Donald Trump gets no support from officials who served in his failed administration

Echo opinion letter published in the Cedar Rapids Iowa newspaper, "The Gazette":

Trump is sleeping during the Manhattan trial

The question Donald Trump’s supporters must ask themselves is how they reconcile their (wrongminded❗) support for him against the damming testimonies coming from those who served him and know him best. The list includes top military advisers, lawyers, economic advisers, some members of his Cabinet, press officials, and campaign aides.

John Kelly, a retired four-star general who served as his chief of staff, criticized Trump as having a “contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” 

Trump, he said, is “[A] person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me’ … and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.” (In fact, Trump referred to Marines buried at cemetery in France in crude and derogatory terms, a former senior official says, reported in CNN by Jim Acosta.)

Maine Veterans Cemetery in Augusta, Maine

Former defense secretary Mark Esper said Trump is not “fit for office because he puts himself first, and I think anybody running for office should put the country first.”

Former White House counsel Ty Cobb claimed, “He never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself … In fact, as history will show from his divisive lies, as well as from his unrestrained contempt for the rule of law and his related crimes, his conduct and mere existence have hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation.”

These assessments come from conservative Republicans who know the man intimately. Ignoring them risks turning our democracy into an autocracy governed by a lawless and vengeful leader.

From Thomas Hill in Cedar Falls Iowa

P.S. from Maine Writer:  Notice the reticence and "no shows" from Donald Trump's family while he is on trial for 91 indictments. 

Give me your tired and your poor...Statue of Liberty history review essay

Essay echo by Michael Schaller published in the Arizona Daily Star and posted on Tuscon.com

MaineWriter- Schaller's timely essay puts a modern spotlight on the beauty of the Statue of Liberty and on the meaningful words in the poem by Emma Lazarus. Sometimes, we tend to take such meaningful history for granted. Therefore, in a convoluted way, the current immigration debate has renewed interest and support for the "Miss Liberty" statue and its important symbol of hope for the American Dream.

Mother of Exiles: The tangled history of the Statue of Liberty

Recently, CNN’s Jim Acosta got into a verbal spat with White House aide Stephen Miller. Acosta accused the Trump administration of violating the spirit embodied by the final lines of the poem The New Colossus (see below) written by Emma Lazarus and inscribed on a tablet at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Miller countered that the statue originally had nothing to do with immigration and that the poem was added decades later.

Surprisingly, both men were correct. Initially, e statue had nothing to do with immigration ... and then it had everything to do with it.

In the late 1860s, French sculptor Frederick August Bartholdi designed a massive lighthouse statue of a robed Egyptian woman – perhaps a belly dancer – holding a torch to be situated at the northern end of the just completed, French-built, Suez Canal.

When Egyptian officials rejected the idea, Bartholdi and several friends re-conceived the project in the form of “Lady Liberty” based on a Roman goddess, with broken shackles at her feet symbolizing the abolition of American slavery.

The Statue of Liberty was created as a gift to enhance Franco-American friendship

Making the statue a gift to be located in New York harbor would, they hoped, enhance Franco-American friendship. The project’s boosters included Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and developer of the Suez Canal, who sought U.S. support for a scheme to build a canal across Panama. (Unfortunately for de Lesseps, he eventually got his wish. The French project proved a fiasco.)

In the early 1870s, Bartholdi sculpted the statue’s head and torch-bearing arm. To attract additional funding, he exhibited the pieces in Europe and in the United States. The disembodied arm appeared in New York’s Madison Square from 1876-82, but generated only modest public interest. The New York and federal governments donated a vacant harbor island for the project but refused to pay for the massive stone pedestal the gifted statue would rest upon.

Charity fundraisers, such as one in 1883 to which amateur poet Emma Lazarus contributed her sonnet, The New Colossus (she called the statue “Mother of Exiles”) also came up short. Satirists suggested financing the pedestal by selling advertising space on the statue to liquor and cigarette companies.

Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer promoted an early version of a “go fund me” campaign that by 1885 raised enough cash through small donations to construct the pedestal. The hollow copper statue, supported by an armature designed by Gustave Eiffel, of Tower fame, reached New York in 1886 and took its place atop the pedestal. Because its torch and harbor location technically made it an aid to navigation, the U.S. Lighthouse Service managed the site, which became part of the National Park system in 1933.

Although Lady Liberty gained the most notoriety, the French government financed several quarter-size versions it sent around the world as symbols of imperial glory and power. One arrived in Hanoi in the newly conquered colony of French Indochina. Vietnamese nationalists destroyed it in 1945 amidst their struggle to gain independence.

The arrivals included single men, families and many unaccompanied minors. Between 1886 and the early 1920s, Lady Liberty’s uplifted torch provided the first glimpse of the United States shared among the more than 20 million immigrants sailing to the processing center on Ellis Island.

