Posts Tagged ‘politics’

 

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From a comment made in the New Yorker by David Remnick April 12, 2020

From the start, the Trump administration has waged war on science and expertise, making a great nation peculiarly vulnerable to the foreseeable public-health calamity of the coronavirus.

The fact that the United States is experiencing tremendous losses—that it has far more COVID-19 cases than any other country in the world—relates to a number of collective risk factors and preëxisting conditions. The most notable one is to be found in the Oval Office!

Kayleigh McEnany, a loud promoter of birtherism and of Trump talking points during the 2016 campaign, cheerfully told the Fox Business audience, “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here, and isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful Presidency of President Obama?” Now McEnany is the President’s press secretary.

Instead of dealing with COVID-19 using all the scientists at his disposal, he points to his brain housing group and says that is all he needs to make decisions. He uses the press conference as a place to make political statements to bolster his bid for re-election! Trump has made it clear that he does not approve of efforts to make voting easier in November. Why should he? He takes a dim view of early voting, voting by mail, and same-day registration. Such reforms, he complains, would produce “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

I (John Love) think we should all read that last statement again! I still cannot believe that Trump could be so ignorant of what the words he uttered meant, but I really shouldn’t be! Basically, he just said that without cheating, gerrymandering, and voter suppression, Republicans couldn’t get elected! Probably the only true thing Trump has ever said! And one last thought, Trump and budget cutters thought the federal government spent too much on public health. Year after year, they have slashed agencies whose mission was to protect the public from pandemics. You know, after the welfare check he wrote to the rich, Trump cannot afford to fund health initiatives, feed children, or take care of at-risk elderly!

 

 

The following will be excerpts from an article penned by Mr. Peter Wehner, a lifelong Republican. He is a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center.

He writes, Trump is fundamentally unfit—intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for office. Mr. Trump has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone master them!

Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism, and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.

He states that Trump could not have prevented the coronavirus from happening or entering the United States. That said, the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain.

We also know the World Health Organization had working tests that the United States refused, and researchers at a project in Seattle tried to conduct early tests for the coronavirus but were prevented from doing so by federal officials. (Doctors at the research project eventually decided to perform coronavirus tests without federal approval.)

The president reportedly ignored early warnings of the severity of the virus and grew angry at a CDC official who in February warned that an outbreak was inevitable. The Trump administration dismantled the National Security Council’s global-health office, whose purpose was to address global pandemics; we’re now paying the price for that. “We worked very well with that office,” Dr. Fauci told Congress. “It would be nice if the office was still there.” 

The president’s misinformation and mendacity about the coronavirus are head-snapping. He claimed that it was contained in America when it was actually spreading. He claimed that we had “shut it down” when we had not. He claimed that testing was available when it wasn’t. He claimed that the coronavirus will one day disappear “like a miracle”; it won’t. He claimed that a vaccine would be available in months; Fauci says it will not be available for a year or more.

This from me, the lies just keep on coming!

From the article, Trump falsely blamed the Obama administration for impeding coronavirus testing. He stated that the coronavirus first hit the United States later than it actually did. (He said that it was three weeks prior to the point at which he spoke; the actual figure was twice that.) The president claimed that the number of cases in Italy was getting “much better” when it was getting much worse. And in one of the more stunning statements an American president has ever made, Trump admitted that his preference was to keep a cruise ship off the California coast rather than allowing it to dock because he wanted to keep the number of reported cases of the coronavirus artificially low! Cooler heads prevailed, and over the president’s objections, the Grand Princess was allowed to dock at the Port of Oakland.

The following excerpt is one I have long agreed with and promoted in my blogs, on Facebook, Twitter, and anyone I could get to listen. Here is what Peter Wehner had to say;

Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious.

Now for my personal closing for this blog.

From the first time I saw Trump in action, long before he became President of these United States, I saw him as an immoral con man. He was always suing someone or being sued, more than any professional entity ever in history! He mostly threatened to sue because he had not paid his debts, knew that a lengthy lawsuit would ruin the people he owed, so he was able to get them to agree to pennies on the dollar for their debt! He has done this time and time again. He has also been sued by the federal govt for refusing to sell or rent to people of color, with his Daddy once, and Donald himself twice! He has cheated on each wife! Usually with the next wife, and the current one (The First Lady) with a porn star while she was pregnant with their son! He has had black people removed from the floor of his casino while he and his wife were there, made remarks in public about how blacks could not help it, they just were not equipped to handle anything complicated. And this is the guy you voted for? This is the guy you think is your moral compass. This is the guy you think has been sent by God to save you? Well, my friends, you are just not thinking. And what your support says about you is not flattering, by any definition!

