Ken – Page 4 – Sanity First!

Obama and Israel III

Few statements bother me more than the oft-repeated assertion that “Obama is anti-Israel.” As I’ve said many times, on this blog and elsewhere, feel free to disagree with specific policies, but to say that the president of the United States is “anti” one of our closest allies is absurd. Recognize that the prefix “anti” unambiguously signals that he knowingly and intentionally takes actions designed to damage the Jewish state.

Buried within this article from Bloomberg BusinessWeek is one sentence that obliterates the ridiculous anti-Israel argument:

When it comes to aid to Israel, and specifically the all-important military aid, “…Obama has done more than his predecessors, financing the development of Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system on top of the annual $3 billion U.S. subsidy to the country.” (Emphasis added)

Are we clear? “More than” every other U.S. president. Ever.

Case closed.

Obama is staunchly pro-Israel. He has said so many times, often in moving and deeply personal ways, and his actions back up his words. Importantly, he has been honored and acclaimed by many prominent Israelis (not all, obviously!) repeatedly over the years he has been in the White House.

If you disagree with a particular action, great, that’s democracy. But let’s please stop the nonsense about Obama being anti-Israel.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

Please pass this message on.

Ken

Adios to Jon Stewart, an American Hero

After sixteen years, tonight is Jon Stewart’s last night hosting The Daily Show. If you don’t know why that makes it a sad day for American democracy, you haven’t seen the show.

No one else has his combination of comedy chops and intelligence. No one else punctures pretense and outright lies as he did. And while we wish his replacement, Trevor Noah, well, it will surely be a long time before he can achieve the same level of respect.

Here’s one historic sample. It was from the darkest days of the Great Recession, back in March, 2009. In this clip he attacks, rightfully and factually, TV stock-meister Jim Cramer. You almost feel sorry for Cramer. Almost.

Watch it, even if you have no interest in financial stuff. Watch it because it is compelling, dramatic television.

And I can tell you, as someone involved in finance every day, everything Jon Stewart said back then was correct. Too bad, despite Jon’s incandescent rage, almost nothing has changed.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

Ken

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Fox News Lies

Here’s all you need to understand about Fox News: when they wake up in the morning they know that their job is to make Democrats look bad.

The Fox News mandate is certainly not to be “fair and balanced.” (That’s their original lie.) They play at being a real news organization. They cover disasters, weather, sports and sure, politics, but in the end it is all targeted toward blaming America’s problems on those who do not share their angry, right-wing world-view.

They feed on anger and they fuel discontent. That’s the massively profitable business model set up by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, and it’s an acid eating at the fabric of American life.

If you think the “main-stream media” is intentionally liberal, you are clueless about how the media operate. Journalism students are taught to present their stories impartially and they are the ones who, in large part, fill the ranks of the news business. It’s impossible to believe that the hundreds of thousands of reporters, writers and producers from all parts of America who have passed through the major media in the last say, twenty years, have all been brainwashed to tilt left. If that were the case, if there really were overt pressure to help Democrats, there would now be hundreds or even thousands of whistleblowers out there saying just that. But there aren’t.

The main-stream broadcast news media, which of course are profit-making divisions of huge corporations, are neither liberal nor conservative. They are incompetent, but that’s another rant for another day.

I try to watch Fox News or Fox Business News now and then, but it’s not easy. Typically, within a minute or two I’m saying (or shouting) “that’s not true!” Distortions are rampant, even within the supposedly “pure news” segments. And on the other programs, almost every time you hear one of them say “Liberals want …” or “Liberals believe …” you can be sure what follows is an extreme distortion of the truth. Worse, outright lies are common.

Want proof? Recently a Vine video has gone viral. It shows 50 Fox Lies in six seconds. Take a look, and if you doubt that those were all lies, check out what Politifact has to say about each of those 50 statements.

And rest assured, there are thousands of other lies that could have been in that video. Fox News is a blight on America.

The REAL Scandal at the IRS

Republicans often tell us that the government ought to be run more like a business. Ok. Then suppose there was a business that knew for sure that for every dollar it spent it would get six dollars back. What business would turn its back on that kind of spectacular return on investment?

Well, thanks to the GOP and their blind frenzy to cut spending, that is exactly the intensely weird situation we have. The tax engine of the U.S., the Internal Revenue Service, must slash $346 million from its budget over the next nine months. That’s on top of the more than $1 billion already cut from the IRS budget since 2010. According to an article in Bloomberg Business, the estimates are that “the government will fail to collect at least $2 billion this tax season, or about $6 lost for every $1 of budget cuts. Over the past four years, there’s been a $4 billion drop in money collected through IRS enforcement actions.”

So since there will be fewer enforcement actions, “the cheaters gonna cheat” – and the rest of us will pay for it, one way or another. Brilliant.

The IRS Commissioner says the cuts will delay tax refunds, and more importantly for the long term, will reduce needed investments in technology. Meaning, things will get worse.

