Walter Williams has taken over Tom Sowell's place as a rational advocate for common sense regardless of racial interests/implications. (See 1 below.)
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Does Giuliani have a shoe to drop? (See 2 below.)
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I have a view about how women came to be in the work force and the consequences.
In a sense there are two types of women in the work force and they got there for different reasons.
First, as the middle class began to shrink, due to bad political policies, inflation and loss of American goods being sold in foreign markets due to competition and other factors, there came to be a need for women to enter the work force and leave their traditional role of raising children etc. Many of these women had never worked outside the home and therefore, did not have the opportunity for high income positions. Many had to forgo getting a college education. Over time the cost of "baby sitting" rose to the point that it began to eat away at any "double" income. Family tensions also rose, divorce rates escalated and many children began to be raised by working mothers or were placed in other type facilities.
The second circumstance resulting in increased women in the work force was the "Woman's Movement" that made working mothers more socially acceptable. In fact, we witnessed the political debate about staying home and baking cookies etc. As society began accepting women in the work force those who actually sought to break the glass ceiling, and who were more qualified for professional positions because of college degrees etc., began to earn acceptable salaries and were able to enjoy personal self-worth benefits as well as making financial contributions to the family.
Economic freedom provided more personal independence and divorce rates increased among this group as well. Many women even postponed having children and an increasing number passed up marriage completely.
The Women's Movement brought many blessings but it was not necessarily a benefit to all economic and educational classes of women.
Now tax laws include tax free benefits for child-raising costs as a way to offset the downside of what has occurred.
I am not making the case women in the work force is a bad thing. I am simply pointing out the consequences have had a downside for some, an upside for others, has contributed possibly to the break up of the family and left children without fathers to provide them opportunities to receive male influence.
Society is adjusting to this phenomena but I doubt America will ever return to the halcyon period of the '50's when TV shows centered around a more stable family environment. Progress comes at a price. There is no free lunch.
I invite comment.
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A counter argument regarding Trump's Phase One China Deal. (See 3 below.)
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Trump counter punches Pelosi. (See 4 below.)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
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DORIS
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1)
Corrupting Our Social Norms
By Walter E. Williams
If you were a judge, would you sentence a criminal, who identifies as a female but has XY chromosomes, to a women's prison? A judge just might do so. Judge William Pryor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit focused on a Florida school district ruling that a transgender "boy," a person with XX chromosomes, could not be barred from the boys' restroom. Pryor suggested students shouldn't be separated by gender at all.
Fear may explain why biologists in academia do not speak out to say that one's sex is not optional. Since the LGBTQ community is a political force on many college campuses, biologists probably fear retaliation from diversity-blinded administrators. It's not just academics and judges who now see sex as optional. Federal, state and local governments are ignoring biology and permitting people to make their sex optional on one's birth certificate, passport, Social Security card and driver's license. In New York City, intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual's preferred name, pronoun or title is a violation of the New York City Human Rights Law. If I said that my preferred title was "Your Majesty," I wonder whether the New York City Commission on Human Rights would prosecute people who repeatedly refused to use my preferred title.
One transgender LGBTQ activist filed a total of 16 complaints against female estheticians, with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after they refused to wax his male genitals. He sought financial restitution totaling at least $32,500. One woman was forced to close her shop. Fortunately, the LGBTQ activist's case was thrown out by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, and he was instructed to pay $2,000 each to three of the women he attacked. The LGBTQ activist is not giving up. He is now threatening to sue gynecologists who will not accept him as a patient.
In 2012, an evangelical Christian baker in Colorado was threatened with jail time for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage ceremony. When Christian bakery owner Jack Phillips won a landmark (7-2 decision) U.S. Supreme Court case in June 2018 over his refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his religious convictions, he thought his legal battles with the state of Colorado were over. But now Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, 24 days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor, faces a new court fight. This fight involves a lawyer who asked him to bake a cake to celebrate the anniversary of her gender transition. There are probably many bakery shops in and around Lakewood, Colorado, that would be happy to bake a cake for homosexuals; they are simply targeting Phillips.
For those in the LGBTQ community, and elsewhere, who support such attacks, we might ask them whether they would seek prosecution of the owner of a Jewish delicatessen who refused to provide catering services for a neo-Nazi affair. Should a black catering company be forced to cater a Ku Klux Klan affair? Should the NAACP be forced to open its membership to racist skinheads and neo-Nazis? Should the Congressional Black Caucus be forced to open its membership to white members of Congress? If you're a liberty-minded American, your answers should be no.
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2) Rudy Giuliani Posts Shocking Tweets About Money Laundering, Burisma, And The Poisoning of Ukraine’s Prosecutor
By Elaine Williams
A few weeks ago, Rudy Giuliani traveled to Ukraine and Hungry to do some investigating and uncovered corruption and pay-to-play schemes allegedly involving some Democrats and members of the Biden family.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced on ABC’s show ‘This Week,’ “This is a crime in progress against the constitution and against the American democracy,” referring to Giuliani’s trip to Ukraine.
