Monthly Archives: October 2018

business news, economic news, International news

Let’s call it NAFTA 2.0

Donald Trump vowed to toss out the North American Free Trade Agreement, calling it the “worst trade deal” ever negotiated … ever!

Over the weekend, the president announced a new trade agreement — which is called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — with Canada and Mexico. It remains to be seen whether it’s better than NAFTA. I’ll say this: Trump has delivered on a key campaign pledge to get rid of one trade deal and replace it with another.

I believe in free trade. I also believe that NAFTA was good for all three nations. It stripped away tariffs, enabling the nations to ship goods among each other. Trump contended during the 2016 that NAFTA cost the United States too many jobs, more or less echoing the mantra delivered in 1992 by Texas billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot.

Let’s look at the details of this deal

Congress will have to approve NAFTA 2.0. The president wants Mexico’s president, Enrique Pena Nieto, to sign it before handing his office over to his successor. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who Trump once blasted as “weak” — called the new treaty a “good day for Canada.”

Midwest farmers are happy with the new agreement. I hope that happiness makes its way to Texas, with its own huge agricultural industry.

The new deal has drawn some guarded, but optimistic, responses from key lawmakers. According to Politico: “Maintaining the trilateral North American deal is an important prerequisite to preserving and extending those gains and the Trump administration has achieved that goal,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “I look forward to reviewing this deal to conform it meets the high standards of Trade Promotion Authority.”

I remain committed to free trade among the three friendly giant nations. I hope the new deal, once we dive deeply into the details, is the result of the guy who has boasted of his ability to cut the best deals in the history of Planet Earth.

national news

POTUS does it again: creates ‘fake news’

Donald J. Trump called a press conference today to talk about a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, but of course he took questions about Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court.

Then he did what he has become (in)famous for doing: The president deflected attention from himself and his embattled SCOTUS nominee to some unnamed Democratic U.S. senator.

It was weird, man.

Trump went off on a riff about a mystery Democrat who he said has gotten himself into some unspecified trouble. I am presuming whatever he refers to is something of a sexual nature. I mean, Judge Kavanaugh is accused of sexual assault against Professor Ford when the two of them were in high school; two other women have surfaced to level similar charges against Kavanaugh.

What in the name of truth-telling is Trump referring to here? It’s a standard dodge the president uses to deflect criticism. He’s done so many times before. The media hear this stuff and they might challenge him in the moment. When the dust clears, the noise goes quiet, the media then let the president’s assertion about unnamed public officials or so-called “friends” go unanswered.

Meanwhile, Trump’s base loves it. Their guy, the president, is “telling it like it is,” they contend.

Actually, he is making things up. He is, dare I say it, fomenting “fake news.” You know: Barack Obama was born in Africa; “millions” of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016; he watched “thousands” of Muslims cheering as the Twin Towers fell on 9/11.

So, he is doing it again with this assertion — without evidence — of some senator “on the other side” who has gotten himself into the kind of trouble that just might resemble the potential difficulty that has ensnared Brett Kavanaugh.

Shameful.

national news

Perjury: a SCOTUS dealbreaker for certain

The FBI has embarked on an investigation into whether Brett Kavanaugh is a suitable choice to take his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nominee stands accused of sexual assault. He has denied it vehemently. His accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, has affirmed her allegation with equal vehemence. He said, she said … blah, blah, blah.

The fate of Kavanaugh’s court nomination, however, might hinge on whether he lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about how much beer he drank while he was in high school. No kidding, man! That’s the deal — maybe, perhaps, possibly.

If the FBI determines that he lied under oath to the Senate panel, well, it’s over. Kavanaugh shouldn’t be seated on the nation’s highest court.

Let us also remember that in 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives — led by its Republican majority — was looking for a reason to impeach President Bill Clinton. The president gave it to them when it was determined he lied — also under oath — to a federal grand jury about whether he had a sexual relationship with a White House intern.

The House impeached the president. The Senate tried him, but he was acquitted.

The clear lesson here for Judge Kavanaugh is that the oath he took to tell the whole truth before the Senate committee is every bit as binding as the oath that President Clinton took to tell the truth to the grand jury.

national news

Happy 94th birthday, Mr. President

Today is a special day for one of America’s greatest citizens.

Jimmy Carter, the nation’s 39th president, turns 94 today. He is the second-oldest former president; the honor of oldest belongs to George H.W. Bush, another great American.

I feel the need to say something good about President Carter because of all that he did after he left office in January 1981 and, indeed, what he accomplished during his single term as our head of state.

It’s been said, perhaps so much that’s become cliché, that Jimmy Carter is the nation’s “greatest former president.” He became active with Habitat for Humanity, building homes for poor folks all across the globe; he isn’t swinging a hammer so much these days, but his legacy stands forever in the lives he enriched through his carpentry skills.

He has been called upon by his successors as president to monitor elections around the world, to ensure they are conducted freely and fairly. That work, too, has improved the lives of literally billions of citizens worldwide.

