tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86363114613237370872024-03-12T17:45:42.327-07:00Global EducationUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-92018886501661115002017-08-19T13:21:00.004-07:002017-08-19T13:43:18.948-07:00Trump's End Game--Retain Power at all Costs<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/neo-nazis-410x220.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="410" height="171" src="https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/neo-nazis-410x220.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mystery of why Trump made his second statement about the Charlottesville demonstrations might not ever been solved. Who after all can look inside Trump’s demented brain? But there is good reason to speculate. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump's 180 pivot is not easily understandable from any rational perspective. Why make a correct statement that condemned “white supremacists” for the violence that led to one death and then two days later say among other things that white supremacists/nazis contain some “ very fine people?” Why describe a false narrative “You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch, but there is another side.’ Why say these things knowing that the same "other side" also were chanting Nazi era</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">slogans such as "Jews will not replace us"when your own daughter and son in law are Jewish as are many members of your cabinet, Madness right?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One explanation for Trump's seeming madness--his doubling down on racism and siding with the fascistic core of his base is that he is now sees himself as cornered as he believes some kind of indictment by the Mueller investigation is likely to occur before the 2018 mid terms. While Trump,understands that his pardon powers will protect himself and his family from the legal jeopardy it will not protect him from impeachment which will inevitably occur if the Democrats succeed in taking over the House in the 2018 mid terms. Trump and his strategists know that the block to the Democrats sweeping the 2018 remains race. According to a voter study report- well before the 2016 election “there was increasing alignment between race and partisanship, with white voters without a college education shifting sharply toward the Republican Party.” As Vox concludes</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“to win back the working-class white voters, Democrats also have to find a way to make race and immigration less salient.” Trump’s presidency in other words as the Mueller investigation closes in is going to be an alt right presidency. As Bannon confided to </span><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16165344/steve-bannon-trump-democrats-identity-racism" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Robert Kutner during one of his tell all exit interviews-</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-“the longer they (the dems) talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.” While the strategy is not yet working it may yet if the Dems become far too shrill and allow Trump to divide them on key issues like affirmative action and civil rights laws. The 2018 Congressional map is stacked against democrats as a </span><a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-congressional-map-is-historically-biased-toward-the-gop/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fivethirtyeight report </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> concludes,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points — a pretty good midterm by historical standards — they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We will have to see if Trump’s effort to sow racial division and hate will succeed. It is his clearly not only his only option. Another much darker calculation behind Trump’s racist turn is indicated by Colbert King in the Washington Post. Trump is preparing to characterize the Mueller investigation as an attempt at a “silent coup” --and is readying his media lieutenants such as Rush Limbaugh and Mike Savage accordingly. Rush informed his vast audience of followers that the Washington establishment is involved in a “silent coup” against Trump. “These people are trying to take this president out,” Savage warned his followers that “the left” is out to take down Trump, Savage threatened, “If it’s done through Mueller or any other source . . . there will be a civil war in this country.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remove Trump from office, Savage said, and “that is what’s going to happen in this country.” He added, “You have not yet seen mob violence in this country. . . . You haven’t seen the thing I’m telling you is coming in this country.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Strap in for a rough ride. Nazis could be marching yet in the streets of Washington DC. That is if he does not go to war with one of several nuclear armed countries on his short list. It ain’t over yet. The country will pay an increasing price for voting in a racist traitor who cares not a jot for anything except money and his own ego.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-11926862777377342482017-07-26T07:36:00.000-07:002017-11-15T13:40:53.896-08:00A New Message and Ethic Needed to Challenge Trumpism<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2016/11/1110-democrats-protest-1000x563.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="179" src="https://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2016/11/1110-democrats-protest-1000x563.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat It is hard these days to wake up and not feel some degree of nausea and shame about being an American. How do we live with the just the idea of a president who lies on a regular basis and seems to be the only one in his administration who disbelieves that the Russians meddled in our election. Place on top of this ugly reality his withdrawal from the Paris Climate accords and , his cruel efforts to take health care away from between 12 to 16 million people and you end up with what can be loosely termed a "hot mess."This is without even considering the Muller investigation which the closer it gets to implicating Trump's inner circle in colluding with the Russian government to steal the election the more the president lashes out and attempts to obstruct justice. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How did we find ourselves at this awful historical moment and how do we move beyond it are two fundamental questions we cannot avoid asking, Naomi Klein provides some answers in her latest book </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/No-Not-Enough-Resisting-Politics/dp/1608468909" target="_blank">No is Not Enough</a>. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In it she argues </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that “Trump is not a rupture at all, but rather the culmination — the logical endpoint — of a great many dangerous stories our culture has been telling for a very long time...That greed is good. That the market rules. That money is what matters in life. That white men are better than the rest. That the natural world is there for us to pillage. That the vulnerable deserve their fate and the one percent deserve their golden towers. That anything public or commonly held is sinister and not worth protecting. That we are surrounded by danger and should only look after our own.” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While Klein has found some compelling words to explain why a narcissistic billionaire maybe driving us all off a potential cliff. but does not give us any robust sense of hope that we can eject him from the driver's seat any time soon. Klein's </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "solution" if that is the right word seems to be a feel good one--the left has to "pull together" and not divide up into "silo interest groups". “The trick is going to be to stick together, and have each other’s backs as never before.” Really? A set of cliches that might be good to share with a set of nervous teenagers who are anxious about the future--but is this a real plan--does this suggest really in the words of her title that "No is Not Enough"?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To really beat Trump the left needs not just an emotional kumbaya moment but a real plan. We cannot simply rely on the fact that Trump's national poll numbers are down to historic low of 36 percent, we need to keep in mind that according to <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/214349/trump-averaged-higher-job-approval-states.aspx" target="_blank">Gallup in 17 states Trump is 50 percent or higher job approval ratings. </a> While the beginnings of the democrats fight back are evident in their latest "A Better Deal" message that was announced to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/us/politics/democrats-economic-message-trump-2018-better-deal.html" target="_blank">very little mainstream press news coverage on July 24th</a>, it fell short of what is required in several ways and was immediately panned by the wildly popular Morning Joe show as "bland" and "vanilla. <span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">” <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/144019/central-contradiction-democrats-better-deal" target="_blank">The New Republic </a> rightly saw a basic contradiction at the heart of the document in that while there is a recognition that the economy is rigged against the middle class, it expects the American worker to pull himself up by his bootstraps and get the training he or she needs to seek higher wage jobs. The new democrats proclaim that their "better deal is not about expanding the government." As <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/opinions/better-deal-opinion-bustos-cicilline-jeffries/index.html" target="_blank">Bustos et al (for CNN)</a> commented " That position betrays a continued acceptance by Democrats of a decades long Republican talking point that demonizes government, adopts the idea that taxes are too high and puts blind faith in the "free market."</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"> It is past time to remind people that big government got us out of the 1930s depression, won the second world war, built the national highway system, got us to the moon, developed the prototype for the internet and GPS. Big government is managed by annual appropriations bills that have to be scrutinized by Congress. To demonize big government to essentially give up on democracy and decide that it is too challenging to put controls on it that reflects the national interest. To really begin to respond to the demands of a global economy and the need to create secure middle class jobs democrats should set out a plan that requires government to be a partner in the need to create a green economy. The dems should be honest in setting out the stakes and that the GOP alternative is to place the nation's wealth in fewer and fewer hands--as the one perc</span></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">e</span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">nt squeeze the middle class even further in their pursuit of ever more gargantuan profits. We must in short replace a wildly out of control individualistic ethic that would strip health care from tens of millions of people because they want younger people to be "free" not to pay into health care, with a communitarian one that accepts the mutual obligations of each generation to contribute to the national good.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elizabeth-warren-there-is-nobody-in-this-country-who-got-rich-on-his-own/" target="_blank">Senator Elizabeth Warren said it well </a> "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” For the last two to three decades there has been very little paying forward and a lot more concentration of wealth in a few hands. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.6667px;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The democrats' challenge will not be easy. They are badly in need of a leader who will speak from the heart and who will not shy away from words like "opportunity", "fairness" and even terms like "economic justice." Democrats will need to have the confidence of their convictions and lean on their talented friends in Hollywood and Madison Avenue to come up with the words, video and music that can help convey the message. Some will argue that until they do get the messenger a new Barack Obama, Bill Clinton or JFK that the democrats new message will not be able to break through. There is some truth to that point --charismatic leaders do have their often decisive role to play but the Trump emergency means we cannot wait around and hope that the man or woman on the white horse will show up. There is plenty of talent that is already there in the democratic party. That talent is more likely to emerge once the old guard--- Nancy Pelosis, Steny Hoyers and Chuck Schumers (all in their seventh decade) decide that is in the long term interest of the party and the country for them to step aside. </span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-82009690314299976452017-05-12T15:21:00.003-07:002017-05-12T18:26:43.917-07:00Trump --Our First Mafia President Shows His True Colors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For those who were eager to know how a Trump presidency would work out and who might fantasized that the golden haired casino owner would be making decisions around a table Apprentice style. Or board room style, work with Chuck Schumer and Paul Ryan and apply his business acumen to form partnerships, build coalitions in order to move his transformative "Make America Great Again" agenda through the Congress, we now have the reality of the first 120 days. Based on the last three months we now have a few hints that the reality of a Trump administration is radically different from the TV fueled fantasy that his supporters probably had in mind. Turns out that Trump wants to closely align his administration with Costra Nostra principles. So the question on the table is whether Donald J Trump is our first Mafia President? There are lots of signs that he well might achieve this historic if dubious historic title. After all something must have rubbed off from his friendship with the true master of intimidating enemies and hoodwinking the authorities, Roy Cohn. It was Cohn after all who used to defend Mafia bosses and must have helped him find the mobsters to work on his building projects <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a-brief-history-of-donald-trump-and-the-mafia" target="_blank">as this article</a> makes clear. <br />
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But the connections to the Mafia world goes even deeper than we might first have imagined. Trump acts like a classic Mafia Capo in his administration because it suits his style of having no interest in the details of government or ideology but just in finding more ways to continue to flatter his insatiable ego and grow his thirst for power for its own sake. To run a non ideological non n strategic administration that depends on the whims of the boss as to whether we bomb Syria today, send warships to North Korea tomorrow, kick 24 million off health care or provide full coverage, is not as easy as it looks. To do so you have to maintain tight control of your inner circle who have the authority to do your bidding. You need to have some well defined enemies to help you achieve your goals. You need an entire army of bad hombres, Muslims, media elites, fake media to get your team in shape. As<a href="http://integralleadershipreview.com/8287-mafia-organization-governance-processes-and-leadership-function/" target="_blank"> one study of the Costra Nostra</a> has pointed out it is the Capo who for example keeps control of the group by constantly "hyping of a belief that there is an external danger to the group."<br />
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As the authors, Franco Di Maria and Giorgio Falgares explains,<br />
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"This way of governing the organization has helped to create the right tension for members to feel not only united, but always alert, ready for attack, to serve the Capo for the good of the group." As Comey and others like SallyYates and a series of other members of the group found out is from the<br />
the Capo ready to discard his men when they failed to show reliability (a failure on a psychological level, an inability to keep secret a truth, or even if a boss warned, paranoid, that certain of his men could pose a threat to him or to the entire group..Psychodynamically speaking, we could say it is the fear of the Capo that is the main mechanism of legitimation of the role and of constructing and maintaining consensus, even if all of this is, as mentioned, cleverly concealed by seeming good faith and readiness-to-help. To paraphrase Lewin, we define this modality of expressing leadership “cruelly authoritarian” or “falsely paternal.”<br />
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People like Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General who was forced to write the appalling memo "justifying" Comey's memo have to possess "certain basic personality requirements. They must demonstrate willingness to be indoctrinated into criminality and cruelty, that is, the process of hardening and brutalization that the organization considers essential in transforming members into willing and trusted tools for their own criminal ends." The study goes on to locate the mysterious rage that Trump and his Costra Nostra colleagues share with respect to their victims like Comey who Trump after unceremoniously firing him while he was talking to employees out in Los Angeles and had to read about his execution on TV is now threatened by the Capo in chief if he tells a story that contradicts the story his boss has just concocted.<br />
