Category: Today’s News?

Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation was shockingly hypocritical. But there may be a silver lining.

Column: Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation was shockingly hypocritical. But there may be a silver lining.

Nicholas Goldberg                             October 26, 2020
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., arrives as Republicans work during a rare weekend session to advance the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, at the Capitol in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) during a rare weekend session in October to hurry the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, (Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

 

So now it is official: The same Republican senators who in 2016 refused to consider Merrick Garland’s appointment to the Supreme Court because, with eight months to go, it was supposedly too close to the presidential election, have now confirmed Amy Coney Barrett with just eight days left before the election.

This is so unprincipled, so inconsistent and so cynical that it defies the imagination. It is the flip-flop of the century, undertaken by the Republicans for one reason: Barrett’s confirmation ensures a conservative majority on the high court for the foreseeable future.

But here is one good thing that could come of this shameful episode. With millions of people still casting their votes before Nov. 3, perhaps the Barrett confirmation will open Americans’ eyes, once and for all, and show them who they’re dealing with. Perhaps it will persuade them to reject the radical and hypocritical Senate Republicans at the polls.

Barrett’s confirmation, after all, is only one of many irresponsible moves by the Senate majority, led by the craven Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who long ago threw his lot in with President Trump. In recent years, he and his caucus have grown not just more extreme in their ideology but more unscrupulous in their tactics.

Not only did they refuse a hearing to Garland (giving that seat instead to Trump appointee Neil M. Gorsuch), but not long after, McConnell and his colleagues rammed Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination through without a comprehensive investigation of the sexual assault allegations against him.

The Senate majority also slow-walked the confirmation of lower court judges during the final years of the Obama administration — and then sped them up when Trump came into office.

The Senate majority ignored evidence, disregarded facts and refused to hear additional witnesses before acquitting Trump in a half-baked impeachment trial in February, thereby giving the imprimatur of the upper house to the president’s high crimes and misdemeanors.

Senate Republicans have refused to stand up to Trump as he politicized every part of the government from the post office to the census to the Justice Department, and even as he turned the conduct of American foreign policy to his own political ends.

And they did virtually nothing to stop further Russian interference in American elections.

Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has identified some of the factors that have driven congressional Republicans to the right over the years and encouraged their take-no-prisoners approach to politics. He cites the no-tax pledge promulgated by conservative activist Grover Norquist and the anti-Washington animus fostered by Newt Gingrich. There was the “Southern strategy” of Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater to win white votes in the Southern states.

And there’s been the slow but steady disappearance of liberal and moderate Republicans.

In 2012, Ornstein, along with Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution, called the Republican Party “ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science.” Today, Ornstein says the problem is worse. “Now it’s not a party but a cult.”

The GOP today is the anti-immigration party, the party of racial division and the party of Trump. It has squandered any reputation it may once have had for principled fiscal conservatism, presiding over costly and irresponsible tax cuts designed to win votes. It largely rejects bipartisanship, as we saw clearly during the Obama administration.

Democracy only works when rules and norms are in place. It only works when the parties compromise through a process of discussion, deliberation and voting.

Unquestionably, both political parties have made bad decisions over the years; both are susceptible to the tugs of partisanship. Democrats and Republicans alike have engaged in tit-for-tat tactics that make compromise more difficult.

For me, though, the turning point was the mistreatment of Merrick Garland. The Republicans flatly blocked an elected president from exercising his constitutional duty to name a new justice.

That was shocking enough. But now, with the Barrett confirmation, they’ve brazenly reversed their own logic, proclaiming their hypocrisy for the world to see.

That kind of disingenuous politics needs to be rejected.

Over time, the U.S. needs to rebuild a system that allows men and women of different parties, ideas and ideologies to work together in good faith to solve the serious problems facing the country.

Hubble Examines Asteroid That’s Worth More Than the Global Economy

Hubble Examines Asteroid That’s Worth More Than the Global Economy

Gabrielle Olya                           
Asteroid shutterstock_1325862941
Asteroid shutterstock_1325862941

 

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new, clear picture of the 16 Psyche asteroid — one of the most valuable asteroids we know to be in existence, Forbes reported. Some estimates place the value of the asteroid at $10,000 quadrillion. To put that in perspective, the global economy was worth about $142 trillion in 2019.

What makes the asteroid so valuable? Well, for starters, it’s huge — it’s about 140 miles wide. And it appears to be made out of pure metal, which is very rare for an asteroid.

“We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel,” Dr. Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told Forbes.

Psyche is located about 230 million miles from Earth and is one of the most massive objects in the solar system’s main asteroid belt, which orbits between Mars and Jupiter. Because it is so dense and metallic, scientists believe that Psyche is actually a “protoplanet” — the leftover core of a planet that failed to fully form. Many planets, including Earth, have a metal core, typically composed of iron and nickel. Becker believes that Psyche may have been struck by another object during its formation, destroying its mantle and crust.

Although Hubble has been able to get clear images of Psyche, only a visit to its surface will reveal what it’s really like. Fortunately, NASA is planning to do just that as part of its Discovery Program. An orbiter is set to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in August 2022, putting it on track to arrive at Psyche in January 2026. The orbiter will spend at least 21 months mapping and studying the asteroid’s unique properties. Visiting Psyche could give researchers more insights into the very, very valuable stuff planets are made of.

Amy Coney Barrett and the Second Amendment: Why her “expansive view” is utter BS

Salon

Kirk Swearingen                 October 25, 2020
Amy Coney Barrett; American Constitution;
Amy Coney Barrett; American Constitution;

Amy Coney Barrett | Constitution of the United States of America Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images

“Pro-life” Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who will almost certainly be seated on the Supreme Court this week, seems to have no problem putting guns in the hands of individual Americans who want to buy them  —  every Tom, Dick and Kyle. She reportedly takes “an expansive view” of the Second Amendment, writing in her only ruling on gun regulation that it should not be considered “a second-class amendment.”

A number of groups advocating gun control and gun safety, including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, and the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, expressed their deep concerns with Barrett’s nomination in a recent letter sent to leading members of Congress.

The 2008 Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller expanded the meaning of the Second Amendment far beyond militias  —  regulated or not. And that 5-4 majority opinion was written by Barrett’s mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia.

It might be useful to look back on that ruling to take another look at the “textualist” approach to reading statutes and the “originalist” approach to reading constitutional questions, and to learn what one might then expect of a Justice Barrett.

There are a number of things one might find admirable about Barrett. She was a seriously engaged student at all levels of her education, taking an English degree at Rhodes College and graduating at the top of her law school class at Notre Dame. She’s a mother (of seven) who manages to work in a demanding career. At her gym, she’s apparently known for her commitment to doing pull-ups, for gosh sakes.

Barrett is also a self-proclaimed “textualist” or “originalist” when she looks at statutes or the Constitution. In rendering decisions as a judge, she says she believes in adhering to precedent but also in closely reading the text of an enacted statute or the Constitution, seeking the reasonable meaning of that text, in the context of what most people at the time it was written would consider it to be.

In speaking to Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, during the confirmation hearings, Barrett put it this way: “My own approach to it would be textualism. The intent of a statute is best expressed through the words  —  so, looking at what the words would communicate to a skilled user of the language.”

Barrett works both as a textualist and as a particular kind of “originalist,” one who focuses on the original meaning, not the intent, of the founders, taking the same approach most recently popularized by Scalia, for whom she clerked in 1998-1999. (Apparently, the “intent” approach had been discredited in the 1990s, so conservative judges moved on to a seemingly paradoxical “new originalist” approach of looking for original meaning.)

To understand how this can work, a look at the language of the Second Amendment may be instructive, followed by a brief discussion of the Heller decision resulting from Scalia’s divining of the text of the framers, as ratified by Congress as part of the Bill of Rights in 1789.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As we all know, that’s it  —  27 words with some oddly placed commas and capitalized terms. (Odd for us, but not for that era; look, you are newly on your way to being a new originalist!)

Given that Barrett has a bachelor’s in English, from Rhodes College in Memphis, it seems fair to turn to a well-regarded reference here. According to “Fowler’s Modern English Usage,” there should be, in this case, no comma after “Militia” because what we see in the amendment is an instance of something called “absolute construction.” Fowler defines it this way:

Defined by the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] as ‘standing out of the usual grammatical relation or syntactical construction with other words’, it consists in English of a noun or pronoun that is not the subject or object of any verb or the object of any preposition but is attached to a participle or an infinitive, e.g., The play being over, we went home./Let us toss for it, loser to pay.

That might be a bit dizzying, but given that Barrett was an English literature major and is a textualist, her imperative to avoid misinterpretation here would seem like a piece of cake.

