BY RAUL HERNANDEZ
[email protected]
CORNYN ALTRUISTIC HEART
States along the border, especially Texas, would take the brunt of the Trump tax, cleverly disguised as a tariff, on the American consumer.
The NYT report states that Texas would be hit the hardest by the proposed tariffs.
A 25 percent tariff would threaten $26.75 billion of Texas imports.
Texas Senator Cornyn’s now altruistic heart, despite rubber-stamping Everything Trump and singing the Trump praises, comes to light because he is up for reelection next year, and Beto O’Rourke’s close underdog run against fellow Republican Ted Cruz has given Cronyn the scare of his comfortable political life. He knows he will lose his power, congressional perks including a generous vacation package if Trump economic voodoo isn’t stopped.
Economic survival is the name of the game in Washington D.C., and so Cornyn will be leading the charge to save his own keister.
It has nothing to do with the rest of the country because if it did, Cornyn, Mitch, and the other spineless Republicans would oppose him on climate change, Chinese tariffs, racist policies, and other issues that are detrimental to the country.
The Mexico tariff issue, however, is too close to home even for Cornyn who has been silent up until this point — the Ghost of Beto nearly turning Texas blue is a grave concern, and threat if Cornyn is to continue feeding on the taxpayer trough.
Cornyn should have congress hire more immigration judges to hear asylum cases; border patrol agents, install better technology, start a massive Guest Worker Program, increase foreign aid to Central America countries, and change the asylum laws so people can apply in their own countries.
TRUMP’S ROAD TRIP
Trump took his breathtaking stupidity and skewed version of reality to England.
Nonetheless, the English kept a stiff upper lip and a stiffer middle finger in the air to greet the American president and leader of the free world.
British creativity, however, was in full display and included colorful, anti-Trump signs along with colossal balloon of a scowling Trump baby wearing a diaper.
But, once again, through the filter of his glassy eyes and Dullard mind, Trump claimed that he was greeted by “tremendous crowds of well-wishers” and that there was “great love all around.”
However, an online Trump-opposition petition with more than 1.8 million signatures and a recent YouGov negative-opinion-of-Trump poll underscored the British middle-finger and a Keep Calm, pinch your nose and Grab a Giant Flyswatter posture.
As Trump and his entourage of assorted nepotism fly back to America after three days,
King George III was probably laughing in his grave. The good King must have known what the Colonies were capable of doing if left to their own devices.
Will’s Crippled Argument
Conservative Columnist George Will’s writes this week that impeachment would be a debacle
George Will’s arguments are lame and Ludacris.
Trump once told his cult following that he could kill someone on Wall Street and get away with it.
The silence by the Republican Congress is deafening and underscores this political flyspeck that perhaps, murder can also be explained away.
Will notes in his column: “The object of impeachment is not to exact vengeance. It is to protect the public against future acts of recklessness or abuse.”
Mr. Will, the bull is already in the china shop.
For starters, Trump has made a mockery of the Constitution, trampled on the rule of law; praised America’s enemies and criticized its allies. There are about two dozen investigations involving Trump Inc.’s criminal and financial empire, including money laundering with the Russians and stealing from charities.
The severe breaches in ethical conduct and 10,000-plus lies continue daily.
Mitch McConnell and company have not uttered a word, and only one Republican Congressman, Justin Amash, has called for impeachment.
On the other side of the ledger, there are Democrats like Pelosi who subscribe to Will’s measured and cautious approach to eradicate this cancer that has spread rapidly and has grown to other once-healthy federal agencies like FBI, DOJ, CIA, and DOD.
There is a reason that the Founding Fathers included impeachment in U.S. Constitution as the method for removing the president, vice president, federal judges, and other federal officials from office.
Moreover, yes impeachment might be an exercise in futility because it would not get past Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate as Will maintains.
Impeaching Trump would allow all the evidence against this criminal to come to light. It would turn up the heat on the Republicans daily. Some will be in tight races in 2020, and they will have to go before their constituents and will be hounded by the media to explain their decisions to continue supporting Trump.
