The Pondering Gulch: Opinioned Notion Discourse

Opinioned Notion Discourse

American Political Culture:

American politics has taken a swing ever more toward the extreme right. It’s obvious in its results of the 2016 U.S. elections outcome and is following a global trend apropos of not only rogue nation leadership, but of civilized nations gravitating into nationalizing fronts. In the notion, ‘we like who we are in likeness’, whether it transcends from race characteristics, social order or to economic structures...an ever increasing majority is wanting to shut out minority entities who they deem are unlike, therefore unlikeable to their own wants, beliefs, religion and ethnicities.

Perception is an innate survival emission in the animal world and mankind is no exception to this. Perceiving, though inbuilt, utilizes tools to enforce it. However, environmental events are perceived differently from one species to the next.

When demolition of a building occurs, the birds resting atop the building perceive what is about to transpire a split second before detonation and fly away to safety. The tortoise crawling on the ground just below does not, getting hit by falling debris before it even knew what has happened. In a wolf trotting by, the common housefly sees it so in slow motion, whereupon a sloth sees the wolf as a hurried blur. Metabolic rates, although not exclusive, are a tool used in perception in both of these cases.

A specific species can also show varying levels of its perceptive world and this is where Homo sapiens sapeins comes into play. Metabolism allows organisms to convert fuel (food) into energy using that conversion as cellular building blocks to carry out life’s functions. The converting process is known as ‘catabolism’ where as the component building process is known as ‘anabolism’.

Enzymes play a critical role in this process by acting as a catalyst, speeding up metabolic rates. Acting as a catalyst, enzymes are not a part of the chemical transformations, so are still utilized for future chemical conversions. Nonetheless, in man as a species enzyme levels can either be lower, or higher, or fluctuate in individuals. This either speeds up the energy format or slows it down...hyper versus lazy. This hyper/lazy extreme ends of the spectrum is where man’s political nature comes into play.

Metabolism in man is not solely a physical trait, but also a mental one in how one perceives his ambient environment and this includes one’s political nature. Hyper versus lazy also entails how one reasons in perception, which can be a blind spot to what perception is real, or not. As in the tortoise and the sloth, this can be detrimental in the species’ perception of the dangerous elements in its surrounding environment; henceforth, the Trump supporter.

In our perceptive being, we need purpose; it is a self-organizing aim in life. Perceptive purpose of self is an identity tag providing a framework of behavioral patterns for short term everyday life. As motivation, this purpose dictates dedication in pursuing specific directions within finite resources limiting perceptive means, such as time, energy and reason for long term achievement. Since a life aim is not achievable merely through purpose, long term perception is deceived, so devotion kicks in becoming delusionary in amicus reasoning.

We see this in man placating that misconstrued devotion onto religion and leadership to further heighten that deceptive purpose hold. There are no gods...only the faithful purpose man employs onto those gods. It just appears that it is in the ethos of the human being in delegating confidence of self over to some ethereal deity or rogue leader.

A case in point along this train of thought is Gene Huber of Trump’s last weekend 2020 campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida. Huber was the fella that was allowed on stage to get a hug from Trump. Huber claims he has a life-size cardboard Trump standee that he not only salutes to, but religiously prays to every day. This is a classic example of relinquishing all self confidence in one’s self by rolling that confidence to some other entity in feeling they can improve their own life better than they can.

What’s so dangerous in this; it is bad enough to put one’s confidence into another’s hands relinquishing not only one’s self-confidence, but also one’s self-identity and self-determination. Add to the admixture that the leader is not only self-serving but as well a proven narcissist, poor Huber hasn’t a chance in life worshipping a cardboard cutout.

What I conjecture as worse than a bad leader is that leader’s followers. No matter how bad a leader is, he/she will have devoted followers; ie: Trump. But in the same token, no matter how good a leader is, he/she will have an entourage of opponents; ie: Obama. I don’t like including these two comparisons with Trump/Obama examples, for it precludes to perhaps most that I am bias in this writing. But in my experienced observations, please read on to see if I might amend your thoughts concerning intentional bias on my part.

With a perspective on life without purpose, folks feel disparaged and if the sensible path has made them feel alienated, they will emotionally disengage and seek a subjective alternative for self while not weighing in intellectually. Undesirable outcomes become nonessential as fervor engulfs their emotional sensibilities degrading common sense and social compassion. In this newly found enigma, they give their total devotion and relinquished confidence to the one they feel can do no wrong.

