So the Felonious Trump and his SS agents were okay with using repoters and WH staff as decoys. Their lives in danger? Who cares. Certainly not our dear leader, who reveled in the deception. Hmm.
It has been reliably reported that this past July, Donald Trump flew to Ankara, Turkey for NATO meetings in the gold plated jet grifted to him by Qatar. The plan was to then transport Trump after the meetings to England in Trump’s prior presidential jet which would ultimately be replaced by the Qatar jet for Trump’s return flight to Washington. [ The term “Air Force One” only applies to the plane that the President is actually in at that time.]
There was much press coverage and pictures taken as Trump boarded his former jumbo jet in Ankara after the meetings for the flight to England. What was recently revealed, however, was that either shortly before or while Trump and the journalists covering him were on board his plane that was on the tarmac and prepared to fly them to England, the Secret Service came into possession of intelligence that Iranian sponsored terrorists were targeting this plane. The Secret Service then instructed the flight crew to advise all passengers to lower their shades. The Secret Service then hurriedly and clandestinely, and out of view of the journalists on board, snuck Trump off the side of the plane onto the lift of a catering truck, which then transported Trump to a military aircraft that then flew him to England.
The journalists, who believed that Trump was still on board what they thought was Air Force One, were then flown to England without being advised of the threat or that Trump had fled the plane or that their plane may have turned into bait for the terrorists.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL FOLKS:
Trump’s military plane, with him on it, arrived in England just before Trump’s jumbo jet which the journalists on the plane believed to be Air Force One with Trump still on it. AND HERE’S THE KICKER: The Secret Service then clandestinely smuggled Trump back onto the plane without any journalists knowing that he had ever left it.
When the door to the plane opened, Trump was greeted by the photo press, undoubtedly with his usual smirk, without any journalists knowing that he had deserted them and only returned to the plane when the coast was clear.
Hypothetically, wouldn’t all this have been as if Secret Service in Dallas in 1963 advised JFK at the last minute either not to ride in the open car with Texas Governor John Connolly or to put a dummy in the back seat because they had a confidential informant advising them that there was going to be an assassination attempt on Kennedy’s life? Had Kennedy, who was sitting directly behind Connolly, switched into an undercover car, Connolly would unquestionably have been killed. As it was, Connolly was struck by a bullet, which had apparently first hit Kennedy, causing him to be seriously wounded—suffering injuries to his back/chest, right wrist, and left thigh—but survived.
Behold the American hero of our time, who needlessly and surreptitiously abandoned a plane full of journalists knowing that there was credible intelligence that the plane was targeted for a terrorist attack and leaving the plane, filled with journalists, to serve as a decoy for the attack.
Along with all the statues around the country that Trump is commissioning to glorify his memory, there should be a statue of Trump sneaking out the side door of his aircraft and into a catering van without addressing the safety of the journalists he was abandoning and without so much as a farewell wave to those journalists whom he might have speculated would never see their families again.
Words and Phrases, failure is not unexpected by Jen Rubin was a great read this morning. Much like the Apollo astronauts whose famous words were “failure is not an option” should be expected. Even those astronauts and those in Mission Control were able to work together and make it work—they got the astronauts home safely but dubbed the mission as a successful failure. This is what the current administration needs to do but they are too prideful to ask for help.
This word, taxation, is feared by the ultra-rich, and it should be the most understood term by the rest of us. In essence, think about it this way: let's say you just inherited 30 million dollars, and I say I want 5% of that money, and you say hell no. Taxation is just that. Questions like Where do you get the right to take 5% of my inheritance? Where do we get that right? It can be said that the Constitution says that this new government can collect taxes, but how it is collected, how much, and from whom are not defined. What is fair or what is right?
In a family, is it right to give one child more than the others? Again, what is right or what is fair? Before the seventeenth century, it was accepted that royalty lived in castles and that people with low incomes provided them with most of their earnings. No one questioned that, and no one questioned anything in previous cultures where the special class lived at the expense of the lesser class.
We see signs of disagreement with this caste system among certain religious leaders, who proclaim that caring for others is God's will, or “do unto others as you want done to you,” as seen in Jesus washing the feet of Mary Magdalene or in Buddha leaving his parents' castle to live among the rest of the population. This raises other questions: where did this idea come from? Was it God, or from somewhere else? Were we wired to see things as right or wrong?
I watch birds building their nests and the mother feeding all the baby birds without distinction, or the mother elephant caring for her baby while other members of the elephant group assume care if the mother is unable to do so. How do they know all this, and do we also know what we should do? I think we all inherently know values about right and wrong, good and bad. I know that Buddhism teaches that we all have embedded knowledge about our nature, which we cover with falsehoods, and that Jesus taught that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." So there were teachings, but they were limited to a few and could not be shared with the public until later.
