"After distancing himself from hostile chant, Trump calls rally supporters ‘incredible patriots’" by John Wagner The Washington Post, July 19, 2019
WASHINGTON - A day after he sought to distance himself from a hostile chant by his supporters, President Donald Trump lashed out at the media for its coverage of the episode and called the crowd at the North Carolina rally ‘‘incredible patriots.’’
I'm tired of the wrestling match shell game between to two when they are just feeding each other while advancing the Zionist agenda.
‘‘Those are incredible people. Those are incredible patriots,’’ Trump said during an event in the Oval Office at which he again attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., the Somali-born lawmaker whom he was criticizing at his rally earlier this week when the chants of ‘‘send her back’’ rang out.
‘‘She’s lucky to be where she is, let me tell you,’’ Trump said. ‘‘And the things that she has said are a disgrace to our country.’’
Lucky to be where she is, let me tell you, huh?
Looks like a threat, and this guy becomes more repugnant by the day.
Asked if he remained unhappy with the chant, Trump said, ‘‘No, you know what I’m unhappy with the fact that a congresswoman can hate our country. I’m unhappy with the fact that a congresswoman can say anti-Semitic things.’’
Yeah, he's more concerned with bending over backwards for his Zionist Jew controllers than anything else.
Trump has provided no evidence that Omar ever said she hates the United States, and earlier this week she said, ‘‘I probably love this country more than anyone that is naturally born.’’
In tweets earlier Friday, Trump characterized media coverage of his rally in Greenville, North Carolina, as ‘‘crazed’’ and complained that media was ‘‘totally calm & accepting’’ of what he said were ‘‘vile and disgusting statements’’ made by Omar and three other minority congresswomen that he has repeatedly criticized in recent days.
Trump also complained that the media covered the return of Omar to her home state on Thursday. She was greeted at the Minneapolis−St. Paul International Airport by a crowd chanting, ‘‘Welcome home, Ilhan!’’
Trump has taken repeated aim at Omar and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan since Sunday, when he said in tweets that they should ‘‘go back’’ to the ‘‘totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.’’
That's what started the conflagration, and the next you know they will burning books.
The other three lawmakers besides Omar were born in the United States. Omar was born in Somalia and became a U.S. citizen in 2000.
In his latest tweets Trump curiously referred to ‘‘three Radical Left Congresswomen.’’ For days he has targeted all four. At his rally, he criticized all four of them by name.
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a question regarding the change.
Trump also referred in his morning tweets to ‘‘Foul Mouthed Omar.’’ However, it was Tlaib who generated headlines earlier this year when she used profane language to call for Trump’s impeachment.
Trump, himself, frequently uses profanities. At his rally, he used the word ‘‘goddamn’’ twice, drawing some complaints from Christian commentators.
During an event Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that he did not agree with the chant of ‘‘send her back!’’ and ‘‘felt a little bit badly about it.’’ He also claimed he had moved to cut the chant off by starting to speak against it ‘‘very quickly,’’ even though he paused for 13 seconds until the chant died down.
Kayleigh McEnany, a spokeswoman for Trump’s reelection bid, told CBSN on Thursday that Trump ‘‘couldn’t really hear what was going on’’ when the crowd started to chant.
I'm getting the feeling that is how he is operating most of the time. He's not in control of this government. He's nothing but a showman, a figurehead, a carnival-barking con man in the charade.
Trump’s decision to try to distance himself from the chant came after a flurry of GOP lawmakers publicly condemned it, even while being careful not to denounce Trump directly.
Earlier this week, the Democratic-led House voted largely along party lines to condemn Trump’s weekend tweets in which he said the lawmakers should ‘‘go back’’ where they came from.
In his tweets Friday, Trump predicted he would win Minnesota next year, saying voters there ‘‘can’t stand’’ Omar and ‘‘her hatred of our Country.’’
In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton carried Minnesota by less than two percentage points.
Much of Trump’s criticism of Omar has focused on remarks she has made about Israel. Earlier this year, she tweeted that support for Israel among members of Congress was ‘‘all about the Benjamins,’’ a reference to hundred-dollar bills.
Omar later apologized for her remarks and said she did not realize ‘‘how my comments would be offensive to Jewish Americans.’’ She also clarified that, in general, her remarks were aimed at criticizing the Israeli government, not Jewish people.
