The media coverage of Trump’s feud with McCain, even after McCain's passing, has been extensive and exhaustive. Yes, Trump is so petty that he can’t even fake doing the right thing. He’s also so petty, and narcissistic, McCain’s coverage of passing way has Trump upset. As a friend told me about Trump’s jealousy of the coverage over McCain, “Why doesn’t he jump in front of a bus?” Trump doesn’t need to worry, Fox News will be there to praise him after he has a stroke eating McDonald's . Fox will be there, not to describe him as Nero, but a modern Abraham Lincoln. I think we should move past the Trump-McCain soap-opera, that keeps us from discussing actual things that are negatively impacting American citizens. And even more specifically, Veterans.
The president likes to claim that he supports the troops, yet has never gone to a war zone where troops are fighting, say, Afghanistan?
As Politico has pointed out:
President Donald Trump wants a parade of tanks and warplanes, promises a huge defense buildup and rarely misses a chance to praise “our great military” and veterans — but he has yet to visit American troops fighting in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Trump needs thing to be about himself, even when it comes to the Troop's. Going to a place to praise the troops would be a disaster. He'd probably spend most of the time talking about how the stock market is doing. He's probably afraid to go to a war zone. Furthermore, he's incredibly petty, which is why the NFL players kneeling is a wheel house for him. He gets to bitch with a simple and inaccurate argument, for fellow simple minded people to lend him support.
He bashes NFL players for kneeing for the Flag, and he bashes television networks who plan to not show the National Anthem. It doesn’t matter that he’s won that war, though he should have lost. Jamele Hill only stated the obvious fact that Trump is a racist, but America is filled with a lot of dumb-racists. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know the lyrics to the anthem, or the fact that he doesn’t know how to draw the flag correctly. Not even draw, just color-in the colors of the flag, and Trump got that fucking wrong.
His brain-melted knuckle dragging supporters have tried to play off his flag mishap, that like Trump is nuanced, and does things like self reflection. Saying that he’s drawing it for John McCain, the flag for US Internal Waters. Saying that this Trump supporter is naive would be incorrect. Mind warped would be more accurate.
If I was a baby boomer, I would’ve avoided the Vietnam War, because it would be going against what I believe in. It’s also why I don’t get choked up about the flag, the troops, and shit like that, because I don’t want to be a hypocrite like Donald Trump, and a lot of Americans. I was eleven when the war on terror started, and from the beginning, Americans have lived life as though nothing is going on. It’s why as a teenager, I have always found the singing of the national anthem before the game, a hollow-lazy version of patriotism. You stand for a few minutes, sing a song, sit down, and call yourself a patriot. Boy, what hard work to be a patriot.
Every game that I have been to, I have stood and sang the anthem, and even cheer at the end. For me, I was cheering so that we could get the fucking game going. I wasn’t there for that shit. I’m there, because I want the blue team to beat the fuck out of the red team.
So were the Green Bay Packers fans, who showed the world that shitting on Colin Kaepernick was complete farce, and that patriotism is as honest as marketing.
For a Monday Night football game the Green Bay Packers handed out miniature American Flags, part of the NFL’s Salute to Service Military Campaign. At the beginning of the game veterans were happy to see what they were seeing, but as the game went on they noticed how full of shit people were.
“During the National Anthem, everybody was waving (their flags) and singing,” said Tegan Griffith, a Marine veteran. By halftime she saw the patriotism fissile into bullshit, saying, “We started noticing people leaving (flags) on the ground, next to food wrappers and beer cups,” said Griffith. “We found a couple on the bathroom floor. The veterans I was with started to get a little upset.”
America is plagued by the fake support that we provide veterans. Our politicians send them to some bullshit, unwindable war, and a large portion of the American people cheer it on like seals waiting for chum. Sending them to a bullshit war is one thing we do to veterans, but we then double down by fucking them over when they come back home.
Alongside the problem of homelessness for veterans, they are also subject to predatory lenders, who leave can leave them broke, in debt, and homeless.
Last week, Andrea Chandler opened her mailbox in rural Virginia to find an official-looking envelope warning her that an immediate response was requested, with a Washington, DC return address and ominous logos to suggest it was a communication from a government agency. She knew what she'd find inside: a solicitation from a firm offering to refinance her home and lower her monthly payments.
“I get on average one to two solicitations a week from firms that want me to refinance my home through them,” said Chandler. They tell her that her credit, home equity, and that providing her income are not necessary. Chandler is a veteran who is financial literacy, so she didn’t get hooked by predatory lenders like other veterans. She could recognize “an adjustable rate mortgage when she saw one, but other veterans weren’t so savvy, and have been facing foreclosures across the United States as the interest rates on their homes spike upward and their homes are now mortgaged for far more than they are worth.”
In short, predatory lenders are convincing veterans who don’t understand the hellish-bullshit- language huckster’s use, try suckering them into getting their mortgages refinanced to adjustable rate mortgage’s, and in the end, veterans are going to have their house foreclosed, and leave them screwed.
That we should have laws to protect veterans from predatory lenders is not a radical thought, bipartisan, you would think. But, you would be wrong.
Congress passed the Military Lending Act, which along with not allowing lenders to charge annual interest rates higher than 36 percent, also stated that lenders could not force veterans from settling legal disputes through arbitration, imposing penalties for early payment, among other things. With the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, thanks to Elizabeth Warren, the federal government increased the enforcement of the MLA. Since 2011, the CFPB have repaid veterans more than $130 million from predatory lenders.
Trump and the Republicans have a problem. They preach their love for the troops, but have to worry about their donor class, which includes predatory lenders. Despite the reality that the CFPB has been largely successful at protecting veterans from predatory lenders by doing proactive investigations. The Trump administration will react to individual reports to possible malpractice. Interim head of the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney, had his spokesperson tell the New York Times that Mulvaney “is urging Congress to quickly pass a measure that would give him the power to resume supervisory examinations.”
That is a cockamamy excuse for two reasons. First, the consumer bureau has not been met with much legal opposition to any of their investigations, and lenders are not challenging the interpretation of the MLA by the CFPB. Second, as New York Magazine points out, “the administration is pretending that it has a legal obligation to suspend routine enforcement because it knows it has no politically viable argument for doing so voluntarily.” The Trump administration is going to help predatory lenders, just as he’s helping “the Mar-a-Lago Crowd,” reported by ProPublica. The secret cabal of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago buddies want him to privatize the VA. Privatizing the Va means that costs for healthcare for veterans will rise just as cost for living will too if predatory lenders are able to pillage the pockets of veterans.
Privatizing the VA and leaving veterans more susceptible to being screwed over, ripped off and cheated. Is not the only times that Donald Trump wanted to fuck over veteran’s.
As David Cay Johnston pointed out in his book IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK:
The biggest cut Trump proposed (2017 budget) was ending a benefit for disabled veterans once they reach the minimum age for Social Security benefits. These veterans would see their income plunge from almost $35,000 annually to less than $13,000 if the Trump plan becomes law. Pg.- 225
He was not successful at getting Social Security benefits cut for veterans, because it was too obscene, even for Republicans. But what it shows is that Donald Trump doesn’t give a shit about the troops. He doesn’t consider McCain a hero, because he got caught. How could he actually think of someone as a hero, if he’s willing to fuck them over in a number of different of ways? He certainly doesn’t have to worry about his base giving a shit. Hell, his veteran emergency hotline is just a place for pro-Trump veterans to call in to say that he’s doing a great job, despite all of his actions that harm the veterans.
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