Just watching Donnie at a news conference with the president of Finland. Same old talking points. Called the impeachment inquiry investigation a hoax, “a big fraud on the American people” as the moron-in-chief put it … Things are getting really interesting. Just last night the president tweeted that he had decided to scrap his plan to host the 2022 G-7 conference at the Trump property in Doral, Florida, close to Miami … Trump’s decision to abandon America’s Kurdish allies by withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria has left the Kurds, who have fought side-by-side with the United States troops in the war against ISIS, to fend for themselves … We haven’t even mentioned Ukrainian President Zelensky or Trump’s attorney, Rudolph (the bug eyed, empty-headed) Giuliani … Isn’t it a crime not to comply with subpoenas issued by a theoretically co-equal branch of government, the Congress ? And if so, why isn’t someone being locked up left now?
A great conversation. A beautiful conversation. A totally appropriate conversation. It doesn’t matter what I brought up. It was totally appropriate”… The I.G. believes that what the whistleblower had said at the end of July was credible and that the phone conversation should be revealed to Congress, but he has been over-ruled by the D.N.I. (Department of National Intelligence) as well as by the D.O.J. (Dept. of Justice)… As the American president, Trump does have the right to say what he wants to anyone, including world leaders, provided what he says is designed to serve the United States’ national security and interest, rather than his own personal interests … The president’s counsel, another idiot, Rudy Giuliani, admitted in a conversation with Chris Cuomo of CNN, that he did bring up Biden’s son with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, after at first denying that he had done so … I couldn’t believe he would actually do it, but he did. Trump decided for some reason to release an unredacted transcript of the phone call with the Ukrainian president … There was no quid pro quo, literally “this for that”, i.e. “I give you military aid, you do my bidding” type of thing. If there had been such a thing unearthed in the transcript, that would be a whole other thing, according to Republican Mitt Romney … The whistleblower’s complaint, for lack of a better word, has just been released to Congress. The question now becomes where do we go from here? What happens now?
It’s hard to believe what’s going on here. Trump’s corrupt, dishonest and totally ignorant approach has been pretty well acknowledged to be a fact of life. Instead of doing something, anything to hold him accountable, politicians and others are simply sitting around and contemplating their navels or running for president … Just to clarify, there is speculation involved but only on the degree of damage the moron-in-chief will cause, not on the fact that the above-mentioned results are America’s present reality. Anyone who can’t see this is either stupid, willfully ignorant, or dependent on Trump and his administration, either directly or indirectly … The guy has a 38% approval rating as of this writing, but I continue to be shocked, angered and find it very hard to believe the base ignorance of his base who think that Trump is the greatest thing since sliced bread, the greatest president in U.S. history … How long can we allow this bum, this racist fool, this misogynistic, sexist, ignorant pig, to run the American government? … Trump is a true narcissist who believes that he knows everything, more than the generals, for example; “I am the least racist person in the world” …. Trump is really running a criminal organization, not a government administration by any stretch of the imagination. He’s sleazy, a slime ball, an oily, greasy, bottom feeding, nutcase and some people better stand up to him before Dorian makes land in Alabama, and the sooner, the better.
Today, the moron-in-chief says that Melania has grown to know Kim very well. Fact is she had never even met the thug. The WH spin is that the moron-in-chief shares his dealings with Kim and others with his wife and that is how he was able to lie that Melania knows Kim quite well. This is just bullshit and the spin doesn’t matter because (a) his base doesn’t care about his lies, and (b) people who oppose the moron-in-chief don’t believe a word of what he says anyway.
John Kasich said in a back-and-forth on CNN, that Americans cannot allow this type of shit to become the new normal. I got sad news for him: it’s too late.
Sadly, I have grown to actually despise the moron-in-chief: the sound of his voice, that fucking face, his ill-tailored and ill-fitting suits, his penguin-like stance, his being short on brains and long on ties, the toilet paper attached to his shoe, his complete lack of any semblance of both integrity and sense of humour, his useless trade war, his not showing up at a G-7 climate change round table and then lying about why he wasn’t there – he said that his meeting with India’s Modi and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, went on too long when in fact both leaders – Modi and Merkel – were shown to be at said round table – his selling the presidency and using it to do business in the hopes that he can make some scratch, his disgustingly sexist lifestyle and so on.
It is beyond me that people can be as ignorant, woefully uninformed, so undignified, believing anything that the moron-in-chief spews at them and labelling anything that doesn’t cast their leader in a positive light as fake.
I saw one of the deplorables being interviewed and being confronted with the fact that Trump had said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and “still not lose any voters”. She argued that he never had said that and when told that there was video of his statement, she proceeded to call that “fake”. It was enough to make me feel like puking, actually. Ignorance pervades the American population more than I thought possible in this day and age, and this uninformed and completely unenlightened orientation can be seen as a partial result of the poor shape of the American educational system as a whole.
In whose interests is a poorly educated populace? In the interests of the “one percents”. I use that term as a means of “saving words and time” and I mean that, unlike when the moron-in-chief rationalized his calling Tim Cook, “Tim Apple”. As some have said we all make mistakes and misspeak at times. Why not just admit that you made a mistake rather than lying about it as Trump did? By trying to mislead people with his lies, he turned a non-event into a news story. What a foolish man he is, stupid as the day is long. Left?
Back to corporate greed, the “one percent”. It is in their interests to see people divided and fighting with each other rather than confronting their real enemies, that same “one percent”. A poorly educated and desperate citizenry are just too uninformed to be able to see the truth and too uneducated to gain the perspective that comes with education starting in high school and proceeding through college and university and as I understand it, there is a difference between those two terms. Colleges do not offer degrees beyond the Bachelors’ level, while universities offer MA’s, MBA’s, MSc’s as well as courses of study leading to professions like medicine.
Steve Sack / Minneapolis Star Tribune
Supporters of the moron-in-chief, for the most part, are part and parcel of what Hillary Clinton classified as a “basket of deplorables” and that’s putting it mildly. There is no chance that his base will ever think or say ill of him so don’t waste your energy trying to reason with them. You’re wasting your breath and you have much better things to do with your precious time.
An updated previously posted JL from Canadian Jerry / 🇨🇦 j
This guy’s name is Andy Zee and he’s really got it going on. In this twelve minute interview with Cenk Igyur from the Young Turks (TYT), he talks revolution, really and truly. For more information, check out Andy Zee; Revolution Books; and Refusefascism.org. People have asked me what can be done. Well, here’s something to think about. This guy must know that he’s putting his life on the line by saying some of this stuff, and rest assured, if things looked like they were coming to a head, he and people like him would be in the sights of representatives of the “powers that be”. Things are getting ridiculous. It may be time to fight the power that be.
Seriously, folks.
Surely William Barr knew that the Mueller Report would eventually be available for all the world to see. Why then would he cover certain details up unless his arrogance allowed him to somehow draw the conclusion that people would either be unwilling or unable to decipher things for themselves?
An example that comes to mind is the interaction between the moron-in-chief and now no longer WH counsel, McGhan, which apparently involved the latter being told by the former to get Mueller fired and telling him over the phone to have the then AG, Jeff Sessions, do the dirty. Somehow this obvious attempt by the moron-in-chief got lost in the shuffle and was not even alluded to or mentioned in Barr’s four-page summary of the Report. As a matter of fact, by refusing to do the moron-in-chief’s bidding in this case, McGhan may have saved the moron-in-chief’s presidency. To pursue this issue a bit further, it seems that this “endeavour” by the moron-in-chief, to some, is tantamount to actually committing the offence – either it is or it isn’t. It can’t be both.
It’s really hard to believe what’s going on in the United States what with a totally reprehensible and completely immoral character in charge of the executive branch of the American government. This moron, whom I call mic – moron-in-chief – recently stated that we should get rid of the judges, whose task it is to interpret the law.
Wouldn’t that be nice, eh? No third branch of government and certainly less of a check on presidential power. The mic would love this. What’s next, get rid of the legislature too. That would leave only the executive with the mic-in-chief at its apex bring free to do what he wants with no legislative or judicial restraint on his power. Wouldn’t that be nice.
Actually, there’s so much hate in the United States – Democrats vs. GOP, Anti-mic vs. Pro-mic and I may be contributing to this hate with use of the term “mic” – that it’s hard to objectively decide what’s fact and what’s fiction, what’s right and what’s wrong. Maybe we should all just sit back, take a deep breath or two, and relax. Personally, I find this difficult to do in the face of that’s all that’s transpired over the last two or so years. There’s sure been a lot of lying going on, with the mic engineering a good part of this.
