Posts by waynehoy

Today marks the 29th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing – a tragic day where 100s of civilians were killed by the People’s Liberation Army in a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protestors.

For years, American presidents from both sides of the aisle have honored the sacrifice of the protestors who sacrificed their lives to bring democracy to their country. But Donald Trump is different. When asked about the event shortly after it happenned in 1990, instead of expressing admiration for the protestors, Trump expressed admiration for the strength of the Chinese Government.

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.” — Donald J. Trump

This guy is now our president.

One of the things that amazes me about Donald Trump is his uncanny ability to somehow troll his future self. On the day when reports are circulating that Rex Tillerson once called Trump a moron, a quick search down the Trump tweet archive turns up this beauty.

It is easy to forget that not so long ago, Trump was vehemently opposed to getting involved in Syria. In fact, Trump campaigned on getting out of the Middle East and spending money at home. Back in 2013, Donald Trump tweeted a series of tweets urging Obama to not attack Syria.

A lot has changed between September 2013 and today. Trump is now president and is under investigation for is campaign ties to Russia. Far more concerning for Trump than his own poll numbers may be the specter of the current FBI investigation. So what’s a desperate president to do when his own polls are down in the dumps?  In Trump’s case, the answer might be “read your own Tweets”.

When Obama was experiencing a slump in his numbers during the 2012 election, Trump tweeted and implied that a desperate Obama might launch a strike in Libya or Iran with the presumption that a strike against one of these countries might help his poll numbers. Obama never did this, but the Tweet seems strangely apropos tonight. Who knows if a 4 year old Tweet really influenced Trump’s decision to launch a strike, but one thing is for sure – having a long legacy of off-the-cuff Tweets might not be such a good thing when you are president.

Surprise. Looks like the Syrian air base that the US hit with cruise missiles wasn’t really destroyed yesterday. The runway was untouched and planes were observed taking off from the base today. I guess $80 million worth of cruise missiles doesn’t even guarantee a destroyed Syrian air base these days.

What could have happened? Well, it appears that the Syrian military anticipated Thursday night’s raid and moved planes and equipment ahead of the strike. Who knows how they would have guessed this. The US did warn the Russians about the upcoming strike, but it’s not like they would ever tip off the Syrian military. Right???

With Trump, ironic actions are commonplace – just look at today’s news. Days after declaring the month of April as sexual assault and awareness week, Trump comes out in defense of Bill O’Reilly, a man who according to the New York Times has paid out $13 million to 5 different women at Fox News to settle sexual harassment claims.

Never mind that Trump himself has had his share of challenges with women after being caught bragging about sexual assault, Trump rushed to O’Reilly’s defense. In an interview with the New York Times today, Trump said:

Speaking in the Oval Office, Donald J. Trump praised Mr. O’Reilly as “a good person” and declared, “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong,”…

Personally, I think he shouldn’t have settled,” Mr. Trump told Times reporters in a wide-ranging interview.“Because you should have taken it all the way; I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

Which just goes to prove, if you are women who was quick to forgive Donald Trump for all his lewd comments from before the election, nothing has really changed.  Donald Trump has shown zero loyalty to all the women who helped get him elected. There is simply no defense for what O’Reilly has done – sexually harassment of women in the workplace is wrong . As Van Jones said today “Trump’s defense of O’Reilly throws conservative women who supported him under the bus.”

With the stroke of his pen, Donald Trump signed into law a bill that officially ends federal online privacy rules – blocking the implementation of rules that would have required ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to ask permission before selling your private web browsing history to advertisers and third parties. In other words, ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable,  and AT&T can collect information on your Internet habits without you knowing about it, and sell them to the highest bidder.

This law blocks rules that were originally passed by the FCC in October of last year and set to go into effect later this year.  These rules would have prevented ISPs from selling customers’ web history and would have made it much harder for ISPs to track and deliver targeted advertisements. With the passage of the bill, these rules are effectively dead.

The bill that Trump signed into law not only blocks the rules, but prevents the FCC from creating similar rules in the future. In other words, the FCC has been effectively neutered when dealing with ISPs who trade their customers’ privacy for increased profit.

The passage of this bill was completely along party lines. It is worth noting that not one Democrat in both the house and the Senate voted for this bill. These Republican lawmakers who sold out the privacy of American citizens, received huge amounts of money from the Telecom Industry in this past election cycle. A full list of the lawmakers and how much money they received can be found at http://theverge.com

More information can be found on this topic at the Electronic Frontier Foundation website. http://eff.org

With the stroke of his pen, Donald Trump signed into law a bill that officially ends federal online privacy rules – blocking the implementation of rules that would have required ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to ask permission before selling your private web browsing history to advertisers and third parties. In other words, ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable,  and AT&T can collect information on your Internet habits without you knowing about it, and sell them to the highest bidder.

This law blocks rules that were originally passed by the FCC in October of last year and set to go into effect later this year.  These rules would have prevented ISPs from selling customers’ web history and would have made it much harder for ISPs to track and deliver targeted advertisements. With the passage of the bill, these rules are effectively dead. (more…)

During his presidential campaign, making promises were easy for Donald Trump. For candidate Trump, Obamacare was an abysmal failure and every day on the campaign trail, he would tell his supporters how terrible it was. Trump vowed that once he became president, he would replace it with a much better plan where everyone would be covered and the costs would be much less. Fast forward four months and we see what Trump actually had in mind. Or maybe not… Maybe Trump would let someone else do the work for him… Someone like Paul Ryan.

Ryan’s replacement for the ACA (Obamacare), the AHCA or American Health Care Act was not anything like Trump had promised. It would not cover everyone, in fact it would cover over 24 million less people than Obamacare. Older poor people in rural voters would see their rates skyrocket. Ryancare had one big distinction from Obamacare – it would give the wealthy a significant tax cut. Gone was the 3.8% tax on investments. The richer you were, the more money Ryancare would save you. For some reason, this must have appealed to Trump, and within days, Trump was pushing Ryancare as his own health care plan. Thus Ryancare morphed quickly into Trumpcare.

Trump has a big problem.  If the AHCA (Trumpcare) is passed, older rural voters who don’t make much money would see their health care premiums increase significantly from what they are currently paying under Obamacare. These same people who will see their rates increase the most are also the people who overwhelmingly voted for Trump and got him elected. These are the voters who actually believed candidate Trump when he promised cheaper, better, and broader coverage. These are the voters who Trump needs to get him re-elected in 2020.

On Friday March 24th, the House will vote on the AHCA and the bill will either fail or pass. If it fails, Trump fails to deliver on one of his main campaign promises. If it passes, many Trump supporters will undoubtedly loose their insurance and finally see Trump for the con-man he is.