(I’m reposting this, after cross-checking Politico and NPR to confirm that it’s correct, because I believe that it’s worth discussing. I cannot say that I personally disagree with Mr. Trump regarding any of the significant positions laid out in this speech. That doesn’t mean he’s going to do what he says, but it’s worth noting that Mrs. Clinton has effectively stopped even bothering to promise any significant change to Americans— JB)
Today I‘d like to share my thoughts about the stakes in this election.
People have asked me why I am running for President.
I have built an amazing business that I love and I get to work side-by-side with my children every day.
We come to work together and turn visions into reality.
We think big, and then we make it happen.
I love what I do, and I am grateful beyond words to the nation that has allowed me to do it.
So when people ask me why I am running, I quickly answer: I am running to give back to this country which has been so good to me.
When I see the crumbling roads and bridges, or the dilapidated airports, or the factories moving overseas to Mexico, or to other countries, I know these problems can all be fixed, but not by Hillary Clinton – only by me.
The fact is, we can come back bigger and better and stronger than ever before -Jobs, jobs, jobs!
Everywhere I look, I see the possibilities of what our country could be. But we can’t solve any of these problems by relying on the politicians who created them.
We will never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who rigged it in the first place.
The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money.
That’s why we’re asking Bernie Sanders’ voters to join our movement: so together we can fix the system for ALL Americans. Importantly, this includes fixing all of our many disastrous trade deals.
Because it’s not just the political system that’s rigged. It’s the whole economy.
It’s rigged by big donors who want to keep down wages.
It’s rigged by big businesses who want to leave our country, fire our workers, and sell their products back into the U.S. with absolutely no consequences for them.
It’s rigged by bureaucrats who are trapping kids in failing schools.
It’s rigged against you, the American people.
Hillary Clinton who, as most people know, is a world class liar –
just look at her pathetic email and server statements, or her phony landing in Bosnia where she said she was under attack but the attack turned out to be young girls handing her flowers, a total self-serving lie.
Brian Williams’ career was destroyed for saying far less.
Yesterday, she even tried to attack me and my many businesses. But here is the bottom line: I started off in Brooklyn New York, not so long ago, with a small loan and built a business worth over 10 billion dollars. I have always had a talent for building businesses and, importantly, creating jobs. That is a talent our country desperately needs.
I am running for President to end the unfairness and to put you, the American worker, first.
We are going to put America First, and we are going to Make America Great again.
This election will decide whether we are ruled by the people, or by the politicians.
Here is my promise to the American voter:
If I am elected President, I will end the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C.
The other candidate in this race has spent her entire life making money for special interests – and taking money from special interests.
Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft.
She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund – doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.
Then, when she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests – in less than 2 years – secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public.
Together, she and Bill made $153 million giving speeches to lobbyists, CEOs, and foreign governments in the years since 2001.
They totally own her, and that will never change.
The choice in this election is a choice between taking our government back from the special interests, or surrendering our last scrap of independence to their total and complete control.
Those are the stakes.
Hillary Clinton wants to be President. But she doesn’t have the temperament, or, as Bernie Sanders’ said, the judgement, to be president.
She believes she is entitled to the office.
Her campaign slogan is “I’m with her.”
You know what my response to that is? I’m with you: the American people.
She thinks it’s all about her.
I know it’s all about you – I know it’s all about making America Great Again for All Americans.
Our country lost its way when we stopped putting the American people first.
We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism – focusing on what’s good for America’s middle class – to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy.
We reward companies for offshoring, and we punish companies for doing business in America and keeping our workers employed.
This is not a rising tide that lifts all boats.
This is a wave of globalization that wipes out our middle class and our jobs.
We need to reform our economic system so that, once again, we can all succeed together, and America can become rich again.
That’s what we mean by America First.
Our country will be better off when we start making our own products again, bringing our once great manufacturing capabilities back to our shores.
Our Founders understood this.
One of the first major bills signed by George Washington called for “the encouragement and protection of manufactur[ing]” in America.
Our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned us by saying:
“The abandonment of the protective policy by the American government will produce want and ruin among our people.”
I have visited the cities and towns across America and seen the devastation caused by the trade policies of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton supported Bill Clinton’s disastrous NAFTA, just like she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization.
We’ve lost nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs since these two Hillary-backed agreements were signed.
Our trade deficit with China soared 40% during Hillary Clinton’s time as Secretary of State — a disgraceful performance for which she should not be congratulated, but rather scorned.
Then she let China steal hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property – a crime which is continuing to this day.
Hillary Clinton gave China millions of our best jobs, and effectively let China completely rebuild itself.
In return, Hillary Clinton got rich!
The book Clinton Cash, by Peter Schweitzer, documents how Bill and Hillary used the State Department to enrich their family at America’s expense.
She gets rich making you poor.
Here is a quote from the book: “At the center of US policy toward China was Hillary Clinton…at this critical time for US-china relations, Bill Clinton gave a number of speeches that were underwritten by the Chinese government and its supporters.”
These funds were paid to the Clinton bank account while Hillary was negotiating with China on behalf of the United States.
She sold out our workers, and our country, for Beijing.
Hillary Clinton has also been the biggest promoter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will ship millions more of our jobs overseas – and give up Congressional power to an international foreign commission.
Now, because I have pointed out why it would be such a disastrous deal, she is pretending that she is against it. She has even deleted this record of total support from her book – deletion is something she is very good at — (at least 30,000 emails are missing.)
But this latest Clinton cover-up doesn’t change anything: if she is elected president, she will adopt the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and we will lose millions of jobs and our economic independence for good. She will do this, just as she has betrayed the American worker on trade at every single stage of her career – and it will be even worse than the Clintons’ NAFTA deal.
I want trade deals, but they have to be great for the United States and our workers.
We don’t make great deals anymore, but we will once I become president.
It’s not just our economy that’s been corrupted, but our foreign policy too.
The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars – and unleashed ISIS across the world.
No Secretary of State has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton.
Her decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched.
Among the victims is our late Ambassador, Chris Stevens. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed — that’s right, when the phone rang at
3 o’clock in the morning, she was sleeping.
Ambassador Stevens and his staff in Libya made hundreds of requests for security.
Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused them all.
She started the war that put him in Libya, denied him the security he asked for, then left him there to die.
To cover her tracks, Hillary lied about a video being the cause of his death.
Here is what one of the victim’s mothers had to say:
“I want the whole world to know it: she lied to my face, and you don’t want this person to be president.”
In 2009, before Hillary Clinton was sworn in, it was a different world.
Libya was cooperating.
Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence.
Syria was under control.
Iran was being choked by sanctions.
Egypt was governed by a friendly regime that honored its peace treaty with Israel.
ISIS wasn’t even on the map.
Fast forward to 2013: In just four years, Secretary Clinton managed
to almost single-handedly destabilize the entire Middle East.
Her invasion of Libya handed the country over to the ISIS barbarians.
Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Iran is now the dominant Islamic power in the Middle East, and on the road to nuclear weapons.
Hillary Clinton’s support for violent regime change in Syria has thrown the country into one of the bloodiest civil wars anyone has ever seen – while giving ISIS a launching pad for terrorism against the West.
She helped force out a friendly regime in Egypt and replace it with the radical Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military has retaken control, but Clinton has opened the Pandora’s box of radical Islam.
Then, there was the disastrous strategy of announcing our departure date from Iraq, handing large parts of the country over to ISIS killers.
ISIS threatens us today because of the decisions Hillary Clinton has made.
ISIS also threatens peaceful Muslims across the Middle East, and peaceful Muslims across the world, who have been terribly victimized by horrible brutality – and who only want to raise their kids in peace and safety.
In short, Hillary Clinton’s tryout for the presidency has produced one deadly foreign policy disaster after another.
It all started with her bad judgment in supporting the War in Iraq in the first place.
Though I was not in government service, I was among the earliest to criticize
the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started.
But Hillary Clinton learned nothing from Iraq, because when she got into power,
she couldn’t wait to rush us off to war in Libya.
She lacks the temperament, the judgment and the competence to lead.
In the words of a Secret Service agent posted outside the Oval Office:
“She simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve
in the office…from the bottom of my soul, I know this to be true…Her leadership style – volcanic, impulsive…disdainful of the rules set for everyone else – hasn’t changed a bit.”
Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is that she refuses to acknowledge the threat posed by Radical Islam.
In fact, Hillary Clinton supports a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees coming into the United States, and that’s an increase over President Obama’s already very high number.
Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on Earth – with no way to screen who they are or what they believe.
Already, hundreds of recent immigrants and their children have been convicted of terrorist activity inside the U.S.
The father of the Orlando shooter was a Taliban supporter from Afghanistan, one of the
most repressive anti-gay and anti-women regimes on Earth.
I only want to admit people who share our values and love our people.
Hillary Clinton wants to bring in people who believe women should be enslaved
and gays put to death.
Maybe her motivation lies among the more than 1,000 foreign donations Hillary failed to disclose while at the State Department.
Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.
Here is some more of what we learned from the book,
Clinton Cash:
A foreign telecom giant faced possible State Department sanctions for providing technology to Iran, and other oppressive regimes. So what did this company do? For the first time ever, they decided to pay Bill Clinton $750,000 for a single speech. The Clintons got their cash, the telecom company escaped sanctions.
Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while 9 investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Hillary Clinton appointed a top donor to a national security board with top secret access – even though he had no national security credentials.
Hillary Clinton accepted $58,000 in jewelry from the government of Brunei when she was Secretary of State – plus millions more for her foundation. The Sultan of Brunei has pushed oppressive Sharia law, including the punishment of death by stoning for being gay. The government of Brunei also stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Hillary’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she would absolutely approve if given the chance.
Hillary Clinton took up to $25 million from Saudi Arabia, where being gay is also punishable by death.
Hillary took millions from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and many other countries that horribly abuse women and LGBT citizens.
To cover-up her corrupt dealings, Hillary Clinton illegally stashed her State Department emails on a private server.
Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments – perhaps even by her financial backers in Communist China – putting all of America in danger.
Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted.
While we may not know what is in those deleted emails, our enemies probably do.
So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be President of the United States.
This fact alone disqualifies her from the Presidency.
We can’t hand over our government to someone whose deepest, darkest secrets may be in the hands of our enemies.
National security is also immigration security –
and Hillary wants neither.
Hillary Clinton has put forward the most radical immigration platform in the history of the United States.
She has pledged to grant mass amnesty and in her first 100 days, end virtually all immigration enforcement, and thus create totally open borders in the United States
The first victims of her radical policies will be poor African-American and Hispanic workers who need jobs. They are the ones she will hurt the most.
Let me share with you a letter our campaign received from Mary Ann Mendoza.
She lost her amazing son, Police Sergeant Brandon Mendoza, after he was killed by an illegal immigrant because of the open borders policies supported by Hillary Clinton.
Sadly, the Mendoza family is just one of thousands who have suffered the same fate.
Here is an excerpt from Mrs. Mendoza’s letter:
“Hillary Clinton, who already has the blood of so many on her hands, is now announcing that she is willing to put each and every one of our lives in harms’ way – an open door policy to criminals and terrorists to enter our country. Hillary is not concerned about you or I, she is only concerned about the power the presidency would bring to her. She needs to go to prison to pay for the crimes she has already committed against this country.”
