Current Trends by Natasha Sapp

The candidates loved it, praised the moderators for an exceptional job well done, that should have been our first clue; basically this was a repeat of the 3rd GOP debate only on their own terms where the moderators rarely butted in, and if they did, it was with ‘softball’ questions or rebuttals, unneeded clarifications being sure not to rattle the candidates. They even took it easier on each other cutting down on the bickering and on stage fighting; though if you like that sort of thing, you had enough to get your fill. In many ways it was like watching the highlight reels of favorite candidates best one liners, best comebacks, best in your face, stick it to the other guy blurbs; Donald Trump reviving his best stuff on building a wall, what we’re not doing to win, how we’re getting screwed on trade, Carly Fiorina repeating her spiel on big government spawning big business, spawning a big business known as politics. Marco Rubio while turning in a solid debate performance is starting to sound, even to the untrained ear, rehearsed, Ben Carson continued to hammer the entirety of his campaign points, the dangers of political correctness and the bias of the media; Ted Cruz and Rand Paul brought back nonsensical answers to sensible questions. Jeb Bush while having a solid, practical answer to big topics like immigration largely faded into the background with John Kasich once more appearing to be the only adult in the room and punished in the polls for it. Stand out moments, good or bad, included Donald Trump referencing the mass deportation of 1.5 million illegal immigrants by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950’s though, conveniently leaving off the operations derogatory name, Jeb Bush giving points to the opposition remarking the tone of the immigration debate conversation was causing the Clinton campaign to do high fives, something a Clinton staffer then tweeted on twitter. Rand Paul challenged Marco Rubio on what defines a conservative considering his want to add trillions more in spending for both child tax credits and military upgrades; Ted Cruz pulling a Rick Perry citing 5 agencies he would eliminate from the federal government ‘to pay to defend this nation,’ actually only naming 4, repeating the department of commerce twice. Ben Carson played off attacks on his past making a joke to the moderator thanking him for not asking him what he said in the 10th grade, deflecting focus off of him by drudging up Hillary Clinton and her alleged lie to the American people, victim’s families over Benghazi; back to the lighter side, Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump created laughs at least among astute analysts and audience members when they equally claimed to have met Russian president Putin. One while doing 60 Minutes, filmed in completely different places just running side by side, the other in a not green room like setting that probably was related to a business meeting. Again it was what was happening around the debate, both before and after that was almost as important as the debate itself, people nearly debated out; Ben Carson and Donald Trump sparing over key events in Carson’s past detailed in his published autobiography Gifted Hands, Trump calling out the absurdity of the trying to stab a friend story where the knife went into the other teens belt buckle. Later challenging people at an event to understand what pathological disease meant, the word Carson used to describe his teenage anger, comparing him to a child molester, citing there is no cure for either. That is when he wasn’t doubling down on his controversial immigration comments elaborating the next day ‘you would have a deportation force; it would be done humanely,’ despite the program he’s modeling his after was anything but. Carson also called out for his inexperience, ill-knowledge on foreign policy calling for ways to make ISIS look like losers, suggesting they were easy to defeat by taking their oil; the subsequent Paris terror attacks 3 days later rattling the entire western world drawing all the more scrutiny to said views and changing candidates’ focus. Their follow up target immigration of a different kind, Syrian refugees most candidates joining the litany of republican governors telling the Whitehouse ‘no refugees here;’ post president Obama’s, granted justifiable, mocking of GOP contenders for being afraid of debate moderators and now orphaned children, Ted Cruz challenged him to insult him to his face rather than be out of the country doing his job as president facilitating foreign relations one would guess. Jeb Bush stood beside refugees, though not winning him any points with voters who want safety over humanitarianism and compassion. All in all it was a pointless do over neither hurting nor helping candidates; also annoying, if not boring, the American public with repetitive, non-substantive “solutions.”

