(CNN)-President Donald Trump might be in jail by the time Election Day comes around, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on her first full day of campaigning as a declared presidential candidate.
“By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be President,” Warren said to voters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, gathered at the Veterans Memorial Building. “In fact, he may not even be a free person.”
The moment marked a notable shift in tone for Warren, who has been reluctant to take on Trump directly by name since she announced her exploratory campaign on New Year’s Eve.
Warren elaborated on those comments to reporters at an event in Iowa City, pointing to the ongoing investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election by special counsel Robert Mueller.
“Well come on. How many investigations are there now? It’s no longer just the Mueller investigation,” Warren said. “They’re everywhere and these are serious investigations, so we’ll see what happens.’
Japan has so many vacant homes it’s giving them away
By Emiko Jozuka, CNN
Okutama, Japan, Four years ago, Naoko and Takayuki Ida were given a house. For free.
It’s a spacious, two-story home nestled amid trees on a winding country road in the small town of Okutama, in Tokyo prefecture. Before moving, the couple and their children — two teenagers and a five-year-old — were all living with Naoko’s parents.
“We had to do a lot of repair work (on our new home), but we’d always wanted to live in the countryside and have a big garden,” said Naoko, 45.
Naoko Ida converted an old Japanese-style house into a cafe.
It’s a popular stop among bikers.
Ida opened her cafe in September 2017.
A free house may sound like a scam. But Japan faces an unusual property problem: it has more homes than people to live in them.
In 2013, there were 61 million houses and 52 million households, according to the Japan Policy Forum. And the situation is poised to get worse.
Japan’s population is expected to decline from 127 million to about 88 million by 2065, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security, meaning even fewer people will need houses. As young people leave rural areas for city jobs, Japan’s countryside has become haunted by deserted “ghost” houses, known as “akiya.”
It’s predicted that by 2040, nearly 900 towns and villages across Japan will no longer exist — and Okutama is one of them. In that context, giving away property is a bid for survival.
“In 2014, we discovered that Okutama was one of three Tokyo (prefecture) towns expected to vanish by 2040,” says Kazutaka Niijima, an official with the Okutama Youth Revitalization (OYR) department, a government body set up to repopulate the town.
Vacant houses are a common sight across Japan as the country’s population shrinks and many young people move to urban areas.
Akiya bank schemes
Okutama is a two-hour train ride west from Tokyo prefecture’s dense, neon-soaked center.
In the1960s, it boasted a population of more than 13,000, as well as a profitable timber trade. But after the liberalization of imports and falling demand for timber in the 1990s, most young people left for the city. Today, Okutama has just 5,200 residents.
In 2014, it established an “akiya bank” — or vacant house scheme — which matches prospective buyers with aging homeowners and empty properties.While akiya banks are now common across Japan, each town sets its own conditions.
For example, Okutama subsidizes home repairs for new akiya residents, and encouragesakiya owners to relinquish their vacant properties by offering up to $8,820 per 100 square meters (1,076 sq feet).
However, it stipulates that those who receive a free home or renovation assistance must be aged under 40, or be in a couple with at least one child under 18-years-old and one partner aged under 50. Akiya applicants must also commit to settling in the town permanently and invest in upgrading second-hand homes.
But even giving away homes is tough in a country where people prefer new builds.
Constructions for Ogouchi dam in 1945. (Okutama Town)
A view over Okutama, 1955. (Okutama Town)
Second-hand homes
Niijima leads the way into a vacant, box-like house with a blue roof and white walls that was built 33 years ago. Though sturdy on the outside, the musty smell inside hints at the decade it has sat empty. The kitchen is in need of a makeover, and the tatami floor is faded.
“It will suit someone who likes DIY,” Niijima said with a grin.
There are 3,000 homes in Okutama, and about 400 are vacant — only half of which are believed to be salvageable. The rest are either too dilapidated or were built in areas at risk of landslides.
In the 20th century, Japan experienced two major population spikes: the first after World War II and the second during the economic explosion of the 1980s. Both created housing shortages which led to cheap, mass-produced homes that were quickly erected in densely populated towns and cities.
These Okutama locals regularly meet to play gate ball.
Fujiko Masuda runs a popular Japanese-style pub.
‘
They remember when the timber trade boomed.
Many of those properties were poor quality, said Hidetaka Yoneyama, a senior researcher at the Fujitsu Research Institute. As a result, about 85% of people opt to buy new homes.
Japanese laws also don’t help things.
In 2015, the government passed a law designed to penalize those who leave houses empty, in a bid to encourage them to either demolish or refurbish their properties.
