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Biden makes a rousing speech to workers and worker families at the AFL CIO campaign rally in Philadelphia. He tells them when he thinks about global warming or renewable energy he is thinking of jobs for union workers, when he is thinking of chips and science he is thinking of jobs for workers and union workers, all in the USA. What trillions of dollars in investments mean is jobs for decent workers, working families in the US, jobs with respect for hard work and dignity. And trillions of dollars that come with deficit reduction because of the super wealthy paying their fair share just like everybody else, not 8%, less than schoolteachers pay, firefighters pay. "What this all means for you is a simple proposition. And I remember having this discussion with you, old buddy. When I think global warming I think jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Good paying union jobs. Jobs you can raise a family on. Jobs you can't outsource (applause) that can't be outsourced." ...

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Frederick Harris of Columbia University says there is a price to be paid for a black president and it may just be too much for the average black person. There is a difference betwen symbols and substance, betwen a role model and accountability in a representative democracy, which is sadly lacking when the black elites, clergy and politicians fail to debate the issues about the problems facing the black community. Problems related to the increasing poverty among black Americans, and the 14% unemployment for black people. There is he says a strange reticience among the black elite to hold the president accountable on these issues just as they would have done for any Democratic president, even one who was as popular with blacks as Mr. Clinton. He says the experience with Obama is not even remotely comparable to the transformative nature of the work of Rev. Martin Luther King in the black community. It may stem from Obama's multiracial background, growing up in many countries, his elite education and being part of a liberal elite more than of the black community. The price is too high in economic and social terms for the poor or average black person and it has created a divide between the average black person and the black elite, with different concerns and different priorities. Harris points out that poor and poverty are words not mentioned often by Obama. Related to this is the foreclosure crisis in which ordinary black people were hardest hit with no effective help from the president to homeowners badly needing relief. Sheila Bair of the FDIC and Martin Feldstein advocated aggressive help for homeowners under water which did not come from the president. Showing not just the limits of a black presidency, but false hopes, inexperience and lack of leadership in issues that mattered to all Americans in the housing and foreclosure crisis. A populist from Kansas, as Sheila Bair describes herself, had the right instincts and courage of convictions which the president lacked and the entire country needed....

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78 year old president Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan steps down after 30 years in power. Presidential elections will be held with a caretaker who is Senate president in charge till then. He juggled the competing interests of China and Russia to attract investment in the energy industry. China has invested $30 billion in the country as a link in the Belt and Road Initiative in infrastructure, mining and financial sectors.  Russia is the largest trading partner. Since 2002 GDP per capita has increased six times according to the World Bank.

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See the full text of the speech by president Biden on the "Battle for the Soul of the Nation" which was delivered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 1, 2022. It is the place where the Declaration of Independence was debated and written by Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers. See  the Lyrarc Gist for the speech given by president Abraham Lincoln in the same Hall on Feb. 22, 1861, on his way to the White House as the Civil War began. 2022 marks a turning point for the nation as it seeks to remain the beacon to the world that it was under Jefferson and Washington, and it was under Lincoln and Stanton.

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What did the Justices say about US Birthright Citizenship? Here are the words of what the Justices said in the June 27 decision of the US Supreme Court 6-3 blocking the district courts from overruling the Executive Order of the US president. From the outset the Justices sought to decide - was the district court in a state deciding on a case with individual circumstances for the plaintiffs, even by a stretch of the imagination going to decide over the judgement of the Executive Branch what the law of the land should be? SC went though British law, and US law during its history and found no such understanding of the courts. "In each case, the District Court entered a “universal injunction”—an injunction barring executive officials from applying the Executive Order to anyone, not just the plaintiffs. And in each case, the Court of Appeals denied the Government’s request to stay the sweeping relief. The Government argues that the District Courts lacked equitable authority to impose universal relief and has filed three nearly identical emergency applications seeking partial stays to limit the preliminary injunctions to the plaintiffs in each case." The Court held- "Held: Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below." ...

