Category: Politics

everything to do with the execution of politics

It’s Infrastructure Stupid

Think back to the campaign of 2016….one of the big promises from Trump was to resurrect our dying infrastructure…..and so far we got nothing of the sorts.

But today the party leaders and Trump will meet on how to go about getting the $2 trillion for the plan that has been set forth.

This plan will go NOWHERE….why? The only way to pay for this plan is a rise in taxes on corporations and the wealthy……

With President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders set to meet Wednesday to discuss a possible $2 trillion infrastructure package, a progressive advocacy group on Monday warned that any proposal that doesn’t include significant tax hikes on the rich and corporations “will be meaningless and doomed to failure.”

“If major tax increases are off the table, there is no way to pay for a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, it’s that simple,” Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), said in a statement. “Other options, such as raising the gas tax, might be part of the package, but by themselves won’t come close to reaching the $2 trillion that’s needed.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/20/without-tax-hikes-corporations-and-rich-critics-warn-2-trillion-infrastructure-plan

Every body agrees that our infrastructure is in trouble…….ever body agrees that it needs to be updated….the problem is NOBODY wants to pay for it.

I have an idea!

Since we have spent about $6 trillion on wars in the last decade or so…cancelling those abortions would easily pay for the infrastructure they all say they want.

The price tag of the ongoing “war on terror” in the Middle East will likely top $6 trillion next year, and will reach $7 trillion if the conflicts continue into the early 2020s, according to a new report out Wednesday.

The annual Costs of War project report, from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, puts the full taxpayer burden of fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria over the last 17 years at several times higher than official Defense Department estimates, because it includes increases in Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs spending, as well as new military equipment and personnel.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/11/14/price-tag-of-the-war-on-terror-will-top-6-trillion-soon/

The Fiscal Times look at out spending on wars as well….

“It’s important for the American people to understand the true costs of war, both the moral and monetary costs,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) said in a statement last week, according to The Hill. “Our nation continues to finance wars and military operations through borrowing, rather than asking people to contribute to the national defense directly, and the result is a serious fiscal drag that we’re not really accounting for or factoring into deliberations about fiscal policy or military policy.”

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2018/11/19/Problem-Our-6-Trillion-War-Tab

I think the easy answer would be the best answer.

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Medal Of Freedom

Closing Thought–20May19

Personally I think this medal has become nothing more than a reward for political support.

This is the highest civilian award possible…..such recipients as Maya, people who have contributed something to this nation and who does this Beloved Supreme Leader pick to give the award to….Tiger Wood.

I realize that this award in the past has been given to friends and the meg donors to campaigns….that is just wrong on so many levels……just what does architecture have with freedom….art or dance for that matter…and especially sports?

The Medal of Freedom should be given not as some reward for donations or other such nonsense but rather to those that have shown that they put their lives above anything else in pursuit…….wait for it……FREEDOM!

I nominate the students in Colorado……

The student killed in Tuesday’s shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch in suburban Denver went out a hero. Kendrick Castillo, 18, along with two of his friends, tackled a shooter—seen pulling a gun out of a guitar case—and was shot in the chest, reports NBC News. The sacrifice “[gave] all of us enough time to get underneath our desks, to get ourselves safe, and to run across the room to escape,” another student says. “We’re going to hear about very heroic things that have taken place at the school,” adds Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock, per USA Today. More details emerging:

  • Student suspects: One is identified as Devon Erickson, 18. Spurlock describes a second, initially identified as a male, as a female minor. Denver Channel, however, describes a juvenile suspect in the process of transitioning from female to male. Spurlock says “we originally thought the juvenile was a male by appearance,” but wouldn’t comment on whether the suspect is transgender.
  • The shooting: The pair are accused of firing on two classrooms at the public charter school after passing through an entrance without metal detectors, per the AP. Spurlock says they had a “number of weapons,” including two handguns they weren’t old enough to possess.
  • Capture: Deputies reportedly arrested the suspects within minutes, with no gunfire exchanged, per the AP. Spurlock said one of the suspects was detained by a security guard at the school, attended by more than 1,850 students in kindergarten through grade 12.
    A Columbine link?: Citing multiple sources, Denver Channel reports the motive “went beyond bullying and involved revenge and anger towards others at the school.” Some are questioning whether the shooting was inspired by the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, just seven miles away. Per the AP, “the answer was not immediately clear.”
    The injured: Eight students aged 15 and older were treated at three hospitals, including one student shot three times. Five had been released by Wednesday morning, while three remained in intensive care.
    The terror: A 8-year-old second-grader tells the New York Times of hearing his first ever gunshot. His mother, speaking for most parents, says, “We’re more messed up than they are.”

