August 22, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk
Donald Trump really thinks he is God
How Trump sees himself
This has to be at the top of the list of the Donald Trump freak show that has become a daily occurrence in the White House and around the world. It seems a T-rump superfan compared him to Jesus Christ, using his latest widely criticized remarks about Jews and Israel...
"The president on Tuesday questioned the loyalty of Jews who voted for Democrats, which was widely condemned as anti-Semitic, and he defended himself the following morning by tweeting out quotes from Newsmax commentator Wayne Allyn Root — who has promoted anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy theories against George Soros and President Barack Obama."
“’President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world…and the Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel.'”
How most see Trump
Now, does anyone wonder how the double-digit Trump supporters come up with such bizarre statements in their backing of this moron. People as crazy as Donald Trump talking about an equally crazy Donald Trump. Root concluded with, “They love him like he is the second coming of God.” Not sure we can top this. Trump isn't the first president to compare himself with God. Historian Heather Cox Richardson tweeted...
The other village idiot, Sarah Sanders, says God wanted Donald Trump...
Well, Johnson failed, but it may be harder to stop the Oval
Office lunatic if he should be elected to a second term. Chauncey DeVega on Salon says, "Trump’s limited intellectual development has given him a ‘God
complex." Now there is no doubt in our minds that Donald Trump's intellectual development is severely narrowed, that is, if there has been any at all. Here's how DeVega explains it...
"Trump’s lack of respect for the country’s long-standing democratic norms and institutions also extends to America’s alliances, security arrangements with its allies and friends, and the international order more broadly...hailed the merits of nationalism (while barely pretending that does not mean white nationalism)...tried to surrender U.S. security to Russian President Vladimir Putin...Donald Trump is also a habitual liar who is at war with the truth and empirical reality...Donald Trump is an authoritarian in waiting, who acts as though he believes himself to be God."
August 21, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk
What will it take to get reasonable gun control? How many more deaths?
What is this sick fascination?
The proof is in the congressional attitude and that currently seems to correlate with Donald Trump after his telephone conversation with the NRA's head gun nut, Wayne LaPierre. We already have enough gun laws including those that are for background checks. Here's the scenario...
"Senate Homeland SecurityChairman Ron Johnson (R-Wi) is casting major doubt on the prospects of significant gun regulations passing this fall, the latest sign that the effort to pass new firearm laws is starting to falter."
No one thought this kind of mindset was possible after Sandy Hook, or Aurora, Colorado, or most recently the California Garlic Festival, El Paso or the Dayton gun massacres. It is only possible because a cowardly Congress supported by a cowardly American public refuse to do anything. That refusal is, of course, prompted by the fact that Washington is afraid of the NRA and the public either doesn't have the brains or just doesn't care about gun violence.
There's more...
"The Wisconsin Republican said that a background checks measure based on the bill written by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and a national "red flag" bill are both unlikely to pass. He was open to GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill that would establish a red flag grant program, but said the Senate would need to 'attach to those grants very strict guidelines in terms of due process.'”
And that makes it absolutely clear that the GOP is more concerned with the NRA and gun manufacturers than they are with the innocent children and adults who die from gun violence. NRA problems reported by Rachel Maddow...
"The NRA reportedly launched a campaign to contact lawmakers in the wake of the shootings on August 3 and 4 in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Both gunmen wielded assault-style rifles in the separate shootings, which killed 31 people."
Hey, these perpetrators of gun violence are supposed to be headed down the drain so who cares what the hell they say. Chuck Schumer said...
"We've seen this movie before: President Donald J. Trump, feeling public pressure in the immediate aftermath of a horrible shooting, talks about doing something meaningful to address gun violence, but inevitably, he backtracks in response to pressure from the NRA and the hard-right."
Donald Trump lies about action on background checks...
In other words, in order to get rid of gun violence we need to get rid of Donald Trump and Congress, something many Americans would agree with. Here's a headline: ‘I’m worried’: Allies fear NRA has lost its power in Washington." Anita Kumar and Gabby Orr of Politico report...
"The disarray at the NRA is alarming allies who say President Donald Trump and Congress appear to have a brief opening to pass legislation while the group is so politically feeble it isn’t able to aggressively lobby lawmakers against proposals or hold them accountable for their votes, according to a half-dozen Republicans familiar with the situation."
And finally an insider reports...
“There’s no coordinated effort. The staff feels like there is no plan. There’s not a lot of direction or a plan for how to proceed.”
If the wheels are coming off at the NRA, it can't happen soon enough.
August 21, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk
Donald Trump's lies finally catching up with him
LYING: The epitome of Donald Trump
Although Anthony Scaramucci doesn't name names in this particular article, he says "that some current administration officials will soon turn on Trump and work against his 2020 re-election." Scary Tony adds...
