Job Losses from Trump's Trade War Likely Just Beginning

Much like Mussolini (for whom things did not end well), Donald Trump likes to strut around and act the tough guy. Part of this tough guy/bully routine is Trump's self-created trade war which is already beginning to kill American jobs.  But worse days are likely to come for both American workers more of whom will lose jobs and American consumers who will find themselves paying higher prices for numerous goods.  All so a foul narcissist can feed his insatiable ego and play to the knuckle dragging base of the Republican Party. A column by a former U.S. Trade Representative looks at America's increasingly alienated allies working to form new trading alliances that exclude America.  Here are highlights:

Diversification is the polite way of saying that America’s friends and allies believe we have become an unreliable partner, and they are now looking elsewhere. From Ottawa to Brussels to Seoul, our trading partners are fed up with the Trump administration’s tariffs, and they have given up on trying to charm President Trump or persuade him that free trade is good. To reduce their economic dependence on the United States and their exposure to a potential global trade war, they are forging trade deals that leave us out of the picture altogether. On June 14, Canada’s government asked Parliament to ratify a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the United States backed out of last year. On June 18, the European Union trade commissioner visited Australia and three days later, New Zealand to begin negotiations for free-trade agreements; and on June 22, South Korea announced plans to pursue negotiations for its first free-trade agreement with Russia.

These moves are a direct response to the Trump administration’s unreliability and unpredictability, and they are a clear sign that the administration’s trade policy priorities — renegotiating deals and punishing violations — are not working out as expected.

[Trump] The president may want better deals to replace the old, “terrible” deals he doesn’t like, but so far, the rest of the world has been reluctant to negotiate new agreements with the United States. The long and growing list of tariffs, particularly those based on dubious national security grounds, has weakened the administration’s ability to form coalitions with other countries to tackle legitimate concerns, especially China’s unfair trade practices.

Instead, our closest trading partners are scrambling to find new markets for exports subject to tariff increases by the United States, and to secure new suppliers for the American products that their own countries are planning to hit with retaliatory tariffs.

Japan is thus accelerating negotiations with other countries. Japan and the European Union plan to sign their free-trade agreement in July. Moreover, it was Japan who stepped up to fill the leadership void left by the American exit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Japanese Diet approved a bill to ratify the revised pact this month.

The tone and policies of the Trump administration have even managed to bring two longtime rivals, China and Mexico, closer together. The two countries once competed head-to-head as low-cost manufacturers, with the United States as the most important market. After Mr. Trump began beating the drum for tariffs and a possible withdrawal from Nafta, Mexico’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, called a visit last year to China “strategic leverage,” saying it “sends the signal that we have alternatives” to the United States.

Regrettably, this leaves the United States on the margins as the rest of the world builds a new trading structure without us. Our workers, farmers and companies will be locked out of important markets. We will lose our chance to help write the rules and set standards for trade in advanced technology, such as alternative-fuel vehicles, 3-D printing and artificial intelligence. Global and regional supply chains will increasingly bypass the United States. And years of efforts by the United States to curb China’s unfair trade practices will lose critical international support. To be sure, as the world’s largest economy, the United States will remain a major player in international commerce. . . . There is a danger, however, in overestimating our negotiating leverage. Trade patterns will shift as our partners look elsewhere. We have spent decades building trust with our allies. We are now squandering it.

Lindsey Graham: 70% Chance Trump Will Start War with North Korea

As noted in some previous posts, I have not worried as much about the possibility of nuclear war since the 1960's as I do now.  Again, as previously mote, back then we had sane individuals in the White House.  Such is not the case today when we are faced with the daily specter of a petulant, narcissistic, intellectually lazy, ego driven bully in the Oval Office with the nuclear codes.  I fear what madness this madman may unleash on the world.  Now, Senator Lindsey Graham - a sometimes responsible Republican - has noted that he believes there is a 70% chance that Der Trumpenführer may launch a war with North Korea with likely little thought of the extended consequences to allies in the far east or America itself. When will Pence - himself a vile man - and the cabinet move to remove Trump?  All of us are in daily danger from the ill-advised voted of roughly 70,000 individuals in three states. The Atlantic looks at the danger we face.  Here are highlights:  

It’s become a grim ritual in Washington foreign-policy circles to assess the chances that the United States and North Korea stumble into war. But on Wednesday Lindsey Graham did something different: He estimated the odds that the Trump administration deliberately strikes North Korea first, to stop it from acquiring the capability to target the U.S. mainland with a long-range, nuclear-tipped missile. And the senator’s numbers were remarkably high.

