Embassy Celebration met with Gaza Massacre; Gaza protests replaced by funerals as Palestinians mark 'nakba' (the catastrophe) [My Comment]

Embassy Celebration met with Gaza Massacre; Gaza protests replaced by funerals as Palestinians mark 'nakba' (the catastrophe)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/funerals-replace-gaza-protests-palestinians-mark-nakba-n874211

My Comment: NUREMBERG WAS NOT FOR NOTHING

I said weeks ago when Trump first came out with his no thought declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of the Israeli Jewish state that this would mean never ending war. Sumner Adelson financed imbecilic policy with a billion bucks that will ultimately take more Israeli lives before it is over if it ever will be over. 

This US embassy policy declaring all of Jerusalem the Jewish capital brushing the other two major religions aside without an inch of thought to the ramifications of it.  It will be using its own Jews (my own Jews) as a sacrifice to the alter of feel good news so Trump can puff his chest out and claim a victory to his base.  Trump knows nothing of Jewish history, nothing of Palestinian history and even less about the history of Islam and its divisions.   Netanyahu and his dupes are this era's Pharisees; the hypocrites that Jesus himself in the New Testament hated.  This will not end, if it ever ends, in our lifetime and we will be lucky if this does not spread to the rest of the Middle East like the cancerous policy it is. 

I have just put out of reach any hope I may have had to see Israel before the end of my life. Trump and Netanyahu have ruined the history the Jewish people who rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. They cheer in the Trump dictate of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state while the people of Gaza and other Middle East nations cry out for Israel's demise.  They may have just arrived at the beginning stages of their wish.

Why foment the simmering flame of Palestinian anger into the explosions of an an all out war? Many Palestinians are dead and many more will follow.  Jewish deaths will follow too.  All are human. Until you walk in the other's shoes you cannot know how they feel. 70% unemployment in Palestinian Gaza; their boundaries to the west are Israeli barricades and to their east is the sea.  There is nowhere for them to go.  The wounded are everywhere and there are few places to medically treat them all.  Those who are protesting by the hundreds think they have nothing to lose and, perhaps, they do not.  Jerusalem is a killing fields initiated by Trump and stupidly the raving rightwing nuts of Israel sit there smugly in their pristine American embassy and cheer while the split news screen shows the depth of Palestinian resistance and anger.

I was intensely pro Israel all of my life.  Now I will no longer give to the Jewish state unless and until Netanyahu and Trump are electorally crushed and the Jews who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust remember what it was like to be oppressed, hunted like animals and killed. Jews everywhere need to remember. Nuremberg was not for nothing. THINK!

 

4 Men Charged With Hate Crimes In Beating Of Gay Couple--My Comment

This (link below) is not surprising given the tenor of the Trumpian time in which we live. When a war hero Senator who sacrificed all for his country is spoken of by an employee in the Trump White House with such indifference impugning and verbally insulting him as he lay dying in his bed simply because Senator McCain had the gall at times to policy oppose Trump it is an outrage. The man at the top from whom this sentiment is sanctioned says nothing and the woman who said it still has her job.

Is it any wonder that these hate crimes against so many minority groups whom Trump has assaulted with pugilistic verbal venom that gays, the targets of sanctimonious teenage violence by allegedly straight men, will occur. A permission slip has been granted by the so called "president" and man at the top of our leadership, so much so he will not come out against hostile statements or acts whether it is in his office about a war hero who has opposed the "dear leader" occasionally or a vicious assault of gay men after a Gay Pride event. Our so called "president" will never decry this vicious behavior and by silent proxy concurs with and owns it.

To those teens: me thinks thou doest protest too much! Often, if one is given the opportunity to psychologically delve into the character of men who commit these violent bullying attacks one might find a fear with which they themselves struggle that they are gay too and try to prove through extreme brutal violence against gays their manliness showing the world they are "real men."

A vile act has been committed on two innocent men fracturing the cheek of one. It is happening to many in this Trumpian hate filled age. There are hundreds more like it whether against gays, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, persons of color, Asians and others.

These bullying tactics go without presidential condemnation because Trump's base loves it and wants more of it so Trump will not condemn it but rather by his reactive silence sanctions it. 

Trump is an inferior man and an inferior president. I think he knows it and he is a bully because of it. Maybe Trump, too, is questioning his manhood and intellectual virility by bullying his opposition when they cannot strike back.  We the people should strike back and we the people must strike back. RESIST!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hate-crimes-beating-gay-couple_us_5af753b2e4b032b10bfb44f3

White House official mocks McCain's opposition to the Haspel nomination for head of the CIA: 'It doesn't matter, he's dying anyway' she says.

Trump's White House employee's words about Senator's McCain's refusal to back Gina Haspel nominated by Trump to head the CIA are sickening.  The employee said about McCain: "It doesn't matter he is dying anyway."  The woman who said those vicious malevolent words should be fired.  In any other administration she would have been but in this immoral sewer of a White House she remains in place.  Trump and his cronies are crushing any semblance of empathetic humanity that is left in the White House if any has been left in place at all.  Even Chief of Staff General Kelly who calls himself a patriot supports a bestial house of lies, collusion and traitors by remaining silent or by lying himself.

