BOTH CANNOT BE TRUE!

SCENARIO #1
Donald Trump and his administration are under siege from the “Deep State” in our government, (which includes Trump’s own Justice Department, the Judiciary and FBI), to undermine and destroy his presidency.  The FBI is concocting false allegations that the Trump campaign worked with Russians to bolster his chances of winning the election, and spinning Trump’s public defense of himself to appear to be Obstruction of Justice — and the Justice Department is allowing the FBI and the special investigation by Robert Mueller to proceed with this attempt to bring down the president.  The FISA Court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is aiding and abetting in this “Deep State” plot.
SCENARIO #2
Donald Trump welcomed the assist from Russia, (where he’d long sought business deals), and his campaign enlisted the aid of several Americans with ties to Russia:  Paul Manafort; George Papadopolous; Roger Stone; Michael Flynn; Carter Page — who all used their personal Russian connections to meet with Russian operatives who are believed to be intelligence agents.  The deal that Russia sought, in exchange for their assistance using Russian experts in “Dezinformatsiya,” (or Disinformation) — derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department — was a promise from Trump to lift the economic sanctions that had been imposed on Russia for “violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and for stealing the assets of the Ukrainian people.” Trump now refuses to enact the additional sanctions that the Congress overwhelmingly voted to impose on Russia for their interference in the 2016 U.S. election.  Yet Trump has not as yet found enough Congressional support to overturn the sanctions imposed due to the invasion of Ukraine — a motive for Putin to continue to use his KHB tricks to try to keep the GOP and Trump in power.
VOTERS WILL HAVE TO CHOOSE.

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EERILY FAMILIAR

Having a major déjà vu moment.  The feeling in the national zeitgeist right now seems very similar, and eerily familiar, to the 1990s when Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City in his anti-government, anti-liberal act of terror.  Pulling on that string of instinct I ask myself, “WHY does it feel so much like that time twenty-two years ago?”

I recall the horror that our nation felt when the innocents were slaughtered and the buildings crumpled.  And, I recall President Bill Clinton coming to the podium beseeching the Right to put a halt to the hate-talk-radio venom being spewed into the heads of the susceptible.  It was so clear that all the hatred directed at our government was based on the Right’s inability to accept a Democrat in the White House.  The violent anger inspired by a political loss resulted in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Democrats lost this last 2016 election, bigly, and so the violent uprising in the streets and in the “air” is not caused by angry Democrats.  Oh, we’re angry alright, but when we take to the streets it is in peaceful marches, holding our signs up high and demonstrating our power in sheer numbers.  No, while the feeling of violence is the same, the cause is the Right again — this time they won the election, and they take this to mean that they not only won an election — but that they are conquerors and the rest of us have to bow down and concede that they were right all along.  After all — the president lets the far Right know that he’s really with them … the dog-whistles are loud and clear — and this time we can all hear them.

Trump won.  They won.  The rest of us lost.  Surrender.

 

 

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TRUMP WORD-SALAD

FOLLOWING IS AN ACTUAL SENTENCE FROM THE MOUTH OF PREZ-ELECT TRUMP.

And, we wonder why the world is laughing at us!

“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, thepower and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power ofwhat’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now itused to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, Iwould have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because,you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarterright now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them aboutanother 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

Transcribed from this video, if anyone is interested in deciphering in real time. The video is from a year ago. Why are people just now figuring out he’s not all there?

REPOSTED FROM THE DAILY KOS

 

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American Tribalism

The Democratic Party has to do some major rethinking — and it has nothing to do with going to the Left or moderating on issues.  It is waking up to the reality that we have no partner in governing, no partner willing to compromise, no partner to partner with in the interest of our nation.

We’ve had a Democrat in the White House for eight years who worked hard to be bi-partisan and to reach across the aisle.  He executed many GOP ideas over his two presidential terms, from a healthcare system first implemented by Republican Mitt Romney in his term as Governor of Massachusetts, to being willing to be branded “the deporter in chief” of undocumented workers in unprecedented numbers.  I believe that he deported huge numbers of the undocumented in an attempt to show the GOP that he could be reasonable, and isn’t an ideologue but a pragmatic leader.

Obama offered to the Congressional GOP a trimming of the so called entitlement programs, that Dems support, in a package that included tax reform that the GOP claims they want.  The Grand Bargain. The Republicans walked away from the deal because they couldn’t bring themselves to support anything that Obama offered, even if it was what they also wanted.

The more Obama offered to compromise, the further to the Right Congress went.

And, now the lesson of the candidacy of Hillary Clinton:  Hillary enlisted the support of most of the high level Republicans in her general election effort;  she reached out to moderate Republicans in the media; and she appealed directly to the rank-and-file members of that party.

Here’s my conclusion:  Both Obama and Clinton reached out to try to unite the country, by not being ideologues and by expressing a willingness to work with the Republican Party.  And in the end, in both cases, the Republican Party could not bring itself to work with a Democrat.  In the end, the moderate Republicans voted for Donald Trump; in the end the GOP would not deal with Obama — because when all is said and done, the Republican Party tribalism beats pragmatism.

The GOP sticks together with its other members of the tribe — no matter what, and THAT’S why the Democratic Party has to rethink strategy.  It’s time to realize that the GOP doesn’t want to work or play with others and their philosophy is “my way, or the highway.”   The only option left to the Democratic Party is to work our asses off to win and win BIG.  It’s time to make a long-term plan for the hearts and minds of American citizens.

The Democratic Party needs a new strategy, because without a partner in compromise the nation just stays stuck, and being stuck means falling backward.

 

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THEY DON’T HEAR US!

If our countrymen didn’t hear us over the two years of electioneering, then they aren’t going to hear us now. They chose not to listen because they didn’t care, and they are going to choose to not hear us now that their guy won the White House.

It’s time for some rethinking on our part. During the campaign we kept thinking that the country could be persuaded by logic and facts, and our logic and facts were dismissed. As The Donald said, “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters.” Yup … he was right, and we need to wake up and realize that is not going to change.

We’re spinning our wheels thinking, “Oh, they’ll be sorry for their votes when Trump changes his mind and backs off campaign promises.” Not going to happen. They don’t care.

We think, “The country no longer believes in Trickle-Down Economics and so when Trump gives massive tax breaks to the elites, that his voters despise, then maybe then they will turn on him. Not going to happen. They don’t care. When he doesn’t build the wall and make Mexico pay, when he doesn’t deport 11 million immigrants, when the courts find him guilty of breaking laws, when facts emerge that Trump actually did sexually assault many women, when his business conflicts of interest are exposed — then, THEN the voters will turn on him.

Not going to happen. They don’t care. Because this vote, I believe from the bottom of my heart, was not about issues, not about Trump’s veracity — It was about race and the desire to strike back at the changing demography in America today. And it worked. It worked because we didn’t show up at the polls to vote for what we believe.

And, that’s a problem for our party. I kept saying, “There are more of us in America than there are of the angry haters.” I was right about that. Where I was wrong is that we didn’t care enough to go vote.

 

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ELECTION EVE

Tomorrow is November 8, 2016 — a momentous presidential election day in America.  Our country and the world agrees that this has been an unbelievably painful and negative campaign season, and we are all relieved that it’s almost over.  The twists and turns, the plethora of bald-faced lies, the interference in the election by the F.B.I., and the disgusting sleaze that has permeated this campaign has all been exhausting and infuriating.

And in the midst of all this negativity we’ve forgotten that tomorrow, America will likely elect our first woman president in the history of our nation.  We haven’t really stopped to think about this potentially historic moment, but we will when it happens, when it becomes real … when we feel comfortable enough to let our held-breath out, and realize we’ve dodged the disaster named Donald Trump.

