The "Witch Hunt" Russia Investigation Nears Completion

CNN article: Acting AG Whitaker: Mueller investigation 'close to being completed'

A recap of the article. There are independent signs that the investigation may be nearing its end. Deputy AG Rosenstein will be leaving soon after AG nominee William Barr's confirmation; he has previously "signaled" that he would leave when the investigation was complete or close enough that it was protected. Some investigation prosecutors have moved to different jobs, and some of its cooperators have been moved toward sentencing. The special counsel's federal grand jury's work could continue; the grand jury was extended for another six months.

Trump associates, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos have been indicted or have pleaded guilty. Adviser Roger Stone (one of the last key campaign associates in Trump's orbit) has been arrested. Also indicted were Russian business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, 12 Russian military intelligence officers, along with 13 Russians and three companies that allegedly manipulated social media to sway US voters.

Quite the haul for a Witch Hunt. How much money spent and how many investigations, probes, and reports have there been concerning Hillary Clinton's emails and Benghazi? Too many. And how many indictments and arrests were made? Zero. Crooked who? Lock up who? 🤔

Jesus Is Not Santa

Do not ask for or expect miracles. Instead, ask for perseverance or for inspiration. Ask for the inner strength to learn and grow. Ask for the courage to do what is right and to become a force for good. Strive to become a better friend or lover or spouse or parent. Change the universe; do not ask the universe to change for you.

There is no invisible Santa Claus in the sky that grants wishes; spirituality is not materialistic. If praying for peace was enough, we would not have war. Thanking God for guiding a surgeon's hands dismisses his or hers lifetime of learning and effort.

Harming others is not being a God, it is being evil. Can you restore a life you have ended? Can you restore an eye that you have maimed? A predator is not superior; taking what is not yours is laziness. Destruction is easy; a child can set a fire.  Construction requires effort.

Take care of this world; Earth does not require our presence to survive. Take care of each other. If we don't care for each other, who will care for us?

A Sacrifice for Future Generations?

"Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, urged federal workers to view this furlough as a sacrifice for the benefit of future generations." A sacrifice?? Starve, lose your home, ruin your credit, stress out so much that it may be fatal (suicide). Might as well be chucking people into the flames of the statue's belly of the pagan god MAGAt. How about treating the oath of office as more than just sentences too long for this president to read, much less understand. Protect and defend against enemies? Who is the domestic enemy harming a million American citizens?

Huffington Post: The Shutdown Could Have Long-Term Mental Health Consequences For Workers

Class Warfare on the Poor

Are you worried about the proposed 70% tax on the rich? Consider what that really means.

First, know that it is not a Socialist proposing this. It is a Democrat Socialist. That is a vast difference. A Democrat Socialist believes in capitalism, but believes that some things must not be for-profit.

If you reach the 70% tax bracket, that does not mean that income under $10 million is taxed at 70%. Only income earned above $10 million (one year's income) is taxed at 70%. The rest is taxed at whatever bracket it falls in. The first $9,700 (for unmarried individuals) is still only taxed at 12%. Income from $9,701 to $39,475 is taxed at 22%. And so on. So if income is $10,000,001, only $1 is taxed at 70%. Don't worry, the super-rich have plenty of ways to reduce taxable income. If you are worried about some of your income being taxed at 70%, think about all the people who work for you and what their incomes are. It's like having 99 slices of pizza while 99 people have to split one piece. And those 99 people are the ones who are doing the work.

Every year the income disparity only grows. Minimum wage has remained the same since 2009. 2009's minimum wage of $7.25 (same as 2018) is only worth $6.19 today. With inflation, 1968's minimum wage of $1.60 should have risen to above $19.

Companies expect stocks to earn 15% each year to remain competitive in attracting industrial investors (such as pensions). With inflation so low, that means cutting costs to get that rate of return. Employee wages are one of those costs. Health care and other benefits are another source for cutting costs. Cheaper ingredients. Lack of safety equipment. Lack of pollution controls. Shipping jobs overseas. Imports not having to meet the same standards as U.S. products. Increasing employee portion of insurance costs. Exempting part-time workers from health coverage. With part-time (cheaper) work, companies save money. But people then have to have two or more jobs to get as much income as they did for one full-time job, and their multiple jobs have no benefits.

Corporations do not pay taxes on income; they only pay taxes on profits. Yet their taxes were cut 50%. And almost none of the tax savings trickled down to employees. Remember Ryan gushing about a worker's rise in income of 50¢ per week and how she could now afford a Costco membership?

Yes, there is class warfare. The rich have been waging it on poor people.

Believe In Fear And Ignore Everything Else

Just stoke the fears of "conservatives" and all of this doesn't matter to them. Pretend the southern border is being overrun. Pretend immigrants have a much higher crime rate. Pretend there are drug dealers and murderers and rapists streaming across the border. Pretend a wall along one border would be effective. Pretend that almost 4000 potential terrorists were stopped at the border rather than at airports.

Then don't pay border patrol agents and airport security and the coast guard and the secret service and 800,000 other federal employees with a government shutdown, all to get funding for an ineffective wall that two years of a Republican House and a Republican Senate could not produce. Scuttle a bipartisan continuing resolution on the very last day of a congressional session just before the holiday recess and just before Democrats are due to take over the House. Then blame Democrats for a shutdown that Trump said he would "own."

