Once upon a time, Gen Mike Flynn was respected among natonal security circles. President Obama even placed him as his Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Now Flynn is being investigated as essentially a traitor. What caused the fall?
Some might point to his being fired by Obama about a year into his post. He resigned, forced out, due to ineffectual leadership. He was accused of being difficult to deal with and subordinates mocked him for his "Flynn facts" — "alt-facts" before the term was coined.
Flynn's criticizing of Pres Obama begins shortly after. Projection, blaming others for one's own shortcomings, apparently infected him as it has with most Republicans. That made him of like mind with Donald Trump, a long-time Obama critic who focused on irrelevancies or outright lies. (I suspect Obama warning Trump not to hire Flynn was one way to assure he'd get a job with Trump.)
Before Trump discovered him, Flynn began a career lobbying for foreign governments. His previous roles in the military and DIA probably allowed him to collect exorbitant fees. Russia and Turkey were obviously willing to pay for his expertise — but how much more than for his contacts as a lobbyist?
Special Counsel Mueller is investigating Flynn for colluding with Turkey to abduct a US resident and extradite him back to Turkey. It would be bad enough if he were to aid in this while an advisor on Trump's campaign, but his loyalty to Turkey's desires were to continue after the election, after Flynn was part of the administration. It's not a stretch to wonder about whether he shared more than his contacts with his foreign clients. His knowledge of our military and defense capabilities would also be if high value.
Am I to believe that being fired as Director of DIA was enough to turn a career US military general into what could be called a treasonous agent? Just what the fuck happened to Gen Mike Flynn?
_________
Matt819 on Democratic Underground pointed out my use in the original post of the term "double agent" was incorrect since it implies that the US received a benefit from Flynn's actions. I have therefore, replaced the term with a more appropriate one: "traitor."
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Healthcare Battle Exposes Republican Bigotry
In the one-sided battle to pass a supposed healthcare bill, Republicans have proven their bigotry and lack of concern for 99% of the US population. GOP members if both houses of Congress have claimed “repeal & replace” is why they were elected. The problem is that the voters who elected them weren't choosing based on any actual facts.
Many who sing the R&R chorus say Obamacare must be replaced but when asked about the Affordable Care Act, say it’s fine—has problems, but they’re all for it. Partisan bigotry along with the racism surrounding much of the opposition to our last president.
Mitch McConnell’s whip, John Cornyn, was on Meet the Press and kept pushing the idea that Democrats refused to work with GOP to structure the bill, ignoring the fact that they not only weren't consulted, but were kept out of Senate's secretive discussions. He also claimed, as have others, that Democrats haven’t offered any suggestions. Blatant falsehood — all Democratic amendments in the House were summarily shot down and they were shut out of Senate confabs.
The simple fact is that Republicans are using their admitted animosity to anything Barak Obama did to further their agenda of abrogating federal responsibilities to “promote the general welfare." They have long sought to increase presidential power while seeking to supposedly return sovereignty to the states. The actual goal is to gut federal control of regulations that prevent corporations from bilking the people and befouling the environment all in the name of the almighty dollar —unfettered avaricious capitalism. Financial inequality, much increased since Reagan began the renewed attack on capitalist restraints, is apparently of no concern. And the inability of working & middle classes to afford things like health insurance and basic medical care seems to follow, for Republicans, the Scrooge mandate: let them die and decrease the surplus population.
The tax-cut-for-the-rich House bill and the let-em-die Senate bill wouldn't be necessary if the bigotry against something named after Obama wasn't a driving force. It would be more in line with actually representing constituents’ interests to explain to them that the ACA most agree has helped is actually the dreaded Obamacare and that fixing it is of far more importance than pushing their bigoted partisan attack on our last president by pushing a failed meme of repeal-&-replace.
Many who sing the R&R chorus say Obamacare must be replaced but when asked about the Affordable Care Act, say it’s fine—has problems, but they’re all for it. Partisan bigotry along with the racism surrounding much of the opposition to our last president.
