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There seems to be no limits to the extent that people are willing to stand up for the guy.There is no accounting for human stupidity or ignorance https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/464018517733024/Some people consider the right to shop and get a haircut more important than the right to breathe and think they have a perfect legitimate right to do these things because they are Americans.Is it karma or irony that John McDaniel, a vocal protester against the Governor of Ohio's shutdown orders, has recently died of COVID-19?Somehow carrying a semi automatic loaded weapon into the Michigan senate has something to with personal liberties and being able to leave the house during a pandemic.People will support him even though he blatantly acts against the interests of the people who vote for him.Americans seem to think they can ban imports from China but still be able to buy cheap Nikes or clothing at Walmart and somehow don’t see the connection between the two.Many people think its perfectly OK to impose their religious dogma on the rest of the country, even though it may be oppressive or discriminatory to minority groups.Now I know what it must feel like to belong to a massive personality cult.Many Americans will say he is the best President ever without actually being able to articulate why and back it up with solid numbers and facts.America is not a democracy but an oligarchy where the many are ruled by a few.Rather than a United States, the U.S is more like a collection of small independent countries run by governors who happen to be controlled by Washington. This pandemic has shown that states are largely autonomous in their power..As of June 2019, the top 10 percent held 69.4 percent of total U.S. net worth (that is the value of all assets a person holds minus all their liabilities)Americans are unaware that Mexicans didn’t steal your jobs, technology did and the majority of people are simply wage slaves working for the 1%. Companies move to Mexico because its cheaper to produce goods there or the jobs in the US have been replaced by machines.If a guy is rich enough and brags about how much money he has people will actually believe that hes a successful businessman despite seven bankruptcies and three wives.Trump can not even borrow money from a US bank but somehow he is in charge of the US Treasury and Central Bank. Go figure.America is the only country where you can lose an election but still become President.Farmers are having to throw out millions of gallons of milk and produce rots in the fields as they have no way of harvesting or getting the product to the market. People no longer have jobs, no money and cant buy anything at the store anyway.People whose sole means on making a living on tips from being paid $2 an hour are now unemployed and homeless, and most do not have health insurance.Millions of Americans believe Fox News is actually real news and not just entertainment.Americans believe that a gaudy rich real estate developer living in a gold palace in New York understands what its like to be poor and living paycheck to paycheck.You talk a great game about what a great country you are but cant seem to score enough PPEs and ventilators for everybody. Governors have to smuggle in supplies from Korea without the Federal government finding out.The country grinds to a halt as soon as people miss one paycheck.And yes, Fundamentalist Christians are the worlds biggest hypocrites.The health system is a joke.Trump has spent over 100 million dollars on his security detail to visit his Mar-a-Lago resort. That works out to about 250 times his annual salary.He has spent about 1 day in 4 playing golf while on the job. Or about the same as Obama did in 8 years as President.Probably the first time in history that some one who dodged the draft for Vietnam gets to make the commencement address at West point.Trump wants to build a wall to keep out immigrants even though 40% of illegals come in legally and overstay their visas. there is also such a thing as airplanes that immigrants use.Speaking of the wall, in Texas some parts of the border run through private property, and a wall would put some parts of United States on the Mexican side of the border. The government is trying to take peoples land off them by force to build the wall.Trump took credit for the wall that was mostly built by Obama. He was simply adding to it, maybe a few hundred miles out of a 2000 mile border.Trump said the new wall panels would be impossible to climb but video records show it being scaled in under 3 minutes.Trump said he would drain the swamp. All he has done is fill it with alligators.Steven Miller’s father or grandfather was a Hungarian Jew who came to America to escape the Nazis. if Miller had been around the time of his grandfather in WW2 he would likely have ended up in Auschwitz, not be allowed to enter the US and Miller not have been born.Ivanka Trump signed over 500 business patents for her company with the Chinese government while campaigning to buy American.Trump called Jeffrey Epstein a “ terrific guy”. Said Epstein liked his girls “really young”Trumps mother was an immigrant from Scotland and his grandfather ran a brothel in Oregon in the early part of the 20th century. Grandfather was kicked out of Germany for avoiding the draft.Trump pushed for the use of an anti malarial drug that actually increased the death rate and many people died from taking it.Trump received about $480 million from his father and probably would have made more money if he had just invested it in the stock market.Trump is estimated to have personally lost over a billion dollars in 10 years.Trump is reportedly known to cheat at golf.If you are