I've written about this before. Years ago I was in my early 20s and I was invited and went somewhere with someone I knew from work. I was in the Air Force at the time. He and his wife picked me and my wife up at our house. Something I later regretted. We were driven unknowingly across the Washington state border up to a place deep into the Idaho hills to a religious compound of white supremacists.
They were very nice people, but with an underlying sense of dysfunction. Superiorities. Religious and racist superiority. We met their people, their congregation, then were invited into their church in their compound. Their national leader was in from Georgia that day.
As he gave his speech, he railed about racist things for about an hour from the pulpit. My wife was terrified. I was horrified. It was such a stark contrast to talk to very congenial people who suddenly got behind hate with such vehemence and passion.
It was only after the service that their national leader was told about us. That they had new people visiting, checking things out. People who were spoken for by one of their own and a member of the military, which they love. He came over and talked to us.
He couldn't have been nicer and apologized saying that had he known we were there as first timers, he would have toned it down. But I put on a big smile and put him at complete ease. I told him, quite honestly, that I was very happy he didn't hold back because I really wanted to know exactly what they truly believed. He relaxed and was more cheerful after that, less concerned about us.
We were at the back of the church, standing around the bench seats. Several of the oldest women in the group, all in their sixties or even seventies, and were very motivated about their beliefs. I had myself a lot of experience about religion and the bible.
Having grown up Catholic, having been lead Alter Boy, graduated from a Catholic school in 8th grade (actually the only year I attended a Catholic school...long story), then since high school I had been learning about various religions. Having graduated high school in 1973, I had known far too many of the Jesus Freak type's and got very acquainted with their favorite tactics and passages. I also held a large and practiced list in my mind of biblical conflicts.
I could easily shoot down anyone trying to convert me and had even convinced a few people they were following a lost cause. Something I stopped doing one day after I crushed one guy's beliefs and realized that I really had no right to destroy his comfort and religious delusions. He had been at peace, happy, and yet he walked away from me that day lost and confused.
Actually if his faith was that strong, I could never have broken it. Which also speaks some to that mindset that even in the face of reality and facts, people will still hold onto their religious delusions.
I hope it did him good though, because I feared it may not have. So I stopped doing that. I had only done it though because I had gotten so sick of the question from various strangers asking me, "Can I give you my testimony."
These self proclaimed Jesus Freaks wanted to give people some big long story about how they were "born again". I wasn't the only person who got sick of people doing that. You couldn't sit in the high school lunchroom without some nutcase coming up and offering to bore you to death over your meal. Boring because it always seemed to be the same story in general.
So when a bunch of tiny, old racist religious women surrounded my wife and I in the church in a compound in the back hills of Idaho where even the local Sheriff they told us was afraid of them, they didn't know who they were talking to. Still, I was also nervous from the stories we had just heard that day from the pulpit. By their national leader.
It seems someone like me who bought into them but later one day decided to abandon (escape?) them, complained to the Sheriff as soon as he got of their compound. So the local sheriff and friends drove to the compound gate and called up to them. They said the Sheriff's men were afraid of them and would never come onto their property. They said that proudly, with broad smiles. Things like that.
At one point, we realized that we could potentially disappear and NO one would ever know what happened to us or where we had gone. It hadn't occurred to me, thinking we would be going to a church there in town where we lived, that we should tell someone where we were going and who we were going with.
Anyway, I figured as long as we were nice to these people, and positive, we would be perfectly safe. It was pretty surreal and unnerving though. I acted like I was honestly seeking answers from the old women, though I was pretty sure I already had more than enough information on them to make an informed decision.
I quizzed them on the difficult parts of the bible to seem genuine. I had somehow turned from potential member of their flock, to spy. And they had answers. Very convincing answers. I would then say, in order to look like I wasn't sure and then give them the opportunity to convince me..."Okay, then what about..." and would give them another unsolvable, or unanswerable bible passage to respond to. And they always had solid answers. To the point that both my wife and I, started to feel a bit creeped out.