They have really become inseparable now because a Jew's loyalty lies first with the religion, and not the country in which they live.
Trump also has falsely accused Omar of praising the terrorist group al-Qaeda.
Later Friday morning, Trump retweeted several of his tweets from earlier this week in which he was critical of Omar and the other minority lawmakers, including one in which he said it was ‘‘sad to see the Democrats sticking up for people who speak so badly of our Country and who, in addition, hate Israel with a true and unbridled passion.’’
In other tweets Friday, Trump vented about a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman that called the president a ‘‘racist, divisive, climate-change-denying, woman-abusing jerk.’’
“He called me a Racist,’’ Trump wrote, ‘‘which I am not.”’
He called Friedman ‘‘a weak and pathetic sort of guy.’’
Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, on Friday tweeted footage of Omar’s greeting at the airport as she returned to Minnesota the night before.
‘‘This land is your land, This land is my land, This land was made for you and me,’’ Ocasio-Cortez wrote, adding the hashtag, ‘‘#IStandWithIlhan.’’
Interestingly, this print copy I read didn't make the somewhat rewritten web version:
Trump said Friday that criticism of the United States is unacceptable and that the four congresswomen "can't get away with it."
"I can tell you this, you can't talk that way about our country, not when I'm the president, he told reporters outside the White House.
Every American has the right of free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution, a reporter pointed out -- and the president acknowledged that.
"We have First Amendment rights also -- we can . . . say what we want," Trump said. It was unclear who he was referring to as "we."
Reporters asked Trump if he believed the "send her back" chant was racist.
"No, you know what's racist to me? When somebody goes and says the horrible things about our country, the people of our country, that are anti-Semitic, who hate everybody, who speak with scorn and hate," Trump said. " . . . We're dealing with people who hate our country."
As the scorn and hate come spewing out of his mouth.
On Friday, Trump dismissed reports that first lady Melania Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, had advised him to condemn the racist chant.
"False information. It was fake news," he said.
So who leaked it?
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Related:
Donald Trump Reveals That He Is An Anti-Semite With Attack On Congresswomen
He is promoting Antisemitism by legitimizing the Zionist view-point that somehow the AIPAC Lobby, powerful Zionists and the Israeli government are representative of the Jewish people. If you equate Jewish people with these things, then by default you are transferring the crimes of these entities/people onto all Jews.
If someone points out that Zionists, who are Jewish, hold powerful positions and that some of these people are perhaps being biased on the side of Israel and/or are committing a criminal act, this is very clearly not anti-Semitic. If you assert that there’s something wrong with Jewish people being in these positions, then you are evidently a bigot, but if you are attaching an entire group of people [Jewish people] to a genocidal regime or powerful individuals, then you are simply throwing the entire group under the bus, or they will fall into the trap of believing what they are told and think that there is some sort of Jewish conspiracy, encompassing most Jews, which is being covered up by Zionists.
The reason many people fall into this trap, is because they most likely have no real connection to Jewish people and are left to make up their mind based upon what they see and hear. Many of these people then end up becoming quite anti-Semitic. This is because they see the Jewish people as being part of Israel and other groups of Zionists, a picture that fascist Israel and its supporters have been able to effectively paint. Because if we continue allowing Zionists to tie Jews together with Israel, powerful Lobbies and groups of criminal individuals, we are allowing not only these pro-Israel groups to silence us [Pro-Palestine voices] as somehow being “anti-Semitic”, but we are allowing them to throw ordinary Jewish people under the bus.
They have done it before. In fact, they cooperated with Hitler regarding the concentration camps so they could then spin the sympathy into acquiring Palestine. Then, in 1944, an attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed as the explosion only wounded the Nazi leader.
Beyond that is the Zionist-lite author's real objective, which is to not get the "good Jews" thrown under the bus.
Well, when are they going to start standing up to the monsters in their midst rather than keep supporting the project?
Also see:
Trump vs. the Squad — voters weigh in
They are free to criticize the government (politely, of course) . . . for now; however, I would suggest a bill of secession just in case.
"Feds silent about decision not to charge Trump in hush money case" by Jim Mustian Associated Press, July 19, 2019
NEW YORK — When special counsel Robert Mueller closed the books on the Russia investigation, he produced a report of more than 400 pages, and Attorney General William Barr held a news conference outlining the reasons the Justice Department didn’t charge President Trump, but in stark contrast to the Mueller inquiry, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have remained tight-lipped about their rationale for charging only Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, in a hush money scandal in which they publicly implicated the president and investigated others in his orbit.