“I would say there’s a three in 10 chance we use the military option,” Graham predicted in an interview. If the North Koreans conduct an additional test of a nuclear bomb—their seventh—“I would say 70 percent.”

Graham said that the issue of North Korea came up during a round of golf he played with the president on Sunday. “It comes up all the time,” he said.

“War with North Korea is an all-out war against the regime,” he said. “There is no surgical strike option. Their [nuclear-weapons] program is too redundant, it’s too hardened, and you gotta assume the worst, not the best. So if you ever use the military option, it’s not to just neutralize their nuclear facilities—you gotta be willing to take the regime completely down.”

“We’re not to the tipping point yet,” he noted, but “if they test another [nuclear] weapon, then all bets are off.”

Graham takes the possibility of war seriously enough that, to prevent it, he would support direct talks with the regime “without a whole lot of preconditions.” It was a noteworthy statement coming from one of the foremost North Korea hawks in Congress. He wouldn’t rule out a Kim-Trump summit. “I’m not taking anything off the table to avoid a war. ... When they write the history of the times, I don’t want them to say, ‘Hey, Lindsey Graham wouldn’t even talk to the guy.’”

Graham says Trump “has 100 percent made up his mind that he’s not gonna let Kim Jong Un break out,” which Graham defined as achieving the capacity to “marry up a missile and a nuclear warhead that can hit America effectively.”

Many experts think North Korea has essentially reached this milestone already through its increasingly sophisticated nuclear and missile tests, while others argue that the North is still months or years away from that goal. But Graham bypassed these technical debates to focus on a central tension in the Trump administration’s approach to the issue: The Kim regime is sprinting toward breakout, while the Trump administration’s diplomatic campaign to persuade China and other countries to impose stiffer sanctions and other forms of pressure on North Korea is moving forward, but slowly. It’s a race. And there’s currently a clear frontrunner.

“I don’t know how to say it any more direct: If nothing changes, Trump’s gonna have to use the military option, because time is running out,” Graham said. “I don’t care if North Korea becomes a Chinese protectorate. … I don’t care who [the Chinese] put in charge of North Korea, as long as that person doesn’t want to create a massive nuclear arsenal to threaten America. There are a couple ways for this to end: The Chinese could kill the guy if they wanted to, or they could just stop oil shipments [to North Korea], which would bring [Kim Jong Un’s] economy to [its] knees.” Graham’s scenarios for resolving the crisis short of war, along with his vision for war, notably conclude with regime change in North Korea, which the Trump administration claims to not be pursuing.

Graham walked me through the case he had made for denial—and how he justified the dark calculation it relies on: that it’s worth initiating an actual conflict on the Korean peninsula, placing thousands and maybe even millions of real lives at risk in East Asia, in order to avert the potential deaths of Americans from hypothetical threats. Of the type of “preventive” war Graham has in mind, Dwight Eisenhower once observed, “none has yet explained how war prevents war. Worse than this, no one has been able to explain away the fact that war creates the conditions that beget war.” But Graham has a ready explanation. The veteran lawmaker, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who for years served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves while in Congress, and who once told voters not to support him if they were sick of war, argues that there are times when people’s aversion to conflict creates the conditions that beget war. He seems preoccupied these days with how the history of the present will be written in the future.

North Korea’s outlier behavior in the world, and its history of selling missiles and nuclear-related materials to countries such as Syria and Iran, inform Graham’s belief that more likely than North Korea firing its nuclear weapons at the United States is the North putting them on the black market. The biggest risk to the U.S. homeland and mankind as a whole is weapons of mass destruction making their way to people who wouldn’t hesitate to use them, he argues. And today those people belong to terrorist groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda. “What would be the source of those weapons?” Graham asked. “An unstable regime, cash-starved, controlled by a crazy man, called North Korea. ... I don’t see China selling [terrorist organizations] nuclear weapons. I don’t see Russia selling them nuclear weapons. I think for [terrorists] to build one of their own would be really tough and we’d probably know about it. I think the transfer of technology from North Korea to these groups would be very difficult to monitor.”

He acknowledged that preventive U.S. military action against North Korea could spiral into a conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons—and that any kind of conflict would probably engulf American civilians and U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan. “Fighting the North Korea threat over there protects the homeland,” he said. “That’s what [U.S. soldiers are] paid to do. That’s what they want to do. They sign up for these kind of risks.”

The urgency with which administration officials are imploring China to squeeze its neighbor, and their apparent lowering of the bar for negotiations, reflect a desire “to avoid what would be a catastrophic war for the region and the world.” But paradoxically that urgency also demonstrates that the probability of war is growing, he argued.

It’s certainly possible that this is all calculated bluster—an attempt by Graham to advocate for his preferred policy agenda within the White House, intimidate North Korea, and spook China into doing what it has resisted for decades: Cut its lifeline to the Kim regime. When I asked Graham who he was directing his warnings about time running out to, he responded, “North Korea and Donald Trump.” He said he was “100 percent convinced that China is a rational actor, that they see North Korea as a thorn in our side—a problem for them, but the upside of North Korea is greater than the downside for them. That changes, the day that they believe Donald Trump will blow up the whole place.” . . . . understanding where the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons is headed also requires reckoning with another possibility: that Graham and like-minded U.S. officials are deadly serious.

 I for one do not sleep better at night with our own version of Kim Jong Un in the White House.  The fact that the lives of my grandchildren are daily threatened by Trump's unfitness for office make me seethe.  Be very, very afraid.

Trump's Surrender of American Power and Influence

Donald Trump - like perhaps a majority of his supporters in my opinion - is basically a know nothing.  He doesn't read, gets his "news" primarily from Kook-Aid serving Fox News, dislikes briefing reports if they are more than a single page, and in general appears to have little interest in doing the work required to be president.   Combine this with his inward looking "America First" narrative that belittles other nations and is blind to the importance of foreign trade in projection American power and it is a recipe for disaster.  A column in the Washington Post by an economist equates Trump's policies to date as a huge surrender of American power and influence across the globe.  Here are column highlights:

President Trump’s foreign policy, such as it is, rests on a massive and apparently indestructible contradiction. Trump wants the United States to remain the “essential” nation, the best embodiment of Western ideals of freedom and democracy, while at the same time deliberately alienating many of our traditional allies, whose support the United States desperately needs. American leadership becomes difficult, if not impossible.

It is hard to straddle this contradiction, because it reflects a basic misunderstanding of the American “greatness” that Trump so avidly pursues. To Trump, this greatness is mainly measured in economic terms: the number of added jobs; the trajectory of wages; the rate of economic growth. It is a nostalgic and unrealistic yearning for the economic dominance the United States enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s.

The truth is that American greatness then and later was never about dollars and cents alone. Prosperity was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The greater objective was to promote democracy and mixed economies, with power divided between the market and government. To advance this vision, the United States advocated open trade and provided a military umbrella. The latter created a geopolitical shield against instability.

Trump sees the costs of these programs as showing that past U.S. leaders were willing to sacrifice the interests of ordinary Americans to meaningless global cooperation. . . .  these complaints, they were (and are) fundamentally misleading. The notion that Americans simply abandoned their own interests for Japan’s, Germany’s or South Korea’s — to select a few obvious countries — is counterfactual. . . . Our economic and political interests were served by a prosperous and increasingly democratic global system.

As “grand strategy,” the post-World War II American conception of the world order largely succeeded. The global economy grew richer. A wealthier Europe established stable democracies. The Soviet Union collapsed. America benefited from all of this.

But as Trump has surely discovered, running an outward-looking, internationalist foreign policy is hard when your domestic policy is nationalist and inward-looking. Abroad, the balancing act has backfired. . . . A recent Pew Research Center poll of 40,448 respondents in 37 countries finds a big drop in favorable views of the United States. 

As a result, it’s harder for Trump to lead internationally. Foreign leaders can more easily oppose him without suffering adverse domestic political consequences. He has made it even harder by antagonizing other countries by withdrawing from the Paris agreement on climate change. There was no need; all the pact’s goals are voluntary.
He quit the Trans- Pacific Partnership — a trade agreement with 11 other Pacific Rim nations; many economists consider this a blunder, because Asian economies are among the fastest-growing. And last week, Europe and Japan announced they’re negotiating a trade agreement that covers 40 percent of world trade and excludes the United States. Being outside these agreements would weaken U.S. exports. Further, the European Union warns it might retaliate against the United States if Trump restricts Europe’s steel exports.

What we’re witnessing is extraordinary: a voluntary surrender of power and influence. . . .  history suggests that trade and geopolitics go hand in hand. To deal with North Korea, Trump needs allies to make economic sanctions tougher or to support military action. He has precious few because he has been so careless in abdicating responsibility for the global trading system.

Putting an ignorant narcissist in the White House will likely cost America dearly.  Bigots and white supremacists may feel empowered and free to swagger, but the country as a whole will be the loser. 

Panasonic To Recognize Same-Sex Marriages Worldwide for Employees

While the majority of Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly remain committed to prostituting themselves to The Family Foundation and granting special rights to Christofascists - sending a message to the world that Virginia is a hostile, bigot-friendly state - electronics giant Panasonic has announced a very different policy.  It will now recognize same sex marriages of its employees on a worldwide basis despite the fact that gay marriage is not yet recognized nationwide in Japan.  This, combined with a bill entered in the California General Assembly that would ban state paid travel to states with anti-gay discrimination policies, underscores the reality that pandering to the Christofascists and quasi-hate groups like The Family Foundation is bad for Virginia's economy.  Rocket News 24 has details on Panasonic's new policy.  Here are highlights:   

LGBT rights in Japan have been in the headlines quite a bit the last few years, but today it looks like the LGBT community can count another win: Osaka-based Panasonic has announced that they will begin recognizing same-sex marriages starting in April.

According to the Mainichi Shinbun, the company has received numerous requests for this policy change from employees in addition to facing pressure as an Olympics sponsor — the Olympics Charter forbids discrimination of any kind, including discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The changes are currently being implemented and will mostly involve rewriting work regulation definitions for “marriage,” “spouse,” and so on. Additionally, employees will be able to take special leave for weddings and funerals and enroll their spouses in the company welfare program. Panasonic will also be including a rule against discrimination based on sexual orientation in their conduct guidelines, which affect the company’s nearly 250,000 employees both domestically and internationally.

One issue Panasonic is currently working out is determining what exactly constitutes marriage in Japan for same-sex couples. Only a handful of districts in the country will legally marry LGBT couples, though other companies, such as IBM, have established protocols, so we’re pretty sure Panasonic can figure something out.

Japanese Buddhist Temple Officiates Gay Weddings - A Return to Tradition?

One of the great ironies of Japan is that homosexual love was once considered honorable - even superior to heterosexual love - although to maintain the family line, males would have wives and families.  The ideal of homosexual love was most honored and distinguished among the Samurai class.   Yet nowadays, most Japanese know nothing of this documented history.  An article published at St. Thomas University notes as follows:

The people of the West are not aware that there once existed in Japan a cultural tradition of homosexuality comparable to that of ancient Greece. During a period of time in which the traditional civilization of Japan reached its perfection, the homosexual love was considered a passion more noble and more gracious than heterosexuality. Over time, this tradition of homosexuality would quickly become discouraged, and eventually it was kept so hidden as it was thought to have disappeared altogether.

The tradition of male on male love was greatly encouraged within the samurai class. It was considered useful to boys in teaching them virtue, honesty and the appreciation of beauty. While at the same time the love of women was often devalued for its so called 'feminising' effect.

This tradition greatly flourished in the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries. The samurai deemed boys aged thirteen to nineteen suitable for love. This is called wakashu-do (or shudo for short), which means the way of the youth or more literally, the way of the young men. There seems to be definite distinction amongst samurai homosexuality and general homosexuality in Japan. The samurai preferred a young man as supposed to a young boy, and the relationship was between the samurai and his pupil. 

The decline of shudo started with the westernization of Japan. At the end of the industrial revolution, homosexuality had disappeared from the social realm. Even today, the Japanese only speak of it as a deficiency or a sexual anomaly. This is a direct result of the anti-homosexual society that has been established, as it was in Europe. Modern writers and historians purposely hide this tradition from foreigners, as they do from the Japanese themselves. They have deemed it an ancient dishonor, and a sign of underdevelopment of Japanese society.

With the introduction of western thought and the Christian ideal of homophobia, no one remembered that at the time of Japan's greatest glory, the traditional Japanese arts of No and Kabuki were homosexual theaters linked with prostitution. That what was called the flower of the samurai spirit and formed the real basis of the samurai aesthetic was shudo, the love of young men. We now understand that it is impossible to understand the traditional civilization of Japan without taking into account these predominant homosexual traditions.

What changed all of this?  The Christian missionaries and eventually Japanese leaders who sought western approval and did not want to be looked down as "uncivilized." Now, a Buddhist Temple is beginning to conduct same sex weddings.  Here are highlights from Towleroad:

The Shunkoin Temple in Kyoto, Japan has become the first zen Buddhist temple offering to officiate symbolic same sex weddings within the country. Japan’s views on homosexuality and gender nonconforming individuals is a complex one. Despite artistic cultural exports that sometimes Japan as being a socially progressive society in regards to gender and sexual expression, the country still struggles with broad legislation that would ensure LGBT equality.

A Pew poll conducted in 2013 found that Japanese citizens, while divided on the issue, were slightly more inclined to agree with the idea that homosexuality should be accepted by society. Nevertheless, change has been gradual.  “It’s not like we have to keep tradition the way it is,” Takafumi Kawakami, a priest at the Shunkoin Temple said in an interview with CNN. “We welcome every couple regardless of their faith or sexual orientation.”

“Japan still has no LGBT protection laws, lawmakers aren’t even talking about it,” said LGBT activist Maki Muraki. “If more people come out and get married, it’ll increase LGBT awareness, marriage equality, and workplace equality.” 

How Big is the Ongoing Danger from Fukushima?

Nearly everyone is familiar with the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant that followed the tsunami that hit Japan.  But how many understand that the dangers and risks may not be passed?  Especially for Americans living on the west coast of the United States (where two of my children and my young grandson currently live)?  An article on Bill Moyers.com contains some frightening information and ought to have many Americans deeply concerned.  Among the issues reviewed are the incompetence and dishonest of the owner of the devastated Fukushima plant to the danger of radiation contamination on the U. S. West Coast.  Here are highlights:

All eyes are on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as major cleanup efforts are set to begin later this month, in the most significant test of the operator’s ability to manage the threats resulting from one of the biggest nuclear disasters ever. For two years now, the plant’s operator and the Japanese government have struggled to contain an ongoing series of crises at the devastated facility. But the situation has the potential to get worse. Here’s what you need to know.

The Problems
The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant has come under severe criticism from nuclear energy experts for its handling of the cleanup at the crippled facility, decimated after the March 2011 tsunami.

Many say Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the Japanese utility company that operates the plant, has been grossly incompetent, deceptive and guilty of downplaying the health impacts resulting from the meltdown.

The Associated Press and Japan Today reported this week that tanks containing radioactive water were leaking or otherwise failing because they were hurriedly erected by inexperienced workers — including one auto mechanic who expressed his concern about the quality of his own work.

Researchers are concerned about the effects of the radioactive water on sea life and those who eat it. Last year, scientists reported that Pacific bluefin tuna migrating from coastal Japan to the waters off Southern California contained radioactive cesium isotopes from the Fukushima plant. The safety of Pacific fish following the disaster is up for debate.

And Fukushima, as well as other nuclear facilities in Japan, lie near 14 active fault lines, which the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) says the utilities are capable of withstanding. Last month, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki expressed his fears that further damage to the Fukushima facility could prove catastrophic. “Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami. The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there’s another earthquake of a seven or above, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose.”

Should the fourth reactor collapse, Suzuki said, it would be “bye bye Japan,” and “everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate. Now if that isn’t terrifying, I don’t know what is.”

Later this month, Tepco is expected to begin the delicate task of removing over 1,500 spent fuel rods stored in a building heavily damaged by the March 2011 explosion. The rods are capable of producing radiation at levels 14,000 times greater than what was released when America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It’s a highly dangerous operation that has never been attempted on such a scale before, and a key part of decommissioning the facility, which could cost $50 billion and take 40 years.

Former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander says Tepco may be playing down the dangers of the operation. “The thing that keeps me up late at night is that they’re getting ready to unload the spent fuel in unit four,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating US nuclear plants. “It has the potential if it doesn’t go well to create a very, very serious accident,” he told Bloomberg News.

The Politics

Both Tepco and the Japanese government have come under criticism for how they handled the disaster. “You have a government that is in total collusion with Tepco, the energy company. They’re lying through their teeth,” said Suzuki.

Of the attempts to stop the water from leaking, Suzuki said, “They don’t know what to do. And the thing we need is to get an international group of experts to go in with complete freedom to do what they suggest. And right now the Japanese government has too much pride to admit that.”

Fact checking Suzuki for Vice, David P. Ball contacted University of British Columbia physicist Marcello Pavan. Asked whether Tepco was indeed “lying through their teeth,” Pavan said, “That is absolutely correct, at least from what I see. Tepco has been minimizing the effects of what is happening. But here we have a large industrial concern lying to the government about an accident related to its business — is that news?”

A study conducted by Australia’s University of New South Wales says radiactive waters will reach the US sometime in early 2014 — and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported earlier this month that radioactive waters from Fukushima had already arrived in Alaska.

Meanwhile, many of the 50,000 workers employed by subcontractors in the cleanup effort are being exposed to dangerous radiation levels while facing low wages and wage theft, reports Reuters. For some, the cost of speaking up was getting fired.

The Danger of the GOP's Refusal to Reject Ignorance and Obama's Refusal to Lead

Increasingly the USA - which once lead much of the world industrially and at times politically - seems to reject any concept of planning ahead. In business, all the focus is on the numbers for the next quarterly report and in politics, no one looks beyond talking points and slogans for the next election - if even that. Often it's the next news day cycle that represents long term planning. The myopia seems to be intensifying even as the USA has growing challenges from China, India and other rising nations that DO look at things with a longer view. Adding to the threat to stability and economic prosperity is the fact that one of the two major political parties seems to increasingly embrace ignorance and be focused solely on looking back in time trying to reprise a social model that never even truly existed. Compounding the problem is a president who refuses to be a leader on anything. He merely punts to Congress which does nothing. Thomas Friedman has a column in the New York Post that looks at this frightening reality. Here are some highlights:
*
At a time when Japan is suffering a nuclear catastrophe that is likely to make the world even more dependent on oil and gas, at a time when the world’s top oil and gas producers are entering what will be, at best, an unstable, and, at worst, a viciously violent transition from autocracy to, one hopes, democracy, and at a time when the combination of the two could slow down global growth while we’re still trying to climb out of recession, America has no energy policy, no climate policy and no long-term plan to deal with its unsustainable deficit.
*
[O]ur two political parties would rather focus on winning the next election and blaming the other guy than making hard choices.”
*
President Obama has the right convictions on all these issues, but he has not shown the courage of his convictions. The Republicans have just gone nuts. If you listen to Obama, he eloquently describes our energy, climate and fiscal predicaments: how we have to end our addiction to oil and cut spending and raise revenues in an intelligent way that also invests in the future and doesn’t just slash and burn. But then the president won’t lead.
*
[T]he president has never gotten in the G.O.P.’s face on this issue [energy policy]. He has not put his own energy plan on the table and then gone out to the country and tried to sell it. It is what a lot of Obama supporters find frustrating about him: They voted for Obama to change the polls not read the polls.
*
Republicans, by contrast, are insisting that we can somehow drill our way out of our energy problems, and House Republicans just reported out of committee a bill that would block the E.P.A. from taking any action to reduce greenhouse gases, while also slashing government funds to keep air and water clean. So far, the G.O.P. is calling for cuts in the things we need to invest more in — like education and infrastructure — while leaving largely untouched things we need to reduce, like entitlements and defense spending. A country that invests more in its elderly than its youth, more in nursing homes than schools, will neither invent the future nor own it.
*
The picture is bleak indeed. Many of us hoped for a transformational president in voting for Obama. We did not get what we wanted. Instead we have a spineless, equivocating follower. As for the GOP, having sold its soul first to the Christian Right and then the Tea Party, I see little hope for an intelligent, rational leader emerging. So what will happen? We will likely follow the path Britain did prior to WWII - being perceived as strong militarily even as the changes needed to sustain that power were ignored and/or turned back.