 

 

 

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Trump is a pathological prevaricator! One reason he cannot help but lie, even though he may be aware he has previously espoused the opposite view, is his mental illness! He cannot ever be wrong in his own mind. He can never be anything but the smartest, most brilliant mind on the planet. His mental facility will allow for no other conclusions, so in his diseased mind, whatever he is saying currently has to be the truth because he cannot perceive that he has ever made an incorrect decision or ever been in error, ever! Find me one instance where he has taken credit for a misstep or admitted he was wrong about something, in his entire life! This makes him dangerous because he will bomb people, let more people die in a pandemic, let potentates murder, rather than admit he is not perfect! Then when the whole world is calling him out, all of a sudden he claims he has always known it was a pandemic, in this latest example, and claims he was the first to say so, while his opinions and stated views were just the opposite only days ago! He has a mental disease, he should not be anywhere near the power centers of our country. I cannot believe that everyone cannot see this!

Posted: January 4, 2020 in News and politics
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ARE WE AT WAR?

 

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Do you think if Trump had stayed in the Iran nuclear deal, extended an olive branch instead of his middle finger, this would be happening now! Yes, Iran is dangerous, but we made them even more so, and we gave them the ammunition to cause even more hatred. All the other signatories to the Iran deal stayed on board and tried to mitigate what Trump had done, but the nail was already in the coffin! If we had stayed the course instead of automatically reversing everything a black President ever did, we would have had an Iran more interested in appeasing us and making diplomatic inroads. Now they more full of hatred and animosity, which puts all of us in danger! And if you try and tell me that everyone in the European Union and others was all wrong, and Trump was the lone mastermind here, then you are part of the damn problem!

No one trusts Trump. Not our allies, and especially not our foes. Members of NATO are forging alliances without U.S. involvement. They are patiently waiting for someone of intelligence to become President. Our foes, well they do not trust Trump to honor any deals he might make. In spite of Trump’s penchant for lying, the United States has close partners, especially in Europe, that might still be willing to believe U.S. accusations toward Iran if presented with compelling evidence. Instead, the Trump administration did just the opposite. Within hours following the Sept. 14 attack, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Iran the perpetrator on Twitter, before briefing Congress or consulting with partners. In all fairness it probably was Iran, or Iran backed militants, but the point is the Trump administration did not consult with its international partners or coordinate any kind of intelligence seeking before making such an announcement!

My point, you ask? Trump is a poor statesman, a bully, he wants to appear strong, he cannot see beyond his own ambitions, his own preconceived notions! He has gotten rid of any intelligent people around him who would not bow down and give him automatic allegiance. Instead, he has surrounded himself with people who are less qualified, who are willing to lie for him, and this is dangerous. Trump wants a war, anything to distract from impeachment, and to make him look good to his base who like the bully in him. It will eventually get a whole lot of American’s killed, I am afraid!

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Trump made 99 false claims over the last two weeks! He is now averaging 63 false claims per week, 1,450 total false claims since July 8! I did not look all these up myself; I got figures from more than one fact-checking entity: Duke University, Snopes, PolitiFact, and FactCheck. Org, to name a few!

A few examples of the lies I am referencing. At Trump’s December 10 campaign rally in Pennsylvania, he alleged that either Strzok or Page had obtained a restraining order against the other. These are the two FBI agents who texted inappropriately about Trump. So he had ammunition against them, but not satisfied, he made up the restraining order because he likes to lie to try and hurt people as much as he can! There was no rhyme or reason for it other than that!

There was a recent Maryland case during which a man allegedly strangled and raped a woman who was trying to enter her apartment! Trump, not satisfied with the facts of the story, said, “She was raped and killed, strangled to death.” The victim was not killed; she survived! Now think if you were a relative or friend and you were watching this rally, you would think she must have had complications and died!

Last year he was reading out a text about an accurate claim that the MS-13 gang on Long Island, New York had called for the murder of a police officer, then decided to turn it into a false claim that MS-13 did murder the police officer!

Trump claimed that there has been fighting over the Turkey-Syria border for 2,000 years, and he did not want to be involved in patrolling it for another 2000 years! Modern-day Turkey and Syria were both part of the Ottoman Empire and was only dissolved after World War I, and the border between them is less than 100 years old. The border where we had been involved between Syria and Turkey was only established in 1923, so 96 years! Of course, Trump does not know where most countries are, or any world history whatsoever!

Trump claimed that he got NATO to increase the spending by $400 billion! He did not. They are trying to reach 2% of their GDP but agreed to this after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, and they are trying to achieve that by 2024! Had nothing to do with Trump, he was still a TV show host at the time! Just another whopper told by him to try and make himself look like a bigshot!

