Health Secretary Tom Price Given the Boot

Tom Price, Health and human services secretary has been forced to resign by President Trump as of yesterday for his travel expense abuses.  He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in plane travel all over the place over these past eight months and only offered to pay back $52,000.   I don’t mind the expenditure that much but this is a guy who is against the whole idea of Health and Welfare and so really Trump’s whole cabinet should resign.  About six Trump cabinet heads have been running up taxpayer funded expenses for their excessive travels.   They say he’s the ninth Trump high official to either have to resign or be fired in the past eight months. 

The ticket buying public is not happy with all this going down to one knee and other stuff that’s been happening in NFL games.  Ticket sale rates are down eleven percent and TV ratings are down and Direct TV is deluged with people calling in to be removed from their Sunday Ticket coverage.  There seems to be either a lot of racism out there or maybe it’s that people don’t like any change in tradition.  People have said though that the team lining up for the national anthem is only since 2009.   People like Thom Hartman say “The NFL is like one big ad for the military anyhow”. 

Now there is this guy who wants to send private parties to Mars by 2024 or something, beating out the government.  He also wants to offer terrestrial trips here to places like New York in 25 minutes or to Shanghai in forty minutes.  I think a much better more workable system would be to bring back the supersonic planes.   Rockets are pretty expensive.   But someone out there wants to be the FIRST to travel to Mars. 

You’ve heard of dumpster diving, and there are even books on dumpster dining.  But now Jerry Brown wants to give used food in school lunches to relief agencies to feed the poor.  Even if it’s been served to the student fruit without any bites taken out of it is OK and unopened process food is OK.  Then there is the place that prides itself on selling damaged fruit like peach nectar from bruised peaches, and the like.  

We think we know what is real and what is not.   In the “Network” movie Howard Beale said “You out there are the reality.  We on the tube are an illusion but we have you convinced that your life is an illusion and we are real”.   Which is real regarding Ron Hubbard?  He wrote Science Fiction books and he also founded a religion.  Which is real- the science fiction or the religion?  You could argue that the novels were real and the religion, like most relition- - is kind of an illusion.   So much of today’s science fiction is both stale and unbelievable.  There is too much stuff about being attacked by warring troops in different timelines from our own.  Or there is talk about time bending or “being changed” or colliding with itself and wrecking the universe.   In soap operas you have people coming back from the dead all the time or else taking over the lives or other people who look like them, as if not a soul could tell the difference.  We claim that Rolling Stone Brian Jones now occupies the body of Valerie Schoffner, who is about 55 years old not but 45 when I knew her.  We also talk about our own warring empires in space.  In the spring of 2006 we made reference to how the Federation decided not to invade the Centaurians because they weren’t the real problem.  They weren’t the cause of this ultra conservatism we have today.  Any alliance they made with certain modern Christians has long since run its course.   We used to for decades speak of the ether light travels in as a green Jell-O type substance with a high viscosity that you’ll “get stuck in” if you try to exceed the speed of light.  The belief was that matter beyond the speed of light had to be increadibly heavy with a lot of crushing mass.   Even in the fall of 2009 when I came up with the optical illusion theory for “what you see” with light at high speeds, I still clung to the Jell-O theory for a few more years like an albitros.  Many people carry religion around them like an albitros.  Once I came up with the “four in one” messiah theory I didn’t have the need to continually talk about Christianity.  I personally had reached a mental conclusion, my own theory that I could live with.  If I were a nice guy I’d give you links here so you could see for yourselves.  Today it seems as if no communication is valid unless it’s 140 characters or less.  This is a very truncated way to communicate.  The President feels comfortable with tweeting but I never have.   I don’t people have the patience to read a whole book or even a whole article now or even a paragraph.  No they need their words broken down into tweets and if you can’t say it in 140 characters or less than forget.  Personally I’m not going to revert to that kind of communication.  