To me (and to many others, including a number of Supreme Court justices), the obvious sense here is “In that a well-regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The latter thing, the right, is contingent on the former thing, the well-regulated militia and the need for such.

The original Congress that passed the Bill of Rights might have chosen to turn it around, as in “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed because a well-regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State” (and it was in that order in an original draft by Madison), but they chose to emphasize the “well-regulated Militia being necessary” clause, which in effect makes it a conditional clause  — if this is true, then this other thing follows.

But a textualist and/or originalist looks not at what the text reasonably means to people today but to the people at the time the provision or statute was enacted. The argument is that in doing so, they are honoring the enacted law, as explained in a 2019 article on The Federalist Society blog:

… the bottom-line principle of textualism is that the enacted text of a law is to be given supreme deference as the ultimate repository of the law’s purpose. Because the object of textualist interpretation is enacted text, many mainstream textualists reject the use of legislative history  —  history that has never been enacted into law.

Hold that thought, because when the text is considered to be not as clear as it needs to be, the textualist then is able to hunt for more information  —  in history, traditions and, if things are still murky, in more esoteric areas, say, sea shanties. (Okay, likely not sea shanties, unless the statute has to do with, say, whaling or piracy. Then maybe so.)

Speaking of militias, the Militia Act of 1903, also known (somewhat hilariously) as the Dick Act, for Ohio congressman Charles Dick, was passed after militia groups sent by states proved untrained and disorderly and generally lacking standards (e.g., different uniforms) during the Spanish-American War. Unfortunately, the act mentioned the creation of both an “organized” and an “unorganized” militia, and thereby confused the issue.

The organized militia became the National Guard; what was meant by the “unorganized militia” was simply a reserve of all men 17 to 45 years of age who might be called into service, if needed. It certainly did not mean a ragtag militia that gathers together for regular gun-fondling sessions or, just for instance, to concoct a plot to kidnap, “try” and execute a duly elected state governor. (You know, for tyranny.)

The “Dick Act” works on a few levels, then  —  it’s all male, and it’s a bit confused, like many men (I include myself). Although that particular Dick served long ago, it seems we still have a slew of Dicks in Congress purposely drawing up vaguely worded legislation, the very bane of a textualist.

Muscle-bound ponytailed oldsters riding around on choppers and those odd insect-like three-wheeled motorbikes as “militia” members often claim that the Dick Act gives them an absolute right to amass a personal armory as part of an unorganized militia. But, again, that is not what was meant.

By the way, The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimates there are at least 300 private militia groups in the United States, nearly all of them far-right so-called patriot groups.

According to the SPLC blog Hatewatch, far-right militia member Ryan Balch, who was photographed walking with Kyle Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August, said they were not part of a well-regulated militia:

“There was not a whole lot of communication [that night], and that was even within the protesters themselves,” Balch told Hatewatch. Asked what he would need to call a militia well-regulated, Balch said, “There would have to be some organization.”

That last bit is worth repeating: “There would have to be some organization.”

The Scalia-led Heller decision took gun ownership beyond even the contested context of a well-regulated militia, extending it to personal ownership of handguns in defending “hearth and home.” Further, it dispensed with the part of the law in Washington, D.C., that called for guns in the home to be locked up or otherwise secured when not in use.

Soon after Heller, states began to pass laws allowing citizens to carry guns nearly anywhere they desired. Walmart? City Hall? Church? Sure, why not?

But despite Scalia’s freewheeling textualist reading of the Second Amendment, ownership outside the context of service in that annoyingly modified militia was never mentioned in the Constitution or in Madison’s drafts preparing for the convention. According to author Michael Waldman,

Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise.

It’s also worth repeating that last line: In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise.

As you will see, Scalia’s originalist reading somehow dispensed with the idea of a militia. The prefatory clause (“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary…”) was reduced to a mere example of why Americans need to keep and bear arms:

The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Once you take that leap, well, you can go anywhere you like. Scalia was likely humming the “Theme of the Fast Carriers” from “Victory at Sea” when he got over that hump. The justice looked to history and tradition, to philosophy and English law and “natural law” in justifying his decision to divorce the meaning of the right from the idea of a militia. He invokes an “ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms” and notes that most state constitutions allowed gun ownership. All of that may be true, but none of it can be found in the enacted text.

Scalia might as well have just gone ahead and adopted the NRA’s concept of gun ownership as a “God-given right.”

Speaking of that, a 2019 paper on the NRA and religious nationalism published in Nature notes:

Over the last 40 years, the NRA has deliberately pivoted to protecting the Second Amendment, not as something merely important but as something sacred to be defended at all costs from the profane hands of the government. The NRA has done this by deliberately using religious imagery, language, and icons such as Charlton Heston, that map onto the largely Protestant religious beliefs and religious nationalism tracing back to the founding of the nation.

Judge Barrett piously promises that she will not make law from the bench, that she will mostly be guided by precedent. But if textualism/originalism got us to a unprecedented precedent that has resulted in people brandishing guns in schools, churches and city halls, how much stock should we reasonably put into this technique? Whose right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness obtains here  —  the gun fetishist or the family of the murdered child? The family of the teenager whose suicide was made perfectly efficient by the presence of a handgun in the home?

The late Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Nixon appointee, famously wrote that the NRA had promulgated fraud about the meaning of the Second Amendment:

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees a “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” However, the meaning of this clause cannot be understood apart from the purpose, the setting, and the objectives of the draftsmen. At the time of the Bill of Rights, people were apprehensive about the new national government presented to them, and this helps explain the language and purpose of the Second Amendment. It guarantees, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The need for a State militia was the predicate of the “right” guarantee, so as to protect the security of the State. Today, of course, the State militia serves a different purpose. A huge national defense establishment has assumed the role of the militia of 200 years ago.

In an 2018 opinion piece published in response to the student-led nationwide March for Our Lives, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the original fears of a national standing army creating problems for states was no longer a legitimate concern. Stevens called the Second Amendment “a relic of the 18th century” and advocated that it should be repealed.

Even the NRA itself has tacitly admitted what the opening clause means for the rest of the statement. According to Waldman, who writes of the takeover of NRA leadership by gun-rights radicals in 1977, the NRA dropped that portion of the Second Amendment on their headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, posting only the latter part in large letters in the lobby, as if there were no contingency: … the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Nice trick, that, just removing the offending clause  —  as Scalia, in essence, did as well. The Second Amendment’s “well regulated” may be the most willfully ignored modifier in history. The Heller decision also ensured that no one had to store guns at home with safety in mind.

In his book “American Dialogue: The Founders and Us,” historian Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize winner, criticized Scalia’s Heller decision as a kind of parlor trick used to push a political agenda:

If Heller reads like a prolonged exercise in legalistic legerdemain … that is because Scalia’s preordained outcome forced him to perform three challenging tasks: to show that the words of the Second Amendment do not mean what they say; to ignore the historical conditions his originalist doctrine purportedly required him to emphasize; and to obscure the radical implications of rejecting completely the accumulated wisdom of his predecessors on the court.

On a larger level, a number of the founders  — James  Madison and Thomas Jefferson in particular  —  saw the Constitution as a living document. Jefferson wrote that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.” In a review of Ellis’ book for the New York Times, Jeff Shesol wrote:

It would never have occurred to Madison … that the Constitution should dictate every answer or foreclose all debate, no matter what is said at meetings of the Federalist Society or in Supreme Court confirmation hearings. As Ellis argues, the prevailing conservative doctrine of “originalism” is a pose that rests on a fiction: the idea that there is a “single source of constitutional truth back there at the founding,” easily discovered by any judge who cares to see it.

Another American historian, Heather Cox Richardson, covering the confirmation hearings for her “Letters from an American” newsletter, addressed Barrett and the real purpose of originalism, which is to serve “a radical capitalism”:

The originalism of scholars like Barrett is an answer to the judges who, in the years after World War Two, interpreted the law to make American democracy live up to its principles, making all Americans equal before the law. With the New Deal in the 1930s, the Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt had set out to level the economic playing field between the wealthy and ordinary Americans. They regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure…. Their desire to roll back the changes of the modern era serves traditional concepts of society and evangelical religion, of course, but it also serves a radical capitalism. If the government is as limited as they say, it cannot protect the rights of minorities or women. But it also cannot regulate business. It cannot provide a social safety net, or promote infrastructure, things that cost tax dollars and, in the case of infrastructure, take lucrative opportunities from private businesses. In short, under the theory of originalism, the government cannot do anything to rein in corporations or the very wealthy.

