Day: January 31, 2017

Closing Thought–31Jan17

Before the closing thought…..Actress Barbara Hale, aka Della Street on Perry Mason, has died at age 94….Hale makes it 3….may her soul rest in peace….

Monday Night Massacre

Anyone else noticed just how many apologists for Trump there are now?  They are usually the same ones that accused so many others of being an Obama apologist.  And how pathetic it was to be an apologist.   Funny how that works, huh?

I remember back in the 70’s and one Pres. Nixon…..during the Watergate investigation he decided to rid his government of those people that he did not like beginning with his attorney general………a political purge……

You see  throughout history the “great” leaders have eventually had a purge of their government…..Besides Nixon there were such notables as Hitler, Stalin and now there has been another one in Washington……

Shortly after the inauguration Trump lost many within the State department…..

State Department senior leaders resigned from their positions. The senior State Department leaders were reportedly asked to leave via letter in what is believed to be an effort to “clean house” at the department.

While the officials technically resigned, the real decision was for the Trump Administration to accept what are pro forma resignations at the beginning of any administration.

Also among those not asked to return to service was highly controversial Assistant Secretary for Europe Victoria Nuland, who seemed to work tirelessly to damage US relations with Russia. Nuland openly supported a coup in Ukraine, handing out bread to protesters, as well as working behind the scenes to form the post-coup government.

By “cleaning house” at the State Department, President Trump is going to be able to exert even more influence in shaping the department for years to come.

Monday night, 30Jan17, the purge continued…….

An Obama holdover who was temporarily running the Justice Department just got fired by President Trump after an act of defiance. Mere hours after acting attorney general Sally Yates said the department would not defend Trump’s refugee executive order in court while she was in charge, Trump made sure that she was no longer in charge. Her announcement was largely symbolic anyway, notes the New York Times, given that nominee Jeff Sessions is expected to assume the office of attorney general in a matter of days, perhaps even Tuesday. In the interim, Yates will be replaced by Dana Boente, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, reports Politico.

A White House statement said Yates “has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” adding that she is “weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.”

Shortly after the firing of Yates the other shoe fell……

President Donald Trump replaced the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday with another director from within the organization.

Trump replaced Daniel Ragsdale as acting director with Thomas Homan, ICE’s executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations since 2013. Ragsdale will return to his position at deputy director, the Department of Homeland Security said on its Twitter page.

Slowly but slowly Trump is assuming complete control over the government…..and there is a name for this action…….

This concludes my posting day…tomorrow will be here and I shall return….have a day my friends….chuq

Trump–Virgin No More

I wrote about these US military deaths the other day and NO one even noticed….that is truly sad…..

Recently a US military action in Yemen was the first under Trump administration…..until this raid Trump was a virgin to calling for an armed response……it was a raid and it was a disaster……

The first American military raid of the Trump administration wasn’t a complete failure, but “almost everything went wrong,” a senior military official tells NBC News. The Sunday raid in Yemen, which the president approved last week, left dozens of people dead, including two Americans: a service member identified Monday as Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens, 36, and Nora al-Awlaki, the 8-year-old daughter of radical US-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. Her father was killed in a US drone strike in 2011 and her 16-year-old brother died in a 2013 strike. Officials tell the New York Times that the raid had been in the works for months, but the Obama administration handed final approval over to President Trump.

Owens, a Navy SEAL from Peoria, Ill., died after being wounded during the raid on an al-Qaeda-held village, the Washington Post reports. Another three members of his unit were hurt during the firefight, and three more were injured, one severely, when their MV-22 Osprey aircraft had a “hard landing” at the site. Pentagon officials say three al-Qaeda leaders were among 14 fighters killed during the raid. Medics say at least 30 people died at the scene, including women and children. Nora al-Awlaki’s grandfather, former Yemeni Agriculture Minister Nasser al-Awlaki, claims the true number is closer to 60. Nora “was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours,” he tells Reuters. “Why kill children?”

Not only did we lose some very brave soldiers but we also set about killing children…..

I truly hope that this was not a vision of what our troops have to look forward to with this administration….

 

Does Size Matter?

There has been a war in the media about the size of the crowd at the inauguration….why does this matter?

There is so much more that needs to be covered.  And why is the president playing this game?  But he, Trump, took the bait and has jumped on this with both flat feet…….

