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.

2017 Apr 4^th

I’ll bet you’ve never heard of Jarrett Skorup. Mr. Skorup is “a policy analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Midland,” He had the privilege of airing his views on funding higher education in this morning’s Traverse City Record Eagle. The title of his opinion piece was, “Do universities deserve the funding they receive?” I’ll bet that without ever reading Skorup’s piece you can guess at his answer to that question.

Skorup uses the University of Michigan as his whipping boy; he points out that the majority of families of these kids earn over 100 thousand dollars a year; and that students whose family income is less than 70 thousand dollars a year pay no tuition at all. Michigan has an endowment of over 500 million so why do they need any tax money? Of course if Michigan can make it without any tax money why should any of the other Michigan colleges need any tax money? It may surprise Skorup to know that not all Michigan colleges are as well endowed as the University of Michigan. Graduates of Michigan Tech who incur debt will graduate owing about 45 thousand dollars.

Even the typical Michigan student who must borrow to attend Michigan will graduate with about 25 thousand dollars of debt. Tuition is not the only expense a college student must worry about. Michigan, in addition to tuition, will cost an undergraduate student about 14 thousand dollars a year for room, board, and books.

The undergraduate problem is only part of the picture. Scholarships for medical students are a rarity. Tuition at Michigan’s medical school is about 60 thousand dollars a year. The new M.D. will graduate from Michigan with about 137 thousand dollars of debt. If they graduate from Oakland University’s medical school their indebtedness will run between160 thousand and 250 thousand dollars. Of course the new medical school graduate may still have a load of undergraduate debt.

Medical specialists earn several times more money than a general practitioner, or an internist. An orthopedic surgeon will make about 450 thousand a year, a thoracic surgeon about 533 thousand and a GP perhaps 170 thousand. Is it any wonder that physicians want to specialize?

Skorup writes, “it isn’t clear that more spending on higher education is a good idea.” Of course not. Why would we need more physicians? Why would we need more teachers trained in the sciences to motivate kids to become physicians? What about educating more agronomists to help Michigan’s farmers?

Isn’t Skorup supposed to be associated with a “Think Tank?” If these questions are the result of that association maybe we should have a closer look at this “thinker’s” background. Skorup graduated from Grove City College a very religiously conservative four-year college. This college does not offer its faculty tenure, so anyone not hueing the college’s party line can be fired immediately. According to Mackinac Center’s website Skorup’s educational experience stopped with his undergraduate degree; he has never attended graduate school, he has never been on a college faculty and he is woefully out of his depth with this assignment about government funding of higher education. Perhaps next time the Mackinac Center can do better.2017 Apr 4^th

I’ll bet you’ve never heard of Jarrett Skorup. Mr. Skorup is “a policy analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Midland,” He had the privilege of airing his views on funding higher education in this morning’s Traverse City Record Eagle. The title of his opinion piece was, “Do universities deserve the funding they receive?” I’ll bet that without ever reading Skorup’s piece you can guess at his answer to that question.

Skorup uses the University of Michigan as his whipping boy; he points out that the majority of families of these kids earn over 100 thousand dollars a year; and that students whose family income is less than 70 thousand dollars a year pay no tuition at all. Michigan has an endowment of over 500 million so why do they need any tax money? Of course if Michigan can make it without any tax money why should any of the other Michigan colleges need any tax money? It may surprise Skorup to know that not all Michigan colleges are as well endowed as the University of Michigan. Graduates of Michigan Tech who incur debt will graduate owing about 45 thousand dollars.

Even the typical Michigan student who must borrow to attend Michigan will graduate with about 25 thousand dollars of debt. Tuition is not the only expense a college student must worry about. Michigan, in addition to tuition, will cost an undergraduate student about 14 thousand dollars a year for room, board, and books.

The undergraduate problem is only part of the picture. Scholarships for medical students are a rarity. Tuition at Michigan’s medical school is about 60 thousand dollars a year. The new M.D. will graduate from Michigan with about 137 thousand dollars of debt. If they graduate from Oakland University’s medical school their indebtedness will run between160 thousand and 250 thousand dollars. Of course the new medical school graduate may still have a load of undergraduate debt.

Medical specialists earn several times more money than a general practitioner, or an internist. An orthopedic surgeon will make about 450 thousand a year, a thoracic surgeon about 533 thousand and a GP perhaps 170 thousand. Is it any wonder that physicians want to specialize?