If I were to try to play “textualist” myself, I would find it notable that the framers capitalized “Militia” in the amendment. Though they were also a bit “cap-happy” in those days, the fact that they capitalized the word is an intriguing clue as to what they intended. To me, that “well regulated Militia” reads as one entity  —  something perhaps in existence in all 13 states, but to be organized into a whole in defense of one nation  —  not the innumerable little “militias,” heavily armed and running amok in their QAnon T-shirts and mail-order camouflage, that we despairingly see today.

Judge Barrett is smarter than I am. I have no doubt she can do more pull-ups, both physically and linguistically. But I’ll stand on the side of a multitude of other very intelligent people who read the right to bear arms as constituting a right only when, and if, it is done as part of a well-regulated militia. And we have that  — it’s called  the National Guard. You want to play with people-killing weapons? Join the Guard. Otherwise, grab a rifle or shotgun and go hunting, if that’s your thing.

If you read anything else into that while claiming to be an originalist, you are perpetrating a very solemn-sounding con on the American public and likely should wear a tricorn hat when out in publick. You know, so we can see you coming.

Conservatives naturally want to keep the founders alive and the Constitution dead. Unless it serves a purpose for them; then, with originalism, they perform a kind of séance to bring the document back to a sort of sham life  —  and if the words themselves are a burden, they blithely look to English common law, philosophy and elsewhere for guidance.

I myself have cherry-picked some quotes for this piece. It’s human nature  —  and I’m trying to keep this article from becoming so long that no one reads it. We may all be textualists now, as Justice Elena Kagan put it in her 2015 Scalia Lecture at Harvard (to the glee of the Federalist Society and some of her conservative colleagues), but we are also human  —  sometimes we see what we want to see. Or as Paul Simon put it, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

What will Justice Barrett find in the words of the founders to help her rule on challenges to the Affordable Care Act, or Medicare, or the environmental regulations so critical to addressing climate change?

The way I read it, if Barrett were to be faithful in her reading of the amendment, she would stand less on the recent precedents funded by the Cato Institute and the NRA  —  precedents that have caused unending misery and grief and have made our society much less safe  —  and actually begin to curtail the so-called rights of gun owners.

In that last sentence, Barrett and other textualists might note that I purposively use the subjunctive. It is a mood that is already disappearing from the language, but in my time it was often used for contrary-to-fact statements.

An American Scoreboard: trump v. Obama / Biden !

An American Scoreboard: trump v. Obama / Biden !

John Hanno, tarbabys.com        October 17, 2020

I’m glad to say the great American trump experiment in Kleptocracy / Putinesque Autocracy  is almost over. It’s not hard to believe many of us saw this coming; we just thought it would happen much sooner. The last 4 years seem like 4 decades. I and others wrote even before trump took office, that he would destroy the Grand Old Party. “Mission accomplished”!

A few voices within the old party tried to speak up at times but were drowned out by trump cult sycophant’s in congress and by far right media.

Some in the old GOP, the never trumpers, the true Republicans, the true conservatives, never waivered; they refused to bend and only spoke louder when the deprivation and calamities grew. Thank you to the Lincoln Project and others for remembering to honor the Constitution and our Democratic principles. Are there enough remnants left to rebuild a viable conservative party?

Now we’re beginning to hear the suddenly woke, trump cult party members in congress, express their indignation; sorry, much too late.

The coming bloodbath on November 3rd will reward these cowards in congress, and especially in the Senate, with a monumental ass-wuppin. Thank-you suburban women and women of color.

I always take the time at Thanksgiving to look back on the previous year and express gratitude for the things I’m truly grateful for. I’ll do that again in November after the 2020 election, because I believe the list will be much greater and more rewarding.

But I thought it would be helpful to post my Thanksgiving musings from 2016, 4 years ago and just after a highly qualified Hillary was cheated out of her rightful presidency by Vlad Putin, republi-con state operatives bent on voter suppression, mistakes in the DOJ, and a narcissistic, self serving reality show con man and liar extraordinaire.

We can only dream of how the last 4 years would have turned out if Hillary Rodham Clinton would have been in the White House. We know the covid crisis would have been much less economically consequential and deadly.

The choice on November 3rd should be very simple; 4 more years of trumpism, AKA widespread death and destruction, or a return to normalcy and to the battered legacy of the Barack Obama and Joe Biden style of competent, honest and ethical leadership.

8 years of an Obama-Biden 'bromance,' in photos | National Politics | gazettetimes.com

The last 4 years of trump cult MAGA “accomplishments” are an embarrassment to our nation and our Democratic history. The only legislation of any consequence is the one single bill passed to give the super-rich, corporations and the powerful and connected even more than they need or deserve. And of course all the destructive executive orders trump “sharpied” for the benefits of his rich donors.

No level of horror or criminality was left unturned. Our Constitution, our Democratic institutions, our alliances, our environment, our national treasures, our civil peace and harmony, and America’s reputation around the world, suffered daily bashings and Tweet-storms. And thanks to Moscow Mitch and barr, our courts and the Department of Justice will have to be reconstituted.

For those few still undecided (really ?) about who to vote for, please read my 2016 post, the 2020 Democratic Platform of how Joe, Kamala and the Democratic Congress plan to govern and “build back better;” and also read the Republican platform (oh yea, they were too embarrassed to publish it because none of it is favored by the American voters).

John Hanno, tarbabys.com

Thanksgiving 2016

November 24, 2016, John Hanno

Image

On Thanksgiving 2008, exactly eight years ago, I had an article published in a Chicago newspaper, where I described all the things I was thankful for. Although the war in Iraq was finally winding down, ours and most of the worlds economies were imploding, thanks to the risky and criminal financial schemes of the world’s banking giants. We were losing 800,000 jobs a month and markets were in free fall. America had just chosen Democrat Senator Barack Obama to be it’s next president and savior; and I truly believed he and Michelle understood why I was thankful for the 35 things listed in my article.

I was thankful the eight years of the Bush Administration were almost over and we didn’t elect John McCain because the world could not have survived another Republican term like that. I was thankful the world was welcoming President Obama with open arms and a deep sigh of relief because it showed they believed America could still lead us from despair. I was thankful Barack Obama realized we all had to work together to solve the enormous problems because being divided was what got us into the mess in the first place. I appreciated the important things; family, friends and community because we had to depend on each other. I was thankful and hopeful that 60 years from then, people would be glad they were born in 2009, because it was the beginning of another period of great hope and change, and not because they were sorry to have been born into another great depression.

Some of that hope was quickly dashed when the Republican leaders in Congress, led by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, met on the eve of President Obama’s inauguration, to hatch a plan to obstruct the President on everything he tried to do, just to make him a one term president. They didn’t care about the consequences to Americans reeling from an economy driven off a cliff by, too big to fail banks and neocon ideologue’s in the Bush Administration.

Every time the President held out a hand, the Republicans slapped it away. They refused to allow him to succeed at anything. Compromise to them meant total capitulation. But what they really accomplished was to make America even more polarized, and it showed during this election. Donald Trump took advantage of and widened that divide to Grand Canyon proportions.

As the votes continue to be counted, Hillary has received more than 2 million more votes than Donald Trump. The 64.5 million folks who voted for Hillary, the media and pollsters, most Republicans and even the Trump campaign, still can’t believe she lost. Computer experts have found evidence that the results in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin may have been manipulated or hacked; possibly by the Russians, who favored Trump. And if these shenanigans with electronic ballots are proved valid, Hillary’s supporters might yet be vindicated. The Jill Stein campaign has collected millions of dollars from concerned Americans, who like me, can’t believe America is still not able to guarantee a free and fair national election.

The OpenSecrets.org Center for Responsive Politics reports that the cost of this 2 year long election is approaching 7 billion dollars, thanks to Citizens United and dark money. Couple that with Republican legislatures throughout the country passing bills aimed at voter suppression, gerrymandering, a reality candidate who believes lying and deception are invaluable traits, debates where discussing critical issues are put on the back burners, a media more concerned with profits than truth in journalism, campaign hacking by the Russians, and the latest peril of Russian propaganda spreading fake news stories, is it a wonder that 53% of America’s eligible voters didn’t bother to vote.

Some of the 62.5 million folks who voted for Mr. Trump believe he will govern much different than he campaigned; that all the nativist, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, anti immigrant and violent dialog and conduct was just chalked up as campaign talk. But half of those who voted for Trump, who Hillary named the “Deplorables,” are in sympathy with the alt right tea party and obstructionist McConnell. They want to burn down the government. They want to “Make America Great Again,” which really means they want to take America back to the dark ages, when America was primarily male controlled,  white and Christian, before workers rights and women’s rights and civil rights for our black and brown brothers and sisters. Before regulations on banks and corporations and protections for workers and the environment.

