Showing posts with label Nancy Pelosi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nancy Pelosi. Show all posts

Friday, March 20, 2020

The Coronavirus Economic Crisis - How to Fix It?


I believe we are doing this all wrong.  Not the medical part.  I think the world is getting that right as evidenced by the success of gene mapping, vaccines, hydroxychloroquine/zinc, anti-bodies, anti-virals, etc.  The medical crisis might be a supply chain problem at this point.  Still deadly serious, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel.  However, the economic crisis is an unfolding disaster.  

The current approach is like the Dutch boy with his fingers in the dyke.  Except he's trying to plug a million holes with his fingers.  It's simply not possible and doomed to fail.

The government is talking about trying to bail out every individual industry involved, well, at least the big ones with lots of lobbyists.  Airlines, cruise ships (yeah, there's an essential industry) automobiles, chain restaurants, banks, planes, hotels, etc., will all get generous bailouts in the trillions.  And these industries were the ones who for years have been blowing their money on stock buybacks to enrich their execs.  Why should they get a blank check worth trillions?  They shouldn't.

Nor should they be asked to twist in the wind thanks to a pandemic.  

Meanwhile, massage therapists, wait staff, carpenters, bartenders, yoga instructors, musicians, small businesses, restaurants, bars, and people like YOU are completely out of work and on their own. 

There's another way which would save everyone, and avoid the disaster we are creating.  

Believe it or not, this is NOT a MONEY problem.  It's a TIME problem.  

We don't need BAILOUTS,  we need TIMEOUTS!

Going back to the dyke analogy, what if there was a way to freeze the ocean?   

The idea is similar to the sci -fi concept of suspended animation.  To do that we need to both support life AND suspend time.      

Therefore I propose two remedies:

1. Suspend all time related expenses: debt, taxes, rents, leases, insurance, etc. until this is over.  We simply go into timeout for the shutdown weeks or months and add that time to the end with interest. This would freeze bank loans, the entire bond market, municipal market, mortgages, rents auto leases, loans, insurance, and all taxes, etc.  Nobody would be obliged to pay anything, and nobody would be able to demand anything regarding these obligations.  Bankruptcies, evictions, lawsuits, etc would all be in suspended animation until normalcy returns.  

No company would need a giant bailout under this scenario because no company would have these time related expenses during a time of no revenue.  Any company that could continue operations would do so and would continue paying their debts, taxes, rents, and leases. Those that cannot though, would not go bankrupt simply because of a pandemic.  The federal government would still be there to lend to states and local governments who need it.  

2. To deal with the need to sustain life, everyone who needs money in the U.S. would go on the existing food stamp program (SNAP), which would be increased to encompass other essential expenses like energy, gas, and medications.    

SNAP is an existing program. It wouldn't require much modification to scale up for the entire population.  (Alternatively, checks could be sent to everyone, but what could possibly go wrong with that?)  

The timeout bill would be much shorter than the bailout monstrosity and way cheaper.  The only money spent would be for citizens to sustain life and governments as loans.  No money would need to go to businesses and corporations. 

Let's freeze this ocean of economic woe until this nightmare clears up.  When it's over, we can thaw the economy and bring it back to life.    

[Update: Unfortunately, the government will never do this.  Why?  First, freezing the economy would be a huge statistical hit to GDP and the unemployment numbers.  Pumping trillions into a bailout will flow directly to GDP and paying employees who can't work will moderate unemployment numbers. Politicians can't allow the bad optics of crashing GDP and rising employment numbers.  That would spook the markets, God forbid.  Second, Democrats see this as an opportunity to blackmail Trump to sign their agenda.  Both sides want a 2000 page bill that no one will ever read except the lobbyists who write it.  That's why we will spend trillions of dollars we don't have and flood the market with the monetary equivalent of Fentanyl.  Sad!]  


Thursday, January 23, 2020

Fact Check - The One Thing You Need To Know About Impeachment


There's a lot of noise in the Trump impeachment story, and it's deliberate.  Noise obscures the clear and obvious truth.  To help simplify things, here's the noise-free version, first from 30,000 feet, and then in high resolution from eye-level.

