I just
managed to squeeze this piece under the wire. Tomorrow there will be a lot of
fingers crossed around the world.
November 8th.....Boy was I ever wrong. I was counting on 55% of Americans not being totally fucking nuts!
November 8th.....Boy was I ever wrong. I was counting on 55% of Americans not being totally fucking nuts!
By the time
you read this the US election will probably have already happened. My
prediction is Hillary Clinton will win with about 330 electoral votes, 60 more
than the 270 she would need to become president. Millions of Americans on the
right will be very pissed off. I also believe that the Democrats will retake
The Senate by 2 seats. Congress will
still be controlled by the Republicans and they will do anything they can to
make things uncomfortable for Mrs. Clinton. They may even try to impeach her.
What The Last Republican President,
George W. Bush, And The Republican Party Did To America
Donald Trump
and other Republicans have predicted that the US will come apart at the seams
if Hillary is elected. Their followers agree. Obama will be leaving office with
a popularity rating of around 55% after 8 years in office. George W. Bush had a
popularity rating of 32% when he left office and no Republican wanted to be
seen with him when the 2012 election was held.
Many
Americans have short memories when it comes to the George Bush Jr. years. He
went to war with Afghanistan and Iraq when all but 1 of the 9/11 terrorists
came from Saudi Arabia. The invasion of Iraq was based on bullshit that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The total cost of the wars is
somewhere between 4 and 6 trillion and it was just added on to the US national
debt. On the insistence of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Cheney, Bush had the Iraqi
army disbanded and without jobs they formed Al Qaeda which later morphed into
ISIS.
Bush introduced
tax cuts for the very wealthy and corporate America that they didn’t need.
Between this loss of government revenue, spending on Homeland Security, and the
huge costs of the wars, Bush increased the US national debt by over 100%, about
5.7 trillion dollars in his time in office. He also left a legacy of continued
debt for things like the costs of taking care of the wounded and
psychologically damaged war veterans. Bush also introduced something called
Medicaid Part D that wasn’t funded.
Bush put a
guy named Michael Brown in charge of a federal department called FEMA. FEMA was
responsible for helping people out who had been hit by natural disasters.
Brown’s previous experience had been in breeding Arabian horses. Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans and FEMA’s response to it was slow and mostly
ineffective.
The real shit
hit the fan in 2008, Bush’s last year in office. Republicans have always
believed in as few regulations as possible when it comes to business. The stock
market crashed, the major banks had to be bailed out because of risky
practices, major US auto makers were teetering on bankruptcy, hundreds of
thousands of people lost their jobs and many also lost their homes. It was the
greatest US economic downturn since the Great Depression.
When Obama
became president the US in 2009 the country was hemorrhaging over 100,000 jobs
a month. The banks and the auto makers had to be bailed out. Fixing the US
economy was not something that could be done instantly. There were huge costs
including extending unemployment benefits. During Obama’s close to 8 years in
office more than 9 million new jobs were created. Unemployment is now under 5%. The US is now
almost oil independent. US car companies have seen record sales. The stock
market has gone through the roof. More than 20 million more Americans now have
health care coverage. On top of all this the US national debt has been
decreased by 1 trillion dollars.
What hasn’t
seen dramatic increases are worker’s pay cheques. No president can force
businesses to pay their employees more nor can they prevent corporations from
shipping jobs overseas.
Obama had to
work with one arm behind his back. For the last 6 years Republicans have
controlled Congress and for the last 2 years they have controlled the Senate.
One would be hard pressed to think of 1 thing the Republican Party has done for
the middle class or the poor in the US. Perhaps Medicaid Part D but then again
it wasn’t funded. Republicans are against bills about increasing the minimum
wage or equal pay for women. A number of Superior Court seats have been left
empty for years because Republicans refuse to accept a Democratic president’s
nominees. One of the biggest roadblocks the Republicans have laid out is the
refusal to consider a bill where the federal government would invest in the
rebuilding of the US infrastructure. One would think that would be a no brainer
considering interest rates have never been lower. It would work for the private
sector in providing goods and services and employ millions more people for at
least a decade, many in areas of the country where good jobs are hard to find.
