Day: June 25, 2018

Closing Thought–25Jun18

The past week the screaming and yelling on the news and in most so-called conserv blogs has been about the border situation….if I need to catch you up then try Google I will not waste my time…..but the news that the corporate Americans would be watching have very little to do with the border…..

Following tariffs recently imposed on steel and aluminum, U.S. businesses have been forced to pay more than $110 million in tariffs in just 13 days according to the Customs and Border Patrol. The U.S. took in $82.2 million in steel tariffs and $28.3 million in aluminum tariffs between June 1-14.

The unintended consequences of tariffs are vast, and have a harmful ripple effect throughout our economy. In just two weeks, U.S. businesses could have spent $110 million in a much different way. Consider the following:

$110 million is enough to hire 2,000 out of work Americans at $55k salaries for an entire year.

$110 million is enough to purchase 4,000 brand new, American made, Jeep Wranglers using the MSRP of $27,495.

https://freedompartners.org/press/report-tariffs-cost-u-s-businesses-more-than-100-million-in-just-two-weeks/

Apparently “Freedom Partners” is not here to cover the horrible policies to this man we call “president”….

I realize that economics is not something most conservs can get a grip on…but all the yelling about the border has done nothing to strengthen our economy and neither has the policies of the dude in the White House.  (Please do not taunt the stock market as proof….there is more to an economy than the markets….if you need a quick refresher course on economics…..https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/economics)

Time for a change…..period!

Coming Together In Peace

That is the feeling that we get from some of the news reports on the outcome of the Kim-Trump “summit”….and yet not everyone is on-board with this feeling…..

An implicit coalition of corporate media, Democratic partisans and others loyal to the national security state are actively hostile to any agreement that would endanger the continuation of the 70-year-old Cold War between the United States and North Korea.

The hostility toward Donald Trump on the part of both corporate media (except for Fox News) and the Democratic Party establishment is obviously a factor in the negative response to the summit. Trump’s dysfunctional persona, extremist domestic strategy and attacks on the press had already created a hyper-adversarial political atmosphere that surrounds everything Trump says or does.

https://original.antiwar.com/porter/2018/06/21/an-elite-coalition-emerges-against-a-trump-kim-agreement/

I think that the meeting was a good idea….since we are not privy to what was actually said in the meeting of the personas I will give them the benefit of the doubt….I think that the media is giving this “summit” too much credit…it was a meeting for two leaders and that is all….any progress toward peace will be made or not in the negotiations that are to come.

So was this meeting a success?  You betcha.  The photo ops were worth their weight in gold as they say…..and it gave enough speculation to the media to keep them going for awhile or until something new grabs their attention….and it has.

Syria’s “Manbij Model”

There seems to be a deal brewing for some sort of ceasefire for Northeastern Syria between the US and Turkey……it is being called the “Manbij Model”….

The US and Turkey finally reached a deal to jointly administer the strategic city of Manbij following the YPG’s withdrawal from it, and this promising agreement is being touted as a model for Ayn al-Arab (more popularly known in the Mainstream Media by its Kurdish name “Kobani”), Raqqa, and other population centers in the northeastern agriculturally and energy-rich one-third of Syria under American-Kurdish SDF occupation. The working concept as articulated by Turkey at the moment but importantly unconfirmed by the US is to gradually return to the pre-war ethnic status quo in the region either by physically reversing the effects of anti-Arab and –“Turkmen” ethnic cleansing (which is unlikely) or at the very least not recognizing its political consequences in the sense of refusing to allow the minority Kurds to be the majority stakeholders in each city that they’ve conquered.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-manbij-model-turkey-us-deal-for-northeastern-syria/5643287

A ceasefire is always more preferable than the shooting and killing however in this case I want to know where the Syrian input is……US and Turkey are invaders and now occupiers and last I looked Syria was a sovereign nation whether the like the leadership or not…it still is a nation and we should have no say on the control of its territory or its people.