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John Reed: Witness to Revolution

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The Book of the Week is “John Reed: Witness to Revolution, A Biography” by Tamara Hovey, published in 1975.

According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked a detailed list of Notes, Sources, References, and Bibliography), Reed was born in October 1887 in Portland, Oregon. The beneficiary of white male privilege, he graduated from Harvard, then bummed around Europe, and wrote stories and articles that were published in the magazines of the day; among them: American, Saturday Evening Post, Century, Smart Set, Colliers, and Trend. But he rebelled against the bourgeois values of his social class. The Masses did not pay its contributing writers, but featured short stories that realistically portrayed the struggling masses in America of the 1910’s. Many publications generously compensated their contributing writers, so Reed was able to scratch out a living.

Reed was given a press pass through the years by different publications to cover a few major historical events. In 1913, he wrote human-interest stories through immigrant workers’ eyes after witnessing violent labor trouble at the silk factory in Paterson, New Jersey.

Reed rubbed shoulders with the famous social activists of his generation. Showing their white-savior-complex– in June 1913, he, along with the independently wealthy Mabel Dodge (who owned a stately home on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan) and Robert Edmond Jones, staged a pageant whose performers consisted of downtrodden laborers at the old Madison Square Garden. The three served as planner and director, funder and arranger, and set designer, respectively. Their goal was to improve working conditions for the poor. After the pageant, Reed, Dodge and Jones sailed to Europe.

Reed spent four days in New Jersey’s Passaic County jail (whose conditions were very disgusting) in order to write articles that publicized the plight of striking workers who were denied due process. He was unlike journalists at most newspapers, who were puppets of: management (rather than labor), government officials, and law enforcement. Reed physically climbed into the trenches with German soldiers during WWI to get their stories. He then turned into a pacifist.

Read the book to learn what transpired when Reed developed a reputation as a radical (hint: he acquired a press credential from the American Socialist press in August 1917 in order to cover the Russian Revolution).

Intimate Memoirs – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Intimate Memoirs” by Georges Simenon, published in 1981. This tome’s intended readers were his four adult children. The author detailed: his and his family members’ lives through all their changing of residences, vacations, the dysfunctionalities in his relationships with others (wives, mistresses, governesses, household help, publishing and movie personnel, etc.), and his daughter’s writings.

Born in 1903, Simenon grew up in Belgium, and served in the military in both WWI and WWII. As a teenager, he began writing. He got rich in a short time, penning via typewriter each year, about six dime novels (eventually numbering dozens in his lifetime, some of which were made into movies) about a police detective named Maigret– whose character was partly based on his father.

By summer 1940, he had a wife and son, at which time they rented a chateau surrounded by a vegetable garden and poultry farm in a coastal sub-prefecture town in France. He was supposed to sign in every day at the police station. A couple of benign German officers were posted on the outskirts of the town.

For the rest of the war, the family stayed in French coastal towns, renting homes with farms for a year or two, then moving on. Basically, they were on vacation, except for one incident that reminded them that a war involving religious persecution was taking place elsewhere.

One day, a Vichy commissioner buttonholed the author and aggressively called him a Jew, demanding that the author prove otherwise, by showing the birth certificates of his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. By war’s end, many non-Jewish wealthy people had become wealthier through profiteering, while the peasants suffered the hardships of rationed goods.

The author wrote of powerful, money-grubbing people, “Sometimes there are indeed fatalities. And aren’t the worst brutes the ones that get the most applause? I no longer look on all this as an outsider. When I first got to Lakeville [Connecticut in the USA] I was told ‘Here you have to belong…'”

Read the book to learn everything you ever wanted to know, both happy and sad, about what the author wanted his children to know.

ENDNOTE: Speaking of the worst brutes, here’s a little ditty in connection therewith (This is the song Donald Trump is singing now):

THE ULTIMATE BULLY

sung to the tune of “The Boxer” with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel.

