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Monthly Archives: September 2018

Can It Be Any Clearer?


All of the rhetoric before and after the 2016 election is more than an indication of the “failing Trump Administration”. We have as I see it a leader with questionable abilities, morals and long range thinking. Guided by agenda specific advisors and bolstered by approval seekers who regularly appear on talk shows to promote the dubious claims of progress of the administration, this “mis Administration” has set us on a path of separation by gender, race and politics. This being the melting pot of the world and a beacon of hope (once) is looking more like a separatist country under the lack luster leadership of a self serving leader abetted by a worse Congress lead by 2 of the worst leaders we have had in many years. This country is now led by multi billionaires who want the world to work the way that benefits them and has bought and paid for many members of Congress to get there. These partisan members have conveniently forgotten that their job is to SERVE the people and not serve them up as fodder. We as voters need to first stop following anyone party and look carefully at the people we elected. Several states have laws that do not allow a voter to vote outside declared parties thereby making us captive voters rather than free ones. We need to fight these laws and the lawmakers every step of the way if we are gain control of the government as it should be. It must be remembered that ALL elected officials serve at the behest of the voters- us.

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Ignorance Is No Excuse-Except?


Ignorantia juris non excusat[1] or ignorantia legis neminem excusat[2] (Latin for “ignorance of the law excuses not”[1] and “ignorance of law excuses no one”[2] respectively) is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because one was unaware of its content.
European-law countries with a tradition of Roman law may also use an expression from Aristotle translated into Latin: nemo censetur ignorare legem (nobody is thought to be ignorant of the law) or ignorantia iuris nocet (not knowing the law is harmful).

It has been said enough times that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” or as stated above “excuses no one”. We have possibly the most or one the most flagrant example of legal (Constitutional) ignorance now presiding in the White House. TOTUS has one and a half sources of information and those are 1/2 Faux news and the 1 is in his own mind which is limited to his ability to understand what he is hearing or listening to. There appears to be penchant for interpreting information according to his ego as a self-proclaimed “Stable genius”. Every President has a staff of people who help him to understand the  daily issues facing the country and normally are not swayed by personal beliefs for the most part. This resident has a different take on things which is colored by his lack of knowledge and his often misguided sense of the topic. TOTUS believes he is smarter than his staff and everyone else so any advice given is either taken or dismissed depending how much pandering is involved. Any issue that disrupts is eagerly accepted and used regularly despite the advice of better informed people. The less honest members of our Congress have used his ignorance to push agendas that benefit themselves and party rather than ALL of the American Voters whom they regularly cite without our consent. This Resident has regularly addressed issues that have little to nothing to do with National and International issues rather than doing the work of the country in a professional way. The NFL is not a National issue yet he has weighed in on it in his “town halls” which he uses regularly to push national issues out of context and to get a dose of adoration. This is an act by a person who is way out of his comfort zone but has too big an ego to accept proper assistance to do the job right.

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Laborers As A Force Of Change


