Speaking of “The Trump Show”, Alyssa Rosenberg writes a column every week on the subject. This was last week’s edition. I have to go look for the one on Mini Trump Scaramucci.
rw @7:50: Yes, and I’m going to bring it up with Warriors fans who try to claim that it was just “Zaza’s clumsiness.” I also like the second change, the “Harden rule.”
“I guess now we’re not supposed to be fighting culture wars anymore – man, it’s so hard to keep up with these ever-changing new rules! I’m old enough to remember way back to 2016, before Trump got nominated, and I could have sworn Conservative Inc., was gung-ho for the whole culture war thing. But then Trump actually fought it, taking on the big, soft target that is the spoiled, semi-literate athletes who like to rub their contempt for the flag we love in our faces in the guise of woke wokedness. Now we suddenly discover that fighting back is horribly uncouth and déclassé and “Oh, well I never!”
Gosh, I would have thought from all those cruise panels about how our crumbling culture is slouching toward Babylon and the need to resist the liberal onslaught that maybe we ought to actually resist the liberal onslaught, but see, that was my mistake. I took it seriously when Conservative, Inc., promised to fight the leftist blitzkrieg against normal Americans. It was all a scam, a lie, a pose for us rubes. The Tru Cons didn’t actually mean it.
There’s a lot of that not meaning it going on in the GOP right now. Exhibit A is John McCain, who ran ads touting how he was leading the way in opposing Obamacare only to give it aid and comfort when someone in the White House would actual sign its repeal. He’s the guy the establishment designated to lose to Barack Obama in 2008, and he was sure up to the task. But in retrospect, thank goodness, because McCain’s inevitable presidential betrayal of conservatives by breaking his word then and treating GOP voters like he treated his first wife would have done exponentially more damage to conservatism than Trump being prevented from keeping his word today ever could.
It’s so good to know that, despite his wonderful, close, awesome friend humiliating him while lying to Arizona’s voters, Lindsey Graham is still the blue falcon’s buddy. No hard feelings!
There used to be a thing called “conservatism,” and I knew it pretty well since I was part of it for about a third of a century. But conservatism changed, becoming less about principles (though the wusscons never shut up about them) and more about money-grubbing navel gazing and intellectual onanism. Actual Republican voters, actual normal Americans? Well, they became kind of beside the point in the tumbler-klinking world of the John Boehnercons, and to the corporate-friendly compassioncons who put the interests of everyone else (including the act of lovers) ahead of the GOP voters who voted the establishment in.”
———————-
“They try to crush our religion and Conservative, Inc., cowers because Apple’s CEO might say mean things. “Just bake the cake,” they say – it’s not worth the fight! They demand our tax money to kill babies and Conservative, Inc., passes the spending bills – “Gosh, we can’t risk the WaPo saying we’re mean!” They diss our National Anthem, we react, and Conservative, Inc., wags its soft, spindly fingers – “So, so very unpresidential! My word!”
Conservatism has become a racket, and everything happening now is a result of its members hoping to wait out Trump and the demand for change he represents. Maybe if they do nothing, but say all the right things, we normals will get tired and go back to our jobs and keep providing those votes and renting those cruise cabins. But that’s not happening. We aren’t going away; business as usual is over. We aren’t just giving up, tossing away our country, and submitting to the ruling caste. We were nice with the Tea Party. Trump’s not as nice. What’s coming after is going to be much, much less nice.
What’s coming after is militant normalacy, the not-so-polite demand that the lackwits and failures who style themselves as our betters stop dumping on us normal Americans who work hard and play by the rules (Gosh that sounds familiar, like it used to be a winning electoral recipe, if only I could remember where I heard it before).”
Who are the normals? The Americans who built this country, and defended it. When you eat, it’s because a normal grew the food and another normal trucked it to you. When you aren’t murdered in the street or don’t speak German, it’s because a normal with a gun made those things not happen. We normals don’t want to rule over others. We don’t obsess about how you live your life, but also we don’t want to be compelled to signal our approval or pick up the tab. We are every color and creed – though when someone who is incidentally a member of some other group aligns with normals, he/she/xe loses that identity. The left drums normals who are black out of its definition of “black,” just as normal women get drummed out of womanhood and normal gays get drummed out gayhood. In a way, the left is making E pluribus unum a reality again – to choose to be normal is to choose to reject silly identity group identification and unite. Instead of saying “normal Americans,” you can just say “Americans.”
