Presidential election, 2016

[David Horn]

(11-27-2016, 09:17 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: The discussion was about the debt, not the deficit.

However, it's to be noted that the highest deficit on your chart was in 2009, Obama's first year, due to his patronage, er, "stimulus" spending, and it went down mostly after the partial shutdown that the Tea Party folks forced.

The big money drivers of the 2009 deficit:

1. Entitlements: UI, SNAP and other automatically triggered programs went into hyper-drive because they had a huge influx of newly entitled recipients.  If they hadn't been available, we would have had the GD all over again.
   
2. Tax Receipts: If income drops, taxes decline too, so this was not unexpected.
   
3. Bailouts: The initial round of bailouts was relatively large, and all on the Uncle Sam credit card.
   
4. Discretionary Stimulus:  Several programs were instigated, including Cash for Clunkers and some infrastructure projects.
   

It's hard to fault any of that.

[David Horn]

(11-28-2016, 09:09 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: I agree a lot of Obama's patronage definitely went to people not on welfare, in particular wealthy Obama donors such as the founders of Solyndra.

Please, give this a rest.  If you're pushing the envelope, you'll have some failures.  If you have no failures, you're playing it far too safe.  Overall, the DOE alternative energy program has been a huge success.  Solyndra offered a technology that didn't stand up to the completion, but those competitors were also in the program.  So Solyndra lost, but the cost of solar arrays has dropped by nearly 75% because those winners had beater ideas.  That was the point.

Solyndra is not an embarrassment.  It was a casualty in a brutal technology war that was guaranteed to have them.  How is this different than the serial failures suffered by NASA in the early days of the space race?  Rockets blowing up on launch was an ongoing saga for years, but it's NASA that made it to the moon.

[pbrower2a]

(11-30-2016, 01:54 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-27-2016, 09:17 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: The discussion was about the debt, not the deficit.

However, it's to be noted that the highest deficit on your chart was in 2009, Obama's first year, due to his patronage, er, "stimulus" spending, and it went down mostly after the partial shutdown that the Tea Party folks forced.

The big money drivers of the 2009 deficit:

1. Entitlements: UI, SNAP and other automatically triggered programs went into hyper-drive because they had a huge influx of newly entitled recipients.  If they hadn't been available, we would have had the GD all over again.
   
2. Tax Receipts: If income drops, taxes decline too, so this was not unexpected.
   
3. Bailouts: The initial round of bailouts was relatively large, and all on the Uncle Sam credit card.
   
4. Discretionary Stimulus:  Several programs were instigated, including Cash for Clunkers and some infrastructure projects.
   

It's hard to fault any of that.

Such was so. The Keynesian multiplier effect practically ensures that efforts to increase tax revenue or cut spending directly do more harm than good -- even to the budget.

People spend unemployment insurance; SNAP is use-it-or-lose-it, and it goes back into the economy through grocery purchases.
The bailouts were necessary for preventing another Great Depression.

Cash for Clunkers? It got huge numbers of gas-guzzling vehicles off the road and supported the American auto industry that had done nothing wrong.

The choice was clear: begin the recovery in early 2009 (the equivalent of early 1931 in the Great Depression) or perhaps late 2010 (the equivalent of late 1932).

[David Horn]

(11-28-2016, 09:41 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Trump never had any credibility with you the left,  anyway.  The right recognizes that states like California, with no enforceable requirement for proof of citizenship in the registration or voting process, likely have many illegal immigrants voting, possibly in the millions given the ruling Democratic party's interest in having illegal aliens vote.  The center also recognizes that Trump's claim here is far more credible than the claims on the left about mass hacking of voting machines by the Russian government.

H-m-m-m.  All evidence to date indicates that denial of voting rights disenfranchises vastly more legitimate voters than any fraud scheme might add illegal ones.  More to the point, fraud, if it occurs, is not restricted by party.  Disenfranchisement is, as North Carolina was recently told by the most conservative US Circuit Court of Appeals: the Fourth.

If the GOP gets slapped by the 4th Circuit Court, you know it's bad.

[Eric the Green]

(11-29-2016, 01:49 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-28-2016, 04:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I was not familiar with that reference at all. I guess because I don't know Minnesota that well.

cake eater
A cake eater actually refers to Edina, MN, saying the people in it are so rich they can have their cake and eat it too. It could also refer to rich white suburban kids in general, too. And BTW- Mighty Ducks was filmed in Minnesota, so he's probably literally calling that kid a cake-eater from Edina.
"look at that f*cker driving his brand new BMW out of the school parking lot. what a cake eater"
by Britta D May 27, 2005
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.ph...ke%20eater





kind of a cross between rap and Owl City (Minnesota native). It's always a Good Time!