Even the debate topic was the same November 10th, the economy; while it is certainly forefront on peoples minds, their questions and subsequent responses just generated more bizarre, incoherent answers, exposing woeful ill-preparedness and explaining why so many candidates have such low poll numbers. Take comments on the minimum wage, Ben Carson may have been a neck in neck front runner going in but he won’t stay that way saying what he said about the lowest paid workers in this country. Arguing firstly people need to be educated about the minimum wage; secondly, we shouldn’t raise the minimum wage because it inevitably leads to job loss adding the clincher, especially in the black community, referencing the low percentage of teens who have, or are looking, for a job blaming the phenomenon on higher wages. He goes on to recount his youth being a lab assistant, among other jobs, stating he wouldn’t have gotten that position if people had to pay him a high wage; that job giving him experience, teaching him how to relate to people, giving him the tools, ability to become a responsible individual, ascend the ladder of opportunity. Ending his comments with, that’s what we need to do for people, help them ascend the ladder of opportunity, not give them everything and keep them dependent. Similar to Rubio who said in his patently earnest voice, proceeding telling his immigrant story, the humble, low skill, low education jobs of his parents, advocating what makes America special is that people who are not rich, the whole world has rich people, can become successful through hard work and patients, if he thought raising the minimum wage would help people he would do it. Instead he claimed it would be a disaster in the 21st century, would only accelerate the machine, robot takeover of jobs; his fix, make America the best place in the world to start or expand a business, competition he says we’re losing through high business taxes and strangling regulation, a common theme of the night reiterated over and over. You remedy that with tax reform, regulatory reform, debt control, full utilization of energy resources, repeal and replacement of Obama care, making higher education faster and easier to access, especially vocational training; falling back on his line from the last debate “for the life of me I don’t know why we stigmatized vocational training…” But nothing could beat Donald Trump’s assertion wages are too high; given, he likewise said taxes were too high and his reasoning for not hiking minimum wage was the soundest of those presented, an inability to compete with the rest of the world, heartless as it sounds. Agreed, people do need to be educated on the minimum wage starting with you Dr. Carson; job numbers usually go up with a rise in minimum wages definitively increasing the quality, productivity of workers if nothing else, could definitely entice those currently not participating in the workforce to at least try. Economist are firmly divided on the lasting effects, each pulling from research supporting either move; what is completely unknown, least of all by candidate Carson, is the result of raising it all the way to $15 an hour or where the cut off should be to equally give people a living wage without disrupting the economy, forcing massive job loss. Only 19.8% of teens, black teens have or are looking for a job for a variety of reasons; some just attempting to get an education simultaneously survive poverty ridden, mean streets deferring employment until they achieve further education. More live in, Don Lemon called them F towns; Felton, Fenton, Ferguson, all across the country where there are virtually no jobs and virtually no one willing to hire them, youth, minority youth from there—meaning the projects, the ghetto, the wrong side of the tracks. Others know the system is rigged and won’t enter it, play the game until they absolutely have to. Late millennial voter I am, love what he said about his lab assistant work and experience; since, what he’s describing isn’t merely his first job, rather an internship/apprenticeship type situation desperately needing to be returned to the American working world so that people can ascend the ladder of opportunity. But as long as service jobs fast food, cleaning, hospitality, hotel work and technology jobs are it, those persons all deserve a living wage; who are you to judge, with your also proposed tiered minimum wage, starter wage for youth and sustained for older workers, a kid who may well be working to aid in supporting his family singularly due to his age, his limited work experience? Dido to Mr. Rubio, again agreed–higher education is too expensive and should be easier to access including vocational training, but it speaks to something deeper, a need for the business community to better alert all ages of eligible workers to jobs available spanning all fields high tech notices on twitter, online field specific to generic job boards, down to low tech newspaper ads, help wanted signs. Coupled with telling people, running the gambit of eligible workers young persons to older, about jobs available, skills required to get said high demand jobs, where both school age and beyond school age interested parties can go for training. Right now many young people don’t know, yes this is a job for which you can