"Loving Christians" Pile On Saying God is Punishing Japan

Frankly, if anyone is deserving of God's punishment, it would seem to be the hate-filled modern day Pharisees of the Christian Right who increasingly seem incapable of common decency much less empathy or concern for their fellow humans. These people make Christianity an uglier and uglier cult with ever passing day. Given the immense human suffering that is at this moment transpiring in Japan, one would think some minimal modicum of decency would prevail. But such is not the case. Not amongst the "godly Christian" set. Exhibit A and Exhibit B are Cindy Jacobs (pictured above), a self-congratulatory nut job Christianist and Malcolm McGregor III, a candidate for El Paso, Texas, City Council. As Right Wing Watch reports, Jacobs is bellowing that God is punishing Japan for its "deep idolatry and the worship of hundreds of idols under the guise of Shintoism, Buddhism, and allegiances to being "sons of the dragon." Meanwhile McGregor - who is vitriolic anti-gay - is likewise chiming in that God is punishing Japan for its failure to be blessed by protection. If Jacobs and McGregor represent the face of Christianity - and they certainly do represent far right Christianists - my query is who would want to embrace such a foul and inhuman belief system? First a sampling of Jacobs' foul verbal diarrhea via Right Wing Watch:
*
Like her close colleague Chuck Pierce, who yesterday declared that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan was an attempt by God to topple "a stronghold of spiritism," Cindy Jacobs weighs in on the tragedy to declare that Japan has always been a "hard group for the gospel" because it was rooted in idolatry - even the island itself "looks like the head of a dragon" - and so God is trying to shake the nation because "the Holy Spirit wants to breathe the wind of revival across Japan and bring a mighty spiritual awakening to the land of the rising sun with healing in His wings":
*
My interpretation of this is that while God did not want people to perish, He is going to use this to "pierce" the darkness surrounding the Japanese people if we will cry out to God for them in the midst of this crisis ... If we respond correctly, the darkness and the grip of idolatry of all forms that has blinded the eyes of so many in Japan will be broken off of them. The faithful believers in Jesus Christ will be strengthened as they are used for great harvest across Asia and the face of the earth.
*

Then there's McGregor. Here are highlights from the Advocate on the mindset of this "loving Christian" who wants to be on El Paso's City Council:
*
One of several antigay candidates running for the El Paso city council says he believes the tsunami and earthquake in Japan are a curse from God.
*
“Japan had built tsunami walls along their coasts but this tsunami was bigger than that. No matter what you say, they either weren’t blessed with protection or they were cursed with an earthquake,” Malcolm McGregor III told ABC7.
*
According to the Dallas Voice, McGregor is a member of the antigay El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values, which sponsored a successful ballot initiative to rescind domestic-partner benefits that had approved by the city council.
*
Once again, I find myself firmly agreeing with Anne Rice: If these individuals are what being a Christian involves, then I have absolutely no desire to ever be considered a Christian ever again.

Christianist Nutcase: God Struck Japan with Earthquake to Punish Its "Spiritism"

I suspect that many of us saw this coming. Now, in yet another example of just how vile Christianity has become under the unrelenting hate of self-congratulation of Christianists, Right Wing Watch looks at the rantings of "Pastor" Chuck Pierce. I am continually left dumbstruck by the manner in which self-anointed "Christians" write off the shared humanity of millions of other humans without the slightest thought or remorse. Their mindset frighteningly mirrors that of the NAZI murderers who sent Jews off for extermination in the 1930's and first half of the 1940's. I find it difficult to grasp how one becomes so morally bankrupt and devoid of even a shred of empathy for others. It is frightening and serves as an indictment not only of Christianists like Pierce but also the GOP politicians who constantly prostitute themselves to such hate mongers. Here are some highlights:
*
[T]oday Pierce reminds us that back in 2005 he and his associates prophesied that Japan would be shaken and brought to its knees because it was a "stronghold of spiritism":

*
"There will be a shaking coming to Japan that will bring them to their knees. This shaking will change the industry of the nation. Japan has been built upon a fault line linked with a deep wounding from the past. This shaking will occur before the apostolic team that I am sending to Japan arrives. When they arrive, I will begin the healing of the fault line and release a new anointing for industries. I am sending you to the people group of that area and they will be humbled in the midst of their pride. Do not fear. I am causing the mountain to be brought down and the valleys to be brought up. I will create a leveling effect in Japan."
*
[B]ecause of this massive disaster "the old religious structures will fall and many will experience the freedom and reality of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."
*
Lest you think Right Wing Watch is exaggerating, check out Pierce's own verbal diarrhea here.

