A Madman in the White House

We have reached a Code Red period in American history. Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist defined this situation in his May 29, 2018 column. Yes his column is long but is worth your time if you care about America’s future.

Everyone reading this should be very afraid of the direction of the United States. Most Republicans appear to support the words and behavior of Donald Trump. Trump’s admiration of dictators and his attacks on the courts, America’s closest allies, the press and everything that have made the America the envy of the world should cause even those ardent loyal Republicans concern for this republic. Many dictators gained their positions through the ballot box and then convinced the public that they should remain in power indefinitely. If re-elected in 2020 I anticipate Trump will attempt to convince America that he should continue to be president for the rest of his life.

Sadly many Americans DO NOT understand or are even slightly aware of the details of the Constitution. The exception is the 2nd amendment. That thanks to the NRA. I would be willing to bet most people have not even read that amendment.

If you dream of a Russian or North Korean style government in America just shut your eyes and stay away from the ballot box in November or any other time there is an election.

If you believe it is OK to treat human beings like animals than Donald Trump is your man.

Fortunately there are thousands of people voicing their opposition to Donald Trump. This is not Nazi Germany!

Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist FEB. 18, 2018

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander-in-chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyber defense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyber warfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

North Korea Nuclear Timeline

The cancellation of disarmament negotiation with North Korea should not come as a surprise to anyone. Like the Peanuts cartoon where Lucy pulls the ball away just as Charlie Brown is running to kick it so has North Korea pulled away from completing an agreement to end its nuclear/ballistic missile program. North Korea has pulled away from every agreement.

Here is a an abbreviated list of the previous failed efforts as reported on a CNN web site.

1985
North Korea signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

1994
North Korea and the United States sign an agreement. North Korea pledges to freeze and eventually dismantle its old, graphite-moderated nuclear reactors in exchange for international aid to build two new light-water nuclear reactors.

2002
October – The Bush Administration reveals that North Korea has admitted operating a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 agreement.

2003
January 10 – North Korea withdraws from the NPT.

2005
North Korea tentatively agrees to give up its entire nuclear program, including weapons. In exchange, the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea say they will provide energy assistance to North Korea, as well as promote economic cooperation.

2007
February 13 – North Korea agrees to close its main nuclear reactor in exchange for an aid package worth $400 million.

2008
December – Six-party talks are held in Beijing. The talks break down over North Korea’s refusal to allow international inspectors unfettered access to suspected nuclear sites.

Donald Trump did the right thing in cancelling a Singapore summit.

April Fool’s Day and Biblical Nonsense

Is it a coincidence that April Fool’s Day and Easter are on the same day or nearly the same day every year?

Religion is all about faith. Most people have surrendered to believing the stories and tales and instructions described in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Vedas, or other holy scripture.

Many of you reading this posting may call me an atheist or perhaps an agnostic.

In my view it is all well-meaning stories and guiding ideas that will take us to heaven. Heaven is an imaginary place where we will live forever. That is our dream because most of us cannot accept the reality that life is not infinite and we will die.

The two most outrageous stories that I am aware of is that 1) the Red Sea opened so that the escaping Jews could leave Egypt. Then the sea returned killing Egyptian soldiers that were chasing the Jews. 2) A man named Jesus died and then came back to life. In both instances Christians and Jews believe these stories.

It is written in a book so it must be true.

So the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years before arriving in Canaan. If one looks at a map of the region between Egypt and Israel, the question of why it took 40 years to travel a straight-line distance of only about 240 miles.

Most Christians believe Jesus to be the Son of God and the awaited Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. The evidence is lacking but the people dreamed of someone coming to promise them a place that they will live forever. Jews as well as Christians want to believe they will live forever even if their bodies fail. To this day religious Jews believe the Messiah is still to come.

The other fairy tales are just as ridiculous.

Noah’s Ark is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative (Genesis chapters 6–9) by which God spares Noah, his family, and a remnant of all the world’s animals from a world-engulfing flood. According to Genesis, God gave Noah instructions for building the ark Seven days before the deluge. God told Noah to enter the ark with his household and the animals. The story goes on to describe the ark being afloat for 150 days and then coming to rest on the Mountains of Ararat and the subsequent receding of the waters. Searches for Noah’s Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c. 275–339 CE) to the present day. There is no scientific evidence of a global flood, and despite many expeditions, no evidence of the ark has been found.

Jews celebrate Hanukkah every year (usually occurring near the end of November to the end of December). The eight-day celebration commemorates the rededication during the second century B.C. of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, where according to legend Jews had risen up against their Greek-Syrian oppressors. There was always to be an eternal light in the Temple but the Greeks had contaminated the oil for the light. One jar of oil that could last for only one day burned for eight days.

