Oh, just frigging sigh. This is what the country has to deal with, every day. After day. After day. But then, this is who the GOP has pushed on itself to the front of its party as one of its leading voices. Here is what Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted on TwiXter yesterday, retweeting something she came across and -- without thinking or checking with her staff or seemingly caring that it was idiotic -- wanted to make sure she passed it along to others, because she thought it was a truly great idea. And what was it she was replying to and retweeted that this Great Thinker thought we should do in the United States to make things great in our country? Emulate Argentina. Yes, Argentina! And why? Well, because -- Yes, this is what Marjorie Taylor Greene thought was SO tremendous that United States should copy it and the lunatic leadership of the crazy, clownish newly-elected leader of Argentina Javier Milei. That inflation that had dropped by half in two months. Now, yes, that's impressive -- unless, of course, you actually looked at the numbers and actually understood what actually was actually going on in Argentina For starters, even if you didn't pay much attention to the news, I think most people can look at these first numbers and grasp instantly that a monthly inflation rate of 13.2% seems really, incredibly high. (And that's the low number.) That's because a monthly inflation rate of 13.2% is, in fact, really, incredibly high. By contrast, the annual inflation rate in the United States -- which one would think Marjorie Taylor Greene would and should know is only 3.2% Which, if I take out my abacus and check, is a smaller number than a monthly rate of 13.2%. Indeed, a massively smaller number when it comes to the inflation rate. The U.S. was understandably in an uproar when inflation here was 8%. Just imagine for a moment the reaction if inflation was over 50% higher than that! And by the way, if Ms. Greene didn't know that the annual inflation rate in the U.S. was 3.2%, she could have asked someone on her staff. Surely somebody there would know. And if not, which I guess is possible, given that this is, after all, Marjorie Taylor Greene's staff, she could have done what I did to get an exact figure -- just go to Google Search and checked for "annual inflation rate." It took about eight seconds. Try it. You don't even have to put in "U.S." which saves time. The very first result will give you the answer. But what about that "budget surplus" thing? That's sound pretty good, doesn't it? Well...yes, it does -- as long as you don't want to destroy everything about your society that makes it livable. You see, when Millei took office, Argentina had horrific problems, and (as you can see) its inflation was over 25%. But rather than work on putting a mature, manageable economic program in place, Millei (who you may recall campaigned with a chainsaw, to show what he'd do to Argentina's economy) instead installed an austerity program. It raised taxes (imagine Republicans doing that), cut subsidies to industries across the country like to energy (imagine Republicans doing that), and poverty for the country skyrocketed to 57.4%, their highest in 20 years!! That means over half of Argentina was pushed by the policies of Millei into poverty! And this -- this! -- is "the same thing" that leading economist and Great Thinker Marjorie Taylor Greene, sitting up there high on Capitol Hill, wants the United States to do!!! Because, she says, it will "save America." The 57.4% of Argentina living in poverty with higher taxes and a 13.2% inflation rate might disagree. Last year, Ms. Greene posted a comment on TwiXter in which she whined about liberals calling her stupid. She might want to take a step back and look at the things she says like this to realize why. Or at the very least, as she ponders her Great Thoughts up on Capitol Hill thinking that that gives her a wisdom she never had at home, she should remember the words of Abraham Lincoln who founded her party -- "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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