Donald Trump and his "makes no sense" foreign policy. Who knew?

Trump lies and, when he is not telling lies, he makes up policies in the middle of the night. 

Donald Trump is not qualified to lead America and he is destroying our democracy❗

Echo editorial published in The Kansas City Star newspaper: 

"The United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest ally and partner. … At the same time, they're talking about working positively with Russia (and) appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying murderous dictator. … Make that make sense." 

I have thought a lot about what then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a March 4, news conference, in the aftermath of a notorious Oval Office meeting where President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance rudely and in a pre-planned verbal attack, lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not being thankful enough for American support. 

Trump then cut off U.S. military assistance to Ukraine to pressure Zelenskyy to agree to a bad deal, but he applied no pressure at all to Putin, even as he continued deadly attacks. "You should never have started it," Trump said to Zelenskyy, blaming him for Russia's invasion of his country.

Unbelievably, the Trump administration's proposed deal to end the war in Ukraine was everything Putin was asking for:

• legal recognition of Russia's control of Crimea 
• unofficial recognition of Russia's control of nearly everything else it has seized since 2022
• a commitment that Ukraine will never join NATO ❗🙄
• lifting all sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014, and 
• enhanced U.S.-Russia economic cooperation 

In return, Ukraine would receive only a vague "security guarantee" and commitment to help rebuild, with no assurance that the United States would help provide either or details of who might. 

Unsurprisingly, this plan emerged after Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin for several hours recently and had no apparent input from the Ukrainians. To get any kind of U.S. commitment for future assistance, Ukraine basically had to bribe the Trump administration separately with a favorable deal for minerals extraction. 

If you're Zelenskyy, or anyone in Ukraine right now, you have to be asking yourself too: 

• How does any of this make sense❓ 
• Why is the U.S. president blaming a democratic partner for getting invaded by an aggressive, authoritarian neighbor❓ 
• Why is he pushing a "peace" plan that explicitly rewards Russia's crimes❓ 
• What could possibly explain an approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict that so nakedly favors Russia❓

America has inexplicably damaged ties with its allies through a pointless trade war and eroded trust with our closest partners. 

With his threats to take control of Panama, Greenland and Canada, Trump is normalizing the very idea of violating other states' sovereignty, something Putin has been trying to do for years. 

Also, the Trump (Republican MAGA cult) administration has stopped or gutted programs designed to combat years of Russia's gray zone warfare against the United States, including cutting funding for cybersecurity offices that fight foreign meddling in U.S. elections and disbanding the task force responsible for enforcing sanctions against Russia. 

Meanwhile, Russia is the only major economy excluded from Trump's punishing tariffs so far. The Trump administration is defunding or dismantling a slew of other institutions that frustrate Putin because they combat Russian disinformation and help strengthen civil society and democracy around the world, such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the National Endowment for Democracy.

But that's not all❗ Massive cuts to scientific research and attacks on America's higher education institutions are undermining some of America's greatest strengths and contributions to the world today. America's strong and stable economy has been the envy of the world, but Trump's inexplicable trade policy is even eroding that too. 

If Russia wants a weaker America, this is exactly how you get there. This column isn't long enough to list all the ways that Trump has done so yet, but you get the idea. The question then is: Why? Once you eliminate all the answers that make no sense, the answer that does "make any sense" may be the right one. The clues have been there all along. A Republican-led Senate panel that investigated Russian interference in the 2016, election found that at least 16 Trump campaign associates met with Russian officials or contacts, and special counsel Robert Mueller's report details at least 140 contacts between Trump's campaign and transition team and Russian nationals or intermediaries. But even if you dismiss those reports as part of a "Russia hoax," don't you find it odd that the Kremlin spokesperson is openly cheering how America's foreign policy now "largely coincides" with their own❓

As the old Cold War saying goes, Americans believe in coincidences, while Russians believe in making coincidences happen. Whether America is now aligning with Russia wittingly or unwittingly, only one of these two countries will reap the benefit, and it won't be ours. The sooner we admit the problem, the sooner we can stop it.

Elizabeth Shackelford is senior policy director at Dartmouth College's Dickey Center for International Understanding and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of "The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age."

Security communications were available to Pete Hegseth but, instead, he used Signal- commercial text WWHT?

Letters: Donald Trump’s administration shows incompetence with SignalGate security breach leak. #WWHT❓

Echo opinion published in the Chicago Tribune:

Fire Hegseth NOW! 

Blatant incompetence and a complete disregard for America’s safety — how could so-called senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration not check who was in the chat when discussing war plans? And why were they using a nongovernment, commercially available application like Signal instead of the numerous secure methods of communication readily available to them? 

The journalist, editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, from The Atlantic showed more concern for our national secrets than our Senate-confirmed so-called “experts.”

This is just another example of the misplaced confidence of the Trump administration. Consider Elon Musk’s unfocused fiscal chainsaw, ❗😱Trump’s constant flip-flopping on tariffs and the thinly veiled bribes from corporations that believe they will never receive fair treatment from this government without making payoffs. Even with the daily examples of ineptitude in the last 60 days, it’s absolutely outrageous that this security breach could happen.

This incompent administration is constantly trying to impress us, wrongminded, that it knows best and has all the answers, but its actions show just the opposite. 

Administration officials are absolutely clueless, sloppy and incompetent.  From Joe Szczepaniak, in Wheaton, Illinoia

Donald Trump could have testified at the Manhattan trial but declined to go under oath

Echo opinion letter published in the Chicago Tribune: To the Rule of Law❗

Political cartoon published in The Washington Post

History was made in Manhattan on May 30, 2024: An ex-president of the United States was found guilty, by a 12-person jury of his peers, on all 34 counts alleged against him, thus making him the first such office holder to become a convicted felon. The rule of law prevailed, and it is particularly satisfying to someone like me, as a member in continuous good standing of the Illinois bar and a former adjunct law professor.

