No, I don’t think so. Rubio endorsed Cruz which means when those delegates are released from their pledge they will vote for who Rubio designated in his last will and testament.
I expect Kasich will do the same thing so his delegates vote for Cruz on the second vote.
Cruz then has an easy majority on the second vote and the democratic process prevails. Trump needed to somehow get Rubio to endorse him instead of Cruz and Trump’s big fat mouth (tiny hands, big mouth) made that ship sail the other way. In the end Trump was his own worst enemy. Fact.
Dummie Donnie, the reptile king with the tiny brain, must be off licking his wounds somewhere. Or maybe he’s hungry and found a fly covered mound of Trump Steaks processed by The Donald into Trump Turds to feast upon.
Hillary’s negative ratings are second only to Trump’s. Cruz is slightly ahead of Hillary in match-up pollls. Kasich cleans her clock. Cruz just needs to tap him for VP and show over for Hillarious.
Trump runs as a Republican. I speculate that his effect would have been similar on the Democratic side. He does not stick to any party’s platform. A missile not guided by ideology. Not afraid to be “politically incorrect”.
Agree that anti illegal migration is not anti migration. Countries have the right to control who enters their countries to take up permanent residence.
So Trump endorses Putox as a great leader, the most totalitarian leader in modern time, killing journalists, making fraud elections, restricting freedom of the people, labeling NGO as enemy of the state, robbing the nation of billion to him and his friends the siloviki’s, putting the mass killer Kadyrov in power funding him with billions. So the Donald is in favors of this behavior of a state leader? My god I don’t know how to think of it but then I’m a European…
So somebody I just met today, who was the first to tell me about the terror attack in Belgium, asked if I thought Donald Trump could do a better job defending us from terrorists.
I replied, “If he can’t stop the violence at his own rallies I don’t think he’s going to do better stopping it anywhere else.”
It’s the lefty socialist protesters who are in the wrong. I think the guy did the right thing by socking the idi0t. Those people can protest outside or in the park. The have no business disrupting a legal political assembly. At least this one guy served up some consequences.
Mitch McConnell called The Donald, today. I bet he didn’t call little teddy, or little marco, or little johnny. Anyway, little marco has a great future in politics, in Puerto Rico.
The reptilian brain makes really stoopid assumptions. The kingmaker in this Republican primary election is going to be…..Donald Trump. Eat your hear out lizardboy.
I wouldn’t expect you to understand my use of multi-syllable words, dannyboy. You are not very bright. You are dull going and coming. Talking or listening. Reading or writing. The lightweight lizardboy pitter patters around on little size nine feetsies and you got an intellect that impacts the earth with a force comparable to the effect of the lizard’s little padded three toed skimmers. He doesn’t leave any footprints in the sand. Little –snipper-snipper– can walk on water. You should find a short pier and try it.
Well golly gee Mr. Monfort. Sure seems you’re having a bad day or something. Did your dog run off, lock your keys in the car, or what? Sure thank you for talking to little ole’ uninteresting and now unintelligent me. If you’ll excuse me I gotta go pier hunting. If I recall there’s one in Atlantic City across from a gilded hotel/casino. Maybe I could get a flight on a showy airline and enjoy a steak chased by a nice refreshing water while comparing my hands with others. If I look hard enough I might find a very good deal, the best, and feel like a winner so much I’ll get tired of winning so much.
I wish I could say “I feel your pain”, Donnie, but the truth is that the only thing I’m feeling with regard to you is superior. Trump’s Waterloo was the great state of Ohio. Too bad, so sad. That’s just how the cookie crumbles. Trump, being Trump, was destined to somehow self-destruct. Cruz will start winning states now as Rubio and Kasich primary voters start pulling the lever for Cruz in a two-man race.
The question for you now is are you going to be a sore loser the rest of your life or grow up and get behind Ted Cruz when he wins the nomination fair and square?
I’d really like to see what kind of mandate a candidate that clearly lost the election would have if they try to Broker the convention away from Trump.
That would be suicide.
In the end it isn’t an election. Political parties are private clubs. Their club, their rules. The Donald is just one member. Not a well liked member but a divisive one with a minority behind him trying to take control of the club.
The primitive reptilian mind is not big on math, nick. Those diminutive size 9 slithering types who disregarded the adult lizards’ advice to ‘stay in school’ are particularly deficient.
I just want a Republican, not because of or despite personalities, but just because their policies are far better for progress than the policies of the democrats (the anti-progress, back to the pre-Enlightenment party)).
Which wasn’t the “wrong” call; it was Gore that got more votes. The press could have no way of knowing Republican stooges on SCOTUS would rig the election for Bush. Scalia’s dead now, so the GOP nominee’s got a big hill to climb.
It was a wrong call because the media messed up the Hispanic votes in the exit polling, and overestimated Gore’s support. They didn’t split into Cuban Hispanics and ones from Latin America. So they called it early, and who knows what effect that had on the voting. Generally, though, rather vote for a winner than a loser, and if you are actually working for a living, no point in dropping by the polls for a losing vote. Go home and hug the wife and kids instead.
meanwhile, the state was in the noise.
It really does put meaning into the “Butterfly” effect from the aptly named butterfly ballot, and also gets rid of that communist idea that societies inexorably head in one direction. I wonder if Gore would even have invaded Afghanistan to get Bin Laden.
“The press could have no way of knowing Republican stooges on SCOTUS would rig the election for Bush.” Jeepers. Read more. The Supreme Court decision on Bush v Gore was 7-2. It was the liberal Florida Supreme Court that tried to rig the election for Gore, and SCOTUS stopped them. A clear majority decided that, including liberal justices Breyer and Souter. The only part that was 5-4 was the decision not to hold yet another recount, but to keep the results of the one they did already.
It was extremely close (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore) and Bush turns out to have won under most scenarios, including the one that Gore requested. You think the press were prophets, knowing what nobody knew at the time? But no, Gore was your guy, so you _know_ that he must have really won.
This is the same kind of partisan resistance to anything but one’s own side’s position that makes climate science a political mess.
Show us a poster depicting granny’s baggage train and billy’s –snip-stained blue dress, Judith. How about a photo lineup of the ladies billy molested? The hideously ugly Rajin Cajin dragging a dollar bill through a trailer park. A silent movie of granny’s $225,000 speeches to granny’s Wall Street corporate cronies at Goldman Sachs. Video of granny lying to the families of her Benghazi victims. We can read her lips. If they are moving, she is lying.
Trump still hasn’t broken 50% in any major primary or caucus, but he has come close in Nevada, Massachusetts, Mississippi and now Florida. To say that none of the voters who were planning to vote for a non-Trump candidate, will switch to Trump now that their favourite has dropped out, is naive.
Paul Begala said Trump has to win 59% of the remaining delegates to win on the first ballot. Very difficult to do.
1. So win on the second ballot.
2. New York and California? Win both, and I would think it’s game over.
Trump won big — routing Marco Rubio in Florida and running up the score in Illinois and North Carolina, while duking it out to the end with Cruz in Missouri.
This was a defiant candidate. The violence that erupted at his rally in Chicago last weekend didn’t stop him from winning the state.
The media criticism led him only to take a whack at “disgusting reporters” and leave without taking a single question, even though his campaign had advertised his election-night event as a “press conference.”
As the volume and fear about Trump rose to a new level, once again the Republican front-runner gets to say: Scoreboard.
Trump has yet to win by a majority in any state. He’s got about a 35% base of Republican voters comprised of angry obnoxious bigots like himself. He can’t climb over that wall to save his life. In the two man races going forward The Donald is crippled by his own toxic personality. Mark my words. This is playing out exactly as I said it would. Ohio was The Donald’s Waterloo. Up until a few days ago I was unsure which way it would go but Kasich won it by a wide margin which is a harbinger of things to come. Trump can’t carry the midwest or the west. States dominated by uneducated southern bigots are just about done voting.
It’s all over but the crying now. Get those tears flowing Monfort, dab them up with a tampon from your purse, then stop being a girl and join the winning team.
Pathetic little emotionally disturbed runt. I told you to get help. Tell us how many states Kasich has won, lizardboy. Oh, Ohio. What a freaking surprise. That’s one in a row. He’s batting a thousand in the state where he is the guvner. Little dishrag is on a roll. He should win KY, MICH ILL, and ..oh freaking waitt! He lost already! Maybe he will win FLA. No, that went to Trump, except one freaking county, which did not go to Kasich. Maybe johnny buckeye will win NY, or NJ, or PA. Or VA or WVa. Oh, wait! He won’t win doodely –snipping– squat after tonight. He will just take votes from teddy. That’s all I have for you. You are a sick little puppy.
I don’t know if I’d get carried away in an orgy of schadenfreude just yet.
Clinton is an extremely vulnerable candidate:
1) Clinton is a neocon par excellence, and the American people have had just about all of these duplicitous, feckless bumblers that they can stand.
The neocon true believers have already signaled their support for Clinton in a Clinton v. Trump general election.
If Trump heeds the advice Scott McConnell gives him in this letter he wrote Trump, and takes a more realistic tac towards foreign policy, Trump will wipe the floor with Clinton on this issue:
One guy who advises Marco on foreign policy…said he’d prefer mass murderer Joseph Stalin to you.
This attitude speaks volumes about GOP neoconservatives: most don’t think the Iraq War was a symptom of failure in moral and strategic judgment; most don’t know anyone who served in a combat unit, or anyone whose children who face repeated deployments. Most of them still hope to start another war in the Middle East, with Iran. Or escalate in Ukraine, in order to “bleed” Russia.
But there are many rooms in the GOP establishment, and the party includes millions who realize something’s gone very wrong….
[M]ost international relations experts are not neoconservatives, and none of the best ones are. They realize America is protected by two large oceans, can’t be expected to solve every problem in the world, and shouldn’t bankrupt itself by trying. Many of them are not liberals of any sort; they are instead the sort of men and women who might in the past have worked for Ike, or Nixon, or Reagan. For lack of a better word, they are realists….
You should always keep in mind that you have a strong mandate to break from the neocons who wrecked George W. Bush’s administration and much of the Middle East. In that sense the hostile letter organized by Eliot Cohen is a blessing in disguise—it means that as president you will have to approach foreign affairs with a clean slate, and no one will expect you to reach out to or “mend fences” with the neocons who have entrenched themselves in the main conservative think-tanks.
Most of these warmongers would rather serve in a Hillary Clinton administration.
2) Clinton is a neoliberal par excellence, and again the American people have had just about all of these traitorous anti-Americans that they can stomach.
The paid liars and bumsuckers for the lords of capital — like Clinton — have struggled long and hard to conflate racism with naitonalism and working-class advocacy.
And granted, racism has always been a feature of populism in the United States, and has invariably been its undoing, its “fatal flaw” one might say. As Lawrence Goodwyn writes in The Populist Moment:
The old Jacksonian resonances of Whig-Democratic conflict containing as they did older rhythms of the Jeffersonian-Federalist struggle, were all but obliterated by the massive realignment of party constituencies that had accompaned the [Civil] war and its aftermath…
Sectional, religious, and racial loyalties and prejudices were used to organize the nation’s two major parties into vast coalitions that ignored the economic interests of millions….
It was this corporate state that the People’s Party tried to bring under control….
The meaning of the agrarian revolt was its cultural assertion as a people’s movment of mass democratic aspiration….
The men and women of the Omaha convention were asking their new party to overcome deeply ingrained sectional, religious, and racial loyalties in the name of their vision of reform. Conceivably, the biggest obstacle facing the People’s Party might be the culture of America itself….
They could, in Polk’s words, “link their hands and hearts together and march to the ballot box and take possession of the government and run it in the interest of the people.”
But, as Goodwyn goes on to explain, it wasn’t to be:
Indeed, throughout recorded history, the presence in all human societies of jerry-built modes of…racial and religious memories have served to help protect traditional elites by strewing complicated psychological and emotional roadblocks [to reform]….
Throughout human history the creation of a new political culture has always involved far more than the propagation of a platform or the existence of “hard times,” and the task facing Alliance organizers in nineteenth century America was truly a momentous one….
We can be certain of one influence everywhere, the power of the received culture was everywhere….
Black community leaders needed to find ways to develop safeguards both for themselves and for blacks generally.
These leaders knew that no Southern farmer needed to escape from the crop lien more than the black tenant, but they also knew that the economic appeal of the Alliance raised a number of other possibilities, few of them good….
The staunchly Bourbon Montgomery Advertiser, for example, became offended by signs of fraternization between the black and white Alliances and reminded the members of both that “the white people don’t want any more Negro influence in their affairs than they have already had, and they won’t have it.”
Black Alliance organizers not only had to keep an eye out for white Bourbons; they also had to cope with Negro Republicans. The reform movement threatened the power bases of both groups.
In Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas, entrenched black Republican leaders systematically undercut the efforts of organizers for the Negro Alliance, and, understandably, Negro Republicans had to ponder the long-range gamble implicit in public identification with the agrarian cause….
Many black Republicans decided — correctly, as it turned out — that the People’s Party was going to lose its battle with the part of white supremacy. Accordingly, they held aloof. The agrarian revolt thus divided…blacks according to decisions based on cold and necessary calcualtions of political and physical survival.
If Trump wants to prevail over Clinton, then he must disentangle the issue of race from the interests of the nation and the economic interests of working-class and middle-class people.
Is Trump up to the chore? Certainly the task is no less formidable now than it was back in the 1890s. And it goes without saying that, now as then, he will be fought tooth and nail by establishment elites who will struggle long and hard to conflate nationalism and economic issues with racism.
A very good article that speaks to some of these issues is this one from The Atlantic.
The Atlantic, being the establishment rag it is, of course loads its article up with distortions, exaggerations and half-truths, but it nevertheless addresses some of the underlying economic issues:
“Trump Wants to Make Government Huge Again: The Republican front-runner is tapping the resentments of white working-class voters—and promising to use federal power to address them.
The Atlantic article ignores the savings. Lighter load on schools, hospitals, and welfare for illegal immigrants. Elimination of some government agencies and programs. Revamped tax policy to make the US attractive to business and the rich, who we after all need.
The Devil’s in the details, Glann, and the article mentioned only the cherries that made the sort of pie it likes.
You seem to be assuming Trump will be the nominee.
I almost wrote that Trump would be a win-win-win for Democrats.
Democrats win if he is nominated and loses, not nominated and somebody else loses, or he is elected.
First, he will probably turn out to be liberal and will do deals with the Democrats. In addition, he will probably mess up enough that even the Republicans will want to impeach him. At any rate by the time it is all over and assuming the country is still intact, there may be nothing left of the Republican Party.
You are not very bright, jimmy cee. The Donald will make accommodations with the pezzonovante and most Repubs will jump on the Trump Express, along with the independents and more evolved dems. The Donald will pack em in.
Watch for the world record campaign rally of 100,000+ fired up folks at Ann Arbor Stadium.
The little loud granny hilly-billy is not inspiring the brainless demobots. When the old commie is out of the picture, whatever enthusiasm there is for the demodrone crowd is gone. And granny got a lot of baggage. Trump won’t be as timid and softy-squishy as the decrepit olde Moscow bernie.
Then you got the IGs of the State Dept and intel community, the FBI, and a couple of honest career prosecutors at DOJ, who have already got the prima facie on ole granny’s thousands of national security violations and they are building a case on the la cosa nostra clintonian foundation slush fund payola scandal. Trump will tower over, outwork, outspend, run over and dump the frump.
No, I am not “assuming Trump will be the nominee.”
But if Trump isn’t the nominee, then what we will witness in the general election is a “battle” between two candidates pre-selected by the elite establishment.
Heads, the establishment elite wins. Tails, the establishment elite wins.
At around 12 AM, the NYTimes shows Trump leading Cruze by a very thin margin (0.3%). If I interpret their model correctly, Trump should barely edge Cruze.
It was never close. These are the same percentages as those reported when only 2% of the returns were in a few hours ago when the press called it for Kasich.
Not happening. Trump never stood a chance in a two man race. The combined totals of Kasich, Cruz, and Rubio put his dick in the dirt EVERY SINGLE TIME even in the deep south where his uneducated redneck base is in the majority.
I don’t think Cruz goes over well in places like New York, New Jersey, California and probably Pennsylvania. It is uphill for him, especially if Kasich stays in too. Kasich also makes it more difficult for Trump to get to 1237, and is showing no signs of quitting yet. The best anti-Trump bet is for Kasich to stay in through the convention, then it is anyone’s depending on what new rules the Party comes up with there.
In a two man race in California it’s no contest win for Cruz. Most recent polls had Trump with his usual 33% plurality and Cruz trailing up by 8 at 25%. Needless to say in a two man race one of them goes over 50%. Who do you think gets the lion’s share of Rubio and Kasich’s 30%?
The Donald lost California the moment Rubio pulled out of the race and endorsed Cruz. Lot of legal hispanic voters in California too. You know, the people who Trump called racists and criminals. Probably safe to say they’ll vote for the hispanic candidate. Cruz will pile up winner take all states like nobody’s business going forward. He might even squeek out a majority going into the convention but he wins if it’s brokered. Donald’s chances of a majority going into the convention evaporated when Kasich won Ohio.
” Lot of legal hispanic voters in California too.”
Trump has been doing pretty good playing legal v illegal immigrant. If he breaks out a plan to simplify becoming legal at low cost without it being equated with amnesty, he could surprise folks.
But on issue after issue, Trump vows to use government as a tool to improve the lot of his supporters, and address their anxieties. He’d interfere in free markets, imposing tariffs to punish companies that move factories offshore, and countries with abusive trade practices. He’s pledged to preserve Social Security….
There’s a common theme dividing the government initiatives Trump supports from the ones he opposes. He’s speaking to his core supporters: working-class whites who identify not by ethnicity, but simply as American. And he’s promising to defend their interests. He’ll protect their jobs from spotted owls and immigrants and offshoring; he’ll keep them safe by keeping terrorists abroad, and troops at home; he’ll buffer them against shifting economic fortunes with robust social-insurance programs.
It seems unlikely that Trump has read the political-science tract, Us Against Them: The Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion, but his campaign sometimes seems devoted to proving its authors correct. They used extensive polling data to argue that white, ethnocentric voters vigorously oppose means-tested programs they believe directly transfer wealth to racial minorities—food stamps, welfare, TANF. On the other hand, those same voters are also more likely to support universal social-insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare….
These are Trump’s voters…in search of a leader who would put the interests of the white working classes first….
For decades, both their legitimate grievances and their racial resentments found outlet in the Republican program of smaller government. But it’s always been, at best, an alliance of convenience, and not just on obvious flashpoints like immigration. Libertarians and business conservatives share little of their affection for robust social-insurance programs, and none of their hostility to free trade.
Now, Trump promises to unite the two halves of their agenda—attacking government programs that threaten the interests of the white working class, as conservative Republicans have long promised, but also vigorously expanding those that favor them, as liberal Democrats have advocated. Even in the remarkably crowded Republican field that began this race, there was no candidate with a program remotely like his. His rivals kept trying to stop him by proving that he’s not a true conservative, just a big-government liberal in disguise. Their attacks, though, only strengthened Trump’s hand: His supporters didn’t want a true conservative—they wanted a champion. And they appear delighted that someone is promising to use government to address their resentments, and serve their interests….
And now? Along comes Trump, promising to make America great again by having government do big things again. By putting it to work in the defense of the white working class. He’s defying party orthodoxy. He’s not a true conservative. And here’s the rub. It’s possible that this is what a plurality of Republican primary voters wanted all along.
Of course The Atlantic, being the establishment rag it is, is promoting the BIG LIE. And the BIG LIE is that the platform Trump has staked out will serve only white working- and middle-class folks. It will, of course, serve the interests of all working- and middle-class folks.
The establishment elites — white, brown and black — will try to make the election all about identity politics (race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc) and not about the economic interests of working- and middle-class whites , browns and blacks.
Can Trump make the election about pocketbook issues and not identity politics? Does he even want to make the election about pocketbook issues and not identy politics?
If so, he’s certainly got his work cut out for him.
As W.E.B. Du Bois famously said, “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour-line.” That statement is just as true today as it was in 1900 when Du Bois uttered it.
I tend to agree with David Plouffe of Uber fame, who argues that Trump has brought a world of uncertainty and unpredictability to the process:
Clinton has an insurmountable lead. Bernie Sanders has to win the rest of the contests 70% to 30%, and that’s just not going to happen, so she’s going to be the nominee….
My suspicion is that if Donald Trump is the nominee, he is going to abandon some of his positions and try to move to the center…
I think Hillary Clinton should beat Trump by a pretty significant margin, but he’s a wild card. He’s the one person even in the world of big data…he supsets the entire apple cart.
We’ve never seen anything like this. The old rules do not apply.
I think we’re in the middle of this, so we don’t have a full appreciation for how he has disrupted politics….
The question is, “Has the game changed, or has it only changed for Donald Trump?” Because it may be he is the only one who could pull off a campaign like this.
I forgot to say my previous post was about Missouri. I’m not ready to make a prediction: Trump will beat Cruz by from 50 to 150 votes. This is fun. If I’m wrong, so what !
Nate Silver blew it on North Carolina. Had Trump winning by 10%. Actual win was 4%. Delegates split almost evenly between Trump and Cruz. In a two man race Cruz would have easily won. Even the south is no longer safe for the Donald.
Silver was off base in Illinois too but got the winner-take-all victor correct. Illinois Nazis turned out in bigger numbers than Nate expected and voted, naturally, for Trump.
Nate Silver blew it on North Carolina. Had Trump winning by 10%. Actual win was 4%. Delegates split almost evenly between Trump and Cruz. In a two man race Cruz would have easily won. Even the south is no longer safe for the Donald.
Silver was off base in Illinois too but got the winner-take-all victor correct. Illinois Nazzis turned out in bigger numbers than Nate expected and voted, naturally, for Trump.
Missouri is a statistical dead heat. It’s not winner take all unless the winner has 50% of the vote and it’s 40.8% Trump 40.7% Cruz with 99% reporting. Either way it’s a split on the delegates and depending on who won what individual districts it could be close to an even split but it looks like Trump is ahead in district count. Cruz carried the two largest districts with St. Louis and St. Paul i.e. where the bucktoothed low information rednecks don’t live.
The highest vote count gets 12 delegates then the remaining 40 are split up by who won in what district.
There was a lot of anger and frustration in the public over the failure of either party to represent the public interest in the past. I share that concern. I was also concerned that we might elect some tyrant on the right or left. Tonight I am feeling a glimmer of hope for at least a partial return to constitutional limits on government and integrity in government science.
Thank you, Peter. The paper is the conclusion to two paper published in Nature about forty years ago – Nature240, 99-101 (1972); ibid. 277, 615 – 620 (1979) – and may be transferred to the Physical Science section for review since the dispute centers in nuclear and solar physics, rather than climatology.
May our next President adopt the recommendation in the conclusion: “Forgive those who deceived us for the past sixty-nine years for being human and move as quickly as possible to restore integrity to government science and constitutional limits on governments.”
I hate to admit it, but I’m not qualified to evaluate the physics. I can proof read, though. “Recognizance” is not a word–I think you mean “recognition.”
Rubio was one of these pathetic little people cut from the same cloth as notorious armchair warriors like Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Hillary Clinton. He believes in sending other people’s kids off to die so that the lords of capital can make big bucks off of war profiteering.
You should talk to vets who have met Bush. Most of the military think very highly of him.
I have three family members who have met him. Nephew when he graduated from West Point, brother when he was DA for District of South Caroline and niece’s husband who worked with families at Walter Reed. The latter spent nearly an hour with the President, when Bush took him aside to ask about his job and the families he worked with. The man sincerely cared about the men and women he knew his orders put in harm’s way, and about their families.
Glenn, timg56 is partially right about the military thinking highly of Bush. Soldiers who aren’t dead because of Bush think highly of him being out of office.
Why don’t people understand that the real contest is between the candidates favoured through social media – and those favoured by the old fashioned (once) “Mainstream Media”.
What is happening is that some candidates are focussing on getting journalists to support them – which used to be the way that elections were won as the “mainstream” media were the kingmakers, but one candidate is focussing on getting people to vote for them, which is how you win campaigns in the age of social media.
So, some candidates are focussing on the issues that journalists just love to write about – and they get lots of supportive write-ups and high-brow debate by journalists …. and another is focussing on the issues that people talk about but which journalists don’t want to discuss …. but they are being forced to discuss because the people have a candidate who’s realised the press are no longer the king-makers.
Candidates asking people to vote for them, rather than asking the mainstream media and others to tell the people who to vote for.
If this continues, pretty soon the unwashed masses might start thinking for themselves! Might be a good time to invest in pitchforks and torches. Best keep a good strong hempen noose or two around, just in case.
I like the idea, but I’m not so sure it’s as neat as you make it out to be. Trump isn’t winning support because he’s asking people for it through social media, he’s getting it because the grass roots is so infuriated with the candidates the Republican establishment has rammed down their throats the last four election cycles (arguably excepting Bush ’04) that they have decided to go rogue, and Trump was in the right place at the right time to be the symbolic middle finger the grass roots were looking for. Perhaps you’re talking about Cruz, who the establishment also hates? (I predict the grass roots will be quite content for that reason with Cruz as their second choice, once it becomes clear that Trump can’t win a simple majority, in the primary, and even moreso in the general election.
The Democrats and Republicans will select their candidate which will relate to the voting we are currently seeing, assuming there is a clear cut winner. If not, the party meeting may decide to select their own candidate (more likely in the case of the Republicans)
But how is the President then chosen? There isn’t a direct general election where each voter in the country will make their choice from the candidates on offer is there?
Yes, there will be a general election in November. I will point out that our national nightmare would not be happening if you folks had just put down the rebellion.
I’m joking, I suppose. Life goes on, whether you wish it or not. I think so, anyway! Just for fun, 3 candidates – 40%, 30%, 30%. Who should win? Change the percentaged, try again. Any difference?
Well “you folks” in the Democratic establishment managed to “put down the rebellion” on your side of the aisle. The Sanders insurgency has all but been quelled.
But on the Republican side of the aisle, the rebellion rages on.
I know that makes “you folks” in the Democratic establishment extremely unhappy. After all, the Democratic establishment did its job, so why can’t the Republican establishment do its job as well?
But it looks like “you folks” will just have to live with some uncertainty and a lack of total control for a little while longer, untill we see if the unholy alliance between the Democratic and Republican establishment elites can put down the insurgency in the Republican Party.
Jim2 has it right about Electoral College. Theprocess and its history is fascinating reading back to Washington, Adams and Jefferson. Every few years there have been calls for doing away with the Electoral College but the founders have crafted so many hurdles I don’t think it will ever happen.
There have been a few elections where the top vote getter has lost the election, the most recent being Gore.
Just as an aside, I just watched an interview with a member of the Republican National Committee who, in essence, said the primaries don’t mean anything if a candidate doesn’t get majority going into Convention. He was incredibly arrogant and said over the decades the public has been misled by the media to think the primaries made the decision but in reality the Committee has been the one to make the choice. This goes back to how the actual process worked in smoke filled rooms. In other words, we are all equal but some are more equal than others.
Technically he is correct but what a dumb thing to say. If Trump is close to majority going into Convention then they go to another. there will be a revolt and Republicans will stay home giving election to Dems.
Tony, the Founders of the US made sure we don’t have a pure democracy. We are a Republic, but more to the point, we don’t directly elect the President. Similar to how we vote on the nominees, but they are actually chosen at a convention, the Electoral College selects the President. Nevertheless, the process usually results in the person selected by the voters being made President.
max10k: it’s a republic, not a democracy. That’s why states get two extra delegates, and at least one representative, in the electoral college.
I doubt our founders could ever have imagined such a massive centralization of power and money in the largest monopoly in the world: the US Federal Government.
The Electoral College is the worst idea in history. Unless you live in a swing state, your presidential vote counts for nothing. They should do it by popular vote. Then every vote counts equally.
Democrats would love a Democracy, because then they could take their big urban welfare cities, pump more welfare and divisiveness, and rule the nation for centuries. I’ll stick with Republic. Thanks.
Trump only has 46% of the delegates so far. At that rate he would have only 800 or so going into the convention. June seems really far off. This is a good site for a visual.
As a foreigner, I never cease to be amazed by the proponents of the bastion of equality referring to the Latino vote. Or the fundamentalist Christian vote . . . You get my drift.
Whatever happened to the American vote? Not PC enough, I guess.
Mike, as they say, it is what it is. Blacks vote overwhelmingly for Dimowits. Hispanics vote ~ 60% for Dimowits. Whites are a bit more diverse, voting-wise. This is one reason it is imperative to control immigration unless we want 100 years of socialist rule. Those are the dominant demographic groups.
Jim2,
Wow:”This is one reason it is imperative to control immigration unless we want 100 years of socialist rule.”
Huh? As an alternative, the Republican side of the equation could figure out how to go about addressing issues important to a diverse set of racial/ethnic/religious folks.
Didn’t realize immigration laws needed to be framed to avoid socialists.
Wonder what that questionnaire would look like?
Yes Mike, we have gradually fallen into not only identity politics but grievance politics. Everyone is a victim. The system is at fault for their predicament not themselves. The politicians have learned the codewords to be used in the appropriate venue. The melting pot has become a lazy Susan. Sad , really. If the present attitude had been prevalent 400 years ago, we would be a country with hundreds of tribes having migrated from all over the globe with no shared values or common language. And we would have a Third World economy.
This is interesting here. You can play with assumptions with the sliders and work out various scenarios. To me it looks like only Trump has the possibility of getting enough delegates to win on the first ballot. There are some scenarios where Cruz could but it would require unrealistic percentages of votes in my view.
Has anyone asked Ted Cruz about being a Dominionist? If he somehow secures the nomination, would he deny his Dominionism during the general election (…three times before the cock crows…) or attack questioners as setting up a religious test for office?
Of course, I can never tell exactly whether Cruz is really that crazy or just someone wanting power using religion to get votes. I am also not sure which would be worse but neither one would be good for the country.
I really want to expand on this. This just makes so much sense.
If there is a brokered convention, then there is no guarantee that either Trump or Cruz get the nomination. Mostly likely the ticket would be Kasich/Rubio because both Trump and Cruz are outsiders despised by the establishment.
So Rafael Cruz’s best bet is to make a deal with Trump in return for a Vice Presidential nomination.
After the election, I could see a host of problems plaguing Trump, including all of his past business deals and who knows what else. It is not hard to imagine Cruz convening with the Senate Republicans to have Trump impeached and removed from office.
“The goal for most of us at this point is to keep delegates away from Trump, and it really doesn’t matter who wins them,” said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP operative who just signed on as an adviser to Kasich’s campaign as it approaches a contested convention. “There are delegates who will be bound to Trump on the first ballot or the first two ballots who aren’t going to be for Trump once they’re free. If you get to a third ballot, the world changes.”
Trump just said there could be riots if he does’t get the nomination if he is leading into the convention.
Bad strategy. There will be millions of very, very upset people, even if they were not supporting Trump. But I don’t think there will be rioting. The Republicans will stay home and not vote. That will give the election to Hillary. Poof.
This vote for Trump is as much a repudiation of the Republican establishment as anything. These geniuses gave us Sarah Palin. Need I say more. Millions of Republicans stayed home when Mitt ran. The establishment gave us Bob Dole. Tea Partiers were elected and nothing changed.
There are all sorts of legislation where there is general agreement from both parties and nothing is done.
Other than the war, LBJ knew how to work the system. He fought a cabal of 22 Southern Segregationist Democrats to get much of his agenda through. This was when the Senate rules required 2/3 vote for cloture shutting down a filibuster. That meant the Democratic anti civil rights obstructionists needed only 12 more votes to keep the filibuster going.
Today to invoke cloture they only need 60 votes. Yet nothing happens on legislation with a consensus. Could Trump go over the heads of the Senators to the voters like Reagan did on occasion? Maybe. Or he could lock them in the White House Oval Office and tell them they cannot go to the restroom until an agreement is made. How many of those old farts have enlarged prostates? That might do the trick.
This sort of attitude is why bunches of US citizens are pissed. From the article:
…
Political parties, not voters, choose their presidential nominees, a Republican convention rules member told CNBC, a day after GOP front-runner Donald Trump rolled up more big primary victories.
“The media has created the perception that the voters choose the nomination. That’s the conflict here,” Curly Haugland, an unbound GOP delegate from North Dakota, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. He even questioned why primaries and caucuses are held.
I saw the interview and his arrogance was worse live than the article. He could have finessed the language to at least made it appear voters were important. He didn’t even try that. Basically it was ” To hell with voters, we decide.” Total jerk.
That the people should have any say-so in the governing of their country is anathema to the establishment elites on both sides of the aisle.
William I. Robinson has called it “polyarchy,” whereby the nomination process is controlled such that the people only get to choose between two candidates that are pre-selected by the ruling elites.
Either candidate, Republican or Democratic, is suitable to the entrenched ruling elites, and there is no substantive difference between the candidates. So the election is little more than a spectacle — entertainment for the masses.
A contest between Clinton and Kasich (or Bush or Rubio), for instance, would be like professional wrestling: great entertainment, but don’t mistake it for a true contest.
Curly Who? They must have interviewed hundreds of low level R functionaries, before they found that dumb –snipping– clown. The ‘powers that be’ have already come to the realization that if they maneuver Trump out of the nomination, the grand old party is over.
Prime ministers tend to make cabinet decisions. If they made a big decision without conferring with their colleagues there would be a huge fuss-they have to take their colleagues and Parliament with decisions.
It sounds as if the President has a lot more authority to act off his own bat and take decisions that suit him or her.
I’m still not sure that I understand how the President is chosen-on the surface it doesn’t seem very democratic or am I misunderstanding something?
Your parliamentary arrangement has better protection against rogue executive power than does ours, Tony, despite plenty of hard-learned lessons and perspicacious phrasing about it in our Constitution.
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Tony. Currently, the Senate is split fairly evenly between Dimowits and Redimowits. There would have to be a solid majority of Redimowits to override a Presidential executive order or to override a Presidential veto of a bill. This even split is why Obama can issue edicts right now. A Redimowit President can nullify all Obama’s executive orders if the Redimowit partly elites can wise up and let Trump or Cruz get nominated. Otherwise, a lot of voters will stay home, write in Trump or Cruz, or out and out vote for Hillary just to take power from the Redimowit elites.
The administrative overreach that your system seems primitive to resist is that stemming from Brussels. A referendum? How faithful of you.
=================
A parliamentary system without constitutional checks is (theoretically) a greater threat to individual liberty than the American division of powers strategy. Parliamentary systems also typically can get things done faster.
The American system was supposed to prevent both the centralization of power and the precipitous passage of legislation. Nevertheless, the Imperial Presidency has been embraced several times in American history, often with war as the justification. Most recently the Republicans argued that Bush the Lesser had vast unilateral powers because something something freedom. Now Hillary has a distinct chance to wield the powers Republicans have argued for. Hoist, petard, etc.
Once in office, Obama saw little reason to disagree. It’s disappointing that he actually taught constitutional law but ignores the fact that the enumerated Presidential powers are rather limited.
Every 10 years we have a census to determine among other things how many people reside in each state. Based on the Supreme Court 1 man 1 vote ruling, each state is apportioned their number of members in the House of Representatives based on their share of the total population. There are 435 members in the House of Representatives. Over the last 50 years the population and thus the number of Representatives have been shifting from some states to others, mostly from North to South and West. There are 100 Senators in the Senate, 2 from each state.
The Electoral College has 538 members with 2 from each state plus their proportionate share of the House of Representatives plus 3 from Wash DC. To win the Presidency, a candidate must get to 270 votes from the Electoral College.
Each state has its own rules on how those in the Electoral College should vote. But in all the States except for Nebraska and Maine it is winner takes all. So if a state has 10 members in the House of Representatives and added to their 2 Senators they have 12 members in the Electoral College and those members are bound (legal or tradition) to vote for the winner of the popular vote for President in their respective state. There may have been some renegade College members who did otherwise in history but I can’t remember off the top of my head.
Nebraska and Maine have systems based on winning the Congressional Districts.
This is a very convoluted method of selecting our President, but there is some democracy at work in all those machinations.
Many thanks for that. So its a population thing primarily, but ultimately, the electoral college will take note of what candidate in their state the people backed.
Yip. That’s why there was such a knock down drag out fight over Florida in 2000. The decider. I’m always so amused to recollect that Tennessee failed to go to Gore that year, which could also have decided.
========================
The system allows situations where the clear winner in the Electoral College ends up being the loser in the popular vote. A candidate could win many little states by just a small amount building up many Electoral Votes but then losing huge in a large state like California. Going back in history it is interesting to compare the popular vote totals against the Electoral Vote totals. I can think of a few elections where the loser only won a very few states but the overall vote total were not all that big.
I didnt check the laws governing the Electoral College members as to how much discretion they really have. Based on recent history their actions certainly reflect what their state did. But I assume each state has slightly different wording guiding how the Electors vote.
It’s not really very complicated, most of the time, because most of the time mass-hysteria causes the two competing tribes to coalesce around their respective representatives. There’s a bit of a beauty pageant, where the prospective nominees strut around in front of the cameras and spout their preferred sound-bites. The masses look them over and discuss, but, for the most part, they think what they are told to think by a relatively small number of people whose job it is to do the thinking for the parties. Usually, the first five or ten primaries are sufficient to show everyone who the mass-hysteria has settled on, and everyone lines up behind their respective tribe’s candidate.
Historically, the general election is decided by which of the two candidates is most appealing to the 8% or so of “swing voters.”
