Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Oct-2020 World View: Earth Two

(10-31-2020, 12:20 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > The difference is the Democrats are following the science,
> avoiding large no mask crowded gatherings. By setting an example
> Biden is striving for leadership and showing concern for his
> people. You wouldn’t understand.

I understand exactly what's going on. You and the Democrats have a
vitriolic hatred of the 68 million tea partiers and Trump supporters.

The Democrats are completely panicked by the tens of thousands of
super-enthusiastic Trump supporters at each Trump rally -- and these
are all people that the Democrats hate -- so they respond by calling
them super-spreader events, which is ridiculous, coming from people
who enthusiastically approve rioting in the streets.

The Democrats are furious that they can't get more than 10 or 20
people to come to a Biden rally -- assuming he ever decides to come
out of his basement -- so they claim that it's all because of
"science." Pathetic.

As I've said many times, this has nothing to do with Trump. It started
years ago with vitriolic attacks on tea partiers, and continues today.

On Thursday, Don Lemon, of the sewer channel CNN, said that he has
had to dump many of his friends for supporting Trump:

Quote: "I think they have to hit rock bottom like an addict,
right? And they have to want to get help.

They have to want to know the truth. They have to want to live in
reality. They have to want to be responsible not only for other
people’s lives but for their lives.

They are so nonsensical when it comes to this issue. They have
every single talking point that they hear on state TV and that
they hear from this president. They repeat it, and they are
blinded by it.

I had to get rid of them because they are too far gone. I try and
try and try. They’ll say something really stupid, and I will show
them the science and I’ll give them the information, and they
still repeat those talking points.

I don’t know if after this I will ever be able to go back and be
friends with those people because at a certain point you just say,
‘You’re too far gone.' If they’re willing to come back and
willing to live in reality, then I will welcome them with open
arms."

Oh, he tries and tries and tries. Poor Don.

This is so sickening and pathetic, but it's just the latest example of
the vitriolic hatred of tea partiers and Trump supporters. Ten years
ago, I was posting examples on my web site of other CNN people spewing
hatred for tea partiers, calling them "teabaggers." Don Lemon is just
another pathetic example.

In the meantime, Don Lemon will do everything in his power to keep you
from knowing about antifa-blm fascist violence in cities with Democrat
mayors, or about huge turnout for Trump's rallies, or about the
massive flood of evidence in the last 2-3 weeks there has been that
Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are criminally guilty of influence
peddling, money laundering, extortion, and other crimes, and people
are coming out of the woodwork to confirm it.

But oh, that stuff is all irrelevant because it's on "Earth Two,"
whatever that is. Really, you and Don Lemon get more ridiculous every
time. Pathetic.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Oct-2020 World View: Bravado

(10-31-2020, 01:22 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > A typical response. I have come to expect it when you have no
> logical answer. The bravado of ideological gridlock.

The problem is that you have absolutely no idea what's going on, so
your answers are more ridiculous every time. For example, there's no
point in mentioning the Biden criminality, since you have no idea what
that is, and you don't want to know. It's the same with every issue.
You're like a 5 year old child who doesn't know anything and doesn't
want to know anything.

I've said this before. You pretend to be an expert on international
events, but you've done no research and your have no clue, so what
you write is at the level of a Donald Duck comic book.

Criticizing Generational Dynamics, about which you know nothing, is an
example of why everything you write is a joke. Just saying that Fox
News is "Earth 2" (whatever that is) is not research. It's a pathetic
joke from a pathetic person. If you want to be taken seriously, then
do the research.

[Bob Butler 54]

I for one don’t hate the Tea Party as it was once.  They rejected the Republican establishment, and if anything were a little ahead of the Democrats in that regard.  The nominees in 2016 reflect that.  Trump was outsider, Clinton establishment.  The Republicans were forced to listen to their people, the Democrats avoided it in the name of orthodoxy.  However, the Tea Party people fell in love with an alleged millionaire and morphed into the Trump base.  I don’t hate them.  I think they are terribly misguided in who they follow.  If the blue manage the transition, it will be for the best.  The fanatic base will be a weight on the Republicans completing their irrelevance for a while.

But I still think you fail to understand Biden’s approach to events.  Sure, cheering crowds would help gather votes, but Biden wouldn’t risk killing his people for that advantage.  It was a choice he made reflecting how he would govern.  Furious is not the correct word for how I see it.  Closer to prudent.  Biden gathers what people he can safely, which is why you hear honking horns at some of his events as the crowds are scattered and still in their cars.

The Don Lemon comment that the Republican base is like an addict does seem apt.  They seem addicted to derivatives of Reagan’s policy, which has been taken well beyond the point of diminishing return.  You can’t keep minimizing domestic spending and cut taxes without hurting the people.  You can’t pander to the racists in this age of Black Lives Matter.  Thus, increased poverty, college debts, objections to systematic racism and the rest.  Still, many want to push the Reagan approach further, and the Republican establishment balks at that.  The Tea Party people are hooked on a policy which has run its time.  Returning to the time America was great, the time of tax and spend liberalism, would be proper for a while.  A steady policy between the two would be better, but a bit much to hope for.

The Tea Party looked to first Palin then Trump.  I sort of anticipate their hooking onto someone else.  If they hooked onto the right somebody it wouldn’t be so bad.  A conservative check to progressive policies ought to be part of the system.  Not establishment would be good.  Still, the establishment and the Tea Party have become Trump enablers, and Trump seem to be heading for a crash.

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-31-2020, 02:21 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(10-31-2020, 01:22 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: A typical response. I have come to expect it when you have no logical answer. The bravado of ideological gridlock.

The problem is that you have absolutely no idea what's going on, so your answers are more ridiculous every time.  For example, there's no point in mentioning the Biden criminality, since you have no idea what that is, and you don't want to know.  It's the same with every issue.  You're like a 5 year old child who doesn't know anything and doesn't want to know anything.

I've said this before.  You pretend to be an expert on international events, but you've done no research and your have no clue, so what you write is at the level of a Donald Duck comic book.

Criticizing Generational Dynamics, about which you know nothing, is an example of why everything you write is a joke.  Just saying that Fox News is "Earth 2" (whatever that is) is not research.  It's a pathetic joke from a pathetic person.  If you want to be taken seriously, then do the research.

There are at least three problems.  Major powers have to deal with proxy wars and opponents with nukes, but you extrapolate the behavior of minor powers onto the majors.  The minor powers to a much greater extent still follow the Industrial Age patterns, but the behavior of the major powers has distinctly changed.  Generational Dynamics does not take this into account.

Which leads to another problem.  The patterns of civilization changed big time with the Information Age, with computers, nukes and proxy wars.  Generational Dynamics does not deal well with the change.

There is your ideological twisting of motivations.  Those with conflicting ideology get their motivations turned into parodies which are easy to tear down.  Thus, the analysis of what is going on if often wrong.

Then there is your silly belief that among major powers, sergeants control whether there is a conflict. not leaders or elites.

Another problem is an inability to learn from criticism.  You type LOL or offer insults rather than learn.  That is a more personal problem which seems impossible to correct.  You admit to being a social outcast but don’t seem willing to admit that this is due to your own shortcomings.  It is not directly related to international politics, but it does effect the quality of anything you touch.  If there is anyone that has a childish inability to socialize and learn, it would be you.

That said, the amount of research into the more obscure parts of the world is admirable.  I seldom need to correct you there.  It is just that your ideology often twists the motivation.  This makes the overall work be rejected by all those who don’t share your perspective.