However, akiya owners are taxed more for empty plots of land than for having an empty property, according to real estate expert Toshihiko Yamamoto. This is a deterrent to razing a vacant home.
Urban planning regulations are also weak in Japan, said Chie Nozawa, a professor of architecture at Toyo University in Tokyo, meaning developers can keep building houses despite the glaring surplus.
Kazutaka Niijima inside one of the akiya that Okutama will give away for free in 2019
Making rural areas alluring
In Okutama, revitalization official Niijima has found families for nine vacant houses so far. They’ve come from places including New York and China — the akiya scheme is not limited to Japanese citizens.
Filipino-Japanese couple Rosalie and Toshiuki Imabayashi, who livein central Tokyo with their six children, will move to the town in early 2019.
“It was getting too cramped for us in Tokyo and we liked that Okutama was within the same prefecture but surrounded by nature,” Rosalie said.
Overgrown vegetation surrounds a vacant house in the Yato area of Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Empty homes are an issue across the country.
For most newcomers, though, free homes are not enough. Depopulated areas like Okutama also need a sustainable economic development plan — and community-building activities between locals and newcomers — if they are to thrive.
“If people can find a way of engaging in productive economic activities and supporting themselves, they will come and stay in rural areas,” said Jeffrey Hou, an architecture professor at Washington University.
Kamiyama, a town in southern Japan, added more people than it lost in 2011 after IT companies set up satellite offices there, attracting workers keen to escape city life.
Okutama station was previously called Hikawa station.
Okutama station, October 2018.
The ingenuity of new residents is also a boon for fading towns.
Certified as caregivers for the elderly, the Idas knew they would have job opportunities in Okutama. However, in September 2017 they tried a new venture, buying and converting a second-hand “kominka” — a Japanese house more than 100-years-old — into a roadside cafe catering to roving hikers and bikers.
“The beauty of this place lies in retrofitting something that already exists,” said Naoko, inside the cozy cafe, which brims with vintage objects and local craft work. “Some people like this culture and really like old things but they hesitate about committing to rural life.”
On their quiet street,there is another empty house and the home of an elderly woman. Before the Idas came, wild monkeys kept eating the woman’s vegetable patch — now the area is busier, the animals keep their distance.
Yet while Naoko has found a permanent home for herself in Okutama, she shakes her head when asked whether her children see a future there.
“Actually, my eldest daughter says she can’t wait to leave home and rent a place of her own in the city,” she said.
We’ve been dealing with Trump’s lies all wrong. We’ve been totaling them up — 6,420 over 649 days, according to the Washington Post! We’ve been parsing and categorizing them — Trump’s statements are regularly found “false,” or “misleading,” or it “needs context,” or it “lacks evidence,” or it’s “exaggerated,” or a claim “contradicts earlier statements.” We’ve been comparing his firehose of lies to the scant misstatements by past presidents — remember how Republicans reacted when during the fight over healthcare, Obama said “you can keep your doctor”? We caught him in a lie! Yipee!
We’ve been fretting about what to call them — The New York Times famously made news with the first time they used the word “lie” in September, 2016 to describe Trump’s “birther” claims about President Obama, and since then has been sparing in the use of the word. The rest of the media has followed the Times
Whole treatises have been written about why Trump lies, profiling him psychologically, looking back at his habit of lying as a businessman when he called reporters and pretended to be a PR man representing himself. Speculation abounds: he does it because he can; it’s all part of a grand strategy; he’s clever; he’s foolish; he can’t tell the difference between truth and lies; he quite literally can’t help himself.
But what we haven’t done is look at what Donald Trump’s lies have done to him. They’re backfiring, and he’s showing signs that he knows they’re beginning to hurt him.
His lie that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt” is working only for his base. An October poll by CNN found that about 60 percent of the public supports the Mueller investigation, while about a third if the public “consider it an effort to discredit Trump’s presidency.
But keeping the base energized has a big downside. He has thrown everything he could think of at the wall, and the problem is, it stuck, and now he’s stuck. He can’t fire Mueller because he has made such a big deal about Mueller’s investigation being a “witch hunt” that if he fired him now, it would be an admission of guilt. Trump’s near constant barrage of attacks on Robert Mueller have only served to make him look like he’s got something to hide. He succeeded in backing himself into a corner he can’t get out of, and he did it the same way he does everything else: with lies and an outsized ego.
