Quote of the Day -- On The Orange One

Even Right Wing, Republican, very Conservative Fox commentator Charles Krauthammer gets it:

"I defended Trump with this Russia thing until today. Look, if you're contacted by the Russians, you go to the FBI. You don't take the meeting .. It's game over"

Linka:

Trump Jr. brushes off explosive emails, admits he ‘probably’ had more meetings with Russians

 E-mail revelations definitely not trouble only for Junior Trump

Quote of the Day -- On This President

And note the source. It's not from some Right Winger. Not by a long shot.

"It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence."

--George Will, columnist, author 

From his column:

Trump has a dangerous disability

Links:

George F. Will - The Washington Post

George Will - Wikipedia

Then, MU Hits the National News, Too, and For a Similar Reason as Olathe

Yesterday, it was Olathe. Now it's MU and again, it's from The New York Times.

Long After Protests, 

Students Shun the University of Missouri

Seems after all the racism and ugliness of the last year, now students are abandoning MU, great education or no.

We have a whole lotta' racism to get over in this country, folks.

A lot.

Olathe Makes National News---And In the Worst Ways

Yes, Olathe is in the news just now, today, over at The New York Times, no less.

He Became a Hate Crime Victim. 

She Became a Widow.

Not only is it tragic because the story is of a very senseless murder but also because, at its root, is just racism. And ugliness. And stupidity. And ignorance.

It's the local story, of course, of the idiot, ugly racist who, last February, took his semiautomatic pistol, confronted a local man about his immigration status. That wasn't enough, he then took it upon himself to wage what he apparently thought was "justice" on this complete stranger, murdering him.

I've said before and this proves it once again, too many times, guns are by and for and with utter cowards. This, again, ugly racist used his gun because he didn't have the guts to spew his stupidity empty-handed.

This proves also why bloggers shouldn't let racists post and spew their ugly, ignorant, racist venom on their blogs, "free speech" or no.  This ugliness feeds on itself among these knuckle-draggers.

We need to be better than this. All of us. All across the Kansas City metropolitan area, all across Missouri and the nation.

We have to end this vile racism.

Side note:  I wish our local Star would have done the story, instead.

But for that they need writers?

The Republicans' AHCA Wealthcare

What they, the Republicans, are presenting, offering, disguised as health care for us all.

Entertainment Overnight -- Two Friends

...on a perfect day



for forever

Missouri: Republicans, Cutting Your Pay

They're working, fighting to take health care away from at least 22 million Americans with their latest AHCA "wealthcare" bill and now this.

Missouri Republicans Lower 

St. Louis Minimum Wage

Not done there, this is what they did in May.

Missouri lawmakers just took 

raises away from minimum wage workers

In February, this is what they did, also lowering Missourians wages.

Right-to-work bill signed by 

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens

Three different efforts to lower Missourians wages.

And they all worked.

Someone please tell me why anyone, anyone in the middle and/or lower classes vote with these greedheads.

Links:

GOP vs Health, Voters, & Healthy Voters

Senate Health Care Bill Includes Deep Cuts to Medicaid

Republican Health Care Bill Delivers Big Tax Cut For The Rich

How the AHCA Leaves the Old, Sick, and Poor Behind

And here's that Republican, Right Wing, "Conservative" "small government"

Trump Administration's Request for Extensive Voter Data Raises Fears

KCPT "Ruckus": White People, Solving KC Problems

White.



Every last one.

Lily white you might say.

Again.

Some more.

Link:

Open thread for night owls: White supremacy is much more than a product of hate groups

Quote of the Day -- On America and Capitalism

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

To That America, We Wish Happy Birthday

 

To the country that values citizenry over consumerism, 

that values liberty over enslavement,

that values equal opportunities for all, 

that values the health of one equal to the health of another, 

that learned that separate is not equal,
that put a man on the moon, 

that separated church from state in order that church could be that much more available, 

that helped free the world from Nazi tyranny and 

proudly had women build the machines that did it, 

that invented the blues, 

that overcame pitting brother against brother in order to break the evil of slavery, 

that exported rock and roll, 

that put storytelling on the big screen, 

that gave us Fred Astaire, 

that gave Einstein a home, 

that has a statue in the harbor welcoming the downtrodden, 

that figured out burgers and shakes go so well together, 

that wrote the social contract that has yet to be beaten that begins "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal..." 

....to THAT America, we wish a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

--Lisa Wiffledust

Entertainment Overnight -- Trump vs Judges

Quote of the Day -- On This President

And ironically, look who said it.