Mitch McConnell’s whip, John Cornyn, was on Meet the Press and kept pushing the idea that Democrats refused to work with GOP to structure the bill, ignoring the fact that they not only weren't consulted, but were kept out of Senate's secretive discussions. He also claimed, as have others, that Democrats haven’t offered any suggestions. Blatant falsehood — all Democratic amendments in the House were summarily shot down and they were shut out of Senate confabs.
The simple fact is that Republicans are using their admitted animosity to anything Barak Obama did to further their agenda of abrogating federal responsibilities to “promote the general welfare." They have long sought to increase presidential power while seeking to supposedly return sovereignty to the states. The actual goal is to gut federal control of regulations that prevent corporations from bilking the people and befouling the environment all in the name of the almighty dollar —unfettered avaricious capitalism. Financial inequality, much increased since Reagan began the renewed attack on capitalist restraints, is apparently of no concern. And the inability of working & middle classes to afford things like health insurance and basic medical care seems to follow, for Republicans, the Scrooge mandate: let them die and decrease the surplus population.
The tax-cut-for-the-rich House bill and the let-em-die Senate bill wouldn't be necessary if the bigotry against something named after Obama wasn't a driving force. It would be more in line with actually representing constituents’ interests to explain to them that the ACA most agree has helped is actually the dreaded Obamacare and that fixing it is of far more importance than pushing their bigoted partisan attack on our last president by pushing a failed meme of repeal-&-replace.
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Why is logic such a foriegn concept to the RW?
This was originally posted July, 2017. It was updated June, 2020.
I could start with the idea that religion is inherently illogical, but the warped version of Christianity pushed by RWers is a slap in the face to honest followers of that faith. Unfortunately, since Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority helped push Reagan’s destructive agenda, conservatives have handcuffed themselves to these radicals. Far too many in elected positions at all levels actually display a theological intent. (Full disclosure, I'm a confirmed atheist.) In the RW perversion, any other faith or sect is not just wrong but worthy of their most vehement disdain.
Many of these RW religionists claim affinity to Judaism, but that's just because Israel plays a vital role in their end-of-days mythology. Islam, which prays to the same supreme entity, is reviled — but bigotry against Muslims is at the core of the discrimination these days, not differences in tenets. Hypocrisy is prevalent in this because while they push for anti-Shari laws, they try to pass legislation with exactly the same misogynistic prohibitions and fealty to faith.
The most bigoted of far right conservatives gladly work with the religionists as both seek control of social mores, especially concerning reproductive issues. The conservatives, particularly the tea party faction, wish to absolve government from honoring that pesky preamble to the US Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Note the highlighted words. The RW focuses on the carefully constructed negative connotation of “Welfare” — an image they’ve fostered as depicting lazy, corrupt people who leech from hard-working folk — hard-working white folk.
President Reagan’s “welfare queen” was never Caucasian. He never said so, but made it clear nonetheless. He knew how to work his base, the incorrectly named “Moral Majority.” (This is the “instincts in common” which Lindsey Graham should have referred when he wrongly praised Trump’s useless missile strike on Syria.) The religionists were happy to sign on to the Reagan administration’s plans to cut support for the welfare crowd because they were seen as immoral as well as moochers, evidenced by supposedly high crime rates and single mothers in the inner cities where most of them supposedly lived. It was irrelevant that not one aspect of the stereotype was based on fact.
Trump’s pandering to his base uses the same deliberate misconceptions. He even taps the religionists who conveniently overlook his obvious ignorance of Biblical scripture and obvious lack of morality (see “Access Hollywood” video and numerous law suits alleging sexual abuse) because he vows to continue misogynistic attacks on women's reproductive rights and continues the crime-ridden inner city meme. He also feeds the insecurity of those white religionists with his vows to “build the wall” and ban immigrants to protect us from Mexican rapist druggies and Muslim terrorists.
