2017 Apr 30^th

Last night President Trump had a rally to celebrate his election victory 100 days after the fact. His victory dance was held in Harrisburg Pennsylvania at the Farm Show Auditorium. (As a side note here, I was born in Harrisburg and I lived there again, very briefly, at the end of WW 2 after I got out of the Army Air Force.) The auditorium holds about 10,000 people and Trump’s fans filled it up. Harrisburg is an interesting location for Trump’s victory dance. Most of these rallies have been in the deep red southland where almost everybody loves Trump all to pieces. Dauphin County, in which Harrisburg is located, was won by Hillary Clinton in the last election by 49.4 to 46.5 percent. Harrisburg is 50 percent black, 30 percent white and 20 percent other. This demographic doesn’t much sound like Trump country. Harrisburg’s population is only about 30 percent of Dauphin County’s total population so Trump probably did well with the more rural folks.

Trump picked Harrisburg rather than a smaller town because smaller towns don’t have a sufficiently large hall to hold all of the Trump fans who would want to attend. Philly and Pittsburgh are not in the running because the potential for a riot if Trump showed up there without a protective Army combat team is not worth the risk.

The fact that Harrisburg was not enthusiastic about hosting the President is shown in the faces of his crowds; they are almost entirely white and middle-aged. That’s not a cross section of Harrisburg. The overwhelmingly white crowds who lined up to get into the Farm Show Auditorium were devoted Trump fans but they were not likely residents of Harrisburg.

Here were his choices: He could go to the WHCA dinner and be expected to give a short speech, including some self-deprecating humor, followed by some professional comics making fun of him, or he could slip up to Pennsylvania and bask in the adoration of ten thousand fans. For a thin-skinned, portly, multimillionaire who has never tolerated the least derogatory comment and for whom self-deprecating wit is a meaningless term, the choice is obvious. For Trump being admired, even fawned over, is the Holy Grail and he will do anything to get it.

The opening ten minutes of his Harrisburg speech found him right back in campaign mode; he spent it castigating the press. Trumps notion of a fact is whatever construction of events he finds pleasing. The press does not accommodate him in these beliefs and so Trump detests the press. He can’t buy them and he can’t bully them although he certainly tries. Witness his press secretary excluding certain members of the press from (private) briefings.

This pre-occupation with the control of the press should worry us; it is the usual first step for any tyrant who recognizes the need to control the information citizens get. Control the information and you very effectively control what the citizens think and believe; then you can control what they will do.

2017 Apr 29^th

This is that magic one hundredth day when all the world will rejoice at the many accomplishments of the Trump administration. OK, so I’m being facetious. His administration has accomplished nothing. The appointment of Gorsuch to SCOTUS was as much an accomplishment by McConnell who refused to do his constitutional duty and consider President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, as to any activity on Trump’s part.

Now, after embarrassing himself with his “repeal and replace Obamacare” effort, an effort that was approved by a mere 17 percent of the population, here comes Trump again with a plan that is even worse. Few men seem to love failure as much as Trump. Except for winning the election by the thinnest of margins (and he might have had a little extra-national help doing that) Trump has won nothing.

Most everyone knows that the Republicans live in fear that someone somewhere will get something they don’t deserve. The new version of the AHCA helps to prevent that and it too stands no chance of passing into law; it is unlikely even to pass the house. As with the previous version this effort was never discussed with the American Medical Association and these worthies plan to run ads against it. Why on earth would Republicans not want to get feedback on their health insurance plan from the country’s premier physician’s organization? Maybe they expected the AMA would not approve it and they didn’t plan to alter it to get their approval.

The new plan still covers people with existing conditions but now these people go into a high risk pool and guess what will happen to their insurance rates…but hey, they don’t have to buy insurance if they don’t want to. In addition, there will be policies that just don’t cover some of the things that are covered now, things like mammograms, doctor’s visits, etc. so naturally the insurance will be a lot cheaper. Eventually it will cover so little and be worth so little that everyone can afford it, but nobody will want it.  

The reaction these Republicans are getting from their constituents should convince them that repealing the ACA is not the answer. In fact, Obamacare is more popular now than ever. The reason is obvious, Republicans have shown the horrendous flaws in any program that might replace it scaring the hell out of the public who have come to rely on it.

It is obvious that the ACA needs to be patched up. Enthusiastic bi-partisan support would be available for that but the “no compromise” wing of the Republican party won’t have it. Didn’t Trump run on a repeal and replace platform? This was before he admitted that he didn’t know how complicated health care was.

Trump now brags about his accomplishments, but most of these are executive orders written by someone else and all Trump is required to do is sign his name.

2017 Apr 28^th

Today the local paper treats us to the views of Michael Barone. Mr. Barone opens with this sentence, “Capital vs. countryside, that’s the new political divide...” Well, not really all that new. In 1936, toward the end of the depression I was growing up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania where there were very few jobs. The available paychecks came from Roosevelt’s WPA. Without those checks, many of the kids I played with would have been very hungry, yet they and their parents all hated Roosevelt. The bikes of the kids I played with all had Wendell Willkie signs on them. Rural Pennsylvania in 1936 was Republican country; Philadelphia was not.

It is worse now; everyone has seen the county maps showing mases of red counties except for the small blue patches locating the cities. A fair number of these rural counties have fewer than a thousand voters. About half the voters in this country live in fewer than 150 counties out of the over 3,000 total counties.

Barone has an important point to make from all this and it begins with his pummeling of the “elites.” He speaks of the “parasitic fringe” of central government. Barone’s unhappiness with “the elites” is a tad hypocritical given his background, He is the 72-year-old son of a Detroit Surgeon, he attended Cranbrook School, a private secondary school and then on to Harvard for his B.A., followed closely by a Law degree from Yale. Now Barone trashes the elites.

Barone takes his cudgel to global warming supporters. He calls global warming a religion and claims the elites believe “deniers” must be punished. You will see no citations in support of these assertions. Global warming occurs because of the action of greenhouse gasses. These are water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane. These gas molecules vibrate when they are hit by photons of energy and can release that stored energy back into the environment. Some of this is fine; without it the atmosphere would fall below freezing every night; too much and we roast. This is elementary chemistry but Barone may have skipped his Harvard science class… along with a fair number of politicians.

Then he says, “The science is settled…That’s exactly what the church told Galileo.” Well, not quite. The church told Galileo that his heliocentric theory was contrary to scripture, not that the science was settled. Big difference there and one that someone with a Harvard education should understand.

Barone goes on to shame those colleges that bar speakers of particular persuasions. I agree; that is not acceptable. On the other hand, if a speaker does not want to devote time for questions, we are talking about propaganda, not education. Barone cites “speech codes” but curiously we see no mention of schools where such speakers are never invited in the first place. Liberty University, that bastion of far right political and religious thought simply discontinued its Democratic club, “Their values don’t agree with our mission.” That’s one way to control dissent. I should add that there is some disagreement about this; Liberty University claims this group cannot claim they are affiliated with Liberty University. Why is that?

2017 Apr 27^th

Morning Joe’s two anchors, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, have had a spat serious enough so that neither appeared on their program this morning. I am amazed it took this long. Joe plays the alpha male to the point of absurdity and seems totally unaware of how obnoxious he is. If anyone else is talking, including his co-host, Joe will interrupt with some utterly trivial comment and expect the attention to come to him. I’m surprised Mika was willing to put up with his boorishness as long as she did. Those who watch the program tolerate Joe so they can listen to his guests. His guests are usually worth it.

