10 ways Donald Trump has dishonored American veterans

By Sarah K. Burris

Memorial Day was the holiday meant to honor fallen soldiers, but somewhere along the line it has become a day that also honors all veterans. Regardless of whether the holiday is Memorial Day or Armistice Day, resident Donald Trump is likely to mark the day claiming that he honors veterans who fought for America. It’s an interesting tactic given his history disparaging veterans, attacking Gold Star families, mocking prisoners of war, getting into a public battle with the family of a soldier that had just been killed.

Then there are the broken promises for the Veterans Administration. That alone could make for an even longer list.

However, as the resident celebrates fallen soldiers Monday, here are 10 of the times he did the opposite:

1. The John McCain attacks
“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, OK?” Trump said at a 2016 campaign event.



A few days later Trump even doubled down on his remarks.

2. Trump goes after the Khan family for speaking out in support of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention.
“Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing — and no one,” Khizr Khan said.

In the days that followed the statement, Trump went into full attack mode. He did everything from claim Khan’s wife wasn’t allowed to speak because she is a Muslim wife. He claimed he made sacrifices because he “created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures.” He even began spreading a conspiracy theory that came from some right-wing fever dream that Khan was secretly a “Muslim Brotherhood agent.”

It’s been almost two years and Trump has never apologized.

3. “My personal Vietnam”
Trump got five draft deferments while Vietnam raged for nearly 20 years. Trump had bone spurs, though. While we’ve heard about his medication list, height, weight and other factors, but the president’s physician, and former nominee to chair the Veterans Administration, never gave a status update on the spurs that kept him out of serving his duty.

He didn’t miss out, however. Trump said that his sex life was like his own personal Vietnam.

“I was dating lots and lots of women,” he said in 2004. “I just had a great time. They were great years, but that was pre-AIDS, and you could do things in those days that today you’re at risk doing. AIDS has changed a lot.”

“It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam,” he continued. “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

4. Promise the moon but give them pennies.
Twice, Trump promised that he would be donating to veteran causes. The reality, however, was another story. While campaigning in 2016, Trump indicated that he has sent nearly $6 million to different veterans groups nationwide, but when Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold called every veterans advocacy organizations to uncover who got what and how much, the donation was a little closer to nothing.

Despite making the claim for months, the money miraculously appeared to various organizations in the days that followed Fahrenthold’s report and questions for Trump.

5. The Niger widows.
The families that lost their husbands or sons in the Niger ambush didn’t get a call from the resident for nearly two weeks. When the call finally came it was only after the resident was blasted publicly in the press.

Except, when he called one family, he completely flubbed the call. Instead of taking the high road, Trump moved on to blast the family and a local Congresswoman and friend of the family who mentored the Sgt. La David Johnson.

If that isn’t bad enough, when Trump was blasted for his behavior, he swore that he had done more for Gold Star families than anyone. He even went so far as to claim that former President Barack Obama never called the families. Not only was the claim false, families who had received that heartbreaking call stepped up to call out the lie.

6. The $25,000 promise.
Chris Baldridge’s son was killed in June 2017 by an Afghan police officer. Over the phone, the resident told Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge’s family how sorry he was. The father lamented how hard the family has struggled financially.

“He said, ‘I’m going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,’ and I was just floored,” Baldridge told the Washington Post in an interview. “I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, ‘No other resident has ever done something like this,’ but he said, ‘I’m going to do it.'”

The interview took place five months after the promise. The check hadn’t arrived. After publicly outcry at another Trump lie, the White House told The Post “The check has been sent.” Better late than never.

6. Trump’s lie he fixed VA wait times.
Everything was supposed to change. Finally, the White House would have an advocate for the veterans, Trump claimed in 2016. But, his promises haven’t proved much in terms of action.

One thing Trump said he would change are the wait times at the VA. During at least two events in 2017, Trump swore he’d fixed it.

