Week in Review, Los Angeles Rams Final thoughts & Need a break, Total Divas, Nia, WWE, WWF, Bruno Sammartino, Chief Jay Strongbow, Spiros Arion, This Is Us, Donald Trump in Norway, Donald Trump wants more immigrants from Norway, Donald Trump does not want immigrants from shithole countries, Hillary Clinton likes 'Windmills', There is no collusion with regard to Russian interference except for all of the collusion, conspiracy & obstruction to find the truth!

I really do not feel like writing about the Los Angeles Rams this week. I feel like it's been a month since they lost last Saturday night vs the Atlanta Falcons. Who BTW, are road favorites vs the Philadelphia Eagles this week in Philly. Maybe the weather will NOT be a factor because it is relatively warm these days throughout the middle of the week.

I am actually giving my writing about the Rams a few weeks off.

Besides, all that is going in right now is that everyone is rehashing the game last week which I have no desire to do and then we are pointing to the three accolades we achieved this year as a team (Winning the NFC for the first time since 03, Winning Season for the first time since 03 and first playoff game since 2004 (we were 8-8 in 2004 and we won a wild card position)).

Plus, everyone's minds are on the Playoffs so let's see how that pans out this month, and then yeah, we have the 23rd pick in the Draft this year. However, the teams needs to do some signing over the next few months.

The organization has also made some headway on the new Stadium.
However, there is still a long way to go before it is done.
Starting in 2020, we will be able to watch some the first of many events in the new stadium. It will be used for the Super Bowl LVI, the 2023 College Football National Championship, and the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. The Rams will start playing at the new stadium in the summer in 2020. We have one more year at the Los Angeles Coliseum which I think is great and then the following year we will start up at the new stadium.

BTW, not only have I not seen one other play of football since last Saturday nights debacle when the Rams lost, I also have no clue what teams are even still in it. I don't even know who lost last week and it's Friday. I know that I heard that Marcus Mariota is playing vs Tom Brady (evidently it is the largest gap between age in quarterbacks that have ever played in a Playoff game vs each other). Like I said above here, I know that the Falcons are playing the Eagles here in Philly tomorrow night.

I am honestly thinking in terms of rooting for the Eagles. I do not want Minnesota anywhere near the Super Bowl. That would be the biggest blow to me after how much I harassed Case Keenum and his followers last year. I was blasted too by those people but them (The Vikings) making mince of us this year was bad enough. This would add insult to injury if you will.

I am rooting for the hometown team and because some of my friends are Eagles fans.

Then, I want the Patriots to win it all. I do not want the Eagles or the Vikings to win the Super Bowl. As much as I cannot stand the Patriots, I never mind if they win because they tend to be one of the top teams no matter what year. They lost a notch this year or went down a notch I should say but they could still win it all. Tom Brady after all, is the QB

First things first with regard to Total Divas and notably with regard to the Bella's, I never even noticed their chin until Brie mentioned it in the latest episode this week. Although, I think the camera angle was set up in a way to make sure that we saw that chin but whatever, I would hardly call that an issue with their physical appearances. Besides, what makes the Bella's and their hubby's (and soon to be hubby) great, is that they are really cool people that all seem so nice. I really believe that both the Bella's, John Cena and Brian whatever his name is all use their fame perfectly.

And, second and onward, I totally need to apologize to Nia. I made judgment based on some clips early in the season and I thought she acted really cool in this episode. She showed some vulnerability though at the same time, she does make sure we all know how extraordinary her life is, but even still, I feel badly for blasting her.

I also found out that my girl Alexis Bliss is in a cool relationship. They showed the guy last week and he seems way cool. I hope they last forever. She is the nicest girl on the planet I think. I don't even think she can be mean. I don't even know if she is a good guy or bad guy as far as her story line. I have never even saw her wrestle. But as you know, I barely watch Wrestling today. I get copies of the big matches which I watch WrestleMania every year no matter what, and then if nothing is on TV while I come across it on the guide, I'll turn it on but then I lose it when it goes to a commercial which is every 7 minutes.

I don't do commercial ads on TV. That is why I have a DVR.

I gotta run to YOGA over at my GYM and then I gotta get over to my my go to Kickboxing class at the UFC Gym/TKO Fitness.

I have a lot more to say about the WWE.

Be back in a few.

Overall what I am finding with the great success that the WWE has today is that there was a sea change over the decades. What I mean is that back in the day when I was a kid and when the WWE was the WWF, the performers and wrestlers seemed very bitter. There was always great comradery in the sense that not everyone can be in this part of the sports entertainment industry. You have to be a freak in a great way and today, for the most they are huge people as far as physical prowess. They are all better looking than the next one (girls and guys but especially the Divas; there are no Divas that are not over the top hot and what makes them even hotter is how they perform in the ring (although I must admit that the fake boobs freak me out. I always think they are going to burst or something bad)). They are all decent actors. And they are all amazing role models today.

