USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Peter Lemkin]

[David Guyatt]

It always does. Goldman should be terminated with extreme prejudice. Wound up anyway - it's a real danger to society everywhere.

[Peter Lemkin]

Trumpf apparently hung up in anger during a phone call on the Australian Prime Minister over the deal brokered by Obama and Oz to relocate some refugees in the USA.

Trumpf also reportedly threatened the Mexican President on the phone with sending US Troops into Mexico if the Mexican Military doesn't act the way Trumpf expects them to.

We have a dangerous authoritarian Cowboy in the Oval Office, with nuclear six-shooters always at his sides.....and the entire might of the US Military as backup. His words, deeds, and threats are those of a common thug.

[Peter Lemkin]

Trump Vows to Destroy' Law Banning Political Activity by Churches

By MARK LANDLER FEB. 2, 2017






President Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times WASHINGTON President Trump vowed Thursday to overturn a law restricting political speech by tax-exempt churches, a potentially huge victory for the religious right and a gesture to his political base.
Mr. Trump said his administration would "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches from engaging in political activity at the risk of losing their tax-exempt status.
Repealing the law would require approval by Congress. Certain tax-exempt organizations in this case, churches are not allowed to openly endorse or campaign for political candidates. If they do, under existing law, they risk losing the benefits of their tax-exempt status.
Speaking to a gathering of religious leaders, the president also defended his immigration policy, brushed aside concern about his harsh phone calls with foreign leaders, and ridiculed Arnold Schwarzenegger for his poor ratings in replacing Mr. Trump as host of "Celebrity Apprentice."
He did not mention an executive order on religious freedom, which critics said would restrict the rights of lesbians and gay men; a draft of the order has circulated, but administration officials have denied that it will be adopted.
In addressing the issue of churches and political speech, Mr. Trump said, "I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution."
He added that "freedom of religion is a sacred right, but it is under serious threat."
During his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump promised to push for repeal of the law, which was passed in 1954 and named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who proposed the change to the tax code.
Mr. Trump also went off topic in his address to the National Prayer Breakfast. He told the audience not to worry about reports that he had held tempestuous phone calls with the leaders of allies Australia and Mexico, saying a tough approach was long overdue.
"When you hear about the tough phone calls, don't worry," he said. "We're being taken advantage of by countries around the world. It's time for us to be a little tough. It's not going to happen anymore."



Mr. Trump also needled Mr. Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, for failing to maintain his ratings as the new host of "Celebrity Apprentice." "We know how that turned out," he said. "The ratings went down the tubes."
"I want to just pray for Arnold, for those ratings," he said.
The president spent much of his speech defending the visa ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which caused chaos at airports and set off protests across the country.
"Terrorism is a fundamental threat to religious freedom," he declared. "It must be stopped and it will be stopped."
The president described "peace-loving Muslims" who had been killed by jihadi fighters aligned with the Islamic State, as well as a campaign of genocide against Christians in the Middle East. Extremists, he said, took advantage of the "generosity" of Americans to undermine the nation's safety.
"My administration will do everything in its power to defend religious liberty," he said. "We have to feel safe and secure."
Mr. Trump talked about the influence of faith in his own life, referring to the family Bible, which was used when he took the oath of office at his inauguration. His mother, he said, read to him from that Bible during his childhood.
"America is a nation of believers," he said. "The quality of our lives is not defined by our material success, but by our spiritual success."
"I tell you that as someone who has had material success," he added, before noting that many rich people are "very miserable, unhappy people."
The breakfast featured the usual menu of homilies and testimonials to the power of faith. But the proceedings took a show-business turn when Mark Burnett, the Hollywood producer, stepped to the podium to introduce the president. Mr. Burnett recalled the influence Mr. Trump's book, "The Art of the Deal," had on him as a recently arrived immigrant. He later produced "Celebrity Apprentice" as a reality television vehicle for Mr. Trump.
The president led his remarks with an extended reminiscence about the show, recalling that he fired his agent after the agent rejected Mr. Burnett's pitch for the program. "I actually got on the phone and fired him myself," Mr. Trump said with a smile.

what exactly is the Johnson Amendment?

