Let's Fix This Country
 the war

Notes on Trump’s War

With the clock already ticking on the meager two-week ceasefire, Vice-President JD Vance is in Pakistan Saturday to begin talks with Iran. The negotiations will go nowhere, but Vance doesn’t know this. article illustration
His blustering on the tarmac shows he knows nothing of our dealings with Iran that began some 15 years ago that went on not for two weeks but four years. Ask John Kerry, who led the negotiations resulting in the nuclear agreement with Iran of 2015. But Vance assures us:

”If the Iranians are willing in good faith to work with us, I think we can make an agreement. If they’re gonna lie, if they’re gonna cheat,…then they’re not going to be happy, because what the President has showed is that we still have clear, military, diplomatic and maybe most importantly, we have extraordinary economic leverage… They’re gonna find out that the President of the United States is not one to mess around. He’s impatient. He’s impatient to make progress. He has told us to negotiate in good faith and I think that if they negotiate in good faith, we will be able to find a deal.”

Iran has the upper hand. They have no interest whatever in catering to Trump’s impatience.

where are our allies?

A reporter said to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt…

“A joint statement put out this morning [Wednesday] by some of America’s European allies, our NATO allies. They said, regarding the Strait of Hormuz, our governments will contribute to ensuring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Leavitt’s response:

”I have a direct quote from the president: ‘They were tested and they failed'. And I would add that it’s quite sad that NATO turned their backs on the American people over the course of the last six…

 the future

Tech World Says Get Rich Now, or Fuhgedaboudit!

The oligarchs are raising the drawbridge.

The panjandrums of Silicon Valley see a future, largely of their creation, that prompts this warning: If you want to get rich, you'd better be about it, because it won't be possible once AI takes over.

Having spent trillions building an archipelago of data centers across this country and beyond, they will own the technology that runs the world. They few foresee that their infinite wealth will make them a superclass well removed from the rest of us. We will get the crumbs. AI will destroy work and eliminate opportunities for us to generate money, much less get rich. Well get to what that leads to, but first a look at the here and now.

current data

The effect on jobs is already making itself known. New college graduates are having difficulty finding employment with companies deciding that AI can handle entry-level work.

In January 130,000 net jobs were created. Significantly, health care, not, say, manufacturing, accounted for more than half. The number that drew greatest attention is…

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 environment

The Climate War That Trump Is Winning

Lacking any knowledge of climate science, President Trump nevertheless persists in calling global warming a “hoax”, a “scam”, a “con job” advanced by climate scientists who are “stupid people”. Fittingly, on taking office again, he immediately set about cancelling all climate initiatives, hyping oil and gas with his infantile "drill, baby, drill" mantra, hobbling wind and solar, and slashing regulations.

On his first day he set in motion the yearlong process that removes the United States from the Paris Agreement, the treaty to combat climate change. Adopted by 195 parties at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015, the U.S. is the only country to withdraw, with the White House calling it “restoring American sovereignty” in keeping with "America First". It is just one of a long list of United Nations organizations that he simultaneously, on his own, chose to cancel by executive order that day.

Halo Mustafa Al Askari, the environmental minister of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, threatened by rising oceans caused by climate change, spoke directly:

”Tragically, the world’s [second] largest emitter of greenhouse gases has withdrawn...Mr. President, this is a shameful disregard for the rest of the world”.

the great undoing

Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is an ardent deregulator. Just weeks ago he celebrated what he called “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States”. His agency has worked to unravel the over 200-pages of peer-reviewed evidence that led to the 5-to-4 Supreme Court Massachusetts v. EPA decision in 2007 that agreed carbon dioxide is a pollutant that, under the Nixon-era Clean Air Act, must therefore be regulated as a… Read More »

 elections

Here’s How Trump Will Steal the Coming Elections

Democrats naively assume a blowout this fall. Trump will make it an obstacle course.

Donald Trump fears impeachment should Democrats take majority control of the House of Representatives this November. There are a few Republican grumbles about his presidency but nowhere enough for the Senate to then convict and remove him from office. Eight of them would have to join all the Democrats to reach the needed 67% super majority.

article illustration
Jim Vondruska, New York Times.jpg


Nevertheless, it seems that Mr. Trump is troubled by a third impeachment damaging his reputation. So, he who persistently but falsely calls elections "rigged" and ridden with "horrible corruption" is marshalling every weapon and contrivance to be the one who actually rigs elections.

To know what’s coming, here’s a round-up of the several tactics Trump is employing to minimize Democratic votes. As the election approaches, keep a link to this and watch… Read More »

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