Hillary also wants to spend hundreds of billions to resettle Middle Eastern refugees in the United States, on top of the current record level of immigration.
For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America.
Hillary’s Wall Street immigration agenda will keep immigrant communities poor, and unemployed Americans out of work. She can’t claim to care about African-American and Hispanic workers when she wants to bring in millions of new low-wage workers
to compete against them.
Here are a few things a Trump Administration will do for America in the first 100 days:
Appoint judges who will uphold the Constitution. Hillary Clinton’s radical judges will virtually abolish the 2nd amendment.
Change immigration rules to give unemployed Americans an opportunity to fill good-paying jobs
Stand up to countries that cheat on trade, of which there are many
Cancel rules and regulations that send jobs overseas
Lift restrictions on energy production
Repeal and replace job-killing Obamacare — it is a disaster.
Pass massive tax reform to create millions of new jobs.
Impose tough new ethics rules to restore dignity to the Office of Secretary of State.
There is one common theme in all of these reforms.
It’s going to be America First.
This is why the stakes in November are so great.
On election day, the politicians stand trial before the people.
The voters are the jury. Their ballots are the verdict. We don’t need or want another Clinton or Obama.
Come November, the American people will have a chance to issue a verdict on the politicians that have sacrificed their security, betrayed their prosperity, and sold out
their country.
They will have a chance to vote for a new agenda with big dreams, bold ideas and enormous possibilities for the American people.
Hillary Clinton’s message is old and tired. Her message is that can’t change.
My message is that things have to change – and this is our one chance do it. This is our last chance to do it.
Americans are the people that tamed the West, that dug out the Panama Canal, that sent satellites across the solar system, that built the great dams, and so much more.
Then we started thinking small.
We stopped believing in what America could do, and became reliant on other countries, other people, and other institutions.
We lost our sense of purpose, and daring.
But that’s not who we are.
Come this November, we can bring America back – bigger and better, and stronger than ever.
We will build the greatest infrastructure on the planet earth – the roads and railways and airports of tomorrow.
Our military will have the best technology and finest equipment – we will bring it back all the way.
Massive new factories will come roaring into our country – breathing life and hope into our communities.
Inner cities, which have been horribly abused by Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party, will finally be rebuilt.
Construction is what I know — nobody knows it better.
The real wages for our workers have not been raised for 18 years — but these wages will start going up, along with the new jobs. Hillary’s massive taxation, regulation and open borders will destroy jobs and drive down wages for everyone.
We are also going to be supporting our police and law enforcement — we can never forget the great job they do.
I am also going to appoint great Supreme Court Justices.
Our country is going to start working again.
People are going to start working again.
Parents are going to start dreaming big for their children again – including parents in our inner cities.
Americans are going to start believing in the future or our country.
We are going to make America rich again.
We are going to make America safe again.
We are going to make America Great Again – and Great Again For EVERYONE.
Taibbi has an interesting take on the Dems basically phoning it in: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ralph-nader-bernie-sanders-lesser-evilism-20160620
Bloomberg polls showing 22% Sanders supporters voting Trump and 18% voting Johnson.
Her IT chief took the fifth 125 times regarding the email server.
She makes Nixon look like Mother Theresa.
At the end of the day, I supported both Bernie and Trump for the singular reason that they both railed against the establishment. You don’t have to support the canidates or even find them that agreeable to vote for them to send the message to the establishment to start working better for people who go to work and pay taxes - i.e the people who make it happen.
I’m not theologically opposed to ‘the establishment’ or authoratitive states, I just want a good deal. I’d gladly live in Singapore but I’d rip my eyes out if I lived in Pakistan. I absolutely hate that I’m a young guy who pays more and more for health insurance I can’t even afford to use, pays for daycare for women who failed at selecting a good mate, and the government says ‘your tax dollars support things you use every day like the road and schools’ but funnels money into all sorts of failed projects like pop up parks and subsizized housing so poor people can ruin nice neighborhoods as though the issue with the poor people who would ruin nice neighborhoods is their location and not their attitude. And then tells me that there are so many pot holes because my gas tax isn’t high enough (although 10% of the gas tax goes to bike lanes and more goes to public transportation) and the school needs more money for iPads and teacher’s pensions when so many young people can’t get jobs as teachers and the school districts don’t use that as a bargining chip with the teachers’ unions to get them to fall in line.
By her own admission, Hillary was broke when she left the white house. Now she’s worth $100 million or at least her charity is. Where did that money come from? How can a person whose only experience is politics make at least $100 million in value for people? It’s obvious that peddling influence is a large element of it.
I don’t mind the State department working for American interests abroad - I encourage it. But it shouldn’t be a pay to play system. Boeing shouldn’t get more consideration over Jack’s Percision Machine shop down the road. But Boeing can write a check to the clintons and their arms deal to Saudi Arabia gets a seal of approval from Hillary’s state department.
And look at how the TPP works - it’s free trade for companies who get to import a lot of stuff for not a lot of money. But if you want to import a car from Japan, you get to stare down homeland security. What’s free trade about waiting 25 years for a few people to import a few Japanese cars every year?
If you’re out there making the money you’re relatively close to jungle law - if you don’t show up to work or do a bad job, you lose your job and better hustle before you starve and become homeless. If you get accused of a crime, the police arrest you on the spot and the DA overcharges you and uses Bill Clinton’s mandatory minimums and the expense of a trial to get you to plead out. But if you’re in the elite, you get to fail upwards, pretend that accusations against you are political and baseless, and be fat and lazy.
Look at all those navy officers who were selling secrets for dinners and hookers. Or the Christie aide who ordered a bridge closure as political retribution. Did you know that she’s suing New Jersey to give her an attorney to protect her from the feds? The insiders are so out of touch they mistake the loss of influence as persecution.
#neverhillary
That was a fine speech and sadly it’s inconceivable that any other republican candidate would make such a speech.
I think he’s greatly overstating what effect he can have on trade deals. American taxes, regulations and the legal climate are more responsible for driving out industry than the minutia of trade deals. For the most part it’s a global economy now and you either compete in it or retreat into a banana Republic kleptocracy like Venezuela or Cuba.
But on everything else - it’s hard to disagree with any of it.
no kidding no other republican candidate would make a speech like that - the speech is describing the system they want to become part of, in order to get rich !
There’s a lot of broad characterizations in the speech and rather than dispute any of them directly here, I’ll simply say that I don’t think Trump or his people have any idea how actually implement any of the things he talks about. He is not an administrator and does not appear to be a talented manager and certainly does not seem to be able to absorb or internalize constructive criticism. When he actually has to speak himself rather than read a speech of a teleprompter, he clearly indicates that his “positions” are really just impulses rather thought-out policies. The reason that speech appears relatively reasonable and competent is because somebody else wrote it. Look back at his last prepared speech on energy and you can clearly see how he was reacting to those ideas as though they were the first time he’d heard of them - and he clearly lacked the analytical ability to identify the internal inconsistencies and contradictions in that very speech.
I know Jack’s skepticism of charges of racism and his sympathy of anti-immigrant stances, so I won’t go into those here other than to say that the atmosphere surrounding many of Trump’s rallies and supporters is genuinely ugly and worrisome, to put it mildly.
Don’t be fooled by this huckster.
American politics since W has been a series of over-corrections. Let’s give the rabble some power for a few years.
That’s quite an over-correction you suggest.
” He is not an administrator and does not appear to be a talented manager”
he’s not too much different from Martin Shkreli. Except Shkreli is stupid. But both have made themselves by convincing other people to give them their money to play with. Trump’s net worth is nowhere near what he says it is.
Besides, Trump’s backed more failed businesses than he’ll ever admit to.
Shkrelli certainly comes off like a clown, but that’s a carefully cultivated image. He’s actually content to play the villain because he knows there’s no counteracting the MSM narrative once it’s set in. I didn’t give him much credit until I saw this VICE piece on him and realized that there was a bit more there than normally comes through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g
Baseball players who fail 65% of the time are in the hall of fame. He’s failed more than he’s succeeded. Most of us have and aren’t worth a billion dollars. I’m not actually a huge fan of blowhards like trump. It’s basically my anti-personality but I think he does care about America and his competition for the republican nomination was a bunch of pussys and his competition for the presidency should be in jail.
Trump has no chance of winning because the endless war, bank bailout, illegal surveillance lobby want a totally compromised president such as Hillary. Regardless - it is still great that for 5 more months we will get to see content like this (not on the MSM obviously)
Like I said on TTAC, I can see why Trump’s message is being well received. But it’s a completely insincere message, and I don’t mean that in the way of a “typical” politician. At least with your garden-variety politician, when they try to find the “right” thing to say, you can see them thinking about it as they say it. Trump doesn’t do that. He can bark out whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear instantly without having to think about it, and have his audience believe him. And that’s the hallmark of a manipulative sociopath. A manipulative sociopath can contort anything or any situation and convince you he (or she) is on your side. Or tell you to go to hell and convince you the trip was your idea.
And that’s what scares me. A sociopath cares about nothing other than his own self-interest. So when Trump says:
“So when people ask me why I am running, I quickly answer: I am running to give back to this country which has been so good to me.”
I say “Bullshit. You’re running because you’ve got crowds of people hanging on your every word, and your ego is gorging itself on the attention. You even stole Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan.”
Dave Barry once said that “If a politician ever ran for president under a slogan such as ‘Harlan Frubert: Basically, He Wants Attention,’ I would quit my job to work for his campaign.”
Well, “Harlan Frubert” is here. I don’t believe for one second that he’ll be able to do even the slimmest fraction of the things he says he wants to do. And I don’t think he believes it either.
Or cares.
For argument’s sake let’s say we concede all of that. Any response to the content of the speech as delivered?
No, because it’s all bluster. and I don’t know who the fuck you think you are to try to demand I respond to what you want me to respond to.
Demand? Lighten up, Francis.
This analysis is based on skimming the media portrayal of Trump.
I decided to put his ideas to the test by looking at what seemed to me the most improbable: getting Mexico to build the wall.
Then I looked on his site, poked around, found his platform statements, and found a carefully crafted plan to either require all remittance payers sending money to Mexico to produce evidence of being here legally (which would cost Mexico far more cash inflow than building a wal), or else giving the Mexican government the option of paying for the wall, and continuing to receive remittance payments from illegal aliens in the US which are sent to Mexico every month.
When you look at the sums involved, both for monthly remittances largely by so-called undocumented immigrants, and the cost of building a wall, suddenly, any rational person sitting in power in Mexico would have no choice but to opt to build the wall rather than lose a much larger stream of remittances.
So much for the idea that his ideas are hollow, with no viable strategy to achieve them.
I looked more closely at other of his plans (and I have the benefit of both a Masters program in Computer Science, and a second one in Accounting), and what I see is cleverly thought out, and easily implemented, detailed steps to do all of the things he is quoted as saying he will do.
But the media never discusses his plans…they just leave it hanging so that they sound improbable or impossible, and hence delusional.
They are not delusional plans…they are carefully crafted plans that apply incentives and disincentives in ways that would undo the shift away from the American economy that has been caused by both trade agreement cheating and relatively high US corporate tax rates.
