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Tag Archives: current-events

Anyone??


Is there anyone in the Trump Administration who knows what they are talking about or can tell the truth? His surrogates shoot from the lip pretty much like their boss and continue to lie as if it’s the truth. This is exactly what Pre world war II Hitler did to convince ordinary Germans that he was doing good things for them-until the bombs rained down on them and they were shown the concentration camps. Unfortunately too many Trump supporters are too angry to see the truth and will be shocked when the wall goes up and the jobs still do not come back. Then there’s health care and taxes, once these are addressed (or not) and more people do not have or can’t afford healthcare, the administration will blame someone else. As much as I would like to talk about something positive coming out of the Whitehouse, there is not much there. Jeff “the knife” Sessions is moving ahead like the racist he is, Steve “the hammer” Bannon is pulling the strings behind the scenes and Reince “figurehead” Priebus appears to be missing. The cost to secure this President rises daily with his children being everywhere, his trips to Mar A Lago along with the cost to scramble the Air force if a private aircraft appears in the no fly zone near the President(resident?). The Governing of the United States is not supposed to play out in the media yet this appears to be the situation the country is in. Many of the people who voted for Trump now have reservations but we are in this until at least 2018 unless the President does something worse than he is doing now. The Congress seems to be rudderless after all of the negative rhetoric about the previous administration and with a blank check attitude have confirmed unsuitable people for the cabinet. The President makes a big show of signing executive orders yet seems to have no idea what these executive orders will affect. I am of the opinion that our TOTUS is not well versed in the details (the real details) of his executive order rollback. It appears that he gets snapshots and acts on those. This is not governing, this is playing in the sand box without paying attention to the lumps. It is my opinion that we as voters should prepare for the worst as it is still coming and we will receive no help from our neer do well Congress.

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Are You Concerned?


Does it bother anyone that we are in the grip of government (our) employees who don’t give a damn about us? All of the high tone and blustery rhetoric is just that. The ongoing attempt to deregulate, deconstruct and repeal are the talking points from people whose sole mission is to take care of them selves while shoveling out homilies, half truths and outright lies. These outpourings do not take into account the long range effects of their actions. The lies put out have served to divide us racially, morally and ethnically. At this point I feel that we can expect nothing good from this administration. This one lie is particularly bad: The lie about EPA regulations causing job loss in the coal industry while the real truth is automation and the increased availability of cheap natural gas were and are still  a factor. Getting the public fired up with this type of misinformation is irresponsible and dangerous. What we have is a classic divide and conquer tactic that does nothing to fix our issues. The selections  made to aid the President were suspect initially but now are extremely troubling as the lie factory is running at full speed. It is apparent to me that the next several years will bring a substantial backwards leap for all of us while providing boosts for the worst of us.

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Talking Points Versus Reality


Donald Trump has promised to make America Great Again, this statement resonated with enough people to get him elected. Since that time he has tweeted himself in a corner that we will certainly suffer because of. Taking one major campaign promise: ” The Great Wall”. Estimated cost of the wall is 326 Million to a Billion(?) dollars. Would this amount of money be better used for infrastructure? Clearly the border security is necessary however infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams and levees) is a much higher priority. The wall would provide jobs for a short period of time and would not significantly affect the economy in the long term(except for possible trade issues with Mexico). The security issue is not as awful as Mr. Trump would have us believe but having good relations with Mexico would certainly help with that. If the money for the wall was used for infrastructure then you gain jobs (long term), save lives as the effects of natural disasters would be  reduced, traffic accidents would be reduced. What is involved in infrastructure repair? You have to have the following: Engineers, architects, construction companies, material suppliers and finally workers. All of these jobs and carriers require education and training. The additional benefit is the health and safety of Americans using these roads and bridges. It will take many more years to address the infrastructure repairs and building than it will take to build the “Great Wall” which will possibly be more of an eyesore and eventually a non factor in immigration. Taking a look at the Health care fiasco, the proposed AHCA (Ryancare or TrumpCare) failed due to the lack of support within the Dupublican party, not because of  the Scamocrats blocking it. This tall tale and others will continue to play out while our neer do well Congress continues on a path of destruction which will affect the voters and not the Elected pimps in Congress. If as voters you think your elected representatives are working for you then I challenge you to investigate what they are actually doing rather than what they tell you they are doing. We are in a situation now where the misinformation mills are running at full capacity and our (the voters) ability to tell truth from fiction is strained. This misinformation is why Mr. Trump was elected. The Dupublicans are not happy with him but they are using him to further their own anti-American agenda. Rallies and high sounding speeches are not how governing is done, the quicker we understand that, the better we will be able to try to elect the right people for the job of representing us correctly.