But while a New York jury won this “battle,” the “war” rages on, given the remarks Donald Trump made immediately after the guilty verdict was read and the jury discharged from its duties. 

Trump asserts — as he has constantly done for years for matters he refuses to accept and for which he is rightly criticized — that the case against him was rigged, that our country is in decline, that the trial judge (Judge Juan Merchan) was against him (though the judge performed admirably) and that he was not tried by his peers (despite his being allowed to testify, though he did not).

In other words, Trump and his minions are attempting to delegitimize our rule of law and the justice system, as we have seen occur in developing nations, even Russia. That will not happen here. It must be up to us Illinoisans — and all voters outside our state, on both sides of the aisle — to ensure that Trump’s warped, dictatorial and disingenuous thinking never prevails and certainly not as the next individual sitting in the Oval Office.

From Miles J. Zaremski, in Highland Park, Illinois (Chicago suberb)

Antisemitism language includes Anti-Zionism

 An echo opinion published in the Chicago Tribune by Kenneth Seeskin.

Demonstrations protesting Israel’s role in the war in Gaza claim that Zionism is racist, colonialist, even genocidal. The response among many Jews has been to accuse the demonstrators of thinly veiled antisemitism. Lawsuits charging universities with antisemitism are pending and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened numerous investigations.

Are antisemitism and antizionism the same or different?

In 2010, the U.S. State Department proposed the following as a working definition of antisemitism: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The State Department tried to clarify its position by providing numerous examples of the kinds of actions that would count as antisemitic. Unfortunately, their examples raise more questions than they answer. Chief among them: what is the relation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism? Or more precisely: what exactly is Zionism and how is it related to Judaism?

Is Zionism (A) commitment to a Jewish homeland, (B) some level of support for current Israeli policies such as the Israel-Hamas War, or (C) active involvement or total support for the war? I will take them up in turn.

The State Department tried to clarify its position by providing numerous examples of the kinds of actions that would count as antisemitic. 

Unfortunately, their examples raise more questions than they answer. Chief among them: what is the relation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism? Or more precisely: what exactly is Zionism and how is it related to Judaism?

Beginning in the 19th century, the need for a Jewish homeland became a hotly debated topic among world Jewry. 

Thinkers on the political left argued that in an enlightened age, Jews would be accepted as full citizens in the countries where they lived, making a homeland unnecessary. By contrast, many Orthodox thinkers opposed the idea that a homeland for Jews could be created by secular means and put their trust in divine intervention instead.

It is also worth noting that unlike Christianity, Judaism is defined by birth rather than belief. A Jew is someone born to a Jewish parent (traditionally a Jewish mother) or someone who wishes to join the Jewish people by converting.

For example, if one were to list the various nationalities in the world, there would be Greeks, French, Koreans, English, Brazilians, Chinese, Italians — and Jews. If, on the other hand, if one were to list the great world religions of the world, there would be Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism — and Judaism. Jews are listed twice, which means they are both a nationality and a religious community.

Although one of the examples of antisemitism listed by the State Department is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist,” there were and still are Jews who reject the idea of a homeland. A prominent Hasidic rabbi once claimed that the Holocaust was divine punishment for the sin of Zionism. ❓ (Makes no sense❗) ✡️

Pundits on both side of the conflict say that it is unrealistic to think that after centuries of hatred and violence, Jews and Palestinians can live side by side and retain their respective identities. Perhaps so, but what does such alleged “realism” offer us other than endless brutality?

If it is realistic to continue fighting without ever stopping to ask what a more humane alternative would be like, then I say that being realistic amounts to moral bankruptcy.

To be sure, these people are a minority. According to a 2020, survey undertaken by the Pew Research Center, 8 out of 10 American Jews thought that Israel was either essential or important to their identity. Most synagogues include a prayer for the State of Israel as part of their worship service.

But the tide may be turning among younger Jews. A Pew Research Study in 2022, showed that 41% of Jews aged 18 to 29 had a favorable opinion of Israel while 69% over 65 did. As the war in Gaza drags on, that gap has surely increased.

Regarding (B), many Jews oppose the occupation and the war in Gaza but still feel a tie to Israel. Huge crowds of Israelis have demonstrated against the Netanyahu government prior to October 7. According to the 2020, study, only 1 in 3 American Jews thought Israel was sincere in its pursuit of peace.

That brings us to (C), whose adherents support Netanyahu’s goal of “total victory” regardless of the consequences. Although I don’t have exact figures, I suspect that in America, they too are a minority.

In sum, the relation between Judaism and Zionism is complicated depending on what era one is talking about and how one understands key terms. Criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic. But one thing the State Department got right is that there is no basis for holding the Jewish people as a whole responsible for the actions of Israel.

The problem is that those who demonstrate against Israel rarely take the time to study history or consider definitional questions. Not surprisingly many contain slogans calling for a worldwide intifada, or complete elimination of the State of Israel, where half the world’s Jews now live.

Should the world tolerate a Jewish state? At present it tolerates more than 15 states which are officially Christian and 23 which are officially Muslim. As for me, I support a cease-fire in Gaza, humanitarian aid, release of the Israeli hostages and the creation of a Palestinian state to exist alongside a Jewish one; in short, a two-state solution.

For most Jews, the debate over Zionism ended after World War II. The idea that Jews would be accepted as full citizens in an enlightened age seemed to go up the smokestack at Auschwitz. 

