Death by a Thousand Cuts: Is Trump Demolishing the Federal Government to Please Corporate America?

by Nomad

President Trump may call it downsizing but a look at just some of the programs and agencies that face cuts (or outright dismantling) makes one wonder what will be spared.

The Heritage Foundation Budget

Trump transition staffers say they've earmarked ways to reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years and cutting jobs is a big part of the plan, The Hill reported. The cutback blueprint report was hand-delivered last year from the powerful conservative think tank and advocacy group the Heritage Foundation.Trump's budget cuts closely mirror a document (titled “Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017”)

The article in The Hill cited unnamed sources from inside President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team. According to that report, two Trump transition staffers are charged with presenting the possible cuts to the White House Budget Office. The Hill said.

 Russ Vought, a former aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence and the former executive director of the RSC, and John Gray, who previously worked for Pence, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) when Ryan headed the House Budget Committee.

Both Vought and Gray worked for the Heritage Foundation, once the intellectual backbone and now the bane of the GOP. Right Wing Watch has quite an archive on the Heritage Foundation. Weeks after the election, the watchdog group reported on a new initiative designed to "roll back the power of the federal government’s regulatory agencies." 

Now with former Heritage rank and file in charged of the budget, the rolling back has presidential approval.   

Here are Five Orwellian Quotes for Trump's "Post-Truth" Presidency

by Nomad

When tiny Donnie Trump, future President of the United States, was a two-year toddler, a world-famous author named George Orwell passed away of tuberculosis at the age of 46.

Orwell's best-known book, "Nineteen-Eighty-Four" painted a grim dystopian image of the future, in which lies and truth were reversible and the definitions of both were under the absolute control of an autocratic state.

The slogans of the ruling party in the novel are all about controlling the message and allowing no dissent, even to the degree of stating something as obvious as 2 plus 2 equals 4 or the size of a crowd.
Allies could suddenly become enemies and long-vilified enemies could in mid-sentence become welcome allies. The "facts" could be anything that suited the leaders and this required citizens to hold both truth and lies - the most transparent- are having equal value. (Thank God, this was just fiction.

Terms found in the novel such as "Big Brother", "doublethink" and "newspeak" have become part of our political language.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 65 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, giving George Orwell a unique place in world literature.

Practically ever since that book was written, Orwell's insight into the ways a government can manipulate the truth has served as an alarm against an increasingly totalitarian world.

An Interesting Story from Trump's Past Should Serve as a Warning to the CIA

by Nomad

In my pursuit of something new, I often go back to something old. In this case, to May 1991. I found an article written by the late Christopher Byron, a veteran financial writer of Wall Street and all of the 1990s shenanigans that went on. In this piece published in New York Magazine (May 1991), Trump plays only a cameo appearance.

The piece is, in fact, about a New York investigative agency, Kroll Associates. Based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City the firm had specialized in digging up dirt in the world of finance.

In the 1980s, corporations would consult Kroll regarding in investors, suitors and takeover targets. "with special attention to any perceived connections to disreputable organizations, suspicious business practices, personality and integrity issues, or any kind of corporate malfeasance " The CIA of Wall Street, you could say.

Its founder, Jules Kroll, recalled a short tale of his encounter with businessman Donald Trump. 

Byron wrote:

Donald Trump.. told me that he had once used Kroll for "a certain matter" and that the investigator's work had been "superb."

"You can quote me on that," said Trump.

A week or so later, however, Kroll himself supplied an unexpected reason for Trump's thumbs-up endorsement. According to Jules, Trump hired Kroll Associates four or five years ago to investigate whether Atlantic City's Plaza casino which Trump was negotiating to buy, had become "mobbed up."

"It was a tough assignment," said Kroll, shaking his head. "One of the people we interviewed was murdered three days after we spoke to him."

