Showing posts with label 45. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 45. Show all posts

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Trumpty Dumpty Had A Great Fall

Well, it finally happened today.  The Donald has become the first (former) president to be indicted for a crime.  In his case, the primary charge (possibly a felony) was one related to the infamous Stormy Daniels hush money scheme, of all things.  And he also faces potential charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.  It is really NOT looking good for the washed up plutocrat turned reality TV star turned wannabe politician turned wannabe dictator turned disgrace of epic proportions.

All the king's horses and all the king's men, won't be able to put Trumpty together again.  Believe me.

UPDATE:  Trump was arrested and arraigned on April 4, 2023, and charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, and that's just what they have so far.  His next court date is December 4, 2023.  Scratch that, it is the next court date for THESE particular charges.  A civil case against him related to rape allegations is coming up before then on April 25.  Looks like all of that Teflon has finally worn off of the Don for good, and for the first time in his life he is finally being held accountable for something.  

And far from rallying around their fallen idol like they would have in the past, most of his supporters were strangely out to lunch when it happened.

He is rapidly falling away and falling apart now, and it is only going to get worse for him going forward.  Really sucks to be him now.  Sad!  Believe me. 

Friday, January 3, 2020

Did Trump Just Start A War With Iran?

On January 2, 2020, Trump apparently ordered a drone airstrike near Baghdad, Iraq, that killed Iran's top general, Qassim Soleimani.  This assassination was of very, very questionable legality given that Trump did not notify Congress (or really anyone else, for that matter) before giving the orders.  And now Iran is openly threatening (unspecified) revenge and retaliation for this foolish and reckless act of bravado and hubris by the Manchild Who Would Be King.

We are well aware that General Soleimani was not a good person by any stretch of the imagination, nor is his own Revolutionary Guard Quds Force particularly cuddly either.  They have in fact been officially designated as a terrorist organization by the United States Department of State years ago due to their notoriously rogue activities in the region, including their support for violent militias in Iraq.  But when the "leader" of the USA decides to go rogue himself and arbitrarily assassinate a leader of a sovereign nation that we are NOT actually at war with, that is a dangerous and irresponsible escalation that threatens to unleash a conflagration across the whole region, if not even further.  At the very least, it will delay any hope for peace in the region by at least a generation, and at worst can perhaps even trigger World War III.

And of course we can kiss goodbye practically forever any chance of reviving the Iran nuclear deal that, while imperfect, was in fact working to keep Iran from getting their hands on The Bomb for the foreseeable future--before Trump pulled out of it of course.  If Iran didn't have a reason to want nukes in the past, well they sure do now!  This latest stunt thus clearly does FAR more harm than good, and we at the TSAP condemn his reckless and irresponsible actions.

(As for motives, can you say, "Wag the Dog"?)

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Trump Has Been Impeached

Well, it's now official.  As of today, December 18, 2019, Donald Trump is now the third president in US history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The two articles of impeachment are 1) abuse of power (for abusing his authority to pressure and bully the Ukraine government to investigate Joe Biden and his son to get political dirt on him, thus attempting to get foreign interference in an election), and 2) obstruction of Congress (for blatantly ordering his underlings to ignore Congressional subpoenas relating to the aforementioned matter).  It seemed like nothing he did would stick to him, no matter how horrible and outrageous, thus enjoying a level of privilege that very few even dream of, and thus he got even cockier and did this, finally getting himself impeached now.

Trump will then be tried by the Senate in January to decide his fate.  And while the Republican-dominated Senate does not likely have enough defectors to have the votes to actually remove him from office, things can always change and stranger things have happened before.  And regardless of what the Senate decides, the fact remains that Trump now has an indelible stain on him for all time.  In the history books as well as his obituary, impeachment will forever be one of the first things mentioned and recalled about him.  Really sucks to be him now!

And even if he "wins" in the Senate, his days are still numbered regardless  Come the 2020 election, it is now exceedingly unlikely that he could possibly win with such a stain.  Especially if we get a recession before the election.  And once he is finally out of office either way, and no longer a sitting president, he will then be vulnerable to criminal charges for his too-numerous-to-mention misdeeds (for which secret and sealed indictiments most likely already exist) at both federal and state levels.  Ruh roh.

Looks like you should have done a Nixon and pre-emptively resigned when you had the chance, Donald.  Now it's too late for you to save face, regardless of what happens next.  Sad!

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

The Donald Is Circling The Drain

It really does NOT look good for the Donald these days.  A formal impeachment inquiry has now been officially launched against him, and it looks like he will be impeached any day now.  This time, it is because Trump allegedly tried to pressure a foreign government, the Ukraine, to give him political dirt on Joe Biden's son.  That, and so many other things in Trump's laundry list of scandals are now coming back to haunt him.  And that is a VERY long list indeed!

With dirty tricks like that, he makes even Tricky Dick Nixon look like an angel by comparison!

Of course, the House can only charge him with such "high crimes and misdemeanors", and it is up to the Senate to actually try him and vote on whether or not he should be removed, which requires a two-thirds majority to do so.  But even if they don't have the votes to remove him before the 2020 election, it is just a little over a year away, and him having this sort of a dark and ominous cloud hanging over him would certainly NOT help him win re-election at all.

