Wednesday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

[Rudy Tirre]

TheFrontPageCover

~ Featuring ~

I Love Maps

by Tom McLaughlin

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President Trump Participates in Swearing-in 

Ceremony For CIA Director Gina Haspel

by sundance

{ theconservativetreehouse.com } ~ THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. And good morning. I want to thank all of you and our distinguished guests for joining us today for a ceremony like few will ever have again... this is a very special one — including Vice President Pence, Secretary Pompeo, Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary Chao, Secretary Perry, Secretary Nielsen, Director Coats, and my nominee for the VA Secretary, who will do a fantastic job, Robert Wilkie. Thank you very much. I want to give a special thank-you for being here to Chairman and Senator Richard Burr. Thank you very much, Richard. And a very courageous man — he’s courageous — Congressman Devin Nunes. Thank you very much, Devin, for being here. Appreciate it. Most especially, I want to thank you, the dedicated men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is a true honor to stand here today before the most elite intelligence professionals on the planet Earth. Nobody even close. We’re here today for the swearing-in of a very special person, your new CIA Director, someone who has served this agency with extraordinary skill and devotion for 30 years — Gina Haspel...

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/05/21/president-trump-participates-in-swearing-in-ceremony-for-cia-director-gina-haspel/

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE9AZI4auqA

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Medicaid and the Democratic War on Work

by DAVID CATRON

{ spectator.org } ~ When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that states could experiment with work requirements as a prerequisite for Medicaid eligibility... the Democrats denounced the policy as racist and cruel. They didn’t explain how such requirements could possibly be racist in states whose Medicaid populations are nearly 100 percent white. Nor did they say what is cruel about asking Medicaid enrollees to do something that will, according to numerous studies, improve their well-being. The science says that work will be good for their physical, psychological, and fiscal health. So, why have the Democrats declared war on work? It certainly isn’t based on any aversion to Medicaid work requirements by the public. According to a Heritage Foundation poll published in December, 92 percent of Americans favor reasonable work requirements for all types of welfare. Nor is it due to any indication from the medical community that gainful employment will adversely affect their patients. According to a single question survey of physicians conducted in April by Merritt Hawkins, the nation’s leading physician search firm, three-quarters of American doctors favor Medicaid work requirements. Conversely, fewer than 2 out of 10 opposed a policy that asked enrollees to seek employment: And yet there can be little doubt that the Democratic Party has somehow morphed into the anti-employment party. The evidence for this is pretty difficult to miss. The liar-nObama era, despite a deluge of disingenuous media reports about the allegedly heroic role our erstwhile president played in “saving” the economy, was characterized by countless initiatives clearly meant to reduce employment growth to the anemic level that liar-nObama himself called the “new normal.” A clear sign that he intended to take every action possible to render this sluggish job growth permanent was his disembowelment of liar-Clinton-era work requirements for welfare recipients...

https://spectator.org/medicaid-and-the-democratic-war-on-work/?utm_source=American+Spectator+Emails&utm_campaign=b530c63338-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-b530c63338-104608113

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Pompeo Calls Out Iran for Continuing to Harbor al-Qaeda Leaders

by JENNA LIFHITS

{ weeklystandard.com } ~ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday in his first major foreign policy address that Iran is still sheltering senior al-Qaeda operatives... and demanded that the country stop doing so as part of any detente with the U.S. “Iran continues to be, during the JCPOA, the world’s largest sponsor of terror,” Pompeo said during a speech at the Heritage Foundation, using an abbreviation for the nuclear deal. “It continues to serve as sanctuary for al-Qaeda, as it has done since 9/11, and remains unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qaeda members residing in Tehran.” He added, “Today, we ask the Iranian people: Is this what you want your country to be known for? For being a co-conspirator with Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda?” In the wake of the president’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal, Pompeo said Iran will face unprecedented financial pressure that will let up only if it complies with a range of nuclear and non-nuclear requirements. Among them: “Iran too must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring senior al Qaeda leaders.”...

https://www.weeklystandard.com/jenna-lifhits/secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-calls-out-iran-for-harboring-al-qaeda-leaders

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Michigan Think Tank Looks Into Scope 

of State’s Crony Capitalism — It’s Not Pretty

by ANDREW WILFORD

{ spectator.org } ~ Crony capitalism appears ubiquitous in today’s economy, but quantifying its costs can be difficult... Fortunately, the Mackinac Center did it for us. A study out of the Michigan-based think tank provides an interesting case study into the scope of crony capitalism — and who is enabling it. The study found that, since 2001, Michigan lawmakers have forked over $16 billion in business subsidies and tax incentives. The study notes that that is more than the value of the state’s four major sports teams: the Lions, Red Wings, Tigers, and Pistons. That’s a bit of an understatement — it’s only a little less than four times the value of those franchises combined. A major issue with corporate subsidies is the lost opportunity to do something more productive with the money. Even in the rare cases where corporate subsidies are not a substantial net loss for states, the funds could have been used more productively somewhere else. The study’s authors note that that amount of money could have been used to pay off the state’s employee pension debt, or to resurface “nearly all” of the state’s highways...

