Russian-Backed Strong Man Dictator

Political Cartoon is by Lalo Alcaraz.

The Singular Evil Of Our Time

For Evil To Triumph

My Thoughts On The Passing Of Fidel Castro

(Photo of Fidel Castro in from the Los Angeles Times.)

At the age of 90, Fidel Castro has died. His brother (and current Cuban leader) Raul announced his death on Friday.

Castro was someone who invoked strong feelings around the world. The leaders of many countries praised him -- because he always stood up to the United States, opposed racial inequality (including apartheid in South Africa long before the U.S. did), and sent doctors and teachers to many countries around the world to help lift them up. The view from most politicians in the U.S. is different. They are calling him a tyrant, a despot, and many other negative things.

So, who was Fidel Castro? Was he the savior of Cuba and a shining hope for the Third World, or was he the incarnation of evil? Probably both -- and neither.

Those who hated him point to his history of repressing opponents in Cuba, even to the point of putting them in prison or putting them to death. It is undeniable that happened. It is also undeniable that many U.S. politicians who eagerly demonize Castro are themselves engaged in trying to deny equal rights and opportunities to their own citizens (including the most precious right -- the right to vote).

But that's not the whole story. He also overthrew a corrupt government that denied basic rights to the Cuban people, and provided all Cubans with food, housing, free quality medical care, and a free public education (resulting in the highest literacy rate in the Americas) -- things that many U.S. politicians are still denying (or trying to take back) from their own citizens.

The truth is that, like politicians in the U.S. and around the world, Castro was a mixture of good and bad. He did some very good things for the Cuban people (and people in other countries), and he did some very bad things.

I think President Obama gave the most reasoned reaction to Castro's death, saying:

"We know that this moment fills Cubans — in Cuba and in the United States — with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him."

Fidel Castro said of himself:

“Judgment is spoken by the eternal court of history. Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me.”

Both are right. History will be the judge of Fidel Castro -- as it is for all revolutionaries, leaders, and politicians.

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Unfortunately, Donald Trump's reaction to Castro's death shows he is much more bully than diplomat. He has threatened to undo all the progress that President Obama has made to normalize relations with Cuba unless the Cuban government gives in to his demands. This is foolish. He will learn, like all other presidents since 1959 did, that the Cuban people will not be bullied.

Post-Election Celebrants

Political Cartoon is by David Horsey in the Los Angeles Times.

Texas Politicians Are Failing To Protect "At Risk" Children

The agency created to protect children in the state of Texas, Child Protective Services, is failing in its mission. That has recently become obvious, and the scandal is being reported by media all over the state.

Why? The graphic to the left (from the Dallas Morning News) is telling. Texas has been trying to do the job on the cheap -- funding the effort at less than half of the per capita funding is for the nation as a whole. Child Protective Services does not receive adequate funding to do the job right.

There aren't enough caseworkers (and foster homes) to protect all of the children that are in need -- and those that the agency has are underpaid for the difficult job they are tasked to do (causing a huge turnover in the agency).

State government (controlled by Republicans) is trying to blame leadership at the state agency. But they should be blaming themselves. Even the best leaders cannot do the job without adequate funding, which they have been denied.

In the last couple of decades, state politicians have been concerned with only one thing -- cutting taxes for the rich. This has been done by cutting the budgets of all state agencies, including Child Protective Services (which was already underfunded).

The legislature (still controlled by Republicans) will meet again in January, and they have a decision to make. Is cutting taxes more for the rich more important than protecting the "at risk" children of Texas? Some politicians will probably try to tell us they can do both. That is a lie.

It's time for the politicians to do their primary job -- protecting the citizens of the state, especially the children. Anything less is unthinkable.

Divisive Election

Political Cartoon is by Joel Pett in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

A Message For Democratic Party Liberals

The following message is from Josh Barro in Business Insider. It may seem strange to some that the Business Insider would be giving good advice to liberal Democrats, but it is reasonable advice. Mr. Barro writes:

Until a few days ago, liberals had shown a realization that Jill Stein was a spoiler and an impediment to liberal policymaking.

Now, a bunch of you have given her more money than she raised during her whole campaignbecause you have been eager to buy into a conspiracy theory about Donald Trump benefitting from the rigging of voting machines, and Stein indulged the theory and offered to seek a recount if youwould pay for it.

Well done, everybody — good job, good effort.

In other fantasy news, electors are never going to strip Trump of the presidency over concerns about the Emoluments Clause. If they did, they would be creating a grave democratic crisis by substituting their judgment for that of the voters.

This is not an idea worth discussing. But liberals are discussing it because it makes them feel good to think maybe Trump won't have to be president.

This is the beginning of a descent into an information bubble of the sort that drove conservatives insane over the past eight years and that led them to send money to candidates like Ben Carson.

I suspect some enterprising grifters are looking at Stein's fundraising success and wondering whether scam PACs shouldn't be just for conservatives anymore. The diversion of liberal money and energy down blind alleys would not be a positive development in the era of Trump, when an effective opposition will be more necessary than ever.

I get it. It is appropriate to feel grief over Donald Trump's election — and to wish this weren't happening.

But it is happening. He won — what you have to do now is to figure out what to do about it.

So here are three places Trump opponents can productively focus their energy:

1. The Louisiana Senate race. Congressional elections aren't quite over yet, because Louisiana will elect a senator in a runoff election on December 10. This race will determine whether Republicans have 51 or 52 seats in the next US Senate. Yes, Democrats are very unlikely to win this election, but they're more likely to win it than Trump is to lose through recounts or Electoral College shenanigans, so on a relative basis it's less of a waste of liberals' energy and money. More important, if Democrats are going to beat back Republican majorities in Congress in 2018 and 2020, they will have to start campaigning and winning in places where they haven't been winning lately. Louisiana's runoff offers the first opportunity to practice.
2. Cabinet confirmations. The Republican majority in the Senate will be narrow, and Trump will need to hold nearly all Republicans together to confirm controversial picks for jobs that require confirmation. Organized efforts to lobby senators could help stop Trump from creating the Cabinet of your nightmares. But it will be best to focus your opposition on his stranger, more Trumpian picks. Liberals have good reasons to be upset about the choice of Betsy DeVos to lead the Department of Education. But she's the sort of pick you might have also seen in a Jeb Bush administration, and it's unlikely any Republicans can be persuaded to oppose her. But if Trump follows through on nominating Ben Carson to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development or Rudy Giuliani to be secretary of state ...
3. Medicare. One of Paul Ryan's longstanding goals has been to transform federal entitlement programs in a way that reduces the generosity of their benefits, including by transforming Medicare so that it would (ironically) look a lot more like the Affordable Care Act, with seniors receiving a fixed subsidy toward the purchase of a private insurance plan. Some Republicans in Congress are signaling an intention to move forward early with a transformation of Medicare. This would be very unpopular, and Trump insisted through the campaign that he didn't want to cut Medicare, in part because it would be very unpopular. This is an issue in which Democrats can apply political pressure that will divide Republicans and push them into infighting — perhaps ending with a Trump veto of a Republican Medicare reform bill. There are lots of good reasons to dislike Steve Bannon, but on this issue Democrats may be able to capitalize on Bannon's desire to punish and humiliate Ryan.

Eyes on the ball, everyone. This is important.

I would add two more things --

4. Make sure the Republicans don't repeal Obamacare. While it's not perfect, and changes need to be made, repealing it would be a serious mistake (and would deny health insurance to millions who obtained it under Obamacare).

5. Protect Social Security. The Republican solution to the future financial problems of the program is to raise the retirement age and/or cut benefits. This would be disastrous to the millions who do physical labor to earn their living, and would throw many who already barely subsist on their Social Security benefit into poverty.