They work hard on their bodies. They work hard on their acting, their delivery, their production and their performances live let alone their entrances. Everyone is better looking than next one and forget about stupid things like dissecting their personalities on Total Divas, they are all really nice people. I get they are in front of the camera but they all have this great basis.

In many ways, they are more impressive than many actors and many professional sports athletes.

Maybe they know their role today and where their bread is buttered so to speak but at the same time, how much fun would be to a WWE entertainer or even someone behind the scenes (like Mark Carrano).

Those guys (The McMahon's) have been through some rough issues like what I alluded to above with the WWF acronym. All of a sudden after like 15 years since I followed wrestling, the World Wildlife Fund wanted their WWF acronym back. I seem to remember how that legal battle but do not hold me to that memory please. They also tried that XFL which had my attention for about twenty minutes take no offense. There used to be serious fueds with the other wrestling companies but eventually, it was all consolidated under the WWE roof.

I forget what else but man did they persevere in such great ways and I am not sure of too many people realize that ride to get to where t is at today.

That turning point could have been when they admitted to it being entertainment rather fighting which they also probably realized that on a great day of being what was deemed as 'fake', it was the furthest thing from it. You try to land on your back after up heaved off your feet. Landing in itself is hard for any normal human being to accomplish, let alone allowing your feet to be upended so you can fall on your back.

Yet they said it was fake.

Even getting slapped in the god dam chest back then would piss me off if anyone did that to me in real life. Jumping off ropes and I am setting aside how they used to cut open foreheads to make themselves bleed easy during matches ('red means green was the motto').

Remember when Dr. David Schultz slapped John Stossel in the ear when he asked if it were fake? He said is this fake? And, he slapped his head and then he did it again. He hit John Stossel two times on National TV. Stossel sued him too and I think won a bunch of money.

Speaking of people being on steroids, the WWE got total control of the steroid thing.

Like I alluded to about the WWE today, they are people we should look up to in life.

They have a good thing going. I also think its very hard to penetrate that sub culture and they are an elite unique group of people that are lucky to be able to do what seems the best of every world (athletic, acting, performing live,travelling,  etc.).

And, the stepping stone it provides is through the roof.

Every person that has come out of WWE and into some other medium like acting, is great at it and they are successful at it from a box office POV.

Like (sorry, Trump used it last week when referring to himself as being a stable genius so I can use it too) John Cena is great at acting. He stole the show in Sisters. That reply about whether he has any kids is priceless:
And, the Rock (Dwayne Johnson) is over the top. His latest film with Kevin Hart (Jumanji, etc.) is the top box office draw over the last few weeks and honestly, it looks good. Plus, The Rock is amazing in everything. He was great in San Andreas for gods sakes. He made that film good. He is great in Ballers. I forget what else he's been in besides the Fast and the Furious franchise. And, Baywatch. 

Dave Bautista has done decent roles or at the very least, some roles in major films. 

Brock Lesner does MMA and I think he had been the champion a few times.

I cannot remember if anyone came out of wrestling before breaking huge into some other medium. 

 Andre The Giant would get a cameo role here and there (I know he was in Princess Bride) and maybe Gorilla Monsoon did too but I don't even think so. No one from the 70's and early 80-'s broke through other mediums. Even the Champ of 8 years straight (he was also the champ in the 60s before I started following the WWF/WWE), Bruno Sammartino never got any ancillary work besides maybe signing autographs at some mall. 

The actors back then were totally two tiered. They were either Joe Blow Nice guy or they were scary as hell back then. And, it was gripping. I'll never forget the first time I ever saw someone turn on another tag team partner. Spiros Arion turned on his partner at that time who was Chief Jay Strongbow. He gets him tangled up in the corner ropes, and then he took his head dress feather set off his head and starting tearing the feathers off of it. He then started shoving the feathers in the mouth of Chief Jay Strongbow. 

I remember being mortified as a kid. The announcers were saying that his head dress had been passed down for centuries of generations. 

It was amazing.

I'll never forget the first time I saw 'The Wolfman'.

It took them like 8 months to show an actual Wolfman match because the initial shtick and story line was that opponent would see the Wolfman come out on dog leash held by Fred Blassie. He would act like a dog or a wild animal and the act was that Blasse could barely hold on to to him as he walked into the ring. The opponent would grab the ref before he would address the audience saying that he 'refuses to wrestle an animal.'

How great was that and trust me in saying that he scared the hell out of me. We would go to the Wrestling matches at the Philadelphia Arena on Market Street way up towards Upper Darby. My grandfather had a stroke at whatever age and so half of his body had no feeling in it. He was in a wheelchair. Therefore, they would give us the front row seats at every match we attended which were a lot. We went every month on that given Saturday.  

