Massive student loan debt - who is to blame?

I heard through ABC news a few nights ago (via David Muir, anchorman and purebred Democrat) that the current amount of student loan debt nationally has surpassed the total U.S. credit card debt, a number in the trillions of dollars.  Then again, this came from the mainstream media, the likelihood of this figure being accurate is 50% at best.

But let's assume it's an accurate statistic.  Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been pandering to these beleaguered young folk with crushing debt by promising to make college free, and they also suggest that they will sign legislation that will forgive these amounts that they owe.  

Woo hoo!  More free stuff!!!  You got my vote, Hillary.  How exactly they will square all of this free stuff with the universities and student loan lenders has yet to be determined.  I am certain that the note holders of this trillion dollar debt will not be too happy to simply write it off their books.  

But the universities who hand out diplomas in Women's Studies, Diversity Studies, Humanities, Art History, Psychology, and the myriad of other useless and stupid degrees will hail this coming free education.  They, of course, will get paid regardless, by the U.S. taxpayer.  The electric bills that power the lights in the classroom will not be free.  The professors that profess inside these lit classrooms will not do so for nothing.  And they will want these classrooms heated and air conditioned, and that does not come free, either.

And nothing, absolutely nothing is ever so expensive once it becomes 'free.'  Once Hillary opens the doors to higher education facilities to whomever wants to walk through those hallowed doors, the price of everything will sky rocket to prices never ever seen by the eyes of mankind.  

Currently, however, college is not free.  Far from it.  The government has subsidized the public university system to levels never seen before, and the colleges that accept any and all students who can cut the tuition check with their student loans flowing in will jack up the cost of attendance at every level: parking fees, tuition, books, student activity fees, there is no end to the costs that rise virtually every day.  

The dirty shame of this higher education scam is that both public and private institutions offer the most useless diplomas ever dreamed up.  Degrees that have no commercial value to any employer at any level.  What kind of demand in the work place is there for somebody who has a Masters of Art degree, and whose 'dissertation' consisted of building a giant high heel shoe along with a giant lipstick case out of paper mache?   

None whatsoever.  And even worse, what kind of demand is there out in the market place for a graduate of Women's Studies?  These graduates are recognized as nothing more than walking, talking sexual harassment lawsuits.  No employer would touch these graduates with a 150-foot pole.

And these dopes with MA's are on food stamps and welfare because they are unemployable in fields such as art.  I would point the finger of blame at these dope's and their plight directly at themselves, their parents and the schools that offer these courses of study.  Surely common sense would prevail here, and all involved in steering these students towards these goofy and worthless pursuits share the blame; the universities, the parents, the guidance counselors, and the students themselves.

Solution: from this point forward, only finance degrees that are demanded by the marketplace.  You know, the 'hard' classes which involve a core requirement of at least an entire year of calculus (that's a form of math for you public educated folks) and English composition at a bare minimum.  You need to know how to write coherently, and you need to be able to present a position from a logical perspective.  If you can't do that, you are worthless to an employer who seeks a college education as a requirement of the job they seek to fill.

Q: What does a holder of an Art History degree ask every day at work?
A: 'Would you like fries with that?'

It's not ransom, you idiots. Next question....

Of course it's not ransom, you idiots.  It's, uh, er,...well, it's not ransom.  Next question, please....

My first knee jerk caption to my cartoon above would be something to the effect: 

Obama: 'Where do you want the ransom, boss?'

Khamenei: 'You evil infidel, just put it over there with the rest.'

Or perhaps a better one:

Obama: 'Are we friends now?'

Khamenei: 'No. Death to America. Now get out.'

The 1960's were to music as the 1970's were to clothes...

At the time, I didn't think anything was wrong with 1960's music, since Dick Clark on a typical Saturday on his 'American Bandstand' would agree with a teenage member of his dumb audience that the tune was good, 'because you can dance to it.'  'Nuff said.

Creedence Clearwater's 'Suzy Q' is a good example.  I think it has four words in the lyrics.  Well, maybe a few more, but not many more.  This awful song made it all the way to the number 11 spot on the Top 100.  

How about the one-hit wonder 'The Kingsmen' and their stupid tune 'Louie Louie', mostly associated with the movie 'Animal House.'  Other than the title, most of the remainder of the lyrics are unintelligible, which is probably a good thing.

Many, many more bad tunes abound in the 1960's: 'Young Girl,' by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, really bad writing.  And a really bad name for a band as well, but I digress.  

