What purpose is served by Donald having blown innocent conversation on Elizabeth Warren’s family into a phony national crisis in this nuclear age?  

In his July 5 pep rally in Montana, Donald spoke as if Warren’s DNA would likely be an on-stage presidential debate issue between her and him, like in 2020. Is that REALLY what the American public is concerned with as it faces economic problems including growing federal deficit and debt, health-care shortcomings, environmental drought and wildfires, burgeoning population, rising oceans but depleted fresh water . . . possible nuclear holocaust?

WHILE BUSY POSTURING in various U. S. cities this monthwith honor and honesty cast by the wayside, dingbat Donald took time Oct. 20 to announce that he intends to withdraw the US from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, citing Russia's violations of the treaty and China's missile arsenal as reasons for ditching the accord. 

I can’t help but feel that as Donald has leaped on his horse to ride off in all directions during this month before the mid-term election, his list of goals includes suggesting to voters that he’s not overly friendly with Vladimir Putin. So he takes a loud shot at the treaty signed by Ronald Reagan (and managing also to get a ridiculous pot-shot at Obama in the process). It’s all supposed to say, “See, I’m not soft on Russia.”  He’ll probably wind up tweaking the old treaty just enough that he can put his own name on it.                   

WHAT WEATHER CHANGE? Donald Trump continues to enjoy good golf weather and that seems to be all that matters to him on the global warming front—as he scoffs at the world’s scientific committee. Said scientists, via the recent United Nations report on climate change, announced that the world has just 12 years to limit the worst effects of rising temperatures. If we don’t, much of the planet will become uninhabitable. So much for the ill-informed populism of this Trump era. Global warming’s an out-and-out killer.

As science seeks to limit rising temperatures, Donald prefers to keep the voting populace ignorant. He dismissed out of hand reports that earth’s ice caps are steadily melting. According to Donald, scientists had said, “The ice caps are going to melt, they were going to be gone my now. But now they’re setting records. They’re at a record level.” That quote is a pure lie, picked out of thin air for Donald’s convenience, along with much of whatever else he spouts off about. Arctic ice is disappearing; chunks are breaking off Antarctica.                                   

Drought and record heat in some areas, extreme flooding, avalanches in others already are making life unbearable and decimating populations in various areas—mainly elsewhere than the U. S. We are getting a few record hurricanes, though, thanks to warming sea waters—plus flooding and mud-slides . . . droughts of our own here and there, endless wild fires . . .

POPULATION AND MIGRATION. As ever-increasing population couples with uninhabitable climate around the world, problems such as unwanted immigrants at the borders of more habitable nations will become more chaotic. Ongoing war will exacerbate the chaos. Starvation and brutality already are general throughout Africa and Central America. One recent study warns that up to 75 percent of Earth’s people could face deadly heat waves by 2100 unless carbon emissions plummet.

WASHINGTON/TAPACHULA, Mexico (Reuters) Oct. 20—President Donald Trump on Monday vowed to begin curtailing tens of millions of dollars in aid to three Central American nations and called a caravan of migrants bound for the United States a national emergency as he sought to boost his party's chances in Nov. 6 congressional elections.

"Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," Donald wrote in a series of Twitter posts. our foreign aid to these countries is comparatively slight—nowhere near “massive”—and is designated for such things as crime control, enhancing security, promoting prosperity etc—aimed at alleviating the various causes of mass emigration in the first place. 

The combined $180 million for the three countries at risk for 2019 already had been reduced sharply under Trump. The $65.8 million slated for Honduras, for example, compares to the $95.2 million in effect for 2017 when Donald took office. Guatemala has been cut to $69.4 from $140.4 million in 2017. El Salvador is slated to receive just $45.3 million in 2019, from $72.7 million in 2017.

Do your homework and learn a little about international diplomacy, Donald. Close your mouth and listen to the actual well-informed experts in your vicinity—if you haven’t fired them all or otherwise driven them from public service out of their disgust with you.