"Let 'em eat cake!"-- Marie Antoinette (supposed quote).

That was funny. I'm not exactly a cake eater. I don't fit their social profile or the uppity red stereotype that's associated with them. Me, I work like everyone else who works in the trades. I don't toot my horn, flaunt my wealth and promote my association with higher wealth in public like play Playdude. I will toot my horn, chime in and inform Playdude that his wealth and political connections and the bulk of social programs associated with them doesn't mean much to me.

I've never seen Playwrite toot his wealth. How you can get that, I assume, is more incredible leaps of logic based on false trickle-down ideology.

Quote: How large and how much more technologically advanced is the group who are associated with those who earned their independence and gave us the Constitution? Ever think about that?

I think I know my history, and I think (duh?) that it was the yankees on the East Coast that did that.

Quote: Well, 60 some million for sure and probably millions more once the shooting starts and sides are taken. Had core America showed up in force in this election. Is it a helluva lot bigger than you ever thought it was? Is it much bigger and more powerful than you ever believed or were able to comprehend?

Just which side is really bigger is something neither side would be wise to assume. There sure were more rural Trump supporters flocking to the polls in swing states than I would have thought. The turnout overall was not appreciably higher there than in the other states, though. Hispanics turned out more, and blacks less. And how many didn't vote because they didn't have ID? The Republican scheme worked, and gave us a corrupt CEO as president.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-30-2016, 12:32 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(11-30-2016, 12:33 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-29-2016, 05:34 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-29-2016, 01:49 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not exactly a cake eater. I don't fit their social profile or the uppity red stereotype that's associated with them. Me, I work like everyone else who works in the trades. I don't toot my horn, flaunt my wealth and promote my association with higher wealth in public like play Playdude. I will toot my horn, chime in and inform Playdude that his wealth and political connections and the bulk of social programs associated with them doesn't mean much to me. How large and how much more technologically advanced is the group who are associated with those who earned their independence and gave us the Constitution? Ever think about that? Well, 60 some million for sure and probably millions more once the shooting starts and sides are taken. Had core America showed up in force in this election. Is it a helluva lot bigger than you ever thought it was? Is it much bigger and more powerful than you ever believed or were able to comprehend?

You are still very much mistaken in thinking Red America is America.  The country is truly split, and the role and values of both halves or American have contributed and will continue to contribute.  We're stuck on a see saw, with two groups of politicians getting power for time, pushing the perspective of one culture or another, ticking off the other culture in doing so, thus guaranteeing the other will take over for a time.  If the blue side has a snobbery about it, believing in the superiority of urban culture and the virtue of their values, the red side seems to have a proactive vindictiveness to it.

In engineering classes it is called feedback.  If pushing things one way results in a force that pushes things back the other way hard enough, things swing back and forth with increasing and vicious intensity.  The best known example is the scream produced when a microphone gets too close to a speaker it is driving.  While the feedback loop is unstable, no other signal is discernible.   The system is unusable.  One has to move the microphone further from the speakers or reduce the volume level on the amplifier.  I suppose one could also pull the plug or crash a guitar through the speakers...

I for one am in favor of reducing the volume some.  If we keep pushing at each other hard whenever we have the chance, the feedback will continue.

You've already lost the majority of the country. If the country were to split, how much of the country would you have left? The majority of the country wants its independence back. The majority of the country voted to retain its national sovereignty.

Are you talking population and economic value add, or are you talking land area? If land area, you are correct. If population and value add, you are completely and utterly mistaken. Hence, the bad mojo we now have.

I'm talking both. We have bad mojo because you are completely aware of my view of you as a person. The progressives -blues are completely aware of my view of them as people. Me, I don't care what your view of me is, I know who I am, I know what I've done for people, I know how I've conducted myself and I know what I'm able to accomplish based on what I've already accomplished up to now.

[Eric the Green]

(11-22-2016, 03:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 07:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trickle-in electionomics:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...rue#gid=19

Hillary leads Trump by about 1,200,000 and still counting.

Now her lead is over 1,700,000, and projected by google to be 2,400,000

It's there.


