07 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
The President’s new travel ban from six specific mostly-muslim countries (Iraq was dropped from the list) is unlikely to pass muster with the courts. It is a much better thought-out order than the first, is more limited in scope, and avoids much that was especially objectionable in the first one. But it still contains the two fundamental problems that the courts called out for the original order.
06 Monday Mar 2017
Posted in Satire
I ran across a story today about President Trump having a secret psychological evaluation recently. This strikes me as a pretty serious story, one that raises all sorts of questions. Like, Why did he get it? Did he voluntarily seek the evaluation? Did his handlers force it on him? What were the results?
The results should be made public. It seems to me that the American people have a right to know whether their President is psychologically fit to conduct the responsibilities of his Office. So far, the White House has no comment, and I haven’t yet seen it in any news sources except the National Enquirer.
05 Sunday Mar 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION?
We know beyond any reasonable doubt that agents of the Russian government actively interfered in the 2016 Presidential election by (1) creating a team of internet trolls to bias google searches, (2) hacking into American servers and stealing private information, and (3) by carefully selected stolen information at critical points in the campaign … all with the intention of ensuring that Donald Trump would win the election. We know all this because every single intelligence agency in the federal government examined the data and agreed that these things are true.
04 Saturday Mar 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
Early Saturday morning the President of the United States of America launched another of his infamous twitter storms, and this one was especially bizarre.
In the middle of defending Jeff Sessions against the dark forces of the Democrats, he threw in a series of tweets accusing former President Barack Obama of wire tapping Trump tower before the election. Here’s the first tweet in the series:
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Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
3:35 AM – 4 Mar 2017
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02 Thursday Mar 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
President Donald Trump gave his first speech to a joint session of Congress. It was about an hour long. I did not watch the performance, which according to the Washington Post, “won high marks for his muscular but measured tone.” Others say he was as Presidential looking and sounding as they have ever seen him.
I offer a point-by-point replay of the speech, which is based on the transcript, along with my own commentary. I make no claim to objectivity here. You will find my own assessment of the speech as a whole at the end of the post.
02 Thursday Mar 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
During Jeff Session’s confirmation hearing for the position of Attorney General of the United States, making him the top law enforcement agent in the country, he was asked if he had knowledge about possible contacts between the Trump campaign and representatives of Russia. He was part of Trump’s campaign staff at that time. Sessions said he did not know of any such contacts. Apparently he forgot that he had had two private meetings with Russian representatives, and at the peak of the Russian cyber campaign to tilt the Presidential race toward Trump.
02 Thursday Mar 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
How does the rest of the world see the US turn against immigrants, especially Muslims? Three (among many) indicators are: (1) cancellations of planned trips to the US, along with an overall decline in the number of tourists planning to come to the US; (2) decisions by scientists to cancel plans to attend conferences in the US, forcing at least one large conference to cancel due to lack of presenters; (3) 150,000 Brits demanding that Trump’s planned state visit be cancelled.
28 Tuesday Feb 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
Trump & Def Sec Mattis
President Trump is asking Congress to increase military spending by $54 billion in 2017, a 10% increase. He wants to pay for it with cuts to other federal agencies. The last President to ask for a military increase this staggering was Ronald Reagan at the height of the Cold War when Soviet and American tanks faced off across the iron curtain.
26 Sunday Feb 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
If you value your constitutionally guaranteed rights, you need to pay attention to what is happening to them right now, because they are being trampled by unaccountable and out-of-control Customs and Border Protection agents who, emboldened by a President that has made it clear that he has little respect for the Constitution, can act illegally with apparent impunity.
26 Sunday Feb 2017
Posted in Political Stuff
From an article in the New York Times:
Immediately after the November election, Democrats were divided over how to handle Mr. Trump, with one camp favoring all-out confrontation and another backing a seemingly less risky approach of coaxing him to the center with offers of compromise.
Now, spurred by explosive protests and a torrent of angry phone calls and emails from constituents — and outraged themselves by Mr. Trump’s swift moves to enact a hard-line agenda — Democrats have all but cast aside any notion of conciliation with the White House. Instead, they are mimicking the Republican approach of the last eight years — the “party of no” — and wagering that brash obstruction will pay similar dividends.