a daughter-in law or girlfriend to the son of the President. You can get a $180,000 dollar a year paying gig without reporting it to Congress as a political donation.Stormy Daniels got 130,000 dollars from Trump. All we get is a fucking T-shirt.Its amazing what you can get people to lie about if you pay them enough or give them enough authority they are not qualified for.Jared Kushner failed his security clearance a dozen times, had multiple omissions and finally got clearance on Trumps say-so.No one, including White House staff, knows what Ivanka Trump does all day.To make money on his casinos Trump would have had to bring in close to a million dollars a day to break even. That was impossible and the casinos folded within 6 months.Trump actually wanted Marla to abort Tiffany (she was unplanned) and hoped she’d have nice breasts.Steve Muchnin the Secretary of the Treasury believes that its possible to make a $1200 subsidy check from the government last 10 weeks.This is the same guy who used a government tax-payer funded jet to go on his honeymoon.Best one I heard yet: “If we are going to have a dictator in America, i want it to be Donald Trump”.Donald Junior seems to have spent the best part of his adult life trying to gain his fathers respect and admiration while the Donald regards him as a bit of a failure and a disappointment. Going on safari shooting rhinos just made him look like a bit of an insensitive tone-deaf jerk.14 year old Barron Trump has a whole floor to himself in Trump Tower and favors wearing suits to copy his dad.Not commonly known but Trump wears platforms in his shoes to appear taller. Has bragged that he is 6′2″ but he is the same height as Barack Obama who is 6′1″.The states that scream most loudly about being anti-government and anti-Washington are largest beneficiaries of federal Aid, including Kentucky, the home state of Mitch McConnell and many are Republican.Jared Kushner’s sister-in-law was in China selling US visas to rich Chinese for $500,000 a pop until the government got wind of it.Jared Kushner’s father is a convicted felon who paid a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law as payback for a bad business deal. He did 2 years in a federal penitentiary. The guy who put his father in prison was none other than Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.Trump canceled the health insurance on his grand-nephew who had a serious life-threatening illness, as revenge for a dispute over a family will..Mike Pence’s wife told reporters her husband didn’t know he had to wear a Mask at a visit to the Mayo clinic even though he was specifically told by the hospital everyone had to wear a mask.Trump suffers an affliction (Dunning-Kruger) where he believes he is the smartest guy in the room knows better and more than all the experts, including generals and doctors and called himself a “natural” at medicine despite no training or expertise in the field.Stupid people often lack the cognitive awareness that they are actually stupid. This is why Trump is unaware that telling people to drink bleach is not only stupid but he just doesn’t understand why it’s stupid.When asked if she married Trump for his money Melania said he wouldn’t have married her if it wasn’t for her looks.Former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry didn’t know America’s nuclear missiles came under his department.After 3 years in office Trump has still not released his tax returns.Melania is NOT fluent in five languages. In televised shots she says hello in Italian and then reverts to English. She spoke English to a bunch of French school children and relied on an interpreter for the rest. Probably speaks some Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and some heavily accented English.Its possible to have bone spurs and play college level football when you are the President.Trump say often he attended Wharton business school but he was in the less well-known undergraduate school, not the graduate MBA program. One of his teachers said Trump was one of the laziest students he had ever taught. Penn was relatively easy to get into in 1965 when Trump was there.Trump said he was one of the smartest students in his year but there is no record of him coming anywhere near the top 50 students and his name is not listed anywhere in the summa cum laude class of 1968.So far the president has said little if anything to comfort the families who have lost loved ones due to the corona virus. What he has said is perfunctory and brief and lacking in any real compassion.Recent headline. Melania has been having a long time affair with the head of security at Tiffany in Trump Tower and he looks like Michael Avenatti. Trump knows about it and is perfectly OK with it.Trump and Melania were planning a divorce but it has been put on hold since he became the President. Watch this space.4 people died in Benghazi, the hearings lasted 2 and half years and cost 5 million dollars. 