I would add that I'm not that much interested in the minor powers, thus am not interested in matching your research in that area.  I'm combining civilizations, turnings, ages and evolutionary behavior, which is quite enough than you.  The systems are focused on different things.  The age transition is one place where Generational Dynamic lacks.

[pbrower2a]

(10-31-2020, 02:09 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 31-Oct-2020 World View: Earth Two

(10-31-2020, 12:20 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: >   The difference is the Democrats are following the science,
>   avoiding large no mask crowded gatherings.  By setting an example
>   Biden is striving for leadership and showing concern for his
>   people.  You wouldn’t understand.

I understand exactly what's going on.  You and the Democrats have a
vitriolic hatred of the 68 million tea partiers and Trump supporters.

Donald Trump has done little to endear himself to people who did not vote for him. He has been a horrid example for dealing with COVID-19.

I will be glad when this sordid election is over. Yes, it is sordid even if my side wins because it is the ugliest in American history since 1860, when America was split between people who thought slavery was the most wonderful thing that ever happened and people who wanted nothing to do with slavery. Trump supporters seem like Tea Party leftovers, but they do not identify themselves as such. 

I like my politics polite, having a focus on service instead of upon sticking it to the other side.  It will be best if we can forget how our neighbors, co-workers, and old school buddies voted. Many of us will be best off with a new set of friends, perhaps as a result of moving to some new community. I also prefer that politics be boring. Read a book. Buy a ticket to a theater or a sporting event. Rent a video. It's not the responsibility of our politicians to entertain us. What do you expect? Feeding Christians to the lions at the amphitheater?  Nero, Caligula, and Commodus certainly knew how to please the crowds.

Quote:The Democrats are completely panicked by the tens of thousands of
super-enthusiastic Trump supporters at each Trump rally -- and these
are all people that the Democrats hate -- so they respond by calling
them super-spreader events, which is ridiculous, coming from people
who enthusiastically approve rioting in the streets.

The typical Black Lives Matters rally -- and I have been to one, leaving only because too few people were wearing masks -- is a well-behaved event. I'm the sort of person who reported a drunk driver to the local police and who told the Michigan State Police that a highway near me (I then had a dog that I walked in that area, and I had no desire to lose that pooch or get crippled or killed by a speeder) was a speeder's paradise because it is flat, straight, and without communities for about ten miles. I often drive on that route, and within two weeks the state troopers were writing tickets to speeders doing freeway speeds on a two-lane blacktop road. Ideally the section in which the dog and I went for walks (to visit some rescue horses) would have the speed limit cut from 55 to perhaps 40 because there is a concentration of small houses with small children.

I see no conflict between efforts to reduce police shootings of black people stopped (even if they are stopped for valid reasons) and strict enforcement of the law. Do the crime and do the time, whether for drugs, assaults, arson, sex offenses, or robbery. Note well that a lawless society isn't much of a society, and it certainly isn't free. 
 

Quote:The Democrats are furious that they can't get more than 10 or 20
people to come to a Biden rally -- assuming he ever decides to come
out of his basement -- so they claim that it's all because of
"science."  Pathetic.

You missed the word "thousand".

On the other hand, Joe Biden had to cancel one event:

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Joe Biden’s presidential campaign canceled a Friday event in Austin, Texas, after harassment from a pro-Trump contingent.[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Texas has emerged as a battleground state in Tuesday’s presidential election, with polls showing the typically Republican stronghold now only marginally favoring President Donald Trump. The Biden campaign scheduled a Friday event in the state, in a bid to drum up last-minute support.[/color]






[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]But when the Biden campaign bus drove to Austin, it was greeted by a blockade of pro-Trump demonstrators, leading to what one Texas House representative described as an escalation “well beyond safe limits.”[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]The cancelation comes amid national anxiety about voter intimidation, a tactic the Trump campaign has implicitly endorsed.
[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Historian Dr. Eric Cervini was driving to help with the Biden campaign stop when he filmed a line of pickup trucks along the highway, many of them flying Trump flags. The drivers were “waiting to ambush the Biden/Harris campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin,” Cervini tweeted.
[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]“These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road,” he alleged. “They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car.”


[/color]


[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]A Biden campaign staffer told The Daily Beast that Trump supporters surrounded the bus on the highway and slowed down in front of it, attempting to stop it or run it off the road. The official sent a picture taken on the bus, showing Trump trucks surrounding the front of the vehicle. Staffers on the bus called police, who helped the bus reach its destination.[/color]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Video from the highway shows trucks surrounding the bus, at one point colliding with an SUV. (This is from a Twitter feed, which this Forum does not absorb well -- pb2a)

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Footage from a CBS affiliate in Austin shows Trump supporters with signs and bullhorns surrounding the bus when it parked, with one person screaming that Biden was a communist.[/color]
[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]Rep. Sheryl Cole, a Democrat representing nearby Pflugerville in Texas’s House, announced that a Biden event in her city had been canceled due to the harassment.
[/color]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]“This is a 1st for me - but we just cancelled a joint event in Pflugerville w/ @JoeBiden campaign,[/color]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]@AustinYoungDems, & more, due to security reasons,” she tweeted. “Unfortunately, Pro-Trump Protestors have escalated well beyond safe limits. Sorry to all who looked forward to this fun event.”[/color]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]The Biden campaign’s Texas communications director, Tariq Thowfeek, said holding the event would have placed Biden staffers and supporters at risk.
[/color]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]“Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas today instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” Thowfeek told The Daily Beat.
[/color]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]“Our supporters will continue to organize their communities for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot, and to the Texans who disrupted our events today: We’ll see you on November 3rd.”[/color]

[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]The Trump campaign—and often Trump himself—has encouraged in-person conflict around the polls. Trump used the first presidential debate to urge supporters to act as “poll watchers,” a call that sparked concerns of voter intimidation. His son, Donald Trump Jr., made an explicit call-out regarding the Biden campaign’s Texas outreach efforts.
[/color]
[color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)][color=rgba(2, 20, 31, 0.85)]In a video ahead of a Friday event by Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, Trump Jr. encouraged his father’s supporters to show up at Harris’s event.

[/color][/color]from The Daily Beast

Quote:As I've said many times, this has nothing to do with Trump.  It started
years ago with vitriolic attacks on tea partiers, and continues today.

On Thursday, Don Lemon, of the sewer channel CNN, said that he has
had to dump many of his friends for supporting Trump:

Don Lemon (of CNN) Wrote:   "I think they have to hit rock bottom like an addict,
   right? And they have to want to get help.

   They have to want to know the truth.  They have to want to live in
   reality. They have to want to be responsible not only for other
   people’s lives but for their lives.

   They are so nonsensical when it comes to this issue.  They have
   every single talking point that they hear on state TV and that
   they hear from this president.  They repeat it, and they are
   blinded by it.

   I had to get rid of them because they are too far gone. I try and
   try and try. They’ll say something really stupid, and I will show
   them the science and I’ll give them the information, and they
   still repeat those talking points.

   I don’t know if after this I will ever be able to go back and be
   friends with those people because at a certain point you just say,
   ‘You’re too far gone.'  If they’re willing to come back and
   willing to live in reality, then I will welcome them with open
   arms."

Oh, he tries and tries and tries.  Poor Don.

