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Tag Archives: As I see It

My Opinion


The next few years will be interesting. We have a “business man ” in the White House and his influence in the election has brought out the  worst elements of America. If we compare the varied factions that have appeared in this past election to the factions in the middle east we could find several similarities. These assorted and varied factions on both sides all appear to want  the same outcomes except for the extremes of each. The worst case in each is the “I want what I want and I want to blame someone else for my issues while getting it”. Mr. Trump has tapped into that sense and has gloried in it.  His ascension has unfortunately left us with void that will be filled with the “less than what we need” people to run things. I do not believe  Mr. Trump  expected (perhaps hoped not to) win but now the real job begins, he will have to put up or shut up. Being an entertainer is a world away from Government (regardless of Ronald Reagan). At best we can expect Congress(?) to step up and do something right, at worse we can expect our trading partners and the outlier Nations to get bolder in their interactions with us. The Real issues we as voters need to pay attention to are the one the Congress address and how they address them. The Congress will use the ineptitude of this administration to do their worse to us, the voters. We can only hope that some one in Congress will continue to push back on the issues that will harm us in general. It is especially important that we as voters pay more attention to detail in this administration as well as the 535 seat fillers who really are the Government. Forget about getting the real story from the media, concentrate on reading for your self and ignore what the Congressional leaders say as they have lied before and will continue to do so. Unfortunately too many of us have missed the shift in the separation of Church and State that the Constitution calls for due to the hype put out by the extreme elements of our society. If we  do not press for the return to the real purpose of  the Constitution we will soon find that the extremists will have us all in camps for as simple a thing as being a voter and use the misreading of the Constitution as the reason.

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What Is Ted Cruzin For??


The award of opportunist of the year goes to Ted Cruz-who can trust any of these forked tongued politicos? MA

Dylan Stableford

Senior editor
Yahoo News
November 17, 2016

Ted Cruz sharply criticized those protesting the election of Donald Trump as hypocrites who cried foul when Trump suggested he might not accept the results if he didn’t win.
“This is hypocrisy on rank display,” the Texas senator said in an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday morning. “All of the folks who jumped on their high horse and were lecturing to President-elect Trump, ‘You’ve got to accept the results of the election’ — look, these are now the idiots protesting in the street, laying their bodies down in front of cars and disrupting traffic.”
“We had an election,” Cruz continued. “The people spoke. Democracy is a powerful, powerful way of choosing. And I think Americans across this country — this is across the line of Republicans, of Democrats, of independents, of libertarians — I think Americans are excited about the opportunity to have an administration that actually protects our rights.”
Since Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in last week’s presidential election, anti-Trump protests have erupted in cities around the country, some turning violent. In Portland, Ore., on Saturday night, 71 people were arrested after a protest devolved into a riot, police said.
Cruz, whose name has been floated as a potential member of Trump’s administration, met with Trump at Trump Tower in New York City on Tuesday.
“I’m eager to work with the new president in any capacity I can,” Cruz said.

He wasn’t always so eager.
During the Republican primary, Trump frequently referred to Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted,” insulted his wife and suggested that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. On the eve of the Indiana primary, Cruz unloaded on Trump, calling him a “bully,” a “narcissist,” a “pathological liar” and a “serial philanderer,” among other things. At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Cruz was booed when he gave a speech while declining to endorse his party’s nominee.
Cruz’s endorsement of Trump didn’t come until September — and it wasn’t exactly full-throated.
“I’ve made the decision that on Election Day I’m going to vote for the Republican nominee,” Cruz said at a GOP phone-banking event in Fort Worth, Texas. “Like a whole lot of voters here in Texas and across the country, this was not an easy decision for me to arrive on.”

Ted Cruz greets members of law enforcement as he leaves Trump Tower on Tuesday. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Cruz insisted his endorsement had more to do with his commitment to the party, and his opposition to Hillary Clinton, than his support for Trump. He noted that he signed a pledge to support the nominee.
“A year ago, I stood onstage and promised to support the Republican nominee, whoever that was, and I am honoring my word,” Cruz explained in September. “Although I have long had significant concerns with Donald, by any measure, Hillary Clinton would be an absolute disaster as president.”
But on Thursday, the tea party firebrand sounded more like a Trump surrogate, dismissing reports of transition chaos as “complete silliness.”
“Nobody should be surprised that their are media critics trying to throw rocks at the president-elect and the transition team — they don’t want the president to succeed,” Cruz said. “What I saw from the president-elect on down to every person at the transition team was men and women working hard with an enormous task in front of them of putting together a new administration of hopefully talented principals, effective leaders — leaders who will be loyal to the president, and loyal to the agenda that he campaigned on and that we promised the American people.”
Sen. Ted Cruz phone-banked for Donald Trump at a GOP office in Texas. He has come a long way from his RNC speech this summer where he famously did not endorse Trump. He formally got behind Trump in September.

