SMITHBITS RADIO MAGAZINE

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America


Front Cover
PenguinJun 21, 2016 - History - 480 pages
The New York Times bestseller
New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016
Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On
NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads
San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books
Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016
Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016

Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary. The New York Times
“This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” O Magazine

In her groundbreaking  bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash.


“When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg.

The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.
 
We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.

Trump's Chumps - Get on board or abandon ship


WEST SACRAMENTO CA (IFS) -- For a moment there as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer "barked" his orders into the media's cameras, this writer felt he was in front of the North Korean's famous Newscaster telling the department heads to "enforce the executive orders or get another job".  Never in the history of this country has anyone just "bullied" their way across the Laws and landscape of democracy, possibly the Nazi movement in Germany of the 1930's.  The only thing that is missing, is the "Brown Shirts" and the Gestapo at the air terminals asking you "Where Are Your Papers"? - KHS  


Jeff Sessions grilled Sally Yates on constitutional duty during 2015 hearing - Now what comes around -- goes around Mr. Sessions.


(CNN)Well, this is awkward.
Video of Sally Yates' Deputy Attorney General confirmation hearing in 2015 shows Sen. Jeff Sessions -- Trump's pick for the country's top legal position -- grilling her about her responsibility to the then-President, Barack Obama, should he require her to execute "unlawful" views.

"You have to watch out because people will be asking you to do things and you need to say no. You think the Attorney General has the responsibility to say no to the President if he asks for something that's improper?" the Alabama senator asks her."A lot of people have defended the Lynch nomination, for example by saying 'well, he appoints somebody who's going to execute his views, what's wrong with that?'" he asks, referring to Obama's 2014 nomination of Loretta Lynch to the role of Attorney General.

"But if the views the President wants to execute are unlawful, should the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General say no?"

Yates replies: "Senator, I believe the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution and to give their independent legal advice to the President."

Yates, who until yesterday was Acting Attorney General, was fired after she instructed the Justice Department not to defend Trump's immigration order, which bans travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations and temporarily halts refugee arrivals.

Yates paid the price for falling afoul of the Trump White House.





    "(Yates) has betrayed the Department of Justice," the White House statement said. 

    Janus – Illuminati God Of Chaos and Deception - As Trump Continues his Bloody Monday Massacre


    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talks with press on Sept. 5, 2016, aboard his campaign plane, while flying over Ohio, as Vice presidential candidate Gov. Mike Pence looks on. (Photo by Evan Vucci/AP)
    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talks with press on Sept. 5, 2016, aboard his campaign plane, while flying over Ohio, as Vice presidential candidate Gov. Mike Pence looks on.
     
    Photo by Evan Vucci/AP

    For Team Trump, the ‘opposition party’ isn’t Democrats

    UPDATED 
    A couple of weeks ago, Esquire published a piece quoting an unnamed official in Donald Trump’s White House describing news organizations as “the opposition party.” At the time, the phrasing seemed rather provocative, so it stood to reason that the White House official didn’t want to be quoted by name.

    This morning, however, the president himself described the media as “the opposition party.”

    The White House’s offensive against journalism has clearly reached a new level. Stephen Bannon called the New York Times last week to tell the newspaper, “I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party.” He added that American media should “keep its mouth shut” and “just listen for a while.”

    A day later, Trump sat down with TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network to argue, “Yeah, I think the media is the opposition party in many ways. I’m not talking about all of them … but a big portion of the media, the dishonesty, total deceit and deception. It makes them certainly partially the opposition party, absolutely.” The day after that, which was also the morning his controversial Muslim ban started causing international chaos, the president lashed out at the New York Times and the Washington Post via Twitter with a series of angry missives.

    And then yesterday, Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” where she delivered a lengthy tirade in which she appeared to call for media professionals to be fired for criticizing the president.
    “Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go. They are on panels every Sunday. They’re on cable news every day. […]

    “We turn the other cheek. If you are part of Team Trump, you walk around with these gaping, seeping wounds every single day, and that’s fine.”
    Remember, this is how White House aides talk when they’re “fine,” and turning the other cheek.