This is so sickening and pathetic, but it's just the latest example of
the vitriolic hatred of tea partiers and Trump supporters.  Ten years
ago, I was posting examples on my web site of other CNN people spewing
hatred for tea partiers, calling them "teabaggers."  Don Lemon is just
another pathetic example.

As we all should know from a tender age, we cannot choose what the truth is. We can live with the truth and adapt to it or we can let truth maul us like... well, pick your favorite zoological analogue. 

By now, most of us have forgotten about the Tea Party. Trump supporters no longer call themselves such. I look at reality and how Trump tries to mangle it to fit his odd combination of immaturity and senility with perhaps some sociopathy seasoning it. I look at it this way: if I lack the funds and I want a new car, but my credit is atrocious, I am not going to get to buy a new Mercedes-Benz. I will instead be lucky to get some car with about the same payments (except that those will be "convenient weekly payments") for some jalopy that will likely expire before the rust-bucket is paid off. Not to worry -- the tote-the-note lot from which I buy that desperate choice of a car will let me keep making similar "convenient weekly payments" for another car in similar condition. Reality, especially in economics, can be nasty.    

It's your tough luck, Mr. X, that a majority of voters in enough states chomp at the bit to replace the Milosevic-like President that we now have.   

Quote:In the meantime, Don Lemon will do everything in his power to keep you
from knowing about antifa-blm fascist violence in cities with Democrat
mayors, or about huge turnout for Trump's rallies, or about the
massive flood of evidence in the last 2-3 weeks there has been that
Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are criminally guilty of influence
peddling, money laundering, extortion, and other crimes, and people
are coming out of the woodwork to confirm it.

Trump supporters seem to be the sorts that don't get around much to the theater, concert hall, museum, or place of great natural beauty. But they get to see the President in one of his Castro-style rallies. He tells people exactly what they want to hear even if such is as far from the truth as what Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez would have said at their rallies. 

...How many giant cities have Republican mayors? Let's put it this way -- what does the GOP have to offer to people in the giant cities?  

Quote:But oh, that stuff is all irrelevant because it's on "Earth Two,"
whatever that is.  Really, you and Don Lemon get more ridiculous every
time.  Pathetic.

The problem with bias in media often comes (and this applies as much to FoX Newspeak Channel as to CNN) with analysis of the stories. I can usually draw my own conclusions. 

OK, maybe I should have been a journalist. There really isn't that much new under the sun. Much of the discourse on foreign policy sounds suspiciously similar to delenda est Carthago.

[Warren Dew]

(10-31-2020, 02:21 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Just saying that Fox News is "Earth 2" (whatever that is) is not research.

Here's where the "Earth 2" thing got started:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/if-...n-had-won/

As usual, Bob gets things wrong.  "Earth 2" is where the people live who are still in denial about Hillary losing.

Quote:If Hillary Clinton Had Won

What’s different — and what’s the same — in a world where the 2016 election went the other way?

By Nate Silver

Greetings, citizens of Earth 1! I’m filing this dispatch from Earth 2, where Hillary ClintonGreetings, citizens of Earth 1! I’m filing this dispatch from Earth 2, where Hillary Clinton got just a few more votes last November than she did in your world. got just a few more votes last November than she did in your world.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-01-2020, 04:11 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(10-31-2020, 02:21 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Just saying that Fox News is "Earth 2" (whatever that is) is not research.

Here's where the "Earth 2" thing got started:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/if-...n-had-won/

As usual, Bob gets things wrong.  "Earth 2" is where the people live who are still in denial about Hillary losing.

Quote:If Hillary Clinton Had Won

What’s different — and what’s the same — in a world where the 2016 election went the other way?

By Nate Silver

Greetings, citizens of Earth 1! I’m filing this dispatch from Earth 2, where Hillary ClintonGreetings, citizens of Earth 1! I’m filing this dispatch from Earth 2, where Hillary Clinton got just a few more votes last November than she did in your world. got just a few more votes last November than she did in your world.

I'm just using MSNBC's oft repeated usage, not going into history for one which was abandoned.

[pbrower2a]

"Earth 2" is simply a different universe, at least for a person. It is any coherent alternative (at least for literary purposes, such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, a science-fiction scenario involving an Axis victory)*. It could be anything from "Lincoln not assassinated" because John Wilkes Booth falls to his death while going up the stairs to the Presidential box at Ford's Theater to "Babe Ruth remains with the Red Sox"... or even "Australia and India never split from Antarctica".

*Want a more plausible scenario of an Axis victory? Germany and Japan become the Good Guys, and the KKK has taken over America. Adolf Hitler gives up on politics after the silly Beer-Hall Putsch and finds his way into commercial art that includes some scary posters, "Dekluxification" becomes a valid word in the English language, Erwin Rommel takes the role of President of the United States even to the extent of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch of the game (to concentration-camp survivor Hank Greenberg) in which Jackie Robinson (another survivor of a concentration camp) has a debut. America's expressways are called "motorways", which is a perfect English translation of "Autobahn". John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath is about Okies returning to Oklahoma as Mexico evicts them. Chicago is the city divided much like Berlin in "Earth 1". It's a Wonderful Life is a story about a German community in which "Georg Behli" discovers at a desperate moment how different the world would be without him. In this world Germany has a rich cultural life because it left the Jews alone. (Point of departure: Walter Rathenau is not assassinated).

[John J. Xenakis]

** 01-Nov-2020 World View: Tough luck

(10-31-2020, 06:14 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > It's your tough luck, Mr. X, that a majority of voters in enough
> states chomp at the bit to replace the Milosevic-like President
> that we now have.

Lol! To start, see Proverbs 16:18.

The reason that your comment is so funny is that you have absolutely
no idea what I would consider lucky.

So first off, at my age hopefully I won't be around much longer. So
I'll be a lot luckier than you, because you'll be alive and I'll be
dead.

Second, "be careful what you wish for." The evidence of criminal
behavior by the Biden family has become enormous in the last three
weeks, and won't go away if Biden wins. There's an FBI investigation,
but even without that, there's enough information in public for the
public investigation to be self-sustaining.

Biden would also have to deal with continuing antifa-blm fascist
violence and with the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis, and it's doubtful that
either he or Kamala has the management skills to deal with such
crises.

Third, as I've said many times, it's a principle of Generational
Dynamics that major decisions are made by the people, not by the
politicians. Putting aside the rhetoric and massive criminal
corruption of the Democrats, the country's policies won't be very
different than under a second Trump term. In particular, all that new
green deal stuff is so idiotic and laughable that it won't go
anywhere. Biden might get some things done on the margins, like
removing some incentives for oil drilling, but nothing more.

A good example is Barack Obama, whose planned policies were just as
idiotic as Biden's, but he got nothing done and, in the end, putting
aside the rhetoric and the massive corruption of the Democrats, the
country's policies under Obama were little different than under a
third Bush term.

I've written about this many times, but it's worth repeating now.
Obama had plans to try to bring peace to the world through his
unopposed policies.

In June 2008, he said, "I am absolutely certain that generations from
now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was
the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to
the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to
slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a
war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best
hope on Earth."

At the time he said this, I thought it was just the usual crazy
nonsense crap coming from politicians, but I was shocked later that
Obama actually believed it. In the 2008 campaign, Obama said that he
was going to heal the world as soon as he took office. He would be
guided by facts, not like President Bush, who had been guided by
ideology and ignored facts. He would cure global warming, close
Guantánamo island prison, become friendly with Iran and North Korea,
bring a two-state solution to Palestinians and Israelis, beat the
Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, impose strict gun control
policies, reflate the real estate and stock market bubbles and, of
course, provide universal health care.

