Focused Read in 1:30 minutes
"International
embarrassment: Germany sees Trump as bigger threat than North Korea
Trump is creating a whole
list of American enemies around the world as longtime allies suddenly
see the White House as a looming foe
Just as Donald Trump
sparks international outrage and condemnation with
a reckless maneuver in the Middle East this week, more and more
longtime American allies around the world now see Trump as a threat
and a problem, instead of a friend.
In fact, Germans now
view Trump as a bigger threat than North Korea’s delusional
dictator Kim Jong Un and Russia’s authoritarian bully, Vladimir
Putin.
It’s all part of the
larger, dangerous tarnishing of America image around the world that
Trump is orchestrating, as the United States’ reputation plummets
in the eyes of the international community.
For Germans, Trump now
poses the second most important foreign policy concern, behind the
country’s influx of refugees, according to a new Koerber Foundation
poll. Citizens of Germany are more worried about Trump (19 percent)
than they are North Korea (10 percent) and Russia (8 percent).
North Korea’s unstable
leader has spent much of this year threatening to launch nuclear
missiles, while Putin has invaded his neighbors. But compared to
them, Germans see Trump as a bigger threat.
… In the Koerber poll of
more than one thousand Germans, 56 percent describe the relationship
with the United States as bad or very bad.
People around the world
simply do not trust and admire the U.S. the way they did before Trump
was elected.
Once considered the most respected nation in the world
and boasting the best country “brand,” the U.S. recently fell all
the way from No. 1 to No. 6 in the last year, according to the market
research firm Gfk, which conducts the annual global survey.
Germany now touts the
title as the world’s most respected nation.
And in the 2017 U.S.
News Best Countries Rankings, the U.S. fell from the No. 4 Best
Country to No. 7.
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Personal
Commentary ~
THIS
is important. Take note of it, please In a day when experience and knowledge
are viewed as a negative by way too many people and national
disrespect for women is being publicly exposed (at a minimum!)
thousands of women have responded admirably.
If
you are a middle-aged women who has jumped into the deep end of the
proverbial pool – take a bow. If you are a younger women who has
done the same and who is recognizing the value of experience and
knowledge – take a bow, too. Politics is not a spectator sport and
if we are to work toward perfecting our union, it will take as many
of us who can participate, however we can participate as possible!
⬇
Focused Point of Interest in 3-4 minutes
“Middle-age women are
leading the new American revolution
When 61-year-old former
federal government worker Annie Williams retired in 2013, taking on a
proto-fascist president wasn't exactly part of her retirement
fantasy. Knitting hats was.
"My plan was to take
classes at my local community college, learn how to knit and make
hats and scarves for my nieces and nephews," Williams says.
Nov. 9, 2016 changed all
of that. Williams, who was working as an election judge the night
Hillary Clinton lost, was "devastated" by Donald Trump's
victory. She remembers meeting a voter who had carried an "I
voted" sticker in her wallet from the time she voted for Barack
Obama, and the feeling that America was about to make history, again.
Well, history was made —
just in an, uh, incredibly bad way. Instead of giving into the chaos,
however, Williams decided to "DO SOMETHING" about it (caps
lock all hers) by taking over a chapter of grassroots activist
group Indivisible. She joined the hundreds of thousands of
middle-aged women who helped lead the resistance to Trump in 2017 —
making calls, staging protests, and, yes, knitting hats.
In less than a year, President Trump
has assembled the most male-dominated government in decades, with 80
percent of nominations for top jobs going to men.
On the ground, that ratio is almost
perfectly reversed. In newly founded grassroots activist groups like
Swing Left and Daily Action, women appear to make up the vast
majority of members — and in some places, do a disproportionate
share of the work. And while most of the critical attention has been
focused on millennials — given both their power and our culture's
youth focus — it's middle-aged women who exerted the most symbolic
influence and grassroots muscle this year.
Retirement will have to wait.
Organized in response to Trump's
election, Daily Action is a service that helps reach out to
their representatives as part of targeted campaigns. In March, Daily
Action polled 28,320 of its most active users and reported some
jaw-dropping demographic data. Eighty-six percent of Daily Action
users polled were women, and of those, 50 percent were between 46 and
65 years of age.
The largest surge in political
enthusiasm does appear to come from millennials and particularly
millennial women, CEO Erin Loos Cutraro of She Should Run
told Mashable. That doesn't mean that middle-aged women are
being left out of the picture. At higher levels of government, they
seem to be packing a more powerful punch.
Emilys List, which supports pro-choice
Democratic candidates, found that of the 32 women who won on Nov. 17,
16 of them were middle-aged (between 45 and 65 years old). Of their
endorsed candidates on a Congressional level, 14 out of 17 are
middle-aged. Ten of the 11 women they've endorsed for senate are
middle-aged. Seven out of eight of their gubernatorial candidates
also fall in that age range.
There are plenty of structural
explanations for this disparity. For one, Congress isn't exactly
known for its, cough cough, youth. Positions that require more
experience tend to be attractive to people with more experience, who,
basically by default, are likely to be middle aged.
Running for office is sometimes a
harder emotional lift for this group, CEO Erin Loos Curtraro from She
Should Run, told Mashable.
"Younger women that we see
stepping into our community benefit so much from this conversation
about being brave and not being perfect," Cortraro says.
More than millennial women, middle-aged
women are pushing against their history and the regressive cultural
scripts they've been given.
"The women leaders in our group
have stepped up for a variety of reasons: some are just so angry that
they are compelled to do something, others are former elected
officials who use their savvy to move us forward, others are moms who
care so much about their children's future," Karen D'Or of
Indivisible Sonoma County explains. …
Middle-aged women are pushing up —
and thankfully, there are a few long-limbed female politicians
willing to pull them to the top.
… It's their outrage, underlined by
their politics, that coheres this loud group of leaders and
grassroots activists together. The quality that once made middle-aged
women "untouchable" is now turning them into stars.
#NastyWoman was the hashtag for 2016 as well as 2017. As a (just
over) middle-aged woman herself, Hillary Clinton's loss — even to
Indivisible leader Carol Fiore, who didn't vote for her in the
primaries — cut so deeply and so personally to this group.
Like so
many women, Clinton lost her job to a man who, as a Vox headline once
put it, "has no idea what he's talking about."
The feeling was familiar …
… "You took somebody like me who
was very center and pushed me way far to the left," Fiore says.
"I'm not going to tell my grandkids I did nothing
while democracy fell apart." … “
You can read more here
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→ Direct sources for Democrats:
* ( Personal favored and most informative follows are shared here with the understanding that readers will always apply their own critical thinking to any information provided anywhere by anyone. #StrongerTogether does not share sources of information lightly but -- no one is perfect! -- so always #DistrustAndVerify I am using a star rating that is strictly based on my situational experience with the work of the media personality specifically in relation to issues of interest to me. )
The Democratic Party Website
Also
C-SPAN (a good place for speeches & hearings direct source (s))
in alphabetical order...
FactCheck.org
FlackCheck.org
PolitFact
Snopes
Washington Post Fact Checker
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
→ Some of the most credible media -- at the moment:
📰📰📰 Mother Jones
📰📰📰 The Washington Post
📰📰📰 The New York Times
💻💻💻 News And Guts on Facebook
→ Some of the most credible Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
📺📺📺 Rachel Maddow on MSNBC
📺📺📺 The Beat With Ari on MSNBC
( ⬆⬆⬆ Wallace is new to the job but for right now
her work on Trump GOP has been credible, IMO)
...for Networking for Democrats today!
.
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(Linked) "...is our 2016 platform...a declaration of how we plan to move America forward. Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."
(Remember 2018...)
*
Curated by Gail Mountain, with occasional personal commentary, Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
( You can also find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GKMTNtwits )
*
Thank you for focusing!
g., aka Focused Democrat
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
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