But so far, based on the people he’s chosen for his cabinet, it’s clear he will govern exactly like he campaigned. He told his supporters that he knows, and would choose, the best and the brightest people for his cabinet. Then he turns around and picks rich, alt right ideologues; Rudolf Giuliani, who most people think has gone off the deep end, Steve Bannon, alt right white supremacist sympathizer, Mike Flynn for National Security Advisor, who has endorsed the use of torture and other war crimes that violate the Geneva Convention and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, who worked hard to gut the Voting Rights act and suppress minority voting. Fellow Republicans denied Sessions a federal judgeship because of his racist track record. Trump also nominated Koch Brothers aligned Billionaire charter school and voucher advocate and $9.5 million Trump campaign contributor Betsy DeVos, as his Secretary of Education, someone who American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten describes as “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee put forward since President Carter created a Cabinet-level Department of Education.” Weingarten said, “In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America.” This coming on top of the 31 mostly red states that have already cut funding to public schools.

During the election, Mr. Trump told his supporters he would not touch Social Security or Medicare, two of the most successful government programs in our history. But the Republican House of Representatives, led by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, has the privatizing of those programs at the top of their to do list.

Trump repeatedly told supporters that he would repeal Obama-care (Affordable Care Act) on his first day in office but he’s already backpedaling on that promise. He might have discovered that the popular parts of the ACA, which he also favors, the preexisting conditions part and the ability to keep children on their parents policy thru age 26, must be paid for, by mandating that everyone sign up or pay a penalty. It’s mind-boggling to me that many of the folks who signed up for Obama-care, some who never before had medical insurance, voted for Trump. Thanks to Democratic Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, more than 60% of Kentuckians, most of them poor, had signed up for subsidized Obama-care. But they not only elected a new Republican governor who favors ending the ACA, but more than 70% of them voted for Mr. Trump in this election. And with Kentucky’s 2 Republican Senators and full cadre or Republican Congress persons, I’m sure the Republican Congress, who already tried to repeal the ACA more than 60 times, will finally succeed without President Obama to veto them. I believe some of the poorest of the poor, those left behind by the new economy, jumped on the Trump train because they were desperate for any type of change.

Mr. Trump said many times during the election, that if elected, he would build a wall on the border with Mexico and make them pay for it, ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., send 11 million illegal immigrants back to Mexico, cancel the nuclear peace treaty with Iran, cancel all of President Obama’s executive orders, bring all the jobs back from China, keep others from off shoring, bring back the coal industry, drop out of the Paris agreement, exit the TPP, renegotiate NAFTA and the China PNTR agreement, end the carried interest exemption, drain the Washington swamp of lobbyists, throw crooked Hillary in jail, destroy ISIS because he knows more than the generals, cut taxes for individuals and corporations, rebuild the depleted military and a whole list of other things. And that’s just in the first 100 days. I hope those who voted for him don’t hold their breaths waiting for most things on this list. It should soon be obvious that Donald Trump was feeding his supporters a monumental line of bull dung. And how these poor souls will react, when they wake up from their Kool-aid induced stupor, is anyone’s guess.

I suspect Mr. Trump will quickly reveal himself as a traditional billionaire zealot who champions, and will again try to implement, the neocons discredited trickle down economics. He despises paying any taxes even though the rich and corporations benefit from them more than anyone, so he will again place cutting taxes above all else, even though it will surely blow up the deficit. He will fall in line with fossil fuel interests and join with his Republican Congress to gut environmental regulations, and to support drill baby drill and heavy investment in pipeline infrastructure; and of course at the same time, they will dial back investments and subsidies for alternative energies. He will fully support charter schools and school vouchers because he simply hates free public education. He will go along with the Republican Congress to attack middle class entitlement and social safety net programs, while at the same time passing out favors to crony capitalists, fossil fuel companies and the prison and military industrial complexes. He will hire a long list of other billionaires, who like himself, have little regard for 99% of the rest of America.

There are some things the Democrats would be willing to work with Mr. Trump on, like an infrastructure bill, modifying trade agreements to make them fairer for America and the American worker and real tax reform that includes ending the carried interest tax dodge. But if the Republican juggernaut resumes efforts to steamroll America’s middle class, the poor and the environment, the Democrats will have to use every tool, including the Republican’s favorite filibuster, to minimize the damages.

America is starkly divided; there’s a pitched battle for America’s Democratic ethos:

Between those who believe a rising tide lifts all boats and that all of us should share in the profits and benefits of a free society and economy….. and those who believe in a plutocratic, corporatist, limited government with lax regulations, low or limited taxes to support our commons and consequently, diminished worker and middle class rights.

Between those who believe our diversity makes for a stronger America and a better future …..and those who long for a lily white, male dominated, Christian past.

Between those who embrace science, innovation and a green future based on sustainable alternative energy….. and those steeped and mired in fossil fuel’s dirty and unsustainable past.

In spite of the Republican’s unrelenting obstruction, the Obama Administration still accomplished a lot, primarily during the first 2 years, when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. I think history will regard him as one of our best presidents.

Joe Biden, Barack Obama had joint graduation party for girls in family - Business Insider

With the help of the admittedly weak stimulus after the economic crash, they were able to apply a tourniquet to the bleeding economy. In spite of staunch opposition from the Republicans in Congress, they bailed out the auto industry, which has increase production each year since 2009 and reached a new record of 17.5 million last year. I wrote the president a letter in early 2009 advocating for the auto bailout and also saying I thought the three most important issues were Jobs, Jobs and living wage Jobs. But he concentrated on and expended a lot of capital and good will on the Affordable Care Act. I guessed that when he sat down with the corporate executives after the crash, he asked them about creating more jobs at home. I’m sure they told him the number one reason for exporting jobs was the escalating, enormous and unpredictable cost of health care. For auto manufacturing, that means between $2,300 and $2,700 per vehicle.

So the administration did what 5 presidents couldn’t do; they committed to finally providing healthcare for 40 million Americans, which caused more than 20,000 deaths a year simply because folks didn’t have insurance. They also slowed the double digit escalating health care costs. They not only had to tackle the number one cause of America’s long term fiscal problems but needed to level the playing field for companies that must compete with countries with much lower wages and much lower health care costs. It wasn’t pretty but it’s a start. America is finally on the path to universal health care. And on the path to healing and rebuilding the finances of the families where medical costs contributed to 65% of all personal bankruptcies.

As part of the ACA, the Obama Administration also took the banks out of the Federal Student Loan Program and expanded Pell Grants. Since 2010, students now get their loans directly from the federal government instead of from subsidized banks. This will save the Treasury almost $70 billion dollars over 10 years. And $36 billion of that will go into expanding Pell Grants for low income families. They also cracked down on predatory for profit colleges.

With the help of Michele Obama, they passed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, giving $4.5 billion for higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. It doubled the amounts of fruits and vegetables and whole grains in foods served to school children.

They passed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.

They repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

They helped make same sex marriage, the law of the land.

I believe the Obama Administration has done more for Veterans than any since Truman’s and Eisenhower’s. They increased the budget for the Veterans Administration by 16 percent in 2010 and 10 percent in 2011, passed a new G.I. Bill that provided $78 billion dollars in tuition assistance and gave tax credits to businesses who hire Vets.

And they still created more than 15 million jobs, including the biggest (800,000) growth in manufacturing jobs since the 1990’s. Unfortunately many of those are not living wage jobs. They’ve created an average of almost 200,000 jobs for 29 straight months between 2010 and 2016 and the unemployment rate dropped from more than 10% to 4.9%.

Medium household income has gone up $1,140 or 2 %.

The buying power of the average workers weekly paycheck is up 4.2%

Median sales prices of existing single family homes are up 23%

The murder rate is down 5%, despite an increase in 2015.

The number of unauthorized immigrants is also down.

Our national deficit has been cut by three-quarters, from the 2009 bail-out deficit of $1.4 trillion to the $439 billion 2015 deficit.

The stock markets have soared. The S&P 500 was up 220% over 2009. Nasdaq is up more than 320% and the Dow is up almost 200%, rising from about 8,000 after the crash to a new record of more than 19,000 now.

The Federal Reserve also played a big role in digging us out of the financial crisis and deep recession, by keeping interests low, which also helped the housing sector recover.

They passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010 to regulate the practices that bank engaged in that crashed the economy and caused the Great Recession. Dodd-Frank improved the regulation of eight areas that led to the financial crisis. The “Volcker Rule” banned banks from being involved in hedge funds. The Financial Stability and Oversight Council regulated hedge funds and banks that became too big to fail. Dodd-Frank also directed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to regulate the riskiest derivatives, like the credit default swaps and commodities future that were the primary causes of the collapse.

