by Judith Curry
A new thread to focus political comments, away from the main threads.
Here are a few interesting analyses on the candidates that I’ve spotted recently.
Sanders: On becoming anti-Bernie
Trump: Why Trump will become the next President of the United States
Is the American party system about to crack up?
For the record, I am neutral here. All three candidates were on my original list of “I would never vote for that candidate.” I’m looking for reasons to vote for one of them.
Pingback: U.S. Presidential election. Part VII – Enjeux énergies et environnement
Libertarian Party looking like a good option.
Romney’s already been trotted out. He would still be a loser against Hillbilly because he wouldn’t get down in the dirt and fight her with all his might. Trump will and I think that’s why he stands a chance. Also, the electorate is shifting around due to job and economy issues. A good chunk of blue collar, ex-union (no longer) workers are moving towards Trump.
As far as some of Trump’s more extreme comments go, I agree he could have chosen words more carefully, but at the end of the day, he’s a fighter and a wheeler dealer. We need that right now.
And WRT women, from the article:
…
After hearing Ivanka talk about her father in multiple interviews, there is no question that this young woman respects and feels very close to her father.
She credits him with much of her professional success, which is quite impressive. During an interview at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference, Ivanka praised her father for being a good listener and leader. She said that she is the highest female executive at his business and that her professional success proves that her dad champions women.
She has a point. As a pediatrician of thirty years, I’ve studied fathers and their relationships with their children—especially their daughters. And from what Ivanka displays, it appears her father did a lot of things right.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/05/trumps-secret-weapon-ivanka/
http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2013/6/19/faf8eb39-81ae-4b13-8dd0-2293a37fec17.jpg
This is the information statesmen and politicians needed to govern:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Solar_Energy.pdf
Libertarian National Convention, May 27 in Orlando
I’d vote for Gary Johnson.
But I’m pulling for the more intellectual and philosophical McAffee.
Downside: history of substance issues and person of interest in a murder.
Make America Clean Again:
http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620×413/k_n/McAfee_2.jpg
Johnson’s got no swagger.
He slouches.
Trump’s voters want a strong alpha male to lead America and provide an example for a world in trouble to follow.
We don’t need some whiny wussie like Johnson or Clinton.
re: “strong alpha male.. don’t need some wussie like Johnson”
Johnson has climbed all seven summits (the highest peaks on each contient, including Everest , where part of that was with a broken leg and severe frostbite), and has done multiple full length Ironman triathlons, and built 1000 person construction company, not exactly a typical “wussie” profile (not that I think that being a “wussie” or not matters in terms of electoral qualifications, I just found it amusing you were attacking him using that description when its rather offbase). In terms of appeal to voters, he was a popular 2 term Republican governor despite being in a heavily Democratic state (term limited out), albeit a low population state. An earlier profile from before he’d done all 7 summits notes in part:
http://www.gq.com/story/gary-johnson-republican-candidate-debate-interview
“Twice he broke his back but continued to compete in marathons, bike races, the usual. His worst mishap was in 2005, toward the end of his governorship, when he crashed while paragliding off the highest mountain in Maui and fractured three vertebrae and broke six ribs. ”
That doesn’t sound like a “wussie”.
“But I’m pulling for the more intellectual and philosophical McAffee.
Downside: history of substance issues and person of interest in a murder.”
Many people with diabetes wound up that way because of their abuse of sugar, or to put in your vernacular “substance abuse”. Obesity is also an example of “substance abuse”. Many Marxists echo the sentiment that religion is the opiate of the masses, but it appears that if not all, almost all people find their opiate.
In terms of “person of interest”, this phrase is arguably abuse of power when law enforcement agencies use the term. Hatfill v. Ashcroft is just one example of this abuse. After the 2001 anthrax attack, USAG John Ashcroft responded to a question from the press about whether Dr. Steven J. Hatfill was a suspect in that case. Ashcroft responded by saying Hatfill was a “person of interest”. Hatfill sued and the federal government settled to the tune of $5.8 million dollars. A “person of interest” is not a suspect, and when government officials use the term, they are injuring people who are very likely innocent.
“That doesn’t sound like a “wussie”.”
It doesn’t sound like sane either.
The best preparation anyone could have for handling the presidency is to not be a crook.
Well shoot, Wag. You just invalidated 97% of all politicians. ^¿^
don’t care for Chump at all, some of his remarks are hurtful to an extreme, and the only saving grace I find in him is his apparent plans for moving away from economy bashing regulation, but that’;s not enough for me.
I don’t think he stands a chance either, and Romney would win in a walk if he were the current nominee.
Romney had his chance to help America and he blew it.
You must be willing to do what must be done and Romney didn’t.
Interesting video on Romney’s Mexican roots:
Romney made the choice not to run. He then rejected the voter’s selection. Imo- that reflects very poorly on him.
What is or are the specific Trump positions that have you concerned?
I can tell you I am concerned about Hilary in regards to:
1. Potential Supreme Court appointments
2. Her position on CO2’s impact on harming the climate
3. Her history of poor foreign policy positions/decisions
a) Libya regime change without reasonable plan for new government
b) Iraq failures with their government to maintain US troops and then subsequence failures to not to quickly address situation as needed.
c) Syria- failure of supported Obama policy-line in the sand
d) Poor Iran treaty
==> What is or are the specific Trump positions that have you concerned
It reflects poorly on him because he doesn’t want to support a candidate that he thinks will be harmful to the country?
So it would reflect well on him if he supported a candidate that he thinks will be harmful to the country?
This just gets better and better.
How Not to Make a Campaign Ad
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/143898615346/how-not-to-make-a-campaign-ad
It is my experience that when people resort to name calling (e.r. Xenophobic, racist, bigot, misogynist, etc.), they do do because they can’t come up with a cogent argument.
if I might add a few other epithets to your list?: “warmunist,” “alarmist,” “fraud,” “Lysenkoist” “Neo-McCarthyist” “extreme-weather denier” “eco-Nazi” “elitist” ????
Yeah good point, Joshua. Sometimes name calling is just done for pleasure and has nothing to do with having a good argument or not. You ignorant slut.
Yeah good point, J0shua. Sometimes name calling is done for pleasure and has nothing to do with having a good argument or not. You ignorant slut.
Sure that ad isn’t going to convince any Trump loyalists but what would?
They’re oblivious to everything.
Trump has already renounced his so-called self-funded campaign – the one that he said guaranteed his independence.
He basically suggested the US should declare bankruptcy today on CNBC. Might be a problem with the Constitution and that, but even that aside, it would be an economic disaster.
He tells the miners he will put them back to work but who is going to buy the coal? The power companies are converting to gas because its cheaper. And automation and technology has eliminated most of the mining jobs anyway even if there was a robust market for coal.
It’s been estimated that deporting 11 million illegals would knock 2% off the GDP. But anyway it’s not doable anyway.
He’s a ignoramus ready to believe and promote any conspiracy theory.
The intelligence community is afraid to give him intelligence briefings because they know he can’t keep his mouth shut.
Do you believe God?
“Trump loyalists”?
It looks like there’s a lot more to Trump’s support than loyalists.
Trump is now in the asendency, and RCP’s poll average has Clinton currently with only a 6.5% lead, down from a double-digit lead only a few weeks ago.
http://i.imgur.com/EB4r1Aa.png
Arch,
No but I believe Dog.
Glenn,
Looks to me like he has fallen with a tiny bit of rebound. And if you look at a more or less equivalent chart on Huffpost the rebound and closeness is accounted for by the outlier Rasmussen polls (which are Republican robocalls). So anybody who would answer and respond to robocalls probably is stupid enough to be voting for Trump.
James Cross, From your response to my query I expect that you too support the AGW science?
“He basically suggested the US should declare bankruptcy today on CNBC.”
When is it, I wonder, that you think that bankruptcy should be declared? You don’t honestly imagine that $20 trillion in debt is getting paid do you?
“As you can see, if you add up debt held by Social Security, and all the retirement and pension funds, nearly half of the U.S. Treasury debt is held in trust for your retirement.”
http://useconomy.about.com/od/monetarypolicy/f/Who-Owns-US-National-Debt.htm
Arch
“From your response to my query I expect that you too support the AGW science?”
I support science. I hope you do too.
Is there some part of science you have a problem with?
Unless things have changed,… the bonds held in trust for Social Security are not allowed to trade in the open treasury markets.
Jean Paul
I never suggested bankruptcy should be declared . Trump essentially did.
“In 2013, United States public debt-to-GDP ratio was 71.8%, according to the CIA World Factbook, or 104.5%, according to the IMF including external debt. The level of public debt in Japan 2013 was 243.2% of GDP, in China 22.4% and in India 66.7%, according to the IMF, while the public debt-to-GDP ratio in 2013 was at 76.9% of GDP in Germany, 87.2% in the United Kingdom, 92.2% in France and 127.9% in Italy, according to Eurostat.”
Actually we are mostly in line with other countries. Of course, if we cut our military and quit subsiding Big Pharma and the health care industry we could move to lower end of the ratio.
If you are suggesting we should refuse the honor our obligations, as Trump did, do you think that would make matters better or worse?
The answer is infinitely worse. I guess we could drive the ratio to zero but we would collapse the economy and take decades to recover. It wouldn’t be good for anybody.
But that shows the problem with Trump. As a business man, a real estate mogul, bankruptcy is part of doing business. His idea that we could apply this the national debt demonstrates his complete unfitness for the job of President.
James Cross, Now that you mention it I do have a problem, we all do.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong
Do you have a guess as to just why, the Mayan people were scrimmaging downtown just before they all left town? The Long Ears on Easter Island all disappeared? Maybe they all came to a conclusion at the same moment?
Sometimes I don’t think people don’t understand. Using a mutual fund I buy a total U.S. bond fund. The money, the national debt is owed to a bunch of people like myself. Many people, not all of them rich. I guess I am Trump’s sucker.
“I never suggested bankruptcy should be declared . Trump essentially did.”
James,
I was fully aware of that when I asked you my question.
“Actually we are mostly in line with other countries.”
If you tell your creditor that your large unpaid debt is inline with your neighbors, will it work?
“If you are suggesting we should refuse the honor our obligations, as Trump did, do you think that would make matters better or worse?”
I think the 2011 “debt crises” spoke volumes to the creditors of the U.S. debt. When the president nationally televised his remarks that we had to raise the debt ceiling so we could pay the interest on our debts, this is a strong indication that the politicians we elect have no intention in honoring our obligations. To pretend otherwise may be populist, but it ain’t economics.
James Cross | May 6, 2016 at 2:54 pm |
“No but I believe Dog.”
Gets things bass ackwards.
Check.
@Crames Joss
Did any polls six months ago predict Trump would take over the GOP?
If not why would you trust those polls to get it right now?
Thanks in advance, dopey.
James Cross | May 6, 2016 at 8:50 pm |
“I support science. I hope you do too.”
“Is there some part of science you have a problem with?”
Only the bits where the conclusions are driven by politics and ideology instead of experiment and reason. Global warming science is driven by politics and ideology. Evolutionary biology is driven by politics and ideology. I can’t think of any others I have a problem with.
How about you, dopey? Do you religiously accept everything that comes out of the halls of scientism?
James Cross | May 6, 2016 at 3:01 pm |
“So anybody who would answer and respond to robocalls probably is stupid enough to be voting for Trump”
As opposed to being even stupider enough to vote for Crooked Hillary?
Actually my views on climate change are a little more complex than you might think. If you want a fairly complete view of what they are you can read something I wrote about four years ago..
https://broadspeculations.com/2012/08/26/climate-of-change/
Regard the national debt, Trump’s new finance guy – the guy who is raising money for Trump that Trump said he didn’t need because he was self-funded – already is walking back the craziness on national debt.
Ringersp,
You were the one who brought the polls up to start with.
I think Trump could win. Whether Trump or Clinton wins, we can be sure that the Republicans will be impeaching somebody in the next four years.
I have estimated that a gradual deportation of 4 million illegal aliens, and their gradual replacement by 4 million carefully screened legal Inmigrants will eventually boost GDP a cumulative 12 % in 20 years. It will also reduce poverty and crime.
Fernando,
I suspect this number is going to go up under Trump:
http://i.imgur.com/iT3wvnB.png
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annual-Number-of-US-Legal-Permanent-Residents?width=1000&height=850&iframe=true
My maid’s husband has gone to the US a couple of times during the past couple of years to work, both times legally. He has no education beyond high school and no trade, but the companies he works for helped obtain green cards for him.
Before it would have been impossible for someone like him to get a green card.
Has Trump ever inveigned against immigration, or only illegal immirgration?
Anyway, who would build Trumps buildings if he were to kick all the Mexicans out?
I pretty much figured it out by the 6th grade that one can pretty much ignore what politicians say on the campaign trail.
I include the qualifier “pretty much” because every now and then they slip up and reveal where they really are coming from. Examples from the current President – “clinging to their guns and their religion” and the comment about making energy much more expensive.
With Trump I am operating on the premise that he is playing to the audience and telling them what they want to hear. I suspect once he gets into the office, he will rely on subject matter experts.
I reckon Southpark’s comment still applies.
https://cdn.meme.am/instances/67259499.jpg
This one number foretold Donald Trump’s rise
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/this-one-number-foretold-donald-trump-s-rise-193022622.html
This article from Dan Kahan is interesting
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2016/5/6/raw-data-the-best-safeguard-against-empirical-bull-shit.html
SO true. I suspect this article also shows how it is far too easy to use a computer to do your stats when you have no real idea what they mean or how to use them properly.
I especially was delighted to read the comments by some Joshua fellow who apparently has conducted extensive research into reading comprehension by skeptics since he shared this astute conclusion “…the vast majority of ‘skeptics’ have no idea what the research actually says.”
Do tell. Exactly how is that this genius Joshua was able to deduce this? What were his sampling techniques? How many in the sample. What is defined as “vast majority”? Is that something like 97%?
He must have attended the Mosher school of insights into the skeptic psyche. When the opposition makes fools of themselves on a routine basis, it sends a tingle up one’s leg.
ceresco –
You do realize that online “skeptics” are not a representative sampling, don’t you? The vast majority of skeptics have neither the time nor skills/ability to interpret what scientists say about climate change.
No different from the majority of “realists.”
If you’d like some data on surveys of the general public on knowledge of climate science, I could dig some up. But would that really be necessary?
RE: Josh’s “online “skeptics” are not a representative sampling, ”
and “The vast majority of skeptics have neither the time nor skills/ability to interpret what scientists say about climate change. ”
How would you know? If the vast majority doesn’t spend time on line expressing their views, how do you know what those views are? (It’s rhetorical Josh, as we all know you haven’t a clue.)
And the part about them not having the necessary skill set, that’s a true gem coming from someone who repeatedly demonstrates his lack of skill or background on the science. Mainly by rarely discussing it. Without conducting an analysis of all of your comments, I think I could still come up with a fairly accurate assessment of how much of your commenting is on the topic of divining the motivation of “skeptics”.
Hi tim –
I always look forward to your insightful comments:
http://www.culturalcognition.net/display/ShowImage?imageUrl=/storage/whobelieveswhat.png
There’s more where that comes from…
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2015/1/23/should-we-care-about-the-publics-climate-science-literacy-wh.html
You give me too much credit Josh. Commenting on the obvious isn’t necessarily insightful.
Regarding your link: The cultural stuff is your thing, not mine. I did notice that the lack of skills applies to both believers and skeptics.
Side note: Of the three goals Kahan mentions near the end, I’ve been involved in the third for 20 years. It’s the only one of the three that really matters.
http://i.imgur.com/FHVLntB.png
Trump is certainly dangerous to the world’s plutocrats.
Leading the defense team for the world’s plutocrats is Mexico’s ex-president, Vicente Fox. A few hours ago he unleashed a new round of vitriol against Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2A1ariS2P8
http://i.imgur.com/aIG6S7p.png
Fox was one of the leading exponents of NAFTA.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-the-real-end-winner-of-nafta-is-going-to-be-mexico-because-we-have-the-human-capital-vicente-fox-121-87-35.jpg
NAFTA, however, has proved to be devastating to the wellbeing of Mexian workers.
Under NAFTA, the average Mexican manufacturing worker has seen the purchasing power of his wage plunge by more than 50%:
http://i.imgur.com/DrMIbE8.png
https://youtu.be/3dB5JpLITCY
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/05/donald-trump-vicente-fox-accept-apology/
Hay muchas buenas razones por las que Trump sería muy malo para México, aunque el señor Fox no menciona ninguna de ellas.
Trump is a deal maker. When a deal is made, both parties have to believe there is a benefit. Until the particulars of the deal are made and known, you can’t really say Trump would be bad for Mexico.
jim2,
NAFTA wasn’t good for American workers. But it was absolutely devastating for Mexican workers. But Mexican plutocrats and oligarchs have prospered mightily under NAFTA.
So when one says “bad for Mexico,” one has to ask, “Which Mexico”?. As Carlos Fuentes said of NAFTA and its consequences:
Glenn, from what I’ve read about the class structure of Mexico, you are correct. The middle class there is stagnating. But that’s true in just about every country; save some Asian ones maybe. I’m not sure NAFTA was the root problem. It could be the NAFTA made the rich richer in Mexico, but simply didn’t help or hinder the middle class – the middle class there just did what the middle class in most countries did. I would also point out, that the rich are getting richer in the US also, again not related to NAFTA.
So, IMO the jury is out.
So many Mexicans immigrated that it’s hard to discuss Mexico’s economy without acknowledging that the most productive members of its workforce don’t live in Mexico.
There are also political aspects to that. The rulers don’t have to worry about the workers rising up or rebelling in the polling booth because the profoundly dissatisfied Mexicans move to Texas, Arizona, or California – and send money home.
@George Turner
Got a link to some credible research supporting any of that wild conjecture?
That’s from long discussions with Mexicans that left. It’s easier to come up here and work toward something than stay down there and fight a system that’s designed to keep the peasants down and the aristocrats on top. Vote for who you’re told to vote for or lose your job, etc. So over ten percent of the Mexican born labor force, the ones with the most ambition, is laboring in the US. Their children, born in the US and filled with dangerous ideas, aren’t even allowed to run for dog catcher in Mexico.
Interesting …
‘Dangerous Donald’
People hate dangerous things like fast cars, motorcycles, roller coasters, sky diving, firearms, drugs, booze, gambling, football, ski jumping, rock climbing, big wave surfing, MMA, boxing … just off the top of my head.
The beautiful girl in your high school was in love with the ‘safe’ guy.
The hero in the movie is always the cautious, well behaved person.
The bad guys can be stopped safely.
One gets rich by playing it safe.
Life is short and should be lived safely.
Yeah, we need a risk management President.
They are obviously attempting to imitate Trump, the Master. He cut down establishment favorite Jeb Bush at the knees with two words: Low energy.
I doubt they will be able to beat Trump at his own game. I’ve already seen echoes of “Crooked Hillary” bouncing around the internet.
http://heapsgay.com/all-your-fantasies-have-come-true-with-this-donald-trump-gay-erotica-novel/
Willard comes out of the closet. Film at 11.
David,
Willard is channeling Pachuri (sp?) perhaps.
For his sake I hope his appearance isn’t as creepy.
For the record, I am neutral here. All three candidates were on my original list of “I would never vote for that candidate.” I’m looking for reasons to vote for one of them.
Still counting Bernie?