Also thanks to the cuts, hundreds of thousands of poor, handicapped and elderly citizens will not get the help they depend on to file properly. They’re on their own.

I would love a Republican explain how these cuts makes sense.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

Ken

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Where is the Democrats’ Backbone?

You’ve not heard much from me this election cycle. Aside from personal reasons (all good, I’m happy to say) I am disheartened by the way Democrats are running their campaigns; if they lose, it will be because they are wimps.

I’ve been in a number of different states over the past few months, and I watch the local political ads. Democrats have a great story to tell, but they, or their high-priced consultants, focus on tiny snippets of issues, and send out attack ads instead of reminding the electorate of the big issues.

Worse still, Democratic candidates are working hard to distance themselves from the president.

Why? If a Republican president had exactly Barack Obama’s track record, the GOP would be highlighting these positives with intense and repetitive enthusiasm…

A massive improvement in the economy. In 5 years under Obama the economy has created twice as many jobs as were created in 8 years under George W. Bush. And the stock market has soared, adding billions of dollars to middle class nest eggs.
The Federal deficit is shrinking rapidly. It’s been cut by two thirds since 2009.
Income taxes on middle-income families are near historic lows.
Millions of Americans have health care for the first time. No one can be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition.
Two wars ended or winding down.
The U.S. now produces so much energy we now are a major exporter of oil. And gasoline prices have fallen sharply (despite repeated GOP screams that under Obama prices would skyrocket).

And MANY more! For an eye-opening list of the major accomplishments under Obama, all carefully documented, click here.

If that was say, Mitt Romney’s list of accomplishments, the Fox-holers would be falling all over themselves in orgiastic glee. Their told-you-so’s would be deafening and non-stop.

But instead of reminding folks which party stands up for a higher minimum wage to keep working people out of poverty, women’s rights, minority rights, sane environmental laws, helping students with college debt, better education for all students, and so many other important issues, for the most part Democratic candidates and the ads they run stay mum about their party’s core beliefs and achievements! It’s a stupid strategy. And attack ads disgust everyone and turn people away from politics.

The polls indicate that Democrats are likely to lose control of the Senate next week. The silver lining is that in 2016 the Republicans have far more seats to defend, and it’s likely they will almost certainly cede Senate control back to the Dems after that election.

I just hope that between now and then the Democrats grow a spine.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

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Better for the Economy: Reagan or Obama?

Forbes magazine and its web site, forbes.com, are owned by Steve Forbes, a former Republican presidential candidate. I say that so you will recognize that the source for this post is not some “liberal media” outlet.

In clear, devastating fashion, financial expert Robert Deitrick methodically dismantles the notion—so dearly held by Grumpy Old People—that St. Ronnie did everything better than anyone else.

Read the entire forbes.com article if you’d like, or just read this, the final paragraph (emphasis added):

Economically, President Obama’s administration has outperformed President Reagan’s in all commonly watched categories. Simultaneously the current administration has reduced the deficit, which skyrocketed under Reagan. Additionally, Obama has reduced federal employment, which grew under Reagan (especially when including military personnel,) and truly delivered a “smaller government.” Additionally, the current administration has kept inflation low, even during extreme international upheaval, failure of foreign economies (Greece) and a dramatic slowdown in the European economy.

So the next time some ill-informed flag waver like Donald Trump (“Obama is the worst president ever!”) or any other Fox News acolyte attacks President Obama’s economic record, you now know where to turn for the facts.

As the mid-term election nears, remember that the GOP has consistently tried to block virtually every Obama initiative. Please help to counter them by supporting Democrats in any way you can. America’s future is at stake.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

Ken

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Previous Sanity First messages are archived at the blog http://sanityfirst.com/

Obamacare and the failed GOP predictions

Here’s a headline that tells you everything you need to know about the Affordable Care Act. It comes to us courtesy of the non-partisan RAND Corporation:

Survey Estimates Net Gain of 9.3 Million American Adults with Health Insurance.

Millions of Americans now have the fundamental peace-of-mind that comes from knowing they have at least minimal health insurance. That is a huge, game-changing improvement over the previous situation.

The GOP, of course, told us that Obamacare would be the ruination of our great land. That’s why the GOP-dominated House voted more than 50 times to repeal it. (Talk about insanity!) But as Bill Maher recently pointed out…

They said Obamacare would use death panels. It doesn’t. They said it was a government takeover. And the insurance industry is making record profits. They said it covers illegals. It doesn’t. They said it was a job killer. It hasn’t been.

Have you noticed that the shouting about Obamacare has started to fade as the facts have come in?

And to be fair, as Maher continued…

Now for sure Obama also told a lie. He said everyone who likes their healthcare plan can keep it. And for about 2% of the population that did turn out to be false. The difference is he stopped saying it. He stepped up and said you’re right, my bad. Because he understands there is this thing called observable reality!

(Bill was on a rant about “Zombie Lies” that Republicans tell, lies that just won’t die even in the face of overwhelming facts.)

Want more truth about the success of the ACA? Look here.