That white insecurity was voiced by Rep Steve King: "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." His term, “our civilization,” was dog whistle for those who fear the fact that whites are rapidly becoming a minority in this country. Radical so-called Christians are also concerned about this. Besides their self-righteous moralistic opposition to abortion, they also look unfavorably on birth control because they want their numbers to increase — more soldiers in God’s army. The failure to see the oxymoronic aspects is due to the perverse tunnel vision of their extreme views.
Religious moralistic fervor prevents them from recognizing that denying reproductive choice, especially to low-income minorities, is a self-fulfilling prophecy in losing majority status. Yet they cheered Trump's first volley in this counter-productive quest. Trump used an executive order to not only reinstate “global gag rule” but make it more restrictive by cutting funds to any clinic that even mentions abortion as an option. (Obviously, free expression is also not something Trump cares about.)
Republicans in Congress add to the perversion of logic by cutting funding for maternity care in their latest farce of a healthcare bill (Joy Ann Reid called it TRyanCare.) The failures in syllogism are obvious here also. Conservative politicians and their religious allies claim to champion “the pre-born.” More rational folk fail to see how reducing pre-natal care furthers the aim of protecting those “pre-born.” This willfully ignorant stance is also behind the decades-long attacks on Planned Parenthood.
On March 30, 2017, Vice-President Mike Pence broke a tie in the Senate for a bill allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood. Trump will undoubtedly sign it if it makes it to his desk. ( http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/mike-pence-johnny-isakson-planned-parenthood-vote-senate-236702 ) With Republican governors and legislatures holding a majority of states, this will result in the closing of even more of the already too scarce clinics, many of which provide vital pre-natal care to those same “somebody else's babies” as well as low-income women of all ethnicities.
It never ceases to astonish me that these phony moralists cannot see the links between readily accessible and affordable birth control and reductions in abortion rates. The only explanation can be their efforts towards theocracy. Many, including elected officials, readily admit this unconstitutional bent while claiming to be the true patriotic Americans who cling to founders’ “original intent.”
The last Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the tax cut for the wealthy ineffectually masquerading as a healthcare bill, continues all the unChristian and bigoted ideology described above. Donald Trump eagerly embraces this bill, though it's doubtful he’s aware of any of its details. (It's well known his narcissistic attention deficit proscribes him from reading anything longer than a couple paragraphs, especially if his name doesn't appear.)
Mitch McConnell and other conservatives, with healthcare insurance supplemented by tax dollars, claim that accessibility is the focus of our health insurance needs. This ignores the gulf between accessibility and affordability. The free market forces of capitalism they idolize will bring down costs, they say, even though such price wars have never been a factor in health insurance, not to mention health products and medicines. The working folk who bought into Donald Trump's bald-faced lies about his support for them are the ones who will pay with their lives if this tax cut for the wealthy, known as Trumpcare, passes. The hated “welfare queens” and other denizens of the feared inner city will also pay — along with the rural poor who are unmentioned perennial victims of RW war-on-the-poor efforts.
All this brings me back to the original idea — logic is a foreign concept to the RW. And the more radical they are, the less logic is a graspable concept. Republicans claim to be the working man’s party (gender bias intended) who aims to decimate government’s control when the only regulatory guidelines they target aid corporations in theft of wages and destruction of a healthy environment. They claim to be the righteous, moralistic party yet want to remove accessibility to basic healthcare, including necessary prenatal coverage for the female family members of their supposed base of working men. (It should also be pointed out that Planned Parenthood’s low income clients include men, belying their false depiction as nothing more than wholesale abortion mills.)
They claim to be the true patriots who honor the US Constitution and its founding tenets while denying the Establishment Clause and suborning a president who openly violates the article against emoluments. (Their support for a president they disparaged before Nov, 2016, despite the mounting evidence for Trump's collusion with a foreign adversary to interfere in our elections and his admitted obstruction into that offense is a whole new blog. Or three.)
While claiming to be faithful Christians, they fully support the radical factions who make a complete mockery of the tolerant socialism Jesus taught and focus on the hateful bigotry of the Old Testament evident in books such as the much-cited Leviticus.