When you fix those things, and they can be fixed, you remove the driving forces that make it more desirable for US/global businesses to leave the US for other countries that they can use for tax havens.
Do not discount the wisdom of this man, even if you don’t like his attitude…
And as far as Trump University being a scam, programs like that have been marketed/hawked at least ever since the JFK administration and the Evelyn Wood speed reading courses…and they work for some, usually most or they collapse quickly, and they don’t work for some who either aren’t motivated or equipped to avail themselves of the information that they have been offered.
Fifty years after Glenn Turner and his Dare To Be Great program, we still have thinly disguised pyramid marketing schemes operating legally in this country.
So how in hell is offering customized training on the inner workings of real estate in America a scam, just because some people of their own free will agreed to pay for the information, but then couldn’t find a way to recoup their investment. Not because it couldn’t be done, but because they couldn’t or wouldn’t do what it took to make money in a competitive market.
And yes, the judge may not be from Mexico, but he is of Mexican heritage, and there can or should be at least an appearance of a possibility of conflict of interest. And it is a long-standing, though often bypassed, judicial principle that a judge should recuse himself even if he is sure that he isn’t biased, if there is even an appearance of the possibility of bias…that way respect for the legal system isn’t undermined, and if the judge is truly unbiased and has respect for the legal system, he has no reason to fear that the outcome would be altered by recusing himself and letting another judge, who does not have even the appearance of the possibility of a conflict, rule on the case instead.
Note carefully that the concept does not hinge on the litigant proving a conflict, only on the APPEARANCE of the POSSIBILITY (and not the actuality of the certainty) of bias.
Trump needs to find a way to better communicate the principles he stands for and calls upon, there and elsewhere. But hopefully, with new and better campaign managers for the presidential race, that day has arrived.
And don’t, by the way, try to tell me for a minute that Hillary speaks extemporaneously when questioned on policies she has. (A) she avoids making anything more than broad brush PC statements; and (B) she either has the replies on the teleprompter or the interviewers she sits still for have agreed to toss her softball questions.
So prepared explanations of presidential plans are not in any way an indication that Trump lacks either policies, or the means to implement them.
This country has been going down hill for decades, and each party shares some of the blame. It is time to let an outsider who has reason to love this country, and who doesn’t need to be beholden to special interests to prosper, have his turn at the helm.
Vote Trump 2016 or be prepared for a perfect(ly awful) storm: the conflation of the Bill Clinton years of immorality and lawlessness (above the law, if you prefer), coupled with the executive over-reaching and denial and destruction of the doctrine of American exceptionalism by Obama, who was raised in a religion that says that it is OK to lie about what you believe in order to further the religion he was raised in by his father.
It’s no bigger scam than many avenues of ‘higher education’ and I doubt trump U leaves people 300k in debt.
You had a solid, well put together post that held my interest until you threw in a little jab at the President’s religion. I don’t know if people truly can stop being paranoid, but I will take a minute to supply a counterpoint so the passer-by doesn’t go on thinking this stuff is OK to share elsewhere.
President Obama wasn’t raised in a middle eastern desert as part of some ultra conservative group of thugs. His highly educated father divorced his white Christian Mother when the president was younger than 3 years old and left him behind to move back to Kenya after completing coursework at Harvard. His father re-married and only visited the President once during his childhood before dying in a car crash in Kenya. Not exactly a big influence on the President’s life.
Christian Mother/Grandparents from Kansas raised him. Lived with them and went to a prep school. After his mother remarried, they lived in Indonesia (a place that, while 99% Muslim, rejects the notion of an Islamic state) and he went to a catholic school. That should tell you something about how important the Christian faith was to his mother.
Oh, then developed a professional career in the midwest, married his wife, has kids and attended christian church regularly. The person you are endorsing in your post isn’t even close that that idyllic of a Christian lifestyle, and anyone with eyes sees this.
Or, simply dismiss the President’s entire story as a lie and convince you and everyone else he was born in Kenya and was raised by a radical Islamic family to hate America. This crap had gotten old 7 years ago. Now I just experience sadness when I hear another person spreading rumors.
Oh, and the line about Muslims being liars to advance their religion. I hate to throw in the dose of sarcasm here, but bravo on cherry picking that one. Did you get that one from “muslimfact.com”? I wonder if that was something his father taught him between the ages of 1 month and 3 years. Or maybe his step father sent him to catholic school to study the enemy at a young age! There is the truth! We found it! I work with, employ and am proud to call several Muslims friends. If I hadn’t gotten out of the midwest, I probably would lean that way too. These people are loyal, loving, honest and hard working. (Great food too) They aren’t hiding and waiting to strike. They are raising kids and working their butts off like everyone else.
There. I finally bit on Trump click bait. It took pure exhaustion from a tough week, but it finally happened. Nice Job Jack.
Oh and the speech? Paul Manafort has gotten plenty of other US candidates pretty far, and his work with repairing the image of genocidal dictators as part of The Torturer’s Lobby was pretty impressive. The Donald might be a layup for him unless Hillary has a few tricks up her sleeve.
Beer me!
I will buy you a case of the beer of your choosing, sir. Thanks for saving me the time to type that. Now, back to the clickbait.
You’re welcome. Yeah… that post escalated quickly… You can clearly visualize a (this) middle class white guy clinching his teeth and pounding a keyboard. Not my best work as far as expressing myself.
“When you look at the sums involved, both for monthly remittances largely by so-called undocumented immigrants, and the cost of building a wall, suddenly, any rational person sitting in power in Mexico would have no choice but to opt to build the wall rather than lose a much larger stream of remittances.”
Show your work.
“I looked more closely at other of his plans (and I have the benefit of both a Masters program in Computer Science, and a second one in Accounting), and what I see is cleverly thought out, and easily implemented, detailed steps to do all of the things he is quoted as saying he will do.”
Show your work.
“And as far as Trump University being a scam, programs like that have been marketed/hawked at least ever since the JFK administration and the Evelyn Wood speed reading courses…and they work for some, usually most or they collapse quickly, and they don’t work for some who either aren’t motivated or equipped to avail themselves of the information that they have been offered.”
So it’s OK for him to have a sham “university” because other people have done it too?
“And yes, the judge may not be from Mexico, but he is of Mexican heritage, and there can or should be at least an appearance of a possibility of conflict of interest. ”
So what heritage must he have such that he has no “appearance of a possibility of conflict of interest?”
“This country has been going down hill for decades,”
Oh, stick it. It’s only “going downhill” for old white guys who pretend they’re Christian. I don’t know who the hell told you this country “belongs to you,” but it doesn’t. And where has it been “going downhill” from? WWII? Well, even during WWII things weren’t all that great. We were already having race riots in 1943 (Detroit,) Jim Crow was alive and well in The South. Maybe Post-WWII? Yeah, we had a few good years; manufacturing which had been dedicated towards the war effort was ready and able to supply pent-up demand from American consumers along with the need to help supply Europe and Japan’s rebuilding. But it didn’t last more than a decade; the automotive industry was already heading down the road of slow collapse as Packard died, Studebaker struggled, and Rambler/AMC had to be formed out of Hudson and Nash-Kelvinator (and later Kaiser-Jeep) so they could survive. Plus the ’50s saw us get involved in the first of many fruitless proxy wars against the Soviets; proxy wars which sowed the seeds of enraged enemies we’re still fighting to this day.
Then when the Japanese decided to do something reasonable like actually listen to W. Edwards Deming and build a manufacturing base centered around discipline and consistency, we lashed out at them and anyone else who wouldn’t settle for the junk we were making at the time.
Perhaps Trump is a huckster, a charlatan, even a snake oil salesman. When I compare him to his opponent, it’s no contest however. I wouldn’t trust one word that comes out of Hillary’s mouth, as she has been proven as a liar going back to near forever. Hell she was canned from the Watergate investigation for lying and unethical behavior(if some of what I have read is true). Is Trump going to be able to do 1/10 of what he say’s? Not given the makeup of the House and Senate. Unless he pulls a page from past presidents book’s and uses executive orders. Then you would hear all form of squalling and moaning from BOTH sides of the aisle.
I’m neither a “law and order” Republican, nor a “big government” Democrat. There is little in either of those party’s that appeal to me. If I were to list all of the thing’s I dislike about the political show, Jack’s server would crash and I would wear out my fingertips.
A few years back I got to see the political process up close as a lobbyist for a non-profit, and as a volunteer on a gubernatorial campaign. Between the two experiences, i decided that perhaps the ancient Romans had a better system with an emperor(speaking of which, I’m available)
“Hell she was canned from the Watergate investigation for lying and unethical behavior(if some of what I have read is true).”
she was still in school back then, what does Watergate have to do with anything?
http://jacksonville.com/reason/fact-check/2014-03-08/story/fact-check-was-hillary-clinton-fired-watergate-investigation#
it’s a question of ethics, of which she has none. And it seems you have trouble with history.
Try again
Are you even remotely serious? you’re citing one guy’s claims as evidence, and your link cites truthorfiction.com as a “fact finder?”
come back when you have some solid evidence, and not just some shit you read online which you buy into because it just happens to line up with what you already believe.
Jesus Christ, that story you linked to started off by saying they were going on a “viral e-mail.” If viral e-mails were worth anything, Bill Gates would have given me thousands of dollars 20 years ago for forwarding an e-mail.
Why don’t YOU pull your head out of your ass and do a little research? So you chose not to believe that ( and as I stated; FROM WHAT I HAVE READ, neither of us were there so who the hell knows). In the past 23 years of NATIONAL public life, she has been proven as a lying sack of dog squeezeings, that will do ANYTHING to become president.
“All I know is what I read on the internet”
Two can play that game…
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp
Bam! Pow!
It’s amazing to me that Trump gets traction for calling Clinton a liar, when every post-speech fact check indicates most of his claims are pure bunk.
but he “makes good points.”
An example of “pure bunk”…Hillary took a page from Bill’s “it depends on the meaning of the word ‘is'”.
She keeps repeating that none of the emails on her server were marked “classified”…when on day one at State she was told that it was her responsibility to archive her emails, and to treat ALL sensitive information in a secure manner. Her personal server was NOT secure. And she also knows that emails that are classified are not marked “classified”. Instead, there is a hierarchy of classifications that are indicated on SOME, but not all, classified information. And she was told in her day one orientation that if an email or other document had ANY information about US plans with foreign governments, information about clandestine information and people, or a host of other things, that they HAD to be kept within a secure environment.
And having HER OWN server for ALL of her emails was not the same as what previous Secretaries of State had done. They had used COMMERCIAL servers for PERSONAL email ONLY, and kept ALL official business within the presumably secure confines of the government’s servers.
That and the fact that she lied to the American public about the cause of the Benghazi uprising when she KNEW that that story was false (even emailing her daughter within the same week that it wasn’t a true story), is just one more example of her moral bankruptcy.
And BTW, how in hell did Vince Foster, who was right-handed, shoot himself with his left hand, something experts said was never done. And why did the investigation refuse to call a jogger who was a witness to the car being parked there just before the suicide allegedly occurred there at the Federally controlled Park a half hour away from the White House. Supposedly, the jogger has said that there was more than one person in the car at one point before the Federal Park Police arrived.
