Details of Trump's Budget Revealed

At six in the morning (Thursday March 16th)  we heard the news that two Judges overturned the second travel ban of the Trump administration.  This is the version Trump referred to as the “watered down” version and he made it clear he’d have preferred the initial broader travel ban of refugees and other Muslims coming to this country.  In a speech delivered last night and played on the Shawn Hannity show Trump read from the US statute that any President can decide on his own which minorities are dangerous and should be barred from coming to this country.  The point here  is that all Trump has to do is open his mouth and speak for a Judge to know the INTENT of both the first and the second travel bans and how the intents of the two are identical.  If I were the judge I'd at least want to be given a little wiggle room where I could approve a travel ban and be able to rationalize it constitutionally.  The other news breaking at about the same time was more details on the US budget.  The pentagon gets an extra 45 billion in funding.  One can only imagine what new killing machines we'll be able to develop with that.  We know how they waste money on new weaponry they only end up discarding in a couple of years.  The Military will get a ten percent hike and Homeland Security will get a seven percent hike and veterans will get a six percent hike.  Other agencies will suffer.  “Meals on Wheels” will be eliminated entirely, even though it is mostly funded from other sources.  I keep thinking of this cartoon with the roller skating mice that are headed to the open mouth of the cat, and he says to God "Thanks a lot for the meals on wheels".  The Environmental Protection Agency budget will be cut by a third and even agriculture subsidies will be cut substantially.  Norman Goldman insists that congress won’t pass these draconian cuts because their people back home won’t let them.  I’m not confident one bit Norman is correct.  We democrats have to make this budget a campaign issue, to elect democrats, so we won't have this problem two years from now.  In terms of the Health Care bill, the odds of passage there are fifty – fifty in the House, and it will likely fail if it gets to the Senate.  Now Trump is saying the terms of the bill are negotiable.  He’s flexible.  Washington’s blog’s headline is that the Mainstream Media has been merged with the CIA and has been since the 1950’s.   As nurse Ratchet would say “That’s a really challenging statement”.   I think the first noticeable change in the news media was in Gulf War I in the early nineties where we are all hyped up with patriotism.  But that wasn't nearly as bad as post 9 - 11 and often stories would come up but then they'd be immediately surpressed because they didn't fit in with the Bush narritive.  Then of course the media bias became obvious in the buildup to the Iraq War of 2003.  

On the news last night they were talking about all the areas with budget cuts including the State Department, of all things.  Some things like climate change research are eliminated entirely and Trump’s henchmen make this moral case of an out of work coal miner or something (?) saying will he give his hard earned money for the NPR or the national endowment for the arts, or whatever?   A better question is whether that coal miner will give money for Donald Trump’s golf course outings or all of the jet fuel and extra security to travel to Florida all the time.  I think we’ve figured out that Trump and those in power are devoid of compassion for the human race.  They don’t care about clean air and water, or getting adequate medical care, and have decent roads to drive on and parks and such to visit.   So far Trump’s war policy is a blank slate.  But this far (two months) into the Bush administration we didn’t know much about Bush’s foreign policy either- - only that he was against the practice of “Nation building”.  For a while people in the tea party expressed a bias against “being the policemen of the world”. 

I’d like to talk about Thom Hartman’s commentary this morning about dopamine and how it’s quieter on airplanes nowadays because people are obsessed with texting and playing their video games.  Teenagers are less inclined to try drugs if their minds are addicted to a certain video game, like that Star Trek episode they had out a couple decades ago or so.  The trouble is I’d like to go back to that old adage of “When you’ve got your health you have just about everything”.  If you’re feeling in the pink- - and have enough B vitamins including B 12 and the Co Q Ten and all the rest- - and aren’t suffering from the ravages of any virus, then you have the energy to go out and do all that other stuff.  You’re ready to go out and start new relationships with women- - or do some of this Ron Rhodes stuff from decades back such as church baseball games or bowling or miniature golf or river rafting or scavenger hunts or playing board games.  Some people could argue that people like Ron and Gina are fixated at a junior high level or something before you’ve discovered dating the opposite sex, and all that goes with it.   For that matter you’re more inclined to explore the internet for video games, or tinker around with some new mathematical formula in BASIC or Excel, or do a Power Point- - - if you have the mental energy to do it.  If chewing coca leaves will do all that for me, I’m game.   I too would like something organic, in conformance with nature- - that won’t be horribly addicting.