I also think that was at about the time when colored TV's started to get popular. When I was a kid, we had black and white TV's.

This is Us. This week's episode could have been one of the best ones which is quite a statement considering how many gripping ones there have been. I especially liked the one story line with the rehab but after being off for a few weeks leading up to Tuesday, they just rore right back into it. 

What made me think so much is how one perceives its own life compared to how other people see into it. Kevin felt neglected his entire life it seems, yet when confronted about the situation, people see that different but what what hit home so much is how no one thought he needed help per se. The perception is that everything is going hunky dory and that so much comes so easy for the likes of Kevin when that is just not the case. Even the mom never felt that he need certain attentions and even certain affections when he felt like he never had that.

No matter what and no matter the upbringing, you must let it go and you must get over it.

Donald J. Trump had this press conference with the head of Norway and it was another awkward one. He is in another crazy spiral. He mentioned Hilary's name this week at least 68 times while his weirdo whatever she is, KellyAnn Conway, says that they never ever mention that name. 

You have to see this press conference. He said something like that Hillary 'likes windmills'. 

Obviously he means Wind Turbines which is a word that is well about the 8th grade level and is also why Trump had to fall back on Hillary liking windmills line. He is like a little kid. 

He also keeps mentioning that there being no collusion even there is collusion with people very close to him and I am not sure how they look at that term. Is there a law surrounding what Collusion is or do we go off the definition in a dictionary:

col·lu·sion
kəˈlo͞oZHÉ™n/
noun
  1. secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
    "the armed forces were working in collusion with drug traffickers"
    synonyms:conspiracyconnivancecomplicityintrigue, plotting, secret understanding, collaborationscheming
    "there had been collusion between the security forces and paramilitary groups"
    • LAW
      illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially between ostensible opponents in a lawsuit.

By definition, one can argue that he has had some collusion with regard to the Russians interfering in our elections if you consider his direct staff certainly colluded on behalf of him and with regard to that issue. His campaign manager and other high level staffer are indicted. His right band person and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency has already plead guilty. And, his son Don Jr. said that he 'loved it' when confronted with opportunity to collude with the Russians.  

No matter what, there is total conspiracy to do what they did which was so illegal to do and then we have the constant lies that are obstruction of Justice that is beyond evident to see with our own eyes.

Then, what is the most telling is how the Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department that they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in a dossier, and they urged the department to investigate. The decision infuriated Democrats and it pisses me off.

They want to put the guy away for raising the awareness of this shady acts when the POTUS's own god dam son said 'love it' when he was confronted with the same opportunities. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort took meetings to check out the opportunity and yet they are just going to try to discredit someone that has an exemplary record throughout his entire career as an MI6 guy. 

The other thing I see too which this administration not only does care about is how they also so proud to be taking a part everything. 

In August 2016, a day after then-presidential candidate Donald Trump announced some of his economic plans, he called in to Fox Business Network to discuss those plans with host Maria Bartiromo. In their conversation, Trump insisted his assault on government programs would not have any negative ramifications. “We’re going to be doing smart budget cuts, budget cuts that will make it just as good or better than it is right now but for a lot less money,” he vowed. A leaked document from Trump’s Domestic Policy Council, reportedly leaked from the Office of Management and Budget and published in October by Crooked Media, identified eight Domestic Policy Council members who are apparently quietly leading that charge as points of contact.

Rob Goad
Handling education policy for the Domestic Policy Council is Robert T. “Rob” Goad II. The leaked document suggests his work has focused on two key priorities: expanding school choice and making colleges and universities share some of the responsibility for student loans. Both efforts would divert federal funding for public schools toward private and even religious schools.

The school choice proposals include a $1 billion education savings account plan for some military families — a concept the conservative Heritage Foundation is pushing — and allowing states to use federal funds to pay for school voucher programs. The student loan idea would make institutions share some of the financial risk — a  concept with some bipartisan support.

Goad began his career in politics after a 2011 wedding where he met Luke Messer, then president of School Choice Indiana. Weeks later, Goad became a staffer on Messer’s campaign for then-Rep. Mike Pence’s open House seat. When Messer was elected to Congress, he brought Goad to Washington to be on his House staff. In 2014, the two launched a Congressional School Choice Caucus to push for public funding of private and parochial education — Messer became chairman, and Goad served as director. In that role, Goad organized a forum for top Congressional leaders during National School Choice Week.

As a Congressional staffer, Goad drafted legislation to change bank liquidity rules and higher education data reporting requirements.

In the summer of 2016, Goad went on leave and became a Trump campaign education adviser, helping the candidate craft a school choice policy. After the election, he became education lead for the transition.

