I wasn’t happy with my post yesterday. The subject was good, but the organization and writing could have been better. So, for the first thing today, I am going to try to restate some of what I said yesterday, but restate it better.

Here goes: who would imagine that the president of the United States would have people grabbed off the street, incarcerated but not accused of or indicted for criminal behavior, kept from their attorney, and moved out of the country to a notorious prison in Central America without any hearing or other procedure, and with the United States giving up any control over the individual or over the conditions or length of their incarceration? Just like the “desaparecidos” in Argentina. Or those who wound up in the Gulag in the Stalinist USSR.

That is what I tried to say yesterday. I have a few more things for today.

First, another podcast I suggest you listen to. This one was posted yesterday by Ezra Klein. He was in conversation with Tom Friedman, and the main topic was China. I learned a lot, and it gave me a lot to think about. Friedman has just returned from a trip to China. He said so much of interest that I know I can’t do it justice, which is why you should listen to it. Basically, he believes that the U.S. and China no longer know enough about each other. There has apparently only been one Congressional delegation to China in the past six (I think, six) years, and that there are virtually no American tourists in China now, and virtually no American students. He says that any thought that China is able to steal our secrets, but not able to innovate is 100% wrong, and he talked about the quality of their electric vehicles, the development of their solar panel industry, the speed of their construction and development, their dark factories (factories where everything is done robotically, so they don’t need lights) and much more. He doesn’t think China is perfect, by any means, but he also thinks that the Trump policies are going to put us at an enormous disadvantage and that we should be working to open China and partner with them to serve the world, not to try to isolate and ostracize them. The podcast can be found, as they say, wherever you listen to podcasts. I just go to YouTube.

Next, if you missed Joe Biden’s speech yesterday, that’s ok. He read the speech, his voice was soft, his energy not very energetic. On the other hand, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley gave a good introduction. He has been getting a lot of press lately. Shouldn’t he be in the mix for 2028? He is an attractive candidate.

And did you watch Marjorie Taylor Green’s town hall? I missed the scuffling and tazing, and was a bit shocked when she said that over 50% of Democrats wanted to see Trump assassinated. So I looked it up. It was a Rasmussen poll after the Butler PA attempt last year. The question asked was whether the United States would be better off without Trump. That is a bit different, I think. And a no brainer.

And so it goes.