get paid money; those not looking at traditional college more attuned to things you do with your hands don’t know how much welders make or the elevated skills in key subjects they need to do that kind of work, to say nothing of legally forcing colleges to keep their costs in line with inflation, not triple digit percentages above it. Greater permanent solutions to tax reform we know is code for lowing taxes so much the government doesn’t function, regulatory reform we know will cut business taxes, cut regulation leaving us with the no man’s land of robber barons a-la John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and the fleecing of the citizen we saw at the turn of the 20th century. Using all our energy resources a repackaging of drill baby drill; having cheaper utilities at the expense of more natural gas explosions randomly leveling neighborhoods, main street businesses. No Mr. Trump, wages aren’t too high; healthcare costs and currently low gas prices aside, forget trying to compete with the rest of the world when people here are too busy trying to compete with the costs of basic food stuffs milk, bread, meat, affordable, decent housing, reliable transportation on minimum wage. Taxes may be indeed too high but European counties seem to function well with high taxes providing a higher standard of minimum health; why can’t we, aren’t their other places, better ways to compete? What do you mean we’re not winning, Bill Maher is just as knowledgeable as Trump on presidential topics and he understands we’re the only country to come out of the nearly global financial crisis intact; Japan has been in a recession for 30 odd years. Indication, it could be better but it could easily be a whole lot worse.

Taxes, national debt and income inequality of course brought out the wonky tax plans and crazier still answers on how you pay for everything you absolutely need to run a country, particularly one our size, without exploding the debt or the deficit. Whether it was Rand Paul reiterating the Federal Reserve was largely responsible for the gap between rich and poor manipulating interest rates, causing the housing boom and bust, the Wall Street crash, devaluing money making it harder for a mother with 3-4 kids to make money, get by; challenging people to look at where income inequality is worst in cities, states and countries run by democrats advising people to, in the meantime, relocate to a state run by republicans. Jeb Bush’s laundry list of Obama statistics, purportedly receiving an A from Hillary Clinton, not receiving an A from him; 1-10 not working, given up all together, 1-7 living in poverty, 1-5 children on food stamps, Obama proposals he would throw away, remove and start over, the clean power act, the waters of the United States act aimed at protecting streams and wetlands. Carly Fiorina’s 5 point plan to handle a whole host of things growing the economy, government regulation, taxes, zero based budgeting, knowing where every dollar is spent, the ability to cut any dollar, move any dollar, rolling back Obama implemented regulations on business, who knows what else. A top down audit of every regulation ‘because we don’t even know what’s in it,’ something she called the thicket of regulation; her 3 page tax plan, a proposal she swears exists, and holding members of government accountable. Ted Cruz’s 10% income tax, 16% business tax touting his plan costs less than anyone’s on stage; fact checkers taking issue with that claim finding it equal to his fellow candidates under card participant Bobby Jindal and stage mate Marco Rubio generating less growth. Oh where to begin deconstructing, would love to know how virtually ignored John Kasich cut Medicaid spending in Ohio reducing it for 5 to 2 percent sans cutting benefits or slashing participant numbers. You know what else would stem the tide of growing income inequality independent of your state of residence Rand, who was lucky enough to be born with penis privilege, how about equal pay for equal work; men and women doing the same job actively receiving the same pay massively effective at helping that mother with 3-4 kids exceed getting by to thrive. How about changing the way Wall Street and its subsidiaries, large investors make money, because they aren’t doing it by working, shrewd investments in stocks, companies eventually worth hundreds of millions, billions; they do it by manipulating money, ordinary citizen money placed their through 401k plans exc. Perhaps moderators would have done well to remind Senator Paul the housing bust, en mass foreclosures nationwide, was chiefly caused by the adjustable rate mortgage and not enough information initially given to the consumer, hints Obama’s regulations on understandable mortgage documents, full disclosure of what people are buying. Refreshing his obviously failing memory, the financial crisis emanating from Wall Street was a result of A- Bush era deregulation and B- bundling those adjustable rate mortgages then selling them on the market with no idea what the outcome would be, practices no one has yet seen fit to make illegal. Former governor Bush you know what concurrently doesn’t get an A from this voter who will be placing an X next to someone else’s name a year from now, presenting as a solution, a way to solve a problem, several problems