Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that charges of bigotry against President Donald Trump remain unfounded because the president previously financed a 2014 medical mission to Haiti.
Paul said on Meet the Press, “I think it’s unfair to sort of paint him, ‘oh well, he’s a racist,’ when I know for a fact that he cares very deeply about the people of Haiti because he helped finance a trip where they would get vision back for 200 people in Haiti.â€
Breitbart News wrote from Antigua, Guatemala in August 2014, “Paul raised tens of thousands of dollars through various donors, including real estate magnate Donald Trump, to help cover the Moran Eye Center’s trip costs,†which included a $10,000 donation from Donald Trump.
Sen. Paul’s communications team confirmed to Breitbart News that Sen. Paul solicited a donation from Trump for the Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah to fund the trip to Haiti and Guatemala.
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Firenze Sage:Â Â And where were Durbin and the rest of the loudmouths. What did CNN contribute?
Trump’s proposed health care rule offers relief from high premiums and freedom to choose
Whew! Trump offers relief from Obama-Care’s many requirements  and high premiums.  Trump’s health care proposal [The Wall Street Journal, Friday, Jan 5, 2018] offers millions of self-employed and small businesses freedom to purchase health insurance plans that don’t comply with Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Time to speak up and say what you think. The new rule will be published Friday in the Federal Register and undergo a 60 day comment period.
The Trump administration also plans to release a proposal to pave the way for more short-term health policies with fewer benefits.
The proposal was praised by the National Restaurant Association and the National Retail Association as a way for small businesses to have the same bargaining power as large companies, leveling the playing field. Self-employed people who don’t get subsidies also heralded the proposed changes in rules.
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Aptos Psychologist Cameron Jackson: Getting rid of the requirement that all Americans must purchase health insurance — which is part of the recent legislation that reduces taxes for 80% of Americans — that was a huge step towards more choice. This proposal means that mom’s working from home as sole proprietors can get health care for themselves and their family. Whew.Â
Trump’s policy towards the Ukraine is a complete change in policy from Obama’s policy – as Obama would not help the Ukraine when it was annexed by Putin back in 2014.
From the Wall Street Journal, On Monday the White House released a new national security strategy that named Russia as a “revisionist†power seeking to upend global order. On Wednesday President Trump followed up by confirming he’d approved the sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine as it resists Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Mr. Putin invaded and then illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, and Ukrainians have been fighting since to stop the march of Moscow-backed separatists in their south and east. They’ve had little material support from the West. That’s about to change now that the Trump Administration has approved a $41.5 million sale of weapons that include the Model 107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition and parts.
Comment by Aptos Psychologist: Actions speak louder than words. Trump’s rhetoric of ‘get along’ with Russia –  now has teeth with a bite. Other news: Russia’s top prosecutor’s son is now on the “bad list” and cannot enter the USA or access his financial assets.
Does he/ she rub your back OK? Is that what Mueller’s FBI agents say?
Does he rub your back OK?   What over diner do Mueller’s FBI agents Page and Strzok –involved in the Trump investigation – say to spouses? ‘Pass the peas?’
What do FBI agents Strzok and Page — both married to different people –  say to their spouses over dinner tonight (Dec. 13, 2017)  now that it comes out what they have been doing [having a sexual affair] and sending text communications back and forth about their dislike of Trump. And how to save the country from a possible President Trump.
Do Page and Strzok say, ‘Pass the peas?’ On Wed. FBI agent Page and her husband Barrow left their home to do what they do, i.e, get children where they have to go.
Clearly, Special Investigator Mueller did not check out the political bias of those he put on his crack team. Clearly Mueller did not do his homework. Now it’s unraveling … Why did Mueller put the lead FBI agent Stzok involved with the Clinton emails [he sat in on the interviews and recommended changing the language so more supportive of Clinton] also on the team investigating Trump? That was Mueller’s bad decision.
How does the Page/ Strzok sexual affair and their communications back and forth impact the image of the FBI and USA federal government. Both Strzok and Page were and are pro-Clinton and anti-Trump and have been so for a long time.
And – very importantly also — how does the publicity about all this impact their children and their families?
Yes – this info may impact the Mueller investigation of Trump.