Hmmm…inquiring minds want to know.
Oh, and there was the the thousand dollars she invested with a crony in a commodities market scam…the trades were pooled, and the crony chose, after the fact, which trades were assigned to who. Some other people who invested with him took all the losses, and she took all, or most, of the gains, netting over a hundred thousand from her thousand dollar investment, in just several months.
Such arbitrary assignment of pooled trades was at that time, and is now, a violation of SEC regulations, but she has never even been investigated, much less indicted for illegally profiting from a scheme where the fund manager didn’t share the gains and losses equally among all of the supposedly equal partners.
Just one more example of her repeated sleazy conduct to enrich herself at the expense of others.
But will there be a chicken in every pot? Please tell me that there will be a chicken in every pot!
Trump steaks my friend
No, there will be pork belly profits in every Hillary crony’s bank account, bestowed there not by Hillary herself, but by the supposedly independent Clinton Foundation.
And they will take a dump on the ordinary person, every chance she and her cronies get.
Wake up and do your own research about her…there are enough things that aren’t disputed that would make your sense of fairness be offended, if you had one instead of having a glowing admiration for someone who has make millions in the last fifteen years, in speaking fees by people the Clintons were in a position to aid, at the expense of the American public.
Well done!
I have an Indian-American friend, born in Indiana, and happened to be in NYC during and after 9/11. She had to face everyday harassment on the streets for weeks because she’s brown back then. It’s the same kind of shit that Trump is legitimizing, whether intentional or not doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter if they’re muslim, mexican, indian, brazilian or even spanish as long as they’re brown - every news story she reads of incidents of hate crimes against Indians, a couple of brazilians, or a spaniard (serious, only a few months ago), it’s a red flag. Every single story that even vaguely suggests a racist element (and there are many) is a red flag. And she’s no welfare queen either - she earns quite a bit than the median Indian-American income. And to top it all off, she’s uneasy with illegal immigration in that way only someone with legal immigrants in the immediate family or are legal immigrants themselves are (though you might not hear it stated publicly because politics is the mind killer). But, even with all that, from her perspective as a Sanders supporter, she hates Clinton and thinks Obama’s been meh at best and a fuckup at worst, but Trump terrifies her in a way that no presidential candidate ever has in over two decades of voting.
And for that reason alone, she’ll never consider Trump, and as it’s quickly becoming apparent, the rest of the GOP either. I can’t really fault her either - I can go on and on about policy and establishment and riggedness and crony capitalism, and corruption, but Trump makes her feel unsafe in her own damn country, and there’s no fixing that, today or a decade from now.
there you go, making it about race again.
/s
You should try living in Columbus, Ohio. 100k Somalis, brought in by the federal government over the objections of Ohioans. They engage in human trafficking. They kill people on the streets like dogs. You take your life in your hands driving through the neighborhoods they control. It cuts both ways. I don’t like what your friend is going through but I also want someone to control the flood of potential terrorists into this country.
You’ll find that it’s only a small core of white liberals, and a few allies on the left who are going to start defending terrorists, Islamic radicalism, and lawless madness in immigrant ghettos.
People like my friend (and many other people I know who lean left) don’t really care for terrorists or illegal immigration or places with bad law and order. For crying out loud, I hear the same shit from the more conservative parts of her family when it comes to those topics (a few interestingly alternative derogatory terms though) as I hear elsewhere. She was a Sanders voter because the economy is rigged and she hated the corrupt establishment. She should have been a perfect Trump convert.
Let me put it to you more bluntly. She lives in a typical suburban upper middle class neighborhood, she and her entire family fit the profile of a generic conservative leaning upper middle class family. Only really notable thing is that they’re completely nuts when it comes to education (questions about kids always start with doctor/engineer/lawyer… and everyone else is a failure) - and Trump is no more than a bad joke to them.
This is not unusual - my Indian friend is just a particularly good example. These are people who should happily break with the Democrats. These are people who are inherently center right. The only immigrants they care about are the highly skilled types, but then they take one look at the right, see the racist nonsense that’s constantly peddled about on that side and nope the fuck out of there.
Trump is a dead end for the GOP.
PS. That just reminded me of something else. Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to take Abigail Fisher to the Supreme court over the Affirmative Action case? Couldn’t they have found someone who actually got fucked over? My friend was not that happy about that outcome…
Have met him. He’s quite smart, in a “mental horsepower” sense. He’s not so smart in the “knowing when to shut up for his own good” sense.
Unlike Trump, though, Shkreli actually did start with no money at all. He made himself a multimillionaire by making a couple of smart trades, and by creating actual businesses that made money for their investors.
Whups - that was a response to the Shkreli comment above.
But yes, I’m 100% with your Indian friend. Trump and a lot of his supporters have been explicitly that they actually think that America’s problems would somehow be solved if they just rounded up and killed me and my family. The probability of that goes up exponentially if he is President. Regardless of any of his other alleged policies, I’m a single-issue voter on that one.
The probability of Mexicans being killed in this country is absolutely zero. Let’s not engage in too much hyperbole.
Trump’s “radical, racist” policies regarding Mexicans are simply this: he wants to enforce the existing immigration laws of the United States. Nothing more, nothing less.
Trump’s most relevant in-context statement regarding Mexicans is this: “I have many successful business relationships with Mexican companies and employ, and am close friends with, many Mexican people. I also have tremendous respect for the leaders of Mexico, who, frankly, are much smarter and tougher than our politicians here in the United States.”
The law says that about 65,000 Mexicans can have a new visa every year: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/07/14_million_mexicans_waiting_to.html That means that Mexico leads the globe in terms of legal, permitted immigration to the United States.
Non-Mexicans who want a green card have a much tougher path:
https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-procedures/green-card-eligibility
As for what Trump’s supporters want… he’s not responsible for anything his supporters do. We established that when Obama’s “God Damn America” pastor was sanctified by the media.
Rounded up and killed? What kind of fevered imaginations do you people have?
The U.S. enforces it’s immigration laws against Canadians. How on earth did it ever get to the state that expecting immigration laws to apply to Mexicans is akin to another holocaust?
When Canada started getting thousands of bogus refugee claims from Mexicans we slapped visa requirements on all visitors from Mexico and put a stop to it.
Why on earth do you think laws don’t apply to you? To hell with you people.
Once again, baconator, you and the rest of the libs like to distort the truth. Nowhere has Trump said to round up and kill all Muslims…just another red herring to keep the average headline reading voter’s eye off the reality of Hillary.
What he said and says is to keep all new potential Muslim immigrants out until we can establish a system of insuring that they are not engaged in anti-American terrorist activities.
If you are an American, even a Muslim American without a jihad agenda, you should be glad that he doesn’t want to let people into this country whose sole intent is to kill Americans to further jihad. You may think your Muslim identity might protect yourself from such terrorists, but it will not, as they will, and have, killed indiscriminately, around the world, either because they have swallowed the Koolaid, or because they were coerced into becoming a human bomb-delivery system in order to protect their families.
And when the system to protect America is in place, Muslims can and will be admitted again, proportionally, but not preferentially simply because they are Muslims.
Unless, of course, our next president is someone who gets multimillion dollar annual speaking fees from foreign governments.
Hmmm, I wonder who THAT could be????
Your comment that “non-Mexicans who want a green card have a much tougher path” makes absolutely no sense. If you look at the visa bulletin you will see that people from Mexico have a much longer line than people from other countries - dating back to petitions filed in the early 90s. https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bulletin/2016/visa-bulletin-for-june-2016.html
They have a longer line, but they don’t have to work as hard once they get to the front of that line.
Look at it this way: The line to get into Space Mountain on a Saturday afternoon is longer than the line of qualified applicants for the next manned mission to the moon. Doesn’t mean it’s tougher to get to Space Mountain than it is to get to the moon.
My wife is an immigration attorney, Jack. I can tell you that the immigration laws are enforced quite rigorously, every day. In fact, many of the most ardent pro-immigrant, very liberal practicing attorneys are quite frustrated with the Obama administration for too aggressively enforcing deport orders, a policy he adopted at the same time as his DAPA proposal.
What Trump is insinuating is forming a special police force - Waffen SS? - that would go house to house and round up people who are here illegally. Such an action would be extremely ugly and divisive. Imagine the folks who would sign up for that duty. And imagine the images of families being torn apart - Elian Gonzales all over again, millions of times over. To think that violence would not erupt from such a process is just naive.
>insinuating
What definition of “rigorous enforcement” includes sanctuary cities and eight million illegal immigrants running free? In what “rigorous” world do we have immigrants motor-voting?
I’m not trying to be difficult here, I’m genuinely curious. According to Pew
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/19/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/
there are over 11 million illegal immigrants in this country.
And while I’m necessarily in favor of “breaking up families”, it occurs to me that the “touch home and you’re free” philosophy is more properly applied to a children’s game of “tag” than to an immigration policy.
You cannot argue, not for a moment, that if I managed to get myself across the Swiss border that I could live, work, and commit crimes in that country without being summarily caught and deported. Hell, Ethan Gaines couldn’t even order a pizza without the authorities finding him. Why do we treat Mexican immigrants differently?
Immigrants who commit crimes are deported every day. They first serve their criminal sentence if convicted, and then face the immigration consequences afterwards, usually in a separate proceeding. Immigration court exists because deportation, in itself, is not considered a punishment for a crime - the criminal sentence is. Then, if the crime is bad enough (usually a “Crime Involving Moral Turpitude”), the immigrant usually faces deportation. If the immigrant can not come up with a qualified reason to stay, they are deported.
This is not a cut-and-dry issue, and there are valid arguments on both sides. Even though my wife is an immigration attorney and is an immigrant herself (came from Russia as a 5 year old in 1990), and my mother was born in Colombia and came to the U.S. to get her PhD from Yale in the 70’s, we both have moderated views on immigration. I’m sympathetic to the sentiment that if you are here illegally and you commit a crime, you should be deported. And I’m not happy with the idea of spending tax dollars to incarcerate immigrants who do commit crimes only to deport them anyway when their sentences are up. On the other hand, it’s not morally or legally defensible to simply deport convicted murderers, rapists, etc. to their home countries without any punishment whatsoever. That’s how you create gang-infested hellholes like El Salvador. And it’s not just a matter of “that’s El Salvidor’s problem”- the instability and violence there does threaten us and impose costs on the U.S.
The bigger issue, however, is the fact that this issue should not be framed solely as a criminal issue. The fact that we are discussing it as such demonstrates how successful Trump is at framing conversations and public perceptions. The vast majority of immigrants living in this country are not criminals, and came here for the simple imperative of trying to improve their family’s lot in this life. You can’t blame individual immigrants for that - everyone on this website has ancestors who came to the US for the exact same reason. Many of them work here quite diligently at jobs that American workers don’t want to do at 3 times the wage. Our quality of life - not to mention the stability of the economy - depends on low wage labor. Some of it is over here, some of it is abroad. It’s not just, but it’s a necessity in a world with uneven and insufficient distribution of resources, competence, education, and morals.
