Poignant Articles.

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The first four articles highlight concerns  I have with respect to Trump recapturing The White House.

First, as with all voters, once they got used to what Trump has accomplished they want something new and his"kick-off" speech  did little to give them a vision of where he wants to go next.

Second, Trump's unorthodox approach toward the presidency has been sort of a whirlwind, exhausting and voters may have tired of his approach and his personality and that can be a further negative.

Third, he has a solid base but that is not enough because the "uncommitted deplorables" will determine the election and Trump has turned a good number of them off, including one of my daughters who truly believes he is hateful.

Fourth, the mass media continues to do a hatchet job on Trump and everything he does. Sulzberger's article, in my opinion,  is a weak defense of The Fourth Estate but many believe Trump is the enemy of the mass media.  The mass media are, by and large, biased . Statistics prove it to be so and the various op ed articles drip with poisonous ink.

Meanwhile the "pus" that oozes out of the pores of hate Trumper's is never addressed and called out for what it is, ie. blatant bias..

The New York Times has written more "fake news " articles followed by retractions and castigated more employee op ed writers than I can remember.  They even apologized for their anti-Semitic cartoons so Sulzberger does not come into court with clean hands."

As for Trump he counter punches but also is loose in use of his rebuttal language. (See 1,1a, 1b and 1c below.)
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As with all succeeding presidents, whomever is elected  in 2020, and if not Trump. they will be dealing with the issues created by him and if Trump succeeds himself he too will be dealing with "unfinished business" and new goals and that means the following:

a) At some point our relationship with Taiwan must not be totally dictated by China.

b) China is an expanding nation with world domination as it's ultimate goal.

c) Iran and N Korea must be dealt with and, once again, that means Chinese co-operation would be useful..

d) Health care, the future bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare as well as our burgeoning deficit must be addressed.

e) Finally, the issue of cyber security and theft of personal records and intellectual property must end if at all possible.

The Obama Administration failed in every count and a Biden Presidency will prove, in my opinion, a disaster.  Biden may offer "solitude" versus "bombastic Trumpism" but the man has not been right on critical issues since birth. and the Democrat alternatives are, for different reasons, even worse.

He is the epitome of establishment, 50 years in D.C and after his nefarious deals are fully exposed  (or will Sulzberger allow them to be?)voters will find a different version of Biden. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Dick
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1)

Make America Even Greater

To win re-election, Trump needs a bold second-term agenda. Here are some ideas. By Kimberley Strassel

To win re-election, Trump needs a bold second-term agenda, not a repeat of his 2016 campaign. Image: Getty

At one point in his Tuesday re-election launch in Orlando, Fla., President Trump polled the audience: Run again on “Make America Great Again”? Or switch the slogan to “Keep America Great”? A roaring crowd opted for the latter.

Conservative activists and GOP lawmakers hope Mr. Trump will add another option: “Make America Even Greater.” They’re happy the president is pointing out conservative achievements. They like that he’s contrasting those victories with the threat of liberal governance. But they’re also concerned by what was missing Tuesday night. Namely, an ambitious second-term agenda, one that builds on the themes that first propelled Mr. Trump to office.

Those themes were a mix of traditional Republican positions (tax reform, deregulation, conservative judges, military strength) and a populist agenda (draining the swamp, trade, immigration). Mr. Trump spent much of Tuesday night highlighting the promises kept and the resulting prosperity, while vowing to complete those items that have had a rougher ride—the border, that China deal, health care. He threw in a few new proposals at the end, like eradicating AIDS in America and a mission to Mars. But broadly the president’s message was this: Give me four more years to protect and finish the plan.

That message comes with risk. Some of it will fire up the base. But new and undecided voters—or those who’ve soured on Mr. Trump—understand this president comes with drama. They require fresh reasons to give him four more years. And a campaign that mostly highlights first-term accomplishments is also a reminder of what didn’t get done. It’s not a position of strength.

