The unique perspective and provocative opinions of Joe O’Neill
Dem Notes
President Barack Obama’s farewell address referenced the perils facing America as well as a directive for Americans to take responsibility for their own democracy. He more than sensed what could be coming with his unconscionable successor. He thus urged Americans to “show up, dive in, stay at it.” It applies like never before.
Morgan Stanley has made a “sizable upward revision” in its GDP forecasts—based on an economic surge that includes, most notably, the 2021 infrastructure bill. MS now projects a 9 percent GDP growth for the first half of 2023. Its previous forecast was 0.5 percent.
Last month 187,000 jobs were added, and the unemployment ticked down to 5 percent.
It’s beyond brutally ironic that the post-Holocaust, Netanyahu nation of Israel keeps pushing harder to the far right—such that it has been labeled a racist, apartheid state by some political partisans on America’s progressive left. The reality is unsettling and even understandable—but politically unhelpful.
After a five-year, Trump-induced hiatus, the U.S. has rejoined UNESCO and become its 194th member. “The return of the United States has a meaning that is bigger than UNESCO,” declared its Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
VP KamalaHarris won’t be debating Gov. Ron DiSaster on the upsides of slavery. “I’m here in Florida. And I will tell you, there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming qualities of slavery.” She spoke at the African Methodist Episcopal Women’s Missionary Convention in Orlando.
President Biden is neither compromised nor corrupt. But when it comes to the sleazy HunterBiden, he’s either regrettably clueless or a fatherly, “Big Guy” enabler. High-profile, unforced errors—remember the emails and Anthony Weiner connection to Hillary Clinton?–hardly help the cause of keeping the truly compromised and corrupt from returning to power.
Voter Priorities: Election day should be a national holiday; the Electoral College should be nothing more than an historical footnote; and Citizens United should be overturned.