Pretty funny:
7/22/2015
5//2016
I guess someone needs to tell Perry that illegal immigrants don’t serve in the US armed forces. Trump maligns illegals. I know plenty of Mexican-American citizens who have indeed put on the uniform of United States soldier and served honorably. They malign illegals too. With impunity because no one can accuse them of being racist when they do it.
David Springer said:
This is anecdotal, but I have heard a number of friends here in Mexico complain of this phenomenon.
They complain of greater hostility from Mexican types while traveling in the US than they get from the Anglo types. Malinchismo is the charge.
Nationalism runs as deep in the Mexican American psyche as it does in any other person’s.
To attribute political or racial ideogies to someone because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin is a fallacy.
https://quotesaga.s3.amazonaws.com/quote/QS_88edae06a3c84413831f352d9600d7bd.jpg
I’m a legal inmigrant, and I feel sympathy for illegals, just like I feel sympathy for the poor in India and Somalia. I believe it’s contrary to USA and world interests for the USA to have illegal aliens flooding into its territory. It’s causing hardship because it oversupplies the low skill market, it allows too many uneducated to enter, people who lack a tradition of study and advancement by hitting the books. It’s also a potential trouble spot if it allows terrorists and or weapons to enter the country.
Therefore, it’s a matter of common sense to remedy the current problem by deporting over time a portion of the illegal aliens inside the country. Those who stay should not have the ability to become us citizens, simply because they broke the law.
Barriers to entry should be much tougher, and if this means building a barrier, fence, or whatever, it should be built. A system and laws is also needed to give police the ability to arrest illegals. And the federal system needs to be improved so it can hold them in a safe and comfortable lock down.
If anybody wants to help the poor in other countries, the bette solution is to have a USA foreign policy which encourages good governance and democracy, and is hostile to human rights abusing nations.
I wish I could have recorded the conversation with the Uber driver that picked up my wife and I at the airport Friday evening.
Immigrant and black, he had a better handle on the campaign and why Trump is where he is at than any of the paid opinion columnists or media editorial boards. He helped reaffirm my belief in the idea that immigration is one of this nation’s strengths. Funny how someone not born here has a better grasp than David Brooks, whose panties are so tightly twisted over Trump that they are in the approximate region of his upper colon.
The Wall Street Journal unleashed a vicious article against Trump:
The Trump Reality
He may be the highest variable nominee in American history
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trump-reality-1462402908
One of the most entertaining aspects of this entire show is seeing the climatariat on the same team with the Koch Brothers.
Well, what else would you expect from that Soviet-style, Leftist propaganda sheet known as the “Wall Street Journal”?
Seriously, I think a lot of people who usually vote GOP won’t even bother voting. I think Trump pretty much demolished the GOP, and the current Democrat strategy is to drown all downstream GOP candidates by ling them to Trump.
The GOP elites are in charge of the GOP. They are responsible for what happens to it, not Trump.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/koch-brothers-take-on-trump
http://i.imgur.com/8epcNzX.png
Brian G Valentine said:
That is the establishment’s #1 talking point.
But, as David Brooks (not the neocon David Brooks that writes for the NY Times) said in his column in one of the Mexico City dailies yesterday:
(conspiracy theory alert):
I think many Democrats supported Chump in the primaries (and appeared waving flags in his crowds too) to present to Hillary the only GOP candidate she could possibly beat.
Glenn, RE David Brooks :
1. John McCain has been in Hillbilly’s camp for several years now, he just hasn’t said so.
2. If hate crimes have been committed, they have been perpetrated by the anti-trump protesters. (I felt the hate!! I want my justice!!!)
I’m voting Trump against Hillary.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/cartoons/images/2016/05/05/gary_varvel_gary_varvel_for_may_05_2016_5_.jpg
We will see.
While I would not have voted Trump in the primary, if he’s the candidate in Sept, I’m voting for him without qualm.
Now, if I was assured of Hillary getting indicted, I might vote for her.
The Trump thing? Just look at the climatariat, the EU, the IPCC, NATO, COP 21, Eurovision…
It’s about the nation state, sillies. We’re just not ready for the other.
Agree, moso,
‘That guvuhmint of the people, by the people and for
the people shall not perish.’ The serfs are getting fed
up with government by remote control, not jest from
above but from afar. Sad to think that Great Britain,
originator of Magna Carta and of parliamentary
democracy, is now governed by unelected, brussels
-men. A serf from the colonies would earnestly
recommend BREXIT.
The EU is just another creaky German empire, barely formed but already sclerotic.
Who has these doomed ideas like the Energiewende, Schengen and the European Union? Surely the Illuminati aren’t this dumb. Maybe it’s the same old guy who thought of New Coke, and now he’s hiding behind a curtain pretending to be an Illuminati wizard. (You read that here first, serf.)
Remember mosomoso, It’s the One…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Goizueta
He worked his way up and then changed everything. I hate to say that I still can remember those days, brand loyalty being what it was.
The thing you have to realize about Trump is that he’s all about the Deal. Recently Paul Ryan said he can’t endorse Trump “right now.” Trump replies that he doesn’t care if Ryan endorses him or not. They are both staking out negotiating positions. It’s a game, but a serious one.
Trump University was founded to teach people how to become Filthy Rich through Deal Making, and it is evident that the results have been a Stellar success.
Trump doesn’t realize how many people there are who can cheat him and walk all over him, with facility, and just by feeding his ego.
Today the presidebt said he knew where a trillion dollars worth of shovel ready jobs might be found. Does that help you feel better?
Sorry to intrude upon your daydream but what evidence can you offer to support your notion that Trump can be cheated easily?
http://i.imgur.com/GFtt3Ra.png
Ryan fans GOP civil war over Donald Trump
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/278945-ryan-fans-gop-civil-war-over-donald-trump
Romney skipping GOP convention, joins list of presidents, leaders
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/05/politics/mitt-romney-skips-republican-convention/
http://i.imgur.com/q3MBvIN.png
http://i.imgur.com/wTkbiDC.png
==> They are both staking out negotiating positions.
The catch-all for Trump supporters. “He’s just negotiating.”
When he said that the military would follow his orders even if they were illegal? Just a negotiating stance. When he said that he’d hired investigators who proved that Obama isn’t an American citizen? Just a negotiating stance.
And to top it off, not only can they dismiss anything that he says as a “negotiating stance,” they can also play the victim card that it’s the media’s fault if the public judges Trump negatively for what Trump says.
A work of art..
Thanks for the vacuous analysis. Keep up the good work.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thanks for reminding me, Jizzhua. Go Trump.
“I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Of course, Alexis didn’t anticipate Hillary.
Or for that matter, Trump.
No one on the Left is concerned with headlines about the catastrophic events that have a high probability of leading to an American apocalypse and an economic collapse that will bring the strongest and most powerful nation on the planet to its knees; but, they are worried that Trump voters stopped listening and started doing…!
Or, they are too consumed with who can go to what bath room and gun control.
It is impossible for America to go as far and as fast in reducing its GHG emissions as the climate activists want us to go without putting a price on carbon and without imposing a strong anti-GHG regulatory framework.
Pushing the Clean Air Act to its maximum legal limits is the only realistic path we have for greatly reducing America’s carbon emissions in the short space of time climate activists say our emissions must be reduced.
Barack Obama and Gina McCarthy haven’t used the Clean Air Act in the ways that it could have and should have been used after the 2009 Endangerment Finding had been upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2010. They developed the Clean Power Plan instead.
The CPP is a plan guaranteed to fail because it gets us only one-quarter of the way towards the President’s goal of an 80% reduction in our GHG emissions by 2050, and because it is highly vulnerable to lawsuits since it targets coal-fired power plants while ignoring most all other sources of US carbon emissions.
If regulating GHG’s is to be successful as the main focus of our carbon reduction efforts, the regulatory framework must cover all GHG’s from all emission sources. Otherwise the framework becomes highly vulnerable to lawsuits, and rightly so.
Let’s ask a question here. Which presidential candidate is most likely to use the Clean Air Act to its greatest possible effectiveness in legally and constitutionally forcing a steep reduction in America’s carbon emissions?
What about Bernie Sanders?
There isn’t much question but that Sanders would move quickly forward with an aggressive anti-carbon program managed by the EPA under the authority of the Clean Air Act. It would be a program which targets all sources of America’s carbon emissions, not just those from coal-fired power plants.
What about Hillary Clinton?
She is the ultimate defender of the status quo and would likely carry Barack Obama’s policies forward into her administration. Suppose she continued the Obama policy of not moving aggressively in using government-enforced anti-carbon regulations to force a steep reduction in our emissions. Would the environmental activist groups call her to account for her lack of effective action in fighting climate change?
What about Donald Trump?
There’s not much doubt Trump would either scale back the government’s anti-carbon efforts or else abandon them altogether. If that’s what he did, what would be the response of the environmental activist groups?
The 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon is on the books. It documents the role of carbon in climate change; it describes the dangers associated with climate change; and it has been successfully defended in the courts.
The EPA’s 2009 finding supplies a solid foundation for moving forward with an aggressive anti-carbon regulatory framework, a course of action which can be argued is mandatory under the law given the consequences of inaction as described in the Endangerment Finding.
The climate activist groups haven’t sued the EPA for its lack of action in using the Clean Air Act to its maximum legal authority. If Donald Trump was elected president, would they suddenly reverse course and start suing the EPA to force adoption of a more aggressive anti-carbon plan, something they declined to do while Barack Obama was president?
Actually, it’s perfectly possible, even feasible. The “price on carbon” and “imposing a strong anti-GHG regulatory framework” are what the activists are really after. “Global Warming” is just their excuse.
Wrong!
Nobody with any real sense regards “regulating GHG’s” as having any realistic effect on “our carbon reduction efforts”. They’re just looking for excuses to impose more regulation, with bigger regulatory bureaucracies.
Hopefully. This whole charade of activists “suing” regulatory agencies to get them to do what both parties want to do, in violation of the law, will only work with a cooperative president. I doubt they’ll get much cooperation from Mr. Trump.
“If regulating GHG’s is to be successful…”
Things are not regulated, people are. You can’t regulate a mountain, or the ocean, or the sky, but you can try, at least, to regulate the behavior of people.
Done.
http://www.kuwaitlocal.com/news/uae-building-mountain-to-bring-more-rain
You would want to be a real Nimrod to not want to build one? Of course that was then, not like now.
You’re right. Gun regulations don’t regulate the sale and use of guns. FDA regulations don’t regulate the sale and use of foods and drugs. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t regulate nuclear power plants.
Oh wait… you’re wrong. Those inanimate things actually are regulated.
“You’re right. Gun regulations don’t regulate the sale and use of guns. FDA regulations don’t regulate the sale and use of foods and drugs. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t regulate nuclear power plants.”
Far from me being wrong, you just made my point. Regulation of gun sales is regulation of behavior. FDA regulates the behavior of people who produce and sell food. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulates the people who run power plants.
I am hoping you don’t need it explained to you how the regulation of sales products is a regulation on people, so I will assume you are capable of recognizing that, and I will just suggest to you that you take a look at the FDA rules and regulations. For example, try looking at the FDA’s regulation on tobacco, and explain to me how “user fees” and “exposure warnings” are actually a regulation of tobacco and not the manufacturers and importers of tobacco.
http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm283974.htm
Then I would suggest you actually take a look at some the rules and regulations imposed by the NRC and explain to me how “licensing”, “oversight”, “incident responses”, “tests”, and “research” is actually a regulation on nuclear power plants and not the people “licensed” to run them.
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/organization/nrrfuncdesc.html
The EPA is an executive branch department of the US gov’t. It declared by fiat, under instruction from the chief executive, that CO2 is a harmful pollutant. The cool thing about that is that a new chief executive can, with the stroke of a pen, declare by fiat that carbon emissions are not a harmful pollutant.
The Clean Air Act did not name carbon dioxide a pollutant. That would have been regarded as stupid by everyone in 1965 when the earth was cooling not warming. It’s still stupid but the failed flower children of the 1960’s, the hippy dippy Vietnam protesters spitting on returning veterans, are setting themselves up for one more epic failure before going on to not meet their maker. It’s a travesty that the Clean Air Act is now being paraded as the legal justification for the war on CO2 which is no pollutant but rather serves as the carbon source for the primary producers in the food chain. Living things THRIVE in a higher CO2 environment. Real science is not ambivalent about that and the data has repeatedly shown that the earth is getting greener as a result of rising CO2.
I think you liked Obama. Maybe you liked “Hope and Change.” But, Obama didn’t actually change anything. He continued to walk down the hill on the well trodden path.
If you believe what Trump says he will do, even a tenth of it, he is definitely going to change America. My view is the status-quo is pretty bad, and something needs to change.
I also think Western Civilization is worth fighting for. Europe is tired, and their culture is failing. Looking at the demographics, Europe can not sustain Western Civilization. Look for even more Sharia law in England, and look to Europe to succumb in the next 20 to 30 years. So, Europe cannot sustain Western Civilization. Only the US can.
Trump’s Nationalism in my view is a good thing for Western Civilization. What are the alternatives? China, where facebook is banned? Or, consider what a co-worker once told me, that her roommate went down to see what was going on in Tienanmen Square, she was curious, and my co-worker never saw her again. Sharia Law? I find Sharia Law offensive, as I suspect most will.
The political left cannot solve this problem. As Hillary should have learned, you can’t bomb people’s identity out of them. And multi-culturalism has failed in Europe, as evidenced by the horrors in England and Europe.
Are you suggesting that British judges adorned in robes and wigs will find themselves replaced by radicals covered in black scarves shouting in Arabic in kangaroo courts?
I don’t think that’s going to happen. Nor do I believe that Trumpism is a very good or even accurate model of Western Civilization. Trump’s education, as well as the person, are shallow.
1. There is no such thing as Trumpism.
2. If there were such a thing, it wouldn’t be a “model of Western Civilization.”
3. There nothing wrong with his education. I dare say, given his vast success in real estate, he’s probably learned more than you will ever know.
From the article:
…
He then entered Fordham University and two years later transferred to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics.
…
http://www.biography.com/people/donald-trump-9511238#synopsis
Jim
No such thing as trumpism.? There is a British tv series set in the town of trumpton
http://trumpton3.homestead.com/pughpughbarneymcgrew.html
It all looks a lot more genteel however than the frantic scenes that often surround the Donald
Tonyb
Noted, Tony. I’m glad you showed up, however. What is your opinion of London’s new mayor?
Jim
There are some three million muslims in the uk out of a population of some 65 million. Of those some one million live in London. I would guess that a very high proportion of those voted for the new mayor.
There are many immigrants of other nations also living in London who tend to vote disproportionately for Labour, the party whose candidate won the london mayoralty
Tonyb
That’s interesting. Thanks, Tony.
Let me tell you, Donald Trump is going to make Mount Rushmore look so much better. So much better. It’s only got like four guys on it, and it’s this huge mountain. We need to start building fantastic sculptures again. I mean they built that thing in the middle of the Great Depression and we can’t do things like that now? What kind of country are we?
You can take the people out of Egypt but you will never be able to take Egypt, out of the people.
For what it’s worth, dopey Valentine, Trump has a graduate degree from an Ivy League University. Those generally aren’t considered “shallow”. But you might be.
Correction. Undergraduate degree. But still an Ivy League school.
Valentine: There are over 80 sharia courts in the UK.
Jim,
I confirm Tony’s statements. I’ve known and worked with many muslims in Britain. It’s just like working with Christians. They don’t wear their religion on their sleeve, their wives don’t wear burkas and their daughters dress like white girls in tights and short dresses, with a pretty scarf over their hair. Some even have dashing blondes as wives.
However, there are many white English people I’ve avoided all my life – they don’t behave like the rest of us, much more rough. They also object vociferously to the enclaves of burka-wearing women and angry sharia-lovers. I don’t drive into those areas because they don’t follow the rules of the road when women are driving. Too dangerous.
I’m surprised that I haven’t seen a comment about how the political consequences of climate change have come to the forefront this week.
Earlier in the campaign, Clinton made a comment about coal mining that reflects the current ‘leave it in the ground’ nonsense. She said, ““We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” This week, a coal miner did an excellent job of confronting her on her statement and it’s becoming clear that the war on coal is not going to help the dems in November.
To be fair, she talked about some sort of $30B program to bring “clean energy jobs” to West Virginia. But does anybody really believe that will happen? And, even if she could, why does anybody believe that it would turn out any differently than Solyndra?
And, of course, next will come the war on oil and the war on nat gas…threatening *many* more jobs.
Anyway, this seems to be yet another instance where Pielke Jr’s “Iron Law” of climate policy is taking effect. The dems have painted themselves into a corner. They have convinced too many of their voters that we need to kill coal in order to save the world. With those kind of stakes, they have no option but to put people out of work…people who will vote against them. The dems have already lost elections because of this, yet they continue to act like lemmings.
Judith
Speaking of climate change, there was a good article by bjorn lomborg in today’s telegraph pointing out the benefits of co2 which might be worth referencing in your week in review.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/05/no-one-ever-says-it-but-in-many-ways-global-warming-will-be-a-go/
This was in the context of the science paper that came out this week which highlighted the greening benefits of co2 but which the BBC inexplicably ignored.
With 7 billion people and many more coming, surely without additional co2 increasing crop yields, millions would be starving?
Tonyb
“…social media propelled “birtherism” to the forefront of the national conversation, reinstating nativism as an active ideology in the United States.”
“Donald Trump has summoned the anger and xenophobia of the birthers…”
– The Nation
I consider this a step backwards, yet Trump will be the nominee. I’ve considered the birthers as inside the Republican tent but more tolerated than lauded. Their ideas may have reach across to the middle. There is a three way situation. Yes capitalists want cheap labor and yes Democrats want more immigrants. Who will help the white middle? The Left says it will not. The Right says it cannot. As Trump rides this to the nomination he may want to thank the people he blamed our problems on. His opportunism might even be envied by some.
I’d been pondering how to work ‘Safe Space’ into the climate debate? We natives need a Safe Space, not one where we have to compete with people not of this nation. It’s the governments job to protect us, not expose us to economic realities.
“Who will help the white middle? The Left says it will not. The Right says it cannot. Who will help the white middle? The Left says it will not. The Right says it cannot.”
Regardless of the color of the middle, when it comes to “class”, or economic status, there is little that either party can do, and the less they do the better for the middle, as well as the bottom. The regulatory state has changed the definition of “capitalism” to include corporatism, and by that definition capitalism can no longer be about free and unregulated markets. The more governments leave people alone to fend for themselves, the better off people are. The more governments leave people alone to create their own charities and fraternal and maternal orders that need no credentialed approval from a tax agency, the easier it becomes for people to help their neighbors who are struggling to fend for themselves. Believing government can help people fend for themselves is naive.
There is an old fable, some attribute to Aesop, but I don’t think it is his, but this fable tells the story of a frog about to cross a river when a scorpion approaches that frog and asks for a ride across the river atop the frogs back. The frog understandably declines explaining that the scorpion would only sting him. The scorpion reasoned that stinging was not an option as long as he was atop the frogs back crossing the river, because stinging the frog would only drown them both. The frog found this reasonable and agreed to give the scorpion a ride across the river. Halfway across the scorpion stung the frog. Paralyzed and about to sink the frog declares:
“Now we will both drown, why?”
The scorpion replied:
“I am a scorpion, it is in my nature to sting.”
The allegorical moral of that story? Don’t let government ride atop your back. It will only drown you both.
I know where the scorpion story originated!
