Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Eric the Green]

Another comedian takes on Trump, and he's a senator!

[jadams]

Russia, if you're listening, please find and release Donald's tax returns...FOLLOW THE MONEY

[Eric the Green]

Sen. Warren Slams Trump, Targets Republican Officeholders

[Eric the Green]

Samantha Bee was on the Newshour tonight, and she and Gwen and "Lorraine Newman" aka Judy Woodruff were wondering why there aren't more women comics with talks shows (like the others we post here by the guys). So I looked her up and here's one her latest Trump bashings:





Pretty good. I wonder tho, not to agree with Xenakis too much, but do women really know how to go for the jugular? They may have some catching up to do. Of course Chelsea's pretty good at ribbing Justin Bieber (and he ribbing back), but I'm not sure how much further she can go. And Samantha, Full Frontal is cool and all, but who's the guy you were standing in front of the whole time?

[Ragnarök_62]

(07-27-2016, 12:48 PM)jadams Wrote: Russia, if you're listening, please find and release Donald's tax returns...FOLLOW THE MONEY

Yes, that and I'd love to see the Clinton Foundations's books as well.  


#JillStein2016

[Eric the Green]

PBS cut off Cory Booker's speech, but its ending was sorta inspiring
https://youtu.be/tGUtSY3FqPo?t=16m40s

[Eric the Green]

So, what's Number 1?

[Eric the Green]

(07-27-2016, 06:45 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(07-27-2016, 12:48 PM)jadams Wrote: Russia, if you're listening, please find and release Donald's tax returns...FOLLOW THE MONEY

Yes, that and I'd love to see the Clinton Foundations's books as well.  


#JillStein2016

It's probably posted on the internet, from their website! I know the Clintons' tax returns are posted for all to see.

[Ragnarök_62]

(07-27-2016, 12:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Sen. Warren Slams Trump, Targets Republican Officeholders

Has she decided to get smart and ....

#JillStein2016 ?

[Dan '82]

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comm...sident_of/

[playwrite]

(07-27-2016, 07:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

So, what's Number 1?

Uncontrolled vaginas.  Universal fear of small men across cultures and history.

[playwrite]

(07-27-2016, 07:37 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(07-27-2016, 12:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Sen. Warren Slams Trump, Targets Republican Officeholders

Has she decided to get smart and ....

#JillStein2016 ?

A Jill Stein voter is just a Naderite who is either too young to remember the Iraq Invasion and Great Recession or too self centered to care.  I'm pretty sure that leaves Elizabeth out.

[MillsT_98]

(07-27-2016, 09:32 PM)playwrite Wrote:

(07-27-2016, 07:37 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(07-27-2016, 12:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Sen. Warren Slams Trump, Targets Republican Officeholders

Has she decided to get smart and ....

#JillStein2016 ?

A Jill Stein voter is just a Naderite who is either too young to remember the Iraq Invasion and Great Recession or too self centered to care.  I'm pretty sure that leaves Elizabeth out.

I'm too young to remember the Iraq invasion in 2003 but I remember the Great Recession in 2008. My cohort has the youngest people that are able to vote this year.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-26-2016, 01:09 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-25-2016, 11:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-25-2016, 09:56 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I was watching a clip of Newt Gingrich trying to create a reality out of feelings.  The interviewer kept presenting him with FBI crime data showing crime sharply declining since the 90s, but Newt kept pushing that there was a 'feeling' otherwise, that the people felt unsafe, and this feeling somehow made the hard data irrelevant. These feelings justified continuing a campaign based on suppressing crime, latinos, muslims, blacks.

Color me dubious.  A rant based on media and politician based agitation and propaganda ought not to define the race.

But part of me noted a partisan flip.  Democrats pushing gun control do the same thing with the same crime data.  Something must be done about guns because the crime rates are so high.

While in a lot of ways the Democrats can try to present themselves as the party of reality, they too will go with feelings, fear and disregard for reality when they think they can score political points.

Bob, what you don't get is that there are a lot people who have completely lost faith in their government and the politicians who are supposed to represent them. Priorities, it' all about the priorities and the perception of where one fist in as far as the priorities of the current Democratic party. Trump recently changed the priority of the Republican party. The division is only going to get worse from here on. Democrats are to corrupt and to deep into big government to change on their own. What happens to Democrats down the road? Don't know and don't really care at this point?