I agree Trump will be the GOP nominee. You and I may not share political views, but the data is clear on Trump trending to win. I hate it, but I am confident and happy Hillary will crush Trump in the end–for around half the race it will be close between Trump and Hillary.
I think the Republicans should use Trump and stop fighting him. He won. While the rules say a plurality is not enough his supporters think it is. He’s in the best position to steal votes from Clinton.
You may be a little smarter and emotionally stable than the average reptilian around here, yacob. I am going to help you.
You are virtually almost absolutely correct that Trump will be the nominee. According to my infallible calculations, Trump will win no fewer than 1160 delegates. If he has any doubt in his shrewd brain that he will go into the convention not having a lock on the nomination by the second ballot, he will call up little marco and offer to rescue him from obscurity by selecting him as V.P. Or he will call up teddy, or johnny buckeye, or have all three on a conference call and let them fight it out. Donald could even hint that he doesn’t want to spend 8 years in the WH and those little hungry chihuahuas fight over the bone. Nomination locked up. Game over.
That would set up a general election with the olde short-squat dumpy-frumpy low-energy lying hollering granny fighting, instead of an olde soft commie, a charismatic populist well-funded junkyard dog pushing all the right buttons, who has survived and thrived on vicious attacks from all sides. Enthusiasm for the junkyard dog will have only become more massive and intense, but the excitement in the demobot primary would have perished with the utopian dreams of the olde commie leaving only disappointment, bitterness and resentment for the corporate crony cankles lying possibly indicted, but definitely guilty granny.
Your confidence in hilly-billy is way misplaced, yacob.
When the Supreme Leader Of Iran hangs up the phone after that midnight phone call from the POTUS
I want him to turn to his aides and say “that guy’s crazy”
just for a change
Being lead by Social Justice Warriors in a tough world is getting scary
But don’t worry, I live in a Democrat controlled state
my vote actually does not count
Just like the Sanders votes
and I’m guessing the Trump votes in the end
You can be sure those in the Kremlin thought that about Reagan more than a few times. The Star Wars initiative had them shaken to the core. They spent themselves into oblivion on Defense, in no small way due to Reagan beefing up our defense. I read they were spending 17% of GDP on Defense. We would have to quintuple our Defense Budget to do that.
That is one of the things I love about America, a movie star can become president. And an Austrian steroid shooting BAD actor movie star can become state governor. And perhaps a self made billionaire entrepeneur tv-show host…
Showmanship counts in the USA and I like that.
In my country our saying “behave normally, then you are already being silly enough” (it sounds catchier in Dutch :-) is suprisingly accurate. Showmanship in politics and more in general showing off your success, money or fame is frowned upon here. I don’t think a guy like Reagan or Arnie would be succesfull in politics here. Shame imo.
And by the way, if you think American politicians ignore their voters, then get a load of this. Here there will be a national referendum on 6 April asking “yes” or “no” to the EU association agreement with Ukraine. But the Dutch political establishment has already made very clear that they will ignore the result….if the result is “no”.
Today I received in the mail the voting ballot, just like all the millions of other eligible Dutch voters. Thousands of voting offices are being set up, millions of euros spent.
Polls show that “no” is in the lead.
So this whole freaking circus is a show.
Showmanship, just of a different kind.
Yeah, I remember that. Lots of pants had to be changed that day in the USSR ….er, former USSR. Funny, I don’t hear from them much anymore. They do have to write more often.
It would have been much cheaper and safer to have gone the unilateral disarmament route to peace with the Soviet Empire. Ain’t that what your type wanted, jimmy commie? If we had done that we wouldn’t be bothered with all the expense and controversy of this election foolishness.
You’re right, of course. The numbskulls here can’t do more than one dimensional thinking. They see X then Y and always assume X caused Y if they like X and like Y. If they see X then Y but don’t like Y then it is Bill Clinton’s fault.
Good one. Of course I accuse the warmists of the same kind of inductive reasoning all the time. Oh, gee, it is warming, so it must be CO2. Not much critical thinking skills or complex reasoning going on there.
You really need to read kim more carefully. Natural variability is not capable of warming the earth. The earth is, naturally, cooling toward CNGC (catastrophic natural global cooling). ACO2 is its salvation. It will save us from the glaciers, the real death trains, which are surely coming. Lol.
Nationalism is another place where leftist intellectuals, sealed off in their Ivory Tower, suffer an almost complete departure from factual reality.
“Marx may have said that the proletarian has no country,” Hannah Arendt writes in Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, but “it is well known that the proletarians have never shared this point of view.”
This striking departure from reality can be clearly seen in an article by Robert Mackey which The Intercept published a few days ago.
The article, titled “Trump Concerned His Rallies Are Not Violent Enough,” goes through a short list of political protest in the United States: the Civil Rights protests of the 60s, the anti-war protests of the 60s and 70s, and the protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. In each case, Mackey notes how the protests were violently put down by the state’s instruments of violence — the police and mlitary.
But Mackey concludes his article with an entirely differnt type of incident, which to me indicates he has drank the Marxist Kool Aid when it comes to the working class. Ironically, he ends his article by condemning the very social class which his Ivory Tower collegues so often claim to represent:
Given Trump’s obvious fondness for the presidency of Richard Nixon, though…, my own guess is that he might be harking back to a moment in early 1970, when dozens of antiwar protesters in Trump’s own city did indeed require stretchers, after being attacked and beaten by construction workers loyal to Nixon.
The incident, which became known as “the hard-hat riot,” took place in May 1970, when a student demonstration against the killing of four protesters at Kent State University in Ohio by members of the National Guard was broken up with extreme violence by union members from nearby construction sites.
Helmeted construction workers broke up a student antiwar demonstration in Wall Street yesterday, chasing youths through the canyons of the financial district in a wild noontime melee that left about 70 persons injured.
The workers then stormed City Hall, cowing policemen and forcing officials to raise the American flag to full staff from half staff, where it had been placed in mourning for the four students killed at Kent State University on Monday.
At nearby Pace College a group of construction workers who said they had been pelted with missiles by students from the roof, twice invaded a building, smashing windows with clubs and crowbars and beating up students.
As Arendt goes on to explain, “the lower social classes,” contrary to whatever romantic notions of the working class Marxists may harbor, “are especially susceptible to nationalism, chauvinism, and imperialistic policies.”
“The fact that the army gives the lower social classes certain opportunities for education and vocational training naturally also plays a role here.”
What Arendt wrote back in 1969 appears to be even truer today than it was then:
Jorge Mariscal…has researched Latinos in the military and says that there are three basic reasons Latinos join– the lack of opportunities to pursue other careers since education is being priced out for many working class people, a tradition of military service in many families, and the appealing masculinity attached to serving.
He points out that the highest percentage of Latinos is in the Marine Corps, which is often considered “the baddest gang in the world.”
Hispanics now get lumped in with whites, but the graph below gives an idea of the current makeup of the military, and it does not appear that racial or ethnic minorities (Hispanics) are under-represented.
For the fact is that Marxism lost its main bet at the outset. It wagered its entire claim to historical inevitablility on the idea that humanity would divide along the lines of class, not nationality. In this it was wrong….
Imagine if Trump is successful, and the end result of his efforts is a realignment so drastic that the Republican Party emerges as the champion of the economic interests of the American working and middle classes, and the Democratic Party emerges as the champion of the economic interests of the global gazillionaires, as well as the very narrow group-interests of the identity politicians.
The future with the Dimowits:
Venezuela is shutting down for a week as the government struggles with a deepening electricity crisis.
President Nicolas Maduro gave everyone an extra three days off work next week, extending the two-day Easter holiday, according to a statement in the Official Gazette published late Tuesday. Maduro had originally said over the weekend that the extended holiday would only apply to state employees.
… http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/venezuela-to-shut-down-for-a-week-as-electricity-crisis-mounts
Hey Dummie Donnie… Trump dropped from 104% of target to 96% of target yesterday. I told you so. Last night only looked like a win for Trump for people who don’t know how big the mountain he must climb. He needed more than a majority of states. He needed a bigger win in North Carolina. The delegates were almost an even split with Cruz. Missouri is so close they’re still counting but he has to split that with Cruz too. Most of all he needed Ohio to stay on track.
Ohio was Trump’s Waterloo. Write that down.
It’s just going to get worse. Stock up on tampons it’s going to be a bloodbath for you and your tiny fingered boy going forward. Mark my words little man.
The little size 9 reptilian mind works in mysterious ways. What looked like a big win to everybody with a proper mammalian mind, looks to the lizard brain like a bloodbath for the big winner. This is the same lizard maroon who said Trump would be stymied by Rule 40. Blowhard clown. How many candidates have passed the Rule 40 threshold, lizardboy? Pathetic little putz. Get some help.
Cruz is one state away from qualifying under Rule 40. Would you care to place a wager that he won’t get another state, Dopey Donny?
Which of the three Republican candidates is the only one who captured a majority of voters in any state? Here’s a clue for the Rodent Brain Donnie; Wyoming.
Yeah, Wyoming is the linch pin. Must win. What’s it like 97 million people live there? All but 4 of them torpid little primitive reptilian Bible thumpers, like you. Cruz of Canuckistan has got it locked up. A reptilian in the WH. Pass the mice and the Kool-Aid. You are a really dumb little runt. Vietnam-era maroon.
I decided to check, just in case your reptilian brain is one of the weakest known to zoology. Wyoming hasn’t voted yet, you Vietnam-era maroon. And you got the other –snip– wrong too. Pathetic little clown. I am beginning to doubt that you are a reptile. Probably some kind of big worm with fake eyes.
It occurred to me that something wasn’t right, so I checked again. The 538 chart has the Wyoming delegate selection in April, but the caucus has already been held and Cruz got a majority of the 47 or so folks who showed up under duress. You see how the mammalian mind works. We detect, admit and correct our little temporary errors. According to the 538 chart Cruz only got 9 of 29 delegates. Who cares about that small crap anyway.
Rule 40(b) requires a majority (not plurality) of delegates for a state to count towards the 8. Trump has 11 already, but Cruz is only at 4 by that count. Hard to see where he can get 4 more majorities. That Rule will likely be the first one that the Party changes to ensure a contest at the convention. It was put in to help Romney over Paul in 2012, and served that purpose. Time for a new one. Nice to be able to make up the rules as you go along.
Quite right. Mibad. Trump won a majority of delegates in exactly 8 states at this point and Cruz is at 4.
That said Cruz has a lock on North and South Dakota, Montana, and Nebraska. Politically they’re clones of Wyoming. He’s in no danger of not making the 8 state minimum.
PS for Rodent Donnie. This is how one who isn’t an insecure nitwit admits a mistake. You of course by definition can never do this I just wanted to let you to at least see how it’s done.
Rule 40 won’t hold anyway. The Party won’t want it to be between just Trump and Cruz in a contested convention, so they have to figure something else out. It was funny seeing Bill O’Reilly interviewing Trump and trying to ask him to be more presidential. Trump was having none of it. The whole interview was about his attitudes to crowds and other candidates, and absolutely zero policy, as with almost any Trump interview. O’Reilly should challenge him on policy, but this attempt at coaching was just wasted time. Trump never admits to being wrong, and also won’t accept advice on his behavior.
26 delegates. More than most of the NE liberal sh!tholes you’re usually- registered-democrat tiny handed hero has won like New Hampshire (23) and Vermont (16). More than redneck deep south Mississippi(23) that plurality boy won. And it was 700 delegates not 70 but only being off by a factor of ten is an improvement for you and a compliment to whatever diploma mill gave you an MBA.
What is generally being missed is that Kasich is committed to winning the nomination and nothing else. He will not release his delegates or endorse either Trump or Cruz.
Rubio was committed to the long game too. Right up until he said “I’m suspending my campaign”. Politicians talk only about winning right up to the moment they formally resign from the contest.
What is being missed is that Trump is now turning his NO-PC guns in Hillbilly’s direction. I think he has either been told or figured out that if he can get Hillbilly on the run, it will be great leverage come convention time.
That would appeal to Trump’s supporters as well as other Republicans, which is the broad support he will need going into the GOP convention.
A quote from Dilbert comic strip author Scott Adams:
“Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.
If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?”
I suspect the number of women angry about their treatment is relatively small. The media make a big deal out of it, but most women are OK with their lot in life.
More women are probably angry at politicians more than the above.
jim2, just kidding, but I really do think you are out of touch with women’s issues. I suspect you were puzzled by women taking offense at Romney’s “binders full of women” comment.
Why do you think Hillary polls so well with women?
Romney was a meek little clown who allowed himself to be defined by the left-loon media. What sensible non-hysterical woman would think that poor little PC Mitt meant anything derogatory with the ‘binders full of women” comment? Is that supposed to be taken literally? That he had “binders full of women”? Get freaking real, you dumb –snip–.
Of course. The problem is that there’s only one person with a higher negative opinion than Hillary. That person is Donald Trump. In match-up polls Kasich kills Hillary. Rubio has consistenly polled several points higher. Cruz is a dead heat. And Donald loses by several points.
Another analysis might be that if all of the Republican candidates except Trump rank ahead of Hillary, then it is entirely possible that the polls are not an accurate picture of what would actually happen in the election.
This shows considerable opposition to Hillary exists in addition to a great reluctance on the part of voters to acknowledge Trump. The question is how many of them would stick to that once it is clear the choices are Hillary or Trump? I know that if polled I’d choose any of the first three ahead of Trump, but if it’s Donald vs. Hillary, I’m voting Trump with no holding of my nose.
The Continuing Implosion of Glenn Beck:
…
After winning the Republican primary in his home state of Ohio Tuesday night, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich announced that he plans to stay the course. Glenn Beck had a few choice words for him.
“Kasich, I mean, excuse my language, but, you son of a bitch, the republic is at stake,” Beck said Wednesday on The Glenn Beck Radio Program. “This is not like a normal race. The republic is at stake.”
Holy Cow! Most of the remaining primaries are either winner-take-all or winner-take-most. Cruz could find tread marks all over his back-side after this is over.
I have budgeted about $100k to spend this election cycle to defeat that nag granny. I would give it all to bernie the commie, if I thought it would help that old fool win the nom. The Donald doesn’t need it. So, I will give it to hilly-billy hunting PACs. On my list:
Ladies Assaulted by Billy and Persecuted By Hilly PAC
Yeah dip–snit–, that’s why they are still whining about Kerry getting “swiftboated”. Younger women don’t know what a vicious little shrew is that olde cankle hiding pantsuited granny. How could any real woman excuse that crap? Got any insight on that, smart –snip–hole?
Speaking of Swift Boating I was just thinking about that. I was thinking what a target rich environment for Swift Boating that The Donald would bring to the table. He’s only the teflon candidate to the 35% of the Republican base composed of uneducated southern rednecks. You must have inherited your money, Monfort. No wonder you feel such affinity with The Donald.
I inherited poverty, lizard. Grew up in a housing project in Detroit, near Dr. Ben Carson. My father died in jail when I was 11 and my mother in a mental institution when I was a fairly successful 17 year old gangster, riding around in my gold Biarritz wearing my cashmere topcoats and Stacey Adams shoes.
I admit that I was significantly better off than my peers, because I was born white, bright and very handsome. Maybe success was in my genes. My absentee, worthless pops was a wayward scion of the Monforts of Colorado, cattle kings. I went on to more honorable, distinguished and productive endeavors when the judge saw my potential and put me in the Army instead of the pen. And you rose to the level of a size 9 lightweight cook-sergeant, technically in the Vietnam-era, so you can freeload on the VA medical system. Carry on little dude.
I rose to the level of a self-made millionaire at the age of 43, Donny. My goal was to make enough money so I never had to work again. And I haven’t. Sixteen years and counting. I stayed home and raised my kids. Thanks for asking.
I did my four in the corps and it was voluntary not a judge telling me “or else ten in the pen” like you. I earned the benefits in the GI Bill and I use it. I’d be stupid if I didn’t and my momma, unlike yours, didn’t have any stupid children.
Funny all the back and forth about Cruz and Trump.
Go to the Upshot at the NY Times and run the scenarios. Only Trump has a reasonable chance of wrapping up the nomination before the convention.
If Trump can’t wrap it up (and Cruz can’t either), then probably Kasich/Rubio will be the ticket. The fix is in. Why else would Kasich be hanging around?
Kasich getting nominated would cause a riot. The first thing they’d have to do is change the convention rules. Right now no one who hasn’t won a majority of delegates in at least 8 states is eligible for nomination. Kasich has won only. The only qualified nominees are Trump (right now) and Cruz (after he wins one more state). There is virtually zero chance that Kasich can win 7 of the remaining states. Rubio/Kasich is a possibility but not the converse.
Cruz is 4 states away. It is a majority, not a plurality, that counts towards the eight. Hard to see where he gets those from. Rule 40 will change anyway, so this is not going to be an issue.
You are correct. Mibad. Trump is at exactly 8 states with a majority of delegates while Cruz is at 4.
That said, if you look a little harder you’ll see that Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska are political and geographic clones of Wyoming. They’re locks for Cruz. He is in no danger of not satisfying Rule 40.
I don’t believe the delegates will change Rule 40. They’ll be taking enough heat for not giving the nomination to Mr. Plurality to be screwing around with the rules. I suspect they already made a deal with Cruz, who the establishment hated almost as much as Trump, to choose an establishment running-mate in trade for giving him their blessing and support going forward.
PS to Monfort. This is how someone without an intellectual inferiority complex admits a mistake. Make note of it.
jim2 Thanks for that. Without tv I don’t get to see all the hilarious fare out there and this was spectacular. Does the soul good to see such a vile public figure ridiculed. Thanks again.
Will anyone dare attempt to interpret this before reading the rest of the story? Well, at least it’s politics …
…
Well, let me start — let me start with the question of the Fed’s credibility. And you used the word “promises” in connection with that. And as I tried to emphasize in my opening statement, the paths that the participants project for the federal funds rate and how it will evolve are not a pre-set plan or commitment or promise of the committee. Indeed, they are not even — the median should not be interpreted as a committee-endorsed forecast. And there’s a lot of uncertainty around each participant’s projection. And they will evolve. Those assessments of appropriate policy are completely contingent on each participant’s forecasts of the economy and how economic events will unfold. And they are, of course, uncertain. And you should fully expect that forecasts for the appropriate path of policy on the part of all participants will evolve over time as shocks, positive or negative, hit the economy that alter those forecasts. So, you have seen a shift this time in most participants’ assessments of the appropriate path for policy. And as I tried to indicate, I think that largely reflects a somewhat slower projected path for global growth — for growth in the global economy outside the United States, and for some tightening in credit conditions in the form of an increase in spreads. And those changes in financial conditions and in the path of the global economy have induced changes in the assessment of individual participants in what path is appropriate to achieve our objectives. So that’s what you see — that’s what you see now.
.. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-16/here-what-janet-yellen-answered-when-steve-liesman-asked-if-fed-has-credibility-prob
What Yellen means is that the Fed ain’t going to do anything to upset the apple cart while they do everything they can to see that the economy keeps limping along, until after the election. Yellen is a Keynesian-Democrat tool.
If you look at the GDP growth rate over the Obama years and compare it with the federal deficit as a percentage of GDP, you can’t help but notice that the growth in GDP is financed by huge budget deficits. Then you got the massive QE and the state and local budget deficits added to that stimulus.
How can so much money be pumped into an economy and result in such anemic growth? And that’s money that is robbed from future Peter’s to pay current Paul’s and Pablos.
The government and academic/socialist economic sighintists call it inter-temporal smoothing. Those of us who make a living in private sector finance and investment call it inevitable bankruptcy.
There is nothing you have ever said here that gives any indication you could ever understand economics beyond the 5th grade level. Or anything else beyond a 5th grade level.
“The U.S. current-account deficit—a net measure of transactions between the United States
and the rest of the world in goods, services, primary income (investment income and compensation),
and secondary income (current transfers)—increased to $124.1 billion (preliminary) in the third quarter of 2015 from $111.1 billion (revised) in the second quarter. The deficit increased to
2.7 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP) from 2.5 percent in the second quarter.”
That’s an account of the funds transfers we know about. As even an inconsequential compulsively yammering 5th grade maroon can see, it’s more than GDP growth. It’s also chronic.
Wait until debt service starts to squeeze out all the free goodies. Nobody is losing sleep over fabricated CAGW. When the whiners want to know where their fee lunch went, you can tell them it went to pay for the debt that you didn’t lose sleep over.
cerescokid March 16, 2016 at 10:32 pm
“I bet maxieboy is all in on the story that the reason Clinton balanced the budget is because of the tax increase on the rich.”
______
No, No, Cisco, you can’t balance the budget by increasing the tax rate for the rich. The rich aren’t patriotic so they will just move to another country which gives them a better deal. What you have to do is lower the tax rate to woo back those who have already left.
The economist Laugher used a paper napkin to prove tax revenues rise when rates are lowered. That may seem counter intuitive unless you are crazy or are have tossed down a few martinis. Anyway, there’s obviously a limit because if you lowered taxes on the rich to zero every rich person in the world would be flocking here and it would get too crowded.
Barely literate 5th grade level maroons are not expected to get that chronic budget and current account deficits that exceed the growth rate of GDP is a problem. Maybe she’s a good cook.
Trump calls for a 15% corporate tax rate as opposed to to a Stalinistic 35% rate. Here’s how it would work, corporations would have more to pay out in taxable dividends. Less incentive to flee. While corporations should not be taxed, it’s an improvement. Money goes to where it’s not taxed or taxed less. It’s a rational thing. Villifying corporations results in them leaving. It’s a rational thing.
Tax corporations less and tax wage earners more. If the wage earners whine, just borrow to make up the shortfall. We have done it before, so we know it works.
Don Monfort | March 16, 2016 at 11:38 pm |
More musings from Don the Economist
“Barely literate 5th grade level maroons are not expected to get that chronic budget and current account deficits that exceed the growth rate of GDP is a problem.”
_____
Don, you may be missing the forrest by concentrating on the trees. If you are worried about the deficit and GDP growth, you may be even more worried about the size of our national debt, which is about 103% of our GDP.
The problem could be even more serious than it first appears. In order to get our debt to GDP ratio down to a more manageable figure, like the countries listed below, we might have to be like one of them.
Nigeria 11%
Cuba 17%
Bangladesh 18%
Norway 26%
China 41%
Sweden 44%
Looks like the choice is between becoming a third-world country, a commie country, or a Scandinavian nanny state.
I see.You didn’t get past the first listed country, Nigeria, because thoughts of Hillary keep poking at your brain. I suggest you stop regretting she married Bill instead of you, and stop dreaming about being the first gentleman.
I am very happy with my fine young long tall Jamaican-Jewish-Brazilian-American Princess wife, little–snip–thang. And somewhere in the woodpile there’s a white man, because our big handsome 12 year old son has blue eyes. Life is good. And I am the first gentleman. No –snip–stained blue dress scandals in our story. She can’t cook, but she got a nice private practice and she pays the housekeepers. I hope you are as happy as we are. I am just having fun with you. You deserve it.
Tax corporations less and tax wage earners more. If the wage earners whine, just borrow to make up the shortfall. We have done it before, so we know it works.
Well that certainly has been the trend.
In the early 1950s corporations paid about 30% of the cost of running the federal government.
By the time Reagan entered office that had fallen to about 15%.
Reagan’s supply-side economics — what Bush the elder later blasted as “voodoo economics” — promised to correct this.
According to Reaganomics, large cuts in tax rates would so stimulate the economy that the tax revenue on the increases in business and personal income would offset the tax revenue losses caused by lower rates, (15% x $2000 > 20% x $1000) Therefore, such tax cuts would not increase the federal budget deficit.
This hypothesis was graphically illustrated by the Laffer curve.
But the supply-side predictions of Reaganomics and the Laffer Curve didn’t come true.
What actually happened was just the opposite.
As corporate tax rates were lowered, the amount of taxes corporations paid decreased. By the time Reagan left office, corporations paid less than 10% of the cost to run the federal government.
According to The Atlantic article I cited above, Trump promises to right this badly listing ship. And Trump is the only candidate, either Democratic or Republican, who has made this a campaign issue.
So, max1OK, why isn’t Trump your man?
Can you cite where Trump has said something different from the way The Atlantic has characterized his position? Or do you just not believe what Trump is promising?
These are Trump’s voters…in search of a leader who would put the interests of the white working classes first….
For decades, both their legitimate grievances and their racial resentments found outlet in the Republican program of smaller government.
But it’s always been, at best, an alliance of convenience… Libertarians and business conservatives share little of their affection for robust social-insurance programs, and none of their hostility to free trade.
Now, Trump promises to unite the two halves of their agenda—attacking government programs that threaten the interests of the white working class, as conservative Republicans have long promised, but also vigorously expanding those that favor them, as liberal Democrats have advocated.
Even in the remarkably crowded Republican field that began this race, there was no candidate with a program remotely like his.
His rivals kept trying to stop him by proving that he’s not a true conservative, just a big-government liberal in disguise. Their attacks, though, only strengthened Trump’s hand: His supporters didn’t want a true conservative—they wanted a champion. And they appear delighted that someone is promising to use government to address their resentments, and serve their interests….
And now? Along comes Trump, promising to make America great again by having government do big things again. By putting it to work in the defense of the white working class. He’s defying party orthodoxy. He’s not a true conservative. And here’s the rub. It’s possible that this is what a plurality of Republican primary voters wanted all along.
The changes in economic policy Trump is advocating would help all working- and middle-class folks — brown, black and white — and not just white ones as The Atlantic’s tautology would have us believe.
Nice attempt at humor but this is not about Art and academe. This is about data from the IRS. The liberal myth is that if it was not for the tax increase of Clinton’s on the wealthy in 1993, there would not have been the surplus of $236 Billion in FY 2000, and no balanced budget at all.
So lets look at the observational data. From FY 92 to FY 00, total tax revenue increased by $925 Billion. Of that amount, $100 Billion was from an increase in Corporate Taxes, $200 Billon was from an increase in Social Security tax revenue, $100 Billion was increases in a variety of other taxes and $100 Billion was from an increase in Capital Gains tax revenue.
That leaves a balance of $425 Billion from increases in the Individual Income Taxes due to the Clinton tax increase and growth in the economy. The IRS shows the effective tax rate for each level of income. In 1992 for those making over $200,000 the effective tax rate was 25.4%. By 2000 it was 26.4% for an increase of 1%. Apply that effective rate increase to the AGI of $1.7 Trillion and you get an increase of just $17 Billion from the tax increase for those making over $200,000.
So of the $425 Billion of Individual Income Tax revenue increase over those 8 years, just $17 Billion was from increasing the top marginal rates on the wealthy while the rest was from very strong growth in GDP and Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). The increase in AGI for those 8 years was 78%. For the period 2000 to 2013 (latest IRS data) the growth in AGI was 38%. A good book by Robert Gordon “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” covers why he thinks we might not be returning to the growth rates of the 20th century. And for this reason you should be losing sleep over the GDP and the bleak prospects of being able to support the exploding debt level.
The bottom line. Clinton balanced the budget not due to increases in tax rates on the wealthy but because of Capitalism Unchained.
Also, during the Clinton years income inequality exploded as evidenced by an increase in the number of tax filers making over $1 Million going from 66,000 in 1992 to 240,000 in 2000. During the Bush years those making over $1 Million went from 240,000 to 320,000.
Be sure to tell your prof how much you have learned from your sojourn mingling with the adults. Let him know your most valuable lesson was finding out how much you do not know.
==> The changes in economic policy Trump is advocating would help all working- and middle-class folks — brown, black and white — and not just white ones as The Atlantic’s tautology would have us believe.
Interesting. Stated as fact. That’s what some folks call “skepticism,” I guess.
The bottom line. Clinton balanced the budget not due to increases in tax rates on the wealthy but because of Capitalism Unchained.
More voodoo economics.
°°°°°cerescokid said:
Also, during the Clinton years income inequality exploded as evidenced by an increase in the number of tax filers making over $1 Million going from 66,000 in 1992 to 240,000 in 2000. During the Bush years those making over $1 Million went from 240,000 to 320,000.
There is a comprehensive metric that’s used to indicate inequality. It’s called the GINI Index.
So you are opposed to using the power of the state to achieve a more equitable distribution of income so that it behooves the economic interests of the working and middle classes, regardless of what color they happen to be?
Come on Glen I spoon Fed you the analysis from the IRS data. Did you actually look at the IRS archives. Did you calculate the taxes increased from growth in GDP and AGI and how that influenced the taxes. I could not have made it more simple. There are no voodoo economics, just simple arithmetic from tax statistics.
Sorry I broke your delusional bubble about the Clinton tax increase. It is what it is. No models. No theory. Just hard data.
Glen, did you even look at the GINI chart? You made my point for me ,unwittingly I guess. See that jump in the 90s? When millionaires increase by nearly 300% and those making over $200,000 go from 950,000 tax filers to 2,800,000 tax filers and the top 5% of households go from their share of aggregate income being 17% to 21% during an 8 year period, then Iwould call that an explosion.
“By the time Reagan left office, corporations paid less than 10% of the cost to run the federal government.”
Many small businesses pay no taxes. For instance an S-Corp is a pass through entity. I report my company’s net income on my personal return. Let me ask, does this zero percent rate seem unfair to you? If C-Corps paid no taxes, the same type of thing could happen. Its owners could still pay taxes on its income. A C-Corp is an odd bird to begin with. Partnerships, pass through trusts, sole proprietors are also pass through entities and pay no taxes in general. C-Corps have this taxation penalty. Then there is the argument that C-Corps pay no taxes, they simply collect them from their customers. That fits the rule that no magic is allowed, there is no corporate money tree.
Corporate tax rates:
1979-1986 46%
1987 40%
1988 34%
The threshold for when the rates kick in was monkeyed with as well, but for the large corporations, that would have had a minimal impact.
Those dummies who think that corporations “don’t pay taxes” or “don’t pay fair share of taxes” don’t understand the basic facts of business organization, tax policy and economics in general. I will give the simplified explanation so even the simpletons can get it.
Corporations are owned by what are called stockholders. New corporation starts up, presumably to make money for stockholders, and the investors/stockholders put funds at risk to get the ball rolling. They have already paid taxes on that money. Corporation hopefully makes a profit. That is taxed as corporate profit. Some of remaining is paid out to stockholders as dividends. Taxed. Some shareholders sell stock at a profit. Taxed. Stockholders who made a few bucks on their investment buy stuff. Taxed.
Some people think that corporations are good, because they hire a lot of people and generate a lot of economic activity, creating wealth and revenue for the gubmint. Some folks think corporations bad. If you think that corporations are bad, raise the taxes on corporations. If you want less of something, raising the taxes on it will do the job.
Glen, I don’t remember saying anything about Reagan. I was referring to the income inequality that increased under Clinton, as evidenced by your own chart where the slope looks like about 80 degrees during part of the 90s. It may have started earlier but the rate of increase is not as great as under
Clinton.
Here is some insight on income inequality. There may be a dozen reasons for its increase on the last 40 years and the top marginal rate does not break the top ten. Politicians like to mislead the masses because that is the simple and easy thing to do.
Here are a few factors that have influenced the share of income going to capital over labor. Loss of manufacturing as % of employment since 1945. Loss of union representation since 1955 as % of private employment. Automation/digitization etc. Dichotomy of labor force between high value in technology vs low value manuel labor. Globalization. Demographics/culture with greater share of highly educated, high income 2 income families median income of $100,000 vs higher level of lower educated lower income single moms median income of $32,000. TV and internet have opened up markets/customers in the millions/billions with smaller barriers to entry allowing entrepreneurs and employees to have the value of their work rewarded quicker and by larger markets than ever. Compare sports/celebrities incomes and number vs 50 years ago. Some internet operations have marginal production costs of near 0 giving capital the advantage.
I could go on but massive changes affect economies globally and the US is not alone in facing income inequality.
Do you really believe that the political and economic revolution that Reagan ushered in wasn’t the catalyst for the inequality we now experience? Granted, every president since has followed his lead. But that’s the point.
Regardless of how you answer that question, though, I’ll ask you the same question I asked Joshua.
Are you opposed to using the power of the state to achieve a more equitable distribution of income so that it behooves the economic interests of the working and middle classes, regardless of what the cause of the growing inequality might be?
Cisco, sorry for the belated reply, but I was too busy practicing capitalism to talk about it. You may want to check your numbers because they don’t appear to be consistent with what the group of tax payers with taxable incomes of $200,000 or more have actually paid in taxes.
You say the 1 percentage point rise in the tax rate from 25.4% to 26.4% for this group resulted in only $17 billion of a $925 billion surplus the 1990’s. If 1% = $17 billion, then 25.4% = $432 billion or the amount of taxes paid in a year by the group. In 1990 that $432 billion would have paid about one-fourth of the $1,654 billion in total tax revenue and in the year 2000 about one-sixth of the $2,541 billion total. But records show this group paid 55% of total taxes in a recent year, 2013 (see link). I don’t believe the rates change much, so if we take 55% of of the 1990’s $1,654 billion, we get about $910 billion, and 55% of the year 2000’s $2,541 billion, yields $1,398 billion, both amounts much greater than the $432 billion your figures imply. This doesn’t account for the $100 billion you said was capital gains tax, but I believe that was spread over 10 years and includes tax by those with incomes under $200,000 per year, but even if I applied the entire $100 billion to the $432 billion, the $532 billon total falls short of the $910 billion and $1,398 billion amounts that those with taxable income of $200,000 or more actually paid.
Max
Your sentences are so convoluted I don’t know what you said. Let’s just focus on the $17 Billion. In 1992 the Adjusted Gross Income for the $200,000 + group was $490 Billion. In 2000 the AGI for that same group was $1.7 Trillion.
Now let’s assume the effective rate stayed the same that is 25.4%. Then the new tax amount would be all due to increase in growth of income not an increase in tax rate. But the effective rate was increased by 1%. So breaking down how much of the tax increase came from growth on income vs increasing effective tax rate is just determined by asking how much did the added 1% bring in. That is $17 Billion. Remember there is an increase in taxes of $925 Billion on 2000 over the taxes in 1992 and only a portion is due to increases of Individual Income Taxes and only a portion of that is due to increases of effective tax rates, while the balance is from increases in Adjusted Gross Income against which the effective tax rate is applied.
“Are you opposed to using the power of the state to achieve a more equitable distribution of income…”
Partial list of middle class tax goodies:
Child Credit
Education Credit
401(k) and IRA deductions
HSA accounts for some
Mortgage and State tax deductions
Property tax deductions
Exemptions for each child
529 plans
Residence gain exclusion
Roth Contributions allowed
Grants for kids in college
Student loan interest deduction
Partial list of rich peoples tax bummers:
The AMT
Phase out of exemptions and deductions
No Education Credit
No Child Credit
State tax deduction make AMT worse
Partial residence gain exclusion
IRA deductions limited or not deductible
Roth contributions can be not allowed
Higher ordinary tax rates
No grants for kids in college
No student loan interest deduction
Some of the tax bummer are backdoor move by Congress. They can sort of say, we didn’t raise taxes (cough) tax rates. Accounts say, yes you did.
cerescokid | March 17, 2016 at 9:57 pm |
Max
“Your sentences are so convoluted I don’t know what you said.”
______
Well, one of my hobbies is writing hypothetical tax code, and I guess you
have to hire a tax preparer.
But seriously, what I wrote is not that hard to understand. I understood it when I wrote it, and I just read it again and still understand it almost as well. Just because reading my explanation requires using your head is no reason to take off in a different direction like you did.
You leave me with no choice but to conclude you can’t defend your point, but maybe you got it from someone else and it’s his fault.
Maxieboy, you are really lost, with logic and everything else. I didn’t get the numbers from anyone else since I couldn’t memorize them. The IRS spreadsheet was in front of me when I was writing. Let me give you the data from 1992 as I am looking at them.
AGI $200,000 – $490 Billion
Taxes paid group $124 Billion
In 2000
AGI $200,000 – $1.7 Trillion
Taxes paid by group – $449 Billion
Those are the only 4 numbers you needto understand my point. The fact you brought in other extraneous numbers prove this is all over you head.
The only question is how much of the tax increase from 1992 to 2000 was due to the increase in the rate vs the increase in the AGI. You have all the numbers right there to figure it out.
Don’t bring in 2013 or anything else. The $200,000 group is a subset of the totals and the issue is only about that subset.
Cisco, we aren’t communicating effectively. I don’t understand you, and you don’t understand me. Let’s go back to where you started on March 17 with your 8:55 AM post. I will quote you.
“Nice attempt at humor but this is not about Art and academe. This is about data from the IRS. The liberal myth is that if it was not for the tax increase of Clinton’s on the wealthy in 1993, there would not have been the surplus of $236 Billion in FY 2000, and no balanced budget at all.
______
Whether this is a liberal myth or not, I don’t know. What I do know is I did not say if not for the tax increase there would not have been surplus, so I was puzzled by your response.
A simple way to estimate the change in revenue from a tax rate increase for tax payers in a particular income bracket for a given year, would be to (a) calculate the revenue based on the higher rate,(b) calculate the revenue based on the previous rate, and (c) subtract the “b” amount from the “a” amount to get the added revenue. The sum of the added revenue from each income bracket would be an estimate of the total added revenue for the year.
Of course this kind of estimate does not address the tax revenue effect of economic growth or the effect of tax payer response to rate changes, which are effects you are trying to determine, but I think would could agree on what the simple estimate does represent, and that would be a starting point,
Yes we are getting closer. A simple way to look at my point is to just use some simple examples. If AGI is 100 and effective tax rate is 10% then the tax is 10. If effective rate stays the same and AGI goes to 200 the tax is 20. And if the tax is increased so the effective rate is 20% and AGI is 100 then tax is 20. But if tax rate is increased to 20% effective rate and AGI goes to 200, then how much is due to growth and how much is due to tax rate increase. In this example it is 20 to growth and 20 to tax rate increase.
