New series
The people we know nothing about
Click on the link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Sawyer
Connie Sawyer
(born Rosie Cohen; November 27, 1912 – January 21, 2018) was an American
stage, film, and television actress, affectionately nicknamed "The Clown
Princess of Comedy".[1][2]
She had over 140 film and television credits to her name, but was best known
for her appearances in Pineapple Express, Dumb
and Dumber, and When Harry Met Sally....[3] At
the time of her death, she was the oldest working actress in Hollywood and
oldest member of the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences.
Monday, January 29, 2018
20 of America's Best Small Towns for Valentine's
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20 of America's Best Small Towns for Valentine's
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Friday, January 26, 2018
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
The World's Ugliest American
The World’s Ugliest American
One year into the Trump administration,
as our president prepares for his trip to address the annual World Economic
Forum in Davos, here is the dynamic abroad: No foreign enemy could have
degraded America’s global standing so completely in so short a time.
In word and deed, Donald Trump
personifies the American ignoramus abroad. He insults foreign leaders in
tweets, then melts in their presence. He switches positions based on personal
flattery. He parades his ignorance of geopolitics. His erratic behavior and
bellicose boasts provoke alarm in a nuclear age.
No longer does America advocate for an
inclusive international order that promotes democracy and stability. In
Politico, Susan Glasser cataloged the verdict of
foreign governments: Our president is uninformed, unstable and
erratic, a volatile and self-obsessed fool with a dystopian worldview.
Particularly incendiary is his racism.
His Muslim ban, race-baiting and disdain for immigrants of color sullies
America’s global reputation. And his recent disparagement of non-white
countries as “shitholes” alienates
governments we need to help combat terrorism and narco-trafficking.
Nor can Trump’s advisers stem the
damage. He tramples on policy formulations and rejects advice. His fractious
foreign policy team includes the sophomoric Jared Kushner. Disdainful of diplomacy,
Trump has gutted the State Department and left critical posts vacant, eroding
America’s capacity to advance its global objectives. In foreign policy, he asserts, “I’m the only
one who matters.”
What matters especially to the world is
Trump’s wholesale abdication of leadership. He scorns alliances, international
institutions, trade agreements and multilateral efforts to stem global threats
like climate change. His atavistic mindset is that of a real estate developer
bent on “winning” one-on-one negotiations with the competitor at hand – leaving
others to organize the landscape which surrounds him.
What
makes Trump’s amorality unique is that it serves no strategy.
In this strategic vacuum, “America
First” becomes America in retreat. Nothing is predictable save the brevity of
Trump’s attention span for all but self. As he fixates on the mirror, our
adversaries look to reorder the world by exploiting his proliferating
derelictions.
One is his penchant for alienating America’s friends. Giving voice to his ingrained bigotry, Trump ridiculed the Muslim mayor of London, and offended Britain’s prime minister by retweeting inflammatory materials from British Islamophobes – spurring the withdrawal of his invitation to visit London. His scorn for NATO and the EU has alienated the redoubtable German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Amid the nuclear crisis in the Korean Peninsula, Trump If anything, Trump seems to envy their example. He congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for winning a rigged referendum, commended the ruthless totalitarian Chinese leader Xi Jinping on acquiring yet more power, and praised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for an anti-drug program rooted in extrajudicial killings. Most remarkable – and suspicious – is his congenital fawning over Russian President Vladimir Putin, who strangles democracy and murders dissidents. This head-spinning moral reversal evokes America at its self-seeking, historic worst.
But what makes Trump’s amorality unique
is that it serves no strategy. Take his dealings with China, a singular
demonstration of his profound ignorance, incompetence and inconsistency.
By rejecting the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, Trump abandoned our Asian allies and
ceded economic dominance in Asia to China ― creating what one Chinese expert called
his country’s “biggest strategic opportunity.” As former National Security
Adviser Susan Rice observed, Trump
seems bent on “making China great again.”criticized South Korea’s
supposed “appeasement” of the North, and complained about the terms of our
bilateral trade agreement.
It is little wonder that a Pew survey of traditional
U.S. allies showed that their citizens have no confidence in Trump’s America.
As Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland explained: “The fact that
our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global
leadership puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own
clear and sovereign course.”
Indeed, Trump reserves his admiration
for autocrats – the more murderous and corrupt the better it seems –
squandering our capacity for moral leadership. To its astonishment, the world
sees America’s president as a reflexive authoritarian who seethes with loathing
for our free press, independent judiciary and rule of law ― and whose disdain
for democratic institutions is truly global.
In his geopolitical illiteracy, Trump
ignores that our most reliable strategic partners are stable democracies. Thus
he has cut our resources for promoting democracy abroad, and jettisoned human
rights as a concern of our foreign policy. With Trump as their enabler, the
authoritarians of countries like Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines feel even
less constraint in how they treat their own citizens.
If anything, Trump seems to envy their
example. He congratulated Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for winning a rigged referendum, commended the ruthless totalitarian Chinese
leader Xi Jinping on acquiring yet more power, and praised Philippine
President Rodrigo Duterte for an anti-drug program rooted in extrajudicial
killings. Most remarkable – and suspicious – is his congenital fawning over
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who strangles democracy and murders
dissidents. This head-spinning moral reversal evokes America at its
self-seeking, historic worst.
But what makes Trump’s amorality unique
is that it serves no strategy. Take his dealings with China, a singular
demonstration of his profound ignorance, incompetence and inconsistency.
By rejecting the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, Trump abandoned our Asian allies
and ceded economic dominance in Asia to China ― creating what one Chinese expert called
his country’s “biggest strategic opportunity.” As former National Security
Adviser Susan Rice observed, Trump
seems bent on “making China great again.”
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