From 30,000 feet it looks like Donald Trump did exactly to Joe Biden what he's been screaming Obama,  Clinton, Comey, and Brennan did to him; that is enlist foreign actors to dig dirt on a political opponent.  When Donald Trump asked Ukraine's leader to investigate how the Bidens made millions from a Ukraine energy company, Joe Biden was leading the polls as Donald Trump's Democrat rival in 2020.  He was clearly asking a foreign country to investigate his political opponent. 

That's how it looks from 30,000 feet, and that's the story Democrats want you to hear.  It looks pretty bad, right?  Maybe even impeachable.  But a funny thing happens when the same events are examined at eye level.

The detail that is missing from 30,000 feet hinges on one key word: "predication".  Was there a basis for what Donald Trump asked Zelensky about the Bidens?  Did he have a good reason to suspect corruption by a former Vice President of the United States?

Here's an analogy:  Consider the cases of two fatal shootings.  In both cases the victim was shot at point blank range in the back.  That's what happened from 30,000 feet.  Are both shooters guilty of murder?  Now consider that in the first case the victim had robbed the shooter and was fleeing.  In the second case the victim had stabbed the shooter and was lunging with a knife for his child.  Those are the details up close.  One shooter had a basis for using deadly force and the other did not.  Predication makes all the difference.

In the case of Obama, Clinton, Comey, Brennan et al digging dirt on Trump, the search for predication came up dry.  Not only that, Obama and Clinton manufactured fake dirt and then looped it back to U.S. intelligence to create the appearance of predication.  That's what the Steele dossier, Stefan Halper,  Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, etc. were all about.  Even after spending years and unlimited funds looking for predication,  Robert Mueller came up empty.  In essence, the Democrat spying on Trump in 2016 and 2017 was part of a coup d'etat.  (Overthrowing an election, in French.)

In Trump's case, he not only had predication, but he also prefaced his request with that very justification during the Ukraine phone call:

There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.  Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.   

(Full transcript here)

Here's what Joe Biden openly bragged about doing in Ukraine that piqued Trump's interest: (video below)
I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee,  And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from [then-Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.
I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.  I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.’ I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired.

Mind you, the Ukrainian prosecutor that Joe Biden had fired for $1 billion U.S. dollars was investigating how Joe's son, Hunter Biden, came to be paid up to $8,000,000 by a Ukrainian energy company for sitting on it's board while knowing nothing about energy, Ukraine, or doing business in the region.

The Bidens took an actual bribe in the form of millions from Ukraine, and then bribed Ukraine with a billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to fire the prosecutor looking into it.  If that is not corruption, then the word is meaningless.

That's it. Donald Trump had ample predication and expressed it to the Ukraine leader.  Case closed.

Donald Trump was actually just doing his job when he asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.  It is the responsibility of Presidents to hold government officials accountable for corruption, bribery, extortion and wrongdoing according to the U.S. constitution.  Politicians like Joe Biden are not exempt from this accountability, even if they are running for office. Were they to be immune due to seeking office, that would put them above the law, and "no one is above the law", as Democrats constantly remind us. 

Moreover,  Ukraine and the U.S. have a treaty that requires cooperation for rooting out crime and corruption.  In other words if Trump had NOT asked about the Bidens, he would be ignoring his official duties as President and could have been impeached for that based on the Democrats newfangled definitions of impeachable offenses!

It all comes down to predication.  Trump had it.  Obama, Clinton, Comey, Brennan did not,  tried to manufacture it and got caught.  That makes all the difference.  Everything else is just noise.

Will that stop Democrats from continuing their coup?  Not a chance.  They've been promising to impeach Donald Trump since before he even took the oath of office!  

