Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Donald Trump Is Gonna Get Us Killed by Michael Moore

A week has gone by since Donald Trump admitted he's only been to "two or three" of his daily presidential national security briefings. There have been 36 of them since the day he secured enough electoral college votes to be appointed president next Monday when the Electoral College meets.

Most would agree the #1 job of the leader of any country is to keep its people safe. There is no more important meeting every day for the President than the one where he learns what the day's potential threats are to the country. That Trump would find it too cumbersome or too annoying to have to sit through 20 minutes of listening to his top intelligence people tell him who's trying to kill us today, simply boggles the mind.

Of course, our minds have been so boggled so many times in the past year by this foolish man no one seems that surprised or concerned. He can get up at 5 in the morning and send angry, childish tweets about how he's being portrayed on SNL ("Not funny! Unwatchable!"), or belittling the local elected union leader in Indiana, but he doesn't have time to hear about the threats to our national security.

So, my fellow Americans, when the next terrorist attack happens -- and it will happen, we all know that -- and after the tragedy is over, amidst the death and destruction that might have been prevented, you will see Donald Trump acting quickly to blame everyone but himself. He will suspend constitutional rights. He will round up anyone he deems a threat. He will declare war, and his Republican Congress will back him.

And no one will remember that he wasn't paying attention to the growing threat. Wasn't attending the daily national security briefings. Was playing golf instead or meeting with celebrities or staying up til 3am tweeting about how unfair CNN is. He said he didn't need to be briefed. "You know, I think I'm smart. I don't need to hear the same thing over and over each day for eight years." That's what he told Fox News on December 11th when asked why he wasn't attending the security briefings. Don't forget that date and his hubris as we bury the dead next year.

We had a president like him before. He, too, lost the popular vote, a majority of Americans saying they didn't want him in the Oval Office. But his governor/brother and his ex-CIA chief/dad's appointees to the Supreme Court put an end to that, and he was installed as Commander-in-Chief. On August 6, 2001, he was on a month-long vacation at his ranch in Texas. That morning, the White House Counsel handed him his daily national security briefing. He glanced at it, set it aside and then went fishing for the rest of the day. Below is the photo of that moment which I showed the world in "Fahrenheit 9/11". The headline on the security briefing reads: BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE INSIDE U.S. On the top page it tells how bin Laden will do this: with planes. George W. Bush didn't leave the ranch to go back to work for the next four weeks. In the fifth week, bin Laden attacked the US with planes on September 11th.

It's one thing to have a president who was asleep at the wheel. But, my friends, it's a whole other thing to now have a president-elect who REFUSES TO EVEN GET BEHIND THE WHEEL! This utter neglect of duty, a daily snub at the people who work to protect us, the first Commander-in-Chief to literally be AWOL and announcing proudly he isn't going to change -- this, I assure you, is going to get a lot of innocent people killed.

To you, Mr. Trump, I say this: When this next terrorist attack takes place, it is YOU who will be charged by the American people with a gross dereliction of duty. It was YOUR job to pay attention, to protect the country. But you were too busy tweeting and defending Putin and appointing cabinet members to dismantle the government. You didn't have time for the daily national security briefing. Don't think we're going to let you use a modern-day burning of the Reichstag as your excuse to eliminate our civil liberties and our democracy.

We will remember that while the plot to kill Americans was being hatched, your time was consumed by whom you saw as the real threat to America: Alec Baldwin in a wig.

Democratic Party condemnation leaves out myriad critical, countering facts

My Response to the "Jewish Journal's" editorial entitled "Trump and the Obama Legacy." Journal editorial linked here 

http://jewishjournal.org/2016/12/08/editorial-trump-and-the-obama-legacy/

 My response:

May I humbly suggest that your editorial entitled "Trump and the Obama Legacy" is, in large part, both presumptuous and erroneous.

Trump, indeed, won the electoral college (which is, in my opinion, an 18th century anachronism formulated in 1787, when states did not vary in size as they now do), that gave him the presidency. But as you deem the Democratic party an unelectable failure, you fail to recognize or state that Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million -- and counting -- more popular votes than Trump -- indeed, more than President Obama received in 2012 -- and many of those votes were, indeed, white.

I proudly add, as a Jew of Ashkenazi extraction, that 71 percent of Jews voted for Hillary as well. I am even prouder to say that Jews, since voting has been dissected, have always voted majority Democrat. Your analysis, especially in a Jewish newspaper, is skewed at best, as it omits this fact.

Hillary's vote total was the single-largest popular vote swamp by Democrats against a Republican to go on to lose the electoral college in US history. It was even greater than was Al Gore's popular vote lead over Bush.

To me, that means something. Democrats did not "slice and dice" the electorate, but rather went after votes they knew would be cast for them -- by those in the electorate that heretofore in US history had been ignored -- while holding the white progressive vote as well.

As to Republicans retaining state legislatures and governorships, Republicans have done a fantastic job at gerrymandering districts, both on the state and federal level, while they suppress the Democratic minority vote by stunningly nefarious means. If Republicans in these states kept the vote available to more persons of color for longer periods of time, perhaps the outcome would have been different.

