Trump Derangement Syndrome "The Next Pandemic"? Don't Make Me Laugh!

"Da Donald can do no wrong! He da man! It da left dat derange!"

One of the tropes still circulating amongst the Trumpkins is that the Left is hysterical and over-reacting to their beloved, brain dead buffoon - manifesting in TDS or "Trump Derangement Syndrome".  In the fantasies of these Right wing pundit knuckle draggers, most of the Left  as well as Democrats are in the throes of TDS and now even going through "five stages".  So writes the latest imp to make such a claim, Joseph Epstein (WSJ, July 10, p. A17,  'The Next Pandemic: Trump Derangement Syndrome' )

  This balmy bozo-  because that's precisely what Epstein is-   given  his reputation for sloppy thinking and misleading  journalism precedes him, e.g.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/22/when-misleading-op-ed-wall-street-journal-irks-academics-its-time-fact-check-faculty


Trots out this latest codswallop as all Trump's poll  numbers are sinking, even eroding among his  base.  This has incited them to flail and render any kind of crappola to try to convince us it's all the Dems' fault,  or else that this animated pustule isn't as degenerate as we know he is.  Anyway in his WSJ op-ed  Epstein confabulates five "stages" as integral to the TDS   onset  and I cite these below:

Stage (1) The "afflicted decides before 2016 that Trump has serious, even strenuous character flaws that disqualified him from the presidency or any other public office".

Well, let's see. How about advocating pussy grabbing (in that 2005 'Access Hollywood' tape with Billy Bush)  as well as assaults on various women including at Miss Universe pageants?  One of the women  (Summer Vernos)  even brought a lawsuit after Trump "thrust his genitals at her."  Sounds disqualifying enough to me and I will take Summer at her word 1 million times before the lying Trump.  (Who's now amassed over 16,000 lies according to the running WaPo tally over the last 3 1/2 years.)

Stage (2) "One dwells upon Donald Trump's looks", the hairdo and golf apparel.

Actually, I could care less about this bloated buffoon's looks.. But I do castigate the orange imp for how he's consistently disparaged the appearance of women,   e.g.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-worst-insults-toward-women-2018-10


whether calling 2016 Reep candidate Carly Fiorina and  the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels "Horseface,"  or calling other women "sluts", "dogs" or worse.  All of these examples say more about this reprobate's basic character than anything any critic could say about his appearance.   Knowing that, it's incredible to me Epstein would even go there.

Stage (3)  "One is ready to believe anything- pernicious or salacious- about Mr. Trump - and to reject anything that might be good for the country."

Oh, oh, you mean like Stormy Daniels taking  the Donald across her knee and spanking him with a copy of FORBES?   E.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-do-white-evangelicals-worship.html


Wherein we learn:

The spanking was revealed in a string of emails.  Subsequently,  Mother Jones basically confirmed all the sordid details that Daniels described from her 2006 encounters  For reference, see:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/stormy-daniels-trump-spanking-forbes-and-shark-week.html

"According  to a trove of  2009 emails exchanged between political operatives (advising Daniels at the time on a possible political campaign), the adult film actress claimed that her affair with Trump included spanking him with a copy of Forbes.  By one account,  a political consultant to Andrea Dubé related in an email that:

"He made her sit with him for three hours watching Shark Week. Another time he had her spank him with a Forbes magazine," 

The magazine used evidently had Dotard's  face on the cover which no doubt provides endless material for any Freudian school psychiatrists and psychologists. "

Stormy having sex with this turd then whacking his fat ass?  Sounds pretty perverse - and convincing to me. Not to mention allowing Russian prostitutes to urinate all over him in a Moscow hotel while the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow in 2013.  All integrated into the dossier prepared by Christopher Steele - which the Right's  nitwits now try to disparage.

According to an earlier (2017)  AP report in the Denver Post ( 'Ex Spy Regarded as Dependable') :

"Three British intelligence agents interviewed by the Associated Press described Steele as well regarded in the intelligence community, with excellent Russian skills and high level sources."

According to one Financial Times account, Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".

James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services"

In other words, professional through and through, no exaggerations and no fillers that hadn't been  sourced.  So the Trumpkins and their hacks like Epstein,  Dan Henninger,  Holman Jenkins Jr. or Kim Strassel can squawk all they want about the "corrupt Steele dossier"  but I will make a Vegas bet on its veracity any day before anything coming out of Trump's piehole. Or that of his enablers and acolytes.