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"The rage expressed upon victims is the physical outcome of that process of blind devotion and unquestioning obedience to the leader which they feel." The leader must constantly be praised as somehow extraordinary and who undying loyalty for his great courage and fortitude must constantly be shown in public and private. There must be no hint of disrespect. Alec Baldwin and others in the SNL team or the Oscar award actress Meryl Streep who dare to disrespect him through satire are "no talent" people worthy of his base's derision and mockery. Trump the beauty queen competition maven is in their eyes at least the final judge of all things, including talent.<br />
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What is the point of all this energy and devotion to the charismatic leader apart from just staying in power and constantly getting even with your enemies in the Fake Media world who point out all your flaws, inconsistencies, contradictions, and amorality? It is the "ability to arouse admiration and consent from groups not only far removed from the criminal world" It is to make their world where authoritarian values rule, where what the leader says today is more important than any other version of reality, a world where crime pays, and morality, human decency and serving others are seen as "phony" insipid even low energy. For finally the real world is less entertaining and less forgiving than the one dreamed up by the Crime boss who even if he has not won every battle<br />
can force those around him to imagine that is the case.<br />
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How does it all end? Stay tuned the ending is likely to be even stranger than the Sopranos and the Godfather but like those two movies expect plenty of victims. The Capo does not go down without a good fight.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-80102448632807606752016-12-10T13:37:00.000-08:002016-12-10T15:28:27.886-08:00Trump and his Lies are leading us to Only One place--War<br />
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />According to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/26/13417532/donald-trump-lies" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #8c68cb; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">Vox</a> “over 25 days (starting on September 15 and ending on October 24, with some days off for Dale in between), Trump lied on at least 378 occasions.”. The lies vary between big whoppers like the birther lie and that Ted Cruz’s father was in on the JFK assassination and relatively trivial ones that usually lies about his opponents such as that Clinton wanted to "an open border with the Middle East." Most are easily disproven but since he started his presidential campaign he has never had to pay any price for his lies. He has never apologized for his lies and in fact the more he has lied the more successful he has become. In this scenario the story there are only two possible conclusions to draw and both are somewhat disturbing--first that Trump is a pathological liar and that the media and everyone else has discounted this and is ready to accept a President whose word cannot be trusted, or second that lying is not a serious offense any more and it is an irrelevant criteria as the color of their hair or their accent. In either case the we are all in for a rough ride over the next four years. </div>
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The dyed in the wool Trump supporters are ready to believe when pressed that he sometimes tells lies but they don’t think they are important because the great man does not always believe in everything he says. Their famous line about him is that we should not take everything he says literally and that it is only his opponents who do that. They seem to believe that he gets a free pass on lies since he is “on their side” against all the others you can lump conveniently together with (Muslims, Mexicans and other un-American types). The trouble with this argument is that these lies, the bold faced untruths, the ugly smears and the whole mess of them in between are set to do lasting damage to the democracy and to the world’s stability.</div>
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Whether or not Trump ever read a word of Machiavelli he is a master practitioner of his sleazy politics. It was after all the great Italian political advisor who said,</div>
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“Everyone admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep his word, and to behave with integrity rather than cunning. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have considered keeping their word of little account, and have known how to beguile men’s minds by shrewdness and cunning. In the end these princes have overcome those who have relied on keeping their word.” </div>
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Machiavelli wrote <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 0.975em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Prince</em> 500 years ago to guide rulers, in the brutal facts of politics that it needs to be based on realism--on keeping the people off balance and in awe of the ruler's’ power. He wrote deliberately against the view that politics was some kind of idealistic realm and it was at all useful to describe as Plato and Thomas Moore had done imaginary utopias, “There is such a gap between how one lives and how one should live that he who neglects what is being done for what should be done will learn his destruction rather than his preservation.” Yet Machiavelli left no school of followers--his great case study, Cesar Borgia never succeeded in taking over all of Italy using his brutal realist tactics that included terror. As Harrison points out “Borgia’s life ended ignominiously and prematurely, in poverty, with scurvy. He died a few years after his father’s death, at the age of 32, in a street brawl in Spain” The ones who followed Machiavelli have however be legion and Shakespeare understood more than most the power of the Italian’s amoral message. As Harrison further points out “Shakespeare’s plays are filled with famous Machiavellian villain.. who have an explicitly Machiavellian cynicism about politics, who believe that politics is nothing but efficacy, the will to power, naked ambition, pragmatism devoid of ethical considerations.” Whether it is Coriolanus, Iago, Lady Macbeth, Edmund in King Lear and most classically of all Richard III they are adept at creating false fears, slandering their opponents and lying when it suits them. For Trump the casual and the big lies are the ways he uses to soften us up to entertaining the belief in his world where every societal ill whether it be unemployment or bad schools is the failure of some corrupt or incompetent politician, administrator, or the result of a one sided trade deal negotiated by someone less worthy and savvy than the Donald himself. The lies are the Kool Aid you have to drink to inhabit this fantasy universe and since big lies, conspiracy theories and all the self serving untruths in between are coming at everyone with such frequency, often as fast as he can tweet them out, they all mix in and are made equally important and equally irrelevant. Where is all this bad behavior leading?</div>
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Unfortunately there is only one answer--to war. As Rowan Williams so eloquently wrote in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/12/words-on-war-a-summons-to-writers-orwell-lecture" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #8c68cb; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> about George Orwell and Thomas Merton, </div>
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“If we talk and write badly, dishonestly, unanswerably, what we are actually doing is getting ready for war. The habits of mind that make war inevitable are the habits of bad language – that is to say, the habits that grow from uncritical attitudes to power and privilege: contempt towards the powerless, towards minorities, towards the stranger, the longing for an end to human complexity and difference.”</div>
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How to resist? It is getting increasingly difficult with each passing day. Words do matter as does truth and the connection between them withers with each new Trump cabinet appointment and each new lie that emerges from the Trump transition team, the latest one of course is that climate change is somehow debatable and that Trump won the popular vote because of illegal voting. War will be the only outcome for this kind of pathology because once the lies and truth take such divergent paths--and the false promises and narratives wrapped up in the lies are exposed , the only alternative is (apart from resigning and risking infamy and humiliation) is to declare war and distract everyone from the mess you created. It will be the last self justifying act of the demagogue the last battle to win and create that sought after place in the history books that this damaged ego needs. We have to resist every day that the man is in office through constantly pointing out the lies, not allowing Trump’s fictional universe to prevail and to demonstrate by word and deed the precious nature of truth and reason and not allow them to be the demagogues’ first victim.</div>
</header>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-83411139594047008802016-11-11T13:39:00.000-08:002016-11-11T14:35:35.332-08:00What Will a New Trump Administration Mean For K-12 Education?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="http://cdn.charismanews.com/images/stories/2016/09/Donald-Trump-Cleveland-Education-Reuters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.charismanews.com/images/stories/2016/09/Donald-Trump-Cleveland-Education-Reuters.jpg" height="176" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the reality of the Trump election sinks in many are now somewhat wearily reflecting on how various parts of Trump’s policies would affect their world. In my world of K-12 education policy there is a potential for some quite dramatic change so it maybe worth spending a few moments contemplating how a Trump presidency may affect our lives as educators if only to distract us from some of the more sordid elements of this bitter election season.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Three themes seem likely to l take center stage when it comes to Trump’s views on education. A sector that he chose not to focus on very much during the campaign, preferring instead to rail against unfair trade deals and ill advised wars. From his campaign literature however it is possible to discern at least three goals that will likely drive the agenda.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Downsizing if not eliminating the US Department of Education.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Promoting school choice and charter schools.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reducing the federal role in all areas particularly in relation to promoting education equity</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s take each one in order. The US Department of Education one of the newest agencies has been the subject of constant right wing vitriol ever since President Jimmy Carter created it in 1979 Reagan vowed to abolish it and was prevented by the irony of appointing an education secretary who was curiously interested in keeping his job and commissioned a panel to write the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A</span><a href="https://www.edutopia.org/landmark-education-report-nation-risk" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Nation At Risk</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">report that linked our educational performance to our economy and defense in ways that resonated in the halls of Congress and most critically the business community, The report’s unexpectedly warm reception squashed all talk of dismantling the department vital to monitoring progress towards widely agreed upon goals and objectives. Lightening may well not strike twice but we should remember that Senator Lamar Alexander is Chair of the Senate Health Education and Labor Committee (HELP) and as a former Secretary of Education has shown no indication that he wants to reduce his Committee’s jurisdiction over the newly minted ESSA which he did more than most to help craft. There is no large part of the Trump coalition howling for the relatively small bureaucracy to be dismantled and plenty in the business community who would sooner have the fight be about abolishing the hated EPA. Moreover, if Trump does move to abolish the Department he would be wasting a lot of his limited political capital on confronting not just the teacher unions (a core part of the democratic coalition) but a good segment of state and local government that relies on federal grants and expertise at a time when education budgets have been shrinking. What is more likely to happen is that the Department’s budget for staff and for what might be considered non core programs such as after school, adult education, special education will be cut to pay for the new school choice and charter schools initiatives that will signal that Trump has brought change to Washington.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump’s major agenda is his</span><a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-remarks-on-school-choice" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">stated intention</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that he wants to add an additional federal investment of $20 billion towards school choice. That is a large sum and since it is a concrete figure you can probably place more trust that he will in fact deliver. Since the charter school movement emerged some 25 years ago there has been a strong steady increase in the numbers of charters in the US and they now educate six percent of the students in this country. But the dramatic growth of publically funded charters in particular has not come without controversy as teacher unions and a variety of education groups complain about reverse segregation and lower standards. The ballot referendum to expand the number of charter schools in Massachusetts was defeated Trump promises to boost charter schools goes along with his belief that both parties have been far too accepting of the status quo in the American big cities. The new billions will be reprioritizing existing federal dollars which as mentioned above is likely to come out of the hide of the budget for the historically forgotten groups that attracted the federal interest in the first place. Politically this will be a much harder fight to overcome-first because democrats remain split on the issue as to whether charter schools may well be the tonic needed to shake up hundreds if not thousands of underperforming schools whose monopolies continue to go unchallenged and second because there may well be no need for new legislation. There are plenty of authorities in current legislation that would allow the reprogramming of these funds for charter schools, but there is every reason to believe that they would be able to pass even broader legislation in the first 100 days that would link this program to a broader anti poverty initiative that would (as the campaign literature sets out) invite each state to “contribute another $110 billion of their own education budgets toward school choice, on top of the $20 billion in federal dollars” which someone in the Trump backroom works out to be , “$12,000 in school choice funds to every K-12 student who today lives in poverty.” No one at this point though can really say for sure how this initiative will end up looking once the various lobbying communities on both sides of the issue have had their say and then the bills get digested and eventually spat out by the relevant congressional committees.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, as mentioned, we are likely to see a new Trump administration oversee a massive role back on the federal role when it comes to preserving educational equity for all kinds of populations not least African American, hispanic and special needs students. Currently there is a fight between the Obama administration and Republican lawmakers over the intent of the ESSA language related to the need for Title One to supplement not supplant state dollars for special populations. The GOP wants to insist that states and locals can use their federal dollars however they want and so if they decide they do not want to spend the funds they were allocating to poor schools they no longer have to because the federal dollars can make up the difference. Today it is much clearer that poor schools under a Trump administration will stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in potential funding.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we end up with a rather dismal picture for the federal role in education as we have known it. It looks now like the recent battles in Congress that led to the long awaited passage of the landmark Elementary and Secondary School Act now renamed the Every Child Succeed Act was a herald for a large retreat from the former federal role as the funds were virtually block granted to the states with limited amounts of controls and oversight. Gary Orfield the noted civil rights historian</span><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-nclb-20151210-story.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">claimed</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the new law stripped the federal funding of its "leverage for any national purpose." Under a new Trump administration we can expect more of the same. But as one wise saw said who helped me survive the Reagan administration as a House Democratic staffer on the brunt end of his similar “drain the swamp” anti Washington rhetoric, "there are no permanent defeats or permanent victories.". What we have in this country is a democracy still expressed in the three branches of government as well as a free press and an active advocacy community.