by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Energy, climate and the economy
Trump pledges ‘energy revolution’ [link]
Hillary Clinton contrasts her economic vision with Donald Trump’s [link]
Climate action a core ‘pillar’ of Clinton’s economic message [link]
Trump: “I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.” [link]
Hillary Clinton’s climate and energy policies, explained [link]
Hillary’s Energy Policies Enrich Wall Street Cronies – Breitbart [link]
Clinton: We Just Need to Build More Bridges and Roads to Have a Great Economy [link]
National security
The Atlantic: GOP security experts vs the GOP nominee [link]
On national security: Trump may lack experience but his detractors lack common sense [link]
Foreign Policy: Scathing House Intel Report on ISIS Fuels Trump’s Attack [link]
State of the candidates
Time: Inside Donald Trump’s meltdown [link]
Evidence accumulates indicating Hillary Clinton has serious health problems. [link]
Donald Trump gets day wrong twice while implying Clinton lacks mental stamina [link]
Pundits, take note: Narcissists aren’t “crazy.” They also aren’t likely to change [link]
The choice
NYTimes: You choose or you lose [link]
Is the ‘lesser of two evils’ an ethical choice for voters? [link]
The Clinton default mistake [link]
Why Are Elites Out of Touch? They Think Anyone Who Disagrees with Them Is Crazy [link] …
Gary Johnson
Can Gary Johnson Really Be the Commander in Chief? [link]
Gary Johnson: Trump watching Olympics to see how high Mexican pole vaulters go [link]
Dr. Curry,
I personally wish to thank you for this specific link: https://theconversation.com/is-the-lesser-of-two-evils-an-ethical-choice-for-voters-63738
as well as this forum.
Danny –
While I am certainly sympathetic to a view that “I won’t vote for someone I consider to be immoral because that person represents less harm than the other candidate” (I’ve been there many times myself)…
From what I’ve seen in this election, the “self-indulgence” point has been largely overlooked. Having had a few discussions with people who say they will refuse to vote for Clinton because they argue that the difference between her and Trump amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to world order problems, my take-away was that they were ignoring the relative impact of a Trump presidency not to themselves, but to those will be hurt the most. For just one example, I think of the potential impact of a Trump presidency to my Mexican-American “grandson,” whose mother is American and whose father is a Mexican immigrant. I think of the damage of him seeing someone who fear-mongers about Mexicans, and Mexican immigrants, elected as president. Despite that I don’t see a huge difference between Clinton and Trump policy-wise, and that I think that the fear-mongering about a Trump presidency is probably, if not definitively, overblown (because I think that he isn’t an ideologue, but a politician, who will, in the end, capitulate on the basis of political expediency), I think that elevating his brand of demagoguery may have a real impact.
I think of a reverse effect: In the end, I often wonder if an Obama presidency has really been much better in terms of certain large-scale policies, than a Romney presidency. Although I can see some reasons to think there have been, there are also a lot of ambiguities that play out in that counter-factual reasoning. But one thing is clear: Obama’s presidency has certainly had a dramatic and positive impact on young African American children.
Another example might be with climate change. According so some projections, the differential impact of what might happen in the next four or eight years with respect to energy policies of Trump vs. Clinton won’t have a meaningful long-term impact on the “pipeline” effect (because small-scale changes of the sort that are politically realistic right now can’t have much long-term effect). But, there is also the reality that a Trump presidency might shorten the length of the time-window when significant policy changes might have a meaningful impact, in the future, on the lives of those are least well positioned to adapt to climate change.
Has Trump somewhere suggested that the child of an American woman isn’t an American?
Amazingly enough, I agreed with much of what Joshua wrote here, except for this statement:
“But one thing is clear: Obama’s presidency has certainly had a dramatic and positive impact on young African American children.”
I fail to see the evidence for this claim.
RE Josh’s “For just one example, I think of the potential impact of a Trump presidency to my Mexican-American “grandson,” whose mother is American and whose father is a Mexican immigrant. I think of the damage of him seeing someone who fear-mongers about Mexicans, and Mexican immigrants, elected as president.”
Odds are there will be zero damage, unless his parents or grandpa fill his head with thoughts of how damaging it must be. Most kids are pretty resilient, care little for politics and don’t worry about stuff adults do, unless said adults force them to. So if your grandson has self-esteem problems because of what a politician is saying, I am fairly certain of where the cause of that lies.
==> Odds are there will be zero damage, unless his parents or grandpa fill his head with thoughts of how damaging it must be. ==>
Right. Cause he doesn’t watch TV and see the nominee for the Republican Party talking about Mexican rapists and murders. And there’s no chance that he’ll have a greater chance of getting racist comments from other kids about Mexicans.
Yup. No likely negative impact at all, unless someone sets him up for it. Must be why Trump has such strong support in the Latino community. Cause Trump would probably improve self-esteem for most Mexican-American kids.
Apparently your parents never controlled what or how much television you watched or taught you the lesson about sticks and stones. No one has more influence in how children develop than their parents.
Unless of course you believe in the “it takes a village” school of thought.
Once again, Tim, your logic (or illogic, as it were) leads you astray.
==> Apparently your parents never controlled what or how much television you watched or taught you the lesson about sticks and stones. ==>
Completely wrong. Although my parents required me to develop out my own sense of right and wrong, they certainly didn’t give me a free reign.
TTGG –
Fair enough. I’ve seen anecdotal reports on this, and it just seems like common sense to me that having a black president would have a significant “role model” effect on black kids who have a paucity of good role models of their race (I have seen that first hand working in mentoring programs), but I don’t know that there’s a lot of scientifically collected evidence.
Amen! A sliver of sanity in an insane world.
I think voting can be thought of as a much more strategic activity than casting a ballot for who you think is best for the job. It can be ethical to vote for a candidate that you abhor. For example, it has been observed that incoming Presidents typically have more clout/success after a decisive victory. If you think candidate X is the best of what’s available but you are not so enthusiastic about some of their propose programs and they are overwhelmingly likely to win, you may want to vote against them. I’m sure many people who think Hillary Clinton is the best option at this time, would none the less like to see her force to move to the center to attach more voters (as typically both candidates are forced to do n a tough election).
==> Why Are Elites Out of Touch? They Think Anyone Who Disagrees with Them Is Crazy [link] … ==>
Can you say cherry-picking? Can you say simplistic generalizations? Can you say painting with a broad brush? How about guilty-by-association?
–snip–
The experts told us that Brexit will not happen.
[…]
Baffled, the experts searched for an answer. And they found one: the people went mad.
[…]
Not a single expert has questioned his own beliefs.
–snip–
Notice how we go from
to “
.” (not to mention the embedded sexism).
While there are legitimate questions about the value of “experts,” why, in response to those questions, do people so easily tend towards the “We’re all a victim of the elitists/experts” line of reasoning, which is so often correlated with facile thinking such as displayed in that article? Nothing quite as identity reinforcing as self-victimhood, I suppose.
Brexit has been voted for, but it is unclear when (and possibly if) it will happen.
Latest ‘policy’ appears to be to wait for result of French Presidential (April – May 2017) and German Chancellorship election (August – October 2017), before Article 50 is triggered. Since it may take some months for new franco/german governments are formed and their policy formulated for the Brexit negotiating stance, it is likely that instead of January 2017, the A50 may not be triggered before January 2018 adding 2 years of haggling it may be sometime in 2020 before Brexit may happen.
In meantime in the two major supermarkets price of Italian pasta, French cheese and vine and Spanish vegetables has been creeping upwards in region of 3-5%. The UK £ fell sharply from about Euro 1.40 (sometime early this year) to today’s close below Euro 1.16, while the end to the tunnel of uncertainty may be long way off.
JCH, would you want to vote for Agenda 21? I vote against.
No, it’s voluntary. The sign of a good UN Agenda is the presence of mindless arbitrariness and coercive ruthlessness.
RE: Foreign Policy: Scathing House Intel Report on ISIS Fuels Trump’s Attack [link]
It’s pretty amazing how the MSM has all but burried this story, the same way it’s all but burried what ‘s currently going on in Turkey. What is transpiring in Turkey has the potential to dwarf in geopolitical importance what happened in Ukraine or Crimea.
Instead, the MSM has chosen to focus almost exclusively on the electoral spectacle between Clinton and Trump, and in the most superficial way possible. But behind the electoral circus are real interests and real policy differences playing out, if one cares to look behind the curtain.
Where is Toto when you need him?
Obama promised us “change you can believe in.”
But the only change we got was a “D” behind his name instead of an “R”.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Why would Crimea be a big deal? It seems to me the USA elites and media have a very sparse understanding of history.
DIVIDED AMERICA: Global warming polarizes more than abortion (Dr. Curry is cited).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/divided-america-global-warming-polarizes-more-than-abortion/2016/08/12/a0801952-609e-11e6-84c1-6d27287896b5_story.html
That story is a complete mess. It opens by noting that John McCain and George Bush were in favor of limits on CO2 “ten years ago” – that would be 2006- and since then the Tea Party (which was a fiscal revolt) changed that.
But later the story cites 1997’s Kyoto protocol as the moment “the parties split.” Which is kinda funny given that the US Senate rejected Kyoto unanimously for the same reasons the conservatives still reject “global action” – the unscientific willingness to give China, Brazil and India a pass, the reliance on policy and alternatives that don’t work.
But, as you know very well Segrest, there is bi-partisan support for expanding the use of nuclear power. Worlds waiting for you guys to give up your obsessions with government control and unreliable renewables.
Just to clarify, lest anyone be led astray by Stephen Segrest’s link to oh-so-dedicated climateer, Seth Borenstein’s typically superficial – and very slanted – take, at least Borenstein did not attribute such an “assessment” to our hostess. This is not to suggest that he was either honest or accurate in his depiction of Dr. Curry as a “self-described climate gadfly”.
Borenstein long ago glommed onto the “hoax” claim in order to discredit those who have chosen – for whatever reason – not to follow the Green brick road. He’s certainly not unique in this regard (nor is this his only fault, as a member of the mainstream press).
But much as we can do absolutely nothing to change the past, every time I see this particular attribution (i.e. “hoax”) by one of the “good guys”, I do so wish that it had never been used.
IMHO, this very quickly became nothing more than a stick, albeit not the only one, with which the climateers attempt to perpetually beat us at the drop of a virtually challenging byte – and to ignore or discredit any and all reasonable arguments contra their oh-so-frequently recycled claims.
Thus endeth my gripe for the day:-)
The story has been withdrawn. It’s even been removed from the Wayback Machine.</a?
This is an AP story published throughout the U.S. including the conservative Washington Times:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/12/divided-america-global-warming-polarizes-more-than/
A good discussion question is why AGW is more polarizing than abortion, and per prior Pew opinion surveys — a balanced budget or social security? Any research studies on this?
I’ve seen no studies covering that arena, but the ‘global’ vs. local issue likely would make any studies moot.
Try this: a divine punishment for abortion – you will fry in hell. Alarmist punishment for AGW – we will fry right here. Not right now; maybe in 500 years.
I’m not signed up for any of the comment posting methods, but if I were, I’d post this one:
Thanks for your continuing efforts. I do want to question, though, your inclusion of what appears to me merely to be malicious gossip concerning Mrs. Clinton’s health. If there’s a there there, why has it not emerged at, say, the Wall Street Journal–a respected national publication with editors who are certainly not promoters of Hillary Clinton? Thanks. Steve Corneliussen
As the gossip article citations indicate, Steve, this is emerging as a real issue. Hence it needs to be discussed and debated, so the posting is legitimate. We are certainly not going to confine ourselves to what the MSM says, far from it. That is the ugly strength of the blogosphere.
She did slip and break an elbow, and then again with a concussion. She did also slip on stairs and have to be steadied in February. One event is understandable. Three starts to look like a pattern of balance problems or worse. IMO not a big campaign issue compared to her energy policies and trustworthiness.
I trust she will ably defend interests of Rodham and Clinton families.
We have all seen that she needs a drink from time to time, she has always had a stressful job and today she is older that 62, it’s late now almost sundown. And still nobody likes her.
When cackling over Gaddafi’s death by bayonet to the anus she gave the impression of being (in Australian parlance) as full as a state school.
Quite frankly at her age and with their history, I am surprised that she even went for the job. Once she and Bill, would be out of office no matter where they went in the world, they will always be the talk of the town.
I wish I had someone to support me when I slip on the stairs. Which happens about, maybe, five times a winter?
But I’m not under constant photographic surveillance.
It would be better for your ability to climb stairs without falling if you had someone to hold your arm at the kitchen table to stop you from stuffing too much food into your fat face.
“But I’m not under constant photographic surveillance.”
Are you sure of that :) Hillary’s DNC stage sure looked like they were going for Big Sister.
David, do you really think she might have to do eighteen months in DC County Jail?
RE: Climate action a core ‘pillar’ of Clinton’s economic message [link]
From the article:
Here, let me fix that:
Good translation of doublespeak.
Thanks for this reminder of the reason I stopped subscribing or reading Time & Newsweek years ago.
These magazines have a long history as CIA propaganda.
The day after Trump RNC speech I saw a special edition of Newsweek with a huge swashteka (on the Germans). Just by happenstance it also had a subtitle about Trump. So millions of people walk by these newstands and get a subliminal kick of swashteka and Trump.
Very slick, pure CIA.
How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/cia-manipulates-media-hoodwinks-hollywood/
Hanna Arendt in Lying in Politics argued that:
Thank you for this drive-by comment, omanuel, which is less abusive than your usual ones.
Speaking of which, here’s Ronald Reagan daughter’s letter to Daughter Donald.
From the article:
…
It was the latest Trump media frenzy, and an example of the double standard: what Trump says is treated worse than what Clinton does.
The media have a left-wing bias because they share the left’s utopianism, and because most journalists entered the profession to “change the world.” But the way that bias operates has not been adequately discussed.
Comedian Evan Sayet notes that the modern left-winger rejects adulthood and romanticizes the narcissistic socialism of kindergarten. What that means for media bias is that Republicans are cast in the role of censorious parents, while Democrats are the rebellious, romantic teenagers.
As “parents,” Republicans are the constant targets of resentment — but are also expected to pay for what Democrats want to buy. If they disagree, it is because they are unfair. And they are never allowed to deviate from the principles they preach.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/08/10/nothing-trump-says-matters-much-hillary/
Hillary said in 2008 she was not dropping out just yet because you know, Bobby Kennedy got shot and inferred that maybe someone will clear Obama out of her way.
Double standard all the way down the line.
Harkin1,
She should never have made the implication. As far as double standards go can we then assume you’ll soon be calling for a Trump apology?
” UPDATE: Clinton’s campaign has put out a statement in her name, apologizing for the remark.” http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0508/Hillary_cites_RFK_assasination_in_explaining_why_shes_still_in_race.html
“As far as double standards go can we then assume you’ll soon be calling for a Trump apology?”
Trump referenced the 2nd amendment, he said nothing about anyone dying. I’m still not sure what Trump was talking about.
The apology should come from the news organizations saying Trump brought up death of a candidate (when he didn’t) without saying that Hillary actually did do it 8 years ago.
But projecting actions of a liberal onto a conservative is the MO of the liberal media.
You can nitpick, slice and dice, enable and encourage, and pretzelize. Or you can hold ALL of the candidates to a higher standard.
Interesting the choice you made.
Trumps words could rightly be portrayed in different ways. No one but he knows how they were intended. One with a little bit of class (assuming class isn’t not a bad thing) could say something along the lines of “that was not what I intended but I can see how folks might have misunderstood my meaning so to those whom were offended I apologize”. Simple. No loss of life. And maybe an increase in stature.
And silly stuff like this: “But projecting actions of a liberal onto a conservative is the MO of the liberal media.” can be taken further that: Making statements such as the immediate above is the MO of one who wishes to deflect and make it appear that all is the responsibility of the media and none to the individuals. It’s called enabling.
Context – staying in a race she was losing
Context – as an elected President, Clinton wants to repeal (a lie) the 2nd amendment of the constitution, and nobody will be able to do anything about it at that time – when she is an elected President of the United States of America… elected by your fellow Americans – well, except the 2nd amendment folks might be able to do something about an elected president by… let’s see… by… I know, by getting their disorganized selves organized.
LMAO.
JCH,
Whether Clinton wants to repeal the 2nd Amendment or not is, for everyone except Hillary Clinton, a matter of opinion.
What Trump has succeeded in doing, however, is to rase the specter of Clinton also wanting to repeal the 1st Amendment.
RE Trump’s 2nd Amendment comment:
Regardless of whether he was being his usual off the cuff sarcastic self or not, Trump was exactly right. The 2nd Amendment was specifically designed to allow citizens to take back control of government, should it ever use its powers to run roughshod over the people. Assuming Clinton wins and places up to a half dozen SC justices on the court, who expand federal reach and specifically go after the right to own and carry firearms, it would be the right of the people to resort to force. The 2nd Amendment exists to ensure no government can monopolize the means of force.
And Clinton accuses Trump and his supporters of having authoritarian tendencies?
Except that Beckel isn’t a Clinton strategist (and the comments were made – what? – 6 years ago?). He’s on Fox News’ payroll – what else would you expect?
Nah. He’s not “on Fox News’ payroll.” He’s on CNN’s (the Clinton Network News) payroll.
And speaking of Beckel’s views on violence, here’s a recent performance of his where he exculpates those who committed violent acts against Trump supporters.
Instead of blaming the violence on those who perpetrated the violent crimes, Beckel blames it on Trump’s speech crimes — “the inflamatory statements like Trump makes”:
When it comes to hyocrisy and double standards, it doesn’t get much worse than that.
But hey! It’s all in a day’s work for a Hillarymonger.
He has gone to his true ideological roots and works for CNN (Clinton News Network) joining all the full time Left Wing Loon journalists in furthering the network’s core mission-electing Democrats.
But I certainly get the picture. The violent crimes of Trump’s detractors don’t matter, but the speech crimes of Trump’s supporters very much matter.
Take this latest offense by a Trump supporter, for example, that CNN is having a feeding frenzy over:
Wow!
http://www.snopes.com/bob-beckel-julian-assange/
Surely this: “Many social media users inferred that the referenced comments had been made recently, but they originated with something Beckel in the course of a Fox News Channel segment about WikiLeaks aired back in December 2010,…………..”
Would NEVER happen.
No Trump supporter here, but watching the propaganda machine in full mode certainly reminds one of the tactics in the Climate Wars.
Agreed, except in reverse. Meaning ‘catastrophists’ (only Trump can ‘fix it’) have taken the form of Trump supporters while Clintonians (Clintonites?) are in support of the status quo (establishment).
Additionally, skepticism of the side with the least detail (Trump’s side) is non existent from the so called skeptics.
Interesting dynamics.
Absolutely out of line. Neither party, candidate nor campaign should be allowed to do so. Right Glenn?
Danny Thomas said:
Neither party, candidate nor campaign should be allowed to do what, Danny?
I’m pretty much a civil libertarian and don’t get too carried away with the Hillarymongers’ speech crimes.
It kinda harkens back to the First Amendment and a principle our country was founded on, a principle which the Hillarymongers have managed to stand on its head:
Clinton and infrastructure. US lost a net 2.9 million jobs under Obama. A figure partly hidden by those who have given up. Roads and bridges are mostly built by machines, not picks and shovels. There is no way that infrastructure spending solves the jobs problem.
It is sensible to raise gas and diesel taxes to cover the needed infrastructure spending. Gas tax has’t changed in decades. ~15 cents a gallon. Raise to $.45. Deficit neutral.
Rud,
“US lost a net 2.9 million jobs under Obama.”
Can you detail? Asking because the labor force has changed (just ask Amazon.com), more are retiring with an aging force, etc. Wondering if that’s a ‘fair’ number on which to lay at Obama’s feet or if some of that number is indeed a change in market conditions.
Ristvan wrote:
“US lost a net 2.9 million jobs under Obama.”
What a lie.
Go to the FRED database, run by the Federal Reserve of St Louis. Look up the time series for CE16OV, Civilian Employment.
Jan 2009: 142,152 K
July 2016: 151,517 K.
difference: +9.4 million
And that’s only if you hold Obama responsible for Bush’s crashing of the economy. Since a year after he took office, the gain in jobs has been 13.1 million.
David Appell: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CE16OV
Thank you for the link.
David Appell: And that’s only if you hold Obama responsible for Bush’s crashing of the economy. Since a year after he took office, the gain in jobs has been 13.1 million.
