Cheap Talk

I could offer this posting as a Miscellany, or Bits and Pieces. But all of the comments circle around ‘cheap talk’ associated with each of the items.

First, republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio declaims President Obama for his diplomacy towards Iran and Cuba. Hello? This is what presidents do. What would you do Marco? Threaten to bomb both Iran and Cuba, or keep Cuba at arms length for another 50 years? Being a leader is about changing the status quo towards something more positive and helpful for the global community. It is not about maintaining hardliner political positions to gain fans but accomplish nothing.

Second, my non-capitalization of the proper noun ‘republican’. In my mind the political party captioned is not properly respectful and thus does not deserve capitalization. When it improves its image, trustworthiness and intellectual acumen, then I’ll consider capitalizing their name. Progress is up to them. Meanwhile I refuse to lend credence to them or their message unless they make a good point. For the last several years they haven’t. I’m not the only one noticing!

Third, recession or not? Now here’s a topic. We experienced a serious recession beginning in 2008. Its roots were in 2006 and 2007 but we really knew we were in the soup sometime in late 2008. It has been one of the worst recessions we have ever experienced. There were times we wondered if a depression were near at hand. But then perseverance and hard work paid off. We are not out of the woods.

No. Not out of the woods. There are many pieces to our economy that remain distorted, sick, and some even dying. Not to worry; old things fade away and are replaced by the new. New technology is one. New land use is another. The internet has changed retail operations nationwide; it will drive land use change as well. But jobs are being created. Unemployment is falling. What’s still in need of mending are these: 

• Improving salaries and wages; we have been shut down for growth in this arena for far too long.
• We need less chaos in the workplace; too many jobs were eliminated leaving the same work to be done by fewer people; they are burning out and need help
• We need to reinvent careers to shift to emerging areas of activity
• We need to reeducate older workers who have outlasted the technology and career base of old and shifted to new industries
• We have infrastructure throughout the nation that needs replacement or major maintenance attention
• We need massive growth of alternative energy to fuel our future safely, cleanly and plentifully
• We need an education system more responsive to major cultural change 

With all of these problems still existing, why would anyone claim our economy is aiming toward another recession? We have not truly emerged from the last recession. Claiming otherwise is cheap talk to make political points.

Our economic present and future remains a work in progress we all have to work on. Making political noise over this is insanity. And counterproductive.

Fourth, Jeb Bush tells us ISIS is the result of Obama and Clinton policies. Now that’s just plain dumb. 9-11 happened and a lot of things changed. For one we went to war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We were making progress there when we were distracted by making war against Iraq. War made many enemies. It exploded tensions among religious zealots which in many skewed violence, death and destruction in Iraq in hideous ways. We certainly got more than we bargained for. Concurrently we were losing the momentum in Afghanistan.

These developments were George W. Bush’s dealings gone bad. And Cheney aided and abetted the insanity. Ill shaped patriotism took us the rest of the way and created chaos on top of chaos. No republican politician today can claim the Iraq and Middle Eastern mess is anyway connected to poor handling by Obama and Clinton. This was a republican mess from the start. They own it and should keep their fingers of blame pointed back at themselves. Because that’s the way it is in a factual world! 

Cheap talk is empty talk. It has little factual basis. Rather it is propaganda nonsense uttered to attempt to damage a political foe and earn votes for the ranter. Let’s all prove them wrong and ignore them.

We have work to do. So let’s get to it. We have all the time we wasted with the other jerks; now let’s use that time to good use.

August 17, 2015