Then (May 2008) The Guardian
In a filmed meeting with editors of a newspaper in South Dakota, which holds the final primary of the Democratic race on June 3, Clinton hinted that she might not concede the nomination to Obama until the August nominating convention.
“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?” Clinton said. “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”
Now – August 2016
The dirty rotten scoundrel (aka Trump)
“If she gets to pick her judges –nothing you can do…Although the 2nd Amendment people maybe there is”
Hillary Clinton:
“A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”
(Presumably “suggest violence in any way” doesn’t include advocating violence against POC in other countries.)
Hillary did get a lot of push back on her RFK assassination comment. Rightly so. Her later “clarification” was hooey, but I’ll accept that she wasn’t actually encouraging some poor soul to decide the nomination with a gun. Still it revealed something unpleasant about her character.
Trump’s statement is less targeted than Clinton’s was but is more difficult to dismiss given his audience. It follows in line with Palin’s rhetoric and her congressman in the crosshairs map. She and nobody on her team were charged with any crime, even though one member of congress on the map was subsequently shot, barely surviving, along with eighteen others, six of whom died.
However, had Palin posted that map and the Tucson shooting occurred while she was the GOP VP nominee would she have remained on the ticket? I’d like to believe that even McCain has that much decency.
“I know words, I have the best words.” — Donald Trump, Dec. 30, 2015
U.S. Secret Service tweet:
The Secret Service is aware of the comments made earlier this afternoon.
For the good of the nation, Trump should publicly own how horrendous his comment was, respectfully ask his supporters to refrain from violence because it’s not a solution, and withdraw from the race.
UPDATE 8/10/16 Business Insider – Secret Service reportedly talks to Donald Trump about 2nd Amendment remark
The Secret Service spoke with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump about his Tuesday remarks on the Second Amendment, CNN reported on Wednesday.
A top official at the agency told the cable news network that there had been “more than one conversation” about the comment.
…
In a tweet, Trump denied that a “meeting or conversation” took place.…
There goes the Secret Service electorate support for Trump. If need be, wouldn’t count on them doing their job either.
Has he ever apologized for anything? I doubt it. Sigh.
Apologizing is not in the DNA of most politicians. They issue “regret” I misspoke or some variation of “if I knew then what I know now.”
Unlike apparently the vast majority of Americans, I neither forget nor give politicians a pass for their egregious failures in words and/or deeds. In those moments all of them should be told to go because they have displayed that they are unsuitable for public office.
What a shame that the only candidate promising anything for blue collar jobs (besides Bernie Sanders’ phony campaign) is such a political idiot. He would have trouble getting elected as a small town Mayor. Or was he just the Clinton’s stalking horse? Wheels within wheels. Easy to believe that Bill Clinton got his good bud to run. Probably told him what issues would get the nomination. Then his good bud throws the election.
Sanders harder to figure out. Why he would so enthusiastically work for the person who stands for everything he opposed his whole political career. I thought it overly dramatic but perhaps the Clinton’s did threaten his family. Ross Perot claimed the CIA threatened his, but maybe it wasn’t the CIA.
No one will win this election except Goldman-Sachs and the multinational corporations.
What’s hard to figure out? Sanders does what he says he will do, and he said he would endorse (in so many words) before this whole thing started. He opposes Trump, he fights for his agenda as best he can within a certain political framework, and he turns out successes with a deck stacked against him.
Adam Johnson of FAIR tweeted back in like June of 2015 how he couldn’t really get excited for Sanders, knowing “when he loses all his energy will be put into electing Clinton”.
Sanders is good at politics. Apparently his detractors in the party didn’t realize how good he actually is or was. His campaign may have even stopped TPP. Oh we all know Clinton doesn’t oppose it and will sign it if it can manage to pass. But it might be too heavy of a lift.
No, Sanders didn’t stop the TPP. Only winning the nomination and general election would have done that. For the past eight years, Republicans have staked their political fortunes and future on opposing all things Obama. The dynamics for Republicans with a Clinton in the WH are different. That’s how the neoliberal agenda was significantly advanced during the last six years of WJC’s tenure without the Republican or Democratic rubes figuring out what was being done to them. Other than the young that lean liberal, they still haven’t figured it out.
