Our TV reporter Grandson, Kevin, sent us a clip of one of his first reports from his new job with one of the top stations in his former home town, Louisville. Andy, his wife, just go a job with The Speed Museum and they found a house in The Highland Neighborhood. Archer, their pooch is still adjusting. All is well.
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Several of my liberal friends and fellow memo readers believe my attitude about what is taking place, with respect to our treatment of South American children, is heartless.
If I were to take a child and walk them to Canada because it was dangerous for them to live in Savannah,due to the high crime rate, knowing when I did they would be subject to my illegal act and that is heartless then, I plead guilty. Seems to me Mexico has some culpability for willingly letting young children, many unaccompanied, traverse their land in order to invade their northern neighbor but then we are not supposed to be insensitive to Mexico because, though their immigration laws are far stricter than our own, we took a lot of their land from them several hundred years ago.
I guess when a rich, powerful nation is bordered by a poorer less prosperous nation the former becomes a welcome magnet/mat and therefore, should be blamed for their success or be made to feel guilty. Because America is a product of a successful capitalistic society, that rewarded hard work and inspired risk taking. Consequently, I guess we are obligated to be the world's dumping ground for anyone who wishes to come here.
I believe Trump should establish a lottery system and place all illegal immigrant's names in a hat and either the Senator or Representative could then draw a constituent's name and they would be assigned to host that illegal. This could be done on a state rotation basis to make it fair and equitable. But upon reflection, it really would be unfair to state's with small populations so maybe we could weight the lottery to take this fact into consideration .
This would solve the sanctuary issue because, that way, all fifty states would become sanctuaries. You might recall, Obama once thought we had more than fifty states but I believe fifty is the correct number.
Then, rather than hire more judges, ICE and Homeland Security Guards and build all those innocuous and stupid walls we could increase the number of government social workers whose job would be to go round to each host home to make sure they were following the nation's new "host an illegal immigrant law" or HAIIL! We play "Hail To The Chief" when the president enters the room now we can play "HAIIL for Illegal Immigrants." That should make them feel right at home.
I know this is a heartless, anti-PC solution but then I spent a little time in The Marine Corps Active Reserves and we know that branch teaches one to be heartless and to hate anyone who is not white and spits on our flag. Semper Fi!
Actually I believe "I'm livin just fine:" https://youtu.be/Bg_Q7KYWG1g
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Meanwhile, Trump asked Harley to be patient. We have heard little if anything about trade negotiation activity and the market is nervous as everyone seems to be digging their heels in to save face so they are not seen as being pushed around by "big brother America." I believe we are in for several months of contentiousness but I still believe there will eventually be some positive movement toward leveling the playing field so everyone can claim victory.
Trump is right about the fact we have allowed ourselves to be taken advantage of and China has stolen us blind when it comes to our intelligent property and this must stop. If that means playing hard ball then hard ball it must be.
We have many advantages over our trading partners and if we hang tough, which Harley chose not to do, we will come out better off than when Trump began.
As the trade confrontation plays out, the mass media will do their best to paint a gory picture and our trading partners are going to target segments of our economy that are vulnerable so there will be economic blood on the floor for a while.
The Fed may decide to defer raising rates while all of this is going on and that could also weaken our dollar and provide some parity relief.
Though we are in the late stages of our economic recovery we also must remember we came from a very washed out level and during the Obama years the pace of the recovery was flaccid so the fact that we are picking up some speed is really a delayed reaction to better policy enactments.
Though you will never hear this from Democrats and their allies in the mass media, Trump is not opposed to clean water, clean air and safe working conditions. He simply does not sanction strangling the economy to reach dubious goals. Business, therefore, is willing to spend money on capital improvements and now they can repatriate frozen funds because they have the wherewithal. What I hear from my liberal friends is all companies are doing is buying in their own stock and increasing dividends.
Yes, they are doing some of this as well but that is just another way of returning capital to stockholders and that is capitalism at work.
Personally, I would like to see more corporations issuing lower cost debt with longer maturities and using the proceeds to pay off high cost debt with shorter maturities but what do I know.
