Did he bring all his unresolved rage and racial prejudice into the presidency regarding his white blood, Muslim faith etc.? Did it shape his presidency? Did it change our America? You decide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Once again, I believe all candidates for the top office should at least be required to take a Rorschach Test.
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More anger from Sarsour's influence on campus life as relates to Israel. (See 1 below.)
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Can Republicans govern? (See 2 below.)
Trump is a Yonker's street fighter. Atty. General Sessions is a patrician Southern Gentleman.
Sessions maintained, ethically, he had to recuse himself because he happened to be in the company of the Russian Ambassador during the campaign. Trump believes that was a weak and flimsy basis for him to have stepped down. Trump also is upset Sessions has done nothing to pursue the Clinton's and others in the former administration for alleged violations. In this I am on Trump's side. However, Trump apparently is unwilling to accept the fact that The Attorney General is supposedly independent when it comes to enforcing the law and he does not represent the president but the nation.
Trump got himself into the independent prosecutor mess partly because he failed to get rid of Comey when he became president but then, what legitimate reason could he have used so early into his presidency? The Democrats were slow walking every appointment and to eliminate the head of the FBI without a quick replacement could have placed our nation in jeopardy. Trump was also struggling to get an Attorney General appointed at that time as well.
I always wanted Trump to appoint Giuliani and rumor is he might do so by way of a recess appointment when Congress goes on vacation.
If Trump does this, I suspect Democrats, led by "Up Chuck,"and his friends in the mass media will create a firestorm analogizing this action with that of their mortal enemy, Richard Nixon, who fired his attorney general. This might make for good headlines but it is not quite the same, factually speaking.
Stay tuned as the Democrats continue to hang onto the Russian Collusion witch/bitch hunt because that is the only thing they have going for them as they continue blocking Trump at every turn so as to lay the foundation for impeachment at a later date given the opportunity.
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When you actually and numerically analyze something it often can take on a different light. (See 3 below.)
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Senator McCain gave a speech on the floor of The Senate today which should remind all Americans what a great Senator, a selfless Senator is all about.
I have no doubt if anyone can beat an incurable cancer McCain is the man.
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Dick
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1) Challenging Violent Speech—Unless It’s About Israel
The border of incitement.
The idea that speech can itself constitute an act of violence grows ever more popular among the left’s leading polemicists. They argue that employing a politically incorrect word can be triggering; that the wrong gender pronoun can provoke; that words and sentences and parts of speech are all acts of aggression in disguise. The left seeks to stop this violence, or less euphemistically: to silence this speech.
Given their particular sensitivity to the triumphant mightiness of the pen, it’s profoundly disturbing to note where lines are drawn and exceptions made.
Linda Sarsour, the left’s darling of the day, posted a widely-shared picture of Palestinians praying in the streets of Jerusalem, an act protesting the placement of metal detectors outside the Al Aqsa Mosque. “This is resilience. This is perseverance. This is faith. This is commitment. This is inspiration. This is Palestine,” Sarsour wrote. “Denied access to pray at Al Aqsa Mosque in their own homeland, Palestinians pray on the streets in an act of non-violent resistance. They are met with tear gas and rubber bullets.”
Absent from her platitudinous prevarication was any mention of the inarguably violent act that led Israel to construct the metal detectors in the first place, the recent killing of two Israeli police officers at the Temple Mount. Also absent: any reference to the three Israelis who were brutally murdered in the settlement of Halamish on Friday night. It was a far cry from nonviolent resistance when 19-year-old Omar al-Abed entered a home, saw a family finishing a Shabbat dinner, and began indiscriminately stabbing his victims.
Sarsour’s rhetoric is dangerous precisely because she understands her audience and how to appeal to their emotions. She peppers her statements with a few felicitous bromides like “non-violent resistance” and hopes no one notices the inconsistency of her arguments. Others on the left are slightly more honest about their intentions.
