AVENUE VIET

[Doan_Du]

His abysmal ignorance isn't getting better. He's been skipping security briefings, they bore him and can't hold his attention, the span of which is about 5 minutes at most.

Instead of wasting his time, energy and tweets on Broadway shows, he'd do better to focus on what's important for a leader to know.

How educated, intelligent and politically-savvy people still support and defend him is a total mystery to me.
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[vu]

[Wildflower]

[Du Khach]

[Annamite_en_Amérique]

This is so unconscionably irresponsible from the president-elect it's barely believable. Especially a president-elect who's so woefully ignorant of the world outside the US and geopolitics in general.

I thought it worthwhile to copy the text of the article from the link Vu posted:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/307461-trump-turning-away-intelligence-briefings-since-victory-report

Trump turning down intelligence briefings since victory: report
By Rebecca Savransky

Donald Trump has been turning away intelligence briefings since winning the presidency earlier this month, The Washington Post reported.

Since his win, the president-elect has received only two classified intelligence briefings — an initial briefing he got within days of his victory and a second he received on Tuesday in New York before leaving for Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday.

That number so far is lower than his predecessors, according to current and former U.S. officials.

In the two weeks since the election, intelligence analysts have been ready to give Trump daily briefings on global developments and security threats, according to The Post.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has reportedly made time almost every day since the election to receive the intelligence briefings*.

A senior U.S. official who gets the same briefings President Obama receives every day said the president-elect has "a lot of catching up to do," and suggested the briefings could help.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of Trump's transition team, dismissed criticism and called national security the president-elect's "No. 1 priority."

Michael Morell, former deputy CIA director, said the last three presidents-elect made use of the intelligence briefings offered "to literally study the national security issues that they would be facing and the world leaders with whom they would be interacting with as president."

“The president-elect is missing out on a golden opportunity to learn about the national security threats and challenges facing our nation,” said Morell, who supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

“Knowledge that would be extremely valuable to have when he takes the oath of office and when he steps into the Situation Room for the first time."

* Maybe Trump will let Pence govern the country while he tweets about trivial matters?
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Công Hòa Viêt-Nam Muôn Nam!

[Viet Chick]

[dzu]

[vu]

It was alarming to confront how thinly thought through many of Mr.
Trump's stances actually are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/opinion/questioning-donald-trump.html
The New York Times
Questioning Donald Trump
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
NOV. 22, 2016

It was good to hear Donald Trump “disavow and condemn” the white
nationalism of some of his supporters, in a meeting Tuesday at The New
York Times.

It was good to hear him acknowledge that climate change is linked to human
activity, and that maybe waterboarding isn’t such a great idea after
all. And speaking for the home team, it was good to hear him even call The
New York Times a “great, great American jewel.”

It was, of course, hard to square all these statements with his record of
spreading the birther lie about President Obama, calling climate change a
“hoax,” promising he’d “bring back waterboarding” and describing
The New York Times as “failing.”

But, hey, if President-elect Trump moderates his views, and then
crystallizes those views in policies that, as he put it, “save our
country,” we will commend him on growth in office. “I am awed by the
job,” he said.

The problem is, as pleasant as it was to hear those remarks, it was
alarming to confront how thinly thought through many of the
president-elect’s stances actually are. Consider climate change. Mr.
Trump said that he valued clean air and water, but that he hadn’t
decided if combating climate change was worth the expense. “I have a
totally open mind,” he said, making a virtue of not knowing the issue.

Or take torture. In the campaign, he stoutly defended waterboarding, which
is contrary to American values and illegal under international law. Yet
one conversation, with Gen. James Mattis, a candidate for defense
secretary, may have changed his mind. General Mattis told Mr. Trump what
experts have been saying for years: Torture doesn’t work. Mr. Trump said
he was “impressed and surprised” by General Mattis’s assurance that,
“Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do
better.”

We would applaud any sensible change of position, however arrived at. Mr.
Trump’s apparent flexibility, combined with his lack of depth on policy,
might be grounds to hope he will steer a wiser course than the one plotted
by his campaign. But so far he is surrounding himself with officials eager
to enact only the most extreme positions. His flexibility would be their
springboard.

President Obama, who also spoke of bringing the country together, invited
Republicans to join his administration. We have not yet seen Mr. Trump
make any such effort to reach across party lines.
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[vu]

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/really-bigger-job-i-thought

The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is really a bigger job than I thought'
11/30/16 10:20 AM
By Steve Benen

In early January, CBS News’ John Dickerson asked Donald Trump an
excellent question. “When you think of the presidency – the
day-to-day, not the show part – what is it going to be like?” the
“Face the Nation” host asked the then-candidate. “What do you think
about that, the operation?”

The Republican replied, “I don’t think about it.”

