A thread for Democrats Only by THGRRI

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
If people believe that Trump is substantially lying about something so easy to uncover, it has the potential to flip people who are merely giving him a pass, though it won't change the minds of true fans.
I could admit that I'm not sure Trump really understands enough to "substantially lie"

Are you familiar with the concept of 'bad faith'? Hiding the truth from oneself. Intentional deceit of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith

Budgets, Bad Faith and ‘Balance’
Paul Krugman FEB. 15, 2018
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/opinion/republicans-bad-faith-krugman.html

Over the past couple of months Republicans have passed or proposed three big budget initiatives. First, they enacted a springtime-for-plutocrats tax cut that will shower huge benefits on the wealthy while offering a few crumbs for ordinary families — crumbs that will be snatched away after a few years, so that it ends up becoming a middle-class tax hike. Then they signed on to a what-me-worry budget deal that will blow up the budget deficit to levels never before seen except during wars or severe recessions. Finally, the Trump administration released a surpassingly vicious budget proposal that would punish not just the vulnerable but also most working families.

Looking at all of this should make you very angry; it certainly infuriates me. But my anger isn’t mostly directed at Republicans; it’s directed at their enablers, the professional centrists, both-sides pundits, and news organizations that spent years refusing to acknowledge that the modern G.O.P. is what it so clearly is.

Which is not to say that Republicans should be let off the hook.

To be sure, American history is full of politicians and parties that pursued what we would now call nefarious ends. After all, the pre-Civil War Democratic Party — which shares nothing but a name with today’s Democrats — was largely devoted to the cause of preserving slavery. But I can’t think of a previous example of a party that so consistently acted in bad faith — pretending to care about things it didn’t, pretending to serve goals that were the opposite of its actual intentions.

You may recall, for example, the grim warnings from leading Republicans about the dangers of budget deficits, with Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, declaring that our “crushing burden of debt” would create an economic crisis. Then came the opportunity to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut targeted on the rich, and suddenly all worries about the deficit temporarily disappeared.

Now that the tax cut is law, of course, deficit-hawk rhetoric is back — not as a reason to reconsider those tax breaks, but as a reason to cut food stamps and Medicaid. You knew this was going to happen, although even I expected the fake deficit hawks to wait a little longer before resuming their act.

You may also recall how Republicans posed as defenders of Medicare, accusing the Obama administration of planning to cut $500 billion from the program to pay for the Affordable Care Act. The legislation did in fact seek substantial savings in Medicare, for example by ending overpayments to insurance companies. But so did Republican proposals. And Donald Trump, who promised during the campaign not to cut Medicare or Medicaid, is now proposing hundreds of billions more in Medicare cuts and truly draconian cuts in Medicaid.

Why have Republicans become so overwhelmingly the party of bad faith? (And not just about budgets, of course; remember when Republicans cared deeply about a president’s sexual morality?) The main answer is probably that the party’s true agenda, dictated by the interests of a handful of super-wealthy donors, would be very unpopular if the public understood it. So the party must consistently lie about its priorities and intentions.

Whatever the reasons for G.O.P. bad faith, however, its reality has been apparent for a long time.

Yet the gatekeepers of our public discourse spent years being willfully blind to this reality. Take, for example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that, to be fair, can be a useful resource for budget analysis. Still, I can’t forget that back in 2010 the committee gave Paul Ryan — whose fraudulence was obvious from the beginning to anyone who actually read his proposals — an award for fiscal responsibility.

And even now the committee is busy pontificating about the need to reform the “budget process.” Let’s get real, O.K.? The problem isn’t the process, it’s the Republicans.

Meanwhile, many news organizations — which, by the way, gave Ryan years of adoring coverage — treat recent G.O.P. actions as if they are some kind of aberration, a departure from previous principles. They aren’t. Republicans are what they always were: They never cared about deficits; they always wanted to dismantle Medicare, not defend it. They just happen not to be who they pretended to be.

Now, there’s no mystery about why many people won’t face up to the reality of Republican bad faith. Washington is full of professional centrists, whose public personas are built around a carefully cultivated image of standing above the partisan fray, which means that they can’t admit that while there are dishonest politicians everywhere, one party basically lies about everything. News organizations are intimidated by accusations of liberal bias, which means that they try desperately to show “balance” by blaming both parties equally for all problems.

But our job, whether we’re policy analysts or journalists, isn’t to be “balanced”; it’s to tell the truth. And while Democrats are hardly angels, at this point in American history, the truth has a well-known liberal bias.

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Friday, February 16, 2018 12:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
If people believe that Trump is substantially lying about something so easy to uncover, it has the potential to flip people who are merely giving him a pass, though it won't change the minds of true fans.
I could admit that I'm not sure Trump really understands enough to "substantially lie"
Budgets, Bad Faith and ‘Balance’
Paul Krugman FEB. 15, 2018
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/opinion/republicans-bad-faith-krugman.html

But our job, whether we’re policy analysts or journalists, isn’t to be “balanced”; it’s to tell the truth. And while Democrats are hardly angels, at this point in American history, the truth has a well-known liberal bias.

nytimes
This is where you fail.

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Friday, February 16, 2018 2:39 PM

rezident owtsidr

inocculated agenst the reality virus.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

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Monday, February 19, 2018 5:26 PM

Trump ranks as worst president in poll of scholars

The survey was conducted among 170 current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is a group of scholars dedicated to studying the American presidency.

These experts were asked to rank each president on a scale from zero (worst) to 100 (best) based on their overall performance in office. With this, Mr. Trump came in last place with an average score of 12.34.

Even among Republican respondents, Mr. Trump still ranked extremely low, earning the 40th spot for presidential greatness. These Republicans labeled James Buchanan -- whose presidency saw the secession of seven states before the Civil War -- as the all-time worst and George Washington as the best.

Coming in first place is Abraham Lincoln, who scored an average of 95.03 between both Democrats and Republicans surveyed. The top seven presidents have remained the same since the poll was last conducted in 2014: Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In this round of questioning, former president Barack Obama moved up in the rankings to 8th best president, whereas in 2014 he came in at 18th. Scholars identifying as Republican, however, ranked Obama 16th. Ronald Reagan, who also moved up from his previous ranking, trails behind Obama in 9th place.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-ranks-as-worst-president
-in-poll-of-scholars/ar-BBJlf3a?ocid=spartanntp

T

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 6:58 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

nytimes
This is where you fail.