</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-b23c88a0-5553-fb4f-a12f-23332a83ce96"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But to make it all work and to achieve any kind of progress we have to participate! We have to learn from the past and make the best arguments we can based on values and reason as well as reliable data and research based evidence. We also need to listen to those of others, and be prepared to engage with them as we all in good faith try to seek common ground. That is what "no permanent victories and defeats" I have come to view is all about--we are all part of the same learning community on the same journey to strive to create a more perfect union.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-30794119608848867082016-11-09T07:08:00.007-08:002016-11-09T12:38:30.239-08:00Why Trump Won<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/trump-victory-3.jpg?w=2000&h=1230" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/trump-victory-3.jpg?w=2000&h=1230" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were plenty of reasons to point fingers at some factors in this election that might help explain the Trump victory</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Comey "October surprise" that for nine days kept the shadow of a potential criminal investigation over Clinton’s head</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The media’s relentless focus on the emails that had no real information to reveal but kept the pundits focused on her trustworthiness as they parsed her answers to the FBI and the numerous investigative committees and treated Trumps’ personal behavior and history of scandals as non disqualifying. The media’s refusal to take apart Trump’s lunatic tax trade policies and focus people’s attention on the harm they would do for ordinary people’s pocket books.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lack of any interviewer prepared to take on Trump and ask any follow up questions that identified the false premises and assumptions and his appalling ignorance of the world and public policy. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But all of these reasons pale in comparison to Hillary’s play it safe campaign lacked a clear message. Was she running for Obama’s third term? Did she have a plan to respond to the economic devastation following the great recession that hit the rust belt longer and harder than many in the media were prepared to recognize or acknowledge? How was she going to improve Obamacare or move to a green economy? It was not that she lacked policy ideas in these areas (there were enough policy briefs on her website to fill a bookshelf) but that she did not seem to want to prioritize any one of them or explain how and why they were important in simple non wonkish terms. Her husband tried with Obamacare but did so in a way that confused rather than enlightened. Although she won the debates she lost the argument as to what she wanted to achieve as President. It seemed she wanted to try working with people from both sides to achieve incremental change but that had been tried and failed. The GOP dominated congress was not interested in incremental change. Some in the GOP indeed were more interested in prosecuting her for alleged crimes and impeaching her than they were ever going to allow her to complete any kind of legislative agenda. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How was the electorate going to get excited about any of her ideas or if any of them appealed to them (raising the minimum wage for example) the prospect of more of the same gridlock that would lead to more hot air and nothing changing. Arguably this was the reason why many democrats stayed home and minorities did not vote in the overwhelming numbers that had led to Obama’s 2004 and 2008 victories. Although this argument that Trump was dangerously unqualified to become President won the popular vote it was not enough to bring out voters in the heartland who were desperate for some kind of change that would move them from the kind of minimum wage dead end jobs to a future where they or at least their children could dream the big American consumerist dream once again. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Trump vote largely composed of these largely white males angry at elites came out in droves for someone their perceived would not sell them </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">down the river by making trade deals that shifted good paying jobs either south or eastwards. The fact that these jobs had permanently left the US for a complex number of reasons due to changes in technology and more flexible global supply chains seemed to escape the media commentators. But this was an election not based on facts but on a sense of grievance that a future the white American workers left behind by globalization had been once promised and had been betrayed by the elites in Washington. Trump understood this sense of grievance more so than anyone else in the GOP and knew how to employ his brand of </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">aggressive macho posturing to appeal to them. Never mind that the grievance mixed in racism and misogyny, whipped up xenophobia and nationalistic emotions, they lapped it up. It seemed authentic and authenticity was something that allowed them bridge the wide gulf between the billionaire's lifestyle and their own. He was a regular guy even though he flew around in his own 727 and owned golf courses and hotels he was relatable because he shared their view about outsiders and their macho values that had conditioned them to objectify and demean women and feel superior to those of different races and religions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump talked their language --it was the language of a TV talk show host --short blunt and not politically correct. Even though he was by all accounts a dishonest operator in his business and personal life his language appeared honest when compared to the political speak used by the Washington politicians. It was the language of the outsider fueled by his anger that derived not from any of the genuine frustrations that ordinary people felt about their lives but due to a personal sense of hurt that somehow the educated and monied elites had too often snubbed him for his crassness.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What can we learn from all this? </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Looking back, Bernie Sanders had the clearer message that could have won the race. His theme that the elite had engaged in unfair trade deals, that the banks should be broken up and that the bankers who caused the great recession should go to jail for their crimes was responsive to the mood of the country. It told a story, one which inspired millennials in debt to their eyeballs that they deserved a chance to move forward and were being held back by having to payback outrageous loans for college, when post secondary education should be a right available to everyone and was a good investment for the society to make in its future, a much wiser investment than the enormous sums spent on the Pentagon. Sanders was set to remake the democratic party so that it could really respond to the 21st century needs of a nation that needed to continue to invest in its future and not be so beholden to corporate interests. The centrist part of the democratic party believed that Sanders represented too much of a leftward shift and moved to stop him becoming the nominee. Hillary’s was not going to give up her fight to become the first female president of the United States and the party top brass who knew that the Clintons had more access to big donors than anyone else agreed to go along. It is speculative to assess whether Bernie could have won over the independents who would use the word "socialism" as some kind of taboo word but it underlines the point that in a change election year --the times did demand an authentic change agent not someone who believed in incrementalism as a kind of therapy treatment for a dysfunctional congress. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hillary turned out to be not the right candidate for the times. We must now all suffer the consequences and continue the work of rebuilding a democratic party responsive to the nations needs in a time of dramatic change. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-15222704213722059222016-11-09T07:08:00.002-08:002016-11-09T07:42:38.121-08:00Why Trump Won<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/trump-victory-3.jpg?w=2000&h=1230" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/trump-victory-3.jpg?w=2000&h=1230" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were plenty of reasons to point fingers at some factors in this election that might help explain the Trump victory</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Comey October surprise that for nine days kept the shadow of a potential criminal investigation over Clinton’s head</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The media’s relentless focus on the emails that had no real information to reveal but kept the pundits focused on her trustworthiness as they parsed her answers to the FBI and the numerous investigative committees and treated Trumps’ personal behavior and history of scandals as non disqualifying. The media’s refusal to take apart Trump’s lunatic tax trade policies and focus people’s attention on the harm they would do for ordinary people’s pocket books.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lack of any interviewer prepared to take on Trump and ask any follow up questions that identified the false premises and assumptions and his appalling ignorance of the world and public policy. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But all of these reasons pale in comparison to Hillary’s lackluster campaign that lacked a clear message. Was she running for Obama’s third term or would she respond to the economic angst, faults in Obamacare and the growing power of Russia. It was the reason why many democrats stayed home and hispanics as well as African Americans did not vote in the overwhelming numbers that led to Obama’s victory. She had no inspiring vision to offer other than a steady hand on the tiller and she was not Trump. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">White males angry at elites who they perceived were ready to sell them down the river by making trade deals that shifted their jobs either south or eastwards were prepared to come out in droves responding to Trump's aggressive macho posturing that he would finally even the score against a world that had taken away their sense of an American future they could continue to dominate. It appealed to their sense of grievance that their futures and those of their children were being blocked by not just by NAFTA like deals but by unfettered immigration. The message resonated, Trump talked their language --it was the language of a TV talk show host --short blunt and not politically correct. Even though he was by all accounts a dishonest operator in his business and personal life his language appeared honest when compared to the political speak used by the Washington politicians. It was the language of the outsider fueled by his anger that derived not from any of the genuine frustrations that ordinary people felt about their lives but due to a personal sense of hurt that somehow the educated and monied elites had too often snubbed him for his crassness.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What can we learn from all this? The democrats cannot be a collection of “boutique issues”- that included a fast changing social agenda--marriage equality, LGBT rights and drug reform.Looking back, Bernie Saunders had the clearer message that could have won the race. He had the message responsive to the mood of the times-and he inspired millennials in debt to their eyeballs that they needed a chance to move forward by having college become affordable once again. He was set to remake the democratic party as being more anti-trade and for a single payer health care system. The centrist part of the democratic party believed that it was too much of a leftward shift and moved to stop him becoming the nominee. But it was considered by the party poh bahs that it was Hillary’s turn and she was not going to give up what she felt as her historic destiny to become the first female president of the United States. It is speculative to assess whether Bernie could have won over the independents who would use the word "socialism" as some kind of taboo word but it underlines the point that in a change election year --the times demanded an authentic change agent and Hillary turned out to be not the right candidate for the times. We must now all suffer the consequences. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-26277222527044743402016-11-02T09:28:00.001-07:002016-11-03T07:03:16.240-07:00Friends Don't Allow Friends to Vote for Trump<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jceHLeJoIkI/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jceHLeJoIkI/maxresdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the polls tighten and Trump, the least qualified and the most reprehensible candidate ever to run for president comes close to achieving an unthinkable result it is time for Hillary supporters to take a step back. The country seems very roughly divided between college educated voters and the rest of us. Without being elitist etc we all know a Trump voter. They are not deplorable they are just angry invariably white males who feel that the elites betrayed them and that they are now living in a world where they are steadily losing ground. It has been easy enough for Trump to convince them that the system is "rigged" against them by corrupt elites who are just interested in holding power while they give away the store in trade agreements that do them economic harm and sacrifice American interests. The latest bombshell from the FBI director James Comey has served to harden their belief that Hillary is the source of all that is evil in Washington and that at the email controversy is representative of how the system protects the self dealing corruption that allows elites to control power and keep their voice from being heard. They see Trump as their ability to finally "throw the bums out" and their opportunity to have their their angry and hyper-nationalistic voice heard. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what do you say to the likely Trump voter in the closing days and hours before they pull the lever for the worst possible candidate that has ever run for president? The temptation to keep silent and not risk an angry confrontation should be resisted. We need to do everything we can in our power to prevent the most catastrophic outcome. So what can we do? My answer is to engage the Trump voter whether they be family members, friends, fellow workers etc. We need to do so in a friendly constructive manner however and in a way that neither condescends to them or puts them too much on the defensive. We need to figure out the right questions to ask, ones that allow them to examine the victim story that that Trump has been selling to them and to see that Trump is really out to victimize them some more rather than take them into any economic nirvana as suggested by his ridiculous slogan "Make America Great Again." </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Below are some conversational strategies you might try:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. Seems like the race is tightening. You got any thoughts about the election?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A nice neutral opening. Trump supporters do feel freshly emboldened now to declare themselves and will probably say something like yeah, I am voting Trump, Hillary is really corrupt. Her FBI investigation means that we are just in for more trouble if she ever gets near the White House.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your follow up:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ever thought your radical hatred of Clinton was irrational and based on misogyny?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump supporters response would be not to recognize the jibe. They believe that Trump likes women and all that implies, but they go onto argue that Hillary is somehow different. That she has been guilty of a horrendous crime of abusing her security clearance and through her illicit use of power has somehow escaped justice. They go onto conclude that she deserves to go to lose or worse be further prosecuted and go to jail because of her reckless disregard for security matters.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Your response:</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have you ever thought there might be a connection between the way that Trump supports sexually assaulting women and the way he demonizes Hillary? You don't need to be Sigmund Freud to recognize the fact that he is terrified of strong women and what they represent to his male sense of privilege. The criticism of Clinton is way over the top. Clinton did not use the correct email server as did one of her predecessors Colin Powell. She has taken her punishment for that mistake and admitted that was not a wise thing to have done. She has not been convicted of any crime and like Colin Powell had to pay a heavy price in terms of public humiliation. Are you sure that there is any equivalence between the multiple ways Trump has offended laws and decency and this lapse of judgment. Or is that she is a woman and needs to be held to a higher standard? Reminder she did not break any laws. By voting for Trump who routinely demeans women and overlooking Clinton’s obvious abilities, competence, and achievements in helping people and children in need you maybe a misogynist but you were afraid to admit it to yourself.