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Trade With China, Canada, Mexico Are Dominant In American Economy

Ronald 3 Comments

When one looks at a map of the United States, based on significance of trade with our leading trade partners–China, Canada, and Mexico–it is clear that Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs of 10 percent on China and 25 percent on Canada and Mexico, will cause an economic calamity.

Eighteen states have China as their major supplier of imported goods; twenty three states have Canada as their major supplier of imported goods; and three states have Mexico as their major supplier of imported goods. Germany, Saudi Arabia, and India have an impact in a few other states.

So it is pure insanity to impose protective tariffs, when history tells us it always leads to economic disaster.

Disturbing Right Wing Trend In International Affairs, Mirroring Donald Trump!

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As the threat of Donald Trump continues to be a menace, we are seeing in international affairs a troubling and disturbing trend of right wing populism, mirroring his extremism.

Already, this has been evident in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Italy, and now The Netherlands, along with Egypt, India, Myanmar, and now Argentina, and dangers of right wing extremism threatening to rise in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

Religion, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist is a growing factor in these nations.

It seems as if the world is moving back into the Fascism movement that was so prominent in the 1930s and 1940s.

Donald Trump Raves About Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, And Republicans Stay Silent!

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Former President Donald Trump is demonstrating yet again how dangerous and crazy he is, and yet the Republican Party acts prostrate toward him!

Trump went on Fox News Channel and was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, who we know has said he hates him, but still has him on his show, as the goal is, ever after, to make money for Carlson and Fox News Channel by allowing Trump to spew forth his authoritarian impulses!

Trump praised Communist dictators Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation, Xi Jinping of China, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea, lavishing them with glowing statements about how smart they are, and how brilliant they are, despite their well known record of human rights violations against their own populations, and threats to their neighbors.

And although one might say Putin is NOT a Communist, since the Russian Federation supposedly replaced the Soviet Union in December 1991, reality is that Putin WAS a Communist functionary in the Soviet KGB in the 1980s.

Imagine this, Communism was the enemy to decades of Republicans from the time of the Russian Revolution to the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

It made the careers of innumerable Republicans, including the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy, President Richard Nixon, and a massive number of others.

But along comes Trump, glorifying and praising these dangerous and unstable authoritarians, who could also be termed “Fascists” in their tactics, such as past horrors as Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, Juan Peron of Argentina, and Francisco Franco of Spain in the 20th century.

The differences between “old line” Communists and modern Fascists are miniscule, and to have an American President praise such tyrants, and his party stays silent, is truly proof that the Republican Party and Fox News Channel are a danger to American freedom, security, and democracy!

How is it that Republicans have completely changed their perception of foreign enemies, and are engaged in similar tactics to undermine the civil rights and civil liberties of millions of Americans, who do not fit the image of white supremacy Christianity?

What has happened that the party of Lincoln, TR, Ike, and Reagan has reached this point?

Joe Biden Showing Vladimir Putin How Tough He Is, Not Easily Intimidated By Russian Threats!

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The Ukraine Crisis is the most dangerous single moment in international affairs, since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962!

Vladimir Putin seems poised to have Russian troops invade and occupy Ukraine, changing the map of Europe in a way that could lead to continental war and even nuclear war, if the situation gets out of hand.

Joe Biden is showing Putin and the Russian Federation how tough he is, and made clear he will not be easily, or at all, intimidated by Russian threats.

A Russian move westward would also endanger NATO allies, particularly Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and cannot be tolerated.

It does seem as if Putin is backing off at this writing, but still there are 130,000 troops at the Russian-Ukranian border, while Putin complains about 3,000 US soldiers being deployed to eastern Europe, specifically to Germany and Poland.

Putin is a bully, and the only way to deal with a bully is NOT to back down, so we are in a tenuous, scary period, but if it works out that Russia backs off on its threat to Ukraine, it will make Joe Biden look as good as John F. Kennedy standing off with Nikita Khrushchev sixty years ago!

The United States Has Become A “Flawed Democracy”!