Well, you're repeating the basic Reagan memes.  The government is corrupt an inefficient.  Projects attempted by the government fail.  The culture should do more in the private sector, less in the public sector.  When in doubt, cut taxes as a short cut to force the government to do less.  The Republican base has been listening to these themes for decades.  They have embraced these concepts to the point that they are applying them of the very Republican politicians who pushed these ideas, who used these ideas to acquire and maintain power.

That's the feeling.  As with the problems of crime and violence mentioned above, the question is whether the feelings have any bearing in reality.  Trump is pushing to make America great again, to return to our heyday of power and plenty, the 1950s and 1960s, the time at the very apex of tax and spend liberalism.

I think there is a balance somewhere.  One can have too big a government, and too little.  FDR did much that had to be done.  LBJ was overly ambitious, and tried to do too much.  He burned out the mood of our peak era, the time when we would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."  That was the spirit that once made America great.  LBJ burned it out.  The fall of Saigon, Watergate, oil crisis, hostage crisis and national malaise buried it.  Reagan read well the mood of the country at the time and scaled back America's greatness.  We should not try to be great because America's government is inherently too corrupt and inefficient to be great.  We should cut taxes so that any possibility of the attempt to be great will be cut off early.

Reagan wasn't entirely wrong.  He felt well the mood of his time.  Before Reagan, we were overly confident in our ability to do several impossible great but expensive tasks at the same time.  The GIs had been bearing too many burdens, paying too many prices for too long.  Reagan harnessed the cycles, made them work for him, taking the country away from the crisis values of working together for the common good to embrace the selfishness and indulgence of the unravelling.

To me, Trump makes a fine symbol of or personification of the unravelling spirit that fell out of Reagan's memes.  He embodies selfishness, greed, egotism, and a willingness to trample on the little guy to gratify his own desires.

So, yes, I believe I do understand the spirit of the Republican base, their distrust of America, their fear of greatness, their selfish desire to focus on themselves rather than consider the common good.  While they want the strength and plenty of the era of tax and spend liberalism, they aren't willing to bear burdens or pay prices.  They seem to think they can achieve greatness through wishful thinking.

But it comes back to feelings rather than reality.  The Republican base still feels the Reagan memes.  One can point back to the good old days, suggest that in fact government is not always inefficient and corrupt, that in fact our times of greatest strength are when we pull together for the common cause.  Alas, they aren't going to 'feel' it.  They will refuse to acknowledge that the time America was great was when the government brought us together to achieve great things.  They will try to ride America and the Reagan memes all the way down into the dust.  The selfish, corrupt and egotistical Trump is just the man to do it, just the man to lead them into ruin.

That's the core of things, specific issues aside.  Do we have a regeneracy and return to a crisis mood of problem solving with a healthy respect for the common good?  Or do we stick with the unravelling values of selfishness and greed.  In Hillary and The Donald we have two pretty good personifications of two positions in the cycle.  I can get the Republican base's hunger to see greatness again, but they shouldn't expect a free lunch.  Indeed, it is their unwillingness to trust the cooks that is making them hungry.

The same basic meme that still holds true today, despite all the liberal memes that place government, it's bureaucrats and their knowledge above all else. The same liberal  memes that lent to rise folks like Hitler and the Nazi's who supported him, reinforced the power of Stalin and the Bolshevik's who supported him and a former King of Great Britain and the aristocracy that supported him. America doesn't work that way. You and any other lib who believes they know what's best for all of us or a larger segment of us or their so-called own better rethink your importance beyond yourself or your own so to speak. Whether Trump wins or looses doesn't matter, Trump is now a powerful voice that will hamper Hillary from day one. A voice that Hillary can't control. A voice that will rip on her and weaken her every day she's in office. A voice that will give way to a stronger voice and equally committed voice reminding Democrats that they used to represent the workingman. Whether you realize it or not, the Democrats lost the working man to the Republicans in this election cycle. A trend that will continue to grow in the future.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-28-2016, 12:43 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The same basic meme that still holds true today, despite all the liberal memes that place government, it's bureaucrats and their knowledge above all else. The same liberal  memes that lent to rise folks like Hitler and the Nazi's who supported him, reinforced the power of Stalin and the Bolshevik's who supported him and a former King of Great Britain and the aristocracy that supported him. America doesn't work that way.