Oh I have my eyes wide open for the backstab. But there’s a lot of noise that Ryan can’t lift enough on his end to make it happen. Maybe he’s hoping for people to be sleeping. But if he can’t do his part, Clinton isn’t going to be able to lift enough Dems to make up the difference.
We may be talking past each other or maybe seeing the same thing and framing it differently. Here’s what I observed.
During WJC’s tenure and excluding “Hillarycare,” the GOP was relentless in its attacks on WJC’s character and on policy initiatives groused for public consumption and signed off outside of public awareness. Democrats (in Congress and the public at large) were exhausted by the constant need to defend Clinton’s character, but he was not worthy of such defending.
The policy impediments for WJC came from Democrats, but they were in the minority, and there were enough Blue Dogs in the caucus that whatever Bill and the GOP wanted, they got. The GOP laughed all the way to the bank and rank-and-file Democrats praised WJC’s as some sort of brilliant triangulator of the GOP when in fact he was screwing the Dem base.
With Obama, the GOP had to go there because Obama doesn’t present an easy target for character issues. On policy, Obama has been more publicly open to compromises with the GOP. That limited the amount of concessions he could make with the GOP but actually not by all that much. All the GOP had to play against Obama was policy. Stoking the race card for their rubes meant they couldn’t give an inch. Even when it meant giving up on something like the “grand bargain” that they very much wanted.
The GOP will be in a position to trash Hillary are character issues and use that to push her further to the right on policy matters. This election cycle may have only opened a few eyes within the Democratic caucus, but those few are enough with the newly awakened liberal electorate that she will have to rely on a number of Republicans to “get thing done.” So, she’ll have more Democrats with her than Bill had but fewer than Obama has. She won’t need as many Republicans as Bill did but she’ll have more than Obama has had. What she won’t have is the luxury to hide what she’s doing from the public. With a public “untrustworthy” rating of 67%, all her little clever ploys won’t work which will increase her need for support from Republicans. Best case, she gets nothing done. Worst case, the Democratic-Republican party in DC reintegrates and lots of horrible things will get done.
I think that’s generally a correct view of the situation. But times, political “reality”, and environments aren’t static. We both know and understand Clinton wants TPP in some form. The best time for it is in lame duck to wash her hands of it. Ryan is making noise that a vote won’t happen in lame duck right now, as of August 4th:
House Speaker Ryan: No point in lame duck vote on TPP deal
Now again, maybe running interference and it happens anyway. But then there are other signs that this isn’t a bluff. August 2nd, David Dayen reports:
Trouble for the TPP: Business groups’ desperate PR campaign signals possible failure for trade deal
So we will see what happens. But right now it seems lame duck is out, and is she going to push this right in the first 100 days given the other legislation promised? I think that depends on how the election goes and her margins.
Merkel says TTIP won’t happen for a yr at least. HC has NEVER come out against it. But dare she try for it a just before 2018 midterms?
If she doesn’t, how will the MSM, particularly TV/cable treat her and her Democratic colleagues in the ’18 election cycle? Where will they get the money for their campaigns? Chelsea’s cookie sales?
And if she does, Berners ride again.
Agree. Ryan/GOP can’t get anything out of Obama for going along with the TPP, but they know that HRC’s benefactors expect her to deliver on it. Difficult to believe that the GOP head honchos aren’t beginning to figure out that Rove’s missing white voters have been sitting on the sidelines and aren’t about to vote for either party pitching this trade carp. (See link to Intercept article below.)
I think that depends on how the election goes and her margins.
An HRC win with 43% of the vote will be less dangerous that one with 55%. More crazies in the GOP caucus, the less dangerous she is as well.
It is a different time. Liberals were willing to be quiet when Clinton was President because they didn’t think a liberal could win.
After the losses in the 80’s liberals accepted that their views were mostly unpopular.
This is no longer true. And this is where the trouble will happen.
Clinton, unlike Obama, is not trusted to her left. If things go bad, and they always do, she does not have the good will Obama does, and her approval ratings will have a much lower floor than Obama had.
I don’t think HRC is any different than Bill ideologically.
