Saved- Why?

"Deep feelings."

Ben Carson: President Trump is very different. He has deep feelings of Christian beliefs. He was saved by God for a purpose. The Biden administration had very different belief system.

Wtf is wrong with these people? pic.twitter.com/JcaQWsGzaz

— Ron Smith (@Ronxyz00) September 8, 2025

What may be most amazing about this is, despite tossing "God" and "religion" into some of his speeches now, Trump actually is done with the charade. CBS News reported

At his first inauguration in 2017, Mr. Trump did place his hand on the two Bibles — the family Bible and the Lincoln Bible — when he took the oath of office. Mr. Trump received the family Bible in 1955 to to mark his Sunday Church Primary School graduation at First Presbyterian Church, in Jamaica, Queens, according to Trump's inaugural committee

However, when Donald was inaugurated for his second term

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts directed Mr. Trump to raise his right hand and repeat after him as Mrs. Trump was still approaching with the Bibles. Mrs. Trump arrived next to her husband a moment later, before he began reciting the oath of office.

Mr. Trump's right hand was raised while his left arm stayed by his side as he was sworn in.

Mr. Trump did reference God during his first remarks as the 47th president. "I was saved by God to make America great again," he said in his inaugural address, referencing the assassination attempt on his life over the summer.

With much of the country watching, and many of the remainder certain to see the ceremony on video, Donald couldn't even be bothered to pretend that he believes in Christianity and the book which tells the story of God and the Trinity. He's telling Americans what he believes- or, more accurately, doesn't believe- but Ben Carson and others won't listen.

People laughed when on January 31, 2016, Donald Trump was thwarted only at the last second before he could place cash into the communion plate. 

Not so funny but condescending and more telling was his statement a few months earlier "when we go to church and I drink my little wine.... have my little cracker."  In both Catholic and Protestant traditions, that "little wine" carries major significance, as does that "little cracker," though arguably more in Catholicism. And when Trump added "that's a form of asking for forgiveness," one needn't have been a doctoral candidate in theology to know that the congregant is not requesting forgiveness. The words of Jesus "do this in remembrance of me" might have been a hint. 

Perhaps Donald has changed, chastened by the assassination attempt in June of last year in Butler Pennsylvania or as Carson puts it, "saved by God for a purpose." That purpose, however, was not in evidence on Easter Sunday when Trump tweeted

Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and...

A real journalist, not a Fox News mouthpiece for President Trump, would have asked Dr. Carson how sarcastically referring to  "radical left lunatics" and "the mentally insane" fits in with the the Apostle Paul's admonition that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

That isn't to suggest that Donald doesn't believe in a god of some sort. Unless he's pretending otherwise and putting on a great act, he obviously does not believe in the God of the Old and/or New Testament. He may believe in a supreme being, someone who recognizes Trump's greatness and indispensability.. That God is one whom, Trump has said, he never has asked for forgiveness, though the Apostle John wrote "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." Those are Trump's "deep feelings of Christian beliefs," choosing not to repent because he is perfect. Step aside, Jesus: Donald Trump is the "Chosen One."

Presumably, though, when Dr. Carson claims Trump was "saved by God for a purpose," he means a good and loving purpose. The pretext is that the USA is a great and virtuous country, upon which a loving and all-powerful God will shower with His favor. 

Carson always has been a fervent advocate of forced birth, an abortion opponent so extreme that, in contrast to Donald Trump, he has called for a national ban on abortion. Such an individual would assume that, with Trump having been saved from assassination, God's purpose would have been to raise the nation to the greatness it deserves.

Yet, while statistics vary from year to year and reporting quirks may yield difference numbers for any one year, it is clear that there consistently are over 600,000 elective abortions each year in this country. And God, we are to believe- especially from rabid opponents of the procedure- wants to reward the USA.

So perhaps God did save Trump, though serendipity or an inept gunman, is more likely. But if God did assert his country, to what purpose?  As reward or punishment? Ben Carson himself is yesterday's news. even last decade's news.  However, there are a lot of people who believe- or seem to believe- what he does and if they're never questioned, we won't know what "is wrong with these people"

Share |

A Nearly Good Idea From Ben Carson

"This was the moment," Senator Barack Obama declared in June, 2008 upon clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, for which we will be able to look back and recognize "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Skeptics might note that with the rate of rise of sea levels growing and the spread of terrorism worldwide, Obama was only slightly more prescient than he was humble. Yet, perhaps the planet has begun to heal, we are leaving our "children a world that's better, kindler, and more just," and we are overcoming egomaniacal politicians and creating nirvana.  It could be- Ben Carson is making sense.

Asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about Hillary Clinton's health, Dr. Carson replied

Well, you know, as a physician, physicians and scientists generally will not make a diagnosis based on something that they see from a long distance.  My diagnosis would be that anybody who is elderly should expose their records. And we the people should know what they are. Because it's a very stressful job.  It's not an eight hour-a day job, it's 24/7 and we need to make sure that is taken care of.

I know, I know. Any nominee for President of either major party should release his or her full medical records. It should not be done based on age, not only to avoid age discrimination but because some people are healthy at 80 years of age and others unhealthy at 40.  Still, Carson wisely suggested both Clinton and Trump should release their medical records.

That should be considered a mild rebuke to  Rudy Giuliani, M.D.  The former New York City mayor, who received his medical degree from The University of Nowhere, had argued on GOP TV that he had witnessed "several signs of illness" in the Democratic nominee and added "go online and put down 'Hillary Clinton illness,' take a look at the videos for yourself."







While you are on online, do a Google search for "Rudy Giuliani gay" and gaze upon "field negro: RUDY GIULIANI'S GAY LOVER COMES OUT AND SAYS....."  It may give your computer a virus, but it's "online" and thus must be true. Rudy says so.