scrap everything and start over. Toss the clean powers act because it sets actual tangible standards for power plant emissions evaporating an incentive to get beyond polluted oil, coal. Clean waters act– delete it because the economy is more important than endangered animals or our fragile ecosystem preventing what has happened in the 3rd world where animal waste, human waste exc. goes right into major, minor bodies of water people drink out of, bathe in. Only here it’s animal waste from huge commercial animal farms producing the meat at the super market, commercial farms providing vegetables to same, corporations who find it cheaper to dump waste than properly dispose of it leaving tainted streams, places children cannot swim in and if you fall in, you require medical attention Assumed by ‘the one that regulates the internet’ he meant the net neutrality act in reality designed to keep big internet providers from regulating the internet for us, providing faster highways to movie streaming giants like Netflix, Hulu. Plus keeping identical speeds for everyone based on available rates, technology and cost differentiated consumer choices. Zero based budgeting on its face sounds very reasonable until you realize that to cut any dollar, move any dollar you have to have an intimate knowledge of what those dollars are doing, why the budget allotted to certain departments is so large, knowledge these candidates don’t have. One of the reasons huge sections of spending are ‘untouchable’ is so the government, like a person who’s put select monthly bills on automatic withdraw, can automatically pay interest on the national debt for example, see to defense, pay out Medicare and social security benefits, provide supplemental nutrition dollars better known as food stamps. Zero based budgeting is reminiscent of how people manage their family budgets, balance their checkbooks and sounds wonderful to try with a ‘bloated’ federal government until you recognize Ms. Fiorina doesn’t necessarily mean stopping the 2 million spent on pastries, the government coins no one wanted.  Maybe unused government buildings, presidential portraits for people serving minor positions, not even completing their terms, stopping dollars paid for high priced art, expensive glassware, but mainly shifting money from one department to another, eventually something vital will get missed. As appealing as going line by line through the regulation code is, removing redundancies is one thing; after that, it too requires an extensive knowledge of each one’s function and being able to anticipate potential consequences, results of not having it, facts she clearly doesn’t understand. How can she know rolling back Obama imposed regulation is a must if she doesn’t know how it plays into other regulation, what it achieves?  Noted she said a 3 page tax code existed, not that it was hers; here’s why that matters, if you don’t know why or how we got to a 73,000 page tax code, what’s in it how do you know what, if anything to cut, more importantly what to keep?  Plus we do have government accountability; they are called elections where, if people don’t like the political direction things are going in, don’t like an officials job performance, you can vote them out of office, including public pressure induced resignations ousting people for public scandals. Who could forget what happen to republican representatives Vance McAllister and Aaron Schlock, president Obama’s 2014 shellacking; isn’t that why you’re begging people to elect you Carly, not Hillary Clinton, so things don’t continue as they always have?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBE63Cnt19I

Immigration during the debate was a hot potato bounced among candidates getting even hotter as the lights went down post-debate night beginning with, what else, Donald Trump and his wall, sending us back to the Eisenhower years regaling the success had under ‘I like Ike’ rousting over a million illegal persons from our boarders. Too bad the project was called operation wetback, a derogatory classification for Mexican later expanding to Latino, Hispanic immigrants. Dozens upon dozens died after being dumped in the Mexican dessert with nothing, suffering heat stroke, yet this is his example for doing it humanely; details left until the next day for the sake of time. He himself admitted it took 3 tries to keep the masses from coming back nearly identical to his immediate statement after talking about the wall–they will come back but come back legally, then switching to hoping they get back; which is it? Followed closely by where are you going to get this deportation force, what are you going to do with it once their task is complete? Like we haven’t seen government agents suddenly out of something to do lead to problems; you may have written The Art of The Deal but I and others have read Reefer Madness explaining we are fighting such a failed war on drugs, pot specifically, because law enforcement enforcing prohibition needed something to do to stay employed alighting on drugs, popular at the time, weed. His idea of humane apparently forcing children born here, to illegal immigrants, educated here, knowing no other country but America to choose between leaving with them or staying behind. Taking illegals, young people brought here as