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Some of the memorable parts of president Biden's speech at the AFL-CIO campaign rally today June 17 that will go with the best of FDR and Lincoln about what America stands for were: "This is America we can do any damn thing we put our minds to. And guess what? We are not going back to the false promises of trickle down economics.  We are going forward. We are going forward." "I really mean. this. I know I'm called a cockeyed optimist, but this is based on history. We're the most unique country in history. We are organized on one notion. Every other country is based on ethnicity, religion, geography. But the United States is based on an idea. The only country in the world based on an idea. Think about it." "Why are we doing it. Because we said, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal" (applause)  "endowed by their Creator with some inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." "We've never met the goal. But we've never- other than the Trump administration- tried to walk away from that goal. And it gets better every time we push." ...

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A CBS/New York times poll shows that 63% of the American people approve Obama's performance as President. And 77% are optimistic about him being the President for the next 4 years. 55% of Americans are just making ends meet, and more than 6 out of 10 fear that someone in their household may lose their job. Most say it will be years before any significant improvement. Over 53% feel the stimulus plan will improve things, half of them say it is not likely to shorten the recession, and two thirds expect more money will be needed. Nearly all Americans are concerned that the cost of the economic programs will have significant long term effects on future generations, with 65% being very concerned. Yet about 75% say they are more concerned about the economic crisis. On the partisan politics, of those polled 63% say Republicans opposed the legislation for political reasons, not policy ones. 79% want Republicans to work in a bipartisan manner. And 56% surveyed want Obama to folow the policies he proposed during the campaign, rather than working with Republicans, and to make this his priority. All this suggests that a large number of Republicans are supporting the President, even though both Republicans and Democrats are concerned about the cost of programs, because a large majority of those polled are more concerned about the effects of this crisis on jobs and the economy....

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President Obama picks Dartmouth College president, Jim Yong Kim, as the U.S. choice for president of the World Bank. Kim is a physician who co-founded Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization for providing health care to the poor. He was a former director of the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization. Working with Partners in Health in Lima, Peru, mid-1990's, he helped establish a large scale treatment program for drug resistant tuberculosis. Such programs are being promoted in 40 countries since then. Under the leadership of Mr. Zoellick, the World Bank provided $57 billion in assistance to low and middle income countries in 2011. About $90 billion was raised in a fund to be used for aid to the poor in developing countries, including China and India.

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At this point in May (May 22, 2026) a glimmer of hope appears for settling both the crisis in Hormuz and the Ukraine war. Pakistan, Turkey and China following DJT visit to China may be pushing Iran to lower the scale of the conflict. China's first priority was to be accepted by the US at the Beijing meeting as an equal power with the US, and keen to show its willingness to bear responsibility for peaceful resolution in conflict zones as a sign of its maturity as a world power. Much of this is not shown in the media as it is mostly done behind the scenes in communications that the media knows nothing about. Note that even in the depths of the Cold War during the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and Soviet action in Budapest, the US and the Soviets when their economies were not intertwined as the US and China are today, were still talking to each other to limit the conflicts to low level conflict. Hong Kong takeover, China's actions near Taiwan, China's presence in Latin America, Chinese cooperation with Iran, and Russia on Ukraine, China's economic competition in rare earths, are relatively smaller levels of friction considering 1950's Soviet's and the US. At the same time China and the Us are aware of a new bloc emerging in Oslo in May, where India is merging its economy with the Nordic economies of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and of the European Union and Germany, creating a new bloc of 2 billion people that can only grow rapidly with India's potential to exceed growth rates of 20% in the 600 million Eastern region for a decade. EU would make the shift to strategic partnership with India displacing the vital role the European Union has played in China's growth and economy. This would create new pressures for Russian president Putin to decide it is time to listen to a friend India and de-escalate lower the level of conflict with an initial peace deal that would lead to more talks on a final settlement. Because Russia would have a harder time tackling both India and Germany at the same time. NYT shows on the same day May 22 a report on Russia and a report by the Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Sonegard that say the elites in Russia and Putin were by January 2026 having very serious discussion to change the administration, bring Igor Sechin as negotiaor to end the Ukraine conflict before serious, possibly irreversible damage, to the Russian economy. Sweden's Sonegard says that between 2020 and 2024 Russian economy declined by 8%, not grew by 13% as official figures show, inflation is much higher than 5% as official figures show, and credit is tightening, bankruptcies expected, growth even with oil prices up down to 0.4% for 2026. During 20 years running Russia Putin's No. 1 priority, his life's mission was to restore, then exceed by a large margin the living standards of the Russian people. Having at such great cost accomplished the goal of gaining recognition as a Northern Power in Europe, having gained much of Russian speaking eastern Ukraine, Putin could wisely with self respect wind down Ukraine conflict for good. The US gains something similar to Northern Power status for Russia in its recommitment to the Monroe Doctrine, with Russia withdrawing from any involvement- and China tacitly doing the same-  in the western hemisphere. With that the US can tackle its own losses that match Russian losses in lives- loss of more American lives than in the Korean and Vietnam and WWI combined to drug smuggling from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and restoring rule of law in Cuba, Venezuela, and through drug cartel free Mexico good governance in Mexico.  ...