Right now it is such good drool humor about the inner workings of the prior Obama administration …. please keep more of it coming. Please don’t kill this investigation. Somewhere it will surface that Obama had a hand in all this.
Conservative media has taken a new tack against Mueller in recent weeks, zeroing in on the sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russia state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom.
Uranium One, at the time of the deal, held licenses for about 20 percent of America’s uranium production capacity. The sale was approved by nine members on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in 2010, while President Obama was in office. Mueller was the director of the FBI at the time.
But reporting by The Hill has shown that the FBI had knowledge of bribery and racketeering schemes at Tenex, a subsidiary of Rosatom, before CFIUS approved the deal.
Republican lawmakers critical of the deal have questioned whether the FBI shared that information with other members of CFIUS before it was approved — an aspect of the controversy that conservative media has seized upon.
“Robert Mueller, I hope you’re watching, you need to testify under oath,†Fox News host Sean Hannity said earlier this month. “Back in 2009, he was the FBI director, this was when the bureau, the FBI so clearly had this information. He has conflicts of interest. There is no way the American people can trust Robert Mueller to investigate anything Russia-related. For him to be fair and impartial is impossible because of his past role in this. He should resign immediately, tonight.â€
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Comments:  What “crime” was committed and therefore Mueller investigates?  No crime has been stated. Clearly there were and are on-going attempts of Russia and other countries to interfere in American affairs. The General who lied did so during transition – not during the campaign. So we should we impeach Trump …. what the mainstream media and “the deep state” want …. because Trump fired FBI Comey who “knew” the General lied?
On Thursday, acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan announced at the day’s press briefing that Trump’s third-quarter salary would be donated to the Department of Health and Human Services. The money will assist with the department’s fight against the opioid epidemic. Hargan said that it will be used to fund a “large-scale public awareness campaign.”
 Trump made the opioid epidemic a big part of his campaign, and he did very well in areas that have been ravaged by the drugs. More Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2016 than during the entire Vietnam War, and the problem has only worsened. Earlier this year, First Lady Melania Trump visited a specialized treatment center in West Virginia for babies who were born addicted to the drug.
Hilary Clinton’s chickens  come home to roost? Who really colluded with whom?
Hilary and the Democrat Party colluded to create fake information [the Trump dossier] which — for the past year — has affected many people’s reputations.
For nearly a year, the media has pounded away on the narrative that Trump colluded and stole the election from Hilary.
Hilary Clinton’s campaign message for President was simple and consistent:  Trump is not fit to serve.
Now we learn via the Washington Post 10/24/17  that Hilary Clinton ‘knew’ Trump’ was supposedly unfit because she and the Democrat Party paid the bill to create false info about Trump.
Hilary Clinton and the Democratic National Party (DNC) paid $9+ MILLION for Fusion GPS to pay Christopher Steele to create the dossier on Trump.
What is Fusion GPS?  hiding? Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm†founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.†But congressional sources say it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary Clinton, anti-Trump agenda.
“These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,†a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.â€
Dirt digging by Fusion GPS: Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired long-retired British spy  Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democratic ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.
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Take away: Now we know why Hilary Clinton was so adamant that she ‘knew’ that Trump is unfit to serve. She ‘knows’ because she paid lots of money to create false information on Trump via Fusions GPS.
Next step: Let’s require Fusion GPS to open up it’s books. We may learn a lot more about who colluded with whom when that happens.
Like exactly who profited from the sale of 20 percent of USA uranium to Russia when Hilary Clinton was Secretary of State. Did Hilary collude?
And, why now is the Washington Post and its backers willing to throw Hilary Clinton under the bus? Because she just won’t go away?
Americans are not stupid. They can make informed choices.
Let people choose their doctors and their health plans.
What to do? Legalize competition across state lines. That will drive premium costs down.
Give ObamaCare no money via the Exchanges. Let people opt out totally. Let small businesses create their own collectives. Encourage Health Savings Accounts with families making the decisions how to spend their health dollars.
written by Cameron Jackson
Phil Gramm, Republicans, Stand up for Health Freedom WSJ, Oct. 19, 2017
“President Trump has now created another such opening for compromise by announcing he will end ObamaCare’s cost-sharing payments to insurers. Without a constant injection of additional money, ObamaCare premiums will spiral upward, and the number of Americans who benefit from the program will continue to fall.