The program is certainly not perfect, but it is a success.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

Ken

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“Hijacked by Crazy, Stupid People.”

Well, after a long hiatus, I’m back. I could not sit around without commenting on the outrageous conduct of Congressional Republicans.

First, some quick background. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was

passed by the Congress,
signed into law by the President,
upheld by the Supreme Court.

Then in the 2012 election, the American electorate was given a choice between a candidate who supported the law, obviously, and one who said he would shut down Obamacare “on day one.” That candidate, Mitt Romney, was soundly defeated. So “the American people” had spoken, clearly, about what they wanted, and the ACA is the law of the land.

The role of the opposition party, if they are not happy with this or any other law, is to work through the normal channels to bring about change. But in this case, a small band of radical Republicans threw a temper tantrum and threatened to deeply wound the American economy.

And they did. Yesterday, Standard & Poor’s estimated that the GOP-forced government shutdown sucked around $24 billion out of the economy – and the meter is still running. (Remember when the GOP was the party of “fiscal responsibility”?)

Sen. John McCain called the actions of the House Republicans a “fool’s errand.” He knew there was zero chance they could get what they wanted – the defunding of the ACA. Yet this small group of crazies persisted, and we will all feel the effects as the damage ripples through the U.S. economy and beyond, forcing interest rates up and holding GDP down.

As egregious as the shutdown was, even worse was the threat to allow the U.S., for the first time ever, to default on its obligations. Some radical righties argued that a default would not be harmful. They are idiots. Not one mainstream economist (and that covers a wide swath of economic thought and theory) agreed with that stance. Not one. Economists were, and are, horrified by the thought of a default.

But where were the “moderate” Republicans during all this? Almost all were strangely silent. That’s not merely my opinion. Listen to what one conservative thinker, Bruce Bartlett, a former advisor to both President Reagan and the first President Bush, thinks about the current situation:

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/53310099#53310099

As he said, the Republican Party has been “hijacked by crazy people, stupid people” and he cannot understand why more of his fellow party members are not standing up to them. (The whole 14 minute video clip is excellent. I hope you will watch it.)

What is my opinion is this: I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that the dumbing down of the Grand Old Party aligns with the rise of Fox News. That organization, watched religiously by millions, stokes paranoia and is not encumbered by facts and rational thought. And the rest of us pay the price.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

Looking Back at the First Term

You didn’t notice, but I have not posted anything since the election. (Gloating is so rude.)

To ease back into the political world, this entire post is merely hoping you take a look that this article (a chart, really) from the New York Times.

It is a blunt and fair assessment of the President’s first four years. He deserves much credit for, among other things, saving us from a full-blown Depression, ending two horribly costly wars, and beginning the difficult task of fixing our notoriously antiquated health care system .

And he clearly stumbled as well, particularly, in my view, in his handling of the housing crisis and Wall Street Reform.

Let’s hope the “New Obama” we saw at yesterday’s glorious Inauguration festivities carries through on his promises, explicit and implied, over the coming four years.

Who Are YOU Aligned With?

OK, one last shot.

Let me be blunt — If you vote for the GOP you are aligning yourself with some of the most radical, hateful, and ill-informed people in our country. Here is just one TINY example. Today I received an email from the Traditional Values Coalition (I have no idea how I got on their list, but I’m glad I am). And here are a few choice quotes from the frantic email…

I won’t bore you with the details of the last four years — you know them all too well: Obamacare, the HHS mandate, “religious toleration” replacing religious liberty, the bombshell discovery of how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds and fuels the radical left, four years where Islamists have been able to freely build radical mosques and entrench shariah in our neighborhoods and communities, the suspension of “don’t ask don’t tell” and the crackdown on our military chaplains.

A few paragraphs later…

Nowhere does the issue of friendly liberal judges have greater momentum within the homosexual and transgender left than with the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

This pet bill would — at a stroke — put transgenders in the classroom, in our small businesses, and in our government as a legally protected class… taking the legal protections for disadvantaged minorities such as women or African-Americans and appropriating them for when Marvin decides he wants to become “Mary.”

Got that? Forget about fixing the economy, protecting women’s rights, ensuring clean air and water, ending wars and helping veterans. Ignore our failing infrastructure, growing income inequality, protecting Israel and stopping Iran from getting the bomb.

You fools! Don’t you see that our really big problem is … transgenders in the classroom! Oh, how could I have been so blind?!

Dear readers, that ridiculous email is the smallest tip of a massive iceberg. The GOP depends on “low-information voters.” Vote for the GOP and you reward their massive campaign deceptions, widespread and despicable efforts to suppress voter turnout (in Democratic strongholds), and you are voting, absolutely, to turn back the clock to the disasters of the Bush years.

And you align yourself with climate change deniers, virulent and violent anti-choice groups, gay bashers, covert and overt racists, and proponents of “creationism” and other hard-core anti-science belief systems.

Why in the world would you do that?

Please vote with your head, and please urge other to do the same.

Thanks for caring about the truth.

Ken