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>What makes you believe that Trump will make America great again?</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their response --he will negotiate better trade deals and protect American workers</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Your response--do you think that his trade agreements will actually benefit American workers? </i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you honestly believe that Trump who has outsourced even the steel he uses to build his Trump hotels to China will protect American workers? Even if you believe that have you ever thought what his trade strategy would really mean to American consumers and how he will start a trade war that we can never win? His trade strategies though make no sense--as </span><a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-21/trump-s-trade-policies-are-worrying-economists" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NPR exposed</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> they will be counter productive. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“With China, Trump says he would impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s consider what this would mean with a real-world example. Let’s say an American consumer goes out to buy a refrigerator from Mexico. For simplicity, let’s say that refrigerator normally costs $100. Under Trump’s plan, that refrigerator from Mexico would now cost 35 percent more, or $135. The thinking behind a tariff is that an American shopper would gravitate toward an American-made refrigerator selling for less. Here’s the problem: Mexico would certainly retaliate and levy tariffs on American products coming into Mexico. And then you have a possible trade war.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most economists agree that Trump’s policies are deeply flawed.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is also against raising the minimum wage and has no interest in protecting American worker rights as he has banned unions and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-is-the-anti-labor-day-candidate-running-against-fair-wages-worker-rights-and-unions/" style="text-decoration: none;">once complained that American wages are too high</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now you are into the conversation and have suggested that Trump’s accusations about Hillary are pitiful when compared to his ethical and moral failings, it would be worth probing some more why they think Trump is qualified to run for office given his background. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What makes you believe that on any planet and in any country someone like Trump a serial abuser of women, the tax system, his contractors, veterans and war heroes and their families, the disabled, hispanics, muslims etc etc etc could be fit for the highest office in the land? We also cannot by the way his record of routine lies and whoppers like the birther malarky.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their answer--well he is a not a politician, he is a businessman and speaks his mind</span></span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Your response:</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He has a mind that has not a</span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/135170/donald-trump-never-read-presidential-biography-rarely-reads-anything-not-himself" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ccording to his ghost writer</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ever bothered to even read one book (except maybe for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Art of the Deal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> --a book he did not write). He has shown no interest in informing himself about the world situation, routinely pedals conspiracy theories and has not the slightest interest in apologizing for all the insulting things he has said. He also by the way routinely stiffs contractors who have worked for him and constructed a phony university whose one purpose was to try to lure seniors and the unemployed to part with the savings they could ill afford to lose in pursuit of a fake get rich scheme.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why do you believe that Trump will “make America great again”? Do you seriously think someone whose main motivation in life seems to be proving he is number one and will vengefully go after anyone with the temerity to stand up to him has the right temperament to be a world leader with access to the nuclear codes?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their answer--well he will make America strong again because other leaders seem to be making us appear less powerful as we lose ground in the Middle East.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your answer --he knows nothing about the world and he has a dangerous tendency to bully people. He has no plan for the Middle East, for the Ukraine or for China. All he knows is that tough talk around supposedly unfair trade agreements win votes in the Mid West. Clinton is for stronger trade agreements and knows all the world leaders and is very aware of the menace of Putin and Assad than Trump will ever know. Meanwhile Trump wants to be Putin’s friend a like minded bully who likes to flatter other bullies.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you honestly believe that America and the world will be a safer place with Trump in charge?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their answer: Can’t get any worse</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Your answer-oh <u>yes it can</u>. </i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember George W Bush who had some of the same vengeful macho temperament as Trump and started an illegal war with Iraq after 9/11, a country that did not attack us and caused the deaths of over 5,000 American servicemen. Trump is even more ignorant than dubya, don’t you think that you are playing with fire and catastrophe if you vote for Trump. As 122 Republican security experts have testified--he is unfit to be commander in chief--</span><a href="http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from-gop-national-security-leaders/" style="font-style: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they state</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle. He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence."</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They also note he " is fundamentally dishonest. Evidence of this includes his attempts to deny positions he has unquestionably taken in the past, including on the 2003 Iraq war and the 2011 Libyan conflict. We accept that views evolve over time, but this is simply misrepresentation. "</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you believe that Trump will heal rather than inflame racial tensions in the US?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their answer: We must support our police officers asserting their authority even if that extends racial injustice.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your answer : We know that increased police training and community policing will help calm those cities that have experienced increased levels of violence and crime. Trump has no understanding of this issue. There is a reason why he has been endorsed by the KKK and far right groups. Do we want to revisit the ugly history of how racism divided and almost destroyed this country over the last century?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-1d6de083-25d9-13a7-2f12-cdc3454bd98c"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a2e49d40-2a66-2854-d75b-451d09c31f3f"><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Please please engage your family member, neighbor, friend and colleagues and try to confront prejudice with facts and logic. This is the election of our lifetimes. Please make every effort not to make the historic mistake of electing Trump. Your children and grandchildren will thank you for it!</span></span></span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-41727478198723567412016-09-16T11:32:00.002-07:002016-09-16T12:18:13.538-07:00Media Has to Stop Enabling Trump!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://img.wennermedia.com/620-width/donald-trump-matt-lauer-zoom-186ff380-78b8-4256-891a-514579be9bf3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img.wennermedia.com/620-width/donald-trump-matt-lauer-zoom-186ff380-78b8-4256-891a-514579be9bf3.jpg" height="231" width="320" /></a></div>
According to the Oxford English Dictionary--a Mountebank is "an itinerant quack" and an "impudent pretender to skill a charlatan, one or resorts to degrading means to obtain notoriety" The word is derived from an Italian phrase ---and applies to anyone who mounts a bench inorder to appeal to an audience through the use of showmanship and tricks. Does this sound like anyone we know? OK Yes the GOP nominee Donald J Trump whose major trick was to get himself into the presidential stakes by claiming that Obama was not an American citizen and thus an illegitimate president. Today he went back on that claim and issued a statement without any reason or apology that President Obama was born in the US as if he now is the ultimate arbiter of who is and who is not an American citizen. The sheer chutzpah, the lack of shame or embarrassment that he has been fronting what became known as the birther movement should stop anyone in their tracks but Trump's consistent lies and lack of shame no longer is of much interest to the media. They consistently cover him as if he were a serious candidate --no one so far in the media (with the possible exception of Chris Mathews on the issue of abortion) has been able to ask any solid follow up questions of Trump. They have allowed one question on one topic, usually a soft ball one and allow his bluster to go unchallenged.<br />
<br />
Take a look below of a typical interview. This was high stakes debate on the military -<br />
<br />
LAUER: You said in the speech today, you said history shows that when America is not prepared is when the danger is the greatest.<br />
TRUMP: And we’re not prepared.<br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Why is that Mr Trump--we spend more on the military than the next nine major countries combined</span><br />
<br />
LAUER: Will you be prepared on day one, if you’re elected president of the United States, to tackle these complex national security issues?<br />
TRUMP: <span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">One hundred percent</span>. Hey, Matt, again, she made a mistake on Libya. She made a terrible mistake on Libya. And the next thing, I mean, not only did she make the mistake, but then they complicated the mistake by having no management once they bombed you know what out of Gadhafi. I mean, she made a terrible mistake on Libya. And part of it was the management after effect. I think that we have great management talents, great management skills.<br />
LAUER: But you are prepared?<br />
TRUMP: <span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">And I have to tell you — totally prepared.</span> But remember this. I found this subject and these subjects of interest all of my life, Matt. This hasn’t been over the last 14 months. I’ve found these substantiates of tremendous interest. That’s why they were asking me about Iraq 14 years ago. They were asking me these questions. They don’t ask businesspeople those questions.<br />
<span style="background-color: #d0e0e3;">What exactly prepared you Mr Trump? What exactly did you study? That makes you "100 percent" and "totally prepared"? </span><br />
LAUER: Let me end in kind of the same place I started. Have you given much thought, Mr. Trump, if you’re elected president and commander-in-chief, to that moment where you’re going to have to make that first decision that puts American men and women in harm’s way?<br />
TRUMP: I think it’s the most difficult decision you can possibly ever make. You’re talking about death. And we’re talking death to not just our side. We’re talking death all over. I would be very, very cautious. I think I’d be a lot slower. She has a happy trigger. You look, she votes for the wars, she goes in Libya…<br />
<br />
Notice no follow up questions. My questions are in blue highlight. His hyperbole and lies are in yellow highlight. The first question Lauer should have asked in any normal environment gone like this --what makes you feel prepared to be commander in chief after your five military deferments in Viet Nam; your recent attempt to demean the character of a former prisoner of war, Senator John McCain and your questioning of the sacrifice of a Gold Star family.<br />
<br />
If Trump is elected in November the media will bear heavy responsibility for not calling this Mountebank, this charlatan, fraudster out. Meanwhile did you hear the news--if Trump loses he is going to set up his own Trump TV network to be bigger than Fox. Watch out mainstream media Trump also wants a piece of your mega billions as well.<br />
If you don't like the media's treatment make your <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/complaints-about-broadcast-journalism" target="_blank">views known to the FCC</a><br />
and/ or to the major national TV stations. Tell them to stop chasing after ratings (Lauer was clearly fearful of offending the very thin skinned Trump who might dare to boycott his highly rated morning show if he got a question he did not like) and live up to the broadcasting traditions of Morrow and Cronkite.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-36644766629766280902016-09-16T11:32:00.001-07:002016-09-16T11:35:25.933-07:00Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-27487690123026393862016-09-16T11:32:00.000-07:002016-09-16T11:36:33.053-07:00Media Has Created Trump the Mountebank<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://img.wennermedia.com/620-width/donald-trump-matt-lauer-zoom-186ff380-78b8-4256-891a-514579be9bf3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img.wennermedia.com/620-width/donald-trump-matt-lauer-zoom-186ff380-78b8-4256-891a-514579be9bf3.jpg" height="231" width="320" /></a></div>
According to the Oxford English Dictionary--a Mountebank is "an itinerant quack" and an "impudent pretender to skill a charlatan, one or resorts to degrading means to obtain notoriety" The word is derived from an Italian phrase ---to mount a bench and proceeds to appeal to an audience through the use of showmanship and tricks. Does this sound like anyone we know? OK Yes the GOP nominee Donald J Trump whose major trick was to get himself into the presidential stakes by claiming that Obama was not an American citizen and thus an illegitimate president. Today he went back on that claim and issued a statement without any reason or apology that President Obama was born in the US as if he now is the ultimate arbiter of who is and who is not an American citizen. The sheer chutzpah, the lack of shame or embarrassment that he has been fronting what became known as the birther movement should stop anyone in their tracks but Trump's consistent lies and lack of shame no longer is of much interest to the media. They consistently cover him as if he were a serious candidate --no one so far in the media (with the possible exception of Chris Mathews on the issue of abortion) has been able to ask any solid follow up questions of Trump. They have allowed one question on one topic, usually a soft ball one and allow his bluster to go unchallenged.<br />
<br />
Take a look below of a typical interview. This was high stakes debate on the military -<br />
<br />
LAUER: You said in the speech today, you said history shows that when America is not prepared is when the danger is the greatest.<br />
TRUMP: And we’re not prepared.<br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Why is that Mr Trump--we spend more on the military than the next nine major countries combined</span><br />
<br />
LAUER: Will you be prepared on day one, if you’re elected president of the United States, to tackle these complex national security issues?<br />
TRUMP: <span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">One hundred percent</span>. Hey, Matt, again, she made a mistake on Libya. She made a terrible mistake on Libya. And the next thing, I mean, not only did she make the mistake, but then they complicated the mistake by having no management once they bombed you know what out of Gadhafi. I mean, she made a terrible mistake on Libya. And part of it was the management after effect. I think that we have great management talents, great management skills.<br />
LAUER: But you are prepared?<br />
TRUMP: <span style="background-color: #fce5cd;">And I have to tell you — totally prepared.</span> But remember this. I found this subject and these subjects of interest all of my life, Matt. This hasn’t been over the last 14 months. I’ve found these substantiates of tremendous interest. That’s why they were asking me about Iraq 14 years ago. They were asking me these questions. They don’t ask businesspeople those questions.<br />
<span style="background-color: #d0e0e3;">What exactly prepared you Mr Trump? What exactly did you study? That makes you "100 percent" and "totally prepared"? </span><br />
LAUER: Let me end in kind of the same place I started. Have you given much thought, Mr. Trump, if you’re elected president and commander-in-chief, to that moment where you’re going to have to make that first decision that puts American men and women in harm’s way?<br />
TRUMP: I think it’s the most difficult decision you can possibly ever make. You’re talking about death. And we’re talking death to not just our side. We’re talking death all over. I would be very, very cautious. I think I’d be a lot slower. She has a happy trigger. You look, she votes for the wars, she goes in Libya…<br />