If you’re a scorpion, you sting. It’s what you do. If you want to save 15% or more on car insurance you go to Geico. It’s what you do.
Jean Paul Zodeaux,
I don’t buy into your rugged individualism, libertarianism and anarchism.
No field of scientific endeavor has been more abused in the pursuit of political, economic and ideological goals than evolutionary biology. Social Darwinism is but one of the many examples of this.
Historian Sidney Fine reports that “it would be difficult to overestimate Spencer’s popularity in the United States during the quarter century after the Civil War.”
As Fine explains,
One of the main reasons homo sapiens has been such a successful species is because of its hyper-sociality and hyper-cooperativeness.
Achieving collective action, however, does have its problems. But we as humans have evolved to more or less cope with these problems, granted with difficulty. But the difficulties do not justify the complete abandonment of collective action, as Spencer theorized:
As the authors go on to conclude, “Possibilities for, and gains from, free-riding act against cooperation.”
The trick of any successful society is to minimize free-riding while at the same time rewarding individual merit and accomplishment, and “these opposing forces may have led to the evolution of some general moral sentiments.”
Define “free-riding”!
Different cultures (and individuals) define it differently depending on their evaluation of how different individual actions “contribute value”. I’ve personally observed that most people involved in a group effort tend to consider their contribution more valuable than most others in the group do.
It even seems plausible that many people rationalize their desire for their contribution to be valuable through their choice of value systems. Chicken or egg?
AK,
The issues you raise are addressed in the paper I linked.
http://i.imgur.com/ilbuluV.png
One thing seems to be for sure, and that is that human nature is far more complex than the simplisitc and highly reductionist models that some evolutionary biologists have cooked up to give a patina of science to the doctrine of laissez faire.
@Glenn Stehle…
I haven’t finished reading the paper you linked, but their comparisons with chimpanzees are primitive and tendentious. I did find this:
There you go: potential different definitions of “free rider” with the “coastal groups [e.g., Ifaluk (Sosis 1997), Lamalera (Alvard in press), and Makah (Singleton 1998)]” coming out in favor of capitalism.
I could add some important questions not answered in that quote: do boat owners build their own, or do they receive help? How is the help (if any) paid for? Does everybody know how to build a boat, or are there experts who offer consultation and or physical help? Do such experts also get extra food?
Another example.
We must also consider fictive kinship or its modern analogs.
The simplest form of fictive kinship is simple adoption, a form of which appears to be practiced by chimpanzees. More usually in status competition, but it seems to be involved in food-sharing as well.
Glenn Stehle:
I hadn’t thought I was libertarian because of what the science said. An ethics class from long ago provided some framework. Many things helped determined where I am today. The science of how to run society could include a lot of economics. Control interest rates, get this result. Control government spending, get this result. Change a 25% income tax rate to 28% and get this result. We see control variables. It seems easy. We could say change this and all things being equal, this happens. When we have economic problems it’s because the control variables are set wrong or the public no longer reacts to them as the formulas say. Our society is financially complex. Control variable inputs from on high assumes it works a certain way. Bottom up control assumes something else. The financial success of a society can be credited to those setting the control variables. Financial problems are blamed on things like not enough consumer spending or someone saving their money. Another control variable is immigration. There is a number or ratio that leads to our prosperity. Like climate sensitivity, if that number is kept top down to a certain level, if we could sink Mexicans into immigrant sinks, we’d prosper. International trade needs controlling as well. We aren’t very good at buying so many things cheaply we have to be prevented from doing that as it’s unfair to some victim group I am sure we can find. We can’t build a pipeline because it’s no longer about supplying oil products, it’s a top down save the world situation. One thing bottom approaches can’t do is save the world. We’ve tried that and nobody cares. Our last chance is a top down approach. And the problem once again is, we people aren’t doing what we’re supposed to do.
Glenn,
“One of the main reasons homo sapiens has been such a successful species is because of its hyper-sociality and hyper-cooperativeness.”
Being social, being cooperative are not at odds with libertarianism. In fact, libertarianism requires cooperation. It merely says you should not be forced to cooperate, provided you do nothing to harm others.
So, if humans are such fine cooperators, why is it you feel the need to force them to do what you want?
Glen,
Those are an awful lot of straw men.
“I don’t buy into your rugged individualism, libertarianism and anarchism.”
For the record, I don’t know how “rugged” my individualism is, but it certainly rankles when shoved around by the collectivists. I am a libertarian, which is a political ideology that encompass a vast spectrum of political ideals. Libertarians disagree with each other all the time, not over core principles, only in the interpretation and application of them, some libertarians might call me an “anarcho-capitalist”, but those people just need labels to better organize their thoughts. Advocacy of free and unregulated markets is not advocacy of anarchy. I do not reject the legitimacy of government, I find its legitimacy wanes as government grows.
“No field of scientific endeavor has been more abused in the pursuit of political, economic and ideological goals than evolutionary biology. Social Darwinism is but one of the many examples of this.”
This is straw man number two. Free and unregulated markets is not “social Darwinism.” People who insist that it is are not advocates of free markets, and they use the term “social Darwinism” as a pejorative. I point to President Obama, as just one example, who uses that term or “thinly veiled social Darwinism” to castigate his opponents. (4-3-12 in a speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors). I get there are lot on the left that insist that it is, I just never see a valid argument as to how it is, and it is mostly used how you have used it, fallaciously.
(I will come to Spencer in soon, but first allow me to jump past that to something you stated that is more germane to this topic)
“One of the main reasons homo sapiens has been such a successful species is because of its hyper-sociality and hyper-cooperativeness.”
This is exactly why free and unregulated markets is best. The left loves to frame free markets as “competition” and they love to frame “competition” as “survival of the fittest”, but these are just the yammerings of effete intellectual snobs who have never played on a team sport in their lives. It is not even as if playing a team sport would be required, even individual sporting events require massive cooperation before any competition can begin.
Let’s call this one straw man number 3. Free and unregulated markets is not antithetical to hyper sociality and hyper cooperativeness, quite the opposite, it facilitates it. Now, let’s address Spencer a bit.
Fine relies heavily upon Richard Hofstadter’s work:
“But there’s a problem with Hofstadter’s celebrated work: His claims bear almost no resemblance to the real Herbert Spencer. In fact, as Princeton University economist Tim Leonard argues in a provocative new title “Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism,” which is forthcoming from the Journal of Economics Behavior and Organization, Hofstadter is guilty of distorting Spencer’s free market views and smearing them with the taint of racist Darwinian collectivism.”
~Root, Damon – The Unfortunate Case of Herbert Spencer: How a Libertarian individualist was recast as a social Darwinist – 7-29-2008~
Kind Regards;
JPZ
Glenn,
After the Civil War Spencer was very popular, as his magazine fed carbine gave Federal troops (and later US Cavalry) a distinct advantage in firepower.
If you are a skeptic on climate change, then you can’t do better than Trump who, if you can wade through the incoherence in this paragraph taken from an interview with Hugh Hewitt, appears to be think there’s nothing to worry about:
“Well, first of all, I’m not a believer in global warming. And I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point. And you know, in the early, in the 1920s, people talked about global cooling. I don’t know if you know that or not. They thought the Earth was cooling. Now, it’s global warming. And actually, we’ve had times where the weather wasn’t working out, so they changed it to extreme weather, and they have all different names, you know, so that it fits the bill. But the problem we have, and if you look at our energy costs, and all of the things that we’re doing to solve a problem that I don’t think in any major fashion exists. I mean, Obama thinks it’s the number one problem of the world today. And I think it’s very low on the list. So I am not a believer, and I will, unless somebody can prove something to me, I believe there’s weather. I believe there’s change, and I believe it goes up and it goes down, and it goes up again. And it changes depending on years and centuries, but I am not a believer, and we have much bigger problems. You know, I talk about global warming. You know, to me, the worst global warming, and I mentioned this to you once before, is nuclear warming. That’s our global warming. That’s what I see, because we have incompetent people, and we have these rogue nations, and not even rogue nations anymore. You know, we had a case where Vladimir Putin about three months ago threw out the nuke word. And I never thought I’d hear that from a Russia. But he said they’d better, essentially, they’d better be careful, because you know, we are a nuclear nation. That was a hell of a statement for him to make. And that’s a statement that’s made because of a lack of respect.”
http://www.hughhewitt.com/donald-trump-returns/
Trump was apparently not wrong about the fears of cooling in the 1920s according to Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Thx for the Hewitt link
You are welcome, Judith. I think he’s the best interviewer in the country. And he does a weekly check-in with Mark Steyn that is always very funny (in a gallows kind of way.)
thx for the tip, now following HH on twitter. I remember seeing him in the debates.
Just for the record, I doubt that the NDP was sunk by the hijab as was suggested in the article entitled “Why Trump will become the next president of the United States”. One must note that just as Mulcair was in the process of convincing voters that the Dippers ( NDP) were reasonably moderate, a bunch of prominently dippy Dippers issued the ‘Leap Manifesto’. The title of said manifesto was cobbled together from two old titles – Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ and Marx’s ‘The Communist Manifesto’. Not surprisingly the voting public Trotsky’d the lot of them off stage left. There is a lesson in this: only Trump can be outrageous at the podium. It’s your election of course but may I suggest something. The media wonders why Trump is tolerated for making outrageous statements when Clinton does not. However, the same media made quite the issue of Romney’s underwear, Trump’s hair, and apparently more recently his little hands. Suppose that the voting public does not excuse the behaviour of the pro Clinton media but instead lays their words at her doorstep. In terms of balderdash that would put Trump and Clinton on equal footing perhaps?
Beats me how an educated person could be “looking for a reason to vote for ONE of them.” That’s like saying you are “trying to decide whether to follow God or Satan; after all, they both look pretty good and sound similar.”
Satan is … which one again?
You miss my point entirely.
Seems to me if someone with Ms. Curry’s intelligence and education thought systematically about politics as she does about scientific questions, she would have no trouble making a choice. I’m not saying how she would choose, but only that a choice would not be difficult. I could easily imagine a person being on the fence between Sanders and Clinton, or Trump and Cruz, perhaps, but it mystifies me when people compare Sanders and Trump, as though they have something in common beyond some very superficial elements. To not be able to choose between Clinton, Trump, and Sanders…
Ok thank you.
Lichanos – I think both Sanders and Trump resonate with those who aren’t prospering. Many millennials are having trouble finding jobs and some of them turn to Sanders as a solution. But Trump is also talking about the lack of jobs, so they could just as well be drawn to him. Both Sanders and Trump aren’t wanted by their respective parties, so both come off as disrupters, something the disaffected might find attractive. Of course, there is a pretty significant difference between Trump’s and Sander’s cure for these ailments, but they both tap into a populist vein.
@jim2
+1
jim2,
Our son is a millennial and voted for Sanders in the WA primary. He has a good job, is rapidly paying off his student loans and saving money. Previous to this election cycle he had little interest in politics. I chalk his interest in Sanders to be based in large part on enthusiasm for a utopian society and little solid acquaintance with US civics and economics.
At least he is participating, which is enough for me.
timg – thanks for that. So it sounds like the “education system” fulfilled its propaganda mission. Too bad he isn’t in your charge anymore. You could give him a reality injection.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/cartoons/images/2016/05/04/gary_varvel_gary_varvel_for_may_04_2016_5_.jpg
Or perhaps more like, “they both look pretty bad and do crazy things!” 😬
I will be voting for Trump for the simple reason that you are not only voting for one person, you are also voting for the 3,000 executive branch apparatchiks he/she will appoint, not to mention the possibility of four or five Supreme Court appointments. For that reason, I would vote for the Republican if they nominated Pee Wee Herman for the office.
Trump does know how to get things done. It is clear that none in the Republican party does know how to get things done as well as Trump, they are all out of the race.
We have proof that when democrats are in charge, they don’t know how to get things done. The successful terrorist attacks, worldwide, have increased after Obama and Hillary took charge, with a worst attack right after Obama announced that we were winning.
In Climate change, they are trying to put Skeptic Scientists in prison because they have no real science or real data to support the alarmist side.
Ah, yes. Let’s see how he would get things done.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/06/donald-trump-on-us-debt.html
The scary thing is that US treasury bonds are widely considered the safest bonds in the world.
There’s an easy answer that doesn’t involve default, per se. It’s been done before.
You borrow up to the hilt when interest rates and inflation are low. Then let interest rates and inflation run away and pay the debt back with inflated dollars. Anyone remember the inflationary days of Jimmy Carter? I do.
China has been devaluing their currency to our detriment for quite some time. I say turnabout is fair play.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/cartoons/images/2016/05/06/gary_varvel_gary_varvel_for_may_06_2016_5_.jpg
You can’t just snap your fingers and create inflation.
Though, the Federal Reserve could just print the c-notes, and have FedEx deliver the bundles of freshly printed trillions to the various debt holders by 9:30 AM the next morning. They would have their dollars, and the US national debt would be retired.The number of dollars they can print is infinite. They’re little different than space.
After the shock and awe had worn off, the Chinese, Etc. would probably come back and ask to buy a few trillion in treasury bonds. It’s about the only safe place the Chinese, etc. can park trillions of nothing.
Actually JCH if you are the printers of the world’s reserve currency you certainly can snap your fingers and turn on monetary inflation. You just start printing lots of money. Interest rates go up and the dollar buys less with each passing day. Trump already clarified that is behind his “default” thinking. As long as rates remain low borrow, borrow, borrow. When interest rates inevitably rise, inflation rises as well, then the debt payments are made with inflated dollars. The debt holders are then motivated to get their money back so then can invest it in something that pays better. Or as Trump recently put it you can buy back the debt at a discounted rate. Trump says he’s the king of debt but in this case the king is just repeating economic common knowledge to the unwashed masses.
This is great, just great. V. Fox is just as clueless as a bunch of people in the US. While I really appreciate his opinion of the US, he really needs to focus on the various cesspools in his own country. From the article:
…
Pelosi, Vicente Fox plot to defeat Trump, Mexican calls Trump voters lazy drunks
…
In an exclusive interview with theWashington Examiner Friday, former Mexican President Vicente Fox also said that he is “becoming a fan of” Clinton, who he compared to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and he disparaged Trump supporters as lazy, uneducated, TV watching drunks.
…
“What I’ve been saying here, I told her. Count with us, with all Mexicans, to support the Democratic Party because you’ve done much better with us than the Republican Party,” he said.
“We will never convince any Mexican either in the (United) States or in Mexico or any Latin American in the States or Latin America to support this false prophet,” he said.
He repeatedly called Trump “stupid,” and a “false prophet,” and called on Americans to “wake up” and reject the Republican.
…
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pelosi-vicente-fox-plot-to-defeat-trump-mexican-calls-trump-voters-lazy-drunks/article/2590642
“…he disparaged Trump supporters as lazy, uneducated, TV watching drunks.”
“I Love the Poorly Educated” – Trump
Well, here’s a thought:
– Robert Heinlein
I still would like to see Heinlein’s proposal for voting rights based on military service to be put into effect.
I was more impressed by the courses in “History and Moral Philosophy”. Although the question that occurred to me then, and still today, is how do you control who teaches that course.
Ultimately, it’s another in-group system. Makes for great fiction though.
I don’t believe Heinlein proposed that for real. It was a plot element in the fictional universe of his classic sci-fi novel “Starship Troopers”.
Yup.
You guys need to go back and read him again. He introduced a lot of ideas through his stories.
Trying to remember the title – “Have Stars, Will Travel” perhaps – where one of the main characters was a legless beggar who was really a military intelligence agent. RH put into the public domain quite a few ideas regarding government and the responsibilities of its citizens through the character’s dialog.
You mean “Have Spacesuit Will Travel”.
Maybe you should read the titles again. I read that in the 7th grade and haven’t forgotten it.
Close enough.
The point still stands.
No I’m afraid it never stood in the first place. You have provided no evidence that any plot elements Heinlein used were things he advocated in the real and specifically in this case the notion that military service be prerequisite to having a right to vote. Try to provide evidence of some sort even if it’s just an opinion from a modern literature professor. Of course something from Heinlein himself would be preferable such as: “I used that device in the novel because it’s something I believe would be beneficiary in society today.”
Like something to the effect of “when you write, you’re competing for beer money”?
Actually, IIRC from actually within the frame of the story, the justification/rationale for the system was “because it works”. Within the fictional universe he was creating. From the outside: entertainment.
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about Citizen of the galaxy. Although the legless begger/intelligence agent (“Baslim the Cripple”) dies at the very beginning, and his apprentice/slave spends the story (among other things) discovering just who he was.
You have the correct story AK.
Springer has nothing but the world according to Springer.
Springer according to the evidence is more like it and you still haven’t offered anything but your personal opinion like you’re a literary expert on Heinlein who couldn’t get the title of a book right which means you can’t be troubled or don’t know how to google anything either. Nice.
Forgive me for introducing facts which may conflict with your narrative, TMG, but in real life Heinlein is noted for strong individualism and self-determination and considered himself a libertarian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Individualism_and_self-determination
To be fair his political views evolved during his life. Back in the 1950’s (a few years before and after too) when everyone was worried about the Soviets launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US instead of global warming, global cooling, population explosions, pollution, and whatnot Heinlein was a bit of a one-world gov’t nutcase. He was convinced the only way to avoid nuclear armageddon was to not have competing nuclear armed governments.
The novel you were reaching for is Starship Troopers published in 1959 in the height of Cold War fears. In upstate NY far away from any city or military targets we still did bomb drills in kindergarten in 1961 and lots of people had underground bomb shelters stocked with food and water. The cold war was in full swing and McCarthyism was still vital. In this novel only military veterans can vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Individualism_and_self-determination
Here’s the money shot for this thread. First sentence in the above link;
Non-sequitur. Find me something from an author who at least later in life styled himself as a libertarian was an endorser of a fascist society rather than just using this as an interesting plot device.
By the way I think his best work is “Stranger in a Strange Land” and then after that “Friday”. Maybe the latter was an expression of his desire for a world with sex-crazed female robots. Or maybe he just makes things up that aren’t real, aren’t likely to ever be real, and takes the reader on engaging journeys through those worlds.
Please don’t be put off by me using references, correct titles, and information about the author and the world at the time. You go right ahead with your unsupported one line empty claims; it takes all kinds to make the world go around.
Second link was wrong. Should be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Allegations_of_fascism
too funny.. clowns talking about Heinlein.
If you want to understand his ideas about suffrage you’d
be well advised to read the transcripts of interviews he did on the topic.
or not..
His house in bonny doon was cool.
Its also funny to look at the courses he took in college.. same with Pynchon
At last a topic which Mosher might actually be competent in: science fiction. Of course we already knew that through his study of IPCC reports. It just hadn’t occurred to me it would extend to sci-fi classics too.
.
Nope. Spoke too soon. Heinlein didn’t write any memoirs or autobiographical material. The only thing that was ever produced was a posthumous book “Grumbles from the Grave” which was highly sanitized by his wife according to others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumbles_from_the_Grave
I may have read Grumbles but just don’t recall it.
Mosher: ” If you want to understand his ideas about suffrage you’d
be well advised to read the transcripts of interviews he did on the topic.”
1. Interviews on the topic.
“Nope. Spoke too soon. Heinlein didn’t write any memoirs or autobiographical material. The only thing that was ever produced was a posthumous book “Grumbles from the Grave” which was highly sanitized by his wife according to others.
