New White House Petition - GPO to Account for Financial Losses Due to Donald Trump's Mistakes

On April 4, 2018 a new petition was created on Petitions.WhiteHouse.gov.

First off, this isn't about the petition itself. But go, sign it. Tell your friends, get them to sigh this.
So if its not about the petition, why sign it? Because, it's about making noise. Calling Trump to account for his juvenile, unpresidential, and damaging actions.

If we got enough people to sign this petition, it would get into the news and that alone could affect some change. Sometimes the smallest of things, affect the biggest of changes. Trump is the type where you have to think outside the box he has boxed us into with our own good nature and decency.

That is how a conman works. We need to outplay him at his own, immature games.

The request was for the Government to account for all the mistakes that President Donald Trump makes and to monthly publicly account for that in numbers.

America cannot have a POTUS who makes that many mistakes and many are costly real people real money. He is costly America real money.

So Go. Sign the petition if you feel so inclined and at least you will know you asked something directly of the White House and Congress to do SOMETHING to curtail Donald Trump's ridiculous and ongoing statements.

It is NOT just embarrassing, it is hurting people. It is hurting us all. He needs to learn to keep his mouth shut until he is 100% sure of what he is saying.

THAT, is being presidential.

GAO to publicly account for how much pres. trump's incorrect tweets and comments cost the government each month.

Pres. Trump simply and obviously makes too many comments that are easily verified to be incorrect. We need to counter that with a reasonable and monthly GAO accounting of what it costs OUR country. This will give Congress a foundation and thereby recourse from which to curb and\or counter Mr. Trump's voluminously misspoken and disinformed statements and diatribes.


#POTUS #realDonaldTrump #GOP #Democrat #Congress #VPOTUS 

Political Ignorance in a Trump Universe

The ignorance in this last 2016 presidential election on the side of Hillary Clinton supporters is superseded only by that of Donald Trump supporters. It is reminiscent in form of the quote by Winston Churchill.

'Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…'
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

I'll get to Pres. Trump's address to both houses of Congress, in a moment.

For many Clinton supporters who have been around a while, they saw this as her time to become president as after all she had put up with, succeeded through, and done they felt she deserved it. And they deserved it to have a woman president. It was time for a woman president. We are long past that time. It needs to happen. Just not apparently with Hillary. Sad for her, but true nonetheless after to failed runs for that office.

However Mr. Trump should never have been a candidate. That is clearly obvious now even as it was for most people during the campaign.

In hindsight we can now see what I had thought all along during the campaign. That yes, Hillary had paid her dues to become president, all through husband Bill Clinton's rise, campaign, two term presidency and all throughout his romantic antics. Also through her work in Congress and as Secretary of State under the opponent, Barack Obama, whom she had lost to not once but in the end, twice.

However as we now examine our actions and how things turned out, we can see more clearly that as some contended during the campaign, Bernie Sanders could very well have won over Donald Trump. I had said and wished that Hillary would have subordinated herself to become Bernie's Vice President on the ticket to his Presidency.

I still think that would have been a world changing event.

Not a Trump style world changing event, but a positive, useful and constructive one. With Hillary as VP, someone who had been through all she had internationally to the point of Secretary of State, what a block buster team that could have been. Perhaps she could then have run at a future date as President. Perhaps it was simply never to be.

In looking now at the world and the state of American politics, it seems clear that we should all have put aside our beliefs and desires, and gone with a Bernie/Hillary ticket and not a Clinton/Bernie ticket, and certainly not as it turned out, a Clinton ticket up against some nutcase like now Pres. Trump. I said that before many times but no one would listen, that surely she would sadly never take second to a Bernie Sanders.

Very sadly as we now see.

We don't realize the advancements we've made. Some say the IQ has dropped. But I think more importantly what we're seeing is a better educated citizen, smarter people, who aren't yet smart enough. And Republicans always want to cut education. Makes you wonder. And I won't even go into things like cognitive dissonance here.