What makes this lack of a compelling agenda more curious is that there is no lack of big ideas among those most vested in a second Trump term. Grass-roots leaders, policy shops and GOP candidates have thought hard about Trump 2.0, an approach that would serve Republican campaigns for both the White House and Congress. And these aren’t left-field proposals but big and obvious “next steps” along the road voters first elected Mr. Trump to walk.

Economically, they include stage 2 of tax reform. Mr. Trump can promise that a reconstituted Republican Congress will deliver permanence to the individual tax cuts and make the corporate income-tax rate, which dropped from 35% to 21%, more globally competitive. How about 15%? There’s also the economically potent promise to index capital gains for inflation—which would potentially unlock trillions in assets. The president can pitch all this as part of his plan to create more jobs.

Now’s the time for the Trump White House to release an updated list of potential Supreme Court nominees, to remind voters of the 2020 stakes. And speaking of the judiciary, it’s overdue for an overhaul. The Judicial Conference for years has flagged the many districts overwhelmed by cases. And congressional commissions have long advocated restructuring the insanely large Ninth Circuit, which has a staggering backlog. It’s time for new judgeships, and a split in that circuit.

This gets to Mr. Trump’s theme of government reform, and he can bolster it by renewing his campaign for term limits. And there’s even more to do in draining the swamp. How about a major overhaul of the federal civil service, reducing its size by attrition and changing rules that govern hiring, firing, seniority and unionization. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue recently announced he is relocating several units from Washington to Kansas City, to make them more responsive and to cut costs. The president could promise more—a complete revamp of the federal bureaucracy’s size, scope and mission.

Those changes would result in modest savings, but the president could also embrace former Speaker Paul Ryan’s antipoverty plan: block-grant federal money for food stamps, Medicaid, and housing aid to states, and let them innovate and lift people back to work (as Bill Clinton did with welfare). Mr. Trump doesn’t want to touch Medicare and Social Security, but reforming means-tested programs is a huge first step and could put a big dent in the deficit.

Mr. Trump’s holdover ideas can be amped up. Infrastructure? Double down on overhauling the permit process. School choice? Pair it with a new focus on the searing problems in higher education, as well as the administration’s existing plans for more technical and vocational training.

Mr. Trump even has further bipartisan issues to pitch. How about a second round of criminal-justice reform, one that attacks civil asset forfeiture and goes after “overcriminalization” (the hundreds of thousands of statutes and regulations that can land the unwary in prison)? Even Democrats acknowledge these problems.

Americans elected Mr. Trump to tread where other presidents would not. He’s a disruptive choice, and his success rests in promising more (positive) disruption. Mr. Trump claims to know America well, which means he knows that Americans aren’t satisfied with being great. They always want to be even greater.

1a) Trump’s ‘Sleepy Joe’ Problem

For voters disturbed by the daily rocking of political life, Biden is offering a timeout.

By  Daniel Henninger

A Fox News poll has found that Democrats prefer a "steady" candidate to a "big agenda" candidate. But going up against the scale of Donald Trump will be tough, so how do frontrunners Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren compare? Image: Getty

At President Trump’s Orlando, Fla., “megarally” announcing his re-election campaign, some of the attendees, who came from all over the U.S., said they had been to more than four dozen such rallies. Mr. Trump’s rallies are beginning to resemble Phish concerts. Phish is the cult rock band whose fans will go anywhere, anytime to hear them play.

Mr. Trump in concert makes a lot of claims for himself—I especially enjoyed Tuesday evening’s self-comparison to George Washington—but no one can dispute that the intensity of his presidential fan base is unmatched in our lifetime.

So why is he 10 points or more behind “Sleepy Joe Biden” in most head-to-head polls? The observable intensity of Mr. Biden’s support is nowhere near the scale of Mr. Trump’s.

Like other presidents, Mr. Trump hates these embarrassing, year-ahead election polls, which resemble the joke about the husband caught in flagrante delicto who asks his wife: “Who are you going to believe—me or your lying eyes?”

On Monday, the president bashed the just-released Fox News poll, which put Mr. Biden in front nationwide by 10 points. “Fox News Polls are always bad for me,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Something weird going on at Fox.” I thought something quite interesting was going on inside that Fox poll, down in the details that don’t get much attention.

