An Insult To His Father's Memory

Robert Kennedy was a great man. He worked tirelessly for both economic, and racial, equality. Perhaps most importantly, he could see the disaster that was Vietnam long before most of Washington

John Kennedy was a great man. Every major Civil Rights bill of the early 60's was begun while he was President. He, unlike J.Edgar Hoover, did not demonize Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcom X. He reached out to the Russians to try and create some workable peace, ignoring all the saber rattling coming from the right. He also reached out to Castro, hoping to build a viable relationship with Cuba. He had plans to get us out of Vietnam by 1965--see NSAM 263 -which, of course, was thrown out by LBJ, almost immediately following that day in Dallas.

Edward Kennedy was a great Senator. Born into wealth and privilege, and haunted by the deaths of his brothers, he worked tirelessly for working class people.

Did they all have flaws? Of course they did. Did they all love this country and want the best for its people? There is no doubt they did. 

It must be difficult to be part of a family, indeed the namesake of one of them, that is held in high esteem and that set high standards. And is cursed with such tragedy.

Which brings us to RFK Jr. 

To be fair, the generations that immediately follow greatness are more often than not, not great.

But Jesus Fucking Christ, Junior! 

Lil Bobby shits on the memory of his father and his uncles every goddamn day. 

And his pigheaded stupidity about vaccines, nutrition, and health care in general will get many people killed and many more deathly ill. 

(By the way, that brain worm he says he had died of malnutrition.) 

And Now, A Few Words About Taxes

Living in Phoenix, as I do, my daily newspaper is the, sigh, Arizona Republic, which, honestly, we subscribe to mostly for the obituaries. Morbid, I know.

I also, being somewhat masochistic, I guess, read the letters to the editor.

Mostly these are word for word rehashes of whatever garbage the writer heard most recently on Fox News. You can almost hear the spittle flying. It is sad. But it is true.

The other day, though, the Republic printed one from a fellow from Sun City, one of the myriad of bland, beige, boring, retirement camps--uh--I mean adult communities--which ring Phoenix like some breed of suffocating albino snake.

This guy was upset that the crazy socialists would tax away all the rich people. They would be forced to flee America if we tried to raise their taxes. And then where would we be without our rich people? He really meant it, too! He wasn't specific about where all those rich people would go. Couldn't be western Europe. Their taxes are higher than ours. Hmmm. Somalia? Venezuela? Russia?

Being a Sun City-ite, this guy must be of a certain age. Surely he remembers, fondly I'd guess, the 1950's. You know, that Trumpian paradise where blacks, browns, gays, women and students kept their mouths shut. Yeah. That place. The place that conservatives hunger to go back to with a passion that makes one blush. Blush, and then vomit.

Anyway, the top marginal tax rate, the rate the richest Americans theoretically pay,  in the 1950's, the Eisenhower years, was 91 or 92%. That's right.

How about the Kennedy years? Same rate.

LBJ? Took a deep plunge to 75%.

Under I Am Not A Crook it was still at 70%. Yeah, that raving socialist Richard M. Nixon was president of a country with a 70% top marginal rate!

The top marginal rate for 2019 is 37%. You could double it, and still be below LBJ's rate, let alone JFK and Eisenhower's.

If things were so much better back then...maybe we should go back to those rates, just for nostalgia's sake. Just to make some people happy again...

The "Permanent War" Party

The President's Iran deal is bad because, well...

War is the only American export we can always rely on!

And if you take that away from us, and by us I mean our defense contractors, who will be able to bribe our congressmen at the level they've come to expect?

Besides the Koch brothers, I mean.

After all, steak dinners at The Palm don't pay for themselves.

Remember when old Ike warned us about the Military Industrial Complex? (Eisenhower, by the way, was our greatest general who never actually saw combat--which makes him a model for all Republican chickenhawks past, present and future.)

Of course, he warned us as he was going out the door. And after allowing 8 years of non-stop growth for the Complex and their good buddies over at the CIA.

But still...

Anyway, JFK, who had seen combat, was in the process of removing us from Vietnam and reaching out to both Cuba and the USSR when he went down to Dallas.

LBJ quickly undid all that. And some of his Texas buddies made a killing building military bases in Southeast Asia.

Nixon gave us more of the same in Vietnam. Though detente and the opening with China must have scared some of our war lovers silly. Ford was a cypher and a punchline. Carter started the supplying of the mujahedin. Reagan was a godsend for defense contractors, what with the Evil Empire, Iran-Contra, and Star Wars. Like pigs in slop. Old Bush had his war. Clinton was the best Republican president of my lifetime. Dumb Bush/Cheney was another godsend for the war machine, after September 11th gave us a shiny new enemy to carry us forward.

And Obama wants to take some--not all--but some of that, away!

What, is he crazy?

War is what we do best. We've had a lot of practice.

Thank God we have the brave (well, chickenhawk brave) men and women of the Republican Party, and their partners over at Fox News, to stand in the way of anything even remotely looking like peace.