Even if former First Lady Barbara Bush says that it is incomprehensible that any woman could vote for Donald Trump, he still has a polling lead in Missouri roughly equal to Mitt Romney’s margin of victory four years ago. The way I look at this is that a substantial percentage of the American public has just given up and no longer gives even the slightest fuck what happens to our country. Call it the Brexit Phenomenon.
Public Policy Polling tried to measure this “fuck-it” sentiment and came up with 12% of voters who’d prefer to see the Earth hit by a giant meteor than vote for either Trump or Clinton. You can add these twelve percent to the 46% of Missourians who say they vote for Trump, and that makes 58% of voters in the Show Me State that no longer want to go on living if it means putting up with the Democrats’ shit.
To be a little more precise, almost 6 in 10 people in Missouri would blow up the world if they could.
It is not nihilism. It is much more to do with the position of the R Party in MO, which is a strong one. There is this persistent and utterly implausible notion that people vote for issues and positions. They do not. Democrats do, but Republicans do not. They vote for the Party of Daddy, and Trump is Daddy.
HRC had better be respectful of Trump. His choice of Pence is a sensible one, as it shows that he is a serious guy, not a lunatic. HRC wants to paint him as a lunatic, and he may yet put himself in that position.
My wife and I drove from SD to NY to SD in June and July. We went to upstate NY, NYC for a week, OH, WI, and the states in between. I saw many many Trump signs. I saw some Bernie signs. I saw no HRC signs. Not even in Cleveland or NYC. As the political pros say, signs don’t vote. But it’s still a tell.
No one is respectful of Trump.
Show me anyone in either party who is respectful of Trump.
You know, Boo, you need to rethink your position on Trump. You pretty much have not called him correctly from the start. You are so invested in your contempt and disdain that you can no longer see clearly. If you want to be a pundit, you better wipe those bitter tears out and start trying to understand:
ahead in NJ and NY and PA?
I’m not sanguine about the race and July polls are worth not much in October/November, but still …
Please read my comment carefully. I stated “might be leading in NY and NJ” – he is from NY, and this is sometimes a factor, and some of his style is the “ya gotta problem wit it” NY stuff. Will he take NY in Nov? It is not beyond belief, and the polls should be watched.
He is currently leading in PA in one poll. Yes, this is July.
The point is that simple contempt and disdain does not made for a political prognostication approach.
Liberal, centrist, movement conservative, and paleoconservative pundits are super-wedded to the fiction that Trump is so ridiculous and unserious and boorish that he’ll be exposed for what he is any day now.
What you guys don’t get is that to a large part of the American public, serious and august and well-educated thought leaders are considered just as incompetent as Trump. Trump, fascist that he is, has actually said quite a few things this election that made me go ‘hmmm, yeah; I’d never hear that from a standard political leader’. And if I thought that he was sincere about his positions I’d give him a hard, lifeboat ethics-style look. Which goes to my next point.
I’ve been saying for months that the only way to chop down Trump does not and cannot involve exposing him as a nihilist or a clown. The only way to chop him down is to show that, more than being merely unable to implement his agenda, he actually doesn’t want to. That is, Trump is actually a bog-standard movement conservative in alt-right clothes. Convince the public that he doesn’t mean for a second his crusade to put the boot to the non-herrenvolk and that as soon as some billionaires wave some money under his nose he’ll go back to busily deporting their jobs.
But no one wants to do that, because that’d mean having to confront their own failings. You know, failings like admitting that the TPP is in fact seen as disastrous or that Obama-Clinton-Bush deported more people people than every other President combined.
You need to get through your head that Trump isn’t being compared to Bruce Bartlett, he’s being compared to Obama and W. Bush and Hillary Clinton. To the people who aren’t living in the liberal/conservative elite bubble, he looks a lot less ridiculous in comparison. And frankly, Bruce Bartlett is a pretty ridiculous man when you take off the liberal blinders.
Sorry. I meant Jed Bartlet. Both Bartlets are pretty ridiculous, though.
He’s not leading in Pennsylvania, and Missouri has voted for a Republican in every election since 1996. Trump will get slaughtered in New York and will lose very badly in New Jersey.
But that’s not my point. My point is that no one has any respect for Trump. True, some voters take his seriously and ever support him. Some think he’s a good businessman, so they respect him in that sense.
But elected Republicans don’t respect him. Republican operatives don’t respect him. Right-wing donors don’t respect him. Former Republican cabinet members don’t respect him. Fox News doesn’t respect him. Hardly any right-wing blogs respect him. The Democrats certainly have no respect for him. The media will endorse Clinton down the line, including papers that have endorsed Republicans since the Civil War. Foreign leaders don’t respect him.
The guy doesn’t get any respect from anyone quotable anywhere, in any country.
Does that mean he can’t win?
Probably, but not necessarily.
I consider Pence or any other
Christianreligious fanatic as a deal breaker. He might have been better off with Gingrich, despite his baggage.You write:
You bet it is!!!
Most of the Trump commentary on the left and center is total bullshit…bullshit served up by the centrist media in an already obviously futile attempt to demonize/clownize/downsize Trump to the vast, still uncommitted middle.
Wrong!!!
Watch as even the fix polls are forced to change in order to survive as so-called “serious” go-tos.
Watch.