60,000 people have died in the last 2 months and Trump is still President. No charges were ever filed against Hillary Clinton.Trump is still waiting on that 3 am phone call.When Mike Pence went to Germany they flew back via Scotland where Trump has a golf course and airport is about a 2 hour drive from the course. Pence and his security detail were pretty much ordered to use his boss’ hotel as accommodation.The Trump International Hotel in the Federal Post Office building recently petitioned the federal government i.e. the President for a break in the rent, so basically you have the owner of a private hotel business petitioning himself for a rent break.Trump apparently likes to eat pizza with a knife and fork.There is something wrong when 30 million people sign up for unemployment assistance one month into a lock down.Kelly Anne Conway actually though there was a Covid 1–18, not realizing “19” stood for 2019.Report: Trump Hired 200 Illegal Workers in NYC and Paid Them $4 an Hour, if they Got Paid at AllStarted a fraudulent university bearing his own name, which was then sued by thousands of its students, subsequently closed down, and to settle the suits, agreed to pay $25 million (!) in restitution.Was captured on video saying “And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Paid off porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stay silent about their affair, then lied about it repeatedly.Used his fraudulent Trump Foundation to buy a portrait of himself, pay off porn stars, and bribe Florida Attorney General to drop a lawsuit against him. Then was forced to close up said fraudulent foundation.Hired Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who was paid millions of dollars by Russian oligarchs, subsequently indicted, and found guilty of tax evasion and money laundering.Perpetuated the known false “birther” conspiracy against President Obama for years.Endorsed known pedophile and child molester, Roy Moore, for US Senate.Repeated the absurd campaign promise countless times that “Mexico will pay for the wall”. Then, when he took office, blamed Democrats for not giving him money for the wall.Campaigned on “Lock her up,” which was ridiculous at the time, and turned into another broken campaign promise.Continually called the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt”, even after it resulted in 35 indictments, convictions and guilty pleas. All while this investigation was conducted by people who reported to him in his own Justice Department.Falsely proclaims all news he doesn’t like to be “fake news.”Routinely tramples the First Amendment by attacking and insulting reporters.Locked immigrant children in cages.Appointed to the Supreme Court a man who was, very credibly, accused of sexual assault.Commuted the sentence of disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and pardoned disgraced Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.Sided with Vladimir Putin over America’s Intelligence agencies.Withheld aid to Ukraine in exchange for a personal favor that Ukraine investigate his political rival.Impeded, and continues to impede, oversight investigations by Congress.Repeatedly promised to release his taxes when elected, then refuses to release his taxes as promised.Has told over 16,000 lies or misleading claims while in office.When you are Donald J Trump Jr. You write a book about how your father has been victimized and bullied by the media and the Liberals. May as well be useful for something.Ivanka said she was going to work for all women when her father became president. So far she has done squat for working mothers, maternity leave and went so far as to say it was not her responsibility. Pretty easy to be a working woman when you can afford nannies and maids.When your daddy is President its “take your daughter to work day” at international summits where you hobnob with the foreign heads of state and pretend to be one.When the Trumps meet the Queen its a family affair as even Eric’s and Junior’s wives and children went along for the ride.Be publicly made the butt of jokes when other world leaders gather and talk about Trump. Justin Trudeau was laughing about how Trump made his own staff’s collective jaws drop at his behavior.Trudeau admits to talking about Trump after President calls him 'two-faced'Trump refused to attend a Veterans Memorial service because it was raining.Ivanka and her husband declared a personal income of $120 million dollars last year while working as unpaid advisors in the White house.Many of the apartments in Trump Tower are owned by shell companies backed by Russian oligarchs and Putin’s cronies. One paid close to double the market rate for his apartment.Trump pulled out of a security deal with North Korea without first telling his Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State. Japan’s Shinzo Abe almost had a heart attack.The US government had been working very closely with the WHO in China overseeing the pandemic in China before Trump pulled its funding saying they had been working with the Chinese and had not warned the US about he pandemic. The US has known since January but did nothing till late March about it.Bill O’Reilly was one of the biggest blowhards and loudmouths on Fox News until he got fired for sexually harassing his staff. He had to pay a $20 million dollar settlement.Fox News pundit Sean Hannity is a college dropout.Melania herself only finished one year of architecture school in Slovenia and did not graduate. She tried to make out she had a degree in design until it was shown to be a lie on her CV.She likely worked illegally on a tourist visa, used a special visa for “geniuses” to gain her green card and then went on to sponsor her parents for residency in America. her husband wants to ban all illegal immigration. But not if you are a Slovenian trophy wife.Trump tried to sue the Scottish Parliament when they built windmills in front of his property n Scotland saying they ruined his view. His case was thrown out of court.Tiffany is probably the only member of the family to have gone to graduate school, with a Law degree from Georgetown University in Washington.Ivanka, Donald and Donald Junior all attended Penn University with Ivanka attending the Wharton school of Business.Donald Junior was known best for partying hard at college and not known for his scholarship or brains. Mostly majored in beer pong.Trump held up the distribution of subsidy checks so he could put his name on them. The checks are tax payer money, not specifically from the Donald.The CDC spent weeks working