I could go on for page after page after page, I mean there are almost 1500 lies from which to choose. Then we could go after all the immoral things he has done and lied about also! But let’s end this with this thought. These are not mistakes; these are outright lies that Trump knows are lies. His accusers of sexual assault have been numbered at 26 so far! So let’s suppose some of them are looking for fame or money, although most have not asked for anything other than he is held responsible! But if even one is accurate, that is one too many! And one is not the damn number, you and I both know that!

So a lot of my friends, since I hail from Idaho in my teen years until I joined the Marine Corps, are conservative and say that I am wrong about Trump. How can I be? Anyone who watches him with any common sense and a rational mind can fact check him themselves. Now they might not come up with 1500 prevarications, but the ones I listed above are easily fact-checked, so feel free. You find I am wrong, well, by all means, let me know. But have your facts at the ready, do not come to me quoting an opinion by someone. Look at history, look at what Trump said, because I listed things I knew you could look up, and they will be just as I said they were! I will be looking forward to hearing from you!

You want to silence me; it is straightforward. Hold Trump accountable! I am not talking about the fact that he was impeached. The trial in the senate will be a rubber stamp in Trump’s favor, and so I was never was in favor of it because that was always a foregone conclusion! It will only muddy up the 2020 election! I am talking about when he degrades women by name-calling or describing them as fat, ugly, or things I will not discuss here! When he just plain lies and degrades anyone who does not worship the ground he walks on! Demand he shows us tax returns and his grades. If he is honest and the genius he claims to be, why not prove it? These are the things I want you to do, hold the man to a fair, honest, and moral standard; if you do, I will gladly fade away!

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One thing that is clear, the practice of American politics and criminal justice is changing. Trump, through his facts-be-damned statements and take-no-prisoners tweets, has led the way. And his approach to politics is catching—rapidly and rampantly among Republicans and even, more gradually, among Democrats. Democrats, arguably, are cutting corners as they push ahead with their plans for a House impeachment vote! Republicans are demonstrating that they will dismiss any finding, evidence, or fact, that does not fit the President’s political narrative.

 

The truth means nothing anymore. Our FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Ambassadors abroad have all come under fire in the Trump administration because they either did not crumble to his unethical if not illegal demands or disagreed with statements about investigations that have been carried out. This has eroded the public trust to the lowest level in my memory, and probably an all-time low in the history of this country!

 

Look at all the hate crimes and shootings by violent citizens of these United States since Trump started spouting who to hate and who to blame! Even spreading to the military bases and personnel as witnessed in the last couple of weeks along with other school shootings and threats. These types of acts always grow more frequent after one of his rallies! It cannot be just circumstance when it happens every time, usually, in the area the rally took place in.

 

The trial for impeachment will be a farce in the Senate! It stands no chance. Trump will just tell whatever lie he thinks will explain away his actions, repeat it often and loudly! His lapdogs will pick it up and repeat the lies at every opportunity! Trump will decimate our security agencies, our ability to investigate, as he must destroy them to disprove his own plethora of crimes! We might as well buy popcorn and settle in for the US Senate Three Stooges marathon!

 

A DO NOTHING PRESIDENT

Posted: December 7, 2019 in News and politics
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Volodymyr Zelensky has one job as far as the people who voted for him are concerned is to end the war going on with Russia in the Donbas area of Ukraine! So he cannot demean Putin as he will be meeting with him on this issue shortly. On the other side of the coin, he needs the U.S. President to be his partner, his support system, and needs his backing with the might and support he needs to make a case to Putin that he, Zelensky, has the resources to negotiate from strength! 

Now, regardless of how you feel about hearings on impeachment going on, two things stand out! Trump is not interested in helping Ukraine. He is playing them as the bad guys in our last election instead of Russia despite all the reports from his intelligence agencies telling him just the opposite. Trump held up support, which Ukraine needed to supply the strongholds in the Donbas area who are attempting to fight off the Russian aggression in their country. Why he did, that seems evident to me, but I do not want to debate that right now. My point is that Ukraine is key to our influence in Eastern Europe. Not supporting Zelensky in his efforts to resist Putin is a direct attack on our security in the region as well as our NATO allies! In an interview with Time and three European outlets, Zelensky went the farthest he has gone in stating his disappointment with Trump. “We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us,” he said, referring to the three hundred and twenty million dollars in aid that Trump ordered frozen in July. “I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.”

But Trump continues to bad-mouth NATO, Ukraine, and individual leaders of NATO countries. Instead of making NATO even more effective, he is threatening to pull support from that organization. 

