Give up the petulant whining and tweeting, Donald. Accept the fact that a majority of American voters don’t like you. Hillary got over 2,500,000 votes more than you did. (at latest wrap-up tally).  And anyone with a fully-functional brain realizes that’s not because of “millions of illegal voters” as you off-handedly claimed the other day. No way millions of illegal aliens put their lives on the line, locating and identifying themselves by somehow registering and voting. Give me a break! America for the greater part does not love you as you continue to claim. You remain a “loser” in the eyes of many. 

Meanwhile, now that you’ve suckered enough average Americans into the fold to win the electoral-college vote, many of your giddy election-day supporters must be beginning to realize (metaphorically speaking) that they really stepped in it while they stumbled along through a deceptively pleasant-looking meadow with their attention diverted to chit-chat on their iPhones.

It’s really beyond me how so many people actually believed that a legendary, self-absorbed money-grubber such as you was somehow planning to separate Wall Street from government—as you blisthely promised during your campaign. That you would end the stanglehold of Wall Street bankers who crashed the economy during the Bush years—bankers who were bailed out with nobody going to jail.  President Obama managed to fix things pretty well, but against a blatantly obstructive Congress most of the way, it took him eight years 

Did you happen to notice the other day that the Obama administration had brought unemployment all the way down to 4.6% . . . and that the auto industry was enjoying a banner year?

But here we are again. You, Donald, are quickly reviving the the ever-disastrous “trickle down” theory so long loved by conservatives. The type of thing championed by Ronald Reagan during his fuzzy years. Every time that’s been tried, the money dumped into the coffers of the ultra-wealthy remains there. It never reaches the pockets of average Americans. It’s more likely to be soaring overhead in the form of some Fat Cat’s private jet plane. 

So, Donald, your choice for Secretary of the Treasury is Steven Mnuchin. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren points out that this guy “had actually been one of those people who helped do all of those lousy mortgages that not only broke the economy, but broke millions of  families.” Mnuchin is a long-time close friend of  yours, Donald. He is described in the Wall Street Journal as a former Goldman Sachs partner who made a fortune as a fast-moving, aggressive and risk-taking investor. He made partner at Goldman Sachs in 1994 and oversaw Goldman’s mortgage-trading desk before becoming chief information officer. 

Like you, Donald, he has no experience in government. Mnuchin says his top policy priorities would be to overhaul the federal tax code, roll back certain financial regulations, review trade agreements and invest in infrastructure. Like cutting taxes on the wealthy, removing retraints on wild-eyed money-handlers? “Infrastructure,” I suspect refers to such things as subsidizing Big Oil . . .  to accommodate, perhaps, drilling in that Alaskan Wildlife Rreserve. He’ll no doubt have some like-minded Secretary of the Interior with whom to collude—perhaps Sarah Palin.

That rolling back of financial regulations alone is pretty scary. “What Donald Trump is doing is he’s literally handing the keys to the Treasury over to a Wall Street banker who helped cause the crash,” says Sen. Warren.

An interesting observation from Politico.com that I will let speak for itself: “Donald Trump wasn’t the only person to see opportunity in the 2008 housing collapse. As the economy recovered from the rubble of failed banks, foreclosed homes and government bailouts, Steven Mnuchin emerged a winner. That success is coming back to haunt the hedge fund manager and Hollywood producer who is Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary. OneWest, a bank Mnuchin and his partners established during the collapse, has taken steady fire from regulators and consumer advocates for myriad failures ever since.

“Mnuchin became a target of consumer activists in 2009, after he and his partners bought the remains of failed mortgage lender IndyMac. The company had specialized in high-risk loans, including so-called liar loans to borrowers with no money or income, and had become a symbol of the Wall Street recklessness that had sent the country into recession and millions of homeowners into default.

“In Florida, the company foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo singled out the lender for squeezing Superstorm Sandy victims. Last month, the company’s successor, CIT Bank, was accused of discriminating against minority borrowers.’We’re just coming out of a foreclosure crisis and a serious economic downturn. It’s not the time to appoint someone who sided with corporate America over real people,’ said Alys Cohen, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. ‘Mr. Mnuchin comes from Wall Street and has served monied interests over homeowners’.”

Mnuchin on the fidelity scene appears to fit right in with Trump, Gingrich, Giuliani, et al. He divorced his second wife in 2014, brought his fiancée, Scottish actress Louise Linton, along on the Trump campaign plane. Several wives seems to be the norm for much of the inner circle. Speaking of women, Trump also has chosen to head the department of Health and Human Services Tom Price, a Republican congressman from Georgia with a 100% anti-abortion voting record. His attention now is not yet on a time-consuming effort to repeal or amend Obamacare. He is zeroed in for the present on immediate repeal, without engaging Congress, of the related free birth control for women initiative of President Obama, which was an adjunct to the act.

BULL IN A CHINA SHOP—If no one else will use that comparison, I think it’s too appropriate to pass up. Trump apologists just don’t get it, claiming that Trump would have no reason to refuse a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan. The problem is, people, not that he chatted on the phone, but that he hastened to jump right on to Twitter—to tweet about it to the entire world. It’s a personal-ego thing with Donald, ever trying to convince everyone that he is universally adored.  Is he really so godlike that he needn’t concern Himself about destroying diplomatic relations with China in such an egotistic off-hand way? 

WISCONSIN RECOUNT—Wisconsin’s attorney general, who endorsed Trump for president, has asked his state’s supreme court to halt the hand recount of election ballots, calling the effort “frivolous.” Too costly and time-consuming, he says. However, recalling occasional voting machine incidents of years past, a lot of us would sleep better nights, if hand-counting actually agrees with the machine tallies in key counties of the state. Recounts also still are under discussion in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Coincidentally, if the 46 electoral votes of these three states were reversed, the total electoral vote would change from Trump 306, Clinton 232—to  Clinton 278, Trump 260. 

In Pennylvania, a judge has demanded a $1,000,000 bond to initiate a recount. Green Party nominee Jill Stein said that’s beyond the means of average citizens. She is filing a motion in federal court to demand a recount (allowable by law on the basis of Trump’s thin margin of victory). Donald, of course, is livid. His lawyers have filed a counter court motion that there is “no evidence—or even an allegation—that any tampering with Pennsylvania’s voting systems actually occurred.”  What’s the big deal, Donald? Is this all similar to your failure to reveal your taxes? 

Meanwhile, of interest: the top pollster of the Trump campaign also pointed out this week, that a reversal of the vote totals in just 5 counties across the country—four in Florida and one in Michigan--would have cost Trump 45 electoral votes and given the presidency to Clinton.

I know, I know; Trump was elected and we’re supposed to bend over and “make the best of it.” Not gonna happen.

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