“It’s a little bit like a cycle,” Scaramucci said. “I mean, if you can get the cycle started, some people that are fear-based due to the president’s bullying or the nonsense on his Twitter feed or how he handles himself personally, they’re intimidated by him.”
It has been obvious how some have been irked at the Oval Office lunatic, like former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson who once called Trump a "fucking moron." Scaramucci concluded with...
“What we saw over the week is the balloon is coming out of the president’s bombast,” he added. “The balloon is coming out of his rhetoric.”
And then Scaramucci came out with, "These 6 former Trump officials are the most likely to throw him under the bus in 2020," Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, Former chief of staff John Kelly, Former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Additional comments...
"The president has not been shy about expressing his disdain for Tillerson ever since he left his position, and he sent out an angry tweet calling his former top diplomat 'dumb as a rock.'”
"In his resignation letter, Mattis took thinly veiled shots at the president’s notorious disdain for America’s system of international alliances."
"He [John Kelly] was caught on camera twice shoving his face into his hand when the president did something embarrassing, such as when he referred to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as 'Rocket Man' in front of the United Nations."
Fact checking for Donald Trump lies has become a major business...
There's more you can read in the AlterNet article. And in the 'I can't believe Trump told that lie" column, he made the claim that Google threw over 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton. "On Monday’s edition of CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” fact-checker Daniel Dale told host Chris Cuomo that not only is President Donald Trump’s claim a lie, the professor he’s citing, Robert Epstein, has repudiated Trump’s interpretation of it."
"Economic reports increasingly warn of a coming recession, likely to be exacerbated by the pointless trade war with China, which was largely launched as an ego boost for Trump. So Trump and his allies are clinging to their favorite strategy — lying their heads off — in order to convince his followers that the U.S. economy is going great."
A documentary of Donald Trump lies...
Here's more from Maggie Haberman of the New York Times...
"Trump’s main response to reports of a possibly looming recession is to go into full conspiracy-theory mode, accusing his own hand-picked chair of the Federal Reserve and the news media of conspiring against his re-election chances."
But with the American public finally getting smart about the White House maniac, "Trump’s presidency is backfiring as the public grows more and more opposed to his views." While still wildly popular among his hardcore far-right base, it's not representative of the United States on the whole. Although in agreement with T-rump's views in the past, “There’s just one catch: the public is turning against Trump’s views.” This because of at least one major factor...
a Reuters poll found that Americans “were more likely to empathize with African-Americans” — including “whites without a college degree,” who played an important role in Trump’s victory over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.
August 20, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk
Measles still on rise in United States
Anti-vaxxers prefer snake oil
The measles epidemic has now grown to over 1,200 cases in 30 states in the U.S. This, all due to a gang of mentally challenged parents who believed social media info over scientific fact. It is all so pathetic since the highly contagious virus had been declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. But these poor souls decided their neighborhoods needed some excitement, so they refused to vaccinate their children, then sent them off to school to infect other innocent children.
And these 1,200 cases are just since January 1, of this year, an average 150 per month. This is the greatest number of measles cases in the United States since 1992, according to Newsweek. Here's the scenario...
"experts recommend a 95 percent vaccination rate for "herd immunity"—or, in other words, the amount of people who need to be vaccinated to keep those who cannot be vaccinated, due to allergies or other health concerns, safe—the CDC says only 91.1 percent of children aged 19-35 months have received the measles vaccine."
One teen with more brains than his mother...
The United Kingdom is also having its problems with more than 230 cases of measles reported during the first quarter of 2019. Once again, the UK blames misinformation from social media for causing the outbreak. The government has even gone online itself to counter what the radical anti-vaxxers are saying. In the U.S....
"Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressing concern that Instagram and Facebook were “surfacing and recommending messages that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.” Schiff cited a Guardian report that suggested searches on Facebook and YouTube often led users to pages that displayed vaccine misinformation."
Zuckerberg made his usual paltry response to something that might jeopardize FB's advertising or collection of personal data. So, the con goes on resulting in the new 1,200 measles cases in the U.S., 230 in the U.K. Here's the rub...
"Measles is 'almost entirely preventable' with two doses of the vaccine, according to WHO."
The Guardian says it isn't necessarily social media causing the problem in the United Kingdom, but rather the “3Cs” – confidence, complacency and convenience. This is all explained at length in the Guardian article, which, by the way, really has little to do with the American problem. Pure and simple, U.S. anti-vaxxers have a ring in their nose and are listening to social media, then passing it around among themselves. Still say, they belong in concentration camps.
