Perry named to run dept. whose name he couldn't remember

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 Trump names Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy

Ex-governor advocated elimination of the department but couldn’t remember its name

In a surprise announcement, President-elect Donald Trump named former Texas governor Rick Perry to become Secretary of Energy.

In the press release announcing the appointment, Mr. Trump said, “Rick Perry is a major, major talent who could do any job in the Trump administration, let me tell you. If I hadn't won the election in a landslide, I would definitely had Rick participate in the next season of Celebrity Apprentice. In looking for the right position for Rick, we also considered Commerce and Education, departments Rick had vowed to eliminate if he ever became president. While he also wanted to eliminate the Energy Department, the fact that he couldn’t remember its name was, for me, what clinched it for him. I mean, sometimes I can’t remember its name. And I’m smart, you know.”

Perry, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, famously said in a debate during the primaries, “"It's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: Commerce, Education and -- the, uh -- what's the third one there? Let's see,” going on to say, “"I would do away with Education. The, uh, Commerce. And let's see. I can't. The third one, I can't. "Oops."

Perry was selected for a Cabinet position by Trump despite having said, while campaigning for the 2016 Republican nomination, that Mr. Trump was a “barking carnival act” and a “cancer on conservatism.”

Through a spokesman, Perry thanked Mr. Trump for his confidence vowing to recommend on his first day on the job that the President “change the name of his department from the Department of Energy to the Department of Oops.”

With Giuliani out, Trump looks to more astonishing Cabinet picks

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 Giuliani drops out of consideration for Cabinet post

Trump team looks past "America's Mayor" and continue building on record of outstanding appointments

In a shocking development, former New York City mayor (and former federal prosecutor) Rudy Giuliani will not serve in Donald Trump's incoming administration, the President-elect announced Friday. (Note: As reported in previous editions, Giuliani can be described as a “former federal prosecutor” now that disgraced New Jersey governor Chris Christie has lost his trademark for the term.)

The transition team released a statement Friday saying Giuliani removed himself from consideration for a position last month. It is not known whether his withdrawal is due to the fact that he had dropped to 22^nd out of 23 potential nominees for the position of Secretary of State, topping only former Republican presidential candidate and pizza mogul, Herman Cain.

"Rudy Giuliani is an extraordinarily talented and patriotic American. I will always be appreciative of his 24/7 dedication to our campaign after I won the primaries and for his extremely wise counsel," Trump said in the statement. "He is, and continues to be, a close personal friend, and as appropriate, I will call upon him for advice and can see an important place for him in the administration at a later date."

Sources inside the transition team were deeply disturbed by Giuliani’s withdrawal.

Trump has already made a number of outstanding appointments, including:

·       An anti-labor Labor secretary;

·       An anti-environment EPA administrator;

·       A racist attorney general;

·       A conspiracy theorist National Security Advisor;

·       Two Goldman Sachs execs as the Treasury secretary and the head of the President’s Economic Council;

·       A Commerce secretary who’s most known for taking companies into bankruptcy;

·       A HUD secretary who’s gone on record saying he doesn’t have the skills to run a bureaucracy;

·       An Education secretary who’s against public education;

·       A Health and Human Services secretary who wants to take medical insurance away from 30 million people and make Medicare a voucher program;

·       And, first and foremost, an anti-women’s rights vice president who, as governor of Indiana, signed into law rules which severely limited abortions in his state and required, when a rare “legal” abortion was performed, funerals or cremations for fetuses, while also signing one of the most discriminatory anti-LGBT bills in the country.

With those appointments in mind, the Transition team had hoped to continue its exceptional record by choosing Giuliani as the first  certifiable member of the Trump Cabinet. (In this case "certifiable" is defined as “officially recognized as needing treatment for a mental disorder” -- see Around the Block, 10/27/16  for more on Giuliani and his rare psychological condition - http://tedblocksblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/giulianis-request-to-return-as.html)

Looking to quickly recover from the loss of Giuliani and his unsurpassed qualities, Around the Block has learned exclusively that the Trump team is now looking at combining the Department of Interior with the Energy Department and naming former Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the first secretary of the newly formed department, to be named the Department of Drill Baby, Drill. 

A first draft of the department's new logo is shown below.

Labor secretary nominee opposes worker protection laws, raising minimum wage

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 Fast-food exec to be named Labor Secretary

Critic of worker protections and increasing minimum wage to be in charge or welfare of wage earners

The New York Times reported that President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to name Andrew F. Puzder, chief executive of the company that operates the fast food outlets Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. and an outspoken critic of the worker protections enacted by the Obama administration, to be secretary of labor, people close to the transition said.