Of course, there was 'In A Gada Da Vida' by Iron Butterfly, who could forget this bad tune? I was in the service in the early 1980's, and was cruising along the back woods around San Angelo, TX, where four or five of my buddies and I noticed on a rusty neon bar sign the headline that stated 'Featuring Iron Butterfly.'  We were curious, walked into the bar, and nobody was there, except the bartender and the band, apparently taking a cigarette break.  They saw us come in, and they started up their one and only tune, 'In A Gada Da Vida.'  It was really them, a bunch of burnt out old hippies living off of their one old hit.  We didn't stay for the entire tune, we finished our beers and left.  They were still only halfway through the never ending, tedious drum solo when the screen door slammed after the last of us left.

I hear 'The Monkees' are getting back together (sans the late Davy Jones).  Boy, I can hardly wait.  

Obama is right: America is relatively safe these days.

For the two guys that read my posts, you are aware that I disagree with President Obama on just about everything he says, does, believes and thinks.

But when he's right (every other blue moon or so), he's right.  And rather than blindly disagree with a glaring truth (being the right wing nut job that I am), I will back up President Obama's assertion: you are in virtually (statistically speaking) no danger of walking out of your front door and getting mowed down by a terrorist wielding an AK-47.  You just aren't.

Donald Trump's acceptance speech was criticized by Obama as being dark, alarmist and exaggerated about the danger that Americans face today, and he says that we have never lived in a more peaceful world than now.  That's unarguably true, if you look at the statistics.

We are all aware of ISIS and their tactics; blow up a very public place, encourage lone wolf assholes to take out as many innocent victims as possible while shouting 'alahu ahkbar,' and make as big of a splash in the headlines as they can.  The body count in Nice was 90 innocents.  49 were killed in Orlando.  14 people were killed by terrorists in San Bernardino.  Home grown Black Lives Matter murderers ambushed and killed 5 officers in Dallas, and another 3 in Baton Rouge.

Very big headlines.  Lots of hand wringing about the world gone to hell in a hand basket.  But the body count is just not what it was in the 'good ol' days.'  It just flat out isn't.

In the American Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, if you are a dumb yokel who doesn't know any better), 750,000 people were killed during 1861-1865.  In World War I, another 53,000 Americans died in that conflict.  In World War II, 291,000 Americans were lost.  Vietnam saw 47,000 U.S. soldiers die.

Those were dangerous times.  A million deaths in times of war in U.S. history over the last 100 plus years, that is living in dangerous times.  The likelihood of a mother losing her son back in those days was relatively high in times of armed conflict.

But only a couple of hundred deaths (not counting Chicago, where black on black crime is considered normal every day life and death) in the last year?  That's relatively nothing, statistically speaking. This is living in peace, given the violence we have seen in our history over the long term.

We are not at a full scale war with any existential threat, such as was the case with the Empire of Japan and the Nazi threats 70 years ago.  

Donald Trump is taking the headlines of a few deaths, as awful as they are, and blowing things out of proportion to advance his political agenda (as all politicians do).  We are still living in a country where we can go to the mall, go to the ball game and not really worry about getting killed.  

We are living in peace, currently. 

Relatively speaking.  And this is Obama's point.  He is right.    

'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree:' the candidate's kids

You perhaps recall the 2012 campaign, where Mitt Romney's sons accompanied Mitt on the stump and stood out as decent, hard working and well cultured children despite being born with silver spoons in their mouths.  

We are now seeing Donald Trump's children speak out about their dad, and they are truly inspiring to listen to: well spoken, articulate and cultured.  And yes, Donald Jr., the oldest, and Tiffany, the youngest, were not only born with silver spoons in their mouths, they were born with silver coal shovels in their mouths; these kids were filthy rich when they were in diapers.

Of course, so was Chelsea Clinton.  Her parents (despite their incredulous claims of being 'dead broke') were multi-millionaires by the time Chelsea was a teenager, although perhaps she was not born uber rich.  Certainly, however, Chelsea Clinton has shown nothing of the gumption displayed by the Trump kids. 

After her graduation from Sidwell Friends HS, Chelsea was off to Stanford (BA), and ultimately Oxford where she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree.  Dr. Clinton was then unleashed into the world to make her mark.  Her first gig was a no-show job at NBC, where she pulled down hundreds of thousands for doing basically nothing, owing to the fact that she had no journalistic chops whatsoever.  And in the ensuing years, she has spoken on the lecture circuit in affiliation to her family's dubious 'Clinton Foundation,' which is nothing more than a slush fund to finance the Clinton's high falutin' lifestyle.  In other words, Chelsea Clinton has never really worked a day in her fabulously wealthy life.

The Trump kids?  Donald Trump put these kids to work as early as the age of 12.  He urged them to rub elbows not with the management of his many companies, but with the laborers: masons, carpenters, iron workers, to get  a feel as to what kind of effort makes the real world work.  He then gave them jobs at the bottom, where they worked their way up the ladder based on merit, and not on who they were related to.  Donald, Jr. when asked a few years ago what would happen to them if they goofed up on the job, replied that if their performance started to suffer, his dad Donald Trump would 'fire us like dogs."  Results were expected and indeed achieved.  The Trump children are all involved in Trump businesses, and are not just sitting on their name, they actually work for a living.