1. Note how Springer changes INTERVIEW to autobiography
The other material on suffrage comes from an interview that was published as an essay. You will have to read the 1980 collection
“Expanded Universe”. It contains a dozen or so works by him never published before. Sandwiched in between these works are several pieces
where Heinlein comments on his life, his work, and critics reactions to his work– like Starship Troupers. In 1958 he and his wife published a newspaper ad, “the Patrick Henry league” . Basically he was trying to increase support for nuclear testing. Eisenhower had suspended testing and heinlein was upset. he was so pissed off that he stopped work on “stranger in a strange land” and wrote Troupers.
If you get the collection you will find Heinleins thoughts on suffrage immediately following the reprint of the ad.
The text appears as an essay but is more likely to have been the transcript of an interview with Jim Baen, editor of the collection.
One of the benefits of being a student of two great scholars in Sci fi
My Northwestern mentor. Frank Mc connell
https://www.sfsite.com/gary/ww-mcconnell03.htm
UCLA
george guffey and Mark Rose
george was my director.
http://www.amazon.com/Bridges-Science-Fiction-Alternatives-Professor/dp/0809309610
Some day Springer i will tell you funny stories about roger zelazny
and Samuel Delaney.
But for now I will leave you with something William Gibson did.
Nice gesture I thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner
Spend some time here is you want to learn
http://eaton.ucr.edu/
“Democrats Aren’t Taking Trump Seriously”
//embed.crooksandliars.com/embed/9vVtTHse
From the article:
…
Kristin Tate, author of “Government Gone Wild: How D.C. Politicians Are Taking You For a Ride,” tells Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon, “I do think (Trump) has a shot at getting the women’s vote.
…
I think Trump obviously does very well with GOP women but what he really needs to work on moving into the general election right now is getting the moderate Independent women who are admittedly a little terrified of Trump right now because of what they’ve been hearing in the media. So, Trump needs to reach out to these women and he needs to aggressively and actively combat these absurd media attacks that he’s a bigot, or he’s anti-women because he’s not.
…
Tate said, “I think he will do better with millennials than people are suggesting,”
…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/06/kristin-tate-trump-will-do-better-with-millennials-than-people-are-suggesting/
Kristin Tate’s book. If you are libertarian leaning, you might want to give this book to your millennial friends.
http://www.amazon.com/Government-Gone-Wild-Politicians-Taking/dp/1455566241/ref=sr_1_1
We couldn’t get a libertarian in the WH so we had to settle for a libertine.
Maybe Dr. Curry is having the same problem as lots of voters:
Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/
Trump understands this. He revels in the negativity. He’s turning presidential politics into a professional wrestling match where the villain more often than not wins. It’s the wrestler who can most convincingly play the villain who creates the huge audiences for professional wrestling. The more odious the villain, the more people want to watch to see him brought to justice. The villain taunts and berates the heroes, who are usually the strong silent types who bear the indignities. In some ways, Trump is playing the villain right now.
But sometimes the villain, after he has served in that role, is turned into a sympathetic hero by the promoters. He has a change of heart and becomes someone the fans can empathize with. A bigger villain comes along (i.e. is created by the promoters.)
I really think Trump is using this strategy to win the nomination. He will, at some point, attempt to morph into a sympathetic, likeable figure.
Trump is not a buffoon; he just plays one on TV.
Which is not to say I support those kind of tactics. It’s clearly stinks of the emotional politics of fascism which are based on the exploitation of resentments. The politics of the nation should not be reduced to who can best turn the election into a soap opera.
It’s not resentments so much as it’s no job, it’s frustration, it’s stagnant wages, it’s the slow economy (stupid), it’s a sense of losing roots …
Andy May just emailed this link:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/an-open-letter-to-hillary-clinton/
As I repeatedly state, Andy May (and others like him here at CE) is making an incorrect blanket statement in saying all forms of “alternative energy” are more expensive than fossil fuels.
For example, applying sound engineering economics, a solar or off-shore wind project (using analytical techniques such as ELCC) can have a lower economic cost than a simple gas fired combustion turbine in meeting peaking load.
Renewable Energy’s economics on an integrated grid are highly dependent on a specific System’s (1) penetration level; (2) flexibility (e.g., level of natural gas combined cycle units).
Stephen Segrest,
Can you show me one single example of where renewables have flourished without state subsidies or mandates?
Can you show me one single example of where renewables have continued to flourish after state subsidies or mandates have been removed?
http://i.imgur.com/kNUVj6F.png
Glen — Can you show me one single example of where fossil fuel and/or nuclear generation flourished without ever receiving a Federal or State subsidy?
I choose not to play your silly straw-man games.
Stephen Segrest,
You mean “subsidies” like this one?
http://i.imgur.com/NyK1XqI.png
http://dor.alaska.gov/Portals/5/Docs/Publications/acloserlook.pdf
I choose not to play your silly games of re-defining the meaning of words like “subsidy.”
Segrest never has been able to figure out the difference between the tax rules all businesses enjoy versus subsidies. His fantasy fossil fuel subsidy is a Dimowit talking point, not a reality.
From the article:
…
Depletion is the using up of natural resources by mining, drilling, quarrying stone, or cutting timber. The depletion deduction allows an owner or operator to account for the reduction of a product’s reserves.
There are two ways of figuring depletion: cost depletion and percentage depletion. For mineral property, you generally must use the method that gives you the larger deduction. For standing timber, you must use cost depletion.
…
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch09.html
I will respond to Jim2’s namecalling yet again by referencing Senator Grassley (a REPUBLICAN!!! of Iowa ) on such things as expensing of tertiary injectants and intangible drilling cost; percentage depletion for oil wells; special amortization for geological costs. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XMYQZQAlWw&feature=youtu.be
Stehle Stomps Segrest
Film at 11.
Hardly. Stehle gave a pie chart for taxes on people in a territory with a population density of 1.11 humans per square mile. What has that to do with the real world? The corresponding population density for the contiguous US is 102 humans per square mile.
What are the odds that taxes on people in the contiguous US yields even remotely like the same pie chart for taxes on people in the contiguous US?
And what are the odds that anyone on this blog can figure out what I meant to say? ;)
Qui sait , Descartes, que ce quel qu’un
d’autre pense? :)
Vaughan Pratt said:
Right. Obviously no one reading this blog can comprehend what someone with an intellect as extraoridinary as yours has to say. When it comes ot intellect and emotional development, you are in a class all by yourself.
Nevertheless, if you have a problem comprehending the chart I posted, maybe you can comprehend this one taken from EIA data:
https://i1.wp.com/i.imgur.com/X0dRcyp.png
http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/
Stehle Stomps Pratt
HBO documentary coming soon.
ROFL
Mr. Stehle — did so much cherry-picking on his graph that I don’t know where to begin. A major item is that the solar tax subsidy is a one time investment tax credit based on capital investment (compared to the yearly production tax credit for wind based on generation).
If Mr. Stehle will go back and find EIA data and graph nuclear subsidies throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s (e.g., the nuclear investment tax credit) so we can do some comparisons to today’s solar, maybe I’ll further engage with him.
Also, Congress has provided approximately “equals” in production (generation) tax credits for wind and nuclear. Under Mr. Stehle’s logic, the wind PTC should be eliminated because the nuclear industry has not built any new nuclear power plants that would quality for the PTC (although Georgia Power’s new Vogtle units will qualify).
If one goes back in history during the 1970’s and 1980’s, you’ll see that coal was crying over the unfair federal government subsidy advantage to nuclear: http://lawschool.unm.edu/nrj/volumes/22/2/04_chapman_federal.pdf
Stephen Segrest,
Nice try at an ad hoc rescue with the ancient nucelar stuff, but no cigar.
You get your head handed to you on a platter, and then you say “If Mr. Stehle will” do so and so, “maybe I’ll further engage with him.”
There is zero chance that I will fall for your factual and rhetological fallacies.
Segrest Stomps Stehle
Can’t win ’em all,
David Springer,
Segrest Stomps Stehle?
How so?
Segrest starts out by making an empirical claim that is not entirely true. To wit:
This is a half-truth at best, and an outright lie at worst.
Let’s take the average rooftop solar PV system in California, for instance, with a projected life of 25 years.
The cost is $14,586. The installer will receive an immediate federal tax credit of $4,376. Then the installer will receive monthly NEM subsidies over the 25 year life of the system with a net present value of $20,359.
http://www.edisonfoundation.net/iei/documents/IEI_NEM_Subsidy_Issues_FINAL.pdf
http://i.imgur.com/DyonsLd.png
So the immediate federal subsidy amounts to only 17.7% of the total subsidies the solar PV system will receive over its 25-year life.
Then Segrest says:
Well here’s the rub: If Segrest wants to make that comparison, shouldn’t it be incumbent upon him to go do his own research and present his own facts, figures and references?
If Segrest wants to make an argument about the yuge subsidies that nucelar plants received, shouldn’t it be incumbent upon him to “go back and find EIA data and graph nucelar subsidies throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s (e.g., the nuclear tax credit)”?
Can you imagine if, instead of presenting facts and figures of current subsidies, I would have argued: “If Mr. Segrest will go and find EIA data for wind and solar subsidies so we can do some comparisons to today’s coal, oil and gas subsidies, maybe I’ll further engage with him”?
Of course I wouldn’t make such an outrageously nonsensical argument. It’s ridiculous. Nor would I expect anyone to believe it is a sound or convincing argument.
David,
Here’s an article which talks about the subsidies lavished on rooftop PV in California, and how it ends up being a subsidy for the rich:
Subsidizing the rich through California’s solar scheme
http://www.aei.org/publication/subsidizing-the-rich-through-californias-solar-scheme/
So what about large-scale, utility-level PV?
Subsidies to utility-level PV come in a different form than those to rooftop PV: contracts that require electric utilities to pay higher rates to PV producers than, say, to producers who produce electricity from natural gas.
It is not publicly known exactly how much these subsidies amount to, because these contract arangements are conducted under a veil of secrecy. The California PUC has deemed this information to be “confidential, market sensitive information.” We do not know, for instance, how much PG&E pays Warren Buffett for electricity produced from his Topaz Solar Farms.
There have been some leaks, however.
In 2013 the average wholesale price of electricity in California was 3.6₡ per KwH.
https://www.masterresource.org/solar-power/5-4-billion-solar-california/
However, in 2011 PG&E inked a long-term contract to buy electricity from NRG’s California Valley Solar Ranch project for 15 to 18₡ per KwH.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/business/energy-environment/a-cornucopia-of-help-for-renewable-energy.html?_r=0
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2011/11/12/business/12subsidy-span/12subsidy-span-jumbo.jpg
David,
The bottom line is this:
http://i.imgur.com/M9gy76P.png
NEM isn’t a government subsidy, doofus. It’s a perceived cost shifting where onsite generation (can be any type of generation not just solar) feeding energy back into the grid rolls an electric meter backward which allows the generator to sell electricity for the same price he pays for it. The argument then goes that the ancillary charges attached to the juice to cover transmission costs etc. aren’t being paid the generator. That’s not even strictly true at least where I’m at because I pay a fixed monthly service fee that is the same whether or not I use any electricity at all. Using the NEM “subsidy” logic that means I’m subsidizing people who use more electricity than I do.
Segrest still stomped you since NEM isn’t really a subsidy it’s just a perceived injustice in the way billing for electricity is handled by individual electric companies.
David Springer,
Did you even read the article I linked?
It explains how the scam works in great detail.
Subsidizing the rich through California’s solar scheme
http://www.aei.org/publication/subsidizing-the-rich-through-californias-solar-scheme/
P.S. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
You are smart enough to know that the NEM “subsidy” is an artifact of the way some electric companies recover their fixed costs. It is not a government subsidy and your tedious defense of it is more like you trying to convince yourself rather than trying to convince me. Moreover NEM applies to all energy generation not just solar. If someone has a wind generator they get the “subsidy”.
In fact the same “subsidy” logic applies to conservation and doesn’t even need net metering hardware. To paraphrase an old saying “A kilowatt hour saved is a kilowatt hour earned.” So if a California resident takes ANY measure to reduce electric consumption he shifts the fixed cost burden over to a customer who consumes more electricity. Your argument is horribly flawed. You just got stomped by me too.
Yes windbag, I read both articles. I also read a third which might behoove you to read:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/-Is-Net-Energy-Metering-For-Solar-Power-a-Subsidy
This article questions whether it’s a subsidy at all. For a change why don’t see if you can be objective and give each side of an argument equal consideration instead of the usual unmovable positions you assume by virtue of the self-annointed awesomeness of your gray matter.
David Springer said:
But “where I’m at” is not everywhere in the United States. Many places in the United States do not levy a charge for grid service.
Planning Engineer did a post on this very subject last year on this very blog:
One place where they actually did have a public debate about what renewables customers should pay for grid service occured last December in Nevada. The renewables folks lost, and the Nevada PUC elected to impose a charge for grid service, which the proponents of rooftop PV argued would ring the death knell for PV:
http://i.imgur.com/NL57wYX.png
The bottom line is this: Without both federal and state subsidies for rooftop PV, it is “a poor investment.”. As SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive predicted, the federal subsidies are not enough, and doing away with state subsidies will “destroy the rooftop solar industry.”
David Springer,
The article you linked from Green Tech Media is four years old.
The arguments the climatariat made then have not withstood the test of time.
Planning Engineer predicted this:
Planning Engineer’s predicitons have proved correct, and those of the climatariat wrong. One doesn’t have to look too far for the evidence.
http://i.imgur.com/M9gy76P.png
http://i.imgur.com/DsoeNuQ.png
http://i.imgur.com/1LTtKEn.png
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/01/26/texas-gets-f-grade-on-net-metering-policies-for-solar-power-and-more/
David Springer,
La neta es esta: If you want to play God and attempt to save the world, it’s gonna cost you.
As we say in Texas: “Praise the Lord and pass the plate.”
http://casey-lewis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/giving.jpg
You lost, windbag. NEM subsidies aren’t real subsidies they’re a perceived injustice in electric company billing in California and ostensibly in enough unspecified other locations to imply it’s common practice everywhere but by sheer happenstance not in Texas where I live.
P.S. I thought you lived in Mexico not Texas. That made sense. You probably thought you were too smart to pay taxes and fled the country after finding out the hard way you weren’t that smart after all.
Any one want to trade their electric bill for mine?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9GegJv8WT7UOTRiT2IyQVBHOTA/view
Glenn Stehle asks Segrest to provide evidence to support his assertions. Segrest responds
Segrest is a Denier and intellectually dishonest.
Verdict: Glenn Stehle resoundingly trumps Segrest, Pratt and Springer.
@Jack
You’re paying $0.15/kWh for 100% renewable energy. Buying renewable is a choice. That’s not a bad price for it. I pay $0.12/kWh and it isn’t 10% renewable. I’m in a non-profit electric co-op that doesn’t have the option of 100% renewable. One of my daughters can and does buy 100% renewable from Green Mountain, She also supports Obama for the most part. I guess it goes with the territory.
I can’t figure out if you’re complaining or not. California residents pay a lot more than you do but the average in Texas is well below what you pay. I pay more than the average in Texas too but I’m rural so it’s fair: there’s a lot more transmission line (which means greater line losses) required to deliver electricity to me and the low population density means more transmission line per customer.
The pundits have been wrong, just like the climate scientists have been wrong. Neither of which has been able to predict the near term future. Models and projections and all sorts of nonsense are involved. Nothing has been helpful for personal decision making.
Given that the people who “know”, and I am including climate scientists, I have to drop back a few feet and assess: What makes sense? At this point, I say, nothing.
Going forward, I just have to gather more information. The science is not settled. The political pundits, whatever matrix they have used in the past, is no longer valid. All that we are left with is “spin”. Trying to influence our decisions in a vacuous situation.
This leaves me of course, a gawker, watching intently, yet, not judging the process let alone the outcome. I guess I am like a lot of voters, I will make up my mind on whom to vote for, at the last minute. As for the climate scientists who spin catastrophic climate change, I already have relegated them to the dust bin. It will be the numbers, like those of Bob Tisdale and others portray that will sway me to one side of the center line or the other.
i can’t believe I just said the above.
When stockbrokers want to tell their clients about the movements to expect near term, they may prefer to simply say “fluctuate”. That word alone can cost you a bunch of money so fast your head will spin. Whether you expect it or not, That is its beauty as we can see with the AGW example.
The part that makes this all fake for me are the things like the Vostok ice data that Steven, thinks is a big waste of time and money because there may be some issues with ‘some’ samples. When examined for the information that was accumulated for the past 420K it shows the waves. It is not the globe but it obviously has a strong sign of it’s own and that tells a story. AGW scientists need to explain the 5 Tops, I don’t. They tell us we don’t understand the science—
OK Prove It.
What’s up Doc?
More buyers than sellers, maybe.
The bowl thickens under these handsome T-Rex hands:
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/728309799667044352
It’s T-rex arms, Willard. As in alligator arms.
For you it’s T-rex brain. Walnut sized, I believe.
Here, boy:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=T-rex%20hand
If you’re more the visual type:
https://vice-images.vice.com/images/content-images/2015/11/26/in-bizarre-statement-donald-trump-says-he-didnt-mock-reporter-with-disability-body-image-1448575250.jpg
Nice try Willard.
T-Rex arms has been around a lot longer than urban dictionary.
A swing and a whiff:
http://townhall.com/columnists/rachelburger/2014/09/08/the-surprising-rise-of-the-hispanic-millennial-libertarian-n1887818
“This population is huge; fully 65 percent of American Hispanics are between the ages of 22 to 35, and they’re filtering into common traits found in libertarianism. For example, they graduate college at higher rates than any other demographic group, including whites.”
“Hispanic Millennials have been largely ignored by both main political parties and are looking for alternatives to the status quo.”
Here’s my thoughts. You’ve got these millennials, remember Ventura, that are being ignored. Rather than attracting them, you attack them. They are stereotyped as probably going to vote Left anyways. But what have they seen? Those from Mexico that pack turkeys in Worthington, perhaps saw a poor government first hand in Mexico. They are predisposed to be conservative. Not so much unlike some immigrants in our past.
“Many children were separated from their fathers; some lost both parents and had to find new places to live. Some local school systems took responsibility for supervising these children immediately after the raid; however, many children returned home from school to find their parents missing. Many people including children went into hiding, fearing that they would also be deported.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_raids
Leave people alone. Don’t point to some section of the law for your morality.
My prediction that is unless something unexpected happens like Hillary getting charged in the classified emails investigation, that Clinton will win. I think the damage Trump has done with minorities and women can’t be overcome .and will doom his chances. Even among some Republicans he is more controversial than I can remember a nominee being. I think Trumps victory is more of indication of how many are dissatisfied with the Republican establishment rather than Trumps strength as a candidate or his positions.
Duly noted!
Ding!
Next!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/cartoons/images/2016/05/05/nick_anderson_current_cartoon_2016-05-05_5_.jpg
“I think Trumps victory is more of indication of how many are dissatisfied with the Republican establishment…”
Perhaps more accurately stated “I think Trumps victory is more of indication of how many are dissatisfied with the establishment”.
Same in my country too, I think – I for one am sick of being treated as a number, sick of attempts to bribe me. I want a politician who will state broad policy, not narrow – and stick with it. One who will say “Well, despite the experts opinions, that didn’t work. Time to try something else, because our goals haven’t changed.”
