monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

War, war, war, bombings, and more war

Posted: Wed 7:46 PM, Mar 15, 2017

Quote:

Members of the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base have officially headed to the Middle East for combat.

More than 400 wing members headed to the region as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.

B-52 Stratofortresses Bombers from Minot have also headed overseas for the first time in 12 years.

The 23rd Bomb Squadron will lead the 5th Bomb Wing in their mission.
Operation Inherent Resolve is the United States’ mission against the Islamic State, primarily in Iraq and Syria.

About a year ago, Donald Trump made one of the more outlandish claims of his candidacy: he said he would eliminate the national debt in eight years.

Specifically, Trump told the Washington Post that he wants to see the United States "get rid of the $19 trillion in debt." Pressed for details, the GOP candidate said he "could do it fairly quickly," eliminating the debt "over a period of eight years."

...A year later, the White House doesn't even pretend to care about those priorities. Politico noted yesterday:

Quote:

While steep cuts to departments like the EPA are expected under a Republican president, Trump's plan leaves out the key conservative priority of deficit reduction. [...]

[OMB Director Mick Mulvaney], once among Congress' toughest deficit hawks, also acknowledged the White House budget leaves the nation's $488 billion federal deficit untouched. The decision ignores what has become the fiscal gold standard within the GOP: a budget that balances within 10 years

.

Operation Inherent Resolve is the United States’ mission against the Islamic State, primarily in Iraq and Syria.

Under scrutiny for declining to bring the diplomatic press corps on his trip to Asia this week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended his decision in an interview published Saturday, saying that he simply doesn't make press access a priority.

"I’m not a big media press access person. I personally don’t need it. I understand it’s important to get the message of what we’re doing out, but I also think there’s only a purpose in getting the message out when there’s something to be done," Tillerson told the Independent Journal Review.

"And so we have a lot of work to do, and when we’re ready to talk about what we’re trying to do, I will be available to talk to people," he continued. "But doing daily availability, I don’t have this appetite or hunger to be that, have a lot of things, have a lot of quotes in the paper or be more visible with the media."

Quote:

The claim that GCHQ carried out surveillance on Donald Trump during the election campaign is "arrant nonsense", Rick Ledgett, the number two at the US National Security Agency (NSA) has told the BBC in an exclusive interview.

No doubt it is. But clearly Trump and team have decided that they are not constrained by any notions of truthfulness in the claims they make. If something is published or spoken anywhere, and no matter how credible or poorly-sourced it might be, that gives them licence to repeat it with the authority of the White House.

It's a rather explicit notice that they will engage in misinformation/propaganda and that this is just jim-dandy.

Specifically, Trump told the Washington Post that he wants to see the United States "get rid of the $19 trillion in debt." Pressed for details, the GOP candidate said he "could do it fairly quickly,"..

War, war, war, bombings, and more war

Posted: Wed 7:46 PM, Mar 15, 2017

Quote:

Members of the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base have officially headed to the Middle East for combat.

More than 400 wing members headed to the region as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.

B-52 Stratofortresses Bombers from Minot have also headed overseas for the first time in 12 years.

The 23rd Bomb Squadron will lead the 5th Bomb Wing in their mission.
Operation Inherent Resolve is the United States’ mission against the Islamic State, primarily in Iraq and Syria.

Does it appear that Tillerson/Trump/Putin desire to bomb the hell out of those Middle Eastern oil fields to get rid of the competition and make those Russian oil interests more profitable?

Much more destruction and death on the horizon and a lot of blood on American hands . . . .

Little Donnie Trump ... the man-child who cried wolf (over and over and over again).

If the American people don't rise up and successfully resist the monstrous government we have, then the rest of the world (including nations that were once our allies) may have to do the job. These are the worst of times....

During the past decade, Mercer, who is seventy, has funded an array of political projects that helped pave the way for Trump’s rise. Among these efforts was public-opinion research, conducted by Caddell, showing that political conditions in America were increasingly ripe for an outsider candidate to take the White House. Caddell told me that Mercer “is a libertarian—he despises the Republican establishment,” and added, “He thinks that the leaders are corrupt crooks, and that they’ve ruined the country.”

We have more than enough nukes to eradicate anyone who seeks to attack us.

Quote:

This is the very same game the left says all the time with their either or BS.

No, there isn't any "play book". A false dilemma can be intentional or accidental but it's not an ideologically-inspired tactic. Your criticism would be more effective if you exposed these sorts of informal fallacies as and where they appear rather than just making a generalized accusation and making up exaggerated examples. Point them out when you see them, no matter the political view of the author, and you'll be doing us all a service.

So, do you want taxes or do you want a government starved of revenue?

Quote:

Ousted U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was overseeing an investigation into current Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s stock trades when he was fired, according to an unnamed source cited by ProPublica Friday.

According to a source “familiar with the office,” ProPublica reported, Bharara’s employees were looking into stock trades made by Price, seemingly those that came to light during his confirmation process.

Before and during his confirmation hearing, Democrats accused Price of abusing his office for his own personal benefit, perhaps illegally.

Price bought stock in Zimmer Biomet the same month, March 2016, that he introduced legislation to delay the implementation of a measure that would have negatively affected that company.

Politico

Mercer “is a libertarian—he despises the Republican establishment,” and added, “He thinks that the leaders are corrupt crooks, and that they’ve ruined the country.”

You say "eradicate," I say "exterminate." Same difference I guess--they do rhyme, after all, but still....

Quote:

Paul Ryan says he fantasized about cutting health care for the poor at his college keggers

Oh, college! It’s a time when young adults discover their professional interests, when they live alone for the first time, when many people come into their sexuality, and when youth get to explore other adult pleasures.
And, if you were House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), it was a time to dream about how, someday, you would take health care away from millions of poor people.
In a conversation with the National Review’s Rich Lowry on Friday, Ryan bragged about how conservatives now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take health coverage away from the most vulnerable Americans.

“So Medicaid,” Ryan told Lowry, “sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around — since you and I were drinking at a keg. . . . I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time. We’re on the cusp of doing something we’ve long believed in.”
Ryan is 47 years old, which means that, if he started “drinking at a keg” early in his college career, he’s fantasized about all the poor people who could be stripped of health care for nearly three decades.

Think Progress video here

10% national sales tax, legalize gambling, prostitution, and weed and tax the **** out of it