The Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin defined greed and stupidity when he asked the government for a jet to take him and his bride to Europe for their honeymoon. This, right after he had gotten in hot water because he grabbed a government jet to fly him and his fiancée to Fort Knox to watch the eclipse. Can this asshole be more brain dead?
This is a spoiled brat of rich parents who needs nothing, but can’t resist getting something for nothing even as people are trying to stay alive after their entire lives were stolen by a hurricane caused by global warming which he denies. Mnuchin is supposed to be managing the nations financial problems not chiseling from it. Any President worth the title would throw this dumb bastard out of the Cabinet but Trump has had such bad judgment in picking his Cabinet and White House staff that he is loath to lose any more of the defective lay-a-bouts he has already picked.
This plane costs 25 grand an hour to fly. To grab this kind of asset while we are scraping for money to offset the effects of two disasters certainly calls Mnuchin’s judgment, along with his integrity and his intelligence into question. If a millionaire who is supposed to be working for the American people actually spends his time chiseling free plane rides for holidays, it’s long past time for him to go.
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This Sunday J.R. McMasters said in an interview on This Week that if North Korea didn’t give up their nuclear weapons we would strike them. That’s pretty strong but after a long consideration of the alternatives I think he’s on the nose. I’m not talking about nuclear Armageddon nor do I think he is either. Consider that w have never plotted out a scenario in which we react to what Kim is doing, nor have we ever tried to understand his position or why he has formulated this plan of action that seems unacceptable to the rest of the world.
Maybe a good starting place would be to take a look at a great imaginary interview that took place today on GPS between Fareed Zacharia and Kin Jung Un. In it Fareed pins down the dictator on why he continues to test nuclear weapons and missals and Kim explains the only possibly sane reasons that make perfect sense, especially considering the way we have treated other nations and their leaders across the world.
First of all it must be acknowledged that Kim and his predecessors have stayed in power because they were stronger and more diabolical than any of their enemies. The ability to murder your brother is considered a virtue in North Korea. Kim and his clan have stayed in power for a long time because they were more vicious than anyone else. He accepts this and bases his policy on it.
So here is this nasty little mass murderer who has watched his family rise to and hold power by being more vicious than anyone else. At one time he had been able to maintain friendly relations with two of the three superpowers but at this point his actions have lost him that friendship and he is faced by the lone remaining super power, which has made no bones about regime change in his country. So far he has been able to rebuff that super power’s desire for regime change because he has nuclear weapons.
Earlier Presidents in the super power have offered olive branches but all he has to do is look to the Middle East to see the results of their peace offerings. Iraq didn’t even have nuclear weapons and Saddam ended up in a hole. Libya gave up their nuclear weapons and Gadhafi ended up the same way. Kim may be mean but he doesn’t appear to be stupid. He understands what will happen to him the minute we no longer fear his nuclear capability. So what is he to do? He understands that he will never win a nuclear war with anyone so he just keeps on testing.
If he were all by himself out there in the middle of deserted Asia he might be more vulnerable but he is fortunate in that he borders on South Korea, a serious enemy but a modern nation whose capital is right on his border and within range of even conventional artillery. He had the foresight to position a great deal of weaponry looking right down the throat of Seoul.
So here we all stand. Kim probably wants to be able to develop his long-range nuclear capability and then use it to hold off any threat from the U.S. or South Korea. Trump, driven by political considerations cannot let that happen and President Moon of South Korea just wants us all to go away and allow his country to continue to flourish. The big danger; that Kim continues to test and enrages Trump who pushes the wrong button.
So what to do? The first thing we have to do is recognize Kim’s problem because if we don’t we can’t help to solve it in a functional way. To help solve Kim’s problem we have to:
A-Stop him from further tests
B-Find a way to give him iron-clad assurances that we will not pursue regime change.
C-Guarantee that he will go no further in his quest fro a deliverable nuclear ICBM.
The first part of the problem is probably the hardest to solve but it can be done and probably by doing something like this. We deliver a President-to-president message that explains the whole plan but we also explain that any further missal testing that leaves the airspace of North Korea will result in our shooting down the missal. If it is repeated we will subsequently destroy the launch site. If North Korea retaliates in any way, against us or any other nation we will destroy their capital and their largest cities. The problem with this is that we have to be ready to do it if we threaten it. This can’t be a red line in Syria kind of cop out. That, of course, means that we have to rely on the defective leadership now in the White House to come to some kind of serious decision and stay with it for more than 24 hours.
Parts B & C of the plan can be guaranteed by China and by technological means but part A is the tricky one. Threats are never a good idea, especially after our failures in Syria but the fact that we are still the only nation in the world to use a nuclear bomb in combat may, in this case, stand us in good stead. This is far and away the most important face off we have had since the Cuba crisis. It’s unfortunate that we have to go through it with a clown like Trump in the White House but maybe Mathis, McMaster and Kelly will be able to make the dunce understand the seriousness of the situation and guide him through it. Something has to be done. Maybe it’s this. Maybe not, but something has to be done.