In the end, I gave them a good run. They believed they had us hooked. We thanked everyone, got driven home and....never talked to the guy again. I'd considered, since we had security clearances for nuclear weapons, perhaps I should report the guy.
Not that he did anything wrong. But it was a radical group and I thought it might be better our people knew and were aware, than not. However in telling all this to my best friend, he convinced me not to. Because during the day he pointed out, I worked fifteen miles away from home, on base, and they knew exactly where we lived now. What if I pissed them off? So I just dropped it and that ended it.
So here's my point. And it has to do with our new President. With the Trump administration and much of what we're seeing going on lately.
What I learned that day on that compound of armed, white, American Christian racists was that anytime you find a religion that has all the answers, they don't. They simply do not. So do not trust them. Never trust them. Something is wrong. Because that is the thing about theism and authoritarianism. You can NEVER know all the answers. When anyone ever does, they are seriously misleading you. They are either delusional (be scared) or lying to you (be very wary).
Authoritarians are like that. They think they know it all, or want you to believe they do. They have to seem like they have all the answers, so they can act decisively. But it's a mask. A lie. A sham.
And now we have one of these types in the white house. Only he's not religious. He's a capitalist, a narcissist and a petty, greedy little man.
It occurs to me the changes in human experience since the advent of electricity. Life used to be pretty quiet, pretty sedate. You go to an office, there was no radio, no sounds, people felt that was normal and changing it made you odd, or worrisome. But we adapted. Things started advancing faster, within our lifetime, rather than through several.
Then came radio and the 1960s, opening us to so much. Then Cable TV, MTV, instant media and now we are saturated, addicted to stimuli. Everything has to be bigger, better, stronger, more.
Donald Trump is now president and you see so far how that is going.
It's an obvious progression in that sense. We need a chance to acclimate to this, to learn to reconsider priorities. Not just to react, but to see what we are doing, what is being done to us, how we are acting in ways not us, but of others and too frequently against our own best interests.
We would rather elect drama than worker. Excitement than boredom. Entertainment than social worker. Social. A social worker works for and in society, in government, for people. Conservatives have warped it into something like the red menace, rather than people working with social conscience.
We really need to take a look at ourselves and work for our benefit and not just those who want us to work for their benefit.
How about some good news?
Our next president? It will be very easy for her (or him), to seem like a very awesome and great president indeed!
Cheers!
Monday, March 6, 2017
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
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.
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....
'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....
Monday, February 27, 2017
We Are What Makes America Great
We need to get along in order to be the Great America we are known to be.
We need to be intelligent, as best we can be; educated, as best we can be; humane as best we can be.
We need to be Human beings FIRST and foremost.
We need to be Americans SECOND and proudly with reason to be proud.
We need to be political or partisan THIRD and as Americans.
And finally and some might say most importantly, we need to be atheists, theists, or ideologues... FOURTH.
Because it needs to be fourth.
It needs to be fourth because we live in an amazing country that is multicultural, not only white. Because we do take in the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free." And that is what makes us great, not isolationism, not fear, not revenge, not anger.
That does not mean you cannot put your God first.
It does mean however that if you will find yourself in conflict between your God and OUR America, then you cannot take a public office that will put you into that conflict if it will affect others in their not being able to have their God first. It is what protects us all from abuse in such a country as ours.
You should praise that, because it protects your rights to your beliefs, and everyone elses and just how amazing is that?
We are multi theistic and atheistic, not only Christian.
We are equally male and female and all other genders involved, not only as defined by theism.
If you want your religion then practice it as you see fit. But allow others to practice their own beliefs too as they see fit, and give them the room for themselves so that you too may have the room you need.
Because THAT, is what America is founded upon and THAT is what makes us Great.
We need to be intelligent, as best we can be; educated, as best we can be; humane as best we can be.
We need to be Human beings FIRST and foremost.
We need to be Americans SECOND and proudly with reason to be proud.
We need to be political or partisan THIRD and as Americans.
And finally and some might say most importantly, we need to be atheists, theists, or ideologues... FOURTH.
Because it needs to be fourth.