There was no news conference or press release announcing the end of the investigation this week. The US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, has stayed silent on the matter. His office declined to answer questions.
The closure of the case became public only because news organizations petitioned a judge to release search warrants related to the FBI raid of Cohen’s office and hotel room last year.
The fact is, they are the only ones who care.
It was amid that litigation — and at the behest of a federal judge — that prosecutors revealed in a court filing this week that they had closed their investigation into the campaign finance violations Cohen committed when he arranged payments to silence two women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump.
That probe, begun in 2017, turned up evidence that Trump himself was aware of the payments, despite his initial public claims to know nothing about them.
Lying is a reflex for the guy. It's damage control first, truth be damned!
The US House Oversight Committee on Friday asked prosecutors to produce documents and evidence in the case, saying they wanted to get to the bottom of the decision to charge Cohen but no one else.
‘‘The committee is seeking to determine whether the internal Department of Justice policy against indicting a sitting president — the same policy that prevented Special Counsel Robert Mueller from bringing an indictment against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russian election interference investigation — played any role in your office’s decision not to indict President Trump for these hush money crimes,’’ the committee’s chairman, Maryland Democrat US Representative Elijah Cummings, wrote in the letter.
‘‘The office of the president should not be used as a shield for criminal conduct,’’ Cummings added.
Why have there been no war crimes charges after they leave?
They asked that the records be produced by Aug. 2.
The US attorney’s office declined to comment.
Federal prosecutors generally don’t offer public explanations for investigations that fail to lead to criminal charges, but they sometimes make exceptions in cases of public importance.
They mention Comey and the Hillary Clinton server scandal.
Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration, said, ‘‘They’ve set up this system in which the president is treated differently than anyone else in the country. Given that they publicly named the president as having directed a crime, it makes no sense for them to end this investigation without at least telling Congress what they found.’’
Trump has said the payments to McDougal and another woman, the porn actress Stormy Daniels, were a private matter and didn’t violate campaign finance rules. While castigating Cohen as a liar, Trump has also said he doesn’t believe his former lawyer should have pleaded guilty to the charges.
Federal prosecutors revealed in a court filing this week that they also had investigated whether anyone had given false statements during the inquiry or otherwise obstructed justice, but didn’t reveal who those people were.....
I can't help but think it's Kushner!
Who else could it be?
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Looks like they are closing ranks at the JU$TU$ Department.
Related:
3,100 inmates being released as Trump administration implements criminal justice reform
They are being being released from federal prisons nationwide because of a change in how their good-behavior time is calculated in the implementation of a new criminal justice reform law. The announcement came at a news conference to discuss the Trump administration’s progress on putting into place the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill President Trump signed into law in December. The First Step Act is one of the signature pieces of legislation passed during the Trump administration with bipartisan support.
It's the Kushner crime bill, the one inspired by his father's stay in jail, and yet he gets no credit.
Also see:
Trump administration may delay ban on abortion referrals at family planning centers
A federal health official overseeing the family planning program told more than 200 leaders of reproductive health organizations that she wanted to give them 60 days to comply with the rules.
Trump picks son of late Justice Scalia for labor secretary
If confirmed, Scalia will be returning to the department where he previously served as solicitor in President George W. Bush’s administration, overseeing litigation and legal advice on rulemakings and administrative law. He has also worked for the US Department of Justice. From 1992-93, Scalia served as a special assistant to Attorney General William Barr during his first stint as attorney general.
I'm so glad Trump is fighting the incestuous Deep State.
Chicago police board fires 4 officers in connection with Laquan McDonald’s death
The day before the anniversary of gunman James Holmes opening fire inside a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight showing of ‘‘The Dark Knight Rises,’’ killing 12 people and wounding 70 others.
Activists pledging to organize a boycott of Wayfair
They “need to take it beyond the 24-hour news cycle,” and deep freeze of the pre$$.
"Trump says debt limit talks in ‘good shape’ after Pelosi rebuff" by Jennifer Jacobs, Erik Wasson and Josh Wingrove Bloomberg News, July 19, 2019
President Trump said he thinks negotiations to lift US borrowing authority are in “good shape,” despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejecting a White House demand for $150 billion in spending cuts earlier on Friday.