We have two big items of information from the administration: The first of these was the long-awaited and much-ballyhooed tax cut. This appeared as a one-sheet handout, indented, triple spaced in spots, and containing just seven numbers. For the typical taxpayer there will be far fewer deductions, but charitable contributions and mortgage interest payments remain deductible. However the citizen does get a doubling of the standard deduction to 24,000 dollars. For the really, really  big net worth folks the Estate Tax is abolished. (This feature will save the Trump fortune from the tax-man and is worth billion to his heirs. Hey, why shouldn’t the boss get a little something here?)

This tax reduction plan like others before it will likely push up the national debt. The very notion of increasing the debt was once a non-starter for conservatives, not any more. But we are told these tax cuts…and there are others will be offset by the huge economic growth that will follow. Standing at the podium Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin told his audience that these cuts will pay for themselves by increasing economic growth to over 4 percent. The best economic growth we’ve seen in years couldn’t sustain 3 percent. Larry Sommers, a previous treasury secretary thoroughly trashed the plan. Here is a comment about it from Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as he wipes egg from his face:

“The Trump administration intended for its initial tax plan to be vague and that assessing its long-term impact is difficult right now.” Apparently not for Mnuchin.

There are lots of goodies for the wealthy in this package. The top tax rate, now 39.6 percent drops to 35 percent, and if he can get rid of the ACA there would be an additional drop of 3.8 percent that applies to investment income over 250 thousand a year for a couple.

The 15 percent business tax rate could open a huge loophole for people to receive business income through a limited liability company or other pass-through entity instead of as wages. Depending on how the law is drafted, that could enable some people to pay that low 15 percent rate on their earnings instead of an individual income rate up to 35 percent. People who already receive their income through investment vehicles wouldn’t have to change anything for a windfall.

Hey, is Trump a great guy or what?

2017 Apr 26^th

A man named Tucker Carlson is the replacement for Bill O’Reilly on the Fox channel. We are told that his ratings are currently right up there with O’Reilly’s. I doubt that his appeal will approach O’Reilly’s long term.

O’Reilly presented a public persona that was superior, smug, above the fray and perhaps avuncular. Tucker Carlson comes across as simply very angry about whatever topic he has chosen for discussion. When I first heard him he was shouting, “You lie,” to some guest with whom he seemed to have disagreed. Perhaps he felt emboldened by Joe Wilson, the South Carolina congressman who yelled the same phrase at the president during a state of the union message. (Joe Wilson had “You lie” repeatedly yelled back at at him when he held a recent meeting of his constituents.)

Tucker Carlson has an interesting background. His father was ambassador to the Seychelles and was president of Public Broadcasting. His mother walked out on the family when Tucker was six years old; this event can hardly have been without effect. His father remarried the heiress to the Swanson Foods business and Tucker was sent to St. Andrews boarding school in Rhode Island. Graduates of the school include several Bushes, a number of Vanderbilts and other lesser luminaries. The boarding school tuition is now just over 58 thousand dollars a year. If Carlson was short on affection growing up, he was unlikely short of funds.

However this background has affected Carlson he does not seem to have much concern for underdogs. His idea of extreme vetting is not allowing any immigrants at all into the country regardless of their credentials. We aren’t just talking about refugees here, we are talking about no immigration period. Now that’s real xenophobia!

In his program he pointed out the terrible position Germany was in because they admitted over a million refugees. Crime among them is sky high according to Carlson. Carlson doesn’t mention that in many countries refugees are ghettoized, they are not integrated into the larger society. They come into the country with different customs, not fluent in the language and without the skills needed to earn a living in their new home. What a surprise that the crime rate among them is high. The refugees need to be educated but so do the people in the host population. Integration of refugees into a new society is not dependent solely on changing the refugees. The hostility of the larger population toward these strangers will have to be defused. Simply giving refugees an apartment and a stipend is not the answer.

We have a long history of hostility toward immigrants in this country, particularly those who look different. Refugees from the Irish potato famine got here to the land of the free wanting jobs to discover signs that said “No Irish need apply.”

You remember that founding father, old Ben Franklin. This is what he had to say about my Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors newly arrived in the Pennsylvania he saw as his personal fiefdom: 

“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the   English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as   to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our   Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.” 

Old Ben was not exactly welcoming. Some things never change.

2017 Apr 25^th

President Trump hosted the U.N. ambassadors of the U.N.’s Security Council at a White House Lunch. Many on the right consider the U.N. useless and insist that it has accomplished nothing. These detractors do not mention UNESCO and it is possible that they don’t know it exists; the same is true of UNICEF. There is not space here to present evidence for the worthwhile activities of these groups, nor would it do any good, so I won’t try.

The Security Council ambassadors gathering at the White House would seem to an aberration. President Trump maintained that the U.N. was useless, but that was then, this is now. Perhaps he has taken a page from comments about Michigan’s weather, “If you don’t like it wait a minute and it will change.” Trump is nothing if not erratic.

Our U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was there and many assume that it was her increasing influence with Trump that led to the lunch invitation. Others have remarked about the absence of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, but there were no other secretaries of state invited. Tillerson’s absence is hardly surprising. If Trump was willing to do this kind of schmoozing with selected Democrats his life would be much improved. I don’t believe there is a chance of that.

 Here is an interesting factoid to chew on: A consistent advertiser on Fox News, one I have seen advertise nowhere else, is a company eager to have its targets invest their IRA, or their retirement funds, in silver and gold coins. The pitch is that this is a consistent store of value not subject to the wild swings of the stock market. The pusher finishes by asking, “If you can’t hold it in your hand do you really own it.” This is followed by a smiling gentleman putting a handful of gold coins in his wall safe. I mention this because it coincides with a two-paragraph note in the morning paper about a couple who returned from Sunday church to find their safe burgled of 50,000 dollars in cash and jewelry. (There are funds traded on the exchange that hold nothing but silver and gold bullion. If this couple had put their money in this fund they would still have their money.)

I find it curious that gold and silver coins are marketed so enthusiastically to Fox viewers. Could it be that these folks are seen as a tad paranoid, expecting the collapse of the monetary system and looking for something better to do with their assets than bury them in a coffee can in the back yard.

Onward and upward; we turn to the British betting parlors for the odds that Trump will fail to finish his first term. Ladbrokes now has that at 50/50 and dropping. Not long ago a dollar bet would have won you three dollars if you bet on impeachment or resignation and you were right. So many people wanted to bet against him finishing that the odds are now just 50/50.

Of course his supporters point out the odds were against him winning the election in the first place.

2017 Apr 24^th

Now we have interviews with people who voted for Trump reported by organizations that support Trump. Guess what: those voters still support Trump. A good example of this stuff is from “Newsmax,” an ultra-conservative news organization run by Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife is a very rich and very, very conservative Pittsburgher. The interviews Newsmax recorded with Trump voters were unequivocal, they all still think he’s doing a great job and all things negative about him are the result of media bias, unfair reporting and other left-wing, sore loser activity. Newsmax has the results of various polls all showing President Trump doing very well.

This result isn’t surprising; if the results were otherwise these voters would have to admit they were wrong. Many haven’t made a lot of decisions in their lives that have turned out well, so they’ll hang on to this one as long as they can. One interesting poll result not mentioned at all by Newsmax is that only 25 percent of those polled believed Trump to be honest and trustworthy. Newsmax won’t touch that one.

The signature Trump scheme is the “big beautiful wall.” As we have heard, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the putative beholders of this ego trip are not all that thrilled. Right wing politicians who support Trump claim we must protect our country from an influx of “drug dealers, rapists and terrorists.” But the people close to the action are not convinced. A full 61 percent of the citizens of Texas do not approve of the wall. You won’t find that statistic mentioned on Newsmax.

Then there is the problem with eminent domain; this is a process by which the government can take a citizen’s land if they can make a case that it is for the common good. They are required to pay the deprived citizen fair market price but the citizen has no choice in the matter. If you are a rancher and you depend on access to the Rio Grande to provide your livestock with water and the government builds a 30-foot high fence separating your stock from water, what use is your ranch? Eminent Domain means you’ve just sold your ranch to the government whether you like it or not.