Among Democratic primary voters, Mr. Biden holds his familiar double-digit lead over Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris.

A little further down, Fox asked these Democratic voters whether they wanted “steady, reliable leadership” or a “bold, new agenda.” Steady and reliable crushed bold and new by 72% to 25%.

Anyone consuming the media every day the past year would have concluded that the Democratic left’s “bold, new agenda” had taken over the Democratic Party lock, stock and barrel. Most of their presidential candidates obviously thought so.

How else to explain why Sens. Warren, Harris and Cory Booker instantly saluted Bernie Sanders’s socialized medicine or, even more incredibly, the antic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s multitrillion-dollar Green New Deal? Recall how Nancy Pelosi, whose 70-something sense of political smell is still more acute than her juniors’, called it “the green dream, or whatever.”

In fact, when Fox asked these Democrats what they most wanted from their candidate, 74% chose “unite Americans” against just 23% who want to “fight against extreme right-wing beliefs.” Looks like there’s a silent majority inside the Democratic Party, unmoved by the propaganda of social media.

These are the parts of the Fox poll, surfacing a nostalgia for steadiness and unity, that should upset the Trump campaign, not Mr. Biden’s 10-point lead 16 months before the election.

Mr. Biden may be doing so well in the head-to-heads against Mr. Trump because many voters simply want respite from the nonstop Trumpian atmosphere of disruption and volatility. For them, “Sleepy Joe Biden” may not be an insult. Political belief still matters, but maybe not as much as neurological relief from political and personality overload.

Donald Trump rocked a political boat that needed rocking, in the U.S. and overseas. The question now is whether the up-for-grabs voters who will decide this election—independents and suburban Republicans—are exhausted from the nonstop rocking of public life today. Joe Biden is promising people a timeout, if little else.

Even people inside Mr. Trump’s titanium base know this is an issue. A woman at the president’s Orlando rally told The Wall Street Journal, “I wish that people would ignore his personality and look at what he’s done.”

Until now, most presidents have raged in private and kept cool in public. Bill Clinton, like Mr. Trump, was inside an investigations hell late in his first term. But despite rants around the White House, his public demeanor remained, for lack of a better word, presidential. Buoyed by a strong economy—like Mr. Trump—he won re-election.

Mr. Trump should win, too. Still, he spent the first 20 minutes of his Orlando rally attacking enemies, followed by nearly an hour of bellowing. It’s a rich mixture, and may have become just too much for enough voters to give Mr. Biden an opening.

Joe Biden is offering a return to normalcy. That was Warren Harding’s campaign slogan in 1920, in the waning months of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. Mr. Biden’s vaporous campaign now is an eerie echo of Harding’s description of “normalcy”: “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy, not revolution but restoration.” He won in a landslide.

The Democratic left abhors Mr. Biden’s steady-Eddie candidacy. Progressives want big change of the sort Sens. Warren and Sanders are promising. “Together,” says Mr. Sanders, “we can transform society.” But if these polls are right, after four years of Donald Trump the prospect of being force-fed daily doses of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders is unthinkable for a lot of people.

Which suggests a footnote: If Mr. Biden self-destructs, the likely beneficiary could be bright, inoffensive Pete Buttigieg, the mayor from “Our Town,” whose improbable but steady rise is perhaps not so mysterious after all.

1b)  Donald Trump and the New

 York Times

Will the President and the newspaper’s employees stop accusing each other of treason

By   James Freeman

This column has been hoping for a few years that the discourse conducted by the President of the United States would always remain above that occurring in the pages of the New York Times. But such hopes seem unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon.

Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger writes in a Journal op-ed today about the latest reckless rhetoric from Donald Trump:  First it was “the failing New York Times.” Then “fake news.” Then “enemy of the people.” President Trump’s escalating attacks on the New York Times have paralleled his broader barrage on American media. He’s gone from misrepresenting our business, to assaulting our integrity, to demonizing our journalists with a phrase that’s been used by generations of demagogues.