Obama accomplished none of those goals. He couldn't even accomplish
the simplest one -- closing Guantánamo -- which you'd think he'd be
able to do easily. But no, he couldn't. And Biden's policies are
even more idiotic than Obama's, and won't go anywhere except to
generate controversy. But who knows? Maybe Biden will get a
Nobel Peace Prize anyway.

The above is particularly true if Biden is forced to leave office
and Kamala takes over. She's a total loon, extremely divisive,
and very unpopular.

For me, a Biden/Kamala presidency will be as incompetent as the Obama
presidency, but Biden won't have Obama's charisma (or Bill Clinton's
charisma). I know that I had to be very careful when criticizing
Obama's policies, because anyone criticizing Obama was immediately
called a racist. That won't be an issue for me or anyone else
criticizing Biden's incompetent policies.

It's true that I do favor Trump over Biden, but that's because Trump
is a much better manager than Biden. Trump's management of the Wuhan
Coronavirus pandemic has been outstanding. He got vaccines and
therapeutics developed in a few months that normally (or under Obama
or Biden) would have taken years. Trump was even congratulated at
times by the governors of NY and California.

The major example of Obama's management "skills" was his management of
the development of the Obamacare disaster. As I've written many
times, what happened on the afternoon of October 1, 2013, was that
President Obama stood up at a press conference to launch Obamacare.
He did so without the vaguest clue that the Healthcare.gov web site
had been a disaster for hours. It was a total farce, and Obama made a
complete fool out of himself. As I wrote in my 2015 analytical
article, Obamacare was a Rube Goldberg invention filled with massive
corruption, criminality and incompetence. Obama had thrown something
like $900 million dollars at a $50 million problem and assumed that no
management was required. That's how stupid and incompetent Obama was.

If Trump had been in charge of Obamacare development, he would have
handled it the way he handled the pandemic. He would have provided
only $30 million instead of over $500 million, until more was needed,
and he would have been on the phone every day to the consulting firms
to make sure that development was on time. On the morning of
October 1, 2013, Trump would have known exactly what the status was,
rather than making a fool out of himself like Obama.

Just to take one example that I discussed in my 2015 article. CGI
Corp. was responsible for the Massachusetts web site. Obama gave them
$200 million, even though it was really only a $10 million project.
CGI Corp saw its job as finding ways to spend $200 million. They
hired programmers who couldn't even write a memo, let alone a computer
program. They defrauded the government by faking test results and
lying about deadlines. They fired the one whistleblower who
complained about what was going on. On Oct 1, 2013, nothing worked.
Another firm had to take over, and all of CGI's code had to be thrown
out as worthless garbage. $200 million had been wasted on nothing.
Trump would never let anything like that happen, but that's standard
fare for Obama's corruption and incompetence.

Even worse, Obamacare confiscated over $716 billion in the Medicare
insurance fund to provide funding for Obamacare entities. This is
money that workers have been paying into the fund for decades, and now
it's all gone. That's criminal incompetence.

Will Biden/Kamala be as incompetent as Obama? I don't know.

I haven't mentioned foreign policy, but Obama appointed that
ridiculous clown John Kerry to be secretary of state, and we watched
(and I documented) as he stumbled from one disaster to the next. By
contrast, Trump has managed the situations with North Korea and China
very well, forcing them to live up to their commitments, rather than
just letting the commitments slide as Clinton, Bush and Obama did, and
Trump has also gotten three Arab countries to sign peace deals with
Israel, which Obama never could. But hey! Obama got the Nobel
Peace Prize. That's what's important, isn't it?

Will Biden/Kamala have any foreign policy skills? I don't know.

There's an ironic result of the Democrats' illegal spying on the
Trump campaign. Mueller spent tens of millions of dollars paying
his gang of Democrats to investigate Trump, and after three years
they found nothing. All they did was prove that Trump is probably
the most honest president in the history of the country.

Are Biden/Kamala honest? We already know that Biden is a crook,
and that Kamala does what AOC tells her to do.

So you've had it easy for the last four years. Just sit back and make
truly idiotic comments about Trump, calling him Hitler and Milosevic
and such, and repeat everything that the shithead Adam Schiff says,
but if Biden wins then you'll have to defend his criminality and
incompetence, which will be a lot harder for you.

I, on the other hand, can just criticize one idiotic Biden failure
after another. So who's the lucky person now?

I have an idea. Why don't you start a new forum thread: "Let's
make fun of Biden while we still can, before he goes to jail
or dies of dementia"?

[Bob Butler 54]

Nice bunch of predictions, very much worth revisiting in a bit.

I suppose my most basic opposing prediction is that the old values will collapse as they have in all prior crises.  I can wait and see what happens to Trump once he moves past the 'no indictment' tradition and his debts come due.

If a former president moves to another country to avoid prosecution, is the secret service still obliged to give protection?

[John J. Xenakis]

** 01-Nov-2020 World View: Illegal China-Vietnam migrants

utahbob Wrote:> Interesting video. It is from India in English, so target audience
> is Americans or Indians in America. It does not paint a pretty
> picture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn5SGkaKQGw

Here are the articles referenced in the video:

-- Vietnam Cracks Down on Growing Wave of Migrant Workers From China
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/w...11656.html
(Radio Free Asia, 29-Oct-2020)

-- China floods its villages to save its cities. Chinese media praises
the supreme sacrifice of the villages
https://tfipost.com/2020/08/china-floods...-villages/
(TFIPost, India, 4-Aug-2020)

-- Over 100 Chinese Migrant Workers Detained for Illegally Entering
Vietnam
https://www.theepochtimes.com/over-100-c...57220.html
(Epoch Times, 29-Oct-2020)

Normally, China encourages Chinese to move to other countries to get
employment, and to establish a local Chinese enclave that can be used
to spy and control the local politics. This has been a specific
policy with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and debt trap
diplomacy, where China can use overdue debts and the diaspora to
control the politicians.

Vietnam is different. There's no BRI. North Vietnam can already
be thought of as a large Chinese enclave, except that the North
Vietnamese and the Chinese hate each other, and could go to war again
at any time, especially in the South China Sea.

During the Second Indochina War (what we call the "Vietnam War"), the
Chinese wanted the North and the South to remain separate countries,
since they they didn't want a united Vietnam on their southern border.
But the Soviets wanted the North to defeat the South and unify
Vietnam, so they provided a lot of military support to the North
Vietnamese. This led to the war that followed the Second Indochina
War, namely the extremely genocidal and bloody Vietnam-Cambodia-China
war, where China was supporting Cambodia, and the Soviets were
supporting Vietnam.

So if the news is true that the Chinese are planning to build a wall
along the entire China-North Vietnam border are true, that would be
quite dramatic, and would indicate that the Chinese are actually
afraid of Vietnam in some way -- perhaps they see a new China-Vietnam
or Vietnam-Cambodia war coming.

Nonetheless, it's hard for me to see why a few hundred illegal
migrants would cause that level of alarm. Maybe the Chinese are
afraid that an open border will allow the Wuhan Coronavirus to come
into China from North Vietnam. But it seems to me that there must be
something else going on that's not described by the media reports.

That further issue might be the continuing Hong Kong crisis.
Cantonese-speaking Guangdong province is adjacent to Hong Kong, and is
the crucible of the last two major anti-government rebellions. The
last two of these massive rebellions were the the Taiping Rebellion
(1850-64) and Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49) -- and both of
these rebellions began in Guangdong province and spread north.

