Republicans claim that they will fix the economy. Let’s review their record.
1929 - The Great Depression
1973 - The Oil Embargo
1987 - Black Friday Stock Market Crash
1989 - Junk bond crash
1991 - Recession
1989 - Savings and Loan Crisis
2001 - Stock market crash
2008 - Housing market crash
I don’t trust these people. Do you?
It’s hard to imagine a better week of football:
The Steelers beat Brady and the Bucs.
The Jets won.
The Giants advanced to 5-1 after knocking off the Ravens
The Eagles are 6-0 after defeating the Cowboys.
The Browns lost.
The Raiders are 1-4.
The AFC North is still wide open with no team over .500.
Chase Claypool is THE MAN!
It’s a shame that Kenny Pickett got hurt, but he threw his first NFL TD pass, and hopefully he’ll bounce back quickly from the injury.
This is speculation on my part, but I believe that World War III has begun. To this point, it has been a proxy war waged in Ukraine, but the effects are widespread. Many countries have contributed arms, supplies, training, and intelligence. Refugees are spreading across the Continent. Russia’s actions in the energy sector have created scarcity and sent prices skyrocketing.
The Ukrainians have defended their land effectively, surprisingly so given their asymmetric disadvantages. The have pushed Russian forces out of some formerly occupied areas and inflicted heavy casualties on the battlefield.
But Russia is not likely to agree to a ceasefire despite their losses. Mr. Putin places no value on life or property. He has drafted another 300,000 conscripts to be sent to Ukraine, as Russian men of fighting age attempt to flee their country. The Kremlin increased penalties for desertion and voluntary surrender, because they realize that no one wants to die fighting for Putin’s objectives.
Expect the conflict to intensify. In addition to the increased personnel, Russia is deploying weapons systems that it has purchased from Iran. Russia has staged a sham referendum in Eastern Ukraine asking the people there whether they would like their territory to become part of Russia. This is significant, because Russia’s constitution allows the deployment of nuclear weapons only in cases where Russia is defending its own territory. When Putin can claim, even illegitimately under international law, that eastern Ukraine is part of his own country, he will have the green light to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.
Don’t think that he won’t use them. The Russian military and its mercenary counterparts have demonstrated that there is no line that they won’t cross, no norm that they won’t break, no war crime that they will not commit. They’ve bombed hospitals, leveled cities, shelled apartment buildings and nuclear power plants. They’ve killed civilians without remorse or justification, often torturing them and mutilating their bodies. They’ve shelled humanitarian corridors to prevent aid from reaching civilians and to prevent escape from heavily shelled population centers. They have kidnapped Ukrainian citizens and sent them to concentration camps in Russia before relocating them thousands of miles from home. They have waged a barbaric campaign of depopulation, just as they did years earlier in Aleppo in Syria. When battlefield commanders come back to Moscow, Putin doesn’t reprimand them for their brutality. He promotes them.
Given that track record, I don’t see any reason by Putin would stop short of deploying nuclear weapons if he thought that they would work to his advantage.
Carlos Alcaraz won the US Open tennis tournament on September 11, 2022. He wasn’t born on September 11, 2001. He’s nineteen years old.
From a nineteen-year-old’s perspective, the September 11 attacks were historical events, like Pearl Harbor or The Alamo.
The last King Charles (II) died in 1685, the year when Johann Sebastian Bach was born, and forty-seven years before the birth of George Washington.
King Charles I was executed in 1649 during a civil war that suspended the monarchy. Rebellion leader Oliver Cromwell signed his death warrant. Charles II was coronated following his father’s execution, but Cromwell’s troops defeated the royal forces, and Cromwell ruled England for nine years until his death from disease. Cromwell’s son did not have support in Parliament, so Charles II was restored to the throne.
The elder Cromwell’s body was exhumed, hung in chains, and beheaded in a “posthumous execution.” The head was mounted to a pole and displayed outside of the UK Parliament building for decades before being sold to a private collector.
Football spelling review: The ball is loose! They’re going to lose! Is that your beer? No, it’s Lou’s.
It’s hard to believe that I’m saying this, but I would rather go to space on an Amazon rocket or a Tesla rocket than a NASA rocket.
The heckler at Biden’s speech gave us a sobering look at the MAGA Republican mindset.
- No sense of service or community
- No helpful ideas
- No willingness to work toward a common goal
- No sense of decency or respect
Instead, it’s all about antics, bluster, disruption, and intimidation.
“Hey, look at me! I brought a megaphone so I can heckle a 79 year old man with a speech impediment! Aren’t I special? I deserve to be in charge of everything!”
Most industrialized countries provide free healthcare and free education up to a four year degree. The expense is offset by the benefit having a healthy, well-trained, well-educated work force. In the Information Age, education is more critical than ever.
The US provides neither of these benefits.
Manufacturing jobs have systematically been sent offshore. The better paying jobs require an education.
The price of an education has increased more rapidly than median wages or the cost of living. Many working families cannot afford to pay for their children’s education, especially given that they also need to pay for healthcare out of pocket.
People need an education to get ahead, so they take out loans.
At the behest of lenders, Congress has enacted laws that force the repayment of those loans regardless of financial hardship.
Student loans are immune to bankruptcy. You still have to pay back the loan, even if you get sick and lose your job and have huge medical expenses.
Complicating the situations is the rise of for-profit businesses that offer educational services. At the primary and secondary level, these businesses are called Charter Schools. Charter Schools are businesses with a CEO. Profit, not education, is their primary objective.
There are for-profit companies providing education at the university level as well. Some use the word University in their name.
For profit companies fulfill their mission by attracting students and collecting tuition. Providing an education to the students is a secondary objective.
These companies do a lot of marketing to attract students. Enrolling paying students is their number one objective.
Some of these institutions were exposed as scams and shut down. The value of the education that students received was negligible, but their loan debt remains very real. Students have to pay back the loans whether or not their “education” resulted in them getting them a job.
These are some of the reasons why student loan forgiveness is an important issue.
I don’t relish having my tax dollars go to paying off someone else’s loans, but it’s necessary for the country to make a course correction.
When former students are no longer burdened with debt, they have more disposable income to contribute to the economy.
I would like to see the US provide more education and healthcare opportunities for all students without forcing people to run up crippling amounts of debt simply to compete in the job market. It’s better to set up a working program than to bail out a broken system.