Now the president has escalated his attacks even further, accusing the Times of a crime so grave it is punishable by death.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump said the Times had committed “a virtual act of treason.” The charge, levied on Twitter , was in response to an article about American cyber incursions into the Russian electrical grid that his own aides had assured our reporters raised no national-security concerns...

Treason is the only crime explicitly defined in the U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers knew the word’s history as a weapon wielded by tyrants to justify the persecution and execution of enemies. They made its definition immutable—Article III reads: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”—to ensure that it couldn’t be abused by politicians for self-serving attacks on rivals or critics. The crime is almost never prosecuted, but Mr. Trump has used the word dozens of times.

This column agrees with Mr. Sulzberger’s message and hopes it will be amplified and advanced by better messengers.

There also remains the hope that Mr. Sulzberger’s employees will consider living by the standards he demands of the President.

“Trump, Treasonous Traitor” was the headline on a Times column by Charles M. Blow in July of 2018. Wrote Mr. Blow:

Put aside whatever suspicions you may have about whether Donald Trump will be directly implicated in the Russia investigation.
Trump is right now, before our eyes and those of the world, committing an unbelievable and unforgivable crime against this country. It is his failure to defend.

The astounding argument was that even if the Russia collusion conspiracy theory fell apart—as it did eight months later with the completion of the Mueller report—it was still reasonable to accuse Mr. Trump of treason because his administration was insufficiently tough on Russia, in the estimation of Charles M. Blow. With sledgehammer subtlety, the Times columnist added that “America is being betrayed by its own president” and reiterated that “Trump is a traitor”.

Treason has been a recurring theme at the Times. “Already, Trump has flirted with treason,” wrote Timothy Egan shortly before Mr. Trump took office in January of 2017. By July of that year columnist Maureen Dowd seems to have concluded that the Trump administration had gone fully medieval:

Wicked siblings willing to do anything for power. Secret deals with sworn enemies. The shock of a dead body. A Wall. Foreign bawds, guns for hire, and snakes. Back-stabbing, betrayal and charges of treason. Little birds spying and tattling. A maniacal mad king and his court of scheming, self-absorbed princesses and princelings, swathed in the finest silk and the most brazen immorality, ruling with total disregard for the good of their people.

The night in Washington is dark and full of terrors. The Game of Trump has brought a pagan lawlessness never before seen in the capital.

Perhaps readers were gratified to see a Times columnist go on record against pagan lawlessness, but the talk of treason continued. “When the President Isn’t A Patriot,” read one 2017 Times headline. The story now appears online under the headline: “Odds Are, Russia Owns Trump.” “The Real Coup Plot Is Trump’s” was another 2017 Times doozy.

Times Columnist Paul Krugman has been peppering his screeds with treason references for years. But instead of simply assailing the President he prefers to accuse tens of millions of other Americans of being willing to sell out their country.

In a 2017 Times blog post entitled, “The New Climate Of Treason,” Mr. Krugman wrote that “essentially the whole GOP turns out to be OK with the moral equivalent of treason if it benefits their side in domestic politics.”

In another piece that year the Times fixture wrote that his partisan opponents appeared to be willing to betray their country not just for power, but for money as well. In “Judas, Tax Cuts and the Great Betrayal,” Mr. Krugman wrote that “almost an entire party appears to have decided that potential treason in the cause of tax cuts for the wealthy is no vice.”

By 2018, Mr. Krugman was so busy making separate accusations about the millions of Americans who disagree with him that he almost didn’t have room to include an allegation of treason. But he somehow managed to find the space:

For more than a generation, the Republican establishment was able to keep this bait-and-switch under control: racism was deployed to win elections, then was muted afterwards, partly to preserve plausible deniability, partly to focus on the real priority of enriching the one percent. But with Trump they lost control: the base wanted someone who was blatantly racist and wouldn’t pretend to be anything else. And that’s what they got, with corruption, incompetence, and treason on the side.