They also created the Consumer Financial protection Bureau, which has returned billions of dollars back to victimized consumers and improved regulation of credit cards and mortgages.

They also passed the Credit Card Accountability Act in 2009.

And the first bill they passed in 2009 was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Play Act, which gave women who are paid less that men for the same work the ability to sue their employers after they finally discover the discrimination.

They passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act in 2011, which increased the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion dollars, so they can expand food inspections, issue direct food recalls and increase safety practices of countries importing products into America.

They Passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. Which mandated that tobacco manufacturers disclose all ingredients and obtain FDA approval for any new tobacco product.

They passed the 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) to cover health care for an additional 4 million children, paid for by a tax on tobacco products.

In 2009, they got the EPA to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant and allowing them to regulate its production.

In 2009, they eliminated the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

They engineered Federal Communications approval to transfer $8 billion in subsidies away from landlines and toward broadband Internet for lower-income rural families.

In 2009, they passed the Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion funding for the legal settlement for black and Native American farmers who the government denied loans and natural resource royalties to in the past.

They passed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act in 2009, which designated more than 2 million acres of wilderness, created historic trails and protected more than 1,000 miles of rivers.

They invested $90 billion dollars in research for smart electric grids, energy efficiency, electric autos, renewable electric generation, clean coal and bio-fuels.

They issued an executive order in 2009 requiring all federal agencies to reduce their environmental impact. This includes 30% reduction in fleet gasoline use, 26% increase in water efficiency and sustainability requirements for all federal contracts.

They passed in 2011, over staunch objections from fossil fuel pandering Republicans, new fuel efficiency standards that will double fuel economy for cars, and for the first time trucks by 2025. Some auto manufacturers have already surpassed those standards.

Wind and solar power have quadrupled; coal production has dropped 36% and carbon emissions have gone down 12%.

Clean energy production (300 million megawatt hours) from solar, wind and biomass has doubled since (150 million megawatt hours) in 2009.

The Administration engineered an agreement with British Petroleum to set up a $20 billion dollar fund to quickly compensate victims of the Deep-water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after pointing out that it took almost 2 decades for the victims of the Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill to receive $1.3 billion.

President Obama led global efforts for the International Climate Agreement in Paris in December 2015. Countries agreed to reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon trading and to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.

He also enacted the Clean Power Plan in 2015. It reduces carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. This is accomplished by reduction goals for the nations power plants. Power plants will create 30% more renewable energy generation by 2030.

They reduced military spending in 2011 by $450 billion dollars.

They stopped the $1 billion per launch Space Shuttle program boondoggle and the even more bloated Bush era Constellation program in 2011.

In 2009 they ended the Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin engine, fighter aircraft program, which cost $358 million dollars for each plane. The plane never flew a single combat mission, even though they already had 187 planes built. Eliminating the program saved $4 billion.

They also created Recovery.gov, an independent board of inspectors general directed to look for fraud and abuse in the stimulus program. It provided transparent information on every contract funded by the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

They ended the war in Iraq and wound down the war in Afghanistan.

They captured and killed Osama bin laden.

They joined with European and Arab governments to topple Moammar Gaddafi and helped unseat Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

After rescinding Bush Administration torture policies, President Obama began rebuilding the world’s opinion toward the U.S, which was severely damaged during the previous Republican administration.

President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in March 2010. The committee cited “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” He withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011 and reduced the U.S. nuclear warhead stockpile by 10%.

The Iran sanctions they helped get passed in 2010, with other countries, led to the Iran Nuclear weapons program agreement.

They helped the South Sudan declare Independence. They appointed envoys to the Sudan, and had U.S. United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice negotiate a peaceful split

And I think one of the most important issues, especially in light of the potential conflict of interest issues for the incoming Trump Administration, is that President Obama has served longer than any other president in decades without a scandal. When he came into office, he told the American public that he was demanding that everyone who worked in his administration would be held to a higher standard of ethics and he has faithfully delivered on that promise.

When the President came into office, he said he would be a president for all the American people, even those who didn’t vote for him. He said he made mistakes but got up every day determined to help improve the lives of all Americans. I think he was successful in spite of Republican refusal to compromise on anything. But looking at the list of achievements, we see that he has helped 100’s of millions of folks in countless ways.

Michelle Obama in talks with Biden team on endorsement, campaign involvement: report | Fox News

President Obama’s administration has helped:

The banks and financial institutions who benefited from the bail-out,

The investors and pension funds harmed by the financial crash and then made whole,

The homeowners who lost equity in their homes and then recovered with TARP funds,

The entire auto industry and the millions of new workers in that industry,

The 40 million folks now eligible for Obamacare,

The 10’s of millions of who can’t be denied insurance because of preexisting conditions,

The millions of young folks who can stay on their parents policy through age 26,

The 10’s of millions of folks who won’t have to file bankruptcy because of medical costs,

The 10’s of millions who can now get preventative care at no cost,

The millions of students and their families who now pay reduced student loan interest,

The millions of students and their families who have benefited from more Pell Grants,

The 10’s of millions of children who now have healthier and more nutritious lunches,

Those less likely to be the victims of hate crimes,

The LGBTQ members of the military who can now openly serve their country,

The same sex partners who can now legally get married,

100’s of thousands of men and women of the military and vets who depend on the V.A.,

The 15,000,000 Americans who now have a job,

The 10’s of millions of taxpayers who will have to pay less interest on the deficit,

The millions who profited from the doubling and tripling of the stock markets,

The millions of homeowner families who have benefited from low home mortgage rates,

The 10’s of millions who are protected by Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Protection Act,

The 10’s of millions of women who are now protected by the Lilly Ledbetter Act,

The 10’s of millions of young people who will not start smoking, or will decide to quit,

The 4 million additional children in the expanded CHIPS health program,

The 10’s of millions who will benefit from reduced carbon dioxide emissions,

The millions who will benefit from embryonic stem cell research,

The millions of rural folks who can now use the Internet,

The black and Native American farmers who can now get farm loans and royalties,

The millions who use the 2 million acres of new wilderness and 1,000 miles of rivers,

The millions who benefit from a smart electric grid, energy efficiency and electric autos,

The millions of taxpayers who benefit from a more efficient environmental impact,

The 10’s of millions who will benefit from doubling the fuel economy standards,

The folks in the Gulf who will receive payouts from the Deep Water victims fund,

The billions of people around the world who will benefit from the Paris accord,

The 10’s of millions of American taxpayers who benefit from reduced military spending,

The 100 million folks in Iraq and Afghanistan who can now see the end of the tunnel,

The 100’s of millions around the world who are glad Osama bin laden is in hell,

The 100 million people of Libya and Egypt who have new leadership,

The 10’s of millions of Iranians who are no longer suffering sanctions and,

The 100’s of millions who no longer have to worry about Iran’s nuclear program,

The 100’s of millions who are just a little safer after we reduced our nuclear arsenal,

The many millions in the South Sudan who now have an independent country,

Add to this list the millions of folks helped by the presidents signing of executive orders, including undocumented children and young Latinos, and we can see why President Obama’s approval rating is 57%, the highest it’s been since 2009; and why folks in the U.S. and around the world are sad to see Barack and Michele leave the White House.

What amazes me, when honestly considering this list of accomplishments, is the 43% of American’s who don’t approve of the job the President has done. The alt right, the tea party and virtually every member of the far right media refuse to give the President any credit at all. Anyone who claims this isn’t racism is fooling themselves. And Trump, with his “birther” rants, was the main culprit in this racist campaign to diminish the first black America President.

I think if the Obama Administration would have tried to prosecute some of the evildoers who crashed the economy, had concentrated more on a legitimate jobs program and not just retraining for nonexistent jobs, and had done more about unfair trade agreements and practices or explained their efforts better, they could have dulled Trumps populist message to those who have been left behind in this new economy; and Hillary would have won the electoral college. I realize the administration tried to get a jobs bill, and countless other legislation they thought would help the middle class and the American worker, thru the filibuster happy Republicans in the Senate and past a Republican House unwilling to propose or compromise on any meaningful legislation that would have allowed the President to succeed; but I think the administration could have done a much better job of explaining their goals and the Republicans obstruction, to the voters. The Republicans were adept at framing their obstruction, as handcuffing an out of control socialist spendthrift and as being beneficial to the economy, where in reality, it just exacerbated America’s widening income inequality.