My biggest concern remains the level of government debt in relation to our GDP and the fact that Trump was held hostage, in the last budget deal, by Democrats who agreed to finance the rebuilding of our military at the expense of more senseless welfare. Trump should not have signed the bill but he did. He said he would not do so again.
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I believe one of our greatest mistakes, when it comes to foreign affairs and our State Department policies, is we/they generally underestimate the weakness of our adversaries and the self interest of our allies.
Currently, I believe this is true with respect to the so called trade war, N Korea and the burdensome costs to Russia from their Syrian engagement.
I also believe China's debt picture could lead to their own economic dislocation but I also believe our divisive political and increasing debt picture are equally worrisome (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Dick
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1) Iranians protest dwindling economy, shout 'Death to Palestine'
By JULIANE HELMHOLD
Protesters gathered in the streets, in shopping malls and outside the parliament building where they clashed with security forces.
Thousands of Iranians returned to the streets of Tehran on Monday in response to the significant devaluation of the country's currency, the rial, which is disrupting business by driving up the cost of imports.
"Death to Palestine," "Help us, not Gaza," and "Leave Syria alone and deal with Iran," protesters shouted, calling on the Iranian regime to invest in its own economy rather than interfering in other spheres throughout the Middle East.
Iran Freedom, a popular Twitter account dedicated to bringing freedom and democracy to Iran, wrote that the protesters asked security forces to join the protests instead of breaking them up.
"Disciplinary forces dispatch to crackdown the protests; in return protesters chant “Disciplinary force, support us, support us,” the Tweet read.
These were the first large-scale demonstrations since December 2017 when protests erupted calling on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to step down which were violently contained by Iranian security forces.
Traders from the bazaar, whose merchants supported Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, said that most shops remained closed on Monday, Reuters reported.
"We are all angry with the economic situation. We cannot continue our businesses like this. But we are not against the regime," said a merchant in the bazaar, who asked not to be identified.
The rial is under heavy pressure from the US sanctions threat. It sank as low as 90,000 against the dollar in the unofficial market on Monday from 87,000 on Sunday and around 75,500 last Thursday, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com. At the end of last year, it stood at 42,890.
After US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from world powers' deal with Iran on its nuclear program, some US sanctions are to be reimposed in August and some in November.
This may cut Iran's hard currency earnings from oil exports, and the prospect is triggering a panicked flight of Iranians' savings from the rial into dollars.
Ali Fazeli, the head of Iran’s Chamber of Guilds, a business association, denied the existence of the protests and told the semi-official Tasnim news agency on Monday: "Business is as usual in the Grand Bazaar."
State TV quoted Tehran's deputy governor Abdolazim Rezaie down-playing the extent of the protests, saying that no one had been arrested in the Tehran protests and adding that all the shops will be open on Tuesday.
1a)
Pompeo on What Trump Wants
An interview with Trump’s top diplomat on America First and ‘the need for a reset.’
Is the Trump administration out to wreck the liberal world order? No, insisted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview at his office in Foggy Bottom last week: The administration’s aim is to align that world order with 21st-century realities.
Many of the economic and diplomatic structures Mr. Trump stands accused of undermining, Mr. Pompeo argues, were developed in the aftermath of World War II. Back then, he tells me, they “made sense for America.” But in the post-Cold War era, amid a resurgence of geopolitical competition, “I think President Trump has properly identified a need for a reset.”
Mr. Trump is suspicious of global institutions and alliances, many of which he believes are no longer paying dividends for the U.S. “When I watch President Trump give guidance to our team,” Mr. Pompeo says, “his question is always, ‘How does that structure impact America?’ ” The president isn’t interested in how a given rule “may have impacted America in the ’60s or the ’80s, or even the early 2000s,” but rather how it will enhance American power “in 2018 and beyond.”
Mr. Trump’s critics have charged that his “America First” strategy reflects a retreat from global leadership. “I see it fundamentally differently,” Mr. Pompeo says. He believes Mr. Trump “recognizes the importance of American leadership” but also of “American sovereignty.” That means Mr. Trump is “prepared to be disruptive” when the U.S. finds itself constrained by “arrangements that put America, and American workers, at a disadvantage.” Mr. Pompeo sees his task as trying to reform rules “that no longer are fair and equitable” while maintaining “the important historical relationships with Europe and the countries in Asia that are truly our partners.”