Trump has the same problem with his appointment of Matthew Whitaker as attorney general. He spent so much time yelling about Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation that firing Sessions isn’t just suspect, it’s yet another admission of guilt. Trump has hobbled Whitaker fatally when it comes to handling Mueller. Anything he touches will be suspect. All because Trump has lied and lied about Russia, and lied and lied about Mueller.
Whitaker is sitting over there at the Department of Justice in his big office, and he’s surrounded by people who worked with and for Mueller when he was director of the FBI. He was FBI director from September 2001 to September 2013. That’s 12 years. You make a lot of friends in 12 years. You engender a lot of loyalty. All of those years of service to the country as director of the FBI aren’t going to evaporate because some hack who used to own nursing homes and sat on the board of a scam company in the patent business moved his office two doors down.
Trump has painted himself into the same corner with his continual lying about his willingness to be interviewed by Mueller and his investigators. In a scene from Bob Woodward’s “Fear” John Dowd, Trump’s lawyer, put the president through a mock interview on January 27 of this year. Trump lashed out after only a few minutes being peppered with the type of questions Special Counsel Robert Mueller would ask, calling the whole investigation “a goddamn hoax.” Trump then told Dowd he didn’t want to testify. By March, Trump had changed his mind and told Dowd he would be “a real good witness” in an interview with Mueller. “I’m afraid I just can’t help you,” Dowd replied to Trump, according to Woodward. He resigned the next day.
Now comes news that Trump spent three days last week in “intense” meetings with his lawyers as they crafted responses to written questions from Mueller’s investigators. Trump told reporters at the White House last Friday that he was crafting the responses to Mueller’s questions himself. “My lawyers are not working on that. I write answers. My lawyers don’t write answers. I answered the questions very easily. Very easily,” Trump said in answer to a shouted question after a bill signing. Then on Sunday, he told Fox News host Chris Wallace that he “probably” won’t answer questions from Mueller in person.
Yes he will. No he won’t. Yes he will, probably. No he won’t, maybe. The man who said repeatedly he wasn’t afraid to answer Mueller’s questions turns out to be a man with a lot to hide.
The trap Trump has put himself in with Mueller mirrors the trap he found himself in right after he was elected. If as many believe Trump made a deal with the Russians to lift sanctions in return for their help in his election campaign in 2016, that deal died with his election. As the number of contacts between the Trump campaign and prominent Russians like Ambassador Sergey Kislyak became known, the chances of Trump making good on lifting the sanctions approached and then became zero. When it was learned that Trump campaign adviser Michael Flynn promised Kislyak that Trump would lift sanctions as soon as he took office, the deal was off. The minute Trump killed the sanctions, he would confirm his guilt in accepting help from the Russians in his election. It was another trap of his own making.
And now Trump finds himself trapped not only by his own lies, but by those of Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman. Trump is stuck with Putin’s denials that he ordered the poisoning of two Russian dissidents in Great Britain last March just as he’s stuck with his denials that Russia interfered in our elections in 2016. And he’s stuck with Mohammed bin Salman’s denials about the killing of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. First the Saudis said he was still alive, then they said he died in an accident, then they claimed he was killed by “rogue agents,” and now they’re left with denying that the murder was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Trump has been with them all the way. He never accepted his own intelligence agencies’ assessment that the Russians interfered with our elections, and now he won’t accept the CIA’s report that bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s death.
Why? Putin and bin Salman both probably have something on Trump, but that’s not it. He is trapped by the lies of others just as much as he is by his own lies because to admit anything at this point is deadly. Donald Trump has good reason to be terrified. The sky really is falling.
LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV,a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. He can be followed on Facebook at The Rabbit Hole and on Twitter @LucianKTruscott.
Perhaps there would be less outrage if the story was told by Wolf Blitzer or Jake Tapper.
There are many white men who are OUTRAGED!!! Here you have a black man stirring the racist pot. IF a white man said something about a Black man, they’d lose their jobs. Megan Kelly lost her job over “Blackface’ so here we have a black man calling white men terrorist, he should lose his job is only fair!
There are white men in this rapidly changing world who believe that they are under attack. It had gone too far and it far more difficult to be a white man in America and this morning advertisers and CNN will demand that Don Lemon lose his job.
THE OUTRAGE
In the course of a week, 14 bombs were mailed to prominent Democrats. On Wednesday, a white man attempted to enter a black church in Jeffersontown, Kentucky. Fifteen minutes later, he drove to near by Kroger Supermarket and killed two black people. As the gunman passed a white shopper in the parking lot he said, I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” Saturday, a white man entered a synagogue and killed 11 worshipers and wounded six others including four Police Officers.