There are any number of mine fields ahead for Trump and the Republicans, including the 25 million dollar Trump University settlement. Neither the plaintiffs nor the courts have signed off on that agreement. Then there’s Trumps upcoming rape trial. Many experts also believe this Trump Administration will explore uncharted new frontiers of governing conflicts of interest. He honestly believes he can run his family business from the White House. And of course, the Republicans always tend to overreach, especially now that they have the White House, the Senate and the House. So strap on your seat belt because it looks like a rough 4 year ride for progressives, the middle class, the working poor, the environment and the economy. Between the cast of characters Trump has assembled for his administration and the temperament and apparent unfitness of the President elect himself, there’s a 50/50 chance this administration may not make it past the 2018 midterm elections intact.

A November 21st article in USA Today by Matt Krantz, highlighted the economic records under Republican and Democratic Presidents. “Recessions are much more common under Republican presidents.” In the last 63 years, since President Eisenhower at the beginning of 1953 until President Obama through 2016, there have been 111 months of recession. 105 of those months of recession have been under Republican presidents, with only 6 months under President Carter. And I think that was because of the oil embargo.

“Every Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 has endured a recession in the first term, according to an analysis from Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at stock research firm CFRA.” Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton and Obama had no months of recession. Eisenhower had 28 months, Nixon/Ford had 27 months, Regan had 16, Bush senior had 8 and George W. Bush had 26 months. The average GDP in the last 65 years since President Truman was 3.33%, according to Princeton Professors Alan Blinder and Mark Watson. “With a Republican in the White House, the GDP slowed to 2.54% and with a Democrat jumped to 4.35%.

“A variety of other economic indicators, such as per capita GDP, stock market returns, real wages, and the change in the unemployment rate are also more robust under Democrats. Unemployment fell by .8% under the Democrats and rose 1.1%  with the Republicans.” “The U.S. Economy has performed better when the President of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, regardless of how one measures the performance.” “The current economic expansion has been running for 89 months (under President Obama), 4th longest since 1902.”

Some experts believe this disparate performance may just be a matter of timing or bad luck. I think it’s simply about the economic philosophy of the Republican president and his cabinet and not due to random acts. Republican’s number one goal is cutting taxes, especially for folks who don’t need it (millionaires, billionaires and corporations, who like Mr. Trump,  already enjoy a very low or N/A effective tax rate). Number two is cutting programs started during the FDR New Deal era, especially for those who simply can’t afford it (attacking Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid). And of course continuing the assault against organized labor (attacking teachers, mail-carriers, government workers, collective bargaining and promoting right to work legislation). But these zealots will never understand that these actions severely depress the economy. It’s been proven time and again that when lower and middle class folks have more discretionary income, they freely spend it and the economy flourishes. When rich folks get huge tax cuts and have more money than they know what to do with, they don’t invest it in the economy but engage in risky business practices (the 2008 financial crisis). These folks heading to the White House again are not true conservatives. They can’t wait to get their hands on Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Protection Agency (Overreaching). The richest of the rich always benefit from chaos and financial distress. Like Mr. Trump stated during the campaign, when the economy goes to crap, it’s a great opportunity for him and other billionaires to make a killing. You wonder, by looking at their record, if they actually try to crash the economy on purpose.

But all is not lost. This is after all Thanksgiving and while I don’t have 35 things like I did in 2008, I still have a few things I’m thankful for.

I’m thankful for all the courageous and patriotic American’s in the streets, especially the young folks, who are protesting the election of Divider in Chief Donald Trump, as America’s leader, especially after eight years of President Obama, Michele, and Joe and Jill Biden attempting to unite us.

I’m thankful for all the Native American water protectors, our first environmentalists, standing up for the earth at Standing Rock, especially all the young people. And thankful for all the Native American tribes (more than 300) from all over the country and Canada who have gone to stand with them. I’m thankful for all the environmental activists like myself who have donated and spoken up and stood with them. I’m thankful for all the landowners and farmers like myself, from North and South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois who have stood in the way of the Dakota Access and other risky pipelines. I’m thankful for all the earth protectors who stood up in Canada against the Alberta Tar Sands. I’m thankful for the protectors who stood up in Minnesota and stopped the Sandpiper pipeline project. I’m thankful for all the Native Americans, activists, landowners, farmers and members of Bold Nebraska who stood up and stopped Keystone XL. And I’m thankful for all the Americans and Canadians and people around the world who have donated and wrote letters and signed letters and petitions and said prayers and commented on social media. I am thankful for all the celebrities and concerned media who refuse to ignore the plight of our Native American brothers and sisters. I’m thankful for all the environmental organizations around the country and the world who stand with Standing Rock and stand for the earth. I’m thankful for all the activist leaders who organized demonstrations supporting Standing Rock on November 15th across the country, in almost every state and around the world. I’m thankful for all the 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders, with their hand made signs, who were at the Standing Rock protest in downtown Chicago; and for their parents and teachers for showing them the right way to live sustainably. They will be the earth protectors taking over for their elders. And I will be thankful for all of my fellow Veterans who are going to standing Rock the first week in December to stand with Standing Rock, to show that they represent the true patriotic Americans defending their country and our earth.

I’m thankful for all of humanity who shuns greed in order to protect our blessings of clean air, fertile soil, clean precious water and wholesome food.

I’m thankful for those on the front lines, protesting exploitation of our wilderness, our public lands and our National Parks and Monuments.

I’m thankful for all the organic and sustainable farmers like myself, who feed their neighbors without spoiling the earth. And I’m thankful for the organizations like MOSES who promote and teach the next generation of protectors.

And in spite of how hard Mr. Trump, his exploitative cabinet, the fossil fuel pandering Republican controlled Congress and the evil doers in the fossil fuel industry work, to overturn progress made by the Obama Administration, to reverse climate change and global warming, they can’t stop the march to a cleaner more sustainable world. Alternative energy is cheaper than coal, oil and gas, it’s sustainable and 10’s of millions of people around the world are already enjoying it’s benefits. The world is using less coal, more wind, solar and alt energy, emitting less carbon dioxide and growing and farming more sustainably. More than 100 large corporations have pledged to become 100% renewable. Corporations, utilities, countries, states, cities and communities have promoted and invested in renewable energy. Even oil companies and insurance companies have woken up to the new sustainable world order. We are plodding forward. Trump, his fellow billionaires and the big banks who are heavily invested in fossil fuel assets will attempt to extract every ounce before America says, enough is enough. But they’re on the wrong side of preserving humanity.

Like probably 80% of Americans who did not vote for Mr. Trump, I’m worried for America’s children and grandchildren, the poor, our middle class, labor, the environment, our Democracy and half of the rest of the world. And I worry that Trump will try to undo  60 to 75% of what President Obama accomplished. President Obama set the bar high with his performance in repairing the economy after the Republicans drove it into a ditch, by repairing our reputation around the world and by his integrity and concern for all human beings. If the Trump Administration can do half as well, I will be surprised. I sincerely hope I’m proved wrong.

By John Hanno, tarbabys.com

The Lincoln Project savages Trump’s debate claim that separated migrant kids are ‘so well taken care of’

The Lincoln Project savages Trump’s debate claim that separated migrant kids are ‘so well taken care of’

Catherine Garcia                               October 23, 2020

 

Just minutes after President Trump declared during Thursday night’s debate that migrant kids separated from their parents are “so well taken care of” inside U.S. facilities, the Lincoln Project released a searing four-second ad combining his words with the wails of children.

This week, lawyers tasked with reuniting migrant kids with their families told a court they haven’t been able to track down the parents of 545 children. They were separated under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, and when asked about this by moderator Kristen Welker, Trump claimed the government is working to find the parents, but added that many are smuggled into the country by coyotes and when kids are placed in U.S. facilities, they are “so well taken care of.”

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden pushed back, saying the children in question were ripped away from their parents, not smugglers, and called the act “criminal.” On Twitter, PBS NewsHour reporter Amna Nawaz said that she has “been inside the border processing centers where many kids and families were held. They were under resourced. Crowded. Staff overwhelmed. Groups of young kids crammed into windowless rooms.”

The Lincoln Project wasted no time bringing attention to Trump’s claim. Their video uses footage from facilities, showing young children wrapped up in mylar blankets inside cages, and the audio is Trump’s claim that “they’re in facilities that were so clean … so well taken care of,” mixed with the sounds of kids crying. Watch the ad below.

Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials – but we’ve found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules

Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials – but we’ve found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules

Susannah Scott                                          

Professor of Chemistry, University of California Santa Barbara

<span class="caption">Bales of plastic waste destined for recycling.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="link rapid-noclick-resp" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/recycling-pattern-waste-recovery-royalty-free-image/1153505120?adppopup=true" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:Koron/Getty Images">Koron/Getty Images</a></span>
Bales of plastic waste destined for recycling. Koron/Get.
If you thought those flimsy disposable plastic grocery bags represented most of our plastic waste problem, think again. The volume of plastic the world throws away every year could rebuild the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall of China – about 3,700 miles long.