“I used to go around and talk about the veterans and they’d stand on line for nine days, seven days, four days… 15 days. People that could have been given a prescription and been better right away end up dying waiting on line,” he said during a July speech. “That’s not happening anymore.”

It was.

“Now [veterans] go right outside, they go to a doctor in the area, we pay the bill, and it’s the least expensive thing we can do and we save everybody’s life and everybody’s happy,” the resident claimed.

Except, they still wait. The Government Accountability Office quotes says that they still wait on average 81 days.

7. The backlog in veteran disability claims
Trump signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 in August, saying that they were working to streamline disability compensation appeal claims for veterans.

It’s great for new vets applying for disability. For those who were stuck in the system, the wait continues as the legislation did nothing to reduce or address the current backlog or address appeals after denials. There are over 470,000 veterans stuck in the backlog. Former VA Secretary David Shulkin said that it would take $800 million and 10 years to clear the backlog of appeals.

They wait still.

8. VA’s Veterans Choice Program emergency funding ran out before it was supposed to.
Someone didn’t do their math correctly. When Congress passed and Trump signed the $2.1 billion in emergency funding for the VA’s Veterans Choice Program, it was supposed to keep the program afloat until February 2018. It ran out two months early.

9. Trump’s hiring freeze
Like many Republicans, Trump wanted to stop government from hiring new people, so he placed a freeze on any agencies bringing in new staff. For veterans looking for jobs at the Pentagon, in the social services or anywhere in government, they were locked out. While many might think it’s a small number, in 2015 The Hill reported that one-third of those applying for federal government jobs were veterans.

For understaffed agencies like the VA, the hiring freeze only made things worse.

10. Trump’s budget hurts veterans.
The Trump White House lacks a basic understanding for the daily life of those coming home from war and being discharged face. When Republicans sought to cut food stamps, they seemed to forget 1.5 million veterans use food stamps. Data on active-duty soldiers isn’t available because the Pentagon doesn’t share it. In 2013, however, 23,000 active-duty troops use food stamps.

Trump’s budget would gut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), by $17 billion for the 2019 budget.

“Veteran-specific benefits and services fall short of meeting the needs of veterans and their families, many of whom struggle to meet basic needs even with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) supports,” the Center for American progress reported in 2017. “More than 3.9 million veterans live paycheck to paycheck—meaning their family incomes are less than twice the federal poverty level, or less than $50,000 for a family of four.”

So, if the resident touts his “many successes” that show how he has “done more for veterans than any president in the history of the world,” Americans can remind him what he has really done.

Paul Ryan Is The Worst House Speaker Ever

Lawrence O'Donnell argues Paul Ryan earned that title through unprecedented and unrelenting cowardice and by surrendering his powers to the Trump residency.

Fucking Hell, John Bolton Again?

Posted by Rude One

Now that our goddamn resident, Donald Trump, has appointed John Bolton, one of the most war-mongering, cruelest, dumbest dick holes, to be National Security Adviser, I ought to write something about his terrible career.

Except I already fucking did that back in 2005, when Undersecretary of State Bolton was nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations, a position he got a recess appointment for until he was whipped out of public service and became that fuckin' guy with the stupid mustache polluting the airwaves with violent and hateful rhetoric.

So here ya go, gathered for your clicking convenience.

John Bolton, Another Motherfucker for America, where you can read about Bolton's belief that presidents should not have to respond to subpoenas, something you know Trump loves about him, as well as his attempt to get a woman fired from the DOJ for taking a leave while pregnant.

Part 2: John Bolton, Another Motherfucker for America, where you can read how Bolton was fiending for war with Iraq during the mid-1990s.

John Bolton Acid Flashback - The Age of Not Giving a Shit, where you can read a 1999 interview where Bolton out-crazied Bill O'Reilly by saying that the United States shouldn't intervene to stop the Serbs from committing genocide in Kosovo.

John Bolton, Crazy Man, where you can read what a total shitheel Bolton was to people working for him.