Do tell me more, JewelStaiteFan, about your excellent character: The Content of the G.O.P.’s Character

Paul Krugman, FEB. 19, 2018
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/opinion/gop-character-bad-faith.html

Even those who have long since accepted the premise that Donald Trump is corrupt, self-centered and dishonest seem a bit shocked by his tirades over the Presidents’ Day weekend. Using the Parkland, Fla., massacre as an excuse to attack the F.B.I. for investigating Russian election intervention on his behalf — while lying about his own past denials that such intervention took place — took vileness to a new level, which is truly impressive given Trump’s previous record.

Yet if you step back a bit and think about it, Trump’s latest outbursts were very much in character — and I don’t just mean his personal character. When did you last see a member of the Trump administration, or for that matter any prominent Republican, admit error or accept responsibility for problems?

Don’t say that it has always been that way, that it’s just the way people are. On the contrary, taking responsibility for your actions — what my parents called being a mensch — used to be considered an essential virtue in politicians and adults in general. And in this as in so many things, there’s a huge asymmetry between the parties. Of course not all Democrats are honest and upstanding; but as far as I can tell, there’s almost nobody left in the G.O.P. willing to take responsibility for, well, anything.

And I don’t think this is an accident. The sad content of modern Republican character is a symptom of the corruption and hypocrisy that has afflicted half of our body politic — a sickness of the soul that manifests itself in personal behavior as well as policy.

Before I talk about that sickness, consider a few non-Trump examples of the lack of character that pervades this administration.

At the trivial but still telling end of the scale, we have the tale of Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who keeps flying first class at taxpayers’ expense. The money isn’t the important issue here, although his spending violates federal guidelines. The revealing thing, instead, is the supposed reason he needs to fly premium — you see, ordinary coach passengers have been known to say critical things to his face.

Remember this story the next time someone talks about liberal “snowflakes.”

More seriously, consider the behavior of John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, whose record of slandering critics and refusing to admit error is starting to rival his boss’s. Remember when Kelly made false accusations about Representative Frederica Wilson and refused to retract those accusations even after video showed they were false?

More recently, Kelly insisted that he didn’t know the full details about domestic abuse allegations against Rob Porter until, a White House staff member said, “40 minutes before he threw him out” — a claim that seems at odds with everything we know about this story. Even if this claim were true, an apology for his obliviousness seems in order. But these guys don’t apologize.

Oh, and by the way: Roy Moore still hasn’t conceded.

So it’s not just Trump. And it didn’t start with Trump. In fact, way back in 2006 I wrote about the “mensch gap” in the Bush administration — the unwillingness of top officials to accept responsibility for the botched occupation of Iraq, the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, and more.

Nor, by the way, are we only talking about politicians. In my neck of the woods, I remain amazed by the unwillingness of right-leaning economists to admit that they were wrong in predicting that the Fed’s efforts to rescue the economy would cause runaway inflation. Being wrong is one thing — it happens to everyone, myself very much included. Refusing to admit and learn from error is something different.

And let’s be clear: Personal responsibility isn’t dead everywhere. You can ask, for example, whether Hillary Clinton apologized sufficiently for her initial support of the Iraq war or her missteps in 2016 — but she did admit to making mistakes, which nobody on the other side ever seems to do.

So what happened to the character of the G.O.P.? I’m pretty sure that in this case the personal is, ultimately, political. The modern G.O.P. is, to an extent never before seen in American history, a party built around bad faith, around pretending that its concerns and goals are very different from what they really are. Flag-waving claims of patriotism, pious invocations of morality, stern warnings about fiscal probity are all cover stories for an underlying agenda mainly concerned with making plutocrats even richer.

And the character flaws of the party end up being echoed by the character flaws of its most prominent members. Are they bad people who chose their political affiliation because it fits their proclivities, or potentially good people corrupted by the company they keep? Probably some of both.

In any case, let’s be clear: America in 2018 is not a place where we can disagree without being disagreeable, where there are good people and good ideas on both sides, or whatever other bipartisan homily you want to recite. We are, instead, living in a kakistocracy, a nation ruled by the worst, and we need to face up to that unpleasant reality.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 7:57 AM

rezident owtsidr

Telling it like it iz!

That wuz the thing that Obama got rong for hiz entire tenure az prez - "our colleagez on the other side uv the ile". I dont think he really beleeved it, but he never stopped trying to make us think he did.

Woud the 2010 and later electionz hav gon better if he called them out for wut they really are insted uv covering for them?

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 7:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
Trump ranks as worst president in poll of scholars

The survey was conducted among 170 current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is a group of scholars dedicated to studying the American presidency.
These experts were asked to rank each president on a scale from zero (worst) to 100 (best) based on their overall performance in office. With this, Mr. Trump came in last place with an average score of 12.34.

Even among Republican respondents, Mr. Trump still ranked extremely low, earning the 40th spot for presidential greatness. These Republicans labeled James Buchanan -- whose presidency saw the secession of seven states before the Civil War -- as the all-time worst and George Washington as the best.

Coming in first place is Abraham Lincoln, who scored an average of 95.03 between both Democrats and Republicans surveyed. The top seven presidents have remained the same since the poll was last conducted in 2014: Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In this round of questioning, former president Barack Obama moved up in the rankings to 8th best president, whereas in 2014 he came in at 18th. Scholars identifying as Republican, however, ranked Obama 16th. Ronald Reagan, who also moved up from his previous ranking, trails behind Obama in 9th place.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-ranks-as-worst-president
-in-poll-of-scholars/ar-BBJlf3a?ocid=spartanntp

T

LOL. The "Rotten Tomatoes" of American Presidents.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 8:47 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

LOL. The "Rotten Tomatoes" of American Presidents.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

The low opinion of the current president crosses party lines. Of the scholars surveyed, those identifying as Democrats put Trump last, independents put him second-last, and Republicans put him 40th, still in the bottom five.

https://qz.com/1210855

https://sps.boisestate.edu/politicalscience/files/2018/02/Greatness.pd
f

This is how Republicans ranked the last few Presidents (lower numbers are better):

Reagan 5
GHW Bush 11
Clinton 15
GW Bush 23
Obama 16
Trump 40

This is how Conservatives ranked the last few Presidents:

Reagan 3
GHW Bush 10
Clinton 18
GW Bush 23
Obama 22
Trump 40

Note: Conservative column includes those who self-identified as either Conservative or Somewhat Conservative.

