Thursday, December 15, 2016

How is the USA going to maintain it's dignity when Trump goes to Norway, IF he goes to Norway?

21 July 2016
By Pierre-Henry Deshayes

Five years after its worst attack since World War 2, (click here) Norway sees its liberal and open values as intact despite the horrific massacre of 77 people by rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik.
As more and more countries ponder how to respond to such atrocities, Norway -- which on Friday marks the fifth anniversary of Breivik's hate-filled massacre on Utøya island -- has sought the path of "openness" and "love"....      

The USA will not only lose it's dignity under Trump, it will forever be known as a country without a moral compass.

THE REASON Donald Trump is 'acting out' and carrying on with his children at meetings while he is President - Elect, is that he expects Congress to be as corrupt as he is. ie: "The Emoluments Clause" would require impeachment. Donald Trump fully expects Congress to look the other way and impeachment will never get off the ground. He is expecting the American electorate to provide the impetus to Congress to look the other way.

It isn't that Donald Trump is moral and a quality businessman, it is the unleashed pure power of corruption that he is counting on.

The real question is not will Trump break the law, the real question is, does it matter he breaks the law?

We now know why he has focused on China as an enemy. He owes China money and plenty of it. I am sure if China feels the wrath of President Donald Trump it will shrink at the mere thought of him and the arrangements will be made to service his loan differently. The power of his Secretary of State is heralded and the new friendship between China and the USA will be inspired.

How does Donald Trump create international thirst for his administration? Why not fill the cabinet with those that will carry out corrupt practices, which the petroleum industry is famous for, to gain leverage over other sovereign countries, ie: Russia and Exxon.

Let me say that again, Donald Trump has exhibited power over Russia for the corruption Putin added to the elections of 2016. There is no doubt about it. Trump called out for corrupt practices by Putin and he delivered. Trump has power over Russia. Trump's cabinet is lusted after by Putin. The "Panama Papers" is nothing compared to the underlying corruption between Russia and Trump.

14 April 2016
By Roland Oliphant

Millions of dollars funnelled (click here) through offshore companies owned by one of Vladimir Putin’s closest friends were used to buy rare musical instruments, including a cello once owned by Frederick the Great, the Russian president has said.

In his most detailed comments on the Panama Papers scandal to date, Mr Putin said recent revelations about the business interests Sergei Roldugin, who is the godfather to his eldest daughter, are “accurate” but do not reveal any wrong doing....

Is there anyone in Russia going to tell Putin he is a criminal? Of course not.

Donald Trump is counting on everyone, without except, to cower in the corner waiting for permission to speak and receive the good graces of the President of the USA. He is not a president, he is intimidator and chief. Oh, I forget, he is 'dealer and chief.'

I would never want to be a part of the Trump administration. There are no rules and breaking the law is SOP. People will be going to jail after a year or two of this mess.

No other heads of state will ever tell Trump he is breaking the law. He will be felling his way through anything and Exxon's CEO will expect to be above reproach. When international agreements have to be drawn up, who is going to know the rules? Who cares about the rules.

ie: Rumsfeld and Pakistan. Rumsfeld paid for the airspace into Afghanistan, Pakistan turned around and bought weapons from China and then China used the money to build more nukes pointed at the USA. And to add insult to injury, Osama bin Laden was living a few blocks away from the military academy. I don't know how many times I stated, "Where is bin Laden, Mushy, in the palace basement?" I underestimated the pure idiocy of American Presidents and their cabinet; bin Laden wasn't in a basement!

There was no place else for bin Laden to be. There was only one place he could be living, in Pakistan. He was wanted in every other country in the world. If he raised his head anywhere else, especially the Middle East, he would be a dead man. Pure process of elimination would point to Pakistan. Was he welcomed in Pakistan? Hell, no. But, the tribal areas were a place where any terrorist could find a cozy corner. No, one is going to tell me the leadership in the ISI or the civilian leadership didn't know bin Laden was there. Of course, they knew he was there. They didn't ruffle feathers in fear of having their car blown up on a bridge.

When a so called leader pretends to know what they are doing, there is huge problems brewing. Look at the "Axis of Evil" speech. Trump is a babe in the woods and every nation's leaders will take him on a ride into hell for the USA.

Donald Trump is counting on intimidation and power to make his administration successful. Ready for another spy plane loss?

I do not see a USA President with a White Supremacist on his staff as being welcome to any country, but, the USA will be welcome for what a country can get out of it.  

Changes in the powers of the North Carolina Governor requires a vote by the electorate.

ARTICLE III (click here)

EXECUTIVE

Section 1.  Executive power.
The executive power of the State shall be vested in the Governor....   

December 15, 2016
By Rebecca Herscher

The Republican-controlled North Carolina Legislature (click here) has introduced measures to limit the powers of the incoming Democratic governor.

Roy Cooper, the state's current attorney general, beat current Republican Gov. Pat McCrory by a slim margin in the November election. McCrory initially refused to concede until a vote recount proved he had lost by about 10,000 votes.

