"Good News of the Week" Story #1

President Trump said "yes" to that friendship thing.

Happy Friday, and make it a great weekend!

Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? K- E- double L -Y?*

Has anybody here seen Kelly?

More loyal than the other guy?

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*  or, Reince = OUT !

Friday Afternoon News (why let things linger over the weekend, afterall? and make those tv reporters late Friday work for it ;-)  Hustle builds muscle!

WASHINGTON — Reince Priebus, the establishment Republican-turned-loyalist to President Trump who served as his White House chief of staff for the last six months, was pushed out on Friday in the latest convulsion in a chaos-wracked West Wing to which he had repeatedly failed to bring some semblance of order.

Convinced that Mr. Priebus was not strong enough, Mr. Trump has been talking about bringing in “a general” as chief of staff and chose John F. Kelly, the retired Marine four-star general serving as secretary of homeland security. But some of his advisers oppose that idea, arguing that Mr. Trump needs someone more in tune with the nationalist political movement that helped propel him to the White House.

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Donald J. Trump‏

I would like to thank Reince Priebus for his service and dedication to his country. We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!

John McCain Surrenders the Party.

His self-preferred nickname was being bandied about this morning by all of the smug and self-satisfied talking heads who are glad to see the sinking ship that is the Affordable Care Act still taking on water, but chugging out into the great unknown.

You know the one -- the nickname that makes Sen. McCain seem like a rugged individualist Western hero:  it was the name of that bad movie some decades back starring Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson.

The true nickname that Sen. McCain earned last night, however, is one that the talking heads dared not speak this morning:  R.I.N.O.  = Republican in Name Only.  As his party members one by one put aside their individual differences and ill feelings toward the president, perhaps -- Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson -- Sen. McCain could not stand and deliver on behalf of his party.

Where the Democratic senators provided a solid front in passing Obamacare on Christmas Eve 2009, inspired by the memory of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who passed earlier that summer from the illness now afflicting Sen. McCain -- the Republican chose to defy his party. He could not simply be one of them, seeking after 7 years to come together and at least try to reverse the course of the sinking ship...

He had to be dramatic too -- like a Roman emperor giving the thumbs up, or thumbs down in deciding who would live, and who would die.  Sen. McCain overrode the wishes of his party, who wanted nothing more from the Skinny Repeal bill than to balance out the partisan move pulled by the Dems not so long ago in passing the Affordable Health Act.

Instead, like a child searching for unicorns in Washington DC, Sen. McCain called for the Congress to come together, to work together to find a solution that would satisfy senators from both parties... As if. 

We will remember John McCain, mostly, for being an elder Congressmen in the Do-Nothing legislatures -- gung-ho for war, but not very good at providing for the domestic needs of the country.  Sen. McCain -- like Senators Schumer, Pelosi, Reed, and even Boehner -- talked a good game, and enjoyed the good life in DC, but in the end, none of them were able to lead the country, and they all simply continued to benefit by the swamp's status quo, which sees rising levels of income inequality and rewards non-initiative.

John McCain will be remembered as the son of a Somebody, who parlayed his wartime service in a lost-cause war into a government career.  He served in an aging state, and never was very good at looking ahead and reading the future.

He chose Sarah Palin, a neophyte Alaskan governor, as the best choice for his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign against the junior senator from Illinois.  The Republican ticket lost the electoral college 173 to 365, taking 46 percent of the popular vote to the Democrats' 53 percent.

John McCain returned to Congress after his loss, where he had served during one of the worst financial crises in the nation, alongside fellow Dems like Barney Frank, and the aforementioned Sen. Kennedy.  John McCain contributed to the nation's costs too -- he never met a war he did not like.

If you watch the clips from last night, you will see Sen. McCain denied his final moment of RINO glory, when Sen. Chuck Schumer -- smart about optics, if nothing else -- waved off his own party members from the cheer in the chambers beginning to rise when they realized Sen. McCain would be a third "no" vote, and the sinking ship would keep on chugging along.

I do not think the Republicans -- who came together briefly last night in a solid show of unity -- would be wise to keep shoveling subsidy cash into the health insurance industry furnaces, so that the leaking ship will continue to struggle along.  In one state, there are counties with no individual insurance marketplace,  In many others, there is only once insurance company offering product that all Americans are mandated to purchase.

Those individuals who can, will jump off the sinking ship and do their best to survive and go on to use their money to build a solid financial future.  Those individuas who cannot will likely see their own health insurance premiums rise, as they sacrifice more and more of their take-home money to keep covered.