 

In the six decades that plastic has been manufactured for commercial uses, more than 8.3 billion metric tons have been produced. Plastics are light, versatile, cheap and nearly indestructible (as long as they don’t get too hot). These properties make them incredibly useful in an enormous range of applications that includes sterile food packaging, energy-efficient transportation, textiles and medical protective gear. But their indestructible nature comes at a cost. Most of them decompose extremely slowly in the environment – on the order of several hundred years – where they are creating a global epidemic of plastic trash. Its consequences for human and ecosystem health are still incompletely known, but are potentially momentous.

I’m a chemist with experience in designing processes for making plastics, and I became interested in using plastic as a large, untapped resource for energy and materials. I wondered if we could turn plastic waste into something more valuable to keep it out of landfills and the natural environment.

A new way to use plastic waste

Plastics are made by stringing together a large number of small, carbon-based molecules in an almost infinite variety of ways to create polymer chains.

To reuse these polymers, recycling facilities could, in principle, melt and reshape them, but plastics’ properties tend to deteriorate. The resulting materials are almost never suitable for their original use, although they can be used to make lower-value stuff like plastic lumber. The result is a very low effective rate of recycling.

A new approach involves breaking the long chains down into small molecules again. The challenge is how to do this in a precise way.

Since the process of making the chains in the first place releases a lot of energy, reversing it requires adding a large amount of energy back in. Generally this means heating up the material to a high temperature – but heating up plastic causes the stuff to turn into a nasty mess. It also wastes a lot of energy, meaning more greenhouse gas emissions.

My team at UC Santa Barbara, working with colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Cornell, discovered a clean way to turn polyethylene into useful smaller molecules.

Polyethylene is one of the world’s most useful and most used plastic types. It is also one of the largest contributors to plastic waste. It represents a third of the nearly 400 million metric tons of plastic the world makes every year, for purposes ranging from sterile food and medical packaging, waterproof films and coatings, cable and wire insulation, construction materials and water pipes, to wear-resistant hip and knee replacements and even bulletproof vests.

How the new process works

The process we have developed does not require high temperatures, but instead depends on tiny amounts of a catalyst containing a metal that removes a little hydrogen from the polymer chain. The catalyst then uses this hydrogen to cut the bonds that hold the carbon chain together, making smaller pieces.

The key is using the hydrogen as soon as it forms so that the chain-cutting provides the energy for making more hydrogen. This process is repeated many times for each chain, turning the solid polymer into a liquid.

The chopping slows down naturally when the molecules reach a certain size, so it’s easy to prevent the molecules from becoming too small. We’re able to recover the valuable liquid before it turns into less useful gases.

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A majority of the molecules in the recovered liquid are alkylbenzenes, which are useful as solvents and can easily be turned into detergents. The global market for this type of molecule is about US$9 billion annually.

Turning waste plastic into valuable molecules is called upcycling. Although our study represented a small-scale demonstration, a preliminary economic analysis suggests that it could easily be adapted to become a much larger-scale process in the next few years. Keeping plastic out of the environment by reusing it in a way that makes good economic sense is a win-win.

Read more:

Susannah Scott receives funding from the US Department of Energy, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Dow Chemical, for her work in polymer upcycling. She is a coinventor on a US patent application related to this discovery, filed by the University of California.

Our Oceans Have Gotten Much More Stable, Which Sounds Great. It Isn’t.

Our Oceans Have Gotten Much More Stable, Which Sounds Great. It Isn’t.

Caroline Delbert                    October 23, 2020
Photo credit: Diane Keough - Getty Images
Photo credit: Diane Keough – Getty Images. From Popular Mechanics

 

  • The oceans are growing more stable—and stagnant—as a consequence of climate change.
  • Oceans are finely balanced and vulnerable to the most severe climate change effects.
  • When water stops pushing up and down within the entire water column, it’s bad news.

As the oceans warm, they become more stable in a way scientists say will worsen climate change. If this sounds counterintuitive, remember that instability of some kinds is essential to how both wind and air circulate around the planet and affect the yearly cycles for agriculture, animal migration, and more.

In The Guardian, researcher John Abraham explains what stability is in this context:

“In oceans, water tends to stratify, with warmer, less dense water sitting atop colder, more dense water. We refer to this as a ‘stable’ configuration. Sometimes the waters are not stable. For example, the upper waters of the ocean can suddenly become heavier. This causes the water to fall from the surface towards the ocean floor. Not only does water move up and down in the ocean, but currents flow around the world horizontally as well. It turns out these water currents have major effects on the entire ocean, as well as the weather.”

So, when the ocean is stable, that means it has settled into identifiable layers like the different colors in a Tequila Sunrise, or like the oil layer in a bottle of salad dressing. The layers have names and are studied in a couple of different ways depending on the scientists involved, whether in three or five layers or something else.

The abyssal zone, for example, is what lies against the deep (but not irregularly deep trenches) ocean floor, which in turn is called the abyssal plain.

Currents and animal populations can circulate effectively within just certain zones, in a way that seems like a miracle until you remember that humans only live in one band that basically touches the Earth’s surface only. Rainforest animals might live their entire lives in the layer above, the canopy, while birds prefer to occupy their own bands of low altitude. And we’ve all seen those days when wind is blowing one layer of clouds at a very different speed and even direction than a layer farther away.

Abraham highlights a new paper he coauthored about the warmer, more stagnant surfaces of the world’s oceans as a result of higher stability. The researchers explain:

“We find that stratification globally has increased by a substantial 5.3 [percent] in recent decades; a rate of 0.90 [percent] per decade. Most of the increase occurred in the upper 200 m of the ocean and resulted largely from temperature changes, although salinity changes play an important role locally.”

That, Abraham says, has a lot of ramifications. The less “fresh” (in the novel sense) water circulates top to bottom, the warmer the top layer grows, which in turn means it’s less nutritious, less able to absorb carbon, and more. And gravest of all, the warmer top layer accelerates its own warming.

“There is hope that we can navigate the challenges resulting from a more stable ocean—but we must start immediately,” Abraham concludes.

Forbes Estimates China Paid Trump At Least $5.4 Million Since He Took Office

Forbes

Forbes Estimates China Paid Trump At Least $5.4 Million Since He Took Office, Via Mysterious Trump Tower Lease

Dan Alexander, Senior editor at Forbes     October 23, 2020

President Donald Trump, who declared “I don’t make money from China” in Thursday night’s presidential debate, has in fact collected millions of dollars from government-owned entities in China since he took office. Forbes estimates that at least $5.4 million has flowed into the president’s business from a lease agreement involving a state-owned bank in Trump Tower.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China signed a lease for space in 2008, years before the president took office, paying about $1.9 million in annual rent. Trump is well-aware of the deal. “I’ll show you the Industrial Bank of China,” he told three Forbes journalists touring Trump Tower in 2015. “I have the best tenants in the world in this building.”

Trump moved from the skyscraper to the White House in 2017, but he held onto ownership of the retail and office space in the building, through his 100% interest in an entity called Trump Tower Commercial LLC. That put him in an unusual position, given that government-owned entities in China hold at least 70% of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Suddenly, a routine real estate deal became a conduit for a foreign superpower to pay the president of the United States.

The arrangement posed legal concerns, since the U.S. Constitution prohibits federal officials from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state” without Congressional approval. Ethics experts, who have often focused on the president’s hotel in Washington, D.C., argued that the president would be in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause from the moment he took office.

On January 11, 2017, Trump and his team held a press conference inside Trump Tower, not far from the office of the Chinese bank. Trump’s lawyer, Sheri Dillon, claimed that routine business transactions are not violations of the so-called Emoluments Clause. But she also said the president planned to donate all foreign government profits at his hotel to the U.S. Treasury. The next month, first son Eric Trump, who had just taken over day-to-day operations of his father’s business, told Forbes the donations would come from “all the properties.”

Perhaps Eric Trump meant all hotel properties, because it sure doesn’t seem like the Trump Organization handed over all their profits from the deal with the Chinese. The Trump Organization reportedly donated a total of $343,000 to the U.S. Treasury in 2017 and 2018, Trump’s first two years as president. Yet, a document connected to Trump Tower suggests that over those same two years, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was set to pay about $3.9 million in rent. Operating profit margins inside the building are an estimated 42%, which would suggest that the deal yielded $1.6 million of earnings over those two years. Even if you only count roughly 70% of that money as coming from the Chinese government, it still adds up to $1.2 million—or more than three times what the Trump Organization reportedly gave to the Treasury.

