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US Presidential Elections of 2016: Primaries

Two Coke/Pepsi parties  fool voters again

News US Presidential Elections of 2016 Recommended Links Hillary "Warmonger" Clinton Hillary Clinton email scandal Clinton Foundation - Wikipedia Hillary Clinton links to financial industry
Hillary role in cover up of Bill Clinton sexapades Channeling donations to Clinton foundation during her tenure as the Secretary of State Hillary as a neocon warmonger Pathological lying Hillary Clinton defense of the middle aged rapist of a 12 years old girl Is Hillary Clinton a toxic manager?  
Deception as an art form Neoconservatism Neocon foreign policy is a disaster for the USA "Fuck the EU": State Department neocons show EU its real place Media-Military-Industrial Complex Resurgence of neo-fascism as reaction on crisis of neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization Neoliberalism as a New Form of Corporatism
Neocons Credibility Scam American Exceptionalism  The Deep State Corruption of Regulators New American Militarism Anatol Leiven on American Messianism Nation under attack meme
Neocolonialism as Financial Imperialism Color revolutions Inside "democracy promotion" hypocrisy fair Democracy as a universal opener for access to natural resources Hypocrisy and Pseudo-democracy Diplomacy by deception National Security State / Surveillance State
    Leo Strauss and the Neocons Bill Clinton The Iron Law of Oligarchy Elite [Dominance] Theory And the Revolt of the Elite The attempt to secure global hegemony
Machiavellism Neo-fascism Torture as an instrument of social control National Socialism and Military Keysianism Predator state Russian Jokes about Neoliberal Fifth Column and Color Revolutions Etc

Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016 - Wikipedia

The 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries and caucuses were a series of electoral contests taking place within all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories, occurring between February 1 and June 14, 2016. Sanctioned by the Democratic Party, these elections were designed to select the 4,051 delegates to send to the Democratic National Convention, which will select the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. An extra 718 unpledged delegates (714 votes), or "superdelegates", are appointed by the party independently of the primaries' electoral process. The convention will also approve the party's platform and vice-presidential nominee. The Democratic nominee will challenge other presidential candidates in national elections to succeed President Barack Obama at noon on January 20, 2017, following his two terms in office.

A total of six major candidates entered the race starting April 12, 2015, when former Secretary of State and New York Senator Hillary Clinton formally announced her second bid for the presidency. She was followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former Governor of Maryland Martin O'Malley, former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee, former Virginia Senator Jim Webb and Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. There was some speculation that incumbent Vice President Joe Biden would also enter the race, but he chose not to run. A draft movement was started to encourage Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to seek the presidency, but Warren declined to run. Prior to the Iowa caucuses on February 1, 2016, Webb and Chafee both withdrew after consistently polling below 2%.[2] Lessig withdrew after the rules of a debate were changed such that he would no longer qualify to participate.[3]

 


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[Mar 29, 2019] Trump Slams US Wars in the Middle East

During 2016 election campaign: "On foreign policy Hillary is trigger happy" says Trump and he is right 100%... And he continued Hillary policies.
And the he behaves as 100% pure militarist.
Notable quotes:
"... I've always thought that Hillary's support for the broader mission in Libya put the president on the 51 side of the line for a more aggressive approach ..."
"... Had the secretaries of state and defense both opposed the war, he and others said, the president's decision might have been politically impossible. ..."
"... Except for that last minute of Trump_vs_deep_states, I almost thought that was a Bernie speech. An interesting general election plan is to take Bernie's ideas with a healthy dash of Trump spice in an attempt to coalesce the angry populist vote. ..."
"... Sanders is the last hope to avoid total disaster. Maybe he can help mitigate HRC's hawk stance in the ME. I think Israel is a lost cause though as the problem child with nukes. ..."
"... A political strategy based on xenophobia and divisiveness supports those who benefit from xenophobia and divisiveness – those who exploit labor (including Trump who outsources jobs, hires H2-B workers, and exploits workers domestically and overseas), and those who benefit from the military-industrial-security-serveillance complex; and harms the rest of us. ..."
"... Obama and the Democrats did everything they could to undermine and stamp out progressive organization. ..."
"... Except it's recent US actions which have undermined the Middle East in general. From Saddam to Libya to ISIS etc etc. ..."
"... if you pay them enough. ..."
"... "We have been killing, maiming and displacing millions of Muslims and destroying their countries for the last 15 years with less outcry than transgender bathrooms have generated." ..."
"... Good point. I keep wondering why Hillary the Hawk's actual illegal war and murdering of Muslims is worse than Trump's ban. ..."
"... Imagine Trump running to the left of Hillary on defense / interventionism, trade, and universal healthcare. That would sure make things interesting. He could win. ..."
"... James Carville, astute handicapper that he is, has already sniffed out that Hillary now needs Bernie more than Bernie needs Hillary. ..."
"... even in comparison with Hillary Clinton ..."
"... "core voters come from communities where a lot of people have fought in the post-9/11 Middle Eastern conflicts. Our armed forces are stretched to the breaking point. Trump has strong support among veterans and active duty soldiers" ..."
"... "As a small business owner, not only are you trying to provide benefits to your employees, you're trying to provide benefits to yourself. I have seen our health insurance for my own family, go up $500 dollars a month in the last two years. We went from four hundred something, to nine hundred something. We're just fighting to keep benefits for ourselves. The thought of being able to provide benefits to your employees is almost secondary, yet to keep your employees happy, that's a question that comes across my desk all the time. I have to keep my employees as independent contractors for the most part really to avoid that situation, and so I have turnover" ..."
"... "We do not qualify for a subsidy on the current health insurance plan. My question to you is not only are you looking out for people that can't afford healthcare, but I'm someone that can afford it, but it's taking a big chunk of the money I bring home." ..."
"... "What you're saying is one of the real worries that we're facing with the cost of health insurance because the costs are going up in a lot of markets, not all, but many markets and what you're describing is one of the real challenges." ..."
"... "There's a lot of things I'm looking at to try to figure out how to deal with exactly the problem you're talking about. There are some good ideas out there but we have to subject them to the real world test, will this really help a small business owner or a family be able to afford it. What could have possibly raised your costs four hundred dollars, and that's what I don't understand." ..."
"... You echo my feelings. My loathing of Clinton knows no bounds, and I cannot vote for her, no matter what. But I simply don't trust Trump. He's a gold-digger extrodinaire, and quite the accomplished showman. He knows how to play to the crowd, and he's clearly quite quick to shape shift. The wrecked tatters of what's called the USA "media" gives Trump a YOOOGE pass on simply everything and anything the man says or does. ..."
"... if Donald wins, he could just end up the loneliest man in DC, be ignored, get nothing done ..."
"... Trump doesn't need to see the Zapruder film. He was alive then and knows the story, just like everyone else of a certain age. Nay, verily, he just means to cash in on it. ..."
"... Being Left of Hillary is a really really really low bar. He probably is, but thats probably because Hillary is right wing. You know, like almost all American politicians from both parties. Trumps not left of Bernie (at least not yet or not right now: I expect hes going to swing left in the general to scoop up Bernie voters), and Bernies just an Eisenhower Republican, which is admittedly to the left of basically all the other politicians today. ..."
May 18, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

There are good reasons to harbor serious reservations about The Donald, given that he changes his position as frequently as most people change their clothes. But so far, he has been consistent in making an argument that is sorely underrepresented in the media and in policy circles: that our war-making in the Middle East has been a costly disaster with no upside to the US. Trump even cites, without naming him, Joe Stiglitz's estimate that our wars have cost at least $4 trillion.

As Lambert put it, "I hate it when Trump is right."

If you think Trump is overstating his case on Hillary's trigger-happiness, read this New York Times story, How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk .

And on Clinton's role in Libya , which Obama has since called the worst decision of his presidency:

Mrs. Clinton's account of a unified European-Arab front powerfully influenced Mr. Obama. "Because the president would never have done this thing on our own," said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser.

Mr. Gates, among others, thought Mrs. Clinton's backing decisive. Mr. Obama later told him privately in the Oval Office, he said, that the Libya decision was "51-49."

"I've always thought that Hillary's support for the broader mission in Libya put the president on the 51 side of the line for a more aggressive approach," Mr. Gates said. Had the secretaries of state and defense both opposed the war, he and others said, the president's decision might have been politically impossible.

And yes, that's this Ben Rhodes .

kj1313 , May 13, 2016 at 7:15 am

Best assessment yet. This is a great speech bite from Donald but I have no idea if he means it. (Though I don't agree with it just look at his Muslim Ban stance) Half the time he makes coherent reasonable arguments, the other half the time I think he definitely is a Clinton Mole. I don't know which Trump I'm getting hour to hour much less day to day.

MtnLife , May 13, 2016 at 8:02 am

Except for that last minute of Trump_vs_deep_states, I almost thought that was a Bernie speech. An interesting general election plan is to take Bernie's ideas with a healthy dash of Trump spice in an attempt to coalesce the angry populist vote. It'll be interesting to watch Hillary circle the wagons of the content, elite center in an attempt to hold off the marginalized hordes of angry "savage plebs", especially if the convention seems stolen. Still hoping for some miracle to pull Sanders through.

Jus' Sayin' , May 13, 2016 at 1:32 pm

Miracle indeed, Sanders is the last hope to avoid total disaster. Maybe he can help mitigate HRC's hawk stance in the ME. I think Israel is a lost cause though as the problem child with nukes.

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 8:22 am

In all seriousness, why is his Muslim ban idea bad? Or for that matter why would it, in principle, be a bad idea to ban nearly all foreigners from entering the US? After all, it's not as if the US has some actual need for foreigners to enter considering the large and growing desperately poor domestic population. Especially considering that heretofore (let's be real here) both legal and illegal immigration has been mainly exploited to destroy domestic labor conditions in the US.

This is a fact a lot of ostensibly good-hearted progressive and wealthy liberals conveniently ignore (they'd probably cry themselves to sleep if they could no longer help to improve the lot of that below minimum wage illegal immigrant maid they hired). Well, the working poor aren't ignoring it, and the lid is going to blow soon if this keeps up. Donald Trump and the popularity of his Muslim ban is only an early sign of the brewing discontent.

marym , May 13, 2016 at 9:24 am

He didn't propose banning Muslims as a way to address our jobs and economic problems (which it isn't), he proposed it as a way to address domestic terror (which it isn't). It's a political tactic to stir up and implicitly sanction hate, prejudice, divisiveness, and violence.

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 10:09 am

Not arguing your point, however how are Trump supporters reading this? These people are already against any immigrant coming into the US for economic reasons, and in all honesty they are looking for any excuse whatsoever to view immigrants in a bad light.

Just to add to that a bit, it's also why immigrant crime is always being hyped up and exaggerated by Trump supporters. The real issue deep down is that immigrants are threatening them economically, and they'll use any justification whatsoever to get rid of them.

Is it right? I don't really know how to objectively answer that. But for the people doing it, this could work out in economic terms for them. So at least from their perspective it's a good idea.

fresno dan , May 13, 2016 at 11:05 am

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workers

AS WELL AS
https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/

I think people are just so angry with how the squillionaries use "politically correct" proper thinking about immigration to hide their illegal suppression of wages that even outrageous and outlandish statements by The Donald will not dissuade his supporters – – after all, the supporters could ask why is this issue of wage suppression, "by any means necessary", that affects FAR, FAR more people who ARE US citizens so scrupulously IGNORED by the media (media owned by rich??? – of course). As disturbing as what The Donald says, what is NOT SAID by the ENTIRE (except Sanders) US political establishment, is far more disturbing, as I think it shows an utterly captured political caste. As well as the rank hypocrisy that if any of these immigrants don't have health care after they arrive, the squillionaires couldn't care less if they died in the streets – no matter how rich they are, they want to make more people poorer. They are such an evil enemy that people will put up with The Donald.

It is a fact that these tech billionaires engaged in an illegal activity. It is a fact the US government simply ignored enforcing laws and refuses to punish them.

Trump in my view will not be able to do even a quarter of some of this crap like banning Muslims – laws do have to be passed. But the fact remains that Trump will probably be the only presidential nominee (not presidential candidate, i.e., Sanders), and the last one in 40 years, to even merely talk about these issues.
The fact that Trump succeeds just shows how famished people are to some challenge to the war mongering, coddling of the rich that is passed off as something that the majority supports.

marym , May 13, 2016 at 11:46 am

A political strategy based on xenophobia and divisiveness supports those who benefit from xenophobia and divisiveness – those who exploit labor (including Trump who outsources jobs, hires H2-B workers, and exploits workers domestically and overseas), and those who benefit from the military-industrial-security-serveillance complex; and harms the rest of us.

It seems no more likely that Trump as president will actually promote policies that will "work out in economic terms" for ordinary people as it was to think Obama would put on this "comfortable shoes" and join a picket line (though I bought that one at the time).

NotTimothyGeithner , May 13, 2016 at 12:21 pm

Hillary basically won relatively well to do minorities who voted for her in 2008 just in smaller numbers. Poorer minorities stayed home in Southern states where Internet access is less available and progressive organizations are just churches. On the surface, Sanders sounds very much like the media perception of President Hope and Change who isn't as popular as much as no one wants to admit the first non white President was terrible or they actively applauded terrible policy.

Free college probably didn't appeal to people with junk degrees from for profit diploma mills. The damage is done. People need jobs not school at this point or incomes. A green jobs guarantee act would have been a better push front and center, but again, this is with hindsight. Many minority voters simply didn't vote, and Hillary pushed that "you don't know Bernie" line to scare voters that Sanders was another Obama.

Obama and the Democrats did everything they could to undermine and stamp out progressive organization.

jrs , May 13, 2016 at 2:22 pm

Agree that jobs should be the focus (or income and meeting basic needs). Education as the focus appeals to the under 25 years old college bound crowd, but not so much to anyone older having to survive out there in the work world everyday.

B , May 13, 2016 at 11:59 am

I am a Trump supporter and I am not against immigrants or immigration. I am opposed to doing nothing in the face of a broken immigration system. I do not think it is wise for any country to have millions and millions of undocumented workers in its midst. I believe we should legalize those that are here. Those that have committed crimes not related to immigrating or over staying visas should absolutely be deported and lose the privilege of living in the US. I live in Spain, but am an American. If I broke minor laws, such as drunk driving, assault or drug possession I would be deported too, seems fair to me. I believe we have to revamp border security, though I don´t think a wall spanning the entire border would be wise or effective I personally think Trump is speaking hyperbolically and symbolically about the wall. Nonetheless, our elites sure do love living behind big walls and gated communities, with armed security, maybe we should ask them why, walls are just racist anyways, no?

Immigrant crime is not some myth, its real and sometimes it is a very tragic consequence of a broken immigration system. The fact that the cartels also exploit our broken border and immigration system is not a myth either, it is reality.

And as for a temporary ban on Muslims coming from Syria, Libya and other locations that have been devastated by the covert and overt wars of the US I support it totally, for no other reason than public safety, which is the first reason we institute government. Remember this happened just after Paris, public safety is a very legitimate concern. Also, why are Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States taking in a single refugee? The Saudis have the money and the capacity to to do this. They have tents used only during the hajj that house thousands upon thousands. Where is that wonderful, charitable side of Islam?

I wish the world were different. I don´t harbor prejudice against anyone. Those that want to come and live, grow and contribute to American civilization, Come, please!! But our world is very dangerous, and we have created enemies that seek to do harm to our society and civilization in anyway that they can. We have to protect ourselves and our nation. I wish beyond wishing, that it was someone besides the Donald saying these things, but, it is what it is. I am not gonna shoot the messanger cuase I dont like his personality, or because I would not be friends with someone like him.

kj1313 , May 13, 2016 at 3:17 pm

Except it's recent US actions which have undermined the Middle East in general. From Saddam to Libya to ISIS etc etc.

jrs , May 13, 2016 at 2:17 pm

Illegal immigration could likely be enforced in some industries (on the lower paid scale in garment making sweatshops and so on). And this could probably best be done by prosecuting the employers doing the hiring. But I'm not at all convinced the country could run without immigrants entirely. Who would pick the crops? Ok maybe lots of people at a $15 an hour minimum wage. But at current compensation? Though I don't know if this really needs to be done via illegal immigration, it could be done by much more formalized guest worker programs I suppose.

Tony S , May 13, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Or, we could just let the market work. You WILL get American workers to perform just about any job if you pay them enough. Obviously, the reasonable price point for labor is currently well below what a US citizen will accept. But if I offered a million dollars to get my lawn mowed, I would have a line out the door of American workers begging to have the job.

Guest workers are just another way to depress US citizens' wages. And immigration reform is best tackled at the employer level, like you said - anybody who doesn't make this part of his or her "reform" plan is not to be taken seriously. (I regularly mention this to conservatives, and they always look for a way to justify going after the powerless immigrants anyway.)

John Wright , May 13, 2016 at 6:04 pm

High wages can encourage more automation or substitution of crops that require less manual labor or even cause people to exit farming as uneconomic.. But the number of workers employed in farming is relatively small.

Per this USDA document http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf in 2000, 1.9 percent of the workforce worked in agriculture.

The World Bank has the USA workforce at 161 million in 2014 and if about 2% of this workforce is employed in farming, this is about 3.2 million people throughout the USA. And the 3.2 million count is probably not all illegal immigrant workers. This report suggests government price supports have encouraged more people to work in agriculture, implying that the government is indirectly creating low wage jobs by price supports.

From the above pdf. "For example, the institutionalization of what began as emergency income support in the 1930s has likely slowed the movement of labor out of the farm sector."

I am of the opinion that the law of one price will apply if there is relatively free movement of workers, legally or illegally, across borders.

Note, Trump never suggests e-verify and employer enforcement, which would be a low cost way of enforcing citizen employment and would avoid a costly "great wall".

Trump and HRC's investments are probably more profitable due to a lower labor cost influenced by low wage workers.

Katniss Everdeen , May 13, 2016 at 11:45 am

And people don't OPPOSE his restrictions on Muslim immigration because they feel so charitable towards and accepting of Muslims.

We have been killing, maiming and displacing millions of Muslims and destroying their countries for the last 15 years with less outcry than transgender bathrooms have generated. And we've allowed our own civil liberties to be radically infringed. All because " THEY hate us for our 'freedoms.' " Who the hell do you think THEY are?

But it's Trump who is hateful, prejudiced, divisive and bigoted? As if "welcoming" some immigrants from countries that we callously destroyed perfectly absolves those who were busy waiting in line for the newest i-gadget and couldn't be bothered to demand an end to the slaughter.

Get a clue. Trump's not talking about murdering anybody. And no amount of puffed up "outrage" and name-calling is going to get the stain out. Not to mention it's the most sane and humane way to protect the "homeland" from the "terrorism" that we, ourselves, created.

lindaj , May 13, 2016 at 3:09 pm

"We have been killing, maiming and displacing millions of Muslims and destroying their countries for the last 15 years with less outcry than transgender bathrooms have generated."

Good point. I keep wondering why Hillary the Hawk's actual illegal war and murdering of Muslims is worse than Trump's ban.

Pespi , May 13, 2016 at 9:26 am

"I'm against all immigration, as it's merely a lever to lower wages." "I'm against the immigration of muslims, because they're bad terrorists." There is a difference in these two statements.

Vatch , May 13, 2016 at 9:55 am

You are correct that there is too much immigration to the U.S., and it causes economic and environmental problems. However, Trump's Muslim ban would cover more than immigration. He would also ban temporary visits by Muslims (except for the mayor of London, I suppose).

I object very strongly to Muslim extremism, and a lot of Muslims have extremist views. But not all of them do. And many Christians, Hindus, and whatever also have extremist views which should be opposed. Trump's not proposing a bad on travel by extremist Christians; he's singling out Muslims because they scare millions of Americans. It's demagoguery.

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 10:39 am

You are not quite right there. Trump supporters do indeed want to ban Christian immigrants as well (the vast, overwhelming majority of immigrants from Mexico, central, and South America are Christians of some sort) although in the case of Christians the excuse is "violent crime" since obviously Trump supporters can not disparage Christians specifically for their Christianity. Seriously, watch any Trump speech and you'll see that he spends more time talking about why all American (Christian) immigrants need to be banned (crime) than why Muslim immigrants need to be banned (terror). Economic insecurity is at the root of all of it.

Vatch , May 13, 2016 at 3:56 pm

Has Trump demanded that Christians from Europe or Canada be prevented from entering the U.S.? I'm pretty sure he hasn't. If he's really motivated by economic reasons, there's no need to specify a particular religion, such as Islam, or a particular nationality, such as Mexicans.

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 5:09 pm

People from Europe and Canada already have high salaries. Or they are perceived to have high salaries in their home countries. IE they are not percieved as an economic threat. I guarantee you, show me a poor, third world country that is sending a lot of people to US right now and and I'll show you an ethnic groups that faces some prejudice. Come on, it's not well paid people with stable jobs and incomes who are going around being prejudiced against immigrants. It's the poor and the desperate who are doing it.

There is a reason for that. Ignoring that reason and pretending that it's some bizarre and unfathomable psychological illness just coincidentally affecting people who are also offing themselves from despair left and right isn't going to make it go away. Rather, you are inviting something terrible to happen. The Germans didn't decide to follow Hitler because times were good, and a friendly PR campaign encouraging openness and acceptance among the poor misguided racists and immigrant haters out there will do exactly nothing to help matters.

pictboy3 , May 13, 2016 at 10:56 am

I don't think anyone (most anyone anyway) would disagree that there are plenty of Muslims who are not extremists. The problem for us is, how do you tell the difference? The San Bernadino shooter was a health inspector, had a wife, kids, a middle class job, ties to the community and still decided to shoot up his co-workers with his wife in tow. Plenty of the European ISIS recruits come from middle class families that are seemingly well-adjusted. If these people (keep in mind Farook was a US citizen) can become terrorists, how can we possibly screen new entrants with any sort of efficacy?

I'd say it's probably worth the miniscule risk of possible immigrants turning out to be terrorists if there was some other benefit to having them come in, but if we agree there's too much immigration to the US already and it is hurting actual US citizens, what exactly is the upside to keep allowing Muslims in?

By the way, I've been lurking on this site for a few weeks now, first time commenter. It's nice to find some quality discussion on the internet. Nice to meet everyone.

Jim , May 13, 2016 at 11:29 am

Where are these "extremist Christians" burning and burying people alive, beheading hostages, blasting away at crowds in night clubs? "Christian extremism" is a figment of your imagination. The attempt to equate Moslem violence with conservative Christians is utterly absurd. Do you seriously believe that soime Amish dude is going to run amuck in a New York night club and slaughter hundreds of people?

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 2:38 pm

The Bush administration?

cm , May 13, 2016 at 2:45 pm

A cheap shot. Please explain how the Obama administration differs from the Bush administration.

Skippy , May 13, 2016 at 6:07 pm

Obama does not get is morning SITREP delivered with biblical headers

"The religious theme for briefings prepared for the president and his war cabinet was the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a committed Christian and director for intelligence serving Mr Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the days before the six-week invasion, Major General Shaffer's staff had created humorous covers for the briefings to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle.

But as the body count rose, he decided to introduce biblical quotes.

However, many of his Pentagon colleagues were reportedly opposed to the idea, with at least one Muslim analyst said to be greatly offended.

A defence official warned that if the briefing covers were leaked, the damage to America's standing in the Arab world 'would be as bad as Abu Ghraib' – the Baghdad prison where U.S. troops abused Iraqis.

But Major General Shaffer, 61, who retired in August 2003, six months after the invasion, claimed he had the backing of the president and defence secretary. When officials complained, he told them the practice would continue because it was 'appreciated by my seniors' – Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Bush.

The briefing covers were revealed for the first time by GQ after they were leaked to the U.S. magazine by a source at the Pentagon."

Disheveled Marsupial . whilst I understand the acts committed transcend time and political party's . never the less in – The Name Of – can not be white washed away

cassandra , May 13, 2016 at 5:14 pm

cm has a point; you should have included Obama/Clinton.

Yves Smith , May 13, 2016 at 2:48 pm

Did you manage to miss Trump's point in the video that the US has killed millions in the Middle East, and that if US presidents had gone to the beach for the last 15 years. everyone would have been better off? And that we murder people by drone in addition to all our undeclared wars? You are seriously pretending Christians not only have blood on their hands, but started these wars and have killed people in vastly bigger numbers than we have? I'm not defending terrorists, but your position is a remarkable airbrushing.

Ulysses , May 13, 2016 at 3:31 pm

The worst domestic terrorist the U.S. ever produced, Timothy McVeigh, wasn't Amish, yet neither was he Muslim. Denying people the opportunity to immigrate here– based solely on religion– contradicts the principles of tolerance on which this country was founded.

JTMcPhee , May 13, 2016 at 3:42 pm

Yah, this is a Great Country, isn't it, where everyone has the right to own assault weapons, and the opportunity to assemble and detonate giant bombs hidden in rental trucks, and you can do pretty much whatever you can get away with, depending on one's degree of immunity and impunity and invisibility

But the Panopticon will Save us

Vatch , May 13, 2016 at 4:01 pm

Eric Rudolph and Robert Lewis Dear, Jr., are more examples of Christian terrorists. Outside the country, there's Anders Breivik (well, he's only partially Christian, but he's definitely not Muslim).

TG , May 13, 2016 at 12:20 pm

Kudos. Well said.

lyman alpha blob , May 13, 2016 at 2:16 pm

I get your point from a labor standpoint but who gets to decide to shut the door and say 'no more room at the inn'? Unless it's First Peoples I think it would be pretty hypocritical coming from the descendants of all the other immigrants who crossed over themselves at some point.

PS: I haven't heard this talked about much but does anyone really believe Trump is serious with all this immigrant-bashing rhetoric? If he is anywhere near as rich as he claims to be, he got there at least in part, and likely in large part by exploiting cheap labor. While I've never stayed in a Trump property to see for myself I'm guessing that all the hotel employees aren't direct descendants of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Vatch , May 13, 2016 at 2:23 pm

Unless it's First Peoples I think it would be pretty hypocritical coming from the descendants of all the other immigrants who crossed over themselves at some point.

Everybody outside of Africa, including "First Peoples" (if I understand that phrase correctly), is a descendant of immigrants. The ancestors of the Amer-Indians (probably) came from Siberia over the Bering land bridge during the late ice age.

It might be hypocritical for an actual immigrant to advocate restrictions on immigration, but that's not the case for descendants of immigrants. But if there are restrictions, they shouldn't be based on religion or race.

lyman alpha blob , May 13, 2016 at 11:14 pm

I don't really think shutting down immigration is the answer. It's not practical and isn't likely to solve the problems blamed on immigration even if you could keep people out.

People don't leave their countries en masse unless there's some kind of disaster. A little less imperialism turning nations to rubble would be a much better solution.

anon , May 13, 2016 at 2:37 pm

So you believe that no people, anywhere, ever, have a right to determine who can join their community, contribute to their community, or undercut their community's wages and values. Except if some "First Peoples" show up and endorse the idea? Do they have divine right of kings or something? What if we got one Indian to agree? A plurality of them?

If it was right for the natives to resist the destruction of their way of life in 1492-1900, and it was, it is right for the natives to resist of the destruction of their way of life now. Even if those natives' skin now comes in multiple colors.

Tony S , May 13, 2016 at 4:09 pm

Well, I have trouble believing that Trump is serious about his TPP-bashing and Iraq-war-bashing, I have trouble believing Trump's words are credible on just about any issue.

It's going to be a rough four years, whether Trump wins or loses.

Vatch , May 13, 2016 at 4:50 pm

Well, Sanders still has a chance, although he's a long shot. Democratic voters in Kentucky, Oregon, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the District of Columbia have a chance to save the nomination for him.

In Puerto Rico, Montana, and North Dakota, the election events are open, so anyone who's registered can vote for Sanders. In California, registered independents can also vote for Sanders.

different clue , May 13, 2016 at 9:50 pm

If its hypocritical, perhaps we should live with that if it is also reality-based and pragmatic. As in " we've got a good thing going here and we don't need nobody else muscling in on our sweet racket".

Separately, many advocates of ILLEGAL immigration carefully pull a sleight-of-mouth bait-and-switch between ILLEGAL immigration and legal immigration. Accepters of carefully controlled legal immigration can still reject ILLEGAL immigration for pragmatic social-survival reasons.

steelhead23 , May 13, 2016 at 5:28 pm

Quite simply, the idea of banning Muslims entry to the U.S. is an affront to the very nature of the American experiment, of plurality, equality, and religious freedom. However, recent events in Europe, specifically the sexual assaults in Cologne and elsewhere show that some young Muslim men are a problem. So are some young American men. An issue we need to wrestle with is how to reduce this problem. Such problems are not about religion, they are cultural, they are about interpersonal respect and behavior. But, the West, broadly speaking, has shown horrendous disrespect to Moslems. The U.S. has attacked wedding parties and funerals, destroyed cities and countries, behaving like Crusaders. Perhaps were the West to display less barbarism toward Moslems, they would express more respect toward us. Seems worth a try.

NotTimothyGeithner , May 13, 2016 at 9:29 am

He doesn't have to mean anything. Trump needs to drive potential Democratic turnout down. On one hand, reminding people how awful Hillary is effectively destroys volunteer efforts which is how voters get registered and identified for gotv. The other side is what is the perception of the average Democratic voter of Hillary's record. Hillary supporters have pushed the "tested," "likely to win, " and "inevitable" arguments for a long time now. How many people in the potential electorate understood Hillary was a hawk when they voted or didn't bother to show up? Bernie used words such as "poor judgement" for fear of being labeled sexist. Trump won't hold back.

Perhaps, Trump was a mole, but what can Bill offer that the GOP can't? Air Force One might not be the most luxurious plane, but its the Air Force plane wherever the President is. Thats respect no one can buy. Reagan was carted through the White House, so why not Trump?

MikeNY , May 13, 2016 at 7:17 am

Imagine Trump running to the left of Hillary on defense / interventionism, trade, and universal healthcare. That would sure make things interesting. He could win.

bowserhead , May 13, 2016 at 9:22 am

It ain't over. She's got one countermove left which is to somehow get Bernie on the ticket and grab the enthusiastic and politically correct (if not fully-informed) millenial vote. Otherwise the dilution of the blue vote in the swing states will loom large. James Carville, astute handicapper that he is, has already sniffed out that Hillary now needs Bernie more than Bernie needs Hillary.

NotTimothyGeithner , May 13, 2016 at 10:19 am

Sanders on the ticket would only undermine Sanders. This Is about the DLC or the status quo. The length of Sanders career has made him credible, but Hillary has already lost this same race to an empty suit. The Democrats have bled support since Obama went full Reagan, but in many ways, this is a conflict between Democratic elites and their loyalist followers and everyone else. Accepting assimilation will only hurt Sanders. Forcing a Vice President onto Hillary such as Gabbard would be a far better aim. Sanders supporters aren't interested in a status quo candidate, supported by the usual list of villains.

Hillary can get a begrudging vote, but she will never endive enthusiasm. Bernie and Hillary uniting will only annoy people.

Michael Fiorillo , May 13, 2016 at 7:29 am

Yes, and then, as his long history with customers, contractors, vendors and creditors has shown, he'll fuck us.

Please don't take this as advocacy for the Other One, but Donnie's entire career is based on screwing people over; this is just another, albeit far bigger, hustle.

Don't think for a second that you could rely on him to follow through honestly about anything; it's always and forever about Donnie.

anon , May 13, 2016 at 7:51 am

As if HRC wont?

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 8:43 am

Hey, there's at least a 1% chance that Trump won't go out if his way to screw the American people considering the blackbox nature of his candidacy, whereas there is at least a 100% chance that HRC will screw the American people hard. And add in the fact that she is a known psychopath with an itchy trigger finger who will have the Red Button on her desk if she gets into the oval office Yeah. Trump isn't looking too bad now, is he?

Ian , May 13, 2016 at 9:05 am

I gotta admit that Trump has always been a wild card for me, and while he is likely to screw us, Hillary definitely will. Still the only candidate worth supporting in any conceivable sense is Bernie.

Jason , May 13, 2016 at 2:54 pm

Given his gleeful endorsement of torture, advocacy for war crimes, nods to totalitarianism and fascism, his own clear psychopathy, along with his racism, xenophobia, and apparent ignorance on everything from medicine to the environment, and nuclear weapons, yes he looks bad, even in comparison with Hillary Clinton , which says a great deal about just how awful he truly is.

Ulysses , May 13, 2016 at 3:17 pm

They are both truly awful!! If they turn out to be the top two candidates on the ballot, I will have no choice but to write in Bernie, or vote Green.

Jason , May 13, 2016 at 3:49 pm

I'm personally more frightened by Trump than Clinton. I've lived through almost 8 years of Obama, plus Bush and Clinton how much worse than those could another 4-8 years of the same be? Trump is a terrifying like my house on fire. But at the same time, I can certainly understand the desire to vote for the Green with a clear conscience.

Perhaps we'll get lucky, and Hillary's campaign will collapse before the convention. Bernie would be the first candidate I could really vote for (and who'd have a real chance at winning).

steelhead23 , May 13, 2016 at 6:29 pm

Why not put your vote where your words are? We're Senator Bernie Sanders to be the candidate, my vote would be his. If he's not, and he endorses Secretary Clinton, then my vote goes to Doctor Jill Stein, my favorite candidate anyway. Given the momentum Sanders has generated, were he, instead of supplicating himself to Clinton following her coronation, to stand behind Ms. Stein Only in my dreams. Sigh

different clue , May 13, 2016 at 9:56 pm

The DLC Third-Way Clintonite Obamacrats will not let Bernie become nominee no matter what. If the party can't coronate Clinton, the party will try to bolt the severed head of Joe Biden onto Clinton's headless body . . and run THAT.

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 3:58 pm

"We came. We saw. He died. [Raucous laughter]"

That right there is what convinced me that the woman is a psychopath. She should have been carried out out of the interview in a straight jacket, and yet there are some people who trying to make her president. Trump may be a narcissist, but I would not say that he's psychotic.

If nothing else you need to support Trump for the survival of humanity.

flora , May 13, 2016 at 10:52 am

Thinking about a Trump/hillary_clinton. contest reminds me of the movie 'The Sting'; where a couple of honest con men take down a dishonest con man who killed their friend. I see Hillary as the dishonest con man.

jrs , May 13, 2016 at 2:34 pm

In reality Trump is NOT to the left of Hillary on universal healthcare. Read his website.

Look since the guy is a major presidential candidate whether one likes that or not, I have no problem directing people to his website. See how he puts his actual policy positions, such as they are, in his own words.

Interventionism and trade remain to be seen as personally I think his positions on them are likely to still uh evolve as they say during the campaign season. So I'm leaving the verdict out there.

MtnLife , May 13, 2016 at 8:06 am

I brought up this idea right when he became the presumptive nominee but this isn't really a pivot left. He's always been less of a hawk than Hillary. One of the few positions he has been relatively consistent on. I see him biding his time for a full pivot until Bernie is out of the picture. Here's to hoping that doesn't happen.

MikeNY , May 13, 2016 at 8:18 am

Like all of my best thoughts, unoriginal. :-p

MtnLife , May 13, 2016 at 10:00 am

My apologies, my friend. Didn't mean to step on you. Meant it as a concurrence. Sipping coffee slowly today. You're one of my favorite people here for your regularly spot on, insightful comments.

MikeNY , May 13, 2016 at 10:10 am

Kind words, TY.

Yves Smith , May 13, 2016 at 8:24 am

Yes, my big effort to tell myself that Life Under Trump may not be as horrible as I fear is that the record of outsider presidents (Carter) and celebrity governors (Schwarznegger and Jesse Ventura) is they get very little done.

NotTimothyGeithner , May 13, 2016 at 9:57 am

Modern governors are bound by devolution and mandates. They are just glorified city managers with the staff to do the city manager's job. Even popular, insider governors can do very little. The President can set the terms by which the governors operate.

John Wright , May 13, 2016 at 10:02 am

I'm concerned that HRC will get more done than the Donald, but little of HRC's actions will be positive.

California handled Schwarznegger without too many problems as he tried unsuccessfully to "break down boxes".

He replaced, via recall, the forgettable democratic Governor Gray Davis who simply disappeared from politics.

As I recall, Davis papered over the CA energy crisis until after the election, figuring that when the s**t hit the fan, he'd have been safely reinstalled in office.

The recall campaign proved this a bad assumption.

Schwarznegger actually tried to do something about climate change, see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/big-energy-gamble.html

I see HRC as possibly getting more wars started, TPP/TTIP approved, a grand bargain done on SS, and providing more coddling to the financial, medical and insurance industries.

If many or all of HRC's possible negative accomplishments will not be done by Trump, then that could justify electing a president who accomplishes little..

jrs , May 13, 2016 at 2:46 pm

Yea Schwarznegger was ok. He made a few very devoted enemies in a few unions. But he was probably far better on pushing environmental issues than Jerry fracking Brown ever was or will be. If it was him versus Jerry at this point, I might very well prefer Arnold.

jsn , May 13, 2016 at 11:37 am

I think Trump at least understands that you can't take money from people who don't have any. His casino enterprise in Atlantic City may have taught him that.

Like Anne Amnisia's link yesterday, I feel like I know where I stand with a Mussolini and can envision taking a bullet honorably in resistance where the DNC method has been slowly killing me my whole adult life and, short of Bernie, I can't see how to resist!

If he's ineffectual and doesn't start more wars, at least its more time to organize and Trump's the kind of "leader" that might give focus to resistance.

Deloss Brown , May 13, 2016 at 4:08 pm

Yves, I wish I thought you were right. But The Duck is so bizarre, so definitively unhinged, that no one can predict what he'll do. He changes positions as the wind blows. And when he follows any philosophy at all, it's the "Conservative" philosophy. He doesn't believe in global warming. He once said that there should be NO minimum wage. I'm a Bernie fan, not a Hillary fan, but I would never, ever take the risk of letting the Hare-Brained Jabberwocky into any position of power, which means, probably, that I have to vote for Hillary, and even start sending her money after the primaries. Probably.

marym , May 13, 2016 at 8:48 am

His healthcare plan on his campaign website is the usual Republican gibberish – repeal Obamacare, sell insurance across state lines, block grant Medicaid.

He suggested 20-30,000 troops to Syria in response to a debate question, then said he would never do that, but send " air power and military support" instead. ( LINK )

marym , May 13, 2016 at 8:57 am

edit: Position on the website is also to give veterans the ability to "choose" healthcare outside the VA system. (I'm not knowledgeable to say if this would actually help current pressing VA issues, but it is a move from a national public health service model to a private care model, so not leftward).