In his Trump administration capacity, has he has made news twice. First, he was the administration staffer tasked with defending then-Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos against plagiarism charges. Then, he hosted a media conference call to announce a Trump executive order on “education federalism” — an order that, Goad admitted to reporters last April, does virtually nothing.

Laura Cunliffe
Laura Cunliffe is the point-person for changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Farm Bill, according to the leaked document.

The changes would apparently eliminate exemptions to SNAP’s work requirements for “able-bodied adults without dependents” — an exemption only available to at most 15 percent of that group. It would also eliminate an employment and training program the administration calls “duplicative;” zero out grants the administration believes prioritize the purchase of some legumes for school lunches and research; and remove the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive, which encourages SNAP beneficiaries to eat more fruits and vegetables. Much of this agenda was included in the proposed 2018 Trump budget, though Congress has not yet enacted it or any other budget.

Cunliffe, nee Guarino, is a 2007 graduate of Wheaton College — an evangelical Christian school in Illinois known for its strict code of conduct that prohibits alcohol, tobacco, pornography, premarital heterosexual relations, and all homosexual behavior. In 2012, she received a J.D. from Samford University, a Southern Baptist-affiliated law school in Birmingham, Alabama. She serves on the advisory board for the law school’s Center for Children, Law, and Ethics, a policy center led by David Smolin, a socially conservative marriage and adoption law scholar.

She spent most of the past five years at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administering child nutrition programs under President Barack Obama. As a USDA program analyst, she joined with nutritional advocates in 2013 to make the rounds explaining the department’s new healthy school snack requirements. Two years later, she gave a keynote speech on the importance of child nutrition programs at a foster-parent conference.

In her new role, she appears to be now working to eliminate much of what she worked to implement in the past administration.
James Sherk
The point person on labor issues is James Sherk. According to the document, his priorities are to reduce benefits to federal employees and labor unions. This apparently would include cutting benefits and freezing salaries “to bring Federal pay in line with the private sector”, reducing paid leave for government employees, and massively increasing funding for a little-known office at the Department of Labor that is tasked with “robustly investigating union corruption.”

Some of these benefit cuts were included in Trump’s 2018 budget proposals and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, recently demanded that Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta do more to investigate alleged union wrongdoing.

Sherk has been a conservative activist for a long time. He is a 2003 alumnus of Hillsdale College, a Michigan school known as a “citadel of American conservatism” with a stated mission of not “succumbing to the dehumanizing, discriminatory trend of so-called ‘social justice’ and ‘multicultural diversity.’” As an undergrad, he penned an article for the college paper denouncing all government stimulus programs.

After grad school (he received a Masters in economics), Sherk spent more than a decade at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, working for the think-tank on macroeconomic and labor policy. He consistently took far-right positions: He opposed public sector employees’ right to bargain collectively, embraced so-called “right to work” laws, and fiercely opposed a $15 minimum wage. He worked to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it easier for workers to unionize. He warned that high government salaries were hurting the economy and pushed to take away any time for government employees to handle union business. Sherk called for repeal of Davis-Bacon, the law that ensures federal construction contractors get at least as much as the local prevailing wage. In 2012, briefed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — the conservative, corporate-backed legislative group that provides model legislation — on “how to limit union influence.” He even pushed the idea that unionized workplaces should have to re-vote to stand in their union every few years and urged local governments to pass local anti-labor legislation, likely in violation of federal law.

Sherk also engaged in employment data “trutherism,” like President Trump has done, suggesting that the Obama administration’s labor numbers were not accurate. In a 2007 Heritage Foundation video, Sherk complained that the Family and Medical Leave Act made it too easy for people to pretend to be sick to take long weekends.
Kara McKee
Kara McKee’s portfolio includes policies on career training and is working on efforts both to loosen restrictions on how those programs work and to save money by combining efforts. The memo identifies her as point person for proposals to allow Pell Grants to be used for job training, to cut or “repurpose” some job training programs at the Department of Labor, and to repurpose Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funds to increase private-sector partnerships and apprenticeships.

A similar bipartisan effort for Pell Grant flexibility, proposed by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Rob Portman (R-OH), has gone nowhere so far. Trump’s May budget cut proposals included a reduction to Labor Department job training programs, but Congress has not enacted it.

As an undergrad at Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, TX, she spoke out against the growing national debt. While at Princeton, she challenged former Obama budget director Peter Orszag on economic policy, and joined the campus chapter of Christian Union — a group that opposes homosexuality, fornication, and pornography.

McKee began her career as a credit analyst at an investment firm in New York City, but moved to Washington, D.C. in 2013 to work a budget analyst for the Republican majority on the House Committee on the Budget — first under Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and then under then-Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). Over the next two years, she worked on the team creating the House GOP budgets, and was thanked by name by then-budget chairman Ryan in the Congressional record.