 

The lease was set to expire on October 31, 2019, according to a debt prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2018, the state-owned bank agreed to a new lease in a different office building nearby, suggesting it might leave Trump Tower. But then, the bank decided to stay in the president’s building anyway. “They are keeping a couple of floors,” Eric Trump confirmed onstage at a business conference in October 2019.

The new arrangement is somewhat murky. Contacted Friday morning, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization initially said that the bank had “consolidated with their other offices in New York.” When told that Forbes might publish that statement, the spokesperson then seemed to confirm that the Chinese bank was in fact maintaining space in the building: “They’ve exited the vast majority of their space in Trump Tower.” The website for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China still lists an address inside Trump Tower.

Trump has other financial connections to China. The New York Times revealed Tuesday that the U.S. president has a bank account in China. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, received 41 Chinese trademarks from the time she was appointed a White House adviser in March 2017 to April 2019, according to an analysis of documents. The review also showed that the trademarks Ivanka applied for after her father’s inauguration got approved about 40% faster than those she sought out beforehand.uncaptioned

I am a senior editor at Forbes, as well as the author of White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business, released Sept. 22, 2020.

Trump will end his presidency as he began it: Whining

Washington Post – Opinion

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Trump will end his presidency as he began it: Whining

Opinion by George F. Will, Columinist        October 21, 2020
President Trump, with reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday.

As the Donald Trump parenthesis in the republic’s history closes, he is opening the sluices on his reservoir of invectives and self-pity. A practitioner of crybaby conservatism — no one, he thinks, has suffered so much since Job lost his camels and acquired boils — and ever a weakling, Trump will end his presidency as he began it: whining.

His first day cloaked in presidential dignity he spent disputing photographic proof that his inauguration crowd was substantially smaller than his immediate predecessor’s. Trump’s day of complaining continued at the CIA headquarters, at the wall commemorating those who died serving the agency. His presidency that began with a wallow in self-pity probably will end in ignominy when he slinks away pouting, trailing clouds of recriminations, without a trace of John McCain’s graciousness on election night 2008:

“Sen. [Barack] Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day — though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her Creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise. . . . And my heart is filled with nothing but gratitude . . . to the American people for giving me a fair hearing before deciding that Sen. Obama and my old friend, Sen. Joe Biden, should have the honor of leading us for the next four years.”

Just 12 years separate the nation from this tradition of political competition bounded by banisters of good manners. Subsequently, the Republican Party has eagerly surrendered its self-respect. And having hitched its wagon to a plummeting cinder, the party is about to have a rendezvous with a surly electorate wielding a truncheon. The party picked a bad year to invite a mugging, a year ending in zero: Approximately 80 percent of state legislative seats will be filled this year, and next year the occupants, many of them Democrats wafted into office by a wave election, will redraw congressional districts based on the 2020 Census.

After Democrats controlled the House for 40 years (1954-1994), control of it changed under four presidents (Bill Clinton in 1994, George W. Bush in 2006, Obama in 2010, Trump in 2018). Trump’s legacy might include a decade of Democratic control of the House.

Political prophecy is an optional folly, but occasionally, as now, it might be useful by encouraging eligible voters to take the trouble to participate in a historic correction. It is not yet probable, but is not highly improbable, that Joe Biden can become the first candidate in 32 years to capture more than 400 electoral votes (George H.W. Bush, 426 in 1988). He can do this by carrying some Trump 2016 states where Biden is either leading or within the margin of polling error — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.

Texas is the most important red state: Without its electoral votes (38 today; probably 41 in 2024), the Republican path to 270 is dauntingly narrow. Trump’s 52 percent in Texas in 2016 was the lowest Republican total in 24 years (when Bob Dole split the anti-Clinton vote with Ross Perot). With seven of the nation’s 15 fastest-growing cities (El Paso is almost the size of Boston; San Antonio is twice the size of Seattle), Texas illustrates the Republican Party’s understandable antipathy toward that which it exists to persuade: the electorate. Texas’s Republican governor, with the elastic scruples of his party, has ordered (this is being litigated) that each of the state’s 254 counties shall have only one drop-off site for absentee ballots — one for Loving County (population 169), one for Harris County (Houston, population 4.7 million, 70 percent non-White), one for Brewster County, whose size (6,192.3 square miles) could hold Connecticut with room remaining for more than half of Rhode Island.

The GOP’s desire — demonstrated in myriad measures in many states — for low voter turnout is prudent: As the nation becomes more urban, suburban, diverse and secular, the Republican Party becomes more fixated on rural and small-town White voters. Thirty-six percent of Americans lived in rural areas in 1950; in 1990, 25 percent did; today, 17.5 percent do. Now, the rural population, 60 million, is about what it was in 1945. Since then, the urban population has almost tripled.

Analyst Charlie Cook asks: “In 2016, 87 percent of Trump’s vote came from whites. For congressional Republicans in the 2018 midterms, it was 86 percent. Is this sustainable?” You have to admire Republicans’ jaunty, if suicidal, wager that it is.

Related:
Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center warns that the president is doing the work of our foreign adversaries by undermining the legitimacy of the U.S. election. (Video: Joy Sharon Yi, Kate Woodsome, Danielle Kunitz/Photo: Evan Vucci/AP/The Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/opinions/opinion-the-us-election-is-under-attack-from-trump/2020/10/14/3ba724aa-96b7-4f55-a6e4-8264c9d0867c_video.html

You all kissed Trump’s ring for four long years. Now, you’re skulking away? We won’t forget

Miami Herald

You all kissed Trump’s ring for four long years. Now, you’re skulking away? We won’t forget | Opinion

Leonard Pitts Jr.                         October 20, 2020

You did not stand up.

Granted, America faced neither enemy bombers nor terrorist plot, but the threat to her was — still is — no less real. Your country needed you.

And you did not stand up.

You told yourself party was more important. You told yourself the courts were more important. You told yourself tax cuts were more important. And you convinced yourself you could put up with his bluster and bullying, with his lies, his hatefulness, his bungling, his complete unfitness, if that was the price those things demanded. You could keep your head down, nod a lot, say as little as possible and, when pressed, pretend to believe the unbelievable, support the insupportable, find no offense in the blatantly offensive.

Your country needed you. You did not stand up.

Now here we are, just days before the election, and your president, the man you Republicans clung to like Jack and Rose on the stern of Titanic, seems poised to do what Titanic did. No one old enough to remember the airless shock of election night 2016 is taking anything for granted, mind you. On the other hand, one would much rather have Joe Biden’s polling numbers right now than Donald Trump’s.

Many of you seem to agree. Lately, one can hardly open a paper or go online without seeing one of you edging carefully away from the man to whom you once stuck like Velcro. There’s Sen. John Cornyn comparing his fealty to Trump to a woman who marries a bad man, thinking she can change him. There’s Sen. Ben Sasse criticizing Trump for cozying up to dictators and white supremacists. There’s Sen. Martha McSally bobbing and weaving like Muhammad Ali when asked if she is proud of supporting Trump. And so on.

Well, to all of you — lawmakers, administration officials, party hacks and other assorted enablers — who have tardily discovered that Trump is a disaster that walks like a man, we have something to say. That’s not the editorial we, by the way. It is, rather, the we of those Americans who watched in apoplectic dismay as our country — its norms, its values, its virtues, its verities and its laws — came under attack while you failed to stand up.

I suspect I speak for more than a few of them when I say that your 11th-hour attempts to put distance between you and Trump do not fool us. As far as we’re concerned, the stink of what you did — what you failed to do — will follow you the rest of your days. May it make you less employable. May it haunt you at sidewalk cafes. May your kids ask you about it. And for any of you who broke the law — up to and including Trump himself — may there be prosecution to the fullest extent.

Maybe that sounds vindictive. America is, after all, a nation of second chances. Mike Tyson went from a rape conviction to Hollywood movies. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton went from scandal-tainted punchlines to respected party elders. And the argument will inevitably be made that we ought not dwell in the past, that we need to move on.

To which, we say: Not this time. Redemption is a fine thing. Moving on is, too. But sometimes, you need accountability. Not simply as a salve for what is wounded in us now, but also as a warning to those who would wound us in the future. Maybe they’ll be less likely to do so if they see that there is a price to pay for sitting down when your country needs you to stand. So let this be the message from the American majority to Trump and his enablers. We will not forget. And we will not forgive.

NOTE: In a recent column, I used “Stars and Bars” as a synonym for the notorious Confederate battle flag. The Stars and Bars was actually the national flag of the Confederacy.