According to the graph, the economic growth tanked after the Democrats took control of Congress, and did not resume until after the Republicans had retaken the House and dramatically slowed Obama’s increase in Federal borrowing.
It could be a meaningless coincidence. Paul Krugman and some other liberal commentators have given Obama credit for reducing the annual Federal borrowing after increasing it as dramatically as he did and the Democratic Congress increased it, but the reductions in borrowing occurred after the House went Republican. Causal inferences are hard to justify, but the Congress ought not be overlooked completely.
Richard Tol Who is correct, David Appell or Rud?
Stephen,
Found the opinion piece with varieties of considerations which isn’t far off (actually a bit higher) than what Appell showed. This one tops off at 13.5 million. FWIW: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/01/08/guess-what-barack-obama-has-been-a-great-president-for-job-creation/?utm_term=.0448ca620feb
Side benefit of comparison with others back to Carter.
“How exactly is the “savings” from closing the coal-fired power plants to be recouped in order to cover the cost of the re-investment?”
Coal creates about $70 B/yr in health costs and other damage.
The govt pays about half of all health care.
So it has $35 B/yr to save by buying out the coal miners and shutting down all coal-fired plants.
This should happen *before* any considerations of climate change. Coal is a filthy fuel.
93 million Americans out of the workforce and those who’ve stopped looking for work are no longer counted in employment stats.
Change You Can Believe In!
“…93 million Americans out of the workforce”
Do you believe every piece of crap you read on the Internet? Or just what Drudge tells you to believe?
David Appell: Coal creates about $70 B/yr in health costs and other damage.
The govt pays about half of all health care.
So it has $35 B/yr to save by buying out the coal miners and shutting down all coal-fired plants.
My question was a “how question”. I appreciate the theoretical, calculation-based, argument that there is savings to be realized, but how is that savings to be recouped to fund the changeover? Put differently, I think that the costs of coal have been exaggerated as much as the cost of second-hand cigarette smoke, and the savings from cutting coal usage are likely to be as meager as the health benefits from ending smoking in public places.
It isn’t that there are **no** costs to coal-burning or second-hand smoke, but the costs have been exaggerated, and the benefits from ending them are much less than advocates (e.g. US govt agencies) claimed.
For an example of “how”, each time the coal consumption reduces 1%, perhaps 0.5% of the medicare/medicaid budget (the exact amount to be computed from the figures that you summarized in your post) could be reinvested instead into converting the next tranch of coal-fired power plants.
I expect that assiduous attention to detail will show that there will be no national or regional health benefits from converting coal-fired power plants to natural gas, but it will be interesting to see analyses based on health-care expenses during the time that the coal-fired plants have been converted to natural gas.
Appell
There are some things that are difficult to confirm. Then there are other facts easily ascertained. If you would have gone to Bureau of Labor Statistics 94 million out if work force on Google it would have come up first. The questionis why. There are many theories as to why from 1976 to 1996 there was an increase in the number
out of the work force of only 7 million while in the last 20 years that number has increased by 27 million. My favorite theory is its due to an explosion of whining Leftists expecting a free ride from those who make more money than they do.
DA, you posted a link to relative employment gains, not to delta total employment jobs.Nice but false diversion for the reason given: failed job seekers that left the market. Please go to BLS.gov for total job employment statistics since 2008 ( since Obama has been in office 8 years.) click on total employment, not annual deltas of relative gains/ losses. Look at total 2008 versus 2016. Use arithmetic to calculate the rough difference. You might learn something from official government statistics.
It is the same thing: the change in jobs since Obama took office.
You should be ashamed for lying like you did.
I see you do statistics David like you do climate science. At least we all know how accomplished you are at playing the fool.
PS: The FRED numbers come from the govt — BLS.
Look: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CE16OV
Trump re climate change: “There could be some impact, but I don’t believe it’s a devastating impact.”
Damn it, I hate it when I have to say he’s right.
Hillary Clinton’s climate and energy policies, explained: Win a Nobel Prize for shutting down American business.
We should buy out all coal miners with a $100,000/yr pension for life, and free health care for them and their family.
It’d cost < $10 B/yr, which is about $60 B/yr less than the damage created by burning coal.
We'd save loads of money, and lots of coal miners lives, too.
David Appell: We should buy out all coal miners with a $100,000/yr pension for life, and free health care for them and their family.
Don’t forget the cost of building nat gas powered power plants. Or are you also advocating the simple shut-down of coal-fired plants without replacement of the generating capacity?
And with what money are you paying for that changeover? Sales of natural gas from Federal lands? Savings on Medicare/Medicaid medical bills?
Power companies are building natural gas plants anyway — it’s cheaper than coal.
But include their cost if you want. We’d still save money in a very short period of time by getting rid of all goal and buying out the coal miners.
Like tobacco farmers…? Then, salt miners and sugar refiners and… automobile workers.
No, tobacco farmers have known the consequences of their product for decades. They’ve had plenty of time to transition to ethical crops.
David Appell: Power companies are building natural gas plants anyway — it’s cheaper than coal.
On that we agree, but why is an additional federal buy-out a good idea? A few power plants converted back from gas to coal when the price of gas rose.
How exactly is the “savings” from closing the coal-fired power plants to be recouped in order to cover the cost of the re-investment?
The buyout would be for coal miners, not plant builders.
Paying people not to work, the liberal answer for everything.
When their product does more harm than good, paying them not to work is financially smart.
“It’d cost < $10 B/yr, which is about $60 B/yr less than the damage created by burning coal."
Pure bunkum. How is it that you have no skepticism about how these numbers get generated? When numbers are generated by those whose self-interest and high numbers are coincidental, what kind of numbers do you expect to get? And how can you possibly convince yourself that they are to be trusted?
Buy now, save later! The more you buy the more you save. Now let’s borrow $10 B/yr from Chinese to start.
Heck, Barack T Firefly won one for not being George Bush.
That’s how low the Nobel Peace Prize has fallen, and we’re not even counting the fake ones claimed by Michael Mann etc.
Fred Singer: “John Christy, my fellow skeptic and fellow co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize (by virtue of having our names listed in IPCC reports) in the WSJ [ITEM #4]….”
http://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2007/November%203.htm
David dear: F in Chemistry. F in Comprehension.
Curious, I think Appell’s on the sauce early again. $70 billion. What a joke.
Why Are Elites Out of Touch? They Think Anyone Who Disagrees with Them Is Crazy
I give the people credit for finally catching on and realizing that the government scientists in Western academia that are passing themselves as climate experts have zero credibility.
Sounds like you’re trying to dismiss all the science you don’t like, without having to actually do any of the hard work of proving it wrong.
Easy. Also, lame.
Turn the scientific method on its head and call it science and what do you do then when asked to prove aliens are not the cause of global warming?
A question not worth the time to answer.
Dear David.
“A question not worth the time to answer.” Let me guess. You intuitively think that going down that analytical path would lead you astray. Lead you away from the conclusion you are trying to get to. Ergo, “It ain’t worth my time man.” Go suck an egg. At least you’d get some nutrition from that instead of the sucking up to the Left Wing meme of Global Warming Theories that are buttressed by junk science, lame interpretations, fiddling with data, and gross exaggerations.
When you start out with the basic assumption of ‘Utopianism,’ you find a corollary to be authoritarian collectivism and that to keep that scam going requires lying, finagling and all manner of twisted thinking. Therein lies the charm of the aphorism, ‘The truth will set you free.’
From a guy who wouldn’t know science (or labor statistics) if it came up and bit him on the ass.
Dr. Curry,
With a cursory check I was unable to find a previous version of this satirical piece I had posted in a different thread. I tried to change the parts I thought might have kept it offline. If this is also unacceptable, could you provide some guidelines that I’d be glad to follow? Given the many fantastical articles the Angry, old white guys have been linking to (Hillary’s hit man, Hillary killed Vince Foster, ad nauseum) that are replete with easily disproved lies, I’m unsure why this attempt at humor that is factually correct in every sentence (?) to the best of my knowledge would not pass muster. Well, actually, I’m almost certainly not going to be Raptured, or at least hope not, as who will run my Rapture Rescue business for pets left behind?
By the way, kudos on the Salby and follow up post. The amazing response, much of it technical and beyond my ability to judge accurately, was what brought me to your blog years ago.
This just in!!!!!1!!!!1
Brand new evidence of Clinton’s failing health. Kaine needs to hold her up at podium !!!!1!!!1!!!!111!!!!
There’s a pattern, I say, a pattern !!!!11!!!11!!!
http://www.msnbc.com/sites/msnbc/files/styles/homepage–3-2–830×553/public/584737436.jpg
Glad to see you’re concerned with Hilarious Godham Clinton’s health, Joshua.
Putting this on the most recent political thread.
From the article:
…
It was as good an explanation as I’d heard. But there was a fundamental problem with the decision that you can see rippling now throughout the West. Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections. Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.
Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.
The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”
And so the great separating incident at Cologne last New Year’s, and the hundreds of sexual assaults by mostly young migrant men who were brought up in societies where women are veiled—who think they should be veiled—and who chose to see women in short skirts and high heels as asking for it.
Cologne of course was followed by other crimes.
…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-global-elites-forsake-their-countrymen-1470959258
Thermalization prevents any significant influence CO2 might have on climate. Increasing water vapor is countering the expected global temperature decline from blank sun & decline in net ocean cycle temperature. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
Lack of engineering science skill has led to the ‘War on Coal’. Changing from coal to natural gas adds water vapor which increases the risk of flooding.
The wheel has come full circle. The hippies are voting for LBJ.
It’s the Foundation, stupid. (Oh, and those aimless, bungled, lose-lose wars.)
6 Problems With Media’s Hysterical Reaction To Trump’s ISIS Comments
http://thefederalist.com/2016/08/12/6-problems-with-medias-hysterical-reaction-to-trumps-isis-comments/
You put AQI together with ISI and what do you get? (Don’t forget to invite John McCain to the baby shower.)
Barry was probably a bit squeamish about all this heavy stuff and would likely have preferred some drones whizzing about somewhere and bombing inconsequentially, so I guess it was more Founding Mother than Founding Father.
Hill don’t chill when there’s some expensive hardware to be unleashed. Gulf ruler lives and arms industry lives matter.
Why Are Elites Out of Touch? They Think Anyone Who Disagrees with Them Is Crazy [link] …
“How can the people trust the elites, their government, when it refuses to state the reality?”
Therein lies the crux of the matter: leaders have fallen into the words of “political correctness.”
If we carefully parse the climate change story coming from both government and academia, we hear a litany of catastrophes into the future, and, when the future is too abstract, weather become the evidence for said catastrophe.
The climate scientists deeply engaged in manufacturing the politically correct dialogue such as Gavin, Mike, Kevin, James and others, deliberately obfuscate the inconvenient truths and hammer away at any and all scraps available to support the common populist story, the politically correct story.
Trying to manipulate the “great unwashed” has, over time, become more and more difficult as their control of climate information is weakened. It is almost as if a “Wikileaks” expose tarnishes the message, first as to its veracity, and then raises a conspiratorial specter, which, we have come to appreciate, is true.
Fortuitously, the “elites” as self described, not having earned their right to speak, rather, have assumed an authority not in evidence. What has been the elitists’ downfall for the time being at least, has been more information from more sources than ever before. True, such information can be confusing and not altogether reliable, yet, new perspectives to which the elites are having to respond to at an ever increasing rate. This leads of course to more errors, and, in particular, more revelations as the motives behind the disinformation provided to first mainstream media and then to the various academic and governmental agencies becomes evident.
The elitists are guilty of bad behavior and reflects directly upon these people as being an untrustworthy source of climate information. The elitists should not be regarded as saying anything important, just as people preserving a message that is currently “politically correct” which lacks substance, particularly in guiding governmental policy.
From the article:
…
UPDATE: Guccifer 2.0 Leaks Documents from NANCY PELOSI’S PERSONAL COMPUTER!
…
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/08/update-guccifer-2-0-leaks-documents-nancy-pelosis-personal-computer/
In United States v. Richard Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that not even the President could withhold evidence in a criminal trial. Is Barry immune from Congressional investigation?? From the article:
…
Having detailed Clinton-appointee Loretta Lynch’s DoJ push-back against the FBI’s Clinton Foundation probe, it seems Director Comey has decided to flex his own muscles and save face as DailyCaller reports, multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation, according to a former senior law enforcement official.
As we previously noted, a US official has told CNN…
At the time, three field offices were in agreement an investigation should be launched after the FBI received notification from a bank of suspicious activity from a foreigner who had donated to the Clinton Foundation, according to the official.
FBI officials wanted to investigate whether there was a criminal conflict of interest with the State Department and the Clinton Foundation during Clinton’s tenure.
But…
The Department of Justice had looked into allegations surrounding the foundation a year earlier after the release of the controversial book “Clinton Cash,” but found them to be unsubstantiated and there was insufficient evidence to open a case.
As so as a result…
DOJ officials pushed back against opening a case during the meeting earlier this year.
Some also expressed concern the request seemed more political than substantive, especially given the timing of it coinciding with the investigation into the private email server and Clinton’s presidential campaign.
However, as DailyCaller reports, The FBI is undertaking multiple investigations involving potential corruption changes against The Clinton Foundation…
…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-12/fbi-mutiny-feds-reportedly-launch-clinton-foundation-corruption-probe-despite-doj-ob
Is it any wonder that Hillary will fight for the right of every red-blooded Sunni male to make this woman wear a black tent like the rest of the loser Mohammedan chicks?
http://www.albawaba.com/sites/default/files/im/Asma-Assad-AFP-Miguel-Medina.jpg
(That’s Assad’s missus.)
I understand from actor Will Smith that this election is an opportunity to identify Trump supporters and “cleanse” them from American society.
As a Trump supporter I welcome this, although I am curious as to what form it will take.
I think this could restore a clear Democrat/Republican equilibrium. Sort of like returning too 350 ppm.
There will also be a shortage of plumbers.
Haven’t you learned by your age that celebrities almost always say idiotic things, and you should ignore them?
Or are you short on outrages for the day?
We are very familiar with Leonardo DeCaprio TYVM.
I didn’t exclude de Caprio. I also pay no attention to what he says.
Hey, something we can agree on.
Well considering some of Trump’s cruder statements I’d think a bar of soap in the mouth would be a good start to a cleansing. Apparently, given the highly-effective ad showing wide-eyed children watching the designated sociopath’s gauche antics, a lot of folks agree.
Will Smith might find its himself and others like him will be the ones getting cleansed. Probably by “second amendment” people as Trump likes to put it.
–snip–
Would you try to get the military commissions — the trial court there — to try U.S. citizens?” a reporter asked.
“Well, I know that they want to try them in our regular court systems, and I don’t like that at all. I don’t like that at all,” he said. “I would say they could be tried there, that would be fine.”
–snip–
So most of Trump’s stupid comments are just stupid comments, but there his ignorance is tantamount to promoting fascism.
Washington Post whistling past their graveyard.
Like I’ve said, the MSM is panicking. Good Riddance!
AK,
Interesting article. Best line: “Among Americans who were similar in terms of income, age, education and other factors, those who lived in places where people were less healthy had more favorable views of Trump. In these communities, whites are dying faster, there is more obesity, and people report more health problems.” No wonder they want a dishonest, politically inexperienced sociopath as our next leader. Misery loves company.
These are by and large people afraid of the future, and who think they can return to an age when they — regardless of others — felt more secure.
johnvonderlin and David Appell,
We haven’t seen anything like you guys — trying to classify your political enemies as emotionally or psychologically disturbed or unfit — since the Soviet Union:
Yeah David and John,
“We haven’t seen anything like you guys — trying to classify your political enemies as emotionally or psychologically disturbed or unfit — since the Soviet Union:” (prolly a conspiracy involving Putin?)
You guys should be ashamed as should anyone else who does similar: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/trump-questions-clintons-mental-health.html
“Donald Trump continued to roll out his newly framed attack on Hillary Clinton’s mental health on Saturday night at a New Hampshire campaign rally, declaring that she was “unhinged,” “unbalanced,” “incompetent,” and a “horrible, horrible human being” who is unfit to be president.”
sarc/off
More double standards Glenn? You Trumpmonger you.
And the problem wouldn’t be nearly so pernicious and dangerous if it were just loose canons making random comments on blogs. But unfortunately, it goes much higher than that. For example:
This is the same tactic used against CAGW skeptics. The Left, that’s just what it does.
“those who lived in places where people were less healthy had more favorable views of Trump.” One theory for that would be that they live in states that did not expand Medicaid (i.e. Republican extremist ones).
jim2,
It’s the latest twist on an old trick: using science to classify, diagnose and demonize an out-group.
The trick is to render all those within a large, heterogenous group as somehow having common physical, psychological and moral traits. The tactic has its origins in the Enlightenment, which in turn can be traced back to Platonic realism.
Some of the first out-groups the tactic was used against in the post-Enlightenment era were those delineated by gender and race. As María Elena Martínez explains in Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico:
The tactic has also been used extensively in the demonization of gay men. Richard C. Friedman explains in Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective that:
jim2,
The Hillarymongers and other assorted warmongers also use the tactic against Russians to beat their war drums.
Take this tweet, for instance, from Clinton mouthpiece Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. Try transposing “cultural DNA” from Russia to Blacks or Jews and see how it reads:
“those who lived in places where people were less healthy had more favorable views of Trump.”
That was from the stress of knowing your on Hillary’s hit list … that is if you survive. This caused a lot of eating disorders.
Danny Thomas,
Nice try at an ad hoc rescue, but no cigar.
The debate is about groups of people, and using pseudoscience (the misue of psychology and psychiatry) to place entire heterogeneous groups of people into tidy little boxes that can then be painted with a tar brush, using all the time-honored and customary tactics.
Your attempt to switch the debate to the individual candidates is a no-go.
Glenn,
‘Groups’? Are David and John the same ‘groups’ who wrote the articles you referenced? Or, might one be ‘attempting’ to ad hoc in their own way? Or might that be a form of strawman leading to a ‘victory’ once that strawman is torn down?
John & David are individuals. If one’s intent is to portray that individuals should be ‘shamed’ for their use of ‘pseudoscience’ then a ‘monger’ for a particular candidate (you for Trump for instance) should apply the same standards to all individuals, candidates included. Unless double standards are preferred.
Danny Thomas said:
Right.
And let’s review what these individuals said:
Danny, have you ever heard the old saw that says “When you’re in a hole, stop digging”?
Glenn,
You crack me up!
What did Glenn say after John and David?
“We haven’t seen anything like you guys — trying to classify your political enemies as emotionally or psychologically disturbed or unfit — since the Soviet Union:”
WE?
Danny Thomas,
There you go with your cutesy little rhetorical ploys again.
But again, no cigar.
Let’s review the entirety of what I said, and the part you conveniently ommitted:
Glenn,
Glad you thought it was ‘cute’. That was the intention.
From your initial comment saying: “We haven’t seen anything like you guys — trying to classify your political enemies as emotionally or psychologically disturbed or unfit”.
Again, I’ll refer you to ‘we’.
The part which “I conveniently omitted” came later: “The debate is about groups of people, and using pseudoscience (the misue of psychology and psychiatry) to place entire heterogeneous groups of people into tidy little boxes’.
Did you not place John & David in one group (your political enemies maybe?) and who knows who in ‘we’ (who have not seen) allowing ‘entire groups’ to be placed in ‘tidy little boxes’ (such as the soviet’s used, McCain’s ‘crazies’, et al?) ‘that can then be painted with a tar brush, using all the time-honored and customary tactics.”?
You might find removing that tar from your hands to be challenging.
Danny Thomas,
You’ve ventured off on your own little bunny trail again, standing up straw men and knocking them over.
Groupism — the practice of slicing human continua into parts, or even into dual poles, of like individuals who exhibit similar or common traits — is necessary if we are to think about the world or talk about it. That, however, is not the issue at hand.
The issue is
1) What is the purpose one engages in groupism? Is it to aid in understanding, or is it to stigmitize and demonize individual members of a certain group?
2) How realistic are the traits one attributes to an individual in a group by virtue of that individual being a member of the group?
3) If one attributes traits to individual members of a group that are unrealistic, that are prescriptive and not descriptive, and for the purpose of stigmatizing and demonizing individual members of that group, is that science?
Glenn,
Well at least I got credit for knocking them over. Thanks.
“is that science”? Nope. Not even close.