It needs to be fourth because we live in an amazing country that is multicultural, not only white. Because we do take in the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free." And that is what makes us great, not isolationism, not fear, not revenge, not anger.
That does not mean you cannot put your God first.
It does mean however that if you will find yourself in conflict between your God and OUR America, then you cannot take a public office that will put you into that conflict if it will affect others in their not being able to have their God first. It is what protects us all from abuse in such a country as ours.
You should praise that, because it protects your rights to your beliefs, and everyone elses and just how amazing is that?
We are multi theistic and atheistic, not only Christian.
We are equally male and female and all other genders involved, not only as defined by theism.
If you want your religion then practice it as you see fit. But allow others to practice their own beliefs too as they see fit, and give them the room for themselves so that you too may have the room you need.
Because THAT, is what America is founded upon and THAT is what makes us Great.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
The Art of Kid Talking
Originally posted on Facebook in 2013. I cleaned it up a bit for posting here as I felt it relevant to share again.
I've had many interesting discussion with my son and daughter that I suspect will be going on for a very long time. The are in their mid and late twenties now.
Even when my kids were very young I used to carry on some very interesting conversations with them. My now ex wife would be gone away at horse shows around the Pacific Northwest region and southwest for a week or even three at a time and so I had a lot of time with the kids.
You're missing some truly valuable resources if you don't see how smart the young can be, or even people with semi or even at times severe mental difficulties.
I'd talk to my kids about things way beyond their ability to understand them, just to entertain myself. I'd simplify them enough so that we could actually carry on a conversation, but they frequently had some very interesting and wise things to say.
Out of the mouths of babes.
We seldom do that. Which is sad. For all involved, because it builds critical thinking in them as well as self esteem in their being treated as equals. They usually don't get enough of that. It's actually even solved problems I've had.
One time when my daughter about four, we were on the floor, playing in her room. Out of the blue, she asked me what was wrong.
I was actually having problems at work. So I honestly told her that I didn't think she could help me. She said, "But maybe I can." I laughed. It was ridiculous. She was four. I worked in IT, in a high level computer and internet job. I'd been on some of the top teams in America as a Senior Technical Writer at a large communications company.
But then I figured, purely for her benefit at first, what did I have to lose? And maybe she could simplify things in a way that I couldn't, because I was too close to the problem. If for no other reason. I have a Bachelors Degree in Psychology. I should be able to pull this off, after all. And she was an interesting kid. I won't go into that now but there was something very unique about her. Other people noticed it just in seeing her.
So I got serious, really thinking about it. About how we don't chance things. How we see things so often in such limited ways, in not thinking out of a box and so on.
I thought, what the hell. I simplified the problem down enough for her to grasp and then sat back and listened. And she solved my problem!
At first I took her comments and couldn't figure out how it fit my situation. I almost dropped it right there. But I tend to be tenacious (tenacious "D" fan that I am, or even otherwise). I took the tact of, what if it actually did fit? Maybe I just wasn't applying her answer properly. Perhaps I wasn't seeing it clearly.
As I thought about it I found more and more over those next few minutes that did fit. The more I thought about it, the more I realized...she had actually solved the problem.
From then on, I asked her about other things. I asked my son, who was five years older than her. Like I said, we had some interesting conversations over the years. Especially from that moment forward.
We have so much wonder and wisdom in our lives that we frequently just disregard it. And it's sad. Sad for all involved.
Pathetic really, in how we don't make use of all that we have available to us.
I've had many interesting discussion with my son and daughter that I suspect will be going on for a very long time. The are in their mid and late twenties now.
Even when my kids were very young I used to carry on some very interesting conversations with them. My now ex wife would be gone away at horse shows around the Pacific Northwest region and southwest for a week or even three at a time and so I had a lot of time with the kids.
You're missing some truly valuable resources if you don't see how smart the young can be, or even people with semi or even at times severe mental difficulties.
I'd talk to my kids about things way beyond their ability to understand them, just to entertain myself. I'd simplify them enough so that we could actually carry on a conversation, but they frequently had some very interesting and wise things to say.
Out of the mouths of babes.