Obama pulled
most of the US troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. He also had Bin Laden
killed, something that George W. Bush became disinterested in doing. The US
armed forces no longer have to try to hide body bags coming back to their
shores. Gay soldiers no longer have to pretend that they aren’t gay.
Gloom and Doom From Trump And The
Republican Party?
When you are
a party that insists on always giving the very rich and corporate America more
and more tax breaks, even the dumbest American might figure out that this is
not helping him or her. Distractions are needed. Fear works. The truth doesn’t
matter.
Tell the
American public that the Dems want to take their guns away. Say that their
religious beliefs are under attack. The abortion issue and being against them
(whether they believe it or not) automatically gets most of the votes from the
94 million Evangelicals living in the US.
Blaming
minorities for problems in the US works has been a tried and true way of
getting the Archie Bunker types on the Republican’s side. Every general
election cycle the Republicans bring up voter fraud even though the evidence
shows that only 30 or so individuals have been prosecuted for voting more than
once out of 1 billion votes cast in the US in the last 10 years.
The way
Republican politicians describe America’s current and future fortunes is that
the country is totally falling apart. It isn’t. .
Trump Blaming The Media?
Trump and the
Republican Party love to blame the “liberal” media for being biased against
conservatives. It’s just pure bullshit. Most Americans don’t follow the news on
a daily basis and those that do tend to watch NBC, CBS, and ABC nightly news.
These 3 networks are generally neutral unless Trump says something absolutely
crazy. NBC, CBS, and ABC all have Sunday morning news programs like Meet The
Press. If anything. Republicans are more than equally represented on these
programs. Arizona Republican Senator John McCain has been on more of these
political TV shows than anyone else.
FOX News is
100% biased towards the Republican Party. MSNBC is believed by many to a
liberal response to FOX. The 3 liberals on MSNBC are Rachel Maddow, Chris
Hayes, and Lawrence O’Donnell and each has a daily weekday 1 hour program. Morning
Joe is a 3 hour morning TV show on MSNBC with Republican Joe Scarborough as the
host. Republicans are well represented on Joe’s program. In fact Donald Trump
was getting about ½ hour free of daily air time for months on end before he
became totally repugnant. Regular Republican panelists on MSNBC include
Republicans Michael Steele, Hugh Hewitt, William Kristol, Steve Schmidt, Mike
Murphy, and Nicole Wallace. Trump surrogates get daily exposure on MSNC and
Trump’s pals Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, and Rudy Gingrich have all made
frequent appearances on the cable news network.
CNN historically has been like a training ground for FOX News. Many former CNN on air personalities now work for FOX including Lou Dobbs, Greta Van Susteren, Howard Kurtz, and John Roberts.
Talk radio in
the US is almost exclusively controlled by hosts who are dyed in the wool
Republicans. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, and Alex Jones have
millions of listeners. It is kind of like a religious following as the same old
fears are trotted out on a daily basis justifying the hate of anything remotely
liberal. Conspiracy theories are rampant. Not trusting the federal government
is a common theme. Being that most of these programs are on in the daytime one
might wonder what kind of jobs the listeners have that allows them to listen to
the radio while they are working.
Pretty well
every hate group in the US is run by people that vote Republican from clandestine
militias to the KKK. The internet is crawling with right wing websites
including Breitbart News and The Drudge Report. Right wingers often use
Facebook to espouse their political beliefs.
To say the
left controls the media is just pure bullshit. Part of being a Republican is to
feel like they are victims.
Really Dumb Americans
Americans by
and large like to brag about their country.
USA! USA! Less than 50% of Americans have passports and most Americans have
little interest in any country but their own. They are not a people in general
that likes to apologize for anything, Republicans in particular.
-One has to
wonder, if Americans are supposedly so very patriotic, why is it that only 57%
of them bothered to vote in the 2012 general election? Apparently spending an
hour or two once every 4 years to line up and vote is too heavy a burden for
them to shoulder. And it isn’t that voters are always restricted to 1 day to
vote. They can vote early if they care to in many states.
-Over the
years both Jimmy Kimmel and Jay Leno have interviewed people on the street and
asked them questions that any high school student should be able to answer and
most often they have either the wrong answer or can’t answer at all. One would
think they would be embarrassed about being ignorant but they aren’t. For some
reason they think it is funny being stupid.
