The Swamp

Now, if I was going to "drain the swamp" in Washington, I think I might start off with former Goldman Sachs employees, or any former big bank employees for that matter, who now hold some sort of office in Washington. Right? Would some how make sense considering the role the banks, and specifically Goldman Sachs, played in the 2008 worldwide financial crash. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their businesses in the recession that the crisis sparked, the worst economic downward descent since the Great Depression. So unless you live under a rock, you know that Wall Street, specifically Goldman Sachs and cohorts, were willing to screw people out of their pensions, homes and investments to put money in their own pockets. And they did. Big time. If I was someone who had run for president on the "drain the swamp" ticket, I sure wouldn't be hiring folks from Goldman Sachs and other big banks that were too big to fail but not too big to take money from taxpayers. Would you? It's not as if Wall Street isn't a longtime established player in Washington, there have been many former employees present in many administrations but Trump presented himself as an economic nationalist determined to not to be a lackey to Wall Street. So what's up President Trump? Now that Jim Donovan has joined the team, Trump has five Goldman Sachs expats
in high level positions. Even White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus reportedly tried blocking Donovan from the Treasury because he had fears of an image problem with too many “Goldman guys.” But Donovan got the post anyway. Other big banks are represented in Trump's team as well, One West Bank, who were especially brutal to homeowners, and Bear Stearns just name a few more.
But it’s not just the presence of ex-bank executives that is so scary, it’s Trump's agenda, oriented to Wall Street’s wishes. Trump has settled into an agenda of tax cuts and deregulations for the financial industry. When I read the word deregulation in the same sentence as Wall Street, I feel pretty disconcerted. In February Trump signed an executive order to get rid of regulations preventing private equity funds to be a game player in the 401k game. These schemes involve a higher risk and
can, as we have seen the in past, go really bad. So is this is what Trump meant by draining the swamp? He never intended to drain the swamp, he couldn't care less about draining the swamp. All just talk and as we all know, talk is cheap.

Art of the....Presidential fake everything

Our President has been besieged with both good and bad news and we the citizens have also been under siege with confusing news from all media. Our problem is that most of the news that we have problems with is actually from our President. My guess is that he can say anything and 43% of the population will believe it although the Senate Intelligence has found no evidence that it happened, which I guess gives each and every citizen the right to create fake news and we will be at the mercy of a Congressional investigation to prove it true or false but of course we do not have to believe any of it which is creating a country that is going in the wrong direction and four years of make believe by the millionaire and his billionaire mercenaries, we are doomed to play this game and we will never see an end to this. The President was always the voice of reason and actually concerned with what the American people believed now we are at the humor of the Joker who is always playing a game on us.
   Has he made any deals that have really helped the American people, it is doubtful and most of his executive orders have only done harm. Ryancare is going to put 24 million more people without insurance, it is being treated like an entitlement rather than a right of each citizen, I thought the whole idea was to make it affordable for the American people not a huge cost savings for Congress, but of course if Ryancare wasn't to pass or actually fail we would still have option two Trumpcare wbich he I'm sure has no idea how to put into place, I guess his art of the deal is to simply take credit for the good and place blame for the failures, without any alternatives. How can a President voted into power by lower white middle class forget they even exist when creating programs for the American wealthy class, it's okay there are several red hats available for all our middle class citizens, which is about all they will ever receive from this millionaire but of course they will be purchased at a discount. All Republican politicians had better use their entitled job to make wealth because several will be without a job in 2018, you along with Christie will be pounding the pavement looking for service jobs and you deserve nothing, good luck trying to ever get back into politics that door will be closed forever, real jobs in your future.
   Immigration halted, wall up for bid, coal miners no jobs, steel workers no jobs, market starting to tank, healthcare soon to be taken away. ISIS still in Iraq and Syria and probably in Europe and even in the US, what have you done to make the American people safer and more prosperous, NOTHING. I am sure all your cabinet members and special advisors are planning all their wealth gains and all the amazing deals they will be able to pull off, but really who can control them when our number one is the biggest deal maker and he will surely lead the pack as we raid the coffers and maintain his millionaire life style, class cannot be bought but he will never stop trying, and we as citizens of this circus will have to stand by and take it, please may I have another and another, it will never get better for the middle class, ever. Please ride that ego train and try to improve the USA, unfortunately we are stuck together for four years.
Rant over
South Jersey out

Trump's Massive Tax Cuts?

