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Monthly Archives: March 2019

Trump Encourages Violence From His Supporters. They’re Listening.


Thank you, GOP (or Dupublicans) and “Scamocrats”   for your continued support of misfit leaders in the Senate and the Oval Office. It will not go unnoticed in the next election by people who vote and are affected by your poor performance.MA

Sebastian Murdock
HuffPost•March 15, 2019
President Donald Trump this week issued a thinly veiled threat of violence against his opponents, saying that members of the police, military and biker gangs could “play it tough” if they “reach a certain point.”
It was a disturbing remark, but even more disturbing is the fact that its part of a long history of Trump encouraging his supporters to engage in violence. Largely unchecked by his party’s leadership, Trump’s rhetoric has become normalized despite its real-world ramifications.
“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of Bikers for Trump,” Trump told Breitbart in the interview, which he later tweeted. “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
“I think it sounds very much to me like he’s encouraging them to engage in something that’s probably illegal such as assaulting people, you know behave in a dangerous way,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told MSNBC. “That sounds like a threat to me. I think it’s appalling.”

The president later deleted his tweet as news began to trickle in of a mass shooting in New Zealand that left at least 49 worshiping Muslims dead on Friday. While there are no signs that the suspect was a close follower of Trump, he did mention the U.S. president once in his rambling manifesto, calling Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” Trump has previously banned those from majority-Muslim countries from coming into the U.S., keeping families apart under a racist policy.
It’s impossible to ignore how Trump’s continued rhetoric of violence and fear of other ethnicities has inspired his supporters to carry out attacks. Pro-Trump extremists sought to slaughter Somali Muslim immigrants in Kansas before authorities managed to intervene. The men chose their targets after Trump called refugees “the greatest Trojan horse of all time,” according to court testimony.
The case is one of more than a dozen where apparent Trump supporters attacked or plotted to attack Muslims. Acts of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have surged during Trump’s presidency, with more than 150 instances of Trump-related taunts and attacks, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.
But it’s not just hate speech the president gloms onto when encouraging violence. During the 2016 presidential election cycle, Trump continuously called for his supporters to commit violence against protestors.
“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?” Trump said at a 2016 rally in Iowa. “Seriously, OK. Just knock the hell — I promise you I will pay for the legal fees, I promise.”
It worked. Videos taken at Trump rallies show his supporters lobbing punches at protestors.
In 2017, a gaggle of white supremacists committed acts of violence in Charlottesville, leading to the killing of anti-racist protestor Heather Heyer. It should have been a layup for the president to condemn the attack. He defended his racist supporters instead.
“You have people who are very fine people on both sides,” Trump said.
GOP leaders have largely ignored Trump’s repeated calls for violence. After Trump claimed to have the might of the military on his side, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stayed quiet. Sens. McConnell and John Cornyn (R-Texas), along with Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) did not respond to HuffPost’s requests asking if they would condemn Trump’s latest remarks.
As the GOP fails to respond to Trumps’ threats, the violence continues. Last October, pipe bombs were mailed to the political enemies of Trump and to the New York offices of CNN, which Trump has consistently deemed the “enemy of the people.” The Florida suspect in that case drove a van plastered with images of the president, and had told coworkers he “wanted to go back to the Hitler days.”
Just days after authorities caught the pipe bomb suspect, another wave of terror hit when a man went into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people. Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers later met with the president to remind him that “hate speech leads to hateful actions.”
The rabbi’s words apparently fell on deaf ears.

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Where Is (B)itch McConnell?


Where the so-called Constitutional leader of the Senate in this “emergency declaration”? The Senate leader(?) is conspicuously absent in the vote on the President’s veto, could it be fear or complicity? Had this been the former President, Bitch would have been all over as would the current seat-filler in the White House. It is apparent that the Senate leader is not the leader he espouses to be in that he does what is safe for his own personal and political well-being. It is my hope that his base is looking at his actions that have damaged them as well as the rest of the country. We have only the hope that Nancy Pelosi with her longtime service can manage an override on this veto. This ill-use of OUR money will certainly follow the path of his ill use of other people’s funds in his business life. As a reminder of our (voters) purpose: Disengage from straight line party rhetoric, disengage from “entertainment news” and above all remember two middle letters in politician is: “LI”.  the rise of TOTUS has brought us down as a Country and will continue unless we stand up now against the actions of ill staffed and managed Administration. Just a reminder this administration has squandered enough of our money to have improved border security several times even though the “crisis” was manufactured by this administration. Bottom line here: phone, email, tweet your representative and ignore “faux news”.