I don't know about "The Art of Dying" but what a lot of people, notably Christians, celebrate is the art of not living, not really.  Maybe it was thirty years ago- - when Bob and Bonnie were still alive- and the conversation came to the topic of "If you could live forever in your present body, would you do it, with the right medical advances".   The inclination of everybody was to said No they wouldn't.  But when you figure what the alternative is- - non existance, the choice doesn't seem like such a wise one.  I remember a conversation I had with Pastor Halliday where I hinted that perhaps my own decisions have been affected by my belief that Jesus was coming back, and may have made other decisions.  Pastor Halliday thought I was a fool for even thinking along these lines at all.  (This says more about him than it says about me) People assume you're going to heaven when you die and will be as smart as God is and will know all of the mysteries of the Universe at the drop of a hat- - and able to best any scientist at his own game.  There are hints of this sort of reasoning in the Bible such as "You will know- - even as you are (now) known".  But as I said a few weeks back- - you might just be in the form of some "psychic energy" that has a will and is driven by it, but no actual brain capable of introspective thought.  So you're forever looking for some human brain to hook up with and perhaps control.  It's kind of a cop out to say "Eye has not seen nor ear heard the wonders that wait for us after we die".   People have this tendency to loath a void and start filling in the blanks, not with actual knowledge - but with their own wish fulfillment.  Think about it.  

Virginia Tech was eliminated last night by Wisconsin in the NCAA tournament.  I watched some of this late game but didn’t see the ending.  In the early game Villanova beat Mt St Mary’s.  Bill is not into the NCAA tournament.   I’ve been fighting this virus or whatever.  Maybe I have more than one virus- - a cough virus and Epstein Barr or something.  What I need is a comprehensive blood test.  There was a substantial medication line with Ida even after seven thirty.  [late note] "Hyperlexia" is the term of the day from Thom Hartman.  It means people who talk a lot of hike up their dopamine levels.  People who post a lot do the same thing. [ ]  I got my cough medicine and a turkey sandwich.  I think channel two was showing another game when I got back.  It was a dash of “Wheel of Fortune” and then it was “Bones” but since I hadn’t had any coffee I was drowsy and not alert and turned the TV off at nine.  I got up at five thirty in the morning, woken by commotion in the hall.  Bill borrowed a cigarette from me and Ron Flowers borrowed a cigarette from me.  There was a substantial medication line with April but I finally got my cough medicine.  I turned on Stephanie Miller and it was Fridays with Fugelsang.  I opted to spend three dollars in cash for a dollar coffee and cigarettes at the liquor store and went into the dining room.   Paul gave me a second helping of oatmeal and I had the sugar for it.  Then we got our scrambled eggs and a whole English muffin that was actually hot, with butter and jelly.  Melanie was erratic with the coffee taking forever on the other side of the room.  Judy got up and got two cups for herself.  Melanie made it around the room almost and she ran out and got more coffee and she said “Who wants coffee?” and I said I did and she says “Wait” but I got up and grabbed a cup while she was still serving the big mugs before going to the little cups.  After breakfast Bill gave me a little coffee with orange juice in it.

Donald Trump Leaks Excerpts from his 2005 Tax Returns

This morning it was announced on the Stephanie Miller show that Donald Trump’s 2005 Federal Income taxes had been leaked to the public.  But now they are saying that it was a deliberate Trump leak.  Apparently it’s only a few pages and there is absolutely nothing surprising in there despite all of the hype I hear that Rachael Maddaw gave the topic on her show, talking her audience to death.  “If you get unsolicited evidence in the mail then it’s not eves dropped”.   But if it’s only the first two pages there could still be all sorts of stuff in that tax return of 2005 we don’t know.  Trump made a little over 150 million dollars that year and paid 24% of that income in taxes.  That’s more than Romney paid, which was around fourteen percent if I recall.  He paid 38 million in taxes.  But I don’t see why you get to cherry pick a three decade carrier and pick perhaps a year where there is no funny business, at least from the pages that were released.  2005 was still a dozen years ago.  What’s he doing right now?