Hmm...  We're dancing with Goodwin here.  I don't know that this election or any election ought to be framed by the question...  "Which candidate is more like Hitler?"

I see Hitler and the other dictators you mention as the (hopefully) last great examples of Agricultural Age thinking.  Before democracy made its comeback with the Enlightenment, the best times for the cultures that had good times came with really strong rulers...  Fill-in-the-blank the Great.  Only if you had someone who could really intimidate everyone else within the culture into submission could one wield the full and effective force of one's people, one's nation.  During the Agricultural Age, use of military force to acquire territory was pretty much cost effective... at least for the winners.  When agriculture is the driving force in the economy, more land is more power.  The sort of strong men that might acquire more land and power strove to do so.  Stalin, Saddam and now Assad and ISIS still embrace this meme... only a dominant personality who can successfully bully and intimidate can achieve enough power to absolutely control a country and then expand it.

The Enlightenment and Industrial values work for the benefit of the common man.  Autocratic demagogues are viewed as dangerous threats rather than being considered great.  One wants balance of power to check the demagog rather than seeking out the strong man.  One gets power by helping the common man and hoping the common man approves enough to vote one back into power.  The Whig tradition that shifted into the progressive tradition still tries to embrace this approach.

Anyway, Hillary isn’t the candidate who endorses Saddam, Putin and Assam.  She doesn’t endorse Autocratic Age tyranny and intimidation.  From the way I look at the conflict between Industrial and Agricultural Age values, it is Trump who is trying to embrace the old ways represented by Hitler and his ilk, and Hillary who is trying to continue the Whig tradition of government working for the common man.

I think you are straw manning the 'liberal memes'.  What do you think the liberal memes are?  As a progressive, I don't recognize you as representing or even understanding the liberal memes well at all.  Rather, you are obsessed with anti-liberal vile stereotypes which you embrace in order to avoid talking about the real liberal memes.  It’s hard holding a conversation with one who doesn’t listen.

(07-28-2016, 12:43 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You and any other lib who believes they know what's best for all of us or a larger segment of us or their so-called own better rethink your importance beyond yourself or your own so to speak. Whether Trump wins or looses doesn't matter, Trump is now a powerful voice that will hamper Hillary from day one. A voice that Hillary can't control. A voice that will rip on her and weaken her every day she's in office. A voice that will give way to a stronger voice and equally committed voice reminding Democrats that they used to represent the workingman. Whether you realize it or not, the Democrats lost the working man to the Republicans in this election cycle. A trend that will continue to grow in the future.

Somebody lost something all right.  To my mind, the Republican establishment lost the Republican base.  For  years the Republican base has been told that the government is corrupt and inefficient, that you can’t trust politicians.  They’ve got so cynical and disillusioned that they have come to recognize that Republican politicians are politicians.

The emphasis at the Democratic convention is on how Hillary has tried to help people, tried and to a great degree succeeded.  The girl in a wheelchair who couldn’t get an education.  The parent who couldn’t get health insurance, who knew a major health problem would bankrupt his family and shorten a family member’s life.  The black deep south families who saw tax breaks going to segregated schools their children could not access.  The migrant farm worker who needed a little help in the deep south to register to vote.  The occupants of a small planet being threatened by climate change.  The residents of Gaza who were about to be immersed in war.

That is the rejection of the idea that government can’t help people.  It can, it does, and Hillary has been doing it all her life.  She has been fighting the Reagan mind set of people who have never needed help and thus don’t want to see people helped.  Her foes are those who can’t imagine themselves needing help, who thus work hard to leave folks in misery.

And that leaves aside what Trump is…  someone who has looked out first and foremost for himself, and has left behind a trail of people who have felt scammed and used.

I of course see the long term dynamics between the parties differently.  The more the Republicans push a government that doesn’t help the People, the more the People will need help, the more they will turn to the party that will help them.  I also don’t anticipate Trump as the candidate who lost will be any more an influence than McCain, Romney or other recent Republican losers.  Heck, the last closest thing to a Republican winner was Bush 43, and nobody wants to be associated with the disasters he created.  The best thing he can do to help his party is to avoid associating himself with it.

The battle for ideas depends on whether the People recognize that the government can improve life in these United States.  The Democrats are trying to prove that it can.  The Republicans are trying to prove that it can’t.  I know who I’m rooting for.

