I want the name and contact information of the liberal activist.

The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!

...After years to prepare, Mr. Ryan finally unveiled what was supposedly the outline of a health care plan. It was basically a sick joke: flat tax credits, unrelated to income, that could be applied to the purchase of insurance....

Flat tax credits are an oxymoron, in more ways than one.

$5,638.75 is the amount of federal income tax paid by someone earning $50,000
per year. Even when Trump eliminates all federal taxes for those earning $50,000 or less 
per year it will not pay for health insurance.

The Public Option which was to be included in the ACA was a striped down version
of any commercial policy. It had all the same preventive measures and would pick
up costs should there be a medical problem, but, it was not commercial insurance
at all. It was a method to find disease among Americans and end it.

The Republican health care cooperatives have failed. The health care savings
account is ridiculous. People are suppose to set aside monies they will need for 
the year in an account that is tax free, but, if serious disease is found and needs
extensive medical intervention, where does the money come from?

Former Secretary John Kerry wanted to establish catastrophic health care plans.
That means one would have to figure in the cost of the catastrophic health care
plan into their health care savings account. 

Catastrophic health plans (click here) cover the same minimum health benefits as other health plans under the Affordable Care Act, including preventive services, emergency services, prescription drugs, and more. The difference with a catastrophic plan is that you must pay for all health-care costs until you meet a high annual deductible. Only after your out-of-pocket spending reaches the deductible does your plan begins to pay for most covered health-care services.

The deductible doesn't apply to all benefits. Catastrophic health plans cover the following benefits, even if you haven't met your yearly deductible yet:

• Three primary care visits every year
• Free preventive services required under the Affordable Care Act, including certain screenings and immunizations.

You'll pay the full cost for all other health-care services until you meet your yearly deductible. Other cost-sharing expenses, such as copayments and coinsurance, are usually higher with this type of plan. However, monthly premiums tend to be lower compared with major medical plans.

Catastrophic health coverage is different from accident, critical illness, or short-term plans; these types of coverage tend to protect the policyholder in specific, limited situations. For example, critical illness plans insure the policyholder against specific health illnesses. Short-term plans provide limited, temporary coverage when an individual isn't eligible to enroll in a major medical health plan or is waiting for coverage to start. For example, you might enroll in a short-term plan to fill a coverage gap before you're eligible for Medicare....

By invoking health care savings accounts and catastrophic health care plans there are still huge blocks of health care that make up the hospital budget not covered.

If there is regression into lack of coverage, there will be all those idiot health care plans that existed before. It supplies a card to carry so the emergency room won't turn a subscriber away, but, once inside the ER there is virtually nothing covered and we are back to bankruptcy and the destruction of the American Dream.

The Affordable Care Act eliminated the bankruptcies and put Americans on a track to success and building wealth. All those pitfalls leading to bankruptcy and home ownership were to be eliminated. The Affordable Care Act was much bigger than simply health care coverage. The law was to insure a reliable outcome to one's health through preventive care and the security of a home for the family. 

Do I have to go there? Home ownership is the primary avenue for people to secure wealth in the USA. Why wealth? Because it solves a lot of problems. It solves the problems of food stamps, Medicaid and vacant neighborhoods. It protects culture and brings the country out of the dangers of collapsing economies. 

Local economies and health care for all is the answer to economic stability. While other countries 'get wise' to Wall Street's greed, the USA can have sustainable economies, cultures, education for the future of their children and an optimistic consumer base.

Yes, the ACA can achieve all that, but, not if hideous Republican political speak continues to put jerks in the White House who have a Ultra White agenda. Putting the American people back in peril with their health achieves the Ultra White's long term "peaceful ethnic cleansing." Come on, get over this mess!

September 17, 2009
By David Cecere

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths (click here) are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993....

This is really good news for China and the USA. And it is still good news for the UK.

This is the way trade relations is suppose to work. Welcome to the Chinese Middle Class.

The UK has nothing to worry about because they are not displaced from tourism to the USA, it means there will be Chinese tourists at the destination, too. 