Eventually, the ACA sink will ship, as our current president/businessman is effectively predicting.

No one likes to see "every man for himself" situations of life and death, but with the government seemingly stuck on bailing out the medical industry fat-cats with guaranteed government dollars, it will come to that.  Sen. McCain knows he will not be around to see those days.  He stepped outside into the dark last night, stung perhaps by a week-long recess called after his lithe senatorial colleague Rand Paul effectively cock-blocked him, by refusing McCain a vote on the defense bill that was anticipated to come after the Skinny Bill repeal.  Some say, McCain returned to Washington, in sickness, just for that one...

John McCain wasn't a Maverick so much as a man who never learned to be a team player.  He chose Drama!, and wanted so badly to provide the winning score he  helped the other team move the ball over his own team's goal line.  The Republicans lost and the Democrats won last night.  John McCain thought he won too -- the media was awarding him trophies today, and surely they will all say good things when he is gone from Washington, for good...
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*  Some are saying President Trump is doomed, with the media absolutely gleeful at this latest loss, and chastising the president's inner circle for using words never before heard in DC's polite company.  But it is only Year One for this coach. He is still assembling his team...

 Year One is always a rebuilding year, while the leader evaluates the skills of the players he has inherited, learns who works well together, who earns his paycheck and who coasts (Paul Ryan -- we're looking at you...), and who puts the team before individual glory.

ADDED:  In other news, Charlie Gard -- the British baby boy whose parents were denied the right (months ago, when he might have had a fighting chance) to decide his medical care or even bring him home for comfort -- died today in goverment care.

Hope that our own sinking ship does not seek out any port in a storm...

There is a reason Americans do not choose socialized medicine here.

I Never Meant to Cause You Any Sorrow.

I Never Meant to Cause You Any Pain.

I only wanted one time to see you laughing...
(everybody now!)

I only want to see you laughing in the Purple Reign!

~Prince Rogers Nelson of Minneapolis, Minn.
   (not a transsexual...)



ADDED:  Don't even try to copy Prince...  or alter him in any way.

He was an original and we can learn lessons from his life.

Honey, I know, I know
I know times are changing
It's time we all reach out...

For something new, (that means you too).

You say you want a leader,
but you can't seem to make up your mind.
I think you better close it...

And let me guide you through the Purple Reign...

Shame on President Trump... really?

For the great sin of addressing the 14-year-old to 18-year-old young men at the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia as, well, young men -- future voters -- who might currently take an active interest in current events and politics that will affect their young lives very, very shortly?  Seriously?

The Boy Scouts are not children.
Why continue serving them pablum rhetoric, as past presidents appear to have done?

Can we not talk to the young people of the nation openly, controversially, honestly and intelligently, until they are adults at the government-defined age of adulthood -- what is it now 26?

I believe the Boy Scouts can listen to their new president talk on relevant topics, and either accept or reject his ideas or both.  They don't need to be coddled.  Good on President Trump for being himself, and understanding that the "What the hell...?" delivery plays perfectly to teenagers actively invested in the future of their country.

#That'sMyPresident...YoursToo.

Rooting for the Skinny Repeal** here...

Chelsea Manning. (

Stylist: Alex White.)

and laughing at the attempts of the NYT to help re-elect Donald Trump by making (convicted and commuted) Chelsea Manning the face of transgender troops today.

We in the military "won't go back", Ms. Manning insists...

No kidding, lady.  Sadly, it's not the confused MtF's who enlisted and who publicly stated their own military isolation and gender dysphoria struggles led to their actions,* who will pay the price.  (The lady's sentence was commuted.)

It's the Female to Male (FtM) soldiers, like this one in the Minnesota National Guard, who kept their heads down and were serving honorably, who will likely be affected.  I can't imagine many MtF's volunteering to serve.  They only seem to identify as females either during, or after, their military service.  Nothing wrong with that (for the military) necessarily, but the policy Trump is imposing now makes sense until we can better understand how gender dysphoria not yet treated affects the mind.
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* From "The Long and Lonely Road of Chelsea Manning":

On rare reprieves from the SCIF, Manning accompanied senior officers to meetings with the Iraqi military and the Iraqi federal police, sit-downs that further entrenched her disillusionment.

“There would be these tea sessions, where you’ve got the Iraqi federal police in their blue uniforms, you’ve got Iraqi Army in, like, the old chocolate-chip camouflage and the Americans in our smeared green digital camouflage,” Manning said — everyone speaking in different languages, frequently at cross-purposes. “I’d come in thinking things would be black and white. They weren’t.”