I've speculated in the past that the Hong Kong protests could spread
into Guangdong province and spark a new anti-Beijing rebellion. I
know that the CCP thugs are also concerned about that, so if it's
really true that the CCP is planning to build a wall along the Vietnam
border, then it would most likely be that the CCP thugs are worried
that Vietnam might support an anti-Beijing rebellion from the south.
And I have no doubt that Vietnam would.

Tensions are continuing to grow. Just today, Beijing arrested 7
pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong on trumped up charges. This is
going to infuriate a lot of people in Guangdong. If there's a high
unemployment rate in Guangdong, because Chinese firms have fled to
Vietnam to escape US tariffs, then the possibility of an anti-Beijing
rebellion supported by Vietnam grows, and perhaps that's the real
story.

Taking this one step further, North Vietnam now loves the US, and is
an ally. So building the wall may be part of the CCP's larger war
plans.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 01-Nov-2020 World View: Stroke

Guest Wrote:> The best post you have ever written on US politics, John.

> I had a stroke last Sunday was hosptialized most of the week. I
> have some mild vision problems, but otherwise, I am fine. I am
> still mentally sharp. I am blessed. My mother passed last summer
> due to a series of strokes, so of course this was scary. Also, I
> am not that old. I am now on Statins and blood thinners for the
> rest of my life. Without prescription medication, I will die, so
> prepping isn't really an option for me anymore. I believe that is
> for the best. I have no interest in living in a world dominatedby
> bottom feeders.

You posted anonymously as a "Guest," so I don't know who you are,
but I offer you my best wishes for whatever outcome you desire.

I share your disillusionment. I feel like I'm a Martian visiting
earth, with absolutely no connection to the world as it's become
today.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 02-Nov-2020 World View: Election polling

Xeraphim1 Wrote:> Here's the thing, most voters are low information and don't know
> very much about who the candidates actually are. For Democrats,
> they only pay attention to Big News which is fully in the bag for
> Biden. They are voting for an illusion which has been presented to
> them rather than an actual person. You can blame them for not
> doing any research, but who would really expect the sheer amount
> of lies and distortion coming out of the Corporate News? It's
> unprecedented.

The polling situation is bizarre. The mainstream media polls are all
showing that Biden is ahead nationally, as well in the important
individual states, and so a Biden victory is almost certain.

Some of these polls show Trump very far behind. Trump himself is
calling these "suppression polls," saying that they're fake polls with
the purpose of discouraging Trump supporters from voting. However, it
seems to me that they would also discourage Biden supporters from
voting.

The Fox News poll also predicts a Biden victory. But some of the
analysts appearing on Fox News are saying that the mainstream polls
are fake, that they're over-counting Democrats, and that they're not
counting the "shy Trump voters," people who are afraid to say that
they're voting for Trump.

The principal pollster predicting a Trump victory is the Trafalgar
Group.

https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/

They claim to be the only pollsters who correctly predicted that Trump
would win in 2016, and that the mainstream pollsters are making the
same mistakes in their models as in 2016. I saw the head of the
Trafalgar Group on Fox News yesterday, and he actually laughed at the
mainstream polls and mocked them, and said that Trump is going to win.

I have no idea which side to believe, and with the mail-in ballot
chaos, we may not know for a few days or weeks, as each side is
sending armies of lawyers into each state, ready to argue over which
mail-in ballots are valid, and which are to be thrown out.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 02-Nov-2020 World View: Censorship over Vietnam War

FullMoon Wrote:> It seems the more removed they became from reality the more they
> had to censor people's thoughts and words and then actions. I
> wonder if we can find a historical parallel that really resembles
> our current situation?

As I work 16 hours a day on my Vietnam book, I'm constantly astounded
about how far the public view of the Vietnam war is from reality.
This is an example of long-term historical censorship by the antiwar
leftist Boomers.

The mainstream view of the Vietnam War, as defined by the antiwar
left, is that South Vietnam never really existed as a coherent
government, that the people in southern Vietnam really wanted to be
governed by the North Vietnamese Communists and were only prevented
from doing so by the evil policies of the evil presidents Kennedy,
Johnson and Nixon. Furthermore, the mainstream view is that once the
Americans withdrew in 1975, then North and South Vietnam were joined
together in a reunion and lived happily ever after.

I particularly remember from watching the news in 1975 that when the
massive genocides began, the mainstream media never reported on them.
At the time of the horrific North Vietnam genocides in South Vietnam
and the horrific killing fields genocides in Cambodia, I recall that
there were only vague mentions of them, and news shows were quoting
Jane Fonda and William Kunstler who took the position that "we will
never criticize the actions of a Communist goverment," the implication
being that everything that Communism did was good, even genocides,
while everything that America did was evil. You have to search hard
to find any information of these and other genocides, since they've
been mostly censored and suppressed.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-02-2020, 03:47 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: The mainstream view of the Vietnam War, as defined by the antiwar left, is that South Vietnam never really existed as a coherent government, that the people in southern Vietnam really wanted to be governed by the North Vietnamese Communists and were only prevented
from doing so by the evil policies of the evil presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.  Furthermore, the mainstream view is that once the Americans withdrew in 1975, then North and South Vietnam were joined together in a reunion and lived happily ever after.

I don’t know where you got that from. It is more a right wing view of what the left wing believes that allows you to discredit the left easily. It reflects your inability to understand motivation, your habit of badly misunderstanding any ideology other than your own. My own view is a bit more complex than that.

If you view the Vietnam War as a local war, it is between the Catholic elite minority and the Buddhist commoner many. The elite as usual were well established, corrupt, and unpopular, pretty much as Marx would say the were. You would expect the people to win, to displace the elites. The good guys would be the people.

If you view it as part of the communist - capitalist conflict, in the west the knee jerk reaction would be to favor the capitalists, to look at things through the prism of the Domino Theory. Ike, Kennedy and LBJ bought into that perspective. They were not evil. They were perhaps misguided. Willing to commit lives to support a corrupt government? Willing to support the remnants of a lost colonial imperialism? The peace people had a more realistic view, supporting the cause of the people. They did not know of the genocidal tendencies, and would not support it if the had. If I view anyone as evil it was Nixon with his secret plan, which turned out to be to claim victory and surrender. He could have done that sooner.

As is, the war has to be viewed as a muddle between the two perspectives.

[John J. Xenakis]

Your problem is that you think that the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
That was just a prelude to the real war, which ran from 1975-1985.

[Warren Dew]

(11-01-2020, 03:17 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: -- China floods its villages to save its cities. Chinese media praises
  the supreme sacrifice of the villages
https://tfipost.com/2020/08/china-floods...-villages/
(TFIPost, India, 4-Aug-2020)

Sounds like the CCP is losing the mandate of heaven.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-02-2020, 09:08 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Your problem is that you think that the Vietnam War ended in 1975. That was just a prelude to the real war, which ran from 1975-1985.

It was over for the US. After that, the people overcame the elites as one would expect. The old thinking was dominated by xenophobia, tribalism and genocide, so the result wasn't pretty. That many are still obsessed with that way of going about things is a problem.

[pbrower2a]

(11-01-2020, 10:29 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 01-Nov-2020 World View: Tough luck

(10-31-2020, 06:14 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   It's your tough luck, Mr. X, that a majority of voters in enough
>   states chomp at the bit to replace the Milosevic-like President
>   that we now have.