What have we become under such mendacious and inhumane executive leadership? I did not always agree with Senator McCain but one thing about him is true he sacrificed for this nation, he was tortured and suffered permanent physical damage in a N. Vietnamese prison camp.  He knows well what torture can do. Who of us could stand such pain? He nearly lost his life for his nation and incurred permanent damage to his arms from that torture.  His captors offered him release but he would not go until the rest of the American prisoners were freed. He is courage, he is honor, and he is duty to country at least the country we used to inhabit. The torture inflicted by N. Vietnam is why Senator McCain is against torture now.  If this nation torturers one can be sure its adversaries will do the same and more.  It is why he is against the CIA torturer in chief during the Iraq War, Gina Haspel, nominated to head the CIA. 

The US is supposed to stand for something.  Gina Haspel used the familiar argument for her acquiescing to and committing war crimes that the perpetrators of the Holocaust employed -- I was just following orders.  The Nuremberg trials at the conclusion of WWII led by US Justice Jackson stood for something.  It stood against crimes against humanity.  It was a universal edict that was supposed to apply to everyone.  The Trump administration spits in the face of the Nuremberg conclusions and rejects our Constitutional document's Eighth Amendment specifically prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.  Moreover, this administration cares nothing about the Geneva Convention treaty it signed.

 

"Torture was the subject of the Geneva Convention as well as the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. In signing these treaties, each nation made a commitment to “take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.”

In pursuance to its agreement, the United States legislatively prohibited torture and other war crimes under 18 U.S. Code § 2441. Violators may be fined or imprisoned for life or any term of years.

Trump cares nothing about the Geneva Convention if he knows about it at all.  In fact, he said during the campaign he wants more severe torture than simply waterboarding.  Read about those who suffered waterboarding and see how easy it is to endure.  It is a brutal form of torture used in the Spanish Inquisition of 1478.  Trump is leading us into another Middle East war by his rejection of the nuclear agreement -- a war in which he will never fight nor has he ever fought in war even in his youth. President Bonespur Five Deferments Trump will send other people's children to wars with no end but not his own children.  He is raping our nation of taxpayer money as well. Both he and his family will sacrifice nothing but will make the middle class, the working class, the poor, the elderly and the sick pay.


Trump and his Republicans are about the 2% richest of this nation giving his permanent huge tax cuts to the top 2% and a smaller IMPERMANENT tax cut for the middle and working classes who allegedly gave him electoral victory but with 3,000,000 votes given to his opponent who won the popular vote. One need only look at his billionaire cabinet to see its billionaires and their deep swampy corruption.  This is unacceptable.

Trump's victory was anemic and his policies now wield destruction for those families who can least afford it.  He is bringing death to a once great democracy.  Our nation was never perfect.  What nation is but it was a damn sight better than the oligarchy it is morphing into now. 

RESIST AS YOU HAVE NEVER RESISTED BEFORE YOUR NATION TAKES ITS LAST DEMOCRATIC BREATH.  Send this to anyone you choose.

CAUSES AND EFFECTS--Read and try to understand a blogger's excellent Middle East analysis. My Comment is below it.

A blogger on my Facebook page opined about Trump's withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear agreement formulated through years of diplomacy by the Obama administration.  I thought it was one of the most cogent analysis on a very opaque subject I had read.  The sinking of the Iran nuclear agreement is catastrophic in view of this analysis.  I post it below:

"When the Bush White House decided to topple Saddam Hussein the strongman leader of Iraq, it enabled the Iraqi Shia majority to seize control.  It kicked Sunnis, the former ruling elite of Iraq, under the bus.  The US had no plan as to what to do with them so the defeated Iraq Sunnis, with Hussein dead, ran for their lives with their weapons intact.  Panicked by this, the Sunni States financed and enabled the rise of ISIS, which quickly escaped their control and became an existential threat to its creators. The Sunni effort to replace the Allawite rulers of Syria ended up driving Assad into the arms of Russia and Iran, to the point where Lebanese, Hezbollah and Iranian troops are fighting on his behalf.

Turkey's Erdogan, seeing an opportunity in Syria's chaos to destroy the Kurds on its border, is effectively now allied with Syria and Iran.  Saudi efforts too to maintain Sunni rule in Yemen have reduced the country to smoldering ruins and have brought it into direct confrontation with Iran.

A wave of elections has handed Hezbollah control of Lebanon and a member of the anti-American Shia Badr Brigade is poised to become Iraq's President.  Seeing an immense Shia block composed of Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq take shape, and watching it abetted by nations like Quatar, the Saudis and Israel, along with the Gulf Emirates,  an alliance of them was formed to influence the US into taking sides in a centuries-old ethno-religious dispute.