Epstein then inserts the example of TDS "afflicted" going so low and over the edge as to aver "he secretly admires King Jong Un's wardrobe"".   Actually, I  was more concerned with how he's openly professed love for the North Korean tyrant, i.e after saying numerous times he's "in love" with Kim.  And Kim sent him a "love letter."  These are all well documented, not fantasies or ideations.

Stage (4) "One imputes evil to Mr. Trump."

Actually, as an atheist I am averse to appending the term "evil" to anyone.  Having said that,  I do maintain a human can over time reach such a level of moral turpitude and character degradation he can at least asymptotically approach evil.  That is Trump, as when he had  migrant children locked up in cages, separated them from their parents.  Also, when he equated Charlottesville (2017) protesters with the Nazis and white nationalist scum who attacked them, including killing one woman (Heather Heyer).  Trump  claiming there were "some very fine people" on both sides. No, only on one!  As Nicole Wallace put it at the time:

"There are not two sides to this. There are hideous, hateful enemies of America, enemies of freedom, and there were people truly exercising their free speech."

Stage (5)  "One is weighted down with all the symptoms of the first four stages but brings to them an added choleric intensity of anger."

If Eppie means anger at the way Dotard has totally fucked up the response to the coronavirus so that over 130,000 if our fellow citizens are now dead- he has it right!  Or how Trump has not  only botched the initial U.S. response but is now actively inciting an even larger death toll by pushing for a premature opening of schools.  As Michelle Goldberg wrote(NY Times, 'Trump Threatens To Turn Pandemic Schooling Into Culture War'):


"Donald Trump has approached the extraordinarily complex challenge of educating children during a pandemic just as he’s approached most other matters of governing: with bullying, bluster and propaganda."

Reinforcing what Chris Hayes' timely take two nights ago:

"Also today he said he disagreed with the CDC guidelines for opening the schools. So he's now pushing the CDC to override their own guidelines.

So if I've got that right, we don't want the guidance of the nation's top health agency on how to stay safe in a pandemic to be the reason why we don't send our kids to school,  while we're suffering from the worst outbreak in the world.  So the president will tell them to change the guidance.  And it's not the first time he's done that.  He did it back in April and May when he didn't like the CDC reopening guidance for business.  He even pressured governors to ignore that guidance, just like he pushed the CDC to change their guidance for reopening churches. And now he's not happy with the CDC guidance on schools.

So what do you think is going to happen? Look, the last person in the world you can trust right now with the safety of your kids is Donald Trump."

 Epstein ends by saying those he fancies suffering from TDS can end the malady and "they don't even have to put on a mask" only "turn off the television set."  

Yeah, but see, Eppie, Trump will find a way to get back into our attention by again insinuating himself in some other outrageous way, whether via a new, demented executive order - maybe trying to fire Anthony Fauci, or threatening to send active military against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Methinks Eppie has got the wrong derangement syndrome and the wrong cast of victims who are afflicted.  

The great Dem Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described ever lowered thresholds for accepting deviant and disreputable behavior in terms of "defining deviancy down."  With Epstein's article on a "TDS pandemic"  we now see just how low Trump's media apparatchiks are prepared to go to justify his deviancy.

Update:  We can now add WSJ columnist Barton Swaim to the stable of Trump defenders and  acolytes determined to 'define deviancy down' for their master.  This after his op-ed piece today ('Will Democrats Accept A Trump Victory', p. A13), writing:

"The president now seems likely to lose. But if he wins may I suggest an alternative theory (to stealing the election)?   A Trump victory in November will have nothing to do with the Russians, the Chinese,  the coronavirus or 'voter suppression'.

It will have everything to do with Democrats' foul behavior over the previous four years."

