This is Viewpoints for Tuesday, August 9, 2016

A choice

Thomas Sowell’s column on Aug. 4, titled “No good choices in the political picture” ends with the following two paragraphs: “Voting for an out of control egomaniac like Donald Trump would be like playing Russian roulette with the future of this country. Voting for someone with a track record like Hillary Clinton’s is like putting a loaded shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger. And not voting at all is just giving up. Nobody said that being a good citizen would be easy.”

This sort of sums up the way I feel about the election. With that being said, playing Russian roulette gives you better odds of surviving than putting a loaded shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger.

Competing tax plans

Americans for Tax Fairness has evaluated Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s tax plans and here are their conclusions:

• Hillary’s would require each member of the top 1 percent to pay $78,000 more each year.

• Donald’s would cut the taxes for each member of the top 1 percent by $275,000 a year.

• Hillary would raise $400 billion from the wealthy.

• Donald would cut corporate taxes by $2.4 trillion.

• Hillary’s tax plan would raise $1.4 trillion to invest in education, health care, infrastructure and clean energy.

• Trump’s will add $9.5 trillion to the federal debt.

Who is fiscally responsible? Who is looking out for the middle class?

Immigration lawyer

After watching Khizr Kahn, the Muslim Gold Star father, use his son’s death as a prop to advance his personal agenda as well as the Democratic Party’s is a glaring display of the sick and perverted lengths the Democrats will take to depict Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. Now that he has been exposed in Breitbart News as well as other forums, the mainstream media fails to say anything about this pathetic person. Kahn is a lawyer who engages in procurement of EB5 immigration visas and other “related immigration services.” He has removed his law firm’s website to try to hide his deceit and his true agenda for his appearance at the DNC.

He lives off the fraud and abuse that is the EB5 immigration program as well as being tied to the Clinton Foundation. I wonder how he arrived here? He has apparently, like Clinton, availed himself to use of the “delete” button very well. Maybe he needs a Snapchat account.

His son’s death is indeed tragic. The loss of a son or daughter is horrific. The self-promotion of same for monetary gain is despicable just as the “con job” he put forth on national television. A Gold Star shame.

He’s the issue

What Hillary Clinton said was we need to make America whole, but Donald Trump does not get it and for that his message is not resonating with voters. He faced a bad week with all the things he said and his refusal to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan’s bid for re-election in Wisconsin shows that voters there are not happy about Trump’s refusal. But at least Trump is Trump, and that is the issue facing people here and everywhere because he is the issue.

Too short

Just a note to mean people. Life is too short for me to worry about what others say or think about me. My mantra is to have fun and give them something to talk about.

Getting giddy

For those who suffer from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and are giddy about the $400 million in cash that was delivered to Iran, please try to control yourselves. There was nothing nefarious about it and the funds were never about prisoners. The payment was from an escrow account related to the International Tribunal Court in the Hague.

Just prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran had paid the U.S. approximately $400 million for military equipment. After the revolution, the U.S. naturally refused to provide the equipment but also refused to refund the money. Iran sued and won with interest which has been piling up over the years. The funds were delivered in cash because the U.S. has no banking relationship with Iran due to sanctions.

Corrections

Marv Murdock on Sunday wrongly blamed our president for pulling our troops out of Iraq. It was actually former President George W. Bush who signed an agreement with the Iraqis who actually kicked us out of their nation before he left office. Obama had to carry out Bush’s past agreement to leave.

Dan Topoleski was wrong Sunday about the $400 million dollar cash payment to Iraq at the same time as the hostage release. This was reported in The New York Times by David Sanger in January of this year. It was actually Iran’s money that we had put in a lockbox because of our embargo of Iran years ago. It had to be in cash as we had no financial institutions to transfer it to in Iran because of the past embargo.

Non sequitur

It was disappointing news to hear that Georgia Power is planning to shut down the Dames Ferry Park camping ground in Monroe County at the end of this summer. I used it occasionally over the years and it was a nice place. I wish it could stay open.

According to a news report, Georgia Power says the “closure is a way for the company to save money after internal changes.” Georgia Power spokesman Craig Bell elaborated that the utility company was “looking at it from an operations standpoint, making sure that we’re doing what’s most cost-effective to protect our customers, to make sure we keep our rates (and) your power bills as low as possible.”

Those are noble-sounding words and good for public relations, but I really doubt anyone is going to notice a difference in their bill as a result of the closed park.