Conjectures, Lies and Nonsense.....This Is CNN

I just watched an analysis presented on CNN regarding the potential impact should the Graham Cassidy healthcare bill pass Congress.  It was a joke.  In fact, it was so far from reality that one would expect that the CNN reporter couldn't present it without laughing.

Let me give an example.  Under Graham Cassidy, there would be block grants to states who will decide how to handle healthcare.  The exact breakdown among the states is not yet known, but CNN presented figures discussing how certain states would fare in three, five and ten years.  You could say it is amazing how CNN knows what will happen in California or Texas in 2030 under this bill when no one else does.  Or, you could say that CNN is just guessing.  Those are the nice ways of saying that CNN is presenting Fake News.

But it gets worse.  CNN didn't just tell us what federal funding for California would be in 2030, it also told the audience how supposed cuts in funding from currently expected levels would be handled by the state legislature.  That's right, CNN pretended to know how the future California legislature will deal with unknown funding levels received from the federal government.  It's totally Fake News.  It makes about as much sense as if CNN were to announce the winner of the 2028 presidential election in California despite the fact that no one knows who will run or what the issues will be in eleven years, and then, in addition, to tell us the percentages of the vote won by each of the unknown candidates.  It's not news, it's just pure fiction.

Foreign Policy or Domestic Politics

There's an article in Foreign Policy magazine declaring that President Trump's first year has been the worst ever for US foreign policy.  Let's take a look to see how accurate that assessment actually is.

We'll start with the big issues:

ISIS and Islamic terrorism.
1.  In his first eight months in office, the President has provided leadership that has smashed ISIS in its main areas in Syria and Iraq.  Mosul is no longer in control of ISIS.  Most of Raqqa has also been freed.  Many other cities and towns have also been liberated.  Trump's main change in the fight has been to free up the military from the total control imposed on it by president Obama.  This has allowed the military to act much more quickly to destroy ISIS targets once discovered.  That speed means that many more ISIS fighters and installations have been wiped out.  It seems likely that the Obama micromanagement style would also have ultimately defeated ISIS, but Trump has sped the process up.

2.  The President also got nearly all of the Sunni Muslim nations of the world to condemn Islamic terrorism at a meeting in Saudi Arabia last spring.  Obama wouldn't even talk about the problem, so this was a step forward.

3.  When Trump took office, the "experts" told us that he would be a major recruiting tool for ISIS and the other terrorists.  That has not turned out to be true.  The terrorists have not disappeared, but there are many fewer of them around the world.

North Korea
1.  Upon taking office, President Trump was faced with a nuclear armed North Korea on the verge of having fully operational ICBM's.  Obama had done nothing and then called it "strategic patience" so that he could seem erudite to the experts.  Trump has had to face the terrible mess left by Obama.  So far, the NK's continue to bluster and conduct tests of their weapons systems.  Trump has managed, however, to get China to participate in sanctions on the NK's for the first time.  The USA has also gotten the Security Council to impose strong measures against the NK's.  The tension has been ratcheted up, but this is a necessary part of any resolution that ends with a disarmed North Korean regime.

Western Hemisphere
1.  Relations between the USA and Venezuela and between the USA and Mexico are not as good as they were under Obama.  One reason for the decline in these relationships, of course, has been that Trump has not just ignored everything that Mexico and Venezuela do.  If Maduro takes an anti-democratic step in Caracas, Trump, unlike Obama, actually condemns it.  Trump also wants to cut off the free flow of illegals from Mexico into the USA.  This is certainly a switch in policy, but it is hard to call it a disaster.

Europe
1.  For all the efforts by the media to whip up some sort of confrontation between Europe and the USA, nothing of importance has actually happened.

Russia and China
1.  With regard to China, Trump has gotten a much more robust response from the Chinese than Obama ever got.  This has had some truly favorable outcomes as discussed above.  Russia is another story.  Under Obama, Russia took over Crimea.  Then Russia invaded eastern Ukraine.  Obama did nothing but watch.  Trump has been in office for eight months and there have not been any further Russian moves to take over Ukraine or other eastern European countries.  It remains to be seen whether or not Trump will do better with Putin that Obama did.

Put all this together and you find that Trump's first year has been quite successful when it comes to foreign policy.  The only people who disagree are the "experts" who are blinded by anti-Trump politics.

Permanent or "Temporary"

It seems as if the Senate GOP has made a rather sensible decision concerning tax reform.  The Republicans decided to accept a net tax cut of $1.5 trillion dollars over ten years in order to boost economic growth.  That, at least, is how the NY Times describes it.  According to the Times, the Republicans are ignoring our huge national debt and accepting that it will grow by 1.5 trillion bucks due to their "risky" tax cuts.  Of course, that's a highly partisan view of the decision by a Democrat paper that is doing its best to put the decision in a bad light.

