Donald Trump's Policies are Incoherent

I watched 60 Minutes tonight and saw Mr. Trump explain what he is going to do.  When listening to him, you have to remember that his gungho approach to his ideas is what generated his multiple bankruptcies.

If he did everything he says he wants to, he will drive the budget deficit higher and will not accomplish what he wants to as the Tea Party will crush him in the House of Representatives, and where they do not, the Democrats will not allow it to happen in the Senate.

And he will generate tons of ill will in the International Arena.

More Rational Observations on the State of the GOP and Why No One Should Trust Them to Govern

1st from Eric Cantor, who I never thought of as anything other than very conservative.

"But somewhere along the road, a number of voices on the right began demanding that the Republican Congress not only block Mr. Obama’s agenda but enact a reversal of his policies. They took to the airwaves and the Internet and pronounced that congressional Republicans could undo the president’s agenda — with him still in office, mind you — and enact into law a conservative vision for government, without compromise."

"Strangely, according to these voices, the only reason that was not occurring had nothing to do with the fact that the president was unlikely to repeal his own laws, or that under the Constitution, absent the assent of the president or two-thirds of both houses of Congress, you cannot make law. The problem was a lack of will on the part of congressional Republican leaders."

"Now we see that these same voices have turned to the threat of a government shutdown or a default on the debt as the means by which we can force President Obama to agree to their demands. I wonder what they would have said, if during the last two years of President Bush’s term, the Democratic congressional majority had tried something similar."

"The tragedy here is that these voices have not been honest with our fellow conservatives. They have not been honest about what can be accomplished when your party controls Congress, but not the White House. As a result we missed chances to achieve important policies for the good of the country."

2nd from Frank Bruni.


"Not so with Republicans, who have become the party of brinkmanship, the party of imminent credit defaults, the party of threatened shutdowns, the party that won’t pass a proper transportation bill, the party that is suddenly demonizing the Export-Import Bank, the party of “no,” the party of ire, the party that casts even someone as unquestionably conservative as John Boehner in the role of apostate, simply because he knows the difference between fights that can be won and those that can’t, between standing on principle and shooting yourself in the foot."

I'm No Fan of John Boehner, but

I think it is particular foolish to try and predict, which many pundits are trying to do, whether his resignation from Congress produces anything of satisfaction to any political wing, or participant.  The fact is John Boehner was very conservative as the Speaker of the House.  He didn't give the House Democrats an inch, and he only gave in to the President and the Senate when necessary for the government to actually function.  And I suspect the next Speaker will do the same thing and the Tea Party will still be unhappy.

The fact is that as long as there are more than 41 Democratic Senators and a Democratic President, the House GOP will have little power to dictate the legislative agenda.

And I hope if the GOP insists on continuing to fail to govern, they kill any chance of the GOP winning the White House in the 2016 election.  However, shutting down the government in 2013 didn't have any effect on the 2014 election for the GOP, so at this point, there is absolutely no reason to expect legislative chaos to have any effect on the 2016 election.

For that, we have to hope for continued chaos in the GOP Presidential contenders.

More Evidence As to the Necessity of Regulations

I do admit you can over regulate, so there has to be a balance.

But you cannot do without regulation as I have stated before and Paul Krugman summarizes as follows:

"Item: The C.E.O. of Volkswagen has resigned after revelations that his company committed fraud on an epic scale, installing software on its diesel cars that detected when their emissions were being tested, and produced deceptively low results."

"Item: The former president of a peanut company has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowingly shipping tainted products that later killed nine people and sickened 700."

"Item: Rights to a drug used to treat parasitic infections were acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals, which specializes not in developing new drugs but in buying existing drugs and jacking up their prices. In this case, the price went from $13.50 a tablet to $750".

"In other words, it has been a good few days for connoisseurs of business predators."

"No doubt I, like anyone who points out ethical lapses on the part of some companies, will be accused of demonizing business. But I’m not claiming that all businesspeople are demons, just that some of them aren’t angels."