Ari Veshi posed a question on his MSNBC show on July 12, 2017, pondering just what it will take for Republicans to finally denounce the disaster known as the Trump Administration. It apparently will take a great deal of blatant, obvious, and utterly irrefutable physical evidence of clearly illegal activities. My fear is that even meeting those requirements won’t be enough for a faction that is so deathly allergic to logic.
If You Really Care about Pregnancy Discrimination You Should Care about Reproductive Justice! https://nwlc.org/resources/if-you-really-care-about-pregnancy-discrimination-you-should-care-about-reproductive-justice/
Senate is moving quickly to dismantle Title X preventive health care protections. House already has. Trying to use the Congressional Review Act, a rarely used law, to undo the protections set in place by President Obama's rule: https://www.democraticunderground.com/11389836
I could start with the idea that religion is inherently illogical, but the warped version of Christianity pushed by RWers is a slap in the face to honest followers of that faith. Unfortunately, since Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority helped push Reagan’s destructive agenda, conservatives have handcuffed themselves to these radicals. Far too many in elected positions at all levels actually display a theological intent. (Full disclosure, I'm a confirmed atheist.) In the RW perversion, any other faith or sect is not just wrong but worthy of their most vehement disdain.
Many of these RW religionists claim affinity to Judaism, but that's just because Israel plays a vital role in their end-of-days mythology. Islam, which prays to the same supreme entity, is reviled — but bigotry against Muslims is at the core of the discrimination these days, not differences in tenets. Hypocrisy is prevalent in this because while they push for anti-Shari laws, they try to pass legislation with exactly the same misogynistic prohibitions and fealty to faith.
The most bigoted of far right conservatives gladly work with the religionists as both seek control of social mores, especially concerning reproductive issues. The conservatives, particularly the tea party faction, wish to absolve government from honoring that pesky preamble to the US Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Note the highlighted words. The RW focuses on the carefully constructed negative connotation of “Welfare” — an image they’ve fostered as depicting lazy, corrupt people who leech from hard-working folk — hard-working white folk.
President Reagan’s “welfare queen” was never Caucasian. He never said so, but made it clear nonetheless. He knew how to work his base, the incorrectly named “Moral Majority.” (This is the “instincts in common” which Lindsey Graham should have referred when he wrongly praised Trump’s useless missile strike on Syria.) The religionists were happy to sign on to the Reagan administration’s plans to cut support for the welfare crowd because they were seen as immoral as well as moochers, evidenced by supposedly high crime rates and single mothers in the inner cities where most of them supposedly lived. It was irrelevant that not one aspect of the stereotype was based on fact.
Trump’s pandering to his base uses the same deliberate misconceptions. He even taps the religionists who conveniently overlook his obvious ignorance of Biblical scripture and obvious lack of morality (see “Access Hollywood” video and numerous law suits alleging sexual abuse) because he vows to continue misogynistic attacks on women's reproductive rights and continues the crime-ridden inner city meme. He also feeds the insecurity of those white religionists with his vows to “build the wall” and ban immigrants to protect us from Mexican rapist druggies and Muslim terrorists.
That white insecurity was voiced by Rep Steve King: "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." His term, “our civilization,” was dog whistle for those who fear the fact that whites are rapidly becoming a minority in this country. Radical so-called Christians are also concerned about this. Besides their self-righteous moralistic opposition to abortion, they also look unfavorably on birth control because they want their numbers to increase — more soldiers in God’s army. The failure to see the oxymoronic aspects is due to the perverse tunnel vision of their extreme views.
Religious moralistic fervor prevents them from recognizing that denying reproductive choice, especially to low-income minorities, is a self-fulfilling prophecy in losing majority status. Yet they cheered Trump's first volley in this counter-productive quest. Trump used an executive order to not only reinstate “global gag rule” but make it more restrictive by cutting funds to any clinic that even mentions abortion as an option. (Obviously, free expression is also not something Trump cares about.)