So to solve the problem of starving, brutalized refugees, many of them women and children, whom Donald likes to characterize as “hardened criminals,” he will just make things worse by further impoverishing their homelands. Typical of his narrow, self-absorbed enrich-my-family-and-friends “nationalism” thinking. He also blames everything in some vacuous way on Democrats—although Republicans have been in total control ever since he took office 21 months ago. What’s holding up immigration laws by you and your Congress, Donald?

Oh, yes—and Donald also made the unsubstantiated claim that migrants are being paid to mass at the border and somehow disrupt the Nov. 6 elections in the United States. "A lot of money's been passing through people to come up and try to get to the border by Election Day because they think that's a negative for us."—Montana rally Oct. 18. 

Actually, those walking 2,000 miles, some in flip-flops and some carrying children in debilitating high temperatures with limited food and water, still will be well short of the U. S.. border on election day. There is prolonged suffering here by people driven to desperation, Donald.

YET LOW FERTILITY RATE A CONCERN.—While Mexican border crossings actually have been decreasing, Donald is raving about an influx of refugees en route from Central America. Congressional House Speaker Paul Ryan as 2017 drew to a close, was decrying the decrease in our country’s birth rate. To keep the country great, he said, “we’re going to need more people.” 

Aha! I seem to smell a solution in all of the above, one that solves a lack of people needed by our country by bringing in more people in search of a country. But first we’d have to get rid of white supremacy, racism and such.

And before leaving the subject, conservative responders to Ryan’s concern included Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who maintained that it has to do with immigration, arguing that immigrants drive wages down, which hurts the attractiveness of men as potential spouses—“thus reducing fertility.” 

And many of you probably thought there was no one else as stupid as Donald Trump in concocting weird extrapolations to find a handy wandering scapegoat now and again. These sure as hell aren’t Mensa sorts trying to brainwash us.

DONALD’S FEAR-MONGERING—Lying at every opportunity, desperate Donald  also is insinuating that “unknown Middle Easterners” (assume “terrorists”) have insinuated themselves into the caravan of refugees—the survivors of which are expected to reach the U. S. border sometime after the coming election. 

So be afraid, be very afraid, America—not of refugees but that Donald’s rotten tactics might actually help a serious number of his supporters survive at the polls Nov. 6.                                                                                                                                                                                    

REPUBLICANS SPEAK OF LYNCHING—No gutter is too low for some Republicans. “PAC won't pull ad suggesting 'lynching' if Democrats win” was the headline on an Associated Press story Oct. 19. It illustrates just how far some Republicans (but not the candidate himself in this case) will go with their dirty tricks. And no, this is not “fake news,” Donald. In fact this deals with some of your supporters.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A political action committee said last week that it wouldn't pull a widely condemned radio ad that suggests white Democrats will lynch African-Americans if they win in midterm elections in Arkansas next month.

Vernon Robinson with Black Americans for the President's Agenda said Friday that the group wouldn’t cancel the radio ad running in the Little Rock area in support of Republican U.S. Rep. French Hill. He said the group also wouldn't pull a similar ad airing in Missouri.

“Hill and his Democratic challenger, Clarke Tucker, have condemned the Arkansas ad, which invokes the accusation that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a woman when he was a teenager. The ad implies that Democrats' support for Kavanaugh's accuser means black men wouldn't be protected from unfounded rape claims.

“A woman in the ad says that ‘white Democrats will be lynching black folk again. I'm voting to keep Congressman French Hill and the Republicans, because we have to protect our men and boys,’ the woman says. ‘We can't afford to let white Democrats take us back to bad old days of race verdicts, life sentences and lynchings when a white girl screams rape’.”

RIOTING IN CALIFORNIA? Lord, how I wish I were back with my own newspaper again up in northern California—or even that I were a student again at UC Berkeley with wartime military service under my belt. HuffPost noted Oct. 20 that disturbed Donald had insisted at a Nevada rally that Californias are “rioting” in protesting sanctuary cities.

That’s news to California—and nearby Nevadans, who are mere victims of the propaganda of a half-a&&ed, near-incoherent would-be Machiavelli.

In my mind, Donald’s fear-provoking words, disorientation of our society and enablement of heartless and brutish behavior are a leading example of domestic terrorism.

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