But you see, Glenn, the problem is from the groupings themselves.
1) What is the purpose one engages in groupism? Good question. Why did you choose to use the term ‘we’ when describing what ‘you’ve’ not seen? It happens all the time.
AK’s piece referenced ‘groups’ and IMO those were the ‘groups’ to whom John and David referred. John & David didn’t create them and you bundled them (John & David) with MSM. So why did you engage in ‘groupism’? Was it for the purpose of ease of ‘tarring’?
Finally, “and for the purpose of stigmatizing and demonizing individual members of that group” is that similar to labeling some with the term ‘hillarymonger’?
Think about it.
And FWIW I think the article to which AK referred is bogus.
Danny Thomas said:
Can you show me where I used the word “MSM”?
You need to get your facts straight, which you never seem to be able to quite do.
Furthermore, are you really going to argue that John and David’s arguments aren’t cut from the same whole cloth as those put forth in the four articles I cited?
As to the charge that you and your two fellow travellers are Hillarymongers, if the shoe fits, wear it.
Glenn,
Where the conversation started:
“AK | August 12, 2016 at 9:54 pm | Reply
Washington Post whistling past their graveyard.
Like I’ve said, the MSM is panicking. Good Riddance!”
And no, I’m not arguing that John and David’s are not ‘cut from the same cloth’. I’m arguing that between the comparisons drawn by you (your choice of words where ‘we’ and ‘they’, plus “if it were just loose canons making random comments on blogs” and since this is only one blog assume you must have seen others in which you’ve ‘grouped’ David and John,) then indeed you are doing exactly the same kind of ‘grouping’.
These shoes just don’t seem to fit!
By the by, Glenn, I’d asked you elsewhere what your motives are since you’re so concerned with mine. Walk like a Trumpeteer, talk like one, must be one? (It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone).
Danny Thomas,
I’m of the old school that believes that facts matter.
And the fact is that everything that you, John and David have expressed here is the same old boilerplate — the same old hackneyed talking points — that come straight out of Clinton campaign central.
Glenn,
Your honor. The witness is uncooperative. The response doesn’t go to motive. Please instruct the witness to respond cooperatively.
Everything, Mr. Glenn. Everything?
If that’s so then “EVERYTHING” you’ve and Jim2, and Springer said is straight out of Trump’s campaign. Oh. And before you respond, you’ve got to go back and reread all that Springer has written (some amazingly ‘distasteful’ and ‘classless’ so beware) including sockpuppets.
By the way, Glenn, you’ve just performed another example of ‘grouping’ just to point it out.
(But again, thanks for the giggles).
” No wonder they want a dishonest, politically inexperienced sociopath as our next leader.” Exactly what I thought of Hilarious Godham Clinton.
As we say in the horse biz, ‘Thirty years of doing the wrong this doesn’t count as thirty years of experience!’
Lets see,
I’m prior service, qualified in submarines, responsible for the handling and security of nuclear weapons, have 3 degrees in 3 different disciplines, published, have a decent paying job with excellent job security and am not angry at anyone. My grandparents and most of my aunts and uncles were immigrants. Coal miners. I participated in Boys State for the District of Columbia. Have several family members who serve or recently served in our armed forces, including our son, a Marine Lieutenant.
So run that bit about Trump voters being low income, low education, angry white folks by me again.
Out of fairness, Rud should equally take the same ‘external’ influences in to account.
The Conversation is just a wing of the democratic party. They are merely following the herd directive to convince conservatives not to vote at all while they convince liberals not to vote for Stein.
Uncle Bernie’s doesn’t exactly have any idea how the other 95% live either. He just bought his third house, this one on the beach. From the article:
…
Bernie Sanders, the socialist who challenged Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, is dropping fat cash on a hot new lakefront pad.
The income inequality expert reportedly bought a $600,000 “camp” on the Champlain Islands in Vermont last week, which he plans to use as a seasonal getaway locale.
Bernie’s new crib has four bedrooms and 500 feet of beautiful shorefront access on the banks of Lake Champlain. Sanders and his wife plan to keep their home in nearby Burlington, as well as their fashionable rowhouse on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
….
http://heatst.com/politics/bernie-sanders-buys-house/
Oh well. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
AirBnB and/or HomeAway makes places like that free to own if you have the chops to get a loan on it and furnish it. Rental managers will operate it on commission. You are first in line to book it of course at no cost except lost opportunity. And it’s always in pristine condition like a model home.
A Court Ruling That Could Save the Planet
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-12/a-court-ruling-that-could-save-the-planet
Courts know how to save the planet. The difference between God and a federal judge: God knows he is not a federal judge.
God answers prayers; the judge decides.
The roles of an eyewitness, an expert witness, and a judge:
– an eyewitness was there, saw it, but does not understand it.
– an expert witness was not there, but does understand it.
– a judge was not there, did not see it, does not understand it, but decides it.
From the article:
…
The Bradley Cooper ‘Outrage’: How the Media Invented a Controversy to Smear the Right
…
So when Mediaite ran a story with the headline “Conservatives Are Angry Because Bradley Cooper is Not Chris Kyle” about Cooper’s appearance, a reader would expect to see quotes from actual conservatives expressing their angst at Cooper.
There weren’t any. Mediaite simply culled a handful of Tweets (two to be exact), and a single Facebook post. The Tweet calling for specific boycott of Cooper came from a Twitter user named Nat Shupe whose Twitter account by all appearances shows he’s a conservative with pro-gun, pro-military views, but there’s no real way to confirm. Shupe is not a verified user and only has 107,000 followers total.
Conservatives were so outraged en masse by Cooper’s appearance at the Democratic convention that the only evidence was one Tweet. There were no prominent conservatives writing about it, or acting out on social media. No one cared.
But that didn’t matter.
…
http://heatst.com/politics/bradley-cooper-conservatives-media/
The credit for the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires goes to Bush. But the credit for the Syria and Libya quagmires goes strictly to Obama and Clinton.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Guccifer 2.0 has a new post today. Also, he entices journalists with “Dear journalists, you may send me a DM if you’re interested in exclusive materials from the DCCC, which I have plenty of.”
https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/guccifer-2-0-hacked-dccc/
He wrote today:
…
As you see the U.S. presidential elections are becoming a farce, a big political performance where the voters are far from playing the leading role. Everything is being settled behind the scenes as it was with Bernie Sanders.
I wonder what happened to the true democracy, to the equal opportunities, the things we love the United States for. The big money bags are fighting for power today. They are lying constantly and don’t keep their word. The MSM are producing tons of propaganda hiding the real stuff behind it. But I do believe that people have right to know what’s going on inside the election process in fact.
To make a long story short, here are some DCCC docs from their server. Make use of them.
…
What might yet turn out to be a ‘comprehensively’ entertaining set of events:
“But Republicans have reason to worry, too. Computer security researchers are linking one of the Russian groups that stole emails from the Democratic National Committee to a campaign that hacked the staff of at least three GOP lawmakers, as well as state-level party officials across the country.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/12/russians-suspected-of-hacking-democrats-also-went-after-republicans-researchers-say.html
Yeah and there’s speculation that the reason there’s nothing revealed on the GOP side is all they have is a conspiracy to not elect Trump which isn’t newsworthy. TIFWIW, caveat emptor, etc.
Speculation? From where? If MSM you know ‘they’ can’t be trusted, right?
Implicated???
This week’s Upshot lowered Odd Donald’sodds at 12%.
Hundreds of millions selling the State Dept, how much for the whole country
This week’s 538’s forecast puts Double-Digit Donald’s odds lower than losing at Russian roulette.
Willard
Immediately prior to the Brexit vote ‘leave’ was said to have only a 23 percent chance of winning
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-latest-odds-80-per-cent-live-betfair-coral-bookies-remain-leave-brexit-winning-ahead-a7093296.html
Whilst higher than the Donald’s chances there are still some three months to run in this seemingly interminable presidential race. Lots of time for plenty of upsets. Mind you, I view either of the main two candidates winning with considerable misgivings.
Tonyb
Bookies versus Nate Silver…
Jch
I am not much of a betting man but if I could get odds of ten to one on Trump I think it would be worth a punt. As our general election and Brexit showed, bookies are not always right.
Tonyb
Hi Tony
The major test of the foreign policy, for who ever wins, it’s going to be reaction to the resurrected ‘friendship’ between two strong men, Putin and Erdogan who is in charge of the NATO’ second largest armed forces.
Putin is preparing for finalising the the Crimea land bridge sometimes this autumn, shrewdly taking advantage of the current US foreign policy ambiguity. His new ‘friend’ Erdogan feels let down by both US and Europe, thinking “if my good ‘friend’ Vladimir can have Crimea, I can have Syrian Kurdistan since I’m more important to Vlad as a new ally than it is the tiresome Assad”.
It appears Trump couldn’t care less whatever happens, while Clinton would be all talk no action, not that she could do much about either of two scenarios.
Vuk
I think the idea of America leading the western world died around eight years ago. Iconsequently I guess Putin will do whatever he wants but am not sure that he and Erdogam have enough in common for them to forge a lasting new relationship
Tonyb
Tony
‘friend’ I said.
No, not permanent friends, just some mutually tolerated executable interests.
The absolute rulers always have enough in common.
Come to think about it, Crimea Trump hotel would be a prestige exclusive venue, lot of nouveau riche Russians hang around there summers and winters.
Pat Caddell, a Democrat pollster, claims that the media are rigging polls to put Hilarious Godham Clinton ahead.
I can assure you that we already knew that is the case.
I didn’t know that but it’s good to know. I hope the ‘we’ you refer to is in the millions!
Daniel –
You seem like a very analytically oriented person. As such, I’m wondering if you could explain the methodological basis for the claim that the polls are “rigged.”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-arent-skewed-trump-really-is-losing-badly/
Nate Silver’s 5,739 explanation of how he ffffd up his Trump prediction:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/
I meant: Nate Silver’s 5,739 word …
Justin –
Perhaps you might step in for Daniel and provide an explanation of how the polls are skewed?
Here’s a link for you for j. Scott Armstrong’s site. He’s a noted “skeptic” and has a well-established record in predicting election outcomes. Maybe you could write to him to inform him of his errors?
http://pollyvote.com/en
Joshua…did you listen to Democrat Caddell’s explanation? You do know that the Left Wing Press, or, in other words, the NotFox press is a collective team for Hilarious Godham Clinton, don’t you? And you do know that the NotFox press has an honesty score that falls a tad bit below that of a used car salesman? You do know these things, right?
Or, are you just interested in the statistical methodology that was employed? If so, follow Caddell. I do believe he’ll lead you to a more thorough description of the sleight of hand the Left Wing MSM are using.
==> …did you listen to Democrat Caddell’s explanation ==>
Explanation? He gave no explanation. He just said “I looked at it…trust me.”
On the other hand, the pollsters are explicit and transparent about their methodology.
So tell, me, Daniel, what are the methodological flaw that return sjewed results?
What is the name and year of the last successful Democrat presidential candidate for whom Pat Caddell did work? Carter, 1976.
His own network, Fox, has Hillary up by 10 points. How does he explain his ideas to his new boss? Probably very carefully.
Jim D, you may not have noticed this but the current word on the street is that in the global realm the coins are being made by two faced, two bit journalists. When asked to answer poll questions now I only give them a mix of disinformation.
Not rigged IMO but they probably don’t have a good representative mix of voters this election cycle. This not like any other election in modern history.
They just have to find where the angry old white guys live. One study found that a key county-level indicator was what they called the people with a “more distressful white experience”.
I wish highly educated people would stop citing the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s junk science at its finest. Read their paper. It’s really astonishing how bad it is. (The popular conclusion flies in the face of common sense.) They substitute ‘assumption’ for controlled variables, use off-the-shelf definitions that are ambiguous at best and like Karl et al, just ‘swish’ past places that beg for clarification and keep right on moving to their preconceived conclusion.
With all the work showing that the majority of papers in psychology, sociology, and health care are not reproducible, not rigorous in the use of statistics, have faulty designs, etc., it would behoove everyone to be skeptical of such research. And, indeed, following up on the Dunning-Kruger paper are researchers world-wide who have been unable to reproduce the same results.
Here is a key statement in their research: “…people who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. We attribute this lack of awareness to a deficit in metacognitive skill. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s.” People can be forgiven for misinterpreting this mushy hash of ambiguity by thinking that the D-K effect means people who perform worse than others think they perform better than others by virtue of their ‘deficit in metacognitive skill.’ So what does the D-K effect mean? It means I’ve asked someone with no skill in a particular area to perform and then, without any knowledge of the skill, judge their performance. They found that the people, who had no knowledge of the area thought they performed better than they did. At this point, I want to vomit at the idea of paying two salaries and funding research with tax dollars for this garbage. It’s no wonder that people have turned it into what it isn’t. As I said, JUNK SCIENCE.
> Read their paper.
I did. Have you read the subsequent studies? Here would be a relevant starting point, featuring DK Donald:
If you could put forward an argument instead of hammering the table with “junk science,” DanielH, that would be great.
Willard, for being a person who is an ‘auditor’ and wants to get your own points across… how do you think you have been doing over the past year?
Willard – do you consider yourself competent to comment here on CE?
Nice try, jim2.
Seems that Distorted Donald is having more GOP problems:
http://bigstory.ap.org/2faea10578944e11be20eb4824cd29ad
Willard cites:
Political director for former President George W. Bush?
Now there’s an unbiased and impartial assessment for you.
Nice try Willerd.
Campaign performance:
Trump had 16 competitors across the Republican spectrum AND the entire republican establishment doing everything they possibly could to keep him down. He cut through all of them like a knife through butter and spent hardly any money to do it and what he did spend was out of his own pocket. No campaign has ever done that well.
Clinton on the other hand struggled until the bleeding end to defeat just a single competitor who is an admitted socialist, an independent who caucuses with democrats. And she had the entire democrat establishment including DNC officials doing everything they possibly could to keep Sanders down. And Clinton spent money like a drunken sailor to pull off that unimpressive win.
Based on campaign performance Trump can’t lose. If you’re going to argue that he can’t win you need to pick something more defensible. “He says mean things” seems to be the best argument. Good luck with that.
Unrescued Donald did not go as planned, Big Dave:
Saying controversial things is a feature not a bug.
Anal retentives don’t get that.
Let it go.
So do you have any specific points of contention with my analysis of the two campaigns? I understand why you wouldn’t. It’s just the facts. But I didn’t take you for a guy (or girl I don’t know) who let facts get in the way of his beliefs.
> Let it go.
Tell that to all to Unrescued Donald’s team, Big Dave, or all those who care about Ribald Donald.
“It suggests that some voters, especially those facing significant distress in their life, might like some of what they hear from [DK Donald], but they do not know enough to hold him accountable for the serious gaffes he makes. They fail to recognize those gaffes as missteps.”
Perhaps they just want someone who is prepared to talk about what they see as important, rather than someone whose first response is a “The real question is…” diversion.
Certainly here in the antipodes, the popularity of Pauline Hansen is, IMO, exactly that – she may not line up with what I feel is appropriate for any particular issue, but she’s prepared to put those issues on the table unlike the “mainstream”, and despite the media’s insistence that, eg, failing to take into account someones race is actually racist.
I’d rather have an honest red-neck in charge than a lying, self-interested, egomaniac (both sides had one of the latter as leaders at the last election here, IMO) Mayhap the same is true there, at least in the opinion of some voters.
> I’d rather have an honest red-neck in charge […]
You might like to review what your fellow antipodean Jim Jefferies said to those who believe that [a href=”http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/watch-australian-comedian-that-crushed-the-nra-nails-trump-supporters-as-dumb-as-sht/”]Dodgy Donald[/a] is a straight talker.
Willard, “I did. Have you read the subsequent studies? Here would be a relevant starting point, featuring DK Donald:”
You did? Really? And you thought it was a good piece of research? Interesting. From all of what you copied and pasted anyone might think that you’ve adopted the common interpretation of that paper which they have denied and clarified BUT then who could blame you when Dunning, in the article you cited, does the very same thing.
You think Dunning’s clever by half article is a relevant starting point? In fact, it’s no starting point at all. If their hypothesis is what is rejected it won’t do to merely puke out some more of the same nonsense. It leaves one no further ahead and just as bored with the thin veneer covering yours and Dunning’s bias and prejudice. I can understand why you’d like it to be true but quoting 50 more studies of the same nonsense won’t make it so.
Consider Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and HRC. I am told by the NotFox news media, on a daily basis, how smart, how bright, how intelligent are the last two and that the first, when he was running for President and during his first and only term, that he may possibly have had the highest IQ of any President evuh! And yet, all three are screaming failures. (Ever notice how the Left has great adulation for verbal intelligence as though that was the alpha and omega of it?) I wouldn’t trust anyone of them to take care of a dead chicken or lead a class of grade school children to lunch without getting most of them run over and the rest of them lost.
We are treated to the stark raving hilarity of one of Obama’s fan boys saying the reason Obama is such an egregious failure at war is because he’s too smart. I kid you not. If he were just dumber he’d be great, like George Bush. But Obama sees, with his great intellect, too many variables, and is led astray into the swamp of failure. No one, to my knowledge, has come forward to rescue Carter or Clinton and explain their F’Ups and failures but I’m sure it will be just as hilarious as the one’s provided for Obama.
Now, Williard, wouldn’t you say something is amiss here? Just slightly ajar? There is some confusion about what is intelligence? These articles written to soothe the aching breast when contemplating the major F’Ups of Obama are all ex post facto rationalizations but they are entertaining. I’m not sure D-K actually understand the problem with the research they did. At least, in reading the article you cited, Dunning seems to show no awareness that he’s using the concept in a way he said they never meant it to be used. Of course, he may just love the adulation and attention he gets from using it that way so the hell with academic integrity and, hey, it’s all for the good cause of promoting the world-view of the elites and academics and Lefty Progressivism so what’s a lie (wink wink) among friends if it’s for a good cause. Taqiyya anyone?
Whataboutism doesn’t compensate for your lack of argument, DanielH.
Please, do continue your political rants.
jim2,
better trenchcoat willie spend his time here than his usual haunts.
Daniel,
I was so shocked when I learned that half of American school children, despite the best efforts of our educational system, perform below average, that I did vomit. Having had Trix (It’s not just for kids you know) for breakfast it was more of a Technicolor Yawn though.
Since when drivers are asked about their skills, 90% rate themselves above average, I assumed our education system should be as successful. It must be all that JUNK SCIENCE they are eating is giving them FAT HEADS.
Like in Cryptozoology, I’m assuming after a supposedly mythic critter has several names it’s got to be out there somewhere or else under my bed. This Wikipedia excerpt seems to indicate that might be the situation with the DK (once something is known by its initials any refutation is impossible. Just CYA and hope for the best) Effect.
“Illusory superiority is often referred to as the above average effect. Other terms include superiority bias, leniency error, sense of relative superiority, the primus inter pares effect,[1] and the Lake Wobegon effect (named after Garrison Keillor’s fictional town where “all the children are above average”)
Could this be a case of everybody being equal, but some of us are more equal than others? I’ll ponder that on the way to the vomitorium.
Sweden’s first Muslim minister (minister for higher education) faces jail sentence for driving under influence of alcohol.
Considering it is holiday season and many Brits drive to Europe, BBC has published list of drink-drive limits (grams per litre of blood) :
UK, Malta: 0.8
Scotland 0.5
Germany, France, Spain, Italy: 0.5
Sweden, Poland, Estonia, Cyprus: 0.2
Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia: 0.0 – no alcohol while driving
United States: 0.8
From the article:
…
Terror on Swiss train as passengers are attacked by man with ‘fire and knife’ leaving carriage covered in blood
…
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/terror-swiss-train-passengers-attacked-8624527
The Trump sarcasm cycle is too fast for some. Republicans, like Giuliani, went to press defending his Obama/Is!s statement, only for him to leave them in the lurch with retracting it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-isis_us_57add89fe4b069e7e504c67b?section=&
Trump, probably realizing this, or getting complaints from those he left out to dry, later eased up on his retraction.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-obama-isis-sarcasm_us_57adc4a6e4b071840410d086?section=&
From the article:
…
In a statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News, Dr. Ward slams McCain for supporting his friend Hillary Clinton’s globalist agenda for decades. “John McCain can hardly bring himself to utter the name ‘Donald Trump,’ much less explain why he supports ‘the nominee,’” Ward says. “If it were not an election year with a close primary, I’m sure he would have already thrown Trump under the bus in order to do his normal political chameleon routine.”