Trump called the debt ceiling a “sacred element” and told reporters at the White House: “I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge. I would have to assume we’re in great shape.”
So not only does this guy have his head up Zionist ass, he's in full thrall to the bankers. What a betrayal of America.
Pelosi has sought to pair a deal on government spending levels with an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
The extended talks mean Congress and the White House will push up against Pelosi’s deadline for a deal before the House leaves town for its August recess. The Trump administration late Thursday gave Democrats a list of $574 billion in savings options from which to find $150 billion to offset Pelosi’s proposed spending increases over the next two years.
A Democratic official who asked not to be identified discussing the closed-door talks described the White House demand as a starting point and said Pelosi will continue negotiating.
As if he would abide by it?
An administration official said Friday morning that the White House remains optimistic about reaching a deal but that talks will likely continue at the staff level over the weekend and into next week.
Roughly half of the administration proposals are straight spending cuts while the rest would result from overhauling various government programs, two people familiar with the proposal said. One proposal is a drug pricing plan from Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget, which the White House says would save $115 billion, one of the people said. Much of the plan is opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.
There are no revenue or tax increases on the White House list.
The suggestions also include a proposal to extend budget caps for two extra years after they expire in 2021 in order to save another $516 billion. Under current law, $126 billion in automatic cuts would take effect by the end of the calendar year if the caps aren’t raised.
Now he is a fiscal hawk, huh?
Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday they were close to an agreement, continuing their conversations even as Mnuchin was in France for a meeting of the Group of Seven. Congressional leaders have been pushing the White House to agree to spending levels for next year, which would allow a budget caps bill to move with the debt limit fix.
Yeah, he is letting hosts have it and issuing them an ultimatum.
Pelosi on Thursday said she wanted to file a bill this week to set up House votes next week on the package.
“Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to, but we are on our way,” the California Democrat told reporters at the US Capitol. “We have a path.”
Yeah, keeping digging the hole deeper.
That's the path they are both on!
The Treasury Department has been using so-called extraordinary measures to meet debt obligations since March 2, when the US reached its $22 trillion limit on borrowing.
Yeah, that's TRILLION with a T, money the taxpayer will never be able to pay back, and God help us all if the dollar loses its reserve currency status. The American people won't know what hit 'em. This place will be like the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. That's why we have to sanction and fight wars.
Mnuchin has said that under one of the Treasury Department’s most conservative estimates, the US will be at risk of defaulting on payment obligations in early September -- before lawmakers are scheduled to return from their summer recess on Sept. 9.
Maybe they can run another 9/11 false flag around that time, thus boosting Trump's claims about those that hate America while advancing Israel's war agenda yet again.
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Perhaps the opposition should be worried:
"How is Beto O’Rourke hoping to revive his campaign? By getting back to his roots" by Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, July 19, 2019
PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — The crowds that once massed for him have dwindled, the rock-star energy has faded, and his standing in Democratic presidential primary polls has tumbled, but Beto O’Rourke is still out there, trying to recapture the magic by going back to his roots.
In a grassy park in this western New Hampshire town last week, he was upbeat if humble as he focused on what he knows — immigration.
The Globe runs him on a Saturday after he's been up there all week?
Yeah, nothing to see here. Beto must be permanent second tier.
He released new fund-raising totals this week, and they were grim: just $3.6 million in the second quarter. That was well behind his top Democratic rivals and less than half of what O’Rourke raised in the first quarter when he had the look of a potential front-runner.
After he called Netanyahu a racist, he was done.
He has enough cash — $5.2 million as of June 30 — to buy the time to try to figure out how to replicate the success of his near-upset victory in the 2018 Texas Senate race, but the clock is ticking. He’s in the low single digits in New Hampshire polls.
“We’re running a different kind of campaign, and because of that, we’re often underestimated,” said his campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon.
Like Trump?
O’Rourke has yet to transform the strategy he used against polarizing Republican Senator Ted Cruz into success against fellow Democrats in the presidential race.
“Presidents have risen and declined in the polls before gaining the nomination,” said Emily Farris, an associate professor of political science at Texas Christian University. “But his campaign is struggling to court a small part of the Democratic base — young, moderate voters who aren’t very excited.”
That's odd, because I was told youth are into it.
It’s all been a considerable comedown for the hacker, punk rock musician, and entrepreneur turned congressman who raised an astounding $80 million in his failed Senate bid.