In some ways, HRC is in the same position Carter was in when he won. It would not shock me to see her experience the same result, particularly if the economy tanks.
We seem to be seeing the same dynamics but also articulating it from different perspectives.
As New Deal economic policies have always remained popular with a majority of the electorate, why would “liberals” accept that their views were mostly unpopular? And if they were so unpopular, why did Republicans fail to gain and/or maintain majority control of Congress from 1930 through 1992?
With the economy doing well by the mid-sixties and the New Deal legislation that directly impacts the lives of ordinary people at a rock solid level, the bigots could afford to vote their racism. Then there was the fissure in the Democratic Party over war and the MIC (which fueled a lot of the economy). It was a three way split — those that wanted to roll back the clock on minority (including women’s) rights, those that wanted to retain the status quo (including massive war-making capabilities), and those that wanted to build on the progress to date and excise the destructive elements that then existed. As a successful national candidate had to in some way own more than one of those three factions, the winner was the one that best embodied and articulated across one of those lines.
Election results only partially captured those divisions in the ’66-78 period. In ’68 the three candidates, as publicly known and identified as, were all mixed bags. By capturing the Wallace’s racist New Dealers and pro-war Democratic vote between ’68 and ’72, Nixon won his landslide. In ’76 Carter recaptured some of those racist-New Dealers by simply being of the South. Then, as he was never an economic liberal, he proceeded to begin the direct assault on New Deal legislation.
By 1980 those earlier factions had morphed. Pro-war, as in active engagement, and racism were weaker, but Carter had watered down New Deal liberalism and had no answer to what was labeled “stagflation.”
It wasn’t so much that liberalism failed in Presidential elections as it was the nominees were either weak messengers (McGovern and Mondale) or faux liberals that were also weak messengers. The wacky Perot actually touched more on the traditional spirit of New Deal liberalism than Clinton did. But Democratic voters appreciate that without a party base in Congress that a president will fail; so, FDR Democrats deluded themselves that Clinton was a liberal. Easier when the opposing party attacks the Democratic officeholder as a liberal.
And the beat goes on.
, particularly
ifwhen the economy tanksGreed is again reaching insane levels.
No — the phony is Trump. Sanders did what he could and worked his tail off. Alas, Democratic PTB are too strong and entrenched because they have figured out to snooker just enough liberals/Democrats.
Had Sanders not stated up front that he would endorse the Democratic nominee, TPTB would have found a way to prevent him from competing. As it was, they figured that he would fold like a cheap suit as Dean had in ’04. They didn’t reckon that a larger portion of the Democratic electorate had wised up since then and that a 74 year old man that identifies himself as a Democratic-Socialist would have the stamina to run a campaign and attract more than the 35% that Bradley managed in ’00.
It’s okay to be mad and disappointed with the outcome of the primary. It’s okay not to vote for HRC. But “get smart.” Trump is a raging, ignorant nutcase. Think of it as a choice between Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan.
There’s a big difference between endorsing and campaigning for.
Choice: McCarthy or Reagan. Decision: stay home or move to Europe if you can afford it.
Those are two options. There may be more politically constructive options as we get nearer to the election.
Don’t remember Kennedy campaigning for Carter.
Kennedy reluctantly endorsed Reagan. However, Kennedy should never have been the Democratic politician in good standing to challenge Carter for the nomination; right move on the part of the party but the wrong candidate.
Carter was not a gracious winner. In fact he was a bit of an asshole. (Like Gore in 2000.) That wasn’t new for him and in part was why Democrats needed to get him out of there.
However, Kennedy made a strategic decision not to campaign for Carter (not that Carter was doing much on his own behalf). Did you gamble that Reagan would be a one-termer? Bad bet because the GOP held the WH for the next twelve years, and after that we ended up with a younger version of Carter with less bible-based preachiness.
Finally, unlike Sanders, not campaigning for Carter didn’t jeopardize Kennedy’s standing within the Senate Democratic caucus and he wasn’t blamed for losing the Senate majority or for Reagan winning MA (even McGovern won MA).
Different men, in different positions, and different times.