Unlike Chelsea Clinton, who is frankly about as worthless as a screen door on a submarine.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  Or so they say.

We already know what needs to be done about Islamic terrorism

What are the characteristics of this enemy?  They are convinced that they fight for a greater cause, and that their spiritual leader is no mere mortal.  They believe that if they cannot convert you to embrace of their beliefs, you will either be enslaved or die.  They are all willing to die to the last man over their beliefs, to include suicide attacks.

We already defeated this enemy: the Empire of Japan in 1945.  

The Rising Sun was destined to spread over the entire planet, and the spiritual leader of the empire, Hirohito, was the son of God.  Their military had orders to annihilate any opposition regardless of age, race, religion, color, etc.  Kamikazi suicide missions wreaked terrible damage on the Allies.

The only way we defeated this enemy was to demonstrate to every man, woman and child in Japan that we were capable and willing to destroy everything they ever loved.  We did so with nuclear strikes against two major Japanese cities.  

They surrendered unconditionally.

We have done this before.  We are facing essentially the same existential threat that we did 70 years ago: an enemy that is willing to die to forward their global caliphate's destiny.  There is virtually no difference between today's radical Islamic terrorists and their leaders and the Empire of Japan.  Same same.

We already know how to defeat an enemy of this nature.  We simply have to demonstrate the capability and national will to destroy everything they hold dear.  And we certainly have the capability to destroy them.  

When we finally developed the nuclear technology capable of destroying great swaths of territory, we warned Japan that unless they surrendered immediately and unconditionally, we would unleash a terrible wave of destruction upon them.  They refused and continued their aggression.  We annihilated Hiroshima to demonstrate our will and capability.  Hirohito and Tojo still refused to surrender.  A few days later we annihilated Nagasaki.  And we would have in time destroyed every major Japansese city until a surrender was inevitable.  They surrendered after Nagasaki.

We can do the exact same thing to this enemy we face today.  We can destroy ISIS HQ in Raqqa, Syria, and we don't even need to use nuclear weapons.  We have conventional weapons that are more than capable of destroying square miles per single attack.  We can then destroy Mosul, Iraq, where ISIS has a stronghold.  The devastation and loss of life would be terrible.  We would offer to accept unconditional surrender at that point.  

If ISIS refused, and continued their terrorist aggression, we would escalate our destruction of all they hold dear: first Medina, Saudi Arabia, a holy city within Islam, would be targeted for destruction. Prior to destroying this holy city, we would offer terms for their unconditional surrender.  If they refused, Medina would disappear from the map.

We would continue to escalate the total destruction of all they cherish: Mecca would be next.  

We have already done this to a terrible enemy 70 years ago, and it worked to bring to an end their hostilities immediately.  We can do this again against this scourge that terrorizes the world today.

Do we have the will, however, to do what needs to be done?  We did in 1945, what about in 2016?

Fear of indictment is not over for the Old Crone, not yet...

Just when I give up on expecting anyone on the GOP side of the aisle in Congress to display any hint of a spine, I am now pleasantly surprised.   Turns out that not all of them are the invertebrates that we have all watched in action on Capitol Hill over the last 10 years or so.

Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut) just made it official this morning, referring charges to the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington D.C. (and cc to the U.S. Attorney General's office) that Hillary Rodham Clinton lied under oath to Congress in addition to the FBI - both felonies.  This is the beef that Martha Stewart was nailed on.  The same beef that Scooter Libby plead out.  And the same beef that hung the Old Crone's ball-n-chain hubby Bill Clinton out to dry during his last term in office.  This is a real serious beef that America has with the Old Crone.  

A felony in the law books of the good ol' U.S. of A, every bit as real as hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.  Hey, how about that? Ol' Fredd is a poet.  I wonder how much a poet's gig pays these days?

But I digress.....

FBI Director Jim Comey as much as confirmed the validity of these accusations during his press conference last week as he was deferring recommendations of indictment.  Of course, when asked by Congressman Chaffetz why these obvious lies to Congress and the FBI were not pursued, he flatly stated that by law, they weren't asked to do so (with a congressional referral), and accordingly he was not inclined to unilaterally press charges.  Immediately, to his credit, Congressman Chaffetz replied "you now have your referral."

This is not simply chit chat among buddies on Capitol Hill.  This is still a serious charge of several felonies, not to be dismissed as simply partisan politics by the Left and the media.  The Old Crone is not out of the woods yet.

Not yet.  Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen.