Martha Raddatz is a hell of a foreign correspondent, a true winner in a chopper, over a battlefield or in a tank, but put her in a studio and she sometimes shrinks to the level of the average Fox news hack. She went after Senator Chris Combs this Sunday after she invited him on This Week to explain the position of Joe Biden on classified documents found in his home and in a former office. Combs expressed a reasoned, intelligent, opinion about how the documents were handled and why Biden did not seem to be overly concerned about their presence. He also pointed out the differences between how Biden treated his docs and how Donald Trump treated his. Raddatz seemed uninterested in anything Combs had to say. She appeared determined to make something out of nothing just to have something to report. Her whole attitude seemed to be to sensationalize what, in reality is a trivial story.
In Trump’s case, he ordered and supervised the transfer of the documents from the White House to Mar-a- and then denied their existence and refused to return them. Biden was guilty of none of these actions. He cooperated with the DOJ and seemingly had no prior knowledge of the document’s existence.
How that happened, doesn’t have to be explained to anyone who has ever packed up a home or office, and especially so when the packing is being done by others.
*****
The biggest issue on the docket for the US Government right now is the debt ceiling. The problems that drive it are twofold. The first is that the process is ass backwards. First, we spend the money and then debate over whether we should pay the bill. That endangers America’s credit rating and exposes us to default. Instead, we should open the debt ceiling so that this does not become a problem. Sure, there are those who will complain that we can’t just progress with unlimited debt, but that is actually what we have been doing all along. We spend whatever congress wants and then we have to cover it. That is, in actuality, an open debt ceiling.
The second part of the problem is the fact that we don’t have enough or the right people in congress to debate this. Most of the clowns we have elected to the House or Senate don’t understand how the bus service in their district works, let along something as sophisticated as this hugely complicated economic problem. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gates, Jim Jordan haven’t figured out what their job entails in congress yet. How do we expect them to deal with this?
******
This Week flubbed the dub this week when it took up almost half its programing time with the non-issue of classified papers and spent a scant few minutes on Jonathan Karl’s important interview with the mayors of Houston, LA and NY. That was the real news, news that actually affected the majority of the people of the United States, but instead of featuring this segment, the producers ran off and hid. They tried to make it a segment about black mayors, but it was really about 3 very intelligent mayors who understand the problems of their cities and how those problems radiate out to affect all of America. They could have done the whole hour on just how these three smart politicians feel about immigration and how it affects their cities and impacts crime, homelessness, mental health, jobs, and the economy. That would have been a hell of a lot better show than the one ABC delivered.
These three mayors, Karen Bass, Sylvester Turner, and Eric Adams were on that show because they are getting it done. Not all of it because all of it is incalculable, but they are making progress despite decades of mismanagement by their predecessors.
Adams replaced a man who was interested in creating bicycle lanes instead of affordable housing. Turner has attacked the mental health issues in his city, which have been ignored for decades, while Bass is working to alleviate the homeless crisis in LA, which is mind boggling due to decades of non-functioning management. They all understand that the problems are interconnected and that immigration, housing, mental health, crime, the homeless, economics and education are all just parts of one huge pizza. They can’t each be considered as just one slice, but must all be seen as a whole if any solutions are to be found and implemented.
*****
The big fight about the Debt Ceiling is really the biggest con job since Bernie Madoff took down all his friends for the sake of a couple of billion bucks. The GOP has just one goal. Protect the wealth of the billionaires which, if we are going to keep the country viable, means destroying the rest of the people who actually have to work for a living.
If the debt ceiling was really the whole problem it could be solved by two changes. The first is cutting out all the tax havens abroad and the second is giving the IRS more leverage in its handling of big money tax cheats. Just fixing those two problems would generate enough income to make any raising of the Debt Limit unnecessary.
I don’t know if anyone noticed that the debt limit was raised three times with no mess, fuss or bother during the Trump administration, but as soon as a Democrat occupied the White House the GOP found an excuse to go after Social Security and Medicare to solve the Debt Ceiling.
Not one spec of what the GOP is telling us is true. In keeping with their tradition of altered reality they ae lying every time they open their mouths and utter the words “National Debt.” For them it’s all about keeping the rich, richer, and making sure that the rest of us pay the bills.
*****
President Biden announced this week that the US will be supplying 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine to help fend off the Russian invsion. This is part of a division of tanks that will be supplied by various NATO members but especially Germany that had been reluctant to supply what could be construed as offensive weapons to the fight.
But as there always is, there is a rotten egg in the omlet. These tanks must still to be manufacturered an once they are the Ukrainian troops must learn how to use them. This will supposedly take about a year. Why are we doing it this way? Why waste all that time when we have thousands of tanks stored in desert locations in the Southwest. These tanks were built even though we never needed them because warfare, for the most part, has changed drastically and because American tank manufacturers donated generously to those who make that kind of decision.
Now we have them available and finally we have a need. All it will take is someone in Washington with the brains to put the two together. A couple of weeks tune up, and a tank of gas and they will be ready to go They are not as complicated as the Abrams tanks, and they are already paid for, so let’s not waste them. We could have thousands of them loaded on cargo vessels by the end of February, which would provide Ukraine with a tank force that could overwhelm the Russian tank force in a matter of weeks.
Come on, Joe, let’s get off our asses and really do something to put Putin in his place.