Here we are, 13 years later, and it's not like he's fuckin' mellowed since getting paid almost exclusively from Fox "news" and nutzoid think tanks. So, of course, Trump chose him. He saw Bolton on the TV.

Crazy meets crazy, and we're all fucked.

Here's what will happen if Trump meets Kim Jong Un

1. Kim will flatter him.


2. Kim will impress him with his palaces and his military parades.


3. Kim will tell him what a historical achievement this diplomatic contact is. And Trump is the one who did it!


4. Kim will agree to take first steps that might eventually lead to denuclearization in the far, far future. In exchange for aid right now.


5. Kim will again tell him what a big win this meeting is.


6. Trump will leave and tout this as a victory.


7. Kim will do as little as possible to fulfill his side of any agreement and wait for Trump to leave office.


8. Once Trump is out of office, Kim sends North Korea back into isolation.

Source

Martin Luther King Would Fuck Trump's Shit Up (Africa Edition)

Posted by Rude One

While conservatives continue their annual desperate attempt to colonize the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., King stubbornly remains a revolutionary figure, one who was blatantly socialist and vehemently anti-capitalist. In fact, King drew a direct line between Western capitalism and the exploitation of African countries. He knew what had turned those countries into "shitholes." A trip to Ghana in 1957 to celebrate that nation's independence from England and the election of a new prime minister solidified King's view that the treatment of African Americans by whites in the United States was strikingly similar to the effects of colonialism in western and southern Africa.

In a sermon after his Ghana trip called "Birth of a New Nation" (goddamn, you know King knew exactly what he was doing with that title), King connected Ghana to the slaves in biblical Egypt ridding themselves of their chains, and he explained what had just happened:

"Prior to March the sixth, 1957, there existed a country known as the Gold Coast. This country was a colony of the British Empire. This country was situated in that vast continent known as Africa. I’m sure you know a great deal about Africa, that continent with some two hundred million people, and it extends and covers a great deal of territory...

"For years the Gold Coast was exploited and dominated and trampled over. The first European settlers came in there about 1444, the Portuguese, and they started legitimate trade with the people in the Gold Coast. They started dealing with them with their gold, and in turn they gave them guns and ammunition and gunpowder and that type of thing. Well, pretty soon America was discovered a few years later in the fourteen hundreds, and then the British West Indies. And all of these growing discoveries brought about the slave trade."

King continued to tell the story of the Gold Coast, bringing it to the then-present: "Finally, in 1850, Britain won out, and she gained possession of the total territorial expansion of the Gold Coast. From 1850 to 1957, March sixth, the Gold Coast was a colony of the British Empire. And as a colony she suffered all of the injustices, all of the exploitation, all of the humiliation that comes as a result of colonialism. But like all slavery, like all domination, like all exploitation, it came to the point that the people got tired of it."

After talking about how the Gold Coast became Ghana, King brought it back to his opening images, "Ghana reminds us that freedom never comes on a silver platter. It’s never easy. Ghana reminds us that whenever you break out of Egypt, you better get ready for stiff backs. You better get ready for some homes to be bombed. You better get ready for some churches to be bombed. You better get ready for a lot of nasty things to be said about you, because you getting out of Egypt. And whenever you break aloose from Egypt, the initial response of the Egyptian is bitterness."

Martin Luther King would fuck up the shit of Donald Trump and his coterie of Republican motherfuckers because that is what he did, and he would specifically fuck up Trump's shit now over the ersatz president's inability to see beyond his own racism when it comes to African nations and their people. King would call out the oppressors for their oppression because that, too, is what he did.

When we remember King, it should always be as a balls-to-the-wall fighter for people of color and, eventually, for all disempowered people. He would be in the streets, marching now, and he would be confronted by white people with tiki torches and uncontrollable cops, and Donald Trump would blame King for any violence that took place because that is what he does.

The Definitive Timeline Of The Trump-Russia Connections | Morning Blow | MSNBC

Morning Blow takes a deep dive into the Russia timeline in two parts.