Main entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. This photograph was taken some time after the liberation of the camp in January 1945.

While reliance on divine intervention might be a comforting trope in the prayer book, it did not answer the question of what to do with the thousands of Jews left homeless by Nazi devastation or who were expelled from Islamic lands.

Kenneth Seeskin is professor emeritus of philosophy and the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor of Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University.

Thank every Veteran

Echo opinion letter: Thinking of veterans who returned — and those who didn’t.

Chicago Tribune

Nov 10, 2022 

By chance, I recently selected a jigsaw puzzle suitable for Veterans Day that reproduces Thomas Kinkade’s “Homecoming Hero.”

In fact, the late artist painted many such peaceful panoramas; this one contains standard rural touches including a farmhouse, a tractor and livestock. A young returning soldier just off the bus is dropped into the scene, and family members outdoors wave a warm welcome. Along with the village shown in the distance, this embodies much of what the veteran had fought for.

Also speaking to the overseas aftermath were the tall memorials I saw in my youth, along major thoroughfares in Chicago's Sauganash and Jefferson Park neighborhoods, with plaques listing names of fallen veterans. These were modified later to simply honor those giving their lives in World Wars I and II and Korea. The diplomatic tribute came at the cost of the more moving approach, with names putting a personal face on sacrifice.

Currently, I can think of another kind of casualty: a noncommunicative and solitary Vietnam vet in his 70s who was raised in a house across the street. Known to most only as John, he routinely wheels an old grocery cart overloaded with trash bags. A neighbor who knew him before his tour confirmed that mentally, this isn’t the same man as before.

Thinking about the fortunes of war, I recall not only luckier actual heroes, as depicted in Kinkade’s painting, but also those who didn’t make it home intact such as John, or at all, such as those whose names once graced local memorials.

I thank every one for running the gantlet and assuming the risk.

— Tom Gregg, in Niles, Illinois

Donald Trump cognition- Wash Rinse Repeat.: Covfefe?

Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA),
the elephant question.

Echo opinion published in the Chicago Tribune newspaper by Jonah Goldberg

Donald Trump’s interview with Chris Wallace, which aired on “Fox News Sunday,” was remarkable in more ways than there is room to recount here.

But let’s start with what should be the lead story: The president of the United States told Wallace that the mental competence test he recently took was “very hard,” specifically the last five questions.
Just to be clear, Trump “passed” the test (Maine Writer, Paaaleeeze! It's not a "test"; rather, it's a cognitive assessment screening tool!)— a fact he’s boasted about on numerous occasions. “I aced it,” he proudly told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, earlier this month. 

Nevertheless, the problem is that none of the questions on the standard Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test are supposed to be hard, if you aren’t suffering from dementia of some kind. Crowing that you “aced” the MoCA is like bragging that you passed a sobriety test, while sober.

The last five questions of the 10-minute, nine-task exercise assess things like basic abstract reasoning — e.g., how are a train and a bicycle alike? — and rudimentary memory. The final exercise, presumably hardest, according to Trump, simply asks the patient to provide the date, time and location of the examination.

We should all hope the guy with the nuclear codes can “ace” this test. Some might even say we should have a president who didn’t find it “very hard” to ace it.

Trump’s bragging about his test results may simply be part of his strategy to cast presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden as “not all there.” But it’s hard to fathom why the Trump campaign thinks this is a shrewd gambit.

In Sunday’s interview, Wallace asked Trump point-blank, “Is Joe Biden senile?”

“I don’t want to say that,” Trump answered. “I’d say he’s not competent to be president.” (Hello? Vice President Joe Biden was competent to be president according to the US Constitution!) At first, it seemed the president was opting to take the high road. But he then went on to say, “Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, OK? He doesn’t know he’s alive.” And, later on, “He’s shot, he’s mentally shot.”

Perhaps he’s seen data suggesting attacks on Biden’s age don’t play well with senior voters, so the task is to claim Biden is mentally handicapped but not as a result of his age? That’s a level of nuance we’d expect of someone who aced a cognitive evaluation, but not what we’d associate with Trump’s political style.

Regardless, the whole strategy of attacking Biden as mentally incompetent is (wrong minded).... and risky. 

Forget that such tactics were once considered beyond the pale. And put aside the entirely reasonable conclusion that Biden does indeed show his age quite often — and that he’s always had a propensity to say weird things. The Trump campaign is now betting his reelection’s already slim chances on Biden proving Trump’s diagnosis is right.  (But, Donald Trump is completely incompetent to diagnose anything, he has no qualifications to diagnose.)
One of the central tasks of campaigning, and politics generally, is managing expectations. Beating expectations in a primary makes you a winner. Falling short has the opposite effect. For instance, Lyndon Johnson won the 1968 New Hampshire primary by seven points but fell so far below expectations that he withdrew from the race. Trump has benefited from early warnings that the U.S. could see millions of deaths from COVID-19, so the current — and rising — death toll of “only” 143,000 beats expectations.

As of now, all Biden has to do to beat the expectations laid out by Trump is prove he knows he’s alive — a very light lift. In normal times, presidential campaigns work hard to set expectations for the opponent unreasonably high.

Before Trump’s first debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, for example, then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said, “The expectations on Hillary are very, very high. She’s been doing this for 30 years. I think people expect her to know every little detail. She has to perform in a way that is of the highest of expectations. I think in the case of Donald Trump, look, he’s the outsider, he’s a person who’s never run before, let alone be in a presidential debate.”

In other words, if Trump even held his own in the debate, he should be declared the victor? (I don't think so!!!~ ugh!)