Nadler called President Trump and Giuliani’s actions “the heart of what the Constitution meant by high crimes and misdemeanors.”
On Sunday, Giuliani posted a series of revealing tweets about what he discovered on his trip.
He tweeted, “In my next thread of tweets I will be sharing some of the evidence I have garnered through hundreds of hours of research. Turn notifications on & stay tuned.”
Giuliani wrote about finding records that prove “Amb Yovanovitch perjured herself at least twice,” documents that show she denied “visas to witnesses who could prove Biden & Rem corruption,” and he has “clear doc proof of money laundering by Burisma & Biden’s.”
Giuliani said the Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma and forced to quit because of Vice President Joe Biden’s threat to withhold $1 billion in aid, was poisoned and almost died from the poisoning twice.
Giuliani said, “Shokin’s medical records show he was poisoned, died twice, and was revived.” He wrote, “Impeachment is part of Dem cover-up. Extortion, bribery & money laundering goes beyond Biden’s. Also, DNC collusion w/ Ukraine to destroy candidate Trump.”
“All of a sudden Shokin gets this communique from Latvia that shows a $16 million laundering transaction, classic laundering transaction,” said Giuliani. “It goes from Ukraine to Latvia, it’s disguised as a loan to another company to Wirelogic, I believe. It then goes to Cyprus, gets disguised as another loan — this is called “Digitech,” then it’s dispersed as payment as board fees,” said Giuliani.
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3)WHITON: Trump Trade Deal Gives China A Win — For A Weak Promise To Buy Some Soybeans
Ultimately, President Trump did what he said he wouldn’t do: cut an unenforceable, partial trade deal with China that will change little about the way Beijing does business. The move isn’t calamitous, but does call into question America’s future handling of the China threat in a likely second Trump term.
Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said of Trump’s deal, “He has sold out for a temporary and unreliable promise from China to purchase some soybeans.” For once, Schumer got it just about right.
The only discernible achievement in an agreement Trump deemed “an amazing deal for all” is that China has said it will purchase perhaps $40 billion or more in U.S. agricultural products. But it has so far refused to put that figure on paper, which isn’t a good sign given Beijing’s long history of cheating on all major international agreements.
There are already media reports that Beijing will account for $10 billion of trade deficit reduction by reclassifying U.S. exports to Hong Kong to mainland China instead. This move, which a shipping expert described to me as “flipping the bill of lading,” is legerdemain that won’t reflect any actual increase in U.S. exports.
Furthermore, Beijing’s promised activities won’t come close to making up for the $419 billion annual goods deficit we have with China, and many of the food-related purchases would have occurred anyway. China is in the middle of a food crisis sparked by swine flu. Prices for pork, the most important protein in China, have doubled. Fruit prices have also skyrocketed. China needs to turn abroad for pork, soy, and other food, but this temporary development hardly reflects fundamental change.
In addition, the fact remains that commodities and cattle prices are above historical averages, and there is no crisis in U.S. agriculture that warrants a panic deal with China. Two more important trade deals Trump negotiated, the U.S.-Japan deal and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement to replace NAFTA, will be major boons to American farmers and ranchers when they take effect in 2020.
Apart from agriculture, U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer, who negotiated the China deal, claimed in a statement that that Beijing agreed to a “strong” dispute-resolution mechanism and it will desist from intellectual-property theft and currency manipulation. However, he offers no details on either, likely because no such details exist.
The politics are even worse than the economics. In agreeing to the deal, Trump has pleased constituencies on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley that will continue to oppose him energetically, no matter how often Apple CEO Tim Cook is feted at the White House. Trump may pick up some incremental votes in the farm states that he was going to win easily anyway. But less enthralled will be the companies and factory workers in Rust Belt states who will continue to suffer from unfair Chinese trade practices.
Furthermore, it is now possible for Trump’s Democratic challengers to get to the right of him on China by sounding more hawkish. Trump has been far tougher on China than any of his predecessors and historians will eventually attribute much of the historic awakening of the free world to the China threat to Trump. But that history won’t stop Democrats and their media friends from saying he caved to Beijing because he needed a good news story during impeachment.
Moreover, the rest of China policy is adrift. While Trump has spoken about rebuilding the military and indeed worked with congressional Republicans who successfully restored a $700 billion defense budget, he has little to show for this in the Pacific. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, there are no more U.S. naval, aviation, army, or nuclear capabilities in the Pacific today than there were when President Obama left office. Trump could have moved forces from Afghanistan and NATO to Asia, but that would have required the translation of presidential sentiments and musings into clear policy, communications, and then real-world implementation activities — the ordinary functioning of government that is far from ordinary in this administration.
Augmenting such hard power options with a coherent political warfare regimen like the one the free world successfully deployed against the Soviet Union seems more impossible still. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have spoken eloquently in support of those struggling against Chinese government tyranny in Hong Kong and western China. No one expects Trump to develop a bleeding heart for freedom movements. But one hopes in vain that statements from officials would give way to coherent action; that the administration will decide formally to support these movements and spotlight symbols of freedom like Taiwan as alternatives to Chinese tyranny, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because causing political trouble for our chief adversary in the world is good for our own national security.