As it turns out this big beautiful wall may not be needed after all. The number of people coming into the country illegally has decreased substantially. In fact, we have almost as many people going back into Mexico as we have coming north. When this was pointed out to one right-wing politician, his response was that this was because these people knew that they would be caught and deported as soon as they arrived. But this had also been the case under President Obama. Much of the decline is due to an increase in the Mexican economy. If jobs are available at home, why risk coming here.

Payment for the wall has changed: First, it was asserted that Mexico would pay for it. Alas, it’s time to start building and no cash has come from Mexico. No cash is likely to come from Mexico because for a Mexican politician to have any part in paying for that wall would be political suicide. Now what? Now it seems Trump wants the U.S. taxpayers to at least start funding it. He tells us that Mexico will help out eventually. John Maynard Keynes is rumored to have commented about some economic policy “eventually” working said, “Eventually we are all dead.”

2017 Apr 23^rd

Today on “Meet the Press” Reince Priebus was so eager to blame Democrats for Trump’s failure to nominate the over 450 appointments needed to keep the executive branch functioning that he was reduced to babbling. He kept at it until Chuck Todd, the moderator, had to shut him down and move on. Then on came Senator “little” Marco Rubio who was asked about his new leader’s 180 turns on everything from China as a currency manipulator—not anymore; to Janet Yellen as bad for the economy—not anymore; to NATO a no longer useful organization—not anymore; etc.. Senator Rubio, the right wing Washington Examiner reported, said his new hero had every right to change his mind as his entry into the presidency produced new information. Naturally, this would lead him to change his mind about ever so many things. It seems Rubio did not expect Trump to inform himself about these things while he was a candidate.

If the world changes between the time Trump is a candidate and the time Trump is president then Trump has a perfect right to change his position about those things that have changed. That is not what happened here; what happened here was that Trump’s ignorance about the world was exposed to him and to everybody else. We aren’t talking about Trump’s daily intelligence briefing, this was information Trump, or any ordinary citizen, could perfectly well have obtained anytime. Trump was too busy soaking up the adulation of his rally crowds and playing golf to bother learning about being president.

This Saturday marks Trump’s 100^th day in office, a milestone Trump has said we should ignore but that he talks about incessantly. Much is made of how much he has accomplished, or hasn’t accomplished, over this time. Except for signing executive orders repealing some of the protections President Obama put in place with his executive orders, Trump hasn’t accomplished much. One thing he has accomplished: he has eliminated an OSHA regulation requiring employers to keep track of workplace injuries and deaths; just more needless regulation…from management’s viewpoint.

He has nominated Neil Gorsuch who did require senate approval to become a SCOTUS associate justice. While that required legislative action Gorsuch’s appointment owes as much to Senator McConnell’s machinations as it does to President Trump.

It is hard to find any other legislative accomplishments by Trump. There were plenty of defeats, some legislative and some at the hands of the courts. The effort to undo The Affordable Care Act was an embarrassing joke. That effort had a 17 percent approval rating and was not even brought to a vote. What happened to, “I will repeal and replace Obamacare on day one.” He can’t have legislative victories if he refuses to spend time persuading legislators that his positions are worth supporting. He hasn’t done that and he probably will not do that. He apparently believes because the legislature is Republican it should give him what he wants. He’s finding out that isn’t how the legislature works. Now he seems prepared to try again to “repeal and replace.” He will get more egg on his face.

The courts have mooted his travel restrictions on Muslims and now they have done it twice. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has distinguished himself by dissing a Hawaiian Judge who stopped the implementation of this act by referring to him as being from “some island out there.” If Trump doesn’t stumble all over himself then his appointees will show him how it’s done.

2017 Apr 22^nd

This is Earth Day and many scientists are out marching to promote science as a partial cure for what ails earth. As you can imagine, in these fraught times, there are those who believe that scientists should stay in their laboratories. One of these protesters against scientists’ political activity is Mona Charen, the very far right political columnist. Ms. Charen has a column in this morning’s paper in which she attempts to make her case. Her title is, “March for Science contributes to the politicization of it.” And so it does…and so what?

Charen then backs up to protest protests in general: She writes, “…it is hard to think of a better way to undermine the public’s faith in science…than to stage demonstrations modeled after the Women’s March on Washington, an anti- Donald Trump festival…which I found vulgar and demeaning to women.” She writes, “… the march contributes to the politicization of science, exactly what true upholders of science should be at pains to avoid.”

But these issues have already been politicized: Trump, needing the votes from the coal and oil producing states, has asserted that global warming is a Chinese plot. Other right-wingers from these states agree. Trump has gone so far as to appoint Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier, as head of the EPA and he has stocked the agency with a bunch of like-minded people. Trump has made sure that in spite of the fact that 99 percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is here and agree about what should be done about it, none of them are in his administration.

Mona tells us that, “Whether temperatures are rising dangerously is a scientific question; what to do about it is a political question.” That has a nice rhetorical ring but if you think about it. It is nonsense. Had she said, “What can be done about it is a political question.” she would have made some sense. What needs to be done about it is still a scientific question and we know that this must start with reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A good portion, but far from all of that, comes from burning fossil fuels.

Charen almost comes to terms with some facts when she writes that, “…this president has been heedless and reckless with the truth or falsity of his comments…” She cites his endorsement of conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism and climate change a Chinese ruse to harm American companies. Then she writes, “But he hasn’t said these things lately…” And neither has he accused President Obama of hiding his birth certificate …lately.

There is much more anti-science pushed by this administration: Dr. Ben Carson is head of HUD. Dr. Carson is a competent neurosurgeon and gained fame by coming from a poor background to head a neurosurgery department at a major university hospital. This fame has not led him to be open-minded about all areas of science. Carson believes that evolution is quite literally the devil’s trick to discredit God. Incidentally, there is no assistant HUD secretary. Perhaps serving as Carson’s assistant given his bizarre beliefs is off putting.

Bizarre notions about evolution are not all that critical in a HUD administrator but we have similar bizarre ideas about evolution from Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education. DeVos is an ardent follower of the Dutch Reformed faith. DeVos and her children have never darkened the doorway of a public school for educational purposes. DeVos is a firm believer in providing public money to support religiously themed education. Writing for the primary orthodox journal of their church an author takes exception to a previous writer’s view of evolution and writes, “In the first part of the article Walthut presents his Godless theory of evolution as fact.” If your tax dollars are spent on high school biology programs sponsored by the Dutch Reformed Church they will produce precious few evolutionary biologists. Trump’s war on science takes many forms most of which Charen knows nothing about.

2017 Apr 21^st

Fox News has a program where four women all in short skirts and tight dresses sit two on each side of a man at a low table and have a conversation. The program is “Outnumbered.” Today the man was Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, and the topic was mainstream media bias against President Trump.

Gingrich has not been Speaker of the House since 1999 when he resigned amidst an ethics scandal involving the use of tax-free money to fund a course he was teaching. None of that was of any concern to Fox News because Gingrich is a Trump supporter and has been for…months. Indeed the Outnumbered women politely referred to him by his former title “Mr. Speaker.” (His wife, Callista, with whom he had an affair while married to his second wife with whom he had an affair while married to his first wife, is rumored to be on the short list to be Ambassador to the Holy See. Think about that!)

As you can imagine, solid evidence was presented showing the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump. The primary example was from a researcher who had gone to the trouble of viewing broadcasts covering Trump’s first several months in office. He watched programs from each of the major networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, and then characterized these broadcasts as being either favorable or unfavorable toward President Trump.

