Is Iraq another Vietnam

I was thinking a lot last night about Iraq and Vietnam. Those of us who are even nominally Republican have to admit that George Bush blew it in the Iraq invasion and initial management of the war. It was not the right response to destroy the jihad that brought us the horrors of September 11^th, 2001. He was badly advised by Rumsfeld and even Cheney. He later made the pretty courageous decision to go with a military surge under General Petraeus and wound up leaving Iraq in stable condition with tenuous but hopeful prospects. At the time of the full troop withdrawal in 2011 Obama labeled Iraq as "sovereign, stable and self-reliant". After the withdrawal, the jihadists reemerged to fill the vacuum and we all know the rest. Now we are back in with 5000 "advisers", without any Status of Forces Agreement, and with war raging.

For those of us old enough to have participated in the social unrest of the Vietnam War era this situation has an eerie ring.  The few thousand troops initially sent by Kennedy were "advisers" also, meant only to help the South Vietnamese government defeat its enemy on its own. Johnson took over after Kennedy's death and then swamped Goldwater in 1964 in an election in which television ads convinced the public that the Republican was a warmonger who would lead us into a nuclear holocaust. But when things turned bad for the South Vietnamese it was the Democrat who converted it to an American war and escalated it. The U.S. superpower, whose leaders fought with politics in mind and an unengaged public, was defeated by a badly outgunned but highly ideologically motivated enemy.  The defeat was a destructive humiliation for our country and a disaster for the people of southeast Asia.

President Obama came to office as a peacemaker, and was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on the strength of his oratory. He gave conciliatory speeches in the United Nations, tried a Russian reset, withdrew our planned missile defense sites from eastern Europe and whispered to Medvedev to reassure Vladimir that he would be more flexible after his reelection. But peace has not come to the Middle East, with virtually every country worse than it was, Iran on the ascendency, not to mention Russia, China and North Korea. Candidate Clinton was part of these events and seems likely to continue on in this vein. If anything she seems more bellicose than does Trump. He has promised to fight ISIS with vigor and to strengthen our military but otherwise seems less inclined to engage in military entanglements. He expresses a preference to get along with the Russians rather than to accuse and threaten them.

As I said what's happening in the Middle East today smells a little like what was going on in Vietnam during the 60's. I hope for our sake that I'm wrong.

Clinton's economic ideas

The recent debate clarified the candidate's economic policies, Clinton's somewhat more than Trump's I think, and presented a sharp contrast. President Obama inherited an economic crisis after the bursting of the housing bubble but after 8 years of his presidency the country's economy remains troublesome, a 1% growth rate, a fair employment rate but a very low labor participation rate, stagnant salaries, a nearly $20 trillion debt and interest rates continuing to be kept artif...icially low.

Clinton presented her plan which featured major new entitlements such as free college tuition for most families, pushing renewable energy over fossil fuels with subsidies, a major new government jobs program, a mandated universal increase in the minimum wage and keeping and refining Obamacare. All of this would be paid for by "asking" those who have benefitted most to pay their fair share, that is major new taxes on high income earners. Each of these proposals would be economic poison, likely to stifle the economy and further decrease employment.

For lack of space let's just talk about taxing the rich, a nice sounding something for nothing proposal, sort of like getting comped at the casino. It should be pointed out that as of the most recent figures the top 10% of income earners pay 70% of all income taxes, up progressively since 1986 when it was 54% (http://money.cnn.com/…/12/news/economy/rich-taxes/index.html) so exactly what is the fair share that Clinton will decide on. I suspect that her ax won't fall so heavily on the Wall Streeters who paid $250K for a ½ hour speech, or the Silicon Valley fat cats who paid $50K a plate for her company. So don't be surprised if most of the rest of us in the casino will be included in the fair share.

However the real problem with raising taxes is what economists call the deadweight effect. Raising taxes to high levels incentivizes actions designed to reduce taxable income and the net effect is to decrease market activity and reduce employment. As pointed out by Arthur Laffer in 1974 this effect may actually reach the point of diminishing returns. Famously the major tax rate reductions instituted by Ronald Reagan were followed by a marked surge in the economy and increased tax revenues. It is money in the hands of private enterprise and not government programs that makes all of us better off.

