Watched an interview with Marco Rubio a while back. It’s fascinating. Rubio, as long as he’s not being interviewed in a political context, is a very smart guy with some very valid opinions on many international matters. Unfortunately, as soon as the talk turns to anything that will effect an election, whether it involves him, or just one in which he has an interest, he becomes a blithering, self-serving idiot. Can’t we find a job outside of politics for this guy? The whole world will benefit.
But no, he is running once again for the Senate. It appeared he would pass on this, especially when it became apparent during the primaries that he had no interest in being a Senator. But here he is, back at the troth, trying to get back on the taxpayer dole when he has already proven that he won’t show up and will just waste the people of Florida’s money.
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A discussion of Brexit on Face the Nation brought forth opinions that political globalization just doesn’t work while economic globalization, as long as it doesn’t lead to economic nationalism is okay.
The problem seems to be that the new economy has wrought huge changes, most of which, no one is ready to handle. Economic globalization is a fact of life. So far it has helped certain national economies but it hasn’t helped everyone and if it is to work, if it is to be a functioning wave, those who lead it must find a way to include all the people, even those who up to now have been drowning in that financial tide.
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There are any number of gun control boosters who have suggested banning any number of different kinds of guns from sale in this country but Senator Tim Kaine (D) Virginia, the Democrat’s new Vice Presidential nominee, has correctly pointed out that every time we set standards for banning a weapon the gun manufacturers have altered it just enough keep it legal.
So we looked at the situation and realized that the answer was fairly simple. It would be catastrophic for the gun industry but they have definitely brought it on themselves? Instead of banning specific guns we should set up standards for guns that are okay and ban everything else. For example a hunter would be allowed to own one single shot 30-30 rifle. If you are really a hunter that’s all you need. Home protectors would be allowed to own one double barrel shotgun, with, at least 24” barrels. There would also be a selection of handguns available for professional users.
Nothing else could be manufactured or sold in this country. Collectors would have to switch to baseball cards.
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The few times Donald Trump has managed to drag himself away from personal attacks on his opponents and actually address the concerns of the nation, he has brayed like a donkey about how he was going to reduce taxes and put everyone back to work.
Of course he wants to put people back to work, unfortunately he doesn’t want to pay them. A typical Trump arrangement! But it’s when he talks about cutting taxes that he really gets into his daily battle with reality. Maya McGuineas, Chairwoman of the Committee for Responsible Budget and head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, explains that his tax cuts would add ten trillion to the debt. Of course Trump explains this away by saying he will make that money back by adding to the economy but as in most circumstances where he is faced by the truth, facts just fail him.
In order to balance the rise in the debt from $10 Trillion to the $21 Trillion he would run it up to, he would have to drive our GDP up to 10%, which is five times what it is now and more than it has ever been before. One can only assume that Trump hasn’t been doing his homework again, because even a seat of the pants thinker like him would never assume he could deliberately make such ridiculous numbers fly.
Right now we are at a record level of debt, the highest since the end of WWII. We’re on track to add $10 trillion in debt over the next ten years without Trump’s fantasy even being considered.
After WWII we faced an even bigger debt than we do now. The costs of war had been astronomical and once it was over we were adding to them by implementing legislation like the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. In addition we had started building the greatest highway system in the world, one that would keep us moving for the next 70 years. So how did we do it? How did we recover?
We taxed some incomes up to 90%, that’s how we did it. Everyone who was against those staggering taxes whined that we would drive all the entrepreneurs and big businessmen overseas, that they would run to tax havens all over the world. It was the same story it is now when talk of raising taxes happens. But almost nobody ran, just as almost nobody would run now if we raised taxes on the rich. Why? Two reasons. First the rich really can afford higher taxes because even with a significantly higher rate they still have enough money left after taxes to live luxuriously and after all that’s all you want, no matter how greedy you are. And second; if they ran to other countries they would actually have to live in them and when you get right down to it, no matter what fantasy Trump is trying to sell, this is still the best place in the world to live. Oh, and by the way, any country that an American millionaire would conceivable move to already has higher taxes than we do.
So let’s stop all the bullshit about higher taxes backfiring and do it now. Raise the tax rates on those that can most afford them and pay off the debt or build infrastructure or make college tuition free or whatever. Paying off the entire national debt with interest rates as low as they are now is probably a bad idea. But all the other ones are great. That’s how a smart nation does things.
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With all the noise being made about ISIS and terrorists attacks around the world the GOP blunderers have been having a field day accusing Obama of not doing enough to snuff out terrorism. So Chuck Todd searched out one of the loosest lips on the planet, Tom Cotton, the brain dead turkey from Arkansas who has too much to say about everything, and asked him a couple of pointed questions like what would you do about ISIS if you were president right now. And guess what Tom said; guess what ingenious plan he came up with. You can’t make this stuff up.
“Well, the first thing is we have to do more.”
Reall Tom? More? You sure? Sounds pretty daring. You really want to do more?
Then he topped himself.
“And we need to do it faster.”
WOW! More and faster; what brilliance, what insight, what political acumen. Then he goes on to explain for those of us who can’t follow the depth of his concepts, that we have to defeat the Islamist threat, we can’t just contain them or soon they will be invading our shores, flooding up on our beaches, creating lines at our hot dog stands.
He has, you must understand, figured out all of this by himself. This cheerleader for a high school field hockey team, has, despite a serious lack of intellect, figured out that Obama should be doing more and acting faster.
It appeared quite charitable that Todd didn’t ask him how he would accomplish these goals. No one wanted to see this pathetic miscreant’s head explode on camera.
Maybe if he’s really lucky Cotton will get to see this interview. Maybe it will instruct him to set his future goals credibly lower.
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Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel died recently, having lived a great full life. The one statement out of many that he made, most of which demonstrated his knowledge and empathy, was that we must get involved on the side of the oppressed; that neutrality only affords the oppressor an opportunity to do more and worse. Although I have spoken out against American intervention in many places in the world, I firmly believe that Wiesel was absolutely right. The problem, however, is often about understanding who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. Not always an easy task.
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The term genius group came up on the Morning Joe show recently and Joe Scarborough and Richard Haas actually spoke of the bunch of degenerate hacks that clustered around George HW Bush in the early 90’s as a genius group. Are they crazy? Just the fact that Dick Cheney was part of that group is enough to disqualify then as anything but mad dogs.
Some of this group, people like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft certainly had something to offer, but their participation didn’t offset the basic evils that the group, led by Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who were joined during the Bush junior administration by Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rove, Gonzales and Bremer to name a few, used to poison the country. These are the idiots that indiscriminately started wars for which there was no reason, crashed the economy and led the country into the worst position it had occupied since 1929. It was at the end of the second Bush administration when Donald Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again. “ would have been appropriate.
It’s fortunate for the country that Barak Obama instinctively understood that he actually had to save this country and make it great again after the Bush years of destruction and decay, and even more fortunate that he did it. Trump is about eight years too late but then no one ever accused Trump of being on time, just on ego.