foment more insecurity and instability and conduct acts of violence. groups like al qaeda and isil would be trying to exploit bill: it may come as a surprise to the military u.s. men and women who fought and died in that country to make hard-fought gains over a long period of time. 9,500 today. the president wants to cut that number in half. is that smart? the president worked strongly with his military commanders to allow for the,800 troops to the stay longer here this year than originally envisioned. but he s also given his commander the latitude to manage that force flow as he sees fit so he can continue to do the job he needs to do to train and advise afghan security forces and conduct the targeted
the george h.w. bush administration, which was the one that withdrew the u.s. nuclear weapons from south korea in an effort to win some kind of reciprocity from the north in the first place. and president obama has treated the problem i think with what could be called benign neglect. basically staying away from and hoping it would all go away or that china would somehow take care of it. now we re stuck with this. it doesn t sound like they actually exploded a hydrogen bomb. we don t know, but the evidence that s coming out makes me skeptical. what s revealing here is they think it is in their interests to claim that they re doing so. and they obviously are trying to see what the reaction of the various players in the region will be and then how they can use exploit that reaction to play these countries one off against the other. as chuck mentions, multiple administrations are cuppal here about north korea. but the obama administration really has not talked about this at all and did n
things. once is, there was a change in policy. bill clinton signed a decrease in the capital gains tax rate in the late 90s, george bush lowered the rate again in the early 2000s. unquestionably, the case of that benefits the very wealthy, since a lot of their income comes in the form of capital gains. but that isn t the whole story. that s kind of the foundation for something else, which we really try to get at in the piece. which is, it s the foundation for a lot of gaming of the system. and basically, if you look at many of the loopholes, if not most that the ultra wealthy exploit, it s all about converting ordinary income, which is taxed at a very high rate, at about 40% for the very wealthy, into capital gains, which is taxed at about half that rate. so all these scams that we talk about is all based on that not all, but largely based on that principle. and that principle is made possible by the fact that capital gains is taxed at such a lower rate. and yet, somewhat remarkab
he apparently there as a sort of santa claus, with his two young daughters portrayed as monkeys. let s talk about it with our panel. steve hayes, senior writer for the weekly standard, a.b. stoddard of the hill and charles krauthammer. the washington post pulled the cartoon, but is not planning to offer a formal apology. a.b., what do you think? i think the world knows, everything it needs to know about this, about this event. pulling the cartoon is an acknowledgement that it wasn t the right thing to do. ted cruz has used his daughters in political commercials. which is pretty rare. but it s still not appropriate for the media to exploit, make fun of, include children in any kind of cartoons or criticism. or even good, well-intentioned jokes, really to include the children of politicians, it s off-limits, it always is and it really, even in the age of trump, we hope it continues to
cycle. i think if you go to our rallies, you see an incredible amount of people turn out and what this is really about is not about the president. certainly we can argue that policies and the anger there but i think it s the lack of leadership that we ve had in washington for quite sometime and it s not just the president. i think it s the president s administration but it s also the republican party. we ve had alack of leadership in the republican party in the last budget deal goes right to the heart of the issues we ve been talking about. many of the candidates have been talking about on the campaign trail and highlights exactly the reason that so many people are angry and disgusted and so disenfranchised with washington. van, the word exploit may be inflammatory but what is wrong with addressing the concerns of working class men? this is a group that has had problems over the last several decades in this country. well, absolutely but i think that he s on to something. the presid