Yes, “touch base and you’re free” is an absurd way of running an immigration policy - everyone recognizes that. The fact of the matter is that we failed to properly admit and screen millions of people who are now here and pursuing the American dream. We need a just and fair framework to incorporate these people into our society officially and to remove the ones who do not deserve to be here. The solution is not to round them up and remove them a la Andrew Jackson. Grandstanding against them and characterizing them all as “rapists and murderers” is a naked call at Nativism and division that you should see through instantly, Jack.
If this country truly needs 20 or 30 million first-generation Mexican immigrants living and working here legally, then the law should be changed to reflect that and to offer the people who play by the rules a legitimate path to citizenship. And they should be changed globally. If the government is going to flood my neighborhood with “new citizens”, then I should have the right to be a “new citizen” in Switzerland or Frankfurt or Paris myself, right?
This country was founded on the idea of open immigration… when most of it was either uninhabited or required being taken by force. You can’t do that anymore. There’s no place for a mass influx of immigrants to go, particularly when the vast majority of those immigrants have no skills whatsoever. We have the lowest labor force participation since before the Depression and somehow all these people are necessary? Why not make convicts work in farm fields? Why not make welfare recipients do the “jobs that Americans won’t do”? I’m not really clear on why there is a Manifest Destiny for Mexico to absorb the United States via trickle-invasion.
I realized I should clarify the situations in which an undocumented immigrant who is convicted of a crime is deported after serving their sentence, since my response above was a bit unclear.
If the crime was a CIMT (crime involving moral turpitude), then there are very very few defenses to deportation. Nearly all are deported.
If the crime was not a CIMT, then the immigrant is still deported for being here illegally, unless the immigrant can argue for a qualifying reason to stay.
As I recall Bush Jr made calls to keep more illegal immigrants in as did Reagan, thru amnesty etc. The reasons are not a left wing conspiracy if you read articles about W and his runs for governor and the white house it was two fold, One a large part of the american southwest relies on cheap immigrant and illegal labor for farming and many other lower level jobs, The ones with money wanted to keep it that way so W typically avoided discussing immigration as he knew this was at odds with what most of his base wanted (the base without money anyways) The 2nd part is more talked about, The Latino vote has grown larger and larger every year and the party understood even back in the late 90’s that courting a heavily religious Latino population would be their best bet at keeping a conservative majority on their side.
On an aside I believe the number of illegals has been pretty steady for over a decade now and the number of deportations up.
“If this country truly needs 20 or 30 million first-generation Mexican immigrants living and working here legally, then the law should be changed to reflect that and to offer the people who play by the rules a legitimate path to citizenship.”
Agreed, that’s what George W, Rubio, and all sorts of Democrats have proposed and it gets nowhere because of demagogue nativists like Trump calling all immigrants rapists and murderers.
“And they should be changed globally. If the government is going to flood my neighborhood with “new citizens”, then I should have the right to be a “new citizen” in Switzerland or Frankfurt or Paris myself, right?”
That would be nice. I’m not holding my breath.
“We have the lowest labor force participation since before the Depression and somehow all these people are necessary?”
It’s supply and demand; they came here for the same reason our ancestors did, nevermind the fact that there’s no frontier anymore. If there were no opportunities - i.e. work on farms, in gardens, in kitchens, painting houses, etc - they would not come.
” If there were no opportunities – i.e. work on farms, in gardens, in kitchens, painting houses, etc – they would not come.”
I wonder about that. There’s something to be said just for living in a country that has yet to become an entirely corrupt narco-state where no lives matter at all. It might just be a matter of people feeling safer in the USA?
If Arabs are brown, can Jews, their cousins, be beige in your racial calculus? In Europe they said we were swarthy and oversexed. Now what does that description remind you of?
My racial calculus is this. Brown=anyone who is not northern European Caucasian, Jewish, East Asian or African.
This is not because it makes sense. It doesn’t. It’s just what it’s come to mean in the modern political context.
A true white supremacist will happily tell you that Jews are not white - and the weren’t considered white for a long period of history. But I’ve also heard some strange theories of how everyone from northern Europe to the ME to south Asia are all Aryans, but that they are progressively more corrupted by mixed breeding. White suptemacist literature is fascinatingly disturbing.
And honestly, all of that bothers me. Both the left and the right are racist. Everyone’s got their own little sacred cows that they pander to, and for a lot of people who don’t conform very well, it’s always two bad choices and voting for someone who is less scary. And in this case, Trump is scarier than Clinton, which is a fucked up achievement in itself. There’s got to be an award for being more hated than a lying, corrupt, narcissistic, self absorbed amalgam of opinion polls.
I want to believe [/Mulder], but whether his intentions are sincere or not, getting anything productive past the noses of those 400+ corporate-tit-fed cocksuckers in comgress is an impossibility. The president alome cannot effect change, and seldom if ever does congress serve up what’s best for Americans.
I have very much enjoyed seeing my lib/prog friends contort themselves to support Hillary, when they said everything Trump is saying about her now, back in 2008.
Here’s a fun question to pose to her supporters: Without mentioning any other candidate or party, please explain exactly what you like about Hillary Clinton.
As a personality, she is really not very likable. As a talented bureaucrat who can get stuff done, she has a lot of appeal to her. There’s a real question as to whether she’s center-left or full-on liberal, but she certainly believes she’s a pragmatist and doesn’t have much patience for policies or platitudes she believes are far-fetched or impossible. That’s a big part of why she comes across as insincere: she is plainly saying things she doesn’t believe or is uninspired by because she knows it will go over well with 51 of the population.
On a substantive level, that are a number of issues that I believe that she would be a good leader on. Most important for me is global warming and respecting this planet. The difference between her and Trump on this issue could not be more stark and I will absolutely vote for her for this issue alone, even though there are plenty of other reasons to side with her.
So she’s going to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet?
I’m detecting some snark and condescension from Bark here. Still, I’ll respond earnestly even though it probably won’t be of much use.
No, I don’t think that Hillary is some kind of messianic figure who will be able to heal the planet herself. Yes, I do think global warming is real and man made and requires serious collective efforts to address. So do nearly all of the planet’s scientists, even those who were hired by the fossil fuels industry in the 70’s to study the issue and then sat on their research. As a collective problem, it requires collective effort to fix, and that requires, as a starting point, a leader who believes in the problem and is willing to stake political capital to do something about it.
“Collective effort”=Socialism.
Or something.
Pseudoperson Randomian
June 24, 2016 at 1:03 am
“All I know is what I read on the internet”
All I know is what MSNBC tells me.
“Anyone who disagrees with me is stupid.”
- Dirty Dingus McGee
Most are.
Given the UK’s economy collapsing over night in the face of hyper-nationalistic and borderline xenophobic policy, how does that effect the view of Trump, who wants the same things? The desertion of the working middle class is what causes these things, and that’s fair to note, but to expect manufacturing jobs to come back by shutting down borders and leaving the globalization race is rather short-sighted as well. Exports would go down drastically without these (admittedly at times harmful) trade agreements. A loss of exports certainly does not help manufacturing, not to mention the economy as a whole.
Also worth noting is the idea of radical change in a historical lens. There have been numerous instances of radical change -and Trump’s proposed ideas are indeed radical- throughout modern Western Civilization, and in virtually every instance it has backfired horribly or at least been pulled back to ultra-conservatism in short order. One only needs to look at the French Revolution(s), the German Revolution, national socialism, Reconstruction, etc. The world does not advance in leaps in bounds without major effect.
This vote was about governance, not trade. There is nothing to stop the UK trading with Europe. They did it just fine forty years ago.
But they lose the ability to freely move, and work wherever they would like w/in the EU. They potentially lose the ability to trade w/o barriers. This may have disastrous impact on the financial sector — or just result in them relocating from London to Dublin or elsewhere — if London banking can no longer do business under EU passport rules and the UK must negotiate separate agreements like Switzerland — I can totally see US, Japanese banks significantly downsizing or eliminating their London operations and relocating them elsewhere.
Fuck the financial sector.
Let ’em print more money.
At some point in my son’s lifetime, you’ll see Wall Street bankers skinned alive in front of their homes. You can’t rig the game in favor of sixty-two people against seven billion and expect to be immune from the consequences forever.
Good luck buying all your Allen Edmonds, fancy watches, sports jackets, guitars, etc. without the financial sector to patronize those industries (i/e subsidize your purchases) and invest in the goods and services that you use every day. Concern about the deficit is a red herring; there is no shortage of demand for T-Bills across the planet as everyone else is even less trustworthy than our financial sector is. As long as the cost of borrowing is free, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do it. Capitalism is all predicated on the irrational common belief that the system will perpetuate itself ad infinitum, and the only way to carry that on is to allocate the risk to the most credible holder. Putting the risk in T-Bills keeps everyone honest: we can’t afford to mess with the formula and our creditors (a minority fraction of which are Chinese/Middle Eastern) can’t afford to lose their savings by disrupting the value of US Bonds. Enact austerity and watch what happens. There will be blood on the streets.
@matt seconded. It’s short sighted to say fuck the financial sector, it’s short sighted to just think we’re going to have some miraculous return to some idealistic 1950s/60s economy where you could drop out of high school walk down the road and get a job at the union plant and raise a family. Those days are gone. That America is gone, That America is not an America I want my future children to grow up in. Intellectual capital is far more valuable than physical capital and backwards “protectionist” policies to “bring back” American manufacturing are only going to have an over all net negative impact on our cost and standard of living.
I guess I come closer to Jack here, Intellectual value being used simply to create wealth out of essentially nothing, for a select few seems to be a piss poor way for the future. I think there needs to be a financial sector but one based more on real world values as it was intended when these finical markets were first created(we need credit we need investment). My father worked in the financial sector his entire life so I’m not one to dismiss it as it fed me housed me and let me go sailing on a little boat in the summer.
But I think the market in it’s current form is creating a world where liquid capital is more valuable then not just labor capital but also intellectual capital. When that happens the value of life is diminished and the probability of war is raised.
Right they did it just fine 40 years ago when this system was not already in place. There is every reason to believe the EU will not offer them a better deal then they had or even one that would be close enough. In all likelihood, they will be made an example of in order to keep Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and whoever else from leaving the union. Also of note is how what’s left of the Empire might just disintegrate. Gibraltar voted something on the magnitude of 19,500 to 800 in favor of staying and Spain is already making moves. Scotland and the leader of the Sinn Fein are calling on their own referendums for independence. That does not bode well for Britain. Furthermore, there is scant reason to believe that London would remain the fiscal capital of Europe. The ease in which it was allowed to serve that purpose has been erased. Amsterdam will probably be looking to take its place here in the next couple years.
The EU was not a democratic organization and was blatantly unfair to larger economies. That much is inarguable. However, to leave without any security could easily be one of the greatest economic crises we’ve seen in the last 100 years or so. Europe has not recovered like the United States has since 2008 after they chose austerity (which didn’t work) over stimulus, and any stimulus that could have been provided is largely tapped out. There wasn’t much of a cushion 8 years ago, but there is certainly less of one now. I
Not everything is about economics. Educated men treat the “bread and circuses” line of argument with contempt. There was an economic cost to American independence, and God knows that post-colonial African countries have become hellholes. Even South Africa is far worse off than it was under apartheid. Is that an argument for apartheid?