    I’ve seen some suggestions that this kind of rhetoric is comparable to President Obama’s aides referring to Fox News in 2009 as “an opponent.” I understand the point, but the details matter: Eight years ago, Obama’s White House was exasperated with one outlet that’s obviously closely tied to Republican politics. In 2017, Trump World is taking aim at practically the entirety of the American media at an institutional level.

    And that’s not the sort of thing presidential administrations usually do. In his final press conference, a few days before leaving office, President Obama delivered an important message to the press corps:
    “I have enjoyed working with all of you. That does not, of course, mean that I’ve enjoyed every story that you have filed, but that’s the point of this relationship: You’re not supposed to be sycophants, you’re supposed to be skeptics. You’re supposed to ask me tough questions. You’re not supposed to be complimentary, but you’re supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power and make sure that we are accountable to the people who sent us here.

    “And you have done that. And you’ve done it, for the most part, in ways that I could appreciate for fairness even if I didn’t always agree with your conclusions. And having you in this building has made this place work better. It keeps us honest. It makes us work harder. It made us think about how we are doing what we do and whether or not we’re able to deliver on what’s been requested by our constituents.”
    This is a perspective Trump and his team apparently have not yet embraced.

    Broadly speaking, it’s notable that Trump’s two most spirited feuds in recent months have been with American news organizations and American intelligence agencies. That’s not a coincidence: this is an administration that has a strained relationship with facts, which inevitably creates a degree of hostility between the Republican White House and those who challenge the conclusions Trump World embraces.

    What’s less clear is what the nascent administration intends to do with this dynamic. If the president and his aides believe they can upbraid journalists into docile obedience, they’re going to be disappointed. If they’re looking for ways to govern without scrutiny or questions, that won’t work, either.

    No White House has ever liked the press, but successful ones have at least learned to interact with news organizations at a professional level. Will Team Trump ever manage this? Will it even try?

    Monday, January 30, 2017

    President Trump is Incompetent to Lead the United States

    WEST SACRAMENTO CA (IFS) --Our fearless leader has managed to dismiss the world leaders and put legal citizens from using their green cards to get back into the United States.  All the work we have put into Iraq is now for nothing.  The fighter pilots and generals who come back and forth into the United States and who suppose to be our friends are now our enemies.

    We got what we paid for.  President Trump's campaign tirades are a fact and he did not hide it.  He told us upfront about what he was going to do.  It was not a hidden agenda.  Trump's Chumps have taken over the NSC, he has fired Attorney General Yates, who is a hold over from the Obama Administration. 

    Shirley Hazzard

    Shirley Hazzard (born 30 January 1931) is an Australian author offiction and non-fiction. She was born in Australia, but holds citizenship ofGreat Britain and the United StatesHer 1970 novel, The Bay ofNoonwas shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010 and her2003 novel The Great Fire won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

    Life

    Hazzard was born in Sydney and attended Queenwood School for Girls in Mosmanbut left in 1947 to travel through Southeast Asia withher parents. Her first landing was Hiroshima.  Her diplomat father tookher to Hong Kongand then she was "brutally removed by destiny" to New Zealand where her father was Australian Trade Commissioner. Hazzard says of her experience of the East that "I began to feel thatpeople could enjoy life, should enjoy life".
    Hazzard's early life "was a carbon copy of Helen Driscoll's" (the heroineof The Great Fire). Helen and her brother, the dying Benedict, are described as "wonderfully well read, a poetic pair who live in literature."Poetry, she says, has always been the center of her life.
    She travelled to Italy in 1956, and worked for a year in Naples.
    In 1963, Hazzard married the writer Francis Steegmullerwho died in 1994. As of 2006, she lives in New York Cityfrequently travelling to herItalian residence in Capri.

