6.28.17
I have had CNN on most of the afternoon while doing chores around the house. The whole afternoon all CNN talked about was Donald Trump. They complained about him the entire afternoon and into the early evening, everything from not being allowed into his fund raiser to the Russian hacking probe to the tapes of Comey that may or may not exist and bla bla bla. Pence gave a speech on the ACA today and CNN didn’t even mention it. Not too many years ago I regarded CNN as a legitimate news channel with a left leaning slant on the news, actually reporting relevant news and mostly separating news from opinion in their broadcasts. But over the last several years CNN has drifted so far to the left side of the political spectrum that they have gone the way of MSNBC and FOX News and become a political opinion channel instead of a news channel. Now they report only information that supports their political outlook, they intentionally minimize or completely avoid reporting on stores or information that conflicts with their opinion, they continually mix opinion with partial facts to promote their political agenda, and all the other vile disinformation tactics that have become more and more prevalent in broadcasting and the press over the last decade. CNN has actually gotten as bad or worse as either MSNBC or FOX in their bias reporting. Today it really reached the point of ridiculous, and they rehashed the same information over and over and over and over. It got to the point where I left CNN on to see how much time was spent on opinion compared to news, and there wasn’t much you could actually call news reporting.
However, despite all the rhetoric I did glean a couple of interesting bits of information, of course they are about Donald Trump. After all, he is CNN’s favorite subject, and between his mouth, his tweets and his ego he always gives his adversaries plenty of ammunition. These 2 topics were reiterated for hours by CNN, but my opinion takes a lot fewer words….
Donald Trump’s fund raiser that the press is not allowed to go to is expected to make him about $10 million toward his reelection in 2020. It’s $35,000 a seat, and they are expecting about 300 guests. Of course it is being held at a Trump hotel. Wow, Donald has only been President for 5 months and he’s already starting his next campaign. Maybe he can pull a Hillary and lock up a bunch of super delegates before the primaries. That way if a better candidate turns up they still can’t get nominated.
Trump had a fake Time Magazine cover printed up with him on it. He has been on the cover of Time about 15 times, how come he needs a fake? Who knows. Maybe the others weren’t flattering enough for him. This demonstrates the immensity of his ego and it appears to be more than a little weird. When I was a teenager I had friends that had the fake magazine covers you can get at the county fair with their picture on mock covers of Sports Illustrated and Surfer Magazine. These were funny and lighthearted. I can understand adults getting their picture on a Forbes, Newsweek or even Pro Wrestling Illustrated mockup for fun and a few grins from their friends. There are a lot of ways to have fun with something like that. The President apparently had his fake Time Magazine cover displayed in many of his hotels, golf clubhouses, etc. world wide, as if it were real. That is just plain bizarre. Yes, there is a lot of fake news out there, and it appears that our President creates a good part of it.
Oh, BTW, I do realize that this web site is purely my opinion on a variety of issues, many of them political. I also realize that many of my opinions have some degree of slant to either the left or the right. Nothing is ever directly in the center, as I have often stated the correct answer can come from either side of the isle, or from both if politicians can compromise. AS far as my complaints about CNN being the “Hate Trump Network” they could do a greater service to America actually reporting on relevant news. I write quite a bit about Trump also, and as I have said many times I don’t need any more reasons to dislike him, I have enough already. So far this month I have written eleven rants, 4 of them (including this one) concerned President Trump. Two others were current events and one is an introduction to my essay on his first 130 days in office.
What this web site really attempts to do is recognize the correct solution or identify a problem issue regardless of which political party it comes from. Here at The Raving Moderate you get a centrism point of view, which is something you will not see on any of the mainstream media.
6.27.17
A new study shows that the $15 minimum wage law is already costing jobs in Seattle. An article in ABC News reported –
A University of Washington team studying the law’s effects found that the law has boosted pay in low-wage jobs since it took effect in 2015, but that it also caused a 9 percent reduction in hours worked ….. For an average low-wage Seattle worker, that’s a loss of about $125 per month, the study said.
I find this disappointing since I am a proponent of a livable minimum wage. The actual Seattle law raises the minimum wage incrementally to 2021 when it will reach the mandatory $15 per hour, with different scales along the way for different business sizes and types. Per ABC minimum wage in Seattle was about $13.00 per hour when this study was done.
Both the New York Times and ABC also cited a study by UC Berkeley that showed that an increased minimum wage had no negative effects on workers in the restaurant industry. However both seemed to give more credibility to the U of W study since it encompassed many other industries.