Read: 7 Things Our Founders Believed about Public Education

These people are smart enough to know there is someone behind the curtain, but then think it's the Illuminati (which always surprises them when you tell them that), or some ridiculous entity, or that this is as deep as it goes and no others are involved, or no other process, entity or entropy is involved.

What I've seen, mostly to be honest on the conservative side (liberals have another issue altogether), is that they are smart enough to see they need to break things down somewhat in order to see what there is and where the problem is.

While a wise person knows when you stop doing that and you have the answer. OR, that you cannot achieve a viable answer from any known information at the time.

Still some will push over the edge into what many call insanity, but is simply drawing conclusions with too little information, or never drawing a conclusion other than the one they have already drawn and which all too frequently turns out to be totally incorrect, once all the information is finally known.

Which almost always does eventually show up.

And so we find those who we offer the solutions to for things and yet they refuse to accept it, in thinking they are that smart as to be able to literally divine the answer from not enough correct information. When frequently it is answers they need and not just one. And so it goes, on and on.

And so too, to most critical thinking people they appear stupid.

But they are not stupid. They are simply not intelligent (or educated) enough. Basically and to put it simply, they know just enough to get themselves and others into real trouble and to look foolish.

Therein lay the Republican party.

One of my favorite people for many years has been Christopher Hitchens who sadly died of cancer in December of 2011. In considering what he thought about Hillary, he would have preferred to have seen her not even run for president. But she did not run in a vacuum. She was against Trump.

I have to believe that he would have seen her as President a far better thing for the world than a Trump administration as we have now and as we're seeing is highly dysfunctional and frequently clueless, self serving, and at times outright dangerous.

Charlie Rose on February 24, 2017 had a segment of his show about Chris asking his wife and friends how he would see things today if he were still alive. There is also an article by Newsweek titled, "What would Christoper Hitchens Write?" (1/2/16)

What Chris might have said may all well be true. However he didn't see her having to run for president against not a Barack Obama, a figure who cut a graceful Fred Astaire profile in form and mind, but a Donald Trump figure who cuts more of an Alfred Hitchcock profile though with little of the grace and intellect and none of the style.

Pres. Trump has  a flabbiness of mind exceeded only by his inflated ego, overt narcissism, greed and questionable mental health. He is not insane as some claim but is a capitalist and narcissist and I'm sure other terms of dysfunction we will be seeing and hearing of in the near future. If he makes it that far.

Chris called out Todd Purdum's view of Hillary Clinton and her husband. Yes, there are many things to be said about all that. Which brings us then back to Pres. Donald Trump. There is little need to lay out the issues we are now seeing with him as President of the United States of America. He is a travesty pure and simple and if you cannot yet see that, you simply don't want to. There is no comparison between the two. One is a work horse, one is Donald Trump. One may have an agenda that would have been poignantly put into place, one is scattered and a novice or worse at executing his skewed and admittedly deconstructive agenda.

Even with all the things we know about Hillary, we would still today be far better off with her than a Donald Trump as president. Both Hillary and Trump have as politicians do, deluded their supporters. Trump simply had a far easier job of it with his. As could be seen in many fact checks during the election campaign up to today, Hillary showed far more truth in her statements than Trump ever did or again, even as he does today.

I won't even go into the Republican, Conservative, and Russian slander against Hillary going back to the 1990s. A grass roots hatred of a candidate that deserved that hatred far less than did her opponent in Trump in deserving his praise by those who have found they need to translate in their heads, what he is saying, because he is frequently not saying anything coherent. And reading into what the president says is a highly, extremely dangerous thing to do, and to have to do.

Frankly, Trump supporters were far more easily duped to the point that we now have him as POTUS. Something that will plague not only America, but the entire world, not to mention benefit Russia and perhaps China, for a very long time after he leaves the world stage.

To be fair to Trump supporters, they voted for him not out of intelligence and information, but out of anger and frustration at our government. It has indeed been entrenched for decades now in a style of government that desperately needed change and repair. Much of  that repair being needed for Republicans working hard to damage the government.

