Time to worry

Stanley - Thursday

To me and most of my friends, Donald Trump is a joke – an ignorant, lying, narcissistic joke. We laugh at his inability to speak coherently. We roll our eyes at how quickly he can change feet in his mouth. We slap our heads in disbelief at how he treats the USA’s allies and shake our heads when he holds hands with Putin and Erdogan.

All of his behavior is fodder for the press, against whom he rails incessantly – 'the fake press'.

But amidst our laughter, there is cause for serious concern. Let’s take a brief look at what has happened over the past ten days.

Despite a court order requiring the government to reunite the children who had been separated from their parents at the southern border, about 650 still haven’t. And there is a strong likelihood that some may never be. The only thing worse than the idea that such separations are good policy is that total lack of caring for the kids and of remorse at what has happened.

The Attorney-General of the United States has instituted a religious liberty task force. "Religious Americans are no longer an afterthought," he said. "We will take potential burdens on one's conscience into consideration before we issue regulations or policies." 

Attorney-General Sessions

I am in favour of religious freedom, but what underlies this is government permission to discriminate – if my religious belief tells me not to serve gays or hire blacks, then the government will support me. Sessions also said "This administration is animated by that same American view that has led us for 242 years — that every American has a right to believe and worship and exercise their faith in the public square." From what I have read, at no time did he talk about the constitutional requirement for the separation of church and state.

Trump continued to escalate the trade war, threatening to slap tariffs on all Chinese goods. Many company executives are beginning to pass the added costs along to customers. They shouldn’t worry too much for themselves, however. The Trump administration is mulling a change in how capital gains are calculated for tax purposes. Instead of a gain being calculated by taking the difference between sale and cost price, they are considering making it the difference between sale price and cost price adjusted for inflation. In most cases, particularly for assets held for long period of times, this will result in a markedly lower tax. Estimates are this will save $100 billion in taxes – which sounds good, except that the savings will go to the affluent, who have assets, and will increase the budget hole already worsened by the Trump tax cut. The Trump administration is working to pay for the cuts by cutting programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, much of which is paid for by deductions from people’s salaries and comprise the most important safety nets for people in need.

Trump tweeted that he wants Attorney-General Sessions to stop the Mueller witch hunt – which has already indicted thirteen Russians. I think Sessions future is very shaky.

Trump attacks the press the whole time.

Republicans have rejected $250 million for securing the elections in November. I wonder why. Trump also eliminated the top government cyber security job. I wonder why.

Trump’s trade war has hurt farmers badly. He just gave them a $12 billion handout. I am sure they want to farm not receive handouts. The Trump administration wants drug testing for all welfare recipients. One joker wondered whether the farmers were going to have to submit for drug testing.

Supporting his push for voter ID cards with photos, Trump said it was ridiculous that you needed to show photo IDs when buying groceries, but not when voting.

The Trump administration has proposed Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice. Kavanaugh is on record as saying that sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted. The Republicans are refusing to provide some records of Kavanaugh’s past to Democrats. What are they hiding?

Trump has threatened to shut down government if he doesn’t get his wall – paid for by the USA!

The Trump administration stopped efforts to prevent plans for making guns out of plastic on 3-D printers from being downloaded on the internet. A judge put a temporary ban on the downloading, but the plans are easily available anyway. Scary! These guns are not detectable by many screening devices.

I think it is time we stop laughing at Trump, stop ridiculing him. We need to work to stop the damage he doing to society, and not only in the USA. If you are an American, get out and vote in November. Join protests. If you are not an American, beware, because Trump’s influence is spreading quickly.

The news

Stanley - Thursday

My mind has been overflowing for the past seven weeks. We rewrote the manuscript for Dead of Night from first person to third person in about four sleepless weeks. We dealt with the edits of that, and we started the seventh Kubu mystery, due to the publishers in mid-December. In addition, I have a commitment to write a golf article for the Minnesota Golf Magazine. Needless to say normal STUFF has been largely neglected.

So as I started to look around for a topic for this week's blog, I found it really difficult. Not because there are so few, rather there are so many, most of which I'd paid scant attention to.

What has taken centre stage here in the USA is Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy that purposefully separates children from their parents as a deterrent to future immigrants. The situation has been so sickening that not only did the spineless Republican elected representatives actually stand up to Trump, but some of his political base did also. That is what tipped the scales, in my opinion. It wasn’t any softening of his attitude that made him sign an executive order yesterday doing away with child separation. It was his recognition that he was losing support of his strongest supporters.

The run up to his change of position was astonishing. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was quoting the bible as justification for what the Trump administration was doing. Secretary for Homeland Security, Kjersten Nielsen (no relative to Mette, I’m pleased to report), flat out lied by saying no children were being separated from their parents. Period. That despite records showing over 2000 had already been taken and the daily number was increasing rapidly. I suppose she would argue that the photographs of it happening had been photoshopped. Both she and Trump insisted that the problem had been created by the Democrats, and that it was up to them to fix it. This lie continued even on Tuesday, the day before Trump signed his executive order, which he had repeatedly stated, he wasn’t able to do. 

Kjersten Nielsen lying.

However, the executive order fails to address how the kids already separated are going to be reunited with their parents. Many people believe that many will never be reunited either because their parent or parents have already been deported or because the federal bureaucracy won’t be able to match parents with children. Sickening.

Secretary Nielsen decided to eat at a Mexican restaurant near the White House on Tuesday evening. Bad idea! She was loudly booed by protesters. Good for them.

Kudos have to go to the press, both print and electronic, for picking up this horrendous story and running with it. There’s no doubt in my mind that the photographs and sound clips had a profound impact on the country – to such an extent that a variety of polls showed that two thirds of the country opposed what was happening.

I think this is the end of the beginning of the story, not the beginning of the end. There are going to be many more horror stories as time passes.

On a totally different topic, my interest in football (soccer) is minimal at best, even when the World Cup is being played. Neither of my two countries are in Russia – South Africa and the USA failing to qualify. Today Denmark plays Australia. Of course, I am sticking up for Denmark, both because of Mette, but also because South Africans support any team playing against Australia! The only good thing about the Cup is that it provides a mindless diversion from politics.

Russia's strange World Cup symbol.

Finally, did you read that the mighty De Beers, for years the monopoly controlling the sale of diamonds worldwide, has just announced that it is going to make and sell artificial diamonds for about $800 a carat, considerably undercutting its competitors? Huh? How does that make any sense when it mines millions of carats of gem quality stones? From what I can read, the idea is to get the public to equate artificial diamonds with costume jewelry. The idea is that no self-respecting woman would then want an engagement ring made from costume jewelry. Will it work? I don’t know, but then the value of a real diamond is not intrinsic, but merely what someone will pay for it.

And then there is the upcoming trade war: the USA versus its closest allies. My mind is too boggled to think of that. But also the USA versus China. I think Trump may have miscalculated here (if he thought at all about it) because the USA's leaders are elected. If midwest farmers start losing their export markets, their votes will move to someone who will improve trading relations.

And then there's Brexit and the rebels, who seem to have capitulated.

And Canada legalising recreational marijuana.

And did you read that Trump wants the USA to have space police? 

Vice-President Pence talking at a meeting of the Space Council. Looks as though he's shouting, trying to be heard.  And is that the Space Police's cruiser?

And that the USA withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council, citing its bias against Israel.

Nothing is simple anymore. Unless you are Mike Pence, Vice-President of the USA, who is Trump's lap dog mimicking everything he does. Watch here: you can't make this stuff up.

Upcoming event:

July 15: release by Orenda Books in the UK of our stand-alone thriller DEAD OF NIGHT. Not available in the USA at the moment.