I am a super-rich man
all-powerful and bold.
I’ve-always-had HIGH resistance
to acknowledging my failures and broken promises.
At-bullying, I’m the best.
My base hears what it wants to hear
and cheers on the unrest.
mm hm, hm hm hm hm hm hm, hm
When I left my home and my family
I was not in THE least coy,
I had to teach my attorneys
dangers of beCOMing a-PR-sensation. I-wasn’t scared.
Making deals, seeking out
the easy suckers and easy girls
looking FOR the
ways I could use them in my World.

lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie

Paying minimal workers’ wages
I start handing out the jobs
and pad my coffers.
One-after-another bankRUPtcy
to disappear through.
As a first resort,
I’ve made smearing, scapegoating and suing,
a na-tion-al sport.

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la

lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie

Now I’m huddling with my attorneys
and wishing I was golfing at Mar-a-Lago.

But the New York City renters are in need of me,
you can’t indICT me. You’re all DOPES.

I hire the best doxers
and go to legal extremes,
so you CARry a reminder
that anytime I-can lay you down
or cut you while I lash out
in my anger with no shame.
You’ll be bleeding,
you’ll be bleeding,
and the-spiter-in-me remains.

mm-hmm

lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie
lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie-lie, lie-le-lie, lie-le-lie
lie-le-lie-lie-lie-le-lie-le-le-le-lie…

American Mirror – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “American Mirror, The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell” by Deborah Solomon, published in 2013.

Born in February 1894 in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan in New York City, Rockwell was an illustrator known for his engaging scenes of ordinary Americans in a kind, lighthearted, innocent time.

The attitude of the United States was forced to change with WWII. FDR speechified about Four Freedoms: of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear. In 1943, Rockwell was tasked with creating images on posters (to promote the sale of War Bonds) that portrayed the freedoms; during which, he helped shape the image of “Rosie the Riveter.” In this way, Rockwell developed a reputation as a patriotic artist who reinforced America’s values, that contrasted with the values of America’s enemies.

Read the book to learn everything you ever wanted to know about Rockwell’s life and career.

ENDNOTE: The 2024 presidential candidates should be asked to explain what they will do to preserve the above Four Freedoms in these modern times. Ironically, freedom of speech is what allows propagandists to whip the public into a frenzy of fear (!)

The freedom from fear directly stems from the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights that, arguably, the U.S. government violates daily, in this electronic age. President George W. Bush pushed for decriminalizing spying on American citizens via Congressional approval of the Patriot Act– a set of federal statutes separate from those contained in the U.S. Constitution. In the past forty years, the following presidents have been accused of a significant number of crimes in the following major categories:

war-related crimes: Reagan, H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush;
treason-related crimes: Reagan, G.W. Bush, Trump, Biden;
financial-related crimes: H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Trump, Biden;
sex-related crimes: Clinton, Trump, Biden

It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama’s name is absent from the above. He needed to avoid egregiously unethical behavior because, given his skin color, not only his political enemies, but also hatemongers— witch-hunted his and his family’s history and every move 24/7.

The question for the 2024 election is:

Is the country ready for another variation on the Caucasian Christian/Catholic male presidents– in terms of ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation?

Disoriented

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The Book of the Week is “Disoriented, Two Strange Years in China as Unexpected Expats” by Howard Goodman and Ellen Goodman, published in 2014.

In the autumn of 2009, Howard, a journalist, moved to Shanghai to work for the newspaper, Shanghai Daily. His wife Ellen went with him. They weren’t allowed access to social media, but as foreigners, they were able to get satellite TV channels HBO, CNN and BBC Worldwide Service. Ordinary Chinese people weren’t allowed access to any idiot-box information unsupervised by their government.

Anyway, unpredictably, channels were occasionally blacked-out due to censorship. Further, Howard was continually frustrated by government censorship of his employer’s product. Nevertheless, they were floored by Shanghai’s super-fast completion of construction on buildings and infrastructure that began in the late 1990’s.

According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index), in a few short years, an efficient, shiny high-speed rail line graced the skyline.

