Friday, July 13, 2018


Brits jarred by Trump's straight talk

Writing in Britain's major Conservative newspaper, a senior journalist called Trump's recent interview about his trip to Europe an "astonishing snub to Theresa May" (the lame-duck British PM).  But Trump was just being realistic and BS free.  Below is what he said:

Trump: “It's going to be an interesting time in the UK, and it’s certainly going to be an interesting time with NATO.

“NATO has not treated us fairly but I think we'll work something out. We pay far too much and they pay far too little. But we will work it out and all countries will be happy.

“With the UK, that's a situation that's been going on for a long time. So I have NATO, I have the UK which is in somewhat turmoil, and I have Putin. Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all. Who would think? Who would think? But the UK certainly has a, they have a lot of things going on.”

Q: Have you talked with May since Boris left?

“No I have not. No I have not. But Boris Johnson’s a friend of mine. He’s been very, very nice to me. Very supportive. And maybe we’ll speak to him when I get over there. I like Boris Johnson. I’ve always liked him.”

Q: Should Theresa May remain in power?

“Well, that’s up to the people. I get along with her very well. I have a very good relationship. That’s certainly up to the people, not up to me.”

The journalist was  not entirely condemnatory, however. He also said:

Given the unfolding chaos at Westminster, one suspects any President would have privately felt that a meeting with Vladimir Putin would be easier than one with Theresa May. Only Donald Trump would have said so publicly. But it would, perhaps, be unfair on this occasion to condemn him for being honest.

SOURCE





Some Britons welcoming Trump, renewal of 'special relationship' amid Brexit jitters

There are the protests, the official snubs, the hostile petitions, the social media campaigns, the infamous orange diaper-draped baby blimp. Britons are expected to rain invective on President Trump when he arrives in the United Kingdom Thursday.

But some are ready to welcome Mr. Trump, and the dramatic meltdown over the future of Brexit this week gives a sense that the U.S. may be the only good alternative the U.K. has in the coming years.

Specifically, people express hope that Mr. Trump and embattled British Prime Minister Theresa May will propose a trade pact to help make up for potential consequences of the United Kingdom’s scheduled withdrawal from the European Union next year, which will likely cause at least short-term pain in the British economy.

“The trip is important to us getting a deal,” said Matthew Peters, 36, a schoolteacher in Stirling, Scotland. Mr. Peters said he felt it was time to renew the special relationship. “I hope he sees that Britain is a better partner in Europe than Brussels.”

Commentator Piers Morgan is openly feuding with London Mayor Sadiq Khan — a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s Twitter barbs — for allowing the blimp to be flown during the president’s stay. Mr. Morgan called it “a pathetically puerile stunt that makes Britain look woefully petty, small-minded and gratuitously offensive.”

“Whether you love or loathe Trump, for Britain to be greeting the leader of the United States of America, its greatest ally, in this way is appallingly disrespectful,” Mr. Morgan said in a fiery television debate with the mayor.

As many as 50,000 protesters are expected to hit the streets to denounce the U.S. president, who will arrive after a NATO meeting in Brussels and is slated to visit one of his golf resorts in Scotland and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki during his weeklong trip to Europe. Leaving the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump joked that his meeting with Mr. Putin, head of America’s longtime Cold War rival, may be smoother than his visit to Britain, which has long boasted of a “special relationship” with Washington.

Critics say Mr. Trump’s British visit has been severely curtailed to shield the president from the protesters. Workers have put up a high metal fence around the U.S. ambassador’s central London residence where Mr. Trump will spend Thursday night, and the State Department has issued an alert warning Americans in London to keep a low profile while the president is in town.

“At first I thought [Mr. Trump] was a joke,” said Karrie Fransman, 36, a comic book artist who lives in North London. “Now I find I’m running out of things to laugh about.

“I find his policies deplorable,” she said. “I feel like we are watching a democratic country, not so dissimilar to ours, crumble at the hands of a government who spreads hate.”