Given that Vice President Joe Biden's lead in the polls continues to widen, there’s no rush for him to call off his front-porch-style campaign. But, after months of Trump’s flailing, erratic and increasingly desperate attacks on Biden as a near vegetable, all Biden will have to do is come across as a reassuringly normal, pleasant, albeit gaffe-prone and competent leader. Biden, despite his flaws, seems up to that.

If the Wallace interview is any indication, it’s Trump who struggles to meet that remarkably low bar.

Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

And the Guardian newspaper wrote this:  

The test is called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and was created by the neurologist Dr Ziad Nasreddine in 1996. Talking to MarketWatch on Monday, Nasreddine stressed that the test “is supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment”, saying that “this is not an IQ test or the level of how a person is extremely skilled or not. The test is supposed to help physicians detect early signs of Alzheimer’s.”

There are a few different versions of the test with small variations (such as the words to remember or animals to name), but the questions are generally the same. We can’t tell for sure which version Trump took, but as he said he did it recently, I’ve taken the latest MoCA test from their website.

Trump is right about the start of the test being easy. But when it comes to the last five questions, his claim that they’re “very hard” is unsettling (although not surprising) in what it reveals about his relationship with reality.

But before we dive into that, here’s what the test involves:

The first few questions are indeed “easy” – although it goes without saying that anyone experiencing cognitive problems is supposed to find it hard, and the point of the test is to help diagnose their condition.

First, you have to draw a line between numbers and their equivalent letters (1 to A, A to 2, 2 to B and so on). Then you have to draw a cube, and a clock at 10 past 11. Call it what you will – millennial-itis, lockdown brain – but this was actually a slight challenge as I can’t remember the last time I looked at a clock that wasn’t on my phone or laptop. So yes, it took me a second to remember that the minutes are all multiples of five – for 10 past the big hand points to two. But I figured it out in the end, and that’s all that matters.

The ‘elephant’ question

If you’re lucky enough to not have any cognitive impairment, this part is also easy. There are three drawings – a lion, rhino and camel. As mentioned, there are a few versions of the test with very minor differences – for example, the test Fox News showed during the interview had an elephant on it, but the latest test has a rhino instead. This has led some of Trump’s critics to baselessly claim that he can’t tell the difference between the two.

Repeat after me – and do some maths

Both of these sections are very simple, and involve repeating a series of numbers forwards and backwards, and remembering a string of five random words. The final part, which Chris Wallace mentioned, asks you to count back from 100 in multiples of seven (100, 93, 86). Like the clock, this took me slightly longer than I would have liked – but nowhere does it say this is a timed test. I did it in the end, slowly but surely.

The difficulties begin

This is where things get a little concerning.

If you remember, Trump bet Wallace that he “couldn’t even answer the last five questions” of the test. But for a mentally healthy person, the last five questions should be as simple as the rest.

The fifth-to-last question on the test asks you to repeat a sentence out loud, before naming as many words as you can starting with F. In the following “abstraction” section, you have to spot the similarity between different objects such as trains and bicycles (modes of transport), or a watch and a ruler (measuring devices).

Next, you have to recall the random words that were included in the earlier memory section. This may be the part that’s easiest to trip over.

And finally, for the orientation part of the test, you have to … say what the date is.

For Trump to claim these are hard is worrying because for any cognitively healthy person, they shouldn’t be. But before we start any armchair diagnosis, you have to weigh up two probabilities against each other. Is it really likely that he found the last five questions hard? Or is it more likely that he’s misrepresenting about how hard they were, in order to look “smarter” than Joe Biden?

In the same interview, Trump got his team to pass him a chart that he said showed the US had “one of the lowest mortality rates in the world”, when it didn’t do anything of the sort. This is shocking, but not surprising – Trump has now made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims since he took office.

So it seems more likely that Trump’s difficulties at the end of the test tell us nothing that we don’t know already. His prolific lying and self-aggrandisement, two things we have empirical evidence for, should be what worries us. For, similar to his “stable genius” claims, you’ve got to ask yourself: how many smart people brag about their supposed intellect so much, and in such a misguided way?

• This article was amended on 24 July 2020. To ensure that the memory section of the MoCA test remains valid for future participants, two images which revealed the answers to that section have been removed. (Maine Writer: The purpose of the cognitive evaluation tool is to assess memory capacity regardless if the image presented to the test taker is an elephant, a giraffe or a rhinoceros.)

America faces an epic choice ...

Midwestern economic reality check - failed Donald Trump trade policy

Just my opinion. Donald Trump randomly goes from one issue per day to another. China Trade talks seems to have been delegated to Ivanka, that's my opinion. This Chicago Tribune echo editorial describes the economic impact of the mismanaged China trade.

Check out the rise in farm bankruptcies report here.

OPINION echo- At the moment, the American economy is really two economies. One is chugging along at a respectable rate of GDP growth, with the stock market up by more than 25% since December and unemployment at its lowest level in 50 years. In the other, manufacturing output is falling, Midwest farm bankruptcies are climbing and exports are down.

One big reason for the worrisome news is the U.S. standoff with China over trade issues. Donald Trump made a priority of getting Beijing to put a stop to theft of U.S. intellectual property, expand access to its markets, curb its subsidies to Chinese companies and buy more American agricultural goods. Early in his first year, he held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort and emerged saying “tremendous progress” had been made on trade issues.

But the apparent breakthrough led nowhere. And the two governments have paired their negotiations with tit-for-tat tariff hikes aimed at forcing each other into concessions. Trump has imposed hefty taxes on goods shipped from China, and Beijing has retaliated by levying tariffs on U.S. goods and halting purchases of American farm products.

China’s Commerce Ministry recently said both sides had agreed to roll back tariffs in a “Phase One” accord that would resolve some of the issues. But, Trump promptly denied agreeing to any rollback, asserting, “They want to make a deal a lot more than I do.” More recently Trump said a trade deal was “close,” without providing evidence an end is in sight.

He thinks the harm his tariffs cause to China’s economy will compel it to capitulate sooner or later. But Xi doesn’t have to face voters at the polls next year, or ever. 

Trump's trade negotiators seem to believe as though the real pressure to settle is on Trump, who must wonder if the economic damage will sink his reelection campaign.

The effects are not pretty. Factory output is down nationally, and manufacturing employment has declined in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — states that were crucial to Trump’s 2016 victory. A study for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta calculated that the tariffs and trade friction “subtracted about 40,000 jobs per month from non-farm payrolls and about $259 billion in sales over the first half of the year.”

Sachin Shivaram, chief executive of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, Wis., told The Washington Post that orders for his firm’s brake housings and conveyor belt motors were off 40% this summer due to Trump’s trade war. “I don’t want to lose my company in the name of what the president is doing,” Shivaram said. “It doesn’t seem like there’s an endgame in sight.”

Agricultural exports to China plunged by more than $10 billion last year, and the administration has had to compensate hard-hit farmers with two rounds of bailout payments totaling $26 billion — with another round reportedly in the works. Sooner or later, consumers are bound to see price increases on goods shipped from China.

Business investment, which got a boost from the 2017, tax reform, has fizzled. Companies can plan when they know what the trade environment will be. But the uncertainties created by trade war leave business people and farmers groping in the dark.

China, of course, is not exempt from the repercussions. It has taken a hit in exports and manufacturing production. The International Monetary Fund says the U.S. tariffs that have been imposed or threatened could reduce China’s GDP by 1.6%.

In the absence of a deal, both countries have additional tariffs scheduled for December. So it should be obvious to all involved that they need to act soon to settle their differences and return both economies to a semblance of normalcy. Neither country gains from prolonging this impasse. Both stand to reap immediate gains from accepting compromises that improve the conditions for trade between the two countries — and speed the removal of the tariffs each has imposed.

Neither is going to come away with a triumphant victory. But an imperfect settlement would leave both countries better off going forward.

— The Chicago Tribune

Republicans on the down staircase - A quid pro quo echo opinion!

Republicans descending the "down"political staircase

This echo opinion was published in the Chicago Tribune by Rex Huppke

Devoted diplomat saw quid pro quo, dishonest Trump says all was ‘perfect.’ Guess who we should trust?
HUPPKE- Trump says he never pressured Ukrainian officials to investigate Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden, or to (require) a chase down a harebrained conspiracy theory about interference in the 2016 election.

Taylor said that Trump absolutely did all of those things and, in fact, refused to release desperately needed U.S. military aid — money that had already been approved by Congress — until Ukrainian officials publicly announced an investigation into Biden and the harebrained conspiracy theory.

Former Ambassador William Taylor leaves a closed-door meeting after testifying as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Oct. 22, 2019. (Andrew Harnik / AP)

Trump is a 73-year-old real estate developer with a long history of dishonesty and a president who, according to the Washington Post’s fact-checking team, has made more than 13,000 false or misleading claims since taking office.

Taylor, on the other hand, is a 72-year-old diplomat who described his credentials, under oath, to Congress like this:

“I have dedicated my life to serving U.S. interests at home and abroad in both military and civilian roles. My background and experience are nonpartisan and I have been honored to serve under every administration, Republican and Democratic, since 1985.

“For 50 years, I have served the country, starting as a cadet at West Point, then as an infantry officer for six years, including with the 101​st​ Airborne Division in Vietnam; then at the Department of Energy; then as a member of a Senate staff; then at NATO; then with the State Department here and abroad — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, and Ukraine; and more recently, as Executive Vice President of the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace.”

That sounds good, but then the Trump administration released a statement following Taylor’s testimony describing people like him as “radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.”

Boy, I don’t know! Yup, it’s a tough call. Do you trust the Vietnam War veteran who has dedicated 50 years of his life to serving the country in military and civilian roles, or do you trust the inveterate liar who has dedicated his life to self-aggrandizement and thinks it’s fine to call an unimpeachable public servant a “radical” who is “waging war on the Constitution”?

What about the other evidence that Trump used taxpayer money and the office of the presidency to pressure a foreign country to interfere in the upcoming presidential election? (Wow, it sounds bad when you put it all together like that.)

Well, there’s the White House’s rough transcript of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president.

On one hand, people who can read words and understand what they mean can see that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asks Trump for more military aid, to which Trump says, “I would like you to do us a favor though.”

Trump then says Ukrainian officials need to investigate a wholly debunked conspiratorial tale about a mysterious computer server that will prove Ukrainians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, not the Russians. And he also wants Zelenskiy to investigate another debunked scandal involving Biden and his son, who served on the board of an energy company called Burisma.

That sure sounds like Trump is pressuring Zelenskiy to do this “favor” in order to get the military aid and a possible meeting at the White House.

On the other hand, Trump, the aforementioned extremely dishonest person, says it was a “perfect phone call” and Republican lawmakers — at least those still able to speak while their integrity is exiting their bodies — say it’s clear there was no “quid pro quo,” and even if there was, who cares?

Hmmmm. Words released by the White House itself that clearly show a president with mob-boss envy pressuring another world leader to dig up dirt on his political opponent versus that same president and his slavish supporters saying, “Nothing to see here!”

It’s tricky.

Because on the one hand you have acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney standing in front of the press corps and admitting the president made military funding contingent on a Ukrainian investigation into the mysterious nonsense server.