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Trump offers condolences to New Zealand following mosque attacks


Unfortunately, the Administration words ring hollow when one looks at the actions taken against migrants who are seeking a better life. Puerto Rico still in crisis, tax reform hurting many of the lower income people to name a couple. MA
By Betsy Klein, CNN
1 hr ago
President Donald Trump on Friday expressed his condolences to the people of New Zealand following mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch that left at least 49 people dead.
“My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!” Trump tweeted.
The White House also condemned the shootings.
“The United States strongly condemns the attack in Christchurch. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement Friday morning.
She continued, “We stand in solidarity with the people of New Zealand and their government against this vicious act of hate.”
National security adviser John Bolton said the US is “very concerned” and is following the events in New Zealand “very closely.”
“We’re obviously greatly disturbed on what seems to be a terror attack, this hate crime in New Zealand. We’ve been in touch with our embassy overnight, we’re still getting details, but the State Department and others are following up on it,” he told reporters Friday morning.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, called the incident a terrorist attack in a Friday press conference, saying the suspects held “extremist views” that have no place in New Zealand or the world.
Forty-one people were killed at the al Noor mosque on Deans Avenue, said Mike Bush, New Zealand’s Police Commissioner. Seven people died at the Linwood mosque on Linwood Avenue, and one person died from their injuries in the hospital.
Bush said four people were taken into custody — three men and one woman. Police do not believe there are any other suspects but said it was still an open investigation. A man in his late 20s has been charged with murder and will appear at the Christchurch court Saturday morning local time, Bush said.
US Ambassador to New Zealand Scott Brown also expressed his condolences and pledged US solidarity.
“We’re heartbroken over the events in Christchurch today. We stand with our Kiwi friends and neighbors and our prayers are with you. Kia Kaha,” Brown tweeted.

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Fact Or Fiction


The trend of the current administration is to pick up the banner of as much fiction as possible to further their failing agenda. It truly fortunate for them that this is the United States and not one of many countries that censor and shutdown information sources they do not agree with. Why is it that this adminstration cannot se the forest for the trees in their policies? MA

Fiction:literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people.
antonyms:
nonfiction
invention or fabrication as opposed to fact.
synonyms:
fabrication, invention, lies, fibs, concoction, trumped-up story, fake news, alternative fact, untruth, falsehood, fantasy, fancy, illusion, sham, nonsense; More
vulgar slangbullshit;
vulgar slangbulldust
antonyms:
fact, truth
a belief or statement that is false, but that is often held to be true because it is expedient to do so.
“the notion of that country being a democracy is a polite fiction”

The current administration has taken fiction to a new level. Each day new evidence of that emerges from someone in the adminstration or a member of their political party  (or subset). The latest is “Jexodus” as explained below:

Trump promotes model’s fringe ‘Jexodus’ campaign encouraging Jews to leave Democratic Party

