Waiting for the Debates

Bill Maher is a coward. Yeah, I know he’s done a lot of gutsy shit, but Donald Trump has backed him into a corner and clobbered him with his stupidity and gross behavior until Bill is just terrified that the fat criminal will win and so he has given up on Biden. And that means he’s given up the fight because Biden’s all we’ve got.  That second string that everybody was talking about a couple of months ago, doesn’t exist, because it has never been developed.

On the other hand the GOP has developed a bunch of possibilities. Sure, most of them are dumb as a post or crazy as a loon but at least the Republicans know their names. And they are the kinds of dumb loons that the GOP likes to run for President. They were all lined up outside the courtroom in Foley Square the other day, auditioning to be the next Trump.

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The noise this week is about the planned debates between Biden and Trump. We saw in 2020 and even before, that Trump is a raving lunatic with no self-control or manners. This time there will be controls imposed to try to civilize his animal tendences. Thar should give Biden a serous advantage because Trump’s natural tendencies are to lose track of whatever subject is being discussed and rave on about whatever fills the space in his empty head.

There has been a lot of conjecture about Biden’s age but that’s not really the problem. People don’t really care about age, it’s perception  of the physical condition that maters and that is what worries them about Biden. A lot of that concern was allayed by his robust attacks during the State of the Union speech. If he manages to bury Trump in a debate, the race should be all but over.

Trump definitely gives the impression of energy, but that energy is completely out of control with no direction or point to what he says. What he says is whatever comes into his twisted mind with no thought to how it is taken by others or what effect it may have on the situation under discussion. This is not the ideal condition for one who may someday be deciding the use of nuclear weapons or the invasion of a foreign nation.

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Any close observation of the actions of Russian Premier, Vladimir Putin, tells us that he believes the territorial expansion of the Russian nation in an attempt to reach the size of the former Soviet Union is his legacy and only goal for the future. Putin’s attempt to achieve this goal has led to the war in Ukraine, and if he is successful it  will his lead to other wars as he attempts to stretch the Russian borders into Poland, Estonia, Latvia and other Eastern European countries. Territorial national expansion was truly the plague of the 20th Century, and previous selected periods, when national leaders believed how much land you commanded dictated how powerful you were.

It was a mistaken theory then and has since been proven wrong by the expansion of power in smaller countries like Japan, which experienced huge economic expansion in the years after WWII.

It is therefore imperative that Putin be stopped and pushed back behind the borders of his own nation.

It looks like the time has arrived for NATO nations to realize, if they don’t stop Putin they will be ass deep in Russian troops throughout the Baltics and Eastern Europe.

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In an interview on Face the Nation, J.D. Vance revealed that he thinks we had peace at home during Trump’s four years in the White House. Where was he when Trump was kissing the asses of Putin and Kim, and they were expanding their nuclear possibilities?

Now he is trying to explain why he thought Viktor Orbán’s plan for turning Universities into propaganda factories for the government is a good idea. Of course, he failed to prove his point, but what else is new? Anyone who is more interested in kissing Trump’s ass than he is in serving the people of his district is destined to fail in all he does.

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Robert Gates, how do we get you back? Probably the most knowledgeable man in American foreign policy in the last century, Gates is wasted running a school. Even in retirement he has a better comprehensve overview of what’s really happening in the world than any man I have yet seen or heard.

We need Gates on the job, making intelligent, informed decisions based on years of experience.

In an interview on Face the Nation he laid out a better set of solutions for the war in Israel than I have heard from all the experts combined. We need him now!

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Watching the near upheaval among the Israeli military, it appears clear that Bibi Netanyahu is running out of fuel in his failed strategy on how to run his war with Hamas. For those who thought there was no possible way to protect the citizens of Gaza while killing off Hamas, there appears to be a solid possibility that shows some hope. The generals are willing to protect the civilians.  They are looking to follow David Petraeus’ strategy in Iraq which identified civilians and protected them from us and al Qaeda. The Israeli generals want to use a similar strategy, but Bibi is against it because he needs the war to continue in order to stay out of jail.

But the Israeli military can’t do it alone. They will need assistance from the Arab states to run Gaza after they have eliminated Hamas. To do that, they must show the Arabs that they have a plan for what to do in Gaza after they have killed off Hamas. It doesn’t seem that Bibi has any plan like that so, the generals will have to develop it themselves and then force it down Netanyahu’s throat. Maybe it can work.

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In Ukraine the Russians are threatening its second largest city, mainly because the GOP clowns that opposed helping Ukraine kept the munitions, they desperately needed from getting to them for six months. The arms are now starting to arrive. The Ukrainians will stop the Russians and drive them back but they  also need us to give them the weapons that will allow them to hit the Russian guns located inside Russia, so that they can eliminate the Russian  ability to shell Ukrainian cities.

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For the first time ever, the Dow hit 40,000 last week! This gave the media something to write about. It’s a shame they don’t write as much about all the corporate tax dodging that goes on.

Corporate profits are at a record high, but not corporate tax payments. Not even close. In 2021, nineteen of the Fortune 100 companies like AT&T, Bank of America, Nike, Merck, Ford, GM and Exon Mobil paid almost no taxes.

One third of those monster corporations paid no taxes in 2018 because of Donald Trump’s tax cuts. This did not increase production or create more jobs, it just made the rich, richer. One company, AIG a company that helped to start the 2008 financial collapse, received a $180 billion bailout from the Feds and a $160 million dollar refund on its 2021 taxes. But that’s chicken feed when you realize that 34% of all large profitable corporations paid no taxes in 2018, the final year of Trump tax cuts.

The answer may lie in Bernie Sanders and Jan Schakowsky’s Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act that would stop corporations from sheltering profits in overseas tax havens, roll back Trumps 2017 corporate tax rate cut, eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, and close loopholes used by tax avoiding companies.

This would help alleviate our legalized tax dodging due to a rigged tax code.