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Bret Stephens on the foreign policy debate about supporting or not supporting dictators. On the big one today of Iraq after the large gains with Maliki in Iraq it could be said that its not an easy path either way with each path fraught with dangers, but in the long run if one perseveres and again in the spirit of democracy and with the people in the region themselves and their leaders having good sense and good judgement and putting the interests of the whole region before their personal interests, given this you are always going to do better by your people and the people in the region affected, by respecting democratic ideals and principles. Pakistan is not a good example because its leaders have put their personal interests before the interests of their people but even there things are changing. Zardari's dirtier and clumsier hands are mentioned by Stephens but even here this time the opposition led by Nawas Sharif decided that its more important to respect the electoral process and democratic ideals and let Zardari run Pakistan. Administrations like the Bhuttos and Zardari's have alway been corrupt so there are no high expectations but even here the people of Pakistan will find a way to make the progress they desperately need and find the leadership that can provide it. The military muffling and jailing dissent and not respecting the independent judiciary may not affect the person on the street in Des Moines or Delaware but for people in Pakistan who have suffered under military rule this may be a different story. And in the Middle East things were not that much better with dictators in power either in Palestine and its an area where the conditional part of leadership in the region having good sense and judgement should be considered as well as history. In Iran its not between the Ayatollah and the Shah, before the Shah an elected government in Iran was overthrown when its anti western oil company stance was seen in the light of the cold war. It was the overthrow of that government that brought the Shah in. Had it continued the internal politics of Iran would have been resolved by the people there. In other words western oil interests and lobbies and the cold war distorted the process there. Without the two Iran's politics would not be of much interest to people in the USA and governments there also would have no reason to be especially friendly or especially hostile to the USA. So once one removes the distorting factors and takes out the countries which cannot be used as good example like Palestine and Iran, on the big one Iraq where the people and the leadership in the region did not fail even in very difficult situation and the US persevered, respecting democratic ideals and principles was the best course with the best results. The improved Libyan relations should not be chalked off as a point in favor of dealing with dictators. With better or worse relations with Libya it made little noticeable difference or probably no difference to the people in Des Moines or Delaware. For Iraq it makes a big difference to get it right by both peoples. Libya which had closed itself off from western technology and ideas now opens itself up because this way it can improve life for people in the region, this may be the only thing that has changed. And Stephens puts it another way its more sustainable. But why is it more sustainable to respect democratic ideals and principles given that the leadership of people in the region affected and the people themselves have good sense and judgement? Because in doing so one is respecting oneself one is more true to one's own people's idea of a good and just society and one is respecting other people....

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This editorial in the WSJ in June 2016 points out the dangers in the U.S. president Obama not facing up to the threat in the Middle East since 2013 leading to the fall of Mosul,  and in not clearly focussing on the threat since then. This has created divisions inside Europe and the U.S. in internal politics, and is being exacerbated with the rise of far right groups in Europe and by Trump in the U.S. It points out that by not clearly identifying the threat president Obama has given "illiberal" policy a boost. It says Hillary Clinton should be careful to formulate her own position in line with policy that has been pursued since FDR.

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Seib cites as a key reason why the presidential race in the U.S. could change- Romney leads by three percentage points over Obama among voters most intensely interested in voting. Another related reason is the plan to reach out to low intensity voters, with the Romney campaign having knocked on 2 million more doors already than they did in all of 2008. Some of the intensely interested voters are more against Obama than in favor of Romney, something Obama experienced in 2008 with the anti-Bush sentiment over the war in Iraq carrying over to support for the Democratic ticket. Another part of the undecided voter sentiment is that more of these voters compared to other voters are dissatisfied with the current condition of the economy and the direction the country is taking. Other reasons that could be cited are the volatile situation in the Middle East which could create questions in voter minds about American resolve in that region, dissatisfaction among some black voters with the deteriorating economic situation for black people, and the lack of intensity among Hispanic voters who feel the Obama administration did not keep its promises on immigration changes, the poor performance of the economy in industrial states of the midwest and east with decline in incomes....