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This week, Trump Tweeted a video of him hitting a golf ball that subsequently whacked Hillary Clinton in the back as she was boarding a plane. Is he insane? This is the act of a morbid child. What he obviously doesn’t realize is that there is no need to prove that he doesn’t possess the control over his mental facilities that would enable him to carry out his duties as President. We already know that. What sane human being sends out a video like that? He has already proven that he is an egomaniacal sociopath, is he now hell bent on proving that he is certifiably insane?
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In watching Alex Castellanos and some bimbo Republican strategist rail against single payer and babble about all the incomprehensible strategies that the GOP has come up with to screw the American public out of healthcare one wonders how they can look themselves in the mirror every morning. No one from the Right has come up with any sensible alternative to single payer just like they didn’t come up with any viable alternative to Obamacare. That fiasco took them seven years and still they came up empty. Now that single payer is gaining attention they roll out the double talk and blabber about nonsensical alternatives to all the failed plans they have already dragged through the mud.
Sure we all know these crooks are on the insurance companies payrolls and we all know that they are in hock to the lobbyists of the rich but at some point they just have to stop lying and face the facts. Single payer works. That doesn’t mean that Bernie’s plan is the one that should go ahead. It just means that there are no ifs, ands, or buts about the viability of universal healthcare anymore. The time for universal, government controlled healthcare is now! All the lies and all the bullshit by the likes of Castellanos and his bimbo backers have to be dismissed.
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This blog attacked Florida governor Rick Scott when he was running for election. Now in Florida’s gravest moment he comes out of his cave and speaks to the state with a barely intelligible address. He looks like he is either on drugs, petrified or just brain dead. He couldn’t even read his speech off whatever it was printed on. He showed no composure and less ability to lead. You watch the mayor of Miami speak to the people and you watch Rick Scott and the difference is monumental. Scott should retire to the basement of the statehouse and stay there until his term runs out..
But it isn’t just his incompetence in the face of trials, it’s that his philosophy on the environment is one of those most responsible for this disaster. Yeah, Scott’s a climate-change denier, one of the dumbest. He followed his hero, Donald (Enjoy yourselves everybody, hope you can swim.) Trump on all the attacks on the EPA and any cogent science that told us this was coming. Even as the residents of Houston are drowning, those of the Caribbean crawling out from under crushed buildings and those of Florida trying to survive 185 mph winds, Trump’s lackeys are busy killing all environmental regulation so the last of the oil magnets can add to their stock portfolios and refuel their yachts.
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And for all my liberal friends that never know when enough is too much, a little story that illustrates why conservatives think you’re all crazy.
A couple of years ago Barry Diller, a serious billionaire took a look at the slowly developing West Side of Manhattan and decided that he could help. He proposed a park for the area currently occupied by the rotting pier 54. He would pay for all of the $130 million dollar cost except for about 2 million that the city would provide and he would also pick up all the cost overruns. It would provide beautiful recreation space over what is now a rotting useless mess. It was a win/win for everyone especially the citizens of NYC.
Then Donald Durst led a surly bunch of rich, malcontent do-gooders called the City Club of NY into the fray. I call them surly and malcontent because Durst, their leader had been forced off the board of the Hudson River Bank Trust which controls most of the land along the rivers in 2011. Hence it appears he wanted to stop any success that the Trust would achieve from this Diller sponsored park.
So he went out and found a fish, the American eel, which he claimed, despite denials from the Army Corp of Engineers and the State Dept. of Environmental Protection would be endangered by this project. The last time this happened was when striped bass breeding grounds stopped the entire process of a super West Side Highway. Naturally, as soon as the whole project died, the bass picked up their eggs and moved to another breeding ground. Of course the damage was done and we have been stuck with the impossible traffic jams ever since.
Now Mr. Durst and his tiny coterie of progress stoppers have succeeded in stealing this magnificent, practically free, park from the people of New York City. Barry Diller having already blown over $40 million of his own money on a vain attempt to do something for someone else, has walked away, frustrated at the way things are not done in this city.
Durst has his revenge on the Hudson River Bank Trust and the people of New York are screwed.
It would be nice if the people of New York could get even with Durst for what he has done to them. Maybe the building department could slow down the permit process for all Durst development or the DOT could withhold permits for blocking traffic lanes next to all Durst construction. Maybe then the rich creep who screwed NYC would understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch and learn to pick his revenge projects more carefully. This is a perfect example of how a rich punk has phonied up a liberal environmental cause to get his petty revenge without even considering the harm he is doing to hundreds of thousands of city dwellers.