From the Fox women’s and Gingrich’s viewpoint the results were not even close. As I remember, far more than 90 percent of the reports about President Trump were classified as negative. By Outnumbered’s standards, this was persuasive evidence of mainstream media bias. If the media reported that Trump’s Muslim ban was vacated by the court, that media report was evidence of bias. Similarly, when his healthcare repeal and replacement of the ACA got a 17 percent approval rating and was not even brought up for a vote, the media report of that fact showed bias. When the media reported that General Flynn, his National Security Chief was paid more than half a million dollars to represent Turkish interests as a lobbyist, that report was evidence of media bias. Simply reporting Trump’s screw-ups were, for these folks, evidence of media bias.

The problem here is not the silliness of this analysis but that many Trump fans watching Outnumbered will nod knowingly as they agree about this terrible media bias and vow to watch nothing but unbiased Fox News.

Fox has been getting a lot of coverage from other “mainstream media” because they have finally canned their premier eyeball draw, Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly’s reputation with women was getting too expensive for Fox because advertisers were insisting they did not want their names associated with his program; they weren’t leaving Fox but they were leaving O’Reilly so Fox decided to say good-bye to O’Reilly as well. Rumor has it that O’Reilly got a 25 million dollar going away present to cushion the blow. That’s about one year’s salary for him. He also has an estimated 35 million a year from his book sales. All that money won’t help his reputation although it is a little late for him to care about reputation.

                         

2017 Apr 20^th

In times like these a little levity is called for: A farm wife is hanging out her wash close to a railroad bridge that has been recently washed away by a flood. Now she hears a train approaching and she must signal the engineer to stop the train. Thinking quickly, she waves a clothespin at the engineer who immediately slams on the brakes and stops the train. Why? Because the engineer knew that a clothespin was the sign of a washout on the line. OK, groan a bit and now back to work!

President Trump’s approval ratings have surged from an embarrassing 38 percent to 42 percent. Forty-two percent is nothing to crow about but it is an improvement. So why has this happened? There are several suspects but they are all in the same group: There was the missile strike at the Syrian airfield. The result of that was muted by telling the Russians/Syrians about it in advance. Even so, he did something however ineffective it turned out to be. We did get a resounding, “Don’t you dare do that again,” from all potentially concerned parties, so it got their attention.

Then we dropped a really big bomb on a cave complex sheltering ISIS in Afghanistan. This was a success we are told because it killed a lot of ISIS fighters and destroyed their hideout. Trump gets the credit here even if he didn’t literally order the drop.

Finally, there was the misplaced aircraft carrier. By now it must, at long last be on its way to the Sea of Japan. Whether the North Koreans are worried or laughing themselves silly is unknown but the imagery of a bellicose president doing something, other than, or maybe in addition to, playing golf should help his ratings.

He must believe that because now his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has started to vilify Iran. He does not claim that Iran has violated the agreement it made with the five plus one countries to stop their nuclear arms research. Instead, he says that Iran is pushing terrorism and generally behaving badly and that we will not put up with it. He claims that we will deal with it and not wait for another administration to act later. He also claims the present agreement allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons eventually and is consequently badly flawed. The alternative is to let them continue developing their nuclear capabilities right now. How this is better we aren’t told.

This is a ridiculous rant: What does Tillerson propose we do about Iran? Saber rattling is silly; we aren’t going to invade Iran. If they were violating their agreement and going back to developing nuclear weapons, we could bomb/rocket their facilities but that isn’t the problem. Tillerson is left with making empty threats and our country looking foolish.

There are two kinds of Muslims, Sunni and Shia and they don’t get along at all. (OK, neither did Protestants and Catholics in the early 1600s when Oliver Cromwell was murdering Catholics in England and Ireland.) About 90 percent of the Muslim world is Sunni but about 90 percent of Iran is Shia. The Saudis are militantly Sunni and Sharia law is the rule there. As you can imagine the Saudis and Iran do not exchange pleasantries. Trump has made the elimination of ISIS a top priority. ISIS immediately kills any Shia it finds so Iran would be a powerful ally against ISIS. Why, then, aren’t we trying to find common ground with Iran at least on this point where we have a common interest?

Maybe Trump believes that his only road to higher approval ratings is through belligerence; that worked earlier so why not keep rattling the saber. Why else this sudden acrimony with Iran which seems counter-productive.

2017 Apr 19^th

It would appear that the Department of Defense (DoD) has lost, or at least, severely misplaced a 97 thousand ton aircraft carrier and her three support ships. Well, that’s not accurate; the DoD knows where they are, at least they say they do, they are just misleading us about their location

I listened to Secretary of Defense Mattis tell an interviewer that while the carrier Carl Vinson had initially been headed to Australia to play war games, the exigencies of the country’s problems required a cancellation of that task and the sending of this task force directly to the sea off Korea. (Mattis didn’t say exactly that but that was the gist of what he said.) Other administrative honchos followed right along telling us, and the world, that this “armada” (Trump’s words) was headed right to Korea.

Now we discover that this battle group was not headed directly to Korea at all, it was eventually headed there but first it participated in war games with the Australians. This directly contradicts what Secretary Mattis told the press about the Carl Vinson’s location and direction. Sean Spicer fumbled all over himself desperately trying to make the facts fit the administration’s utterances. As usual, he couldn’t do it. (I remember Jack Kennedy’s press conferences; what a delight they were, especially compared with these daily disasters.)

Now the foreign press is chortling away saying that America has lost an aircraft carrier. That isn’t true and it doesn’t matter that it isn’t true; it’s still embarrassing. We really can’t blame Mattis here. He has to depend on what one of his underlings tell him, specifically the Secretary of the Navy who in turn must use information from some claque of admirals.

The Secretary of the Navy, pro tem, is Richard V. Spencer. Spencer has not been on duty all that long; he replaces Victor Bilden who withdrew his nomination for financial reasons. Spencer must be confirmed by the full senate. Much of the confusion about what’s going on in our military and elsewhere is the result of not having various assistant secretaries in place and that is the fault of Donald J. Trump who would rather play golf and show off his Mar-a-Lago guests than do his job.

As to aircraft carriers, we have one very impressive carrier, the Ronald Reagan stationed in Yokosuka, Japan. The Ronald Reagan also carries 90 fixed wing aircraft and is much closer to Korea than was the Carl Vincent. Maybe we’re keeping that carrier in reserve.

It is embarrassing for the country to have the world’s press all asking, “Where in the world in the Carl Vinson.” If you have just one aircraft carrier as the Russians have and the Chinese have, they are really hard  to lose. We have ten so losing one is a lot easier. Let’s be fair here.

In “The Importance of Being Earnest” Lady Bracknell is quizzing Earnest about his parents. Here is the dialog, approximately:

Lady Bracknell: And what of your parents Mr. Worthing?

Earnest: I am afraid I have lost both of my parents, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell: I can understand losing one of your parents, Mr. Worthing, but to lose them both sounds like plain carelessness.

Parents…aircraft carriers; it does seem like carelessness.

2017 Apr 18^th

As all sentient people know by now Premier Kim, the North Korean despot, was embarrassed recently by a missile failure. This was particularly embarrassing because it came at the end of a military parade flaunting an impressive array of military hardware, missiles, tanks and perfectly synchronized goose-stepping troops. The parade was in honor of Kim’s grandfather’s birthday and was meant to show everyone the military might of North Korea. (Of course some doubters questioned whether those enormous missiles might have been just empty tubes. Even so, it was a powerful parade and successfully scared the hell out of everybody, particularly the residents of Seoul, just an easy missile shot across the border.)

The ability of North Korea to do any damage to any country not on their border depends entirely on their ability to successfully launch missiles. When his bellicose parade was over it was launch time. They did successfully launch a missile; unfortunately, only the launch was successful, about 5 seconds after launch the thing blew up. Given Kim’s predilection to execute any underling who displeases him, I’m sure there are some very nervous North Korean rocket scientists.