Sunlight is still the best disinfectant for America.
NYT HeadLines: Trump Says U.S. Will Hit Mexico With 5% Tariffs on All Goods
Much of the problem of how Mexico is perceived is because of media coverage.
This coverage rarely extends beyond the drug cartels, El Chapo, illegal immigration, corruption and poverty.
The extreme example of this mindset is when Fox sent a reporter who interviewed Border Patrol agents within a stone’s throw from Mexico. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest. Laughable, having lived on the El Paso border for three decades.
Fox spends a lot of air time supporting and hyping up Trump’s “invasion” of Brown people who are coming to take what many whites are terrified of losing or sharing: economic, political and social power.
This is the lens through which newsroom managers see Mexico. I’ve had front-row seats to this. I was a reporter at four newspapers for three decades. I worked in one newsroom about 15 years ago where the managing editor had a focus group to find ways to reach more minority readers, and the handful of Black and Hispanic reporters weren’t asked to participate.
A Hispanic and Black female reporters weren’t happy about this.
I told them I had my own minority program going, and I had learned to work around the newsroom racism.
Yes, Mexico has many very serious problems.
But there is the under-reported economic side:
Each day, more than 1 million people and about $1.7 billion in commerce are processed through official ports of entry. About 1.3 million Americans live in Mexico.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce repeatedly warned that a shutdown would hurt farmers and manufacturers across the nation, as well as workers and consumers.
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative: Mexico is currently our 3rd largest goods trading partner with $611.5 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2018.
Mexico was the United States’ 2nd largest goods export market in 2018.
Nothing will change, however, until Americans pay $5 for an avocado and the price for a six-pack of Corona is $10.
Then there will be cries to impeach the Orange Buffoon.
What the F*ck Did Mr. Mueller Say?
In legal nomenclature and while tap dancing around the obvious, Robert Mueller noted in his statements (if we read the fine print) that Trump’s fingerprints were all over his 400-plus-page report.
Suspense at Scotland Yard, Sherlock?
No, but, perhaps, at CNN, the meaning of Mueller’s words are being shredded by panelists, legal analysts, commentators, and pundits for clues of buried treasure.
Sane America, including hundreds of former prosecutors, read the 400-page report weeks ago and concluded the same thing that Trump has been in bed with the Russians for years.
Surprise, again?
You shouldn’t be because this is the way it works: Putin and his gangsters steal from the Russian treasury, take the stolen rubles to Deutsche Bank ( Russians’ equivalent of Wells Fargo) and have it washed by hand-picked Deutsche Bank employees.
Reportedly, Trump Crime Inc. goes to Deutsche Bank with a shopping cart when the Trumps are on the hunt for money. There at Deutsche, the Trumps, including Junior, load up on astronomical amounts of rubles packed as legitimate “loans” that are magically converted into U.S. dollars.
(Pssst…Money laundering)
In 2018 Bloomberg reported that in January 2017
Deutsche Bank was fined $629 million by U.K. and U.S. authorities for compliance failures when it helped wealthy Russians move about $10 billion out of the country using transactions that were likely thinly veiled attempts to cover up a financial crime.
An hour after listening to Mueller make his remarks today, I remember thinking: Right about now, Sean Hannity is crawling out of Trump’s ass waving a new script to use tonight on Fox.
There is a story, borderline rumor maybe, that Winston Churchill once asked this beautiful, upper-crust, haughty woman if she’d go to bed with him for a million pounds.
She smiled, sized him up and said coyly: “Why, yes.”
Churchill then asked the woman whether she’d go to bed with him for 20 pounds.
Angry, she said: “No, of course not. Who do you think I am?”
Churchill calmly replied: “Ma’dam, we already know what you are. Right now, we are negotiating on a price.”
Most of sane America has known what Trump is – a lying con man with the IQ of a slug and scruples of an outhouse rat.
We are now trying to figure out how much the Trumps owe to the Russians and what other parts of America the Trumps’ are trying to sell off while he entertains us with this Twitter account.