Basically, the more the merrier.

February 23, 2017
By Katie Johnson

A record number of Chinese tourists visited Boston last year, (click here) dethroning the United Kingdom as the top source of overseas tourists. And next month, local tourism officials are leading their first sales mission to China to attract even more.

The number of Chinese visitors to the area has more than doubled over the past four years, to an estimated 230,000 last year, according to the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The visitors bureau is aiming to again more than double the number of Chinese visitors to the city to half a million by 2021.

This is the Chinese the people of the USA wanted to bring about in opening trade relations with President Richard Nixon. This is the USA that is proud of it's ability to instill an understanding of quality of life and how everyone on Earth is welcome to practice it.

Economies topple when they are contracted into the foreign impoverished worker and the American consumer. Citizen to citizen there should be an understanding healthy economies with quality of life, including health care, should exist for all. No more of the wacko Wall Street paradigm. It is over!

There is every reason to continue with all venues of treatment and cure.

February 23, 2017
By Natalie Akoorie

New evidence on how Parkinson's disease spreads (click here) offers renewed hope for a cure, according to researchers.

In a paper, published today in Scientific Reports - Nature, the study revealed that pathological proteins (known as Lewy bodies) in Parkinson's disease could be spread from cell to cell.

The discovery, made by researchers at the University of Auckland, is the first strong evidence on how Parkinson's develops and will help advance treatment of the disease.

Associate Professor Maurice Curtis, who leads research on Parkinson's disease at the University's Centre for Brain Research, said the new evidence is the first proof, using donated human brains, of the mechanism controlling the spread.

Curtis said it was previously known that the troublesome Lewy bodies accumulated in susceptible cells, but it was not known that the protein could spread from cell to cell, in the same way a straw connects two cups....

Obeso, Jose A., (click here) 

Maria C Rodriguez-Oroz, 

Christopher G Goetz, 

Concepcion Marin,

Jeffrey H Kordower,

Manuel Rodriguez,

Etienne C Hirsch,

Matthew Farrer, 

Anthony H V Schapira

& Glenda Halliday. "Missing Pieces in Parkinson's Disease Puzzle," 

Nature Medicine, 23 May 2010; 

16,

 

653–661

 

(2010

 

23 May 2010.

...What can we learn from gene therapy? Currently, there are four clinical trials testing different gene therapy approaches against Parkinson's disease. One finding common to all of these studies is that no serious adverse events have yet been reported for any of the procedures....

Everything old is new again.

Mikhail Lermontov (click here)

February 23, 2017

The giant November 2016 earthquake (click here) has snapped the top decks from a sunken Soviet cruise liner in the Marlborough Sounds.

The magnitude-7.8 tremor of November 14 last year pummelled the upper east coast of the South Island, cutting off the tourist mecca of Kaikoura, and causing its seabed to rise up to 2m.

It's also had an incredible impact on the wreck of the Mikhail Lermontov cruise liner which sank in Port Gore, at the northern end of the Marlborough Sounds, on February 16, 1986.

Go Dive Marlborough owner Brent McFadden, who has dived the world-renowned wreck thousands of times, noticed its damage just two days after the quake.

He found the top three decks of the 155m, 20,000-tonne Mikhail Lermontov had been jolted off in the force of the shaking and water force....

 

It is religious bigotry. There is no doubt about it. Caught 'ya.

The entire presidency of "W" was based out of the support of the Religious Right. Unfortunately, the Religious Right tends to be the voting base in Texas. The more reasonable persons are found, in no surprise, the larger cities of the states.

All the radical ideas found in the Trump administration are also seen in "W"s, but, with different measure of extremism. Trump found his place among the Tea Party that rejected the establishment Republicans.

The changes in education (click here), immigration, acceptance of sexual identity differences, housing (click here) and environmental law (click here) is all based in religious bigotry.


The introduction of computer based learning in impoverished populations of the USA is to force more and more children out of public education. Additionally, we already know voucher programs are primarily to "advance God's kingdom." (click here) That is engineered and institutionalized religious bigotry. How many churches don't mind the federal money but reject federal agendas because of it's religious standing?