McCain was censured by Maricopa County Republicans for betraying Republican Party values in 2014 and has been routinely criticized for only pretending to be conservative during election years.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/13/exclusive-dr-ward-calls-out-mccain-for-disingenuous-donald-trump-support/
I think the Bush clan is behind the never trump “movement.” They are upset the coronation of Jeb didn’t go as planned. I’ve had enough of the Bushes. May they and their ken fail and fail again.
I think Trump is behind the Never Trump movement.
I think Hillary is behind Anybody but Hillary movement.
No sarcasm here. I am serious.
Twit Pelosi has invoked “Watergate” in connection with the G2.0 hack. She wishes!! From the article:
…
EDGARTOWN, Mass. (AP) — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warned fellow Democrats on Saturday to change their cellphone numbers and not let family members read their text messages after personal and official information of Democratic House members and congressional staff was posted online.
Pelosi told Democratic lawmakers that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other Democratic Party entities were the target of “an electronic Watergate break-in.”
…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pelosi-warns-colleagues-harassing-calls-messages-194244818–politics.html
I hope Obummers daughters got an invite. From the article:
…
First-ever marijuana fair opens in Oregon
…
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/First-ever-marijuana-fair-opens-in-Oregon-9140951.php
From the article:
…
According to the RealClearPolitics average of opinion polls, which are performed by calling people on landlines and cell phones, and answering questions on websites, Clinton leads with 47.8%, to Trump’s 41.0%.
…
How can Zip’s results be so different?
“We’re not a poll. We’re a conversation, and 100% anonymous,” Militi says. “People feel comfortable answering questions without fear of being bullied or being called a racist. People can express themselves safely, and you get a pure answer.”
…
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/08/13/app-maker—trump-win-election/88640044/
— ”New polls suggest Trump is getting crushed by Clinton. Do they reflect how you are going to vote?” Some 64% told Zip they would vote for Trump, compared to 36% for Clinton. In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, Clinton leads Trump, 42% to 36%.
Oops! WordPress throttled G2.0’s blog!! I wonder what will happen to WordPress now? From the article:
…
GUCCIFER 2.0 HACKED DCCC
Some content on this page was disabled on August 13, 2016 upon receipt of a valid complaint regarding the publication of private information. You can read more about WordPress.com’s private information policy here:
…
https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/guccifer-2-0-hacked-dccc/
Trump is still getting extraordinarily large audiences at his rallies. The polls seem to say that shouldn’t be happening. It isn’t the usual Republican crowds either.
Evangelicals aren’t terribly excited about Trump but they’ll all vote for him because of his Supreme Court picks and VP. Evangelical church leaders are very political, dedicated, and have almost captive audiences. There’s not really an equivalent to evangelical churches for organization and number of highly dedicated people. But it’s not the religious right showing up at rallies.
Principled republicans faithful to the neocon platform aren’t excited but they’ll all vote Trump even if they don’t publically admit who they vote for. They’ll vote for Trump because of his Supreme Court picks and vice president. They aren’t the ones packing the halls at Trump rallies either.
So who is it? NASCAR fans. People who go to sports bars. People who visit the VFW or American Legion regularly. White blue collar working class. Union people. A staggering number of them and their wives and children. Who knew there were so many and they would become so passionately political? Demonstrably none of the usual political prognosticators that’s for sure. That’s what happens when you have never spent a lot of time in flyover country. I have. I grew up in flyover country. A small depressed railroad, lumber, and factory town. They are not all American Legion but they are indeed legion.
PHOTOGRAPHS: Trump rallies vs. Clinton rallies
a; https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpoVBy8VMAIuFSQ.jpg
Impeach Barry asked:
Didn’t you get the memo from Clinton campaign central?
It’s racists packing the halls at Trump rallies:
I think it is the kind of fascination you get with a slow motion train wreck. They just go there to hear him say his catchphrases, make faces, gesticulate in funny ways while saying something new and controversial for the next news cycle, perhaps mixing it up with people protesting in the crowd, or demeaning the press. Celebs draw bigger crowds than politicians, whatever they are saying. Even I might go to see that. It can be very humorous according to the highlights we see. A free comedy act.
Well I’m glad to see that you and Joshua have it all figured out.
Maybe. But his fund raising reflects a populist movement too. He raised nearly as much as Clinton but his were millions of small donations not thousands of large ones.
If it weren’t for fear of being a branded a racist I think the public events would be much larger.
Hooray for secret ballots, eh?
I also enjoy watching BHO, when he gives a speech, you must laugh when he fills his mouth with hot air while he purses his lips together and puffs his lips all while under his control, I have mimicked it myself but am not able to be certain about just what he is feeling inside. What is it Jim D, you know him better? What do you empath, this is not sci-fi Jim D, this is important stuff?
Assuming they really are secret.
It occurs to me that Trump has actually caught an important point: his concerns about vote-rigging, and search for supporters willing to help monitor the process, may be more useful in helping people feel safe in voting as they choose:
— Scott Adams
This goes in spades for polls. Does anybody really believe today that the telephone polls (where they have to have your number to poll you) can be relied on not to pass your position on to local thugs?
Much less Internet polls. Those of us who understand the Internet know how much effort it takes to hide your identity. Those who don’t probably assume they’ll know who you are because “that’s how they catch cybercrooks, isn’t it?” (And they’re more or less right.)
So there’ll be quite a few people who plan to vote for Trump who either won’t participate in polls, or will tell them what they want to hear. And we all know what that is, don’t we?
There’s only a limited number of angry old white guys, and the numbers just don’t add up on the other demographics that Trump doesn’t care about and usually insults.
Divorce Donald:
Hooray for secret ballots, huh?
Probably won’t do much good. She’ll probably ask, and probably can know when he’s ly1ing.
There are plenty of fish in the sea, especially for an older, well-off man.
If she’s serious he should cut the bitch loose now not wait until November.
There’s a similar husband and wife team who are voting Trump and Clinton towards the end of this video. But they are much more amicable about their differences:
Check this out. An intact copy of guccifer2 dot wordpress dot com on 8/13/2016.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160813030041/https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/
All the information that Twitter and WordPress “disappeared”.
Where did you go man?…
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/12/globalists-unite-hillary-clinton-running-mate-tim-kaine-dines-george-soros-son-donald-trumps-rise-terrifies-world-elite/
Early dinner, fake, fake, fake.
The unbearable stench of Trump’s B.S.
That’s right. “Unbearable stench”: If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan. Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.
At this point substantive issues are certainly taking a back seat to tabloid spectacle. It’s the only way Hillary wins.
We’ll see if any substantive issues get interjected into the campaigns between now and November 8.
I’ve tried three times to leave a reply here, and three times it’s vanished into nowhere. No “waiting for moderation”, no message that I’ve already submitted a comment with this content, nothing.
#comment-803491
#comment-803492
#comment-803493
This seems like a strangely selective sort of “database error”.
Substantive issues, eh? Do you think they are important? If Trump said he was going to turn the oval office into a casino and spend his time talking about how he won I’d still vote for him. Substantive issues are good things, who could deny that? But they have no place in an election. That sounds really dumb because it goes against the accepted wisdom of the ages. But that wisdom is wrong as it rests on a couple of mistaken assumptions.
I think the most important thing one can know about a candidate for the WH is if they have any ability, any experience, any talent for leadership.
In this regard, clearly, Trump is Einstein to Clinton’s Elmer Fudd.
The next thing I want to know is what do they think/feel about America. Are they proud of this country, do they love it and its culture and its people?
What do they think/feel about the Bill of Rights? How does the notion of individual freedom display in their lives. Do they treat people as individuals whose own lives are the means to the individual’s own ends or do they treat people as members of a collective where they are endowed with the importance of the collective and the individual’s ends are to be used by those higher in the pecking order, for their own ends?
It would be lovely to have someone who wasn’t a total economic illiterate like Clinton and Obama ( and especially Sanders) but those things can be learned if a person is serious and not an ideologue. As for other issues, it’s enough for the candidate to sketch out a vision, a direction, the tune to which they want to dance. The steps will come later and will require a lot of input from a lot of people so detailed policy positions are enormously boring and excessively wasteful of time and money.
It should go without saying that a person’s basic honesty is important. If they gave Nobel Prizes for lying, Clinton would have a room full of them.
AK,
By this comment of yours it appears that you think Trump will be the next Obama!
Trump won’t be the “next Obama”. He’ll be the first Trump. As for how much difference that makes…
But my point was that Fareed Zakaria, and the MSM in general, don’t seem to notice any “unbearable stench” except when Trump does it. And not even as president, just candidate.
Also see my comment here. (I ran into some problems with WordPress vanishing my comments without trace because I used a certain word. If I were working a test log here, I’d be looking in the code for a hard-coded exclusion in an unexpected place.)
Check this out. An intact copy of guccifer2 dot wordpress dot com on 8/13/2016.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160813030041/https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/
All the information that Twitter and WordPress “disappeared”.
Thirty Things Donald’s Advisers Managed to Persuade Him Not to Do Last Month
Shadow Donald:
Lying Willard,
It’s amazing how the Clinton mouthpieces manage to take factual reality and turn it on its head. It’s not Trump, after all, who is clamoring for US full spectrum dominance. Quite the contrary, it’s Clinton and her fellow neocons and liberal internationalists who are peddling that toxic notion.
And any number of studies have revealed that it is the elites, and not the hoi polloi, that cling most fervently to national mythologies of greatness:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/148844611656/the-greatest-cognitive-dissonance-trap-of-all-time
Scott Adams: The Greatest Cognitive Dissonance Trap of All Time
Here’s the set-up:
1. The mainstream media knows they are smarter than Donald Trump. They see evidence of this truth all the time, although much of that evidence is confirmation bias.
Then…
2. Trump does something smart – accusing Obama and Clinton of being “founders” of ISIS. This is a clever way to get the world to debate Clinton and Obama’s ineffectiveness during a time when ISIS expanded. In other words, it is brilliant media manipulation, and it worked.
3. CNN and other Clinton supporters interpret Trump’s statement about ISIS as absurd and uninformed because they can’t imagine a scenario in which Trump does something brilliant. Trump being brilliant isn’t one of the options, as far as they know.
The reality of Trump’s clever persuasion is crystal-clear to anyone who thinks Trump is smart. Trump was clearly joking about the “founder” part to get people squawking, and it worked. Total success. Brilliant technique.
Now the media has a big problem. They can’t admit that they were extraordinarily dumb in this situation and Trump was brilliant. That reality is invisible to them because it doesn’t fit their worldview.
So…cognitive dissonance happens.
This is a textbook set-up for cognitive dissonance. The facts we observe (Trump is smart, the media is gullible) is opposite of the media’s worldview in which they are smart and Trump is uninformed. So what do they do?
They act as if Trump is the dumb one in this situation. Because that fits their worldview.
And…they…fact-check his claim.
Meanwhile, the unhypnotized laugh themselves into a stupor watching this spectacle of cognitive dissonance. Humor aside, it is a marvelous and incredible thing to behold.
One of my smartest friends just emailed me to say he thinks Trump really believes that Obama and Clinton “founded” ISIS. My friend has a very high IQ and he’s well-informed. But cognitive dissonance isn’t influenced by intelligence. He believes whatever fits his worldview. Just like the rest of us.
The fun part is that we can see cognitive dissonance when it happens to others – such as with my friend, and CNN – but we can’t see it when it happens to us. So don’t get too smug about this. You’re probably next.
I think this story will end up in psychology textbooks. You rarely see such a clean example of cognitive dissonance in public.
Oh, and Trump hates babies, and he also wants a 2nd amendment supporter to assassinate his opponent. As long as the media is being dumbasses, they might as well fact-check that stuff too.
I have never been so entertained.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/148844611656/the-greatest-cognitive-dissonance-trap-of-all-time
Scott Adams: The Greatest Cognitive Dissonance Trap of All Time
Here’s the set-up:
1. The mainstream media knows they are smarter than Donald Trump. They see evidence of this truth all the time, although much of that evidence is confirmation bias.
Then…
2. Trump does something smart – accusing Obama and Clinton of being “founders” of ISIS. This is a clever way to get …
–more at link
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/148844611656/the-greatest-cognitive-dissonance-trap-of-all-time
Scott makes s good point. Demagoguery and fear-mongering are genius, AND hilarious.
Oh, and don’t forget, Trump is amazing because he is a genius at manipulating the press when though he is a victim of the press. Just amazing. Bends the universe to his will.
“Scott makes s[sic] good point. Demagoguery and fear-mongering are genius, AND hilarious.”
Duh, well I don’t know Joshua, you’re a pretty smart fella and ‘demagoguery’ is a pretty big word but I betcha you’d think the very same statement out of Obama’s mouth would be wisdom and out of Trump’s, ‘demagoguery.’ Now, what ya call that, smart fella?
And what was it that Western philosopher said about fear mongering? Oh yeah, ‘One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.’ I bet you could explain that to us red blooded, blue collared, white guys, us being D-K afflicted and all.
Boy, you smart fellas sure are clever. Have you ever noticed how the Left loves closed systems, self-referential systems? You know, like Islam, Marx & Freud. Systems where your disagreement proves you’re an idiot. Intellectual whack-a-mole! Great stuff.
I love it.
Maybe the ones who really suffer from a bad case of the Dunning-Kruger effect are the establishment elites lined up behind Hillary Clinton, and not the common folks lined up behind Donald Trump.
Muslims have done things to make it look like they are being harassed before. I would put the odds at 70% the shooter is Muslim. From the article:
…
Queens, New York–An imam and his associate were killed Saturday in Queens, NY, shortly after leaving the mosque where they were saying their afternoon prayers.
The victims were identified by the NYPD as Imam Maulama Akonjee, 55 and Thara Uddin, 65. Both men were shot at close range in the head, just a block away from the mosque shortly before 2pm. The Imam was pronounced dead at the scene, while Uddin died four hours later at Jamaica Hospital.
The shooter, according to Deputy Inspector Henry Sautner from the 106th precinct, remains at large. According to Sautner, the shooter is a “male with medium complexion dressed in a dark polo shirt and shorts.” The authorities added that the motive has not been determined, but community members, predominantly Muslims, are calling the crime a hate crime. Most blame the shooting on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
“That’s not what America is about,” Khairul Islam, 33, a local resident told the Daily News. “We blame Donald Trump for this. Trump and his drama has created Islamophobia.”
…
Oh, the link …
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/13/new-york-muslims-blame-donald-trump-imam-shooting/
Here’s the first part of the reply I tried to leave above (breaking it down trying to analyze why it won’t post):
I doubt “substantive issues” make that much difference. People, IMO, shouldn’t be voting for presidents over their positions on “substantive issues”, because once they’re on the job, they’ll have lots more information and the issues will have changed anyway.
People should be voting for the person. And I wonder who regular voters think stinks worse: somebody “like that guy we have all met at a bar” or somebody like Hillary.
(to be continued)
Here’s the rest (I think I found the problem):
Two things I noticed about this article: you remember all those accusations by Hillary about something between Trump and Putin? Turns out they’re based on BS: “I got to know him very well because we were both on ‘60 Minutes.’”
Then Clinton comes along and builds an entire conspiracy theory based on his “bullsh1tt1ng”.
I think regular voters are smart enough to see through Clinton, just as they’re smart enough to see through “that guy we have all met at a bar”.
Second thing is, Trump is willing to change his approach based on new information. To the extent his “bullsh1tt1ng” is more than an expression of momentary emotional state, it will be subject to change when he has access to all the information a president has.
He can be flexible according to circumstances.
Contrast this to Hillary (Obama
2.01.2) who carried through the same failed policies and destabilized the whole Middle East.AK,
Scott Adams, from the link Impeach Barry furnished above, may be onto something.
Adams offers an explanation for something I have wondered about: Why does Trump continue to play the role of clown in this silly spectacle the MSM has choreographed so meticulously? I for one would like to see him move on to more substantive issues.
Here’s Adams:
So, according to Adams, the tactic Trump is using is a way Trump can put more substantive issues on the table for debate, a debate that the establishment elites from both the Republican and Democratic parties — now solidly lined up behind Clinton — wish to avoid at all costs.
I have an older quote from him in m0deration, but I agree and he’s right to be amused.
That comment makes an interesting point about polls, when it gets out of m0derati0n.
One of his proxies also started blaming him for Afghanistan, triggering this Twitter meme.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-katrina-pierson-twitter-mocks_us_57b02fcfe4b069e7e5059a58?section=&
Here’s the second part:
Two things I noticed about this article: you remember all those accusations by Hillary about something between Trump and Putin? Turns out they’re based on BS: “I got to know him very well because we were both on ’60 Minutes.’”
Then Clinton comes along and builds an entire conspiracy theory based on his “bullsh1tting”.
I think regular voters are smart enough to see through Clinton, just as they’re smart enough to see through “that guy we have all met at a bar”.
Wow! If I use the word “bullsh1tt1ng” with “i” where I have ones, the post just vanishes into nowhere.
If you see that guy at the bar, he is probably trying to sell you a Rolex. Bit dodgy. Wouldn’t fall for that smooth talk. “Trust me, it will be great” (not).
“If you like your health plan you can keep it”?
AK,
Would you like to buy this ‘rolex’?
“If you like your health plan you can keep it”?
“I’m the only guy who can ‘fix it'”.
All sound similar and like words that would come from the mouth of a B.S. salesman don’tcha think?
Trump=Obama?
Not as simple as you think. While the ACA allowed health insurance companies to grandfather existing plans, it was the health insurance companies that removed the old plans. The government did not have the ability to force health insurance companies to keep them.
Jim D,
“The government did not have the ability to force health insurance companies to keep them.”
Then, except to make the ‘sale’, why did Obama choose those words?
Really is a lot like Trump.
Trump doesn’t even have a glimmer of a plan. At least ACA was already fleshed out to where they could state that they would let insurance companies keep older plans. Little did they know insurance companies would not. I doubt they could have extended the law to force that either. It was hard enough getting it past the insurance lobby as it was.
JimD,
“Trump doesn’t even have a glimmer of a plan.” That’s just wrong.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform
Deductible premiums and more importantly (IMO) the ability to purchase across state lines are strong. Repeal Obamacare as a broad stroke is not.
Obama goofed on that one (assuming he wasn’t being sarcastic:))).
What about Medicaid expansion so everyone can actually afford it? Or a national-level public option for efficiency of scale like Medicare has? Hillary has a form of this where you can sign in to Medicare at 55. Getting the insurance business out of this is the right direction.
JimD,
“What about Medicaid expansion so everyone can actually afford it? Or a national-level public option for efficiency of scale like Medicare has?” Should be evaluated. CBO project.
But that belies the statement that ‘Trump doesn’t have a glimmer of a plan’. Hillary’s is a side discussion.
“Getting the insurance business out of this is the right direction.” Governmental DEMOLITION of a multi-multi billion dollar industry seems a bit ‘socialistic’ (or stronger) approach. Governmental cooperative approaches are better until the governmental input is no longer needed.
Insurance leeches off national health needs. It would be like if you had to support the police and fire stations through insurance payments. These are government roles. They should be supported via taxes, not payments to middle-men.
You should be exiled to Cuba.
JimD,
You’ve crossed the line to silliness now: “Insurance leeches off national health needs.” So do doctors, pharma, bed manufacturers, ambulance manufacturers, paper mills, computer and software companies, ad nauseum.
And one part of the equation you seem to forget is that ‘national financial needs’ leech (really don’t like that word choice here) off the insurance industry via a little something called the stock market. Keep in mind that most of these companies are ‘publicly’ held.
Explain the value added to your healthcare by the insurance man. I missed that part.
Go read a few books on how insurance works.
It seems to work to profit and sustain the insurance companies.
JimD,
Just experienced it. I’m not bankrupt (yet) and someone covered just had P.E. $20,000 (inflated, but not what insurance paid) for aPO. 4 days in intensive care (still don’t have all the costs but what I’ve seen is high). Received immediate care (see Canada for wait timeshttp://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/canada-wait-times-deadly-and-take-longer-than-ever/ {not clear on veracity but our Canadian friends might chime in}). All because we had insurance. I’d call that value. And none of that considers my ROI from stock ownership. It’s called a hedge.
One concern was a requirement to return to state as follow up coverage was unavailable for ‘out of network’. Added benefit were ‘crossing state lines’ for competitive reasons available. But it’s not as currently offered.