Manning told me she heard the name WikiLeaks for the first time in 2008, at a computer security training course at Fort Huachuca. By the end of 2009, she had started logging on to internet relay chat conversations devoted to the site. (I.R.C., a semisecure protocol, was then the preferred method of communication for hackers.)

Initially, she was an observer: She was intrigued by the work that Julian Assange and his team were doing, if not quite ready to endorse their argument for total transparency. She told me that she believed then, and believes now, that “there are plenty of things that should be kept secret.” “Let’s protect sensitive sources. Let’s protect troop movements. Let’s protect nuclear information. Let’s not hide missteps. Let’s not hide misguided policies. Let’s not hide history. Let’s not hide who we are and what we are doing.”

She was edging closer to acting but said nothing about the I.R.C. channel to her friends at F.O.B. Hammer, nor about her own personal tumult. She was now fighting to keep what amounted to two life-altering secrets. She couldn’t discuss her identity openly: The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was still in effect, and it would be years before transgender people were allowed to openly enlist.

For good reason, it turns out in retrospect.
Remember:  What a liberal Commander-in-Chief can giveth, a conservative Commander-in-Chief can taketh away...

ADDED:  A lot of the media is calling Trump a hypocrite today for promising, while campaigning, to "protect" GBLT citizens.  But people, please don't trust the media.  Listen to the FULL clips... most of the endings to his promises left out the rest of the statement.

Again and again, candidate Trump promised to "protect" GBLTQ people from the foreign ideologies that call for the deaths of gay people. Hillary Clinton, according to candidate Trump, would open the doors to those fleeing foreign wars, many of whom practice a religion that indeed believes that gay people are not equal citizens, but worthy of death in their old homelands.

Trump made a promise that such a mentality would not take hold in our shared America.  He NEVER promised to uphold Obama's personal directives on transgenders in the military, or that school children had the right to use the bathroom of the opposite gender.  All of the people who call Trump a hypocrite here are only twisting his words and promises, hearing only what they wanted to hear.

Our Commander-in-Chief has a bigger role to play than promising to integrate cisgender (sic) and transgender troops.  That was President Obama's big accomplishment -- in his last year -- while the undeclared wars appear to have received less of his attentions.

Already, President Trump has stopped arming the military rebels who threaten to overthrow Syria's leader.  It appears President Trump, and all the voters who helped elect him, learned lessons from the costs and results of our military follies in Iraq and Libya.

Enough about the transgender troops.  Like in 1948, these decisions are best not made in wartime.  Again, what one president "giveth", the next can taketh away... Smart soldiers, and their lawyers, always understood that.  Just like with the Paris climate accord, people apparently were deceived in putting their complete faith in President Obama's temporary powers.

Don't get fooled again?

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* UPDATED:    Why I support the Skinny bill:

The framers of the Constitution never envisioned granting Congress the power to force people to buy a privately delivered financial service. The Constitution never would have been ratified had they tried.

But even if you’re the type to roll your eyes at constitutional arguments, there are important economic reasons to oppose Obamacare’s mandate. Gross premiums for individually purchased coverage have doubled over the past four years under Obamacare. But the authors of Obamacare don’t need to care about whether they’ve made coverage costlier, because they’re forcing you to buy it anyway.

Without a mandate, insurers would have to do what businesses have to do in every other sector of the economy: design products that you voluntarily want to buy because they represent a good value for you. Under Obamacare, they don’t have to...

~Avrik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.

Read the whole thing.

Never Let Him See the Light of Day...

or draw a breath of the fresh air of freedom.

SAN ANTONIO — A truck driver faces the possibility of the death penalty or life in prison under a federal criminal complaint filed against him Monday in the deaths of 10 immigrants who were being smuggled in a tractor-trailer found in a Walmart parking lot.

The driver, James M. Bradley Jr., was charged under a federal law against knowingly transporting people who are in the country illegally — a law that provides for an unlimited prison term or capital punishment, if the crime results in a death.

You just can't learn better judgement at 60.
Your morals are set, and the real harm you have done to others cannot be undone.

Lock him up.

"Gas Prices Fall to 12-Year Low Under Trump..."

"Some girl that knows the meaning of, ah-
Hey hit the highway!"

~Cougar Mellencamp

Congratulations to Maya Moore...

Saturday's WNBA All-Star Game MVP!

#LynxRepresent

Congratulations also to Allie Quigley of the Chicago Sky, who won $10,000 for her impressive performance winning the 3-point contest at halftime.  The money will go to a memorial scholarship fund set up in her late father's name.