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Notice no follow up questions. My questions are in blue highlight. His hyperbole and lies are in yellow highlight. The first question Lauer should have asked in any normal environment gone like this --what makes you feel prepared to be commander in chief after your five military deferments in Viet Nam; your recent attempt to demean the character of a former prisoner of war, Senator John McCain and your questioning of the sacrifice of a Gold Star family.<br />
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If Trump is elected in November the media will bear heavy responsibility for not calling this Mountebank, this charlatan, fraudster out. Meanwhile did you hear the news--if Trump loses he is going to set up his own Trump TV network to be bigger than Fox. Watch out mainstream media Trump also wants a piece of your mega billions as well.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-34702578953035523562016-08-31T08:42:00.004-07:002016-08-31T17:38:47.016-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the immortal words of what has become a Monty Python theme tune--”always look on the bright side” dare I propose three reasons why we might take a more positive look at the Trump candidacy? Yes the billionaire buffoon has lowered the tone of American politics immeasurably by his juvenile name calling, brought racial hate of the kind we have not seen since the 1960s back into the mainstream of American politics, embarrassed us on the world stage with his shameful ignorance etc etc. So what good has come out of the billionaire bloviator’s candidacy? I count at least three reasons why the Trump run at the nation’s highest office might not be a total zero.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First--it has exposed the fact that the Republican party really had no core principles that it was willing to defend. Trump ripped apart any of their so carefully harbored beliefs in free trade, entitlement programs, immigration policy, foreign policy and fiscal conservatism. He also tore the mask of the rhetoric about the GOP being an open inclusive party, the party of Lincoln and all that nonsense. Post Trump the GOP must decide if it is going to follow the blustering liar into the political wilderness of right wing extremist politics or if it is going to reject him. If it decides to reject him it will then be forced to examine its core principles and offer a coherent and rational alternative to the democrats. This will not be a bad thing. The elite GOP leadership has been allowed for too long to have it both ways---to allow corporate interests to hold sway over major policy decisions while feeding their base with red meat "social issues" like abortion and a variety of constitutional amendments that would only come to pass if there were a political earthquake. The shake out has begun and the result--possibly the establishment of a third party following the November election returns may make our politics more interesting and more democratic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second it is clear that the task of repairing our politics is more urgent than ever. Trump rose to prominence by calling both parties corrupt and beholden to monied interests. This call for a less corrupt system struck a deep nerve and allowed Trump to knock over his primary opponents as if they were paper dolls (rolled from US currency we might hasten to add). Trump reminded us that if monied voices that continue to call the shots for both parties then we will see the further decay of the vital institutions like political parties, informed political candidates who possess integrity that give meaning to our democracy. While Trump pointed to the problem in typical fashion he could not point to any solution other than electing him, the patriotic billionaire who clearly had the nation's best interests at heart. What he should have said and the democrats should have jumped on is that Trump's diagnosis means that we any new democratic administration should repeal the zany Citizens United decision. Money is not speech and it never was. The power to dominate the media through buying politicians and media is antithetical to democracy. The rise of Trump helps us learn the importance of that lesson and the reasons to address the source of the problem and not indulge ourselves with the nonsensical notion that we now need to be ruled by the top 1 percent because only they are the ones that cannot be bought!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thirdly, Trump has given us all a teachable moment by providing us with a startlingly vivid insight into how American style fascism might quickly become a reality in this country. As Sinclair Lewis showed us (and <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/09/29/it_really_can_happen_here_the_novel_that_foreshadowed_donald_trumps_authoritarian_appeal/" target="_blank">Slate magazine has pointed out</a>) in his prescient semi satirical novel,<i> It Can't Happen Here </i> published in 1935. Sinclair's book teaches us that the descent into fascist madness begins by populist patriotic appeals that quickly descends into nationalism and finding scape goats for our economic and security woes. Trump rose in the polls by demonizing Muslim and the Mexican immigrants--and even went so far as casting them all as either terrorists or rapists. Then we were treated to the threats of violence with regard to people who disagree with them--first at the Trump rallies and then outside of them and lately with threats of appealing to gun owners to take unspecified actions against elected officeholders. We should have learned from the Nazis in the 1930s that this is how democracies are destroyed by resorting to violence over the ballot box. We learned during this dark Trump dominated period in our politics who process the enablers --the elites who refused to condemn these anti democratic sentiments and the craven political hacks who try to defend their champion using phrases like he's only “telling it like it is." and other apologies for inexcusable behavior. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px;">It is no accident that Trump in a </span><a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-i-love-the-poorly-educated/" style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px;" target="_blank">moment of self revelation proclaimed his love for "poorly educated people.</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px;"> </span>Trump's rise reminds us in the last analysis why education matters. No matter that Trump seems not to have read a history book let alone one on foreign affairs we all need to reflect on Jefferson's caution that if a nation expects</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-5383634266403489432016-07-31T13:32:00.000-07:002016-07-31T14:14:18.136-07:00 Why We Must Avoid the Trump Disaster at all Costs<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the start of the summer things were going fairly normally and we were headed for two reasonably boring candidates--Clinton and if not Bush then Cruz. Trump was dismissed as a bloviating billionaire with a penchant for late night tweets, rude barbs and other nasty ways of grabbing the attention of the media. Having succeeded in getting people’s attention like the student at the back of the class prepared to mock the teacher, curse and generally make a ruckus the media then prepared to provide full coverage for his speeches given inside “huge” stadiums and aircraft hangers to mostly white males who when they were not cheering for his familiar "build a wall” line, were looking for hecklers to eject or otherwise beat up when the cameras were not around. The billions of dollars in free media attention the ratings focused media owners were prepared to donate to Trump gratis served to turn a small forest fire into a national environmental emergency. True the kindling was all around--stagnant wages, a perception that Trump helped foster that immigration both from Mexico and from Middle East was out of control and it did not help that the other GOP candidates lacked both policy ideas, passion or convincing solutions. They also had no credibility as it turned out with the mass of the electorate, just like the experts who were wheeled out in the UK’s Brexit debate to persuade the voters to stay in the Remain camp, people preferred to follow their gut that simple solutions would do the trick.--a wall, or in the case of Brexit rejecting the EU treaty. Then some more disturbing things happened. The GOP leadership in the form of Paul Ryan and to a lesser extent Mitch McConnell decided they were not only going to stand in his way to the nomination. Just like Chris Christie and Marco Rubio they folded in the wake of the Trump steamroller so despite his racist views, his counter productive terrorism strategy, his 19th century views on abortion and his efforts to undermine the NATO alliance, he managed to make the GOP into his own image. The GOP is now no longer the party of Lincoln, it is the party of Trump, a crazy megalomaniacal billionaire. Despite the fact that Trump regularly lies, has been bankrupt four times, has not read or shows any interest in reading anything that could be loosely called a briefing book, let alone a normal book, has no experience of governing, this man is now only a few percentage points (if latest opinion polls are to be believed) from winning the presidency of the United States. It is all too shocking to behold. This is a man who has no sense of shame for his lies, who has clear case of narcissism, who has no empathy for others, who created a sham university whose sole purpose was to milk old and vulnerable people of their life savings. He is a publicity seeking amoral monster the media has helped to create.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">What can we do? First we all must demand:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. Trump release his tax returns. These will show most probably the ways that Trump not only skirts the law, does not give to charity, sends jobs abroad etc</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. The media not allow Trump to avoid answering the question and insist on asking follow up questions</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. Insist that your own Senator, Congressman denounce Trump’s racism and counterproductive views on terrorism.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. Actively register people in your community and make the argument that this is an election no one can afford to sit out.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. If you know anyone slightly inclined to vote for Trump--that has said one or two positive things about him--please confront them with the one question that counts--would you want his small fingers on the button--they are itchy enough to send insulting crazy tweets at 3:00 am that a 5th grader would never send.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: cambria;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the election of our lifetimes. To those who try to find fault with Hillary--she has after all spent 40 plus years in the public spotlight we can only say this --there is no comparison between the kind of tried and tested temperament of Hillary as Senator from New York and as Secretary of State and Trump. Trump has never been elected to anything. He has devoted his entire life to his one object of affection--himself. The email issues have been resolved. We are talking about the future of the country here if not the world. A Trump presidency is unthinkable.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-69330477395274293692016-05-21T18:57:00.002-07:002016-05-21T18:57:04.131-07:00Time for Hillary's Team to Craft a New Message<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br />
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Some of the reasons why Bernie still lingers around winning the odd primary here and there, and dominating a news cycle or two, is the difficulty Clinton has had so far articulating a winning message. One way to characterized the problem is whether after so many speeches, campaign rallies and interviews the difficulty anyone experiences in trying to sum up precisely what Hillary’s candidacy is all about? Take her <a href="http://time.com/3920332/transcript-full-text-hillary-clinton-campaign-launch/" target="_blank">first major speech </a>that launched her candidacy the one she gave on Roosevelt Island in New York back in June last year. A speech that was far from off the cuff--one she had time to prepare and refine for a two years after she had resigned from Secretary of State back in February 2013. The speech’s central conceit that there is a unifying bond that connects FDR with the other successful presidents, notably her husband and of course Barack Obama and that is “America’s basic bargain. If you do your part you ought to be able to get ahead. And when everybody does their part, America gets ahead too.” But also woven into the speech is her unique background as a problem solver and a compassionate believer in an inclusive society. But what is noticeable is the scant reference to the last eight years and the fact that eight years after the depression was supposedly fixed in which Wall Street bankers profited to the tune of $281 billion dollars, a majority of working Americans are still suffering. She nods her head to this in a fairly routine way,<br />
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“You worked extra shifts, took second jobs, postponed home repairs… you figured out how to make it work. And now people are beginning to think about their future again – going to college, starting a business, buying a house, finally being able to put away something for retirement.”<br />
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It is not that Hillary cannot excite her audience or refrains from giving them red meat or is afraid of stoking a class war it is that the language she uses to describe their plight is so lifeless and abstract that it reeks of condescension.<br />
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She does not seem to be able to grasp that the Obama administration has to also account for why most middle class people feel squeezed and why in many US cities more African American youth stand more chance of going to prison than to college? Is it purely due to a poor economy that has not recovered from the great recession? Or that the economy is not working for all Americans the way it once did. In either case what has the Obama administration done to alleviate these trends? One of the reasons that Bernie Sanders has resonated so well among young people is that he at least has found the language to describe the last eight years, used in his own <a href="https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-launches-presidential-campaign-in-vermont/" target="_blank">campaign launch speech </a>back in May last year.<br />
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“There is something profoundly wrong when, in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. There is something profoundly wrong when one family owns more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans. This grotesque level of inequality is immoral. It is bad economics. It is unsustainable.”<br />
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Bernie makes what happened to the American economy in the last eight years-- underlines the economic crises moral dimensions by focusing on the way the billionaire class has flourished during this period. He does not blame Obama but he does not want to run for his third term either as Clinton seems to want to do. Bernie wants fundamental reform of the system, starting with the repeal of Citizens United and campaign financing. What is Clinton's narrative?<br />
If you parse her words carefully her Roosevelt Island speech --goes something like this--trust me I know I know you are all frustrated with a gridlocked dysfunctional Congress but I rather than Obama have the political skills to fix the mess. How else to interpret the following passage,<br />
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“Our political system is so paralyzed by gridlock and dysfunction that most Americans have lost confidence that anything can actually get done. And they’ve lost trust in the ability of both government and Big Business to change course. Now, we can blame historic forces beyond our control for some of this, but the choices we’ve made as a nation, leaders and citizens alike, have also played a big role. Our next President must work with Congress and every other willing partner across our entire country. And I will do just that — to turn the tide so these currents start working for us more than against us. At our best, that’s what Americans do. We’re problem solvers, not deniers. We don’t hide from change, we harness it.”<br />
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So President Obama is not a problem solver? Wasn't it rather the case that the GOP Congress in the second term refused to cooperate with the President? The question she does not answer is why given the obstructionism of the GOP should a Clinton administration be treated any differently? That is the central flaw in the message. Hillary wants us to see her as a transcendent political force that can somehow magically make the system work again and get the Republicans to behave more reasonably when it comes to their determination to continue to shower their rich backers with tax cuts.<br />