I was just separating the pieces to know how much of the increase in taxes were to the increase to growth (in this case a lot with AGI going from $490 to $1700) vs the increase in the effective rate.
“In this example it is 20 to growth and 20 to tax rate increase.” Yes, in the second year of the new tax, that would seem to be the case. I’m glad we agree. Similarly, if the tax rate was lowered from 20 to 10 and the AGI grew from 100 to 200, the revenue would remain at 20. I imagine Laffler’s (sp?) curve would have the revenue going higher than 20.
The CBO report which I linked in my previous report had an interesting discussion on how tax payers and the economy could be affected by hikes and cuts in income tax rates. I knew about the theory that lower rates stimulate economic growth, and the reasons. Also discussed was the theory higher rates can stimulate the economy if people work harder or longer to make up for lost take home pay. I hadn’t heard of that one. It made me think of how bees work harder to make up for the lost honey bee keepers take.
About 50 years ago I worked in a steel wire factory where nearly everyone worked on a piece rate. They got X cents for each item they produced during the day. Or if they were down for machine malfunction, they got a “day rate”. If they produced the quota of pieces, that would generate more income than the “day rate” on a per hour basis.
After working there for a few months, I noticed that machines all over the shop were shutting down anywhere between 15 and 45 minutes before the shift ended. I asked a few of the workers what was going on. The most frequent reply was along the lines “man, I ain’t gonna work anymore cause it will just put me into a higher tax bracket and I don’t want to give the gubmint any more my money.” At the time there were around 20 to 22 tax brackets going up by 2% or so every couple of thousands of dollars. During the 60s and 70s there was the phenomenon of bracket creep. Inflation had started to really accelerate and wages were being pushed into a higher tax bracket just from inflation. These workers had it in their head why work more just for the gubmint. Not totally rational because they would still get lets say 70 to 80% of that additional income in take home pay but that was their logic.
The idea of lower tax rates influencing behavior stuck with me after that. Today, we are in a new age where the vast majority or workers no longer work on a piece rate and the incentive to work harder for a marginally greater return probably is more esoteric than before, but it still has merit.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize a worker with a 91% marginal tax rate is not going to work at hard as someone with a 5% marginal tax rate. Somehow getting up in the morning and realizing you get to keep 95% of what you make is more enticing than working for 9% of your pay. Those are extremes and not realistic but that encapsulates the theory. In the 50s and 60s and maybe some into the 70s, the Lowest marginal tax rate was 20% and the highest was 91% in the 50s to 63 then down to the 70s and then to the 50%s and eventually to 28% in 1988 and 89 before going back up.
Today the lowest marginal tax rate is 10% going up to 39.6%. We were talking about an effective tax rate before. The ironic thing is the effective tax rate in 1963 was 13.6% and that was the last year the top marginal rate was 91%. (LBJ got thru the reduction in the top marginal rate to 70% proposed by JFK) Move forward to 1988 when the top marginal rate was reduced to 28%. Guess what, the effective rate (average rate of AGI paid in taxes) was again 13.6%. There are many ways to affect the effective rate and the top marginal rate is just one. And there are many ways to effectuate a progressive tax system and the top marginal rate is just one. But it sounds so sexy and politically attractive to stick it to the rich. In 1954 with only 201 millionaires and the top rate of 91% they paid less than .3% of total tax revenue. Those who paid some of their income tax at 91% , of whom there were only 630, paid less than 1% of total taxes. There was no massive income redistribution since the rich kicked in so little to begin with, simply because there were so few of them. Those at the top then paid an effective rate of about 45 to 50%.
The real goal should be to maximize the effective rate with the least harm to the growth of the economy
Cisco, I suspect your factory coworkers The most frequent reply was along the lines “man, I ain’t gonna work anymore cause it will just put me into a higher tax bracket and I don’t want to give the gubmint any more my money.”
________________
Cisco, I think they were full of sh*t. I could see quiting if there was a large jump, say from a 20% bracket to 50%, but that wasn’t the case here. I think these guys were satisfied with what they had already earned and wanted to go home. That’s OK. Not everyone is driven by ambition.
I can see some situations where moving to a higher bracket might be unattractive. For example, a physician or dentist might prefer to work fewer hours.
I would love to be in a higher tax bracket. I would be delighted to be in the highest tax bracket.
Very nice explanation on how marginal tax rates influence total tax collection, ceresco. Of course, maxie comes back with a non-substantive emotional response that shows no grasp of the issue. Hey, maybe she can cook.
Don…”How can so much money be pumped into an economy and result in such anemic growth? And that’s money that is robbed from future Peter’s to pay current Paul’s and Pablos. ”
That’s because only the Regressive Left, Marxists, and the economically ignorant (synonyms) would believe that pumping money into a structure that has been evolving to shift value to Washington Kleptocrats would do anything with the money but store it and wait for ‘economic opportunity’ to return.
The Left thinks ‘money’ is the same as economic growth/economic opportunity. Has there ever been such a collection of economic illiterates in the history of the species? One would have to travel far back in time to when wealth was seen as ‘static’ and to be plundered. Only the Left would think (and the ‘Progressive Right’) that money stolen from the private sector, filtered through the maw of DC and returned to the private sector, after being devalued, would stimulate growth. Ignoramuses one and all.
If the establishment manages to stab both Trump and Cruz in the back, and they run two back of the pack stragglers who won two states and Puerto freaking Rico between them….
They might hold their nose and pick Cruz, perhaps with Kasich or someone more centrist as a VP to sweeten it for them. In a contested convention the VP is up for debate and voting too.
Nobody wins with Trump. He’s a con artist. He’s conning 35% of the Republican party. The uneducated part. The rubes. The marks. The inbred angry deep south poor. People like Donnie the Rodent King II.
This is something Trump supporters have had enough of … liberals disrupting legal assembly. I hope Trump can get them all jailed and held until January 2017.
From the article:
…
Despite the fact that many of the main groups endorsing Democracy Spring are funded by billionaire Soros, the group complains that “American elections are dominated by billionaires and big money interests who can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns to protect their special interests at the general expense.”
But if the status quo goes unchallenged, the 2016 election — already set to be the most billionaire-dominated, secret money-drenched, voter suppression-marred contest in modern American history — will likely yield a President and a Congress more bound to the masters of big money than ever before.
The stage is set for a bold intervention to turn the tinder of passive public frustration into a fire that transforms the political climate in America, that sparks a popular movement that can’t be stopped.
The group continues:
We will demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won’t leave until they do — or until they send thousands of us to jail, along with the unmistakable message that our country needs a new Congress, one that that will end the legalized corruption of our democracy and ensure that every American has an equal voice in government.
… http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/16/anti-trump-groups-threaten-largest-civil-disobedience-action-of-the-century/
max10K. You know they are liberals, or progressives, because the MSM isn’t reporting on it. If it were the tea party they would be labelled “racist,” or maybe even the department of homeland security would be worried, and need to investigate.
It is no longer a question of what the party wants. The voters — remember them? — keep showering Trump and Cruz with Ceausescu-like percentages. The combined vote for Trump and Cruz is a ringing chorus of what this party wants: a wall, deportation, less immigration and no job-killing trade deals.
In other words, what the party wants is the diametric opposite of what the donor and consultant class wants. One would have to search the history books to find a party establishment so emphatically rejected by the voters as today’s Republican Party has been.
The source is Judicial Watch, a litigation happy conservative legal advocacy group that uses FOIA to go after political figures, nearly all of whom turn out to be guess what?
If there’s someone you don’t like and you have loads of money to donate, Judicial Watch might be interested.
Actually, the source is legitimate emails vetted by State and NSA and released to Judicial Watch under FOIA. The emails show that granny was aware of something called ‘national security’ and she wanted the same portable comm. device as was used by the POTUS.
Knowing how this –snip– works from personal experience I will inform you that the reason the NSA would not give granny the same type of secure device as carried by POTUS is because they wanted to have the methods of security as closely guarded as possible, restricted to carrying risk only to the POTUS. We are talking on about the same level as the nuclear football.
So when granny cankles was denied the highest possible secure portable communication device of her liking, granny went off and did the next best thing, by setting up a freaking homebrew server connected unencrypted to the WWW. Just more prima facie evidence of foolish self-serving gross national security negligence and dumb –snipping- hubris. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
Judicial Watch’s track record isn’t good. Considering all the people they have gone after, who did they get. I read that the organization is so litigation happy their own members sue each other, one official had even sued his own mother.
You are incredibly dim, maxie. How do you ever manage to properly interpret recipes? Judicial Watch got the emails, The information is in the emails. Judicial Watch didn’t write the –snipping– emails. Maybe I have been overestimating you, but I was leaning towards thinking you are being deliberately obtuse. It’s looking more and more like you are just plain stooopid.
Don, I’m not sure how your comments relate to anything I wrote. I know how Judicial Watch operates. If you believe that organization’s web site is an accurate reporter of e-mail content, you are naive.
Didn’t you notice that the story is from the AP wire service, little maxie okie? I am going to assume, until I see evidence indicating otherwise, that the reporter has perused the FOIA released emails and is reporting the content correctly. It would not be hard to find out if something phony was being reported. Do you got anything to show us, maxie? Of course, you are free to make your own illogical assumptions and to embarrass yourself by running your mouth off when you don’t have a clue.
Don, I’m afraid you spend too time here making comments and too little time keeping yourself informed.
Here’s an example of Judicial Watch quoting an e-mail. Notice the “…” thingies.
“In a subsequent email from Reid dated February 18, 2009, Clinton’s penchant for Blackberry technology is described as an issue of “personal comfort” growing out of her becoming “hooked” on her Blackberry during the 2008 presidential campaign:
Here’s the results of our meeting yesterday… as I had been speculating, the issue here is one of personal comfort … S [Secretary Clinton] does not use a personal computer so our view of someone wedded to their email (why doesn’t she use her desktop when in SCIF?) doesn’t fit this scenario … during the campaign she was urged to keep in contact with thousands via a BB … once she got the hang of it she was hooked … now everyday [sic], she feels hamstrung because she has to lock her BB up … she does go out several times a day to an office they have crafted for her outside the SCIF and plays email catch up … Cheryl Mills and others who are dedicated BB addicts are frustrated because they too are not near their desktop very often during the working day…”
I really think you need to regroup and check yourself, maxie. There is an AP report. I have just read a CBS report. Neither of those news agencies could be suspected of being favorable to Judicial Watch. I am pretty sure they have seen the emails that were released by the gubmint. It’s not hard to check these things. Don’t keep talking about what Judicial Watch may get wrong. Look at other sources. That is a bad story for granny, plain and simple.
Now I just saw this. A very good easy to understand explanation of what foolishness the Fed is up to. I suggest you could learn something by reading it:
Jason Scheuren is an inflation hawk at a time of deflation, with recommendations that are untimely if not downright silly. He would recommend laxatives for diarrhea.
It’s surprising to me that the climate deniers who haunt this little blog in such profusion aren’t more pro-Trump. He’s the candidate of denial. All Mexicans are rapists, build a giant wall, ban Muslims from entering the United States — the Republicans, like the climate denier community before them, have surrendered to fantasy. The only explanation for climate denial, or Trump, is that the person making the claim knows it’s a ridiculous lie, the people claiming to believe it know it’s a ridiculous lie, but they all embrace the lie because it is their only weapon as spoiled children against the grow-ups of the world.
So surprising that Trump doesn’t get more love from his fellow liars, climate denier chapter. But it’s not always pleasant to look in a mirror, I suppose.
I know, right? Trump could sell solar panels or windmills and make the rubes believe they were getting something of value. He’s on the wrong side for sure.
“It’s surprising to me that the climate deniers who haunt this little blog in such profusion aren’t more pro-Trump. He’s the candidate of denial.”
________
Robert, I speculate more aren’t pro-Trump because they fear he has Democrat tendencies on other issues.
Generally, it would be good for those concerned about AGW to not want more immigration into the US. After all, US citizens have a pretty big carbon footprint. My guess, though, is that in this case many are willing to make an exception.
Let me break it to you gently. There are no facts about what will happen in 2100. None. Nada. Zip. If you are able to channel the facts of the future, how about helping me with my brackets. I have Michigan State all the way but without your help I am a little bit jittery.
That’s one fork in history. I often wonder what would of happened with really serious Reconstruction — 100% of assets & privately held land given over as reparations, all Confederate government officials and soldiers tried for treason and executed if guilty.
Maybe we could have rooted out the stupid in America before it give rise to climate denial, Ted Cruz, or Donald Trump.
Right now, 42 of 267 (~16%) comments on this page are by Don Monfort, almost all of which include rudeness, hostility and attacks on other commenters. This is the sort of thing which made me quit visiting this site very often. I’m all for light moderation, but when so much of your comments thread is devoted to things like this, reading the comments here becomes very unpleasant.
And I defended you from the attacks on you by that nasty Web Hubble. He was especially cruel about that mail order diploma that you “attended”. You little whining ingrate. This is a political thread. Politics ain’t beanbag, junior. Judith is moderating it appropriately. Stop the freaking whinging. Didn’t you say that you had taken great pains to make sure that my comments did not appear to you? How you know what I am saying, you lying little –snipper–?
What the hell are you ranting about now? I dropped out from Cal State Fullerton (computer science major) in my junior year to go to work full time as an engineer in the computer industry. A local company I was working for part time to supplement what the GI Bill was paying offered me far more moolah than a fresh BSCS was getting. I never looked back and 20 years later retired from Dell. Thanks for asking.
The subject of US politics (3rd thread) is not what I come to Judith’s blog for. The personal sniping has often been amusing and well crafted but at the end of it all, no learning has transpired so I turn off and go elsewhere, as is everyone’s right. No comment was invited by the protagonists and none is required. If you chose to join in, it will be at your own risk.
It’s an example of adapting, instead of attempting to mitigate – which would require much more effort.
This place here is kind of like a drainage ditch, well fertilized, and supporting an interesting variety of flora and fauna which might otherwise be considered invasive species.
This thread is giving us a chance to share with others, more about ourselves. Where are lukewarmers politically? Some in the middle, some on the right. Some back the establishment, some are renegades.
Rodent Monfort is lashing out in all directions. I think we should be a little more sympathetic. He has now realized he backed the wrong horse and is transferring buyer’s regret into lashing out at everyone. Let’s keep track of him as he progresses through these five stages:
Thank You for these threads. Being overseas, I’ve been having trouble making sense of the current election cycle. I find the above discussion enlightening. Also terrifying, but enlightening.
The Ides have passed and we are OK, Ken. Don’t let the hysteria the left-loons and their tool Repub establishment allies are trying to generate scare you. The republic will still be here, when you decide to come home.
It is true Don, in our history we have been up much worse creeks than we are right now. I am simply appalled by what seems to be a willful determination on the part of so many people – to screw it all up. This certainly goes for Europe as well – if not double.
And now I gotta go, time for a beer, and my waders are starting to leek. good evening to you all
An erudite historical reference from Don regarding the Ides of March but what happened a week later is intriguing and bearing in mind that at the heart of modern climate data is the new ‘branch’ of science known as treeolgy perhaps one or other side ought to be either lamenting or mourning…
‘A week later, on 22 March, the day of Arbor intrat (“The Tree enters”) commemorated the death of Attis under a pine tree. A college of priests called “tree bearers” (dendrophoroi) cut down a tree,[14] suspended from it an image of Attis,[15] and carried it to the temple of the Magna Mater with lamentations. The day was formalized as part of the official Roman calendar under Claudius.[16] A three-day period of mourning followed,[17] culminating with the rebirth of Attis on 25 March, the date of the vernal equinox on the Julian calendar.[18]’
I never suggested that everyone go away, dannyboy. There are about a half dozen commenters here who are well informed and offer some useful insight. Many of the others are entertaining. The residue, just taking up space. Let your conscience be your guide.
If not for Keynesian Economics the U.S. economy would had went off the cliff a long time ago. The markets now look superb and the unemployment rate is way down < 5% and real wages are up.
The markets look like bubbles. Remember the last two bubbles? We went off the cliff. And each time the recovery, bought with massive deficit spending and QE BS, sets us up for a bigger bubble:
I can’t even tell if your joking or deluded. If unemployment were still calculated the way it was in the ’60s, it would look like the great-depression. No worries, though–just change the calculation, and no one will notice!
I know there is a great deal of angst on the part of people who are worried about Trump being elected POTUS. The concern seems to be coalesced into two groups: 1) Progressives who see a mucking up of its agenda by what appears to be a loose cannon on the wooden decks of ships in the days of yore, a ship tossed in a storm, sails tattered and the steering mechanism dysfunctional; a large hardened object being tossed and crashing about creating wreck and ruin. 2) The established power brokers who manipulate circumstances, elections, politicians and finances because they have worked hard to slice and dice an electorate whom they have calculated and believe they understand.
“Being overseas, I’ve been having trouble making sense of the current election cycle.”
What makes the current election cycle less understandable is that Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders have drawn out voters who hitherto had not been politically active; hence, not politically accounted for. Large primary voter turnout reflects interest in issues and changing emphasis on issues that have, like embers of a fire, been smoldering for the last 8 years with winds of words now fanning politics aflame.
Obama also campaigned on a ticket of discontent and change drawing a large primary turnout which torpedoed Hillary’s efforts to be the first elected woman President.
Today, using crude language and a bellicose style, Trump is also campaigning on a ticket of change again aimed at disaffected groups instead of Eastern establishment and Ivy schooled elites.
We saw a similar campaign as Trumps in the 1960’s with Barry Goldwater whose Presidential defeat carried the Republican Party into depths of voter participation and Republican candidate defeats that frankly has Republican Party elites terrified now.
Hillary’s campaign has been forced to move more Left than she wanted it to be as she knows that being elected President requires a broader electorate participation and agenda than Vassar approved and feminists want to see.
The elites will eventually succeed in fielding candidates more to their liking as they are aware and are focusing their energies to do something within their control. In reality however, the Federal budget is mostly consumed by entitlements and the much smaller discretionary portion is all that people are fighting over. There will be some regulatory changes which, like most, will outlive their usefulness and subsequently provide grist for the political mill in years hence.
In short, impending political catastrophe, like in climate change, is in the eye of the beholder. Large political movements have an inertia to change of their own, usually collapsing when old leaders (like old soldiers) never die,they just fade away.
Obama also campaigned on a ticket of discontent and change drawing a large primary turnout which torpedoed Hillary’s efforts to be the first elected woman President.
Today, using crude language and a bellicose style, Trump is also campaigning on a ticket of change again aimed at disaffected groups instead of Eastern establishment and Ivy schooled elites….
The elites will eventually succeed in fielding candidates more to their liking as they are aware and are focusing their energies to do something within their control. In reality however, the Federal budget is mostly consumed by entitlements and the much smaller discretionary portion is all that people are fighting over….
Large political movements have an inertia to change of their own, usually collapsing when old leaders (like old soldiers) never die,they just fade away.
Talking about a nattering nabob of negativism, this takes the prize.
Not everybody, however, buys into the negativism and defeatism:
The struggle of the working class is like the growth of a plant. The plant is blind and stupid, but it knows enough to keep pushing upwards towards the light, and it will do this in the face of endless discouragements.
— GEORGE ORWELL, Looking Back on the Spanish War
Here’s another intellectual who took aim at negativism and defeatism:
When the old New Left students of the 60s academe re-entered the university as teachers, they saw the exhilarated hopes of their youth deflate after 1968, collapse under the backlash of the 70s, and become mere archaeology by 1980. None of the beautiful promises came true.
Their response to this trauma was to shift away from classical Marxism, with its emphasis on economic and class struggle in the real world, and embrace the more diffuse and paranoia-driven theories of the Frankfurt school — Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse.
For these theorists, all human life was ruled by repressive mechanisms embedded, not in manifest politics, but in language, education, entertainment — the whole structure of social communication.
To this was joined the belief of French poststructualism, exemplified by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida… The intellectual, under these conditions, is thought to be as helpless against power and control as a salmon in a polluted stream, the only difference being we, unlike the fish, know the water is poisoned.
Thus, by the theory, we are not in control of our own history and never can be….
It would be difficult to find a worse — or more authoritarian — dead end than this.
John Diggins, in The Rise and Fall of the American Left, puts it in a nutshell:
“Today the intellectual’s challenge is not the Enlightenment one of furthering knowledge to advance freedom: the challenge now is to spread suspicion. The influence of French poststructuralism enjoys in American academic life…answers a deep need, if only the need is to rationalize failure.”
It is mostly an enclave of abstract complaint.
Outside its perimiter, real life, real language and real communication go on.
“Talking about a nattering nabob of negativism, this takes the prize.”
Thank you for your response.
I wonder: who am I to doubt when there has been such a distinguished cadre of intellectuals that first thought and then written such elegant prose? I must surely withdraw my negativism and defeatist attitude in the face of experts, authoritative dialogue, and words clutched upon by those whose passion is to change the world as they see fit.
I am optimistic however, that knowledge drives mankind towards freedom, albeit in a herky-jerky fashion. As far as negativism is concerned, its breadth and nuances are delicious to nibble upon as we already have a God that is good and there seems to be nothing that will stand in his/her path to bring us truth, justice and the American way.
Today, using crude language and a bellicose style, Trump is also campaigning on a ticket of change again aimed at disaffected groups instead of Eastern establishment and Ivy schooled elites.
We saw a similar campaign as Trumps in the 1960’s with Barry Goldwater whose Presidential defeat carried the Republican Party into depths of voter participation and Republican candidate defeats that frankly has Republican Party elites terrified now.
This is the same old boilerplate that the establishment is trotting out against Trump:
<blockquoteFrom Wallace To Trump, The Evolution of “Law And Order”
As the atmosphere inside and outside of Donald Trump’s rallies took a violent turn this weekend, the comparisons grew between Trump and two figures from an earlier era of tumult: President Richard Nixon, and George Wallace, the conservative populist politician whose 1968 campaign for president drew on cries for “law and order.”
And zeroing in on what the Trump-is-Goldwater boilerplate looks like, one can Google “Trump Goldwater.” Here is an example from a leftist blog:
VIDEO: Donald Trump Resembles Far-Right Fanatic Barry Goldwater in 1964 Race With LBJ
In 1964, Goldwater was an Arizona senator, challenging conventional conservative beliefs with far-right, extremist views that went counter to Republican Party lines….
Goldwater captured only 52 electoral votes in that 1964 election, to LBJ’s 486, and lost the race in the biggest landslide defeat since 1820, when James Monroe was elected in the third and last unopposed presidential election in United States history.
Here’s an article that debunks the establishment talking point that is making the rounds:
Establishment Playbook to Defeat Donald Trump Echoes Smears Against Barry Goldwater
In recent months, hysterical opponents of Donald Trump have stoked fears about his candidacy by likening the billionaire to Hitler, raising questions about his mental health, attempting to tie him to the Ku Klux Klan, claiming he may pose a nuclear threat, and warning that a Trump presidency will disrupt international diplomacy and the world order.
While these sentiments might seem novel to most political observers, the template for such attacks may have been set more than five decades ago. All these claims were deployed against Senator Barry Goldwater during his 1964 presidential campaign, which was widely considered a threat to the political establishment.
Countless commentators have compared Trump’s candidacy to Goldwater’s insurgent presidential run. But largely missing from the debate is how Goldwater faced some of the very same attacks made against Trump.
If I recall correctly, Barry Goldwater was defeated in his Presidential aspirations and took the Republican Party down with him. Years later, Nixon, then Reagan, then Bush I & II resurrected the Party as Carter was seen as a nice man but ineffectual as a national politician, and Clinton I is/was not a nice person but deviously effective ala LBJ. Obama has been President in name only, after all, he is a Nobel Prize winner going in. He didn’t have to do anything after the 2008 election.
This election cycle I do not see Trump pushing on the door to the White House because the door is already open, and open to most anyone ala Andrew Jackson.
It will be interesting to watch this election as one might be entertained by a college basketball game. Lots of passion and energy. It gets the blood flowing. Yeh Yeh Cis Boom Bah.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Maybe so.
Since the founding of the United States there has existed a tension between “hard-headed practice, on the lines of Hamilton and Hobbes, and very idealistic theory, on the lines of Jefferson and Locke.”
And according to Eugen Weber, “the tension between theory and practice, between equality and competition, this tension would never be admitted, let alone resolved.”
“The frauds and the illusion necessary to conceal it became part of American history and of history itself, and it is quite possible that without such great delusions and great deceptions too, no great nation can exist, at least not as a nation.”
I would argue that Jefferson is every bit as much of the reality of the United States as is Hamilton.
See the full lecture here:
38. The American Republic
A new republic, the compromise of radicals and conservatives, was founded on universal freedoms.
Agreeing with RiHo08, Trump is doing something the Republicans are not good at doing this time. Bringing in voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote. The establishment of course prefers the status quo. He doesn’t appear to be that to many. The establishments arsenal for maintaining things the way they want them has so far been ineffective. Trump doesn’t need to get ballot access like some third parties would. The Republican voters gave that to him. He hijacked enough Republican voters to get to where he is. He was able to do that because for years the Republicans have not been able to deliver on their rhetoric. Possibly their social stands are hurting them. Perhaps people are tired of being kowtowed to be politically correct. Where are the Republicans when that happens? The establishment Republicans are at their wits end. Threatening a split when that’s in the their playbook of things to avoid at all costs. Why is that we only have two parties in the U.S.? It’s to avoid this chaos of a three way split of the two parties plus one more. It is to shut outsiders out. Like Trump, the Repulican party is going to have to redouble its efforts to keep outsiders out. But it’s a bit late for that this time around.
Trump didn’t hijack anyone. Trump supporters support him by choice.
You are on to something about a third party. If the Redimowit (Dim o’ Wit, Redimowit being a Dimowit with a new tread applied) establishment does not respect the will of its voters, they might will split away from the colony and establish one of their own.
Demagogues work by building up a set of non-problems into looking like the greatest threats that the country has seen, and saying that they are the only people who not only realize them, but the only ones who can stop these trumped up threats. It builds on susceptibility to fearmongering, and there always is a susceptible population for demagogues to use.
Yes, demagoguing is a tool used by politicians to gain power. It doesn’t rely on truth, but more on a cult of personality and taking advantage of weaknesses to try to divide the nation.
Obummer takes every opportunity to divide the nation. Like when an innocent cop has to kill a black person to save his own life, for example. Or talking about “climate change deniers.” Or going against the will of the majority of citizens to pass socialistic healthcare bills. Or destroying miner’s jobs.
JimD. No, I don’t like what Trump does. I LOVE what Trump does? Is that clear? I will vote for Trump if the Redimowit Idiocracy does not nominate either Trump or Cruz. If they deny me my power, I will deny them theirs. I’m done with them.
Jim D:
“Demagogues work by building up a set of non-problems into looking like the greatest threats that the country has seen…”
Everything keeps repeating itself. Trump studied the global warming movement and then just did the same thing more effectively and faster. The right is in denial, skeptical of Trump, but not doing any real vote getting politics. The science says, Trump will be the nominee. Now where is a link between Trump and anything? What explains more than 80% or if you prefer Gavin Schmidt, 120% of his delegates earned? The Republican Party. High correlation there. There is an inverse relationship between the establishment Republicans follow through with economic freedoms and Trump’s delegates. Failure to deliver equals someone who may deliver and talks a better game to date.
Little yimmy wants all the leftist PC crap to be accepted as the norm in this country. Anybody who doesn’t go along and fights back is a “demagogue”. Shut them down and if possible prosecute them for being “deniers” “bigots” yatta..yatta..yatta. Like they are doing in a crumbling Europe, which according to the peripatetic peronista pope is undergoing an “Arab invasion”:
AMSTERDAM (AP) — In a case that will test the limits of Dutch freedom of expression, firebrand lawmaker Geert Wilders appeared in court Friday for the first public hearing in a hate speech prosecution.
The pretrial hearing at a tightly guarded courtroom on the edge of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport comes with Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party standing atop opinion polls a year ahead of Dutch parliamentary elections and with anti-immigrant sentiment rising across Europe.
The case against Wilders, who was acquitted in 2011 of insulting Islam, centers on comments made before and after 2014 local elections. At one party meeting he asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, drawing them into the chant of “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!”
OMG! They are prosecuting this guy whose party is standing atop opinion polls, again, for wanting fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. In other words, he doesn’t like the “Arab invasion”. When are they going to bust that peripatetic peronista pope?
By the way, I have heard from national security types in France that under the emergency powers instituted after the latest Islamic carnage in Paris they have had occasion to search a couple dozen mosques and they have found large numbers of illegal firearms. No reporting of this in the press. Go figure.
“and they have found large numbers of illegal firearms.” I think this happens in American structures of all kinds. What’s the Trump plan for addressing that here?
It appears that you’re advocating for a police state by the wording of your post.
The “party” Republicans have their work cut out, because this is a runaway effect that they unleashed with their constant promotion of anger, fear and loathing in their own media. It is now Trump – Clown Prince and Hair Apparent of the Republican movement (excuse spelling). He will likely get the majority, and they are tied by their oath to support him, oddly backwards from how they wanted that oath to play out. I say serves them right, and they are getting the candidate they deserve with their “in-depth” debates.
You just keep showing how utterly dumb you are, danny. Where do you get that I am advocating anything in that comment. I stated what was reported to me by people I know and trust. WTF are you talking about? Do you think that many Christian churches or Jewish synagogues here or in Europe have large arms caches on premises? Do you think the press would be told to lay off the story and co-operate if there were large arms caches found in those places? Do you have a freaking clue about anything? Or are you just here to see your crap in print and get any kind of attention you can get?
Oh, yeah Don, my ‘crap in print’ is really going to my head. Attention? From who?
It was your words wishing that the information about the finding of illegal guns being found in mosques should be made more available thru the media (thought you didn’t like the media). Why? What does it matter the structure? That they are illegal is important, and that applies equally to finding illegal weapons in any structure. Were they found in a church or synagogue would you feel it to be so important that the structure be included?
Now we know what you consider pathetic. What I consider pathetic is your choice to emphasize the weapons locations within mosques vs. that illegal weapons are found in many locations in Europe and this is easily discovered from a simple Google search. Speaking coherently.
Don, try this, research Muslim vs. radical. You might find radicals of all persuasions. And have a wonderful spring equinox.
During Thursday night’s Republican debate, a moderator — finally! — asked about climate change, and Marco Rubio supplied an answer that, while banal and dogmatic, was fascinating in its own way….
Rubio’s argument contains three parts.
First, even when twice asked to do so, he refuses to accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming, which is the consensus belief held by climate scientists that the release of heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere leads to warmer temperatures….
Amazingly, Rubio continues to maintain this is all just a bunch of stuff that happens with no discernible pattern, insisting, “There’s never been a time when the climate has not changed,” and dismissing efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions as a futile effort to “change the weather,” using a favorite sneer for climate-science skeptics, who conflate weather with climate.
Second, Rubio repeated his insistence that the Obama administration’s climate policies, or any policies designed to seriously mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions, would create prohibitive costs….
Major new clean-energy technologies — wind, solar, batteries, LEDs — have plummeted in cost:
[T]he electricity sector is rapidly transitioning into zero-carbon sources….
It is not only the power sector that is responding. The auto sector is on the verge of rolling out electric cars that are fully price-competitive with gasoline-powered versions….
Rubio’s third argument is that the (imaginary) crippling effects of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions will bring no benefit, since other countries will never reciprocate….
The green-energy revolution is really two revolutions acting in tandem: an increase in political willpower, and the rise of new technologies to reduce carbon usage….
Rubio revealed the mind-set of a party that remains fully in denial of all this — not just the science but the diplomatic and technological transformation now well under way. The horror of the populist insurgency besieging the GOP from its perimeter has diverted attention from the deep intellectual rot at its core.
I am afraid that the lens through which you seem to view Republican’s stance on climate change may have an astigmatism, the inability to focus outside of New York City.
As this blog represents, the rush to judgement by the climate cabal and has implications that reach into people’s pocketbooks, and people tend to notice such things.
Just today, the bird burning solar furnace owned by Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert is seeking an extension of its license as it has so far has failed to produce the expected power even at $200 a megawatt-hour. I am not saying that BrightSource Energy Inc should give all the $2.2 billion cost back to rate payers since $1.5 billion was fronted by the US taxpayer. Now, what is the return on investment for bankruptcy?
The rush to judgement by climate activists failed to consider the uncertainty of the whole story. This blindness, or in reality distorted view has probably delayed investment into workable alternatives to providing energy because of bad investments in failed Pi in the sky schemes.
I’d be curious how Pew segregated Climate and Environment in their questionaire.
Found this: “(I’d like to ask you about priorities for President Barack Obama and Congress this year (2016). As I read from a list, tell me if you think each should be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important or should it not be done.) Should…dealing with global climate change be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important, or should it not be done?
Jan 14, 2016, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
View Question Results
View Report [Jan 22, 2016]
and this:”(I’d like to ask you about priorities for President Barack Obama and Congress this year (2016). As I read from a list, tell me if you think each should be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important or should it not be done.) Should…protecting the environment be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important, or should it not be done?
Jan 14, 2016, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press”
If these were the phrasing, seems ‘environment’ won out.
1) Not religious.
2) Pro-religious
3) Anti evolution because evolution ‘is bad for religion’.
No kind of soon is soon enough to get the guys out in the gutter where they belong.
—-
“Because of Strauss’ teachings, Kristol continued, “There are in Washington today dozens of people who are married with children and religiously observant. Do they have faith? Who knows? They just believe that it is good to go to church or synagogue. Whether you believe or not is not the issue — that’s between you and God — whether you are a member of a community that holds certain truths sacred, that is the issue.” Neoconservatives are “pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers.”
This noble hypocrisy on the part of intellectuals is required in order to encourage religious belief in ordinary people who would otherwise succumb to nihilism without it. In other words, Kristol believes that religion, which may well be a fiction, is necessary to keep the little people in line. This line of thinking has led him and other neoconservative intellectuals to attack Darwinian evolution because they fear it undermines religious belief.”
Interesting approach: “Consider what it might look like if two dozen Republican senators, 150 House members and 15 Republican governors appeared together at a news conference Monday to announce that they were supporting Cruz.” (I’ll insert Kasich in lieu of Cruz but you get the point)
It could be the beginning of the end for the republican party. The party “establishment” doesn’t seem to want to give up power. It is suicide and their actions will give the election to the democrats if they continue.
Danny- Whatever sub-banner they support, their party would be stronger if the establishment united behind him and helped to make him a stronger candidate. FYI- I am an independent
Rob,
FWIW, me too! Socially liberal but fiscally conservative. Too many banners under the heading of ‘Republican’ lead to not being able to do what you suggest should be done to move Trump forward as a candidate. How can a libertarian, conservative, moderate, Trump (ex? democrat, may be chameleon) led entity coexist? Having a hard time grasping. Think he’s solid at a third, but not sure ‘which’ third.
Hope this formats properly:
Trump’s affiliations have gone back and forth since then. Here’s a quick look:
Month and year of registration/Party affiliation
July 1987 Republican
October 1999 Independence Party
August 2001 Democrat
September 2009 Republican
December 2011 No party affiliation (independent)
April 2012 Republican
I fit that description and “believe” that it is where a majority of the voting population is at this point.
Now defining the specifics of what is included in “socially liberal” and how “fiscally conservative” goals should be implemented will have wild debates.
I’m sorta like you. Socially liberal, and personally fiscally conservative. I would like to see the national debt paid down a little. However, I think government borrowing is ok. Businesses do it, so why not government?
Max1OK,
I’m going to hazard a guess that most of us here are fairly socially liberal and fairly fiscally conservative personally. Money and it’s handling is not taught to much of a level below the college level, and I think most here are somewhat educated. Libertarians tend to be for individual rights (and responsibility). Those considered socially conservative obviously don’t fit that mold, but even there my perception has grown that there are societal acceptances.
And when ‘the free market’ is not in a position to implement growth, then government has tools to act as substitute but this should be only an interim position so some borrowing is acceptable. The problem comes when social ‘support’ becomes a crutch and not a short term leg up. Borrowing for that, as it does on a personal level, is a recipe for problems.
“However, I think government borrowing is ok. Businesses do it, so why not government?”
Nothing is wrong with government borrowing if properly managed. When a business borrows excessively it goes broke, when a government borrows excessively it leads to a massive devaluation of their currency.
Currently, the US benefits by being the largest economy in an economically weak world. We should not expect this situation to be maintained and should fix our basic economics.
The key issue is not really the total US debt, but is the ability to balance current expenses with current revenues over an extended period. A large portion of the long term debt can be “written off” since the government owes it to itself.
What we can’t do is to continually spend more than we generate in revenue. The real problem is our expenses will grow drastically in the next 15 years and most almost all politicians do not realistically address the issue since it requires difficult choices.
“Money and it’s handling is not taught to much of a level below the college level, ”
Well, I’d advise you do your part. Junior Achievement has been teaching this for decades. I’ve been a volunteer for the past 9 years, working with students from 3rd thru 8th grade.
I am not exaggerating when I say the majority of them exhibit better understanding of finance and economics than max shows on these pages.
TimG56,
That’s a great idea, and thank you for doing so. In my family, I’ve tried to share the time value of money with the ‘youngers’. Think it’s open their eyes a bit. Reminding them that money is printed in papers daily (& the internet) for easy use in stores comes as a surprise to some.