We seldom do that. Which is sad. For all involved, because it builds critical thinking in them as well as self esteem in their being treated as equals. They usually don't get enough of that. It's actually even solved problems I've had.
One time when my daughter about four, we were on the floor, playing in her room. Out of the blue, she asked me what was wrong.
I was actually having problems at work. So I honestly told her that I didn't think she could help me. She said, "But maybe I can." I laughed. It was ridiculous. She was four. I worked in IT, in a high level computer and internet job. I'd been on some of the top teams in America as a Senior Technical Writer at a large communications company.
But then I figured, purely for her benefit at first, what did I have to lose? And maybe she could simplify things in a way that I couldn't, because I was too close to the problem. If for no other reason. I have a Bachelors Degree in Psychology. I should be able to pull this off, after all. And she was an interesting kid. I won't go into that now but there was something very unique about her. Other people noticed it just in seeing her.
So I got serious, really thinking about it. About how we don't chance things. How we see things so often in such limited ways, in not thinking out of a box and so on.
I thought, what the hell. I simplified the problem down enough for her to grasp and then sat back and listened. And she solved my problem!
At first I took her comments and couldn't figure out how it fit my situation. I almost dropped it right there. But I tend to be tenacious (tenacious "D" fan that I am, or even otherwise). I took the tact of, what if it actually did fit? Maybe I just wasn't applying her answer properly. Perhaps I wasn't seeing it clearly.
As I thought about it I found more and more over those next few minutes that did fit. The more I thought about it, the more I realized...she had actually solved the problem.
From then on, I asked her about other things. I asked my son, who was five years older than her. Like I said, we had some interesting conversations over the years. Especially from that moment forward.
We have so much wonder and wisdom in our lives that we frequently just disregard it. And it's sad. Sad for all involved.
Pathetic really, in how we don't make use of all that we have available to us.
Friday, February 24, 2017
Sex or Violence? Choose.
It seems really weird, a kind of stunted child development of our legislators that sex and weed are the devil's tools, but guns are God's gift to humanity. Is it really true that sex and nudity are obscene but violence is not? We are seeing many abuses of Americans and our government on the Trump Republican side of things.
This bleeds over into the conservative agenda of pushing guns on America but maintaining that legalizing cannabis is bad when it has been shown clearly to be good for America, lessening crime, cutting out Mexican and other drug cartels from drug trade in America and yet we have not yet legalized cannabis all across the country out of ignorance and ideologies.
Why is violence a God to conservatives? And sex (and weed) the tools of the Devil or something? The Trump administration is now floating the idea of cracking down on legalized Cannabis. There go state's rights after all their talk about them.
Guns good. Weed bad. Really? Alcohol good, weed bad? Behaviors that harm are good, but getting stoned, watching TV, eating munchies is bad? But carrying guns literally anywhere is good?
So a kids watching two people showing love and kindness and say walking on a beach naked is utterly horrible but watching people blown apart with guns is okay and fine? How did we ever get to THAT point?
I guess because the former gives you liberals and the latter, conservatives?
Then I vote for the former if we have to choose. Why is it bad for conservatives in their mind? Because fear. Because what if we go to war. Because we set up and cause so many environments requiring war all around the world. What if we used diplomacy and an agenda of setting up people for success rather than invasion and death?
How messed up is that?
Nudity and sex in films and frankly, even in life, is bad, horrible (so we should force women to wear full body bags and only show their eyes or we might get what, a twinge in the crotch?). Grow up guys, Be a real man, be responsible for YOUR own actions.
Yet violence, people being blown away from gun shots, heads torn completely off, people blown up with bombs, even cannibalism is good clean fun. Well yeah, I'd agree to a degree.
Make believe violence is so much more preferable than real violence and yet so many people don't seem to get that.
Why? Is it because conservatives just can't seem to understand things that are counter-intuitive, but true?
Regardless, WTF people?
This bleeds over into the conservative agenda of pushing guns on America but maintaining that legalizing cannabis is bad when it has been shown clearly to be good for America, lessening crime, cutting out Mexican and other drug cartels from drug trade in America and yet we have not yet legalized cannabis all across the country out of ignorance and ideologies.
