Donald Trump tells American who he is. A Putin supporter who should expatriate to Russia!

Shame on University of New Hampshire for being the host venue where Trumpziim hate speech in the Whittemore Center, was spewed with venom.

Echo report published in the Boston Globe by Isaac Arnsdorf:

DURHAM, New Hampshire - Republican polling leader Donald Trump approvingly quoted autocrats Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary, part of an ongoing effort to deflect from his criminal prosecutions and spin alarms about eroding democracy against President Biden.

His speech at a presidential campaign rally here on Saturday also reprised dehumanizing language targeting immigrants that historians have likened to past authoritarians, including a reference that some civil rights advocates and experts in extremism have compared to Adolf Hitler's fixation on blood purity.

And he used the term "hostages" to describe people charged with violent crimes in the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.

The comments came as experts, historians and political opponents have voiced growing alarm about Trump's rhetoric, ideas and emerging plans for a second term, pointing to parallels to past and present authoritarian leaders.

"Donald Trump sees American democracy as a sham and he wants to convince his followers to see it that way too," said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who researches democracy and rhetoric. "Putin hates western values like democracy and the rule of law, so does Trump."

Donald Trump is a Putin asset

Trump quoted Putin, the dictatorial Russia president who invaded neighboring Ukraine, criticizing the criminal charges against Trump, who is accused in four separate cases of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme, mishandling classified documents, and trying to overturn the 2020, election results. In the quotation, Putin agreed with Trump's own attempts to portray the prosecutions as politically motivated.

"It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy," Trump quoted Putin saying in the speech. Trump added: "They're all laughing at us."

He went on to align himself with Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has amassed functionally autocratic power through controlling the media and changing the country's constitution. Orban has presented his leadership as a model of an "illiberal" state and has opposed immigration for leading to "mixed race" Europeans. Democratic world leaders have sought to isolate Orban for eroding civil liberties and bolstering ties with Putin.

But Trump called him "highly respected" and welcomed his praise as "the man who can save the Western world."
In the speech, Trump also repeated his own inflammatory language against undocumented immigrants, by accusing them of "poisoning the blood of our country" - a phrase that immigrant groups and civil rights advocates have condemned as reminiscent as Hitler in his book "Mein Kampf," in which he told Germans to "care for the purity of their own blood" by eliminating Jews.

The crowd of thousands in a college arena cheered Trump's recitation of an anti-immigrant poem called "The Snake" that he has repeated on the campaign trail and popularized since the 2016, campaign.

And approaching the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump came to the defense of alleged violent offenders who have been detained awaiting trial on the order of judges.

"I don't call them prisoners, I call them hostages," he said. "They're hostages."

The speech drew renewed criticism from Democrats. "Donald Trump is campaigning on an extreme MAGA agenda that would rip away hard-won freedoms from Americans - it's as simple as that," Democratic National Committee press secretary Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. "If he takes power, Trump will waste no time implementing his dangerous vision for America."

Trump's speech began with an economic focus, with a new tagline of "Better off with Trump" and a recitation of statistics comparing affordability under his presidency to now. But Trump became more animated as he returned to his material on immigration and the charges against him.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said that Trump "gave a great speech and knocked it out of the park" in front of a large crowd.

In a move that experts said could have the effect of confusing voters about the true dangers to democracy, Trump has begun deflecting from reports that he would seek revenge on his critics in a second term, accusing Biden of acting like a dictator because of the prosecutions against Trump. Two of the cases were brought by local prosecutors, and the two federal cases are being handled by a special counsel acting independently of the White House in accordance with Justice Department rules.

Without evidence, Trump is portrayed all four cases as a coordinated persecution against him because of his lead in primary and general-election polls. As he pushed that theme on Saturday, the slogan "BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY" flashed across the screen above him.

The speech ended with an instrumental track that Trump has continued using at rallies despite becoming associated with the QAnon online extremist movement.

New Hampshire echos about Medicaid Expansion

Jerry Knirk: Re-authorization of Medicaid expansion

Commentary echos about the New Hampshire Medicaid expansion:

Expanded Medicaid makes New Hampshire a healthier state

CONCORD, NH ~ The most important bill currently in the New Hampshire Legislature re-authorizes New Hampshire’s Medicaid expansion.

Jerry Knirk ~ Medicaid expansion came about as part of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA included expansion of Medicaid to include nearly all low-income individuals with incomes up to 138 percent of poverty ($28,180 for a family of three in 2017) with the individual exchange covering those above. It was intended to be nation-wide, but a 2012 Supreme Court ruling made Medicaid expansion optional for each state. Initially, the federal government paid 100 percent of the Medicaid expansion with that percentage dropping to 90 percent by 2020, requiring some state funding. In states that did not expand Medicaid, there is a coverage gap between traditional Medicaid and the exchange, leaving many uninsured.

New Hampshire chose to expand Medicaid two years at a time, requiring re-authorization every two years. Re-authorization in 2016 was accomplished with HB 1696. My close attention to this process in 2016 motivated me to run for the House of Representatives. SB 313 has been my all-consuming passion for the past few weeks, explaining the lack of my columns recently.