Come on – if the simple-minded solutions most of these politicians propose worked, we wouldn’t be arguing over it, would we? If it’s complicated, if it’s complex, if it’s difficult, you WILL make mistakes – acknowledge them, undo them if you can, try something else. FIND what works, and if you make a mistake, FIX IT, apologise and try again. Repeat until you get it right. Despite the spin-doctors, I really think someone who does this can gain – and stay in – power.
Maybe Trump is the USA’s attempt at this – an attempt at getting the excessive politics out of government. Maybe that is why he’s popular – because he is at least saying these things; because he is not so concerned with offending no-one that he pleases no-one; that he won’t be pinned down on details because it’s not the details that sell the policies, it’s the ultimate goal that matters to the voters; that he comes across as someone that you maybe don’t agree with with, but that you at least know where he stands because he’ll say it before he gets an opinion poll first, and will keep saying it even after the opinion poll shows it’s a divisive issue.
But Trump is not very popular at all among the general public. His favorability numbers are consistently in the low 30’s. He is popular among a certain segment of Republicans and that’s about it.
Denizens are standing by ready to deal severely with anyone attempting to talk sense on Climate Etc.
(I considered substituting “claiming” for “attempting” but for some reason it changed the meaning entirely. Go figure.)
Vaughan Pratt,
A question.
Do you live in your parents’ basement?
Not sure if I’ve seen a more convincing argument for Trump winning in November than this.
i.e. if Joseph thinks it, it has a low possibility of being accurate.
Don’t forget the other aspect.
Hillary is not Bill 2. She is LBJ 2. With Hillary, as with Lyndon, you get the hyper-control, the massive expenditures, the endless violence…and you still get to lose and do the humiliating retreats. (The criminality I could live with, but wars are for either avoiding or winning.)
This 5 May 2016 news article claims a different mechanism produces sunspots on other stars
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/star_with_different_internal_driving_force_than_the_sun-171969
and says “The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature.”
Anyone have a link to the paper in Nature?
Found the report Nature published on-line on May 4, 2016:
“No Sun-like dynamo on the active star ζ Andromedae from starspot asymmetry”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17444.html
The Nature paper and news report overlook this 2002 paper on the origin of sunspots and solar eruptions:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2352635vv166363/
The Drumpf may find that one tremendously hard to dodge:
https://twitter.com/JohnBuysse/status/727857275759628289
You’re odd.
Love Trump’s hate
Trump hates war, terrorism, and bad trade deals. I love Trumps hate. Don’t you?
http://i.imgur.com/DC8nRzi.png
http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/files/2016/03/Anti-Trump-cartoon.png
From the article:
…
It seems crazy to call it the ‘New Normal’, but once again, record numbers of Americans are renouncing citizenship. Every three months, the Treasury Department publicly names individuals who renounced. It is surely more about FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act enacted in 2010, than it is about politics. Still, numbers are flying, with one poll saying that 1 in 4 Americans would consider leaving if Trump is elected. Others claim they will leave if Hillary is elected.
In reality, of course, most who bristle about politics are not serious. And for those who are, they surely mean a temporary move, not a final exit. In contrast, giving up citizenship is a big deal. Yet the number of published expatriates for the first three months of 2016 was a record 1,158. In 2015, there were approximately 4,300 expatriations. Comparing present to past suggests that Americans renouncing citizenship have risen 560% from their Bush administration high. There are now 18 times as many renouncers as in 2008.
…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/05/06/many-americans-renounce-citizenship-even-before-president-trump/#1743eca82b66
Looking at the latest CNN poll, the groups most leaning to Hillbilly are women and even more so, non-whites. Trump has been gaining ground on Hillbilly, but he still needs to make his case to those groups. He would only have to move the needle on those groups a little to beat Hillbilly.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/cartoons/images/2016/05/04/michael_ramirez_michael_ramirez_for_may_04_2016_5_.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NEqZRix.png
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/cartoons/images/2016/05/05/signe_wilkinson_current_cartoon_2016-05-05_5_.jpg
On the kerfuffle concerning Trump and national bankruptcy.
From the article, he said:
“I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal,” Trump said. “And if the economy was good, it was good. So therefore, you can’t lose.”
*****
OK, no one has said that out loud before, but what do you think has been happening since 2008? We have gone into debt. So, what he said basically reflects what is happening now. While our debt to GDP ratio isn’t as high as Greece, Greece is an example of what happens when a country becomes over-leveraged. Let me repeat, this process is happening now in the US. Our economy is still lackluster, so more debt could be piled on at any time given the proclivities of those currently in charge.
The alternative is to raise interest rates. But that means we have to pay more to issue bonds, which we still have to do. That would also plunge us into another outright recession. On a side note, this is what should have happened in 2008, but the Nanny State didn’t want to see economic blood in the streets, so they took the Keynesian bridge to nowhere.
The point is, there is no good solution to our economic/debt problem. What Trump said has already happened. Apparently, he would just do more of the same, which may be the best course now that we have painted ourselves into the debt corner.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/06/donald-trump-on-us-debt.html
jim2,
The author of the article, Matthew Yglesias, is a shameless shill for the global finance industry, so I believe I would take anything he says with a rather large grain of salt.
Only the most biased partisans of the too-big-to-fail banks would give Yglesias the time of day.
Take this nonsense from Yglesias from the article you link, for example:
Did Trump actually say anything even remotely resembling that?
It’s just one more example of “the sky is falling” hysteria emanating from the anti-Trump brigade.
For the lowdown on Yglesias, here’s the latest example of Yglesias’ brazen boosterism for the too-big-to-fail banks:
Glenn – I’m not endorsing what the article says, just linking so others can judge for themselves.
I just spotted this link at RealClearMarkets re restructuring debt:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2016/05/06/Why-Trumps-US-Debt-Default-Isn-t-Idiotic-It-Sounds
We ignored Ross Perot when there was still a chance to correct the debt problem, now Trump’s plan is the only realistic option. Calculate the debt service on 20 trillion at 2,4 and 6 %. Then consider that we continue to add to the debt every year. We are at the cliff edge. When debt is paid with debt it is just a matter of time before we go over the edge.
I don’t see anything in that article that suggests that it is good idea or even necessary that we default. Only that other industrialized countries have done it and it isn’t unprecedented.
And the example of widespread defaults in state governments after Jackson closed the Bank of the United States shows that bankrupting the US would be exactly the sort of unforced error that closing the Bank of the United States was that causes the economic upheaval in the 1840’s.
It might be interesting to look at recent history of federal debt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#/media/File:51129-land-summaryfigure1(1).png
If you look at the chart you will see debt was higher in debt to GDP ratio after World War II than it is now. It shrunk during the fifties, sixties, and stayed low into the Carter administration. It rose again significantly under Reagan and Bush – so much for the Laffer Curve and voodoo economics. It began to go down again after the Democrats raised taxes in the first two years of the Clinton administration until once again the Republicans got unfettered reigns of government, cut taxes, and the debt slowly began to grow. The financial meltdown in the last year of Bush exploded the deficit to the point that only now are we beginning to plateau.
So the lessons learned. Apparently you have to raise taxes if you want to reduce the debt. Taxes were high from World War II until Reagan when the deficit shrank. The deficit shrank again with Clinton raising taxes. During Reagan and Bush when taxes were cut it rose. If Bushonomics hadn’t cratered the economy almost to the point of a Depression the deficit probably would have shrunk under Obama rather than exploding as it did. As it is now the year to year deficit is shrinking because Obama “tricked” the Republicans into letting Bush tax cuts expire and has cut military spending.
Of course, this is all against the great Republican myth that tax cuts are always good and always lead to more revenue.
Certainly there are marginal areas where tax cuts can make a difference in economic activity that results in more tax revenue. However, if history shows us any rule, it is that taxes right now are probably too low if we want to deal with the deficit.
But Trump’s plan apparently is to cut taxes, deport illegal foreign workers (who pay taxes), and default on the debt. Of course, if he does the first two, we will probably have no choice but to do the third. So maybe he is just preparing us for where his policies will take us.
You will need to click on the image to see the chart below.
For another view
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trumps-plan-for-the-economy-lets-copy-greece-2016-05-07
Some excerpts:
“It’s incomprehensible that, decades after Trump began to go through bankruptcies, debt restructurings and the like, he hasn’t figured out that those deals ended with him being stripped of control of assets he spent years trying to build up.”
“Mr. Trump, your creditors reduced your debt in order to get you to go away. Did you miss that? As president, you’ll have a four-year term and won’t be able to offer them that.”
“If new credit just to the government were sharply cut, as it was in Greece, the consequences of balancing the budget immediately would be measured in millions of jobs.”
“The consequences would likely be worse if the U.S. defaulted on purpose. And higher interest rates on existing loans would just be the beginning.”
“Lest we forget, Ted Yoho and Co. helped send the S&P 500 Index 20% lower by rattling confidence during the 2011 debt showdown. Apparently, that was just a warm-up act.”
James Cross,
The MarketWatch article you linked to is even more poorly informed than the CNBC article that jim2 linked (and you linked to up the thread). And that’s saying something, because it doesn’t get much worse than Matthew Yglesias’ defactualized nonsense.
The comparison of the US to Greece in the MarketWatch article departs from factual reality because United States has monetary sovereignty and Greece doesn’t. This makes the two completely different.
This post from Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns is grounded in historical examples, as opposed to the wild speculations of the corporate media, so helps bring the discussion back down to earth:
Russia, sovereign debt defaults, and fiat currency
https://www.creditwritedowns.com/2009/11/russia-sovereign-debt-defaults-and-fiat-currency.html
http://i.imgur.com/4zb2aMH.png
Yes, Glenn, by all means let’s model ourselves after the Baltics, Argentina, and Russia. That ought to work out wonderfully.
From what I have been reading the powers that be, Steven even knows who the are, want to shoot for the China model.
James Cross,
That’s what I thought, that you would not be able to articulate a substantive counterargument.
Speaking of Russia, it, along with China, have a bullseye drawn on the US dollar, as Pepe Escobar explained in a recent article:
If the petrodollar goes, then the ability of the United States to consume more than it produces goes with it. It’s “bye bye” to the US dollar being the world’s reserve currency.
Do you have any earthly idea what it would be like for the United States to have to live on what it produces? To have to live under the same fiscal restraints as everyone else? To be vulnerable to the same debt-trap dynamics as everyone else?
Unlike the “neoliberalcons” from “Exceptionalistan” that you cite, Escobar does not consider the dollar’s reserve currency status to be bulletproof:
“Endless war; the progressive smashing of the nation state; democracy blasted to smithereens; and technocratic governance by the 0.00001%” are not only what the neocons and neoliberalcons offer the Global South, but what they offer the American people as well. And the American people are sick and tired of it.
Green spewster Justin Trudeau swept the election and he promised to increase debt big time because interest is low.
Not so different fromTrump.
Looks like Trump has decided Hillbilly’s biggest zit, Bill, is one of her greatest vulnerabilities. From the article:
…
EUGENE, Ore. — An unrestrained Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton an “unbelievably nasty, mean enabler” who “destroyed” the lives of her husband’s mistresses during a rally in Oregon on Friday night.
The comments, made during an evening rally in Eugene, Ore., marked the sharpest tone he’s taken against the Democratic frontrunner since becoming his party’s presumptive nominee, and the first time he’s been so direct in referencing Bill Clinton’s affairs in months.
“She’s been the total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives,” Trump said. “She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful.”
…
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-slams-hillary-clinton-nasty-mean-enabler-husband-s-affairs-n569791
From the article:
…
Now they know how I feel when McCain was running. So I hope they’re enjoying it. And by the way, I wasn’t as much of a little b*tch as George Will is being.”
…
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/05/06/coulter-i-wasnt-as-much-of-a-little-btch-as-george-will-is-being-when-mccain-won/
Shub Niggurath asks Why does the climate debate drag on?”
https://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/why-does-the-climate-debate-drag-on/
Answer: AGW promoters lost the scientific debate but retained the power of a corrupt political system.
The election of Trump may be the quickest and surest way to end the climate debate.
What does this portend?
Saudi Arabia ousts longtime oil minister
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2016-05-07-ML–Saudi%20Arabia/id-3e6990a7e1714b809a7bffa7f02e37d7
World oil demand has grown continuously:
http://i.imgur.com/Z21ooNw.png
But it could not stay up with rapid increases in world oil supply from OPEC:
http://i.imgur.com/kcpLOSM.png
Or unprecedented increases in oil production from U.S. oil shales.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JmrdxMxAE_Q/Vmnb0NMXeKI/AAAAAAAAGB0/vTDVDZHHisI/s1600/Top-US-Shale-Oil-Fields-Production-JAN-2016.png
Not sure what it portends, but I won’t be buying any stock in ARAMCO. The Saudi’s want to fund their sovereign fund by selling off part of their oil business. They want to sell it because they can see the end of oil will come some day. I doubt it will be soon, but I don’t trust the Saudi’s to honor contracts or other commitments when push comes to shove.
Majority of GOP insiders won’t commit to Trump
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/majority-of-gop-insiders-wont-commit-to-trump-222866#ixzz4857b8118
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
Republican Party Unravels Over Donald Trump’s Takeover
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/us/politics/republican-party-unravels-over-donald-trumps-takeover.html
TRUMP SAYS GOP UNITY WOULD BE NICE, NOT ESSENTIAL
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CAMPAIGN_2016?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-05-07-19-21-27
In revolt against party rules, Maine Democrats vote to strip superdelegates of power
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-maine-democrats-strip-superdelegates-20160507-story.html
It’s Official — the First Democratic Convention Just Abolished Superdelegates
http://usuncut.com/politics/maine-democratic-party-just-got-rid-superdelegate-system/
Bill Maher @billmaher 23h23 hours ago
I wasn’t kidding last night, Trump is going to crash the stock market. I miss the days when bad Republican ideas just ruined Kansas.
Maher is a putz who has let his tv show fame convince himself he’s a knowledgeable pundit on any topic.
I bet you also think Bill Nye is the go to guy for science.
I have to chuckle at the flummoxed elites and their charges. They are used to fighting the fight with money and who has the biggest pile. That’s why the charges (the nominees) suck up to the big donors and the big donors, in return, get favorable regs helping them retain their ultra-rich status.
Trump single-handedly body-slammed them all. First, he shows up for interviews when asked by a TV or radio show. The others eschew live interviews as they are afraid they might say something stupid – which is very likely. Instead, they employ the pile of cash to create a craftily designed advertisement, supposedly keeping the “message” on point.
Secondly and brilliantly, Trump can encapsulate a concept in just a few words. He cut Jeb Bush off at the knees with “low energy.” Lyin’ Ted! Little Rubio! Now its Cruooked Hillbilly’s turn. Trump may run out of two-word terms for her and have to switch to three term ones. It’s going to be great!
This third point is inconclusive right now. Obviously, Trump has tapped into the frustration and anger of a large swath of the electorate. Is he merely playing them? Or will he deliver along the broad swath of policy he’s laid out. I think he deserves a chance.
Yeah, Trump out-foxed them all. They all thought that a birther-candidate would be branded an idi@t and hardly anyone works vote for him. But clearly, they underestimated the gullibility of many Republican voters I think he deserves a chance to show just how unhinged many Repuublicans really are.
You do know that a large number of Trump supporters are not Republicans, right numbnuts?
Trump was in WA this past weekend. The Seattle Times article on his Lynden appearance had this classic comment:
_____ _____ of OneAmericaVotes voiced her opinion through a translator….
What was classic is the woman making the comments came to the US in 1982. By my math that’s 34 years living here. My (Korean) wife has lived here ~ 27 years. She doesn’t need a translator to be understood.
What the twits don’t get is that the people that are supporting Trump aren’t carrying water for the Republicans. They are people who feel, correctly, abandonded by both the Republican and Democratic party.
It’s as simple as that…
Justin: Exactly. Same goes for Sanders. Did you see that the real Gordon Gekko endorses Bernie Sanders for economic reasons.
Jo$hua continues to play the suckers game of divide and conquer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xSVzdUNqo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asher_Edelman
Horst –
==> Jo$hua continues to play the suckers game of divide and conquer.
??? Please translate.
==> What the twits don’t get is that the people that are supporting Trump aren’t carrying water for the Republicans.
Carrying water for Republicans? The vast majority of the people who voted for him are Republicans
==> They are people who feel, correctly, abandonded by both the Republican and Democratic party.
It’s nice that you were elected spokesperson. Perhaps some fit that description. Others like people who denigrate Mexicans, propose banning Muslims from entering the country, think that Obama’s birth certificate was fake, like tweets from White Supremacists, think that hitting Chinese imports with huge tariffs will work (without causing massive inflation), think that Trump has an answer that will bring back coal miners’ jobs, think that Trump has an answer for ISIS (without getting involved in an foreign intervention, no less), think that making fun of people with disabilities is a gas, thinks that mocking people is refusing to bow to political correctness, blah, blah, blah.
The funniest thing about all of this is that the people buying Trump’s con game call themselves “skeptics.”
It is to laugh.
Jo$hua: Trump’s con is small potatoes compared with the republicrats like the Bushes, Reagan, Clinton and Obama who have sold out our country to the bankers and the sweatshop offshore profiteers. I’m voting for Bernie, but I completely get the attraction to Trump and do not dismiss his voters as gullible and/or unhinged. They have taken a big step away from the oligarchy power structure and should be applauded, not derised using soundbytes fed to you by corporate media. That’s where you are a divider and not a uniter.
Horst –
==> Trump’s con is small potatoes compared with the republicrats like the Bushes, Reagan, Clinton and Obama who have sold out our country to the bankers and the sweatshop offshore profiteers.
They’re con artists. That’s the nature of the game. What counts is, in the end, the policies that they will try to enact.
But my point is that people are falling for Trump’s con. Self-described “skeptics” are lining up to listen to the sweat song of a carnival barker. Whether or not anyone else is a con artist is basically a non-sequitur. The con-artist nature of other politicians doesn’t diminish Trump’s fraudulence.
==> I completely get the attraction to Trump and do not dismiss his voters as gullible and/or unhinged.
Some of the policies he’s advocating are unhinged. And some of his supporters are unhinged. I don’t think that policies I disagree with are necessarily unhinged at all….but something like sending deporting 10 million people, levying massive tariffs on imports, claiming he’s going to put coal miners back to work, building a wall, saying that he’s going to put an end to ISIS (with no plan explicated?), claiming that Obama’s birth certificate is fake…unhinged, unhinged, unhinged, unhinged.
I get being turned off by the phoniness of standard-issue politicians, but presenting juvenile insults as “truth-telling” is a grade school level con job.
==> They have taken a big step away from the oligarchy power structure and should be applauded,
This is what I’m talking about. Trump has decades of history being inextricable from that oligarchy power, and not people are gullible to believe that he’s some sort of anti-oligarchy crusader? It is to laugh.
==> not derised using soundbytes fed to you by corporate media.
Soundbytes fed to me by corporate media? Geebus. They’re reporting what he’s saying. It’s just hilarious that people are so reflexively self-victimizers that they would blame the media because they report what Trump says
But I have to admit, getting people to blame the media for reporting what he says even as he collects support for saying exactly what they report is a really, really beautiful con job. What’s amazing is that people fall for it even though it’s so blatant.
==> That’s where you are a divider and not a uniter.
Dude, this is a blog comment thread. Nothing I say here has any effect of either uniting or dividing. It’s always fascinating to see how people have such an outsized impression of what takes place in these threads.
And BTW –
I much prefer Trump to Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Carson, Fiorina, etc., who while also con-artists, are in addition, scary ideologues. I prefer Trump to them because at least the policies he’s “advocating” for at any given moment (before he changes and advocates for something else) are so unhinged they have no possibility of being enacted.