Can’t locate our country club conversation, but this will do as well here:
Kevin Kruse tweet:
Billmon response:
Kruse continued:
Good thing the Trumpheads don’t actually listen to what Trump says.
It only takes about two weeks to become efficient on an assembly line. They’re not designing apple computers. They’re assembling them from component parts.
I remember the initial Chevelle recall. One worker tightened four bolts. That’s all he did. He didn’t do it tight enough, but today there are power wrenches that set the proper torque automatically.
Not sure what your point is. And it would appear that two weeks training time for that Chevelle line worker wasn’t enough. The measure of the value of work or output is more than the required training time.
Point was that the miners could rather easily become assembly line workers. The skills needed are punctuality, and an ability to stay with boring work.
Farmers have a problem with that. They can do boring work, but ten or fifteen minutes more or less doesn’t matter to them. Zenith found this out when they left Chicago for rural Missouri to save labor costs. Or maybe they didn’t, because they left Missouri for Mexico to save even more on labor costs. Then they went out of business. Obviously, labor costs were not their real problem.
Regarding the Chevelle worker, since it was a brand new model can we really say a priori that the worker wasn’t given the wrong specs?
Oh. I will still stuck on Trump pitching his hotels and wine to coal miners.
How much are Apple assembly line workers paid? Even if he had any interest in repatriating those jobs, no POTUS could do it. For a “business whiz,” he doesn’t seem to know much about how it works.
No doubt that manual workers in any field are capable of learning and performing any industrial/manufacturing job. Workers also move to where the jobs exist (the story of industrialization). But owners have a habit of picking up and moving their factories to wherever cheaper new labor exists. Textiles out of New England to NC, SC, and GA and then to Mexico and then China, then Vietnam and Bangladesh. Somewhat different with the auto industry as domestic and foreign manufacturers have been locating in TN and SC. Tesla in CA, but does threaten to move if it doesn’t get what it wants.
The problem — I was going to cite Richard D. Wolff wrt to the end of the US labor shortage in the early 1970s, but that only focuses on one factor and then only a small slice of that factor — is a disconnect between the speed with which populations have grown and the speed with which capitalism has gotten better and better at making and selling things with the slow pace of cultural and educational changes and the ability of the ecosystems to absorb or accommodate the people and factories. A couple of examples of what I mean.
Farming/food — In the US growers and manufacturers are pumping out two to three times the number of calories that the population requires for healthy sustenance. The choices are 1) produce less 2) eat more, and 3) export. One is considered a non-started. Two figures into why obesity continues to rise. Three requires selling the surplus at a price to cover the costs and profits. Not a bad option wherever local commodity prices are high due to non-industrialized farming. However, if shortages don’t exist in those places, the local farmers have to be whipped out (as has been done in Mexico). And that leads to an increase in surplus labor and surplus labor leads to increased migration. A vicious cycle.
My thirty-five year old Kitchen-Aid mixer. It’s built like a tank and with normal use estimate that it has another seventy years of life left. A great tool for cooks, but a costly investment for those that didn’t do much cooking. Question: how to sell more in the absence of a repeat customer base? First stage was to maximize the status symbol of the machine. That scooped up the pool of customers that could afford and chose not to purchase it. But that also created a new pool of potential customers that wanted it but couldn’t afford it. Second stage, build an inferior product abroad and make it look like the original. Shorten the life of the product by 50% or more so that at a minimum, each generation had to buy their own instead of having it passed down.
People today make and eat fewer meals at home and yet Kitchen Aids are far more prevalent on counters. It’s like one of the “must have” items on bridal registries (weddings — a whole other industry that has mushroomed into “must haves” and adding to financial pressures and woes of young people). IOW — our consumption has passed the “need” criteria. Remember when bread machines were hot (and expensive)? My response is that the Kitchen Aid has a dough hook and I have a bread board. Most of those bread machines have since ended up at the back of a cupboard for various reasons including that they made terrible bread. So, manufacturers have to keep coming up with the newest best ever thing.