Note that while leftists rail against the term “normals” (When I use it on Twitter, the reactions are always delightful!), they will never, ever demand to be counted as one. That’s because they hate normal Americans, wanting us enslaved or dead. How do I know? They tell me on Twitter, again and again and again.”
Ricky @9:37 That rally it was apparently in Fairhope, AL, so don’t look at me…although, come to think of it, we do have someone from that area here on the blog.
Speakers included Nigel Farage! I would have been tempted to go, just to hear him. But it was not to be. :–)
Came across this piece from last year, when the controversy was just heating up. Kaepernick & Reid had had a meeting with a former Green Beret, to discuss how to do this without disrespecting the military. . .
.
~~~”“We were talking to him about how can we get the message back on track and not take away from the military, not take away from pride in our country but keep the focus on what the issues really are,” Kaepernick said after the game. “As we talked about it, we came up with taking a knee because there are issues that still need to be addressed and there was also a way to show more respect for the men and women that fight for this country.”
.
As reported by ESPN, the quarterback kept explaining himself.
.
“Once again, I’m not anti-American. I love America. I love people. That’s why I’m doing this. I want to help make America better. I think having these conversations helps everybody have a better understanding of where everybody is coming from.
.
“Those conversations are important to have because the better we understand each other, the better we know each other, the better we can deal and communicate with each other which ultimately makes everyone, puts everybody in a better position.”
I am that person and am so embarrassed. I will be voting today in the primary run off and I will not be casting my vote for Roy Moore.
In November I will be voting for Doug Jones. It will be the first time I will ever vote for a Democrat.
Here’s a thoughtful piece by a man who doesn’t like the idea of the kneeling for the anthem, but sees a larger picture.
“Kaepernick, Speech, and a Job: The Cleat May Soon be on the Other Foot
Free speech is important, but is it always helpful, and how does it relate to employment?”
Just as I thought that President Obama sometimes weighed in on things I thought he should have stayed out of, I also wish President Trump had stayed out of this. His words have only inflamed people on both sides of the issue even more. (That is me, not a quote, but the author touches on this, too.)
A friend writes: “Kneeling during the anthem only changed the discussion from police violence to the anthem, and ranting about the anthem only caused the rest of the players to kneel.
All useless and wasted effort, not helping anyone.”
“The worst-kept secret in college basketball is how coaches, sneaker executives, sports agents, travel-team coaches and financial advisers, often through under-the-table payments, steer top high school talent first to NCAA programs and later to apparel brands and professional representation once they enter the NBA.
Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York blew this shadowy world open in ways that have never before been seen, indicting 10 men, including active assistant basketball coaches at Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and USC, plus an executive for adidas, in a widespread case that is sure to rock college basketball to its core.
While only four schools are currently involved, the complaints will provide a treasure map for NCAA investigators as it tells stories of endless payouts and kickbacks in the recruitment of numerous top prospects over the past three years.
And that’s before any of the involved agree to cooperate with authorities.
Among the named defendants include former NBA star Chuck Person, an assistant at Auburn, as well as assistants Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State, Emanuel “Book” Richardson of Arizona and Tony Bland of USC. Adidas executive Jim Gatto is also named, as well as agents and financial planners.
While some other major schools and national championship coaches are not specifically named yet, nearly any college basketball fan can put the dots together on some of the recruiting stories to figure out who is who. The names that are expected to come out will be prominent.
Using a “cooperating witness” who is described as operating an athlete management business (a financial planner who handled the money for pro athletes), the FBI was able to get an undercover agent into hotel rooms, meetings and deals. In 2016, the cooperating witness was accused of committing securities fraud, according to the complaints, and presumably flipped after that. The details are overwhelming.”
“”I will defend women’s access to contraception and a woman’s right to choose and fight any legislation or executive action that would allow insurance companies to discriminate against women. Planned Parenthood provides essential preventative and reproductive health care services like cancer screenings, STD testing and low-cost birth control to millions of American women who have no insurance or otherwise can’t afford these services. I stand with Planned Parenthood. “
This will not go over well. But exactly the type of likely failure that provides little or no gain anyway even if they pass it, that I’ve come to expect Republican controlled govt..