Note that we’re due for a realignment.  The Republicans are clearly a party in flux.  They need to reinvent themselves.  I don’t think Trump represents the best model for them to build on.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are a party that has been filibustered into impotence.  Crisis magnitude transformation has been out of reach, and might well remain out of reach.  Change will remain a struggle.  The struggle will have to continue.  Successes must be made visible.  A good size dent has to be made in the notion that everything the government tries to do is a failure.  For Democrats, success will come with programs that work.  I don’t see any other approaches, no easy short cuts.

Grumble.  I don't usually like to go all partisan.  We have enough blue partisans on the board without me beating yet another blue drum.  I'd rather push the notion that there are real reasons the red values came into being, real reasons they aren't going away trivially.  Reagan really did have his finger on the pulse of the country in his time, and really did try to take it where it had to go.  His ideas in moderation do make a reasonable check on big government.  One party, either party, any party, will take its ideas way to far if left in control too long.

But at the moment we have two choices.  It may be that the country would have been better served by two different choices.  Still, Trump isn't a choice.  We've had a former CIA chief and a current Supreme Court justice among others flat out say he isn't qualified for the job.  This is bad form, against all tradition, true and necessary to say.  I guess I've got to say it too.

[Anthony '58]

Quote:The same basic meme that still holds true today, despite all the liberal memes that place government, it's bureaucrats and their knowledge above all else. The same liberal  memes that lent to rise folks like Hitler and the Nazi's who supported him, reinforced the power of Stalin and the Bolshevik's who supported him and a former King of Great Britain and the aristocracy that supported him. America doesn't work that way. You and any other lib who believes they know what's best for all of us or a larger segment of us or their so-called own better rethink your importance beyond yourself or your own so to speak. Whether Trump wins or looses doesn't matter, Trump is now a powerful voice that will hamper Hillary from day one. A voice that Hillary can't control. A voice that will rip on her and weaken her every day she's in office. A voice that will give way to a stronger voice and equally committed voice reminding Democrats that they used to represent the workingman. Whether you realize it or not, the Democrats lost the working man to the Republicans in this election cycle. A trend that will continue to grow in the future.

There is only one problem with this analysis:

Who will keep all those immigrants out - and throw out those who are already here illegally?

Who will stop corporations from outsourcing jobs?

Who will slap 40% tariffs on foreign goods?

It won't be the Antioch Baptist Church.

Resolved: Donald Trump is no more laissez faire than the Democrats.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-28-2016, 07:23 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-28-2016, 12:43 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The same basic meme that still holds true today, despite all the liberal memes that place government, it's bureaucrats and their knowledge above all else. The same liberal  memes that lent to rise folks like Hitler and the Nazi's who supported him, reinforced the power of Stalin and the Bolshevik's who supported him and a former King of Great Britain and the aristocracy that supported him. America doesn't work that way.

Hmm...  We're dancing with Goodwin here.  I don't know that this election or any election ought to be framed by the question...  "Which candidate is more like Hitler?"

I see Hitler and the other dictators you mention as the (hopefully) last great examples of Agricultural Age thinking.  Before democracy made its comeback with the Enlightenment, the best times for the cultures that had good times came with really strong rulers...  Fill-in-the-blank the Great.  Only if you had someone who could really intimidate everyone else within the culture into submission could one wield the full and effective force of one's people, one's nation.  During the Agricultural Age, use of military force to acquire territory was pretty much cost effective... at least for the winners.  When agriculture is the driving force in the economy, more land is more power.  The sort of strong men that might acquire more land and power strove to do so.  Stalin, Saddam and now Assad and ISIS still embrace this meme... only a dominant personality who can successfully bully and intimidate can achieve enough power to absolutely control a country and then expand it.

The Enlightenment and Industrial values work for the benefit of the common man.  Autocratic demagogues are viewed as dangerous threats rather than being considered great.  One wants balance of power to check the demagog rather than seeking out the strong man.  One gets power by helping the common man and hoping the common man approves enough to vote one back into power.  The Whig tradition that shifted into the progressive tradition still tries to embrace this approach.