Both Conservatives and Republicans gave Obama a better rating than GW Bush.

If Trump keeps going the way he has, even Conservatives and Republicans might move him down below Buchanan, who was the President that didn’t want the Confederacy to take away half the country, but he didn’t feel like it was his job to do anything more than the 19th Century equivalent to “tweeting” about it. Lincoln followed Buchanan.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 8:57 AM

The problem is that there aren't actually any Conservatives in Political Sciences. Their idea of a Conservative is anybody just a tad right of Karl Marx.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 9:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The problem is that there aren't actually any Conservatives in Political Sciences. Their idea of a Conservative is anybody just a tad right of Karl Marx.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

29 of the political scientists that contributed to the survey of Presidents were self-described Conservatives. 21 self-described as Republicans. Obviously, some of those "Conservatives" are not Republicans, but that doesn't make them Commies, does it?

https://sps.boisestate.edu/politicalscience/files/2018/02/Greatness.pd
f

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 12:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The problem is that there aren't actually any Conservatives in Political Sciences. Their idea of a Conservative is anybody just a tad right of Karl Marx.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
29 of the political scientists that contributed to the survey of Presidents were self-described Conservatives. 21 self-described as Republicans.

https://sps.boisestate.edu/politicalscience/files/2018/02/Greatness.pd
f

Of the 170 respondents, 9 (5.3%) self-identified as Conservative. 20 (12%) self-identified as somewhat conservative.

57% identify as Democrats. 32.5% self-identified as Liberal, 26% as somewhat Liberal, 24% as Moderates. Most telling, there was "no significant difference" and "little variation" in the results between "self-identified" Democrats, Liberals, somewhat Liberals, and Moderates.
This 82.5% block that mostly can't comprehend that they are ultra-Liberals ranked Reagan as 14th, yet the 5% of Conservatives swayed the results toward reality so much that Reagan ended up 9th overall. The study refused to breakdown the Conservative results, instead muddying them with self-identified somewhat Conservatives.

This comingled group ranked Obama 16th Greatest President? Yep, they were Commies.

And these esteemed "political Scientists" were so clueless that, when asked which President should be ADDED to Mt. Rushmore, 5 of the 170 respondents voted for Washington, T Roosevelt, Lincoln. Hint: they are already there.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2018 1:16 PM

It's funny to watch trolls challenge our best and brightest. They actually believe when they are doing so, that they are perceived as smart, and that they are not perceived as trolls who are, well trolling.

Reality eludes the likes of Jack, JSF, Rappy, sig and kiki. Lost to them, is the fact that their being trolls makes them losers.

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Wednesday, February 21, 2018 4:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The problem is that there aren't actually any Conservatives in Political Sciences. Their idea of a Conservative is anybody just a tad right of Karl Marx.
29 of the political scientists that contributed to the survey of Presidents were self-described Conservatives. 21 self-described as Republicans.
https://sps.boisestate.edu/politicalscience/files/2018/02/Greatness.pd
f
Of the 170 respondents, 9 (5.3%) self-identified as Conservative. 20 (12%) self-identified as somewhat conservative.

57% identify as Democrats. 32.5% self-identified as Liberal, 26% as somewhat Liberal, 24% as Moderates. Most telling, there was "no significant difference" and "little variation" in the results between "self-identified" Democrats, Liberals, somewhat Liberals, and Moderates.
This 82.5% block that mostly can't comprehend that they are ultra-Liberals ranked Reagan as 14th, yet the 5% of Conservatives swayed the results toward reality so much that Reagan ended up 9th overall. The study refused to breakdown the Conservative results, instead muddying them with self-identified somewhat Conservatives.

This comingled group ranked Obama 16th Greatest President? Yep, they were Commies.

And these esteemed "political Scientists" were so clueless that, when asked which President should be ADDED to Mt. Rushmore, 5 of the 170 respondents voted for Washington, T Roosevelt, Lincoln. Hint: they are already there.

One thing to notice with this survey, there is no weighted balance, which Libtards hate to do when they have 82% of their respondents as Liberals, and 5% Conservatives.

Although they were able to obfuscate the actual figures for the 5% Conservatives, enough data is exposed that we can extrapolate and interpolate data to find a more accurate ranking.
A Gallup poll shows that Americans self-identify as 38% Conservative and 24% Liberal, so those figures can be used to weight the results for balance.
Since the study admits the Liberals, Somewhat Liberals, and self-identified Moderates are essentially the same, these can be used as the sample of "Liberals" representing the 24%. First I calculated the overall figure among the 2 columns (Libs & Mods). The list below shows the resulting balanced Rank, and then balanced Rating, for the first 2 columns. The next 2 columns of Rank and Rating are results if we pretend that PoliSci experts who self-identify as "Moderates" are really not Liberals (and those results are not used in weighted balancing). In the 5th column I included the Rank presented in the Report. Then the Name and sequence number.

#1 93.71 #1 93.92 #1 95.03 Lincoln 16
#2 93.39 #2 93.48 #2 92.59 Washington 1
#3 83.52 #3 84.36 #3 89.09 FDR 32
#4 78.30 #4 78.39 #4 81.39 T Roosevelt 26
#5 77.06 #5 77.46 #5 79.54 Jefferson 3
#6 74.54 #6 73.36 #9 69.24 Reagan 40
#7 73.25 #8 72.78 #7 74.03 Eisenhower 34
#8 72.65 #7 73.05 #6 75.15 Truman 33
#9 64.16 10 63.53 17 60.90 Bush 41
10 62.60 14 62.09 15 62.16 Jackson 7

11 62.44 #9 63.99 #8 71.13 Obama 44
12 62.39 13 62.59 14 63.24 Adams 2
13 62.35 12 62.93 12 64.48 Madison 4
14 62.16 11 63.41 10 69.06 LB Johnson 36
15 62.12 18 60.55 19 55.49 McKinley 25
16 61.89 15 62.00 13 64.25 Clinton 42
17 61.23 17 61.36 18 60.74 Monroe 5
18 60.94 16 61.43 11 67.40 Wilson 28
19 57.45 19 56.35 20 54.09 Polk 11
20 56.59 21 56.08 22 51.96 Taft 27
21 55.50 20 56.26 16 61.86 Kennedy 35
22 53.78 22 52.76 24 51.01 Cleveland 22 & 24