Do you have Obamacare? Are you familiar?
Mine is through work, not directly through an exchange, and these larger shared plans tend to be very low cost. HDHP plus HSA. Seems fine. Not had to use it in any significant way. What would your costs have been if you were too poor to afford insurance and if your state did not cover the Medicaid expansion? These are the people to be concerned about.
JimD,
“What would your costs have been if you were too poor to afford insurance and if your state did not cover the Medicaid expansion?”
Zero. Family with health issues who’ve not been able to work for probably 30 years are covered via medicaid. They’ve been unaffected by any sort of expansion.
But I’m a participant. I pay the premiums, deductibles, and overages.
Obamacare, IMO, is an expanded version of medicare. I’m a fan. But your proposition is an expansion of the VA (effectively) and while I’m for the concept surely we agree the execution is less than optimal.
You do know Trump is a fan of HSA’s right?
I am guessing by VA you mean government-run hospitals. These work OK and the NHS is popular and highly appreciated, even if not perfect, in Britain, but that doesn’t have to be the route. More like Medicare. I have nothing against HSA’s. There should be private hospitals and heath options for the wealthier who want to pay more for some extra benefits.
Sometimes it’s better to wait to make plans till you’ve reviewed the information.
Anybody who understands the first thing about insurance would have known they probably wouldn’t. Not when preex exclusions were forbidden.
And if Obama didn’t have any idea whether the insurance companies would let them keep their plans, why did he promise they would?
He was bullsh1tt1ng!
If they had they’d have put the insurance companies out of business. And, in the process, savaged plenty of voters’ retirement portfolios.
I have this feeling you’re just pontificating about another subject you’re totally ign0rant of.
You mean they made all sorts of different promises in different directions? Yeah, that’s sorta obvious.
They might reasonably have expected the insurance companies to grandfather the plans. Anyway blame the insurance companies at least as much.
JimD,
“They might reasonably have expected the insurance companies to grandfather the plans.” and they may have ‘expected’ the other 20,000 pages to have followed ‘the plan’ perfectly also. But is that really reasonable?
Obama overreached.
“Anyway blame the insurance companies at least as much.” So that sounds like you indeed are ‘blaming’ Obama for that overreach?
Insurance companies are private for profit entities. Government is not. Obama left zero room (margin of error) in his statement.
Not if they understood anything about insurance.
Nope.
Not at all.
The insurance companies did what they had to do to protect their stockholders’ value. Obama made promises in their name he had no business making.
For every person complaining, you probably find ten who are happier. Has anyone done the poll on better/worse? The thing is that those who are better off are much better off, in a life-saving way in many cases. Those who are worse off are marginally worse off. Those who are poor even have the Medicaid expansion to help them pay.
Steal from anybody who has any money, and throw it away on the “poor”.
In almost civilized country except the US everyone gets healthcare, and I don’t mean just emergency treatment, but clinics and preventive forms of medicine. It should not be a matter of wealth whether they do or not. What the heck is wrong with the US for not seeing this as a basic right?
It’s not a “basic right” and never has been.
It is in nearly every other civilized country, and you can see why from a moral standpoint. A nation should be judged by how its poorest citizens live.
And “nearly every other civilized country” is leaching off the US for their new drugs.
Why should the US people pay more when they developed the drugs in the first place? If money is needed for medical research that should be separate from getting it via US insurance company customers.
If you don’t understand the difference between “the US people [who] pay more” and those who “developed the drugs in the first place” you really should be exiled to Cuba.
Like money for “climate research”?
Are you opposed to the government investing in medical research too?
Pretty much. The return tends to be far lower than research by free enterprise.
See here: https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/12/week-in-review-politics-edition-6/#comment-803624
If the government did drug research, they would get the ownership of the drugs too, which solves some other issues, such as holding patients to ransom.
What drugs?
The ones they funded the development of.
“All of them have projects that are shovel-ready.”
The stimulus package was one of the main ingredients to get us turned around after Obama came into power. He wanted to continue it past 2010, but Congress said no, hoping that the recovery would not be so strong that they would lose in 2012. Instead they implemented the highly regressive budget-capping tactics to slow down the recovery.
“Trust me, it will be great” (for the first few days).
“Trust me, it will be great” (for the first few days).
Yep. Sounds a lot like Trump!
Trump=Obama?
“Shovel-ready” means shovel-ready, not “shovel-ready in 3 years.”
What was the context of that statement?
There’s 20 million ore mpeople who now have health insurance, and none of those pre-condition denying, payment capping, money-based decisions by insurance company bureaucrats are now allowed to interfere with your health treatment (see Sicko, 2007). It’s a better state. Not perfect, but more humane.
Yup.
And I have little sympathy for anybody who believes it.
Perhaps. A little. In this respect.
But unless you’re going to claim it isn’t also true of Hillary, the choice has to be made on other grounds.
The last PotUS I can think of who even might not have indulged in such bullsh1tt1ng is Reagan.
So we have to look at other factors. But my point was more about how the MSM only detects an “unbearable stench” when it’s Trump.
Bad MSM.
AK,
Maybe ‘shovel ready’ and ‘you can keep your doctor/health plan’ were just sarcasm?
IMO no. YMMV.
I doubt many who bother to follow the links I provided would think that. Especially the Youtube link.
AK,
I know they weren’t and presumed I didn’t need a sarc tag. Just a jab at the ‘Trump’ approach for when he gets caught being silly. Figured I’d take a shot at (this time) Obama equaling Trump. (Gotta be even handed ya know) : )
(Sorry, but I’m in a location where I can’t stream videos so couldn’t view the Utube).
Like the Soviet Union. IIRC housing for everyone was built into their constitution.
Would you prefer that?
I’d prefer that you, Obama, and all your ilk got slid through a time/space warp back into the 1950’s Soviet Union. It would be much better for the rest of us, and you might even learn something.
Reagan’s way of bs’ing was saying he didn’t remember.
Who’s supposed to pay for this?
Who’s supposed to pay for this?
Who’s supposed to pay for this?
It works out cheaper to have Medicare for all. Efficiency of scale. Single-payer means reduced bureaucracy. Better bargaining position with drug companies. Why do you think drugs are so much cheaper in Canada and Europe?
Only at first. Like the fake Rolex.
But with multiple corporate bureaucracies, they compete. Customers can choose. Drug companies (i.e. their stockholders, boards, and CEO’s) have a strong incentive to control their bureaucracies.
Government bureaucracies are like cancer: they grow till they destroy their host society.
Thus, no new drugs, because the drug companies see no way to recover their R&D expenses.
Because their laws essentially prevent drug companies from recovering their R&D expenses. They still can make a little money on marginal profits once they have the drugs, but only the US and other non-socialized medicine countries allow them to recover R&D costs. Once they go, so do new drugs.
Your bureaucratic solution ends up being a race to the bottom. The cheapest is the worst, but you don’t find out where they have cut corners until you need them. A very poor model for a healthcare system where lives are at stake.
Nope.
That’s just your opinion, and history doesn’t agree.
And a no-choice government bureaucracy like the VA is better?
Your alternative is a highly regulated insurance system with certain mandates, but that is the ACA.
JimD,
“A very poor model for a healthcare system where lives are at stake.”
Lives are always at stake. And none are perpetual.
I like Trumps proposition to allow crossing state lines and increasing market competition. And wonder what you think about the consideration to allow deductions for coverage? Gets us to a similar place and does so w/o destruction of multi billion dollar industry and who knows how many American jobs.
Increased competition leads to a race to the bottom unless it is strongly regulated like the ACA does. Allowing it to cross state lines is just a tweak to the ACA system, so what are the pros and cons of that? While we have national-scale insurance, what about having a public option to compete with it? It could be like opting into Medicare with an increased payroll tax.
JimD,
“Increased competition leads to a race to the bottom” and what, may I ask, does NO competition lead to.
Since your concern is the insurance industry ‘leeching’ off the health care system where will you draw the line? Janitorial services (let’s socialize ’em)? Contractors who build hospitals? Suppliers of construction materials? Security guards (yep, hospitals have ’em)? Transportation systems to transport patients? Paper clip companies? Software firms? Waste disposal? I assume you recognize that each ‘leech’ off the same system. So I wonder why it’s acceptable for some to ‘leech’ and some not. And who gets to choose?
No competition requires regulation which is what the ACA does. Now, the government is allowed to have contractors for vital roles, but insurance is more like an appendage than a necessity, so it can be lopped off without affecting the healthcare system. See the distinction?
JimD,
Ok. Let’s try this via mental experiment. Let’s say that something called a ‘sequestration’ occurs. Temporary layoffs (except ‘vital’) means only docs and nurses work. Trash builds up. Repairs go by the wayside. Might be a few other impacts: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/sequestration-federal-agency-impact/
Why are you so opposed to insurance? (Gotta go, but will look later)
Not sure what you mean. Health insurance is not needed if you pay a national insurance to the government, which is what the payroll tax is. If you can think of an advantage of having multiple insurance companies as middlemen each dealing separately with hospitals and drug companies, and skimming off for bureaucracy, say what it is. There would be a role for private insurance that gives some access to private hospitals or special sections within hospitals, which would be available for the more wealthy who don’t want to mix with the riffraff, but they would still be paying the payroll tax to support the national health system including their own Medicare for the future.
JimD, never one to let facts get in they way of his beliefs, states a fallacious belief that universal health care is widespread. In fact, it is not. Only 58 countries have it. Here’s a map:
link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_coverage_by_country#/media/File:Universal_health_care.svg
Russia, India, China, Mexico, almost all of South America, Asia, and Africa have virtually no universal health care. Maybe Jim D thinks most of the world is not civilized. Not sure what kind of mental gymnastics it takes to deny this particular bit of reality.
These are the countries you look up to?
I don’t look up to any country. There’s a few I look down upon but China, India, and Russia aren’t among those I look down upon. Those three alone are civilized countries certainly and represent billions of people. You’re so full of crap your eyes are probably brown, Jimmy, and your claim that almost all civilized nations have universal health care is dead phucking wrong unless you redefine civilized in some bizarre to exclude most of the inhabited world.
Thanks for your input.
Competition.
It’s an enormous advantage. We need only look at what happened when Xerox, IBM, and especially Ma Bell were finally broken up.
Much faster technological progress, lower prices, people had their choice of products such as phones, message machines, etc. By now, we’ve got convergence among cell phones, computers, browsers, etc.
The FCC still has a part to play, but the drive is from various companies, competing with one another in a framework overseen by a bureaucracy that answers to companies, customers, and Congress.
What’s most important is to eliminate independent government bureaucracies. They should primarily be working in service functions to the economic sectors made up of private enterprise.
They should also answer to Congress, and through them to the people, but they should not be bastions of independent power.
The trend these days is towards merging, monopolization, price-fixing. This is not good for the consumer or the industry. How would you stop that apart from maintaining state boundaries? What if the Chinese or Europeans wanted to buy one of these insurance industries to funnel profits elsewhere or consolidate into some global effort? Lots of questions.
Yes, there’s too much of that. I don’t see regulation as the optimum way to correct this, but it’s what people think of first, and it’s not entirely unworkable.
How would I?
My approach would be to more completely formalize the expectations built into counter-party agreements by corporations. Thus, in a merger/acquisition situation, the resulting entity would be more on the hook for previous obligations of their new component parts.
This could in principle be done without new regulation, simply somebody taking the effort to shine a light on counter-party agreements so the deal-makers have much more incentive to formalize their expectations into contracts.
Of course, the way people think these days, I suspect many would call for regulations rather than spending the extra effort doing it “right”(as I see it).
Always. But a simplistic “throw the baby out with the bath-water” approach isn’t indicated just because there are questions.
I have not looked into why they prevent selling insurance across state lines, but there must be a reason. If they did, i suspect some states with lower pay (think Alabama) may become the headquarters of the national insurance agencies because they can reduce bureaucratic costs. It would also reduce jobs through consolidation. What’s not to like?
Neither have I in detail, but I suspect it has to do with competition between neighboring states’ different regulatory regimes.
I doubt it. AFAIK most large insurance companies have national organizations, and state companies are little more than shells, along with the needed local staff.
Again, I doubt it. The only thing that could be consolidated would be IT staff, and I would assume the well-run ones already use a single staff to maintain a single system that encodes all the state rules, and just applies the ones appropriate for the state involved.
The problem with different regulations in different states is that they’re different, the advantage is that they can compete. A business, for instance, can move its offices across a state line, if the superior environment, including insurance regulations, which allows everybody to see how the differences in regulations actually work out.
This was part of the original intent of how the US was set up.
I disagree. Large national organizations will undercut and outcompete local mom-and-pop type insurance companies, leading to the kind of consolidation seen in other service industries, and lots of money funneling to fewer and fewer people.
You clearly don’t understand the insurance business. “Large national organizations” are already by far the most competitive players in this business. And “local mom-and-pop type insurance companies” have been totally non-competitive for centuries. Literally.
Unless you mean agencies. But those are tied to the “large national organizations” they represent.
If you are saying removing state lines doesn’t lead to more consolidated business operations using economy of scale, I am not sure I follow. Why would you need separate offices in Texas and Alabama when Alabama can sell to both? Reduces jobs too.
You see, one of the reasons I so often seem angry at you is that you don’t bother to read what I say.
Operations have already been consolidated.
They don’t have separate offices. They just have IT systems that can apply different rules.
All they have is local offices, needed for local interactions. Those wouldn’t change. (And most of those are actually agencies anyway.)
And is “reducing jobs” a positive in this election year where both candidates are promising to increase good-paying jobs?
OK, so the idea of selling across state lines must then be getting the same plan as they sell in Alabama when you live in Texas. Is that what it is? This might mean the folks in New York would get some really good deals. Or will the Alabama prices rise to a national level, not so good for them? How does it work? Does everyone win?
I’d guess so, but as I said above, I haven’t looked into it in detail.
Now you’re getting into the good questions. I’d guess that letting state regulatory bureaucracies directly compete (which is what I think your suggestion would lead to) would be big headache for all the bureaucrats. It might also require a bunch of IT work by all the big insurance companies.
Bureaucrats deserve headaches, and deserve to be fired
if they can’t deal with them, but I suspect the benefits for both companies and customers would be small relative to the headaches they’d experience.It might work better for states whose regulations are inferior to change to be more like those with superior regulations.
But one question does occur to me. Are these “cheaper” plans in, say, Alabama, really covering the same thing as the more expensive plans in Texas?
Another major issue is that most insurance is group insurance (typically by employer), and most regulations (AFAIK) are intended to standardize how much healthy members of groups are required to subsidize less healthy members.
So if you allow people to buy plans under different states’ regulations, would the healthy people all flee to Alabama, leaving the groups in Texas full of people with expensive conditions?
Insurance regulation is a very complex issue, and IMO ObamaCare was a simplistic monster that just barged through and made things worse.
While selling across state lines sounds good to the layman, I can see that it is fraught with issues like adjusting for the expenses of the local hospitals, etc., which are best done locally, and then you lose any benefit or uniformity, which can only be truly done with a public option.
A “public option” is far worse. You just won’t see the problems with it until they’ve occurred, by which time it will be too late.
That’s where we differ. The countries using this option have no thoughts of going back.
That might change if they no longer have access to the results of US drug research.
Healthcare is 99% not about that issue.
No, there’s also issues such as wait time for emergencies, people being allowed to die because a single, non-competitive bureaucracy decides they’re not entitled to expensive treatments, and so on.
Your solution being…?
Think it through a lot more, and try to incent the free market rather than replace it with a government bureaucracy.
I’ll agree the old employer-paid medical plan system is done for. I just don’t think either single-payer or ObamaCare are the answer.
One thing I think needs to be considered is the rapid disappearance of jobs. Adding new jobs in an expanding health-care industry might help, but fitting this into the current “economy of scarcity” based system is difficult.
But you can’t solve a big problem by pretending that 99% of it doesn’t exist. Which was what “ObamaCare” did, and, bringing it back to the original subject, Obama spouted bullsh1t trying to sell it. Because he wanted to divert attention from the fact that the plan failed to solve the problem.
The goal is universal health care including preventive care and neighborhood clinics. By giving more people access, you may get more jobs needed in healthcare. Drugs would be cheaper, and other ways are needed to fund their research. They never resolved the drug company issue with Obamacare because of their lobby which prefers to deal with multiple insurance companies than one big government. It is big money, and it affected some key Dem senators. So we have a hybrid system which no one would design from scratch. It came from compromise, which is the way government works. It removed most of the biggest problems in health care, but some remain, primarily it not being universally affordable due to the ability of states to opt out of the Medicaid expansion, and also the lack of a rigorous mandate allowing people to game the system by not paying in until they get sick.
Once again Jim D commenting on a topic he knows knowing about – the ACA in this case.
Rather than giving us your guesses, why don’t you talk to small business people who are paying much higher premiums for lesser coverage due to Obamacare.
The biggest remaining problem is for those millions of people in states that have been denied the Medicaid expansion support because these are in wage brackets that, by definition, make them hardest hit by insurance rates, yet their Republican states don’t care while at the same time feigning that they do care about making it affordable for those that have the hardest time getting it. Which is it?
From the article:
…
For the hackers at Symantec Security Response, Election Day results could be manipulated by an affordable device you can find online. “I can insert it, and then it resets the card, and now I’m able to vote again,” said Brian Varner, a principle researcher at Symantec, demonstrating the device…
Symantec Security Response director Kevin Haley said elections can also be hacked by breaking into the machines after the votes are collected. “The results go from that machine into a piece of electronics that takes it to the central counting place,” Haley said. “That data is not encrypted and that’s vulnerable for manipulation.”
…
https://it.slashdot.org/story/16/08/13/1553237/voting-machines-can-be-easily-compromised-symantec-demonstrates
Paging Chad! Paging Mr. Hanging Chad! Please come to the lobby. Mr. Hanging Chad!
They should have simply fixed the punch ballot problem. If anyone believes electronic voting is secure, they are either ignorant, stupid, or just lying.
Jim2,
“If anyone believes electronic voting is secure, they are either ignorant, stupid, or just lying.”
If anyone believes voting methods for 330,000,000 people are perfectly secure they are wrong. Studies show the level of fraud to be almost non-existent.
But makes for great headlines, although it’s probably a problem with the reporting.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-57xlUf66sNg/VFbu4IgFXzI/AAAAAAAADxk/3xU9o2SOI00/s1600/Box%2B13.jpg
Jim2,
Can’t make out the year on that licence plate. How long ago was that?
jim2,
You shouldn’t let facts get in the way of the boilerplate that issues from Clinton campagin central.
Glenn,
“You shouldn’t let facts get in the way of the boilerplate that issues from Clinton campagin central.”
What is your ‘motive’ for posting the above comment?
Danny Thomas The license plate was 1940.
Daniel,
Thank you. Over 75 years ago? That’s what, two and 1/2 climate scales?
Yep, it’s where the Dimowits of the 40’s wrote in enough fake votes, after the vote was over, to get Lyndon Johnson in the Senate.
The Dimowits haven’t changed. They just have more ways to steal elections now. Dead people, illegal aliens, hacking, bribing, brow-beating, paying people to vote, … it’s endless.
Assertions vs. proof (or even a bit of evidence)?
The most recent information (just a bit more fresh than the 1940’s) actually show more from the Republican side. But that’s data so what the heck.
Teh Donald Comedy Hour, by Tom Tomorrow.
Tomorrow we all may be dinning with George,…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/13/soros-groups-get-hacked-hundreds-of-documents-leaked/
so there must be some real animus still left in the world and we aren’t even in Hungry.
This is a good clip….
Trump supporter explains the reason that Trump polls at 2% among African Americans ….You guessed it…they’re to stupid to see beyond the ruse of the left wing MSM.
Truly remarkable that Trump sycophants are so embedded and invested in their culture of victimhood that they can’t see that their own elitism (i.e., the belief that they can see past the ruse but 98% of African African voters aren’t smart enough to do so) is exactly the reason that Trump is so unpopular among Black voters.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/polls-2-of-african-americans-would-vote-trump-743778371888
Well Blacks certainly don’t seem to be voting their pocket book.
How do you explain that?
http://i.imgur.com/RrWSULk.png
Indeed, Glenn’s whataboutism shows that the popular class should vote Trickle-Down Donald:
Good ol’ GRRROWTH.
Unless Trickle-Down Donald’s being sarcastic?
Trump, win or lose: what do you think?
