Month: March 2017

Nepotism Outlawed in 1960s After RFK, But Back In Full Swing With Ivanka And Jared Kushner

Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of President John F. Kennedy, was Attorney General to his brother, and briefly to Lyndon B. Johnson, from January 1961 to June 1964, and while he is perceived overall as a great cabinet member, the Congress passed legislation after this situation had ended, to prevent nepotism from being used in the future.

But now Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner, are working for the President, although they are unpaid.

That does not really matter, as it is simply against the spirit and substance of the nepotism law that they are influencing government policy.

It is just another of numerous examples of Donald Trump violating the law, and getting away with it.

There is a need to reassert that such family influence is not permitted, and this needs to be pursued expeditiously, as it cannot have a positive ending.

Trump Drops To 35 Percent In Gallup Poll, With 59 Percent Negative Toward His Presidency

Donald Trump is falling fast in the polls, hitting an all time low for a new President after 70 days, of only 35 percent in the latest Gallup poll.

Trump is striking out at the House Freedom Caucus, threatening primary challengers to the extreme right wing group, not realizing that in their gerrymandered districts, they are likely to beat any primary opponents in 2018.

Trump talks about cooperating with Democrats, but why would they, since he wishes to destroy Obama Care, and has forced an extreme right wing judge, Neil Gorsuch, on them, with the potential for this man who seems to be to the right of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, to be on the Court for the next 30 or more years, as he is only 49.

59 percent in the latest Gallup poll have a negative attitude toward Trump, and his second Muslim Ban has again been held up in the courts.

His Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, has admitted that building a Mexico Wall will be a major challenge due to topography, including the Rio Grande River in Texas.

And the Russian connection is being ratcheted up by the Senate Intelligence Committee headed by Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Mark Warner.

Finally, there are reports that former National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn, is ready to testify in exchange for immunity from prosecution so it now seems likely that Donald Trump will NOT finish his term, and that Mike Pence will become President during this term.

Donald Trump Declares War On Science, The Environment, And Climate Change That Endangers America And The World

Donald Trump has declared war on science, the environment, and climate change that endangers America and the world.

Coming upon the environmental legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Barack Obama, the six leading environmental Presidents–two Republicans and four Democrats—it insures that Donald Trump will go down as the worst environmental President, surpassing Ronald Reagan.

Trump has shown his total ignorance of science, and has shown a mean streak as he wishes to destroy everything his predecessor did in office, a situation that has never been quite like this before in our history.

Trump is stupid enough to believe there is “clean coal” when there is no such thing, and to believe coal mining has a long term future, when very few jobs will be created or kept, as robots are being used more than ever in coal mining that does exist, as it is just about the most dangerous and dirty job that any human being has ever faced.

Considering the large loss of life in coal mining over the decades and centuries, no one should wish that their children follow them into that field of work.

And putting more carbon into the air in the form of carbon dioxide through burning of coal pollutes our air, as well as our water supply and soil, and it is absolute poison short term and long term.

Making believe climate change is a hoax is a sell out to right wing groups who do not care about the long term future of this planet, as the almighty dollar, materialism and greed, reign in Trump’s America.

The good thing is that law suits will make it a long drawn out situation, and hopefully the damage being done by Trump’s executive order will not be as great as it seems at the moment.

But Donald Trump insures a low ranking in history by his greed, selfishness, egotism, and willingness to sell out his country and its citizens for cheap political gain based on fiction about the environment, not facts.

Donald Trump Tweeting Is A National Security And Domestic Tranquility Threat!

Donald Trump is mentally unstable, and very bitter when anyone dares oppose him. and he utilizes Twitter to get his revenge.

Trump shows the absolute worse side of his personality in so doing, and he causes the office of the Presidency to be corrupted and undermined by his vicious language at all hours of the day and night.

He is the first President to accuse his predecessor of illegal acts of monitoring him, when no such situation occurred, and refuses, of course, to apologize or retract his accusatory statements about President Barack Obama.

Trump cannot be stopped from his tweeting, although it should be banned as dangerous to national security and domestic tranquility.

He is a threat every day, and he lies every day, on a constant basis, at least five times a day on the average, and he lives in his own fantasy world.

To imagine having to cope with this dangerous maniac for four years, with all of the potential for foreign and domestic disasters, is totally unacceptable.

Even though Mike Pence is an unacceptable choice in so many ways to be President, at the least he is a stable person mentally, and has never been outrageous in his public or private behavior.

This is what we have to wish for, a new President who would be the most right wing President in American history, but is mentally and emotionally stable.

The question without an answer is how we managed to put ourselves in this mess, the worst crisis since Watergate, and arguably more of a threat to our stability than Richard Nixon represented 45 years ago.

Placing Blame For The Health Care Bill Disaster: Trump, Ryan, The Freedom Caucus, Moderate Republicans, Democrats?

The favorite game this past weekend was who should take the blame for the Trump Care disaster.