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Americans want to believe that their nation is a paragon of “democracy”, but by estimates of many experts who watch how governments change in their level of democracy, the United States has become a “flawed democracy”.

The Economist Intelligence Unit, the research division of the publication THE ECONOMIST, has rated the nations of the world as “Full Democracies”, “Flawed Democracies”, “Hybrid Regimes”, and “Authoritarian Regimes”.

The United States is in the “Flawed Democracies” category as Number 25, second on the “Flawed Democracies” list behind France, which also has fallen out of the “Full Democracies” listing!

23 Nations are “Full Democracies”, led by Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Canada. Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Australia and The Netherlands are the next five, with the latter two actually tied for 9th!

Other major nations in the “Full Democracies” list include, among others, Taiwan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Spain, and South Korea.

Inspiring is the fact that Taiwan, Chile, and South Korea have become democracies in recent decades, but sadly so many more nations have moved away from democracy, and the fact that the US and France are put at the top of “Flawed Democracies” is troubling! And Israel and Italy are 5 and 6 as “Flawed Democracies”. And Mexico is way down, near the bottom of 52 nations that are “Flawed Democracies”.

“Hybrid Regimes” are the next 35 nations, and “Authoritarian Regimes” were 57 in number, with the total of nations on the list being 167.

May 7, 1945 And May 7, 2020: The End Of One Crisis And The Growth Of The Worst Threat In 75 Years!

Ronald 18 Comments

Seventy five years ago, World War II in Europe ended with the German surrender, although it was not officially announced to the world until the next day, which, coincidentally, was new President Harry Truman’s 61st birthday, only in office for 26 days, upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945.

It is true that the war against Japan did not end until after the atomic bomb was used in August 1945, with surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945. But the dire threat of Adolf Hitler was over on May 7, 1945.

Now, 75 years later, America is in the worst crisis since World War II, with 33 million people out of 155 million employed before the CoronaVirus Pandemic hit, now unemployed, and many losing their homes, having no food to eat, many in mortal health danger, and we have a President and administration sitting by and doing nothing, only interested in reelection.

And on this day, 75,000 Americans have died in about two months, more than the Vietnam War or the Korean War, and each day now, about as many are died on Pearl Harbor Day (December 7, 1941) or September 11, 2001!

Trump and his cronies in the Republican Party seem to live in an alternate world, where one can kick around the population and yet think they are going to be given power again, to do ever more damage to the American people.

The only way that Trump can be reelected is by foreign government collusion; state governments who promote illegal gerrymandering; and state government purging the voter rolls, promoting voter suppression by other tactics, including fewer voting locations and dates, and denying felons who have completed their debt to society the right to vote as in Florida and a few other states.

The Republicans know that they cannot win honestly, and that the future of their party is dim, but they will engage in any form of corruption to promote nativism, racism, Islamophobia, and gay bashing.

The Democrats have a massive job on their hands to insure a truly fair election, including voting by mail for those who wish to use that method of voting, for any reason!

Donald Trump And Disposal Of Human Rights, The Goal Of Jimmy Carter Four Decades Ago

Ronald 6 Comments

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter enunciated his belief in human rights, and pursued a policy of denunciation of those nations which denied human rights to their citizens.

Now, four decades later, President Donald Trump has totally reversed such a policy, and has embraced leaders of nations which massively violate human rights.

So we see Trump embracing Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation ; Kim Jong Un of North Korea; Xi Jinping of China; Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia; Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt; Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines; Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil; Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland; Viktor Orban of Hungary; and other authoritarians who deny basic civil rights and civil liberties to their citizens, and persecute minorities and immigrants in their midst, and threaten journalists, extremely alarming and disturbing.

At the same time, Trump attacks and is critical of the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Canada and the other nations in NATO, and it is clear that he is enamored with dictators over democratic leaders.

In so doing, Trump is undermining the concept of liberal democracy, and destroying American constitutional principles, damaging the image of America, and destabilizing international affairs.

April 2, 1917: Woodrow Wilson Asks Congress To Declare War On Germany, Ending US Isolation From World Affairs

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On this day 102 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson transformed America forever, as he went to Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, putting America into the “Great War”, World War I, four days later.