Dylan Stableford,  Editor,Yahoo News•March 12, 2019
Trump lauds model’s ‘Jexodus’ campaign encouraging Jews to leave Democratic Party
President Trump on Tuesday kept up his campaign to turn Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party, tweeting support for an organization founded only a week ago called “Jexodus.”
Trump’s tweet quoted its spokesperson, Elizabeth Pipko, a 23-year-old model turned activist and former Trump campaign staffer.
Pipko appeared on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning.
“‘Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party,’” Trump tweeted, quoting Pipko. “‘We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worse & worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.’”
Jexodus.org, a site for “Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics,” launched earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“We reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left,” a message on the site reads. “Progressives, Democrats, and far too many old-school Jewish organizations take our support for granted. After all, we’re Jewish, and Jews vote for Democrats. Until today.”
American Jews supported Hillary Clinton over Trump by 71-24, the largest margin of any of the denominations (including “unaffiliated”) surveyed by Pew Research and consistent with the results of the last five presidential elections.
“We’re done standing with supposed Jewish leaders and allegedly supportive Democrats who rationalize, mainstream, and promote our enemies,” said a press release announcing the site’s launch. “We’d rather spend forty years wandering in the desert than belong to a party that welcomes Jew-haters like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
According to the Daily Wire, Jexodus is the “brainchild” of Jeff Ballabon, a Jewish Republican operative and an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.
It’s unclear how many “members” Jexodus has.
According to her bio, Pipko is an “international model, Trump 2016 campaign staffer, poet, patriot, and fiercely proud millennial.” Her official title is “national Jexodus spokesperson.”
“We left Egypt, and now we’re leaving the Democratic Party,” Pipko said on “Fox & Friends” in comments the president omitted from his tweet.
Trump has been sounding this theme since last week, when the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a Democrat-sponsored resolution condemning hate. The resolution was drafted in response to remarks by Omar, a freshman Democratic representative from Minnesota, which critics described as anti-Semitic.
It was subsequently broadened to condemn all forms of bigotry, which Trump described as evidence that “Democrats hate the Jewish people,” according to guests at a Mar-a-Lago dinner, as reported by Axios.
“The Democrats have become an anti-Israel party. They’ve become an anti-Jewish party,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn Friday. “And I thought that vote was a disgrace.”
All the Democrats present in the House voted for the resolution, but so did all but 23 of the Republicans.
At a press briefing Monday, the White House defended Trump’s comments, with press secretary Sarah Sanders sparring with reporters who challenged the president’s assertions.
“The president has been an unwavering and committed ally to Israel and the Jewish people,” Sanders said. “And frankly the remarks that have been made by a number of Democrats and failed to be called out by Democrat leadership is frankly abhorrent and it’s sad and it’s something that should be called by name. It shouldn’t be put in a watered-down resolution.”
Sanders, though, refused to answer when asked whether Trump believes “Democrats hate Jews.”
“I think that’s a question you have to ask Democrats”

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Trump said he wouldn’t cut Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare. His 2020 budget cuts all 3.


How many of Trump’s base and stalwart supporters will be affected? Possibly millions if we believe the numbers he gives us. MA

Tara Golshan 18 hrs ago
President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget breaks one of his biggest campaign promises to voters: that he would leave Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare untouched.
“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump told the Daily Signal, a conservative publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, in 2015.
Over the next 10 years, Trump’s 2020 budget proposal aims to spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid — instead allocating $1.2 trillion in a block-grant program to states — $25 billion less on Social Security, and $845 billion less on Medicare (some of that is reclassified to a different department). Their intentions are to cut benefits under Medicaid and Social Security. The impact on Medicare is more complicated, which I’ll get into a bit later.
Over time, the Trump administration tried to whittle down the president’s promise to just Social Security and Medicare. Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Russ Vought said Monday, March 11, that Trump is “keeping his commitment to Americans by not making changes to Medicare and Social Security.” But even that is not true.
Like “every other Republican,” Trump has repeatedly proposed and supported cutting these programs. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
How Trump is proposing changing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
When it comes to Medicare, the White House has been very clear: “He’s not cutting Medicare in this budget,” Vought said. “What we are doing is putting forward reforms that lower drug prices. Because Medicare pays a very large [share] of drug prices in this country, [that] has the impact of finding savings. We are also finding waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Here’s what’s actually happening: This budget proposes finding $845 billion in savings over 10 years from Medicare as we know it. But $269 billion of that figure is reclassified under the Department of Health and Human Services, bringing the Medicare cuts to $575 billion. As Vox explained, the administration says it will achieve these cost reductions by targeting wasteful spending and provider payments and lowering prescription drug costs.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for fiscal responsibility, estimates that 85 percent of these cuts will come from reductions in provider payments, 5 percent would come from policies around medical malpractice, and 11 percent would come from reducing drug costs through the Medicare Part D program. Medicare Part D is the only area of these reforms that could raise out-of-pocket drug prices for some while lowering it for others. Otherwise, premiums, deductibles, and copays would largely be left unaffected.
Unsurprisingly, the Federation of American Hospitals is not a fan of this part of Trump’s budget proposal. In a statement, they called the reforms “devastating for seniors.” More surprisingly, as Axios’ Sam Baker points out, these reforms are pretty similar to policies Barack Obama proposed in 2012 that Republicans panned.
But when it comes to Trump’s proposed changes to Medicaid and Social Security, the intent is unambiguous: These are cuts to benefits.
The 2020 budget’s Medicaid reforms include adding work requirements and repealing Medicaid expansion and one of the most successful policies within the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid expansion reduced the uninsured rate by more than 6 percent in states that enacted the policy; it continues to show better health outcomes and is popular in conservative states. But Trump is envisioning changing Medicaid altogether; his budget proposes transforming the current pay-as-needed system to a block grant, where states are given a capped lump-sum fund that doesn’t grow with increased need or rising costs. The budget proposes a $1.2 trillion “Market-Based Health Care Grant.”
In isolation, the Medicaid budget cuts amount to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, but looked at in the context of the new block grant as well the work requirements and ACA cuts, the cuts round out to about $777 billion — which could leave millions more uninsured.
The budget also continues an attack on Social Security, including to a program which gives assistance to those who have disabilities that prevent them from being in the workforce. In all, the cuts to Social Security amount to $25 billion over the next 10 years, cutting roughly $10 billion from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program, which the administration says will be found through cutting down on fraud — a common conservative talking point.
Trump broke this promise from the beginning
This is Trump on the campaign trail in 2015:
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.