“We all know that besides healthcare, tax reform is one of the bigger ideas on President Donald Trump’s agenda. His administration has been screaming tax cuts while the left cries over lost “revenue.” But instead of cutting spending like any sane person would do when caught in a tight budget, the lawmakers have been looking for ways to make up the lost money.
Targeting a person’s 401(k) has been floated around. A possible change includes taxing the earnings before a person places the money into the retirement fund. This has some worried because it could change your tax bracket once you retire and encourage people not to save as much as they usually do.”
————————
“Another fear is that this change would not change the change or add as much revenue as the government hopes:
“If the gimmick results in a higher level of debt, then it’s harmful,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates for lower deficits.
The issue is that Rothification of 401(k)s would not actually raise revenue, the way that eliminating a tax credit or loophole used by business would. Instead, it would merely shift the timing of when the government received the revenue. As a result, if the tax reform plan, including the gimmick, looked on paper as though it did not add to deficits, could be a big net tax cut. In general, most members of Congress are willing to play such games. But others have resisted similar moves in writing budgets or other legislation.
And in the out years, the Treasury would see lower tax revenue, as people began withdrawing funds from retirement accounts tax-free. “What you’ve basically done is charge the cost of rate reductions to a future generation,” Goldwein said.
Today at The Hill, Robert Reynolds, the president and CEO of Putnam Investments and Great West Financial and owner of Empower Retirement, penned an op-ed against making changes to the 401(k) plans:”
—————————-
DJ, My son says that Arnold does something called “fat-sitting”. It is a cross between sitting and laying down that Travis says is caused by his ample girth.
MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) — Mobile Police confirm a coyote has been captured in one of the neighborhoods that has had several family pets go missing.
The coyote was caught in a trap.
People living in the Lanfair and Yester Oaks neighborhoods say that for the last several months, they’ve seen coyotes wandering the streets. … There are other traps set up, in hopes of catching the remaining coyotes. …
____________________________________________
“The Senate will not vote on Republicans’ latest bill to repeal Obamacare this week, putting an end, for now, to the GOP’s seven-year campaign promise to dismantle the health care law.
The decision was reached at a party lunch Tuesday after it became clear the plan would fail, GOP senators said. Three Senate Republicans had already said they would vote against the measure, and the GOP could only afford two defections.
“Why have a vote if you know what the outcome is and it’s not what you want,” said GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. “I don’t know what you gain from that. But I do believe that the health care issue is not dead, and that’s what counts.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans are not giving up on a health care bill but made clear he wants a quick pivot to another issue where Republicans hope to notch a legislative victory: taxes.
“We haven’t given up on changing the American health-care system … We’re not going to do it this week, but it still lies ahead of us. We haven’t given up on that,” McConnell said Tuesday afternoon. “Where we go from here is tax reform.””
——————–
I voted for Luther Strange. I fear Roy Moore will win and in Alabama it is almost impossible for a Democrat to win, but in November I will be voting for Doug Jones.
Kaepernick really disgusted me when he wore a shirt touting Fidel Castro — and socks depicting cops as pigs. At the same time, I counseled benign neglect, borrowing Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s (radioactive) phrase from the late ’60s. Starve Kaepernick of attention. Don’t feed him, or it. Let him do his thing, and the rest of us will do ours. This is America. What the hay. (“Hey”?) The issue was dying out. There were just a few embers.
Then Donald J. Trump got into it, of course. He is an arsonist in American politics. We used to call Sharpton & Co. “racial arsonists.” The president is his own brand of arsonist. (Actually, Trump and Sharpton are a lot alike, as I’ve argued before: two New York media creatures.) Also, Trump insists on being at the center of attention, always. There’s an expression for such men: “the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.” You heard Trump, revvin’ up that crowd: “Get that son-of-a %#@&% off the field right now! Out! He’s fired!” Blah blah blah. Roar roar roar. And that changed everything.
We Americans are a patriotic lot. We’re also a cranky, independent-minded, nonconformist lot. We don’t like to be told what to do, especially by Authority. We don’t like to be bossed around. So, pre-Trump, kneeling meant one thing — and then it meant a big middle finger to the Man, a.k.a. Trump, a.k.a. POTUS. Context is everything. Everything.
It took Donald J. Trump to make anti-kneelers sympathetic to kneelers. Indeed, he turned some anti-kneelers into kneelers themselves. He crudifies everything he touches — including conservatism, including patriotism. There is a difference between patriotism and jingoism. Between patriotism and crude nationalism, crude flag-waving. If Trump is so all-fired patriotic, why does he repeatedly equate the United States with Putin’s Russia? (“What, you think our country’s so innocent?”) Why did he trash an FBI director to two of Putin’s reps in the Oval Office? And so on.