American ISIS

Political Cartoon is by Bob Englehart at cagle.com.

Monster

Never Finished

Is Donald Trump Indebted To Russia For His Election ?

There is no doubt that the Russian democracy is just a sham. Russia is ruled by a strongman (a nice term for a tyrant), who controlled that government even for the short period when he was no longer the country's president.

And it is a fact that Donald Trump was aided in winning the American presidency by the government of that Russian strongman (Vladimir Putin). The Russians not only hacked the e-mails of prominent Democrats and fed that information to Trump, but also used social media platforms to post numerous fake news stories -- stories that Trump and the right-wing eagerly spread as fact.

This brings up some troubling questions for those of us that don't want a Russian-style strongman in this country -- an orange-tinted Putin. What does the Russian government expect in return for helping Trump win the election? Does Trump think he owes that Russian government a debt, and is that going to result in this country kowtowing to Russian interests? Is Trump, ignorant to the ways of government, going to be played for a fool by his new best-buddy, Vladimir Putin?

Some of you may think I'm going off the deep-end, but I don't think so. Consider the following.

From The Washington Post:

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

And from The Miami Herald:

In the scarcely two weeks since Donald Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have spoken at least twice by phone. 

Their aides have had additional contacts.

That’s more contact than Trump is known to have had with any other world leader since he defeated Clinton in the Nov. 8 election. But it is a concrete display of what many predicted would be a reversal in the standoffish relations between the two nuclear powers should Trump win election.

Russian news outlets reported Wednesday that Trump and Putin already are negotiating how Russia and the United States will act in the Middle East next year.

Putin cultivates an image as a stern-faced tough guy with a black belt in judo who rides horses bare-chested and exiles political foes. But it appears he can hardly contain his joy at Trump’s ascension to the presidency.

Putin discussed his most recent talk with Trump at a briefing in Lima, Peru, on Sunday.

“The president-elect confirmed he is willing to normalize Russian-American relations,” Putin told reporters. “I told him the same.”

Putin said he and Trump had not set a date for a personal summit, but he noted that their representatives will be meeting soon.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article116799623.html#storylink=cpy

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Political Cartoon is by Stuart Carlson at carlsontoons.com.

Donald Trump's Appointees Are As Scary As He Is

When Trump was elected by getting more than 270 electoral votes, there were some who thought his administration might not be so bad. Their reasoning was that Trump would not really be a hands-on president, and would nominate some reason people to do the actual governing. Unfortunately, Trump's first few picks are dashing those hopes.

Trump started by picking Steve Bannon to be his chief White House advisor -- an admitted member of the "alt-right" (i.e., a white supremacist). Trump says that is not True of Bannon, but Bannons own words and actions make Trump's claim a pathetic farce. Bannon is not only a white supremacist, but also a misogynist and a xenophobe -- and anyone denying that is simply ignoring the facts.

Then Trump appointed a known racist to be Attorney General (supervising the Justice Department, which Americans count on to insure government fairness). Jeff Sessions denies that he is a racist, but then almost all racists deny their racism. But years ago, when nominated for the federal court system, he was denied approval by the U.S. Senate because of his racism. And after being elected to that Senate, Sessions has consistently voted to support racism and inequality.

Now Trump has appointed billionaire Betsy Devos to be the new Secretary of Education. If possible, this pick may even be worse than that of Bannon and Sessions -- because she could destroy the hopes and dreams of millions of American students by destroying public education.

Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Devos never attended public schools, never sent her own children to a public school, never taught or worked in a public school, and has spent her life opposing public school education. She favors taking money away from public schools, and sending it to both charter and religious private schools -- which would go a long way toward killing free public education in this country.

And if that was bad enough, she has also spent millions supporting organizations that would deny equal rights and opportunities to the LGBT community. She is a true believer in the homophobic (and racist) belief that rights are not for all citizens in this country.

If these three picks are indicative of Trump's remaining picks, then the Trump administration is going to do serious damage to this country and its citizens.