It is impossible to predict what will happen during the conventions. They are a black hole waiting to materialize, and I have no doubt that truly powerful controller-run intelligence services are going to try to have a hand in their eventual outcome. But so will…so can, anyway…nutball individuals with access to something like a truck.
Gonna get nasty.
Soon.
Watch.
AG
Maybe. But the last few months have convinced me that the fix in in and everything going forward has been scripted by Wall street. The only surprising thing that has happened was the Turkish coup attempt. Even Nice was depressingly familiar.
How can you of all people think Trump has a chance? Isn’t Clinton the candidate of the PermaGov(tm)?
The PermaGov control mechanism is shot. Digital media…especially social media, so far…has become so dispersed that it is almost impossible to control without closing it down completely or at the very least censoring it to the point that no one trusts it or wants to use it anymore.
This is a big problem for the controllers.
Trump’s rise is the most evident symptom of this problem…also the massive distrust of HRC and government in general.
It’s gonna get even more interesting, soon.
The controllers done lost control of their own control mechanism.
Watch.
AG
Because his positions are totally incoherent. All his “Watch.”/”Like dat.” patter creates an impression of confident, bold, assured factual predictions (and a sneering disdain for the rest of us who don’t see as clearly as he claims to) but the surrounding sentences always push in the completely opposite direction, emphasizing the volatility and impermanence of the situation and the corresponding impossibility of gauging what’s to come. He hedges everything he says — it’s not even worth trying to find any structural theme (beyond scolding those who don’t accept his “vision”) because there isn’t one; it’s just bluster and posture.
Surprise. Another concern troll post from dataguy. Where have you been, Nick?
I blame Global Warming.
As the temperature goes up, the animals (us!) start to go crazy.
I don’t think that a substantial percentage of the American people no longer give the slightest fuck about what happens to our country. I think a substantial percentage of the American people do not believe that our country gives even the slightest fuck about what happens to them.
Shockingly, people don’t rally beneath the banner of ‘let’s make sensible, incremental changes to the status quo without rocking the boat!’ And I’m not being specifically anti-Clinton. She’s a perfect fit with a Democratic Party that refuses to appeal to emotion, to take bold stands, to establish scary goals and then fight for them–and lose. And then double down.
And they are beginning to not even give a fuck about what happens to one another. Little sentiment of larger community left. Everybody hates everybody else.
thanks to the shredding of the social fabric by the Romney types sending all the jobs overseas – I’ve seen that in some rust belt areas, especially those that don’t have a solid ag base.
I wonder how much of it is due to the ‘nationalization of the town square.’ There’s no local news anymore, there’s often no local Main Street. We gossip about Kanye and Kim–and for that matter about Barack and Donald–more than about local figures of import and interest and ridicule. We mourn the same events–but they’re so distant that we mourn them through ‘partisan’ lenses. The world is smaller but less personal.
My neighbors are a lovely young Christian couple with a newborn. They’re a bit on the Flanders spectrum, but truly nice. Yet once the Ben Carson bumpersticker appeared, I fucked them off completely.
I think that’s part of it, or rather they are connected. and part of fragmenting the populace. rebuilding Main St is key, I figure must be a key part of combatting the fragmenting of the social fabric, if not rebuilding something. I wouldn’t F them off completely – perhaps find areas of common interest re: the neighborhood to talk about. can’t say I have any full answers, just some small scale strategies.
Oh, that wasn’t an indictment of my neighbors (well, beyond BEN CARSON WTF???), but of me. They’re much nicer people than I am, and were interested in being good neighbors, but the bumpersticker ‘nationalized’ them, and I shut them down pretty comprehensively.
It’s possible (and not all that unlikely) that I’m particularly immature. But I wonder if reactions like mine are more common now than they’ve been.
Maybe the Internet did it. Express any sort of opinion on any topic and you are almost always called out by someone. Over-sharing. We’d all be better off if we just kept our opinions to ourselves and minded our own business.
and what you talk about, Kanye and Kim, it’s a preoccupation with figures that are completely disconnected from ppls daily lives, a bread circuses thing.
Hardly new — Singing in the Rain made fun of it, so it was old enough a phenomenon then to parody already, over 60 years ago.
difference is widespread collapse of local social fabric today, hence that’s all there is in terms of common areas of discourse, the preoccupation with etc etc
remember that when Ye gets the dem nom in 2020.
Part of it is having the privilege of getting to live within our own bubbles. Why even try to deal with people who you disagree with when you can find a comfortable online place to discuss politics? Or just avoid political talk altogether.
Part of it is the fact that rather than factions (in the Federalist Papers sense) existing between different states, they exist pretty consistently among rural vs. urban areas everywhere, with rural areas getting a much larger voice in the Senate, and often, the House of Representatives (depending on how the jurisdiction is packed/cracked). The media makes this worse, especially right-wing hate media, which plays the faction card as hard as possible, as divide and conquer is effective in uniting conservatives.
Until you’re friendly with someone on a basic, “Hey, how ya doin'” level, avoid politics and act indifferent if they bring something up.
If and when you’re friendly on a basic level and politics comes up, tread lightly. For example, abortion, probably the easiest test to determine whether someone is a Republican/Conservative or not, is a favorite topic for Christians to bring up. Probably related to their implicit fear that the second coming of Jesus is going to be aborted. Don’t go straight away into how abortion rights need to be absolute all the way into the 39th week. Instead, weave liberal values into their existing worldview. They care about the fetus oh so very much, so liberal viewpoints regarding healthcare are directly related to that fetus/baby.
