monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Kim Jong-un has said remarks by "deranged" US President Donald Trump have convinced him he is right to develop weapons for North Korea.
In an unprecedented personal statement, via state media, Mr Kim said Mr Trump would "pay dearly" for his recent speech to the UN.
Mr Kim said in an English statement carried by state news agency KCNA that Mr Trump's remarks "have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last".
He said "now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history", North Korea would consider the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure" to make Mr Trump "pay dearly for his speech".
He ended by saying he would "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire".
Experts say this is the first time a North Korean leader has made a direct address to an international audience.
The statement came shortly after the country's delegation arrived in New York for the UN General Assembly. Analysts say that for this reason it merits serious and thorough consideration.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says his company will share 3,000 Russia-linked political adverts with US investigators.
He also pledged to make political advertising more transparent on his network in future.
"We will work with others to create a new standard for transparency for online political ads," he said in a live address on his Facebook profile.
He said political advertising will now carry disclaimers about which campaign or organisation paid for it.
He added that the company was continuing to investigate instances of foreign actors abusing its advertising platform, including Russia and other "former Soviet states".
The move to share details with investigators comes after considerable public pressure for Facebook to be more transparent - and is being interpreted by some as an attempt to fend off any potential regulation from the US government.
Earlier this month it was revealed that politically-charged advertising had been targeted at American voters, paid for, Facebook believed, by Russian actors with links to the Kremlin.
The adverts did not support a specific candidate, Facebook said, but instead posted inflammatory information on hot topics, such as immigration.

Trump supersizes America’s most famous aeroplane
Trump's Air Force One looks similar to the one that Obama flew. But plans for a bigger one are now under way.
The US president walked down the stairs of Air Force One at an airport in Morristown, New Jersey. He gave a thumbs-up to journalists standing on the tarmac and as he walked past the cameras, he straightened the lapel of his jacket.
An image-conscious businessman, he brags about the size of his hands and his ability to make a deal. For the new presidential aircraft, he wants both - a big machine that'll save the taxpayer money.
Trump tweeted after the election that he wants to cut costs for the presidential aeroplane, but he's also said enviously that another head of state, the emir of Kuwait, has a bigger one.
Air Force personnel are scrambling to make the new aeroplane happen - and meet the president's demands. They're looking at ways to ensure that the aircraft will be as cost-efficient as possible while at the same time embodies the heft that Trump wants.
Boeing executives said last week that they'd been awarded a contract for the aeroplane's redesign. "We'll do our best to drive down costs," said Caroline Hutcheson, a Boeing spokeswoman.
The president is tinkering with an icon, a symbol of "the global reach of American diplomacy and power", as Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with a Virginia-based consultancy, the Teal Group, described it.
The first Air Force One jet flew in 1959 with President Dwight D Eisenhower on board. It was red and gold. President John F Kennedy changed the colours to blue and white, the distinctive look it still has today.
A fleet of presidential aircraft are kept in a hangar at an Air Force base in Maryland. Trump went on a tour of the base before flying to New Jersey.
He walked past an array of different-sized, blue-and-white aircraft emblazoned with the words: "United States of America". Any of them could serve as Air Force One, which is an air traffic control designation that's given to a plane when the president is on board.
Aside from ferrying the president, the aircraft have several important traits - they have encrypted communications, for example, and they can withstand electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion.
The most famous is a jumbo jet built on a Boeing 747-200B airframe. Trump flew on the jet to Paris in the summertime: it has several different cabins, one with thick carpets, powder blue melting into cobalt; chairs that swivel; and a table reserved for senior White House officials.
Another one, a 757, or "Baby Air Force One", as it's known, has the same safety features built to scale. People were crammed into their seats on Friday on the flight from Maryland to New Jersey. Still the trip had luxurious aspects.
Butternut squash and linguine was served for dinner. Afterwards a flight attendant brought me two boxes of M&Ms as souvenirs from the journey. Decades ago passengers were given cigarettes and playing cards - along with other small items. "They used to have barf bags," a military official said.
There's only a few differences between his aeroplane and the one that Obama flew. The boxes used to have Obama's signature, and during his administration an overhead screen played CNN. Under Trump, it's Fox News. Otherwise the plane looks the same.
Trump can make small changes - he's complained about the softness of the hand towels and could replace them. At this point, though, they're the same (in my opinion, they have a nice, fleecy texture).
Bigger changes would have to undergo a vetting process for safety. That's what military personnel are doing now while they look at a redesign - and try to keep costs low.
Weeks after the election, Trump tweeted that Boeing was making a new presidential aircraft "but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!"
Since that time, Air Force officials and Boeing executives have tried to make it seem as though they're acting in a frugal manner. The air force recently bought two Boeing 747-8s at a bargain price. That's what they say - they haven't revealed the cost, though, so it's hard to know.
The new aircraft will replace the older model, the 747-200B, but it won't be ready for several years.
"When it's time for a president to buy a new Air Force One, you buy it for the next president," said Aboulafia.
The new plane will have the same features - medical facilities, defence safeguards, and other perks.
And it's bigger - the wingspan is nearly 30 feet longer than the old one. By any measure, that's likely to please the boss.