The Berlin (New Hampshire) Sun~ echo opinion letter

A few weeks ago, the N.H. Senate voted 17-7 in support of SB 313, which reauthorizes New Hampshire’s Medicaid expansion program. Now, the bill has moved to the N.H. House, where our representatives will decide whether it will continue. The hearings in the N.H. Senate and House were teeming with advocates including patients, health-care providers, business leaders, clerics and many more who — one after the other — stood up before a large room to tell their first-hand experiences of how this program changes lives in a positive way.

In 2014, New Hampshire expanded eligibility for Medicaid to include a larger portion of the state’s population; more than 130,000 Granite Staters have accessed health coverage as a result. This expansion, however, is set to expire at the end of 2018 if not reauthorized. Senate Bill 313 is one of the most important pieces of legislation in the 2018 session because it impacts the health of our friends, neighbors and economy. 

A Granite State poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and published a few weeks ago shows that 59 percent of Granite Staters support Medicaid expansion reauthorization, and nearly half of Granite Staters say they would be less likely to vote for their state senator if he or she voted against it.

Democratic candidates debate was a Republican loose-loose

Univeristy of New Hampshire in Durham was the place to be on Thursday, Feb 4th, when Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders had a rare opportunity. They debated one-on-one, while the Republican "wanna-bees" had to watch! Indeed, the Republican candidates, as they line up right now, will never have the same experience as the Democrats. Obvious to the pundits, the Democratic candidates were brilliant.

Although the interesting "give and take" in the real debate (not a political Republican Punch and Judy show),  is still under analysis, it's the Republicans who lost in the New Hampshire forum. In fact, Republicans lost because none of their so-called debates came remotely close to talking about issues, vision, ideas, accomplishments or policies, like we heard from Sanders and Clinton.  In my opinion, Secretary Clinton was well prepared for the debate and she often took charge of the dialogue!

Although the Democratic duo presented often divergent visions for the Democratic party, the quote from Senator Sanders summed up their differences.  "On our worst day," he and Hillary Clinton have more in common than they do with any of the Republicans. As a matter of fact, I would carry that quote further. Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton have more in common with each other, than with Republicans, because each of them is smarter, more articulate, positive, visionary and dedicated to their passion for public service than any in the Republican candidate's line up.

In other words, if the 2016 presidential election were held today, the Republicans would be in disarry while the Democrats remain focused. 

For example, Iowa showed the disarry. I can't get over how the Republicans created a three way split in their Iowa Caucus while the two Democrats divided their forums (aka "caucuses") right down the middle. It's mathematically impossible for the three top tier Republicans, "win = 28%" "place = 24 %" and "show = 23 %" at the Iowa Caucus, to delcare victory. As a matter of fact, the third place candidate, Senator Marco Rubio, celebrated as though he won a national election, but he didn't even garner 25 percent of the caucus!  In other words, 3 out to 4 Repbulican caucus voters cast their ballot for somebody else! 

On the other hand, the Iowa Democrats clearly gave rousing support for both Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton. It's likely we'll never know, with certainty, who the decisive Iowa winner was, because the archiac rules created a situation that was simply too close to call. (Anybody who's ever been to a caucus can confirm the backwards process). In fact, both Sanders and Clinton won with close to 50 percent, a much bigger margin of support than the paltry 28, 24 and 23 percents in the Republican caucus. 

In the New Hampshire debate, with Sanders and Clinton, it was the Republicans who lost because they have been unable to generate a vision for America. Their campaign is based on negativity, fear, and concrete conservatism so severe it makes Calvin Coolidge look like a liberal.  

Republicans lost in the New Hampshire debate forum because both Sanders and Clinton spoke intelligently about issues that matter to people. They weren't engaged in ego building or personality analysis, (like the "boy in the bubble", as Governor Christie described his rival, Senator Marco Rubio).  

Moreover, Republicans also lost a winning strategy, because the Democrats clearly own the issues that matter. It's difficult to understand how Republicans can hope to win the national election when the economy is growing and unemployment is lower than it's been in decades.

Of course, as the Republican pundit Steve Schmidt said, modern voters don't necessarily make decisions like they have in the past. In fact, the voters are now evaluating a candidates potential for being a leader, rather than on concrete data, like economic trends.

Well, maybe the celebrity quotient has kicked into the 2016 election equation. Indeed, the "Trumponian" show has probably raised the bar on how motivated voters are to support a particular candidate. Therefore, if celebrity really enters into the equation, the two who share the highest applause ratings from their supporters are unquestionably Secretary Hillary Clinton and businessman Donald Trump. Therefore, the Republicans will have lost yet again because, the New Hampshire Democratic debate performance of Secretary Clinton, created a "loose-loose" for "Trump the Chump". 
He has no grasp of the issues, he's never going to upstage her (she's definitely not made for TV Megyn Kelly!) and she has plenty of experience standing up to right wing extremists - and it shows.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Secretary Hillary Clinton at the University of New Hampshire on Feb 4th

In the University of New Hampshire Democratic candidate debate, it was the Republicans who lost.