Despite his stumbles since 2018, O’Rourke has retained his grass-roots vibe and constant schedule. In stump speeches, conversations with voters and interviews, he harkens to his hometown of El Paso and the lessons learned on a back-breaking road trip through all 254 counties in Texas on his quest to beat Cruz.
Across New Hampshire last weekend, he often drove himself and his staff in a van, stopping at homes and town halls where many undecided voters arrived skeptical or lukewarm and came away willing to give him another look.
He was there last weekend and the Globe hardly covered him.
Veterans advocate Stephanie Keegan said she was sure O’Rourke could climb back up in the race and then took out a photo of her son sipping a latte at a Dunkin’ Donuts. She said Army Sergeant Daniel Keegan died in 2016 of an infection from injecting drugs.
“He is the best listener I have met on Capitol Hill far and away,” she said, pointing to O’Rourke, who was still shaking hands with people well after the Manchester picnic was over.....
--more--"
Let's hope he doesn't end up like Vincent Foster.
"Anxious Democratic governors urge 2020 field not to veer too far left" by Jonathan Martin New York Times, July 19, 2019
WASHINGTON — After claiming governorships from Republicans in seven states last year, including in crucial presidential battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Michigan, Democratic governors should have good reason to celebrate, but there was as much anxiety as optimism when the governors gathered for their annual fund-raising retreat on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts last weekend and grappled with why a party that won with a pragmatic message in 2018 is now veering sharply to the left.
The party of the working man had their confab on Nantucket Island, huh?
Bad optics!
Some governors are alarmed that their party’s presidential candidates are embracing policies they see as unrealistic and politically risky, and they are especially concerned about proposals that would eliminate private health insurance.
Is that an ultimatum?
“I think it scares people,” said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico.
The comments represent a striking rebuke of the direction the Democratic primary race is headed, as progressive candidates have pulled the field to the left at a moment when President Donald Trump and Republicans are eager to paint them as extreme.
Just don't criticize anything they do; otherwise, they will have you declared mentally ill.
“We cannot become the party of the checklist,” said Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, alluding to litmus tests on cultural flash points. She urged the 2020 hopefuls to resist proving their liberal credentials on every issue and instead focus on “economic security for everyday Americans.”
That's the price you pay for identity politics.
The governors’ angst offers cautionary signs for the party. They are often the best-known elected officials in their states and usually are the de facto head of their state parties, which means they wield considerable political clout, and with many of the governors having been on the ballot last year, they also possess a grasp of what the general electorate wants from Democrats.
Most of the officials have yet to support any White House contender and have largely avoided intervening in their party’s primary, but in the aftermath of last month’s debates, when a number of candidates, for instance, favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings and offering federal benefits for unauthorized migrants, the governors are taking their pleas public.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who won last year with a mantra of “fix the damn roads,” recalled the show-of-hands moments in the first presidential debates, which she said illustrated the party’s shift left but were so terse as to offer no context or explanation about the candidates’ positions.
“Raising hands and not really talking about the fundamentals is counterproductive to the average voter who really wants solutions,” she said.
What if there are none?
What if this rank, fetid, and corrupt carcass of a country and empire is beyond that?
The governors’ discomfort illustrates a larger tension among Democrats. Many party elites view 2018 as the obvious model for 2020 success. Democrats won governorships and claimed 40 House seats last year by emphasizing poll-tested, broadly popular issues and averting their gaze from Trump’s provocations. Why hand an unpopular, deeply vulnerable incumbent the fodder he craves? they ask.
The party elites are why they lost the last time.
Invoking the midterm elections, Raimondo said the party carried “a message that resounded throughout the country, and we think that’s a blueprint for next year,” but to progressive activists and some leaders in the party’s liberal wing, vowing to protect the health care of individuals with preexisting conditions and other incremental proposals are vastly insufficient at a time of soaring economic inequality and racial divisiveness emanating from the White House.
No issue may better illustrate the Democratic schism than health care, which was central to their gains last year but which has cleaved the presidential primary field.
Progressive candidates like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have called for “Medicare for All,” in which private health insurance would be eliminated and taxes would have to be raised; others, such as Joe Biden, want to build on the Affordable Care Act, and Senator Kamala Harris has signed on to Medicare for All but voiced opposition to its tax increases.