The Republican Tax Plan will Balloon the Deficit

I think we all know what’s really in the Republican tax plan that President Trump talked about today.   It gets rid of the tax deduction for state and local taxes.  This most hurts people in blue states with higher tax rates and the Republicans know that.  There is also a “childless” penalty.  Because people with kids can offset the higher expenses in this tax plan with an increased deduction.  However the earned income tax credit is gone.  Trump didn’t mention this today.  This whole scheme is a synical plan to punish liberals who tend also to be poor and reward rich Republicans with a lot of kids.  Also there is a repatriotation of overseas funds for business who have been evading taxes to bring their money back to America with no repercussions.  But Norman Goldman states that all of these provisions aren’t even written up in a bill yet, so maybe we don’t have as much to fear as we think.  This tax plan will balloon the federal deficit. 

President Trump chose to give a major speech on tax reform carried only on radio.  It was kind of a wish list of tax favors.  He claims he gives the middle class and poor breaks that he won’t give the upper classes.  He’s increasing the child deduction but eliminating the earned income tax credit.  Of course that’s one thing he neglected to tell us.  He’s doing away with a minimum income tax on the very rich.   And of course he’s doing away with the dreaded estate tax.  By the applause he got there must have been a lot of very rich people in the crowd.  I don’t know how much of this was already known.  Perhaps everything in the speech was already known but the President implied that what he was saying was something new.  It won’t spur the economy.  The economy is on the verge of topping out and it will top out regardless of whether this tax bill is passed or not.  

That Alabama judge who was kicked off the court twice for being unconstitutional was elected last night for the republican nomination for US Senate.  That Bannon guy supported him.  He thinks God ought to be invoked in all of our laws and says the God is the foundation for all moral goodness.  This judge also believes that homosexual ought to be made illegal again.  The thing is he was elected judge by popular vote even after being forced to resign once.  And now the people of Alabama are still so beyond the pale right wing that this guy will be elected.  There have been four special elections for political office since Trump has been in office and the Republicans have won all four. 

This economy is going good now but it isn’t going to keep up forever.  It’s almost unheard of to have ten years of uninterrupted growth.  This time in 2007 we were seeing early signs of the oncoming recession.  This one was the real estate bubble and the one before that in 2000 was the Dot Com bubble.  I don’t know of any equivelant bubbles occurring this time.  But it’s foolhardy to think that this cut in corporate taxes and repatriation of overseas corporate funds is going to pump up this economy to new unexplored heights.  More likely somehow, somewhere, cracks are going to form in this economy and the whole thing is going to collapse.  It might occur as late as 2020 and in that case President Trump may choose not to run again.  He’s getting pretty old anyhow.  And so the next democrat will have a total economic mess on his hands, and of course this will be just the way the Republicans planned it.  

President Trump Losing his War with the NFL

President Trump is losing the “football wars”.  The opening shot came last Friday at a rally in Alabama (of all places).   President Trump suggested that a team owner or coach call anybody who wouldn’t stand for the National Anthem as a son of a bitch.  Trump made other inflamitory statements over the weekend.  He got a lot of blow back for it on Sunday.  They held an NFL game in London and the Jagwires and the Ravens were playing and a lot of players took a knee, and not to end the game.  Then all over people were taking a knee or sitting with their fists in the air or else standing with their arms locked around another as an action of solidarity.  Trump then said “Well you know racecar drivers wouldn’t tolerate any driver now showing proper respect to the flag”.  Of course racecar driving is primarily a sport of the southern states.  I used to think of it as something they did in the winter when it was too cold to do much in northern states.  

The end of the world has been put on hold.  Actually what these Christians said was that last Friday or Saturday would open up a Judgement Period where God would have a special microscope on the United States.  So we should be on our best behavior.  They also say that the following solar eclipse with this one form a giant cross or X accross the United States, which is a little unusual.  If this planetary formation last Saturday was so unusual maybe these prognosticators shouldn't give up on it entirely.   I don't understand it fully but apparently various planets form a Crown over the virgin's head, which is great if we were into Mary worship or something.