American nerves were raw before Trump became president, and he has rubbed them rawer. It’s what he does. He may not have substantive achievements, but he’s got grievance and Kulturkampf, as Bob Tyrrell says — culture struggle, or culture war — and that keeps him going. The whole country is responsive to Donald J. Trump. The whole country is in the throes of Trump fever.
If no decent, sane Republican runs against Trump for 2020 GOP nomination, I'm gonna write in the name of 1 of these rescue dogs. Yes, I am. https://t.co/tscpujSVn6
Wandering Views 
https://twitter.com/kevinnr/status/912502901691600896
LikeLiked by 3 people
Tychicus, I suspect you had a hand in this.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/article/NBA-refs-can-rule-reckless-closeouts-as-flagrants-12220572.php?ipid=artem#item-38489
LikeLiked by 1 person
“The Vietnam War” on PBS is really good. I have stopped watching The Trump Show.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/09/26/the-american-war-how-the-vietnam-war-revealed-the-fragility-of-human-decency/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.89af1ad1e3fa
LikeLiked by 2 people
Speaking of “The Trump Show”, Alyssa Rosenberg writes a column every week on the subject. This was last week’s edition. I have to go look for the one on Mini Trump Scaramucci.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/09/22/the-trump-show-season-1-week-35-recap-rocket-man/?utm_term=.66a196e0f34b
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Re. the “travel ban,” this US Marine speaks truth. He was actually evacuated out of Iraq within 16 hours of this video going viral.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTXN2p3qVRg
LikeLiked by 3 people
rw @7:50: Yes, and I’m going to bring it up with Warriors fans who try to claim that it was just “Zaza’s clumsiness.” I also like the second change, the “Harden rule.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
A good speech by Bret Stephens:
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OK. Time to fess up. Who sent Bannon my Sunday comment about The South being decapitated by The War?
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/25/alabama-senate-bannon-strange-moore-243131
LikeLiked by 1 person
Conservative Inc. is dying. Not because of their message or policies, but because they keep selling out their voters.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/09/25/conservative-inc-is-being-replaced-by-us-militant-normals-n2385943
“I guess now we’re not supposed to be fighting culture wars anymore – man, it’s so hard to keep up with these ever-changing new rules! I’m old enough to remember way back to 2016, before Trump got nominated, and I could have sworn Conservative Inc., was gung-ho for the whole culture war thing. But then Trump actually fought it, taking on the big, soft target that is the spoiled, semi-literate athletes who like to rub their contempt for the flag we love in our faces in the guise of woke wokedness. Now we suddenly discover that fighting back is horribly uncouth and déclassé and “Oh, well I never!”
Gosh, I would have thought from all those cruise panels about how our crumbling culture is slouching toward Babylon and the need to resist the liberal onslaught that maybe we ought to actually resist the liberal onslaught, but see, that was my mistake. I took it seriously when Conservative, Inc., promised to fight the leftist blitzkrieg against normal Americans. It was all a scam, a lie, a pose for us rubes. The Tru Cons didn’t actually mean it.
There’s a lot of that not meaning it going on in the GOP right now. Exhibit A is John McCain, who ran ads touting how he was leading the way in opposing Obamacare only to give it aid and comfort when someone in the White House would actual sign its repeal. He’s the guy the establishment designated to lose to Barack Obama in 2008, and he was sure up to the task. But in retrospect, thank goodness, because McCain’s inevitable presidential betrayal of conservatives by breaking his word then and treating GOP voters like he treated his first wife would have done exponentially more damage to conservatism than Trump being prevented from keeping his word today ever could.
It’s so good to know that, despite his wonderful, close, awesome friend humiliating him while lying to Arizona’s voters, Lindsey Graham is still the blue falcon’s buddy. No hard feelings!
There used to be a thing called “conservatism,” and I knew it pretty well since I was part of it for about a third of a century. But conservatism changed, becoming less about principles (though the wusscons never shut up about them) and more about money-grubbing navel gazing and intellectual onanism. Actual Republican voters, actual normal Americans? Well, they became kind of beside the point in the tumbler-klinking world of the John Boehnercons, and to the corporate-friendly compassioncons who put the interests of everyone else (including the act of lovers) ahead of the GOP voters who voted the establishment in.”