They have succeeded beyond their expectations. The stage is now set for a potentially catastrophic conflagration that will set the region afire, will likely bring the military superpowers into direct confrontation, and could potentially spark a nuclear war not to mention crash the world economy, which will certainly happen if Mideast oil is cut off."

My Comment;

How many think Trump understands one minuscule part of this Middle East mess which the US created by its feckless foreign Middle East policy the War in Iraq destabilizing the region, raise your hand.  I see no hands and for good reason.  The Middle East morass takes the minds of policy experts in Middle East history and contemporary politics to understand the meaning of it all or even a part of it.  The odds Trump understands any of that on a scale of 1 to 100 are ZERO.  His presidency, to quote him, is a disaster, and we are all held hostage to it.

Trump welcomes American detainees freed from North Korea--a good thing .... BUT

I am not going to be a hypocrite. The freeing of the prisoners from N. Korea is a good thing. I will give credit where it is due. This is a good thing, Mr. Trump, and the attempt at creating a diplomatic amelioration between N. Korea and the South with the US facilitating it is nothing short of miraculous if it happens. It is too early to tell how solid this attempt will be but the prisoners are home and that is surely good. Trump's attempt at improving the relations between North Korea and the South could have a positive impact on other nations in the region and, indeed, the world.  It could tamp down the nuclear war threat on the Korean peninsula and even its occurrence as far as the US mainland if Kim Jong-un improves his nuclear proficiency which he appeared to be doing.

This does not, however, eliminate the hundreds of poisonous things that began with Donald J. Trump's ride down the escalator to declare Mexicans, crossing our border to escape a dastardly life, criminals and rapists. Trump has sullied the positive relationship between the races both here and around the world.  He has made a place for neo Nazis to spew their hate and said nothing of right wing terrorist violence more prolific here than Islamic terrorist attacks by far. You, Mr. Trump, have done many unAmerican things, including and most especially the alleged collusion with Russia which I believe has occurred.  In my mind that is treason.  Trump has advocated for many inhumane polices -- creating a wall between nations, ruined DACA separating Hispanic parents from their children, deported thousands who committed no crime but were merely looking for a better life.  He has tried to exact his pound of racist flesh on Obama by overruling much good the Obama administration did.  Trump lies and he lies all the time impugning our free press as well as his own Department of Justice.  Trump has implemented more destructive mandates including but not limited to pulling away from the Iran nuclear agreement as well as denying climate change by pulling away from the climate change agreement signed by all nations in the world except the US.  These are existential threats to our planet.

The corruption in this administration shocks the conscience of most of our nation. It increases our allies' incredulity about the reliability and the sanity of our country.  These things have disastrous consequences not only for the US and its allies but for the world entire. 

What, Mr. Trump, you do, if successful, between N. Korea and the South will be great and I applaud you for it but the evil you spawn by the rest of the ugly inhumane and profane things you do will obviate the greatness of thawing the icy relations between North Korea and the South but creating another flood that kills.

Still RESIST!

Firm Tied to Russian Oligarch Made Payments to Michael Cohen

June is busting out all over.  The chickens are coming home to roost. Massive explosions of hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments into an LLC that is tied to Michael Cohen revealed by Michael Avenati and others.  It's raining collusion. We as a nation are either going to be rescued or we are now massively in trouble.

The Iran deal that Drumpf just blew up we HOPE will not eventually blow up in our own faces; for the first time Americans could be running to the bomb shelters as the British did in WWII.  It can happen.  If Iran begins again developing nuclear capacity and we are minus allies another war in the Middle East this time against a formidable power Iran and Pakistan already has nukes.  The misfit Bolton who led us into the disaster that was Iraq said it himself.  That gutter snipe wants regime change again because after all Iraq went so swimmingly well--17 years and still blowing up. 

How many thousands more of our youth will die in Iran so that as Bolton insanely thinks we can dance into Tehran.  It is more than madness and Trump is more than alleged treasonous he is deplorably DEVASTATING to our nation!

RESIST AS YOU HAVE NEVER RESISTED BEFORE! SAVE OUR REPUBLIC VOTE REPUBLICANS OUT OF OFFICE ALL OVER THE NATION.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/michael-cohen-shell-company-payments.html?emc=edit_na_20180508&nl=breaking-news&nlid=75028030ing-news&ref=headline

An intellectually argumentative position -- Morning Joe

I loved the segment on Morning Joe which was an exchange between experts discussing the difficulties of having an intellectual discussion between groups with diametrically opposing positions but the desire to have those discussions nonetheless.

I am telling you why I, a liberal's liberal progressive on every issue, find it extraordinarily difficult to have a rational discussion with those who support Trump or those who support other right wing so called "conservative" positions.