BUT, “It didn’t take long for one of the two new bullet trains to crash in Zhejiang Province, killing forty people and injuring nearly two hundred. In the aftermath, the Railway Ministry was revealed to be a pit of kickbacks, corruption, construction shortcuts, and debt, skimming profits and shortchanging safety.” Americans like to think the United States, unlike China, is NOT as greedy, power-hungry and lawless as all that.

Americans also like to think that their own country WOULDN’T ban all of its media from revealing ugly truths about itself in the interest of image-management (also called “optics”) the way China’s government did. In 2010, China didn’t televise the Nobel Peace Prize awards-ceremony because a then-imprisoned Chinese dissident was the winner. Howard’s newspaper did a workaround– reporting that the Foreign Ministry: was livid about awarding a prize to a dissident, and blasted Norway as the venue of the ceremony.

The United States government is currently grappling with Big Tech’s ability to control free speech. There is great difficulty in deciding where to draw the line when a man as provocative as a “Father Coughlin” type comes along and his power surpasses that of just national radio commentator. Obviously, there are worldwide repercussions if he is a world leader.

Along these lines, here’s a song most ordinary Americans are singing right now:

WOULDN’T IT BE NICE
sung to the tune of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” with apologies to the Beach Boys.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our-courts-were nonpartisan,
then respect for justice would be strong.

And why don’t we apPLY the law-for-all,
then we’d have a better world ‘ere long.

Resolving conflicts makes us that much better.
We can’t possibly let violence stay, unfettered.

Wouldn’t it be nice if officials could take up,
all the issues IMportant to you,
and we’d get to have a say together, in our town halls,
we CAN see matters through.

But in recent decades we’ve seen hating.
We should ditch the rallies, and demand, real-debating.

Oh wouldn’t it be nice?

Maybe if, we lose the patronage and corruption,
we wouldn’t have to SUE.

Maybe then, we’d be rid of dangerous loudmouths, whose time should be through.

Please ignore THEIR rants. Please ignore THEIR rants.
Reform campaign FI-nance! Reform campaign FI-nance!

Oh, wouldn’t it be nice?

You know it seems the more we read world history,
the less the current situA-tion’s a mystery. So let’s READ world history.

Wouldn’t it be nice?
Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah bop, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah bop,
bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah bop, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah bop…

***

Anyway, read the book to learn a wealth of information on what daily life was like for American expats in Shanghai and Hong Kong at the start of the 2010’s, and about the authors’ employment adventures, too.

Here We Are

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The Book of the Week is “Here We Are, American Dreams, American Nightmares” by Aarti Shahani, published in 2019.

In the mid-1990’s, according to New York State, the Manhattan electronics store co-owned by Shahani’s father, was a front for Colombia’s Cali drug cartel. The indictment had thirteen counts.

After 9/11, the U.S. federal government agency Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established for the purpose of finding and deporting immigrants, both illegal and those in special circumstances, with no statute of limitations.

Shahani’s uncle Ratan (in the latter category– he had a green card) “… missed his [ICE deportation] flight and spent more nights in detention, on the taxpayer dime…” The financial institution with which he had an account– Broadway National Bank– had laundered $123 million through various accounts. It “…paid a fine of $4 million, and no bank executive served a single day in jail.”

One question Americans might want to ask, however, is how much IS the “taxpayer dime” when it comes to funding illegal immigrants? Is the actual dollar value a nickel a month per American?? Or a thousand dollars a day per American??

Of course, it is impossible to fully account for the qualitative impacts, good and bad, that illegals have on society as a whole. More specifically, they might make undocumented (excuse the pun) positive economic, cultural, social or athletic contributions, but partake of limited resources such as healthcare and education that diminish quality thereof for citizens. (For more info, see this blog’s posts: The Opposite of Woe, Call Me American, full circle (sic), Patriot Number One, The Snakehead, Where the Wind Leads, The Fox Hunt, and Scorpions For Breakfast.)