Thinking to elect a disruptor, someone to shake up the government and not just another status quo candidate, Trump is most definitely now disrupting things.

However he has consistently and blatantly lied to us, damaged our government's standing with our citizens and even more so with other countries around the entire planet. Good things will come of his presidency, of that I have no doubt. But in the same way as a broken leg is stronger at the break than it was before it was broken. However that also weakens the areas on either side of that break.

Things like government and in such a big and powerful country as the US, needs care not damage to fix things. Of that few gave much consideration out of their frustration at being promised change for so long and seldom seeing it. Or simply not seeing it as fast as change happens on reality TV shows.

I get that. We all do. But a child throwing a tantrum in a shopping mall merely evokes a parent to do whatever they can do stop the tantrum. Not necessarily at all doing what really needs to be done.

Yes, a good parent will do what is needed, and not just what is required to assuage the child. Trump however is not a good parent. Pointing to his children raised by wives and not him, is not proof of anything other than to show that he knows how to marry multiple women and have them raise his kids. Not to mention, those children do have problems as we're now seeing. First off, they're all capitalists. And too rich to really see clearly what most Americans are living through.

When Republicans say "affordable" healthcare, or what American's can afford, or for them to pay reasonable healthcare costs, they have no clue that is a code word for too expensive. My healthcare now that I'm retired is one third of my income. One Third. That's just to have healthcare coverage and not even considering out of pocket expenses.

As for Ivanka, I personally have issues with anyone who chooses on their own to convert to any religion, let alone one like Judaism which is convoluted and rather silly like so many religions. Especially those desert religions of the Middle East which evolved out of a one time need and have evolved into a religion of the obfuscations of reality.

But then, that's what religions do. Make the fears of living more palatable. Offer up hope. When reality should do that if we would just let it. But that really isn't the point either. The point is, Trump is now president. Two words that should never have ever come into the public consciousness: President Trump.

Just how politically ignorant can we be to have allowed such a thing to take place?

Obviously. Pretty damn ignorant. But mostly just frustration.

I have never been so embarrassed to be an American as I was the day Trump was elected. I was pretty embarrassed by the Nixon debacle in the early 1970s as a kid in High School. I was embarrassed by Gore losing to Bush in 2000 and that debacle. I was more embarrassed with the false war in Iraq and then George W Bush being unbelievably re-elected in 2004 at which time I simply gave up on the American people for a time until Obama was elected.

But nothing trumps America electing a Donald Trump as president.

Nothing.

Speaking of political ignorance, Pres. Trump's speech last night on February 28, 2017. He spoke through his teleprompters, made it mostly through the speech with only a single break where he almost turned into The Donald again, but caught himself and returned to reading Steven Miller's curious speech.

photo from CNN

The ONE thing I'd have liked to see last night from a President who says he wants to bring people together... A nod at Republican's for their eight years of obstructionism, now that they ARE in power, for them also to work with Democrats. To have put that ALL on Democrats was ludicrous.

I wouldn't have half minded the several other negative nods at Democrats about that then.

But when it was mostly Republicans refusing to work for America through eight years, it screamed for equal time to both parties last night to do something constructive together, especially for the Republicans and even more so.

Mr. Trump's creating the Voice agency to point out immigrant illegal activities brought a hush of fear over the Congress for a moment, then a few Republicans clapped. It is not as he said to support victims but to further his contentions about immigrant abuse of Americans. A sad commentary on the Trump administration.