Is it Donald Trump and his White House staff, which has no clue as to how the political system works?

Is it Paul Ryan and top House of Representatives leadership, which was so cocky and arrogant and uncaring about the millions who would be thrown off the health care system?

Is it the Freedom Caucus extreme right wingers, who make Paul Ryan seem moderate by comparison?

is it moderate Republicans, the Tuesday Group as they are known, who did not want their constituents thrown off Medicaid?

Is it the Democrats, because they refuse to see Obama Care, with all the good it has done for 20 million Americans, totally eviscerated?

The answer is that it is the first three groups, with the only groups escaping blame being the moderate Republicans and the Democrats.

Only when Donald Trump and the House leadership realize that ending Obama Care without any protection for 20 million Americans is not going to work, then maybe the moderate Republicans and some Democrats can work to fix the system, not destroy it.

Do not expect that will happen, however, and meanwhile, it adds to the image that the Trump Presidency’s first hundred days will go down as a total disaster, only good at promoting hate, division, and incompetence.

Donald Trump Trying To Blame Others For His Own Incompetence And Inexperience, As Republicans Fail To Destroy Obama Care

Donald Trump is trying to blame others for his own incompetence and inexperience.

He would rather allow blame to be put on Speaker of the House Paul Ryan or Chief of Staff Reince Priebus or Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, than take responsibility for the failure.

The answer is they are all to blame, but also Stephen Bannon, Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, and Office Of Management And Budget Chairman Mick Mulvaney.

But above all, it is Donald Trump himself, and he and his administration are on the road to the worst Presidency we have ever seen, with Trump at a 37 percent rating and falling, after only 65 days of his Presidency.

Donald Trump must start to take responsibility for his own administration, and apologize and admit mistakes, but that is not in his DNA.

Many observers are saying that the Republican Party is self destructing, as they work to destroy Obama Care, and seem ready to see tens of thousands of people die in the process, as they take 24 million people off the rolls without any concern, including many of their own supporters.

The party that claims to be pro life is simply a party that believes every fetus should be born, but after that, you are on your own.

Anyone who says health care is a privilege, not a right, should be immediately repudiated, and any politician who promotes that should be kicked to the curb, and told you are no longer going to represent the American people.

The House Freedom Caucus should be told goodbye and good riddance by other Republicans, or else the party is doomed as the party of death.

Obama Care Survives: Massive Defeat For Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, And Republican Party, And Public Opinion Is Turning Negative!

Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the Republican Party have suffered a massive defeat, in their failure, after 60 votes over the past six years to destroy Obama Care, and now being unable to control their own caucus and accomplish its demise yesterday in the House of Representatives.

The Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, Can still undermine the enforcement of the law, and cause it to fail, but it will put the blame on Donald Trump for failure to enforce the law as it is, until and when it is repealed and replaced.

The irony of it all is that Obama Care is really the Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich Heritage Foundation program of 1993, offered as an alternative to Hillary Care, and is also based on Romney Care in Massachusetts, but once Obama was elected, the GOP decision was to refuse to accept any health care plan, and Mitt Romney ran against his own program in Massachusetts, when he opposed Obama in the 2012 Presidential election.

So both the Republican Party and Mitt Romney were engaged in total hypocrisy, when Obama settled for what has become law, due to the difficulties in gaining “a public option”, or promoting “Medicare For All”, a single payer system, when both would have taken control away from the health insurance companies.

The proposed bill that never came to a vote yesterday would have caused 24 million to lose all health care coverage, and would have given massive tax cuts to the wealthy yet a third time, after Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and George W. Bush in the 2000s, taking the needs of the wealthy who do not need a tax cut over the needs of millions of Americans.

Donald Trump has failed, and has discovered that his business methods do not work in politics, with him having believed like Ross Perot in the 1990s, that all you had to do was take the politicians into a room, and you could force them to do what you want, and both Perot in theory then, and now Trump in practice, is learning otherwise.

So we saw yesterday a rare moment of humility by Trump, who had claimed Obama Care would be gone on the first day of his Presidency.

We also saw yesterday the gleeful Paul Ryan, so anxious since college to destroy the social safety net while drinking kegs of beer and failing in love with lunatic Ayn Rand, finally getting his comeuppance.

The GOP is doomed as long as they allow the 30 or so members of the House Freedom Caucus to hold them hostage, a group which forced John Boehner out of the Speakership in 2015.

It is time for Ryan to start working for bipartisan government, and ask Democrats for help, as otherwise the GOP will fail to get anything done, since the anarchistic Freedom Caucus is out to destroy government itself, and must be repudiated totally, and told where they can go.

The Republican Party may be the majority right now, but public opinion has turned against them on health care, with only 17 percent supporting the failed Ryan health care plan.

So Ryan Care or Trump Care lies in ruins at this time, and it is well deserved.

War On The Working Class, Which Helped To Elect Donald Trump: A Major Turning Point Against The Republican Future

The Republican Party seemed in an ideal position after the Presidential Election of 2016, as they had control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House.

