Take you pick of which question(s) you would like to answer in the comments section below. This is not a real survey ... just an opportunity to bloviate:
Which was worse for the U.S. -- GWB's invading Iraq ... or BHO's pulling out?
Is the establishment media biased?
What obscure "-stan" country question will be asked of DJT in the next presidential debate?
Are you a nationalist or a globalist?
When will be the next terrorist attack in the U.S.? ... in Europe?
Who is the better VP candidate ... Kaine or Pence?
Should DJT release his tax returns or will Lois Lurner beat him to it?
Is a "tax loss carry-forward" a "tax loophole"?
If HRC is elected, will she be healthy enough to serve?
If DJT wins, will he build the wall? Will Mexico pay for it?
Should HRC release the transcripts of all her Wall Street private meetings?
Is DJT a racist? Is HRC? Is BHO?
Will the Fed raise interest rates in December?
Is Julian Assage a hero or a traitor ... or both?
Is HRC guilty of a felony for mishandling gov't intelligence?
I'll start it off. I correctly predicted that the Fed would not increase interest rates in Sept. to not hurt Hellary's chances. But Dec. is a different story. The market and the economy can take a interest rate increase hit if either candidate wins ... actually better to get ithings out of the way early. Therefore I predict at least a 1/4 of a point increase then.
ReplyDeleteIf it's Trump, probably 1/2 a point ...
DeleteGWB invading was far worse than following a pre-arranged withdrawal. It is rape when you penetrate, not when you pull out.
ReplyDeleteBon mot!
DeleteWhich was worse -- GWB's invading Iraq ... or BHO's pulling out? The invasion under false pretense and without a thought to the consequences is the chief cause of all of our misery over there, not to mention the deaths of hundreds of thousands if civilians. Obama was elected on the promise that he would get out of Iraq. The GWB geniuses who cannot account for $12 billion in Iraq are criminally responsible for funding much of the chaos there. They should be in jail.
DeleteIn the cell next to Hellary and Bill ...
DeleteMedia is inherently subjective. The most accepted sources get the largest following. We individually choose the bias we like best. If you lived in rural Wyoming and only got Fox News on TV, plus the NRA mag and the Weekly Standard in your mailbox, you'd feel there is no bias, just facts. It is watching and reading progressive media and expecting them to be what they are not that is the issue.
ReplyDeleteTrue ... only the establishment media is slowly losing out to the Internet. We'll see where we are in about 5 years.
DeleteHRC will be healthy enough to serve. The pace and the services on the road during an excruciatingly long campaign would wear any of us down.
ReplyDeleteExcept she takes three days off for every one day on. Can she do this as POTU.s?
DeleteThe US Mexico wall is already 580 miles long, about 30% of the whole distance but in the high traffic areas. The Mexicans are very good at tunnels as much as 30' below the surface so you'd have a HUUUGE wall with highways underneath it.
ReplyDeleteThe Israelis have learned how to deal with both.
DeleteHillary's meetings are her business. I am surprised that no one came up with captured video or text from her speeches on Wall Street. There must be some sort of honor code there.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right. Goldman Sachs has forbidden donations to Trump by their suits. I'm sure that they can control leaks on her speeches.
DeleteIf Donald does not come up with IRS submissions that refute the allegations, then he implicitly accepts that they are true. You gotta ask how he not only lost a $1B but that the net of the deals was negative $1B. How did he then have assets enough to get gains the next year?
ReplyDeleteCould it be that he is a good businessman? I wonder where these IRS forms came from? The IRS?
DeleteA "tax loss carry-forward" is a planned "tax loophole", an unintentional characteristic of the tax laws. All legal. But who wrote these tax laws such that your loss can completely wipe out your tax liability for 20 years? It should be more reasonable such as a reduction of your tax liability in any year by up to 50% and expire at 20 years whether or not it was all applied.
ReplyDeleteWhen the D's controlled both houses and the White House did they put this forward? No? Perhaps the D's are now the party of big business and Wall Street? (No need to answer.)
DeleteWhat government intelligence did Hillary mishandle? Specifically? A lot emails but what earth-shaking revelation was in any of that? That said, the work of Wikileaks and Assange, Manning, and such are far more worrisome. They were TRYING to leak the information.
ReplyDeleteAssage didn't reveal anything today at his hyped press conference ... perhaps he saw a drone circling above?
DeleteHow many do i have to go? ;-)
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you ask some topical ones (since the MSM won't)?
Deleteok
ReplyDeleteHow revealing is it that the Senate was almost unanimous in supporting suing a sovereign nation and then many of them saying they really hadn't understood what the consequences might be?
How can anyone say they will bring back the steel industry when China's steel is over producing and consolidating?
Why are we and New Zealand the only countries that allow TV ads fir drugs? Does anyone not know about boner pills? What do children make of that?
Why do US citizens expres that we are becoming a third world country? Have they never visited a real third world country?
What is there left once women artists perform naked and perform sexual acts? Or does that justify hookers and strip clubs?
Why is socialism such a dirty word? Seems like it meshes well with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the the people, for the people, by the people.
When did the word reality get away from...well, reality... and become enhanced, artificial, or virtual, as well as tightly scripted reality on TV shows?