Anyway, Hillary isn’t the candidate who endorses Saddam, Putin and Assam.  She doesn’t endorse Autocratic Age tyranny and intimidation.  From the way I look at the conflict between Industrial and Agricultural Age values, it is Trump who is trying to embrace the old ways represented by Hitler and his ilk, and Hillary who is trying to continue the Whig tradition of government working for the common man.

I think you are straw manning the 'liberal memes'.  What do you think the liberal memes are?  As a progressive, I don't recognize you as representing or even understanding the liberal memes well at all.  Rather, you are obsessed with anti-liberal vile stereotypes which you embrace in order to avoid talking about the real liberal memes.  It’s hard holding a conversation with one who doesn’t listen.

(07-28-2016, 12:43 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You and any other lib who believes they know what's best for all of us or a larger segment of us or their so-called own better rethink your importance beyond yourself or your own so to speak. Whether Trump wins or looses doesn't matter, Trump is now a powerful voice that will hamper Hillary from day one. A voice that Hillary can't control. A voice that will rip on her and weaken her every day she's in office. A voice that will give way to a stronger voice and equally committed voice reminding Democrats that they used to represent the workingman. Whether you realize it or not, the Democrats lost the working man to the Republicans in this election cycle. A trend that will continue to grow in the future.

Somebody lost something all right.  To my mind, the Republican establishment lost the Republican base.  For  years the Republican base has been told that the government is corrupt and inefficient, that you can’t trust politicians.  They’ve got so cynical and disillusioned that they have come to recognize that Republican politicians are politicians.

The emphasis at the Democratic convention is on how Hillary has tried to help people, tried and to a great degree succeeded.  The girl in a wheelchair who couldn’t get an education.  The parent who couldn’t get health insurance, who knew a major health problem would bankrupt his family and shorten a family member’s life.  The black deep south families who saw tax breaks going to segregated schools their children could not access.  The migrant farm worker who needed a little help in the deep south to register to vote.  The occupants of a small planet being threatened by climate change.  The residents of Gaza who were about to be immersed in war.

That is the rejection of the idea that government can’t help people.  It can, it does, and Hillary has been doing it all her life.  She has been fighting the Reagan mind set of people who have never needed help and thus don’t want to see people helped.  Her foes are those who can’t imagine themselves needing help, who thus work hard to leave folks in misery.

And that leaves aside what Trump is…  someone who has looked out first and foremost for himself, and has left behind a trail of people who have felt scammed and used.

I of course see the long term dynamics between the parties differently.  The more the Republicans push a government that doesn’t help the People, the more the People will need help, the more they will turn to the party that will help them.  I also don’t anticipate Trump as the candidate who lost will be any more an influence than McCain, Romney or other recent Republican losers.  Heck, the last closest thing to a Republican winner was Bush 43, and nobody wants to be associated with the disasters he created.  The best thing he can do to help his party is to avoid associating himself with it.

The battle for ideas depends on whether the People recognize that the government can improve life in these United States.  The Democrats are trying to prove that it can.  The Republicans are trying to prove that it can’t.  I know who I’m rooting for.

Note that we’re due for a realignment.  The Republicans are clearly a party in flux.  They need to reinvent themselves.  I don’t think Trump represents the best model for them to build on.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are a party that has been filibustered into impotence.  Crisis magnitude transformation has been out of reach, and might well remain out of reach.  Change will remain a struggle.  The struggle will have to continue.  Successes must be made visible.  A good size dent has to be made in the notion that everything the government tries to do is a failure.  For Democrats, success will come with programs that work.  I don’t see any other approaches, no easy short cuts.

Grumble.  I don't usually like to go all partisan.  We have enough blue partisans on the board without me beating yet another blue drum.  I'd rather push the notion that there are real reasons the red values came into being, real reasons they aren't going away trivially.  Reagan really did have his finger on the pulse of the country in his time, and really did try to take it where it had to go.  His ideas in moderation do make a reasonable check on big government.  One party, either party, any party, will take its ideas way to far if left in control too long.

But at the moment we have two choices.  It may be that the country would have been better served by two different choices.  Still, Trump isn't a choice.  We've had a former CIA chief and a current Supreme Court justice among others flat out say he isn't qualified for the job.  This is bad form, against all tradition, true and necessary to say.  I guess I've got to say it too.

