(from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/14/is-there-anything-trump-touches-that-isnt-corrupt/?fbclid=IwAR04ICqGKb_Tcc9IeDV_zvciOvg30K8FG-ebBwvrtc9WMnJWGaZU0V-R1Ko&noredirect=on&utm_term=.a5e09b861827)
*Trump’s campaign is under investigation for possible hidden dealings with Russia and a possible conspiracy to violate campaign-finance laws.
*Trump's administration has been beset with a shocking number of scandals of various types.
*Trump is currently being sued for allegedly violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause, since foreign governments are directing money his way by booking large numbers of rooms and holding events at his properties.
*The attorney general of New York is seeking to have the Trump Foundation dissolved, citing a pattern of "persistently illegal conduct" that made the foundation little more than a scam devoted to self-dealing.
*In October, it was revealed in an exhaustively documented investigation that Trump, his father and his siblings engaged in a conspiracy to commit tax fraud on an absolutely epic scale, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
*Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump repeatedly misled buyers and investors about properties they were developing in order to acquire funding and pump up sales.
. . . of bad U.S. choices do NOT justify the current administration's stance of Saudi Arabia, but indeed illustrate is error, IRRESPECTIVE of relative administrations' political affiliation. . . ((It's not blue against red, black against white, liberal against conservative, them against us. It is CORRECT against INCORRECT)
". . . In 1964, the U.S. overthrew (Brazilian President João) Goulart in one of the most violent CIA-backed coups up to that time. . . Goulart’s U.S.-backed successor, General Castelo Branco, would have a devastating impact on the Brazilian population. . . The Branco regime had tens of thousands of Brazilians — many of whom supported the coup — arrested and tortured to death. . . General Augusto Pinochet, who was grateful to the US State Department for its help in making . . . (itss) coup possible. . . Security officials herded labor leaders and other troublemakers into the National Soccer Stadium and forced them to sit in the stands while military police took them down by ones and twos to the field and shot them. Pinochet dispatched Allende ally General Ramos in a helicopter “Caravan of Death” to the north, where he had tens of thousands of “leftists” rounded up and disappeared. . . (During Nicolae Ceausescu's) 23 years in power, the regime liquidated all potential political opposition at home and funneled Romania’s resources out through an elaborate network of public-private partnerships that made the Communist dictator one of the world’s richest men. . . And through it all, as Romania’s foreign debt more than tripled, the US Treasury-backed IMF was always there with an open line of credit to ensure Ceausescu never had to reform. . . the CIA-supported, anti-communist Syngman Rhee (who) ran the Republic of Korea in the south. Rhee regularly arrested and occasionally even killed those he suspected of harboring communist sympathies, even presiding over several massacres. . . Indeed, In 1950, just before the Korean War, Rhee had approximately 20,000 supposed communists imprisoned, and in June of that year ordered the execution of those who he believed posed a threat to his regime. . . Then, in 1961, South Koreans — who were at this point poorer than North Koreans — saw the rise of Park Chung-Hee, who seized leadership via a coup tacitly supported by the U.S. Upon entering office, Park declared the rule of martial law and amended the constitution to support his own authoritarianism. . . While the South Korean economy did begin its decades-long boom under Park, it came at the cost of political repression, corruption, and even violence. Park used sham elections to legitimize his rule by decree, which on the less harmful end of things, included dictating the length of men’s hair and women’s dresses. . . While all of the dictatorships mentioned so far ended long ago, Uzbekistan’s continued until very recently — a fact that Washington doesn’t seems to mind much, likely due to the nation’s geography and its erstwhile leader’s shared interest in combatting Islamic extremism. . . The Karimov regime engaged in what the United Nations has called “institutionalized, systematic and rampant” acts of torture, which Karimov directed toward the Muslim community in particular. . ."