These students illustrate what it means to protect freedom…..than some sports figure.

Why did Tiger Wood get the medal?  Why not he is a close friend and a carbon copy of a womanizing douche that gave him the medal.

Trump is not the only one that does this…they ALL do it….it is a reward  not for protecting freedom but rather having an open wallet for the president.

The Medal of Freedom should be held for the highest regard as the military Medal of Honor.

Feeding The Lord Of Chaos

For the last two years or so there has been an example of the Chaos theory…….you do not have to be a math geek to realize what is happening……

Chaos or Khaos is the primeval state of existence from which the first gods appeared. In other words, the dark void of space……in the case for this post replace  space with government.

First, just what is the Chaos Theory?

Chaos is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. While most traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena like gravity, electricity, or chemical reactions, Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control, like turbulence, weather, the stock market, our brain states, and so on.

The Trump administration has NO form or reason…whether it is internationally or nationally….the policies are just thrown to the wind to see what plays well in Peoria.

Jeb Bush was the Cassandra of the 2016 presidential race. She was the figure in Greek mythology whose gift was being able to foresee the future — and whose curse was that she would not be believed.

Bush had the most accurate prediction of the campaign, if not of the 21st century. “He’s a chaos candidate,” he said of Donald Trump in a 2015 debate. “And he’d be a chaos president.”

https://www.nationalmemo.com/under-trump-the-chaos-never-ends/

Jeb was very prophetic……since January 2017 chaos has run the White House and the country.

Trump throws the shiny little objects of chaos up into the ir and his supporters flock to the destruction it will bring.

Plus he is proud that he sows chaos with NO actual answers or solutions….

Foreign policy under President Trump can often be wildly unpredictable, with optimistic offers of diplomacy and wild ravings about the “great suffering” he’s going to inflict militarily interspersed, and seemingly nobody in the administration on the same page.

So as the US threats against Iran spiral out of control, many saw it as business as usual, with Trump objecting to any report that there is disagreement within the administration. In comments Friday, President Trump indicated that his dangerously inscrutable foreign policy is by design.

Trump bragged on Twitter that “Iran can have no idea what is actually going on.” Later in the day, he was talking to real estate agents and said it was “probably a good thing” that Iran has no understanding of his policy toward them.

This all seems to verify Iran’s official position that the US is not approaching them in an honest manner. Administration offers of talks and threats of war are all built around a deliberate policy of making sure Iran, and for that matter the American public, have no idea what the president’s real intentions are.

(antiwar.com)

The Chaos that Trump is creating is making problems that will take a generation to repair….if ever……

The consolidation of Republican power in Washington was supposed to create huge dividends for every kind of interest group by eliminating legislative gridlock and brinkmanship and giving a single party power to set policy. By the same telling, this was supposed to be a particular boon for business owners (and, downstream, for workers), who would welcome a climate of lower taxes, laxer regulation, and greater certainty with new investment, and thus more jobs.

The concept of “certainty” was one Republicans in Congress wielded as a brickbat against President Obama for eight years only to abandon it when President Donald Trump, through a mix of incompetence and malevolence, turned uncertainty into a weapon.

In the realms of health, immigration, and foreign policy, Trump has managed to leave stakeholders on all sides of issues—consumers, providers, civilians, enforcers, diplomats, and entire countries—completely befuddled in ways that threaten to cause great harm. The question is whether people around Trump can convince him that the policy environment he has created needs to change, or, more ominously, whether he has convinced himself that chaos gives him the upper hand.

https://newrepublic.com/article/142065/trumps-chaos-causing-lasting-damage

The Chaos can be repaired but if it has 8 years to fester then the damage will be more permanent.