Trump repeatedly sides with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies. He rejects U.S. intelligence he finds inconvenient! This happens all the time according to people that work or have worked for Trump. One prime example is he cannot except that he won the Presidential election with the help of Russia and did not win the popular vote. So even though all of the U.S. intelligence agencies assured Trump that Russia did influence the election in a very robust campaign that favored him, he rejected their assessment. So now, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support the claim, he is saying that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that is responsible for the election interference and that it favored Hillary, not him. He further claims that the Ukraine intervention and millions of illegal aliens voting was why he did not win the popular vote. Which an investigation he asked for found no such evidence existed. So he is a do-nothing President when it comes to our security, even to the point of saying out loud in public that Putin told him what was true and real, and that is what he believes over U.S. agency reports! His answer to our security is touting a nuclear build up and how much power he has! He admires the totalitarian stereotype and wants them to know he is the top strongman! 

Leaders in the world are now mocking Trump in public, and they are not waiting on America to move forward with NATO, Climate Change, and any world problems that take cooperation between nations!

One last point! Trump is adamant that he did not ask for help or use his influence to get dirt on Vice President Biden or his son! But right now, as I write this, Rudy Giuliani is back in Ukraine actively still trying to do just that! The very thing that Trump has already been accused of! But Trump knows he will never be held accountable by a GOP controlled Senate! So he does not care to curtail anything he thinks will help him win! He is and always has been corrupt in his personal life before and after his political career started! The facts about this are not even in being denied! His career should have been over with the P—- tape. Or when he impersonated a physically disabled individual! Or when it became clear he paid off porn stars! Or when a minimum of 17 women came forward to accused Trump of sexual assault! That should have ended any bid for the office of President! I usually end my blogs and other offerings with this question, “Do you get it now!” But I must admit, I don’t get it! I cannot fathom how anyone thinks this man should be the representative of our country to the world! He made a big deal out of the fact that he would be to busy to play golf and that he would donate his salary. So far, Trump has spent 115 million of our dollars on golf, which amounts to 287 years of his salary, you add it up! 

By John Love

The Love Chronicles

Impeachment

Posted: November 15, 2019 in News and politics
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All, I repeat all, of the U.S. intelligence agencies, have concluded that Russia was responsible for the interference in the Trump election and that it was to help Trump. Trump and Putin both are trying to put this on Ukraine, not Russia, but there is no evidence to support this.

When Biden was acting to get the Ukraine top law enforcer ousted, he was following U.S. policy as well as several other European countries and financial institutions! As this person, Victor Shokin, was a corrupt individual and not prosecuting or going after certain bad actors connected to Putin and Russia. We might also make the connection that the ouster of this top law enforcer would increase any investigation into Burisma, not protect them from more scrutiny! So none of the allegations by Trump make any sense! Plus, a President attacking his own Ambassador in a public forum, twitter, is unheard of! I might add that his last tweet about how ineffective she was in all her posts are just ludicrous. She has been in service for over thirty years with a stellar reputation, well thought of by both Democratic and Republican administrations. She was sent into places that had significant problems because of her superior skills, not the other way around! Let’s be plain-spoken here, Trump lies, and that is what all this is based!

Trump hates that he did not win the popular vote in the election or the fact that every intelligence agency in the U.S. has agreed that the influence in that election favored Trump and that Russia was responsible. So not only is he attacking the integrity of his Ambassador but of his intelligence agencies! There is no factual evidence that Ukraine is responsible for this election interference, and according to Trump, was all in favor of Hillary. I was not a Hillary fan for President, but I was not ever for Trump! But I am a comprehensive reader, and all of the fake sites that have been identified were anti-Hillary and pro-Trump! All identified sources came out of Russia; specific names of who were responsible have been uncovered down to the building where they work! Still, work out of, I might add!

So Trump wants to create a false narrative that the election interference was all in favor of Hillary, which means that he would have won the popular vote. He has to find a new source that does include Russia to make that lie stick! Biden’s part in the removal of Victor Shokin was following U.S. policy as well as several European countries and major institutions worried about the corruption of Shokin! Again, this removal of this corrupt law enforcement officer would cause an increase in an investigation of Burisma! But still, Trump is promoting a lie to hurt his most dangerous political foe, which is illegal by any definition.

