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Donald Trump: A “Big League” Owner?

Hunter Staszak

This post is pure (informed) speculation. But it’s pretty interesting to think about.

President Trump might just be the new owner of the Miami Marlins... join me for a little leap.

Let’s start with what we know. Donald J. Trump loves all things big league. He’s on record as saying that he “was the best baseball player in New York when [he] was young.” As a hitter, he was “the best. The best hitter.” Sure, he was good at baseball - but to say he was the best player in New York in the age of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra suggests something of a disconnect from reality. Nothing new there, of course. So the guy’s probably still clinging to his glory in baseball. His activities may have shifted from athletics to binge-eating KFC (growing those man tits), but hey, he can still live out those MLB dreams as an owner. 

What exactly do we know about the “handshake deal” made between owner Jeffrey Loria and his suitor? The Miami Herald and Forbes reported this morning that the agreement is “with a real estate developer based in New York” who “doesn’t have the cash to buy the Marlins.” Doesn’t that sound like someone we know? Realistically, that means there’s gonna be a bit of debt taken on in this deal. Should be no problem for the self-proclaimed King of Debt.

Plus, Trump and Loria have some kind of relationship and communicate with one another. The Miami Marlins owner made a pretty big donation to Trump’s campaign. 

And I’ll be god damned if the Marlins aren’t the perfect fit for Trump. They’re a subpar team with poor attendance (sounds like someone’s Inauguration), have made horrible financial decisions, and surround themselves with a low-skill farm team (low-skill Administration). Just don’t let anybody tell him where his players are from!

It is possible that Trump’s meddling in the free market is “limited” to tweeting and tanking companies’ values, criticizing Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s brand and having co-clown Kellyanne shamelessly promote it, and failing to divest from his company. But hey, if you’re going to do conflicts of interest, do it up right and add yourself another in the world of sports!

New developments from ESPN cast a little bit of doubt on my theory, but there’s really only about a degree of separation between Trump and the deal. That’s right: Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner - a top advisor to Trump and Ivanka’s husband - has expressed interest in purchasing the Marlins. 

Whatever ends up happening, I sure hope it means Donald Trump ends up in a beautiful orange blazer. Or maybe they’ll rename Billy the Marlin Donnie. They wouldn’t have to change much. After all, the Marlins mascot is already well known as a “natural born clown.” 

[resistance-rabbit-blog]

Bunny Bites: Things You Thought They Gave A Shit About

Hunter Staszak

When the Trump Administration is awfully busy being awful, there’s a lot to write about. With each assault on democracy worse than the one before, no one issue should get all of the attention. Bunny Bites are designed to break down the most important stuff, with summaries and links to the craziest shit the mad Cheeto’s been up to.

This edition of Bunny Bites focuses on President Trump, The Republican Majority, and the things they told us they cared about - but only took a week to betray.

1. “Transferring power... and giving it back to you, the people” and transparency.

After promising to restore power to the American people, some of the Trump Administration’s first decisions leave Americans in the dark. The US Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency have been barred from communicating with the public. When Badlands National Park went rogue and tweeted objective facts about climate change, those tweets were deleted within hours. The guy that wanted to “drain the swamp” and return control back to the people would like to shut off any communication between agencies and uh... the people. We live in times where a government agency can be censored for tweeting out facts. Of course, we only deal in alternative facts now. 

2. Fiscal responsibility.

It should be pretty well known that outside of municipalities, there are few Republicans who actually mean it when they say they care about “fiscal responsibility.” The reality is that fiscal responsibility is just a really dressed up way of saying Paul Ryan and company would love to take a knife to the safety net and education. Everything else? The wallet’s suddenly open! It’s magic. Republicans have always been much more loose with their checkbook with their guy at the helm. This time around, it’s no different. President Trump, who lost the popular vote by almost 3 million, is ready to mobilize resources for a “major investigation into voter fraud.” 

Voter fraud, for all practical purposes, is a non-issue. Even Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has admitted that “he does not see the evidence,” but is still prepared to let President Trump “have at it.” If the Republicans were truly concerned with fiscal responsibility, they would show some kind of fight and save the American taxpayer from funding a vindictive, ego-driven project. 