I believe that this is an adjustment period that businesses will need to go through as the wage increases. In the long run it seems that if you want to run or grow a business you need to hire people. Regardless of the minimum wage a business will hire the people that they needs, but will not hire employees it does not need. Once they have found that they have overtaxed the time and endurance constraints of their current employees I believe hiring will resume at the new higher minimum wage.
6.26.17
The Supreme court surprised me and actually made a common sense ruling on the Travel Ban, aka: “Muslim Ban” executive order signed by President Trump on March 6th.
An article in the L.A Times stated –
The ruling clears the way for Trump’s 90-day ban on foreign arrivals from six Muslim-majority countries to take effect, but it also carved out exemptions for those with “bona fide relationships” with Americans or U.S. entities, including spouses, other close family members, employers and universities.
Opinions on this ruling seem to vary depending on how much you hate Trump, but to me this ruling makes sense. I wrote comments on this back in February regarding this issue, just after Trump wrote the first Travel Ban order. Here is part of that rant –
…. 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
Guess what, I was exactly correct. That was written more than 4 months ago and none of our politicians on either side of the isle have done anything to create a workable vetting process of refugees from Syria and other war torn parts of the world. The extremists on both sides had to drag this all the way up to the Supreme Court to get a ruling that is dictated by common sense and so simple it’s ridiculous. Again this is a perfect example of what happens when we listen to extremists. Lots of wasted time and effort, nothing gets accomplished and human suffering continues.
6.16.17
If it were not so pathetic it would be funny. A survey of 1,000 Americans over the age of 18 shows that 7% of adults in this country think chocolate milk is chocolate because it comes from brown cows…. Honest, I couldn’t make that up. I read this article this morning in the Washington Post and verified it in the British publication The Independent
This study was conducted by the Innovation Center of US Dairy. It also showed that another 48% of Americans don’t know where chocolate milk comes from. The Washington Post also noted that a U.S. Department of Agriculture study from the early 1990’s showed that 1 in 5 Americans did not know that hamburger is made from beef.
I am kinda curious about the demographics of this survey. Is it really possible that half of this country doesn’t have a clue how something as common and simple as chocolate milk is made? Do 1 out of 14 people in this country actually believe that the color of the cow determines the color and flavor of the milk? Where was this survey taken? Was it nationwide or regional? How do the answers brake down by age, gender, location, etc, etc, etc? It is scary to think that half this country does not understand a simple concept.
I would be inclined to think that 7% of this country gave the “brown cow” answer just to mess with the people giving the survey were it not for the fact that almost half of the people surveyed didn’t know where chocolate milk came from.
Is this really a reflection of today’s American intellect?
6.14.17
Today a nutcase extremist shot 2 Republican congressmen and a couple federal offers during practice for a charity baseball game. While everyone in media condems this action there was already a lot of finger pointing going on. The left says its the fault of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and gun ownership in general. The right says it is the influence of the far left’s continuous hate speech and ongoing public displays of violence and hate against Republicans by various celebrities and the BAMN crowd.
I will try to examine this more in depth later, but my immediate reaction is that this is the result of extremism. Extremists always foster hate, they can’t exist without it. As their hate grows they become more and more evil until they are more vile than the thing they claim to hate. Their hate leads them to violence and we see something like this happen. From everything I’ve seen on tv the shooter, James Hodgkinson, was a far left extremist. I think these beliefs that he cultivated caused his hate to grow until he convinced himself that violence was correct and necessary because his beliefs are more important than human life.
Remember, extremism always breeds hate.
Hate always breeds bigotry and violence.
If you want to stop this cycle of extremism and hate…
Come to the middle and become part of the solution.
6.11.17
In the last couple weeks Britain was hit by 2 terrorist attacks. The carnage was abhorrant and emphasizes why we need to destroy Radical Islam. Those vile attacks were reported on in great detail by our American media. But that’s just a tiny sampling of the horrors of Radical Islamic terrorism world wide . During the month of May there were 215 terrorist attacks, including 44 suicide bombings, in 26 countries around the planet. Last month these vicious attacks by Radical Islam groups like ISIS, al Quida, Boko Haram and others killed 1,639 people and injured 1,725 others. Most of the helpless victims were women and children in 3rd world countries. Most of the dead are Muslim, but the carnage knows no religious boundaries. These cowardly animals openly kill Christians, Jews, Hindu’s, atheists and anybody else that is not just like them. All of these events except those in wealthy countries like Britain went unreported by or mainstream media.