On Wednesday, the state Legislature met for a special session called by Republican lawmakers ostensibly to pass a disaster relief bill for Hurricane Matthew.

But once the relief bill had been passed, the Legislature moved to introduce a slew of new laws which, if passed, would go to McCrory to sign....

I am sure Dylann Roof will receive a severe sentence. But, this needs to be a wake up call about hate in the USA.

Dylann Roof is 22 years old, but, I believe he was 21 when he committed the hate crime. What does this say about us as Americans? There are extremists all over this country that embrace violence. Besides trials such as this there isn't any focus on the end of such violence, it lives below the radar.

Roof got away besides. He carried out the murders and left to return to his life. He was not effected what so ever. It was a woman of conscience that noticed him and called the police. We do have a conscience about such issues, but, we do nothing to end this senseless violence.

Keeping people alive begins with efforts to end the hate. As a country we are facing this very task. There are escalating incidence of violence in the country and they are targeting people of ethnic and religious difference. It has never been more important to end the hate to end the violence.

The people in that church were among the most precious in this country. They believed in God and they believed in prayer. I am sure there are many words of wisdom from them. I think to honor them for the lives they lived, there should be a vigilance carried out regularly, perhaps monthly or weekly, as a national movement. We need to make a statement about their lives and it needs to be a continued vigilance to end the hate in this country.

Dylann Roof will be sentenced to the justice these dear people deserve, but, the hate lives even after his sentence. He will no doubt provide a defense of himself in that courtroom when he is sentenced and we all will be appalled at his words. That defense will no doubt be laced with hate and self-righteousness to inspire anyone that hears them. His defense needs to be censored by the judge. There should be no media coverage to his words. Let that be the beginning to end the hate.

June 19, 2016
By Seth Ferranti

...Roof never did time (click here) in prison despite having been previously arrested, and nothing so far has tied him to any white supremacist groups. But the quote being attributed to him in the final moments before the shooting—"You are raping our women and taking over the country"—is loud and clear. While it's appalling to think the type of hate it takes to murder nine people in cold blood exists today, it does. And that kind of resentment is probably strongest in America's prisons, where white supremacist inmates are celebrating the crime.

"Dylann will be my next tattoo," a skinhead doing time in the feds for a gun charge told VICE after watching the news of the church shootings....

...White supremacists generally want to isolate themselves from other races. (click here) They want their own schools. They want white women to marry white men and produce white babies.

When asked, Big tried to explain why he ended up like this.

"The way I grew up in a small town where the race was only white, I heard my grandparents talking about niggers and spics and wetbacks and how they were different from the white race," he said. "When I grew older, I saw opposite races with my own race, and it didn't look right to me."

By talking about ideals like loyalty, dedication, solidarity, and kinship, white supremacist gangs can easily sell themselves to prospective members, even if they also require a lot from them. "I can't associate with homos, chomps [child molesters], or snitches. You can only affiliate with opposite races if you're gaining something from them. You can't eat with the opposite race or fraternize with them or cell with them. You have to keep it right, so keep it white," Big said. "We are running the prison for whites. We are brothers, comrades-in-arms. We go to war together. We represent the white race. We are the soldiers at the front of the war."

Big's prison time is almost up, but he'll take his views into the outside with him....                            

Did I hear that right?

His children NEED an office in the White House because they are able to calm him down in his decision making?

Trump is a hot head and is unreasonable when he becomes angry.

That is 100 percent unacceptable. The President of the USA can't be 'handled.' 

The sovereign country of Ukraine retains their national treasures.

This is a ruling that upholds the assets of a sovereign country. The Crimea was one of the provinces of Ukraine before it was annexed by Russia. The annexation is not recognized by the international community and still has provisions in Minsk II.

A sovereign country has a right to enter into debt. That debt is covered by assets of a country. Assets in the USA are it's people and their work ethic. In this case, the assets of Ukraine are important for the functioning of it's government.

Ukraine should consider allowing Europe to keep these incredible national treasures until domestic peace returns.

The Scythians (click here) are known to be tribal in the 5th century. They roamed the region of Ukraine and believed to have migrated into and out of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and possibly Mongolia.

December 14, 2016
By Merrit Kennedy

A Scythian gold helmet from the fourth century B.C., which is part of the collection that was in limbo after Russia annexed Crimea.

When Russia annexed Crimea (click here) from Ukraine in 2014, many of the region's most precious artifacts were on loan to a museum in Amsterdam.

This kicked off a two year legal battle over where The Netherlands should return the priceless collection of gold and jewels: to Ukraine or to the four Crimean museums that lent the objects.

Now, "the Dutch court says only sovereign countries can claim objects as 'cultural heritage.' So since Crimea is not a country, the artifacts will go back to Ukraine," as reporter Teri Schultz tells our Newscast unit. "The judges say there a Ukrainian court can settle the question of who actually owns the precious items."