Share |

Major Flaw

From the start, the Republican presidential race was viewed as one pitting Establishment candidates against anti-Establishment candidates.   It proved to be an accurate portrayal and as the race has narrowed to three individuals, it is clear that two of the fellows, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, have survived the anti-Establishment lane while John Kasich has emerged from the Establishment lane .

It isn't, of course, black-and-white.  It is by nurture, not nature, by clear intent rather than instinct, that a graduate of two Ivy League schoos (Princeton and Harvard Law), Bush 43 official, law professor, litigator in the US Supreme Court and United States Senator has come to be seen as bucking the system. Obversely, John Kasich told an NBC reporter at the close of one of the primaries that he is not of or opposed to the Establishment but rather representing the "John Kasich lane."

Still, there is a clear distinction, and an even clearer one between two of the now-departed candidates, Ben Carson and Lindsey Graham.  However, recent television appearances by the two highlight the false dichotomy between an "establishment" candidate, as Graham clearly was portrayed, and an "anti-" candidate, as the somewhat more successful Carson portrayed himself as.

Politico reports

Ben Carson spent the majority of his time on the set of "The View" on Thursday defending Donald Trump and his endorsement of the Republican presidential front-runner, who at one point compared Carson to a child molester.

“Sir, I hate to ask this question, but you have aligned yourself with the man who has bashed women, made countless racist remarks, and you’re Ben Carson; why would you align yourself with that?” co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked the retired neurosurgeon.

Carson responded, saying on multiple occasions that “there is no perfect person” but that Trump has a history of inclusion, referring specifically to his allowing African-Americans and Jews into his Palm Beach clubs. “He insisted on Jews and blacks and helped to break that open,” Carson said, as Goldberg chuckled incredulously.

“So has he said some things that I wouldn’t say or that you wouldn’t say? Of course,” Carson said.

The panelists then discussed Trump’s run-in with the federal government in the 1970s, when the Justice Department sued him alleging racial discrimination. Trump later settled without acknowledging wrongdoing.

“I will put it this way,” Carson said. “I have met a lot of his employees, including African-Americans, and they have nothing but good things to say. Somebody who’s hired as many people as he has hired, and you can find very few people who have anything negative to say.”

Carson also had nice things to say about Trump’s family, noting that he knows the children of other wealthy people who, he said, have been raised worse.

Carson didn't ask Goldberg to cite the "racist" remarks. Nor did he explain that had Trump been required to acknowledge wrongdoing, he might have balked and been found not to be culpable, instead of simply buying his way out of the charge.

That would have been arguing on the merits of the case. Instead,he claimed that everyone else does it too, that Trump's employees won't criticize him (as if most employees are free to blast their employer), and that he is a swell family man, as if that will matter when he tries to bully (or make love to) his friend Vladimir Putin.

In everyday discourse/parlance, Carson is what is known as a "weasel." His ilk is also known as a "politician."

Contrast that with Lindsey Graham, who appeared Wednesday on The Daily Show (first part of the segment, video below).   Just this winter, Graham had famously joked "if you're a Republican and your choice is Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in a general election, it's the difference between poisoned or shot" and "if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you." Less famously, he labeled the Texas Senator "an opportunist" and maintained the latter on foreign policy is "just as wrong as Obama, if not worse."

Soon after, he endorsed Ted Cruz.  If Graham were as disingenuous a politician as Carson, he would have pointed to whatever minorities or women the Texan has on his staff; maintained that Cruz gives gifts to his aides on Administrative Professionals Day; and defends his wife whenever she's criticized.

Instead

When asked about his support of Cruz, Graham said that his change of heart "tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump."

Graham, who was once in the presidential race himself, endorsed Cruz ahead of the AIPAC conference in Washington last week.

"He was my fifteenth choice so what can I say?" Graham added.

And everything came back to Donald Trump.

What do you like about Cruz, Noah asked the senior senator. "He's not Trump," Graham replied.

"He's not completely crazy," Graham said of his colleague, adding "that works in Washington."

Cruz virtually stated he preferred being poisoned than shot. Oh, wait- not virtually:

Noah then aired a clip of Graham being asked in January whether he preferred Cruz or Trump as the nominee during a news conference on Capitol Hill.

“It’s like being shot or poisoned, what does it really matter?” Graham said.

Graham explained the comment, telling The Daily Show host, “Donald is like being shot in the head.”

On Cruz being the “poison,” the senator said, “You might find an antidote to the poisoning — I don’t know, but maybe there’s time.”

Not only is it an honest explanation, but an accurate one, for the best reason to support Ted Cruz over Donald Trump (or Trump over Cruz) is to choose the lesser of two evils.  Graham has done so in a manner befitting the sense of irony and self-detachment identified by Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.  As a candidate, Graham was caught in a bind:  a politician charged with being a typical Washington politician, yet far more forthcoming than a Dr. Carson or other anti-politician poseurs.



 

                         
                                                   HAPPY EASTER






Share |

Looking For Something For Nothing

NBC News reports

A former Mexican president had some tough words when asked about GOP candidate Donald Trump's much-touted plan to build a border wall that he says will be paid for by Mexico.

"We are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall! And it's going to be completely useless," said former Mexican president Felipe Calderón when asked about this at the AmCham Egypt for Business Conference on Sunday.

Calderón had harsh words about the Republican presidential race during his conversation with CNBC's Hadley Gamble, saying it was "incredible" that quite an "admirable society" like the U.S. had candidates like Trump.

"No offense, no offense to America. So Donald Trump … is ambitious but not exactly very well-informed man, I don't want to say ignorant, but he is not very well informed," said Calderón.







Donald Trump is ignorant? Calderon ought to check out a few of the other GOP candidates, including Ben Carson, who believes the Affordable Care Act is "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery" and "we're living in a Gestapo age.'"   And then there is Carly Fiorina, still trying to produce that tape of Planned Parenthood no one has yet found. We not only have candidates like Trump, we have ones more reprehensible (Fiorina) than him and more divorced from reality (Carson) .
Mexican politicians such as Calderon have to speak out, not only because Trump's vow is a swipe against Mexicans, but the suggestion that the government of Mexico would pay to have its residents blocked from entering the USA is silly.