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The Art Of The Spiel


The current White House resident and associates have mastered the art of the spiel. The press crops (hand-picked) has had to endure a continual stream of non facts and “alternative” information. There appears to be no shame in producing a stream of outright lies with a straight face. Now with the recent visit from Germany Leader Angela Merkel we have seen that we no longer have a Presidency. What we now have is an entertainer  in the form of  a Government head. Unfortunately or predictably the Dupublican majority has done nothing to assist or curtail the descent of the Presidency into a Reality show. The only good thing is that the American people (and the rest of the world) see that the government is not as stable as they (Congress) would have us believe. The seemingly unending  stream of lies and “alternative” facts coming from the Whitehouse is distracting and acting as a cover for the misdeeds being perpetrated on the citizens. This type of activity is not new but now more open due to the ascent of an adoration seeker as President. The President’s primary focus is completing his campaign promise agenda at whatever cost it requires. This push for completion comes with no backup information that would lead one to believe these ideas were well thought out considering the pros and cons as well as the long range effect. Now the “repeal and replace” has  failed and the Teflon Don takes no responsibility thereby hanging the failure on everyone else including Scamocrats who had no power to stop it had the entire Dupublican Congress agreed. This is not a new idea from the Don since he will walk away from situations  no matter what the cost if he is not happy with the deal. What we can expect in the time he has in office is more of the same as he is a professional knee jerker who cannot apparently read anything longer than a paragraph. We need to pay attention to what our Congress does as they seem to have no problem with hurting us and attempting to make us like it.

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The Superlatives Of Presidency


Given the recent rush to repeal and replace the ACA with the AHCA, it has become apparent that this was an ill conceived project which is based more in political theater than any improvement for the participants. The proposed changes are all things that could have been resolved 7 years ago when the ACA dubbed  Obamacare by the Dupublicans. Their new version is not an improvement but a lessening of the existing benefits. Consider his: why are people we elected who have a very nice healthcare plan seeking to reduce the medical care we have and need? All of the talk about cost and saving money does not seem to apply to their salaries and benefits. With the inability to enact the new coverage due to in fighting, disagreement  and outright poor legislation we have TOTUS who after trying to persuade, then threaten action decided to just forget about it. This appears to be his style so what can we expect going forward? We can expect to be met with more of the same rhetoric via twitter and no substantial material information. Looking at the cabinet selections: there was no real “vetting” since these choices were made almost in secret. It seems that the President is unable  or unwilling to read or discuss anything beyond snippets of information. What we have is a disjointed administration where one hand does not know what the other is doing, this includes the Presidents staff and certainly his “party” members. The way the government is supposed to work (ideally) is the separate factions look at proposed legislation and come to a compromise that works the best for their constituents (voters). There is no perfect legislation but there is always good legislation. Speaking in superlatives does not equal governing nor does tweeting but that is what we are experiencing at this time.

Remember the following:
1. Do not trust some who has to tell you to “trust them”
2. Be cautious when some one constantly tells you how good everything will be in superlative terms.
3. Beware of a “troll” who comments with no facts on important issues.
4. The Presidency is not a 40 hour week.

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Where To Start?


Trump: taxes, executive orders, tweets or town halls? This Presidency has all of prerequisites for disaster. Beginning with the cabinet choices, spokespersons and the seemingly never-ending stream of lies (or alternate facts). This Presidency appears to be more of a circus act with more clowns than real acts even though it is entertaining. The right, alt right and seemingly in power GOP all appear to working in disconcert with their stated goals. The GOP appears to be on track to scuttle this administration and themselves. Given the broad support they once had , there are signs of their base weakening in the face of their leader’s constant stream of tweets that they cannot stop. The tweets not only undermine their “core” values but highlight their being out of touch with the people they purport to help (the working middle class and poor). The neediest of us all will suffer the most as these seat fillers have lost touch ( or maybe never had it) with what they campaigned on. What this amounts to is politics taking over and ignoring what is really needed to move the country in a good direction. No administration is or will ever be perfect but with the right people in Congress it could be an achievable goal. The solution lies with the voters being well informed. The sound bites and buzzwords do not make good government only the election of  quality representatives in Congress can achieve that, unlike the glory hounds we now have. This constant barrage of misinformation put out as truth is distracting and  designed to do just that, is not in the best (or any) interest of the voters. We as voters are more the victims of an entertainer and bully backed up by a group of self serving seat fillers who are using the headliner as a shield for their own purposes. I am still a bit surprised at some of the comments still coming from Trump supporters who apparently cannot see beyond their own biases (based on misinformation). The United States has had too many years of Racial inequity and injustice to continue down the same path leading to potential harm to all of us. Where to start?: Read beyond your comfort zone, do not assume anything is correct or wrong  without proof that you have found yourself, remember your elected officials are not necessarily your friends no matter what comes out of their mouths. “Telling like it is” good in theory but in reality it cause problems beyond our borders and emboldens the worst elements in our society and in the countries of our allies (that affects us too). Change comes from the voters but good change comes from well informed voters.