Massive waves of Eastern and Southern European immigrants began arriving in New York around the same time as the statue. Pushed out by clashing nationalisms, economic dislocation from global trade, and religious persecution, millions of Italians, Poles, Slavs and Eastern European Jews sought refuge in the United States.

For them and their descendants, the statue embodied America’s welcome.Before Lazarus’ sonnet became associated with the statue, another writer, Thomas Baily Aldrich, also invoked Lady Liberty as a potent symbol. His 1895 screed, Unguarded Gates, invoked the statue as a guardian against foreign assault. Aldrich wrote “wide open and unguarded stand our gates / and through them press a wild motley throng / Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes / ... bringing with them unknown gods and rites ... accents of malice alien to our air / ... O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well to leave the gates unguarded?”

In 1903, perhaps to counter Aldrich, friends of Lazarus (she
died young, in 1887), placed a bronze tablet with the words of her poem within the statue’s pedestal. But as the 20th century unfolded, Aldrich’s alarms found growing acceptance.

Restrictive measures had begun with Chinese exclusion, then with barriers to Japanese migration, followed by literacy tests. World War I halted most trans-Atlantic migration between 1914 and 1918.

Immigration opponents like the prominent writer and eugenicist Madison Grant used the hiatus to warn in his 1916 book, “The Passing of the Great Race,” that “Nordic” America faced “invasion” by racially inferior criminals, revolutionaries and degenerates. Adolf Hitler later called Grant’s work his “bible.” After peace brought a renewed exodus from Eastern and Southern Europe, Congress enacted rigid quotas in 1921 and 1924 that effectively blocked immigration from anywhere outside northwestern Europe.

With only small changes, these “paper walls” remained in place until 1965. Then, as a Great Society reform, Congress enacted a new immigration law that abolished most ethnic and racial quotas. Signing the bill as he stood before the Statue of Liberty, President Lyndon Johnson re-kindled the promise embodied in Lazarus’* words:

Give me your tired, and your poor
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, the tempest tossed, to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Michael Schaller is Regents’ Professor emeritus of history at the University of Arizona. He has written several books on U.S. history.

*Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist. She wrote the sonnet The New Colossus in 1883, which includes "lines of world-wide welcome". Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, installed in 1903.  The last stanza of the sonnet was set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The last stanza was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song "The Lady of the Harbor" written in 1985 as part of his song cycle "Three Women". Lazarus was also the author of Poems and Translations (New York, 1867); Admetus, and other Poems (1871); Alide: an Episode of Goethe's Life (Philadelphia, 1874); Poems and Ballads of Heine (New York, 1881); Poems, 2 vols. ; Narrative, Lyric and Dramatic; as well as Jewish Poems and Translations.

Orwellian intention in the Huckabee-Sanders video

Even *More lies* in doctored video~ a Palmer Report echo

"..‘And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth'.” — George Orwell, 1984

In her most recent outrage against common sense and the First Amendment, Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted this week: “We stand by our decision to revoke [Jim Acosta’s] hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video.” The video Sanders alludes to, as it happens, was doctored, unconvincingly, to create the illusion that CNN’s Jim Acosta (jesuisJimAcosta!)  assaulted a White House staffer as she was attempting to grab his microphone away from him during a tRump press conference.

Actual un-retouched footage from various angles contradicts Sanders’ video, giving the lie to the entire squalid rationale. 

While the provenance of Sanders’ spurious video is still under dispute (at one point it passed through the hands of (the alt-right) InfoWars), its nefarious and quite possibly unlawful intent is not: 

it was meant to pervert Acosta’s constitutionally sanctioned right to ask the “president” (aka Donald tRump) a legitimate question.

In the Orwell prophetic classic, 1984, we are introduced to the concept of “doublethink,” a word now in common coin, by the book itself. To again quote 1984: “All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.”

The whole sordid, solipsistic, White House spin on the Jim Acosta (jesuisJimAcosta! encore!) “assault” affair positively reeks of Orwellian doublethink. We are once again called upon to disbelieve the evidence of our eyes and our ears and, through a “series of victories over our own memories,” but to believe, in their place, the word of this gaslighting, and disingenuous and corrupt tRump administration.

General McMaster and tensions with Donald Trump

McMaster could leave White House after months of tension with Trump ~ CNN Dan Merica, Jim Acosta, Kaitlan Collins

General H.R. McMaster

(MaineWriter ~ As an American citizen, I send to General McMaster my appreciation for giving Steve Bannon the boot,kicked him off of the National Security Council.)

Washington (CNN) ~ With tensions flaring between President Donald Trump and national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the Pentagon is considering options that would allow the President to potentially move the three-star general out of his current role and back into the military, according to half a dozen defense and administration officials.

