Day: June 18, 2019

Closing Thought–19Jun19

Recently our beloved supreme leader issued his dictum that all aid would be cut off to the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras because they are doing little to curb the amount of immigrants headed to the US border……

His, Trump’s, slobbering supporters were all down with him on this unilateral use of his powers……but what the MSM has not done is tell the the rest of the story to his supporters…..

The Trump administration said Monday it is easing previously announced cuts in hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Central American nations of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala but will not allow new funding until those countries do more to reduce migrant flows to the United States.

The State Department said that after a review of more than $615 million in assistance that President Donald Trump ordered in March to be cut entirely, it would go ahead with $432 million in projects and grants that had been previously approved. The remaining amount will be held in escrow pending consultations with Congress, it said.

That $432 million, which comes from the 2017 budget, is being spent on health, education and poverty alleviation programs as well as anti-crime efforts that many believe help reduce migrant outflows from the impoverished Northern Triangle region. About $370 million in money from the 2018 budget will not be spent and instead will be moved to other projects, the State Department said.

“Previously awarded grants and contracts will continue with current funding,” department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said. She added that assistance “to help the Northern Triangle governments take actions that will protect the U.S. border and counter transnational organized crime will also continue.”

(yahoo news)

Just to let his supporters know that his tough talk is just that…TALK!

And as they say…Talk is cheap!

We Need An Economic Bill Of Rights

This election cycle there seems to be a call from the Left for a new idea they call the “Economic Bill of Rights”…….Bernie, Warren, Harris et al will call for this to be the law of the land….

I agree…there needs to be some sort of economic reset so that poverty does not become the “law of the land”….

The problem with this idea is that it is old hat…..this idea was floated by FDR back in 1944 just before he died….and the idea apparently died with him for Truman made no mention of it…..there were some of the same ideas being floated by Dems for 2020…..

Among these are:

  • The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
  • The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
  • The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
  • The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
  • The right of every family to a decent home;
  • The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
  • The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
  • The right to a good education.

http://www.ushistory.org/documents/economic_bill_of_rights.htm

What was old is new again!

It’s time to think big. The rules that govern our economy are working best for far too few, at the expense of far too many. While Republicans have sought to dismantle the New Deal and the regulatory apparatus that was developed to protect Americans from an unfettered private sector, Democrats in recent decade have mustered no more than incremental changes to an increasingly unequal and unfair economy. The rise of Donald Trump provides a political lesson for both Democrats and Republicans: People are looking outside the box. Despite the vast gulf between the two major political parties on many issues, on fundamentals both have adhered to a neoliberal agenda of deregulation, reliance on market-based solutions to our social problems, and a devolution of the role of government in ensuring and enforcing Americans’ right to a decent standard of living, economic dignity and economic mobility. 

Direct government intervention for full employment, a cornerstone of the Democratic Party Platform for almost half a century, has been all but forgotten, replaced by a commitment to market liberalization or tax incentives and other subsidies for corporate America to cajole them into hiring more workers. Policies put forth by Hillary Clinton in 2016, which included raising the minimum wage and promoting equal pay for equal work for women, would have improvde the lives of many working Americans – but they do not go nearly far enough.  They do not address the fundamental problem of increasing risk and vulnerability—employment “precarity”—confronting the American workforce.

Let us be clear: Our economic reality is not mere circumstance; these are the result of policy choices.

https://prospect.org/article/economic-bill-rights-21st-century

Ask yourself why the Dem Party forgot this plan until recently.  In an age when Dems were extremely popular why did they abandon such a great program?

I know why…..do you?

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Now take what you ahe learned and….VOTE!