Highlights of Pres. Trump's speech if you missed it (go here for a more professional account):

-Various fluff, chaff and misdirections
-Magical promises.
-He's great!
-Republicans rock!
-Immigrants are dangerous! To the point of their creating Voice agency to publish list of crimes by immigrants. The President claimed that murders were being kept quiet by 'special interests']
-Democrats suck because they are partisan and they need to work with Republicans. Republicans apparently are doing just great on that point!
-ACA ("Obamacare") is giving people cancer or something and needs to be exorcised from American consciousness for the great plan Republicans are going to put in place, if only Democrats and the American people would get out of their way and let them implement whatever it is they may come up with if they can only think up something and by the way, NO ONE KNEW that healthcare reform was so hard.
-Display a woman who was in a wheelchair and an inspiration.
-Display the wife of the Navy SEAL the president sent into harm's way with too little planning and who died on the mission, leading to an emotionally rousing and very long standing ovation.
-Other stuff.

It's going to be a very, very long four years....

Hillary's Emails - Where From Here?

Hillary's emails.

Is that really a topic to bother with? Considering a variety of things, like how this was handled by previous Secretaries, even Republican ones (like Secretary Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice) who did pretty much the same with their emails. So I ask again, is this really even a thing? Or yet another conservative attempt to attack another Clinton, or just another Democrat?

Because let's face it, almost everytime in recent history Republicans have called for an investigation like this we have later discovered (as we knew to begin with) that was just a partisan political effort and not a true concern as they openly professed. Just a desire to make their job easier (or possible) by taking down a Democrat in their way.

State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said that: "For some historical context, Secretary Kerry is the first secretary of state to rely primarily on a state.gov email account."

Once the FBI found (or was shown?) classified information in Clinton's or her aide's emails, it triggered an investigation. That means nothing at this point until they finish. It's like the IRS auditing you. It happens. Much of the time it goes nowhere, but it's better to review and be wrong than not and be right. But in this case I see this all as more of an historical event than one of criminal actions.

It is also odd how normally in the conservative mindset this kind of a waste of money would be considered, well, a waste of money. It is through their typical fear and paranoia however that we see the conservative mindset trumped over considerations of money saving and big government involvement, IF there is a potential to prove their fears correct, and especially if it can be at the detriment of a political enemy.

Consider how useless Republicans in congress have been in the past two administrative terms of Barack Obama. How obstructive, destructive and regressive Republicans have been and continue to be. How twisted and turned about their political policies and ideals are and have become. How skewed their priorities are, beyond even that of how skewed most American's priorities have become mostly though Republican efforts and those of their supporters in the military \ corporate \ industrial complex.

I would submit that a similar group of High School students could easily have gotten just as much done and more, and more useful issues settled, had we swapped out all of our Republican Congress with kids. Kids who would have worked together simply for a good grade. All with no connections either to the regressive beliefs, greed or political ignorance of either the "Tea Party" or lobbyists.

I met former and only ever head of both the NSA and the CIA, Michael Hayden back in the 90s at the same security cyber group meetings where we used to get briefings in Seattle from so many smart and in-the-know people. His book Playing To The Edge - American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, is definitely worth a read.

People like Richard Clarke, former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States and many others who went on to becomes heads of departments and agencies. We got briefings from the DIA, NSA and many others over the years drawing cyber and police people from Canada to Washington D.C. to even Australia

Hayden had something interesting to say on Fareed Zakaria today that changed my mind on Hillary's email situation. But it's not how you might think.

Time as we all know, marches on. Technologies advance faster each year so that most of us find it difficult to keep up with. Government departments and agencies tend to lag behind the citizens on much of this. I know I had the newer flat screen monitor technology at home and at work before many if not most government agencies did.

Only in some departments are they consistently abreast of technology, when it is their prime directive. Such departments as the CIA, DHS, the NSA or other lesser known such alphabet soup named agencies we all know and may never have heard of.

What the Hillary email situation has (and I refuse to call it a "scandal", it's just not) brought up is not whether she shared classified documents in her emails. She didn't, though some documents were later classified as secret in either the natural course of events (few I'm sure if any) and through political maneuverings by Republicans (all of them?). Even Michael Hayden gave a nod to that theory in question of the practice of making documents secret after their creation and dissemination.

What is important in all this is that what Hillary did was not illegal, but from here forward it needs to be.