Ms. Fransman’s comments reflected the sentiments of many others in the British capital. The 20-foot-high orange blimp portrays the president as an angry baby wearing a diaper and clutching a smartphone. It will be hovering over Westminster near the Houses of Parliament.

Boiling over Brexit

The anger also stems from the frustration over Brexit in this cosmopolitan city. The issue has dominated the press and politics in Britain in recent months as Mrs. May has been negotiating the country’s exit from the European bloc. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson quit in protest Monday after saying Mrs. May conceded too much to the EU.

Ms. Fransman said Mr. Trump’s record on immigrants, Islamophobia and racial issues mirrors a worrisome nationalism that has arisen in the U.K.

“I want to send a clear message to Theresa May and Boris Johnson,” she said. “We refuse to stand quietly by as Trump spreads hate speech for the benefit of profit and our ‘special relationship.’ I fear our country might follow the U.S. and that now is the time to get out of our armchairs and protest.”

But by no means are all here embracing those sentiments. A majority of British voters opted for Brexit two years ago, said Mr. Peters, and many see it as a harbinger of Mr. Trump’s surprise election four months later.

“I think the EU is trying to stop us from making good trade deals with other countries,” said Mr. Peters. “There are some politicians in the British government who get this and want to keep good relations with the U.S. and Canada and other English-speaking allies, but too many are scared of the EU. We need to show the EU that we can go and make a deal with the U.S. just like we used to do before we joined the EU, as an equal partner.”

For many Brexiteers, Mr. Trump is a hero, one of the few Western figures to have positive things to say about an EU-U.K. divorce ahead of the momentous June 2016 referendum.

Director Robin Niblett of Chatham House, a London think tank, said the popular protests anticipated for Mr. Trump won’t necessarily be larger than those that greeted some past American presidents. British protesters staged huge demonstrations against Ronald Reagan over the deployment of U.S. nuclear missiles on the continent during the Cold War and against President George W. Bush in 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq War.

“At a popular level, it feels simply like another wave,” said Mr. Niblett. “I’m not convinced that the anti-Trump mood is more intense than those moments.”

And while some 50,000 people — and the blimp — are expected to join Friday’s protest, a counter-gathering is also being organized to welcome Mr. Trump.

Nonetheless, the analysts said many British officials are worried about Mr. Trump’s propensity to upend the status quo.

“Where the U.K.-U.S. split is emerging is not so much at the popular level,” he said. “Rather, it is that America is increasingly not trusted by those who develop policy in the United Kingdom. And that is profound and new.”

Sean Duffy, 30, a Labor Party supporter from Glasgow, Scotland, is no fan of Mr. Trump. But he said Mrs. May should listen closely to Mr. Trump because the American president won office for many of the same reasons British voters supported Brexit.

“I grew up with the people who drove Brexit to victory. They’re sick of being patronized, and any government which dismisses them will be destroyed at the next election,” said Mr. Duffy. “Brexit was a revolt against a complacent establishment that felt it was best-placed to dictate to ordinary working people what was right for their communities.”

SOURCE



Trump Ends Obama ‘Exception’ Rule That Gave Unions ‘Illegal’ Medicaid Cash

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it will end an Obama-era rule that gave an “exception” to unions so they could illegally take money from worker’s Medicaid.

According to Fox News, the Obama-era rule allowed unions to take large sums of money from state subsidies there were supposed to provide services and resources for home health workers, such as family caregivers. This rule allowed unions to steal money for years, and now President Donald Trump is stepping in.

Current federal law largely forbids states from siphoning money from Medicaid payments, which are allocated for in-home caregivers and workers.

However, Obama created an exception to the rule in 2014 that allowed states to divert a huge chunk of Medicaid money to unions.

Since it was signed into law, 11 liberal-leaning states have used the Obama rule to raise more than $200 million a year for unions. Between 2014 and 2017, unions across the country took more than $2.2 billion from Medicaid and those who need health professionals.

The Trump administration’s major announcement comes less than a month after the Supreme Court delivered a huge blow to unions and organized labor. The High Court held that non-union workers couldn’t be forced to pay agency fees to public-sector unions.