"Trump's behavior is not just beneath the dignity of the Presidency, but that of any decent man. Every day, I'm presented with someone who acts inappropriately. Why would anyone think that behavior belongs in the White House?"

-- Jerry Springer, June 30, 2017

Let's never forget. We have Republicans and the Right Wing to thank for this boob of a President and his ugliness, clumsilness, mistakes and ignorance.

Entertainment Overnight -- George Washington Trump

Hilarious.

The Ugliest, Most Dangerous, Most Untrue Advertisement I've ever seen.

A friend posted this on his Facebook page today. It says it's from the NRA.


And what he said about it is dead on, too, no pun intended.

Beware folks, the NRA is advocating basically a civil war with this ad that is nothing short of stochastic terrorism. They are calling for gun owners to make a violent response to freedom of assembly, a First Amendment right. This is a message to incite domestic terrorism. The use of words like "assassinate" are a dogwhistle to the faithful gun cult.

Liberals hate that the rightwing is so misinformed. The Right Wing has marketed the message to hate Liberals. 

This may not end well. 

I have seen many Right Wingers saying lately that Liberals should be rounded up and shot. or worse. with folks inciting people to take action on that. 

We are all Americans and we should be working together to make America a better , more equitable place. Liberty, equality and fraternity.

This video inciting hatred of neighbor on neighbor is a most shocking and unpatriotic piece of propaganda. 

It is stochastic terrorism and should be branded a hate crime.

--Richard Trombly

If there is any silver lining, so to speak, on these clouds of ugliness, it's this.

Fewer and Fewer Americans Own Guns

American gun ownership drops to 

lowest in nearly 40 years

Fewer Americans Own Guns, 

But Those Who Do Own More Than Ever

Fewer Americans Own Guns, 

But Those Who Do Own More Than Ever

Here's hoping sanity and intelligence and calm, rational thought and true patriotism wins out, ultimately.

Happy Fourth, y'all.

On This Day, July 2, 1917---Missouri and National History

Just some of the state and national history our society seems to go out of the way to NOT teach us.

The 1917 East St. Louis race riots

This photo ran in the St. Louis Star on July 3, 1917 with the caption: “Where the charred bodies of eight negroes burned in their homes at Eighth Street and Broadway were found today.” The bodies of some Black victims were buried in a common grave, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Others were thrown into Cahokia Creek which ran between downtown and the riverfront railyards. (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Bowen Archives).

Blacks in East St. Louis were beginning to come in from the Southern United States and were taking jobs, yes, at lower wages, from Union members. The white Union members would have nothing of it.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a fantastic series of articles on this important time and group of events.

Archive editorial: 'The East St. Louis Murders'

Archive article: 'Several hundred Negroes brought across river'

Editor's Note: East St. Louis riot coverage

Archive article: 'Several hundred Negroes brought across river'

Bell that warned of approaching white mobs 

amid East St. Louis riots

Keep in mind, too, this East St. Louis event, this massacre, this slaughter, was far from the only one in our nation's history. Here are two more, anyway.

The Chicago Race Riot of 1919

Tulsa Race Riot (1921)

Keeping in mind, too, that the national disgrace that was the "Trail of Tears", where we displaced thousands of Native Americans, from East to Oklahoma, also went through Southern Missouri. In fact, it went right through what is now downtown Springfield. 

Trail of Tears - Native American History

I know that, as I went through grade school and high school, at no point during those years was it taught this history, that this abomination went through the Southern part of our state, Missouri.

So yes, let's know our national history.

All of it.

Maybe especially now, this time of year, around our Independence Day when we only remember how good and great we are.

Quote of the Day -- On Life, Living and Learning

Quote of the day from Herman Hesse, born this day, 1877.

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Entertainment Overnight

Mr. Cheetoh

Dangerously cheesey.

Link:

Jared Kushner's company got $285M bank loan before election

Presidential Campaign/Candidate, Now Officeholder Quote of the Day

That was then.

"We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

--Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump

This is now.

G.O.P. Health Bill Would Leave 

23 Million More Uninsured

I'd laugh but I think I'm going to be sick to my stomach.

Links:

Trump vows 'insurance for everybody' 

in Obamacare replacement plan

Republican Health Care Bill Delivers Big Tax Cut For The Rich

On That King James Version of the Bible

Food for thought on a Sunday morning.

Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.

Quote of the Day -- On Donald Trump and the Republican Party and How Scary and Unhinged They Are

From David Clow, from Facebook today:

"What Trump made unmistakable is that the GOP needs to live in fear of its base. Policy and numbers are unimportant, as Trump (keeps) showing them. He commands the mob. The mob runs the party. None of them cares about the budget or the details. None of the Trump voters care about intellectual consistency or actual policy measures; Trump can contradict himself in the same sentence and all they hear is tone, not substance. Trump is there to manifest malice and hostility, period. If the GOP isn't with him they're against him and he'll turn that on them....

