4.16.17
Two days ago we dropped a 21,000 pound bomb on a cave network in Afghanistan killing 96 ISIS fighters, including 13 of their commanders. THAT IS EXCELLENT. These low life pigs are committing vile atrocities all over the globe. The more of them we can kill the better. However we must realize that this is only a minor dent in the armor of ISIS. Estimates show ISIS has as many as 200,000 members with about 30,000 front line fighters. The rest are support personnel of some type or are scattered throughout the world as covert cells of terrorists. This bombing may put some fear in them, but the only way to end the carnage ISIS inflicts on innocents world wide is to decimate this evil forever.
The raving moderate on Terrorism
4.12.17
We launched 60 Patriot Missiles at a Syrian air base because Assad used poisonous Sarin gas on a town in Syria killing 89 people. I don’t know if this is a good idea or not. Let’s examine the facts…
- Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war over 400,000 people have died.
- This is at least the second time that Assad has used poison gas on his countrymen. One other time was in 2013 when he killed 1,400 people, mostly innocents, in a Damascus suburb. Assad’s use of poison gas challenged President Obama’s “Red Line” statement and found Obama embarrassingly feckless.
- Of the 400,000+ casualties of this war it appears that less than 2,000 have died from poison gas.
I don’t get it. Over 400,000 dead, over 6 million people driven from their homes, fleeing for their lives. Destruction of entire cities. Brutal atrocities by ISIS and the Syrian Army……. and NOW we are shooting missiles at Syria……WHY??
We launched 60 missiles at a cost of somewhere around $80 million, and what did it accomplish? Virtually nothing. The Syrian military was using the airfield within a few days of the attack, so it had no real effect on Assad’s military. We knew where the poison gas was but we intentionally did not blow up that building, which makes no sense at all. People are just as dead if they are killed by a bullet in a massacre, blown up by a car bomb or killed with Sarin gas, why is poison gas the one thing that prompts a missile attack?
Despite the carnage in Syria the United States needs to stay out of it. I am sorry for the Syrian people, but the U.S. cannot be the “Justice League” for the entire planet. We have our hands full just dealing with the problems of the United States. We should have learned from Iraq and Libya that even the most brutal dictator is less of a threat to America than the religious radicals (like ISIS and al Quida) that rise to power out of any chaos they can create in that part of the world. Let Syria and Russia fight ISIS in Syria. We have other battles to fight with ISIS helping countries that are actually our allies and want our help. We do not need to end up in a war or a police action in Syria, or even an advisory or support roll to some rebel faction in Syria. Every time America interferes with a government in in the middle east the people in that country end up worse off than if we had never been involved. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.
For more on this see The Raving Moderate Essay “The War in Syria”
3.28.17
Donald Trump’s bill to repeal the dysfunctional ACA and replace it with another massively dysfunctional law failed in the House of Representatives a few days ago. I think this is good, at least we didn’t go from one poorly written law to another. The weird part of it is that the far right Republicans that didn’t vote for the bill chose that path because the bill was not dysfunctional enough. The reason the bill died is not because it offered changes to health care legislation but because it did not completely eradicate government health care intervention. The Freedom Caucus effectively chose to support the ACA by not voting for Trump’s bill to replace it. Trump’s bill had some good ideas such as allowing insurance companies to sell coverage nationally instead of being limited by states, but it also had a lot of poorly conceived ideas, like causing rates to double or triple for seniors or basically making the pre-existing conditions clause optional. Perhaps this delay will give both sides time to figure it out. The ACA has some problems that need to be fixed, and also has some good points for Americans who need health care coverage. We live in an age of advanced medicine and high costs. One severe illness or accident can wipe out a lifetime of hard work and savings. That possibility should not exist in a country as wealthy the United States. We need functional health care legislation and we need it soon. The ACA has issues that need to be fixed before any more Health Insurance providers drop out of the program. My suggestion is to figure out how to make the ACA better and more affordable. Then maybe it will get support from both mainstream Democrats and Republicans, and America won’t need the support of the extremists in either party to get decent, affordable health care coverage.
3.02.17
This is from TheStreet.com, published 3-1-17.
Wells Fargo denied cash bonuses to CEO Tim Sloan and CFO John Shrewsberry, along with six other senior executives, as the board seeks to show investors that senior managers will be held responsible for protecting the company’s reputation, tarnished in a fake-accounts scandal last year.
The actions weren’t based on any findings of improper behavior in the board’s ongoing independent investigation into the matter, Wells Fargo said in a statement. Along with forfeiting the cash incentives, the executives’ 2014 equity awards, which vested after 2016, will be cut by half, costing them a total of $32 million.
Well, it’s good to see that there is no income inequality or justice inequality when it comes to these high powered big shots at major banks. I don’t believe for a second that the Board of Directors at Wells Fargo didn’t know what was going on. These crooks were in charge of some of the most underhanded dealings we have seen from a bank since the derivatives meltdown, DEFRAUDING AND RIPPING OFF MILLIONS OF CUSTOMERS, and they’re employer basically fines them half their annual bonus. That means they get to keep half, so It sounds like they get to keep $32 million despite their dirty dealings?
$32 MILLION IS HALF THEIR “EQUITY AWARDS” !!
THEIR TOTAL “EQUITY AWARDS” (AKA: BONUSES) WOULD HAVR BEEN $64,000,000 DOLLARS !!
AND THAT DOESN’T INCLUDE THEIR SALARY !!
In the mean time we can’t get a decent Federal Minimum Wage Law so working class Americans (aka: the working poor) can make enough money to live on.
Really ….??