Anyway, this suspenseful story recounted a series of traumatic events of an immigrant family from India, interspersed with vignettes of the family’s hardships (due to the author’s father’s naivete; plus swindlers, errors and bad luck) that led the author to become an activist. She ended up delivering lectures to audiences consisting of “lawyers, journalists, social workers, congressional staffers, city council members and families in crisis.”

Read the book to learn all about it.

A Dedicated Life – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Dedicated Life, Journalism, Justice, and a Chance for Every Child” by David Lawrence, Jr., published in 2018.

“More money is almost never the right first response. Rather, we need to begin by figuring out how well we are doing with the money we already have.”

-the author, on embarking on a quest to improve the lives of preschool children, beginning in 1999 in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Born in March 1942 in New York City, the author was raised Catholic in a wealthy family of eventually, nine children. His father was a journalist covering politics in New York. In 1948, the family moved to a residence that was a six-hour drive north of the city to tend to a farm that had animals and food-crops.

The author retired as a newspaper executive at the end of 1998, to take on a new career as an advocate for young children. There were two possible ways to institute “high quality” (the author never exactly defined what he meant by that) pre-kindergarten for all, regardless of need, in the entire state of Florida:

Lobbying the Florida state legislature to pass a bill, or
Propose a Constitutional amendment, voted on by the people, during an election for state officials.

The latter required: that hundreds of thousands of Floridians sign a petition; that an expensive campaign be launched in order to raise awareness and promote the initiative and get people to vote for the amendment. Unfortunately, the opposition always launches a campaign to smear such an initiative (or oppose it in order to smear a prospective candidate for office or an incumbent who would run for reelection– in planning for the next election; for example, currently– 2022 and 2024).

Anyway, read the book to learn whether the author and millions of others, in November 2002, actually achieved their ultimate goal (Hint: over the course of decades, through the cumbersome political process that is democracy– such radical, widespread change happens in baby steps; with the aid of the trick of telling voters that funding for the new program wouldn’t come from raising taxes!), and learn much more about his philosophy, careers, and fundraising successes for good causes (for which, it appears, he deserves bragging rights.)

Beneath the Tamarind Tree

The Book of the Week is “Beneath the Tamarind Tree, A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram” by Isha Sesay, published in 2019.

In April 2014, Boko Haram members (Muslim extremists) abducted a few hundred female students from a boarding school in Chibok in Nigeria. For the attention whores of the world, a Twitter account was immediately started, inviting comments. The American news cycle ended quickly, but trauma for the victims and their families– even for the girls who were released (fewer than half at the book’s writing)– will never end.

Apparently, the trading relationship between the United States and Nigeria wasn’t a sufficient motivator to resolve the situation peacefully. In 2017, there occurred more than $9 billion worth of oil, cocoa, cashew nuts, minerals and animal feed exchanged between the two.

The author had a vested interest in seeing the girls’ safe release, as her mother’s family hailed from Sierra Leone on the continent of Africa, and her family had lived there. So her personal experience put her in a better position to get the story, more than other TV journalists. Even so, information-gathering through personal interviews could be life-threatening, as Boko Haram was a terrorist group comprised of sociopathic sadists with weaponry– child-soldiers– who had occasional episodes of sympathy but usually had no qualms about committing looting and arson, to boot.

The author felt that the 2016 U.S. presidential election eclipsed all media coverage of her Nigeria story– more media coverage would have swayed the world to take action on behalf of the abducted girls. Possibly. But– in the 1990’s, American media outlets covered Nigeria only insofar as to give it a reputation for fraudsters who got Americans to fall for inheritance scams via airmail or email.

So that is all that most people here know about Nigeria. They usually don’t actively seek news from the European media outlets, such as the BBC, the Guardian, Al Jazeera or Reuters. “Breaking News” coverage on their favorite celebrities, politicians and themselves, is much more of a priority. Sadly.

Read the book to learn many more details.