I don't think either one are even close to being someone like Hitler. However, I do believe Democratic America would be more likely to become something similar to one of those examples than Republican America. I think government has been a lousy parent. I think government has been a lousy teacher and a piss poor educator of poor children. I think government has been a lousy role model and a piss poor example to follow. I think government has been a lousy cop. I think government has been a lousy general. I think government has been a lousy mass decision maker. In my opinion, government does not belong on the battlefield delivering orders and directing our troops. Government does not belong in a classroom teaching children. Government does not belong in the home being the parent. I don't have a positive view of the progressives. You can blame yourself because the progressives themselves have more influence pertaining to my view of them than the Republicans. Bob, you are so stupid to actually believe that the Republicans have more influence over my negative views and opinions of progressives than the progressives themselves. Hint.. Kiff earned every vile liberal stereo type that I pinned on her or directly associated her with. BTW, the liberal meme came from the mouths of progressives so to speak.

[pbrower2a]

(07-27-2016, 07:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

So, what's Number 1?

1. Moose-slims! Including Barack HUSSEIN Obama, that enabler of Radical Islamic Terrorism. (Whoops!)

4. Black men marrying their precious white daughters.

6. Mexican-Americans marrying their precious white daughters.

[pbrower2a]

(07-28-2016, 07:23 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-28-2016, 12:43 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The same basic meme that still holds true today, despite all the liberal memes that place government, it's bureaucrats and their knowledge above all else. The same liberal  memes that lent to rise folks like Hitler and the Nazi's who supported him, reinforced the power of Stalin and the Bolshevik's who supported him and a former King of Great Britain and the aristocracy that supported him. America doesn't work that way.

Hmm...  We're dancing with Goodwin here.  I don't know that this election or any election ought to be framed by the question...  "Which candidate is more like Hitler?"

Considering that Donald Trump has made a thinly-veiled reference to something that Hillary Clinton does not have (a penis)...

I once discussed the superficial similarities of some of Adolf Hitler's nemeses and antitheses.

Abraham Lincoln wrote much about politics. So do I.
Sir Winston Churchill painted (and he was apparently good at it). So do I, even if I am not yet good at it.
FDR and Harry S. Truman were very affectionate toward dogs. So am I.
David Ben-Gurion was very much a patriot. So am I at times.
Many of the July 20 plotters, and many of the Jews that he exterminated,  loved classical music, as I do.
Dwight Eisenhower had much origin in German-speaking countries and advocated superhighways. (I'm about half German and Swiss and I would like to see some Blood Alleys replaced).
Mohandas Gandhi was a vegetarian, as (really a myth) was Hitler. OK, I'm not a vegetarian.
Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Vaclav Havel were spell-binding speakers who got in trouble with the law for their politics.  (OK, I have never been in trouble with the law for anything other than traffic-law violations, and I am a very bland speaker).

So I don't smoke, and Hitler didn't either...

Am I like Hitler? Let me count the ways...

Quote:I see Hitler and the other dictators you mention as the (hopefully) last great examples of Agricultural Age thinking.  Before democracy made its comeback with the Enlightenment, the best times for the cultures that had good times came with really strong rulers...  Fill-in-the-blank the Great.  Only if you had someone who could really intimidate everyone else within the culture into submission could one wield the full and effective force of one's people, one's nation.  During the Agricultural Age, use of military force to acquire territory was pretty much cost effective... at least for the winners.  When agriculture is the driving force in the economy, more land is more power.  The sort of strong men that might acquire more land and power strove to do so.  Stalin, Saddam and now Assad and ISIS still embrace this meme... only a dominant personality who can successfully bully and intimidate can achieve enough power to absolutely control a country and then expand it.

Add the Kim dynasty in the odd merger of absolute monarchy with Marxism in the alleged Democratic People's Republic of Korea (it is one of the least democratic political orders in the world, it does not serve the Korean people well, and it is no Republic)...

The world is now too small for their type.

Quote:The Enlightenment and Industrial values work for the benefit of the common man.  Autocratic demagogues are viewed as dangerous threats rather than being considered great.  One wants balance of power to check the demagog rather than seeking out the strong man.  One gets power by helping the common man and hoping the common man approves enough to vote one back into power.  The Whig tradition that shifted into the progressive tradition still tries to embrace this approach.