President Trump may not have had the biggest inauguration crowd in history, but he may have made a bigger fuss about media coverage of it than any of his predecessors. Sources tell the Washington Post and CNN that on Saturday morning—the first morning of his presidency—Trump contacted Michael T. Reynolds, the National Park Service’s acting director, to demand more photos of the crowd on the National Mall. Reynolds, who has worked for the service for 30 years, was “taken aback” by the request, but he sent some aerial photos to Trump, according to the Post’s sources. The photos did not, however, provide proof of Trump’s claim that more than a million people had gathered to watch his inauguration.

Reynolds and the NPS have declined to comment, but insiders say Trump also expressed anger over an NPS tweet comparing his crowd to Obama’s, which apparently led to an order for all Interior Department accounts to stop tweeting. White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump contacted the NPS. She said the call demonstrated the president is “so accessible, and constantly in touch.” “He’s not somebody who sits around and waits. He takes action and gets things done,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons that he is president today, and Hillary Clinton isn’t.” (Trump was still talking about the size of his inaugural crowd on Wednesday, when he gave his first interview as president.)

All this is so petty….I expect more from a person at the helm of state….but then I could be asking for too much…..

Years ago there was a similar story only it was Glen Beck that was concerned about the size of the crowd and so I looked up just how these sizes are come to…..

Source: Taking It To The Streets – In Saner Thought

This is petty fecal matter….time to let this type of crap go and focus on the country…..put your ego on a desk somewhere and get on with the duties your raised your goddamn hand to……peace out!

Let’s Talk Legislative Branch

I have long said that most Americans have NO idea how the government works….most are too busy bitching and moaning about the other side to give a crap….the reult of this ignorance is the stupidity that inhabits the halls of government….

My friend and regular visitor to IST from  Life Between 0 and 1 | w1nt3l.com has posted an excellent look at the legislative branch of our withering government.

I press it below for everyone to read and hopefully will find a new understanding of how things work…..

So few Americans understand, let alone even know, the lengthy and bureaucratic process that is followed attempting to make laws in the United States.  Given the complicated process this is, I’ll do my best to make it understandable, meaning in some cases parts of the process may be simplified for the sake of sanity.  I’m not an expert and there are thousands of resources on this 240 year old process.

After having spent a 2 weeks on this post, I can honestly say that I would *not* want to go into public service as a politician.  It definitely takes a certain type of person to work with this kind of bureaucracy, one that has endured the test of time up to this point and one that I hope continues.

Source: The U.S. Legislative Process | Life Between 0 and 1

Refugee Ban Is Nothing New

Pres. Trump has banned some immigrants from entering the US….and all crap broke louse….people are protesting….bloggers are ranting….and the unwashed masses are rolling over and accepting the “fatwa”……

From David French, National Review: “To read the online commentary, one would think that President Trump just fundamentally corrupted the American character. You would think that the executive order on refugees he signed Friday betrayed America’s Founding ideals. You might even think he banned people from an entire faith from American shores.”

But I will do what I always do….give my readers a bit of a history lesson along this issue……

And since there are those that cannot shut up about this…one dimensional blogger is a thing…..I figure what the Hell I would point out a little history…but then there will be those micro brains that will have something to say about history….never the less history is history……

You see fellow readers this is NOT a new occurrence…..Pres. Arthur, FDR, Teddy, Carter and Reagan did similar actions….we have banned Chinese, Jews, people with HIV, etc……….

On Friday, Donald Trump barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries – Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen – from entering the United States for at least the next 90 days.

He also suspended the US refugee programme for 120 days, specifically banning Syrian refugees until further notice, reduced the number of refugees who would be admitted this year to 50,000 and specified that refugees who were from a religious minority and fleeing religious persecution should be prioritised.

Now that you are caught up with the local news….let’s move on to the historic perspective shall we?

But this is not the first time that the US has banned immigrants from its shores. Over the past 200 years, successive American presidents have placed restrictions on the immigration of certain groups.

Here are six occasions when laws have been passed to restrict some people from entering the country.

Source: Six other times the US has banned immigrants | | Al Jazeera

This ban is NOTHING…..it has been going on for at least a 100 years…….so sit down and let it play out….hateful language does NOTHING to solve the problem.

These people are human beings maybe now would be a good time to start treating them as such….this may be a new concept for some but it is never too late to try.

I have one question……why is Saudi Arabia and Egypt exempt from Trump’s now ban?