America, We're Better Than This...

Nine people are dead in Texas, and others suffering brain damage from the heat, after being packed and transported into our country in an uncooled truck to work as illegal laborers.

Nine people are dead because someone wanted cheap labor here, to save a buck.  This is a sin, a crime, a travesty.

Why aren't more Americans -- black, white, Christians, Jews, Muslims -- demanding that Washington begin to pass federal legislation aimed at gaining control of our borders, and most importantly, going into every dairy farm, field, factory and household where we suspect illegal laborers are employed, where they are systematically being exploited because they have none of the legal protections of American citizen workers?

How much more will the American labor force be asked to endure in terms of our own labor standards, when we see how our national leaders are turning a blind eye to our dead brothers and sisters being trafficked into this country to compete?

I hope that ever media person who is so focused on legitimizing Hillary Clinton's loss by blaming Russian interference in our elections (that President Obama apparently was powerless to stop) will think about the final hours and minutes those 9 dead people endured inside that truck.

Think like a human being:  these are real crimes, not imaginary ones.  And such acts are making us more and more callous to the loss of life, all to help someone here make a cheap buck and save $ by employing foreigners who are seen as less than human...

#Not In My Name.
#TortureTheTorturers.

ADDED:  And let's hear none of this liberal talk: "But who will pick the fields clean, and birth, feed, milk and shovel the shit for the cows?  Can you imagine how our produce and milk and meat prices will rise if we had to pay Americans to do this work?"

If we were honest, we would understand that labor-saving machinery is used in Europe and other advanced countries to replace the humans in the field.  American farmers are not willing to invest in such machinery that would pick the fields with less human labor needed.  We are unwilling to pay American men -- many uneducated and even mentally slow/disabled -- a cost of living so they could continue to hook the cows up to the machines, as they have for decades, before NAFTA opened our borders further to cheap farm labor.

If you can't afford to be in the farm business without illegally purchasing human flesh from abroad to keep your operation making money, then you shouldn't be.  Find another line of work, and learn to compete within the established labor rules.

I Love My Straight President.

Different Strokes:  Rhode Island's "visibly out" teacher of the year poses in the Oval Office with President and Melania Trump.
Trump responded, "Sure!" when the teacher asked if he could use the lacy, black fan as a prop for the formal shot.

Bad News Butera.

The Washington Post has a great local story about a recent graduation speaker --the four-term, high-school class president who tried to represent his peers, but was repeatedly told students don't make decisions, they make decorations...

Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time.

“I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.”
But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code.

“Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures.

And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway.

“It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage.
“However …”
Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat.
“At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.”

At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech.

“Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …”

The principal mouthed something to someone offstage.
” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …”

A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that.

“Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard.
“Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ”

Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system.

“It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.”

Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone.
“He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post.

But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!”

In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.”

The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned...

The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do your own laundry.”

And “watch what you put on social media.”

Read the whole thing...

Dog Days of Summer.

Traditionally, this is the funny feature story time in the slow news media.  When Washington takes off from the swamplands, the wealthy are enjoying relaxation away from their work worlds, and the news stories slow...

Something funny is happening in the country now though.

The Washington media is hyperventilating, chasing their tails over the Russia-gate stories that they are certain are the downfall of Team Trump.   The incriminating emails!  The meeting!  The inconsistencies that grow daily -- how many people were in the room?  Do translators count as people, or as extensions of the people they are translating for?  Who are the lobbyists, who was here on visas, and who let the Russians in?  (woof -- woof-woof!)

The Washington media would be surprised to learn that the rest of the country does not share their enthusiasm for running around in the heat, and coming up empty.  Not when there are real news stories, abounding out in the real world...

Illinois is going bankrupt.
Who will bail them out?

Obamacare limps along,
sick but not dead, the politicians
unwilling to perform a mercy killing
for the good of the host body...

Meanwhile in Minneapolis,
we might soon see a police officer convicted in this country for unlawfully shooting a civilian. (The blue brotherhood does not seem to be circling ranks around this fellow officer.)

Those are news stories.  Even in teh dog days of summer.
Who met who for 20 minutes in some nefarious spying action which still has not turned up any results of wrongdoing... that's a soap opera.

A soap opera that won't end with Hillary Clinton being asked to serve as president, as perhaps some Dreamers wistfully wish, but with a more conservative angry-old-man Washington replacing Team Trump, if it comes to that...

It's a dog's life, but there's plenty of feral still in many of us beasts.
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 #MAGA

"We Can Do It..."

Happy Independence Day weekend!