Trump: "I Thought Presidency Would Be Easier" - Politico

Gee, the most powerful position on earth; who would think that that wouldn't be a piece of cake? A big beautiful piece of cake!

The full article is available here

Donald Trump's File - Politifact Truth-O-Meter

Here's how Donald Trump fares on the Truth-O-Meter:

• Pants on Fire - 16% 
• False - 33% 
• Mostly False - 20% 
• Half True - 15% 
• Mostly True - 12% 
• True - 4%.

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Obama Criticized for $400K Speech To Wall Street - Common Dreams

"While Obama railed against 'fat cat bankers' on the campaign trail, during his tenure as president he oversaw the massive bailout for the firms responsible for the 2008 crisis, picked former Wall Street executives for his cabinet, and not a single banker went to jail."

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Trump's "Swamp Draining" Lags Behind Campaign Rhetoric - NPR

"If 'draining the swamp' means less lobbying, that isn't happening. Since Election Day, the number of new lobbyist registrations is up compared with a year ago."

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How Do Trump's First 100 Days Rate Historically - Politifact

Trump: "No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days."

Facts: "Trump's accomplishments are much less numerous and far-reaching than those of Roosevelt, the standard against whom all presidents are measured. In more recent years, other presidents, including Obama, have accomplished more in their first 100 days than Trump has."
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Trump's First 100 Days: An Entry Level Presidency - NPR

"There have been legislative stops and starts; hectic management in the White House, including infighting between family and advisers and the shortest tenure of any national security adviser in history; and many, many key positions in his administration remain unfilled."

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Nature's Healing - Gerald May at Shalem Institute

No matter how kindly we feel, we will never be able to participate in healing the world around us as long as we keep seeing Nature as something different from ourselves.

We have been fractured. We have been broken off from the nature of the world, broken away from the nature of one another, broken apart from our own nature.

The pain of this breach is so constant that we have become accustomed to it; it feels normal.

The pain is with us every day, when we judge ourselves and others, when we struggle for control, when we draw circles around ourselves that shut others out, when we long for a connectedness we cannot find, when we try to help one another and it’s never enough, and, perhaps most of all, when we go outdoors and feel that Nature is something different from us.

Before we can effectively heal the wounds we have inflicted upon the rest of Nature, we must allow ourselves to be healed. And we must allow the rest of Nature to help us.

I do not know exactly how the healing happens; I only know a little bit of what has happened to me. I am sure you, also, have had some experience of it. It can happen in very ordinary situations, like feeling your hands in the dirt of a garden or lying on your back in a field.

In part, it happens just through the physical touch of earth and sky and growing things. This physical, healing touch has to go deep within us to where we are truly broken. For me, the deep touching happens when my mind stops and my senses open and I am given willingness.

The full article is available here

Return of Dangerous ‘Obama Did Nothing’ Syria Narrative - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

One could make a very good argument that even before Trump’s missile strike, the Syrian civil war was suffering from far too much foreign intervention, rather than not enough.

One of great ironies of our over-saturated media environment is that, often, the biggest falsehoods and most transparent acts of political theater enjoy the most widespread acceptance and demonstrate the most stubborn popularity.

For years, the press has convinced itself—and, by extension, much of the public—that President Barack Obama refused to intervene in Syria after a ghastly sarin nerve agent attack in 2013 violated his “red line” warning about chemical weapons use to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Previously, FAIR (9/5/15) documented how this narrative was mere “fantasy” and that, in fact, “the US has been ‘intervening’ in the Syrian civil war, in measurable and significant ways, since at least 2012—most notably by arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces.”

The Washington Post (6/12/15) reported that the CIA was spending $1 billion a year, or about 1/15th of the agency’s budget, on efforts to train Syrian rebels; the Pentagon had a separate program that spent another half billion dollars on an almost completely useless rebel-training effort that a Foreign Policy analysis (3/18/16) bluntly called money “wasted.”

Several countries—among them the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Russia—have already been intervening in Syria for years, with untold numbers of military staff and materiel to the tune of billions of dollars. In fact, one could make a very good argument that even before Trump’s missile strike, the Syrian civil war was suffering from far too much foreign intervention, rather than not enough.

The full article is available here