———————-
“They try to crush our religion and Conservative, Inc., cowers because Apple’s CEO might say mean things. “Just bake the cake,” they say – it’s not worth the fight! They demand our tax money to kill babies and Conservative, Inc., passes the spending bills – “Gosh, we can’t risk the WaPo saying we’re mean!” They diss our National Anthem, we react, and Conservative, Inc., wags its soft, spindly fingers – “So, so very unpresidential! My word!”
Conservatism has become a racket, and everything happening now is a result of its members hoping to wait out Trump and the demand for change he represents. Maybe if they do nothing, but say all the right things, we normals will get tired and go back to our jobs and keep providing those votes and renting those cruise cabins. But that’s not happening. We aren’t going away; business as usual is over. We aren’t just giving up, tossing away our country, and submitting to the ruling caste. We were nice with the Tea Party. Trump’s not as nice. What’s coming after is going to be much, much less nice.
What’s coming after is militant normalacy, the not-so-polite demand that the lackwits and failures who style themselves as our betters stop dumping on us normal Americans who work hard and play by the rules (Gosh that sounds familiar, like it used to be a winning electoral recipe, if only I could remember where I heard it before).”
Who are the normals? The Americans who built this country, and defended it. When you eat, it’s because a normal grew the food and another normal trucked it to you. When you aren’t murdered in the street or don’t speak German, it’s because a normal with a gun made those things not happen. We normals don’t want to rule over others. We don’t obsess about how you live your life, but also we don’t want to be compelled to signal our approval or pick up the tab. We are every color and creed – though when someone who is incidentally a member of some other group aligns with normals, he/she/xe loses that identity. The left drums normals who are black out of its definition of “black,” just as normal women get drummed out of womanhood and normal gays get drummed out gayhood. In a way, the left is making E pluribus unum a reality again – to choose to be normal is to choose to reject silly identity group identification and unite. Instead of saying “normal Americans,” you can just say “Americans.”
Note that while leftists rail against the term “normals” (When I use it on Twitter, the reactions are always delightful!), they will never, ever demand to be counted as one. That’s because they hate normal Americans, wanting us enslaved or dead. How do I know? They tell me on Twitter, again and again and again.”
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Ricky @9:37 That rally it was apparently in Fairhope, AL, so don’t look at me…although, come to think of it, we do have someone from that area here on the blog.
Speakers included Nigel Farage! I would have been tempted to go, just to hear him. But it was not to be. :–)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Came across this piece from last year, when the controversy was just heating up. Kaepernick & Reid had had a meeting with a former Green Beret, to discuss how to do this without disrespecting the military. . .
.
~~~”“We were talking to him about how can we get the message back on track and not take away from the military, not take away from pride in our country but keep the focus on what the issues really are,” Kaepernick said after the game. “As we talked about it, we came up with taking a knee because there are issues that still need to be addressed and there was also a way to show more respect for the men and women that fight for this country.”
.
As reported by ESPN, the quarterback kept explaining himself.
.
“Once again, I’m not anti-American. I love America. I love people. That’s why I’m doing this. I want to help make America better. I think having these conversations helps everybody have a better understanding of where everybody is coming from.
.
“Those conversations are important to have because the better we understand each other, the better we know each other, the better we can deal and communicate with each other which ultimately makes everyone, puts everybody in a better position.”
https://undertheradar.military.com/2016/09/kaepernick-meets-veteran-nate-boyer-kneels-anthem/
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am that person and am so embarrassed. I will be voting today in the primary run off and I will not be casting my vote for Roy Moore.
In November I will be voting for Doug Jones. It will be the first time I will ever vote for a Democrat.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Kim, Hold on! Arnold the Dog may yet run for that seat.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s a thoughtful piece by a man who doesn’t like the idea of the kneeling for the anthem, but sees a larger picture.
“Kaepernick, Speech, and a Job: The Cleat May Soon be on the Other Foot
Free speech is important, but is it always helpful, and how does it relate to employment?”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2017/september/kaepernick-speech-job.html
Just as I thought that President Obama sometimes weighed in on things I thought he should have stayed out of, I also wish President Trump had stayed out of this. His words have only inflamed people on both sides of the issue even more. (That is me, not a quote, but the author touches on this, too.)
