“Republicans formulate public policy, from taxation to education, from healthcare to welfare, with attention to the needs and strengths of the family.” God no! I’m not saying that! It’s a line from the official Republican platform (easily found on the internet). Try wrapping your head around that campaign rhetoric in light of today’s political realities—such as the separation of families at our southern border, the ongoing assault against Obamacare, the cutting back of the Food Stamp program, etc. Bold-face lies all around.
Another synopsis—What do I as a lifetime journalist think of the shooting at the Annapolis newspaper that took five lives? I won’t even get into Trump’s daily charges of “fake news” against the media (except for his kiss-up Fox News) and his pledge to support the NRA forever at its last national convention. I’ll just turn to the the closing words of a better writer than I, Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who concluded a recent syndicated column: “After the Capital Gazette, Trump’s press bashing must be called out for what it is: an encouragement to the deranged to rid their idol of his troublesome critics.”
Another thought for the day—Hypocrisy: “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.” The opening paragraph above illustrates that well. Also, occasionally in a forum such as this a comment by some presumptive sort about the motivation of others will include the charge of hypocrisy. When that occurs, I suggest you consider the source. Is the writer/speaker someone who has inherited a large sum of money through no self-effort, who now is complaining that incoming immigrants are getting something for which they have not worked? Yes, these true hypocrites walk among us, seeking scapegoats for their personal sins.
I think it’s also hypocritical to brag about freedom but refuse to share it, to raise the bar for the next guy.
On June 19 the U. S. announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council. A day earlier the commissioner heading the council had rebuked U. S. abuse of children at the Mexican border. But U. S. officials said that the withdrawal at the U. N. had been because the council unfairly had been officially censuring Israel in its relationship with Palestine.
So, turning to the intended subject at hand . . .
MORE ABOUT FOREIGN AID—(June 26) “The U. N. agency that helps the 5l4 million Palestinians classified as refugees could start running out of money next month because of a $250 million shortfall, largely because of American aid cuts. Pierre Krhenbhi, commissioner general of the U. N. Relief and Works Agency, said Monday. Most of the roughy $1.2 billion in annual spending by the agency, known by its acronym UNRWA, comes from voluntary contributions by the 193 member states of the United Nations. The Trump administration significantly reduced its contribution, to about $60 million in 2017, a drop of more than 80 per cent.”
In September 2016, Israel inked a landmark deal with the U.S., which agreed to transfer $38 billion to Israel until 2028. More recently, before US President Donald Trump's visit to the Jewish state, "the U.S. added another $75 million to the aid package for Israel's missile defense program."
Apparently this latter bit came after Trump’s promise to preserve Israel’s arms advantage amid concerns in Jerusalem about the recently announced $110 billion U.S.-Saudi Arabia arms-sale deal.
So Donald made a deal to sell $110 billion in arms to Saudis, then added another token $75 million to the $38 billion already pledged to Israel to keep it ahead in the Middle East arms race. Am I missing something here? Meanwhile, Arab nations such as Iran are being carefully denied nuclear weapon capability, while the word on the street is that Israel may already have that capability. “Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, with an estimated arsenal of up to 400 warheads; which would make it the world's third biggest arsenal. Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is thought to have been created in December 1966; which would make it the sixth country in the world to have developed them.”—Wikipedia
Meanwhile, I’ve never really understood the rationale of this country’s overwhelming support of Israel over Palestine. Something that certainly must be exacerbated by the fact that Donald Trump appointed his Kuschner son-in-law, a grandson of Jewish immigrants, to deal with the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict.
Some $38 billion-plus to Israel to polish its nukes, while nickel-and-diming to death social-assistance programs here in our own country.