Of course, all of this is looking past President Trump’s most big league project: the wall. And despite all of the pep rallies where degenerates would yell that Mexico will pay for it, Mexico announced (¡sorpresa!) that they will not be paying for the wall. Watch Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto lay down the truth to the POTUS here.

Even if one day (ha!) Mexico comes around to the idea of paying for something they have no interest in, the wall will cost the American tax payer, big league. Even though Trump ordered the construction of the wall by executive order, he’ll still have to go through Congress to rearrange departmental funds for a $20B wall and law enforcement, plus $750 million/yr for upkeep.

3. Private accounts and national security. 

Remember the deplorables’ fixation with sending a grandma to prison? The Crook used a private e-mail server and endangered our country’s security, dammit - LOCK HER UP! That sentiment really got them going. Not long after his election, Trump backed off and his supporters’ rage boners went immediately flaccid in utter confusion when he announced that he “doesn’t want to hurt [the Clintons].”

Perhaps Trump’s change of heart had something to do with the fact that his Administration could very well do the same thing. Maybe that’s because a bunch of his aides are chillin’ with personal e-mail accounts themselves. Or, perhaps, that Donald Trump is still using his unsecured Android as of the 25th. 

4. Limiting executive power. 

Remember the GOPs outrage at President Obama for his supposed executive overreach? On one of the weeks they settled on “tyrant” in their “Is Obama a weak leader or total Moslem Kenyan dictator?” conundrum, Trump tweeted this gem out.

Turns out, Trump’s moving just about as fast as President Obama did. His first week in office saw the rapid rollback of The Affordable Care Act (in a vague sense), the ordered construction of the wall, Keystone XL, the ordered creation of an “Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens” along with the announcement of government-reported crimes in sanctuary cities. Trump is soon expected to ban immigration from “terror prone” countries. Of course, Trump has a friendly Congress to work with to pass his plans, but has opted to bypass and do the same damn thing he criticized Obama for - at arguably a much wider (and scarier) scope. 

5. Not being scientists. 

Unless the very same assholes who claimed “I’m not a scientist” as a cop-out to all questions concerning climate change just got PhDs in climate science, it’s pretty suspect that they’ve taken an interest in involving themselves in the scientific process. According to the Associated Press, the “Trump administration mandating EPA scientific studies, data undergo review by political staff before public release.”

Sure, the government always plays some role (funding) in setting the agenda as to what will be researched, but this move goes far beyond that. That the Trump administration wants to personally review scientific reports by the EPA is straight up bonkers - and it’s not science. Science is always subject to review; peer review. Trump’s team - filled with climate change deniers and non-scientists - is not qualified to assess the acceptability of any scientific report. 

By giving Trump’s team the ability to pick and choose what scientific studies are released by the EPA, we are giving them unlimited leeway to choose what the truth is. Objective facts and research are not a friend of this administration. 

Resist.

[resistance-rabbit-blog]

Dispelling With This Fiction That Marco Rubio Is A Paragon of Virtue

Hunter Staszak

I question why people of all political stripes are so quick to paint Marco Rubio as some sort of moderate and principled politician who we’d all be lucky to have as President someday. Throughout the election, Marco Rubio would “boldly” condemn Trump as a “racist” and “xenophobe,” and called the ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ remarks “vulgar and impossible to justify.

At the end of the day, of course, Rubio stood by Trump.

Just a couple of weeks ago, thousands of people took to social media to share the following video. 

They praised Marco Rubio for his "principles" when he grilled Secretary of State-to-be Rex Tillerson over his refusal to call Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

On Monday, Marco Rubio announced that he will vote to confirm Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.

So “let’s dispel with this fiction once and for all” - to borrow a phrase from Little Marco himself - that Senator Rubio is anything other than a grandstanding clown whose sole interest is advancing his political career. This is what he has always done and will continue to do: put up enough of a fight to raise his political profile before falling right back in line. The only time Marco Rubio shows himself to be a person of principle and conviction is when the cameras are rolling.

Point-blank: we cannot count on mainstream Republicans to hold President Trump or his appointments accountable. The Republican Party operates under the belief that might makes right. In 2016 - with Trump at the helm - they won The White House and Congress. Why change a winning formula?