Democrats' foul behavior?  Is Swaim living on an alternate Earth, or simply blind and fucking nuts?  Did Dems lock migrant kids - often as young as two or three- in cages and separate them from their parents:? Did Dems side with marching Nazis and KKK'ers in Charlottesville?  Did Dems appoint a toady to foul any concept of justice and turn the DOJ into Trump's personal protectors?  Did Dems seek help from a foreign nation (Ukraine)  to take out his political opponent? Thereby violating his oath of office by using it for personal gain?  Did the Dems call the pandemic a 'hoax' for two weeks, wasting valuable time to control the virus, then upend CDC guidelines while also failing to organize a national response? Instead letting states compete with  each other for personal protective gear as is happening again now? Did Dems embrace the notion that masks are for 'elites'  - thereby setting the unmasked against the masked and enabling the virus to spread?

The answer to all the above is 'NO!' - leaving Trump as the only foul entity to be singled out.  As well as now Swaim in his perverse effort to defend him. And no, there is no way in hell we will accept a Trump election win, after the way this demented orange maggot has sought to undermine mail ballots-- which  elimination even he admitted would be the "only way to win".  


See Also:

2020 Elections | Election Integrity

Recruiting Poll Workers Is Key to Thwart Trump’s Attacks on Our Voting Systems

And:

The worst president ever keeps getting worse

Excerpt:

"Think about all that has happened since April 5. That was before security forces attacked peaceful protesters  in Lafayette Square so that Trump could stage a bizarre photo-op. 

Before he pushed to send the armed forces into the streets. Before he embraced white  power and called Black Lives Matter a  symbol of hate.  Before he vowed to veto the defense authorization bill to prevent the renaming of military bases named after Confederate generals. Before he used the novel coronavirus as an excuse to  shut down immigration and threatened to revoke  the visas of college students unable to attend classes in the fall. 

Before he ignored reports that a Russian intelligence unit had placed a bounty  on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Before he moved to pull out of the World Health Organization."

• Cartoon: Trump's monuments

Carly Fiorina Should Be Held Responsible For Inciting Robert Dear's Terrorist Act

This is a condensation of an article on the site: www.smirkingchimp.com

------
Carly Fiorina and the House Republicans should be held responsible in the court of public opinion for inciting Robert Lewis Dear to commit murder at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday.

Robert Lewis Dear, 57, has been arrested and charged with shooting to death with an AK47 three people, including a police officer, and wounding nine others, including five police officers, at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday. An Initial Appearance is scheduled for tomorrow (Monday) at which time a judge will (1) tell him what crimes he has been accused of committing, (2) advise him of his constitutional rights including his rights to remain silent and to be represented by court-appointed counsel, if he is unable to retain counsel and (3) set or deny bail. Since this is likely to be a death-penalty case, you can reasonably expect the judge will appoint counsel at public expense and deny bail.

In addition ABC News is reporting,

Sources told ABC News the Justice Department is building a domestic terrorism case against Dear, though it would only move forward if somehow the state capital case was sidetracked.

/snip/

In a statement released late Saturday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch called the shooting a "crime against women receiving healthcare services at Planned Parenthood."
While police haven't released a motive or said whether the clinic was the intended target, Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in a statement Dear "eyewitnesses confirm that the man ... was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion."

“We've seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric and smear campaigns against abortion providers and patients over the last few months," Cowart said. "That environment breeds acts of violence. Americans reject the hatred and vitriol that fueled this tragedy. We do not accept this environment as normal. We should not have to live in a world where accessing health care includes safe rooms and bullet proof glass."
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said he was not aware of any threats to the clinic, but said "we can speculate" on the motive. 

"It happened at a Planned Parenthood center," he said. "My suspicions are that has a lot to do with the motive."

In one statement, made after the suspect was taken in for questioning, Dear said "no more baby parts" in reference to Planned Parenthood, two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case told NBC News.

Although the two law enforcement officials added that the comment about 'no more baby parts' was part of a longer rant against government and President Obama, I think we can reasonably conclude from this information and his booking photos that (a) he is mentally ill and (b) he targeted Planned Parenthood in significant part because of Carly Fiorina's intentional lie about Planned Parenthood during a Republican Presidential debate when she made her infamous harvesting-baby-parts comment about Planned Parenthood clinics. She was referring to heavily edited videotaped interviews of Planned Parenthood officials by an anti-abortion organization calling itself the Center for Medical Progress. She said,

'Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’

Fiorina knew her statement was false when she uttered it because she claimed to have witnessed the incident and the conversation while watching the videos. However, the videos do not support her claim. Therefore, Fiorina's indelible word picture was a lie. Even though she was confronted about her false statement by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, she doubled down insisting that she was telling the truth despite zero evidence to support it.