Here’s another bit from Wikipedia—“Israel occupied the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War of 1967 and has since maintained control. Previously, these territories had been ruled by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, since the 1948 founding of Israel. In 1980, Israel officially absorbed East Jerusalem and has proclaimed the whole of Jerusalem to be its capital. The inclusion, though never formally amounting to legal annexation, was condemned internationally and declared ‘null and void’ by the United Nations Security Council. The Palestinian National Authority, the United Nations,, the international legal and humanitarian bodies[ and the international community regard East Jerusalem as part of the West Bank, and consequently a part of the Palestinian territories.”
Donald, of course, contributed his personal bit to enraging Palestinians recently by moving the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
According to a July 7 report, “Unemployment in Gaza is above 40 percent, and residents have only about four hours of electricity per day. The United Nations says conditions there are dire and growing worse, and it predicts that without intervention, the seaside territory bordering Israel and Egypt will be ‘unlivable’ by 2020.”
The bogging down of peace negotiations reportedly “has led U.S. officials to consider options for an infusion of development aid into Gaza, a perennial trouble spot that is controlled by Palestinian Authority rival Hamas, in hopes of relieving the humanitarian crisis there.” But wait. Didn’t we just cut out a ton of aid to Palestinian refugees?”
Oh, I see. That aid that was cut was via the United Nations, and Donald Trump wants to do away with such groups as the U.N., NATO, multi-national trade agreements, etc.—anything over which he cannot exercise individual dictatorial control. If he could, he would dissemble the European Union.
(A related lie to the world by Donald Trump: The U.S. pays 90% of NATO costs. The truth?: 22%.)
The United States accuses Hamas (a Palestinian Islamist political organization and militant group that has waged war on Israel since the group's 1987 founding), which it labels a terrorist organization, of using Gazans as pawns in a power struggle with the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas’s allies accuse the United States of using the Gaza crisis for leverage to force him to bargain from what he considers a weakened position.
Abbas said last month that he rejected a U.S.-organized economic package for Hamas-controlled Gaza as an attempt by the Trump administration to divide Palestinians and reduce a political conflict with Israel to a purely humanitarian emergency.
Please don’t get all over me about sounding anti-Semite in my comments about Trump’s love affair with Israel (despite his first love, Russia). It’s Donald’s anti-Muslim stance all around that’s the problem. He makes an exception for Saudi Arabia out of money considerations—just sold them $110 billion in military arms (a boon to his pals in the military-industrial complex) and he also is presuming he can woo the Saudis into increasing oil production to hold down rising pump prices currently facing the American public.
Donald’s own loose-cannon antics have cut off supply from Iran, Venezuela, etc. (i.e.: “The United States is pushing foreign countries to cut their oil imports from Iran to zero by November.” ) We import about 50 to 60 percent of our oil from other countries, mostly Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. Not many bosom buddies left in that crowd, thanks also to current U. S. immigration and tariff policies,
I have no Arabian kinship but I have two grandchildren who are half-Jewish ethnically, their paternal great grandparents having emigrated to the U. S. from Poland prior to the Holocaust—and a great granddaughter who is thus a quarter Jewish, a quarter Camfield-Westall and half Korean.
And while I’m paused here on the matter of biased intolerance—for you homophobes out there, one troll in particular, on the in-law side I have a great granddaughter who has two female parents, one of whom (who is Black) bore her via a sperm donor, who has both Black and Japanese in his ethnic background. I’d go to the wall for any of the aforementioned outstanding and highly intelligent individuals I’ve mentioned here. This is the future, and our struggling world has no room for racists or homophobes.
DISRESPECT FOR FAMILY VALUES has never been more aptly illustrated than at our Mexican border in recent months. Despite the hypocritical trumpeting of the GOP platform (as per the opening paragraph here) families’ well-being has been taking heavy hits from the Trump administration ever since his election. In such areas as medical coverage, all manner of social welfare programs, economic parity, civil rights . . . Donald’s delusional and deceitful oratory just isn’t feeding the bulldog. He is tearing down Democratic freedom and opportunity piece by piece.
As I’m exceeding attention span at this point in our modern age of impatience, I’ll leave more about the insanity of moral monstrosity Donald Trump for another day.