Skorup writes, “it isn’t clear that more spending on higher education is a good idea.” Of course not. Why would we need more physicians? Why would we need more teachers trained in the sciences to motivate kids to become physicians? What about educating more agronomists to help Michigan’s farmers?

Isn’t Skorup supposed to be associated with a “Think Tank?” If these questions are the result of that association maybe we should have a closer look at this “thinker’s” background. Skorup graduated from Grove City College a very religiously conservative four-year college. This college does not offer its faculty tenure, so anyone not hueing the college’s party line can be fired immediately. According to Mackinac Center’s website Skorup’s educational experience stopped with his undergraduate degree; he has never attended graduate school, he has never been on a college faculty and he is woefully out of his depth with this assignment about government funding of higher education. Perhaps next time the Mackinac Center can do better.

2017 Apr 3^rd

There are some behaviors that lead psychological experts to question the mental health of the behaver. Some time ago, a candidate for the presidency, Senator Goldwater, was declared a few marbles short by some mental health professionals. Various organizations have since declared that any diagnosis, particularly of political figures, without an examination is unethical. On the other hand, some behaviors are sufficiently bizarre as to convince any observer that an intervention may be needed.

Our president, seated in the oval office with his acolytes gathered behind his chair, was prepared to sign a document. This his precisely the task at which he is adept and which he seems to enjoy. A reporter shouted a question about General Flynn and instantly Trump rose from his chair and abruptly left the room, his vice president trailing behind him, unsigned documents in hand, moving swiftly to catch up. Absent minded? Forgetting the task at hand? Put off his goal by a routine question from the “dishonest media?”…or has he starting dropping marbles? Everyone has an opinion, but no one knows.

An even more startling example of a need for mental health counselling comes from Patrick Buchanan’s column. In it Buchanan asks, “Is Putin the ‘preeminent statesman’ of our times.” Buchanan then goes on to present what he considers evidence for this bit of inanity. The evidence is more than a tad lopsided. He cites a speech given at Hillsdale College by Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard. Caldwell says, “When Putin took power in 1999 Russia was defenseless. It was bankrupt….” This poor defenseless state had the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and it had the means for delivering those weapons against whomever.

Caldwell tells us (through Buchanan) that Putin “disciplined the plutocrats.” What does that mean? He certainly didn’t deprive them of money. We know that Deutsche Bank was fined 600 million dollars for laundering 10 billion dollars in Russian money. This was not complicated: A Russian bought millions of dollars in stock and paid for it in Rubles, then immediately sold that same stock for dollars that could be sent out of the country to, perhaps buy US properties. The purchase might include a house in Florida owned by Donald Trump for which he paid about 40 million and then sold to a Russian for about 100 million four years later. This is what Caldwell calls, “disciplining the plutocrats.”

Buchanan asks, “What has Putin done to rival what our NATO ally has done in Turkey jailing 40,000 people…” But wait, didn’t Trump’s erstwhile NSC chief hire his lobbying group to this same dictator for over half million dollars? No mention of this by Caldwell. He also brings up Philippine’s Rodrigo Duterte calling him “our Philippine ally.” He fails to mention that this “ally” called President Obama, “… a son of a whore,” and told him, “to go to hell.” No mention of that by Caldwell or Buchanan.

A few days ago there were thousands of Moscow citizens protesting in the streets. Hundreds were arrested.  Protesting against this “preeminent statesman” is not permitted. At least half a dozen critics, journalists and politicians have been murdered recently, the latest casualty shot in the back of the head on the street just outside the Kremlin. Caldwell never mentioned that in his talk to the right leaning folks at Hillsdale.

It does strike me, as an old academic, that it is unconscionable to present this unmitigated Bull S***t to very bright but naïve college youngsters. Eventually there will be a price and we will all pay it.

                                                     

2017 Apr 2^nd

It is time to review our Leader’s Sunday morning tweets. He begins just before nine o’clock by telling us that, “Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of Obamacare is dead does not know the love and strength in the R party.”

A few minutes later we have an essentially identical message “Talks are and have been going on…” (To eliminate Obamacare.)

Finally, at 9:34 we leave the Obamacare replacement theme and we get back to his favorite issue: “The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING! Find the Leakers.”

The “love and strength in the R party” was not entirely evident when Ryan tried to push his pseudo healthcare bill through the house. Trump ignores the fact that there are several very different “R” parties. The most conservative Tea Party types would probably side with Steve Bannon and his desire to “Deconstruct the administrative state.” They don’t want to raise taxes, borrow money and they hope to starve the government until it becomes impotent. Then there are more moderate Republicans who don’t believe that needy citizens should be allowed to bleed to death at the hospital emergency room door. Trump believes that this is the love and strength of the R party. Really? The notion that these segments of Republicanism will get along and agree on anything is simply silly.

His last tweet is far more important to Trump because it is truly existential for his presidency. If the spooks in the various government agencies discover collusion between Trump or his closest supporters and the Russian attacks on our election it will be “Hello President Pence.” As a result, Trump is desperately trying to deflect the investigative energy to leaks. For Donald Trump Russia in the context of the election is a place he will not go.

Why does he never mention the Russian interference in our election?  Why does he never talk about that? Presumably, he believes that if you don’t mention it, the problem will go away. Unfortunately for Trump there is too much there there. There are Trump and his people’s connections to the Russians everywhere you look.

Then there are Trump’s legislative efforts, they have been a total failure. Beginning with his attempt to ban the immigration of Muslims from seven countries, struck down by the courts, and they revised that so it would surely pass, only to have it struck down again. He has managed to put in effect his pipeline but his insistence that it use only American made pipe is a non-starter because American manufactures simply don’t make enough of that pipe. Then we have his famous wall that America will now have to pay for until he can find a way to charge Mexico for it. Then he boots the cancel and replace Obamacare legislation that had been a major talking point for his campaign.

We have his presentation of a bill to Germany’s Angela Merkel for what he believes is Germany’s debt to NATO and you have Russia giddy with delight at how well their favorite patsy is performing. Trump doesn’t want to talk about Russia. I wonder why.

2017 Apr 1^st

It’s Saturday morning and time to review the basket of Tweets from our dear leader. First off the mark is this effort:
When will Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd and NBC News start talking about the Obama Surveillance Scandal and stop with the Fake Trump/Russia Story?

This appeared at 8:43 this morning, a bit late for the early rising Donald Trump. A mere 19 minutes later comes his second tweet; he claims again that the media is “pushing the phony Russian Story.”

There is little doubt that Trump really and truly wants all this Russian stuff to go away...does he ever! Unfortunately for President Trump, he doesn’t have enough money to make that happen.

Meanwhile back at the Nunes Theater the question of the day is why was Nunes picked as the errand boy to take some good news to Trump? Remember these White House NSC people specifically invited Nunes to this viewing, no one else need come.

The obvious answer is that Nunes was a Trump supporter from way back. He was a member of the Trump transition team helping Trump get ready to actually be president after he had won the presidency. There is more: There were two members of the NSC attached to the White House who were involved in extending the “come visit” invitation to Nunes. One of these, Michael Ellis, just happens to have been Nunes’ deputy general counsel, before Ellis got his White House gig. The other NSC White House person has a very interesting history: This is Ezra Cohen-Watnick. When General Flynn got his walking papers he was replaced by another retired Lt. General, H.R. McMasters. McMasters has a reputation for speaking truth to power and for being willing to pay the cost of that predilection. He had been passed over for promotion more than once because he would not put up with military do-do.

When he agreed to work for Trump he was promised he would have total control of his subordinates. That was another Trump lie. McMasters found Ezra Cohen-Watnick on the NSC staff and fired him. That was a no-go because Cohen-Watnick had powerful friends in the administration. He had been recruited by none other than the previous NSC head, the partially discredited Mike Flynn. Cohen-Watnick also had the support of Steve Bannon with the result that Trump countermanded McMasters’ order and Cohen-Watnick remained part of the NSC. Both Cohen-Watnick and Ellis were instrumental in producing the Nunes Theater’s opening production.

Now we have Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the house intelligence committee, invited to the White House to view these documents. Schiff said,  after seeing what he had been given, that there was no reason why every member of the committee could not see what he had seen and, in essence, couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

You don’t suppose, by any chance, that Schiff was not given the same documents Nunes saw? Is it possible that the White House NSC people could have switched documents? Only if switching them would have served their purpose. I’m sure this administration will tell the truth… just as long as they see no benefit in lying.