September 5, 2016

Big questions about Melania Trump's immigration status linger

Donald Trump's immigration position is, at its heart, fairly simple. People in the country illegally would be subject to deportation if he is elected president, as he said in his speech this week in Arizona. Even those who hadn't crossed the border illegally but who'd been admitted on a visa and then didn't leave are "a big problem" in Trump's estimation.

"Immigration law doesn't exist for the purpose of keeping criminals out," he said. "It exists to protect all aspects of American life. The work site, the welfare office, the education system, and everything else."

That speech came more than three weeks after Trump's campaign promised to answer questions about a more personal component of the immigration issue. In early August, Trump pledged that his wife Melania, a native of Slovenia, would hold a press conference explaining how she managed to navigate the onerous process of getting a green card after questions about the timeline of her entry into the country were raised by a number of outlets.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/Big-questions-about-Melania-Trumps-immigration-status-linger.html

August 28, 2016

Access Denied errors on the internet

Firefox forced 48.0.2 on me, and I ran a GoToMeeting on Thursday.

Now I get "Access Denied" errors on senate.gov servers and on some
Indeed.com links

Did a restore to Aug 12, dialed Firefox back to 47, but it's still the same.
Ditched GoToMeeting install too.

This happens in both Firefox and IE9

What do I do to correct this? Any ideas?

Thanks

August 21, 2016

What do evangelical newlywed Trump supporters say to one another on their wedding night?

"Let's get one in the oven for Cheeto Jesus!"

August 17, 2016

In shift, Toomey says he'll oppose international trade deal

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Major labor unions opposing the deal also were not impressed. Pennsylvanians are too familiar with Toomey "to be fooled by this episode of pathetic pandering," said Richard Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

The TPP, awaiting ratification by Congress and officials in other countries, involves countries that account for roughly 40 percent of the global economy, including Japan, Mexico and Australia.

Toomey last year praised the potential deal and in May and June of 2015 voted in favor of so-called "fast-track authority" for President Obama, a measure seen as crucial to helping the administration seal the pact.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20160818_In_shift__Toomey_says_he_ll_oppose_international_trade_deal.html

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Shameless waffling. Last week he wrote he wasn't a 'rubber stamp'
for his party, even as he supports McConnell on Supreme Court stonewalling.

Now he doesn't stand for anything! Not even his own long held principles.

ANYTHING to get reelected.

August 17, 2016

Help with Verizon

Last Friday and Saturday nights, we had severe local thunderstorms.
Quarter mile away type stuff. My internet was unaffected. My phone
went dead. There is no dial tone. I took one of the phones, hooked
it up to the direct incoming line, dedicated - nothing else connected -
and it's still dead.

I can't call Verizon. My phone is dead. I can't find a payphone when
I go out. There are none anymore. I went to Verizon.com to file a repair
ticket. That site goes around and around, but you never get to email anyone,
chat with anyone, or find another means of communication. There is a link
where you enter your phone number and Verizon calls you back. And they do
My phone rings, but when I answer, the line goes dead with a large amount
of static. Totally unintelligible. They hang up. I did this four times. After the
second try, it now only rings once when I ask them to call me.

I know, grab a cell phone. I have a pay as you go plan. I've called them twice.
First time I got placed on hold for 6 minutes. Second time it said it tested my
line, and there is nothing wrong with it, and there could be a charge to obtain
repair work. Then they ran me through the repair options I could do myself, such
as conducting a dedicated line check like I ran three days ago.

Do you think it would help if I wrote Verizon a letter? Filed a complaint with the
FCC or Public Utility Commission?

How can you have a phone company that cannot be contacted? Why are they
making this so difficult?

August 12, 2016

What do banks do

with open carry clients?

August 4, 2016

Trump Repeats His Lie That He Watched A Video Of Money Landing In Iran

Source: Huffington Post

Donald Trump on Thursday repeated his false claim that he had watched a video of money being unloaded from a plane at an airport in Iran ― after his campaign acknowledged that such footage doesn’t exist.