children, remembering no other country but America and shipping them off with their parents according to his Meet The Press comments months before, to the tune of 11 million; estimated cost to America, to the taxpayer, up to 166 billion, with a B dollars. Slipping past Trump’s purported eagle eyed business awareness, ramifications of suddenly removing 11 million people from the economy despite time taken to round them up and transport them; dollars lost to American businesses, services, schools when renters lose tenets and money, neighborhoods, cities become largely ghost towns,  schools lose funding due to a reduction in student populations. We saw exactly this under the current administration’s immigration crackdown, local cities own immigration enforcement efforts; producing conundrums such as where employers will, in the immediate future, find workers to replace the ones he had just a week or month prior, what happens when they can’t find workers with the skills needed, particularly in picking fruits and vegetables, what will be the total impact to the American economy then, nothing good that’s for sure. Historians asserting only 250,000 max persons were removed from the country under operation wetback barely making a dent in illegal immigrants living within our boarders contrasted against the bracero program allowing in legal guest workers for jobs for specific periods of time. As one article writer pointed out, hmmm, giving them temporary jobs Americans can’t or won’t do is more effective than rounding them up on buses, ship described as 18th century slave ships, trying to get rid of them, keep them within their won boarders. Ted Cruz using the fact he is the son of a Cuban immigrant who came here legally to shout enforcing the laws isn’t anti-immigrant; except when top excuses for enforcing the law so rigorously isn’t fairness, deference to the rule of law, instead tired lines about having a country or not, having a boarder or not, classic rhetoric about them taking our jobs. He at one point saying immigration doesn’t often get couched as an economic issue by mainstream, liberal media forcefully announcing it would be a different story entirely if there were masses of lawyers and journalists coming across the Rio Grande driving down wages of the press. Yet enforcing the law isn’t anti-immigrant, though there is a strong case to refute that considering what the laws currently are versus what they should be to both honor the melting pot we always have been, exercising compassion and balancing our needs, expectations required of immigrants who do cross the border legally. Interesting he hypothesizes about wages in the press if illegals were suddenly coming across with journalism degrees when the field is eating itself alive thanks to technology and writing, news being relegated to anyone with a blog, less entities willing to pay for what most will do for free. Lawyers likewise wouldn’t be able to traverse the Rio Grande and land a job in the legal field because Mexican and American law is fundamentally different; further, like doctors, you must have both a state and national license to practice.   Donald Trump blasting Marco Rubio and by default John Kasich about their amnesty plans, the latter evoking republican standard Ronald Reagan’s ‘if they are law abiding, productive they can stay’ calling it extremely unfair to the ones who have done it legally, gone through the process waiting in line to come here; question, if they’ve gone through the process, paid their fees, why are they waiting? And if they didn’t meet the criteria, weren’t eligible to come her for whatever reasons, why were they paying a fee being doubtlessly poor, emigrating from a struggling country? Then Paris happened early information concluding at least one, possibly two, attackers posed as Syrian refugees sparking vitriol laced backlash both against them and between candidates regarding what to do about them; Ted Cruz alleging only Christian refugees should be let in, Trump saying not here, we don’t know if they’re Christian, we no virtually nothing about these people, ignoring a reporter who suggested a database for Muslims, advocating a watch list getting him in media hot water for the zillionth time, bringing back an older idea he talked about over the summer monitoring and closing some mosques, throw out that little thing called the constitution. Ben Carson getting himself in further trouble all the way around comparing refugees to rabid dogs; these are people fleeing things most of us can’t imagine, bombs going off daily, neighborhoods, entire cities reduced to rubble, forget working a job if you had one, nothings open, people don’t go out, there are chemicals being spewed around. We saw credible news footage of possible gas attacks, biological agents released to kill the people by Assad’s government forces, so for a better life for them, their children they’ve trekked thousands of miles, spent weeks on rickety boats, many dying on the journey, been placed in camps, turned away at boarders, manhandled by police. And he wants to call them rabid dogs because 1 or 2 might, just might be a terrorist; unlikely to get into this country because our screening processes are much more extensive than those of France or Turkey, where the attacker(s) allegedly entered into Europe from.

