Green Eagle

Reuters has the following to report today: "NEW YORK - The United States' diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focused on making the war-torn country's president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday, in a departure from the Obama administration's initial and public stance on Assad's fate. The view of the Trump administration is also at odds with European powers, who insist Assad must step down." Contrary to former US policy, and at odds with European powers...well, let me think now.  Isn't there someone out there that wants Assad to remain in power?  I just know his name will come to me any second now. This is what treason in the White House looks like.

Today, Donald Trump hit 36% approval in the always Republican leaning Gallup poll.  I mention this, because this is lower than the lowest ever recorded by either Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, despite the multi-hundred-million dollar smear campaigns conducted against them for years.  And it only took him two months. He's got a long way to go, however, before he hits the 25% approval rating recorded by George W. Bush, after he destroyed the American economy.  Well, give him a chance.  He's working on it. _________________________________________________________________ Just to be clear about my comment about Gallup being Republican leaning.  Gallup, under its founder George Gallup Sr, was the first polling organization to really gain national prominence, and once had a reputation as highly reliable.  Unfortunately, when Gallup died, his company was inherited by his son, George Gallup Jr, who was a hard core right wing evangelical Christian, who made no ...

A prediction: Well, it is obvious that Trump cannot come up with the money to build his promised wall, nor is it even feasible to build it across large parts of the border with Mexico, as anyone who has been to, say, Big Bend National Park will know.  So, what to do, to avoid another gigantic humiliation? Here is what I think will happen:  Trump will find enough money somewhere to start building the wall, and then actually build a few miles or a few dozen miles of it, which will be utterly useless, except for propaganda purposes.  The completion of the wall will then fall into the same hole as Obamacare repeal; always promised, but never happening.  His deluded followers will take his meaningless gesture as having fulfilled his promise, and the rest of us will just move on to his next abomination.  That's how he wins until we are sick of winning.

Once again, the press, our politicians in both parties, and the American people are totally ignoring what is happening in Washington. We all know the Republicans don't give a damn about health care, they only care about themselves and giving money to their rich backers.  So even though they have majorities in both houses of Congress, they couldn't enact a simple bill.  Why?  Well, I will tell you. As I keep pointing out, there is only one person in this country with his finger on the impeachment button, and that is Paul Ryan, who is holding off for one reason and one reason only; until he can be sure he can take Mike Pence down with Trump, he can't make himself President, which is all this power mad, morally dead semi-human really cares about.  Well, it was worth it to Trump to see to it that Ryan has a humiliating failure, even if Trump had to have one himself.  After all, Trump has four years to recover from this, and he is such a deranged egomaniac that h...

"Dear Abby: Friends are ignoring the loss of our cat" Man, that's enough to make you cry.

Until some time in the future.  My guess?  The middle  of the night on some three day weekend, or maybe during the Super Bowl if they can wait that long.

I've got a little work the next few weeks, so I had better get this out there, before it corrodes the insides of my computer. Advice that won't help you, Donald: Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Down To The Wire Trump Applies Pressure on Healthcare: Call Your Congressman" My Congressman is Adam Schiff.  I don't know that calling him is going to help Trump too much. Derek Hunter, Town Hall:  "Liberals Prefer Illegal Aliens Over Your Kids" But what if your kids are illegal aliens?  Derek argues: "A few weeks ago in this space I asked a simple question: How many victims of illegal alien crime will be enough to make Democrats and the media care about illegal alien crime?" On a similar note, how many years of 30,000+ gun deaths in this country will be enough to get Republicans to put "your kids" ahead of gun company profits?  Nah, forget it.  Profits are more important than kids. Larry Elder, Town Hall:  "What to Do Abou...

Big Time. James Comey!  The single American most responsible for the malignant lies that sunk Hillary's candidacy and put the Traitor Trump in the White House. Have you heard him utter one word of apology for this monstrous act, or show one sign that he has suddenly discovered what a criminal abuse of power it was? Now, all of a sudden, he stands in front of a Congressional committee and admits that the FBI has been investigating Trump's treason with Vladimir Putin for months, and he knew all about it, even when he was spreading hideous lies about Hillary. Can you not see that this crooked son of a bitch is going to now let a few weeks go by and then announce that Trump did nothing wrong? How can anyone stand still and let one of the chief malefactors in the Trump election theft be portrayed to the nation as a fair minded investigator of his own crimes? We must have a truly independent inquiry into Trump's behavior, staffed with people who are determined to see ...