Worth a second comment…
==> Well Blacks certainly don’t seem to be voting their pocket book. ==>
Glenn makes an excellent point. Black voters aren’t intelligent enough to knows how to vote in their own best interest. If they weren’t putty in the hands of the “elite” and the “establishment,” they’d have the insight of non-elitists such as Trump sycophants, and know that what is really in their best interest is to vote for Trump.
The only way Trump can lose PA is if “in certain sections of the state, they cheat.”
What “sections,” I wonder?
Joshua,
But here’s the thing: The opinions you so violently object to (on the video you linked) are made by a black man, Sean Jackson. So your black vs. white spin is a BIG FAIL, and more than just a little bit disingenuosus.
I did, however, like the way the host framed the following question, because it reveals an underlying reality: much of the black ‘just-us’ movement is nothing more than special interest advocacy:
Blacks vote for whoever wants the biggest government. If they have a job it’s usually a gov’t job. Local, state, federal, and military. The gov’t is their largest employer. For the embarrassingly large percentage that are unemployed the gov’t is still their provider and the only work they do is cashing their welfare checks. The rest, an alarmingly large fraction, the gov’t houses them in prisons. Democrats are reliably the most likely to accommodate their special needs.
Now on three you can all call me a racist for bluntly stating some unflattering facts… one, two, three, GO!
I love David. So wrong, and so confidently so:
==> If they have a job it’s usually a gov’t job. ==>
http://blackdemographics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Employment-Chart-20121.jpg
Oh but blacks are voting their pocketbooks, Glenn. You see Trump’s plan is to boost the economy by creating real jobs in the private sector that boost GDP. Blacks aren’t interested in real jobs. Clinton’s plan is to grow the number of gov’t jobs and entitlement programs that drain GDP. Blacks are interested in those things.
Cherry picking, Joshua. Tsk, tsk.
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/07/discrimination-against-whites-in-federal-employment/
Though 10 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force, African-Americans are 18 percent of U.S. government workers. They are 25 percent of the employees at Treasury and Veterans Affairs, 31 percent of the State Department, 37 percent of Department of Education employees and 38 percent of Housing and Urban Development. They are 42 percent of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 55 percent of the employees at the Government Printing Office and 82 percent at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.
I’m not counting federal prison which is technically US gov’t employment.
10% of civilian population, 40% of federal prison inmates.
Questions?
Cherry picking, J0shua. Tsk, tsk. I stand by my points and here are the numbers.
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/07/discrimination-against-whites-in-federal-employment/
Though 10 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force, African-Americans are 18 percent of U.S. government workers. They are 25 percent of the employees at Treasury and Veterans Affairs, 31 percent of the State Department, 37 percent of Department of Education employees and 38 percent of Housing and Urban Development. They are 42 percent of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 55 percent of the employees at the Government Printing Office and 82 percent at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.
I’m not counting federal prison which is technically US gov’t employment.
10% of civilian population, 40% of federal prison inmates.
Questions?
He’s in 4th place for the black vote.
Joshua,
And if we take a look a what Sean Jackson says in the video you linked about Bill Clinton presiding over the mass incarceration of black people, he’s absolutely right.
https://s19.postimg.org/fsaul32er/Captura_de_pantalla_1346.png
You know, Glenn, continuously ducking the point didn’t change that you’re ducking the point.
1) black people aren’t stupid.
2) only some 2% of black people think that voting for Trump is in their best interest.
3) the argument that the only reason that 98% of black voters don’t support Trump is because they’re duped by the media is a prime example of the myopia and confirmation bias (being generous there) that explains the near complete rejection if Trump in the black community.
4) the vacuous logic of “that the past few years have been hard on the black community means that Trump better supports their interest and they’re too stupid to realize that, unlike myself who can see through the media conspiracy.” completely undermines you claim to be empirically focused. That the past few years have been hard on the black community does not logically “trump” other evidence that Trump and Republicans more generally support policies that are not in the interests of the black community. One day, perhaps, you will see that the condescension and arrogance of your argument helps to explain why the vast majority of blacks don’t agree with you about what is in their best interest.
Our perhaps not. Lol.
Joshua said:
But it is not my argument that has set you off and caused you to mount your moral high horse.
Once again, let me repeat what I said above. The opinions you so violently object to (on the video you linked) are made by a black man, Sean Jackson. So your black vs. white spin is a BIG FAIL, and more than just a little bit disingenuous.
Your argument boils down to a claim that some black people — the ones you disagree with — are “stupid.” But the black people who agree with you are not “stupid.”
Oh well, maybe some black people are more equal than others.
“1) black people aren’t stupid.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_States_test_scores
Maybe the US just got more than its fair share of the stupid ones. If you think about how many originally arrived here, the smart ones in Africa captured the stupid ones and sold them into slavery. Please excuse me for being reasonable and factual.
Rushton & Jensen (2005) wrote that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They stated that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median).
On the other hand Asians in the US consistently score higher than whites. Again, the means of arrival seems related. In that case they’re the ones smart enough to find a way to escape the sh*tholes into which they were born.
Glenn –
==> Your argument boils down to a claim that some black people — the ones you disagree with — are “stupid.” ==>
Really? Is that what my argument “boils down to?” You just go from one fallacy to the next, don’t you.
I don’t think that Black Trump supporters are likely differentiated by intelligence from Trump non-supporters. So you’re wrong.
I am pointing out that:
1) Black people vote in what they perceived to be in their best interests just like every0ne else.
2) The vast majority of Black voters don’t support Trump (some 98%)
3) Your argument about Blacks not voting in their best interests because they don’t vote for Trump is arrogant and elitist. They don’t support Trump because they don’t agree with you about Trump’s policies. That doesn’t make them smarter than you or less smart than you. I’ll leave the backwards engineering to intelligence from voting preference to you – because it is a fallacious line of reasoning
Thank you David, for making it explicit why Black voters don’t align with Trump supporters (well, at least some 98% of them).
Pay attention, Glenn. Hopefully David’s comment will help you to understand why the vast majority of people think that voting for Trump (who collects support from folks like David) is not in their best interests.
From the article:
…
Revolution is closer than you think…
Following Angela Merkel’s earlier calls for German CEOs to hire refugees, and as Martin Armstrong notes, Germany has raided its healthcare funds to support the refugee crisis…
The government passed a law that allows them to take 1.5 billion euros from the liquidity reserve of the public health care fund (10 billion euros in total, paid by all members and additionally by the taxpayer) and to give that money to refugees / asylum seekers.
What would you call this? Insane?
We thought a reminder of the tensions that are bubbling under the surface in Germany.
As VoxDay noted appropriately, Germany’s elite is going to get a well-deserved one soon as German President Joachim Gauck was booed and attacked in the streets of Sebnitz, Saxony after he blurted out the following unbelievbable statement:
“The elites are not the problem, the people are the problem.”
…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-13/german-president-booed-attacked-after-claiming-people-are-problem-not-elites
Not sure why but article clip @jim2 | August 14, 2016 at 11:10 am in moderation.
Another interpretation of what’s going on in Turkey. Was the Putin-Erdgan meeting a dud?
Biden to the rescue?
So they are actually going to send the man who thinks he is James Bond, unbelievable.
I’m going to try to explain a simplistic model of the basics of new drug (and other medical procedures) R&D under the capitalist ideal some people envision for the US. (Note these are my opinions, but I have worked for a medical insurance company. So I’m not entirely unfamiliar with the economics.)
Drug companies pay for their R&D. (They currently get more than a little help from the government, but that’s not the ideal.) When they come up with a new drug/procedure, they do the confirmatory trials and try to get approval (from the FDA and other regulatory bureaucracies).
Once their product is approved, it’s rolled out to patients who need it. In the US, and to some extent in other countries, they recover some amount in return for their R&D costs. Since their patents (and/or other IP) have limited lifetimes, the initial costs tend to be high.
If they generally recover more than the actual costs of their R&D, they may make a profit for their stockholders. If they routinely recover less, either because they’re forced to sell their products too cheaply, or because manipulation of IP laws allows “generic” competition to undersell them, they don’t make a profit and go out of business.
Insurance companies sell policies that attempt to keep their premiums down by placing limits on what they will cover. Among other non-covered products are “experimental” drugs and procedures. Such tend to be both expensive, and risky in terms of needing secondary treatments for things that go wrong. (“Experimental”, right?)
As conditions for which there were few or no real treatments come to be treatable with new, expensive drugs/procedures (freshly rolled out from the “experimental” classification), premiums go up. Thus, medical insurance premiums have been steadily increasing as the value of what they pay for goes up (more conditions can be treated every year).
Some countries set up “nationalized” or “socialized” medical systems, which would be just about as expensive as the insurance version, except that they have the leverage to force drug companies to charge less than the amounts needed to recover their R&D costs.
This can be done through “single-payer” leverage (we’ll pay what we want or you can’t sell to us at all), as well as stealing IP rights: buying from “generic” competitors and using their position as government agencies to prohibit drug companies from enforcing their IP.
As long as enough regions make sure the drug companies get enough in return for their R&D efforts, the cornucopia of new drugs will continue. But once the US stops letting them recover their R&D expenses, the supply of new drugs will dry up.
And remember it isn’t just the cost of R&D for that one successful treatment that has to be recovered. A typical R&D program makes hundreds of tries for every one that actually makes it into profitable production.
Why do you suppose this simple model of pragmatic realities is so difficult for the State worshiping collectivists to get their minds around? TANSTAAFL is another model they fail to grasp.
There’s a moral dimension to this as well. If one is concerned with the poor, by all means, do what you can to help them. From clothing donations to soup kitchen lines that need servers, there is much to do and the rewards are personal contact with the people you help and the gratification that results.
But what are we to make of people who cry, carry on, and whine about the poor, whose solution is to create a massive bureaucracy of people who don’t give a damn about the people they are serving, and all this is to be paid for at the point of a gun by people who might have other ideas about how to spend their life, their work and their treasure. Jim D seems to get a great deal of emotional satisfaction out of ‘punishing’ the drug companies and telling their investors and executives how to run their business. Another word for that is ‘slavery.’ (Or Fascism, but what’s in a name…) And while he’s punishing the drug companies how about limiting doctors salaries to 110k per year. And all other medical workers as well. After all, they are feeding at the trough of human misery and pain, are they not? Should we apply the idiot Kantian standard for what is moral and convince ourselves that any monetary or personal profit renders their acts morally neutered and thus we have a right to dictate what they should get for recompense?
And what event in the universe suddenly changed the law of human behavior that Lord Acton so cleverly wrought? “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We are witness to the corruption of Obama and Clinton on a daily basis. Yet these self-proclaimed moral poltroons want to argue that they KNOW giving the power to government to run health care is a ‘good.’
Ask a drug addict if he wants a dime of heroin. Will he refuse it? Does that mean he knows what is good for him? That people want ‘X’ means nothing other than that they want ‘X.’
Single pay health care actually exists here. It’s called the Veteran’s Administration. Veterans would be served well by abolishing what Hoover set up: a bureaucracy that has turned into a cesspool of corruption and inefficiency.
It must be a mindset that decides these things. Some people can’t stand messy, dynamic, creative systems. They want the force of law to order things into predictable and guaranteed results. It never works but they keep trying…like all faith-based systems, reality is dismissed in favor of fantasy.
So, the elite and their ‘cosmopolitan’ PC-driven supporters have noticed an anti-establishment attitude in the population. Here in UK, they’re talking about ignorant, angry ‘left-behind’ working-class people with repect to the BREXIT vote. What most of them seem to have forgotten, is that huge chunk of the population known as “Middle England” – the working folk who live in the market towns and suburbs. They’re not pushy folk, enjoy gardening, visiting stately homes, walking in the country and will campaign vigorously to stop further development of their precious environment. Hence they’re also called Nimbys (Not In My Back Yard). They are happiest left alone to bring up their children, play tennis and cricket, and never see a modern windmill in their countryside, ever again (particularly since ClimateGate when we realised the science is not settled). (200 year windmills are lovely). We’d also rather like it if all the Carbon-taxes could be removed so that our industries stop dying (steel is just going now)
I’m suspecting it’s the same in the US. All the articles Judy quoted have the premise that more development (but better targeted) is wanted. Is it? do Trump’s supporters include similar?
This could turn out to be the sweetest hack so far!!! From the article:
…
BREAKING—- George Soros’s Open Society Hacked and Information Leaked Online
…
DC Leaks wrote this on Soros:
George Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, political activist and author who is of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry and holds dual citizenship. He drives more than 50 global and regional programs and foundations. Soros is named as the architect and sponsor of almost every revolution and coup around the world for the last 25 years. Thanks to him and his puppets USA is thought to be a vampire, not a lighthouse of freedom and democracy. His slaves spill blood of millions and millions people just to make him even more rich. Soros is an oligarch sponsoring Democratic party, Hillary Clinton, hundreds of politicians all over the world. This website is designed to let everyone take a look at restricted documents of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and related organisations. It represents workplans, strategies, priorities and other activities of Soros. These documents shed light on one of the most influential network operating worldwide.
…
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/08/breaking-george-soross-open-society-hacked-information-leaked-online/
As Yves Smith said,
I’m sure glad, on the unimpeachable word of Danny Thomas, that “Studies show the level of fraud to be almost non-existent” in the United States.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/12/week-in-review-politics-edition-6/#comment-803560
Americans are such exemplars of probity in comparison to those dastardly British.
Glenn,
Is England now a 51st state? Don’t tell Tonyb, he might not approve as I don’t think he got to vote.
Here’s a link which contains links to several studies of various forms here in the U.S. (I think when I said U.S. I might have meant actually the U.S.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/09/7-papers-4-government-inquiries-2-news-investigations-and-1-court-ruling-proving-voter-fraud-is-mostly-a-myth/
They are easy to find, but I find it much simpler if you do the search with your eyes open. Try it. You might find a difference.
So, again Glenn, what is your motive for posting here?
Dr. Strawman much?
Danny Thomas,
And to make your point you cite an article from the
WashingtonJeff Bezos Post?Please, Danny, give me a break. You’re going to have to do better than that.
Glenn,
Talk to me about the steak. I don’t care about the dinnerware.
And remind me again what your motive is for posting here. Thanks.
Danny Thomas,
The issue of whether voter fraud is a problem or not is a very partisan issue.
It comes as no surprise to see which side you’ve taken on the issue.
Glenn,
The breeze created by all your arm waving is refreshing. Thanks. And as expected you once again bypass the substance. Thanks for not surprising me and addressing content.
So, again, what is your motive for posting here?
Danny Thomas,
And what “content” is it you believe must be “addressed”?
The content the
WashingtonJeff Bezos Post has cherry picked so carefully?Glenn,
If you’ve got the stuff, prove the ‘cherry pickers’ wrong. But keep in mind you have to refute 7 academic papers, 4 governmental reports, and at least one court.
To make it easy, let’s don’t address each individually. Just compare how many votes were cast in the U.S. in the last decade (keeping it short to lighten the workload), how many cases of fraud were reported and prosecuted and their type (ya know, dead folk voting, fraudulent ID’s, official misconduct, that sorta thing). Not asking for convictions as I don’t want you whining about the standard of proof being too high.
Still breezy. Arms tired yet?
Oh, and still asking what your motives are for posting here.
Danny Thomas,
You need to get out more. Take a walk on the wild side, and break free of the fetters of the Clinton echo chamber.
Here, for instance, is a point of view very much in opposition to that evangelized by the
WashingtonJeff Bezos Post::
There’s a whole new world out there waiting for you, Danny, a whole different way of looking at things. All you have to do is throw off the chains of the Clinton brainwashing.
Glenn,
LOL! Really? You’re going to go with an article (we don’t trust the media, remember) full of anecdotes and which is in part based on the concept that the president will be chosen only in Philly where apparently 2 guys have the power to intimidate the entire election vs. 7 academic works, 4 governmental reports and a court case?
So where are the numbers from your assignment? How many votes were cast in the past decade, vs. reports of fraud including prosecution? No convictions required to make it easy.
By the way, bring on the observers. Not against that whatsoever as long as they don’t wear any marketing materials or offer influence or intimidation.
What is your motive for posting here, Glenn? What is your motive?
Aw. Heck with it. Works pretty much been done for ya: http://www.rnla.org/survey.asp
46 states have had incidences in the past decade.
Then: https://www.rnla.org/votefraud.asp
2011-1 instance listed
2012-118
2013-26
2014-29
2015-18
2016-17
If 50% (if ya don’t like 50% pick a number) of folks vote annually, that’s +/- 165Million votes per year times 10 years. You figure out the rest of the math.
See the difference between making an effort and making a breeze?
Danny Thomas,
It doesn’t surprise me that you would reject the counter argument out of hand.
The point is that there are two sides to this argument. You have staked out one side of the argument, the Hillary Clinton side, which you defend very passionately.
There’s nothing wrong with that, except for your constant claims that you don’t have a dog in this fight, when it’s so obvious that you do.
Glenn,
I was under the mistaken belief that you were a fairly intelligent individual yet you keep harping on my being on ‘the Clinton side’. That is patently false. Here’s another non-Clinton citation: Overall, voter fraud is quite rare. Between the years of 2000 and 2012, there were only 867 proven cases of voter fraud in the United States. http://www.republicanviews.org/republicans-and-voter-fraud/
Interestingly, the republican oriented site further states: ” However, in the years since 2012, the Republican Party has been far more prevalent in the news regarding this matter than the Democratic Party. Case after case of voter fraud has been brought to light, and it seems that just about every one involves Republicans.”
And this: “In November of 2012, Strategic Allied Consulting, the Republican Party of Florida’s top recipient of 2012 expenditures, was discovered to have turned in over 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration forms to the Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections. The fraud appears to have been run by Nathan Sproul. Sproul is a notorious Republican operative often hired for Republican Presidential campaigns. He has also been accused of numerous other cases of voter fraud in the form of shredding Democratic voter registration forms in multiple states. The firm was paid $667,000 by the Flordia GOP to run voter registration campaigns. However, they also received another, identical payment for unidentified purposes. Strategic Allied Consulting had also handled voter registration campaigns in North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado in the same year. Furthermore, the firm was tied to Mitt Romney’s campaign and Romney hired Sproul as a political consultant in late 2011 despite his long history of fraud accusations. This fraud was deemed the GOP ACORN Scandal after the now-disbanded ACORN, which was accused by the GOP of falsifying voter registration forms in 2008.” (further reported here: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/0929/Potential-voter-registration-fraud-in-Florida-GOP-s-own-ACORN-scandal)
I used my own eyes and did the work and unlike you, didn’t wave my arms whatsoever.
The ‘counter argument’ (if that’s how you’re describing the article to which you linked) was almost soley anecdotal. Specter (RIP) and two (apparently quite intimidating) New Black Panthers.
Did I not support the call for greater observation? Did you ask if I support voter ID’s, or are your working under (another) assumption of my view?
The greatest issues I find in a fair number of hours looking, the two areas of the highest exposure to fraud is:
1) Absentee (no ID required)
2) Malfeasance on the part of voting officials.
Provisional ballots can address (by far) the bulk of other areas of potential fraud.
The number of prosecuted cases (as reported on a Republican attorney’s oriented website) is ‘a few hundred’ (over a decade’s time) out of some (approximated) 165 MILLION votes per year.
The extent is effectively meaningless.
Your arm waving has reached the full level of tedium.
Two New Black Panthers in a predominantly black neighborhood, at that, where historically there are very few Repubkican votes, if any (sometimes there are none, prolly cause “the blacks” dront know what’s in their own best interest – if only they would take direction from Glenn they’d be so much better off). Not that what happened is defensible, but there was no actual evidence that anyone was intimidated or that there was any voter fraud.
Danny Thomas,
You’re very passionate in defending the Clinton talking points.
I’ve got to give you that.
But I, just like Arlen Specter, have actually had some experience in these matters, and have ventured deep into the bowels of the election system.
You’re not going to blow smoke up my a$$, regardless of how well you believe you’re spinning things.
Glenn,
Either you’ve gotten tired, or are just being lazy. That’s fine. It’s clear you have no evidence or argument so you stay the ad hoc course. It’s weak, but it’s your choice. Even here, you offer another anecdote-ette with your ‘experience’ and no data or references.
You may have ventured in to the ‘bowel’s’ of something at least from your shoulders upward.
Your motive for posting is quite clear, so I’ll ask you no further.