What about the rest of us? Kim will surely try again…and again. His technology is imported from China and eventually he will be able to put the pieces together the right way. At this point we have sent Vice President Pence to South Korea and to the infamous DMZ to looks very sternly at North Korea and to tell them that we are through talking. But we aren’t through talking because Pence is standing there in the DMZ…talking.

Military help is on the way. Our president now has more credibility as a warrior; he has allowed the use of an enormous bomb, reported to weigh 15 tons, on a cave complex housing evildoers in Afghanistan. This bomb did go off and reportedly killed about 100 bad guys, or, if you believe the other side, it killed nobody. I’ll buy our side’s estimate although I remember the exaggerated ‘Nam body counts; but that was then, maybe now it’s different.

Trump also launched a bunch of missiles at Syria. They didn’t even put the Syrian airfield out of commission for 24 hours but it did enhance Trump’s reputation for bellicosity and his willingness to use military force.

Trump tells us he has sent an “armada” to the Korean peninsula just in case we need major military force there. The carrier Carl Vincent, two rocket throwing destroyers and a cruiser we are told were on their way to Korea. Unfortunately they’ll be a while getting there. Just now they are about 3,000 mile from the Korean peninsula on their way to Australia for some war games. There will be no time for sailors to explore the Australian ports of call but this mighty armada is taking its time getting to Korea; maybe it will get there by the end of the month.

Much was made of Trump’s dandy meeting with China’s General Secretary XI. China is seen as the key to a successful settlement with North Korea. China provides North Koreans with oil and buys their coal; it sends them armaments and can shut down Kim’s bellicosity whenever it wishes. At this date the major accomplishment for Donald Trump’s visit with General Secretary Xi is three new exclusive patents for Ivanka Trump’s jewelry. Hey, that can mean a lot of money. What dad wouldn’t want to help out his daughter?

2017 Apr 17^th

President Trump has decided to react to the protests against him conducted in various cities around the country.  He has decided that these are all Democrats, that they are paid, and that someone should tell them the election is over. These are all things that would make him feel good if they were true so that’s why he asserts them. He claims the world is the way he wants the world to be; it isn’t of course as he will eventually learn.

The election he claims is over is certainly over and he won it, at least he won the electoral vote. He claims he would have won the popular vote except for all the votes of illegal aliens. Note, once again, his claims are for an imaginary world he wishes existed.

While one election is over, another, far more critical election is looming. The election of 2018 might be a turning point for President Trump. If the Republicans lose the house Trump will lose his presidency; he will be impeached. To avoid impeachment he will probably resign; it’s happened before with President Richard Nixon.

He doesn’t seem to enjoy his presidency. He must constantly defend himself against critics. No slight is too slight to go unremarked. The poor man is so busy defending himself he has no time to do the business of the presidency. This is his nature and it is unlikely to change. We have no ambassador to China, no ambassador to South Korea, no Ambassador to Japan.

We do have a new ambassador to Singapore; it is K.T. McFarland, once on the National Security Team at the White House. Mrs. McFarland was brought into Trump’s NSC by the now departed General Flynn, although there is some debate about that, at least from McFarland’s point of view. McFarland has been a contributor to Fox News on matters of national security and her educational background would seem to qualify her very well for that role. I watched an interview of her by a Fox News person who asked her about Flynn’s role in her NSC gig. She bristled immediately and claimed she had a phone call from President Trump himself asking her to accept the position as deputy director of the NSC.

That might be beside the point as Trump could have called offering her the position at the suggestion of General Flynn. In any event, the current NSC director General McMaster prefers not to have this person as his assistant and so she is off to Singapore. Well, that’s a start, but you can’t play golf and make the necessary government appointments at the same time. We know which activity Trump prefers and what Trump prefers is what Trump will do, his responsibility to the country is irrelevant.

Toyota is building a new plant in Kentucky and Trump is taking credit for this increased economic activity, “And yesterday Toyota just announced that it will invest more than 1.3 billion into its Georgetown Kentucky plant, an investment that would not have been made if we didn’t win the election.” That is another lie. This expansion has been planned for about four years, long before Trump ever decided to run for office. This puffery will eventually be Trump’s undoing. Even his most devoted supporters will eventually realize they’re being conned and they won’t like it.

2017 Apr 16^th

The fall-out from the licensed thugs dragging a man down the aisle and off the UAL plane continues. This is all because airlines overbook flights. They overbook because if a booked passenger doesn’t show up the revenue from that seat is lost.  An empty seat can mean lost revenue so to avoid the loss airlines overbook.

If you book a cruise to the Caribbean and you miss the boat, you miss the boat. Unless you’ve bought cancellation insurance you lose the cost of the cruise. Why can’t airlines do the same thing? You reserve a seat and pay for it; if you don’t sit in it for that flight the airline loses nothing. UAL is now discussing the possibility of offering up to 10 thousand dollars to compensate passengers who are asked to give up a seat they’ve paid for. Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United, should be able to devise a better system; if he can’t why is he paid about 6.5 million a year in compensation?

This morning we had one of those little TV round tables discussing current events, presumably for the education of the viewing public. The topic turned to the riots in many cities where protesters who had to pay their income taxes wanted to see Donald Trump’s tax return. Trump’s tax return has been a sore point for some time. Rachel Madow claimed a scoop when someone leaked a two-page summary of Trump’s tax return from 2005. When the earth shakes at the thought of seeing Trump’s tax return from eleven years ago, the very year he married Melania Knauss, there is surely a keen interest in the current document.

Trump and his support group have maintained that his returns are being audited and consequently he cannot release them. He says that he will release his returns once the audit is over. Ah, but the wicked, wicked press have looked into this rationale and the IRS has said their audit of a return is no bar to releasing that return. Has Trump now changed his tune about the audit being a problem? Of course not; now he has upped the ante and his flunkies tell us he will never release his tax returns.

He could be compelled to release them if a congressional committee decided there was evidence of Russian collusion but with Republicans in control of all congressional investigating arms and the Justice Department controlling others there is little chance of that happening. John E. Sununu a former senator from New Hampshire, and one of the afore mentioned round table people, has a unique take on this issue: Sununu declares with a straight face that no one cares what is in Trump’s tax returns. Senator, if you don’t know what is in the tax returns how could you possibly know whether you care what is in them or not. In the face of these country-wide demonstrations why would any rational observer claim that no one cares about the content of those tax returns.

It is possible that only devoted Trump supporters do not want to know what is in his tax returns. One might speculate that the less they know about Donald Trump the easier it is for them to support him.

Sununu, as a Trump supporter, can hope the rest of the population doesn’t care, but obviously they do. Senator, your political blinders are making you look foolish.

2017 Apr 15^th

April 15^th is the awful day when taxes are due, but not this year. Although separation of church and state is specified in the constitution, a well known religious holiday, the Easter Weekend, has caused a delay of this obligation until April 17^th; few strict constitutionalists are objecting.

Of various crimes against the state, from treason on down, failing to pay your income tax is not particularly shameful. There are organization that advertise on TV that claim to negotiate down the amount of tax and penalty you owe the IRS. These ads feature very ordinary looking citizens who claim that they have paid no income taxes in year, that they had owed thousands of dollars in back taxes and that this fine group had settled their debt to the government for pennies on the dollar.

We do not hold IRS agents in high esteem. This is not the case in other countries. Japanese television has a program in which the heroine is s young attractive government revenue agent whose job it is to bring tax cheats to justice. She is shown on a motorized scooter chasing a miscreant in a Maybach through the back alleys of a Japanese city. Any similar program would be impossible in this country.