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US Professor Who Called Trump’s victory now predicts he will be impeached


The article  below falls in line with my own perception of the looks and actions of the establishment Dupublicans. After condemning Donald Trump, the Ryan- McConnell coalition are waiting for The New President to step on his tie so to speak and then pounce on him like the rabid dogs they are. MA 
Rediff.com  » News »
November 12, 2016 15:24 IST

A United States-based professor, who was among the few prognosticators who had predicted Donald Trump’s victory, has made another stunning prediction that he will be eventually impeached by a Republican Congress and replaced by a leader who can be trusted and controlled.

Professor Allan Lichtman has predicted that if elected, Trump, 70, would eventually be impeached by a Republican Congress that would prefer a President like Mike Pence — someone whom establishment Republicans know and trust, the Washington Post reported.

“I’m going to make another prediction. This one is not based on a system; it’s just my gut. They don’t want Trump as president, because they can’t control him. He’s unpredictable. They’d love to have Pence — an absolutely down-the-line, conservative, controllable Republican,” Lichtman said.

He said he is “quite certain” Trump will give “someone grounds for impeachment, either by doing something that endangers national security or because it helps his pocketbook.”

The stunning prediction is similar to what an op-ed columnist for the New York Times David Brooks said about Trump’s future within the next year.

“Trump’s bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced. We can’t go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fuelled his ascent. After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. The future is closer than you think,” Brooks said in an NYT column.

The Washington Post report said few prognosticators had predicted a victory for Trump and polls had shown Hillary Clinton comfortably ahead with much of America failing to anticipate the wave of pro-Trump support that propelled him to victory.

Lichtman, however, had insisted that Trump would win due to the idea that elections are “primarily a reflection on the performance of the party in power.”

Lichtman uses a historically based system of what he calls “keys” to predict election results ahead of time. He had outlined how President Barack Obama’s second term set the Democrats up for a tight race, and his keys tipped the balance in Trump’s favour

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Congressional Republicans



Mitch McConnell is elated(?) or does he now have the foil he needs to continue his divisive and self serving ways. As an aside : would you trust this person with your children’s future? MAERICA WERNER
Associated Press November 9, 2016

More Elated congressional Republicans pledged swift action Wednesday on President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda as they heralded an extraordinary new era of unified GOP control in Washington.
“He just earned a mandate,” House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin declared of Trump. “We are going to hit the ground running.”
Said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky: “We would like to see the country go in a different direction and intend to work with him to change the course for America.”
Republicans saw their majorities in the House and Senate reduced, but not by much, as Democrats’ hopes of retaking Senate control vanished. And though Ryan and McConnell both had well-publicized reservations about Trump, both were quick to declare that the newly elected president deserved the credit.
“Donald Trump pulled off an amazing political feat. He deserves tremendous credit for that,” said Ryan, who initially refused to endorse Trump and only last month declared he’d no longer defend him. “It helped us keep our majorities, but it also showed the country that people don’t like the direction we were going.”
First up would be repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law, something Republicans have already shown they can get through Congress with just a narrow Senate majority. What they haven’t done is unite around a plan for ensuring that the 20 million who achieved health care coverage under the landmark law don’t lose it.
Republicans also celebrated the opportunity to fill the existing Supreme Court vacancy, and potentially more to come, with “constitutional conservatives.” McConnell was being widely praised for his strategy, once seen as risky, of refusing to act on Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February.
And Republicans pledged to try to unwind any number of executive moves by Obama, including tougher clean air rules on power plants, looser restrictions on travel to Cuba, and tougher rules on sleep for long-haul truckers, among others — “Every single one that’s sucking the very life out of our economy,” GOP Sen. David Perdue of Georgia said in an interview.
That threatened to wipe away key areas of progress highlighted by Democrats under the Obama administration.
Some of Trump’s goals could be harder to achieve. A wall on the southern border is estimated to cost $10 billion to $20 billion, money that Congress may be unlikely to provide given that cooperation from Democrats would be necessary.
Indeed the Senate Democratic minority stood as the only legislative barrier to Trump’s goals, since 60 votes are required for most consequential moves in the Senate.
Republicans were poised to end up with 52 Senate seats after Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., conceded to Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan in their close race. That assumes the GOP wins a December runoff in Louisiana, as expected. Democrats managed to pick up only one other GOP-held Senate seat, in Illinois, a devastating outcome for a party that went into Election Day with high hopes of holding the White House and winning back Senate control.
In the House, Republicans were on track to lose a maximum of nine seats, an unexpectedly modest reduction to a wide GOP majority that now stands at 247-188, including three vacant seats.
“We kicked their tails last night,” said GOP Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, head of the Republicans’ House campaign committee.
Trump’s extraordinary win appeared to be going far to heal divisions within the GOP, as even Republicans who’d long harbored doubts about him offered warm pledges of support.
Here and there, notes of caution were sounded, as a few Republicans made clear that Congress would be asserting its constitutional prerogatives as a check and balance on the executive, following what Republicans viewed as overly expansive use of executive power by Obama.
“It’s just our constitutional duty to keep the executive branch in check,” GOP Rep. Todd Young, the newly elected Republican senator in Indiana, told reporters in Indianapolis.
Yet McConnell appeared to invite executive action by Trump, suggesting he should be exploring what kinds of “unilateral action” he could take — to undo unilateral actions by Obama.
___
Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko in Indianapolis and Matthew Daly and Andrew Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.