Let's look at reality.  The tax cuts will only total $1.5 trillion if they get scored by the CBO using static methods.  The point of the tax cuts is to grow the economy more rapidly, but the CBO method assumes that there will be NO increase in growth due to these cuts.  That's like turning on the oven to 450 degrees and then assuming that the inside of the oven will remain cold.  The reality should be quite different.  In fact, if the tax cuts lead to an additional 1% in the annual growth rate over the next decade, federal tax receipts should be about $350 billion higher in year ten than projected by the CBO.  In fact, over the ten year period, the extra growth will be sufficient to pay for the tax cuts.

The problem, it seems, is the outmoded methodology of the CBO rather than the scope of the tax cuts.  Most likely, however, the Senate will be stuck with the CBO's method when it comes to scoring.  That will lead to the tax cuts being only "temporary".  In other words, they can only be put into effect for ten years.  Of course, ten years is like a lifetime in the world of taxation.  Businesses usually use a shorter time from when analyzing investments, so ten years is the same as forever in that regard.  Even real estate developers, who have perhaps the longest time horizon of any business use a ten year span for valuations.  Even more important, most businesses understand that it would be foolish to assume that taxes will stay the same over the next ten years.  They change all the time.  There have been significant changes in tax rates, deductions and the like periodically over the last 40 years.  Ten year limitations on new tax rates, etc. really won't make much of a difference in that regard.

So The Tweet Was Correct??

Remember the uproar when President Trump tweeted that the Obama administration had bugged his campaign?  The media and the Democrats denounced the tweet as false.  "Where's the evidence?" they all screamed.  Media outlets like CNN reported on what they called the "unproven" or "false" allegations, and that was only when they were being nice.  In all of the response, it was considered outrageous that Trump would claim to have had his campaign bugged.

Now, CNN itself has reported that both before and after the election, the FBI was wiretapping Paul Manafort who, for part of the relevant time, was the chair of the Trump campaign.  If this report is correct, that means that President Trump's tweet was also correct.  We're not likely to hear much coverage of that sort; most in the media don't like to admit that they were very wrong.  Nevertheless, it's nice to know.

Can't Someone Tell Her to Go Away?

The Hill is reporting today that Hillary Clinton "won't rule out challenging the 2016 election" if it turns out that Russia played a significant roll in her defeat. 

It's sad.  Someone should tell her that the election was nearly a year ago, and that there is no way to challenge the result now.  The Electoral College met and voted and the result was certified by Congress.  That's the end of that, at least according to something called The United States Constitution.  Perhaps Hillary has heard of it.

Hillary lost.  Now she's out trying to sell books by blaming everyone but herself for that loss.  In the last month, it has been Obama's fault, Biden's fault, Russia's fault, fearful women dominated by their husband's fault, Jim Comey's fault, and the list goes on.  Hillary hasn't blamed me for her loss yet, but I think I am the only one she has overlooked.  After all, I did write some blog posts slamming her during the campaign.  I might have influenced a vote or two.

The strange thing is that Hillary needs to realize that her endless whining about her loss will not sell books.  All it does is reveal that Hillary is and surely was completely unfit to lead the nation.  All she cares about is herself.  I say again; it's sad.

Few Seem To Care About the Emmys

Last night's Emmy awards show had really poor ratings.  In the demo, the numbers were down 18% from last year, and last year's show was down from the year before.  This year's show may set a new all time low in the ratings for the Emmys.  It seems as if not that many people cared what the various TV personalities had to say or who won Best Performance by a Vegetable in a Cooking Show.  (In case you missed it, the winner was a rather large Turnip on Lydia's Italy.)

The numbers are still preliminary, so there could be some change, but it's highly unlikely to be big enough to rescue host Stephen Colbert from being the face of the biggest Emmy failure ever.

There ought to be a lesson to Hollywood in these results (and also from the terrible box office numbers of this past summer.)  Sadly, the Hollywood people will surely miss this.  Nevertheless, these people ought to understand that the half of America that supported President Trump really didn't want to tune in so that they could be insulted as racists, sexists, homophobes, and Islamophobes or to hear Trump bad mouthed for three hours.

Besides, even without the politics, does anyone still care about the Emmys?  Not many, it seems.

The Clarity of Fog

This morning, I saw two articles.  The first said that war with North Korea is inevitable.  The second said that having to live with North Korea as a nuclear power is inevitable.  To say the least, the two did not agree, but they each presented their point of view as the certain truth.

Let's get one thing straight:  no human being knows the future.  I was told yesterday by a friend that the world is going to end on Friday of this week.  I doubt that, but I really don't know.  Maybe it will.  Of course, in that event, one could ask why I am bothering to write this.  It's a good question with an easy answer.  I'll let you all figure it out.

We all have to be less certain about what the future will bring.