Donald Trump and RFKjr are idiots putting lives of all Americans at risk of exposure to infectious diseases and environmental contamination

Editorial published in Le Monde

Trump's deplorable offensive against vaccines❗

Donald Trump is a sick old man.  RFKjr is a morally bankrupt embarrassment to his family.

By signing an executive order on Monday recommending, among other things, that US states reduce the number of vaccines administered in pediatric care, Donald Trump is irresponsibly fueling the poison of suspicion.

One can only hope that the executive order Donald Trump signed on Monday, August 10, meets the same fate as many others that reflect his obsessions whose impact does not extend beyond the walls of the White House's Oval Office. 

Unbelievably, his order recommends that states drastically revise their vaccination policies to reduce the number of vaccines administered to children. It also endorses separating the vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella, which, until now, have been administered as a single injection.

The president of the United States used the signing ceremony to, once again, repeat claims that the scientific consensus considers conspiracy theories: that vaccines administered to children lead them to develop autism spectrum disorders. This rumor, which Trump first seized on in 2012, has never been proven but is nevertheless championed by the anti-vaccine movement, which denounces both imaginary health risks and what it claims is the federal government infringing on individual freedoms.

It would be tempting to dismiss this executive order, which will surely face legal challenges, as an old man's whim.  Nevertheless, it fuels a culture of doubt that is already having an impact on American public opinion. As shown by the Pew Research Center, an independent institution, Republican voters have begun to diverge when it comes to the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. 

Over the past 10 years, support for the single shot has eroded, dropping from 91% to 78%. The poison of suspicion is set to spread even further with the August 10, (stupid ❗) executive order.

Trump's remarks are irresponsible. American children are set to go back to school as the country faces its worst measles outbreak in 35 years. By year's end, the surge in measles cases could cost the US its status as a country that has eliminated the disease, a title it has held since 2000. Vaccine skepticism has played a significant role in this outbreak, which started in a religious community opposed to vaccination in Texas, a Republican state.

The roadmap for Trump's second term in office, drafted by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, recommended just such a backward step on vaccination policy. 

Ever since he was appointed to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the notorious anti-vaccine activist Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. (RFKjr) has carried out sweeping purges in the ranks of health agencies responsible for immunization policy. 

Republican senators with medical expertise nonetheless supported his appointment, out of fear they might displease Trump.

This deadly ideology is not limited to vaccines. Ever since Trump returned to power, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)  – if it can still be called that – has, out of a philosophy of climate change denial, eliminated several federal measures designed to guarantee air quality. This notably includes limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel power plants, as well as regulations on fine particulate matter.

With this systematic dismantling, Trump's administration is fueling a genuine wave of scientific revisionism. The reputations of vital public health measures will only suffer from it, as will the health of all Americans.

Donald Trump cruelty campaign betrays the Latino voters that supported him now live in fear of ICE deportations

Trump was winning with Latinos. Now, his cruelty is derailing him.

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Gustavo Arellano:  

Maine Writer comment:  Donald Trump is throwing his voter base under the bus; in fact, the poor will be paying for his tax cuts to billionaires. Now, the Latino voters who were wrongminded in supporting Trump  are among those carrying their passports to help protect them from disappearing. 

The Pew Research Center is one of the most trusted polling firms in the country, especially when it comes to Latinos. 

It's recent published findings should have been a victory lap for Donald Trump and his tortuous relationship with America’s largest minority.

According to Pew, Trump won 48% of Latino voters in the 2024, presidential election — the highest percentage ever recorded by a Republican presidential nominee and a 12 percentage point improvement from his 2020 showing.

Latinos made up 10% of Trump’s coalition, up from 7% four years ago. Latino men went with a Republican, for the first time. Trump even improved his share of support among Latinas — long seen by Democratic leaders as a bulwark against their macho Trumpster relatives — by a 13-point margin, a swing even greater than that of Latino men.

These stats prove what I’ve been warning about for years: that Latinos were souring on illegal immigration — even in blue California — and tiring of a Democratic Party too focused on policies that weren’t improving their lives. This gave Trump a chance to win over Latino voters, despite his years-long bloviations against Mexico and Central American nations, because Latinos — who assimilate like any other immigrants, if not more so — were done with the Democratic status quo. Latino voters were willing to take a risk on an erratic strongman resembling those from their ancestral lands.