Fiscal conservative, social liberal. But such a party cannot exist as it isn’t one the two established ones. No third parties allowed. In practice, that is the rule. Trump is a third party and is breaking their rule. And the Republicans are threatening to break the rule that served them well for a long time. They’ll add a third candidate if they can to sabotage Trump. They can stop Trump from getting elected, but to do so, they’ll cause Clinton to get elected. How many Republicans will urge a party meltdown to stop Trump?
Left vs. right issue: the politically-motivated Inculcation of global warming alarmism shines a spotlight on the dangers of ‘Common Core’ in the classroom.
Common core is favored by parents who fear their kids will be even dumber than them, and resisted by parents who fear their kids won’t be as dumb as them.
Nobody (almost) seems to be against education standards, and almost all seem to agree that these standards should be locally driven. What should be done if the local standards do not result in good results?
Rob – If anything should be done if local standards don’t work, it should be fixed by the locals. The good thing about local standards is that we will have thousands of education experiments. And without Federal funding, it will have to be done with a reasonable amount of money. I think it would be OK.
OTOH, I’m really tired of hearing politicians say we need to fix or improve the education system. If it hasn’t happened in the last 50 years of “improvements,” it ain’t gonna happen. But what has happened is that teachers and administrators have a sweet pension plan and the Dimowits have a captive audience.
Common core raises the bar for performance. It’s a shame opponents of common core want to deny children the opportunity to be all they can be. I can’t understand why anyone would want to hold kids back, unless it’s a “kid should know his place” thing.
My kids attended public schools that were run by a liberal judge named Barefoot Sanders. The locals were so corrupt and incompetent and evil that the federal government intervened. The high school he initiated is considered the best public high school in the country.
As Trump takes the lead, rich GOP donors have no one to give to
Trump now appears to be the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination for president. And if he’s the nominee, what will top donors such as hedge funders Robert Mercer (a big giver to Ted Cruz), Paul Singer (Rubio) and Ken Griffin (Rubio) do with their money? Here are five possibilities:
In typical neocon fashion, the “crashing and burning” of the Republican Party all somebody else’s fault, in this case Trump’s.
Jjust like the Iraq quagmire the neocons lied us into, they judge themselves completely blameless in creating the insurgency that is ripping the Republican Party apart.
Donald Trump is getting blamed for more ills, or potential ills if he is elected, than ills blamed on global warming. It’s totally amazing and just as unbelievable.
jim2, facts are stubborn things. I understand Republicans are not happy with the past 8 years, They lost the elections and have had to put up with policies dictated by the winners of the elections.
But regardless of the ebb and flow of the daily news, those checkpoints I cited are true. Why would you not acknowledge them and move on to specific areas where you disagree with the president’s actions?
Obama is the best president ever, even better than Bill Clinton. We should hope Hillary Clinton will be as good as her husband Bill. IMO, she has the potential for being even better than Obama.
Looking at the U.S. from outside (I live in Taiwan), it looks to me like Obama (who I voted for twice) has at the very minimum followed Hippocrates’ dictum ‘do no harm.’
Employment up? Check. Unemployment down? Check. Uninsured down? Check. Country (broadly) at peace? Check. Wages rising? Check. Crime down? Check. Teen pregnancy down? Check.
As those are the measures by which other presidents are rated during and after their tenure, I do believe history will be kind to President Obama.
Tom Fuller: “Employment up? Check. Unemployment down? Check. Uninsured down? Check. Country (broadly) at peace? Check. Wages rising? Check.”
Talk about misleading statistics. 1. “Employment up” — Very debatable. Percentage of work age people working down or static. Young minority workers no improvement. 2. “Uninsured down” Ridiculous. I have garbagecare. It costs $963 per month for $12,000 deductible (4 years ago was $387 per month for $7,000 deductible.) I wouldn’t even call the garbagecare I have insurance between its high cost and high deductible. It went up 10%!!! from last year. Disaster for the middle class and above. 3. “Country broadly at peace” — Really. I think the racial and cultural divide is much worse than it was 20 years ago. See the Black Lives Matter movement and White reaction to it. 4. “Wages Rising” — No. See Pew Article “a look at five decades’ worth of government wage data suggests that the better question might be, why should now be any different? For most U.S. workers, real wages — that is, after inflation is taken into account — have been flat or even falling for decades, regardless of whether the economy has been adding or subtracting jobs.” See http://stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/wages/
Even worse is Obama’s destruction of the rule of law with respect to Executive Orders, particularly with respect to illegal immigration. It is one thing to look the other way and not enthusiastically to enforce a law — which has been upheld by the courts. However, what Obama has done is to actively encourage law breaking and illegal immigration. Under his analysis (and as he said the power of the pen), the exception overtakes the rule and makes congressionally passed law superfluous and irrelevant. Maybe, he, or another President, will decide not to enforce tax laws or laws against sexual harassment. His legacy in this area is horrendous and risks destroying the rule of law in the US.
Crime tends to be a local phenomenon, with local measures dictating whether it goes up or down. Not much a President can do to impact that. Plus the trending in lower crime is a long term one that predates our current President.
Well Obama showed us how a President can have an impact. I’ve read reports showing that crime is increasing in cities as law enforcement is stepping back and not getting involved. It seems they are getting the message loud and clear that black lives matter – as in they matter when an officer is involved. Not so much when it is blacks killing other blacks.
Little tommy should tote up the cost of the “shovel ready” jobs Obama has “created”. Compare GDP growth over the period of Obama’s reign with the growth in federal debt. Where is all the money going? Wall Street? Somebody after the anointed has left the scene will have to pay for that. Housing market up, it’s another bubble, created by loosey goosey Keynesian-Democrat fed policy, just like the last bubble. How is Obama doing on gun comntrol, tommy? Isn’t it about 200 additional firearms? And you say crime is down, What a co-incidence. Healtcare? Every body is still getting healthcare, except folks with those increasing deductibles are avoiding going to the docs. Emergency room visits down. Well no they aren’t. Yatta…yatta…yatta.
An interesting observation, but consider a key difference. One relied upon donations to reach and maintain a position of power while the other did not.
Rob,
True. However, does that justify “getting blamed for more ills, or potential ills” to a level of being “totally amazing and just as unbelievable”? And does the capitalist deserve more or less blame than the organizer/politician?
Heck, some assert “Obummer has screwed up the country even worse than Clinton 1 and the Bushes” w/o any sort of consideration of the starting points, levels of cooperation, and improvement in standing. But when one views a ‘curve’ with one’s head slanted too far any direction the results get skewed.
Now don’t misread me as an Obama apologist. I did vote his way, but as with most heads of state I ‘believe’ some of his directions where appropriate while others not so much. But in history, with clear eyes, the rhetoric will likely soften. In the end so far I give him a fair to good rating.
It’s interesting to me that opposition (no matter the party) seems to have downtrended over time while same party support has steadied:
Rob,
Just taking a rub at Jim2’s assertion that “Obummer has screwed up the country even worse than………….”. His is an unsupported blanket comment which has no way (other than as a political statement) to be validated. The chart is offered to show the approval ratings over time and several administrations and as evidence that the Clinton and Bush’s approval ratings and Obama’s are quite similar and each follows party lines.
Danny – you really need to pay more attention. Read the President posts more closely. For example, Obummer’s doubling of the national debt has been highlighted. He has ruined the healthcare system. He has put bunches of coal miners out of business and he is still picking on them today. He had dumped money into failed “green” energy companies. He has put the Middle East into chaos. He is the most incompetent President of all time. There is Benghazi. There is Iran. There’s more, but my fingers are getting tired.
Jim2,
I pay plenty of attention, but obviously you and I wear different glasses. We may not be far off on education and local control.
Some areas you’re going to have to show me and not tell me:
Healthcare has been ruined under Obama.
Obama’s doubling of the national debt (w/o credit for addressing the greatest financial crisis in a generation and improvement since that crisis).
Coal Miners. Yep. I’ll give you that one.
Green energy. We’ll have to see about that one. Yes, some poor choices. But not all and in any regard this will take substantial time before a determination can be made based on apolitical evaluation and long term energy needs (I did not say climate oriented).
Middle East in chaos. We’ve meddled for a long time, and it’s been chaotic before us. Proving it’s worse soley due to Obama would be of interest.
Iran. I’m undereducated so cannot reasonably comment, but again please prove not just political commentary.
Benghazi. Political football, and sadly on the backs of the lost lives of Americans. I wasn’t there, it was handled terribly with the original Rice commentary after the event. But the reality I doubt we’ll ever know. If congress had anything we’d know.
Your list. Have at it. I see political talking points. And with every evaluation, Jim, there are pros and cons. Where is your list of pros?
Most incompetent? Eh. You and I’ve both seen incompetence/deception/misdirection before, and recently. ‘Most’ needs to be quantified.
Jim2,
2nd attempt w/ a couple modifications to clear moderation
Jim2,
I pay plenty of attention, but obviously you and I wear different glasses. We may not be far off on education and local control.
Some areas you’re going to have to show me and not tell me:
Healthcare has been ruined under Obama.
Obama’s doubling of the national debt (w/o credit for addressing the greatest financial crisis in a generation and improvement since that crisis).
Coal Miners. Yep. I’ll give you that one.
Green energy. We’ll have to see about that one. Yes, some poor choices. But not all and in any regard this will take substantial time before a determination can be made based on apolitical evaluation and long term energy needs (I did not say climate oriented).
Middle East in chaos. We’ve meddled for a long time, and it’s been chaotic before us. Proving it’s worse soley due to Obama would be of interest.
Iran. I’m undereducated so cannot reasonably comment, but again please prove not just political commentary.
Benghazi. Political football, and sadly on the backs of the lost lives of Americans. I wasn’t there, it was handled terribly with the original Rice commentary after the event. But the reality I doubt we’ll ever know. If congress had anything we’d know.
Your list. Have at it. I see political talking points. And with every evaluation, Jim, there are pros and cons. Where is your list of pros?
Most inc0mpetent? Eh. You and I’ve both seen inc0mpetence/decepti0n/misdirection before, and recently. ‘Most’ needs to be quantified.
More people are employed now than at any time in American history. The national deficit now is at a level consistent with or even below the average of the last 30 or more years, with only the late 90’s having a lower deficit rate. That’s just what the numbers say for anyone that cares to check, which of course most people don’t. Overblown concern about these is just politics as usual.
JimD,
I’m not sure the number of people employed is the correct metric. What was the population vs. the employment percentage (of those wishing to work) would be a better evaluation?
The population has grown faster than the number of jobs, but we don’t know if that population growth is at the young or old end, or immigrants. It doesn’t necessarily tell us that it is more competitive for jobs. Insufficient data.
The national deficit now is at a level consistent with or even below the average of the last 30 or more years, with only the late 90’s having a lower deficit rate.
That’s just what the numbers say for anyone that cares to check, which of course most people don’t. Overblown concern about these is just politics as usual.
Interpretation: People don’t have any rational reason to be upset with Obama, so it must be their irrational prejudice (read racism) that’s motivating their dislike of him.
Glenn, let’s define terms. When I say more are employed, numerically more are employed. It is 148 million (Bureau of Labor Statistics). When I say the deficit is similar to the 30-year average, I mean the deficit in the last few years is similar to the 30-year average. We are back to normal in deficit as a percentage of GDP. There was a large deficit from the stimulus package to get us out of the mess left by the previous administration, so it is not fair to credit that to Obama. The deficit is now stabilized.
Glenn, whose fault is that?
Let’s help. Total income has increased, GDP is healthy, the US is making money. Where is all that extra wealth going? Not to the middle class. What would be a solution for this?
Income inequality is a major issue for economic health. Higher equality means more spending per income. The US is going towards inequality as you show. A better tax system with less loopholes for the wealthy could help that. There should be no way that wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. So far the Republicans have resisted this (TP and Norquist doctrines), so inequality mounts. The solution is known and Obama keeps proposing it, but the will hasn’t been there from Congress.
The deficit may be stabilized for a couple of years as a % of GDP, but with Real GDP expected to be at historical lows that will not last. The entitlements and Social Programs at $3 Trillion per year are going to eat up any tax revenues in the future just for population growth and inflation.
From 1945 to 1960 the National Debt Held By The Public grew from $235 B to 237 B, a 1% increase. Since 2000 the Debt Held By the Public (not total debt) grew by 300%. That amount $13.8 Trillion is what the Net Interest is calculated from. The deficit in FY 16 is estimated at $612 B. It will go down a bit for a couple of years but then start going up. The rate of increase on the $13.8 Trillion is going to exceed the rate of increase of GDP and thus the increase of tax revenues and thus the Net Debt Service costs.
Japan is paying 40% of the tax revenues for debt service costs. If the US can’t get Real GDP over current levels we will be there all too soon.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
The intriguing thing is that, in your attempts to distort the realities of the current political and economic situation, you end up being on the same page as conservatives like cerescokid and Ragnaar, although for very different reasons.
So left meets right, with both denying the current realities of working- and middle-class existence in the United States.
For a good example of how conservatives have also joined in denying economic and political realities, see this thread:
As much as Democrats like to push income inequality and how they would fix that, the data shows that inequality worsens under Democrat Presidents. With Obama having one of the biggest jumps in inequality.
Good interview about Trump’s finances….including a fascinating factoid about Trump’s, shall we say unusual, loan of over 3 million from daddy Trump to help bail him out in Atlantic city.
The establishment Republicans and Democrats are running around with their hair on fire, but all their histrionics, amplified by an obedient mainstream media, aren’t working.
Trump seems to have mastered some sort of primal, psychological Taekwondo. The more the plutocrats, bureaucrats, establishment politicians, and billionaire technocrats attack him, the harder their collective head hits the ground.
He is appealing to paranoia, which does play to the internal fears of susceptible people. Phrases like China and Mexico are laughing at us, or the Islamic religion is out to get us are right from the paranoia playbook. I don’t know if Trump is paranoid himself, but if not he knows how to pretend he is for the sake of getting support.
WHICH socialism, Jim. Which are you okay with, and which not? Specifics. Not broad talking point generalizations.
Medicaid okay? Medicare? Farm Bill? Social Security? Veterans benefits? How about tangibles like water systems and electrical distribution systems? Roads and bridges?
Just more fluff and no substance Jim, and normally from you this is not what I expect.
And I never once said or intimated racism. That’s another talking point.
Jim2,
And I managed to leave out public schools. Police protection. Military. Public transportation. And that you want to use my money to build your wall across a border (a socialism I’m aware of that you’re for).
Yet I still don’t know which ‘socialisms’ you’re not for.
Real conservatives? What’s that? Seems to be a severe shortage of specifics and long on rhetoric, more of which is unhelpful.
We have some ‘real conservatives’ in power right now in our congress. Those I want in charge of the purse strings, yet much like you they seem to choose to be offering general resistance and no answers. Let’s hear ’em.
jim2 means we need less racism and more socialism. I agree on less racism, but I believe we already have enough public libraries, schools, roads, etc., and now with Obamacare we have health at least partially covered.
Danny, You like the socialism and the big government. Is there point where there would be too much socialism , or the governmental control.too pervasive? Do you think there are any possible negative effects of socialism or a more dominant government?
Chuckrr,
Please don’t misinterpret my questions as an indication that I’m all about big government and/or socialism. Some I do ‘like’. But I’m actually fairly fiscally conservative and chide our congress for ineffectiveness. The point is that when someone suggests that big government is the root of all evil and socialism is as well I’m trying to figure out if they’re just spouting political talking points of if they’ve thought things through.
I suspect most people…even conservatives….realize we have socialistic programs and agencies. Some are quasi socialist and some full blown. A I would like to know if someone can articulate how much socialism and big government is ideal. Do they feel there is a point of diminishing returns and have we reached that point or will we ever. My opinion has probably been revealed by the questions I ask. That fact in itself is interesting but I wouldn’t assume someone that doesn’t ask that question hasn’t put a lot of thought into it.
“I would like to know if someone can articulate how much socialism and big government is ideal.” I’d comment that it’s probably much like porn. Hard to describe, but you know it when you see it.
And your willingness to suggest socialism is a necessary in some forms and to some level is more than many are capable of and is courageous to state in some company.
The longer answer is that it seems obvious to me that in some areas we are long overdue for modifications. For me, as example, a leg up over a hand out. And even there a time limit. I’ve suggested that those capable of working are subject to some ‘reasonable’ time (6 months-2 years?) and if not employed then must perform public works to continue receipt of public support. (Leaving out the incapable for shortness).
Chuck,
Final segment.
Diminishing returns? You bet. When assistance becomes reliance w/o participation/contribution. Soc. Sec. includes both in most cases.
To jim2, Reagan would be a socialist because the last substantial payroll tax increase was in that administration. Republicans ain’t what they used to be.
From the article:
…
I predicted in this column last week that the left wasn’t going to kill off the coal industry so much as it was going to steal it. That prediction is already becoming true courtesy of billionaire George Soros.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Act filings indicate that Soros has purchased an initial 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal, the two largest publicly traded U.S. coal companies. As pointed out last week, both companies have been driven perilously close to bankruptcy by the combination of President Obama’s “war on coal” and inexpensive natural gas brought on by the hydrofracturing revolution.
Under the hypothesis that not even socialists would leave trillions of dollars worth of a perfectly safe and clean energy source in the ground for the sake of the imaginary “climate crisis,” I posited that once the existing coal industry ownership was wiped out by President Obama’s regulatory onslaught, a new politically correct ownership would rehabilitate the fuel by contributing to Democrats.
… http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/17/the-new-king-coal-george-soros/
Peter M Davies | March 17, 2016 at 8:00 am |
Agree that anti illegal migration is not anti migration. Countries have the right to control who enters their countries to take up permanent residence.
=================================================
Would that that were true. In the EU it is not. One of many reasons why I shall be voting to leave the EU in June.
EU-wide immigration rules generally apply in 24 out of the EU’s 27 countries. The following exceptions apply:
Denmark does not apply EU-wide rules which relate to immigration, visa and asylum policies.
Ireland and the United Kingdom choose, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not to adopt EU rules on immigration, visa and asylum policies.
National Immigration Rules
Each EU country alone decides:
The total number of migrants that can be admitted to the country to look for work;
All final decisions on migrant applications;
Rules on long-term visas – stays for periods longer than three months; and
Conditions to obtain residence and work permits when no EU-wide rules have been adopted.
That’s the solar plant that burns nat gas. What a waste of money. More from the article:
Ivanpah, which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it would. The plant only generated 45 percent of expected power in 2014 and only 68 percent in 2015, according to government data.
And it does all this at a cost of $200 per megawatt hour — nearly six times the cost of electricity from natural gas-fired power plants. Interestingly enough, Ivanpah uses natural gas to supplement its solar production.
I consult for a homebuilder who recently fell for a pitch on rooftop solar and was considering building it into all new homes. I deconstructed the pitch and found that under very limited conditions it was a good idea. The limited condition was that $4/watt system cost must be offset by a $3/watt rebate from the electric company and a 30% federal tax credit on the remainder. That reduces the cost to the homebuilder for a 6kw system to $4000 from $24,000. I further suggested that the builder would be buying in bulk so should negotiate for a $4000 discount from the solar installer since it’s much easier to install on a new home during construction than an existing home. That would make the cost to the homebuilder free and in the Austin Energy electric district result in $56/mo lower electric bill.
The interesting thing is I got the actual local performance in generated kilowatt hours per year from a local solar advocate “Austin Solar” who use measured results from local installations. The solar system installer tried referring me to here: http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php which produces a theoretical annual production for any area in the country.
The federal gov’t website gave me a figure 62% higher than that given by Austin Solar. The reason I’m saying all this is that Ivanpah underperformed state expectations by roughly the same amount as NREL overestimates rooftop solar performance in Austin.
I included a link and quote from the Ivanpah story in my advice to the homebuilder. We’re looking at some larger developments of high end homes, several hundred homes each, in an explosive growth region in the rapidly expanding Austin suburbs. These projects are in a different electric utility district than Austin Energy called Pedernales Electric. Pedernales Electric is non-profit coop who offers not one thin dime in rebates for solar. My advice for those projects – don’t even think about rooftop solar. The payoff time (Return On Invested Capital or ROIC) is over 50 years without the rebate which is bad news for a system with a 25 year service life.
The long and short of my research is that even at 30 degrees north latitude an ideally placed (30 degree roof pitch, due south exposure) rooftop solar installation cannot cost more than $1 per watt nameplate capacity at 4% interest rate (cost of capital) in order to make it a good investment.
P.S. it makes getting a roof replaced cost a lot more and also produces numerous potential entry points for water through the flashing that surrounds the mounts which must be anchored to roof studs. On a new home that isn’t so bad as the service life of 25-year shingles is the same as the solar panels. On metal or tile roofs with far longer service lives it’s not an issue as the mounts will essentially never need to be tampered with so long as the flashing is intact. The service life of the solar system is determined by solar panel degradation. The panels are easy enough to replace without tampering with anything else.
Just for kicks I ran the numbers for my hometown in upstate NY at 42 degrees north latitude. The total kilowatt hours generated declined about 15% which is less than I would have guessed. The kicker is that the local electric company purchases power from Niagra Falls electric company for less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour and passes that same cost to the consumers since it’s a non-profit city gov’t service. The cost of solar generated electricity is 7 cents per kilowatt hour even using the overly optimistic federal gov’t website http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php
So it’s definitely a no go for Niagra Falls electric customers.
I have a clip of an article in moderation. Part of the clip:
U.S. Securities and Exchange Act filings indicate that Soros has purchased an initial 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal,
But surely Soros should be using all that moolah he’s spending on coal to buy Ivanpah. Ivanpah can always do with an extra quid…mostly for its gas bill.
Free energy from the sun, George! We won’t mention the gas (or what you did in the war).
Ok. At age 14, living in 1944 WWII Hungary, Soro’s well-to-do father bought forged papers and bribed a gov’t official into swearing that George was his Christian godson. Soros then accompanied the gov’t official around on his job. The job was confiscating the possessions of Jewish families being sent off to death camps.
True story confirmed by Soros himself in an interview on 60 Minutes broadcast on December 20, 1998:
KROFT: (Voiceover) To understand the complexities and contradictions in his personality, you have to go back to the very beginning: to Budapest, where George Soros was born 68 years ago to parents who were wealthy, well-educated and Jewish.
When the Naziis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.
(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)
KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros’ friends and neighbors.
(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) You’re a Hungarian Jew…
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…
(Vintage footage of women walking by train)
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
(Vintage footage of people getting on train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) … by — by posing as a Christian.
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.
(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)
KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and — and anticipate events and when — when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a — a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s — that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not — not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t — you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c — I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was — well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would — would — would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the — whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the — I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Ok. At age 14, living in 1944 WWII Hungary, Soro’s well-to-do father bought forged papers and bribed a gov’t official into swearing that George was his Christian godson. Soros then accompanied the gov’t official around on his job. The job was confiscating the possessions of Jewish families being sent off to death camps.
True story confirmed by Soros himself in an interview on 60 Minutes broadcast on December 20, 1998:
KROFT: (Voiceover) To understand the complexities and contradictions in his personality, you have to go back to the very beginning: to Budapest, where George Soros was born 68 years ago to parents who were wealthy, well-educated and Jewish.
When the Naazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.
(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)
KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros’ friends and neighbors.
(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) You’re a Hungarian Jew…
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…
(Vintage footage of women walking by train)
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
(Vintage footage of people getting on train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) … by — by posing as a Christian.
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.
(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)
KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and — and anticipate events and when — when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a — a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s — that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not — not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t — you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c — I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was — well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would — would — would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the — whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the — I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Of course, Soros’ favourite coal would have to be the Kosovar lignite of Trepca. Not to mention all the other yummy minerals those Serbs were squatting on.
You’d just kill for a slice of Trepca, wouldn’t you?
Graham also said of Ted Cruz “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” if that’s any indication of how desperate the Republican party is right now.
If you had asked me four years ago to concoct the most dispiriting and debilitating 2016 presidential campaign, I might have said, “Start with a political family; find a scandal-scarred creature of Washington addicted to 20th-century identity politics.”
“Now find a vacuous outsider; somebody who reflects the worst of modern politics and culture. A celebrity would be perfect. Better yet, a reality star who is famous for being famous, a social media whore, a boor, a bully who traffics in old hates via new technologies.”
I might have picked Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump. What could be worse for a creaky, cancerous political system than what the Democratic and Republican parties are brewing up? Nothing really. This is as bad as it gets.
Votes for Trump essentially are a public referendum on the continued acceptability of the use by the Left of political correctness as a tool for the high tech lynching of opponents of their ideology and for the social waterboarding of skeptics of initiatives the Left claims are in the best interests of all the people.
From the article:
…
Visits to campaign rallies in Florida this week confirmed what polls have been suggesting for months: Donald Trump is leading the race for the Republican nomination in large part because he’s winning over throngs of nonhabitual voters.
…
At a Trump rally in Boca Raton, meanwhile, the crowd of 6,000 was younger and much noisier. “We want Trump!” they chanted in unison, a spectacle that would have been striking even if it hadn’t been at night, in an outdoor amphitheater, with spotlights ranging across their heads.
…
Ask Trump supporters why they back him, and you hear different versions of the same litany: He’s not a politician. He’s a businessman who can get things done. He doesn’t bow to “political correctness.”
“He’s a billionaire,” explained Deborah Patronik, Richard’s wife.
“He’s saying a lot of things that we’re thinking,” said Gil Brown, 54, an African American businessman from Lakeland. “It’s so refreshing to hear somebody say things clearly.”
(Brown said he wasn’t worried about Trump’s views on race. “I’ve been on the receiving end of racism. I know what it’s like,” he said. “I’m not hearing it from him.”)
The race-baiters are –snipping– their drawers worrying over how much of the black and hispanic Trump will get. And many will stay home, because they know that granny hilly-billy doesn’t care squat for them.
“Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011 email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The Agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.
Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence. Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program or SAP, several of which from CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.
Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.
How Sid Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and there’s no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reports – none of which he was supposed to have any access to – and pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels, indicates something highly unusual—as well as illegal—was going on.”
Meanwhile in Obamaland, they are very good at keeping secret the information on what are supposed to be transparent operations of government that folks have requested under FOIA:
“The Obama administration set a record for the number of times its federal employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page requested under the Freedom of Information Act, according to a new Associated Press analysis of government data.”
“You gotta dance with the one who brung ya” is the first rule of politics where I come from.
However, the first thing the president from Wall Street did when he got in office was to betray the millions of everyday Americans who brung him to the dance.
The art of cooptation, that’s Obama’s great forte.
“Change you can believe in!” What a crock.
There’s a great documentary that poignantly shows how quickly Obama turned on the people who had put such great hopes in him.
Lifting the Veil
Well surprise, Obama, you and the lords didn’t quell the insurection, and now it’s resurfaced in the most unlikely of places.
Pretty easy to explain when you have so many dimwits asking for stuff that doesn’t exist. They want to believe so badly they just make stuff up and then think there is a conspiracy when nobody can find the stuff they made up. The same ones who actually believe Trump is going to build awall, pull out of trade agreements, and deport 12 million people.
From the article:
…
The ballot measure, Initiative Petition 52 (2016) (IP 52), will be submitted to Oregon voters soon. If passed, IP 52 would require businesses with five or more employees to confirm that their employees are actually legally eligible to work. The measure was the work-product of Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR).
Government regulates jobs out of existence. Can’t wait for the ad showing a robot eating a hamburger!! From the article:
…
The CEO of Carl’s Jr., Andy Puzder, has been inspired by the 100-percent automated restaurant, Eatsa, as he looks for ways to deal with rising minimum wages. “With government driving up the cost of labor, it’s driving down the number of jobs,” he says. “You’re going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants.” Puzder doesn’t believe in [the progressive idea of] raising the minimum wage. “Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job? If you’re making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive — this is not rocket science,” says Puzder.
… https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/03/17/2220225/fast-food-ceo-invests-in-machines-because-regulation-makes-them-cheaper-than-employees
Trump looks a lot better than any democrat on climate. At least he’s not pushing for a bunch of Malthusian, crony capitalist energy policies … yet! Still, there is a lot about him that is uncertain and disturbing — especially wrt libel laws. With all his outbursts, perhaps he might balance tighter libel laws with looser slander ones. If he’s the candidate, I’ll still probably vote for him. If we’re going to have a banana republic, we might as well have someone who looks the part.
Ted Cruz is a Christian Dominionist, i.e. a Christian Facist.
And almost certainly an atheist at the same time (all neocons are).
“Cruz’s approach to politics is inseparable from this theology. His goal is to lead a Christian occupation of the culture and then wait for the Second Coming of Christ.”
“The misguided Dominionists believe that they have been “anointed and chosen” to “bring in the Kingdom” of the Lord Jesus Christ. This heresy is not found in the Bible. The Bible says in Revelation that the Kingdom will only come when the King, Jesus Christ, returns at the Second Coming. And it will not happen one moment before the return of Jesus Christ. ”
Outta be a fun time at the GOP convention this time out.
No, I don’t think so. Rubio endorsed Cruz which means when those delegates are released from their pledge they will vote for who Rubio designated in his last will and testament.
I expect Kasich will do the same thing so his delegates vote for Cruz on the second vote.
Cruz then has an easy majority on the second vote and the democratic process prevails. Trump needed to somehow get Rubio to endorse him instead of Cruz and Trump’s big fat mouth (tiny hands, big mouth) made that ship sail the other way. In the end Trump was his own worst enemy. Fact.
Dummie Donnie, the reptile king with the tiny brain, must be off licking his wounds somewhere. Or maybe he’s hungry and found a fly covered mound of Trump Steaks processed by The Donald into Trump Turds to feast upon.
I assume Cruz will lose to Hillary. Kasich would have been the better choice.
Hillary’s negative ratings are second only to Trump’s. Cruz is slightly ahead of Hillary in match-up pollls. Kasich cleans her clock. Cruz just needs to tap him for VP and show over for Hillarious.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_presidential_race.html
“Dangerous AGW and nuclear radiation” come from the same unreliable source: The US National Academy of Sciences.
IS TRUMP’S ELECTION THE WAY TO PEACEFULLY END DECEIT?
Trump runs as a Republican. I speculate that his effect would have been similar on the Democratic side. He does not stick to any party’s platform. A missile not guided by ideology. Not afraid to be “politically incorrect”.
Protectionism, anti immigration, anti common core are all way further right than any of the ex-commie Neoconservative positions.
Anti-illegal-immigration.
Agree that anti illegal migration is not anti migration. Countries have the right to control who enters their countries to take up permanent residence.
So Trump endorses Putox as a great leader, the most totalitarian leader in modern time, killing journalists, making fraud elections, restricting freedom of the people, labeling NGO as enemy of the state, robbing the nation of billion to him and his friends the siloviki’s, putting the mass killer Kadyrov in power funding him with billions. So the Donald is in favors of this behavior of a state leader? My god I don’t know how to think of it but then I’m a European…
Yeah, Russia needs a nicer leader.
???
Russia requires a hard leader. Putin is pro West, anti stupid cultural nonsense.
Neocons are ovsessed with the cold war-a big problem.
Who will play Cassius.at the convention?
KenW,
It’s have to be George Clooney, dontcha think?
If it turns out to be Ted Cruz, I can see Bill Murray, getting the part.
Arch,
Nice. Baby Ruth bars for all!
So somebody I just met today, who was the first to tell me about the terror attack in Belgium, asked if I thought Donald Trump could do a better job defending us from terrorists.
I replied, “If he can’t stop the violence at his own rallies I don’t think he’s going to do better stopping it anywhere else.”
It’s the lefty socialist protesters who are in the wrong. I think the guy did the right thing by socking the idi0t. Those people can protest outside or in the park. The have no business disrupting a legal political assembly. At least this one guy served up some consequences.
Not surprisingly Trump won Florida which prompted Rubio to suspend his campaign and endorse Cruz.
If The Donald doesn’t make the magic 50% delegate number then Rubio’s delegates may in good conscious vote for Cruz at the convention.
Ohio has been called for Kasich. Undoubtedly Kasich will suspend his campaign soon and I expect will also endorse Cruz.
The sum of Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz delegates I believe will give Cruz a solid majority. The Donald is toast. He needed to win Ohio.
It’s all shaking out exactly as I predicted. Now who’s the reptile brain, Dummie Donnie? HAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!111
Mitch McConnell called The Donald, today. I bet he didn’t call little teddy, or little marco, or little johnny. Anyway, little marco has a great future in politics, in Puerto Rico.
The reptilian brain makes really stoopid assumptions. The kingmaker in this Republican primary election is going to be…..Donald Trump. Eat your hear out lizardboy.
Kingmaker? Interesting choice of words considering how some rail against some they consider to have ruled like a king. But whatever.
I wouldn’t expect you to understand my use of multi-syllable words, dannyboy. You are not very bright. You are dull going and coming. Talking or listening. Reading or writing. The lightweight lizardboy pitter patters around on little size nine feetsies and you got an intellect that impacts the earth with a force comparable to the effect of the lizard’s little padded three toed skimmers. He doesn’t leave any footprints in the sand. Little –snipper-snipper– can walk on water. You should find a short pier and try it.
Well golly gee Mr. Monfort. Sure seems you’re having a bad day or something. Did your dog run off, lock your keys in the car, or what? Sure thank you for talking to little ole’ uninteresting and now unintelligent me. If you’ll excuse me I gotta go pier hunting. If I recall there’s one in Atlantic City across from a gilded hotel/casino. Maybe I could get a flight on a showy airline and enjoy a steak chased by a nice refreshing water while comparing my hands with others. If I look hard enough I might find a very good deal, the best, and feel like a winner so much I’ll get tired of winning so much.
Don you are a fair dinkum dick head
You’re not comparing hand size. That’s just a proxy. King Trump Louis XII”. He guaranteed it.
I wish I could say “I feel your pain”, Donnie, but the truth is that the only thing I’m feeling with regard to you is superior. Trump’s Waterloo was the great state of Ohio. Too bad, so sad. That’s just how the cookie crumbles. Trump, being Trump, was destined to somehow self-destruct. Cruz will start winning states now as Rubio and Kasich primary voters start pulling the lever for Cruz in a two-man race.
The question for you now is are you going to be a sore loser the rest of your life or grow up and get behind Ted Cruz when he wins the nomination fair and square?
I’d really like to see what kind of mandate a candidate that clearly lost the election would have if they try to Broker the convention away from Trump.
That would be suicide.
In the end it isn’t an election. Political parties are private clubs. Their club, their rules. The Donald is just one member. Not a well liked member but a divisive one with a minority behind him trying to take control of the club.
” Not a well liked member but a divisive one with a minority behind him trying to take control of the club”
Actually he is blowing Ted Cruz off the map with an overwhelming majority.
Unless math left town anyway.
The primitive reptilian mind is not big on math, nick. Those diminutive size 9 slithering types who disregarded the adult lizards’ advice to ‘stay in school’ are particularly deficient.
I just want a Republican, not because of or despite personalities, but just because their policies are far better for progress than the policies of the democrats (the anti-progress, back to the pre-Enlightenment party)).
There’s still 1.2 million votes unaccounted for in Ohio. Time will tell.
Trumps number keeps going up with Kasich steady. Hmmmm …
The polls showed a close race, so Trump closing the gap seems likely.
Antidisestablishmentarian in action?
The press has already called the race in Ohio for Kasich. They haven’t made a wrong call since they called Florida for Al Gore in 2000.
Which wasn’t the “wrong” call; it was Gore that got more votes. The press could have no way of knowing Republican stooges on SCOTUS would rig the election for Bush. Scalia’s dead now, so the GOP nominee’s got a big hill to climb.
Robert,
It was a wrong call because the media messed up the Hispanic votes in the exit polling, and overestimated Gore’s support. They didn’t split into Cuban Hispanics and ones from Latin America. So they called it early, and who knows what effect that had on the voting. Generally, though, rather vote for a winner than a loser, and if you are actually working for a living, no point in dropping by the polls for a losing vote. Go home and hug the wife and kids instead.
meanwhile, the state was in the noise.
It really does put meaning into the “Butterfly” effect from the aptly named butterfly ballot, and also gets rid of that communist idea that societies inexorably head in one direction. I wonder if Gore would even have invaded Afghanistan to get Bin Laden.
“The press could have no way of knowing Republican stooges on SCOTUS would rig the election for Bush.” Jeepers. Read more. The Supreme Court decision on Bush v Gore was 7-2. It was the liberal Florida Supreme Court that tried to rig the election for Gore, and SCOTUS stopped them. A clear majority decided that, including liberal justices Breyer and Souter. The only part that was 5-4 was the decision not to hold yet another recount, but to keep the results of the one they did already.
It was extremely close (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore) and Bush turns out to have won under most scenarios, including the one that Gore requested. You think the press were prophets, knowing what nobody knew at the time? But no, Gore was your guy, so you _know_ that he must have really won.
This is the same kind of partisan resistance to anything but one’s own side’s position that makes climate science a political mess.
Cruz is popular with losers. Lose with Cruze!
You selected a montage of caricatures that’s very flattering for granny hilly-billy, Judith. Her handcuffs are not in the picture.
Ted Cruze looks like Grandpa Munster, but the similarity ends there. Granda was a loveable character.
Show us a poster depicting granny’s baggage train and billy’s –snip-stained blue dress, Judith. How about a photo lineup of the ladies billy molested? The hideously ugly Rajin Cajin dragging a dollar bill through a trailer park. A silent movie of granny’s $225,000 speeches to granny’s Wall Street corporate cronies at Goldman Sachs. Video of granny lying to the families of her Benghazi victims. We can read her lips. If they are moving, she is lying.