23 52.32 24 51.44 28 42.23 Coolidge 30
24 51.71 23 51.96 23 51.90 JQ Adams 6
25 50.77 25 50.78 21 52.88 Grant 18
26 49.93 26 49.13 25 47.28 Ford 38
27 47.03 27 46.09 30 40.42 Bush 43
28 44.54 28 44.25 27 44.27 Van Buren 8
29 44.18 29 43.79 29 41.50 Hayes 19
30 43.06 30 43.19 31 39.90 Arthur 21
31 41.77 31 41.90 33 37.18 Nixon 37
32 39.31 32 39.38 26 45.04 Carter 39
33 39.03 33 38.60 34 36.69 Garfield 20
34 38.58 34 38.04 32 37.63 B Harrison 23

35 37.70 35 36.84 36 33.27 Hoover 31
36 35.58 36 34.98 35 33.34 Taylor 12
37 32.97 37 32.93 37 31.46 Tyler 10
38 29.81 38 29.79 38 27.71 Fillmore 13
39 28.76 39 29.05 39 25.26 Harding 29
40 23.04 40 22.79 40 24.91 A Johnson 17
41 22.42 41 22.42 41 23.25 Pierce 14
42 19.63 42 19.41 42 19.02 WH Harrison 9
43 19.13 43 18.51 44 12.34 Trump 45
44 14.20 44 14.23 43 15.09 Buchanan 15

GOP red, Democrat blue, Whig buff.

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Wednesday, February 21, 2018 8:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
It's funny to watch trolls challenge our best and brightest. Who actually believe when they are doing so, that they are perceived as smart, and that they are not perceived as trolls who are, well trolling.

Reality eludes the likes of Jack, JSF, Rappy, sig and kiki. Lost to them, is the fact that their being trolls makes them losers.

Let me summarize T's post for everyone:

Insult, insult, insult, insult, dur....

Wipe the drool off your keyboard, T.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, February 21, 2018 1:25 PM

Schiff: Inexplicable Why Trump Sitting On Russia Sanctions

https://www.iheart.com/content/2018-02-19-schiff-inexplicable-why-trum
p-sitting-on-russia-sanctions/

T

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Wednesday, February 21, 2018 1:29 PM

Here Jack, have a carrot.

come on take it...

T

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Wednesday, February 21, 2018 2:29 PM

I'll ask again. Where are all those who posted over and over again about Hillary being a security risk. You were relentless, as though you really cared about our national security. Huh...guess you don't care after all. You must have been trolling huh? Come on admit it. You're trolls...

And Benghazi trolls, where are you??? Our national security is at risk like never before yet silence. You must have been trolling huh? Admit it, you're trolls.

T

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Thursday, February 22, 2018 5:12 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What’s Killing Liberalism?
www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/liberalism-trump-era/5535
53/

It is fair to say that all early liberals would have accepted Adam Smith’s proposition that prosperity will be best served if men are given free rein to pursue their self-interest. Yet by the end of the 19th century, as the industrial economy both raised living standards and plunged workers—now equipped with the vote—into appalling conditions in factories and mines, the doctrine of laissez-faire became both politically and morally unsustainable to liberals themselves. In 1909, Herbert Croly published The Promise of American Life, an immensely influential book that argued that Jeffersonian individualism no longer offered a real guarantee of freedom. “The democratic principle requires an equal start in the race,” Croly wrote, but so long as private property was sacred, equal rights could not guarantee equal opportunity to citizens not born to privilege. Liberalism could not be satisfied merely with the promise of equal rights. . . .

In his famous speech announcing the advent of the Great Society, LBJ used Croly’s metaphor of the unequal race. But by the 1960s it was not white middle-class American who needed state intervention, but minorities, above all African Americans, who had been left behind as America became a broadly prosperous nation. This moral commitment carried obvious political dangers, for liberals were now asking Americans to make sacrifices for others. By the end of the decade, liberalism had begun to lose its hold on the white working-class, once the prime beneficiary of government programs. Liberalism has never regained its appeal for those voters. By 1980, the abandoned laissez-faire tradition had revived, and left-liberalism had been replaced by Ronald Reagan’s right-liberalism of small government, low taxes, and free-market economics. (This is over-simplifying, of course, for Reagan also ran against liberal secularism and liberal doubts about American power and virtue.)

The Democrats responded to their marginalization by dropping the tainted word “liberal” and accepting crucial parts of the Reagan program. “Neoliberals” or advocates of a “Third Way” like Bill Clinton endorsed the conservative emphasis on economic growth but applied liberal principles of social justice to public investment and the distribution of wealth; they aspired to forge a liberalism of the middle class. The right-liberal and left-liberal parties traded power; each appeared to have almost exactly half the country on its side. Then, in 2016, the seesaw stopped: Both parties were rejected in favor of a candidate who simultaneously attacked Wall Street and the welfare state, professed little regard for individual rights and none for free speech, opposed globalization and free trade, and called for the country to erect a wall against pretty much the entire outside world.

Donald Trump’s election has thus provoked a crisis of identity both for the party of the market and the party of the state. Conservatives need to rescue their own party, now marshaled under Trump’s populist banner. Liberals have a problem of a different order; they need to reconstruct their faith as they did in 1912 and 1964 and 1992, when they learned or relearned how to speak to the broad middle of the country. Or rather, liberals need to decide whether that is their goal. Can they, should they, seek to address the deep sense of grievance that the election exposed? Politically, after all, they may not need to: Trump’s base is melting down to the hard core, and Democrats may return to power simply by letting his party self-destruct, and by mobilizing a base fired up by righteous fury. . . .

I doubt whether the near-obsession with identity issues can be uprooted from the heart of the Democratic Party. But liberalism’s appeal has always sprung from its commitment to the language of collective interest—the language of “we.” This offers liberalism a platform very different from the insistent “I” of conservatism, and the “they” of populism—the not-us, whether elites or their clients. . . .

What would it mean to address the sense of grievance that cost Hillary Clinton the election? Doing so requires liberals to find ways of buffering the effects of the globalization of jobs and products and people, without surrendering to Trump’s xenophobia and isolationism. And it requires addressing the issue of inequality, which Donald Trump exploited and then abandoned once he reached the White House.

But the inequality that makes Trump voters seethe is not the same one that enrages voters on the left. . . . Edward Luce dubs this phenomenon “hereditary meritocracy.” Luce observes that about a 25% of American children from the top 1 percent of the income scale attend an elite university, while only 0.5 percent of those from the bottom 20% do. “Why wouldn’t the losers be angry?” Luce asks. . . .