Of course the Republicans still haven't voted on that Health Care repeal bill yet and all of the votes aren't nailed down on our side for sure.   I'm assuming that congressmen read their mail and that vox populi will pervail and the bill will fail.  However the other side has a lot of resources and it's not that big of a matter to those people to bribe whom they need to and threaten others with political blackmail and arm twisting and old fashioned horse trading, and the republicans may yet pull this one out of the fire.  Marginally interesting stuff highlighted in green.  

Dr Nichols is the skin doctor everyone around here sees and I've seen him on and off since August of 2016.  But apparently we all won't be seeing him much longer.  Dr Nichols will be retiring at the end of the year and a stranger has bought out his practice.  Linda said that Dr Nichols wasn’t happy about his future prospects, and I speculated whether Dr Nichols might be having some kind of financial problems.  Maybe it’s too generous with his time.  

Windows takes a uniform amount of time to load now even if it’s longer.  It also takes longer for the Start rectangle to appear.  This is Monday September 25, 2017 with three and a half days to go before I get paid.   Jennifer just announced the start of Money draw on a Monday.  More people will have cigarettes to borrow from.  I got lemonade and a graham cracker from Rico.  Days of our Lives was uneventful except one thing.  Justin had Abigail swear out a knowingly false statement about what Abigail knew before she was married.  Clearly the statement is provably false because the reason why Abigail married Dario was because he told her that he HAD to marry an American or else his immigration status would be withdrawn and he’d be deported and turned over to the Mexican mafia.  Now Zander is making threatening phone calls to Victor.  I made myself instant coffee and I have only one spoon of coffee left in the jar for tonight. 

We had sliced chicken breasts for lunch with broccoli.  We had scalloped potatoes with that and I should have gotten more potatoes when they were offered.  We had peaches with whipped  cream on them for desert and I had seconds on that.  They were serving coffee in the big styrophoam cups partially filled.  I had the Gary and Shannon show on.  Rachael came in here with someone and they were talking about our beds and I thought they said mine needed to be replaced because Nora found beg bugs.  I’m not sure but I’ve needed a new mattress for a long time anyhow. 

Last night I was drowsy during the ABC network news at five thirty.  There was some news after that and then I remembered the game.   The Washington Redskins defeated the Oakland Raiders but I don’t remember the score but it was lopsided.  I had Sixty Minutes on but I didn’t see Oprah.  They had a thing on the hurricanes and an interview with John Mc Cain talking about his cancer of the brain and his feelings about President Trump.  Trump isn’t reaching out to him at all to reconcile or anything.  Later on it was some drama on KTLA but drowsiness got the better of me.  I don’t remember if I had any instant coffee.  The KTLA news came on at nine.  I went to bed.  I woke before five needing a cigarette.  I showered and went out there.  I don’t remember what I found in the way of cigarettes.  Later on John gave me butts.  I made myself instant coffee and lay back down with the light off.  At six medication announcements came and I turned on the computer and listened to Stephanie Miller.   I was lucky enough to catch the Rude Pundit today.  I went down at the bottom of the hour to get medication from April.   May-be it’s my timing or April is getting faster but I’m less aware now of really long waits.

Breakfast was a little slow to get going.  It dawned on me that I needed to include “Pandora’s Box” by Procol Herum in that latest compilation.  I considered making more drastic changes but decided against that.  We had Raison Bran for breakfast.  This was followed by scrambled eggs and two biscuits and gravy.  I had Stephanie on and a little of Thom Hartman.  Bill informed me that Glenda was in the building.  I went down to see her.  She has a healthy tanned glow about her.  She said she lives in the part of Corona that gets really hot.  I saw her two different times.  One time I mentioned the fading blotches on my skin.  Glenda was there to pick up some certificate of discharge or something.  She’d been going here and there all morning doing chores.  Andrew showed no interest in seeing her.  Eventually I went out for snacks and got a lemonade and a graham cracker.  Bill had “The Price is Right” on.  They had news on that show last week when all three contestants rolled a hundred on the wheel and they had to do roll offs and someone rolled a hundred and they had to pay out eighty thousand dollars all together.  It was unprecedented.  As predicted, the weather got a lot warmer today.  