I do not see Trump being asked to teach a course on International Relations anytime soon…..maybe with a resurrected Trump University (God forbid)…..

A couple of closing thoughts…….

I laugh at people who tell me how smart they are……..and I do  not trust a baboon that sits with arms folded in front of his body as he answers questions….a sure fire way to spot a goddamn liar.

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

Can Planet Be Saved?

My Saturday begins…….now the wait for the predicted rain…..This is the South…if you do not like the weather….wait 30 minutes and it will change…….

Today is Armed Forces Day…….so please give our overworked and stretched thin troops a moment of silence and remember their sacrifices…..

MoMo is waiting in ambush for that damn squirrel……

Speaking of the climate…….

The debate on climate change has taken many bizarre twists in the last decade…..we have those that want to protect the planet at all costs and then we have the other end of that spectrum, the climate deniers.

I can understand the “deniers” but they need to purge the idiots from their ranks……those that think melting ice is a good thing…..or those that think CO2 is something new in the atmosphere……you know who these people are……

The question has been asked……

Our Dear Beloved Supreme Leader has shown that he supports the coal industry above all else….he promised to bring back the coal industry…..that was a lie…he is trying but the industry is dying in the 21st century.

One example of the possibilities of renewables…..

Avery Thompson Popular Mechanics reports that in the month of April for the first time in US history, the country produced more electricity with renewables than with coal.

Part of the solution to this puzzle is economic. In much of the US, Thompson notes, you could actually make more money building and running a wind farm than you could just keeping an existing coal plan open.

In April, renewables produced 2,322 thousand megawatt hours per day. Coal only did 1,997 thousand megawatt hours.

Back in 2010, burning coal provided the world 45 % of its power generation.

In 2018, that figure had drooped to 27 percent.

At the same time, the share of renewables in power generation in the US has grown to 18% (including hydro).

(Informed Comment)

I am waiting for the MSM to report this….but instead I get a royal birth or the fashion line by some artists or…….

This is GREAT news! But apparently not for the corporate media to pay attention.

On a side note…..the big environmental news was that the “Holy Grail” of recycling has been found…..

The “Holy Grail” of recycling may finally be here. Scientists at Berkeley Lab say they’ve found a new way to create plastics that are 100% recyclable, meaning they can be used, recycled, and re-used without losing value, Fox News reports. “Most plastics were never made to be recycled,” says lead scientist Peter Christensen in a statement. “But we have discovered a new way to assemble plastics that takes recycling into consideration from a molecular perspective.” Called poly(diketoenamine), or PDK, the new material could help unblock the plastic pileup at recycling plants and ease ocean pollution that could be sucking $2.5 trillion from sectors including fisheries, tourism, and human health, according to one study.

Unlike regular plastic, PDK can apparently be undone by a simple acid bath. “Recovered monomers can be re-manufactured into the same polymer formulation, without loss of performance, as well as other polymer formulations with differentiated properties,” per the study in Nature Chemistry. Most plastics are composed of molecules called polymers that are made up of compounds called monomers; the monomers are bound to chemicals that make them hard to process and recycle. Just 9.1% of US-made plastic was recycled in 2015, a 0.4% drop the year before, according to the EPA’s latest available numbers. But so far PDK is only in the lab, notes Gizmodo. For now the PDK team is trying to improve its invention by mixing in materials made from plants.

How many times have we heard about a “new” plastic that will not be a problem?  I am old so TOO MANY TIMES.

Try HEMP it is truly biodegradable and all natural….how hard is that?

***This is a commercial company that is not paying me in any way……https://hempplastic.com/

Or this one……https://www.cbdforlife.us/blogs/environment/rise-of-biodegradable-hemp-plastic/

Learn Stuff!

Be Smart!

Meanwhile MoMo waits out the rain……

What Part Of This Moves The Country Forward?