A friend writes: “Kneeling during the anthem only changed the discussion from police violence to the anthem, and ranting about the anthem only caused the rest of the players to kneel.
All useless and wasted effort, not helping anyone.”
LikeLiked by 3 people
What! I’m shocked! 🙄
Said nobody……..
This is widespread in all major college sports, probably even more so in football.
https://sports.yahoo.com/fbi-probe-uncovers-massive-college-basketball-scandal-snaring-big-time-programs-144631716.html
“The worst-kept secret in college basketball is how coaches, sneaker executives, sports agents, travel-team coaches and financial advisers, often through under-the-table payments, steer top high school talent first to NCAA programs and later to apparel brands and professional representation once they enter the NBA.
Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York blew this shadowy world open in ways that have never before been seen, indicting 10 men, including active assistant basketball coaches at Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and USC, plus an executive for adidas, in a widespread case that is sure to rock college basketball to its core.
While only four schools are currently involved, the complaints will provide a treasure map for NCAA investigators as it tells stories of endless payouts and kickbacks in the recruitment of numerous top prospects over the past three years.
And that’s before any of the involved agree to cooperate with authorities.
Among the named defendants include former NBA star Chuck Person, an assistant at Auburn, as well as assistants Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State, Emanuel “Book” Richardson of Arizona and Tony Bland of USC. Adidas executive Jim Gatto is also named, as well as agents and financial planners.
While some other major schools and national championship coaches are not specifically named yet, nearly any college basketball fan can put the dots together on some of the recruiting stories to figure out who is who. The names that are expected to come out will be prominent.
Using a “cooperating witness” who is described as operating an athlete management business (a financial planner who handled the money for pro athletes), the FBI was able to get an undercover agent into hotel rooms, meetings and deals. In 2016, the cooperating witness was accused of committing securities fraud, according to the complaints, and presumably flipped after that. The details are overwhelming.”
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I would vote for a yeller dawg before I voted for Roy Moore
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks, Tychicus.
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Kim,
He’s yellow alright, but not in the way you mean.
“”I will defend women’s access to contraception and a woman’s right to choose and fight any legislation or executive action that would allow insurance companies to discriminate against women. Planned Parenthood provides essential preventative and reproductive health care services like cancer screenings, STD testing and low-cost birth control to millions of American women who have no insurance or otherwise can’t afford these services. I stand with Planned Parenthood. “
LikeLiked by 1 person
Arnold is polite to most people, but my son says he will bite members of certain disfavored groups.
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This will not go over well. But exactly the type of likely failure that provides little or no gain anyway even if they pass it, that I’ve come to expect Republican controlled govt..
.https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/09/tax-reform-may-include-targeting-401k-to-help-with-lost-revenue/#more-228238
“We all know that besides healthcare, tax reform is one of the bigger ideas on President Donald Trump’s agenda. His administration has been screaming tax cuts while the left cries over lost “revenue.” But instead of cutting spending like any sane person would do when caught in a tight budget, the lawmakers have been looking for ways to make up the lost money.
Targeting a person’s 401(k) has been floated around. A possible change includes taxing the earnings before a person places the money into the retirement fund. This has some worried because it could change your tax bracket once you retire and encourage people not to save as much as they usually do.”
————————
“Another fear is that this change would not change the change or add as much revenue as the government hopes:
“If the gimmick results in a higher level of debt, then it’s harmful,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates for lower deficits.
The issue is that Rothification of 401(k)s would not actually raise revenue, the way that eliminating a tax credit or loophole used by business would. Instead, it would merely shift the timing of when the government received the revenue. As a result, if the tax reform plan, including the gimmick, looked on paper as though it did not add to deficits, could be a big net tax cut. In general, most members of Congress are willing to play such games. But others have resisted similar moves in writing budgets or other legislation.
And in the out years, the Treasury would see lower tax revenue, as people began withdrawing funds from retirement accounts tax-free. “What you’ve basically done is charge the cost of rate reductions to a future generation,” Goldwein said.
Today at The Hill, Robert Reynolds, the president and CEO of Putnam Investments and Great West Financial and owner of Empower Retirement, penned an op-ed against making changes to the 401(k) plans:”
—————————-
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can Arnold the Dog kneel?
LikeLiked by 2 people
DJ, My son says that Arnold does something called “fat-sitting”. It is a cross between sitting and laying down that Travis says is caused by his ample girth.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmmm. Well is he going to be a troublemaker?