In an attempt to clarify that admission, a reporter asked Mulvaney: “But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo: The funding will not flow unless you’re getting an investigation into the Democratic server.”

To which Mulvaney replied: “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”

On the other hand, Mulvaney later said that he didn’t say that. So who can you really trust in this scenario? The Mulvaney who said it, or the Mulvaney who said he didn’t say it?

This is a conundrum.

I want to believe Taylor, the West Point graduate and war veteran, who on Tuesday described under oath a September phone call he had with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union: “During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskiy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskiy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance.”

But then there are people like Trump who call war veterans like Taylor “radical unelected bureaucrats,” and those people all promise nothing bad happened and say we should just get over it.

Who do you believe in this situation?

Heck if I know.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com

What Robert Mueller said - editorial echo about digital warfare

http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=ced21f84-c1b9-40dd-b725-02a6eacdb296

Russia invaded the 2016 election and will do so again unless #MoscowMitch (Senator McConnell) moves forward the legislation to protect elections.

The Chicago Tribune - Although both volumes of the Robert Mueller Report are heavily redacted, it is Volume II of the Special Council report is the blockbuster. In fact, it is the one still getting all the attention, pertaining as it does to the question of potential illegal activity by a president. But let’s not forget the Volume I findings of the Mueller report: how agents of the Russian government allegedly tried to sabotage an American presidential election.

The Russians “used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign,” special counsel Robert Mueller, citing an indictment, reminded the country in brief remarks Wednesday. “They stole private information, and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization WikiLeaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.”

Mueller, who hadn’t spoken publicly during the investigation, did so Wednesday because the special counsel’s office is closing down and he’s returning to private life — though he will remain a key figure in a national political drama. He made it clear he believes the report should speak for itself.

He reiterated that his investigation did not make a determination whether Donald Trump obstructed justice because a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. He also dropped a broad hint acknowledging the potential for House Democrats to pursue impeachment, noting “that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” So have at it, Democrats, if you so choose, knowing that, as it stands, Senate Republicans won’t convict.

But Mueller did something else that was effective: He reminded the American public as the presidential campaign season heats up that the work of his investigation was prompted by concerns of Russian meddling. And while Mueller found no collusion with Russians by members of the Trump campaign, there were — according to indictments — “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election,” he said.

At a different point in American political history, that determination might shake this country to its core: A foreign adversary uses computer hacks and bogus social media accounts to attack American democracy.

The logical follow-up: If the Russians employed this form of digital warfare, in what other ways is the United States election system vulnerable? Everyone understands the cyberthreats posed by Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and others, but the risks don’t get the scrutiny required because Trump’s over-the-top behavior dominates daily discourse.

This president isn’t inclined to adopt a sober mien, of course, much to the delight of his supporters.

With a few choice words Wednesday, Mueller reminded Americans of the danger in being sucked too deeply into Trump’s reality TV show. Other important developments get missed. According to the indictments, the Russians really did try to tamper with an election. And if Americans aren’t vigilant, the Russians (or someone else) will try again in 2020. (P.S. from Maine Writer- and the Russians and their comrades in political crime are doing so again.....)

Facing down Donald Trump's cruel and forced deportations

This echo essay was published in the History News Network and in the Chicago Tribune

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY- Amid the Donald Trump administration’s threats to deport thousands of immigrant families, state and local governments and community organizations across the country are voicing support for immigrants and refusing to cooperate with federal law. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has declared that Chicago police “will not cooperate with or facilitate any ICE enforcement actions.” The Illinois legislature, supported by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, banned private immigrant detention centers and barred local law enforcement from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Their actions echo responses to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and remind us that the structure of government in the United States allows space for resistance to unjust federal policies. In the weeks after Congress passed the law on Sept. 18, 1850, Chicagoans took measures to ensure that it would not be enforced in the city. 

More than 300 African Americans and white allies gathered in Quinn Chapel, the city’s African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, to discuss how to protect each other and what next steps to take. Black Chicagoans organized a police force to patrol the streets, looking for would-be slave catchers.

In mid-October that year, a slave catcher from Missouri came to town with an enslaved man as his assistant, distributing handbills that described three people who had escaped from slavery. Several “respectable citizens” of Chicago informed the slave catcher that he was putting his personal safety in danger; he heard he would be tarred and feathered. Meanwhile, his slave boarded a steamer bound for Canada. The slave catcher applied to a Chicago judge for protection, but the judge said there was nothing he could do. Frustrated, the Missouri man left the city.

The next day, the three people he’d been looking for came out of hiding and boarded a boat bound for points east. As a sympathetic news reporter concluded, “Our colored population are fully prepared for any emergency. While they do not propose to commit any violence unless driven to the wall, they will not suffer the new law to be executed upon their persons. In resisting this even to death, they will be sustained by the omnipotent sentiment of the city of Chicago.”

Days later, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring that the law was unconstitutional and that the city and its officers would not enforce it. The law was “cruel and unjust,” the council said, and “ought not to be respected by an intelligent community.”

The federal Fugitive Slave Law was designed to empower the U.S. government to capture runaway slaves who escaped into free states. Pro-slavery politicians in Congress demanded the law in large part because Northern state governments and local officials were increasingly refusing to help slaveholders and their agents get their slaves back.

Slaveholders in Congress often argued against expanding and empowering the federal government. In this case, however, they wanted the U.S. government to ignore the expressed wishes of the people of many free states; their law empowered federal officials to enforce the repressive statute and demanded cooperation from local officials and private citizens.

Resistance in Chicago was dramatic, but it was not unique. Across the North, Americans resisted the new law. Among the most famous examples occurred in Boston, where in 1854 abolitionists struggled to protect Anthony Burns, who had escaped from slavery in Virginia.