My point is that while people here generally recognize the PR/con artist game of politics for what it is, they’re so focused on confirming their own biases that they’re willfully ignoring the con nature of Trump’s candidacy – despite it being so obvious – to the ludicrous point where they see him as some kind of truth-telling working class hero/crusader. And to top it off, they call themselves “skeptics.”
Oh, my sides.
Joshua
Some like to lie and overly generalize to support their positions or beliefs.
Can you show where Trump inappropriately “denigrated Mexicans”?- Is stating the truth that some illegal immigrants cause crimes your evidence?
“Propose banning Muslims from entering the country” – I grew up in Saudi Arabia. Do you understand Wahhabism and how it has spread around the world? Doesn’t it make sense to have additional security screening for potential terrorists based on their radical religious backgrounds?
Hitting Chinese imports with tariffs will work (without causing massive inflation),– It will increase cost of consumer goods for Americans. It will also increase US manufacturing jobs. It would also provide the US revenue.
Think that Trump has an answer for ISIS- Many have “the answer” to ISIS. It simply requires the use of force to implement. Both on the Iraq government and on the rebels.
For anyone who is arguing that Trump isn’t a con-artist, selling an image for political expediency, try explaining how he’s presented religious identity…
http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/donald-trump-gospel-liberty
Try explaining how he’s fighting against oligarchy:
I love the notion that Teump is some truth teller who says what he really thinks. Look at his current position on the controversial North Carolina law. He says people should use whatever bathroom they want to use. But then it says that the issue should be decided by the state. It’s a state law that he was talking about that he says is a mistake. So he wants to present the image of being open and fair-minded and wants to appeal to the constituency that opposes the law. But he wants to speak platitudes about states’ rights. He doesn’t know what he really thinks about the policy or the law. He just knows what image he wants to present because some shallow and gullible gullible people will fall all right in line if he presents the right image. It has nothing to do with speaking his mind. It’s about crafting an image for his personal benefit and ego gratification
The more you post the d*mmer you look. You must be nervous. You should be.
“It has nothing to do with speaking his mind. It’s about crafting an image for his personal benefit and ego gratification”
mind reading.
==> mind reading.
True – That’s a good point.
I can’t actually know for sure that just because he’s a freakin’ politician running for the presidency, he’s trying to craft an image for personal interests.
It could just be that he’s a noble guy, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.
And it could just be that he keeps saying stuff that appeals to certain constituencies, and then later shifts his opinions, and then later perhaps shifts back again or shifts to yet another opinion, all of which are in sharp contrast to the opinions he had before he ran for office. That is except for the opinions that he “doesn’t want to talk about” such as his birther crusade when he said he hired people who proved that Obama’s birth certificate was fake.
It could all be some bizarre coincidence that the pattern repeats, mixed with completely inconsistent and incoherent viewpoints over time.
I stand corrected.
Too funny.
You know your stuff, Steven.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/9/obama-wh-shows-bad-faith-global-warming-case-judge/
Are they phonies or just posers maybe?
And let’s not forget the White Supremacist re-tweets…
It could be that he doesn’t just do those RT’s because he presenting an image to please a constituency. He could actually belief that stuff, and his RTs reflect his true opinions (that he just doesn’t happen to present when he’s addressing the press, participating in debates, etc.)
Or it could be that he’s a manipulative demagogue and people are suckered into thinking that he’s some kind of straight-shooting, honest-talking, truth-teller..
You boyz are hilarious.
the point is simple Joshua.
Trump supporters dont care about his positions…He is a vessel.
Steven –
==> Trump supporters dont care about his positions…He is a vessel.
I think that’s an overstatement – as certainly there are many do do care about his positions. I wouldn’t be so dismissive. Many of his supporters are very swayed by his promise to build a wall and deport 10 million people, to levy a huge tariff on China, etc.
But yes, to some extent, for others, his positions are not the main attractor… but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t crafting an image to attract people. Of course he is. Many are very attracted to his name-calling and fear-mongering and because he presents a nice simple solution to complicated problems. But that’s all part of the stagecraft.
“I think that’s an overstatement – as certainly there are many do do care about his positions. I wouldn’t be so dismissive. Many of his supporters are very swayed by his promise to build a wall and deport 10 million people, to levy a huge tariff on China, etc.”
But yes, to some extent, for others, his positions are not the main attractor… but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t crafting an image to attract people. Of course he is. Many are very attracted to his name-calling and fear-mongering and because he presents a nice simple solution to complicated problems. But that’s all part of the stagecraft.”
You still dont get it.
Then explain it.
I think that some care about issues.
For,example, some think there is a cadre of murderers, terrorists, and rapists lined up at the border and coming to steal our jobs, kill us, and install a caliphate. They thought that before trump came on the scene. They think that deporting millions of women and children and building a wall will protect us crim harm. It is an issue the care about and the like his position on that issue.
Some like his BS image as a straight shooting truth teller and that insulting people is an effective tool for expressing viewpoints.
Not only doesn’t Donald Trump “deserve a chance” he doesn’t deserve to breath the same air that we do.
Says someone from safely behind his computer screen.
So you think Hilary will make a better President?
No one deserves to breathe the same air you breathe.
Mark Silbert, Stalin felt the same way about Trotsky, anyway he died.
Watching the Sunday political shows, I can see how deeply divided the Republicans are. It is like Trump has cracked open a bad nut, and all the different Republican factions are crawling out in different directions, probably many not to come back to Trump. Trump stands for something different from what they have been saying, at least out loud, up till now, except for their talk radio hosts and certain Fox pundits who have cultivated the Trump kind of anger in the background over the past couple of terms. Trump says it like the talk radio, and they like it, and finally they had someone to vote for. The old Republicans that united those with religiously held values, the small-government libertarian wing, the warhawks, and the anti-regulation donor class, have all been brushed aside. Their causes will not be represented by Trump who presents a more angry-whites tone that was previously suppressed.
I’m not sure if you are trying to taint Republicans with Trump or taint Trump with the Republicans. I don’t think you know either. None are so blind …
I am just saying it is a mess, and there is a lot of scurrying around at the moment. When it settles, the Republicans will be divided into at least two factions that don’t respect each other at all.
http://i.imgur.com/QxVxAbd.png
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/06/our_awful_elites_gutted_america_now_they_dare_ring_alarms_about_trump_sanders_and_cast_themselves_as_saviors/
Glenn, have you seen this:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/11/politics/donald-trump-30000-troops-isis/
Thought provoking article
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/founding-fathers-2016-donald-trump-america-first-foreign-policy-isolationist-213873
International Trade is especially going to be an interesting debate. From a Climate Change perspective, it would beneficial to at least understand concepts of international “Trade Clubs“. Maybe Richard Tol can weigh in and educate us on this from time to time.
https://i2.wp.com/badattitudes.com/MT/rambabe.jpg
From the article:
Yep.
http://i.imgur.com/RaWNKNs.png
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18998/neocon-war-hawks-want-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump.-no-surprisetheyve
I don’t see Clinton’s foreign policy being much different from Obama’s and he is definitely not allied with Neocons. Have you seen anything said by her during the campaign that makes you think she is going to be any more interventionist than Obama?
Joseph said:
That’s because you need to get out more. Did you even read the article JC linked?
And then there’s this:
From the article:
Trump is, above all else, a businessman.
I heard him in an interview over the weekend in which he lamented that the US government is $18 trillion in debt, $4 trillion due to our imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bottome line is this: Playing world policeman is one hell of an expensive enterprise.
And if you’re going to engage in the business of imperialism — of conquest and plunder — then the plunder has to outweigh the cost of conquest.
How long can the United States continue its money-losing enterprises, even if wants to?
Maybe there is “no other choice” than to give up on the idea of worldwide full spectrum dominance.
ReasonTV has an interview with Scott Adams on Trump:
Scott Adams is awesome.
This is interesting and fun: Political Polarization literacy test
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/?SSScrollPosition=0
The “bubble test” is even better, but maybe not as funny.
You can take it via PBS, which makes it go down a little easier:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-a-quiz-2/
Very good article on Clinton and climate change (some surprises):
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060036891
I found this interesting:
—————-
Connaughton said the president “can and must get the government out of what it does badly” and should focus the government “on what it must and does do very well.”
Since 1998, Connaughton said, more than 100 federal and state mandates have been put in place dealing with greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. Those include market-based ones like cap and trade in California.
It involves $150 billion in incentives, he said, but “when you incentive everything, it seems to me you incentivize nothing.” You’re transferring money away from the tax revenue side with “everybody benefitting,” but nothing additional is accomplished.
———————————————-
The only thing accomplished is a transfer of wealth from the working poor and middle class to the wealthy or the elite.
Another good article on Clinton and climate change
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11548354/hillary-clintons-climate-and-energy-policies-explained
One good thing about Clinton is that she is not an idealogue – she can be bought. I suppose the Republicans should find some solace in that. There is a little in her plan to irritate just about everybody.
As for utilizing the bridge fuel nat gas pipelines for bio-gas and synthetic natural gas, here is a kind of sciency article – from a mag that calls people heretics – about that:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-china-s-bid-to-turn-coal-to-gas-be-stopped/
Jeepers, if the Chinese can’t do it, how can it be done in a democratic republic?
Yep.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-every-era-has-a-currency-that-buys-souls-in-some-the-currency-is-pride-in-others-it-eric-hoffer-104-10-93.jpg
Poll: Clinton, Trump run tight races in key swing states
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-poll-ohio-florida-pennsylvania/index.html
http://i.imgur.com/81zQap5.jpg
“Hillary Clinton’s climate and energy policies, explained”
David Middleton reviews Hillary’s “bread and games” policies.
Hillary committed to following Germany to probably double the cost of US electricity while causing major probabilities of blackouts.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan slams Donald Trump’s ‘ignorant’ take on Islam
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/donald-trump-london-mayor-ban/index.html
The video is a compilation of some of the things Trump has said in regards to Muslims.
Trump: U.S. will never default ‘because you print the money’
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/09/politics/donald-trump-national-debt-strategy/index.html
Hum. Let me fix that:
Libertarian candidate: What Trump says is ‘ridiculous’
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/gary-johnson-donald-trump-bernie-sanders/index.html
Carson wants to meet with Ryan before Trump sit-down
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/09/politics/ben-carson-paul-ryan-donald-trump/index.html
Trump news gets chilly reception from returning GOP senators
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/09/politics/donald-trump-republican-senators/index.html
http://i.imgur.com/Oi97X5T.png
Well, “the revolution may not be televised,” but the people are getting the message anyway, much to the chagrin of the Republicrat establishment.
http://i.imgur.com/bXnEurr.png
This is interesting: survey of active troops presidential preference:
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/election/2016/05/09/military-times-survey-donald-trump-beats-hillary-clinton/84132402/
http://i.imgur.com/ZQxTSn2.png
http://i.imgur.com/lpe4tTD.png
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/10/11585182/donald-trump-reading-list
“…it is a form of racial resentment based on historic white entitlement and a backlash to the upsurge in leftist identity politics that has marked American politics in the age of Obama.”
White entitlement lines up well with a right to be here since we were born here. Others like immigrants are not so entitled. What some voters have seen is decades of identity politics. The only non-minority is white males. Identity politics is now being used by white males and that is equally wrong or right if it’s white males or black women.
“Not only did authoritarianism correlate, but it seemed to predict support for Trump more reliably than virtually any other indicator…”
https://foodforthethinkers.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/political-matrix.gif
Identity politics on the matrix may be difficult to locate. The inability to compete because of one’s identity would be on the economic axis. On the personal axis, excessive identity class protection such as campus safe spaces can make it hard to place. Restricting speech even informally, indicates authoritarianism in my opinion.
The Republicans have always had their authoritarians, but so have the Democrats. In the authoritarian sector of the matrix we find many negative things. Ventura accomplished his win near the more positive libertarian centrist border. In both cases the two parties were flummoxed as their voters left them.
What’s tormenting Paul Ryan?
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/09/opinions/ryan-conservatives-trump-stanley/index.html
Donald Trump Gets Something Right: The US Can Avoid Defaults by Printing Money
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/05/09/donald-trump-gets-something-right-the-us-can-avoid-defaults-by-printing-money/
“13,533,000 Reasons Trump and Sanders Are Doing Well”
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/05/httpwwwnoquarterusanetblog7909213533-reasons-trump-sanders-well.html
Panama Papers web site:
https://panamapapers.icij.org/?utm_source=Watchdog&utm_campaign=25e2616c6f-PP_database_coming_soon_4_26_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ffd1d0160d-25e2616c6f-101237021&mc_cid=25e2616c6f&mc_eid=b9f7ae2e20
The offshore banks and such are the dark web for the rich and powerful. They watch our every move and every dollar we make; but they break the laws they themselves make. This is why the rule of law is so important – laws should apply to everyone equally.
It’s hard to believe that all these names would even bend over to pick up a measly $45,000,000.00.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/article/2002345
Will this signal the end of the ‘Clinton’ dynasty?
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/politics/election-candidate-matchmaker/
Trump was given as #1 for me followed by #2 Rand Paul and #3 Carly Fiorina.
Same, exactly.
Rick Perry, the longest serving governor of Texas ever, is angling for VP.
Perry was a great governor and spent a lot of time traveling convincing businesses to relocate to Texas. He also worked hard to successfully make Texas friendly to business bringing jobs and prosperity to the state. He’s also strong in energy matters and believes abundant affordable energy is the backbone of the economy. Not only that be he was also head of the state that has the largest installed base of wind energy (California is distant second) where it actually works and isn’t controversial. He also successfully managed the largest state border with Mexico and a huge undocumented hispanic population also without controversy or problem.
I think he’d be an excellent partner for Trump in making American great again especially in energy, jobs, and immigration. A proven track record. Unfortunately Perry doesn’t bring any swing states with him. Texas votes Republican and that’s a given. I’m not sure Trump is worried about that anyway as he eschews the political games.
Wind energy was George Bush’s baby. Texas led the nation before he was done as governor.
==> ” I think he’d be an excellent partner for Trump…”
I know how shocked you must be when you observe a change in belief. It’s incomprehensible to tribal ideologues such as yourself. Perry has admitted that “the people” have spoken and, much to his chagrin and contrary to his personal feelings, has accepted their choice. He supports the will of the people and feels that he’s in a better position to moderate some of Trump’s non-conservative positions by being on the team as opposed to a sore loser on the outside whining about it.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/9f/c6/dc/9fc6dca32eac3fbab45ee266e22a84c4.jpg
Lol! “Change in belief.” That’s a good one.
So Trump goes from a ” small-minded – divisive figures propelled by anger, and appealing to the worst instincts in the human condition,” who offers “a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense,” to being a president that no only he’d support, but serve along side of as vice-president.
Of course, Perry’s self-interest has nothing to do with his change of heart. He’s only changed his mind because Trump got enough votes for the nomination. The fact that Trump got more votes invalidates the deep criticisms he offered earlier. He must have realized that when so many people voted for Trump, his previous observations were wrong.
How could we go wrong with such a man of character as vice-president.
Oh, my sides.
I wonder how the CE Denizens might score on this quiz?
“Trump Values Similarity Test”
http://shermanassessment.com/Trump/
After you finish you might find the following link informative:
“Donald Trump’s Values”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-situation-lab/201603/donald-trumps-values
Concerns Rise Over Trump Fealty to GOP Agenda
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/05/11/concerns_rise_over_trump_fealty_to_gop_agenda.html
Sabato: Rank And File Republicans Are Getting Behind Trump
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/10/sabato_rank_and_file_republicans_are_getting_behind_trump.html
DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz responds to last night’s WV primary results and Trump’s recent gains in the polls.
“The national polls are–” she said about polls showing the gap between Clinton and Trump narrowing, “It is a little early to be hanging your hat on national polls.”
Ann Coulter: “”The people are with him and there’s no point in meeting with these generals without armies.”
As Clinton Looks Vulnerable, Event Risk Favors Trump (and Sanders)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/as-clinton-looks-vulnerable-event-risk-favors-trump-and-sanders.html
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/p1lcf11-624×698.jpg
I want to thank Canman how eerily brilliant Scott Adams is. I read maybe 10 of his recent blog entries concerning Trump, mostly, and how he’s a master at persuasion and that’s really all that matters.
Good stuff:
http://blog.dilbert.com/
meant to say “thank Canman for reminding me how eerily brilliant Scott Adams is”
You’re welcome. Now do we choose the devil we know or the devil we don’t?
https://padresteve.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/phil.gif
What’s up with Trump and his tax returns?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-is-mr-trump-hiding/2016/04/25/7e4bd4ac-0b21-11e6-8ab8-9ad050f76d7d_story.html
Might be he is a complete fraud and has lost most of whatever wealth he might have had. Why else has he been working in television all these years and conning people with Trump University type businesses.
In other words, he’s a failure.
Obama was a success at whatever, again?
Obama released his returns and so has Hillary.
What’s Trump hiding?
http://bit.ly/1bX7wOD
It’s not his Birth Certificate.
But Hillbilly won’t release her Wallstreet speech transcripts, let’s pound on her for that for a few weeks, OK?
==> But Hillbilly won’t release her Wallstreet speech transcripts,
Apparently, “They did it first/too” is a one-size-fits-all argument in defense of anything Trump.
Very insightful there, Josh.
He’s probably got plenty of stuff going on he wants to keep private. I don’t believe we’ve had anyone near to that since Ross Perot and I don’t think that’s even close because Ross was a one-trick pony with a high tech company compared to Trump who is more diverse and almost certainly gaming the rules to pay a surprisingly low tax rate.
Here’s how I figure it. It takes a thief to catch a thief. I have no doubt that Trump knows exactly how the very wealthy get away with a far lower effective tax rate than the middle class and that further he’s an experienced expert at that himself. So he understands better than the average bear what loopholes need to be closed and how to close them.
Trump stopped caring about money a long time ago but I’m sure he doesn’t give it away to the IRS if there’s any way to avoid it. That’s just part of the game. Trump is a gamer. He builds gaming houses (casinos). He starred on a reality game show The Apprentice.
What’s important is that he plays to win, knows how, and that he’s playing for millions of people voting for him instead of who pays for the campaign.
You can’t keep financial (and maybe medical) stuff private if you want to be President. You have to be transparent.
As for knowing how the wealthy get away with a lower tax rate, there isn’t any mystery that Trump is aware of that nobody else knows. You are naive if you think Trump is going to catch any “thieves”. He will be like the fox guarding the hen house.
If Trump stopped caring about money, why is he doing fundraising from donors to pay himself back? He only spent a few million on the campaign. Ought to be chump change for him if he doesn’t care about money.
Get real. He is not a socialist. He is all about making himself a profit, so to speak.
IIRC foxes are very territorial creatures.
There are no secret loopholes or tricks Springer. There are just more tax breaks one has available as one’s income increases. Earning under six figures, I’ve had an effective tax rate of 10%.
@James Cross
Could you please refer me to the law that says presidential candidates must make their tax returns public?
@TimG
“Under 6 figures” for earned W-2 income is a very wide range and spans the gamut of no taxes at all on the low side to needing itemized deductions (form 1040) with a big total on the last line. At the high side to keep federal tax burden to 10% or less requires some or all of a bunch of dependents, lots of medical bills, large mortgage interest and property tax payments, etc.
