America and the Obama Factor

Our current President has grown increasingly bizarre. I saw his press conference last Friday and have seldom seen a more disjointed and incoherent presentation. He rambled and mused and babbled, while seldom giving a real answer to the questions. Also, he seemed to carefully hand pick the reporters who got to ask questions. Thus he was assured soft ball questions and he had difficulty answering those.

Then, we have the horrific attack in Germany. That was Monday. As I write this, it is Wednesday morning and we still have no statement from the President. He could at least issue a statement of condolence, but, so far nothing. We do, however, have a lot of pictures of him playing golf in Hawaii. By the way, he has an awful golf swing.

He is still praising his administration's efforts in Syria. That is quite odd since Syria has almost been reduced to rubble and the death toll is at least in the hundreds of thousands. The rebel forces we are backing are being stomped. I am still not sure why we armed these rebels because, even though they oppose Assad, many are closely tied to ISIS. And we armed them. Contrary to the old saying, the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. To conduct foreign policy based on such inane drivel is juvenile, yet for years it has seemed to be the basis for much of our foreign policy.

In addition, between rounds of golf and sipping  Mai Tai's on the beach, he is busily signing Executive orders banning oil drilling in the Atlantic. Forget the fact that we need to stop depending on Arab oil, forget the fact that we can create good jobs by drilling, why is he bothering. Trump has made it clear that all those Executive orders are going away very quickly.

He is also signing Presidential pardons at a furious clip. No one has had the time yet to review just who is being released and, no doubt, some of them deserve release, but I will bet huge sums that the release of some of the folks will turn out to be a bad idea. That's always the case and while Obama does have the right to pardon, a wee bit of restraint may have been a good idea.

Then, we have Gitmo. Today, he is ordering the release of 22 of its inmates and it seems likely that the facility will be emptied by the time he leaves office. These inmates are the worst of the worst, and, given the terrorist organizations they come from, that is saying something. This will not end well.

I seriously believe that Hillary's failure and the inevitable dismantling of his legacy, something he seems obsessed with, has so rattled him that he has become a bit unglued, Blessedly, we have only 30 more days before he has to hand over the reins to Trump.

America and Obamacare

The news is out. Obamacare premiums are about to go through the roof. Monthly payments are about to jump and, if you have coverage, well, you are going to lose a chunk of your pay.

The whole system was doomed from the start. No matter how the administration twisted the numbers, they just did not add up. Lately, several carriers have said they were  opting out of the whole mess because they were losing money.

Hillary's campaign has put out a statement saying most folks will still be able to get coverage for $75 per month when you consider the assistance from the state funds. Not so fast. There are states   that do not support the plans and even if yours does, you have issues with the deductibles. Some states help some with those, some do not, and in every case, the policy has large deductibles.

There are folks, many, many of them, who are living from check to check, Some are only managing by using credit and will likely never get out of debt. To ask them to pay more is an outrage. I remember, in the 1980s, not that long ago, I paid, through my job, $20 a month for a Blue Cross policy with $5 co-payment for office visits and a $100 deductible for hospitalization. Why have things gotten so out of hand? That can be answered in one word, government. Whenever the government sticks its nose into people's finances, the results are disastrous.

Many of the people who supported Obama are Hillary supporters and I ask them this; what in God's name is wrong with you? You are about to get clobbered with expense and the woman you are voting for is 100% behind this fiasco. She is telling you that she is all for the greater costs about to hit you and you still support her.

And to all those Bernie Sanders supporters who want bigger government, I ask this; are you insane? The disaster that is Obamacare should tell you that the last thing we need is more government. At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur, let me tell you a little story. When I was a kid, an office visit to the doctor costs $10. Now, since the government has become more and more involved in the whole business, that is just the co-payment. There is no rational reason why prices have gone up so much except, that this is always what happens when the government gets involved. Wake up and get over the idea that we need some sort of socialism.