Trump has glibly promised massive tax cuts for "the middle class, the forgotten people, the forgotten men and women of this country, who built our country”. Unfortunately if we take a good look at his tax cuts it appears that the only people who will benefit big time are the richest 1%. Meanwhile more than 8 million with children are to be at a disadvantage and are expected to suffer under his proposed tax plan. Is anyone really surprised by this? Maybe the peolple who voted for him are but I can't imagine anyone else is.
Lily Batchelder, a law professor and tax expert at NYU has stated that “The Trump tax plan is heavily, heavily, skewed to the most wealthy, who will receive huge savings. At the same time, millions of low-income families – particularly single-parent households – will face an increase.”
Ms. Batchelder who wrote an academic paper on Trump's tax plan which was published by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, has also stated that "The president's plan “significantly raises taxes” for at least 8.5 million families, with “especially large tax increases for working single parents”. More than 26m individuals live in those families. According to Ms. Batchelder’s research Trump’s tax "reforms" – if taken at their “most conservative” – could leave just over half of America’s nearly 11m single-parent households facing an increased tax burden. This figure rises to 61% – or 7m households – if the analysis is run on “reasonable assumptions” that the changes Trump has suggested go ahead.
Single-parent families would suffer the most because Trump is planning on lowering the amount of tax-free earnings to $15,000 per adult, regardless of the number of children in the household. Under current law the threshold is $17,400 for single-parent families with one child and $24,750 for a couple with one child, and the threshold increases by $4,050 for each additional child.
The richest 1% will collect 47% of all the tax cuts – an average saving of $214,000. 
So while the poor will face tax increases, the rich will receive big tax cuts that get even bigger as you work up the income scale. So where is the massive tax cut for the forgotten people?
 Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has said.  “America is already very unequal, and his proposals would make income inequality a lot worse,” This is obviously quite worrisome. If he rode to victory on a middle-income wave of support, those middle Americans will be very disappointed.”
Well that doth indeed sucketh.

International Women's Day and Trump

Happy International Women's Day, ladies!
I thought a fun way to celebrate would be to list just a few of Trump's chauvinistic, insulting and disparaging comments he has made about women through the many years of his unsavory public life.
Lest we forget who we are dealing with here....

1. In a May 1991 Esquire magazine profile, Trump said this in lieu of his recent bad press: "You know, it really doesn’t matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass. But she’s got to be young and beautiful."

2. "You’re disgusting." Trump hurled at the woman lawyer who asked to take a break during a deposition, to pump breast milk for her 3-month-old daughter.

3. He insulted New York Times columnist Gail Collins. Trump sent her a copy of one of her columns, in which she called him a "financially embattled thousandaire," he circled her columnist picture and added a note saying, "The Face of a Dog."

4. He has insulted Arianna Huffington on several occasions, "Arianna Huffington is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her husband left her for a man- he made a good decision."

5. He felt it necessary to tweet that Bette Midler is an extremely unattractive woman.

6. He has called Rosie O'Donnell, among other things, crude, rude obnoxious and dumb. “Rosie O'Donnell is disgusting, both inside and out. If you take a look at her, she's a slob. How does she even get on television? If I were running The View, I'd fire Rosie. I'd look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers and say, 'Rosie, you're fired.'

7. Trump has been quoted as saying that women who seek abortions should receive "some form of punishment" if abortions become banned. He has since renigged on this, but hey, he put it out there, this he can't deny.

8. Trump has attacked Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren repeatedly calling her "goofy," (goofy, really??) "a fraud," and, like Clinton, someone who is "playing the woman’s card."

9. He obviously had a weird problem with the fact that Miss Universe Alicia Machado had put on weight. During the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called out Trump for his history of chauvinistic comments. In particular, she called attention to Trump body-shaming Machado, whom he has called "Miss Piggy," "Miss Housekeeping," and an "eating machine."

10. Megyn Kelly has often been a target of his inappropriate comments...
After the first debate Trump called her a “bimbo”in one of his inimitable tweets.
He later implied her tough line of questioning was because she was menstruating.
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever,” he said.
He has also called Ms. Kelly “really weird, “crazy,” “the most overrated anchor,” “very bad at math,” “dopey,” “so average in every way”“Never worth watching”“sick”“the most overrated person on TV,” “Highly overrated” and a “lightweight.”

11. This is what he had to say about former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina....
 “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?
“Can you imagine that, the face of our next next president? I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”

12.He has insulted the German ice skating champion Katarina Witt..."Wonderful looking while on the ice but up close and personal, she could only be described as attractive if you like a woman with a bad complexion who is built like a linebacker".

13. He, of course hit Hillary hard during the campaign, implying that if she couldn't satisfy her husband, how could she satisfy the USA? At a rally, he also called her an enabler to Bill Clinton's affairs “Bill Clinton was the worst in history and I have to listen to her talking about it?" he said in Eugene, Oregon. “Just remember this: She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler.

14. In an interview with New York Magazine in 1992 , Trump uttered this charming phrase about women: 'You have to treat 'em like s----'.


 15. And of course the all time low..
the  emergence of a video in which he discusses "grabbing (women) by the p****" and states that “when you’re a star, they let you do it”. Wonder what they let you do when you are president?
President Trump, before he was of course our elected commander in chief, is seen using lewd and sexually aggressive language to brag about groping and trying to have sex with women, including someone who was married, in footage obtained by the Washington Post.
In the video, Trump was recorded talking about a woman, who, thankfully for her sake remains unnamed, to Billy Bush, who was then a host for TV entertainment show Access Hollywood.
“I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it,” Trump says. “I did try and f--- her. She was married.
“And I moved on her very heavily... I moved on her like a b----, but I couldn’t get there."