But having Donald Trump as their President was not the same, as say for instance, John Kasich or Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have been in the White House.

Donald Trump is a loose cannon, a reckless man who owes no allegiance to anyone, and he is unpredictable and dangerous for the long term future of the Republican Party.

Choosing to pursue health care, by destroying Obama Care completely, now seems a like a gigantic mistake, and even Trump seems ready to abandon the party and Speaker Paul Ryan on this, and move on.

But the image has been left that the GOP has declared war on the working class of America, ready to take away their health care without any concern, as to how it affects the white working class that put him in office, due to small margins in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The Republican Party has decided that single mothers and their children, the elderly, and disabled also do not deserve health care, and their lack of concern about what many consider a basic human right, will reverberate against them and insure a return to the Democratic Party in power.

So many people who were against Obama Care were not against the Affordable Care Act, not realizing it is the same legislation, so it is clear what the Republicans did was promote racism against the “black man”, Barack Obama, who had promoted the law.

Now, however, many white working class people realize their own ignorance, and how it has now come back to bite them, and the racial appeal will no longer work among many of them.

States like Kentucky, West Virginia, Arizona and many others, who have benefited from Obama Care, will start to turn against the party which manipulated them, and the GOP will suffer long term.

And if that does not happen, by some pure stupidity of the white working class, then what happens to them is the proper punishment because of their prejudice and narrow mindedness, and with no sympathy to be offered.

The House Freedom Caucus: Extreme Right Wing Group Destructive Of Common Decency And Compassion For Elderly, Poor, Disabled

The House Freedom Caucus is a group of about 30 extreme right wing Republicans, who are the balance of power in the House Republican caucus.

They are the outcome of the Tea Party Movement, begun in 2009 when Barack Obama became President, and they are now the biggest problem for President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, as they work to destroy Obama Care, and show no concern about the 24 million Americans who will lose health care insurance if the Republican Party achieves its goal, now about to be voted on in the House of Representatives in the next few days or weeks.

An examination of the membership of this caucus shows that 60 percent are from the South (including three from Texas, three from Virginia, three from Florida, two from Alabama,and two from South Carolina, and one each from North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and West Virginia), and three more from Arizona, one from Colorado, one from New Mexico, one from Idaho, one from Michigan, two from Ohio, one from Iowa, one from Maryland, and one from Pennsylvania, and they have no concern about the lives or health of the sick, disabled, elderly, and poor who will lose health care.

This group has no common decency or compassion, and if allowed to hold sway, their goal is to destroy the federal government and its agencies, and to restore America to what it was before the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson.

This group believes in unbridled capitalism, and supports the increase in wealth of the top one percent of the nation, at the expense of the dwindling middle class and the poor, and includes in its midst many who are openly racist, nativist, misogynist, and homophobic.

They are really those who prefer chaos and disarray. and are anarchists, who threaten the whole idea of the faith they profess to believe in, Christianity, as they fail to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and instead follow the beliefs of Ayn Rand. Selfishness and greed and hate are what motivates them. Saving taxes for the rich is their only goal.

So we are in for very difficult times for millions of Americans, as the Trump nightmare continues!

Paul Ryan, A Phony Christian (Catholic), With His Views On The Poor, Disabled, And Needy–Shame On Him And His Ilk In The GOP!

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan ran for Vice President as the running mate of Mitt Romney in 2012, and at that time, this blogger made clear just how despicable a person he was, and I received a lot of hate emails because of that.

But what I said was true, and it is showing through ever more now on the Health Care legislation, where Ryan seems gleeful and excited about knocking millions of people off health care, and tells us that Obama Care is a nightmare, when it is anything but that.

Obama Care is not perfect, but it has saved many lives and brought health care to more than 20 million people, with the majority being white Christians, who now will be knocked off, and this will cause the death of thousands of people who will be unable to gain necessary medical intervention.

Ryan and others in the Congress have town halls, and hear the desperate entreaties of poor, sick, elderly, and disabled of all races and ethnic backgrounds, who are begging for a health care plan that does not ignore them.

Instead, the plan is to destroy Medicaid, and eventually Medicare as well, with Ryan laughing at one point about how he had been dreaming about this, when he was in college, drinking kegs of beer.

Watching that scene made this blogger want to vomit, as Ryan claims to be a “good Catholic”, a “good Christian”, as all of these reprehensible Republicans, including Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, claim they are.

But with Ryan’s views on the poor and needy, it is clear he is a phony Catholic, a phony Christian.

He believes all fetuses should be protected until born, but then a poor child and its mother are on their own, and if disabled, well,that is no responsibility of government.

Shame on him and his ilk in the Republican Party, who if there is true justice, should be kicked out of office by the voters, and should pay in the next world for their horrific sins, as they are NOT following the teachings of Jesus Christ, who would be shocked at their lack of concern for those less fortunate.