I was for single-payer when Obamacare was being written and passed, then I was against it when I realized how corrupt this government actually was, but now I'm willing to give them a chance.
While some Democratic governors have at least rhetorically backed single-payer systems, most have used their political capital to put in place and protect the expansions in the ACA while also enacting measures aimed at controlling insurance costs, and they warn that openly pledging to end private health insurance will only hand ammunition to the Republicans.
Noting that many voters were already uneasy about losing their coverage, Whitmer said, “I don’t think feeding into that is a good idea.”
The three governors urged the presidential candidates to focus on immediate ways to improve health care access and lower costs.
Then why did they repeal the Cadillac Tax?
They were just as emphatic about immigration, warning 2020 candidates that their support for decriminalizing illegal migration would allow Republicans to cast Democrats as the party of open borders. At the last debate, many of the leading candidates — including Warren and Sanders — raised their hands when asked if they would make unauthorized border crossing a civil rather than a criminal offense.
They are anyway, and the reason the problem is never solved is that illegals provide the cheap labor that corporations demand.
“That just scares too many people who don’t know anything about immigration,” said Lujan Grisham, who worked on the issue as a local official and in Congress before being elected governor. She said Democrats should lash Trump for “closing the border,” because it only prompts asylum-seeking migrants “to sneak around” instead of coming to points of entry.
Did they just call the voters they need to cross over idiots?
The broader risk for the party, they say, is that too many of the candidates are courting only a segment of the liberal base rather than the entirety of the more moderate Democratic coalition.
Isn't that how you secure a nomination?
Raimondo and Lujan Grisham both urged the candidates not to become consumed by the affirmation or opprobrium of Twitter.
“A month or two before my primary I was getting crushed on social media,” Raimondo said, recalling the challenge she had from the left last year. “My friends were calling me, saying, ‘Gina you’re going down’ and then we won by 20 points.”
Looks like a rig job.
Anybody check the machines?
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I'd say the Democrats have about as much of a chance of winning the White House as America has getting to the moon:
"As NASA celebrates its biggest triumph, there are worries it won’t be able to do it again" by Christian Davenport Washington Post, July 19, 2019
When I read that headline, I laughed out loud!
What do you mean they may not be able to get back?
WASHINGTON — The White House has gone heavy on the lofty rhetoric, calling its plan to return humans to the lunar surface the ‘‘challenge of our time.’’ It’s set a Kennedyesque timeline to pull off the feat — five years — coupled with a dash of novelty: This time, a woman would leave boot prints in the moon’s dusty soil.
Oh, yeah, now enlist the woman in the cau$e.
The endeavor even has marquee branding to match that goal — Artemis, in Greek mythology the twin sister of Apollo, an unsubtle sign that NASA is attempting not only to reach the lunar surface but also recall its glory days, but now, as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the agency is scrambling to meet the White House’s accelerated schedule and is facing one of the biggest tests since it fulfilled President’s Kennedy’s pledge at the dawn of the Space Age to go to the moon.
For decades, one White House after another tried and failed to create an Apollo-like program and reinvigorate an agency that has not been able to return people to the moon since 1972 — and since the space shuttle was retired eight years ago, has not been able to fly astronauts anywhere.
Makes you wonder if they ever did it at all.
The Trump administration, however, has made space a priority. It reconstituted the National Space Council, which had been dormant for nearly 25 years. It’s pushing for a Space Force, a new branch of the military. Vice President Mike Pence has given several high-profile speeches on space, including one in March in which he urged NASA to accelerate its efforts to reach the moon by 2024, instead of 2028, its previous plan.
That only has to do with putting things into orbit, and it looks like NA$A's real mission is providing a further conduit for the MIC, one that citizens may not object to as much.
Given the high-level focus, many think that this is the best shot NASA has had in years to pull off a moon mission, but NASA faces a series of obstacles — both technical and political — that threaten to make Artemis another in a string of lofty goals that never came to fruition.
Gimme a break, will ya'?
The question NASA now faces is not just whether it can meet that ambitious timeline, but whether it can get humans there again, ever. Artemis, then, isn’t just a race to the moon but a test of whether NASA still has the sort of DNA for such ambitious human exploration missions.
This makes the anniversary laughable, and since when has man stopped trying to build a better mousetrap?
If moon landing logic is to be followed, then the rest of the world would never have developed nuclear weapons once the United States got the bomb.