And now with his stupid trade war really starting to bite hard and wreak havoc with both the national and global economy, and his latest foray into the asinine War on Vaping, he is pissing off more and more of his erstwhile supporters, making it even more likely that he will be creamed in 2020 either way.

The jig is up, Donald.  Now go do us all a favor and RESIGN, yesterday.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.  Or as you like to say, "YOU'RE FIRED!"

UPDATE:  It looks like Trump threw Pence under the bus as well.  So we may very well get a two-for-one impeachment special as a result.  Plus, if Trump eventually does a Nixon and pre-emptively resigns in hopes of Pence pardoning him, he will surely be out of luck now.  Hey, that's karma!

Sunday, March 5, 2017

One Weird Trick to Rescue Economy, Defeat Oligarchy, and Pre-empt Fascism--Banksters HATE This!

As the classic clickbait-y title implies,what if there was a way to accomplish such a thing at little to no cost, and would also result in lower taxes for the masses as well? What if that option has always existed, but knowledge of it has been suppressed by the elites for decades out of fear of losing their power?

Well, it's actually true, believe it or not.  It's so simple that people tend to overlook it, and it's called public banking.  To wit, the government would print/create its own money interest-free, independently of the banks.  And thus the FERAL Reserve (which is about as "federal" as Federal Express, given how it is privately owned by the big banks) would become truly federal for once, with banks serving We the People, not the other way around.  National debt would become a non-problem overnight.  (This idea can also be implemented at the state and local levels as well.)  Of course, the banksters would absolutely HATE that.  For example, both JFK and Lincoln tried to do such a thing in fact, and we all know what eventually happened to them.  But the fact remains that We the People, through our elected representatives in Congress, nonetheless have to power to do exactly that.  We essentially gave the banksters their power, and we can also take it away--were it not for their venal and cowardly puppets in Congress today, that is.

Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt (2007) and The Public Bank Solution (2013), has a lot to say about such an idea.   She brilliantly illustrates just how important the democratization of money is to a free society, and the history of just how much the bankster oligarchy has been ripping us all off for centuries.  For example, did you know that nearly HALF of the taxes we pay essentially go towards servicing the massive government debt to the banksters?  Did you know that nearly HALF of the price of practically everything we buy is a result of cumulative compound interest and/or hidden taxes embedded within such prices?  Did you know that infrastructure costs can also be cut in HALF simply by financing them with public banking?  And did you know that private banks actually create money out of thin air via a perfectly legal and centuries-old racket known as "fractional reserve banking"?  And that interest charged, not the expansion of the money supply, is the real cause of nearly all of the "inflation" that we see?  And for decades now, wages have not only lagged behind productivity gains, but haven't even kept up with such inflation?  Meanwhile the top 1%, and especially top 0.01%, have made out like bandits at the expense of the bottom 99%, with resulting inequality (which hurts the economy) soaring to levels not seen since the 1920s or even the Gilded Age.  If that doesn't make you feel RIPPED OFF, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!

So what does all of this have to do with fascism?  Well, it appears that a certain little painter from Austria decided to exploit a rather similar situation in 1930s Germany after taking over.  In fact, rescuing the ailing economy, especially reducing or abolishing unemployment, was one of Hitler's biggest campaign promises.  And he did in fact succeed in doing so, and did so better than FDR despite Germany starting out in much worse shape than the United States was in 1933.  So how did the Nazis manage to pull it off?  By thinking outside the box and having their government essentially create their own money independently of the banks. Their country was literally bankrupt from the aftermath of losing WWI as well as being hit particularly hard by the Great Depression, but by creating their own money and spending it to "prime the pump", they were able to transcend their economic woes, and were thus able to restore full employment within a few short years.  In fact, their unemployment rate dropped by HALF within a year!  Contrast this with Austria, whose unemployment rate remained stubbornly high and barely even budged from 1932-1937, only dropping significantly in 1938 after Hitler annexed their country as part of the Third Reich.  Prior to that, the Austro-fascist regime was essentially following the outdated Austrian School austerity policies that Ludwig von Mises himself would have likely approved of.  The point of this discussion is NOT to praise Hitler or the Nazis in any way, but rather to show what opportunists they were and how to prevent such an evil authoritarian regime from ever rising again--if only the (erstwhile) free world had the foresight to get their economic policies right in the first place.  Because then, there would be essentially no legitimate grievances large enough for such a regime to exploit.

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn't also note that Hitler's "economic miracle" came with a serious dark side as well, even before the Holocaust began in earnest.  At least part of the drop in unemployment was the result of 1) removing Jews from the workforce after revoking their citizenship, replacing them with ethnic Germans, 2) removing women from the workforce (i.e. by firing many of them and also paying mothers to stay home), replacing them with men, and no longer counting women in the statistics, 3) bringing back the draft, and 4) spending ludicrous amounts of money on the military, financed by debt.  But since none of these things occurred until 1935 or even later, one could safely conclude that at least the first two years of the "economic miracle" can be easily traced to the pump-priming that resulted from their independent money creation.  The point is, there is no logical reason why that policy cannot be replicated minus the dark side, as fascism/racism/sexism/militarism is NOT a prerequisite for sound fiscal and monetary policy, any more so than it is for making the trains run on time like Mussolini did.