In the summer of 2015, McKee left Congress to work on Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) presidential campaign as a domestic and economic policy adviser.

When that campaign collapsed, she joined the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in a similar capacity. When his campaign also failed, she took a position as a senior policy editor for a now-defunct conservative online site called Opportunity Lives. There, she authored opinion pieces, including one arguing that federal anti-poverty programs should be replaced by ones that “transition over time from reliance on government aid to self-sufficiency.”

In November 2016, she was a guest on Fox News talking up then-President-elect Trump’s appointments and on a local Washington, D.C. news program defending Trump’s economic plans. Over the next couple of months, she made other media appearances defending Trump’s response to Russia hacking and praising Price and Ryan as the ideal pair to pass comprehensive health care reform.

Since joining the administration, McKee has occasionally had public visibility. In February, Trump highlighted her as one of the administration’s African-American staffers. In March, she was involved in a White House meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel about workforce and vocational training. In October, she was identified as part of the team pushing Ivanka Trump’s child tax credit plan. She has also represented the administration at meetings with construction and plumbing and HVAC contractors and small-business advocates about training and apprenticeship.

The efforts in particular to cut federal programs is very much in line with her long history of pushing to decimate government.

Peter White
Peter J. White is the point of contact for issues related to aeronautics and space, according to the document. The two major pushes on his docket appear to be a joint NASA partnership with Russia to build a new space station called Deep Space Gateway and an expansion of the Federal Aviation Administration’s office that oversees commercial space transportation. Neither has happened yet, but the increased spending on overseeing private aeronautics is a priority for the space business community and was to some extent included in the recent House budget proposal.

A native of Huntsville, Alabama, White got his J.D. at American University’s Washington College of Law. His career has mostly been in the federal government, working at the Federal Trade Commission on international trade, for Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and serving for nearly three years as a legislative counsel for Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL).

In a statement congratulating White on his position in the Trump administration, Brooks opined that “Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District’s loss is President Donald Trump’s gain” and noted that White had crafted bills for him on “immigration, space, and cybersecurity” while serving as his main judiciary and transportation adviser.

White’s former boss Brooks boasts that he “consistently receives the highest rating in Congress from NumbersUSA,” a notorious anti-immigration group known for racist attempts to convince black people that immigration takes away their jobs. Brooks’ views on immigration and other judicial issues are far-right — he once complained that the Democratic Party had launched a “war on whites. White also served as his old boss’ conduit to the Trump administration when Brooks was upset in January that the new administration did not immediately rescind protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as kids.”

Brooks represents a district that is home to the Marshall Space Flight Center, a large NASA field installation with about 6,000 employees, and has been a strong proponent of the space program.

In his Trump administration role, White authored a presidential executive order reinstating the National Space Council, which President Bill Clinton disbanded in 1993 as part of a larger effort to reduce White House staff.

White is a member of the conservative Federalist Society. While space policy may be one area where White and the Trump administration are not pushing for massive cuts, it remains to be seen whether they will push for a massive privatization of the space space.
Darin Selnick
Darin Selnick has been tasked with fixing the Veterans’ Affairs department, according to the document. And that apparently means privatizing it.

So far the VA is in the process of outsourcing its electronic records system, replacing its in-house Vista system with an estimated $10 billion to $18 billion system through the company Cerner. A recent push in Congress on a bill to overhaul the Veterans Choice Program, which proponents say would give veterans more flexibility in receiving care from private doctors (but opponents warn could effectively dismantle the VA), also aligns with the leaked list of Trump administration priorities — though it’s unclear if Selnick has been involved with the legislation.

Prior to being named veterans affairs advisor on the Domestic Policy Council, Selnick served in the U.S. Air Force as a captain, as well as California state commander and a member of the National Executive Committee for the Jewish War Veterans.

He was also special assistant to the VA’s Learning University and later director of the Center for Faith-based and Community Initiatives at the VA.

Selnick then spent several years in the private sector as a director for a social media site for Veterans called ArmedZilla.com and as president of his own company, the Selnick Group, which provided an array of services in government, community relations, business development, training, and management to various organizations.

From 2013 to 2017, he served as senior veterans affairs advisor for Charles and David Koch’s libertarian dark money group Concerned Veterans for America, which is trying to push veteran healthcare into the private sector and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on electing Republican U.S. Senate candidates.

Selnick’s never been quiet about his conservative ideology. In 2002, he campaigned in California for conservative agricultural businessman Dick Monteith, who ran for a seat in the U.S. House. He also wrote a letter to the Washington Post in 2009 arguing the Obama administration should have maintained Bush-era regulations allowing faith-based groups to receive government funds despite discriminating against people who don’t share their beliefs.