"Why is socialism such a dirty word? Seems like it meshes well with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the the people, for the people, by the people." I think that many non-Western European socialist countries too often become dictatorships ... like Cuba, Venezuela, most of post war Eastern Europe, even China today. Also pure socialism seldom produces real wealth (China being a modern exception). Without Capitalistic wealth production, countries sink into anarchy. As I remember it, the Massachusetts Pilgrams were socialists until they realized that this is why they were starving to death.
DeleteIt is only those socialist countries that allow capitalism to co-exist that have any modicum of success. Read Adam Smith again.
DeleteDid you read where Joe Biden is complaining that Socialist Bernie Sanders is wealthier than he is?
DeleteI did not mention communism. And I did not diss capitalism. Democracies that are very capitalist and very socialist such as South Korea, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Canada and the Netherlands have broad healthcare, education, and infrastructure coverage while still maintaining strong, expanding economies. And happy citizens. Go figure...
ReplyDeleteIt is OK that Bernie is wealthier than Joe. Joe has about $500K while Bernie has about a million. Clearly these are not guys who were on the take. As I near 70 years old, I am comforted that i am in the wealth same range they are.
Socialists don't have to be poor. But being a proud that you are a billionaire that pays no federal income taxes while sitting in gold-inlaid furniture... and then declared a genius is just wrong.
The fact that the social democracies that you list can spend so much on healthcare, education and infrastructure may have something to do with the fact that they look to us to protect them? But somehow they are not creating wealth like they might with less nanny-statism.
DeleteYou have on one point there. We should stop protecting everyone. It is not ours to decide who owns what in the China Sea. And we are not responsible for everything that happens on the Middle East. Having far and away the largest military budget, the greatest number of foreign bases, and the largest navy does not seem to correlate with the military's feeling "depleted."
DeleteI do not consider healthcare, education and infrastructure to be nanny-statism.
Delete"We should stop protecting everyone" -- careful ... you are beginning to sound a little like DJT ...
DeleteAs for creating wealth, therein lies the great problem: wealth for who? The captains of industry and those that gain money from investments seem short-sighted and put the money into dark, secret locations.
DeleteI like to take my positions cafeteria style. On that point I agree. A lot.
DeleteThat's the beauty of being a centrist.
The Communist Party of China is pure socialism? Marx would freak out.
ReplyDeleteTo me, Communism is Socialism but with the state owning everything. Using that measure China is less Communist than Socialist. If they could adopt a few of our Constitutional amendments then they would look more like Western Europe ... still a few steps from full-throated democratic capitalism.
DeleteAnd I also get the impression that the privately owned companies in China are doing much much better than the publically owned ones. Is this a lesson that the left needs to relearn?
DeleteWhat does 'much, much better' mean? Generating more wealth for their owners? Like Shrekli or Mylan... Some aspects of society are best not being highly profitable such as prisons, drugs, insurance, hospitals, and education.
DeleteAnd the railroads and the steel industries ... like in Britain in the late 40s? Or the "green" crony capitalism industries of Obummer? What you are proposing is creeping Socialism ... a slippery and dangerous slope.
DeleteCan we put social networking, search engines and electric cars on your list too? Perhaps even confiscate these entrepaneurs' obscene accumulated wealth? Or, because these bozos profess liberalism, they are a protected class of billionaires?
DeleteNo. What they market are goods for arbitrary consumption. If you have the money and want a Tesla or smart phone, get one. If you need first aid, or smooth roadways, or a lesson in accountancy, you should be able to not measure what you can get by your wealth. Anyways, the guys you mention seem to have transcended the quarterly EPS scoring to look to longterm tasks that neither the government or investors care to do: driverless cars, space travel, vaccinating against diseases, mapping exotic diseases and formulas for their vaccines. All billionaires are in a protected class. But what do the boys on Wall Street with their wealth for common good or the advancement of society?
DeleteInteresting that you put trains and steel on that slippery slope. Let's toss in offshore wind farms. We have shown that no matter what we do, a high-speed rail across flatland is beyond our ability to finance or execute, we need to hire European industries to apply their wind-farm construction technology, we ship scrap steel (at what cost?!) all the way to China so that they can build and ship sections back across the ocean for the Bay Bridge cheaper than we can do all that here... Huh? Apparently, unless your projects are military, finance, or oil related, we have no idea how to compete. There are LOT of jobs in those infrastructure projects. It'll take a billionaire with vision to get 'er done.
ReplyDeleteI mention trains and steel because the Brits in a swing left after WWII nationalized both industries. It took them almost ten years to reverse things.
DeleteElon Musk?
DeleteNew thread: Kaine or Pence. Wow! Two grownups with experience and seemingly clean closets. Even when arguing, they were delightfully reminiscent of mature debates from the last millenium.
ReplyDeleteNew thread: bit of a cheat... next terrorist attack will be Brussels.
ReplyDeleteNew topic: Does shingles medicine sell better when they show us the scabby wounds... while we are eating dinner? Can we expect visual displays of hemorrhoids in advertising soon?
ReplyDeleteSometime, yes. There already is a laxative ad that has a graphic of poop going through the colon ...
DeleteOoh!. Positive bowel sounds. Difficult to consider in the abstract. I'll see if I can find it on YouTube before dinner is served.
Delete