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How should she approach the challenge? For a winning message in 2016 she must stop believing that simply having Bill join her as economic tsar will<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/10/most-americans-say-u-s-economic-system-is-unfair-but-high-income-republicans-disagree/" target="_blank"> convince the 65% of the electorate</a> that believe that the system is fundamentally unfair to support her in the swing states. The days of the Clinton magic if they ever existed are over for a variety of reasons--but mostly due to the cozying up of billionaires and hedge fund managers to the Clinton's various operations. To win she will have to come clean and make public funding of elections as the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/could-hillary-clinton-be-the-champion-campaign-finance-reform-needs/394238/" target="_blank">Atlantic magazine argues </a>"the first issue in her presidency, just as Johnson made passing the Civil Rights Act the first issue of his administration." It will involve a difficult pivot --but one that she is fully capable of making--from successful power broker to acknowledging the system’s flaws that involve capture of the Congress by special interests most notably by Wall Street. She has no alternative but to stop taking money from Wall Street and PACS and argue that she henceforth will like Bernie only be accepting donations from individuals. Only then can she find the political breathing space to craft a campaign that genuinely addresses the future and contrast that with the GOP's effort ever since Reagan was elected to turn the country into a plutocracy. She must help the electorate connect the dots between the GOP refusal to acknowledge climate change as a real threat to the planet’s survival by connecting the campaign contributions of Koch and Company to the Republican coffers. She must skewer their tax plans that are based on yet again another discredited idea that trickle down tax relief for the wealthy helps to create jobs. She needs to argue that the GOP are driven by a narrow right wing base that do not believe in government and would prefer to see government fail than work for ordinary people. She has to talk directly to the American people about her candidacy as a moral crusade for the future of the country. Her candidacy must be less about her as a dynamic competent person (we all know that she is) and more about responding to the current generation who will be graduating from college deeply in debt and with fewer prospects of getting on the economic ladder to start families and to enter the middle class. To make this morally based politics resonate with the electorate she must accept the new political realities that are shaping 2016 as the year when Americans have had enough of status quo politics that no longer works to improve their lives.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-7403867826557055452016-03-05T13:00:00.000-08:002016-03-05T13:01:08.608-08:00Trump Supporters Share One Disturbing Quality<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What unites Trump supporters? The media like to suggest that they are all angry at elites, upset by their declining living standards and are less educated. According to a recent University of Massachusetts, poll as reported in <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533" target="_blank">Politico</a> of 1,800 registered voters across the country and the political spectrum. found that "education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate. Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter."<br />
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According to Mathew McWilliams the author of the survey, "Political pollsters have missed this key component of Trump’s support because they simply don’t include questions about authoritarianism in their polls. In addition to the typical battery of demographic, horse race, thermometer-scale and policy questions, my poll asked a set of four simple survey questions that political scientists have employed since 1992 to measure inclination toward authoritarianism. These questions pertain to child-rearing: whether it is more important for the voter to have a child who is respectful or independent; obedient or self-reliant; well-behaved or considerate; and well-mannered or curious. Respondents who pick the first option in each of these questions are strongly authoritarian."<br />
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We have seen this movie play out before. In Nazi Germany a despondent group of rabid nationalists, wanted to make "Germany great again"--and were looking for scapegoats, simplistic solutions and a totalitarian leader to show them the way. His bully boy tactics at his rallies where he glories in the crowd's desire to expel any dissenting voices, his contempt for what he sees as weakness--McCain cannot be a war hero because he was captured, people with special needs deserve to be mocked and women who appear too aggressive and his anti Muslim rants need to be put in their place all resemble proto fascist moves. Lately his quick shout out to the KKK and David Duke and his song and dance with torture, suggest how far this ego maniac would go if left to his own devices.<br />
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If we learned anything from Nazi Germany it is that such people need to be consistently rejected not to be politely tolerated. Their abhorrent views need to be exposed and confronted at every turn. The Chris Christies' of the world that try to cozy up to power should get their reputations and their careers permanently damaged and the media should be ashamed if they start showing Trump speeches without serious critical commentary that rises above the "oh what large crowds he is attracting variety." They just need to examine the above picture to gain a sense of how Trump is currently taking a look at Mussolini's photo ops to fashion his current "serious" image. They might also benefit themselves and their audiences by reading a little history. A course that Trump University unfortunately never provided.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-27145511465960994072016-02-28T07:40:00.000-08:002016-02-28T09:00:28.650-08:00Sneak Preview of Chris Rock's Academy Awards Monologue<br />
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President Trump how do you all like that one?<br />
So much for President Obama’s hope and change<br />
He is the sort of change that I don’t think Obama was thinking about- a New York billionaire with enough gold fittings in his 757 to feed the population of Haiti for a month.<br />
<br />
Good work Obama to have erased all memory of your campaign. Its as if you did not happen<br />
we just went from the Bush to Trump without missing a beat. That healthcare stuff and saving the economy from fat cat predators like Trump--that did not really happen. You being the first black president --well that was kind of statistically interesting but not really that important in the long term march of progress. We all took the Kool Aid--now we are really so excited now to have new and improved healthcare, which means that we go back to our familiar Emergency Room doctor and our friends on Wall Street get to pay less taxes. But be grateful that you are not one of the 11 million illegals that will get deported back to Mexico. We can all feel so much better to be protected from those rapists and thieves now they will be safely put behind that Mexico will pay for. That wall will also be a new tourist destination. A better legacy than health care or even Trump Tower. And you can trust that Trump will surround himself with the best deal makers that money can buy. While he is getting Mexico to pay for the wall they are planning how they can get the Saudis to pay for the health care and Iran to pay for our nuclear weapons and China for our highways and bridges that are in a state of collapse. I mean he is only going to get the best talent.<br />
<br />
I cannot wait to make America great again. I can see Chris Christie might get a job in your administration. How about Transportation secretary to make sure roads get closed at the right time for your limo parades down Trump Avenue--I mean Pennsylvania Avenue is such a boring name, we need some exciting upgrades to accompany that Trump Hotel you built down there in DC. Maybe you can throw in the Lincoln bedroom as an upgrade to some visiting Saudi prince who knows who might come visiting.<br />
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I cannot also wait to see who you might pick as your next Supreme Court justice--who might it be--one of your sons? Your sister a federal judge would certainly qualify but we really don’t need so many females on the Supreme Court after all we have more now than at any time in our history and they can say irritating Megan Kelly type things that can upset you sometimes. We cannot have that.<br />
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But it will all be great, huge magnificent. Just like Trump University--that great institution of higher learning you built. Just like those Trump University students we will all study your one great book the "Art of the Deal" or was it the art of the scam. We dont need the Department of Education because its a drain on the Treasury. A better idea would be for people to pour their life savings into some scheme that will make them great millionaires or even billionaires just like you as a result of turning up to some drafty Holiday Inn Express somewhere and listening to some clown read from your award winning book.<br />
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Yes I can see students all over the country learning many patriotic lessons from your life story --<br />
from the bribery investigation in New Jersey during the nineteen-seventies, to allegations that a Mafia-related company helped to build Trump Tower, to your hiring of illegals on your building projects. It will all make us so proud to have you as our next President. Something that will go down in history.<br />
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Posted <abbr class="time published" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: none; color: #333333; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" title="2016-02-28T15:34:00.004Z">2 minutes ago</abbr> by <a class="url fn" href="https://plus.google.com/107895625948168280023" itemprop="author" rel="author" style="color: #009eb8; outline: none; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.3s;">Laurence Peters</a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-27348433385581334702015-09-22T07:51:00.002-07:002015-09-22T09:18:26.137-07:00<br />
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Shakespeare and Immigration<br />
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I was listening to Sir Ian McKellen who was promoting his new Sherlock Holmes movie on a recent podcast and he ended the interview by quoting from a little known speech from a seldom performed play,<i> Sir Thomas More</i>, that Shakespeare is known to collaborated on. Known as the "strangers speech" it concerns the 1517 riots against the presence of immigrants in England which were recurring in the 1590s and attracted the censor's pen and the play was never performed despite( according to Stephen Greenblatt's <i>Will in the World</i>) alterations being made and new scenes inserted. The strangers speech survived and we know it was written by the bard himself because his handwritten version of it <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_More_(play)" target="_blank">is now in the British Library, classified as "Hand D."</a><br />
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It is a speech to the rabble to quell their anarchic and violent tempers made unruly due to their reaction to an influx of new refugees from Europe. Although similar in tone to the speeches about law and order the bard had crafted in numerous plays most notably <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, it is less abstract, more modern and emotionally harder hitting than anything similar he had previously attempted. I provide the text below but McKellen's reading allows a modern ear to tune into its heartfelt power.<br />
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One cannot help when the world is undergoing its immigrant crisis to understand the message--we are all humans. We all deserve dignity. In a similar vein, Immanuel Kant calls the cosmopolitan right of strangers "not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another.” It is Shakespeare at his most political and humane--recognizing that the right is a reciprocal one and constitutes our humanity. As the speech builds towards its crescendo we cannot help recognizing the universality of Shakespeare's "stranger's case" and the "mountainish inhumanity" that allows us to ignore it.<br />
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For to the king God hath his office lent<br />
Of dread, of justice, power and command,<br />
Hath bid him rule, and willed you to obey;<br />
And, to add ampler majesty to this,<br />
He hath not only lent the king his figure,<br />
His throne and sword, but given him his own name,<br />
Calls him a god on earth. What do you, then,<br />
Rising ’gainst him that God himself installs,<br />
But rise against God? What do you to your souls<br />
In doing this? O, desperate as you are,<br />
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,<br />
That you like rebels lift against the peace,<br />
Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,<br />
Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!<br />
Tell me but this. What rebel captain,<br />
As mutinies are incident, by his name<br />
Can still the rout? Who will obey a traitor?<br />
Or how can well that proclamation sound,<br />
When there is no addition but a rebel<br />
To qualify a rebel? You’ll put down strangers,<br />
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,<br />
And lead the majesty of law in line,<br />
To slip him like a hound. Say now the king<br />
(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)<br />
Should so much come to short of your great trespass<br />
As but to banish you, whether would you go?<br />
What country, by the nature of your error,<br />
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,<br />
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,<br />
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,—<br />
Why, you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleased<br />
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,<br />
That, breaking out in hideous violence,<br />
Would not afford you an abode on earth,<br />
Whet their detested knives against your throats,<br />
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God<br />
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants<br />
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,<br />
But chartered unto them, what would you think<br />
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;<br />
And this your mountanish inhumanity.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-88311870150540331792015-01-01T12:28:00.000-08:002015-01-01T12:28:06.565-08:00The Smartest Kids in the World and how They Got That Way, by Amanda Ripley, A Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Amanda Ripley a former <i>Time</i> reporter used to try to avoid education stories because they were in a word “soft”--by this she means that they were largely human interest stories that traded on various cliches--well intentioned adults and kids turned into photo opportunities--smiling and silently following authority figures. Evidence that there was anything particularly replicable or important was usually lacking and the result was invariably feel good mush. Ripley’s book, <i>The Smartest Kids in the World</i> is a praiseworthy step in the opposite direction. Ripley provides a lucid and largely non mushy account of how and why three school systems (Finland, Poland and South Korea) differ by allowing us to see these systems through the eyes of three articulate Americans as they spend a semester in these countries as a foreign exchange students. For anyone who has been put off by the typical faceless data heavy accounts as to how US schools are typically failing when measured against international metrics this book is for you. In this book we gather a more nuanced view as to how our schools shape up internationally (or at least in comparison with those that typically excel on international comparison tests South Korea, Poland and Finland) by seeing them through the eyes of three American exchange students. The book is a great example of deep reported journalism for a broad audience of readers who would not normally pick up a book about educational policy for light reading but are drawn in by books’ basic conceit, how three US students who spend a semester studying abroad cope with the complexities such markedly different school systems.<br />
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Along the way Ripley helps us to learn a lot about the world of educational comparisons in a way that avoids the usual academic jargon. For example, you are introduced to the Pisa test that undergirds all the international testing which is not as you might have first imagined a<br />
a challenge to build a jenga tower but stands for the Program for International Student Assessment and developed by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and not about students solving difficult equations that would fox adults and children alike but rather tests the ability to think creatively. By taking readers through her own process of preparing and then taking the test itself Ripley leaves us more impressed with the clever way the test really examines whether the student is able to apply critical thinking problem solving and literacy skills to questions that seem on the surface quite simple such as whether an interpretation of some statistics makes sense and to justify their opinion based on the facts they are provided.<br />
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Ripley also illuminates the difficult issue of ‘rigor’ a word that is often thrown around in education circles but as you read about the way all the systems discussed in the book treat education comes to mean more than just whether students work hard at school (as it tends to do in the US) but the extent to which all the components of the educational system from teacher training to parental and public expectations converge and support students wrestling with complex ideas.<br />
