Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Daily Kos?

Republicans float yet another doomed health care plan

Trump DOJ sues over Affirmative Action at universities

Lawyer #16: Former Justice Department official joins Mueller team ...

Speaker Ryan: 'It's time for the wall'

Democrats propose working together on tax reform, McConnell shoots it down

Panicked NYT tells reporters not to talk to college students

Report: Former Obama aide Ben Rhodes now person of interest in unmasking probe ...

N Korea submarine activity may foreshadow sub-launched missile test

70% of immigrants arrested in ICE's massive 'targeted' operation weren't targets

Commercial crabber for 50 years tells [Al] Gore sea level hasn't changed since at least 1970

Apple cash pile hits $261.5 billion ...

Survey shows 60% opposition to ALL immigration

Cloud of Suspicion

There is a growing cloud of suspicion surrounding our former National Security Advisor Susan Rice ... for her past escapades, including, it seems to be more and more obvious, her using our intelligence agencies to spy on Donald Trump's presidential campaign team. This is an extremely serious charge which may involve other Obama political appointees ... maybe even B.O. himself. President Trump has even suggested that Ms. Rice may be guilty of a crime ... particularly if she requested unmasking of more than two dozen intelligence intercepts that apparently had no national security or Russian contact references ... only political value and personal information.

I know. I know. It it quite early in this investigation to make these leaps of logic. But, like when President Reagan was embroiled in Iran-Contra, it is the seriousness of the charge that is paramount. We are peeling this onion ... and, like it has been over the last week, this obvious misfeasance is looking more and more like the early days of Watergate. ... serious malfeasance. I will not be surprised that, if over the next months, Susan Rice is joined in the docks by such luminaries as Rice's aide Ben Rhodes, Obama's confident Valarie Jarrett, the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA head John Brennan,  and even former AG Loretta Lynch (her meeting with Bill Clinton came shortly before the first FISA request to wiretap Trump Tower).

I suspect it might be a very entertaining summer of congressional TV hearings swirling around this spying on Trump and his people matter.

Tending Trump

When Donald Trump skipped the Iowa Republican debate, he held a rally which collected money pledged to support our veterans ... something like $6 million. These pledges went into a Trump personal foundation and were slowly distributed to various veterans' groups. I have said I was going to monitor the progress of these donations previously in this post: Unvetting. Now it seems all of these contributions have been properly dispersed with the addition of an extra one million dollar personal donation from Trump ... but it took a fine follow-up story by the AP for this to be done ... see: AP Story.

Now Donald Trump is a fast and loose operator and doesn't always cross the "T" in Trump. But the good news is that, with media follow-up, he does what he promises ... as opposed to that pretender in the pink pants suit. If Trump is elected president, will he still be so diligent? Hopefully, but clearly only if our national media keeps him honest through good reporting ... which would be out of character for them. As Ben Rhodes recently pointed out in his disclosures of how he hoodwinked the media about the Iran nuclear deal, our media tends toward lassitude and often just copies White House press releases. They are, in essence, just stenographers (as Rush Limbaugh used to say.)

So, given that Trump might be elected in the Fall, our national media will have their work cut out for them. They will have to tend Trump's promises to make sure he delivers ... and, given their natural animosity for The Donald, this might just energize them to the point where they will do their jobs. Of course this will be an adversarial relationship and Trump will do a lot of griping ... but it might just work for getting more of the right things done.

If Hellery is elected, the media would obviously be a lot happier. Then they could go back to sleep.

I Lied

I lied to my granddaughter yesterday. I told her that the police came to arrest her because she was screening bloody murder out in our back yard and the neighbors were complaining. I told her I told the police it was OK ... that I would take care of it. My granddaughter had been  having a meltdown because her grandmother wouldn't let her dig in an area of the garden that she had just planted with seeds.

For whatever reason my six-year old granddaughter was screaming to high heaven over this conscription and it was disturbing me and my wife to no end. So I lied. And this expeditious lie was even more effective because there was a cop car down the street at a baseball game going on in a nearby park. I pointed to this car and said that those were the police I had talked out of arresting her. This made my falsehood even the more believable and effective. Wide-eyed, this calmed her down.

This question is ... should I have deceived my granddaughter like this? Is it OK to fabricate a story in order to achieve something in an expeditious manner? Could I play President Obummer's Deputy National Security Advisor (and former Hellery Clinton State Department aide), Ben Rhodes, and blatantly lie to the American people in order to get the Iran nuclear deal done ... because if I told the truth, the American people would throw a hissy fit? To better understand this comparison read the following New York Times Disclosure. It has obviously caused a Congressional dust-up and some embarrassment for the Obummer administration.

The answer... I think it would be all right for me to play Ben Rhodes if the American people were all six-year olds.

A Bright Line

After the Paris attacks and the revelation that at least one of the suicide bombers was a recent Syrian refugee, a bright line has been drawn between President Obama's insistence that the United States accept as immigrants many thousand un-vet-able Syrians  ... and the push-back from many Republicans (and some Democrats) who believe that this is an invitation for future terrorist attacks here at home. So far the governors of 22 states have indicated that they do not wish Syrian immigrants to be relocated in their states ... defying President Obama who says that this is inhumane and unAmerican.

Hillary Clinton's former State Department attack dog, Ben Rhodes, has indicated that the United States can thoroughly vet such immigrants "from the available data" while many intelligence officials and many (Republican and Democrat) on the intelligence committees in Congress saying that this is impossible ... no such data exists. Thus the bright line has been drawn that should define the political landscape for the next year.

This bright line is also now separating the candidates for president ... with most Republicans opposing Syrian immigration while most Democrat candidates are ducking for cover. I do believe that this will be the defining issue ... at least for the foreseeable future ... in the race for the White House. Watch for the Obama administration to throw up all sorts of political gorilla dust to confuse this issue ...while most common-sense Americans push back against this political insanity.

Will Obama win this argument? He certainly has the bully pulpit of the presidency on his side ... as well as the Christian golden rule working in his favor. But then again, self-preserving common sense and the suspicion that Obama's motivations are not Christan but more Muslim-inspired work against his stance ... and the stance he expects his acolytes to follow ... including Hillary Clinton. Watch and see if she toes the line on this one. If she does, it may be her downfall.