Tomorrow Manic Monday President Donald J. Trump will be arriving here in Williamsport–center of Pennsylvania’s Alabama–to waste everyone’s time. A special election will take place on Tuesday for the seat vacated by Tom Marino, the worst member of Congress ever to have served in the House
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https://youtu.be/4RQXwJd2tLo
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Marino, who initially was elected on a term limitations platform, resigned on January 23rd after being elected to his sixth term in November. Previous to Congress, when Marino had left the office of the U.S Attorney in Philadelphia, the best that could be said of him was that there was not enough evidence to indict him.
President Trump called Marino his god of thunder because of his support. After Marino’s abrupt resignation ( where he announced he was going after the big bucks in the private sector), the local Republican party nominated a fascist member of the Commonwealth legislature.
Fred Keller is running on a support the Second Amendment platform in a town where the Williamsport Sun Gazette published on page six the release of the Muller report (when every respectable newspaper in the world had the story on page one).
Immediately below is tomorrow’s story today: “The event [Trump’s Presidentially visit] is being held for Fred Keller, who is seeking a vacated seat of Tom Marino. His opponent is Democrat Marc Friedenberg.”
Fred Keller, who will certainly win on Tuesday, cannot bait Nancy Pelosi, whom he calls a socialist, into wasting precious money and resources, into having the national Democratic Party into supporting the local Democratic candidate who will certainly lose.
Marc Friedenberg, the candidate of Centre County’s delusional very local Democratic Party, lost in November with 34 percent of the vote against Rep. Marino. [In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s State College headquarters in Centre County was not wheel chair accessible.]
Almost certainly, you have sinned in your lifetime. If you are capable of sitting through the next 55 minutes of a meaningless debate where hell will freeze over before the Democrat wins on Tuesday, your sins will be erased.
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One might think the President of the United States has better things to do (e.g. on Friday our Commander in Chief expressed the hope we will not go to war with Iran this week) than clog up Williamsport’s streets and waste the time of an estimated 10,000 admirers . Trump’s local admirers are thrilled that Trump loves the other Alabama which has decided to deprive women of their Constitutional right to an abortion (even in the event of rape.)
Bottom line: Trump would rather make a pointless trip to Williamsport than do his job.
Given this reality or what passes for reality, I suggest that Trump consider using as the text and lyrics of his speech tomorrow evening the following material broadcast on Saturday Night Live.
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The two joined-at-the-hip Alabamas; one in the state of Alabama, the other in PA
“Twenty-two years ago, as a Democratic strategist working on a gubernatorial race, [James] Carville described the state as Paoli (a suburb of Philadelphia) and Penn Hills (a suburb of Pittsburgh) with Alabama in between.
One fact that unites the two Alabama’s is that their leading pro-Trump politicians do not care about preserving life after birth, This is not a joke; it is a sin. Consider the infant mortality rate in the US: the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world.
The infant mortality rate consists of the number of babies and children who die within the first year of being born. In the US, six babies of every thousand born die every year. In Spain, the figure is half that.
in Alabama, these 25 state senators who have the power to lower the infant mortality rate ( I can cite specifics on how that can be accomplished) who pretend to be pro-life are responsible for the state’s 9.3 infant mortality. That means that in Alabama, if the state senators who passed the law which would ban legal abortion ( and endanger women’s lives who would use illegal means to do so [ coat hangers]. The New Yorker points to a recent study that regardless of whether an abortion is legal or not, the number of abortions stays constant.
In the Orwellian world of the 25 state senate, pro-life is pro-death in a state where every year three additional babies die each year than do so on average in the US. Pro life my ass.
Here in PA’s Alabama, the county infant mortality rates are shockingly higher than the US national average.
Trump’s support of pro-life means that our President is pro-death.
What follows is a superb video taking you inside the neonatal ward of a hospital where babies die at great cost right before your eyes. The principal cause of infant death is low birthweight. The principal cause of low birthweight is anemia. If every woman in the US received pre- natal care ( even if it were only administered by a nurse or physician’s assistant and if every woman with anemia were treated properly with low-cost iron pills, the number of babies dying in the US would decrease considerably and health care costs would plummet. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pond of cure.
I dare you to watch this video without weeping. I weep every time loudly and out of control.
How we got the images you weren’t meant to see in Yemen
World Jul 3, 2018 2:44 PM EST
As I arrived in Sana’a city late at night on June 6, the few working street lights cast a glow over the closed doors of shops, trash on the streets, and the earthen color of the buildings. All so familiar. Driving past the enormous Saleh Mosque — a major landmark in the capital — the sign now read “the people’s mosque” in Arabic. Yemen’s former, long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, had turned against the Houthi rebels occupying this city in December and paid with his life. All visible reminders of him have been removed.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/reporting-in-yemen-the-city-that-has-fallen-off-a-cliff
How we got the images you weren’t meant to see in Yemen July 3, 2018 2:44 PM EST As I arrived in Sana’a city late at night on June 6, the few working street lights cast a glow over the closed doors of shops, trash on the streets, and the earthen color of the buildings. All so familiar. Driving past the enormous Saleh Mosque — a major landmark in the capital — the sign now read “the people’s mosque” in Arabic. Yemen’s former, long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, had turned against the Houthi rebels occupying this city in December and paid with his life. All visible reminders of him have been removed. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/reporting-in-yemen-the-city-that-has-fallen-off-a-cliff
Jane Ferguson is risking her life right now to report the news from Yemen for PBS
Yesterday, at risk to her life, Jane Ferguson reported on the PBS’ excellent News Hour from the only open port in Yemen from which food and medicine can still be shipped to provide relief to millions of civilians . A fragile cease-fire the UN negotiated in Sweden may bring a modicum of hope in a country where tragedy prevails.