You deem the recovery "slow and weak." You decline to acknowledge that Obama inherited an economic mess from Bush, and yet he decreased the unemployment rate by half; saved the auto industry; and for the first time, offered health insurance to insure 20 million people who otherwise would have gone uninsured, and filled emergency rooms. Obama eliminated the preexisting condition that had been a rationale insurance companies used in order to not insure those who needed insurance most. Is the ACA perfect? No, but under a Hillary Clinton administration, it would have been perfected. Now it stands to be, God forbid, repealed -- and I am sure not replaced -- so yet again, people will not be treated, and may consequently die.

To say Democrats thought of white Republicans as the "other" is simply ludicrous. From day one of President Obama's first administration, Republicans met at dinner and were committed to the passage of exactly nothing the president wanted. In other words, if they could not defeat the President by the ballot, they would defeat any and all proposals he might try to pass. The President's entire message, from the beginning of his administration to well into his second administration, was to work with Republicans on initiatives they both might benefit from. His mantra was always "compromise." He would continuously espouse the mechanics of government to be rooted in getting a little, and giving up a little, of what one wanted, in order to craft legislation with which both could live. But no matter which cheek the President turned, Republicans would slap him on the other.

Trump's initial foray into things political began with a racist and ridiculous disparagement of the President as not having been born in the United States, an obvious insult and falsehood Trump was forced to retract much later, during his run for the presidency.

The President has been besmirched by white Republicans time after time. One cannot forget South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson's famous insult, "you lie," directed at Obama during his State of the Union speech.
Never has such rudeness occurred at a State of the Union address given by a white president.

Nor can I forget the President's attempt at racial inclusion convening the so-called "beer summit which involved a black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. going into his own home and being arrested wrongly by a white Cambridge police officer. The president here yet again tried to calm a racially tense situation through discussion.

One can only deduce that no matter what the President did, or however he did it, he would be overruled by a portion of the mostly white electorate, through their representatives who could never accept a black President. Are these the votes you would have wanted the Democratic nominee to pursue?

The fact that white men in the Rust Belt thought Hillary Clinton would destroy their coal and oil jobs was, perhaps, one area that stood better clarification by her, and she should have spent more time in those states doing precisely that. She did not want to eliminate coal and oil jobs entirely, but said that she wanted to transition workers from coal and oil jobs to those more environmentally-friendly, certainly healthier for them (I heard an interview one day on NPR where a coal miner praised G-d for sending Trump to restore coal production. Later in the interview, he incredulously said that both his father and grandfather had died of black lung disease) and thereby, reduce the carbon load on the environment. Who could argue with climate change amelioration? Trump and his minions, that's who.

Ultimately, I believe Hillary's main difficulty to those white men in the Rust Belt was that it was a woman transmitting the message -- and that is too bad. Nothing less than the planet's life is at stake!

From a Canadian Friend: My comment I cry

I cry for the last of the vets of WWII who saved the world and saved my Jewish family from certain death if Nazis won. I cry for my friend a soldier who died in Vietnam before he married and his sister, my best friend, who died later of cancer with no family left. I cry for soldiers today sent to those hell holes, I cry for horrible policies that send them there while those who make policy are warm, safe and never saw war. I cry for their sacrifice for so many they do not know. I cry for what I saw on the news re: Syria ... innocents, women, children, elderly, disabled walking and walking and walking away fleeing from those that want their blood. Unfathomable to me. Russians/Syrians bombed four hospitals....hospitals can you imagine doing that to the sick and doctors who try to help them? And our soon to be fearless leader loves Putin. I just cry because so much is so sad and my efforts to help so weak!
Sent to me from a friend and sent to him from a Canadian friend
> > A Different Christmas Poem
>
> The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
> I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
> My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
> My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
> Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
> Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
>
> The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
> Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
> My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
> Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
> In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
> So slumbered I, perhaps I started to dream.
>
> The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
> But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
>
> Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,
> Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
>
> My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
> And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
>
> Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
> a lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

> A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
> Perhaps a Trooper, huddled here in the cold.
>
> Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
> Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
>
> "What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
> "Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
>
> Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
> You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
>
> For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
> Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.
>
> To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
> Then he sighed and he said "It's really all right,
> I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."
>
> "It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
> That separates you from the darkest of times.
>
> No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
> I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
> My Gramps died in Europe on a day in December."
> Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
> I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
> But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
>
> Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
> The red and the white ... A Canadian flag.
> I can live through the cold and the being alone,
> Away from my family, my house and my home.
> I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
> I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
> I can carry the weight of killing another,
> Or lay down my life with my sister and brother.
> Who stand at the front against any and all,
> To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."
>
> "So go back inside," he said, "Harbour no fright,
> Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
> "But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
> "Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
> It seems all too little for all that you've done,
> For being away from your wife and your son."
> Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
> "Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
>
> > To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
> To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
> For when we come home, either standing or dead,
> To know you remember we fought and we bled.
> Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
> That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."
>
>

NOT ANYMORE

  I wrote this last week and for the most part sat on it because I did not want my writing to imply anything against Israel. As stated agai...