Reagan was great at explaining this phenomenon to the public. Trump is not, although he did make the point strongly that the major economic problems of our entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare which are linked to our colossal debt would disappear with a change in our GDP from the present anemic 1% to his predicted 4%, similar to our performance in the past.

Probably the most succinct explanation I've heard was given in a short speech by President John Kennedy in 1962 as he explained to the American people the reason for his proposed major tax reduction. Here's the link and it's worth watching.

See More

president kennedy speech on taxes - Bing video

bing.com

Trump vs Clinton. Bimbo Eruption, Wiki-Leaks and Deleted Emails.

Trump is having his bimbo eruption. He categorically denies the whole thing, but so did Bill Clinton until he was foiled by dress stains. The Democrat's outrage seems ideological since they find Trump's behavior deplorable but Clinton's was just a little personal problem and he remains as popular with them as ever. Hillary's well documented role in smearing the reputation of Bill's victims is pushed aside.

Meanwhile the Wiki-Leaks keep rolling out, giving us direct evidence ...confirming what everybody already knew, that there is ongoing collusion between the Clinton camp, the Obama administration, most especially the State Department and the Justice Department, and the major news media. When asked to explain the contents of the emails the Clintonistas respond that the Russians did it. That one is right up there with the dog ate my homework.

However things don't look great for the Trumpster. When you look at him he does seem to have a pretty big mouth. I think it's been stretched from putting his foot in it so much. Two things might intervene to change the trajectory. He could have a bang-up third debate. He seemed to have gotten the hang of it in the second one. Chris Wallace, who will be the moderator has a well-known history of asking tough questions to all concerned, but at least he'll be even-handed so that Trump won't be facing two opponents.

Another possible Hail Mary would be the release of the actual deleted Hillary emails since it seems pretty likely that they contain some bombshells. Going to the trouble of wiping them out permanently in the face of a subpoena and FBI investigation amounted to obstruction of justice so they must have contained something pretty important for her and her staff and lawyers to have decided to take that risk. If they were actually to surface it could be a game changer.

James Comey kept his investigation narrowly focused on the question of handling classified information. So the email deletion issue has not been adjudicated. Whether it will be in the future makes the outcome of the election particularly important for her, as Trump has already pointed out. If she wins she will have gotten away with it, even if the Senate stays Republican, since it seems clear that a great many Republicans are pretty comfortable with the established way of doing things.

Trump the lecher and Hillary the elitist

In this day and age there are no secrets, especially for the high and mighty. Yesterday it was revealed from secret recordings that Trump is (or at least was) a lecher and Hillary is two-faced.

Let's take Trump first. There is a reason why women, even waitresses, and even underage males are not wanted in the men's lounge at our golf club. Not all men talk like Trump's recorded conversation reveals but a great many do, and most do it a little bit. If a well-endowed female sports commentator appears on the TV screen in the men's lounge very little discussion will be devoted to what she actually says. I haven't the slightest doubt that many liberal icons including John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton spoke exactly so in private. Very few men are seriously offended by this type of talk although you can bet that every politician will now claim to be. Some occasional straight shooters, such as Mitt Romney, really are and I have felt that Trump's crudeness is the real basis for Romney's antipathy.

Hillary's fault is definitely not licentiousness. She is revealed to have a sense of personal elitism. She feels that those like her who lead, as she puts it, a complicated life, have little in common with what H.L. Mencken used to call "the booboisie". Thus the person behind closed doors with her wealthy friends is quite different from the face presented to the general public. What she is in reality is anybody's guess, but it isn't at all hard to believe the numerous underground stories from the white house staff and secret service about her haughty disdainful attitude and frequent use of coarse language. Her understandable intense efforts at maintaining secrecy however are presently being foiled by today's pervasive computer hacking and it will be interesting to see what's coming next.

All this being said, I don't think many voter's minds are going to be changed by yesterday's revelations primarily because so many are voting not so much for someone as against the other. Or more precisely for or against policies. I'm for what Trump proposes that his administration will do and dead set against Hillary's plans so I will dutifully pull the Trump lever.