Mr. Puzder has spent his career in the private sector and has opposed efforts to expand eligibility for overtime pay, arguing that the minimum wage hurts small businesses and leads to job loss among low-skilled workers.

If confirmed, Mr. Puzder will oversee a department whose mission statement reads:

  

To foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.

  

Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Puzder is a successful businessman prone to populist statements and a degree of political incorrectness. This latter trait is demonstrated most prominently in the ads he runs for his companies which frequently feature women wearing next to nothing and gesturing suggestively.

“I like our ads,” he told the publication Entrepreneur. “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.”

So "very American," with Mr. Puzder's selection the Trump transition team is claiming one more score for American exceptionalism.

Puzder’s selection follows Trump’s naming of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. 

This means, in the space of 24 hours, a climate change denier has been named to protect the environment and a critic of worker protection who is against raising the minimum wage will be in charge of "fostering, promoting and developing the welfare of wage earners..."

There has been no confirmation from the transition team at Trump Tower that along with Mr. Puzder's nomination, Mr. Trump is considering an executive order changing the name of the Department of Labor to the Department of Anti-Labor.

Putting twist on word "Protection," fossil fuel industry ally picked to run EPA.

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Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA

President-elect considering executive order to change agency’s name

The New York Times reported today that President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

According to the Times, Mr. Pruitt, a Republican, has been a key architect of the legal battle against President Obama’s climate change policies.

Mr. Pruitt, 48, is one of a number of Republican attorneys general who have formed an alliance with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda. 

Saying that the debate on climate change is “far from settled," Pruitt is part of a coalition of state attorneys general suing the agency over the administration’s Clean Power Plan.

Industry representatives expressed satisfaction with the Pruitt nomination, with a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute saying, "Scott Pruitt is an outstanding choice for this position given that he is suing the federal agency he is scheduled to lead and is a trusted ally of the industry he will be charged with regulating. You can't do better than this."

There has been no confirmation from the transition team at Trump Tower that along with Mr. Pruitt’s nomination, Mr. Trump is considering an executive order changing the name of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Environmental Destruction Agency (EDA).

Trump call with Taiwan president compels China to immediate action. Crisis averted?

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Breaking precedent, Trump takes call from Taiwan president

Was scotch taped Trump tie behind call?

Breaking decades of American diplomatic practice, U.S. president-elect Donald J. Trump spoke on the phone on Friday with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. The call caught the Chinese government off guard by lunging into the most sensitive of its so-called core interests, the “One China” policy agreed to by President Richard M. Nixon more than four decades ago.

China’s foreign ministry on Saturday protested the call, initially calling it a "small trick” that would not affect U.S. policy toward China.

While the Trump transition team has not announced the nature of the conversation between Ing-wen and Trump, sources within Trump Tower told Around the Block that Trump took the call after being warned by Commerce Secretary-designate Wilbur Ross of potential business issues for Trump's companies.

Ross, known as the “king of bankruptcy” apparently told Mr. Trump that recent pictures of Trump showing his necktie being held together with scotch tape would have a detrimental effect not only on the Trump tie business, but the Trump brand in general, saying to Trump, "if you don’t do something about this tie problem quickly, I’d advise filing for bankruptcy.”

Sources say that in a remarkable moment of “bashert” (the Yiddish word for “destiny” or “meant to be” – clearly son-in-law Jared Kushner is having significant influence within the transition team), President Ing-wen called Mr. Trump after seeing photos of the scotch taped tie to tell him that Taiwanese tie factories could solve the scotch tape problem, imploring Mr. Trump to move tie production from China to Taiwan.

While there has been no official confirmation of the nature of Trump's conversation with the Taiwanese president, Chinese officials, when apprised that Taiwan might be in line to take Trump tie production away from them, reacted strongly.

According to a foreign ministry spokeswoman, “If indeed this call was about moving production to Taiwan to solve the Trump tie scotch tape problem, make no mistake, we will not let that move happen. Effective immediately, we have authorized our top cravat scientist, Ascot Chang, to set up fool-proof systems that will ensure that every tie making facility in China will be able to manufacture Trump ties in a manner that will eliminate the need to use scotch tape.”

The spokeswoman, Tai Won-on, went on to say, “Donald Trump’s ascendency to the U.S. presidency, his unprecedented popularity and the love of the American people for him, will result in record sales for Trump branded products, particularly ties. This will be a boon for the Chinese economy and we will do all in our power to make sure that all Trump products will be made nowhere else but in China. This will be the cornerstone of our policy with America."