We know now that even the right wing FBI and all of our right wing intelligence services (because right wing is what they have always been) admit that the spies of a foreign dictator were major factors in the election of the man who criminally sits in the White House (well, except on the weekends, when we pay $3 million so he can play golf.) Hey, so what? In the entire history of this country, for almost two and a half centuries, if anything like this had happened, this man would be out of the White House and in jail by now, if he had not already faced execution. But this time around?  Who cares? We watched as Republicans shouted at the top of their voices about utterly made up crimes that Obama and Hillary had allegedly committed; which even if they had been real would have amounted to almost nothing compared to the high treason that Donald Trump has obviously, beyond the shadow of a doubt, committed.  We watched them demand impeachment and imprisonment over and over ...

I feel the need to dedicate this Wingnut Wrapup to White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who, as reported at Daily Kos, as well as elsewhere, had the decency to explain to all of us how the Trump administration thinks: "We can't do that anymore. We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good. Meals on Wheels sounds great. […] I can't defend that anymore. We cannot defend that anymore." We cannot defend feeding people who are too old and sick to work. And as for meals for hungry school kids? "They're supposed to help kids who don't get fed at home get fed so they do better in school. Guess what? There's no evidence they're actually doing that." No evidence that feeding kids actually makes them less hungry? "There's no evidence they're helping results, helping kids do better in school, which is what -- when we took your money from you to say, we're going to spend them on after-school pr...

I guess there isn't an electric guitar player worth a nickel that hasn't taken the time to learn this one. 'Bye, Chuck. And I must also add that, two days ago, James Cotton, the great Chicago blues harmonica player, who I saw a couple of times back in the late sixties or early seventies, also died.  Here's a number from him:

Get ready for it.  Despite all of the Republicans' efforts to shut things down, every day we get a new little piece of the puzzle of the Trump administration's treason.  At this point the evidence, taken as a whole, is so overwhelming, that you would have to be corrupt or deeply ignorant to deny what is going on. It is clear that Trump and his manipulators know perfectly well that all that is needed is a couple more revelations, and absolutely nothing will be able to save him but starting a war, during which he can try to intimidate people into falling in line behind him, the way that George W. Bush did. The Trump administration has been sending up trial balloons suggesting various possibilities, ever since it took office, but it seems that they have now settled on provoking a conflict with North Korea, a country which has as little sympathy around the world as Trump himself has.  Here is our current Secretary of State, blabbing on about the new Trump doctrine towa...

So, the nation cannot afford meals on wheels for senior citizens, but we can afford to build more aircraft carriers, even though we own as many as the rest of the world combined, and most of those owned by other nations are barely functional (not large enough for any modern jets except Harriers, which are all at the end of their service life) or scheduled for retirement. We can also afford $180 million dollars a year, so the "first lady" doesn't have to actually live in that dump of a White House with her "husband."  I'm sure that many of us might have some sympathy with her in that regard, but still, that is more than the annual budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, which is about to be eliminated because it is far less important than Melania's right to live wherever she wants at our very considerable expense. This isn't a budget; it is a sick joke at the expense of the American people.  The only conclusion that can be drawn from this, ...

The following is the musing of a historical autodidact, admittedly, but it's something that I have been thinking about lately. The nation-state as we think of it was really a product of the age of Napoleon, i.e. the age in which revolution, war and collapse of government brought a pretty decisive halt to European monarchies.  The truly large nation states mostly all came into existence in the century after that:  The United States, Germany, the British Empire in its terminal form, the Soviet Union, Brazil, and only shortly after that, India and China. Now that a couple of centuries have passed since the demise of Napoleon, I am beginning to wonder if the world can really afford to have countries that are so large and powerful that they can pose a threat to the world that can only be stopped at a price of the deaths of tens of millions. Maybe it is time to admit that, after a couple of centuries on an even keel, the United States has been so subverted by the rich that it ...

This news from Daily Kos today: "Trump expected to double U.S. ground forces in Syria in coming weeks...The U.S. military has drawn up early plans that would deploy up to 1,000 more troops into northern Syria in the coming weeks, expanding the American presence in the country ahead of the offensive on the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, according to U.S. defense officials familiar with the matter.   That's 1,000 in addition to the current 1,000, and comes as those troops are increasingly being asked to step in to prevent violence between our various semi-allied factions." Can anyone imagine a situation more likely to end in disaster?  Other than having elected Trump to begin with, of course.  All of our painful experience in Vietnam and Iraq, washed down the drain by a President who probably knows nothing real about either of those military disasters, despite having lived through both of them.  Based on previous experience, my guess is that soon the...

I suggest that you take the time to watch the latest video from Keith Olbermann: It has been clear for months now, that the endless connections between Donald Trump and Russia are enough to convince anyone not living in a state of utter denial that Trump is a traitor in collusion with the Russian dictator.  Keith lays a lot of it out in this video; what he does not get into is what Trump has actually done for the Russians, in the way of demolishing our intelligence apparatus, deliberately alienating us from our allies, working to destroy NATO, obviously planning to do away with sanctions on Russia, appointing people deeply connected to Russia to our highest executive branch positions, and on and on. Now, just consider how much immense power the Republicans have to prevent this sort of information from being assembled in public, and any sentient person must come to one conclusion and one conclusion only: that we are led by a man who has accepted bribes or been blackmailed to d...