MikeNY , May 13, 2016 at 9:30 am

Thanks for that. I think the general idea holds, though: it's a populist remake of politics, and I think if Trump stakes out some 'unconventional' positions that are to the 'left' of HRC, he could beat her.

marym , May 13, 2016 at 12:39 pm

Well, if by left you meant 'left' then we agree :) His appeal is much broader, though IMO a combination of rightward demagoguery and leftward populist-i-ness.

MikeNY , May 13, 2016 at 5:05 pm

You're right about the demagoguery. So again, we agree!

JTMcPhee , May 13, 2016 at 9:43 am

That VA notion is a dagger pointed at the heart of all those people who for whatever reason, "took the King's shilling" or drew the short straws in the draft lotteries or, before that, were nailed and "inducted" just by living in heavy-draft-quota areas. And of course the Greatest Generation, so many of whom got drug into earlier US imperial wars (Narrative notwithstanding.)

Sending GIs to docs outside the VA system (itself under siege for generations now by the same shits who bring on the Forever War that generates ever more damaged people needing those "services"), to docs who in my experience pretty uniformly have zero knowledge of vet-specific problems and diseases and injuries, who will be paid how much to treat what quota of veterans, again? Crucifying GIs on the HMO cross, so people can pretend there's "care" for them, via docs who are even more likely than VA docs (who at least have some protections against arbitrary rules and policies and firings, in a "system" run by many who institutionalize actual CARE as the main idea) to "go along with the minimization-hurry-up-and-die program"?

The whole notion is straight Rule #2: "GO DIE, FOKKER! And do it quietly, out of sight, and with minimum fuss, in a structure that so diffuses the abuses over space and time that it's extremely difficult for the affected population to even gather the numbers to show how bad it is." Straight "more continuing more opaque fog of war" bullshit. The same kind of sales BS as used to sell the rest of neoliberalist misery ("Don't whine now, fools - you voted for it, I have the validated results of the elections right here, so now it's All Nice And Legal, seeee?) from NAFTA and preceding frauds and vast FIREs, on up to the present scams.

In the meantime, the Military-Industrial Juggernaut continues to gain mass and momentum. Trump can natter about "war in the Mideast is a bad deal for the US" (Mideast seemingly not including AfPak, China, Africa, South America, etc.) as a "bad deal." But will he have any interest in spooling down the turbines on the enormous Milo Minderbinder Enterprises machine that is daily being "upgraded" and "up-armored" and "re-weaponed" and "re-doctrined" and "mission-creeped," with the happy participation of every business, large and small, that can wangle or "extend" a procurement or "study" contract to expand and lethality and simple bureaucratic-growth size and incompetence (as a military force, in the old sense of what armies are supposed to do for the Emperoro) of the monster, even as we blog participants do our mostly ineffectual (if intellectually pleasing) nattering?

Civilian Control of the Military is a dishonest myth - true only in the sense that the Captains of MICIndustry and drivers of "policy" are not currently Active Duty, though they all, along with the generals (who live like kings, of course) belong to the same clubs and dip deeply into the same MMT Cornucopia. And the MIC, from what I read, is quite open and pleased about the state of affairs

whine country , May 13, 2016 at 10:07 am

I would argue that the MIC is simply part of the 20 percent that derive their middle class existence by serving at the beck and call of the 1 percent. You are describing the symptoms and not the disease.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 2:35 pm

Yep.

Felix_47 , May 13, 2016 at 10:41 am

We are in the grip of "credentialled" doctors and lawyers. Just as most litigation and most of what lawyers do is destructive to the average person, it is estimated that half of all surgeries done in the US are unnecessary. the HIC (health industrial complex) has brainwashed the public to believe that we need $20,000 per month medications and artificial discs. As you have doubtless seen the third leading cause of death in the US is medical mistakes. They happen in the VA and in the private sector. Maybe the notion of more medical care is better is simply not valid. At some point we will have to realize that rationing in a rational way is going to have to happen. I would rather have someone who went to medical school decide on what is going to be rationed than some lawyer or business administrator.

JTMcPhee , May 13, 2016 at 2:46 pm

There sure is a lot packed into that comment. But my experience with VA doctors and other caregivers (speaking as a retired "private sector" nurse, VA care recipient and former attorney) is that except for the psychiatrists and some of the docs that perform disability examinations, the VA caregivers actually provide care, and they seem to do it pretty well, given the constant attrition of resources and burgeoning case load the neolibs are imposing. Personal tale: the Medicare 'provider" at the full-spectrum clinic I used to use was all hot to perform a "common surgical procedure that most older men need." A fee-generating TURP, which pretty rarely improves the victim's life. The VA doc, looking at the same condition and presentation, noted the down-sides pretty carefully and said that until I was a lot more "restricted," there was no way I "needed" any such invasive procedure. But then his income is not influenced by the number of cuts he makes

Most of what lawyers do any more, and this has been true for a long time, is combat over wealth transfers, economic warfare. Ever since partnership was killed off as the mandatory form of lawyer business operations, with attendant personal liability for partner actions, the rule is "eat what you kill, and kill all you can." Most doctors I know have caregiving as their primary motivation in going into medicine. (Most nurses, the same to a much greater extent, and since they start with smaller debt and fewer chances to bleed the patient and the system that bleeds the nurse pretty badly, they can carry that decency forward.)

Interesting, of course, that more and more doctors have joint MD and MBA credentials. And working with other operatives, are gradually and maybe inexorably forcing more of their fellows into "medical cooperatives" like HCA and JSA, where they become salaried wage slaves with productivity targets and metrics, and thus "rationers" de facto, by having to respond to "metrics" that are all driven by the basic business model: "More and more work, from fewer and fewer people, for less and less money, for higher and higher costs, with ever more crapified outcomes for the mope-ery." Although, I might offer, there are some of my fellow mopes who actually do benefit from those back surgeries (yes, maybe most of them are unwarranted, but not all) and meds that only cost "$20,000 per month" because of MARKETS.

Jim Haygood , May 13, 2016 at 11:27 am

'Imagine Trump running to the left of Hillary on defense / interventionism, trade, and universal healthcare.'

It would be like FDR vs Hoover - with Goldwater girl Hillary playing the role of Hoover.

inode_buddha , May 13, 2016 at 6:41 pm

Imagine Trump winning as a GOP canidate by running to the left of the DNC canidate. The vision of the GOP having a collective ulcer/Rovian Meltdown is making me giggle like a schoolgirl all day.

Frankly, I'm *much* more worried about HRC in the Whitehouse than I am about Trump. Reason why is that he's a relative outsider, not an Establishment guy - and there is always Congress to deal with. Its not like he would have a total dictatorship, whereas HRC would be able to do far more and deeper damage to the nation.

My position is Sanders or bust, and I say that as a 20-year member of the GOP (now independent).

Nick , May 13, 2016 at 7:22 am

Like you said, he changes his positions all the time, and Clinton is no doubt a serious warmonger/war criminal, but he did also say that he would "bomb the s- out of ISIS," which one might also be inclined to characterize as trigger happy.

I am equally terrified at the prospect of having Clinton or Trump at the nuclear controls, which is why we should all send Bernie a few bucks today. The MSM have already gone into full Clinton v Trump general election mode, though that is certain to change once Bernie wins California.

Yves Smith , May 13, 2016 at 7:30 am

If you read what Trump has said about our foreign policy, he has been consistent in his view that the US can't and shouldn't be acting as an imperalist. He does not use those words, but he's said this often enough that I've even linked to articles describing how Trump is willing to depict America as being in decline, and this as one manifestation. In addition, his foreign policy speech was slammed basically because it broke with neocon orthodoxy. I have not read it but people I respect and who are not temperamentally inclined to favor Trump have, and they said it was sensible and among other things argued that we could not be fighting with China and Russia at the same time, and pumped for de-escalating tensions with Russia as the country whose culture and interests were more similar to ours than China's.

Having said that, calling out our belligerence and TPP as bad ideas seem to be the only issues on which he's not been all over the map (well, actually, he has not backed down on his wall either .)

The other reason to think he might stick with this position more consistently than with others is that his core voters come from communities where a lot of people have fought in the post-9/11 Middle Eastern conflicts. Our armed forces are stretched to the breaking point. Trump has strong support among veterans and active duty soldiers, and it's due to his speaking out against these wars.

Trump can probably get away with continuing to shape shift till Labor Day, since most voters don't make up their minds till close to the election. It's not pretty to watch him make a bold statement and then significantly walk it back in the next 24 hours, particularly if it's an issue you care about and he's said something that is so nuts that it sounds like he cares more about his Nielsen rating than what makes sense for the country. If he can't put enough policy anchors down by the fall and stick to them, he will lose a lot of people who might give him a shot out of antipathy to Clinton.

P , May 13, 2016 at 7:45 am

This guy has been writing some great stuff this cycle.

http://theweek.com/articles/622864/how-hillary-clinton-could-blow

miamijac , May 13, 2016 at 8:06 am

like's bait and switch.

Nick , May 13, 2016 at 8:05 am

That may well be the case and he was right to call out the Iraq war as a "mistake" during that debate (given his otherwise unconventional rhetoric, however, I was actually a bit disappointed that he didn't use the more correct term war crime), but he has also said that he wants to bring back torture and then some.

As far as I'm concerned though, the race right now is between Clinton and Bernie and I'm fairly confident that Bernie still has a good chance since he is sure to take California (which, luckily for Bernie, will seem like a huge surprise).

In a match up between Trump and Clinton my own personal thoughts (that a democratic – i.e. neoliberal – white house will at least continue to move people to the left, whereas a republican white house will only galvanize people around bringing another neoliberal to the white house) are irrelevant because I have virtually no doubt that Trump will win.

Yves Smith , May 13, 2016 at 8:30 am

Yes, his enthusiasm for torture is pretty creepy and you get a taste of it here indirectly: "That Saddam, he was a really bad guy but he sure could take care of those terrorists!" While Trump does seem to genuinely disapprove of all the people our wars have killed for no upside (a commonsense position in absence among our foreign policy elites), he seems overly confident that we can identify baddies well and having identified them, we should have no compunction about being brutal with them.

bowserhead , May 13, 2016 at 8:50 am

"That Saddam, he was a really bad guy but he sure could take care of those terrorists!"

His meaning here is we should have stayed out of it and let the "really bad guy" (Saddam) handle Al Quaeda. Of course, the Bush neocons dishonestly morphed Saddam into Al Quaeda. You know the rest of the story.

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 9:34 am

I'm willing to bet that he's saying a lot of this stuff for his audience–people who are generally a pretty angry and bloodthirsty lot. I'm not saying that he's not going to come out for peace, love and contrition when he's elected president, but I think it is safe to say that his rhetoric now is completely unrelated to how he'd go about actually governing.

OK, so normally that'd be a horrible admission–if the Democrats hadn't had the brilliant idea of foisting Hillary onto the American people. What a brain-dead move! I myself could have been persuaded to support Bernie, but Hillary is the Devil incarnate as far as I'm concerned.

fresno dan , May 13, 2016 at 11:23 am

One fact that we have to remember is all the people who designed, advocated for, implemented, and defended "enhanced interrogation" and than who use "Clintonisms" to say we no longer use torture (because we never did – "enhanced interrogation") AND because we are "rendering" them someplace else and our friends are doing the enhanced interrogation – well, such lying devious people in my view are far, far worse than The Donald.
In my view, there appears to be considerable evidence that the US still defacto tortures – and that is far, far worse than the appalling, but at least truthful statement of how Trump feels. And of course, pink misting people may not be torture, but it can't be separated.

Again, which is worse:
A. The Donald up front advocates a policy (of torture), people can be mobilized to oppose it. No legalisms, dissembling, and every other term that can be used to obfuscate what the US is REALLY doing.
B. The US government asserts it no longer tortures. How many readers here have confidence that that is a factually true statement, that can be said without word games?
Is saying we should torture WORSE than saying we don't torture, but WE ARE???

ggm , May 13, 2016 at 2:17 pm

I feel the same way. It's preferable to have someone take the morally reprehensible pro-torture stance than to pretend to be against it while secretly renditioning prisoners and so forth.

jrs , May 13, 2016 at 2:51 pm

A good argument for reelecting George W Bush I suppose. Everything was pretty out in the open in the W administration you have to admit.

pretzelattack , May 13, 2016 at 4:16 pm

except for the fake wmds that started it. and abu ghraib. and the reasons the contractors were hung in fallujah. and the fake alliance between saddam and al quaida. and outing valerie plame when joe wilson blew the whistle on the fake purpose of the aluminum tubes.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 7:44 pm

Let's not forget the warrantless surveillance program!

Also, Wilson blew the whistle on the yellowcake uranium. The aluminum tubes were another mole in the whack-a-mole game.

Seas of Promethium , May 13, 2016 at 7:44 pm

Everything was pretty out in the open in the W administration you have to admit.

"The United States does not torture." -GWB

Ian , May 13, 2016 at 9:10 am

Enough electoral fraud has been evidenced that I think that the numbers are going to be gamed to be closer to the non-representative polling that flood the MSM. He may win, but they aren't going to allow him to win by a lot in such a delegate heavy state.

Rhondda , May 13, 2016 at 11:22 am

Unfortunately, I think you are quite right that the California numbers will be rigged/gamed. I had become quite cynical about American politics, thanks to Obama the More Effective Evil's reign and the Bush and the Supremes Florida gambit back in 2000. But this primary vote rigging has really moved my marker so far that I am not even sure what word to use what's more cynical than super duper cynical?

I no longer believe - any of it .

jrs , May 13, 2016 at 2:54 pm

So here's an idea I've been pondering how can the people try to prevent or find this? Could we exit poll outside the voting places? Yes it would be a limited sample of just one local place but it's something and in aggregate if lots of people were doing this

I too think they might try to game California. And this is quite alarming considering California is usually too unimportant to even game. I figure the elections are usually honest here, probably because they just don't matter one whit. But this time it might matter and they might steal the vote.

Northeaster , May 13, 2016 at 8:45 am

"core voters come from communities where a lot of people have fought in the post-9/11 Middle Eastern conflicts. Our armed forces are stretched to the breaking point. Trump has strong support among veterans and active duty soldiers"

This.

People tend to also forget that there's a lot of us Gen-X'ers that were deployed over there over 25 years ago, when it was popular, for the same damned thing. Nothing has changed. Sure, some leadership folks have been taken out, but the body count of Americans soldiers has only risen,and the Region is now worse off.

The "first time" we had more folks die from non-combat related accidents than from actual combat. Some of us are sick of our political and corporate establishment selling out our fellow soldiers and Veterans, even worse is the way they have been treated when they come home. I'm not a Trump supporter, but this part of his message not only resonates with me, but angers me further. Why? Because I know that if Hillary Clinton walks into The Oval Office, even more Americans are going to die for lust of more power and influence.

HRC is simply the evilest human being I have ever seen in politics in my lifetime. Trump may be an idiot, crass, authoritarian, and any number of negative things, but he is not "evil" – she is.

Roger Smith , May 13, 2016 at 7:25 am

If the mash up continues as Clinton v. Trump and barring any character sinking actions of Trump, this man will win in November. To paraphrase Shivani, Clinton is speaking entirely in high minded self-interest, while Trump has latched onto and is pressing a actual truths of reality (regardless of his personal convictions or what he wlll actually do if elected).

Trump is more liberal than Clinton here. What exactly are her redeeming qualities again?

Pavel , May 13, 2016 at 8:01 am

I can't really think of any HRC redeeming qualities. "Retail politicking" doesn't seem to be one of them. Lambert, you no doubt saw this video of her confronted with rising health insurance costs post-ACA? Her word salad response doesn't begin to address the real issues

During a recent town hall event, a small business owner explained to the Democratic front-runner that her health insurance has gone up so significantly for her family that the thought of providing benefits to her employees is secondary at this point.

"As a small business owner, not only are you trying to provide benefits to your employees, you're trying to provide benefits to yourself. I have seen our health insurance for my own family, go up $500 dollars a month in the last two years. We went from four hundred something, to nine hundred something. We're just fighting to keep benefits for ourselves. The thought of being able to provide benefits to your employees is almost secondary, yet to keep your employees happy, that's a question that comes across my desk all the time. I have to keep my employees as independent contractors for the most part really to avoid that situation, and so I have turnover"

"We do not qualify for a subsidy on the current health insurance plan. My question to you is not only are you looking out for people that can't afford healthcare, but I'm someone that can afford it, but it's taking a big chunk of the money I bring home."

To which Hillary responded, to make a long story short, that she knows healthcare costs are going up, and doesn't understand why that would ever be the case.

"What you're saying is one of the real worries that we're facing with the cost of health insurance because the costs are going up in a lot of markets, not all, but many markets and what you're describing is one of the real challenges."

"There's a lot of things I'm looking at to try to figure out how to deal with exactly the problem you're talking about. There are some good ideas out there but we have to subject them to the real world test, will this really help a small business owner or a family be able to afford it. What could have possibly raised your costs four hundred dollars, and that's what I don't understand."

"What could have possibly raised your costs four hundred dollars, and that's what I don't understand." - this from a woman who ostensibly is an expert on health care delivery?

The link is from Zero Hedge but in any case watch the video. Or wait for it to appear in a Trump campaign ad:

"What Could Have Possibly Raised Your Costs" – Hillary Can't Answer Why Obamacare Costs Are Soaring

Roger Smith , May 13, 2016 at 9:16 am

"Or wait for it to appear in a Trump campaign ad" Haha!

I am surprised she didn't pull out the "90% coverage" false-positve. We haven't seen that pony enough. The notion of imploring "scientific" method here is interesting in light of the party's blood oath to meritocracy. "There are some good ideas out there but we have to subject them to the real world test ". It also implies that the process is natural and no accountability is necessary.

Another great DNC experiment. Throwing the blacks in jail for 20 years over nothing "oh well, we need to try more!" I cannot imagine being in prison right now for some minor drug offense and hearing the Clintons spew this nonsense.

That bagel spread though

P , May 13, 2016 at 7:37 am

This is going to be one hell of an election If nothing else those slimeballs that Clinton represent will be killed off. Finally.

samhill , May 13, 2016 at 7:41 am

joe-stiglitz-tells-democracy-now-that-war-cost-will-reach-5-to-7-trillion

It's a cost to the 99%, to the 1% it's profit – a damn whole lot of profit.

bowserhead , May 13, 2016 at 8:13 am

Jeff Gundlach, one of the few iconoclasts and reigning king of bonds on Wall Street:

"People are going to start putting greater focus on Hillary (Clinton). Voters are going to say, 'No. I don't want this,'" he told Reuters. "Hillary is going to evolve into an unacceptable choice. If she is such a great candidate, how come (Bernie Sanders) is beating her?"

JustAnObserver , May 13, 2016 at 10:05 am

IIRC Gundlach's outfit is based in California, not Wall Street. Left coast plutos for Bernie ?

bowserhead , May 13, 2016 at 10:54 am

Good point.

JustAnObserver , May 13, 2016 at 1:40 pm

Even more. He's based in LA so there's a 400 mile air gap between him in the goldbugging, glibertarian, wannabe John Galt culture of the Valley exemplified by Peter Theil.

How about a picture of Gundlach for tomorrow's antidote ?

Yaacov Kopel , May 13, 2016 at 9:29 am

It is warm heartening to see this site who consistently leaning left warming for the Donald. Clinton is a horrible candidate, flawed human being and her presidency is guaranteed to be marred by scandal after scandal and deep polarization.
Bern would be a great choice but he has no chance, the corrupt Democratic establishment will stick with Clinton.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 2:34 pm

The post has nothing to do with "warming" to the Donald. It's policy focused.

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 4:24 pm

I inuited months ago that the warming to Donald thing would happen. I have a growing conviction that most of the people here, maybe even you, are going to vote for Donald in November. Even Jason will vote for Donald (unless he is being employed by that pro-Hillary super pac which I don't think is the case but just throwing it out there since there are empirically speaking people being paid to produce pro Hillary comments on the internet). Barring something truly interesting and novel happening between now and then that is.

The way things are going now this plane seems set for an effortless autopilot victory for Trump. I have no doubt that everyone will regret too. They'll even regret before they cast the vote, and do it anyway. Oh man, that's some truly black humor. OK I'll make an even grander prediction: Trump will inaugurate the post postmodern era (whatever historians eventually decide to call it) where our entire conception and perception of reality as a society undergoes a radical and unpleasant change. It's a unique time to be alive. Aren't we lucky?

jgordon , May 13, 2016 at 5:38 pm

Wait. I just had an incredible insight. We're already out of the postmodern era, and I can date it from Sept. 11, 2001as the exit. Historian are going to say that this was a short era, a transitional era of illusions, delusions and fear, where complete non-reality Trumped the real for an ever so short period of time. But now we're going to be shocked awake, and what's coming next is going to be incredible and horrific. Damn, it's such an awesome and strange feeling to see things so clearly all of a sudden! It's really happening. So this why I've been obsessing over this stuff much recently.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 7:42 pm

I tried to find a short clip of Brunhilde riding her horse into the flames in Gotterdammerung right before Valhalla collapses, which is what voting for Trump would be like for me, but I couldn't find out.

Noonan , May 13, 2016 at 9:38 am

The worst result of the Obama presidency is the disappearance of the anti-war left from every form of mainstream media.

NotTimothyGeithner , May 13, 2016 at 9:52 am

There was an antiwar left on the msm during the Bush years? Kerry's campaign message was "Ill be W 2.0." Kerry himself was that awful, but there was no antiwar left in the msm. I thought the absence was the direct cause for the rise of blogs. The real crisis is the shift of websites such as TalkingPointMemo and CrooksandLiars to Team Blue loyalist sites or when Digby brought on Spoonfed.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 7:40 pm

Yep. 2006 was when the Dems decapitated the left blogosphere, and as a result we have no independent media, except for lonely outposts like this one, and whatever those whacky kidz are doing with new media.

TedWa , May 13, 2016 at 10:01 am

I keep donating to Bernie because even if he somehow doesn't win the nomination, he can force Hillary to be much more like him – if HRC wants Bernie voters to clinch the deal for her. Bernie staying in and fighting to the end (and my money says he wins) is great and if Hillary doesn't become Bernie, then the only one that can beat Trump is Bernie, and the super-delegates have got to see that.
Bottom line, Hillary has to become Bernie to beat Trump. Is that going to happen? We'll see.

Praedor , May 13, 2016 at 10:34 am

Bernie staying in until the very end serves two purposes (he CAN still win, especially when he carries California). The first is, again, he CAN win. The second purpose is to prevent Hillary from shifting right the way she REALLY wants to for the general. She will have to keep tacking left to fend off a major slide towards Bernie. The "center" (actually right wing) is out of reach for her as long as Bernie is there.

TedWa , May 13, 2016 at 10:43 am

Exactly, and I'm loving it :^)

ewmayer , May 13, 2016 at 6:49 pm

Sorry to rain on your thesis, but absent the nomination, all Bernie can do is to force Hillary to *message* more like him. With her, the operative phrase is "words are wind". There is nothing whatever to keep her from immediately ditching every progressive-sounding campaign stance once she is in office, just as Obama did. And I guarantee you that if she does become president, that is precisely what she will do.

ke , May 13, 2016 at 10:13 am

Trump knows the counterweight better than anyone. He's the guy you keep on the job because he's entertaining, knowing he will sell you out if you let him, and you let him, when it serves a purpose, to adjust the counterweight.

POLITICS, RE feudalism, is a game, and he loves it, despite the heartburn. All that debt inertia.preventing the economic motor from gaining traction is psychological. That much he knows, which is a lot more than the rest of the politicians, making him a better dress maker. But like the others, he has no idea what to do about it.

He vascillates to maintain options, including a path to the future, while others rule themselves out. Of course hiring good people is the answer, but most Americans are politicians, like anywhere else, wanting to know little more than their cubicle, because the net result of majority behavior is punishing work, in favor of consumers, competing for advantage.

If you spent this time developing skills and finding a spouse that won't cut your throat, you will do quite well. The casino isn't life; it just keeps a lot of people busy, with busy work. Government is hapless.

dingusansich , May 13, 2016 at 10:31 am

It's hard to know if Trump sees militarization and imperialism as bad because they're bad or bad because it's not Donald Trump in charge, with a great big straw sucking Benjamins between those rectally pursed lips. It may take an agent provocateur bullshitter to call bullshit, but that says nothing about what Trump will do as president. What's likeliest, given his record, is an opportunistic seizure of the Treasury to rival the occupation of Iraq. When I gaze into my crystal ball at a Trump administration I see cronyism, graft, corruption, nepotism, and deceit of monumental dimensions, just like the gold letters spelling Trump plastered over everything he lays his stubby little hands on. Because the Clintons are appalling doesn't make Trump appealing. It's a farcical contest, and every way, we lose.

RUKidding , May 13, 2016 at 2:43 pm

You echo my feelings. My loathing of Clinton knows no bounds, and I cannot vote for her, no matter what. But I simply don't trust Trump. He's a gold-digger extrodinaire, and quite the accomplished showman. He knows how to play to the crowd, and he's clearly quite quick to shape shift. The wrecked tatters of what's called the USA "media" gives Trump a YOOOGE pass on simply everything and anything the man says or does.

I don't trust Trump, and although, yes, he has says a few things that I agree with – and usually stuff that no one else at his level will ever say – it's essentially meaningless to me. I think Trump would be a disaster as President, and my "take" – which is based on my own opinion – is that he'll be Grifter El Supremo and make sure that he walks off with stacks and gobs and buckets of CA$H. For him. And if the country really tanks and goes bankrupt? So What?

Plus all this about Trump not being a War Hawk? I don't trust it. With the other breath, he's constantly spewing about "building up" the damn military, which, allegedly Obama has "weakened." Like, we really need to be spending another gazillion of our tax dollars "building up" the Military??? WHY? If The Donald is so against all these foreign wars, then why do we need to spend even more money on the Military??? All that signals to me is that Donald expects to go large on MIC investments for HIMSELF.

Won't get fooled again.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 7:38 pm

"cronyism, graft, corruption, nepotism, and deceit of monumental dimensions"

Rather like the Clinton Foundation, though the Clintons have more tasteful building fixtures

"Because the Clintons are appalling doesn't make Trump appealing"

Very true, and vice versa.

hemeantwell , May 13, 2016 at 10:32 am

The Saudi 9/11 connection is now front stage:.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/september-11-saudi-arabia-congressional-report-terrorism#comment-74155478
Trump can legitimately harp on this and likely will as part of his battle both with the R establishment and the Ds. HRC will probably respond "judiciously" in a way that will make her claim to "expertise" appear to be nothing more than what it is, lockstep parroting of neocon positions. Sanders?

ke , May 13, 2016 at 11:38 am

Story time: so, when I married the Mrs, I offered to fix the mother in laws old bug. She turned me down and has since demand that I fix what is now a rust bucket, not worth one manhour of my time, going around to the neighbors, all critters on govt checks rapidly falling behind RE inflation, to build consensus to the end, among women using men and men using women, all of them having thrown their marriages under the bus, as if majority vote is going to get me to do something I have no intention of doing.

When hospital gave Grace that shot and sent her to the ICU, per Obamacare expert protocol, all the critters went into CYA mode, and ultimately called the family, to confirm that the wife and I must be on drugs, which they did. I don't blame the morons running the court system, and she's the mother in law.

That debt is nothing more than psychology, but it is more effective than a physical prison. Silicon Valley is the as is abutment, simply reinforcing stupid with ever greater efficiency, but it is the endpoint on a collapsing bridge with no retreat, because automation has systematically destroyed the skill pool and work ethic required to advance further, replacing them with make work and make work skills.

Competing with China and the Middle East to build carp infrastructure to keep As many economic slaves as busy as possible is not the path forward. As you have seen, govt data is far closer to being 180 degrees wrong than being correct, as designed, which you should expect, from those holding out ignorance as a virtue.

There are far more elevators that need fixing than I could ever get to, and I am quite capable of fixing them in a manner that generates power. Who becomes president is irrelevant.

ke , May 13, 2016 at 11:54 am

My family in Ohio is massive, they made a killing on RE and currency arbitrage, after selling all the family farms, and have nothing real to show for it, but rapidly depreciating sunk costs, waiting to do it again. Rocket scientists.

Watt4Bob , May 13, 2016 at 12:30 pm

The way I read this situation is this;

If the GWOT has cost us $4 Trillion, somebody made $4 Trillion.

That/those somebodies are not about to give up the kind of behavior that makes that kind of money.

If there is any real, actual third-rail in American politics, it's the MIC budget.

This fact has never been openly acknowledged, even though the American people are pretty sure that threatening the will of the MIC cost the life of at least one well known politician.

Trump may talk about that enormous waste now, but after his private screening of the Zapruder film he's going to STFU and get with the program like all the rest.

OTOH, like Yves has pointed out, if Donald wins, he could just end up the loneliest man in DC, be ignored, get nothing done, and I'm not sure I see a down-side to that.

Roger Smith , May 13, 2016 at 1:35 pm

if Donald wins, he could just end up the loneliest man in DC, be ignored, get nothing done

Exactly my feeling. He will be hated and fought constantly, whereas Clinton (if nominated) is guaranteed to screw things up. Like her husband (who by the way will be there whispering in ears and making passes at maids) she will triangulate on issues and pass destructive GOP legislation and likely drag this country into another foreign policy blunder, where I am betting more young, under-educated, poor citizens with no prospects or options will be sent to slaughter (themselves and others).

RUKidding , May 13, 2016 at 2:49 pm

EH? I think The Donald will just go Large on MIC investments for himself. He talks a good game, but he keeps saying that he's going "build up" the Military, even as he's stating that we shouldn't be fighting in all of these wars. Why, then, do we need to "build up" the Military?

No one ever said Trump was stupid. I'm sure he's rubbing his grubby tiny vulgarian mitts with glee thinking about how he, too, can get in on that sweet sweet SWEET MIC payola grift scam. Count on it.

Trump doesn't need to see the Zapruder film. He was alive then and knows the story, just like everyone else of a certain age. Nay, verily, he just means to cash in on it.

fresno dan , May 13, 2016 at 6:31 pm

Watt4Bob
May 13, 2016 at 12:30 pm
"OTOH, like Yves has pointed out, if Donald wins, he could just end up the loneliest man in DC, be ignored, get nothing done, and I'm not sure I see a down-side to that."

I too view that as a feature and not a bug. Seriously, in the last 10, 20, 30 years, I would ask, what law is viewed as making things better? Was Sarbanes Oxley suppose to do something??? Maybe the law is OK, they just won't enforce it

I know Obamacare is relentlessly disparaged here, others think it is better than nothing.
Many of you youngsters don't realize this, but there was a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, that there were no deductibles, co-pays, narrow networks, and that you had confidence that your doctor may have over treated and tested you, but you weren't afraid that you would die because it was too expensive to treat you.
Just like I don't care if GDP goes up because i won't see any of it, I don't care about all the cancer research because I am certain I won't be able to afford it, even though I have health "insurance" .

fresno dan , May 13, 2016 at 7:44 pm

And this
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-retiree-health-insurance-20160511-snap-story.html

"Employer-sponsored retiree health coverage once played a key role in supplementing Medicare," observe Tricia Neuman and Anthony Damico of the foundation. "Any way you slice it, this coverage is eroding."

Since 1988, the foundation says, among large firms that offer active workers health coverage, the percentage that also offer retiree health plans has shrunk to 23% in 2015 from 66% in 1988. The decline, which has been steady and almost unbroken, almost certainly reflects the rising cost of healthcare and employers' diminishing sense of responsibility for long-term workers in retirement.
.
Financial protection against unexpected healthcare costs is crucial for many Medicare enrollees, especially middle- and low-income members, because the gaps in Medicare can be onerous. The deductible for Medicare Part A, which covers inpatient services, is $1,288 this year, plus a co-pay of $322 per hospital day after 60 days. Part B, which covers outpatient care, has a modest annual deductible of $166 but pays only 80% of approved rates for most services.
====================================================
80% of 100,000$ means 20K is left over – with cancer treatments*, kidney treatments, cardiovascular treatments, such a scenario is more likely than a lot of people will imagine.

*treatments don't include those foam slippers that they charge you 25$ for .

fresno dan , May 13, 2016 at 7:48 pm

AND

But the consequences of the shift away from employer-sponsored retiree benefits go beyond the rise in costs for the retirees themselves. Many are choosing to purchase Medigap policies, which fill in the gaps caused by Medicare's deductibles, cost-sharing rates and benefit limitations. That has the potential to drive up healthcare costs for the federal government too. That's because Medigap policies tend to encourage more medical consumption by covering the cost-sharing designed to make consumers more discerning about trips to the doctor or clinic. Already, nearly 1 in 4 Medicare enrollees had a Medigap policy - almost as many as had employer-sponsored supplemental coverage.
..
The trend is sure to fuel interest on Capitol Hill in legislating limits to Medigap plans. Such limits have supporters across the political spectrum: Over the past few years, proposals to prohibit Medigap plans from covering deductibles have come from the left-leaning Center for American Progress, the centrist Brookings Institution and conservatives such as Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

================================
please stop going to the doctor, its expensive .just expire

singfoom , May 13, 2016 at 2:44 pm

First time poster, long time lurker. You don't think that Sanders success in the race pushed HRC to embrace debt free 4 year public college?

We'll see what specific policy commitments come out of the convention, but I don't think the current campaign would have the same issues if Bernie wasn't there.

Please don't mistake me either, ideologically I'm with Sanders and was supporting him until the NYDN article and the delegate math became pretty much impossible. If I had my druthers, he'd be the candidate, but it looks quite quite unlikely now.

I'm concerned that HRC will pivot after the election and give support to the TPP but even then I'm still anti-Trump more.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 10:50 pm

Actually, a poster with your email commented in 2014 under another handle. There seems to be a rash lately of infrequent or new commenters who "support Sanders but" or "supported Sanders until" lately. For some reason.

That said, you could be right on college ( see here for a comparison of the plans ). It's just that Clinton's talking point about not wanting to pay for Trump's children is so unserious I can't believe the plan is serious.

Paper Mac , May 13, 2016 at 6:40 pm

I dunno. I see a lot of people decry Trump's immigration ban on Muslims, but Hillary's record as SecState was incredibly violent toward Muslims internationally and also includes presiding over a defacto immigration ban from specific "problem" states- banning people for security reasons being much more tactful than banning Muslims per se.

The nativist appeal Trump is making doesn't go much farther than naming the intent of policy Hillary has been actually pursuing. Trump wants to use the demonisation of Muslims since 9/11 as a political lever to gain power and will use anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant (weird to see the two conflated so frequently) sentiment to achieve specific political goals, preferably sublating it into keynesian infrastructure programs (wall building or whatever). Hillary intends to keep bombing societies that are increasingly visibily disintegrating from the cumulative effects of climate change, colonial oppression and marginalisation, foreign intervention, etc. It's not obvious who gets the benefit of the doubt in a lesser evil contest.

Code Name D , May 13, 2016 at 1:24 pm

Trump is breaking the "lesser of two evils" argument.

Let's be clear about something here. The "lesser of two evils" is not an argument to find which candidate is "the less evil." It's an argument used to justify the assumption that your candidate is the less evil of the other. While else is it that Democrats say Clinton is the less evil while Republicans argue that Trump is the less evil.

It's obvious watching leftist pundits (many of whom I respect) come out and flatly assert "Clinton is the better of the two." And there heads usually explode right off their shoulders when they run into someone who disagrees or is simply skeptical of the claim.

The real problem is when Trump dose speak on trade and war policy, he exposes the fallacy of the argument. We can't take Trump's word for it – even though we already know Hillary is likely lying, so it's still a tie. The notion that Trump might actually be honest here isn't even permitted to be considered because that would make Trump the less evil of the two.

The problem I keep running into is just how do you measure "evil?" This gets even harder to do when you can't take either at their word. There is always some deeper calculous we are expected to project on the candidates in order to arrive at our pre-supposed conclusion that our candidate is always the less evil.

It's the main reason I will not be voting for either.

bowserhead , May 13, 2016 at 1:43 pm

Forgive me for piling on today Btw,.anyone know who this Carmen Yarrusso is? Excerpt from Counterpunch (today)

"Trump may be a (loose-cannon) unpredictable evil. But then, based on her long track record, Clinton is a very predictable evil. In fact, Trump is left of Clinton on such things as legal marijuana, NATO aggression, and trade policy. His crazy proposals (e.g. Mexican wall, banning Muslims) are just bluster with zero chance of becoming reality. If Congress can stop Obama, it can stop Trump. But Clinton has a predictable pro-war track record (Iraq, Libya, Syria) and a predictable track record of changing positions for political expediency (e.g. Iraq war, NAFTA, Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000, immigration, gun control, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, same-sex marriage). How can you be sure she won't conveniently change her current progressive positions as president? A Trump presidency just might force Democratic Party elites to start seriously addressing the populist concerns they now arrogantly ignore.

If you vote for Clinton as the lesser of two evils, you're compromising your moral values, you're condoning the Democratic Party's shoddy treatment of millions of progressives, and you're sabotaging future real change. You're virtually guaranteeing the Democratic Party elites will put you in this position again and again. If you refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils, maybe you'll help elect Trump (or maybe your write-in or third party choice will win). But you'll certainly send a very clear message to Democratic Party elites that you'll no longer tolerate being ignored, marginalized, or shamed with false lesser of two evil choices."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/13/lesser-of-two-evils-vote-is-counterproductive-and-morally-corrupt/

Bernard , May 13, 2016 at 1:44 pm

lol watching people attack Trump well, not sure if it's Clinton's army out to scare us about the horrors Trump will cause. now it's like the Devil we know vs the Devil we don't know. Kind of hard to compare Trump to Hillary. Hillary's effective brand of evil is well established and is quite thorough, shown by the primary votes in NY and AZ, for example. watching the Elites attack, belittle and completely ignore the existence of Bernie gives us a little clue of what is in store if Hillary gets her way. Trump is the "known unknown" to use Rumsfeld terminology.

Evil is as evil does. aka Hillary

this is perhaps the one and only time I ever will vote Republican. and I abhor Republicans. Hillary has earned her reputation, Trump.. well Trump or no Trump, it won't be Hillary getting my vote. Keeping Bernie out, we all lose.

singfoom , May 13, 2016 at 2:54 pm

No, I don't support the current administration's drone war, nor did I support the horrible Iraq war of 2003, but that doesn't answer my question. I don't understand "Hillary is lying" as a tautology and the conclusion being that Trump is a better bet than HRC because of that.