on a detailed report including flow diagrams, on how to deal with the pandemic but once it reached Trump’s desk it was promptly shelved.Trump watching a solar eclipseTrump has no dress sense or sense of sartorial style. His jackets and pants are too big, his ties are worn too long. He wears baggy clothes to hide his protruding gut. When he went to a white die dinner with the queen his white vest was lower than his jacket lapels and he looked like a huge penguin. He can afford to get bespoke suits but prefers off-the-rack or perhaps has his own tailor.Trump could not name a single book that he had read apart from his own, nor name any newspapers that he reads.On one occasion he wished out loud that he wished Melania could have been there, except she happened to be standing right next to him.Trump has a very peculiar way of standing. He will lean forward, stick his bum out and hang his hands in front of him as if holding two hot irons.THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY ITBy: Fintan O'TooleOver more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into corona virus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemicAs the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted … like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.Abject surrenderWhat used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3 that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities.”Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic.It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the virus draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providential-ism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralyzed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.Fertile groundBut this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St. Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.THIS WAS ON A FRIEND’S PAGE: An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/04/10/trump-university-settlement-judge-finalized/502387002/)That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay." (https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hotel-paid-millions-in-fines-for-unpaid-work)That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem." (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-trumps-accusers-allegations-sexual-misconduct/story?id=51956410)That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/)That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you exclaimed, "He sure knows me." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/23/president-donald-trump-could-shoot-someone-without-prosecution/4073405002/)That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, "That's cool!" (https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story)That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-criticized-after-he-appears-mock-reporter-serge-kovaleski-n470016)That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?" (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/americas-first-post-text-president/549794/)That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/what-trump-has-said-central-park-five/1501321001/)That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!" (https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trump-campaign-protests-20160313-story.html)That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!" (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-orders-protesters-coat-is-confiscated-and-he-is-sent-into-the-cold-a6802756.html)That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!" (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/why-cant-trump-just-condemn-nazis/567320/)That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be." (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-insult-foreign-countries-leaders_n_59dd2769e4b0b26332e76d57)That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!" (https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/12/29/138-trump-policy-changes-2017-000603)That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!" (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-05/how-is-donald-trump-profiting-from-the-presidency-let-us-count-the-ways)That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/09/26/the-very-big-ocean-between-here-and-puerto-rico-is-not-a-perfect-excuse-for-a-lack-of-aid/)That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!" (https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/02/politics/donald-trump-dictators-kim-jong-un-vladimir-putin/index.html)That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-5-400-children-split-border-according-new-count-n1071791)That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. (https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/06/04/451570/confronting-cost-trumps-corruption-american-families/)What you don't get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.- Adam-Troy Castro