And that’s a valid argument. I guess it just depends on how much you’d like to have a strong economy vs how much you value independence. They aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but it’s gonna be very tricky to avoid a pretty powerful recession in Britain in a global economy that has become thoroughly interdependent post-WWII.
There is a bit of humor there in bringing up apartheid when the baby-boomers (and it was mostly that age bloc) voting for leaving the EU were doing it in large part out of fear of brown people.
Heh, if the UK wants the same access to the EU markets as it has now, they’ll have to agree to the same conditions - open borders, payments and so on - as they do now. Only difference is, they won’t have any say in EU rules, unlike before yesterday, when the UK was one of the de facto leaders.
Besides, have you seen the demographics? The younger people are, the more…global (for the lack of a better term) the are likely to be. Far more likely to be ok with distant governments, and far more likely to be okay with federal/central action. Those bankers are screwed whether whichever way you go. The trends for globalization and centralization will continue, but they’ll take a slightly different path and just screw over a few more people along the way now. Maybe with a bit more of the balance of power shifting away from the west if people insist on tearing down more of the institutions that have ensured western hegemony for decades.
Economic reality will always come back to bite you, and it will bite you hard - and it’ll be the worst for average working class citizen who just wanted their country back. Nationalist pride will make you feel good, but it won’t keep you warm or fill your stomach.
Sung by a chorus of the inmates of the asylum at Charenton, under the direction of the Marquis de Sade:
“Marat, we’re poor! And the poor stay poor…”
But no one ever said that they had to be as poor as they have become in this brave new world.
I will resist the urge to go full-on with a lengthy rebuttal.
I will only point out, that while I knew I was lighting up the room with a bit of gasoline on the fire, it is a fact also about Obama that his autobiographical book is full of father-nostalgia for his long lost father, as only a young man raised by his mother’s family, with his father’s at a remove, could have.
So I don’t find it that far of a reach to think that he may harbor a greater love for his father and his father’s beliefs than he can afford to openly endorse, for obvious political reasons. Note that I said “may” and not “does”…
And I too have known many who proclaim Islam as their faith who seem to have all the same humanness, both for noble and for petty behavior, as do non-Muslims. Some of them no doubt truly exceptional and admirable human beings.
But that does not change the fact that any Muslim who feels themselves to be in an environment hostile to their beliefs can find solace and advice in the surya that allows and advocates lying - tsuriya, I believe it is called.
The problem arises in that when that is an official policy of the religion, it becomes impossible to know for sure if someone, professed Muslim or not, is telling the truth or lying to advance their religion.
I even know of an Iranian who wholeheartedly embraced Christianity in order to get money and a car from a Christian church, and then renounced the religion after the deal was sealed.
So no numerical percentage of honest and honorable Muslims is ever going to convince me, or many others as well, to accept ALL of them as being noble, fine and peaceful examples of the best that can be crafted out of their teachings.
The fact remains that there is an indeterminate percentage who have, do and will lie to advance their cause, and who will stop at nothing to impose their beliefs on others.
So it is not hatred of Islam, per se, or of what it is perceived to always be, but rather a nagging suspicion that you never know for sure what you will be getting. Unfortunately, even those Muslims who do not believe in such behavior suffer as a result of those who would lie, cheat, steal, enslave or kill non-Muslims in the advancement of their face as they conceive it.
And except for reach, it matters little whether that percentage of perfidiousness is less than one per cent, or is sixty percent…the fact is, that such perfidiousness can and does dwell alongside the so-called ideal and pure Islam of other Muslims.
PS The Muslims Lawrence of Arabia dealt with, and the Muslims of the fine book Three Cups of Tea, about climber Chris Mortenson’s successful attempt to bring schools for the education of young girls to the Muslim rural regions of Afghanistan (to repay them for saving his life after a failed climb attempt in the Hindu Kush), both portray Muslims who, by every indication, were and are noble and honorable people.
But as I noted before, the very nature of the teachings of the religion allow it to mean vastly different things to different people. So it always comes down to “buyer beware”.
Hillary pork belly futures, my friend.
If you are her, and not just any of her co-investors, you are guaranteed a 9,900% profit on your original investment of just $1,000.
Now THAT is a luxurious, top end brand if I ever saw one!
Jab at the president’s religion, my ass…all you Hillary-lovers love to go around saying that Trump is a phony about his religion because he said “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, supposedly proving his ignorance of standard universal Christian scriptural referencing.
Sorry, guys, but you will lose ground on that one, because there are many ordinary Americans who have sat in more than one church in their lifetime, and have heard pastors say “Two Corinthians” or “One John” many a time…
Anyone who says that it is never said as a cardinal number, rather than an ordinal one, is showing their own ignorance of religion, not Donald Trump’s.
And many voters can and will recognize that cheapshot for just what it is.
Whether Zeifman was misrepresenting his relationship to Hillary, or had dementia twenty years later, or whatever, it still seems awfully shady for her to have been part of a plan to remove all the documents from a prior impeachment attempt, in order to prevent discovery of a precedent for counsel during one.
Not the kind of lawyer I’d want to rely on, if I valued my own integrity and honor.
She’s not. But she’s also less likely than trump to increase the negative slope we are currently on. She’s a placeholder- I get that. But trump- he’s a race baiting narcissist. The only way he makes things better is by a random mutation that works out in our favor.
Notice how it is never “Trump has said he will…”, it is conjecture: “…is insinuating…”.
It is called a straw man argument, as I am sure you are intelligent enough to recognize, Matt.
Yet the anti-Trumpistas repeatedly go “Don’t worry about Hillary and her misdeeds. They are nothing compared to what we have concluded that Trump would do.”
_________, please!
“….admit and properly screen…”
Note the order, and the implicit idea that we are obligated to admit.
May I suggest that it should be “properly screen” first, and only then “admit”, and then only to the extent that it fits our country’s policies, and not to the extent that meets the needs of would-be immigrants everywhere.
She feels the earth’s pain, Bark.
This is good. Ive always liked and respected both of you Baruths, but after reading all of the comments here I realize that my respect was solely based on both of your automotive journalism efforts. Read this and think…
“Everything that we’re taught as children — not to bully, not to demean, to treat others with respect — everything we’re taught as children is the exact opposite of what the Republican nominee is doing. How do you work for somebody like that? What would I tell my family?”
Brent Swander, long time Ohio-based GOP operative who has coordinated nationwide logistics for Republican presidential campaigns dating to George W. Bush.
I think Mr. Swander would need to tell his family that his children are likely to have a brighter future under a Trump administration than they would under a Clinton one. Mrs. Clinton is a bully. She demeaned African-Americans when it suited her needs to do so. She treated the American people without respect when she decided that her personal needs were greater than this country’s security needs.
Mr. Trump is far from a perfect person, or a perfect candidate. But would you prefer Mrs. Clinton?
I would prefer just about anyone over Clinton, But unfortunately Trump is one of the few I would take Clinton over.
As to Mr. Swander he is in the top 15% of the country and part of the political machine, he would likely be far better off (and his family) with Clinton in charge.
Also I believe if you are currently doing well top 15-20% income wise (a Baruth or 2 may fall in there) you would want to keep the status quo and that is pretty much a vote for Clinton.
I dont like either of them, but Clinton is by far the lessor of two evils. Do you really trust a guy who lies about virtually everything, and has made boatloads of money by going bankrupt and fucking investors with the economy of our country? Even conservatives can see what he will do to our economy.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/02/why-trumps-government-spending-will-destroy-the-economy/
“Do you really trust a guy who lies about virtually everything,”
His opponent, I would remind you, is Hillary Clinton.
“and has made boatloads of money by going bankrupt and fucking investors with the economy of our country? ”
Hillary Clinton made boatloads of money by selling influence and in at least one case putting unqualified people on national-security advisory boards. $3 Billion and counting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/clinton-money/
In almost every case, the worst-case scenario for a Trump presidency has already come to pass under Clinton’s watch. Would be lie to the American people? Hillary has lied to the American people a thousand times. Would he peddle influence for cash? The Clintons do that already. Would he damage the economy? Bill and Hillary sent fifty million jobs to China.
Not a perfect person? How about a despicable person?
ST. CLAIRSVILLE, Ohio — Donald Trump on Tuesday evening declared his fondness for torture, likened a new trade deal to the “rape of our country,” and joked with a man wanting a job by offering him one if he agreed to a 10 percent pay cut.
In other words: If last week was Trump’s “pivot” to becoming a more serious presidential candidate, it’s been followed by a pivot right back.
Again, I ask, without mentioning any other candidate or party, please explain exactly why you like Hillary Clinton. If you reply “She’s the Democrat, I’m voting along party lines”, I will respect your party loyalty, but I hope you recognize that the two-party system is part of the problem. Repeating that Trump is a liar who will exchange favors for contribution$ means that he’s exactly like everyone else in Washington, including Clinton 2.0.
I dont like Clinton at all and do not dispute that she comes with baggage. I simply view her as the lessor of two evils.
It means that Trump is a liar like everyone else in Washington IF AND ONLY IF he is doing the same thing, and not just because Hillary says that he is.
Everything we were taught as children…not to lie, cheat or steal, Hillary and Bill have done.
Front-running trades in the commodities market, to the benefit of her account, translating one grand into a hundred grand in a matter of months, while others lost money in the same market with the same person managing the accounts. And done by a frontman for her for deniability of wrong-doing.
Lying about the video being the cause of Benghazi.
What about being taught not to jeopardize others in order to protect ourselves. I learned that in elementary school, if not in kindergarten. But that didn’t apply when Hillary was Secretary of State.
Oh, and what Hillary says about The Donald would be considered bullying also, except that you implicitly feel that in his case, he deserves it.
And as the “big deal” about his University…yeah, there was a law that said anything called a university needed to file as such. But first, I doubt anyone believed for a moment that his real estate school was a college with a campus, that it granted degrees, that it had fraternities and sororities, that it fielded athletic teams, that it had dormitory living, etc., etc. In other words, no one was deceived into thinking it was a university the way Ohio State, Yale, Stanford or a lot of other universities are.
And yes it was a law. But when Jesse Ventura became governor of Minnesota, his new office had one wall covered from floor to ceiling with books. He asked his staff what they were. They replied, “all the laws in the state of Minnesota.” His reply “And ignorance of the law isn’t supposed to be an excuse?”.
In other words, how in the H is anyone supposed to know every one of them. What his Trump U did and didn’t do was clearly spelled out to any and all who were prospects or students.
And anyway, the state trying to control the use of a word that has more than one meaning in the way NY state does, is just another vestige of what it did with liquor laws. It used to be against the law for anyone to call their establishment a saloon, for what good reason no one has ever fathomed. One restaurant owner was taken to court for calling his Columbus Circle establishment “O’Neal’s Saloon”.
After he was taken to court for ignorance of that naming law, he simply changed the name of his place to “O’Neal’s Balloon”.
Lot of good that law did. But my point is that no one argued that he was a crook, guilty of moral turpitude, or that he should lose his liquor license just because he happened to use a word in the name of his business that the legislature that it was their business to regulate.