Lol!  To start, see Proverbs 16:18.

I thought that that would be this one:



And, yes it is. Our President could do a deliberate show of extreme arrogance (pride can also mean a legitimate, positive sense of self-esteem for doing something admirable and honorable and achieving a legitimate success that makes the world better for others) such as having protesters tear-gassed so that he could have a photo op in which he stood holding a Bible that he seems to have never read and to never heed. Arrogant, or in the more Anglo-Saxon synonym, haughty, pride is itself destructive.

I know enough about the Bible to recognize that the best reading within it is the Gospels, Psalms, and Proverbs. I also recognize that I have terrible flaws as a person and must do an acting job simply to avoid letting those make the lives of many others miserable. 

   

Quote:The reason that your comment is so funny is that you have absolutely
no idea what I would consider lucky.

So first off, at my age hopefully I won't be around much longer.  So
I'll be a lot luckier than you, because you'll be alive and I'll be
dead.

Part of progress is that, distressing as it might be, the old people committed to old ways of life and demonstrably-obsolete ways of doing things lose their competence, their relevance, and their lives. Sure, it might be a good thing if Dmitri Shostakovich were still composing, Ludwig Wittgenstein were still philosophizing, Katharine Hepburn were still acting, Martin Luther King, Jr. (he would be 91, which he might have reached had he not been assassinated) were working our consciousness, and Georgia O'Keefe were still painting. We could do better with Hugh Scott and Tip O'Neill as politicians than much of what we now have.  I look at the Silent Generation dying off, and I miss the whimsy in popular music that is now fossilized and their biggest cultural contribution: a self-effacing comedy that takes the edge of the deadly seriousness that so many of us have. There is no more Leslie Nielson, Andy Griffith, Alan King, Joan Rivers, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Mary Tyler Moore, Flip Wilson, George Carlin, or Richard Pryor. Heck, Yogi Berra and Alex Karras could make sports funny -- and don't forget the comedy that Meadowlark Lemon could do on a basketball court. (Is Bob Uecker still around?) Many of us are too stuffy for our own good; we need to laugh some. What remains of the Silent generation of comedians either doesn't do comedy any more because it does something else (Dick Van Dyke, Alan Alda, Christopher Lloyd), has a foot in the grave (Mel Brooks, Bob Newhart), has simply gotten weird (Woody Allen), or is doing time for something not at all funny (Bill Cosby). 

I'm going to predict, based upon the generational theory of Howe and Strauss, that the Homeland Generation now approaching adulthood among its oldest, will recognize the fault within our collective, excessive seriousness (and self-righteousness) and the emptiness of pretentious claims to entitlement and solipsism. Such people as Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity are objects of legitimate ridicule.

I admit that I philosophize too much and laugh too little. That goes with Asperger's syndrome. 
    

Quote:Second, "be careful what you wish for."  The evidence of criminal
behavior by the Biden family has become enormous in the last three
weeks, and won't go away if Biden wins.  There's an FBI investigation,
but even without that, there's enough information in public for the
public investigation to be self-sustaining.

Joe Biden has never enriched himself in his years of public service. When Barack Obama selected him as the VP nominee in 2008, our soon-to-be 44th President picked the least-rich US Senator in the Democratic Party. To be sure, Biden was living on his Senate salary, but he wasn't making money off insider information on the legislative process (which used to be an easy way of making money as a  Senator or Congress-critter), easy money from putting his name on a ghost-written book that gets onto a best-seller list, or retiring but keeping his campaign fund (Biden had arguably the most low-cost re-election campaign that anyone had). Biden did not have a critical state to deliver, so he looked to offer ideological cohesion, no hint of scandal (you can mention him writing material that looked plagiarized, but since then he has stayed out of the book-writing game), and no conflicts of interest.  

Quote:Biden would also have to deal with continuing antifa-blm fascist
violence and with the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis, and it's doubtful that
either he or Kamala has the management skills to deal with such
crises.

COVID-19 is a crisis as destructive as a soldier-devouring military stalemate that ends only when one side runs out of troops, as was World War I. If it began in Wuhan, China and was most likely spread from China by people with connections to China (heavily the Chinese diaspora) which had no idea of what it was doing, and then people largely connected to Wuhan as opposed to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Kweichow, Hong Kong, Macau, etc. ... it is now an American crisis, and it is up to our political, scientific, commercial, and cultural leaders to deal with... Big Business, liberal politicians, the medical profession, scientific researchers, mainstream clergy, and the bulk of our creative people. There is much praise to be spread around. I even did my little act of kindness; rather than confronting people for not wearing masks when such was not the mandatory norm, I thanked people for wearing masks at Wal*Mart, Meijer, Spartan-Nash, and Kroger. Positive reinforcement works. Now that mask-wearing has become lax I do this again. 

It may be only a few zip codes, and not in the biggest cities, but I suggest it for others. Most people want to feel good about themselves. Considering what matters most, I will praise people who have "Trump 2020" masks on beginning tomorrow should I see that.  (Just put those  silly caps with the vapid slogan "Make America Great Again" into retirement. 

Quote:Third, as I've said many times, it's a principle of Generational
Dynamics that major decisions are made by the people, not by the
politicians.  Putting aside the rhetoric and massive criminal
corruption of the Democrats, the country's policies won't be very
different than under a second Trump term.  In particular, all that new
green deal stuff is so idiotic and laughable that it won't go
anywhere.  Biden might get some things done on the margins, like
removing some incentives for oil drilling, but nothing more.

OK, so that is how a free-market system works. The incentive to get a profit (and for a small-scale entrepreneur such as the operator of a bodega, a convenience store, a non-chain restaurant, or an insurance or real-estate agency is one's living and may be little more than what an assembly-line worker with a union contract gets) does far more good than the dictates of some despot who sees himself as the measure of national greatness or some central-planning board that can determine which state enterprise gets what resources and produces what.  The fault with the first is that it is as inhuman as the Leader; with the second the faults are that consumer choice does far better at rewarding wise decisions  (including thinking outside the box), intangible qualities of service, and adaptability to changing realities. The fault with our economic system is that it has scrapped competition in return for offering much schlock available cheaply, treating workers badly to keep costs low and profits high, and creating barriers for advancement within monopolized, vertically-integrated behemoths that reward elites lavishly for treating the common man badly. 

I see a trend that you may not: that we are at the end of the line for a certain model of economic development, at least in the advanced industrial world (countries near the median in economic development worldwide, which China dominates for obvious reasons and Mexico is probably the biggest country in population and industrial activity are close to that) in which producing more stuff is no longer a way of  creating human happiness. The technologies that can disseminate  virtual books, video, audio, and possibly even cultural events for which we no longer need the 'dead-tree editions', physical recordings on discs, photographic film, and the like make mass manufacture less necessary. We aren't going to be happier by having multiple refrigerators, ranges, dishwashers, washers, dryers, water softeners, or the like. Manufacturing is largely for either replacement of something broken or terribly obsolete or for population growth -- the latter a bad idea when we stare global warming as a menace that can make life miserable for billions just in time for the next Crisis Era. 