The Washington Post headline on the day Donald Trump was inaugurated read:
"The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun"-  Washington Post 1/20/2017

Eleven days later, the lawyer representing "whistleblower" Eric Ciaramella tweeted that the "#Coup has started".  He tweeted it twice to make sure the message wasn't missed:


The impeachment of Donald Trump has always been a coup d'etat.  He is restoring constitutionally limited government, borders, strong defenses, free markets, and an independent populace to the U.S.  In other words, he is an existential threat to the entire Democrat project.  

_________________________________________________________________________________

Here's "predication" in Joe Biden's own words:




Wednesday, January 9, 2019

A Failure To Communicate

Donald Trump gave his Oval Office address on the border last night.  Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi gave their response.  Unfortunately, for the American people, the two speeches displayed the futility of politics today and the insanity of abandoning limited government as we have.

The two sides weren't even talking about the same thing!  The President made a speech about protecting the American people from drugs and violence flooding across the southern border.    Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi made a speech about protecting the government from a  partial shutdown.  They were like two ships passing in the night.

The President used facts, statistics, and real life stories to bolster his argument.  He showed respect for his critics and made no moral judgements about their opposition.  The Democrats denied there was a problem in the first place, though they didn't refute any of the Presidents statistics or anecdotes.  They showed nothing but contempt for anyone who disagreed with them, accusing them of immorality, racism, and stupidity.

I'm not sure what the final outcome of all this will be, but the President seems to have won this round.

And then there were the optics:



   

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Session's Russia Sessions

Multiple Democrats, including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, have called on Jeff Sessions, the new Attorney General, to resign.  The ostensible reason is that he met with the Russian Ambassador twice in 2016 while he was a U.S. Senator and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Both of these meetings were public knowledge.  One took place at a Heritage Foundation confab, and the other took place in the U.S. Senate building, in Session's office.  That's real cloak and dagger stuff right there.

The reason this is supposed to be a problem is that Sessions was asked about his contacts with Russia as a Trump campaign advisor and he denied having any.  He was not asked about his contacts with Russia as an elected officeholder who is SUPPOSED to have discussions with foreign leaders!