A restriction for churches and nonprofits

It is one of the brightest lines in the legal separation between religion and politics. Under the provision, which was made in 1954, tax-exempt entities like churches and charitable organizations are unable to directly or indirectly participate in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate. Specifically, ministers are restricted from endorsing or opposing candidates from the pulpit. If they do, they risk losing their tax-exempt status.
Considered uncontroversial at the time, it was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican. Today, however, many Republicans want to repeal it.

The Johnson' is Lyndon Johnson

Back when Lyndon B. Johnson was a senator from Texas, he introduced the measure as an amendment to the tax code in 1954. Like many things Johnson did, the goal was to bludgeon a political opponent, in this case a rival in a primary who had the backing of nonprofit groups that were campaigning against him by suggesting he was a communist. Though there was no church involved, according to PolitiFact, churches were covered by the bill as well.

It fulfills a major campaign promise to the right

Mr. Trump promised he would work to repeal the Johnson Amendment as part of his extensive outreach efforts to religious conservatives, a group that took a long time to warm to his candidacy. Eliminating the measure has been a goal of the right. Conservatives have argued that it violates the protections of free speech and free exercise that the First Amendment extends to houses of worship. Courts have not agreed.
Speaking of the implications of a repeal last year, Jerry Falwell Jr., the prominent evangelical leader and Trump supporter, said it would "create a huge revolution for conservative Christians and for free speech."

[Peter Lemkin]

The Trump administration has announced plans to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants living in so-called sanctuary cities, where local officials and law enforcement are refusing to comply with federal immigration authorities' efforts to speed up deportations. The plans for the weekly list, to be published by the Department of Homeland Security, were included in Trump's executive orders signed last week. We speak to Andrea Pitzer. Her upcoming book is called "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps."

---

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what President Trump has said he's going to do: keep a list of, quote, "immigrant crimes"?

ANDREA PITZER: Well, this weekly report that he has called for recalls a number of things from the past that we have seen before, which is this move to isolate and identify and then vilify a vulnerable minority community in order to move against it. When heI just went back last night and reread his speech from when he declared his candidacy, and the Mexican rapist comment was in from the beginning, and so this has been a theme throughout. And we see back in Nazi Germany there was a paper calleda Nazi paper called Der Stürmer, and they had a department called "Letter Box," and readers were invited to send in stories of supposed Jewish crimes. And Der Stürmer would publish them, and they would include some pretty horrific graphic illustrations of these crimes, as well. And there was even a sort of a lite version of it, if you will, racism lite, in which the Neues Volk, which was more like a Look or a Life magazine, which normally highlighted beautiful Aryan families and their beautiful homes, would run a feature like "The Criminal Jew," and they would show photos of "Jewish-looking," as they called it, people who represented different kinds of crimes that one ought to watch out for from Jews.

So this preoccupation with focusing in on one subset of the population's crimes and then depicting that as somehow depraved and abnormal from the main population is something we've seen quite a bit in the past, even in the U.S. Before Japanese-American internment, you had newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle running about the unassimilability of the Japanese immigrants and also the crime tendencies and depravities they had, which were distinguished from the main American population.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, this flies in the face of all studies that have shown that the crime rate among immigrant populations in the United States is actually lower than it is among ordinary American citizens, but yet this is attempting to take isolated incidents or particular crimes and sort of raise them to the level of a general trend, isn't it?

ANDREA PITZER: It is. And I think it's part of a disturbing narrative in which you strip out the broader context and the specificity of actions like this, and you try to weave them into this preset narrative of good and evil somehow, that really ends up being simple and dishonest and very counterproductive for the society as a whole. But yes, in general, these groups would want to keep a lower profile. They would want to stay off law enforcement's radar. And so, this is one of the reasons that's been suspected that it's actually a lower crime rate. But if you get a few dramatic imagesand don't forget now, this won't be coming outyou know, Breitbart has had this "black crimes" tag that they've used to try to do a similar thing in the past. And now we have Bannon in the White House. And it's sort of a scaling-up and doing this with a different minority group, and you'll have these, what will no doubt be, very dramatic narratives that will come forward that will eclipse the larger picture. And they're going to have the imprimatur of a government report, which I think is another disturbing aspect.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Andrea Pitzer, about the White House considering a plan to make visitors reveal cellphone, internet data. Describe the role mass surveillance plays in authoritarian societies.