Except that it's not, because it was a spectacular tactic on the part of the real estate mogul. It combines fear of The Other with the principle most securely binding the Republican popular base with the donor base: not paying for anything that doesn't involve weapons.

Imagine that- we keep Mexicans out and do it for free!( In previous decades, it was "cut taxes and balance the budget..)  As Bill Maher has pointed out endlessly, we simply will not pay for anything anymore. We send our youth off to war, but then refuse to devote sufficient resources to treat them when they come back wounded, broken physically and emotionally. President Obama proposes a $10 per barrel tax on oil to be phased in over five years, creating jobs, promoting clean vehicle research and deployment, replenishing the Highway Trust Fund, and providing improved public transportation. House Speaker Paul Ryan declares it "dead on arrival"... until the next bridge collapses- and maybe even then.

Increasingly, Trump and other GOP candidates, intimidated by attention to their Hispanic phobia while aware that terrorism sells, have cleverly framed their opposition to immigration reform in the context of terrorism.  Fail to secure the (southern) border, they suggest, and ISIS will practically be in our bedrooms.

"As someone who has access to very sensitive information, I can tell you for a fact that ISIS understands our legal immigration system and is seeking to exploit it," claims one GOP presidential aspirant, one somewhat acquainted with reality, if somewhat repetitive and frightened of the governor of New Jersey. So it's not only Donald Trump who is irrational, and not only Mexicans Republicans dislike. They won't pay for anything worth paying for, and Donald Trump is only the loudest voice among them.








Share |

The Actions Which Don't Match The Rhetoric

It has been two days since the convention of the Republican Jewish Coalition, thus two days since Donald Trump was asked whether Jerusalem should remain undivided and the capital of Israel. He is said to have remarked "I don't know that Israel has the commitment to make it," spurring Zeke Miller to observe "you can hear a pin drop."

Context is everything, or at least a lot, so it's difficult to determine whether the crowd believed that Trump wanted Israel's confidence to flag or that he merely expected it to occur.  However, the thought process was clearer and less complicated when, as Scott Eric Kaufman wrote

Trump spoke about the infamous $43 million gas station in Afghanistan, asking the crowd, “How many of you think you could have done it for less?” His question was greeted with silence, so he moved on. “I’m a negotiator, like you folks,” he said while discussing what he considers to be the failures of the recent nuclear deal struck with Iran.






Rarely does a politician so explicitly reveal anti-Semitism (video, above), but then part of Trump's appeal always has been that of someone not a career politician.  Further, Jews in the USA do not face the constant danger that the State of Israel does, nor do they- unlike Israel- confront forces determined to annihilate them.

The GOP candidates have kept silent about Trump's lukewarm remarks about Israel before the RJC., odd given that their comments about President Obama's policy in the region have included (from the first, second, and fourth debates respectively):



The president can’t tell you what we got. I’ll tell you what the world got. The world has a burgeoning nuclear power that didn’t, as the Soviets, say “we might defend ourselves in a war.”

What the Iranians have said is, “we will wipe Israel off the face of the map, and we will bring death to America.” When someone points a gun at your head and loads it, by God, you ought to take them seriously, and we need to take that seriously. (M. Huckabee)

You know, we turned our back on Israel, our ally. You know, and a situation like that, of course Obama’s not going to be able to do anything. I would shore up our military first, because if you don’t get the military right, nothing else is going to work. (B. Carson)

The next thing I intend to do is instruct the Department of Justice and the IRS to start (sic) persecuting religious liberty, and then intend to cancel the Iran deal, and finally move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. (T. Cruz)

***********

As it relates to Iran, it’s not a strategy to tear up an agreement. A strategy would be how do we confront Iran? And, the first thing that we need to do is to establish our commitment to Israel which has been altered by this administration. And, make sure that they have the most sophisticated weapons to send a signal to Iran that we have Israel’s back. (JEB!)

If they don’t go with us, we slap the sanctions on anyway. If they fund these radical groups that threaten Israel and all of the West, then we should rip up the deal and put the sanctions back on. (J. Kasich)

On day one in the Oval Office, I will make two phone calls, the first to my good friend to Bibi Netanyahu to reassure him we will stand with the state of Israel. (C. Fiorina)

***********

In the groups — in the countries of the Gulf states of Bahrain, the Cleveland Clinic is opening an operation. Clearly we see the same with them. And in Israel, we have no better ally in the world, and no more criticizing them in public, we should support them. (J. Kasich)

His calculation in the Middle East is that he has seen what this president has done, which is nothing, the president has no strategy, our allies in the region do not trust us. For goodness sake, there is only one pro-American free enterprise democracy in the Middle East, it is the state of Israel.

And we have a president that treats the prime minister of Israel with less respect than what he gives the ayatollah in Iran. And so our allies in the region don’t trust us. (M. Rubio)



However, it seems that when it comes to action, support for the tiny nation flags, inasmuch as

Democrats say there’s only one reason that pro-Israel language is not included in the revival of the Export-Import Bank: Mitch McConnell.

The Senate majority leader has been wary of Democratic maneuvering around Israeli politics, and he's recently warned that the minority party might attempt to “get well” with the Jewish community after they backed the nuclear accord with Iran.

Now, senators and Democratic leadership sources say McConnell is taking out his frustrations by rejecting a popular provision that would express the Senate’s support for Israel’s economy and undercut the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestiture and Sanctions campaign. The provision, which has bipartisan support, had been targeted for inclusion in a larger transportation bill.

The news was delivered to Reid in a meeting with McConnell on Monday to game out the end of the year. Reid was furious upon learning that the pro-Israel language was being jettisoned, people close to him said.