Writing in Al Jazeera, Stanley Cohen called on Israel to “accept that as an occupied people, Palestinians have a right to resist—in every way possible.” He begins by telling his readers: “long ago, it was settled that resistance and even armed struggle against a colonial occupation force is not just recognized under international law but specifically endorsed.” His entire article is predicated on a false premise in that it demands the characterization of Israel as a “colonial occupation force”— a characterization that is categorically incoherent.
Cohen cites a 1982 UN Resolution which “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” He does not mention which countries voted for and against this resolution.
Among the countries that voted for it: Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Rwanda, Qatar, Niger, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq.
Among the countries who voted against it: Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States.
On college campuses, the call for armed struggle has become the Cri de Coeur of leftist students who are otherwise hypersensitive to the impact that intangible words can have on corporeal beings. On Columbia’s campus, students who form the backbone of the BDS movement have successfully blurred the line between incitement and impassioned—albeit severely misguided—opinion. In 2016, the Columbia/ Barnard Socialists concluded one social media post by declaring: “long live the intifada.” As recently as Sunday—after the Halamish attack— the Students for Justice in Palestine shared the Al Jazeera article calling for armed resistance. Where are the outraged professors, administrators, and students concerned for the safety of the student body? Where are the charges of bigotry and racism, the calls to silence this speech, to stop this violence?
Nowhere does the idea that speech can constitute violence find more support than on elite liberal arts colleges. But regardless of whether they have intellectual or moral merit on their own, calls for safe spaces, trigger warnings, and micro-aggression-free environments that come from groups or individuals who not only condone, but use their words to quite literally call for violence, must be ignored, and the hypocrisy highlighted.
From the safe confines of an ivy-covered campus–or from the relative safety of this country, for that matter–it’s easy to preach justice and retribution, to portray armed struggle as the necessary means that will find justification through a righteous end. But especially those who are sensitive to the power of language should understand: euphemistic terminology does nothing to mitigate the violent nature inherent in this rhetoric. There must be no confusion. The left’s glorification of armed struggle is nothing short of approval for those Palestinians who target and kill innocent men, women, and children. Those who proclaim to speak for social justice have been damningly silent.
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2)
Can Republicans Govern?
Some Senators want to talk forever about health care. Time for a vote.
By The Editorial Board
Mitch McConnell is scheduling another showdown vote in the Senate—the third attempt—as early as Tuesday on a motion to proceed to debate on health reform. Succeed or fail, the Republican Majority Leader is right to demand this moment of political accountability.
Mr. McConnell wanted to hold the vote last week after a rump group of GOP Senators on the right and left opposed his latest draft. But the White House sought more time for talks and he agreed—apparently in the name of hope over experience. The vote he wants to hold Tuesday would require 50 Senate ayes to proceed to a floor debate, and he can only afford to lose two Republicans.
Members have been debating among themselves for weeks, they know or should know the bill’s essential policy choices, and the bill isn’t getting prettier with age. That’s especially true on Medicaid reform and spending, which is the chief gripe of the so-called moderates led by Rob Portman of Ohio. They keep demanding more money. They keep getting it, but it’s never enough.
The first version of the bill’s “stability fund” for states was $62 billion. The moderates demanded more and pushed that to $132 billion in the second version. Then they demanded $45 billion to fight opioid addiction. Check again. Now we hear they are back demanding tens of billions more. A spokesman said Mr. Portman is undecided on the bill.
A particular outrage would be if Senators blocked the bill from even going to debate if the extra money isn’t added to the latest McConnell draft. Never mind that they could offer an amendment on the floor after debate begins and see where the sense of the Senate is. The moderates, and conservatives like Rand Paul and Mike Lee, are using Mr. McConnell’s narrow margin to trump the policy preferences of the vast majority of their conference as the price of even allowing debate.
Tennessee Senator Bob Corker had it right last week when he said that “it’s beginning to feel like a bazaar, much like how ObamaCare was put together where disparate things are added and put in.”
Mr. McConnell is obliged by procedural rules to introduce the bill that passed the House for the motion to proceed to debate. By our deadline Monday, he had not announced what he would offer as the first amendment on the Senate floor. Some Republicans want him to offer his latest draft, and he probably will if he thinks he may have the votes to pass it. The bill would then have to endure an amendment free-for-all, with Democrats and perhaps some Republicans seeking to amend it in ways that might kill it. But at least we’d get a debate, and voters could see which Senators have which priorities.