And just in case you thought that this "one weird trick" was peculiar to fascism, keep in mind that Hitler in fact got the idea from--wait for it--ABRAHAM LINCOLN.  Yes, really. Meanwhile, fascist Austria did the opposite under Dolfuss and Schuschnigg, and they messed the economy up so badly that the Austrian people actually eagerly welcomed the Nazis when they eventually took over in 1938.

Bottom line:  we know now what economic policies really work in practice, as opposed to half-baked voodoo economic theories and crank science.  As the saying goes, "it's the economy, stupid!"  So how long till we finally get it right?

Monday, February 13, 2017

Trump's Immigration Policy is Cruel, Callous, and Counterproductive

One issue on which the TSAP has changed considerably over the years for the better, especially more recently, has been immigration policy, which we have recently updated in our party platform.  And not coincidentally, that very issue is emerging as one of the most controversial issues concerning the new Trump regime, who is currently displaying a very angry, paranoid, hard-line, nativist, racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic character.  Such toxic and regressive attitudes toward immigrants and immigration clearly do far more harm than good overall.  Because like it or not, America has always been a nation of immigrants, and we always will be, believe me.

National security is an important issue, no doubt about that.  But Trump's method of dealing with such concerns, most notably the draconian Muslim Ban that was recently struck down by the courts, is far too crude and extreme, and ultimately makes us less safe on balance.  Most Muslims are good people, only a tiny fraction are jihadists, and we have more to worry about from reich-wing extremists in this country than we do from jihadists nowadays. In fact, you are statistically more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist of any kind.  And slamming the door on refugees (who are fleeing unimaginable horrors due in part to American foreign policy blunders, and were already being vigorously vetted under Obama) is downright cruel and un-American. Besides, such draconian and xenophobic policies only alienate more people in the Muslim world, and are thus a yuuuge propaganda victory for ISIL and their fellow-travelers.

"Building the wall" along our border with Mexico would also not be a particularly wise idea on balance.  Especially Trump's idea of demanding that Mexico pay for it or reimburse us for it (or slapping a tariff on goods from Mexico to pay for it), all $15-25 billion dollars of it.  That is practically the definition of chutzpah!  And it would be wasteful.  We already have a fairly large fence in place along most of the land border, and the rest of the border's terrain is really not very suitable for building a wall there.  And it would still have to be patrolled, wall or no wall, so investing more in patrols and technology would make more sense if border security were really the goal.  In practice, it is starting to sound less like the Great Wall of China (which ultimately failed to keep out Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes, by the way), and more and more like the infamous Berlin Wall (which effectively kept half of Europe prisoner for decades).  Now, if only Gorbachev would tell him, "Mr. Trump, tear down this wall!"  (The irony.)

What about all those mass deportations that Trump has promised, and have apparently already begun to some extent?  Well, those who support such an idea apparently haven't exactly thought that one through.  First of all, it would be a logistical nightmare in practice to round them all up.  Secondly, deporting all or most of the currently undocumented immigrants in this country, or causing them to "self-deport", would basically blow a YUUUUGE hole in the economy, particularly in agriculture where they are a YUUUUGE part of the workforce, and the resulting labor shortage would cause food prices to go up.  BIGLY.  When Alabama tried such a crackdown a few years back, that was exactly what happened, so imagine that happening nationwide.  (As for the old chestnut, "dey turk ur jerbs", most of those "jerbs" are ones that very few native-born Americans are willing to do at current wages and conditions.) And last but not least, doing so would be downright cruel and callous indeed, and would break up countless families with children.

And about all that crime that immigrants supposedly bring to this country with them?  Well, the best studies find that more immigration actually tends to reduce crime overall.  And sanctuary cities also tend to have lower crime rates (and better economies as well) compared with similarly-matched non-sanctuary cities. Another myth bites the dust.

What we really need to do is pass comprehensive immigration reform like Obama and Congressional Democrats had tried a few years ago, but Republicans had severely obstructed.  The system is clearly broken as it is, and so many problems can literally be solved with the stroke of a pen.  We need to make it easier to enter legally, and also easier to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, as the current process is ridiculous.  We need amnesty and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are currently here, we need to pass the DREAM Act yesterday, and we need to speed up the ridiculously long backlog of people waiting years to get in legally.  After that, of course, we should still reduce the quotas so going forward we let in no more immigrants than the previous year's emigration rate (around 200,000 per year) in order to fight overpopulation.  Note that this last bit is still part of our party platform, and has been since 2009, though we should note that the very high immigration rates (both legal and illegal) that prevailed under Bush have actually plummeted under Obama for a variety of reasons.  And finally, we need to focus on the "push" factors in the sending countries, not just the "pull" factors. 

Anything less would be uncivilized.  Believe me.