Immigration is obvious. (click here)

Rejecting the transgender identity of children is based in hate and religious bigotry. When children are rejected at any level of society, what does that mean for the rest of us?

The cut back in housing incentives directly targets the lower incomes in the country and what demographic is that? (click here) Fifty-eight percent of low income Americans (200% of poverty level) are minorities. 

Environmental law also seeking to turn the corner on "Environmental Justice." (click here) One guess to the demographics of these folks. The best example of religious bigotry (DO NOT ACCEPT SCIENTIFIC FACT) is the outcome of the people of Flint, Michigan to Snyder's Emergency Manager Law. The Michigan law was changed to include more than supporting educational infrastructure, it took over the entire elected infrastructure and caused profound damage to that city's infrastructure leading to deaths and brain damage; that is known.

All these changes in our government that protected citizens from greed have been removed, to put in place exploitative measures. The only defense the CITIZENS have are the states and local authorities that have been established over the past two decades. There was definitive measures made once "W" was elected, too.

The "W" administration and Trump administration is based on what ever can be exploited and gotten away with is fair game. Ha, ha, ha, I am rich, white and know it with God's permission.

February 22, 2017

By Jeremy W. Peters, Jo Becher and Julie Hirschfield Davis

Washington — President Trump (click here) on Wednesday rescinded protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, overruling his own education secretary and placing his administration firmly in the middle of the culture wars that many Republicans have tried to leave behind.

In a joint letter, the top civil rights officials from the Justice Department and the Education Department rejected the Obama administration’s position that nondiscrimination laws require schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice.

That directive, they said, was improperly and arbitrarily devised, “without due regard for the primary role of the states and local school districts in establishing educational policy.”

The question of how to address the “bathroom debate,” as it has become known, opened a rift inside the Trump administration, pitting Education Secretary Betsy DeVos against Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr. Sessions, who had been expected to move quickly to roll back the civil rights expansions put in place under his Democratic predecessors, wanted to act decisively because of two pending court cases that could have upheld the protections and pushed the government into further litigation....

Radioactive meat and suspicions of birth defects.

February 23, 2017

Wild boar (click here) is a popular local delicacy in the Czech Republic but fans of the meat have an unusual problem on their hands this winter - the boars are radioactive.

The boars became contaminated by one of their most popular food sources - false truffles.

A cold and snowy winter is forcing them to feed on false truffles, an underground mushroom common in the Sumava mountain region between the Czech Republic, Austria, and Germany - where wild boars roam free.

The mushrooms can absorb high levels of the radioactive isotope Caesium 137. And three decades ago the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl released a fair amount of Caesium 137 that eventually drifted down on the Sumava mountains.

Now the boars are eating the mushrooms, and ingesting the Caesium 137 along with them....

Boars aren't the only problem left over from Chernobyl.

April 20, 2016
By Courtney Verrill

...A 2010 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics (click here) found a correlation between the presence of hazardous levels of strontium-90 — a radioactive element produced by nuclear fission — and dramatically high rates of certain congenital birth defects. 

Belarus, whose border with Ukraine is just four miles from the Chernobyl power plant, absorbed an estimated 70% of the nuclear fallout. 

A study by UNICEF suggested that more than 20% of adolescent children in Belarus suffer from disabilities caused by birth defects. 

Getty photographer Sean Gallup recently visited care centers for children with disabilities in Belarus. Below, see Gallup's images of the children living in these facilities....

The USA actually calls itself an ally?

Trump knows absolutely nothing about Europe's immigrants. Germany has reassessed the immigration issue and is carrying out some deportations. But, immigration in Europe is different from that of the USA and Trump needs to be an ally, not an instigator.

I swear he is the Ultra White attempting to unseat governments.

February 21, 2017
By Max Bearak

Just two days after President Trump (click here) provoked widespread consternation by seeming to imply, incorrectly, that immigrants had perpetrated a recent spate of violence in Sweden, riots broke out in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood in the northern suburbs of the country's capital, Stockholm.

