Democratic congressmen and women are holding an old fashioned “sit in” demonstration on the House floor demanding a vote on the latest gun bill. If they would do an up or down bill of the entire House - - often a bill under consideration will pass but the speaker of the House won’t allow it in some invocation of the ‘Haster doctrine’. The other day in the Senate all four gun proposals went down to defeat. But on Tuesday Senator Susan Collins assembled an eight person bi-partisan committee to support a compromise bill. If no gun legislation is this session I believe it will bode dire consequences for the Republicans in congress this November. At least 85% of the American public want action on gun regulation now. In other news Donald Trump gave his long awaited speech against Hillary Clinton. To me the thing was a dud because we’ve heard it all before. The two candidates are talking past each other always pointing out the other’s weakness, and both sides cheer for their own man or woman as the case may be. Donald Trump still hasn’t made his taxes available to the public. This “audit” he’s been talking about has been going on for months and months and Trump is almost opening the door to saying it will still be going on election day so we’ll never see his taxes. We don’t know how rich Donald Trump is. Maybe he’s broke. We don’t know.
In terms of ISIS verses gun legislation I see no reason why we can't have concerns about both. That should make Shawn Hannity happy. But Democrats have concerns too, even about ISIS. We also wish ISIS didn’t exist. But if we topple Assad of Syria then ISIS troops will overrun the whole country with no one to stop them and there will be hell to pay then. People will be slaughtered in the streets. Christians, women, Jews, and other minorities won’t stand a chance. Ancient historic cultural sites won’t stand a chance and will be sacked and destroyed. There was a caller on the Thom Hartman show the other day who mentioned all of this. But as soon as he mentioned Hillary’s name, Hartmann cut him off and began yelling at him as being some kind of an anti Hillary plant. Of course Hillary takes millions from Saudi Arabia where women and gays and Christian and Jews have no rights and they use the death penalty for everything under the sun. Let’s make no mistake about it. We need a candidate who is serious about eliminating ISIS as a first priority. If it requires “boots on the ground” then so be it. In terms of strategy I’ll have to agree with Donald Trump. I’ve often found that my chance of winning in a chess game, particularly a good player, is when the unpredictability factor is higher. I believe we need s leader who is perceived as unpredictable because unpredictability makes a lot of people insecure.
Yesterday
Hillary really made a major speech attacking Trump and Trump today gave his
major speech against Hillary that he was planning to give before Orlando
happened. People want to know whether
Trump is serious about bringing back jobs.
If he really wants to help the poor, that’s the way to do it. The populists are the nationalists when it
comes to the economy and it’s the elite on both sides who are the
internationalists. Thom Hartman reminds
us that the one way that Trump might defeat Hillary is on the area of this
international trade and trade deals.
Hillary had better get her act together on this issue. The Obama administration has been leaning
hard on England to vote to stay in the European Economic Community. It’s a little unusual to interfere in a
foreign election like that. Rush
Limbaugh even agrees that getting OUT of the European Community would be a good
thing because Britain’s culture is being lost due to all of this immigration
which is suddenly legal. Rush says the
elite don’t want any international borders of any kind, and that’s a bad
thing. I think a dose of cultural
nationalism is a good thing as well as economic nationalism. But the other issue to come to the
foreground now is Trump saying “Debt is a good thing, if you know how to use
it, and I do”. Trump has declared
bankruptsy four times. The average American
no matter economically strapped they are- - don’t get to declare bankruptsy
even once. A lot of people in thousands
of dollars of college debt would love to be able to be given a fresh start by
the government. How come a rich person
like Trump gets to do that four times.
Trump like Judy is perfectly willing to suspend logic. If the law allows you to do that then you’re
“smart” to be able to use the law. So
Trump is smart at manipulating the laws to his own advantage, and therefore
would not work to see any changes in these laws. How many people were thrown out of work
because Trump had his golden parachute leaving employees to fend for
themselves. Trump speaks of jobs coming
back to the USA but Trummp, like Judy,
says that it’s “necessary” or expedient that goods be made overseas
because it’s the law of the jungle or survival of the fittest or whatever
“Christian” explanation you care to employ (he said laughing). Certainly this behavior is anything but
Christian but republicans just want to be CALLED Christians and identify with
this “Christian voting bloc” but they don’t want to adopt Christian
morals. Trump has spoken of the
government defaulting on the national debt and giving bond holders fifty cents
on the dollar. If that ever happened the
world would be thrown into an international depression. Those of you who think that Trump is an
economic whiz had better think again.
The world may be a much less safe place.
I haven’t even listened to
Trump’s speech this morning. I may add
to these remarks when I do.
Wally
was out there talking about the yard, and Scagg’s drugstore and other stuff and
mentioned Ronald Reagan and “Death Valley days”. I’ve never been to Death Valley but one time
when we were in southern Nevada we started down the road to Death Valley and
after a few minutes we turned around.
“Days” was brought to you by 20 Mule Team Borax. Of course in the “Carrssel of Progress” in
Disneyland they featured a color TV showing shoot em up Westerns. But Westerns would be on their way out
soon. Ronald Reagan was known as a good
speech maker in those days and parents said he was a far right conservative
propagandist. He ran against George
Christopher for governor and on June 7th I recorded the election
results kicking off 3rd Mastro and it was still light when
Christopher made the announcement that “The voter profile analyses indicators
do not augur well for my candidacy.
1966 was a year of uncertainty.
The stock market peaked out in early February. You wonder whether the anxiety caused people
to want to turn to some other kind of drug.
They were interviewing William Auld for pastor in the summer of 1966 and
Auld had the magazine “God is Dead” out and people asked him about that and he
assured them that wasn’t his belief.
I’ve always wondered what the statement behind the statement really was
that “God is Dead”. Maybe it was a drug
induced LSD revelation some person got that “God is Dead” or something. Of course people were reading lyrics into
songs in those days. The most obvious of
which is “Along Comes Mary” about marijuana.
You had “Strangers in the Night” being about homosexuals, and “Day
Tripper was about a prostitute and “Norwegian Wood” was about a lesbian, and
“Puff, the Magic Drag On” was about toking marijuana. And people came to say that “Yellow
Submarine” referred to another name for yellow jackets.
According to Norman Goldman just now - - California is now nuclear free. They are closing down both the San Onofre and the Diablo Canyon nuclear plants, and they aren't coming back. I'm assuming that carbon tax is in effect. Judy said a couple of years ago that when the carbon tax takes effect in California the whole economy is going to fall apart and that hasn't happened. The right wing loves to engage in scare tacticts. The best minds have now concluded that damage to the economy from minimum wage hike is - - minimal. Strangely if we pass immigration reform and 'bring in aliens out of the shadows" then these people will be reporting their income and we'll have more tax revenue. Not only will a corporate tax hike not harm business but it will help the employment picture because people will use hiring employees and the like as an "expense" write off to balance against their higher corporate income that they would otherwise just horde. That's what they do, they horde it and don't put that earned income in circulation to help the economy. The golden rule in taxes is that you penalize the behavior you want to discourage, and you provide financial incentives for the type of behavior you want to encourage. How else can you explain the explosion of the Clinton economy in late 1994. And remember if you try and cut capital gains taxes too much at one time it will start a securities selling stampede. Donald Trump doesn't want that does he, a few months after he takes office.
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