Manafort wasn't just an unfortunate choice. He was the canary in the coal mine.

Trump put in a great performance. Every "Shucks, I got it wrong," wasn't a reflection of a flaw in judgement, so much as the next act.

August 21, 2016
By Kevin D. Williamson

...Trump has just fired his campaign manager, (click here) Paul Manafort, who, if recently unearthed documents are to be believed, is in the pocket of pro-Moscow oligarchs in Ukraine. Reports the New York Times: “Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from [former president Viktor] Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau.” Desks rose a few inches in the oubliettes of the Internal Revenue Service at that news, surely.

There is also a criminal investigation under way regarding an $18 million sale of Ukrainian cable-television operations to “a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.”...

Those Americans that backed him from The Apprentice to the White House didn't count on Russia. If they did then they knew more than anyone else and we all need to be reading more tabloids.

See, Trump was hurt by what he considered a dear friend. Now, his vital campaign manager would turn out to be a traitor and what was poor, injured Trump going to do?

That is the persona the USA saw, but, it wasn't the truth and today it is an astounding set of values Americans are witnessing in the White House; the selling out of the USA and it's military prowess to protect allies and defeat foes.

Facilitated by greed, Khruschev has won. Russia is no different than al Qaeda; it is using the political infrastructures, rather than tall buildings, of The West to defeat democracy.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (click here)

Holding: Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections. While corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns, they may seek to persuade the voting public through other means, including ads, especially where these ads were not broadcast.

Judgment: Reversed, 5-4, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy on January 21, 2010. in a 5-4 decision with an opinion written by Justice Kennedy. Justice Stevens dissented, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.

Putin is promising openly he will escalate the number of nuclear weapons owned by Russia. He is destroying treaties. He is an impatient man.

Two rare simultaneous phenomena are occurring off Antarctica. The katabatic winds are causing dragon skin ice to form.

Philadelphia is wondering if the crack in the "Liberty Bell" is getting wider with each passing day of the Trump White House.

May 10, 2017

By Will Bunch

The Tuesday Night Massacre (click here) doesn't have quite the right ring, but then the sequel is almost never as satisfying as the original.

Nearly 44 years ago, Richard Nixon touched off what many of us had hoped would be the worst constitutional crisis of our lifetimes when he fired not only the special prosecutor investigating his Watergate scandal but also the attorney general and his No. 2, in the notorious Saturday Night Massacre. But that 1973 misadventure had what most Americans considered a happy ending. The investigative pressure on Nixon only increased, and he resigned 10 months later. The system worked, everybody said.

On May 9, 2017, President Trump shocked the nation by firing FBI director James Comey -- just weeks after Comey confirmed that his agents have been conducting a lengthy ongoing criminal investigation into whether Trump's 2016 campaign colluded with Russia in hacking emails that damaged his election rival, Hillary Clinton.

There is absolutely no guarantee that the ending of this sequel will be as upbeat as things turned out in the days after October 20, 1973. Our politics are more narrow, partisan and divisive, our media is more muddled, and our voters already proved last November that not all Americans are terrified by the prospect of authoritarian-style government in Washington....

It looks like the weld is still holding. Such a worry the country has never had before. How does anyone relate to a loss of a democracy and the existence of a plutocracy? I can hear them rolling over in their graves. The founders of our country left a Plutocracy run by an imperial regnant for a country of rag-tag misfits that proved to be more powerful than any existing military could oppress.

We have lost our culture of humble people in pursuit of magic such as a free country, democratic government and free exploration by science. We have lost who we truly are. We have lost our strong sense of equity rather than greed. We have lost the truth about America and replaced it with political lies that are to break the USA Constitution and instill a theocracy. Money can buy anything, including, the land of a free country to be replaced by an ideological dream of power over people used to freedom.

Peaceful genocide is removing liberty, not celebrating liberty. There is no liberty in oppression.

Trump is the fear of our founders. He is king. The power of the people is being diluted and removed.

Being a "she" is not a disease.

May 10, 2017
By Laurel Wamsley

Australian Greens party Sen. Larissa Waters breast-feeds her baby, Alia Joy, during a session in the Senate Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Tuesday.

Years from now, (click here) a girl named Alia Joy will have a claim to fame to tell at summer camp: She was the first baby to be breast-fed on the floor of Australia's Parliament.

Her mother is Greens party co-deputy leader Larissa Waters, who was returning to Parliament after giving birth to her second child a few weeks ago, according to The Sydney Morning Herald....

This is how a country begins to break up the big banks.

By Peter Wells

...This levy (click here) would apply to about A$2.6tn in liabilities including senior bonds, covered bonds, subordinated bonds and all retail deposits above A$250,000 per individual, and raise A$6.2bn for the government over four years, Mr Morrison said.

Shares in Australia’s four big banks — which reported combined profits of A$30bn in the 2015-16 financial year — fell on Wednesday, extending a decline that the previous day wiped A$14bn from their combined market cap.