I think the reason for the difficulty and the reason these discussions devolve into explosiveness ​is because the positions that so called conservatives take if

implemented would even deny life to minorities who have been trying for decades to be given a fair shake. For persons of color the issues are obvious. If conservatives

have their way they gerrymander districts, they use voter suppression techniques, they deprive people of government assistance and even CHIP for children assistance. If people who need the help are deprived of it death is not an outrageous possibility but conservatives do not care and, in fact, I may jump out on a limb here, some are happy about it. They want it to increase their ranks and decrease Democratic ranks. If persons of color are denied these rights both voting rights, civil rights and medical assistance these are the​ life threatening policies for which conservatives advocate. Conservatives want to return to a nation of the 1950s. Anti abortion efforts kill women by forcing them to have illegal quack abortions. They die, often, from blood poisoning. It's their own body they want to control and who is to tell them they cannot -- the state?

Anti gay initiatives are deadly. Sexuality is DNA determined. So called inhumane "conversion therapy" or praying the gay away doesn't work. Millions of people will be forced back into the closet of lies, denied the benefits everyone else takes for granted through marriage and other civil rights allowed everyone else but gays will be relegated yet again to a second class status where they must be afraid if anyone knows the subject of their personal affectation. It is depressing and it is why there were and even still are so many suicides among homosexuals who love one's own sex over the other. That fact cannot be changed. It's a question of love but the truth must be suppressed. That means death to those who merely want what everyone else wants -- happiness by having someone to love and love them back with all the rights that go with it.

Health care that should be a right is given only to those who have a job or can afford it and denied to the poor and denied in the past even to gay couples. This makes death a distinct possibility. As Alan Grayson​, the Democrat from Florida​,​ said if Republicans get their way make sure to die and die quickly. If Social Security and Medicare benefits for which people have worked and that sustain them in retirement years are demolished we die. It's that simple but Republicans do not care if we die; in fact, it means more for the top 2%. 

Those Republicans with whom I take issue treat minorities unequally to those things the majority takes for granted. It forces suicide as a sole option for those who cannot lift themselves up by their boot straps because they have no boots. Again, Republicans do not care. The empathy gene is vacant among Republicans.

Republicans views of war and peace are killing. How many wars have been promulgated by those who did not serve but based this nation's entry in them on lies that have killed thousands and forced now millions into refugee status. Republicans, however, do not want to give them refugee status. Where do the refugees go? They are shipped back to their own countries facing certain death. How is this fair and how does one argue nicely with those who want to inflict policies like that which do nothing less than discriminate and kill.

The Republican Party now bows ​its head to Nazis and says some are "fine people." One is running in California as a neoNazi for the Senate seat Diane Feinstein occupies. It is an anathema to tolerate that position or inhabit a Party that makes room for it. Other so called Alt Right candidates are running for positions around the nation. This cannot stand. It is inhumane and wrong.

Tell me how and I will adopt a more pacific stance in argument with Republicans but for now the administration of Donald Trump is more than lethal it is murderous. My blood pressure rises at the prospect of his getting away with all the illegalities --

​ some treasonous -- ​he ​allegedly ​has committed. It simply cannot happen but it may.

Men and Eric Schneiderman--Preliminary thoughts -- I don't get it

I am so upset about The New Yorker article by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow, two sterling journalists, about Eric Schneiderman now former attorney general, a liberal's liberal, that last night I wished I drank.  I do not drink but I wished I did because these allegations IF true, and I am assuming the women are believable by just reading The New Yorker story (linked below) is SO outrageous on a scale of 1-10 it is an infinity is sickening and a threat to liberals everywhere.  His career will be finished and if those women prosecute he could go to jail.  I went to bed thinking about it and I woke up thinking about it.  I didn't go to bed until 1:00 a.m. because I had to calm down and knew that story about one of the strongest Democrats and progressive liberals destined to do and has done big, wonderful and humane things would ruin my sleep.  I wonder how he slept. Forgive my hyperbole but I must write in such a way as to express my outrage.  It's the hypocrisy stupid!!  I just do NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT times infinity get it.  I do NOT get these men ESPECIALLY liberal progressives who commit these violent, sometimes racist, career ending outrageous acts.  Those who speak for humane justice, fairness and humanity who are in supreme positions of power to obtain that justice but commit career ending acts. Those who are the criminals of those crimes get prosecuted by men like Schneiderman and sent to jail or in Trump's Trump University civil case Trump, bastion of electorate outrage, Eric Schneiderman got him to cough up 25 MILLION! These alleged acts of sexual violence are so sick it defies description.  The HYPOCRISY is enormous.  Again, I do not get it. These men of great power think they are so powerful they cannot get caught, are above the law and the president of the United States can get away with anything even as he said if he shot someone in Time Square. I even feel bad for men who are righteous and how scared they must be.  All it takes is one time, one allegation and their career is ruined.  If JFK were alive today he would have surely been impeached and possibly convicted. JFK compromised national security by an affair he had with Judith Exner, a mob kept woman.   Just think about it.  Thomas Jefferson would have been taken down by Sally Hemmings, a slave he impregnated.  Where does it stop?  The question at hand is either power or men's unabridged sexual proclivities most women cannot understand that is so strong it simply, in many men, cannot be denied no matter how risky, no matter how threatening, no matter how illegally wrong? The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and man, who evolved much later, has evolved to this.  Just think of all the men who preceded Schneiderman and did what he did to women with impunity no matter how violent.  With all those years of cultural advancement I still just don't get it! https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/harvey-weinstein-scandal/n-y-attorney-general-schneiderman-accused-violence-toward-women-n872181

