March of our Lives

April 2018

April 9: Trump's Black Monday

Every citizen who's proud to be American and has been horrified at the corruption, criminality, and even possible collusion [or even treason] since the Trump election campaign and subsequent Republican election "victory", is breathing a massive collective sigh of relief. It's almost euphoric. It's Donald Trump's Black Monday, as the FBI seizes records of the Grump's personal lawyer in three simultaneous pre-dawn raids on Cohen assets.

Trump, Manafort, Flynn and others have to be mentally incompetent. How else can you explain that they got involved in presidential politics knowing they had all those skeletons in their closets? Put yourself in Trump's shoes. You have spent your career laundering money, raping women, and dealing with criminals, and so far you've gotten away with it. So what's your next move? Place yourself in the biggest spotlight in the world and invite your criminal accomplices to join you. Subject yourself to the most intense media scrutiny in history. What could go wrong?   wizbing, forum poster mediamatters.org

DMD of Scottsdale Arizona comments on an article in the New York Times: "When the history of this period is written, Robert Mueller will go down as an American hero, whose integrity, fearlessness and commitment to the rule of law will serve as an example to us all."

The scandals and revelations are now coming thick and fast as the outraged Grump is shooting his foul mouth off more than ever, cornered as he is like a guilty right-wing rat [no offense to actual rodents].

Orwellian Fake News script

Forum poster Ongoing responding to an article in the Washington Post entitled 'The real problem with Sinclair's fake news script' wrote: "Western oligarchs like the Mercers and the Kochs are making common cause with Russian oligarchs to destroy democratic governance and turn the United States and other democratic countries into Latin American style oligarchies with a very small segment of very rich people, the majority of the population destitute and no middle class. Sinclair is a hard right propaganda organization.... the next step in a dictatorial propaganda ministry." A Guardian article by a lawyer argues that Sinclair's employees are entrapped.

Meanwhile, the Blue Wave washed away another Republican election hope on Tuesday [April 3] when Democrat leaning Rebecca Dallet convincingly won a Wisconsin Supreme Court race by over 11 points.

"The NFL continues doddering down the path to cultural irrelevancy. Ticket sales are down, television audiences are smaller, fear of concussions is causing more parents[to keep] their kids from playing football, and four states are considering banning tackle football for players under 12." -- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

March 2018

Trumpism: brainless, sinister, clownish

"There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth, and it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability." -- Mona Charen, booed by "fellow" conservatives.

Meanwhile, Wolf PAC has persuaded a handful of "blue" states to request an Article V convention with the hope that it will reform campaign finance law.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the Internet. He invented it, what does he think of it now?

The kids are alright & they're all that's left

There is great news amid the carnage of the Trumpian wrecking ball that has placed the United States' environment, social fabric, democracy, healthcare, education, and soon its economy, on life support.

That good news is that, for all the media control by the billionaires and the right wing military-industrial cartel, for all the capture of social media by hostile foreign actors, the youth of America has not only survived the 24/7 brainwashing but is providing the beacon of liberty and safety that could inspire the rest of us to get America out of the distorted, nepotistic, and corrupt nightmare it's degenerated into.

Impressively, its not a generation of college aged youth like it was in the late 60s and early 70's, these are middle and high school aged children who are bringing wisdom and a thoughtful and well articulated path to lead a nation out of despair and frustration both at the insanity and horror of the constant gun massacres, but also at the utter depravity and disfunction of the "bought and paid for" US socio-political wasteland.

It's inspiring and actually mind-blowing to see the energy and vision of a new generation rise up like never before. They feel they've got no choice. Their very lives are on the front line and the adults won't act to protect them.

The extent to which the American system is able to be salvaged at this juncture is of course in question. Taking the money out of politics isn't on the horizon, though we must continue to fight its corrosive effects. But the kids have shown that accepting our fate is an option that leads to wholesale slaughter.

Zervos serves up a Stormy summer for tawdry Trump

MSNBC makes a key point about which of the three women taking action against occupationist puppet Trump poses a bigger problem for the fake leader, and it's Summer Zervos because Stormy and McDougal's respective cases contain issues hingeing on arbitration agreements.

The March for Our Lives was so big because the fears are so personal   Washington Post

By contrast, the case of Zervos can't be shunted into the privacy of a murky arbitration conference room far from public scrutiny or legal discovery, described by the channel's legal pundit as "oblivion", so it's her action that could, through deposition and discovery, create pitfalls and potentially damning revelations, especially for someone like Trump who has a hard time keeping facts straight. If Zervos' counsel know what they're doing, Summer may prove so hot for Trump he'll be sweating it big time.

Previously in March from the Washington Post: "President Trump's tweet early Saturday celebrating the firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is what stands out: a marquee of bullying and unseemly behavior by a president. Mr. Trump acts like a nasty, small-minded despot, not the leader of a democracy more than two centuries old in which rule of law is a sturdy pillar. If there is doubt that the timing of Mr. McCabe's dismissal was driven by political vengeance, Mr. Trump does everything he can to prove the worst with his own sordid words."

