Dec. 19 is
my daughter Melanie’s birthday and also the day that my son Andrew died.
International
adoption is getting more complicated and expensive. (Reminder, my son Jon was
adopted from Colombia and my late Cuban foster son arrived from Cuba via the
Mariel boatlift.) Yet there is a point of diminishing returns in adding more
layers of cost and protections that actually impede such adoptions and prevent
children from finding homes. There is no way for any human endeavor to provide
a 100% guarantee of success. Granted, that there have been unscrupulous
practices in the past that have harmed some kids and families, but most have
now been taken care of, almost to the point of overkill. Speaking as both an
adoptive and a birth parent, I do think there are additional factors and
complications involved in becoming a parent by international adoption, but
current practices are more than sufficient to address them. Adding unnecessary
and costly hurdles serves only to discourage would-be adoptive parents. Adoption,
like any other human endeavor or relationship, involves a degree of chance or
risk that cannot be entirely eliminated. The adoption process should try to
prepare parents to cope with possible problems, but cannot make them all
magically disappear. An adopted child, like any human being, is not a cookie
cutter image, but flesh and blood responsive to the emotional environment of
his or her new home. Parent-child relationships develop over time and cannot be
guaranteed in advance. We all know that, but some adoption policy makers seem
clueless and overly concerned about rules.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/12/04/international-adoptions-may-get-harder.html
Recently,
I got together with the daughter of a good friend who died recently. The
daughter works at a school in my neighborhood that my kids once attended. Her
mother, Hope Marindin, was a single adoption pioneer, about whom I
once wrote in the Washington Post. In
her late 40’s, she adopted two boys and the daughter with whom I recently met.
The daughter, originally from Vietnam, has visited there twice, including going
to her old orphanage. Now she and her husband want to adopt a child from Asia.
Elaine Chao, Trump’s new Transportation Secretary
pick, is Mitch McConnell’s wife and also a former Peace Corps Director. Trump
is beholden to McConnell for his support. Trump’s announced future appointments
are all over the block, most seeming quite inappropriate for or even
antithetical to the mission of the agency involved. Whether or not Donald Trump
dons the Republican mantle, might some Republican lawmakers balk at some of
these nominations?
Why doesn’t Trump bring many of his overseas businesses back to
the US to provide jobs here?
The more Donald
Trump keeps on traveling around the country arousing his supporters and also
naming staff, thus keeping himself in the news, the harder it will be to
overturn this election without a civil war, which may be part of his strategy.
Trump obviously enjoys speaking extemporaneously at rallies and being cheered on
by crowds much more than actually engaging in the nitty gritty of governing. He
doesn’t appreciate being mocked and is also facing widespread civil
disobedience by cities, churches, and universities regarding his intended wholesale
deportations. The fact that he lost the popular vote by such a wide margin (now
2.7 million and counting) has made his mandate seem illegitimate, which may be
one reason for him abandoning his promise to “lock up” Hillary Clinton. Lock
her up for what? Hillary has been cleared and reportedly got the highest vote
count ever for a presidential candidate.
Nor have Trump’s
appointments or statements since the election given those opposed to him any
more confidence in his leadership. He says he doesn’t need daily intel
briefings because he’s “smart.” His appointments are top-heavy with generals
and regulators opposed to the regulations they are supposed to support. They
may face sabotage in the ranks. He may not even enjoy a post-election honeymoon.
And while a Republican House and Senate may give him the benefit of the doubt
initially, they must also be aware that a large proportion of the public has
not been won over and may even oust them
at the mid-term elections. Despite extensive gerrymandering, not all
Republicans are in safe districts. The electorate is fickle and impatient and
some Trump voters have taken all his wild promises literally. Like spurned
lovers, will they seek their revenge? Some high-profile conservative supporters,
like Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter, have already jumped ship.
Apparently, unlike other presidents, Trump won‘t
divest himself of his overseas holdings nor is he giving up his role in “The
Celebrity Apprentice.” And he will probably stay involved with his US
businesses despite saying his kids will manage them, while also holdings
meetings at his conveniently located DC Trump Hotel. “Conflict of interest” is
not part of his vocabulary—he seems bent on using the presidency to increase
his fortune. How much money does one person and one family need to amass? Trump
flaunts the usual rules and expects to get away with it and certainly, so far,
his Republican supporters and advisers seem poised to give him that leeway. For
someone who attacked Hillary Clinton for her association with the Clinton
Foundation, an actual benevolent foundation supporting many useful projects
around the world, Trump certainly holds himself to a different standard.
It would be great if a majority of members of the Electoral
College would not
actually vote for Trump. Some have resigned
rather than vote for him, though it would have been better if they had stayed
on and simply not given him their vote. Five million have already signed an
on-line petition in favor of Hillary
Clinton and against Trump. If that number swells before Dec. 19, when the
Electoral College vote, will it have any effect? Probably not, because the
signatures will not have been checked against voter rolls. (There was no
internet, obviously, when the Electoral College was formed.) And these eager
signers may not have actually voted for Hillary on Nov. 8. People who were
lukewarm for her may have decided instead to vote for a 3rd party or
not at all, confident that she would win anyway, but not wanting to feel
responsible. Some of them are sorry now; Trump’s margin of victory in
battleground states was so small.
According to Michael Moore,
who had predicted Trump’s victory, it's not impossible that the Electoral
College will deny Trump the presidency. If that should actually happen, we will
have a major tweet storm and all hell breaking loose. The several retired
generals whom Trump has nominated will be on the warpath.
Unfortunately, at this point, it’s probably wishful thinking that
Trump could actually be dislodged. We may have to endure him, just as we endure
other life challenges and reversals such as illnesses, accidents, job losses, relationship
problems, and natural disasters. He can do a lot of damage in 4 years, but, so
far, there seems to be no way to avoid a looming accident or catastrophe. We
can always hope that he won’t be as bad as we had feared.