U.S. Total
Clinton 64,952,215 48.2%
Trump 62,562,364 46.4%
others 7,353,548 5.5%


Dem margin 2012 3.9%
Dem margin 2016 1.8%
decline -2.1%

total votes 2012: 129,075,630
total votes so far 2016: 134,868,127
increase 4.5%

13 Swing States
Clinton 21,388,000 46.6%
Trump 22,216,798 48.4%
others 2,336,691 5.1%

Dem margin 3.6%
Dem margin -1.8%
decline -5.4%
total votes 2012: 43,939,918
total votes 2016: 45,941,489
increase in total votes: 4.6%

Non-Swing States
Clinton: 43,564,215 49.0%
Trump: 40,345,566 45.4%
others: 5,016,857 5.6%

Dem margin 2012: 4.0%
Dem margin: 3.6%
decrease: -0.4%

total votes 2012: 85,135,712
total votes so far 2016: 88,926,638
increase in total votes: 4.5%



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...rue#gid=19

[FLBones]

^^^Hopefully California will vote to leave the country in 2019.

#Calexit 2019

[Eric the Green]

Wow, the margin is approaching 2%, has passed 2.5 million, and California has surpassed Hawaii in the % of the vote for Hillary.

And more votes came in from PA, and Trump's lead is shrinking there. Total decisive vote margin in the 3 "Brexit states" is now less than 80,000.

[Warren Dew]

(12-01-2016, 06:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Wow, the margin is approaching 2%, has passed 2.5 million, and California has surpassed Hawaii in the % of the vote for Hillary.

Give it a year and Clinton will have 100% of the 100 million votes from California.

[Ragnarök_62]

Quote: Eric the Green] Wow, the margin is approaching 2%, has passed 2.5 million, and California has surpassed Hawaii in the % of the vote for Hillary.

It's December 1, do you know where your horses are?  Hint, said horse left the barn on Nov, 9.

Warren Dew Wrote:Give it a year and Clinton will have 100% of the 100 million votes from California.

California has a tad of only a bit above 37,000,000 folks. Some of that is of course too young to vote. If you're counting the resident zombies, then yes, the 100 million votes would work.

[Eric the Green]

(12-01-2016, 06:51 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(12-01-2016, 06:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Wow, the margin is approaching 2%, has passed 2.5 million, and California has surpassed Hawaii in the % of the vote for Hillary.

Give it a year and Clinton will have 100% of the 100 million votes from California.

Ca is counting legally the legal votes from legal citizens. It takes a while to count 14 million plus votes and verify that they are legal votes. Red states that don't care about the people taking too long to stand in line and vote, because their method is to make people wait in line so they have to take extra time to show ID cards and do all the verification at the polling place. And their method encourages rather than discourages people from voting, because unlike red and many purple states, deep blue states like CA believe in democracy.

I went to vote in person early at the registar. I was surprised the huge parking lots were full, and I asked an employee walking along about why the county building was so full, and he said "it's the election." Lots of people work at the registrar's office to make sure the vote is conducted and counted properly. I'm sorry you live in a state where they don't do this, but don't blame California, and please don't believe a word that our stupid president-elect says; he's a total dufus, a scumbag and a dirt ball. And those are kind words for him.

[Eric the Green]

(12-01-2016, 07:01 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

Quote: Eric the Green] Wow, the margin is approaching 2%, has passed 2.5 million, and California has surpassed Hawaii in the % of the vote for Hillary.

It's December 1, do you know where your horses are?  Hint, said horse left the barn on Nov, 9.

Warren Dew Wrote:Give it a year and Clinton will have 100% of the 100 million votes from California.

California has a tad of only a bit above 37,000,000 folks. Some of that is of course too young to vote. If you're counting the resident zombies, then yes, the 100 million votes would work.

The point, dear Rags, if you can possibly grasp it, is that the people did not vote for Trump. Last I checked, Californians were still part of the people, and our votes are part of the voting public. It is very significant indeed to point out that the people didn't vote for the scumbag, and he has no mandate at all. Still, some people will think that he does. This fact that Hillary Clinton was the person people voted for, should be trumpeted aloud constantly for the next 4 years.

[Ragnarök_62]

(12-01-2016, 07:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The point, dear Rags, if you can possibly grasp it, is that the people did not vote for Trump. Last I checked, Californians were still part of the people, and our votes are part of the voting public. It is very significant indeed to point out that the people didn't vote for the scumbag, and he has no mandate at all. Still, some people will think that he does. This fact that Hillary Clinton was the person people voted for, should be trumpeted aloud constantly for the next 4 years.

Oh, I grasp it, OK.  The US is a republic, not a democracy. The election rules pretty much state that Trump won, regardless of what the actual underlying election results garnered. So yes, you're correct that the "people" being the input to the box for the election voted one way, but how wins are counted, by "winner take" all get the other result. So... the Electoral College, the process is that got the actual results. It's sorta like the Senate, where low population Oklahoma has the exact same number of Senators as high population California.  I think the composition of the Senate and the Electoral College are just 2 examples of attempting to prevent Tyranny of the Majority."