ANDREA PITZER: Well, over time, we've seen that it's very hard to have an authoritarian or a totalitarian society, a state that runs, without a secret police. And you can'twhat you need the secret police for is to gather information secretly. The surveillance techniques and abilities that we have today are really unparalleled in history. And while we can't yet be sure what the Trump administration's motives are, what they have at their disposal is far greater than what was had in Soviet Russia, in Nazi Germany. I'm thinking in particular of Himmler complaining that he had trouble keeping track of all the people he needed to, because he needed so many agents. But when you have the kind of technology that we do, you don't need as many people, if you have the right tools to use. And so, the ability to gather that kind of information and then potentially use it, domestically or on foreigners who happen to be here, I think is something that's worth paying attention to and to be concerned about.

[Peter Lemkin]

Jeff Sessions has been approved as Attorney General by the Senate Judicial Committee and his confirmation is now a foregone conclusion. But he is a proponent of the phony war on drugs, a supporter of mass government surveillance, and has vowed to mandate encryption backdoors for "national security."

[Peter Lemkin]

[Cliff Varnell]

Trumpf apparently hung up in anger during a phone call on the Australian Prime Minister over the deal brokered by Obama and Oz to relocate some refugees in the USA.

Trumpf also reportedly threatened the Mexican President on the phone with sending US Troops into Mexico if the Mexican Military doesn't act the way Trumpf expects them to.

We have a dangerous authoritarian Cowboy in the Oval Office, with nuclear six-shooters always at his sides.....and the entire might of the US Military as backup. His words, deeds, and threats are those of a common thug.

Trump has put Iran "on notice" that a US military attack is in the planning stages.

Why anyone thought Trump was some kind of isolationist peacenik is mystifying.

[Peter Lemkin]

Trumpf apparently hung up in anger during a phone call on the Australian Prime Minister over the deal brokered by Obama and Oz to relocate some refugees in the USA.

Trumpf also reportedly threatened the Mexican President on the phone with sending US Troops into Mexico if the Mexican Military doesn't act the way Trumpf expects them to.

We have a dangerous authoritarian Cowboy in the Oval Office, with nuclear six-shooters always at his sides.....and the entire might of the US Military as backup. His words, deeds, and threats are those of a common thug.

Trump has put Iran "on notice" that a US military attack is in the planning stages.

Why anyone thought Trump was some kind of isolationist peacenik is mystifying.

Not to mention that Bannon, apparently the real power behind the 'throne', has recently repeated about a full war with China in the offing [i.e. sooner than later].

The War on everyone in the USA not rich, white, Christian, male, straight, far-right, corporation-friendly, has already begun.

It is not as if he didn't advertise all these things. Yes, he offered a few pipe-dreams to make the medicine go down, and apparently the useful idiots bought it. Blame is also on the Democrats, however, as their alternative was also very bad, and clearly only 'more of the same', which was not a good same, even if a less insane same.

The only answer is to start impeachment efforts [many], even if they fail; to completely re-stock the Senate with progressive anti-Trumpf Senators in two years and stop this madness before it is too late. In the meantime in local/state jurisdictions, battles through the courts, and general resistance of the People are needed to try to temper/thwart in some ways this madness.

'America First' is looking more like 'America Uber Alles' to me.....

[Peter Lemkin]

In another act of madness, within the last hours, the House of Representatives have scrapped a law that forbade selling of guns to those with diagnosed mental health problems. The gun lobby who were big supporters of Trumpf will get everything and anything they want now. More guns for everyone except those who really need it for defense against the Police, State, local criminals. Madness. American has disintegrated back four decades in less than two weeks and some here are opening up the champagne because they feel the 'neocons' are gone. This is worse than the neocons and to me seems to be the old wine in a new bottle. New faces for sure....but the same ugly general policies - only the draperies have been changed.