In Part 1, the story begins in September 2015.

John Kelly Makes Excuses For Slavery, Murder, & Genocide In Sick Attempt To Whitewash History!

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse addresses John Kelly's comments during his interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham.

Trump Loves Genocidal Maniac Christopher Columbus

Trump proclaimed his respect for Columbus on Twitter. Cenk Uygur, Brett Erlich, and Hannah Cranston, hosts of The Young Turks, discuss.

"resident Trump does not acknowledge Native Americans in his first proclamation of Columbus Day, breaking with his predecessor.

Trump’s proclamation — issued Friday — celebrates Christopher Columbus’s role in launching the “age of exploration and discovery” and acknowledges the contributions of Italian Americans to the country.

 “The permanent arrival of Europeans to the Americas was a transformative event that undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great Nation,” Trump’s proclamation reads.

“Therefore, on Columbus Day, we honor the skilled navigator and man of faith, whose courageous feat brought together continents and has inspired countless others to pursue their dreams and convictions — even in the face of extreme doubt and tremendous adversity.”



http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/354496-trumps-columbus-day-proclamation-leaves-out-mention-of-native

Columbus Day For The Conquered: Yeah, Trump Dicks Over Indigenous People, Too

Posted by Rude One

Believe it or not, the policies and proposals of resident Donald Trump, for whom the Washington Redskins could rename themselves "Orangeskins" and offend far fewer people, will have or are having a detrimental effect on Indian communities throughout the country. No one is immune from his patented brand of incompetence, cruelty, and fuckery.

Take, for instance, Trump's budget proposal from a few months back. It cuts federal funding to Indian country over 10 percent. That's $300 million less for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $50 million cut from HUD's budget for housing for Indian communities, and $150 million cut from the Indian Health Service. Oh, and Indian education programs would be cut by $64 million plus an additional $58 million cut from funds to repair worn-out school buildings in Indian country.

On and on the cuts go, to law enforcement, to youth delinquency programs, to assistance programs, to tribal national resource management programs. And because the war on children by this administration is never truly complete, cuts to child welfare programs on reservations are proposed, too.

The budget proposal so thoroughly dicks over Indian country that an Oklahoma Republican member of Congress, Tom Cole, who is a Chickasaw, spoke out, saying, "I can tell you, whoever came up with this budget, I don't hold them in high esteem."

Trump himself actually met with tribal leaders back in June, and he didn't talk about Pocahontas or Tonto or say, "How" and tap his "woo-woo"-ing mouth. Of course, what he did was make unrealistic promises because he had no fucking clue what they were talking about. "We love Indian Country, right?" he said because, yeah, that's what he does. And Trump talked about how he was going to make land use much easier for Indian tribes: "All you want is the freedom to use them, and that’s been the problem. It’s been very difficult, hasn’t it? It will be a lot easier now under the Trump administration."

While some things won't happen (like a weakening of the National Environmental Policy Act so drilling and other shitty activities can get going faster), the Native American groups' representatives there hoped for an answer on getting land-into-trust requests expedited. This is how tribes get more land around their reservations, by restoring traditional lands to the tribes. But the Trump administration just last week announced that Department of the Interior was proposing to make the already years-long process more onerous and to actively discourage tribes from getting land back. So, in other words, deregulation is great except when it might benefit someone other than huge corporations.

Meanwhile, North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, has proposed a bill to help with the "epidemic" of "missing and murdered Native women." In a speech on the floor of the Senate, Heitkamp told the stories of four women whose cases are still open. She said, "Native women and girls face a crisis of exploitation, violence, and murder – we must take action to protect them as I’ve long been working to do."

The bill, named after a young woman who disappeared when she was 8 months pregnant and was later found murdered, would require "federal agencies to discover the extent of the problem by reporting on the numbers of missing and murdered Native women every year. To address potential shortfalls, it creates a standardized protocol for federal, tribal, state and local governments to follow in dealing with these types of cases."