-Most
Americans won’t admit that their country has lost wars in Viet Nam.
Afghanistan, and Iraq. Commonly they explain the losses as could have, should
have, and would have. The irony is some of them say these things while wearing
running shoes made in Viet Nam.
-30% of
Americans don’t believe in climate change. 53% of Republicans believe it is a
hoax. Trump has suggested it is a Chinese plot.
-Americans
think that having insurance companies dictate their health care is a natural
thing. Most of them don’t realize that they are dealing with a cartel with
anti-trust exemption. To many of them, universal healthcare is beyond their
comprehension. The fact that universal health care is practiced in every
country in the world with a decent economy is not something they are curious
about. In a lot of cases in the US, health care insurance eats up 1/3 of
peoples’ income.
-For some
strange reason many religious Americans believe that their Jesus is mostly
concerned about the US and the Deep South in particular, and other countries
not so much. The bible’s Jesus was a poor man who walked with the poor and
didn’t have old ladies opening envelopes and counting money in church
basements. Pastors are living in mansions with 12 bathrooms and flying around
in privately owned jets. What would Jesus say? Is he more concerned about
people in the wealthiest country in the world or the millions of kids that
starve to death in poor countries each year?
-72% of
Republicans doubt that Obama was born in the US even though Trump finally
admitted he was. Producing his Hawaiian birth certificate and the two birth
notices printed in Honolulu newspapers 55 years ago is not enough for them. Most
Republicans also believe that Obama has raised their taxes. He hasn’t.
-57% of
Republicans believe the Constitution should be dismantled and Christianity be
established as the national religion.
-25% of
Americans don’t believe in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
-Most
Republicans believe Obama is a socialist. He isn’t. He hasn’t socialized any
American business. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Obama is centrist Democrat.
-The vast
majority of Americans are not capable of finding Iraq or Afghanistan on a map.
-The
Kardashians, Honey Boo Boo, Duck Dynasty, and Jerry Springer have been watched
by millions of Americans and most watchers are not disturbed about what they
see. Dying 5 year old girl’s hair and putting lipstick on their mouths and entering
these kids in beauty contests seems normal to millions of Americans.
-More
Americans can name 2 of the 7 dwarves than 2 Supreme Court Justices. More
Americans can name the 3 Stooges than the 3 branches of government.
-35% of
Americans believe being gay is a lifestyle choice.
-30% of
Americans don’t know what year 9/11 took place.
-29% of
Americans believe that an armed revolt against the federal government makes
sense.
The list of
“stupid” goes on and on.
The Cowardly Religious Right
The
Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Mike Pence, while governor of Indiana
spent money on trying to de-gay gay people. When Trump was heard on tape
talking about grabbing women’s pussies, Pence said his religion taught him to
forgive those that have sinned. Apparently his religious beliefs don’t include
forgiving Hillary Clinton or the Democrats for anything he perceives she has
done wrong.
The basis of
Christianity is the 10 Commandments. One of the stranger things about
Christianity is that you can sin, be forgiven, and then go right back to
sinning again. It’s like a free pass.
The most
powerful religious entity in the US is the Evangelicals with 94 million
followers. Pastors in these churches have simply refused to call Trump out on
any awful thing he has done. Most likely it is because Trump has said he is
against abortion. 10 years ago when Trump was 60 years of age and a registered
Democrat he was pro-choice.
About the
only commandments Trump hasn’t broken on numerous times is Thou Shalt Not Kill
and Honour Thy Mother and Thy father.
The only time
anyone has spotted Trump in a church was at his own weddings.
Not only has
Trump committed adultery on a number of occasions so have some of his chief
advisors including Gingrich and Guiliani.
Thou shalt
not steal has not prevented Trump from not paying taxes and stiffing investors
and contractors. Not paying people for goods and services they have provided is
simply theft.
-Thou shalt
not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Trump lies on a daily business and
makes shit up about others that just aren’t factual. Statistics show that Trump
has told more lies in his run for president than any other candidate for
president in history. Hillary isn’t even close. Its chilling that he has the
nerve to call others liars.