7,337
10:38 AM – May 7, 2015
Twitter Ads info and privacy

19.4K people are talking about this

Trump’s budgets — and the policies he has supported around health care — and government spending in Congress reflect the opposite. Some of this can be attributed to Trump’s appointed budget chief Mick Mulvaney; the former congressman who was part of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus has long rallied for cutting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.
In fact, Mulvaney once bragged to a Politico reporter that he tricked Trump into accepting a proposal to cut Social Security by calling SSDI just disability insurance — spinning it to the president as general welfare reform. The idea has been in every single one of Trump’s budget proposals to Congress since the president came to office.
Then there was the Republican Obamacare repeal push; every bill proposed massive cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts elsewhere. Trump supported every iteration of Republicans’ Obamacare repeal-and-replace bills. He even held a party for House Republicans in the White House Rose Garden when the lower chamber of Congress narrowly passed a proposal that slashed more than $800 billion from Medicaid over 10 years.
Republican lawmakers have long argued that spending around mandatory programs that make up 70 percent of the federal budget — like Medicare and Social Security — needs to be reined in, in order to tackle the national debt. Trump drew red tape around those programs, as well as Medicaid, on the campaign trail in 2015 because they are extremely popular federal programs.
Now, his policy positions around those programs break from that promise.

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Tucker Carlson Said Terrible Things About Women For Years In Unearthed Radio Clips


By Nick Visser and Christopher Mathias
POLITICS 03/10/2019 07:07 pm ET Updated 17 hours ago

The Fox News host regularly made misogynistic comments during years of appearances on Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson made a series of shocking comments about women prior to and during his employment at the cable network, including instances where he called women “extremely primitive,” said a teacher sleeping with an underage male student was “doing a service to all 13-year-old girls” and lambasted rape shield laws as “totally unfair” because they protected victims, according to clips uncovered by Media Matters for America.
The outlet sifted through hours of Carlson’s previous appearances on the program “Bubba the Love Sponge,” hosted by the shock jock who was born Todd Clem. Carlson was a weekly guest on the syndicated show from 2006 to 2011, and was hired by Fox in 2009.

