Observations on Trump Inaugural Address

     January 20^th:  For citizens who thought that President Donald Trump would change his spots in delivering an inaugural address were disillusioned.    He began by stating that he would “deliver the power to the people” and blamed “the establishment” for the failure of our government.  He did this without clarifying what that means and further it served as an affront to all previous administrations.

2.      He then used the word “carnage” to lump all the hopeless conditions of our society including gangs and drugs.

3.      He further deprecated the previous administrations’ military preparedness and the decrepit infrastructure.

4.                 Declared without reference that the wealth of the middle class had been stolen. He gave no details.

5.         He then called for a new vision of “America First” which would protect our borders as part of “Protectionism”, a nebulous declaration that “America wins again” and that in doing so, we would “Bring back our dreams”.

6.               He inferred that now levels of employment would be reached and America would be “off welfare” because we would “Buy American and Hire American”.  “We would Shine”.

7.               His referenced  international intentions declaring that he would “eradicate Radical Islam”.

8.              He declared his love of “patriotism” and that he was convinced that we in America were “protected by God”. 

9.             He then squeezed in out of the blue, a reference to dedication to “pursuing the mystery of space”, totally out of context with any other statement.  

1          He then closed with an impassioned repeat of the theme of his campaign, that we would together make America great again.

   It was obvious that he wrote the address himself which is unfortunate but explains the ungraciousness and vapidness of it all. The address loudly proclaims that previous leaders did not have the best interest of the nation at heart. Not only did he manage to insult the previous administration and the entire Washington working force, but failed to even thank the previous president for his eight years of service.  He referred to re-uniting the country and it seems that he expects a better economy to do that for there was no other way mentioned. He wants us to believe that patriotism cures prejudice. The old campaign cliches and protectionist rhetoric adds up to tariffs and isolationism as the new international direction.  

      The address set a fearful if not a frankly selfish projection--“America First”, projecting  doubt in the minds or our long-standing allies as to where they might stand in the new Trump world. Finally, I have an abiding distrust in those who tell me I am part of a chosen people protected by God. That is the mark of a demagogue!

        But what did I expect from a walk-on president with thin skin and an aversion to truth?

A RIGGED ELECTION

     Irony of ironies! Donald Trump repeatedly criticized  the election process during the month prior to the election yesterday as "rigged".  Well it was rigged in favor of Trump, but not by Hillary Clinton's team or the democrats.  It was rigged not by Trump the accuser, but by our illustrious forefathers who designed and scripted the rigged process called the Electoral College.  Here again for the second time in this century, a candidate for president registered a clear majority vote of the electorate, but lost the election in the archaic process called the  Electoral College (which is neither  fair to the electorate nor a college in any way).  

          The message is clear.  As long as this absurd excuse for a democratic election stands as part of our process, the United States is a grossly imperfect democracy.   As part of our getting together and healing, let us all unite and get rid it ASAP. It is the non-partisan thing to do. 
          In the meantime, no member of the Trump team should consider this election a mandate,  You won by a rigged system.

The "Torture Candidates" Unworthy of The Nomination

This past week in New Hampshire, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz stated that they would advocate return of water-boarding and other forms of torture in the name of national security. For the record, it should be recalled that candidate Ben Carson had done so back in 2014 in editorials. It should be recalled that in December of 2014, CIA Director Brennan testified before Congress that torture did not add to intelligence effectiveness.  Further, that whether torture saved lives was "unknowable".  What is knowable and factual is that the CIA secretly used foreign prisons and agents to torture at sites out of the United States, euphemistically called "rendition". In so doing we shredded our constitution, twisted the law and trampled on all that we stand for and gave the enemy jihadists an enormous propaganda wedge.  The Senate Report on Torture of some 500 pages was extracted from 6500 pages--we had only a glimpse of the truth.  Perhaps this is the price of a never ending state of war. But war, Candidates Trump and Cruz, can never become an excuse for abandoning our principles of civilization.  You cannot paint your enemy as uncivilized when you yourself are not. To return to the failed policy of  President George W. Bush is terribly devoid of any enlightened leadership.  I hope the voters of New Hampshire take note today.

