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Monthly Archives: March 2017

Smoke And Mirrors


It is apparent that the current administration is in disarray. The TOTUS has spent valuable time attempting to implement his promises (possibly against the advice of wiser folk). His staffers perpetuate the idea that the President is doing what he said he would do including the basket of lies and never-ending tweets that have no proven basis in fact. It is to our detriment that the Dupublican Congress is using his stream of tweets to cover their own nefarious agendas. It is not a far stretch to see that the current Congress is not in it for their Constituents. Each move they make to change or repeal the ACA brings us closer to a health crisis (Trump will be blamed). We should bear in mind that our Congress has been against us for years and will continue to be that way until we stop them. How conservative can they be when they take home excellent salaries and health benefits while denying the same to all of us. If you believe that your representative is doing something for you then you need to reexamine their actions, NOT the lies they tell you. We are now in a state of entertainment since there are so many sleight of hand actions within the Government aside from the potential scam angle which allows for the doublespeak we hear daily and are expected to accept as correct. There are a few Congressional members who are on the side of the voters accidentally or on purpose but I consider none of them worthy of complete trust. If you are interested in the truth then you need to spend less time on Faux news, mainstream extreme pundits whose only agenda is to put their opinions out as fact. The only opinions that should count are fact based opinions gleaned from researching those facts. If as a voter you are unwilling to do this then your opinion is playing into the hands of the very people who are ruining the country in your name and laughing all the way to the bank.

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This former British lawmaker is at the heart of the Trump wiretap allegations


3/06/2017. This story from the Washington Post appears to show the Trump allegation of wiretapping is gleaned from a British Writer last year . It seems that the Trump administration is too busy looking for distractions rather than solutions to the Countries issues and possibly his own (external and internal). He is continuing on the campaign trail rather than the solution trail, What makes more sense, putting millions (or billions) toward infrastructure (which will create jobs, long-term) or towards a wall (which will create jobs temporarily)? The wall will also create more problems as Mexico cannot be forced to pay for it and we risk losing a partner in the fight against the drug cartels who are supplying Americans in a bad way, creating a rift in the trade agreements now in place which could  affect many corn producing states in the U.S.A . To top it off the wiretapping is old news and unrelated to the current Tweetstorm. MA

2 / 23

The Washington Post
Karla Adams hrs ago

LONDON — A former British legislator is at the heart of the Trump administration’s explosive allegation that President Barack Obama was spying on him during the 2016 campaign.
But who exactly is Louise Mensch?
For starters, the politician-turned-journalist is the writer behind an article published on the eve of the election titled: “EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia.”
The article, published on the right-leaning, libertarian website Heat Street, did not create much of a stir at the time. But it has come under the spotlight after Trump, in a tweetstorm over the weekend, accused Obama of wiretapping his offices during the election campaign. Trump compared the alleged bugging to the Watergate scandal, but he has not offered any evidence to back up his claims.
In tweets on Monday, Mensch emphasized that her reporting does not back up Trump’s wiretapping claim, even though the White House cited her article to justify the allegation. She stressed that her reporting refers to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant and does not mention anything about wiretapping.
Over the weekend, the White House cited reports “from BBC, Heat Street, New York Times, Fox News, among others” to justify the claims. Former Obama administration officials and aides have denied the accusation.
After combing through these news reports, The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler concluded that the piece by Mensch in Heat Street was “the most important” of the lot.
In her report, published Nov. 7, Mensch said the FBI was granted a FISA court warrant in October “giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.”
She cited “two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community” as evidence for those claims.
Mensch, who is based in New York, said her sources contacted her because of her outspoken backing for the intelligence community. She has, for instance, called Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified documents, “a loathsome traitor.”
“They gave me one of the most closely guarded secrets in intelligence,” she said, referring to her sources. Speaking to the Guardian, a left-leaning British newspaper, she added: “People are speculating why someone trusted me with that. Nobody met me in a darkened alley in a fedora, but they saw me as someone who has political experience and is their friend. I am a pro-national security partisan. I don’t have divided loyalties.”
Mensch, 45, is a force on social media and describes herself on Twitter as a “Conservative. Feminist. Optimist. Patriot.”
Anyone who follows her on Twitter — and more than 170,000 people do — knows that she is not a Trump supporter and has been probing Trump-Russia links for some time.
Her name also appeared in the hacked emails of John Podesta, the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In an email she sent to the Creative Artists Agency that was forwarded to Podesta, Mensch described herself as a “committed Republican” who was concerned about a Trump presidency and offered a suggestion for a campaign ad for Clinton.
In Britain, Mensch is best known for her stint as a Conservative lawmaker and for her work as a successful chick-lit novelist under her maiden name, Louise Bagshawe.
She resigned as a lawmaker in 2012, saying it “proved impossible to balance the needs of my family.” The mother of three moved to New York to live with her husband, Peter Mensch, manager of the bands Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Although she served as a member of Parliament for only two years, she quickly became a high-profile figure, partly because of her leading role in a parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid.
Mensch was one of four Conservative lawmakers on the committee who refused to endorse the panel’s conclusions. The committee’s description of Murdoch as “not a fit person” to run a major international company, Mensch said, was “partisan” and unjustified. She also apologized to the broadcaster Piers Morgan after falsely accusing him of admitting to phone hacking.
Mensch was regularly featured in the news when she was a politician. She was once contacted by an investigative journalist who claimed to have pictures proving that Mensch had taken drugs in a nightclub in the 1990s with the violinist Nigel Kennedy.
Mensch responded in a statement by saying it was “highly probable” and apologized for her dancing.
“Since I was in my twenties, I’m sure it was not the only incident of the kind; we all do idiotic things when young. I am not a very good dancer and must apologise to any and all journalists who were forced to watch me dance that night at Ronnie Scott’s,” she said.
She works as an executive for News Corp., a media company owned by Murdoch. She helped to launch Heat Street last year but left that role in December and is focusing on creating digital media projects for the company.
This story has been updated.