But in regards to your question, do you think that the drone war stance will change in the next administration whether's it's HRC or Trump? Trump said he wants to get more aggressive on terrorists than we currently are, explicitly endorsing torture.

jrs , May 13, 2016 at 3:09 pm

Well even Sanders has come out in favor of drones, so probably, unless one is die hard Jill Stein all the way. Then one's hands are entirely clean if also entirely ineffective.

Massinissa , May 13, 2016 at 7:06 pm

Yeah, because voting for drone strikes, imperialism and corruption is more effective at getting rid of those things than not voting for drone strikes, imperialism and drone strikes

Massinissa , May 13, 2016 at 7:04 pm

Because its totally impossible for Republican talking points to be true right?

If you havnt noticed, the Republicans are liars, but so are Clintonista Democrats.

Massinissa , May 13, 2016 at 7:09 pm

Hey, let me tell you a secret

Theyre both liars. If youre trusting Donald to not drone strike or trusting Hillary to not torture, youre being duped.

As for your comment further down about Trump saying he wants to torture people more Its not as if Obama has stopped Bush's torture regime or closed Guantanamo. Hillary too would continue more things.

Honestly I still dont understand why Trump is so much scarier than Hillary. Their differences are mostly kayfabe. All that xenophobic racist demagogy Trump is doing? More kayfabe. Im still voting Stein, because I dont vote for corrupt imperialists.

Seas of Promethium , May 13, 2016 at 8:04 pm

Stein is likewise kayfabe. If the party had gone with Anderson he might well have pulled a Bernie in the last general election. That just wouldn't do, so the party was rather brazenly railroaded into nominating Stein.

Jerry Denim , May 13, 2016 at 2:01 pm

Just as the best lies are 99% truth the best con-jobs are the ones containing the maximum amount of truthiness. Some days I like the things I hear Trump saying, the next he gives me a sick feeling with chills down my spine. Sure, he's not sticking to the approved neo-con, neo-lib, Washington consensus script but just how stupid do you have to be to not know that Saddam Hussein was a secular Bathist dictator who executed anyone who he saw as a threat to his power, especially muslim extremists. Just because Trump can spout off a truthy factoid that is only news to the brain-dead Fox News masses doesn't mean he is any more of an honest dealer than Bush Jr. Does anyone think Bush, Cheney or Rumsfield were operating under any illusions that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11? Of course not, they either saw an opportunity or they engineered an opportunity to do what they wanted to do. Trump has shown himself to be a bully comfortable with marshaling mob violence or the threat of mob violence. He is an authoritarian and no defender of civil liberties, habeous corpus or the Geneva convention. He's exactly the type of megalomanic that would try and seize power in an ailing democracy like our own, and I have no doubts that if elected he will create some sort of Constitutional crisis that could end in a military coup or Trump installed as a dictator. He already has a silent pissed-off army of violent brown shirts on his side. I don't like the way this situation looks and people on the left with intelligence and a grasp of history are deluding themselves if they think Trump isn't a very dangerous person.

In a possibly unrelated note, I'm 99% sure someone deeply keyed the full length of my car (truck actually) yesterday while I was surfing for no other reason than my Bernie Sanders bumper sticker right here in sunny, liberal southern California. Could it have been a Clinton supporter or a joy vandal who likes keying random people's cars – sure. But if Trump wins I wonder how long it is before halal restaurants and muslim dry cleaners start getting their windows smashed, then burned. How long before Hindus and brown people start getting attacked (as a common occurrence, not outlier events that are punished as they are now) because they are confused as being Muslim or Mexican or deliberately because they just aren't white and should go home. There's a very nasty underbelly to this Trump thing and I don't like it.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 2:28 pm

I agree on the nasty underbelly. On the other hand, I find it refreshing that Trump mentions the millions of people slaughtered by our foreign policy. I don't hear that from Clinton, at all.

Jerry Denim , May 13, 2016 at 3:25 pm

" I find it refreshing that Trump mentions the millions of people slaughtered by our foreign policy. I don't hear that from Clinton, at all."

Ditto, me too, but I'm not about to cherry-pick Trump's schizophrenic and ever shifting talking points then soft-peddle candidate Trump while telling people not to worry. I like silver-linings, staying optimistic and being contrarian (I wouldn't hang out here otherwise) but why ignore the very troubling subtext in the rest of Trump's speech? The anti-democratic, sneering remarks about suspected terrorists being executed immediately in Saddam's Iraq instead of "on trial for fifteen years" in pansy-cakes weak, habeas corpus America. Trump offhandedly mentions; 'Oh by the way, don't buy the lowball collateral damage numbers you hear from the Pentagon, we're unnecessarily killing a lot of brown people abroad.' But then he fans the flames of racism with stump speeches about building a wall and banning all muslims from entering the USA. I can tell you which message his supporters are comprehending if you're unsure. Despite being a politically heterodox chameleon Trump is showing his true colors. Just because Trump is willing to break with the orthodoxy while he is campaigning doesn't mean he isn't an aspiring tyrant. Don't be fooled. Trump isn't enlightened or altruistic, he's a talented demagogue pulling a Con on America- that's it.

Jerry Denim , May 13, 2016 at 3:33 pm

By the way, I wanted to add I am not in any way considering a vote for Hillary if she does in fact become the Democratic nominee. I am very troubled by the prospect of a President Trump but I will not allow my vote to be held hostage by the DNC and the very tired "lesser of evils arguments" I realized my last comment might be construed as a "Trump must be stopped at all costs" Clinton rationalization. It was not. Trump will be on the conscience of those who vote for him and those who have enabled him.

Ron Showalter , May 13, 2016 at 2:20 pm

Maybe we should look at what Trump recently said at AIPAC – y'know, that itsy bitsy little lobby that seems to strike fear into the hearts of all US politicians Trump included – to get a sense of his ME policy, shall we ?

snip

'In Spring 2004, at the height of violence in the Gaza Strip, I was the Grand Marshal of the 40th Salute to Israel Parade, the largest single gathering in support of the Jewish state."

"My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic – for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East."

"First, we will stand up to Iran's aggressive push to destabilize and dominate the region. Iran is a very big problem and will continue to be, but if I'm elected President, I know how to deal with trouble. Iran is a problem in Iraq, a problem in Syria, a problem in Lebanon, a problem in Yemen, and will be a very major problem for Saudi Arabia. Literally every day, Iran provides more and better weapons to their puppet states.

Hezbollah in Lebanon has received sophisticated anti-ship weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, and GPS systems on rockets. Now they're in Syria trying to establish another front against Israel from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights."

Just last week, American Taylor Allen Force, a West Point grad who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was murdered in the street by a knife-wielding Palestinian. You don't reward that behavior, you confront it!

It's not up the United Nations to impose a solution. The parties must negotiate a resolution themselves. The United States can be useful as a facilitator of negotiations, but no one should be telling Israel it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that don't even really know what's happening.

When I'm president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state.

Already, half the population of Palestine has been taken over by the Palestinian ISIS in Hamas, and the other half refuses to confront the first half, so it's a very difficult situation but when the United States stands with Israel, the chances of peace actually rise. That's what will happen when I'm president.

We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem – and we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel."

Yup, it's like he and Hillary are just night and day, huh?

I mean other than the fact that Hillary actually BACKS the Iran Deal but don't let that get in the way of a good "but Hillary" meeting.

The two candidates will be identical where it's most important – e.g. w/ Israel and the ME – just like all of the presidential candidates.

You would think the Obama administration may have taught us something about perceiving reality oh wait that's right, it really was Hillary and not poor Obama who's been doing all that killing over the last 8 years and the Donald's really a renegade "outsider" billionaire who's just scaring the pants off of the Establishment, right?

Wow. Just wow.

Obama Hope Junkies so desperate that they're shooting Trumpodil straight into their minds.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 2:24 pm

I'm confused. What does this have to do with the topic of the post? The YouTube has nothing to do with the deplorable Beltway consensus on Israel, of which Trump is a part.

Ron Showalter , May 13, 2016 at 2:40 pm

Why, I am glad you asked.

War Is Realizing the Israelizing of the World

snip

As US-driven wars plummet the Muslim world ever deeper into jihadi-ridden failed state chaos, events seem to be careening toward a tipping point. Eventually, the region will become so profuse a font of terrorists and refugees, that Western popular resistance to "boots on the ground" will be overwhelmed by terror and rage. Then, the US-led empire will finally have the public mandate it needs to thoroughly and permanently colonize the Greater Middle East.

It is easy to see how the Military Industrial Complex and crony energy industry would profit from such an outcome. But what about America's "best friend" in the region? How does Israel stand to benefit from being surrounded by such chaos?

Tel Aviv has long pursued a strategy of "divide and conquer": both directly, and indirectly through the tremendous influence of the Israel lobby and neocons over US foreign policy.

A famous article from the early 1980s by Israeli diplomat and journalist Oded Yinon is most explicit in this regard. The "Yinon Plan" calls for the "dissolution" of "the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula." Each country was to be made to "fall apart along sectarian and ethnic lines," after which each resulting fragment would be "hostile" to its neighbors." Yinon incredibly claimed that:

"This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run"

According to Yinon, this Balkanization should be realized by fomenting discord and war among the Arabs:

"Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon."

And another link:

The Unfolding of Yinon's "Zionist Plan for the Middle East": The Crisis in Iraq and the Centrality of the National Interest of Israel

And another:

Who is Israel's Biggest Enemy?

So, you can see that Trump has said the right things into the right ears – read: AIPAC – as far as anyone of import is concerned – read: not any of us – and so now he's free to say whatever else he thinks he needs to.

I mean, Sheldon Adelson endorsed him so he can't be THAT scary to Israel-first billionaires and their bed-buddies, right?

Ooops, I forgot he's an outsider that everyone's scared of. My bad. Hillary will be so much worse.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 7:31 pm

You may be glad I asked, but that doesn't mean you answered.

Chauncey Gardiner , May 13, 2016 at 2:21 pm

Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews has written an insightful article about the damage that has been caused by both the neocon ideologues' control of US foreign policy and the neoliberals' control of economic policy, their powerful political and propaganda apparatus, and what we can expect from the legacy political party candidates for the presidency, focusing on Clinton and her past positions regarding the Middle East.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/11/neocons-and-neolibs-how-dead-ideas-kill/

It is noteworthy that the dominance of failed neocon and neoliberal policies over the past few decades has coincided with consolidation and concentration of ownership of corporate media in very few hands. As with restoring the Glass-Steagall Act and breaking up the TBTFs, reinstating limits on media ownership and control is an important and necessary measure to breaking the influence these few individuals have had over national policy.

John , May 13, 2016 at 2:59 pm

I'm actually considering the possibility that Trump is to the left of Hillary. He appears to be on foreign policy, at least. What do you guys think?

Massinissa , May 13, 2016 at 7:01 pm

Being Left of Hillary is a really really really low bar. He probably is, but thats probably because Hillary is right wing. You know, like almost all American politicians from both parties. Trumps not left of Bernie (at least not yet or not right now: I expect hes going to swing left in the general to scoop up Bernie voters), and Bernies just an Eisenhower Republican, which is admittedly to the left of basically all the other politicians today.

Lambert Strether , May 13, 2016 at 7:55 pm

Quoting from memory, context foreign policy: "If our Presidents had gone to the beach every day of the year fifteen years ago, we would have been in much better shape." (Note this includes Bush.)

He's right, you know.

[Dec 18, 2017] Can The Deep State Be Cured

Notable quotes:
"... The "Obama Doctrine" a continuation of the previous false government doctrines in my lifetime, is less doctrine than the disease, as David Swanson points out . But in the article he critiques, the neoconservative warmongering global planning freak perspective (truly, we must recognize this view as freakish, sociopathic, death-cultish, control-obsessed, narcissist, take your pick or get a combo, it's all good). Disease, as a way of understanding the deep state action on the body politic, is abnormal. It can and should be cured. ..."
"... The deep state seems to have grown, strengthened and tightened its grip. Can a lack of real money restrain or starve it? I once thought so, and maybe I still do. But it doesn't use real money, but rather debt and creative financing to get that next new car, er, war and intervention and domestic spending program. Ultimately it's not sustainable, and just as unaffordable cars are junked, stripped, repossessed, and crunched up, so will go the way of the physical assets of the warfare–welfare state. ..."
"... Because inflated salaries , inflated stock prices and inflated ruling-class personalities are month to month, these should evaporate more quickly, over a debris field once known as some of richest counties in the United States. Can I imagine the shabbiest of trailer parks in the dismal swamp, where high rises and government basilicas and abbeys once stood? I'd certainly like to. But I'll settle for well-kept, privately owned house trailers, filled with people actually producing some small value for society, and minding their own business. ..."
"... Finally, what of those pinpricks of light, the honest assessments of the real death trail and consumption pit that the deep state has delivered? Well, it is growing and broadening. Wikileaks and Snowden are considered assets now to any and all competitors to the US deep state, from within and from abroad – the Pandora's box, assisted by technology, can't be closed now. The independent media has matured to the point of criticizing and debating itself/each other, as well as focusing harsh light on the establishment media. Instead of left and right mainstream media, we increasingly recognize state media, and delightedly observe its own struggle to survive in the face of a growing nervousness of the deep state it assists on command. ..."
"... Watch an old program like"Yes, Minister" to understand how it works. Politicians come and go, but the permanent state apparatchiks doesn't. ..."
"... The "deep state" programs, whether conceived and directed by Soros' handlers, or others, risks unintended consequences. The social division intended by BLM, for example could easily morph beyond the goals. The lack of law due to corruption is equally susceptible to a spontaneous reaction of "the mob," not under the control of the Tavistock handlers. There's an old saying on Wall St; pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. ..."
www.zerohedge.com

Submitted by Karen Kwiatkowski via LewRockwell.com,

So, after getting up late, groggy, and feeling overworked even before I started, I read this article . Just after, I had to feed a dozen cats and dogs, each dog in a separate room out of respect for their territorialism and aggressive desire to consume more than they should (hmm, where have I seen this before), and in the process, forgot where I put my coffee cup. Retracing steps, I finally find it and sit back down to my 19-inch window on the ugly (and perhaps remote) world of the state, and the endless pinpricks of the independent media on its vast overwhelmingly evil existence. I suspect I share this distractibility and daily estrangement from the actions of our government with most Americans .

We are newly bombing Libya and still messing with the Middle East? I thought that the wars the deep state wanted and started were now limited and constrained! What happened to lack of funds, lack of popular support, public transparency that revealed the stupidity and abject failure of these wars?

Deep state. Something systemic, difficult to detect, hard to remove, hidden. It is a spirit as much as nerves and organ. How do your starve it, excise it, or just make it go away? We want to know. I think this explains the popularity of infotainment about haunted houses, ghosts and alien beings among us. They live and we are curious and scared.

The "Obama Doctrine" a continuation of the previous false government doctrines in my lifetime, is less doctrine than the disease, as David Swanson points out . But in the article he critiques, the neoconservative warmongering global planning freak perspective (truly, we must recognize this view as freakish, sociopathic, death-cultish, control-obsessed, narcissist, take your pick or get a combo, it's all good). Disease, as a way of understanding the deep state action on the body politic, is abnormal. It can and should be cured.

My summary of the long Jeffrey Goldberg piece is basically that Obama has become more fatalistic (did he mean to say fatal?) since he won that Nobel Peace Prize back in 2009 . By the way, the "Nobel prize" article contains this gem, sure to get a chuckle:

"Obama's drone program is regularly criticized for a lack of transparency and accountability, especially considering incomplete intelligence means officials are often unsure about who will die. "

[M]ost individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names," Micah Zenko, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations told the New York Times."

This is about all the fun I can handle in one day. But back to what I was trying to say.

The deep state seems to have grown, strengthened and tightened its grip. Can a lack of real money restrain or starve it? I once thought so, and maybe I still do. But it doesn't use real money, but rather debt and creative financing to get that next new car, er, war and intervention and domestic spending program. Ultimately it's not sustainable, and just as unaffordable cars are junked, stripped, repossessed, and crunched up, so will go the way of the physical assets of the warfare–welfare state.

Because inflated salaries , inflated stock prices and inflated ruling-class personalities are month to month, these should evaporate more quickly, over a debris field once known as some of richest counties in the United States. Can I imagine the shabbiest of trailer parks in the dismal swamp, where high rises and government basilicas and abbeys once stood? I'd certainly like to. But I'll settle for well-kept, privately owned house trailers, filled with people actually producing some small value for society, and minding their own business.

Can a lack of public support reduce the deep state, or impact it? Well, it would seem that this is a non-factor, except for the strange history we have had and are witnessing again today, with the odd successful popular and populist-leaning politician and their related movements. In my lifetime, only popular figures and their movements get assassinated mysteriously, with odd polka dot dresses, MKULTRA suggestions, threats against their family by their competitors (I'm thinking Perot, but one mustn't be limited to that case), and always with concordant pressures on the sociopolitical seams in the country, i.e riots and police/military activations. The bad dealings toward, and genuine fear of, Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party's wing of the deep state is matched or exceeded only by the genuine terror of Trump among the Republican deep state wing. This reaction to something or some person that so many in the country find engaging and appealing - an outsider who speaks to the growing political and economic dissatisfaction of a poorer, more indebted, and more regulated population – is heart-warming, to be sure. It is a sign that whether or not we do, the deep state thinks things might change. Thank you, Bernie and especially Donald, for revealing this much! And the "republicanization" of the Libertarian Party is also a bright indicator blinking out the potential of deep state movement and compromise in the pursuit of "stability."

Finally, what of those pinpricks of light, the honest assessments of the real death trail and consumption pit that the deep state has delivered? Well, it is growing and broadening. Wikileaks and Snowden are considered assets now to any and all competitors to the US deep state, from within and from abroad – the Pandora's box, assisted by technology, can't be closed now. The independent media has matured to the point of criticizing and debating itself/each other, as well as focusing harsh light on the establishment media. Instead of left and right mainstream media, we increasingly recognize state media, and delightedly observe its own struggle to survive in the face of a growing nervousness of the deep state it assists on command.

Maybe we will one day soon be able to debate how deep the deep state really is, or whether it was all just a dressed up, meth'ed up, and eff'ed up a sector of society that deserves a bit of jail time, some counseling, and a new start . Maybe some job training that goes beyond the printing of license plates. But given the destruction and mass murder committed daily in the name of this state, and the environmental disasters it has created around the world for the future generations, perhaps we will be no more merciful to these proprietors of the American empire as they have been to their victims. The ruling class deeply fears our judgment, and in this dynamic lies the cure.

Jim in MN Tallest Skil Aug 20, 2016 8:22 PM

I made a list of steps that could be taken to disrupt the Beast. It's all I can offer but I offer it freely.

https://www.scribd.com/document/67758041/List-of-Demands-October-6-2011

4:00 AM October 6, 2011

Kitchen Table, USA

LIST OF DEMANDS TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FROM FINANCIAL CATASTROPHE

I.CURB CORRUPTION AND EXCESSIVE POWER IN THE FINANCIAL ARMS OF THE US GOVERNMENT

A. FEDERAL RESERVE

1. Benjaman Bernanke to be removed as Chairman immediately

2. New York Federal Reserve Bank and all New York City offices of the Federal Reserve system will be closed for at least 3 years

3. Salaries will be reduced and capped at $150,000/year, adjusted for official inflation

4. Staffing count to be reduced to 1980 levels

5. Interest rate manipulation to be prohibited for at least five years

6. Balance sheet manipulation to be prohibited for at least five years

7. Financial asset purchases prohibited for at least five years

B. TREASURY DEPARTMENT

1. Timothy Geithner to be removed as Secretary immediately

2. All New York City offices of the Department will be closed for at least 3 years

3. Salaries will be reduced and capped at $150,000/year, adjusted for official inflation

4. Staffing count to be reduced to 1980 levels

5. Market manipulation/intervention to be prohibited for at least five years

7. Financial asset purchases prohibited for at least five years

II. END THE CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF GIANT BANKS AND PROTECT AMERICANS FROM FURTHER EXPOSURE TO THEIR COLLAPSE

A. END CORRUPT INFLUENCE

1. Lifetime ban on government employment for TARP recipient employees and corporate officers, specifically including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase

2. Ten year ban on government work for consulting firms, law firms, and individual consultants and lawyers who have accepted cash from these entities

3. All contacts by any method with federal agencies and employees prohibited for at least five years, with civil and criminal penalties for violation

B. PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FROM FURTHER HARM AT THE HANDS OF GIANT BANKS

1. No financial institution with assets of more than $10billion will receive federal assistance or any 'arm's-length' bailouts

2. TARP recipients are prohibited from purchasing other TARP recipient corporate units, or merging with other TARP recipients

3. No foreign interest shall be allowed to acquire any portion of TARP recipients in the US or abroad

III. PREVENT CORPORATE ACCOUNTING AND PENSION FUND ABUSES RELATED TO THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

A. CORPORATE ACCOUNTING

1. Immediately implement mark-to-market accounting rules which were improperly suspended, allowing six months for implementation.

2. Companies must reserve against impaired assets under mark-to-market rules

3. Any health or life insurance company with more than$100 million in assets must report on their holdings and risk factors, specifically including exposure to real estate, mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, and other exotic financial instruments. These reports will be to state insurance commissions and the federal government, and will also be made available to the public on the Internet.

B. PENSION FUNDS

1. All private and public pension funds must disclose their funding status and establish a plan to fully fund accounts under the assumption that net real returns across all asset classes remain at zero for at least ten years.

Winston Churchill -> Sam Clemons Aug 20, 2016 7:26 PM

Watch an old program like"Yes, Minister" to understand how it works. Politicians come and go, but the permanent state apparatchiks doesn't.

sinbad2 -> Winston Churchill Aug 20, 2016 7:58 PM

Sir Humphrey Appleby: You know what happens when politicians get into Number 10; they want to take their place on the world stage.

Sir Richard Wharton: People on stages are called actors. All they are required to do is look plausible, stay sober, and say the lines they're given in the right order.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Some of them try to make up their own lines.

Sir Richard Wharton: They don't last long.

rlouis Aug 20, 2016 7:47 PM

The "deep state" programs, whether conceived and directed by Soros' handlers, or others, risks unintended consequences. The social division intended by BLM, for example could easily morph beyond the goals. The lack of law due to corruption is equally susceptible to a spontaneous reaction of "the mob," not under the control of the Tavistock handlers. There's an old saying on Wall St; pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

The failed coup in Turkey is a significant indication of institutional weakness and also vulnerability. The inability to exercise force of will in Syria is another. The list of failures is getting too long.

[Dec 01, 2017] Elite needs a kill switch for their front men and women

marknesop.wordpress.com
Patient Observer , July 23, 2016 at 7:07 pm
An interesting article on John McCain. I disagree with the contention that McCain hid knowledge that many American POWs were left behind (undoubtedly some voluntarily choose to remain behind but not hundreds ). However, the article touched on some ideas that rang true:

Today when we consider the major countries of the world we see that in many cases the official leaders are also the leaders in actuality: Vladimir Putin calls the shots in Russia, Xi Jinping and his top Politburo colleagues do the same in China, and so forth. However, in America and in some other Western countries, this seems to be less and less the case, with top national figures merely being attractive front-men selected for their popular appeal and their political malleability, a development that may eventually have dire consequences for the nations they lead. As an extreme example, a drunken Boris Yeltsin freely allowed the looting of Russia's entire national wealth by the handful of oligarchs who pulled his strings, and the result was the total impoverishment of the Russian people and a demographic collapse almost unprecedented in modern peacetime history.

An obvious problem with installing puppet rulers is the risk that they will attempt to cut their strings, much like Putin soon outmaneuvered and exiled his oligarch patron Boris Berezovsky.

One means of minimizing such risk is to select puppets who are so deeply compromised that they can never break free, knowing that the political self-destruct charges buried deep within their pasts could easily be triggered if they sought independence. I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best career move for an ambitious young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the hard evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring his rapid political rise.

The gist is that elite need a kill switch on their front men (and women).

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-tokyo-rose-ran-for-president/

Cortes , July 24, 2016 at 11:16 am

Seems to be a series of pieces dealing with Vietnam POWs: the following linked item was interesting and provided a plausible explanation: that the US failed to pay up agreed on reparations…

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-relying-upon-maoist-professors-of-cultural-studies/

marknesop , July 24, 2016 at 12:29 pm
Remarkable and shocking. Wheels within wheels – this is the first time I have ever seen McCain's father connected with the infamous Board of Inquiry which cleared Israel in that state's attack on USS LIBERTY during Israel's seizure of the Golan Heights.
Cortes , July 25, 2016 at 9:08 am
Another stunning article in which the author makes reference to his recent acquisition of what he considers to be a reliably authentic audio file of POW McCain's broadcasts from captivity. Dynamite stuff. The conclusion regarding aspiring untenured historians is quite downbeat:

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-will-there-be-a-spotlight-sequel-to-the-killing-fields/

marknesop , July 25, 2016 at 10:40 am
Also remarkable; fantastic. It's hard to believe, and a testament to the boldness of Washington dog-and-pony shows, because this must have been well-known in insider circles in Washington – anything so damning which was not ruthlessly and professionally suppressed and simply never allowed to become part of a national discussion would surely have been stumbled upon before now. Land of the Cover-Up.

yalensis , July 25, 2016 at 3:40 pm

So, McCain was Hanoi Jack broadcasting from the Hanoi Hilton?

[Sep 30, 2016] Neoliberal media are just stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign

Notable quotes:
"... This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush." ..."
"... "Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign. And that's exactly what they're doing." ..."
"... Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point, or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished what he needed to accomplish. ..."
Sep 30, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
"I think it's entirely understandable that what Clinton will try to do is avoid criticizing Obama, because she desperately needs to recreate the Obama coalition on November the 8th," said Bolton. "She has gone out of her way, including in her 600-page-long tedious memoir about her days at the State Department, failing to distance herself from Obama."

This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush."

"Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign. And that's exactly what they're doing."

Bolton thought Trump "did what he needed to do" at the first presidential debate:

Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point, or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished what he needed to accomplish.

My critique of his performance would be that he missed opportunities. For example, you mentioned the foreign policy section, when they were asked about cyber warfare, and the dangers to the United States of hacking, and that gave Clinton a chance to give a little college-type lecture on Russia – by the way, omitting China, Iran, North Korea, and others – I thought at that point Trump could have talked about her email homebrew server for his entire time, and just drilled that point home.

But, you know, people at home aren't sitting there grading on that basis. I think the second debate, and the third debate, will be very different, and those – particularly in the media – who now confidently predict the outcome of the election, based on their take of this debate, are smoking something.

...Listen to the full audio of Bolton's interview above.

[Sep 30, 2016] Trump vs. the GOP Elite by Rep. John J. Duncan Jr.

Sep 26, 2016 | The American Conservative

... ... ...

2) Trade. With only 4 percent of the world's population, we buy almost one-fourth of the world's goods. Every country is champing at the bit to get into our markets. We have tremendous leverage on trade that we have not used. We do not want or need trade wars. But we should, in a friendly way, tell other countries-especially the Chinese-"We want to trade with you, but we can't sustain our huge trade deficit. You are going to have to find some things to buy from us, too."

3) Immigration. With 58 percent of the world's population-almost 4 billion people-having to get by on $4 or less a day, hundreds of millions would come here over the next few years if we simply opened our borders. Our entire infrastructure-our schools, jails, sewers, hospitals, roads-and our economy as a whole could not handle such a massive, rapid influx of people. The American people are the kindest, most generous people in the world, and we have already allowed many millions more than any other country to immigrate here, legally and illegally. But we must do a much better job enforcing our immigration laws.

4) Wars. I am now the only Republican left in Congress who voted against going to war in Iraq. For the first three of four years, it was the most unpopular vote I ever cast. I even once was disinvited to speak at a Baptist church. Now, it is probably the most popular vote I ever cast. The American people are tired of permanent, forever wars. While everyone wants a friendly relationship with Israel, I do not believe the American people will continue to support wars that primarily benefit Israel but cause thousands of young Americans to be killed or horribly maimed for life.

5) Jobs. Almost any member of Congress, if asked what is the greatest need in their district, would probably say more good jobs. Radical environmentalists have caused many thousands of U.S. businesses to go to other countries or close for good. We have ended up with the best-educated waiters and waitresses in the world. When I was in Vietnam a few years ago, I was told if you wanted to start a business there, you just went out and did it. The place was booming. It is now apparently easier to start a small business in some former communist countries than in the supposedly free-enterprise U.S.

... ... ...

Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. represents the 2nd district of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.represents the 2nd district of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

[Sep 30, 2016] Myth that neoliberal globalization reduces poverty

Notable quotes:
"... "Over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40 percent of humanity to under 10 percent." This is roughly true, according to World Bank data, but the story of how it happened goes against his whole speech - which argues that this progress is a result of the "globalization" that Washington leads and supports wherever it has influence in the developing world. In fact, the majority of the reduction in extreme poverty during this period (more than 1.1 billion people worldwide) took place in China. But during this period China was really the counterexample to the "principles of open markets" with which Obama insists "we must go forward, not backward." ..."
"... If we go back a bit more and look at 1981–2012, China accounted for even more of the reduction of the world population in extreme poverty, about 70 percent. This would indicate that other parts of the developing world increased their economic and social progress during the 21st century, relative to China, and indeed many developing countries did (as compared to the last two decades of the 20th century). But China played an increasingly large role in reducing poverty in other countries during this period. ..."
"... It was so successful in its economic growth and development - by far the fastest in world history - that it became the largest economy in the world, and pulled up many developing countries through its imports. Chinese imports went from a negligible 0.1 percent of other developing countries' exports to 3 percent, from 1980–2010. China also provided hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, loans, and aid to low- and middle-income countries in the 21st century. (In the last few years, Chinese growth has slowed, along with that of most countries, and that has contributed - although perhaps not as much as Europe has - to the global slowdown since 2011.) ..."
"... the "principles of open markets" that Obama refers to is really code for "policies that Washington supports." ..."
"... In his defense of a world economic order ruled by Washington and its rich country allies, President Obama also asserted that "we have made international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund more representative." But that is a gross exaggeration: the most recent reform of IMF voting shares left the US with an unchanged 16.7 percent share, enough to veto many important decisions (that require an 85 percent majority) by itself; and it left Washington and its traditional rich country allies with a solid majority of more than 60 percent of votes. Of course, it is the developing countries, especially poorer ones, that are most subject to IMF decisions. But the IMF is - by a gentleman's agreement among the rich country governments - headed by a European, and the World Bank by an American. It should not be surprising if these institutions do not look out for the interests of the developing world. ..."
Sep 30, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne : September 30, 2016 at 04:55 AM

http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/president-obama-inadvertently-gives-high-praise-to-china-in-un-speech

September 29, 2016

President Obama Inadvertently Gives High Praise to China in UN Speech
By Mark Weisbrot

President Obama's speech at the UN last week was mostly a defense of the world's economic and political status quo, especially that part of it that is led or held in place by the US government and the global institutions that Washington controls or dominates. In doing so, he said some things that were exaggerated or wrong, or somewhat misleading. It is worth looking at some of the things that media reports on this speech missed.

"Over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40 percent of humanity to under 10 percent." This is roughly true, according to World Bank data, but the story of how it happened goes against his whole speech - which argues that this progress is a result of the "globalization" that Washington leads and supports wherever it has influence in the developing world. In fact, the majority of the reduction in extreme poverty during this period (more than 1.1 billion people worldwide) took place in China. But during this period China was really the counterexample to the "principles of open markets" with which Obama insists "we must go forward, not backward."

China's historically unprecedented economic growth in the past 25 years (or 35 years, or even more) was accomplished with state-owned enterprises and banks dominating the economy. State control over investment, technology transfer, and foreign exchange was vastly greater than in other developing countries. China rejected the neoliberal policies of an "independent central bank," indiscriminate opening to international trade and investment, and rapid privatization of state companies. Instead, it chose a gradual transition, over 35 years, from an overwhelmingly planned economy to a mixed economy in which the state still plays a leading role. Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016 (as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the economy.

If we go back a bit more and look at 1981–2012, China accounted for even more of the reduction of the world population in extreme poverty, about 70 percent. This would indicate that other parts of the developing world increased their economic and social progress during the 21st century, relative to China, and indeed many developing countries did (as compared to the last two decades of the 20th century). But China played an increasingly large role in reducing poverty in other countries during this period.

It was so successful in its economic growth and development - by far the fastest in world history - that it became the largest economy in the world, and pulled up many developing countries through its imports. Chinese imports went from a negligible 0.1 percent of other developing countries' exports to 3 percent, from 1980–2010. China also provided hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, loans, and aid to low- and middle-income countries in the 21st century. (In the last few years, Chinese growth has slowed, along with that of most countries, and that has contributed - although perhaps not as much as Europe has - to the global slowdown since 2011.)

Of course, the "principles of open markets" that Obama refers to is really code for "policies that Washington supports." Some of them are the exact opposite of "open markets," such as the lengthening and strengthening of patent and copyright protection included in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. President Obama also made a plug for the TPP in his speech, asserting that "we've worked to reach trade agreements that raise labor standards and raise environmental standards, as we've done with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so that the benefits [of globalization] are more broadly shared." But the labor and environmental standards in the TPP, as with those in previous US-led commercial agreements, are not enforceable; whereas if a government approves laws or regulations that infringe on the future profit potential of a multinational corporation - even if such laws or regulations are to protect public health or safety - that government can be hit with billions of dollars in fines. And they must pay these fines, or be subject to trade sanctions.

In his defense of a world economic order ruled by Washington and its rich country allies, President Obama also asserted that "we have made international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund more representative." But that is a gross exaggeration: the most recent reform of IMF voting shares left the US with an unchanged 16.7 percent share, enough to veto many important decisions (that require an 85 percent majority) by itself; and it left Washington and its traditional rich country allies with a solid majority of more than 60 percent of votes. Of course, it is the developing countries, especially poorer ones, that are most subject to IMF decisions. But the IMF is - by a gentleman's agreement among the rich country governments - headed by a European, and the World Bank by an American. It should not be surprising if these institutions do not look out for the interests of the developing world.

"We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration," President Obama told the world at the UN General Assembly. "Or we can retreat into a world sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion."

But the rich country governments led by Washington are not offering the rest of the world any better model of cooperation and integration than the failed model they have been offering for the past 35 years. And that is a big part of the problem....

RGC -> anne... , Friday, September 30, 2016 at 06:57 AM

Excellent commentary by Mark Weisbrot.
anne -> RGC... , Friday, September 30, 2016 at 07:09 AM
Excellent commentary by Mark Weisbrot.

[ Really so. ]

anne -> anne... , Friday, September 30, 2016 at 09:23 AM
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/president-obama-inadvertently-gives-high-praise-to-china-in-un-speech

September 29, 2016

China's historically unprecedented economic growth in the past 25 years (or 35 years, or even more) was accomplished with state-owned enterprises and banks dominating the economy. State control over investment, technology transfer, and foreign exchange was vastly greater than in other developing countries. China rejected the neoliberal policies of an "independent central bank," indiscriminate opening to international trade and investment, and rapid privatization of state companies. Instead, it chose a gradual transition, over 35 years, from an overwhelmingly planned economy to a mixed economy in which the state still plays a leading role. Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016 (as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the economy....

-- Mark Weisbrot

anne -> anne... , Friday, September 30, 2016 at 10:04 AM
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/president-obama-inadvertently-gives-high-praise-to-china-in-un-speech

September 29, 2016

Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016 (as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the economy....

-- Mark Weisbrot


http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/10/14/yale-professors-offer-economic-prescriptions/

October 14, 2011

Yale Professors Offer Economic Prescriptions
By Brenda Cronin - Wall Street Journal

Richard C. Levin, president of Yale - and also a professor of economics - moderated the conversation among Professors Judith Chevalier, John Geanakoplos, William D. Nordhaus, Robert J. Shiller and Aleh Tsyvinski....

An early mistake during the recession, Mr. Levin said, was not targeting more stimulus funds to job creation. He contrasted America's meager pace of growth in gross domestic product in the past few years with China's often double-digit pace, noting that after the crisis hit, Washington allocated roughly 2% of GDP to job creation while Beijing directed 15% of GDP to that goal....

anne -> anne... , Friday, September 30, 2016 at 10:13 AM
Repeatedly there are warnings from Western economists that the Chinese economy is near collapse, nonetheless economic growth through the first 2 quarters this year is running at 6.7% and the third quarter looks about the same. The point is to ask and describe how after these last 39 remarkable years:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=7uKv

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, 1976-2015

(Percent change)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=7uKu

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, 1976-2015

(Indexed to 1976)

anne -> anne... , Friday, September 30, 2016 at 10:16 AM
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=7uKF

November 1, 2014

Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, 1976-2014

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=7uKE

November 1, 2014

Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, 1976-2014

(Indexed to 1976)

jonny bakho : , -1
Before the crash, complacent Democrats, ... tended to agree with them that the economy was largely self-correcting.

Who is a complacent Democrat? Obama ran as a fiscal conservative and appointed a GOP as his SecTreas. Geithner was a "banks need to be bailed out" and the economy self corrects. Geithner was not in favor of cram down or mortgage programs that would have bailed out the injured little folks.

Democrats like Romer and Summers were in favor a fiscal stimulus, but not enough of it. I expect to see the Clinton economic team include a lot more women and especially focus on economic policies that help working women and families.

I have always thought that a big reason for the Bush jobless recovery was his lack of true fiscal stimulus. Bush had tax cuts for the wealthy, but the latest from Summers shows why trickle down does not work.

Full employment may have been missing from the 1992 platform, but full employment was pursued aggressively by Bill Clinton. He got AG to agree to allow unemployment to drop to 4% in exchange for raising taxes and dropping the middle class tax cuts. Bill Clinton used fiscal policy to tax the economy and as a break so monetary policy could be accommodating.

He should include raising the MinWage. Maybe that has not changed but it is a lynchpin for putting money in the pockets of the working poor.

[Sep 30, 2016] Will the media ever stop the ridiculous charade of pretending that the path of globalization that we are on is somehow and natural and that it is the outcome of a "free" market?