In 2012, Selnick campaigned for Mitt Romney with the group Vets for Romney. And over the years he has made a number of appearances on the TV news networks, conservative talk shows and bus tours, and in front the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee to rail against the state of the VA, Obama’s handling in reducing VA claims backlogs, scandals involving the agency, and the need to allow vets to seek privatized healthcare.

In May 2015, Selnick testified before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee about the need to reform the very same Veterans Choice Program that is currently before Congress.

“Healthcare organizations provide quality and convenient care because they know if they don’t, they will lose their patients to somebody else.” Selnick said. “In order to fix the VA healthcare system, both choice and competition must be injected into the system.”

His role in the Trump administration would seem to be chiefly a continuation of his longstanding pro-VA privatization activism.
Katy Talento
Two women are listed on the document as overseeing the health policy area: Katy Talento and Alexandra “Alex” Campau.

In that capacity, the duo would be trying to dismantle a long list of USAID and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health programs aimed at curbing sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, chronic diseases, teen pregnancy, and infant mortality, and improving environmental health and workers’ safety.

Now, the administration’s fiscal year 2018 State Department and USAID and CDC budgets propose drastic cuts to global AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria programs, global health initiatives, and a range of chronic disease prevention and health promotion programs and grants.

Many of the affected programs and grants focus on preventing a number of diseases at home and abroad — including cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Others attempt to curb climate change, childhood obesity, drug overdoses, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Before moving to politics, Talento worked at the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that provides services for HIV/AIDS patients and LGBTQ people.

But since then, Talento, a former nun, has been open about her anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion Catholic beliefs.

Talento — who gave $1,000 to Trump’s presidential campaign and whose husband kicked in another $250 — has written columns for the right-wing news site The Federalist arguing birth control causes miscarriages and abortions and is a form of medical malpractice. She opposed funding for HIV/ AIDS research while working as a U.S. Senate staffer in 2003 because she claimed it supported Russian prostitution. And she gave incorrect advice to women to avoid Zika: “Sleep with your husband, with you snug under the covers and him on top of the covers, offering himself as human sacrifice to the mosquitos, who will pick the easier target,” Talento wrote in the Federalist. Zika can be transmitted through sex.

On the Facebook page of the anti-LGBTQ Ruth Institute, Talento disparaged families headed by same sex couples, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

The Harvard University School of Public Health graduate has a lot of experience in the public health field and on the Hill. She started her career as a research instructor at Georgetown University Medical Center in 1998, became the associate director of contracts and grants at Whitman-Walker, and served in several positions with the U.S. Senate, as legislative director for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), and as a speechwriter for the Republican National Committee.

More recently, from 2013 to 2015, Talento was vice president for corporate affairs at MosquitoZone International, which helps major oil and mining companies mitigate the risks from malaria, dengue, and other infectious diseases at their overseas sites.

The New York Times, in a July profile, called Talento one of the “architects” of Trump’s reversal of the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover birth control and noted that she has “the experience and know-how that others in the administration lack.”

Alex Campau
Alex Campau (nee Pryor) has also immersed herself in conservative politics. Campau graduated from Georgetown’s Public Policy Institute and Law Center in 2012. In 2006, she interned for Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts governor’s office before interning for his losing presidential campaign in 2007-2008. She later interned for the Senate Republican Policy Committee and, in 2015, the House Budget committee, where she was credited for helping House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) write that year’s budget resolution.

Later, in 2013-2014, she began influencing lawmakers on various healthcare-related issues while working as a lobbyist for the Washington, D.C.-based firm Cozon O’Connor PC. There, she represented several healthcare companies and organizations on issues related to Medicaid expansion or reform, and implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

She also lobbied for Beachbody LLC on government initiatives promoting healthy living, childhood hunger, and the Congressional Fitness Caucus; the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation on funding for National Highway Transportation Safety Administration alcohol and drug abuse surveys and studies; and for Elwyn on healthcare related issues for individuals with disabilities.

Her work shilling for the healthcare industry make her a prime fit to dismantle important initiatives and programs intended to improve global health.

He is also allowing drilling in the arctic again which is maddening.

Trump and his greedy yes-men in Congress just passed a disgraceful tax bill that will give handouts to the super-rich.

And if that's not bad enough, a rider in the bill puts thousands of square miles of polar bear habitat on the industry chopping block.

But drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge isn't going to happen. Not tomorrow, not next year, and with you in our corner, not ever.

We will oppose every effort by the Trump administration to rubber-stamp any drilling or seismic exploration in the pristine Arctic. 

Join us by giving to our Endangered Species Act Protection Fund.