The neighborhood, Rinkeby, was the scene of riots in 2010 and 2013, too.
And in most ways, what happened Monday night was reminiscent of those earlier bouts of anger. Swedish police apparently made an arrest on drug charges at about 8 p.m. near the Rinkeby station. For reasons not yet disclosed by the police, word of the arrest prompted youths to gather.

Over four hours, the crowd burned about half a dozen cars, vandalized several shopfronts and threw rocks at police. Police spokesman Lars Bystrom confirmed to Sweden's Dagens Nyheter newspaper that an officer fired shots at a rioter but missed. A photographer for the newspaper was attacked and beaten by more than a dozen men and his camera was stolen....

Additional to racial discrimination that victimizes people there is the language barrier.

Unless there are local studies of the incarcerated population and demographics including language competency, it is difficult from a national level to account for everyone.

What I think we are entering into is an "Anne Frank" syndrome in the USA. When people can only act covertly in their lives all kinds of economies break out that result in adverse circumstances for them and the USA in general.

When the undocumented can no longer work openly, the underground becomes a real answer. That should be avoided, but, it looks as though anything goes now.

January 27, 2017

By Julia Dahl

The Department of Homeland Security (click here) did not provide answers to Crimesider’s questions regarding how the federal government would go about collecting this data from the nation’s more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies, but the order nonetheless begs the question, how big a problem is crime committed by immigrants?

Florida State University Professor of Criminology Daniel Mears says that “good data” focused on immigrant criminality - specifically undocumented immigrant criminality - is scarce. Determining definitively whether someone who has been arrested is in the country legally can take significant effort, and the result might not be noted in all law enforcement records. In addition, researchers often have to rely on arrest and conviction numbers, which may be misleading because they can reflect law enforcement priorities more than criminal behavior. A jurisdiction might see a spike one year, for example, if a police chief or prosecutor decides to prioritize enforcement against immigrants.

Despite this, Mears and others who study this subject seem to agree that most research indicates immigrants actually commit crime at lower rates than native-born citizens.

According to analysis of the 2010 census and the American Communities Survey done by the non-profit  American Immigration Council, immigrants to the United States are significantly less likely than native-born citizens to be incarcerated. The authors found that 1.6 percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born.... 

Were these women trafficked?

It just seems as though they took orders too easily.

February 22, 2017

By Matthew Tostevin

The Vietnamese woman (click here) suspected of helping to kill the North Korean leader's half-brother was a keen singer whose Facebook pages featured pouting portraits and pictures of parties.

Four days before Kim Jong Nam was killed at a Malaysian airport, she appears to have posted a picture of herself wearing a shirt emblazoned with the acronym "LOL", similar to the one on the fleeing suspect caught on CCTV cameras.

Doan Thi Huong worked at an entertainment outlet, according to Malaysian police, who have arrested her over the murder of Kim Jong Nam.

On a rice farm in northern Vietnam, the family whose daughter's details match those from Malaysian police said it rarely knew where she was since she left home a decade ago aged 18....

I know age 18 is a reasonable age to leave home, but, never to be heard from again? That is suspicious to me.

Because there is no vetting. It is all crony politics. Twitter users don't know this? Do they understand what crony politics are? TAKE A GOOD LOOK, THIS IS IT!

February 21, 2017

By Jenni Fink

...On Friday, (click here) Trump's director of scheduling, Caroline Wiles, resigned before her background check was completed, according to the Washington Examiner. In a statement posted by the Florida Times Union, Wiles said:

“It has been my honor to serve President Trump in the campaign and the transition. I resigned my position last Friday and look forward to serving the Administration in a new capacity beginning next week.”

Sources told Politico that Wiles, the daughter of Trump's Florida campaign director and former campaign manager for Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), will now be taking a job in the Treasury department.

The staff's inability to pass a required background check made some Twitter users wonder how they were even in their positions in the first place, or how Wiles was able to be reassigned to Treasury.