So if you wish, go ahead and try to convince me how smart anyone could be and still believe that Trump U was a university like the schools I named above.
Haters will stop at nothing to overlook any and all Clinton sins, and to tar Trump for fighting back when others try to bully him. And that is where most of his supposed bullying quotes come from: when someone says a lot of mean-spirited and slanderous things about his looks, his businesses, etc. Maybe it would be nicer if he turned the other cheek, but in this country, anyone who does on the electoral scene is quickly relegated to obscurity.
I see nothing wrong with, for example, Trump calling Rosie O’Donnell a fat little pig after she said things at least as slanderous about him. If you don’t want to be attacked, don’t attack. That simple.
What Trump pulled with his University was basic fraud, a legal concept I’m sure he’s familiar with. Making lofty promises and charging a price commensurate with the expectations set by his marketing, and then delivering a product that a used telephone book salesman wouldn’t want his name on.
Assuming he had a lot to do with it. The guy had fifty business operations going on at any given time. If you can give Hillary a pass for Whitewater you have to give Trump a pass for TU. Face it — the stakes on that were low enough that it hardly justified his time or fraudulent efforts. How many people were ever going to sign up for it? Again, there’s a double standard where Hillary can claim to have slept through Benghazi but Trump has to be responsible for everything he’s ever touched.
The reason people are harping on Trump U is because it is representative of a larger issue with Trump. Yes, he is a successful businessman, but nowhere near as much as he lets on. He states his net worth is $10b, based on a valuation of his Trump brand as being the lion’s share of that figure. Much of his wealth was built on the casino business, which is incredibly shady and predatory just like Trump U was. And he repeatedly stiffed his workers and contractors whenever he thought he could get away with not paying them. So it’s not that a few suckers fell for the Trump U scam that has given the story legs, it’s how perfect a distillation of his whole approach to business and success it is.
Sounds like the kind of guy you want on your side, rather than across the table from you.
Listen — if the Democrats had put O’Malley up there, or somebody with a respectable history of ethical conduct, I’d be nodding my head right along with you. But his opponent is Hillary Clinton. Who, I should add, apparently RIGGED THE PRIMARY!
Like I said above, I get why people don’t like Hillary. But a vote for her is, for better or worse, a vote for the team. She is very transparently running on an Obama 2.0 platform, with continuity on a lot of efforts in place. Hillary is, by all accounts, a skilled bureaucrat and manager, so despite her inherent sketchiness as a person, voting for her is essentially voting for a known approach to running the country. So, you could say “what difference does it make” whether it’s Hillary or O’Malley on the top of the ticket?
Trump, by contrast, is someone who is impossible to work for. He has a tiny campaign staff, basically made up of yes men and sycophants. He throws his own people under the bus when they contract his instincts, and the GOP is trying to run a campaign on his behalf to make up for his shortcomings as a manager. He doesn’t seem to have any history or capability of being able to internalize and analyze complex policy information, as demonstrated by his recent parroting of an obviously incoherent and internally inconsistent energy policy. By your own admission, it’s plausible that someone ran a fraudulent Trump branded “university” on his behalf and he had no idea (or didn’t care) that the basic business model was fraudulent. He is a loose cannon who has an unfaltering confidence in his own gut instinct, and seemingly no inclination to seek out facts prior to or following his pronouncement of the latest whim that flew through his head and out of his mouth. You simply cannot vote for such a person to be president.
I call total BS on that, Matt. No one was talked into spending tens of thousands of dollars in one intense afternoon while they were locked in a room and high-pressured.
It is my understanding that the people who had bought the full Monty of courses had bought several introductory and intermediate courses before signing up for the final series of courses.
If the quality was that bad, why did they keep signing up for more, and only complain when they found out that they didn’t have the whatever to activate the plan.
And don’t give me some Stockholm syndrome crap, that they identified with their oppressors. Only Hillary can say things like that with a more or less straight face.
These people knew what they were getting into, they wanted to make a lot of money in a competitive but sometimes highly remunerative field, and some did and some failed.
The ones who failed want to blame the information they received, the same information that worked for others, rather than accept the fact that they lacked the personality, the brainpower, or the whatever that it took to excel in that competitive environment.
You might as well try to sue a lawyer or accountant for incorporating you and starting you off in business, where you spend thousands of dollars and then fail…yeah, it was their fault. THEY made me spend my money, made me act real funny, that wasn’t the real me who failed, they sold me snake oil. That’s it, THAT’S the ticket!
Please…
Well that’s an interesting comment thread.
From my rather sheltered perspective, wherein virtually everyone I know is either in “knowledge work” or difficult-to-robotize labor like high-end construction or restoration, I see anyone hoping for or relying on a return to an economy which is supported in any significant part by large numbers of people producing physical goods as being in for a very difficult future. Same for anyone who wants to try to compete with the 2nd/3rd world on production via human labor rather than innovation.
Honestly, I’m confused by the intimation that a technologically advanced society (implying highly automated production of physical goods,) and a labor pool in which a majority are only suited to work a production line rather than design it, are fundamentally compatible; moreso by the idea that we could somehow compete on output with countries for which human labor costs basically nothing, particularly when considering the difference in population (and more importantly distribution thereof) between now and when the USA was known for producing the types of basic goods that China is today.
“Intellectual value being used simply to create wealth out of essentially nothing, for a select few seems to be a piss poor way for the future.”
I like this line. I can’t fully disagree, but what’s the alternative? Once we’ve automated away the need for labor to such a degree that there’s hardly such thing as a menial factory job anymore, what do you do with the people who were suited for them?
I’m probably going to regret posting this, but oh well.
Absolutely agree that manufacturing and low-skill labor was always going to shift to developing countries. Bill Clinton embraced that fact, but is not to blame for that bare economic reality. I’d be curious to see how Jack responds to this.
Listen, I accept that there’s not going to be anymore canning on Cannery Row, nor is there going to be any sweatshop work in Hell’s Kitchen.
But this idea that the United States has somehow… progressed… beyond manufacturing work… What makes anybody think that the vast majority of Americans are going to be knowledge workers of any kind? Four out of ten working-age men aren’t participating in the labor force. Most of them aren’t qualified to do anything beyond entry-level labor.
The Clinton paradigm is to send those jobs overseas in exchange for political contributions, and then to join those manual laborers and factory workers to the social safety net so their votes stay solidly Democratic. But why can’t they do jobs? It might be cheaper to have cheap things made overseas, but it’s not cheaper to have cheap things made overseas AND pay the people who used to make them a ton of money to do nothing.
I’m not saying we’ve magically progressed past a need to manufacture goods as if by God’s hand; more that it looks (from the outside) like we’ve automated and outsourced ourselves out of a whole bunch of jobs, because American humans get expensive after a while and businesses want to make as much money as possible, arguably at the expense of the “greater good” of giving people something to do. The roles of morality and social responsibility in capitalism have been up for debate for a while and I don’t think we’ve come to much of a conclusion yet.
I’m also not proposing any sort of solution, more just trying to reconcile the diminished need for labor which has historically come as part and parcel of a society’s “progress,” with the need to keep millions of unskilled people employed (if I take at face value the assertion that such a large percentage of young men and women can’t do much more than dig ditches which no longer need dug, which I’m hesitant to do.)
But, I’m probably the wrong person to talk about this, because I’m in a pretty homogeneous environment where I’m able to enjoy being the least-intelligent and lowest-paid person in the room because we’re all doing just fine. Pretty much all of my peers are employed and doing OK, buying new cars and starting families. While I understand that there are other parts of the country where the opposite is the case, I don’t know where the mean lies.
That’s a fair point, Jack. The partisan riposte is that traditional Republican efforts that are framed as reducing dependency on government and encouraging work are really just thinly-veiled efforts to “starve the beast” without any intention of putting into place any sort of mechanism to encourage economic opportunity or any solution for the would-be-working class.
By contrast, the pragmatist/cynical view of the Democratic big brother state is that the social safety net is the price you pay to keep the proles from reaching for pitchforks and AR-15s. To be sure, there always has been a great proportion of society that isn’t invited to the party, and by any objective measure poor people today have it better than they have in the pre-War past. But without meaningful work to do, the Brexit/Trump vote seems to be “if we can’t have nice things you can’t either,” which is causing a lot of consternation amongst the well-off. It seems that we have outsourced our manufacturing and pollution to developing countries, and insourced their impoverished working class.
It seems to me that what you are attracted to about Trump is that he proposes a way to cut through this impasse: instead of “you are on your own/pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” he proposes . . . some sort of strongman brinksmanship protectionist business magic? Blame the immigrants and the Chinese?
Just removing china’s most favored naton status would go a long way towards bringing low skill assembly back to the US.
We need jobs for people. Or there will be hell to pay.
I agree that there will be less and less low skill labor needs in the future, but innovation should try and focus on improving society on the whole not the few, which would be one of my main complaints with Wall st which has created a brain drain on pretty much every other industry because it’s the best chance a intelligent person has on a huge payday. I’m not saying we should force companies to do things for the greater good but you do need to take away incentives for bad behaviors.
. Also training in this country is a bit of a joke, most people could be trained in a short amount of time in a innovative field but instead we push far too many people thru a corrupt university system. I’m not saying everyone needs to be a plumber and go thru trade high school, obviously, but I work with a number of guys doing engineering work with Associate degrees, and have been since the 70’s.
Also back in the day when someone failed at school they often ended up in a low paying trade but were trained from within and often could move up the ladder, I see less and less of this as jobs suddenly require 4 year degrees when the guy with 3 years of actual experience would likely do just as well if not better.
I have lived a lot of this myself. I was stubborn and despite having parents who would have paid for my education and high SAT scores I decided to attend a trade school after high school, because I knew what i wanted. I’am fairly good at moving up the ladder since then, but have been blocked and had resumes gone unread many times (mostly by large companies and government employers) because of my education rather then then focusing on my 2 decades of experience in my chosen field.
I did work for a fortune 500 company for a while, myself and one other guy were the only ones in our business unit to not have a 4 year degree, which is funny because I could have trained most any high school graduate how to do the job of most of the unit in about 8 weeks. The company actually tried that by the way but there were problems with existing employees because they felt they were entitled for more money with a degree then the guy the company trained so the company made a new pay classification for the trained staff and watched them bolt for the door to competitors after the first year to get payed the same as their previous co workers, at which point the company said this isn’t working and went back to hiring college grads and trying to under pay them.
I agree with. what you said about the financial industry sucking talent from all others, but:
“innovation should try and focus on improving society on the whole not [for] the few”
I’m not yet convinced this can be done by people themselves, and the cause seems to be the same as for your point about “brain drain.”
People will help themselves and their kin; intelligence doesn’t necessarily factor into altruism, and altruism isn’t particularly helpful if you want to make a buck.
Incentives for bad behavior weren’t created by accident, and you’ll be fought tooth and nail if you want to take them away
Your (con)man has stepped in shit again Jack
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is illegally soliciting campaign donations from foreign nationals, according to a complaint being filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.
Mr. Trump’s campaign has emailed solicitations to foreign nationals in Iceland, Scotland, Britain, and Australia requesting that they make contributions to his presidential campaign, according to a copy of the complaint being filed by the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, two campaign finance watchdog groups.