A Call To Democracy

Once you got past the lies spread by our president you may heard about the protests going on Hong Kong……

Hong Kong citizens marched for hours Sunday in a massive protest that drew a late-in-the-day apology from the city’s top leader for her handling of legislation that has stoked fears of expanding control from Beijing in this former British colony, the AP reports. Nearly 2 million of the city’s 7 million people turned out, according to estimates by protest organizers. Police said 338,000 were counted on the designated protest route in the “peak period” of the march. A week earlier as many as 1 million people demonstrated to voice their concern over Hong Kong’s relations with mainland China in one of the toughest tests of the territory’s special status since Beijing took control in a 1997 handover. Well after dark, crowds gathered outside the police headquarters and Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s office.

On Saturday Lam suspended her effort to force passage of the bill, which would allow some suspects to be sent for trial in mainland China. The move did not appease Hong Kong residents who see it as one of many steps chipping away at Hong Kong’s freedoms and legal autonomy. In a statement issued late Sunday, Lam noted the demonstrations and said the government “understands that these views have been made out of love and care for Hong Kong,” adding: “The chief executive apologizes to the people of Hong Kong for this and pledges to adopt a most sincere and humble attitude to accept criticisms and make improvements in serving the public,” it said. Not enough, said pro-democracy activists, who demand that the Lam administration retire the proposed amendments and not bring them up again for passage at a later stage.

Now the MSM and its pundits are telling the world about the ruthlessness of the Chinese government…how they are doing they can to dash any hopes of a democracy movement….

How nice!

And yet people trying for their democratic rights elsewhere are ignored by the MSM…..take the state of Israel as an example…..they do all they can to subvert the movements in the West Bank and Gaza

You know I have hard time seeing a group of people with rocks as the aggressor in that situation….rocks against airstrikes, artillery, tanks etc……and the Palestinians are the aggressors…..and that is how lies get started.

Rush To Condemn

By that I am talking about the West’s belief in anything said about North Korea…..and then the lack of correction by the media after they make a false report….for instance….recently it was reported that North Korea’s Kim had executed his negotiator on nukes because of the failure of the Hanoi “summit”….and then the person in question was spotted a week later very much alive,,,,and that false report was not corrected by most of the MSM.

I have often question some of the claims by the government and their propaganda arm, the Mainstream Media….

Why do we so easily believe the false reports? Have we been programed to do so?

The American Conservative answers this question……

Perhaps the greatest bottleneck in creating a stable and self-sustaining peace regime on the Korean Peninsula isn’t North Korea’s nuclear weapons or missiles but something much simpler: making peace with what we feel in our hearts is “evil.”

Case in point: last week, a right-leaning South Korean publication, The Chosun Ilbo, published a bombshell story that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had “purged” Kim Hyok-chol, Pyongyang’s lead negotiator in working level talks leading up to the Hanoi summit, executing him a month later. Another even more senior official close to Kim himself, Kim Yong-chol, was “sent to a labor and reeducation camp.”

That’s big news. And from there it gets even more interesting. Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, had “not been spotted in public since the Hanoi summit” some 50 days ago, said a South Korean government official. She was reportedly ordered to “lay low.”

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-our-obsession-with-evil-north-korea-fed-fake-news/
 
Americans are easy to rush to condemnation…..they have had years even decades of programming to get the society pleasingly numb to reality.
 
The real story is the “Squid Wars”……this is a battle for squid harvest in the Sea of Japan…..
The Japanese coast guard says its patrol boats have been pushing back hundreds of North Korean boats trying to poach in fishing grounds rich with squid off Japan’s northern coast. Coast Guard officials say they have forced more than 300 North Korean boats out of Japan’s exclusive economic zone near Yamatotai since May, the AP reports. The patrol boats used water cannons on 50 North Korean boats that ignored warnings. Coast Guard footage obtained Tuesday showed North Korean crewmen on a wooden boat abandon a fishing rope after being sprayed with water. Japanese authorities have stepped up patrols in the area as North Korean poaching has surged in recent years. Experts say Pyongyang’s campaign to boost fish harvests has increased poaching by North Korean boats.
Have you ever smelled dried squid?