I use the definition that Maharishi Mahesh YOgi came up with.See:Lawson English's answer to What's the way to find a real guru? Apart from "When you are ready a guru will appear, what's the realistic recommendation I can take up to find a real guru?Enlightenment emerges as elements of the physical activity of the brain outside of meditation (specifically Transcendental Meditation) start to resemble elements of the physical activity of the brain found during samadhi, the deepest period possible during a TM session.Experientially (for lack of a better word), when sense-of-self becomes a “pure” or “featureless” I am rather than a complex I am doing (or thinking or feeling or acting or planning or desiring or remembering or whatever), and this simple I am is present in all circumstances, whatever the demanding task or stressful situation —and is permanent — present whether awake, dreaming or in deepest sleep — then we naturally call this our “True Self” — atman (or Self for short)— and the presence of this unchanging atman 24 hours a day is the beginning stage of enlightenment.It turns out that there is a simple, consistent change in electrical activity in the brain during TM that becomes most pronounced during samadhi and starts to show up more and more outside of TM practice, directly related to how long and how regularly one practices TM: EEG coherence. What this means at some deeper level, no-one is quite sure yet, but it seems an extremely consistent marker for TM that coincidentally is not found in any other well-studied form of meditation: other meditation practices reduce EEG coherence during meditation practice and I know of no research on other forms of meditation that says that EEG coherence goes up outside of meditation practice because of meditation practice (not surprising given that all other meditation practices seem to reduce EEG coherence during practice).Interestingly, the generators of this coherence appear to be in the main resting network of the brain, the “mind-wandering” default mode network, which is where our ability to switch tasks, not to mention our aha! moments of creativity, come from.It is also the source of our sense-of-self. It is worth noting that most other forms of meditation do not “enhance or balance or make lower-noise” the activity of the DMN as TM seems to, and in fact, in the tradition that mindfulness comes from, “sense-of-self” is considered a very bad thing.A list of many of the studies that have been done on the topics of TM, samadhi/pure consciousness and enlightenment can be found here..As part of the studies on enlightenment via TM, researchers found 17 subjects (average meditation, etc experience 16,000 hours) who were reporting at least having a pure sense-of-self continuously for at least a year, and asked them to "describe yourself" (see table 3 of psychological correlates study), and these were some of the responses:We ordinarily think my self as this age; this color of hair; these hobbies . . . my experience is that my Self is a lot larger than that. It's immeasurably vast. . . on a physical level. It is not just restricted to this physical environmentIt's the ‘‘I am-ness.’’ It's my Being. There's just a channel underneath that's just underlying everything. It's my essence there and it just doesn't stop where I stop. . . by ‘‘I,’’ I mean this 5 ft. 2 person that moves around here and thereI look out and see this beautiful divine Intelligence. . . you could say in the sky, in the tree, but really being expressed through these things. . . and these are my SelfI experience myself as being without edges or content. . . beyond the universe. . . all-pervading, and being absolutely thrilled, absolutely delighted with every motion that my body makes. With everything that my eyes see, my ears hear, my nose smells. There's a delight in the sense that I am able to penetrate that. My consciousness, my intelligence pervades everything I see, feel and thinkWhen I say ’’I’’ that's the Self. There's a quality that is so pervasive about the Self that I'm quite sure that the ‘‘I’’ is the same ‘‘I’’ as everyone else's ‘‘I.’’ Not in terms of what follows right after. I am tall, I am short, I am fat, I am this, I am that. But the ‘‘I’’ part. The ‘‘I am’’ part is the same ‘‘I am’’ for you and me.THe principle marker found consistently in the above subjects is… EEG coherence of hte same pattern found growing in short-term TMers, but at a level far greater than found in anyone else.As an interesting aside, the second-highest levels of that coherence are not found in long-term TMers who are not having any consistent quiet sense-of-self episodes , but in world champion athletes, defined as “consistently scoring in the top-10 in every national or international game or competition they’ve competed in over a three year period.” Also interestingly, the “also rans,” which is defined as “competing in the same games over the same time period, but not breaking out of the bottom 50th percentile over the same time period,” show EEG coherence levels no higher than the non-meditating group in the above study.Apparently, well before one appreciates “pure sense-of-self,” this measure predicts success in life: the more enlightened-like your brain, the more successful you tend to be. A similar pattern holds when comparing award-winning managers vs non-award-winning managers..Many Buddhists, especially American Buddhists who are unfamiliar with any of the myriad sects of Buddhism aside from what the Dali Lama preaches, consider the above descriptions the ultimate in anit-Enlightenment. 'No real Buddhist' could ever knowingly practice a meditation technique that leads to the above as it is the ultimate illusion, is almost word-for-word what a moderator on /r/buddhism on reddit.com once told me..An interesting complication arises because most people, even those who claim to “follow” the advaita vedanta “philosophy,” actually do practices like mindfulness and concentration, which are the exact opposite of TM.If you read that first link, you will note that TM comes out of hte northern Advaita Vedanta monastic tradition and the monks of that tradition consider most meditation practices done in India itself to be detrimental to enlightenment.That was the whole point of “bringing their guru’s teaching to the world”: attempting to correct that misconception about meditation that almost everyone outside that monastery was misunderstanding.That tradition says that only an enlightened teacher has the intuition necessary to pass on the intution about "not trying" to someone else:.Taught by an inferior man this Self cannot be easily known,even though reflected upon. Unless taught by onewho knows him as none other than his own Self,there is no way to him, for he is subtler than subtle,beyond the range of reasoning.Not by logic can this realization be won. Only when taughtby another, [an enlightened teacher], is it easily known,dearest friend.