What have we become as a nation? I am pretty sure that is a question that much of the world is asking. This week I am reading there is a Fox News person calling on us to attack Canada, we have Trump calling for us to take Greenland for our economic security, and Tommy Tuberville is saying that we have to take back the Panama Canal in case we have to go to war over Taiwan. Trump has not been sworn in and taken the oath of the Presidency but we have chaos already.

Trump campaigned on a lot of issues but I hate to say it wasn’t the annexation of Canada or Greenland. It also wasn’t about taking back the Panama Canal. Trump vowed to have the biggest deportation in the history of American. What I am reading now it looks like it is not going to happen as easily Trump made it sound. We are a country of laws and procedures which Trump will try and bypass but not without a fight. Deporting the numbers that he has promised just isn’t going to happen. In fact, you could actually say that his supporters are being lied too. He talks about elite members of ICE that would be rounding up these people, where are these elite members going to come from? Who is going to train them? Where is the money going to come from to pay them? This is not a situation that you can just round people up and drive them over the border and just dump them there. The detention camps that are going to house all these people who is going to build them and where is that money going to come from? Calling out the National Guard to assist will bring about many legal challenges. Also, where is that money going to come from?

All during the campaign the entire Republican Party said how Biden had ruined the economy. They were saying that Biden and Harris caused the inflation. They promised from day one they would bring inflation down. They promised on day one they would bring down the cost of goods. Now that they have won the election, we hear nothing about the Biden economy. If fact we are hearing that it is really hard to bring down prices. We are hearing that inflation may go up. So far Trump’s two plans for the economy that I hear about are tariffs and drilling for more oil. Trump has called a tariff a tax on foreign countries importing their goods into the United States. Who is paying the tariff? Tariffs are paid by the domestic consumer. In the United States we are the domestic consumer, you and me. If we have to pay higher prices because of tariffs won’t that cause inflation to rise? Could tariffs help bring manufacturing back home? I think over the long haul it could but that would a long process. It was Reagan who pushed for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yes, Reagan did pass some tariffs to protect some specific industries like Harley Davidson but the Free Trade was he his shinning light. By Trump trying to protect jobs that have already left is like closing the barn door after the horses have already gotten out. Instead of chasing old products that have already left we should be encouraging new products and new innovations. We should be shaping the future and not trying to bring back the past. Shaping the future is what a real leader would do.

Is drilling more oil going to bring down the price of gas? We already export more oil than we import. It would make you wonder if we export more than we import why do we import oil at all? Would you believe that it is because we pump the wrong type of oil out of the ground? Fracking. which has really made the amount of oil production here at home jump, is what they call a light sweet crude and what we make our gas from is a heavier crude. The heavy crude is a cheaper oil that is harder to refine but it is they type of oil that our refineries are geared to refine. The light crude that we export is a more expense oil so in reality we are importing the cheap stuff and exporting the more expensive stuff that just increases the profits for the oil companies, it really doesn’t benefit the American people. Even though oil production has been its highest under Biden, Trump wants to open up more and more areas for the drilling of oil. We already are the number one exporter of oil in the world. Will drilling more oil help the American people or will it help the Petroleum Companies many of which I think of as International Conglomerates than American Corporations? Because we use that heavier crude oil to refine for our gas does exporting more oil bring down our price of gas? It sure doesn’t look like it did the last four years. The funny thing is that that two of the countries that we get much of our heavy crude is our neighbors Canada and Mexico. Two of the countries that Trump has been attacking on social media. I could actually see the price of our gas going up.

I don’t hear anything about no tax on tips or not taxing Social Security. All I am hearing is Trump playing the blame game. Governor Newsom is now responsible for all of the California Wildfires. Many scientists believe climate change is. This last year has again been the warmest year on record and the warming may just be accelerating. Trump of course has campaigned on eliminating what he calls the “Green New Scam”. With that he is coming out against the science and he is also turning his back on new products and new technologies that just may be the future. It is costing Americans new jobs in new developing fields. He is also blaming Biden for there not being much money left for FEMA. First Biden did not create any of the disasters that have happened. No President or political party is capable of creating the devastating hurricanes that have decimated much of the Southeast such as Hurricane Helene no matter what the conspiracy theorist says. Also, Biden doesn’t create the budget that allocates that money that supports FEMA, Congress does. The Republican Speaker chose not to reconvene the House to pass more support for FEMA after Milton damaged much of Southwestern Florida. Blaming Newsom and Biden are just smoke screens for not having a clue on what to do. I fear that under Trump we will just hear more and more excuses and more of the blaming game.

He also campaigned he would keep us out of War but, even before he has taken the Oath of Office, he seems to be picking a fight with half the world. Greenland, Panama, Canada just to name a few off the top of my head. The Republicans are talking about American Imperialism which in my opinion would lead to many wars. America First? What I really see is a man that doesn’t know how to lead, a man that doesn’t know how to govern, and a man that only cares about himself.