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Trump plan to shrink ocean monuments threatens vital ecosystems, experts warn
Ryan Zinke has recommended three major marine monuments be reduced to allow greater commercial fishing.
The Pacific Remote Islands national monument was created in 2009 by George W Bush. Ryan Zinke has recommended the monument be shrunk to an unspecified new shape.
The Trump administration’s plan to shrink four land-based national monuments has provoked howls of anguish from environmental groups, Native American tribes and some businesses, such as the outdoors company Patagonia.

Accompanying changes to protected monuments in the oceans – vastly larger areas than their land-based counterparts – have received less attention, but could have major consequences for the livelihoods and ecosystems dependent upon the marine environment.

Ryan Zinke, the secretary of the interior, has recommended to Donald Trump that three sprawling marine monuments, one in the Atlantic and two in the Pacific, be either opened up to the commercial fishing industry or reduced in size, or both.

“These ‘blue parks’ harbor unique species, a wealth of biodiversity and special habitats,” said Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration between 2009 and 2013.

“They are undersea treasures. I fervently hope that these incredible marine monuments will not be degraded by opening them up to extractive activities. There are plenty of other places in the ocean to fish.”

In 2009, George W Bush created the Pacific Remote Islands national monument around seven islands and atolls in the central Pacific. The monument, subsequently expanded by Barack Obama to become what was the largest marine protected area in the world, comprises “the last refugia for fish and wildlife species rapidly vanishing from the remainder of the planet”, according to the Fish & Wildlife Service, boasting creatures such as sea turtles, dolphins, whales, sharks and giant clams.

Zinke noted that the monument, which spans more than 490,500 sq miles, protects largely untouched coral reefs and marine species but also pushed out Hawaiian and American Samoan fishers who previously used long lines and huge scoop-like nets in the area. The interior secretary said the monument should be shrunk to an unspecified new shape and allow regional authorities to oversee commercial fishing in the monument.

Trump has been handed similar recommendations for Rose Atoll, a 10,000 sq mile ecosystem in the south Pacific that was protected in 2009, with Zinke adding there is “no explanation” as to why there can’t be commercial fishing in America’s only protected area of the Atlantic, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts.

Combined, these marine monuments encompass an area more than three times the size of California – dwarfing the four terrestrial monuments set to be resized. But the land and sea monuments share common arguments over conservation, resource extraction and the role of the federal government to restrict certain activities in prized ecosystems.

In March, a coalition of New England fishing organizations sued the federal government over the Obama administration’s creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, an area of plunging rock formations that contain a wealth of cold water corals, located 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The simple “stroke of President Obama’s pen” would put fishers out of work, said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. About 800,000lb of lobster are caught near the canyons each year.
Conservation groups say commercial fishing would be merely a precursor to further invasions into the marine environment.
“The monument designation will have a negative rippling effect across the region as fishermen will have to search for new fishing grounds – only to find they are already being fished,” Casoni said.

The legal challenge, predicated on the claim that Obama exceeded his authority in naming the area a monument, was paused by the Trump administration’s review of national monuments declared since 1996. If Zinke’s recommendations are followed, commercial fishing could now be ushered back into the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, beyond the two lobster and crab operators currently allowed in the area before a sunset clause bars them in six years’ time.

Conservation groups fret that commercial fishing would only be a precursor to further invasions, such as oil drilling or seabed mining. The Atlantic monument is considered particularly sensitive due to its dense forests of deep-sea corals and its role as a migratory route for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which has experienced an alarming dip in numbers this year.

“This is a spectacular place that contains animals incredibly vulnerable to drilling, fishing, noise and pollution,” said Peter Baker, director of US oceans, north-east, at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“It shouldn’t be too much to ask to protect 2% of the US’s exclusive economic zone off the Atlantic coast for future generations. Allowing commercial fishing there is really a distortion of why you would have a national monument in the first place.”

These monuments are like bank accounts; the fishing industry can live off the reproductive output

Robert Richmond, marine ecologist
Baker said the New England Fisheries Management Council, which Zinke indicated should determine fishing restrictions in the monument, has a “horrible track record” of overfishing and conflicts of interest.

Janice Plante, spokeswoman for the council, rejected that claim.

“We work very hard to have sustainable fishing,” she said. “We had no position on the designation of the monument but we support [Zinke’s] recommendations because we would manage it the best. We have the expertise and the experience.”

In the Pacific, the equivalent industry body, Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, has sought greater access for sought-after stock, such as bigeye tuna.

Kitty Simonds, executive director of the council, said the review of national monuments “provides an opportunity for America to remember that it has the ability to protect marine ecosystems without closing more than half of the US Pacific island waters to fishing.”
Rare giant clams in the Pacific Remote Islands marine national monument south of Hawaii.
But ecologists argue that a doubling in the amount of tuna caught off Hawaii since 2006 is evidence that protection of key breeding and foraging ecosystems has not hindered the industry.