Tomorrow, March 16^th is the day that the Muslim travel ban is scheduled to go into place now for the second attempt.  However at the last minute the courts in Washington, Hawaii, California and Maryland are moving to put a halt to the travel ban.   There arises a question as to what is a credible story and what is not.  Shawn Hannity says there is no evidence of a Russian connection to the Trump campaign.  All of the people on our side of the political fence insist there is a ton of evidence there is campaign collusion with Russia, if we would only look at it, but nobody wants to look at it.  On the other hand Shawn says that President Obama bugged the Trump Tower during last year’s campaign.  In Shawn’s mind this is a credible story. 

Shawn Hannity is not any happier with the American Health Care plan than people on our side of the fence are.  Shawn doesn’t see anything good in the bill either and believes that it will fail.  And when it fails it will embarrass the Republican Party as well as the Trump administration.   The correct figures are that 24 million people will get thrown off health care in ten years.  But right now the figure is fourteen million and it will go up to eighteen million in a couple of years.  I know Trump has attacked the Congressional Budget Office saying their figures aren’t correct.  Nobody has attacked the CBO till now.  People on both sides have trusted this entity for years, and I see no reason to begin mistrusting them now.  Apparently the CBO came into existence after the Nixon administration, because nobody could trust Nixon.

Kisselev is the name of the Russian embassador who is feeding Donald Trump all of these names he is stocking his administration with.  He appointed another high figure from Goldman Sachs just today.   The thing is you get a little nugget of information here or there but nobody puts all the pieces together into one of these police crime time-lines.  We need reporters like Woodward and Bernstein today.  But we don’t have that.  According to Hannity these reporters all just tweet one another to flatter each other and build each other up.  I share Shawn’s frustration that there is nobody weaving a tapestry of facts, strands and slows of evidence kind of like Theodore White did with his four books on “The Making of the President”.  In his books all of the campaigns has this air of inevitability about it the way White tells the story.   

I listened to rhapsody in black.  There were a lot of fly-by-night songs.  The hits were “Church Bells May Ring” and “Slipping and a Sliding” by Little Richard, “Bullweevle” by Fats Domino “The Magic Touch” by the Platters and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”.  They also played “Down in Mexico” by the Coasters.  Then he had some kind of guest and I turned it off. 

The Trump Administration After Seven Weeks

“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.” – H.L. Mencken

“This new regime will enthrone itself for the duration of the Crisis. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention. The regeneracy will be solidly under way.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

The blog goes to conclude the following, which I'll put in quote and then come back to live.  "We are now seven weeks into the Trump presidency and it seems like seven years with amount of incidents that have occurred before and since his inauguration. When in doubt, Trump’s brain dead, hyperventilating with hate, opponents either blame the Russians or declare him Hitler. The histrionics displayed by the low IQ hypocritical Hollywood elite, corrupt Democratic politicians, fake news liberal media and Soros paid left wing radical terrorists over the last two months has been disgraceful, revolting, childish, and dangerous. "  And that's how page one of this rather agitated posting ends.  About the only fact we can be totally sure of is that Donald Trump has been President for seven weeks and that he has shattered a lot of presidential tradition and really shaken things up.  The posting is a little bit factual and a little bit hysterical and trying to paste more of it than what I have, proved problematical.   

  The economy added 235,000 jobs last night in the monthly unemployment report.  Unemployment is 4.7%    A lot of economic sectors such as construction look pretty good.  That continues good, but Trump will take credit.  We won’t really know till three to six months into the new administration.  The same holds true for Obama, Bush and Clinton.  Clinton got credit for an improved economy in late 1992 he didn’t deserve.  Trump and Sanders both called the unemployment numbers bogus last fall, as they indeed were then and are now.  So let's not get our knickers all in a twist over today's numbers one way or the other.  They are the best numbers in ten years and this is an accomplishment; there's no doubt about that.  But it still lags the three hundred thousand new employees that Shawn Hannity and others were insisting were required for a really robust "recovery".  Pretty much we HAVE recovered but it took us a full eight years, and most of it was on Obama's watch.  