Notable quotes:
"... Will the media ever stop the ridiculous charade of pretending that the path of globalization that we are on is somehow and natural and that it is the outcome of a "free" market? Are longer and stronger patent and copyright monopolies the results of a free market? ..."
"... The NYT should up its game in this respect. It had a good piece on the devastation to millions of working class people and their communities from the flood of imports of manufactured goods in the last decade, but then it turns to hand-wringing nonsense about how it was all a necessary part of globalization. Actually, none of it was a necessary part of a free trade. ..."
"... First, the huge trade deficits were the direct result of the decision of China and other developing countries to buy massive amounts of U.S. dollars to hold as reserves in this period. This raised the value of the dollar and made our goods and services less competitive internationally. This problem of a seriously over-valued dollar stems from the bungling of the East Asian bailout by the Clinton Treasury Department and the I.M.F. ..."
"... The second point is political leaders are constantly working to make patents and copyrights stronger and longer. This raises the price that ordinary workers have to pay for everything from drugs to computer games. The result is lower real wages for ordinary workers and higher incomes for the beneficiaries of these rents. It also slows economic growth since markets are not smart enough to distinguish between a 10,000 percent price increase due to a tariff and a 10,000 percent price increase due to a patent monopoly. (In other words, all the bad things that "free trade" economists say about tariffs also apply to patents and copyrights, except the impact is far larger in the later case.) ..."
Sep 30, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... September 30, 2016 at 05:30 PM

Dean Baker:

Why are none of the "free trade" members of Congress pushing to change the regulations that require doctors go through a U.S. residency program to be able to practice medicine in the United States? Obviously they are all protectionist Neanderthals.

Will the media ever stop the ridiculous charade of pretending that the path of globalization that we are on is somehow and natural and that it is the outcome of a "free" market? Are longer and stronger patent and copyright monopolies the results of a free market?

The NYT should up its game in this respect. It had a good piece on the devastation to millions of working class people and their communities from the flood of imports of manufactured goods in the last decade, but then it turns to hand-wringing nonsense about how it was all a necessary part of globalization. Actually, none of it was a necessary part of a free trade.

First, the huge trade deficits were the direct result of the decision of China and other developing countries to buy massive amounts of U.S. dollars to hold as reserves in this period. This raised the value of the dollar and made our goods and services less competitive internationally. This problem of a seriously over-valued dollar stems from the bungling of the East Asian bailout by the Clinton Treasury Department and the I.M.F.

If we had a more competent team in place, that didn't botch the workings of the international financial system, then we would have expected the dollar to drop as more imports entered the U.S. market. This would have moved the U.S. trade deficit toward balance and prevented the massive loss of manufacturing jobs we saw in the last decade.

The second point is political leaders are constantly working to make patents and copyrights stronger and longer. This raises the price that ordinary workers have to pay for everything from drugs to computer games. The result is lower real wages for ordinary workers and higher incomes for the beneficiaries of these rents. It also slows economic growth since markets are not smart enough to distinguish between a 10,000 percent price increase due to a tariff and a 10,000 percent price increase due to a patent monopoly. (In other words, all the bad things that "free trade" economists say about tariffs also apply to patents and copyrights, except the impact is far larger in the later case.)

Finally, the fact that trade has exposed manufacturing workers to international competition, but not doctors and lawyers, was a policy choice, not a natural development. There are enormous potential gains from allowing smart and ambitious young people in the developing world to come to the United States to work in the highly paid professions. We have not opened these doors because doctors and lawyers are far more powerful than autoworkers and textile workers. And, we rarely even hear the idea mentioned because doctors and lawyers have brothers and sisters who are reporters and economists.

Addendum:

Since some folks asked about the botched bailout from the East Asian financial crisis, the point is actually quite simple. Prior to 1997 developing countries were largely following the textbook model, borrowing capital from the West to finance development. This meant running large trade deficits. This reversed following the crisis as the conventional view in the developing world was that you needed massive amounts of reserves to avoid being in the situation of the East Asian countries and being forced to beg for help from the I.M.F. This led to the situation where developing countries, especially those in the region, began running very large trade surpluses, exporting capital to the United States. (I am quite sure China noticed how its fellow East Asian countries were being treated in 1997.)

[Sep 30, 2016] By the standards of the Nuremberg trials, then, the aggressive, unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 were unquestionably war crimes

Notable quotes:
"... By the standards of the Nuremberg trials, then, the aggressive, unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 were unquestionably war crimes. A just government would have put Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, and so forth on trial. One might note that the Nuremberg trials, the crime was taken seriously enough to earn condemnation to death by hanging. ..."
Sep 30, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

Anarcissie 09.29.16 at 10:51 pm 158

Howard Frant 09.29.16 at 4:21 am @ 130:
'… She is somewhat interventionist militarily. Of course, people aren't content just to say that, they have to say that she is a "war criminal" (sorry, could I have some specifics on this?)….'

I was giving this a rest, but since you ask, it is my duty to comply with your request.

First, we need to determine what a war criminal is. I go by the standards of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, in whose charter we read (Article 6):

The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:
(a) CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing….

I think this is a pretty good definition of a war crime, although if you disagree I will be glad to argue in its favor.

By the standards of the Nuremberg trials, then, the aggressive, unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 were unquestionably war crimes. A just government would have put Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, and so forth on trial. One might note that the Nuremberg trials, the crime was taken seriously enough to earn condemnation to death by hanging.

Clinton's connection to this crime was, of course, at least her vote in 2002 to enable it, which made her an accomplice. Her subsequent excuse was 'bad intelligence', but given her position as a US senator, her connections, her powers, her fame, and her undoubted wits, it is almost impossible to believe that she believed Bush's pack of lies. It seems much more likely that her calculus was as follows: 'If the war goes "badly", it'll be on Bush. If it goes "well", we Democrats will have been in on it. Win-win.' However, one must concede that if she were brought to trial, she might be able to plead monumental ignorance and incompetence. Of course there will be no such trial, so everyone confronted by the question must answer it for her- or himself with whatever means may be at hand. To me the evidence seems pretty conclusive.

Anarcissie 09.30.16 at 2:04 pm

Layman 09.30.16 at 1:20 pm @ 197 -
If the war was a criminal act, then voting for the war, by making the voter an accomplice, was also a criminal act. Believable ignorance, incompetence, or other personal defects might mitigate, but would not exonerate.

I asked about 'going on with this' because at least one participant seemed to feel that the cataloguing of Clinton's flaws had become superfluous. Some people might regard war criminality as a flaw, so perhaps we are offending as we persist.

Layman 09.30.16 at 2:54 pm

Anarcissie: "If the war was a criminal act, then voting for the war, by making the voter an accomplice, was also a criminal act."

Look, I personally believe it was wrong to vote for the authorization, and that it was a political calculation, but I wonder if you've actually read the resolution? It is consistent with the claim that some people make, that they assumed that Bush would act in concert with the UN, because the resolution says he would act in concert with themUN. The resolution was passed in October, the Bush admin went to the UN in November, but failed to get a clear authorization from the UN for the war.

You brought up Nuremberg. How many people were prosecuted at Nuremberg for the crime of having voted for the Enabling Law of 1933, which granted dictatorial powers and led directly to everything that followed. None, right? Doesn't that undermine your case?

Anarcissie 09.30.16 at 1:07 pm

Layman 09.30.16 at 2:38 am @ 169:
'"Because a proper trial can't be held, people must make up their minds individually."
Which is another way of saying that it is not a fact, and that you acknowledge it isn't a fact, and that rather undermines your entire response.'

I think you are mistaken. If you believe in any sort of objective universe, then there are facts which are hidden - in fact, given our lack of omniscience, most of them. Nevertheless we must proceed in the world in some way, so we - some of us, anyway - try to establish an idea of the facts through the best evidence available, rational procedures, intuition, and so on. Some people believe that the question of whether Clinton is a war criminal is important. There is a reasonable argument in favor of the proposition, which Howard Frant wanted to know, or pretended to want to know. I have given it.

Do you really want to go on with this? It does not make your favored candidate look good, and in any case, most of the people reading and writing here evidently don't really care that much one way or the other.

[Sep 29, 2016] Ann Coulter How to Avoid Immigration, Terrorism and Health Care for 90 Minutes - Breitbart

Notable quotes:
"... Ha ha! We prevented Trump from talking about issues that matter to the American people! ..."
www.breitbart.com

Hillary supporters, or "the media," had reason to be happy: She looked healthy! She probably could have kept reciting her snarky little talking points for another hour.

In fact, it was the best I've ever seen Hillary. She avoided that honking thing she does, smiled a lot - a little too much, actually (maybe ease up on the pep pills next time) - and, as the entire media has gleefully reported, she managed to "bait" Trump.

... ... ...

Hillary - with assists from the moderator - "baited" Trump on how rich he is, the loan from his father, a lawsuit in 1972, the birther claims, who he said what to about the Iraq War from 2001 to 2003, and so on.

... ... ...

For the media, their gal was winning whenever precious minutes of a 90-minute debate were spent rehashing allegations about Trump. Ha ha! We prevented Trump from talking about issues that matter to the American people! That was scored as a "win."

[Sep 29, 2016] If you're a geopolitical rival of the United States, Trump is a delight.

Sep 29, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs -> pgl... September 29, 2016 at 06:49 AM Last Night, Donald Trump Showed Why
He's Dangerous http://bit.ly/2czfGEM
Nat'l Review - David French - September 27

... in foreign policy, the modern American president has become a virtual monarch. He or she can launch military actions without congressional approval (just ask Presidents Clinton and Obama), reach agreements with foreign nations, and establish or rescind diplomatic relations. The Constitution is supposed to check the power of the president to declare war or to enter treaties, but presidents have been shedding those restraints for generations. The president holds the power of war and peace in his or her hands, and the entire world - including our enemies - pays attention to the president's every word and deed.

If you're a geopolitical rival of the United States, Trump is a delight. He's America's leading Putin apologist, wasting several agonizing turns in the debate defending Russia from the charge of meddling in U.S. elections and bizarrely wondering if a "400-pound" man "sitting on their bed" hacked Democratic National Committee e-mails. He said he hasn't "given lots of thought to NATO" and then went ahead and proved the truth of that statement by fundamentally misunderstanding the alliance. He treats it as a glorified protection racket whereby NATO countries allegedly pay us to defend Europe and they're not paying what they owe. He even doubled down on his claim - an incredibly bizarre claim given Russia's military resurgence - that NATO "could be obsolete." ... Reply Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 06:49 AM pgl -> Fred C. Dobbs... , Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 07:05 AM

I agree Gary Johnson is not ready to be commander in chief but he is far more ready than Trump. A low bar.
likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
Why you are reproducing neocon garbage in this blog ?

"He's America's leading Putin apologist"

That's pretty idiotic statement, even taking into account the abhorrent level of Russophobia of the US elite for whom Russophobia by-and-large replaced anti-Semitism. .

Anybody who blabber such things (and that includes Ms. Goldman Sachs) should not be allowed to approach closer then 10 miles to Washington, DC, to say nothing about holding any elected government position.

[Sep 28, 2016] The debate was very scripted, organised, funelled, etc. Much much more so than the public realises, by the promoters (network), the PTB, etc. Viperous bitter discussions take place about what can or cannot be mentioned

Notable quotes:
"... HRC, the PTB, deep state, neo-lib-cons, still think they can 'win' by using these kinds of blatant domineering tactics. ..."
"... I was surprised, while watching the debate, at how subdued it all was. The subject matter was clearly circumscribed by previous agreement. The public can never escape the scripted product they receive; and another way of saying this, is that the agreed-upon lies, always make up the bulk of the debate. ..."
"... The narrative is sanitized to an important degree, and just shows the effect of suffocating control. Neither person won the debate after all, for the oppressively scripted event was only meant to impress the public with the idea that the race is still a close one. And who, after all, knows what will happen. ..."
"... To anyone awake and questioning the legitimacy of the 'arrangements' made for the election, especially the 'newborn' skeptics who abound at this point, this whole 'show' is just confirmation of their worst fears. ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | www.moonofalabama.org

Noirette

A last point about the debate. They are very scripted, organised, funelled, etc. Much much more so than the public realises, by the promoters (network), the PTB, etc. Viperous bitter discussions take place about what can or cannot be mentioned. (I presume as that is the case in other countries besides the US.) Trump tweeted he 'held back' because he did not want to embarass HRC, but imho he was muzzled in part by the ''deals' as the show itself illustrated, softball to HRC and interrupting DT etc. Imho HRC was given the questions beforehand, DT not (but who knows?) and basically everything was organised beforehand to put him at a disadvantage.

HRC, the PTB, deep state, neo-lib-cons, still think they can 'win' by using these kinds of blatant domineering tactics. The point has been made by many: all these standard coercitive controlling moves can now backfire badly, they only serve to show up that the Establishment creeps use illegit. actions, and in any case Trump supporters won't be moved an inch, he could give out a recipe for Texas BBQ (as one pol I saw did but for rabbit, see previous posts), or flat out ask the moderator, well IDK, what do you think? and that would be peachy..

Trump followed the no. 1 rule (campaign for myself not against the other), as he was surely advised to do. Various excuses, rationalisations are put forward for it: he wanted to appeal to the conventional Repub base, appear as a legit candidate to ppl who had never seen him 'live' before, he is holding back for the next debates, etc. Still, his performance was not tops, in the sense of a maverick breaking the mold, he fell down, was a disapointment. He was shown up to be low man on the pole, constrained by negotiations which he could not dominate, rules which he could not transgress. Of course many DT supporters and possible new ones perceived the manipulations quite clearly, and were thus on his side, so a mixed bag. (It's all optics so i wrote nothing about the real issues.)

Copeland | Sep 28, 2016 4:35:03 PM | 95

I agree with Noirette @ 94

I was surprised, while watching the debate, at how subdued it all was. The subject matter was clearly circumscribed by previous agreement. The public can never escape the scripted product they receive; and another way of saying this, is that the agreed-upon lies, always make up the bulk of the debate.

The narrative is sanitized to an important degree, and just shows the effect of suffocating control. Neither person won the debate after all, for the oppressively scripted event was only meant to impress the public with the idea that the race is still a close one. And who, after all, knows what will happen.

jfl | Sep 28, 2016 7:01:02 PM | 96
@94 n, @95 c

Bruce Dixon recounts his experience outside the debate itself, Hundreds of Cops Divert and Foil Thousands of Protesters Outside NY Presidential Debate

While inside the debate moderator Lester Holt failed to ask questions about joblessness, medical care, student loans, police murder or mass incarceration, New York police outside the debate showed the world how to suppress free speech with a soft hand, diverting more than two thousand protesters into "free speech zones" long lines and checkpoints and spaces artfully designed to prevent groups from concentrating in one place or finding each other.
And Glen Ford points up its obvious, mobbed-up circumstances The Great Debate That Never Was on the inside
If the Green Party's Jill Stein had been allowed in this week's presidential debate, it would have transformed the discussion and altered the race. That's why Democrats and Republicans kept it a duopoly-only affair. "The only circumstances in which either Trump or Clinton can muster a minimally compelling argument, is against each other."
To anyone awake and questioning the legitimacy of the 'arrangements' made for the election, especially the 'newborn' skeptics who abound at this point, this whole 'show' is just confirmation of their worst fears.

The Powers That Are can't do anything right any longer. Everything they do is wrong, and is immediately apparent as wrong, on the big screen and booming through the big megaphone. They'd do better just to lay off but, like all the extras brought on to push Xmas after Thanksgiving, there are just too many of them wound-up and let loose, stepping and slipping from one pile of dog-doo to another, as they tear down the streets of NYC and Hollywood.

I think there's a very good chance that this is the year the extravaganza implodes.

[Sep 28, 2016] Why Donald Trump is winning

Notable quotes:
"... Both were highly disciplined, one being a billionaire who has made it mostly on his own and the other having survived in public life for at least 45 years with no jail time. ..."
"... Hillary's response was that Donald had used bad language in public, lacked the proper "temperament" to be president, and favored the rich whom she would hit with higher taxes to pay for her giveaways. That last line about the rich is a bit much given the fact that Hillary is the creature of Wall Street, Hollywood, and large donations. Whereas Donald relies on mostly modest donations. ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | www.washingtontimes.com

After Hillary's coughing spells, after her wobbly display at the Sept. 11 ceremony in New York City (she almost fell face forward on the running board of her van), after her admission to pneumonia and all the rumors that admission gave rise to, you had expected something highly dramatic. Perhaps the cough would return. Perhaps she might pass out under Donald Trump 's relentless barbs, possibly to be wheeled out on a gurney. Or perhaps you thought Donald might explode or go into a wild rant. Well, it did not happen. Both debaters pretty much played to form. Both were highly disciplined, one being a billionaire who has made it mostly on his own and the other having survived in public life for at least 45 years with no jail time.

... Donald had things under control. As he has done for weeks he was talking directly to the American public through the awkward stage prop of Hillary. He would start up the economy from its measly growth rate of barely 2 percent. He would get Americans working again. He would tear up trade agreements that favor crony capitalists and foreign governments. He would prevent companies from leaving America unscathed. Hillary had been a part of this system for decades. She was a standpatter and defender of the status quo. She had revealed bad judgment.

Hillary's response was that Donald had used bad language in public, lacked the proper "temperament" to be president, and favored the rich whom she would hit with higher taxes to pay for her giveaways. That last line about the rich is a bit much given the fact that Hillary is the creature of Wall Street, Hollywood, and large donations. Whereas Donald relies on mostly modest donations. Oh, yes, and her needling him on his "temperament" - who was the last presidential candidate to be attacked for his temperament? Does the name Ronald Reagan come to mind?

... ... ...

Perhaps Hillary did not notice it because Donald talks like an ordinary American rather than a standard-issue politician, but he was talking to America and she was talking to official Washington. Official Washington claimed he "missed opportunities." He could have done more with the Wall, Obamacare in free-fall, immigration and immigrant criminals, terrorism and Benghazi. He should have done more with her errant emails, the Clinton Foundation, her mishandling of classified documents. He could have cited her lies to Congress, the FBI and how FBI Director James Comey has contradicted her on her lies.

[Sep 28, 2016] James Comey, FBI director, rejects calls to reopen Clinton email case

Notable quotes:
"... He said he wasn't aware one of Mrs. Clinton 's tech staffers called the deletion of her emails a "coverup operation," but said none of the other information made public about grants of immunity or efforts to delete the messages has changed his mind. ..."
"... Mr. Comey also said he couldn't remember another instance where the subject of an investigation - Mrs. Clinton 's former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, sat in on the FBI 's interview with another subject, in this case Mrs. Clinton . ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | www.washingtontimes.com
He said he wasn't aware one of Mrs. Clinton 's tech staffers called the deletion of her emails a "coverup operation," but said none of the other information made public about grants of immunity or efforts to delete the messages has changed his mind.

Mr. Comey also said he couldn't remember another instance where the subject of an investigation - Mrs. Clinton 's former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, sat in on the FBI 's interview with another subject, in this case Mrs. Clinton .

[Sep 28, 2016] fairleft

Notable quotes:
"... The neoliberalist denial that anything was wrong with their economic model before or after 2008 could well create the perfect storm for chaos with either result ..."
"... Trump was Trump, Hillary was Hillary, but the real Trump is a New York blowhard 'type' most Americans are very familiar with, a bit annoyed by, but definitely not 'scared' of. That's a very tough sale Hillary the mainstream media has for itself. On the other hand Hillary was Hillary. Same old same old Washington insider politician yada yada that most people are tired of, especially in these endless hard economic times. 'Cancel that show' is the natural reaction, as Demian says. ..."
"... Who's Scarier: This has to be Clinton. Of course we know both will be obedient to the deep state, the militarist and financial elites, Israel, and so on. But look at the difference between Obama and Clinton. Obama sensibly held back from full on rape of Syria, he's been non-belligerent toward Iran. ..."
"... So there are different grades of Neocon. Clinton would be the full on "we lied, we lied, he died" sort. My guess is that Trump, a know-nothing feeling his way, would be a less confident neocon and therefore more cautious, if not much more cautious, and would continue forward with the 'normal relations with Russia' concept he has made a big deal of. ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | twitter.com
| Sep 27, 2016 11:00:06 PM | 81
...The colluding media-commercial-complex getting properly rogered by one of the monsters it gave birth to. Poetic really.

The neoliberalist denial that anything was wrong with their economic model before or after 2008 could well create the perfect storm for chaos with either result .

Posted by: MadMax2 | Sep 27, 2016 8:26:25 PM | 79

The main emotion of any sane and well-informed leftist is disgust after watching 45 minutes of the debatoid, and that's how I felt.

Horserace Talk:

Demian's point at 49 is excellent: "But Trump did not come across as beyond the pale in this debate. Thus, he took away the narrative that the public needs to believe in order not to do what it would usually do – vote out the incumbent party when it is unhappy with the status quo."

Trump was Trump, Hillary was Hillary, but the real Trump is a New York blowhard 'type' most Americans are very familiar with, a bit annoyed by, but definitely not 'scared' of. That's a very tough sale Hillary the mainstream media has for itself. On the other hand Hillary was Hillary. Same old same old Washington insider politician yada yada that most people are tired of, especially in these endless hard economic times. 'Cancel that show' is the natural reaction, as Demian says.

Who's Scarier: This has to be Clinton. Of course we know both will be obedient to the deep state, the militarist and financial elites, Israel, and so on. But look at the difference between Obama and Clinton. Obama sensibly held back from full on rape of Syria, he's been non-belligerent toward Iran.

So there are different grades of Neocon. Clinton would be the full on "we lied, we lied, he died" sort. My guess is that Trump, a know-nothing feeling his way, would be a less confident neocon and therefore more cautious, if not much more cautious, and would continue forward with the 'normal relations with Russia' concept he has made a big deal of.

But hey, his 'cut the taxes for the rich' insanity is a pretty horrible deform from an already horrible status quo. Anyway, vote for Jill as a protest is my half-hearted advice. It's depressing and disgusting and we are helplessly watching it roll on.

/div>
nothing will change | Sep 28, 2016 1:27:22 AM | 83
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said American support for the entity would remain strong regardless of who is elected president in November.
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/netanyahu-us-presidential-vote-candidates-will-support-israel/

Unfortunately he is right, and he knows that Iran will be the next target, "regardless of who is elected president in November"

Eight yaars ago, Obama, "hope and change", the Nobel Prize... but Guantanamo is still open.

/div>
t
t
dahoit | Sep 28, 2016 9:03:20 AM | 89
The Hell Bitch was nothing more than an edition of the Enquirer, bringing up long ago attacks on Trump, that have absolutely nothing to do with policy or Americas future.
And her face was just too made up,with her false eyelashes fluttering behind a wall of pancake makeup,her eyes glittering with some demonic presence,as she lashed out like a furriner extolling all immigrants,weirdos and fat foreign beauty queens and not appealing one iota to US deplorables.
And yeah,both genuflected to Israel,but is there a more powerful influential force in America than the dual citizen traitors?A sad and terrible fact,but they own every media outlet,witnessed by the fact there is not one MSM outlet pro Trump,a never before scenario in our history.
And of course world leaders don't like Trump,as he will cut off the spigots and make them pay for their own defense,instead of US.
But only those prejudiced rufus and America haters fail to note that.

juliania | Sep 28, 2016 9:54:20 AM | 90
Forgive me if this is a repeat, but it wouldn't hurt if so, since so rarely does a third candidate get mentioned. Amy Goodman did the American public a great service by publishing the transcript of the debate, with Jill Stein's answers (had she been permitted to attend) within the transcript - you really, really all should read this:

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/27/expanding_the_debate_jill_stein_debates

ProPeace | Sep 28, 2016 9:54:38 AM | 91
So Hitlary is apparently alive and not in jail contrary to previous rumors.

Lame-scream media announced her win in the debate as 1-0 - does it mean the establishment is not behind Trump, who received some strange endorsements recently from former enemies like Ted Cruz?

What I consider interesting is that being that far in the game still any options seem to be opened:

1) Killary wins (trough rigged votes or claim of Russian hacking in favor of Trump)

2) Trump wins

3) Congress appoints the president because of tie in the electoral votes

4) Obama continues his presidency because of some "emergency": "Russian hackers" attacking the election systems, false flag massacre in the US, ME, Ukraine, "natural" disaster (is the constitution still suspended after 9/11 and COG in play? NDAA?)

5) Bernie Sanders joins the race as an independent because of new grave evidence against Hitlary

6) Hitlary withdraws "because of her sudden health problems" - Demockrats appoint Biden, Pence, Michelle Obama, ...?

7) Military organizes a coup against Obama

8) Security apparatus organizes a coup against Hitlary after her election

9) Deep state organizes a coup against Trump after his election (remember "business plot" against FDR headed by Prescott Bush and defused by general Butler?)

10) Third party wins because Trump and Clinton become unelectable

Anyway many signals indicate that we are to see an "October Surprise" for sure.

It seems that the plan is the keep people guessing until the very end.

The crucial question is - which people?

From The Hague | Sep 28, 2016 10:18:46 AM | 92
The Debate: Trump's Three Points for Peace

Better on nukes, better on entangling alliances, better on Russia

http://russia-insider.com/en/debate-trumps-three-points-peace/ri16701

Demian | Sep 28, 2016 2:15:47 PM | 93
Ted Rall (author of the book Snowden ):
The Thrilla at Hofstra: How Trump Won the Debate
Trump did great for a guy who has never run for political office before – and didn't cram for the debate. Hillary has debated at the presidential level so many times she could probably do it half of it in her sleep. If I go into the ring with heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury and manage to survive a round with all but one of my teeth, it's fair to say that I won. …

Maybe the herd is right. Maybe it's a simple matter of she did better, he did worse. But I keep thinking, debates are graded on a curve. She was supposed to kick his ass. Yet there he is, dead even in the polls with her.

[Sep 28, 2016] Occupy the DNC: A Bernie Delegate's account of the 2016 Democratic National Commercial

Sep 28, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Kim Kaufman September 28, 2016 at 2:23 pm

Occupy the DNC: A Bernie Delegate's account of the 2016 Democratic National Commercial

https://medium.com/@5cottBrown/occupy-the-dnc-a-bernie-delegates-account-of-the-2016-democratic-national-commercial-85406db8cac7#.3a53g0q5q

This is a very long read… and I haven't finished it yet but so far lots of good details.

[Sep 28, 2016] THE NEW COMMON GROUND BETWEEN POPULIST LEFT AND RIGHT

Sep 28, 2016 | baselinescenario.com

Annie | August 27, 2016 at 7:26 pm |

Well, "We The People" still have some time before the election to get the psycho-ops weapons we do not have – mental masturbators on behalf of our "populist" issues…

From Robert Reich:

THE NEW COMMON GROUND BETWEEN POPULIST LEFT AND RIGHT

The old debate goes something like this:

'You don't believe women have reproductive rights."

"You don't value human life."

Or this:

"You think everyone should own a gun."

"You think we're safer if only criminals have them."

Or this:

"You don't care about poor people."

"You think they're better off with handouts."

Or this:

"You want to cut taxes on the rich."

"You want to tax everyone to death."

But we're seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:

Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.

Both are against crony capitalism.

Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.

Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.

Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.

Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,

If we join together, we can make these things happen.

  1. publiustex | August 28, 2016 at 9:54 am | Hey Ray,

    Lots of words in your response, but I don't see where you identified the model candidate who meets your high standards. You just told us that HRC doesn't, which we already knew. Does no one meet your standards, or is there a reason you won't say who?

    Re "lesser of two evils"–if you don't like Trump or HRC, the election boils down to three choices:

    – you vote for the greater evil
    – you vote for someone who can't win, or you stay home, which is effectively a half vote for the greater evil
    – you vote for the lesser evil

    Not choosing is essentially half-ass choosing the greater evil.

  2. skunk | August 28, 2016 at 10:24 am | Pub, I don't think she has eight years left in her, she's about to croak on stage, limiting her ability to forget what happened yesterday so she or (another democrat) can carry the democratic mantra tomorrow. She has passed out, fallen, tripped like a Ford just not going down hill yet, had her intestines ripped out because of bad behavior, and this is just in public.
    Imagine how many blunders have occurred with her in private. She is a disaster just waiting to happen, a Nixon at a Kennedy debate. She hasn't held a press conference in almost 3/4 of a year, is trying to ride to the rescue of her own created problems under the guise of the Clinton foundation. 8 years, I want to see her survive the next eight weeks.
    Plus there is nothing left to choose from except 100% pure unadulterated, political evil.
  3. publiustex | August 28, 2016 at 11:10 am | Hahaha. You've mistaken her for Bill. He's the one on her left. She'll live to 90.

    Now, who's your ideal politician? We'll loosen the requirements. You can choose from life or literature. :-)

  4. skunk | August 28, 2016 at 11:56 am | I don't think so, I know her and Bill too well. She even got mad when I was going to send somebody over there to have Bill take the drug test. Like we really need politicians who are beholden to their drug dealers.
    As for ideal politician, I can't say we have ever had one beyond the founders, and life so is different today that the comparison is moot.
    Buddy Haley was on the right track, but since the wrong track is the majority it just goes to show how doomed politics really is.

    This country got outsmarted by the Germans and had to retaliate by out gunning them and never recognizing their grievances. Now that the tables have turned and we are the guilty ones, we turn to denial and war as the end of all solutions.
    Their is no political solution, hence the beating of the dead horse as it gets pitch black outside. And it's hard to fight the reaper coming up behind you with his surprise execution when you can no longer see where you are going.

  5. publiustex | August 28, 2016 at 12:50 pm | Which founder? Burr?
  6. skunk | August 28, 2016 at 1:23 pm | Haven't looked into it that closely. I first thought that the three 2 term succession administrations since the founding of the country was the greater consideration of the end of all, now that i've been proved wrong, I aint so sure what's goin on next.
  7. Ray LaPan-Love | August 28, 2016 at 6:26 pm | Pub,
    So, if only 25% of the eligible voters participate, as opposed to the usual 40something%, you believe that the additional non-voters are saying little or nothing?
    "Not choosing is essentially half-ass choosing the greater evil".

    But doesn't choosing the lesser of two evils simply perpetuate evil? Saying something like "yea, we know this is not really a democracy, the political parties do of course decide who we vote for, but ah shucks, it is fun to pretend, and yea, the system is obviously corrupt but my candidate promises that he/she will change that. And just because he/she takes money from bad people doesn't mean he/she'll do just like every other politician has done, always, my candidate will be different. To heck with Einstein's theory of insanity."

    So is it not conceivable that the lessor of two evil votes "is essentially half-ass choosing" to be duped over and over again? While a non-vote might say enough is enough?

    Anyway, you seem to represent living proof that the conditioning in regards to what a non-vote truly means is working quite well. The following being a solid example of that conditioning:

    "three choices:

    – you vote for the greater evil
    – you vote for someone who can't win, or you stay home, which is effectively a half vote for the greater evil
    – you vote for the lesser evil"

    But what if nobody voted other than a small number of political zombies, and of course the establishment?

  8. publiustex | August 28, 2016 at 7:19 pm | Ray,

    "Anyway, you seem to represent living proof that the conditioning in regards to what a non-vote truly means is working quite well. The following being a solid example of that conditioning"

    You know how self-righteous and condescending this is, right? And from what I've seen of your logic and the evidence you muster to support you're opinion, I see little reason for such arrogance other than possibly insecurity.

    If you can't name a single political leader from anywhere in time or space that meets your standards of righteousness, that says a lot. And I suspect I know what it says. You don't want to show your true colors, or you feel you can't back up your choice.

    Which is it?

  9. Ray LaPan-Love | August 28, 2016 at 8:44 pm | Wow, pub, you are even more of a zombie than I thought. I write ten times as many words on this board as you do, teeming with contentions that you could challenge, but you ignore nearly all of those opportunities to defend your champion of less evil only to keep coming back with some lame nonsense about who I might support.
    And by "condescending" do you mean like this:"Lots of words in your response, but I don't see where you identified the model candidate who meets your high standards".
    But of course telling me what we 'should' be talking about after suggesting that my "words" are not worthy of any effort on your part, is not just condescending but rudely so and evasive. As if the topic here is what you say it is, not HRC's questionable behavior, but instead this all important quest of yours to discover my "single political leader from anywhere in time or space". As if such folly matters in the actual time and space that we can do something about.
    And questioning my "true colors" as if suggest that I'm trolling or whatever. Should I now expect the name-calling and context tweaking to follow? Or must the moaning and chanting simply go on until election day.

    who is your dreammm can-di-da-te?", lessor of two evils, do you have an ideal can-di-date? you only have 3 choices, ya 'know. lessor of two evils. lessor of two evils. All leaders have flaws. not voting as I do is half-ass. wanna talk about the best candidate taken from all of history. lessor of two evils. don't be half-ass. lessor of two evils. I like standing in line, do you?

    But then too there is the big tell of big tells:
    "And from what I've seen of your logic and the evidence you muster to support you're opinion, I see little reason for such arrogance other than possibly insecurity".
    Do have any notion of how hypocritical and low-integrity it is to not provide 'any' support for such a claim? What logic! What evidence! What reason do you 'actually' see? Where be the 'why'? Did you flunk English all through school?

    I've written enough on this board that even the laziest blogger at the worst site could of found at least some sort of an example, or shred of evidence, to back up at least something. Crap like your comment just says "hey look, I don't know the first rule of sound analysis, or good writing in general, but I've analyzed you using low standards and I don't like you because you don't agree with me and that makes you insecure". Wow again.

  10. publiustex | August 28, 2016 at 10:43 pm | Ray,
    Sorry, man. the ratio of IQ to word count is too low to bear. Over and out.
  11. BRUCE E. WOYCH | August 29, 2016 at 1:46 pm | Closer to Homebase: "WHO CARES?"
    Department of Homeland Security Has Surprise for Bernie Supporters at DNC Lawsuit Hearing
    By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 29, 2016
    There are political issues not being covered by mainstream media http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/08/department-of-homeland-security-has-surprise-for-bernie-supporters-at-dnc-lawsuit-hearing/ …that have more to do with election questions concerning the DNC and its efforts to evade accountability for its conduct, along with certain too close for comfort insider support to keep things confused:
    (QUOTED)
    The lawsuit against the DNC is Wilding et al v DNC Services Corporation and Deborah 'Debbie' Wasserman Schultz. The case is being heard in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida. (Case Number 16-cv-61511-WJZ.) The Sanders supporters are being represented in the lawsuit by the following law firms: Beck & Lee Trial Lawyers of Miami; Cullin O'Brien Law, P.A. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Antonino G. Hernandez P.A. of Miami.
    (QUOTED):
    "the first hearing on August 23 in the Federal lawsuit that has been filed by Senator Bernie Sanders' supporters against the Democratic National Committee and its former Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The lawsuit, which currently has more than 100 plaintiffs and more than a thousand in the wings with retainer agreements, is charging the DNC with fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence."

    MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAILED TO COVER IT.
    Regardless of the voting; the exposure of corrupting political practice must be considered equal to the election voting itself.

  12. skunk | August 29, 2016 at 2:26 pm | Somebody get the 1984 air controllers on the phone, we're runnin on empty.
  13. thoughtful person | August 29, 2016 at 9:27 pm | "Some progressives seem to prefer purity over progress. This puts a millstone around the necks of pragmatic progressives, like HRC, who are warriors and make the compromises necessary to gain and then exercise power for progressive ends"

    The ends justify the means right? Barf!!!

  14. publiustex | August 29, 2016 at 11:02 pm | Person, yes. Thoughtful, no.
  15. Annie | August 31, 2016 at 8:50 pm | Donations and ideas….

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/video-bill-clinton-rebuild-detroit-with-syrian-refugees.html

  16. Bob Snodgrass | September 1, 2016 at 1:19 pm | Wow, I found your article OK although too much in the all pure or all evil genre. We can't deal with this kind of problem in isolation from the rest of our culture and government, any more than we can impose a nationally funded Medicare for all without changing our NASCAR, celebrity/millionaire worshipping, racialist- tribalist (not the same as racist which has lost most of its meaning, closer to Barry Goldwater's viewpoint) controlling central core. That's a tall order, not even Bernie has the answer although reducing financialization & imposing a security transaction tax would be a start. If we somehow snuck in Medicare for all or an improved and expanded Obamacare, the controlling central core which includes the Koch brothers, would ensure that it failed because of their stranglehold on Washington and federal + state budgets.

    Turing to the comments, there are many that make me cringe. This is a harmful side of the Internet, reading comments makes me feel that Armageddon is nigh. It is not in reality.

[Sep 28, 2016] Battling Apple and the Giants naked capitalism

Notable quotes:
"... Reuters reports that an investigation conducted by it in 2013 found that around three-fourths of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies use practices that are similar to Apple's to avoid paying tax. So Verstager has taken on not just one giant, but the worlds corporate elite. She should not lose. But even if she does this time, this is a battle well begun. ..."
"... Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and from the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic conditions ..."
"... Those who support globalisation support this power disparity. ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
The case of Apple's Irish operations is an extreme example of such tax avoidance accounting. It relates to two Apple subsidiaries Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe. Apple Inc US has given the rights to Apple Sales International (ASI) to use its "intellectual property" to sell and manufacture its products outside of North and South America, in return for which Apple Inc of the US receives payments of more than $2 billion per year. The consequence of this arrangement is that any Apple product sold outside the Americas is implicitly first bought by ASI, Ireland from different manufacturers across the globe and sold along with the intellectual property to buyers everywhere except the Americas. So all such sales are by ASI and all profits from those sales are recorded in Ireland. Stage one is complete: incomes earned from sales in different jurisdictions outside the Americas (including India) accrue in Ireland, where tax laws are investor-friendly. What is important here that this was not a straight forward case of exercising the "transfer pricing" weapon. The profits recorded in Ireland were large because the payment made to Apple Inc in the US for the right to use intellectual property was a fraction of the net earnings of ASI.

Does this imply that Apple would pay taxes on these profits in Ireland, however high or low the rate may be? The Commission found it did not. In two rather curious rulings first made in 1991 and then reiterated in 2007 the Irish tax authority allowed ASI to split it profits into two parts: one accruing to the Irish branch of Apple and another to its "head office". That "head office" existed purely on paper, with no formal location, actual offices, employees or activities. Interestingly, this made-of-nothing head office got a lion's share of the profits that accrued to ASI, with only a small fraction going to the Irish branch office. According to Verstager's Statement: "In 2011, Apple Sales International made profits of 16 billion euros. Less than 50 million euros were allocated to the Irish branch. All the rest was allocated to the 'head office', where they remained untaxed." As a result, across time, Apple paid very little by way of taxes to the Irish government. The effective tax rate on its aggregate profits was short of 1 per cent. The Commissioner saw this as illegal under the European Commission's "state aid rules", and as amounting to aid that harms competition, since it diverts investment away from other members who are unwilling to offer such special deals to companies.