The Obama/Clinton policies on health care are a failure that is about to become a disaster. I cannot believe that in the wake of this announcement there is anyone who is still planning to vote for Clinton. If she is elected, don't any of you dare complain. You can stop this madness.

American Gullibility - Part 2

Let us now turn our attention to some of the nonsense Americans have been fed, and have swallowed, on the domestic front. In the interest of brevity, we will skip Lincoln's rape of the Constitution and Wilson's unforgivable role in the creation of the Federal Reserve. Let's begin with JFK.

Here, 52 years later, we still have no clue as to Kennedy's assassin. We have theories galore, ranging from the laughable, Oswald acted alone, to the frightening, the CIA acted in cooperation with extreme right wing rich folks. It is certainly fun to play with the possibilities, we all love a good mystery, but it is absurd that we still have no idea what happened.

We do know, from their own records, that the CIA was, at that point, in the midst of the MKUltra experiments. In case you have not heard of these, in brief, the Agency, in an effort to learn how to control the human mind, were conducting a range of experiments on US citizens, involving, drugs, torture, hypnosis, and any nightmarish scenario they could come up with. By the way, a lot of those experiments were the suggestions of supposedly ex-Nazis scientists we had imported after WW2 as part of the incredibly illegal Operation Paperclip.

Then, we have LBJ. The man was insane. That is the only way to explain his belief that we could afford to send 500000 troops to Viet Nam while conducting a major social initiative, the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Guess what? It cannot be done.

Nixon, of course, was de-throned by Watergate. Much like the JFK assassination, this event has never been satisfactorily explained. It did not happen because Nixon was afraid of losing the election. At that point, the Republicans could have nominated Bullwinkle J. Moose and beaten McGovern. What really  happened? Who knows?

Skip ahead to Ronnie Reagan, we see a huge hustle being pulled off, two actually. First, he convinced everyone that all the Nation's woes were do to too many laws and Congress, like little puppets, said, "yes sir," and de-regulated most everything. You will see later that this was definitely a bad idea. Second, the Old Gipper turned loose Ollie North and his merry band, who, in an effort to illegally fund rebels in Nicaragua. flooded the Land with cocaine.

George Herbert Walker Bush, a loathsome individual, promised, repeatedly, no new taxes, before he oversaw the raising of taxes. By the end of his term, the economy was in awful shape.

Then, we have Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton. For now, I will not mention all, and there are many, of his sleazy escapades, to focus on his rape of the Social Security Fund. He makes much of his balancing of the Federal Budget, but always omits the fact that he did this by, with no legal justification, borrowing from Social Security, money that has never been paid back. To any younger readers, do not count on drawing Social Security in your old age. The economy did boom while he was in office, but that had nothing to do with him. He was just lucky to be around when the Tech Bubble was happening. Of course, like all bubbles, it broke, leaving many a poor yuppie.

Next, we move to George Walker Bush, a man as loathsome as his Father. Let us overlook 9/11 and the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction nonsense. On the Domestic front, he should be remembered for his lack of action during the collapse of the Housing Bubble and the monstrous Banking Scandals, both the direct result of Reagan's de-regulation program. How a President can sit by and do nothing while big time investment banks not only collapse, but continue paying those who oversaw the collapse huge salaries and ridiculous salaries is beyond me. He should have called for their dismissal and deep Federal investigations. Instead, he called for tax payer bailouts. Oh, he did accomplish something else. He oversaw the creation of the Patriot Act. If you wish to know more about that, simply read Orwell's 1984.

Leaping to the present, we find Barak Obama. Barry O has been a busy fellow. First, he has tightened the noose of the Patriot Act, after hinting that he wanted it repealed. Second, he has forgotten that he is supposed to, according to our much neglected Constitution, govern in cooperation with Congress. Instead, he has signed a dizzying array of Executive Orders. I am still not sure why the legality of these unilateral actions has not been questioned but, it hasn't. Finally, we have his pride and joy, the Health Care Act. After he rammed this through Congress, many discovered that they had to drop plans they liked in exchange for more, much more, expensive plans. Businesses in a time of a stagnant economy, had an expense added that they could not really afford, so many dropped workers and began using part-timers they didn't have to cover. There were actually cases of post-menopausal women having to take policies that included pregnancy coverage. Those who were poor were told, "don't worry, the States will help you," only to find that they weren't eligible for help or that their State was one of many who were not going to help.