[Eric the Green]

(12-01-2016, 07:59 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(12-01-2016, 07:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The point, dear Rags, if you can possibly grasp it, is that the people did not vote for Trump. Last I checked, Californians were still part of the people, and our votes are part of the voting public. It is very significant indeed to point out that the people didn't vote for the scumbag, and he has no mandate at all. Still, some people will think that he does. This fact that Hillary Clinton was the person people voted for, should be trumpeted aloud constantly for the next 4 years.

Oh, I grasp it, OK.  The US is a republic, not a democracy. The election rules pretty much state that Trump won, regardless of what the actual underlying election results garnered. So yes, you're correct that the "people" being the input to the box for the election voted one way, but how wins are counted, by "winner take" all get the other result. So... the Electoral College, the process is that got the actual results. It's sorta like the Senate, where low population Oklahoma has the exact same number of Senators as high population California.  I think the composition of the Senate and the Electoral College are just 2 examples of attempting to prevent Tyranny of the Majority."

It doesn't f**king matter what the rules are. Yes, Trump is dufus-elect. The majority voted for Hillary Clinton. The votes coming in stamp that point ever-more clearly. What this system has given us IS tyranny. It has failed. The point is to remember who the people voted for, and that's the only point worth remembering about this.

In a country of over 300 million, 100,000 people (edit: make that 80,000 and falling) chose our "president." This is what happens in a banana republic; not to mention that this country is already owned by .1% of the people; not to mention that those 100,000 people chose a "president" who will try to create even-more of a banana republic here in the GOU. (good old USA).

I guess you didn't read my post detailing how the electoral college came about. Did you know it was to protect slavery?

Now, THAT's pretty outdated. Tyranny of the majority my a**

[Ragnarök_62]

Eric The Green Wrote:It doesn't f**king matter what the rules are. Yes, Trump is dufus-elect. The majority voted for Hillary Clinton.

The rules matter, because folks can't go off and demand the rules be changed after the fact. The rules should be changed BEFORE the issue that the rules bind to happen.

Quote:]
The votes coming in stamp that point ever-more clearly. What this system has given us IS tyranny. It has failed.

So, if we go with a plebiscite only with the 2 party system we have now will work?  I don't think so. A plebiscite with a parliamentary system is OK. Normally, you'll get a plethora of parties which forces some sort of compromise amongst a subset of those parties to govern. The 2 party system here is clearly broken. An example is unelected super delegates to the Democratic Party of all places. Party hacks are the Banana Republic within the Democratic Party. Even the Republicans don't have that.  The Democratic Party hacks even tried to smother Sanders, that's an inconvenient truth, there Eric.  Debbie Washedup Shulz should have stayed neutral, but did not. So why not just reboot to  a parliament? The modern forms seems to work just fine. We have here, a 2 party monopoly which tends to render a vote between tweedle dee and tweedle dum.

Quote:The point is to remember who the people voted for, and that's the only point worth remembering about this.

Why? The US hasn't done that yet.

Quote:In a country of over 300 million, 100,000 people chose our "president." This is what happens in a banana republic; not to mention that this country is already owned by .1% of the people; not to mention that those 100,000 people chose a "president" who will try to create even-more of a banana republic here in the GOU. (good old USA).

I certainly agree we're a Banana Republic and have been for a long time. Take a pinch of Citizen's united, mix in party gerrymandering, vote buyoffs with stuff like the F-35 program, and all those $10,000/plate dipshits that buy off Congress and that's the Banana Republic.

Quote:I guess you didn't read my post detailing how the electoral college came about. Did you know it was to protect slavery?

Now, THAT's pretty outdated. Tyranny of the majority my a**

No. I don't want California laws like soda taxes. I think those sorts of laws are patronizing. Grown adults should feel free to drink sugar saturated stuff because everyone knows they make you fat. It's like my snus production at home. I know that snus has close to zilch carcinogens with double the nicotine.  I have a right to do nicotine without getting badgered by PC nicotine nazis. I don't get a shit about the origin of the thing, I just know it balances the output of Presidential elections between big California and little Oklahoma a tad, which is a good thing.

[Eric the Green]

(12-01-2016, 08:46 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

Eric The Green Wrote:It doesn't f**king matter what the rules are. Yes, Trump is dufus-elect. The majority voted for Hillary Clinton.

The rules matter, because folks can't go off and demand the rules be changed after the fact. The rules should be changed BEFORE the issue that the rules bind to happen.

It is too hard to change the rules. That is obvious. What we need to realize now is that the results of these rules are illegitimate and do not confer any mandate. Hillary Clinton is our rightful CIC.