(fromhttp://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29359579/colorado-rape-victim-challenges-obamas-stand-guns-at)
". . . "I have been unspeakably victimized once already, and I refuse to let that happen again to myself or my kids. So why can't your administration see that these restrictions that you're putting to make it harder for me to own a gun, or harder for me to take that where I need to be is actually just making my kids and I less safe?" Obama replied that nothing he has proposed makes it harder for her to buy a gun. "Well, Kimberly, first of all, obviously — you know, your story is horrific. The strength you've shown in telling your story and, you know, being here tonight is remarkable . . .I just want to repeat that there's nothing that we've proposed that would make it harder for you to purchase a firearm. . . you have to be pretty well trained in order to fire a weapon against somebody who is assaulting you and catches you by surprise. . . And what is also true is there's always the possibility that that firearm in a home leads to a tragic accident.". . . "
(from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/01/08/meet-kimberly-corban-the-pro-gun-rape-survivor-who-challenged-obama-on-cnn/)
". . . Corban wasn’t impressed. “I would say it was more of a non-response,” she told The Post. “He kind of dodged the question.”. . ."
. . . and dost the press haveth the wherewithall to point out the obvious????
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So congressional Republicans claim they will never allow taxes to increase for wealthy Americans. They claim that they will eliminate loopholes and leave tax cuts in place which will provide the additional revenue the country requires.
Conversely, President Barack Obama says that the amount of revenue that elimination of tax loopholes would generate, (while leaving tax cuts for the wealthy in place) is not nearly close to the amount of revenue required to tackle the budget deficit.
It seems to me that the 'leave-cuts-eliminate-loophole' strategy either WILL or WILL NOT generate the amount of revenue required. There is no OPINION involved. This is an empirical issue and can be proved or disproved.
Either Congressional Republicans or the Administration should take it upon themselves to prove or disprove (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) the effectiveness of the strategy. Or even better, if you can imagine, the news media could take it upon themselves to prove or disprove it (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) and actually provide a service to the general public for a change.
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. . . or was the debate something like this? . . .
(from http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2012/president/candidates/romney/2012/10/11/fact-check-slips-vice-president-debate/7ZH8sFVuIfG2B7XpZaaozH/story.html)
". . .Vice President Joe Biden has
mangled a heaping helping of facts over the years. Despite being newer
to presidential-campaign politics, Republican Paul Ryan has already
earned something of a reputation Vice President Joe Biden has mangled a heaping helping of facts over the years. Despite being newer to presidential-campaign politics, Republican Paul Ryan has already earned something of a reputation for taking flying leaps past reality.
How'd they do Thursday night?
Here’s a look at some of their claims:
BIDEN, on whether U.S. should have beefed up security at the U.S. Consulate in Libya before the deadly terrorist attack there: ‘‘We weren’t told they wanted more security there.’’
RYAN: ‘‘There were requests for more security.’’
THE FACTS: Ryan is right, judging by testimony from Obama administration officials at a congressional hearing this week.
Charlene R. Lamb, a deputy assistant secretary for diplomatic security, told lawmakers she refused requests for more security in Benghazi, saying the department wanted to train Libyans to protect the consulate. ‘‘Yes, sir, I said personally I would not support it,’’ she said.
Eric Nordstrom, who was the top security official in Libya earlier this year, testified he was criticized for seeking more security. He said conversations he had with people in Washington led him to believe that it was ‘‘abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident. How thin does the ice have to get before someone falls through?’’
___
RYAN: ‘‘We should have spoken out right away when the green revolution was up and starting, when the mullahs in Iran were attacking their people. We should not have called Bashar Assad a reformer when he was turning his Russian-provided guns on his own people.
THE FACTS: Neither President Barack Obama nor anyone else in his administration ever considered the Syrian leader a ‘‘reformer.’’ The oft-repeated charge stems from an interview Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave in March 2011 noting that ‘‘many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.’’ She did not endorse that view. The comment was widely perceived to be a knock at senators such as John Kerry of Massachusetts who maintained cordial relations with Assad in the months leading up to his crackdown on protesters.
___
BIDEN: ‘‘We went out and rescued General Motors.’’
THE FACTS: Actually, the auto bailout of General Motors and Chrysler began under President George W. Bush. The Obama administration continued and expanded it.
___ RYAN: ‘‘And then they put this new Obamacare board in charge of cutting Medicare each and every year in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors. This board, by the way, it’s 15 people, the president’s supposed to appoint them next year. And not one of them even has to have medical training.’’
THE FACTS: Ryan is referring to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law. It has the power to force cuts in Medicare payments to service providers if costs rise above certain levels and Congress fails to act. But it doesn’t look like the board will be cutting Medicare ‘‘each and every year,’’ as Ryan asserts. Medicare costs are currently rising modestly and the government’s own experts project the board’s intervention will not be needed until 2018 and 2019 at the earliest — after Obama leaves office if re-elected to a second term.