----------------------

My Addendum:

Carly Fiorina has shown herself no more possessing  presidential quality than the other GOP clowns in the field. People need to know these things if for some odd reason they back this harpy and now it's pretty clear she's ok with inciting a political wacko to domestic terror. Her recent bellyaching that it is "all typical left wing tactics" puts her even more out in left field.  (As much as those who maintian that murdering 3 "isn't enough to qualify as terror" - failing to grasp it isn't the number killed but the motivation to instill fear in a community!) As the author of the piece, (Mason) observes:

"Carly Fiorina might never be charged or sued for inciting Robert Lewis Dear to go on a shooting spree at a Planned Parenthood clinic killing three people, including a police officer and injuring nine others, including five police officers, but we can and should hold her and the House Republicans responsible in the court of public opinion for the deaths and injuries."

4th REEPO Debate = Democratic Cause For Jubilation

If I were the Democratic front runner, I'd save a tape or DVD of the just completed Republican debate. The reason? It is chock full of material to slay any of these bozos in a 2016 general election showdown. Not only did their responses show their detachment from economic reality (this debate was on economics) but the "solutions" proffered are assured of inciting middle and working class outrage. All the Demos need do is exploit the 'gift' already there, which means integrating the cockeyed replies into assorted Demo ads come 2016.

Where to begin? Start with their reasons for not raising the minimum wage when hard working Americans are already - many of them (as in  Boulder and Frisco, CO) having to live in their cars because there is no affordable housing. How are you going to afford an apartment for $1900/month in Boulder or Frisco, CO when your pay is $9 an hour at Starbucks.

Do the Reepo goons have any solid answers for Ellie Reilly - living out of her Subaru because there aren't any affordable homes or apartments in Frisco, CO - where she works?

None of their stupid, ignorant solutions will help a hard worker like Ellie Reilly featured recently in a DPost article on workers in Colorado mountain towns having to live out of their cars because of the lack of affordable housing.  What happened? After the 2008 crash which was cause by their same ignorant tax cutting policies and rabid creation of credit default swaps, home builders simply created high end condos for tourists, pricing locals out. Home owners rented rooms and apartments but also mainly for tourists.  Teachers, cops and others - like Starbucks baristas - were priced out.

And please spare me the BS that those jobs (like Ellie's barista job) were "only meant to be entry level" when corporations - sitting on over $1.9 trillion, have ceased investing in higher pay jobs. For anyone who needs it spelled out, that translates into a fixed jobs 'pyramid' with only a few great paying jobs at the top, and only middling to low pay jobs making up the bulk. (Made worse by older workers refusing to leave and open up their jobs to the young, because they're still trying to make back the 401k money lost after the 2008 crash.)

The solution to move these folks to better jobs? Tax cuts (in the form of "flat" taxes like Cruz' idiotic 10 percent flat tax - he also wants to abolish the IRS). All the bozos on stage wanted cuts of some form, as well as to "entitlements" in order to also lower corporate taxes. The claim often repeated, especially by Trump, is that the U.S. is the "most highly taxed nation" in the world, which is baloney.

 Thus, Trump's, Fiorina's, Paul's, Carson's, Cruz's and Rubio's solutions of cutting taxes to quick start the economy falls under the header of fantasy. Cutting taxes (Rubio also wants to blow $1 trillion on increased defense spending - meaning he'd have to not only cut Medicare, Medicaid, but the military Tricare program too) is only going to increase the debt. (See my citation of the Financial Times analysis of the Bush tax cuts below). The way to more higher earning jobs and productivity is actually to increase taxes.

Authors James Medoff and Andrew Harless (The Indebted Society) indeed showed that as tax rates increase, aggregate demand is enhanced and job output and productivity grows. This is in direct opposition to the specious claims of the tax cutter fetishists like the goons on parade at this GOOPs debate.

At several points I had to even ask wifey if any of these lunatics knew how to do basic math. WIth all their giveaways to the rich (Jeb would give them an average $180k tax cut each) and Rubio and Trump lowering corporate taxes, they wouldn't have a fucking dime left to work with and in fact add trillions to the deficit. Especially Rubio, aka 'the Cisco Kid' , who wants to give a trillion bucks to the Pentagon when they "misplaced" a trillion back in the late 90s. (As former defense analyst Chuck Spinney pointed out to Bill Moyers on one of his 'NOW' PBS shows in 2002). With a chump like this, why would the brass at the Pentagon want anyone else as Prez?