Quote:

Quote:The votes coming in stamp that point ever-more clearly. What this system has given us IS tyranny. It has failed.

So, if we go with a plebiscite only with the 2 party system we have now will work?  I don't think so. A plebiscite with a parliamentary system is OK. Normally, you'll get a plethora of parties which forces some sort of compromise amongst a subset of those parties to govern. The 2 party system here is clearly broken. An example is unelected super delegates to the Democratic Party of all places. Party hacks are the Banana Republic within the Democratic Party. Even the Republicans don't have that.  The Democratic Party hacks even tried to smother Sanders, that's an inconvenient truth, there Eric.  Debbie Washedup Shulz should have stayed neutral, but did not. So why not just reboot to  a parliament? The modern forms seems to work just fine. We have here, a 2 party monopoly which tends to render a vote between tweedle dee and tweedle dum.

As much as I agree that we need more than a two-party monopoly, blaming it for the debacle of a Trump presidency is the wrong approach. No, it is not true that the DNC smothered Sanders, although it's true they voiced their desire to that effect. That is not the same as doing it. What is wrong is to assume that because Sanders didn't win, it's OK to ignore the fact that Trump has no mandate for the incredible destruction he is wreaking. The best thing to do was to vote for Hillary, but arguing over that or bringing up the problem with Democrats is beside the point. The point is that we have a president who was not chosen by the people, but by some plantation owners in 1789. And we should never let anyone forget this.

Quote:

Quote:The point is to remember who the people voted for, and that's the only point worth remembering about this.

Why? The US hasn't done that yet.

We haven't done that yet, no. Apparently we have not done the job of realizing that Trump does not have a mandate, and that the people didn't vote for him.

Quote:

Quote:In a country of over 300 million, 100,000 people chose our "president." This is what happens in a banana republic; not to mention that this country is already owned by .1% of the people; not to mention that those 100,000 people chose a "president" who will try to create even-more of a banana republic here in the GOU. (good old USA).

I certainly agree we're a Banana Republic and have been for a long time. Take a pinch of Citizen's united, mix in party gerrymandering, vote buyoffs with stuff like the F-35 program, and all those $10,000/plate dipshits that buy off Congress and that's the Banana Republic.

And what 80,000 people did on Nov.8 is making this 1000 times worse, instead of fixing it as Sanders OR Clinton would have done.

Quote:

Quote:I guess you didn't read my post detailing how the electoral college came about. Did you know it was to protect slavery?

Now, THAT's pretty outdated. Tyranny of the majority my a**

No. I don't want California laws like soda taxes. I think those sorts of laws are patronizing. Grown adults should feel free to drink sugar saturated stuff because everyone knows they make you fat. It's like my snus production at home. I know that snus has close to zilch carcinogens with double the nicotine.  I have a right to do nicotine without getting badgered by PC nicotine nazis. I don't get a shit about the origin of the thing, I just know it balances the output of Presidential elections between big California and little Oklahoma a tad, which is a good thing.

You are concerned about soda taxes, when people are going to be thrown off all health insurance, when the oligarchy is going to be in charge of all commerce, when environmental laws are going the way of the dodo bird, Citizens United being upheld by Trump judges indefinitely, the 1% oligarchy, military boondoggles, indefinite gerrymandering, and on and on? You've got to be kidding! We've got to focus. And I don't see Oklahoma legalizing MJ, and I don't think you're likely to. I'm glad to live in CA, where at least I know I'm free. Hey, that's a song ain't it?

And I don't know if SF and Oakland passed those soda taxes, despite all the ads against doing it, but if not I don't know if there are any such laws anywhere in CA, except maybe Berkeley, and you don't have to live in Berkeley.

Don't fool yourself by consoling yourself that at least in Trumpland you don't have to pay ciggie taxes.

[Ragnarök_62]

(12-01-2016, 08:58 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is too hard to change the rules. That is obvious. What we need to realize now is that the results of these rules are illegitimate and do not confer any mandate. Hillary Clinton is our rightful CIC.




The 2 final choices were yucky. We got Mr. cyanide instead of MS. arsenic.  I've gone into the I don't give a fuck anymore mode.

Quote:As much as I agree that we need more than a two-party monopoly, blaming it for the debacle of a Trump presidency is the wrong approach. No, it is not true that the DNC smothered Sanders, although it's true they voiced their desire to that effect. That is not the same as doing it

They did smother it. You have to get outside of the lamestream media bubble to find the info though.  The fact is I don't give a rat's ass who hacked what or how the info got leaked. I'm only concerned with the contents of the info itself.

