Staggered

I am staggered by the New York Times article by Peter Baker entitled "How Trump has Reshaped the Presidency, and How It's Changed Him" (Linked below). He gives Mr. Trump a pass on the plethora of alleged unethical, immoral, constitutionally ignorant and potentially illegal behaviors of the most unfit for the office of the presidency in US history.Donald Trump is a president who makes me cringe with embarrassment for other nations to see. I shout with fury at his flagrant abuse of our democratic processes as well as those racist supporters he allows within the oval office. I keep hoping I will wake up from this electoral nightmare.

Mr. Trump has, as Mitt Romney predicted, perfected the greatest con ever sold and made the presidency his very own nepotistic cash cow. From his alleged treasonous behavior towards Russia to his alleged money laundering, gargantuan conflicts of interest and his flouting of the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution he swore to uphold, this nation should not rest until Mr. Trump and his henchmen are brought to justice.

Either we are a nation of laws applicable to everyone including the richest and most powerful among us or we are not. Benjamin Franklin after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 answered a woman who asked him what form of government we had -- a monarchy or a republic. He said "a republic if you can keep it." Unless Mr. Trump is impeached, tried and, if the mountain of evidence shows, found guilty I believe we do not have a republic but an undemocratic oligarchy that exists solely for the top 2% of the population and no one else.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/us/politics/trump-presidency-100-days.html?emc=edit_ta_20170429&nl=top-stories&nlid=75028030&ref=cta

A Little Optimism -- Let Him Eat Cake:

Here is what I think is happening: Trump, as we know, is a tub full of baloney. He is now going against much of the horror show the he promised in his campaign. Why? Because he is in bed with big money and he is not a populist. His choices for cabinet secretaries show it. Further, he does not want to alienate his duped base. Today he said NAFTA is NOT going to be rolled back after he talked with Mexico and Canada. It will be "worked on." Oh sure. Trump's main allegiance is to Trump. Getting rid of NAFTA will not happen and neither will it be "worked on" but it surely did sound like music to his white blue collar supporters' ears during the campaign because they simply want jobs back and know nothing of the complex details of NAFTA. Doing stuff like trade policy requires a huge amount of time and expertise. It is very very difficult and the parties with whom one is negotiating get a say.

He just found out that healthcare is complex ... no kidding. Today the news crawl read "White House to continue to pay Obamacare subsidies to help low income patients ... for now" Yeah right for now...meaning forever. He will not repeal nor replace Obamacare because it will eviscerate his poor white base the most and re-institute the forever loathed pre-existing condition as rationale for insurance companies to deny coverage. Besides that, a majority of the electorate likes Obamacare. The longer it exists the more they like it and an electoral price will be paid by Republicans in Congress if they replace it with something much worse.

The wall will never get built as he cannot find enough in Congress who want to spend the huge bucks for it and Mexico is definitely absolutely without a doubt NOT going to pay for it. How ridiculous was that? It sounded oh so racist good to his minions who think undocumented workers are a huge national problem. They aren't. They fill thousands of jobs many do not want to fill as George W. Bush learned which is why Bush could not get immigration reform. Many of the plethora of small and big business farmers and others do not want to lose their employee base. And I might add the tactics targeting undocumented workers amount to cruel and unusual punishment as well as denial of rights under the Fourth and 14th Amendments. Yes, even the undocumented worker has Constitutional rights. See "The Hill" http://thehill.com/…/255281-yes-illegal-aliens-have-constit…
.

His "tax plan" will be dead in the water because Republicans will never go for raising the debt trillions when the highest tax bracket Trump just happens to occupy is lowered from 35% to 15%. It won't happen. Republicans will not saddle the nation with trillions more big debt over 10 years that will not have been paid for. Reforming tax code, as Larry O'Donnell said in his broadcast last evening, is hard --- one does not do it in the one page Manuchin offered in front of the cameras. Manuchin, Trump's Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sach's ex banker with his co-policy monetary assassin standing next to him looked ... well ... ridiculous.

Trump and his "administration" are so corrupt and international conflicts of interest exist by the carload not to mention he will be occupied with criminal prosecutions, FBI investigations and alleged congressional investigations (ultimately) into Trump campaign associates treasonous conspiracy with Russia to influence the 2016 election that there will be no time -- a huge amount of time -- it takes to get those things about which he blustered in his faux campaign to promote the biggest con in American history.

No, one does not have to be a rocket scientist to realize he is in it for the big con -- as Mitt Romney said. The money Trump and his family can make from the US presidency is mammoth and it is on the taxpayer dime as not one, not two but three White Houses need protection. Moreover, Trump will make oodles of non-blind trust investment cash simply by being president but the middle classes and the poor, of course, will not. Trump calculated (erroneously I might add) that most of the electorate would be so saturated with investigations of corruption and ethical abuses that they would be bored as he is bored concentrating on anything for more than 15 minutes. I'm not bored are you?

This country is NOT a monarchy and he is NOT king. All that he thought would be a piece of cake as he waived his magic powerful presidential wand is not going to be baked and, in fact, he would not want to eat much of it.


Yes, illegal aliens have constitutional rights

Yom Hashoa -- Remembering the Holocaust

Two-minute siren brings country to a standstill amid memorial ceremonies marking annual remembrance day http://toi.sr/2q5oSrx
Tel Aviv stands still for the millions murdered in the Holocaust http://toi.sr/2q5oSrx

There is no single event in the history of man on this planet that has done more to shape not only my political values but my personal character. There is no single event that makes me bend with sadness and no single event that makes me hope the arc of the universe bends toward justice.

May their memory be a blessing lighting a candle in the wind for peace.

Together

Many of the posts on progressive sites make sense even though some seem argumentative of what the other is saying. What is happening in France to make sure the moderate Macron wins over the right wing extremist Trump-like anti-immigrant Le Penn is to unite the multi-party factions against her.