Loonie GOP flop memo fails to distract from Trump shenanigans

The Quake's comments prior to the firing: The Andrew McCabe imminent firing is the latest impending gaffe by fake president Trump. Making an enemy of one of the few genuinely grounded, straight arrow, pro-American Republicans in the administration, and someone who has helped smooth over relations between Trump and the intelligence community, is not too wise when McCabe could soon be testifying in a criminal investigation of the Trump regime and company.

Moreover, as one of the MSNBC panel said earlier today, it's another of Trump's further attacks on, and erosions of, the very institutions that separate us from almost everyone else.

Yet no matter how many Republicans he screws over [this was a hate attack by Trump to deny McCabe his pension by firing him just days before the public servant could collect a pension], not a whimper from that cowardly party, knowing their future is barren without a demented, raving version of Mussolini as their executive in chief. They're living on borrowed time, but the damage they are causing to America is already, and will be, immense.

USA obesity crisis almost 10 times worse than Japan

Fat people in Japan are not very common. In most USA communities they're everywhere in plentiful quantity.

Why do Japanese citizens seemingly have little problem looking like normal humans whereas the US, and the UK for that matter, have turned into a freak show? "What I've learned" youtube channel has some observations.

USA's five fattest cities: 5-> MOBILE [Alabama]. That said, Jeff Sessions has a small head, but that could be a Zika issue. 4-> MEMPHIS [Tennessee]. Chuck Berry would be stunned. 3-> McALLEN [Texas]. Red state towns with "Mc" in their names are a sure fire red flag. 2-> SHREVEPORT [Louisiana]. A little less corn syrup in the Bayou bagels? Probably not the whole story. 1-> LITTLE ROCK. [Arkansas]. Jebus. The rocks are little because they've been compressed by the pressure.

Saccone sucks it up

Unpopular Trump stooge Rick Saccone got upstaged by fresh faced Democratic winner Conor Lamb who stunned the nation by winning an extremely GOP district in ex-urb Pittsburgh that's been so cynically gerrymandered by the Republiscum that right-wingers previously laughed at the heavy Dem defeats. It was so one-sided that sometimes Dems didn't even bother to contest it.

Saccone's hypocritical disgraced predecessor, who claimed to be anti-abortion but pressured the woman with whom he was having an affair with to get one, was duly toppled, giving rise to the local election. Meanwhile, the jackbooted and goose-stepping Republicans were trampling union and workers' rights. That's over. Labor is back and labor is blue.

Mueller subpoenas Trump Org records   New York Times, 3/15/2018

Effectively, the Blue Wave just blew away the traitors. The total votes may have been squeaky tight, but we witnessed a massive swing of support away from the filth towards the party that fights against the corrupt nepotist White House and is lauded for doing so.

Smug fake president Trump himself and some of his nepotism-drunk family flew out there to stump for seemingly senile Saccone and that only added to the already mounting woes of his lazy, bigoted campaign. Obscene gobs of outside corporate money poured in for the deranged aging Trump groupie but Blue Wave anger and activism could not be denied. Alleluja!

Mad oh numbers for Rachel

MSNBC evening host Rachael Maddow is now one of the hottest properties on TV. Not just cable, but the whole works.

Whilst right-wing trolls trumpet Fox News as the #1 "news" channel [albeit usually a narrow margin, usually over MSNBC], the botniks as usual don't tell the real meat of the story, that Fox's "set in their ways" geriatric demographic is of far less interest to advertisers than the younger and early midlife adults which Maddow's program delivers in droves.

And now she's not only been scoring regular leading viewership numbers among cable shows, but she's recently been threatening to break into the Top 10 of all television offerings [hitting #12 at the time of writing], beyond just scooping up cable's most prized demographic.

And now back to Scousers [Liverpudlians] behaving badly. Former Liverpool star and current TV futbol pundit Jamie Carragher gobs on a troll [or actually the troll's daughter in the passenger seat]. UK males behaving badly. Wag response: "Jamie did not spit, that's how a scouser talks." Ouch!.

Guns, Hicks, Kushner, Carson, & Nunberg

The classic Sam Nunberg meltdown on MSNBC.

The tide is noticeably turning against the occupationist Trumpists and it seems even his handler has given up on dirty Don who's always behaved as if highly compromised by his idol.

The Russians nonetheless scored a huge hit on these United States by getting their poodle elected, and even the most cursory surf through the political internet reveals the hostile botnicks and troll farms are still active, though not promoting the Grabber much any more. Their horses are now the likes of the NRA, fundamentalist Xtians, the Syrian poison-gas spraying regime, batty populists and mass murduring dictators, right-wing football thugs [including trained militia] with their darting eyes now lasere-beamed onto World Cup mayhem, Brexit pornmoters, anti-EU bot swarming, disruption of eastern European democracies, support of anti minority and gay organizations, pro misogyny agitation, and a host of other schills and shells.