President Franklin Pierce, intent on enforcing the law, authorized federal officials in Boston to “incur any expense deemed necessary” to send Burns back to slavery. The U.S. attorney and his allies mobilized tremendous force, including state militia, U.S. soldiers and Marines, to overpower Bostonians’ resistance and force Burns back to slavery. It was a pivotal moment for many Northerners who hadn’t previously been involved in the anti-slavery movement but now saw the cruelty and excess of the law and resolved that there must be another way.

Boston’s black abolitionists did not forget Burns. They raised money to purchase his freedom, and Burns went on to study theology at Oberlin College and become a Baptist pastor. His life was cut short by tuberculosis. When he died in Canada in 1862, he was just 28 years old.

To be sure, the decision to resist was not to be taken lightly. 

In Boston, resistance to Burns’ rendition led to the death of an assistant to the U.S. marshal. Powerful, well-respected Americans stood up for the Fugitive Slave Act. Stephen Douglas, the nationally prominent Illinois senator, rejected the council’s resolutions. Chicagoans must not nullify federal law, he told a great crowd. “We have no right to interpose our individual opinions and scruples as excuses for violating the supreme law of the land."

Almost 170 years later, the Fugitive Slave Act is viewed as one of the most repressive federal laws in all of American history. It’s clear to us that people who managed to escape from slavery were asserting a fundamental human right — the right to personal freedom. It’s also clear that resistance was effective. It drew popular attention to the law’s brutality, helped shape popular opinion, and made enforcement more costly for the government, both financially and reputationally.

Those who today rally on the side of immigrants and who look for ways to resist policies they deem cruel and inhumane are acting in a long American tradition. We can take inspiration from the bravery of people in the past, who dared to stand up for human rights in face of a government that had taken a wrong turn and lost sight of its highest ideals.

Kate Masur is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University.

Donald Trump taxes - more lies and incriminating information

Echo opinion column published in the Arizona Daily Sun by Eric Zorn is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Trump Taxes are Over-due

"during the 2016 campaign Trump promised he would conform to 'shortly', is now seen as harassment."- Eric Zorn

You just know Donald Trump’s tax returns are bad. 

• Really bad. 
• Humiliating. 
• Mortifying. 
• Compromising. 
• Incriminating. 
• Fatal to his political fortunes.

Why else would the White House be fighting so hard against a formal demand issued April 3 by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., that the Internal Revenue Service turn over six years of Trump’s personal, business and charity-related returns for a confidential examination by members of the committee?

After all, conventionally humiliating, mortifying, compromising and seemingly incriminating behavior hasn’t eroded his support. Trump shatters norms and degrades his office with such regularity that even those who are horrified by his frightening unconventional presidency are numb to it.

He famously boasted during the 2016 campaign that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters,” so the information in his various tax returns must be worse than that.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has declared that Democrats “want (Trump’s) tax returns to destroy him,” an accusation that contains a hidden admission.

So you also just know that not even House Democrats are going to see them — at least not until after the November 2020 presidential election renders them politically moot.

Should they (we!) see them?

Yes! We all should. Citizens ought to have comprehensive financial information about our president and major-party presidential nominees. This is why showing tax returns has been a norm for some 50 years and why several recent polls have shown that roughly 2 in 3 Americans want Trump to disclose his.

And the law explicitly allows Congress to see them. 

Specifically, Section 6103 of the IRS code says that the agency “shall furnish” certain congressional committee chairs “with any return of return information” they request, so long as they review the information in “closed executive session.”

That obscure, seldom-used 1924 law doesn’t say Congress needs a subpoena or any reason whatsoever to look at usually confidential tax return information.

But here’s where it gets complicated — so complicated that the legal fight seems destined to drag on for years.

In a letter challenging the Democrats’ demand, William Consovoy, an attorney representing Trump, pointed to Watkins v. United States, a 1957 U.S. Supreme Court decision, that defined limits on congressional investigations.

“There is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren for a 6-1 majority that upheld the right of a witness before a subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee to refuse to answer questions about whether certain people he knew had been or ever were members of the Communist Party.

“The power of the Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process,” wrote Warren, noting the general need to root out corruption, inefficiency and waste. “But, broad as is this power of inquiry, it is not unlimited. There is no general authority to expose the private affairs of individuals without justification.”

Rep. Neal’s request for Trump’s taxes said the Ways and Means Committee needs them because it “is considering legislative proposals and conducting oversight related to our federal tax laws, including, but not limited to, the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces the federal tax laws against a president.”

Consovoy called shenanigans on this stated reason: “If Chairman Neal genuinely wants to review how the IRS audits presidents, why is he seeking tax returns and return information covering the four years before President Trump took office?” said Consovoy’s letter. “Why is he not requesting information about the audits of previous presidents?

“His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because (members of that party) dislike his politics and speech.”

It’s odd that attempting to require a president to conform to an expected contemporary practice, one that during the 2016 campaign he promised he would conform to “shortly,” is now seen as harassment.

But given the evident stakes here and Trump’s obsession with keeping his financial secrets, I suppose it is.

How will the lower courts and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court rule on this dispute?

All I know is that the law tends to move glacially. Briefs, arguments, opinions and appeals take time. Lots of time. Almost certainly more time than we have before voters go to the polls again to render their verdict on Donald Trump.

New Zealand evil attack and the Internet

An opinion echo editorial published in the Chicago Tribune and re-printed in the Stanford Advocate, a Connecticut newspaper.