“Somewhat different with the auto industry as domestic and foreign manufacturers have been locating in TN and SC. ” Virulently anti-union red states. That’s the reason, not the availability of labor. Plenty of labor available in Michigan, or there was until they had to migrate away due to lack of work. Not to mention Illinois. We used to have a Ford plant that built Mustangs on the South Side of Chicago. And a Tucker plant that later became a Buick plant in Melrose Park (Western suburb). That one later became an International Harvester Construction Equipment Division plant which is why I know of it. Last I heard, the engine portion of the plant was still going but the main plant was still empty. Lots of postal workers that I worked with worked there. I was surprised but maybe it’s true that Uncle Sam is the employer of last resort. Of course, neoliberals, including the upper echelons of the service, want to contract out everything but the last mile (the dirty man-killing unprofitable part).
Agree with the rest of your post.
It’s not a labor shortage for automakers to move to TN. It’s “cheap” and voiceless labor that they’re after.
Why I said that how the factory relocations in the auto industry to low cost/open shop states developed differently than other industries is that the progression from high to low wage US locations was interrupted by Japan and then Korea. Once Japan got the quality, style, and performance down, Detroit had a harder time competing. However, energy supplies and transportation costs ate up much of the cost differential and so, Toyota (NUMMI, Honda, etc. exported their assembly lines that supplied the US market to US locations. Meanwhile more and more of the component parts were off-shored. Initially to Japan but also migrated to other countries by all the automakers.
I suppose the same is also true for other goods — final assembly in the US and all the parts imported. So, there is some back and forth going on in manufacturing.
Now that I’m retired, I’d like to make home made Italian Sausage like my father did. But I can’t find sausage casings anywhere. My wife says to just make breakfast patties and forget the casings. Further, she says to forget selecting and grinding the meat and just buy pre-ground chicken and turkey and spice it. Doesn’t seem the same. However, last year I had some very tasty Chicken-Apple-Gouda sausage at Denny’s on the road. Making that in patties with home-grown apples sounds very appealing. Maybe in Fall when the Golden Delicious are ripe. If any survive the heat this summer, that is. They’ve been dropping like rain. If global warming gets any worse I’ll be growing oranges in Illinois. Not that much of an exaggeration. I have this little citrus rootstock that my daughter sent me. It’s been surviving the Winters covered with a rose cone. (Do you know what a rose cone is in California? I was talking once with a gardener in Balboa Park, San Diego, and he said the roses never really went dormant or dropped their leaves, just paused flowering. The rose bushes there were like Lilacs here!)
Sausage casings.
Disagree with your wife, grind your own meat for sausage. That way you’ll only put into the mix exactly what you want.
Was never an aspiration for me and hence, never bought the Kitchen Aid meat grinder attachment.
Just something I remember from childhood. I used to live on Dad’s sausage and peppers. Dad worked the swing shift. Mom worked the night shift.
Wouldn’t want to live on it, but do like an Italian sausage with onions and peppers with potatoes on the side every once in a while.
I guess it depends on what you ate as a child. I’ve heard several southern guys wax nostalgic about the Army’s chipped beef on toast! I shudder to think what they were used to that they could enjoy that.
Yes and no. Bell peppers were something I wouldn’t touch as a kid and learned to appreciate much later. Organ meats, forget it then and forever.
What a shame that the only candidate promising anything for blue collar jobs (besides Bernie Sanders’ phony campaign) is such a political idiot. He would have trouble getting elected as a small town Mayor. Or was he just the Clinton’s stalking horse? Wheels within wheels. Easy to believe that Bill Clinton got his good bud to run. Probably told him what issues would get him the nomination. Then his good bud throws the election.
Sanders harder to figure out. Why he would so enthusiastically work for the person who stands for everything he opposed his whole political career. I thought it overly dramatic but perhaps the Clinton’s did threaten his family. Ross Perot claimed the CIA threatened his, but maybe it wasn’t the CIA.
No one will win this election except Goldman-Sachs and the multinational corporations.
Trump has a history of inciting violence over the course of his campaign. He deserves no pass for his most recent remarks. The last candidate that I can think of who advocated “Second Amendment remedies” was rightfully pilloried and lost her Senatorial bid. At bare minimum, anyone associated with Trump’s party should condemn his comments, demand an apology, and refuse any association with him. That’s a tall order, and I don’t expect much of that to happen.
Politicians and elected officials condemn so many words and deeds so frequently that condemnation has lost any meaning.
