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Biden's decision to donate 500 million vaccine doses to other countries is the right thing to do morally and will pay dividends. Besides helping people in need, it will help protect the U.S. by curtailing cases globally and create badly needed goodwill post Trump. Now if only more Americans would get vaccinated instead of believing absurd claims about 5G and magnetism.

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This may have been mentioned previously, but it has not gone unnoticed to us that you wrote through the weekend and did not take your usual day of rest (and beautiful Buddy Poland photo). What you're doing, Heather, is really appreciated. Every. Single. Day.

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Whenever I used to hear the term, “three dimensional chess“, I would to picture “Spock” sitting there, perplexed as to why his logic can’t overcome the “unconventional strategies” being employed by Captain Kirk. Today, I picture President Biden there, being confronted by the very real and “hard to respond to”, unconventional warfare being waged by Vladimir Putin. While Putin may not waging a conventional war, he is waging an unconventional one by supporting and radicalizing the Conservative opposition of every Western Democracy, touting the benefits of one party rule to them. I really hope President Biden can send these fascists back to the garages and basements they crawled out of.

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Your last sentence sets the stage, the critical importance of 2022. Democrats and Independents showing up at the voting booth must join forces to defeat the Trump wing of the Republican party. No matter the blocks put up by the Koch funded and controlled state legislatures we will overcome.

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Thank you Heather.

I do wish that President Biden was as forceful in his stance against the assault of Democracy in this Country as he is with other Countries in the world.

That said, the doses of the vaccines that the US has committed to purchase for less fortunate countries speaks volumes as to the moral high ground Biden is trying to take this country to.

We are at a plateau in this country to have a substantial amount of people get their vaccines. Perhaps it's in spite of the success that Biden has gained in getting vaccines in arms so the July goal will not be met.

Spite is a game piece in the arsenal of hate that comprise the GOP.

Be safe, be well.

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That last sentence. Gulp.

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A little off-subject but chew on this article from today's Allentown Morning Call:

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and leading Democratic lawmakers vowed to defend voters’ rights Wednesday, saying they will not negotiate with Republicans attempting to scale back people’s ability to vote.

For nearly an hour Wednesday, Wolf, acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid, state House Minority Leader Joanne McClinton, state Sen. Shariff Street and state Rep. Margo Davidson denounced unnamed Republican lawmakers for pushing a false narrative about the 2020 presidential election and promoting conspiracy theories about the election’s outcome.

The misinformation is damaging to American democracy and feeding conservatives’ demands for election reform that will limit citizens’ right to vote, they argued. Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have repeatedly introduced legislation seeking to eliminate mail-in voting this year, and Wolf vowed to reject those and other efforts that would infringe on voters’ access to the polling place.

“I will stand up for our freedom to vote. I will not allow bad actors to put up barriers to voting in Pennsylvania. Not only will I veto any legislative efforts to roll back the freedoms Pennsylvanians right now have, I will continue to push for changes that expand our access to the polls,” Wolf said.

The Democrats were unsparing in their comments. Without naming any individuals other than former President Donald Trump, the group accused some Republicans of engaging in dangerous, undemocratic

activities that directly led to the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington. Street compared Trump to segregationist George Wallace, and Davidson cited experts who identified misinformation as the greatest security threat to come out of the 2020 election cycle.

“I cannot sugarcoat this at all. Our democracy continues to be under attack. I repeat, our democracy is under attack,” McClinton said.

A request for comment to Sen. Kim Ward, the Republican majority leader, was not immediately returned.

Wednesday’s news conference came a week after state Sens. Doug Mastriano and Cris Dush and state Rep. Rob Kauffman toured the controversial Arizona audit of the 2020 election. The audit has drawn criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike for playing to conspiracy theories, its flawed process and the lack of qualifications by Cyber Ninjas, the contractor performing the audit.

Wolf and other speakers noted that Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral votes and razor-thin outcome, was a target of about 20 lawsuits attempting to reverse Trump’s loss in the election, none of which overturned the results. The speakers noted that audits at both the county and state levels confirmed the outcome, and that a federal judge appointed by Trump rejected his argument that the results should be overturned.

The divide over the 2020 election has prevented lawmakers from addressing actual problems that exist with Pennsylvania’s election code. For nearly a year, a bipartisan group of county election officials have requested that lawmakers allow them to start counting mail-in ballots days ahead of Election Day so they can quickly produce results. Instead, many Republicans want to revoke mail-in ballots and some Democrats are pushing for same-day voter registration.

The Republican effort against mail-in ballots is a stark reversal from 2019, when mail-in voting was allowed thanks to Republican support despite overwhelming Democratic opposition in the Senate. At the time, no one believed there would be significant demand for mail-in ballots, but the coronavirus pandemic fed massive interest in the voting method last year.

Since the 2020 election, some Republican-controlled states have sought to change voting laws. The efforts align with Trump, who has continued leveling false claims that fraud cost him the election. Trump’s own Justice Department determined the election was the most secure in American history.

In March, Georgia reduced the number of drop boxes for mail-in ballots and made it a crime for third parties to give food or drink to people waiting in line to vote. Supporters of the bill argue it enhances voting rights because it adds more days for people to vote ahead of Election Day. The changes came after Georgia voters narrowly backed President Joe Biden in the presidential election and then granted Democrats the slimmest control of the U.S. Senate.

Since then, Florida, Montana and Iowa have passed voting changes while other states have introduced similar bills. Texas nearly passed voting restrictions last month but was foiled after Democratic lawmakers fled the statehouse to deny Republicans a quorum.