The U.S. relationship with Germany has come under particular strain. Mr. Pompeo cites two reasons. “It is important that they demonstrate a commitment to securing their own people,” he says, in reference to Germany’s low defense spending. “When they do so, we’re prepared to do the right thing and support them.” And then there’s trade. The Germans, he says, need to “create tariff systems and nontariff-barrier systems that are equitable, reciprocal.”
But Mr. Pompeo does not see the U.S.-German rift as a permanent reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. Once the defense and trade issues are addressed, “I’m very confident that the relationship will go from these irritants we see today to being as strong as it ever was.” He adds that he has a “special place in my heart” for Germany, having spent his “first three years as a soldier patrolling . . . the West and East German border.”
In addition to renegotiating relationships with existing allies, the Trump administration is facing newly assertive great-power adversaries. “For a decade plus,” Mr. Pompeo says, U.S. foreign policy was “very focused on counterrorism and much less on big power struggles.” Today, while counterterrorism remains a priority, geopolitics is increasingly defined by conflicts with powerful states like China and Russia.
Mr. Pompeo says the U.S. must be assertive but flexible in dealing with both Beijing and Moscow. He wants the U.S. relationship with China to be defined by rule-writing and rule-enforcing, not anarchic struggle. China, he says, hasn’t honored “the normal set of trade understandings . . . where these nation states would trade with each other on fair and reciprocal terms; they just simply haven’t done it. They’ve engaged in intellectual property theft, predatory economic practices.”
Avoiding a more serious confrontation with China down the line will require both countries to appreciate one another’s long-term interests. The U.S. can’t simply focus on “a tariff issue today, or a particular island China has decided to militarize” tomorrow. Rather, the objective must be to create a rules-based structure to avoid a situation in which “zero-sum is the endgame for the two countries.”
Mr. Pompeo also sees room for limited cooperation with Russia even as the U.S. confronts its revisionism. “There are many things about which we disagree. Our value sets are incredibly different, but there are also pockets where we find overlap,” he says. “That’s the challenge for a secretary of state—to identify those places where you can work together, while protecting America against the worst pieces of those governments’ activities.”
Mr. Pompeo says his most important daily task is to understand what the president is thinking. As he prepared for the job, “I spoke to every living former secretary of state,” Mr. Pompeo says. “They gave me two or three big ideas about things you needed to do to successfully deliver on American foreign policy. Not one of them got out of their top two without saying that a deep understanding and good relationship with the commander in chief—with the person whose foreign policy you’re implementing—is absolutely central.”
He continues: “It needs to be known around the world that when you speak, you’re doing so with a clear understanding of what the president is trying to achieve. So I spend a lot of time thinking about that—trying to make sure that I have my whole workforce, my whole team, understanding the commander’s intent in a deep way.”
And the president’s agenda, as Mr. Pompeo communicates it, is one of extraordinary ambition: to rewrite the rules of world order in America’s favor while working out stable relationships with geopolitical rivals. Those goals may prove elusive. Inertia is a powerful force in international relations, and institutions and pre-existing agreements are often hard to reform.
Among other obstacles, the Trump agenda creates the risk of a global coalition forming against American demands. American efforts to negotiate more favorable trading arrangements could lead China, Europe and Japan to work jointly against the U.S. That danger is exacerbated by Mr. Trump’s penchant for dramatic gestures and his volatile personal style.
Yet the U.S. remains, by far, the world’s most powerful nation, and many countries will be looking for ways to accommodate the administration at least partially. Mr. Trump is right that the international rules and institutions developed during the Cold War era must be retooled to withstand new political, economic and military pressures.
Mr. Pompeo believes that Mr. Trump’s instincts, preferences, and beliefs constitute a coherent worldview. The secretary’s aim is to undertake consistent policy initiatives based on that worldview. This endeavor will strike many of the administration’s critics as quixotic. But Mr. Pompeo is unquestionably right that no secretary of state can succeed without the support of the president, and he is in a better position than most to understand Mr. Trump’s mind.
The world will soon see whether the president’s tweets of iron can be smoothly sheathed in a diplomatic glove.
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