The McConnell camp denies the accusation but

Two other Democratic senators blamed McConnell for blocking the language, which would require the Ex-Im Bank to consider whether applicants for loans oppose “policies and actions that are politically motivated" and meant to inhibit "commercial relations specifically with citizens or residents of Israel."

GOP candidates frequently use questions about Iran, Syria, or ISIL to declare their undying love for Israel.  Of course, the uncompromising prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself probably is the object of their affection but the nation itself also garners their unequivocal support in public. That is, until Republican leadership has the opportunity to erode support for a rabidly anti-Zionist, (barely) arguably anti-Semitic, movement.   They then go silent, demonstrating yet again there is little substantial difference between Donald Trump and the rest of the pathetic GOP presidential field.








Share |

Some Ideas, Most Of Them Bad

Maureen Dowd, bowing to enlighten all of us narrow-minded liberals, has "decided  to let my Republican brother offer his red-state soliloquy now,  hoping he'd let me eat my white meat in peace. He-e-e-ere's Kevin."

It turns out that Kevin (pictured below) has very little to add to what we've noticed for months.

Most of the rest is partisan bunk as "Kevin" praises each candidate- Trump, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Bush, and Christie- he mentions, presumably the field of six he considers viable.  Note that the man who cites "the ultimate irony that the Republican field blows the Democrats away on one of their favorite topics — diversity" does not include Carly Fiorina, the only woman.

Kevin appears to believe (realistically) that Marco Rubio ultimately will be the GOP nominee, given that Dowd's brother exults "wait until he starts delivering his speeches in Spanish." That's selling hispanic voters a little short, given that they are likely to be far more concerned about electing a guy from a Party that wants The Other (Hispanics, Arabs, anyone on public subsidies) removed from civil society than they are to be thrilled  by someone speaking Spanish.  Admittedly, Rubio might speak Spanish even while seeking the nomination, as John Ellis Bush has. Good  luck with that.

Unconvincingly, Kevin suggests he wants a President among whose aims is to "protect the homeland and honor the Constitution."  This comes from a guy who believes the candidate who argues  "if we are ever ordered by agovernment authority to personally violate and sin.... we cannot abide by that because government is compelling us to sin" is "whip smart." Whip-smart Rubio may be, but he's not too big on honoring the Constitution.

Kevin says other silly things, believing even that Ben Carson "presents intriguing possibilities as part of the ticket, forcing African-Americans to choose between him and the wife of the man Toni Morrison called our 'first black president.'"  Yes, because voters always base their decision as much on the vice-presidential candidate as on the presidential candidate. Ask two wildly popular vice presidential nominees, Lloyd Bentsen and Ed Muskie, how that turned out.  Note to Kevin:  hispanics and blacks aren't as stupid as you think they are.

If Kevin were not so partisan, he might have figured a few things out.  "Sixty percent of the country does not trust" Hillary Clinton, he asserts, "and her emails are currently under F.B.I.review for potential national security breaches."  A moment later the same fellow asks, remarkably, "O'Malley: Does anyone know his reason for running?"  As a standard-grade, Establishment liberal, O'Malley considers himself insurance against Clinton's candidacy blowing up, as someone who evidently believes it might ought to realize.

If "Kevin" were only Kevin, the brother of a frequently annoying and snarky columnist, it wouldn't matter.  But when he explains Trump's appeal as partially "We are tired of apologies for America’s exceptionalism,"  he taps into something significant.  The slogan of the Trump campaign is simple: "Make America Great Again."  Somehow, "America" (presumably the USA, rather than Latin America or South America), though exceptional, is not great.

"Make America Great Again" defines the country's greatness in terms of  who is president, rather than enduring qualities of liberty, justice, constitutionalism, openness to outsiders, and concern about our own citizens. It is an enervating principle for many American conservatives and explains much of the hostility toward President Obama and to Democrats and progresssives generally.

Consequently, Kevin may be accurately reflecting Republican sentiment in his essay. But as he ends by wishing a "Happy Thanksgiving," so may we be thankful that despite Citizens United and voter suppression in GOP-dominated states, a semblance of democracy still exists in the USA and one of the guys he admires probably will be rejected by the voters in 12 months.




                                           HAPPY THANKSGIVING







Share |

We Have A Winner!

After each debate, the "Politico Caucus," which Politico describes as a "bipartisan survey of the top activists, strategists and operatives in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," declares "winners" and "losers."

On the whole, Rubio, Bush, Paul, Cruz, and Fiorina are perceived to have done well in Milwaukee and only Dr. Carson and, especially, John Kasich, to have laid an egg.  That's not surprising because of the ample time given the candidates to give their stump speech. Occasionally, a moderator would tell the candidate he or she went over the time allotted, after which the candidate would continue because, hey, no one wants to be Kellyed. 

Politico wrote

several respondents from both sides of the aisle who said Rubio had a good night also argued that while they saw him as the winner, it wasn’t a blow-out performance — other candidates also had solid showings.

“Several candidates had a good night, but Rubio had strong substance and presentation,” a South Carolina Republican said. “Jeb was probably good enough to stop some of his bleeding.”

Added a Nevada Democrat who selected Rubio, “Rubio, Trump, Bush, Paul and Cruz all seem to have held their own, but I wouldn't say there was a clear winner.”

The runner-ups for best performance, according to the survey, were Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina with 12 percent each, followed by Rand Paul with 8 percent and Ted Cruz and Ben Carson at 6 percent, according to Republican insiders.

“Jeb was most in need of a strong performance, and he was much improved,” a New Hampshire Republican said. “At a minimum, he has bought himself more time to reset and start advancing.”

Cruz was the favorite of several non-partisan participants, one of whom, from New Hampshire, called him the “most articulate” of all the candidates, and another, from Nevada, called him “always focused, on message.”