The Year I Was Peter the Great – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Year I was Peter the Great, 1956–Khrushchev, Stalin’s Ghost, and A Young American in Russia” by Marvin Kalb, published in 2017.

Born in 1930 in the Bronx, the nerdy author tutored Puerto Rican students for free at his high school, and in exchange, they became his bodyguards against the Irish kids who tried to bully him. The author attended City College and covered sports for its college newspaper. In the early 1950’s, a sting operation caught 32 basketball players from seven colleges across the country in a point-shaving (sports-betting) scandal.

Passionate about all things Soviet, after a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, the author was afforded the opportunity to do post-graduate, independent study in Moscow in 1956. He also became a translator of news articles for the American embassy there.

In February 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, through delivering a famous speech, signaled that the political times were changing in the Soviet Union. The indoctrination of people born under the rule of his predecessor Josef Stalin, could be described thusly: “For much of their lives, they had been moored to rigid Communist dogma, trained to worship Stalin’s genius, dedicated to the Soviet system.”

At the time, the author was hopeful that Khrushchev’s speech was going to be ground-breaking, and reported to the American embassy, his personal observations of students’ rebellious behavior in Lenin Library and Historical Library. Unfortunately, it took about thirty-five (!) more years of the inhumane political system of pure Communism to collapse in a large portion of the world.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s experiences during, and reminiscences of, a very exciting year in his life.

Lost On Planet China

The Book of the Week is “Lost on Planet China, The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation” by J. Maarten Troost, published in 2008.

SIDENOTE: Just as there is hyper-awareness among foreigners of the opaque, dreadfully polluted air in China’s urban areas, there is hyper-awareness of the oppressive COVID political ideology SPOUTED 24/7 BY HYPOCRITES in the United States. The masking and “six-feet apart” rules are simply minor inconveniences piled on by ruling authorities to give the appearance that there are actions ordinary Americans can take to stop the spread of the disease.

However, the major inconveniences for everyone– cancelling big social events, or allowing sports with no fans, and closing schools– are meant to prevent people from gathering in large numbers in one place so that they will be less likely to die in terrorist attacks or shooting sprees. Violent political unrest has become more and more likely (in America!), given the nature of the most recent presidential administration.

Americans have been made hyper-aware of the fatal, contagious viral disease of COVID through scare-tactics that were NEVER used during previous epidemics of fatal, contagious, viral diseases. Take the flu epidemic in 1957. Incidentally, at that time, there were fewer viral treatments for patients, and patients then were just as ignorant about medicine as now: Rosalind Russell, a Broadway and movie actress, wrote, “That second Auntie Mame winter [in 1957 on Broadway] I had the flu three times myself, took antibiotics like popcorn, and kept going.”

Jim Croce caught the flu during what his wife wrote in her book, was an “epidemic” that caused a serious financial loss from his concert series on college campuses in 1972. Students were loath to attend cultural events (but there were no restrictions on doing so) for fear of catching the flu.

Croce recovered in a week, but his wife DIDN’T mention that: he was tested for “the flu,” he saw a doctor, or that he reported his illness to the local government. Along these lines, in the 1970’s, an indeterminate number of people WEREN’T COUNTED in flu-epidemic statistics even though they had flu symptoms– because they weren’t tested for it, didn’t see a doctor, or didn’t report it to the local government. In 2020, the vast majority of people who felt sick got tested for COVID, which led to an immediate reporting to medical or political authorities!

Thus, for the above and other reasons, then as now, statistics on fatal, contagious viral diseases, aren’t all that accurate. A book that makes this point in general, published in 1954, that also teaches readers about how to spot bias, spurious causation, and all manner of misleading nonsense in a range of topics including politics, medicine and economics, is: “How to Lie With Statistics” by Darrell Huff. The highlights include: pp. 28, 35, 39-41, 64, 83-85, 118-119 and 131.

Anyway, the author of the above Book of the Week traveled to various provinces and regions of China around 2005– he failed to specify how many months he was there– leaving his wife and two young sons, two and four years old, in the United States. He wrote he was looking for a livable part of China for his family for a year. While there, he met up with a friend fluent in Chinese, who showed him around Beijing.