SEPTEMBER 4, 2018
Meyerson on TAP
The “Labor Question” Is Back, Big Time. That term came into use around the turn of the 20th century; it was a shorthand way of asking: What should be done about the abysmal conditions in which American workers were compelled to labor, and about the smoldering discontent those conditions engendered? The anger was palpable, made manifest in waves of worker revolts that stretched from the nationwide rail strike of 1877 through the general strikes of 1919.
Not all the battles were fought in the plants and in the streets. Progressive state legislatures in the early 20th century enacted laws setting minimum wages and limiting the hours women and children could be compelled to work; the courts routinely struck them down, and just as routinely short-circuited strikes by imposing jail sentences on strikers.
It was the New Deal, and the rise of unions that the New Deal facilitated, that rendered the Labor Question seemingly moot. In the three decades following World War II, when unions were strong and prosperity broadly shared, the term receded into the history books alongside other phrases—like, say, “slaveholder”—that evoked a dark and presumably buried side of America’s past.
For the last several decades, however, it’s the largely (if imperfectly) egalitarian spirit of the New Deal that has receded into the shadows. The economic inequality that preceded the New Deal is back with us; the Labor Question has returned.
At the core of the problem is the imbalance of economic power, which takes the form of booming profits and stagnating wages. The Financial Times recently reported that the share of company revenues going to profits is the highest in many years, which necessarily means that the share going to the main alternative destination for company revenues—employees’ pockets—has shrunk.
Nor is this a short-lived phenomenon brought about by the Republican tax cut. In 2011, the chief investment officer of JP Morgan Chase calculated that three-quarters of the long-term increase in U.S. companies’ profit margins was due to the declining share going to wages and benefits. A study last year by Simcha Barkai, then an economist at the University of Chicago’s Stigler Center, found that labor’s share of the national income has dropped by 6.7 percent since the mid-1980s, while the share of the nation’s income going to business investment in equipment, research, new hires and the like has also dropped by 7.2 percent. Correspondingly, the share of the nation’s income going to shareholders (the lion’s share to the very wealthy, among them the CEOs who are compensated with shares) rose by 13.5 percent. That shift has put American workers at a double disadvantage, as their wages and the private-sector investment that creates jobs and boosts productivity have both hit the skids.
Like slowly simmering frogs, Americans have required some time to grasp just how dire their situation has become. On Labor Day 2018, however, it’s clear that most of them now realize the need to reshuffle the power structure. A Gallup poll released on Friday showed support for unions at 62 percent, the highest level in 15 years, with majority backing from every demographic group except Republicans, and even they are evenly split, 45 percent to 47 percent.
The overwhelming public support for striking teachers this spring in such red states as West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona was no fluke; another recent poll, this one from the venerable education pollster PDK, found 73 percent support for teachers’ strikes, and a remarkable 78 percent support from parents of school-age children. The 2-to-1 rejection of a right-to-work law this summer by Missouri voters is further evidence of a pro-labor shift in public opinion, as are the successful unionization campaigns over the past year of such not easily fired workers as university teaching assistants and journalists (including those at such venerable anti-union bastions as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times).
As was the case during the years when the Labor Question was first before the nation, the chief instrument the right relies on to diminish worker power is the courts. The Supreme Court’s decision this June in the Janus case, which was meant to reduce the membership and resources of public-sector unions, was just the latest in a string of rulings to advantage corporate and Republican interests. During the past year, however, progressives have put forth some of the most far-reaching proposals in many decades to rebalance economic clout, including bills from two Democratic senators—Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin—that would require corporations to divide their boards between representatives of workers and representatives of shareholders.
Since conservatives and business interests began pecking away at the New Deal’s handiwork in the 1970s, class conflict in America has been largely one-sided. On this Labor Day, however, it’s clear that the battle has finally been joined. The Labor Question is before us and remains to be resolved. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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How To Read My Blog


Creating a blog is relatively simple but often reading it is not however I will explain mine.

1.On the left top side is the Title, date and time blog is posted, categories (subject and sources).

2. Across the center  likes (stars)

3. Writer and source if information is taken from another source

4.Some time in a different font color is a short sentence or statement from me (my Opinion) will precede the actual blog and will have my initials at the end of the statement (MA)

5. Blog

6.Donation box at the end of the blog.

I make every effort to be correct in what I present but am not above making mistakes, comment good or bad are welcome but trolling is not as I feel that they are usually irrelevant and unsubstantiated.

Thank you for reading  my blog.

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The Normal Is Abnormal


We have expected our politicians to be true to their party’s basic line however not to the extent of fanaticism. Every voter has their own take on what is proper and correct however many times these opinions do not reflect the real effect of enacting or acting on these opinions for the country as a whole. In any give and take there no winners or losers  if done properly with that said why are we still electing and re electing the same people to misrepresent us in Congress? Our Congress to quote a statement From Wikipedia:
The phrase “speaks with a forked tongue” means to say one thing and mean another or, to be hypocritical, or act in a duplicitous manner. In the longstanding tradition of many Native American tribes, “speaking with a forked tongue” has meant lying, and a person was no longer considered worthy of trust, once he had been shown to “speak with a forked tongue”. This phrase was also adopted by Americans around the time of the Revolution, and may be found in abundant references from the early 19th century — often reporting on American officers who sought to convince the tribal leaders with whom they negotiated that they “spoke with a straight and not with a forked tongue” (as for example, President Andrew Jackson told the Creek Nation in 1829[16]) According to one 1859 account, the native proverb that the “white man spoke with a forked tongue” originated as a result of the French tactic of the 1690s, in their war with the Iroquois, of inviting their enemies to attend a Peace Conference, only to be slaughtered or captured.”