Oh and then there was God Tests Abraham’s Faith. When Isaac (son Abraham) had grown older, Jehovah tested Abraham’s faith. He called: ‘Abraham!’ And Abraham answered: ‘Here I am!’ Then God said: ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, and go to a mountain that I will show you. There kill your son and offer him up as a sacrifice.’ Then at the last minute God sends an angel to tell Abraham you have shown your faith. Don’t kill your son but sacrifice a sheep from the nearby bushes.

And finally God created heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. How long is a day? This was a story to explain the world to children.

April Fool! It is all a fairly-tale.

Fear of Deportation from the United States

Fear of deportation is a real fear that most Americans will never know.

President Obama’s DACA program was a well-meaning effort to protect those people brought into the United States illegally. However Obama did not understand the illegal immigrant’s fear of being arrested and being deported. That fear is most likely prompted by the illegal parents of those children.

When the program was first announced I immediately identified the potential consequence of announcing to the government your name and address. What if the program was ended? I asked. Wouldn’t ICE know exactly where to look for all those children and their families. That same quandary exists in states that have granted driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. Their addresses are now public record. ICE now can obtain those addresses and deport those people.

So when Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, suggest many DACA eligible people were ‘too afraid’ or ‘too lazy,’ he is half correct. They were ‘too afraid.’ We can see why those concerns are well founded as more illegal aliens, or those suspected of being here illegally, are being arrested.

By the way my family moved legally to the United States when I was six months old. I would not have divulged my name and address to any government office and I would not have applied for a driver’s license if I was an illegal alien. It would be out of fear!

When I renew my passport I have to surrender my citizenship document. After reviewing it they return it along with my new passport. I am always concerned that some bureaucrat will not return that citizenship document.

My sympathies are with the people brought here as children.

A Dream of Absolute Power

Donald Trump is taking the steps necessary to destroy the American democracy. His objective is a government similar to Turkey, Russia, and other nations ruled by despots.

Trump has attacked the most treasured parts of this country.
1. The court system
2. The press and freedom of speech
3. Libel laws
4. The electoral system
5. The Congress

The courts:
Trump has made a series of tweets and public statements attacking the deciding judges personally, questioning the authority of federal courts to review his orders, suggesting the court is biased, and suggesting that the judges and court system would be to blame for future terrorist attacks.

February 4, 2017 Trump tweet: The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

In response to U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo O. Curiel’s orders in a class action lawsuit against Trump University, then-presidential candidate Trump made a number of statements attacking Judge Curiel as biased because of his “Mexican heritage” and appointment by a Democratic president.

Trump tweet: I should have easily won the Trump University case on summary judgement but have a judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is totally biased against me.

The Press, freedom of speech and Libel laws:
Senator John McCain (Republican senator from Arizona, writing in the Washington Post
wrote the 45th president’s assault on American media provides cover for oppressive global regimes to “follow suit.”
“He [Trump] has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit the free press by bestowing ‘fake news awards’ upon reporters and news outlets whose coverage he disagrees with,” McCain writes. “Whether Trump knows it or not, these efforts are being closely watched by foreign leaders who are already using his words as cover as they silence and shutter one of the key pillars of democracy.”

John McCain continued, “For decades, dissidents and human rights advocates have relied on independent investigations into government corruption to further their fight for freedom. But constant cries of ‘fake news’ undercut this type of reporting and strip activists of one of their most powerful tools of dissent.”

Reported by ABC News on January 10, 2018: Pres. Donald J. Trump says he plans to “take a strong look” at libel laws: “You can’t say things that are knowingly false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account.”

Perhaps Mr. Trump has not read the constitution. The first amendment guarantees a Free Press. That means the press has the right to publish articles or books that criticize the president and anyone else. The book “Fire and Fury” tells stories of people who think Trump is child-like. Trump wants to stop those kinds of stories about him.

The electoral system:
From nytimes.com
Trump Disbands Commission on Voter Fraud
JAN. 3, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday abruptly shut down a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony, but no real evidence that American elections are corrupt.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump called for requiring voter identification in a pair of Twitter posts because the voting system “is rigged.” “Push hard for Voter Identification!” Mr. Trump wrote.

Mr. Trump did not acknowledge the commission’s inability to find evidence of fraud, but cast the closing as a result of continuing legal challenges.

The question of voter fraud and rigged elections is not and has not been an issue ever. Dictators don’t like honest elections. Trump’s dream is to pre-determine the outcome of all elections. His recent motivation is the fact that he won the electoral college vote but lost the popular vote. Vladimir Putin ( president of Russia) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (president of Turkey) are the two government leaders that Trump admires because they have shut down any opposition to their re-election by putting them in jail.