Believe the lie that the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatives. Believe the lie that self-funded Social Security is part of the budget and that cutting benefits would affect the federal budget and the National Debt. Believe the lie that people are inherently lazy and lead immoral lifestyles and don't deserve health care. Believe the lie that Climate Change is a hoax. Believe that the founding fathers wanted a Christian nation. Believe that corporations have equal rights rather than just economic rights. Believe the lie that businesses will self-regulate and that workers and consumers and people who breath will not be hurt by trashing the EPA. Disregard science at every turn. Embrace Russia and other authoritarian regimes. Direct your anger at other citizens because of their differences from you. Pretend that the Second Amendment says nothing about militias. Believe that human sexuality is binary rather than a biological spectrum, and believe that gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage. Believe that the GOP is the party of GOD and family values. Believe that only individual responsibility counts and social responsibility does not exist; I've got mine, too bad for you. Believe that women and minorities and the disabled are second class citizens not deserving of the same protections that white males have. Cheer on Nazi marchers and the KKK.

Keep believing all the lies. Believe nothing else but an ineffective wall is the solution and nothing else matters. Believe all of this as our democracy is being flushed down the toilet.

Trump Should Make Sacrifices

Trump should make sacrifices just as the federal employees and employees of federal contractors affected by his shutdown are doing. The shutdown of the federal government that he declared he would own. The shutdown that occurred when he decided, after Congress was beginning to go home for the holidays, to end 2018 with a veto of the bipartisan continuing resolution.

Because on the last day of Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, on the last day before Democrats take control of the House, one of the last days of two years of his presidency, that he wanted to hold people and government hostage for an ineffective wall on our southern border. The shutdown that he now blames the Democrats for.

Take away Trump's 24-hour Fox News with its radical conservative propaganda that guides his actions. Take away his golf clubs. Take away his ability to twitter. Take away his protection detail and his gourmet meals and his housekeeping staff and servers and butlers and health care and drivers and interpreters.

Freeze his assets. Suspend his pay, block his ability to cash in CDs or raid his retirement fund or get some cash from his off-shore accounts. Tell him to have Ivanka make up his bed and serve his take-out meals and clean up his garbage.

Tell him exactly what he is telling federal employees to do. Adjust. Ask parents for a loan. Send silly letters to people (and Russians) to accommodate newly found poverty. Get a part-time job with no health insurance (maybe work for the groundskeepers). Tell him to walk in the shoes of the people he is screwing. Let him feel the effects of the shutdown that he engineered. Let him find out what it is like for people who live one paycheck away from disaster.

Trump said he would own the shutdown. He should also live it.

Protect our Borders

To make a border wall truly effective, one would have to have two fences with a no-man's land between them, and enough guard towers with machine guns to cover the no-man's land. Nobody should be able to throw drugs or defective weapons across this moat. Then we must blockade both of our coasts, and build a wall along the northern border. That should keep everyone from entering or exiting from Mexico and Canada. We must stop the invasion of Canadians who are fleeing their socialist universal no-profit free healthcare. We must shoot down any unauthorized drones or planes or boats or submarines crossing those borders, and fully inspect planes and boats that are supposedly authorized. We must monitor the ground for any attempts to tunnel under the walls. We must have tamperproof national IDs that everyone must carry and that must be presented for inspection whenever an official asks to see it or whenever entering a government building. No-one should be exempt from stop-and-frisk laws. We must stop allowing uninspected diplomatic pouches through the borders. We must check more than the current 3% of incoming cargo containers. We need to weaponize space so that incoming missiles or planes can be hit from both the land and from the skies. We must detain suspected criminals and rapists and murderers and illegal immigrants and people who don't speak the national language and drug smugglers and homeless people and evil atheists in camps across America. We must coordinate with Russia to defend against threats from the EU and other socialist countries. Anyone with head coverings will be charged. Everyone must carry firearms to protect against domestic terrorists. Social media and mainstream media must be monitored and censored to stop the recruitment and planning and spreading of subversive ideas by enemies of the state. The president must declare martial law and must be unfettered in his authority to use whatever means are necessary to protect us from foreign immigrants, foreign laborers who are taking our agricultural jobs away from us, from nasty drugs smuggled inside people, and from other countries who are trying to make a profit from our weapons purchases.

We must have never-ending peace and safety and capitalism.

To Radical Conservatives Who Believe the Gov Shutdown is a Power Play by Dems.

A wall that does not do much. 4000 potential terrorists stopped at airports. Zero at our southern border. So let's not pay TSA workers while fighting for a wall. Brilliant. Both the Republican Senate and Republican House agreed on a bill to keep the government open. Trump vetoed it just as the congressional recess began. He said he would own the shutdown, then tried to blame others.

Impeachment and conviction of that incompetent ignorant idiot head of the Republican Party would only result in another Republican assuming the Presidency. And yet you think it is a power play? You think a wall would stop drugs and terrorists and rapists and murderers? Trump is pulling you by the nose hairs and you don't even know it. It's called fear-mongering. It is especially effective with conservatives. You have been played.

Why ERs Are Flooded With Mental Patients

State mental institutions were widely viewed as snake pits, and the increasing use of drug treatments was seen as a panacea. State institutions were supposed to be replaced in part by community facilities. Increasing numbers of people found to be mentally ill, along with problems in funding those institutions, were also drivers of change.

In 1967, California governor Ronald Reagan began instituting widely recommended policy changes, and some other states followed. The discharge of mental patients was accelerated in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a result of a series of court decisions that limited the commitment powers of state and local officials.

But community facilities were absent or poorly funded, and people were let out that should not have been. It was an overreaction followed by inaction, and now ER's are one of the few places for many to get the treatment they need.

CNN Article, ERs 'flooded' with mentally ill patients with no place else to turn

From a New York Times 1984 article, HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN