In
this posting, a little bit of everything.
As
much as I would like to get rid of Donald Trump’s very annoying and very harmful
presidency, I tend to agree with Nancy
Pelosi that it’s best not to make a big fight about impeachment, which
would only rile up Trump’s base. Better to just ignore and work around Trump
and render him ineffective, perhaps even winning some Republicans over,
especially those facing re-election in 2020. If Trump were to leave office, we
would be left with Pence, with less of a devoted following, but likely to be a
more effective promoter of the rightwing agenda and possibly with more
prospects of winning the 2020 presidential election. If Trump loses reelection,
which I fervently hope and expect he will if he even runs again, then he can
always blame “fake news” and “the deep state.” And if he is actually charged
with a crime, he has said he will pardon himself. I will vote for anyone opposing Trump. Maybe all these
Democratic contenders know that many voters feel the same way, so they are all
jockeying to secure the nomination and the presidency.
It’s very
unfortunate that Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have agreed with
Trump’s immigration detention policies. We can only hope that Ginsburg hangs in
there long enough until Trump leaves office.
Meanwhile, while Trump
fails to acknowledge climate change, it’s been happening big-time here in the
US and around the world, exacerbated by his policies. Farmers already harmed by
Trump’s tariffs are now facing floods, hurricanes, and cyclones. Will they
stand by their man, like members of a suicide cult? Of course, climate change affects
everybody, not only farmers, but people in other countries, including those “invading”
our southern border.
While
Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs have hurt the auto industry, the man himself
takes no responsibility for the closing of an Ohio plant, instead berating management
and the union. Since he promised to save and even increase US jobs in the heartland
where his base is concentrated, he then visits a Ohio plant producing military vehicles,
something he can control.
With
so many automatic and computerized features built into airplanes, pilots need to know how to override or respond to them
when necessary. A plane crash not only threatens so many with death, but with a
particularly scary and painful death. Is the aircraft involved in these recent
crashes perhaps too automated? Override features also need to be built into
automatic cars. While machines may be more reliable than human beings, machines
are not omniscient.
Neither
Boeing nor Trump will want to admit
any possible flaw in the design of the planes involved in the recent fatal
crashes since that would require compensation for victims, dampen future sales,
and leave the company open to demands from airlines that have already purchased
the planes. At the same time, Boeing needs to find a fix to prevent a third
fatal crash, which would certainly sink the company.
Trump
has not said anything as far as I know about the college cheating scandal,
perhaps because he himself and others in his circle (such as Kirschner?) may
have benefited from similar efforts. If Trump’s father would intervene to save
him from the draft, it’s not unlikely that he would intervene to assure the
college admission of a mediocre student.
Good
to see a few Republican lawmakers finally
daring to oppose Trump (still ranting about departed Senator John McCain and
thinking that Brazil could be part of NATO) —and may the independence trend continue,
even if that means governmental paralysis, better that than enactment of Trump’s
goofy and harmful schemes. His true believers, those he says would support him
even if he killed someone on Fifth Ave., seem to worship the man like no other
president. But it’s hard to govern with only the support of fanatics, a
minority now oppressing the majority. Remedial steps need to be undertaken,
such eliminating or reducing the clout of the Electoral College (and also enfranchising
us forgotten DC residents), to make the voters’ collective will able to count
for more. The debacle of the Trump presidency is a warning that imposing the agenda
of a radical right fringe on the majority is not a sustainable practice in a
democracy. What has saved Trump so far is the strong economy, an economy,
however, that favors the wealthy because of big tax breaks. To protect their
wealth, many will continue to invest in Trump, whatever the consequences for the
majority.
Obviously, whatever
happens in Venezuela affects the Cuban regime and its citizens.
News item: more than 6000 Cubans
entered to US through the southern border in 2018, many withut visas and asking
for asylum. Más
de 6000 cubanos entraron a EEUU por frontera con México en año fiscal 2019
Las cifras
incluyen a todos los inmigrantes de la Isla que ingresaron sin documentos y
solicitando asilo político
Lunes, marzo
11, 2019 | CubaNet
Capitalism within communism
https://news.yahoo.com/cuba-taps-high-end-luxury-tourist-market-031218019.html
https://news.yahoo.com/cuba-taps-high-end-luxury-tourist-market-031218019.html
-----------------------------------------------------------
The
school shooting in Brazil was
horrifying and I hope won’t start a copycat trend in Latin America where
firearms proliferate.
