PARIS TRAGEDY EXPOSES GOP CANDIDATES..NONE READY FOR PRIME TIME

USA MASS HYSTERIA, YELLOW JOURNALISM, GOP JINGOISM

NO CANDIDATE PASSES "FLINCH TEST"

OBAMA KEEPS CALM AND LOGIC

CALL OFF ELECTION?

Since the tragic massacre of 130 innocents in Paris on November 13, 2015 mass hysteria has broken out in the USA. The terrible tragedy in Paris, has caused unimaginable fear to seep in to the US psyche. Fear is a powerful emotion with an uncanny ability to make idiots of our citizenry, and journalists, and to create actual raving maniacs out of the political class and especially our hyped-up, eager, controlled, venal and ill-informed presidential campaigners.

The US press has used the tragedy to avidly fear monger for market share. Too much of their reporting has been short on facts and long on exaggeration. Even more egregiously they have turned to yellow journalism...attempting to ratchet up emotions based on sensationalism while dredging up so called "military experts" to malign the president and urge the nation into amother senseless unnecessary and unwise war.

Much of the blather and nonsense one hears is just not based on facts and is too silly to recount here. But suffice it to say that all the GOP candidates have rushed to (irrational) judgement about refugees, about inserting US ground troops into a complex and convoluted civil war, initiating a new war, lifting rules against torture, expanding the spy state, closing mosques, internment of Moslems, instituting religious tests for those entering USA as refugees, and so forth. Most of these candidates do not sound at all like actual American politicians and leaders such as Jack Kennedy, Ike Eisenhower, and even Ronald Reagan. One wonders where and from under what rock some of them have arisen?

But one thing is clear...not one of them...left or right....have passed the "respond to disaster test". It is certain that our nation will be faced with severe problems in the future. Major storms, loss of life, natural disasters, yes, even terror attacks are the stuff of every president's term. We hope that our future leaders will respond to these exigencies with calm and level headedness that would soothe the fears of our citizenry and then calmly and logically turn to address the disaster at hand with maturity and common sense.

Only one man has demonstrated this capacity, our present President, Barack Obama! He alone has passed the "disaster test". He alone seems to be the adult in a room of kindergartners. Among the loud calls for excess...he has not flinched. He has kept his calm and remained true to his and our American values and his logical assessment of the problem.

Perhaps we should just call off this election if we can not come up with any better candidates?

MARCO RUBIO'S TAX PLAN EXPOSED AS "CRAZY"

Marco has a tax plan. According to a piece in the NY Magazine (See: " The Math on Rubionomics Is Way Way Crazier Than You Think"by Jonathan Chait, NYMat, November 8, 2015).

It is a crazy plan. Citizens For Tax Justice (CFTJ) analyzed the Rubio Plan and found the plan to be "hostile to economic reality". Rubio, who is essentially in the "employ" of fat cats like the Adelsons, Koch brothers and most recently billionaire Mr. Paul Singer, so it is understandable that his plan will give the most to the few. The plan slots one-third of the tax breaks to the top ONE PERCENTERS. (This is one of the pay-backs billionaire donors get for supporting the Rubio candidacy.) It follows that the rest of us get only the remaining two-thirds of that tax windfall to share among the 99 percent. That does not seem so fair already.

But according to CFTJ that is not the most crazy part. It is the size of the plan that is troubling. Recall the massive George Bush tax roll back. The one that led into the housing bubble and then the Great Recession of 2007? Yes that one. Rubio's plan is almost four times that big. His plan will cut tax revnue to about $12 trillion over the next decade. That means that over those ten years Rubio plaN will reduce revenue from about $40 trillion down to about $30 trillion. According to the CFTJ analysis that amount is only just enough to pay for defense, social security and medicare and the interest on the debt. Rubio's government would be pared to the bone. With those funds he would have to cut Out all non requisite or mandated expenditures over those noted above....no border security, no emergency funds, no Medicaid, anti-poverty budget, veterans healt care, education, infrastructure projects, etcetera, etcetera. Is is probable? No not likely...that why it is crazy.

Oh and to add insult to injury, Rubio also plans to enlarge the defense budget. Yes that massive mill wheel we have hanging around our necks which keeps us all riding over potholed bridge roads, with lousy health care, and crumbling infrastructure will only expand with Rubio. Also based on his donor class and their published demands, his largess with our tiny and queztionalble ally in the Middle East, Israel, will also grow....whether they need the money or not.

The authors state that the "relationship between Rubio's tax plan and economic reality" is "deeply hostile".

So Rubio's plan will undermine the miserable social safety net we have in this nation, further, to third world standards, eliminate government support for needed investment in domestic infrastructure, and instead, shunt the funds into the pockets of the super wealthy, and enlarge our already massive overstuffed military. If that is where you believe the nation should be heading...

NO $5 BILLION TO NETANYAHU- NOT WITH OUR DESPERATE NEEDS AT HOME

Utrustworthy ally, Bibi Netanyahu is back in Washington, hat in hand, to beg for money...again. He undermined his friendship rating and credibility after the recent acrimonious Iran deal, and should not be welcome again in the White House. We understand he is now reformed and promises that he is now (again) in favor of the "two state solution". Can we believe him? It is whispered he has also given up using the "N" word to refer to our President. But with our government and GOP so eager to cut expenses to the bone for our own citizenry..how can anyone imagine giving big piles of greenbacks to Netanyahu? For what purpose? To build more illegal settlemets in the territories? Or is it to beef up his massive military, already armed to the teeth so it can turn its might again on the outdoor Palestinian prison of Gaza?

Without doubt, that $5 billion should be spent here at home to rebuild our schools, crumbling infrastructure, our failing bridges, our slow or non existent broadband, and to attend to the desperate needs of our poor, high-school educated, white middle-aged citizenry who are dying and committing suicide faster than any other demographic here in the USA or in any other affluent western nation. (See: NYT Nov.2, 2015, "Death Rates Rising For Middle Aged White Americans" by Gina Kolata)

Je ne suis pas Charlie!

THE CHARLIE HEBEO PLANE CRASH CARTOONS Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine just published two cartoons which have us all realize how much we are NO LONGER Charlie. The phrase "I am Charlie" became popular after the terrorist attack on that publication's offices in Paris. But the recent cartoons published by the weekly Paris magazine concerning the tragic Russian plane brought down in the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, 2015 with the loss of 224 innocent travelers, among them 17 children was a step too far. Who can find anything to satirize about such a terrible human tragedy? Charlie Hebdo does not do satire...Its crude ugliness has no purpose or positive effect to increase knowledge or improve humankind. It exposes no human frailty or stupidity, only the coarseness and lack of humanity of the authors. No these cartoons are not Satie. It is a form of literary pornography. Our sympathies, here in my little corner of the USA where most know little of Charlie, are with the families and relatives of the victims of that awful tragedy and with all the Russians.