Green Eagle

I see Trump voters all over the internet crowing over how Trump is keeping every one of his campaign promises! Well, every one that involves screwing minorities, I guess.  Here's a promise that seems to have escaped their attention:  adopting a longstanding Democratic pledge to let Medicare negotiate bulk discounts in the price it pays for prescription drugs- something that would actually benefit ordinary people. Oops: "Today, after a meeting with pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and executives, he abandoned that pledge, referring to an idea he supported as recently as three weeks ago as a form of “price fixing” that would hurt “smaller, younger companies.” Instead of getting tough, Trump’s new plan is that he’s “going to be lowering taxes” and “getting rid of regulations.” So, instead of a benefit for consumers, he is going to reduce taxes and regulations on rich people and their companies.  What a refreshing change from past Republican policy, right? You st...

I've noticed in the last day or two that the Trump people seem to be trying to clean up Bannon.  I think it is important to have a record of exactly what the Trump voters have put in charge of the country: Good work, Republicans.  I bet you are so proud of yourselves.

I'm trying not to make the same comments everyone else is making about Trump, but here is an issue that has not received much attention:  Trump's threats to abrogate the NATO treaty, if other NATO members don't cough up unspecified amounts of money.  Here's a report from a little while ago, from the Atlantic: "Donald Trump’s apparent rejection of the cornerstone of global security after World War II has stunned U.S. partners in the alliance...America’s NATO allies may be on their own after November if Russia attacks them. At issue is NATO’s Article 5 on collective defense, which states that an “armed attack against one or more of them [members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all...” Well, the interpretation of this position of Trump's has mostly involved the implicit extortion of money from NATO allies by threatening not to aid them if they are attacked, but it has occurred to me that the actual truth might be the e...

We know that Democrats that emerged from last month's intelligence briefing about Putin's blackmailing of Trump and interference in our elections were enraged, and they have said that if Americans knew what was in that briefing, they would be screaming to get Trump out of there. Well, okay, guys.  It is time to do what has to be done.  At this time in our history the need of the American people to know what is in those briefings is a thousand times bigger than any secrecy laws.  Unfortunately, if someone does the right thing and makes those briefings public, the Trump administration will slaughter them.  There is only one answer.  Every single Democratic member of Congress, and I mean every one of them, must join together in the release of this information.  Let us see Trump arrest the entire leadership of the opposing party, and accuse them of treason, after we have seen the evidence that it is Trump himself who is the traitor.  That would pretty we...

Some more Twittering from Donald Trump, this time directed toward John McCain and Lindsay Graham: "The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong - they are sadly weak on immigration. The two Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III." Listen, I think McCain and Graham are craven jerks, who talk a good game before inevitably going along with whatever piggishness the Republican party comes up with.  Still, coming from the President of the United States, this is pure lunacy.  The man is deranged.  So, John and Lindsey, are you going to do the right thing and initiate Trump's removal from office, or are you just talking big, before helping him enact his criminal agenda?

I have stated in the last couple of weeks that Donald Trump's undermining of our national security apparatus, his publicly accusing them of being Nazis, his stated commitment to doing away with much of their ability, is not some specimen of his obvious mental incapacity, but is a payment to Vladimir Putin, in the form of destroying our country's ability to foresee and deal with international threats. Not many people seem to agree with me about that, but I think Trump just proved that I am actually right, with the most treasonous and subversive act he has yet made as President. Today, Trump removed the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the National Security Council, and unbelievably replaced them with neo-Nazi propagandist Steve Bannon.  It is almost impossible to express in words what a treacherous betrayal of our national interests this is.  At this point, it is absolutely clear that Trump is endeavoring to destroy our na...

No point, really.  I just liked the picture:

Many of you may be unaware of this, but the Inaugural and the Women's March were not the only great outpourings of Americans into Washington D. C. this month.  Today is the 44th annual MARCH FOR LIFE! And this year, for the first time ever, the event is headlined by the beloved Vice President of the United States, the honorable Mike Pence!  This would, of course, not have been a first, except that for eight years in a row, Dick Cheney was unable to accept this great honor, having had a previous engagement at the March for Death, which took place annually in his office. Anyway, enough with the dumb jokes, huh?  As is usual, Green Eagle is on the story, which Fox News is covering as follows: "Pence fires up massive March for Life crowd...Vice President Mike Pence fired up a huge crowd at Friday's March for Life in Washington, telling the pro-life throng their movement is succeeding.  The 43rd annual event was the third massive event in the nation’s capital this w...