https://spectator.org/michigan-think-tank-looks-into-scope-of-states-crony-capitalism-its-not-pretty/?utm_source=American+Spectator+Emails&utm_campaign=b530c63338-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-b530c63338-104608113

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Dan Bongino Discusses John Brennan – President Trump 

Modifies Schedule To Meet Rosenstein, Wray

by sundance

{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ Earlier today President Trump highlighted a quote from Dan Bongino to the Fox News Morning group... The citation references former CIA Director John Brennan and his rather looming responses to the requests by the office of the President for DOJ and FBI review. Additionally, President Trump has changed the last half of his daily schedule to allow for a 3:00pm meeting today with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.  Meeting Topic: ‘The Big Ugly’.   https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/05/21/dan-bongino-discusses-john-brennan-president-trump-modifies-schedule-to-meet-rosenstein-wray/

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69rRA57QPPA

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I Love Maps

by Tom McLaughlin

{ tommclaughlin.blogspot.com } ~ Maine has the second largest collection of globes in the country housed at the Osher Map Library on the campus of the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Only the Library of Congress has more. The Osher Library also contains more than 400,000 maps of all kinds and over 7000 have been digitized according to the Library’s web site.

Prior to computers, maps were the best way to organize many kinds of knowledge. As a teacher my classroom was full of them. Seven were pull-downs and I still miss being able to walk over and pull one down like a shade to study it when something happens in a remote part of the world. As things change politically, maps have to depict new national boundaries, especially after wars, but the old maps will always be valuable as historical references.

 

Topographic maps don’t change nearly as fast — only after a lot of volcanic and tectonic activity. Depending on how extensive the eruption in Hawaii becomes, local maps may need modification. Last month I toured Civita di Bagnoregio — a town perched on the head of a pin which is all that remains of once-thriving Italian town founded by Etruscans over 2500 years ago. In the 17th century it had 2500 people but now only ten live there year-round. Most of the town has fallen away due to earthquake activity and erosion and what remains is a small butte with medieval buildings atop and accessed by a long pedestrian bridge.

Civita di Bagnoregio last month

Maps depict what we know and older ones show what we didn’t know. The earliest printed map of what is now the state of Maine was done in 1793, decades after most towns around where I live in western Maine were established and it was part of Massachusetts. Mapmaker Osgood Carleton didn’t know much about interior Maine, nor the course of the St Croix River which became part of the boundary between the USA and Canada in 1842. There were few surveys and he had to rely on anecdotal data.

 

 

Subsequent Carleton maps indicate that Moosehead Lake still had not been surveyed by 1795 and he etched its eastern boundary as a vague dotted line. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of information on these early maps. When I visited the Osher Library with one of its benefactors eight years ago, I witnessed some of its efforts to digitize its extensive collection, a tedious process employing a 60-megapixel camera. Pulling up one of their thousands of digitized maps now, we can zoom in very close without losing resolution.

 

 

Astounded by the camera’s capabilities back then, I’ve since purchased a Nikon D850 which was introduced only last fall with 45 megapixels. I had to wait over a month to get it because it’s so popular all around the world. Mapping renders relatively small pictures of very large things, like the entire earth’s surface for one example. By contrast, my new camera enables me to shoot a faraway image with my zoom lens at its strongest, then put the image on my computer and zoom in further to see details I never would have been able to view with my former equipment, or with my naked eye.

 

Researching for this article, I came across a 1902, birds-eye view of Mount Washington on the Osher web site. If you’re reading this in a newspaper, go here: http://oshermaps.org/exhibitions/map-commentaries/the-eye-of-mt-washington  First published in a pamphlet, it was a piece of artwork as well as a guide, offering then-unique perspectives on our environs in the north country. People couldn’t fly over the mountain back then, but they could pull out their pamphlet and use a magnifying glass to see details only available to eagles.

 

 

Before Saco Valley Printing in Fryeburg went out of business, I purchased sets of old county maps of Maine and New Hampshire from both 1858 and 1880 as well as larger maps of Oxford County towns around where I live. They’re slices of history showing old roads and farms no longer in existence —  abandoned and reclaimed by wilderness. Now only stone walls and cellar holes remain, and occasionally dead hulks of what had been massive sugar maples behind which houses and barns once stood.

 

 

While I have GPS devices for my vehicles, I also have hard-copy maps in each. When navigating in unfamiliar places there’s nothing like those 21st century GPS devices to get where I’m going, but if I’m not in a hurry, I like to have a real map in my hands to get perspective on where I've ended up. A real map enables me to see what’s over the next hill because I might decide to explore it.

http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/2018/05/i-love-maps.html

[Rudy Tirre]

Bonnie

No doubts thats the way its always been. Even back to the days Kennedy was president. Just maybe we should have term limits.

[Bonnie Somer]

Dem war on work; that is b/c they want govt to be God to have all individuals be dependents not free but slaves to them

that has been there way.   we must end that and like now