Quote:. What is wrong is to assume that because Sanders didn't win, it's OK to ignore the fact that Trump has no mandate for the incredible destruction he is wreaking. The best thing to do was to vote for Hillary, but arguing over that or bringing up the problem with Democrats is beside the point.

Sanders may or may not have won, that's true. However, the fact the DNC shot itself in it's ass matters. Corruption is corruption, period. The fact is the DNC should have behaved itself so as not to delegitimatize itself.

Quote: The point is that we have a president who was not chosen by the people, but by some plantation owners in 1789. And we should never let anyone forget this.

The deed is done. I've moved on.

Quote:We haven't done that yet, no. Apparently we have not done the job of realizing that Trump does not have a mandate, and that the people didn't vote for him.

I'm not sure where that line of thinking would take the US.

Quote:In a country of over 300 million, 100,000 people chose our "president." This is what happens in a banana republic; not to mention that this country is already owned by .1% of the people; not to mention that those 100,000 people chose a "president" who will try to create even-more of a banana republic here in the GOU. (good old USA).

Rags Wrote:I certainly agree we're a Banana Republic and have been for a long time. Take a pinch of Citizen's united, mix in party gerrymandering, vote buyoffs with stuff like the F-35 program, and all those $10,000/plate dipshits that buy off Congress and that's the Banana Republic.

Quote:And what 100,000 people did on Nov.8 is making this 1000 times worse, instead of fixing it as Sanders OR Clinton would have done.

That gets back to what the rules are for that campaign.

Rags Wrote:No. I don't want California laws like soda taxes. I think those sorts of laws are patronizing. Grown adults should feel free to drink sugar saturated stuff because everyone knows they make you fat. It's like my snus production at home. I know that snus has close to zilch carcinogens with double the nicotine.  I have a right to do nicotine without getting badgered by PC nicotine nazis. I don't get a shit about the origin of the thing, I just know it balances the output of Presidential elections between big California and little Oklahoma a tad, which is a good thing.

Quote:You are concerned about soda taxes, when people are going to be thrown off all health insurance, when the oligarchy is going to be in charge of all commerce, when environmental laws are going the way of the dodo bird, Citizens United being upheld by Trump judges indefinitely, the 1% oligarchy, military boondoggles, indefinite gerrymandering, and on and on? You've got to be kidding! We've got to focus.

Quote: And I don't see Oklahoma legalizing MJ, and I don't think you're likely to.

We almost had a ballot measure. I'm sure we'll get it on the 2018 ballot. The demographics favor that. Even Arkansas legalized medical MJ.  Oklahoma did go the right way in decriminalization of petty crimes like possession.  The Republicans did that 'cause if we keep on this lock 'em up and toss the key, then the prison budget puts the tax cuts at risk.  There's nothing like an exploding expense to get folks' attention, man.   MJ will get legalized in due time because it's a revenue source that isn't a "new tax". Da Republicans dug a really big hole here you know.

Quote:I'm glad to live in CA, where at least I know I'm free. Hey, that's a song ain't it?

You're not a Millie. Millies and Rags can't afford to live in CA due to too high of house prices. Eric probably got his house before real estate got weirded out. I wouldn't be free 'cause I'd have to pay lots of property tax rent. [Unless I moved to Needles. ]  House prices there are OK, but the climate isn't. I'd prefer something opposite of Needles, a place folks don't like because it's cold and snowy. Dunno if there's cheap houses in the Sierra Nevada area in some dinky town there.

Quote:And I don't know if SF and Oakland passed those soda taxes, despite all the ads against doing it, but if not I don't know if there are any such laws anywhere in CA, except maybe Berkeley, and you don't have to live in Berkeley.

Dunno either. Just knew those silly things were on the budget.

Quote:Don't fool yourself by consoling yourself that at least in Trumpland you don't have to pay ciggie taxes.

That gets to an older problem. Why didn't team D engage X'ers in the 1980's?  Team R did which is why team R has a lot of bench strength at the state and local level.  It's sort of what labor unions did with those 2 tier wage schedules. Older members got the raises while GenX got the shaft.  GenX then just blew off the labor unions as useless. Yes, bad decisions go back a long way and come back to bite you.

[Eric the Green]

(12-01-2016, 09:33 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: The 2 final choices were yucky. We got Mr. cyanide instead of MS. arsenic.  I've gone into the I don't give a fuck anymore mode.

The choice was between cyanide and apple juice. We got the poison. That's reason to give a fuck. The nonsense about Hillary wouldn't matter, unless it's your excuse to not give a fuck about where we are now; in deeper doodoo than we've ever been.