Here are the new characteristics of the United States government under Trump: He has asserted the right to commit armed aggression against other countries in order to seize their resources.  This is the doctrine of Lebensraum, which was central to Nazi ideology. He has asserted the right to use armed force to make cities in the United States do as he commands, which would be clearly illegal in this country but is standard with dictators, from Hitler to Assad, to just about any other one you could mention. He has commanded that only information that supports his positions, true or false, may be propagated by the government. He has begun attacking his opponents with patently false charges, implicitly threatening anyone who calls him out on his lies, calling them his enemies. He has appointed underlings committed to destroying the legal apparatus of government, and using their power for his purposes only. This right here is enough for any halfway awake person to realize th...

I must tell you that today I feel overwhelmed by the torrent of abominations being perpetrated on an almost hourly basis by Trump. As you know, I have predicted for years that the end-game of the Republican party is to devolve the country into a totalitarian dictatorship.  Well, they seem to have now found someone ready and willing to play the role of dictator.  That does not surprise me, but what has shaken me has been the speed, across so many fronts, with which they are deliberately destroying all norms of decency and morality in government.  Destroying any notion of truth, denying the concept that people are not at the top of our government for personal profit, threatening openly to invade other countries to steal their resources, talking about sending the military into cities that don't do what he tells them, betraying the country to a foreign dictator, destroying the health care system and public education, licensing the plundering of the environment by those of u...

I now must try to deal with something which will seem innocuous to many, but is by far the worst abomination yet perpetrated by Trump.  I have been thinking about this for several hours, since I first heard about it, and for once in my life I find myself unable to muster words that describe the true evil and danger of this course of action, but it must be addressed, so here I go. It was revealed today that, immediately after the inauguration, Trump issued a proclamation declaring his own inauguration day to be a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.” “Now, therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Jan. 20, 2017, as National Day of Patriotic Devotion, in order to strengthen our bonds to each other and to our country... There is no freedom where the people do not believe in it; no law where the people do not follow it; and no pea...

Today's Wingnut Wrapup respectfully dedicated to Marc Lamont Hill, a black Sheriff who has decided to cast his lot with Donald Trump, and who sensitively had this to say about another black man: "I am tired of this jigaboo telling black people who they should be, what they should do. He's a lackey for Democrats" So that is what we have come to in this country, thanks to the VERY NOT RACIST Donald Trump, and what he has licensed.  I guess that if you are for him, you are now free to call black people jigaboos.  FREEDOM!!!!  So that's what they mean when they use the word freedom.  It's not just about flying the Confederate flag any more.  And let me say once again that the highest accomplishment that any Conservative can strive for, is to get his racist, white supremacist garbage to come out of the mouth of a black man.  Well, let's just move on here, before I get sick on my keyboard. And a shout out to right wing talk show host Tomi Lahren:  ...

Is there no behavior so despicable that it is beneath Donald Trump?   Here's a tidbit from Britain's The Independent: "Donald Trump delivered a rambling, boastful speech on Saturday in front of CIA staffers in an attempt to win over support in the intelligence community" If you watch the video feed, which was totally focused on Trump and did not show the audience, you will hear applause and cheering. "...Pool reports later clarified that the attendants who were cheering and clapping when Mr Trump spoke were not CIA staffers but people who accompanied Mr Trump to the briefing." He brought his own paid stooges with him to cheer and clap to fool the American people into thinking that the CIA attendees were on his side, despite his having savaged them repeatedly during his campaign.  And it largely worked, because most American coverage of his remarks makes no mention of the fact that the applause he got was phony. This was the first speech he has...