I happen to count as two real friends plus one FB “friend” who are supporters of the moron-in-chief. Try as I might to get these guys to admit something as obvious as that the mic is a liar, it seems that all they got with which to come back is “Obama … this, Hillary … that, infanticide this, Vince Foster that … “. They don’t have a way of defending the mic so all they do is go back to the past to attack previous people in power specifically and the Democrats in general. In discussions, I have admitted that I wasn’t a supporter of Hillary Clinton because I don’t find her honest or trustworthy but heaven forbid that these guys admit that the mic’s not infallible.
Oh yes, just one more thing. Happy 4/20 which doesn’t seem to have the same ring to it as it did prior to legalization. Social change comes quite slowly. Wait for it.
That’s all I got except to wish everyone who celebrates Happy Easter, Chag Sameach and what remains of Shabbat Shalom.
Trump is claiming that the 4.1% growth in the USA’s GDP for the most recent quarter (3 months) is at the highest level in decades. To be honest, I don’t remember his exact words but he is contending that this 4.1% increase is the largest in a long time … He talks in terms of dollars and cents, winning and losing, but countries are not businesses and should not be administered as such… It’s Trump’s tariff time. It’s just a waste of time… when we buy a good or service from the United States, this is a Canadian import because money is exiting Canada to purchase that import. Alternately, when Americans buy goods and/or services from Canada, the cost of these goods go into the Canadian export column because money is coming into our country … Other countries have reacted to the American imposition of tariffs with tariffs of their own on American exports to their country, like on soybeans which will hurt American farmers just like Harley Davidson …
Just thinking about England while watching a football game on television between Brighton and Hove Albion and Huddersfield, being played in Falmer, Sussex.
Below : American Express Community Stadium in Farmer, Sussex, home pitch of BHA.
That new and beautiful pitch is located in Falmer, equidistant between Brighton on the east and Lewes, very close to Sussex University, where I earned my Masters in International Relations between 1969 and 1972, way back when, around 45 years ago, now.
I used to live in Brighton, first, and then in Hove, a part of my life I enjoy thinking about as my salad days. We had a gas, my girlfriend, Donna and my friend, Lorne, as well as other characters we encountered on our journeys.
Below: Brighton, Sussex, England.
One of the latter was a classic, “Paul” to the straight world, “Sebastian” to his buds and all the Hippies around in those days. He was homeless, relying on his friends, of which there were more of than a few, to provide shelter to this cashless guy, with his copy of the album “Mirror Man “ by Captain Beefheart** under his arm, and his Alsatian (German Shepherd) by his side. Like him, dog carried a dual aperture. She was “Hash” to the freaks and “Tessa” to those with, shall we say, more conventional views, including cops.
Below : Captain Beefheart – Don Glen Vliet – and album cover. Paul was hardly ever without this album under his arm.
Cops couldn’t simply approach Sebastian to search him. They tried once and Hash bit that guy, breaking his arm. To call her off, Mr. Sebastian simply said “Hash”, firmly, from some place deep inside this remarkable gentle man whom I grew to love. When the dog was with Paul, all the time in other words, they had to lay back and he was safe. Never got busted as far as I know.
Actually, one of the highlights of my 1982 visit to England was locating this guy and hanging out. The last time I was in Brighton, in the “summer” of 2013, I wasn’t that lucky. Couldn’t find Sebastian even though I went to check out our old haunts, pubs, mostly, as well as putting an ad in the local “Evening Argus” newspaper. Too fucking bad. Hope he’s still living. Some of my British friends have since died, most from from lung cancer and I am convinced it’s from all that tobacco we used to smoke – chain smoking straights except for me who didn’t smoke straights while stoned – I recall one time, somewhere in the world, when not stoned, I lit up a straight and the person I was with mentioned that he didn’t know that I even smoked cigarettes which I happened to not do when buzzed, for some reason..
That and the fact that we constructed spliffs rather than simple joints, the former containing the tobacco from a single cigarette plus hash of course.
We used to use three skins – cigarette papers, Rizzla, I think, and stick two together on one side with a third skin perpendicular affixed to the other two. Then we used open up an entire smoke by licking the seam, breaking the filter, and pulling it down, along the wet seam, and emptying an entire straight into it. Then the hash and roll, add a filter of at least 1/4 inch wide and voila, an English spliff. Some of us used to put the filter in prior to rolling it up.
We used to suck this concoction rather than puff on it if we really wanted a strong stone, similar to how chillums. Imagine what that did to the lungs.
Now back to my story :
One time, Paul was crashing at our place, in Hove – we could actually see the English Channel/La Manche – from our living room window as well as from the window of the room which Sebastian was occupying that morning.
So I enter the room, take two steps in the dark, and immediately hear a low-throated growl emanating from Hash, the dog. Fortunately, that’s all it was, rather than something more painful than the fear I felt for the few seconds it took for me to escape from that room and quickly closing it the in my wake. I believe that that huge Alsatian had scented me out, and recognized me as a friend to Master Sebastian. Otherwise my unannounced foray into that dark room would have resulted in something worse than that growl, which I imagine I can still conjure up, exactly, after all these years.
I remember Sebastian, Hash and I going up to London
in a small car with little money and less gas. This is how it was on this trip of around 50 miles/80 km. We’d get to the beginning of a downhill slope or hill, turn off the ignition, and glide down the hill. Upon reaching the “end of the road”, as it were, we would then turn on the engine and use it to get us to the next downhill portion of the motorway. So it was use the engine, turn it off, turn it on and repeat.
One more interesting tidbit is that I purchased a car while over the ocean. It was a 1958 Austin A-35 and you actually had to crank it from outside the front of the car to get it started. That wasn’t the same car as the above-mentioned vehicle Sebastian, Hash, and I used on that incredible “ride” to London.
Below: Stock photo of the A-35. Look very closely and you can see the hole in the bumper, right in the middle, where the crank is attached.
I paid a measly seven quid for it, less than $20 at the time so I wasn’t risking much cash. Don’t remember getting insurance for it. It was fun to use and ran fairly adequately in the few months I owned it. Only problem was the fact that I had to drive on the left side of the road, to which I wasn’t at all used. At times, turning left found me on the wrong side of the median, but I used to drive completely focussed so that I handled those turns a very high percentage of the time. It was black, by the way.
Sebastian was a generous man, who gave what and when he could to his freaky friends who had helped him out. One morning, upon waking up and heading down the 69 stairs to the street – beautiful flat which exhausted the less in shape among us at the time, at least the sixty-nine steps did – and opening the front door, and low and behold, raw fish wrapped in newspaper, a few pounds if it was an ounce. From Paul, – fell off a truck – cod, I believe it was.
That’s pretty much all I’ve got to say,
Today, Christians attend Church and pray,
So have good days tomorrow and today
May all your cares and worries go away
Just like the Habs’ chances for a playoff foray.
Ok, Ken?
**Legend has it that the Captain, a Frank Zappa-like character. or maybe it’s the other way round – went to live a solitary life in a California desert until he forgot how to speak English. Provided that he relearned it on his return to civilization, I find that very cool.
Below: “That guy…”
Just had a horrible experience with this man. He’s the brother of one of the owners – she and her hubby – and he drove me to the Harley dealership in North Charleston to collect some clothes to take home when I head back to good old Montréal. We also went to a buffet to pick up some Chinese for us although that wasn’t intended at the time. At first I thought I wouldn’t mind spending time with this guy who I’ve know for six years eating at the restaurant but decided, because I knew that, right here, right now, I didn’t want to spend any longer than necessary with the guy, I decided to ask him if it was ok if we put the food in boxes – including food for my hosts – after hmming and hawing and generally being obnoxious, he asked me why I didn’t want to eat at the restaurant and I surprised myself by giving him an honest answer in this context rather than simply making something up – that he was acting obnoxiously and I felt that I wanted to spend as short a time as possible with him at that moment.
Suffice to say, after collecting and paying for the food, things got a lot worse on the 30 or so minute ride from China Buffet to the house where I’m staying. In the end, I was almost physically sick; this was my first conflict since hitting the road in late January. Good and bad. Anyway, on getting back, I simply begged off and have been recovering on my bed. Unfortunately, I’m hungry – all I’ve eaten today and it’s now just after five in the afternoon, is one-half of a left-over Big Mac which means I’m gonna have to head downstairs and interact with this obnoxious man once more; hopefully it’ll be alright. If he starts acting up again I’ll either head back upstairs or clock him. Actually in the car on the way home, I told him that if I was feeling better and it wasn’t raining that I would get out of the car and cab it home. His response: If you were healthier, I’d “beat the crap out of you”. Very nice. What an asshole this guy can be. I apologized for calling him obnoxious, and he, obnoxiously, didn’t accept my apology and when I mentioned that to him, he said that I was “putting words into my (his) mouth”.