-Katha Upanishad, I.2.8-9.Maharishi Mahesh Yogi attempted to get around that requirement by devising a teaching play which the TM teacher rehearses for 5 months, in residence (learning the words, gestures, body language and tone of voice MMY used when teaching, as well as how to modify the above, based on the experience-level, age, and comprehension-level of the students), so that they can "play the part" of Maharishi. He called it "duplicating myself," and spent the next 45 years of his life revising that teaching play based on feedback from thousands of TM teachers who taught millions of people TM.In a very real sense, there is only one TM teacher — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — and thousands of his clones..All TM centers worldwide are expected to provide an equally carefully designed and choreographed, (also free-for-life, at least in the USA) followup program for all people who learned TM through official channels, regardless of when and where they learned, or how much they paid..And now you know where TM comes from.Occassionally, a TM teacher will rebrand TM. One common rebranding is “Vedic Meditation.” There are now many teachers in the world who are learning to teach meditation under the guidance of someone who managed to obtain some portion of the TM teacher training materials. Note that many “Vedic Meditation” teachers don’t even acknowledge where they learned to teach meditation or who they learned from, so you can’t even be sure if they learned an official course, however bastardized, or merely adopted the name on their own because they know there is no trademark to guarantee that all Vedic Meditation teachers have received formal training from the same source.Your mileage may vary as to whether or not you think this is important.60 years ago, it was very controversial to claim that, even with rigorous training, a person who wasn’t enlightened could possibly teach real meditation.These days, everyone believes it because they heard it on the internet.ANd if you don’t care either, I give you Rosie O’Donell, whose TM teacher didn’t want to charge even major stars the full price, and so broke away from the TM organization over money. Rosie’s teacher died many years ago and so she has had no access to anyone in the TM organization to help her with any misconceptions about TM that may have arisen, and it shows…Rosie is the poster child who explains why there are so many conflicting meditation traditions with conflicting descriptions and interpretations of enlightenment. She learned TM and then she learned all sorts of conflicting stuff and continued to call it TM no matter how she mutated her practice in her own mind because her teacher died and there was no one to help her because she was too cheap (even as a Hollywood star) to pay the full price for the practice..Now you know.

Paying taxes is never fun, but there are steps you can take to reduce your business's tax liability.A tax liability is the tax debt you owe the federal, state or local government.Understanding what deductions you can make, what equipment to purchase and how to invest in operations can help reduce your tax liability.Tax credits can reduce your taxThis article is for small business owners looking to better manage their taxes.For most people, taxes are due April 15, but businesses must prepare (and pay) taxes year-round. The decisions you make throughout the year impact your business's tax liability. If this is your first year filing a business tax return, you might be nervous about how much you owe the government.What is tax liability?Your tax liability is the total amount of taxes you owe to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), state or local government. A tax liability includes your income tax, employment tax, capital gains tax and past taxes that haven’t been paid yet. Ultimately, anything you are required to pay taxes on is a tax liability.How can I reduce my taxable income?From business expenses to careful investments, there are a variety of strategies that smart business owners can use to reduce the portion of their business income that can be taxed.1. Know which deductions you can legally make."Many small business owners are unaware of deductions and are missing out on money that can be saved every year," said Gary Milkwick, chief product officer of 1-800Accountant.Milkwick named some of the most common business expenses owners can deduct from their taxes:Expenses and mileage for personal vehicles that are used for businessCell phone bills, if the phones are primarily used for businessCosts of operating a business from home, such as a portion of your mortgage, rent or utilities50% of meal and entertainment expenses with existing or potential partners, employees, contractors and clientsCosts to purchase business equipment, such as computers, printers, monitors and phonesSetting up and contributing to retirement plans2. Make smart purchases and investments.If you're going to invest in new equipment or services for your business, the timing of those purchases can affect your tax liability this year or next year, said Milkwick. Starting in January, plan out what you're willing to invest in before the end of the year."If it's November, and you're planning on purchasing equipment within the next several months for a business expansion, for example, it may make sense to accelerate the purchase … before