At this point, the essay gets very interesting. More at www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/liberalism-trump-era/5535
53/

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Thursday, February 22, 2018 9:29 AM

GOP rattled by Pennsylvania congressional race in the heart of Trump country

The dismayed laborers from shuttered coal yards and steel mills didn't have to shift political allegiances to vote for President Trump in this part of the Rust Belt. They had been electing Republicans long before he showed up on the ballot.

That explains why party leaders in a congressional district stretching from the Pittsburgh suburbs to the West Virginia border are so panicked that their candidate is flailing, with a special election only weeks away.

A poor showing here would signal trouble for the midterm elections in November, in which GOP control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance. Republicans are trying to hold on to a seat being vacated by once popular Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned after the disclosure of text messages in which the pro-life crusader pressured his mistress to seek an abortion.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-rust-belt-gop-congress-20180
222-story.html

T

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Friday, February 23, 2018 7:27 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania says Impeachment of Judges Who Struck Down Gerrymandered Map Is “A Conversation That Has to Happen”

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/22/toomey-pennsylvania-gerrymandered-
map/

A Republican legislature in Pennsylvania drew the congressional lines back in 2011, which led to the GOP winning 13 of the state’s 18 districts in the 2016 election. The new map from the judges is intended to restore fairness. The 4 million registered Democrats in the state outnumber the 3.2 million registered Republicans.

The GOP map had given Republicans a nearly 3-1 congressional majority in a state that leans Democratic; the court’s new map will still give Republicans a significant advantage, but slightly less of one. For Senator Pat Toomey, that amounted, he said, to a “blatant, unconstitutional, partisan power grab that undermines our electoral process.”

In the wake of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order that struck down a Republican congressional map as unconstitutionally gerrymandered, Sen. Pat Toomey said that impeachment of the justices is “a conversation that has to happen.”

“I think state House members, state senators, are going to be speaking among themselves and their constituents,” Toomey said. “Does that rise to the level of impeachment? That’s ultimately their decision but it’s a conversation that has to happen.”

The new map means several Republican incumbents now risk losing their seats, and a half-dozen competitive Republican-held congressional districts move left.

Toomey’s floating of impeachment drags what had been a fringe position into the GOP mainstream. And the rhetoric is already intense. The Pennsylvania House Republican spokesman Wednesday morning called the judges “unaccountable despots” after drawing the new lines.

It’s one of the most consequential events yet in the Democrats’ effort to retake the House. There are now at least five plausible opportunities to pick up a seat in the commonwealth, including the seat held by Rep. Pat Meehan, who is retiring after a sexual harassment case. Besides the districts that have all been shifted away from Republicans, the only other notable change is for Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican moving into a more conservative 11th district. But even there, activists in his Lancaster district say they are still determined to beat him, even if the hill is steeper.

State lawmakers are expected to sue to overturn the new maps and President Donald Trump gave Republicans his blessing to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court “if necessary,” arguing that the original version the court ruled unconstitutional was actually “correct.” Legal experts, however, note that the issue is about state law and Republicans probably won’t find much help in federal courts.

“It’s unfortunate that the only way the Republican Party can win elections is to dismantle democracy, relying on unconstitutional gerrymandering and calling for the impeachment of judges that have been elected by the voters of Pennsylvania,” said Greg Edwards, a Democratic candidate for Congress running in the Lehigh Valley. “It shows Democracy is nothing more than an accessory to put on and take off when most convenient to the Republicans.”

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Friday, February 23, 2018 10:39 AM

That's not going to happen SECOND. The new boundaries makes sense. They run according to counties. Pennsylvanias' supreme court had an independent group draw the lines and then they made it law. Gerrymandering has had a worse effect on our politics than money. This is great and I hope to see this sweep across the nation.

Our supreme court won't touch this.
T

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania says Impeachment of Judges Who Struck Down Gerrymandered Map Is “A Conversation That Has to Happen”

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/22/toomey-pennsylvania-gerrymandered-
map/

A Republican legislature in Pennsylvania drew the congressional lines back in 2011, which led to the GOP winning 13 of the state’s 18 districts in the 2016 election. The new map from the judges is intended to restore fairness. The 4 million registered Democrats in the state outnumber the 3.2 million registered Republicans.

The GOP map had given Republicans a nearly 3-1 congressional majority in a state that leans Democratic; the court’s new map will still give Republicans a significant advantage, but slightly less of one. For Senator Pat Toomey, that amounted, he said, to a “blatant, unconstitutional, partisan power grab that undermines our electoral process.”

In the wake of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order that struck down a Republican congressional map as unconstitutionally gerrymandered, Sen. Pat Toomey said that impeachment of the justices is “a conversation that has to happen.”

“I think state House members, state senators, are going to be speaking among themselves and their constituents,” Toomey said. “Does that rise to the level of impeachment? That’s ultimately their decision but it’s a conversation that has to happen.”

The new map means several Republican incumbents now risk losing their seats, and a half-dozen competitive Republican-held congressional districts move left.

Toomey’s floating of impeachment drags what had been a fringe position into the GOP mainstream. And the rhetoric is already intense. The Pennsylvania House Republican spokesman Wednesday morning called the judges “unaccountable despots” after drawing the new lines.

It’s one of the most consequential events yet in the Democrats’ effort to retake the House. There are now at least five plausible opportunities to pick up a seat in the commonwealth, including the seat held by Rep. Pat Meehan, who is retiring after a sexual harassment case. Besides the districts that have all been shifted away from Republicans, the only other notable change is for Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican moving into a more conservative 11th district. But even there, activists in his Lancaster district say they are still determined to beat him, even if the hill is steeper.

State lawmakers are expected to sue to overturn the new maps and President Donald Trump gave Republicans his blessing to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court “if necessary,” arguing that the original version the court ruled unconstitutional was actually “correct.” Legal experts, however, note that the issue is about state law and Republicans probably won’t find much help in federal courts.

“It’s unfortunate that the only way the Republican Party can win elections is to dismantle democracy, relying on unconstitutional gerrymandering and calling for the impeachment of judges that have been elected by the voters of Pennsylvania,” said Greg Edwards, a Democratic candidate for Congress running in the Lehigh Valley. “It shows Democracy is nothing more than an accessory to put on and take off when most convenient to the Republicans.”