It should be clear that our Congress (save a few )do not have the interest of their constituents in mind unless it serves them personally (or make big donations to their campaigns). This current political era (1945-2016) has brought us “McCarthyism” where there was a Red or communist behind every door and ruining may live in the process, the Watergate scandal where a sitting President had to resign and the attempted impeachment of a sitting President for lying to Congress. Now we have a political a party that helped elect a person unfit to be President just to get their personal agendas passed while allowing their constituencies to go with little or no quality health care, air quality regulations to be rolled back and abetted in the passing of a predatory tax “reform” which gives nothing to the least of us. In the wings is a movement to tinker with your Social Security earnings to offset the  deficit created by the “tax Reform”. These are the issues that too many of us either do not know about or possibly care about but readily accept the blatant falsehoods emanating from the White House and Congress with impunity. We are currently in the middle of a struggle between correct governance and malfeasance in governance and we (voters) are the agents of change.

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The Line Is Here


The real truth of Congress and the current mis administration have been clearly shown with the death of John McCain. The hypocrisy of the Senate leaders who have deceived us for years was apparent in their hollow words. Mr. Ryan and Mr. McConnell are both self serving leaders who have set us on a path of more unemployment, more uninsured and the subsequent economic downturn due to the support of a known unhinged leader. They have decided that the well-being of the country is less important than their own legacies (which will certainly be tainted by association with the current administration and their support of it). The  tacit approval of this administration with their silence and behind the scenes activities is a powerful incentive to vote them out. These folks have essentially usurped the power of the people with their suspect actions and silence on laws they were sworn to uphold. The intent and meaning of the Constitution has been trampled upon by years of “politricks” on both sides. Not since the outright theft of votes by exclusion by gender, ethnicity and color in past and near past voting cycles have we had such flagrant disregard for American’s freedom to vote and elect (hopefully competent and honest) representatives. Looking at our Congress who have made their own service a sea of comfort in pay, retirement and healthcare while decrying the passage of  laws that enhance the well-being of the American people whose will they so readily invoke without our implicit consent. It appears to me that our Government representatives have taken the position that “when I want your opinion , I’ll  give it to you”!

Considering what at stake isn’t it time we as voters ignore the hype and understand that our Government and freedoms are being usurped by self serving factions who unduly influence the folks we elect to serve us. There should never be a right, left, conservative or liberal influence in elections,  just factual information on the candidate as it pertains to the job. A persons politics should never be an influence on their work but alas we have that influence  big time due the obscene amount of money in politics. Which indicates that any and all office aspirants and holders are bought and paid for but not by the voting public. The solution we have as voters is to ignore the hype and ferret out the facts on each candidate up to and including the Supreme  court nominees and make our voices heard. The line is drawn with us- Here and Now!

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What Most Of Us Already Knew Or Suspected- It was All About Trump


Politics
Leon Panetta Says Trump’s ‘Failed’ North Korea Summit Was ‘Doomed’ From The Start
Hayley Miller, HuffPost 19 hours ago

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Sunday bashed President Donald Trump’s “failed” summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June, calling it “doomed” from the beginning.
Panetta, who headed the Pentagon under President Barack Obama, said Trump never completed the necessary “preparatory work” ahead of the historic meeting.
“I’m very worried” about the current U.S. relationship with North Korea “because frankly, I think we have a failed summit on our hands right now,” Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The summit “was all about show,” he said. “It was about shaking hands, exchanging words. But the underlying work on process, on looking at nuclear weapons sites, on inspection regimes, on what should be done with sanctions ― all of the things that need to be done to produce some kind of peaceful solution ― were not done.”

Days before the June 11 summit in Singapore, Trump raised eyebrows when he told reporters that he didn’t need to “prepare very much” for it.
“It’s about attitude,” Trump said. “It’s about willingness to get things done.”
Trump emerged from the summit declaring it a great diplomatic success and he lavished praise on Kim ― something he has continued to do. But questions quickly surrounded Trump’s claim that North Korea had agreed to denuclearize, and U.S. relations with Pyongyang have appeared to sour in recent weeks.
North Korea experts reported shortly after the summit that satellite images proved the isolated country was continuing to develop their nuclear sites. Still, Trump tweeted several times in July that he believed North Korea would denuclearize.
“I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake,” Trump tweeted July 9.
But on Aug. 24, Trump tweeted that he had directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to cancel a planned visit to North Korea amid the signs that its nuclear program remained intact. The president blamed China ― North Korea’s main ally and a target of Trump’s trade policies ― for helping block progress on the nuclear issue.
“I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Trump tweeted. “Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved.”
Panetta, turning to domestic political matters in his Sunday comments, urged Democratic lawmakers not to push for impeachment against Trump until special counsel Robert Mueller has completed his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“I think Bob Mueller’s report will ultimately determine whether or not there are going to be additional steps taken against the president,” Panetta said. ”[Democrats] ought not to get ahead of that report because that will be the key to determining what happens in the future.”