Observations On the New Constitution of Egypt

         Observations on  The New Constitution of Egypt

     The draft document begins with a very wordy preamble expressing eleven principles.  The first is that the people are the source of all equality and equal opportunities are established for all citizens, that democracy is a system of government providing for among other things, the peaceful transfer of power, recognizing that the dignity of the individual and that women must be "appreciated", freedom of opinion,  expression and creativity, that equality and equal opportunities are established for all citizens The sixth principle calls for an independent judiciary.  Seventh notes the importance of national unity and adds "the rights and freedoms of all citizens shall be protected without discrimination".   The eighth principle notes the place of the Armed Forces in not being involved in political affairs and the ninth, the role of the police.
     Principle number ten is a statement calling for Arab unity and the need for Egypt to be part of the Muslim world and eleven is an extension of a dedication to Egypt's intellectual and cultural role, again with an emphasis on Islamic institutions including the national church and Al-Azhar University and Islamic Sharia. 
     The constitution follows in five parts.  Notable in Part I[The State and Society]  is Article 2, stating that Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic its official language. Principles of Islamic Sharia are the principal source of legislation.

 Freedom of thought and opinion is guaranteed but by article 44, Insult or abuse  of all religious messengers and prophets shall be prohibited. Article 82 says the legislative power shall consist of the House of Representatives and the Shuria Council. Article 85 provides for a 350 member House of Representatives and Article 128 for 150 member Sharia Council
[of which the president shall appoint 15]..
     An opinion on this document must recognize that the document is a translation, but that said, the two points of weakness must be these: 1.) As others have pointed out, the draft constitution guarantees equality before the law, but does not explicitly prohibit discrimination on the grounds of gender, sex, religion and origin. 2.) There is no separation of church and state, and therefore the guarantee of rights of women is very much in question regardless of the provisions.

Profiles in Cowardice

    The meaning of the closure of the General Motors Fuel Cell Research Center in Honeoye Falls is that once again as a nation, and as a community, we have failed to rally the political forces necessary to free our dependence on foreign oil.  The decision says, we will again fold to the forces of Big Oil over the logical alternative—hydrogen fuel.  The fuel cell powered automobile technology will be sequestered back to the home headquarters in Detroit, never to be heard from again.  What a lost opportunity!  What a study in “profiles in cowardice” on the part of our local leaders.  From Senator Alessi, whose district includes Honeoye Falls, to Danny Wegman and UR President Seligman, our  Governor Cuomo, and our US senators Gellibrand and Schumer, the story is one of failure of leadership.  All the more tragic is the failure of our federal government, which as a consequence of the bailout owns 25% of the stock in General Motors, to exert any effort what-so-ever.
   They did not wish to stand and fight.  Too bad.  We could have started building solar-hydrogen stations fueled by cheap solar panls and water, and in the process lessened foreign oil depencency, improved the greening of the environment, and moved forward with the solution to unemployment  in a major way. We could have been the fulcrum toward correcting our international accounts deficit.  We could have made the argument for natural gasfracking moot.  But history is repeating itself, is it not?  We could have had the Hadron Super Collider and world class high energy physics technology locate in Wayne County twenty years ago, but we again had no leadership.  In the end it is we the people who failed ourselves.

 

 

AFTER-THOUGHTS OF 9-11

The perfidious attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was a tragedy, exceeded only by the tragedy of our response. Why was the response a greater tragedy? Because it cost us 6,400 dead American soldiers and 45,000 military personal wounded--some severly and forever, and cost 6 trillion dollars. It caused civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan of 300,000 known (probably twice that), and it did not clearly define who was behind and funded Al Quida nor was there an under standing of the extent of support of world Islam behind the Jihad warriors. It made George W. Bush a wartime president rather than defining the attack as a crime against humanity--against civilization. We are yet to obtain all the facts about the information known to the CIA, military intelligence and the president's briefings prior to 9-11. The final tragedy has been a destruction of clear thinking.