Republican Health Care Bill Appears Headed for Defeat

It looks as if the Republican health care repeal act will come to a crashing end.  John Mc Cain, a key senator in this political tug of war, just announce that he in good conscience cannot vote for this bill, despite being best friends with co author Lindsey Graham.  John Mc Cain’s vote will insure the defeat of this dreadful repeal bill we’ve discussed before.  This is because Maine senator Susan Collins will vote no for sure.  And Alaska senator Lisa Marcauski is leaning “No” because of all of the activists outside her door.   Mc Cain won’t vote for any bill that hasn’t had a “mark up session” where amendments are offered, or has not been “scored” yet by the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO.   21 million people will immediately lose their health insurance if this bill passes.  Even in republican areas the voters are likely to blame Trump for this loss of their health care.  Apparently according to Chris Matthews, ten republican governors including Chris Christie and John Kasich have urged defeat of this health care repeal bill.  Meanwhile Ron Paul criticizes this bill calling it 'Obamacare light'.  President Trump is thin skinned about it and attacks Mc Cain.  It has been said that Trump may hate negative commentary of reporters.   But even more Trump disdains reporters with factual material against the president.  This Mark Zuckerburg stuff has really gotten under Trump’s skin talking more about “fake news”.   Once again Trump denies any Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign despite mounting evidence that the Russians were involved, as this latest Facebook episode reveals.  Zuckerburg intends to turn the mountains of documents over to congress.  Of course we’re all awaiting Muller’s report.  Muller is increasingly sweeping in gathering evidence and let’s hope it’s leading to something. 

Now Kim Jung Un is threatening to detonate a hydrogen bomb out in the middle of the Pacific.  This would cause untold ;radiation polliferation.  It’s just the latest step-up in the increasingly strident war of words between North Korea’s leader and President Trump.  I think it’s safe to say that Kim Jung Un is a mad man.  Maybe it will be necessary to obliterate North Korea after all.  People involved with the South Korea Olympics have security concerns.  Of course some wonder whether all of this bad news is the herald of some new era of a “Last Judgement”.  People are saying that today, Saturday September 23, 2017 is not the end but the beginning or opening of a new era or “Judgement period” by the Almighty.  It’s hard to think of a worse month of bad news than this month of September.  It would seem that somewhere, somehow, somebody is going to miscalculate and push the rhetoric a little too far and there will be some incident that happens that will lead us into war.  It would be interesting to read the newspaper headlines a year from now to see whatever happened with all these events.  

The Revelation 12 Sign is an apocalyptic belief heralding that the time of Jacob's Trouble—also known as the Tribulation Period—may begin on September 23, 2017, a date that coincides with the Autumnal equinox and the end of the Catholic September Ember Days. This theory, which has been promoted by a number of people and news organizations, proposes that a literal fulfillment of the prophecy made in the Book of Revelation 12:1-2^[1] will occur on this date over Jerusalem. Others maintain caution while nevertheless marveling at the coincidence.  This passage of scripture in the New Testament metaphorically describes "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth." (NIV). Many people worldwide believe that an astronomical alignment involving the constellations Virgo and Leo, the sun, moon, and planets Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter occurring in September 2017 will fulfill this prophecy word-for-word.    This passage is taken right from the Wikkipedia, and ot occurs today. 