In their fealty to the NRA, Republicans have been pulling this crap for a long time. Most, except for those like Palin and Angle, are simply more sophisticated in their use of language. But their message gets through just as well as all their racists dog whistles.
That said, “Annie Oakley” wasn’t subtle in using her racist dog whistles and a hope that something would intervene to give her the nomination in ’08. So, since
Democrats didn’t see fit to clean their own house, it’s a bit disingenuous to point a giant finger at the GOP.
Not a shining moment with regard to the RFK remark, but hardly equivalent to what Trump was suggesting today. On that front, seems a bit like false equivalence. Not buying it. Annie Oakley she is not. Dog whistles are another matter, and as an outsider that year (and that is a fair characterization of myself), there were moments where the Clintons’ behavior was cringe worthy. The dead-enders from that primary who became the notoriously ineffective PUMAs were repeating those dog whistles long after the primary ended, and I suspect a few of them became quite enamored with Palin. That was an ugly primary, and a cautionary tale on how not to behave as a candidate when a nomination is slipping away. That said, is Hillary Clinton currently engaging in the use of racist dog whistles within the context of this year’s electoral cycle? Is that part of her campaign in any way shape or form? Is there credible evidence that this is currently happening? If not, there is not much equivalent between the behavior of her campaign and that of Trump’s.
Since we don’t have a window into the minds of HRC and Trump, we can only evaluate the words spoken. On that criteria, what the two said is roughly equivalent. I’ve already stipulated that it was the audience for the two statements that differed. Thus, a higher percentage of Trump supporters would be inclined to act on the message. But it only takes one (or so we’re led to believe in this country) and HRC’s comment was guaranteed to be repeated for a wider audience. Both should have been completely denounced by a majority in both parties and the vast majority of voters that affiliate with either.
I used “Annie Oakley” because that was the description Obama used in ’08 when HRC was courting the pro-gun, white vote in ’08. Seems like the sort of shorthand that readers here would be familiar with and needed no further exposition.
Why would you give a politician a break because she/he says different things as she/he courts different demographic factions in different election cycles? If anything, shouldn’t that make such a politician suspect and untrustworthy? Oh, wait, that’s exactly why HRC has such a high negative on the question of trustworthiness. Bernie gained trust because he doesn’t do that.
So, who is the real Hillary Clinton? The one with a southern accent when she’s in N. Carolina or the one without such an accent when she’s in NY? etc.
So, what’s the solution then? We surely agree someone will be sworn in next January to occupy the White House for the next four years. What’s the plan? Mass movement demanding a new set of primaries? Hope that Jill Stein’s party becomes more than a series of post office boxes and that Stein figures out how to be something other than a perennial losing candidate? Drink the Libertarian bongwater? Give up and curl into fetal position until the apocalypse occurs? Right now all I am getting from these various missives is that HRC is presumably as bad as Trump. That’s perhaps how you see it. So be it. Is there a solution that is suitable to you given your premises? What is that solution?
Solution? As if there’s some answer that will solve a complex conundrum that’s also in flux? No, I don’t have any answers at this point other than to keep our eyes on the juggling balls. One of which landed today and led to the title of this diary and perhaps will keeps rolling and gathering steam.
Almost a year ago many Sanders supported detected signs that the DNC had its whole weight on the scale and we were called CTs. Then only a few weeks ago a few DNC emails that confirmed dirty dealing were leaked. However, its not enough to determine the full scope of what went on — only enough to oust the Chair and top level employees and they’re not going to talk. Bits and pieces. Reminds me of how the details of the Watergate break-in slowly became known as the story continued to develop. Painfully slowly for those who instantly perceived from the first reports of the break-in that it went right to the WH. Not because we were prescient but because:
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“Trump has a history of inciting violence over the course of his campaign. ” I keep hearing that but no one can point me to an example. Yes, they point me to him saying nasty things about various people, but never a call to violence. When people hear rail against old white men are they inciting violence or just engaging in hate speech?