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions asked Friday for the resignations of dozens of politically appointed U.S. attorneys held over from the Obama administration, the Justice Department said.  Sessions wanted "to ensure a uniform transition" to the Trump administration, spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.  "Until the new U.S. attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutors in our U.S. attorney’s offices will continue the great work of the department in investigating, prosecuting and deterring the most violent offenders," she said.  The order affects 46 U.S. attorneys; 47 others have already stepped aside. Ninety-three U.S. attorneys are the top federal prosecutors in 94 districts. (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands share a federal prosecutor.)  It is not unusual for a new administration to seek the dismissal of political appointees, particularly those of a different party. In March 1993, then-Atty. Gen. Janet Reno sought the resignations of U.S. attorneys appointed by President George H.W. Bush, a move that sparked intense criticism from conservative commentators.  I would tell Donald Trump and the Republicans to go fuck themselves.  We know how long it took for President Obama to get people in high posts filled.  I’ll be damned if they’re going to step down at anything short of gun point.  Just make this Republican congress go through the motions of nominating and approving new appointees, then they’ll step down.  That’s what I say. 

This topic of the “Deep State” is a term I’ve seen used in Washington’s blog.  But I didn’t know there was any real such term or that it directly referred to holdovers from the previous administration.  I thought it was kind of a covert corporatocracy type thing –possibly with military overtones.  At any rate the turn is being resurrected by the Republicans now.  White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Friday conceded there may be a network of federal government employees resisting President Trump — the "deep state."  “Does the White House believe there’s such a thing as the deep state that’s actively working to undermine the president?” a reporter asked during Spicer’s daily press briefing. “I think there’s no question when you have eight years of one party in office that stays in government [they’re] affiliated with, joined [to] and continue to espouse the agenda of the previous administration,” Spicer answered, referencing former President Obama’s two terms in office.  While the term deep state typically refers to longtime government officials, especially in the military or intelligence agencies, Spicer tried to characterize it as Obama loyalists throughout the government.

President Park Chung He of South Korea has been removed by South Korea courts.  But the other news is that China is trying to negotiate between North and South Korea to keep the two of them from going to war.  This is the big rumor now.   Norman Goldman believes it. 

President Obama made so many deals with the drug and insurance companies and the hospitals to get Obama Care passed, that maybe the Democrats should make alliance with the conservative Republicans and vote against this new Trump care because a lot of people are going to be unhappy no longer feeding at the troff of Obama Care.  It’s just a thought.

"Ryan Care" Bill on Swift Road to Passage

This Trump Health Care bill is on the road to passage in the House and I mean later this month of March.  I guess if you call anything “American” then that makes it all right”. The congressional budget office hasn’t even “scored” this bill to determine how much it will cost or save or otherwise.  Norman believes this bill will cause a massive hemorage of red ink because this bill represents a tremendous transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.   This bill will increase the number of uninsured patients Obama worked so hard to allieviate.  The American Medical Association and AARP have come out against this bill.  But even with all this bad news the bill has already cleared two key committees.  Goldman says the Republicans learned something from eight years ago when they were able to obstruct a lot of bills and turn on the whining and herranging to slow the bill down.  It took congress till March of 2010 to pass the Affordable Care Act or some fourteen months.  Congress wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time.  Their motto is to pass it before the other side knows what hit them.  They aren’t holding hearings on the bill or anything.  And Mitch Mc Connell says in the US Senate they will pass the House bill even more quickly in a rubber stamp action.   But as I said before, the democrats can make a political issue out of any health care bill that’s passed if the average American is worse off.  Also it was Marco Rubio go got some insurance gap coverage bill repealed so the government did not reimburse insurance companies they lost under Obama care so that they had no choice but to drastically raise their rates just before last fall’s election.  This hike in rates no doubt figured in their decision to vote for Trump over Obama. 

WASHINGTON — The Republican drive to repeal the Affordable Care Act advanced on Thursday as two House committees approved broad legislation to undo the law and replace it with a more modest system of tax credits and a rollback of President Barack Obama’s Medicaid expansion.  The rumor persists however that mandatory taxes and other requirements remain in the bill.  The House Energy and Commerce Committee endorsed the legislation on a party-line vote of 31 to 23 after a session that lasted more than 27 hours. The House Ways and Means Committee had approved the measure in a predawn session on Thursday. The House Budget Committee must give its approval to the measure next week before a final House vote that Speaker Paul D. Ryan plans for the week of March 20.