But now, here is another point of view.  Old doomsday predictions never die. They just get recycled.  Just six years after radio preacher Harold Camping promised the apocalypse, and five years after the end of the Mayan calendar was supposed to extinguish life on Earth as we know it, new doomsday predictions have arrived. This time, they come via YouTube and a man named David Meade, who claims that the first spiritual sign of the apocalypse will arrive tomorrow (Sept. 23).  Meade's theories meld biblical prophecy with astronomy. He claims that on Sept. 23, there will be a rare alignment of the sun in the constellation Virgo — with the moon just to the east — with nine stars and three planets (Mercury, Venus and Mars) clustering around the constellation's head, like a crown. This is supposed to be the sign foretold in the beginning of Revelation 12, which reads, in the New International Version of the Bible: "A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth." [Doomsdays: Top 9 Real Ways the World Could End]

Never a Tranquil Moment

NEVER A DULL MOMENT

Pack It Up (Pretenders)

That’s All (Genesis)

I’m Not Angry (Elvis Costello)

My Old School (Steely Dan)

A Song for Jeffrey (Jethro Tull)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)

Queen of the Hours (Electric Light Orchestra)

Blue Turk (Alice Cooper)

Pandora’s Box (Procol Herum)   

When the Lights Go Down in the City (Journey)  

Pleasure (West, Bruce and Lang)

Everything Gives You Cancer (Joe Jackson)

Jamrag / Scumbag  (Frank Zappa and Elephants Memory)

Real One and Two  (The Who) 

The cover is news events of the day including this Nazi stuff and the car ramming in Charolettsville.  There is stuff from Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and from the earthquake in Mexico City.  The title "Never a dull moment" is the only one that seemed to fit even though it's a Rod Stewart album.  Title listings are on the back of this CD and on the left hand side opening it up- - are valves and the "blood supply" to red and blue states and the caption is "Now we know how they became blue states".  (No blood supply)  This album was released in the Federation on September 21st.   John Lennon argued against a gradual fade of "Scumbag" because it fits in better with the title".   Mal Evens didn't want Lennon's first choice for a Lennon song.  We added a final track because I think we ended the album on an awkward note.  We also did a little PH adjustment because the acidity of the ocean was running a little high.  People are talking about the end of the world being soon and the words "The Lord Jesus Christ" are trending.  That's interesting.  

This is Thursday September 21, 2017 and the start of Rosh Hashana, which began at sundown last night.  It’s also the traditional day of the expected Rapture among Christians though we in the Federation make it on the third day of the crescent moon, which is coming up in a couple of days.  In the news basically it’s “Never a tranquil moment”.  We have the 7.1 earthquake that struck in Mexico City a couple of days ago.  It caused a lot of violent shaking and destruction of buildings, and scared a lot of the locals out of their whitts as they fled in terror.  Mexico City is built over sediment from an old lake bed making the ground extremely unstable and prone to amplify shaking.  Of course they also had that other earthquake a couple of weeks back.  They are saying that the earthquake in 1985 was an 8.0 earthquake.  As I remember that one it was an 8.5 with a major aftershock of 7.8.  But the powers that be inform that I’m wrong.   But of course we have all these hurricanes still.  We still have hurricane Jose from weeks ago threatening the east coast and causing winds and high surf everywhere north of Virginia up through New England.  Of course the water gets drastically cooler once you pass a certain point in Virginia where there seems to be a “wall” of temperature variance if you look at a map.  We haven’t heard much from Hurricane Lee.  Hurricane Maria is between a four and a five magnitude hurricane with winds around 155 mph and literally engulfed the island of Puerto Rico with its full force.  It’s the first time Puerto Rico has had a direct hit like this in a hundred years.  They’ve been lucky up till now.  Untold destruction has been reaped upon the island and as an American territory the Trump administration will be responsible for providing emergency disaster relief.  We need to pray for those people.  I’m sure Christians are working overtime in topics they bring up for prayer meetings these days.   I wonder about all of these vacations handed out in Wheel of Fortune.  Most of these are Caribean islands to the south of the main ones such as Cuba.  Most of the islands they send you to are closer to the South American coast.  Of course the Trump Administration still won’t talk about global warming.  I heard the other day that the Trump administration ordered the destruction of a weather satellite that was paid for and ready to be launched.  And the reason they gave was that “We don’t want to lend credence or evidence to anyone who is supporting global warming”.  That’s pretty bad. 