Let's give props to the most talented writers and comedians who are providing nightly insight into the shambolic state of Republicanism and the ongoing train wreck that is the hollowed out Trumpist regime.

The Right can't fight the future. Actually they can, Daily Beast, and they are, they just won't ultimately win by means of reactionary populism, and that's the only effective [though increasingly lame] horse they have.

February 2018

Indictments!

Washington Post: "Thirteen people are accused of working for a Russian propaganda organization and posing as Americans to support candidate Donald Trump and attack his political opponent, Hillary Clinton."

Does this mean that the light of freedom shines ever more pentratingly into the murky self-dealing back halls of the occupationist House on Trump? That remains to be seen. But the bad 'ombres are feeling the heat. For instance, as the Post goes on to say: "Robert Mueller's indictment of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 election deals a fatal blow to Trump's insistence that foreign interference was a fiction created by Democrats."

Ray of hope: investigation authorized into White House security clearance debacle

Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC described it as a situation where, once again, "the inmates are clearly and openly running the asylum" as pressure mounts on the clown show that has been John Kelly's attempts to discipline said asyl..., er, White House.

How much of America's confidential intelligence has already been compromised by White House operatives without security clearance may never be fully known to the public.

But the news that finally the Republiscum have caved and authorized a congressional inquiry into the dysfunctional White House security compromise shenanigans suggests that the tide against Tronald Dump's occupationist regime may be turning in a visible way.

This may possibly be a milestone, a light at the end of the tunnel appearing in the distance, welcomed by those that yearn for American autonomy to be restored, along with belief in the democratic process, our security, and competent governance.

Meanwhile any meaningful gun control reform died a long time ago in the Unites States, in fact it never lived in any truly meaningful way, and we see that no amount of senseless slaughter, averaging one human being [mostly children of course] butchered by school shootings every 2.5 days. And we, collectively, won't lift a finger to change things. You can vote for the people who are most likely to effect change, and it never adds up to anything. The massacres continue, and we set about building a border wall. The danger comes from within.

Trump assault on America continues

"By releasing the Nunes memo, Trump betrayed the intelligence community to save his own skin." -- Phillip Carter, Slate.

The Daily DC examines the crumbling of America's institutions on the day of the release of the ill advised "Nunes memo".

January 2018

Another New Year is here

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg tries to show that he really is human. He eats a sandwich and virtually inspects the devastation in Puerto Rico.

The man who's always correct -- Professor Allan Lichtman, and the case for impeachment.

Bill Maher had a succinct answer while interviewing Fire & Fury writer Michael Wolff: "When will white men born to great wealth finally catch a break?"

The horrifically ill-advised, self-serving "tax cut" was passed to appease the ultra wealthy benefactors of the "captured" Republiscum party, at the expense of everybody else, along with its cynical hobbling of the ACA health care system.

Sufficient voters who blew off the 2016 election, assuming from polls that fake occupationist Donald Grump would not get elected, will hopefully be motivated in the mid-terms to get our nation back on track, health-wise, psychologically, economically, socially, internationally, and in sheer sense of basic decency, because the wheels have well and truly come off under the current Republiscum regime.

We witnessed a wholesale and unforgivable looting of America by the Russian aligned and "on the take" politician power-brokers from which the working and middle classes may never fully recover. But a lot can be won back and steps to further progress can be achieved. Thing is, it's never going to happen of its own accord.

quake's world

Futbol
the spur
football daily
guardian football
WSC
one touch football
200%
bbc five live radio, plus quality podcasts

Beats
jukebox

Likeable links
daily DC
washington post
democracy forward
raw story
slate
media matters
pro publica
daily kos
politico
axios
the daily beast link fixed Sept 2017
public citizen
vox
xe.com currency currency exchange converter
the last quiet places
mac option key symbols
annualcreditreport.com
free internet access for the city of santa clara
allcarselectric.com
plugincars.com
friendly atheist eye-opening daily accounts of the threat to the separation of church and state that America faces

Usually reliable online TV streams
euronews in english, new link Nov 2017
al jazeera in english, new link Nov 2017
france 24 in english, and french
PBS newshour episodes, live 3-4pm M-F pacific USA time
CBS news "cbsn" cbs hi rotation rolling feed, USA live
DW german intntl news in english
sky news uk, live on you-tube
crtvg, galicia, espana, us feed
tvr britanny, france
elonce tv argentina
rte dublin, ireland
rtl muenchen deutschland
center.tv dusseldorf, deutschland, updated 2016
telemolise southern italia
bbc britain
sfgovtv san francisco, usa

San Francisco & Monterey online radio
kqed san francisco radio
kalw san francisco radio
kazu nat. public radio for the monterey bay

Other radio
bbc world service

Radio programs and podcasts
PRI
On point
philosophy talk [live on kalw]
on the media

dhamma