Why do I say Americans are gullible? Simple. Many when confronted with these facts refuse to believe them. "Oh, no, our Government wouldn't do that." More, will admit problems but insist that all of these issues can be fixed by voting for the right Candidate in the upcoming election. That is the gullibility factor comes in, and that is what I will discuss in my next installment.

In the meantime, most Americans will not give any of this a thought. All they want is football on the TV and a full refrigerator they can waddle over to. It is no accident that you see so many of those annoying erectile dysfunction treatment ads on sports programs.

America and Fear - Part 4

Finally, we arrive at the era of Bush 2, George W., henceforth known in my blog as the Shrub. How this man became President is a mystery. Heck, how he graduated from Yale Law School is beyond me. The man can barely string two words together and coherent thoughts are foreign to him. I guess when your daddy is rich, ex Congress, exCIA, ex Vice President, ex President, you can get away with a lot. In my Is Paris Burning Series? on terrorism, I wrote of his disasterous Mid East policy, so for information on that I refer you there. All I need say here is that it has left us with a bunch of half decided battles, wars that will seemingly last forever, and a smear of deep red blood spread over the Mid East that is rapidly spreading to Europe. We have earned the enmity of most of the Moslem world.                                  

 

At home, he did no better. To be fair, the bank scandals that ultimately crippled the economy were not his doing. No,the Old Gipper convinced Congress that we didn't need any silly regulations hampering industries and they said a collective, "yes Sir." and dutifully repealed a lot of them. When the Shrub took office, the chickens came home to roost and we learned that some of the Nation's largest and most trusted Investment Banks were running scams that would make a common grifter blush, all the while giving themselves huge bonuses and raises.                                                 

Had it just been the wealthy who were hit when the crap hit the fan, I wouldn't care. After all, when you lie down with pigs, you ahould expect to get a might dirty, but many of the funds that failed were held by people who were just trying to get ahead in life, young couples thinking to the future of their kids and older couples hoping for a nice retirement. Gone, swindled. Again, not strictly the Shrubs fault, but when the truth became obvious, I don't recall him calling for criminal charges and prison terms. No, of course not, these were his buddies, his financial bakckers. In other words, these were the guys calling the shots and he knew not to mess with them.                                                                                 

To say I did not like him is an understatement, but, in retrospect, he almost looks good next to Obama. Almost. Our current President has less business holding that job than Elmo. He is arrogant and has come to believe that his word is law. I remember when the Government was in one of its perpetual budget crises. He threatened to block Social Security checks from being issued. When it was pointed out to him that such a move would cause great hardship for many, he made it clear tha he was unmoved by that and that he would follow that course of action if Congress did not bow to his wishes. Blessedly, they did.                                                                            

He has no comprehensive foreign policy. We are told, by him, that we have a plan, it will work, and he is sticking to it, despite great evidence to the contrary. The whole thing is a miserable failure. He is however pushing Climate control, something Americans are not as concerned about. Terrorism and the Economy, those are our basic issues right now, but Barry will have his way, and I guarantee that he will push through an agreement that will be a disaster, just like the horrible deal he made with Iran over their nuclear program.                                                                                           

Are Americans afraid? Damn right they are. They have come to see the government as the enemy and with good reason, since they have made a mess out of a great Nation.We have had years of constant, extreme change and on top of that, we have no idea where we are headed and no sign of a real, competent leader (sorry Trump, you do not inspire trust, no matter how much you try to sound like one of us). Pile stress upon stress and anyone will break. We haven't broken yet, but how much more we can take is questionable. In the next, and last part of this series, I will, attempt to throw out a few ideas. Nothing will be easy.