So, you start out positing that abortion will likely never be illegal, and there will always be abortions, period. If the only thing you want is for abortion to be illegal, than it means you only want women punished for having it done. If you actually care about the fetus/baby/life, then the real goal should be decreasing abortion so that the numbers of abortions are as close to zero as possible.
Then you can bring up liberal talking points: free maternity healthcare for all women; free healthcare for all babies/children (and adults brought up much later); free and readily available contraception; better technology so that women can control their fertility from menarche until menopause. In other words, the bare minimum that is required before you can even begin talking about abortion restrictions…because a woman who can’t afford being pregnant may decide that she definitely can’t afford to carry it to term to give it up for adoption. Hence, make all maternity care free for all women, otherwise abortions will occur whether it’s legal or illegal.
Baseline requirement, otherwise, the conservative isn’t serious about saving lives, but about punishing sin.
Not all conservatives/Republicans are infantile or stupid, but I’ve found that you do have to talk to them like children to some extent, because their amygdala is larger than ours, and are very likely to fight or take flight once you start challenging their beliefs and the cognitive dissonance that has been ingrained in them from their tribe members and the media they surround themselves in.
I only offer this generic advice as someone who is radical progressive (but also neoliberal neoconservative because, you know, I think HRC isn’t as bad as Strongman Trump) and has southern baptist Florida panhandle military Republican family-in-law-ish relatives who I have been able to make inroads with.
Don’t get me wrong, some people are lost, forever, and it’s best to just avoid all political discussion. But there are people who are open to discussing politics and are amenable to objective reality. It isn’t easy, and it definitely is comfortable, but there it is.
At a family event focused around my wingnut family member, her friends kept coming up to me and saying hello, chatting a bit then mentioning that they’re pro-life. It took a while for me to realize that I’d been identified as ‘the pro-abortion’ cousin (and ‘pro women’s lib’) , and while they were happy to be polite, they felt awkward about not sharing how they felt about the issue, given my rabid extremism. (I’d said, after having a kid, that I now thought abortion should be legal up to 16 months after conception, so they felt a bit like having a chat with Hannibal Lecter. You try to be polite, but you want to mention that you, personally, are not a cannibal.)
Exactly. Abortion is the litmus test for a lot of conservatives. They mention it in passing, because they honestly believe there is only one correct viewpoint on it.
The trick is showing them that making it illegal doesn’t end abortion, but only punishes women who will continue having abortions. It can’t be done in a meeting or two, and in your case, it’s probably best to just nod your head and talk about cats or horseshoes, since the situation isn’t really amenable to having a serious discussion.
It is always interesting being the libruul in the midst of a Scold of Conservatives. If I don’t know the people very well, I just put forward my best face so that their brief interlude with an America-hating libruul doesn’t give them any ammunition to immediately shoot down anything said in the next meeting.
to a “murder of crows”, “gaggle of geese”, “flock of sheep”, “herd of elk”, “pod of whales”, “school of anchovies”, etc., etc.?*
Cuz if so, I like it!
And if you came up with it originally, well done!
*I’ve long held the theory that all these often bizarre names were originally invented by a bunch of people (yeah, guys most likely) sitting around drinking when one had the brainstorm, “hey, I know, let’s make up specific names for groups of all sorts of animals. Then if someone ‘mistakenly’ refers to, say, a “herd of sheep”, we’ll point, laugh, and call them ignoramuses!” Yours, otoh, is actually apt, though.
I meant a Scold of Conservatives as a group, and I don’t think I stole it, intentionally or accidentally. That said, I’m pretty sure there is a group of animals that are called a “scold of x”. I’ve always enjoyed some of the names of the groups of animals, and yes, it was probably a few guys drinking and naming them, if I had to guess.
My response to people like that is:
I’m with you; 7.4 billion people in the world just isn’t enough. If more women were forced to have more babies as quickly as possible, we could get to 15 billion by the end of the century. So, why stop at banning abortion? I say ban all forms of birth control. More babies for poor and desperate women will let us choose either to increase funding for schools, medicare, and food stamps or watch all the poor, illiterate wretches starve to death in homeless camps. (sigh) I’m a liberal; so, I’ll have to go with increasing my taxes. How about you?
I find interesting 2 sets of numbers:
1. Right track/wrong direction – If you want to know what accounts for the way politics is right now, you don’t need to look farther. The last time 40% said the country was on the right track was July of 2005. Since they began asking that question it has never gone that long below 40.
So there is a sense that is over a decade old that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
2. Consumer Sentiment – this is an interesting number. It is not asked with a political reference – it simply track people own person plans. It is a reflection of economic well being.
Right now consumer sentiment is actually pretty good. Before 2009 consumer sentiment was VERY strongly correlated with the right track/wrong direction question. It also correlates very strongly (R squared of over .5) with Presidential Approval.
In historic terms, Obama should be in the mid to upper 50’s with consumer sentiment numbers like he has, and right track should be over 50%.
So what this means has fundamentally changed in how people are looking at the future.
It’s not nihilism – the PPP polling is a joke about deez nuts – taking that seriously is idiotic.
But there is surely frustration. In some ways we are lucky that Trump is so undisciplined.
If Trump was more like Perot, I think he would win. And this election does bare some resemblance to 1992.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1669/general-mood-country.aspx
I think you underestimate the effect of Ferguson on the entire state. MO has always been divided between the rural and St. Louis+Kansas City. The classic rural urban issues divide kept rural racist whites from joining in common cause with urban racists. The paucity of black faces in the rural areas (I spent ’61-’68 3 miles outside Humansville, Mo. and NEVER saw a black face) has always been a bulwark against the overt, in-your-face racism of the Deep South.
Ferguson brought it home to the farm boys and girls. Trump support reflects the racism of the whites in suburban St. Louis and KC PLUS the energized racism of the rural areas.
God, what will Claire be forced to support now to stay in office?
You know, you’re right about the lack of black faces in central Missouri! One would think one was in central Michigan except that central Missouri has a lot more Italian names on businesses. Actually a lot of names period, because rural Michigan has zero.
and that the dem party did its best to close off the candidate who appealed to the issues of those voters, leaving them with the candidate who appeals only to disaffection and hate – I blame the blindness of the dem elites and the I’ve got mine f you ambition of the Clintons. it’s potentially much worse than you describe, – voters looking to Hitler Youth as a resource. just hoping Sanders working for the downballot races mitigates some of this disaffection
You write:
That happens other places, too.
Like…gentrified Brooklyn, NY.
I played a latin music festival a couple of weeks ago on a pier in Brooklyn…1500 or so Latinos of all shades dancing to the great Mambo Legends Orchestra and some other good groups on a pier jutting out into the harbor across from the Statue of Liberty, etc.
I drove there from the Bronx because the NYC transit system is in such disrepair that it takes hours on the weekends to get almost anywhere because of the continuing frenzied repairs. On the way back home to the Bronx…the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was too trafficked up…I drove through what is essentially the newest gentrified area in Brooklyn…maybe several stop-light-slowed miles up 4th Ave. to the Brooklyn Bridge. I had a rider, a great saxophonist who doesn’t get around much now in NYC, someone who’s been here for a long, long while. As we drove north on 4th Ave. I was busy dealing with traffic and didn’t notice much of what was going on outside, but by the time we got to Atlantic Ave. (the borderline between northern “downtown Brooklyn” and the more residential southern areas) he said to me “You know, I didn’t see a black face on the street until we got to Atlantic Ave. Unbelievable!!!”
Just sayin’…economically-enforced racism is everywhere in the U.S.
Gentrification is monetized racism.
Bet on it.
And Trump is going to get some votes from that crowd, too.
Bet on that as well.
Watch.
AG
>>Like…gentrified Brooklyn, NY
like, the gentrifying sections of Oakland CA too. I was drinking with friends in a jumping neighborhood of trendy restaurants and boutique beer, and wondered where all the black people had gone. Even the staff in the trendy places is nearly all white or asian. In Oakland.
Oakland is affordable SF. Pretty soon the entire place gonna be gentrified.
This is the intended result of gentrification. The folks that run things in the major cities want the poor riff-raff to move out to the suburbs and elsewhere. The more you do that the more likely it is for people with money to move in and add to the tax base.
There’s some reverse migration going on for many blacks formerly living in northern cities. Some of this is a good thing… moving to where its cheaper and easier to find work.
Gentrification:… “urban pioneers” arrive. Urban pioneers are usually young, educated, adventurous, predominately white, often artistically minded individuals who don’t fit the traditional demographic of the neighborhood. They build artist lofts in abandoned industrial spaces, open underground music venues and begin to leave the imprint of their alternative tastes and bohemian lifestyle on the neighborhood [source: Hampson].
Money follows that, since it generally is not creative, but vampiric.
I agree with that. However, the politicians know full well what areas are lacking in investment, adequate law enforcement, education, jobs, etc. Some of its been going on for so long you wonder whether they are hoping that people just get so sick of it that they will leave. Chicago is a good example.
Just because people are sick of obnoxious candidates doesn’t mean they want to blow up the world.
BTW, for Republicans, obnoxious means non-tea party. For democrats it means Third Way.
I think it is more than obnoxious candidates. Unemployment may be “normal” now but somehow too many are not feeling propsperous. And we have a Wall Street candidate. And we have endless war. Some just say fuck it.
yes.
Yes, but not “fuck it” as in “I want to blow up the world”.
But…
But…
“Fuck it” means “blow up the world.” It does now, anyway now.
One way or another.
Like dat.
AG
“Fuck it! I’m outa here” does not mean “I’m going to kill myself”. It means “I’m through arguing and moving on”.
There is no longer any possibility of an “outa here,” Oui….except of course killing yourself.
I am presently in the southernmost islands of Alaska…seabound and rural as can be. Gorgeous on every level including the personal. It is a sort of paradise…so disconnected from the realities of what is essentially now a state of World War that I haven’t heard a word from anyone…local or otherwise…about anything except their own relatively minor problems. But this innocence is so rare and could be so easily tipped over by some sort of economic disaster that as this World War gathers steam…and it will, bet on it…there will soon be nowhere whatsoever safe to hide.
Moving on?
Where, exactly?
In your own head?
Good luck with that when the dollar plummets.
Orlando, FL.
Nice, France.
Baton Rouge, LA.
And on and on and on and on and on and on…
There are more chickens coming home to roost every day.
Bet on that as well.
This is just the beginning.
Where next?
Wait until people realize that neither Trump nor HRC offer anything other than the application of different kinds of band-aids onto a rapidly more suppurating wound.
He’s been right all along.
So were the Beatles. We are back in the U.S.S.R.
Just before the fall.
Watch.
AG
The only things exhibiting inflation are rents and utilities. 40% of the total is that.
Sheer bullshit. Sorry, mino, but there it is. We are now living in a pre-Weimar Recession situation. Only the ongoing printing of money…dollars which are and have been basically world currency since after WWII…is saving us from debt defaults in the multi-trillions.
Economic WWIII will start when either:
!-One or a number of other countries efectively act to take away the “world currency” position of the dollar.
and/or
2-Some kind of political or disaster-driven collapse occurs in U.S. society as a whole.
Pray not.
“Trust in God, but tie your camel,” as the Arabs say.
Our camel is running wild now.
So it goes.
Gonna be an interesting election.
Two people without a clue as to how to rein in that economic and societal camel.
May you be born(e) into interesting times.
AG
Directly equating the U.S. in 2016 to the Weimar Republic? Extensively quoting from Rand Paul’s latest nutty pronouncements?
This stuff’s pretty extreme, even for AG.
It’s clear that he is very excited about the prospect of a President Trump. Arthur’s so anxious to see a comeuppance for his PermaGov construct, he keeps himself, and wishes to keep us, from really confronting the fact that Trump is running on massively increasing Defense Department spending, would have our military commit genocides in the Middle East, and would see to it that the U.S. tortured Arabs and Persians. And can you imagine the CIA, FBI and IRS under Trump’s direction?
Yeah, Trump’s an enemy of the PermaGov. And AG is a community member with healthy, unwavering principles.
Ron Paul, kneejerk.
I dread Trump’s reign.
I equally dread HRC’s reign.
But worst of all?
I dread people like you.
You do not think; you only kneejerk.
It is people like you who will elect…if indeed an election actually comes to pass, because another couple of months of escalating violence in the streets of the almighty NATO nations is liable to put a kibosh on the whole operation…it is people like you who will elect the next Preznit of the United States of Omertica, and whether the election goes down the Trump road or the HRC road, all that is going to happen is a further accelerating disintegration of the societal system as it now stands.
A feedback system that is now threatening to break its speakers.
Police noise in.
War noise in.
Amplified by the media.
Societal noise out.
BLM noise.
Trump rally noise.
Bloody mass murders by people who have lost their minds and souls due to the cultural dissonance produced by said feedback system, which will then result in more police noise, more war noise, more media amplification of that police and war noise, ever more street violence, etc., etc. etc.
Round and round it goes; where it stops? Everybody would if they could just shut the fuck up and observe the spiraling violence feedback system in which we are now living.
But NOOOOOooo…
People like you will trot around obediently to the polls, vote for whichever disaster most resembles you and then pat yourselves on the back for being such good citizens.
Good Germans, really.
Good Americans.
No real difference.
Thanks a lot, centerfielddj.
You are the people I dropped out from 50 years ago.
Enjoy your results.
Two sides of the same rancid ass.
Yakety yakety yakety yak.
Yakety yak.
Don’t talk back.
AG
There’s an infinite willingness here to avoid, distort and invent histories in order to justify the impenetrable political nihilism held by the author.
No hope is offered, other than American society instantly and thoroughly agreeing with and taking action on every viewpoint held by Arthur Gilroy. Little help this offers us: he doesn’t even have the guts to organize votes for Johnson or Stein.
Instead, Arthur chooses, today of all days, to tilt more windmills for Daddy Paul. And he wonders why I remind community members of Arthur’s support for Cliven Bundy and Voter ID laws.
One major problem: what is AG suggesting we should do in the general election? Society has strayed; the candidates are who they are. Which viable candidate most closely expresses democratic/progressive policies? Bernie Sanders has extended his leadership into offering a direct answer to this question. Arthur has claimed to admire Sanders, but refuses Bernie’s advice.
And he is angered that I point out that his constant rhetorical stream in recent months is one that entirely serves Trump’s interests, and that I’m willing to bring these facts together and draw completely justifiable conclusions from them.
You are correct. I do not know what to do. Do you you know the secret of survival?
Surviving.
By any means necessary.
That I will do, to the best of my ability. This thing that is arising in the NATO countries resembles nothing so much as a terrible storm. I’m headed for high ground, myself. You? You think not much is going to happen. Those clouds you see? The rising wind? Just a little bad weather.
I don’t think so, myself. Neither do many others. The game has been played almost to the end and the results are not going to be pretty.
From Counterpunch:
This system has been in place and operating quite well…for the .01%…since the 1992 election of Bill Clinton. Ross Perot pinned it 24 years ago:
This is not news, bubba. It’s been building in plain sight for 24 years. Now it’s coming to a head and all you can do is advocate putting some makeup on it and calling it President Hillary Rodham Clinton?
Get real.
AG
Someone ought to pay more attention to Brexit. The folks out in the shire just said f.u. to the VSP in London. Immigration and job loss got to be too much. We have had some really serious inequality and many people are feeling it with the loss of manufacturing and the perceived immigration problem. When, in heavens name, will HRC say $15 out fucking loud? If she said it, it escaped me. Something has to be done for the working people out there and it doesn’t help she gives speeches to Wall Street at near a guarter million each. But it doesn’t affect her progressive policies. Yeah, sounds like London. Trump will drive this into our conscious along with those e mails.
yes
HRC will do NOTHING for working people, not a single fucking thing. THe only jobs statement she has made is the “staple a green card” statement. For every little foreign student, they get a permanent job here.