Pew’s findings confirm one of Trump’s most remarkable accomplishments — one so unlikely that professional Latinos long dismissed his election gains as exaggerations. Those voters could have been the winds blowing the xenophobic sails of his deportation fleet right now.

All Trump had to do was stick to his campaign promises and target the millions of immigrants who came in illegally during the Biden years. Pick off newcomers in areas of the country where Latinos remain a sizable minority and don’t have a tradition of organizing. Dare Democrats and immigrant rights activists to defend the child molesters, drug dealers and murderers Trump vowed to prioritize in his roundups. Conduct raids like a slow boil through 2026, to build on the record-breaking number of Latino GOP legislators in California and beyond.

Trump has done none of that. He instead decided to smash his immigration hammer on Los Angeles, the Latino capital of the U.S.

Instead of going after the worst of the worst, la migra has nabbed citizens and noncitizens alike. A Times analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law found that nearly 70% of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from June 1 through June 10 had no criminal convictions.

Instead of harassing newcomers with few ties to the U.S., agents are sweeping up migrants who have been here for decades. Instead of doing operations that drew little attention, as happened under Presidents Obama and Biden — and even during Trump’s first term — masked men have thrown around their power like secret police in a third-rate dictatorship while their bosses crow about it on social media. Instead of treating people with some dignity and allowing them a chance to contest their deportations, the Trump administration has stuffed them into detention facilities like tinned fish and treated the Constitution like a suggestion instead of the law of the land.

The cruelty has always been the point for Trump. But he risks making the same mistake that California Republicans made in the 1980s and 1990s: taking a political win they earned with Latinos and turning it into trash.

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the last amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally. It was signed into law by Ronald Reagan, who famously said that Latinos were Republicans who didn’t know it yet. The Great Communicator knew that the best way to bring them into the GOP was to push meat-and-potato issues while not demonizing them.

The 1986, amnesty could have been a moment for Republicans to win over Latinos during the so-called Decade of the Hispanic. Instead, California politicians began to push for xenophobic bans, including on store signs in other languages and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, arguing that these supposed invaders were destroying the Golden State. This movement culminated in the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994, which sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants and was eventually declared unconstitutional.

We all know how that worked out.

My generation of Mexican Americans — well on our way to assimilation, feeling little in common with the undocumented immigrants from southern Mexico and Central America who arrived after our parents — instead became radicalized. We waved the Mexican flag with pride, finding no need to brandish the Stars and Stripes that we kept in our hearts. We helped Democrats establish a supermajority in California and tossed Republicans into the political equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits (La Brea Tar Pits comprise an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles.)

When I covered anti-ICE protests in June outside a federal building in Santa Ana, it felt like the Proposition 187 years all over again. The Mexican tricolor flew again, this time joined by the flags of El Salvador, Guatemala and other Latin American countries. The majority of protesters were teens and young adults with no ties to the immigrant rights groups I know — they will be the next generation of activists.

Back to Pew. Another report released last month found that nearly half of Latinos are worried that someone they know might get deported. The fear is real, even among Latino Republicans, with just 31% approving of Trump’s plan to deport all undocumented immigrants, compared with 61% of white Republicans.

California Assemblymember Suzette Martinez Valladares and state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh are among those GOP skeptics. They signed a letter to Trump from California Republican legislators asking that his migra squads focus on actual bad hombres and “when possible, avoid the kinds of sweeping raids that instill fear and disrupt the workplace.”

When proud conservatives like Ochoa Bogh and Valladares, who is co-chair of the California Hispanic Legislative Caucus, are disturbed by Trump’s deportation deluge, you know the president’s blowing it with Latinos.

Yet Trump is still at it. This week, the Department of Justice announced it was suing the L.A. City Council and Mayor Karen Bass, arguing that their “sanctuary” city policy was thwarting “the will of the American people regarding deportations.”

By picking on the City of Angels, Trump is letting us set an example for everyone else — because no one gets down for immigrant rights like L.A., or creates Latino political power like we do. When mass raids pop up elsewhere, communities will be ready.