Quote:They did smother it. You have to get outside of the lamestream media bubble to find the info though.  The fact is I don't give a rat's ass who hacked what or how the info got leaked. I'm only concerned with the contents of the info itself.

Same old stuff; I've seen it a dozen times. It made no difference to the outcome at all. Hillary got the votes.

Quote:Sanders may or may not have won, that's true. However, the fact the DNC shot itself in it's ass matters. Corruption is corruption, period. The fact is the DNC should have behaved itself so as not to delegitimatize itself.

Woulds shoulda coulda. Yes the DNC and Hillary waged an inadequate campaign. What's new about that for Democrats?

Quote:The deed is done. I've moved on.

You can't move on. The deed has crippled the country and endangered the world.

Quote:

Quote:We haven't done that yet, no. Apparently we have not done the job of realizing that Trump does not have a mandate, and that the people didn't vote for him.

I'm not sure where that line of thinking would take the US.

It's quite easy to know that. If Trump doesn't have a mandate, and everyone knows it because he lost the popular vote so badly, then he has less support for his programs, which are horrible, and so are the dufuses he's choosing to carry out his policies and advise him.

Quote:That gets back to what the rules are for that campaign.

No, not even for a moment. That's exactly where you need to move on from. You need to focus on what counts. A few emails do not contradict that fact that we have lost the chance to carry out any helpful policy for what will be a total of ten years by 2020, and have unleashed a madman and his cronies upon the USA and the world to give us nothing but trouble and a rapid train to a banana republic. And we should have been doing something about that trend. Instead we have a leader who want's to make it permanent and irreversible. That's what it gets "back to."

Quote:We almost had a ballot measure. I'm sure we'll get it on the 2018 ballot. The demographics favor that. Even Arkansas legalized medical MJ.  Oklahoma did go the right way in decriminalization of petty crimes like possession.  The Republicans did that 'cause if we keep on this lock 'em up and toss the key, then the prison budget puts the tax cuts at risk.  There's nothing like an exploding expense to get folks' attention, man.   MJ will get legalized in due time because it's a revenue source that isn't a "new tax". Da Republicans dug a really big hole here you know.

You are dreaming. Only a few blue states have ever done anything about this issue. Red states are dominated by religious and economic ideology. Demographics have made no difference at all in Oklahoma voting patterns. They still vote for the worst right-wing assholes, including the guy at the top of the ticket.

Quote:You're not a Millie. Millies and Rags can't afford to live in CA due to too high of house prices. Eric probably got his house before real estate got weirded out. I wouldn't be free 'cause I'd have to pay lots of property tax rent. [Unless I moved to Needles. ]  House prices there are OK, but the climate isn't. I'd prefer something opposite of Needles, a place folks don't like because it's cold and snowy. Dunno if there's cheap houses in the Sierra Nevada area in some dinky town there.

Probably there is. They would be the red counties within blue CA. This isn't an issue about where you live though. It's an issue of coming to grips with the "American Amnesia," as a writer portrayed on PBS tonight said. Without a move back toward government involvement in the economy, our national decline will accelerate. The priorities are not soda taxes. The priorities are the larger issues of what kind of country we live in. Republicans = the oligarchy. To confuse the issue by saying the Democrats are just as bad and rig elections, misses this larger issue. The Democrats understand how to get our country back on track. Republicans want to speed up our decline. Worrying about soda taxes means you miss the train.

Quote:Dunno either. Just knew those silly things were on the budget.

It doesn't matter; they were not passed by any state authority. CA does not have soda taxes, and there's no imminent prospect for such. I'm in CA, I would have heard about it. NO, it was a ballot measure in a few cities.

Quote:That gets to an older problem. Why didn't team D engage X'ers in the 1980's?  Team R did which is why team R has a lot of bench strength at the state and local level.  It's sort of what labor unions did with those 2 tier wage schedules. Older members got the raises while GenX got the shaft.  GenX then just blew off the labor unions as useless. Yes, bad decisions go back a long way and come back to bite you.

And that decision by Gen X was the bad decision. Yes, too many unions and Democrats in the 1980s fell for the Reagan propaganda that people didn't deserve a living wage; that they should yield to the boss's interests because the benefits would trickle down. Talk about not moving on; this speculation gets us nowhere. It doesn't matter what generation you are in. The problem is that unions went away, and R's have the back bench because the people fell for Republican propaganda. Trickle-down doesn't trickle. So the Gen Xers vote Republican because things failed because of their own decision!