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Kim,
My wife didn’t vote for Trump or Hillary. You can do the same. I voted for Trump. He was not my choice but Hillary? Ugh!
She should go to jail. She was and is a crook.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not *exactly* election related, but it’s in Alabama … And coyotes are very political in our area.
http://local15tv.com/news/local/coyote-captured-in-mobile-neighborhood
________________________________________
Coyote captured in Mobile neighborhood
MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) — Mobile Police confirm a coyote has been captured in one of the neighborhoods that has had several family pets go missing.
The coyote was caught in a trap.
People living in the Lanfair and Yester Oaks neighborhoods say that for the last several months, they’ve seen coyotes wandering the streets. … There are other traps set up, in hopes of catching the remaining coyotes. …
____________________________________________
LikeLiked by 1 person
I suppose this is for the best. It’ll save them the embarrassment of yet another failed vote.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/26/obamacare-repeal-failure-republican-senate-243148
“The Senate will not vote on Republicans’ latest bill to repeal Obamacare this week, putting an end, for now, to the GOP’s seven-year campaign promise to dismantle the health care law.
The decision was reached at a party lunch Tuesday after it became clear the plan would fail, GOP senators said. Three Senate Republicans had already said they would vote against the measure, and the GOP could only afford two defections.
“Why have a vote if you know what the outcome is and it’s not what you want,” said GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. “I don’t know what you gain from that. But I do believe that the health care issue is not dead, and that’s what counts.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans are not giving up on a health care bill but made clear he wants a quick pivot to another issue where Republicans hope to notch a legislative victory: taxes.
“We haven’t given up on changing the American health-care system … We’re not going to do it this week, but it still lies ahead of us. We haven’t given up on that,” McConnell said Tuesday afternoon. “Where we go from here is tax reform.””
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So they can fail at that too.
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I voted for Luther Strange. I fear Roy Moore will win and in Alabama it is almost impossible for a Democrat to win, but in November I will be voting for Doug Jones.
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I liked this article by Jay Nordlinger on Trump, Kaepernick, et al.
https://twitter.com/kevinnr/status/912769679294390273
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From the article:
Kaepernick really disgusted me when he wore a shirt touting Fidel Castro — and socks depicting cops as pigs. At the same time, I counseled benign neglect, borrowing Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s (radioactive) phrase from the late ’60s. Starve Kaepernick of attention. Don’t feed him, or it. Let him do his thing, and the rest of us will do ours. This is America. What the hay. (“Hey”?) The issue was dying out. There were just a few embers.
Then Donald J. Trump got into it, of course. He is an arsonist in American politics. We used to call Sharpton & Co. “racial arsonists.” The president is his own brand of arsonist. (Actually, Trump and Sharpton are a lot alike, as I’ve argued before: two New York media creatures.) Also, Trump insists on being at the center of attention, always. There’s an expression for such men: “the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.” You heard Trump, revvin’ up that crowd: “Get that son-of-a %#@&% off the field right now! Out! He’s fired!” Blah blah blah. Roar roar roar. And that changed everything.
We Americans are a patriotic lot. We’re also a cranky, independent-minded, nonconformist lot. We don’t like to be told what to do, especially by Authority. We don’t like to be bossed around. So, pre-Trump, kneeling meant one thing — and then it meant a big middle finger to the Man, a.k.a. Trump, a.k.a. POTUS. Context is everything. Everything.
It took Donald J. Trump to make anti-kneelers sympathetic to kneelers. Indeed, he turned some anti-kneelers into kneelers themselves. He crudifies everything he touches — including conservatism, including patriotism. There is a difference between patriotism and jingoism. Between patriotism and crude nationalism, crude flag-waving. If Trump is so all-fired patriotic, why does he repeatedly equate the United States with Putin’s Russia? (“What, you think our country’s so innocent?”) Why did he trash an FBI director to two of Putin’s reps in the Oval Office? And so on.
American nerves were raw before Trump became president, and he has rubbed them rawer. It’s what he does. He may not have substantive achievements, but he’s got grievance and Kulturkampf, as Bob Tyrrell says — culture struggle, or culture war — and that keeps him going. The whole country is responsive to Donald J. Trump. The whole country is in the throes of Trump fever.
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Ana Navarro is a copycat.
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