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No Original Thoughts


The President’s address to Congress was measured and calm(?) almost like being sedated. The message was still a collection of  talking points that brought nothing new to the fore. Looking at his selections for his cabinet speaks volumes on where he thinks he wants to go. His selections are more like looking through the phone  book for a service, the areas that will create the most problems: Attorney General-Jeff Sessions an avowed Racist, still!, Betsy DeVos, wealthy with no idea about public education. These are just two of the many pulled out the hat with no real vetting (or extreme vetting as Mr. Trump is so fond of saying). This lack of “vetting” is rampant through his selections of staff and  the executive orders he has signed. It appears too me that he is more concerned with the fanfare over the signing rather that the context and the long range effect of these orders. One that stands out is the rolling back EPA rules on clean water, do we want a nation of Flint Michigan’s? The oil pipeline reversal again we are stealing from the Native Americans. Let us not begin on the ACA repeal and replace. With all of the evidence of the overall devastation the repeal would cause this train is still on the tracks. The majority Dupublicans are sitting back as if nothing is wrong while many of them have been shouted out and down in their town hall meetings. Many of the Dupublicans have elected not to have town halls because they appear to be afraid to face their constituents whom they have lied to time after time. We as voters have an opportunity to reverse this impending disaster, all we need to do is vote and call, text or email your Congressional representative, this is our voice and we need to use it whenever possible and continue to do so as long as we have poor government from the local to Federal levels. Now to put a fine point on this administration, TOTUS the current White House resident has tweeted that the Obama administration bugged his office in Trump tower. Apparently the way this engineer of the Crazy Train copes with issues is to tweet something outrageous with little or no truth to change the conversation. If there is a betting line on his tenure I will put money on 2018.

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Trump’s Help For Harley Is Hurting The Bike Maker


A little more evidence that the current White House resident is not as in touch with world events as he would (or his staff) would like you to believe.MA

David Kiley, Contributor
2 days ago

© Provided by Forbes Media LLC
There aren’t too many brands that are as iconically “American” as Harley Davidson. And when Donald Trump invoked the “Hogs” in his speech to the nation Tuesday night, he thought he was calling attention to unfair trade deals inhibiting American companies and workers abroad.
Not so fast. It turns out that the high tariffs faced by Harley when trying to sell its bikes overseas would have been substantially removed by the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump squashed his first days in office. In Vietnam, for example, Harley faces a 74% tax. It would have been zero if the U.S. signed on to TPP. Indeed, Harley’s CEO and chief lobbyist publicly advocated for TPP last year.

Trump repeatedly called TPP a U.S. “job killer.” Trade experts disagree, arguing that it was just the opposite, but got caught up in the political rancor and rhetoric of a campaign, rightfully referred to as “the silly season.”
Trump seems fairly fact-challenged in his use of Harley to call attention to unfair trade. He complained that there is one country that charges a 100% tariff on imported motorcycles. That’s true. It’s India. But Harley has a factory in India that supplies bikes to consumers there, so those bikes aren’t subject to the tariff. India, a developing country, put heavy tariffs on some categories of products to force companies to build factories in their country and create jobs for their working class. Indonesia, another country with a tariff, hits imported motorcycles with a 40% tax for the same reason.
In a statement, Harley-Davidson said it opened the plant in India in 2011 “to improve production flexibility, market responsiveness and strengthen operations in the country.” It doesn’t address whether the tariff played a part in its decision, but it did, of course.
India is a huge market for motorcycles and scooters – 16.5 million per years. Harley has less than a 1% share of that market. But that is because Harley does not make the kinds of bikes that are most popular in India, where there are many manufacturers vying for share at much lower price points.
Tariffs on motorcycles are common across the Asia-Pacific region. Besides India and Indonesia, China levies a 30% tariff, as does Malaysia. Thailand hits Harley with a 60% tariff, and Taiwan’s tariff is 20%. Malaysia and Singapore were also part of TPP, and there was hope that Indonesia would have joined it eventually.
The 12 countries in TPP account for one-third of global trade, according to The Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Harley relies heavily on overseas sales. Last year, the company reported 40% of its sales were outside the U.S. And despite the tariffs in Asia, it had a record year in the Pan-Asian region, selling 33,000 bikes – not bad considering Harley’s bikes are among the most expensive available in those markets.
Ironically, while Harley has been a big loser from Trump’s pull-out from TPP, the big winner is China, the country he has been most vocal about in terms of wanting to make it harder for Chinese goods to get into the U.S.
Without the U.S. in TPP, China is free to dominate the Pan-Pacific region through trade. “China’s ambitious One-Belt-One-Road and Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank initiatives will also be strengthened by a perceived or actual U.S. pullback from Asia [as a result of leaving the TPP],” says Linda Lim, professor of a strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
No wonder Harley CEO Matthew Levatich seems uneasy in the spotlight with Donald Trump using Harley as a poster-brand for his supposed fair-trade policy. The new president already killed the one deal that would have helped the motorcycle company.
The focus on Harley isn’t all bad, though. Shares of Harley climbed 3.58% Wednesday, compared with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was up 1.46%.

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