What is important is that for one of the few times, Republican partisan whining as actually brought to fruition, a change in how things are done. Though as adults they could have gone about this in a far more logical and procedural way. But again rather then just do the job they exist for, they had to go about it in such a way as to attempt to inflict damage on a major member of their opposition political party.

It deeply saddens me that half of our political parties are so destructive and self aggrandizing at almost every turn. Why Republicans can't simply do their job, why they have to do almost anything but simply legislate, is quite beyond me. Seriously, beyond any rational and thinking person who does not see government service as anything but a way to serve the people, all the people, and not only those you think you represent or that you feel support you.

Anyway, what is important in all this is progress and making things better.

What had worked in the not so distant past for those like previous Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell when he did the same thing, is no longer worth the risk. Technology and cyber hacking have advanced to a point that we need now to start to positively seek security on an "at war-like" basis. We need professionals, in house, running, monitoring and handling these types of email servers FROM NOW ON.

Because the once invisible Cold War has turned into the not so invisible Cyber War.

My suggestion would be to drop this partisan effort to besmirch the reputation of Secretary Clinton and change the laws. Then audit everyone necessary to be sure they are using the correct procedures being handled by the correct people. People who will be running tech that will continue to be handled correctly both during and after those individuals leave their positions so that there is a continuity of security and advancing their technologies, sometimes on a day by day basis.

The issue here is bigger than Hillary, or Republican's juvenile hatred for her or their attempts to waylay her run for the presidency.

That is to say tech and security needs to be handled by a department and not an individual member of government or their own people, even if they are very good. It needs to be handled by a department whose sole responsibility it is to stay on top of technology and security issues.

Seems like a no brainer, right? Sure, now it seems real obvious, and in highsight.

It's possible an individual Secretary or such person could hire even better people than a government department might have available. But that isn't the only consideration. And yes that department needs to be assured they will always have the best minds and best maintenance of those minds and have the abilities to stay as far ahead of technology and security issues as possible.

We need these changes and an audit now. How to ever get it through a republican held, do nothing congress is beyond me though.

I would apply an audit to assure people are adhering to these new changes, deal with the situation, not chastise anyone at this point, but be sure they and their emails and technologies are properly migrated to where they now need to reside. We don't need a massive witch hunt, we don't need people scurrying about trying to save themselves or others. We just need to be sure things are being done properly NOW and then continue to do them properly from now on. We need people to be on board, not looking for ways to abandon ship.

As Hayden put it if he were a foreign intelligence agency he would be on this with everything he had to try to hack technologies that aren't being handled as will as they could be, or by in house security and technology experts. Though don't be fooled, he'd already I'm sure have been working all along (hopefully unsuccessfully) on those in house types, too.

We need to protect our people. We need to protect their work and efforts as related to their emails and technologies with everything we have. We also need to focus on what is most useful for America, to stop wasting time on trying to count coup on our enemies on the other side of the political partisan aisle.

What is important, what our priorities should and need to be, is the security of America, Americans, and our American government employes and chief execs and through them our foreign country friends. And enemies.

If that last statement confused you, then you should now see why this all needs to be handled by the experts. Experts we have constant access to. People who can address not just the tiny miniscule technical issues involved in day by day, minute by minute, and nanosecond by nanosecond administration of email and technologies, but also the macro sized global issues involved in maintaining national security.

Where nowadays in this fearful new world one email can potentially, change the world.

Let me leave you with this thought....

A very brief video about Bernie Sanders by Dick Van Dyke. What he says is true. Whether or not you think he could or should be President, or could handle it or if he's qualified or he most qualified, Dick Van Dyke is absolutely right in what he says.

#BernieSanders #HillaryClinton #Conservatives

Conservatives fear the DemSoc! Absolutely not, dummy....

In some ways I see Democratic Socialism as a redundancy. Certainly, one doesn't (shouldn't) fear it. Children fear concepts in that way. Conservatives, Republicans do also where fear is a primary focus, rather than intelligent consideration, appropriate actions. And so this is a note to those conservatives and republicans who need to hear these things.

