A Wandering Mind

Responding to Trump’s Economic Assertions in Graphs A constant theme of Donald Trump is that he has greatly improved the economy of the United States. He asserts this mostly by asserting it. Unfortunately, he has many supporters who believe his assertions based, evidently, on his assertions. The President’s Budget for fiscal year 2021 contends that, if all of his programs are passed by Congress, the economy will grow at an annual rate of 3 percent. That this has not happened at all seems not to deter his supporters. I am not an economist. Instead, I am an ordinary citizen who takes the time to read things. So in the following blog, I would like to present my rebuttal to the “Trump Economic Miracle,” a miracle that doesn’t exists. As with all my blogs, I welcome comment and correction from knowledgeable persons. I would especially welcome input from economists.  1. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) President Trump asserts, with some hyperbole, that we have “the greatest econo...

          On Friday, February 7th, the White House announced that LTC Alex Vindman, Ukraine analyst, on the National Security Staff, was escorted out of the White House, along with his twin brother, Yevgeny Vindman, also of the National Security Staff. Twitter has been on fire with this news. It accompanies the news that Ambassador Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the Eurpean Union, was being removed from his post. The Vindmans are, of course, careerists, while Sondland is a political appointee. What do they have in common? Both Alex Vindmand and Sondland were subpeoned by the House of Representatives, and both testtified during the Trump Impeachment Inquiry.           Despite the outrage, it is clearly a fact that any presdient has the authority to remove an ambassador. Any president has the authority to remove some member of his own National Security Staff. There really should not be a debate over that. Neither should there be a ...

          Paula White is a famous "evangelical" who is especially close to Donald Trump right now. Currently, Paula White-Cain (her married name) supposedly serves as the Head of "The White House Office of Faith and Opportunity Initiative," according to several press reports published between early November 2019 and January 2020 (for example, see this in the National Catholic Reporter at  https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/paula-white-head-trumps-faith-office  ). This initiative is part of President Trump's Executive Order of May 3, 2018, found at  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-establishment-white-house-faith-opportunity-initiative/?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term= .. The EO ordered various agencies within the U.S. Government to each establish a "Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives." A good example of one that seems somewhat fully developed ca...

Jim Harrold, January 10, 2020      We are now living in one of those "interesting times" in the American Republic. Since the Trump Administration took out Qassem Soleimani, Republicans have been marketing the narrative that we must support the commander-in-chief, and that to fail to do so is unpatriotic. Some elected Republicans are more extreme than others. Congressman Doug Collins seems to have become a reliable voice of demagoguery. He asserted a few days ago that Democrats are “in love with terrorists.” You're either for us, or you're for the terrorists. That's the logic.      An article today in my hometown newspaper, the Omaha World Herald , caught my interest in this regard.Link:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XEdUxFRLNGjEz0TNUQ9QHT1s0xVC5UlI/view?usp=sharing .      One member of Nebraska's Congressional delegation is Don Bacon, a man who regularly likes to remind Nebraskans that he is a retired brigadier ge...

There is No Long-Term Strategy As I write this, on January 8th, we are a less than 24 hours removed from Iran's attack on a U.S. and Coalition Forces base at Al-Asad, Iraq. Just as a side note, while deployed in Iraq in 2005, I took a helicopter day-trip from Balad Air Base once. I cannot remember the day, and I do not remember much about Al-Asad. That was in 2005, when we had hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq. We continue to have thousands of U.S. Military personnel all over the Middle East, somewhere north of 65,000. Most Americans do not ever think about how many are there. We do pay attention when many more are issued deployment orders, as many are now. The U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani started the latest round of tensions, but that is really an unfair statement to make. Our history of mistrust with Iran is long and complicated. But taking out Soleimani is part of the Trump Administration's strategy of "getting tough" with Iran. The Obama A...

Qasam Soleimani is Dead The President, Donald Trump, launched a direct attack to kill Iran's Qasam Soleimani, leader of the so-called "Quds Force," which is something like the Iran Foreign Legion, involving itself in all kinds of destabilizing operations in the Middle East. As a person whose boots have been on the ground in Iraq, I frankly am not grieving the loss of this guy. No doubt, his organization and its work in the region has been responsible for the death of Americans. His organization has certainly been responsible for the deaths of Kurds, Iraqis, Yemenis, and others.  It's also instructive to point out that the Obama Administration participated in targeted killings. We could use the word "assassination" if we want. The Obama Administration targeted and killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 560 individuals, compared to around 60 during the Bush Administration. The most famous was the targeting of Osama bin Laden. From Bush to Trump, all of...

Apologies for Not Writing in a While I notice I have not written anything here since April 2019. Today is the first day of 2020, and I need to do better. I feel like I have had writer's block since I completed my dissertation in early 2016. Not that writing a dissertation is a minor accomplishment. In fact, I would have never expected to have written one during my first career in the Air Force. Also, my dissertation was probably way too wordy, as witnessed by two members of my committee actually having a disagreement on length during my dissertation defense.  The point is that writing that thing was a major investment of my time and my energy. In my 50s when I wrote it, I had determined that I was not going to pursue the path of striving for tenure. That would have involved a lot of things I was unwilling to do. It would have involved moving from the Omaha area. I was not willing to do that, because by 2016, we had a one-year-old granddaughter (she is now going on five!) who...