Cnn’s Don Lemon said Trump would have people believe immigrants are to be feared, but statistics reveal the biggest threats are home-grown. He went on to say, we have to stop demonizing people and realize that the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them. So ,have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white-guy ban. So what do we do about that?”
“the biggest terror threat in this country is white men.”
This is what some people heard! Other’s heard he called for a “white guy ban” Fox news said Lemon was ranting! Others called him a racist!
You decide, Listen.
There are many in this country who supported the Presidents ban on Muslims and individuals from the middle east based on a unsupported belief that, Muslims hate Americans and want to destroy America. The facts are white men are the principle source of terrorism in the United States and no one is proposing a ban on “white men” this is what I believe Mr Lemon meant.
When its not Fake News
Since 9/11 attacks in 2001, far-right violent extremists have killed 106 people in 62 attacks in the United States, while radical Islamist violent extremists have killed 119 people in 23 attacks.
From 2008 to 2016, there were almost twice as many terrorist incidents carried out on U.S. soil by right-wing extremists — many of whom are white — than by Islamist extremists. It showed there were 115 incidents involving right-wing extremists and that those that ended in death were more deadly than incidents carried out by other groups.
An analysis of the Global Terrorism Database by researchers at the University of Maryland published in 2017 shows a “sharp increase”in the share of attacks by right-wing extremists, from 6% in the 2000s to 35% in the 2010s. The share of attacks by religious extremists also increased, from 9% to 53% between the two decades.
White supremacists in the United States killed more than twice as many people in 2017 as they did the year before, and were responsible for far more murders than domestic Islamic extremists, helping make 2017 the fifth deadliest year on record for extremist violence in America, a new report states.
For decades,some members of the GOP have demonized immigrants from Mexico. They were accused of straining our resources and crossing the border to have babies and to get on welfare.
Presidential Candidate Donald Trump took it further, he said the people coming from Mexico were bringing drugs, bringing crime and-they’re rapist. There isn’t any subjective data that supports any of these claims.
A point of reference for some against Mexican immigration is the murder of Arizona Rancher Rob Krentz in 2010. Krentz’s property is near the Mexican border. The Krentz family was accustomed to undocumented migrants crossing their 35,000 acres. Because of this, many assumed he was killed by one of those undocumented migrants. His widow was convinced his was killed by an illegal immigrant. After an extensive search, no one has been linked to his murder. Today, many are convinced he was killed by a Mexican national.
Less than a year after the Death of Mr Krentz. Arizona passed a law requiring anyone suspected of being in US illegally to produce papers to the police.
Race Baiting 2018 (Donald Trump’s Evil Caravan)
Before I talk about our president current attempt to inject white fear in the midterms, I want to look back a few years.
But first thing’s first! What is “Race Bating?: The unfair use of statements about race to try to influence the actions or attitudes of a particular group of people
A look Back to 1986
In 1986, a convicted felon named Willie Horton — who was serving a life sentence for murder — was released from a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough program, during which time he escaped and raped a woman. Then-governor Michael Dukakis had supported the prison furlough program, and when he ran for President in 1988, his opponent, George H. W. Bush, used that to his advantage. The “Revolving Door” ad never mentions Horton by name, but the connection was clear and the ad received considerable news coverage.
Bush Played on the fears of whites who were terrified of blacks.
2018, President Trump, has told his base a Caravan is coming, filled with thugs, bad people, including people from the middle east. He has a few days to convince his base these horrific people filled with diseases (so says Fox News) will be here at any moment. In a world where facts don’t matter. These terrible people are walking and they only have 800 miles to reach our borders. Tuesday, if you believe the president. Bringing lawless people who will kill the men and rape the women. (a small exaggeration)
The footage is several years old and his story about Democrats allowing illegals in is patently false. Donald Trump is doubling down on his attack on brown skinned people using fear to get them to the ballot box.
Luis Bracamontes was first deported to his native Mexico in 1997, during the Clinton administration, after he was busted selling drugs. But, according to U.S. Immigration officials, Bracamontes managed return to the United States by 2001, when he was deported a second time for being in the country illegally. That was during the first year of the Bush administration.
Bracamontes was back in America again by 2002. He married a U.S. citizen and remained in the country even as the Bush administration deported people at a record rate, topped only by the Obama administration.
When Bracamontes shot and killed the two Sacramento county deputies in 2014, he had been deported once under a Democratic administration and once under a Republican administration. He had been back in the United States for at least six years during the Bush administration and five years under the Obama administration. He is currently on death row in San Quentin.