This is borne out in Trump and his followers. No matter Trump’s daily lies to his followers, in their perception he only spreads the truth. Satisfied with his propaganda, it is the ‘fake news’ media that constantly lies. By insistently calling out commonly used Republican scapegoats as the enemy, Trump supporters now feel more comfortable and empowered to hiss at minorities, other religions, cultures and now the media, the judicial system and intelligence agencies. Trump is fueled by disruption and he is “bigly” willing to pass on that disruptive cause to his allegiant following.

Divide and conquer is a good concept in a military war, but to divide one nation is a history lesson always worth rereading. This is exactly what Trump is doing while his followers relish along its destructive path.

In effect, Trump supporters have allowed narrow minded religiosity to meld purpose with unrealistic goals warping their perception. This is purpose without goals and in erasing the complexities of goals, their new found symbolic savior reigns in a simpleton awakened refreshment. For ya see, to grasp and take hold of goal accomplishments requires abstract cognitive individual intuitiveness. It also enlists an individual’s perceptive tools of insight, perspective, introspect and conceptual planning. This takes effort and there are those that won’t put forth.

I dare say, most Trump supporters cannot grasp, or won’t devote thoughts to abstract cognitive concepts, for it is difficult and time consuming in generating logical purpose. Being ignorant is much simpler allowing one to avoid suffering as opposed to those who seek out purpose, but fail to meet its mandates. However, this false immunity to the suffering in playing ignorant does not compete with those that did indeed perceive purpose but still failed. Attempting is a far better outcome than ignoring. It’s an ongoing learning experience and to know, or knowledge gained is happiness. Whereas, the ignorant will remain angry always seeking out the fall guy to constantly replenish that pent upped anger. Expectations can and does deceive perception.

Purpose for Trump supporters has been lost in their avoidance of goals warping their perception. This, not only in long term, but even short term will endanger or at the very least negatively impact their lives and others resulting in an outcome that is totally opposite of what perception is biologically supposed to do and that is preservation. Trump supporters illogically think they are persevering in what they perceive as substantive, but in not even knowing it, have been hoodwinked instead.

Irregardless of Trump’s supporters the Trump/Russian connection will bring Trump down. As I wrote just after the elections, Trump will either quit or be impeached within two years. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who is a proud curator of white nationalist propaganda needs to go immediately, for he is not only a threat, but an internal threat to the security of this nation.

Bannon wants to destroy our government. At the Conservative Political Action Conference he unveiled his ‘destructive economy policy’ and admitted that Trump's Cabinet picks were chosen to destroy the agencies they’re supposed to lead. He describes his new form of government as “economic nationalism.” As a self-proclaimed Leninist he stated to journalist, Ronald Radosh, an adjunct fellow member at the ‘Hudson Institute’ that, “I want to bring everything crashing down.” This nation is not quite ready for a Vladimir Lenin idolater.

Antic Perishables:

Zero sum thinking is the thought that to receive anything, first, someone else must lose it. This zero sum thinking in perception, keeps the loyalty of the Trump fan base tethered, through lies, but too, in Trump’s overshadowing those lies by constant shirking on blaming whom he deems as his enemy as the ones lying. His “so-called judges” and “fake news media” baseless accusations are an affront to the U.S. Constitution. He also insinuated U.S. intelligence has lied about him and Putin by claiming, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.”’

Besides the fact in insisting the seventeen intelligence agencies are lying through association with 9/11, Trump and his administration also lied about the electoral win spread and ended the statement rather pretentiously with the stolen slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’.

Anything outside the realm of normality is assuredly perishable and certainly an orange thin skinned adumbration is no exception. Sure, all politicians lie, perhaps more so than folks in other walks of life, but to the level and consistency Trump has is incorrigible.

On top of that, from common folk who disagree with him to established traditional U.S. institutions, Trump blames everyone else as the deliberator of ‘fake news’ and if that is not enough, Trump supporters not only believe the blatant Trump inaccuracies, they promote them.

How can the media be lying when for the most part they’re reporting what Trump has actually said or did? This is a harmful sickness and it’s a behavior that is going to eventually bite back hard. Just hopefully, that bite isn’t deep enough to bring the nation down to its knees as it will Trump.

Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson had to defend NATO allies breaking from Trump’s NATO attacks. Vice President Mike Pence and Defense Secretary James Mattis had to fly over to Europe to assure that the U.S. will honor its commitments to the international organization. They were speech smoothing that the bonds between West European countries and the U.S. were still lock-in-step after unease had crept in from Trump’s NATO and Swedish comments and his lack of reason in his abhorrence for Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Of course, all the Trump surrogate officials have been running around each week to try and amend or appease Trump tweets. Apparently there is burnout on that job, for now it is performed in weekly shifts. Kellyanne Conway as Trump spokesperson has been replaced by Stephen Miller who has been replaced by anyone else in the administration.

Just this last week, it was Reince Priebus hitting all the Sunday political talk shows as Conway and Miller had left the building being visibly absent. About the only defense Priebus could muster over Trump’s defense when it comes to claims of the lying media, is that the media throws all these stories out there without naming any sources. Actually, Priebus should evaluate his boss a little more, for that is exactly what Trump does. Lest we not forget during Trump’s years of birther claims, he would be asked on numerous occasions where he got his information and he would always reply with no names, just, “an extremely credible source.”

More recently, Trump’s claim of 3-5 million fraudulent Hillary votes is totally baseless. Their only defense is how many dead people in states are still registered to vote and registrants in two states, but that is sloppy states’ record keeping; it is not voter fraud. In fact Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon was registered in the two states of California and New York when the November elections occurred, but that still doesn’t prove he committed voter fraud unless he did vote in both states.

In the video below, NBC’s Peter Alexander stops Trump dead in his irascible bully tracks relegating him to a whimpering sycophant. Alexander questioned Trump at the 02/16/2017 press conference about why people should believe him when he’s rolling out false information on claims he had a record Electoral College vote count. Trump demurs by saying he was given information without saying from whom, then devolves in changing his story in that he was referring only to Republican presidents. Alexander further embarrasses Trump, if that’s possible, by revealing both Bush presidents had higher electoral votes. Trump once again says he was given that information. It’s just numbers, but the addition to all this is that Trump was proclaiming he had 306 electoral votes when it is actually 304.

Trump is putting the nation and the world on edge. This is the consequence of governance by chaos when Trump officials are always scrambling to repair what Trump has proclaimed either in his attacks or lies, for...who is to be believed.

Trump even lies to the American public when it is so easy for the public to fact check him. Concerning the intelligence ‘Steele memos’, after a 01/11/17 conference with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Trump tweets this the following day:

As evident in the public summary of the ‘Steele memos’ put out by U.S. intelligence, it clearly states, “No one in possession of the memos has yet verified them or determined them to be inaccurate.”

Trump and his administrative officials have incessantly denied that there were any communique between Russia and Trump or his administration during the presidential election campaign. However, this is in stark contrast to U.S. intelligence officials and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak who have all stated there was.

U.S. intelligence reports confirm Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had repeated conversations between Kislyak and Flynn. Communications between the two continued after Trump’s victory on Nov. 8^th according to officials with access to intelligence reports on the matter.

Rybakov, in a Thursday 11/10/16 said, “Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage. I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives.”

Kisylak himself in a short interview with the ‘Washington Post’, admitted having contacts with Flynn before and after the election, but he declined to say what was discussed. It’s a sure hedge bet Kisylak is not a common Joe name to the average American, but I’ve an itchy scratch it soon will be.

There’s a corollary here manifesting; the more Trump’s administration lies about having no Russian contacts, the more intelligence leaks occur saying they do.

As put out by the ‘Toronto Star’, just his first month in office, Trump has spewed forth over 80 lies; that’s an average of three a day and there is never an apology offered for misleading the nation.

Oh the Hypocrisy:

What Trump’s outright lying leads to is his overt hypocrisy; oh the hypocrisy of it all. In his Florida campaign rally last Saturday (02/18/17), Trump had this to say in the video below to his pawn supporters:

He not only said it, but Trump repeated that the rich have to pay their bills. Yet, supposedly as a very rich self-proclaimed multibillionaire that he ever “so-called” is, Trump did not pay his bills to hundreds of small businesses and subcontractors working on and in his real estate properties. A lot of them had to lay off employees, for some they even had to close their small family businesses because they couldn’t absorb Trump’s nonpayment while working on tight budgets. They thought doing business with the Trump name recognition would be a big boost for their businesses, instead; it drained them of most or all of their assets.

