Hillary vs. Bernie, Trump’s Running Mate and Taxes

First:
Hillary has finally beaten Bernie in the race for delegates and locked up her spot as the Democratic nominee. As such, all the Bernie fans are taking to social media to vent their feelings of disillusionment and loss. I am not one of those people.

Bernie had tons of great amazing progressive ideas that would really move this nation in the right direction. However, there’s no way in hell he could’ve executed any of them once he got into office. Hillary has been the right choice since the beginning. She works hard. She knows how to get things done in Washington. She’ll make a good President. Not a great one, but a solid leader for the next four years and the best choice we have as a Nation. Real question is, will some of Bernie’s great ideas rub off on Hillary and the rest of the Democratic Party?

We should all pray that the Democratic Party is intelligent enough to understand why so many people came together behind Bernie's ideas and can work to make those ideas an integral part of what the Democratic Party strives to accomplish in the years ahead. Investments in higher education, equal social mobility opportunity for all those willing to work for it and the reduction in Washington's reliance on special interest group's money (ahem, bribery). Progress on any of those in the next 4 years would be incredible. Granted, that last one is tricky for both Democrats and Republicans alike.

Still, for those who are so upset about the Potus nominees, have we all forgotten we still have an abysmally dysfunctional Congress that we need to replace and send back to work? Those elections are going to be far more important to our collective future as a nation.

Second:
Trump should choose Hillary as his running mate in the election. Proclaim that when he wins, he’s decided to get rid of partisanship and unite the two parties and the country. Now there’s a ticket I could vote for, plus, I still haven’t ruled out the idea that Trump is really just a Democratic plant. He and Bill Clinton just decided it would be a hoot to see him run as a Republican and lay waste to that mess of an organization starting from the rotten core inside and working his way out. I’m not entirely sure he actually planned on winning and maybe doesn’t even want to be the President. Could be a strong argument as to why he seems to be sabotaging his own campaign lately.

Last but not least:
I saw an interesting piece about America being one of only two Nations in the world to tax their expatriate citizens living and working abroad in other countries. It’s the US and tiny east African, Eritrea.

I’m not sure I disagree with the idea of taxing expatriates overall, but certainly I disagree with the extent to which we’re taxing them. Unless they want to give up their US citizenship, these citizens should have to pay a nominal placeholder fee to help maintain the country to which they pledge allegiance and plan to return to one day.

Additionally, the 'welfare, welfare, and other' comment is way off base. Unless by welfare, the author means all the tax cuts we hand out to the billionaires in the form of capital gains. Yes, US spending is out of control and Congress needs to start cutting those programs that aren’t working and retooling those that aren't delivering the ROI that was promised to society when they were rolled out. Why the Republicans always want to focus on some irrelevantly small or worse yet essential piece of the pie when they look to cut taxes these days defies all logic and common sense. If we really want to cut American tax rates, let's reel in the absurd military spending. Honestly, how many golden parachutes do US taxpayers need to keep buying for the c-suite elite at Boeing, Halliburton, etc...?

The US doesn’t need to apologize to Japan for the Atomic Bombs

Following President Barack Obama’s visit to Japan this past week, I got into a rather heated discussion with an ivy-league millennial b-school student friend of mine.  Said Millennial kept arguing that it was a travesty that no one from the US was ever tried or held accountable for the ‘war crime’ of dropping atomic bombs in Japan at the end of WWII and at the very least we should offer an apology. 

First off, let’s disregard for a moment the fact that the MORONs at Fake (Fox) News, CNN and other media outlets screwed up yet again and are continuing to LIE to their viewers and readers by reporting (sorry, can’t really even bring myself to call what those overpaid fools do reporting anymore, how about…) writing that the President was apologizing for actions in WWII.  In truth President Obama did NO SUCH THING, he apologized only for the recent incident involving a US Marine who admitted to raping and killing a 20 year old Japanese woman. 

Secondly, said Millennial is dead wrong and here’s why…  The atomic bombing of Japan in WWII was not nearly as morally reprehensible as a war crime when you consider we were only responding in kind.  Germany bombed cities and civilians all over Europe.  Japan bombed cities and civilians all over China.  We simply came back and responded in kind, just with significantly more force.  And we even provided them the courtesy of forewarning. 

