It's the Same Ol' Same Ol'

The media can't tell you what to think- - but they can tell you what to think About... Meditate on the Truth of this statement with me now.

 Norman Goldman once again talked about being ready to make compromises.  First we have to get back to where we were nine years ago in mid 2007 when the democrats held congress and the economy was really humming along.  In fact we haven’t yet gotten back to that level of economic activity we had then.  Certainly we are more pessimistic about the future than we were then.  I am totally perplexed at Norman Goldman’s frame of reference when he speaks of this “compromise” we’ll need to do.  We are totally beaten down.  The last time the Republicans had a president who wasn’t hard right and therefore could be said to have “made compromises” was Richard Nixon, and Republicans regard him as a failure and never invited him back to speak at conventions.  It’s my belief that the democrats should treat President Obama the same way if they’re going to be consistent.  This president’s speeches are toxic in that their only effect is to enable tons of Republican right wing response.  It seems clear to me the only thing Norman Goldman wants us to think about is "loving".  In one thing I agree with Donald Trump.  Winning is a heck of a lot better than losing and winning is what we have to start doing.  How absurd it would be for a champion sports team like the Cleveland Cavileers to suddenly "think about" somehow compromising as if that would cause them to win the final game that they would be unable to win on sheer merit.  As the saying goes "A victory has a thousand fathers; a defeat is an orphan".  The whole appeal of Hillary as a candidate is not so much planning to be a winner by rolling out a clear sighted political agenda, but just hoping not to lose.  

Self destructive behavior is horrible.  Omar Mateen or whatever his name is, has this horrible secret he's kept inside him, and I don't mean the shingles virus.  Starting Tuesday we began hearing reports one by one that Omar was on gay dating sites and hung out at the "Pulse" in an effort to pick up gay men.  We know about his repressed personality due to perhaps an over-bearing father with higher expectations of him as to what a good Muslim ought to be.  We need to take a hard look at not only the mass availability of AR 15's and AK 47's but also Mental Illness as a subject for more throrough investigation, if for no other reason than National Security.  We need to find better ways of screening for certain types of Mental Illness the way we have learned to screen for autism in young toddlers.  On the soap opera there is this pretty young woman named Abigail.  In fact it could be that her beauty is her best feature.  But this week she sank deeper into her mental illness by torching the Institution she resides in and burned herself badly including her face.  How is she ever going to get over that?  Shawn Hannity sees everything in terms of ISIS sneaking people into this country by way of posing as refugees from Syria, and he says "They are coming by the hundreds of thousand and there is no way to vet them all because ISIS instructs (all of) them on how to lie to get past the authorities.  So we are in grave danger.  As Hannity puts it "They are taking away our guns to defend ourselves and then letting in more terrorists.  Of course Omar Meteen is from Queens, New York so he is an American citizen.  So apparently Ronald Reagan should have kept out Omar's parents. So Reagan's State department should have been psychic and known that their unborn son would be a psycho-killer.  

Donald Trump is continuing to make one absurd statement after another.  When asked about people on the FBI terrorist watch list being allowed to buy guns, even assault weapons, Donald Trump said, “Let me consult with the NRA”.   Meanwhile there is new evidence that Trump didn’t and doesn’t pay any Federal Income taxes.  There are still rumors that Trump won’t be nominated; that the party will throw him out.   It seems that not only has Trump praised Vladimir Putin but Putin has praised Donald Trump.  They don’t allow homosexuality in Russia.   Trump has said “Any nation that doesn’t subscribe to our way of life and is terroristic- - is a nation we shouldn’t accept immigrants from”. 

Mitch Mc Connell is speaking now after Senator Harry Reid gave a brief speech mostly on anti gun legislation.  He wants expanded background checks and also to close the terrorist watch loophole.  Just for a little background here, the Republicans have been saying as of late that people on terrorist watch lists could be there unjustly not having had ‘due process”.  Suddenly they are concerned about due process when so many of the people in Guantanamo Bay are there on the flimsiest of evidence, or no evidence at all.  The Obvious solution is to deny these people on the terrorist watch list the right to buy a firearm, and if there are any unjustly put on that last then we can deal with that issue separately. There was talk about June 19^th being a holiday in Texas because on this date slaves in 1865 learned that they were now free.  There was also a plug for District of Columbia statehood.

John Mc Cain says President Obama is directly responsible for the terrorist attack in Orlando.  Donald Trump came close to saying the same thing yesterday.  They can’t talk about terrorism or any problem without linking the President to causing it whether it’s race relations or the state of the economy.  This kind of school yard taunting and passing the buck is not worthy of an elected statesman.  The conversational tone is altogether too juvenile these days. 

There has been an incident where Russia hacked democratic computer data banks and stolen all the information about Donald Trump the party was planning to use in the campaign.  Here is something from Washington’s blog on the subject.  NATO had produced in 2013 (prior to the take-over of Ukraine) an informational propaganda video alleging that “cyberattacks” by people in Russia or in China that can compromise U.S. national security, could spark an invasion by NATO, if the U.S. President decides that the cyberattack was a hostile act by the Russian or Chinese government. In the video, a British national-security expert notes that this would be an “eminently political decison” for the U.S. President to make, which can be made only by the U.S. President, and which only that person possesses the legal authority to make. NATO, by producing this video, made clear that any NATO-member nation’s leader who can claim that his or her nation has been ‘attacked’ by Russia, possesses the power to initiate a NATO war against Russia. In the current instance, it would be U.S. President Barack Obama. However, this video also said that NATO could not automatically accept such a head-of-state’s allegation calling the cyber-attack an invasion, but instead the country that’s being alleged to have perpetrated the attack would have to have claimed, or else been proven, to have carried it out. With the new NATO policy, which was announced on June 14th, in which a cyber-attack qualifies automatically as constituting “war” just like any traditional attack, such a claim or proof of the target-nation’s guilt might no longer be necessary. But this has been left vague in the published news reports about it.  Could a President Hillary Clinton be planning an attack on Russia?