America and Donald Trump

I have recently been noticing a strange trend on the news. I really need to get away from watching the news, it is very bad for the psychic health, but I think this is both interesting and important. It seems that many in the media are daring to bring out the big guns and call Donald Trump a fascist. Now, the Donald is not my favorite person, but fascist is a) going too far and b) an incorrect use of the word. The word 'racist' is also showing up and one and two of our pompous pundits are cautiously using the word 'Nazi.'

Fascism is a specific ideology that places the entire function of the nation under the control of the state and corporations. All of the important aspects of life are controlled by the  industrial/government complex. To implement this policy, strict, very strict control is necessary, often including extreme surveillance, harsh punishment for dissenters, and strict education/indoctrination into the state agenda. Trump, to my knowledge has advocated none of these. He is pushing for surveillance of Muslims and mosques. Given the expansion of terrorism, this is just good sense; it would not seem useful to spy on Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. In addition, does any one believe for one moment that this is not being done already? Trump is simply saying what everyone is thinking.

Economically, Trump is not suggesting the state control of the economy. In fact, I have never heard him be anything but supportive of properly run small business. Socially, I have never heard him moralize, unless you call advocating the punishment of the violent and the criminal, moralizing. He does not seem to me to be especially bigoted. Yes, he has attacked the illegal Latin immigrants, but has spoke admirably of Latins who are here legally and are productive members of society. Honestly, I have never heard him make disparaging comments about Black people who are law abiding and hard working, although, like any sane person, he dislikes those who are destructive and parasitic.

Trump is a loud-mouth and a bit of a bully, of that I am convinced, but that is a far cry from being a racist, fascist, Nazi. He is certainly not politically correct, but neither am I. There is one aspect of his candidacy that I do find distressing. His populism could easily morph into demagoguery which can lead to disaster. First, the demagogue may become so enamored with his power that he seeks to expand into a sort of dictator. Second, those around the demagogue may, behind the scenes, co-opt his power and put it to their own use, leaving him as the figurehead for an agenda he had no intention of developing. So the candidacy of the Donald does have risks, but look at the alternative.

Hillary Clinton is an extension of old President Willie Clinton who was a forerunner of our current dunce, Barak Obama. This sleazy trio make a great pretense of being liberal but, if you look at their deeds and policies, you see a clear attempt to turn this Nation into a State and Corporate controlled  economy with all of us marching in lock step as good little cogs in the machine. Left in their hands, the Country will rapidly turn into an Orwellian nightmare, or will become a hotbed of revolution that would make our Founding Fathers take notice and while revolution always sounds grand and romantic, it is not. Necessary on occasion, but definitely to be avoided if possible. Do not allow that woman in the White House. For a detailed and frightening look at the history of the Liberal/Progressive agenda, I urge you to read Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism."

Will I vote for Trump? Maybe, but not enthusiastically, and if he is elected I believe we will have to keep a very sharp eye on his actions. I would rather see a saner, calmer voice step forward, but I really don't see much hope of that and I, without exaggeration, would vote for Homer Simpson before I voted for Hillary.  

Is Paris Burning - Part 5

Confused? So am I. Just remember a song title from the 80s, Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World. That sums up our problems. Why that is, I can't imagine. since I can barely rule myself.

What can we do? Experts say this will be a long, long fight. Only if we lack will. Remember, we beat Germany and Japan in WW2 in only 4 years. There is no reason we can't beat an army of an estimated 30000, quickly. We know that they are headquartered on the northern Syria-Iraq border. Seal their supply routes from the south, east and west using a combination of bombing and ground troops/ Allow no one in or out. Much of their money comes from black market oil. Destroy the oil fields. Place ships off the coast and allow no one out. Then, bomb the cities to oblivion. Then send in ground troops to clean out any surviving ISIL fighters. Job done. Then let the world know that this is how we will deal with things in the future.

