When was America Great, Mr. Trump?

When asked to relate when America was greatest (this quote is from CNN):

"If you look back, it really was, there was a period of time when we were developing at the turn of the century which was a pretty wild time for this country and pretty wild in terms of building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship," he told the Times.Trump also pointed to the "late '40s and '50s," a time when, he said, "we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do."

As a clarification, it should be pointed out that at the turn of the century there was no federal income tax in the United States. Something must have happened during that stretch that led to the creation of the income tax in 1913. Not long thereafter came the great depression. Without a doubt the first third of the 20th century was filled with fiscal and financial turmoil. Not too great.

The other time Trump termed "great" had a maximum tax rate at 90% or higher.
Does "Make America Great Again" ask for a return to pre-depression policies, or to a 90% maximum tax rate?
Can someone please explain?

Boycott Kentucky!

Mitch McConnell, Senator from Kentucky, has done enough damage, and the positions of Speaker of the House and Senate majority leader have done enough damage.

No person in Congress elected to serve a state or a congressional district should have the power to control what Congress can or cannot do.  That applies no matter which political party claims the position. 

There is no requirement that the Speaker of the House even be in congress. Given that, I have never understood why the Speaker is second in the line of Succession.

Back to McConnell: he has got to go.  The rules may never change, but he has got to leave.

I propose that the people of the United States adopt a "no go" policy towards the state of Kentucky, until such time as Mitch McConnell has left government.  By that I mean:

• Do not visit the state. (No Mammoth Cave visit, ni Kentucky Derby stay, no Louisville Slugger trip)
• Do not drive through the state unless you can do so without stopping. Most cars should be able to go the distance across the state on an interstate without needing gas, provided they are topped off before entering the state.
• Do not fly into, out of, or through Cincinnati's main airport. (Apologies to the city, but they put their airport in Hebron, Kentucky.  The people of Hebron must have been irate when they called this airport CVG, in honor of what looks to be a gerrymandered city about a 15 mile drive away). Watch your Delta connections!

This is not an original idea of mine (see here), but it is time to bring it on. 

Unless and until McConnell is gone from Washington (and only Kentucky can make that happen), shun the state itself. 

Is this news?

The New York Times of November 16 has an article entitled "the Two Americas of 2016", splitting the country in two by counties, based on whether or not they went for Clinton or Trump in the recent elections. (Article here). Why counties? Why not Congressional districts, why not voting districts, why not by elevation? (Who knows! Is height above sea level positively correlated with election results?)

The Times let me down with this article. It said nothing new. Urban areas tended to go democrat and rural areas republican.  Who didn't know this BEFORE the election?

Maybe the times should display a rainbow map where colors indicate percentage of population with Twitter accounts, or maybe Facebook accounts. Maybe show us a colored contour map colored so that height relates to available broadband speed and color to election results.

There are many ways in which creative maps could be used to educate the public about its country. This creation may be unique, but not newsworthy.

What would be newsworthy would be for the Times to show a map that encourages some form of unity between urban and rural areas. Perhaps displaying by creative use of color the average drive time to the nearest supermarket. (Maybe the urban people might realize they have a distinct advantage here. Perhaps the Trump vote's underlying cause was accessibility of grocery stores!)

However a newspaper packages its news, let it first be sure that it is news, and not just beating a dead horse.

PS: I would have written this as a comment on the Times web site, but the article had no such option.