Analysts said lenders would probably pass the tax on to their customers by increasing mortgage rates. But Treasury officials were gambling that it would be difficult for banks to do so, because if the big banks cut deposit rates or lifted interest rates, smaller banks not subject to the levy would fill the gap with more competitive offerings.

Morgan Stanley analysts estimated that the “proposed bank levy would reduce major bank earnings by about 4.5 per cent before any repricing offsets” and would strip about 1.6 percentage points off the Australian stock market’s earnings per share....

The levy, every year, will absorb the high end amounts of greed obtained by the banks. It will return the levy to reduce the national debt and enforce the sovereign authority of Australia.

It is not going to break the backs of any bank; it tempers their profit margin into a realism that prevents over reach, mergers and irresponsible investing; ie: The London Whale. If the money is not floating in the banking system it cannot be spent.

In recent years, we have witnessed merger after merger to bring asset strength into the financial markets in "debt to asset" ratio. It is ridiculous to think this form of financial leadership is good for any country OR ANY COMPANY. Countries cannot escalate their value to create an authority greater than the sovereign. A country must resolve it's debt and maintain control of it's borders and any greed that goes on within those borders that is adverse to the citizens.

This decision by Australia did not happen overnight. It occurred in the years since 2008 and provides for a stronger Australia and a better and more comfortable home for it's citizens.

In case no one notices, Trump has modeled himself after Putin. "Popular Strongman"

Comey is out and the first White House visitor today is Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He met with Trump and Tillerson. The White House is for sale.

There are no rules or regulations. That is a "For Sale" sign if I ever saw one.

This may seem like nothing, but, I think Ukraine is correct in banning images that will seek to influence favoritism to Russia.

NATO does not need to send troops to Afghanistan, it needs to send troops to Ukraine's eastern border to secure the country and protect Europe.

5 May 2017
by Alec Luhn

Ukraine (click here) has banned American action movie star Steven Seagal as a national security threat, making him the latest of several cultural figures to be blacklisted.

The Ukrainian security service said it had forbidden Seagal entry to the country for five years, in a letter published by the news site Apostrophe. The service’s press secretary later confirmed the ban to other media....

Everyone knows Putin embraces any strong man willing to be an icon in Russia. Steven Seagal needs to think through his continued endorsement of Russian leaders.

3 April 2017

Ukraine...

• ...Dialogue and cooperation (click here) started after the end of the Cold War, when newly independent Ukraine joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (1991) and the Partnership for Peace programme (1994).
• Relations were strengthened with the signing of the 1997 Charter on a Distinctive Partnership, which established the NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) to take cooperation forward.
• Cooperation has deepened over time and is mutually beneficial with Ukraine being the only partner to have contributed actively to all NATO-led operations and missions.
• Priority is given to support for comprehensive reform in the security and defence sector, which is vital for Ukraine’s democratic development and for strengthening its ability to defend itself.
• In response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, NATO has reinforced its support for capability development and capacity building in Ukraine.

The USA had dialogue and cooperation with Russia, but, with the invasion into Ukraine and broken treaties that ended years ago. There was no place for Russia's foreign minister in the White House today or any other day. It is an outrage.

The international community is far from ignoring Ukraine's eastern border and the robbing of Crimea.

May 9, 2017

Few Russian citizens (click here) view the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine as unlawful.

Not many Russian servicemen realize that when they are fighting there, they fight as unnamed, faceless soldiers who lack the protection of international pacts, including the Geneva Conventions.

They not only risk death, injury, or abandonment by the state that sent them there, they also risk becoming war criminals.

The Kremlin has dragged Russia’s army into actions that, legally, can only be carried out by subversive special forces....

Ukraine at some point has to harden it's eastern borders and end the siege in Crimea.

Quite frankly, the USA in NATO's Afghanistan is not helpful. They facilitate citizen's deaths, first with the attack on a hospital and lately moving military hardware into the country's capital of Kabul.

Afghanistan needs stability and the people have a political solution to firm up their sovereignty and push any threat, be it Daesh or the Taliban, from their country. The real problem and why Daesh and the Taliban are currently tolerated is the Haqquani network.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen:

In a strong and public condemnation of Pakistan, (click here) America's most senior military officer has said the Haqqani network is a veritable arm of the country's intelligence services.

Admiral Mike Mullen told US senators that the militant group planned and conducted the recent assault on the US Embassy in Kabul with the help of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service.

Islamabad has denied similar accusations in the past.

If I may?

The relationship Pakistan's leadership (If you want to call the ISI leadership.) has with the Haqquani network is no different than the relationship Assad has with Hezbollah. 

Haqquani acts as a stabilizing force for Pakistan's ISI in the region. Why? Because of the tribal areas. Haqquani, no different than Hezbollah, can carry out attacks for any reason with impunity. There is a great deal of work Haqquani carries out that the Pakistan ISI cannot do due to international law.

That is the long and short of it. Haqquani blesses the Taliban and Daesh with it's permission to kill and it is carried out. It is about land, who lives on it and who has control of the crops and minerals of that land. Afghanistan produces poppies and it is sanctioned by the ILLEGAL ENTITIES within the culture of violence that is Haqquani.