The big deal here is tax reduction. President Trump is all for tax reduction and his emphasis is on reduction for those poor abused souls who pay the largest tax; naturally they should get the largest tax reduction and not just in absolute terms but in percentage terms as well. Trump’s plan to eliminate the estate tax will be a huge boon to his children and to his grandchildren. When a politician says that he will reduce taxes we should ask him/her what programs supported by this now absent tax money will be reduced or eliminated.

There is one method of taxation we haven’t tried in this country which is used with success in Europe and that is form of consumption tax called a value added tax. This tax is not all that noticeable because it is collected in stages during the manufacturing and then the sales process. A woolen mill sells a bolt of cloth to a tailor. They bought the yarn, died it and wove it into cloth. The difference between the value of the dye, the yarn and the value of the woven result will be taxed and that tax will be paid by the mill when the bolt of cloth is sold to a tailor. He, in turn will fashion some of that cloth into a jacket and the difference in value between the cloth and the jacket will be taxed when the jacket is sold. Does it sound complicated? It does and it is. But many countries use it.

There is another possibility and the mere suggestion of it could decimate my readership…but here it is: Why not a tax on net worth? The critics might answer that you’ve paid tax on your income as you acquired your net worth so this is taxing the same money again. Not always; dividends from municipal bonds are not subject to any federal income tax. Corporate income is taxed and then when distributed as dividend income it is taxed again. Money in an IRA can increase with no tax consequences until the owner reaches a certain age.

About 1 percent of the population has a net worth over 8 million dollars. You could start a net worth tax at a 1 percent from 10 to twenty million net worth, gradually increasing it to three percent at the top. I have no idea how much tax this would generate but it would surely get more money in circulation.

2017 Apr 14^th

Our president, ever concerned that the weight of office does not overcome him, has this week scheduled his 17^th golf outing in the roughly 15 weeks of his presidency. Heaven help the visiting head of state who does not play golf, or worse, plays it exceptionally well.

Trump still has about 500 lower level administrative appointments to make so there are many undone tasks that require his attention, but…he’s an elderly gentleman and probably needs his recreation. His excuse for not filling these appointments is that the Democrats refuse to approve them, but if he won’t propose the appointments in the first place that excuse makes no sense.

This past week he had the fun of using American military power (my military) to hit an airfield in Syria and to send a naval strike force to saber rattle off the coast of North Korea and, of course, to drop a 15 ton bomb on a cavern hideout for ISIS in Afghanistan. (The ISIS people were quick to tell us that there had been no casualties.) These military actions got him high marks from those who are unconcerned about answering the question, “what’s next?” Our adversaries in North Korea are expected to test a nuclear device this weekend and Russia with Syria and Iran are wagging a finger at us daring us to strike again because they are really, really upset and will do something awful if we repeat with the missiles.

Here at home we’ve had a decision: The White House visitors log will be closed to the public. There is no need for the public to know who comes to see the president; Trump and friends are concerned with national security and this will help that, so we are told. Most of the list was publicly available during the Obama administration. We’ll probably hear that Trump is more concerned with keeping the nation safe than was Obama and this rule is proof of that. (Didn’t Trump say that for every new restrictive law two old ones had to be eliminated? )

He should enjoy his last weekend free of catastrophe: North Korea’s Kim will be exploding something or other to celebrate something or other and that will require Trump to respond by taking firm action, which, in turn, will require Kim to take even firmer action …,and so it goes until it stops.

We hear that Trump plans a resuscitation of his health care substitute for the ACA. You remember the one that never got to the house floor and had a 17 percent approval rating by citizens? Wel, he’s going to try again. Apparently, the freedom caucus is now more agreeable to much of the content. But this mess still has to get the approval of moderate Republicans and then get past the senate. Why is Trump returning to this battle? His attempt to replace ACA was certainly a defeat and he can’t tolerate a defeat so he’ll keep pounding away at the ACA. If he can be kept busy with that maybe he’ll stay out of other trouble.

The budget is coming up and if he is to avoid a government shutdown, he will have to do some deal making. I believe that most of the “freedom caucus” would be happy to shut down the government. Isn’t strangling the government what they got elected to do? Just think about how popular those folks and Trump will be when Social Security checks stop arriving for their constituents’ parents.

This coming week should be fun for The Donald and even more fun for the rest of us.

2017 Apr 12^th

Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, has committed a boo-boo. In comparing Hitler and Assad, Spicer claimed that even Hitler never used poison gas. What he meant, and shortly clarified, was that Hitler never used poison gas militarily. Hitler did use poison gas to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews and other people he considered undesirable.  Spicer never denied that. Spicer, often the target of the press for his belligerence during his press conferences, was quick to express his regrets for this obvious blunder. He has been apologizing for this gaffe ever since he made it.

I think the piling on has been overdone. Spicer is out of his depth in this job; he is simply not quick enough mentally to be able to deal with the press corps so he winds up frustrated and then hostile and finally ludicrous. The piling on in this instance leaves some Democrats looking foolish: I think particularly of former leader Nancy Pelosi insisting that Trump should demand Spicer’s resignation. Such remarks are not useful. Pelosi should save her hyperbolic indignation for those times when it would be helpful and this is not one of those.

Spicer’s gaffes are not an existential threat to this country. Sending a battle group to rattle the saber off Korea could lead the unstable Kim to do something that would irritate the equally unstable Trump. and then things could go boom! To add to this we have Trump suggesting that we might put nuclear armaments back into South Korea. This will not cool things down in that region.

Tillerson in Moscow is at least as variable in his positions as is Trump. He insists that the Syrian people must decide if Assad stays, then he claims that there can be no peace with Assad as head of state. Now he is accusing Russia of knowingly helping Assad to gas his people. Putin claims that there has been no hard evidence that Assad did the gassing and wants to see what proof we have of that. (We’ll just forget the thousands of barrel bombs Assad used against civilians for the time being.) Tillerson is being told by both Russia and by Iran that if there is another missile strike against Syria there will be a military response. Is this bluster? We’ll find out.

Meanwhile, back home in the White House the president has told Bannon and Kushner to “work it out or he, the president, will work it out.” If Trump works it out it will be Bannon who winds up “out.”

As usual there is no consistency here and very little truth: Trump was nearly reduced to blubbering by the pictures he saw and now, apparently solely on the basis of those pictures, we are re-engaged with the world…a position we should have taken from the beginning. Perhaps if Trump had not insisted on “America First” there would have been no pictures.

2017 Apr 11^th

The ability to take pictures most anywhere might eventually help to civilize this country. It has at least embarrassed a police department one of whose members is seen firing about a dozen shots into the back of a black man frantically trying to run away from him. The officer claimed he was in mortal danger.

Now we have photographic evidence of three thugs employed by United Airlines “re-accommodating” a passenger by pulling him out of his seat into the airplane’s aisle and then dragging him out of the plane. The reason for this brutality is entirely understandable: the airline needed four seats to relocate some employees who where needed elsewhere…and could not be inconvenienced by taking a bus. The airline was willing to pay a considerable sum to designated passengers willing to give up their seats but if one of them refused then apparently thuggery was in order.

The other passengers who witnessed this mess were outraged by what they saw.  What if the person “re-accommodated” by being pulled from his seat and dragged down the aisle had been a 75-year-old grandmother? The four airline employees who subsequently took the vacated seats received no little abuse from the other passengers. What happened wasn’t their fault but if they had refused the seats they likely would have been fired.

The next day has Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United Airlines sending a message congratulating his employees for the fine way they handled this incident. Is that unbelievable? It is, but that’s what happened. Here is the message:
"This situation was unfortunately compounded when one of the passengers we politely asked to deplane refused, and it became necessary to contact Chicago Aviation Security Officers to help," the letter says. "While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right." One of these “Chicago Aviation Security Officers” involved in this action has been suspended. I guess the CEO, Oscar Munoz, is in no danger of losing his 6.7 million a year job.( It is now several hours later and Munoz has managed a much more conciliatory response to this public disaster.)