Republicans in Congress add to the perversion of logic by cutting funding for maternity care in their latest farce of a healthcare bill (Joy Ann Reid called it TRyanCare.) The failures in syllogism are obvious here also. Conservative politicians and their religious allies claim to champion “the pre-born.” More rational folk fail to see how reducing pre-natal care furthers the aim of protecting those “pre-born.” This willfully ignorant stance is also behind the decades-long attacks on Planned Parenthood.
On March 30, 2017, Vice-President Mike Pence broke a tie in the Senate for a bill allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood. Trump will undoubtedly sign it if it makes it to his desk. ( http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/mike-pence-johnny-isakson-planned-parenthood-vote-senate-236702 ) With Republican governors and legislatures holding a majority of states, this will result in the closing of even more of the already too scarce clinics, many of which provide vital pre-natal care to those same “somebody else's babies” as well as low-income women of all ethnicities.
It never ceases to astonish me that these phony moralists cannot see the links between readily accessible and affordable birth control and reductions in abortion rates. The only explanation can be their efforts towards theocracy. Many, including elected officials, readily admit this unconstitutional bent while claiming to be the true patriotic Americans who cling to founders’ “original intent.”
The last Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the tax cut for the wealthy ineffectually masquerading as a healthcare bill, continues all the unChristian and bigoted ideology described above. Donald Trump eagerly embraces this bill, though it's doubtful he’s aware of any of its details. (It's well known his narcissistic attention deficit proscribes him from reading anything longer than a couple paragraphs, especially if his name doesn't appear.)
Mitch McConnell and other conservatives, with healthcare insurance supplemented by tax dollars, claim that accessibility is the focus of our health insurance needs. This ignores the gulf between accessibility and affordability. The free market forces of capitalism they idolize will bring down costs, they say, even though such price wars have never been a factor in health insurance, not to mention health products and medicines. The working folk who bought into Donald Trump's bald-faced lies about his support for them are the ones who will pay with their lives if this tax cut for the wealthy, known as Trumpcare, passes. The hated “welfare queens” and other denizens of the feared inner city will also pay — along with the rural poor who are unmentioned perennial victims of RW war-on-the-poor efforts.
All this brings me back to the original idea — logic is a foreign concept to the RW. And the more radical they are, the less logic is a graspable concept. Republicans claim to be the working man’s party (gender bias intended) who aims to decimate government’s control when the only regulatory guidelines they target aid corporations in theft of wages and destruction of a healthy environment. They claim to be the righteous, moralistic party yet want to remove accessibility to basic healthcare, including necessary prenatal coverage for the female family members of their supposed base of working men. (It should also be pointed out that Planned Parenthood’s low income clients include men, belying their false depiction as nothing more than wholesale abortion mills.)
They claim to be the true patriots who honor the US Constitution and its founding tenets while denying the Establishment Clause and suborning a president who openly violates the article against emoluments. (Their support for a president they disparaged before Nov, 2016, despite the mounting evidence for Trump's collusion with a foreign adversary to interfere in our elections and his admitted obstruction into that offense is a whole new blog. Or three.)
While claiming to be faithful Christians, they fully support the radical factions who make a complete mockery of the tolerant socialism Jesus taught and focus on the hateful bigotry of the Old Testament evident in books such as the much-cited Leviticus.
Ari Veshi posed a question on his MSNBC show on July 12, 2017, pondering just what it will take for Republicans to finally denounce the disaster known as the Trump Administration. It apparently will take a great deal of blatant, obvious, and utterly irrefutable physical evidence of clearly illegal activities. My fear is that even meeting those requirements won’t be enough for a faction that is so deathly allergic to logic.