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Friday, February 23, 2018 1:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The problem is that there aren't actually any Conservatives in Political Sciences. Their idea of a Conservative is anybody just a tad right of Karl Marx.
29 of the political scientists that contributed to the survey of Presidents were self-described Conservatives. 21 self-described as Republicans.
Of the 170 respondents, 9 (5.3%) self-identified as Conservative. 20 (12%) self-identified as somewhat conservative.

57% identify as Democrats. 32.5% self-identified as Liberal, 26% as somewhat Liberal, 24% as Moderates. Most telling, there was "no significant difference" and "little variation" in the results between "self-identified" Democrats, Liberals, somewhat Liberals, and Moderates.
This 82.5% block that mostly can't comprehend that they are ultra-Liberals ranked Reagan as 14th, yet the 5% of Conservatives swayed the results toward reality so much that Reagan ended up 9th overall. The study refused to breakdown the Conservative results, instead muddying them with self-identified somewhat Conservatives.
One thing to notice with this survey, there is no weighted balance, which Libtards hate to do when they have 82% of their respondents as Liberals, and 5% Conservatives.

Although they were able to obfuscate the actual figures for the 5% Conservatives, enough data is exposed that we can extrapolate and interpolate data to find a more accurate ranking.

The list below shows the resulting balanced Rank, and then balanced Rating, for the first 2 columns. The next 2 columns of Rank and Rating are results if we pretend that PoliSci experts who self-identify as "Moderates" are really not Liberals (and those results are not used in weighted balancing). In the 5th column I included the Rank presented in the Report. Then the Name and sequence number.

edited, added first column:

Quote:
-1.32 #1 93.71 #1 93.92 #1 95.03 Lincoln 16
+0.80 #2 93.39 #2 93.48 #2 92.59 Washington 1
-5.57 #3 83.52 #3 84.36 #3 89.09 FDR 32
-3.09 #4 78.30 #4 78.39 #4 81.39 T Roosevelt 26
-2.48 #5 77.06 #5 77.46 #5 79.54 Jefferson 3
+5.30 #6 74.54 #6 73.36 #9 69.24 Reagan 40
-0.78 #7 73.25 #8 72.78 #7 74.03 Eisenhower 34
-2.50 #8 72.65 #7 73.05 #6 75.15 Truman 33
+3.26 #9 64.16 10 63.53 17 60.90 Bush 41
+0.44 10 62.60 14 62.09 15 62.16 Jackson 7

-8.69 11 62.44 #9 63.99 #8 71.13 Obama 44
-0.85 12 62.39 13 62.59 14 63.24 Adams 2
-2.13 13 62.35 12 62.93 12 64.48 Madison 4
-6.90 14 62.16 11 63.41 10 69.06 LB Johnson 36
+6.63 15 62.12 18 60.55 19 55.49 McKinley 25
-2.36 16 61.89 15 62.00 13 64.25 Clinton 42
+0.49 17 61.23 17 61.36 18 60.74 Monroe 5
-6.46 18 60.94 16 61.43 11 67.40 Wilson 28
+3.36 19 57.45 19 56.35 20 54.09 Polk 11
+4.63 20 56.59 21 56.08 22 51.96 Taft 27
-6.36 21 55.50 20 56.26 16 61.86 Kennedy 35
+2.77 22 53.78 22 52.76 24 51.01 Cleveland 22 & 24

+10.09 23 52.32 24 51.44 28 42.23 Coolidge 30
-0.19 24 51.71 23 51.96 23 51.90 JQ Adams 6
-2.11 25 50.77 25 50.78 21 52.88 Grant 18
+2.65 26 49.93 26 49.13 25 47.28 Ford 38
+6.61 27 47.03 27 46.09 30 40.42 Bush 43
+0.27 28 44.54 28 44.25 27 44.27 Van Buren 8
+2.68 29 44.18 29 43.79 29 41.50 Hayes 19
+3.16 30 43.06 30 43.19 31 39.90 Arthur 21
+4.59 31 41.77 31 41.90 33 37.18 Nixon 37
-5.73 32 39.31 32 39.38 26 45.04 Carter 39
+2.34 33 39.03 33 38.60 34 36.69 Garfield 20
+0.95 34 38.58 34 38.04 32 37.63 B Harrison 23

+4.43 35 37.70 35 36.84 36 33.27 Hoover 31
+2.24 36 35.58 36 34.98 35 33.34 Taylor 12
+1.51 37 32.97 37 32.93 37 31.46 Tyler 10
+2.10 38 29.81 38 29.79 38 27.71 Fillmore 13
+3.50 39 28.76 39 29.05 39 25.26 Harding 29
-1.87 40 23.04 40 22.79 40 24.91 A Johnson 17
-0.83 41 22.42 41 22.42 41 23.25 Pierce 14
+0.61 42 19.63 42 19.41 42 19.02 WH Harrison 9
+6.79 43 19.13 43 18.51 44 12.34 Trump 45
-0.89 44 14.20 44 14.23 43 15.09 Buchanan 15

GOP red, Democrat blue, Whig buff.

I just noticed that this provides additional example of Liberal bias and imbalance. I'll try to reorganize with a new column (added above) showing the gain when removing the Liberal imbalance, like Trump gaining 6.79%.

+10.09 23 52.32 24 51.44 28 42.23 Coolidge 30
+6.79 43 19.13 43 18.51 44 12.34 Trump 45
+6.63 15 62.12 18 60.55 19 55.49 McKinley 25
+6.61 27 47.03 27 46.09 30 40.42 Bush 43
+5.30 #6 74.54 #6 73.36 #9 69.24 Reagan 40
+4.63 20 56.59 21 56.08 22 51.96 Taft 27
+4.59 31 41.77 31 41.90 33 37.18 Nixon 37
+4.43 35 37.70 35 36.84 36 33.27 Hoover 31
+3.50 39 28.76 39 29.05 39 25.26 Harding 29
+3.36 19 57.45 19 56.35 20 54.09 Polk 11
+3.26 #9 64.16 10 63.53 17 60.90 Bush 41