In the last couple of weeks abortion has once again taken front row importance in politics……

First in Georgia……

One, two, three—and now, four. Georgia has passed a bill banning abortions after a detectable fetal “heartbeat,” making it the fourth US state to pass such a law this year, per Vox. “All life has value, all life matters and all life is worthy of protection,” Gov. Brian Kemp said Tuesday in signing the bill more than a month after it passed the legislature, per the Atlanta Journal Constitution. As in Ohio, Kentucky, and Mississippi, court challenges await. Critics say the bill equals a near-total abortion ban as fetal cardiac activity is detected just six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. It “flies in the face of 50 years of US Supreme Court precedent,” says Andrea Young of Georgia’s ACLU. “We will see Governor Kemp in court.”

Unless it’s struck down, the law will go into effect in January with exceptions when the mother’s life is at risk or for “the accidental or unintentional injury to or death of an unborn child.” Unlike Ohio’s law, a woman in Georgia can also obtain an abortion after the fetal heartbeat is detected in cases of rape or incest, though she’ll need to provide a police report. Otherwise, mothers, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists could be subject to criminal prosecution for seeking, performing, or assisting in an abortion once a heartbeat is heard.

Then came the Alabama law…….

After rejecting an attempt to add an exception for rape or incest, Alabama’s Senate passed the nation’s strictest abortion law Tuesday. The bill, which passed by a vote of 25-6, makes performing an abortion at any stage of pregnancy a felony punishable by up to 99 years or life in prison, the Guardian reports. Four Republican senators joined Democrats in voting in favor of the rape or incest exception, which was defeated 21-11. The only exception that remained in the bill is for women whose health is at serious risk. The bill—which punishes doctors, not women seeking abortions—will now head to the desk of Gov. Kay Ivey, whose office says she won’t make a decision until she sees the final version of the legislation, reports AL.com. (Not to worry the gov signed it into law)

I have one question….but before I ask it…..on a personal note…I am against abortion but it is never my decision to make and therefore it has definitely not the government’s place to make it either.

I understand the state’s push to limit voting or gerrymandering….that moves a political agenda and benefits a party over another.

With that said….this push for the overturning of Roe v Wade…..what does it do for the country?  Does it improve the infrastructure?  Does it improve the income of states?  Does it create any jobs?  Does it help feed the hungry?  Or house the homeless?  Maybe help keep the border safe?

Just what in Hell does this energy, time and money actually do for the state that the laws have been passed?

This is how you do it.  This is how you overturn a law that you do  not like.  Chip away at it until the emotions run high and you get stuff done.

It has taken 50+ years and all that whining and bitching could pay off when this makes it to the Supreme Court….this is how you force a belief on a country that does not agree with you.

To me this is a worthless endeavor that does NOTHING to improve the country and the lives of the people.

Ain’t democracy great?

Talbert Swan put something on Twitter that rings true…..

Only in American can you be:

Pro-Death Penalty– Pro-Unrestricted Gun Rights– Pro-War Pro-Preemptive Strikes– Pro-Torture– Pro-Healthcare Repeal Pro-Police, defending every extrajudicial murder of an unarmed  persons… …and still perfidiously call yourself ‘Pro-Life.’

Well said!

The Green New Deal

Now here is one of those topics that can be lied about for political gain. Most conserv carve out one small piece and make it the center of attention…..

I will admit that it is intended to fight the effects of climate change but there is more to the “Deal” than just that…….there is an infrastructure bill in there as well…(remember that promise by our Supreme Leader?)

The Green New Deal is a 10-year plan introduced by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey to mobilize every aspect of American society toward 100% clean and renewable energy, guarantee a good job to all members of our society, and create economic prosperity for all. The goals of the Green New Deal are:

  • to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;

  • to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;

  • to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;

  • to secure clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all people of the United States for generations to come; and

  • to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, de-industrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.

You can bet that this proposal will be hit by all sorts of claims from both sides…the corporatists will fight it tooth and nail (watch who gets the most cash from corporations)…..