The big news of the day is this Graham – Cassidy health care bill that is threatening to get passed in the next nine days.  That’s a scarey thought.  We thought we were home free in late June when the other health care bill went down in flames.  We democrats patted each other on the back then for dodging a bullet.  Now it’s back, in a new and more dangerous form.  Lindsey Graham is the “Gram” portion of the bill.  That’s Mc Cain’s partner in so many things but not on this one.  I hope John Mc Cain sticks to his guns and insists on “proper parliamentary procedure”, which we won’t get because there’s not enough time.  But John Mc Cain is under a lot of pressure to defy his principles and change his mind.  The Cassidy portion of the bill is this guy in Louisiana, where people in that state are so broke they want health care.   As to the bill itself I’ve heard that it keeps most of the Obama taxes.  This will help the deficit, which should be at a record low when the report comes out next month.  The fiscal year ends September 30^th and usually in October they give a report of the previous deficit and the projected deficit for the following year.  As to the bill itself it replaces Medicare and Medicaid with these “block grants” to red states to use for things never envisioned by the proponents of the Affordable Care act.  So it’s a boondoggle for ted state governors.  As to the blue states they will be squeezed dry for reasons I don’t yet understand.  From what I’ve heard the Republicans wanted to make it so that blue states such as California and New York and Washington would be unable to establish their own self-running Single Payer health care system.  The taxes they’d have to raise would just be too high.  But the thing is that all of the same US Senators are against this bill that were against the previous June bill, but for some reason republican analysts are more optimistic about passage with at least fifty votes this time.  If it passes the Senate, this bill will sail through the House with no opposition because House Speaker Paul Ryan has already signaled the bill will sail through with his blessing.  And no doubt it will be signed by President Trump a few days later. 

There is a new brewing crisis in the Asian nation of Mirimar or whatever, which used to be Burma.  There is a minority race there that is Moslem, and all they want is to practice their faith in peace but they are being persecuted in a major way and there is a mass fleeing to cross the border of Bangle Desh.  Who would guess people would be rushing to get IN to that nation?  Of course Free Speech TV says one of the earliest mass internment of races occurred in Cuba in the late 1800’s just before the Spanish American war.  There were orders that rebels be rounded up and those still out in public would be shot on sight.  They appointed a special guy for this operation they called “The butcher”.  The US public was riled up by this news. 

Paul sent me that E mail a while back saying that in 1917 only ten percent of the households had either telephones- - or even bathtubs.  That would mean my own grandparents didn’t have bathtubs when they were teenagers.  I only wish they were still alive so that they could set us straight on these statistics.  The article says not only marijuana but Heroin was still legal.  I guess I dispute this information.  I thought they took the cocaine out of Coca Cola in 1910 or something because people believe now that Cocaine was dangerous.  

All the News Fit to Print

Scott Wilkinson was still on the Leo Le Port show at twenty to twelve.  Leo was talking about digital projectors and I looked up that topic to remind myself how they work.  There is the new DLP technology with mirrors but most of the time it’s working off a mini LCD screen supported by a powerful light source.  Another informative topic was that people with callouses on their fingers can't use touch screens.  I guess guitar players get those.  But the skin is too dry and won't conduct moisture to "complete the circuit" as Leo says.  I always thought touch screens were heat generated rather than moisture.  Have they solved the problem of constantly getting finger prints on the screen?  Nora came by to mop the floor and complain.  She had me open the shades.  Last night there was some pink powder that fell on the side of the sink cabinet and also on the floor.   

They passed a bill in the California legislature on Friday to move the state primary back to March where it was for a while and for the same reason.  They want to make California more competitive in determining the nominees of the parties.  The only problem is that it didn’t work the other time they tried it.  Also the legislature voted to make California a sanctuary state where the ICE authorities can’t be contacted by local law enforcement to round up minorities who aren’t breaking the law in any major way.    There is still talk about making Daylight Savings time a year round affair.  We talked about this a couple of months ago. 