Jill
Stein has certainly elevated the profile of the Green Party and
her own standing with her recount efforts. The fact that so much money poured
so quickly into her effort is a tribute to her, as well as to Clinton. Of
course, Trump's folks are fighting tooth and nail to stop the vote recount,
even though, if Trump believes there actually were irregularities and that
"illegals" voted, he should welcome the recount. Probably, the
biggest take-away from the effort will be that vote counting is an inexact
science, that each time it’s done, a different outcome emerges.
Now a NY lawyer is
trying to show that the Trump camp informed or urged Comey to investigate Weiner's
e-mails for a Clinton connection:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/edc7fbce-2f9e-3fe2-b4d7-6ab308d71007/l.a.-based-lawyer-sues-fbi.html
I would hope that at least some Republican
Congress members who have supported Trump will take a drubbing in the mid-term
elections. Little he has said or done so far gives much hope for moderation or
even focus when he actually assumes office. At least, the Trump phenomenon has
been interesting, gobbling up lots of ink and bandwidth. If Hillary had won, it
would have just been business as usual and rather dull. Sensationalism has been
Trump’s wild card all along. As it stands, I suppose that like with any
catastrophic event, we will adapt somewhat over time to his election.
Opinions about Cuba and the Castro regime
continue to be strongly polarized. It's very easy, even for a visitor there who
is Spanish-speaking, to view Cuba through a partisan lens. Certainly if you
were inspired by Fidel Castro's
rhetoric and early vision (as many of us were, including me), you would be able
to find Cubans still supporting him, though some of those won’t be sincere and
will only be expressing what they think you want to hear. The degree of
subterfuge and secrecy among Cubans, especially when relating to foreigners, or
even among themselves, is sometimes hard to discern. Many are on guard until
they find out just where you stand. There are sincere partisans of Fidel and some
tears now being shed are real, but others are fake and some people cry when
they see others doing so, as there is also crowd contagion. And many of those
along the parade route of Fidel’s ashes were either expected or forced to be
there. It's hard to tell the difference between the willing and unwilling in a
dictatorship.
In any case, I would hope that Cuba will
gradually open up now to more tolerance of differing views and, especially,
move toward a greater economic opening along the lines of China and Vietnam, unfortunately,
still one-party states with political prisoners, executions, and censorship.
However, both nations allow Peace Corps volunteers and most people there are
doing better due to greater economic opportunity, with most being satisfied
with that, like most Cubans would be. In fact, most Americans and citizens of
western democracies are also more concerned with economic opportunity than with
civil rights. Raul Castro has expressed admiration for the Chinese/Vietnamese
model, so now that Fidel is gone and the influence of his partisans is diminished,
Raul may well move in that direction.
Apparently, machete victim Sirley
Avila, about whom I have written previously, was in DC recently, but I
didn’t know about it: http://wjla.com/news/local/vigil-held-in-northwest-dc-for-victims-of-communism-in-cuba
I'm sorry that painted pig artist Danilo Maldonado is back in prison; at
Amnesty Int'l, we've issued an Urgent Action for him. He was planning to repeat
his painted pig caper ("Fidel" and "Raul") again this
Christmas, but the authorities are preventing that now. With Fidel dead, they
should just ignore him and his "performance art;" instead, by making
a big deal, they are arousing support for him and against the Cuban government
from around the world, though perhaps not within Cuba, where such information is
blocked.
Dissident artist jailed in Cuba beaten and fed sedative-laced
food, family says | Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/05/dissident-artist-jailed-in-cuba-beaten-and-fed-sedative-laced-food-family-says.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/05/dissident-artist-jailed-in-cuba-beaten-and-fed-sedative-laced-food-family-says.html
Carlos Eire, a Cuban
American history professor at Yale, has written a bitter diatribe against Fidel
Castro, of which here is only the last paragraph: Fittingly, his arrogant deceitfulness extended past his death. In
Havana, tens of thousands of Cubans were forced to trudge to the Plaza of the
Revolution, to bow before his ashes. Attendance was mandatory—as it was
whenever Fidel needed to be surrounded by a throng of slaves—but the ritual was
grotesquely hollow. After they had waited in line for hours, all that those
Cubans got to see was a small framed photo of the ex–Maximum Leader and a
kitschy display of some of his medals, guarded by four young soldiers. The
ashes were not there. They were at the Ministry of the Armed Forces
headquarters, accessible only to the top brass of the Castro military junta.
For a final time, Fidel had hoodwinked his slaves, and the aging oligarchs
gathered around his relics probably laughed.
Yes, how
would Americans feel if now they had to look forward to more than 50 years of
Donald Trump as president? That’s how many Cubans feel after more than 50 years
of Fidel.
Cuban
exiles speculate that Fidel forbade any monuments in his honor not out of
humility (which he never expressed), but because of fear that they might be
defaced in the future, as happened to Communist Party monuments elsewhere.
While South Sudan is far afield from our orbit,
it is of special interest to me ever since my mission there in 2006, before independence.
Now the tribal warfare between the president and his former vice president
seems to have escalated to almost to a Rwanda-type situation. South Sudan,
which became independent in 2011, is a nation with so many needs and whose
people have such a long history of suffering that it is cruel that its leaders
cannot settle their differences and seem determined to drag the people into a
brutal civil war.
Police
shootings, including of a Nevada boy
wielding a knife, make me wonder whether when the attacker doesn’t have a
gun, if the police could use a stun gun
instead? Of course, there is usually little time for reaction and maybe police don’t
always have stun guns handy, but it seems that a gunshot should be a last
resort. I realize that occasionally someone dies when being hit by a stun gun,
but very rarely.
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