Forget the phone call for a minute and this whole Ukrainian bucket of bullshite. A President that lies to the American people as Trump does, and easily proven, is an impeachable offense in my opinion! I think the count is over 13,435 over 993 days since people started keeping track. So even if you think these figures are wrong, even if you discount 50%, look at the still horrendous amount of lies you still have! The fact that Trump is blatantly using the office of the Presidency to enrich himself! His hotels where he directs diplomats to hold gatherings, selling overpriced properties to Saudi oligarchs, rerouting military flights so that they would have to stay at one of his overseas properties! Visiting his personal holdings for meetings, and of course, golf, where he charges his security exorbitant fees for services, food, and lodging above the norm!

So if you add this to the fact that Trump has damaged U.S. security by his actions, has tried to influence a country for personal gain, and has lied profusely about these and other activities! He is even now, even today, intimidating an ambassador whose life he placed in danger! He is an embarrassment the world over, ask any of our former allies!

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Thursday attended an uncomfortable session of NATO where members harshly criticized Turkey’s incursion into Syria and apparent U.S. acquiescence. Trump essentially greenlighted the move by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Turkey put us all in a very terrible situation, and I think the incursion’s unwarranted.”  Esper also added he thought we were “heading in the wrong direction.”
His comments contrasted with those of Trump, who a day earlier claimed the results of Turkey’s invasion — in which Turkish forces hooked up with Russia to take control of an enormous swath of Syrian territory once home to the Kurds and patrolled by the U.S. — was a victory for his administration.
Information from an article written by;
TRACY WILKINSON AND NABIH BULOS

So my point is by posting the above is to look, listen, and think about what you just read! Then compare that to what Trump is telling you. How do you call Russia taking over not only our role in the area but increasing their influence on the entire border shared by Turkey, a U.S. victory? Even the withdrawal of troops Trump is so proud of is a false flag! We are now planning to send troops and tanks back in to protect oil fields, basically our reason for being anywhere on the planet with our big stick, not people! Trump just exemplified that last sentence I just wrote by allowing Turkey and Erdogan to expand their ethnic cleansing agenda against Kurds, and not just fighters, whole families have been murdered! Even inside Turkey, if you are a citizen but align with Kurdish beliefs, you can be arrested, imprisoned, even killed with no recourse! And we are now a part of that, aren’t we just special!

Trump Still Telling Lies

Posted: October 23, 2019 in News and politics
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Syria and the Kurdish crisis, according to Trump, is a huge success, which he says he should be congratulated for! He is talking about the cease-fire between Turkey and the Kurdish region of Syria! Trump is taking credit for a crisis he created and then had nothing to do with anything that came after! Sure, Pence and Pompeo went to talk to Erdogan for a pullback from Syria. But Erdogan was not much impressed, the real force in the region now in the border region between Turkey and Syria are Russian forces! So now the Kurds, abandoned by the U.S., are looking to the Russian controlled Syrian government for help and protection. It is like jumping from the fire into the frying pan if you ask me, but what choice do they have? Turkey, if left unchecked, will exterminate the Kurds in an ethnic cleansing campaign they have waged on and off for centuries. The happiest person on the planet right now concerning this current scenario is Putin. Things could not have gone better for Russian influence in the area! All handed to them on a silver platter by Trump!

Recent events are reinforcing my earlier opinions that Trump is working for Putin’s interests. Take a look at current testimony about what Trump wanted in Ukraine. My take away was not primarily the Biden connection, that was a political ploy by Trump, and it fits with how he operates! The other Trump demand was to get Ukraine to admit to the political campaign interference that has happened in our elections, thereby proving the Russians had nothing to do with it! So, again, Trump working for Putin’s interests again! All of our security agencies have unanimously agreed to Russian interference in elections. The Mueller investigation found this same evidence to be true, even indicted specific Russian operatives involved. So Trump was trying to use his influence and money to bribe a foreign government to not only help him win an election but to disprove both our intelligence agency findings as well as Robert Mueller’s report! Which helps whom, well Trump and Putin both, tying them together once again!

Finally, a diplomat appointed by Pompeo, Bill Taylor, claims that the money intended for Ukraine was withheld unless they agreed to announce that they were investigating the company that Biden’s son had been employed! And admit that they, not Russia, were responsible for election fraud in the U.S. during the Trump campaign! The Republicans stormed the inquiry trying to interrupt Laura Cooper’s testimony who is the Pentagons top official on Ukraine! . Bringing cell phones into a SCIF, which GOP members did, is highly illegal for starters, plus the GOP members demanding to participate are not members of any committees, which would not allow them to be involved under any circumstances! But back on point, Taylor is a former Ambassador to Ukraine appointed by Bush, and recently brought out of retirement by Pompeo! So he is not a democratic plant, by any means you care to imagine! So why is he testifying to Trump’s bullying of Ukraine? Could it be because he felt he needed to tell the truth, not what he had been told to say?