Heitkamp's impassioned plea, followed by equally strong words from Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who is co-sponsoring the legislation, received virtually no media coverage. This despite the fact that, as Heitkamp points out, "In 2016, North Dakota had 125 reported cases of missing Native women according to the National Crime Information Center, but numbers are likely much higher as cases are often under reported and data isn’t officially collected."

Which is a situation that Christopher Columbus would approve of.

Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is A Celebration Of Slavery

Few people know this, because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Donald Trump Makes Up African Country of #Nambia In Front Of African Delegation!

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse addresses Donald Trump's ignorance of the world's nations after his remarks before a delegation of African leaders at the United Nations, where Donald Trump invented the nation of "Nambia" and praised it for its advances in healthcare.

Even on 9/11 Donald Trump Couldn't Resist Bragging About Himself

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse addresses the sociopathic nature of Donald Trump and the lengths to which he will go to brag about himself... Even in the face of tragedy and the heartbreak of a nation!

How Bad Of A Businessman Is Donald Trump? Here’s How Bad.

How bad of a businessman is Donald Trump? Two experts, and one person impacted by Trump’s business deals, discuss his record.

Marvin Roffman, an analyst, took Trump to court after getting fired for telling the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s plan for the Taj Mahal was financially irresponsible. Trump settled the case and Roffman won financial compensation.

Prudence Gourguechon, past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, argues that Trump views his business partners and even the banks which lend him money as expendable, since he can just use them until he gets a better deal.

“Donald Trump’s handshake, his signature and his word mean absolutely nothing in Atlantic City,” says Paul Friel, whose father’s cabinetry business was never paid in full for the work it completed on Trump Plaza.

Roland Martin To Paula White: Be A Prophetic Voice And Don't Just Be A Profitable Voice

Roland Martin rips Pastor Paula White for her partisan comments about Donald Trump: Be a prophetic voice and don't just be a profitable voice.

The Story Of The Game Genie - Gaming's Most Famous Cheating Device!

In the 80's, if you wanted extra lives, the ability to skip levels, to be invincible, or anything that wasn't included in your console's video game...you were out of luck. That all changed in 1990 when Codemasters created the Game Genie, opening the world of console video games to amazing ways to cheat and to an extent, a form of hacking.

The Game Genie was important not only for being a groundbreaking device but also for establishing a legal precedent. In this video we'll take a quick look at the Game Genie's various abilities and console versions, how it worked, as well as its fight just to make it to the market.

Donald Trump Responds To Barcelona Terror Attack With A Lie

Lawrence O'Donnell reacts to Donald Trump's newest lie about fighting terrorism, as well as top Republican senator Bob Corker saying Donald Trump lacks the "stability" and "competence" to be president.

How To Impeach Donald Trump

What we can learn from Reconstruction, Watergate, and the Clinton saga.

ROBERT E. LEE'S DIRECT DESCENDANT DENOUNCES CHARLOTTESVILLE WHITE NATIONALISTS: 'THERE'S NO PLACE FOR THAT HATE'

By Zach Schonfeld

Three days after Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted into violence and racial unrest, the family of Robert E. Lee is denouncing the white nationalist groups who rallied and marched to preserve a statue of the long-dead Civil War general.

"There's no place for that," Robert E. Lee V tells Newsweek, referring to the white supremacist protesters who carried torches and marched through Charlottesville on Friday. "There's no place for that hate."

The statue of Lee, which has stood in Charlottesville since 1924, is now at the center of a racially charged conflict that has gripped the city and resulted in one woman's death. In February, the local city council decided to remove the statue from the park, noting that for many people, such Confederate monuments are "painful reminders of the violence and injustice of slavery and other harms of white supremacy that are best removed from public spaces." In May, white supremacist Richard Spencer organized a demonstration in support of the monument, and on Friday evening, a large group of torch-bearing white nationalist marchers descended on Charlottesville to protest the decision to remove the statue.

