The Rats are abandoning the sinking ship in droves. Last week it was Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House who announced that he would not run again. He was a reluctant Speaker anyway, a policy wonk who was more comfortable as head of the Ways & Means Committee than as the Speaker of the House, but he took the job understanding the problems he had seen for Speakers before him. Maybe he wanted the power, mayvbe he just felt a responsibility to the nation to do a jb no one else wanted. Either way, he failed.
Ryan makes the 41st congressmen to have quit on the GOP since the beginning of the Trump Presidency. He leaves, as his legacy, a twenty trillion dollar deficit by 2020. That’s a hell of a lot of failure for a conservative. He says he is leaving to spend more time with his family. I sure hope it’s more productive than his time in the House. He never lived up to his leadership position. He ignored the many failures of Donald Trump when he was called on to be a leader in congress. He chose not to point them out. In that he abandoned his franchise and failed the American people.
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Trump tweeted about Syria today and asked, “Where is our thank you, America?,” Hey Donald, how about,” thank you Kurds?”
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Steve Scalise stated on Fox news this morning that he and his fellow House members were proud of their record. After all they did pass one piece of legislation, the tax bill that will destroy the deficit and eventually save no tax dollars for the poor and middle class and they are now supporting a president who has no policy planned for the future except how to make money for his family. Scalise says he is proud of his work, which shows that getting shot didn’t make him any smarter. This kind of ignorance is exactly why he and most of the GOP congressmen should be kicked out of their jobs. This party has control of all government. They control both houses of congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court and they pass one bill in 18 months? Yeah, Steve, That’s really something to be proud of.
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The Trump administration was out front again this weekend, proving that they are dishonest and proud of it. Sara Huckabee Sanders was on This Week, lying her ass off about everything asked of her. She was followed by the Liar-in-Chief, tweeting about James Comey;, almost every sentence containing a lie.
Politicians have always known how to skirt the truth but the smart ones have also known enough to avoid the outright, provable lie. That made for conversations that were able to proceed because there was some basis of truth. This week both Trump and Sanders made statements about there being no evidence of collusion and that there was no collusion and that the various investigations had all concluded there was no collusion. All of these statements are blatant lies by both the Liar-in-Chief and his Liar-in-Communications.
What’s really interesting is that no subject talked about or even hinted about, as a possible object of the Mueller investigation, has been proven to be untrue. Everything, despite Trump’s denials, is still on the table. With all the smoke and all the possible charges this can only lead a reasonable man to assume that there is in fact fire.
There was a time when we would hear a politician lie and it would stand out to the point that we could attack it, pull it out of the statement and use it to expose either the truth or the lies of that person’s point. . That is no longer possible. The volume of lies that flow from Donald Trump and those who infect his administration is so great that it precludes any ability of anyone to make any sense out of any position any of them takes. The Trumpitaries lie about things they have stated in a previous sentence. Trump lies about things he said on tape the previous day. Truth the basis of all discussion no longer exists in our government.
If I cannot believe what you say, there is no way to speak to you about anything significant. There is no basis for any agreement or disagreement. The result is that nothing is ever accomplished and that is exactly what we are looking at right now in our country.
After almost a year and a half in office with control of all branches of government and the Supreme Court this administration has passed only one single flawed piece of legislation; a tax bill that staggeringly favors the rich and has been untruthfully disguised to appear to help the poor and middle class. Looking to the future there is nothing on the horizon, no plan to deal with anything that needs to be fixed. Only a joke of a Wall, the disenfrancement of voters and the crippling of much needed immigration reform appear to interest our Idiot-in-Chief. All, if you bothered to notice, are aimed at gaining the white superiority vote.
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I don’t know if any of you readers find it fascinating that Trump is going after Comey for helping him win the election but that, at least in some small sense, is exactly what happened.
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Watched Madeline Albright on Fareed’s show. This brilliant woman, like Fareed, an immigrant, has just written a book called Fascism- A Warning. In it she, without accusing him, explains how Donald Trump, exemplifies everything that we see as the worst aspects of a fascist dictator.
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The President of the United States is lying again. This time about the fact that he fired James Comey for his work on Hillary Clinton’s emails. He lies about this despite having been caught, on numerous occasions, stating that he actually fired him for his work on the Russian intervention in our elections. So basically, what Trump has done is fire Comey for helping him win the election. How can I state this so unequivocally?
It’s really pretty simple. Every person I have talked to that voted for Trump, even the ones who no longer support him, have spoken to Hillary’s emails as a major factor. Not just then but still.
Does anyone remember what was so important about those emails? How about the fact that they “may” have included classified information. But no one has ever shown that they did. What has been shown, as blatantly as possible; is that Trump blurts out all kinds of classified information to anyone who bothers to listen, including Russian diplomats and spymasters. He does this almost every time he speaks. This doesn’t seem to bother those that still think he is an acceptable president. It does seem to bother those that worry about National Security. So why isn’t Trump in the slammer?
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With all the eyes on presidential politics, it amazes me that no one seems to have noticed a particular anomaly that is currently rearing its ugly head. Inarguably the two worst presidents in American history, elected within eight years of each other, were both put in office by means of grievously flawed elections.
George Bush lost the 2004 election, by lying us into a war we had no business fighting, but recovered by means of snarky voting counts in a state governed by his brother. It was only because of the cowardice of his opponent that he didn’t lose a court challenge and was able to go on and decimate corporate regulations that led directly to the collapse of our economy.