In the books, however, taxes due on the "head office" profits of Apple are reportedly treated as including a component of deferred taxes. The claim is that these profits will finally have to be repatriated to the US parent, where they would be taxed as per US tax law. But it is well known that US transnationals hold large volumes of surplus funds abroad to avoid US taxation and the evidence is they take very little of it back to the home country. In fact, using the plea that it has "permanent establishment" in Ireland and, therefore, is liable to be taxed there, and benefiting from the special deal the Irish government has offered it, Apple has accumulated large surpluses. A study by two non-profit groups published in 2015 has argued that Apple is holding as much as $181 billion of accumulated profits outside the US, a record among US companies. Moreover, The Washington Post reports that Apple's Chief Executive Tim Cook told its columnist Jena McGregor, "that the company won't bring its international cash stockpile back to the United States to invest here until there's a 'fair rate' for corporate taxation in America."

This has created a peculiar situation where the US is expressing concern about the EC decision not because it disputes the conclusion about tax avoidance, but because it sees the tax revenues as due to it rather than to Ireland or any other EU country. US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew criticised the ruling saying, "I have been concerned that it reflected an attempt to reach into the U.S. tax base to tax income that ought to be taxed in the United States." In Europe on the other hand, the French Finance Minister and the German Economy Minister, among others, have come out in support of Verstager, recognizing the implication this has for their own tax revenues. Governments other than in Ireland are not with Apple, even if not always for reasons advanced by the EC.

... ... ...

Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and from the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic conditions. The costs of garnering that difference are, therefore, often missed. Reuters reports that an investigation conducted by it in 2013 found that around three-fourths of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies use practices that are similar to Apple's to avoid paying tax. So Verstager has taken on not just one giant, but the worlds corporate elite. She should not lose. But even if she does this time, this is a battle well begun.

JEHR September 28, 2016 at 10:42 am

Greed has no boundaries!

Ranger Rick September 28, 2016 at 10:43 am

I think the common misconception that multinational corporations exist because "they are big companies that happen to operate in more than one country" is one of the biggest lies ever told.

From the beginning (e.g. Standard Oil, United Fruit) it was clear that multinational status was an exercise in political arbitrage.

tegnost September 28, 2016 at 11:23 am

" Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and from the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic conditions "

Those who support globalisation support this power disparity.

[Sep 28, 2016] Goldwater wasn't a liar

Notable quotes:
"... I'd actually say that endorsing Hillary very much reflects conservative ideals and Republican (party) principles. Kudos to them on maintaining their streak. ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Alex morfesis September 28, 2016 at 3:17 pm

The arizona republic has Never endorsed a democrat…$hillary is just a goldwater girl wearing democratic spanx(tm)….

Reply
Benedict@Large September 28, 2016 at 5:11 pm

Goldwater wasn't a liar.

Daryl September 28, 2016 at 4:09 pm

> "Since The Arizona Republic began publication in 1890, we have never endorsed a Democrat over a Republican for president. Never. This reflects a deep philosophical appreciation for conservative ideals and Republican principles"

I'd actually say that endorsing Hillary very much reflects conservative ideals and Republican (party) principles. Kudos to them on maintaining their streak.

[Sep 28, 2016] The old neoliberal ideologies are not working, every thing has to change and we hate much of the change we do see creeping up.

Notable quotes:
"... I think one reason Sanders was respected by some of these people, even when his views were radically opposed to theirs, was because this theme of fairness resonated with them, they sensed he was operating on a similar principle, even if disagreeing on the content. ..."
"... I actually find it easier to imagine why someone listening to the debate might place forlorn hope in Trump than to conjure up the people who could listen to Clinton's platitudes and not recall any of the history. Corey Robin is right that Trump is a standard Republican in everything but style, but there was also a break between the Republican electorate and the Republican establishment that put Trump on that stage, and Clinton has embraced the Republican establishment. ..."
"... In Labour Party politics, the insistence of the PLP on Tory-lite policy stances seems, from my great distance, farcical. The Clinton embrace of the Republican establishment drains the last drop of populism from the Democrats even while Late Trump proves how ill-suited the Republicans are to populist appeal despite years of petty demagoguery. ..."
"... I think Trump differs very substantially from the standard Republican politician. Sure he mostly channels the same meme's, but he is willing to consume some sacred ideological cows at the same time. ..."
"... Given that Trump loudly opposes trade deals, it is difficult to say that he on economics is a typical Republican. People vote for Trump because they think the system is rigged against them, and Hilary Clinton is running as the candidate of the status quo. They will see Hilary's resemblance to past candidates as a reminder of what they have gotten from the past 40 years of government policy. ..."
"... Clinton is socially embedded but apparently unaware of the deficiencies of elite performance. This makes her a favorite of the new class, but also makes it very difficult to rally broad popular support or avoid policy disaster. ..."
"... She wants George W Bush's vote. No joke. Why so many on the left are clueless about this and what it implies about policy is left as an exercise. ..."
"... Sure, he supported the Iraq War, but at least he lies about it. And Hillary (with Lester Holt's help) successfully maneuvered around her own vulnerability on that score. She doesn't need to be invoking GW Bush. ..."
"... aside from the Iran agreement, HRC has pretty much carried the neocons water. ..."
"... in the primaries, Trump seriously trashed Bush's most excellent Mesopotamian adventure. Hillary can't do that without creating blowback from her vote for the war. ..."
"... She may well believe that, but if so it's self-deception. She'll get nothing from Republicans in Congress, who will treat her as even more illegitimate than Obama. ..."
"... No way the median Republican member of Congress will open up to a primary challenge just because Clinton is playing nice with the Bushes. ..."
"... Only of the many unhelpful aspects of the HRC presidency will be that since her reachout to Republicans turns off base Dems, she is likely to face a Repub House and Senate, who will be at least as obstructive to her as they have been to Obama. That leaves her room to abandon all the half-hearted dog treats she threw to the Bernie supporters as "now impossible", and plenty of room to get "bipartisan" on passing the TPP and cutting SS. ..."
"... And it won't impede her military desires to enlarge the empire one iota. ..."
"... The comments here strike me as very sensible and sober. Given that the CT community shares little with a great swath of the electorate and in fact share HRC's view that they are both deplorable and irredeemable, its probably sound reasoning to deduce that if people here thought HRC won, a great many 'others' believe the opposite. ..."
"... Hillary succeeded in the first debate because she didn't fall over, cough a lot, and looked alive in that bright, red dress. That isn't enough to convince voters that she's not the candidate of the past. ..."
"... We begin from the assumption that Clinton is standard-bearer of "neoliberalism," and then interpret everything she does as evidence of that. ..."
"... the Democratic Party was once the party of the working class and old-style liberalism, but, starting with Bill Clinton, they abandoned this, and now they have lost the loyalty of the working class. In actuality, the last old-style liberal in the Democratic Party was Mondale, and he lost the popular vote by eighteen percentage points, more than anyone since. ..."
"... In foreign policy, we need a new term that we can drain of all meaning, and so Clinton becomes a "neoconservative," virtually indistinguishable from Charles Krauthammer, and eager to rain down destruction on the rest of the world. ..."
"... A no-fly zone? Those neocons will stop at nothing! ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 3:40 pm

Ideologically exhausted? Sure.

Against a background anxiety surrounding a sense that things are not working. The old ideologies are not working, every thing has to change and we hate much of the change we do see creeping up. The conservative party serves up a wrecking ball. The reform party serves up the status quo warmed over. ("Intelligent surge") We fear change. We fear the continuation of the status quo and the degeneration the status quo promises to continue.

Yan 09.27.16 at 5:46 pm

"On the other hand, there's a not so small current in American politics that would hear that, that Trump didn't pay his taxes, and think, with him, that he was indeed smart for having outsmarted the system. …This is a nation of conmen (and women)…"

I think this is right but misleading, since the voters who probably liked that comment don't see themselves as conmen out for a quick buck, but as victims gaming a rigged system. They think taxes are an injustice, and that they're John Dillinger fighting for their rightful earnings against the thieving IRS.

This is generally important for understanding Trump voters: for all their quirks, at bottom they are, like most Americans, very strongly motivated by a skewed notion of fairness: they think others are cutting in line, getting a handout, getting special rights and favors.

I think one reason Sanders was respected by some of these people, even when his views were radically opposed to theirs, was because this theme of fairness resonated with them, they sensed he was operating on a similar principle, even if disagreeing on the content.

bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 6:20 pm

Watching British Labour Party politics from afar is like seeing Democratic Party politics in a fun house mirror. One thing that is writ in primary colors and big block letters in the Labour Party struggle is the tension between the new class and everyone else seeking protection from the globalizing plutocracy and whose only ideological models are anachronisms.

I actually find it easier to imagine why someone listening to the debate might place forlorn hope in Trump than to conjure up the people who could listen to Clinton's platitudes and not recall any of the history. Corey Robin is right that Trump is a standard Republican in everything but style, but there was also a break between the Republican electorate and the Republican establishment that put Trump on that stage, and Clinton has embraced the Republican establishment.

In Labour Party politics, the insistence of the PLP on Tory-lite policy stances seems, from my great distance, farcical. The Clinton embrace of the Republican establishment drains the last drop of populism from the Democrats even while Late Trump proves how ill-suited the Republicans are to populist appeal despite years of petty demagoguery.

Patrick 09.27.16 at 6:25 pm

I think Trumps policies frequently look like a generic Republicans because he didn't enter this election as a serious candidate, and now that he's the actual nominee he's been scrambling to come up with any policies at all. So he's copying from the party that nominated him.

His campaign has always been very ad hoc. Look at his "make Mexico pay for the wall" thing. He clearly just threw that out there as bluster, then when it went viral cobbled together a pseudo plan to make it sound plausible.

His line on taxes was perfect, unfortunately. On taxes, for a lot of people the question is whether he behaved legally. If you can legally not pay taxes but you do anyway, you're a chump. Can anyone who does their own taxes honestly say that they've chosen to NOT take an exemption or deduction for which they were qualified? I can't.

The people who feel this way may wish it wasn't legal for Trump to do this. But as far as condemning him for it assuming it WAS legal… maybe they can drum up some generic resentment of the rich, or tell themselves that he probably broke the law somewhere, somehow, but that's about it. They're not going to adopt a principled belief that he should pay taxes he doesn't have to pay. And if Democrats push on this there's no shortage of "rich democrat does lawful but resentment inducing rich-guy thing" stories that can be used as a smokescreen.

Now… are Trumps taxes actually on the level? Probably not. I suppose the IRS will tell us eventually, after the election. It's not like Trump will release them in the meantime.

Other than that Hillary Clinton won but it won't matter because conservatives live in a creepy little bubble where HRC is a shadowy murderess who assassinates her rivals and must be kept from the throne at all costs.

Omega Centauri 09.27.16 at 6:28 pm

I think Trump differs very substantially from the standard Republican politician. Sure he mostly channels the same meme's, but he is willing to consume some sacred ideological cows at the same time. Just recently he said he'd allow over the counter contraception. He tried to Savage war hero John McCain because he'd been captured. He hasn't just thrown away the dog whistle, he is willing to jetison any part of the ideology he finds inconvenient.
Watson Ladd 09.27.16 at 6:51 pm

Given that Trump loudly opposes trade deals, it is difficult to say that he on economics is a typical Republican. People vote for Trump because they think the system is rigged against them, and Hilary Clinton is running as the candidate of the status quo. They will see Hilary's resemblance to past candidates as a reminder of what they have gotten from the past 40 years of government policy.
bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 7:06 pm

Omega Centauri @ 21

Listening to Trump has a way of casting his audience into the same position as the dogs in a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon, where the dogs only hear a few words they are hungry to hear.

Clinton's patter seems more conventionally structured, but its highlights are righteous self-regard, well past its sell-by date.

There is no coherence (beyond class interest) to Trump. He is a socially isolated Billionaire who is lazy, inattentive, arrogant . . . but put him in front of an audience and he will talk randomly until he finds a laugh or applause.

Clinton is socially embedded but apparently unaware of the deficiencies of elite performance. This makes her a favorite of the new class, but also makes it very difficult to rally broad popular support or avoid policy disaster.

She will win the election, but after that . . . things are unlikely to go well.

People make the observation that both have high negatives. But, beneath those high negatives, each has pursued coalition-building strategies almost guaranteed to narrow their respective bases of support below a majority threshold.

bruce wilder 09.27.16 at 7:12 pm 25

Why isn't Clinton saying "Trump is a more reckless, less coherent George W. Bush"

She wants George W Bush's vote. No joke. Why so many on the left are clueless about this and what it implies about policy is left as an exercise.

politicalfootball 09.27.16 at 7:46 pm

I wouldn't read too much into HRCs apparent decision not to tar Trump with Bush.

That's a charge that simply wouldn't stick. Trump has quite persuasively separated himself from the Bushes - and vice versa.

Sure, he supported the Iraq War, but at least he lies about it. And Hillary (with Lester Holt's help) successfully maneuvered around her own vulnerability on that score. She doesn't need to be invoking GW Bush.

I would be curious for Bruce to explain anything that Hillary has actually done to get Bush's vote. Seems to me she continues to run to the left.

Omega Centauri 09.27.16 at 8:33 pm

I'm not Bruce, but aside from the Iran agreement, HRC has pretty much carried the neocons water.

But, I think its mainly that the Bushes see Trump as crazy beyond the pale, and Clinton as a somewhat steady hand. Also in the primaries, Trump seriously trashed Bush's most excellent Mesopotamian adventure. Hillary can't do that without creating blowback from her vote for the war.

JimV 09.27.16 at 8:56 pm

I agree with Bruce Wilder than HRC doesn't want to offend Republicans unnecessarily. He seems to see it as a character flaw, and maybe it is, but it could be simply that she can get more done in office if she doesn't make a lot of bitter Republican enemies. And I think it is the polite way to behave even with those with whom you disagree, but I won't lobby for that motive here.

If Trump avoided taxes legally and that is a smart, enviable thing to do, why doesn't he release his tax information to show how smart he was? Why is he really hiding the information? Inquiring campaign adds will want to know, if people can't figure that out for themselves.

Ideology: I like the ideology that climate science is not a hoax, that universal health insurance is a good thing with more work needed on it, and some other parts of HRC's agenda that do not seem to be the current ideology (in power).

"Smart surge": that was another palpable hit by Bruce Wilder (along with "no-fly zone in Syria"). Ouch. (I'm not being sarcastic, if it is difficult to tell.) I'm going to write her a letter opposing that. She's sent me a couple letters, so I should have her return address. I think I haven't recycled the last one yet.

Layman 09.27.16 at 9:25 pm

"…it could be simply that she can get more done in office if she doesn't make a lot of bitter Republican enemies."

She may well believe that, but if so it's self-deception. She'll get nothing from Republicans in Congress, who will treat her as even more illegitimate than Obama. There's no obvious incentive for them to do anything else, and the base think she's a murderer and traitor. No way the median Republican member of Congress will open up to a primary challenge just because Clinton is playing nice with the Bushes.

marku52 09.27.16 at 9:46 pm

Only of the many unhelpful aspects of the HRC presidency will be that since her reachout to Republicans turns off base Dems, she is likely to face a Repub House and Senate, who will be at least as obstructive to her as they have been to Obama. That leaves her room to abandon all the half-hearted dog treats she threw to the Bernie supporters as "now impossible", and plenty of room to get "bipartisan" on passing the TPP and cutting SS.

And it won't impede her military desires to enlarge the empire one iota.

A Trump presidency would be hated by all parties to the duo-gopoly, and would be stymied at everything.

Phil 09.27.16 at 9:51 pm

The point about not paying tax is on point, I think. I wrote something yonks ago about Berlusconi and 'patrimonial populism' – the idea being that Berlusconi was seen as both the figurehead of the nihilistic "screw politics" crowd and a national sugar daddy, dishing out favours from the national budget in just the same way that he lobbed sweeteners to business partners. One Italian commentator spotted a graffito that called on Berlusconi to abolish speed limits – "Silvio, let us speed on the autostrada!" Because you knew he would, and if you voted for him, hey, maybe he'd let you do it too.

(Berlusconi hasn't been in government for a while, but he was Prime Minister for ten years in total between 1994 and 2011. He's still involved in three court cases relating to corruption and fraud, and has been found guilty in another; he served a sentence of house arrest and community service. He will be 80 on Thursday.)

kidneystones 09.27.16 at 10:05 pm

The comments here strike me as very sensible and sober. Given that the CT community shares little with a great swath of the electorate and in fact share HRC's view that they are both deplorable and irredeemable, its probably sound reasoning to deduce that if people here thought HRC won, a great many 'others' believe the opposite.
derrida derider 09.27.16 at 11:17 pm

The best way to assess how a national TV debate went is to watch the whole thing with the sound turned off. Swing voters are almost by definition the least interested watchers who will just not care about coherence, patter, policy, ideology, etc because they don't just don't care about politics much. Subconscious impressions, mainly set by body language with perhaps the odd striking expression, are what persuades or dissuades them.

I haven't done this yet, but has anyone else?

Anarcissie 09.28.16 at 12:04 am

ZM 09.27.16 at 11:24 pm @ 45:
'This is a paper by Paul Gilding on a war time mobilisation response, although he isn't connected to the Democrats I don't think: WAR. What Is It Good For? WWII Economic Mobilisation An Analogy For Climate Action http://media.wix.com/ugd/148cb0_1bfd229f6638410f8fcf230e12b1e285.pdf '

I criticized the war metaphor before, mostly on literary or stylistic grounds, but having seen this publication, I feel it is necessary to offer as well a practical consideration, out of character as that may be. War metaphors and models appeal to many people because a good-sized war, especially in our era, appears as an existential crisis, and in properly organized wartime all dissidence and discussion are swept away by the power of necessity, harnessed by great leaders and experts. It is a paradise of authority.

kidneystones 09.28.16 at 12:25 am

@ 52 "My main takeaway from the debate is that it finally refuted any notion that Trump has any idea what he's doing."

What markers did Trump provide that are significantly different from any of the ravings that propelled him past a stable of extremely well-funded and politically-skilled GOP politicians?

The fact that a rodeo clown like Trump is even on the same stage as HRC suggests that whatever his perceived defects here, Trump commands the attention, affection, and respect of almost as many Americans, perhaps more, than the candidate of Goldman-Sachs.

Trump is not going to 'win' any of the debates. Trump is marketing the Trump brand on the biggest stage possible. What actually takes place on stage is negligible in a world where superficiality is much more important than substance.

What will happen is that Trump is going to remind the audience that Hillary does indeed sound very clever and well-grounded. Then, he'll catalogue the questions: 'How can HRC credibly claim not to know what the initial 'C' means on a classified document?' etc.

The most recent good poll I saw on HRC identified the voters' principal concerns with HRC: Syria, Libya, emails – in short, her judgment and her honesty.

Hillary succeeded in the first debate because she didn't fall over, cough a lot, and looked alive in that bright, red dress. That isn't enough to convince voters that she's not the candidate of the past.

As others have noted, the Dukakis title doesn't make any sense to me at all.

She's done.

kidneystones 09.28.16 at 12:30 am

And then there's the health issue (the one that can't be wished away).

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1fa5d876cd9e4d899b277574f84b9d96/ap-poll-voters-more-confident-trumps-health-office

Lee A. Arnold 09.28.16 at 10:13 am

The Arizona Republic, Arizona's biggest newspaper (Phoenix), just endorsed Clinton for President, the first time it has endorsed a Democrat in its 126-year history.
Glen Tomkins 09.28.16 at 1:56 pm

Rich,

"…that no one is really pushing these propaganda lines on people."

That's the very thing, isn't it? That's what US politics has gotten too. There is a very conventional approach to a national campaign that dictates that you do messaging, which means that you carefully avoid saying anything with any public policy entailments. Having the candidate say anything of this sort is especially to be avoided, because that ties the campaign most concretely to specifics, and specific public policy your side advocates can be fitted into a different, hostile, theoretical frame by the other side. Yet candidates have to say things, it's expected. So they have refined a method that avoids propagandizing for anything in terms more concrete than "Make America Great Again", or "Stronger Together", both of which are brilliant at hinting at whatever good thing you might want them to mean, without pushing any actual policy.

In that silence from the campaigns themselves step all of the sorts of sophisticated people such as those of us in the CT commentariat. The media rise no higher on the intellectual food chain than the attempt to fill the silence with theorizing about campaigns as horse races, who's winning and why. We here at CT are a superior sort, so we tend to weave in theories about the actual supposed subject of politics, public policy. But at all levels of this effort, we theorize because we are of the species Homo theoreticus, and we must have theories. The more sophisticated we are the more we need them. We fill the silence by propagandizing on a DIY, freebie basis.

Not that any of this is new. Swift told us all about it in Tale of a Tub, the oracle of our age. Think of this campaign as a tub bobbing on the waves. Worry it as you will, and it just moves to the next wave.

Rich Puchalsky 09.28.16 at 2:05 pm

Glen Tomkins: "We here at CT are a superior sort, so we tend to weave in theories about the actual supposed subject of politics, public policy."

Does not fit the observables. These theories are not about public policy and are not good on any theoretical level (even if you consider this goodness to be possible if it is decoupled from fact and is purely a matter of internal consistency).

Almost all of these "theories" are based on a simple three-step;

1. HRC is the lesser evil.

2. I can't stand voting for someone purely as the lesser evil: my ego requires that I affirmatively support someone.

3. Therefore the lesser evil is really kind of good and anyone against it is bad.

Howard Frant 09.28.16 at 3:41 pm

As usual, I find a lot of discussion here about worlds totally unlike the one that I live in.

We begin from the assumption that Clinton is standard-bearer of "neoliberalism," and then interpret everything she does as evidence of that. Um… people.. she was Secretary of State. Can we really think of no reason she might favor an agreement that includes the US and east Asia, but not China, other than subservience to international capital? Can we think of no reason a Secretary of State might want to encourage fracking in Bulgaria other than anticipated future contributions from the oil and gas industry? (Hint: Russia is monopoly supplier of natural gas to Europe, and not shy about reminding them of that.)

In this imaginary world, the Democratic Party was once the party of the working class and old-style liberalism, but, starting with Bill Clinton, they abandoned this, and now they have lost the loyalty of the working class. In actuality, the last old-style liberal in the Democratic Party was Mondale, and he lost the popular vote by eighteen percentage points, more than anyone since.

In foreign policy, we need a new term that we can drain of all meaning, and so Clinton becomes a "neoconservative," virtually indistinguishable from Charles Krauthammer, and eager to rain down destruction on the rest of the world. Um.. people… destruction has been raining down on Syria for years now. There have been 400,000 people killed, and, as you may have noticed, a whole lot of refugees. The left doesn't seem to be overly concerned about this, other than bitterly oppose any attempts to use military force to do anything about it. A no-fly zone? Those neocons will stop at nothing! If Obama had carried out his threat over the "red line" by striking at the Syrian air force, it would have saved many, many lives, but that would be imperialism.

Possibly people at CT, even Americans, have gotten used to thinking of politics in parliamentary terms, in which platforms actually have some practical effect, and winning means winning a legislative majority. (That's the only way a Sanders candidacy would have made sense.) As you know, though, the US doesn't work that way, and so the question is what can get done. If Clinton is able to actually carry out the things she is talking about – an increase in the minimum wage, paid family leave, increased infrastructure spending -- it will make a much bigger difference in people's lives than bringing back Glass-Steagall would.

likbez 09.28.16 at 4:45 pm

@80
Rich,

This "HRC is the lesser evil" is a very questionable line of thinking that is not supported by the facts.

How Hillary can be a lesser evil if by any reasonable standard she is a war criminal. War criminal like absolute zero is an absolute evil. You just can't go lower.

Trump might be a crook, but he still did not committed any war crimes. Yet.

[Sep 28, 2016] She's been most aggressive about shepherding into her corner are the neoconservative foreign policy hawks whose coups, death squads, invasions, and so on were allegedly supposed to embody the worst and most immoderate excesses of the Bush and Reagan administrations.

Notable quotes:
"... neoliberalism's constant drive toward depoliticization of issues that might interfere with short-term corporate profits ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

Will G-R 09.28.16 at 9:53 pm 112

Calling the people whose endorsements Clinton has spent her time since the DNC pursuing "moderate Republicans" seems suspect. After all, apart from Wall Street financier types whose rigid party identification tends to dissolve in the bipartisan solvent of the neoliberal financial establishment [I shouldn't say "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" or liberals will throw a tantrum], the Republican public figures she's been most aggressive about shepherding into her corner are the neoconservative foreign policy hawks whose coups, death squads, invasions, and so on were allegedly supposed to embody the worst and most immoderate excesses of the Bush and Reagan administrations.

It seems the idea is to impress so-called moderate voters with a show of establishment unanimity across all prior "extremes" as a show of Clinton's seriousness and Trump's unseriousness, but then we have to reckon with the way "moderate voters" is most often a euphemism for "low-information voters with a vague sense of not wanting to be seen as rocking the boat who otherwise don't give much of a damn about electoral politics at all", which has little to do with what "moderate" means when describing actual public figures.

If we took any real effort to directly hash out "moderate" inclinations of the depoliticized public at large the same way we do those of the institutions through which this public is supposed to funnel its political engagement, we'd probably come up with something very different.

Also, Rich @ 106, you're more or less echoing what Nathan Robinson writes about "objectively pro-Trump" anti-leftist Hillary supporters here .

Will G-R 09.28.16 at 9:57 pm

It also seems the commentariat here is still stuck on utopian fantasies in which the existing political class (including the GOP Congressional majorities Clinton's campaign strategy is all but ensuring will continue for the foreseeable future ) is both willing and able to take the necessary steps to wean global capitalism off of fossil fuels.

ZM's wartime mobilisation, bob's politics of continual catastrophe, or even bruce's Two-To-Three-Year Plan will not happen, in part because of neoliberalism's constant drive toward depoliticization of issues that might interfere with short-term corporate profits , and also in part because First-World politics is well practiced at not giving a shit about the suffering of the Third World

Which of course is where the most immediately catastrophic suffering from climate change will be borne at least at first. Lee's "chink in the rightwing cognitive armor" won't happen either, not in response to any empirical facts about the actual climate: this cognitive armor exists because there are vested interests promoting its existence, interests that aren't themselves stupid enough to completely deny the basic parameters of climate science ( e.g. ).

If anything the least starry-eyed one here is Layman for implying that neoliberalism would tackle climate change by radically reconfiguring market incentives to make prevention and/or mitigation a profitable business, which is close to how people like Charles Koch see the issue too - but in this case I have to agree with everybody else here that this kind of gentle nudging of markets wouldn't be enough, without slamming on the brakes much harder than our current thoroughly marketized mechanisms are capable of doing.

What's needed is impossible under our present institutions, and what's possible is inadequate.

Lee A. Arnold 09.28.16 at 10:53 pm

Will G-R #114: "this cognitive armor exists because there are vested interests promoting its existence"

I don't think so. I think it emerged when the Great Chain of Being was overturned in the public imagination in the middle of the 18th Century (see Lovejoy) and so, at the same moment, the market economy began to be accepted as a way to escape the status positions of traditional society.

The change in emotional expectation about the source of social status immediately formed a left/right politics, generally reflecting the interests of the have-nots and the haves. Promotion by vested interests is not a cause of this, rather it is a predicable symptom of it.

And it won't be overturned by anything less than a reversal in the reign of the status-psychology of money which has characterized the last 250 years.

Which may be closer than we think, because a part of "status" has always been since ancient times a signal of being able to avoid need - but it is unavoidably becoming ever clearer that our basest owners are in the richest things superfluous.

Perhaps we will soon be ready to read the social tragedy of our next romantic Shelleyan horror myth: the Trumpenstein monster!

[Sep 28, 2016] Hillary Clinton's immoral, illegal, stupid enthusiasm for wars to effectuate regime change by Bruce Fein

Notable quotes:
"... As secretary of state in 2011, Mrs. Clinton vocally supported the war against Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi on the heels of his abandonment of weapons of mass destruction. She boasted with the dripping arrogance of Julius Caesar after Gaddafi's death: "We came, we saw, he died." She insisted that regime change in Libya was for humanitarian purposes. She agreed with President Barack Obama that to be faithful to "who we are," we must overthrow governments that are oppressing their citizens by force and violence. ..."
"... Like the French Bourbons who forgot nothing and learned nothing, Mrs. Clinton eagerness to initiate wars for regime change was undiminished by the Iraq and Libya debacles. She urged war against Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad. She confidently insinuated that we could transform Syria into a flourishing democracy sans James Madisons, George Washingtons or Thomas Jeffersons because of our unique nation-building genius. ..."
"... Wars for regime change are immoral. We have not been tasked by a Supreme Being to appraise foreign nations like a schoolmarm and to invade those to whom we have superciliously assigned a failing grade. ..."
"... Wars for regime change also violate international law. Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter generally prohibits "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state…." Article 51 creates a narrow exception for wars in self-defense "if an armed attack occurs…." Regime change wars do not fit that narrow exception. ..."
"... Mrs. Clinton underscores in her memoir that she would rather be "caught trying" something kinetic than to try masterly inactivity like Fabius Maximus. She would rather be criticized for fighting too many wars for regime change than too few. She is the war hawks' dream candidate. ..."
Sep 19, 2016 | Washington Times

Democratic nominee is war hawks' dream candidate

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton champions wars to effectuate regime change. Their immorality, illegality and stupidity do not diminish Mrs. Clinton's enthusiasm for treating independent nations as serfs of the United States.

As first aady, she warmly supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which made it the policy of the Unites States to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As United States Senator, she invoked the 1998 policy in voting for the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force Against Iraq. Saddam's successors proved a cure worse than the disease. Shiite dominated governments allied with Iran, oppressed Sunnis, Kurds, and Turkmen, and created a power vacuum that gave birth to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Our national security has been weakened.

As secretary of state in 2011, Mrs. Clinton vocally supported the war against Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi on the heels of his abandonment of weapons of mass destruction. She boasted with the dripping arrogance of Julius Caesar after Gaddafi's death: "We came, we saw, he died." She insisted that regime change in Libya was for humanitarian purposes. She agreed with President Barack Obama that to be faithful to "who we are," we must overthrow governments that are oppressing their citizens by force and violence.

Libya predictably descended into dystopia after Gaddafi's murder. (It had no democratic cultural, historical, or philosophical credentials.) Tribal militias proliferated. Competing governments emerged. ISIS entered into the power vacuum in Sirte, which has required the return of United States military forces in Libya. Terrorists murdered our Ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi. Gaddafi's conventional weapons were looted and spread throughout the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled and are continuing to flee Libyan shores for Europe. North Korea and Iran hardened their nuclear ambitions to avoid Gaddafi's grisly fate. Our national security has been weakened.

Like the French Bourbons who forgot nothing and learned nothing, Mrs. Clinton eagerness to initiate wars for regime change was undiminished by the Iraq and Libya debacles. She urged war against Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad. She confidently insinuated that we could transform Syria into a flourishing democracy sans James Madisons, George Washingtons or Thomas Jeffersons because of our unique nation-building genius.

She forgot South Sudan. We midwifed its independence in 2011. Despite our hopes and prayers, the new nation descended into a gruesome ongoing civil war including child soldiers between the Dinka led by President Salva Kiir and the Nuer led by former Vice President Riek Machar. More than 50,000 have died, more than 2.2 million have been displaced, and a harrowing number have been murdered, tortured or raped. South Sudan epitomizes our nation-building incompetence.

Wars for regime change are immoral. We have not been tasked by a Supreme Being to appraise foreign nations like a schoolmarm and to invade those to whom we have superciliously assigned a failing grade. As Jesus sermonized in Matthew 7: 1-3:

"Judge not, that ye be not judged.

"For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Thus, Thomas Jefferson wrote to President James Monroe in 1823: "The presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government is so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation as well as moral sentiment enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one and our equal execrations against the other."

Wars for regime change also violate international law. Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter generally prohibits "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state…." Article 51 creates a narrow exception for wars in self-defense "if an armed attack occurs…." Regime change wars do not fit that narrow exception.

They are also stupid, like playing Russian roulette. We lack the wisdom necessary to insure that successor regimes will strengthen rather than weaken our national security taking into account, among other things, the staggering military and financial costs of propping up corrupt, incompetent, and unpopular governments.

Mrs. Clinton underscores in her memoir that she would rather be "caught trying" something kinetic than to try masterly inactivity like Fabius Maximus. She would rather be criticized for fighting too many wars for regime change than too few. She is the war hawks' dream candidate.

[Sep 28, 2016] Hillary Clinton's Platform Lacks a Firm Footing by Russ Wellen

Sep 28, 2016 | fpif.org
July 27, 2016 | FPIF

Domestic-policy successes such as paid family leave count for little if the U.S. is at war with Russia.

Hillary Clinton has some impressive goals for the United States. And it is conceivable that, to whatever extent, she can even achieve them. These include (courtesy of NPR ):

Make public college debt-free. Fund universal pre-K. Create a comprehensive background check system and close loopholes. Give the government a role in setting insurance rates. Waive deportation and give undocumented residents a path to legal status. Enact an infrastructure plan that also serves as a stimulus to the economy. Raise capital gains taxes [We will overlook her coziness with Wall Street for the moment.]

But what does domestic-policy success avail us if the United States is fighting a major war? It is common knowledge that when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton gives many of us on the left the heebie-jeebies. A blurb on the issues page of her official campaign website suggests traditional Democratic overcompensation on defense, but to the nth degree: "Military and defense[:] We should maintain the best-trained, best-equipped, and strongest military the world has ever known."

The extent to which Russian President Vladimir Putin considers Ms. Clinton a nemesis (and Donald Trump a potential ally) can be seen in a new article by Simon Shuster at Time . But, obviously, no American election should be decided by which candidate the leader of another superpower prefers. The real issue, without going into detail, is her policy toward Russia, summarized by Jeffrey Sachs at Huffington Post .

… she championed a remarkably confrontational approach with Russia based on NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia and a new nuclear arms race that will cost American taxpayers more than $355 billion over a decade.

There we have the two weakest links of Hillary Clinton foreign policy bundled into one. She is likely to increase tensions with Russia, thus putting us at risk of war with nuclear weapons, the modernization of which she champions.

To put it another way, an aggressive stance toward Russia and more nuclear weapons would cancel out domestic initiatives and achievements. After all, what good is paid parental leave if the United States is waging a major war and not only is there no money left over from defense for such programs, but, the number of families left standing to benefit from these programs is, shudder, drastically diminished?

Bottom line: Without a visionary policy that works toward alleviating tensions with, not confronting or attacking, other countries, domestic policy successes count for little.

[Sep 28, 2016] I Was RFK's Speechwriter. Now I'm Voting for Trump. Here's Why by Adam Walinsky

Sep 21, 2016 | POLITICO Magazine
Here it is. John and Robert Kennedy devoted their greatest commitments and energies to the prevention of war and the preservation of peace. To them that was not an abstract formula but the necessary foundation of human life. But today's Democrats have become the Party of War: a home for arms merchants, mercenaries, academic war planners, lobbyists for every foreign intervention, promoters of color revolutions, failed generals, exploiters of the natural resources of corrupt governments. We have American military bases in 80 countries, and there are now American military personnel on the ground in about 130 countries, a remarkable achievement since there are only 192 recognized countries. Generals and admirals announce our national policies. Theater commanders are our principal ambassadors. Our first answer to trouble or opposition of any kind seems always to be a military movement or action.

Nor has the Democratic Party candidate for president this year, Hillary Clinton, sought peace. Instead she has pushed America into successive invasions, successive efforts at "regime change." She has sought to prevent Americans from seeking friendship or cooperation with President Vladimir Putin of Russia by characterizing him as "another Hitler." She proclaims herself ready to invade Syria immediately after taking the oath of office. Her shadow War Cabinet brims with the architects of war and disaster for the past decades, the neocons who led us to our present pass, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, in Ukraine, unrepentant of all past errors, ready to resume it all with fresh trillions and fresh blood. And the Democrats she leads seem intent on worsening relations with Russia, for example by sending American warships into the Black Sea, or by introducing nuclear weapons ever closer to Russia itself.

In fact, in all the years of the so-called War on Terror, only one potential American president has had the intelligence, the vision, the sheer sanity to see that America cannot fight the entire world at once; who sees that America's natural and necessary allies in this fight must include the advanced and civilized nations that are most exposed and experienced in their own terror wars, and have the requisite military power and willingness to use it. Only one American candidate has pointed out how senseless it is to seek confrontation with Russia and China, at the same time that we are trying to suppress the very jihadist movements that they also are attacking.

That candidate is Donald Trump. Throughout this campaign, he has said that as president, he would quickly sit down with President Putin and seek relaxation of tensions between our nations, and possible collaboration in the fight against terrorists. On this ground alone, he marks himself as greatly superior to all his competitors, earlier in the primaries and now in the general election.

[Sep 28, 2016] Who Cares About the Clinton Foundation?

Sep 28, 2016 | baselinescenario.com
by James Kwak Posted on August 25, 2016 The Baseline Scenario | 59 comments By James Kwak

Imagine that while George W. Bush was governor of Texas and president of the United States, various people and companies decided to write him checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars, just because they thought he was a great guy. Those people and companies, just coincidentally, happened to have interests that were affected by the policies of Texas and the United States. But when he thanked them for their money, Bush never promised to do anything in particular for them. You would be suspicious, right?

Now, that's roughly what has been happening with the Clinton Foundation. Various people and companies have been writing checks for millions of dollars to the Foundation during the same time that Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and, following that, the most likely next president of the United States-a title she has held since the day Barack Obama's second term began. (The Clintons finally decided to scale back the Foundation earlier this week.)

... ... ...

So the real question is this: Do you think it would be appropriate for people and companies affected by U.S. policy to be writing $1 million checks directly to the Clintons? If the answer is yes, then you should be against any campaign finance rules whatsoever. If the answer is no, you should be worried about the Clinton Foundation.

  1. Vinny Idol | August 25, 2016 at 8:02 pm | I disagree whole heartedly with this post. The clinton foundation is a big deal, because its proof positive that America was founded on Money laundering, the elite that run this country make and made their money through money laundering; and no one wants that in the White House. Thats ok for the rest of America sociery, but not the government where peoples lives hang on the balance through every speech, law and policy that is conducted on capitol hill.

    The Clintons destroyed Libya, Honduras, Haiti through their money laundering scheme called the clinton foundation. Theres no justification for that.

  1. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 12:40 am | Trump thinks very highly of Reagan, but very lowly of Mexicans, so if Trump were to win I suspect he will secretly sell some of our nukes, this finally giving him the financial boost needed to overtake Carlos Slim on the list of the world's richest men. This 'deal of deals' then also harkens back to another historical 'deal' (Iran/Contra), and of course Reagan, while simultaneously eliminating Trump's deepest regret which is that of being bested by a Mexican. This being the real reason that he decided to run in the first place.