We will work less (unless our efforts go largely to enriching rentiers who serve as gate-keepers for opportunity dependent upon people paying them off and act more like feudal lords than like competitive capitalists) to make what we need because we will need no more stuff than we used to. Humanity will instead (at some point that will include neither of us; I am old enough to remember people who lived in the horse-and-buggy era at the stage at which telephones and phonographs were new things, who remembered that "red" was the color largely associated with the British Empire and not with socialism, when the elderly Queen of England and much else was Victoria instead of Elizabeth II, when the "Gay Nineties" had nothing to do with homosexuality, and when Art Nouveau was truly nouveau. The biggest differences:  industrial workers typically worked seventy hours a week and lived to age 40 or so, in contrast to the norm today in which industrial workers typically work 40-hour workweeks and live into their seventies, and that in America to live the Good Life one either had to be part of the WASP commercial elite in the North or the similarly-WASP agrarian elite of the former Confederacy.  

    

Quote:A good example is Barack Obama, whose planned policies were just as
idiotic as Biden's, but he got nothing done and, in the end, putting
aside the rhetoric and the massive corruption of the Democrats, the
country's policies under Obama were little different than under a
third Bush term.

Senator Mitch McConnell promised that he would do everything possible to ensure that Barack Obama would be a one-term President and did what he could do to ensure gridlock. In 2010 a cadre of economic elitists who believed, like the worst of all elites believe -- that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as it enhances their power, indulgence, and gain -- financed a pseudo-populist Tea Party movement that accepted what those elites believed and faulted Obama for not bringing back America to the level of prosperity that Americans thought they had during the Dubya-era speculative boom. (The conservative economist and political thinker Friedrich Hayek explains as clearly as anyone that speculative booms are more effective at devouring capital than at creating any real prosperity.  Those booms, like those of the late 1920's and the middle of the Double-Zero decade create the illusion of prosperity while failing to improve life. When the illusion disappears, then people start to realize that they have been had... and an economic meltdown ensues).  
 

Quote:I've written about this many times, but it's worth repeating now.
Obama had plans to try to bring peace to the world through his
unopposed policies.

In June 2008, he said, "I am absolutely certain that generations from
now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was
the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to
the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to
slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a
war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best
hope on Earth."

Setting high standards and achieving some of them without doing real harm is far better than setting low, debased standards that hurt people -- and achieve them. Maybe Trump is far less harmful than he could have been because he is as incompetent as he is as a politician. 

Quote:At the time he said this, I thought it was just the usual crazy
nonsense crap coming from politicians, but I was shocked later that
Obama actually believed it.  In the 2008 campaign, Obama said that he
was going to heal the world as soon as he took office.  He would be
guided by facts, not like President Bush, who had been guided by
ideology and ignored facts.  He would cure global warming, close
Guantánamo island prison, become friendly with Iran and North Korea,
bring a two-state solution to Palestinians and Israelis, beat the
Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, impose strict gun control
policies, reflate the real estate and stock market bubbles and, of
course, provide universal health care.

That universal healthcare may have kept me from committing suicide. In my case that is definitive success for a policy.

Quote:Obama accomplished none of those goals.  He couldn't even accomplish
the simplest one -- closing Guantánamo -- which you'd think he'd be
able to do easily.  But no, he couldn't.  And Biden's policies are
even more idiotic than Obama's, and won't go anywhere except to
generate controversy.  But who knows?  Maybe Biden will get a
Nobel Peace Prize anyway.

Obama got the wrong Nobel prize. It should have been for economics. Still, putting an end to an economic meltdown that after a year and a half was as severe as that that began with the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 in a year and a half as opposed to three full horrible years that in the first case culminated in the rise of Satan Incarnate in Germany... maybe he did make a huge difference. Obama backed the financial system before he could even start to go on his liberal agenda.    

Quote:The above is particularly true if Biden is forced to leave office
and Kamala takes over.  She's a total loon, extremely divisive,
and very unpopular.

Let us see how Donald Trump does in today's Presidential election. Maybe Donald Trump  "is a total loon, extremely divisive, and very unpopular". For people who want Donald Trump out of office, Joe Biden may be the model of an antithesis (an Establishment type who shares none of Trump's vindictiveness, cruelty, corruption, and ruthlessness) and Kamala Harris may be the one to elicit the needed votes. 

I do not expect perfection in my political leaders, and if you see perfection in a political leader, then you are most likely in that politician's cult. Donald Trump has a cult of personality as obnoxious as that of the late Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe.

Quote:For me, a Biden/Kamala presidency will be as incompetent as the Obama
presidency, but Biden won't have Obama's charisma (or Bill Clinton's
charisma).  I know that I had to be very careful when criticizing
Obama's policies, because anyone criticizing Obama was immediately
called a racist.  That won't be an issue for me or anyone else
criticizing Biden's incompetent policies.

Our system is not designed to ensure that everything that the President wants is what we get.  In view of Donald Trump, that is a good thing. We have division of power, checks and balances, enumerated rights, competitive elections, and the rule of law -- all of which Donald Trump has sought to circumvent. For that he must lose, and I would say this even if he had an agenda compatible with mine. 

Quote:It's true that I do favor Trump over Biden, but that's because Trump
is a much better manager than Biden.  Trump's management of the Wuhan
Coronavirus pandemic has been outstanding.  He got vaccines and
therapeutics developed in a few months that normally (or under Obama
or Biden) would have taken years.  Trump was even congratulated at
times by the governors of NY and California.

Donald Trump has effectively appeased an invader which has already killed 235,000 people in America. Figure how much America hated Osama bin Laden for killing about a hundredth as many people in America on September 11. Barack Obama ended up whacking Osama bin Laden, and for that he is a hero. He has encouraged Americans to risk their lives to have a vibrant economy. Sure, but we have lost 235,000 people. That is more than four times the military and custody deaths Americans in combat in either Korea or Vietnam and twice the deaths of America in combat in the First World War. We have surpassed the Union death toll of the American Civil War and are approaching the American death toll of World War II. 
American deaths by the Union side ended as the last slaves were freed in the former Confederacy, and by the time America had lost 235,000 soldiers American armed forces were already emancipating plenty of slaves in Nazi Germany and in the Thug Japanese Empire.

I was not around when Americans hated Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, but I can only imagine what Americans of the time thought of them. I was born slightly more than ten years after victorious partisans ventilated Mussolini with gunfire and strung him up upside down and when Hitler blew out his brains in a fetid bunker... and a little more than seven years after  an Allied judgment commission hanged Tojo. I would probably feel the same way had I been born thirty years later. SARS-2 (the name of the virus that has killed so many Americans during the last eight months) is as much an enemy of the American People as were Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. Trump has bungled the response and taken revenge upon people who have urged more effective responses (and made them) than he. 

We have a war with severe casualties, but no Medals of Honor. Were I to give a commendation to Trump it would be a badge of disgrace.

Quote:The major example of Obama's management "skills" was his management of
the development of the Obamacare disaster.  As I've written many
times, what happened on the afternoon of October 1, 2013, was that
President Obama stood up at a press conference to launch Obamacare.
He did so without the vaguest clue that the Healthcare.gov web site
had been a disaster for hours.  It was a total farce, and Obama made a
complete fool out of himself.  As I wrote in my 2015 analytical
article, Obamacare was a Rube Goldberg invention filled with massive
corruption, criminality and incompetence.  Obama had thrown something
like $900 million dollars at a $50 million problem and assumed that no
management was required.  That's how stupid and incompetent Obama was.

No law and no program, or even technology, is perfect. Anyone who fails to expect unforeseen and unwelcome consequences is a fool. 