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Charles Barkley hammers Democrats and Republicans, calls them ‘fools’ that ‘lie to real people’


Very well stated. MA

On the eve of the college basketball spectacle known as March Madness, CNBC sat down with announcer Charles Barkley and discussed the NCAA, politics and everything in between.
True to form, the basketball Hall of Famer didn’t mince his words.
Barkley, who will be part of the broadcast team airing on CBS and Turner, had a good reason for how March Madness can really make a difference in everyday life.

“I love sports because it takes me away from reality and I tell people, no matter how bad your life is, if you are having problems at home, you are having problems at work, that’s the beauty of sports.”
When applying that principle to the current environment, the NBA great was his usual outspoken self: “If it wasn’t for sports we would have to isolate ourselves in just reality and right now reality sucks.”
In the interview Tuesday, Barkley spoke of the political situation in Washington and the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election. He also didn’t spare either side of the aisle. Currently, both major parties are sparring over just about everything, including health-care reform and Russia’s accused meddling in the U.S. elections.
“What bothers me the most are the Republicans and the Democrats, they act like little kids,” Barkley said. “They are lying to real people out here trying to get through life. … It’s both parties: They disagree on every single issue and it [angers] me … because their job is to work for us.”
He took offense at their usual approach of showing up “on TV yelling and screaming they are fighting each other” rather than what he expects from them. “They are supposed to take care of people and they are not doing that.”
Barkley didn’t stop there. He denounced Trump’s proposed travel ban as “stupid” and “ridiculous” and lashed out at the way the U.S. is treating immigrants. After suffering several decisive legal rebukes last month, Trump’s revised plan restricts travel from six majority-Muslim countries linked to terrorism and imposes new levels of vetting on refugees.
That is “probably bugging me the most right now,” Barkley said, especially the treatment against people “who have been here many years.”
He also railed against the nation’s divide between rich and poor. “My perspective is never gonna change on that. … We’ve got to do a much better job to take care of poor people, because you cannot put all the poor people in bad neighborhoods send them to bad schools and say good luck in life. That’s just not right.”
Barkley, 54, has undertaken his own efforts to make it better, discussed donations he’s made to three schools: Morehouse, Clark Atlanta University, and Alabama A&M. “I wanted to help historically black colleges,” said Barkley, who is from Alabama.
Asked whether he would run for office himself, he said no. His reason was characteristically blunt: “Because I don’t have time to go to work and argue with fools every day,” said the former member of the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets.

Eric Chemi
Sr. Editor-at-Large, Data Journalism

Jessica Golden

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Labels and Their Faults


The discussion of politics always involves labels of some sort. Each major party has subsets. These subsets can be called anyone of many names i.e. Conservative , moderate, liberal. These are just attributes of the group and the individuals within that group and have nothing to do with Governing. The key to governing is first getting elected. The after of gaining the office is doing what you said if you said something that is possible. To determine what is possible is to research what your goals and the potential outcome will be. It is unfortunate that too many of us are so disenfranchised with the Government for a variety of reasons that we miss the real issues. The real issues are the people we have kept in office too long and thought they had our backs. The reality is that they are ON our backs and will continue that ride until we say stop. If you need a label to cover your belief then I submit that you are depriving yourself of the ability to make rational judgments in elections. Think about the people we elect to Congress: their medical plan is better than most and the ACA has no effect on them (they made sure of that), the economy has no effect on their salary (they made that a law) and they do not have pay for transportation, office help, decorating or supplies. With this in mind-what does a label mean? Its definition in this case is: a short word or phrase descriptive of a person, group, intellectual movement, etc. If you define your beliefs by a label then its possible that you do not really know or understand what you believe. The way I see beliefs as applied to politics is  to disengage from the labels associated with political parties and use your common sense with a healthy dose of skepticism. The skepticism will allow you to stay out the surge of “crowd” thinking and hopefully see the chinks in the armor of   politispeak and rhetoric that sounds good but has no basis in fact. With all of the available information outlets we have access to why would you depend on one or two when you have access to many and thereby have access to a broader view of  the situation. Think of it as watching a football game, the 50 yard line is great but the view is close up so much of the action is unseen. If you are higher up you can see the whole field and get a view of all of the action. The same applies to information you receive.

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Smoke And Mirrors


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

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


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

2 / 23

The Washington Post
Karla Adams hrs ago

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

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