the end of the year to get the tax deduction in the current year," Milkwick told Business News Daily. "[The] same goes for services. If it's toward the end of the year, and you're planning on a large marketing campaign over the next several months, it may make sense to prepay for some of the costs to take the deduction in the current year."Happen to have spare cash to make bigger investments? Be sure to consider tax-friendly opportunities. For example, you can write off a significant portion of initial investments in areas like real estate and oil and gas, said Casey Minshew, CEO of EnergyFunders."Oil and gas investments that pass through 'intangible drilling costs' help reduce an investor's taxable income, as they can take these costs as active deductions against their earned income," Minshew said. "This can generate up to a first-year return of 30% based on tax benefits alone, even before a drop of oil has been produced."Business owners often mistakenly think that all cash inflows are taxable income and all cash outflows are deductions, Milkwick said. In reality, the nature of cash inflow or outflow determines whether it can be taxed or deducted.For example, he said, income from the sale of the business's goods or services is taxable. However, some common cash increases that aren't taxable to the company include bank loans, lines of credit and loans from the owner to the business."These [loans] are also not deductible to the owner until the business spends the money," Milkwick added.If you're not sure whether you can or should use any tax deduction strategies, consult with your tax attorney or certified public accountant (CPA).3. Invest in your employees.Finally, one of the best ways to reduce your taxable income is to reinvest earned money back into your business, specifically your employees. This will reduce your tax burden while simultaneously giving your team better chances of success.Generally speaking, the salaries, wages, bonuses and other compensation you pay your employees in a given year are tax deductible so long as they fit the following criteria:The compensation is both ordinary and necessary.They are a reasonable amount.They paid for services that were actually provided.They were paid for or incurred in the current year.Investing in your business by hiring skilled employees can lower your tax burden, but employee retirement contributions are also tax deductible for employers. According to the IRS, employers may deduct 401(k) contributions as long as they don’t exceed the limitations described in section 404 of the Internal Revenue Code.Offering your employees matching, profit-sharing or safe harbor contributions is a great way to boost their morale, attract the top talent and grow your business as research shows happy employees are more productive workers.Key takeaway: Reduce your taxable income by understanding deductions and credits, make tax-friendly investments, and invest in your employees.Avoid an audit.While it makes financial sense to explore all your options for reducing your tax bill, you need to be careful. If your deductions look suspicious to the IRS, the agency might audit your business.The IRS has switched its focus from large corporations to smaller business entities like sole proprietors, LLCs, partnerships and S corporations, said Jessie Seaman, former senior managing attorney at Tax Defense Network. In other words, Seaman said, your business could be under even greater scrutiny than your big competitors are.Seaman noted that the IRS commonly looks for certain types of business tax deductions – such as those for home offices; meals, travel, and entertainment; vehicle use; and real estate losses – to make sure taxpayers are adhering to limits and regulations.Similarly, Steven Aldrich, former chief product officer of GoDaddy and the former CEO of online accounting system Outright, reminded business owners to keep personal and business expenses separate. (The IRS looks for personal expenses reported as business expenses, he said.) And always report full, gross income before any fees, such as those for credit card processing, are taken out, he added.If you receive an audit notice, read Business News Daily's guide to handling an audit properly. Then consult your tax professional for the next steps.Key takeaway: Reduce your odds of being audited by avoiding comingling personal and business expenses or taking egregious deductions.How can I reduce my tax exposure?One of the best ways to decrease your tax exposure is to pay attention to tax credits as well as tax deductions.Unlike tax deductions, which reduce your taxable income, tax credits are deducted from your tax burden. Rather than decreasing the income you owe taxes on, tax credits grant a dollar amount reduction in the tax that you owe. There are many federal tax credits available for businesses, such as the general business credit, investment credit, credit for employer-provided childcare and facilities, the Indian employment credit and more.In some cases, you may find that your business is eligible for more tax credits than you can legally take that year. In these cases, you can do one of two things:Apply the tax credit to previous years when you did not exceed your credit limit to receive a retroactive refund.Carry the balance forward and apply them to the next tax year.Many states offer tax credits to encourage economic growth and business investment. These vary from state to state, and many are offered for businesses that increase employment, use local resources, or operate in underdeveloped cities and regions. Your state's treasury department or chamber of commerce will have comprehensive information on the state and local tax credits that are available.Many businesses record their deductions