A Heartfelt Reason to have no hard and fast time limit on abortions

click on the link below to see the column


link to column

Compassion vs War Mongering

I cannot do this justice in the time I have to frame my thoughts.

This writing was stimulated by a former Kosovo refugee who pointed out that the E.U. migration wave has its base in the desire to survive.

The comments on the Washington Post article were driven by the fear that terrorists could be hiding in the migration wave.  But we have terrorists in our mix who are homegrown, and never migrated anywhere.  How does that fear overwhelm compassion?

These migrants are largely educated, have skills, and are driven by an overwhelming desire for the safety of their family and a desire to have a better life than the one they had wherever they are coming from.  How can we not have compassion for that?

I suspect many of those who lack this compassion, letting fear overwhelm it, are people who in general tend to vote for the GOP.  This lack of caring for the living and our ability to do something for them (how many of these believers say people like this should pick themselves up by the bootstrap and get motivated to earn a living) is similar to the desire to limit abortions.  They don't want to help the children once they are born if there is any need for public support, but they oppose abortion.

But all these migrants want is a chance to pick themselves up by the bootstraps.  Why wouldn't the U.S. support that as a matter of policy?

When we start a war and destabilize something, we do have an obligation to fix it.  We can debate how we do that considering the costs, but we should have some compassion for the people who are victims of that destabilization.


Link to Wash Post column

Hillary Clinton's Accomplishments

Link to Politico Story


I am glad for the recap to counter the GOP slander.  Hillary has accomplishments as a Lawyer Politician, strategist, legislator and Secretary of State.  Which is more than you can say about a lot of the GOP candidates, who "make up a strong bench" according to some GOP pundit.

I still want Joe to run because the email B.S. doesn't play well in key states because it was a poor decision, even if bad publicity is the only bad thing to come out of it.

Run Joe Run

Rather Than Watch the GOP Debate

I decided to watch baseball and ponder whether my latest effort to make a little money by offering Financial Planning to people is a fool's effort.

After reaching no conclusion about that, but looking up why Pedro Alverez isn't playing (it appears the manager is tired of his not playing the field well and striking out too much, which means Pedro should probably be a DH in the American League), I decided to check in on the Washington Post website and see what was what.

Lo & behold the debate is full of insults.  Which leads me to wonder, why did the GOP let Donald Trump on the ballot.  He is a despicable human being and the personification of the dangers arising from the cult of personality.  That is what led Germany to Hitler, and while I don't believe Trump would be a Hitler, I am Caucasian and not Hispanic and my view might be different if I was Hispanic.

But I chose to write this blog because a WashPo writer pointed out that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump believe they must pander to the elderly and state that Social Security does not need any alteration.  To those of us who do believe in Simpson Bowles, another bi-partisan effort sunk by the partisan animosity in D.C., this is far from the truth.

But you would never know it from the support these two clowns get, although it really isn't fair to include Bernie in the Clown category.  He is sometime outrageously wrong, but his issues are real and it is just his solutions are wrong.

Anyway, when the GOP panders to its base, and its leaders refuse to tell the base the truth that some things are just the way they are (as the Democrats say to theirs about gun control, even tho we disagree with it), you end up with the situation the GOP faces today.

The base is so angry that over 50% of support non-politicians.  So what did that pandering and non-leadership get the Congressional GOP?  Nothing.

So, I am Mad and Not GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.  I will not write another blog until I have something sensible to say.

And for the record, Run Joe Run.

Who Knew Promoting Democracy Would be a Disaster for Millions of People?

I certainly didn't.  I thought getting rid of tyrants was a good idea.

But in the process, because we and other countries insisted on maintaining colonial borders, we created an abyss which gangs, covering up their real intentions by claiming to be jihadists, took over thousands of square miles and created chaos.