The names of the other five staffers have not been released, and the White House has not commented on their dismissal.

Churches are legal sanctuary. I can't believe this is going on.

There are churches actively accepting refugees and/or the undocumented into their sanctuaries.

February 21, 2017
By Michael D. Shear and Ron Nixon

Washington — President Trump (click here) has directed his administration to more aggressively enforce the nation’s immigration laws, unleashing the full force of the federal government to find, arrest and deport those in the country illegally, regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes.

Documents released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security revealed the broad scope of the president’s ambitions: to publicize crimes by immigrants; enlist local police officers as enforcers; strip immigrants of privacy rights; erect new detention facilities; discourage asylum seekers; and, ultimately, speed up deportations.

The new enforcement policies put into practice the fearful speech that Mr. Trump offered on the campaign trail, vastly expanding the definition of “criminal aliens” and warning that such unauthorized immigrants “routinely victimize Americans,” disregard the “rule of law and pose a threat” to people in communities across the United States.

Despite Mr. Trump's talk, research shows lower levels of crime among immigrants than among native-born Americans....

The courts. The undocumented and especially refugees do have rights under the USA Constitution. They are persons.

Pyler vs. Doe

This is a class action, (click here) filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in September 1977, on behalf of certain school-age children of Mexican origin residing in Smith County, Tex., who could not establish that they had been legally admitted into the United States. The action complained of the exclusion of plaintiff children from the public schools of the Tyler Independent School District.^[2]The Superintendent and members of the Board of Trustees of the School District were named as defendants; the State of Texas intervened as a party-defendant. After certifying a class consisting of all undocumented school-age children of Mexican origin residing within the School District, the District Court preliminarily enjoined defendants from denying a free education to members of the plaintiff class. In December 1977, the court conducted an extensive hearing on plaintiffs' motion for permanent injunctive relief....

...The District Court held that illegal aliens were entitled to the protection of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that § 21.031 violated that Clause. Suggesting that "the state's exclusion of undocumented children from its public schools . . . may well be the type of invidiously motivated state action for which the suspect classification doctrine was designed," the court held that it was unnecessary to decide whether the statute would survive a "strict scrutiny" analysis because, in any event, the discrimination embodied in the statute was not supported by a rational basis. Id., at 585. The District Court also concluded that the Texas statute violated the Supremacy Clause.^[5] Id., at 590-592.

Pyler vs. Doe illustrates clearly PERSONS are real with real circumstances. The reason the school district in Texas wrote a law barring the undocumented children was because they would cost money to educate. Sadly, the Texas school district lost sight of the LONG VIEW. If these children were not educated they would not be productive people within the borders of the USA. 

So, the USA's courts determined discrimination was not costly to educate HUMAN BEINGS within the borders of the USA.

Below is out of order to above:

...In considering this motion, the District Court made extensive findings of fact. The court found that neither § 21.031 nor the School District policy implementing it had "either the purpose or effect of keeping illegal aliens out of the State of Texas." 458 F. Supp. 569, 575 (1978)....

Pyler vs. Doe runs into some trouble in that according to Trump there are means to remove the undocumented from the country. However, it has yet to determine whether or not the "Trump SS" is carrying out legal search and seizures and conducting deportation according to the law.

WHAT actually NEEDS TO BE DONE is to grow more courts for immigration and reduce the backlog. Trump is loading the front end of the deportation backlog without providing a way to resolve the legal issues that face these undocumented. Like most Republicans it is all show with little substance.

Trump's SS is adding to the backlog and clogging up the immigration courts even further. Those rounded up like cattle will be back to their lives in the USA before too much longer.

Laws are laws, but, they lose their authority when human life is effected adversely. It is a human rights issue and if this precedent of rounding up people believed to be the undocumented and sending them to the courts for deportation is allowed, where does it stop? It is a precedent and a very dangerous one. In comparison to the problems the undocumented cause in a country of over 330 million legal Americans the precedent isn't worth it. I know there are criminal deaths and I am sure if it were mine I would feel differently, but, that does not negate the precedent as being dangerous.