    Probably though, HRC will win. The problem there being that all of the scrutiny that she has been receiving for so long, coupled with Bills' infidelities, and other various setbacks and slights, have left her very angry and bitter. Combining this seething hatred of all humans, especially men, with the fact that there has never been a women president to look up to, HRC's only influence is a secretary who worked for Woodrow Wilson by the name of Mildred Jingowitz, or Ms. Jingo as she was called. Ms. Jingo stands out for HRC because she actually wrote the Espionage Act of 1917 and the the Sedition Act of 1918. Those combining to "cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds."
    "The Sedition Act of 1918 stated that people or countries cannot say negative things about the government or the war."
    "It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt." Most importantly though, these acts gave the Government the legal right to prosecute draft dodgers, and …these could bring an end to at least some of the scrutiny that has plagued HRC for so long just so long as we remain at war.
    So, if you are wondering what any of this has to do with the Clinton Foundation, well, HRC used the Foundation to facilitate at least one very large arms deal with at least one Royal Gulfie. But it matters little whether she used the foundation or not, HRC used her tenure at Foggy Bottom to arrange a record number of weapons deals, and of course she is mad as hell and determined to prove just how tough women can be (and there is of course one man who she respects, H. Kissinger).

    Anyway, it doesn't take a historian specializing in the build-up leading to the two World Wars to figure out the rest. BOOM!!!

  2. Philip Diehl | August 26, 2016 at 12:46 am | Dear James,

    I'm a long-time reader. I admire what you and Simon have done educating us about the financial crisis and its aftermath, and I agree with most of your political positions, especially related to the corrupting influence of money in politics. I have seen this first hand over my years in politics and government, and I believe it is the single most important issue we face because progress on all others depends on it.

    But in taking yet another hack at Hillary Clinton in this post, you've contradicted yourself in a way that unravels your argument, while engaging in false equivalencies and blowing a key fact out of proportion. First, the internal contradiction:

    "Bill and Hillary are getting on in years, they only have one child, and she is married to a hedge fund manager. When you have that much money, a dollar in your foundation is as good as a dollar in your bank account. Once you have all your consumption needs covered, what do you need money for?"

    You imply, here, that the Clintons' wealth and Marc Mezvinsky's hedge fund income have made the marginal value of another dollar in income de minimis for the Clintons' personal finances. Then you write, paraphrasing, that a dollar donated to the Foundation is as good as a dollar deposited in their personal bank account; therefore, you imply, money that goes to their foundation is as corrupting as money that goes into their personal accounts.

    You see the problem in claiming that a contribution to the Clinton Foundation is a powerful incentive for HRC to tilt her foreign policy positions, right? You just made the case for why a donation to the Foundation has little personal value to the Clintons:

    MV of $ to bank account = 0.
    MV of $ to Foundation = MV of $ to bank account.
    But you don't proceed to: Therefore, MV of $ to Foundation = 0. So, according to your logic, there can be no corrupting influence.

    You follow this, writing:

    "If you're a Clinton, you want to have an impact in the world, reward your friends, and burnish your legacy. A foundation is an excellent vehicle for all of those purposes, for obvious reasons. It is also an excellent way to transfer money to your daughter free of estate tax, since she can control it after you die."

    Your imply that the Clintons give equal weight to their desires to reward their friends, burnish their legacy, and have an impact on the world. What evidence do you have of this? Also, you implicitly denigrate their charitable motives by describing them as a desire "to have an impact on the world" without a nod to their clear intent to have an impact that is profoundly constructive. You also speculate, without providing any support, that the Foundation is a tax avoidance scheme to enrich their daughter. I think you've crossed a line here.

    Now for the false equivalencies:

    "Imagine that while George W. Bush was governor of Texas and president of the United States, various people and companies decided to write him checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars, just because they thought he was a great guy. Those people and companies, just coincidentally, happened to have interests that were affected by the policies of Texas and the United States. But when he thanked them for their money, Bush never promised to do anything in particular for them. You would be suspicious, right?"

    Why imagine? We have the real-world case of the Saudis bailing out George W's Harken Energy while his father was president. Of course, this is only one example of how the lucrative Bush-Saudi relationship generated income that went straight into the Bush "coffers".

    So you implicitly compare HRC's alleged conflict related to the family's charity with the Bush family conflict related to their own personal bank accounts. While HW Bush, as president, made use of his long friendship with the Saudis for the family's personal gain, HRC gave access to the likes of the crown prince of Bahrain and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus. Not equivalent. Not even close. I wonder how routine it is for a Secretary of State to meet with the crown prince of an oil-producing nation or a Nobel Prize winner versus how routine is it for foreign oligarchs friendly to a president to bailout his son.

    But at least the Saudis were allies of the US. Today, the GOP nominee has undisclosed but apparently significant business ties to close allies of the president of our greatest strategic adversary, and expresses his admiration for an autocrat who is seizing territory in Europe and terminating his opponents. I've missed your post on this one, though I'm sure there is one.

    One last point: This controversy involved some 85 meetings or telephone calls HRC granted to Foundation donors. The media have morphed this into 85 meetings, dropping the "and telephone calls," and made this out to be a pretty big number. Naive readers and Hillary haters have accepted it as such. If fact, 85 meetings and telephone calls over four years are, well, de minimis.

    Many of these donors had standing sufficient to get them in the door whether they gave to the Foundation or not. But let's say all of them gained access solely as a result of their donations. Over the four years HRC was Secretary of State, 85 meetings and telephone calls work out to 1.8 meetings/calls per month. Let's make a guess that she met or talked on the phone with an average of 15 people a day. So, one of every 250 people HRC met or had a phone call with each month, or 21 out of 3000 each year, would have secured their contact with her by donating to the Foundation. 85 doesn't look so big in context, especially since no one has presented any evidence of any quid pro quos.

  3. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 2:42 am | Philip,
    The 85 meetings occurred during about half of HRC's term and I've not heard anyone else dilute things with "phone calls".

    Plus, the Bahrainis were approved for a major arms deal after donating. The Prince tried to make an appointment with HRC privately, but was made to go through State Dept. channels before being allowed a meeting.

    HRC was also involved in the selling of more weapons in her term than all of those occurring during the Bush 43 terms combined.

  1. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 2:50 am | Philip.
    Also, there is this:
    "You had a situation, that The Wall Street Journal reported, where Hillary Clinton herself intervened in a case dealing with taxes with UBS, a Swiss bank, and then, suddenly, after that, UBS began donating big to the Clinton Foundation. So there are many examples of-I mean, there's oil companies-that's another one I should mention right now, which is that oil companies were giving big to the Clinton Foundation while lobbying the State Department-successfully-for the passage of the Alberta Clipper, the tar sands pipeline."
    David Sarota, interview: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/25/weapons_pipelines_wall_st_did_clinton
  2. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 9:40 am | Other noteworthy donors to the Clinton Foundation:
    $1,000,000-$5,000,000

    Carlos Slim
    Chairman & CEO of Telmex, largest New York Times shareholder

    James Murdoch
    Chief Operating Officer of 21st Century Fox

    Newsmax Media
    Florida-based conservative media network

    Thomson Reuters
    Owner of the Reuters news service

    $500,000-$1,000,000

    Google

    News Corporation Foundation
    Philanthropic arm of former Fox News parent company

    $250,000-$500,000

    Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
    Publisher

    Richard Mellon Scaife
    Owner of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

    $100,000-$250,000

    Abigail Disney
    Documentary filmmaker

    Bloomberg Philanthropies

    Howard Stringer
    Former CBS, CBS News and Sony executive

    Intermountain West Communications Company
    Local television affiliate owner (formerly Sunbelt Communications)

    $50,000-$100,000

    Bloomberg L.P.

    Discovery Communications Inc.

    George Stephanopoulos
    ABC News chief anchor and chief political correspondent

    Mort Zuckerman
    Owner of New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report

    Time Warner Inc.
    Owner of CNN parent company Turner Broadcasting

    $25,000-$50,000

    AOL

    HBO

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundation-donors-include-dozens-of-media-organizations-individuals-207228#ixzz4IRfGoJcr
    Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

  1. publiustex | August 26, 2016 at 10:11 am | Hello Ray,

    First, I'd appreciate it if you could provide a cite supporting the statement that move arms sales occurred during HRC's four years than during W's eight years. I'd like to look under the cover of that one.

    Also, it's important to note that a lot more people are involved in approving arms sales than the SoS, including Republicans on the Hill.

    Second, the AP touted its original story as being "meetings" but when you read the story itself you found it was "meetings and phone calls." Subsequently, the media and commentariat referred to 85 meetings, dropping reference to phone calls.

    Now for the arms sales to Bahrain. This one is especially juicy because it's an excellent example of how HRC is being tarred.

    The US has massive military assets in Bahrain, which hosts the largest US military outpost in the Gulf. We've been making massive arms sale to Bahrain for many years. So no surprise that we'd make some when HRC was SoS.

    And considering the strategic importance of Bahrain, there's no surprise in HRC meeting with the crown prince. The surprise would be if she declined to do so.

    Now, if memory serves, and I encourage you to check me on this, the US suspended arms sales to Bahrain while HRC was SoS in response to the Bahrain's suppression of dissent among its Shia minority. Later, we partially lifted the suspension to allow sales of arms Related to protecting our huge naval base in Bahrain. I think this decision also came while HRC was SoS.

    So, the arm sales to Bahrain illustrates my objections to the facile claims that contributions to the CF suggest that HRC is corrupt. These claims bring one sliver of information to the discussion: so and so donated money to the CF and then talked to HRC on the phone (or got a meeting). No evidence is produced that there's a causal relationship between the two much less a quid pro quo in which the donation and meeting led HRC to act in an official capacity to benefit the contributor.

    All of the examples I've seen so far, the oil companies, UBS, etc. are like this. No context, no evidence of a quid pro quo, all inuendo.

  2. publiustex | August 26, 2016 at 10:20 am | I consider some of these contributors to be unsavory, and I wish they'd give the Clinton Foundation a lot more money so they'd have less to sink into GOP House and Senate races.
  1. Philip Diehl | August 26, 2016 at 11:05 am | Ray LaPan-Love: You left out this quote from the interview with David Sirota. Context matters.

    'DAVID SIROTA: Well, my reaction to it is that I think that if you look at some of these individual examples, I think Paul is right that it's hard to argue that their donations to the foundation got them access. They are - a lot of these people in the AP story are people who knew her."

  2. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 11:21 am | Pub,
    I can't remember where I saw the comparison between the arms sales of HRC and the shrub. But, if it comes to me I'll add it later. Meanwhile, here is a link to lots of related info:

    https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Arms+sales+under+obama

    And yes, "no context, no evidence of a quid pro quo", and almost as if she knew she might run for the prez job.

  3. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 11:41 am | Sorry Phillip, but gee whiz, am I to assume that nobody else has any 'context' on a story that is difficult to miss. Where does one draw such lines? And the spin you are hoping for is somewhat unwound by David using the phrase "hard to argue". That could be interpreted to simply mean that the CF is good at obfuscating. And as someone who has worked in politics and even for a large NPO, I can atably assure you
  4. Ray LaPan-Love | August 26, 2016 at 11:59 am | ….!!!!!! my cursor got stuck on the previous comment as I tried to use spell-check.
    Anyway, I was trying to comfratably assure you that these organizations are commonly structured to allow for deceptive practices. The Sierra Club for example has affiliates that collect donations and then those funds are used to pay the overhead of the affiliate 'before' any money is donated to the Sierra Club. Thus, the Sierra club's solicitation costs are not reflected in the percentage of funds used toward whatever cause. This is not of course very subtle, and a Foundation such the CF could not likely get away something this obvious, but…schemes such those exposed by the Panama Papers should make us all hesitant to assume anything.
  5. RICK | August 26, 2016 at 12:20 pm | Dear James -

    I'm a long-time fan of your smart writing and the important work that you (and Simon) do. But what's with this constant Clinton Derangement Syndrome? Why look so hard to find some morsel of "scandal" with the Clintons when there's an entire herd of elephants in the room with the Republican candidate??

    As a wealth manager of many years, I must disagree with your dismissive assessment of the Clintons' personal philanthropy as a personal piggy bank. For sure, in a regular family foundation (many of my clients!) the grants and donations are entirely at the discretion of the controlling family, and very often it's all about shiny brass plaques and photo ops with museum directors or mayors. Fine, that's our system, and at least something gets done. And then the donors die and the plaques fade. A shawl has no pockets.

    But the Clinton operation is unique: they choose specific issues, partner with competent outside groups, and then direct enormous extra outside funds - not just their own meager foundation money - to tackle the problems. This is only possible because of their international status; not a Gates nor a Slim nor a Zuckerberg could engineer the same.

    One can certainly speculate about who got access (a phone call, seriously?) or who was schmoozed in what way in order to secure their donations. But to broad-brush the whole of the Clinton philanthropy as personal corruption is truly unfair. And it sure doesn't make sense when there's so much worse and genuinely scandalous material on the other side just waiting to be uncovered.

    Keep the faith!

  1. Bruce E. Woych | August 27, 2016 at 2:39 pm | Note: (from Global Research critique @ (eg: https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/suite ) cited above: "Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: "Exposing Lies Of The Empire" and "Fighting Against Western Imperialism". Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: "Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear". Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV.
  2. Ray LaPan-Love | August 27, 2016 at 3:42 pm | Bruce, (been awhile),
    High grade stuff there. Yet, I'm not as taken by Caros' comment as you seem to be. Near the end, this part: "The Clinton family business is benefiting themselves AND OTHERS by way of their prominence."
    To begin with, the Clinton's influence in arming the royal gulfies may get us all killed, and so his comparison to the Bushs, while apt in a current sense, it may well be…dangerously premature. Then too, Caro is of course taking sides as if the Clintons don't fully realize the P.R. benefits of giving away other peoples money. Which segs the question of how could the Clintons have put so much time and effort into Hillary's run, while creating so many pitfalls for themselves? Did they think the Repubs might get nice? Are they stupid, arrogant maybe? Or just so corrupt that they just can't stop like so many kleptomaniacs? In any case, it isn't only Trump's fitness that we should be questioning.

[Sep 28, 2016] there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.:

Sep 28, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Vatch September 28, 2016 at 3:45 pm

I'm all for reducing the unmanageably high levels of total immigration into the U.S., and I strongly believe in penalizing illegal employers, but I think you have exaggerated the number of illegal immigrants. According to Numbers USA, there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.:

https://www.numbersusa.org/pages/illegal-aliens-us

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the total immigrant population of the U.S. is about 42 million people:

http://cis.org/Immigrant-Population-Hits-Record-Second-Quarter-2015

[Sep 28, 2016] The root cause of Syria war is Baathists aligned with non Sunnis running a sector of land lusted after by the Saudis and GCC

Notable quotes:
"... Of course the root cause is Baathists aligned with non Sunnis running a sector of land lusted after by the Saudis and GCC. ..."
"... That the US supported the Sunnis (since the Iranians ousted CIA puppets) against the Baathists did not start the civil war, it merely keeps it growing in lust for death and destruction. ..."
"... While that Sep 2012 skirmish in Benghazi included CIA ground troops otherwise there securing the sea lanes supporting Syrian Al Qaeda with Qaddafi's arms, less stingers. ..."
"... "Settle for the crooked, Wall St, war monger because real change is too hard and the other guy is insane, supported by racists and don't think Russia should praise American exceptionalism." ..."
Sep 04, 2016 | angrybearblog.com

ilsm, August 31, 2016 8:21 am

Bev,

"As for Syria, here too I'm not sure why you think this country caused its civil war, but it did not."

Of course the root cause is Baathists aligned with non Sunnis running a sector of land lusted after by the Saudis and GCC.

That the US supported the Sunnis (since the Iranians ousted CIA puppets) against the Baathists did not start the civil war, it merely keeps it growing in lust for death and destruction.

While that Sep 2012 skirmish in Benghazi included CIA ground troops otherwise there securing the sea lanes supporting Syrian Al Qaeda with Qaddafi's arms, less stingers.

ilsm August 31, 2016 9:44 pm

"Settle for the crooked, Wall St, war monger because real change is too hard and the other guy is insane, supported by racists and don't think Russia should praise American exceptionalism."

Obama might as well have voted with Hillary for AUMF forever, he is running it.

[Sep 28, 2016] Heres a semi-CT saying that NBC tipped Clinton off to the debate questions a week in advance

Notable quotes:
"... Here's an interesting analysis someone posted to reddit (in annoying gif screenshot form) about Holt being biased in favor of Clinton: https://i.redd.it/jixd3s8d05ox.png ..."
"... And here's a semi-CT saying that NBC tipped Clinton off to the debate questions a week in advance: http://baltimoregazette.com/clinton-received-debate-questions-week-debate/ ..."
Sep 27, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

none September 27, 2016 at 7:14 pm

Here's an interesting analysis someone posted to reddit (in annoying gif screenshot form) about Holt being biased in favor of Clinton: https://i.redd.it/jixd3s8d05ox.png

And here's a semi-CT saying that NBC tipped Clinton off to the debate questions a week in advance: http://baltimoregazette.com/clinton-received-debate-questions-week-debate/

I have no idea how partisan the Baltimore Gazette is, but it's apparently been around a long time.

[Sep 28, 2016] Why I Switched My Endorsement from Clinton to...

Notable quotes:
"... To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn't look sufficiently healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. If you disagree, take a look at the now-famous " Why aren't I 50 points ahead " video clip. Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too, and Hillary wouldn't be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side. ..."
"... So when Clinton supporters ask me how I could support a "fascist," the answer is that he isn't one. Clinton's team, with the help of Godzilla, have effectively persuaded the public to see Trump as scary. The persuasion works because Trump's "pacing" system is not obvious to the public. They see his "first offers" as evidence of evil. They are not. They are technique. ..."
"... The battle with ISIS is also a persuasion problem. The entire purpose of military action against ISIS is to persuade them to stop, not to kill every single one of them. We need military-grade persuasion to get at the root of the problem. Trump understands persuasion, so he is likely to put more emphasis in that area. ..."
"... Most of the job of president is persuasion. Presidents don't need to understand policy minutia. They need to listen to experts and then help sell the best expert solutions to the public. Trump sells better than anyone you have ever seen, even if you haven't personally bought into him yet. You can't deny his persuasion talents that have gotten him this far. ..."
Sep 25, 2016 | blog.dilbert.com

As most of you know, I had been endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, for my personal safety, because I live in California. It isn't safe to be a Trump supporter where I live. And it's bad for business too. But recently I switched my endorsement to Trump, and I owe you an explanation. So here it goes.

1. Things I Don't Know: There are many things I don't know. For example, I don't know the best way to defeat ISIS. Neither do you. I don't know the best way to negotiate trade policies. Neither do you. I don't know the best tax policy to lift all boats. Neither do you. My opinion on abortion is that men should follow the lead of women on that topic because doing so produces the most credible laws. So on most political topics, I don't know enough to make a decision. Neither do you, but you probably think you do.

Given the uncertainty about each candidate – at least in my own mind – I have been saying I am not smart enough to know who would be the best president. That neutrality changed when Clinton proposed raising estate taxes. I understand that issue and I view it as robbery by government.

I'll say more about that, plus some other issues I do understand, below.

... ... ...

4. Clinton's Health: To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn't look sufficiently healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. If you disagree, take a look at the now-famous " Why aren't I 50 points ahead " video clip. Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too, and Hillary wouldn't be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side.

5. Pacing and Leading: Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something that the military would refuse to do. Normal people see this as a dangerous situation. Trained persuaders like me see this as something called pacing and leading . Trump "paces" the public – meaning he matches them in their emotional state, and then some. He does that with his extreme responses on immigration, fighting ISIS, stop-and-frisk, etc. Once Trump has established himself as the biggest bad-ass on the topic, he is free to "lead," which we see him do by softening his deportation stand, limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion, and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary. If you understand pacing and leading, you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency. That's how I see him.

So when Clinton supporters ask me how I could support a "fascist," the answer is that he isn't one. Clinton's team, with the help of Godzilla, have effectively persuaded the public to see Trump as scary. The persuasion works because Trump's "pacing" system is not obvious to the public. They see his "first offers" as evidence of evil. They are not. They are technique.

And being chummy with Putin is more likely to keep us safe, whether you find that distasteful or not. Clinton wants to insult Putin into doing what we want. That approach seems dangerous as hell to me.

6. Persuasion: Economies are driven by psychology. If you expect things to go well tomorrow, you invest today, which causes things to go well tomorrow, as long as others are doing the same. The best kind of president for managing the psychology of citizens – and therefore the economy – is a trained persuader. You can call that persuader a con man, a snake oil salesman, a carnival barker, or full of shit. It's all persuasion. And Trump simply does it better than I have ever seen anyone do it.

The battle with ISIS is also a persuasion problem. The entire purpose of military action against ISIS is to persuade them to stop, not to kill every single one of them. We need military-grade persuasion to get at the root of the problem. Trump understands persuasion, so he is likely to put more emphasis in that area.

Most of the job of president is persuasion. Presidents don't need to understand policy minutia. They need to listen to experts and then help sell the best expert solutions to the public. Trump sells better than anyone you have ever seen, even if you haven't personally bought into him yet. You can't deny his persuasion talents that have gotten him this far.

In summary, I don't understand the policy details and implications of most of either Trump's or Clinton's proposed ideas. Neither do you. But I do understand persuasion. I also understand when the government is planning to confiscate the majority of my assets. And I can also distinguish between a deeply unhealthy person and a healthy person, even though I have no medical training. (So can you.)

I will be live streaming my viewing of the debate Monday night, with my co-host and neighbor, Kristina Basham . Tune your television to the debate and use your phone or iPad with the Periscope app, and look for me at @ScottAdamsSays.

[Sep 28, 2016] Flawed as he may be, Trump is telling more of the truth than politicians of our day Most important, he offers a path away from constant war, a path of businesslike accommodation with all reasonable people and nations

Notable quotes:
"... Flawed as he may be, Trump is telling more of the truth than politicians of our day. Most important, he offers a path away from constant war, a path of businesslike accommodation with all reasonable people and nations, concentrating our forces and efforts against the true enemies of civilization. Thus, to dwell on his faults and errors is to evade the great questions of war and peace, life and death for our people and our country. You and I will have to compensate for his deficits of civility, in return for peace, we may hope as Lincoln hoped, among ourselves and with all nations. ..."
"... No doubt, clinton supporters will snicker and deride efforts to treat Trump's positions seriously as this essay does. ..."
Sep 25, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Katniss Everdeen

RE: I Was RFK's Speechwriter. Now I'm Voting for Trump. Here's Why. Politico (RR)

Flawed as he may be, Trump is telling more of the truth than politicians of our day. Most important, he offers a path away from constant war, a path of businesslike accommodation with all reasonable people and nations, concentrating our forces and efforts against the true enemies of civilization. Thus, to dwell on his faults and errors is to evade the great questions of war and peace, life and death for our people and our country. You and I will have to compensate for his deficits of civility, in return for peace, we may hope as Lincoln hoped, among ourselves and with all nations.

No doubt, clinton supporters will snicker and deride efforts to treat Trump's positions seriously as this essay does.

But for anyone who is the slightest bit aware of how the maniac imperialists have hijacked the public means of persuasion for a generation to the detriment of countless foreign countries as well as our own, the obsession with turning Trump into a cartoon character with joke "policies" should sound an alarm.

No "politician" was ever going to buck this system. Bernie Sanders, fiery and committed though he was, proved that. It was always going to take an over-sized personality with an over-sized ego to withstand the shit storm that a demand for profound change would create, and some "incivility" seems a small price to pay to break the vice grip of the status quo.

I, for one, have no intention of squandering this opportunity to throw sand in the gears. There has never been a third candidate allowed to plead their case in a presidential "debate" since Ross Perot threw a scare into TPTB in 1992. Should clinton manage to pull this one out, the lesson of Trump will be learned, and we may not be "given" the opportunity to choose an "outsider" again for a very long time. It's worth taking a minute to separate the message from the messenger.

subgenius September 25, 2016 at 11:33 am

No doubt, clinton supporters will snicker and deride efforts to treat Trump's positions seriously as this essay does.

[Sep 28, 2016] TPP implies the increased protectionism, in the form of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. which are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent on the protected items. As they apply to an ever growing share of the economy, the resulting economic losses might be huge.

Notable quotes:
"... It is not clear what the NYT thinks it is telling readers with this comment. The economy grows and creates jobs, sort of like the tree in my backyard grows every year. The issue is the rate of growth and job creation. While the economy has recovered from the lows of the recession, employment rates of prime age workers (ages 25-54) are still down by almost 2.0 percentage points from the pre-recession level and almost 4.0 percentage points from 2000 peaks. There is much research ** *** showing that trade has played a role in this drop in employment. ..."
"... It is not surprising that Ford's CEO would say that shifting production to Mexico would not cost U.S. jobs. It is likely he would make this claim whether or not it is true. Furthermore, his actual statement is that Ford is not cutting U.S. jobs. If the jobs being created in Mexico would otherwise be created in the United States, then the switch is costing U.S. jobs. The fact that Michigan and Ohio added 75,000 jobs last year has as much to do with this issue as the winner of last night's Yankees' game. ..."
"... The piece goes on to say that the North American Free Trade Agreement has "for more than two decades has been widely counted as a main achievement of [Bill Clinton]." It doesn't say who holds this view. The deal did not lead to a rise in the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which was a claim by its proponents before its passage. It also has not led to more rapid growth in Mexico which has actually fallen further behind the United States in the two decades since NAFTA. ..."
"... It is worth noting that none of the analyses that provide the basis for this assertion take into the account the impact of the increased protectionism, in the form of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections, which are a major part of the TPP. These forms of protection are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent on the protected items. As they apply to an ever growing share of the economy, the resulting economic losses will expand substantially in the next decade, especially if the TPP is approved. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com

anne said... \ September 28, 2016 at 04:55 AM

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/nyt-editorial-in-news-section-for-tpp-short-on-substance

September 28, 2016

NYT Editorial In News Section for TPP Short on Substance

When the issue is trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the New York Times throws out its usual journalistic standards to push its pro-trade deal agenda. Therefore it is not surprising to see a story * in the news section that was essentially a misleading advertisement for these trade deals.

The headline tells readers that Donald Trump's comments on trade in the Monday night debate lacked accuracy. The second paragraph adds:

"His aggressiveness may have been offset somewhat by demerits on substance."

These comments could well describe this NYT piece.

For example, it ostensibly indicts Trump with the comment:

"His [Trump's] first words of the night were the claim that "our jobs are fleeing the country," though nearly 15 million new jobs have been created since the economic recovery began."

It is not clear what the NYT thinks it is telling readers with this comment. The economy grows and creates jobs, sort of like the tree in my backyard grows every year. The issue is the rate of growth and job creation. While the economy has recovered from the lows of the recession, employment rates of prime age workers (ages 25-54) are still down by almost 2.0 percentage points from the pre-recession level and almost 4.0 percentage points from 2000 peaks. There is much research ** *** showing that trade has played a role in this drop in employment.

The NYT piece continues:

"[Trump] singled out Ford for sending thousands of jobs to Mexico to build small cars and worsening manufacturing job losses in Michigan and Ohio, but the company's chief executive has said 'zero' American workers would be cut. Those states each gained more than 75,000 jobs in just the last year."

It is not surprising that Ford's CEO would say that shifting production to Mexico would not cost U.S. jobs. It is likely he would make this claim whether or not it is true. Furthermore, his actual statement is that Ford is not cutting U.S. jobs. If the jobs being created in Mexico would otherwise be created in the United States, then the switch is costing U.S. jobs. The fact that Michigan and Ohio added 75,000 jobs last year has as much to do with this issue as the winner of last night's Yankees' game.

The next sentence adds:

"Mr. Trump said China was devaluing its currency for unfair price advantages, yet it ended that practice several years ago and is now propping up the value of its currency."

While China has recently been trying to keep up the value of its currency by selling reserves, it still holds more than $4 trillion in foreign reserves, counting its sovereign wealth fund. This is more than four times the holdings that would typically be expected of a country its side. These holdings have the effect of keeping down the value of China's currency.

If this seems difficult to understand, the Federal Reserve now holds more than $3 trillion in assets as a result of its quantitative easing programs of the last seven years. It raised its short-term interest rate by a quarter point last December, nonetheless almost all economists would agree the net effect of the Fed's actions is the keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise be. The same is true of China and its foreign reserve position.

The piece goes on to say that the North American Free Trade Agreement has "for more than two decades has been widely counted as a main achievement of [Bill Clinton]." It doesn't say who holds this view. The deal did not lead to a rise in the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which was a claim by its proponents before its passage. It also has not led to more rapid growth in Mexico which has actually fallen further behind the United States in the two decades since NAFTA.

In later discussing the TPP the piece tells readers:

"Economists generally have said the Pacific nations agreement would increase incomes, exports and growth in the United States, but not significantly."

It is worth noting that none of the analyses that provide the basis for this assertion take into the account the impact of the increased protectionism, in the form of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections, which are a major part of the TPP. These forms of protection are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent on the protected items. As they apply to an ever growing share of the economy, the resulting economic losses will expand substantially in the next decade, especially if the TPP is approved.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-trade-tpp-nafta.html

** http://www.nber.org/papers/w21906

*** http://economics.mit.edu/files/6613

-- Dean Baker

[Sep 28, 2016] Mook Spooked Clinton Campaign Manager, Other Top Dems Dodge Questions on Whether Hillary Wants Obama to Withdraw T

www.breitbart.com
Hillary Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook and other top Democrats refused to answer whether Clinton wants President Barack Obama to withdraw the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) from consideration before Congress during interviews with Breitbart News in the spin room after the first presidential debate here at Hofstra University on Monday night.

The fact that Mook, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, and Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Donna Brazile each refused to answer the simple question that would prove Clinton is actually opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership now after praising it 40 times and calling it the "gold standard" is somewhat shocking.

After initially ignoring the question entirely four separate times, Mook finally replied to Breitbart News. But when he did respond, he didn't answer the question:

BREITBART NEWS: "Robby, does Secretary Clinton believe that the president should withdraw the TPP?"

ROBBY MOOK: "Secretary Clinton, as she said in the debate, evaluated the final TPP language and came to the conclusion that she cannot support it."

BREITBART NEWS: "Does she think the president should withdraw it?"

ROBBY MOOK: "She has said the president should not support it."

Obama is attempting to ram TPP through Congress as his last act as president during a lame duck session of Congress. Clinton previously supported the TPP, and called it the "Gold Standard" of trade deals. That's something Brazile, the new chairwoman of the DNC who took over after Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) was forced to resign after email leaks showed she and her staff at the DNC undermined the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and in an untoward way forced the nomination into Clinton's hands, openly confirmed in her own interview with Breitbart News in the spin room post debate. Brazile similarly refused to answer if Clinton should call on Obama to withdraw the TPP from consideration before Congress.

[Sep 28, 2016] Wolf Richter Negative Growth of Real Wages is Normal for Much of the Workforce, and Getting Worse – New York Fed naked cap

Notable quotes:
"... If you're wondering why a large portion of American consumers are strung out and breathless and have trouble spending more and cranking up the economy, here's the New York Fed with an answer. And it's going to get worse. ..."
"... That the real median income of men has declined 4% since 1973 is an ugly tidbit that the Census Bureau hammered home in its Income and Poverty report two weeks ago, which I highlighted in this article – That 5.2% Jump in Household Income? Nope, People Aren't Suddenly Getting Big-Fat Paychecks – and it includes the interactive chart below that shows how the real median wage of women rose 36% from 1973 through 2015, while it fell 4% for men... ..."
"... Nominal wages are sticky downwards but not real wages. That is why the FED, the banks, the corporate sector and the economists support persistent inflation, i.e. it lowers real wages. The "study" correlating wage growth with aging is one of those empirical pieces by economists to obscure the role of inflation in lowering real wages. ..."
"... Real Wage Growth chart very interesting, crossing negative at about 55 for no college, and 43 for a Bachelor's degree. 43!! Not even halfway through a work-life, and none better since 2003 at best. ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street.

The New York Fed published an eye-opener of an article on its blog, Liberty Street Economics , seemingly about the aging of the US labor force as one of the big economic trends of our times with "implications for the behavior of real wage growth." Then it explained why "negative growth" – the politically correct jargon for "decline" – in real wages is going to be the new normal for an ever larger part of the labor force.

If you're wondering why a large portion of American consumers are strung out and breathless and have trouble spending more and cranking up the economy, here's the New York Fed with an answer. And it's going to get worse.

The authors looked at the wages of all employed people aged 16 and older in the Current Population Survey (CPS), both monthly data from 1982 through May 2016 and annual data from 1969 through 1981. They then restricted the sample to employed individuals with wages, which boiled it down to 7.6 million statistical observations.

Then they adjusted the wages via the Consumer Price Index to 2014 dollars and divide the sample into 140 different "demographic cohorts" by decade of birth, sex, race, and education. As an illustration of the principles at work, they picked the cohort of white males born in the decade of the 1950s.

That the real median income of men has declined 4% since 1973 is an ugly tidbit that the Census Bureau hammered home in its Income and Poverty report two weeks ago, which I highlighted in this article – That 5.2% Jump in Household Income? Nope, People Aren't Suddenly Getting Big-Fat Paychecks – and it includes the interactive chart below that shows how the real median wage of women rose 36% from 1973 through 2015, while it fell 4% for men...

Sally Snyder September 28, 2016 at 7:22 am

Here is an interesting article that looks at which Americans have left the workforce in very high numbers:

http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2016/08/exiting-workforce-growing-pastime-for.html

The current real world employment experience of millions of Americans has shown little improvement since the end of the Great Recession.

Damian September 28, 2016 at 7:35 am

The number of public companies have been cut in half in the last 20 years. Just for one metric.

So for those born in the 50's, reaching middle or senior management by the time they were in their mid 40's (1999) was increasingly harder as the probability of getting squeezed out multiplied. In the last ten years, the birth / death rate of startups / small business has reversed as well.

There is probably ten other examples of why age is not the mitigating criteria for the decline in wages. It's not skill sets, not ambition, not flexibility. Pure number of chances for advancement and therefore associated higher wages has declined precipitously.

Anti Trust Enforcement went out the window as Neo-Liberal policies converted to political donations for promoting consolidation.

Now watch even those in their 20-30 age group will experience the same thing as H-1b unlimited takes hold with the Obama / Clinton TTP burning those at younger demographics. Are you going to say they are "too old" as well to write software?

Tell me where you want to go, and I will focus on selective facts and subjective interpretation of those selective facts to yield the desired conclusions.

Barack Peddling Fiction Obama – BS at the B.L.S. – has a multiplicity of these metrics.

Jim A. September 28, 2016 at 7:37 am

Hmm…Because wages are "sticky downwards" it would be helpful to see the inflation rate on that first chart.

Reply
Ignim Brites September 28, 2016 at 8:35 am

Nominal wages are sticky downwards but not real wages. That is why the FED, the banks, the corporate sector and the economists support persistent inflation, i.e. it lowers real wages. The "study" correlating wage growth with aging is one of those empirical pieces by economists to obscure the role of inflation in lowering real wages.

Steve H. September 28, 2016 at 8:05 am

Real Wage Growth chart very interesting, crossing negative at about 55 for no college, and 43 for a Bachelor's degree. 43!! Not even halfway through a work-life, and none better since 2003 at best.

[Sep 28, 2016] Trump was right about VAT subsidizing exports

Sep 28, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

"The VAT export rebate is a huge subsidy to exporters who are exporting to non-VAT countries such as the US."
MacAuley : , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 02:14 PM
The VAT export rebate is a huge subsidy to exporters who are exporting to non-VAT countries such as the US. That's why nearly every large country has VAT. VAT rebates also give foreign producers a competitive advantage over US manufacturers in third-country markets.
It's also a major incentive for US companies to supply the US market via Mexico or other VAT countries, since VAT countries rely on VAT for a huge chunk of their tax base. Since foreign profits of US companies are not taxed unless repatriated, the incentives against US production are compounded.
sanjait -> MacAuley... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 02:42 PM
Or ... VAT is just a sales tax collected on the production side. It's not like importers to the US get to avoid US sales taxes.
MacAuley -> sanjait... , -1
The difference is that VAT countries tend to rely much more heavily on the VAT than the US relies on sales taxes, so sales taxes are much less than VAT. Sales taxes in the US range from Zero in Indiana to 7.5% in California. VAT rates in the EU range between 20% and 25%. The VAT is 16% in Mexico and 17% in China.

There may be some intellectual equivalence in your argument, but the real-world difference is huge.

Dave Maxwell : , -1
The VAT indirectly subsidizes exports. If you have country A that relies 100% on VAT for tax revenue then the exporting corporation in that country incurs and pays zero taxes on exports. If the company exports 100% of its product that company pays zero in taxes.

In the US states generally exclude sales tax on materials purchased for manufacturing and on products sold for resale and for export outside that state (including to other states)so there is similarity with the VAT. The big difference is magnitude of the tax. States sales taxes average around 7% compared to VAT in the 15% to 20% range. VAT is a much bigger subsidy.

Sanjait -> Dave Maxwell... , -1
Well, I should have scrolled down before expressing disbelief.

But if you want to talk facts, then note that no country relies 100% on a VAT. No country is even close:

http://taxfoundation.org/article/sources-government-revenue-oecd-2014

Mexico is actually the highest in reliance on consumption taxes generally (which is how the OECD classifies a VAT), but as the report notes, only part of the consumption tax mix is VAT. It also includes other excise taxes and fees. In Mexico I'd assume this includes oil industry revenues going to the government, which as of recently made up a third of the national government's total revenue mix.

Anyway, what is the point you guys are really trying to make? Is it that the policy mix of taxes has some effect on export incentives? Well, yeah that's true. But consumption taxes aren't even the whole story there. How about the way the US handles international transfer pricing? Lots of things factor in.

reason -> Dave Maxwell... , -1
Actually most countries have VAT and when two countries with VAT trade, then VAT is always raised on all goods where they are sold to an end consumer. Simple. The issue comes when a country has no VAT and relies almost only on income tax. Income tax is then levied on exports but not on imports, so that the exports from such a country are at a relative disadvantage UNLESS the real exchange rate adjusts (as it should). Because the real exchange rate should adjust to equalize such effects, this argument is really just hot air. But of course, if he really wanted to do something about it, he could offer to institute a VAT himself, as most countries have.