In more than a dozen clips compiled by Media Matters, Carlson regularly shared misogynistic comments with Clem, used demeaning terms to describe prominent women, and defended the actions of Warren Jeffs, who had been accused of facilitating the marriage of an underage teenage girl to an older man. During a discussion of “miscegenation,” Carlson refers to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as “two of the biggest white whores in America.”
The host responded to criticism over the clips late Sunday, moving to distance himself from them by saying he was simply caught “saying something naughty.”
“Media Matters caught me saying something naughty on a radio show more than a decade ago,” Carlson said in a statement to HuffPost. “Rather than express the usual ritual contrition, how about this: I’m on television every weeknight live for an hour. If you want to know what I think, you can watch. Anyone who disagrees with my views is welcome to come on and explain why.”
Here are some of the more shocking moments, all of which can be found at Media Matters:
On a teacher having sex with a 13-year-old student 28 times in one week (likely in reference to Rachel Holt, then 34, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison) in 2006:
So my point is that teachers like this, not necessarily this one in particular, but they are doing a service to all 13-year-old girls by taking the pressure off. They are a pressure relief valve, like the kind you have on your furnace.
On then-Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan (now a justice) in 2010:
I got to be honest with you. I don’t like [Kagan] and I wouldn’t vote to confirm her if I were a U.S. senator. But I do feel sorry for her in that way. I feel sorry for unattractive women. I mean it’s nothing they did. You know, she didn’t. Nobody deserves that. And men are just mean. … No, it’s just absolutely fundamental ― physically, the problems with her are fundamental. She’s never going to be an attractive woman.
Referring to Martha Stewart’s daughter Alexis as “extremely cunty” in 2006:
She just does seem a little cunty. I mean you said it; I’m just agreeing with you. I don’t use that word because it’s offensive.
On the elimination of rape shield laws, meant to protect victims of sexual assault, in 2006:
If I’m alleging rape, I have the protection of anonymity. I can say whatever I want while hiding behind anonymity, while the person I accused, whether he’s guilty or not, has his life destroyed. That’s totally unfair.
On women in general in 2007:
I mean, I love women, but they’re extremely primitive, they’re basic, they’re not that hard to understand. And one of the things they hate more than anything is weakness in a man.
Carlson still appears as an occasional guest on the “Bubba the Love Sponge” show, including a November segment where he spoke about his career at Fox and his longstanding relationship with the radio program.
His comments referring to Alexis Stewart as “cunty” offer a stark contrast with the outrage he expressed last year, when comedian Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “cunt” on her TBS show “Full Frontal.”
“That one word that she used ― I don’t know any man who uses that word because it is kind of the one word that is actually degrading,” Carlson said on his Fox News show. “It’s the thing that feminists are always telling us.”

Carlson has regularly drawn controversy and condemnation for his remarks, even as he’s been elevated into a senior position at the network. In December, many of the advertisers on his program canceled their spots after Carlson said immigration made the United States “dirtier” and “more divided.”
He slammed his critics at the time, and Fox News defended the host after saying he had been bullied and terrorized by “far left activist groups with deeply political motives.”
“While we do not advocate boycotts, these same groups never target other broadcasters and operate under a grossly hypocritical double standard given their intolerance to all opposing points of view,” the network said at the time.
In recent years Carlson has increasingly promoted and parroted white nationalist talking points and conspiracy theories on his show, an especially concerning trend as President Donald Trump is an avid Fox News watcher. In the video below, Media Matters compiled clips of Carlson using language on his show that is remarkably similar to language used by white nationalist figures.

Hayley Miller contributed reporting.
Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Here’s how.

Nick Visser

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

Christopher Mathias

National Reporter, HuffPost

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Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts ‘Horrified’ By Reports He Employed White Nationalist


POLITICS 03/11/2019 04:13 pm ET

By Andy Campbell
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said he was “shocked and horrified” after leaked chat logs revealed that a man he employed pushed white nationalist ideology and violence.
Bennett Bressman, 22, was the statewide field director for the billionaire governor’s successful re-election campaign in December. Bressman is also a prominent poster on white nationalist Nicholas J. Fuentes’ Discord server, under the moniker bress222, according to Anti-Fascist Action Nebraska, which published the revelation on Sunday.
After searching some 3,000 comments Bressman made, anti-fascist activists and news organizations like Talking Points Memo uncovered his regular use of the N-word, sexism, anti-Semitism, an admission that his “whole political ideology revolves around harming journalists,” and fantasies about running over black people with his car.

Approached with the evidence, Ricketts said he had no idea who he had hired.