Washington’s blog reminds how bogus the CPI is as an indicator of inflation.  It went through all of the spending categories and all of the categories are cut by about half.  I have a feeling it’s more than half.  Health insurance has exploded in the past twenty years.  The bottom line for all of this, at least for me is that SSI and Social Security recipients are getting rooked out of the cost of living adjustment.  So our living standard is constantly going down. 

People are bored with my blog entries.  My ratings are about as low as it’s possible to go and the question is how they could possibly be so low on the vast internet.  You’d think that by accident people would tune in and read at least a small portion of my blog.  Of course I haven’t felt like writing anyhow.  I guess I figure that everybody has gotten to the news first because everything happens so fast today with twitter, facebook, and insti-gram.  The latest news is of course is what President Trump is going to do about the latest missile launch by North Korea.  This latest missile that overflew Japan’s air space had the distance to reach Guam, if it had been aimed in that direction.  Tomorrow President Trump speaks before the General Assembly of the UN.  I hope he gets good speech writers.  Trump is so “off the cuff” I think he must write all of his speeches himself.  We have hurricanes in the news with Jose, Lee, and Maria out there.  I guess right now Jose is generating surf along the east coast.  They said that Marie is in the right position to attack the east coast and perhaps even Florida again as the 

Trump and Democrats Make a Deal on the DACA Program

Wednesday night Donald Trump met at a White House dinner with Minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schummer to cut a deal on this DACA thing.  Deferred action on childhood arrivals, or whatever.  This is the program that keeps illegal children under sixteen brought over by their parents from being deported.  The three of them cut a deal eating Chinese food.  They agreed that DACA would be preserved by law by an act of congress.  In exchange the Trump administration would get all the funding it wants for border patrol assuming that none of that goes toward building the border wall.  They agreed that that would be a battle left for both sides to fight out another day.  Schummer and Pelosi made separate announcements stating what this deal was.  How the Republicans can’t accept it.  All of the right wing news publications are saying their cause was being betrayed by President Trump.  After all one big reason they voted for him was he would deport the DACA children, who are now mostly adults.  However House Speaker Paul Ryan referred to the deal as a “discussion” and not an agreement.  Paul Ryan and Mitch Mc Connell don’t want to bring up this proposed bill before the house and senate.  As such you have a continuation of “Republican Civil War” as Norman Goldman refers to it.  Now this is a wedge issue that splits the Republicans right down the middle.  I can only imagine what Shawn Hannity thinks of Trump now.  This is the first real disagreement Shawn has had with President Trump and it must be a real come-down.  There were other proposals made by callers on the Norman Goldman show.  It was suggested, for instance, that the democrats agree to build the border well knowing beaurocratic snaffos would insure that the wall was never built because it would be delayed forever.  In exchange the Republicans would support the concept of “Medicare for Everyone” or the Bernie Sanders bill.  Norman states that this would be setting the sights too high and the democrats at this time don’t have that kind of leverage.  

On June 8th 1967 the United States Navy intelligence ship the U.S.S. Liberty was attacked in international waters by aircraft and vessels belonging to Israel. Thirty-four sailors, Marines and civilians were killed in the attack. The deliberate Israeli air and sea onslaught sought to sink the clearly identified intelligence gathering ship and kill all its crew. It was in truth the worst attack ever carried out on a U.S. Naval vessel in peace time. In addition to the death toll, 171 more of the crew were wounded in the two-hour assault, which was clearly intended to destroy the intelligence gathering vessel operating in international waters collecting information on the ongoing fighting between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and with torpedo boats from the sea. When one Israeli pilot hesitated, refusing to attack what was clearly an American ship, he was instructed to proceed anyway.  Most Americans are completely unaware that a United States naval vessel was once deliberately targeted and nearly sunk by America’s “greatest friend and ally” Israel. The attack was followed by a comprehensive cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States even back nearly fifty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country.  The most disgusting part of the tale relates to how U.S. warplanes sent to the Liberty’s aid from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean were called back by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acting under orders from President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea than embarrass his good friend Israel. Ironically, the first ship to reach the foundering Liberty and offer assistance was from the Soviet Union, an offer that was declined.