Why is violence a God to conservatives? And sex (and weed) the tools of the Devil or something? The Trump administration is now floating the idea of cracking down on legalized Cannabis. There go state's rights after all their talk about them.
Guns good. Weed bad. Really? Alcohol good, weed bad? Behaviors that harm are good, but getting stoned, watching TV, eating munchies is bad? But carrying guns literally anywhere is good?
So a kids watching two people showing love and kindness and say walking on a beach naked is utterly horrible but watching people blown apart with guns is okay and fine? How did we ever get to THAT point?
I guess because the former gives you liberals and the latter, conservatives?
Then I vote for the former if we have to choose. Why is it bad for conservatives in their mind? Because fear. Because what if we go to war. Because we set up and cause so many environments requiring war all around the world. What if we used diplomacy and an agenda of setting up people for success rather than invasion and death?
How messed up is that?
Nudity and sex in films and frankly, even in life, is bad, horrible (so we should force women to wear full body bags and only show their eyes or we might get what, a twinge in the crotch?). Grow up guys, Be a real man, be responsible for YOUR own actions.
Yet violence, people being blown away from gun shots, heads torn completely off, people blown up with bombs, even cannibalism is good clean fun. Well yeah, I'd agree to a degree.
Make believe violence is so much more preferable than real violence and yet so many people don't seem to get that.
Why? Is it because conservatives just can't seem to understand things that are counter-intuitive, but true?
Regardless, WTF people?
Monday, February 20, 2017
Exterrestrial Contact Clock
We have had a method based in scientific consideration about our potential for nuclear war from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The clock was reset recently to 2.5 minutes to midnight. When it hits midnight, we're toast.
2017: For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.”
In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way. See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2017 time of the Doomsday Clock.
According to the Bulletin's statement: The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work.”
It has been derided by some, feared by many. It is an obvious way that non scientists can get a handle on where we are at.
I'd like to suggest another clock. One that is a bit more positive, a bit less punitive and a bit more attractive. Considering there may be extraterrestrials out there who really want to explore, make new friends and not just the horror show some have claimed may be their intention, I'd like to see a Contact Clock, for how far we are from extraterrestrials visiting us.
As with the human element to Climate Change, for those who disbelieve in it, even against all the scientific facts involved, it still does us great good to go along as if it is true, even if it weren't. We would finally get off industrial age energy, petroleum, coal, even natural gas, though it's far better than the other two forms.
A Contact Clock would give us a way to see if we are moving toward a kind of global community of humanity that would attract a positive feeling from non terrestrials about us.
The argument against contact by such as Stephen Hawking and others, is that we have seen in our own history how contact by an advanced group toward a more primal group, tends to destroy that visited group.
And yet, it seems Hawking's desire to know if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe trumps his fears. Today (July 20), he was part of a public announcement for a new initiative called Breakthrough Listen, which organizers said will be the most powerful search ever initiated for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]
Examples of destructive encounters with advanced nations on earth have been either through outright destruction as with the Spanish toward the Aztecs, or where giving a primitive society advanced technologies that led to the destruction of their culture and many times led to that group either disappointing, becoming alcoholics or worse.
However only focusing on contact being by an aggressive, or even slave trade (or even culinary) extraterrestrial force, brings us nowhere. If they are that advanced, we're lost anyway. However, if they lean more toward the positive versions of contact with humankind in their contacting more primitive cultures, it would certainly benefit us to move along those lines.
Ii is in that case that we need to consider how we look to outsiders.
Are we appearing externally to act like children, and violent children at that? Are we prepared to maintain our own culture, in being psychologically cohesive and strong enough to withstand an influx of drastically new cultures, of immensely new forms of technologies?
Are we sociologically capable of even handling a contact? We can barely handle dealing with other countries that are different from what we are used to.
If we start now to move toward our productively and intelligently handling those things, if we can make ourselves appear more attractive for contact, even if there is no other race in the universe, we will still be all the better for it.