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The TOTUS Method


AUGUST 31, 2018
Kuttner on TAP
Let’s Make a Deal. Trade policy is an emblematic case of how the bipartisan establishment paved the way for Donald Trump. By behaving as a bully and threatening high tariffs if he doesn’t get his way, Trump has intimidated the Mexicans, Canadians, and Europeans into offering concessions (if only they can figure out what he wants this week). He has even intimidated the Chinese.
None of this is a tribute to Trump’s negotiating genius. It simply reflects the fact that the U.S., as the world’s largest importing nation, has a great deal of bargaining leverage. But that leverage, which might have been deployed to create a more level playing field for U.S. industry with China and other nations, lay fallow while both parties pursued trade deals that benefited Wall Street.
Now Trump, in his blunderbuss way, is deploying that leverage for deals that will be more symbolic than real. And he will reap some political gain. What a pity. But, as the French say, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” ~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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AP Fact Check: Trump’s week of fiction: trade, Google, polls


Cannot tell the truth or in other words “Milk curdles in his mouth!”. MA.

26 mins ago

 

© The Associated Press President Donald Trump talks on the phone with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in the Oval Office on Aug. 27, 2018.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is playing loose with the facts in his exuberance to push through a trade agreement with Mexico.

He insists the deal reached this past week between the United States and Mexico to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement is “one of the largest trade deals” ever. It’s not.
And in an effort to pressure Canada to join the reimagined trading bloc, or dismiss Canada as irrelevant if it doesn’t, Trump also wrongly suggests that Mexico is a bigger and more important trading partner.