Foreign policy intricately tied into national security really bought out the junior varsity team if Ben Carson and Donald Trump’s, supposed-to-be, strategies are anything to go by; Carson who insists China is in Syria alongside Russia vowing in a press conference to release his intelligence described as better than the Whitehouse. Petulant tone of the Young Turks News Network panel comments or no, they do bring up several good points, the hubris in claiming you know more than the Whitehouse, than the people reading classified, government level reports, getting their information from top generals, opposed to speculation at least, Ben Carson was getting sections of his foreign policy from internet memes. Putin’s base is in Russia, seeing as he is president of that country, solely interest in restoring Russia’s power on the international stage; his influence centered in the Baltic region if anywhere, miles upon miles away from Syria. True energy field as Carson was using it meant energy rich area, energy storage, as in where ISIS was parking its oil, chief commodity financing their, operation rather than something out of Star Wars, Star Trek but hit it directly on the money when they analyzed Carson’s comments through the lens of an 8th grade social studies teacher, what grade the student would get if’ make them look like losers’ was their answer, how they as the teacher would feel, also a failure. But it is slightly better in terms of sophistication to that of Donald Trump who says he’ll just bomb the shit out of them. Another thing about Carson, cribbing off Donald Trump’s notes much; he was the one who relentlessly advised taking Iraqi oil and presented it as a method for defeating ISIS. Making them look like losers is a way to reduce their social media influence, diminishing their reach to radicalizing young people globally; doing so however is a lot more complicated, to do it without looking like bullies, achieving your actual goal of turning people off to them instead of amping up their attraction to them. President Obama absolutely right, when the top people with all the information, long military careers and combat experience are telling you it isn’t easy, you shouldn’t be thinking, never mind saying, it’s easy. His own words betray him when confronted with one of his own advisers saying to press he was on a learning curve pertaining to foreign policy; we don’t need, can’t afford someone still learning about said policy with the state of the world. Too many believe we’ve already suffered 8 years of that under Obama; liberals and democrats not hesitating to invoke George W. Bush, what a calamity it would be to go back there. Moving to a closely related issue, Ted Cruz when asked how he would ensure America’s national security on such a thin budget attempted to rattle off 5 agencies he would eliminate entirely from the federal government the department of commerce, the department of energy, the IRS, HUD analysts speculating the second mention of the department of commerce was intended to be the department of education. Removing he can’t correctly name the 5 agencies he believes the government, the nation don’t need, workers by the hundreds, thousands America wide he would displace disbanding their department, their job, again to credibly talk about dismantling any such agency you have to know what it does, what the implications are without it; does he know this, doubtful. Yes let’s get rid of the department of energy, people not limited to being responsible for energy conservation, energy resource development, tracking the amount of energy resources we have versus what we need, but also the people responsible for nuclear weapon management, nuclear power plant monitoring, radioactive, nuclear waste disposal. Of course being an evangelical conservative holding one office and running for another, he takes issue with the human genome project, yet keep in mind the mapping already done has identified genes linked to major diseases, helped doctors to create gene therapies to correct some anomalies, bettering the lives of people. Sure he thinks you can eliminate the IRS if you reduce tax filings down to something fitting on a postcard, slashing tax rates for the person, the family to 10% and business to 16% you also won’t have tax evaders, wishful thinking. Assumed, the grade school definition of the treasury department is to count the country’s money among countless other things, but can the treasury seamlessly take over collecting taxes, looking out for tax evaders and answering inevitable questions that will arise from the public even if Cruz gets his postcard tax filing plan? Short answer no, what you would likely get is a renamed agency to do the duties currently assigned to the IRS; alternatively, the treasury department gets too big