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency- - is officially a climate change denier and doesn’t believe that CO2 causes global warming.  This assertion contracts the agency’s own web site.  Some would call it “the shadow hold-overs of Obama”.   People like Shawn Hannity insist that it’s this shadow government of Obama that’s still there as carrier beaurocrats, that are responsible for all of the massive leaking that’s been going on.  Hey, if we have the power maybe we should use it.  If you are looking for specifics here it is.  

EPA chief Scott Pruitt says carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming  8 Hours Ago | 01:02

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.  "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box."  "But we don't know that yet. ... We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis."

The statement contradicts the public stance of the agency Pruitt leads. The EPA's webpage on the causes of climate change states, "Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change."

In other amusing news arrests of illegal aliens attempting to cross the border are down fifty percent.  This one really surprises me.  I figured the Trump edit would cause the ICE officers to be more aggressive in hunting down aliens but this not the case.  Some claim it’s just the threat of deportation that scares them off.  I really don’t know if news travels that fast.  

(from Washington's blog) In order to understand the enormous magnitude of Trump’s failure (not merely of performance, but of his actual intentions), consider a poll by a top pollster, published on 18 November 2016, ten days after the U.S. Presidential election, and headlined “Support for Trump Fed by Near-Universal Frustration that Government Ignores the People”:  A remarkable nine-in-ten voters agreed that ‘Elected officials think more about the interests of their campaign donors than the common good of the people.’ …  This profound dissatisfaction with government has reached new heights in response to longstanding trend line questions. Asked whether government ‘is run for the benefit of all the people’ or is ‘pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves’ in the 1960s only a minority said that it was run by big interests. In recent years this number has risen to eight-in-ten. In the current study this leapt to an unprecedented 92 percent. …

Just one more item.  It's my policy not to go back and edit blog posts that are ten and eleven years old no matter how "expediant " such a move might be.  Those posts have been there that long and people have been reading them and have a right to expect that that's how I felt on the issues at the time, regardless how trivial I might make the edits.  

The Specifics on Trump's Health Care Plan

I may be a little slow in getting a posting out because yesterday the details were very vague with a lot of misinformation.  If this bill passes it will be better than nothing, and we can still decide to make it a campaign issue in 2018 and in 2020 when the Democrats can make their case.

Walking a fine line between the free market and a safety net, Republicans on March 6 released their legislative plan to replace Obamacare — more formally known as the Affordable Care Act — without throwing millions of people off their health insurance coverage.  It’s too soon to tell how much the plan will cost or if people currently covered will retain their coverage, and at what cost. That information will come later, after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finishes analyzing the plan.  The more conservative congressmen don’t like this plan so there are a few rays of hope there.  But basically it pretty much guts the affordable care act. 

But we can draw a few initial conclusions about the plan, which the Republicans are calling the American Health Care Act, or AHCA.

First of all all funding to Planned Parenthood is cut.  Instead the funding that would go to Planned Parenthood goes to other “community health services” under a broad definition. 

The requirement to buy insurance goes away. People will no longer be fined on their tax returns if they lack insurance under the plan. Large companies will no longer have to pay penalties for not offering insurance.

There are still tax credits for people to buy insurance. The plan includes an "advanceable" tax credit, based on age and families size, which people can use to buy insurance. Whether it’s as bigger or smaller than Obamacare will depend on specific circumstances. The plan’s advocates say the credit will be between $2,000 and $14,000 a month "for low- and middle-income individuals and families who don’t receive insurance through work or a government program."

Insurers still have to cover pre-existing conditions, but they will be able to charge more for people who are recently uninsured. The plan allows insurance companies to charge higher rates if a person has a significant lapse in coverage. Higher rates will be charged if a person was uninsured for 63 continuous days during the previous 12 months.

Insurance plans will no longer have to cover most care; catastrophic policies will be allowed again. The Obama administration required insurance companies to cover basic care without exclusions; they called it "essential health benefits." The GOP plan allows for more limited policies and policies that kick in only in cases of major illness or injury.

Adult children and college students can stay on their parents’ plans. As under Obamacare, children will be able to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26.