Of course, we actually have American students who want jobs.
But the Democratic Party has done nothing NOTHING for American students. Obama has made unilateral unconstitutional provisions for more jobs for foreign students. While they get jobs DUE TO TAX BREAKS FROM THE FEDS, our students have trouble getting full-time barrista jobs.
Thanks, Obama, you useless tool.
Not Nihilism but Choice-ism. The choices are lousy for the responsible voter.
Both have extremely high negatives that normally would disqualify anyone from getting past the 3rd or 4th primary. But Trump exploited the fears and social prejudices of the Republican base electorate to get the nomination. That and frustration with the “Establishment” Clinton has exploited the fears and social prejudices of the donor and establishment class of the Democratic electorate. Even then, the most unlikely challenger imaginable kept defeating her in state after state, due to frustration with the “Establishment”. The result might have been different if not for the media drum beat of “lead in super-delegates” and the call of “inevitable” had not suppressed some of the vote.
Now HRC, after repeated foolish antics of Trump, is tied in the polls, instead of ahead by a wide margin. We have discussed this in the past, she will need every vote available to win. She is certainly trying for those votes with shifts in the platform and proposed policies. Will it be enough? We’ll see.
Ridge
BTW- some say the email kerfuffle is holding her back. Maybe. Here is the most succinct and complete explanation of the issue; taken from the FBI report, hearings, and examination of the emails themselves. (for instance, I didn’t know that the server was first set up for Bill and Hillary decided to jump on).
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/indifference-and-ignorance-delving-deep-into-t
he-clinton-e-mail-saga/
upvote for a fellow Arsian!
Thank you kindly, great site.
Re: HRC. She wanted what she wanted. If they wouldn’t spend the tens (hundreds?) of thousands to get and support a Blackberry like the POTUS, then to hell with them.
You can’t expect a 60+ yr old woman to know all the ins and outs of IT security but that is what pros are for. What happened at State is that no one would tell her “No” and they even hired on her personal IT guy to manage her personal IT infrastructure. Never a formula for success. What is more disturbing was the use by other State employees of commercial email services for official business out of convenience or frustration. I think the FBI conclusion is correct, there was not intent; but the other conclusions of recklessness and carelessness were also correct.
We also can’t reject the legitimate concern for privacy and /or political protection from the known political enemies of the Clintons. That also was a motivating factor.
R
All that is present everywhere in any large public or private organization. It is good to call out short sighted selfish security behavior and the badly implemented government IT, and I hope HRC learns something but thus kind if thing us too widespread for me to think there should be criminal charges. Apoxy the usb ports for now.
“Epoxy the usb ports for now”
And tape over the camera. Don’t know if you saw this
————–
A group of researchers from Georgetown University and UC Berkeley have demonstrated how voice commands hidden in YouTube videos can be used by malicious attackers to compromise smartphones.
https:/www.helpnetsecurity.com/2016/07/11/hacking-smartphones-voice-commands
I always use black electrical tape over my device cameras!
Fortunately re: that particular attack I dont use Digital Assistants, disabled them when I got the phone in an effort to improve performance and battery life. Very interesting story though!
If you knew that “intent” doesn’t figure into determining if a crime has been committed under the relevant statures, would you still agree with Comey?
Nobody gives a crap if she understood the law and/or is a tech dummy. Neither figures into determining the probable existence of a criminal act. DAs and AGs and juries may choose to cut the person some slack, but not the criminal investigators.
Generally intent is presumed from illegal acts. It’s enhanced when someone under investigation lies about what they did. 1) I thought it was allowed. (As if she wasn’t told to use the State Dept email system.) 2) I only wanted to use on device. (She used multiple devices.) 3) There were no classified emails on my server. (A lie, but how could a SOS expect not to receive a single, email with classified material?) 4) I turned over all my work emails. (After they were demanded and almost two years after she left office. But, no, she didn’t turn over all her work emails. And she has no idea what her attorneys and IT people read as they purged her emails.) She got very lucky that there was no Inspector General at State during her tenure and who very likely would have discovered her private email server set-up during her tenure. (Obama has some culpability for letting this go for four years.)
Intent is obvious. It’s motive that’s undefined. HRC is on record as having said that she didn’t want anyone to see her personal emails. That’s fine. Nothing prevented her from having a personal email account — Gmail or on her own server. If one wants to accept her excuse that she only wanted to use one device (even though that has been documented to be false), there was no technological reason why her server couldn’t accommodate both a personal and a work email address for her. That way she wouldn’t have gotten so confused as to which was which and which one needed to be turned over to State when she left. (She would have saved a lot of attorney and IT fees if she’d done that.) Still unacceptable for a SOS because her server was insecure, but at least there would be no excuse for deleting emails in the work account.
A common reading of para D of the law seems to require intent or “willfully”
Para F said “gross negligence” is enough.
Appears to be a toss up. Of course there may be other Fed laws which could be applied. The FBI gave her legal cover but not political.
R
18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
Here is an article going through Supreme Court cases that require intent over gross negligence. Was HRC compliant with State Dept regulations? No. Was she completely forthcoming about the whole matter? No. Will it matter to the American Public? They will have their say.
http://warontherocks.com/2016/07/why-intent-not-gross-negligence-is-the-standard-in-clinton-case/
R
A long and lawyerly explanation by rob Hager.