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This report in the Washington Post says Hillary Clinton accepted $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. After this was raised in a question by Anderson Cooper of CNN, at a CNN Town Hall in Derrry, New Hampshire, on Feb. 3, 2016, Hillary Clinton has postponed 2 speaking events, one at an affiliate of Bain Capital and one organized by the chief legal officer of BlackRock asset management firm. Anderson Cooper's question to Hillary was whether she had made " bad error in judgement" by accepting that amount for 3 speeches. Her answers "that's what they offered," and "they're not giving me very much money now," were not seen positively in the media. Federal Election Commission reports cited by the Washington Post show that donors from hedge fnds, banks, insurance companies, financial services firms gave $21.4 million for Clinton's 2016 campaign, out of a total of $157.8 million. Including allied superPACS the Clinton 2016 campaign received $44.1 million from financial industry donors compared to $39.7 million received by Bill Clinton, according to this WP report. Compared to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders has raised about $75,000 of the $75 million he raised for the 2016 campaign from the financial industry, says WP....

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The stark differences in the policy positions of the two major parties in the U.S. seen emerging in the television debates. Trump vocal on immigration calling for large deportations. Sanders and Clinton vocal on the struggles of the middle class and white working class.

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There are problems with TikTok as social media app that are shown under The Enemy Within in Movement for Global Literacy of Lyrarc.com that relate to global literacy of children spending many hours on the app taking time away from homework and reading, when over half of American children 12-18  perform below basic requirements on reading proficiency tests. Similar loss of reading comprehension in UK and France. China can regulate its internet by restricting it in ways that won't hurt literacy in China. India has banned the app.  There are problems with TikTok that relate to literacy and cultural literacy that Democrats or Republicans or the Supreme Court have failed to bring up let alone address. These concerns should grow in the minds of Americans concerned about preserving the cultural literacy that has existed in the US for the last 200 years- it is about who Americans are as a Nation of immigrants from Europe of the Renaissance and the Modern World. US is a mix of population from European nations of 204 million, of a black population of about 48 million in 2025, 7 million native Americans, and Spanish speaking Americans of 62 million, Asian population of 25 million. The US is at a critical juncture in deciding what kind of a nation it will be. Will it lose it's basic character of a nation which draws its inspiration from European civilization's defining characteristics of the Renaissance, the evolution of science and democratic forms of government leading to creation of the Modern World. The 25 million Asians immigrated to the US for a large part seeking this kind of modernization of society from what they left behind and this is largely true of Spanish speaking immigrants and Spanish settlers who settled California, Texas and Florida as Spain settled the American colonies before the English and French. TikTok ban opposed decreased from 2023 to end of 2024 by 18% from 50% to 32%, according to Pew Research. Pew does not say that this is the result of growing use of TikTok by teenagers and children for entertainment by 12-15% in the period 2023-2025. Between 2021 and 2023 use of TikTok in the US increased by 12% from 21% to 33% from which we can extrapolate that it increased by about 12-15% between 2023 and 2025 if it is growing at the same pace. Politicians oblivious of the effects on cultural literacy in the US are allowing it to be embedded in the US in ways that hurt basic reading and cultural literacy skills. ...

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The first signs of a change in Germany's position to promoting growth in Greece came when German chancellor Angela Merkel told CNBC on May 15, 2012: "I have the will, the determination to keep Greece in the euro zone." She added that if Greece's leaders are looking for "stimulus to be pursued for growth in the euro zone, which we could pursue in the interest of Greece, we're open for this. Germany is open for this." The Social Democrats, SPD opposition leaders have long said that Merkel is able to change positions as the situation changes. Looking back she even disassociated herself from her mentor German chancellor Kohl when he was not willing to disclose the names of donors for illegal donations. This has given her the flexibility that another Christian Democratic party leader Schauble lacked in leading Germany. She has also seen poll numbers favoring the CDU dissipate quickly before the 2005 elections and is aware how quickly situations can change, as is happening now with the public in France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and eastern european EU countries growing weary of strict austerity policies pushed by the CDU. A faction of the CDU pushed for strict austerity policies at the recent CDU convention in Leipzig, Germany. Merkel told the CDU about charges that she had shifted on a number of core issues such as nuclear energy, social issues, minimum wage, and euro zone bailouts- "Our political compass has not changed. The context is changing. This is a time of epic change."...

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Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama campaign together in swing states such as North Carolina. Hillary Clinton capitalizes on the surging popularity of Michelle Obama, who has a 64%  approval rating, according to Gallup, 10 points more than president Obama, and above Hillary's 43 percent. Both women show a mutual admiration and sisterhood as they campaign together with rising crowd enthusiasm. For Michelle her unprecedented effort as First Lady is a result of the dirty campaign fought by Donald Trump to turn off voters to the political process, and her effort is meant to counter this. She says about this demeaning of women, "Enough is enough." Both women are drawn together with a campaign for a woman as president. And the slogan coined by Michelle has taken off  "When they go low, we go high." It has energized the very African American and millenial voters that have played an effective role in previous Democratic campaigns.