Many Latinos voted for Trump because they felt that Democrats forgot them. Now that Trump is paying attention to us, more and more of us are realizing that his intentions were never good — and carrying our passports because you just never know.

You blew it, Donald — but what else is new?
I also met folks such as Giovanni Lopez. For a good hour, the 38-year-old Santa Ana resident, wearing a white poncho depicting the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, blew a loud plastic horn as if he were Joshua trying to knock down the walls of Jericho. It was his first protest.

“I’m all for them deporting the criminals,” Lopez said during a short break. “But that’s not what they’re doing.... They’re getting regular people, and that’s not right. You gotta stand up for regular raza.”

Since then, I’ve seen my social media feeds transform into a barrio CNN, as people share videos of la migra grabbing people and onlookers unafraid to tell them off. Other reels feature customers buying out street vendors for the day so they can remain safely at home. The transformation has even hit home: My dad and brother went to a “No Kings” rally in Anaheim a few weeks ago — without telling each other, or me, beforehand.

When rancho libertarians like them are angry enough to publicly fight back, you know the president is blowing it with Latinos.Back to Pew. Another report released last month found that nearly half of Latinos are worried that someone they know might get deported. The fear is real, even among Latino Republicans, with just 31% approving of Trump’s plan to deport all undocumented immigrants, compared with 61% of white Republicans.

California Assemblymember Suzette Martinez Valladares and state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh are among those GOP skeptics. They signed a letter to Trump from California Republican legislators asking that his migra squads focus on actual bad hombres and “when possible, avoid the kinds of sweeping raids that instill fear and disrupt the workplace.”

When proud conservatives like Ochoa Bogh and Valladares, who is co-chair of the California Hispanic Legislative Caucus, are disturbed by Trump’s deportation deluge, you know the president’s blowing it with Latinos.

Yet, Donald Trump is still at it. This week, the Department of Justice announced it was suing the L.A. City Council and Mayor Karen Bass, arguing that their “sanctuary” city policy was thwarting “the will of the American people regarding deportations.”

By picking on the City of Angels, Trump is letting us set an example for everyone else — because no one gets down for immigrant rights like L.A., or creates Latino political power like we do. When mass raids pop up elsewhere, communities will be ready.

Many Latinos voted for Trump because they felt that Democrats forgot them. Now that Trump is paying attention to us, more and more of us are realizing that his intentions were never good — and carrying our passports because you just never know.

You blew it, Donald — but what else is new?

Shrinking Middle Class ~ struggling in the American economy

USAToday- by Paul Davidson

Esther Akutekha, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, has a good job as a public relations specialist that pays more than $50,000 a year.

But because of the $1,440 a month rent on her studio apartment in the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood, she never takes vacations, dines out just once a month and scrapes together dinner leftovers for lunch the next day.

“I’m frustrated with the fact that I’m not going to be able to save anything because my rent is so high,” says Akutekha, who says she’s 30ish. “I don’t even know if I can afford” to have children.

Despite an unemployment rate that has reached a 50-year low of 3.7 percent, most jobs across the U.S. don’t support a middle-class or better lifestyle, leaving many Americans struggling, according to a new study.

Sixty-two percent of jobs fall short of that middle-class standard when factoring in both wages and the cost of living in the metro area where the job is located, according to the study by Third Way, a think tank that advocates center-left ideas.

“There’s an opportunity crisis in the country,” says Jim Kessler, vice president of policy for Third Way and editor of the report. “It explains some of the economic uneasiness and, frankly, the political uneasiness” even amid the most robust U.S. economy and labor market since before the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.

A slight majority of Americans, 52 percent, do live in middle-class households, according to recent annual reports by Pew Research Center. And another 20 percent or so live in upper income households. But that’s because they’re juggling multiple jobs, for example, or relying on investments, an inheritance or other household members who may have higher-paying jobs.

The Third Way study more starkly assesses the jobs in each metro area and the opportunities they’re providing to live a good life. By those measures, the study found that Trenton, New Jersey, and Durham, North Carolina, rank highest among the nation’s 204 largest metro areas in share of middle-class or better jobs. Honolulu and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on the other hand, are near the bottom.

Some areas, such as Myrtle Beach, fall short because of a scarcity of good-paying jobs. Among the biggest cities, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco were ranked fairly low (172nd, 168th and 174th, respectively) despite thriving economies because of their high cost of living.