Trump's statement to the Paralympic heroes

Never in my entire life observing things political did I ever hear a president say to winners of games for the handicapped that it was "a little hard to watch."  That is a big deal and should be aired on news commentary shows over and over again.  They often play his inane comments that are less than this presidential humongous faux pas.  Shame on that man. A heroic man who knew disability and pain, Senator John McCain, does not want him even at his funeral.  I do not blame Senator McCain after Trump's impugning the Senator's heroic capture by egregiously and insultingly with unmitigated gall dared to say that he "liked heroes who were not captured."  Odd coming from a man who received five deferments during the Vietnam War for bone spurs.  I wonder how the president's bone spurs are now.

I know what it is like to be disabled at a time when it was not as accepting as it is now but even in my day if people thought it was hard to watch they surely never said it.  On the contrary I was heaped with praise when I attempted things that many disabled never would. 

We did not have the Paralympics then but if we did I would have wanted to have been in it.  If I had had the blessing of being so athletically proficient that I was invited to the White House for recognition only to have the President of the United States tell me it was "hard for him to watch" I would have been devastated maybe even hurt for life.

Perhaps, one day Mr. Trump will know what it is like to lose the use of a limb.  I can only hope someone is there to say hey, Donald, you are really hard to watch.  I already say that but not because of a handicap but because he is without a doubt the most disgusting, irreverent, cruel, sickening, vicious, mendacious, unethical excuse for a human being to ever occupy that hallowed office.  Anyone who saw fit to vote for this fool should consider seriously the content of their own character.

May he not see another term in an office he has abused with filth.  I pray our nation survives this intemperate jerk and I surely hope I will survive him as well!

A Pakistani City Hit 122.4 Degrees In April, Probably Setting A World Record - My Comment: REPEAL AND REPLACE

There is no climate change is there? Yes, there emphatically is and it is not simply the temperature in Pakistan that is at issue. It is the strongest storms, droughts, and fires ever recorded on the planet. It is the Everest size tornadoes we see in the west, it's the huge mudslides from torrential rains in California sparing no one not even the 2% wealthiest as many have lost their multi-million dollar homes to it. It is the massive hurricanes on the east coast. It is Hurricane Maria, a rare Category 5 storm, that hit Puerto Rico the devastation from which the island still has not recovered.  Electricity is still out for thousands and there is putrefied drinking water with the disease it births. It is Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Harvey and, yes, remember Katrina?

The always lying Trump does not give a damn as long as his entourage of the wealthiest 2% can afford repair of anything that goes awry. I hope I live to see the day when even Mar-A-Lago falls into the Atlantic because the rising oceans everywhere will affect everyone. Trump's alleged billionaire bank account will not save him. Where will his god, he says he believes in but we know he does not, be for him? Answer: Nowhere. Climate change is an equal opportunity employer.

Those of us who revere science, know climate change is real and have been saying so for years. We will be swept up with its onslaught that makes the Biblical story of Noah's Arc look like a child's swimming pool. We and generations after us will not be spared. Our mendacious, cruel, wretched and racist president promises climate disaster by pulling out of the Climate Change Agreement signed by nearly every nation on earth. Moreover, he courts a nuclear agreement with N. Korea but rejects a finalized nuclear agreement with Iran that is poised to give those who want to avoid a planet destroying nuclear holocaust a 10 year reprieve from the most devastating annihilative weapon on earth sitting in the middle of the most contentious human tinder box on earth. Trump is the Anti-Christ of the modern era and he is the promise of Revelation about which Evangelicals love to preach but for whom they love to vote.

Fred Trump (Donald's father) what have you spawned? Trump is a terror unleashed on our nation and the world. We must repeal and replace him by any means necessary!

RESIST and save yourself, your children and your children's children from the most destructive man on planet earth.  Vote Democrat in November, 2018 and beyond. 

Pass this on to anyone you choose.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=163301c713356296

"John Kelly is right about the president" -- PLEASE READ IT IS A MUST

 Please read and send this to all you know.

John Kelly is right about the president

By Michael A. Cohen   May 01, 2018

White House chief of staff John Kelly thinks the president is an idiot.
So says a new report by NBC News that relies on multiple White House sources. Apparently Kelly views himself as “the lone bulwark against catastrophe, curbing the erratic urges of a president who has a questionable grasp on policy issues and the functions of government.” In making this case to aides and other White House officials, according to the report, Kelly has called the president an idiot not one time in a fit of frustration, but rather “multiple times.” Kelly has called the allegations “BS.”

Kelly’s ridicule of the president’s intelligence is not an unusual occurrence in this administration. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a “moron” — a charge he refused to deny.

Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster complained that Trump is “idiot’’ and a “dope” who has the intelligence of a kindergartner. 

Even outside confidants like Fox News head Rupert Murdoch are not too impressed with the president’s intellect. Murdoch called Trump an idiot after struggling to explain immigration policy to the president.

Kelly’s latest indiscretion is yet another broadside to hit this White House, but the shock here is not that Kelly (and a healthy percentage of White House officials) thinks his boss is an idiot. What would be shocking is if he didn’t think that to be true.

All you need to do is listen to Trump speak or watch him try to explain any of the myriad policies that a president is supposed to understand in order to do the job. Trump talking about immigration or North Korea or health care is like watching a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. We know from repeated White House leaks that the president doesn’t like to read; that aides need to talk him out of harebrained ideas, or use models and dioramas to explain complicated issues to him. According to a recent report by Reuters, “Trump was shown a scale model of North Korea’s sprawling nuclear bomb test site with a removable mountaintop and a miniature Statue of Liberty inside so he could grasp the size of the facility.” If ever a visual aide said a thousand words. 

If there’s a scandal in Kelly’s true feelings about the president being revealed, it is that so many of the president’s closest aides are critical of his intellect. Imagine what they see from Trump, on a daily basis, that causes them all to draw the same conclusion.
It’s one more example of how Trump is the “emperor has no clothes” president. It seems everyone who works for this administration has to publicly assert that he is able to carry out the functions of the presidency and that he is engaged on policy issues, when in reality he’s intellectually naked as a jaybird. In the days after the Ronny Jackson debacle, administration officials like Sarah Huckabee Sanders publicly claimed that Trump’s nominee to become head of the Department of Veteran Affairs had been “more vetted than most nominees,” when, in reality, no one believes that and Trump’s own aides leaked to reporters the fact that Jackson had not been vetted at all.

No one believes the White House’s own talking points — not even the people who work in the White House. Perhaps the 30 to 40 percent of Americans who still support this president have convinced themselves that he’s smart enough to be president, but frankly, that says more about them than it does Trump.
I suppose this is the ultimate example of how Trump has gaslighted the country. Most of us can see that the emperor has no clothes. White House aides mutter under their breath and unload to reporters; members of Congress complain off-the-record or talk among themselves; journalists come up with euphemisms to capture Trump’s intellectual limitations. We can pretend that Trump is wearing the finest and most magnificent garments in the world. But the truth is, John Kelly and former administration officials are right about the president — and we all know it.

Correspondents' Dinner

While I thought the jokes against Trump by Michelle Wolf on target I still believe it is not a good idea to play into the hands of the cruelty that is Trump.  His minions who were in Michigan probably were few in number but the damage he can do and has done to those forces of good work and good will can be legion as they sound like thousands are cheering him.  

 

I say do not give Trump anything to use in front of his campaign crowds.  It plays poorly for us in the long run because so many in this nation do not know  the difference

between right wing and left and the devastating damage he is doing to our nation.  It is dangerous.  I have never seen a country divided so badly as we are divided now; where Nazis the president
can deem good people.

The facts that ruined the election for Hillary are many but what good does it do to lament it.  November, November, November and VOTE for Democrats.  Let's not give this
angry, mean, mendacious human that is Trump anything to hold against us because a comic cannot stop the crudity creating more division.  Like Michelle Wolf said "They still have no water in Flint, Michigan"!

Memorial To Victims Of Lynching Forces Reckoning On America’s Racist Legacies

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/memorial-lynching-reckoning_us_5ae22f8fe4b04aa23f212c2e

A shameful past is being carried on into the present by a president who is a shameful monstrosity and emblem of what our embarrassing history is with respect to race. God forgive us and forgive those who have had the chance to rectify so many wrongs our nation has committed but decide instead to perpetuate them.

I pray that this current so called president is relegated to the ash bin of history and is a testament to the most egregious ugliness by far in comparison to all others who came before him. You, Mr. Trump, are a national disgrace. I pray fervently that those in this nation who have been so hurt by you ruin you!

RESIST AND VOTE DEMOCRATIC IN NOVEMBER!

Korean Leaders Call For ‘Complete Denuclearization’ Of The Peninsula, End Of Korean War

Wishing both S and N. Korea the best.  Can miracles happen?! They are doing this for themselves. Hats off to them. The US has become a second rate nation under Trump and matters little to the stability of the world unless Trump, in fact, blows us up. It seems, post WWII the US destabilizes every nation it touches whether it is Vietnam, Iraq or a US president who owes an unquestioning allegiance to a murderous Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin.  Maybe soon we will find out why or he will send this nation into the convulsion of his incurable madness by firing those investigators who could save us from him.

I love the pic of N. Korea and S. Korea shaking hands one stepping over into each of their respective nations and over the line of war into peace.  I wish them well. This will go down in history, if a permanent peace is achieved,  as one of the great events of the 21st century like the defeat of Nazism in the 20th.   Both leaders planted a tree of peace.  That act gave me chills running up my spine.