Dems MUST present a united front too. No one Democrat or progressive is going to be all things to all people but we know Democrats will stand for much the opposite of what most all Republicans will offer. Dems will stand for civil rights and voting rights for those minorities Republicans want to suppress. They will stand for the environment, climate change action, clean energy and clean air Republicans want to erase. Democrats will stand for health care. Democrats will stand for gay rights, immigrants and minority religious rights Republicans want to crush, they will stand for regulations of banks to ensure a Great Recession never happen again, we will stand together on government enlisted to help the middle class and know government has its place to help. We stand together on so much more.

We MUST stop infighting and stand for all those things to which we know Democrats and all progressives agree. Government is NOT the problem but it can be one among many solutions.

We MUST retake the House, take the Senate and stop all Republican murderous to-human-rights-legislation. We do that like the multi party France seems to be doing against the poisonous right wing nationalist Le Pen -- STAND TOGETHER! As Ben Franklin so wisely said in his era I say of ours "We must hang together or we most assuredly will hang separately!"

Gay men in Russia’s Chechnya region are being lured into weeks of government torture

WHEN ONE CRITIQUES THE US WITH VITRIOL PLEASE PAUSE AND THINK ON THE STORY BELOW. I AM GUILTY OF GREAT ANGER TOWARDS THE RIGHT WING EXTREMIST NATIONALISTS THAT SAW FIT TO PUT A MENTALLY SICK MAN TRUMP IN THE MOST POWERFUL POSITION ON EARTH. STILL I AM MINDFUL ESPECIALLY WHEN STORIES LIKE THE ONE LINKED BELOW SHOUT THAT HOWEVER MUCH WE CRITIQUE THIS NATION WE ARE LIGHT YEARS FREER AND MORE OBSERVANT OF THE RULE OF LAW THAN MANY OTHER NATIONS OF THIS EARTH. THE STORY BELOW IS BONE CHILLING ESPECIALLY WHEN WE KNOW MANY OF THOSE IN THE ALT RIGHT MOVEMENT OCCUPY A SPOT IN THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE AND SHARE THE SAME VIEW AS THE CHECHENS. WE AGAIN MUST RESIST!
 
‘They Starve You. They Shock You’: Inside the Anti-Gay Pogrom in Chechnya [https://www.nytimes.com/…/chechnya-russia-attacks-gays.html…

Using classic K.G.B. tactics, security officers lured gay men into traps and tortured them into giving up the identities of others like them.

Thoughts and One or Two More Things

Worried.  I just heard a rumor of another SCOTUS justice leaving.  I suspect it would be Kennedy.  No matter who it is it made me feel like I wanted to throw up.  This was such a huge election for Clinton to lose!!

I do not know why Leon Panetta when interviewed by Brian Williams last evening about Trump gave the jackass Trump a grade of "B" on foreign policy.  Is he kidding me?  Trump has pissed off our allies, insulted them, cannot figure out from the beginning of a Trump sentence to its end where his thoughts lie.  Trump as most know by now has zero foreign policy understanding because he has no idea about anything and he is not even curious to find out.  He does not like to read.  He refused to shake Angela Merkel's hand, he insulted Australia, just wrangled Canada and this is not including one of our biggest trading partners, Mexico, who will NOT, of course, pay for his damn wall. He said to the Italian president that Italy has given us great culture and included knowing "a very very good friend" of his, opera star Luciano Pavarotti!!!  One problem Pavarotti has been dead 10 years and his wife hates Trump!

He makes ping pong ball statements on policy to our enemies and the confrontation with a nuclear powered N. Korea our crackpot so called president does not even know which way the "powerful armada" he said is headed for N. Korea is going as it was headed south.  Worse his wonderful generals everyone seems to love because they are the only thing keeping us from nuclear annihilation got it wrong as well.  Truthfully, Trump is so bad he makes Kim Jong Un look good!  Leon Panetta where is your mind?  I give Trump an "F" in both foreign and domestic performance.  Maybe I know more than Leon Panetta?  Brian Williams was a good one to interview Panetta.  They both wax sugary sweet afraid they might offend someone.  The entire Trump "administration" should be an offense to everyone.  We are talking about millions of lives at risk both in the domestic and foreign sphere!

Trump is a true know nothing because he knows so little about anything.  He does not read, cannot spell and is a dope about everything else except himself, his buildings and golf in that order. This is our president?   If Democrats do not take back the House and the Senate in 2018 they will be an American tragedy hopeless as Republicans have all of politics bought hook line and sinker with their billions making so many states gerrymandered red (a new crayon color for Crayola.)   This should be an easy pick off blue (another Crayola crayon.)  Montana Republicans successfully this week beat back the ability to vote by mail which they have been using to make voting easier.  Republicans, of course, want to make voting difficult because if voting is easy too many Democrats vote and win.  The nerve.  I think they call voting part of a democracy.  Montana Republicans placed the voting day on a Thursday and think no one can figure out why.  I bet so many Montana voters will show up -- NOT.  How can one compete against that kind of slime?  It's impossible unless ALL of us become involved anad RESIST.

I heard Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff on Rachel Maddow.  He is low on the charisma scale but very smart on the cerebral scale. Much better, naturally, than any Republican.  Ossoff should win as the HHS secretary Tom Price left that seat open for his wife Karen Handel.  Both she and Price were involved in nefarious activity. She regarding Susan Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Secretary Price involved in an insider stock trading scandal you know the kind of thing for which Martha Stewart went to jail.  The DNC should have put big money into the Ossoff campaign and maybe he could have pulled it out with his very good showing in the preliminary of 48% (he needed 50%.)  Again, the DNC drops the ball.  I am fed up as Democrats are TOO weak and Republicans utterly billionaire saturated corrupt.  The big Con Trump, as Romney said he was, pulled the wool over white blue collar men in the Rust Belt and now they and the middle class will pay a massive price. 