‘‘The future of NASA is at stake,’’ Mark Sirangelo, who was helping lead the Artemis effort before resigning after less than two months, said in an interview. ‘‘If NASA doesn’t do the big, bold things, then what does it do?’’
I told you, provide a conduit for more MIC spending.
The hurdles NASA faces are many and complicated.
How can they be with the advances in technology after 50 years, and if so, just send 'em back in what we built before. I mean, it worked once before, right?
The rocket it plans to use to get astronauts to the moon has yet to fly, is years behind schedule, and it’s unclear when it will be ready. NASA doesn’t have a lunar lander to get astronauts to the surface, or spacesuits for them to wear once they get there, and the amended budget request for next year of $1.6 billion is a drop in the bucket for the mission’s estimated cost of $20 to $30 billion, which would require between $4 billion and $6 billion additionally a year.
This reaches the point where the excuses are so f***ing lame you have to be a fool, dupe, or agent to promote this nonsense.
That's coming from someone, btw, who believed this pile of BS for most of his adult life and never even questioned it. That all changed after the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq. After that it was one official story after the other proving out to be total bunk or an extreme distortion.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a Senate hearing this week that the failure of the White House and Congress to reach a budget deal would be ‘‘devastating’’ to the program since it would prevent the agency from investing in the new hardware needed to meet the 2024 goal.
Oh, this is more pre$$ure on them to so they will rai$e the debt ceiling to the moon!
There’s also been upheaval within the top levels of the agency’s exploration division. Last month, Sirangelo, a longtime space industry executive, resigned after less than two months. NASA had wanted to reorganize to create a ‘‘Moon to Mars Mission Directorate’’ that Sirangelo would have led, but Congress blocked it. Last week, Bridenstine abruptly ousted William Gerstenmaier, the head of the agency’s human exploration division, saying he and others had grown tired of leaders who overpromised but didn’t deliver, but it’s unclear when the position will be filled, the clock is ticking, and Congress is growing restless.
Why even bother filling the position, and leaders who promise and don't deliver?
Epidemic in AmeriKa.
Gerstenmaier had served at the agency for 42 years and had become an institution in his own right. Bridenstine said he is searching across the country for a top manager to take over.
That's never good.
The next thing you know, they think they are God!
‘‘Where is the leadership within the organization to deliver on this goal?’’ Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, the ranking member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, asked during a hearing.
She and other members also had questions about Artemis’s price tag. ‘‘It’s difficult for us to approve the mission if we don’t know what the ultimate cost will be to the taxpayers,’’ she said.
Bridenstine said the answer to that wouldn’t come until early next year, when NASA lays out the entire multi-year cost of the program in its budget request.
Representative Kendra Horn, Democrat of Oklahoma, the chair of the House space subcommittee, said in an interview her concern was that as NASA rushes to meet the White House goal it doesn’t compromise safety. ‘‘We don’t want schedule pressure to force NASA to take undue risks,’’ she said.
Like the Challenger and Colombia shuttles that were rushed into flight?
In the meantime, a political question hangs over the program: In the age of Trump, with a presidential election looming, can the nation rally around anything, let alone a risky escapade to a lifeless rock 250,000 miles away that is certain to cost billions, and maybe lives, and doesn’t poll well?
Yeah, the poll numbers are what keep the program grounded!
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Yesterday, the Globe came wrapped in 50 years ago, and as you can probably guess, I am of the opinion that the official story never happened. They used a sound stage to fool the world, and no one has called them on it.
I mean, we are supposed to believe that fifty years ago, American ingenuity landed man on the moon, and yet they can't even get the Red Line running on time (so much so that she isn't even riding it anymore).
I'm told the Apollo computer was a remarkable device as they dust off more space junk in an attempt to convince us that men walked on the moon.
Related:
India reschedules launch of its moon mission for Monday
If India did manage the soft landing, it would be only the fourth country to do so after the US, Russia and China.
If?
Of course, the fourth country would have been Israel, but their spacecraft crash landed.