Then, then we will emotionally gasp; we will watch it happen on our televisions and we’ll see a victorious moment for women — a victorious moment for ourselves, our daughters and granddaughters — and the past will be put into perspective with a new point in time to look back from.

Hallelujah, I may have lived long enough to see a woman in the White House.  Amazing.  Amazing.

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I’M WITH HER!

I met Hillary Clinton once.  She was meeting and shaking hands with donors in Colorado, and I was one of hundreds standing in line to chat with her for a minute or two.  It was at the height of the many attacks on her personally, and I remember that I said to her, “I hope you can feel all the support that’s out here for you.”  She said, nodding affirmatively, “I do, I do.”

Still got your  back, Madam President.

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BREXIT “REASON”?

EXPLANATIONS TO THE VOTERS OF “LEAVE THE E.U” REPERCUSSIONS

BRITISH VOTER EXPLAINING HER “LEAVE THE E.U.” VOTE

The Brexit vote is the result of angry white frustration, not reason.  Immigration was a very large contributing factor in the vote to Leave the E.U., and interestingly the older generation voted to Leave and the under 40s voted to Remain in the E.U.

One of the main contributing factors for the older generation has been the recent difficulty of gaining access to their healthcare system … and they are blaming (“angry frustration”) the influx of new immigrants.  But, the FACTS (“reason”) are that the healthcare system is currently stressed because the Conservative government has adopted an economic policy of Austerity by slashing spending across the board, including on their healthcare system.

The US has avoided the lure of Austerity because we have a Democratic President who wisely implemented a policy of stimulating the economy to keep money flowing through the system.  America leads the world in recovery from the near worldwide economic melt-down, because we followed Keynesian economics — which was (ironically)  developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes during the 1930s.  Keynes advocated increased government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate demand and pull the global economy out of the Depression.  It worked.  And it’s worked again in 2009 for America; unfortunately for Great Britain they chose to slash spending and their economy contracted under their Austerity program.

So, Great Britain has struggled with their economy and the people have paid the price.  But Keynesian Economics is not something easily understood by the older and less educated voters, and the easy scapegoat for many of the Leave voters (older generation) has been the new non-white immigrants, not Reason.

The repercussions for Leave the E.U. were predicted and were carefully explained to the voters,  but, too many voters ignored the experts and instead chose to deny reason and FACTS — to take the simple path, and embrace xenophobia.

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BOILED TRUMP

TRUMP NEWS OF THE WEEK BOILED DOWN:

  • Donald Trump’s poll numbers plummeted, following his bizarre response to the Orlando mass murders — his numbers fell 9 points.
  • GOP is more than mildly panicked, and the highest ranking Republican, Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, has said that “Republicans in the House are free to follow their “conscience” on Trump” and that the last thing he would do is tell anybody to do something that’s contrary to their conscience.
  • Paul Ryan is also the head of the GOP Convention, and if he tells the Delegates to “follow their conscience” that could very well lead to a contested convention.  See this NY Times article on how that would work.
  • Conservative writer says GOP should win a “Darwin Award” for backing Trump, The Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Continetti warns that the Republican Party is destroying itself, “By supporting the least qualified, least knowledgeable, most unsuited major-party nominee for president in history, they are engaged in an ‘astounding misapplication of judgment.’ Every week that Donald Trump remains the Republican nominee, the party comes closer to removing itself from the presidential gene pool. Self-selection is at work here. Trump’s supporters are choosing their party’s demise.”
  • Trump’s Campaign is not an actual campaign, as he is drastically understaffed, seems to have no organization or fundraising that will be needed to run a competitive campaign, and no coherent messaging.  He has not integrated his presidential campaign into the RNC.  Check out this Salon article.
  • Vanity Fair asks the question, Is Donald Trump’s Endgame the Launch of Trump News? The candidate is considering starting his own cable empire.  Vanity Fair article.
  • Bill Maher:  Trump’s ‘Selfishness’ Might Force the GOP Into a Late-Term Political Abortion.

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