Medicaid will eventually be reduced, but it might expand first. The Medicaid expansion remains at first but new enrollment freezes in 2020. Other limitations will also be applied to the program.

The taxes from the 2010 health care law will be repealed. That includes taxes on prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, health-insurance premiums and medical devices. As for how the plan will be paid for, an explanation on the House GOP website says, "We are still discussing details, but we are committed to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with fiscally responsible policies that restore the free market and protect taxpayers."

We are updating disk two with five new songs and shortening Trump’s speech.  The current guy in charge got wind that a lot of people thought there was just too much Trump, so we listened.  It’s kind of a clean out the refrigerator special with five new songs, one of which has been previously used and then dropped.  Also we are in fact changing “Radio Ready” because of the fact that “I’m Looking Through You” is on at least two of our other compilations so we are replacing the track, alphabetically with “Honey, What do you do for Money” and that’s how we’re going to list it- by AC DC.

Disk Two  (revised with reduced Trump)  released March 7, 2017

Hell Bound Train (George Thorogood)
Midnight Cruiser (Steely Dan)
Am I Going Insane? (Black Sabbath)
Our House (Madness)
Keep Me In Your Mind (Scorpions)
Passion Play (Jethro Tull) (radio edit)
Pretty Penny (Stone Temple Pilots)

Muscle of Love (Alice Cooper)

Killer in the Home (Adam and the Ants)

Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie (Bob Dylan)

Little Wing (Derek and the Dominoes)

TV Caesar (Procol Herum)

The Trumpster Delivers (Feb 28th 2017)  15:21  edited

Playing time may be a minute or two shorter.  The editing was at the discretion of the Federation.  "Bush Babies" had something by the Clapper but we used a different song here.  

A Brief Update

This whole wiretapping story where Trump accuses the Obama administration of bugging the Trump building has really got traction.  It used to be we figured that if the story was false it would make Trump look like a liar.  And if the story was true it would be worse because some FISA judge (appointed by Clinton) thought there were sufficient grounds to believe Trump had contact with foreign governments.  But Shawn Hannity says there were two requests for approval of a FISA judge.  One was made in June or July that was turned down.  The other was made in October of last year and this one was approved.  Trump had a lot of guests and there was a lot of stuff about creeping fascism and the government has a dossier of evidence on everybody.  Trump finally issued his travel ban in a revised form.  Iraq was taken off the list of nations so now there are only six.  Also there is no specific reference to religion and one religion won’t be favored over another.  This should get it through the courts.  Also Visas won’t be touched.   There were new rumors about what is in the Obama Care reform bill that aren’t true.  Some are saying that a form of mandentory insurance has been left in the bill. 

They are doing more invasive pat-downs with the airlines and they are doing pat-downs of the groin, the breasts and the buttox.  They claim that too many weapons have gotten through ordinary pat-downs. Well the whole inspection thing is getting out of hand and we're suffering from too much post 9 - 11 paranoia and airline traffic and processing will be slowed to a crawl. 

 Last night I watched Sixty Minutes.  There was this Marie Le Penn lady from France who is kind of a female Trump with a French accent who believes all the same things Trump does in terms of exit from the EU and immigration.  But her father was known as an anti Semite.  Then it was this cruise ship that went down in the Bermuda Triangle around September of 2015 and they discovered the ship in October of 2015 and all the details with that.  Then I went down for medication with Ida and turned down a tuna sandwich.  Then it was the thing on the 33 lions who were beaten and otherwise mistreated with terror tactics and smashing in their teeth for punishment.  These were circuses in Peru and Brazil and often when their spying was discovered the reorters would be beaten up and had their legs broken.  When the lions were eventually moved to Africa it was the first time many lions had seen a tree or walked on grass.

 I didn’t sleep well at all because I was coughing so much.  I had a dream I was taking college courses and it was finals time.  I had this one essay assignment that was due so I threw something together before class.  We were supposed to have a fellow student grade it and Wally was in charge and gave me a C.   But the papers weren’t turned in till the next day and then Wally announced that mine was unsatisfactory and I had gotten an F.  I felt hurt and betrayed because I thought Wally was my friend. 