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“it wasn’t that public respect for teachers led to learning, as some American educators claimed after visiting Finland; it was that public respect for learning led to great teaching..one thing led to another. Highly educated teachers also chose material that was more rigorous, and they had the fluency to teach it. Because they were serious people doing hard jobs and everyone knew it they got a lot of autonomy to do their work. That autonomy was another symptom of rigor. Teachers and principals had enough leeway to do their jobs like true professionals. They were accountable for results, but autonomous in their methods.”<br />
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Ripley is eloquent about why rigor matters and why educational policy in the US often interferes with its attainment because it invariably wants to eat away at teachers’ autonomy and prescribe outcomes that should be in the hands of professionals not bureaucrats. The ‘education superpowers’ (as she refers to the countries she studies) had a ‘clarity of purpose’ as to what counted that translated down to the students and their families. The systems enjoyed the synergy that comes from families and schools reinforcing students motivation to learn and do well at school. All students in these countries knew how and why education mattered to their lives but as Ripley sadly opines in many US schools “the priorities were muddled beyond recognition.” One of the chief muddling factors was the oversized space that sports had in American students lives. While only a minority of American students actually played competitive sports they played an outsize role in budgets and time devoted to them. Other countries cared about sports but they were typically organized by parents, community centers or clubs outside of school time. The time and the amount spent on sports in the US all sent the message that was different to the one in the other countries studied that “what mattered, what really led to greatness--had little to do with what happened in the classroom. That lack of drive made the teachers’ jobs harder, undercutting the entire equation.”<br />
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The book is worth reading just for the sections on rigor and why and how it makes a difference for disadvantaged students just as much for advantaged ones but there are so many other things to enjoy about the book and more importantly to reflect on. The Korean bargain to place far too much emphasis on testing so that school and cramming colleges turned education into a joyless enterprise should serve as a warning signal to all test minded enthusiasts. However, the opposite was also true--”moon bounce schools” (as Ripley refers to many US schools where improving self esteem rather than achievement were the end goals) produced kids who had no experience of what it meant to fail, and only later would “discover that they had been tricked” and had essentially wasted their time and would have to struggle if they were to obtain even a minimum wage job. Although politicians like Bush and Obama have through their various signature initiatives to inject rigor from the outside into faltering schools through new kinds of testing regimes, Ripley views them as promising more than they could deliver “lifting the floor but not the ceiling.” For a more complete approach one that raised the standards for all students people had to believe in and demand rigor as a result of recognizing why it mattered it economically. The author is persuasive on this point down as she recounts that all three of the countries studied passed reforms that propelled them to the top of the Pisa League Tables as a result of serious threats to their countries’ living standards. Part of the reason the US has resisted adding more rigor to the school experience has been the general preference of some sectors of the society to continue to deny the connection between schooling and economic success. Ripley uses the example of Oklahoma’s resistance to any form of rigorous standards or assessments as something of a test case. The repeated efforts by some Oklahoma lawmakers to defeat a simple graduation test as well as more recently the Common Core make for some bitter if humorous reading as the old canard of federal control over local standards was wheeled out by a series of demagogic politicians. However, despite examples like Oklahoma Ripley seems encouraged that Americans are beginning to get it and to “feel the urgency, the unsettling proximity of change and competition. The truth is that US is a difficult country to compare internationally as it contains a wide amount of diversity--as she illustrates by one map that looks at states as if they were PISA countries--some states like Texas compare to Poland and many Northeastern states in particular compare well to some top PISA performers. A charter school chain like BASIS (operating in Washington DC and Arizona) can produce students who outscore the average student in Finland, Korea and Poland or even Shanghai the region that ranked first in the world on PISA in 2009. Ripley maintains the issue is one of leadership. Rather than allow politicians to play with education to indulge in their own pet ideas that might include teacher bashing or federal control, leaders from all sectors including from business and universities need to help build the consensus that what matters is rigor that starts with high standards, accountability for outcomes and market driven compensation for talented teachers. Read this book and then insist that your friends, family and most important your political representatives also read it!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-91585594549433231482014-06-27T10:11:00.003-07:002014-06-27T10:11:12.827-07:00Are We at an Inflection Point for a New Kind of Social Impact Philanthropy?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the silver linings of a deadlocked congress is that the President has been forced to come up with more creative ways to stay relevant. Rather than just convening the White House conference that ends with a commission report that may or may not make the 24 hour news cycle, the administration has decided that much more good can be done by leveraging private sector philanthropy in connection with governmental actions (such as regulatory changes) that don’t need the blessing of Congress. Basically it all goes back to the idea that companies can get rich and do the right thing and that government should be there to support what they do. This message ever since the G-8 Social Impact investment forum in London last year seriously endorsed a new more progressive minded approach to aligning capital formation with solving large social and economic issues culminated in </span><a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/06/25/executive-actions-accelerate-impact-investing-create-jobs-and-strengthen-communities" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an announcement from the White House this week</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> involving twenty private-sector investors, including the McKnight, Ford, and MacArthur foundations to commit a collective $1.5 billion dollars to a public private partnership. The initiative’s goals include delivering “affordable housing and healthcare for low-income communities, carbon footprint reductions for some of the America’s least energy efficient buildings, fresh produce to food deserts, financial services and education to help lift millions out of poverty.”</span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of this activity has generated some discussion as to whether we are now at an inflection point here in the development of a new kind of philanthropy? For example, Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation took to the </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jean-case/impact-investing-1-billio_b_5527395.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Huffington Post</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to proclaim so “A new day has dawned. Impact investing offers a unique opportunity to "invite business in" - not limiting their role to that of their foundations or social responsibility programs, but rather enabling and encouraging them to use their core areas of expertise, or their established products and services in these efforts.” Case gives the example of Warby Parker, “using fashion and consumer demand to bring eyeglasses to the developing world at scale.” Why are philanthropies needed when their funding could easily be drowned out by the private sector? For several reasons, philanthropies can invest in that part of the project where the risk of not getting a high enough rate of return (building affordable housing for example) would preclude (based on their fiduciary duty) a private sector endowment manager from investing. They might also according to the influential report, </span><a href="http://static.squarespace.com/static/539e71d9e4b0ccf778116f69/t/53aa1681e4b04a6c515fac31/1403655809489/Private_Capital_Public_Good.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Private Capital, Public Good: How Smart Federal Policy Can Galvanize Impact Investing — and Why It’s Urgent</span></a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by the US Advisory Board use their own non charitable investments which can all count towards their mandated annual five percent payout. The investments will be watched carefully for impact and if the indicators suggest positive synergies we can expect that this sector with government help will grow and the old divisions between governmental, corporate and private sector philanthropy will for start to fade as a new urgency enters the minds of the global financial elite to save the planet. This shift in thinking cannot come a moment too soon as the Millennials are expected to receive a transfer of $41 trillion in the coming decades and will want to continue to align their investment priorities with their values. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-75676338870764664002014-01-26T15:41:00.000-08:002014-01-26T15:41:54.646-08:00Future of Climate Change<span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amy Luers</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">We are now accepting that the prospects of climate reform are quite bleak. But the effects of it are quite real, <a href="http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/climate_change_what_is_our_goal" target="_blank">as Luers and Skar write</a>, the effects of climate change are now real,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">"Populations across the globe are beginning to perceive the real or apparent effects of a changing climate. The climate threat is increasingly equated with present-day devastation wrought by storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, and heat waves, rather than abstract </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/05/is-inequality-bad-for-economic-growth/" style="color: #990000; cursor: pointer; font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">catastrophic threats</a><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"> </span><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">such as a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet or the sudden shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (dramatized in the 2004 science-fiction thriller</span><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"> </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/" style="color: #990000; cursor: pointer; font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><em style="font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Day After Tomorrow</em></a><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">). "</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">These events have forced the media to see climate change, </span></span><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">"as</span></span><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"> the magnifying lens through which we view all other problems: food and water, national security, human health, and poverty." As a result "the climate change narrative has changed. A greater number and diversity of actors are aware of and involved in addressing climate change; yet each is motivated by different concerns, driven by different values, and focused on different outcomes. For many, a rise of average global surface temperatures of two degrees Celsius is not a clear line between the acceptable and unacceptable impacts of climate; we are experiencing unacceptable affects from climate today."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">But as the authors write while the narrative may have changed "t</span><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">he framework originally set in motion in 1992" has not. The authors argue that "</span><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">It is time to restructure policy discussions of the climate problem from a simple pollution problem to a more complex risk-management problem. This will mean shifting the goal from averting a global catastrophe to minimizing global collective suffering. This will require: taking on the climate threat as a continuum of risks from variability to change; no longer debating whether any given weather event was the result of climate change; recognizing that stakeholders hold different values and risk perceptions; and addressing </span><a href="http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/climate_risks_linking_narratives_to_action" style="color: #990000; cursor: pointer; font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">climate mitigation and adaptation</a><span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"> as truly integrated and equal approaches to managing climate risks. By restructuring the climate challenge as minimizing collective suffering, we may open up new opportunities to address the multiple facets of the systemic risks posed by climate."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Caslon, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">It sounds like a more productive approach. Rather than confronting the climate change deniers who may not look at the same facts the same way we could find more opportunities to as the authors challenge us to do, to "minimize global collective suffering." </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-4257366199573980442013-12-22T07:04:00.001-08:002013-12-22T13:28:03.013-08:00Signs of Hope at the End of 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Reagan_with_Peggy_Noonan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Reagan_with_Peggy_Noonan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
As we close out 2013 a remarkable thing happened, Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter, Wall Street Journal opinion writer and Republican darling tells the startling truth about what might be passing through the minds of the world's thinking billionaires. While many dream of ever bigger houses and yachts some worry about the market continuing to rise. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579268591272440548" target="_blank">Noonan overheard a New York billionaire say these unlikely words</a>, "I hate it when the market goes up. Every time I hear the
stock market went up I know the guillotines are coming closer." Noonan reflects that self-made, broadly accomplished was concerned that the gap between the ever richer haves and the increasingly poverty line and below have nots "has become too extreme, too dramatic, and static," and "fears
it will eventually tear the country apart and give rise to policies
that are bitter and punishing, not helpful and broadening." What is arresting apart from the stark choice of imagery is the fact that this commentary is published on capitalism's flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. There maybe some hope that the financial and political captains of the country (more or less the same people) maybe having second thoughts about the increasing unfairness of a system that keeps rewarding those with the wealth and will think again about continuing to fray the safety net that keeps millions of people from destitution. Liberals who propound such views are usually vilified by the right wing media machine as well "liberals" who know nothing about the need to run profitable businesses or some such tired put down, but they are in reality capitalists best friend, trying to make an inherently unequal system slightly more humane and by extension less unstable. Thus for example initiatives such as passing higher cost of living related minimum wage laws are designed to keep the system from not breaking down so completely that families cannot get properly fed and clothed and people cannot afford to live in dignity. Obama with nothing left to run for but a legacy as a change agent to protect, should be dedicating his presidency to closing the wealth gap. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-74865707163653016952013-12-02T12:50:00.000-08:002013-12-02T12:53:50.645-08:00Global Education At A Crossroads <h1 class="title" style="color: #333333; font-family: PTSansNarrowRegular, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: capitalize;">
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Since the 1970s, there has been a long struggle to have global education accepted as part of the curriculum and as a subject for serious study. Since 9/11, despite the upshot in interest all things global, the states and the federal government have lacked sustained interest to push for more global education in the curriculum.</div>