    Career

    Hazzard is the author of four novels and two collections of short fiction.Her first book, the story collection Cliffs of Fallwas published in 1963. In 1977 her short story "A Long Story Short", originally published in The New Yorker on 26 July 1976, received an O. Henry Award.
    The Transit of Venusher third novelwon the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her next novel, The Great Firewhich took her 20 years to complete, garnered the 2003 National Book Awardthe 2004 Miles Franklin Awardand the 2005 William Dean Howells Medal.It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fictionlong listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prizeand named a 2003 Book of the Year by The Economist Her second novel, The Bay of Noonwas nominated for the Lost Man Booker Prize.
    In addition to fiction, Hazzard has written two books critical of the United NationsDefeat of an Ideal (1973) and Countenance of Truth (1990), and, "Greene on Capri", the latter an account of her friendship with Graham Greene.  Her most recent work of nonfiction, The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples (2008) is a collection of writings on NaplesItaly,co-authored by her late husband, Francis Steegmuller.
    In 1984 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation invited Hazzard to give the Boyer Lectures, a series of radio talks delivered each year by a prominent Australian. The talks were published the following year under the title Coming of Age inAustralia.
    In 2012 a conference was held in her honor at the New York Society Library and Columbia University.

    Thursday, January 26, 2017

    Trump order stops federal funding to "sanctuary cities"?

    One Trump order would stop federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities — a loose term that refers to communities that shield undocumented immigrants from deportation — unless the money is related to law enforcement.
    Image: Immigrant family
    Isabel Sandoval, an undocumented immigrant, and her daughter, Marisol, during a vigil in Los Angeles in June. Eugene Garcia / EPA
    "These jurisdictions have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic," the order reads. "Many aliens who illegally enter the United States and those who overstay or otherwise violate the terms of their visas present a significant threat to national security and public safety."
    The action also directs the hiring of 5,000 new border patrol agents and would triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
    A separate order redirects Homeland Security money to erect a "very large" wall on the southern border with Mexico, along with more detention facilities along the border.

    Great Walls of the United States and Mexico - Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto Cancels Meeting

    Great Walls of the United States and Mexico









    WEST SACRAMENTO CA (IFS) -- Looking at this picture of the Great Wall(s) of Mexico and the Great Wall of China at the bottom of this hitlist.  It grieves me to know that the Great Wall of China is the worlds longest graveyard. It is estimated that the Great Wall cost ten (10) bodies per mile.  
    At one time, it was estimated that the cost of the United States from East Coast to West Coast was approximately one (1) body per mile.  The cost of the United States from North to South was three (3) bodies per mile.  The people that are entering the United States are not from Mexico.  These people come from everywhere else in Central and Latin and South America to descend upon our borders.
    Mexico's unemployment rate is less than three (3) percent.  The Mexican economy is five (5) times better then the United States at this moment in time.  Why would they want to pay for a wall?   Their law abiding citizens use the international portals to come and go like the rest of us.
    You could take $2.5 Billion dollars and change the face of the governments of Central and Latin America and create a safe environments for their citizens.  We have overturned governments we don't admire before.
    If you find anyone in the Sonora Deserts trying to enter the United States, they are not from here -- AT ALL!!  How tall will this fence be?  20 feet - 50 feet - 100 feet high?  How far down in the ground?  About the same in depth and height?  You get the crazy arguments?

    The border line between Mexico and the U.S in the community of Sasabe in Sonora state, Mexico, on Jan. 13, 2017. Alfredo Estrella / AFP - Getty Images
    Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has scrapped an upcoming meeting with President Donald Trump in the wake of a fiery back-and-forth over which nation will pay for a border wall between the two nations.
    "This morning we informed the White House that I will not attend the business meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with the @POTUS," Nieto tweeted.
    Trump tweeted earlier Thursday that if Mexico refused to pay for the wall it might be best to scrap their upcoming meeting.
    "The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers...," Trump tweeted. "If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting."