Should add that I carefully read Comey’s statement and even for a non-lawyer, there were problems with it. Drafted a diary on it, but set it aside because it felt too short on the legal precedents and questions and I couldn’t find a satisfactorily objective and unbiased source that had commented on it. This one actually surprised me because I had considered that in carefully limiting the reported scope of the investigation that Comey was on solid legal ground. (GOP House Oversight … members also didn’t key in on that when they grilled Comey, but at least for once they demonstrated some intelligence and succeeded in making Comey squirm.)
>>What happened at State is that no one would tell her “No”
I’m not sure that anyone at the Dept of State should be able to tell the secretary no.
If I’m the Secretary of State there is one and only one person with the authority to order me around, and it is NOT the Preventer of Information Services.
Could someone point out some good Hillary bashing comments on this thread?
It’s interesting. Booman is a liberal Democrat. But most of the comments,at least over the past year, are from fringe leftists and concern trolls. Odd.
baiting and trolling was just what the thread was lacking!
Now it’s complete, whole, thanks to you!
Good job!
so defensive about the candidate’s weaknesses you must attack those willing to discuss said weaknesses. well, your comment is right on cue. wouldn’t want to let serious commenters discuss the weaknesses now would we?
(I doubt it):
That is not my perception. But it is your claim. The burden is not on me to show that it’s false. The burden is on you to provide evidence that supports it. Commenting here creates an accessible record, so if your claim were true, that should be doable.
(Hint: simply defining any-/everyone who may not see things as you do to be “fringe leftists and concern trolls” will not suffice.)
Perhaps it is time to take a break. Stop doing stupid stuff. End the wars, manage the existing government without making any major changes, stop promising stuff that will never come to pass. The country is divided. There is no consensus on anything. Let’s just admit that and sit tight.
If thats the plan then why not start killing each other now to decide things? Thats the only way someone gets to move forward.
What’s wrong with life in America today? I’m fine and so are you (I assume) Lots of people are. Just because its not perfect doesn’t mean we have to make a whole bunch of changes. That’s why most democrats chose Clinton over sanders. We don’t need or want change. Let’s have a do nothing president to match our do nothing congress. Stop agitating for fantasy policies that can never work or even be passed in country so evenly divided.
What’s wrong with America is that outside the West Coast and enclaves in the Eastern US, most of us are seeing our standard of living declining for 20+ yrs. That, more than anything else is driving Trump supporters. Sure its easy to say, move elsewhere. If investments in education and internal infrastructure were made, the country as a whole would be better off.
The feeling is that most of America is being made serfs to the Corporations and our political leaders are paving the way. Its easier to point to big targets like “Unions” or “Immigrants” or “Guns” than the root of the problem; the wealth of the nation is being siphoned off for the very select few. If you want to “Make America Great Again”, put the tax rates on the wealthy back to what they were in the 60’s or even under Reagan and spend the money on the country; not billion dollar jets or tax shelters in the Caymans.
R
Yes!!!
See my comment above.
AG
President Obama hasn’t delivered your fantasy economic system. Neither will anyone else.
Ridge Cook writes about differences in various parts of the country – in what part of the country are you located?
There are severe economic differences in various parts of the country. There have always been, but its much more pronounced in the last 30 yrs. I put it down to several factors-
-WalmMartization of retail and manufacturing.
This is reflected in the demise of small town retail as WalMart runs them out of business and the demise of US manufacturing, which WalMart has helped destroy with their emphasis on cheaper imported goods. The Clinton trade treaties (both organizations from Arkansas and HRC was on the WalMart board during its growth period). I saw this happen real time with the textile industry in Southside Va and NC. Mills and factories employing 10s of thousands disappeared replaced by Indian, Pakistani, and other south Asian fabric sources. Especially since large orders from WalMart and others disappeared as well.
Recent study say WalMart is directly responsible for loss of 400,000 industrial jobs.
http://fortune.com/2015/12/09/walmart-displaced-us-jobs/
-Declining direct investment in US infrastructure. Why, because tax rates have been declining for the last 50 yrs. 90% Under Eisenhower to Johnson (25% capital gains tax).Under Nixon and Ford, 77% (27-36% capital gains). Reagan 28% (with 20-28% capital Gains) Went up under Bush 1 and Clinton 39% (29% capital gains) Bush 2, 35% (15-21% capital gains) and remained same under Obama.
But the Effective tax rate on the top 1% earners, according to IRS, is 23% and declining to 17.5% for super rich.
So if you want to make America great again; build bridges, dams, Interstate Highways, airports, railroads: you have to get money into the system and not spend it on 1 bill.$ jets and unending wars in the Mideast. Bump up the capital gains tax rates to shift from short term trading and auto trading (maybe a tax on trades themselves) and begin to aggressively go after wealthy rates and corporate hiding of profits overseas. I like the idea of postal banks funding infrastructure. Many, many rural communities have no access to local modern banking which post offices could take over (credit/debit cards, bill pay, etc…)
You get a 2 for 1 multiplier for every dollar spent on infrastructure. Think about what several billion dollars dumped into construction spread around the “fly over” part of country. People working, paying local taxes, buying local products…all that money circulating.