Will we do this? Probably not. We  seem to have forgotten that in war, people, including civilians, die. This is a nightmarish scenario, but it works, and we have done it before. Folks today don't know history. In WW2, we demolished Dresden, Germany and Tokyo, Japan with conventional bombs and Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomics. We ended the war. Again, this was brutal, bur war is ugly. The idea is to win and win quickly. However, our current administration lacks the will to win. The good news? Russia is now angry and seems willing to do the job.

To stop terrorism in individual countries, there must be intelligence cooperation and, for good or ill, certain groups and individuals must be targeted. Let's be honest. An 80 year old Irish-American Granny is far, far less likely to be a danger than an 18 year old Arab. Fair? No, of course not, but the world is simply not fair. Any one caught planning or attempting to carry out any act of terror must be stopped, terminated if need be. If not a citizen, deport them immediately.

Much of the funding for terrorism comes from drug trafficking. Burn the poppy field in Afghanistan and the heroin trade will be greatly damaged. If they plant again, spray the land with defoliants. They will soon get the idea and, at home, we can begin to get a grip an what has become a horrible problem.

As far as refugees are concerned, I have no idea what Europe can do. I believe that at least some will defy the EU position and close their borders. With winter coming on, they had best do something quick or there will be disaster.

In the US, we should not allow them in. We, by current estimates have 500000 homeless in our land, 1/4 of those are children and many are veterans we promised to take care of. We cannot even agree on funding health care for the 9/11 first responders. We cannot take in more. In addition, entering under such conditions would be the perfect avenue for those of evil intent to disappear from intelligence surveillance, enabling them to plot and to recruit those already disaffected. If we wish to help, we could, with cooperation from the Saudis and the UAE (who, by the way refuse to take in refugees), set up temporary tent communities, supplying the poor with food, water and sanitation.

As far as the Global Elite are concerned, their power is often overrated. You will read, on the Internet and in various books, that the game is over, that the Powers that Be, run everything. Far from it. They have never achieved their goal of total domination and they have just lost control again. Power is back in the grasp of common people. We just need to grasp it.

The PTB will not give up, such is the nature of their sickness, but they likely will step back into the shadows for awhile and wait for another opening. Or, they may turn their attention to another region. If I were in India or South America or South Africa, I would watch my back.

The PTB will not win. Even if they get close to their goal, they will rapidly degenerate into factions and they will implode. In addition, there will always be ordinary folks who will only be pushed so far and the American common man is about as stubborn and ornery as any can imagine. No, the elite will not win, nor will they lose. They will rise and fall, always coming back, like a bad yeast infection, and we must always be vigilant. Such is the way of the World.

You may think I have forgotten Israel Not at all. Israel has served the purpose of the elite in their push for domination and they are no longer of interest to the Powers that Be. The power game is over for now, and Israel will have to sink or swim on its own. Let's be honest, the only real concern for Israel in this country comes from the Jewish community, a significant minority of the population, and the Evangelical Christian, a rapidly diminishing minority. The Evangelicals are only interested because Israel plays a significant role in their demented Apocalyptic world view. However, they are still a wild card in the terrorist game because, God knows when they will take a notion to attack Iran. Desperate people, and Netanyahu seems desperate to me. are unpredictable.

Two last points. We have a President, for the next year, who cannot be trusted. He threatens to govern not by cooperating with Congress, but by Executive Order. The House has passed a bill rescinding the law that allow him to bring in the refugees. If the Senate does the same, he will veto it. You must let your Congressmen know that if they do not get together enough votes to override that veto, that they have served their last term in Congress. He is still pushing draconian climate laws and a terrible trade pact with Pacific countries and he must not be allowed to do so. He, from time to time, threatens to enforce gun control and possibly confiscation, by Executive Order. If he does so, the case must be taken into the Courts immediately. He has no Constitutional right to do that. Yes, other Presidents have used Executive Orders, but far less than he has. The issue has never been taken to the courts and it is time that it was. And, if you think Obama has been a disaster, you had best try to keep Hillary as far as possible from the White House.