I want a Democrat in office despite the fact they are brain washed on made up global whining, but I suspect Trump will get the GOP nomination.
And you are brainwashed on everything else.
Trump still hasn’t broken 50% in any major primary or caucus, but he has come close in Nevada, Massachusetts, Mississippi and now Florida. To say that none of the voters who were planning to vote for a non-Trump candidate, will switch to Trump now that their favourite has dropped out, is naive.
Paul Begala said Trump has to win 59% of the remaining delegates to win on the first ballot. Very difficult to do.
1. So win on the second ballot.
2. New York and California? Win both, and I would think it’s game over.
Even CNN is giving credit where credit is due, and is certainly casting it as a big win for Trump.
http://i.imgur.com/LNXJ1ee.png
Trump is still the de-facto leader of the Republican party, only more firmly in control. Another one bites the dust. Poor little marco.
Trump is driving the bus. Knock him out and the bus goes over the cliff.
Utter 100% unadulterated bullsh*t.
Trump has yet to win by a majority in any state. He’s got about a 35% base of Republican voters comprised of angry obnoxious bigots like himself. He can’t climb over that wall to save his life. In the two man races going forward The Donald is crippled by his own toxic personality. Mark my words. This is playing out exactly as I said it would. Ohio was The Donald’s Waterloo. Up until a few days ago I was unsure which way it would go but Kasich won it by a wide margin which is a harbinger of things to come. Trump can’t carry the midwest or the west. States dominated by uneducated southern bigots are just about done voting.
It’s all over but the crying now. Get those tears flowing Monfort, dab them up with a tampon from your purse, then stop being a girl and join the winning team.
Pathetic little emotionally disturbed runt. I told you to get help. Tell us how many states Kasich has won, lizardboy. Oh, Ohio. What a freaking surprise. That’s one in a row. He’s batting a thousand in the state where he is the guvner. Little dishrag is on a roll. He should win KY, MICH ILL, and ..oh freaking waitt! He lost already! Maybe he will win FLA. No, that went to Trump, except one freaking county, which did not go to Kasich. Maybe johnny buckeye will win NY, or NJ, or PA. Or VA or WVa. Oh, wait! He won’t win doodely –snipping– squat after tonight. He will just take votes from teddy. That’s all I have for you. You are a sick little puppy.
I love it when Republicans fight among themselves.
Trump is a real win-win for Hilary.
If he wins the nomination, he will be thrashed in the general.
If he doesn’t win the nomination, he’s right there will be riots and Cruz or whoever will be thrashed in general.
James Cross,
I don’t know if I’d get carried away in an orgy of schadenfreude just yet.
Clinton is an extremely vulnerable candidate:
1) Clinton is a neocon par excellence, and the American people have had just about all of these duplicitous, feckless bumblers that they can stand.
The neocon true believers have already signaled their support for Clinton in a Clinton v. Trump general election.
If Trump heeds the advice Scott McConnell gives him in this letter he wrote Trump, and takes a more realistic tac towards foreign policy, Trump will wipe the floor with Clinton on this issue:
2) Clinton is a neoliberal par excellence, and again the American people have had just about all of these traitorous anti-Americans that they can stomach.
The paid liars and bumsuckers for the lords of capital — like Clinton — have struggled long and hard to conflate racism with naitonalism and working-class advocacy.
And granted, racism has always been a feature of populism in the United States, and has invariably been its undoing, its “fatal flaw” one might say. As Lawrence Goodwyn writes in The Populist Moment:
But, as Goodwyn goes on to explain, it wasn’t to be:
If Trump wants to prevail over Clinton, then he must disentangle the issue of race from the interests of the nation and the economic interests of working-class and middle-class people.
Is Trump up to the chore? Certainly the task is no less formidable now than it was back in the 1890s. And it goes without saying that, now as then, he will be fought tooth and nail by establishment elites who will struggle long and hard to conflate nationalism and economic issues with racism.
A very good article that speaks to some of these issues is this one from The Atlantic.
The Atlantic, being the establishment rag it is, of course loads its article up with distortions, exaggerations and half-truths, but it nevertheless addresses some of the underlying economic issues:
The Atlantic article ignores the savings. Lighter load on schools, hospitals, and welfare for illegal immigrants. Elimination of some government agencies and programs. Revamped tax policy to make the US attractive to business and the rich, who we after all need.
The Devil’s in the details, Glann, and the article mentioned only the cherries that made the sort of pie it likes.
You seem to be assuming Trump will be the nominee.
I almost wrote that Trump would be a win-win-win for Democrats.
Democrats win if he is nominated and loses, not nominated and somebody else loses, or he is elected.
First, he will probably turn out to be liberal and will do deals with the Democrats. In addition, he will probably mess up enough that even the Republicans will want to impeach him. At any rate by the time it is all over and assuming the country is still intact, there may be nothing left of the Republican Party.
You are not very bright, jimmy cee. The Donald will make accommodations with the pezzonovante and most Repubs will jump on the Trump Express, along with the independents and more evolved dems. The Donald will pack em in.
Watch for the world record campaign rally of 100,000+ fired up folks at Ann Arbor Stadium.
The little loud granny hilly-billy is not inspiring the brainless demobots. When the old commie is out of the picture, whatever enthusiasm there is for the demodrone crowd is gone. And granny got a lot of baggage. Trump won’t be as timid and softy-squishy as the decrepit olde Moscow bernie.
Then you got the IGs of the State Dept and intel community, the FBI, and a couple of honest career prosecutors at DOJ, who have already got the prima facie on ole granny’s thousands of national security violations and they are building a case on the la cosa nostra clintonian foundation slush fund payola scandal. Trump will tower over, outwork, outspend, run over and dump the frump.
James Cross,
No, I am not “assuming Trump will be the nominee.”
But if Trump isn’t the nominee, then what we will witness in the general election is a “battle” between two candidates pre-selected by the elite establishment.
Heads, the establishment elite wins. Tails, the establishment elite wins.
jim2,
I agree.
See my response to captdallas below:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/15/u-s-presidential-election-discussion-thread-2/#comment-771924
No. Bernie supporters stay home on Hillary.
That should be
Heads the establishment elite win, tails the anti-establishment commoners lose.
At around 12 AM, the NYTimes shows Trump leading Cruze by a very thin margin (0.3%). If I interpret their model correctly, Trump should barely edge Cruze.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/15/upshot/live-model-republican-primary-results.html?_r=0#g-state-anchor-MO
98% of Ohio reporting.
Kasich 937,636 47.0 66
Trump 717,570 35.9 0
Cruz 263,538 13.2 0
Rubio 46,700 2.3
It was never close. These are the same percentages as those reported when only 2% of the returns were in a few hours ago when the press called it for Kasich.
I can’t break the habit of adding an “e” to Cruz. I think he should change the spelling. Otherwise, his name appears to rhyme with fuzz.
Doesn’t matter. Even if he were to dye his hair blonde and change his name to Ivanka, he’s still not getting inside the White House.
I believe the “e” is the Canadian spelling. He dropped it when he emigrated.
Before Missouri is called, Trump only needs 54% of remaining delegates for 1237 according to my reckoning. Doable.
Not happening. Trump never stood a chance in a two man race. The combined totals of Kasich, Cruz, and Rubio put his dick in the dirt EVERY SINGLE TIME even in the deep south where his uneducated redneck base is in the majority.
I don’t think Cruz goes over well in places like New York, New Jersey, California and probably Pennsylvania. It is uphill for him, especially if Kasich stays in too. Kasich also makes it more difficult for Trump to get to 1237, and is showing no signs of quitting yet. The best anti-Trump bet is for Kasich to stay in through the convention, then it is anyone’s depending on what new rules the Party comes up with there.
In a two man race in California it’s no contest win for Cruz. Most recent polls had Trump with his usual 33% plurality and Cruz trailing up by 8 at 25%. Needless to say in a two man race one of them goes over 50%. Who do you think gets the lion’s share of Rubio and Kasich’s 30%?
The Donald lost California the moment Rubio pulled out of the race and endorsed Cruz. Lot of legal hispanic voters in California too. You know, the people who Trump called racists and criminals. Probably safe to say they’ll vote for the hispanic candidate. Cruz will pile up winner take all states like nobody’s business going forward. He might even squeek out a majority going into the convention but he wins if it’s brokered. Donald’s chances of a majority going into the convention evaporated when Kasich won Ohio.
A couple of real –snipping– geniuses.
” Lot of legal hispanic voters in California too.”
Trump has been doing pretty good playing legal v illegal immigrant. If he breaks out a plan to simplify becoming legal at low cost without it being equated with amnesty, he could surprise folks.
captdallas,
I agree. With Trump, all bets are off.
As The Atlantic article I cited above notes:
Of course The Atlantic, being the establishment rag it is, is promoting the BIG LIE. And the BIG LIE is that the platform Trump has staked out will serve only white working- and middle-class folks. It will, of course, serve the interests of all working- and middle-class folks.
The establishment elites — white, brown and black — will try to make the election all about identity politics (race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc) and not about the economic interests of working- and middle-class whites , browns and blacks.
Can Trump make the election about pocketbook issues and not identity politics? Does he even want to make the election about pocketbook issues and not identy politics?
If so, he’s certainly got his work cut out for him.
As W.E.B. Du Bois famously said, “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour-line.” That statement is just as true today as it was in 1900 when Du Bois uttered it.
I tend to agree with David Plouffe of Uber fame, who argues that Trump has brought a world of uncertainty and unpredictability to the process:
I forgot to say my previous post was about Missouri. I’m not ready to make a prediction: Trump will beat Cruz by from 50 to 150 votes. This is fun. If I’m wrong, so what !
I may have missed a percentage point. If so I revise my prediction to Trump beats Cruz by 500 to 1,500 votes.
I underestimated Trump. He won by 1,726 votes.
In my previous post, I meant I’m now ready rather than not ready.
Here’s a grand opportunity for modellers, predictors forecasters and pundits. Get exactly the future you pay for!
I’ll wait for the actual results. How boring!
Cheers.
Nate Silver blew it on North Carolina. Had Trump winning by 10%. Actual win was 4%. Delegates split almost evenly between Trump and Cruz. In a two man race Cruz would have easily won. Even the south is no longer safe for the Donald.
Silver was off base in Illinois too but got the winner-take-all victor correct. Illinois Nazis turned out in bigger numbers than Nate expected and voted, naturally, for Trump.
Nate Silver blew it on North Carolina. Had Trump winning by 10%. Actual win was 4%. Delegates split almost evenly between Trump and Cruz. In a two man race Cruz would have easily won. Even the south is no longer safe for the Donald.
Silver was off base in Illinois too but got the winner-take-all victor correct. Illinois Nazzis turned out in bigger numbers than Nate expected and voted, naturally, for Trump.
You haven’t noticed, lizardboy. But The Donald has already won the South.
Nate Silver was way off in Ohio too. He had Kasich winning by 6 points. The actual win was by over 11 points.
The Donald is flaming out. Fact.
Missouri is a statistical dead heat. It’s not winner take all unless the winner has 50% of the vote and it’s 40.8% Trump 40.7% Cruz with 99% reporting. Either way it’s a split on the delegates and depending on who won what individual districts it could be close to an even split but it looks like Trump is ahead in district count. Cruz carried the two largest districts with St. Louis and St. Paul i.e. where the bucktoothed low information rednecks don’t live.
The highest vote count gets 12 delegates then the remaining 40 are split up by who won in what district.
There was a lot of anger and frustration in the public over the failure of either party to represent the public interest in the past. I share that concern. I was also concerned that we might elect some tyrant on the right or left. Tonight I am feeling a glimmer of hope for at least a partial return to constitutional limits on government and integrity in government science.
More good news tonight:
Nature Climate Change allowed submission and assigned tracking number NCLIM16030433 to the paper on “Solar energy.”
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Solar_Energy.pdf
Well done. Not many of us serfs have had an article accepted by Nature Climate Change.
Thank you, Peter. The paper is the conclusion to two paper published in Nature about forty years ago – Nature 240, 99-101 (1972); ibid. 277, 615 – 620 (1979) – and may be transferred to the Physical Science section for review since the dispute centers in nuclear and solar physics, rather than climatology.
May our next President adopt the recommendation in the conclusion: “Forgive those who deceived us for the past sixty-nine years for being human and move as quickly as possible to restore integrity to government science and constitutional limits on governments.”
I hate to admit it, but I’m not qualified to evaluate the physics. I can proof read, though. “Recognizance” is not a word–I think you mean “recognition.”
Let’s see whose playing the dirty tricks:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/03/337074/
Rubio was one of these pathetic little people cut from the same cloth as notorious armchair warriors like Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Hillary Clinton. He believes in sending other people’s kids off to die so that the lords of capital can make big bucks off of war profiteering.
Good riddance.
Yeah, morally bankrupt people like Christopher Hitchens… oh, wait…
Glenn,
You should talk to vets who have met Bush. Most of the military think very highly of him.
I have three family members who have met him. Nephew when he graduated from West Point, brother when he was DA for District of South Caroline and niece’s husband who worked with families at Walter Reed. The latter spent nearly an hour with the President, when Bush took him aside to ask about his job and the families he worked with. The man sincerely cared about the men and women he knew his orders put in harm’s way, and about their families.
Glenn, timg56 is partially right about the military thinking highly of Bush. Soldiers who aren’t dead because of Bush think highly of him being out of office.
you have to be the only one here who thinks you are witty max.
Do you even know anyone who has served?
very pathetic, maxie
a new low for you
I spotted this on Facebook:
It took me a while to work it out … I could see Hilary Clinton and Trump, but I couldn’t work out who the other two candidates were.
After reading the comments:
Why don’t people understand that the real contest is between the candidates favoured through social media – and those favoured by the old fashioned (once) “Mainstream Media”.
What is happening is that some candidates are focussing on getting journalists to support them – which used to be the way that elections were won as the “mainstream” media were the kingmakers, but one candidate is focussing on getting people to vote for them, which is how you win campaigns in the age of social media.
So, some candidates are focussing on the issues that journalists just love to write about – and they get lots of supportive write-ups and high-brow debate by journalists …. and another is focussing on the issues that people talk about but which journalists don’t want to discuss …. but they are being forced to discuss because the people have a candidate who’s realised the press are no longer the king-makers.
Scottish Sceptic,
Now there’s a novel thought!
Candidates asking people to vote for them, rather than asking the mainstream media and others to tell the people who to vote for.
If this continues, pretty soon the unwashed masses might start thinking for themselves! Might be a good time to invest in pitchforks and torches. Best keep a good strong hempen noose or two around, just in case.
Ain’t life grand!
Cheers.
I like the idea, but I’m not so sure it’s as neat as you make it out to be. Trump isn’t winning support because he’s asking people for it through social media, he’s getting it because the grass roots is so infuriated with the candidates the Republican establishment has rammed down their throats the last four election cycles (arguably excepting Bush ’04) that they have decided to go rogue, and Trump was in the right place at the right time to be the symbolic middle finger the grass roots were looking for. Perhaps you’re talking about Cruz, who the establishment also hates? (I predict the grass roots will be quite content for that reason with Cruz as their second choice, once it becomes clear that Trump can’t win a simple majority, in the primary, and even moreso in the general election.
So what happens next?
The Democrats and Republicans will select their candidate which will relate to the voting we are currently seeing, assuming there is a clear cut winner. If not, the party meeting may decide to select their own candidate (more likely in the case of the Republicans)
But how is the President then chosen? There isn’t a direct general election where each voter in the country will make their choice from the candidates on offer is there?
tonyb
Yes, there will be a general election in November. I will point out that our national nightmare would not be happening if you folks had just put down the rebellion.
KCH,
If only . . .
I’m joking, I suppose. Life goes on, whether you wish it or not. I think so, anyway! Just for fun, 3 candidates – 40%, 30%, 30%. Who should win? Change the percentaged, try again. Any difference?
Cheers.
JCH,
Well “you folks” in the Democratic establishment managed to “put down the rebellion” on your side of the aisle. The Sanders insurgency has all but been quelled.
But on the Republican side of the aisle, the rebellion rages on.
I know that makes “you folks” in the Democratic establishment extremely unhappy. After all, the Democratic establishment did its job, so why can’t the Republican establishment do its job as well?
But it looks like “you folks” will just have to live with some uncertainty and a lack of total control for a little while longer, untill we see if the unholy alliance between the Democratic and Republican establishment elites can put down the insurgency in the Republican Party.
Hi Tony
Jim2 has it right about Electoral College. Theprocess and its history is fascinating reading back to Washington, Adams and Jefferson. Every few years there have been calls for doing away with the Electoral College but the founders have crafted so many hurdles I don’t think it will ever happen.
There have been a few elections where the top vote getter has lost the election, the most recent being Gore.
Just as an aside, I just watched an interview with a member of the Republican National Committee who, in essence, said the primaries don’t mean anything if a candidate doesn’t get majority going into Convention. He was incredibly arrogant and said over the decades the public has been misled by the media to think the primaries made the decision but in reality the Committee has been the one to make the choice. This goes back to how the actual process worked in smoke filled rooms. In other words, we are all equal but some are more equal than others.
Technically he is correct but what a dumb thing to say. If Trump is close to majority going into Convention then they go to another. there will be a revolt and Republicans will stay home giving election to Dems.
And what scares me is establishment Republicans being willing to do that.
I don’t see myself voting for Trump in my primary, but if he is the candidate there is no doubt he has my vote.
Tony, the Founders of the US made sure we don’t have a pure democracy. We are a Republic, but more to the point, we don’t directly elect the President. Similar to how we vote on the nominees, but they are actually chosen at a convention, the Electoral College selects the President. Nevertheless, the process usually results in the person selected by the voters being made President.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)
jim2 | March 16, 2016 at 7:28 am | Reply
Tony, the Founders of the US made sure we don’t have a pure democracy.
____
We should change that. Why stick to a rule made by a bunch of old farts who owned slaves?
They worked to make slavery less palatable. Partly by the 3/5th rule.
I’m good with the rules they made. In fact, I’m for letting the State Legislators elect the Senators as first envisioned by the founders.
jim2 you are stuck in the past. Time marches on with or without you.
All insult, no facts. That would be you, Max.
max10k: it’s a republic, not a democracy. That’s why states get two extra delegates, and at least one representative, in the electoral college.
I doubt our founders could ever have imagined such a massive centralization of power and money in the largest monopoly in the world: the US Federal Government.
The Electoral College is the worst idea in history. Unless you live in a swing state, your presidential vote counts for nothing. They should do it by popular vote. Then every vote counts equally.
It is why we are so willing to fight for world democracy and nation building.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/venezuela-to-shut-down-for-a-week-as-electricity-crisis-mounts
In the end it becomes easy to measure success. Democracy Now!
Democrats would love a Democracy, because then they could take their big urban welfare cities, pump more welfare and divisiveness, and rule the nation for centuries. I’ll stick with Republic. Thanks.
max,
Just when you show signs of engaging in intelligent conversation, you revert to form with a comment like “old farts who owned slaves”
One man, one vote. Nope, it’s not that way, and that’s what Republicans like. Why? Because Republicans don’t believe in fairness and justice.
Lindsay Graham?
Trump only has 46% of the delegates so far. At that rate he would have only 800 or so going into the convention. June seems really far off. This is a good site for a visual.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-delegate-tracker/
Ooops! He would have 1147.
That would probably be enough, but there are some big liberal states to go. Unless Trump can pull off a win in New York, he may fall far short.
It’s very hard to imagine New York Republicans warming up to Ted Cruz.
California has a large Hispanic population. They might go for Cruz, I suppose. And California has 172 delegates and one of the last to vote.
If Kasich is in the whole time, New York and California could go for him. That’s probably more likely than them going for Cruz.
jim2,
As a foreigner, I never cease to be amazed by the proponents of the bastion of equality referring to the Latino vote. Or the fundamentalist Christian vote . . . You get my drift.
Whatever happened to the American vote? Not PC enough, I guess.
Cheers.
Mike, as they say, it is what it is. Blacks vote overwhelmingly for Dimowits. Hispanics vote ~ 60% for Dimowits. Whites are a bit more diverse, voting-wise. This is one reason it is imperative to control immigration unless we want 100 years of socialist rule. Those are the dominant demographic groups.
Jim2,
Wow:”This is one reason it is imperative to control immigration unless we want 100 years of socialist rule.”
Huh? As an alternative, the Republican side of the equation could figure out how to go about addressing issues important to a diverse set of racial/ethnic/religious folks.
Didn’t realize immigration laws needed to be framed to avoid socialists.
Wonder what that questionnaire would look like?
Yes Mike, we have gradually fallen into not only identity politics but grievance politics. Everyone is a victim. The system is at fault for their predicament not themselves. The politicians have learned the codewords to be used in the appropriate venue. The melting pot has become a lazy Susan. Sad , really. If the present attitude had been prevalent 400 years ago, we would be a country with hundreds of tribes having migrated from all over the globe with no shared values or common language. And we would have a Third World economy.
In 19 years, 2035, we’ll celebrate our first 100 years of socialism.
Maybe the politically correct authoritarians can force everybody to be color and culture blind.
Good one, JCH.
========
This is interesting here. You can play with assumptions with the sliders and work out various scenarios. To me it looks like only Trump has the possibility of getting enough delegates to win on the first ballot. There are some scenarios where Cruz could but it would require unrealistic percentages of votes in my view.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/16/upshot/trump-cruz-kasich-republican-delegate-lead.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fupshot&action=click&contentCollection=upshot®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront
Planting the seeds?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/16/trump-youd-have-riots-if-contested-convention-results-in-a-different-nominee/
Hayseeds.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/boehner-endorses-paul-ryan-for-president-220855
Arch,
3 days ago is soooo 3 days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/13/john-boehner-endorses-fellow-ohioan-john-kasich/?_r=0
Has anyone asked Ted Cruz about being a Dominionist? If he somehow secures the nomination, would he deny his Dominionism during the general election (…three times before the cock crows…) or attack questioners as setting up a religious test for office?
I had never read that.
Hadn’t heard that either about Daffy Raffy.
This link may work. Other examples are out there.
http://wpo.st/FMHM1
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2B5fVm_Fmz4/mqdefault.jpg
Thanks.
Of course, I can never tell exactly whether Cruz is really that crazy or just someone wanting power using religion to get votes. I am also not sure which would be worse but neither one would be good for the country.
I’m doing my best to ignore all of it. Whole thing is a sad joke.
Only chance I’ll see a poll anytime this year is the chance Mitt Romney runs as an independent.
Legislators have no business in the top executive office. Period.
I could see Rafael accepting the Vice Presidential nomination with the idea of plotting to have Trump impeached after the election.
I really want to expand on this. This just makes so much sense.
If there is a brokered convention, then there is no guarantee that either Trump or Cruz get the nomination. Mostly likely the ticket would be Kasich/Rubio because both Trump and Cruz are outsiders despised by the establishment.
So Rafael Cruz’s best bet is to make a deal with Trump in return for a Vice Presidential nomination.
After the election, I could see a host of problems plaguing Trump, including all of his past business deals and who knows what else. It is not hard to imagine Cruz convening with the Senate Republicans to have Trump impeached and removed from office.
Rafael is President.
simple-minded clowning
No contaba con la astucia de Rafael.
Wishful thinking, James.
“The goal for most of us at this point is to keep delegates away from Trump, and it really doesn’t matter who wins them,” said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP operative who just signed on as an adviser to Kasich’s campaign as it approaches a contested convention. “There are delegates who will be bound to Trump on the first ballot or the first two ballots who aren’t going to be for Trump once they’re free. If you get to a third ballot, the world changes.”
Trump just said there could be riots if he does’t get the nomination if he is leading into the convention.
Bad strategy. There will be millions of very, very upset people, even if they were not supporting Trump. But I don’t think there will be rioting. The Republicans will stay home and not vote. That will give the election to Hillary. Poof.
This vote for Trump is as much a repudiation of the Republican establishment as anything. These geniuses gave us Sarah Palin. Need I say more. Millions of Republicans stayed home when Mitt ran. The establishment gave us Bob Dole. Tea Partiers were elected and nothing changed.
There are all sorts of legislation where there is general agreement from both parties and nothing is done.
Other than the war, LBJ knew how to work the system. He fought a cabal of 22 Southern Segregationist Democrats to get much of his agenda through. This was when the Senate rules required 2/3 vote for cloture shutting down a filibuster. That meant the Democratic anti civil rights obstructionists needed only 12 more votes to keep the filibuster going.
Today to invoke cloture they only need 60 votes. Yet nothing happens on legislation with a consensus. Could Trump go over the heads of the Senators to the voters like Reagan did on occasion? Maybe. Or he could lock them in the White House Oval Office and tell them they cannot go to the restroom until an agreement is made. How many of those old farts have enlarged prostates? That might do the trick.
Nah, if Trump is smart, after getting nominated he would choose Sanders as his VP. Otherwise, Clinton will cream him.
Trump vs. Tripe
Ideally, voters should pick the lesser evil.
This sort of attitude is why bunches of US citizens are pissed. From the article:
…
Political parties, not voters, choose their presidential nominees, a Republican convention rules member told CNBC, a day after GOP front-runner Donald Trump rolled up more big primary victories.
“The media has created the perception that the voters choose the nomination. That’s the conflict here,” Curly Haugland, an unbound GOP delegate from North Dakota, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. He even questioned why primaries and caucuses are held.
Haugland is one of 112 Republican delegates who are not required to cast their support for any one candidate because their states and territories don’t hold primaries or caucuses.
…
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/16/we-choose-the-nominee-not-the-voters-senior-gop-official.html
I saw the interview and his arrogance was worse live than the article. He could have finessed the language to at least made it appear voters were important. He didn’t even try that. Basically it was ” To hell with voters, we decide.” Total jerk.
That the people should have any say-so in the governing of their country is anathema to the establishment elites on both sides of the aisle.
William I. Robinson has called it “polyarchy,” whereby the nomination process is controlled such that the people only get to choose between two candidates that are pre-selected by the ruling elites.
Either candidate, Republican or Democratic, is suitable to the entrenched ruling elites, and there is no substantive difference between the candidates. So the election is little more than a spectacle — entertainment for the masses.
A contest between Clinton and Kasich (or Bush or Rubio), for instance, would be like professional wrestling: great entertainment, but don’t mistake it for a true contest.
Curiously, the fix is less in with either Trump or Cruz vs Clinton. Free-for-All or Tag Team, eh?
================
> To hell with voters, we decide
Not different anywhere …
Curly Who? They must have interviewed hundreds of low level R functionaries, before they found that dumb –snipping– clown. The ‘powers that be’ have already come to the realization that if they maneuver Trump out of the nomination, the grand old party is over.
Curly Fries?
They probably didn’t need to look too hard. Almost all of R functionaries are dumb enough to say something like this.
jim2
Prime ministers tend to make cabinet decisions. If they made a big decision without conferring with their colleagues there would be a huge fuss-they have to take their colleagues and Parliament with decisions.
It sounds as if the President has a lot more authority to act off his own bat and take decisions that suit him or her.
I’m still not sure that I understand how the President is chosen-on the surface it doesn’t seem very democratic or am I misunderstanding something?
tonyb
It works the same as it does in any other oligarchy.
There are charades of nominations and elections and then one of the choices preselected by the wealthy becomes President.
Your parliamentary arrangement has better protection against rogue executive power than does ours, Tony, despite plenty of hard-learned lessons and perspicacious phrasing about it in our Constitution.
====================
In one party, James, we witness the tripartite rending of the charade, in the other, the usual Kabuki.
=============
Tony. Currently, the Senate is split fairly evenly between Dimowits and Redimowits. There would have to be a solid majority of Redimowits to override a Presidential executive order or to override a Presidential veto of a bill. This even split is why Obama can issue edicts right now. A Redimowit President can nullify all Obama’s executive orders if the Redimowit partly elites can wise up and let Trump or Cruz get nominated. Otherwise, a lot of voters will stay home, write in Trump or Cruz, or out and out vote for Hillary just to take power from the Redimowit elites.
The administrative overreach that your system seems primitive to resist is that stemming from Brussels. A referendum? How faithful of you.
=================
A parliamentary system without constitutional checks is (theoretically) a greater threat to individual liberty than the American division of powers strategy. Parliamentary systems also typically can get things done faster.
The American system was supposed to prevent both the centralization of power and the precipitous passage of legislation. Nevertheless, the Imperial Presidency has been embraced several times in American history, often with war as the justification. Most recently the Republicans argued that Bush the Lesser had vast unilateral powers because something something freedom. Now Hillary has a distinct chance to wield the powers Republicans have argued for. Hoist, petard, etc.
Once in office, Obama saw little reason to disagree. It’s disappointing that he actually taught constitutional law but ignores the fact that the enumerated Presidential powers are rather limited.
Hi tony
Every 10 years we have a census to determine among other things how many people reside in each state. Based on the Supreme Court 1 man 1 vote ruling, each state is apportioned their number of members in the House of Representatives based on their share of the total population. There are 435 members in the House of Representatives. Over the last 50 years the population and thus the number of Representatives have been shifting from some states to others, mostly from North to South and West. There are 100 Senators in the Senate, 2 from each state.
The Electoral College has 538 members with 2 from each state plus their proportionate share of the House of Representatives plus 3 from Wash DC. To win the Presidency, a candidate must get to 270 votes from the Electoral College.
Each state has its own rules on how those in the Electoral College should vote. But in all the States except for Nebraska and Maine it is winner takes all. So if a state has 10 members in the House of Representatives and added to their 2 Senators they have 12 members in the Electoral College and those members are bound (legal or tradition) to vote for the winner of the popular vote for President in their respective state. There may have been some renegade College members who did otherwise in history but I can’t remember off the top of my head.
Nebraska and Maine have systems based on winning the Congressional Districts.
This is a very convoluted method of selecting our President, but there is some democracy at work in all those machinations.
I hope this helps.
cerescokid
Many thanks for that. So its a population thing primarily, but ultimately, the electoral college will take note of what candidate in their state the people backed.
tonyb
Yip. That’s why there was such a knock down drag out fight over Florida in 2000. The decider. I’m always so amused to recollect that Tennessee failed to go to Gore that year, which could also have decided.
========================
tony
The system allows situations where the clear winner in the Electoral College ends up being the loser in the popular vote. A candidate could win many little states by just a small amount building up many Electoral Votes but then losing huge in a large state like California. Going back in history it is interesting to compare the popular vote totals against the Electoral Vote totals. I can think of a few elections where the loser only won a very few states but the overall vote total were not all that big.
I didnt check the laws governing the Electoral College members as to how much discretion they really have. Based on recent history their actions certainly reflect what their state did. But I assume each state has slightly different wording guiding how the Electors vote.
> If they made a big decision without conferring with their colleagues there would be a huge fuss
Happens all the time, tonyb.
The “Westminster” answer to this is a Palace Coup. Aus has had three of those in four years, and I suspect the fat lady will sing yet again
It’s not really very complicated, most of the time, because most of the time mass-hysteria causes the two competing tribes to coalesce around their respective representatives. There’s a bit of a beauty pageant, where the prospective nominees strut around in front of the cameras and spout their preferred sound-bites. The masses look them over and discuss, but, for the most part, they think what they are told to think by a relatively small number of people whose job it is to do the thinking for the parties. Usually, the first five or ten primaries are sufficient to show everyone who the mass-hysteria has settled on, and everyone lines up behind their respective tribe’s candidate.
Historically, the general election is decided by which of the two candidates is most appealing to the 8% or so of “swing voters.”
Don Monfort,
I agree Trump will be the GOP nominee. You and I may not share political views, but the data is clear on Trump trending to win. I hate it, but I am confident and happy Hillary will crush Trump in the end–for around half the race it will be close between Trump and Hillary.
I think the Republicans should use Trump and stop fighting him. He won. While the rules say a plurality is not enough his supporters think it is. He’s in the best position to steal votes from Clinton.
Hey, Ragnaar, I think you messed up when you set the destination on your time manchine… this is March of 2016.
You may be a little smarter and emotionally stable than the average reptilian around here, yacob. I am going to help you.
You are virtually almost absolutely correct that Trump will be the nominee. According to my infallible calculations, Trump will win no fewer than 1160 delegates. If he has any doubt in his shrewd brain that he will go into the convention not having a lock on the nomination by the second ballot, he will call up little marco and offer to rescue him from obscurity by selecting him as V.P. Or he will call up teddy, or johnny buckeye, or have all three on a conference call and let them fight it out. Donald could even hint that he doesn’t want to spend 8 years in the WH and those little hungry chihuahuas fight over the bone. Nomination locked up. Game over.
That would set up a general election with the olde short-squat dumpy-frumpy low-energy lying hollering granny fighting, instead of an olde soft commie, a charismatic populist well-funded junkyard dog pushing all the right buttons, who has survived and thrived on vicious attacks from all sides. Enthusiasm for the junkyard dog will have only become more massive and intense, but the excitement in the demobot primary would have perished with the utopian dreams of the olde commie leaving only disappointment, bitterness and resentment for the corporate crony cankles lying possibly indicted, but definitely guilty granny.
Your confidence in hilly-billy is way misplaced, yacob.
When the Supreme Leader Of Iran hangs up the phone after that midnight phone call from the POTUS
I want him to turn to his aides and say “that guy’s crazy”
just for a change
Being lead by Social Justice Warriors in a tough world is getting scary
But don’t worry, I live in a Democrat controlled state
my vote actually does not count
Just like the Sanders votes
and I’m guessing the Trump votes in the end
A pause, all of a sudden,
Before the buzz on the red button.
============
You can be sure those in the Kremlin thought that about Reagan more than a few times. The Star Wars initiative had them shaken to the core. They spent themselves into oblivion on Defense, in no small way due to Reagan beefing up our defense. I read they were spending 17% of GDP on Defense. We would have to quintuple our Defense Budget to do that.
That is one of the things I love about America, a movie star can become president. And an Austrian steroid shooting BAD actor movie star can become state governor. And perhaps a self made billionaire entrepeneur tv-show host…
Showmanship counts in the USA and I like that.
In my country our saying “behave normally, then you are already being silly enough” (it sounds catchier in Dutch :-) is suprisingly accurate. Showmanship in politics and more in general showing off your success, money or fame is frowned upon here. I don’t think a guy like Reagan or Arnie would be succesfull in politics here. Shame imo.
And by the way, if you think American politicians ignore their voters, then get a load of this. Here there will be a national referendum on 6 April asking “yes” or “no” to the EU association agreement with Ukraine. But the Dutch political establishment has already made very clear that they will ignore the result….if the result is “no”.
Today I received in the mail the voting ballot, just like all the millions of other eligible Dutch voters. Thousands of voting offices are being set up, millions of euros spent.
Polls show that “no” is in the lead.
So this whole freaking circus is a show.
Showmanship, just of a different kind.
Yes, nothing like having your enemies think you are crazy when a malfunction in their systems makes them think you’ve launched a nuclear missile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83#False_alarm_from_the_Soviet_early_missile_warning_system
Yeah, I remember that. Lots of pants had to be changed that day in the USSR ….er, former USSR. Funny, I don’t hear from them much anymore. They do have to write more often.
It would have been much cheaper and safer to have gone the unilateral disarmament route to peace with the Soviet Empire. Ain’t that what your type wanted, jimmy commie? If we had done that we wouldn’t be bothered with all the expense and controversy of this election foolishness.
Interesting that Reagan did do disarmament.
I’m skeptical that the USSR broke up because of spending on defense.
However, it gives me an idea. If the US spent a lot more on defense, would Texas leave the Union. If so, I would be all for spending more.
max10K
You’re right, of course. The numbskulls here can’t do more than one dimensional thinking. They see X then Y and always assume X caused Y if they like X and like Y. If they see X then Y but don’t like Y then it is Bill Clinton’s fault.
Jim
Good one. Of course I accuse the warmists of the same kind of inductive reasoning all the time. Oh, gee, it is warming, so it must be CO2. Not much critical thinking skills or complex reasoning going on there.
You really need to read kim more carefully. Natural variability is not capable of warming the earth. The earth is, naturally, cooling toward CNGC (catastrophic natural global cooling). ACO2 is its salvation. It will save us from the glaciers, the real death trains, which are surely coming. Lol.
Jim Cross,
Yes he did.
On his terms.
Nationalism is another place where leftist intellectuals, sealed off in their Ivory Tower, suffer an almost complete departure from factual reality.
“Marx may have said that the proletarian has no country,” Hannah Arendt writes in Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, but “it is well known that the proletarians have never shared this point of view.”
This striking departure from reality can be clearly seen in an article by Robert Mackey which The Intercept published a few days ago.
The article, titled “Trump Concerned His Rallies Are Not Violent Enough,” goes through a short list of political protest in the United States: the Civil Rights protests of the 60s, the anti-war protests of the 60s and 70s, and the protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. In each case, Mackey notes how the protests were violently put down by the state’s instruments of violence — the police and mlitary.
But Mackey concludes his article with an entirely differnt type of incident, which to me indicates he has drank the Marxist Kool Aid when it comes to the working class. Ironically, he ends his article by condemning the very social class which his Ivory Tower collegues so often claim to represent:
Nixon, who would go on to encourage Donald Trump to run for office, later gave tacit blessing to the attack on the protesters, by inviting the leaders of New York’s construction unions to the White House to thank them for their support.
https://theintercept.com/2016/03/11/trumps-good-old-days-when-battering-protesters-was-celebrated-in-the-white-house/
As Arendt goes on to explain, “the lower social classes,” contrary to whatever romantic notions of the working class Marxists may harbor, “are especially susceptible to nationalism, chauvinism, and imperialistic policies.”
