China is a major player on the world stage, geopolitical know-nothing Trump outclassed, outshined, and outwitted by its ruling authorities.
He’s an embarrassment compared to other major world leaders, a laughing stock geopolitical wrecking ball.
His regime’s unacceptable Indo/Pacific agenda made resolving major differences with China all the harder – notably US dirty hands all over months of disruptive protests in Hong Kong, along with selling F-16 warplanes and other heavy weapons to Taiwan.
A Final Comment
Former White House council of economic advisers chairman under Obama Jason Furman believes “Trump’s China strategy is failing.”
“His tougher approach has yielded no meaningful Chinese concessions but is increasingly damaging the US economy,” adding:
He “needs to change (his) strategy radically.” Based on the current trend, it seems unlikely.
Читайте больше на http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/142652-usa_china/
Category: Trumpland
A former Infowars staffer who organized the Proud Boys protest in Portland Saturday deemed the “mission” a success because President Donald Trump sided with the right-wing extremist group against the anti-fascists.
As the Post-Gazette reported:
The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 am, scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours—through lunch but without lunch—would be paid.
“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.
Unite the poor by fighting racism
According to the Poor People’s Campaign, there are 140 million Americans living in poverty or near poverty. Those living near poverty are low income workers who are one paycheck away from “official” poverty (which is set at a ridiculously low standard). About half of those in or near poverty are white — although poverty is significantly higher percentage-wise among the Black, Latino and Native populations. The total breakdown of poor people in the country is 66 million white people, 26 million Black people, 38 million Latinos, 8 million Asian Americans and 2 million Native people.
What is needed in the United States is to promote a class-wide rebellion of the working class that lives in or near poverty. This is not only possible but it is an imperative need. Racism and white supremacist ideology is the most potent and nurtured weapon of the ruling class to retain power. It is the principal obstacle to such a class wide rebellion to end poverty. To dislodge the capitalists from power requires a fighting movement that promotes the rise of a genuine popular democracy that puts state power in the hands of the poor and working class. Central to such a movement and to its eventual victory is an uncompromising war against any manifestation of racism.
via Trump the Magician: The Real Function of Racism and Xenophobia
In Australia’s Interest to Know(ODT)
via Five Lies on Iran We Need to Refute to Stop Another Illegal War
The administration’s rollbacks, which sparked a torrent of public opposition, come just months after a dire United Nations report warned that human activity has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction.
Writing in The Atlantic, David Graham reminds us that Obama is still presidential, Trump is all a President shouldn’t be:
” … whilst Trump’s efforts at consoling and uniting are intermittent and clumsy, it feels as though the role of president is vacant, and Obama is sliding right back into it by habit—his and the nation’s.”
The President alluded to the mental illness of the shooters. Obama had legislated to prevent anyone with a history of mental illness from purchasing guns. Trump reinstated it. Why did he do so?
Read carefully Obama’s language as it condemns Trump’s racial and ethnic hatred and violence without naming him.
“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.”
Indeed it is masterly prose from a former president walking a fine line between condemnation and occupying a place above it.
America is a huge and complicated country. Its success has been born of the annihilation of one race and the enslavement of another.
It goes without saying that they would be a greater nation with more men like Obama … and less like Trump.
via Mass murder: The prose of a president past – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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After Donald Trump accused Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of “trafficking in vicious anti-Semitic screeds” at a rally in North Carolina, the crowd erupted in the chant “Send her back! Send her back! Send her back!” Trump later claimed he did not agree with the chants and that he had tried to cut them short. A tape of the event, however, makes clear that this was a lie. Moreover, Trump refused to retract the racist tweets that set in motion this frenzied mass expression of racism by renewing his call for the four Congresswomen he attacked to leave the country if they do not embrace his worldview of patriotism and American exceptionalism. In fact, he mentioned to reporters that he was “enjoying” the latest controversy over his comments, which have drawn international condemnation.” This was a spectacle that had the markings not only of a current white nationalist rally but also echoes of the hate-filled spectacles that took place in Germany and Italy in the 1930s and 1940s.
