HyperNormalisation

Here is a link to an interesting documentary....HyperNormalisation from Adam Curtis. This documentary tries to explain some of the craziness we are experiencing today and how we got where we are. There is no rational explanation for Trump having been elected president but Curtis does make an effort at reasoning why. Here the blurb to the film....
"HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before." via thought maybe
Check it out.

This is Really a Mock Government

All the news is fake and actually all government that we know in the United States is also fake. Our so called President has gone and done what all Presidents are so afraid of doing and that is creating crisis and not solving problems but creating them, he has crossed the line and his White House is tearing apart the USA in such a way we might as well divide the country. Trump has interjected himself in every government short coming and has miserably failed at uniting the country, the divisions between people are enormous and his policies continue to separate the economic classes like never before. He continues to sign executive orders that go no further than the length of his desk. Immigration has failed and will probably end up in the Supreme Court, and if all retiring judges will outlast him they all will replaced, with a democratic majority, simply pass using the nuclear option and fifty one votes is a winner, McConnell was so pushing for Trump to have one win he has opened up the door to destroy the Republican platform for decades to come, thanks Mitch but I think your wife still would have passed confirmation and Schumer will be dancing all over the Senate in 2018.
   Unfortunately Trump was let loose in the Middle East and Europe and now we will struggle to patch up relations with the entire world. His school boy smile and elementary messages were seen as a brain possibly damaged by constantly bumping into the mirror ,have positioned the American people in a grip on his forever growing EGO, maybe now his ardent base of conservative evangelicals might see him for what he is an orange faced blonde seventy year old teenager with a constant need for attention. I understand the massive ego but why not try and gain some attention and respect by actually trying to make the American people great again, on the world stage with his mock government we will never be great again and that is his biggest failure. The art of the deal is now being completed with finger paint and crayons, we need adult leadership to help him get out of this terrible mess, we can't continue to clean up his play area and accept that he may never get it right. Mr. Trump needs to drain the swamp of his millionaire flunkies whose ideas are not right to move America forward, I agree NATO needs to pay up and we cannot police the world but let's help solve the world's problems as they relate to us and destroy terrorism, reign in North Korea and Syria, stop the senseless killings of refugees and then send out the invoices and expect payment due in thirty days. Tackle the problems that are most important to American citizens, all of them, safety, jobs, prosperity, good health care, solid retirements and maybe then we will stand behind you for the great things that successful presidents have actually done through out history.  Mr.Trump you don't need to unite the country like Lincoln, you don't need to create an economy like FDR and you don't need to stand in defiance of the USSR like Kennedy did, but it might be a great thing if you treated this country like your. Mother and tried to save all the National Parks and wild beautiful lands like Teddy tried to do, maybe then you could actually look in the mirror and not bump your forehead trying to kiss that circus clown but rather look with pride at a man who really was successful in his life, not a mock President after all, we will all be waiting for you to make the right decision..
Rant over South Jersey out.

GET HIM OUTTA HERE! Wildest Donald Trump Rally Moments

Three people, Kashiya Nwanguma, Molly Shah, and Henry Brousseau, have filed lawsuits against Trump supporters who they claim assaulted them at a rally and against Donald Trump, who they claim incited the attack. They claim they were assaulted at a Trump campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky, where Mr Trump directed the crowd to “get them the hell out.” They are the first to take legal action. Now you can see in this short compilation above how Trump reacted to protestors at several of his rallies while campaigning for President. It isn't pretty, in fact it's absolutely unbelievable that someone who has behaved like this, in public, is now President of the United States. What is wrong with people, how is this possible? He apparently brings out the worst in his supporters
and now even his supporters are admitting it! Matthew Heimbach, leader of the white nationalist Traditional Youth Network,  has accused Donald Trump of inciting violence at his campaign rallies, saying he was encouraged to angrily remove protesters from a rally by the New York tycoon!
He has claimed in a federal court filing that he acted under Mr Trump’s authority to remove protestors from a March 2016 rally in Louisville, Kentucky.
Any of the alleged actions, he states, were taken "pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J Trump and Donald J Trump for President lnc.”
President Trump’s lawyers have submitted their own filing, in which they claim he cannot be subject to civil suits because he is president of the United States. They also claim that his words were not  directed to his crowds. Who was he yelling at?? The rally, being as that it took place before Trump was elected, is not considered an official presidential act and although he is not be liable for damages in civil suits over his actions as President, he is not immune from federal litigation concerning non-official acts. 
So this should be interesting, thugs calling the kettle black.

Trump and the War on Coal

A crucial EU standing committee vote to clean up Europe's toxic air is coming up on April 28th. If the new pollution limits are passed than even bigtime polluters (coal) Germany and Poland, would be forced to clean up their act. If the regulations are implemented the dirty coal industry will be forced to adopt the best available techniques to clean up the air pollution caused by burning coal. Every day in Europe, air pollution caused by coal causes the deaths of 63 people through pollution related diseases. By applying clean air technologies thousands of lives could be saved, deaths caused by dirty air could be reduced by 85%. So you would think this is pretty cut and dry but, the coal industry isn't pleased that legislation could be passed which would force them to clean up or shut down, so lobbyists are fighting this and once again we are faced with a possible outcome of profit over people.
So Europeans are fighting for clean air regulations here and on the other side of the pond, Trump's newest executive order begins the process of reversing the climate change policies put into effect by the Obama administration. He is putting an end to the war on coal and stepping up his gameplan on the war on breathable air. He has already proposed cutting E.P.A. funding by 2,6 billion dollars and laying off about a fifth of it's workforce. The Obama Clean Power Plan places limits on carbon emitted from existing power plants and would have forced hundreds to close. This plan was the product of years of debate and negotiation between industry and environmental groups, economists, and policymakers. Many activists felt that the end result was too weak. Trump’s executive order, is simply ignorant and arrogant. If the U.S. is to meet its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement, part of the world’s eleventh-hour efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change, the Clean Power Plan cannot be revoked. Repealing the C.P.P. will do little or nothing to help out-of-work coal miners. Robert Murray, the C.E.O. of Murray Energy, the country’s biggest private coal company, recently said that coal jobs weren’t going to come back in the numbers that Trump has promised. According to estimates of the E.P.A. the C.P.P. would help prevent as many as thirty-six hundred premature deaths, seventeen hundred heart attacks, ninety thousand asthma attacks among children, and three hundred thousand missed workdays and school days every year. So much cannot be said for Trump's plan, in fact the only people who would seem to benefit are actually who? Not miners, really, because the coal industry has become so obsolete that jobs won't really be created in any large number  so I'm guessing the only people who really benefit from this craziness are a few people at the top of the industry, right? So if we win the battle here in Europe we can only hope that the battle still rages in the U.S. and that Trump will be foiled once again.  

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.