-The not
coveting stuff. Trump has a long history of displaying jealousies. As a for
instance he wasn’t satisfied owning 1 casino in Atlantic City but had to own
all of them. The end result was he went into over 3 billion dollars of debt.
-Remember the
Sabbath Day. Like most Christians real or fake working on the Sabbath is okey
dokey.
-Christians
are expected to be charitable. Trump has a charitable foundation with no record
of helping any needy group of people. Instead he has used his foundation as a
piggy bank.
Not matter
what ugly thing that Trump has done in the last 16 months, and there have been
plenty of them, the religious right has refused to call him out on anything
including the filthy language he uses. Absolute cowards! Would these pastors
like their children to talk like Trump or emulate him?
Obama and
Hillary Clinton are actually practicing Christians but the religious right
wants no part of them. There is something very strange about that.
The Hillary Clinton Hate Club
Hating
Hillary Clinton is a fetish for most right wing Republicans. It isn’t as if she
says outlandish things or attacks others viciously. Right wingers love to think that she is
scheming woman doing awful things out of sight of the American public.
When Bill
Clinton left office in in January of 2001 he had a popularity rate of 55% in
spite of his lying to the American public about his numerous affairs. What kept
him popular wasn’t that Americans thought his adultery was a good thing but
more that the country wasn’t engaged in any major wars and the economy had been
booming for a continued length of time. Most Americans thought that Republican
prosecutor Kenneth Starr had gone too far in his investigation of Bill Clinton
when he got into semen stains and blowjobs.
There was a
lot of empathy for Hillary Clinton at the time and she was parachuted into New
York State where she was elected junior senator. Like her husband Hillary often
worked with Republicans on political issues. 9/11 happened a few years after
she was elected and the loss of 3,000 lives in New York City devastated her and
her home state. She chose to listen to George W. Bush and his cronies instead
of Ambassador Joe Wilson or the Swedish diplomat Hans Blix and his inability to
discover WND in Iraq. When Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, was outed
by Bush’s pals, Mrs. Clinton chose to ignore it. It seemed that it was
important to her that she didn’t look like an indecisive women when it came to
making some country pay the price for attacking the US.
In 2005 the
Clintons attended Donald Trump’s 3rd wedding. Trump was a Democrat
at the time and in the ensuing years he had a lot of nice things to say about
both Clintons that included saying that she did a good job as Secretary of
State.
In 2008 she
decided to make a run for president and it looked like she had it in the bag.
On a broad scale it became whether the Democrats wanted to see a seasoned woman
or a younger black man in the White House. The black man won but Hillary sucked
it up. She wouldn’t have another shot at the presidency for 8 years.
In 2009 she
became Secretary of State at Obama’s request. She left that office in 2013 after
serving for 4 years. She had 3 years to prepare for next and last run for
president. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were well aware
of her goal. There was really good money available for ex-presidents who were
willing to give speeches to private groups and corporations and between Hillary
and Bill they made over 153 million dollars. It was legal but a bit on the
shady side considering they were selling their experience as public servants.
Hillary had
been through a lot in her political life and she scared the crap out of the
Republicans. They hatched a plot. The Benghazi episode of 2012 where 4
Americans died in the dead of night seemed a good place to start. There would
be investigations and hearings about what happened that night that would lead
up to laying the deaths at Hillary’s feet. Historically something like Benghazi
would have been considered part of “the fog of war”. During Bush’s time as
president there had been 13 attacks on American embassies and 60 deaths without
1 single investigation.
The idea was
to tie Hillary up for months on end and make her look incompetent. Altogether
there were 8 investigations. One might think that Benghazi was right up there
with Viet Nam or WW2. Ambassador Stevens’s own sister didn’t hold Hillary at
fault. She described her brother as somebody who was infatuated with the Middle
East ever since he was a boy and dressed up like Lawrence of Arabia.
Mrs. Clinton
wasn’t found guilty of anything including her response to the attack on
Benghazi. The 3rd most powerful Republican in Congress, Kevin
McCarthy openly admitted the Benghazi Committee was formed to discredit Hillary
Clinton.