He’s now denying any of it on Twitter employing his two word slogan Fake News (ODT)
President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has harnessed Facebook advertising to push the idea of an “invasion” at the southern border, amplifying the fear-inducing language about immigrants that he has also voiced at campaign rallies and on Twitter.
“We don’t have a country right now,” he said in footage shown in one ad. “We have people pouring in, they’re pouring in, and they’re doing tremendous damage.”
He seized on the “invasion” imagery again in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, when he claimed without evidence that a caravan of migrants making its way north toward the border had been infiltrated by “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.”
via Trump campaign uses Facebook ads to amplify his ‘invasion’ claim
It completely baffles me that the politicians of America, most notably President Trump, can’t see that things are far beyond the point of being out of control. I get it — the NRA has the White House in their grasp and as long as Trump keeps sending those thoughts and prayers, everything will be okay. But how much does the world have to take before enough is enough? And yes, I realise this is largely an American problem, but it still affects all of us around the world, that our own human race can turn on one another in such a violent way. It’s like America has become a troubled relative in need of a serious intervention.
Last year, when a rabid, anti-immigrant antisemite murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, I called it an act of domestic terrorism inspired by the ideology of Trumpism. The shooting took place during the height of the 2018 midterm campaign when Trump was inciting fear of an immigrant “caravan” from Central America. The shooter got the message. Hours before his bloody rampage, he accused a Jewish refugee support agency of bringing “invaders in that kill our people”.
Saturday in El Paso it was deja vu all over again.
400 million guns
With more than one gun for each of the 330 million Americans, the issue is plain. The easy access to guns places America as the world’s outlier in gun violence; the easy resort to firearms means the killings will continue on any day, in any city.
El Paso is also in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott in 2015 said he was “embarrassed” that Texas had fallen behind California in gun purchases.
Only last week, days after the California massacre, at his rally in Cincinnati, Ohio — the state where nine would die two nights later — Mr Trump said:
“We will defend privacy, free speech, religious liberty, and the right to keep and bear arms. And just remember, with the Democrats, there is no Second Amendment. You can forget about ‘keep and bear arms’.”
In raw numbers, 40,000 Americans die from guns each year.
Trump trumpets the low unemployment rate among blacks as proof that his body contains no racist “bones.”
But what Trump doesn’t say (and what the media doesn’t report adequately) is that the current unemployment rate for blacks remains about twice that of whites. The June 2019 national unemployment rate for whites was 3.3 percent compared to 6 percent for blacks. The June 2000 rate was 3.6 percent for whites and 7.8 percent for blacks. Since Trump has neither eased nor erased that long-standing unemployment rate disparity – one rooted in racial discrimination – he does not deserve credit.
via Presidential Racism: Shining Example Of America’s Somber Status Quo | The Smirking Chimp
Bolt’s Cultural Racism helps divide the class divide in America which is absolute structural and real. Black American unemployment is still X2 that of white and hasn’t changed one iota since Trump came into office. Trump’s family investments is into poverty stricken areas as Slumlords so yes he knows only too well how to exploit the poor in his rat-infested Baltimore. (ODT)
First, white men at every education level are more likely than women and non-Asian minorities to get access to higher-wage jobs.
Second, while wages of average working-class people in the U.S. have stagnated in recent decades, and economic insecurity has grown, earnings for middle- and upper-class jobs – which are dominated by educated whites – have soared.
A third and more recent finding is that working-class white men are the group that is most racially resentful and most opposed to further immigration. This finding is based on analyses of survey data of the whole U.S. population examining both voting behavior and attitudes toward blacks and immigrants, zeroing in on President Donald Trump’s core supporters and the content of his political messaging to them.
