monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

...In their fight against Obamacare, Republicans could equate Medicaid expansion with Stalinism to everyone on their email lists — while attacking the law for cutting Medicare and failing to provide truly universal coverage to the general public.

This strategy worked well. Obamacare became deeply unpopular. And Republicans leveraged their base’s energy; Democrats’ complacency; white America’s rage at hearing instructions repeated in Spanish; and the public’s general appetite for change into full control of the federal government.

But now, Americans’ dissatisfaction with their government is no longer a crutch for the GOP, but a handicap. And fulfilling the party’s obligations to its base — while stringing along swing voters with sweet nothings about a “better way” — is much more difficult. Republicans tried to find a way to do both during the health-care-reform fight, and ended up alienating the party’s hard-liners and moderates alike. Americans finally discerned that the Republican alternative to Obamacare was a tax cut for the rich — and, for the first time, Obama’s signature law became popular.

@Baldimo,
Back in my day, a sergeant E5 was known as a "hard five" (and so on). Is that still common?

Except you can be an E-4 Corporal instead of a Spec-4. A Corporal is a Non Commissioned Officer.

Nothing to see here: US carrier still thousands of miles from Korea

WASHINGTON — For more than a week, media reports in the U.S. and around Asia routinely have mentioned the approach of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson's carrier strike group, seemingly implying an attack on North Korea could be imminent. But a week after the U.S. announced the carrier and its escorts would leave Singapore, forego port calls in Australia and instead return to Korean waters, the carrier and its group had yet to head north.

Rather, the ships were actually operating several hundred miles south of Singapore, taking part in scheduled exercises with Australian forces in the Indian Ocean.

On Saturday — according to photographs released by the U.S. Navy — the carrier passed north through the Sunda Strait, the passage between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java. It's about 3,500 miles from Korea.

U.S. Navy officials in Pearl Harbor and Washington declined to comment on the ship’s movements, other than to confirm the April 15 movement through the Sunda Strait. Off the record, several officials expressed wonderment at the persistent reports that the Vinson was already nearing Korea. “We’ve made no such statement,” said one official.

Those same officials did not push back on reports that the Vinson would return to Korean waters, where the strike group operated for much of March as part of the annual U.S.-Korean Foal Eagle exercises. While declining to confirm a specific date, they did not dispute speculative media reports from South Korea that the strike group could be in the region by April 25 or so.

Officials did, however, flatly deny reports that three U.S. carrier strike groups were being directed to mass off the Korean peninsula in a few weeks.

Speculation has been rising that the Ronald Reagan and Nimitz strike groups could join with the Vinson. The Japan-based carrier Reagan, however, is in a maintenance period at Yokosuka scheduled to complete in May. The Bremerton, Washington-based Nimitz and her strike group is off Southern California, nearing the completion of its major pre-deployment exercise. The ship is scheduled to deploy this spring to relieve the Vinson in the Western Pacific.

The Vinson’s return to Korea was ordered on April 8 by Adm. Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Command. On April 11, Defense Secretary James Mattis – having just met with Harris in Washington – noted that no specific incident prompted the order to curtail the exercise program and head north.

“She's stationed there in the western Pacific for a reason,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. “She operates freely up and down the Pacific, and she's just on her way up there because that's where we thought it was most prudent to have her at this time. There's not a specific demand signal or specific reason why we're sending her up there.”

Quote:

Except you can be an E-4 Corporal instead of a Spec-4. A Corporal is a Non Commissioned Officer.

True, but Corporal isn't a rank that I've seen heavily used in other parts of the military except for Infantry. I was in aviation and we had specialists, they made one guy a corporal but it was more to bust his balls and make him a Jr. NCO.

And when you peddle bull crap like that do you seriously expect anyone to believe you?

President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized his predecessor for being “weak” on illegal immigration and blamed him, without evidence, for allowing the violent MS-13 gang to form in America.

Quote:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized his predecessor for being “weak” on illegal immigration and blamed him, without evidence, for allowing the violent MS-13 gang to form in America.

The guy is a lying bag of scum-stuff. And with each of these lies he is doing the next-to-impossible - making his supporters even more stupid. That's why he does it.

And when you peddle bull crap like that do you seriously expect anyone to believe you?