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INAUGURATION,   January 20, 2009

Drunk in its stale air
For two hundred years.
Fettered in mind and body,
The soul, the safe escape

To let me breathe the cries
Of my heart singing
Tears of mel-an-choly.

The tears flow free today
Washing the stains of blood
And sweat in brotherhood.

Raise the curtain then an'
Let the world look in
On this promised land --
We breathe free today.... almost.

--- Arshad M. Khan
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.
---  Native American proverb
March 31, 2017 (posted April 5, 2017)

Mr. President:  The incessant drumbeat demonizing Russia has reached a crescendo
here.  Half-truths lead, and outright lies follow.  A Congressman on National Public
Radio accuses the Russians of interfering in the November election; as a member of
the Intelligence Committee, he should know better.

The hacking was during the primaries six months previously.  It revealed a corrupt
Democratic Party leadership scheming to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination.  If
they were successful in thwarting the wishes and choice of the rank and file, then that
is a real scandal, particularly as that leadership did not suffer any lasting
consequences.  No surprise that many Sanders' supporters couldn't hold their noses
tight enough to vote for Hillary in November.

She leaves a trail of lies, unethical behavior and corruption.  For example, no one
investigates how she turned $1,000 into $100,000 over a year trading commodity
futures.  It is an impossibility particularly, as she claimed, by 'reading The Wall Street
Journal'.

No one is investigating the Clintons' fortune of over $100 million accumulated as Mr.
went around hiring himself out at exorbitant rates as a speaker while the Mrs.
manipulated her Secretary of State position.  Where are the disappeared emails and
why did she not use the authorized email process?  Has the true history of that period
been compromised?  These are just some of the questions unanswered.

Then there is the Clinton Foundation with dubious donations smacking of a quid pro
quo routine, clearly obvious in the case of Morocco, which tied the donation to a
Hillary Clinton official visit bringing prestige and an imprimatur to the government at a
difficult time.  The Foundation seems to have now morphed into a $1.6 billion trust
fund for Chelsea.

Next we have Donald Trump.  The only issue of merit outside his neanderthal agenda
was improving relations with Russia.  That is now becoming a harder mountain to
climb thanks to the spitting in the soup by the Obamaites.

What have the Russians done?  Heavens they invaded Ukraine and annexed
Crimea.  The latter was merely added to the Ukraine to facilitate the administration of
a dam being constructed on the Dnieper river during the Khrushchev era.  With a split
Ukraine, the majority Russian population in Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin
Russia.

Now the big question?  In the present hysteria about Crimea, there is a conspicuous
absence of the reason for Russian action in the Ukraine.  Half truths are the weapon
of choice delivering fake news as effectively as outright lies.  Consequently, the
protests and organized coup and the self- confessed (by Assistant Secretary of State
Victoria Nuland) $5 billion expended which eventually brought down the
democratically elected government of Ukraine is rarely if ever mentioned.

It is as if the Russians would orchestrate a coup in Mexico setting up a strongly
anti-U.S. and pro-Russian government, and the U.S. should then sit idly by.

Such are the ways of a media that cheered on the Iraq war, the Afghan war, the
Libyan war, even the Vietnam war, all mostly with fake news, and is now doing the
same with Russia.