A few days ago, I posted a prediction of how the Trump Presidency would work out, with the Republicans in Congress forcing Trump to go along with every bit of piggish legislation they have dreamed of for years, and then kicking his ass to the curb. I just came across an article about a Facebook post by Robert Reich, which reported this: "Writing on Facebook, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich relayed a conversation with a former GOP member of Congress who claims current members of the House are playing along with President Donald Trump for now but will dump him at the first possible moment...“They’ll get as much as they want – tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare – and blame him. And he’s such a fool he’ll want to take credit for everything.” They all think Trump is out of his mind,” he explained. “So the moment Trump does something really dumb – steps over the line – viola...

A few things to add to my previous comments.  First of all, expert opinion seems to be settling in on a number of attendees at Trump's inaugural of around 250,000, not the 300-350, 000 that I had settled on.  I hope this is not too much inside baseball, but I believe there are two reasons that I arrived at my erroneously high number.  First of all, I initially started with a number of 600,000, before there were really clear pictures, and I guess when I saw the real photos, I just couldn't bring myself to believe a number that is so low.  And I don't like to underestimate their crowds, because they are always so small as it is, and I want to be able to defend my numbers as not being motivated by wishful thinking. It's not often that I am not cynical enough about Republicans, but this was one of the times. And here is another factor that I have realized for some time, but that I often forget.  Republican crowds are, in the aggregate, older than Democratic crowds, ...

Well, preliminary evidence is coming in about today's Women's March on Washington.  Here are a couple of pictures, and then my comments: The lower picture is of the Mall, of course, looking from the Capitol toward the Washington Monument.  The other is on an adjacent street.  It is very difficult to calculate the size of this demonstration, because there is tremendous spillover from the Mall onto the parade route.  Even so, it is obvious that there are far more people on the Mall alone than attended the Inaugural. News sources report far larger attendance that expected, with size estimates in the 500,000 range, or close to twice the number of people who attended the Inaugural.  And remember that this is one of many marches being held today, with those in the large cities likely well above 100,000.  150,000, for example, were reported in Chicago, and I can tell you that my wife and I tried to go to the one in Los Angeles, only to find that it was impos...

Well, that was Donald Trump's prediction for his big day.  And how did that work out for you, Donald? Green Eagle loves to make a record of the turnout for right wing demonstrations, which is inevitably a small fraction of what they claim, and I am not going to stop now.  Better pictures will undoubtedly emerge in the next few days, but here is what we can see already: Oh wait, my bad- wrong picture.  Oh yeah, here it is: A little hard to see what is going on here.  Just for your information, for some reason, the ground on the mall has been covered in white plastic for Trump's inauguration.  Maybe someone had the idea of just rolling it up and using it as giant garbage bags to dispose of the Trump supporters.  Unfortunately, they apparently scattered like cockroaches before the cleanup crews arrived. Well, what can we see here?  The photos are a little bit hard to see.  They were apparently taken from the top of the Washington Monument, ...

Long time readers of this blog will know that one of the things I have continually covered is right wing marches and demonstrations, contrasting the wingnuts' claims about them with reality.  I have been assuming that such a fact check is going to be needed for the Trump Inauguration, which every sign seems to indicate is going to be pretty pathetic, but Trump got out ahead of me, and has been making public claims about the crowd that turned out in front of the Lincoln Memorial, for his Inaugural Concert of Has Been Musicians.  Here courtesy of Buzz Feed, are Trump's claims: Trump thanked people for coming by the “thousands and thousands” and added that he didn’t know if a concert outside the Lincoln Memorial had ever been done. “This started out tonight being a small little concert, and then we had the idea maybe we’ll do it in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know if it’s ever been done before,” Trump said. “But if it has, very seldom. And the people came by the t...

Well, at last we have a concrete proposal from Donald Trump about how he plans to make America great again. "In an interview Wednesday with the Washington Post, President-elect Donald Trump was asked just exactly how he plans to make good on his promise to make America great again. One potential he floated to the Post‘s Karen Tumulty: military parades in DC and New York showing off the armed forces’ human and materiel strength.   The Post reports:   “Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country,” Trump said. “And we’re going to show the people as we build up our military, we’re going to display our military.   “That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military,” he added." And what a magnificent way to increase the welfare of the American people.  Af...