Other than intervention in Latin American affairs, and the gaining of island territories overseas in the late 1890s, the US had avoided foreign controversies, other than Theodore Roosevelt winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for being the mediator bringing about the peace treaty at the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

But from this point on, with the exception of a virulent isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s, which did NOT keep us out of the necessary involvement in World War II, the United States has faced its responsibilities of world leadership since the 1940s, committing to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership and leadership in official ceremonies on April 4, 1949, seventy years ago.

Christopher Wray, Gina Haspel, Michael Rogers And Dan Coats, Heads Of Intelligence Agencies, Strongly Disagree With Donald Trump On Major National Security Threats

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The heads of the national intelligence agencies testified in open session before Congressional committees on Tuesday, and warned of the dangers to national security that exist in an unsafe world.

Christopher Wray, head of the FBI; Gina Haspel, head of the CIA; Michael Rogers, head of the NSA; and Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, warned that America faced great threats from Russia, China, North Korea, ISIS, and Iran, making clear that they did not agree with President Donald Trump, who has undermined all intelligence, and says none of these nations and forces, except for Iran, are a threat.

Ironically, the three Intelligence heads said Iran is actually keeping the nuclear agreement that Donald Trump has given up, despite the support of the Western democratic nations–Great Britain, France, and Germany–for continuation of that agreement.

The “love affair” of Trump for Kim Jong Un; the trust and secret meetings that Trump has had with Vladimir Putin; the rocky relationship between the US and China; and the attitude that ISIS is no longer a threat in the Middle East, are alarming, and yet all Trump says in response to the intelligence conclusions is to say that these people need to go back to school.

It is Trump who is truly dangerous and too trusting of authoritarian nations, when he has no experience, no background, no knowledge on international relations, and is causing undue threats to the future of American foreign policy as a result.

Instead, Trump sees the Border Wall issue with Mexico as more of a national security threat, when none of the intelligence agencies see any threat on the Southern border, and dismiss the whole issue of the Border Wall as unnecessary.

We have a President who is truly warped in his views, dangerous to the nation, and could be leading us down a road toward true disaster, which could be far worse than September 11.

And we have to wonder why he engages in secret diplomacy without translators or note takers in meetings, many unreported, with Putin, and it all makes one think of the film from 1962, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

We cannot afford to have such an uneducated and morally and ethically challenged President as Donald Trump in authority much longer, without a disastrous effect on America and its future.

Even Mike Pence, with all of his horrible social views on many issues, cannot be imagined to be likely to follow the same foreign policy as Trump, were he to succeed to the Presidency. We are at a point where he may be the only likely alternative, but better for American national security and safety than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump Taking America On Road Of Total Diplomatic, Economic, Constitutional, and Environmental Disasters By His Egotistical Child Like Behavior: Time For Action Now!

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As 2018 comes to an end in a few days, it is perfectly clear that President Donald Trump is taking America on the road of total diplomatic and economic disasters by his egotistical child like behavior.

Trump is endangering our friendship and alliance with such nations as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Israel by his reckless courting of the leaders of Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, his worship of their authoritarian leaders.

His lack of realism in American foreign policy is emboldening North Korea to continue to develop nuclear weapons; for Russia to develop new nuclear weapons as well; for Saudi Arabia and Turkey to wield power in the Middle East that endangers Israel’s security; and for the relationship with our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, to become the worst in a century.

His economic policies are leading us toward a Great Depression, and the destruction of our agricultural economy through the imposition of protectionist tariffs, which never benefit workers or consumers.

His authoritarian bent endangers the rule of law and obedience to the Constitution, and his failure to accept the environmental realities of global warming endanger the nation and the entire planet.

His lack of civility undermines what all parents should teach their children, to be respectful and tolerant toward the opposite gender, as well as people of all religions and nationalities.

The President is the worst role model imaginable, and the corruption and scandals surrounding his administration will soon be investigated in detail by the Democratic Party, and accountability will finally occur.