What is happening with the so called investigation of the House and the Senate of treasonous hacking ties to Russia by Trump and his merry campaigners' to help throw the election to Trump?  If Democrats were accused of all that this "administration" has allegedly corruptly done the president would have been impeached, by now removed from office and his entourage and maybe even he would be going to jail. 

Oh yes, one more thing: Trump said that Korea was once held by China except it never was making the Koreans' blood pressure skyrocket.  We can relax, though, as he said the Chinese president at the Mir-A-Lago dinner taught Trump a lot about the history of Korea.  Korea is furious and who could blame them?  Have we gone ad infinitum insane electing a man that belongs in rehab but surely not in the White House with control over the entire world and his itchy trigger finger on the nuclear football? 

One more thing: his Everest size conflicts of interest and massive unethical behavior disadvantage most of us but place buckets of cash in his and other Republicans corrupt pockets.  It's unconstitutional under the Emoluments Clause but since Dick Cheney said "to hell with the Constitution" to justify Iraq Republicans think when it is advantageous to them that that is a pretty good idea.

And just one more thing: He praised Turkey's Erdogan who probably stole an election making Turkey once a democracy now a dictatorship.  Maybe Trump is learning from him as well.  If one wrote a script like this it would be rejected as too preposterous except we are living this horror in real time. 

Meanwhile US planes were sent to "monitor' N. Korea's behavior.  I bet even N. Korea doesn't know from one day to the next what this mendacious crackpot president will say much less do.  If you were the N. Korean dictator what would you be thinking?

I'm saying where is that building from which I can jump?!

A Fake and a Fraud by NYT -- Charles Blow + my comment

Fake and a Fraud





NYT Charles M. Blow APRIL 20, 2017

Donald Trump’s mounting reversals, failures and betrayals make it increasingly clear that he is a fake and a fraud.

For many of us, this is affirmative reinforcement; for others, it is devastating revelation.

But it is those who believed — and cast supportive ballots — who should feel most cheated and also most contrite. You placed your faith in a phony. His promises are crashing to earth like a fleet of paper airplanes.

He oversold what he could deliver because he had no idea what would be required to deliver it, nor did he care. He told you what you wanted to hear so that he could get what he wanted to have. He played you for fools.

That wall will not be paid for by Mexico, if in fact it is ever built. If it is built, it will likely look nothing like what Trump said it would look like. His repeal and replace of Obamacare flopped. That failure endangers his ability to deliver on major tax reform and massive infrastructure spending. China is no longer in danger of being labeled a currency manipulator. The administration is now sending signals that ripping up the Iran nuclear deal isn’t a sure bet.

Trump has done a complete about-face on the Federal Reserve chairwoman, Janet Yellen, and when was the last time you heard him threaten to lock up Hillary Clinton?

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the positions he took for in-the-moment advantage that have been quickly converted into in-reality abandonment.

He isn’t cunningly unpredictable; he’s tragically unprepared and dangerously unprincipled.

No wonder then that a Gallup poll released Monday found:

“President Donald Trump’s image among Americans as someone who keeps his promises has faded in the first two months of his presidency, falling from 62 percent in February to 45 percent. The public is also less likely to see him as a ‘strong and decisive leader,’ as someone who ‘can bring about the changes this country needs’ or as ‘honest and trustworthy.’”

While the largest decline in the percentage of those who think Trump keeps his promises came among women, young people and Democrats, the number also dropped 11 percentage points among Republicans and nine percentage points among conservatives.

Even so, The Washington Post’s The Fix warned readers to beware “the myth of the disillusioned Trump voter,” citing a Pew Research Center poll released Monday “showing very little buyer’s remorse among Trump voters.”

As the newspaper pointed out: “The poll showed just 7 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Trump has performed worse than they expected him to. Fully 38 percent — five times as many — say he has performed better.”

This seems to me a fair point, but it requires us to have a better handle on the expectations for him in the first place. After all, the union has yet to crumble into ashes and his Twitter tirades have yet to push us into an impulse war.

Furthermore, the stubborn human resistance to admitting a mistake should never be underestimated. Admitting that Trump is failing, even when he is failing you and your family specifically, is an enormous pill to swallow. Acknowledging that your blindness, selfishness and fear compelled you to buy into a man who is selling you out may take more time.

But I think that time is coming, because Trump is an unabashed leech and an unrepentant liar.

Trump cares only about Trump, his brand and his image, his family and his fortune. Indeed, his personal philosophy as president might best be described as clan over country.

Instead of being a grenade-throwing iconoclast bent on blowing up the D.C. establishment and the big-money power structures, he has stocked his inner circle with billionaires and bankers, and he has bent to the establishment.

Trump sold himself as a populist only to line his own pockets. Trump built his entire reputation not as the champion of the common man, but by curating his image as a crude effigy of the cultural elite.

He accrued his wealth by selling hollow dreams of high society to people who wanted to flaunt their money or pretend that they had some.

Put another way, Trump’s brand is built on exclusivity, not inclusivity. It is about the separate, vaulted position of luxury, above and beyond the ability for it to be accessed by the common. It is all about the bourgeois and has absolutely nothing to do with the blue collar.

And yet somehow, it was the blue collar that bought his bill of goods. People saw uncouth and thought unconventional; they saw raffish and thought rebel.

They projected principle and commitment onto a person anathema to both. Now, we all have to pay a hefty toll as Trump’s legions cling to thinning hope.

My Comment: Mr. Blow, yet again you hit the nail on this time the Trumpian head. Your editorial is precisely correct. I knew what this huckster Trump was all about before the biggest Con ever sold his Harold Hill wares to the gullible and/or desperate in this nation. I can only cry in powerless disgust as to why on earth blue collar whites thought Trump cared more about them and less about himself. He not only cares less about them he cares ONLY about himself.