Trump says that negotiations on a “Phase 2” trade deal with China will begin right away — a tacit nod to Phase 1’s inadequacies. Fat chance. Beijing won’t resume serious talks voluntarily, and will threaten to stop any of the purchases or other reforms it promised in Phase 1 if Washington persists or threatens new tariffs. Trump will then be faced with another choice in how to deal with a duplicitous, communist enemy.
3)WHITON: Trump Trade Deal Gives China A Win — For A Weak Promise To Buy Some Soybeans
Ultimately, President Trump did what he said he wouldn’t do: cut an unenforceable, partial trade deal with China that will change little about the way Beijing does business. The move isn’t calamitous, but does call into question America’s future handling of the China threat in a likely second Trump term.
Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said of Trump’s deal, “He has sold out for a temporary and unreliable promise from China to purchase some soybeans.” For once, Schumer got it just about right.
The only discernible achievement in an agreement Trump deemed “an amazing deal for all” is that China has said it will purchase perhaps $40 billion or more in U.S. agricultural products. But it has so far refused to put that figure on paper, which isn’t a good sign given Beijing’s long history of cheating on all major international agreements.
There are already media reports that Beijing will account for $10 billion of trade deficit reduction by reclassifying U.S. exports to Hong Kong to mainland China instead. This move, which a shipping expert described to me as “flipping the bill of lading,” is legerdemain that won’t reflect any actual increase in U.S. exports.
Furthermore, Beijing’s promised activities won’t come close to making up for the $419 billion annual goods deficit we have with China, and many of the food-related purchases would have occurred anyway. China is in the middle of a food crisis sparked by swine flu. Prices for pork, the most important protein in China, have doubled. Fruit prices have also skyrocketed. China needs to turn abroad for pork, soy, and other food, but this temporary development hardly reflects fundamental change.
In addition, the fact remains that commodities and cattle prices are above historical averages, and there is no crisis in U.S. agriculture that warrants a panic deal with China. Two more important trade deals Trump negotiated, the U.S.-Japan deal and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement to replace NAFTA, will be major boons to American farmers and ranchers when they take effect in 2020.
Apart from agriculture, U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer, who negotiated the China deal, claimed in a statement that that Beijing agreed to a “strong” dispute-resolution mechanism and it will desist from intellectual-property theft and currency manipulation. However, he offers no details on either, likely because no such details exist.
The politics are even worse than the economics. In agreeing to the deal, Trump has pleased constituencies on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley that will continue to oppose him energetically, no matter how often Apple CEO Tim Cook is feted at the White House. Trump may pick up some incremental votes in the farm states that he was going to win easily anyway. But less enthralled will be the companies and factory workers in Rust Belt states who will continue to suffer from unfair Chinese trade practices.
Furthermore, it is now possible for Trump’s Democratic challengers to get to the right of him on China by sounding more hawkish. Trump has been far tougher on China than any of his predecessors and historians will eventually attribute much of the historic awakening of the free world to the China threat to Trump. But that history won’t stop Democrats and their media friends from saying he caved to Beijing because he needed a good news story during impeachment.
Moreover, the rest of China policy is adrift. While Trump has spoken about rebuilding the military and indeed worked with congressional Republicans who successfully restored a $700 billion defense budget, he has little to show for this in the Pacific. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, there are no more U.S. naval, aviation, army, or nuclear capabilities in the Pacific today than there were when President Obama left office. Trump could have moved forces from Afghanistan and NATO to Asia, but that would have required the translation of presidential sentiments and musings into clear policy, communications, and then real-world implementation activities — the ordinary functioning of government that is far from ordinary in this administration.
Augmenting such hard power options with a coherent political warfare regimen like the one the free world successfully deployed against the Soviet Union seems more impossible still. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have spoken eloquently in support of those struggling against Chinese government tyranny in Hong Kong and western China. No one expects Trump to develop a bleeding heart for freedom movements. But one hopes in vain that statements from officials would give way to coherent action; that the administration will decide formally to support these movements and spotlight symbols of freedom like Taiwan as alternatives to Chinese tyranny, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because causing political trouble for our chief adversary in the world is good for our own national security.
Trump says that negotiations on a “Phase 2” trade deal with China will begin right away — a tacit nod to Phase 1’s inadequacies. Fat chance. Beijing won’t resume serious talks voluntarily, and will threaten to stop any of the purchases or other reforms it promised in Phase 1 if Washington persists or threatens new tariffs. Trump will then be faced with another choice in how to deal with a duplicitous, communist enemy.
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4
Complete text: Trump’s letter to Pelosi the Pirate
by Frank Miele
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(I decided to post the entire text of President Trump's letter to a Speaker Nancy Pelosi because it is such a gem of a smackdown. Never give up! Never give up! NEVER GIVE UP! ... Pelosi still doesn't know what hit her!) Letter from President Donald J. Trump to the Speaker of the House of […]
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