    Mexican president cancels meeting with Trump


    Washington (CNN)Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Thursday canceled a meeting with US President Donald Trump that had been set for next week after renewed tensions over Trump's plan to build a wall on the border.
    "This morning we have informed the White House that I will not attend the meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with the POTUS," Peña Nieto tweeted.
      Earlier Thursday morning, Trump had tweeted that it would be better to skip the meeting if Peña Nieto continued to insist Mexico would not pay for the wall -- something the Mexican leader had said as recently as Wednesday evening.
        "If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting," Trump tweeted and in an earlier tweet he noted the US's trade deficit with Mexico and what he said were the American job losses caused by NAFTA.

        The Day After Roswell

        Philip J. Corso (May 22, 1915 – July 16, 1998) was an American Army officer.

        He served in the United States Army from February 23, 1942, to March 1, 1963,[1] and earned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
        Corso published The Day After Roswell, about how he was involved in the research of extraterrestrial technology recovered from the 1947 Roswell UFO Incident. On July 23, 1997, he was a guest on the popular late night radio show, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell where he spoke live about his Roswell story. 

        This interview was rebroadcast by Coast to Coast AM on July 3, 2010.


        After joining the Army in 1942, Corso served in Army Intelligence in Europe, becoming chief of the US Counter Intelligence Corps in Rome. In 1945, Corso arranged for the safe passage of 10,000 Jewish World War II refugees out of Rome to the British Mandate of Palestine. He was the personal emissary to Giovanni Battista Montini at the Vatican, later Pope Paul VI, during the period when the "Nazi Rat Lines" were most active.
        During the Korean War (1950–1953), Corso performed intelligence duties under General Douglas MacArthur as Chief of the Special Projects branch of the Intelligence Division, Far East Command.One of his primary duties was to keep track of enemy prisoner of war (POW) camps in North Korea.
        Corso was in charge of investigating the estimated number of U.S. and other United Nations POWs held at each camp and their treatment. At later hearings of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs,Corso provided first hand testimony, that many hundreds  of American POW's were abandoned at these camps.
        At those hearings, Senator John McCain [R AZ] dismissed these undocumented and uncorroborated allegations made by Corso as being extremely difficult to believe. McCain implied that Corso was guilty of fabricating the truth and essentially terminated the testimony being given by Corso immediately after a severe verbal reprimand on live television. 
        McCain noted that his personal relationship with Eisenhower, led him to believe that Eisenhower was just not capable of allowing known American POWs to remain incarcerated after the termination of the Korean War.
        Corso was on the staff of President Eisenhower's National Security Council for four years (1953–1957).
        In 1961, he became Chief of the Pentagon's Foreign Technology desk in Army Research and Development, working under Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau.
        In 1964, Corso was assigned to Warren Commission member Senator Richard Russell, Jr. as an investigator into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Corso's role was to deliberately fabricate the "legend" of Lee Harvey Oswald as a so-called Marxistand Communist sympathizer when in fact Oswald circulated within the Dallas based White Russian pro-Czarist and anti-communist community frequented by Baron George de Mohrenschildt, George Bouhe, Ilya Mamantov and Marina Oswald[citation needed].
        In his book The Day After Roswell (co-author William J. Birnes) claims he stewarded extraterrestrial artifacts recovered from a crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
        Corso says a covert government group was assembled under the leadership of the first Director of Central Intelligence, Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (see Majestic 12). Among its tasks was to collect all information on off-planet technology. The US administration simultaneously discounted the existence of flying saucers in the eyes of the public, Corso says.
        According to Corso, the reverse engineering of these artifacts indirectly led to the development of accelerated particle beam devices, fiber optics, lasers, integrated circuit chips and Kevlar material.
        In the book, Corso claims the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars", was meant to achieve the destructive capacity of electronic guidance systems in incoming enemy warheads,as well as the disabling of enemy spacecraft, including those of extraterrestrial origin.