Election Results-Down The Road


With Donald Trump’s victory our high expectations have been lowered. We as voters have been mixed on our love or hate for the Government. That being said where we go from here is based in questions like: Can the stated goals of the President elect be accomplished?, will the neer do well Congress continue to obstruct? and who will really run the country? It is well to remember that a majority of voters who supported Trump are disenfranchised due to the actions of their elected representatives who they elected time and time again as opposed to the White House resident. These are the powers behind the “Throne” and if the President is not as strong as he purports to be then we will have at least 4 years of crap to trudge through and another 4 to 8 years of correction. It is the American way to disagree with Government but it is also the American way to be swayed by rhetoric that belies the facts of the economy and the state of the Union. We have just barely removed ourselves from the covert racism that dominated the past 100 years. It is not too soon to think about and read what is going on behind the headlines. Do not allow the media to color your opinions, the job of the media is to report (if they are doing it right) the news not dictate it. If you believe everything printed or said then you are being mislead and misinformed. My Fear is his advisors are not as wise as they should be and not as culturally in tune with America.

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Art as Lessons


There are several comic strips (cartoons) that have animals as characters and these characters act in many ways as humans do while  maintaining animal ways. The premise of animals (our pets) speaking in terms like humans is hilarious in itself. The outcomes in some situations are predictably human while maintaining the air of animal thought. However the stream of consciousness indicated in this current political climate is not as hilarious in calmer times but very telling in how difficult voting  in this election will be. There are so many outlets covering this election pro and con for each candidate as to be headache producing. Fist examine why people are following Trump: 1. “He speaks his mind”: this is the act of a bully and a child, 2.” he tells it like it is”: He doesn’t know how it is!, he is a consummate showman and egotist,3. “He will make America Great Again”: America is already great but not for the poorer people who have suffered under the long serving Congress who spin more webs than any spider while Kow Towing to their moneyed interest.  The non existent policies of Mr. trump should be a red flag, his policies are more responses to news reports on “Obamacare”, the economy and foreign affairs, all of which he knows little to nothing about. If it should happen that Trump (gag) wins, we will actually have a Pence Presidency. To be clear many of Trump’s supporters are underserved , in need of jobs and government support. The real anger is with Government  and by extension President Obama but the real government is the Congress who controls what is enacted and where funding is appropriated. The anger needs to be localized by not electing the same people to under represent them time after time. My prime example : Mitch McConnell has lied to his constituents about coal, aside from the side effects of coal production and use, the fact that large users have switched to natural gas which has grown abundant due to new (fracking) techniques of oil production . If the Turtle really was in office to help his constituents he would be pushing education and training for solar, wind and other modern potential energy sources. Our biggest issue in this election ( an issue that has always been here) is the radical fringe who have been able to come out under the banner of supporting Donald Trump while spreading their own message of hate(unfortunately Mr. Trump’s ego does not allow him to separate himself from their ideology). Many of them have not taken the time  to actually READ the U.S. Constitution. and understand what it actually means rather than interpreting sections to suit their needs (the Islamic radicals have done the same to the religion of Islam). Perhaps we should listen and talk to the animals.