Soon to be released research from the United Nations is expected to place species loss, a/k/a mass extinction, as an environmental threat equal to or greater than climate change. Industrial agriculture— vast expanses of monoculture crops managed with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, will feature prominently as a cause. This plant agriculture supplies people with increasingly toxic and processed food and antibiotic and hormone dependent factory farms with animal feed.  Together, these link the model of capitalist efficiency economists have been selling for the last two centuries to environmental crisis.

Understanding the theoretical precepts of Western economics is crucial to understanding these crises. Capitalism is scientific economic production, a method in search of applications. Its object is to maximize profits, not to growth nutritious food sustainably. As industrial agriculture has demonstrated, these objectives are antithetical. Crop yields have increased as the nutritional value of the food produced has declined. But far more troublingly, the narrow focus on profits has led to a form of environmental imperialism where interrelated ecosystems are viewed atomistically.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/re-the-green-new-deal-first-shoot-the-economists/

(It is a shame that a disclaimer had to be inserted at the beginning of the above piece)

Are the media making a big deal out of the Green New Deal?

Nope!  They are not making much of something that is overwhelmingly desired by Dem voters…….

The global climate crisis and Medicare for All are top issues for a large majority of Democratic voters, according to new polling results published Tuesday by CNN.

The survey (pdf), conducted last week, asked Democrats and left-leaning Independents how important they considered certain policy items.

Most people polled said it is somewhat or very important that the Democratic candidate for president in 2020 support party priorities like stricter gun laws, tuition-free public college, impeaching President Donald Trump, paying reparations to slaves’ descendants, and restoring voting rights for all convicted felons.

But two issues stood out at the top.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/30/more-90-democratic-voters-want-2020-candidate-make-climate-action-and-medicare-all

And yet there are Dem reps that will not sign on to these bills and are always looking for ways to protect their donors in the corporate sphere (cowards in my book)……

Time for both these ideas to get the media they deserve and the media that the voter deserves.

One last thought…….

#23–Bill De Blasio

Holy crap!

How many more ego-centric tools want to be president?

The news has broke….NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio has thrown his hat into the fray for the nomination of the Democratic Party…..this situation is now become a joke.

Really?

Does the country need 23 candidates to choose from?  A country that cannot make up its mind whether paper or plastic!

What does he bring to the table?

Another day, another Democratic candidate. This time it’s New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced his 2020 campaign with a video and an appearance on Good Morning America, reports ABC News. The 58-year-old, currently in his second term, is running on a “working people first” theme. If he wins, he’ll need to do a better job managing secrecy: The Washington Post notes that his launch was revealed in advance by a sharp-eyed teenager in St. Louis. Gabe Fleisher, 17, spotted a notice from the Democratic Party in Sioux, Iowa, announcing that de Blasio would be in town Friday for the “first stop on his Presidential announcement tour.” Fleisher tweeted the news Wednesday, meaning the teen’s Wake Up To Politics newsletter scooped every other media outlet.

“There’s plenty of money in this country,” de Blasio says in his video. “It’s just in the wrong hands.” He adds that he’s a New Yorker, and “I’ve known (President) Trump’s a bully for a long time. This is not news to me or anyone here, and I know how to take him on.” De Blasio may have name recognition, but FiveThirtyEight notes that he is unpopular in his home city and has suffered some high-profile policy failures—for instance, he campaigned on a promise to curb homelessness, but New York’s shelter system has only gotten more crowded. And his liberal base wasn’t too thrilled that he tried to bring Amazon to town. “Then again, he has some debates coming up, and he isn’t a stranger to a crowded primary field, so don’t rule him out just yet,” writes Chadwick Matlin.

To me he is a typical politician…..say what he needs to get elected then do what he wants…..for instance when he was running for re-election he was asked if he would give the people of NYC a full 4 years if he won re-election……his answer was…YES!  That being the mayor was all he wanted to do.

He lied!  He will lie if in office as president.

He needs to stay put and focus on the needs of NYC…let the other 22 focus on the nomination.

Just another ego trip to clutter up the 2020 election cycle.