“The fact that the army gives the lower social classes certain opportunities for education and vocational training naturally also plays a role here.”
What Arendt wrote back in 1969 appears to be even truer today than it was then:
http://i.imgur.com/3c8a694.png
Hispanics now get lumped in with whites, but the graph below gives an idea of the current makeup of the military, and it does not appear that racial or ethnic minorities (Hispanics) are under-represented.
http://i.imgur.com/Dcsv5ts.png
The lefties have burned far more police cars and local businesses than any group on the right. Hypocrites.
jim2,
Imagine if Trump is successful, and the end result of his efforts is a realignment so drastic that the Republican Party emerges as the champion of the economic interests of the American working and middle classes, and the Democratic Party emerges as the champion of the economic interests of the global gazillionaires, as well as the very narrow group-interests of the identity politicians.
Now >that would be a realignment.
Interesting concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln
Glenn, that scenario appears to be an interesting possibility.
The future with the Dimowits:
Venezuela is shutting down for a week as the government struggles with a deepening electricity crisis.
President Nicolas Maduro gave everyone an extra three days off work next week, extending the two-day Easter holiday, according to a statement in the Official Gazette published late Tuesday. Maduro had originally said over the weekend that the extended holiday would only apply to state employees.
…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/venezuela-to-shut-down-for-a-week-as-electricity-crisis-mounts
An ingenious idea: Everybody should get a week off, no work, no food.
Repeat as necessary: socialism wins.
Anuther reaction against costly philosopher kings.
Poll @ The Telegraph, ‘ Brexit campaign has the edge.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12193963/EU-referendum-Exclusive-Telegraph-poll-says-Leave-campaign-most-likely-to-win-in-June.html
Hey Dummie Donnie… Trump dropped from 104% of target to 96% of target yesterday. I told you so. Last night only looked like a win for Trump for people who don’t know how big the mountain he must climb. He needed more than a majority of states. He needed a bigger win in North Carolina. The delegates were almost an even split with Cruz. Missouri is so close they’re still counting but he has to split that with Cruz too. Most of all he needed Ohio to stay on track.
Ohio was Trump’s Waterloo. Write that down.
It’s just going to get worse. Stock up on tampons it’s going to be a bloodbath for you and your tiny fingered boy going forward. Mark my words little man.
HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/delegate-targets/republicans/
The little size 9 reptilian mind works in mysterious ways. What looked like a big win to everybody with a proper mammalian mind, looks to the lizard brain like a bloodbath for the big winner. This is the same lizard maroon who said Trump would be stymied by Rule 40. Blowhard clown. How many candidates have passed the Rule 40 threshold, lizardboy? Pathetic little putz. Get some help.
Which part of dropping from 104% of target track to 96% did your highly evolved brain not understand, Dopey Donnie?
Reptilian and mammalian minds. Any questions?
https://michaeldgriffiths.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/snake_eating_a_rat.jpg
Cruz is one state away from qualifying under Rule 40. Would you care to place a wager that he won’t get another state, Dopey Donny?
Which of the three Republican candidates is the only one who captured a majority of voters in any state? Here’s a clue for the Rodent Brain Donnie; Wyoming.
Yeah, Wyoming is the linch pin. Must win. What’s it like 97 million people live there? All but 4 of them torpid little primitive reptilian Bible thumpers, like you. Cruz of Canuckistan has got it locked up. A reptilian in the WH. Pass the mice and the Kool-Aid. You are a really dumb little runt. Vietnam-era maroon.
I decided to check, just in case your reptilian brain is one of the weakest known to zoology. Wyoming hasn’t voted yet, you Vietnam-era maroon. And you got the other –snip– wrong too. Pathetic little clown. I am beginning to doubt that you are a reptile. Probably some kind of big worm with fake eyes.
It occurred to me that something wasn’t right, so I checked again. The 538 chart has the Wyoming delegate selection in April, but the caucus has already been held and Cruz got a majority of the 47 or so folks who showed up under duress. You see how the mammalian mind works. We detect, admit and correct our little temporary errors. According to the 538 chart Cruz only got 9 of 29 delegates. Who cares about that small crap anyway.
Don,
Was that an apology to David?
Rule 40(b) requires a majority (not plurality) of delegates for a state to count towards the 8. Trump has 11 already, but Cruz is only at 4 by that count. Hard to see where he can get 4 more majorities. That Rule will likely be the first one that the Party changes to ensure a contest at the convention. It was put in to help Romney over Paul in 2012, and served that purpose. Time for a new one. Nice to be able to make up the rules as you go along.
Danny Thomas | March 16, 2016 at 10:42 pm |
Don,
Was that an apology to David?
————————————————————–
I know, right? I studied rodent. Let me translate.
“You’re right and I was wrong, Springer.”
Jim D
Quite right. Mibad. Trump won a majority of delegates in exactly 8 states at this point and Cruz is at 4.
That said Cruz has a lock on North and South Dakota, Montana, and Nebraska. Politically they’re clones of Wyoming. He’s in no danger of not making the 8 state minimum.
PS for Rodent Donnie. This is how one who isn’t an insecure nitwit admits a mistake. You of course by definition can never do this I just wanted to let you to at least see how it’s done.
Which one of you uneducated technically Vietnam-era VA sponging maroons told this lie:
“Cruz is one state away from qualifying under Rule 40.”
Rule 40 won’t hold anyway. The Party won’t want it to be between just Trump and Cruz in a contested convention, so they have to figure something else out. It was funny seeing Bill O’Reilly interviewing Trump and trying to ask him to be more presidential. Trump was having none of it. The whole interview was about his attitudes to crowds and other candidates, and absolutely zero policy, as with almost any Trump interview. O’Reilly should challenge him on policy, but this attempt at coaching was just wasted time. Trump never admits to being wrong, and also won’t accept advice on his behavior.
26 delegates. More than most of the NE liberal sh!tholes you’re usually- registered-democrat tiny handed hero has won like New Hampshire (23) and Vermont (16). More than redneck deep south Mississippi(23) that plurality boy won. And it was 700 delegates not 70 but only being off by a factor of ten is an improvement for you and a compliment to whatever diploma mill gave you an MBA.
http://snag.gy/Q2iIm.jpg
Playing now at Trump Headquarters…
Rally cry for Tiny Hands Trump!
Trump on Ohio yesterday… LOL I kill me sometimes!
What is generally being missed is that Kasich is committed to winning the nomination and nothing else. He will not release his delegates or endorse either Trump or Cruz.
Rubio was committed to the long game too. Right up until he said “I’m suspending my campaign”. Politicians talk only about winning right up to the moment they formally resign from the contest.
Dedicated to Hillary 2016 who got four more years. Four to twenty years.
What is being missed is that Trump is now turning his NO-PC guns in Hillbilly’s direction. I think he has either been told or figured out that if he can get Hillbilly on the run, it will be great leverage come convention time.
That would appeal to Trump’s supporters as well as other Republicans, which is the broad support he will need going into the GOP convention.
A quote from Dilbert comic strip author Scott Adams:
“Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.
If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/141146589216/clinton-versus-trump
______________
I guess who you think holds the stronger hand depends on which candidate you like, but polls show beating Trump.
I suspect the number of women angry about their treatment is relatively small. The media make a big deal out of it, but most women are OK with their lot in life.
More women are probably angry at politicians more than the above.
The election is too far off to pay any attention to Trump vs Hillbilly polls.
jim2 feels women shouldn’t claim. Trump should jim2 as a speech writer. He could stress how good women have it.
Make that jim2 thinks women shouldn’t complain. I don’t know, jim, but using that one hasn’t worked out well for me.
The women I know don’t complain.
Yeah, but I doubt you talk much with young women. You probably talk mostly with older women who don’t think it’s worth the effort to set you straight.
I see your factualness hasn’t improved. You just blather on … and on … and on …
jim2, just kidding, but I really do think you are out of touch with women’s issues. I suspect you were puzzled by women taking offense at Romney’s “binders full of women” comment.
Why do you think Hillary polls so well with women?
Romney was a meek little clown who allowed himself to be defined by the left-loon media. What sensible non-hysterical woman would think that poor little PC Mitt meant anything derogatory with the ‘binders full of women” comment? Is that supposed to be taken literally? That he had “binders full of women”? Get freaking real, you dumb –snip–.
Of course. The problem is that there’s only one person with a higher negative opinion than Hillary. That person is Donald Trump. In match-up polls Kasich kills Hillary. Rubio has consistenly polled several points higher. Cruz is a dead heat. And Donald loses by several points.
A vote for The Donald is a vote for Hillary.
David,
Another analysis might be that if all of the Republican candidates except Trump rank ahead of Hillary, then it is entirely possible that the polls are not an accurate picture of what would actually happen in the election.
This shows considerable opposition to Hillary exists in addition to a great reluctance on the part of voters to acknowledge Trump. The question is how many of them would stick to that once it is clear the choices are Hillary or Trump? I know that if polled I’d choose any of the first three ahead of Trump, but if it’s Donald vs. Hillary, I’m voting Trump with no holding of my nose.
That’s a hit, tim. One of the few who get it.
Bill Clinton; I cringe.
The Continuing Implosion of Glenn Beck:
…
After winning the Republican primary in his home state of Ohio Tuesday night, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich announced that he plans to stay the course. Glenn Beck had a few choice words for him.
“Kasich, I mean, excuse my language, but, you son of a bitch, the republic is at stake,” Beck said Wednesday on The Glenn Beck Radio Program. “This is not like a normal race. The republic is at stake.”
Continuing his criticism of Kasich, Beck, a top surrogate for Republican candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, argued that the Ohio governor is “delusional” if he thinks he can win. Additionally, he thinks the Ohio governor made his victory speech Tuesday night “about himself” instead of about the country.
…
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/03/16/you-son-of-a-bh-glenn-beck-slams-delusional-kasich-for-staying-in-the-race/
Holy Cow! Most of the remaining primaries are either winner-take-all or winner-take-most. Cruz could find tread marks all over his back-side after this is over.
jim2, I think you are right. Their denial is making Cruze lovers look silly.
I have budgeted about $100k to spend this election cycle to defeat that nag granny. I would give it all to bernie the commie, if I thought it would help that old fool win the nom. The Donald doesn’t need it. So, I will give it to hilly-billy hunting PACs. On my list:
Ladies Assaulted by Billy and Persecuted By Hilly PAC
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-women-idUSMTZSAPEC288843FQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug7diBO3XYY
Mothers of Granny’s Benghazi Victims PAC
Don, save your $100,000. PAC efforts backfire. Anti-Trump PAC’s just made Trump stronger. Do some good by donating your $100,000 to Greenpeace.
Yeah dip–snit–, that’s why they are still whining about Kerry getting “swiftboated”. Younger women don’t know what a vicious little shrew is that olde cankle hiding pantsuited granny. How could any real woman excuse that crap? Got any insight on that, smart –snip–hole?
Speaking of Swift Boating I was just thinking about that. I was thinking what a target rich environment for Swift Boating that The Donald would bring to the table. He’s only the teflon candidate to the 35% of the Republican base composed of uneducated southern rednecks. You must have inherited your money, Monfort. No wonder you feel such affinity with The Donald.
I inherited poverty, lizard. Grew up in a housing project in Detroit, near Dr. Ben Carson. My father died in jail when I was 11 and my mother in a mental institution when I was a fairly successful 17 year old gangster, riding around in my gold Biarritz wearing my cashmere topcoats and Stacey Adams shoes.
I admit that I was significantly better off than my peers, because I was born white, bright and very handsome. Maybe success was in my genes. My absentee, worthless pops was a wayward scion of the Monforts of Colorado, cattle kings. I went on to more honorable, distinguished and productive endeavors when the judge saw my potential and put me in the Army instead of the pen. And you rose to the level of a size 9 lightweight cook-sergeant, technically in the Vietnam-era, so you can freeload on the VA medical system. Carry on little dude.
Maybe you could donate to
http://www.sons.of.absentee.fathers.com
Chip off the old block.
I rose to the level of a self-made millionaire at the age of 43, Donny. My goal was to make enough money so I never had to work again. And I haven’t. Sixteen years and counting. I stayed home and raised my kids. Thanks for asking.
I did my four in the corps and it was voluntary not a judge telling me “or else ten in the pen” like you. I earned the benefits in the GI Bill and I use it. I’d be stupid if I didn’t and my momma, unlike yours, didn’t have any stupid children.
Why not give it to http://www.neglected.sons.of.blog.warriors.com?
Don and David,
I have an organization that would be worthy of your largess. An award winning science education non-profit. beoutside.org takes you to their web page.
One of the most rewarding experiences I get to enjoy is working with students in the field watching them get excited about science.
Funny all the back and forth about Cruz and Trump.
Go to the Upshot at the NY Times and run the scenarios. Only Trump has a reasonable chance of wrapping up the nomination before the convention.
If Trump can’t wrap it up (and Cruz can’t either), then probably Kasich/Rubio will be the ticket. The fix is in. Why else would Kasich be hanging around?
Kasich getting nominated would cause a riot. The first thing they’d have to do is change the convention rules. Right now no one who hasn’t won a majority of delegates in at least 8 states is eligible for nomination. Kasich has won only. The only qualified nominees are Trump (right now) and Cruz (after he wins one more state). There is virtually zero chance that Kasich can win 7 of the remaining states. Rubio/Kasich is a possibility but not the converse.
Cruz is 4 states away. It is a majority, not a plurality, that counts towards the eight. Hard to see where he gets those from. Rule 40 will change anyway, so this is not going to be an issue.
Jim D
You are correct. Mibad. Trump is at exactly 8 states with a majority of delegates while Cruz is at 4.
That said, if you look a little harder you’ll see that Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska are political and geographic clones of Wyoming. They’re locks for Cruz. He is in no danger of not satisfying Rule 40.
I don’t believe the delegates will change Rule 40. They’ll be taking enough heat for not giving the nomination to Mr. Plurality to be screwing around with the rules. I suspect they already made a deal with Cruz, who the establishment hated almost as much as Trump, to choose an establishment running-mate in trade for giving him their blessing and support going forward.
PS to Monfort. This is how someone without an intellectual inferiority complex admits a mistake. Make note of it.
“Desperate Don and the Hillary Haters” would be a hit name for an old fogey musical group.
https://youtu.be/17EOM3RTD1Y
jim2 Thanks for that. Without tv I don’t get to see all the hilarious fare out there and this was spectacular. Does the soul good to see such a vile public figure ridiculed. Thanks again.
Will anyone dare attempt to interpret this before reading the rest of the story? Well, at least it’s politics …
…
Well, let me start — let me start with the question of the Fed’s credibility. And you used the word “promises” in connection with that. And as I tried to emphasize in my opening statement, the paths that the participants project for the federal funds rate and how it will evolve are not a pre-set plan or commitment or promise of the committee. Indeed, they are not even — the median should not be interpreted as a committee-endorsed forecast. And there’s a lot of uncertainty around each participant’s projection. And they will evolve. Those assessments of appropriate policy are completely contingent on each participant’s forecasts of the economy and how economic events will unfold. And they are, of course, uncertain. And you should fully expect that forecasts for the appropriate path of policy on the part of all participants will evolve over time as shocks, positive or negative, hit the economy that alter those forecasts. So, you have seen a shift this time in most participants’ assessments of the appropriate path for policy. And as I tried to indicate, I think that largely reflects a somewhat slower projected path for global growth — for growth in the global economy outside the United States, and for some tightening in credit conditions in the form of an increase in spreads. And those changes in financial conditions and in the path of the global economy have induced changes in the assessment of individual participants in what path is appropriate to achieve our objectives. So that’s what you see — that’s what you see now.
..
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-16/here-what-janet-yellen-answered-when-steve-liesman-asked-if-fed-has-credibility-prob
I totally understand Yellen.
Now, the Cisco Kid, is an economist.
Desperate Don and the Cisco Kid!
What a pair !
What Yellen means is that the Fed ain’t going to do anything to upset the apple cart while they do everything they can to see that the economy keeps limping along, until after the election. Yellen is a Keynesian-Democrat tool.
If you look at the GDP growth rate over the Obama years and compare it with the federal deficit as a percentage of GDP, you can’t help but notice that the growth in GDP is financed by huge budget deficits. Then you got the massive QE and the state and local budget deficits added to that stimulus.
How can so much money be pumped into an economy and result in such anemic growth? And that’s money that is robbed from future Peter’s to pay current Paul’s and Pablos.
The government and academic/socialist economic sighintists call it inter-temporal smoothing. Those of us who make a living in private sector finance and investment call it inevitable bankruptcy.
Don attempts macro economics. Results are hilarious. Keep ’em coming, Don.
Don’s doing a better job than Obummer and his Fed.
Max
There is nothing you have ever said here that gives any indication you could ever understand economics beyond the 5th grade level. Or anything else beyond a 5th grade level.
I got to laughing so hard I posted this in the wrong place.
Now, the Cisco Kid, is an economist.
Desperate Don and the Cisco Kid!
What a pair !
jim2 | March 16, 2016 at 9:32 pm |
Don’s doing a better job than Obummer and his Fed.
______
Do you think deflation is a good idea?
Where is our money going?:
http://bea.gov/newsreleases/international/transactions/transnewsrelease.htm
“The U.S. current-account deficit—a net measure of transactions between the United States
and the rest of the world in goods, services, primary income (investment income and compensation),
and secondary income (current transfers)—increased to $124.1 billion (preliminary) in the third quarter of 2015 from $111.1 billion (revised) in the second quarter. The deficit increased to
2.7 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP) from 2.5 percent in the second quarter.”
That’s an account of the funds transfers we know about. As even an inconsequential compulsively yammering 5th grade maroon can see, it’s more than GDP growth. It’s also chronic.
I bet maxieboy is all in on the story that the reason Clinton balanced the budget is because of the tax increase on the rich.
From Don the Economist
“The deficit increased to
2.7 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP) from 2.5 percent in the second quarter.”
______
DAMN ! I won’t be able to sleep tonight.
Wait until debt service starts to squeeze out all the free goodies. Nobody is losing sleep over fabricated CAGW. When the whiners want to know where their fee lunch went, you can tell them it went to pay for the debt that you didn’t lose sleep over.
cerescokid March 16, 2016 at 10:32 pm
“I bet maxieboy is all in on the story that the reason Clinton balanced the budget is because of the tax increase on the rich.”
______
No, No, Cisco, you can’t balance the budget by increasing the tax rate for the rich. The rich aren’t patriotic so they will just move to another country which gives them a better deal. What you have to do is lower the tax rate to woo back those who have already left.
The economist Laugher used a paper napkin to prove tax revenues rise when rates are lowered. That may seem counter intuitive unless you are crazy or are have tossed down a few martinis. Anyway, there’s obviously a limit because if you lowered taxes on the rich to zero every rich person in the world would be flocking here and it would get too crowded.
Barely literate 5th grade level maroons are not expected to get that chronic budget and current account deficits that exceed the growth rate of GDP is a problem. Maybe she’s a good cook.
Trump calls for a 15% corporate tax rate as opposed to to a Stalinistic 35% rate. Here’s how it would work, corporations would have more to pay out in taxable dividends. Less incentive to flee. While corporations should not be taxed, it’s an improvement. Money goes to where it’s not taxed or taxed less. It’s a rational thing. Villifying corporations results in them leaving. It’s a rational thing.
Wasn’t it GW who started the tradition of throwing trillions of dollars at the sub-prime debt crisis?
Tax corporations less and tax wage earners more. If the wage earners whine, just borrow to make up the shortfall. We have done it before, so we know it works.
Don Monfort | March 16, 2016 at 11:38 pm |
More musings from Don the Economist
“Barely literate 5th grade level maroons are not expected to get that chronic budget and current account deficits that exceed the growth rate of GDP is a problem.”
_____
Don, you may be missing the forrest by concentrating on the trees. If you are worried about the deficit and GDP growth, you may be even more worried about the size of our national debt, which is about 103% of our GDP.
The problem could be even more serious than it first appears. In order to get our debt to GDP ratio down to a more manageable figure, like the countries listed below, we might have to be like one of them.
Nigeria 11%
Cuba 17%
Bangladesh 18%
Norway 26%
China 41%
Sweden 44%
Looks like the choice is between becoming a third-world country, a commie country, or a Scandinavian nanny state.
Which model do you prefer?
I see.You didn’t get past the first listed country, Nigeria, because thoughts of Hillary keep poking at your brain. I suggest you stop regretting she married Bill instead of you, and stop dreaming about being the first gentleman.
I am very happy with my fine young long tall Jamaican-Jewish-Brazilian-American Princess wife, little–snip–thang. And somewhere in the woodpile there’s a white man, because our big handsome 12 year old son has blue eyes. Life is good. And I am the first gentleman. No –snip–stained blue dress scandals in our story. She can’t cook, but she got a nice private practice and she pays the housekeepers. I hope you are as happy as we are. I am just having fun with you. You deserve it.
Oh, a house husband. Sounds cushy if you have a maid.
Donnie… seriously. If you have such a great life why are you spending most of it here on Judy’s blog?
Does not compute. I don’t know who you think you’re fooling but it isn’t me.
max1ok said:
Well that certainly has been the trend.
In the early 1950s corporations paid about 30% of the cost of running the federal government.
By the time Reagan entered office that had fallen to about 15%.
Reagan’s supply-side economics — what Bush the elder later blasted as “voodoo economics” — promised to correct this.
According to Reaganomics, large cuts in tax rates would so stimulate the economy that the tax revenue on the increases in business and personal income would offset the tax revenue losses caused by lower rates, (15% x $2000 > 20% x $1000) Therefore, such tax cuts would not increase the federal budget deficit.
This hypothesis was graphically illustrated by the Laffer curve.
http://i.imgur.com/fBAEsdU.png
But the supply-side predictions of Reaganomics and the Laffer Curve didn’t come true.
What actually happened was just the opposite.
As corporate tax rates were lowered, the amount of taxes corporations paid decreased. By the time Reagan left office, corporations paid less than 10% of the cost to run the federal government.
http://i.imgur.com/lyisqeH.png
According to The Atlantic article I cited above, Trump promises to right this badly listing ship. And Trump is the only candidate, either Democratic or Republican, who has made this a campaign issue.
So, max1OK, why isn’t Trump your man?
Can you cite where Trump has said something different from the way The Atlantic has characterized his position? Or do you just not believe what Trump is promising?
And one more time, just for the record, let me state that the race issue The Atlantic keeps raising is a red herring.
http://i.imgur.com/beydGpG.png
The changes in economic policy Trump is advocating would help all working- and middle-class folks — brown, black and white — and not just white ones as The Atlantic’s tautology would have us believe.
Max
Nice attempt at humor but this is not about Art and academe. This is about data from the IRS. The liberal myth is that if it was not for the tax increase of Clinton’s on the wealthy in 1993, there would not have been the surplus of $236 Billion in FY 2000, and no balanced budget at all.
So lets look at the observational data. From FY 92 to FY 00, total tax revenue increased by $925 Billion. Of that amount, $100 Billion was from an increase in Corporate Taxes, $200 Billon was from an increase in Social Security tax revenue, $100 Billion was increases in a variety of other taxes and $100 Billion was from an increase in Capital Gains tax revenue.
That leaves a balance of $425 Billion from increases in the Individual Income Taxes due to the Clinton tax increase and growth in the economy. The IRS shows the effective tax rate for each level of income. In 1992 for those making over $200,000 the effective tax rate was 25.4%. By 2000 it was 26.4% for an increase of 1%. Apply that effective rate increase to the AGI of $1.7 Trillion and you get an increase of just $17 Billion from the tax increase for those making over $200,000.
So of the $425 Billion of Individual Income Tax revenue increase over those 8 years, just $17 Billion was from increasing the top marginal rates on the wealthy while the rest was from very strong growth in GDP and Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). The increase in AGI for those 8 years was 78%. For the period 2000 to 2013 (latest IRS data) the growth in AGI was 38%. A good book by Robert Gordon “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” covers why he thinks we might not be returning to the growth rates of the 20th century. And for this reason you should be losing sleep over the GDP and the bleak prospects of being able to support the exploding debt level.
The bottom line. Clinton balanced the budget not due to increases in tax rates on the wealthy but because of Capitalism Unchained.
Also, during the Clinton years income inequality exploded as evidenced by an increase in the number of tax filers making over $1 Million going from 66,000 in 1992 to 240,000 in 2000. During the Bush years those making over $1 Million went from 240,000 to 320,000.
Be sure to tell your prof how much you have learned from your sojourn mingling with the adults. Let him know your most valuable lesson was finding out how much you do not know.
http://www.slyman.org/m_politics/US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent_of_GDP_by_President.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/oSRAomc.png
==> The changes in economic policy Trump is advocating would help all working- and middle-class folks — brown, black and white — and not just white ones as The Atlantic’s tautology would have us believe.
Interesting. Stated as fact. That’s what some folks call “skepticism,” I guess.
http://i.imgur.com/c5K8uxN.png
http://i.imgur.com/Y82CTZs.png
http://i.imgur.com/xjq09lf.png
°°°°°cerescokid said:
More voodoo economics.
°°°°°cerescokid said:
There is a comprehensive metric that’s used to indicate inequality. It’s called the GINI Index.
http://i.imgur.com/IwMmphx.png
Joshua,
So you are opposed to using the power of the state to achieve a more equitable distribution of income so that it behooves the economic interests of the working and middle classes, regardless of what color they happen to be?
It pays to stay in school:
https://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=C111US679D20151022&p=income+by+education+level
Come on Glen I spoon Fed you the analysis from the IRS data. Did you actually look at the IRS archives. Did you calculate the taxes increased from growth in GDP and AGI and how that influenced the taxes. I could not have made it more simple. There are no voodoo economics, just simple arithmetic from tax statistics.
Sorry I broke your delusional bubble about the Clinton tax increase. It is what it is. No models. No theory. Just hard data.
Glen, did you even look at the GINI chart? You made my point for me ,unwittingly I guess. See that jump in the 90s? When millionaires increase by nearly 300% and those making over $200,000 go from 950,000 tax filers to 2,800,000 tax filers and the top 5% of households go from their share of aggregate income being 17% to 21% during an 8 year period, then Iwould call that an explosion.
“By the time Reagan left office, corporations paid less than 10% of the cost to run the federal government.”
Many small businesses pay no taxes. For instance an S-Corp is a pass through entity. I report my company’s net income on my personal return. Let me ask, does this zero percent rate seem unfair to you? If C-Corps paid no taxes, the same type of thing could happen. Its owners could still pay taxes on its income. A C-Corp is an odd bird to begin with. Partnerships, pass through trusts, sole proprietors are also pass through entities and pay no taxes in general. C-Corps have this taxation penalty. Then there is the argument that C-Corps pay no taxes, they simply collect them from their customers. That fits the rule that no magic is allowed, there is no corporate money tree.
Corporate tax rates:
1979-1986 46%
1987 40%
1988 34%
The threshold for when the rates kick in was monkeyed with as well, but for the large corporations, that would have had a minimal impact.
Here’s a longer history of the GINI Ratio I found that illustrates when the problem began.
http://i.imgur.com/XjBaSSb.png
cerescokid and Ragnaar,
Sorry guys, but you’re not going to baffle me with your BS.
You can choose to live in your fact-free world and worship at the altar of Saint Ronnie.
And granted, Saint Ronnie might have had some good qualities.
But being a friend to those who have to work for a living wasn’t one of them.
Those dummies who think that corporations “don’t pay taxes” or “don’t pay fair share of taxes” don’t understand the basic facts of business organization, tax policy and economics in general. I will give the simplified explanation so even the simpletons can get it.
Corporations are owned by what are called stockholders. New corporation starts up, presumably to make money for stockholders, and the investors/stockholders put funds at risk to get the ball rolling. They have already paid taxes on that money. Corporation hopefully makes a profit. That is taxed as corporate profit. Some of remaining is paid out to stockholders as dividends. Taxed. Some shareholders sell stock at a profit. Taxed. Stockholders who made a few bucks on their investment buy stuff. Taxed.
Some people think that corporations are good, because they hire a lot of people and generate a lot of economic activity, creating wealth and revenue for the gubmint. Some folks think corporations bad. If you think that corporations are bad, raise the taxes on corporations. If you want less of something, raising the taxes on it will do the job.
Glen, I don’t remember saying anything about Reagan. I was referring to the income inequality that increased under Clinton, as evidenced by your own chart where the slope looks like about 80 degrees during part of the 90s. It may have started earlier but the rate of increase is not as great as under
Clinton.
Here is some insight on income inequality. There may be a dozen reasons for its increase on the last 40 years and the top marginal rate does not break the top ten. Politicians like to mislead the masses because that is the simple and easy thing to do.
Here are a few factors that have influenced the share of income going to capital over labor. Loss of manufacturing as % of employment since 1945. Loss of union representation since 1955 as % of private employment. Automation/digitization etc. Dichotomy of labor force between high value in technology vs low value manuel labor. Globalization. Demographics/culture with greater share of highly educated, high income 2 income families median income of $100,000 vs higher level of lower educated lower income single moms median income of $32,000. TV and internet have opened up markets/customers in the millions/billions with smaller barriers to entry allowing entrepreneurs and employees to have the value of their work rewarded quicker and by larger markets than ever. Compare sports/celebrities incomes and number vs 50 years ago. Some internet operations have marginal production costs of near 0 giving capital the advantage.
I could go on but massive changes affect economies globally and the US is not alone in facing income inequality.
cerescokid,
Do you really believe that the political and economic revolution that Reagan ushered in wasn’t the catalyst for the inequality we now experience? Granted, every president since has followed his lead. But that’s the point.
Regardless of how you answer that question, though, I’ll ask you the same question I asked Joshua.
Are you opposed to using the power of the state to achieve a more equitable distribution of income so that it behooves the economic interests of the working and middle classes, regardless of what the cause of the growing inequality might be?
Don could have the IQ of a squirrel and still understand almost any topic better than you max.
Don,
don’t mean to imply you have the brains of a squirrel. Just that numbnut max doesn’t even have that.
re cerescokid March 17, 2016 8:55 AM
Cisco, sorry for the belated reply, but I was too busy practicing capitalism to talk about it. You may want to check your numbers because they don’t appear to be consistent with what the group of tax payers with taxable incomes of $200,000 or more have actually paid in taxes.
You say the 1 percentage point rise in the tax rate from 25.4% to 26.4% for this group resulted in only $17 billion of a $925 billion surplus the 1990’s. If 1% = $17 billion, then 25.4% = $432 billion or the amount of taxes paid in a year by the group. In 1990 that $432 billion would have paid about one-fourth of the $1,654 billion in total tax revenue and in the year 2000 about one-sixth of the $2,541 billion total. But records show this group paid 55% of total taxes in a recent year, 2013 (see link). I don’t believe the rates change much, so if we take 55% of of the 1990’s $1,654 billion, we get about $910 billion, and 55% of the year 2000’s $2,541 billion, yields $1,398 billion, both amounts much greater than the $432 billion your figures imply. This doesn’t account for the $100 billion you said was capital gains tax, but I believe that was spread over 10 years and includes tax by those with incomes under $200,000 per year, but even if I applied the entire $100 billion to the $432 billion, the $532 billon total falls short of the $910 billion and $1,398 billion amounts that those with taxable income of $200,000 or more actually paid.
Let me know what you think.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/24/high-income-americans-pay-most-income-taxes-but-enough-to-be-fair/
Also you may be interested in the following:
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/111th-congress-2009-2010/reports/2010-12-02_incometax_chartbook.pdf
Max
Your sentences are so convoluted I don’t know what you said. Let’s just focus on the $17 Billion. In 1992 the Adjusted Gross Income for the $200,000 + group was $490 Billion. In 2000 the AGI for that same group was $1.7 Trillion.
Now let’s assume the effective rate stayed the same that is 25.4%. Then the new tax amount would be all due to increase in growth of income not an increase in tax rate. But the effective rate was increased by 1%. So breaking down how much of the tax increase came from growth on income vs increasing effective tax rate is just determined by asking how much did the added 1% bring in. That is $17 Billion. Remember there is an increase in taxes of $925 Billion on 2000 over the taxes in 1992 and only a portion is due to increases of Individual Income Taxes and only a portion of that is due to increases of effective tax rates, while the balance is from increases in Adjusted Gross Income against which the effective tax rate is applied.
“Are you opposed to using the power of the state to achieve a more equitable distribution of income…”
Partial list of middle class tax goodies:
Child Credit
Education Credit
401(k) and IRA deductions
HSA accounts for some
Mortgage and State tax deductions
Property tax deductions
Exemptions for each child
529 plans
Residence gain exclusion
Roth Contributions allowed
Grants for kids in college
Student loan interest deduction
Partial list of rich peoples tax bummers:
The AMT
Phase out of exemptions and deductions
No Education Credit
No Child Credit
State tax deduction make AMT worse
Partial residence gain exclusion
IRA deductions limited or not deductible
Roth contributions can be not allowed
Higher ordinary tax rates
No grants for kids in college
No student loan interest deduction
Some of the tax bummer are backdoor move by Congress. They can sort of say, we didn’t raise taxes (cough) tax rates. Accounts say, yes you did.
I note jobs isn’t on your list of middle class “goodies.”
cerescokid | March 17, 2016 at 9:57 pm |
Max
“Your sentences are so convoluted I don’t know what you said.”
______
Well, one of my hobbies is writing hypothetical tax code, and I guess you
have to hire a tax preparer.
But seriously, what I wrote is not that hard to understand. I understood it when I wrote it, and I just read it again and still understand it almost as well. Just because reading my explanation requires using your head is no reason to take off in a different direction like you did.
You leave me with no choice but to conclude you can’t defend your point, but maybe you got it from someone else and it’s his fault.
Maxieboy, you are really lost, with logic and everything else. I didn’t get the numbers from anyone else since I couldn’t memorize them. The IRS spreadsheet was in front of me when I was writing. Let me give you the data from 1992 as I am looking at them.
AGI $200,000 – $490 Billion
Taxes paid group $124 Billion
In 2000
AGI $200,000 – $1.7 Trillion
Taxes paid by group – $449 Billion
Those are the only 4 numbers you needto understand my point. The fact you brought in other extraneous numbers prove this is all over you head.
The only question is how much of the tax increase from 1992 to 2000 was due to the increase in the rate vs the increase in the AGI. You have all the numbers right there to figure it out.
Don’t bring in 2013 or anything else. The $200,000 group is a subset of the totals and the issue is only about that subset.
Cisco, we aren’t communicating effectively. I don’t understand you, and you don’t understand me. Let’s go back to where you started on March 17 with your 8:55 AM post. I will quote you.
“Nice attempt at humor but this is not about Art and academe. This is about data from the IRS. The liberal myth is that if it was not for the tax increase of Clinton’s on the wealthy in 1993, there would not have been the surplus of $236 Billion in FY 2000, and no balanced budget at all.
______
Whether this is a liberal myth or not, I don’t know. What I do know is I did not say if not for the tax increase there would not have been surplus, so I was puzzled by your response.
A simple way to estimate the change in revenue from a tax rate increase for tax payers in a particular income bracket for a given year, would be to (a) calculate the revenue based on the higher rate,(b) calculate the revenue based on the previous rate, and (c) subtract the “b” amount from the “a” amount to get the added revenue. The sum of the added revenue from each income bracket would be an estimate of the total added revenue for the year.
Of course this kind of estimate does not address the tax revenue effect of economic growth or the effect of tax payer response to rate changes, which are effects you are trying to determine, but I think would could agree on what the simple estimate does represent, and that would be a starting point,
Max
Yes we are getting closer. A simple way to look at my point is to just use some simple examples. If AGI is 100 and effective tax rate is 10% then the tax is 10. If effective rate stays the same and AGI goes to 200 the tax is 20. And if the tax is increased so the effective rate is 20% and AGI is 100 then tax is 20. But if tax rate is increased to 20% effective rate and AGI goes to 200, then how much is due to growth and how much is due to tax rate increase. In this example it is 20 to growth and 20 to tax rate increase.
I was just separating the pieces to know how much of the increase in taxes were to the increase to growth (in this case a lot with AGI going from $490 to $1700) vs the increase in the effective rate.
“In this example it is 20 to growth and 20 to tax rate increase.” Yes, in the second year of the new tax, that would seem to be the case. I’m glad we agree. Similarly, if the tax rate was lowered from 20 to 10 and the AGI grew from 100 to 200, the revenue would remain at 20. I imagine Laffler’s (sp?) curve would have the revenue going higher than 20.
The CBO report which I linked in my previous report had an interesting discussion on how tax payers and the economy could be affected by hikes and cuts in income tax rates. I knew about the theory that lower rates stimulate economic growth, and the reasons. Also discussed was the theory higher rates can stimulate the economy if people work harder or longer to make up for lost take home pay. I hadn’t heard of that one. It made me think of how bees work harder to make up for the lost honey bee keepers take.
Would the AGI have been hit
Please excuse the sentence fragment at the end of my previous post.
Max
About 50 years ago I worked in a steel wire factory where nearly everyone worked on a piece rate. They got X cents for each item they produced during the day. Or if they were down for machine malfunction, they got a “day rate”. If they produced the quota of pieces, that would generate more income than the “day rate” on a per hour basis.