New Zealand is taking the right steps to reduce
the proliferation of guns after the mass shooting there. The subsequent shooting
in the Netherlands appears to be a
copycat or retaliatory attack, perhaps by a Muslim? In the US, we are just
holding our breath that a similar mass shooting won’t happen again here. Trump
has given tacit approval to the actions of rightwing extremists around the world.
This
year when we are acknowledging the contributions of the Dalai Lama, I am reminded of being present with a small group of
Amnesty International volunteers at a reception for him held in Washington, DC,
I think back in 1981. He spoke very movingly then. It’s unfortunate that the
Chinese regime has not allowed him to return to Tibet.
The Catholic church is under fire again, this time in a civil (not
criminal) complaint filed by W Va.’s attorney general against the Diocese of
Wheeling-Charleston saying, effectively, that parents can sue in civil court to
get their money back if their child attended a school where at least one man
worked who apparently has admitted abuse. It seems quite a convoluted way to
attack or reveal a problem, depending on your point of view, and is sure to set
up a fight between the Catholic church in W Va. and the attorney general. Was
he pointing out a real problem or just reaching for straws?
While the medicinal or
occasional use of pot may not be harmful,
it now looks like regular use, like anything in excess, can promote the development
of psychosis.
I
often work as an interpreter at home therapy
sessions for children with behavioral, mental, and/or physical disabilities. After
my social work experience, 16 years at the occupational therapy association,
and 3 ½ years as a Peace Corps health volunteer in Honduras, such sessions are
right up my alley. The role of the therapist, who only visits the family a
maximum of once a week, is to show the mother (and father and siblings) how to
interact consistently with the child to foster desired behaviors and/or physical
and social skills. However, many mothers at first expect the therapist to “fix”
whatever developmental or behavioral problems the child has, like a doctor setting
a bone or prescribing a medication, whereas the therapist is instead trying to
show the parent what repeated actions on their part will encourage the desired
response by the child, whether decreased hyperactivity or the ability to grasp
a toy or to learn to crawl or walk or talk. Often there are other children in
the family who have met behavioral and developmental milestones automatically with
little effort on the parents’ part, so they don’t know quite how to respond to
a child who falls behind.
Sometimes
it’s a frustrating task to work with parents, as with the mother of a girl with
Down Syndrome who kept comparing her development with that of an older daughter
without the syndrome. The child with Down’s was actually quite high functioning
and very sociable and responsive, but the mother could not see past her
disability. It’s sometimes tricky to get parents to cooperate without making
them feel blamed or judged. However, most children (and their families) do show
progress in therapy due to the child’s growth and maturation combined with therapeutic
intervention, something heartening to witness. In contrast, for older persons,
like myself, the therapy goal is often not necessarily to achieve improvement,
but just to slow the rate of decline.
{By
the way, when I’ve had occasion to notice it, it looks like Central American
families living here still put toilet paper in a bathroom wastebasket, not in
the toilet.}
It
was with a flash of surprise recognition and familiarity that I noted the
illustration for Google’s home page of
March 18 (illustrations that change daily). On that date, we saw only the tip
of a red-and-white cane typically used by a blind person depicted next to the
person’s feet on a raised-dot surface indicating the proximity of the edge of a
subway or metro train track. For 24 years, I was married to a blind man who
used a red and white cane like that, so it was a familiar image that triggered memories
of our life together.
Forgot
to mention in my report on my Honduras
trip that when I got off the bus in Tegucigalpa after coming back from the south,
a man waiting at the bus stop shouted, “Señora,
whatever are you doing traveling around this country all by yourself? Where is
your husband?” I said he had died [indeed my ex-husband had died]. “Where are
your children?” I said they were in the US. “What a travesty,” he insisted, “very
sad.” That encounter still gives me a chuckle.
No comments:
Post a Comment