carefully but forget to explore all the tax credits that might be available to them. To ensure that you reduce your business's tax exposure as fully as possible, work with your accountant to make sure you are taking every applicable tax credit that can benefit your business.Key takeaway: Securing tax credits can reduce your overall tax liability. Consider the general business credit and investment credit to start.What makes a business tax-exempt?Tax-exempt organizations do not have to pay federal income taxes, though may still be required to pay state and local income tax. To be eligible for tax-exempt status, the owners and founders of a business must not receive profits from it.A variety of organizations can be tax-exempt, but they generally fall into one of nine categories:Religion (such as churches or synagogues)Arts or culture (such as art museums)Education (such as universities or parent-teacher associations)Public social benefit (such as the Gates Foundation or United Way)Health (such as nonprofit hospitals or cancer societies)Human services (such as homeless shelters or the Girl Scouts)Environment (such as human societies or environmental foundations)International or foreign affairs (such as the International Committee of the Red Cross)Membership organizations (such as veterans' organizations or labor unions)To receive tax-exempt status, your business must register with the IRS. The most common form of tax-exempt organization has 501(c)(3) status. To be eligible for this, your organization mustNot give net income to an owner, founder, or any other individual.Have a religious, scientific, educational or other charitable purpose.Not be involved in political campaigns or attempt to influence government legislation.Not violate public policy or be involved in illegal activity.If you are a 501(c)(3), in addition to being tax-exempt yourself, donations that individuals make to your organization are tax-deductible. There are a variety of other tax-exempt entities, such as a 501(c)(4) status for social welfare organizations. The IRS provides information on who can claim tax-exempt status and which forms you will need to use to file the return.Key takeaway: Tax exempt businesses are identified by law and registered with the IRS. Tax exempt businesses are generally non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations.How do I calculate my business taxes?If you are not a tax-exempt organization, the business taxes that you owe depend on the type of business that you have. A limited liability corporation, for example, will have a different tax structure than a sole proprietor.The main federal taxes that business owners must calculate areIncome taxes: Every business, except partnerships, will need to file an income tax return every year. (Partnerships file an information return.) How your income tax is calculated depends on the structure of your business. Partnerships, sole proprietorships, corporations and S-corps are the most common types of business structures.Estimated taxes: Income tax is pay as you go throughout the year. Employees have taxes withheld from their paychecks, but businesses and the self-employed must file estimated taxes throughout the year, based on the income you have earned up to that point in the year. Federally, four income tax payments are due on April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15 for the previous tax year. Estimated tax is calculated using Form 1040-ES or Form 1120-W for corporations.Self-employment tax: Employees generally have Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from their paychecks. If you are a self-employed business owner, however, you must calculate and pay your own Medicare tax and Social Security tax through self-employment taxes. Some groups are exempted from self-employment taxes, but, generally, if you earn more than $400 from self-employment, you must pay self-employment taxes, which you can calculate using Schedule SE on Form 1040.Employment tax: If your business has employees, you have to file a portion of their Social Security and Medicare taxes, along with income tax withholding and the federal unemployment tax. These are calculated and paid through employment tax.Excise tax: Not all businesses need to calculate or pay excise taxes. You must pay excise taxes if you manufacture or sell certain products, use specific kinds of equipment or facilities, or receive payments for specific services. Businesses that must pay excise taxes range from indoor tanning providers to aircraft management services. Before calculating business taxes, find out if you are required to pay excise taxes and which forms you will need to file.Depending on the assets that your business owns, you may need to pay additional taxes, such as property tax. Most businesses must also pay state and local taxes. Though these taxes are often much lower than federal taxes, they can be more complicated to calculate and can carry large penalties for mistakes. Check all your forms carefully before submitting your taxes to avoid fines.Calculating your business tax does not depend on a single number. Due to deductions, credits, and changes in the tax code, the actual rate that you pay will likely change every year.To ensure that you are calculating your business taxes correctly, work with a tax preparation specialist or certified accountant throughout the year. A tax pro can advise you on strategic decision-making that will reduce your tax liability and ensure that you receive every deduction, credit or tax exemption possible.Key takeaway: To calculate your taxes, tally your total from income tax, self-employment tax, excise taxes and more. Consult with a certified public accountant to ensure your tax bill is correctly tabulated.