One example is GOP strategist, Brian Walsh. Speaking to NPR host, Ari Shapiro on the September 28, 2016 airing, Walsh stated that Trump stiffed his father on a six-figure 1980’s telecom job. Walsh claims that Trump, although giving no detail whatsoever as to why he might be unhappy with Walsh’s father’s work, refused to pay, instead attacked his father and said that if he wants to sue him for the salary, it would cost him more in litigation.

Walsh confesses it hurt his father’s business, but was able to recover and become successful, although he knows of other small businesses that went under due to Trump not paying them what he owed.

In strategizing for Republicans and being a lifelong member to the party, Walsh said he could not vote for Hillary, but he emphatically said he would not cast his vote to Trump.

When asked on why he wouldn’t vote for Trump, Walsh contended, “Well, I think like many Americans, you know, I have very serious concerns about not just Donald Trump's temperament, but his experience and qualifications for the job. And as an American and a voter, Hillary Clinton's attacks resonated with me and I just was sitting there smiling saying yes, you know, I actually have a personal firsthand knowledge of this.”

Now first off, I don’t believe that presidential vacations are something to make a fuss about, for the president is still in contact and working the current issues. Also, the cost of presidents taking vacations would cost about the same if they didn’t go on vacation, for presidental secret service and other services is on duty 24 hours a day no matter where the president is. However, Trump has made a big deal out of it, so I’m going to relay his hypocrisy.

Trump, during Obama’s presidency consistently complained about Obama’s vacation and golf outings. Some of his tweets are below.

Now Trump confesses he won’t be playing golf or vacationing at all, but for his first month in office, he has turned his Mar-a-Lago into the Winter Fun White House three weekends in a row making a lot of money off of it by inviting elites over with $200,000 fees each to do so. These socialite members also are getting an opportunity to watch Trump go over classified material and take selfies with the nuclear football, the person who carries the briefcase holding the nuclear codes around with him wherever the president goes.

Unfortunately this is costing the local West Palm Beach airport a ton of money. Each Trump visit puts heavy airspace flight restrictions coming or going from the airport during Trump’s visits; they’re losing paying aircraft fly-ins and fly-outs. If it continues they may go out of business.

$97 million of taxpayer dollars is what Obama spent in his eight years of office on vacation travel. Trump in just his first three weeks in office spent over a tenth of that at $10 million.

Obama during his eight year tenure played golf once every 8.8 days. Trump currently is worse off than that at 7.8 days. But lo, Trump said in May of 2016 on the campaign trail, “I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf.” All of this...is on the taxpayer’s dime.

Now, as of 02/24/17 he’s reported to be going on his fourth consecutive Mar-a-Lago vacation which bumps the taxpayer’s dollars up to $13 million in Trump’s weekend getaways. That is more than the average of what Obama took in a year at $12.125 million. Remember, it was Trump who declared and promised on his campaign trail in a 6/23/2016 interview with ‘The Hill’, “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.”

Trump’s terrorist Sweden comment at the Florida campaign rally (in which by the way, calling it a 2020 campaign event allowed him to hock his various Trump paraphernalia), baffled everyone. After going on about Islamic Terrorism, he suddenly interjects, “We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden.”

Nothing happened that night in Sweden except for an amorous bull moose attempting to make it with a wooden decorative moose as confirmed by Swedish police reports.

With everyone scratching their heads as to what Islamic terrorist incident Trump was referring to, WH damage control came pouring out. Speaking to reporters Sunday (02/19/17), principal deputy press secretary, Sarah Sanders told reporters, “He was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general, and not referring to a specific incident.”

Later that Sunday, Trump tweets: “My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.”

First-off, Trump was specific in stating what happened “last night in Sweden.” In immediately making the statement after expounding on Islamic terrorism, it did not come off as generalization. Secondly, Trump says he got his material from TV’s ‘Fox News’ Tucker Carlson segment concerning a crime wave report ever since refugees had been accepted into the country.