THAT IS A SHAMEFUL STATEMENT ON THE BIAS AND HYPOCRISY OF AMERICAN MEDIA. WHY DOES IT SEEM THAT THE ONLY REASONS OUR MEDIA REPORTS ON ANYTHING IS –
- IF IT WILL GET THEM HIGHER RATINGS
- IF THEY WANT US TO HEAR IT THE WAY THEY WANT TO TELL IT
- IF THEY THINK WE WILL FIND OUT ABOUT IT ANYWAY
You can see a complete list of these atrocities at TheReligionofPeace.com.
Below is a few of the most recent heinous atrocities from that list –
| DATE | COUNTRY | CITY | KILLED | INJURED | |
| 2017.06.09 | Cameroon | Hambagda | 4 | 6 | |
| Islamists slit the throats of four villagers. | |||||
| 2017.06.09 | Iraq | Karbala | 31 | 34 | |
| A female suicide bomber detonates in a Shiite market, slaughtering over thirty innocents crowded around her. | |||||
| 2017.06.09 | Nigeria | Adamawa | 2 | 3 | |
| Two children are disassembled by a suspected Boko Haram bomb blast. | |||||
| 2017.06.08 | Iraq | Zanjali | 13 | 0 | |
| The Islamic State takes out thirteen women and children with chlorine gas. | |||||
These 4 savage attacks, and over 200 others, WERE COMPLETELY IGNORED BY OUR MAINSTREAM MEDIA. Like I have said before, human life doesn’t matter to the U.S. media unless it is in a wealthy country. In the mean time you will watch these two-faced liars on your tv screen telling you how much they care about humanity, yet they know thousands of people are being brutally murdered and don’t even report on it. There is good reason that the American people don’t trust the media, and also why much of the world doesn’t trust America.
6.10.17
James Comey testified to congress a couple of days ago in conjunction with the ongoing and ever expanding Senate investigations into Russian hacking, obstruction of justice, leaks of classified information, election fraud, treason, conspiracy and accusations of many more crimes to numerous to mention. Of course the number of public figures that find themselves entangled in this convoluted web of inquiry and accusation continues to expand. So far it seems we can include Donald Trump, almost everyone President Trump has appointed, Hillary Clinton, several high ranking members of the DNC, ex-FBI Director James Comey, ex-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, CNN’s Donna Brazile, Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner and now the arrest of a low level government contractor named Reality Leigh Winner for leaking secrets we got from the Brit’s apparently because she hates Trump. The list seems to grow daily.
When Trump first became aware of Comey’s intent to testify he tweeted –
May 12th
James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
Most of the press, and actually most of America, seems to have taken this as an admission that recordings actually exist of at least some of the 6 Trump/Comey conversations documented by Comey. When asked about the tapes Trump stated that he will answer that “in a short period of time”. When asked to clairify that statement he just repeated himself. If these recordings do exist Trump needs to Turn them over to the Senate. If not then Trump needs to say so, shut his mouth and quit tweeting dumbass crap.
I guess the next question I would ask is ….. “Have any conversations with any other notable or high level officials in any government been recorded or video taped?” …. and the questions would get more specific from there. How about conversations with prominent industrialists and billionaires from America or any other countries? Etc, etc, etc.
The day before Comey testified he released a prepared statement to be read as part of his testimony. In this statement Comey submits that on February 14th Trump said to him –
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Legal opinions are mixed as to weather or not this constitutes Obstruction of Justice, but overall the majority of opinions is that nothing Comey said will get Trump impeached.
Shortly after Comey completed his testimony Trump Tweeted –
June 9th
Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!
Well … maybe ….. Like most Americans I still want to know about the tapes. It seems like it is time for President Trump to stand up and get this set straight. If there are recordings, lets hear them. If not, say so and stop the stupid tweets.
Recorded conversations or not these investigations look like they will drag on a long time. So far there is no evidence that links Trump to any serious offenses, even the Democrats in congress admit that fact. But no doubt our legislators will keep fishing. The Democrats want to find some kind of criminal charges against Trump or anybody he appointed and the Republicans want to pursue charges against Clinton, Lynch and members of the DNC. I think that congress should take all the time and resources needed to resolve these issues, and if they find criminal activity on either side the wrong doers should be prosecuted. But they should not drag the process out for their own political purposes. If they don’t find actionable evidence after reasonable diligence they should wrap this up and get back to their jobs and do things they were elected to do. Oh, you know, like finding better ways to promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense, insure domestic tranquility and all that other stuff they should be doing.
6.7.17
It appears that the continuing breakdown of the ACA is getting worse, and its failures have finally reached the point where thousands of Americans are left without any options for health care coverage. A few days ago Anthem, the last health insurance provider for 18 counties in Ohio, announced that it will be pulling out of that market. On June 6th The Columbus Dispatch wrote:
Anthem’s departure from the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchange in Ohio next year would leave more than 10,000 people in 18 counties without a plan.