“Bombing of Chongqing; 18 Feb 1938-23 Aug 1943; the temporary Chinese capital Chongqing was the target of a long series of aerial attacks by both Japanese Army and Japanese Navy aircraft beginning in early 1938. These attacks were meant to serve two purposes: to destroy Chinese civilian morale, and to soften defenses for the planned offensive of Sichuan province. Of the many raids of various sizes, the larger ones generally came in the spring of 1941, some of which killed thousands of civilians in single days. An estimated 11,000 bombs were dropped by the Japanese, most of which were incendiary bombs. Over 10,000 Chinese were killed, most of whom were civilians.” – C. Peter Chen, ww2db.com

“Bombing of Nanjing; 15 Aug 1937-31 Dec 1937; Bombing of Nanjing, the capital of China, began in late Aug 1937. On 21 Sep, the Japanese Army Air Service under Prince Naruhiko ordered a renewed aerial campaign against the city. The residential districts in southern Nanjing suffered heavy damage in late Sep, with the greatest loss on 25 Sep when Japanese bombers made 95 sorties between 0930 and 1630 hours, dropping 500 bombs and causing 600 civilian casualties. During this aerial campaign, power plants, water works, the radio station, and the Central Hospital were also targeted. Air raids on Nanjing began to cease as the Battle of Nanjing began in Dec 1937.” – C. Peter Chen, ww2db.com

And those are just 2 instances, there are many more examples.

What if we hadn't chosen to drop the bomb and Japan and Germany turned things around and won the war?  Would that be better for humanity if no war crime had been committed in that instance?  I agree that it was a horrible act and came with a horrible loss of civilian life, but I also believe there is a grey area, a moral cost/benefit trade-off that exists in all areas of life, but especially during times of war.  What are you willing to trade in exchange for not having dropped the bomb?  200 lives, 2000 lives, 20,000 lives, 200,000 lives from a war that continues years further than it did?  Then what about freedom and democracy itself?  Should the US have lost the war rather than take a path they knew could win it only because that one act is horrible?  Somewhere in there the benefit of not dropping those bombs is far outweighed by the costs of that inaction.

How can you truly apologize if you believe it was horrible, but possibly necessary at the time?  The apology is entirely hollow if you say you’re sorry, but at the same time believe that without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, you would make the same choice all over again.  The United States should not be apologizing when the real blame lies with the Japanese leadership and the decisions of the Japanese prince and government at the time of WWII.  Those actions forced our hand and required our response. We had no way of knowing the devastation and death toll would be as high as it ended up being.  We had a new weapon.  We only had time to test it once thanks to an ongoing world war that someone, ahem Japan & Germany, started.  We wanted the war to end, so we used it.  We didn’t know about nuclear fallout and the impact the radiation would have for generations to come.  We made the best decision available with the facts that we had at the time.  Are you asking for an apology only for the fact that it was much more destructive than the US had originally estimated?  That I might be ok with, everything else was excuse the pun… a necessary evil.

The Irony of Farmer Welfare

I read this bullshit blog post today from this dairy farmer (Dairy Carrie) complaining about how little they’re paid for milk and how rough life is milking all those cows on the farm.  Well, it set me off…  First off, the US gives roughly $20 billion of our tax dollars to farmers in the form of handouts each year.  And secondly, in general the folks who vote republican and support farm subsidies are the same ones who spend a lot of time ragging on other social safety nets, not to mention that evil ‘socialism’ word in general.  This woman does seem to generally want to do something positive with her blog and facebook accounts, but it’s hard to hear about your ‘hardships’ when you’re flying to conventions every other week and spending all your time on social media.  Hard to imagine where you find the time for all that ‘tough’ farm work…

Here’s what’s really happening…

Corporate Farms = Mom & Dad had a huge piece of property.  Parents die in 1965.  Leave equal parcels to each kid.  Kids decide to lump the land together and form a family owned corporation.  So essentially in South Dakota and other middle states, you have all the land owned by just a few families.  Family business = corporate farm.  The Republicans just renamed that shit so that it sounded better than a few white folks getting super rich and still receiving government handouts in the form of Farm subsidies.  And those families don’t necessarily sell to companies like Cargill.  In many cases if they want to go do something else, they can just rent out the land to companies like Cargill or other farmers for a profit.  The land value alone of each of these family or ‘corporate farm is worth millions.  You’d have to be an utter moron to sell.

My absolute favorite part is that in her post, she makes sure she never discloses actual profits or specifics in any of her replies to comments, even though her real goal is just to ‘educate’ us all about the hardships of her profession.  The statement she’s really making is; Feel bad for me, I’m only making a few thousand dollars in profit this month instead of the usual ten thousand dollars.

Even better, the 30 and 40 year old kids of these owners are living on the farm (mom and dad’s basement) working the land and complaining about how they as farmers make less than a $15 minimum wage.  But it’s a lie.  They’re living room and board free.  Being paid a stipend of $1500 a month and stand to inherit a multimillion dollar fortune when their baby boomer parents finally croak and they inherit the business.  News flash, that’s NOT minimum wage you redneck assholes.  But yeah, having to pay a decent wage to the Hispanics and HS kids working your land would put a dent in that profit from those government checks, wouldn’t it?

And in case you don’t want to take my word for it. 

Dig deeper and educate yourself a little more…

http://www.wsj.com/articles/should-washington-end-agriculture-subsidies-1436757020