August 20, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk
Donald Trump con artist extraordinaire
Donald Trump con artist extraordinaire
Donald Trump has given us one con job after another starting in 2016 when he duped all those supporters to vote for him. Still didn't get the public vote; Hillary Clinton beat him by 3 million. You'd think he won by a landslide; even Trump's Electoral win wasn't that impressive, just 304 to 227. Barack Obama was overwhelming over John McCain in 2008, 365 to 173. The con was on day one in the Oval Office and it has never abated.
"President Trump came into office promising some fabulous yet unspecified health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. No plan existed..."
In fact every Republican plan reduced the rolls of Obamacare. There's more...
"Trump said he’d bring back manufacturing."
"Actually, it slowed and now has slumped. That’s one of the reasons the Federal Reserve gave for cutting interest rates this week." Rubin continued...
"Trump said he’d get tough on drug companies. He hasn’t. He said his tax cut would be aimed at the middle class, deliver $4,000 a year to the average American family and permanently boost business investment, pushing growth above 3 percent. Nope, nope and nope."
Most of the American public by now knows that the tax cut was in the beginning and continues to be for the wealthy and corporations, and there is no way the middle class or less will ever realize any benefits. Anyone in the White House embarrassed over all these failures? Not on your life. More than likely they are shouting their success to those who stood to gain. John Harwood of CNBC said...
“Benefits from what President Donald Trump called ‘the biggest reform of all time’ to the tax code have dwindled to a faint breeze just 20 months after its enactment. Half of corporate chief financial officers surveyed by Duke University expect the economy to shrink by the second quarter of 2020. Two-thirds expect a recession by the end of next year.”
MSNBC's Chris Hayes, NY Times dubs Trump a con man...
Rubin says this is Trump's biggie...
"The biggest economic lie was Trump’s declaration that trade wars are quickly and easily won, American consumers and farmers wouldn’t be hurt and we somehow would get richer by making Americans pay more at stores. Actually, they are paying a lot."
And even more...
The conservative American Action Forum’s recent study found, “Altogether, the president’s tariffs could increase nationwide consumer costs by nearly $100 billion annually.”
So, with all of the above, economists have come to the conclusion that a recession is very likely in 2020, brought to us compliments of Donald Trump. If that doesn't dump Trump in 2020, I don't know what could.
August 19, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer is crazier than ever I thought I had heard the most bizarre comments already from the NRA's Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer, but she proved she is still as crazy as NRA head, Wayne LaPierre with this question...
Wayne LaPierre
“How do you tell a 10-year-old little girl who got a Ruger 10/22 with a pink stock for her birthday that her rifle is an assault weapon and she has to turn it over to government or be arrested for felony possession?”
This is beyond belief that any responsible parent would give a ten-year-old child any gun, much less an assault rifle. This walking propagandist has spread more gun violence over Florida and the rest of the country than is possible to comprehend. Here are some actual facts from Hammer...
"Florida is the number five state in terms of gun production. And Hammer pressed that gun manufacturers are a $1 billion dollar industry with more than 700 firearms manufacturing license holders. In 2016, those smaller shops and large manufacturers produced more than 750,000 weapons."
NRA turmoil that could put it out of business...
Don't know what would be best, get rid of Hammer, or just get rid of the state of Florida, which would eliminate the gun manufacturers as well. It's when you witness the idiocy of moron gun nuts like this that you realize the significance of gun control and why these gun rights maniacs fight it so hard. Hammer received a litany of Twitter activity telling her just how stupid she was for the comment, and the fact that she is lamenting the fate of the poor gun manufacturers.
What possible sane individual could give a crap about a company that is in the business of producing weapons of human destruction, particularly on young children? These lost lives also come at a large expense...
"Dr. Charles Tate, a Broward County radiologist, said Florida would save millions that way, citing that the 2016 Pulse shooting in Orlando costs about $390 million from medical costs, police, and expense to employers."
John Legend on Dayton gun violence...
Although this does not eclipse the innocent people that die from the use of these weapons, you have to look at the overall picture from a national basis. There have been at least 17 deadly mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019, 3 more that could have been. And there are numerous shooting deaths across the nation every day. Here's a headline from Quartz...
"It took more than 700 deaths over 20 years for Americans to finally dislike the NRA"
Further...
"It took at least 87 mass shootings and 725 fatalities, but for the first time in 19 years, American opinion has finally turned on the National. Rifle Association (NRA)."
And the polls support this...
"According to a poll by Fox News published Aug. 14, 47% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of the NRA, versus 42% who hold a favorable one."
With Wayne LaPierre and his NRA on the run in recent internal conflicts and fraud investigations, it is time to eliminate the major source of gun violence in this country. And then we can busy ourselves getting the millions of guns off the street.
Robert Reich: Is Donald Trump worst president ever?...
Did you know that the WSJ "trashed [Trump] adviser Peter Navarro for being the driving force behind policies that appear to be driving the entire world’s economy into recession.