Peace and Love
What’s on my mind is Greg, a born and bred Virginian, whom I met this aft in Charleston, SC. He’s a Trump supporter to the end and won’t desert him, no matter what … The guy stated that he hates niggers – his word – and when I asked him if he classified himself as a racist, he answered in the affirmative, keeping his voice down because Bonita, a black friend of mine, was close enough to hear … What does Trump want? I am firmly convinced that he could, he would subvert the entire system of government and become a dictator …
So Tiger’s in contention at the Arnold Palmer Invitational PGA Tourney at Bayhill, in Orlando … Like many who follow the game, I find myself pulling for Woods to the extent that I lose interest when the camera follows other golfers … Even the crowds out on the course on Saturday were totally immersed in Woods’ progress back to prominence after a fourth back surgery and his cheating ways. He is a divorced father of two kids, Charlie and Sam, who are apparently old enough now to understand what their father has done and can, apparently, still do … There was a time that I was angry at Mr. Woods for depriving me and millions of others of the chance to see golf history unfolding in front of our incredulous eyes because he cheated on his wife …
Nice home. Front and back views of a Bialik alumnus’ classy place shared with his wife and two kids. There are alligators in the man-made lake in the back of the property. Otherwise, it’s swimmable. So if you ain’t afraid of gators, dive right in … I’ve been on the road for over five weeks at the moment, first landing in Charleston and picking up my trike … Willie, who in his own words when we last saw each other, is 83 1/2, still rides … My plan is the following. I will leave Miami tomorrow morning, planning to spend the next two days in Punta Gorda, just north of Port Charlotte …
Let’s have a parade for fuck sake. Why not call it treason. Why not. But he’s only joking says the WH ….
White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a top aide to President Donald Trump, has resigned, the White House confirmed Wednesday, following allegations of abuse from his two ex-wives …
“Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor and I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidante and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him,” Kelly said in a statement.
The Dow dropped a total of 1175.21 points today in heavy trading. This is the biggest single day drop IN HISTORY. Trump was trumpeting the fact that the market was setting all kinds of records and took plenty of credit for this when it had little to do with his actions, or with those of any other human. The economy has a mind of its own.
The Business Cycle
The Business Cycle goes through periods of expansion/inflation, recession, troughs and peaks. The Federal Reserve regulates open market operations by which government bonds are bought or sold in order to respectively increase or decrease the money supply. In other words, when the Federal Reserve decides to buy bonds from individual consumers, businesses and corporate entities, it is attempting to put money in people’s’ pockets to help combat a real or anticipated recession.
Alternately, during periods of inflation, in order to curb the money supply, the Reserve, the equivalent of our Bank of Canada, will sell bonds, thus taking money out of peoples’ pockets. In this situation, people exchange money for government bonds.
The Reserve and the BOC (Bank of Canada) also use interest rates to control the money supply. During periods of expansion during the Business Cycle, the Bank Rate will be raised while during periods of economic contraction, the Bank Rate (BR) will be lowered, making it more attractive to borrow and spend money, thus assisting in economic expansion.
A third way the Reserve and the BOC operate to control the money supply is through a policy of moral suasion.
The government itself, through its spending and taxation policies also operates as an economic regulator. Increased taxation coupled with decreased government spending would be the methodology used to combat inflation and decreased taxation coupled with increased spending would be introduced to fight recession.
Even with all this, the ups and downs of the Business Cycle march on. All the government and the Reserve/ BOC can accomplish is to attempt to ensure that the ups and downs are less severe than they would be in the absence of government intervention in the economy.
Trump is an idiot to take credit for a good economy or, by the same token, to take the blame for what has happened to the Stock Market in the last three or four sessions. But the moron obviously doesn’t see it that way which means he can be blamed for the LARGEST POINT DROP for the Dow in HISTORY, if he has taken credit for the Market’s positive performance since the 2016 presidential election, which he definitely has.
Just to repeat, the economy moves in cycles. Intervention can be used to even out the ups and downs. However, they cannot be eliminated. Eat shit, Moron-In-Chief.
Inflation is an economic situation where too much money is chasing too few goods which drives prices up due to the laws of supply and demand. In this case, demand for goods bids up prices causing increased inflation, rising prices with the result that the purchasing power of the money falls.
Recession results from an antithetical scenario, in which there is not enough money around which causes prices to either rise less quickly, stabilize or fall. Less demand results in increased rates of unemployment, so characteristic of recessionary periods in the Business Cycle.
That’s all folks.
Peace out.