Now, just to be clear, this policy of promoting Democracy is an old one practiced by Presidents of both parties.  The Marshall Plan had this as a basis. So did the Vietnam War, our invasion of Panama, our support of Israel, many things the Clinton administration tried to do, the War in Iraq, and of course our support for the Arab Spring.

What we all overlooked, even if we knew it was a problem in the back of our brains, is what Thomas Friedman wrote today, and while I feel the non-Tea Party GOP gets this better than liberal Democrats do, the GOP slavishness toward raising revenues to pay for wars prevents them from having a convincing policy that their way is better than the Democrat's way.

"That is because the three largest forces on the planet — Mother Nature (climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth in developing countries), Moore’s law (the steady doubling in the power of microchips and, more broadly, of technology) and the market (globalization tying the world ever more tightly together) — are all in simultaneous, rapid acceleration."

"This combination is stressing strong countries and blowing up weak ones. And the ones disintegrating first are those that are the most artificial: their borders are mostly straight lines that correspond to no ethnic, tribal or religious realities and their leaders, rather than creating citizens with equal rights, wasted the last 60 years by plundering their national resources. So when their iron fists come off (in Libya and Iraq with our help), there is nothing to hold these unnatural polygons together."

....

"Historically we’ve counted on empires, like the Ottomans, colonial powers, like Britain and France, and autocratic strongmen, such as kings and colonels, to hold artificial states together and provide order in these regions. But we’re now in a post-imperial, post-colonial and, soon, I believe, post-authoritarian world, in which no one will be able to control these disorderly regions with an iron fist while the world of order goes about its business as best it can with occasional reminders of the nasty disarray on its frontiers."

.....

"If we’re honest, we have only two ways to halt this refugee flood, and we don’t want to choose either: build a wall and isolate these regions of disorder, or occupy them with boots on the ground, crush the bad guys and build a new order based on real citizenship, a vast project that would take two generations. We fool ourselves that there is a sustainable, easy third way: just keep taking more refugees or create “no-fly zones” here or there."

"Will the ends, will the means. And right now no one wants to will the means, because all you win is a bill. So the world of disorder keeps spilling over into the world of order. And beware: The market, Mother Nature and Moore’s law are just revving their engines. You haven’t seen this play before, which is why we have some hard new thinking and hard choices ahead."

What a ****ing Mess

In no particular order,

Syria

EU refugee crisis (the intelligence and skill level of those interviewed is very high)

Eastern Ukraine

(and you can pretty much blame Putin for a lot of this above, but he is a fuel, not an ignition.  The ignition is the failure of political leadership to put the Sunni Shiite divide into a modern framework)

China Economic Policy  (you can't have a capitalist market economy with a Communist government buying up stock to support the market)

Islamic Jihadist motivations (fed by God knows what, unless you are an atheist and then it is simply incomprehensible what could motivate such people to do such things)

The GOP Presidential Candidates (there is no coherent policy here)

The Democratic Presidential Candidates (no perfection here, either)

North Korea (megalomania personified here, I thought North and South would be unified by now 20 years ago)

Kareem Abdul Jappar's Take on Donald Trump's Poor Choice of Verbage

"Trump’s rationale for avoiding Kelly’s debate question – that neither he nor America has time for “political correctness” – taps into a popular boogeyman. The term “political correctness” is so general that to most people it simply means a discomfort with changing times and attitudes, an attack on the traditions of how we were raised. (It’s an emotional challenge every generation has had to go through.) What it really means is nothing more than sensitizing people to the fact that some old-fashioned words, attitudes and actions may be harmful or insulting to others. Naturally, people are angry about that because it makes them feel stupid or mean when they really aren’t. But when times change, we need to change with them in areas that strengthen our society."

"It’s no longer “politically correct” to call African Americans “coloreds.” Or to pat a woman on the butt at work and say, “Nice job, honey.” Or to ask people their religion during a job interview. Or to deny a woman a job because she’s not attractive enough to you. Or to assume a person’s opinion is worth less because she is elderly. Or that physically challenged individuals shouldn’t have easy access to buildings. If you don’t have time for political correctness, you don’t have time to be the caretaker of our rights under the Constitution."