Quote:If Trump had been in charge of Obamacare development, he would have
handled it the way he handled the pandemic.  He would have provided
only $30 million instead of over $500 million, until more was needed,
and he would have been on the phone every day to the consulting firms
to make sure that development was on time.  On the morning of
October 1, 2013, Trump would have known exactly what the status was,
rather than making a fool out of himself like Obama.

Trump would have made it a corrupt profits-first system that first generates profits and gets at most mediocre results. People would be paying far more for medical costs as Trump would guarantee monopoly profits and mandate that people work longer and harder for less so that they could enrich the owners and executives in a monstrously-corrupt system. It may be a good thing for America that Donald Trump is less competent than someone like Fidel Castro in achieving his dreams!

Quote:Just to take one example that I discussed in my 2015 article.  CGI
Corp. was responsible for the Massachusetts web site.  Obama gave them
$200 million, even though it was really only a $10 million project.
CGI Corp saw its job as finding ways to spend $200 million.  They
hired programmers who couldn't even write a memo, let alone a computer
program.  They defrauded the government by faking test results and
lying about deadlines.  They fired the one whistleblower who
complained about what was going on.  On Oct 1, 2013, nothing worked.
Another firm had to take over, and all of CGI's code had to be thrown
out as worthless garbage.  $200 million had been wasted on nothing.
Trump would never let anything like that happen, but that's standard
fare for Obama's corruption and incompetence.

As if you didn't realize. $200 million is a drop in the bucket of the federal treasury, and the system develops moral outrage only when someone gets corrupt gain from some scam against the Federal government. So it is with such things as electoral campaigns, bribes, and issues under government regulation. 

Quote:Even worse, Obamacare confiscated over $716 billion in the Medicare
insurance fund to provide funding for Obamacare entities.  This is
money that workers have been paying into the fund for decades, and now
it's all gone.  That's criminal incompetence.

Will Biden/Kamala be as incompetent as Obama?  I don't know.

Quote:(ignore)

For an assessment of how objective historians rate the President, see this. Donald Trump so far doesn't impress the historians. Obama comes up as above-average, Dubya as below average, and Clinton about average. 

Quote:I haven't mentioned foreign policy, but Obama appointed that
ridiculous clown John Kerry to be secretary of state, and we watched
(and I documented) as he stumbled from one disaster to the next.  By
contrast, Trump has managed the situations with North Korea and China
very well, forcing them to live up to their commitments, rather than
just letting the commitments slide as Clinton, Bush and Obama did, and
Trump has also gotten three Arab countries to sign peace deals with
Israel, which Obama never could.  But hey!  Obama got the Nobel
Peace Prize.  That's what's important, isn't it?

I concur that John Kerry was a poor choice, and we are only lucky that nothing imploded. Your assessment of how Donald Trump has dealt with North Korea, China, and (you didn't say Russia) will be repudiated under a Biden administration. 

Quote:Will Biden/Kamala have any foreign policy skills?  I don't know.

Probably not the gullible duffer that Trump is. 

Quote:There's an ironic result of the Democrats' illegal spying on the
Trump campaign.  Mueller spent tens of millions of dollars paying
his gang of Democrats to investigate Trump, and after three years
they found nothing.  All they did was prove that Trump is probably
the most honest president in the history of the country.

Republicans used power from lockstep obedience to rescue Donald Trump from an impeachment and removal that he so clearly deserved. But don't worry: we have our own impeachment and removal trial, by American voters, and we will see most of the results tonight.
 

Quote:Are Biden/Kamala honest?  We already know that Biden is a crook,
and that Kamala does what AOC tells her to do.

Donald Trump is a crook, and like most crooks he obeys his appetites, greed, impulse, haughty ego, and anger over all else. 

Quote:So you've had it easy for the last four years.  Just sit back and make
truly idiotic comments about Trump, calling him Hitler and Milosevic
and such, and repeat everything that the shithead Adam Schiff says,
but if Biden wins then you'll have to defend his criminality and
incompetence, which will be a lot harder for you.

Did you see me defending Harvey Weinstein? I made plenty of jokes about former Congressman William "Cold Cash" Jefferson for being caught with bribe money in a freezer. Don't worry: should Joe Biden be as incompetent in dealing with COVID-19 as Trump is, then I will call him on it. I expect, so far, to keep wearing a mask in public until 2022. 

Quote:I, on the other hand, can just criticize one idiotic Biden failure
after another.  So who's the lucky person now?

I have an idea.  Why don't you start a new forum thread: "Let's
make fun of Biden while we still can, before he goes to jail
or dies of dementia"?

You will be more effective starting a new forum thread: "Let's make fun of Bill Cosby while we still can".

Oh... rape isn't funny? That is the point.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 03-Nov-2020 World View: North Vietnamese Communist genocide of South Vietnam

(11-02-2020, 09:08 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: > Your problem is that you think that the Vietnam War ended in
> 1975. That was just a prelude to the real war, which ran from
> 1975-1985.

(11-03-2020, 05:50 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > It was over for the US. After that, the people overcame the
> elites as one would expect. The old thinking was dominated by
> xenophobia, tribalism and genocide, so the result wasn't pretty.
> That many are still obsessed with that way of going about things
> is a problem.

My heart sank when I read this, because I know exactly what you're
saying. You're saying what everyone on the left says -- that the
North Vietnam Communist genocide of the South Vietnam "élites" was
perfectly ok because genocide is perfectly ok to establish a socialist
paradise.

I'm really so sick of hearing this kind of garbage in support of
violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide. It's the same way that the
Nazis justified killing the Jews or how Democrats today justify the
antifa-blm fascists burning down cities. It's become very depressing
to me.

I'm not sure what "élites" you're talking about in South Vietnam,
since they were already dead from the invasion of Saigon. The massive
genocide by the North Vietnamese Communists was conducted against
ordinary people, even people who had been sympathetic to the Communist
cause, and especially small landowners who were trying to use their
small farms to support their families, and were thrown off their land
by the Communists murderers.

Prior to America's betrayal of the South Vietnam democracy, led by the
antiwar leftists, the South Vietnamese people had been looking forward
to a bright future, provided that the Communist invasion could be
defeated. They hoped to enjoy prosperity and democracy similar to
what developed in Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand. Instead, under
the Communists, ordinary people were beaten, tortured, raped or killed
by the socialist blessing. Hundreds of thousands of "Vietnamese Boat
People" fled Vietnam in rickety boats, flooding Malaysia, Hong Kong,
and Indonesia, and eventually the US and Canada.

North Vietnam sent administrators to Saigon to establish a new regime.
Officials in the defeated government were killed, and hundreds of
thousands of people were sent to concentration camps, ostensibly to
re-educate them to live in a socialist society. A system of
registering the population was instituted to ensure that those whose
families had supported the Second Republic were penalized by denial of
employment, education, and food rations. An ambitious plan for
economic development was initiated, but within three years the country
was facing political, economic, and diplomatic failures. This was
just as disastrous as China's Great Leap Forward. These failures
became parts of a crisis that led to a new war.

So it's not surprising to me that you consider all of that to be
ok, because anything is ok to produce a wonderful socialist paradise.

You've also confirmed my original point: That all of the above history
of the North Vietnam Communist genocide has been censored and
suppressed by the antiwar left and the mainstream media and mainstream
leftist historians. It's the same as today, where the mainstream
media and the Democrats are suppressing news of the antifa-blm fascist
violence and news of Biden's criminality. You can find all of the
above information online, but you have to search hard for it.

Latest news: Maxine Waters says she will never ever forgive black men
who vote for Trump. Lol! What a jackass she is.