Treason on the side. Just a casual step across the line that the Times publisher rightly scores the President for crossing. Mr. Krugman has so thoroughly convinced himself of the wickedness of people who disagree with him that he now asserts that one of America’s two main political parties “will do anything, even betray the nation, in its pursuit of partisan advantage.”

Here’s hoping that both the President and the opinion writers at the New York Times will choose their words more carefully.

1c) Accusing the New York Times of ‘Treason,’ Trump Crosses a Line

By A.G Sulzberger

First it was “the failing New York Times.” Then “fake news.” Then “enemy of the people.” President Trump’s escalating attacks on the New York Times have paralleled his broader barrage on American media. He’s gone from misrepresenting our business, to assaulting our integrity, to demonizing our journalists with a phrase that’s been used by generations of demagogues.

Now the president has escalated his attacks even further, accusing the Times of a crime so grave it is punishable by death.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump said the Times had committed “a virtual act of treason.” The charge, levied on Twitter , was in response to an article about American cyber incursions into the Russian electrical grid that his own aides had assured our reporters raised no national-security concerns....

Meanwhile, the president’s rhetorical attacks continue to foster a climate in which trust in journalists is eroding and violence against them is growing. More than a quarter of Americans—and a plurality of Republicans—now agree that “the news media is the enemy of the American people” and “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” A world-wide surge of attacks has made this the most dangerous year for journalists on record. This is particularly true in parts of the world where pursuing the truth already carries great risks, as news reporters and editors experience rising levels of censorship, harassment, imprisonment and murder.

I met with the president in the Oval Office earlier this year and told him directly that authoritarian leaders around the world, with growing impunity, are employing his words to undermine free expression. The president expressed concern and insisted he wanted to be viewed as a defender of the free press. But in the same conversation, he took credit for the term “fake news,” a phrase that has now been wielded by dozens of leaders across five continents to justify everything from the passage of anti-free-speech laws in Egypt to the takeover of independent news organizations in Hungary to a crackdown on investigations into genocide in Myanmar.

America’s Founders believed that a free press was essential to democracy, and the American experience has proved them right. Journalism guards freedoms, binds together communities, ferrets out corruption and injustice, and ensures the flow of information that powers everything from elections to the economy. Freedom of the press has been fiercely defended by nearly all American presidents regardless of politics or party affiliation, and regardless of their own complaints about coverage....

Over 167 years, through 33 presidential administrations, the Times has sought to serve America and its citizens by seeking the truth and helping people understand the world. There is nothing we take more seriously than doing this work fairly and accurately, even when we are under attack. Mr. Trump’s campaign against journalists should concern every patriotic American. A free, fair and independent press is essential to our country’s strength and vitality and to every freedom that makes it great.

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2) Liberalism Isn’t What It Used to Be

The values that made me a supporter of RFK in 1968 put me at odds with today’s progressives.

By  Michael Blechman

In the late spring of 1968, when I was 26, I helped organize Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in the Bronx. I rented a storefront headquarters, recruited a team of volunteers, and held a launch event at the old Concourse Plaza Hotel—all to prepare for the candidate’s expected appearance in New York following his victory in California. That, tragically, wasn’t to be. Instead, I took my turn in the honor guard that surrounded the senator’s casket throughout the night in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and attended his funeral June 8.

When I worked for the Kennedy campaign, I identified as a Democrat and a liberal. The core beliefs that made me a liberal in 1968 put me at odds with many of the things “progressives” stand for today, 51 years later.

One of those core beliefs is that no one should be discriminated against because of his race. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream—that every person be judged by the quality of his character rather than the color of his skin—resonated with the experience of my own Jewish forefathers, who had come to this country seeking an equal opportunity to compete, to learn and to find work. At some point, however, the liberal ideal of equality of opportunity gave way to a progressive program to give certain historically disadvantaged groups overt preferences in education and employment. This is the opposite of judging people based on their character. Liberalism somehow made a U-turn when it morphed into contemporary progressivism.

