GUN RIGHTS PEOPLE HAVE THEIR 2ND AMENDMENT...

Gun rights people have their 2nd Amendment, pro-choice people have their 13th amendment.  If gun ownership is protected by the 2nd Amendment, surely a woman's womb cannot be enslaved under the 13th amendment prohibiting slavery.

POLITICS CEASING AT WATER'S EDGE IS FOR DEMOCRATS ONLY.

Would that the so-called Conservatives had treated the Dixie Chicks who criticized George W. Bush, while they were in London. and were excoriated because  American Politics were supposed to cease at the water'sedge, with the same flexibility and leniency as they now afford to Donald J. Trump for doing the same thing siding with a murderous dictator, who has brutally killed American citizens, while he was in Japan.

A STABLE GENIUS

To those who would controvert Trump's claim that he is a stable genius, I challenge you to name a single stable where he would not be a genius compared to other denizens thereof.

DISGRACE UNDER PRESSURE

Americans have demonstrated a certain fondness for those who have shown grace under pressure.  Even as he was in the middle of actual impeachment procedures, Clinton kept his cool and did his job.  His approval rating was at its highest point after he was impeached.  Even Nixon who was forced to resign the office kept working at his job. until the very last minute of his presidency  At   the end of his life, Nixon had become a sort of elder statesman.

Trump, who has shown not grace but only disgrace under pressure, by not doing his job while still retaining the office will probably not fare as well as either Clinton or Nixon

POSSIBLE POSTPONMENT OF THE WAR WITH IRAN?

 Donald Trump became ecstatic at the news that costs of building his wall on the Southern border is working out to costing about $1 Billion per mile.  Here he was trying to figure out a third $1 trillion giveaway of taxpayer money, to mark the start of the third year of his administration and now may be able to call off the war with Iran, or perhaps postpone it till next year.

OLD STORY UNFORTUNATELY STILL RELEVANT

A personal story, which I have told before, which I regret still has relevance today, but shouldn't have, is how because of experiences, I changed from being anti-abortion to being anti-abortion but pro-choice:  

.My work took me behind the Iron Curtain to the Soviet-dominated country of Romania, then under the brutal administration of a Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu who, seeking more workers for his factories, imposed even harsher penalties on women, living under difficult conditions as is, if they did not bear more children for the State. Abortions were banned in Romania.

I was particularly drawn to the plight of the children themselves who as pawns of the State received scant attention from mothers who had to work themselves to the bone to not only provide for more children than she could handle but eke out a livelihood in a Communist society.

In effect, Romania had enslaved women's bodies to serve the State.
I could not accept that any government legislate slavery for any person.  A woman has the right to decide whether she wants more children or not.  I changed my views.  Although like most, I am still anti-abortion, I am strongly pro-choice.

TO DEMONSTRATE THE DIFFERENCE

To demonstrate the difference in vision and foresight between Obama and Trump, we need only look at the situation between China and the U.S. through the eyes of future historians.  Obama came to office and looked at a situation where the U.S. was becoming more and more dependent on China for manufactured goods and financing and immediately began negotiating a new trade pact with a group that could become a rival and competitor to China.  That group, the TPP, could have changed the whole dynamics of our negotiations with China, but Trump killed the TPP before it could be born and thereby left the U.S. in what may turn out to be an untenable position.

ANOTHER TRAGIC MISTAKE?

In the fall of 1980, Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, attacked Iran with what was considered to be the 3d largest army in the world, at the time.  Saddam, not only had equipped his army with the finest, most modern weaponry available, he had a supply chain set up to replenish supplies as needed. Even with air superiority, not only did Iraq's forces not prosper, the poorly equipped Iranian forces halted the advance of the Iraqis but they began to push into Iraq itself.  In effect, the Iranians had stopped the massive Iraqi war machine with their own bodies. 

Iran took a  million casualties but they stopped the Iraqi invasion. If the neocons, who predicted that the Iraqis would welcome us with candy and who are now back in power, in the Trump Administration, are predicting a cakewalk in Iran, they will again be leading us into another tragic mistake, 

IS A TRADE WAR WITH CHINA WINNABLE?

I doubt that China"s populace is as addicted to American goods as Americans are to cheap Chinese goods.  It may turn out that the outcome of this trade war will hinge on which side suffers more from withdrawal symptoms.

INVESTIGATIVE CONCLUSIONS MANAGEENT

AG Barr, possibly responding to pressure from Trump, is opening a third investigation into alleged, by Trump, malevolent origins of the F.B.I. an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.  If past is prologue, I expect that the report will go only to AG Barr who will issue a summary of the report but the report itself will never see the light of day unless the conclusions are those of Mr. Trump.

OLD AMERICAN TRADITION UPHELD BY REPUBLICANS

Other nations may gape at the spectacle of our nation punishing China, for what it considers unfair trade practices, by beating up its own citizens instead of the Chinese.  It assesses tariffs that Americans have to pay.  At the same time, Americans lose markets for their goods which are higher valued goods than what they sell to the U.S.

Those other nations need not be amazed.  They can look to the last Republican Administration which, responding to a terrorist attack, invaded and occupied  Iraq, wrongly punishing a country which was not involved with that attack.  

DID YOU REALLY THINK TRUMP HAD ENOUGH MONEY TO LOSE $1.2 BILLION?

Did you really think Trump had enough money to lose $1,2 billion?  It was other people's money, that he lost.  It was bank loans that went unpaid; contractors who didn't receive reimbursement; workers who did not receive pay.  The Trump family did not miss a beat when it came to their lifestyle.

What Trump got from his, so-called losses was the right to deduct, from future earnings, the losses of others, owing to the largess of our tax code for the wealthy, where the less fortunate have to cover the losses of the more fortunate.

QUESTIONABLE MOTIVES?

Senate Democrats who are excited at the possibility that their Republican colleagues, who are subpoenaing Donald Trump< Jr. to appear before the Intelligence Committee, are growing a backbone, may be, in the end, rudely disappointed.  This may turn out to be an opportunity for Donald, Jr. to, by recanting, to the committee, his previous testimony, relative to the Trump Tower Moscow project, save himself from perjury charges, should the Republicans lose control of the Senate in the  2020 elections

UNFAIR APPLICATION OF AN OLD LAW

Donald Trump- says that the 1924 law with which Democrats have been demanding his tax returns is patently unfair.  Democrats have been successfully evading the law by the unfair tactic of voluntarily releasing their returns.

LIFE IN A VASSAL STATE

People who question why Trump did not tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election, just do not have a grasp about what it is to live in a vassal state.  Trump figures y'all will eventually figure it out.

LOWERING THE BAR

It seems to me that the bar for fiscal responsibility is raised for Democratic Presidencies and lowered for Republican ones.  Republican deficit hawks hover over Democratic Administrations who must lower deficits at the same time expand the economy whereas that bar gets arbitrarily lowered for Republican Administrations.  I watch the present Administration receiving praise and adulation for expanding the economy while increasing the deficit at the rate of $1 Trillion per year.  Both Trump's immediate Democratic Administrations expanded the economy, Clinton and Obama, expanded the economy and reduced the 
deficit; neither has occurred under the Republicans.

CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED?

AG Barr, feels that after what the Democrats did to him at the Senate hearings, any decision to forego House hearings, would be Constitutionally protected, by both by the Double Jeopardy Clause as well as the Cruel and Unusual Punishment prohibition.