Related: Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee should be 'relocated,' says Jefferson Davis's great-great-grandson

Lee, a great-great-grandson of the Confederate hero, and his sister, Tracy Lee Crittenberger, issued a written statement on Tuesday condemning the "hateful words and violent actions of white supremacists, the KKK or neo-Nazis."

Then, Lee spoke with Newsweek by phone.

"We don't believe in that whatsoever," Lee says. He is quick to defend his ancestor's name: "Our belief is that General Lee would not tolerate that sort of behavior either. His first thing to do after the Civil War was to bring the Union back together, so we could become a more unified country."
White supremacists gather under a statue of Robert E. Lee during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12. Lee's descendants have denounced the violent actions that led to a counter-protester's death. Joshua Roberts/Reuters 
 
The general was a slave owner who led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War and who remains a folk hero throughout much of the South.

"We don't want people to think that they can hide behind Robert E. Lee's name and his life for these senseless acts of violence that occurred on Saturday," Lee says.

The Lee heir says it would make sense to remove the embattled statue from public display and put it in a museum—a view shared by the great-great-grandson of Jefferson Davis.

"I think that is absolutely an option, to move it to a museum and put it in the proper historical context," Lee says. "Times were very different then. We look at the institution of slavery, and it's absolutely horrendous. Back then, times were just extremely different. We understand that it's complicated in 2017, when you look back at that period of time...  If you want to put statues of General Lee or other Confederate people in museums, that makes good sense."

Lee, who works as a boys' athletic director at the Potomac School outside Washington D.C., says that his family was raised to believe that his great-great-grandfather "was fighting for his homeland of Virginia" and not for the preservation of slavery.

Historians, though, typically agree that the Confederate cause was "thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery," to quote from Mississippi's own declaration of secession. The Southern states that seceded were largely motivated by a desire to continue owning and using black slaves as property. (Lee's own personal views on slavery are commonly debated, though the general did own slaves and, as The Atlantic notes, "raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South.")

The debate over Confederate monuments has erupted in other cities such as New Orleans, where a statue of Jefferson Davis was recently removed, and Durham, where protesters tore down a Confederate monument on Monday evening.

For the Lee family, the question of Confederate iconography is complicated as their family name becomes a rallying point for white nationalists. The younger Lee hopes that lawmakers and citizens in individual communities will "talk it over and [decide] what makes best sense for them in the times that we're living in today."

Lee declined to comment on Donald Trump's administration, nor on his erratic response to Charlottesville.

Here's the Lee family's statement in its entirety:

The events of the past weekend in Charlottesville were a terrible tragedy for America, for the state of Virginia and for us, the descendants of General Robert E. Lee. Our family extends our deepest condolences to the families who lost a loved one. We send our heartfelt sympathy to those who were injured, and pray for their recovery.

General Lee's life was about duty, honor and country. At the end of the Civil War, he implored the nation to come together to heal our wounds and to move forward to become a more unified nation. He never would have tolerated the hateful words and violent actions of white supremacists, the KKK, or Neo Nazis.

While the debate about how we memorialize figures from our past continues, we the descendants of Robert E. Lee decry in the strongest terms the misuse of his memory by those advancing a message of intolerance and hate. We urge the nation’s leaders as well as local citizens to engage in a civil, respectful and non-hateful conversation.

As Americans and as human beings it is essential that we respect one another and treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated. As General Lee wrote in his diary, “the great duty of life is the promotion of the happiness and welfare of our fellow man.”

Robert E. Lee V
Great-great-grandson of General Robert E. Lee

Tracy Lee Crittenberger
Great-great-granddaughter of General Robert E. Lee

First live stream of the daily @rolandsmartin Unfiltered Podcast

Russian Mob Money Helped Build Donald Trump Business Empire - Trump’s Russian Laundromat

A stunning report in The New Republic alleges that, whether Donald Trump knew it or not, for decades he made a large portion of his personal fortune from Russian mobsters & oligarchs.



Trump's Russian Laundromat