Another core liberal belief of mine is that proper justice depends on due process—which includes a presumption of innocence. The archvillain of my youth was Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who sought to ruin the career of anyone he accused of being a Communist or fellow traveler. Many compared his efforts to the Salem witch trials, as a result of which 19 people were executed based solely on the “credible” accusations of a few young girls.

The due-process hero of my younger years was Atticus Finch, the fictional lawyer in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He defended Tom Robinson, a black sharecropper falsely accused of rape by a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although Atticus proved that Mayella was lying in a brilliant cross-examination that had me—as a young lawyer-to-be—silently cheering as I read, Tom was convicted by a white jury that presumed him guilty.

I had always thought it was only bigoted Jim Crow juries and redbaiters like Joe McCarthy who rode roughshod over due process. Yet in 2011 the Obama Education Department sent a “dear colleague” letter to colleges and universities, threatening to cut off federal funding unless the schools changed their procedures to make it easier to discipline students accused of sexual assault. As a result, many students were stripped of their rights to counsel, cross-examination of their accusers and discovery of the evidence against them. Those procedures were re-examined by the current secretary of education, a step that was bitterly criticized by progressives because it may make it more difficult to punish the accused—the price of all due-process protections.

My first reaction to the #MeToo movement was satisfaction that victims of sexual harassment could feel safer about speaking out. Then, during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, “women deserve to be heard” transformed into “women deserve to be believed.” A presumption of guilt replaced the presumption of innocence, and progressives seemed unconcerned. I can imagine a #MeToo version of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” with Mayella Ewell as the heroine, Atticus Finch condemned for “toxic masculinity” and the lynch mob cheered as an engine of popular justice.

Another tenet of American justice that inspired me to lean left was the idea that every defendant, however unpopular, is entitled to legal representation. Here my childhood heroes were lawyers like William Kunstler, who defended politically unpopular leftist clients, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which defended clients of every stripe when their constitutional rights were threatened.

This year, however, Ronald Sullivan, a Harvard Law School professor, became the object of student protests after joining disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s defense team. The protests led Harvard to fire Mr. Sullivan and his wife as faculty deans at Winthrop House, a campus residential college. The right of an unpopular defendant to counsel, it seems, is no longer a progressive value.

Another of my core values is free speech. In the McCarthy era, one often heard of professors and screenwriters being forced out of their jobs for expressing far-left views. Today it’s conservative professors that are an endangered species on campus. Progressive students have become expert at forcing the dismissal or resignation of professors who allegedly display insufficient sensitivity about racial or gender issues. All too often, such students are able to keep anyone they disagree with from even speaking on campus. Once again, progressives have become the most visible enemies of a core “liberal” value.

I know that young people are often idealistic and attracted to anything that seems like a fight against injustice. But progressives today are riding roughshod over much of what liberalism once stood for. I hope that old 1960s liberals like me will stand firm, not be shamed into silence, and call out those who challenge our core values, whether from the left or the right.

Mr. Blechman is a mediator based in Chappaqua, N.Y.

2a)Congress Members To Wear 

Barcodes So Lobbyists Can Scan

 Prices, Self-Checkout

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a move to make purchasing congresspeople easier and faster for lobbyists, Congress voted to approve a new measure that calls for congresspeople to wear barcodes on their foreheads so lobbyists, activists, and corporations can simply scan them and self-checkout.

Self-checkout machines will be installed at all exits of the Capitol Building, so once they've added congresspeople to their cart, lobbyists can pay right on the way out.

"Purchasing congresspeople used to be a time-consuming, expensive process," said a Planned Parenthood representative. "Now, we can simply walk through Congress, scan all the congresspeople that are for sale, and checkout without having to interact with any humans."

"We hate humans---like, a lot," the PP rep added.

One major military-industrial complex lobby group, Americans For Bigger Bombs, said they are also in support of the new move.

"When you need to make a quick pit stop at our nation's legislative body to purchase a few congresspeople to start a new war, you need to do it fast," said one AFBB lawyer. "An attack on Iran can't wait while you wheel and deal, wine and dine, and negotiate endlessly. Now, I can just scan and go."

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