I mean Jeebus Peace! Rubio can't even control his own outlandish spending on his GOP credit card - running it into the red - and he wants to take over the nation's budget? (The Miami Herald fact -checked his insistence he only used the card once. The Herald documented over $1,200 blown at a Miami steak house, plus $275 for one New Year's Eve fling and over $3,800 at assorted Miami gas stations. What? Cubans don't have their own credit cards? Did the punk expect the party to pay for his spending? If not, why not use your own card?

Rubio also blew it with his blurtation that "welders make more money than philosophy majors". But a fact check exploded that canard: welders earn an average of $37k a year and philosophers, $64 k.

This is all stuff the Dems can use to their maximum advantage and if it doesn't inspire class hatred and warfare I have to consign most of the American working class to the walking dead demographic.

Then there was Trump barking about sending 11 million "illegals"  back across the border. Kasich tried his best to temper this ntiwit's bombastic blathering - realizing he was handing Hillary or Bernie millions of potential Hispanic votes on a platter. Don't these goons grasp what this sort of rhetoric does and how it plays against their stupid elephant party?

I mean, after Trump then Carson, blurted their solutions for the nation's finances I had to recall JFK's words when he faced Tricky Dick Nixon in the 1960 campaign:

"I run against a candidate who reminds me of the symbol of his party, the circus elephant, with his head full of ivory, a long memory and no vision"

But I'd even question their collective memories, given none of these turkeys on stage in Milwaukee (my home town, btw) seem to have any recollection of what went down before Obama arrived. How Bush busted the budget with his tax cuts and wars of choice, as well as a massive giveaway program to Big PhrmA (in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003). And then they all want to blame Obama for economic deterioration. WTF are they all blind too, as well as Alzheiumer's- level low on memory?

Any of these tools could have, prior to the debate, gotten hold of the CBO's data on how deficits have been lowered progressively since Obama was elected, including a clear graph, e.g.


What? They can't read graphs? Or maybe they don't want to because it means acknowledging what Obama has accomplished for the nation's economy which their own party and yahoos have failed to do.

Note after an initial spike the most significant lowering of deficits arrived AFTER the cessation of the Bush tax cuts (which the Dems had also unwisely extended for two years). But what it shows is that tax cuts do not work to help the economy. I don't know how much more clearly I can make this, except maybe to refer to the Financial Times own assessment of the Bush tax cuts. Its analysis of Sept. 15, 2010 showed:

"“The 2000s- that is the period immediately following the Bush tax cuts – were the weakest decade in U.S. postwar history for real, non-residential capital investment. Not only were the 2000s by far the weakest period but the tax cuts did not even curtail the secular slowdown in the growth of business structures. Rather the slowdown accelerated to a full decline”

Get that? A full decline! The fucking Bush cuts (which "Jeb!"  also wants to renew) did not even "curtail the secular slowdown in the growth of business structures". No - the slowdown "accelerated to a full decline"

And these goobers think THEIR cuts will do any better? What are they drinking? Hell, what are they smoking?

To put the capper on it, the FT analysis observed that:

“during each decade from the 1950s to the 1990s, growth in real gross non-residential investment averaged between 3.5 percent and 7.4 percent a decade. During the 2000s it averaged a mere 1%”

Read the preceding then do so again. And then tell me any of these would-be presidents has anything to offer the American public but more tax cut snake oil which never worked whenever it was tried before. (Note to those with short memories: Even Reagan had to raise taxes after his initial cut frenzy! But his added defense spending to the tune of $2.1 trillion is what converted the U.S. into a major debtor nation, with the largest deficits in history.)

Then there was Jeb Bush whining about the 2 percent growth which is becoming structural but which he believes he can jerk up to 4 percent. Does this moron even know WHY the growth remains at 2 percent?  And why no amount of is tax cuts will alter the situation?