There is not much doubt that UAL will face a lawsuit for considerable damage. There in nothing in the fine print of their passenger contract that allows them to do what they did. If a flight is overbooked they can deny boarding to waiting passengers with tickets but this passenger had already boarded and was in his seat.

This is not rocket science. All they had to do was to offer progressively more money to any passenger who would be willing to give up a seat. Why push this one seat holder to give up his seat when he was adamant about staying where he was? Were the airline officials on a power trip or did they want to solve the problem? The answer is obvious and it will be expensive.

2017 Apr 10^th

Mona Charen who ordinarily champions all things Israeli, with the possible exception of their abortion policy, has heaped praise on Vice President Pence’ recent rules of engagement for his interaction with the opposite sex. Charen tells us that, “Pence,  even as villagers in Bora-Bora doubtless  know by now does not attend one-on-one dinners with women other than Karen (his wife) and does not drink alcohol in social settings when Karen is not with him.” Then Charen writes, “Progressives were by turns confused and disgusted.” Charen does not cite evidence from any confused and disgusted progressives. Charen seems of the opinion like many conservatives from The Washington Examiner to Fox News, that when you lack evidence you should use hyperbole and increase the volume. I confess here, lest there is any doubt, that I am severely progressive but I was neither confused nor disgusted by Pence’ personal rules; actually I found them close to hilarious. (When I explained Pence’s rules to a close woman friend her response was that he must not trust himself around women.)

Not attending one-on-one dinners with women other that his wife seems an unnecessary rule, not terribly different than a rule against using an “escort” service if your wife is busy with her bridge club. As to alcohol consumption, does he refuse wine at state dinners if his wife is not in attendance?

Charen writes, “Avoiding ‘occasions of sin’ isn’t primitive: actually it’s kind of elevated.” Of course it is; but many people do that without publicly enunciating specific rules. Then she admiringly quotes Jonah Goldberg, another far right icon who wrote, “Elites say we have no right to judge adultery, but we have every right to judge couples who take steps to avoid it.” What gives Jonah Goldberg the right to judge anyone about anything? Only Jonah knows.

Charen continues by writing that, “…women should never disdain the honor that good men show their wives by their constancy.” Again, Charen misses the point. We have a president who has told us over and over how much he respects women, how much he reveres them. Yet he allows his daughter, Tiffany, to be born out of wedlock, refusing to marry the mother, Marla Maples, until his daughter is two months old. Constancy is not in rules you claim you have but in what you do; in short, talk’s cheap. Pence’s “rules” are talk.

Charen’s target here is Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News’ main attraction. O’Reilly has settled a number of lawsuits accusing him of sexual harassment and many of his advertisers have peeled away from his program. Even so his ratings are higher than ever because it is thought that people watch his program to see how he’ll defend himself. Hey, it’s entertainment!

Mona finishes her piece by writing, “Wouldn’t everyone be better off following Mike Pence’s rules?” Actually Mona, almost everyone does, they just don’t talk about it.

2017 Apr 9^th

Oh dear, I guess the 59 Tomahawk missile strike on the Syrian airfield was much ado about very little. The capacity of the Syrians to launch punitive air raids against their civilian population does not seem to have been degraded at all. Given that we announced the raid in advance to the Russians, and therefore to the Syrians, let them shield irreplaceable assets from the attack, what did you…or Trump expect?

If there is a “next time,” and there probably will be, we can hope that the warning the Russians get will be less specific. Wasn’t this the president who insisted he didn’t want to be predictable?

The next hot spot for Trump is North Korea. He seems to believe that a little sabre rattling at Kim will be all that is required so he has dispatched a carrier strike force to hover just off the Korean peninsula. This force consists of the carrier Carl Vinson, a guided mille cruiser and two guided missile destroyers. These support ships are equipped with the Argosy anti-ballistic missile system that can destroy North Korean missiles in flight.

Meanwhile, back at the White House an interesting little feud has emerged and the principals recognize that it must be quelled. Exactly how is not agreed to by these principals.  We have the alt-right folks headed by Steve Bannon and supported by the billions of Mercer family money. That should be a very strong hand…except for the fact that Jared Kushner, husband of Trump’s beloved daughter Ivanka, is on the other side.  Kushner and company are seen by Bannon and company as apostates with decidedly Democratic leanings and a desire to keep the country engaged with the rest of the world. This is anathema to Bannon and the Alt-right. Trump’s authorization of the missile strike against Syria put the administration squarely in the Kushner/Ivanka camp. Keep in mind that Kushner was, and perhaps is still, a Democrat. Of course so was Trump. (Bill and Hillary were guests at his wedding.)

It would seem that the Bannon/Mercer people have a very weak hand here. It was Kushner, not Bannon, who went to Iraq with several generals. Unfortunately, Kushner’s flak jacket worn over his blue blazer and khakis did not attract favorable attention. Really wrong costume kid! Fortunately Kushner wasn’t there long enough to screw up anything else.. “Always leave them laughing” is expected of any good stand-up comic, not the president’s personal representative. Kushner has the good fortune to be Trump’s son-in-law so he starts on third base but any more of these gratuitous SNL moments won’t help him steal home.

2017 Apr 8^th

I believe we are in very serious trouble as a result of President Trump’s military action against Syria. No, I don’t believe Iran or Russia will take any action to respond to what we did; the problem is with The Donald himself. Trump was, and Trump is, having problems with his presidency.

His much trumpeted health care replacement for the ACA was such a disaster that it had only a 17 percent public approval rating and was never even brought to a vote in the house. He was on his second effort to ban Muslims from entering the country and it was faring no better than his first effort. If the wall is built it is unlikely that Mexico will pay for it and his administration is days away (April 28^th) from a government shutdown unless they raise the debt ceiling. Jared Kushner, a liberal, and Steve Bannon, an alt-right conservative, are feuding right in front of him. Add to these problems an approval rating hovering just under 40 percent and you have a man always desperate for approval and applause getting little of either. He hasn’t even had time to schedule a “feel good” rally in one of the deep red states he won handily in the last election. Maybe he’s worried about the reception he’d get there now.

 But wait! The pictures of suffocating children in Syria has made him take some action. When an even worse event happened in 2013 he was completely unsympathetic, even urging President Obama to do nothing about it. This is different; this is 2017, in 2013 only about 35 percent of Americans thought we should take any action against Syria. In 2013 Russia agreed to oversee the removal of Syria’s stockpile of lethal gas so President Obama backed off from his “redline.” That removal wasn’t effective, so now in 2017 we still have the Syrian gas problem. (Of course the fact that about half million Syrians have been displaced by other means does not come up. Trump is only concerned about children dying if their deaths are caused by a gas attack not by barrel bombs or starvation.)

Now Trump has found relief. Two destroyers off the coast of Syria lobed a total of 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian airfield used to launch the gas attack. The result hasn’t much damaged the airfield; it is even now being used to attack the same rebels who were attacked before. This attack has had other consequences: President Trump is suddenly a hero, he is the man of the hour in Europe and is even getting good press in Canada, His gaffes and his boorish sexual remarks are immediately forgotten by a now adoring press. His newfound popularity has cost him very little. Attack options were brought to him by competent military people and he picked one…and it worked and now he is a hero.

A long time ago, in 1905, a psychologist named E. L. Thorndike proposed what he called the Law of Effect. This law meant only that organisms tended to repeat in similar situations what had worked before. We deduce from this that when Trump is once again faced with the option of using military force or negotiating a settlement he will take the option that has boosted his approval rating; he will attack.