Here's what I wrote about the whole "Russian Hacking" meme back on January 4th.  It still holds true...
Remember Benghazi?  This Russian hacking meme, and the responses to it, are just like what happened after Benghazi.  Back then, the ploy involved an anti-Muslim YouTube video instead of Russian meddling, but the goal was the same: divert attention to cover-up an ugly reality. 
There are always some "tells" with these tactics:  
  • Instantaneous determination of the culprit.
  • Unanimous talking-point buy-in from all Democrat operatives.
  • Over-the-top denunciations of routine behavior.
  • Convenient deferrals to the "intelligence community".  (Which, of course, has been thoroughly politicized in the Obama era.)
  • Disproportionate and decisive remedial action taken.
  • Inability to provide any proof.  
  • Claims that proof exists, but exposing proof would jeopardize secret national security sources and methods.
Like Benghazi, there was an instantaneous determination of complicity after WikiLeaks began releasing DNC and John Podesta emails.  It took the Obama administration several years to finally figure out that Major Hassan, screaming "Allahu Akbar" while murdering U.S. military personnel, was actually committing an act of terror.  Yet somehow the administration knew instantly Russia, and specifically Vladimir Putin, was to blame for the emails.  The same administration that couldn't competently launch an Obamacare website with an unlimited budget and years to prepare, knew instantly and with absolute certainty that the easily disguised tracks of a phishing scam led directly to Vladimir Putin.  Does this add up? 
So unanimous was the adherence to this meme, that it became a standing joke whenever a Democrat operative was interviewed during the campaign.  The interviewer would ask a question about some innocuous topic, something like, "So, how's the food on the campaign trail?", and the op would figure out a way to squeeze in a reference to Russians meddling in our election! Anyone paying attention could tell this was a meme being pushed for political expediency...just like the Benghazi YouTube diversion. 
Remember after Benghazi how every Democrat operative referred to the YouTube video as "reprehensible",  and then would go on to distance the U.S. government from having anything to do with it?  That was classic straw-man stuff, as no one ever claimed the U.S. government had anything to do with the video in the first place. With this Russian "hack",  operatives have been using superlatives for how evil and against international norms this alleged hack has been.  Oh really? Not long ago, WikiLeaks disclosed the U.S. government was actually listening to Angela Merkel's cell phone! Now that deserved some superlatives.  And during the last election in Israel, Obama spent a pile of U.S. taxpayer money in an attempt to overthrow Bibi Netanyahu.  All of it wasted, of course. Yet somehow we are to believe Putin is doing something reprehensible?  Putin actually invaded a country recently, and Obama's response?  Nothing.  Remember Anna Chapman?  She was a real Russian spy with an entire spy ring living in the U.S. who got caught in 2010.  Obama's response? Nothing - except she was asked to leave.  Now someone figures-out Podesta's "ultra-secure" password is actually... "password", and Obama is expelling people and sending troops?  Does this make logical sense?  
The intelligence community was somehow coerced into mentioning the YouTube video as a possible irritant for the murders in Benghazi.  We now know that line was Bravo Sierra.  Similarly, the same intelligence community is now pedaling the line about Putin and the Ruskies.  Just as credible, and just as political as last time.  And in both cases, there were dupes in both parties who sincerely bought into the ploy.
To make the Benghazi ploy look legit, Obama actually did imprison the hapless guy who made the YouTube video.   If only we had a first amendment or something to protect video makers from being imprisoned for speech!  Oh wait...  Now we are invading countries and expelling diplomats to make the same diversional ploy look legit.  That, and to sabotage the incoming administration. 
In both Benghazi and the email hack there is a conspicuous lack of proof to support the diversions, and none is forthcoming in either case.  Obama promised a swift response after Benghazi, and then said,  "The perpetrators will be brought to justice!".  Remember how every major network was able to interview the perps within weeks, but it took the Obama military, with a budget in the trillions, years to get one alleged attacker and bring him stateside?  His trial is conveniently scheduled for 2017, long after the election of 2016.  He would certainly know if the attack was really a film critique, and I'm sure he was offered a great deal to publicly finger the video on 60 Minutes.  Of course, any serious observer would know that the compound in Benghazi was attacked on multiple occasions long before the offending YouTube video was ever put online! 
In the case of Benghazi, one poor schmuck actually spent a year in prison to divert attention from a terrorist attack and get Obama re-elected.  Now it is a diversion to delegitimize and sabotage the incoming President who threatens to undo eight years of Obama's totalitarian liberalism.  This time the ploy has turned sinister and dangerous.  I sure hope Donald Trump can gracefully dance around all the landmines Barack Obama is putting in his path, because if not, real people could get blown up. 
(UPDATE: The company that found the alleged Russian hack, and on which the entire intelligence community assessment rests, is a Google linked company with strong ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign. CrowdStrike was funded by a division of Google, and Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Googles parent, was a staff member and advisor to the Clinton campaign.)   

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

What’s All This Fuss About Vets and Healthcare?


As Emily Litella would say, "What's all this fuss about about vets and healthcare?"

I made one phone call yesterday and got an appointment with a top neurologist in under 24 hours.  That is incredible service by any standard.  Of course, in this case I paid cash, the provider was in private practice, and the doctor was the vet not the patient.  The patient is expected to make a full recovery and will soon be back to eating voraciously, running around, and wagging his tail.

To those like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama who told us that vets had the best healthcare system available and it should be a model for the whole nation, I say they were looking at the wrong vet system.  Veterinarians are the only doctors working in a totally privatized system today.  Theirs is the best healthcare model in terms of quality and service in the US, and in fact on the entire planet. 

So while our military vets are dying on VA waitlists, while all citizens are now subject to the bureaucratic nightmare that is Obamacare, while the poor suffer on substandard Medicaid, and while the aged are herded into the socialized system that is Medicare, our pets are enjoying state-of-the-art medicine in the best private healthcare system in the world.  Heck-of-a-job America.