“I am shocked and horrified to learn that this former staffer made these statements and I had no idea he harbored these feelings. He never expressed these views to me,” Ricketts said in a statement. “I unequivocally denounce his hate-filled views towards Jewish people, LGBT people, African Americans, journalists, women, and others. I am particularly concerned about his anti-Semitic statements. Anti-Semitism has no place in society no matter where it hides.”
Bressman, 22, said in an unrelated interview with the Lincoln Journal-Star that he wanted to work on Ricketts’ campaign after state GOP executive director Kenny Zoeller spoke in front of his class. As field director, Bressman oversaw two dozen interns who worked phones and canvassed for Ricketts. Bressman was never employed by the state, according to a Ricketts spokesman, KLKN-TV reported.
On Monday, Bressman told the Journal-Star that he regrets the statements.
“Yes, that was my profile,” he said in a phone interview Monday morning. “I’m not denying it. I understand how they look really bad and are really bad on their face. I regret what I said.”
Bressman’s comments were unearthed as part of a wider leak by independent media organization Unicorn Riot of more than 700,000 posts on Discord chat servers visited and maintained by white nationalist groups like Identity Evropa. The leaks have pulled back the curtain on prominent white nationalists, revealing their assistance in planning the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counterprotester was killed; a plot to amplify white supremacist Rep. Steve King and keep him in office; and efforts to infiltrate the GOP, among other undertakings.

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Trump Proposes a Record $4.75 Trillion Budget


The proposed budget as outlined below indicates how out of touch the current administration is or perhaps they do not care about the effects this budget if passed will have on the country and especially the neediest of us all no matter the race. This administration seems to have the idea that these cuts will only affect mostly nonwhite Americans. The point of this budget is to get money for a wall that in its use will not stem the flow of drugs, illegals as the administration likes to tout. Better thinkers have pointed out what is needed in conjunction with some “barriers”  are more personnel (jobs) and electronic surveillance (jobs). This is an indication of “trump” method of conducting business e.g create a crisis or situation then through solutions at it and hope something works, if not move on like grazing cattle . Examining the current cabinet composition we can easily see that they are not the “best” people as TOTUS assured us he would appoint (drain the swamp?). MA

JIM TANKERSLEY and MICHAEL TACKETT 1 hr ago

As budget deficit balloons, few in Washington seem to care

WASHINGTON — President Trump sent Congress on Monday a record $4.75 trillion budget request that proposes an increase in military spending and sharp cuts to domestic programs like education and environmental protection for the 2020 fiscal year.
Mr. Trump’s budget, the largest in federal history, includes a nearly 5 percent increase in military spending — which is more than the Pentagon had asked for — and an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a border wall with Mexico.
White House officials said the budget would include a total of $1.9 trillion in cuts to mandatory safety net programs, like Medicaid. It also proposes new work requirements for working-age adult recipients of supplemental nutrition assistance, federal housing support and Medicaid, a move the administration said would reduce spending on those programs by $327 billion.

The president is asking for a 5 percent, cut in nondefense discretionary spending, compared to 2019 spending caps set by Congress. That would amount to $100 billion less than Congress actually spent on nondefense discretionary programs in 2019, when it busted those caps.
Those cuts would not be across the board but come from programs at federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, where Mr. Trump has previously suggested cutting funds. The budget would also reduce spending on foreign aid, international cultural exchange programs and federal employee retirement plans.
A few domestic spending programs would see increases, if Mr. Trump’s budget were to become law. Those include efforts to reduce opioid addiction and a 10 percent increase in health care spending for veterans. Mr. Trump will also propose a new school-choice program, $200 billion in infrastructure spending and efforts to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
The budget would not balance for 15 years, breaking Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to pay off the entire national debt within eight years. Mr. Trump’s first budget proposed to achieve balance in 10 years.
The budget forecasts trillion-dollar deficits for four straight years, starting in 2019.
The budget is unlikely to have much impact on actual spending levels, which are controlled by Congress. As with any president in a time of divided government, the blueprint is more of a declaration of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign priorities than it is a guide to spending decisions in Washington this year. Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate pronounced the budget dead on arrival on Sunday. Mr. Trump’s budgets largely failed to gain traction in previous years, when Republicans controlled both chambers.
Budget details released by White House officials highlight several areas of conflict between Democrats and Mr. Trump, starting with immigration enforcement. Along with renewing the wall funding fight that led to a record government shutdown late last year, Mr. Trump is asking for more personnel at United States Customs and Immigration Enforcement and a policy change meant to end so-called sanctuary cities, which do not hand over undocumented immigrants to federal officials when they are arrested in local crimes.
Administration officials fanned out to defend the president’s budget. Russ Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, blamed Democrats for “our nation’s $22 trillion debt,” while omitting that the debt has soared under Mr. Trump.
In an Op-Ed on FoxNews.com, he said that the president’s proposed cuts in domestic spending were in line with his campaign promises. He then outlined a number of programs, such as $68 million “being spent every year on international labor activities, including promoting unions in countries in South America,” that he said highlighted wasteful spending.