“These monuments are like bank accounts, whereby the fishing industry can live off the interest, which is the reproductive output of the protected areas,” said Robert Richmond, a marine ecologist at the University of Hawaii.

“Invalidating this management is nothing short of irresponsible and flies in the face of best science. It’s a race to the bottom, for the short-term gain of the fishing industry but to their long-term cost.”

In US waters, comparatively well regulated compared with many other countries, more than a quarter of fish stocks are either overfished or severely depleted.

“The US is among only a few nations who have taken significant steps to protect the vibrancy of its ocean treasures through large, highly protected blue parks,” said Lubchenco.

“It is only recently that our technology has allowed us to mine, drill and fish virtually everywhere in the ocean. Creation of highly protected blue parks like these monuments is beginning to re-establish the all-important balance of places to be used and places to be treasured. We need both.”

He got rid of that law that bans dumping sludge into rivers so now they can do that again.

He's just an ass.

He lost by almost 3 million votes and yet he is making these changes catering to literally the 1%. 

Not even the 35% and speaking of that base, it seems like that white knight for the Carrier Corp.is more like an emperor with no clothing today. 

More than 200 workers clocked in for their final shifts on Thursday at Carrier Corp. in Indianapolis in the latest round of layoffs at a plant President Donald Trump toured in December 2016 to trumpet a deal to save jobs and prevent its closure.Trump praised the deal, under which he said 1,100 jobs would be saved, as a model of how he would push American companies to keep jobs in the country.

Trump did save hundreds of positions at Carrier, but manufacturing workers who now face unemployment say they feel let down by a deal that started out as a presidential campaign rallying cry but turned out to be less than it appeared.

Carrier said this week that 1,100 workers will remain at the factory, upholding its deal with Trump. They include 730 manufacturing jobs and about 300 engineering and administrative positions that were never slated to move.

But Carrier also laid off 338 manufacturing workers in July and another 215 this week. Those jobs are going to the company’s plant in Monterrey, Mexico, where workers make about $3 an hour, according to Indiana union officials.

“Yes he (Trump) saved jobs, yes he did. But he didn’t save mine, he didn’t save manufacturing jobs. He saved office personnel, okay?” said Renee Elliott, 45, who supported Trump in the 2016 election and was among those being laid off on Thursday.

Elliott began working at Carrier in 2013 as a seasonal employee making $13 per hour. She currently makes $18 per hour, taking advantage of overtime shifts, and sometimes works seven days a week.
The White House said Trump’s intervention in the case of Carrier was successful.

“The President was proud that he was able to help save the jobs of 1,100 Americans from being shipped to Mexico by overseeing a deal between United Technologies and the state of Indiana,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement on Thursday.

The U.S. economy is growing steadily, unemployment is low at 4.1 percent and wages have started to rise. About 2.1 million new jobs were created in 2017 and 2.24 million in 2016 as one of the longest economic recoveries on record has pulled people back into the labor force.

Trump had repeatedly criticized Carrier during the presidential campaign as he pledged to rip up bad trade deals and save American jobs. And he put pressure on the company to change course after his election victory in November 2016.

Carrier workers now question why their factory, which will continue making furnaces after fan coil operations move to Monterrey, was singled out by Trump when hundreds of steelworkers in Indiana are in a similar predicament.

United Technologies Electronic Controls, another United Technologies facility two hours away in Huntington, Indiana, is closing in 2018, also sending its operations to Monterrey.

About 400 workers were laid off in 2017 and another 230 will be this year, a company spokeswoman said.

Rexnord Corp., just down the road from Carrier, closed in November, laying off 300 workers represented by the same local steelworkers union as the Carrier employees.

Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after touring Carrier that Rexnord, which also relocated operations to Mexico, was “rather viciously firing” its workers. “This is happening all over our country. No more!” Trump wrote.

“Don’t get me wrong, me and the people here that work for Carrier are very grateful for it but when he was running during the election he stated that these things wouldn’t happen anymore,” said Robert James, president of the local United Steelworkers union.

“How do you save 730 jobs at Carrier and not give a damn about the 700 jobs in Huntington? Both owned by the same company. Why would you leave them out of the equation?” James asked.

Indiana’s unemployment rate was 3.7 percent in November 2017, lower than the national rate of 4.1 percent.

But the U.S. steel industry, in particular, has struggled over the past decade.

Chuck Jones, the former president of the local United Steelworkers union, said that while some laid-off Rexnord and Carrier workers have been able to find comparable union jobs, others are in warehouse jobs paying about half the $25 per hour they used to make.

And, last, our POTUS refers to African countries as 'Shithole Countries' and that is basically ruling the news cycle this weekend. Trump is literally calling around congress to see what the reaction is and notably, how his base is reacting to the shithole country comment.

Regardless, stay in touch.