2.23.17
Less than a month ago Donald Trump signed an executive order banning immigration and travel from seven primarily Muslim countries. This is been immediately struck down in the courts and will probably have to be decided at the Supreme Court level. Messed up part of this is, of course, that all the court ruling seem to be along party lines. From what I understand the president has the right to issue such an order but it seems that Trump is allowing admission to this country based on religion. I am betting that this is unconstitutional and it is correct that this executive order is not allowed to stand.
The last three weeks or so there have been lots of protests calling Trump a racist (and he can only blame himself for this, with some of the statements he has made) and promoting free immigration from the Middle East. The demonstrators seem to make the assumption that Trump and everyone else in our government hates every Muslim on the planet. But in reality most of these demonstrations seem to be geared more toward hating Trump than having any concern for the refugees. I don’t need another reason to dislike Trump, I have enough already. What we really need is reasonable solutions to the vetting problem. Most of these protests seem to completely ignore the fact that many of the European countries that have allowed unvetted refugees to come into their country have suffered horrendous terrorist attacks upon their citizens from terrorists who came into the country claiming to be helpless and needy refugees.
In the meantime Trump has had people busy writing a new executive order that will have a better chance in a court of law. He has also been busy doing lots of other things that have nothing to do with this issue. I have not heard of anyone on either side of the political spectrum trying to come up with an idea that will allow us to weed out the bad guys from the decent human beings who want to enter this country. That is generally what happens when hate takes over, common sense goes out the window and nothing positive gets accomplished. I’m going to bet that a month from now the 230,000 Syrian refugees that need help and asylum will still need a place to go, and we will be no closer to solving this problem and we are now.
1.7.17
The CIA has declassified and made public information that they have overwhelming evidence that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC emails and gave the information to Wikileaks. At this point I believe the CIA report. It does not surprise me that this happened, especially since cyber espionage is about as common place as bottled water. A few things I find noteworthy….
<> Donald Trump continues to contest and deny the CIA findings. I think he protests a little too much. He is acting an awful lot like a man who has something to hide or something to fear, or both.
<> We here in the United States got a taste of our own medicine and we didn’t like it. Our government has been manipulating elections and governments across the globe for half a century, and now when it happens to us we take the moral high ground and cry foul. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world doesn’t care?
<> I am still more angry about what the DNC did than the fact that it became public knowledge. If Clinton, Wasserman-Schultz and their cohorts hadn’t acted in such a despicable manner there would not have been any incriminating email to release. Our congress really should be investigating the DNC’s actions as much as how the Russians uncovered them. What the DNC did should be in the press as the biggest election scandal since Watergate, but the press just ignores this part of the story. Really? Among the vile things the DNC did was to give Hillary the debate questions before debates with Sanders, but they did not give Bernie the same courtesy. This gave Hillary a huge advantage of being able to memorize prepared statements for her answers, yet Bernie had to field the questions on the fly as if it were an honest debate of real ideas and original thought. Yet the problem that the press has with the whole event is that this became public knowledge. How incredibly hypocritical and bias can our media get? The mainstream media may be some of the worst bigots in the country. After a stunt like that Hillary deserved to lose the election. The really messed up irony of it all is that the person there to win it was Donald Trump.
<> Hillary Clinton immediately hired Wasserman-Schultz as her “Honorary Campaign Chairman” after she was forced to resign as the head of the DNC. Hillary put out a glowing public statement about Wasserman-Schultz that never mentioned the dirty dealings against Bernie Sanders. I wonder how many Sanders supporters she alienated with that BS. Maybe enough Democrats stayed home from the polls in enough key states to cost her the election. This is another example of the Good Ol’Boy (or Girl) networks in our political process and how the Party Nazi mentality within those networks destroys the trust of the average American and always has a negative effect on our entire country.