A search is quietly being conducted by the Pentagon to see if there is a four-star military job suited for McMaster, these officials said.
Several sources told CNN that the push for a replacement comes after months of personal tension between McMaster and Trump. The task of easing McMaster out of his role as national security adviser presents a unique challenge for the White House.

While administration officials have privately said the preference is to move McMaster into a position within the Army or Defense Department that qualifies as a promotion, some within the Pentagon feel he has become politicized in the White House and have expressed reservations about him returning to the military in a prominent role. Some defense officials caution that the President could also go as far as not to offer him a fourth star and force him to retire.

This is not the first time McMaster has faced speculation that his job may be in jeopardy and sources with knowledge of McMaster's standing in the White House have repeatedly said that he has been on thin ice for months.

There was discussion in the West Wing about replacing him last fall, but he ultimately survived because officials, including the President himself, were skeptical about the optics of appointing a third national security adviser in less than a year, several sources told CNN. Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned amid controversy over his contact with Russian officials within a month of taking the job.

The decision was also driven by the White House's challenge attracting top talent for jobs in the administration due to Trump's "blacklist" of individuals who have criticized the President, his personality and the Russia investigation, according to a senior Republican source.

However, those familiar with the President's thinking don't believe McMaster's job is any safer now. "He is safe until he's not," the senior Republican with knowledge of the White House added.
On Thursday, the Pentagon referred all questions about McMaster's future to the White House.

"General McMaster works for President Trump. Any decision with regards to staff, the White House will make those determinations," chief spokesperson Dana White said.

The White House did not respond to CNN's request for comment. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday that Trump "still has confidence in General McMaster."

Tension with TrumpTensions between Trump and McMaster have been playing out for months and were on full display this weekend after Trump (stupid Donald Trump!) publicly chided him over remarks he made regarding Russian interference in the election.

"General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems," Trump tweeted. "Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!"
The criticism laid bare the strained relationship between the two men and left some wondering how much longer McMaster has left in the administration.

For months, Trump has privately expressed irritation with McMaster stemming from differences in "personality and style," the senior Republican source said.

The two have never gotten along, and Trump continues to chafe at McMaster's demeanor when he briefs him, feeling that he is gruff and condescending, according to a source who is familiar with his thinking.

He prefers the briefing style of someone like CIA Director Mike Pompeo or Defense Secretary James Mattis, who patiently answer his questions, regardless of the premise.

McMaster, meanwhile, is the person who delivers the news that Trump doesn't want to hear on a daily basis, according to the senior Republican source.

The issue is not political but mostly stylistic, as McMaster and Mattis tend to discuss information before it is presented to the President, the same source added.

CNN previously reported that McMaster has been at odds with the President and other cabinet officials over the last year.
He has also been undercut by others in Trump's orbit like former chief strategist Steve Bannon, according to congressional and administration officials.

A source familiar with the situation said Trump's perception of McMaster is still influenced by the legacy of Bannon who maintained a tense relationship with McMaster after McMaster removed him from the National Security Council.
"He paid McMaster back by spreading rumors and whispering in Trump's ear," the senior Republican source said, adding that "Bannon poisoned the well."

What's next for McMaster?Officials could not yet confirm what job McMaster might be nominated for if he were to leave the White House.

The current commander of US forces in South Korea, General Vincent Brooks, is expected to leave his post on a scheduled rotation in the coming months but his successor has already been earmarked within the Army but not yet made public, several officials said.

Another possible option would be to name McMaster as the replacement for Gen. John Nicholson who has served as commander of the coalition in Afghanistan since 2016.

Some officials have told CNN that the Pentagon may be looking to identify a slot that is not too high profile, because McMaster would be transitioning back to the military from a White House position akin to a political appointee.

If moved back into a military role that involves testifying before Congress, McMaster might be viewed as simply supporting the White House rather than providing lawmakers with his best military advice, one defense official said.

Lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee would likely have questions about McMaster's time in the White House should he be nominated for a military role but an aide to one senior Republican member told CNN that there do not appear to be any obvious red flags at the outset that would inherently prevent his confirmation.

A second defense official said McMaster is well aware of those political sensitivities.

However, one top Pentagon official said McMaster's role in the administration should not prevent him from earning his fourth star, comparing his transition to other military officers like Colin Powell who have gone back and forth between the Pentagon and the White House.

McMaster would also have the option of retiring from active duty at any time if he chose to do so.

But officials told CNN that the White House's wish is to find McMaster a four-star job that is seen as acknowledging his service.

Guns- Executive Action needed to protect Second Amendment for law abiding Americans

President Obama must act to prevent gun violence in America. To talk about gun violence but do nothing to end the public health dangers of the growing numbers of morbid incidents, is irresponsible leadership. Moreover, prevention measures at amy level of regulation will protect American from those who seek to abuse Second Amendment rights. In other words, if ordinary people can buy bigger guns than law enforcement personnel own, then terrorists and those intent on sedition can do likewise.