Danny Thomas,
What reasons do I have to spend more time discussing the matter with you when you sumarilly dismissed as “anecdotes” the word of Arlen Specter — the only one who’s been cited so far who was a prosecutor and has any actual knowledge and experience in investigating and prosecuting election fraud?
There are none, of course. You’ve already made up your mind. You already think you know everything that’s to be known. You’re so deep in the tank for Clinton that you couldn’t be pried out of it with a crow bar. No reality and no common sense will ever penetrate your mind.
Glenn,
Look up the word anecdote if you don’t know the definition. It’s a story.
I remember Specter (that’s an anecdote by the by) and googled voter fraud and Arlen Specter and got only: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/19/us/vote-fraud-ruling-shifts-pennsylvania-senate.html
which dealt mostly with absentee ballot fraud. Specter wasn’t mentioned. Article dated 1994. Specter would no longer have been DA. There are 103 cites on his wiki. None about voter fraud.
You keep telling me but refuse to show me. Knowing your ‘motive’s’ you lack my trust. I’ve done all the work and shown the results. You wave your arms.
I stand by my the DATA provided to you to support my contention that in the past decade there are reports of fewer than 1000 incidents reported/prosecuted while 100’s of millions of votes have been cast. Your anecdote is weak tea.
Danny Thomas said:
That “reality” exists only in that completely closed mind of yours.
Wooshh! Blew my hat off with that armwaving created breeze Glenn.
Show me! Don’t tell me. Otherwise you’re wasting E1’s time.
Danny Thomas,
How can one have an intelligent conversation with you?
It’s impossible.
You sumarilly ruled someone like Arlen Specter — the only one cited in this debate thus far who has provided any actual knowledge and experience as to the details of how elections really work — out of bounds.
And with that you ruled yourself out of bounds.
Glenn Dr. Strawman Stehle,
Arlen Specter is in NO WAY out of bounds. Your postings indicate he has issue with voter fraud. Smart man he was. But he’s one man. You seem to be professing a rampant incidence occurring. I showed there is a minor level of a few hundred incidents out of hundreds of millions of votes dating back over a decade.
Your argument is much like those who are CAGW’ers. Because there might be some concern that incidents of voter fraud COULD MAYBE POSSIBLY PROJECTEDLY happen (even though evidence is that it’s not and has not for most certainly the past decade) then the house must be on fire.
Weak tea.
Danny Thomas,
Good liars need good memories, which you obviously don’t have. Or maybe you don’t believe people can’t scroll back up this thread to see what you said?
Let’s review what you said:
Then let’s review what Arlen Specter said:
Glenn,
Liar? Really?
The first para was LOL AT YOU, not Specter. You (feigned?) issue with my link to a WAPO article (that media which is not to be trusted) which cited academia, government and courts. Then YOU link to a media article yourself. (Hypocrite much?).
So let’s look at the word choice in your article: “Specter MAY once have been a victim…..”, “strongly SUSPECTED voter fraud”, “1993” (might as well use Jim2’s 1940’s).
Hell. I oppose voter fraud. Those 800 and some odd folks out of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of votes cast should enjoy their shackles.
Still anecdotes and still lacking actual data. But that’s okay. We recognize your ‘motives’ for posting here. Your misinformation campaign (misinformation is a polite way of calling you a liar back since you choose to stoop to that level) is clear.
I ‘openly scoff’ at unsubstantiated misinformational claims that there is voter fraud to a large extent. ‘You see what you want to see’.
I invite you once again to show me and not tell me. If you had the stuff you would just to try to ‘show me up’. Obviously you don’t and are just making stuff up (another form of lying but I was trying to be more polite).
Out of an abundance of caution I skipped the Obama years (where I previously provided you EVIDENCE from Republican sites) and looked back to Bush’s admin and found:
“Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.
Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.”http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?_r=0
The only time I see the potential for fraud highlighted verbally (always lacking data) is when a candidate is likely to lose and desperation has set in. So it goes with Trump (and you, his Trumpeteer).Voter fraud exists, it’s miniscule in scale, it’s an area worth watching, and it’s a convenient excuse for poor candidates.
Glenn,
Instead of your anecdotally based unsubstantiated biodegradable B.S., how about some actual research?
“While cases of election fraud are a colourful and ignominious part of American history going back to the earliest days of the nation (Bensel, 2004; Campbell, 2006; Kousser, 1974), despite heightened detection efforts during the past decade incidents of voter fraud are rare in contemporary American elections. One study found 31 instances of voter impersonation out of one billion votes cast (Levitt, 2014). Another study estimates one instance of voter fraud for every 15 million prospective voters (Kahn and Carson, 2012). Election fraud cases comprise less than one-tenth of one per cent of federal criminal prosecutions, despite efforts by the George W. Bush administration to devote substantially more resources to voter fraud investigations (Minnite 2010: 48). State level evidence also indicates that the vast majority of voter fraud investigations reveal no criminal violations (Minnite 2010: Chapter 4). Two other recent studies find little to no evidence of voter fraud in the United States (Ahlquist et al. 2014; Christensen and Schultz, 2014).”
http://rap.sagepub.com/content/2/2/2053168015587156
Glenn,
When done falsely (disingenuousness is not a good look on you Glenn, nor is your hypocrisy), yes I have a problem with it. But since we’re aware of your motives it’s not surprising especially since you call yourself a pseudo-libertarian.
“The fiscal sense, though, is more murky. This is especially so because the extent of fraud is an unknown entity. We simply don’t have a great handle on how big the problem is. We could be, in effect, taking the proverbial hammer to a problem that simply does not warrant it. What is clear, though, is that the laws would cost the states money. In my state of Pennsylvania, cost estimates range from $4-11 million dollars. As anyone familiar with Harrisburg’s problems knows, we don’t have that money just sitting around.
So consider this particular libertarian decidedly undecided. It is a core function of government to ensure elections have integrity; but, it is also a core function to spend the taxpayer dollar wisely. Voter ID laws have to meet a high burden of proof here that the cost is worthwhile. Until that happens, I can’t jump fully on board with this movement.”
http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/9718-should-a-libertarian-support-voter-id-laws
But I’m sure you were being fully honest when you described yourself as one.
Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!
Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!
The Drone Presidency
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/the-drone-presidency/
Panel of independent scientists tells EPA to revise report that said fracking did not have “widespread, systemic impacts” on drinking water
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/08/12/epas-own-advisory-board-demands-revision-deeply-flawed-fracking-report
Democrats Trying to Assess Scope of Leak of Personal Information
http://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-trying-to-assess-scope-of-leak-of-personal-information-1471128589
PELOSI: “The Ruskies did it!”
Use this link if you’re not a subscriber to WSJ. They have an agreement with Google to not require subscriptions when linked from there.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjdoJrc78HOAhWEgCYKHVHDAIAQvYgBCCkwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fhacker-reveals-personal-information-for-almost-200-democrats-1471048195&usg=AFQjCNHzSD1FBQeZEn3P9xTmAN_bURVjzw&sig2=yipgeWnbRq27rGLEDki4xQ&cad=rjt
Obama has now trotted out Senator Claire McCaskill to rewrite history so as to cover up how badly he mismanaged the Iraq War:
First McCaskill says:
But according to what the NY Times reported at the time:
1) The Obama administration overruled the military:
BAGHDAD, October 21, 2011: President Obama’s announcement on Friday that all American troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year was an occasion for celebration for many, but some top American officials were dismayed by the announcement….
This year, American military officials had said they wanted a “residual” force of as many as tens of thousands of American troops to remain in Iraq past 2011 as an insurance policy against any violence…..
At the end of the Bush administration, when the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, was negotiated, setting 2011 as the end of the United States’ military role, officials had said the deadline was set for political reasons, to put a symbolic end to the occupation and establish Iraq’s sovereignty. But there was an understanding, a senior official said, that a sizable American force would stay in Iraq beyond that date….
According to two people briefed on the matter, one inside the administration and one outside, the arguments of two White House officials, Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, and his deputy, Denis McDonough, prevailed over those of the military.
Intelligence assessments that Iraq was not at great risk of slipping into chaos in the absence of American forces were a factor in the decision, and American official said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/middleeast/united-states-and-iraq-had-not-expected-troops-would-have-to-leave.html
2) The Obama administration badly bungled the negotiations with Iraqi prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki:
Senator McKaskill then says:
But this once again rewrites history, and again dodges the fact of how badly Obama miscalculated and erred in his handling of the Syrian situation, maybe even worse than he did in Iraq.
Regime change and removing Russian influence over Syria, for Obama, always took precedence over fighting Islamic terrorism.
Here’s how The Gurardian explains it:
From the article:
…
Hillary Clinton claims that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails to help Donald Trump in the 2016 race, but a NSA whistleblower disagrees with her assertion.
Former NSA official William Binney, an architect of the agency’s surveillance program, says that it is more likely that a disgruntled member of the U.S. intelligence community leaked the emails.
On “Fox and Friends” this morning, Binney said that accusing the Russians is a way of diverting attention from the actual issues that the emails bring to light.
…
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/08/03/former-nsa-official-william-binney-dnc-email-hack-likely-wasnt-done-russia
jim2
you asked about Brexit.
Its holiday time and Parliament is in recess so nothing much tends to happen at this time of the year anyway. A likely cause for delay in the autumn and onwards, is going to be the assembly of enough civil servants capable of unravelling decades of EU laws which are embedded into various aspects of trade and society.
Several very large ministries have to be created from scratch each requiring expertise on various subjects which, because we have not been handling our own affairs, will be very difficult to find.
The French and Germans have national elections this year which means we don’t know who we will be negotiating with.
So, all in all, its likely to be a very slow process and the optimistic time scales are unlikely to be met. My guess is that there will have to be a political resolution to all this which might mean triggering the relevant exit clause before we are properly ready to begin negotations.
One very noticeable benefit in my tourist oriented part of the west country (Devon) is an upsurge in European visitors taking advantage of the strong Euro. This was a very strong Brexit area and it has been a pleasing side effect of the vote.
tonyb
Thanks, Tony. Brexit easier said than done. Not too surprising. Divorces are like that.
You’ll also get the British people who can no longer afford to go to Europe.
jimd
Obviously. So that means they stay in the country and spend their money here.. There is a well established term for it ‘staycation’. A driving factor is also a concern over terrorism and the sheer hassle of traveling, with airport delays etc. The weather has also been good the last month or so which encourages people to stay here.
tonyb
Class…..Class…..Class……CLASSSS!!!
Glenn stop scribbling all over your desk. Dave take the bag off your head. Jim Jr. stop bothering Josh.
Now class, it’s Vocabulary time. Today’s word is “demagogue.” Wikipedia tells us: “A demagogue or rabble-rouser is a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. Demagogues have usually advocated immediate, violent action to address a national crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. Demagogues violate established rules of political conduct; most who were elected to high office changed their democracy into some form of dictatorship.
Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, nothing stops the people from giving that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population.”
Now can anybody in the class give me an example of a present day demagogue running for the Presidency?
Hillary Clinton?
tonyb
F minus.
None of the above.
tonyb,
Yep. You couldn’t come up with a more accurate description of Hillary Clinton than this, what with her identity “just-us” politics:
But as we all know, according to Joshuwa, “prejudice and ignorance among the common people” is only a white thing. To wit:
Glenn –
==> But as we all know, according to Joshuwa, “prejudice and ignorance among the common people” is only a white thing. ==>
You’ve made a mistake. I’ve never made that argument. Nothing even close. How do you get from my argument that Trump is a demagogue to thinking that I’m arguing that “prejudice and ignorance…is only a white thing?”
Here is something far more dangerous than Trump …
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/12/week-in-review-politics-edition-6/#comment-803714
I’m going with “D”. All of the above.
The proper answer for who is a Demogogue can only be Hilarious Godham Clinton. “Why?”, you ask? Cause, the description you’ve offered of a Demogogue, besides being wholly superficial, is missing the one salient feature that would make it an accurate description. One can appeal to the people and not be a Demogogue. One can lay out the dangers of following certain paths and not be a Demogogue. An appeal to ‘x’ may be viewed by some as an appeal to the lowest common denominator or prejudice but may be no such thing. It’s a matter of opinion.
No, the one thing that makes a Demogogue a Demogogue is the appeal for power. It’s the idea that if you give me and mine, power, we can solve all the problems and Utopia will be at hand.
This is the raison d’etre of the Left. The Constitution limits power? Pack the Supreme Court with toadies who will ‘decide’ the limits away. The opposition puts up roadblocks to power? Smear them and sneer at them and use the force of law to control them. The First Amendment allows the truth to be known? Use the law to limit the First Amendment. A well-armed citizenry is a threat to the usurpation of power by government, slice and dice it until it’s rendered neutered.
This is Obama with his constant lying and misinformation war. With his extrajudicial pen, that attempts always to exercise power that is not granted to the executive. And this is Hilarious Godham Clinton with her private server and selling of US influence for private gain. With her promise to limit the 2nd amendment and her dedication to all that is anti-First Amendment embrace of PC language.
Trump hasn’t asked for power beyond that granted in the Constitution. Clinton lives there.
From the article:
…
Power structures maintain order using layers of control. In an ostensibly free society like the United States the primary mechanism of social control is what the CIA’s Frank Wisner referred to as the Mighty Wurlitzer. That is, a sophisticated and ubiquitous stream of information that’s directed by a conglomeration of corporate outlets. These media companies use their gatekeeper status to set the agenda of public discourse and define the acceptable parameters of debate.
There are signs lately that the machine is breaking down. For example, during the 2016 election cycle there were genuine rumblings of populist revolt. Though not enough to derail the stranglehold of big money. As predicted Bernie Sanders did his sheep dog trick for the Democrats and Donald Trump no doubt likewise made a backroom deal with powerful members of the GOP establishment. In a political system captured by corporate interests the belief in a lesser evil is pleasant fiction.
It’s a numbers game, really. Not enough people in this country are sufficiently fed up to achieve the critical mass necessary to effect concrete structural change. In fact, considering the sheer number of mobile phone zombies stumbling around a supposedly progressive city like San Francisco it’s entirely plausible that a genuine uprising is unlikely to occur in the United States before the end of this century. Instead it’s more likely that society will experience an increased number of isolated individuals lashing out in despair.
…
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/12/facing-down-the-panopticon/
I’m not so sure about that. It looks like Trump’s relations with at least some of the “powerful members of the GOP establishment” are pretty strained.
What this claim looks like is more of the false equivalence that Danny Thomas was peddling above.
Sure, Trump may in the end not dance with the one who brought him to the dance, the same way Obama did. But this is pure speculation. It’s a prediction about what might happen in the future, because evidence at the moment indicates this hasn’t happened yet.
From the article:
…
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman on Sunday dismissed reports that Trump was floundering amid perceived off-message remarks and said the campaign is “moving to get forward and is very strong.”
Paul Manafort said the national media chose to focus last week on Trump’s “aside” about Second Amendment advocates trying to stop Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s White House bid, despite major news off the campaign trail, including Trump and Clinton announcing major economic plans.
“Besides running against Hillary Clinton, [Trump] is running against the media,” Manafort said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There was a debate that could have been had there. Instead, the media chose to take the Clinton campaign narrative and go on attack on Donald Trump. Trump, in the course of this week, was very substantive.”
Manafort suggested the Second Amendment comment, which some interpreted as a call to violence, deserved media attention but was overplayed compared to the coverage last week of weak economic numbers, a terrorist attack on the NATO base in Turkey and the release of emails suggesting a “pay-to-play” connection between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton-run State Department.
…
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/14/manafort-slams-press-coverage-says-campaign-very-strong.html
So is Trump “just outgunned,” as Yves Smith has asked?
From the article:
…
Clinton E-mails Show George Soros Gave Sec of State Foreign Policy Marching Orders
…
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/14/wikileaks-e-mails-reveal-clinton-taking-marching-orders-george-soros/
Something tells me this score is building to a crescendo, which will climax someitme around the first week of November.
Yeah. it was interesting how the ’08 bubble popped just in time to give Obama a push.
OTOH, I wonder whether a collapse just prior to November would really help Clinton?
Perhaps it’s intended to help Obama
justifyrationalize cancelling the elections?Here’s another establishment elite who is backing Clinton and who has also rewritten history to eliminate the sordid role he played in the making of it:
Link to Panetta v. Panetta
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/02/panetta_v_panetta_former_defense_secretarys_conflicting_accounts_of_the_iraq_withdrawal/
And here’s yet another establishment elite who is backing Clinton, one of the 50 who signed the letter published this past week blasting Donald Trump:
Hayden, former director of the NSA and of the CIA, has never seen a civil liberty that is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that he didn’t want to abolish, even if it meant lying about what the constitution says:
Hayden argued that probable cause is not needed to justify wiretaps of domestic communications.
He also branded as “interrogation deniers” those who believed that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA didn’t yield useful intelligence.
That’s gonna leave a mark. Wall Strret Journal.
==> If they can’t get Mr. Trump to change his act by Labor Day, the GOP will have no choice but to write off the nominee as hopeless and focus on salvaging the Senate and House and other down-ballot races. As for Mr. Trump, he needs to stop blaming everyone else and decide if he wants to behave like someone who wants to be President—or turn the nomination over to Mike Pence. ==>
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-self-reckoning-1471213081
Trump will survive the RNC cutting off any money they are giving to him. Trump’s collecting almost as much as Clinton and he’s doing it through small individual donations averaging $70 each. The cash flow is from Trump to Down Ticket candidates. It’s an empty threat in other words just like every other threat the establishment clowns have made that didn’t pan out.
!!! From the article !!!:
…
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort said on Sunday’s “Cats Roundtable” on New York AM 970 radio that “a lot” of the anti-Trump Republicans “have connections to the Clinton Foundation.”
…
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/08/14/manafort-anti-trump-republicans-connections-clinton-foundation/
Bouncing Check Donald:
Wow. Almost like the US ambassador to Libya being abandoned in Benghazi by Hillary then getting sodomized with a knife and dragged through the streets while dying by angry US-hating Muslims. All because Hillary didn’t want to offend Libyans by sending in a military rescue team.
That Hillary, she’s your kind of girl, eh Willerd?
Now listen to Willerd do his best imitation of the sound of crickets chirping in response.
Impeach Barry, you must understand, the Left, its leaders, and sycophants are to be judged by their intentions. Not the intentions we surmise from their behavior, but by the intentions they tell us they had. They are, by definition, pure of heart and grace personified. Anything that appears to not conform to that is the cause of evil doers, especially Republicans and Libertarians and folk who cling to the 2nd amendment. As HRC tells us, ‘I’ve been truthful all along about everything.’ Anyone who doubts that is, by definition, unqualified to render an opinion or cite a fact. There are no facts in Progressivism, only class opinions.
If Clinton is elected to the White House, the country will collapse and it will damn well deserve to given how lame the opposition to Marxism, collectivism, and naked power has been for the past 100 years. (The collapse will look like Detroit metastasizing at the speed of social media). The poor won’t notice other than that there will be many more of them. The rich won’t notice other than they can find more people to mow their grounds behind their gated (walled) communities and will have the wealth to last a few more decades and cause more mischief (like Soros). What is needed for a free and prosperous society is a robust and dynamic middle class. Kill that and you end with societal collapse.
My only solace will be a wish that the people who voted for her live long enough to see the destruction they have wrought.
When Franklin asked what kind of country had been created, he replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” He understood the challenges.
One of my aphorisms is “No government will long endure limitations to its power if the people are not willing to assert their rights.” A corollary to that is “No government can survive once the people discover how to use it as a personal ATM.”
The nation’s first offshore wind farm takes shape off R.I.
The turbines off Block Island will feed into the region’s electrical grid and provide energy for some 17,000 homes.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/08/14/the-nation-first-offshore-wind-farm-takes-shape-off-block-island/243IxkMseo3fDuhI8gN3ML/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=
“This is a recipe for economic disaster,” he said.
Progressivism all over again. And again. And again.
This is getting to look eerily like the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Racial tensions haven’t been as bad as they are now for decades.
Yep. Scott Walker had to call in the National Guard. Ironically the fleeing black fel0n was shot and killed by a black police officer.
How is a racist supposed to take sides in this case? These are indeed troubled times!
An anti-Muslim hate crime?
http://www.infowars.com/video-black-lives-matter-rioters-target-whites-for-beat-downs/
Shocking footage of the organization supported by Barry and Hilly. Caution advised before opening the link.
Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!
For Clinton and Obama, creating chaos and mayhem in Central America has also created new business opportunities for those bellied up to the public trough.
Here’s a little background as to how Clinton took a wrecking ball to Honduras and created the conditions that spawned this mass migration to begin with:
Then comes one of the payoffs:
Wyoming considers whether to increase the tax on wind energy from $1 per megawatt hour to as much as $12 per megawatt hour.
Media Are Flat Wrong to Dismisses Voter-Fraud Concerns
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438981/donald-trump-voter-fraud-warning-hes-right-media-philadelphia-pennsylvania
Global Warming Extremists Try To Silence Science — Again
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/global-warming-extremists-try-to-silence-science-again/
Professor Valentina Zharkova is an alarmist. She’s trying to scare people with her frigid little tale of frozen rivers and no summers in whatever, 15 years.
Do you mean to say that what she says is false and she’s nothing more than a ‘Demogouge’ trying to scare people? Is that what you’re saying?
The U.S. shale revolution: a geopolitical and economic seachange?
“If U.S. shale can withstand domestic political pressure against hydraulic fracking, and regulatory incentives promoting a shift to renewable energies, it stands to disrupt OPEC’s global oil cartel and Russia’s strong influence in Europe, and establish the United States as the new global energy superpower.”
No thanks to Obama and his idiotic energy policies. And no thanks to Clinton sucking up to the Fascist Greens and Global Warming Luddites.
“The old energy order looks on its way out, and should it keep its nerve, Washington is perfectly placed to seize the advantage.”
Washington keep its nerve? What a quaint way of talking about the power hungry rat bastards that are always looking for a way to cash in on any event for their own political gain.
I’m betting this Soros hack is going to be a treasure trove of very surprising information. He and his son need to be exposed for the traitors to the US and Israel that they are. From the article:
…
A non-profit group controlled by billionaire financier George Soros set out to conduct opposition research on a handful of critics of radical Islam, a newly released internal memo shows.
The 2011 document, entitled “Extreme Polarization and Breakdown in Civil Discourse,” is one of more than 2,500 files stolen from Soros’ Open Society Foundations and published online on Saturday.
It names prominent critics of radical Islam, such as Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, and Robert Spencer as targets for opposition researchers working on a project operated by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank that has received millions of dollars in grants from Soros’ groups.
…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/14/memo-soros-group-funded-opposition-research-on-critics-of-radical-islam/
Discreet Donald risks losing Mark Sanford’s support unless he produces his tax returns:
He should release them after he’s elected.
Interesting that Manafort worked with two dictators that were deposed by popular uprisings before signing on for Trump (Philippines’ Marcos and Ukraines’ Yanukovych). He certainly knows how to pick them. Can you imagine what the right-wing media’s attitude to him would be if he was on the Dem side? But no, they don’t care about the dodgy and corrupt backgrounds of those who work with Trump. No surprise there, so no questions will be asked. Just to be expected from Trump associates these days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html
I find red-baiting from the Clinton campaign offensive, but this is pretty concerning:
–snip–
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
–snip–
I look forward to comment from Glenn, jim2, and AK (which, hopefully, will rise above the standard tu quoque)…
Ah, well, now that I’ve read Manafort’s response, I can see what their response will be: media bias.
But Manafort has denied taking it, so that’s OK then. His taxes might be interesting, however.
Funny the Clintons complaining about Russian money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=1
Remind me again about the sale of uranium to Russia and who was paid off for that and how many millions did John Podesta get? Just asking.
From the article:
…
Once again The New York Times has chosen to purposefully ignore facts and professional journalism to fit their political agenda, choosing to attack my character and reputation rather than present an honest report.
The simplest answer is the truth: I am a campaign professional. It is well known that I do work in the United States and have done work on overseas campaigns as well. I have never received a single “off-the-books cash payment” as falsely “reported” by The New York Times, nor have I ever done work for the governments of Ukraine or Russia. Further, all of the political payments directed to me were for my entire political team: campaign staff (local and international), polling and research, election integrity and television advertising. The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical.
My work in Ukraine ceased following the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2014. In addition, as the article points out hesitantly, every government official interviewed states I have done nothing wrong, and there is no evidence of “cash payments” made to me by any official in Ukraine. However, the Times does fail to disclose the fact that the Clinton Foundation has taken (and may still take) payments in exchange for favors from Hillary Clinton while serving as Secretary of State. This is not discussed despite the overwhelming evidence in emails that Hillary Clinton attempted to cover up.
…
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/15/paul-manafort-new-york-times-report-unfounded-silly-nonsensical/
Many people are saying Manafort was consulting with Yanukovych on his elections for years. I don’t know. You tell me. They say he took all this money. Many people say that. I don’t know.
Maybe the 2nd amendmenter’s can find out.
Ya. ‘prolly just coincidence that his name appeared on the books. Or it could just be media bias.
But some people say that he probaly got some money in less than official fashion. I don’t know, but that’s what they’re saying. So you tell me. People cannot, they cannot believe that Manafort worked for that crook with everything being above board. There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on. Or maybe not. I dont know. You tell me.
A lot of people say a lot of things, JD. Question is 1) is it true and 2) is it illegal?
Joshua,
Sure you made the argument that prejudice and ignorance among the common people is only a white thing.
When a majority of working-class white people decide to vote for Trump, it’s because they are “Trump sychophants,” which makes these highly emotional and illogical people vulnerable to the appeals of a demagogue like Donald Trump.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/12/week-in-review-politics-edition-6/#comment-803543
But when a majority of working-class black people decide to vote for Clinton, it’s because they are voting “in their best interest.” They have logically and judiciously weighed up the “evidence that Trump and Republicans more generally support policies that are not in the interests of the black community.”
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/12/week-in-review-politics-edition-6/#comment-803621
But you hardly stop there. You then go on to lash out at anyone who dares suggest that Blacks have fallen victim to an elaborate propaganda campaign — replete with all sorts of us vs. them messaging — that is being orchestrated by the Hillary Clinton campaign. “[T]he condescension and arrogance of your argument helps to explain why the vast majority of blacks don’t agree with you about what is in their best interest,” you growl.
This claim that the “argument about Blacks not voting in their best interests” is “arrogant and elitist” you repeat more than once.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/12/week-in-review-politics-edition-6/#comment-803838
==> when a majority of working-class white people decide to vote for Trump, it’s because they are “Trump sychophants,” ==>
BTW, I haven’t made that argument either. The sycophants are those who refuse to acknowledge anything negative about Trump and who act as if he is a god-like figure who has no flaws – even when they make logically inconsistent arguments to do so.
==> But when a majority of working-class black people decide to vote for Clinton, it’s because they are voting “in their best interest ==>
What I said is that black people, like white people, vote for candidates based on their best interests.
Try again, Glenn
“Black people, like white people, vote for candidates based on their best interests”?
Oh really?
This brings us full circle back to where we began. If that is true, then why would black people vote for someone who did this to them?
https://i2.wp.com/i.imgur.com/RrWSULk.png
Or this?
https://s19.postimg.org/fsaul32er/Captura_de_pantalla_1346.png
The 9 stages of a Trump statement.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stages-of-a-trump-statement_us_57ae1c7be4b069e7e5053ea1?section=&
Young voters flee Donald Trump in what may be historic trouncing, poll shows
Showing the makings of a great generation.
As well as with black voters, Trump is 4th among young voters too.
E.g.
http://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2016/08/06/trump-4th-place-behind-3rd-party-candidates-young-voters-new-poll/
This is good:
–snip–
The casino company posted losses every year it was public — more than $600 million in total between 1995 and 2004 — a CNNMoney analysis of 10 years of corporate filings shows.
DJT paid Trump handsomely each year. His salary, bonus and options totaled about $20 million.
[…]
An additional $18.5 million came from what the filings called “other” compensation. That includes a web of inventive deals:
— complex consulting contracts that paid Trump for consulting with his own company;
— licensing deals under which DJT paid Trump to use the Trump name;
— reimbursement for the times the company used his personal jet or golf courses for VIPs
In other words, a company that Trump controlled was paying Trump to use other stuff he owned, including his name.
–snip–
Oh, right. Media bias. The media he manipulates is so unfair. So unfair. I forgot
Trump is just mailing it in now. Republicans not so sure he wants to win.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-lose_us_57b2033de4b007c36e4f91f2?section=&
Duh. He’s basically said he doesn’t want the job. That’s what Pence is for. Trump want’s the position and the limelight.
His greatest con yet. Some are fooled.
Trump is proposing “extreme, extreme vetting”. He backed off on “extreme, extreme, extreme vetting”, however. What a wuss?
Imagine my relief in finding out that Trump will save us from terrorism by asking Muslims questions when they want to come into the country.
What a great idea!
Only he could come up with that idea!
Obviously, asking Muslims questions will solve the problem. Why didn’t those so-called national security “experts” think of that?
No wonder he said that he alone could save us from violence and crime.
From the article:
…
In a series of speeches, President Obama described America as “arrogant,” “dismissive” “derisive” and a “colonial power.” He informed other countries that he would be speaking up about America’s “past errors.” He pledged that we would no longer be a “senior partner,” that “sought to dictate our terms.” He lectured CIA officers of the need to acknowledge their mistakes, and described Guantanamo Bay as a “rallying cry for our enemies.”
Perhaps no speech was more misguided than President Obama’s speech to the Muslim World delivered in Cairo, Egypt, in 2009.
In winning the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan repeatedly touted the superiority of freedom over communism, and called the USSR the Evil Empire.
Yet, when President Obama delivered his address in Cairo, no such moral courage could be found. Instead of condemning the oppression of women and gays in many Muslim nations, and the systematic violations of human rights, or the financing of global terrorism, President Obama tried to draw an equivalency between our human rights record and theirs.
His naïve words were followed by even more naïve actions.
The failure to establish a new Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq, and the election-driven timetable for withdrawal, surrendered our gains in that country and led directly to the rise of ISIS.
…
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/national/here-what-donald-trump-said-his-speech-about-isis/nsGLZ/
Article clip @jim2 | August 15, 2016 at 9:45 pm in moderation
Who is this about? Sound familiar?
X went on the attack portraying Y as
trigger-happy cowboy with his finger on the nuclear button.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/media/uploads/special_features/download_files/carter_transcript.pdf
Well, there you have a fine gathering of sycophants all talking up how great Jimmy Carter was, his segregationist father and all. I don’t ever remember hearing anyone from the NYT asking Jimmy the Peanut to disavow his father for his racism. Gosh, those NYT fellas are so forgiving and tolerant, don’t ya just know.
And wasn’t it endearing the day Jimmy realized, his white privilege, at the gate, no less (how ironic and symbolic) and just took it all in and thought, “Isn’t life grand.”
I’d say the barf meter on that article is at least an 8…I couldn’t read the whole thing on account I gots me a weak stomach and can only handle so much, “Oh, he’s such a smart man who failed here and here and here but lordy, lordy, he’s so smart.”
We know who won that race, though. And before that, he won the California governorship by 1 million votes.
“We know who won that race, though. And before that, he won the California governorship by 1 million votes.”
Yes, Thank God!!
Carter is one of the lynchpins in my argument that intellect is not the best indicator of an effective and competent LEADER. When faced with many hard choices Carter dithered. His dithering wasn’t even that interesting given all the hype about his intellect.
I want a leader who is smart but I want a leader with a backbone, with moral mettle, with courage and a clear idea of who he/she is and the values that this country was founded on and a love of those values
Edward Witten is a very smart man. Would he make a good President or effective leader? The idea that high verbal or mathematical aptitude translates into all things is simply false. And very, very silly. Yet NotFox pushes the notion that it is the alpha and omega that solves all problems.
I’d prefer Calvin Coolidge or Harry Truman to Obama (actually, almost anyone to Obama or a Clinton) or Carter or…
It looks like the police have a suspect in custody for the killing of the Imam and his assistant in New York.
The police had a vehicle under surveillance they believed was used in the commission of the crime. When the suspect — Oscar Morel, 35 — entered his vehicle and police approached, he rammed their car and tried to escape. The police found what they believe to be the murder weapon.
I thought California and New York, at least in the Anglo-American world, were way out in front of the pack in the contest for the ‘Land of Stupid’ award. But now Australia has a couple of entrants who are in close competition for the prize.
If your hearing starts to fail, they can put a device in your ear that’ll make you able to hear as good as you could the day you were born. But let me tell you something, folks…you can’t fix stupid. – Ron White
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ron_White#You_Can.27t_Fix_Stupid
From the article:
…
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has called on the top U.S. environmental regulator to make changes to a market for renewable fuel credits or else risk “the mother of all short squeezes” that could bankrupt refiners.
In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency administrators seen by Reuters on Monday, Icahn said “a number” of refiners could go bankrupt if the playing field is not leveled to stop disfavoring independent refiners such as CVR Energy, in which Icahn owns an 82 percent stake.
Icahn expressed worries about the market for renewable identification number (RIN) credits, which the EPA calls the “currency” of a renewable fuel standard program designed to reduce reliance on imported oil and the emission of greenhouse gases.
…
“The RIN market is the quintessential example of a ‘rigged’ market where large gas station chains, big oil companies and large speculators are assured to make windfall profits at the expense of small and midsized independent refineries which have been designated the ‘obligated parties’ to deliver RINs,” Icahn wrote.
“As a result, the RIN market has become ‘the mother of all short squeezes,”‘ he added. “It is not too late to fix this problem if the EPA acts quickly.”
…
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/16/icahn-urges-epa-to-change-renewable-fuel-credit-market.html
From the article:
…
Can you now answer the question “What’s a RIN?” If you are like most other people you probably still cannot answer it. This part of the RFS program is complex and hard for everyone to comprehend, much less understand the implications. Even EPA does not have the resources to compile and publish all of the RINs data in a timely and helpful manner.
http://blog.afpm.org/what-is-a-rfs-rin/
The moral philosophy of Obama’s EPA is the same as that of the medieval Catholic Chruch. As one Roman theologian of the time put it:
Trump vs. Clinton August Campaign Event Schedules
link: http://16004-presscdn-0-50.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Trump-vs-Hillary-Attendance-8-14-575×709.png
Trump:
– average audience size: 5,523
– number of events: 19
– total audience: 104,940
Clinton:
– average audience size: 1,531
– number of events: 8
– total audience: 12,250
Clinton has taken off 7 of 14 days in August so far. Trump has taken off 2 days. The gist of the article is that Trump is a high energy workaholic, inspires the electorate to get involved, and can work hard for the American people as president. On the other hand it appears that Clinton has one foot in the grave already.
It’s probably bordering on insane to elect a 70 year-old to such a demanding 4-year position but clearly one of the geriatrics running for the office has more physical endurance than the other.
Is Saudi Arabia About To Cry Uncle In The Oil Price War?
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-Saudi-Arabia-About-To-Cry-Uncle-In-The-Oil-Price-War.html
Clinton’s most loyal demographic:
http://www.infowars.com/burn-down-white-suburbs-sister-of-man-killed-by-milwaukee-police-urges-rioters/
That who you boys here want to pal around with? LOL
Obama! Obama! Obama!
It would be interesting to hear Planning Engineer’s evaluation of this article:
“What Will You Do When The Lights Go Out?”
Gorge on frozen and refrigerated food for the first week or so. I have water and sewer that don’t require electricity.
I’ll be out working to restore it. Part of my job description.
Would it not have been prudent of Obama to invest some of that TARP money in grid infrastructure? Would it not be interesting if pigs could fly?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/08/16/a_candidate_you_can_trust_to_lie.html
First as an attorney and then as a politician, Clinton has been lying professionally since the disco era. Even before her first election to the Senate, the late William Safire called her “a congenital liar” and “a habitual prevaricator.” These designations can now be scientifically verified.
Recently, Clinton maintained that FBI Director James Comey found her statements regarding her email server to be “truthful”—a claim that The Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave “Four Pinocchios,” enough to make it a “whopper.”
More astounding: Asked in February if she has ever lied, Clinton said, “I don’t believe I ever have. I don’t believe I ever will.”
–more at link
VIDEO: Bill Clinton: FBI Director’s Claim That Hillary Mishandled Classified Info Is A “Load Of Bull”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/08/14/bill_clinton_fbi_directors_claim_that_hillary_mishandled_classified_info_is_a_load_of_bull.html
David,
“First as an attorney and then as a politician”. That’s two strikes before the mouth is opened (Sorry Rud).
Would you tell others that Wapo’s fact checker is likely a reasonable source?
The dangerous alliance between Hillary Clinton’s Democrats and neocons: Fear of Trump is cementing a strange relationship
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/michael-tracey-liberals-neocons-trump-article-1.2752285
Yes, the System Is Rigged
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/yes-the-system-is-rigged/
“[I]f the establishment’s hegemony is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity — for the preservation of their perks, privileges, and power.”
Powerful statement!
Ballot box uncertainties hang over US election
https://www.ft.com/content/7bb34dda-6097-11e6-ae3f-77baadeb1c93
Black Lives Matter = Only Some Black Lives Matter, and White Lives Don’t Matter
But of course no left-wing or right-wing establishment commentary would be complete without the gratuitous swipe at Donald Trump, placing at least some of the blame for the violence on him:
Civil Rights leader blames police chief and mayor for violence in Milwaukee:
Peaked Donald:
Interesting dichotomy. How does it work when one professes one will assemble the ‘greatest’ and then those ‘greatest’ hold differing views from the one?
“Donald Trump’s agriculture advisory committee includes members who have advocated for comprehensive immigration reform that would give unauthorized workers a path to legal status, a position that runs counter to Trump’s call for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/16/several-members-of-trumps-agriculture-committee-have-supported-legal-status-for-undocumented-workers/
Not sure if it’s a problem with the reporting, or moot because the ‘one’ seems hell bent on not being elected.
TED TALK: Margaret Heffernan: Dare to disagree
https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree#t-244189
Aetna Joins Other Major Insurers In Pulling Back From Obamacare
“Corlette acknowledges that the key to making the ACA market work is to broaden the customer base by attracting more low-risk customers. But she questions whether the insurers themselves have taken sufficient steps to bring them into the pool. “What are they doing to market to young healthies?” she asks. “From what I’ve seen, instead of doing more outreach, they’re disappearing into their bunkers. To some extent, if the risk pool is unbalanced, they’re to blame.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-obamacare-saved-20160816-snap-story.html
Looks like it’s the ‘big boyz’ playing hardball: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/08/17/490202346/aetna-ceo-to-justice-department-block-our-deal-and-well-drop-out-of-exchanges
Aetna are focusing on their more profitable side which is the Medicare and Medicaid government supported programs as well as company-provided insurance, which has larger built-in pools of healthy people. It tells us that it is time to allow those left with going to exchanges for individual insurance to have a public option. Or they have to not allow healthy people to game the system, buying insurance only when they need it, either by having a larger fee for no insurance or by having a delay period for when bought insurance kicks in.
Looks to me like Aetna’s focused more on wanting the merger and ‘punishing’ the Obama administration for not allowing same.
Here’s a good article from WSJ which suggests structural issues in the ACA from the ground up. And, it offers a plausible solution while discussion the public option:
“So how can the ACA be fixed? Democrats’ solution is, essentially, more subsidies. Mr. Obama has called for a “public option,” a federal health plan to supplement private insurers. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, goes even further: She wants anyone over 55 to be able to opt into Medicare. Both would nudge the U.S. closer to a “single payer” model like Canada’s that liberal activists have long sought.
Yet this would require a lot more money and further erode market forces in health care.
Republicans have long called for repealing the ACA, yet their leading thinkers now concede the pre-ACA status quo isn’t an option.
The AEI report represents one promising alternative: every individual would receive a refundable tax credit, rising with age, to buy a basic plan. Insurers would be largely free to design a plan to fit that price point. This would stabilize the market by realigning premiums with risk. Some people with pre-existing conditions would need additional subsidies. For some individuals, the credit may only be enough for catastrophic coverage. But that, they note, is what insurance is supposed to do: “The insistence that only ‘comprehensive’ insurance coverage is really insurance…encourages a great deal of economic irrationality.””
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-unstable-economics-in-obamas-health-law-1471452938
With premium increases reportedly upcoming, folks gaming the system, and fewer insurers participating and those who remain becoming selective something’s got to give.
The ACA premise is doable, but the execution has been less than optimal.
There is no way this id0tic government program can work. You can’t allow people to not have insurance, get cancer, then enroll and suck up millions in medical care. Won’t work.