I’m not a fan of Trump but I do believe we need to review our borders, review our immigration polices in order to protect our nation. This is only a temporary order.

The United States has the world’s most generous immigration system but we cannot continue to feel obligated to take on every persecuted, threatened, tortured or disadvantaged populations of people around the world. Especially not when we have people in our own country that our going thru the same ordeals. Let’s take care of ourselves first as many are suffering here at home.

America First, may have been Trump’s campaign but it sits fine with me!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry To The United States

Release Date: January 29, 2017

The Executive Order signed on January 27, 2017 allows for the proper review and establishment of standards to prevent terrorist or criminal infiltration by foreign nationals. The United States has the world’s most generous immigration system, yet it has been repeatedly exploited by terrorists and other malicious actors who seek to do us harm. In order to ensure that the United States government can conduct a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the national security risks posed from our immigration system, it imposes a 90-day suspension on entry to the United States of nationals of certain designated countries—countries that were designated by Congress and the Obama Administration as posing national security risks in the Visa Waiver Program.

In order to protect Americans, and to advance the national interest, the United States must ensure that those entering this country will not harm the American people subsequent to their entry, and that they do not bear n\malicious intent toward the United States and its people. The Executive Order protects the United States from countries compromised by terrorism and ensures a more rigorous vetting process. This Executive Order ensures that we have a functional immigration system that safeguards our national security.

This Executive Order, as well as the two issued earlier in the week, provide the Department with additional resources, tools and personnel to carry out the critical work of securing our borders, enforcing the immigration laws of our nation, and ensuring that individuals who pose a threat to national security or public safety cannot enter or remain in our country. Protecting the American people is the highest priority of our government and this Department.

The Department of Homeland Security will faithfully execute the immigration laws and the President’s Executive Order, and we will treat all of those we encounter humanely and with professionalism.

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/29/protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states

It upsets me to read on social media the people that are upset because people on their feed did not vote for the candidate they did and therefore deem it acceptable and appropriate to remove them. It upsets me the closed mindedness of people that act this way as it demonstrates the same bias that they feel they saw in the candidate they didn’t vote for. I have worked and interacted with many a person that had differing views as I on many things but we both worked together to accomplish our goal. After all the true act of accepting of others is learning to interact together regardless of each other’s differences. Respect begets respect and at the end of the day has nothing to do with who you voted for.

Trumponomics
Best’s Review – January 2017
Insight

The new president’s policies are a potentially potent elixir for insurers.

Donald Trump’s inauguration this month represents the end of an intense period of speculation and sophistry about his administration’s policies and the beginning of their implementation. Trump’s impact on the structure and operation of government will be profound, chiefly because his administration will benefit from majorities in both houses of Congress, and only secondarily because Trump is the ideological antipode of his predecessor. His impact on the economy, on the other hand, could be even more impactful—music to the ears of the growth- and yield starved insurance industry.

For insurers and their policyholders, changes large and small are in store. There’s no question the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—first on the long list of Obama-era legislation Republicans have queued up for annihilation—will be ceremonially extirpated in the opening hours of the new administration. And yet, Trump has already made multiple concessions to reality: Republicans suffer from pre-existing conditions just like Democrats and have trouble affording health care. And they’ve come to like the option of keeping their kids on parental plans until the age of 26. The bottom line is that the campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare will be implemented as something more akin to a reform and restructuring effort rather than a complete repudiation of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. Popular elements of the ACA will be retained, while the much-loathed individual mandate to purchase coverage will almost certainly be eliminated. Private health insurers are likely to gain more underwriting freedom as coverage mandates are jettisoned, which should help arrest and reverse the adverse selection death spiral that has led many insurers to abandon the ACA exchanges. Competition in terms of price and product should increase, moving the American health care system away from the single-payer model in which it was headed.

The early messaging on Obamacare is encouraging because it suggests Trump’s vision for “making America great again” involves a pragmatic approach toward vexing problems. Overregulation is one of those problems, and insurers are hoping for relief from bank-centric regulation through a partial rollback or reform of Dodd-Frank. Easing of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule could benefit life insurers. The urgency with which a Trump administration will tend to insurance industry concerns, apart from the ACA, is unclear. Trump is said to reward loyalty, and when it comes to prioritizing, administration insiders may notice that insurers donated nearly five times as much to Hillary Clinton’s campaign as they did to his own.

After a momentous election such as this, the industry’s political pundits can be forgiven for focusing too much on the regulatory trees and not seeing the economic forest. The reality is that the greatest gift Trump and his compliant Congress are likely to bestow on the industry is the potent combination of faster economic growth and higher interest rates. A mere one percentage point improvement in GDP growth could add $5 billion to $6 billion in premiums per year to the top line of growth-starved property/ casualty insurers. The expectation for faster growth is pushing up yields. Higher interest rates could arrest the slide in P/C insurer investment income, which remains nearly 20% below pre-crisis levels. Insurers were as surprised as any industry by Trump’s victory. The potent combination of a lighter regulatory burden, faster economic growth and higher interest rates could be just what the industry needs to jolt it from its growth and ROE doldrums.
————————————————
Best’s Review columnist Robert P. Hartwig, Ph.D., CPCU, is past
president of the Insurance Information Institute and current professor
of risk management, insurance and finance as well as co-director of
the Center for Risk and Uncertainty Management at the University of
South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business. He can be reached
at robert.hartwig@moore.sc.edu.