He is so bad in so many ways it staggers the imagination. If he is not among those his minions, ultimately, when they see the light want to lock up I can only hope our nation survives.

Bill O'Reilly just got fired!!!!!

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/04/19/bill-oreilly-just-got-fired-fox-news/

One piece of good news!!  :)    Oh gee El commandant presidente Ya Vol Mein Fuhrer jerk thought his opinion would help Bill O'Reilly.  Guess not as a matter of fact it probably hurt him as he hurt Republicons in the Ossoff special election.

I wanted Ossoff to break 50 and at times he did but 48% is MUCH bigger than anyone thought he would get.  IF the DNC would have coughed up cash he probably would have won.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda, DNC, cough up the cash for the final election in June (I think) and let us Democrats do our part.  SUPPORT OSSOFF!

BIG UPSET AGAINST HANDEL IN THE FINAL ELECTION AND CHECK OUT THE OLD NEWS BELOW RE SUSAN KOMEN BREAST CANCER ORGANIZATION and KAREN HANDEL:
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/07/komen_scandal_goodbye_karen_handel/

In a historically Republican district in Georgia, a Democrat nearly won a seat in the U.S. House. He gets another shot in a June runoff.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/us/politics/georgia-special-election.html?emc=edit_na_20170419&nl=breaking-news&nlid=75028030&ref=headline

Stream of conscious: 

I blabbed initially too soon. So what else is new I have trouble waiting especially when Huffington was suggesting an upset win for Ossoff maybe. Bottom line:  A run off STILL is amazing as Republicons usually win this district by double digits...Gingrich's district ...  but of course Drumpf will spin it that he pulled it out at the end for the run off because he is in deep scandal s^%$.
The Cons (my new short name for Republicrats) cannot win unless they do something unfair and of course this district was gerrymandered to death. Beyond that someone said and I read that voting machines were uplifted. Would I think that impossible? NO NO NO NO and NO. Cons will do anything short of murder to win.
The issue STILL is GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC AND INDEPENDENT VOTE.

I made a mistake too about the generals and the "Armada" going to N. Korea. The big shot Drumpf generals who are supposedly quite good made excuses because they sent it the wrong way south and not north! They made some excuse I think about "practicing" but Rachel said they lied -- you've heard of wrong way Corrigan well this is wrong way Republicons -- in more ways then one! -- god help us!

 I know I forgot my Jesus rule of loving those that hate me and turning the other cheek!! sorry --- NOT THIS TIME!

King of Kings

It was Easter Sunday yesterday. I wondered if on cable I could find the Jesus story. I did, watched part of it and as it became too late taped the rest. Since I was very young religious story telling films that came out of Hollywood held magnetic attraction for me with the modern exception of Mel Gibson's "The Passion" which I refused to watch to the end because of the anti-Semitic bent of the director and because I simply could not stand its sadism, bloody brutality and its indictment of the Jew. Easter historically has been a difficult time for the Jew world over. It has often been a time when Jewish heads were kept low fearing condemnation and reprisals for the death of Christ. This should not be so.

I have viewed at least two versions of "King of Kings" many numbers of times, "Ben Hur -- a Tale of the Christ" at least 10 times, "The Ten Commandments" which I viewed first at age 8 going in and out of the theater as many times as the film was shown in a day and then later every Passover. Yes, I knew the dialogue of many of these films. The question I have for myself is a larger one. What fascination did these films that are often considered by critics to be, well, rather junkie? They still hold an appeal for me and in view of their less-than stellar reviews why do I still continue to watch especially films of Christ?

Please do not get me wrong. I am still an atheist -- well, maybe an agnostic --, a cultural Jew and a liberal but I love what I deem is the essence of Christianity. What is there not to love if one extracts the core of thought irrespective of all the hatred generated over generations by human beings who say they follow him but reflect nothing of who he allegedly was. I say Jesus, as the story, iterates was a good man. I say he was a great man whose story offered hope to the hopeless, hope to the afflicted, hope to the poor, and hope to those who were persecuted and scorned.

If Jesus is the King of Kings is he my king? No, not in the divine sense but he is the king of my political and social thought, the king showing the example of what it means to be humane and the king showing us to how we should treat one another. Jewish sages like Rabbi Hillel did that too but no one has taken that thought to the mountainous heights that early Christian thought has taken us in its journey over centuries. And so I have always had a flirtation with Christianity without accepting man-made ritual. Jesus' thoughts should be all of our yardsticks for what it means to be good; to treat your neighbor as yourself; what it means to feel compassion and to help those who cannot help themselves. It should be instinctual to save man from himself but it is not. Man must be taught and the Jesus story, I believe, taught us this.

I watch these religiously glitzed up films because it is how I want life's tenets to be. I want it to be kind, I want it to be gentle, I want it to be humane, I want us to help one another as we would want to be helped ourselves if we needed it and I want a teacher to tell us we should. The thoughts Jesus was alleged to have conveyed appeal to me.

If I experienced him at that time I would like to think if he thirsted I would have given him drink; If he were hungry I would have given him food; I would like to have seen him help the lame to walk and the blind to see; I would like to think I would have cried at his Roman-inflicted barbaric death. I believe it is for us the living to carry out the true essence of his words. The thoughts of this king of kings are my thoughts too and I believe his life should breathe meaning into all of us that we should, as he is to have said, love one another; and as he is alleged to have said to Mary Magdalene go and sin no more.