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In 2008 the standards of only two states, Maryland and Mississippi, contained the term “global citizenship.” Remarkably, the Common Core standards pay only a glancing attention to global issues. Maryland was the only state to receive “Race to the Top” funding that included <a href="http://www.education.umd.edu/international/Report%20for%20the%20Maryland%20State%20Summit%20on%20International%20Education,%20June%202011.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="color: #13678c; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><u>international education and global citizenship</u></a> in 2011.</div>
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Generally, what has occurred over the half century that spans the term’s first use in the 1970s until today is an increased number of teachers who are experimenting with making their classrooms more global -- but no commensurate increase in the number of schools or school districts that could be termed fully global in nature. Nowadays, when schools or districts reference global issues, it is often done in the context of promoting something referred to as “global competence” or even more nebulously "21st century skills." The terms sound appealing, particularly to the business community that sees both as embracing the need for workers equipped with both foreign language and STEM skills. But it strips out the core meaning why many of us first got involved with global education movement: the need for students to truly understand people from other cultures.</div>
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To do this effectively<em>, </em>as much of the research since Hanvey wrote his masterful essay, “<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00405848209543001?journalCode=htip20#.UppIU6aA1dg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #13678c; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><u>An attainable global perspective</u></a>,” bears out, is to collaborate with people from other parts of the world. Following the growing sophistication of online tools such as Skype and services such as iEARN and ePals, these approaches are now more widely available but to tend to require a deeper, longer-term commitment on behalf of teachers than many of them can nowadays afford to give. Such teachers are in danger of becoming marginalized, as classroom time is ever more taken up with teaching only what is measurable and they find alack of support for the more difficult to quantify cultural skills that students only learn through such longer term collaborative efforts. As a result of these developments, the global education movement faces an uncertain future.</div>
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For global education to grow as a field and not just survive, individual teachers who care about creating the next generation of world-minded students need to collaborate together through social networks or forums such as the global education conference affords to make clear their core principles. They need to work with their colleagues to help their entire schools become global, with sustained partnerships that help enrich the curriculum across disciplines and grade levels. To make progress we will need to extend and expand our discussions from beyond our fellow “true believers” to include our fellow teachers and school leaders as well as parents and community leaders. The field will need to examine areas where it can have greatest impact. Working towards an aspirational goal of creating global 21<sup>st</sup>-century citizens will require entire schools to develop partnerships with counterpart schools around the globe that can be sustained -- so that when one globally minded teacher leaves, the entire program does not then disappear.</div>
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For this type of vision to be sustainable, we will also need university partners who can evaluate the harder-to-measure metrics connected with what it means to move from an awareness of different cultural perspectives to a willingness to act as a global citizen and provide the all important preservice and inservice professional development that is today so noticeably lacking.</div>
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Activities such as those during Connected Educator Month and the Global Education conference are a start in the right direction.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-71311525172531347142013-11-21T10:52:00.001-08:002013-11-21T10:53:36.615-08:00Lack of Coverage of Warsaw Climate Conference Does Not Bode Well<br />
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The devastation from the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/end-this-climate-madness-philippines-tells-global-warming-summit-20131112-2xd4f.html#ixzz2lJ4d36gR" target="_blank">recent typhoon that hit the Philippines</a> according to the country's lead negotiator at the United Nations climate summit in Warsaw, Naderev Sano,“was [like] nothing we have ever experienced before, or perhaps nothing that any country has ever experienced before”.<br />
Despite the thousands of people killed and Sano's plea to nations to act on climate change and prevent super typhoons such as Haiyan, from becoming “a way of life” the UN Conference on Climate change in Warsaw seems currently deadlocked.<br />
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The UN climate change summit going on now in Warsaw might as well be occurring on an alternative universe. There is no coverage in the mainstream press. The news today of a walk out among<br />
"hundreds of environmental activists over the absence of a binding agreement on curbing global warming coming on the heels of a group of 133 developing nations walking out of a key negotiating meeting about how much of the burden developed economies must pay for the cost of the damage they have caused seems to suggest deadlock is now inevitable. According to one <a href="http://www.countercurrents.org/ciobanu171113.htm" target="_blank">source</a><br />
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"The paper makes it clear that, despite President Barack Obama's progressive stances on climate issues over the past year, the US continues to pose difficulties to closing an international global climate deal by strongly resisting the concept of historical responsibility for emissions and positioning itself in opposition to developing countries on the main issues at stake."<br />
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The memo is indicative as to how many western governments are now turning their backs on climate change. As the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/16/climate-change-pledges-rich-nations" target="_blank">Guardian</a> has reported,<br />
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"Recent decisions by the governments of Australia, Japan and Canada to downgrade their efforts over climate change have caused panic among those states most affected by global warming, who fear others will follow as they rearrange their priorities during the downturn.<br />
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In the last few days, Japan has announced it will backtrack on its pledge to reduce its emission cuts from 25% to 3.8% by 2020 on the basis that it had to close its nuclear reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.<br />
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Australia, which is not sending a minister to this weekend's talks, signaled it may weaken its targets and is repealing domestic carbon laws following the election of a conservative government.<br />
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Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto accord, which committed major industrial economies to reducing their annual CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels.<br />
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These governments as well as the US have been allowed to get away with it by a compliant media that is owned in large part by corporate interests. If there is to be real change in terms of addressing the climate crisis it has to come from the grassroots. Even though the NGOs are walking out of Warsaw only after mobilizing a sleepy public and a negligent media.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-52349401919490441932013-10-21T08:17:00.003-07:002013-10-21T08:38:23.228-07:00Democrats Need to Go on The Offensive<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite the travesty of the Republican led government shutdown the GOP is still controlling the debate in Washington.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 25px;">As<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/10/28/131028taco_talk_packer?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_Daily%20(42)" target="_blank"> George Packer writes in the New Yorker</a></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25px;">"These days, Republicans may be losing politically and resorting to increasingly anti-majoritarian means—gerrymandering, filibuster abuse, voter suppression, activist Supreme Court decisions, legislative terrorism—to nullify election results. But on economic-policy matters they are setting the terms. Senator Ted Cruz can be justly described as a demagogic fool, but lately he’s been on the offensive far more than the White House has. The deficit is in fairly precipitous decline, but job growth is anemic, and millions of Americans remain chronically unemployed. Democrats control the White House and the Senate, and last year they won a larger share of the national vote in the House than Republicans did. And yet the dominant argument in Washington is over spending cuts, not over ways to increase economic growth and address acute problems like inequality, poor schools, and infrastructure decay.</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25px;">"</span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">s Larry Summers has <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/71d7439c-31a2-11e3-817c-00144feab7de.html#axzz2iMtfpIXK" target="_blank">stated recently in the Financial Times</a></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">" budget deficits are now a second-order problem relative to more pressing issues facing the US economy. Projections that there is a major deficit problem are highly</span><span style="line-height: 25px;"> uncertain. And policies that indirectly address deficit issues by focusing on growth are sounder economically and more plausible politically than the long-term budget deals with which much of the policy community is obsessed. </span><span style="line-height: 25px;">The latest Congressional Budget Office projection is that the federal deficit will fall to 2 per cent of GDP by 2015 and that a decade from now the debt-to-GDP ratio will be below its current level of 75 per cent. While the CBO projects that under current law the debt-to-GDP ratio will rise over the longer term, the rise is not large relative to the scale of the US economy. It would be offset by an increase in revenues or a decrease in spending of 0.8 per cent of GDP for the next 25 years and 1.7 per cent of GDP for the next 75 years."</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">So why the disconnect between the political conversation that should be dominated by facts and not by Republican talking points? </span><span style="line-height: 25px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 25px;"> A lack of White House leadership seems the best explanation. As Maureen Dowd<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/opinion/sunday/cat-on-a-hot-stove.html?_r=0" target="_blank"> puts it well in yesterday's New York Times</a>, this is a President who is too fond of being above the fray,</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">"Obama’s default position is didactic disdain. He underuses the fear and charm cards. When he first saw the White House movie theater, he was surprised there were so many seats beyond what the first family would need. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, probably would have built a balcony and auctioned off seats, if he could have.</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 25px;">As Valerie Jarrett told David Remnick in “The Bridge,” Obama’s “uncanny” abilities need to be properly engaged, or he disengages. “He’s been bored to death his whole life,” she said. “He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">The worst part about the situation is that the White House will not allow other talented people do anything either. Perhaps they are too caught up in the health care exchange failure but this cannot be the entire explanation. The President so controls the message that they will not allow other potential spokespeople, notably his Secretary of Labor to take center stage in the way that Robert Reich was allowed to do in the Clinton administration. The Democrats in Congress too seem in a cowering position as if they just want the Republicans to return to the old centrist party they once were and feel they might get rewarded for good behavior if they play on their turf. If Obama is really serious about preserving jobs and growing the economy he should repeat over and over again that the deficit is not the issue, the problem is growth. He should be out front on this debate instead of gaming the next potential shutdown in January when Republicans will demand cuts in social programs and refuse to allow tax increases on billionaires. You cannot win when you don't engage. </span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8636311461323737087.post-49328636243202847042013-09-04T06:59:00.001-07:002013-09-04T08:51:55.139-07:00Is Obama Squandering his Legacy?<br />
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In July Obama visited Knox College in Galesburg Illinois and told the audience that he cared about “one thing and one thing only, and that’s how to use every minute of the 1,276 days remaining in my term to make this country work for working Americans again,” but now Obama is so boxed in with regard to Syria that it is highly unlikely that many of those days will now be devoted to delivering on that major goal. This will be unfortunate as the slow crisis that has been building since the implosion of the economy under reckless mismanagement by the former president, his friends on Wall Street and enablers in Congress, is now stealing the futures of the young. The portion of people aged 20-24 who have jobs has fallen from 72.2 percent in 2000 to just 61.5 percent, while adjusted for inflation, their median earnings has fallen by nearly 30 percent since 1973 and women, the median by 17 percent. Meanwhile the average net worth of the wealthiest seven percent of households climbed by 28 percent. The effects on the next generation will be even more severe. In 2011 nearly one third of all children lived in a household where no parent had full-time year round employment while half of all children in urban centers experience unstable family employment. As a recent<a href="http://www.ets.org/newsroom/news_releases/report_warns_child_poverty" target="_blank"> ETS report</a> points out “only Romania has a higher child poverty rate than the US." This is shameful for a nation that claims to be a world superpower. There is no use to pretending either that these numbers don't translate into significant gaps in achievement between rich and poor particularly in cities where continued segregation compounds the problem. As the recession continues income and educational equality will make the lives of poor families even worse as 26 states provide less funding per student to local school districts in the new school year than a year ago.<br />
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Syria is a huge distraction from the battle to focus people’s attention on unemployment and underemployment. A Syrian operation will likely cost several billion dollars just a few of those dollars could be spent to raise the minimum wage. How can you justify paying workers who support families wages that cannot support those families so that they have to apply for food stamps ? These are not handouts. The minimum wage in 1963 when Martin Luther King marched for jobs and justice was held constant for inflation it would now be $9.40 an hour in today’s dollars, not $7.25. Rather than wasting his political capital on rounding up Congress to authorize a dubious strike with a dubious legal basis he should be raising the minimum wage to reignite his flagging presidency. Doubtless MLK, Obama's hero, as he declared so passionately on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial this month, would have supported the fast food workers. As their strikes move to more cities he could allow his inner MLK to sign an executive order to raise the minimum wage and rescue at least some of the workers caught in today's economic vice. On Syria he should follow<a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114481/liberals-advice-obama-syria" target="_blank"> Jane Harman’s advice</a> and get Russia on our side, “If Russia would align with us on stopping all the butchery, that would be an important change, and Russia’s not there. For Russia to be on the wrong side of the use of chemical weapons is stunning, and we’re just not calling them out adequately. Our recent track record with Russia has not shown many results, but I think pulling the international community together to shame Russia is something we should be doing. We should use the leverage we have. The G20 is happening [September 5-6] in Russia. I would look at the G20 and at the United Nations General Assembly as two places where the international community comes together. It should be G19 against G1 going into Russia.”<br />
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For Obama to squander his last year and a half in this way will not help his legacy and set back the hopes of a generation.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0