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I am wondering why we have so few public demonstrations showing support for our democracy, the government, elected officials, business and social leaders that we need to sustain and improve our democratic nation? And why we allow autocrats, demiguoges, their financiers and militant gun carrying supporters so much air time in their in broad daylight hijacking of our nation?

Clearly the Trump faction emulates Putin's Russia, right down to using courts and departments of justice to protect bad actors. This isn't just a race thing. Russians in every country particularly in the former Soviet countries believe they have no laws to live by, and should be in control of their respective adopted country to maintain support for mother Russia. Trump's allegiances are to a former Confederacy that once ruled roughshod over the US. Then imposed their Jim Crow rule of intimidation, death and destruction over the south like the many Tulsa Massacres. And now election lies, voter suppression and insurrection at the the Capitol with impunity in broad daylight. These are all criminal and unconstitutional acts that require accountability, consequences and prison time. We have enough prison cells in our nation to deal with these Putinesque Trump Republican puppets and players.

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What struck me most about today's post is contained here:

"Biden is trying to reinforce democracy even while it is under threat at home. For the first time in our history, the office of the presidency did not change hands peacefully, and former president Trump continues to rally his supporters by insisting—falsely—that he won the 2020 election. Rather than reinforcing the rules of our democracy, the leaders of his party have chosen to throw their weight behind the former president."

Then, of course, dear Prof. HCR, you end with words that are decidedly more unsettling, perhaps even, ominous: "Biden's message about the strength of the world's democracies is a hopeful one, but it is not necessarily one on which European allies can rely."

To that, I would add: nor can we. Our world has changed so dramatically since the millennium was ushered in with such pomp and ceremony just over two decades ago. The problem is that we didn't see it coming until the Trump regime took over.

2001: the 9/11 tragedy, US invades Afghanistan;

2002: Israel begins Operation Defensive Shield and construction of West Bank barrier begins;

2003: US invades Iraq, Dafur war begins, deadly battle of Falluja,

2004: Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, Hurricane Katrina;

2005: Valentine's Day bombings;

2006: Lebanon War, Mumbai bombings;

2007: protests in Myanmar, assassination of Benazir Bhutto;

2008: Gaza War begins, Mumbai attacks, Great Recession;

And I could go on and on until 2016 when a contemptible, self-centered autocrat was elected POTUS. As our country diminished in morals and accountability, we started to look at the world around us and recognize a pattern -- an abundance of totalitarian regimes taking over so-called democratic nations. We weren't alone, but this wasn't meant to happen to the USA, this was not to be our lot. So we scrambled, demonstrated, wrote letters, and showed our dismay using all the resources available to us and managed to vote him out in 2020. Yet, the threat remains and none of us know how to reverse this trend here or abroad. It is a frightfully dangerous situation, and if President Biden and the DNC don't begin to address the 6th January insurrection and its leaders in the Florida Swamp and in Congress in the strongest terms possible, hope will be a term that will regress to its tangled roots from bygone days.

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"...the U.S. wants to be sure “that democracies and not anyone else, not China or other autocracies, are writing the rules for trade and technology for the 21st century."

I did check my memory against the statement above from a few sources, and the ill-fated TPP of 2016 involved a very different process in being written largely by multi-national corporations and completely shrouded in secrecy from the American people and even their elected representatives. Corporations are not democracies, and neither are nations that are actually governed by corporatocracies while claiming to be democracies. <https://emorywheel.com/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement-secrecy-concerning/>.

I'm hoping to be happily surprised that the enacted process will have good semblance to the described process Biden provided above. We now have benchmark from which to watch and evaluate what actually happens.

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Thank you, Dr. R. Your penultimate paragraph says it all. We are under attack from within our country. Biden and his administration must stand firm against the domestic terrorists from within our own government, as well as within our borders.

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I came to this calm and rational news roundup after seeing a short, salivary burst from Texas Senator Ted Cruz on the NBC news, decrying President Biden as soft on our adversaries. It made me wonder if you (Dr Richardson) can imagine and explain how it is that well-educated opportunists like Cruz can convince themselves that their political rhetoric is even close to truth and justice. I wish that someone who studies this for a living (unlike me, I'm a scientist) could please make the rest of us understand people like Cruz and Rubio from a place of compassion, not horrified disgust. I fear that compassion is the only way forward, because brutishness is the way of the autocrat.

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Is there anyone one the Right who produces a daily review like HCR's who is intelligent like her? I'd love to read a daily review from the other side's perspective. As always, thank you HCR for all you do to keep us informed. You ignited in me a passion for history and for fighting for Democracy that was not there until I found your YouTube videos.

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The next few days with Biden meeting with allies and then our enemy, Putin, will be a tell-tale sign if he succeeds in reviving the trust that Americans have mostly always had. I am guessing Biden has a definite plan to squeeze Putin’s scrotum tightly but we will see. In the meantime, Kamala will be holding down the fort while she deals with Mexico, Central and South Americas. Now if someone could just toss a big ole firecracker at Mitch, I’d be real happy.

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Professor, I am perplexed by how forceful President Biden can be in foreign policy and how tentative he seems in domestic matters.

The Vandenburg Resolution, "Politics stop at the water's edge" is used/interpreted in a number of ways other than maintaining solidarity in foreign policy. What it means currently is that we will not hear much about our domestic policies these eight days that the President is abroad.

I think he has to be as forceful at home as he is foreign policy matters.

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Challenging, it is, to be considered an unreliable ally. But truth.

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