Larry The Cat Versus President Trump?

Even though he served as the “Chief Mouser” of Number 10 Downing Street since 2011, did Larry the Cat managed to successfully put a damper to Trump plans where London protesters failed?

By: Ringo Bones

Ever since serving as Number 10 Downing Street’s “Chief Mouser” after being recruited from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home for his exceptional mouse hunting skills since 2011, Larry the Cat has kept the official residence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain free from furniture and document destroying mice for almost a decade now. And yet, back in June 4, 2019 - the intrepid feline has managed to do what thousands of London based protesters has set out to do – to put a damper on the U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s packed itinerary during his official U.K. state visit.  

By hiding under the underside of “The Beast” – the president’s official armored limousine, it seems like Larry the Cat is not shy at expressing his disdain against President Trump. Maybe Larry the Cat is no fan of white supremacists who do not give a rat’s ass on the less fortunate. Given that President Trump is too fat to reach down under The Beast to shoo the cat away by himself, it looks like Trump finally met a pussy that he can’t grab by himself. Earlier that day, Larry the Cat managed to photobomb the U.S. President’s photo-op with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, it looks like this cat doesn’t like President Trump and his politics.

Donald J. Trump’s Diplomatic Pornography: His Guiding Principle In “Making America Great Again”?

A term first coined by Thomas Friedman on US President Donald J. Trump’s ill-advised Jerusalem embassy show, but has diplomatic pornography all along been the guiding principle behind Trump’s “Make America Great Again” plan?

By: Ringo Bones

The world’s top political and diplomatic analysts are probably bemused by Thomas Friedman’s description of US President Donald J. Trump’s Jerusalem embassy show as “diplomatic pornography” when Trump made serious appeasements and concessions with regards to moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem – as in the May 14, 2018 reclassification of the US consulate in Jerusalem as the US embassy in Jerusalem -  despite Jerusalem wasn’t recognized by everyone as the state of Israel’s capital because it is a disputed territory claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

It was Thomas Friedman who was the first to use the term “diplomatic pornography” after he tells it like it is during his guest spot on Fareed Zakaria GPS over the issue of Hamas, Israel and President Trump and his  Administration’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In hindsight, Donald J. Trump’s diplomatic pornography could be described as an ill-advised policy of making political and material concessions without making a corresponding leverage. President Trump could have negotiated for a landmark renewed Israel-Palestinian peace process that the Obama Administration had never achieved in exchange for going along with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s green light on allowing those countries who do so the ability to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Back in the middle of May 2018, Thomas Friedman managed to capture the zeitgeist of this fiasco by stating that “The whole thing is a tragedy. It’s like two bald men fighting over a comb.” And “The embassy event was really just a Republican mid-term prep rally disguised as a diplomatic event…This was meant to fire up the far-right religious base of the Republican Party.”As someone made famous for his iconic business how-to book, The Art of the Deal, Friedman can’t hold back on his bemusement of this ill-advised policy by saying “Trump didn’t do the ‘Art of the Deal’, he did the art of the giveaway…Trump gave away the most valuable diplomatic real estate in the Middle East treasure-box of the United States and gave it away for free. Believe me, in Jerusalem they are laughing at him. In the Arab world they are laughing at him. They can’t believe what a sucker he was to take the bait and give this away for free when he could have used it for a leverage to truly advance the peace process.” Unfortunately, Trump’s “Jerusalem Embassy Diplomatic Pornography” maneuver can also be applied to his lackluster diplomacy on North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.

United States National Butterfly Center to be Bulldozed For Trump’s Wall?

If putting migrant children in cages is not cruel enough, would President Trump give the green light to bulldoze the US National Butterfly Center?

By: Ringo Bones

The center’s director Marianna Wright compares the site to Disney’s Fantasia and more than 200 wildlife species, not just butterflies, make their homes at America’s most diverse sanctuary. But if President Trump had his way, all of it could be bulldozed to oblivion. On any given day at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, visitors can see more than 60 varieties of butterflies. In the spring and fall, monarch butterflies and other species can blanket the center’s 100 acres of subtropical bushlands that extend from the visitor center to the banks of the Rio Grande river, where the wildlife center and US sovereignty ends.

