Things we should be thanking Donald Trump for....

....besides some of the best Saturday Night Live skits ever!

Yes, The Donald has had much ridicule heaped on him this election season for his....umm....unusual ideas.  But he has also brought into the light some issues that had been largely underground for years.  You might have to look deep, but he's done us all a service and maybe secured for himself a worthwhile legacy in the process.  To wit:

TRADE AGREEMENTS  Most Americans don't understand trade deals.  We give a little, they give a little, we both get what we want....win/win, right?  Hardly!

Trade deals are driven by what's in the best interest of business, and not necessarily (rarely, actually) in the best interest of the American workers.  Why do you think millions of well-paying American jobs have have moved beyond our borders, and too much of what we've gotten in return are much-lower-paying warehousing and delivery jobs?  Because businesses can make more $$$$ doing business that way.  Screw US!

American businesses used to have America's interests at heart, but for decades now all they've cared about is making money for themselves, however/wherever they can.  If Carrier Corp hands out 1,000 pink slips in Indiana and hires a like number in Mexico, or Indonesia, etc, they don't care!  There's rarely even a passing thought of good 'ol America's best interest.  Their quarterly profits are up, their executive bonuses are up, their shareholders (many of them foreign investors) are happy, the job-gaining country is happy....the big losers are the 1,000 laid-off American workers.  

We need trade.  We can produce much more than we can consume ourselves.  I'm all for trade, if done fairly, but what we've negotiated recently are simply BAD DEALS!

OUR F___KED UP TAX CODE  Most of us only know "we" pay too much, and "the rich" pay too little.  That's all we ever hear.  It's hard to wrap our arms around that opaque concept.  Donald Trump put a real-world number on it.  How many of us had ever heard of a "loss carry forward" before Donald Trump's $936,000,000 business boo-boo?  That sweetheart tax deal has helped him (and many other of his uber-rich buddies) to avoid paying hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars in taxes.  

That has led us to take a deeper look at our ridiculously complex 75,000 page +/- tax code, a code that got that way due to special favors granted by lawmakers to wealthy special interests in exchange for.....?
  

The rich usually deserve to be rich....they work hard, they work smart, they take risks....more power to them.  But when they can take their hard-earned gains and, with the signing of a piece of tax legislation, see their wealth explode with little additional effort on their part, that's just WRONG!  That's what "income inequality" is all about.  That, more than anything else, is what is killing our middle class! 

You're likely to ride off into the sunset next month, Donald, to take up company with Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, John Kerry, and all those other historical footnotes, but if your spotlight can somehow enable us to fix our tax code and trade policies, you'll at least have that as a legacy you can be proud of.

S

It's always something!

Yesterday I went to the doctor to have him check out a bump on the bridge of my nose underneath where my glasses rest.  Turns out it's skin cancer.  Not a biggie, but still another nuisance that I have to deal with.  Of course they're reminding me to slather on the sun screen, but I hate the stuff.  Isn't a hat enough?  Jeez!

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Looks like it's "sink or swim" time for FEMA, pardon the pun.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency is responsible for coordinating federal, state, and local response to national emergencies, such as hurricane Sandy. (The actual work of putting things back right again still falls to the governors and the states.) 

They botched it big time after hurricane Katrina all but destroyed New Orleans.  Now we'll see if they've learned anything since.  Any time there's a federal bureaucracy involved I'm skeptical.  I hope I'm wrong.

The images coming out of the aftermath of the storm are incredible. The cleanup looks like an impossible task.  Where do you start?  They showed how things were down in the underground subways.  Yuck!  I can't imagine how long it will take to get it put back like it was before, if they can at all.  

Looks like unemployment in the area will fall to near zero for years to come, just by putting everyone to work hauling off debris.  For building material suppliers I'm sure they'll be producing stuff as fast as they can to replace what was destroyed, which will mean upward pressure on material prices nationwide.  Yes, we'll ALL probably feel it with every trip to Home Depot.

Wouldn't it be great to have things all going our way, smoothly, as planned, even if only for a few days?  What was it SNL's Roseanne Roseannadanna said?....It's always something!  *sigh*

S

When have you won a debate?

When your opponent resorts to name calling. When we were kids you knew it was over when the other kid said, "Yeah, but you're fat!"  


Then during the hey-day of Saturday Night Live the line Dan Aykroyd would say to Jane Curtin was, "Jane, you ignorant slut."


Now, it's "You're pompous and arrogant."  


I guess that's progress.  ;)

Or to turn it around, how do you know when you've lost a debate?  When your wife says so.  ;)

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Does anyone believe statistics anymore?  On today's news some local politician was arguing the value of giving a tax abatement (tax break) to a company if they would move to his city.  Of course another employer in the area would be a good thing, but how good?  $6.235 million dollars a year benefit, that's how good.  Really?  Not $6.364 million?  Drink 2 cups of coffee a day an you'll have 23% less chance of developing gut cancer, but if you drink 3 cups, odds are you'll have a 4% greater chance.*  Unless you use cream.  Or sugar. Then your odds....

*The odds are as high as 91% that these statistics were totally made up.

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What's the deal with this heat?  It's always hot here in Texas, but new record highs are being set daily coast-to-coast.  I've figured out how I'm going to choose my candidate this November:  I'm going to vote for the one who promises to lower the temperature the most.   'Cause, you know, they're all-powerful and they never lie.


Stay cool everyone.


S