Day 133: Fuck the world

Today, Trump has relinquished the title of President. He no longer has any claim to it. Henceforth, he shall be known as the Potato in Chief. I understand that this is insulting to potatoes, and I apologize.

• The Potato in Chief has indicated that the US will begin the process of withdrawing from the Paris Accord. I am gutted. There is no "better deal for America" to save the world. There are no concessions to extract. We only have one planet. If we, collectively, do save this one, then the USA will be mentioned only as an impediment that the rest of the world had to overcome.
• The Potato has no idea what he has just done. He has no idea what the Paris Accord meant, or what the USA's role in it was.
• As I said yesterday, there is no benefit to this action, other than pleasing his base, who have admittedly been gunning for the environment for years.
• Pulling out of the accord has essentially no economic benefit, and is a huge political expenditure on the world stage, so much so that some are writing that the entire point of this is to give a big "fuck you" to the rest of the world in furtherance of his nationalistic ideals.
• The Potato claimed that he wanted to "renegotiate" the treaty for a better position for the US. This is not a crummy real estate deal. The whole point of this was to commit the US to maintaining its position as a world leader. EU leaders have rightfully rebuffed the Potato completely, firmly stating that the treaty cannot be renegotiated.
• Here's an annotation of the Potato's remarks, which were uncharacteristically dark, even by the standard of the inauguration speech.

Unsurprisingly, the Potato has been slammed from all corners for his "grotesque abdication of leadership", as John Kerry put it. Furthermore, I've never seen such international condemnation of the US.

In other depressing news:

• Remember back in December when the Obama administration seized a bunch of Russian properties that were being used for espionage? The Kremlin recently threatened the Potato's administration regarding them, and the administration is capitulating and planning on returning them with what seems to be no strings attached. Once again, the administration appears to be batting for Russia.
• The Potato's travel ban has been appealed by the administration to the Supreme Court.
• The EPA has offered buyouts to its staff in an attempt to trim their workforce down to the Potato's desired size. Even without the Potato's budget in place, the EPA is going to be hobbled.
• That ethics notice yesterday? It turns out that the Potato's entire fucking senior staff have had to be given ethics exemptions. When Obama gave exemptions (49 over the course of 8 years), a detailed letter was written indicating why that exemption was in the public interest. Potatohead has written 17 in just 3 months, with no justifications whatsoever. A number of those exemptions are incredibly sketchy, and some are likely to be illegal.
• The Potato has refused to recognize LGBTQ Pride Month. I wonder why the self-proclaimed ally is silent.
• The administration is planning to enforce federal drug laws in states that have "legalized" marijuana. They have a war on drugs to uphold!
• The administration doesn't like the Congressional Budget Office. Because the CBO has said bad things about Republican bills, Mick Mulvaney (White House Budget Tsar) has claimed the CBO is obsolete. This is an amazing display of wilful ignorance.
• A bunch more relatively minor Russia news. Here's a good overview.
• US visa applicants will now be asked for 15 years of biographical information and for all social media handles within the past 5 years. This will undoubtedly lead to lengthy delays and rejections based on innocent mistakes in the applications because who the hell remembers their address from 15 years ago?

Welp. Good luck, everybody.