The friend taught the author where to get pirated software and pornography, and how to bargain. For, the prices of all goods and services exchanged in the country are negotiable. He also got assistance in hiring a young female translator, whose schooling had taught her only positive aspects of China’s history in recent decades. She had no clue about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

When the author remarked on the air pollution in China, various Chinese people responded to his criticism by saying Los Angeles had smog. Another cultural aspect of life in China, aside from being forced to accept the pollution, was China’s government’s legal insistence that couples have only one child in their immediate families; preferably a boy. Parents of a child of marriageable age met in the local parks to find a spouse for their one child.

The author also conveyed his (unpleasant) experiences of riding on China’s railways, and seeing “…streetlamps decorated with swastikas, a sight that always succeeded in startling me. But, in fact, in Buddhism it is a symbol for love and mercy…”

Read the book to learn: the history of China of the 1400’s, and of the author’s adventures in China proper, Hong Kong and Macau. Through the eyes of the multi-racial author– who is Canadian, Czech and Dutch– the reader might get the impression that Chinese society is sociopathic.

But, when one thinks of the two-word phrase ending in “spree” the first words that spring to mind in AMERICAN English are: shopping, spending, shooting or killing. While it is bashing China, perhaps America ought to reflect on how the rest of the world views it, and “remove the plank from ITS OWN eye” first.

BONUS POST

“But, over time, I learned to hate as blindly and viciously as any of them.”

No, the above was not said by American viewers or listeners of political pundits in the last forty years. But it might as well have been.

At every opportunity, pundits bash their political enemies. Then they complain, “The nation is more divided than ever.”

It is the pundits who have made spewing hatred socially acceptable and perceived as even a good thing!

That is why hatred is still a “thing” in this country. Politicians too, pile on.

In addition, scapegoating is also all the childish rage these days. Pursuant to what they’ve heard, American viewers and listeners can feel free to blame any or all of the following for all of their troubles (in no particular order):

illegal immigrants, the Iranians, Robert Mueller, Hillary, James Comey, Obama, Lisa Page, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, red state governors, Democrats, police officers, Republicans, Donald J. Trump, Adam Schiff, Hunter Biden, the Chinese, conservatives, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Peter Strzok, the North Koreans, blue state governors, the Squad, liberals, the ladies on “The View,” Joe Biden, teachers, Antifa, Jerrold Nadler, the NRA, and numerous lesser attention whores.

Renewing threats is apparently in vogue, too. A Google search reveals who, of the most recent three presidents, has renewed the most threats.

The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Trump renews threat to” (Warning: this might get a little tedious):

Dec 9, 2015 Trump renews threat to run as an Independent GOP presidential…

Mar 3, 2016 Trump Renews Indie Threat

Aug 8, 2016 Trump renews threat to leave NAFTA in speech on economy

Nov 28, 2016 Trump renews threat to prosecute Clinton for joining recount

Aug 2, 2017 Trump renews threat to scrap NAFTA

Aug 27, 2017 Donald Trump Renews Threat To Scrap NAFTA Amid Negotiations …

Aug 28, 2017 Trump renews threat to scrap NAFTA going into next round of talks …

May 23, 2018 Trump Renews Threat to Scrap North Korea Summit

May 29, 2018 Trump Renews Threat To Impose Tariffs On High-Tech Chinese Goods

Apr 23, 2018 Trump renews threat to tie border crossings to new NAFTA deal

Jul 29, 2018 Trump renews threat to shut down government over border wall

Jul 30, 2018 Trump renews threat to shut down government over border wall

Aug 2, 2018 President Trump renews threat to shut down the …

Nov 22, 2018 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border over migrants

Nov 23, 2018 Trump renews threat to close US border with Mexico

Nov 29, 2018 Trump Renews Threat To Impose Tariffs On Imported Cars

Dec 28, 2018 Trump renews threat to close southern border

Dec 29, 2018 Trump renews threat to close US-Mexico border

Jan 6, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Declare National Emergency in Border Wall