Funny why he would use a news source instead of not referring to U.S. intelligence, but anyway that ‘Fox News’ report was a bit phony in itself. Carlson was interviewing conservative filmmaker, Ami Horowitz whose sole intention was to blame crime waves on Middle Eastern refugees. Police officers, Horowitz interviewed were led under the impression that Horowitz wanted hot spots of crime in Sweden. Whether it is from Swedish nationals or refugees, Horowitz didn’t stipulate. Most Swedish crime indeed is conducted by Swede nationals.

One of the police officers, Anders Göranzon told the ‘Dagens Nyheter’ newspaper the following Monday, “I don’t understand why we are part of the segment. The interview was about something completely different to what Fox News and Horowitz were talking about. It was supposed to be about crime in high-risk areas; areas with high crime rates. There wasn’t any focus on migration or immigration.”

Concerning fake news...in speaking of Tucker Carlson and ‘Fox News’ as the only news worthy of Trump’s praise, Carlson recently went for an interview segment over current protesters. He could not get any protester organizers to agree to be interviewed on the segment. They all refused his offer. So ya know what he did, he hired an actor to act as if he was a protest organizer, then aired it on his 02/20/17 show. It was all a sham and with an added ‘e’...shame...

Trump may have been half baked, but in his defense, there really was a recent Swedish terrorist attack this past month, however it wasn’t Islamic terrorism. A neo-Nazi fascist group carried out a homemade bomb attack on refugees stationed at the ‘Gothenburg Asylum Center’. One person was seriously injured.

So, Trump fires his national security advisor, Michael Flynn. He claims it wasn’t for Flynn actually speaking to Russian agents about sanctions imposed by Obama before Trump’s inauguration, but only because he ruses Flynn lied to VP Mike Pence about it in telling Pence sanctions were never brought up.

Actually, I feel that Pence knew Flynn had discussed the Russian sanctions with Russians and lied to the media when he reported that Flynn didn’t. For ya see, Trump was briefed by intelligence officers almost two weeks before Pence’s 01/15/17 CBS interview that indeed Flynn had spoken about sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. So, since Trump knew, why did he not tell Pence? Might be because Trump has taken the Hypocritical Oath and used Flynn to be the stooge?

No one needs to feel sorry for Flynn, for if ya might recall, Flynn at the RNC this past summer cheered on the Hillary chant to “lock her up.” Even stated if he’d done only a tenth of what she has done to damage national security, he’d be locked up. Well then, “lock him up.”

Trump quipped during a listening session with manufacturing CEOs that, “All of a sudden for the first time we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country and it's a military operation because what has been allowed to come into our country.”

Using the military to apprehend people living illegally in the interior of the country is unconstitutional and a violation of U.S. law. All the Trump administrative surrogates had to run out and do more damage control. Sean Spicer at a WH press conference, attempted to gloss it over with white crayons in saying, “The president was using that [military operation] as an adjective.” Spicer needs more English refresher courses, for “military operation” is not an adjective.

This is the second time Trump has mentioned using military force. The first was enlisting the ‘U.S. National Guard’ to combat Chicago gangs. Also, Obama had already been getting the undocumented ‘bad guys’, so much so his administration has deported more ‘bad guys’ than under any other president, so Trump is not doing anything new with criminal immigrants, but he has with the meek and mild undocumented.

Trump goes around sallying forth he’s only rounding up the “bad hombres, thugs and murderers,” but with ICE agents going into a hospital, hand and feet cuffing an undocumented woman that is suffering from a brain tumor then hauling her to the detention center is a bit too much for me. This actually happened last week in Texas. Where does she fit into the “bad hombres, thugs and murderers” scenario?

Yes, Trump has been, to say the least quite spiteful concerning illegal immigration, but how hypocritical is this? In 2013, undocumented immigrants, in working the cheapest jobs, paid out $12 billion in federal taxes; as for Trump, a billionaire, 0. Trump has paid zero (nada) in federal taxes since 1999 due to his bankruptcy filings. Along with that, undocumented workers contribute 3% to the nation’s GDP.

Trump himself, Trump administrators, Trump pundits and Republican politicians continually on a daily basis spread fear of how dangerous a threat Islamic terrorism is to Americans. Funny that though, in the week of February 12-18, 2017 there were three terrorist plots or attacks that were thwarted on American soil by law enforcement officers. But it wasn’t Muslims, it was white nationalists. But of course, nothing was said about that from Trump and friends.