“It was interesting because a tape was made, you saw that? With the airplane coming in?” Trump asked the crowd at a rally in Portland, Maine. “Nice plane. And the airplane coming and the money coming off, I guess. That was given to us, has to be, by the Iranians.

~~~~~~~~~

It was the second time in two days that the Republican nominee for president claimed to have seen Iranian video of money being unloaded from a U.S. plane. He first made the claim Wednesday morning, during a rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, and said the video he had seen was “top secret.”

Trump’s spokeswoman told The Washington Post early Thursday that the candidate had actually seen publicly available footage of American citizens disembarking from a plane in Geneva in January. Spokeswoman Hope Hicks didn’t explain why Trump claimed the video was top secret Iranian military footage.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-iran-video_us_57a3a58fe4b056bad214f633

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Confabulation?

August 4, 2016

Clinton leads Trump in new 6abc/Franklin and Marshall poll

Source: WPVI Philadelphia

Those results, released Thursday, show Clinton leading trump 49% to 38% among likely voters in Pennsylvania.

This suggests Clinton got quite bounce from her convention last week here in Philadelphia.

Nearly two out of three people who watched the Democratic convention reported being more likely to vote for Clinton.

Meanwhile, in the campaign for Pennsylvania's Senate seat, Democrat Katie McGinty has a one-point lead over Republican Senator Pat Toomey, 39% to 38% among likely voters.

Read more: http://6abc.com/politics/clinton-leads-trump-in-new-6abc-franklin-and-marshall-poll/1456575/

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Wide margins of error on these polls, and a long way to go

July 30, 2016

Father Of War Hero Near Tears As He Pleads With Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell To ‘Repudiate’ Trump

Source: Huffington Post

Khizr Khan, who denounced Trump at the Democratic Convention, said “an ethical, moral stand has to be taken, regardless of the political costs.”

Khan, the father of Muslim-American war hero Army Capt. Humayun S.M. Khan, who was killed in action in Iraq, implored Republican leaders of the Senate and House to disown their presidential nominee, Donald Trump, once and for all.

Appearing in his living room with his wife on MSNBC, Khan stared unwaveringly into the camera with watery eyes and asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “Isn’t this time to repudiate Trump?”

“If your candidate wins and he governs the way he has campaigned, my country, this country, will have constitutional crises [like] never before in the history of this country, and my conscience compels me under these very difficult circumstances,” Khan said. “But there is so much at stake, and I appeal to both of these leaders, this is the time. There comes a time in the history of a nation where an ethical, moral stand has to be taken regardless of the political costs. The only reason they’re not repudiating his behavior, his threat to our democracy, our decency, our foundation, is just because of political consequences.”

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/khizr-khan-paul-ryan-mitch-mcconnell_us_579c1d52e4b0693164c1726f

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Mr. Kahn is as brave as his deceased son. A man obviously of great moral character,
and his story is our story, because he could be the parents or grandparents or ancestors
of any one of us, who understands America's unique moral role in the world.

It really is time for Trump to surrender. Every patriotic American must do all they can
to make sure our country does not fall into the sea of darkness.

July 23, 2016

But What If Trump Loses

The possibility that Trump would encourage his supporters not to accept this defeat, perhaps by claiming that the vote was rigged or that undocumented workers voted in droves in key southwestern states, must be gravely considered at this point. This conclusion is not simply the product of progressive paranoia, but it is a reaction to what we have seen and heard from Trump and his supporters for the last year, but even more so during the last week.

Speculating about what a candidate might do if he loses is a strange exercise, and one that should have no place in a consolidated and stable democracy, if flawed, democracy like ours. However, it is something that based on the behavior of Trump and his supporters, must be considered. Throughout this long campaign we have seen Trump encourage and even advocate violent behavior, stand by while his Democratic opponent is accused of treason and murder, and evince little understanding of democratic processes or mores. The question of what this man will do if, as is still likely, he loses on November 8th, cannot be ignored given this context.

Trump, should he be defeated, could easily eschew the traditional gracious concession, mobilize his supporters to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the outcome and their disbelief in his Democratic vanquisher’s victory. Ultimately, however, it would be very difficult for him to stop Clinton from becoming President. Trump controls no security forces, has little institutional support and has few concrete resources other than his Twitter account, but he clearly has the enthusiastic support of enough people to create problems in the immediate aftermath of his possible defeat. Those people could easily protest for a few weeks and continue a lower level campaign of failing to recognize Clinton’s presidency for years.

It should also be remembered that Trump a man with a loyal following of angry citizens with an extraordinarily exaggerated sense of their own victimhood and suffering, and that he has the temperament of an acutely narcissistic middle school student. He also has built a presidential campaign heavily around overreacting, often viciously and with prejudice towards almost all, to every real, or more frequently, imagined, insult or slight he has experienced. This is not the temperament of somebody who will accept an electoral defeat move on and urge his followers to do the same. In a very real way, while seeing this man elected President of the United States should, and does, strike fear in the hearts of millions, even his defeat could create enduring problems for American democracy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/but-what-if-trump-loses_b_11153432.html