Trump blocks woman with stage 4 cancer on Twitter after she criticized his latest health care plan
President Snowflake.

On Wednesday morning, President Trump tweeted out his support for the so-called Graham-Cassidy health care bill that would allow insurers to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions and could cause tens of millions to lose coverage.



In the hours before Trump posted that tweet, his account blocked a woman with stage 4 cancer who has spoken out about the dangers of Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare.

Following a restless night, Laura Packard, a Las Vegas-based self-employed consultant, found out she’d been blocked by the president.

“I didn’t sleep too well because of the cancer,” she told ThinkProgress by phone. “But I don’t know if he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed today or what.”

Packard, who has Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, has regularly been tweeting at Trump about health care and other topics at least since the election. The day before she was blocked, she put the president on blast for supporting a bill that would jeopardize the lives of people like her who rely on Obamacare exchanges for coverage.

As ThinkProgress detailed earlier this week, under Graham-Cassidy, a 40-year-old diagnosed with metastatic cancer “could expect to pay a $140,510 surcharge on their annual health premium, effectively making many families choose between being bankrupted by their insurance company or being bankrupted by their hospital bills.” Packard is 41.

I cannot afford [a $141,000 premium] and I suspect most people cannot,” Packard said.

Asked about how being blocked by Trump makes her feel, Packard said, “I just wish that he would listen.”

“He said [during the campaign] he would come up with something that was great and was going to cover everybody, and [Republicans] keep coming up with bills that are the exact opposite,” she added. “He’s definitely not listening to me now.”

When Republican senators were trying to pass a previous Obamacare repeal/replace package earlier in the summer, Packard wrote an op-ed for U.S. News & World Report headlined, “Save Obamacare, Save My Life.”

“Getting rid of lifetime and/or annual limits? That means many of us will die when we hit those caps and can no longer afford treatment,” she wrote. “Getting rid of pre-existing condition protections? Many of us will die, because we won’t be insurable anymore. Allowing insurers to remove essential health benefits (such as chemotherapy, or hospitalization, or many of the drugs we need to stay alive) means many of us will die, because our insurance won’t cover our treatment anymore.”

The Graham-Cassidy bill would remove lifetime limits, gut protections for preexisting conditions, and allow insurers to charge more for services like the treatments Packard needs to stay alive.

In May, Packard starred in a viral video aimed at Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), who was ultimately strong-armed into voting for Obamacare repeal by President Trump.

“The good news is that my doctors believe I can be cured, I just need to keep my health insurance,” says Packard in the video, which has been retweeted more than 4,700 times.

In response to the video, Heller’s office released a statement that didn’t address any of Packard’s concerns.

“Laura’s story is heartbreaking,” the statement says. “Over the past several months, Senator Heller has been working for solutions that protect Nevada’s most vulnerable and help people like Laura, and he’ll continue to do so.”

Packard said she was disappointed by Heller’s response.

“I appreciate the sympathy, but what I need is affordable, comprehensive health insurance,” she said.

Heller is a cosponsor of the Graham-Cassidy bill. Republican senators who support the bill are using lies to try and sell it to the public.

While Trump blocks people like Packard who are his constituents and offer valid critiques of his policy positions, he regularly retweets racists, conspiracy theorists, and bot accounts.

Why bashing Morgan Freeman, of all people, is suddenly the rage in Russia
...But now the legendary American actor is a pariah in Russia, with Kremlin officials, Russian talking heads, and pro-Putin social media trolls ganging up to denounce Freeman. The all-hands-on-deck response suggests a concerted Russian effort to discredit the actor via social media.

This is a serious question because I really don't understand it:
- there are 3,000 ads purchased on facebook by Russians in the 2016 presidential election.
Why does Trump call it a hoax?
And who are the “biased and dishonest” media? Facebook, because it published the ads? Others, who reported the facebook press-release?

There's nothing unusual in what he's doing here, Walter. Perhaps you are asking another question... How could anyone be so stupid as to presume that Trump is making a logical, honest, rational argument about the Facebook story?

I'm still confused by the tweets of the President of the United States of America

Senator John McCain has said he cannot support his fellow Republicans' latest effort to repeal Obamacare, dealing it a potentially fatal blow.
The Arizona senator, who is battling brain cancer, said he "cannot in good conscience" vote for the new plan, which President Donald Trump backs.
Mr McCain said it was wrong to pass such far-reaching legislation without input from both main parties.
It is the second time he has thwarted his party leadership on the issue.