Other large cities such as Washington, D.C. (14th) and Boston (61st) surmounted their high-cost burdens with a large share of jobs in flourishing sectors such as government and technology. Houston (18th) is blessed with both vibrant energy and aerospace industries and relatively moderate costs.

The rankings highlight some vivid contrasts. A factory machinist in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earns an average $45,470 a year, more than enough to meet the $40,046 threshold for a middle-class job in that area.

A similar machinist makes more – $57,220 on average – in San Francisco, but that’s far short of the $82,142 minimum for a middle-class job in that area, according to the report. It costs an average $32,440 a year to rent a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, compared with $7,368 in Cedar Rapids.

Akutekha was set back in her career path because she graduated from college during the Great Recession and initially could only find jobs in industries such as fast-food and as an assistant in a law office. She got the public relations position at a nonprofit this year but, “I just feel like I’m back to square one,” she says.

She says she’s not considering moving because major cities such as New York offer far more opportunities in her field.

Nationally, the study found:

30 percent of jobs are “hardship jobs,” meaning they don’t allow a single adult to make ends meet.
32 percent are “living wage” jobs, enough to get by but not to take vacations, save for retirement or live in a moderately priced home.
23 percent are middle-class jobs, allowing for dining out, modest vacations and putting some money away for retirement.
15 percent are “professional jobs,” paving the way for a more comfortable life that includes more elaborate vacations and entertainment and a more expensive home.

A big reason for the dearth of middle-class jobs is the offshoring of millions of middle-income factory positions to countries with lower labor costs, such as China, in recent decades and the spread of lower-paying service jobs. Former manufacturing strongholds that have remade themselves fare better. Cleveland, which has become a health and biotech hub, is ranked sixth while Youngstown, Ohio, is 80th.

Here’s a look at the top five metro areas for middle-class or better jobs:

Trenton, New Jersey
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 49.9 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $50,947
Has largely lost its manufacturing base but it’s the state capitol and an education hub centered around Princeton University.

Durham-Chapel Hill, North CarolinaShare of jobs middle-class or better: 49.4 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $45,169
Part of the Research Triangle, a vibrant cluster of research universities and related industries such as biomedicine and technology.

Beaumont, Texas
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 49.2 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $37,693
Chiefly supported by the oil industry and one of the nation’s largest seaports. But the share of prime-age Americans who have jobs is relatively low.

Hartford, Connecticut
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 49.1 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $48,203
The country’s largest insurance industry hub and home to the University of Connecticut.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 48.3 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $40,046
A large center for corn processing and close to the University of Iowa.

Here are the bottom five areas for middle-class or better jobs:

Nassau and Suffolk Counties (Long Island)Share of jobs middle-class or better: 24.4 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $73,400
Long Island is an anomaly. The cost of living is high and the median household income is about $95,000, but many people who have higher-paying jobs work in Manhattan, which is part of a separate metro area.

Honolulu
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 25.3 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $66,049
Has a large tourism industry and is a center for defense jobs. But its cost of living is among the highest in the country.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 25.3 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $39,021
Has low costs but many jobs in tourism and other service industries are low-paying.

Town of Barnstable, Massachusetts
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 26.8 percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $60,052
The Cape Cod community is set back by its high housing costs.

Santa Rosa, California
Share of jobs middle-class or better: 26.8 percent percent
Middle-class salary threshold: $61,506
The area has the fifth-highest housing costs the country.

P.S. Amazon leadership:  The e-commerce giant said it would increase its minimum wage on November 1 to $15 for all U.S. full-time, part-time, seasonal and temporary employees, including temps hired by agencies. 

Depressed working wages ~ Republican workers who vote against their own best interest

An echo essay about the *tax cuts for the rich* published in the History News Network - this opinion analysis also speaks to the incongruous correlation between Republican workers who support Donald Trump and weirdly vote against their own best interest. 

Dr. Lawrence Wittner, a Professor of History emeritus at State University of New York/Albany

Recent announcement by the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, that his company would give substantial raises to its lowest-paid employees should not blind us to the fact that most American workers are not receiving big wage increases. In fact, the real wages (that is, wages adjusted for inflation) of average American workers are declining.

When justifying the Republicans’ December 2017 $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan claimed that it would result, in 2018, in wage gains for American workers ranging from $4,000 to $9,000 each.

But, in reality, nothing like that has materialized. Instead, as the U.S. Labor Department reported, between the second quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2018, the real wages of American workers actually declined. Indeed, the second quarter of 2018 was the third straight quarter―all during the Trump administration―when inflation outpaced wage growth. 

The last time wages grew substantially above inflation was in 2016, during the Obama administration. Consequently, by August 2018, as the Pew Research Center reported, the purchasing power of American workers’ wages was at the same level as in 1978.

Why did the Republican promises go unfulfilled? A key reason for stagnating wages lies in the fact that U.S. corporations used their windfall derived from the slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent under the 2017 GOP tax legislation to engage in stock buybacks (thereby raising their stock prices) and to increase dividends to share-holders. This practice produced substantial gains for big corporate investors but did nothing for workers. Although it appears that some workers (a reported 4 percent) did receive pay raises thanks to the tax cuts, it’s estimated that corporations spent 88 times more on stock buybacks than on pay increases for workers.

Another important long-term factor that has depressed workers’ wages is the dwindling membership and declining power of America’s labor unions. Once a force that created a more level playing field between workers and their bosses, unions have been badly weakened in recent years by Republican-sponsored anti-union measures, such as so-called “Right-to-Work” laws and the subversion of the National Labor Relations Board.

The Republican opposition to raising the minimum wage has also undermined wage levels. In the past, numerous Republican Presidents backed legislation that increased the minimum wage. But that position has radically changed as the Republican Party has turned sharply to the Right. Although the federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 for more than nine years, Trump and congressional Republicans have blocked legislative efforts to raise this pathetically low wage floor, contending that they saw no need for a federal minimum wage. Moreover, Republicans have used their control of state governments, as in Missouri and Iowa, to block cities and counties from raising local wage levels through legislation.

By contrast, Republican policies have done wonders for the wealthy and their corporations. By the fall of 2018, the stock market had reached new heights and the fortunes of the wealthiest Americans had grown remarkably. According to Forbes, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans averaged $7.2 billion each―a hefty increase over the previous year, when they averaged $6.7 billion. Moreover, the ten richest Americans possessed $730 billion among them―an increase in their wealth of nearly 20 percent over the past year. And the very wealthiest American, Jeff Bezos, nearly doubled his wealth during this time―to $160 billion. From the Republican standpoint, their programs had been a great success. 

Accordingly, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted in late September to make its steep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy permanent.

So let’s stop saying that Republican rule in the United States―from the White House, to the Congress, to the Supreme Court, and to the states―has been dysfunctional. It’s been very functional―not for American workers, of course, but certainly for those people Bernie Sanders has referred to as “the billionaire class.”

Gun violence is a sick example of American exceptionalism ~ echo from Wisconsin

An opinion column published in The Capital Times, in Wisconsin, written by David Zweifel, editor emeritus.

Historically, Americans, especially their politicians, like to brag about American "exceptionalism," an ideology that the United States is unique among all other countries in everything from its form of government to a belief that it has a mission to transform the rest of the world.

Some say the concept first gained its footing in the early 1800s when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America," in which he praised American liberty and individualism as exceptional, as later, in different contexts, did Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. 

Today, conservative commentators have expanded the term to suggest it's what makes America superior over other nations.

I couldn't help wonder about that several days ago as we learned of yet another school massacre, this one in Texas.

Predictably, Texas politicians quickly noted that the Texas shootings were nothing like the one that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17, a few weeks before. You can't blame guns, they repeated for the millionth time.

No, everyone from Texas' lieutenant governor to newly elected National Rifle Association president, the disgraceful Oliver North, proclaimed that the killing is the result of other factors.

It's a result of our violent culture, North told Fox News.

"Nearly all these perpetrators are male, and they're young teenagers in most cases," the retired Marine lieutenant colonel, who helped smuggle arms to Iran back in the '80s, remarked. "And they've come through a culture where violence is commonplace. All we need to do is turn on TV, get a movie. If you look at what has happened to young people, many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten."