The Continuing Nightmare in Japan

A second explosion has hit the Fukushima nuclear complex about 150 miles north of Tokyo. Meanwhile, the images and increasing death toll coming out of Japan are mind boggling and extremely disturbing. They are certainly a lesson in how little control we often have over our lives and that, indeed "control" is an illusion. A video here shows the onslaught of the tsunami from a street level perspective and under scores how quickly areas were inundated. The threat of nuclear contamination makes matters even more frightening. Here are brief highlights from the BBC:

*
Japanese officials are playing down any health risk, but the US said it had moved one of its aircraft carriers from the area after detecting low-level radiation 100 miles (160km) offshore.
*
Technicians have been battling to cool reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant since Friday, following the quake and tsunami. In other developments:
*
Two thousand bodies have been found on the shores of Miyagi prefecture, Japanese media are reporting
*
The government said it would pump 15 trillion yen ($182bn; £113bn) into the economy to prop up markets, but the Nikkei slumped more than 6%
*
Prime Minister Naoto Kan postponed planned rolling powercuts, saying they may not be needed if householders could conserve energy
*
The BBC's Rachel Harvey in the port town of Minamisanriku says everything has been flattened until about 2km inland.

Reflections on The Earthquake Disaster in Japan

Watching CNN as I type this post, my heart goes out to those in Japan who have lost family members, their homes, and had their lives turned upside down by the horrific earthquake in Japan. One report indicates that the main island of Japan was moved eight (8) feet by the quake. The devastation is mind boggling and the damage to nuclear power plants especially troubling. Compounding the disaster is the fact that it's winter time and with disrupted utilities and in some areas a demolished infrastructure, the likelihood of more deaths is sadly increased. The Washington Post has these highlights:
*
A bulldozing tsunami triggered by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake devastated the northeast coast of Japan on Friday, turning cars into driftwood, washing away neighborhoods and leaving this industrialized country bracing for an epic humanitarian disaster.
*
This earthquake, the fifth-largest worldwide since 1900 and the strongest ever to strike Japan, will redefine the challenges facing a country already burdened by debt, economic stagnation and depopulation.
*
A grim accounting of lost infrastructure and lives lies ahead. But as of Saturday morning, Japan remained a country reckoning with images, not numbers. Describing what could become one of Japan's deepest traumas since World War II, television broadcasters appeared on camera wearing helmets, fearful of aftershocks. People in Tokyo shared YouTube videos of downtown skyscrapers swaying and witnesses screaming.
*
A series of aftershocks Saturday - the strongest measured at a magnitude of 6.8 - only increased the sense of anxiety.
*
"It is snowing in Sendai, and blankets and food are not abundant," Tamotsu Watanabe, a staff member for the Sendai city government, said Saturday morning. "We haven't been able to catch up with the magnitude of things."
*
It's time for the world to pitch in and recognize our shared humanity with the victims of the terrible disaster. Sadly, the cynic in me wonders how long it will be before Pat Robertson or some other "professional Christian" hate merchants lays the blame for the disaster on the Japanese for their failure to be Christians and/or gays as happened in the aftermath of the recent New Zealand earthquake.
.

On the Humorous Side

Growing up my family had a parrot for many years and the bird was definitely a character and often quite bold. The sound of the vacuum cleaner in particular sent him into spasams of shrieking and making a loud racket. When my family moved to Virginia from central New York, I got to drive the car carrying the parrot in the front passenger seat. In any event, I found this story from Japan humorous since it highlights what characters these birds can be. Here are highlights from Yahoo News:

*

TOKYO - When Yosuke the parrot flew out of his cage and got lost, he did exactly what he had been taught — recite his name and address to a stranger willing to help. Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor's roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said. He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.

*
"I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura," the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs. The Nakamura family told police they had been teaching the bird its name and address for about two years.