The point is that there is no philosophical underpinning left in the GOP. Their stated "policies" are generalities about "smaller government" and "less regulation" and "freedom"--but situationally those and all the rest of the platitudes are defined any way that power wants them to be defined. So in places like Kentucky they've been smartly getting people to sacrifice their own real interests for the sake of slogans. 

Trump called their bluff. 

He dispensed entirely with the very idea of policy, and made it 100% about pure tone--all he needed (was) to be malicious, nasty, vindictive, and proudly stupid. While Bush and Romney were talking about policy, Trump was wagging his wood and laughing at them. The GOP had been hinting for decades at what Trump said openly--they hate for fun, they won't govern, and they're ready to cash out, so why not just make it clear? Now they must make the all-in final bet on these bluff and lies, shovel as much money offshore as they can carry, and then get the hell out of politics while their heads are still on."

________________

If you don't recognize all this, all the above, you are very likely a Trump supporter.

If all this doesn't frighten you, nothing can.

Republicans' "Wealthcare" Bill Is Just More Class Warfare

It needs to be said, pointed out and emphasized just what this new AHCA, "Trumpcare" is, at its heart. It is, at its core, not concerned with heath care virtually at all. If it were, more Americans would be assured of having health insurance, not less.

No, at it's core, this is yet one more, again, Republican Party, Right Wing money grab for the already-wealthy.

Republican Health Care Bill Delivers 

Big Tax Cut For The Rich

House Health Bill: Tax Cuts for Wealthy, 

Insurers, and Drug Companies, 

Paid for by Low- and Middle-Income Families

One Certainty of G.O.P. Health Plan: 

Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

The ACHA Bill Is a Tax Cut for Rich Americans

Senate Health-Care Bill: Tax Cuts for Rich, Skimpy Coverage for Everyone Else

Trumpcare: Republican Plan Is Big Tax Cut 

for Rich, Graph Shows

Rich get tax cuts under 

Obamacare repeal bill

Warren Buffett famously said it so right and this, some years ago.

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Missourians got, in effect, a pay cut when their new, Republican, pretty boy Governor, Eric Greitens and his fellow Republicans put in their "Right to Work" legislation recently. This just makes it that much tougher for the middle- and lower-classes to get, have and keep health insurance.

But they're proposing this for all 50 states.

Link:  Warren Buffett

Mounting Opposition to the Republicans' Obscene "Trumpcare"

I've been heartened this morning over what I've seen out in the world today of opposition already to this monstrous "wealthcare" bill the Republicans created. Here is just some of that opposition.

Groups opposing the American Health Care Act

According to this page of Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper, "Over 50 organizations oppose the proposed healthcare plan that will make Americans will pay more for less. The list includes nurses, doctors, hospitals, teachers, churches, and more."

And thank goodness.

Here are just some of those organization from this link.

AARP

American Medical Association

American Hospital Association & Federation of American Hospitals

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

This next one is wonderfully ironic.

American Health Care Association (AHCA)

Get that.  The AHCA is against this AHCA. I love that. 

Here's more:

America’s Essential Hospitals

America’s Hospitals and Health Systems

American Public Health Association

National Disability Rights Network

National Partnership Women and Families

National Physicians Alliance

Even state employees are united against this nightmare.

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees

And that's just a partial list of groups opposing.

The media coverage of the opposition to the bill is mounting, also.

The Latest: Medical groups find fault 

with Senate plan - ABC News

Fortunately, even some Republicans in Congress realize this bill is a virtual train wreck, even for themselves, let alone us out here, their constituents.

Four GOP senators say they can't vote 

for Republican health care bill

Keeping in mind it only takes four of them defecting to kill the bill, too.

Senate GOP's health plan debuts 

amid doubts

The fact that they created this healthcare stealing, tax giveaway to the already-wealthy is bad and scary enough. Fortunately, the light of day and information about it is swiftly creating opposition to it.

And rightly so.

Please contact your Congressional representative, especially any Republican. Tell them you're against this AHCA of theirs, that it takes away health care options from Americans--because it does--while it gives yet more tax cuts to the already-wealthy and corporations.

Contact Us | Congress.gov

Thank you, in advance.

Link:

Medicare for All: A Prescription for What Ails Us

Shifting Dollars From Poor to Rich 

Is a Key Part of the Senate Health Bill