Schultz adds that "Crimea is expected to appeal, so the collection will remain in Amsterdam for the next three months and Ukraine will help pay to store it."...   
Larsen A Iceshelf, a 4000 year old ice structure, was destroyed by heating in 1995.

Larsen B Iceshelf, a 12,000 year old ice structure, collapsed during the first quarter of 2002.

In late August 2016, (click here) sunlight returned to the Antarctic Peninsula and unveiled a rift across the Larsen C Ice Shelf that had grown longer and deeper over the austral winter. Satellites spotted it in natural-color imagery. By November, the arrival of longer days and favorable weather made it possible for scientists to take a closer look.

These photographs show close and wide views of the rift from the vantage point of NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft. NASA scientist John Sonntag snapped the photos on November 10, 2016, during an Operation IceBridge flight. The mission, which makes airborne surveys of changes in polar ice, completed its eighth consecutive Antarctic deployment later that month.

The rift in Larsen C measures about 100 meters (300 feet) wide and cuts about half a kilometer (one-third of a mile) deep—completely through to the bottom of the ice shelf. While the rift is long and growing longer, it does not yet reach across the entire shelf. When that happens, Larsen C will shed an iceberg about the size of Delaware.

Cracks and calving of ice from the front of an ice shelf are normal. Shelves are fed by glaciers and ice streams coming from the interior of the continent. They advance into the ocean until a calving event takes place. The shelf front retreats and then advances again. The whole cycle can occur over the span of a few decades.

But calving that happens faster than a shelf can re-advance can mean trouble for an ice shelf. For example, large and frequent calving events at Larsen B preceded that shelf’s final period of rapid disintegration, which occurred in just six weeks in 2002. Whether Larsen C will respond in a similar way remains to be seen, but that’s one reason why scientists plan to make observations before and after the next calving event.

Ice shelves float, so they do not directly contribute to sea level rise. They are important, however, because they buttress land ice and keep it inland. If a shelf disintegrates, glaciers that feed it can flow more quickly out to sea—a process that directly increases sea level.

The continuing earthquakes of Oklahoma.

News OK (click here)

The earthquakes in Oklahoma are so frequent there is a special section of reporting them in the Oklahoma media.

The new regulations. I'll be darn, the state of Oklahoma has passed regulations of fracking water. That is amazing. I thought regulations are the enemy with oil barons. 


November 7, 2016
By Matthew Philips


Sunday night's 5.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Cushing, Okla., is the latest and, in some ways, the most troubling in a series of temblors that has rocked the Sooner State over the past few years. Not only did it strike within a mile of what is arguably one of the country's most important strategic assets—Cushing is the largest crude oil trading hubin North America, with almost 60 million barrels of stored crude—but its occurrence raises questions over the state's ability to do anything about the significant rise in earthquakes, which has been linked to oil and gas activity.
While regulations limiting the underground disposal of wastewater have succeeded in reducing the overall frequency of earthquakes, they haven't been able to stop the really big ones from happening. And when they hit close to Cushing, they suddenly become an issue of national security....
Cushing, Oklahoma has the largest commercial oil storage facility. I stress commercial because it is not the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 

This is outrageous. Ivanka and what's his name was not elected. The White House is a matter of national security.

The White House is a museum for the public and a secure place for the First Family. The First Family does not include extended family. The law prohibits family members from participating in the activities of the President.

Who is residing in the Vice President's residence? Republican impoverishment takes on a new meaning with these idiots.

Is Donald Trump competent? Why is he and Ivanka joined at the hip? 

Finding loopholes is a Wall Street activity. Finding loopholes lacks dignity and purpose. By looking for loopholes the idea the Trump White House is honest and trustworthy goes right out the window. 

So, let's see. Melania and Barron get to stay in New York City for continuity to the boy's education, but, Ivanka can be in the White House to keep her father honest. I don't think so. The Obama children had absolutely no problem transitioning to the White House; it is called tutors.

Donald Trump needs regular assessment to the insult of the laws governing the White House and the Executive Branch. Ethic violations need to be reported to the people on a regular basis. If Mr. Trump finds the White House INCONVENIENT to his mixing of government and business, then he should move to old post office and resign his elected position. The White House is not a hotel.

By Rose Donohue

President-elect Donald Trump (click here) has revealed he is still trying to find a loophole to a rule preventing him from appointing family members into his administration.
Mr Trump previously announced plans to hand over his business empire to his elder children Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric Trump, but told Fox News on Sunday that his transition team was trying to engineer daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, jobs in Washington.
A federal nepotism law preventing Mr Trump from hiring from within the family could prove a problem, however.
“We will have to see how the laws read,” Mr Trump told Fox News Sunday‘s Chris Wallace.
“If you look at Ivanka, you take a look and she’s so strong, as you know, on the women’s issue and childcare and so many things … nobody could do better than her – we’ll have to see whether or not we can do that.”...