June 14, 2018
I see the Trump administration is crowing about the summit meeting with
North Korea. By that I mean that he's tweeting up a storm about it and
the official spokesliars are swearing to it. So far, what we have is
exactly nothing while Kim has greatly increased his international stature by
virtue of just meeting with the POTUS. We did get talk about
denuclearizing North Korea, but we've had that many times before and nothing
has happened. Trump may have record lack of respect in the rest of the
world, but Kim had the distinction of having even less. That has
changed. He may still have less than Trump but he has a lot more than
before, and it cost him nothing.
Let's look at
this objectively. Trump has unilaterally pulled us out of treaties,
that while they may not have been ideal, were working. At least we had
inspections of nuclear facilities in Iran. He gave that up. What
happens is now up to Iran and the rest of the world. Hold your breath
while we wait. He pulled us out the the Paris Accords. He has
stated we will be pulling out of NAFTA. Not renegotiating these
things... flat out pulling out. What that tells the world, including
North Korea is that our agreements are not worth the paper they are printed
on. So Kim has no real reason to believe we will honor any agreement
we make with him, so he has no motivation to plan to honor any agreement he
makes with us. More worthless paper. The idiot who mentioned
Libya should be dumped in a septic tank and closed in. Shooting is too
good for him. To remind you, Libya gave up a far less advanced nuclear
program and Gaddafi wound up being overthrown and executed. Great
example when you're trying to negotiate with someone like Kim Jong Un.
His nuclear arsenal and missiles are far too good a bargaining chip for him
to ever give them up. I guarantee that it will never happen. I
might also remind all of you as to how tough a war the Korean War was.
If we try to overthrow Kim by force, it will be messy and it is very likely
China will get involved as they won't want a U.S. puppet state next door.
So just what has happened here and who gets what?
Win for Kim:
huge boost in his international stature at no cost to him or to North Korea
Win for Trump: sort of... his faithful will believe something useful
or even historic has happened. The rest of us are reality based and
need something useful to actually happen.
Loss: there is no
agreement to remove, limit or in any way alter the North's nuclear weapons.
If we get such an agreement, there still little chance anything will
actually happen.
Loss: there in no agreement to remove, limit or in
any way alter the North's missile capability
Loss: there is no
agreement for the North to let the South alone.
?:
Trump said that we will stop the training manoeuvres with the South.
This is what "war games" are. They are not actual "games" but training
exercises. Yes, they are expensive. but when did a Republican give a
shit what the military cost? And lack of preparedness could cost a lot
more.
http://www.lcurve.org/
http://www.lcurve.org/WealthDistribution-1998.htm
http://www.newthinktank.com/2011/06/income-in-united-states/
http://www.newthinktank.com/2011/06/income-distribution-united-states/
PLAY THE VIDEO it’s a bit dry, but very informative
http://www.wealthandwant.com/issues/income/income_distribution.html
http://ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html
note Reagan years, lowest rate went from 11 to 15%, highest rate went from 69%
to 28% (footnote states effective top rate was actually 33%).
If you doubt any of these, they include documentation so you
can go back to the original sources. The IRS is a major source.
Here’s a link to a very comprehensive workup on
income, wealth and taxation over the last half century, with ample references
for anyone who wants to see the sources.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Also, the cost of the wars:
http://costofwar.com/en/
running totals.
Cost of national debt
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm
I just discovered that the player widget on my web page has a
problem with Firefox.... or rather, the web page it opens does not
display correctly or operate correctly in Firefox. It works fine
in Windows Internet Explorer. As far as I know, IE remains the
domimant browser, so this is not surprising. I'm running Firefox
in IE mode and it still doesn't display right. So if you have a
problem connecting through the widget, try Internet Explorer, or any
browser other than the one you're using. If you choose to fight
for your browser, it doesn't auto-start in Firefox, and actually hides
the button you need to press. Press the button in the picture BEHIND
the "Live 365" window.