Really,  now, let's be objective. The real winner was Maria Bartiromo, who stayed on message throughout.In an interview with Politico sometime prior to the debate, the Fox Business Channel host stated

After that [CNBC] debate, I realized, I knew my marching orders. It was clearer than ever what my marching orders are, and that is to help the viewer, help the voter better understand what each candidate’s plan is; is it a realistic plan, can it work and how is it different from the next guy or gal, and that’s what I plan to focus on.

Marching orders? After she let the cat out of the bag, Bartiromo cleaned it up a bit- but.marching orders?  Some of the conservative talking points (in asterisks; comments beneath) she added to her questions:

Today the national debt is at record highs and growing unsustainably. Interest will be the fastest-growing part of the federal budget, tripling over the next 10 years. Social Security, the lifeline of millions of American seniors, is rushing toward insolvency...

The national debt is not growing unsustainably and the deficit has declined by two-thirds since Barack Obama took office (chart below by OMB via Politico).  Social Security, with its dedicated source of funding, has nothing to do with the national debt (or deficit) Inasmuch as (according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, its chart below, from OECD statistics) "After 2034, even if policymakers took no further action, Social Security could still pay three-fourths of scheduled benefits, relying on Social Security taxes as they are collected," Social Security is not "rushing toward insolvency."

Senator Cruz, the International Monetary Fund recently cut its expectations for economic growth. Many economists expect a recession to hit the U.S. within the next year due to the weakening of manufacturing. The next president will have to deal with it.

No doubt many of the thousands of economists in the USA believe a recession will hit within a year. However, this past summer, The New York Times

asked leading forecasters from economic consultancies, financial firms and universities for their predictions on where key economic variables will stand on Nov. 8, 2016 — Election Day. The 17 who participated replied with a relatively strong consensus.

They said they believed that unemployment would be the lowest it has been during an election since George W. Bush and Al Gore faced off in 2000, when it stood at 3.9 percent. The median forecast for the unemployment rate when voters go to the polls in November 2016 was 4.8 percent (which would be down from 5.3 percent last month). They saw only a 15 percent chance of a recession starting by next Election Day. Interest rates, inflation and gasoline prices should all be a bit higher than they are now, they said, while staying quite low by historical standards.

Moreover, early in the year, the chief economist of the National Association of Manufacturers explained (NAM's chart, below)

Respondents to the latest National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)/IndustryWeek survey continued to be mostly upbeat in their assessments of the economy, but the challenges discussed above have dampened some of that enthusiasm. In this report, 88.5% of manufacturers said that they were either somewhat or very optimistic about their own company's outlook.

Almost 40 percent of Americans are without a job and are not looking. Many have given up. That’s what the participation rate tells us....

Uh, no, Maria, The unemployment rate is down to 5.1% and approximately 40% of those individuals have given up looking for work. That would total around 7%, slightly less than 40%.


Mr. Trump, a federal appeals court just dealt a blow to the Obama administration’s plan to prevent the deportation of 5 million people living in this country illegally. The White House is appealing to the Supreme Court....

Ms. Bartiromo refers to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which pertains to young people who were under the age of 16 when they arrived, generally with their parents.  Such specificity, however, would have conflicted with the meme. People, even some Republicans, sympathize with children.


We go back to Facebook. Dewayne Wesley Cato asks on Facebook, how do we get rid of regulations choking our businesses? Ms. Fiorina?

Those "regulations choking our businesses" somehow have not prevented unprecedented corporate growth under the Obama Administration. Fourteen months ago- when the economy was a little weaker than it is today-  this Forbes contributor argued that the nation under Obama has enjoyed the highest private sector job growth in its history and "economically, President Obama’s administration has outperformed President Reagan’s in all commonly watched categories."


Specifically, under the president’s Affordable Care Act, employers with 50 or more employees are required to offer health insurance, or be fined. Many are opting to pay the fine. Others are cutting back employee hours to duck the law altogether. What specific ways will you alleviate the pressure on small business?

Early this year, Ben Casselman of five thirty eight reviewed the Current Population Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistica and found

the share of part-timers working just below 30 hours a week has been rising for roughly the past two years, while the share working just over 30 hours has been falling. (The share working exactly 30 hours has risen a bit too, but that’s harder to interpret since people who work 29 or 31 hours might round to 30 when they answer the survey.)

,,,,even focusing just on the most affected workers, the impact has been small. In 2009, before the Affordable Care Act was passed, 9.7 percent of part-timers worked between 25 hours and 29 hours and 7.7 percent worked between 31 and 34. In 2013, those numbers were 11.1 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively.

Further, as the chart below from the BLS reflects

The Congressional Budget Office, in a report before the law had fully taken effect, estimated that millions of Americans would voluntarily shift to part-time status once they no longer needed to work full-time to qualify for health benefits.9 It’s hard to know exactly how many have already done so. But there has been a marked increase in recent months in the number of people reporting they are working part-time by choice. It’s possible, a sliberal economist Dean Baker has suggested, that this rise reflects the effect of the health law.

The GOP candidates are so concerned about the American worker that three of them definitively came out against any increase in the minimum wage while one, John Kasich, noted that he had signed into a law a "modest increase.""  

Kasich did not address the idea of increasing the national minimum wage, recognizing that was too hot for the audience to handle. Later, he allowed that he would consider the plight of individual investors if a bank were to fail.  He was, of course, booed and was considered the big loser of the night. In a debate in which one of the moderators told us beforehand that she would hew to the Fox/GOP party line, that only made sense.








Share |

Mortified At Facing Carson

Rush Limbaugh said something silly today.

That wouldn't be when he referred to Politico's report(s) about Ben Carson and West Point as "Not just the biased, but racist journalism that it was." That is a preposterous allegation offered without any evidence, though that is Rush Limbaugh, a guy who labeled Senator Obama a "Chicago street thug" and "little black man-child"; and who called no-drama President Obama "an angry black guy" and claimed "Obama's entire economic program is reparations." The latter charge earned the response from Stephen Colbert "Those guys aren't racist. They're just saying that a program that helps the poor is actuallly a secret plot by African-Americans to steal white people's money."

