Daffy Ducks, Indeed!

Donald ‘Duck’ Trump and John ‘Bonehead’ Boehner! Now there’s a couple of daffy guys!
by Charlie Leck

The NY Times is charging fees to read its on-line newspaper now. As much as I like the newspaper, I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. So, for now, I’ve taken the NY Times off my list of favorite links and I’ve turned to the Washington Post and, while that can be read on-line without fees, I’ll be giving you some of the important news and opinion that highly regarded journal publishes.

Greg Sargent wrote an entertaining column yesterday (5/10) that he titled DONALD TRUMP GETS MAULED BY THE FREAK SHOW. It’s really worth a read – especially if you dislike Mr. Trump as much as I do. Here’s how Sargent concludes the column:

“What a ride! At first the Donald skillfully played the media, adopting a strategy of deliberately tracking in lurid, freak-show-friendly falsehoods in the full knowledge that the resulting media attention — even if negative — would buoy his presidential hopes among GOP primary voters. At first, it worked. But Trump was defined by the freak show, too, and his antics quickly came to look pathetically buffoonish and small when reality — Obama’s birth certificate, the killing of Bin Laden — came along and popped Trump’s balloon, causing him to crash back down to earth.

“Live by the freak show, die by the freak show.”

I like even more the rebuttal of House Speaker John Boehner’s loudly stated opinion that…

“The truth is we will never balance the budget and rid our children of debt unless we cut spending and have real economic growth. And we will never have a real economic growth if we raise taxes on those in America who create jobs.”

Ruth Marcus solidly rebuts Boehner’s opinion.

“Never? Under President Clinton, taxes were raised, primarily on the wealthy. During the eight years of his administration, the economy grew by an average of close to 4 percent.

“Boehner blames the budget deal for tanking the economy, but the recession actually started in July 1990, two months before the agreement was reached. And that revived economy? It came despite the supposed dead weight of the Clinton tax increase.

“During the early 1980s, taxes were cut and public debt ballooned, from 26 percent of GDP in 1980 to 40 percent by 1986. In 1993, taxes were increased (and spending cut); debt as a share of the economy fell, from 49 percent to 33 percent. In 2001 and 2003, taxes were cut. By the time President Obama took office, debt had climbed to 40 percent of GDP.

“Listening to Boehner, I began to think the country suffers from two deficits: the gap between spending and revenue, and the one between reality and ideology. The first cannot be solved unless we find some way of at least narrowing the second.”

Very frankly, have you spent much time listening to this Boehner guy? The guy is not a very sharp tack. As a matter of fact, he’s pretty dull and I don’t particularly like having government reorganized around his ideas.

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