Eleven months later, Trump was the president-elect, meeting with President
Obama in Oval Office, where Trump “seemed surprised by the scope” of
the responsibilities that would soon be on his shoulders. He shouldn’t
have been surprised – candidates for the nation’s highest office
usually give these duties considerable thought before launching their
campaigns – but Trump sought the presidency before learning about what
the job entails.

Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally, talked to USA Today this week about his
impressions of the president-elect at this phase in the process. When he
met with Trump last week, Gingrich says, “He commented, ‘This is
really a bigger job than I thought.’ Which is good. He should think
that.” As president, Gingrich went on, “you have war and peace, you
have enormous powers … and it all comes down to the Oval Office and it
all comes down to you.” The problem, of course, is that Trump doesn’t
quite know what to do while he comes to terms with the fact that the
presidency is “a bigger job” than he realized. The incoming president
has no relevant experience, and he’s surrounded himself with a team
whose members also have no relevant experience. Trump should’ve thought
all of this through before he even kicked off his candidacy, but instead,
he’s learning it all on the fly, driven by misplaced confidence shaped
by nothing but his unhealthy ego.

Vox’s Libby Nelson recently explained, “Running for president is hard.
You’re on the road all the time, your every utterance is scrutinized,
you have to prepare for debates and manage donors and keep up a tough
schedule. But being president is much, much harder. Trump used to joke on
the campaign trail about how hard he was working at running for president.
One theme that emerges from reports … is that he doesn’t realize how
much harder it can get.”

What I’m most curious about at this stage is whether or not Trump
actually cares. We learned yesterday, for example, that Trump has decided
to put his transition work on hold and will instead “begin a victory
lap” with a political rally in Cincinnati tomorrow.

It’s reportedly part of a “tour” Trump is launching that will take
him to a variety of other states.

In theory, Trump simply doesn’t have time for a multi-state tour. The
amateur politician only has two months to prepare for the presidency, and
he should be maintaining a grueling official schedule in advance of his
inauguration in mid-January.

But that’s not fun. Trump doesn’t like rolling up his sleeves and
tackling unglamorous tasks; Trump likes cameras and applause. The
president-elect’s focus isn’t on work; it’s on being a celebrity
superstar. Leading the executive branch of a global superpower is hard,
but leading rallies and promising to Make America Great Again with adoring
followers is exciting.

And so it’s apparently time to say goodbye to policy papers and
briefings, and hello to a Midwest road trip.

The New Republic’s Alex Shephard had a great piece on this yesterday,
adding, “Donald Trump, a man who has a very short attention span and
requires instant gratification more or less constantly, loves campaigning
because he has a very short attention span and requires instant
gratification more or less constantly…. And just as Trump has no
intention of giving up control of his businesses, he has no intention of
giving up his rallies either, maybe because he believes they are the key
to his success and maybe because he is a petulant narcissist and maybe
both.”
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[Annamite_en_Amérique]

Cultural Comment
Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , 12:00 P.M.



America has always been aspirational to me. Even when I chafed at its hypocrisies, it somehow always seemed sure, a nation that knew what it was doing, refreshingly free of that anything-can-happen existential uncertainty so familiar to developing nations. But no longer. The election of Donald Trump has flattened the poetry in America’s founding philosophy: the country born from an idea of freedom is to be governed by an unstable, stubbornly uninformed, authoritarian demagogue. And in response to this there are people living in visceral fear, people anxiously trying to discern policy from bluster, and people kowtowing as though to a new king. Things that were recently pushed to the corners of America’s political space—overt racism, glaring misogyny, anti-intellectualism—are once again creeping to the center.

Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots. Now is the time to confront the weak core at the heart of America’s addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for resilience, and too much for fragility. Hazy visions of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we hate” sound dangerously like appeasement. The responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the denigrated but to the denigrators. The premise for empathy has to be equal humanity; it is an injustice to demand that the maligned identify with those who question their humanity.

America loves winners, but victory does not absolve. Victory, especially a slender one decided by a few thousand votes in a handful of states, does not guarantee respect. Nobody automatically deserves deference on ascending to the leadership of any country. American journalists know this only too well when reporting on foreign leaders—their default mode with Africans, for instance, is nearly always barely concealed disdain. President Obama endured disrespect from all quarters. By far the most egregious insult directed toward him, the racist movement tamely termed “birtherism,” was championed by Trump.

Yet a day after the election, people spoke of the vitriol between Barack Obama and Donald Trump. No, the vitriol was Trump’s. Now is the time to burn false equivalencies forever. Pretending that both sides of an issue are equal when they are not is not “balanced” journalism; it is a fairy tale—and, unlike most fairy tales, a disingenuous one.

[...]

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/now-is-the-time-to-talk-about-what-we-are-actually-talking-about
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Công Hòa Viêt-Nam Muôn Nam!