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I Wish We Were Smarter


The current elections have shown how divided we are as a country. This division is not new but has been accented by this Presidential race. Race became an issue when President Obama ran and won twice! The division was always there but once a man of color ran and won the Racists and bigots surfaced in droves spurred on by the likes of the Drump and many members of our illustrious(?) Congress. Skin color, sex or religious belief  has nothing to do with ability and intelligence. Our problem starts with the lack of reading and understanding what is really happening in the world and our Congress. If we were “smarter” as voters we would give less weight to the political ads that interrupt our TV time, our dinner  and assail our senses. The political system has come to rely on half truths and outright lies to get our votes. It is in our best interests to ignore this deluge of garbage and research the candidate  for ourselves. We have to remember a political campaign is just advertising in a different form. Our future is in the hands of the people we elect and unfortunately we fail to follow-up on them after they get into office. This lack of follow up is why they fail us (but not themselves).Once they fail we become disenfranchised and stop paying attention to them while looking for the next best thing. There is no next best if we continue to follow the same pattern of apathy (which the electeds depend on) until the next election cycle. I wish we were smarter, smarter means put aside the rhetoric you hear and look for the results. Look at the track record of the candidate (incumbent or new) and stop being a single issue voter. There are always multiple issues in a campaign and they affect all of us no matter who you are. The way to affect change in government is to be a smarter voter. Disappointment will always follow the uninformed.

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Selling Books


This political race and previous ones have shown that several so called political pundits and media hosts have one objective and that is to sell their books and their opinions (no matter how flawed). Bill O’Reilly has killed off several Presidents, Ann Coulter has shown she can’t tell one person of color from another. The issue is that in modern American the Racial divide is alive and seemingly living well. These well known (if not well read) writers have the ability to do better things with their writing but with their implied if not implicit bias they have only increased the ignorance in understanding other “races”. First we need to examine “Race” . We are ALL members of the “HUMAN RACE!”, that being said would it not make sense as members of the same world wide group that we work together in the face of truth to make the world we live in better? Forget the politics of Brexit, ISIS, Al Qaeda and other semi political groups (some of whom hold up their cause as religiously based). The aforementioned writers/ pundits have one goal and that is to sell books! Do your self a favor do not buy the books but read them on line or at a library then decide the validity of their writings and the facts(?) behind the text.   As humans we have capability to get beyond these common misconceptions by simply talking to one another and understanding that each division of the human race aside from religious views have similar if not exactly the same views on more issues than is known. The divisions are political ploys to keep us separate with overblown explanations of non issues.

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Sooner Than Later


The FBI has failed again (still?). The close to the vest method of gathering information has hurt us again and again. Information on the Boston Bombers and now the Orlando shooter should have been made available to local Law enforcement. The local officers have the ability to monitor these people and hopefully prevent another tragedy. It is time that the FBI step up and really help protect Americans from any potential radical threats local and foreign. Apparently its OK to allow these events to happen in order to protect the “integrity” of the agency. It is well past time that these agencies should have a reciprocal association for the security of the Nation, this is after all their job. The agency was so intent on investigating civil rights activists that there was no protection Dr. king, none for Malcolm X and none for Robert Kennedy. I am of the opinion that the agency possibly had information that could have prevented these acts but we may never know for sure. More recently, the bureau has extensively investigated Hillary Clinton’s email (at what cost?) and decided that there were no intentional mistakes in what was done but there were many instances of poor record keeping. Little known facts  that 2 former Secretaries of State used private email servers and these were never brought up in this debate by the Dupublicans. As an agency, the FBI has changed from protectors and investigators to more of a dingy office detective. This is not to say that the agency is bad but more to say that their mandate does not  or should not include investigations involving politics or at least not publicize them until a full and complete investigation is done. These days of instant information put out incorrect or incomplete information with the speed of light but correction is lost in the dust.

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Consolidate Our Thinking


Many organizations with as many smaller sects are encouraging people to vote a certain way however the real issue should be proper education on all of the issues. These issues are beyond the rhetoric and by extension beyond this election. The smaller elections where Congressional representatives are elected are the biggest issue. We all hear the constant yammering of who is the best choice and the sound bites, buzzwords and snippets designed to excite the voters yet say nothing of substance. An educated electorate is the key to good government, not single issues that apply to some of the people. The way to better government is a long range overall view of all issues no matter who it specifically influences. What effects one group has an impact on all of us sooner or later. As voters we need to broaden our vision of the issues and vote according the effect on all of us for now and in the future. Keep in mind many of our Congressional reps have been in office too long for our own good. Listening to recent interviews with supporters of candidates shows the many people who will be voting are under informed and have one (1) single issue in mind when pressed for reasons they will vote for their favored candidate. These single issues cannot be addressed in a vacuum since they are just a piece of a larger puzzle which like any puzzle needs all of the pieces to make a complete picture. It is of little consequence that you like or dislike a candidate (popularity is over rated) but more that you know more about them in the context of what they may or may not bring to the office.

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