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Once again, the Republican Party has laid out its real agenda, in the form of a federal budget. And once again, they have proven what their real priorities are: cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans no matter what -- no matter who has to pay for it, or how.
Disasters happen. It's a fact of life. Mother Nature occasionally decides to wreak havoc, and there's not a whole lot humanity can do about it. Steps can be taken to mitigate the worst features of a disaster (such as strengthening building codes), people do what they can to cope with disasters when they strike, and then the affected area goes through a phase of recovery and rebuilding after the disaster is over. Natural disasters can't be prevented, but we do everything we can in their aftermath to ameliorate the suffering. That's the way it is supposed to work, in any case.
Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill today, in an attempt to browbeat his fellow Republicans into supporting a budget bill. Speaker Mike Johnson has his own self-imposed deadline of passing the bill this week, before Memorial Day. Whether this plan succeeds or not is still very much in doubt, however.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying, once again, to herd his Republican cats. As usual, this comes to the fore in the form of a budget bill. With a razor-thin majority and several competing factions, the question is whether he can assuage all of them enough to drag his bill over the finish line this week before Congress scarpers off on vacation once again.
Donald Trump seems to now be in full retreat on his trade war. Which is good news, since American consumers are the ones who would have paid the price for it all. The strategy for other countries to follow is becoming clear now -- just wait Trump out, and eventually he will cave on his own, due to political and economic pressures increasing on him over time.
This strategy worked wonders for China, as last weekend Trump dropped his tariff levels against the country by a whopping 115 percentage points. This was precisely what China had been demanding he do before any trade negotiations could even begin. All they had to do was wait.
There are plenty of things wrong with the proffered gift (to Donald Trump from the rulers of Qatar) of a luxury 747 airplane to serve as a sort of interim Air Force One. For starters, Qatar has "historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level." For another, it's one of many Middle Eastern countries "that horribly abuse women and L.G.B.T. citizens" -- a country that "oppress[es] women, gays and people of different faiths." You could get even more specific: "You talk about women and women's rights? So these are people that push gays off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money." These complaints merely scratch the surface of the wrongness of accepting this plane, but they are relevant because they are all quotes from Donald Trump himself, castigating Hillary Clinton for accepting contributions to the Clinton Foundation from Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries.
What would you think if an arsonist set fire to your house, waited until the flames were causing major damage, and then rushed in and put (most of) the fire out? Would you thank the arsonist for saving your house, or would you be angry with him for starting the fire in the first place? Would you look around your home, now drenched in water and with some spots still smoldering and burning, and be thankful? Probably not.
If you'll check a historic calendar (which is easy enough to do), you will clearly see that there are three possible days which could validly be celebrated as marking the end of World War II. They are: August 14th, August 15th, or September 2nd. The initial announcement of the surrender of Japan was made on August 14th, in Japan. Due to the nature of time zones, this happened when it was August 15th in America already. Then the formal surrender, which happened on the deck of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, was signed on September 2nd. The president at the time, Harry Truman, announced the United States would celebrate what was known as "V-J Day" (for "Victory over Japan Day") on September 2nd. So that would be the most likely day you'd expect any subsequent American president to announce as a new semi-holiday, since it was when World War II actually officially ended. But you'd be wrong.
Republicans in Congress are at the "rubber meets the road" phase of constructing their new budget, where they have to put actual numbers down on paper and add them all up. The next few weeks are going to be a dizzying frenzy of dealmaking and adjustments, as differing priorities are weighed against each other. But at the heart of their plans is a big "tax cut." I put that in scare quotes because the American taxpaying public is probably not going to see it in quite the same way as the Republicans do. The public, in fact, is going to be left wondering: "Tax cut? What tax cut? I don't see a tax cut anywhere!" Which could make the whole thing a hard sell, politically.
Yesterday, the NBC show Meet The Press aired an interview that host Kristen Welker had held with Donald Trump two days earlier. It generated a lot of news, since it's one of the few interviews he has given as president to a news organization that doesn't inhabit the rightwing echo chamber. It generated a lot of headline quotes, including Trump answering: "I don't know" to the question: "Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?"