There is literally nothing to fear, but fear itself! 

Well, seriously now. We're living it now, we have been for many decades. So what suddenly is so horrible about i? It's not, it's just a way for conservatives to have a way to have something to sell for people to buy as they have so little. But really you're just buying air from them, animosity, disingenuous diatribe, and ... trouble. 

The idea that socialism is something we should fear, like it's communism in 1950, is ridiculous. 

First, it's not communism. Second, it's not 1950. Third, it's not even socialism. It's a lean away from capitalism and toward fellow human beings. It's not redistribution of wealth, which is a conservative Republican codeword phrase. 

It's paying into government so they simply do the job they have been tasked to accomplish. It's paying for our government to do the jobs we don't want, shouldn't need to deal with, like maintaining the common good across our nation and protecting us so we can get one with our lives.

Good roads, schools, rational healthcare and seeing everyone is taken care of especially those who cannot take care of themselves and others of us as we fall on very hard times. Especially when those hard times are perpetrated upon us by the elite or outside forces. With the dumbing down of America, making education harder to access and more problematic, it makes sense there are now more and more people who cannot take care of themselves. But conservatives would have us ignore them. Cast them aside, because it is easy and cheap. But it is not, either.

Conservatives want people to act like sheep, just do whatever they want and they have been getting their wish, although that comes with a price. Ignorant people lead to people needing more help and guidance and the more you guide them incorrectly, the more you have problems and need to guide them. 
Conservatives have a weird combination of ideals where they don't believe you should teach someone to fish (let them learn it themselves), but then you shouldn't feed them fish either if they don't have it (they should have learned to fish), to refer to an old parable. Then they make it hard to learn to fish.

Bernie Sanders is making sense. It's not news really. It's old information he is just trying to get us to face full on, to stop the nonsense and start the actions leading to making things better...for real.

It's been this long and we still cannot get it:

"The Soul of Man under Socialism is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds a libertarian socialist worldview and a critique of charity.^[1] The writing of The Soul of Man followed Wilde's conversion to anarchist philosophy, following his reading of the works of Peter Kropotkin.

"In The Soul of Man Wilde argues that, under capitalism, "the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism—are forced, indeed, so to spoil them": instead of realising their true talents, they waste their time solving the social problems caused by capitalism, without taking their common cause away. Thus, caring people "seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it" because, as Wilde puts it, "the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible." - Wikipedia

Times they are a changin'....

America needs to clear her collective throat of the conservative sputum that has collected there for so many decades now.

We need to be able to breathe through passages clear and free of this miserable Republican asthma. Cough it up and spit it out into the conservative spittoon, America! Yes, it's almost full but it's on their side of the aisle where it belongs.

Times they are a changin'....

Freedom. Feel the change, feel the free air filling your lungs!

Times are a changing....

We don't need a "Big" Brother who beats us down at every turn. We need a Big "Brother" who squares his shoulders and says that we're not too heavy, who will then carry us to safety. Who will care to see we are all safe and able to be successful, not just his friends, not just his lovers, but all of his extended family.

Times they are a changin'....

I use the "he" metaphor but it could as easily be our "sister", right? Right? No. Not really. And it's not so much our brother, as it is our Dad, an old white guy (even if you're no white). But really i is more like our grandfather, those who have the souls of old codgers; in many cases of an old pervert.

Times they are a changin'....

Be afraid, those of you who have abused us for so long. Be very, very afraid. Or then again, don't even bother being afraid (though you're so good at being fearful, you probably can't stop it anyway). Because nothing you can do will stop what is about to happen.

Times they are a changin'....

Instead get on the bus with the rest of us because truly unlike you, we want to be inclusive. We don't want to cut you out. We want a cohesive and rational America who succeeds for everyone. Not just for a few.

Time they are definitely...
a changin'.

And now, this.... Ed Asner's cartoon explanation of America today.