Saturday, November 30th 2019
Pope Clement calls nuclear weapons "immoral" and calls for nuclear disarmament during visit to Hiroshima
Hiroshima — Pope Clement XV, in his first visit to Japan, called nuclear weapons and the maintenance of nuclear arsenals "immoral" and called on the nations of the world to destroy their nuclear stockpiles. Speaking in the city of Hiroshima, the Pope paid his respects at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park that honors the estimated 90,000-140,000 people that were estimated to have been killed when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 6, 1945 during the final days of World War II. Three days later, another atomic bomb would be dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 39,000-80,000 people.
After meeting with a few very elderly
hibakusha (persons affected by the atomic bombings), Clement decried the possession of nuclear weapons by nations around the world, urging the destruction of these "dangerous and immoral weapons" whose creation and stockpiling "wastes vital resources that could be used to facilitate peace and alleviate suffering."
Prime Minister Ayeka Jūchirō thanked the pope for his visit to Hiroshima and "meeting with those who suffered as a result of the bombings", but stopped short of endorsing his push for nuclear disarmament. Despite Japan's history as the only nation to have ever been victimized by a nuclear bombing, the nation has been under the United States' "nuclear umbrella" since the beginning of the Cold War, which many in her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) see as an invaluable deterrent against both China and North Korea.
The pope's call for the "peaceful use of the atom" instead of the "wasteful and immoral turning of [atomic energy] towards destruction" attracted criticism from anti-nuclear energy activists, who cite the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 2006 San Andreo near-meltdown as evidence to nuclear power's inherent danger.
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Saturday, November 30th 2019
Straus keeps possibility of 2022 bid open
Former Senator Haydn Straus said he was "open" to running for president in 2022 in an interview with
Jacobin. Speaking to the democratic socialist magazine, Straus, who campaigned on the Green Party ticket last year and took six percent of the vote, said he was "open" to running in three years' time if President Sam Seaborn starts to "backslide on his progressive pledges."
"He's pledged to do some things I campaigned on," Straus said. "Gun control, fighting climate change, invest in infrastructure and fix our nation's tax structure away from hurting the working poor and towards making the rich pay their fair share. If he keeps to it—or keeps trying, anyways—I'll weigh my options when it comes time. But if he starts backsliding, I won't hesitate to run again."
Straus' performance, the best for a third-party candidate since Jim Buckner's independent run in 1998, is cited as a key factor in the closeness of the 2018 contest, where President Seaborn very narrowly defeated former Secretary Henry Shallick in both the popular and electoral vote. The 71 year-old, who represented Ohio as a Democrat in the Senate from 2011 until 2017, has maintained a strong following among left-wingers, especially younger progressives who soured on the President after his selection of billionaire Franklin Hollis as his running mate in 2018.
If he were to run again, Straus would most likely run as a Green candidate. Last year's campaign performed well enough to grant the party automatic ballot access for the 2022 election in a majority of states, making it very likely that the Green ticket will again be on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia by the time Straus would potentially launch another presidential campaign.
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Saturday, November 30th 2019
Senate Republicans backtrack on infrastructure spending
Faced with another punishing winter ahead, Senate Republicans have returned to the bargaining table on infrastructure spending for the next fiscal year. After keeping infrastructure spending largely to the same levels as the 2017-2018 budget (the final one passed under President Glen Allen Walken), Senate Majority Leader Cody Riley (R-AL) signaled that the party would be open to an increase in infrastructure spending.
Appearing on the morning show
Fox and Friends, Riley said that his caucus was open to an increase in federal highway spending and bloc grants to states for infrastructure, but that other proposals would be "difficult to pass". "The fact of the matter is that these severe weather events are hurting our roads and bridges harder than we had been told," Riley said in an interview with Fox hosts. "So we need to start investing in our roads, but it should be up to the people who are using those roads to say how they spend that money, not Washington."
The Senate approved funding to increase infrastructure spending to $27 billion per year last summer, a far cry from the $200 billion asked for by the White House and congressional Democrats. Senator John Huntingdon (D-RI), ranking member on the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, had criticized the "miserly" increase in infrastructure spending at the time and had predicted that the Senate would again revisit infrastructure spending increases before the year's end. He is cautiously optimistic about the majority party's change of heart.
"This is a positive step for the majority leader to take," Huntingdon said as he was greeting constituents in Providence. "I'm not thrilled that he's already putting conditions on what we can negotiate [spending] increases on, but we have to start somewhere."