But the initial bipartisan bill, offered by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D., Wash.), is more of a capitulation than compromise. It resuscitates ObamaCare but hardly provides a fig leaf for Americans who want their health-care freedom back—the very people who elected Republicans.
“Any agreement to restore funding for cost-sharing payments should be tied to provisions allowing families to opt out of ObamaCare and buy coverage that meets their individual needs. The compromise should also grant insurers the right to sell such plans independent of ObamaCare’s rules and its rigged risk pool.
“A money-for-freedom compromise would at last provide an opportunity to debate health-care freedom, something the public was denied by the great ObamaCare lie. If Democrats refuse to allow ObamaCare’s losers to escape in return for funding for the program’s beneficiaries, it will be Democrats who let the program collapse. Throughout the debate they will be forced to argue against the very health-care freedom they falsely promised when they adopted ObamaCare.”
the above is from an article in the Wall Street Journal Oct. 19, 2017  by Phil Gramm “Republicans, Stand Up for Health Freedom”
Former Ohio Democrat Congressman Dennis Kucinich defended President Donald Trump’s claims about being wiretapped by the Obama administration during the 2016 presidential election.
“It’s important because there are people who are saying about President Trump’s claim, ‘Oh, it could never happen.’ Well, frankly, it happened to me,” Kucinich told Fox News on Friday. Also on Friday, the former congressman penned an article on Fox News describing the incident — a phone call in his congressional office from a foreign leader had been tapped in 2011, and he listened to a recording of it in 2015.
“Members of Congress ought to be aware that my experience was that my phone wasn’t safe in a congressional office,” Kucinich, who served in the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2013, said. “Now, if they can do that to a member of Congress, they can certainly do it to a presidential candidate, and they can do it to private citizens as well.”
The former congressman learned that he had been wiretapped two years after leaving office, when he was approached by The Washington Times. “The newspaper’s investigative reporters called me, saying they had obtained a tape of a sensitive telephone conversation that they wanted me to verify,” Kucinich wrote. “When I met them at a Chinese restaurant in Washington, they played back audio of a call I had taken in my D.C. congressional office four years earlier.”Kucinich recalled that the call had been from Saif el-Islam Qaddafi, a high-ranking official in Libya’s government and a son of the country’s ruler, Moammar Qaddafi. “At the time I was leading efforts in the House to challenge the Obama administration’s war against Libya,” the former congressman recalled. “The Qaddafi government reached out to me because its appeals to the White House and the State Department to forestall the escalating aggression had gone unanswered.”
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Firenze Sage: Â Well so much for the most transparent govt in history.
School bathroom decisions given back to states by Trump. Â That’s not authoritarian.
Lost in most of the coverage of President Trump’s decision to rescind the Obama administration’s transgender mandates is a fundamental legal reality: The Trump administration just relinquished authority over gender-identity policy in the nation’s federally funded schools and colleges.
In other words, Trump was less authoritarian than Obama. And that’s not the only case.
Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, a man known not just for his intellect and integrity but also for his powerful legal argument against Âexecutive-branch overreach. Based on his previous legal writings, if Gorsuch had his way, the federal bureaucracy could well face the most dramatic check on its authority since the early days of the New Deal.
 Trump nominated H. R. McMaster to replace Michael Flynn as his national-security adviser. McMaster made his name on battlefields in the Gulf War and the Iraq War, but he made his name as a scholar by writing a book, “Dereliction of Duty,†that strongly condemned Vietnam-era generals for simply rolling over in the face of Johnson-administration blunders and excesses.
In his view, military leaders owe their civilian commander in chief honest and courageous counsel — even when a president may not want to hear their words.
 When the Ninth Circuit blocked Trump’s immigration executive order (which was certainly an aggressive assertion of presidential power), he responded differently from the Obama administration when it faced similar judicial setbacks.
Rather than race to the Supreme Court in the attempt to expand presidential authority, it told the Ninth Circuit that it intends to rewrite the order to address the most serious judicial concerns and roll back its scope.
Authoritarianism is defined by how a president exercises power, not by the rightness of his goals.
The above is from the National Review.
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Monterey Bay Forum: So far, Â Trump’s bark is much louder than his bite. Â He certainly controls the news narrative of the day. What will come tomorrow?