In the rest of the state, 56,000 people already signed up with Anthem would have to find another plan.
“I think this will lead to increased uncompensated care,” said Steve Wagner, executive director of the Universal Health Care Action Network of Ohio, a nonprofit that promotes accessible and affordable health care. “Certainly, people will go without care, or defer it until it’s so critical they end up in the emergency department.”
I have voiced my opinion on this many times. Our legislators have known this would happen since the inception of the ACA and have had eight years to fix it, but the inability of Democrats and the Republicans in congress to work together has lead to the situation we have now. President Obama did not help the situation. Since the ACA was passed into law Obama never offered any suggestions on fixing these problems that he knew were coming. I cannot imagine his reasoning for this. Perhaps he could not admit the flaws in what has become known as his “signature” accomplishment. Maybe he expects the failure of the ACA to drive the US to a single payer health care system. I could “Maybe” all day long. By by taking no action Obama has helped set the stage for his signature accomplishment to become his signature failure.
Again, this is an example of what happens when politicians let their overblown egos, personal interests and political prejudice control their actions. We are all aware of both the positives and negatives of the ACA, and so is every member of congress. Yet this situation looks like it will get a lot worse before it gets better. Don’t any of our elected legislators have the fortitude do do what is right for the citizens of this country?
5.30.17
It was only a few weeks ago that everyone in the press and on TV and on any other form of media were focused on Trump’s first 100 days in office. Well, today he has been in office about 130 (more or less) days so I will take a look at Trump’s first 130 days in office. There is absolutely no particular reason to pick this number of days other than today’s the first chance I’ve had to write about this. Let’s kind of review some of the major events, executive orders and happenings since he’s been sworn in as president……
5.26.17
A good friend of mine put this quote by Yuriko Gamo Romer on her face book page. I don’t know if the writer realized it or not but the thoughts expressed here are good examples of the moderate point of view, written far more eloquently than I ever could have said it …
“For all of you who aren’t sure, it is possible to be gay and Christian. It’s also possible to believe in God and science. It is possible to be pro-choice and anti-abortion.
It is equally possible to be a feminist and love and respect men…. It is possible to believe in sensible gun control legislation and still believe in one’s right to defend one’s self, family, and property, it’s possible to be anti-war and pro-military.
It is possible to love thy neighbor and despise their actions. It is possible to advocate Black Lives Matter and still be pro police.
It is possible to not have an education and be brilliant. It is possible to be Muslim and also suffer at the hands of terrorists. It is possible to be a non-American fighting for the American dream.
It is possible to be different and the same.
We are all walking contradictions of what “normal” looks like. Let humanity and love win.”
-Yuriko Gamo Romer
5.03.17
I was watching C-SPAN today and Arizona Republican Representative David Schweikert addressing the House. He was showing charts about health care coverage in Arizona. Before the ACA every county in Arizona has at least 5 or 6 health care providers competing for the business of the consumer. Some counties had up to 8 providers. Now every county has only 1 health care insurer, which basically guarantees no competition and high prices. He stated that some of the counties will loose that 1 last carrier next year, leaving people that live there without a health care provider to purchase insurance from. Theses kind of results are what emerges from poorly written legislation, and highlights one of the many flaws in the ACA.
He also made an interesting point about the large number of people that are not buying insurance, either because they feel that they do not need it or they cannot afford it. About 10% of this country still is not covered by health insurance. Many of these are young, healthy Americans who do not feel health insurance is a priority and they know they can always buy it later if needed. Most of these fall in the economic gap where a person makes too much money to qualify for Medicade or any substantial premium subsidy but not enough to pay the current expensive premiums of health insurance under the existing ACA rules. Again this is the result of poorly written legislation.
I have said many times that this country needs affordable health care for all its citizens. The ACA (despite its many flaws) was a first step, but the job is far from finished. It is becoming painfully obvious that the Republicans are not going to be able to come to any practical solutions for this, and it is equally painful to realize that the Democrats are more interested in criticizing Republicans than in finding useful solutions to these problems.
However, it does appears that some Democrats are trying to draft some legislation to fix the ACA but that seems to be going nowhere. This is actually a time where the Democrats could do a lot of good for America, stand tall in the eyes of the American people and show that they are more interested in helping Americans than in hating Donald Trump and “resisting” him at all costs. If the Democrats could give legislators from both parties something they can support (or will be pressured to support, if Americans see that it makes sense) then we take the next step in fixing the current problems of the ACA.