A close family friend died in Korea in 1952.  He was a gem.  He said to my mother and father when he left that he thought he would not return and he did not.  His name is up in the town's hall of heroes.  I salute him and cry because he could not see this day.  Thank you S. Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un for making me feel, at least for now, if you succeed, our family's wonderful friend's death will not have been in vain!


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kim-jong-un-crosses-north-korea_us_5ae271b0e4b02baed1b88096

"Mick Mulvaney Admits He Spoke Only To Lobbyists Who Paid Him Mick Mulvaney has been criticized for his cozy ties to the financial industry."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mick-mulvaney-lobbyists-who-pay_us_5adfed8ee4b061c0bfa2c06d
My Comment: Nothing surprises me anymore especially about Republicans and double especially about the Trump administration and their Congressional Republicans. Somehow they got those on the white lower socio-economic end of the spectrum to believe that Trump's Republicon Party is about them especially if they are white. It was a con maybe the biggest con ever sold because, in fact, they were not about the middle class or working classes they were about the white 2% richest in the nation.

Trump lied (big surprise) and got low intellect unthinking voters to believe there was nothing in it for Trump because he was a billionaire and did not need the money. In fact it was ALL about him while he spit on the emoluments clause of the Constitution.  He slipped the working classes a mickey telling them he was giving them tax cuts. The tax cuts for the middle class and working classes were minimal and NOT permanent but the billionaire tax cuts were HUGE and permanent. What a con.

My hat goes off to them, though, because despite the media showing the light Trump over and over and over again called it the fake media and fake news allowing his propaganda arm of Fox to tell his lies to his so called base who believed it.

In the end Trump was NOT going to drain the swamp but add to the swamp pulling the wool over many middle class and blue collar taxpayers' heads. Just wait until his new tax code kicks in.  My accountant said the working classes will get the surprise of their life but it should be no surprise at all if you figured out that every time Trump says believe me one needs to believe the opposite. 

Those who insanely pulled the lever for Trump you have been had, as Sherlock Holmes would say, properly had!  Maybe in November, 2018 you will think the opposite and vote your interests.

RESIST AND VOTE DEMOCRAT IN NOVEMBER, 2018.  SEND THIS TO ANYONE YOU CHOOSE.

A Prescription

Can this man Trump do anything proper and nominate candidates for high office who are qualified?  The number of things for which this Cretan president could and should be impeached are legion, could fill a library and are growing every day.  The stages of my accepting this mentally unfit monstrosity as the president have morphed from maybe he will not be as bad as I thought after all he was once a Democrat to he is as bad as I feared he would be.  In fact, he is worse than I thought.  Trump is not only unfit for the office of president he is a danger to it.

Trump must be removed from office by all legal means necessary and with speed.  Republican Congressional resistance to that means they are complicit in the possible demise of democracy, our nation, the world and even the planet.  He is ignoring the corruption of those he, with the assistance of Congress, has put into positions of cabinet secretarial power who are unqualified for the positions of power they hold.  

Scott Pruitt, EPA secretary, has as Oklahoma Attorney General sued the EPA numerous times, wants to eradicated the office he holds and is undoing pollution regulations that keep our nation and its children safe.  He has cost this nation millions in abuses of power, in unusual and unnecessary expenses for personal office security and travel requirements.  Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, courts "allegations that Zinke has mixed professional and personal business, dodged campaign finance laws and generally demonstrated dubious ethics that have led watchdog groups to call for investigations for other allegedly illegal conduct such as attending political events while on duty, private plane travel, selling government property under the value of the property."  Ben Carson, HHS secretary has ordered expensive items for his office including a dining room set and hutch worth $31,000, custom-made chairs and blamed his wife for ordering them.  Trump and his cabinet are unnecessarily bilking the taxpayers of millions.

The latest of unvetted nomination of this lazy president is his nomination of the White House doctor for oversight of the VA, a huge job for which Jackson has zero experience and now there is more egregious behavior alleged.  Either other allegations of Dr. Jackson's lack of character and immoral conduct are untrue OR if they are true the fact that he has no experience running a huge organization like the VA will be the least of his problems. The further allegations against him now if true will sink his nomination.  They include his alleged disrespectful relationship with White House medical staff, heavy drinking during office hours as well as -- the worst of all those rumored accusations -- the improper writing of prescription drugs.  If true these egregious accusations would not only deep six his nomination but also leave him, in my opinion, criminally at risk!

A doctor who deals with life and death issues putting patients at risk by bad or illegal behavior is unfathomable and further, to oversee the gargantuan office of the VA for which he has zero experience is intolerable.  In the end it is the president who shows us over and over and over again just how unfit for and dangerous to the presidency and our nation he is.  The committee that oversees the nomination of Dr. Ronny Jackson for VA secretary should deny him the position not write him a prescription for it.