Even more absurdly, while attacking Politico and the left for questioning the ever-righteous Ben Carson, Limbaugh today declared "It scares them he might become president.  It scares them that anybody like him, any religious conservative might become president. That's why they support the Democrat Party.  I'm convinced.  They're scared to death of religious people."

Quaking in their boots, I tell you.  It's curious that Limbaugh believes liberals worry "any religious conservative might become President," when right-wing icon Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6) pretended he was religious and George W. Bush probably was.  But never mind.

The left need not fear a religious conservative on the order of Dr. Carson as president (Carson on a tirade, video below). The first prerequisite to obtaining the Oval Office is a single-minded conviction to get there. However, as Amanda Marcotte observes

Carson is not running a typical campaign for office—arguably, he’s not really trying to win office at all—so much as he’s trying to build his brand as a fundamentalist Christian icon. He wants his book to be wrapped and placed under every evangelical’s tree this Christmas. After he bows out of the presidential race, he has a nice career ahead of him as an “inspirational” speaker—and seller of tapes and sermons and educational materials—for the Christian right circuit. His exaggerated tales of sin and redemption sound bizarre to most Americans, but they are par for the course in the evangelical circles that Carson is trying to win over.

Take the Yale story: A young man who needs $10 and doesn’t have it and then is put in this situation where his convictions are tested and voila! He is given the $10 he needed. It’s a weird story if taken literally. But the story is perfect for a Sunday sermon on how the good Lord will provide to the righteous man. The likeliest explanation is not that Carson was too stupid to understand what was going on, but that he used his real life experience to fabricate a story meant to be read aloud from pulpits or turned into coloring books to be used in Sunday school.

Hammering messy real world experiences into trite fables about sin and redemption is standard operating procedure in conservative Christian circles. So is the exaggeration. Tales of your behavior before you were saved are embellished for maximum drama. What’s important is not the literal truth, but reinforcing fundamentalist notions that the world outside of the Jesus bubble is a depraved hellhole.

Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, Ben Carson will not be nominated. Were he to be so blessed (as he would put it), there would be an historic turnover in the US Senate and in the House.  There aren't many opportunities to run against a fellow who has compared the Affordable Care Act, gun control, political correctness, the progressive movement, and abortion to slavery and/or the Holocaust.(also, women who have abortions to slaveowners).. And did you know that some guys go into prison as straight and come out as gay?

Dr. Carson is, as Charlie Pierce puts it, a "guy (who) says his unprovable biographical details are true because he's running as a Paschal Lamb against an imaginary conspiracy, and his primary competition is explaining the structure of the pyramids to you, as well as the decades-old wanderings of William Westmoreland and the tensile strength of belt buckles as body armor."   Terrified.















Share |

Hardly A Dime's Worth Of Difference

Jack Mirkinson believes the appearance Saturday night of Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live is "a notable and rather strange intervention by 'SNL'" because politicians (aside from the hapless Al Sharpton in early 2003) have hosted the NBC program only between campaigns.  Writing before the show aired, Mirkinson argued Trump's campaign "long since crossed the line from entertainment into serious reality."  He cites the candidate's "toxic" comments about Latinos, "tacit acceptance of anti-Muslim racism," and "openly bigoted birther crusade."

Although aimed at SNL, Mirkinson's piece is only one which has implied that the presidential candidate and his philosophy are significantly more malignant as those we have recently witnessed from mainstream Republican conservatism.

The difference, however, is les than meets the eye.  One does not have to recall Mitt Romney's infamous "47%" comment to recognize that most American presidential elections, traditionally, have been decided less on a cultural or foreign policy basis than on an economic one, defined broadly. After considering the analysis by the "left-leaning but independent" Citizens for Tax Justice and the conservative Tax Foundation of the tax proposal of the mainstream and most likely GOP nominee, Jonathan Cohn summarizes

Estimates have suggested that Rubio’s tax cut would increase deficits by anywhere from $4 trillion to $12 trillion over 10 years, depending on how you count. Either way, it’d be a staggering amount of money -- so staggering that even prominent conservatives have blanched at the price tag. But according to the CTJ analysis, the poorest one-fifth of the country would keep just 6 percent of the money while the bottom 60 percent, as a whole, would get just 22 percent. By contrast, the richest 5 percent of Americans would pocket nearly half of the tax cut while the richest 1 percent alone would receive more than one-third. 

Keep in mind that, in the real world, the poor’s share of the tax cut would probably be smaller than either the CTJ or Tax Foundation analysis suggests. That’s because Rubio campaign officials have said they would limit the refundable tax break to people who are working....

Whatever the details of the refundable credit, the bottom line is clear. If enacted, the bulk of the money in Rubio's tax cut would go to the affluent and a huge chunk would go to the very richest of the rich. Meanwhile, the loss of so much revenue would require some combination of higher deficits and deep cuts to government programs, most of which disproportionately benefit the poor and middle class.

According to CTJ's numbers (graphs below via Dylan Matthews of Vox), the cuts proposed by Trump and John Ellis Bush would jack up the deficit only slightly less than those proposed by the Florida senator. Rubio's plan would deliver more handouts to the very wealthy, slightly more for the poor, and less for middle-income taxpayers.

Tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum.   Two and a half months ago, Salon's Conor Lynch concluded "the scary thing is that America would probably be better off with a president Trump than any of the other major GOP contenders, who are either puppets for their corporate masters or wholly controlled by their dogma (i.e. Mike Huckabee’s Christian chauvinism)."