@Stanton
Yeah right. Trump lives paycheck to paycheck and worries about he’s going to pay his bills if he loses his job. He needs a regular salary.
Stehle do you think an article penned by some obscure blog “fiuel fix”
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/01/26/texas-gets-f-grade-on-net-metering-policies-for-solar-power-and-more/
who gets data from an obscure organization
http://freeingthegrid.org/#state-grades/texas
who claims to be part of Interstate Renewable Energy Council
http://www.irecusa.org
which is some obscure biased non-profit advocacy group….
You think that’s going to impress anyone?
They give Texas an F because they don’t like the rules. Looks like Texas is far from alone, by the way, according to free the grid and whoever the guy is who lives in his parents basement who owns the fuelfix website you called out.
I’m playing the triple-obscure reference card. Come up with a credible source and if you mention that planning engineer dope again please warn me first so I don’t spit coffee.
David Springer,
So let me get this straight.
You believe Texas is some renewables energy paradise? Think again.
One can go to this website and see all the local, state, and federal government interventions to promote renewable energy.that have been enacted and which apply in each of the fifty idndividual states.
http://www.dsireusa.org/
Even though there may be some local Texas governments which have mandated net metering, there is no state-wide net metering mandate as there is in California.
But even more important, one will not find anything like this at any level of government in Texas, much less on a state-wide level as is the case in California:
http://i.imgur.com/MGboHfG.png
This is the reason Texas earned its “F” grande, and it has nothing to do with your orgy of ad hominem attacks.
I don’t know about others, but the main reason that I listen to what Planning Engineer has to say is because of his credentials. He is an engineer who has a lifetime of experiencie working in electrical grid management.
I also like his attitude and demeanor. He seems to be a very kind person, concerned about the less privileged in our society, and not at all dogmatic or beligernet. To wit:
http://i.imgur.com/M9gy76P.png
“Orgy of ad hominem attacks”. Oh please Stehle now you’re forcing to me add “drama queen” to the “orgiastic” bombardment.
You need to stop focusing on California to make your case. 90% of the US population lives outside California and this is a US presidential election thread not a California governor election thread.
Your problem, and both know it, is that you can’t make a case at the federal level or even in the aggregate by averaging state subsidies together and dividing by 50. “Planning engineer” is not a recognized expert in the field. If you want a serious discussion with me you need to have serious citations instead of your orgy of groping anonymous blog authors and obscure advocacy sites.
You’re now contradicting yourself too, Stehle. First you compare Texas to California and Massachusetts showing that Texas residents pay about half as much for electricity as the other two. Then later you point to another website that lists number of energy conservation programs available in each state to support your new claim that Texas isn’t a bowl of cherries with little state government interference.
You lost. Segrest stomped you and so did I. Get over it.
Average Electrical Rate Cents/kWh, (rank, lowest rate first) from
http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/204.htm
Texas 8.99 (17)
California 15.23 (44)
National 10.45
Texas is 11% below the national average. I use it because it’s where I live and have the greatest knowledge of details at state level.
California is 45% above the national average. Stehle lives in Mexico and claims residency in Texas. He uses California because it is favorable to his argument and hopes that it will go unnoticed that he’s using an outlier to make his case.
Springer stomps Stehle.
Any questions?
David Springer,
You can knock yourself out, trying to spin it anyway you want.
But the bottom line remains the same, and that is if you want to play God and save the world from the coming apocalypse — in the way elite Californians do — it’s gonna cost some serious bucks.
Like we say in Texas: “Praise the Lord and pass the plate.”
https://i1.wp.com/casey-lewis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/giving.jpg
The good thing about Texas is that people tend to practice their religion at their local church, and not at the statehouse.
Glenn Stehle stomps Singer … Again !
David Springer said:
David, do you really believe calling Planning Engineer a “dope” is going to enhance your credibility on this forum?
I’m not here to enhance to my credibility. Is that why you’re here?
I’m here to speak my mind and quash what’s untrue. You’re here to read and react. It seems to be working perfectly from my perspective.
You may think of me as “The Donald” of Climate Etc. I don’t care who I offend.
David Springer said:
And you believe ad hominem, in combination with a dearth of empirial evidence and sound logic, is the best way to achieve that?
Ad hominem is mostly for entertainment purposes but it also serves to make associated content more memorable. It garners attention. Trump uses this artifice a lot for the same purpose. And look what it got him in the primary race. I didn’t learn it from Trump but could be an acquired trait from New York culture which I share with Trump. We’re pretty f*cking rude and crude compared to people from other states. I’ve lived in half a dozen states and known people from virtually all states starting at age 17 when I enlisted in the US Marine Corps. Marines aren’t exactly noted for being dainty either.
Thanks for asking!
The dearth of evidence and logic is all yours in this case, Stehle. I’m not the one who couldn’t make a generalized case for solar production subsidies. You picked an extreme case, California, and a subsidy that’s arguably not a subsidy. The NEM “subsidy” is actually a perceived injustice in the way power companies in California bill for fixed costs like transmission lines and generating plants. Cost-shifting from generators (people with net metering who can run their electric meters backward) to non-generators happens as an artifact of including fixed costs and fuel costs into the same charge per kilowatt hour. So bascially the injustice goes like “someone is selling electricity and getting free use of the transmission lines” where others who consume more electricity are paying for those transmission lines.
In actuality the way net metering works is you’re only using very local transmission lines because one of your nearby neighbors will be consuming it not some distant consumer. As well this neighborhood generation and consumption reduces the total fixed costs because major transmission lines need less capacity with the wider distribution of generators putting power on the grid. It also reduces total generating power required by the main producer which also lowers total fixed cost.
So even in California you can’t demonstrate any production subsidy. At this point I’m casting pearls before swine so go ahead and get in the last word windbag. I’m done.
too funny Springer
https://judithcurry.com/2016/05/06/u-s-presidential-election-part-vii/#comment-783909
When I was talking about transparency on tax returns earlier, I mentioned medical reports.
It looks like Trump has a problem in that area too.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/14/donald-trump-releases-medical-report-calling-his-health-extraordinary/?_r=0
Lame letter not a medical report.
How much you want to bet he’s on v**gra?
I’ve read that he is a T-Totaler too. Not at all like that spokesperson Bob Doyle. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge…
Keep whistling James.
How much do you suppose I care if Trump is on viagra you ass?
Trump looks and acts healthy at all times. Hillary looks like death warmed-over half the time. She suffers from hypothyroidism of unspecified severity. Some people believe her health is so poor she won’t make it through November. Between that and the prospect of criminal indictment before November it’s good that Bernie is staying in the race to the bitter end because he may in fact be the last
manperson standing in the Democrat primary.Strange West Virginia Primary exit poll:
34% of Sanders voters say they will vote for Trump in the presidential election in a Sanders-Trump head-to-head!
https://youtu.be/qZQIE6uoSPg?t=216
Humiliate Hillary!
Heh. If Hillary is the nominee, she gets a big Democrat turn-out for Trump, in WV at least.
The part that makes me smile, is that once those 33% of registered Democrats pull the lever for Trump, (a licensed Republican), for the first time… if he tries to do what he said he will do, the Democrats may lose power for decades. The opposite of the RNC’s greatest fear.
I’m hoping Hillary can prevail over Sanders. That’s Trump’s best bet, as well as ours, the citizens of the US.
The “Trump-Sanders” bit of that appears to be erroneous. The question posed to Sanders voters in exit polling by CBS in W.Va was who will you vote for in November: Trump, Hillary, or Neither. 44% answered Trump. 23% answered Hillary.
An ABC exit poll asked all democratic primary voters who they’d vote for and 48% answered Hillary, 31% said Trump.
Neither of those results are good for Hillary. Republican voters are much more loyal to the party and independents are largely wanting an outsider which is not Hillary. I’m confident Hillary is toast in November. Too many people are fed up with the professional politicians in Washington D.C. and Hillary is the penultimate professional politician.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/279430-nearly-half-of-sanders-voters-in-west-virginia-would-vote
politico, nbcnews and msnbc report that 34% of WV primary Sanders’ voters say they will vote for Trump in a head-to-head. Could be bogus as you say.
Clinton Policies Have Hurt Women
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/clinton-policies-have-hurt-women.html
http://i.imgur.com/17pgYFh.png
FBI head challenges Clinton’s description of email probe
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/279552-fbi-head-challenges-clinton-on-email-probe
http://i.imgur.com/ZCoyksD.png
Why Sanders won in West Virginia
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/12/pers-m12.html
Another Tight Hillary-Trump Poll Came Out. Here’s What She’s Doing About It.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/05/11/clinton_attacking_trump_on_taxes_economy_as_polls_tighten.html
http://i.imgur.com/sGUVDUu.png
Either that or he’s really the blue-collar billionaire that his kids say he is. He talks the part I’ll give him that.
“blue-collar billionare” born with a sliver spoon in his mouth.
I love this romanticism.
Trump draws even with Clinton in national White House poll
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN0Y2119
http://i.imgur.com/aeA5jXQ.png
http://i.imgur.com/9BkfKUF.png
http://i.imgur.com/NgkgOge.png
Liberals are starting to panic. Bill Maher is in denial about Crooked Hillary. You’d think he of all people would be happy we finally have someone “Politically Incorrect” heading to the White House. LOL
Liberals are starting to panic. Bill Maher is in denial about Krooked Hillery. You’d think he of all people would be happy we finally have someone “Politically Incorrect” heading to the White House. LOL
Romney to Trump: Not releasing tax returns is ‘disqualifying’
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/279584-romney-to-trump-not-releasing-tax-returns-is
http://i.imgur.com/nTy5bqV.png
No, it isn’t disqualifying. And there’s more than one reason why Trump might not be releasing them. The first reason is the one every fool in the world comes up with: he’s hiding something. The second reason is that Trump is cagey, there’s nothing to hide, but he’s going to let the nattering nabobs of negativity whip themselves into a frenzy over it then in the last weeks before the election make them public and there won’t be anything worth hiding in them. Trump comes out looking good and his detractors look like chimps he can move by holding a banana out to them.
I’ll give better than even odds Trump is simply setting up the other side to look like dumbasses. He makes it look so easy too.
Donald Trump softens stance on Muslim ban
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36272236
Trump needs cash, but GOP donors not opening their wallets
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/donald-trump-gop-donors/index.html
Trump Says He Would Appoint Anti-Choice Justice to Supreme Court (Video)
Donald Trump doesn’t hate women—just women’s rights to choose.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-says-he-would-appoint-anti-choice-justice-supreme-court
Texas Republicans Inch Closer to Secession
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/texas-republicans-gop-secession-resolution
http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/top-of-content-main/secede2.gif
I’ll have to dig out the textbooks, but from memory, Texas actually had a right to secede when Texas first became a state, but lost that right when the Yankees kicked the snot out of them and forced to bend over and surrender at the end of the Civil War. Our public schools had the Yankee version of American history and Texas schools have the War of Northern Aggression version.
And Mexicans have yet another rendition of history:
http://i.imgur.com/GRwm6j6.jpg
PBS did a documentary on the period, which I thought wasn’t too terribly biased in any one single direction:
http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/index_flash.html
http://i.imgur.com/xSh0zLU.png
PBS did a follow-up documentary of what life was like for Mexicans in the United States after the US-Mexican War. It was pretty outstanding IMHO:
http://www.pbs.org/latino-americans/en/watch-videos/#2365075996
http://i.imgur.com/pTkoeiT.png
A Class Apart I believe is also outstanding, but PBS no longer has it available on to be viewed from their website:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9k3hJOlOiY
I was once considering running for governor of Texas. Since so many Mexicans appear to want to live in Texas, my platform was to trade Texas for Mexico even Steven, as Mexico is a much much more beautiful place. The new country was to be called Mexas, and our new state was to be called Texaco as we could save a lot of money by buying signs from the oil company.
“I was once considering running for governor of Texas.”
Try running for Queen of England. Drama queen that is…
Jobs: How Good are the Jobs the Economy is Creating?
https://mishtalk.com/2016/05/11/jobs-how-good-are-the-jobs-the-economy-is-creating/
High paying? $1000/wk is less than median household income!
Here’s why Trump is going to win big:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/US_Real_Household_Median_Income_thru_2014.png/1024px-US_Real_Household_Median_Income_thru_2014.png
The middle class is shrinking just about everywhere in America
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/11/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-just-about-everywhere-in-america/
http://i.imgur.com/csKspGo.png
From the article:
…
“Mr. Trump and I sat down together for a meeting earlier this month at my request,” Kelly said in today’s news. “He was gracious with his time and I asked him to consider an interview. I am happy to announce he has agreed and I look forward to a fascinating exchange – our first sit-down interview together in nearly a year.”
Fox News, meanwhile, called Trump’s campaign “one of the most historic presidential runs in modern times.” And that, in the interview, Kelly will “for the first time ever…explore how events unfolded with Trump after the August debate” calling her “one of the most prominent voices covering the 2016 presidential campaign of the
…
http://deadline.com/2016/04/megyn-kelly-to-interview-donald-trump-1201744022/
David Springer,
You can spin like a top all you like, untl you make yourselft so dizzy you fall over. Go for it! Knock yourself out!
And you say you don’t like the name “subsidies”? Well call them anything you like. These pointless debates over semantics are useless.
But whatever you call them, when the government makes electric companies buy a KwH from rooftop PV owners for 15.5₡, when they can buy that same Kwh wholesale for 3.6₡, somebody has to pay.
And that “somebody” ends up being the other ratepayers.
http://i.imgur.com/M9gy76P.png
“California doesn’t have a solar subsidy. You’re in denial, windbag.”
“The California Solar Initiative (CSI) is the solar rebate program for California consumers that are customers of the investor-owned utilities – Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). Together with the rebate program for New Solar Homes and rebate programs offered through the dozens of publicly owned utilities in the state – the CSI program is a key component of the Go Solar California campaign for California.”
http://www.gosolarcalifornia.ca.gov/about/csi.php
“If you own property in California and are interested in going solar solar you’re in luck. Home and business owners in California have a bevy of incentives to choose from to install solar power. California’s robust renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which requires all utilities in the state to source 33 percent of their electric generation from renewable resources by 2020, is a leading driver for the incentives offered throughout the state. Incentives in California are offered by utilities, the state, counties and even some municipalities.”
http://www.cleanenergyauthority.com/solar-rebates-and-incentives/california/
The electric companies aren’t buying it, windbag. They’re giving customers a credit for it. Consumers can’t run their meters backward into negative numbers. Consumers can’t become net producers of electricity. The best they can do is zero out their electric bill by producing exactly as much as they consume.
As I said before this no different than lowering an electric bill through any means including conservation. If someone put a solar pre-heater on their electric hot water heater their electric bill would go down and dipsh*ts with an agenda like you would call it subsidized.
Spare me. Spare us all.
David Springer,
Well again, you’re arguing semantics, and making empirical statements which are half-truths at best, and outright lies at worst.
Most solar rooftop PV producers in California produce excess electricity during those hours when the sun is shining brightly and household usage is low. The PUC has mandated that the utilites must buy this excess electricity from the rooftop producers, and at full retail price.
The electricity flows into the grid, and the utilities are forced to pay for this electricity at full retail rates.
Then during the evenings, when the sun has gone down and the solar panels aren’t producing, and when household usage is at its peak, the rooftop solar PV producers buy back the electricity, and at the same retail price they sold it to the utilities during the day.
Believe it or not, David, it costs money to provide this service. And if the rooftop solar PV producers don’t pay for it, then who do you suppose ends up paying for it? Are you really so naive to believe that the utilities end up paying for it?
For instance:
And in more technical and legal terms:
http://i.imgur.com/CMKnl6P.png
It was Trump’s kids that ultimately swayed me. Most presidential offspring I’ve observed in my life have been absolutely horrible. The children are a reflection of the man and his are outstanding. He ought to run with Ivanka for VP.
Thanks for posting these videos without comment, windbag!
Pelosi dismisses Trump’s candidacy
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/11/politics/nancy-pelosi-donald-trump/index.html?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial
http://i.imgur.com/JvwEONr.png
I didn’t know Pelosi was still above ground. There should be an age limit on all national office holders as well as term limits too.
==> There should be an age limit on all national office holders as well as term limits too.
Good point. Can’t have the voters deciding who to vote for, now can we?
We do it with lower age limits already. A person can’t even vote until a certain age to say nothing of holding public office. You’re a very shallow thinker, Joshy. Squashing your attempts to make a point is like shooting fish a in barrel. Dead fish. In a dry barrel. With a shotgun and buckshot.
There’s that guy who’ll walk into the bar and say anything to get laid. That’s Donald Trump right now to a T. But it’s all of us who are going to get f—–,” Cuban said during an interview at the SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference in Las Vegas on Thursday night.
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-trump-is-that-guy-in-the-bar-who-will-say-anything-to-get-laid-2016-5
Bill and Hillary drink, Donald Trump, does not. You can now see the problem the Clinton’s, face.
James, just the tip of the iceberg…
http://nypost.com/2016/05/13/clinton-charity-gave-2m-to-company-owned-by-bills-friend/
Four More Years!
Think, about ‘it’ man.
“Follow this logic, and you’re left to infer that the only person who won’t voluntarily release their tax returns must have the most to hide. It doesn’t just say that Mr. Trump has more to hide than Mrs. Clinton; it says that he has more to hide than any other candidate you could imagine.
Think about it. The problem for Mr. Trump is that the voters don’t know if he’s Honest Donald or some other Donald. But Mr. Trump knows. If he’s Honest Donald, he’ll release his tax returns to make sure that voters know that he’s neither dodgy nor deplorable. And if he’s dodgy, he will release his returns so that we know he’s not deplorable. Only Deplorable Donald — the worst possible Trump — has no incentive to disclose.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/upshot/what-we-can-learn-from-donald-trumps-unreleased-tax-returns.html?nytmobile=0
The only reason he has more to hide is because she already has most of her stuff hidden.
The reason for making tax returns public is for a candidate to show how he makes his money. We already know that about Trump. His lawyers have advised him to not make returns public during an IRS audit. Here is a link to several independent tax attorneys and accountants who gave their opinion on whether that’s sound legal advice:
http://lawnewz.com/politics/donald-trump-is-right-it-would-be-very-stupid-to-release-his-taxes-while-being-audited/
Except he has already set the precedent of releasing his tax returns while under audit.
CNN: “Trump Has Handed Over Tax Returns In The Midst Of Audits Before.” CNN reported that “Trump has handed over tax returns in the midst of audits before — to state gambling officials in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as part of the process of seeking casino licenses in those states,” noting, “At least some of the federal and state tax returns he gave Pennsylvania were the subject of ongoing audits at the time.” CNN reported that though “Trump insists he won’t release his tax returns … because those returns are the subject of ongoing Internal Revenue Service audits … When he’s had casinos on the line, it’s been a different story.” From the May 11 CNN report:
But we know one key reason already. He isn’t a billionaire. Not even close. Sources who knew Trump estimated his worth under $250 million in 2011.
Imagine this, dopey. Trump refuses to release tax returns until mid-October. The outcry from the loony left “He’s hiding something!” rises to a fever pitch and is non-stop in every news cycle.
Then he makes it public and there’s nothing there worth hiding. Your side comes off looking fools and you wasted a sh*t ton of time on a non-issue. Trump comes out looking like a genius for playing his opponents like a fiddle.
You’ve been warned now but you won’t be able to help yourself because that’s the nature of a fool.