If You Really Care about Pregnancy Discrimination You Should Care about Reproductive Justice! https://nwlc.org/resources/if-you-really-care-about-pregnancy-discrimination-you-should-care-about-reproductive-justice/
Senate is moving quickly to dismantle Title X preventive health care protections. House already has. Trying to use the Congressional Review Act, a rarely used law, to undo the protections set in place by President Obama's rule: https://www.democraticunderground.com/11389836
Friday, March 10, 2017
Religious discrimination is ingrained in the fabric of the US
This was originally posted March, 2017. It was updated June 3, 2020 in light of Donald Trump's latest pandering to right wing evangelicals.)
Raging white supremacist bigots and rabid un-Christian Christians aside, embedded in habit and law in this country is a pro-Christian, anti-all others bias.
Protestants outnumbered all others early on and their moral views were a guiding force in legal and social edicts. Perfect example are "blue laws." Closing businesses on Sundays was just to make sure folks were free to go to church — God's day of rest and all. While these laws began to be repealed in the 1970s, vestiges remain: no hunting on Sunday and no alcohol sold until after noon or 1pm in several places for instances. Other signs of the bias exist.
"Under God" was added to the Pledge in 1954 by President Eisenhower. In signing the Congress’ bill he readily admitted it was a decision based entirely on religious preference:
FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty. To anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be more inspiring than to contemplate this rededication of our youth, on each school morning, to our country's true meaning.
Especially is this meaningful as we regard today's world. Over the globe, mankind has been cruelly torn by violence and brutality and, by the millions, deadened in mind and soul by a materialistic philosophy of life. Man everywhere is appalled by the prospect of atomic war. In this somber setting, this law and its effects today have profound meaning. In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource, in peace or in war.
His statement follows Congress’ rationality “to acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon the moral directions of the Creator” and “to deny the atheistic and materialist concepts of communism.”
A similar case is “in God we trust.” The phrase first showed up on currency in 1864 thanks to
Rev M R Watkins. In his letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P Chase, he explained the reason for the change, saying it was important to “relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism.” It wasn’t until 1955 that Congress decided it should be mandatory on all currency. A year later, Congress replaced “E Pluribus Unum” (From Many, One) as our national motto with the religious phrase. The same anti-Communist rationale was put forward in all three 1950s laws.
Although I grew up on the fringes of the Bible Belt, I’m glad my teachers in the late 50s-early 60s taught the inclusive former motto instead of the exclusive newer one. (Admittedly, it may have been because it was a small town and news of the change wasn’t well publicized.)
The Freedom From Religion Foundation states the divisiveness:
Unbelievers represent 7%-9% of the population. By comparison, Jews are a respected minority at 2%-3%. Most people would consider "In Jesus We Trust" to be exclusionary and inappropriate. So, why is it okay to exclude atheists and agnostics?
In this century, challenges have been brought against such religious preferences with mixed results. While some courts have ruled that sectarian invocations at school board and other government gatherings are unconstitutional, the latest to reach the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in Greece v. Galloway (2014), reversed a lower court and gave religionists the power to let Christian prayers dominate such events. Challenges to religious proclamations at public school events, however, have been more successful.
Donald Trump pandered to the right wing religious and other bigots to help secure his role as President. His choice for the Supreme Court seat (the one that should belong to Merrick Garland) will undoubtedly continue to deny that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment applies to renewed instances of religious intrusion into government concerns. Pres Trump continues to curry favor with those who see non-white, non-Christian people as a threat to their supposed exceptionality. The ramifications are not positive.
In addition to the new administration’s targeted wide scale roundups of undocumented Latinos and blatant targeting of Muslim immigrants and refugees, attacks by Trump’s bigoted followers on Jewish establishments have seen a marked increase. Supposed Christian entitlement plays a large part in the onslaught and impugnment of “others.”
It has to stop. Christians, Jews and Muslims all pray to the same God yet battle each other over the minutiae of how to frame their supplication. It has to stop.
The pious of all three opprobriate non-believers, Wiccans, pagans and others who don’t hold to the belief in that one supreme being. It has to stop.
If this country is ever to live up to its ideals of equality, justice and the sanctity of human rights, to become “one nation, indivisible”, it has to stop.
It. Has. To. Stop.
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