Trump Transition: Conservative Christmas

Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former Texas governor and a longtime conservative government standard-bearer, visits Trump Tower in New York during the president-elect's Cabinet hiring spree in December. /Getty Images photo by Drew Angerer

Conservative Americans found an unexpected haul of presents under the Christmas tree this year: a bigly box bursting open with a business-tycoon president-elect and a Cabinet stuffed with billionaires and plutocratic ideologues.

Several of the executive-department nominees are more akin to a wolf pack guarding the whole farm than a fox guarding the hen house.

Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, is a retired neurosurgeon and former Republican primary-season rival of the president-elect. He has no public housing experience and a self-help ideology that seems ill-suited to providing an essential safety-net service. /Getty Images photo by Andrew Burton


Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Michigan Republican Party bigwig billionaire Betsy DeVos, has no experience in public education, including with her own children. She favors private-school vouchers and charter schools as solutions--and likely poison pills--for struggling public schools.

Trump's nominee for Energy secretary, two-time GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, has advocated dismantling the department. While calling for the agency's demise in an epic 2011 debate gaffe, he forgot the department's name.

Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, favors a free-market approach to medicine that includes slashing HHS regulations and privatizing Medicare.

Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, E. Scott Pruitt, has been a fierce critic of the EPA in his current role as Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt is among the named petitioners in a 25-state lawsuit against the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations.

As the country embarks on Republican government in the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of statehouses, a host of hurdles that require united effort confronts the apparently partisan Trump administration: healthcare reform; national governments that threaten global security such as North Korea; external economic threats from powerful competitors and volatile global markets; internal economic challenges including a dilapidated infrastructure, an aging population, a skewed concentration of wealth, and disruptive waves of automation that upend the workforce; roiled race relations; immigration reform; and climate change.

Tackling these hurdles from the right, or any single-minded approach, is doomed to failure measured in blood and national treasure.

Russian Big Lie Watch: Lost Paratroopers in Ukraine

After Russian paratroopers were captured in Ukraine in late August 2014, they were quickly swapped for Ukranian prisoners of war. /AFP image

Big Lie: Ten Russian paratroopers captured recently in Ukraine "really did participate in a patrol of the Russian-Ukranian border, crossed it by accident at an unmarked section, and as far as we understand showed no resistance," the Russian Defense Ministry said according to the BBC.

Closer to the truth: "This wasn't a mistake, but a special mission they were carrying out," a Ukranian military spokesman said.

Ukraine bulwark against Russian aggression

A resident reacts to shelling damage in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, in August 2014. /CTV News image

Ukraine is a fledgling democracy, and young governments of the people are more imperfect than their mature counterparts such as Australia, Switzerland and the United States.

Vladimir Putin's Russia is imperfection incarnate.

The Russian president, ex-KGB officer, Judo expert and all-star power monger has pushed his James Bondesque villain game to an Ivan the Terrible level. In 2014, Putin has racked up a string of stains on humanity, from exterminating dogs at Sochi during the Winter Olympics to launching an aggressive war against Ukraine.

Putin's Russia, which ranks as an authoritarian regime in indexes of democracy, appears determined to re-establish key elements of the Soviet Union, including large chunks of Ukraine.

This is starting to look a lot like Stalin's Russia.

Russian tanks are invading an Eastern European country and the Kremlin has dusted off a propaganda tool imported from Nazi Germany during World War II: The Big Lie. Joseph Goebbels, who operated Hitler's propaganda machine, was the master of the WWII whopper: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

For weeks, the Russians have been deploying The Big Lie about their military activity on Ukrainian soil. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shamelessly fired up the propaganda machine, claiming NATO satellite photos showing heavily armed Russian military units conducting operations inside Ukraine had "turned out to be from video games."

NATO satellite imagery reportedly shows Russian military units operating inside eastern Ukraine.

Dutch cut deal with the devil on natural gas

The Netherlands has the largest natural gas reserves in Europe. But the multibillion dollar industry that has helped keep the Dutch on solid ground through the Great Recession is shaking property owners to their foundations.

The BBC reports fracking companies face 6,000 damage claims from Dutch property owners for earthquakes linked to the Groningen natural gas fields, which are the biggest in the EU. The Dutch government's cut of the fracking pie last year was about $18 billion.

We've seen this movie before, and it's playing in theaters around the world.

The dozens of Groningen earthquakes recorded since 1996 are similar to earthquakes linked to fracking in U.S. natural gas fields. In Oklahoma, scientists recently tied fracking to the strongest temblor in state history. And fracking has been exempt from several key U.S. environmental laws since 2005.

The fracking drama pits profits and an energy quick fix against a barely understood range of environmental dangers that includes earthquakes and ground water contamination. In most cases, governments are apparently looking the other way with their hands out while the petroleum industry fracks away despite obvious environmental damage.

Dearest Europe: Don't forget our past

In 1916, British soldiers "go over the top" from a trench during the Battle of the Somme in France. At least 13 million soldiers and sailors died in World War I, with many of the missing never accounted for. /Image via British Library


Times have been really tough on all our families these past few years. Your relatives here in the U.S. have been watching the troubles you have been having in your family, and we're deeply worried about you.

First and foremost, we really love you and we're not trying to be judgmental. While some can certainly argue that we stole her from your family, you gave us our greatest gift: beautiful, placid Canada. We hope you can all see how the strong relationship we have with her is one of our greatest treasures. We hope you can see the treasures in your own relationships with one another.

Financial woes have the potential to strain any family, and we wish there was more we could do to help solve your debt crisis. This kind of problem should be settled between family members, and we are not trying to meddle, just support you through this difficult situation. The best advice we can offer is for you to stick together, to look past your current struggles to a far more prosperous future, and look to the past, where the divided European family turned on itself time and again with horrific consequences.

To our western and northern European relatives, we know how hard you have worked to educate your children and build strong financial foundations for your homes and businesses. We also know it will take patience and commitment to help your southern clans develop a comparable level of financial strength and discipline. Please don't give up on them, many of whom like elders Greece, Italy and Spain have contributed greatly to the family institutions and culture that bind all of us together.

Germany, Germany. You've always been one of the smartest and most industrious members in our extended family. When it comes to holding your European family together through this debt crisis, you probably bear the heaviest burden. We know it's not fair for someone who has worked so hard and been so responsible to sacrifice for family members who have not lived up to their responsibilities. But you have tried to go it alone or impose your will on your European brothers and sisters several times in the past 150 years, and everyone in the family paid a terrible price.

To our southern European relatives, we know how hard it is to compete with members of our global family, to carve out a comfortable niche in an ever-changing world. We also know how ungrateful some family members must appear in your time of need ... ungrateful of your considerable contributions to the European family such as democracy, architectual innovations and your leading role in the Renaissance many centuries ago. But there are some aspects of your modern lifestyle, such as over reliance on government subsidies, that you will have to change to keep your family together.

To our eastern European relatives, you are the long-lost loved ones who only recently were welcomed as full-fledged members of the European family. Don't despair over the forces threatening to pull your kin apart after enduring decades of painful hardship on a long road home. Do your utmost to encourage your squabbling European siblings to not only settle their differences but also reaffirm their commitment to each other and move forward with a shared sense of purpose.

We in the U.S. ask all of these things not just for our European family but for our own. Since the great discords of the last century, everyone on both sides of the Atlantic has thrived most when our families have tackled challenges with unity and cooperation.

With peace and love,
Your U.S. family