Mr. McConnell’s other option would be to offer the December 2015 bill that repealed ObamaCare with a two-year delay to find time to replace. Fifty-one of the 52 current GOP Senators voted for that repeal bill that Barack Obama vetoed. (Maine’s Susan Collins was the exception.)
The only difference now is that President Trump will sign the bill. This would keep a core promise to GOP voters over four elections and seven years. Opposing this same bill now would expose Senators who campaigned for repeal only when they thought it had no chance to happen. The vote would stick with them for the rest of their careers.
Paradoxically, repeal-and-delayed-replacement might also offer the best chance for bipartisan action on health care. With the fuse lit on ObamaCare repeal, Congress would have an urgent incentive to fix it. Democrats might not want to help the GOP do so, but their refusal would be litigated in the 2018 midterms. If they refused to help at all, they would share the blame for collapsing insurance exchanges.
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The larger stakes in the ObamaCare fight are whether Republicans can be a governing party. They can win elections but not since the early 2000s have they showed they can pass a major reform through Congress. They blew it the last time they controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2005-2006. They’ve already wasted six months on health care in this Congress with nothing to show but division and discord.
This failure is all the more remarkable given the current Senate election cycle. Only one GOP incumbent—Dean Heller of Nevada—faces a difficult challenge in 2018 and that is 16 months away. If Republicans can’t reform Medicaid when they are in this strong an election position, when will they ever? Forget about modernizing Medicare or Social Security before a debt crisis.
What is becoming clearer every day is that some GOP Senators would rather not vote on health care at all. They’d rather talk in the cloakrooms until time runs out on this Congress. But voters want to see who honors their campaign promises, and especially who doesn’t. Call the roll.
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3)
Gun Control Numbers
Read this to the end and you can judge for yourself why there is even an effort for gun control. Someone did some research on this issue. Pay it some heed.
There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. U.S. population 324,059,091 as of Wednesday, June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.000000925% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:
- 65% of those deaths are by suicide which would never be prevented by gun laws
- 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified
- 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – gun violenc
- 3% are accidental discharge deaths
So technically, "gun violence" is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Well, first, how are those deaths spanned across the nation?
- 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
- 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
- 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
- 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)
So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.
This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation, or about 75 deaths per state. That is an average because some States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had 1,169 and Alabama had 1.
Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, of course, but understand, so it is not guns causing this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all cities and states are not created equally, then there must be something other than the tool causing the gun deaths.
Are 5,100 deaths per year horrific? How about in comparison to other deaths? All death is sad and especially so when it is in the commission of a crime but that is the nature of crime. Robbery, death, rape, assault all is done by criminals and thinking that criminals will obey laws is ludicrous. That's why they are criminals.
But what about other deaths each year?
- 40,000+ die from a drug overdose–THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THAT!
- 36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths
- 34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities (exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide)
Now it gets good:
- 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. You are safer in Chicago than when you are in a hospital!
- 710,000 people die per year from heart disease. It's time to stop the double cheeseburgers! So what is the point? If Obama and the anti-gun movement focused their attention on heart disease, even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.). A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides Simple, easily preventable 10% reductions!
So you have to ask yourself, in the grand scheme of things, why the focus on guns? It's pretty simple.: Taking away guns gives "control" to governments. Another thing to remember is "which political party is constantly trying to take away the guns, and is always wanting a bigger government?”
The founders of this nation knew that regardless of the form of government, those in power may become corrupt and seek to rule as the British did by trying to disarm the populace of the colonies. It is not difficult to understand that a disarmed populace is a "controlled" populace.
Thus, the second amendment was proudly and boldly included in the U.S. Constitution. It must be preserved at all costs!
So the next time someone tries to tell you that gun control is about saving lives, look at these facts and remember these words from Noah Webster:
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe.
The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force at the command of Congress can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power.”
Remember, when it comes to "gun control," the important word is "control," not "gun.”
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