Democrats Struggle with Political Impotence

The trouble with democrats trying to bring down Donald Trump is that they want it too badly.  They are trying so hard to do it people see a sense of desperation in them because the democrats have become known as a loser party.  Yesterday Trump’s son in law, the Jewish fellow, and Flynn were both in touch with Russia.  But the situation gets muddied with all of the charges and counter charges.  The adage is true that the best defense is a good offense.  As I have said before, what we need is some prosecutor to lay out the case in a “nexus” cause and effect type thing where point A leads to B and then C and finally you get to overwhelming evidence that convicts.  We are still in search of a smoking gun, because merely lying under oath isn’t considered definitive evidence any more.  And then they produce photos with Chuck Schummer with Putin and say “See, the democrats do it too”.  And you have Mike Pence with his private E mail server that was hacked but you still hear the Republicans countering “Yeah but what Hillary did was still worse because national security was involved”.   The Republicans got where they are today with a lot of hard planning and some under-handed schemes like James Comey’s actions.  And just remember that without Citizen’s United” we wouldn’t even be talking about Republicans being in all the houses of government.  But I’ve been fighting drowsiness these last two days.  I’m beginning to wonder whether I might have Epson Barr disease or something.  Maybe it’s a B vitamin deficiency.  At any rate I dozed off and then roused and Michael Moore was on talking about the reason why he knew that Trump was going to win last year was that in Michigan people who had voted for President Obama twice were switching to Trump this time around.  And you saw a whole lot more Trump signs than you saw Hillary signs.  The Republican fortunes have by no means plateaued or even gone into the equilivant of a financial “bubble”.  So far the Republicans have not over-reached because no matter what Trump has done, he’s somehow able to explain it all and end up as the one who is justified and all of his enemies are just “sour grape” detractors.  I missed the snack period.  This morning I thought of some blog entry I could write that would be so brilliant it would convince everybody that we democrats did have a winning plan.  But I’m not the only person that’s out of ideas.  Everybody is out of ideas and you hear whispers that this whole thing with Sessions is going to blow over.  This isn’t 1973 and our party is not in power.

Nobody would have guessed that when the internet began to get popular it would be such a vehicle for the propagation of right wing ideas.  That’s why they call it the right wing echo chamber.  Because people tweet their senseless thoughts over and over again and the same error gets multiplied.  It would be nice if people who used computers really had to have knowledge in computer science.  Of course I wish everybody were approximately as smart as I am in terms of higher math and science and logic, and also a decent understanding of history.  People today are told what to think by FOX news, which came on in 1996.  The right wing didn’t really have a message in 1996.  It was kind of just Dole on his own without much backing.  But now of course there are all the rich people like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers organizing the brainwashing of the population.  They say that the news can’t tell you what to think, but it can tell you what to think about.  If they want you to think about terrorists coming over the borders then that’s what you’ll think about.  You know the odds are slim of coming up with a really intelligent thought in 120 characters or less, unless you yourself are unusually intelligent.  People repeat these sayings and things they hear on Hannity because they are conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs, to do so.

Arizona appears to be on the road to defeating Arizona State leading by ten points.  I was out for a cigarette and Augustine came out with some St Patrick’s Day cup cakes with green icing.  He had enough so each of us could have two of them.  Manuel was saying he was tired and slept because he had nothing to do.  There are things I could do but I’m too tired to do them.  As you know the Romulans celebrate St Patrick’s Day the same day as we do on earth, along with most of the holidays shared by earth.  The one exception is Christmas, which they celebrate thirteen days later on the Julian calendar.  And Easter they don’t celebrate at all.  I’d like to get rid of this cough.  Maybe Rico will be more helpful than April turned out to be.  I should just call Dr Saran directly since I’ve called him before but April says I shouldn’t do that. 

MISSING LINKS   If you’ve seen today’s release of this album  (we are referring to the compilations of rock songs you see in my postings especially in May of 2006), which has been around since April of 2005 you will noticed four songs have been added, which should have been there all along.  On Disk 1 we added “Do You Know what I Mean” by Lee Michaels,  On disk 2 it is “I Can’t Get Next to You” by the Temptations” and note the date peramaters say 1969 to 1974 (and early 1974 at that)  Kicking off disk 3 it’s “Mercedes Benz” by Janis Joplin, and on disk 4 it’s “Saturday In the Park” by Chicago.  You’re probably tired of hearing about that stuff.