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Kristen Nielsen and the Trump Administration Still Don’t Care About Children


One would think that a Cabinet Secretary would come prepared to answer questions when called before a Congressional committee but I guess a consummate liar has no need for facts or preparation especially when trying to please another consummate liar. MA
March 7, 2019

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristen Nielsen testified about the situation on the southern border before the House Homeland Security Committee. The committee, headed by Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, more or less berated the Secretary on the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy, which has led to 2,600 migrant children being separated from their parents, many being housed in cages, and several dying.

When questioned, Nielsen said she had no idea how many children were currently in ICE custody and denied that the “fenced-in” areas that kept migrants separated from one another were cages. She also explained she did not believe that the no tolerance policy would lead to trauma for children beyond the trauma endured while traveling from their home country to the Southern border. This suggests she either deliberately ignored the American Academy of Pediatrics’ warning that these separations would cause, for many children, irreparable psychological harm, as well as the countless protestations from academics and scientists — much less the real stories of kids dramatically regressing cognitively while in custody away from their parents.
Despite the consistent line of questioning about the harms the policy she was responsible for enacting would do for children, Nielsen focused on her talking points: that the border crisis was not manufactured, that migrant flow is a threat to national security, that parents shouldn’t be bringing their children to America, and that she did not know how many kids were in the system.
That the DHS secretary wouldn’t know how many kids are detained in a system that she controls is alarming, but no more alarming than the fact that Nielsen said she wasn’t aware that the family separation process would cause trauma to kids. Her callousness and irresponsibility are, at least, consistent.
Here’s a fact: Many children didn’t recognize their parents upon reunification because they were too distraught and other regressed back into diapers despite being potty trained. Additionally, thousands reported being sexually abused. Nielsen, in this testimony, essentially shrugged her shoulders and said that the price Americans should be willing to pay for national security. For Americans who care about kids, this is a disgusting idea.
It’s specifically troubling that the Trump administration has so little regard for kids in light of the fact that new statistics indicate that over half of new babies born in this country aren’t white. But troubling doesn’t mean surprising. If the cages were filled with white kids, rather than the kids of people who might not speak English or are fleeing violence from their home countries, the administration would act or, at the very least, familiarize themselves with the potential fallout of their policies. After all, Trump has remained focussed on murders of Americans by undocumented migrants despite the fact undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens. Make no mistake, racism hurts kids and racists don’t care.
Nielsen doesn’t know how many kids her department has traumatized. And she doesn’t know how many kids her department will traumatize. Today, business goes on as usual.

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Continuing Issues


Each day is another day without a proper administration abetted by a neer do well Congress. TOTUS has shown his truth on a daily basis. Our GOP leader in the Congress is still waffling about how to do the job he was elected to do and TOTUS has visited Alabama (with no paper towels) and ordered FEMA  to put 100% effort in the recovery and repair. This was not the attitude in Puerto Rico which is still struggling to make corrections. The future of America is currently in the (small) hands of a Narcissistic ignoramus who has the backing of an uninformed and underinformed core of American voters and a self-serving legislature. It is plain to see that there is a news(?) outlet that opines for TOTUS and giving him their take on what he should be doing. The worst part of this is an underinformed voter who perceives TOTUS as a good leader, the rest of the country and many allies see a near-manic leader in the mode of past dictators who are no longer with us.  The tactics used by Ultras on all sides is lies, lies and more lies. The solution is informed voting.

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