There are reasons the undocumented exist and it is not due to the will to prevent it. But, the real answers to the undocumented is to help solve the problems south of our southern border. If life was worth living there there would be virtually no undocumented to worry about and ICE would not be overwhelmed.

That has been the problem all along. The USA didn't solve the problems in Mexico because it didn't solve the problems in Latin America. Columbia acts as a stop gap to some extent, but, even with USA backing in Columbia the problems are not solved.

Real statesmanship to other countries to solve the problems along with more immigration courts domestically and the USA would not be having problems with undocumented.

Anyone can put the "Trump SS Roundup" on camera for the constituents, but, the real results are different than the story the cameras tell. 

It is no different than the "State Dinner" with the UK. It is expected and of course regardless the royal treatment, Trump holds his ground and cannot be called corrupted by money and politics. Everything is a show.

News Conference tomorrow that should not be missed.

Nasa is to host a major press conference (click here) on a "discovery beyond our solar system".

The event will see the revelation of major information about exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars other than our sun, according to a release. It made no further mention of the details of what would be revealed.

NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 22, (click here) to present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Details of these findings are embargoed by the journal Nature until 1 p.m.

Limited seating is available in the NASA TV studio for media who would like to attend in person at the agency’s Headquarters at 300 E Street SW in Washington. Media unable to attend in person may ask questions by telephone. To attend in person or participate by phone, media must send an email with their name, affiliation and telephone number to Dwayne Brown at dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov by noon Feb. 22.

Media and the public also may ask questions during the briefing on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

Defence Secretary James Mattis says US military not in Iraq ‘to seize anybody’s oil’

Nice try, but, tell that to BP. Unless, of course, the DOD doesn't consider the Brits our allies anymore. Dutch Royal Shell is there as well.

The 25-year technical service contract (TSC) (click here) was signed between SOC and BP (47.6%), PetroChina (46.4%) and the State Oil Marketing Organisation (6%), which sets out the framework to redevelop Rumaila and significantly increase production output.

The government of Iraq receives about 98% of the revenue from the 25-year TSC. In June 2010, the Rumaila Operating Organization was formed as a joint venture with these organizations, with the remit to operate and redevelop the field, with BP as the lead contractor. In September 2014, the TSC was extended by another five years to service the field through to 2034, with the target of producing 2.1 million barrels per day.

Today, more than 7,000 people from SOC, BP and PetroChina (93% of them Iraqi) and more than 22,000 contractors (most of them from Basra) support Rumaila’s operations.

BP has invested billions of dollars in new equipment and systems and put global experts to work. For example, 3D seismic surveying, with BP proprietary technology, has given an unprecedented geological understanding of 9,000 cubic kilometres of subsurface terrain. This investment in money and expertise has significantly increased revenues to Iraq, revenues that help Iraq re-build its economy. We believe Rumaila is a model of what can be achieved and it is now one of the largest producing fields in the world....

Rumaila is the second largest oil field in the world. It is what has funded the Iraqi treasury for decades and the corruption since 2003.

What I didn't know until I read this is that PetroChina is in Iraq along with Lukoil.

No, Mr. Kushner, you may not have control of the media. Communist!

February 20, 2017
By Andrew Buncombe

When Donald Trump’s son-in-law (click here) met recently with a senior executive from CNN’s parent company, there were apparently several things he wanted to get off his mind.

Firstly, Jared Kushner, a senior advisor to the president, did not think the network had been reporting fairly on his father-in-law. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, he took particular objection to some of the comments made by CNN contributors Van Jones and Republican strategist Ana Navaro.

The newspaper said that Mr Kushner, one of the people on whom Mr Trump relies heavily, spoke with Gary Ginsberg, Time Warner’s executive vice president of corporate marketing and communications.

“Mr Kushner has taken issue with specific CNN contributors including Van Jones, a Democrat who served in the Obama administration, and Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist, who have each criticised Mr Trump in harsh terms, the people familiar with the matter said,” the report said...