It’s a meme — and memes that sell don’t require actual evidence. He says lots of crazy and mean stuff, but even in his “2nd Amendment” comment he dropped of any words that could have been heard as incitement to violence. OTOH, it’s possible that his audiences don’t require such words as they also appear unhinged. Reminds me of the “dittoheads.” Crude and mean talk gets their juices flowing, but they only mimic Rush by speaking angrily and using symbols of violence. Still, something that should be avoided. OTOH, perpetrating violence in deeds more than words is a daily feature of the USG and law enforcement. So, it’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
I actually think the GOP needs to die. Trump should stay; he is a karmic punishment, sent to euthaniza a soulless party
To be fair, the Democratic party should have died in 1864. And it wasn’t much better when it was established as a breakaway from the Democratic-Republican party by Andrew Jackson. What most deeply infects the GOP today are the same forces that infected the Democratic party until rather recently. It took over a hundred and fifty years for both parties to agree on certain components of federalism vs. state rights and resolution of that divide is still far from complete.
A problem with your desire is the constitutional constraint on our electoral system. Functionally, it simply doesn’t allow for more than two major parties. Operationally, we’ve had periods of one party rule at the national level, but only once did such a period result in much good and not so much bad. OTOH, periods of swinging back and forth between the two parties also doesn’t result in much good and produces much bad. It really depends on the level of enlightenment of the leaders and we’re currently in a long period where that has been very low.
Yeah, whatever emerges from this debacle will be another two party system, all we can hope for is a realignment. However the current GOP coalitio is simply a union of the worst elements in the body politic, which makes them even worse by a kind of positive feedback loop. For example, dixiecrats were moderated when they belonged to the democrtic party. A realignment will surely beaer more fruitful combinations
If we look at the electoral landscape from the perspective of ruling and not individual tolerance or support for bigotry, the worst elements are in both parties. Two war and income/wealth inequality parties. Both indifferent to full on support for the suffering of peoples in various parts of the world. Both make selective use of religion to push voters in their direction but the mega-agendas only differ in the margins.
How does this country stop/reduce LEO violence that disproportionately impacts POC, mostly men and boys while militarizing local police and giving a pass to US friends or the USG that engage in such violence abroad? Ugly speech is ugly, but ugly deeds are far more powerful.
We emerge with a conservative party and a far-right party.
But at least the reports on one thing you said this week were wrong. Gawker — He Really Didn’t Say “Titties” Good bit of journalism in the article.
Conclusion:
…
Mike Morrell — chilling and off-his-rocker in that traditional CIA way. It’s people in positions of power like this jerk that have been creating mayhem around the world since the end of WWII.
One note: the US gave Iraq weapons that led to the estimated deaths of a million Iranians. And Morrell wants revenge for some number of US soldiers (maximum possible 4,497) because he believes that Iran supplied the weapons that killed those soldiers.
Job interview? LOL?
WikiLeaks tweet:
OOPs.
Not some kind of secret Beckel feels that way. He said it publicly in 2010 on Fox:
“This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I’m not for the death penalty, so […] there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.”
Worse — she knowingly hired a guy that advocates for assassinations.
Projection much? Trump: “Ordinary citizens are rigorously investigated for suspicion of colluding with foreign governments…”
Judicial Watch just got some e-mails released… http://www.wsj.com/articles/newly-released-emails-highlight-clinton-foundations-ties-to-state-depart
ment-1470785910
Billmon:
Agree, but am leaning towards “pure obsession/compulsion.” Yet remain open to alternate possibilities that may include “rational thinking” but only if it’s not Trump driving the thinking part of his campaign.
Gawker — Donald Trump Now Just Holds Up Signs He Printed From the Internet
Does demonstrate that he knows how to squeeze a buck. Doesn’t employ the army of wordsmiths, graphic designers, and printers for campaign signs destined for a landfill site in about a nano-second. But doesn’t seem to appreciate that it’s the disposable economy that keeps the wheels turning.
Politico — Trump team, RNC to meet at pivotal moment
Some articles leave no room for commentary. Now they’re stuck with the Great White Hype because they couldn’t field even a mediocre, sort of white, hopeless candidate. Without the Hype, they still can’t.
Billmon did better than me (as he usually does)
“Political equivalent …” is not spot on. Because Trump is like the “Man Who Came To Dinner.”