The Congress:
America’s system of government demands compromise. When there is no compromise poor legislation is passed and government shutdowns can occur.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s calls to end Senate filibusters.

When filibusters of legislation are underway, it takes 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to halt them.
Republicans now control the chamber 51-49. But strong Democratic opposition and some defecting GOP senators have kept Republicans from getting the votes needed to end the shutdown — now in its second day.

McConnell has long defended the filibuster. He says Republicans will welcome it whenever they are returned to the Senate minority.
As the Senate began a rare Sunday session, the Kentucky Republican said: “I support that right from an institutional point of view.” But he also said, “The question is, when do you use it?”

Trump has made repeated calls this year to end that rule, and did it again Sunday in a tweet.

It is my contention that Donald Trump is working at destroying the American democracy that was created in 1789. I believe he dreams of being a president who has absolute power as many presidents of other nations retain. Everyone should be on guard against Trump’s objective. It was German complacency that gave Hitler absolute power. Marches and demonstrations, like the women’s marches, are the antidote to the Trump dream.

Nighttime on a canal in Venice, Italy

For centuries this city was a major world power and center of culture, religion, learning, commerce—and heaps of intrigue. Consisting of hundreds of lagoon islands connected by some 400 or so bridges, Venice, Italy, long ago relinquished the title of global mover and shaker. Still, it remains a unique treasure beloved by residents and beset by hordes of tourists during the high season. Quiet scenes such as this can still be had, though, if you wander through the backstreets and over the bridges after the tour groups and cruise ships have departed. And if you listen very closely, you may hear echoes of intrigues past.

Happy New Year 2018!

Happy New Year 2018!

Rivlin

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin came to the Jewish Federations’ General Assembly in Los Angeles to plead for Jewish unity. He harped on Israel’s growth, its innovations, and its place as a home for all Jews. Emphasising that we can do everything better if we do it together.

President Rivlin lamented the Western Wall’s transformation into “a symbol of division and disagreement” between Israel and the Diaspora, and expressed hope that understandings would soon be reached on egalitarian prayer at the holy site.

For those of you who have not been following the issue, the question is about prayers at the Western (or wailing) Wall in Jerusalem. Women are kept separate from men and they cannot pray together. The issue has become a symbol of the difference in religious beliefs of Israelis versus most Jews spread throughout the world (Diaspora).

The problem, as I see it, is that Israel is controlled by the ultra-orthodox who are a political party. Apparently it is a party that has enough voters that can sway the governing of their country. Of course, as in any democratic country, they are free to choose the kind of society they live in. It just is not the kind social order that most American and Canadian Jews want.

North American Jews believe in a social order that is an anathema to the religious people of Israel.

Reuven Rivlin’s purpose in making this speech was his plea for North American Jewish support. It is all about money and political support. After all Israel does not have many friends. The loss of North American Jews would be significant.

Rivlin’s plea did not come with any offers of inclusion of North American Jews. Both American and Canadian Jews are obviously happy with their lives. Is there a reason North American Jews should treat Israel any differently than Americans of Italian decent should treat Italy or those of Irish decent should view Ireland?

As a child I accompanied my grandmother to Saturday morning services. I was either eight or nine years old. To my dismay we sat on a mezzanine. Women were required to sit separately from the men and were excluded from the ceremony. Even at that age I concluded that orthodox Judaism was living in a medieval past. Sorry Grandma.

Corporate America Must Prove Tax Reform is Good for Average Americans

Lowering the tax rate from the current 35% to the planned 20% will be a dramatic change for corporations. The GOP controlled congress contends that their planned corporate income tax cuts will result in more investment in new business and higher wages for American workers. Will it actually happen? We will have to wait until next year.

Read this report from CNBC.
A meeting of CEOs might seem to be a friendly gathering place for President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs. But at a gathering of chief executives hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday November 14, business leaders called into question one of Cohn’s top arguments for slashing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.

When one of the Journal’s editors asked the crowd if they planned to up their capital expenditure if the GOP’s tax plan went through, only a smattering raised their hands.

There’s little evidence to support the claim that tax breaks boost employment numbers.

A National Bureau of Economic Research study published in 2014 found “little evidence that corporate tax cuts boost economic activity” unless implemented in a recession.

Far from being short on cash, corporations are sitting on record amounts.

The informal poll was not the only disappointment for Cohn on Tuesday. Another non-scientific poll conducted at the gathering found that more than half of the CEOs present didn’t believe that Congress would pass a major tax bill by the end of the year.

Cohn had previously told reporters that tax legislation would be advanced by the end of the year, calling it a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Is this an opportunity to improve America’s middle class or an opportunity for higher dividend payments to shareholders?

We will know after the tax cut is put into effect. If the result of this tax cut does not provide higher incomes for the middle class the Republicans will lose in the next election.