The Trump administration could now bulldoze the National Butterfly Center to oblivion in order to build Trump’s so-called border wall because back in December 2018, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing the Trump administration to waive 28 federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act and begin construction on 33 new miles of border wall in the heart of the valley – and right through the National Butterfly Center.

According to the National Butterfly Center’s director Marianna Wright “Environmental tourism contributes more than $450-million to Hidalgo and Starr counties.” referring to the adjacent counties in the valley. “Many of the properties people choose to visit to see birds, butterflies and threatened and endangered species are all going to be behind the border wall. For us, the economic impact is potentially catastrophic.”

More than 200 species of resident or migrating butterflies make homes at the butterfly center over the course of the year, including the vibrant Mexican bluewing, the tiny vicroy’s ministreak and the black swallowtail which carpets the wild dill at the property with its eggs each spring. The center opened in 2003 and is the flagship project of the North American Butterfly Association. Sadly, Trump has expansive powers to construct the border wall on both public and private land because since 2005, the Department of Homeland Security has had the power to waive numerous environmental laws in the name of national security.

Do Walls And Barriers Between Nations Still Work?

With President Trump’s debacle over the funding of his “ego wall” have resulted in the longest government shutdown so far, do walls and barriers between nations still work?

By: Ringo Bones

For those old enough to remember, the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 13, 1961 have left me somewhat bemused given that during that time, there are military jet aircraft that can fly around 3 times the speed of sound that could make any wall irrelevant. Even though that the Berlin Wall is now a distant memory after the Cold War thaw that relegated it to the dustbin of history back in November 9, 1989 declassified documents that have been revealed back in 2004 have shown that the then East German government already has plans to “automate” the wall with computer guided guns said to make the wall ready for the year 2000. Given their somewhat checkered history in the 20^th Century, are walls nothing more than a Medieval solution to a 21^st Century problem?

After reading The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World by Tim Marshall, it seems like walls more or less offer mixed results to the problems it intends to solve. The Israeli Wall that formed the barrier between the Israeli and Palestinians seems to be almost 100-percent effective when it comes to its intended function - i.e. stopping militants from conducting suicide bombing attacks on major metropolitan areas in Israel. Consequently, such walls are also referred to as “Apartheid Walls” and are not winning Israel new friends elsewhere on the planet anytime soon.

Another “effective” wall is the so-called Moroccan Wall or more properly known as the Moroccan Western Sahara Wall that separates the Moroccan occupied west from the Polisario controlled east. The structure stretches for 1,700 miles or 2,700 kilometers and is actually more like a combination between a “berm” and a minefield. It was created back in August 1980 and was deemed to be very effective in its intended function as it ended the violence of the border dispute around 1991. Unfortunately, this “uneasy peace” is currently costing Morocco 40-percent of the country’s GDP. Would Donald J. Trump’s U.S. – Mexico “ego wall” prove to be more “economically viable”?

Michael Wolff’s Fire And Fury: Factual Account Of The Dysfunctional Trump Administration?

Despite Donald Trump’s legal team vehemently dismissing its authenticity, is Michael Moore’s Fire And Fury a true and factual account of the dysfuntionality of the Trump administration?

By: Ringo Bones 

Despite merely “reaffirming” what every critic of the Trump administration already knew during the “chaotic” first year of the Trump presidency, US President Donald J. Trump’s team of lawyers threatening to sue libel only bolstered the demand of Michael Wolff’s latest magnum opus – “Fire and Fury” to know end. The book’s release has even been moved to Friday January 5, 2018 due to overwhelming demand. But is it really a factual account of the degree of dysfunctionality of the Trump administration? 

Michael Wolff is a respected journalist who started several publications and despite of Trump’s legal team questioning the authenticity of the accounts of his latest nonfiction political magnum opus, it is hard to ignore the evidence that Trump’s top brass did allow Wolff free reign to cover the start of his presidency ever since Trump got elected back in November 9, 2016. I mean there are even pictures and video clips of Trump gatekeeper Kellyanne Conway handshaking Wolff and showing him around The White House since near the end of November 2016. 