He failed to mention that he has been the pitchman for a video game that viewers play on a particularly violent battlefield of the future.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is frequently prone to uttering weird theories, insisted that it's a result of life being devalued, whether through abortion, the breakup of families, or violent movies and music. "It's not about the guns, it's about us."

He then goes on to explain that what happened in Santa Fe, Texas, High could have been averted if there weren't so many entrances and exits in the school building. Others blamed our lack of religion.

One of my favorite columnists, Rex Huppke of the Chicago Tribune, was curious about those claims.

How come, he wondered, only we seem to have this problem, when young people in other countries face similar circumstances?

The "our culture is causing mass shootings" argument "is compelling and can sound reasonable on a visceral level." But it's not reality, he pointed out.

For instance, the five countries that spend the most money on video games are China, the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom. The violent gun deaths per 100,000 people in those counties is 0.06 for China, 3.85 for the U.S., 0.04 for Japan, 0.12 for Germany and 0.07 for the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Huppke points out, a Pew Research Center study reported that a little more than half of Americans say religion is important to their lives, but in China only 3 percent say so, in Japan just 11 percent. Only 21 percent of the people in the U.K. and Germany consider religion paramount.

As to Patrick's claim that abortion has devalued human life in the U.S., then how come that hasn't been the case in countries like the U.K. and Sweden, which have as high and higher abortion rates than the United States?

Or as New York Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote: "One reason Americans in their late teens are 82 times more likely to be murdered with guns than their peers in other advanced nations is simply that we are awash with guns, some 300 million of them."

And as we continue to blame mental illness for other massacres, does that mean that Americans somehow are more mentally ill than people in other countries?
But, fret not, our exceptionalism when it comes to guns may soon change. The Trump administration is considering a new rule to make it easier for American gunmakers to export their wares to other countries. Just what the world needs.

It's difficult to ask, but Meanwhile, Huppke points out, a Pew Research Center study reported that a little more than half of Americans say religion is important to their lives, but in China only 3 percent say so, in Japan just 11 percent. Only 21 percent of the people in the U.K. and Germany consider religion paramount.

As to Patrick's claim that abortion has devalued human life in the U.S., then how come that hasn't been the case in countries like the U.K. and Sweden, which have as high and higher abortion rates than the United States?

Or as New York Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote: "One reason Americans in their late teens are 82 times more likely to be murdered with guns than their peers in other advanced nations is simply that we are awash with guns, some 300 million of them."

And as we continue to blame mental illness for other massacres, does that mean that Americans somehow are more mentally ill than people in other countries?

But, fret not, our exceptionalism when it comes to guns may soon change. The Trump administration is considering a new rule to make it easier for American gunmakers to export their wares to other countries. Just what the world needs.

It's difficult to ask, but have we now evolved to a point where we have become exceptional in perpetrating evil?

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com and on Twitter @DaveZweifel. 

Millennial generation will inherit the earth- Mexico border wall and all

Most Americans continue to oppose U.S. border wall, doubt Mexico would pay for it- Pew Research Report

Millennial voters will inherit the Donald Trump draconian policies all of them counter intuitive to a progressive generation

Common sense should tell most thoughtful people the obvious, as reported by Pew Research. Nevertheless, the group where the impact of this draconian Donald Trump policy statement will be most opposed are by the millennial generation, that will inherit the remains of the deteriorating symbol of right wing political intolerance.  Rob Sulls reports, "As was the case throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, more Americans continue to oppose (62%) than favor (35%) building a wall along the entire U.S. border with Mexico. And while Donald Trump said the U.S. would make Mexico pay for the wall, the public is broadly skeptical: 70% think the U.S. would ultimately pay for the wall, compared with just 16% who think Mexico would pay for it." Among college educated voters, Pew Research reports that 70 percent oppose the wall. Among the age group 18-29 years old, 78 percent oppose the border wall.

In other words, it's a stupid political stunt to trick right wing voters. Donald Trump can't deliver on expensive wall construction when the next generation of millennials will not maintain the structure.  

An expensive border wall will rob millennials with revenues they could rely on to assist with educational resources and access to quality affordable health care.  It makes no sense to build an expensive border wall to create a barrier to hard working Mexican and Hispanic immigrants who want to find a better life, expecially because there is absolutely and positively no way the Trumponian "monument against humanity" can be sustained. It won't happen.