We have already seen much thought on this issue of contact. Both in sociology, science and speculative fiction, as well as in the fields of pure science.
One thought is that we are at a very noisy stage of our technological development. A more advanced society would be quieter and in our projecting broadcast signals out into deep space, we may be telegraphing how primitive we still are. Just as we are seeing a trend to go from broadcast to cable, to silent forms of communications, as in forms such as the internet, more advanced cultures who might themselves be silent in their more economical uses of energy and communications, may view us as much more reasonable to consider contacting us..
When we listen, we may quite reasonably not hear a thing from far off intelligently populated planets. Possibly because their old broadcast TV signals passed us by when we were neanderthals. The signals from the old 1950s TV show, I Love Lucy have been calculated as having now reached out as far as 60 light years from us back in 2011.
And so there is a Contact Clock already, currently set to five minutes to midnight.
"The Official Countdown to Contact Clock which began June 17, 2014 is a real-time countdown to contact between humanity and beings that exist outside of our known reality sphere and is visually represented by the minutes left until the clock hands strike midnight. The TOR Contact Clock is a mirror of the infamous Doomsday Clock which signifies a countdown to nuclear oblivion. The TOR Contact Clock offers an alternative reality belief system in which humanity is not destroyed by the military-industrial-complex mindset, but alternatively, glides into a parallel reality in which humanity shrugs off the old, barbaric ways and enters into a final stretch of open contact and strong relationships with peaceful galactic neighboring civilizations."
I'm not so sure they are the ones to be doing this. But the concept is a valid one. We need a guage by which to judge who we are and how we are developing. The Doomsday Clock is a wake up call about a serious issue. We need to be aware of that.
Still, we also need to see the more positive side of our development and reasons for it. Not just to avoid destruction. But also to have a goal to attain that is more positive.
2017: For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.”
In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way. See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2017 time of the Doomsday Clock.
According to the Bulletin's statement: The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work.”
It has been derided by some, feared by many. It is an obvious way that non scientists can get a handle on where we are at.
I'd like to suggest another clock. One that is a bit more positive, a bit less punitive and a bit more attractive. Considering there may be extraterrestrials out there who really want to explore, make new friends and not just the horror show some have claimed may be their intention, I'd like to see a Contact Clock, for how far we are from extraterrestrials visiting us.
As with the human element to Climate Change, for those who disbelieve in it, even against all the scientific facts involved, it still does us great good to go along as if it is true, even if it weren't. We would finally get off industrial age energy, petroleum, coal, even natural gas, though it's far better than the other two forms.
A Contact Clock would give us a way to see if we are moving toward a kind of global community of humanity that would attract a positive feeling from non terrestrials about us.
The argument against contact by such as Stephen Hawking and others, is that we have seen in our own history how contact by an advanced group toward a more primal group, tends to destroy that visited group.
And yet, it seems Hawking's desire to know if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe trumps his fears. Today (July 20), he was part of a public announcement for a new initiative called Breakthrough Listen, which organizers said will be the most powerful search ever initiated for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]
Examples of destructive encounters with advanced nations on earth have been either through outright destruction as with the Spanish toward the Aztecs, or where giving a primitive society advanced technologies that led to the destruction of their culture and many times led to that group either disappointing, becoming alcoholics or worse.
However only focusing on contact being by an aggressive, or even slave trade (or even culinary) extraterrestrial force, brings us nowhere. If they are that advanced, we're lost anyway. However, if they lean more toward the positive versions of contact with humankind in their contacting more primitive cultures, it would certainly benefit us to move along those lines.
Ii is in that case that we need to consider how we look to outsiders.
Are we appearing externally to act like children, and violent children at that? Are we prepared to maintain our own culture, in being psychologically cohesive and strong enough to withstand an influx of drastically new cultures, of immensely new forms of technologies?
Are we sociologically capable of even handling a contact? We can barely handle dealing with other countries that are different from what we are used to.
If we start now to move toward our productively and intelligently handling those things, if we can make ourselves appear more attractive for contact, even if there is no other race in the universe, we will still be all the better for it.