After working there for a few months, I noticed that machines all over the shop were shutting down anywhere between 15 and 45 minutes before the shift ended. I asked a few of the workers what was going on. The most frequent reply was along the lines “man, I ain’t gonna work anymore cause it will just put me into a higher tax bracket and I don’t want to give the gubmint any more my money.” At the time there were around 20 to 22 tax brackets going up by 2% or so every couple of thousands of dollars. During the 60s and 70s there was the phenomenon of bracket creep. Inflation had started to really accelerate and wages were being pushed into a higher tax bracket just from inflation. These workers had it in their head why work more just for the gubmint. Not totally rational because they would still get lets say 70 to 80% of that additional income in take home pay but that was their logic.
The idea of lower tax rates influencing behavior stuck with me after that. Today, we are in a new age where the vast majority or workers no longer work on a piece rate and the incentive to work harder for a marginally greater return probably is more esoteric than before, but it still has merit.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize a worker with a 91% marginal tax rate is not going to work at hard as someone with a 5% marginal tax rate. Somehow getting up in the morning and realizing you get to keep 95% of what you make is more enticing than working for 9% of your pay. Those are extremes and not realistic but that encapsulates the theory. In the 50s and 60s and maybe some into the 70s, the Lowest marginal tax rate was 20% and the highest was 91% in the 50s to 63 then down to the 70s and then to the 50%s and eventually to 28% in 1988 and 89 before going back up.
Today the lowest marginal tax rate is 10% going up to 39.6%. We were talking about an effective tax rate before. The ironic thing is the effective tax rate in 1963 was 13.6% and that was the last year the top marginal rate was 91%. (LBJ got thru the reduction in the top marginal rate to 70% proposed by JFK) Move forward to 1988 when the top marginal rate was reduced to 28%. Guess what, the effective rate (average rate of AGI paid in taxes) was again 13.6%. There are many ways to affect the effective rate and the top marginal rate is just one. And there are many ways to effectuate a progressive tax system and the top marginal rate is just one. But it sounds so sexy and politically attractive to stick it to the rich. In 1954 with only 201 millionaires and the top rate of 91% they paid less than .3% of total tax revenue. Those who paid some of their income tax at 91% , of whom there were only 630, paid less than 1% of total taxes. There was no massive income redistribution since the rich kicked in so little to begin with, simply because there were so few of them. Those at the top then paid an effective rate of about 45 to 50%.
The real goal should be to maximize the effective rate with the least harm to the growth of the economy
Cisco, I suspect your factory coworkers The most frequent reply was along the lines “man, I ain’t gonna work anymore cause it will just put me into a higher tax bracket and I don’t want to give the gubmint any more my money.”
________________
Cisco, I think they were full of sh*t. I could see quiting if there was a large jump, say from a 20% bracket to 50%, but that wasn’t the case here. I think these guys were satisfied with what they had already earned and wanted to go home. That’s OK. Not everyone is driven by ambition.
I can see some situations where moving to a higher bracket might be unattractive. For example, a physician or dentist might prefer to work fewer hours.
I would love to be in a higher tax bracket. I would be delighted to be in the highest tax bracket.
Very nice explanation on how marginal tax rates influence total tax collection, ceresco. Of course, maxie comes back with a non-substantive emotional response that shows no grasp of the issue. Hey, maybe she can cook.
Don…”How can so much money be pumped into an economy and result in such anemic growth? And that’s money that is robbed from future Peter’s to pay current Paul’s and Pablos. ”
That’s because only the Regressive Left, Marxists, and the economically ignorant (synonyms) would believe that pumping money into a structure that has been evolving to shift value to Washington Kleptocrats would do anything with the money but store it and wait for ‘economic opportunity’ to return.
The Left thinks ‘money’ is the same as economic growth/economic opportunity. Has there ever been such a collection of economic illiterates in the history of the species? One would have to travel far back in time to when wealth was seen as ‘static’ and to be plundered. Only the Left would think (and the ‘Progressive Right’) that money stolen from the private sector, filtered through the maw of DC and returned to the private sector, after being devalued, would stimulate growth. Ignoramuses one and all.
If the establishment manages to stab both Trump and Cruz in the back, and they run two back of the pack stragglers who won two states and Puerto freaking Rico between them….
Do you really think that could happen?
They might hold their nose and pick Cruz, perhaps with Kasich or someone more centrist as a VP to sweeten it for them. In a contested convention the VP is up for debate and voting too.
Jim D,
You wrote –
“They might hold their nose and pick . . . ”
Do they pick their own noses, or hold each others’, and then pick away furiously?
Seems as good a way of picking a winner as any other.
Cheers.
Trump and Rubio. Everyone wins.
Not as good as Trump and Sanders. That would keep the extreme right and extreme left at home, but who cares?
On second thought, the Republican establishment might care enough to have a fit. That would be fun to watch.
Rubio will probably stay well clear of Trump. He has no respect for Trump at all.
Are you serious, yimmy? I know, silly question. You are just clueless. Rubio is washed up at 44 and he would lick The Donald’s boots to be his V.P.
Nobody wins with Trump. He’s a con artist. He’s conning 35% of the Republican party. The uneducated part. The rubes. The marks. The inbred angry deep south poor. People like Donnie the Rodent King II.
who could possibly want to be Trump’s veep?
Sara Palin ?
If Trump supporters could vote for his VP, she would win by a landslide.
Sarah Palin is SO last decade. Try to catch up, boys.
This is something Trump supporters have had enough of … liberals disrupting legal assembly. I hope Trump can get them all jailed and held until January 2017.
From the article:
…
Despite the fact that many of the main groups endorsing Democracy Spring are funded by billionaire Soros, the group complains that “American elections are dominated by billionaires and big money interests who can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns to protect their special interests at the general expense.”
But if the status quo goes unchallenged, the 2016 election — already set to be the most billionaire-dominated, secret money-drenched, voter suppression-marred contest in modern American history — will likely yield a President and a Congress more bound to the masters of big money than ever before.
The stage is set for a bold intervention to turn the tinder of passive public frustration into a fire that transforms the political climate in America, that sparks a popular movement that can’t be stopped.
The group continues:
We will demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won’t leave until they do — or until they send thousands of us to jail, along with the unmistakable message that our country needs a new Congress, one that that will end the legalized corruption of our democracy and ensure that every American has an equal voice in government.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/16/anti-trump-groups-threaten-largest-civil-disobedience-action-of-the-century/
I think I read that article. They want to throw out the sitting members of congress and return us to a democracy.
How do you know they are liberals? I can easily pretend to be a Tea Party supporter.
max10K. You know they are liberals, or progressives, because the MSM isn’t reporting on it. If it were the tea party they would be labelled “racist,” or maybe even the department of homeland security would be worried, and need to investigate.
http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/01/coulter-headshot-640×480-640×480.jpg
It is no longer a question of what the party wants. The voters — remember them? — keep showering Trump and Cruz with Ceausescu-like percentages. The combined vote for Trump and Cruz is a ringing chorus of what this party wants: a wall, deportation, less immigration and no job-killing trade deals.
In other words, what the party wants is the diametric opposite of what the donor and consultant class wants. One would have to search the history books to find a party establishment so emphatically rejected by the voters as today’s Republican Party has been.
jim2, good god, don’t tell me you have the hots for Coulter. Are you about 90 years old?
You ever see a woman with an Adam’s apple like Coulter’s before?
Me neither.
wonder if this will grow legs…
Emails: Clinton sought secure smartphone, rebuffed by NSA
http://wtop.com/elections/2016/03/emails-clinton-sought-secure-smartphone-rebuffed-by-nsa/
The source is Judicial Watch, a litigation happy conservative legal advocacy group that uses FOIA to go after political figures, nearly all of whom turn out to be guess what?
If there’s someone you don’t like and you have loads of money to donate, Judicial Watch might be interested.
Actually, the source is legitimate emails vetted by State and NSA and released to Judicial Watch under FOIA. The emails show that granny was aware of something called ‘national security’ and she wanted the same portable comm. device as was used by the POTUS.
Knowing how this –snip– works from personal experience I will inform you that the reason the NSA would not give granny the same type of secure device as carried by POTUS is because they wanted to have the methods of security as closely guarded as possible, restricted to carrying risk only to the POTUS. We are talking on about the same level as the nuclear football.
So when granny cankles was denied the highest possible secure portable communication device of her liking, granny went off and did the next best thing, by setting up a freaking homebrew server connected unencrypted to the WWW. Just more prima facie evidence of foolish self-serving gross national security negligence and dumb –snipping- hubris. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
max10k protests too quickly. The fun is seeing if little legs grow. I guess he is just anxious to snip them off ASAP as a precaution.
“You can’t make this stuff up, folks.” Unfortunately we don’t have to make it up. I just wish I could make up the ending.
Judicial Watch’s track record isn’t good. Considering all the people they have gone after, who did they get. I read that the organization is so litigation happy their own members sue each other, one official had even sued his own mother.
You are incredibly dim, maxie. How do you ever manage to properly interpret recipes? Judicial Watch got the emails, The information is in the emails. Judicial Watch didn’t write the –snipping– emails. Maybe I have been overestimating you, but I was leaning towards thinking you are being deliberately obtuse. It’s looking more and more like you are just plain stooopid.
Don, I’m not sure how your comments relate to anything I wrote. I know how Judicial Watch operates. If you believe that organization’s web site is an accurate reporter of e-mail content, you are naive.
Didn’t you notice that the story is from the AP wire service, little maxie okie? I am going to assume, until I see evidence indicating otherwise, that the reporter has perused the FOIA released emails and is reporting the content correctly. It would not be hard to find out if something phony was being reported. Do you got anything to show us, maxie? Of course, you are free to make your own illogical assumptions and to embarrass yourself by running your mouth off when you don’t have a clue.
Sorry. I was just having a little fun. Here’s the original.
http://snag.gy/QYMwT.jpg
Don, I’m afraid you spend too time here making comments and too little time keeping yourself informed.
Here’s an example of Judicial Watch quoting an e-mail. Notice the “…” thingies.
“In a subsequent email from Reid dated February 18, 2009, Clinton’s penchant for Blackberry technology is described as an issue of “personal comfort” growing out of her becoming “hooked” on her Blackberry during the 2008 presidential campaign:
Here’s the results of our meeting yesterday… as I had been speculating, the issue here is one of personal comfort … S [Secretary Clinton] does not use a personal computer so our view of someone wedded to their email (why doesn’t she use her desktop when in SCIF?) doesn’t fit this scenario … during the campaign she was urged to keep in contact with thousands via a BB … once she got the hang of it she was hooked … now everyday [sic], she feels hamstrung because she has to lock her BB up … she does go out several times a day to an office they have crafted for her outside the SCIF and plays email catch up … Cheryl Mills and others who are dedicated BB addicts are frustrated because they too are not near their desktop very often during the working day…”
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-state-department-documents-show-that-nsa-rebuffed-hillary-clintons-attempts-to-obtain-a-secure-blackberry/
You can alter meanings by replacing words with three dots:
Don Motford is not a dummy.
Don Motford is … a dummy.
Sometimes an ellipsis is just an ellipsis.
Write that down of course.
I really think you need to regroup and check yourself, maxie. There is an AP report. I have just read a CBS report. Neither of those news agencies could be suspected of being favorable to Judicial Watch. I am pretty sure they have seen the emails that were released by the gubmint. It’s not hard to check these things. Don’t keep talking about what Judicial Watch may get wrong. Look at other sources. That is a bad story for granny, plain and simple.
Now I just saw this. A very good easy to understand explanation of what foolishness the Fed is up to. I suggest you could learn something by reading it:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/16/the-federal-reserve-is-dealing-financial-drugs/
Nitey night, maxie.
Jason Scheuren is an inflation hawk at a time of deflation, with recommendations that are untimely if not downright silly. He would recommend laxatives for diarrhea.
You didn’t learn anything, maxie. It seems that willful ignorance is your life choice. But you can cook, right?
Breitbart? News fit for rodents I guess. Second only to national enquirer.
It’s surprising to me that the climate deniers who haunt this little blog in such profusion aren’t more pro-Trump. He’s the candidate of denial. All Mexicans are rapists, build a giant wall, ban Muslims from entering the United States — the Republicans, like the climate denier community before them, have surrendered to fantasy. The only explanation for climate denial, or Trump, is that the person making the claim knows it’s a ridiculous lie, the people claiming to believe it know it’s a ridiculous lie, but they all embrace the lie because it is their only weapon as spoiled children against the grow-ups of the world.
So surprising that Trump doesn’t get more love from his fellow liars, climate denier chapter. But it’s not always pleasant to look in a mirror, I suppose.
Perhaps you are operating with biases when to walk in the door and it skews your perception. Or perhaps you are just out for an evening troll.
But it’s not always pleasant to look in a mirror, I suppose.
Hmmm, it figures…you’ve never looked into a mirror.
“Perhaps you are operating with biases when to walk in the door and it skews your perception.”
Not bias. Fact. That’s the difference between deniers and regular people: to us, facts matter.
So it both the perception and an evening troll. …watchout for the cow paddies.
What denial is that Robert? Please don’t drift…take a deep breath and focus.
Actually, he seems to have quite a few fans here. And they say the most amusing things. Like how Trump might be the champion of the working class.
Too funny.
I know, right? Trump could sell solar panels or windmills and make the rubes believe they were getting something of value. He’s on the wrong side for sure.
Robert | March 16, 2016 at 11:28 pm
“It’s surprising to me that the climate deniers who haunt this little blog in such profusion aren’t more pro-Trump. He’s the candidate of denial.”
________
Robert, I speculate more aren’t pro-Trump because they fear he has Democrat tendencies on other issues.
Generally, it would be good for those concerned about AGW to not want more immigration into the US. After all, US citizens have a pretty big carbon footprint. My guess, though, is that in this case many are willing to make an exception.
Bob
Let me break it to you gently. There are no facts about what will happen in 2100. None. Nada. Zip. If you are able to channel the facts of the future, how about helping me with my brackets. I have Michigan State all the way but without your help I am a little bit jittery.
So you managed to talk them into letting you out of the sanitarium Robert?
Ha ha Robert. You too funny. Please comment more, it makes the masses giggle.
The British should never have allowed them their liberty, lol.
That’s one fork in history. I often wonder what would of happened with really serious Reconstruction — 100% of assets & privately held land given over as reparations, all Confederate government officials and soldiers tried for treason and executed if guilty.
Maybe we could have rooted out the stupid in America before it give rise to climate denial, Ted Cruz, or Donald Trump.
Not a good idea. I wouldn’t exist.
Not a bad idea, bobbie.
Robert ponders one of the fantasies which likely got him committed in the first place.
I do agree that it has the benefit of removing max from history.
Right now, 42 of 267 (~16%) comments on this page are by Don Monfort, almost all of which include rudeness, hostility and attacks on other commenters. This is the sort of thing which made me quit visiting this site very often. I’m all for light moderation, but when so much of your comments thread is devoted to things like this, reading the comments here becomes very unpleasant.
And I defended you from the attacks on you by that nasty Web Hubble. He was especially cruel about that mail order diploma that you “attended”. You little whining ingrate. This is a political thread. Politics ain’t beanbag, junior. Judith is moderating it appropriately. Stop the freaking whinging. Didn’t you say that you had taken great pains to make sure that my comments did not appear to you? How you know what I am saying, you lying little –snipper–?
That’s a “mail order diploma mill” that junior “attended”. The little kid needs to attend a self-awareness and sense of humor academy.
What the hell are you ranting about now? I dropped out from Cal State Fullerton (computer science major) in my junior year to go to work full time as an engineer in the computer industry. A local company I was working for part time to supplement what the GI Bill was paying offered me far more moolah than a fresh BSCS was getting. I never looked back and 20 years later retired from Dell. Thanks for asking.
Brandon this is a political thread provided as a courtesy to bleed the off-topic Trump mania[cs] from the science threads.
And she’s deleting plenty of my comments. Presumably Rodent King Donnie the Second is getting dinged too.
…snips and snails comes ter mind… )
yes, the presidential threads are designed to keep such comments away from the other threads. i’m deleting lots of comments, about twice a day
The subject of US politics (3rd thread) is not what I come to Judith’s blog for. The personal sniping has often been amusing and well crafted but at the end of it all, no learning has transpired so I turn off and go elsewhere, as is everyone’s right. No comment was invited by the protagonists and none is required. If you chose to join in, it will be at your own risk.
Peter, you failed to mention that hip-waders are advised attire.
It’s an example of adapting, instead of attempting to mitigate – which would require much more effort.
This place here is kind of like a drainage ditch, well fertilized, and supporting an interesting variety of flora and fauna which might otherwise be considered invasive species.
KenW, excellent description…maybe more of a sump?
Hey Ken! Greetings from Texas!
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/6f/7e/85/6f7e858812df7e53cb9f6ddc1333c4b1.jpg
This thread is giving us a chance to share with others, more about ourselves. Where are lukewarmers politically? Some in the middle, some on the right. Some back the establishment, some are renegades.
Rodent Monfort is lashing out in all directions. I think we should be a little more sympathetic. He has now realized he backed the wrong horse and is transferring buyer’s regret into lashing out at everyone. Let’s keep track of him as he progresses through these five stages:
http://usa.eclosure.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/11/LocnessDesignsdotcom.jpg
Dear Dr. Curry,
Thank You for these threads. Being overseas, I’ve been having trouble making sense of the current election cycle. I find the above discussion enlightening. Also terrifying, but enlightening.
thanks.
terrifying is a good description, unfortunately
What do you all find terrifying? You must have led very sheltered lives. Ivory tower syndrome? It rough out in the real world.
None that I know will be; much that I fear may chance.
The Ides have passed and we are OK, Ken. Don’t let the hysteria the left-loons and their tool Repub establishment allies are trying to generate scare you. The republic will still be here, when you decide to come home.
It is true Don, in our history we have been up much worse creeks than we are right now. I am simply appalled by what seems to be a willful determination on the part of so many people – to screw it all up. This certainly goes for Europe as well – if not double.
And now I gotta go, time for a beer, and my waders are starting to leek. good evening to you all
An erudite historical reference from Don regarding the Ides of March but what happened a week later is intriguing and bearing in mind that at the heart of modern climate data is the new ‘branch’ of science known as treeolgy perhaps one or other side ought to be either lamenting or mourning…
‘A week later, on 22 March, the day of Arbor intrat (“The Tree enters”) commemorated the death of Attis under a pine tree. A college of priests called “tree bearers” (dendrophoroi) cut down a tree,[14] suspended from it an image of Attis,[15] and carried it to the temple of the Magna Mater with lamentations. The day was formalized as part of the official Roman calendar under Claudius.[16] A three-day period of mourning followed,[17] culminating with the rebirth of Attis on 25 March, the date of the vernal equinox on the Julian calendar.[18]’
tonyb
KenW:
Being overseas, I’ve been having trouble making sense of the current election cycle.
That’s OK. Don’t worry about it. We can assure you that you would have the same difficulty making sense of it even if you were here.
Don, If everyone goes away you’d be lonely.
I never suggested that everyone go away, dannyboy. There are about a half dozen commenters here who are well informed and offer some useful insight. Many of the others are entertaining. The residue, just taking up space. Let your conscience be your guide.
Thanks Don: “Let your conscience be your guide.” I’m so happy to discover you want me to stay around!
Danny, here is a vote from me: STAY AROUND
With such a request from the ‘boss’ how could I not!
Plus, after all Don’s sweet talk I think I may be falling for the guy a bit.
If not for Keynesian Economics the U.S. economy would had went off the cliff a long time ago. The markets now look superb and the unemployment rate is way down < 5% and real wages are up.
The markets look like bubbles. Remember the last two bubbles? We went off the cliff. And each time the recovery, bought with massive deficit spending and QE BS, sets us up for a bigger bubble:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/16/the-federal-reserve-is-dealing-financial-drugs/
I can’t even tell if your joking or deluded. If unemployment were still calculated the way it was in the ’60s, it would look like the great-depression. No worries, though–just change the calculation, and no one will notice!
I know there is a great deal of angst on the part of people who are worried about Trump being elected POTUS. The concern seems to be coalesced into two groups: 1) Progressives who see a mucking up of its agenda by what appears to be a loose cannon on the wooden decks of ships in the days of yore, a ship tossed in a storm, sails tattered and the steering mechanism dysfunctional; a large hardened object being tossed and crashing about creating wreck and ruin. 2) The established power brokers who manipulate circumstances, elections, politicians and finances because they have worked hard to slice and dice an electorate whom they have calculated and believe they understand.
“Being overseas, I’ve been having trouble making sense of the current election cycle.”
What makes the current election cycle less understandable is that Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders have drawn out voters who hitherto had not been politically active; hence, not politically accounted for. Large primary voter turnout reflects interest in issues and changing emphasis on issues that have, like embers of a fire, been smoldering for the last 8 years with winds of words now fanning politics aflame.
Obama also campaigned on a ticket of discontent and change drawing a large primary turnout which torpedoed Hillary’s efforts to be the first elected woman President.
Today, using crude language and a bellicose style, Trump is also campaigning on a ticket of change again aimed at disaffected groups instead of Eastern establishment and Ivy schooled elites.
We saw a similar campaign as Trumps in the 1960’s with Barry Goldwater whose Presidential defeat carried the Republican Party into depths of voter participation and Republican candidate defeats that frankly has Republican Party elites terrified now.
Hillary’s campaign has been forced to move more Left than she wanted it to be as she knows that being elected President requires a broader electorate participation and agenda than Vassar approved and feminists want to see.
The elites will eventually succeed in fielding candidates more to their liking as they are aware and are focusing their energies to do something within their control. In reality however, the Federal budget is mostly consumed by entitlements and the much smaller discretionary portion is all that people are fighting over. There will be some regulatory changes which, like most, will outlive their usefulness and subsequently provide grist for the political mill in years hence.
In short, impending political catastrophe, like in climate change, is in the eye of the beholder. Large political movements have an inertia to change of their own, usually collapsing when old leaders (like old soldiers) never die,they just fade away.
RiHo08 said:
Talking about a nattering nabob of negativism, this takes the prize.
Not everybody, however, buys into the negativism and defeatism:
Here’s another intellectual who took aim at negativism and defeatism:
Glenn Stehle
“Talking about a nattering nabob of negativism, this takes the prize.”
Thank you for your response.
I wonder: who am I to doubt when there has been such a distinguished cadre of intellectuals that first thought and then written such elegant prose? I must surely withdraw my negativism and defeatist attitude in the face of experts, authoritative dialogue, and words clutched upon by those whose passion is to change the world as they see fit.
I am optimistic however, that knowledge drives mankind towards freedom, albeit in a herky-jerky fashion. As far as negativism is concerned, its breadth and nuances are delicious to nibble upon as we already have a God that is good and there seems to be nothing that will stand in his/her path to bring us truth, justice and the American way.
RiHo08 said:
This is the same old boilerplate that the establishment is trotting out against Trump:
<blockquoteFrom Wallace To Trump, The Evolution of “Law And Order”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/from-wallace-to-trump-the-evolution-of-law-and-order/
As the atmosphere inside and outside of Donald Trump’s rallies took a violent turn this weekend, the comparisons grew between Trump and two figures from an earlier era of tumult: President Richard Nixon, and George Wallace, the conservative populist politician whose 1968 campaign for president drew on cries for “law and order.”
And zeroing in on what the Trump-is-Goldwater boilerplate looks like, one can Google “Trump Goldwater.” Here is an example from a leftist blog:
Here’s an article that debunks the establishment talking point that is making the rounds:
Glenn Stehle
If I recall correctly, Barry Goldwater was defeated in his Presidential aspirations and took the Republican Party down with him. Years later, Nixon, then Reagan, then Bush I & II resurrected the Party as Carter was seen as a nice man but ineffectual as a national politician, and Clinton I is/was not a nice person but deviously effective ala LBJ. Obama has been President in name only, after all, he is a Nobel Prize winner going in. He didn’t have to do anything after the 2008 election.
This election cycle I do not see Trump pushing on the door to the White House because the door is already open, and open to most anyone ala Andrew Jackson.
It will be interesting to watch this election as one might be entertained by a college basketball game. Lots of passion and energy. It gets the blood flowing. Yeh Yeh Cis Boom Bah.
Maybe so.
Since the founding of the United States there has existed a tension between “hard-headed practice, on the lines of Hamilton and Hobbes, and very idealistic theory, on the lines of Jefferson and Locke.”
And according to Eugen Weber, “the tension between theory and practice, between equality and competition, this tension would never be admitted, let alone resolved.”
“The frauds and the illusion necessary to conceal it became part of American history and of history itself, and it is quite possible that without such great delusions and great deceptions too, no great nation can exist, at least not as a nation.”
I would argue that Jefferson is every bit as much of the reality of the United States as is Hamilton.
See the full lecture here:
Agreeing with RiHo08, Trump is doing something the Republicans are not good at doing this time. Bringing in voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote. The establishment of course prefers the status quo. He doesn’t appear to be that to many. The establishments arsenal for maintaining things the way they want them has so far been ineffective. Trump doesn’t need to get ballot access like some third parties would. The Republican voters gave that to him. He hijacked enough Republican voters to get to where he is. He was able to do that because for years the Republicans have not been able to deliver on their rhetoric. Possibly their social stands are hurting them. Perhaps people are tired of being kowtowed to be politically correct. Where are the Republicans when that happens? The establishment Republicans are at their wits end. Threatening a split when that’s in the their playbook of things to avoid at all costs. Why is that we only have two parties in the U.S.? It’s to avoid this chaos of a three way split of the two parties plus one more. It is to shut outsiders out. Like Trump, the Repulican party is going to have to redouble its efforts to keep outsiders out. But it’s a bit late for that this time around.
Trump didn’t hijack anyone. Trump supporters support him by choice.
You are on to something about a third party. If the Redimowit (Dim o’ Wit, Redimowit being a Dimowit with a new tread applied) establishment does not respect the will of its voters, they might will split away from the colony and establish one of their own.
jim2:
Hijacked in a laudable way. He pulled that off. He’s changed the party.
Demagogues work by building up a set of non-problems into looking like the greatest threats that the country has seen, and saying that they are the only people who not only realize them, but the only ones who can stop these trumped up threats. It builds on susceptibility to fearmongering, and there always is a susceptible population for demagogues to use.
JimD:
We are discussing politics right?
Yes, demagoguing is a tool used by politicians to gain power. It doesn’t rely on truth, but more on a cult of personality and taking advantage of weaknesses to try to divide the nation.
Obummer takes every opportunity to divide the nation. Like when an innocent cop has to kill a black person to save his own life, for example. Or talking about “climate change deniers.” Or going against the will of the majority of citizens to pass socialistic healthcare bills. Or destroying miner’s jobs.
jim2, so you like it when Trump does? What are you saying exactly?
JimD. No, I don’t like what Trump does. I LOVE what Trump does? Is that clear? I will vote for Trump if the Redimowit Idiocracy does not nominate either Trump or Cruz. If they deny me my power, I will deny them theirs. I’m done with them.
Anyone who seriously supports Trump is lost.
Jim D:
“Demagogues work by building up a set of non-problems into looking like the greatest threats that the country has seen…”
Everything keeps repeating itself. Trump studied the global warming movement and then just did the same thing more effectively and faster. The right is in denial, skeptical of Trump, but not doing any real vote getting politics. The science says, Trump will be the nominee. Now where is a link between Trump and anything? What explains more than 80% or if you prefer Gavin Schmidt, 120% of his delegates earned? The Republican Party. High correlation there. There is an inverse relationship between the establishment Republicans follow through with economic freedoms and Trump’s delegates. Failure to deliver equals someone who may deliver and talks a better game to date.
Little yimmy wants all the leftist PC crap to be accepted as the norm in this country. Anybody who doesn’t go along and fights back is a “demagogue”. Shut them down and if possible prosecute them for being “deniers” “bigots” yatta..yatta..yatta. Like they are doing in a crumbling Europe, which according to the peripatetic peronista pope is undergoing an “Arab invasion”:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a9b2af1a5f894c05a92b63a38a851875/dutch-lawmaker-wilders-court-hate-speech-charges
AMSTERDAM (AP) — In a case that will test the limits of Dutch freedom of expression, firebrand lawmaker Geert Wilders appeared in court Friday for the first public hearing in a hate speech prosecution.
The pretrial hearing at a tightly guarded courtroom on the edge of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport comes with Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party standing atop opinion polls a year ahead of Dutch parliamentary elections and with anti-immigrant sentiment rising across Europe.
The case against Wilders, who was acquitted in 2011 of insulting Islam, centers on comments made before and after 2014 local elections. At one party meeting he asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, drawing them into the chant of “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!”
OMG! They are prosecuting this guy whose party is standing atop opinion polls, again, for wanting fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. In other words, he doesn’t like the “Arab invasion”. When are they going to bust that peripatetic peronista pope?
By the way, I have heard from national security types in France that under the emergency powers instituted after the latest Islamic carnage in Paris they have had occasion to search a couple dozen mosques and they have found large numbers of illegal firearms. No reporting of this in the press. Go figure.
Don,
“and they have found large numbers of illegal firearms.” I think this happens in American structures of all kinds. What’s the Trump plan for addressing that here?
It appears that you’re advocating for a police state by the wording of your post.
The “party” Republicans have their work cut out, because this is a runaway effect that they unleashed with their constant promotion of anger, fear and loathing in their own media. It is now Trump – Clown Prince and Hair Apparent of the Republican movement (excuse spelling). He will likely get the majority, and they are tied by their oath to support him, oddly backwards from how they wanted that oath to play out. I say serves them right, and they are getting the candidate they deserve with their “in-depth” debates.
You just keep showing how utterly dumb you are, danny. Where do you get that I am advocating anything in that comment. I stated what was reported to me by people I know and trust. WTF are you talking about? Do you think that many Christian churches or Jewish synagogues here or in Europe have large arms caches on premises? Do you think the press would be told to lay off the story and co-operate if there were large arms caches found in those places? Do you have a freaking clue about anything? Or are you just here to see your crap in print and get any kind of attention you can get?
Oh, yeah Don, my ‘crap in print’ is really going to my head. Attention? From who?
It was your words wishing that the information about the finding of illegal guns being found in mosques should be made more available thru the media (thought you didn’t like the media). Why? What does it matter the structure? That they are illegal is important, and that applies equally to finding illegal weapons in any structure. Were they found in a church or synagogue would you feel it to be so important that the structure be included?
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/19/biggest-hoard-of-illegal-firearms-found-in-secret-room-in-late-parish-councillors-house
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/11/weapons-cache-found-hidden-at-swedish-migrant-center/
http://www.ibtimes.com/german-gun-trafficking-police-find-700-guns-22-tons-ammo-mans-home-1891239
Nice work, dummie. You googled “arms cache” and yammered incoherently about whatever. Pathetic.
Now we know what you consider pathetic. What I consider pathetic is your choice to emphasize the weapons locations within mosques vs. that illegal weapons are found in many locations in Europe and this is easily discovered from a simple Google search. Speaking coherently.
Don, try this, research Muslim vs. radical. You might find radicals of all persuasions. And have a wonderful spring equinox.
There are lies, and then there are damned lies:
Climate Change and Conservative Brain Death
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/climate-change-and-conservative-brain-death.html
Glenn Stehle
I am afraid that the lens through which you seem to view Republican’s stance on climate change may have an astigmatism, the inability to focus outside of New York City.
As this blog represents, the rush to judgement by the climate cabal and has implications that reach into people’s pocketbooks, and people tend to notice such things.
Just today, the bird burning solar furnace owned by Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert is seeking an extension of its license as it has so far has failed to produce the expected power even at $200 a megawatt-hour. I am not saying that BrightSource Energy Inc should give all the $2.2 billion cost back to rate payers since $1.5 billion was fronted by the US taxpayer. Now, what is the return on investment for bankruptcy?
The rush to judgement by climate activists failed to consider the uncertainty of the whole story. This blindness, or in reality distorted view has probably delayed investment into workable alternatives to providing energy because of bad investments in failed Pi in the sky schemes.
RiHo08,
I think you and I are on the same page on this issue.
I thought I made that clear when I led in with “There are lies, and then there are damned lies,” but evidently not.
There’s not a thing in your comment I disagree with, other than you have mistaken my position on this issue.
The author of the article said
Climate change has all but fallen off the political radar.
It seems to me this is going to make it exceedingly difficult for the climate cabal to move its agenda along, at least by popular mandate.
http://i.imgur.com/fRGzLin.png
I’d be curious how Pew segregated Climate and Environment in their questionaire.
Found this: “(I’d like to ask you about priorities for President Barack Obama and Congress this year (2016). As I read from a list, tell me if you think each should be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important or should it not be done.) Should…dealing with global climate change be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important, or should it not be done?
Jan 14, 2016, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
View Question Results
View Report [Jan 22, 2016]
and this:”(I’d like to ask you about priorities for President Barack Obama and Congress this year (2016). As I read from a list, tell me if you think each should be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important or should it not be done.) Should…protecting the environment be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important, or should it not be done?
Jan 14, 2016, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press”
If these were the phrasing, seems ‘environment’ won out.
Glenn Stehle
My apologies for not reading closer.
Regards
You can watch live as it happens in Washing DC at the DCEagleCam.
Anything can happen!
Interesting to note following the outcome in Ohio on Tuesday is that blue-state California Republican politics, just got relevant…!
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-california-primary-20160316-story.html
Neoconservatives:
1) Not religious.
2) Pro-religious
3) Anti evolution because evolution ‘is bad for religion’.
No kind of soon is soon enough to get the guys out in the gutter where they belong.
—-
“Because of Strauss’ teachings, Kristol continued, “There are in Washington today dozens of people who are married with children and religiously observant. Do they have faith? Who knows? They just believe that it is good to go to church or synagogue. Whether you believe or not is not the issue — that’s between you and God — whether you are a member of a community that holds certain truths sacred, that is the issue.” Neoconservatives are “pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers.”
This noble hypocrisy on the part of intellectuals is required in order to encourage religious belief in ordinary people who would otherwise succumb to nihilism without it. In other words, Kristol believes that religion, which may well be a fiction, is necessary to keep the little people in line. This line of thinking has led him and other neoconservative intellectuals to attack Darwinian evolution because they fear it undermines religious belief.”
http://reason.com/archives/2001/10/17/the-voice-of-neoconservatism
Republicans were the anti-slavery party.
Republicans (prior to Trump) are the old cold war left Trotsky admirers.
Interesting approach: “Consider what it might look like if two dozen Republican senators, 150 House members and 15 Republican governors appeared together at a news conference Monday to announce that they were supporting Cruz.” (I’ll insert Kasich in lieu of Cruz but you get the point)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/17/republicans-keep-meeting-secretly-to-stop-trump-heres-a-better-idea/
Could this be the beginning? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/17/lindsey-graham-will-raise-money-for-ted-cruz-a-man-he-has-said-some-amazingly-bad-things-about/
It could be the beginning of the end for the republican party. The party “establishment” doesn’t seem to want to give up power. It is suicide and their actions will give the election to the democrats if they continue.
Rob,
Yep. Don’t think they can help themselves though. Too many ‘sub banners’ under that big ole’ elephant.
Danny- Whatever sub-banner they support, their party would be stronger if the establishment united behind him and helped to make him a stronger candidate. FYI- I am an independent
Rob,
FWIW, me too! Socially liberal but fiscally conservative. Too many banners under the heading of ‘Republican’ lead to not being able to do what you suggest should be done to move Trump forward as a candidate. How can a libertarian, conservative, moderate, Trump (ex? democrat, may be chameleon) led entity coexist? Having a hard time grasping. Think he’s solid at a third, but not sure ‘which’ third.
Hope this formats properly:
Trump’s affiliations have gone back and forth since then. Here’s a quick look:
Month and year of registration/Party affiliation
July 1987 Republican
October 1999 Independence Party
August 2001 Democrat
September 2009 Republican
December 2011 No party affiliation (independent)
April 2012 Republican
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/aug/24/jeb-bush/bush-says-trump-was-democrat-longer-republican-las/
Danny
“Socially liberal but fiscally conservative.”
I fit that description and “believe” that it is where a majority of the voting population is at this point.
Now defining the specifics of what is included in “socially liberal” and how “fiscally conservative” goals should be implemented will have wild debates.
I’m sorta like you. Socially liberal, and personally fiscally conservative. I would like to see the national debt paid down a little. However, I think government borrowing is ok. Businesses do it, so why not government?
Max1OK,
I’m going to hazard a guess that most of us here are fairly socially liberal and fairly fiscally conservative personally. Money and it’s handling is not taught to much of a level below the college level, and I think most here are somewhat educated. Libertarians tend to be for individual rights (and responsibility). Those considered socially conservative obviously don’t fit that mold, but even there my perception has grown that there are societal acceptances.
And when ‘the free market’ is not in a position to implement growth, then government has tools to act as substitute but this should be only an interim position so some borrowing is acceptable. The problem comes when social ‘support’ becomes a crutch and not a short term leg up. Borrowing for that, as it does on a personal level, is a recipe for problems.
“However, I think government borrowing is ok. Businesses do it, so why not government?”
Nothing is wrong with government borrowing if properly managed. When a business borrows excessively it goes broke, when a government borrows excessively it leads to a massive devaluation of their currency.
Currently, the US benefits by being the largest economy in an economically weak world. We should not expect this situation to be maintained and should fix our basic economics.
The key issue is not really the total US debt, but is the ability to balance current expenses with current revenues over an extended period. A large portion of the long term debt can be “written off” since the government owes it to itself.
What we can’t do is to continually spend more than we generate in revenue. The real problem is our expenses will grow drastically in the next 15 years and most almost all politicians do not realistically address the issue since it requires difficult choices.
Danny.