Instanly

N. KOREA MISSILE FAILURE: Someone on a blog read that Trump was getting his team together to talk about striking N. Korea back even though they failed with a ballistic missile test and not a nuke test. This is very risky. Our MOAB -- so called Mother of All Bombs but really termed a Massive Ordnance Air Blast --  was exploded in Afghanistan the most massive conventional weapon tonnage other than a nuke in our arsenal of catastrophic weaponry. In my opinion, it was useless. Yes, it packed a big punch but killing 36 ISIS even leaders is nothing and there are more where they came from.

Likewise, the 59 missiles lobbed in Syria allegedly in retaliation for Assad exploding dastardly chemical weapons but, in truth, more to impress President Xi Jinping from China sitting right next to Trump at Mir-a-lago when the missiles struck. It was another of Trump's ego weapons that a sickening Brian Williams called "beautiful." Is a weapon exploded ever beautiful? The Passover Haggada, the book read on the sedar nights, says no pleasure is taken from killing even one's enemy. I am sure the 51 strikes had collateral damage about which you will never hear but I hear reports that the US killed the "good guys"-- the rebels -- allegedly on our side fighting Assad. Trump will use these strikes as propaganda like Kim Jong Un uses his parade to show off his horrific penile weapons. They are both demagogues.

One can never believe Trump. He will spin any event to suit his purpose and appeal to his base who will buy all of it. Massive bombing of N. Korea should not be attempted. It should be the hard work of negotiation to which Trump is allergic. Many nations (some allies and some adversarial) have nukes including the US which has hundreds to wipe out the earth many times over. The US even possesses hydrogen nuclear weapons which make Hiroshima look like a walk in the park.

Everyone should look at the Youtube Hiroshima blast and see for yourself what the Enola Gay -- the B59 airplane -- that dropped the first nuke ever used by a nation in combat. You will see what a nuclear blast looks like and it is devastating effects beyond words. One should look so you will know what Trump may have in mind. One should view on YouTube the Hiroshima bombing itself and the after effects of the blast -- the flash one cannot look at or one goes blind, the sun-like heat, the horrific mushroom tornado-like cloud, the instant total destruction from the blast, human beings vaporized, the fires, the burns and massive injury with few doctors to treat them or their infections and needed skin grafts. The horrific radiation ensues across national boundaries, this time a blast may approach Seoul and Japan with 28,000 US soldiers aboard, China and even the western US. 

People in Hiroshima/Nagasaki of that era had and those who lived still have DNA damage. Cancers come from radiation and many die sooner or have died later from cancer. Life stops at the day of the blast. There is little help, no food, no safe drinking water nothing. Hiroshima killed 20,000 immediately. Nuclear weaponry in present time will kill millions instantly leaving the rest to suffer seemingly to the end of time.

The blast Youtube:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY9VwCE_Dsg

96% Who Knew? I Did!!

I received my DNA results from Ancestry.com but there are TONS more things I can explore with it. It is fantastic. If you care about Jewish roots -- you or a loved one's roots -- you will absolutely love this. If you are not Jewish you will love Ancestry.com too. One can get pictures, too, of ancestors as they traveled and also traveled into the US.

They sent a pie chart but I cannot cut and paste it as it does not allow for that but it gave me percentages as well as the Genetic Communities where a connection is likely. NO SURPRISE at all -- Except for the Iberian peninsula which would be Spain. My father always said we were Jewish as far back as he could ever remember! I called it Jew blue. No no blue blood at all though. Seeing my Jewish percentages made me cry ... seriously not kidding especially because of the Holocaust, all the anti-Semitic acts now around the nation due to oh yes you guessed it who else but Trump and Spicer's comments about Hitler not using gas and calling death camps "Holocaust CONTAINERS" made me see red as my blood pressure soared. Hitler only gassed between 6 and 10 million Jews--ONLY! Can one even understand that number? Fenway Park holds about 40,000. Think about it and compare that to 6-10 million. So when Ancestry sent me what I knew to be true it put my heritage into science and it tugged at my heart strings. The Jewish story is sad but many of us have had a happy ending here and elsewhere -- so far. How brave were our grandparents or great grandparents or great great grandparents? VERY!

And now for the drum roll I am sure you cannot wait to read: [If you are interested about getting your DNA read go to Ancestry.com] There are a million more things to learn and connections one can make.

So for me it said--SCROLL down--all the way down:

Hundreds of years ago

Genetic Communities™

Jews in the Russian Empire

Connection: Very Likely

Jews in Western Ukraine, Moldova & Eastern Romania
Connection: Possible

Thousands of years ago

Ethnicity Estimate
96% European Jewish (seriously?)  Yep!  :)
2% Iberian Peninsula
1% Caucasu

From Generation to Generation

YES, I BELIEVE EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS HERETOFORE UNSEEN FILM "NIGHT WILL FALL" (LINKED BELOW) THAT WAS FILMED BY ALLIED TROOPS LIBERATING THE DEATH CAMPS AT THE END OF WWII AS TESTAMENT TO HISTORY OF THIS UNTHINKABLE OCCURRENCE. THIS FILM WAS OVERSEEN BY THE GREAT ALFRED HITCHCOCK.

I DO NOT THINK THAT EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS OUT OF A SENSE OF MORBIDNESS BUT OUT OF A SENSE THAT THE WORLD SHOULD NOTE AND NEVER FORGET ITS HAPPENING AS HISTORY'S TIME FADES MEMORY. IN MY OPINION, IT SHOULD BE SEEN BY EVERYONE EVEN OR, PERHAPS, MOST ESPECIALLY, BY MATURE YOUTH AS WELL AS BY ALL ADULTS SO THAT THOSE IN POWER LIKE A STEVE BANNON OR SEAN SPICER AND, YES, THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF WHO EITHER NEVER CONDEMNS OR CONDEMNS WEAKLY THE NAZI MENACE ALIVE TODAY IN THE WHITE HOUSE OPENING THE DOOR TO A NATIONAL ALLIANCE THAT RAISES ITS ARM IN A NAZI SALUTE TO TRUMP. HE GIVES THEM CREDENCE BY HIS OWN WELCOMING ARMS.