If you ask me and of course no one is, this is more racism by the Trump camp. It could not be any more obvious that Kushner is a Ultra White along with the rest of the White House staff.

Van Jones has been on the Right Wing media hate list since President Obama was elected. Ana Navarro should have been courted by Mr. Kushner as a Republican media darling, but, no Ms. Navarro must be an illegal from Mexico and needing deportation soon.

I would worry about security.

It is too early in this administration for such a party. It isn't just the UK with protesters. I think a state dinner carries with it a threatening circumstance for the participants. The safety of all have to be considered.

At this point with Brexit at work and tensions still existing between allies, it really is less appropriate than one might expect. A state dinner would not change a thing with Trump in the White House. The UK should recognize that. He is not a man that carries loyalty in any of his actions. If the state dinner goes forward it is because he expects it, not because the USA and UK have something to sincerely celebrate.

I remind, just because Pence is making statements about foreign policy when visiting in Germany, it doesn't mean a thing. 

February 20 at 2:50 PM

By Jill Lawless

London — Thousands of protesters (click here) against U.S. President Donald Trump rallied outside Britain’s Parliament on Monday, while lawmakers inside urged the government to rescind its offer to the president of a state visit stamped with pomp, pageantry and royal approval.
In a passionate debate that’s unlikely to change the British government’s position, Trump was labeled a misogynist, a bigot and a “petulant child” by opposition legislators. They argued that a state visit planned for later this year will demean the U.K. and Queen Elizabeth II, the president’s official host.
Conservative lawmakers, however, said revoking the invitation would do far more harm. Tory lawmaker Edward Leigh said canceling the state visit would be “catastrophic” to the trans-Atlantic relationship.

The USA is not winning on Climate.

This February 20th. President's Day in 2017. To the left is a tornado outbreak in Texas with 150 homes destroyed.

By Mary Claire Patto

...Get alerted to news (click here) events as they happen or sign up for a scheduled news headline email that is delivered right to your inbox....

February 20, 2017
By the AP (The Associated Press doesn't have authors anymore? Who writes this then?)

San Francisco — Downpours swelled creeks (click here) and rivers Monday in Northern California, threatening to cause even more flooding in the already soggy region.

In Texas, officials said severe storms pushed at least three tornadoes through parts of San Antonio overnight Sunday, damaging dozens of buildings but causing only minor injuries,...

February 20, 2017
1030.18z
UNISYS Water Vapor North and West Satellite (click here for 12 hour loop

The system responsible for the tornadoes has borders that extend from the equator (where there is no ICTZ) across Mexico, crossing the entire Gulf of Mexico, into the Caribbean Sea reaching all the way to San Juan and Antiqua, joining with another water vapor system secured off the east coast of the USA, while it's main body of turbulence stretches from the southern tip of Texas to Saskatchewan, Canada. It is a tropospheric storm. Everyone got off easy.

The eastern half of the continent should remain vigilant.

Nam could still be alive? That is wonderful, send him to Japan Disneyland. Please.

Regardless of the chance Nam is still alive there needs to be an autopsy to determine the real cause of death. This article sites four people believed to be involved if not responsible. It is important none of the evidence is lost.

Poor Malaysia has sustained enough criticism over recent years about undetermined people lost in air flight. At least this time Malaysia can focus on all the facts and evidence to bring justice to the deceased.

I am looking forward to Malaysia's report of the facts and their ability to remand those responsible to face trial. My sincerest sympathies to family and friends of the deceased, regardless, his fame.  

February 20, 2017 

Left is the Nam we all would long to know. Free spirit, man about town.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak (click here) said his government's investigation of the killing Kim Jong Nam will be "objective."

Kim Jong Nam was the half-brother of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un.
"We have no reason why we want to do something to paint North Korea in a bad light, but we will be objective," Najib told reporters on Monday in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV released video footage that appears to show Kim Jong Nam being attacked in Kuala Lumpur International airport last week. Two women, believed to be North Korean agents, participated in the attack; one of them appeared to put poison on Kim Jong Nam's face.
Officials have not confirmed this footage....