Then came the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, which followed the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, beginning with Andreas Vesalius and culminating with Isaac Newton. The revolution produced changes that challenged the Catholic Church, including the idea that the world is round rather than flat and that the sun does not revolve around us; we revolve around the sun. The Enlightenment saw writers like Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and John Locke use new printing techniques to propose ideas such as individual liberties, the rule of law, and religious freedom; they also discussed the establishment of secular states. This was a period of developing ideas about right and wrong, with topics like Hume's science of man, Locke's philosophy of social contracts, and discussions of natural and legal rights. Locke and Rousseau argued that individuals acquire civil rights by accepting the obligation to respect and protect the rights of others, thereby relinquishing certain personal freedoms in the process. Locke defines the state of nature as a condition in which humans are rational and follow natural law, in which all men are born equal and with the right to life, liberty, and property.
And so, we have it: the idea that what is right or wrong is a natural process embedded in our humanity. Consider a small village with two storage bins: one owned by the baron and the other by the poor people of that county. How do you think the poor people should accept that the baron's bin has enormous supplies of food while the peasants' bin is nearly empty? Would they think that is right? In the make-believe world, the baron would acknowledge the surplus in his bin and distribute food to the peasants; that’s in the make-believe world, but what about the peasants? What should they do? Should their families starve while they do nothing? No, they would revolt!
Now back to us: we should be outraged by the presence in our world of billionaires and MAGA-rich people who sit atop their fortunes and believe they do not have to share the wealth with those around them. This is where taxation comes in; we should reject their mentality and impose greater taxation on their fortunes
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration reached a 94% top marginal tax rate in 1944. This rate applied to individual taxable income exceeding $200,000 (roughly equivalent to $2.8–$3.5 million today).
• Harry S. Truman: Maintained high wartime rates, and the top marginal rate remained at 91% to 92% throughout the Korean War era.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower: Kept the top marginal tax rate at 91% throughout his two terms in the 1950s
• The highest federal corporate income tax rate in U.S. history was 52.8%, levied in 1968 and 1969 (during the Vietnam War era, combining a 50% normal/surtax rate with a temporary 10% surcharge), compared with today's 21%. (Wikipedia)
We do not have any control over money passed on to others in an inheritance, and other countries have an inheritance tax. And finally, other countries have a direct tax on individuals' wealth, and we don’t. When are we going to wake up? Do you think our tax code just happened? Do you think our tax code favoring the rich just happened? You see, the rich know about tax codes and how to keep them favoring the rich, and they will fight any attempt to change them with all their wealth.
So the Felonious Trump and his SS agents were okay with using repoters and WH staff as decoys. Their lives in danger? Who cares. Certainly not our dear leader, who reveled in the deception. Hmm.
A HERO FOR OUR TIME?
It has been reliably reported that this past July, Donald Trump flew to Ankara, Turkey for NATO meetings in the gold plated jet grifted to him by Qatar. The plan was to then transport Trump after the meetings to England in Trump’s prior presidential jet which would ultimately be replaced by the Qatar jet for Trump’s return flight to Washington. [ The term “Air Force One” only applies to the plane that the President is actually in at that time.]
There was much press coverage and pictures taken as Trump boarded his former jumbo jet in Ankara after the meetings for the flight to England. What was recently revealed, however, was that either shortly before or while Trump and the journalists covering him were on board his plane that was on the tarmac and prepared to fly them to England, the Secret Service came into possession of intelligence that Iranian sponsored terrorists were targeting this plane. The Secret Service then instructed the flight crew to advise all passengers to lower their shades. The Secret Service then hurriedly and clandestinely, and out of view of the journalists on board, snuck Trump off the side of the plane onto the lift of a catering truck, which then transported Trump to a military aircraft that then flew him to England.
The journalists, who believed that Trump was still on board what they thought was Air Force One, were then flown to England without being advised of the threat or that Trump had fled the plane or that their plane may have turned into bait for the terrorists.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL FOLKS:
Trump’s military plane, with him on it, arrived in England just before Trump’s jumbo jet which the journalists on the plane believed to be Air Force One with Trump still on it. AND HERE’S THE KICKER: The Secret Service then clandestinely smuggled Trump back onto the plane without any journalists knowing that he had ever left it.
When the door to the plane opened, Trump was greeted by the photo press, undoubtedly with his usual smirk, without any journalists knowing that he had deserted them and only returned to the plane when the coast was clear.
Hypothetically, wouldn’t all this have been as if Secret Service in Dallas in 1963 advised JFK at the last minute either not to ride in the open car with Texas Governor John Connolly or to put a dummy in the back seat because they had a confidential informant advising them that there was going to be an assassination attempt on Kennedy’s life? Had Kennedy, who was sitting directly behind Connolly, switched into an undercover car, Connolly would unquestionably have been killed. As it was, Connolly was struck by a bullet, which had apparently first hit Kennedy, causing him to be seriously wounded—suffering injuries to his back/chest, right wrist, and left thigh—but survived.