We have no idea where this new attack will be; perhaps there will be another Sarin gas attack and this time Russia will not be so accommodating, perhaps it will be North Korea, but with this easy success under his belt you can bet Trump will try for a repeat of this splendid ego boost. Where else does he have a sure-fire winner?

2017 Apr 7^th

For those of you who don’t know what all the fuss is about, Trump authorized a Tomahawk Missile strike against Shayat Airbase in Syria. This airbase was the origin of the Sarin gas attack against the civilians in Khan Sheikhoun that killed 80 people. Some 59 missiles were sent into that base but care was taken to avoid hitting any Russian barracks or other Russian facilities. Targeting was apparently successful for although Russia is very unhappy at this outrageous act, they haven’t claimed any Russian casualties. This concern for Russian feelings and safety even extended to Russia getting a warning beforehand of our planned strike. You don’t suppose that the Russians having received this heads-up about the coming attack would tell their buddies, the Syrians, so that the Syrians could minimize the damage? It is obvious that this attack, with its warning beforehand, is one step more severe than Trump shaking his finger at Assad and saying, “Naughty, naughty.”

Now what? There are five more airbases in Syria that we could hit if Assad needs a stronger message; it is also the case that the Chinese leader Premier Xi is visiting and observing, North Korea’s premier can see the results as well and that might modify his belligerence.

So is this just a wonderful move that will boost Trump’s approval ratings to at least 45 percent? I doubt it. While there was bi-partisan approval of this air strike, Trump did not consult congress before he acted and some members are unhappy about that.

There are some who are very unhappy about Trump moving from “Making America great again” to acting to involve us in other countries’ problems. Back in 2013 Trump is on record as advising President Obama against any attack on Syria and this was after Assad had killed far more civilians with gas then than he has recently. Trump’s change may be the result of watching children choke to death on videos that bring their deaths “up close and personal.”  What do you suppose the effect of watching these Muslim children die will have on his attitude toward Syrian refugees entering this country? He has said, “I’ll look Syrian children in the face and say they can’t come.” I wonder if he’s changed his mind about that.

You may remember that there was a blogger who insisted that no children died at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut. Several of the alt-fact boys insisted that it was all an acting job instituted by those opposed to “gun rights.” That same mentality is alive and well right now: Those pictures of dead and dying children were all a hoax carried out by the “deep state” — what they believe to be a nebulous network of military officials working behind the scenes — to drag the United States into war. Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, wrote on his website on Thursday before the missile strike that the chemical weapons attack was a “manufactured event.”

A few hours before the missile strike, the far-right blogger Mike Cernovich warned his followers in a live video that the United States was going to attack Syria. “Remind Trump who supported him,” he told his viewers. “We got to stop him.” Cernovich is the very same guy who spread the alt-fact that Hillary Clinton was running a child porn site out of the basement of a pizza parlor, He has a law degree from Pepperdine University Law School; they must be so proud of him.

2017 Apr 6^th

If you follow Fox News you will find agreement with President Trump that the gas massacre of women and “little babies” was all President Obama’s fault. This is because the president established a “red line” and then when Assad crossed it in 2013 by using gas against his own people President Obama took no military action.

This gas attack in 2013 was far worse than the one yesterday. In 2013, the attack killed about 1400 people over 400 of them women and children. The red line had certainly been crossed now what would President Obama do? He went to congress to get authorization to use military force, or at least get congress’ advice. You can guess what happened; congress told him that he didn’t need their approval to use military force and that was true. It also meant that if the president committed military force and it turned out badly the Republican congress had nice clean hands; it would all be Obama’s fault. It was also the case that using military force against Syria at this time was unpopular with American citizens; only 36 percent favored taking military action against Syria.

Fox News and Trump keep harping on the fact that President Obama did nothing when Syria crossed this red line. They provide not a shred of context. This moves them from a news channel to a propaganda channel. Are we surprised?

Another predictable, although disgusting event occurred when The President of the United States was asked about Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly who had just settled five lawsuits brought by a variety of women who had claimed sexual abuse at O’Reilly’s hands. The president, beset by many challenges commented on this item of international importance by saying that he knew Bill O’Reilly, that he was a “good man” and that he should have not settled the lawsuits brought against him. Again, are we surprised?

Our president claims that he “inherited a mess.” The mess is almost entirely international and much of that is his own fault.  His slamming of NATO and his playing the patsy to Putin has emboldened Russia. Domestically, in spite of his outright lies about the economy, it is gradually picking up steam. If he inherited a mess. what is he going to do about; his solution seems to be to play golf, whine about his tasks as president and hand off the many jobs of the presidency to his 36-year-old son-in-law, Jeffery Kushner, and Trump’s own aging bodyguard. A photo op shows young Kushner (surely the youngest person in the room) meeting with senior Iraqi and American military officials with this bodyguard seated beside him in a jogging suit.

Now we discover that Bannon is no longer needed at National Security Council meetings. It is rumored that Bannon was in a rage and threatened to quit and perhaps his original demotion had been much more severe. Maybe the moneybags Mercer folks stuck their hands on the Bannon scale and resurrected him. In any event, we have this bit of hilarity from the Trump White House: The reason Steve Bannon was on the NSC in the first place was to watch General Mike Flynn. No reason is given by any Trumpettes as to why the head of Trump’s NSC, especially selected by Trump himself, needed to be “watched.” (All right, stop giggling now!) Once Flynn was gone Bannon was no longer needed. (Bannon had to keep an eye on the head of the National Security Council? So, did anyone have to keep an eye on Bannon?)

2017 Apr 5^th

Pat Buchanan asks, “Why is Kim Jong Un our problem?” The fact that Kim has launched many missiles in our direction and in the direction of our ally, Japan, would seem to answer that question; couple that with the likelihood that Kim already has ICBMs in reserve waiting for the development of nuclear warheads means that residents of our west coast have reason to be nervous…or move to Maine.

According to Buchanan, “He (Kim) is targeting us because we have 28,500 troops on his border.” Then he writes, “If U.S. air missile and ground forces were not in and around Korea…and if we were not treaty bound to fight alongside South Korea, there would be no reason…for Kim to threaten us.”

What complete nonsense! Let’s start with the notion that our 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea pose a threat to North Korea and Kim: Just how large is the North Korean Army? The answer is about 1.25 million men under arms right now with a ready reserve force of another 7.5 million. It’s hard to see why Kim would be bothered by 28,500 U.S. troops; they constitute about 2 percent of Kim’s active troop strength.

Buchanan then points out the effect our immediate military presence and our treaty obligations with South Korea have on incurring the wrath of Kim. Of course they do; they bother him because without that ever present U.S. military strength and our treaty with South Korea, Kim would had incinerated Soul and occupied the entire peninsula long ago. North Korea nearly did that some time back when we had no military presence there. That’s why we have a military presence there now.

Buchanan talks of Russia’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine by saying that if these states had been in NATO, “We would have been eyeball to eyeball with a nuclear armed Russia.” On the other hand if those states had been in NATO Russian military action against them might never have occurred. That possibility is never mentioned by Buchanan.

Buchanan continues this riff about our treaties with “scores of nations with little or no vital link to vital U.S. interests.” Here I’m reminded of Chamberlain’s response to the occupation of Czechoslovakia just before WW 2. (“A quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” And then he found out!)

Buchanan makes a great to-do about the relative amounts NATO countries spend on defense. We sped a larger portion of our GDP on defense than does Germany, or probably any other nation… North Korea excepted. Buchanan does not understand that the United States is by far the largest supplier of arms in the world. If other countries are “encouraged” to spend more on arms where will they spend it? Some of it, perhaps most of it, will be spent right here. Indeed most of the money we spend on our arms is spent providing employment, paid for by your tax dollars, for citizens right here in this country.

This is the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about; we should have listened.