+3.16 30 43.06 30 43.19 31 39.90 Arthur 21
+2.77 22 53.78 22 52.76 24 51.01 Cleveland 22 & 24
+2.68 29 44.18 29 43.79 29 41.50 Hayes 19
+2.65 26 49.93 26 49.13 25 47.28 Ford 38
+2.34 33 39.03 33 38.60 34 36.69 Garfield 20
+2.24 36 35.58 36 34.98 35 33.34 Taylor 12
+2.10 38 29.81 38 29.79 38 27.71 Fillmore 13
+1.51 37 32.97 37 32.93 37 31.46 Tyler 10
+0.95 34 38.58 34 38.04 32 37.63 B Harrison 23
+0.80 #2 93.39 #2 93.48 #2 92.59 Washington 1
+0.61 42 19.63 42 19.41 42 19.02 WH Harrison 9
+0.49 17 61.23 17 61.36 18 60.74 Monroe 5
+0.44 10 62.60 14 62.09 15 62.16 Jackson 7
+0.27 28 44.54 28 44.25 27 44.27 Van Buren 8

-0.19 24 51.71 23 51.96 23 51.90 JQ Adams 6
-0.78 #7 73.25 #8 72.78 #7 74.03 Eisenhower 34
-0.83 41 22.42 41 22.42 41 23.25 Pierce 14
-0.85 12 62.39 13 62.59 14 63.24 Adams 2
-0.89 44 14.20 44 14.23 43 15.09 Buchanan 15
-1.32 #1 93.71 #1 93.92 #1 95.03 Lincoln 16
-1.87 40 23.04 40 22.79 40 24.91 A Johnson 17
-2.11 25 50.77 25 50.78 21 52.88 Grant 18

-2.13 13 62.35 12 62.93 12 64.48 Madison 4
-2.36 16 61.89 15 62.00 13 64.25 Clinton 42
-2.48 #5 77.06 #5 77.46 #5 79.54 Jefferson 3
-2.50 #8 72.65 #7 73.05 #6 75.15 Truman 33
-3.09 #4 78.30 #4 78.39 #4 81.39 T Roosevelt 26
-5.57 #3 83.52 #3 84.36 #3 89.09 FDR 32
-5.73 32 39.31 32 39.38 26 45.04 Carter 39
-6.36 21 55.50 20 56.26 16 61.86 Kennedy 35
-6.46 18 60.94 16 61.43 11 67.40 Wilson 28
-6.90 14 62.16 11 63.41 10 69.06 LB Johnson 36
-8.69 11 62.44 #9 63.99 #8 71.13 Obama 44

GOP red, Democrat blue, Whig buff.

Of the 11 Presidents since 1960, all 5 Democrats had more than 2.35% of Libtard bias bloat, and all 6 GOP had more than 2.64% deflation from Libtard bias, and the 5 elected had more than 3.25% deflation.

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Friday, February 23, 2018 2:08 PM

rezident owtsidr

Cow lady Hukubee shoud not be allowed to uze the word 'clear' ever agen.

She uzed up her lifetime alotment a long time ago and iz alwayz lying wen she sez it.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

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Friday, February 23, 2018 2:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Cow lady Hukubee shoud not be allowed to uze the word 'clear' ever agen.

She uzed up her lifetime alotment a long time ago and iz alwayz lying wen she sez it.

She means clear to those with a brain. Sorry you feel excluded, but that is likely common in ChicagoLand.

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Saturday, February 24, 2018 7:21 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

She means clear to those with a brain. Sorry you feel excluded, but that is likely common in ChicagoLand.

Back in the day, clearly Republicans felt at least a twinge of inhibition when thinking of endorsing policy positions that could make them appear hypocritical. Those days, of course, are pretty much gone. GOP elected officials today seem to have no internal guidance mechanism telling them, “Hey, if I spent eight years attacking Barack Obama for increasing the deficit, shouldn’t I think twice about supporting tax and budget policies that do the same?” They’ve learned that the voters they really need to care about, the ones who can unseat them in primaries, simply don’t care whether they’re hypocrites, as long as they endorse the policy positions these voters demand, which are basically whichever ones Donald Trump happens to be supporting at any given moment.

Of course, no politician is less burdened by concerns over hypocrisy than Trump himself. While others might see a flashing red light saying, “Don’t go there, you’re personally vulnerable!” he steamrolls ahead, heedless of the danger. The whole Russia scandal is a daily reminder of this tendency of his. But it now looks like the same lack of inhibition is at play in his legal immigration plan.

When Trump was running for president, he actually didn’t talk all that much about restricting legal immigration. He didn’t endorse any long-term changes to legal immigration. Then Trump began calling for restrictions on family reunification, what he calls “chain migration.”

But when he did this, did it not occur to him that his own in-laws are taking advantage of precisely the “chain migration” provisions he wants to deny others?

The parents of first lady Melania Trump have become legal permanent residents of the United States and are close to obtaining their citizenship, according to people familiar with their status, but their attorney declined to say how or when the couple gained their green cards.

Immigration experts said Viktor and Amalija Knavs very likely relied on a family reunification process that President Trump has derided as “chain migration” and proposed ending in such case.

The Knavses, formerly of Slovenia, are living in the country on green cards, according to Michael Wildes, a New York-based immigration lawyer who represents the first lady and her family.

David Leopold, an immigration lawyer and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the first lady’s sponsorship of her parents appears to be the only reasonable way they would have obtained green cards because the process currently gives preferential treatment to parents of U.S. citizens.

Will the apparent fact that Trump’s own family is benefiting from a policy he is actively trying to deny other families in any way harm the chances of the proposal becoming law? Or hurt the GOP generally in the polls? No and No.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/02/22/in-the-gop-political-universe
-hypocrisy-has-no-meaning-or-consequence/

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Saturday, February 24, 2018 7:37 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced a policy idea that at a normal time would have dramatically moved financial markets. But nothing of the sort happened.

He said that unless he can get Mexico and Canada to agree to sweeping changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would eliminate the US-Mexico bilateral trade deficit, he “will terminate the deal and we’ll start over again.”

Specific companies that depend on the ability to easily import goods from Mexico to the United States should have seen their share prices plummet while firms that compete with Mexican imports should have seen prices soar. Instead, it was a blah day on financial markets, with the Dow up slightly and no particularly surprising moves from individual companies.

Corporate America just shrugs off his various pronouncements on trade policy. Trump also promised to eliminate the bilateral deficits with China and Vietnam, and nobody in the business world took note.

His rhetoric has nothing to do with the actual conduct of the Trump administration. And Trump’s CPAC speech was filled with such moments — moments that would be blockbuster news from a normal president but that are largely irrelevant given Trump’s marginal role in the Trump administration. He’s a Potemkin president who riles up crowds at rallies but has no real role in governing the country.