Because of
the Benghazi investigations America became aware that Mrs. Clinton was using a
private server for her e-mails. Most Democrats and pretty well all Republicans
found this to be sheer arrogance on her part. The facts are that the FBI, the
Republican Party, nor the Russians were aware that she was using a private
server. It may have been inappropriate and risky but there is no record of her
server ever being hacked. In other words no highly confidential material ever
got into the wrong hands.
Next up on
the Republicans agenda was The Clinton Foundation. There is no record of the
Clintons personally profiting from The Clinton Foundation. They made their
money from speeches. Some of the sources that they got money for the foundation
may be a bit dubious, particularly from foreign dictatorships, but the money
all went to good causes. Yes they hired friends to run the foundation but why
wouldn’t they want it run by people they trusted?
85% of the
funds collected by The Clinton Foundation go directly to people in need
throughout the world. It has been enormously effective are here are just some
of the things it has accomplished.
-It has
provided HIV/AIDS drugs to 11.5 million people in the world.
-Raised 313
million dollars for R&D into new vaccines and medicines.
-Helped
provide better maternal and child care to more than 110 million people.
-Provided
treatment for more than 36 million people with tropical diseases.
This is only
a partial list of the good works the foundation has done.
On the other
hand Donald Trump also has a foundation. The last gift he gave to his
foundation was $35,000.00 in 2008. There is no record of Trump donating a dime
to the 9/11 charities.
There is one
group in the US that particularly hates Hillary and that is white men without
college degrees. I have a theory of why this is. They probably remember a girl
or two in grade school or high school who was an over achiever and seemed like
a goody two shoes. They hated the praise the teacher gave the girl(s) and the
attention she got. Often the teacher was a woman and that just made it worse.
There are still millions of men in America who have a hard time with women
being in authority.
To combat
their fear of a woman like Hillary they will go to any lengths to bring her
down and destroy her. Some fill their Facebook pages with cartoons of her
looking like she is totally unhinged. The strange thing is that these same
people can get all warm and fuzzy about a baby, a dog, or a cat.
Dazed And Confused?
The evidence
is there. It is often most noticeable in small towns and cities throughout the
United States, the abandoned factories with grass growing through the concrete
in the once packed parking lots, the boarded up shops with the signage long
removed. The busiest business in town now is often the local coffee shop.
There was a
time, decades ago, that if going to college wasn’t your thing or not
affordable, an American kid out of high school could get a job with a
reasonable pay cheque at a local factory or mill. Perhaps even work with his
dad.
There are millions of disgruntled blue collar workers across the US. Many feel they have been left behind and they are very angry. They aren’t politicians and weren’t born wealthy. They don’t have any power. It isn’t just the amount of industry that has disappeared in the past 30 years it is the fear of the future. Will they the next to get a pink slip?
There are millions of disgruntled blue collar workers across the US. Many feel they have been left behind and they are very angry. They aren’t politicians and weren’t born wealthy. They don’t have any power. It isn’t just the amount of industry that has disappeared in the past 30 years it is the fear of the future. Will they the next to get a pink slip?
They often
don’t have many choices. If they are lucky they might be able to get a job
working for the city. They may be able to get 10 or 12 bucks an hour at Home
Depot. Some of the younger ones leave town and move to a part of the US with a
better economy. Other young people in these communities join the armed services
almost as a last resort.
Money and the
lack of it is the biggest cause of the breakup of marriages. Low paying jobs
can affect a person’s self-esteem. There often is profound bitterness and it
isn’t just about the availability of decent paying jobs.
The city or
town they live in was once almost entirely white. For some time now there have
been more visible minorities living in the community. Some are Mexican illegals
whose kids are attending local schools. A lot of the illegals will work at
labour jobs for very low wages. Usually they are paid under the table in cash
and they don’t have taxes taken off of their pay cheques like people with
regular jobs do. What are they doing being in the US? They aren’t citizens.
Angry people
look for ways to vent and they have found it in talk radio. Mayhem and panic
sells. There are lots of right wing radio talk show hosts who are quite willing
to fan the flames for a large disgruntled group of people. Blaming the federal
government is an easy thing to start with. Racism is another common theme.
Sometimes it is masked a bit but the angry mass can recognize the dog whistles.