This resentment probably explains why working-class whites, particularly men, are so receptive to President Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist messages – and why he targets them.
via Taking Focus off Wage Stagnation: How Trump’s Stoking of Racial Divide Harms the White Working Class
This is the per capita income of the poorest 10 states to have voted for Trump (in 2018 current dollars):
39 Florida 48,318
40 Arizona 48,055
43 Kentucky 46,898
44 Montana 46,609
45 South Carolina 45,280
46 Alabama 45,219
47 Idaho 43,430
48 West Virginia 43,053
49 Arkansas 42,454
50 Mississippi 37,948
ALL LESS THAN BALTIMORE
10 Poorest States in US, which voted for Trump, Poorer than Baltimore
Pro-publica and The New York Times did an expose on “JK2” — Kushner’s real estate company buying up hundreds of thousands of housing units in Baltimore in the last 2 decades, including in Rep. Cummings’ district, dontchyaknow. These neighborhoods have been dubbed “Kushnerville,” and are known for his company’s cruel practices and housing violations unchecked.
via Watch Out Donald Trump, Baltimore Strikes Back | Crooks and Liars
How Trumpsters roll (ODT)
Later, at a rally in North Carolina, Mr Trump accused the Somalia-born congresswoman specifically of being soft on terrorism.
“Omar laughed that Americans speak of al-Qaeda in a menacing tone,” he said. “You don’t say America with this intensity. You say al-Qaeda makes you proud. Al-Qaeda makes you proud. You don’t speak that way about America,” he added, referring to her remarks in a 2013 interview.
As he spoke about Ms Omar, he drew a chant from the crowd of “Send her back! Send her back!”
He later backtracked, claiming he disagreed with the chant and tried to stop it.
Ms Omar responded on Twitter, with a quote from civil rights activist Maya Angelou: “You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise.”
via Donald Trump: Ilhan Omar slammed over ‘white men’ Al Jazeera footage
The head of the U.S. Border Patrol said Wednesday that she joined a Facebook group whose members mocked migrants and lawmakers so she could read what her personnel thought about her, and said she knew little about the group.
Chief Carla Provost said during a congressional subcommittee hearing in Washington that she logged on to Facebook very rarely and that she immediately reported her membership in the group to an oversight division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection after she realized she was a member.
via Trump’s Border Patrol Chief Was In Secret, Racist Facebook Group | HuffPost
In this media-fabricated ecosystem, agency can only find its purpose and meaning in the coordinates of hate and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Under Trump, reality has become a toxic melodrama played out through a relentless display of hypermasculinity, ultranationalism and a culture of utter cruelty that accelerates the death of the unwanted.
White nationalism is now being delivered nationally via emotional taunts parading as spectacle, entertainment and manufactured drama. The making of politics as theater opens up a new connection between contemporary fascist politics and a fascist past. Ilhan Omar was right in calling Trump a fascist.
via As Ilhan Omar Said, Trump Is a Fascist — and His Rallies Prove It | The Smirking Chimp
TRUMP SAVING COAL. STRAIGHT OUT OF THE TRUMP BUSINESS HANDBOOK (ODT)
Blackjewel files for chapter 11 in a move critics say is increasingly used to avoid paying workers what they are owed
via ‘Our paychecks bounced’: US workers in limbo as coalmines suddenly close | Business | The Guardian
Thus did the president of the United States openly commit both an incitement to riot and promote the malicious exile or other elimination of — the “blowing away of” — four members of the U.S. Congress. That bears repeating. The president of the United States is now publicly advocating — at an unsubtle minimum, “suggesting” — the forced removal, through banishment or murder, of four American citizens; members of Congress, no lees.
Murdoch’s America
via A comprehensive list of former Fox employees who have joined the Trump administration
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. … It is not the light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
via History Holds the Antidote to Trump’s Fascist Politics – Truthdig
Riding on Obama’s shoulders Trump’s Record (ODT)
We’re 16 months away from the 2020 presidential election. It’s likely that the U.S. economy will weaken. Trump will be responsible. HIs approval rating will decline.
Another OOPS it’s effen Teleprompter again!! (ODT)
Republican consultant Thomas Hofeller, who ghostwrote portions of what would later become the Justice Department’s formal request to add the citizenship question to the census, wrote that adding the question would pave the way for redistricting that would increase the political power of “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites,” according to documents revealed in federal court in May.