He has written numerous books, chronicling his years in public life, his dedication to public service and his intense and immense faith in God. Indeed, he still teaches Sunday school classes at his church in Plains, Ga.

While he was ridiculed and vilified for his single term in office, I want to remind readers of this blog that the president’s grit and determination produced a lasting peace agreement between two ancient enemies in the Middle East. The agreement has become known as the Camp David Accord. He took Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Primer Minister Menachem Begin to the presidential retreat in rural Maryland to hammer out a treaty that ended state of war between Egypt and Israel.

The 1978 treaty eventually would cost President Sadat his life, as he was murdered by Muslim fanatics while watching a military parade. That, though, is the nature of that part of the world, as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would fall victim to a Zionist extremist after signing his own peace agreement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization leader, Yasser Arafat, in 1995.

Jimmy Carter’s work as president perhaps one day will get the full measure of respect that is due.

Today, though, I just want to join millions of other Americans in wishing this good man a happy birthday and thank him for making this world a better place because he came along to grace it.

political news

Trump admits to preferring ‘Democrat Party’ epithet

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Donald J. Trump flew off the rails on one of those impromptu campaign-rally riffs in West Virginia … and proceeded to acknowledge what many of us have known all along.

Republicans like referring to their political foes as members of the “Democrat Party,” even though the party to which they refer is the Democratic Party.

Trump said he likes using the term “Democrat” as an adjective because it grates on Democrats and because their party — according to Trump and other Republicans — isn’t too democratic these days.

It’s an idiotic and feeble attempt to stick it in the eye of those who oppose GOP doctrine and the rants of the Republican (In Name Only) in chief, Donald Trump.

And that brings me to what’s so damn funny about Trump’s association with the once-great Republican Party. He’s the classic RINO, the very personification of the term that hard-core Republicans used to describe the more moderate members of their political party.

Trump had zero political grounding prior to announcing his candidacy for the presidency. He wasn’t involved in partisan politics. His entire adult life was dedicated to one thing only: Trump’s personal enrichment.

So now that he has hijacked the Republican Party, he claims to be a political purist, the standard-bearer of a party that once stood for inclusion and that once joined hands with a Democratic president — Lyndon Baines Johnson — in advancing the cause of civil rights and voting rights for African-Americans.

Listening to Trump proclaim his desire to refer to those on the other side of the aisle as belonging to the “Democrat Party” tells me only one thing: He is pandering to that shrinking, but still vocal, political base that hangs on this carnival barker’s every word.

national news

Sen. Flake admits it: Lame-duck status enabled compromise

Jeff Flake has admitted something many of us knew already but it still is a bit of a surprise to hear him actually acknowledge it out loud — and on national television to boot!

Sen. Flake, an Arizona Republican, appeared tonight on “60 Minutes” in the wake of his stunning proposal to delay a Senate vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. He pitched the idea that the FBI needs to conduct a week-long investigation into allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a woman when he and the accuser were teenagers.

The senators agreed with him. Flake then voted “yes” along with his 10 GOP colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee to recommend Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Then came the question from “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley: Could he have made that proposal were he running for re-election? Flake said “no.” There was no chance he could — or would — do such a thing, he said. The mood on Capitol Hill just doesn’t allow compromise. The mood is too toxic, too divisive.

Flake announced several months ago that he would leave the Senate. Since his announcement he has become a staunch critic of Donald Trump and many of his fellow Republicans. He blames the president for fomenting the politics of anger and lays blame on congressional Republicans for refusing to stand up to the president.

He talked about his week-delay compromise with a good Senate friend, Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware.

This is how it has come down. Senators and House members are having to declare their intention to retire from public life for them to show the kind of courage they ought to show even when they must face the voters at election time.

It’s a sad time, ladies and gentlemen.

entertainment news

‘No longer funny’? How does POTUS know that?

Donald J. “TV Comedy Critic in Chief” Trump declares that “Saturday Night Live” is “no longer funny,” it has “no talent” and “no charm.”

How in the world does the president make that judgment? How is he able to discern whether the award-winning comedy sketch TV show is no longer funny?

Oh, he was watching it — one must presume — while the show poked fun at Brett Kavanaugh’s appearance before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Oh, but the president said he didn’t watch it, but … he did offer some praise for Kanye “Kim Kardashian’s Husband” West for wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat during his appearance on the show. So, which is it, Mr. President? Did you watch or didn’t you? Oh wait! He said in his tweet that “word is that” West wore the hat. Nice dodge, Mr. President.

Not that it matters. The leader of the free world surely ought to have plenty to do to instead of wasting his time critiquing a show that he says is “no longer funny.”

This is the kind of response that presidents dating back to Gerald Ford have been getting from “Saturday Night Live.” None of them liked the parody and the occasional ridicule dished out by the writers and the comics.

But, hey. It goes with the territory. At least that used to be the case.