Just this February 23^rd, Adam Puritan stepped up to two men of Indian decent while eating in a Olathe, Kansas bar and grill and apparently mistaking them for Middle Eastern origins, but for sure in recognizing their darker skin color yelled out, “Get out of my country,” then shot both of them killing one and seriously injuring the other.

Fueled by Trump fervor, there have been 144 mosque attacks from confetti to burning the building down since Trump’s election. Jewish synagogues haven’t been faring well either, 100 synagogues were defamed and damaged just within a ten day period after Trump’s election.

It is nice to know though that American Muslims donated $100,000.00 to the ‘Chesed Shel Emeth’ Jewish cemetery just outside of St. Louis, Missouri that had many of its headstones knocked down and broken just last week. In like, leaders of the Victoria, Texas Jewish community donated their synagogue for Muslims to worship in after a January 28, 2017 set fire had burned their mosque down to the ground. Trump should take note of this and spread its American diversity unity spectrum instead of using rhetoric to enflame division.

According to the, ‘Southern Poverty Law Center’ who compiles these statistics, there’s been 1,094 hate crimes conducted just in the first month of Trump’s election. Since Trump’s election win, Muslim mosques have been receiving hate messages like, “He’s going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews.”

Except for Spicer calling it “absurd” in comparing this uptick to Trump’s nationalism stoking, Trump and company have not mentioned one thing about white nationalist terrorism. Needless to say, nothing has been mentioned either about the Quebec, Canada mosque attack where a white supremacist killed six this past January.

Trump didn’t even feel the need to send his personal condolences to the Canadian victims and Canada; for it might just be he didn’t want to recognize this form of terrorism, which goes against the grain of his framework of terrorism as only being Islamic related.

The white misogynist nationalist, Milo Yiannopoulos had his U. C. Berkley speaking engagement cancelled due to a student uproar over it. Trump, although legally he can’t without congressional approval, threatens to revoke the university’s federal grants for the cancelling. Other Republicans complained the university acted out against free speech. Why, Dan Adamini, former chair and current secretary of the Marquette County Republican Party even went so far as to say on a ‘Facebook’ post that, “I’m thinking another Kent State might be the only solution protest stopped after only one death.”

Lo and behold, Yiannopoulos was also committed to speak at the CPAC meeting, but instead, got jilted again, for CPAC cancelled him. It appears that they could tolerate his white supremacy efforts, his female bashing, even his being gay, but when a pedophile account came out about him, they shuttered the door.

So, where is the Republican outrage over free speech? Where is hypocritical Donald Trump’s threat to CPAC for doing the same thing? Nowhere...

Trump claims he “inherited a mess” but yet takes all the credit for the January’s ‘Department of Labor’s job report when it was concluded on January 12, 2017, a full eight days from his inauguration. The report stated that 227,000 jobs were added at a 4.8% unemployment rate.

It’s funny why he would claim the 4.8% as his own, when on the campaign trail he repeated numerously that any unemployment rate around 5% is “such a phony.” He also stated, “The number isn’t reflective. I’ve seen numbers of 24 percent. I actually saw a number of 42 percent unemployment. Forty-two percent! 5.3 percent unemployment; that is the biggest joke there is in this country. The unemployment rate is probably 20 percent, but I will tell you, you have some great economists that will tell you it's a 30, 32 and the highest I've heard so far is 42 percent.”

Well it appears Trump’s confused on which number it actually is so decides to keep raising the unemployment bar, while mind ya, not revealing what source where he heard these so-called factual figures.

Trump’s clueless hypocrisy also extends into the national debt. He says this in his tweet below:

Again, what Trump inherited from Obama and what Obama inherited from W. Bush are at opposite poles. It takes a full nine months into a newly elected president’s office for his actual policies to start affecting entities like the national debt and employment. Trump’s got eight more months to lay claim to what is actually being impacted from his administration.

Trump not only hasn’t drained the swamp, he’s filled it with snapping gators that will snap shut on the everyday American worker. Trump’s first regulations were to repeal financial regulations to allow financial institutions to begin doing what they did that lead to the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008.

In his first hours in office he made it pricier for first time homebuyers. Just an hour in taking office, Trump suspended a rule that would have made certain mortgages less costly. Bannon and Mnuchin both worked for Wall Street’s ‘Goldman Sachs’ making millions off of hedge funds that helped lead to the financial recession.