Our Declining Public Discourse

Jeff Jacoby, an editorialist with whom I usually disagree but his editorial "Our &@*!^$# public discourse" on Sunday, April 22 (see link below) I could not agree with more.  A point of personal privilege, however, is an admission that I am guilty of using profanity in both political and personal discussion as well at times. I plead mea culpa to that.   I believe his article hits a Red Sox home run with the Ortiz example after the Boston Marathon bombing.  What we say and how we say it says much about so much. One can tell one's educational level, one's ability to speak cogently correct English, the level to which we will stoop to articulate a point and how much off color language we think we need to use to prove that point.

The late 1960's, an era I loved and often want to relive, ushered in a freedom of many cultural things heretofore taboo.  It loosened sexual mores, it freed up the dress code, it opened up topics for discussion one would never have mentioned before and it allowed women to say things only a man used to be able to say.  An allowance of profanity in language never before used is now commonplace and permitted to be used in discussion to emphasize one's point.

It was refreshing, then, to me that the late 1960's era ushered in a freedom I never before experienced.  I thought it was a social good after all who wants to remain imprisoned by so many ridiculous social customs illuminated by June Cleaver, Beaver's mother, wearing a hat, gloves and high heels to a barbecue while her husband was dressed in comfortable clothes? As often is the case human beings take a social good and create a monster ushering in a coarsening of culture with, as Steve Allen entitled his book, vulgarians at the gate.

The election of Donald Trump has ushered in a continuation of a cultural coarsening monstrosity on steroids creating a hardening of the national culture already on its way to the extremes of crudity.  When bad language is permitted and used at the top by the president it sets a standard that it is okay not only to use vulgar language but to degrade one's opponent by any words necessary. The presidential licentious behavior sexual and otherwise, his using of ugly profane language when others are witness to what he said sums up the dastardly nature of the president, his allies and what our culture has become when six year olds are barred from listening to the 6:30 p.m. news.  Donald Trump has given a permission slip to use the profanity he uses all the time and a toleration of a sidecar of violence associated with it. His many campaign appearances prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.

Personally, I will try to do better curbing my own use of bad language since I do have the ability to use correct English both in written language and its oral counterpart.  I surely cannot say the president will curb his own profane and often hurtful language as well.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/04/21/our-public-discourse/PC3lOh0lrvskdLJeqpzaSL/story.html

Why I love James Comey

I thought the following quote written by James Comey in his book "A Higher Loyalty -- Truth, Lies and Leadership" was another example among many that represents the essence of an honorable man:

He says,  "All of us have encounters with death in our lives.  It's inevitable.  I've had my share. I visited Patrice [his wife] who at that time was just my girlfriend, while she was in the Peace Corps in a remote village in Sierra Leon, West Africa, I nearly died from contracting malaria.  If she had not driven me in the middle of the night on the back of her motorcycle and literally dragged me into a remote hospital, I would not have made it.  But sometimes it isn't when we face death ourselves, but rather death takes away those we love the most, that we really learn about just how short our time on earth is and why what we do with that time matters."

These are the words of a thoughtful empathetic man who does, in my opinion, not deserve the pillorying he has gotten from the most irreverent, thoughtless and cruel human on earth who unhappily just happens to be our president now. 

Hang tight, Mr. Comey, keep hoping President Obama's thought rings true: "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."   President Obama took that quote from Martin Luther King.  Martin Luther King took that quote from Justice Theodore Parker.  In case one does not know who Theodore Parker is as I did not Wiki explains: "Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – May 10, 1860) was an American Transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr." and I might add President Barack H. Obama.  I imagine that James Comey might be on that distinguished list too.

NYT: 6 Takeaways From the James Comey Memos+ My Comment

My Comment: Trump is obsessed with the dossier and specifically with the sex tape.  If one has nothing to worry about then one should want the FBI to use him as a "subject" of an investigation to exonerate him.

Obviously Trump is obsessed with it all, trying to figure out how to fire the next FBI man up who dares to investigate him.  God knows what they will find and God knows if Michael Cohen flips what trouble Trump will be in next.

If you have lost the thread in this complex quilt who can blame you.  It is very hard to keep these complex potential illegalities, lies and the twisted business dealings with which

Trump has been and is involved.

The only thing that makes sense to me is the potential tape with prostitutes doing unmentionable things that the president may (or may not) have done or witnessed.  Are we really talking about such sordid seamy things with respect to the President of the United States?  Unbelievable.

I do think though Trump focuses on that so much because he does not want that thread pulled.  The man doth protest too much, methinks.



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/us/politics/comey-memos-takeaways.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=75028030ries&ref=headline

A Force of Nature -- Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois--My congrats to her

A BIG hug to Senator Duckworth, an amazing woman. That child will have the best parenting I'm sure. Many many congrats and hugs to her and the baby. Wishing her family the best, health, the best life and the best of everything. Thank you for your service to our nation, Senator Duckworth, and thank you for setting an example to others with disability that the will to live is the strongest force in nature!

See link below for the amazing video of her and her baby on the senate floor -- a first and below that link is a link to her web page if you want to send congrats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba3tuILhOsw


 https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/