Sad, but True

This is inspired by the picture of that unfortunate 3 year old who drowned while his parents tried to flee Syria through Turkey and on to the E.U, so their kids could have a better life.

Some problems just have no solutions, they can only be managed on the fringes until either (i) the perceived political cost of the problem becomes greater than the cost of a possible solution or (ii) there is a breakthrough discovery that solves the problem.

Issues which fall into this unfortunate category of problems include:

Global Warming  I don't understand how the GOP went from creating Cap & Trade to denying that anything can be done about Global Warming.

Syria and it's migrants, who just want a better life somewhere else, but number too many for the places they want to go.  Can you imagine the uproar in America if 5 million people from Central America tried to get to the U.S. all at once and 3 year olds were downing in the Gulf of Mexico or off the Baja.  Both the Tea Party and the Liberal Left would be screaming at Washington to find a solution.  And I do think Assad is guilty of crimes against humanity for not leading his country to peace.  You, would think after all this conflict and failure to govern, he would realize he is not governing, and needs to go.  But he clearly lacks either introspection or compassion.  Maybe NATO or the U.N.will come up with a solution.  All I know for sure is neither Russia, nor China, nor Iran will support anything and they are very important to a global solution.

Guns in America and the NRA  The Daily News had nice statistic's showing that loose gun regulation states have more death by guns than tighter gun regulation states.  So much for the NRA's belief that its takes a good guy to kill a bad guy and that reduces violence.  Meanwhile, both police and young black men have much to fear.

Link to column on how politicians are failing on this issue

Link to Nikki Haley's take on the issue


Serious disease.  Fortunately, there is money here and sometimes a breakthrough occurs.  The ALS ice bucket challenge was criticized by some, and I was skeptical that science could find anything, but low and behold, today there is a news story that research funded by that additional funding from the ice bucket challenge has discovered a protein that seems to reverse ALS plague buildup in the brains of mice.  Since this plaque build up is similar to Alzheimer's, this would be a truly mind blowing development; all built upon research that was speeded up by the funding from the ice bucket challenge.

I am sure there are other issues that fall into this, but I can't think of anymore right now.

Consensus Reached: RedStateVt and & I Agree: Middle East Cess Pool

I agree with RedStateVT's comment:  "The Middle East is a Cess Pool.  Good Luck figuring it out."  Which is why I don't want American boots on the ground.

And who is behind the worst of the worst there.  Well, Turkey is worthy of comment even though they probably come in 5th place.  But as the former colonial power there, they should be exercising more intelligent use of their power, including supporting the Kurd's who are not terrorists.

Israel, is in 4th place because they have abandoned the moral high ground with the West Bank Settlement's providing the provocation that #'s 3 & 2 use for their sh*tty activities.

The PLO is in 3rd place because through the years they have had the opportunity to do something positive for their people and they have failed to find the security necessary for Israel to trust them and they have failed to accept the compromises that were once available to them from Israel and now they are not available and may not be available.  Any solution will have to recognize reality on the ground and that has changed over the last 25 years.

In 2nd place is Iran and it's proxies:  Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad.  Nothing more need be said about them.  They are prime contributors to the cess pool.

And in 1st place, as Thomas Friedman writes so well today, is Saudi Arabia.  Whose promotion of Wahhabism is behind ISIS, AlQaeda and the Taliban.  I urge you to click on the link and read how petro dollars that Western economic policy has never tried to curb until recently, combined with Saudi religious policy have created the number 1 enemy to world peace.

Link to Friedman column

And this next link is to a column that highlights how the debate on immigration misses the point and the cost to our moral structure of instituting a Trump vision of border control, which is what existed on the East Germany/West Germany Border during the Cold War.  I am pretty sure I still have to convince RedStateVT that there is a better path than the one the GOP is following today.

Link to Column on Immigration