It’s 2018
Perhaps, some white men would have been more comfortable with CNN’s Jake Tapper or Wolf Blitzer talking about this subject. One would think, in 2018 we are beyond this. Apparently not.
By the reaction,s only black people should talk about black on black crime in cities like Chicago or Detroit. Or Hispanics in El Paso or Albuquerque. Don Lemon ins’t racist, he didn’t attack white men, he talked about the news and the double standard.
I can’t remember a time when a white reporter was dismissed after reading statics about black people or any other persons of color. I can remember when a reporter or personality was dismissed after saying spic, called black women nappy headed hoes, fag and other disparaging words or terms on air. Blackface, hasn’t been acceptable since the 1930’s neither are insulting ethnic impersonations.
Omarosa wasn’t on any ballot yesterday. But she won in every state. Thanks to the President. If you live outside of Connecticut, Minnesota,Vermont and Wisconsin you may not be aware there were major contests in those states. Especially after 9am on the west coast, as all the media focused on The Presidents tweet, calling his favorite black woman a Dog.
After three stints on the The Apprentice it became very apparent, she’s learned from the master. It’s very clear, Omarosa, has studied Donald Trump,and knows him well.
1. She knew the announcement of the tapes would make him crazy. (Unhinged)
2. The mere suggestion of a meeting with Robert Mueller would cause an explosion. (Dog)
3. Promised the release (drip, drip, drip, ) of future recordings, resulting in fear and chaos in the White House.
Omarosa released a tape to CBS yesterday. The issue was the dreaded “N” word”. In the book Omarosa said GOP pollster Frank Luntz told them he had heard Trump use the racial slur on an audio tape. (Luntz denied having heard Trump use the word.)”
On the tape was Former Trump spokesperson, Katrina Pierson and Lynne Patton the three of them talked about the possible existence of the tape. On Monday, Pierson told Fox News the conversation was pure fiction. On another Cable news show, she said admitted (of course after CBS played the tape) she was on the tape and yes she did say that Donald might have used the “N” word. But she only said that to placate Omarosa. “That happened a number of times because Omarosa is a bully.” (It was as if Omarosa was sitting in the director chair, telling her what to say and how to react) NEXT!!!!
Like Trump, Omarosa will speak into any microphone placed in front of her.
Like Trump, she cant escape from a lie, a falsehood, so she will twist the pretzel until you’ve forgotten the question.
Omarosa isn’t known for loyalty. She is polarizing figure and not highly regarded.
“She’s doing Trump as well or better than he is,”“This is his mini-me. He created Omarosa. He gave her license and invited her into the sacred space of the Oval Office . . . Now, after having created this monster that’s coming back on him, what’s he going to do?” The answer, for now at least, is tweet.
Michael Steele, Former Republican National Committee chairman.
The Perfect Storm
I believe she wants to be sued by the President, this will keep her in front of the cameras and sell more books. Unlike the other authors, Omarosa, knows Donald too well. She knew he would attack her . There are rumors that he leaned on her for comfort, after all they have known each other for more than a decade. This IS the perfect storm for Omarosa. A woman who isn’t creditable , against an entire administration that isn’t creditable. CNN’s Gloria Borger said it best “They deserve each other”
The Trump women seem to be slowly distancing themselves from the President. First, it seems the first lady prefers CNN to Fox News. Now in a statement prepare by her spokesperson Stephanie Grisham, wrote to counter his tweet suggesting LeBron isn’t bright.
“It looks like LeBron James is working to do good things on behalf of our next generation and just as she always has, the First Lady encourages everyone to have an open dialogue about issues facing children today. As you know, Mrs. Trump has traveled the country and world talking to children about their well-being, healthy living, and the importance of responsible online behavior with her Be Best initiative. Her platform centers around visiting organizations, hospitals and schools, and she would be open to visiting the I Promise School in Akron.
Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!
Mike or Michael Jordan gets in the fray. Earlier today Jordan said I support LeBron James. He’s doing an amazing job for his community,”
A few days ago his daughter Ivanka said the separation of migrant children from their parents as a low point of her White House tenure and unlike her father she doesn’t believe the media is an enemy of the people.
While, Donald is the President. We can look to Melania and Ivanka to at least look Presidential.
CityFella
Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!
White women like me, we need to have a talk. Enough is enough and we need to make ourselves part of the solution. You. Me. The woman next to you in the grocery store line, at the bus stop or on the soccer field. The writing is on the wall. We’ve got to stand up and speak out because right now, we’re part of the problem.