The ideas that religion in the US is under attack or that Dems want to take
people’s guns away creates additional fears. Hating Hillary Clinton becomes a
passion.
A lot of
these people used to be called “rednecks”. They have nothing but distain for
anything considered to be intellectual thought. Most of their tastes are quite
simple. Beer over wine, Country Music over Hip Hop, NASCAR over Formula 1,
jeans and tees over suits, Bar-B-Q over sushi, USA! USA! over humility.
With their
fears stoked and being on the bottom rung in terms of personal success,
desperation has set in. For some violence is an option. Some have even joined
militia groups. It shouldn’t be any surprise that the KKK and other White
Supremacists are part this group that wants upheaval instead of the status quo.
So why have
they decided to be part of the Republican Party? Because the Republican Party
doesn’t care how crazy their followers are as long as they are on their side.
The Democratic Party has their progressive base that wants to make America more
equitable but they have zero toleration for racists, homophobes, or
misogynists.
Dispelling The Beliefs Of The Trump
Morons
Make America Great Again?
Just what
does this mean? What time in America’s history is better than now? Was it The
Great Depression years? Was it the 2nd Word War Years when thousands
of American soldiers were killed and rationing was a part of how Americans
lived? Was it the 1950s when American kids were taught to hide under their
school desks if the Russians dropped a bomb or when Jim Crow laws were still in
effect in the US South? Was it the Viet Nam years when 50,000 American soldiers
lost their lives? Maybe Trump is talking about the Bill Clinton years when the
economy was sound, the debt reduced, and most American soldiers remained within
the US?
Illegal Immigrants?
Most
Americans would agree that foreigners should not be able to enter the US
illegally. It is pretty obvious why there are 11 million and more illegal
Mexicans in the US. Even the low wages there are paid in the US, usually under
the table, are far more money than they could ever make back home. Mexicans
will often do work like picking crops that most Americans would never even
consider.
Trump has
been all over the place on illegal immigrants over the last several years
including stating that he didn’t want to break up families. He opened his
campaign by saying Mexico was sending rapists to the US. It was red meat for
the rednecks and they ate it up.
Trump’s own
wife, Melania, worked illegally in the US before getting her papers. Hundreds
of illegal Polish immigrants worked on demolishing the old building that stood
where Trump Tower now stands. They were easily identifiable because they didn’t
wear hard hats. They worked 12 hour shifts and were paid so purely that many of
them lived on the site. Trump’s resort in Florida, Mar-a-lago, has hired
hundreds of foreign workers.
Virtually no
American business is in any jeopardy if they hire illegal immigrants. 11
million of them aren’t sitting around twiddling their fingers. They work on
construction sites, hotels, anywhere that will use them for low cost labour. If
they get injured on the job they are out of luck as far as coverage goes. They
end up in the emergency rooms of hospitals and taxpayers pick up the tab.
Over 600.000
employers in the US use e-verify when hiring new employees. Many employers want
to know if applicants have criminal records. E-verify could be made mandatory
and the authorities could be notified if an illegal immigrant applies for a job
but the Republican run congress refuses to discuss the matter or making it a
criminal offense to knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
Republicans
have a long history of wanting low taxes for businesses and they and others
have no problem with not collecting taxes on illegal’s pay cheques. Let someone
else pay is the meme.
Many illegals
that pick fruit and vegetables are only needed at particular times of the year.
Stricter laws could require them to go back to Mexico when they are not needed.
Enforcing a law like this would mean that these workers would not be able to
bring their families to the US but they could still send money home improving
their family’s lives.
The Wall?
A wall works
in Israel but it is a small country. Most illegal Mexican immigrants don’t come
to the US by sneaking across barren country in the middle of the night. They
simply drive across the border or come to the US under the guise of being
tourists. There are about 350 million Mexican border crossings yearly. Trump
says that Mexico will pay for the wall and that it will be “huge”. It’s just
bullshit. If the wall was 12 feet underground, tunnels 15 feet underground
would be constructed.
American Jobs Going To Other
Countries?
Maybe Trump’s
followers don’t know what the Republican Party they are voting for stands for?