Meanwhile, also on the PBS network, Washington Week—once the premier weekly opinion program in the US—exemplifies the dominant isolationism of,the White House Corps. On Friday night Washington Week continued to ignore ( as it has for years) the humanitarian tragedy in Yemen and President Trump’s complicity in Saudi genocide.
PBS should immediately appoint Jane Ferguson Washington Week’s peermant moderator,replacing Robert Costa who covers the White House for The Washington Post. If Ferguson is not available, Reporters without Borders has many brave reporters on the front lines of the world’s humanitarian crises. American politicians tell the public we are the leading power in the world. If that power is to mean anything, it must be used to resolve crises— not hide from them and pretend they do not exist.
Reporters such as CNN’s Arwa Damon bring the news of US complicity or indifference to the millions of children and their parents dying . Meanwhile, their coverage of life and death issues do not receive priority coverage. Instead, the majority of the well-tailored White House Press Corps seems to focus exclusively on the Presudent’s soap opera machinations.
Remember, if the public had to rely on the White House Press Corps during Watergate, Richard Nixon would have completed his second term in office. Woodward and Bernstein were not a part of the White House Press Corps. They were low-level reporters covering night court.
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Friday night should cause Bob Costa and his Washington Week panelists shame for failing even make mention of the two Senate resolutions on Yemen
Subject: Kincaid recommended your comment on “Senate votes to withdraw support for Saudi-led coalition in Yemen | Financial Times”
Finally.
For the past four years, 88,000 children have died needlessly, avoidably in Yemen. The Guardian reports starvation on a mass basis has become so severe people are committing suicide rather than wait to die from hunger and cholera.
Is this US Senate vote too little too late? As international journalists risk death to cover the horror, will the US press (for the most part) continue to ignore the reports of US assistance in Saudi genocide?
Or will Robert Costa and his fellow Washington Week reporters on the US Public Broadcasting System (PBS) continue to disregard (as they have been for the past four years) infants being bombed in hospitals and schools—preferring to critique President Trump’s capitalization within his lunatic tweets?
PBS’ hour long nightly news is the best news program on American television broadcasting the courageous Jane Ferguson from a bombed out Physicians without Borders hospital tent in Yemen.
Yet, Washington Week—hitherto regarded as the premier opinion program in the country ( in the tradition of, for example, my late friend Eileen Shanehan)—will certainly devote considerable space to the President’s efforts to hire a new chief of staff.
I predict that tonight’s broadcast will devote more time opining on whether Jared Kushner is qualified for the job at the expense of any international news story.
Of the two Yemeni developments this week, the Senate non-binding resolution may be mentioned because of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ role in drafting the resolution. (No doubt Costa is aware a significant number of his viewers are Sanders supporters.)
I would be pleasantly surprised if the truly significant Yemeni story of the week was covered at all:
A UN brokered truce with the Yemeni combatants. The truce could easily result in hundreds of thousands of lives being saved because of the truce, Yemen’s last operating port will/may not shut down distribution of food and medicine.
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Note: My comment was published early on Friday morning December 13th before the announcement that President Trump selected by tweet Mitch Mulvaney as his acting Chief of Staff.
Take note Washington Week, this is the kind of reporter your panelists should emulate
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“Once inside, there is an unnerving quiet to the children’s ward. The healthier babies cry, but many just stare blankly. It’s not immediately clear if their eyes look too big or their faces too small.
“Malnourishment can have very few tell-tale signs to an untrained eye — perhaps just a paleness, a smallness. As the scale continues, some children have lost hair or had their hair turn orange, some have swollen bellies, or no belly to speak of, or bones sticking out through wilted skin. Some of them have aged faces, with skin that wrinkles when they cry.
Their parents have exhausted all “coping mechanisms” as the aid organizations would say. To you or I, that’s anything we would turn to if a salary suddenly stopped: savings, relatives, a cow or some chickens in the backyard, a line of credit at the local grocery store. After three years of war, most people have exhausted all of those. Sweet tea and bread is keeping an untold number of people here alive, barely. It’s especially tough on the babies as mother’s cannot produce enough high nutrient milk when they themselves are not eating nearly enough.”
After years of effort— of driving his Senate colleagues crazy by insisting every time he rose to speak—that the Senate ratify the genocide treaty, it is now a matter of law that the kind of genocide the US participates in today ( right now) must result in the US being tried in the World Court if our country does not stop it.
Last week, when the Senate took initial steps to end this the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, this— to its shame—is what the trendy news organizations ignore. CNN, MSNBC, and nearly everyone else on US television have been flogging to death for the previous two days, the same old same old Washington Week’s host decided to repeat yet again on Friday night.
No one at Washington Week saw fit to even mention Yemen. How many more infants have to die in Yemen before Robert Costa decides it worthy of even ten percent of his show’s time?
Syria and Russia have carried out their most intensive air attacks on eastern and southern Idlib province, the last major rebel-held part of Syria after seven years of war. Activists and rescue workers reported more than 60 attacks from the air, including helicopters that dropped barrel bombs. Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker reports from Antakya, on the Turkey-Syria border.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, Minister of State (Western Economic Diversification), speaks to the media and public during a media event at Northlands College in Air Ronge, Sask., Wednesday, July 30, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Matt Smith
Canadian MP Michelle Rempel represents Alberta, a province landlocked between two Canadian coasts. Alberta’s economy has been devastated as a consequence of low energy prices. Thousands of Rempel’s constituents are out of work. Downtown stores and offices are egregiously closed down. Rempel said that women in her district are being forced into prostitution to make ends meet.