Jan 7, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Declare Emergency Over Border …

Jan 10, 2019 President Trump Renews Threat To Declare Emergency To Get Funds …

Jan 25, 2019 Trump renews threat to declare national emergency over border …

Mar 28, 2019 Trump renews threat to close the southern border, blasts Mexico on …

Mar 29, 2019 Trump renews threat to shut down US-Mexico border

Mar 31, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Close Border, Cuts Aid to Central America

Apr 1, 2019 Trump renews threat to close southern border, calls on Congress to fix …

Apr 2, 2019 Trump renews threat to close border, possibly affecting commerce …

Apr 24, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexican border, send more troops …

Apr 25, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border

Apr 26, 2019 President Trump Renews Threat to Close U S Border with Mexico …

Jun 10, 2019 Trump renews threat to against French wine (sic)

Jun 11, 2019 US President Donald Trump renews threat to impose tariffs on Mexico

Jul 14, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border.

August 14, 2019 Trump renews threat to pull US out of WTO

Aug 21, 2019 Trump renews threat to end ‘ridiculous’ birthright citizenship

Sep 20, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Dump IS Fighters at Europe’s Border

Nov 3, 2019 Trump renews threat to cut wildfire aid to California

Jan 5, 2020 Trump renews threat to Iran after rockets land in Baghdad’s Green Zone

Jun 18, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with Beijing, a day after high-level U.S.-China talks

Jun 18, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with China.

Jun 23, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with Beijing

0 0 0

The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Obama renews threat to”:

Jul 15, 2009 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Military Spending Bill Over F-22s

Jul 26, 2011 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Boehner Debt Plan

Jul 27, 2011 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Boehner Debt Plan

Jan 13, 2016 Obama Renews Threat to Suspend AGOA Benefits for South Africa

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The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Bush renews threat to”:

Aug 24, 2001 Bush renews threat to boycott racism conference over Zionism

Dec 5, 2001 Bush renews threat to Iraq

Dec 6, 2001 Bush renews threat to veto defense bill

May 25, 2005 Bush renews threat to veto stem cell …

Mar 28, 2007 President Bush Renews Threat to Veto Bill on Iraq Troop Withdrawal

Apr 25, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto war funding bill from Congress

May 2, 2007 Bush vetoes war spending bill with Iraq …

Jul 19, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto health bill

Aug 24, 2001 Bush renews threat to boycott racism conference over Zionism

Sep 21, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto children’s health legislation

Sep 25, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto spending bills

Oct 3, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto children’s health legislation

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It remains to be seen whether overpaid bashing, hating, scapegoating, threatening noisemakers and/or patronage pigs will triumph over:

the refinement of national healthcare (even the second draft of ANY extremely, extremely, extremely complex system such as this, is going to have numerous problems)

human teachers

the cleaning up of and future prevention of pollution in various places in the United States

freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, etc., and

reducing even a little– the usual corruption, incompetence and waste that is always present to some degree in even a democratic nation.

By the way, the Bonus Book of the Week is “Makes Me Wanna Holler, A Young Black Man in America” by Nathan McCall, published in 1994.

The line preceding the first line of this post is, “I wondered, ‘Where did those white people learn to hate so deeply at such a young age?‘ “

Born in 1955 in Portsmouth, Virginia, the author detailed how his life mirrored his ethnic group’s mentality (African American) in his generation. When he was an adolescent, the forces governing his behavior included: the need for a feeling of tribal unity, peer pressure, hating all white people, and vendetta against rival gangs. If those gangs had acquired the kinds of writing, speaking and debating skills valued by the ethnic group (Caucasian) politically dominant at the time, those gangs could have become pundits or politicians.

Instead, they wasted their time and talents on physical fighting against each other, sexual conquests, and committing street crime. Such activities were destructive to their own ethnic group. Read the book to learn how that worked out for the author.