The Republican Party has always been on the side of Corporate America and the
very wealthy. Corporate America has a long history of not caring about the
American worker. Years ago the big US car company’s used to hire people to beat
up workers if they went on strike. Mine owners never cared if coal miners got
black lung. 100 years ago it was common to find 12 year olds working in mines.
The last
Republican to run for president, Mitt Romney, owned a business called Bain
Capital. One of the company’s frequent practices was to buy businesses in
financial difficulty, sell off the assets, fire workers who had been with the
company for years, and ship the jobs and equipment overseas where they could
pay the workers lower wages.
Hewlett
Packard has call centers all over the world, including India, that service
their US customers. Apple i-phones are all made in foreign countries. These are
just a couple of examples. Corporate America could give a rat’s ass what
happens to people who lose their jobs.
A US owned air
conditioner manufacturer named Carrier had 56 billion dollars in revenue in
2015. They are very profitable but decided that they weren’t profitable enough
and laid off most of their American workers and shipped the jobs to Mexico. 
Trump says he
would stop this kind of thing if he becomes president. A president doesn’t have
the ability on his own to change how corporations run their businesses. It
would be very unlikely if Trump became president that he could get congress to
change the rules. They have been bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists.
Trump is also
a terrible example of keeping jobs in the US. Some of his buildings have been
built with Chinese steel. His clothing line is manufactured in China, Honduras,
Viet Nam and India. Most of his furniture line is produced in Turkey.
What is a bit
confusing is that Trump’s followers blame the federal government and the
Democrats instead of the real culprits. The federal government can’t dictate
how a corporation runs its business.
Those
deserted factories that dot the American landscape and the boarded up shops on
Main Street didn’t happen overnight. It goes back 30 years ago and longer. The
local hardware store has been replaced by a Home Depot or a Lowes. The
neighbourhood drugstore has been replaced by the Walgreen’s chain. The local
coffee shop has been replaced by Starbucks. The local grocery store has been
replaced by Costco. The local clothing store has been replaced by Wal-Mart.
NAFTA has
often been cited as one of the main reasons many blue collar jobs have been
lost in the US over the past 20 years. It is estimated that close to 1 million
jobs were lost and most of them went to Mexico. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into
law but most of the votes to get the bill passed came from Republicans in
Congress. Democrats voted against it 156 to 102. Republicans voted for it 132
to 43. In the Senate Democrats voted for it 27 to 26 and Republicans voted for
it 34 to 12.
Wages have
been driven down. Wealth has shifted dramatically. In the last 30 years the
middle class has lost 30% of its wealth. The 400 richest Americans have more
wealth than 61% of the rest of Americans combined. In some ways it is like
living in the 1930s again when working people were in distress and went to the
movies and saw rich people in tuxedos and furs being driven around in
limousines. Things today are not nearly as bad as the Great Depression but
millions watch the Kardashians and the Real Housewives of whatever city and
some wonder just what value there is in people being so rich that all they seem
to do is quarrel with one another about petty things while contributing nothing
to society.
Some people
like to say that anything is possible in America. A person can sometimes rise
from nothing and become very rich. The question that needs to be asked is how
rich is enough? Is having endless riches for a few more important than the
quality of most American’s lives? It should be in country where people care
about one another but sadly it often isn’t.
The Dems Want To Take Away American’s Guns?
This is more
pure bullshit by Republicans and Trump. The Democratic Party has never talked
about taking people’s guns away even though there are a lot of people who have
guns that shouldn’t. What the Dems have talked about is having guns registered
so when the police go to a house on a domestic dispute that they know somewhat
what they are dealing with. The Dems are also against guns being sold on-line
or from a car trunk without the buyer and seller having to fill out a form
identifying the parties in the transaction and a background check being made.
Most
Democratic politicians are also against the sale of high powered rifles with
large clips that hold up to 100 bullets. These are the guns that have been used
in mass shootings including at grade schools and high schools all over the US.
You don’t use a rifle like this to shoot wild animals. Who has ever heard of a
home owner defending himself from a home invasion by firing off 100 shots in a
few short minutes? It just doesn’t happen.
American’s Religious Beliefs are Under
Attack?
This is just
more Republican bullshit. Church leaders still have carte blanche to bilk their
followers while being tax exempt.