Behold the American hero of our time, who needlessly and surreptitiously abandoned a plane full of journalists knowing that there was credible intelligence that the plane was targeted for a terrorist attack and leaving the plane, filled with journalists, to serve as a decoy for the attack.
Along with all the statues around the country that Trump is commissioning to glorify his memory, there should be a statue of Trump sneaking out the side door of his aircraft and into a catering van without addressing the safety of the journalists he was abandoning and without so much as a farewell wave to those journalists whom he might have speculated would never see their families again.
Words and Phrases, failure is not unexpected by Jen Rubin was a great read this morning. Much like the Apollo astronauts whose famous words were “failure is not an option” should be expected. Even those astronauts and those in Mission Control were able to work together and make it work—they got the astronauts home safely but dubbed the mission as a successful failure. This is what the current administration needs to do but they are too prideful to ask for help.
LET'S TALK TAXATION
This word, taxation, is feared by the ultra-rich, and it should be the most understood term by the rest of us. In essence, think about it this way: let's say you just inherited 30 million dollars, and I say I want 5% of that money, and you say hell no. Taxation is just that. Questions like Where do you get the right to take 5% of my inheritance? Where do we get that right? It can be said that the Constitution says that this new government can collect taxes, but how it is collected, how much, and from whom are not defined. What is fair or what is right?
In a family, is it right to give one child more than the others? Again, what is right or what is fair? Before the seventeenth century, it was accepted that royalty lived in castles and that people with low incomes provided them with most of their earnings. No one questioned that, and no one questioned anything in previous cultures where the special class lived at the expense of the lesser class.
We see signs of disagreement with this caste system among certain religious leaders, who proclaim that caring for others is God's will, or “do unto others as you want done to you,” as seen in Jesus washing the feet of Mary Magdalene or in Buddha leaving his parents' castle to live among the rest of the population. This raises other questions: where did this idea come from? Was it God, or from somewhere else? Were we wired to see things as right or wrong?
I watch birds building their nests and the mother feeding all the baby birds without distinction, or the mother elephant caring for her baby while other members of the elephant group assume care if the mother is unable to do so. How do they know all this, and do we also know what we should do? I think we all inherently know values about right and wrong, good and bad. I know that Buddhism teaches that we all have embedded knowledge about our nature, which we cover with falsehoods, and that Jesus taught that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." So there were teachings, but they were limited to a few and could not be shared with the public until later.
Then came the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, which followed the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, beginning with Andreas Vesalius and culminating with Isaac Newton. The revolution produced changes that challenged the Catholic Church, including the idea that the world is round rather than flat and that the sun does not revolve around us; we revolve around the sun. The Enlightenment saw writers like Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and John Locke use new printing techniques to propose ideas such as individual liberties, the rule of law, and religious freedom; they also discussed the establishment of secular states. This was a period of developing ideas about right and wrong, with topics like Hume's science of man, Locke's philosophy of social contracts, and discussions of natural and legal rights. Locke and Rousseau argued that individuals acquire civil rights by accepting the obligation to respect and protect the rights of others, thereby relinquishing certain personal freedoms in the process. Locke defines the state of nature as a condition in which humans are rational and follow natural law, in which all men are born equal and with the right to life, liberty, and property.
And so, we have it: the idea that what is right or wrong is a natural process embedded in our humanity. Consider a small village with two storage bins: one owned by the baron and the other by the poor people of that county. How do you think the poor people should accept that the baron's bin has enormous supplies of food while the peasants' bin is nearly empty? Would they think that is right? In the make-believe world, the baron would acknowledge the surplus in his bin and distribute food to the peasants; that’s in the make-believe world, but what about the peasants? What should they do? Should their families starve while they do nothing? No, they would revolt!
Now back to us: we should be outraged by the presence in our world of billionaires and MAGA-rich people who sit atop their fortunes and believe they do not have to share the wealth with those around them. This is where taxation comes in; we should reject their mentality and impose greater taxation on their fortunes
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration reached a 94% top marginal tax rate in 1944. This rate applied to individual taxable income exceeding $200,000 (roughly equivalent to $2.8–$3.5 million today).
• Harry S. Truman: Maintained high wartime rates, and the top marginal rate remained at 91% to 92% throughout the Korean War era.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower: Kept the top marginal tax rate at 91% throughout his two terms in the 1950s
• The highest federal corporate income tax rate in U.S. history was 52.8%, levied in 1968 and 1969 (during the Vietnam War era, combining a 50% normal/surtax rate with a temporary 10% surcharge), compared with today's 21%. (Wikipedia)
We do not have any control over money passed on to others in an inheritance, and other countries have an inheritance tax. And finally, other countries have a direct tax on individuals' wealth, and we don’t. When are we going to wake up? Do you think our tax code just happened? Do you think our tax code favoring the rich just happened? You see, the rich know about tax codes and how to keep them favoring the rich, and they will fight any attempt to change them with all their wealth.