Experts project billions of dollars will now be diverted from unions.

SOURCE





Bartender Flips Stephen Miller the Bird, So Miller Turns Right Around & Tosses His Meal

The left has become extremely hostile to the right, particularly those in the Trump administration.

Rather than voicing their frustration through usual political means — voting or peaceful protest — leftists have taken their outrage to the private sphere, insisting that the crime of serving in the Trump administration deserves unending harassment even during private, non-work hours.

Last month, California Rep. Maxine Waters told her supporters to physically confront and harass Trump officials whenever possible so that it’s made clear to them that they’re not welcome, “anymore, anywhere.”

It seems many leftists have taken her instructions to heart, especially in our nation’s capital.

In a recent incident in downtown Washington, D.C., senior White House adviser Stephen Miller went to a local restaurant and ordered takeout sushi, The Washington Post reported.

After Miller had left the establishment with his food, a bartender from the same restaurant followed him outside. “Stephen!” he yelled.

Miller turned around, only to see the bartender with both middle fingers in the air, cursing at him.

Thankfully, Miller took the high road and didn’t throw the $80 worth of sushi in the bartender’s face. He did, however, toss it in the trash.

According to The Washington Post, “Miller threw the sushi away, afraid that someone in the restaurant had spit in or otherwise tampered with his food, he later told colleagues.”

Only a few months ago, Miller also found his face printed on “Wanted” posters placed in the area near his City Center apartment, the Washington Examiner reported.

Miller isn’t the only Trump official who has faced this kind of treatment by sneering leftists.

According to the Post, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway was in a downtown grocery store, when a man walking by with his shopping cart yelled, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Go look in the mirror!”

And of course, Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant while peacefully eating with her family.

Every day it becomes clearer that the party that has always claimed to be tolerant is embodying the definition of intolerance — and it’s not going to end well.

SOURCE





Leftist hate in Australia too

I republish below something I wrote in 2014.  It's very reminiscent of what is happening in America at the moment

I am enrolled in the electorate of Griffith, Kevin Rudd's old seat.  I used to get a nice Christmas card from Kevvy every year while he was there.  So I will be voting in the by-election caused by Kevvy's retirement.

The LNP [conservative] candidate for the by-election is Dr. Bill Glasson, a most energetic campaigner and an ophthalmologist by trade.  His father, also Bill Glasson, was a minister in the long-running Bjelke-Petersen government of Queensland.  So the present Bill has name recognition.

I was sitting in my usual Buranda brunch destination about mid-morning yesterday when Bill and a campaign assistant walked in -- also seeking brunch.  The assistant was a nice-looking young lady who might have been his daughter.  She had "Vote Bill Glasson" written all over her t-shirt so she was at any event a helper.

Bill & Co. sat down beside a lady in a green dress.  The restaurant was busy so some tables were right up against one another.  Bill chose one such table.  As the lady beside him got up to leave, she launched a furious verbal assault on Bill:  Quite egregious behaviour in a restaurant.

I was too far away to hear what she was saying and I am pretty deaf anyway but a professional actor could not have done a better job of portraying rage and hate  than this woman did  -- finger pointing, tensed-up body and all other conceivable hostile body  language.  Bill just sat there.  She gave up after a few minutes and walked out.  She must have thought of more things to say, however, as she shortly thereafter came back into the restaurant and resumed her angry tirade at Bill.

It was a most remarkable assault on a man the woman did not know personally and who has never been a member of any government.  She appeared to have been blaming Bill for something some government had done but why she blamed Bill for it was  obscure.

When I had finished eating, I went over, shook Bill's hand, introduced myself as a Griffith voter and said I would be voting for him.  I then asked him what the lady had been on about.  He said it was confused but it was something about hospitals.  All Australian public hospitals are in a mess so that might be understandable.  The government that got Qld. hospitals into a mess was however the recently departed Leftist government.  So again, why blame Bill?

I then said to Bill:  "She was full of hate, wasn't she?".  He agreed.  Just his conservative political identity was enough to fire her up.

SOURCE

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