WATCH AND LEARN AND NEVER FORGET SO THAT WE AS A NATION FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION NEVER EVER ELECT A MENDACIOUS MALEVOLENT SPEWER OF HATE INTO THE PEOPLE'S HOUSE AGAIN!https://www.theguardian.com/…/holocaust-film-too-shocking-t…

The Holocaust film that was too shocking to show

In 1945, overseen by by Alfred Hitchcock, a crack team of British film-makers went to Germany to document the full horror of the concentration camps. Despite being hailed as a masterpiece, the film was never released. Now, after 70 years, the full…

theguardian.com

Anti-Semitism Continues In America — And Trump Is Silent Again -- see link at the top enclosed

http://forward.com/opinion/368631/anti-semitism-continues-trump-silent/?utm_content=opinion_Newsletter_MainList_Title_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Opinion+-+automated+-+wednesday+2017-04-12&utm_term=Opinion

Trump is SO full of xxxxx it's coming out of his ears. All of a sudden NATO is a bulwark against tyranny when during the campaign it was expendable. Now Putin is a problem when in the campaign he would not criticize him if he excreted on his Mir a Lago lawn. He had an interview where he got the name of the nation he bombed with 59 missiles as Iraq when it was SYRIA.  He changed his position 180 degrees on Syria. THE SCHMUCK DOES NOT KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING!! He is so AWFUL there are no words.

Trump's father had Nazi sympathies about WWII and Trump is not far off. Although I don't think he's thought out historical positioning anyway. He knows NOTHING and I fear that his vile entourage especially Bannon and Spicer Nazis-like creeps will direct policy by whispering in his ear.  The conflicts and treason in his administration add up exponentially.  It is MADNESS worse than Bush worse than anyone ever no matter how bad one is holding the office of the presidency Trump is worse ... MUCH worse. My TV is lucky I haven't smashed it when Drumpf is on.

He is the biggest JERK ever to hold that high and powerful office with nuclear weapons no less.  The electorate in their infinite wisdom bought the con and made him president. God help us indeed!!

DOUBLE NO TRIPLE NO QUADRUPLE TROUBLE--DEEP DEEP &^%t

Major no double major things are happening. The thread has been pulled! This is NOT going away. Google Rachel Maddow as I have no time to explain the minutiae if I even could. It is such a complex web and Rachel Maddow if you Google her (the GREATEST most brilliant TV journalist in history with a staff second to none!!) it will be explained. In short (very short) and first Carter Page, Campaign Advisor to the Beast, is in BIG BIG BIG BIG trouble for alleged Russian collusion as an agent for Russia. It will be if it is not already is lawyering up time for him. It will be trial for him soon if indictments are handed down. He will, ultimately, be jailed in my humble (or not so humble) opinion if the allegations are proven true and if he does not cut a deal. The FBI has set up a special office for Drumpf/Russia collusion. Wonder who the traitor is now?!

How ANYONE with the conflicts of interest Trump has could EVER on planet earth think he could run for president and that sooner or later things would not be revealed, I have no idea. The fact that he has SO many conflicts all over the world but specifically with Russian oligarchs, Putin and allegedly other Russian mafia types with an adversarial nation that his campaign team would think that is not a problem is insanity. Trump, by his own admission, has the BIGGEST brain in history that knows more than the generals is knee deep in scandal with his big brain in charge. Save me. Where were his children who are supposed to be smart and one married to Jared in charge of the entire globe from N. Korea to Iran, to Iraq, to Syria to changes for all veterans and more? What a guy! His "team" does not realize Trump should have pulled out of the race and chalked it up to his stupid mendacious mantra of a faux election?!

In my entire life of watching politics I have NEVER on this planet seen a presidency SO FILLED with anti-reason and anti science crackpots. I would not care but my life, your lives, your children's lives, your granchildren's lives and the lives of future generations who may never get to see life if this sickening, corrupt, disgusting presidency is allowed to continue. Trump needs to resign, and I need to swallow hard and accept ANOTHER crackpot Pence with his religious wingnut ideas taking rights away from those who fought so hard for the rights they have. 2018 -- Republicans need to be Congressionally CRUSHED and the 2020 presidency won by the Democratic nominee--Obviously!! It MUST happen.

The Drumpf administration is in DEEP DEEP @#$t!

Bending Toward Hate

Spicer claims in his  insipid press briefing comment that Hitler never used chemical weapons.

The Anne Frank Center released a scathing statement saying Spicer should be fired to which I concur.  It said:

"On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable, by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death. Spicer’s statement is most evil slur upon a group of people we have ever heard from a White House press secretary,” the center’s executive director, Steven Goldstein, said. “Sean Spicer now lacks the integrity to serve as White House press secretary, and President Trump must fire him at once.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. said "We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice; not in love with publicity but in love with humanity."

It simply staggers the imagination that we now have a president who attracts and places in prominent positions people like Spicer and Bannon too.  There are surely more added to the Trumpian cause whatever that cause may be.  No one on planet earth could make such an ignorant comment unless in his heart he has an ideological Nazi-like bent.  I believe in his heart and many others in this polluted and corrupt administration believe exactly as he said too.  It is why the Alt Right in a forum stood with outstretched Nazi-like arms yelling hail to Trump. 

Instead of Spicer's heart bending toward justice it bends toward hate.  

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/assad-hitler-chemical-weapons_us_58ed19cfe4b0c89f91221b5a?