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Sri Lanka has an inflation rate of 26%. Government spending on the war against Tamil separatist movement in the east and north makes things more difficult. Central bank is squeezing credit to control inflation. And there is a need to spend more to rebuild the wwar ravaged eastern province. And the war has taken a toll on human rights and on the free press as the country became increasingly polarized. The Rajapakse brothers won the last election to as Maninda Rajapakse, the president says to have peace and development by defeating the Tamil separatists who have created a continuous conflict on the island for decades sapping government resources and attention from development.

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French president Macron takes a walk in the Tuileries garden and meets protesters some who are critical and some who thank him for coming out. Macron has admitted he was a bit isolated during the early part of his term and has not listened enough. He says it was not his project to do things to benefit people at the top, that he has learned and is listening to make the right changes. He say he will continue pursuing pension reforms that are needed.

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New film by Fabio Barreto on the life of Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, President of Brazil. Lula Da Silva has a 70% popularity rating in Brazil and the Barretos, a Rio based filmaking family, are strong supporters of the President. It shows the difficult childhood of Da Silva growing up in a one room house in a rural area of Brazil, his rise as head of the steel workers union, an automobile factory worker who becomes President on his fourth try. Lula himself says he started to cry at a screening of the movie when he saw the image of his mother. Says Barreto: the vast majority of poor Brazilians are portrayed as inferior and lazy, and less than what they are, and no one has has told these Brazilians that their people are strong.

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After resisting calls for impeachment inquiry into president Trump's dealings with Russia during his campaign by the Democrat controlled House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi decides to launch the inquiry in September 2019. The issue raised in the inquiry relates to a call made by the president and released transcript, and whistleblower's letter that showed president Trump asking the Ukrainian president to look into corruption of a company in which Democrat Joe Biden's son was a board member.

The U.S. provided funds to Ukraine as it struggled to keep Eastern parts of Ukraine from separating with the help of Russia. Mr. Trump states that the U.S. was left with providing most of the cost without European countries contributing enough, a complaint he has made since the beginning of his campaign about all U.S. allies in American engagements overseas such as Korea and Japan and NATO.

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Mexican president Sheinbaum in a conversation with Trump says all caravans have already been stopped inside Mexico. The two presidents discussed the flow of drugs, migration and closing the border. DJT called the conversation "wonderful" and "very productive."

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Israel's prime minister Netayahu and U.S. president Obama move further apart with serious disagreement on when to impose further sanctions on Iran for nuclear weapons development. Netanyahu accepts an invitation from Speaker Boehner to address the U.S. Congress in 2015. Republicans face a serious divide with the U.S. president with serious disagreements in domestic policy, including immigration, taxes, and ways of addressing increasing inequality.

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In endorsing Obama for President the New York Times says he has met challenge after challenge and put real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. It says leading America forward will require strength of will, character and intellect, sober judgement and a cool and steady hand, and Obama it says has these qualities in abundance.