I am hoping that some day soon we can get passed Amateur Hour in the Oval Office and that the Not Ready For Prime Time Players of the Trump administration can step up their game, so that they may at least appear to be providing a modicum of control over the most powerful country on the planet,
It's about time. The reporting said that the administration could have released it last week, but they chose not to, because they wanted to bask in the glow of Trump's most recent speech, which was almost Presidential in tone. I can't blame them really. As there is no guarantee he will ever sound that way again, I'd want to hang on to the moment too.
Without addressing the question about whether this is or is not the best approach to protect the country, because reasonable people may genuinely disagree on this, let's just assume for the sake of argument, that No Trespassing 2.0 is the best approach. Let's assume we all agree, that we need this new and improved executive order in order to keep out all the bad hombres, no matter what the downstream ramifications are on all the good hombres.
In that light, NT 2.0 represents a significant improvement over its predecessor.
It does at least three things, which near as I can tell, have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with any of the legal challenges to the executive order, and which therefore must have occurred only because the Not Ready For Prime Time Players actually stopped, perhaps for the first time in their lives .... to think about what they were actually doing, and to maybe get some advice from the GOOD people in government who actually know how to do this stuff. Praise Jesus and the administrations of the 44 earlier presidents, who somehow added value to the process despite the fact that they were all just a bunch of bottom feeders hanging out in the swamp.
NT 2.0 does the following:
1) It removes Iraq from the list of banned countries. What a concept. We are sending an important message to the government who today represents one of our most important allies in the Middle East in fighting ISIS, that you really aren't the scum of the earth after all. We were just kidding the first time around. Ha, ha.
2) It also removes Green Card recipients from the banned countries list. It would appear that it finally dawned on some one in Trump administration that you couldn't get any more extreme than the extreme vetting of getting a Green Card. Who knew?
3). Most importantly, NT. 2.0. provides a 10 day waiting period prior to implementation of the new law. so that government employees who are responsible for enforcing the law can actually try to understand what the crazy mind of Donald Trump has concocted this time. This is no easy task. Maybe ten days aren't enough, but it's a start. Oh, I know this change in the executive order means that all the bad hombres in the world are going to swarm the country in mass over these next 10 days, but in truth our president already opened the barn door on this one weeks ago when he announced his first executive order on this topic, without any real planning, and then had to walk it backwards
I am just disappointed in the amazing amount of ongoing incompetency with in the Trump administration. As I have said, I did not vote for him, but still I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, having an outsider in government might reveal some better ways to run government. OK, it's official, I was wrong.
Instead, the first 50 days (OMG, we are only halfway to the first hundred) have brought us among other things, a poorly planned attempt to restrict immigration, controversial selections in cabinet member, an NSA director who had to resign, an Attorney General coming close to perjury (I don't subscribe to the perjury claim, its the incompetence one that gets my attention), inane, meaningless discussions over crowd size and millions of illegal votes, accusations of wire tapping by our former President, and oh god, more discussions about walls.
And all I can think of is, one thing- what happens when we are faced with a real crisis?
Republicans have argued that Obama was not a strong enough president, that America has lost its stature in the world under his presidency. Even if you subscribe to this position, what do you say when the answer to this is Donald Trump.? Strength and stature requires a foundation of competence. Campaigning is easy. Governing is hard. I suspect a fair number of Republicans are asking "What did we get ourselves into?"
The original Not Ready For Prime Time Players (including John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Jane Curtain and Chevy Chase) had a job to do on Saturday Night Live and they did with style and incredible wit. Their humor was reserved for late night, but it quickly went mainstream. It was that good and it led the way in the world of comedy. The cast and crew of Trump's Not Ready for Prime Time Players are simply, not ready for our times, any of them.
[Note - the one positive attribute of the Trump administration is that there will never be a shortage of material for an amateur blogger. Go Donny, Go!]
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