U.S. to Move Carrier Strike Group Closer to Korean Peninsula

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-move-carrier-strike-group-closer-korean-peninsula-n744271

 

Carriers, USS Carl Vincent Carrier group and USS Nimitz aircraft carrier  moving in to the Korean Peninsula and Trump's minions want South Korea to have nuclear weapons.  What could possibly go wrong with Russian and other carriers moving into the mix and hot of the press of a Syrian strike?  Thanks, America this is for whom you voted.  I feel like prey on the ground watching vultures encircling above waiting to move in for the kill.  Imagine how the South Koreans and the Japanese feel!

God, if there is one, help us!

 

Beautiful

Brian Williams is catching hell for describing the Syria bombing as "beautiful" and comparing it to a lyric of the late Leonard Cohen. Why am I not shocked? Because so many of the broadcasters wax EUPHORIC about war. They said that when Bush invaded Iraq comparing it to the 4th of July. It turned into a disaster that keeps on growing into the longest war in US history. GET THESE INSENSITIVE BRUTES OFF ESPECIALLY MSNBC SUPPOSEDLY THE PROGRESSIVE NETWORK THAT CARES ABOUT FEELINGS. GD IT, BRIAN, WE ARE TALKING WAR HERE NOT BEAUTY .... THE DEATH AND THE CARNAGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS NOT "BEAUTIFUL" IT IS TRAGIC. HE QUOTED LEONARD COHEN MISERABLY AND COMPLETELY LOST SIGHT OF WHO LEONARD COHEN WAS AND WHAT HE WAS TRYING TO SAY AND IT WASN'T THAT BOMBS BLASTING A PEOPLE WAS OH SO BEAUTIFUL. I THINK BRIAN IS MISTAKING LEONARD COHEN FOR OUR STAR SPANGLED BANNER'S ROCKETS RED GLARE BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR ETC.! LET'S CHANGE OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM TO "AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL!"

THIS STRIKE ON SYRIA WILL DO NOTHING AND HERE WE ARE AGAIN IN A PLACE TRUMP SAID WE WOULD NOT GO BUT YOU ELECTED HIM, AMERICA, NOW LIVE WITH IT AS MORE OF OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS WILL OCCUPY SPACE IN ARLINGTON!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brian-williams-leonard-cohen-syria_us_58e76c44e4b058f0a02e12b1?5xc&

CROCODILE TEARS

Trump sheds crocodile tears over Syrian children suffering the horrific fate of Sarin gas used against them by Bashar al-Assad (link below) when he actually said in many of his rants to take out terrorists' families. Moreover, he tweeted multiple times to NOT become involved in Syria but now is critical of President Obama, of course, for not crossing the red line even though President Obama asked Congress for authorization to use military force in Syria. The Republican controlled Congress never acted. Now all of a sudden Trump says he's "flexible." Flexible my posterior. Trump cares NOTHING for the suffering of others as his policies and executive orders to date prove declaring war on the planet, polluting our environment, repealing regulation of poisons and incredulously allowing the mentally ill to buy and carry guns. He is a HYPOCRITE of Everest proportions and he is NOT my president. I hate that man more than any other politico who has assumed power in this nation.


He is the Hitler of our time and I do NOT ever use that comparison lightly. Wait until he explodes the first nuclear bomb since Nagasaki. Wait until he declares marshal law, wait until the planet breathes its last breath, wait until climate change is ruinous to us all, wait until the middle class is taxed to death while the top 1% pay nothing and the national debt skyrockets, wait until another Great Depression, wait until all of us who are critical of him are at risk of arrest, wait until there is no one else to round up!

Martin Niemöller, a 1933 concentration camp captive and a German Lutheran pastor said it best in his most famous quote:

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

The American electorate has placed the most unqualified, unfit, mentally unstable cruelest of beasts in the highest office in the land and the most powerful office in the world. I pray to a higher power that, it seems, does not hear: Please God take this curse from our shoulders and remove him from this land. RESIST!

 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/world/middleeast/chemical-attack-syria.html?emc=edit_na_20170406&nl=breaking-news&nlid=75028030&ref=cta

PRESS FAILURE YET AGAIN

Again the press failed to ask the appropriate questions at Trump's "press conference" with King Abdullah of Jordan. What was CONSPICUOUSLY absent regarding the Syrian gas attack on innocents was Russia. NOTHING BUT NOTHING was said about Russia. Russia may have if not perpetrated the attacks for Russia's ally Assad, stood by and looked on as Assad mercilessly did so. Russia MUST be addressed when policy toward Syria is made but Trump cannot as he holds conflicting financial hands with the head of the Russian bullion, Putin, to the point of treason.

All of a sudden Trump is an internationalist when all his previous tweets going back years said no involvement with Syria. Now he sounds like he will enter the fray COMPLEX as that fray is without saying one thing about how he will go about perfecting Middle East policy and what kind of military force will he use and for how long.

Dare I wait to hear what this know nothing president has to say about China and North Korea. He says not to worry about actions as he will choose what he will do without telling anyone. Great escape clause.
 
 Is this all war all the time? Syrian gas attack, he says did not cross a "red line" but crossed MANY lines? So what the hell does that mean? God help us as Russia's useful idiot continues to lie and lie and obstruct ALL the time!

Frozen

I listened to Rachel Maddow last night and could not help but scream and then cry about what she conveyed.
 
 If you are not frozen in fear and incredulity that Drumpf signs things with no cameras or reporters present behind closed doors when he knows the electorate would hate what he is signing into law by executive order then you must be hiding your head in the tar sands. Even his own supporters would hate these signings. Do extremist "conservatives" not have children or grandchildren? Do they not even care about the risk to their family's health and their own health?

For example: If you can believe this he signed an Executive Order so that guns could be made available to the mentally ill.

He signed an Executive Order so that restrictions be lifted of a certain chemical poison that is used by, for example, Dow Chemical and I am sure other corporations. Dow's president and others stood behind the president behind closed doors smiling and applauding. I wonder if they or their children or someone they know and/or love are poisoned by it or contract a case of cancer from it how much will their smiling stupidity remain on their faces?