“Donald Trump should have known better,” said Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/29/trump-illegally-solicit-foreign-nationals-watchdog/
Yet Hillary has taken $3B in contributions, much of it from overseas. Hell, they gave Iridium tech to the Chinese who used it to develop the Long March missile.
We have jobs for people, but we are unwilling to pay people who take those jobs enough to support themselves. We also charge people too much for the education needed to get better paying jobs such that debt wipes out much of the advantage of them. There are things we could do to help make our current situation more fair without having to try to roll back time and hope that our stereotype of the 1950’s becomes reality. I greatly respect your opinion,Jack, and you have raised some good points. I think there is some combination of Conservative and Liberal ideas that moves us forward, but I can’t abide by the hate mongering and fear that trump is using to gain adoration.
How well can you abide the lying, dissembling, hiding of agendas with Wall Street, approving of the sale of 20% of our uranium to foreign interests, and other things harmful to US citizens which Hillary is doing.
I think I’d rather have someone who is fighting back about this, and calling it as he sees it, even when I see it a bit differently sometimes, than to have a person as dishonest as Hillary has proven herself to be in the White House. And that’s not even taking into account all the ways she sells us out to foreign interests and to Wall Street.
For anyone who thinks Hillary is a better choice, tell me why is it that you don’t mind that she refuses to release the contents of her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other large Wall Street firms to us, the ordinary voters?
And speaking of Trump seeking donations from foreign nationals, what is it when the Clintons have taken millions from foreign nationals and have parked them in a foundation 100% under their control, in order to hide their origin, and to avoid speculation about any quid pro quo that most certainly must have taken place.
Trump doesn’t need that money, even if the story is true. And he doesn’t need to do favors for others, on the down low, in order to raise money to run and to line his pockets, like the Clintons have done.
After letting my thoughts on this post ferment a bit, and feeling like I finally a grasp on Jack’s political convictions I now see he’s evolved into a Lebowski-grade Nagelbett nihilist. While I’m upset as many are at the kleptocracy that America has become, the lobbyists and pwned politicians and Wall Street as the tail which wags the dog … I can assure you that throwing a Trump sized wrench into the machinery is not going to fix it, though the fireworks will be a spectacle.
The upcoming election has shaped up to be a choice between a kick to the groin or a prison-grade rogering by the exercise yard thugs, both unattractive options of different severity. Hillary will please the neo-cons and won’t rock the Wall Street boat (while it sinks us) but Trump will be much worse: as a demagogue he’ll court the power of the richest benefactors and operate on his instincts - instincts which more often than not result in bankruptcies. His primary attraction being his xenophobic rhetoric rather than having a cohesive economic plan. Spouting slogans won’t turn the economy or moribund job situation around.
https://medium.com/@ChrisBrosnahan/im-fucking-terrified-7057458c704#.pi9sbuam8
I’m also terrified of any politician who cozies up to the police rather than acknowledging the problems with law enforcement in America. Jack, this alone should give you pause:
http://theweek.com/articles/613589/american-police-serve-donald-trumps-stormtroopers
Posting his yard-sign placard and double spaced speech here is an endorsement, even if you tepidly point out “that doesn’t mean he’s going to do what he says”. For a writer who tugs on Hemmingway’s coat tails, it’s not what I expected from you. But then again, nihilism does have a cathartic side as we burn down the institutions that otherwise seemed impregnable, but this fire will likely spread and burn yours and my house down too.
A few comments:
* Bankruptcy is a financial tool. The word “bankrupt” is thrown around by Mrs. Clinton’s press regarding Trump because the average person thinks of bankruptcy as what happens when you have too much credit card debt. What’s scarier: Mr. Trump’s bankruptcies or Mrs. Clinton’s $3 billion in dark money? What’s less ethical: Trump putting a building up then declaring bankruptcy, or Chelsea’s husband trying to use his mother-in-law to influence the situation in Europe to his financial advantage?
* This pearl-clutching about “fascism” is a fuckin’ joke. Britain takes more immigrants EVERY YEAR than they did between 1066 and 1960, and it’s “racist” to object? Britain has over 500 citizens fighting for ISIS, and it’s racist to object? Fascism in the Nazi sense will never happen again and we all know this. The liberal idea of “fascism” is somebody objecting meekly in the anonymous ballot box to another million-plus Muslims in their country next year.
* “I wouldn’t necessarily bet on it, but it’s disturbingly easy to imagine Trump co-opting some police to act as his paramilitary wing.” From your second link. Need I remind you that under Democratic leadership, the FBI and ATF burned children alive in Waco because their parents worshipped a weirdo? That Lon Horiuchi knowingly and deliberately shot a pregnant woman in the head while she was holding an infant? That Louis Katona’s wife was beaten into a miscarriage because her husband didn’t open his safe fast enough? How about the German police turning a hose on people who were protesting the rapes in Cologne, a few weeks after they had stood by and watched the rapes happen?
If the system is broken — and it is — then let’s fix it. Is Trump the right tool for the job? Maybe not. But at least its a step in the right direction. And if this is all going to end in fire — and it probably is, because you can’t have 62 people owning half the world and 40% of American men out of work without consequences — then let’s start it now, while there’s a fighting chance of decency triumphing, rather than in fifty years, where any violence and upheaval will just end in a Western caliphate.
I gave up nihilism when Green Day killed punk rock. I’d guess you were pogo-ing to Misfits and D.R.I. while I was internalizing the lyrics to Minutemen and Black Flag songs which would later define our philosophical trajectories in life. I still look to the Minutemen for inspiration and ask myself who would D. Boone vote for? This election cycle being the evil of two lessers, I know Boone would not vote for the catharsis of nihilism.
Sadly, you’re correct enough to merit - for the first time - my giving Trump the tiniest benefit of the doubt. I rail against the importation of cultures contradictory to the American way of life i.e. Sharia Law or religious convictions like Jihad or which condone murder but I don’t see a method to filter extremists other than closing our doors to the world’s oppressed - which is antithetical to American ideals. Our legacy is one of immigration, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty being synonymous with our inclusive culture, and that’s the way it should remain (with much vetting of immigrant’s backgrounds). http://www.state.gov/j/prm/ra/
I’ve not forgotten the horror of Waco, the FBI torching women & children in their church buildings. That such a travesty occurred under a Democrat president was not lost on me. It was also duly noted that nobody in the FBI lynch mob spent time in jail or otherwise ended their career. What that demonstrated was America’s two-party system had been co-opted into something with a rotten center and two slightly different faces. However - I don’t understand your analogy & how it pertains to my fears that Trump will embolden America’s police to further become armored, paramilitary stormtroopers exempt from laws and decency. There’s orders of magnitude more cops in America than the FBI, and they already have many characteristics of the Germany’s Sturmabteilung Brown Shirts.
Jack, we *are* edging closer to fascism every day, in increments that escape your notice and the police will be a large part of that transformation. If you think Trump with his take-no-prisoners business background and aggressive contempt for a free press has suddenly become a humanistic populist who will reign in the police and smash the kleptocratic tumor that has grown on our government … you’re either a chump (unlikely) or a nihilist (my guess) pogo-ing to The Misfits.
As you’re a tastemaker of some distinction (and one I like as well) who has some traction with swing voters, I really hope you’re willing to reconsider your choice before we cast our ballots.
Thanks for giving me this forum Jack.
I appreciate the depth and detail of your response.
Sad to say, I was listening to Coltrane and Wynton Marsalis back when DRI and the Misfits were filling the mosh pits.
The militarization of our police force concerns me — make no mistake about that. However, in this election we are dealing with someone who might further mobilize them for nefarious purpose and someone who has a demonstrated history of using police and law indiscriminately against “superpredators” and “gun nuts” and “religious wackos” and whomever else she does not like.
Much of this election, in fact, is the battle between what Trump might do and what Hillary has done. For every potential excess on Mr. Trump’s part, I can point you to an equal or greater problem in Mrs. Clinton’s documented (or erased) history.
Trump might feel that he has the power to abuse the law. Mrs. Clinton has demonstrated her contempt for the law beyond the shadow of even the most reasonable doubt.
Mark my words. When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the “Pride” flag or the #BlackLivesMatter banner. Those movements have been irretrievably co-opted by George Soros and his cabal. They take their marching orders from above, and we have shown that there is no affront to civil society we will not tolerate if it is put forth by a politically correct cabal. I remind you that BLM blocked access to a public airport recently. Had “cishet” white people done that, it would have ended in gunfire the way Waco did.
I’m feeling you … until your last paragraph. The last century shows no prior art supporting your contention that fascism could arrive under a rainbow flag - or any flag of political correctness. Isis throws gays off tall buildings, the Saudi’s throw them in prison. Hitler tossed gays, gypsies, brown people, communists and fans of be-bop into prison camps. Same for Stalin, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Pinochet and more. Pol Pot was so anti-intellectual that even medical doctors and grade school teachers became piles of bleached bones. All were the opposite of PC.
American black males aged 15 -19 are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white males in that age group & unarmed black men were seven times more likely to be killed by police last year than unarmed white men. Add to that the prison statistic of 380 white vs 2200 black per every 100,000 inmates. Being black in America feels like the 1950’s revisited. It’s evident to me who’s losing. I don’t begrudge the black man his anger.
You’re not the hunted Jack; you’re the top dog. As we emphatically agree on wealth redistribution, The Fleet Foxes and raking shitty car reviewers over hot coals, I’ll exit on the high note of shared values. Mazel tov!
Trump gets major props for his comments today on Saddam Hussein, channeling verbatim my anger on that criminal war and its human cost both here and in Iraq. Trump’s the first public figure to dare give credit to Hussein for holding that powder-keg, shitheap of a country together, and to point out that as bad as he was, things now are a magnitude worse there and throughout the Middle East. Hillary was happy to cozy up with the warhawks endorsing the Iraq war - while I was downtown with the protestors in Austin being called unAmerican.
Yes, I’m conflicted.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/opinions/trump-comments-on-saddam-opinion-bergen/index.html
Note that he’s being crucified for it, though 🙂
The media has pulled a neat trick with this one. If you were for the war in Iraq, you’re a piece of shit. Unless you are Hillary Clinton.
“Western Caliphate”
You are giving these guys way too much credit, Jack. What has the Muslim world proved itself capable of in the past 500 years, other than fostering the most corrupt cultures on the planet and leaving enough of their population destitute enough that young men will willingly blow themselves up because of their fanatical fantasies?
At the end of the day, Muslims are people just like everyone else. Let their countries develop and and they will secularize just like everyone else. Let some of the people emigrate to countries willing to have them, and they will integrate into society within a generation or two just like everyone else.
I understand if ancient countries with proud histories like France and England identify their cultural history with a particular racial identity and want to preserve that identity by limiting immigration and not integrating immigrants. It’s not a European obligation to take these people in. But if you don’t see the parallels to some of the fascist development in Europe in the ’30s, then you’re not looking.
Not to cheap shot your detailed and thoughtful comment, but…
“And they will integrate into society within a generation or two just like everyone else.”
Omar Mateen.
Mat say’s
” Let their countries develop and and they will secularize just like everyone else”.
Sure, because it’s worked so well in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Malaysia,etc.