[Sep 28, 2016] We No Longer Live in a Democracy Henry Giroux on a United States at War With Itself

Notable quotes:
"... FDR once said, "A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself." This is happening in the United States in the most literal sense, given that our political and economic system are wedded to a market-driven system willing to destroy the planet, while relentlessly undermining those institutions that make a democracy possible. ..."
"... War is no longer an instrument to be used by political powers, but a form of rule, a general condition of the social order itself -- a permanent social relation and organizing principle that affects all aspects of the social order. In fact, the US has moved from a welfare state in the last forty years to a warfare state, and war has now become the foundation for politics, wedded to a misguided war on terror, the militarization of everyday life ..."
"... Politics has become a comprehensive war machine that aggressively assaults anything that does not comply with its underlying economic, religious, educative and political fundamentalisms. ..."
"... The vocabulary of war has become normalized and mobilizes certain desires, not only related to violence and social combat, but also in the creation of agents who act in the service of violence. ..."
"... This retreat into barbarism is amplified by the neoliberal value of celebrating self-interest over attention to the needs of others. It gets worse. As Hannah Arendt once observed, war culture is part of a species of thoughtlessness that legitimates certain desires, values and identities that make people insensitive to the violence they see around them in everyday life. ..."
"... A one-dimensional use of data erases the questions that matter the most: What gives life meaning? What is justice? What constitutes happiness? These things are all immeasurable by a retreat into the discourse of quantification. ..."
"... Reducing everything to quantitative data creates a form of civic illiteracy, undercuts the ethical imagination, kills empathy and mutilates politics. ..."
"... America's obsession with metrics and quantitative data is a symptom of its pedagogy of oppression. Numerical values now drive teaching, reduce culture in the broadest sense to the culture of business and teach children that schools exist largely to produce conformity and kill the imagination. Leon Wieseltier is right in arguing that the unchecked celebration of metrics erases the distinction "between knowledge and information" and substitutes quantification for wisdom. ..."
"... The left appears to have little interest in addressing education as central to how people think and see things. Education can enable people to recognize that the problems they face in everyday life need a new language that speaks to those problems. What is particularly crucial here is the need to develop a politics in which pedagogy becomes central to enabling people to understand and translate how everyday troubles connect to wider structures. ..."
"... We no longer live in a democracy. The myth of democracy has to be dismantled. ..."
"... We have to make clear that decisions made by the state and corporations are not in the general interest. We must connect the war on Black youth to the war on workers and the war on the middle class ..."
"... As Martin Luther King recognized at end of his life, the war at home and the war abroad cannot be separated. Such linkages remain crucial to the democratic project. ..."
www.truth-out.org
Henry Giroux: FDR once said, "A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself." This is happening in the United States in the most literal sense, given that our political and economic system are wedded to a market-driven system willing to destroy the planet, while relentlessly undermining those institutions that make a democracy possible. What this suggests and the book takes up in multiple ways is that the United States is at war with its own idealism, democratic institutions, the working and middle classes, minority youth, Muslims, immigrants and all of those populations considered disposable.

War has taken on an existential quality in that we are not simply at war; rather, as Étienne Balibar insists, "we are in war," inhabiting a war culture that touches every aspect of society. War is no longer an instrument to be used by political powers, but a form of rule, a general condition of the social order itself -- a permanent social relation and organizing principle that affects all aspects of the social order. In fact, the US has moved from a welfare state in the last forty years to a warfare state, and war has now become the foundation for politics, wedded to a misguided war on terror, the militarization of everyday life, and a culture of fear, which have become its most important regulative functions. Politics has become a comprehensive war machine that aggressively assaults anything that does not comply with its underlying economic, religious, educative and political fundamentalisms.

As a comprehensive war machine, the United States operates in the service of a police state, violates civil liberties and has given rise to a military-industrial-surveillance complex that President Eisenhower could never have imagined. For instance, the largest part of the federal budget -- 600 billion dollars -- goes to the military. The US rings the earth with military bases, and the US military budget is larger than those of all other advanced industrial countries combined. And that doesn't count the money spent on the National Surveillance State and intelligence agencies.

... ... ...

What's interesting about the war metaphor is that it produces a language that celebrates what the US should be ashamed of, including the national surveillance state, the military-industrial complex, the war on whistleblowers, the never-ending spectacle of violence in popular culture and endless wars abroad. The vocabulary of war has become normalized and mobilizes certain desires, not only related to violence and social combat, but also in the creation of agents who act in the service of violence.

Violence is not only normalized as the ultimate measure for solving problems, but also as a form of pleasure, especially with regard to the production of violent video games, films and even the saturation of violence in daily mainstream news. Violence saturates American life, as it has become cool to be cruel to people, to bully people and to be indifferent to the suffering of others. The ultimate act of pleasure is now served up in cinematically produced acts of extreme violence, produced both to numb the conscience and to up the pleasure quotient.

This retreat into barbarism is amplified by the neoliberal value of celebrating self-interest over attention to the needs of others. It gets worse. As Hannah Arendt once observed, war culture is part of a species of thoughtlessness that legitimates certain desires, values and identities that make people insensitive to the violence they see around them in everyday life. One can't have a democracy that organizes itself around war because war is the language of injustice -- it admits no compassion and revels in a culture of cruelty.

How does the reduction of life to quantitative data -- testing in schools, mandatory minimums in sentencing, return on investment -- feed into the cultural apparatuses producing a nation at war with itself?

This is the language of instrumental rationality gone berserk, one that strips communication of those issues, values and questions that cannot be resolved empirically. This national obsession with data is symbolic of the retreat from social and moral responsibility. A one-dimensional use of data erases the questions that matter the most: What gives life meaning? What is justice? What constitutes happiness? These things are all immeasurable by a retreat into the discourse of quantification. This type of positivism encourages a form of thoughtlessness, undermines critical agency, makes people more susceptible to violence and emotion rather than reason. Reducing everything to quantitative data creates a form of civic illiteracy, undercuts the ethical imagination, kills empathy and mutilates politics.

The obsession with data becomes a convenient tool for abdicating that which cannot be measured, thus removing from the public sphere those issues that raise serious questions that demand debate, informed judgment and thoughtfulness while taking seriously matters of historical consciousness, memory and context. Empiricism has always been comfortable with authoritarian societies, and has worked to reduce civic courage and agency to an instrumental logic that depoliticizes people by removing matters of social and political responsibility from ethical and political considerations.

America's obsession with metrics and quantitative data is a symptom of its pedagogy of oppression. Numerical values now drive teaching, reduce culture in the broadest sense to the culture of business and teach children that schools exist largely to produce conformity and kill the imagination. Leon Wieseltier is right in arguing that the unchecked celebration of metrics erases the distinction "between knowledge and information" and substitutes quantification for wisdom.

This is not to say that all data is worthless or that data gathering is entirely on the side of repression. However, the dominant celebration of data, metrics and quantification flattens the human experience, outsources judgement and distorts the complexity of the real world. The idolatry of the metric paradigm is politically and ethically enervating and cripples the human spirit.

As you have written and said often, the right takes the pedagogical function of the major cultural apparatuses seriously, while the left not so much. What do progressive forces lose when they abandon the field?

In ignoring the power of the pedagogical function of mainstream cultural apparatuses, many on the left have lost their ability to understand how domination and resistance work at the level of everyday life. The left has relied for too long on defining domination in strictly structural terms, especially with regard to economic structures. Many people on the left assume that the only form of domination is economic. What they ignore is that the crises of economics, history, politics and agency have not been matched by a crisis of ideas. They don't understand how much work is required to change consciousness or how central the issue of identification is to any viable notion of politics. People only respond to a politics that speaks to their condition. What the left has neglected is how matters of identification and the centrality of judgment, belief and persuasion are crucial to politics itself. The left underestimates the dimensions of struggle when it gives up on education as central to the very meaning of politics.

The left appears to have little interest in addressing education as central to how people think and see things. Education can enable people to recognize that the problems they face in everyday life need a new language that speaks to those problems. What is particularly crucial here is the need to develop a politics in which pedagogy becomes central to enabling people to understand and translate how everyday troubles connect to wider structures.

What do you want people to take away from the book?

Certainly, it is crucial to educate people to recognize that American democracy is in crisis and that the forces that threaten it are powerful and must be made visible. In this case, we are talking about the merging of neoliberalism, institutionalized racism, militarization, racism, poverty, inequities in wealth and power and other issues that undermine democracy.

We no longer live in a democracy. The myth of democracy has to be dismantled. To understand that, we need to connect the dots and make often isolated forms of domination visible -- extending from the war on terror and the existence of massive inequalities in wealth and power to the rise of the mass incarceration state and the destruction of public and higher education. We have to make clear that decisions made by the state and corporations are not in the general interest. We must connect the war on Black youth to the war on workers and the war on the middle class, while exposing the workings of a system that extorts money, uses prison as a default welfare program and militarizes the police as a force for repression and domestic terrorism. We must learn how to translate individual problems into larger social issues, create a comprehensive politics and a third party with the aim not of reforming the system, but restructuring it. As Martin Luther King recognized at end of his life, the war at home and the war abroad cannot be separated. Such linkages remain crucial to the democratic project.

[Sep 27, 2016] DeLong on helicopter money

Sep 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Peter K. : September 27, 2016 at 06:45 AM DeLong on helicopter money: "The swelling wave of argument and discussion around "helicopter money" has two origins:

First, as Harvard's Robert Barro says: there has been no recovery since 2010.

The unemployment rate here in the U.S. has come down, yes. But the unemployment rate has come down primarily because people who were unemployed have given up and dropped out of the labor force. Shrinkage in the share of people unemployed has been a distinctly secondary factor. Moreover, the small increase in the share of people with jobs has been neutralized, as far as its effects on how prosperous we are, by much slower productivity growth since 2010 than America had previously seen, had good reason to anticipate, and deserves.

The only bright spot is a relative one: things in other rich countries are even worse.
..."

I thought Krugman and Furman were bragging about Obama's tenure.

"Now note that back in 1936 [John Maynard Keynes had disagreed][]:

"The State will have to exercise a guiding influence... partly by fixing the rate of interest, and partly, perhaps, in other ways.... It seems unlikely that the influence of banking policy on the rate of interest will be sufficient by itself.... I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment; though this need not exclude all manner of compromises and of devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative..."

By the 1980s, however, for Keynes himself the long run had come, and he was dead. The Great Moderation of the business cycle from 1984-2007 was a rich enough pudding to be proof, for the rough consensus of mainstream economists at least, that Keynes had been wrong and Friedman had been right.

But in the aftermath of 2007 it became very clear that they-or, rather, we, for I am certainly one of the mainstream economists in the roughly consensus-were very, tragically, dismally and grossly wrong."

DeLong sounds very much left rather than center-left. His reasons for supporting Hillary over Sanders eludes me.

Hillary's $275 billion over 5 years is substantially too small as center-leftist Krugman put it.

Now we face a choice:

Do we accept economic performance that all of our predecessors would have characterized as grossly subpar-having assigned the Federal Reserve and other independent central banks a mission and then kept from them the policy tools they need to successfully accomplish it?

Do we return the task of managing the business cycle to the political branches of government-so that they don't just occasionally joggle the elbows of the technocratic professionals but actually take on a co-leading or a leading role?

Or do we extend the Federal Reserve's toolkit in a structured way to give it the tools it needs?

Helicopter money is an attempt to choose door number (3). Our intellectual adversaries mostly seek to choose door number (1)-and then to tell us that the "cold douche", as Schumpeter put it, of unemployment will in the long run turn out to be good medicine, for some reason or other. And our intellectual adversaries mostly seek to argue that in reality there is no door number (3)-that attempts to go through it will rob central banks of their independence and wind up with us going through door number (2), which we know ends badly..."

------------

Some commenters believe more fiscal policy via Congress is politically more realistic than helicopter money.

I don't know, maybe they're right. I do know Hillary's proposals are too small. And her aversion to government debt and deficit is wrong given the economic context and market demand for safe assets.

Some pundits like Krugman believe helicopter money won't be that effective "because the models tell him." We should try it and find out. Reply Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 06:45 AM

reason -> Peter K.... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 08:40 AM

"Moreover, the small increase in the share of people with jobs has been neutralized, as far as its effects on how prosperous we are, by much slower productivity growth since 2010 than America had previously seen, had good reason to anticipate, and deserves."

?????? The rate of (measured) productivity growth is not all that important. What has happened to real median income.

And why are quoting from Robert Barro who is basically a freshwater economist. Couldn't you find somebody sensible?

pgl -> reason ... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 09:08 AM
Barro wants us to believe we have been at full employment all along. Of course that would mean any increase in aggregate demand would only cause inflation. Of course many of us think Barro lost it years ago.

These little distinctions are alas lost on PeterK.

Peter K. -> pgl... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 01:05 PM
run a long stupid troll.

Go read some hack Republican analyses.

Peter K. -> reason ... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 01:06 PM
DeLong is quoting Barro.
Paine -> Peter K.... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 09:57 AM
Really it's Delong on the context that has produced a return to HM fantasies

I'm sure u agree

He doesn't endorse HM in this post does he ?

Peter K. -> Paine ... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 01:09 PM
Sounds to me like he does:

"Now we face a choice:

[1] Do we accept economic performance that all of our predecessors would have characterized as grossly subpar-having assigned the Federal Reserve and other independent central banks a mission and then kept from them the policy tools they need to successfully accomplish it?

[2] Do we return the task of managing the business cycle to the political branches of government-so that they don't just occasionally joggle the elbows of the technocratic professionals but actually take on a co-leading or a leading role?

[3] Or do we extend the Federal Reserve's toolkit in a structured way to give it the tools it needs?

Helicopter money is an attempt to choose door number (3). Our intellectual adversaries mostly seek to choose door number (1)-and then to tell us that the "cold douche", as Schumpeter put it, of unemployment will in the long run turn out to be good medicine, for some reason or other. And our intellectual adversaries mostly seek to argue that in reality there is no door number (3)-that attempts to go through it will rob central banks of their independence and wind up with us going through door number (2), which we know ends badly...""

---------------------
Conservatives want 1 and 2 ends badly, so 3 is the only choice.

[Sep 27, 2016] Was NAFTA smart? Smart for whom?

Sep 27, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
jonboinAR September 27, 2016 at 7:22 pm

Lambert: " "Smart" is one of those 10%-er weasel words. Was NAFTA smart? Why or what not? Smart for whom?"
----
Indeed. Whether a deal is smart to make depends on one's real objective. Hows'about clearing that question up, Mrs C?

[Sep 27, 2016] Globalization is gone as a main driving force, pan-European unity is gone, and whether the United States will stay united is far from a done deal

Notable quotes:
"... Global is gone as a main driving force, pan-European is gone, and whether the United States will stay united is far from a done deal. We are moving towards a mass movement of dozens of separate countries and states and societies looking inward. All of which are in some form of -impending- trouble or another. ..."
"... And of course it's confusing that the protests against the 'old regimes' and the growth and centralization -first- manifest in the rise of faces and voices who do not reject all of the above offhand. That is to say, the likes of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may be against more centralization, but none of them has a clue about growth being over. They don't get that part anymore than Hillary or Hollande or Merkel do. ..."
"... Dems in the US, Labour in the UK, and Hollande's 'Socialists' in France have all become part of the two-headed monster that is the political center, and that is (held) responsible for the deterioration in people's lives. ..."
Sep 27, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
fresno dan September 27, 2016 at 4:46 pm

Why There is Trump ~Ilargi

But nobody seems to really know or understand. Which is odd, because it's not that hard. That is, this all happens because growth is over. And if growth is over, so are expansion and centralization in all the myriad of shapes and forms they come in.

Global is gone as a main driving force, pan-European is gone, and whether the United States will stay united is far from a done deal. We are moving towards a mass movement of dozens of separate countries and states and societies looking inward. All of which are in some form of -impending- trouble or another.

What makes the entire situation so hard to grasp for everyone is that nobody wants to acknowledge any of this. Even though tales of often bitter poverty emanate from all the exact same places that Trump and Brexit and Le Pen come from too.

That the politico-econo-media machine churns out positive growth messages 24/7 goes some way towards explaining the lack of acknowledgement and self-reflection, but only some way. The rest is due to who we ourselves are. We think we deserve eternal growth.

And of course it's confusing that the protests against the 'old regimes' and the growth and centralization -first- manifest in the rise of faces and voices who do not reject all of the above offhand. That is to say, the likes of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may be against more centralization, but none of them has a clue about growth being over. They don't get that part anymore than Hillary or Hollande or Merkel do.

So why these people? Look closer and you see that in the US, UK and France, there is nobody left who used to speak for the 'poor and poorer'. While at the same time, the numbers of poor and poorer increase at a rapid clip. They just have nowhere left to turn to. There is literally no left left.

Dems in the US, Labour in the UK, and Hollande's 'Socialists' in France have all become part of the two-headed monster that is the political center, and that is (held) responsible for the deterioration in people's lives. Moreover, at least for now, the actual left wing may try to stand up in the form of Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, but they are both being stangled by the two-headed monster's fake left in their countries and their own parties.
================================================
This is from today's Links, but I didn't have a chance to post this snippet.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1A225NBEA

Long time since we had 5% – if the whole system is financial scheme is premised on growth, and there is less and less of it ever year, it doesn't look sustainable. How bad http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/200pm-water-cooler-9272016.html#comment-2676054does it have to get for how many before the model is chucked???

In the great depression, even the bankers were having a tough time. If the rich are exempt from suffering, I think history has shown that a small elite can impose suffering on masses for a long time…

'there is nobody left who used to speak for the 'poor and poorer'.

Actually, there are plenty who SPEAK for the poor, there just is NONE who ACT.

Reply
jrs September 27, 2016 at 5:08 pm

How would we measure this growth that is supposed to be over? Yes of course there are the conventional measurements like GDP, but it's not zero. Yes of course if inflation is understated it would overstate GDP, and yes GDP measurements may not measure much as many critics have said. But what about other measures?

Is oil use down, are CO2 emissions down, is resource use in general down? If not it's growth (or groath). This growth is at the cost of the planet but that's why GDP is flawed. And the benefit of this groath goes entirely to the 1%ers, but that's distribution.

The left failed, I don't know all the reasons (and it's always hard to oppose the powers that be, the field always tilts toward them, it's never a fair fight) but it failed. That's what we see the results of.

fresno dan September 27, 2016 at 6:13 pm

I agree

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL September 27, 2016 at 5:12 pm

Someone very smart said "the Fed makes the economy more stable".
He also quoted The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think".
Definition of stable: firm; steady; not wavering or changeable.
As in: US GDP growth of a paltry 1.22% per year.
But hey it only took an additional trillion $ in debt per year to stay "stable".

Softie September 27, 2016 at 5:42 pm

there are plenty who SPEAK for the poor, there just is NONE who ACT.
========
That's why in 1992 Francis Futurama refirmed the end of history that was predicted by Hegel some 150 years earlier.

Lee September 27, 2016 at 5:58 pm

Time to revisit Herman Daly's Steady-State Economy.

[Sep 27, 2016] The Morning After the Debate, Donald Trump Goes on the Attack

Notable quotes:
"... "I don't believe she has the stamina to be the president," he said on Fox. "You know, she's home all the time." ..."
"... Better late then never. This issue should be raised during the debates. Serious neurological disease that Hillary is suffering from should be a campaign issue. It is a fair game. ..."
"... That does not make Trump immune from counter-attacks as he is older then Clinton and might have skeletons in the closet too, but voters have right to know the real state of health of candidates. ..."
"... "Khan Gambit" was the most shameful part of Clinton attacks on Trump. ..."
Sep 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs : September 27, 2016 at 12:58 PM

The Morning After the Debate, Donald Trump Goes on the Attack
http://nyti.ms/2cSvOlO
NYT - ALEXANDER BURNS - SEPT. 27, 2016

A defensive Donald J. Trump lashed out at the debate moderator, complained about his microphone and threatened to make Bill Clinton's marital infidelity a campaign issue in a television appearance on Tuesday just hours after his first presidential debate with Hillary Clinton.

And defying conventions of civility and political common sense, Mr. Trump leveled cutting personal criticism at a Miss Universe pageant winner, held up by Mrs. Clinton in Monday night's debate as an example of her opponent's disrespect for women.

Mr. Trump insisted in the Fox News appearance that he had been right to disparage the beauty queen, Alicia Machado, for her physique.

"She was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem," said Mr. Trump, who was the pageant's executive producer at the time. "Not only that - her attitude. And we had a real problem with her."

Mrs. Clinton mentioned Ms. Machado by name, quoting insults that Ms. Machado has attributed to Mr. Trump and noting that the pageant winner had become a citizen to vote in the 2016 election. During the debate, he showed disbelief at the charge that he had ridiculed Ms. Machado, asking Mrs. Clinton repeatedly, "Where did you find this?"

But Mr. Trump abruptly shifted course a few hours later, with comments that threatened to escalate and extend an argument that appeared to be one of his weakest moments of the debate.

Mrs. Clinton assailed him late in the debate for deriding women as "pigs, slobs and dogs." Mr. Trump had no ready answer for the charge of sexism, and offered a muddled reply that cited his past feud with the comedian Rosie O'Donnell.

His comments attacking Ms. Machado recalled his frequent practice, during the Republican primaries and much of the general election campaign, of bickering harshly with political bystanders, sometimes savaging them in charged language that ended up alienating voters. In the past, he has made extended personal attacks on the Muslim parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq and on a Hispanic federal judge.

Trump aides considered it a sign of progress in recent weeks that the Republican nominee was more focused on criticizing Mrs. Clinton, and less prone to veering off into such self-destructive public feuds.

Going after Ms. Machado may be especially tone deaf for Mr. Trump, at a moment in the race when he is seeking to reverse voters' ingrained negative views of his personality. Sixty percent of Americans in an ABC News/Washington Post poll this month said they thought Mr. Trump was biased against women and minorities, and Mrs. Clinton has been airing a television commercial highlighting his history of caustic and graphic comments about women.

Mrs. Clinton pressed her advantage on Tuesday, telling reporters on her campaign plane that Mr. Trump had raised "offensive and off-putting" views that called into question his fitness for the presidency.

"The real point," she said, "is about temperament and fitness and qualification to hold the most important, hardest job in the world."

Both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton will strike out on the campaign trail on Tuesday with the goal of framing the debate's outcome to their advantage. While Mr. Trump is in Florida, Mrs. Clinton plans to campaign in North Carolina, a traditionally Republican state where polls show her and Mr. Trump virtually tied.

It will likely take a few days to measure any shift in the race after the candidates' clash at Hofstra University on Long Island. Polls had shown the presidential race narrowing almost to a dead heat on the national level, with Mr. Trump drawing close to Mrs. Clinton in several swing states where she had long held an advantage.

But Mr. Trump appeared thrown on Tuesday by his uneven performance the night before, offering a series of different explanations for the results. On Fox, he cited "unfair questions" posed by the moderator, Lester Holt of NBC News, and insinuated that someone might have tampered with his microphone.

Moving forward in his contest with Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump said he might "hit her harder," perhaps raising the issue of "her husband's women." Should Mr. Trump opt for that risky approach, he could begin to do so during a campaign swing in Florida on Tuesday.

And in another indication that Mr. Trump has little intention of shifting his tone, the Republican nominee repeated the attack on Mrs. Clinton that spurred their Monday exchange about gender in the first place: that she lacks the physical vigor to be president.

"I don't believe she has the stamina to be the president," he said on Fox. "You know, she's home all the time."

Mrs. Clinton was dismissive on Tuesday of Mr. Trump's barbs, shrugging off a question about his threat to go after Mrs. Clinton and her husband personally and his dismay about the microphone. "Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night," she said. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... Shamed and Angry: Alicia Machado, a Miss Universe
Mocked by Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/2cSGwsk
NYT - MICHAEL BARBARO and MEGAN TWOHEY - Sep 27

For 20 years, Alicia Machado has lived with the agony of what Donald J. Trump did to her after she won the Miss Universe title: shame her, over and over, for gaining weight.

Private scolding was apparently insufficient. Mr. Trump, at the time an executive producer of the pageant, insisted on accompanying Ms. Machado, then a teenager, to a gym, where dozens of reporters and cameramen watched as she exercised.

Mr. Trump, in his trademark suit and tie, posed for photographs beside her as she burned calories in front of the news media. "This is somebody who likes to eat," Mr. Trump said from inside the gym. ...

(The Donald is clearly no slouch in that department.)

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/728297587418247168

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... September 27, 2016 at 02:03 PM

Trump, 'the candidate who almost always flies home in his private Boeing 757 to Trump Tower in New York or to his palatial Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.' ...

Donald Trump Means Business in Iowa: Night in Motel, and a Day in Church http://nyti.ms/1UlcJI3

NYT - MAGGIE HABERMAN - JAN. 24, 2016

MUSCATINE, Iowa - Donald J. Trump spent the last seven months saying he wanted to win. Now he is really acting like it. ...

On Friday night, the candidate who almost always flies home in his private Boeing 757 to Trump Tower in New York or to his palatial Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., instead slept in a Holiday Inn Express in Sioux Center, Iowa. ("Good mattress," he said afterward. "Clean.") ...

likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 02:57 PM
"I don't believe she has the stamina to be the president," he said on Fox. "You know, she's home all the time."

Better late then never. This issue should be raised during the debates. Serious neurological disease that Hillary is suffering from should be a campaign issue. It is a fair game.

That does not make Trump immune from counter-attacks as he is older then Clinton and might have skeletons in the closet too, but voters have right to know the real state of health of candidates. This is a fair game.

likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs... , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 03:01 PM
"Khan Gambit" was the most shameful part of Clinton attacks on Trump.

See http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Two_party_system_as_poliarchy/US_presidential_elections/Candidates/Trump/khan_gambit_at_democratic_convention.shtml

[Sep 27, 2016] David Cay Johnston The Making of Donald Trump

Notable quotes:
"... The manner is which she secured the Democratic nomination is a signature of the Clinton style. The Clinton 'charitable foundation' is a beacon for everything that is wrong with the American economic and political system today. ..."
"... I consider this upcoming national election to be the signal failure of the two party political system as it is today, choked by a self-referential elite, corrupted by a lust for power and big money. ..."
Sep 25, 2016 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside."

Sam Vaknin


I make it no secret that I find Hillary Clinton to be both morally repugnant and appallingly dishonest.

The manner is which she secured the Democratic nomination is a signature of the Clinton style. The Clinton 'charitable foundation' is a beacon for everything that is wrong with the American economic and political system today.

But that does not mean that I am blind to what is being offered by The Donald.

I consider this upcoming national election to be the signal failure of the two party political system as it is today, choked by a self-referential elite, corrupted by a lust for power and big money.

watch-v=19KI_2X2Sfs

[Sep 27, 2016] What Krugman doesnt get is that trade is resonating as a an issue and its resonating for a reason. Look at Brexit. Preaching to the choir that we should it ignore it - it makes corporations and the donor class happy - doesnt change that fact.

Sep 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Peter K. -> anne... September 27, 2016 at 06:11 AM

What Krugman doesn't get is that trade is resonating as a an issue and it's resonating for a reason. Look at Brexit. Preaching to the choir that we should it ignore it - it makes corporations and the donor class happy - doesn't change that fact.

pgl -> Peter K.... September 27, 2016 at 07:01 AM

Maybe you missed the simple point. Having a sales tax is not trade protection. Trump is either an idiot or he is playing people to be idiots. I guess you are OK with this.
Paine -> Peter K.... , September 27, 2016 at 08:01 AM
Yes

The de bots need to jump on this hard if they want the wage class back

Maybe not

After all the MNC class might not donate as much

Note they'll always donate something
It's a hedge if nothing else

But the collateral jobs and deals can be denied to a naughty Dembotic party

Peter K. -> Paine ... , September 27, 2016 at 01:02 PM
"After all the MNC class might not donate as much"

And yes ignore PGL. He's not worth the time or energy.

paine -> Peter K.... , September 27, 2016 at 01:55 PM
I will
reason -> anne... , September 27, 2016 at 06:23 AM
I have repeatedly pointed out that if country A mostly uses VAT (which taxes imports but not exports) and country B mostly uses income tax (which taxes exports but not imports) then that affects the effective exchange rate.

IN PRINCIPLE the exchange rate should adjust for this. The question is whether it does (but note also the incentive to export effects). The problem with all these issues is that it is complicated and for people who can't think in terms of more than 15 words at a time it is difficult.

pgl -> reason ... , September 27, 2016 at 07:02 AM
The US$ and Mexican peso do float with respect to each other so you are correct. Besides, the Republican plan to replace those massive income tax cuts for the rich that Trump wants is to hit the rest of us with sales (aka VAT) taxes.
pgl -> pgl... , September 27, 2016 at 07:33 AM
The peso appreciated after the debate. Wonder why!
Paine -> reason ... , September 27, 2016 at 08:04 AM
Yes. Pk should have attacked trump for blowing the try benefit of a vat in global market wars

The corporate elites road block to a US vat is a great story in narrow class interests

[Sep 27, 2016] The reason to win elections is not just to prevent disastrous conservative policies. Its to enact good policies.

Notable quotes:
"... Bill Clinton's tenure wasn't all good. He said the "era of big government was over." He enacted Republican lite policies which helped lead to the financial crisis. He didn't enact policies that helped globalization's losers. The Clinton years ended in a tech-stock bubble and financial crisis in East Asia. ..."
"... The reason to win elections is not just to prevent disastrous conservative policies. It's to enact good policies. Left policies are better than center-left. Hillary is center-left as Krugman pointed out. Corbyn is left. Yes the next 40 days has a contest between between the center-left and insane right, but that doesn't mean we cant' fact check the center-left pundits like Krugman. ..."
Sep 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Peter K. : September 27, 2016 at 06:31 AM

Trump was proud he evaded taxes and yet he complains about the state of American infrastructure? He babbled incoherently about Yellen and the Fed.

Yes Republicans and Bush squandered the fact that Clinton/Gingrich balanced the budget with tax cuts for the rich.

Krugman has made the distinction between center-left and left in the context of attacking Bernie Sanders. Read Simon Wren-Lewis's blog post on UK Labour.

Hillary rightly lambasted trickle-down economics last night and contrasted Republican economics with Democrats' "middle class" economics. But she mostly went after Trump at a personal level and I thought she was effective. Maybe in the next debates she'll talk more about economics.

Her description of what caused the financial crisis wasn't really accurate but so what, it was close enough.

She did brag about her husband's tenure (and how many times during the primary we were told by supporters that it wasn't fair to equate her with her husband.

Which is where Trump would go off on NAFTA. Bill Clinton's tenure wasn't all good. He said the "era of big government was over." He enacted Republican lite policies which helped lead to the financial crisis. He didn't enact policies that helped globalization's losers. The Clinton years ended in a tech-stock bubble and financial crisis in East Asia.

Simon Wren-Lewis's blog post doesn't make much sense to me. Maybe it's my fault. All he does is link to the Owen Smith piece which says Labour doesn't poll well and SWL complains Corbyn won't win elections.

The reason to win elections is not just to prevent disastrous conservative policies. It's to enact good policies. Left policies are better than center-left. Hillary is center-left as Krugman pointed out. Corbyn is left. Yes the next 40 days has a contest between between the center-left and insane right, but that doesn't mean we cant' fact check the center-left pundits like Krugman.

As even Krugman pointed out, Hillary's "investment" of $275 billion over 5 years is substantially too small. It will lead to a reliance on monetary policy from a shaky Fed which may create more asset bubbles if regulators and regulations aren't up to the task of preventing them.

It was very center-left of Hillary to brag that her plan is revenue neutral. Maybe that's the smart thing to do politically, but not economically and it's not being honest with the voters.

Reply Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 06:31 AM

[Sep 27, 2016] Presidential Debate Part 1 Achieving prosperity in the U.S. economy - YouTube

Sep 27, 2016 | www.youtube.com
Jim Bob 4 hours ago
I hate how shes smiling and at one part almost laughed at something serious like this is a game. she never directly responds to what lester or trump asks, but you see trump directly answering or responding to what she asks. One thing i want to know is, but will never know, does she want to destroy this country or is she so ignorant that she will destroy it by trying to help. Her views are wrong on economy, there may be somethings that i will agree with her but when it comes to economy she will wreck this country.
somuchkooleronline. 30 minutes ago
If Hillary is in the White House then we may as well has the Islamic flag above it instead of the stars & stripes. Craigslist has ads for protesters to be paid to show where there's a Trump rally to harass. In the paper a few months back a man woke to find windows of his car bashed in. The car had a Trump sticker. The anti Trump climate in networks NBC & MSNBC & CNN & Morning CBS. On YouTube Hillary is bringing 65K rufugees to US next year.
dag let 7 hours ago
This debate sealed it. I'm voting trump. Hillary just came across as an emotionless conniving snake. Trump at least looked somewhat human.

[Sep 27, 2016] I don't think Trump was vastly different in the R primary debates (he was unfocused and narcissistic then as well), but I always suspected somehow that he would play softball rather than hardball when it came to the REAL showdown with Clinton

Notable quotes:
"... Yes, people kept saying how they wish Trump would win the R primaries because it would be so exciting when he took his attack to Hillary and gave her what she may very well deserve. And I was always "I'll believe it when I see it, not until then". ..."
"... May be… He could easily bury her, but preferred not to. He was definitely unprepared. Also he might be afraid of Clinton clan. ..."
"... He's 70 years old and can be knocked off balance defending !insults! about a beauty queen. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

jrs

Yes, people kept saying how they wish Trump would win the R primaries because it would be so exciting when he took his attack to Hillary and gave her what she may very well deserve. And I was always "I'll believe it when I see it, not until then".

I don't think Trump was vastly different in the R primary debates (he was unfocused and narcissistic then as well), but I always suspected somehow that he would play softball rather than hardball when it came to the REAL showdown with Clinton (no "little Rubio" here). Well I told ya so. Although there are 3 more debates so I guess I could still be proved wrong. But it's looking like I told you so.

What so great or even fun and entertaining about Trump again? These circuses are completely boring!!! Well he's not Clinton I suppose there is always that.

----

I guess the 10% think they got there by doing well on tests and not sheer luck and choosing the right parents. Hmm well screw em.

likbez

"I have seen people say he is saving it….?dry powder?"

May be… He could easily bury her, but preferred not to. He was definitely unprepared. Also he might be afraid of Clinton clan.

"A lot of people check out after the first 30 minutes of one debate and never come back."

True -- It was pretty disgusting performance on both sides.

ChiGal in Carolina

Just had my first in-person encounter with an apparent Trump supporter, 40ish lifeguard at the community pool down here. He was very pleased with last night's debate, thought Trump showed he has self-control and was generally presidential (!).

All my friends and family thought Clinton "won" but it's not gonna matter.

charles leseau

He's 70 years old and can be knocked off balance defending !insults! about a beauty queen.

Amen. It takes very little wit to point out immediately how irrelevant such a thing is to a presidential debate, but instead he walked right into it like a rattled kid who doesn't think half a second before responding.

[Sep 27, 2016] Hillary enters, as the Woman in Red. The stains of Iraq, Libya, Honduras, Syria and Yemen.

Sep 27, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Carolinian September 27, 2016 at 7:12 pm

Here's St. Clair's liveblog of the big debate. Sampler

+ Lester Holt needs to be extremely cautious tonight. Lots of police and armed security in the debate hall. No sudden movements. Holt must keep his hands firmly on the podium at all times.

+ Bill and Melania shake hands at center stage. Bill whispers something in her ear. I think it was: "Text me."

+ No national anthem. Kaepernick wins!

+ Hillary enters, as the Woman in Red. The stains of Iraq, Libya, Honduras, Syria and Yemen.

Etc.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/27/idiot-winds-at-hofstra/

[Sep 27, 2016] Economist's View Trump On Trade

Sep 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

RueTheDay : , Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 10:07 AM
"Gah. A VAT is basically a sales tax. It is levied on both domestic and imported goods, so that it doesn't protect against imports - which is why it's allowed under international trade rules, and not considered a protectionist trade policy."

I think what Trump was getting at was that exports are typically exempt from VAT. So while Krugman is correct that Mexican VAT applies equally to Mexican goods sold in Mexico and US goods imported into Mexico, it doesn't apply to Mexican goods exported to the US.

But honestly, who cares? Trump is not espousing any sort of realistic solution to the problems facing the middle class. Imposing tariffs, tearing up trade agreements, and kicking out immigrants is baby talk intended to placate the ill-informed.

Paine -> RueTheDay ... , -1
Yes I think trump garbled his point
In the briefing he got from his brain trust
I suspect he heard something like this

The vat advantage is more like an undervalued peso effect on lowering "the cost "
of US exports
But without the protectionist effect of raising the cost of US imports

Perhaps his apparent ADHD
Betrayed him here
He heard the word protectionist and forgot the details and the precise fact
There is no protectionist effect of the vat export rebate

PRD -> pgl... , -1
Correct me if I'm wrong but this is the arithmetic I'm picking up from Krugman which shows Trump's fallacy.

If you have a $10,000 Mexican car that paid a $2,000 VAT, the exporter gets reimbursed for the $2,000 dollar paid in VAT which would normally get passed along to the consumer, thus making the price that it is exported at $8,000. That $8,000 dollar car would subsequently pay sales tax in the USA.

If you have a $10,000 USA car being exported to Mexico, it would get the VAT tax added on to be passed along to the consumer, thus making it $12,500. That same car would pay sales tax in the United States on it being worth $10,000.

So basically, the Mexican car is actually only worth $8,000 because the VAT that would have been passed along to the consumers (and had been paid already) is reimbursed to the exporter. The American car is worth $10,000 and must pay the VAT, because the Mexican car would pay the VAT in Mexico as well. Essentially he's equating an $8,000 Mexican car with a $10,000 American car.

Shah of Bratpuhr : , -1
I highly doubt Trump considers people that understand economics to be his target audience. Trump speaks only to his target audience not about issues, but rather how they feel right now at this exact moment. Perhaps his strategy is to keep people angry and fearful enough by Election Day?

His message to his audience: "you feel badly because you're not rich", audience nods, "it's this scapegoat's fault", audience cheers, "Only I can rid you of this scapegoat and when I do, you'll feel better"

Paine -> Shah of Bratpuhr... , -1
Yes

He has learned the devil can easily hide in the details

JohnH : , -1
"Trump's whole view on trade is that other people are taking advantage of us - that it's all about dominance, and that we're weak."

You have to admit, Trump was right...he just doesn't understand who's taking advantage of whom. He really should understand this (and probably does)...the winners are all around him on Park Ave, Fifth Ave, and Wall Street. Of course, you'd never expect Trump to admit that he's part of the predatory class, would you?