Abortion?
Trump has
spoken about how an unborn baby of almost 9 months can be ripped out of a
woman’s womb. Less than 1% of abortions happen in the last trimester and they
occur either because the life of the mother is in jeopardy or because the baby
has problems that wouldn’t see it live very long or it is missing things that
are needed to sustain a normal life. Women should have the right to control
their own bodies.
Trump told
MSNC’s Chris Mathews that he thought women who have abortions should be punished.
Trump Speaks His Mind and Identifies
With Struggling Americans?
The only
person Donald Trump identifies with is himself and his enormous ego. Living in
an apartment filled with European art and French period furniture is not
something most Americans can identify with. There is nothing in Trump’s home that
reflects America. Average Joes and Jills don’t have their own bullshit made up
family crest either. They also weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths
as he was.
The average
working stiff hasn’t declared bankruptcy 6 times or written off a 920 million
dollar business loss in one year. If the average working stiff went bankrupt
they would find a bailiff’s notice on their house and a tow truck in their
driveway within days.
Working
American pay taxes but Trump with high priced lawyers and accountants has avoided
paying millions in taxes. Many American families have relatives who have served
in the US military. Nobody in Trump’s family, past or present, has. The average
American doesn’t eat pizza with a fork either. What working stiff wears a suit
with a baseball cap?
Where was
Trump all those years in helping out the little guy? He left many small
contractors high and dry and didn’t pay some a dime. Some of the ones he did
pay did not receive all they were owed. Trump’s one concern all of his adult
life is getting as much wealth as he could.
The real reason
he has run for president is that he can’t get enough attention. At 70 years of
age he can’t chase women any more. He’s a jowly old fart now. Could anyone
imagine him being locked to the White House for the next 4 years?
The average
American doesn’t belong to private golf course or spend their time with
billionaires and famous people either.
But this is
the guy who is going to lead struggling Americans to a bright future? I don’t
think so.
Obamacare?
Trump has
promised to kill Obamacare on day 1 if he is elected. His party agrees with
him. They promise to replace it with something much better. In 6 years they
haven’t been able to describe what it is they are offering other than saying
there would be more competition. Maybe they don’t know that there really only 6
major health care insurers in the US and that it is a cartel with anti-trust
exemption. No other American business other than professional baseball has
anti-trust exemption. They don’t compete. They just divide things up. The
biggest Us healthcare insurance company has 75 million customers. They aren’t
too worried about competition.
World Affairs?
Trump says he knows more about how to deal with ISIS than US generals. He has figured all this out by watching his big screen TV. Trump has suggested that it might be a good idea that Japan, South Korea, and even Saudi Arabia have nuclear arms. He has threatened to back out of NATO. He scares the crap out of America’s allies. Over and over he has proven that he really doesn’t know much about the world other than where some really nice golf courses are.
Trump says he knows more about how to deal with ISIS than US generals. He has figured all this out by watching his big screen TV. Trump has suggested that it might be a good idea that Japan, South Korea, and even Saudi Arabia have nuclear arms. He has threatened to back out of NATO. He scares the crap out of America’s allies. Over and over he has proven that he really doesn’t know much about the world other than where some really nice golf courses are.
In the last
few weeks he has mocked the American generals for announcing in advance that
the Iraqi city of Mosul would be under siege. He can’t believe that the US
military would do this. The fact is that Mosul sits on a flat plain and it
would be impossible to hide 30,000 Iraqi troops. Many Iraqis are hostages in
Mosul so it isn’t a bad idea that they are prepared for an invasion. Maybe some
of them can hide somewhere until it is safe to come out?
He faults
Hillary Clinton for the US attacking Libya even though he once wanted to bomb
the crap out of the country.
Trump changes
his mind on foreign affairs and domestic affairs as a regular pattern. It
doesn’t make that much difference when he doesn’t have any power but if he did
he could start a war with just a few of his crazy twitters.
Remembering What Trump Has Said In The
Last 16 Months
Trying to
document the crazy things Trump has said in the past 16 months is a daunting
task. It would take up pages and pages here just listing those he has insulted.
Here are just a few of the high-lights….