The trade comments came in a week of outright fiction in which Trump also kept asserting that Mexico will pay for his long-promised wall along the southwest border despite Mexico’s statements to the contrary; falsely accused Google of shunning his State of the Union address while promoting Barack Obama’s; and cited high poll ratings for himself that don’t appear to exist.
A sampling of the claims and the reality behind them:
TRADE
TRUMP: “This is one of the largest trade deals ever made. Maybe the largest trade deal ever made.” — phone call Monday with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
THE FACTS: Not even close. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated by the Obama administration, included the three NAFTA partners — United States, Canada and Mexico — plus Japan and eight other Pacific Rim countries. Trump withdrew the United States from the pact in his third day in office.
Even the TPP shrinks in comparison to Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. Concluded in 1994, the round created the World Trade Organization and was signed by 123 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found the following year that the WTO’s initial membership accounted for more than 90 percent of global economic output.
___
TRUMP: “We made the deal with Mexico. And I think it’s a very — deal. We’re starting negotiations with Canada, pretty much immediately … It’s going to be a — it’s a smaller segment, as you know. Mexico is a very large trading partner.” — phone call Monday with Peña Nieto.
THE FACTS: Trump appears to be suggesting that Mexico is a bigger U.S. trading partner than Canada. That’s not the case. America’s two-way trade — exports plus imports — came to $680 billion with Canada last year. That’s compared with $622 billion with Mexico.
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TRUMP: “I smile at Senators and others talking about how good free trade is for the U.S. What they don’t say is that we lose Jobs and over 800 Billion Dollars a year on really dumb Trade Deals … and these same countries Tariff us to death.” — tweet Tuesday.
THE FACTS: The $800 billion is a reference to America’s trade deficit last year. But Trump exaggerates the size of the gap between what the U.S. sells and what it buys from the rest of the world. The trade deficit in goods and services came to $552 billion in 2017. The United States ran an $807 billion deficit in goods such as cars and machinery. But Trump ignored America’s $255 billion surplus in services such as education and finance.
Mainstream economists also take issue with Trump’s assertion that trade deficits amount to a loss for the United States. The money didn’t just vanish. In exchange for what they spent on imports, Americans got the benefit of owning everything from made-in-China iPhones to French wine.
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BORDER WALL
TRUMP: “The wall will be paid for very easily by Mexico. It will ultimately be paid for by Mexico.” — remarks Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Not according to Mexico. Immediately after Trump’s remarks, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray tweeted to stress, once again, that his country won’t foot the bill for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Videgaray wrote that his country has been “absolutely clear” that Mexico “will NEVER pay for a wall.”
___
GOOGLE
VIDEO TWEETED BY TRUMP: “For years, Google promoted President Obama’s State of the Union on its homepage. When President Trump took office, Google stopped.” — tweet Wednesday.
THE FACTS: The video is incorrect as to Trump.
There’s no dispute that Google promoted Obama’s State of the Union speeches from 2012 to 2016, according to webpages captured by the Wayback Machine, an internet archive site.
In a statement, Google said it has not historically promoted “the first address to Congress by a new president, which is technically not a State of the Union address,” so it didn’t do so in either 2009, when Obama first took office, or 2017, Trump’s first year as president.
For 2018, several web pages captured by the Wayback Machine show the Google homepage advertising a livestream of Trump’s speech with the words: “Live! Watch President Trump’s State of the Union address on YouTube.”
The archive site shows the webpages in Greenwich Mean Time, which is several hours ahead of the Eastern time zone in the U.S. That means the relevant images of the Google homepage promoting Trump’s prime-time Washington speech on Jan. 30 are dated one day later, on Jan. 31, Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine archive site, told The Associated Press.
___
RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
TRUMP: “What’s going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks – with @NBCNews being the worst … When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: There is no evidence of the NBC interview having been “fudged” or doctored in any way, and the White House didn’t respond to requests regarding what Trump was referring to. NBC declined to comment.
In the interview, Trump referred in part to “this Russia thing” as a consideration in his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating possible obstruction of justice in the Russia probe.
It’s possible Trump is frustrated that other comments from the same interview may have received less attention.
Minutes after he acknowledged that “this Russia thing” was on his mind when he fired Comey, Trump also acknowledged that he knew the decision to terminate him might actually prolong the investigation. In fact it did, with Mueller investigating the firing for potential obstruction of justice.
His lawyers and other supporters have contended that that sentiment is actually helpful for the president, suggesting he couldn’t have been trying to obstruct the investigation by doing something that he knew would actually draw it out longer.
___
CLINTON EMAILS
TRUMP: “Report just out: ‘China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.'” — tweet Tuesday.
TRUMP: “Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!” — tweet Wednesday.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own law enforcement agencies dispute that.
Trump appears to be citing a story by the right-leaning Daily Caller publication, which reported that a Chinese-owned company in the Washington, D.C., area hacked Clinton’s email server.
But FBI and Justice Department officials have said publicly that there was no evidence Clinton’s server was hacked by a foreign power.
A June report from the Justice Department’s inspector general on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton investigation said FBI specialists did not find evidence that the server had been hacked, with one forensics agent saying he felt “fairly confident that there wasn’t an intrusion.”
An FBI official said Wednesday after the Daily Caller story and Trump’s tweet that the “FBI has not found any evidence the servers were compromised.”
___
POLL RATINGS
TRUMP: “Over 90% approval rating for your all time favorite (I hope) President within the Republican Party and 52% overall. This despite all of the made up stories by the Fake News Media trying endlessly to make me look as bad and evil as possible. Look at the real villains please!” — tweet Sunday.
THE FACTS: He’s wrong in regard to polls citing his overall job ratings.
The Associated Press couldn’t find any evidence of a recent poll that put Trump’s approval at 52 percent, and the White House and his re-election campaign didn’t respond to requests for specifics.
Polls are a snapshot of public opinion at the moment they are taken. Job approval can — and has in recent history — vary during a president’s term.
Since his inauguration, however, Trump’s job approval has been remarkably consistent, in the high 30s and low 40s, in polls from various media organizations and other pollsters.
The latest AP-NORC poll, taken this month, finds Trump’s approval among American adults at 38 percent. Some other recent polls measure his approval in the low- to mid-40s.
On his level of support among Republicans, Trump is correct that they broadly approve of his work as president. In the same AP-NORC poll that found 38 percent of adults approving of the president, 76 percent of Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP said they approved of Trump. Some polls have put that level of support as high as 90 percent.
Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Jill Colvin and Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

Summary Of TOTUS’ Administration


“The policeman isn’t there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder”

Richard J. Daley

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