Twelve years later through the perfect storm of James Comey’s comments, Russian interference, rural voter intolerance and his opponent’s campaign incompetence, Donald Trump landed his criminal ass in the White House.
Two men who shouldn’t, by the application of any accepted criteria be in the White House, both elected by extraordinary means, both doing their best to take down our country; Bush through stupidity and obsession and Trump through his bigotry, criminal nature and ego driven madness.
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There has been a great deal of pro and con about Trump’s decision to bomb the three chemical facilities in Syria. Richard Haas one of the most astute political thinkers extent, has laid it out pretty clearly.
Those who occupy the planet have decided that there are certain things that are not compatible with normal human existence on our planet. Among these, is the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. UN and individual national treaties have upheld these concepts. Assad has chosen over 50 times by some counts, to violate these abstentions. The violation of these demands is not a cause to wage war against Syria but it is a reason to punish Assad. That’s why this raid was carried out.
I think that a better choice, considering the circumstances, would have been to destroy Assad’s palace. This would have made the punishment more personal and less national.
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So you figure that Donald Trump is a moron who can’t read and can barely think. Well, think again. In the year before he became president, Trump’s various hotel properties grossed less than $20,000 in political bookings. In the year and a quarter since he’s been elected they have grossed more than a million bucks in political bookings, most of which he generates by going from the White House where he has spent a little less than 200 of the 446 days he’s been in office to his various business holdings including his golf courses in New Jersey and Virginia and his hotel at Mar-a-Lago where he’s spent 253 days.
Don’t forget when Trump moves he doesn’t move alone. No president does. He is followed by a small army of helpers and protectors who all have to be fed and housed. Right now the tax money that pays for that is going directly into Trump’s pockets.
But they have to stay someplace, you say. Sure they do but a more ethical President would have them stay in hotels not owned by him and his family. That’s why other presidents divested themselves of their personal business holdings when they were in office. Trump held onto his and set up a system whereby they could make him tons of money. That’s how this petty criminal has been draining the swamp. He’s been filtering the money out of the mud and depositing it in his own bank accounts. So for all those true believers who keep telling everyone who will listen, that he gets stuff done; he sure does and he’s doing it with your money.
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It’s an ill wind that blows no on good. Maria, the hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico seems to have been the impetus that is turning that territory solar. After the many attempts by the fossil fuel industry to renew the old grid in Puerto Rico, all failed due to a series of almost comical accidents, the island fell back on what was available and could be quickly installed. That was solar and batteries given them by Elon Musk. The combination seems to have taken hold and Puerto Rico will soon be the only area of the country using 100% solar.
Our own Governor Cuomo should take notice. His recent attempt to keep dying nuclear sources upstate in operation despite needing billions to do so, are inept and stupid. You have an election coming up Andrew. It’s not a time for dumb moves. Get into the future, not the past. Only Donald Trump is dumb enough to want more coal production.
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Kay Ivey, the doddering, semi-senile Governor of Alabama is running again in November. To push off her campaign she has published a TV ad in which she brags about signing a bill that preserved statuary honoring the confederate traitors who led an insurrection against this country aimed at preserving a man’s tight to own another man. Ivey speaks to a reverence of the past as being the basis of the future. If that were true we would never make any progress. We must know the past in order to recognize the mistakes we made there, but there is no reason to revere the past just because it’s gone.
The Confederate tradition that still eats at the soul of the South is a plague that must be stamped out. It is a psychosis that allows its sufferers to immolate themselves in a conflagration of loss. Winners soon forget their victories as they move on to bigger and goals. Losers replay their losses in an orgy of self- disgust. That’s how most of the south has existed since the civil war. The South has crawled into a hole and allowed itself to rot, licking its wounds with a tongue on which is branded, “The South will rise again,”
And it can, but only if it rises above the petty bigotry and prejudices that allows it to feast on its own flesh. The South has to forget the civil war and concentrate on its future, its population and the possibilities that currently exist and that can be developed for that future.
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Donald Trump has done a lot of bragging about reducing business regulations and helping push up the economy. This week we have an object lesson in how the reduction of regulation really helped the American people, when Wells Fargo the biggest criminal enterprise in the United States since a bunch of Italian mobsters invented the MAFIA, was fined one billion dollars for the way they were stealing from their customers through mortgage and auto loan deals.
Sounds like a lot of money doesn’t it, a billion bucks? But it’s really chump change because it won’t solve the problem, won’t stop the criminal activity for which Wells Fargo has become infamous. This isn’t the first enormous fine they have paid for stealing from their customers, and it won’t be the last. Not until we add jail time for all the officers of that criminal enterprise will the activity stop.
The fine means nothing to the guys who run Wells Fargo. It doesn’t even come out of their pockets. It represents a reduction of a paltry 14% in the first quarter profits. Wells Fargo has been running a criminal operation for years and it will continue to do so until its officers go to jail. The point of punishment is to change behavior. The punishment must be egregious enough to put the fear of God into the criminal. In white collar crime that fear is represented by jail time. Paying fines doesn’t hurt the crooks who run these operations, it only hurts the same people they are already stealing from; their customers. And the banking regulations that Trump brags about eliminating are what are allowing this whole criminal enterprise to flourish. Trump doesn’t want the CEO of Wells Fargo to go to jail. Trump want’s him to contribute to his legal fees and his next campaign and cutting business regulations is how he gets that to happen. So keep cheering suckers, while the thief in the White House allows the thieves in the banking business to steal your future. You earned it when you voted for a felon.