And then there is the current leader- Dr. Ben Carson- in national and Iowa polls. He wants to eliminate Medicare (video, below). Three days ago, Charlie Pierce described how as Mannatech Corporation's most famous shill, Carsib is in a long line of  of snake-oil salesman in the USA. Politically

The process began with Ronald Reagan, the greatest patent-medicine salesman of them all. It was he who marketed the economic snake-oil with a wink and a smile. It was he who taught them how to flex and pose – fiercely denouncing terrorism while selling missiles to the mullahs. It was he who gulled the country with tales of Sandinistas driving jeeps across the Rio Grande, and dangerous Cuban adventurism in Grenada, while Marines were being slaughtered in their barracks. He was the best show in town. The starstruck rubes flocked to see him. The country swallowed the swamproot whole.









Donald Trump at least at one time opposed the Iraq War, opposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and supported universal healthcare.  Having taken in with the wrong crowd, he now competes with the rest of the GOP field to prove he is the most extreme of them all. He has a lot of people convinced, but he really is just of a piece of what the Republican Party has become nationally.








Share |

However, He Is A Christian

"That might be the greatest answer all week," observed Joe Scarborough (video below) a week or so ago on Morning Joe. The ex- GOP congressman was responding to Lindsey Graham's reply to Eugene Robinson's question about Ben Carson: "How do you explain his obvious appeal?"

The South Carolina senator answered "I don't think he has a clue about what's going on in the Mideast. So I don't know. I'm doing the best I can."







Good answer, and darned humorous. Again on Morning Joe, on Monday morning Graham was asked (video below) about the same candidate "Have you ever stabbed anyone? Or tried to?" So he ridiculed Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, then quipped "On our side you got the number two guy (who) tried to kill somebody at 14 and the number one guy is high energy and crazy as hell. How am I losing to these people?"










As stand-up this is great stuff, and says a lot about the "deep Republican bench" we kept hearing about until these players became candidates and it became clear what they really were made of.

Nonetheless, Graham answered his own question, "how am I losing to these people?" He's losing in part because they are "crazy as hell" or, rather, remarkably reckless and self-delusional. It is an asset.

Likely Republican caucus attendees in Iowa were asked in a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll “I’m going to mention some things people have said about Ben Carson. Regardless of whether you support him for president, please tell me for each if this is something that you find very attractive about him, mostly attractive, mostly unattractive, or very unattractive."  Salon's Bob Cesca summarizes 

If we couple “very attractive” and “mostly attractive” responses, here’s how the numbers stacked up.

1. “He is not a career politician”: 85 percent
2. “He has no experience in foreign policy”: 42 percent
3. “He was highly successful as a neurosurgeon”: 88 percent
4. “He has said the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is the worst thing since slavery”: 81 percent
5. ”He has an inspirational personal story”: 85 percent
6. “He has raised questions about whether a Muslim should ever be president of the United States”: 73 percent
7. “He has said he would be guided by his faith in God”: 89 percent
8. “He has said that Hitler might not have been as successful if the people had been armed”: 77 percent
9. “He approaches issues with common sense”: 96 percent
10. “He has conducted research on tissue from aborted fetuses”: 31 percent

Steve M. recognizes conservative GOP voters believe the culture is tyrannical and "politically correct" (a catch-all for, roughly speaking, anything not conservative) and that

Carson and Trump actually are striking serious blows against this fascist dictatorship. Congress hasn't found a way to repeal Obamacare or crush Planned Parenthood or permanently block the next debt-ceiling increase or make gay marriage illegal again, and that makes GOP base voters furious at all the party's politicians because, dammit, they ought to be able to do something -- but Ben Carson can say "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi" and get away with it, and Donald Trump can say that undocumented immigrants are feral rapists and get away with that, and that, to Republican voters, is a real blow against the liberal-fascist power structure.

"Republican base voters" Steve M. argues, think of the 'politically correct' culture, in their words -- as a liberal-fascist dictatorship, just like the Obama presidency." Sunday, Carson equated abortion with slavery because

During slavery, a lot of slave-owners thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose. And what if the abolitionists had said, 'I don't believe in slavery, but you guys do whatever you want'? Where would we be?" I know that's one of those words you're not supposed to say, but I'm saying it,

Carson has a thing with Hitler.  This past August he saw a "connection (between Planned Parenthood and Nazi Germany) in the sense that Margaret Sanger, their founder, and people like Adolf Hitler … felt there were certain people who were superior and certain people who were inferior. And the way that you strengthen the society was to enhance superior ones and eliminate the inferior ones.”

But it's not limited to abortion/Planned Parenthood. In a 2009 commencement speech he warned graduates “I daresay the vast majority of German people did not believe what Hitler believed. But they didn’t speak up, and you see what the result was. " Last month he suggested those events could come about in the USA because "If you go back and look at the history of the world, tyranny and despotism and how it starts, it has a lot to do with control of thought and control of speech."

In March 2014, again railing against the culture his supporters believe is destroying the nation, Dr. Carson had claimed his beloved country is "very much like Nazi Germany. And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

Probably, individuals are afraid to say what they actually believe because people will think they are stark, raving mad.  Judging by the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Polotics survey and Carson's ascent to the top of the heap of dung in Iowa, they are not crazy but today's Republicans.







Share |

There's Something About Ben

"Unless," The Daily Show's Trevor Noah says (video below), "slow,languid pace, dead eyes. loves brains. Oh my God, this explains everything. Ben Carson is a zombie!" Though meant primarily in humor, that was no less insightful, no less likely, than Noah's notion "It's just shocking that such a smart man, a brain surgeon, could have this kind of perspective- rushing a gunman" or that "a body with bullet holes" is no "more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away."

It's not that Carson's various commenting about firearms are so ridiculous.  He says people should charge a gunman threatening them because at least not all the individuals would be shot and killed ("after you, Dr."). When he himself was faced with a robber at a Popeyes restaurant, Carson claimed, he "directed him, he went to the cashier, the cashier gave him the money, and he ran out of the store."