As far as Trump’s administration goes there has never been such a collected group of billionaires in any president’s office. Trump’s billionaire list is:

Secretary of Education: Nancy Devos ~ $5.1 billion

Secretary of Commerce: Wilbur Ross ~ $2.5 billion

Deputy of Commerce: Todd Ricketts ~ $1 billion

Small Business Administration: Linda McMahon ~ $1 billion

Veteran Affairs Advisory: Isaac Perlmutter ~ $4.1 billion

Economic Advisory Council: John Paulson ~ $7.9 billion

Economic Advisor: Diane Hendricks ~ $4.3 billion

Economic Advisor: Andrew Beal ~ $9 billion

Inaugural Committee Head: Gail Icahn ~ $16.46 billion

President Strategic & Policy Forum: Elon Musk ~ $13.4 billion

President Strategic & Policy Forum: Stephen Schwarzman ~ $11.6 billion

President Strategic & Policy Forum: Travis Kalanick ~ $6.3 billion

The ‘President Strategic & Policy Forum’ are corporate CEOs advising Trump on how government policies will affect the economy.

Just Trump’s initial fifteen secretarial cabinet picks were worth $13 billion. The total so far for his current billionaire administrative seats secured is $82.52 billion. How Trump voters were conned into a billionaire looking out for their welfare by flooding the swamp with more billionaires still eludes me.

Running Crybabies:

In holding up, or should I say in lack of holding up to constituent meetings to promote transparency and the sharing of concerns, Republicans as of late have been running scared like crying cackling chickens with a fox in the coop. Instead of facing the backlash of repealing Obamacare or refusing to investigate Trump over his Russian connections, more than 200 Republican congressmen will not hold a town hall meeting, or holding private invitation only meetings, or holding impersonal robocalls, or if holding meetings, allowing only Republican constituents to fill up the room or at least the front rows, or canceling meetings altogether.

For those that did go through with the meetings, they indeed tripped and fell into a buzzing hornet’s nest, with some Republican politicians cowardly sneaking out before the meeting’s end. Perhaps if they weren’t attempting to defend Trump and repeal or degrade public policies from the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare to Social Security, all the while doing irreparable repeals to environmental laws, they wouldn’t find themselves under such scrutiny.

Hundreds of thousands across the nation are packing into town halls:

There are simply too many town hall meetings where the Republican politician got an earful to relay here, but following below are a few highlights.

Voters are upset and Republican politicians may justify it as paid professionals, or folks from out of district or state, or it’s a Democrat affront, but it is an authentic reaction to common folk finally getting upset with Republican rhetoric, why no interests in the GOP congress in investigating the Trump/Russian connection and how Republicans are going to dismantle concrete public policies.

Below is a collage video of Republican town hall meetings.

Many congressmen ducked and ran for cover before hosting their appointed town halls. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) announced the cancellation of his town hall because he had to be in Europe. He lied, for he was seen in Florida lecturing at a ‘Florida International University’ political science class, then ventured on over to a private ‘Jackson Memorial Hospital’ event closed to the press and public the same time his no-show town hall was supposed to start.

Then there’s ol’ Rep. Louie Gohmert, who usually talks so tough, but was so fearful for his life that he cancelled his town hall meeting. Herein lies his scaredy-cat excuse, “Unfortunately, at this time there are groups from the more violent strains of the leftist ideology, some even being paid, who are preying on public town halls to wreak havoc and threaten public safety.” He then proceeded to compare himself to Gabby Giffords in that he could get shot by some crazed leftist.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn did hold a meeting where she was met with boos and shouts of “shame on you” after stating lies and being very condescending. She also kept stressing on a CNN next day interview that the crowd for the most part were not her district constituents, but Wolf Blitzer kept cornering her misleading lies.

Rep. Michael Coffman (R-CO) saw how big his constituent crowd was, so said that he would interview four a time behind closed doors. After doing around sixteen, he then attempts to sneak away. He does sneak away out the back door to a waiting chauffeured car, but is caught in the process with the crowd shouting “shame on you.”

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) skedaddled from her two scheduled town hall meetings. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) has his staff abruptly cancel his meeting that was scheduled weeks in advance. Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA) was a no show at his packed town hall meeting. At least Tom McClintock (R-CA) did appear, but then decided to bolt commencing the crowd to chant shame on you.