He signed an Executive Order increasing the emissions that could spew from corporate smoke stacks.

He signed an Executive Order that now the Internet providers can use all of your information from sites you visit and sell it off to other corporations taking your information without your knowledge.

He approved the Canadian oil pipeline flowing with the dirtiest tar sands oil stretching across the US to Louisiana. In the end it will keep 35 jobs and the oil will not go to the US. What could possibly go wrong? Piping leaks anyone?

He signed legislation ending a key Obama administration coal mining rule. The bill quashes the Office of Surface Mining's Stream Protection Rule, a regulation to protect waterways from coal mining waste that officials finalized in December.

He signed an order reversing Obama's efforts to address climate change. Drumpf says climate change is a hoax. Have you seen weather events in California, the west and the southwest and around the entire globe that proves the insanity of Drumpf's position on climate change? He and it are idiocy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned. Only one word comes to mind RESIST!!!

 http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/donald-trump-environmental-policy-explained

A New Hypothesis and What I Fear

A new hypothesis: First, a friend of mine said: "Think it was Bannon who riled trump with misinformation to divert/ distract the public from what was going to be revealed about Flynn. When Bannon realized his lies were getting them in deep sh&^ he used Nunes . And then used those two young WH administrators."

My Comment:

There was a post on Huffington from billionaire Mark Cuban who knows Trump but is NO supporter of Trump who said that Trump was "too clueless" to think about colluding with Russians. I am reformulating my hypothesis thinking my friend is right about the Obama spy episode and that Trump would not think of that because he is too stupid which I have thought all along. That the idea was, I now think, in fact, Bannon's who used Nunes as the useful idiot and the other two experienced jerks in the WH who should NOT be privy to national security info because they are so inexperienced were used as useful idiots by Bannon too. Bannon the white supremacist is ruling the roost. Trump is drowning and in way over his head. He is unfit for the presidency as we who loathed him always said.

How anyone even if they are "conservative" would ever want to be a part of this theater of the absurd I will never know. Pence is now going out there and spouting the mantra of jobs while it is said Drumpf is hunkering down avoiding the scandal. One could even say they are ALL using Drumpf only to acquire power and money. The cabinet posts taken are inconsequential to them as Tillerson, for example, I have read, hides out, won't make eye contact with those in State who are career professionals and someone like Rick Perry destroys an office, Department of Energy no less about nukes. He knows not one thing about nukes and did not know what that department even was about.

In the final analysis the WH remains inoperative and we the people are left SO vulnerable at risk. Even infrastructure something that we need so desperately this "president" so weakened by it all and, even if he wasn't, the so called "Freedom Caucus" will never go, for example, for infrastructure spending. Trump's budget they will not condone.

In the end our government will be shut down and the rational have no ally in the White House. The only silver lining I see in this horrific administration and do nothing Congress mess is 2018. I think they could all including the "Freedom Party" in large part be voted out. Problem is if the Executive branch can't be cooked until 2020 we are all at risk as this nation's enemies are lying in wait from now until then to strike. That is what I fear.

"Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Still Benefiting From Business Empire, Filings Show" + a blogger and my comment

Here is the link to the NYT article referenced in the title above https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/us/politics/ivanka-trump-and-jared-kushner-still-benefiting-from-business-empire-filings-show.html?emc=edit_na_20170331&nl=breaking-news&nlid=75028030&ref=cta&_r=0
 

I also post a blogger (ExCook) response to that article which I thought was very well thought out and on point. I place his opinion and my comment to it below.

ExCook:  Of course, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with wealth. I'm sure criticism of the Trump aristocrats can be interpreted as class resentment but there are serious constitutional and legal problems with this current situation. It seems that the lexicon connected to political ethics is irrelevant today -- "disclosure" "transparency" "conflict-of-interest""recuse""beneficiary" "trusts" "limited liability" "filing" "real interest" "ownership" and my favorite, "nepotism."  The elites who are now filling the top levels of our government are immune to or will simply ignore all of those pesky legal entanglements the rest of us (little people) must endure. They are being allowed to set up a whole new set of rules in order to avoid legal/constitutional accountability.

I clearly recall the era of Newt Gingrich back in the 90's, when one of the popular conservative retorts against the "liberal elites" was that they were acting like the old-world "aristocrats." Funny, where's all the concern and outrage from all of those same conservatives today? More disturbing is the fact that more Americans aren't more concerned that the Federal Republic is looking more like a banana republic every day.

MY COMMENT: ExCook, your post is a very well thought out.  You are exactly right as you hit the conflicts of interest worry "little people" have as megga wealth at the top usurps all power in the White House.  Accumulating all that wealth at the top is one thing but wanting to scoop it up in its entirety through the creation of policy as easy as putting a pen to an executive order rolling back corporate and environmental regulations is another.  Placing foxes in charge of all the hen houses is still another.  Corporate tax loopholes at the top means it is all for them and nothing for those at the bottom who could benefit from a small slice of it with help from government policy that favors their interests too.

This is America in 2016 where the accumulation of wealth for the top 2% is huge and the middle class pays for it.  The imbalance of wealth and power between the 2% at the top and the rest of us below keeps growing larger. Yet the electorate keeps electing Republicans into office.  Republicans are smart to lie to the middle class and the poor that they are the ones who care about us.  They don't.  One need only look at NYT stories like this one (posted at the top) discussing Trump family wealth to see this is so. 

Securing the seat of president of the most powerful nation on earth while not holding Trump and his minions to account for that conflict of interest wealth will ensure the gap between the top and the bottom will keep growing apart as the top 2% take it all.  Yes, all for them and nothing for anyone else.  Sad.