It seems a little strange that a presidential candidate would voluntarily remark that he offered up someone else in his place to be possibly killed. The incident itself  has been called into question, with one blogger (or headline writer) remarking "Ben Carson should produce his long-form Popeyes receipt" (which, oddly, is funnier than anything Noah's writers could come up with).

Arguing also that Jews in Nazi Germany would have been better off armed, Carson contended “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed … I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first."   Carson's fantasy aside, there were at least ten major instances of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.   It took, further, powerful nations and one heck of a winter in Russia before the Nazi regime was defeated. Oh, and comparing something to Nazi Germany is never a good thing.

But Carson's bizarre statements are no less ridiculous than Marco Rubio claiming he can create a budget surplus by cutting taxes by trillions of dollars. They are less arrogant than John Ellis Bush almost casually stating that his brother kept the nation safe from terrorism. Nor are they more appalling than Carly Fiorina lying about Planned Parenthood- repeatedly- or her record at Hewlett-Packard, or imagining a hardscrabble background. (Give her enough time and Fiorina would vehemently deny she ever worked at HP.)  And then there is Donald Trump- where would we begin?

Unlike with Rubio, Bush, Fiorina, and Trump, Carson appears actually to believe what he is saying. He's probably not an actual zombie, though the odds of him being so are roughly equal to those of Carly Fiorina getting through the next GOP debate without fabrication.

Perhaps Dr. Carson simply is an evil genius, offending Jews, victims of violence, and other people in some nefarious scheme to obtain the GOP nomination.   "The key to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made," a famous talk-show host once quipped, and maybe that's Carson's M.O.

But it's more likely that Trevor Noah is naive to believe that such an esteemed, successful individual in the highly-technical field of brain surgery could be so devoid of intellectual heft in another subject area.  Ben Carson might be the brilliant doctor we always hear he is and may have made greater contributions to mankind than the vast majority of human beings. Knowledge and understanding are not always transferrable to another field of study.

Politics, foreign affairs, economics, history, and everything else not labeled "medical science" are not medical science. And when it comes to most of those subject areas in which a president must exhibit some rudimentary knowledge and have the ability to acquire further understanding, the good doctor may be out to lunch.













Share |

Yes, It Is About Guns.

Once House Republicans claimed the scalp of Speaker John Boehner, there was speculation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would be the next target of the right wing of America's right wing party.  However, though it appears many House Republicans want to see the Kentucky Senator lose his position, he is safe with the group, his own caucus, which really counts.

That is wise given that Senator McConnell again has demonstrated strategic deftness, as his spokesperson maintains of mass shootings "The president told them to politicize the issue, and apparently they're taking him up on it."

The statement is reasonably accurate inasmuch as, following the mass killing at Umpqua Community College, Obama boldly stated "And, of course, what’s also routine is that somebody, somewhere will comment and say, Obama politicized this issue.  Well, this is something we should politicize."   Although the President might have noted that Republicans already have politicized the issue, he did not, probably because he is unaware that their remarks, avoiding the issue of gun violence, not only are insufficient but misguided.

McConnell's comment allowed him not only to criticize the Democratic President, but to remain wisely agnostic on the excuse offered by his fellow Republicans as they themselves rushed to politicize the issue- as they have in the past.

Following the incident, Donald Trump released a statement criticizing gun control efforts and claiming

All of the tragic mass murders that occurred in the past several years have something in common – there were red flags that were ignored. We can’t allow that to continue. We need to expand treatment programs, because most people with mental health problems aren’t violent, they just need help. But for those who are violent, a danger to themselves or others, we need to get them off the street before they can terrorize our communities. This is just common sense.

On ABC's This Week, presidential candidate Chris Christie argued

that the focus needs to be put on mental health and take some of the murkiness out of the law.
“Let’s make involuntary commitment of people who speak violently easier for doctors,” said Christie, who says he has proposed similar legislation in New Jersey.

The governor also seemed to brush off calls for tougher laws following the shooting.

Interviewed by GOP partisan Hugh Hewitt, Ben Carson contended

Obviously there are going to be those calling for gun control but that happens every time we have one of these incidents. Obviously that’s not the issue. The issue is the mentality of these people. And we need to be looking at the mentality of these individuals and seeing if there are any early warning clues that we can gather that will help us as a society be able to identify these people ahead of time.

There is an "obvious" here, but it's not what Carson evidently thinks it is.  Most mentally ill people are not violent and the vast majority of violent crimes are not committed by a person with a serious mental illness (John Oliver on the subject, below). The Huffington Post reports 

According to Harold Pollack, co-director of the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, gun reform can't be achieved until Americans stop looking at mental illness as a scapegoat for violent behavior.

"We don't want to stereotype people with a severe mental illness," Pollack told HuffPost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "Severe mental illness accounts for something like five percent of the violence we see in America, and we don't have a particularly higher rate of severe mental illness than many other places that have much lower gun homicide rates than we do."

Additionally, Pollack argued the practice of concealed carry permits fosters a culture that normalizes firearm possession -- no matter the state of mental health. 

"What kind of norms are we really creating by having people walking around in public with dangerous weapons?" he said. "The people who have concealed carry permits are not particularly the people who are the dangerous people, but they're contributing to an environment that is a problem."

Real estate mogul Trump, Governor Christie, and brain surgeon Carson have something in common other than wanting to ignore gun safety. It is not hypocrisy because only Christie has cut psychiatric services and additionally made it easier for mentally ill individuals to purchase firearms. Instead, none of the three had ever examined, or even met, Christopher Harper-Mercer or any of the other mass murderers. But they just know they must have been mentally ill.

They do not. But what we do know is that Christopher Harper-Mercer would not have been able to kill nine people if he had been running around with a knife. Mental illness is a factor, but only sometimes; it is handier as an excuse.














Share |