___
BIDEN, when asked who would pay more taxes in Obama’s second term: ‘‘People making a million dollars or more.’’
THE FACTS: Obama’s proposed tax increase reaches farther down the income ladder than millionaires. He wants to roll back Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making over $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.
___
RYAN: ‘‘We cannot allow Iran to gain a nuclear weapons capability. Now, let’s take a look at where we've gone — come from. When Barack Obama was elected, they had enough fissile material — nuclear material — to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five. They’re racing toward a nuclear weapon. They’re four years closer toward a nuclear weapons capability.’’
THE FACTS: Ryan’s claim is misleading. Iran isn’t believed to have produced any of the highly enriched uranium needed to produce even one nuclear weapon, let alone five. That point isn’t even disputed by Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored the world at the United Nations last month to create a ‘‘red line’’ at enrichment above 20 percent. Iran would have to enrich uranium at much higher levels to produce a weapon. There is intelligence suggesting that Iran has worked on weapon designs, but not that it has developed a delivery system for any potential nuclear warhead. . . "
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. . . that should be polarized is the electrical plug on your appliances. . .
Karl Rove, David Koch, Grover Norquist, Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Ted Nugent, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Chris Christie, John Boehner and Rick Santorum please take note.
(from http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-21/news/30424409_1_david-frum-republican-party-tax-cuts) " . . . Republican commentator David Frum, who recently mortified many members of his party by suggesting that Paul Krugman might be right about the US economy, is back with a long essay in New York magazine.
This time, Frum expresses dismay about how the Republican party has lost touch with reality.
In the space of only a decade, Frum observes, the GOP has gone from being a party dominated by reasonable right-of-center pragmatists to being hijacked by right-wing extremists.
A lifelong Republican, Frum sums up his views this way:
I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration.
And then he looks at the views one has to have to be a loyal member of today's Republican party, and he's appalled by what he sees:
America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration’s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions—crime, inflation, the Cold War—right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong.
Specifically: It was not so long ago that Texas governor Bush denounced attempts to cut the earned-income tax credit as “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” By 2011, Republican commentators were noisily complaining that the poorer half of society are “lucky duckies” because the EITC offsets their federal tax obligations—or because the recession had left them with such meager incomes that they had no tax to pay in the first place.
In 2000, candidate Bush routinely invoked “churches, synagogues, and mosques.” By 2010, prominent Republicans were denouncing the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult.
In 2003, President Bush and a Republican majority in Congress enacted a new prescription-drug program in Medicare. By 2011, all but four Republicans in the House and five in the Senate were voting to withdraw the Medicare guarantee from everybody under age 55.
Today, the Fed’s pushing down interest rates in hopes of igniting economic growth is close to treason, according to Governor Rick Perry, coyly seconded by TheWall Street Journal. In 2000, the same policy qualified Alan Greenspan as the “greatest central banker in the history of the world,” according to Perry’s mentor, Senator Phil Gramm.
Today, health reform that combines regulation of private insurance, individual mandates, and subsidies for those who need them is considered unconstitutional and an open invitation to “death panels.” A dozen years ago, a very similar reform was the Senate Republican alternative to Hillarycare.
Today, stimulative fiscal policy that includes tax cuts for almost every American is “socialism.” In 2001, stimulative fiscal policy that included tax cuts for rather fewer Americans was an economic-recovery program.
Frum's observations are far from radical. A couple of weeks ago, we noted that the Great Hero of the Republican party, Ronald Reagan, would not likely be able to get elected today, because of, among other things, his willingness to raise taxes when he needed to.
Frum attributes the GOP's drift to the extremes to the influence of talk radio and FOX News, ethnic competition, and the pain of economic stagnation. He observes that, once he raised his views on FOX News, he was immediately banned as a commentator.
The America championed by the current Republican party would be a brutal country with even more extreme wealth inequality and poverty and an even more powerful and richer ruling class. And, unfortunately, the extreme views of today's party will alienate many of the more moderate Republican ideas --or, worse, cause them to have to get extreme or risk getting excommunicated.
One hopes that, by bravely speaking out on these issues, David Frum will galvanize what might be called the Great Silent Majority of Republicans to take back their party. Because the sooner America returns to having two reasonable alternatives, the better. . . "
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