The low growth is worldwide and has to do directly with the degradation of energy, meaning what we are getting is resulting in an overall loss or regression in useful net energy. The only thing that will change the outcome is a new form of intense energy (e.g. nuclear fusion) more efficient than the fossil fuels now being used. For more on this issue, see:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/09/44-trillion-in-deficits-by-2024-minus.html

I could go on and on, but it's just as well this is the last parade of clowns and idiots for at least a month. I really don't think most sane citizens would be able to withstand much more bullshit disguised  as sober debate.

For a sober debate I guess I will have to tune into the Dem debate on CBS  this Saturday!

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/11/the_gop_is_living_in_a_fantasy_world_every_single_republicans_economic_plan_is_made_of_wishes_and_fairy_dust/

Obama's "Free" 2- Year College Proposal: How To Pay For It?

Two weeks ago, Obama surprised everyone with a daring proposal  that "would make community college free for everyone who is willing to work for it". Alas, the White House provided no details on how it might be implemented, but one expects that will be taken care of when Obama delivers his State of the Union message.

In respect of the plan, Obama also noted in a Facebook message:

"It's not just for kids. We have to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to constantly train themselves for better jobs, better wages, better benefits."

This intention to make community college accessible for all ages is good, and I already cited (in my Dec. 15 post) a Denver Post op-ed by Dick Hilker who quoted Rhonda Bentz (the state system's media and government relations director)  that :

"the Voc-Technical route is the educational system's best kept secret. Students come for two year degrees and then get real jobs."

 Hilker went on to note:

"In other words there are solid alternatives to spending big bucks at Big State U. to major in Tibetan Culture or Music Appreciation before winding up as a clerk at Mega-Mart."


Community colleges, therefore, are  a definite solution that is both realistic and rational. Especially given that nearly 60% of incoming college students now don't finish their degrees. Thus, as Hilker put it: "California is now considering making a community college degree mandatory before a student can enter a state university"

Hence, Obama's free community college proposal could well lead to a more economic approach to getting a 4-year college education - and hence much lower student debt.  Alternatively, a student who can't finish a 4-year degree will now have an option, in most cases,  before s/he comes to the point of quitting. So rather than waste tens of thousands of dollars the student  will come away with something (A.A. degree or trade certificate) allowing them to economically advance.

 

 

Community colleges also provide a major economic solution because they can be accessed for half the cost or less of state universities, mainly because they aren't research institutions "where professors get big bucks for not doing much teaching" in the words of Hilker. This is also a boon given 51 percent of college students, according to a recent Brookings Institution study, don't even know how much student debt they will owe. (28 percent of entering freshmen don't.)

In respect to Obama's proposal, the White House said that if all states participated, some 9 million students could benefit - saving an average of $3,800 per year for a full time student. One projected cost estimate (cited by Carly Fiorina on Bill Maher's Real Time last Friday) is $60 billion.

Carly Fiorina

Ms.Fiorina then stated: "This isn't going to be free, and someone will have to pay for it ....taxpayers!

 

 

But there are ways to take it on using budget  offsets, as opposed to adding that amount of new taxes. For example, if we withdrew all our remnant 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by mid-year, that would save about $60 billion which could be put towards this education plan. Take your pick: bottomless waste pit or constructive education!

Another option is to cut $60 billion from the bloated defense budget itself. A rational place to start cutting is the white elephant, problem-laced F-35 which cost overruns currently estimate to lead to $0.3 billion each before production ends. Some 2,335 of these are planned - and to make a $60 billion offset all that's needed is to reduce production by 200. That leaves 2, 135  F-35s- still more than enough for all service branches!

 

 

Let's also bear in mind that under the plan states would put up part of the funding.

 

 

There are also ways to control costs by stipulating qualification requirements as well as retention of benefits.  For example, not every manjack who thinks he wants to go to college should be given a free pass. There must be preliminary evidence of being a serious student, say in his or her high school record. At the very least then, a high C (e.g. 2.8)  average ought to be the minimum requirement for entry into the program.

 

 

What about continuing the program? Under the Obama proposal participating students would be required to maintain "a modest grade point average". Of course, the devil here is in the details. What exactly is the definition of a modest grade point average? Is it 2.0? Is it 2.2?  What about 2.5? This threshold will have direct bearing on continuing costs.
 

The plan on paper looks promising but we will be looking for Obama to provide many more details about it in his State of the Union!