We have already seen much thought on this issue of contact. Both in sociology, science and speculative fiction, as well as in the fields of pure science.
One thought is that we are at a very noisy stage of our technological development. A more advanced society would be quieter and in our projecting broadcast signals out into deep space, we may be telegraphing how primitive we still are. Just as we are seeing a trend to go from broadcast to cable, to silent forms of communications, as in forms such as the internet, more advanced cultures who might themselves be silent in their more economical uses of energy and communications, may view us as much more reasonable to consider contacting us..
When we listen, we may quite reasonably not hear a thing from far off intelligently populated planets. Possibly because their old broadcast TV signals passed us by when we were neanderthals. The signals from the old 1950s TV show, I Love Lucy have been calculated as having now reached out as far as 60 light years from us back in 2011.
And so there is a Contact Clock already, currently set to five minutes to midnight.
"The Official Countdown to Contact Clock which began June 17, 2014 is a real-time countdown to contact between humanity and beings that exist outside of our known reality sphere and is visually represented by the minutes left until the clock hands strike midnight. The TOR Contact Clock is a mirror of the infamous Doomsday Clock which signifies a countdown to nuclear oblivion. The TOR Contact Clock offers an alternative reality belief system in which humanity is not destroyed by the military-industrial-complex mindset, but alternatively, glides into a parallel reality in which humanity shrugs off the old, barbaric ways and enters into a final stretch of open contact and strong relationships with peaceful galactic neighboring civilizations."
I'm not so sure they are the ones to be doing this. But the concept is a valid one. We need a guage by which to judge who we are and how we are developing. The Doomsday Clock is a wake up call about a serious issue. We need to be aware of that.
Still, we also need to see the more positive side of our development and reasons for it. Not just to avoid destruction. But also to have a goal to attain that is more positive.
Monday, February 13, 2017
Vladimir Putin, Russian Mobster, Pres. Trump Hero
Both Pres. Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping admire President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation.
I've been warning the public about Vladimir Putin [Mikhail Ivanovich] literally since the first months he took power in 1999. Ivanovich, Putin's alleged nickname, is a name gleamed from a 1969 Russian comedy film. Actor Stanislav Chekan played Mikhail Ivanovoch, Captain, then Major of militsiya. Also Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin known familiarly by Soviet citizens as "Kalinych", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist functionary. Another was an opera singer by that name.
Once in power Putin kept himself there. Our President Trump at allegedly $10 billion, loves this jerk. Probably because he's illegally gotten away with becoming massively wealthy. By one report in a 2014 documentary, to the amount of 60 million euros. My understanding of Mr. Trump is that he is of a similar cut of the cloth in his own business dealings to a much minor extent.
Donald Trump is not at a financial level with Putin. Where Mr. Trump may have walked the fine line of legalities in America, I would assume he has had to use somewhat rough methods to achieve so much silence in this time of his becoming and being, president.
Putin however is more murderer and thug to Mr. Trump's illiberal businessman demeanor, to be overly polite and politic. Putin wears vastly expensive watches, even giving them away at times. though he claims he only makes the meager sums he is paid as his position dictates.
"And some people, including myself, believe that he's the richest man in the world, or one of the richest men in the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth that was stolen from Russia." [When] asked by [journalist Fareed] Zakaria what Putin's net worth is, Browder replied, "I believe that it's $200 billion."
[Kremlin whistle blower Sergei] Kolesnikov, who published a 2012 article in "Vedomosti" titled "Putin Forever," says the Russian leader's controversial third-term reelection convinced him that after years of criminal self-enrichment, the only way to stave off prosecution was to remain in power.
"Putin's entire chain of command is built on a foundation of corruption," Kolesnikov says. "To see power go to another party or other people would be to put themselves under enormous threat of criminal investigation and inevitable punishment." That, is Vladimir Putin.
That is the man the new American President Trump admires so much. And that greatly speaks to just who our new president is and what his orientation is.
We are seeing a Trump administration in the White House who seem to be clueless that they are actually in the White House, running the government. Luckily, Federal Judges and appeals courts have reigned him in. Something they have sorely needed.