Rep. McClintok with a police escort bolting from Town Hall

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) scheduled a meeting, but then holds the meeting privately with only invited Republican attendees in a different location. Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) took Brooks’ suggestion and held his meeting 60 miles away from where it was scheduled to be held, but his constituents sniffed him out and over 200 of them were as angry as a junkyard dog.

Out of all of this though, Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) licks the icing off the cake. He did hold a town hall. But, in that meeting he stood up to tell his constituents a bare face lie. He’s still hung up on the old Republican ‘death panel’ ruse in stating that Obamacare is indeed a ‘death panel’. While doing so the crowd boos him where he insults their integrity again by calling them children. Watch Bilirakis in action in the short video below:

It turns out rather clearly that Trump and the GOP have lied to Americans about Obamacare ever since its inception and have lied for six years in claiming they have a wondrous replacement. Partisan showing is all it has been.

The GOP can demean and stomp on folks, but when it comes to democracy in action their chicken side suddenly kicks in by not showing up, running away, moving meetings to differing locations unannounced, or merely outright lying at an event. However, this protesting is simply democracy in motion and it assuredly is nothing to be afraid of.

Republicans falsely whining that these are so-called paid protesters by George Soros, had better wizen up, it is a grassroots movement from the bottom up and the election years will return.

Finality Opine:

Trump claims he has inherited an economic mess in stating, “What I am essentially inheriting is a mess. The finances of our country are a mess, but we’re going to clean them up...we’ve already saved a lot.”

The thing is this is coming from someone that has filed bankruptcy six times. American bankers and financial institutions no longer granted him loans due to all his bankruptcy filings, which is why he reached out to foreign financial and investment entities like Russia.

For after all, Trump now promises to clean up America’s finances, but most likely through the same streamline of bankruptcy once his building the wall costs and wealthy tax cuts kicks in.

On the 02/22/17 press conference, WH Secretary Sean Spicer whimpering about all these protesters and angered folks showing up at Republican town hall meetings stated that they should be applauding Trump, instead of blurring the facts.

He also stated, “They’re losing their coverage and premiums are spiking, and so if people are truly worried about losing their coverage, they should be applauding the President’s action for wanting to make sure that we put a system in place that does what they were promised a while back, and that’s what I think has been missing from this dialogue.”

In fact, it’s Spicer who is blurring the facts. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is health care legislation that impacts areas of the health insurance system. If you are on employer-based insurance many of the benefits, and the increase in coverage came from the ACA. Medicare and Medicaid are both impacted by Obamacare, which by the way is the ACA. Obamacare is not an insurance plan that folks are on. They are indeed on Medicaid, Medicare and employer based health coverage as constructed through Obamacare.

Concerning the rise in premium costs, this is due to the fact that private insurers hold the helm to insurance and not the government as Republicans like to ruse. Just imagine how much private insurance companies would have raised costs without the litigation of the ACA as they have traditionally done. Still though, Obamacare has cut into the stampeding costs in the rise of healthcare, for as since the law’s implementation, healthcare costs have dropped down to the 1960’s inflation rates.

Of course these folks aren’t going to clap for Trump, he and Republicans are taking away their only safety net for healthcare. Republicans are about to repeal the ACA and Trump claimed during his Fox News Super bowl interview that he won’t have an Obamacare replacement until after a year or two elapses.

Trump is nothing new when it comes to unethical social policy issues; Republicans have been attacking them for decades. Even Trump’s lying to the nation’s public is nothing new as Republicans through misinformation, scapegoating and deceit have used the public. Trump merely is the apex, the crowning achievement in Republican goals to set up a caste system of the “haves and have nots.”

Again I’ll repeat for all the Trump followers...expectation can deceive perception.

Other countries look up to America as an example of how democracy works and its intricacies of transparency and battling corruption. The world looks up to our judiciary system so much so, that it is U.S. judges that merit decisions on international sporting events whether it be lawful implementation or scandals.

Trump’s administration may in short course begin to unravel and flame out America’s beacon by showing it is OK to exert corruption and to scoot towards more authoritarianism thereby diminishing democracy. It’s only a matter of time that this nation is going to tire of its iconic image being marred.

A perfect storm is quietly brewing picking up enormous energy and strength. As I stated before, within two years Trump will either be forced out of office or impeached...enough said...