Modernity in culture begins with the Renaissance, modernity in thought begins with the Enlightenment, and real modernity in economics begins when capitalists recognize that working people need a stake in the system. An attempt to bring back the labor-management relations associated with Henry Clay Frick is a reversion to the Marxist stereotype of early-industrial capitalism that few people want. The privileged elites of contemporary America might want it just as the industrialists and financiers of the doomed Weimar Republic wanted (and got!) such a reversion... tough luck to them!

Quote:Anyway, Hillary isn’t the candidate who endorses Saddam, Putin and Assad.  She doesn’t endorse Autocratic Age tyranny and intimidation.  From the way I look at the conflict between Industrial and Agricultural Age values, it is Trump who is trying to embrace the old ways represented by Hitler and his ilk, and Hillary who is trying to continue the Whig tradition of government working for the common man.

A basic rule in life: even if one can deal with flawed people one cannot deal with pure evil except through overpowering force. One cannot deal with the Devil (metaphoric or theological) without becoming ethically soiled.

Quote:

(07-28-2016, 12:43 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You and any other lib who believes they know what's best for all of us or a larger segment of us or their so-called own better rethink your importance beyond yourself or your own so to speak. Whether Trump wins or looses doesn't matter, Trump is now a powerful voice that will hamper Hillary from day one. A voice that Hillary can't control. A voice that will rip on her and weaken her every day she's in office. A voice that will give way to a stronger voice and equally committed voice reminding Democrats that they used to represent the workingman. Whether you realize it or not, the Democrats lost the working man to the Republicans in this election cycle. A trend that will continue to grow in the future.

Somebody lost something all right.  To my mind, the Republican establishment lost the Republican base.  For  years the Republican base has been told that the government is corrupt and inefficient, that you can’t trust politicians.  They’ve got so cynical and disillusioned that they have come to recognize that Republican politicians are politicians.

The Republicans abandoned rationality to cultivate the votes of the most gullible and least-sophisticated of voters. In doing so they offended and old part of their coalition, the successful and well-educated people who distrust superstition, bigotry, unreason, and ignorance. One's level of formal education was once a good proxy for Republican voting. That's over. That proxy worked for Dwight Eisenhower -- and Barack Obama.  Should the High Plains states reject Donald Trump in November, then the electoral map for Hillary Clinton will look like an Eisenhower victory.

Quote:The emphasis at the Democratic convention is on how Hillary has tried to help people, tried and to a great degree succeeded.  The girl in a wheelchair who couldn’t get an education.  The parent who couldn’t get health insurance, who knew a major health problem would bankrupt his family and shorten a family member’s life.  The black deep south families who saw tax breaks going to segregated schools their children could not access.  The migrant farm worker who needed a little help in the deep south to register to vote.  The occupants of a small planet being threatened by climate change.  The residents of Gaza who were about to be immersed in war.

One corollary of democracy is that people expect democratically-elected politicians to be problem-solvers. There have been political figures (Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, Gottwald in Czechoslovakia, Peron in Argentina, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Chavez in Venezuela) who have disrupted a flawed democratic order with demagogic promises and taken over, only to gut democracy and the responsibility of leadership to the people. It is far easier to enrich one's cronies and punish rivals and opponents than to solve problems.

Donald Trump is a demagogue exploiting a flawed democracy -- ours. America doesn't have much of a political center that puts quality over ideology. I doubt that we have a truly representative legislature, unelected lobbyists responsible to their paymasters having hooks in politicians who pay more attention to economic interests than to constituents. Add to that we have an educational system that fosters irresponsible narcissism in potential leaders.

Quote:(In contrast to Donald Trump) is the rejection of the idea that government can’t help people.  It can, it does, and Hillary has been doing it all her life.  She has been fighting the Reagan mind set of people who have never needed help and thus don’t want to see people helped.  Her foes are those who can’t imagine themselves needing help, who thus work hard to leave folks in misery.

And that leaves aside what Trump is…  someone who has looked out first and foremost for himself, and has left behind a trail of people who have felt scammed and used.

America needs pervasive change, part of it educational (think of how often I call for the return to the liberal arts as the objective of undergraduate education instead of as a watered-down grad school), part of it economic (strengthen labor unions, the only institutions that can protect workers from the exploitation of workers by owners and bosses), and partly political (tighten the checks and balances so that unelected Party bosses cannot control the system). The culture will go along.  