[pbrower2a]

Elections have consequences. If you voted for anyone but Donald Trump, get over it. Prepare yourself for the worst four years of your life if you plan to stay in America, when your life gets reduced to its economic role -- and not what you can enjoy with the rewards. Even I expect things to get worse for myself despite having had some very bad times due to asset-devouring, time-robbing care for parents with slow-moving degenerative diseases -- and I am not sure that I will be able to survive because life for anyone who isn't a workhorse will be precarious in the extreme.  The rewards to which you have gotten accustomed will shrink because the ruling elite will cut your pay and ensure that any taxes that they pay will be shifted to you or that the services that you or your loved ones need (like education) will be cut. Donald Trump loves the ignorant fool, the sort of person most likely to vote for him if not super-rich, and if you are non-white but middle class, President Trump will achieve one of his promises -- sticking it to you. His voters wanted that and they will get it -- perhaps ensuring that the schoolteacher who corrects some dullard kid's grammar gets paid like a store clerk.

If I were thirty years younger I would consider emigration even if I had family responsibilities. Maybe especially. I would rather that my kids struggle with a language as difficult as Czech and have a chance to attend college without owing as much as $100K than get away with bad grammar and learn that the Earth is only about 6000 years old because some cleric so calculated and that global warming is a myth because some coal baron so says. So they get to hear Dvorak string quartets instead of hip-hop? Wonderful!

Of course it would be back to America once sanity prevails in the USA -- but if not... well, the kids might have assimilated into a place of sanity.

It will be four years. After things really go bad in America, Americans will surely want someone who promises to reverse the damage other than lost years of economic failure.  That failure is nearly certain. Economic strength depends more upon consumption than upon rewards to economic elites. But think of the positive about four years of Donald Trump. Because so few people will want to move to America while Trump is President, real estate will be affordable again -- maybe even in California ... assuming that there hasn't been a nasty war. Elite profits will be sheared in a near-replay of the 1929-1932 meltdown, so economic inequality will not be so severe. As America falls behind the rest of the world in technology because top engineers from China and India will prefer to stay in their own countries than risk going to a country with a racist President who sees education as a menace to his political agenda, America may have to have something like a WPA for teachers and other middle-class professionals. Americans will decide to have vast reforms of the tax system and educational practice. The 46th President will go back to the sanity associated with Barack Obama -- in fact, by 2020 the winning President will likely be the one who seems most like him (except perhaps for the aspect that matters least in the President that tried to make race irrelevant in American life -- melanin).  

But should Donald Trump be re-elected... your smart kids will assimilate into some other culture. They will go back to America for cheap holidays, just like their classmates,  because skiing in Colorado will be much less expensive than skiing in Austria. Or because tickets to the financially-struggling Chicago Symphony will be cheap. But live there? To be bartenders and cleaners in resorts catering to foreign visitors on cheap holidays so that they might have the bonus of seducing some rich European or Asian and gaining a better life through matrimony? Those jobs would be very attractive even if they pay about the same as farm labor or assembly-line work but require one to wear costly clothes that one must pay for.

If you voted against Donald Trump, you have a good idea of what is coming. You may not know about any Crisis theory of history, but you recognize that things will get very bad very fast.

But if you voted for Donald Trump -- it is quite likely that you have accepted Pascal's wager    that suffering in This World is a worthy gamble so long as you have a chance at eternal bliss -- and if there is no eternal bliss, what have you missed? You might think that people debased in their circumstances will recognize that there is nothing more to life than toil and Jesus and become a fundamentalist Christian for lack of alternatives. Maybe you never recovered from the de-industrialization of America and expect the jobs to return. (Really, they won't. Technology makes that impossible unless people revert to the technology of about 1955, something very unlikely).

No, cars will not be built here again:




Nobody will revive the slogan  "Ask the man who owns one", even with sexually-neutered language. Packard made a fine car in its day. That's over. But Donald Trump might set race relations back sixty years (so that landlords will again have the right to Make (their part of ) America Great Again by regaining the right to discriminate on race in housing, and labor-management relations back 90 years to those glorious days when Big Business didn't have to deal with unions, and elderly workers stayed on the job until they died of overwork and exhaustion or had some crippling or fatal industrial accident because there was no Social Security.

If you voted for Donald Trump you are going to see strikes, demonstrations, and protests as you never saw since the 1960s, and you will not expect those as part of the bargain. But this will not be Awakening-era self-discovery. This will be Crisis-Era concern for freedom, community, and economic survival. Maybe even peace in a time in which several countries hostile to the USA will have nukes. We liberals who start demonstrating in late January are not your enemies. The people who got you to vote for your own economic ruin in return for some Schadenfreude have already cheated you. They will keep cheating you for four hard years.