New Zealand, from an American perspective, may seem to be at the end of the Earth (MaineWriter - yes, New Zealand is half way around the planet from the US east coast!). Yet, that perceived isolation doesn’t equal protection from evil. 

Evil can come from anywhere and descend on anyone. 

Tragically, the internet can speed messages of hate.

On Friday, March 15, one gunman, who was fueled by hate, attacked two mosques in Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island, killing several dozen people and wounding dozens more. 

He carried out the carnage on an afternoon day of prayer for Muslims. His purposeful massacre was livestreamed on Facebook. This was a heinous act of violence designed to be seen and shared. A shooter, apparently using a helmet camera, led viewers on his rampage.

The design of the crime is all too recognizable.

It is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a gunman killed 11 people in a synagogue.

It is a South Texas church, where a murderer killed 26 people.

It is a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., where the death toll was six.

It is terrorism carried out against a targeted group of victims at their most peaceful and thus vulnerable: people at prayer. One can speculate about a possible motive — in this case, white nationalist rage — but logic fails to justify such twisted acts.

New Zealand, like the United States, is a multicultural nation where Muslims are assimilated contributors to society. But like other groups, including Jewish people, Muslims are a highly visible minority, owing to their cultural identity and pattern of worship.

One sickening aspect of this crime that gained immediate attention was the bizarre livestream.

Early evidence suggested the internet also played a role in fomenting the gunman’s hateful ideology. The dark corners of cyberspace are full of such lunacy.

All kinds of ideas, good and evil, go viral through social media. Societies can’t outlaw hate. Government cannot regulate thought or ban words. In the United States, the First Amendment doesn’t take sides. Short of explicit threats, free speech must be free, which limits the ability of lawmakers to prevent eruptions of hate like the one in New Zealand.

But that doesn’t mean civilized societies are powerless. Gatekeepers such as Facebook and other social media purveyors do have a responsibility to patrol and regulate their own venues. And all of us have a responsibility to eradicate racial supremacy and other vile forms of bigotry.

Two messages come at us from faraway New Zealand. The first is the need to call out the hatred of the mass “them,” no matter who “they” may be. The second is to teach tolerance and embrace the differences that make people of all backgrounds unique and equal.

If all of us listen, those messages have a chance of squelching these senseless acts.

This editorial is from the Chicago Tribune.

Trump is now a political quadriplegic - echo opinion

Historians will mark August 21, 2018, as a turning point in American history.

Published in Informed Comment by Juan Cole

Michael Cohen made the ethical decision to admit to criminal behavior at the direction of Donald Trump

"Trump has been clever about having the people around him take the fall, a fate he likely will inflict on his own son, Don Jr., with regard to the meeting with the Russian government agent Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in summer of 2016."

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer pleaded guilty to 8 counts of criminal wrongdoing that could carry a sentence of up to 65 years.

Most significantly, he pleaded guilty to having attempted illegally to interfere in an election “in coordination with and at the direction of a federal candidate for office.”

AFP writes,“Just days before the election, Cohen paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her past with Trump.

He also was involved in buying for $150,000 the rights to the story of Playboy model Karen McDougal about her alleged affair with Trump.

Those actions, which involved shell companies and offshore entities controlled by Cohen, got him into legal trouble over banking, tax and campaign finance laws.

Cohen initially said he used his own money to pay Daniels and was not reimbursed. Trump, who first denied knowing anything about the payment, has since conceded that Cohen was paid back.”

Although Cohen was involved in a crime in preventing information from surfacing relevant to the election by basically bribing eyewitnesses, Trump’s crime was not exactly the same. If you considered getting his ex-lovers to remain quiet to be a campaign expense, he would have been within his rights to spend money on it. Trump’s crime would be in not reporting it to the Federal Election Commission.

While some are arguing that neglecting to report a couple hundred thousands of dollars in campaign expenses is a relatively minor crime, that is not really true. Former presidential candidate John Edwards was prosecuted for similar payments, to his lover Rielle Hunter, and the only reason the Federal case failed was that prosecutors couldn’t prove the money was paid to keep the public from knowing about the affair, as opposed to keeping Mrs. Edwards in the dark. But given the timing of the payment to Ms. Daniels, and given the knowledge and cooperativeness of Mr. Cohen, prosecutors who brought Trump up on charges would almost certainly prevail.

Trump is, of course, unlikely to be put on trial while in the presidency. He could, however, end up being deposed, just as Bill Clinton was, and then he would either have to admit the affair and the payoff or continue to lie about them. The latter course of action, given Cohen’s own plea, would certainly be perjury.

If Democrats can take the House in November, they could launch an investigation that would throw up further evidence for Trump law-breaking, or which might tempt him to continue lying, which could become perjury if he did it in formal circumstances.

The crux may be a matter of public opinion more than legal, in the end. Above all, the likelihood that Trump’s evangelical base can go on pretending he doesn’t have serial affairs, and can go on denying the swampy corruption at the center of this administration, is low. And without that base, Trump has almost nothing.

Trump has been clever about having the people around him take the fall, a fate he likely will inflict on his own son, Don Jr., with regard to the meeting with the Russian government agent Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in summer of 2016.

But with Cohen’s plea, for the first time someone has laid a hand on Trump himself. There are almost certainly emails or recordings to back Cohen up.

For the first time since Watergate, the president is an unindicted co-conspirator in a crime under continued investigation. Whether or not impeachment is ultimately in the offing, Trump’s cripple presidency just became a quadriplegiac and is now living on borrowed time, one way or another. And, it seems certain that when he goes out of office, he is going to prison for crimes committed in and prosecuted by New York state.

Chicago Tribune report follow up to the above:
Donald Trump will always look to someone else to who he can assign blame for his own actions.