“Money and it’s handling is not taught to much of a level below the college level, ”
Well, I’d advise you do your part. Junior Achievement has been teaching this for decades. I’ve been a volunteer for the past 9 years, working with students from 3rd thru 8th grade.
I am not exaggerating when I say the majority of them exhibit better understanding of finance and economics than max shows on these pages.
TimG56,
That’s a great idea, and thank you for doing so. In my family, I’ve tried to share the time value of money with the ‘youngers’. Think it’s open their eyes a bit. Reminding them that money is printed in papers daily (& the internet) for easy use in stores comes as a surprise to some.
Fiscal conservative, social liberal. But such a party cannot exist as it isn’t one the two established ones. No third parties allowed. In practice, that is the rule. Trump is a third party and is breaking their rule. And the Republicans are threatening to break the rule that served them well for a long time. They’ll add a third candidate if they can to sabotage Trump. They can stop Trump from getting elected, but to do so, they’ll cause Clinton to get elected. How many Republicans will urge a party meltdown to stop Trump?
“How many Republicans will urge a party meltdown to stop Trump?”
What % of republicans are stupid?
Polls indicate that about a third of Republicans would choose an unnamed third Republican candidate if Trump is their nominee.
“How many Republicans will urge a party meltdown to stop Trump?
http://www.newsweek.com/help-me-ted-cruz-youre-my-only-hope-438526
I am assuming a contested convention with anyone other than Trump winning will cause a meltdown.
Left vs. right issue: the politically-motivated Inculcation of global warming alarmism shines a spotlight on the dangers of ‘Common Core’ in the classroom.
Common core is favored by parents who fear their kids will be even dumber than them, and resisted by parents who fear their kids won’t be as dumb as them.
Nobody (almost) seems to be against education standards, and almost all seem to agree that these standards should be locally driven. What should be done if the local standards do not result in good results?
Rob – If anything should be done if local standards don’t work, it should be fixed by the locals. The good thing about local standards is that we will have thousands of education experiments. And without Federal funding, it will have to be done with a reasonable amount of money. I think it would be OK.
OTOH, I’m really tired of hearing politicians say we need to fix or improve the education system. If it hasn’t happened in the last 50 years of “improvements,” it ain’t gonna happen. But what has happened is that teachers and administrators have a sweet pension plan and the Dimowits have a captive audience.
Common core raises the bar for performance. It’s a shame opponents of common core want to deny children the opportunity to be all they can be. I can’t understand why anyone would want to hold kids back, unless it’s a “kid should know his place” thing.
My kids attended public schools that were run by a liberal judge named Barefoot Sanders. The locals were so corrupt and incompetent and evil that the federal government intervened. The high school he initiated is considered the best public high school in the country.
Trump’s Advantage: 55% of remaining Republican delegates winner-take-all
Since February 27, 3 threads on politics have approximately the same number of comments as 11 on climate change.
Some folks say that the threads on politics is a way to channel the interest in politics away from the climate threads.
Seems to me that,more likely, the disparity shows how climate change bickering is a proxy for ideological warfare.
Josh,
Maybe, at this time, the ‘politics’ is more unsettled (unsettling?) than the science?
It comes down too, what’s Pop & Whatnot.
Climate science is politics in scientific drag.
You keep trotting out your stick pony Josh, hoping we notice what a fantastic horseman you are.
It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad sack.
Here’s a breakdown of spending for all the major candidates who have left the race:
http://i.imgur.com/A0ilvGA.png
Trump’s renegade candidacy is obviously one reason millions of dollars in donor funds aren’t buying success this year.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/rich-political-donors-have-blown–200-million-on-failed-candidates-172041720.html
I like money not buying votes,
As Trump takes the lead, rich GOP donors have no one to give to
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/17/contested-convention-donald-trump-delegates-republican-party-nomination
Here’s an article from one of the leading neocons, John Podhoretz.
In typical neocon fashion, the “crashing and burning” of the Republican Party all somebody else’s fault, in this case Trump’s.
Jjust like the Iraq quagmire the neocons lied us into, they judge themselves completely blameless in creating the insurgency that is ripping the Republican Party apart.
Donald Trump is getting blamed for more ills, or potential ills if he is elected, than ills blamed on global warming. It’s totally amazing and just as unbelievable.
Kinda reminds one of Barack Obama!
jim2, facts are stubborn things. I understand Republicans are not happy with the past 8 years, They lost the elections and have had to put up with policies dictated by the winners of the elections.
But regardless of the ebb and flow of the daily news, those checkpoints I cited are true. Why would you not acknowledge them and move on to specific areas where you disagree with the president’s actions?
Obummer has screwed up the country even worse than Clinton 1 and the Bushes. There is blame to go around. Trump will fix it.
Obama is the best president ever, even better than Bill Clinton. We should hope Hillary Clinton will be as good as her husband Bill. IMO, she has the potential for being even better than Obama.
Looking at the U.S. from outside (I live in Taiwan), it looks to me like Obama (who I voted for twice) has at the very minimum followed Hippocrates’ dictum ‘do no harm.’
Employment up? Check. Unemployment down? Check. Uninsured down? Check. Country (broadly) at peace? Check. Wages rising? Check. Crime down? Check. Teen pregnancy down? Check.
As those are the measures by which other presidents are rated during and after their tenure, I do believe history will be kind to President Obama.
Hope you enjoy your cherry pie, Thomas. The rest of us know better.
Housing market up? Check. That is a sign of economic confidence from the public despite what the Republicans want to portray.
Tom Fuller: “Employment up? Check. Unemployment down? Check. Uninsured down? Check. Country (broadly) at peace? Check. Wages rising? Check.”
Talk about misleading statistics. 1. “Employment up” — Very debatable. Percentage of work age people working down or static. Young minority workers no improvement. 2. “Uninsured down” Ridiculous. I have garbagecare. It costs $963 per month for $12,000 deductible (4 years ago was $387 per month for $7,000 deductible.) I wouldn’t even call the garbagecare I have insurance between its high cost and high deductible. It went up 10%!!! from last year. Disaster for the middle class and above. 3. “Country broadly at peace” — Really. I think the racial and cultural divide is much worse than it was 20 years ago. See the Black Lives Matter movement and White reaction to it. 4. “Wages Rising” — No. See Pew Article “a look at five decades’ worth of government wage data suggests that the better question might be, why should now be any different? For most U.S. workers, real wages — that is, after inflation is taken into account — have been flat or even falling for decades, regardless of whether the economy has been adding or subtracting jobs.” See http://stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/wages/
Even worse is Obama’s destruction of the rule of law with respect to Executive Orders, particularly with respect to illegal immigration. It is one thing to look the other way and not enthusiastically to enforce a law — which has been upheld by the courts. However, what Obama has done is to actively encourage law breaking and illegal immigration. Under his analysis (and as he said the power of the pen), the exception overtakes the rule and makes congressionally passed law superfluous and irrelevant. Maybe, he, or another President, will decide not to enforce tax laws or laws against sexual harassment. His legacy in this area is horrendous and risks destroying the rule of law in the US.
JD
tom,
I believe the crime down one is no longer true.
Crime tends to be a local phenomenon, with local measures dictating whether it goes up or down. Not much a President can do to impact that. Plus the trending in lower crime is a long term one that predates our current President.
Well Obama showed us how a President can have an impact. I’ve read reports showing that crime is increasing in cities as law enforcement is stepping back and not getting involved. It seems they are getting the message loud and clear that black lives matter – as in they matter when an officer is involved. Not so much when it is blacks killing other blacks.
Little tommy should tote up the cost of the “shovel ready” jobs Obama has “created”. Compare GDP growth over the period of Obama’s reign with the growth in federal debt. Where is all the money going? Wall Street? Somebody after the anointed has left the scene will have to pay for that. Housing market up, it’s another bubble, created by loosey goosey Keynesian-Democrat fed policy, just like the last bubble. How is Obama doing on gun comntrol, tommy? Isn’t it about 200 additional firearms? And you say crime is down, What a co-incidence. Healtcare? Every body is still getting healthcare, except folks with those increasing deductibles are avoiding going to the docs. Emergency room visits down. Well no they aren’t. Yatta…yatta…yatta.
That’s 200 MILLION additional firearms.
“Kinda reminds one of Barack Obama!”
An interesting observation, but consider a key difference. One relied upon donations to reach and maintain a position of power while the other did not.
Rob,
True. However, does that justify “getting blamed for more ills, or potential ills” to a level of being “totally amazing and just as unbelievable”? And does the capitalist deserve more or less blame than the organizer/politician?
Heck, some assert “Obummer has screwed up the country even worse than Clinton 1 and the Bushes” w/o any sort of consideration of the starting points, levels of cooperation, and improvement in standing. But when one views a ‘curve’ with one’s head slanted too far any direction the results get skewed.
Now don’t misread me as an Obama apologist. I did vote his way, but as with most heads of state I ‘believe’ some of his directions where appropriate while others not so much. But in history, with clear eyes, the rhetoric will likely soften. In the end so far I give him a fair to good rating.
It’s interesting to me that opposition (no matter the party) seems to have downtrended over time while same party support has steadied:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/12/presidential-job-approval-ratings-from-ike-to-obama/
Graph didn’t post:
http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2015/02/FT_16.01.06_presApproval.png
Danny–can’t understand your point.
Rob,
Just taking a rub at Jim2’s assertion that “Obummer has screwed up the country even worse than………….”. His is an unsupported blanket comment which has no way (other than as a political statement) to be validated. The chart is offered to show the approval ratings over time and several administrations and as evidence that the Clinton and Bush’s approval ratings and Obama’s are quite similar and each follows party lines.
Danny – you really need to pay more attention. Read the President posts more closely. For example, Obummer’s doubling of the national debt has been highlighted. He has ruined the healthcare system. He has put bunches of coal miners out of business and he is still picking on them today. He had dumped money into failed “green” energy companies. He has put the Middle East into chaos. He is the most incompetent President of all time. There is Benghazi. There is Iran. There’s more, but my fingers are getting tired.
Jim2,
I pay plenty of attention, but obviously you and I wear different glasses. We may not be far off on education and local control.
Some areas you’re going to have to show me and not tell me:
Healthcare has been ruined under Obama.
Obama’s doubling of the national debt (w/o credit for addressing the greatest financial crisis in a generation and improvement since that crisis).
Coal Miners. Yep. I’ll give you that one.
Green energy. We’ll have to see about that one. Yes, some poor choices. But not all and in any regard this will take substantial time before a determination can be made based on apolitical evaluation and long term energy needs (I did not say climate oriented).
Middle East in chaos. We’ve meddled for a long time, and it’s been chaotic before us. Proving it’s worse soley due to Obama would be of interest.
Iran. I’m undereducated so cannot reasonably comment, but again please prove not just political commentary.
Benghazi. Political football, and sadly on the backs of the lost lives of Americans. I wasn’t there, it was handled terribly with the original Rice commentary after the event. But the reality I doubt we’ll ever know. If congress had anything we’d know.
Your list. Have at it. I see political talking points. And with every evaluation, Jim, there are pros and cons. Where is your list of pros?
Most incompetent? Eh. You and I’ve both seen incompetence/deception/misdirection before, and recently. ‘Most’ needs to be quantified.
Jim2,
Rest your fingers. Comment in response currently in moderation.
Jim2,
2nd attempt w/ a couple modifications to clear moderation
Jim2,
I pay plenty of attention, but obviously you and I wear different glasses. We may not be far off on education and local control.
Some areas you’re going to have to show me and not tell me:
Healthcare has been ruined under Obama.
Obama’s doubling of the national debt (w/o credit for addressing the greatest financial crisis in a generation and improvement since that crisis).
Coal Miners. Yep. I’ll give you that one.
Green energy. We’ll have to see about that one. Yes, some poor choices. But not all and in any regard this will take substantial time before a determination can be made based on apolitical evaluation and long term energy needs (I did not say climate oriented).
Middle East in chaos. We’ve meddled for a long time, and it’s been chaotic before us. Proving it’s worse soley due to Obama would be of interest.
Iran. I’m undereducated so cannot reasonably comment, but again please prove not just political commentary.
Benghazi. Political football, and sadly on the backs of the lost lives of Americans. I wasn’t there, it was handled terribly with the original Rice commentary after the event. But the reality I doubt we’ll ever know. If congress had anything we’d know.
Your list. Have at it. I see political talking points. And with every evaluation, Jim, there are pros and cons. Where is your list of pros?
Most inc0mpetent? Eh. You and I’ve both seen inc0mpetence/decepti0n/misdirection before, and recently. ‘Most’ needs to be quantified.
More people are employed now than at any time in American history. The national deficit now is at a level consistent with or even below the average of the last 30 or more years, with only the late 90’s having a lower deficit rate. That’s just what the numbers say for anyone that cares to check, which of course most people don’t. Overblown concern about these is just politics as usual.
JimD,
I’m not sure the number of people employed is the correct metric. What was the population vs. the employment percentage (of those wishing to work) would be a better evaluation?
The population has grown faster than the number of jobs, but we don’t know if that population growth is at the young or old end, or immigrants. It doesn’t necessarily tell us that it is more competitive for jobs. Insufficient data.
°°°°°Jim D said:
http://i.imgur.com/AVK99wR.png
°°°°°Jim D said:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2012/05/20120503_FedBudgDebt4.png
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/unabridged-and-illustrated-federal-budget-dummies-part-3-debt-deficits
°°°°°Jim D said:
Interpretation: People don’t have any rational reason to be upset with Obama, so it must be their irrational prejudice (read racism) that’s motivating their dislike of him.
Glenn, let’s define terms. When I say more are employed, numerically more are employed. It is 148 million (Bureau of Labor Statistics). When I say the deficit is similar to the 30-year average, I mean the deficit in the last few years is similar to the 30-year average. We are back to normal in deficit as a percentage of GDP. There was a large deficit from the stimulus package to get us out of the mess left by the previous administration, so it is not fair to credit that to Obama. The deficit is now stabilized.
Jim D,
See if you can spin this away.
http://i.imgur.com/6W4WzMn.png
Glenn, whose fault is that?
Let’s help. Total income has increased, GDP is healthy, the US is making money. Where is all that extra wealth going? Not to the middle class. What would be a solution for this?
Jim D,
Or try spinning this away.
http://i.imgur.com/oRGVyaA.png
Income inequality is a major issue for economic health. Higher equality means more spending per income. The US is going towards inequality as you show. A better tax system with less loopholes for the wealthy could help that. There should be no way that wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. So far the Republicans have resisted this (TP and Norquist doctrines), so inequality mounts. The solution is known and Obama keeps proposing it, but the will hasn’t been there from Congress.
JimD
The deficit may be stabilized for a couple of years as a % of GDP, but with Real GDP expected to be at historical lows that will not last. The entitlements and Social Programs at $3 Trillion per year are going to eat up any tax revenues in the future just for population growth and inflation.
From 1945 to 1960 the National Debt Held By The Public grew from $235 B to 237 B, a 1% increase. Since 2000 the Debt Held By the Public (not total debt) grew by 300%. That amount $13.8 Trillion is what the Net Interest is calculated from. The deficit in FY 16 is estimated at $612 B. It will go down a bit for a couple of years but then start going up. The rate of increase on the $13.8 Trillion is going to exceed the rate of increase of GDP and thus the increase of tax revenues and thus the Net Debt Service costs.
Japan is paying 40% of the tax revenues for debt service costs. If the US can’t get Real GDP over current levels we will be there all too soon.
Jim D,
See if you can spin this away
http://i.imgur.com/o6eKRoy.png
Jim D,
See if you can spin this away:
http://i.imgur.com/GnePT8f.png
http://i.imgur.com/JtTjpqe.png
Leonard Cohen — Everybody Knows
JIm D,
The intriguing thing is that, in your attempts to distort the realities of the current political and economic situation, you end up being on the same page as conservatives like cerescokid and Ragnaar, although for very different reasons.
So left meets right, with both denying the current realities of working- and middle-class existence in the United States.
For a good example of how conservatives have also joined in denying economic and political realities, see this thread:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/15/u-s-presidential-election-discussion-thread-2/#comment-772151
Jim D,
As much as Democrats like to push income inequality and how they would fix that, the data shows that inequality worsens under Democrat Presidents. With Obama having one of the biggest jumps in inequality.
Good interview about Trump’s finances….including a fascinating factoid about Trump’s, shall we say unusual, loan of over 3 million from daddy Trump to help bail him out in Atlantic city.
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/17/470806232/opening-the-books-on-donald-trumps-business-deals-in-atlantic-city
What’s hilarious is that there are so many marks who fall for the long con about Trump’s genius for making money. Kind of like with Madoff.
Always amusing to see how many climate “skeptics” aren’t actually particularly skeptical people.
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2016-03-14/GOPnational1085074.png
The establishment Republicans and Democrats are running around with their hair on fire, but all their histrionics, amplified by an obedient mainstream media, aren’t working.
Money isn’t working either.
3 charts that show money can’t stop Donald Trump
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/16/11248380/2016-ad-spending-trump
http://i.imgur.com/MJeaj7C.png
http://i.imgur.com/6rKCLdq.png
http://i.imgur.com/59a5jyT.png
Wednesday, March 16
Race/Topic (Click to Sort) Poll Results Spread
Arizona Republican Presidential Primary Merrill Poll Trump 31, Cruz 19, Kasich 10 Trump +12
…
Tuesday, March 15
Race/Topic (Click to Sort) Poll Results Spread
California Republican Presidential Primary Landslide/NSON Trump 38, Cruz 22, Kasich 20, Rubio 10 Trump +16
http://i.imgur.com/QVZHV6T.jpg
Trump seems to have mastered some sort of primal, psychological Taekwondo. The more the plutocrats, bureaucrats, establishment politicians, and billionaire technocrats attack him, the harder their collective head hits the ground.
And of course the cherubic angels of the establishment had nothing to do with creating the conditions under which Trump has blossomed.
He is appealing to paranoia, which does play to the internal fears of susceptible people. Phrases like China and Mexico are laughing at us, or the Islamic religion is out to get us are right from the paranoia playbook. I don’t know if Trump is paranoid himself, but if not he knows how to pretend he is for the sake of getting support.
I think JimD may be one of those programs that tosses out realistic-sounding sentences at random.
Someone needs to pound it into JimD, Danny’s, and all the other lefties heads that it isn’t rascim. It’s SOCIALISM wot’s the problem.
Jim2,
WHICH socialism, Jim. Which are you okay with, and which not? Specifics. Not broad talking point generalizations.
Medicaid okay? Medicare? Farm Bill? Social Security? Veterans benefits? How about tangibles like water systems and electrical distribution systems? Roads and bridges?
Just more fluff and no substance Jim, and normally from you this is not what I expect.
And I never once said or intimated racism. That’s another talking point.
All the stuff you mentioned is socialism. And it continues to creep just like the real conservatives said it would over 50 years ago.
Jim2,
And I managed to leave out public schools. Police protection. Military. Public transportation. And that you want to use my money to build your wall across a border (a socialism I’m aware of that you’re for).
Yet I still don’t know which ‘socialisms’ you’re not for.
Real conservatives? What’s that? Seems to be a severe shortage of specifics and long on rhetoric, more of which is unhelpful.
We have some ‘real conservatives’ in power right now in our congress. Those I want in charge of the purse strings, yet much like you they seem to choose to be offering general resistance and no answers. Let’s hear ’em.
Shoot. Forgot about the shipping ports that handle all that oil.
jim2 means we need less racism and more socialism. I agree on less racism, but I believe we already have enough public libraries, schools, roads, etc., and now with Obamacare we have health at least partially covered.
Danny, You like the socialism and the big government. Is there point where there would be too much socialism , or the governmental control.too pervasive? Do you think there are any possible negative effects of socialism or a more dominant government?
test
Chuckrr,
Please don’t misinterpret my questions as an indication that I’m all about big government and/or socialism. Some I do ‘like’. But I’m actually fairly fiscally conservative and chide our congress for ineffectiveness. The point is that when someone suggests that big government is the root of all evil and socialism is as well I’m trying to figure out if they’re just spouting political talking points of if they’ve thought things through.
I suspect most people…even conservatives….realize we have socialistic programs and agencies. Some are quasi socialist and some full blown. A I would like to know if someone can articulate how much socialism and big government is ideal. Do they feel there is a point of diminishing returns and have we reached that point or will we ever. My opinion has probably been revealed by the questions I ask. That fact in itself is interesting but I wouldn’t assume someone that doesn’t ask that question hasn’t put a lot of thought into it.
ChuckRR,
“I would like to know if someone can articulate how much socialism and big government is ideal.” I’d comment that it’s probably much like porn. Hard to describe, but you know it when you see it.
And your willingness to suggest socialism is a necessary in some forms and to some level is more than many are capable of and is courageous to state in some company.
The longer answer is that it seems obvious to me that in some areas we are long overdue for modifications. For me, as example, a leg up over a hand out. And even there a time limit. I’ve suggested that those capable of working are subject to some ‘reasonable’ time (6 months-2 years?) and if not employed then must perform public works to continue receipt of public support. (Leaving out the incapable for shortness).
(part 1 of 2)
(part 2)
I think there is no point of diminishing returns to assist folks in attaining work, as work begats work. (Money multiplier effect).
The infrastructure begats life/commerce w/r/t water/roads/etc.
Chuck,
WP not letting me post in full, now it’s not letting me post in part. So I’ll leave it there and hope for your response.
Chuck,
Final segment.
Diminishing returns? You bet. When assistance becomes reliance w/o participation/contribution. Soc. Sec. includes both in most cases.
WP must have some kind of ‘boredom’ filter, danny.
Could be Mr. Don, but others are able to post. :)
To jim2, Reagan would be a socialist because the last substantial payroll tax increase was in that administration. Republicans ain’t what they used to be.
From the article:
…
I predicted in this column last week that the left wasn’t going to kill off the coal industry so much as it was going to steal it. That prediction is already becoming true courtesy of billionaire George Soros.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Act filings indicate that Soros has purchased an initial 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal, the two largest publicly traded U.S. coal companies. As pointed out last week, both companies have been driven perilously close to bankruptcy by the combination of President Obama’s “war on coal” and inexpensive natural gas brought on by the hydrofracturing revolution.
Under the hypothesis that not even socialists would leave trillions of dollars worth of a perfectly safe and clean energy source in the ground for the sake of the imaginary “climate crisis,” I posited that once the existing coal industry ownership was wiped out by President Obama’s regulatory onslaught, a new politically correct ownership would rehabilitate the fuel by contributing to Democrats.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/17/the-new-king-coal-george-soros/
Peter M Davies | March 17, 2016 at 8:00 am |
Agree that anti illegal migration is not anti migration. Countries have the right to control who enters their countries to take up permanent residence.
=================================================
Would that that were true. In the EU it is not. One of many reasons why I shall be voting to leave the EU in June.
Good on you, Jeremy. I hope the Brits exit the EU. It will be a blow to centralized power … at last.
What do you mean “would that were true”. It IS true.
http://ec.europa.eu/immigration/who-does-what/more-information/explaining-the-rules-why-are-there-eu-rules-and-national-rules_en
Exceptions to EU-wide rules
EU-wide immigration rules generally apply in 24 out of the EU’s 27 countries. The following exceptions apply:
Denmark does not apply EU-wide rules which relate to immigration, visa and asylum policies.
Ireland and the United Kingdom choose, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not to adopt EU rules on immigration, visa and asylum policies.
National Immigration Rules
Each EU country alone decides:
The total number of migrants that can be admitted to the country to look for work;
All final decisions on migrant applications;
Rules on long-term visas – stays for periods longer than three months; and
Conditions to obtain residence and work permits when no EU-wide rules have been adopted.
From the article:
…
California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds.
…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/17/obama-backed-solar-plant-could-be-shut-down-for-not-producing-enough-energy/#ixzz43FylOnGqv
I wonder how Team Green is going to spin this one to make lemonade out of lemmons.
That’s the solar plant that burns nat gas. What a waste of money. More from the article:
Ivanpah, which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it would. The plant only generated 45 percent of expected power in 2014 and only 68 percent in 2015, according to government data.
And it does all this at a cost of $200 per megawatt hour — nearly six times the cost of electricity from natural gas-fired power plants. Interestingly enough, Ivanpah uses natural gas to supplement its solar production.
I consult for a homebuilder who recently fell for a pitch on rooftop solar and was considering building it into all new homes. I deconstructed the pitch and found that under very limited conditions it was a good idea. The limited condition was that $4/watt system cost must be offset by a $3/watt rebate from the electric company and a 30% federal tax credit on the remainder. That reduces the cost to the homebuilder for a 6kw system to $4000 from $24,000. I further suggested that the builder would be buying in bulk so should negotiate for a $4000 discount from the solar installer since it’s much easier to install on a new home during construction than an existing home. That would make the cost to the homebuilder free and in the Austin Energy electric district result in $56/mo lower electric bill.
The interesting thing is I got the actual local performance in generated kilowatt hours per year from a local solar advocate “Austin Solar” who use measured results from local installations. The solar system installer tried referring me to here: http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php which produces a theoretical annual production for any area in the country.
The federal gov’t website gave me a figure 62% higher than that given by Austin Solar. The reason I’m saying all this is that Ivanpah underperformed state expectations by roughly the same amount as NREL overestimates rooftop solar performance in Austin.
I included a link and quote from the Ivanpah story in my advice to the homebuilder. We’re looking at some larger developments of high end homes, several hundred homes each, in an explosive growth region in the rapidly expanding Austin suburbs. These projects are in a different electric utility district than Austin Energy called Pedernales Electric. Pedernales Electric is non-profit coop who offers not one thin dime in rebates for solar. My advice for those projects – don’t even think about rooftop solar. The payoff time (Return On Invested Capital or ROIC) is over 50 years without the rebate which is bad news for a system with a 25 year service life.
Actually that’s Solar Austin not Austin Solar.
http://www.solaraustin.org/is-solar-right-for-you/
The long and short of my research is that even at 30 degrees north latitude an ideally placed (30 degree roof pitch, due south exposure) rooftop solar installation cannot cost more than $1 per watt nameplate capacity at 4% interest rate (cost of capital) in order to make it a good investment.
P.S. it makes getting a roof replaced cost a lot more and also produces numerous potential entry points for water through the flashing that surrounds the mounts which must be anchored to roof studs. On a new home that isn’t so bad as the service life of 25-year shingles is the same as the solar panels. On metal or tile roofs with far longer service lives it’s not an issue as the mounts will essentially never need to be tampered with so long as the flashing is intact. The service life of the solar system is determined by solar panel degradation. The panels are easy enough to replace without tampering with anything else.
Just for kicks I ran the numbers for my hometown in upstate NY at 42 degrees north latitude. The total kilowatt hours generated declined about 15% which is less than I would have guessed. The kicker is that the local electric company purchases power from Niagra Falls electric company for less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour and passes that same cost to the consumers since it’s a non-profit city gov’t service. The cost of solar generated electricity is 7 cents per kilowatt hour even using the overly optimistic federal gov’t website http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php
So it’s definitely a no go for Niagra Falls electric customers.
I have a clip of an article in moderation. Part of the clip:
U.S. Securities and Exchange Act filings indicate that Soros has purchased an initial 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal,
http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/19/the-real-winner-of-obamas-war-on-coal-george-soros/
https://www.google.com/search?q=soros%20peabody&rct=j
Soros is a bane on civil society.
But surely Soros should be using all that moolah he’s spending on coal to buy Ivanpah. Ivanpah can always do with an extra quid…mostly for its gas bill.
Free energy from the sun, George! We won’t mention the gas (or what you did in the war).
We won’t mention the gas (or what you did in the war). …
Please do.
Ok. At age 14, living in 1944 WWII Hungary, Soro’s well-to-do father bought forged papers and bribed a gov’t official into swearing that George was his Christian godson. Soros then accompanied the gov’t official around on his job. The job was confiscating the possessions of Jewish families being sent off to death camps.
True story confirmed by Soros himself in an interview on 60 Minutes broadcast on December 20, 1998:
KROFT: (Voiceover) To understand the complexities and contradictions in his personality, you have to go back to the very beginning: to Budapest, where George Soros was born 68 years ago to parents who were wealthy, well-educated and Jewish.
When the Naziis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.
(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)
KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros’ friends and neighbors.
(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) You’re a Hungarian Jew…
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…
(Vintage footage of women walking by train)
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
(Vintage footage of people getting on train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) … by — by posing as a Christian.
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.
(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)
KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and — and anticipate events and when — when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a — a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s — that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not — not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t — you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c — I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was — well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would — would — would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the — whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the — I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Ok. At age 14, living in 1944 WWII Hungary, Soro’s well-to-do father bought forged papers and bribed a gov’t official into swearing that George was his Christian godson. Soros then accompanied the gov’t official around on his job. The job was confiscating the possessions of Jewish families being sent off to death camps.
True story confirmed by Soros himself in an interview on 60 Minutes broadcast on December 20, 1998:
KROFT: (Voiceover) To understand the complexities and contradictions in his personality, you have to go back to the very beginning: to Budapest, where George Soros was born 68 years ago to parents who were wealthy, well-educated and Jewish.
When the Naazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.
(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)
KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros’ friends and neighbors.
(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) You’re a Hungarian Jew…
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…
(Vintage footage of women walking by train)
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
(Vintage footage of people getting on train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) … by — by posing as a Christian.
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.
(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)
KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and — and anticipate events and when — when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a — a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s — that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not — not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t — you don’t see the connection. But it was — it created no — no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c — I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was — well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets — that if I weren’t there — of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would — would — would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the — whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the — I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Tivadar Soros
Tivadar Soros
Of course, Soros’ favourite coal would have to be the Kosovar lignite of Trepca. Not to mention all the other yummy minerals those Serbs were squatting on.
You’d just kill for a slice of Trepca, wouldn’t you?
Lindsey Graham, Who Said He Would Rather Be Shot or Poisoned Than Endorse Ted Cruz, Is Endorsing Ted Cruz
http://gawker.com/lindsey-graham-who-said-he-would-rather-be-shot-or-poi-1765530200
Uncle Fester has nothing on Despicable Me’s Gruz:
https://i.imgur.com/zdpFUGT.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f0/24/f4/f024f410566e982d57a8eb078a1ae6d5.jpg
http://beforeitsnews.com/mediadrop/uploads/2014/46/a1919f424ea3778e124ed03cd57429c0bf0e8215.jpg
Further proof that they are related:
https://i.imgur.com/dTr4lgV.jpg
A pretty good representation: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/elections-2016-florida-voters-anti-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-focus-group/
There certainly seems to be a great deal of that sentiment out there.
The Worst of All Worlds
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/clinton-vs-trump-the-worst-of-all-worlds/474024/
Glenn,
Yes. Seems so much about portrayals. Crook vs. Bully. Not much discussion about policy vs. policy.
The Worst of All Worlds
+many
Yes, the world is coming to an end. Of course it is. At this rate, Trump will have a majority of delegates. Get used to it.
Votes for Trump essentially are a public referendum on the continued acceptability of the use by the Left of political correctness as a tool for the high tech lynching of opponents of their ideology and for the social waterboarding of skeptics of initiatives the Left claims are in the best interests of all the people.
New York Republican Presidential Primary Emerson Trump 64, Cruz 12, Kasich 1 Trump +52
From the article:
…
Visits to campaign rallies in Florida this week confirmed what polls have been suggesting for months: Donald Trump is leading the race for the Republican nomination in large part because he’s winning over throngs of nonhabitual voters.
…
At a Trump rally in Boca Raton, meanwhile, the crowd of 6,000 was younger and much noisier. “We want Trump!” they chanted in unison, a spectacle that would have been striking even if it hadn’t been at night, in an outdoor amphitheater, with spotlights ranging across their heads.
…
Ask Trump supporters why they back him, and you hear different versions of the same litany: He’s not a politician. He’s a businessman who can get things done. He doesn’t bow to “political correctness.”
“He’s a billionaire,” explained Deborah Patronik, Richard’s wife.
“He’s saying a lot of things that we’re thinking,” said Gil Brown, 54, an African American businessman from Lakeland. “It’s so refreshing to hear somebody say things clearly.”
(Brown said he wasn’t worried about Trump’s views on race. “I’ve been on the receiving end of racism. I know what it’s like,” he said. “I’m not hearing it from him.”)
Their faith in Trump’s ability as a businessman to overturn the traditional order in Washington is hard to shake with conventional political arguments.
…
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0316-mcmanus-trump-rubio-florida-20160316-column.html
I notice the race-baitors here at CE have chosen to ignore this. :) Makes me smile.
The race-baiters are –snipping– their drawers worrying over how much of the black and hispanic Trump will get. And many will stay home, because they know that granny hilly-billy doesn’t care squat for them.
This is a big problem for the sender and receiver of clearly NSA SIGINT info. No way to spin outta this one:
http://observer.com/2016/03/hillary-has-an-nsa-problem/
“Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011 email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The Agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.
Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence. Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program or SAP, several of which from CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.
Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.
How Sid Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and there’s no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reports – none of which he was supposed to have any access to – and pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels, indicates something highly unusual—as well as illegal—was going on.”
Meanwhile in Obamaland, they are very good at keeping secret the information on what are supposed to be transparent operations of government that folks have requested under FOIA:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUNSHINE_WEEK_FOIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-03-18-11-37-47
“The Obama administration set a record for the number of times its federal employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page requested under the Freedom of Information Act, according to a new Associated Press analysis of government data.”
Yep, one of many broken promises from Obummer. His was, as he stated, going to the most transparent administration EVA!!
“You gotta dance with the one who brung ya” is the first rule of politics where I come from.
However, the first thing the president from Wall Street did when he got in office was to betray the millions of everyday Americans who brung him to the dance.
The art of cooptation, that’s Obama’s great forte.
“Change you can believe in!” What a crock.
There’s a great documentary that poignantly shows how quickly Obama turned on the people who had put such great hopes in him.
Well surprise, Obama, you and the lords didn’t quell the insurection, and now it’s resurfaced in the most unlikely of places.
Pretty easy to explain when you have so many dimwits asking for stuff that doesn’t exist. They want to believe so badly they just make stuff up and then think there is a conspiracy when nobody can find the stuff they made up. The same ones who actually believe Trump is going to build awall, pull out of trade agreements, and deport 12 million people.
$63 Million and Counting: Anti-Trump Ads Take Over the Airwaves
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/63-million-counting-anti-trump-ads-airwaves/story?id=37752543
From the article:
…
The ballot measure, Initiative Petition 52 (2016) (IP 52), will be submitted to Oregon voters soon. If passed, IP 52 would require businesses with five or more employees to confirm that their employees are actually legally eligible to work. The measure was the work-product of Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR).
The issue of illegal aliens working in local communities is not a small one for the Beaver State. Recent figures show that around five percent of the state’s workforce is illegal. Unemployment figures for black youth, for example, is as high as 55 percent.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016/03/17/immigration-control-advocates-win-challenge-on/
‘They are taking our jobs’ as may be implied, brings to mind a union of citizens. Adaptation, not mitigation.
This is adaptation. Political adaptation.
Politican mitigation. Returning the ideal situation of the past. Aren’t we just trying to turn the clock back or slow it down?
Government regulates jobs out of existence. Can’t wait for the ad showing a robot eating a hamburger!! From the article:
…
The CEO of Carl’s Jr., Andy Puzder, has been inspired by the 100-percent automated restaurant, Eatsa, as he looks for ways to deal with rising minimum wages. “With government driving up the cost of labor, it’s driving down the number of jobs,” he says. “You’re going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants.” Puzder doesn’t believe in [the progressive idea of] raising the minimum wage. “Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job? If you’re making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive — this is not rocket science,” says Puzder.
…
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/03/17/2220225/fast-food-ceo-invests-in-machines-because-regulation-makes-them-cheaper-than-employees
If raising minimum wage is a good thing why not make it $50/hr.?
I think Ted Cruz has the best position on climate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_xVWfGjk0o
And he won Iowa opposing ethanol subsidies!
Trump looks a lot better than any democrat on climate. At least he’s not pushing for a bunch of Malthusian, crony capitalist energy policies … yet! Still, there is a lot about him that is uncertain and disturbing — especially wrt libel laws. With all his outbursts, perhaps he might balance tighter libel laws with looser slander ones. If he’s the candidate, I’ll still probably vote for him. If we’re going to have a banana republic, we might as well have someone who looks the part.
Ted Cruz is a Christian Dominionist, i.e. a Christian Facist.
And almost certainly an atheist at the same time (all neocons are).
“Cruz’s approach to politics is inseparable from this theology. His goal is to lead a Christian occupation of the culture and then wait for the Second Coming of Christ.”
http://www.religionnews.com/2016/02/04/ted-cruzs-campaign-fueled-dominionist-vision-america-commentary/
“The misguided Dominionists believe that they have been “anointed and chosen” to “bring in the Kingdom” of the Lord Jesus Christ. This heresy is not found in the Bible. The Bible says in Revelation that the Kingdom will only come when the King, Jesus Christ, returns at the Second Coming. And it will not happen one moment before the return of Jesus Christ. ”
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/ted-cruz-believes-he-is-an-anointed-king-for-end-times-transfer-of-wealth/
Total freak.
I’ll take a loud mouth New Yorker who values religion and goes to church from time to time any day.
If Cruz had been “anointed and chosen” to be POTUS, God would have given him a presentable face. Something that resembled a human being.
Monfort finds Trump more attractive than Cruz. A first step out of the closet perhaps. Maybe Donnie should consider joining the Log Cabin Republicans.
nickels you’re a gullible fool quoting religious hate groups. Buy a clue you silly phuck.