So these are just a few of the President's comments over the years. Do we really have to ask if an International Women's Day is still relevant? What does this say about our society and what women have achieved when a man like Trump is sitting in the oval office? Pretty sad.

Russians....Republicans......who can help us?

Okay Sessions meets with the same top rated Russian spy as Flynn, but he just side steps the grim reaper he recuses himself from investigating himself and Flynn which of course make sense, but shouldn't he fall on his sword like Flynn did ,where is the honor in recusing himself when Flynn had to resign for doing the same thing except he misled the VP. How can these people not accept responsibility for all their wrong doing, even Trump is pissed because Sessions recused himself because it makes him look bad, don't dare make the boss look stupid it really hurts his massive ego, so the blame game begins and the spin starts to spin and out of the blue it is Obama's fault. Why would the president authorize wire taps on Trump, he has no secrets that he hasn't tweeted, so let throw a smoke bomb to get people off the Russian investigation. Can his political base even grasp what kind of nonsense this amounts to, crazy if his fervent fan base can believe anything he says, especially a 6:30 AM tweet, that he saw on right wing new services, my God, Melania keep that guy busy at least until he has had time to have breakfast and can actually think and put together some thoughts and remember that he is the President of the USA, normal citizens cannot believe this made up shit anymore.
   Now the Senate has called for investigation, but to what it seems that an investigation is called for at the drop of a hat, first the Russian crisis and now the Obama crisis, how about the crisis that is the Trump twins receiving Secret Service protection, I thought they were big game hunters, they can't protect themselves, the tax payer is responsible for the White House, Trump Tower, Mar a Lago, KellyAne Conway, Trump twins travel we are going to go broke just covering all these people from the boogie man, it needs to stop or no money for the wall.
   Let's not forget ISIS they are still inhabiting the earth and unless the Generals have a secret plan, Trump still has not moved on them and apparently he has out sourced this task to Putin, but for what price I ask, is he going to take credit for Putin's handy work, let's finish this work and rid the world of   the beheaders of American citizens, they have lived way too long and have not faced the wrath of the American military might. Fulfill your campaign promises and eliminate these radical Islamist terrorists, then you can build your wall to protect the Americans from leaving the country for Canada and Mexico. Make America the melting pot it always was and always will be, we don't need to stop the goal of all incoming dreamers we need to support them and make our country great again.
  What are the plans for coal and steel we need to lay this out so your political base can continue to support you, be honest to they people and give them a plan, they deserve it and it seems that no one will stand for them even though they stood for you. How..when...what time frame, these are American workers and former immigrants that deserve you to resolve their future.
   Rant over...South Jersey out.

War Propaganda?

Here is a link, to what is in my opinion, a really intelligent article by Glenn Greenwald for "The Intercept" on Trump's use of a grieving woman, (standing next to Ivanka Trump, really?) during his speech before Congress. This woman's husband was killed in a commando raid in Jemen that Trump ordered. It was obviously intended to be a powerful moment during the televised speech where Trump is seen as showing great empathy for this poor young widow. Sustained applause. Some media commentators gushed about Trump's true presidential moment. Now, Trump isn't the first to use to this tactic of using suffering soldiers and their families, it seems to be quite popular among Presidents, Obama and George W. Bush also seemed to find it effective. Many civilians were also killed in this raid, including nine children, but the of course are not mentioned. This is also key to an effective form of war propaganda, politicians and media commentators fixate on the number of Americans being killed but the innocents (collateral damage?) remain for the most part nameless and faceless. How else can a war on terror  turn into a never ending war? (And who is fighting this war? The financially and socially disadvantaged, not the offspring of the elite and financially powerful.) Americans must continue to regard themselves as victims and not as perpetrators, the enemy has to be dehumanized, we cannot be privy to families of the fallen civilians grieving for their loved and lost.
But here is the real key to Trump's performance and c'mon, I am not saying he isn't sympathetic but the time and place to showing his sympathy is, as always, used to his advantage, and here I quote......
"The ritualistic tribute to dead or wounded U.S. soldiers has other purposes as well: It attempts — not using rational formulas but rather emotional impulses — to transfer the nobility of the slain soldier onto the war itself; after all, how unjust could a war be when such brave and admirable American soldiers are fighting in it?
And it is also intended that the soldier’s nobility will be transferred to his commander in chief who is so solemnly honoring him. As demonstrated by the skyrocketing post-9/11 approval ratings for George Bush and the endless political usage Obama obtained for killing Osama bin Laden, nothing makes us rally around a president like uplifting war sentiment."
Glenn Greenwald "The Intercept" 
Read the article and keep in mind that this how many Europeans see our war effort.

Bernie Sanders' Response To Trump's Speech To Congress

Make Empathy Great Again

via awelltraveledwoman