Trump’s comment on Friday that the question is needed for “districting” appears to give weight to that argument.
Trump May Have Revealed The Real Reason For Census Citizenship Question | HuffPost Australia
and
Trump Is Humiliating the Department of Justice and Tearing Its Credibility to Shreds
A White House official tells HuffPost that Trump’s Fourth of July “speech will not be political. It will be about celebrating our nation’s independence, our flag and our great military.”
Except, Democrats are not being welcomed to celebrate the flag and our men and women in khaki, and the Republican National Committee has been passing out tickets to major donors for special seating.
“This looks like it’s becoming much more of a Republican Party event — a political event about the president — than a national celebration of the Fourth of July, and it’s unfortunate to have the military smack dab in the middle of that,” says retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan. “It’s looking highly politicized by anybody’s yardstick,” he added.
Jaime O’Neill | July 4, 2019 – 7:56am | permalinkFor most of my life, I’ve been wary of the word “evil.” It’s too easily used by demagogues and war mongers, too incendiary in its weighted connotations, too loaded to allow much room for thoughtful pauses. We’re all against evil, so anyone pausing to give thought to whatever is being described as evil would make people who’d rather not think too much assume those who hesitate to give assent just might be pro-evil themselves. It’s the kind of word employed to bludgeon people, and it’s probably been used to foster at least as much evil as it’s ever opposed.
and
The making of America’s Royal Family. Meritocracy stripped from America (ODT)
“It may be shocking to some, but being someone’s daughter actually isn’t a career qualification,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “It hurts our diplomatic standing when the President phones it in & the world moves on.” (AOC)
“Ivanka Trump is not on the National Security Council – she is not an adviser on the issues being discussed,” Michael McFaul, an ambassador to Russia under former president Barack Obama, said of Ivanka Trump’s presence.
“So her presence undermines the professional look of the Trump delegation, both to other countries and to national security professionals in the Trump administration.”
President Donald Trump has come under fire for making family members part of his staff since the beginning of his administration, and then for clinging more tightly to them in a White House racked by turnover.
The President keeps the counsel of Ivanka Trump and Kushner closer than anyone, the official said.
via Ivanka Trump tests her diplomatic chops and riles a legion of critics
This is politics for the age of reality television. The star gets the audience talking, wins friends and enemies in equal measure and somehow thrives while others are voted out. The spotlight is its own reward.
Tweeting an invitation to Kim, and then meeting the North Korean leader at a military checkpoint, adds to the drama.
Trump-Kim meeting: Stunts and bombast in high-stakes reality show
When Trump said “there isn’t anything wrong with listening; if somebody called from a country, [Russia, China, Ukraine], [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it,” he was advertising more than his intention to collude in 2020. He was, effectively, confessing his impeachable malfeasances of 2016. It is beyond belief that Trump’s collusive sentiments are merely recent.
via This Week, Trump Confessed to (Past) Collusion | The Smirking Chimp
via
Just Lie like I do says Trump
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over President Trump 51 – 42 percent;
California Sen. Kamala Harris ahead of Trump 49 – 41 percent;
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tops Trump 49 – 42 percent;
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg edges Trump 47 – 42 percent;
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker by a nose over Trump 47 – 42 percent.
Trump Instructs Staff To Lie About Poll Numbers, Really! | Crooks and Liars
America’s Grifter in Chief. How to make it appear you have won when you’ve gained nothing. (ODT)
He did not cite examples of reporting that had angered him, but in the afternoon the Times cited “officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations” when it said Mexico agreed the steps contained in the deal “months earlier” in meetings with former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Trump, who spent the day at his golf course in Virginia, did not immediately respond to a report which also said it was unclear if he “believed that the agreement truly represented new and broader concessions, or whether the president understood the limits of the deal but accepted it as a face-saving way to escape from the political and economic consequences of imposing tariffs on Mexico”.