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The ANC wins 62.2% of the vote in South Africa's 2014 general election.

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Laura Meckler describes the many experiences as First Lady in Arkansas and in the White House, the many political investigations that happened, that led to the more cautious style Hillary has taken since becoming Senator from New York. This combined with her intense longing for privacy have led to the strange situation where people do not the human person that is Hillary, when they are inundated with information about the Clintons as a couple. With the 2016 campaign that human person is what is coming out as her fighting spirit kicks in, for someone who has seen all sides over a long time. 

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Krugman in the NYT describes the dangers of plutocratic power to American democracy. When exercized by the Murdochs, the Elon Musks, the Harlan Crows of this world. He cites presidents who are Republican and broke up the large oil companies in the 1900's, Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) who warned about "a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power." This is happening with the power of the so called Tech companies today and both parties seeking to break  up the Tech companies.  Then there is a Democratic president from this period Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) who followed Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson says- "If there are men in this country who are big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it." Theodore Roosevelt fought political machines such as Tammany Hall in New York as well as Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Wilson, a professor from Princeton, continued this tradition by protecting the working class of that time through his New Freedom campaign in 1913.  As a professor Wilson wrote the textbook The State used in colleges of that period, which set forth for the first time the basic idea of the state that we see today- "that forbids child labor, supervises the sanitary condition of factories, limits employment of women in occupations hurtful to their health, institutes official tests for the purity or quality of goods sold, that limits the hours of work in certain trades, and by a hundred and one limitations the power of unscrupulous or heartless men to outdo the scrupulous or merciful in trade or industry." Both were progressive Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson under his New Freedom platform for the 1913 election, asserted that it was the task of government "to make those adjustments of life that will put every man in a position to claim his rights as a normal human being." What president Biden is doing today is closest to what Wilson and Roosevelt were trying to achieve, and what Modi is doing today in India is also closest to what Wilson and Roosevelt were trying to achieve. In 1913 Wilson won 42% of the vote, Roosevelt 27% because of a split within the Republican party with Robert Taft. Wilson proposed breakup of oil companies to provide a level playing field for all companies. Similar decisions are being considered by president Biden today for Tech Companies. The future of both the US and India is being decided in these difficult times after a pandemic and in the middle of a European war, and a supply chain overconcentrated in one country in Asia. Wilson's idea "to put every man in a position to claim his rights as a normal human being," is being set forth by president Biden through the word "dignity," by Modi in India as "sab ka vikas, sab ke sath" (development for all, with all). The Greens and SPD's Scholz also set forth this idea as "dignity" for the worker for Germany.   ...

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Mikhail Gorbachev calls the Russian parliament Speaker Sergey Naryshkin's idea of looking into the reunification of Germany as an annexation of East Germany, a form of "nonsense." This was originally stated by a Communist member of the Russian parliament Nikolay Ivanov, who sees this as "a retaliatory step" to Chancellor Merkel's criticism of the annexation of Crimea. Merkel said at the Davos forum- "The annexation of Crimea is a violation of something that has made up our peaceful coexistence, namely the protection of borders and territorial integrity." Merkel and Putin now have profound differences. Putin sees the world of Russia in terms of its relations with border states such as Ukraine, the Baltics and Poland in terms of the Soviet Union and Czarist Russia's influence in Eastern Europe, as a part of Russia's legitimate interests. Merkel and Germans see it differently, with the collapse of the Prussian military state and Czarist Russia, and the collapse of Nazis and the Soviet Union, in succession, Germany is fully committed to a new view of relations between states in Europe based on democratic processes, respecting the views of people in Kiev to decide their own future. This reflects a new mood in Europe with increased funding for Deutsche Welle, Germany's broadcasting service to the world, in response to increased broadcasting by Russia Today, Russia's news service....

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Krugman says there is cause for concern from May's U.S. jobs report of only 38,000 jobs added- low even with Verizon strike jobs added back in- compared to the 200,000 a month average since Jan 2013. One cannot read too much into one months report, yet the political uncertainty in a election year adds to the problem. The low interest rates near zero offering little possibility for rate cuts, make it difficult to come up with a policy response. Under a Clinton administration the infrastructure spending option would face Republican resistance.  It is not clear how a Trump administration would respond. Krugman says the jobs figure reflects a stronger dollar- a result partly of the Fed's plan to raise rates- that is hurting U.S. exports.