and too many things are missed and mishandled. Absolutely idiosyncratic and absurd with an economy limping along at 2% growth he would want to ax an entire government department devoted to job creation and improving the economic lives of citizens, conveniently housing no explanation for the decision, no inkling of what he would replace it with, who would be in charge of its duties. Yes let’s evaporate HUD, the department of housing and urban development responsible for among known tasks subsidizing affordable housing, specialized housing for the elderly, disabled and public housing and section 8 programs for persons surviving on extremely low incomes, attempting to get ahead, get out of poverty. Let’s be sure there are no people ensuring fair housing at a time when there is renewed racism, being a Christian he would side with the Christian renter who thought it violated their principles to rent to a gay person gay couple; let’s get rid of the people who are responsible on a national level for helping build better communities, because communities on the local level can do that more efficiently, effectively themselves state to neighborhood. Yeah right, forget both HUD and the department of commerce were mentioned when Baltimore erupted in terms of where were you and when will the government get serious about doing something about this?  The department of education, admittedly unmentioned at the 4th debate though consistently denigrated by Cruz as something her would eliminate if elected, serves a vital function in providing governmental support to US schools, collecting data on those schools and is a step toward the centralization experts agree we need if we are to compete with the rest of the developed world, i.e. China. Oh but we need to remove the department of education, completely decentralize education to the local level to improve test scores and actual learning, assimilation of both material and knowledge. Listening to Ted Cruz I can’t help but remember back everyone’s favorite, though fictional, president Josiah Bartlet from the fabled West Wing and the episode where deputy communications director Sam Seaborne in an earnest attempt to save the government money tried to decide which government reports were no longer needed, only to be schooled by a teenage intern who was highly interested in government and had read the reports. Including one on garbage collection and the lack of garbage collectors relating to how much trash we would have piling up everywhere if the government didn’t take steps to entice more workers into the industry and reduce garbage mass altogether. Underscoring the need, in an art imitating life sort of way, to fully understand an issue before making blanket decisions about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bse4KvR1dXE

And what’s a night, especially a night like debate night, without a gag reel; you see the problem with not being able to distinguish between where you did or didn’t meet an important figure, thinking you met someone during the taping of a TV news show because segments starring you aired side by side, an inability to keep straight simple facts like whether or not it was a greenroom, proficiently name agencies you want to abolish from the federal government, never mind explain why, is people begin to think you can’t handle that so you can’t handle more complex things. Details Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz should keep in mind going forward and, surely we hope not, should one of them win the Whitehouse. Interesting Rand Paul wants a government so small you can hardly see it affiliating himself with a party who wants to defund Planned Parenthood, outlaw abortion, was instrumental in establishing the guidelines for doctors on when women can voluntarily have their tubes tied to prevent pregnancy, indignant about the welfare they are then pushed into providing for the weakest and innocent, the children; a party who says it’s for smaller government putting its nose in these parts of people’s business yet wants religious exemptions for not doing their jobs for people like Kim Davis, huh? For the life of me I don’t understand, as a voter, why a guy forever reminding us what century we’re in wants to revitalize our economy talking about bringing back, going back to long lost manufacturing jobs; on one hand saying we need to modernize American education pointing to vocational training contrasting welders and philosophers. Fact check Marco dear, welders don’t make more than philosophers owing to what philosophers go on to do after earning their undergraduate degree; just ask your stage mate Carly Fiorina who got the same degree going on to business school and the Sloan school of management to be CEO of a fortune 500 company. Certainly there are those who believe