So to sum up, living in areas that don’t have high tech, govt, or financial economies…these areas are being starved of spending on state and Fed levels which more wealthier areas benefit from. And they are wealthier because of previous spending. Its a self perpetuating cycle that has to be broken to “Make America Great Again”
R
—————-
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/eisenhower-obama-wealthy-americans-mitt-romney-pay-taxes/story?id=153
87862#11
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/04/as-the-rich-become-super-rich-they-pay-lower-
taxes-for-real
http://www.businessinsider.com/infrastructure-economic-multiplier-2012-11
While I’m confident it was not your intent, your presentation of tax rates actually plays into Norquistian dogma favoring tax cuts, always and under all circumstances, as unquestionably “right” policy.
Cuz, ya know, lotsa not-very-well-informed people, hearing the “tax rate” was 90% from Eisenhower to Johnson, will understandably react “Wow, 90%!? That’s obviously way too high! The gummint was taking back 90% of everything people earned?!?! That’s just wrong! Obviously!”
Your formulation (which is deliberately employed for propaganda purposes by Rightwingers) helps enable that misconception.
Because it omits the critical information the the numbers you cite were highest marginal rates, i.e., they were levied only on the last increment of income over the upper bound of the next-lower bracket. In short, only very rich people paid the rates you cite, and only on a portion of their income. And even for many of them (excluding the really obscenely wealthy who are so rich that their income over that cutoff comprised a large proportion of their total income), they paid that highest rate on only a small portion of their total income.
Sorry to quibble, all you included is very worthwhile; but this omission matters.
I understand your comments, but the following sentences answer your concerns-
” But the Effective tax rate on the top 1% earners, according to IRS, is 23% and declining to 17.5% for super rich.
So if you want to make America great again; build bridges, dams, Interstate Highways, airports, railroads: you have to get money into the system and not spend it on 1 bill.$ jets and unending wars in the Mideast. Bump up the capital gains tax rates to shift from short term trading and auto trading (maybe a tax on trades themselves) and begin to aggressively go after wealthy rates and corporate hiding of profits overseas….”
The effort was to make apparent one of the causes of a “Better, Greater America” was a revenue stream that make some of the things we are proud about America possible. That it was unclear I will blame because it was done during lunch between bites of hot dog.
One of the other things that are becoming more and more apparent is the vast over spending of federal dollars on areas where economic growth and development are mature. And they are mature because of vast over spending in those areas. Areas that are politically important to both parties. Areas where large portions of donations come from. If some of that spending was diverted to more needy areas of the country, they would have the chance of growing out of a “net receiver” of Federal welfare and support dollars.
Example-
Why should the rest of the US subsidize water costs for an over populated Calif desert SW? Why should we pay for water to grow cotton in Ariz? Or transportation in the wealthy NE? Or gas and oil exploration in Texas? We do so because the economic growth in those areas are important to the Nation. And the growth was begun and subsidized by the Nation with Fed dollars. Because of the political power from that growth it will continue to the detriment of the “fly over” part of the country. A self perpetuating cycle. This has to be addressed if revenue cannot be increased.
R
make the point that those facts I pointed out are the explanation for that crucial sentence you rightly highlight. (I wouldn’t say it “answers” my concerns; but it’s a completely valid, and very important point.)
Then I forgot to do that before I hit “post”. My bad.
I still think it’s needed to identify “highest marginal” tax rates (and explain what that means!) for what they are whenever they are mentioned precisely because they are so prone to misinterpretation (and so amenable to dishonest propaganda use otherwise). I don’t think that one sentence adequately accomplishes that, especially for people who aren’t very well-informed on the subject already.
I’ve mentioned this before.
It’s the Anger and Bargaining stages of grief.
The Republican base, and ill-informed, are Angry, and Bargaining that if Trump can’t make America great again, he’ll at least burn this fucker to the ground in the process.
It’s very likely that the same 12% abuse alcohol and opioids at higher rates than average Americans, i.e. killing themselves.
Capitalism (capital C) has failed everywhere it has ever been tried and has only been propped up by socialism and a society scared of external forces that might evidence just how bad greed d.b.a Capitalism really is on a society.
More likely people know the system is top dog and cant be changed. Trump is the only vehicle outside that system. And if you arent brown what he says is pretty good.
I’m not brown.
It sounds like shit to me.
Putting the brakes on globalization and foreign wars along with infrastructure spending. Not saying Trump could or would deliver but those are all good things.
How are the 40 percent of folks in Missouri who are leaning towards Hillary not voting to end the world? She is the only candidate who as part of her foreign policy includes armed confrontation with Russia. It seems to me that there’s more chance of Hillary getting us into a major war with a nuclear power than Trump tripping while carrying the football and accidentally pressing the wrong button.
This election would have been a walk in the park for Dems if they still were Dems. No one really trusts Clinton (except the core of true believers), nor should they.
declared something to be fact that aroused my skepticism enough to request documentation of the claim from you. My recollection is that I got no response on such occasions in the past.
Will this be another?
Facts in evidence, please.
This fellow Muhammed Fethullah Gülen who Erdogan says is behind the coup turns out to be connected with the Clinton Foundation and charter schools.
Anyone have more information?
there were a couple articles in the NYTimes about him a while back
here’s one
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/world/europe/thousands-protest-arrest-of-2-turkish-journalists-on-
spying-charges.html?_r=0
here’s another
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/world/middleeast/turkey-feels-sway-of-fethullah-gulen-a-reclusive-
cleric.html?_r=0