What earned the most ire of Trump’s legal team has been the account of Wolff’s book on Steve Bannon actually witnessing Trump’s meeting with his “Russian election benefactors” and describing it as treasonous. This prompted the Trump legal team to issue a “cease and desist order” when the first working day of 2018 came that only prompted the move by Wolff to release his book sooner to bookstores by Friday January 5, 2018. Luckily for Wolff, the gamble worked and made Fire and Fury an instant bestseller. If all of it is factually true, the head of the Russia Collusion investigation Frank Mueller could use Steve Bannon as a so-called hostile witness during the Trump impeachment trial.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s Swedish Massacre Hoax: Trump Fake News In Action?

Given his open mistrust of the “dishonest mainstream media”, is Trump’s Swedish Massacre Hoax a sure sign that he’s already out of touch with reality? 

By: Ringo Bones

With the whole world still reeling after Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre Hoax, people who are already questioning the sanity of President Trump may had earned credence of their claims with the recent “Swedish Massacre” tirade on Twitter as Trump tries to justify his anti-immigrant stance. The Swedish Massacre Hoax was apparently invented by Trump during a campaign-style rally of his supporters in an aircraft hangar in Melbourne, Florida. When former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt Tweeted: “Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound.” It wasn’t long that everyone realized that Trump’s “Swedish Massacre Hoax” is about as real as his presidency. 

President Trump’s bizarre nonexistent terror attack on Swedish soil may have been due to his rejection of other more reliable news media in preference to a conservative far-right news channel called Fox News, where the night before Trump’s Melbourne, Florida rally, he was watching a documentary made by a right-wing demagogue claiming that Swedish crime rates are on the rise because of the Swedish government relaxing its restrictions in accepting Syrian war refugees in 2015. But the truth is crime rates across Sweden had been in decline since 2005. Trump’s war on the “dishonest media” has unforeseen consequences indeed. By often referring to CNN and the BBC, amongst others, as “fake news”, it seems Trump has apparently lost all contact with reality this time. 

Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre Hoax: The Massacre That Never Was?

Given that it forms the bulk of her raison d’être of President Donald Trump’s so-called “Travel Ban”, is Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre Hoax a triumph of President Trump’s obsession with so-called “Alternative Facts”?

By: Ringo Bones 

Looks like U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s obsession with so-called “Alternative Facts” had backfired when her former campaign manager and current Counselor Kellyanne Conway during a press interview defending his proposed “Travel Ban” – which is widely viewed as the notorious “Muslim Ban” – managed to create the so-called “Bowling Green Massacre Hoax”, which allegedly, according to Kellyanne Conway, is a result of a “slip-of-the-tongue”. Despite of this press interview faux-pas, is Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre Hoax has a kernel of truth contained in it? 

Various small-town mom and pop bread-and-breakfast establishments in the United States deep-south region had been quick to exploit the “tourism potential” of Kellyanne Conway’s so-called Bowling Green Massacre incident, the truth is the origin of the now famous “journalistic hoax of 2017” that have since gone viral has a rather mundane origin. During Kellyanne Conway’s press interview in defense of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s notorious “Muslim Ban”, Conway cites an incident of a supposed massacre perpetrated by a group of “radicalized Muslim-Americans” that happened in Bowling Green, Kentucky. 

But the true origin of Kellyanne Conway’s “Bowling Green Massacre Hoax” was the 2013 Justice Department announcing that it has sentenced two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green, Kentucky to federal prison after they confessed to attacking U.S. soldiers in Iraq and assisting Al Qaeda in Iraq by sending money and weapons. In truth, the so-called bloody massacre that Kellyanne Conway cited as an example to defend U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s notorious “Travel Ban” during a press conference actually never happened. Unfortunately, the truth (or was it U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s so-called “Alternative Facts”?) is still powerless to stop unscrupulous tour operators exploiting Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre Hoax even if their town is only coincidentally named Bowling Green - and not Bowling Green, Kentucky – for monetary gain. In truth, Kellyanne Conway’s “Bowling Green Massacre” is about as real as Gene Roddenberry’s Sino-Indian War.