she was given a fortune 500 company to wreck; nevertheless she was given the job, hired based on her education and employment background. Adjacently you don’t try to reassure, placate the American worker their jobs aren’t being replaced by machines, because anyone paying attention knows they are; you, to borrow a phrase from Chris Christie tell the truth, then tell them where pockets of traditional ‘low skill’ and starter jobs still exist, at the same time directing them toward training for higher skilled positions, ensuring that training is available. One of the reasons the high school in the above video segment works is because IBM the major computer company is teaching directly skills it needs now, combining it within high school education, surpassing shoring up deficient academic skills to giving practical work skills; problem, when was the last time someone from any major company, technology or other field went to 4 year universities, community colleges, private colleges and updated personnel there on their needs, in demand job skills for that field? When was the last time all these businesses, industries complaining they can’t find workers dared to try an old novelty an internship/apprenticeship or taking someone with the most skills and engaging in the lost art of on the job training; it’s been at least a decade. It goes back to what was detailed earlier about people knowing what skills are needed for jobs, how far they have to go in their education to get specific jobs, knowing all their job options based on city, town, state, regional demographics, non-traditional job choices for non-traditional people. Concerning technology, mechanization of jobs, the question remains why we have factory workers doing trigonometry rather than the machine due to the unadulterated fact, not that math is too hard, advanced math too complex, but that if you put the right numbers in in the right order you will get the right answer every time with a machine. Because the machine doesn’t get sick, doesn’t get distracted, doesn’t worry about their spouse, significant other relationship, delinquent child, finances; accuracy you can’t hope to get from humans. Analysts correct too when they highlight Ben Carson’s biggest press problem is Ben Carson’s own words in Ben Carson’s own book, reporters simply asking questions; he needs to stop calling it media bias, nor is it anyone lying about him. Media simultaneously need to stop saying it doesn’t take away from his larger success narrative when it assuredly does. People find it a plus they can’t confirm his violent past because maybe he never was and is just being hard on himself; except, it takes away from the people who actually have gotten out of that life, received help in dealing with a real anger issue, overcome odds to become a productive citizen and represents the embellishment no one is interested in. Him not being offered a formal West Point scholarship or finding the Yale class he said he attended, perceptions 301, judging by the tone of the Business Insider article doesn’t exist in the context not of class changes, curriculum reconstructions over years and years, but doesn’t exist at all; sounding an awful lot like a tithing tax plan that’s not really 10% rather 15, math that doesn’t add up. His follow up attack on Hillary Clinton, what she said about Benghazi, ‘where he comes from they call that a lie,’ might have been ok if he had stated he would rather about Hillary Clinton’s ‘lie,’ than the lack of scrutiny given to Obama’s past prior to election brought up by the moderator; otherwise it’s a non- sequitur to controlled talking points showing you can’t manage your own small details. Imagine what would happen when you forget small, not so small details about government; for the record, there was less scrutiny for Barack Obama A- because he was already a senator, had been through some vetting, opposed to a retired neurosurgeon never held office before. B- because Barack Obama Barack Obama talked about the struggles of being raised by a single parent, not his personal theory on the pyramids being grain silos or being taught chemistry by an angel, aided in a chemistry final by an angel, his violent teenage past and religious redemption making him sound like a late night TV kook.  Barack Obama shared his struggle for him and his wife to pay off undergraduate and law school student loans developing a desire to help the middle class, has been candid about his battle to quit smoking, not so ill-equipped at communication he can’t say whether he was offered a scholarship clearly or references a class he can’t remember the number of, so why bring it up? Proving Dr. Ben Carson should have stuck to neurosurgery and we the people need better candidates.

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