Since the Presidential Election is known to be on the Tuesday the 8th of November, 2016, Being a negotiator Donald Trump, will likely keep all his cards close to his vest as his team spreads his rumors by their whispers, waiting.
Let’s all take stock of this being a thing: Donald Trump routinely threatens to use government power (DOJ, IRS, etc.) to attack his personal enemies once he becomes President.
In other words, Trump openly promises to do what Republican propagandists and fever swamp nutballs have pretended or imagine Democratic presidents do.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/yes-this-is-a-thing
Do you believe in Karma…
Definitely.
“Well, listen, there’s time for recriminations,” Cruz said. “Everyone who was responsible for the rise of Donald Trump, they will bear that responsibility going forward. But there were more than a few players who played a disproportionate role in that rise.”
It always seems to go around and then it all comes back to Hillary somehow.
Nice FUD James C. Maybe you should author fiction books. You would be good at it.
Crooked Hillary and Es.pionage
https://reason.com/archives/2016/05/12/hillary-clintons-perfect-storm
Not looking good for Mrs. Clintoris. Read the article for details.
https://reason.com/archives/2016/05/12/hillary-clintons-perfect-storm
http://i.imgur.com/TPybuAX.png
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the end of a one-day trip to Tripoli, Libya, on Oct. 18, 2011, after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Media reports referred to it as a “victory lap.”
I’m not yet finished blaming Bush/Cheney for lying us into a real war in Iraq, with infinitely greater negative consequences. My calculations indicate that I will be ready to start blaming Clinton for Libya approximately two years into her first term as president.
There is no need to rehash every incidence of racist swill in Trump’s long public career. But this all goes to explain even further the worldview that Trump has developed. He has ensconced himself in a bubble where he can hold court at some five-star Manhattan restaurant, gamely recounting the details of some racially charged crime he read about in that day’s New York Post, with no sense of what his ranting might sound like to people whose check he isn’t picking up. He has surrounded himself with racists and misogynists of every stripe, and didn’t throw in at least one or two confidants who could explain to him that he is not running for president exclusively in Alabama in the 1930s.
So why on earth would he notice if his butler was a raging nutball while the guy was exaggerating the distance Trump was hitting golf balls into the Intracoastal Waterway (an actual anecdote in the Times story)? One can picture them out on the Mar-a-Lago lawn, with Senecal telling him those 225-yard drives are actually 275 and nodding along in agreement when Trump rants about Obama refusing to release his birth certificate.
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/13/why_donald_trumps_racist_butler_actually_matters/
Apparently Trump is a germaphobe too. Hr wrote in his 1997 book The Art of the Comeback, “One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get. I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.”
http://theweek.com/articles/623743/donald-trumps-selfaffirming-bubble
A real nutcase.
A fascinating result of this is the more and worse names Trump gets called the more popular he becomes.
You boys ought to start calling him brilliant, poised, charming, and the next president of the United States. At least one of those is correct too!
==.> I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.”
Fortunately, given their size, that shouldn’t take long. :-)
This guy’s a real peach:
The worm has turned. Payback is a bitch. It’s karma, Joshy. So called global warming due to CO2 was falsely ginned up into a disaster that just had to be stopped at all costs even if it meant a one-world government forcing the world into energy poverty. Turnabout is fair play.
Trump taps climate change skeptic, fracking advocate as key energy advisor
Rep. Kevin Cramer
On the Issues:
Energy
==> Cramer has said he believes the Earth is cooling, not warming,
Interesting.
And there I thought that “hardly and “skeptics” doubt” that the climate is warming and that aCO2 has something to do with the warming (we just don’t know how much).
Joshy who said skeptics are monolithic in their opinions? The only thing they have in common is they disagree with the “consensus”.
Write that down.
Joshua Climate has been cooling for ~8,000 years since the Holocene Thermal Optimum. What scientist disputes that?
Will we be able to generate enough global warming to prevent descent into the coming glaciation?
David –
Anthony Watts, and many other “skeptics,” frequently say that most “skeptics” don’t dispute that the climate is warming, and that aC02 contributes to that warming – they only question that magnitude of the effect.
So here’s the problem, IMO. It becomes difficult for their to be progress in discussions when people keep switching the nature of their argument depending on the specific context – for the sake of advocacy. Of course, that takes place on both sides of the fence.
Just about the only “skeptics” that I’ve seen who remain consistent in their arguments are people like David W or Mike Flynn – who consistently argue that there is no warming,
Of course, “skeptics’ like “realists” come in many stripes – and I’m not in a position to pass judgement on anyone else’s technical interpretation of the evidence…but I think there will be no progress in bridging the divide if people don’t realistically and accurately assess and accept the nature of the discussion that’s taking place. .
I recommend he consider advising President Trump to dump the command and control policies favoured by the Democrats and socialists, including carbon pricing, and instead implement policies to remove the distortions in energy markets. Start by removing all impediments that are delaying progress on developing and deploying nuclear power, including removing the massive policy incentives for renewable energy.
Another quote from the Cramer piece
“One example is Trump’s assertion last week that ozone-depleting substances that were once found in hair spray don’t actually hurt the environment.
“Does that scare me?” Cramer said laughing. “No, it doesn’t scare me, because frankly, it gets back to his blunt talk. He speaks so plainly, and yes, it may not seem sophisticated, it may not seem hyper-intellectual, but it’s plain enough for everybody to understand.”
OK, so he is saying at least Trump is easy to understand when he denies the science which is all that matters for Trump supporters apparently.
You’ve got nobody to blame but yourselves. :)
We’re talking about continuing production subsidies not one-time capital investment credits. Keep up or shut up.
Donald Trump masqueraded as publicist to brag about himself
The voice is instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian. The man on the phone vigorously defending Donald Trump says he’s a media spokesman named John Miller, but then he says, “I’m sort of new here,” and “I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes” and even “I’m going to do this a little, part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-alter-ego-barron/2016/05/12/02ac99ec-16fe-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html
These kinds of things only endear him to his supporters. It takes cojones not to cave when all the evidence says he is just lyin’ Don.
Contrary to logic and reason these kinds of things only add to the number of his supporters. Social psychologists will likely be studying this for quite some time.
If he did, he isn’t the first one. His supporters will continue to support him and this incident has nothing to do with their support. They support him because of bigger-picture concepts and you are focused on this, something so far out of the big picture it’s on Mars.
The big picture is that Trump advocates for the US and its citizens. The perception is that people like Obama, Kerry, and Clinton advocate more for foreigners than their own people and to some extent it is, too much, a reality. This even applies to may Redimowits.
Trump isn’t like the Dimowits or Redimowits. He’s more like a libertarian really. I’m good with that.
jim2,
If the election is fought out on the battleground of economic and foreign policy issues, Clinton loses.
Clinton is the quintessential neocon and neoliberal, and these doctrines do not favor rank and file Americans, nor for that matter the rank and file of any country anywhere in the world. They only favor the economic elites of the world.
Therefore the Republicrat esablishment seeks to shift the battleground from economic and foreign policy to:
1) Cultural politics (gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, right-wing Christian evangelicism, etc.), or
2) Trivia (something Trump did or said 25 years ago, his tax returns, etc.)
Can you imagine the idiocy of making a presidential campagin about what Trump’s butler said? And yet this is exactly what the Republicrat establishment and its obedient corporate media are trying to do. To wit:
Glenn, the election will revolve around what candidate will secure the best supply of free sanitary napkins.
Here’s the really weird thing.
The woman Trump was talking to said she had the only tape of the call and she lost it twenty-five years ago. So where did the tape the Post got come from? She thought it came from Trump himself.
So why would he release the tape?
It might be he wanted to get all of this stuff out in the open early so it wouldn’t come back later in the campaign.
Or, maybe Trump is playing this whole thing as a big game just like he was playing the promoter on the call. His objective is to show exactly how stupid the American people, particularly the Republican Party, is. And he is doing a fantastic job at that. He is doing everything he can to self-sabotage his own campaign. He doesn’t really want to be President. But the American people eat it up and want more. If this is the case, we can only expect the bizarre to continue and get worse until finally it stops working or he actually becomes President. And if it is the latter the game will be over and we will be left with an borderline insane person who really didn’t want to be President in the White House.
From the article:
…
Primeau Forensics located a C-Span interview from 1991 titled ‘Donald Trump on Economic Recovery’. We chose this recording as the ‘known’ Donald Trump voice for forensic comparison. We chose this older voice sample because it was closer in time to the ‘unknown’ recording.
The biometric software program that we used is a Speech Pro Product titled ‘SIS 2’. We formatted each speech sample based on training received from Owen Forensic Services and loaded them into the biometric software. The result was a 98% mismatch meaning the ‘unknown’ voice recording that surfaced in the Washington Post today is NOT the voice of Donald Trump.
The image below is a screen shot of ‘SIS 2’ with the test results highlighted.
…
http://www.audioforensicexpert.com/tag/voice-identification-2/
I’ll bet you had a subscription to True Detective, when you were a kid growing up.
Jim2.
Listen to the recording. It was him. Same speech patterns…sentence fragments…use of “btw,” etc. go ahead and listen, and then come back and tell us it wasn’t him.
To funny.
Joshua – he and his publicist probably were both from New York. They all sound alike :)
Anyway, you are just anti-Trump. Your perceptions is colored by hate. We can’t trust anything you say about him.
Any minute now Mr. Barron or Mr. Miller stepping will be stepping forward to explain it was them and not Donald, and to offer recordings of their voices to prove it.
jim2 | May 14, 2016 at 1:05 pm | got moderated
Josh – all those New Yorkers sound alike anyway.
==>> Josh – all those New Yorkers sound alike anyway.
Yeah. And have the same values.
The woman verified with Marla Maples that it was Trump on the call and Trump also took her and her editor out to a club as apology.
Of course he did, James.
Jim
From the WP article:
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/05/14/reporter-trump-leaked-own-tape.cnn
http://i.imgur.com/Qv1t0Yb.png
From the article:
…
Mexican officials are pursuing a counteroffensive to Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, reaching out to U.S. business leaders, looking at ways to better use social media, and even encouraging qualified Mexicans to get U.S. citizenship. But they’re also trying to stay sensitive about taking more high-profile steps, such as running TV ads in an already overheated presidential race that promote Mexico as a friendly, vibrant neighbor and not a cesspool of criminals.
…
But many in Mexico, as well Americans with family on both sides of the border, wonder if there are deeper issues at play.
Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who represents the major Texas border town of El Paso, said one Mexican lawmaker told him that “what’s alarming is not necessarily what Donald Trump is saying. What’s alarming is that Donald Trump is saying this, and it is resonating with a significant number of Americans.”
…
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/trump-mexico-backlash-223128
jim2,
The revolving door works in Mexico the same way it does in the United States.
Carreño’s background is in “the financial world,” including stints with Citigroup as well as other global money-center banks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMIl1_jqvas
Carlos Manuel Sada Solana is a former Priista politician from the Mexican state of Oaxaca turned career diplomat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oDSHTM2-SI
So when Carreño and Sada say their “clear and precise” mandate is to defend the interests of Mexico and Mexicans, which Mexicans’ interests do you believe they have in mind? The interests of rank and file Mexicans? The interests of Mexicans living in the United States without visas? Or the interests of the Mexican gazillionaires who have benefited enormously from globalization, NAFTA and neoliberalism?
If one listens to the second video linked above, the concern is over the anti-NAFTA rhetoric, which they say originates as much from Sanders as from Trump. Trump’s “racist” anti-Mexican rhetoric is a separate issue, also of concern. But one should not conflate the two issues.
jim2 | May 14, 2016 at 9:39 am | Reply : has been moderated
Well I guess the ‘Trump = Hitler’ analogy didnt have legs, so the Republicrat establishment is trotting out a new formulation, ‘Trump = ISIS’.
According to the new narrative, Trump’s success has nothing to do with events or issues, and everything to do with communication strategies. These are the same communication strategies, of course, that are used by ISIS.
The use of powerful graphics to peddle the ‘Trump = ISIS’ narrative is really over the top.
http://i.imgur.com/2KnkivX.png
Rice’s comparing Trump to John Bolton doesn’t fly, since Bolton is the quintessential neocon, and Trump is enemy #1 of the neocons.
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/05/14/exp-gps-rice-sot-trump-un.cnn
http://i.imgur.com/g4pVU8D.png
It’s full court press for the Republicrat establishment:
Trump’s great success on the campaign trail is because…….Drum Roll!……he uses the same communicaitons strategies as ISIS:
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/05/14/exp-gps-ramo-seventh-sense.cnn
http://i.imgur.com/F9dYkIg.png
Making it about identity politics:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/13/politics/trump-women-2016-campaign/index.html
http://i.imgur.com/sD91a2R.png
Let me get this straight…
You actually think that the media is responsible for it being about identity politics, and not Trump? Really?
Playing the woman card? Rapists and murders. Banning Muslim immigrants. Re-tweeting white Supremacists?
Actually, Obama has done more to divide the country by identity than ANYONE else, hands down.
jim2 –
Do you have any other form of argument other than “they do it to,” “they did it first,” “they do it more,” etc.?
Joshua,
Gloria Trevi warned against taking the bait, and said Latinos should not get down and wollow in the mud with Trump:
Latinos deben reaccionar con clase ante Trump: Gloria Trevi
http://www.excelsior.com.mx/funcion/2015/08/18/1040934
http://i.imgur.com/MaO5oQV.png
http://i.imgur.com/hOAOflf.png
They didn’t listen though, did they?
Vicente Fox: That fellow is going to die politically because of his big mouth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2A1ariS2P8
And it’s not like those who were paying attention couldn’t see what was coming decades ago, back when identity politics first became the rage.
Peter Skerry, writing in Mexican Americans over two decades ago, warned of “the consolidation of Mexican Americans around a racial minority identity.”
The resentment of the broader society will eventually emerge, he foresaw, because “the dominant thrust of Mexican-American politics will be that of elite-network.”
Josh says: Do you have any other form of argument other than “they do it to,” “they did it first,” “they do it more,” etc.?
**********
Just pointing out the reality of the situation. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and all that.
Donald Trump puts GOP in an impossible position
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/13/opinions/trump-puts-gop-in-impossible-position-opinion-setmayer/index.html
That’s for sure.
But in the orgy of trivia the Republicrat establishment and its obedient corporate media have unleashed, the fact that Trump has thrown down the gauntlet to the neocons and neoliberals in both parties gets lost.
It will be interesting to see if the Republicrat establishment and the MSM will have any success in leading the American public off on these bunny trails.
==> … and its obedient corporate media
Oh, brother.
They’re reporting on what Trump says. Do you expect them not to do that?
And Haidt thinks that the culture of victimhood is disproportionately found on college campuses.
The right-wing media (Fox and radio talk shows) don’t question Trump on any of this stuff, and that is all the Republicans pay attention to, so he won’t suffer much with the Republicans from the MSM trying to hold him more accountable.
So you know this because you listen to Fox News and Fox Radio all the time? I’m sure you do. Given how much you post here, between posting and listening to Fox, I guess you don’t do much else, eh?
I do actually. It is a very interesting perspective. Hannity, O’Reilly, Fox Report, Judge Janine, all the angry voices there. Amazing stuff.
So I guess you missed the dustup between Trump and Megyn Kelly?
I didn’t list Megyn Kelly because she is not one of the angry ones, and seems a bit more reasonable in holding oddball views to account rather than just nodding along.
Are you even aware that Geraldo Rivera, Juan Williams, and a wide variety of Dimowit point-talkers are on Fox?
Yes, I think the commenters O’Reilly argues against are quite good, Kirsten Powers too.
I’ve been tuning in to MSNBC more than FOX. I’m trying to feel their pain but it’s just making me smile.
The Republicrat establishment trots out another neoliberal guru to attack Trump.
Mark Cuban: I’d be Clinton’s VP if I can ‘throw bombs’ at Trump
http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/13/investing/mark-cuban-hillary-clinton-vp-donald-trump/index.html
I don’t believe his political orientation has anything to do with it. He is one of the ultra-rich that stay that way on the backs of foreign slave labor.
==> He is one of the ultra-rich that stay that way on the backs of foreign slave labor.
Are you referring to Trump?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-decries-outsourced-labor-yet-he-didnt-seek-made-in-america-in-2004-deal/2016/03/13/4d65a43c-e63a-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html
Fault Lines – Anaheim: A tale of two cities
Full court press……….
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/05/14/richard-clarke-on-a-trump-presidency.cnn
http://i.imgur.com/HVgHVhX.png
Full court press………..
Warning From the Syrian Border: Trump Reminds Us a Bit Too Much of Assad
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/warning-from-the-syrian-border-trump-reminds-us-of-assad-20160512#ixzz48f3fsdRZ
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
From the article:
…
The casino magnate Sheldon G. Adelson told Donald J. Trump in a private meeting last week that he was willing to contribute more to help elect him than he has to any previous campaign, a sum that could exceed $100 million, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge of Mr. Adelson’s commitment.
As significant, Mr. Adelson, a billionaire based in Las Vegas, has decided that he will significantly scale back his giving to congressional Republicans and direct most of his contributions to groups dedicated to Mr. Trump’s campaign. The two Republicans familiar with Mr. Adelson’s plans spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
…
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/us/politics/sheldon-adelson-donald-trump.html
“He is a candidate with actual CEO experience, shaped and molded by the commitment and risk of his own money rather than the public’s,” Mr. Adelson wrote, adding that Mr. Trump “has created a movement in this country that cannot be denied.”
Venezuela, future of the US …
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2016/05/13/saqueos-venezuela_0.jpg
The People’s Store…
Hey Judith, how about a new presidential election thread? All of windbag’s pictures and videos are making it slow,
i’ll put a new one up on monday
More full court press, trying to make it all about trivia and identity politics and not economic and foreign policy………..
Hillaryous. A new word to describe what it’s like watching Cr00ked Hillary thrash and fumble about looking for some dirt that will stick to Trump. Him calling up reporters pretending to be a publicist is hillaryous. Genius, brazen, playful… I here to tell this guy grows on you.
At this point I physically can’t NOT vote for him. I’m addicted. I need my daily fix of The Donald. I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next!
I’m thinking along similar lines.
The more they try to tear him down and sow doubt, the clearer it becomes how out of touch they are and afraid of him. That they are so out of touch is a pretty good indication their time has passed.
While Trump wouldn’t top my list of replacements, he appears to be the guy who will shake things up. Who knows, maybe even for the better.
Barbara Boxer cannot maintain order at Nevada Democratic Convention as she is booed down trying to rally the troops behind Hillary Clinton
The Republicrat extablishment is struggling to put down the Sanders insugency in the Democratic Party.
Can the elites put down the insurgency and unify the party before the general election?
Barbara Boxer, a Clinton supporter who, like Clinton, is an unrelenting hawk who never saw a war she didn’t like and is a long-time champion of the rich:
How did that stupid c*nt ever get elected? I swear to Chr*st a majority in California aren’t playing with a full deck.
Yep
Chaos At Nevada Democratic Convention; DNC Leaders Flee Building As Sanders Supporters Demand Recount
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/15/chaos_at_nevada_democratic_convention_dnc_leaders_flee_building_as_sanders_supporters_demand_recount.html
Chiefio nails it.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/05/03/dear-lame-stream-media-msnbc-in-particular-and-tptb-per-trump/
He sure does.
I wonder if the people he is addressing understand exactly what it means when the folks our current President referred to as desperately clinging to their guns and their religion are the same people Chiefio is talking about.