Health care- just who to believe?  A knotty problem. The Republicans' intentions regarding Obamacare, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would accomplish the following: The number of people who are uninsured would increase by 18 million in the first new plan year following enactment of the bill. Later, after the elimination of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility and of subsidies for insurance purchased through the ACA marketplaces, that number would increase to 27 million, and then to 32 million in 2026. Premiums in the nongroup market (for individual policies purchased through the marketplaces or directly from insurers) would increase by 20 percent to 25 percent—relative to projections under current law—in the first new plan year following enactment. The increase would reach about 50 percent in the year following the elimination of the Medicaid expansion and the marketplace subsidies, and premiums would about double by 2026. So, to be brief, the Republi...

From James Hohman at the Washington Post, and no, I don't link to anyone who writes this kind of garbage: "Monica Crowley’s announcement shows that rules of politics still apply for Trump   Donald Trump and his team believe that the rules and norms of Washington do not apply to them. They are wrong, and yesterday brought a significant proof point." So he ditched a spokesman that embarrassed him in public.  That does away with the corruption and treason, I guess, as well as the daily signs that he is mentally unstable.  It does away with the bullying and deliberate incitement of racism.  It does away with his willing use of the Presidency to harm anyone who stands in his way.  Get ready, folks, it's time for the mainstream media to go into overdrive to force us to accept that Trump is just a normal President.

I had my e-mail account hacked a few days ago, and since then, I have not gotten a single comment on any of my posts.  I'm not the most popular guy on the internet, but it's gone on long enough that I'm beginning to think something is wrong.  I'll try to figure it out, but in the meantime, forgive me if your comments are not posted. Update:  I found the comments.  For some reason, Blogger has stopped sending them to my e-mail, but they are in the management section of my blog.  Why?  Who the hell knows- they certainly never told me about the change.

Back again already. They're howling at the moon these days: Kurt Schlichter, Town Hall:  "Obama Fades Away As Trump Laughs At His Enemies" Well, Kurt, his enemies are laughing back. Deal with it. Bryan Crabtree, Town Hall:  "Trump vs. Lewis: The Civil Rights Crisis in Atlanta — There is a civil rights crisis in Atlanta. While I'm not specifically referring to the battle of words between Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) and President-elect Donald Trump, it makes this the proper time.   Atlanta is full of modern-day plantations. The policies of leaders like Lewis have led to the entrapment of millions of minorities who are stuck in poverty, bad schools and crime-ridden neighborhoods." More lies for the white crackers out there to consume.  Thanks for that, Bryan.  John Lewis represents the richest part of Atlanta, just to be clear. Christine Rousselle, Town Hall:  "Here's Who Will Deliver The Oath of Office To Mike Pence" As if we ...

Well, we are now getting confirmation from a number of intelligence agencies that Donald Trump is indeed deeply compromised by the Russians.  When you add this to the blatant, grotesque corruption in the manner he is refusing to divest himself of his business interests, his picking a cabinet committed to violating his Constitutional duty to see the law is faithfully enforced, and his use of his visibility to engage in petty vendettas against anyone who criticises him, we now have a spectrum of absolute justifications for his impeachment, and he hasn't even been sworn in yet. Well, what can we expect from Congress?  Well, first of all, let's get this out in the open.  Every person remaining in the Republican party is as big a crook as Trump is, so don't look to them to do a thing about this just because it is the right thing to do. Here is how I think this is going to play out.  In all the attention devoted to the overwhelming likelihood that Vladimir Putin is bla...

I've been waiting for the grand American Nazi march in Whitefish, Montana, which was scheduled this month, and which has been receiving tons of publicity on the right.  Sad to say, as my good friend Curt has now informed me, it is not to be: "Neo-Nazis couldn’t raise the $125 needed for a permit for their Montana march...Neo-Nazis and white supremacists have been planning an on-again, off again march in Whitefish, Montana after the mother of well-known white supremacist Richard Spencer began complaining she was being harassed in Spencer’s hometown. Now, it seems, the march is off again after rally organizers were unable to afford the price of the permit to hold the event. According to The Flathead Beacon, the City of Whitefish received the application for a march on Second Street from Memorial Park to City Hall. The fee for the permit is $125, but the application had only a $65 money order attached to it. Parades are also required to have a certificate of insurance, whi...