Sanity Sunday- Two Songs by Zee Avi

by Nomad

Here are two selections from Malaysian-born Zee Avi. This talented singer/songwriter is also a guitarist, ukulele player, and visual artist.
For more about her biographical details, click here.

Let's start off with "Bitter Heart."

How Ignoring American Diversity is Warping of our Heritage and Sense of Pride

by Nomad

The mission of the non-profit organization the Ad Council "is to identify a select number of significant public issues and stimulate action on those issues through communications programs that make a measurable difference in our society. "  

In the ad featured below, American professional wrestler, rapper and actor, John Cena points out that you cannot celebrate and honor America without recognizing its diversity.

Patriotism is, he says, more than pride of country. it’s a kind of love that goes beyond labels.

Looking for a Non-Political Diversion? Try Listening to these True Story Podcasts

by Nomad 

In honor of the "coronation, I've decided to offer my readers an alternative, a diversion from what will be, for many of us, a spectacle very difficult to watch. Here are three true story podcast episodes that you might find interesting.

Pleasures of Podcasts

Blogging can be hard work.
A lot like digging ditches in the Texas sun. In August. Some days my shoulders ache from toting that barge and lifting that bale. You just can't imagine.
Okay, it's not really all that hard. And to be honest, my reward is watching the lively chat that I am privileged to host on this blog.  

Of course, there are times in writing a blog article when the spirit is willing but the eyes feel like burning globes of fire. At such moments, it's time to take a break from all things Internet. 

But how?
By reading? No, that's clearly not a solution.
By sleeping? Perhaps but then my mind is still active- at least, as active as it will ever be. I need a shot of mental stimulation while keeping my eyes closed.
That doesn't leave a lot of options.

This is why listening to podcasts make so much sense for me. Maybe you too.

There are literally tens of thousands of podcasts available online. If you aren't familiar with the format, it's kind of like a radio program that you have control over. You can pause it or listen to it as many times as you like.
When you subscribe to a podcast feed, (and it is best to subscribe to more than one) you will receive a new show regularly, every week or so.

The subjects are practically limitless and can be loaded onto whatever device you wish, (phone, tablet) making them more portable than your laptop. Many podcasts are not discrete episodes but run as a season-long series.
But it's no problem if you have missed the previous installments, though. In that case, you can download all episodes and binge on a full season. (That's great if you are traveling and you don't feel like toting a book around.)

Unlike humans, not all podcasts are created equal and some of them are unbearable to sit through. As a rule, I cannot tolerate the kind of podcast where two people are sharing their opinions about politics a la the Howard Stern format.

Government for Sale: An Interesting Discovery in the CIA Files on Donald Trump

by Nomad

Newly-released CIA files offer us a bitter look back at what we used to laugh at decades ago. A satirical op-ed piece is a timely reminder of how far we have come along the path to corporatocracy. And under Trump, it's likely to get a lot worse. 

When I heard the news that the CIA had just uploaded around 13 million formerly classified documents, I did what any inquisitive blogger would do. I hastily typed in Donald Trump's name in the site's search engine. What I found was, to put it mildly, not what I was expecting.
No, nothing scandalous, so don't get too excited. There is one rather peculiar find to report.

Among a few other items, there's a photocopied news clipping of a June 1985 article by the then-editor of the monthly, Harper's Magazine, Lewis Lapham.
This article's presence in the CIA file is very likely to do a very brief mention of the CIA head at the time, Bill Casey. As for the Trump reference, you'll have to be a little patient.

The piece itself is a tongue-in-cheek op-ed entitled "Putting the Government Up for Sale: Deals to Ponder." The crux of the article is pretty basic and is summed up in the first paragraph.

"Sooner or later, it will occur to somebody in the Reagan administration to put the federal government up for sale in a patriotic series of leveraged buy-outs. The deficit and the national debt would vanish as if in magician's smoke. The Dow Jones stock averages would gain 4000 points and everybody lucky enough to command the necessary lines of credit and political patronage would make a killing."