Ben Groves : , -1
Trade agreements hurt a lot of country's that American "businesses" deal with more than America a good deal of the time. NAFTA killed Mexican farming. It was part of the package along with the 2002 subsidy agreement after 9/11 that started nationalizing agri-business. This also allowed drug production to take off and cartels to expand quickly, using the increased volume of business transactions to ship more drugs across the borders into Donald Trump supporters noses and veins.

[Sep 27, 2016] I have seen people say he is saving it for later

www.nakedcapitalism.com

fresno dan September 27, 2016 at 4:07 pm

"After a shaky start, Clinton was mostly prepared, disciplined, and methodical in her attacks. By contrast, after landing some early blows on trade, Trump was mostly winging it" [NBC]. That's how it felt to me. Of course, 10%-ers like preparation. Preparation leads to passing your test! But in this case, they are right to do so.

====================================================
Trump could have brought up:

I have seen people say he is saving it….?dry powder? A lot of people check out after the first 30 minutes of one debate and never come back.
And I'm really into it – and I doubt I will waste my time again. Even though I am a big believer in judging people/politicians by what they do and not what they say, Trump's immaturity has frayed my last nerve. He's 70 years old and can be knocked off balance defending !insults! about a beauty queen.

[Sep 27, 2016] No chief executive at the nation's 100 largest companies had donated to Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign through August,

Notable quotes:
"... Should Trump succeed in renegotiating US trade deals, corporations - currently at their most indebted level in history - will be deprived of revenues to service their debts. Some will default. ..."
"... Meanwhile, realizing whatever benefits accrue from more domestic production takes time and capital to construct plants. That's a problem, when corporate leverage already is too high. ..."
"... Most likely, the Business Roundtable will sit down for The Talk with Trump, and his wacky promises to restructure the global trade system will quickly be forgotten. ..."
Sep 27, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Jim Haygood September 27, 2016 at 3:47 pm

It's unanimous:

No chief executive at the nation's 100 largest companies had donated to Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign through August, a sharp reversal from 2012, when nearly a third of Fortune 100 CEOs supported Mitt Romney.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/no-fortune-100-ceos-back-republican-donald-trump-1474671842

One executive is quoted taking offense at Trump's ethnic slurs. But that doesn't explain the complete unanimity. What does explain it: overseas sales account for a third of large companies' revenues. Chart:

http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/559eac5969bedd0d06679458-1200-900/cotd-sp500-foreign-revenue.png

Should Trump succeed in renegotiating US trade deals, corporations - currently at their most indebted level in history - will be deprived of revenues to service their debts. Some will default.

Meanwhile, realizing whatever benefits accrue from more domestic production takes time and capital to construct plants. That's a problem, when corporate leverage already is too high.

Most likely, the Business Roundtable will sit down for The Talk with Trump, and his wacky promises to restructure the global trade system will quickly be forgotten.

If Donnie's serious, then he's Herbert Hoover II, and the long-suffering Dr Hussman becomes a billionaire after the Crash Heard Round the World.

[Sep 27, 2016] Trump supporters will not be converted

Notable quotes:
"... This is an impossible task. She is a war criminal, a stanch neoliberal (like her husband, who sold Democratic Party to Wall Street) and unrepentant neocon. ..."
"... My feel is that Democrats lost the support of rank and file union members in this election cycle. Serial betrays starting from Bill Clinton "triangulation" and "third way" scams finally got under the skin of workers and they do not any longer consider Democratic Party as a political entity representing their interests. And financial oligarchy and professional classes voters are not numerous enough to secure the victory. ..."
Sep 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Chris G : September 27, 2016 at 07:59 AM

Trump supporters will not be converted. What we need to do is 1) get people who lean Clinton to show up and vote for her and 2) convince fence-sitters that she's the better choice and to show up and vote for her. Towards that end, we need to establish what's important to them: policy positions, nice clothes, likes dogs? Find out what appeals to THEM, not necessarily you, and if Clinton has those traits even a little bit then make the pitch for her based on those traits. Engage those voters. Don't just speculate on what might or should appeal to them. Ask them what is important to them and ASK FOR THEIR VOTE!
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Chris G ... , September 27, 2016 at 12:52 PM
I have come across a few Trump supporters in my travels and what they all have in common is what they have to say about Hillary, while about Trump they are mostly mute.
Chris G -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , September 27, 2016 at 01:55 PM
Hillary hate is strong.* It's not as widespread in eastern MA as it is in other parts of the country but where it exists it looks like it's just as intense.

*There's no intellectual consistency to it. It's visceral.

likbez -> Chris G ... , -1
"convince fence-sitters that she's the better choice and to show up and vote for her"

This is an impossible task. She is a war criminal, a stanch neoliberal (like her husband, who sold Democratic Party to Wall Street) and unrepentant neocon.

Trump might be a crook and as bad as she is, but in a larger scale of things he did not committed the crimes she committed. Yet. And at least on the surface he is against neoliberal globalization.

My feel is that Democrats lost the support of rank and file union members in this election cycle. Serial betrays starting from Bill Clinton "triangulation" and "third way" scams finally got under the skin of workers and they do not any longer consider Democratic Party as a political entity representing their interests. And financial oligarchy and professional classes voters are not numerous enough to secure the victory.

And that might well spells doom for Demorats.

On the other hand Trump could bury Clinton but choose do not even touch her most vulnerable points (Iraq war vote, emailgate, Libya, Clinton Foundation scam. health issues, Bill Clinton "legacy"). Is he afraid of something or just saving the shots ? Also he looked completely unprepared. Clinton relied on notes and pre-defined gambits, while Trump relied on intuition. It did not play well for him.

[Sep 27, 2016] Personally, I came out of this feeling more sympathetic to Trump as a person, believe it or not.

Notable quotes:
"... Personally, I came out of this feeling more sympathetic to Trump as a person, believe it or not. I think he genuinely sees the infrastructural decay and it frosts him. ..."
"... Same with "you had 30 years to solve it." Undeniably true; Clinton's whole "let's build on our success" schtick is such a steaming lot of 10%-er-ness. But if Trump wants to make this election a referendum on the political class, he's going to have to do a lot better than this ..."
"... Hillary gave no indication she is going to change the course we are on now; in fact, reading between the lines, she thinks things are going great and there is no reason to change anything. ..."
"... I think there is a better chance that Trump will actually try to fix things, but tax policy and several other things did not give me great hope that he has any idea how to fix things, or will learn & adapt quickly enough. On the plus side, some people talk better than they deliver; some people deliver better than they talk. At least there's a chance he's one of the latter. ..."
"... I can't find where he would refuse "trade deals", only ones "These Morons running things" have negotiated. I'm betting he would push them with minor changes, as will HRC. ISDS is a foregone conclusion, with either. Jesus, one of his advisors is Larry f'n Kudlow. If the regulars here are not appalled by the guys he has surrounded himself with, I sure am. I can see it coming… ..."
"... I think Trump's probably serious about trade. But if I understand the structural issues correctly, it doesn't really matter whether he is serious or not. Apparently the Republican base is now strongly opposed to free trade. ..."
"... If my assessment is correct, TPP dies with a Trump win. There isn't an option to reopen negotiations, is there? A brand new "Trump style" treaty would take years to negotiate, and he has "one term" written all over him. This also would kill TISA, right? Is it technically contingent on TPP passing first? ..."
"... The Democrats in opposition will be just as feckless as the Republicans have been effective. ..."
"... One particular provision of TISA is as bad as anything in TPP (bar ISDS) and that is the prohibition on remunicipalization of privatized public resources. Governments would not be allowed to take back things such as British Rail that have been sold off to the private sector, and would be prohibited from nationalizing any other public good now in private hands. It's another hit to national sovereignty. ..."
"... HRC, you knew from the beginning, who she was tied to/advised by/paid for by. She is a "known known". We are all seeking to know what or who DT represents, as he is harder to pin down. ..."
"... I don't think Clinton won every category just most. I think Trump won on "there is no evidence Russia hacked the DNC". ..."
"... How are we gonna survive 4 years with either of them at the helm? ..."
"... That was my take exactly. Since I don't honestly think Stein is going to win, and I think Johnson might be worse than either of these, I was hoping one of them would give me a reason to feel optimistic that they would do a decent job. They … both failed horribly. ..."
"... What universe are they living in? Half of these people used to be Bernie supporters. Are people that easily manipulated? Did I used to be that easily manipulated? Or have I gone completely insane now. This was some kind of masterful performance? She mouthed a lot of decent sounding platitudes with no specifics re: policy (while everyone praises her for specifics, and I think she championed the ideas of specifics themselves) while doing a decent but not great job of hitting Trump on some areas where he's very vulnerable. ..."
"... He did a great job finding areas where she's vulnerable, but a terrible job of hitting her on them. ..."
"... "Are people that easily manipulated?" Yes. Was I that easily manipulated? Probably. Don't feel bad though most of us were naïve enough to believe the BS for at least some period of time. ..."
"... Uh it's scripted reality TV. The "debates" are vetted and agreed upon by the two parties who sponsored the darn thing via their little pretend front group. Anyone, at this point, who thinks these things matter is fooling themselves. It's a 90 minute infomercial, so if you find infomercials masterful then I guess. ..."
"... Thank you for pointing out that as usual, the unconstitutional and illegitimate two-party duopoly has excluded other candidates who will be on the ballot. Who exactly gave them this privilege of exclusion? ..."
"... Private enterprise, Jim. You can always put up the money for third party candidates to debate on prime time. Thought that was how the market "works". ..."
"... I disagree strongly that Trump is incoherent; I saw him in Bangor. What he is, is discursive and improvisational. He has his main points that he always ..."
"... However, that style doesn't work for him in this debate. He doesn't get to determine the structure, there's no time in a two minute answer to do the kind of excursions he likes to do, and the crowd was told not to react. ..."
"... The format works very much against Trump, and very much for Clinton. Delivering bullet points successfully is a marker that a candidate is president-y. Considering what PowerPoint has done to the Pentagon, that might not be such a great idea, but it is what it is and we are where we are. ..."
"... I'm surprised that no one mentioned the one best line to the non political junkie. They HATE political commercials. He nailed her on spending Millions attacking him and he came across gentlemanly saying he wouldn't / hasn't done that to her. ..."
"... Honestly, I've seen 5 years olds who could resist the bait better than Trump… ..."
"... I don't know why this is surprising, Trump is the narcissist he is regardless of what people want to project on him. Of course none of that makes Clinton any better. Whether it's effective, eh who knows, if it's authoritarians voting for him maybe that is what they like, but I don't think there are enough of them for him to win on that alone. If people are just casting random angry votes for anything but the status quo then maybe. ..."
"... I disagree. I think both candidates are isolated within elite bubbles, leading to behaviors we consider narcissistic (armchair diagnosis, when you think about it. I mean, "I'm with her….") ..."
"... So which one is the Grandiose and the other an Insecure type ..."
"... ….Did anyone else notice how consistently Hillary looked down at the podium? I believe she was being fed "Cliff Notes" ON AN IPAD by her staff re every topic that was bought up….she was ALWAYS looking down and, I assume she was being fed CUES AND WORDS OR PHRASES that she should use….she not only looked down a lot before the time she was supposed to speak but also looked down a lot during her responses…… ..."
"... OTOH, Trump was "winging it" and "shooting from the hip"…..Hillary won because the notes kept her on track….If trump had done any serious prep and could take advice, he could have destroyed her…But, he doesn't do prep, so he can't effectively respond……. ..."
"... Hillary's closing comments were stronger, but by then I don't think their were many left watching who were "Persuadables"….those of us left were "political junkies" hoping for a last lap NASCAR worthy Candidate Crash….. ..."
"... I think Trump had the opportunity to win the debate handed to him on a silver platter by Hillary, but his failure to Prepare and Do the Little Things that would have helped him be ready for her totally expected responses/statements/stalking points cost him dearly….. ..."
"... He remains the Rich Guy, who does what he wants….. She remains the Robotic Gal, who will probably get what she wants…. ..."
"... Yes she was looking down a lot. Were they allowed to have iPads to look at? ..."
"... I think one of the CBS commentators said that Hillary appeared to be using notes. She did look down a lot, and I also thought she seemed unusually subdued. At times she appeared to look sleepy and bored. I don't think this "debate" changed anyone's mind. I think Trump was trying to "dial it back", and he did miss several opportunities to zing Clinton. It did confirm one thing for me – we're all screwed. ..."
"... I don't think in the great scheme of things this matters much. If there was an iPad and it worked for Clinton, then why the heck didn't the Trump team give their guy an equivalent advantage? ..."
"... Two impressions, on the bus where I could just hear them, it was pretty equal. Both spouted nonsense and both had decent points regarding the other. Home where I had visuals, before I switched, she looked relaxed and yes healthy. She even appeared amused by him.He was flustered and floundering. There were at least two opportunities where he could have landed blows on her policies which he lost by being defensive. His judgment is better than her's, but that is an incredibly low bar. Based on 2, she won. ..."
"... Ironic that in this post-democratic world I watched my first political debate ever. Give the credit to the great entertainer: Donald Trump. Problem was: he wasn't the least bit entertaining tonight. I thought Clinton did well, however she is playing a losing hand. Trump is on the right side of all the issues that matter. Unfortunately(for everyone) the only reality Clinton and the entire western political establishment cares about is how many of the 1% will pay $500 a plate for a dinner and a speech. ..."
"... Bottom line is, all Murica could do was cough up these two turds. Yeah, deliberately mixed metaphor. Main difference is, if Trump gets elected it will certify Murica before the whole world as a country full of arseholes who've finally got to elect their very own Arsehole in Chief. ..."
"... One point made by a friend of the blog: Neither candidate appealed to anyone other than their base. And it's hard to see why anyone undecided would be moved. It's even harder to see why a voter committed to Johnson or Stein would move. ..."
"... Watched the whole thing. Trump missed a good opportunity to respond to Hillary's comment that trickle down was the reason for the financial crisis. Trump could have spoken up and said it was Goldman Sachs and big banks that played the key role in bringing on the financial crisis – which would have lead many to think again about her speeches at GS. Outside of the fact that Hillary's comment made me super confused – and maybe Trump as well – it would have been great if he could have mentioned the banks and what did she promise the big banks during her speeches. ..."
"... I was wondering if he's holding the GS speech transcripts in reserve? I was hoping for more of a pounding. I wonder if his team will do polling to determine how hard-hitting he can go before it gets too negative? The history of Glass-Steagall repeal is pretty damning. I'm also hoping to hear her defence of her cattle futures trading, but perhaps that is too ancient of history? ..."
"... Also, was interesting wrt his usage of the word "secretary" - a la Scott Adams, I suspect he's hoping the average viewer will subconsciously associate Hillary with the office secretary, rather than Secretary of State. ..."
"... Before I forget, Trump was very strong on trade, early. Nailed Clinton on NAFTA, nailed her on TPP. Fits right in with "you've had 30 years," but (B team, not top tier school) he didn't keep hammering that point. An early win (on the theory that debates are won early) but for me overshadowed by the rest of it). ..."
"... Absolutely. If it had been a 35 minute debate, Trump would have won hands down. Of course, the minute they moved to taxes, the incoherence of Trump's economic policy becomes apparent. ..."
"... Among others, 3 mistakes by Trump that a seasoned politician wouldn't have made. First, Clinton accuses him of not paying maids, contractors, architects, etc. and Trump basically agrees. He doesn't dispute this, instead says "maybe they didn't do the work." In a time of economic stagnation, this was a miss. (A seasoned politician would have just lied and said "not true.") Second, the tax stuff where Clinton outlines possible reasons he isn't releasing and he didn't do the simple thing and say "none of those are true." Instead, maybe not paying taxes is a "smart thing." Third, Trump can't even do the short work to memorize a story tying the creation of ISIS to Clinton's interventionism (and thus refugee crisis). Instead he bloviates about the Iran deal that very few Americans know enough about to judge good or bad. ..."
"... Not having watched one second of this "debate," I think it's important to note that there are many different kinds of communication. As far as I can tell, Trump's a decent salesman. That's a very specific type of communication, that specifically is NOT about delivering information or or enhancing understanding. It's about establishing control of your target and leading them to do/buy what you want them to do/buy. It doesn't sound like he figured out a way to make this very different situation work for him, the way he apparently did the very different Republican debates. Note that I'm not claiming he IS a master communicator. I don't think either of them are. ..."
"... Trump is giving mixed messages - that's his communication failure. We're supposed to be disgusted by Obama/Clinton foreign policy, but it's never clear why. Because the policy is failed at the start - intervening in Middle Eastern affairs is foolish? Or, we should be intervening for the sake of American power? Trump never articulates a policy goal either way. This is the empty rhetoric of "America first." He never argues a long term strategy of foreign policy for America or the world at large ..."
"... I don't consider Hillary Clinton very smart. Her complete lack of morals and empathy are a far more significant factor in her success than her intelligence. Trump seems fairly bright in some ways, and he's certainly good at understanding certain kinds of non-verbal communication. (For example, all that gold that seems so vulgar to one audience is very appealing to another.) Beyond that, I have no strong opinion about him in this regard. Do I think he's a sizzling intellect? No. ..."
"... I'm basically with Lambert: the best we can hope for is gridlock. But since Clinton is running as an efficient, bloodthirsty Republican, and what she really wants to do is wage war, which requires no Congressional action, Trump's the better bet for gridlock, even with a Republican majority. We'll get Democrats forced to playact the role of "Democrat;" it's something. ..."
"... Clinton doesn't have her thumbs on the button yet she's just threatened Russia with a cyber-war in retaliation for purported Russian attacks on the DNC etc., 'hacks' for which there is less proof than there is an interest on Clinton's part in changing the channel away from what the 'hacks' revealed about her own nefarious doings. So, in retaliation for something that may not have happened at all Clinton's instinct is to hit what could well be the wrong guy because it suits her personal interest – more egregious still, in this instance the wrong guy happens to be engaged in an existential struggle for independent, sovereign survival on the same planet as the US Empire and quite desperately needs an American leader of calibre. ..."
"... If he'd wanted to win he could've sat down with any high school coach to map out a strategy and a set of talking points that would not just defeat Clinton, but quite possibly send a bunch of people to jail. That's why it's Trump (or could've been Cruz). You could not draw a more perfect stereo-typically encumbered character beside which to contrast Clinton, whose entire public career persona has been premised on 'breaking down' same – even if her husband did send a million poor, mostly young black Americans away to rot in fantastically lucrative private prisons working for slave wages. ..."
"... Trump doesn't have to play that "arrest the banker" card to win, and there are plenty of reasons why he would not, including he wants to stay alive. Plus, there's selling and then there's giving away. ..."
"... Senior Romney strategist: Trump brought 20 minutes of material to a 90 minute show. ..."
"... Personally, I'm not sure laziness is a disqualifying characteristic in a Presidential candidate. If a machine is so broken that all its outputs are bad, then it behooves one to turn the crank more slowly than faster. ..."
"... This was a pathetic performance all around. Hillary looked like a polished turd in the debate, compared to Trump who came off as an unpolished turd. My feeling is that Hillary was the "winner" though that word doesn't seem suitable. ..."
"... Yes she jabbed him to death, while Trump held his punches. The question is: why? Having already done the Foreman trick of KOing five guys in one night, was he guarding against punching himself out? Seeing he's already won debates with aggression, was he trying to win by playing defense? Am I simply reading into it what I want to – spinning for Trump to excuse a mediocre performance? ..."
"... Did Trump suffer a mini-stroke on stage? After slurring a word, he began to answer questions for a while with incoherent, freely associated chains of slogans and phrases. This, about the time he blurted out about Hillary's stamina–, psychological projection perhaps? Then he began to list to his left and lean pronouncedly on his podium. After the debate, he left the hall rather too promptly. Was the elderly Trump physically fit enough to withstand a one-on-one 90 minute debate? ..."
Sep 27, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
September 27, 2016 at 12:11 am

I think he genuinely sees the infrastructural decay and it frosts him.

Yes, and connects the $6 trillion invested in blowing up the Middle East to what it could have been used for instead, and repeatedly called out big bureaucracy for big mistakes.

MojaveWolf September 27, 2016 at 12:15 am

Personally, I came out of this feeling more sympathetic to Trump as a person, believe it or not. I think he genuinely sees the infrastructural decay and it frosts him.

Same with "you had 30 years to solve it." Undeniably true; Clinton's whole "let's build on our success" schtick is such a steaming lot of 10%-er-ness. But if Trump wants to make this election a referendum on the political class, he's going to have to do a lot better than this

Agreed here. My SO put it better than me: Hillary gave no indication she is going to change the course we are on now; in fact, reading between the lines, she thinks things are going great and there is no reason to change anything. " And Trump did do a good job of identifying a number of things that are wrong, even if he wasn't particularly articulate in discussing them.

I think there is a better chance that Trump will actually try to fix things, but tax policy and several other things did not give me great hope that he has any idea how to fix things, or will learn & adapt quickly enough. On the plus side, some people talk better than they deliver; some people deliver better than they talk. At least there's a chance he's one of the latter.

Hillary… we know what we are getting. She won't deliver better than she talks. I have nothing kind to say here, other than she did a good job of finishing her sentences, and her tax policy is better than Trump's. And that she used to be much, much better in debates. I remain flummoxed that people are giving her credit for doing well in this one.

ilporcupine September 27, 2016 at 12:49 am

Trump makes an occasional noise in that direction, IF there has been a related segment on the talk shows or one of the conservative sites. Where in his stated policy (ie on his website or in positions in writing) is anything to suggest he will fix any of that misery? Tax cuts and deregulation? Letting him negotiate trade deals, instead of Obama people?

I can't find where he would refuse "trade deals", only ones "These Morons running things" have negotiated. I'm betting he would push them with minor changes, as will HRC. ISDS is a foregone conclusion, with either. Jesus, one of his advisors is Larry f'n Kudlow. If the regulars here are not appalled by the guys he has surrounded himself with, I sure am. I can see it coming…

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 1:35 am

> if the regulars here are not appalled

Henry Kissinger and George W. Bush set a pretty high bar not being appalled, amiright?

aab September 27, 2016 at 1:53 am

At least Trump has the good taste not to have Kudlow sit on his lap. Or vice versa.

Reading liberals explain how George W. Bush is just a misunderstood patriot has been…educational. Not in the way they intend.

I think Trump's probably serious about trade. But if I understand the structural issues correctly, it doesn't really matter whether he is serious or not. Apparently the Republican base is now strongly opposed to free trade. (I think most already were, but now they have permission to affirmatively say so, and pick up stragglers.)

I know Obama is counting on getting votes from people thrown out of office and looking for lobbying work. But I don't think there will be enough of them, will there? The Dems aren't going to flip either house, it looks like - certainly not by large numbers. That means there won't be tons of "loose" Republican votes, Republicans returning won't be incentivized to betray their incoming President for Obama, and Democrats on their way out may see shrinking lobbying opportunities, as the Democratic Party - IF Clinton doesn't take power - will be very weak at both the federal and state level.

If my assessment is correct, TPP dies with a Trump win. There isn't an option to reopen negotiations, is there? A brand new "Trump style" treaty would take years to negotiate, and he has "one term" written all over him. This also would kill TISA, right? Is it technically contingent on TPP passing first?

I am looking forward to Democratic Senators using secret holds and such to stop Republican tax plans that benefit corporations and the wealthy.

Okay, now that I've stopped laughing, I'll correct this. I'm assuming BERNIE will use holds and such to stop this stuff. But it will be entertaining to watch the Democrats explain why the Republican can top from the bottom, but they never can.

Steve C September 27, 2016 at 6:53 am

The Democrats in opposition will be just as feckless as the Republicans have been effective.

John Zelnicker September 27, 2016 at 9:21 am

@aab – "This also would kill TISA, right? Is it technically contingent on TPP passing first?"

I don't think TISA depends on TPP being passed. As I understand it, they are being negotiated separately.

One particular provision of TISA is as bad as anything in TPP (bar ISDS) and that is the prohibition on remunicipalization of privatized public resources. Governments would not be allowed to take back things such as British Rail that have been sold off to the private sector, and would be prohibited from nationalizing any other public good now in private hands. It's another hit to national sovereignty.

ilporcupine September 27, 2016 at 3:07 am

You are right, indeed. I just think DT is getting more "benefit of the doubt" than is warranted, given what I know of his past, and the sources he apparently uses, and the advisors he surrounds with.

HRC, you knew from the beginning, who she was tied to/advised by/paid for by. She is a "known known". We are all seeking to know what or who DT represents, as he is harder to pin down.

HRC and Bill are the most successful organized crime outfit since Wall St., and that is enough to categorize them, even without the obvious foreign policy horrors .

jrs September 27, 2016 at 1:00 am

I don't think Clinton won every category just most. I think Trump won on "there is no evidence Russia hacked the DNC".

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 1:36 am

And trade.

OIFVet September 26, 2016 at 11:25 pm

Time to relax and forget the debate's ugliness: Pachelbel's Canon In D Major

fresno dan September 26, 2016 at 11:40 pm

OIFVet
September 26, 2016 at 11:25 pm

thanks for that – very soothing – and in the scheme of eternity, it doesn't much matter. And the pictures are great!

MojaveWolf September 26, 2016 at 11:27 pm

How are we gonna survive 4 years with either of them at the helm?

That was my take exactly. Since I don't honestly think Stein is going to win, and I think Johnson might be worse than either of these, I was hoping one of them would give me a reason to feel optimistic that they would do a decent job. They … both failed horribly.

And what is up with all the people on NBC and now in my twitter feed repeating this mantra that "We had high expectations for Hillary, and she exceeded them!"

What universe are they living in? Half of these people used to be Bernie supporters. Are people that easily manipulated? Did I used to be that easily manipulated? Or have I gone completely insane now. This was some kind of masterful performance? She mouthed a lot of decent sounding platitudes with no specifics re: policy (while everyone praises her for specifics, and I think she championed the ideas of specifics themselves) while doing a decent but not great job of hitting Trump on some areas where he's very vulnerable.

He did a great job finding areas where she's vulnerable, but a terrible job of hitting her on them.

She did a better job of finishing her sentences, but … wow. That was the bar for coherence and specificity here.

Meanwhile, my twitter feed is full of people who think one or the other landed telling blows. The pundits all think she was terrif. His partisans seem to think he did well.

He looked like he was posing half the time. I don't even know what to say about her expressions. I hate when people talk about stuff like that but what else is there to say here?

My SO and I were constantly covering our eyes and putting our heads down and occasionally laughing at each others expressions and occasionally laughing so hard we had tears running down our eyes at what (both) the candidates were saying. Now it's over I just want to cry.

I know a lot of people here are not fans of the Green Party, but hate on Jill all you want, she would have almost certainly been better up there tonight than either of these people. It would have been hard to be worse.

cwaltz September 26, 2016 at 11:43 pm

"Are people that easily manipulated?" Yes. Was I that easily manipulated? Probably. Don't feel bad though most of us were naïve enough to believe the BS for at least some period of time.

This was some kind of masterful performance?

Uh it's scripted reality TV. The "debates" are vetted and agreed upon by the two parties who sponsored the darn thing via their little pretend front group. Anyone, at this point, who thinks these things matter is fooling themselves. It's a 90 minute infomercial, so if you find infomercials masterful then I guess.

Personally, I'm boycotting these things until they actually allow ALL the candidates that qualify for the ballot on stage.

Jim Haygood September 27, 2016 at 12:04 am

Thank you for pointing out that as usual, the unconstitutional and illegitimate two-party duopoly has excluded other candidates who will be on the ballot. Who exactly gave them this privilege of exclusion?

ilporcupine September 27, 2016 at 12:22 am

Private enterprise, Jim. You can always put up the money for third party candidates to debate on prime time. Thought that was how the market "works".

ilporcupine September 26, 2016 at 11:29 pm

Trump can go off on 5 tangents in each sentence. I keep waiting for him to make his damn point, already. It all comes off as gibberish. I cannot wait for a verbatim transcript of this cluster****. It will be largely incomprehensible. As for "HER", I aint with her either. We are screwwwed.

jrs September 27, 2016 at 12:44 am

It was like that in the Republican debates for anyone who bothered to read the transcripts. Trump was incoherent, the other candidates were basically coherent (wrong, liars and horrible many of them, but able to form a coherent sentence. Trump stood out).

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 12:59 am

I disagree strongly that Trump is incoherent; I saw him in Bangor. What he is, is discursive and improvisational. He has his main points that he always circles back to, but he riffs and reacts to the crowd.

However, that style doesn't work for him in this debate. He doesn't get to determine the structure, there's no time in a two minute answer to do the kind of excursions he likes to do, and the crowd was told not to react.

The format works very much against Trump, and very much for Clinton. Delivering bullet points successfully is a marker that a candidate is president-y. Considering what PowerPoint has done to the Pentagon, that might not be such a great idea, but it is what it is and we are where we are.

Meteor2016 September 26, 2016 at 11:30 pm

hmmm, time online poll says trump won 56-44.

http://time.com/4506217/presidential-debate-clinton-trump-survey/

Yves Smith September 26, 2016 at 11:58 pm

Prediction markets are saying she killed him. I would look to see the results of multiple online polls. Both Hillary and Trump fans will be trying to game them but it will be hard to skew results across the entire web.

Nelson Lowhim September 27, 2016 at 12:19 am

how accurate were these during the primary?

Yves Smith September 27, 2016 at 5:29 am

Dunno with Rs, but the online polls showed Sanders to be a winner in debates where the MSM called him a loser, and Sanders continued gains in later, conventional polls v. Clinton seemed way more in line with the online polls than MSM takes.

PhilU September 27, 2016 at 9:34 am

I'm surprised that no one mentioned the one best line to the non political junkie. They HATE political commercials. He nailed her on spending Millions attacking him and he came across gentlemanly saying he wouldn't / hasn't done that to her.

Frenchguy September 27, 2016 at 1:24 am

Since the Brexit fiasco, I'm extremely skeptical when it comes to prediction markets (at least on political subjects…).

fresno dan September 26, 2016 at 11:37 pm

All I can think after I watched this is that I could have dismembered, dissected, discombobulated, and reduced Hillary not only to cells, not just to molecules, but to quarks.
looking at it, I just can't see how anybody could think Trump is actually very smart, or smart, or much above ANY New York cabbie…or any or those horses in central park….or the south end of any of those horses….

Honestly, I've seen 5 years olds who could resist the bait better than Trump…

ilporcupine September 27, 2016 at 12:04 am

The Donald can't even shut up for the HRC time allotment. "Debate?" Schoolyard tiff!

EGrise September 27, 2016 at 12:13 am

This.

jrs September 27, 2016 at 12:17 am

I don't know why this is surprising, Trump is the narcissist he is regardless of what people want to project on him. Of course none of that makes Clinton any better.

Whether it's effective, eh who knows, if it's authoritarians voting for him maybe that is what they like, but I don't think there are enough of them for him to win on that alone. If people are just casting random angry votes for anything but the status quo then maybe.

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 1:38 am

> narcissist

I disagree. I think both candidates are isolated within elite bubbles, leading to behaviors we consider narcissistic (armchair diagnosis, when you think about it. I mean, "I'm with her….")

Skippy September 27, 2016 at 4:48 am

So which one is the Grandiose and the other an Insecure type – ??????

John S September 26, 2016 at 11:49 pm

I watched the debate on CSPAN, where a split screen was used that showed the candidates at all times…

….Did anyone else notice how consistently Hillary looked down at the podium? I believe she was being fed "Cliff Notes" ON AN IPAD by her staff re every topic that was bought up….she was ALWAYS looking down and, I assume she was being fed CUES AND WORDS OR PHRASES that she should use….she not only looked down a lot before the time she was supposed to speak but also looked down a lot during her responses……

OTOH, Trump was "winging it" and "shooting from the hip"…..Hillary won because the notes kept her on track….If trump had done any serious prep and could take advice, he could have destroyed her…But, he doesn't do prep, so he can't effectively respond…….

She was told to smile when he attacked….she did this……this response aggravated me, but didn't hurt her with the public of "Undecideds"

He was told to refrain from interrupting…he did an excellent job of interjecting comments at the beginning, but lost control as the night wore on…..

Lester was about the worst Moderator I have listened/watched/prayed for during a Debate…..of course, the job is "thankless"

Hillary's closing comments were stronger, but by then I don't think their were many left watching who were "Persuadables"….those of us left were "political junkies" hoping for a last lap NASCAR worthy Candidate Crash…..

I think Trump had the opportunity to win the debate handed to him on a silver platter by Hillary, but his failure to Prepare and Do the Little Things that would have helped him be ready for her totally expected responses/statements/stalking points cost him dearly…..

He remains the Rich Guy, who does what he wants….. She remains the Robotic Gal, who will probably get what she wants….

Sad…….

(and, thanks, Lambert)

TheCatSaid September 27, 2016 at 12:06 am

Yes she was looking down a lot. Were they allowed to have iPads to look at?

I felt she was listening a lot–she had that look some newscasters have when their producers are telling them updated news or giving suggestions through an ear device. Could she have been wired up? Are there rules about this?

Elizabeth September 27, 2016 at 12:31 am

I think one of the CBS commentators said that Hillary appeared to be using notes. She did look down a lot, and I also thought she seemed unusually subdued. At times she appeared to look sleepy and bored. I don't think this "debate" changed anyone's mind. I think Trump was trying to "dial it back", and he did miss several opportunities to zing Clinton. It did confirm one thing for me – we're all screwed.

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 12:47 am

> Trump was trying to "dial it back"

Yes, you could tell that from his tone of voice. I've heard him deliver the same talking points, but with more verve.

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 12:33 am

I don't think in the great scheme of things this matters much. If there was an iPad and it worked for Clinton, then why the heck didn't the Trump team give their guy an equivalent advantage?

(If true, this shows the dangers of an overly lean campaign team.)

Pat September 26, 2016 at 11:51 pm

Two impressions, on the bus where I could just hear them, it was pretty equal. Both spouted nonsense and both had decent points regarding the other. Home where I had visuals, before I switched, she looked relaxed and yes healthy. She even appeared amused by him.He was flustered and floundering. There were at least two opportunities where he could have landed blows on her policies which he lost by being defensive. His judgment is better than her's, but that is an incredibly low bar. Based on 2, she won.

Based on the nonsense they both reeled off the biggest loser tonight, election day and the future are the American people either way.

Jim Haygood September 27, 2016 at 12:18 am

J-Yel must be shocked that Trump ripped her early on. The earnest bureaucrats at the Fed are not used to being fodder for campaign criticism.

Trump went on to call today's economy a "big fat Bubble." (I call it Bubble III.) He implied that one rate hike will be the pin that pops it, and he's probably right.

Knowing this does not mean he can do anything about it. Currently J-Yel plans to hike in December during the interregnum, when the US political system is inert and the MSM is all focused on cabinet picks.

Almost certainly, the next president will have a close-up, personal encounter with a harsh recession. The only advice from pros is "get it behind you early." That's why I have it penciled in for 2017-18.

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 12:38 am

> 2017-2018

That's what the hotel people think (see yesterday's water cooler). Hotel bookings being a fine indicator of the animal spirits of the managing and investing classes. Whether they are a leading indicator remains to be seen….

cm September 27, 2016 at 12:39 am

Fed is political, no doubt about that:

I quote :

And in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who wanted cheap credit to finance the Vietnam War and his Great Society, summoned Fed chairman William McChesney Martin to his Texas ranch. There, after asking other officials to leave the room, Johnson reportedly shoved Martin against the wall as he demanding that the Fed once again hold down interest rates. Martin caved, the Fed printed money, and inflation kept climbing until the early 1980s.

EoinW September 27, 2016 at 12:19 am

Ironic that in this post-democratic world I watched my first political debate ever. Give the credit to the great entertainer: Donald Trump. Problem was: he wasn't the least bit entertaining tonight. I thought Clinton did well, however she is playing a losing hand. Trump is on the right side of all the issues that matter. Unfortunately(for everyone) the only reality Clinton and the entire western political establishment cares about is how many of the 1% will pay $500 a plate for a dinner and a speech.

Regarding tonight's shenanagans, I thought Lester Holt was the winner. A good moderator should be virtually invisible, let the candidates do their thing. Clinton scored her debating points but I'm not convinced that won her any votes. Was Trump performing in a strait jacket? Seemed like he was more worried about appearing reserved and presidential. And holy repetitive! I was looking forward to Tyson-Spinks, instead I got Tyson-Douglas! Yet I wouldn't be surprised if it all worked and Trump comes out ahead in the polls. He certainly didn't look scary tonight. Boring yes, however doesn't boring deflate these ideas that he's an out of control amateur who can't be trusted?

Brad September 27, 2016 at 12:34 am

Bottom line is, all Murica could do was cough up these two turds. Yeah, deliberately mixed metaphor. Main difference is, if Trump gets elected it will certify Murica before the whole world as a country full of arseholes who've finally got to elect their very own Arsehole in Chief.

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 12:44 am

One point made by a friend of the blog: Neither candidate appealed to anyone other than their base. And it's hard to see why anyone undecided would be moved. It's even harder to see why a voter committed to Johnson or Stein would move.

Therefore, we would not expect the polls to move. And what matters is a tiny population of voters in swing counties in swing states (not national polls), which data is not available to us.

Of course, since the political class is all in for Clinton, they will portray it as an overwhelming win for Clinton (as did I, since I am a 10%-er manqué ). However, exactly as with TV advertising, the pronouncements of the political class have had greatly diminished returns this year….

I'll be interested what old-school people like Nooners have to say….

manymusings September 27, 2016 at 2:54 am

I don't see them as playing only to their respective bases - it seems like they also were trying to affect overarching narratives. Clinton's case against Trump is that he's monstrous. I think he cut against that indictment tonight (and it wasn't a foregone conclusion that he would). Trump's case against Clinton is that she's a corrupt and dishonest version of politics as usual, which already is corrupt and dishonest. I don't know whether she moved the dial on that. Apart from immediate reactions, wonder if there will be any shifts.

Susan C September 27, 2016 at 12:46 am

Watched the whole thing. Trump missed a good opportunity to respond to Hillary's comment that trickle down was the reason for the financial crisis. Trump could have spoken up and said it was Goldman Sachs and big banks that played the key role in bringing on the financial crisis – which would have lead many to think again about her speeches at GS. Outside of the fact that Hillary's comment made me super confused – and maybe Trump as well – it would have been great if he could have mentioned the banks and what did she promise the big banks during her speeches.

Lambert Strether Post author September 27, 2016 at 12:53 am

Very good point on Goldman. In a way, it seems that Clinton threw the kitchen sink on Trump (her assault on his business dealings, using the income tax thing as a hook, was prepared but highly effective). But Trump didn't throw the