Mishaps with Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and presidential counselor Kellyann Conway have led to restraint on their parts. As well in senior presidential advisor "I can barely read pre written scripts off que cards during interviews" Stephen Miller, who has added confusion to their messaging.
These people appear to be lacking any sense of what they are supposed to be doing. Not in what is most desired by the administration, though that too seems somewhat lacking. Mostly they seem to be best at not doing what is in the best interests of the country.
Yes, it is the same with every new administration. The question always being, how long will the indoctrination period last? With the Trump administration it is very likely that it could last until the end of the Trump presidential term, if not longer.
With a crew like this on his administration and his exhibiting admiration for criminals like Vladimir Putin, this loose canon of a president should have only up to go from here. Or does he? As he still shows potential for continuing to go down again and again and again.
#POTUS #PUTIN
I've been warning the public about Vladimir Putin [Mikhail Ivanovich] literally since the first months he took power in 1999. Ivanovich, Putin's alleged nickname, is a name gleamed from a 1969 Russian comedy film. Actor Stanislav Chekan played Mikhail Ivanovoch, Captain, then Major of militsiya. Also Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin known familiarly by Soviet citizens as "Kalinych", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist functionary. Another was an opera singer by that name.
Putting it simple, Putin is a criminal. He is also, as Donald Trump is in America, Russia's worst political cancer and needs to go merely for the sake of Russia, but as well for the rest of the world. Russia definitely needs more than anything to be rid of him. Putin has been involved in criminal activities since leaving the KGB. He was then elevated by being put into power by Boris Yeltsin in order to replace him. And in order to protect Yeltsin from prosecution, from his own actions to be clear. Putin then absolved Yeltsin and his family from prosecution or further investigation.
Once in power Putin kept himself there. Our President Trump at allegedly $10 billion, loves this jerk. Probably because he's illegally gotten away with becoming massively wealthy. By one report in a 2014 documentary, to the amount of 60 million euros. My understanding of Mr. Trump is that he is of a similar cut of the cloth in his own business dealings to a much minor extent.
Donald Trump is not at a financial level with Putin. Where Mr. Trump may have walked the fine line of legalities in America, I would assume he has had to use somewhat rough methods to achieve so much silence in this time of his becoming and being, president.
Putin however is more murderer and thug to Mr. Trump's illiberal businessman demeanor, to be overly polite and politic. Putin wears vastly expensive watches, even giving them away at times. though he claims he only makes the meager sums he is paid as his position dictates.
"And some people, including myself, believe that he's the richest man in the world, or one of the richest men in the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth that was stolen from Russia." [When] asked by [journalist Fareed] Zakaria what Putin's net worth is, Browder replied, "I believe that it's $200 billion."
[Kremlin whistle blower Sergei] Kolesnikov, who published a 2012 article in "Vedomosti" titled "Putin Forever," says the Russian leader's controversial third-term reelection convinced him that after years of criminal self-enrichment, the only way to stave off prosecution was to remain in power.
"Putin's entire chain of command is built on a foundation of corruption," Kolesnikov says. "To see power go to another party or other people would be to put themselves under enormous threat of criminal investigation and inevitable punishment." That, is Vladimir Putin.
That is the man the new American President Trump admires so much. And that greatly speaks to just who our new president is and what his orientation is.
Mishaps with Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and presidential counselor Kellyann Conway have led to restraint on their parts. As well in senior presidential advisor "I can barely read pre written scripts off que cards during interviews" Stephen Miller, who has added confusion to their messaging.
These people appear to be lacking any sense of what they are supposed to be doing. Not in what is most desired by the administration, though that too seems somewhat lacking. Mostly they seem to be best at not doing what is in the best interests of the country.
Yes, it is the same with every new administration. The question always being, how long will the indoctrination period last? With the Trump administration it is very likely that it could last until the end of the Trump presidential term, if not longer.
With a crew like this on his administration and his exhibiting admiration for criminals like Vladimir Putin, this loose canon of a president should have only up to go from here. Or does he? As he still shows potential for continuing to go down again and again and again.
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