Many Americans become paraoid about loosing their Second Amendment rights to own guns, as though weapons are essential to their basic survival. Meanwhile, one gun doesn't satisfy those who make a point of having one to wear and others to display, like trophies. Regardless of how many guns a person owns, the physicial reality is that only one gun with one bullet is required to kill any target, be it human, or otherwise. 

On the other hand, if oridnary people are permitted to buy the same, or even more deadly kinds of armament, as the military or law enforcement (as is now the case), the reality is that people of evil intent will use Second Amerndment rights to destroy the very government that allows gun ownership, in the  first place.

Therefore, using public safety logic, it makes perfect sense to protect the rights of people to own guns by creating barriers against those who will misuse the privilege to create carnage. 

It's a counterintuitive argument, ie "protect Second Amerndment rights by regulating guns", but the logic is a win-win. Prevent terrorists, and those intent on murder or sedition from using guns to destroy our basiic right to life, liberty  and the pursuit of happiness.

It sounds counter intuitive but to protect 2nd Amendment rights to own guns means to regulate who is athorized to buy them. It's becoming a national security issue.

It certainly  makes sense to me. Hopefully, President Obama will take executive action to prevent the growth of gun violent carnage before his last State of the  Union address coming up in Janaury.

I suspect Americans will be pleased to learn about the President's intention to use Executive Action to prevent growing gun violence. After all, if guns were "germs", like influenza or ebola, even  the US Congress would demand a public health response. It's difficult to understand how Second Amendment zealots don't understand that guns kill,, just like untreated germs. Therefore, unregulated guns must be treated like a public health danger. Otherwise, as deaths by gun vilence grow, the ownership of deadly weapons could destroy the very "right" the Second Amendment advocates are trying to protect. 

CNN reprots By Jim Acosta and Kevin Liptak:

President Barack Obama is expected to announce in the coming days a new executive action with the goal of expanding background checks on gun sales, people familiar with White House planning said.

Described as "imminent," the set of executive actions would fulfill a promise by the President to take further unilateral steps the White House says could help curb gun deaths.

Plans for the action are not yet complete, and those familiar with the process warn that unforeseen circumstances could delay an announcement. But gun control advocates are expecting the new actions to be revealed next week, ahead of Obama's annual State of the Union address, set for January 12.

Although the White House wouldn't comment directly on the exact timing or content of Obama's executive orders, the spokesman Eric Schultz said that the President expected a set of recommendations on unilateral action to arrive at the beginning of the year.

He said Obama was "expressing urgency" for a list of steps he can take on his own after high-profile incidents of gun violence at the end of this year.

"It is complicated. That's why it's taken some time for our policy folks, our lawyers, and our expects to work through this and see what's possible," Schultz said.

A spokeswoman for the (politically powerful) National Rifle Association (NRA) said the group had no comment. Previously, the gun rights group told CNN that Obama's "gun control agenda was rejected by Congress. Now, he's doing what he always does when he doesn't get his way, defying the will of the people and using executive action." (Excuse me???? Listen up NRA! It's not the will of the American people to see mass killings on nearly a monthly basis, murders are consuming our national identity and allowing terrorists to buy guns!)

The group said at the time that Obama had his "wish list of gun control," in California but "it didn't prevent the San Bernardino attack."

"The fact is, the President's gun control agenda will only make it harder for law-abiding citizens to exercise their right to self-defense," NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker.

Gun control advocates and White House officials say the focus remains on the so-called "gun show loophole," which allows certain sellers of guns -- at gun shows and elsewhere -- to avoid conducting background checks before making sales.

Months after the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school massacre that claimed 26 victims, the then-Democratic majority Senate rejected a similar proposal.

Congress would still need to act in order to make background checks fully universal. But advocates and administration lawyers have struck upon a provision in the law that could allow for Obama to expand the background check requirement to additional sellers.

Federal law currently requires all individuals "engaged in the business" of selling guns to obtain a license and conduct background checks on buyers. But others who only make occasional sales or are selling firearms from a personal collection are exempted from the background check requirement.

Gun control advocates say Obama could take action himself by issuing a regulation that provides expanded guidance on who falls under the "in the business" standard.

One group, the Michael Bloomberg-helmed Everytown for Gun Safety, has provided recommendations to the White House that include creating a test for assessing who must become licensed to continue selling guns. Factors would include volume and speed of sales, and whether or not the seller relies on advertising to sell guns.

The group also recommended Obama define a gun in a "personal collection" as having been in the seller's possession for at least a year.

Before leaving for his winter vacation in Hawaii, Obama met with Bloomberg at the White House to discuss gun control.

Aside from the background check provision, people familiar with Obama's plans say his new gun control announcement will include new funding for government agencies to better enforce existing gun laws.

CNN's Chris Frates and Kevin Bohn contributed to this report.