I’m sorry folks but as long as we kill cows for food we’ll have their skins for leather. To waste this product is not really very environmentally friendly. I would rather have that natural leather on my body or feet than the petroleum needed to make that faux leather product! And rest assured other than outgrowing the item, leather will last for decades. Case in point I sold a leather jacket last year that was over 35 years old for $15 at the Westgate Yard sale!

“If you can buy a pair of boots that last twice as long as a synthetic alternative, you’ll end up with half the environmental impact in the long run…”

Is Fake Leather Really More Eco-Friendly Than Real?
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/01/fake-leather-really-more-eco-friendly-real

I have no problem with two consenting adults in having sex, regardless if young or not as when the urge is there hormones will prevail. But when has it become a fact of course that Momma “don’t know who baby Daddy is” and “that baby ain’t mine”? Is it a result of parents too afraid to have that discussion with their children and allowing access for contraception? And then we see all the daytime talk shows providing DNA testing and elaborate calendars showing conception date and due date – I’m sure we all know the time frame from conception date and due date; seems really the issue is that someone ought to be marking on their smart phone calendar the date and time that Joe spread Momma-to-be’s legs.

Very well said. I’ve seen my friends count on FaceBook drop by almost 10 because of my outspokenness on this, not that that matters to me but I’ve made some pretty countering statements on other subjects in the past. The fight is not about protesting because of a choice of President but rather holding our new President to be accountable and fair to all the citizens of our country. Rioting, destruction of property, or promoting of hate is not an acceptable way to express one’s fear or not accepting or concern as to what our country has in store for us. Instead turn that fear into constructive energy and make positive change and growth instead of hate and tearing down. And please don’t think your actions of racism and prejudice gives you acceptable license because our new President to be got away with it. Trust me he will be held accountable severely if any of these actions should occur going forward.

JUST BECAUSE DONALD TRUMP GOT ELECTED DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN DO THIS
From A Thespian girl – The Official Site of Alex Matsuo

https://alexmatsuo.com/2016/11/11/just-because-donald-trump-got-elected-doesnt-mean-you-can-do-this/#comment-2210

It is so sad the number of friends that have unfriended me on FaceBook over my recent posts, especially one’s identifying as gay. I’m actually quite embarrassed for them as in years past this same group of people were harassed, beaten up, hated on, denied employment opportunities, or disowned by families, or lost their lives. It’s also ironic that these same tend to be younger and have had the privilege to express and be themselves throughout their lives as a result of the generations that fought for their right to be who they are today. It saddens me that they use the same words of hate, hurt and such to a Presidential elect (one who myself I did not vote for) or towards the voters that elected him. They use these words based on assumptions or prior actions instead of seeing exactly what our new President elect will do. We are a democratic society with systems in place that protect our current laws, laws put IN MOTION by prior Presidents because people came up and spoke and educated the President that this was the thing to do. It embarrasses me that as a gay person who has always believed in acceptance, tolerance, understanding, “to be who I be” that I have to see these hateful activities going on today all based on an assumption of what if, instead of believing in our great American Democratic Society that we will continue to move on towards a great nation that embraces all it’s people. Sure we can jest, pass humor, state our beliefs but we sure don’t need to be rioting (and let me point out that the rioting today over a Presidential elect is in no way equitable to the Stonewall riots decades ago), spreading hate, or fighting within the same group that share these core beliefs. I’d rather see unity; and practice what we all have fought our lives for and that is acceptance and to be loved for who we are. We all have done this in our own ways whether large or small. We have the power of knowledge, education, and cultural history. We sure do not need to embarrass ourselves and succumb to the same haters that have ridiculed and suppressed us. Continue on with the local LGBT (LGBTQA) groups and participate in their upcoming endeavors but please let us not go backwards and undo their efforts. Acceptance in part is assimilation, strength though is proudly being who you are and this cannot be taken away by any President. And if our President elect attempts to, it will be just that, an attempt because we are a powerful force not to be reckoned with. Let’s focus our energies in preparing for that, if the time comes, instead of passing hate or contributing to activities that have no outcome; participate instead in activities that will. It’s our future and us “olderlings” are relying on a smart youth that need not go astray on inconsequential embarrassing matters. Remember, it has been stated that we are a group of the world’s most influential people. So let’s not embarrass ourselves: “Fight smart not aimless.”

And let’s not forget: A democracy by definition is government through elected representatives. A healthy civil society requires responsible and active citizens who value the system of government and work towards a shared vision of civil life.