A few random comments on their new, improved health care bill: "Asked in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” approximately how many people will lose coverage if the American Health Care Act is passed, Ryan replied: “I can’t answer that question. It’s up to people...“People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”  Paul Ryan considers this "freedom", because Paul Ryan is at best an idiot and at worst a sociopath. "On NBC's Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd asked Price how he could call the Affordable Care Act a "failing system" if millions of people were being covered under the law. "Can you say for certain that once this bill is passed that nobody will be worse off financially when it comes to paying for health care?" Todd asked. "I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we're going through," Price rep...

The increase in uninsured under the Republicans' Obamacare "replacement." I guess the number speaks for itself.

Donald Trump a week ago: "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" We learn today from Sean Spicer that, when Trump said "President Obama" he did not mean President Obama, and when he said "tapp (sic) my phones" he did not mean tap my phones. There is no reasoning with sick people like this.  They need to be destroyed, for the good of all of us.

Well, yes, of course they can be.  It's happened so many times that it is now just the way things work in Washington- Republicans screw things up and blame it on the Democrats, Democrats fix things, and Republicans take the credit.  And since the Republicans own the press, voters fall for it every time. What am I raving about today? This story, which I originally saw at Crooks and Liars, but which can be found at many other places: "Republicans are openly hoping that Democrats will clean up the mess after they pass a health care law that results in million of Americans losing coverage.   The New York Times reported over the weekend that Republicans are moving forward with plans to replaces the Affordable Care Act even though voters in red states are expected to be hit hard by the changes.    Regardless of warnings from experts that millions could lose coverage, Republicans are pressing forward with the belief that Democrats will one day help fix the...

Well, five weeks in, and here is what we have: A traitorous President in league with a foreign dictator The most corrupt President ever, openly using his position for personal profit An uncontrollable, vicious liar A level of incompetence and disarray in the White House that is almost impossible to comprehend Savaging of the most basic rights of American citizens, such as the right to travel openly without government permission. So, what do the wingnuts have to offer to try to turn people's attention away from these multiple abominations?  Let's dive in and take a look. and here is a good place to start.  I swear to God this is something I actually read on a right wing website yesterday: The Resistance:  "FBI Issues Warrant For Obama’s Arrest After Confirming Illegal Trump Tower Wiretap...Former president and breaker of laws, Barack Obama, will either surrender himself or be picked up by the FBI sometime today to be booked and charged with unlawful use of autho...

If you need any more evidence (you don't) of what a bunch of evil fucks the Republicans are, you need look no farther than the name they have given to their disgusting "health care plan."  Really, here it is, from the House's website: The World's Greatest Health Care Plan!  That's what these cynical cocksuckers are calling their malignant bill.  What kind of a sickening name for a bill is that, even if it were true? This is the sort of government that Republicans were voted in to provide us- screw the American people and then kick them in the face on the way out the door.  And their stupid, ignorant voters are just thrilled with it.

I think we need to talk about a phenomenon that I have noticed with increasing frequency the last few months- purportedly left wing sites promoting outrageous or easily disproved claims about Trump, the Republicans and right wingers.  In the last week or two, these sites have started to attract some mainstream attention, such as this article from the Atlantic , which correctly observes: "there’s no equivalence between the falsehoods coming from the American left and the right in the past two weeks. Individual Democrats on Facebook may cling to pleasant stories and wishful thinking, but the Republican White House press secretary spouts off lies beneath the presidential seal. On Thursday, Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to the president, referenced a terrorist attack that never happened. But a preponderance of fake information ultimately harms the political cause that absorbs it." I think I can see at least three strains in this sort of website. First of all, there...

Just a random collection of what passes for Republican government, compiled in the last day and a half or so: Congressman Steve King:  "Trump needs to purge Leftists from executive branch before disloyal, illegal & treasonist acts sink us." Funny, I grew up associating the term "purge" with Joe Stalin.  Well, if Putin can turn out to be a far better leader than Obama, why not Stalin too? Remember Trump saying this: "[Putin] has very strong control over a country," Trump said during the town hall, which was hosted by MSNBC and NBC...he's been a leader. Far more than our president has been a leader." Strong control over a country...this, from the same people who have screamed for eight years that Obama was a dictatorial monster running roughshod over the Constitution.  And may I point out that, by this standard, Idi Amin and Muammar Khadaffy were also better leaders than Obama? Ed Klein, Fox News:  "[Obama] must have known about...