Maybe India should deal with their problems down here on Earth first:
"A village chief and a group of higher-caste men opened fire on poor farmers in northern India and killed at least 10 of them in a land dispute, police officials said Thursday. The bloodshed unfolded on Wednesday around noon in a village in Sonbhadra District, about 500 miles southeast of New Delhi. Experts said it was one of the deadliest land disputes in India in recent years. Officials said that men from the Gujjar caste — a midrank caste, and the dominant one in that area — were bent on taking possession of about 100 acres of land that was being used to farm rice. When a group of Gond tribal members, who are often at the bottom of India’s complex social hierarchy, protested, the Gujjar men showed up with tractors and guns. Their leader was the village head, and after heated arguments the village head and his accomplices opened fire, police said. Experts said the case exemplified the pressures on land in India, where 1.3 billion people live in a space about the size of a third of the United States....."
No wonder they want to get to the moon.
Lebensraum! Breathing room!
Just watch what you spray on those crops:
"Judge to slash $2 billion award for couple with cancer in Roundup lawsuit" by Taylor Telford Washington Post, July 19, 2019
A California judge will slash a $2 billion judgment against Bayer AG, which had been awarded to a couple who both developed cancer after decades of using Roundup to kill weeds.
The damages award announced in May marked the largest to date in the litany of lawsuits tying the top-selling herbicide to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but in a tentative ruling late Thursday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith said the $2 billion exceeded legal precedent and that she was considering an award closer to $250 million. If the parties can’t agree on a new amount, the case would go to a retrial.
A reduction in damages will do little to alleviate the legal crisis for Bayer, which is known for such pharmacy aisle products as aspirin and Alka-Seltzer. When it acquired Monsanto for $63 billion in June to create the world’s largest seed and agrochemical company, it also inherited the company’s Roundup brand and a mountain of lawsuits; more than 13,000 have been filed in the United States.
I beg to differ.
It doe$ a lot to alleviate it!
Bayer categorically denies Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, cause cancer, and maintains that both are safe for human use. Since the Monsanto acquisition, Bayer’s value has fallen roughly 45 percent.
Alva and Alberta Pilliod, who are in their mid-70s, had been using Roundup for decades by the time Alva was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his bones in 2011. Four years later, Alberta was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma brain cancer. The couple estimated they used a gallon of the weed killer a week on four residential properties over the course of 30 years, without using protective clothing or face shields.
In his final argument, the couple’s attorney, R. Brent Wisner, urged the jury to levy $1 billion in punitive damages for misleading and endangering the public.
Newspapers do it all the time.
‘‘They can afford it, and they need to pay,’’ Wisner told the jury. ‘‘That’s the kind of number that sends a message to every single boardroom, every single stockholder, every single person in Monsanto that can make a decision about the future. That is a number that changes things.’’
That's why the judge lowered the amount, to pre$erve the $tatu$ quo.
On May 13, jurors awarded the couple $55 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages. Experts assumed the award would be reduced, given US Supreme Court rulings that cap the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages at 9-to-1.
It's a Corporate Court.
The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, concluded in April that it continues to find ‘‘no risks to public health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label’’ and that ‘‘glyphosate is not a carcinogen.’’
They also said that the other day, and that agency has become just about useless. They fell down when it came to Flint, and spent six years and more than the $29 million, to tell us fracking poses no threat to drinking water. It seems their mission these days is to run cover for corporate polluters, and that's all.
The verdict followed an $80 million judgment in March to a California man who said Roundup gave him non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and last August, in the first US Roundup trial, a California jury awarded $289 million to a former groundskeeper who blamed the herbicide for his terminal cancer. A judge later reduced that amount to $78 million, and the verdict is being appealed.
That really burns me up!
The federal agency acknowledged the ecological risks associated with glyphosate and proposed certain measures aimed at helping farmers better target its application, but it said its findings on the human health risks of the compound ‘‘are consistent with the conclusions of science reviews by many other countries and other federal agencies.’’
‘‘If we are going to feed 10 billion people by 2050, we are going to need all the tools at our disposal, which includes the use the glyphosate,’’ Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement about the EPA’s decision. ‘‘USDA applauds EPA’s proposed registration decision as it is science-based and consistent with the findings of other regulatory authorities that glyphosate does not pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans,’’ but the EPA’s decision clashes with guidance from other leading organizations and existing research. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said glyphosate is ‘‘probably carcinogenic to humans,’’ and earlier this year, researchers at the University of Washington who analyzed all published studies on the impact of glyphosate on humans concluded exposure to Roundup raised cancer risks by 41 percent.....
Maybe they should perform the tests again.
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What does it matter, anyway?
We are all going to die, right?
Have a Good Life, readers.