Quote:I of course see the long term dynamics between the parties differently (from Classic X'er).  The more the Republicans push a government that doesn’t help the People, the more the People will need help, the more they will turn to the party that will help them.  I also don’t anticipate Trump as the candidate who lost will be any more an influence than McCain, Romney or other recent Republican losers.  Heck, the last closest thing to a Republican winner was Bush 43, and nobody wants to be associated with the disasters he created.  The best thing he can do to help his party is to avoid associating himself with it.

The battle for ideas depends on whether the People recognize that the government can improve life in these United States.  The Democrats are trying to prove that it can.  The Republicans are trying to prove that it can’t.  I know who I’m rooting for.

Donald Trump mandates that the vast majority will be consigned to failure. Just think of it: much of his success is from getting people to be irrational actors in the economy. That's the gambling casino. I can look at a casino and see the glitz and recognize who pays for it. Contrast a cereal processor for which I have much respect; its plant is strictly functional in design. But those who go in as workers generally have middle incomes because of their jobs in that plant. The cereal processor makes its money offering a tangible product that I find useful, and it doesn't need to entice me to buy its wares with wild promises that I could be a big winner.

Quote:Note that we’re due for a realignment.  The Republicans are clearly a party in flux.  They need to reinvent themselves.  I don’t think Trump represents the best model for them to build on.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are a party that has been filibustered into impotence.  Crisis magnitude transformation has been out of reach, and might well remain out of reach.  Change will remain a struggle.  The struggle will have to continue.  Successes must be made visible.  A good size dent has to be made in the notion that everything the government tries to do is a failure.  For Democrats, success will come with programs that work.  I don’t see any other approaches, no easy short cuts.

The Crisis will pull us Americans, perhaps kicking and screaming, into a new era that fits the economic realities. It will compel rational solutions. In the last Crisis one part of the losing side convinced many of its young men that glory came from flying a doomed, bomb-laden aircraft into an American war ship. Another part of the losing side saw an ancient-but-vibrant religion as a nemesis to be exterminated instead of to be recognized for its competence as entrepreneurs and scientists. America and Britain resolved to finish off the nasty war against vile enemies. America and Britain got the benefits of having some of the finest entrepreneurs and scientists, many of them of an ancient-but-vibrant religion, and both valued its soldiers enough to save them with antibiotics. In the end many Germans got guided tours of slave-labor camps courtesy of the British and American armies with loaded weapons, and Japanese military forces that had depended upon rice looted from occupied countries got sent to Japanese rice paddies that needed harvesting while they were enforcing the looting of occupied countries.

Quote:Grumble.  I don't usually like to go all partisan.  We have enough blue partisans on the board without me beating yet another blue drum.  I'd rather push the notion that there are real reasons the red values came into being, real reasons they aren't going away trivially.  Reagan really did have his finger on the pulse of the country in his time, and really did try to take it where it had to go.  His ideas in moderation do make a reasonable check on big government.  One party, either party, any party, will take its ideas way to far if left in control too long.

Maybe if the American educational and political systems weren't so broken, we wouldn't have the polarization of the political sphere that now bedevils America.

Quote:But at the moment we have two choices.  It may be that the country would have been better served by two different choices.  Still, Trump isn't a choice.  We've had a former CIA chief and a current Supreme Court justice among others flat out say he isn't qualified for the job.  This is bad form, against all tradition, true and necessary to say.  I guess I've got to say it too.

Democracy is not a suicide pact. And, yes, Donald Trump is singularly unqualified to be president. He has the wrong education (law is ideal); his problem-solving has been simply to fire people or abandon a failing enterprise; he plays fast and loose with words and promises; he is either grossly dishonest or out of touch with logical reality (one cannot reconcile opposite sides of a logical contradiction); he shows little respect for precedent; he is reckless; he is narcissistic in the extreme; he even seems to lack fundamental decency. He will make George W Bush look good by contrast. After a short experience with President Donald Trump (pardon me if I vomit!) we might want to dispense with or modify the 22nd Amendment to accommodate a third term by you-know-who.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-28-2016, 09:29 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-27-2016, 07:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

So, what's Number 1?

1. Moose-slims! Including Barack HUSSEIN Obama, that enabler of Radical Islamic Terrorism. (Whoops!)

4. Black men marrying their precious white daughters.

6. Mexican-Americans marrying their precious white daughters.

Hillary isn't scary. She turns REAL men off.