“We have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” said Trump, “one of our great natural resources.” Coal exports increased, but in fact, US coal consumption dropped in 2017 as natural gas and renewables continue to displace it, and Trump’s own Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointees killed Trump’s proposed bailout of US coal-burning electric generating plants.

Trump offered a desultory announcement of new sanctions on North Korea:

"I appreciate everything you’ve done. I do want to say, because people have asked, North Korea, we imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before. And frankly, hopefully something positive can happen. We will see. Hopefully something positive can happen. But that just was announced, and I wanted to let you know. We have imposed the heaviest sanctions ever imposed."

Trump doesn’t even appear to be particularly supportive of the new policy, just saying blandly that “hopefully something positive can happen.” Most strikingly of all, he says that the new policy “was just announced” when he himself just announced it.

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Saturday, February 24, 2018 9:56 AM

rezident owtsidr

Soundz even more disjointed than usual. Another sine that the pressure iz about to squish him like a sub that iz dropping below its max depth.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

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Saturday, February 24, 2018 2:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced a policy idea that at a normal time would have dramatically moved financial markets. But nothing of the sort happened.

He said that unless he can get Mexico and Canada to agree to sweeping changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would eliminate the US-Mexico bilateral trade deficit, he “will terminate the deal and we’ll start over again.”

Specific companies that depend on the ability to easily import goods from Mexico to the United States should have seen their share prices plummet while firms that compete with Mexican imports should have seen prices soar. Instead, it was a blah day on financial markets, with the Dow up slightly and no particularly surprising moves from individual companies.

Corporate America just shrugs off his various pronouncements on trade policy. Trump also promised to eliminate the bilateral deficits with China and Vietnam, and nobody in the business world took note.

His rhetoric has nothing to do with the actual conduct of the Trump administration. And Trump’s CPAC speech was filled with such moments — moments that would be blockbuster news from a normal president but that are largely irrelevant given Trump’s marginal role in the Trump administration. He’s a Potemkin president who riles up crowds at rallies but has no real role in governing the country.

“We have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” said Trump, “one of our great natural resources.” Coal exports increased, but in fact, US coal consumption dropped in 2017 as natural gas and renewables continue to displace it, and Trump’s own Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointees killed Trump’s proposed bailout of US coal-burning electric generating plants.

Trump offered a desultory announcement of new sanctions on North Korea:

"I appreciate everything you’ve done. I do want to say, because people have asked, North Korea, we imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before. And frankly, hopefully something positive can happen. We will see. Hopefully something positive can happen. But that just was announced, and I wanted to let you know. We have imposed the heaviest sanctions ever imposed."

Trump doesn’t even appear to be particularly supportive of the new policy, just saying blandly that “hopefully something positive can happen.” Most strikingly of all, he says that the new policy “was just announced” when he himself just announced it.

Plagiarize much?
I see everything you copied was from a vox.com article posted at 1:10pm on Friday.
Trump's speech at CPAC was reportedly 75 minutes long, don't see when it started.
Stock Market started the day with a half percent gain and mostly stayed there for hours. Then the last 90 minutes of trading all 3 major indices started climbing, each gaining about 3/4 of a percent in 90 minutes. Perhaps the Market will continue this climb on Monday.

This does point out an interesting thing. Does the Market always go up when Trump has a speech? The Market dropped when the Jobs Report showed too many jobs, and then higher interest rates. How to make money from this info?
With Obama it was easy. His speeches about how he explained how he would destroy the economy would drop the Market, at a period it was trying to grow, and did grow when Obama wasn't speaking. So I would sell out of the Market the day before his speech and immediately schedule a buy-in the day after his speech. I recall gaining 12% in a 3-day span, plus many lesser gains of 8%, 6%, 4%, etc.
But making $ off Trump speech schedule could be trickier.

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Sunday, February 25, 2018 6:31 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

This does point out an interesting thing. Does the Market always go up when Trump has a speech?

Does the market go up when Trump is asinine? #MAGA?

On January 29, 2017, the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team 6 launched a surprise raid in a remote part of Yemen, apparently trying to capture or kill an Al Qaeda leader. This was the first covert assault of the Trump era, and the White House, which was not challenged in the U.S. media, hailed it as “highly successful.”

Except it wasn’t.

When the report came out weeks later that SEAL Team 6 had killed women and children, Trump took action. U.S. aircraft returned to the village and repeatedly bomb and strafe it over four consecutive nights, killing the witnesses to the previous massacre by SEAL Team 6. #MAGA?
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/24/iona-craig-won-a-polk-award-for-he
r-investigation-of-a-seal-team-raid-that-killed-women-and-children-in-yemen-heres-how-she-did-it/

A Mexican official said Trump "lost his temper" on Feb 20th. US officials described the President as being "frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Pres. Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall." Trump wants the Mexican President to keep the American President’s promises. #MAGA?
www.cnn.com/2018/02/24/politics/mexican-president-cancels-white-house-
trip/index.html

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Sunday, February 25, 2018 8:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

For all the talk of Kremlin puppetry and intelligence operations, the heart of the offenses that Mueller has laid out involves the normal aspects of American politics, particularly the opacity of campaign finance, and the startling sums involved.

The Russian effort echoed themes that were already a factor in the election: the Internet Research Agency allegedly paid someone to dress up as Clinton in a prison uniform; the Trump campaign sold “Clinton for Prison” gear on its Web site, and American PACs have been paying for ads calling her a criminal since Bill Clinton’s Administration. Which way did the influence run?

Trump has not surrounded himself with the best people. The bots are not the only ones who come across as preposterous impostors. How did Manafort manage to pass himself off as the adult in the room in a major party’s Presidential campaign? How did Gates hang on in Trump’s orbit, even after Manafort was pushed out? How was Papadopoulos given a seat at high-level meetings? How was Flynn seen as a prudent adviser on matters of national security? Then, there is Trump himself.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/robert-muellers-distinctly-ameri
can-indictments

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Sunday, February 25, 2018 3:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For all the talk of Kremlin puppetry and intelligence operations, the heart of the offenses that Mueller has laid out involves the normal aspects of American politics,

The Russian effort echoed themes that were already a factor in the election: the Internet Research Agency allegedly paid someone to dress up as Clinton in a prison uniform; the Trump campaign sold “Clinton for Prison” gear on its Web site, and American PACs have been paying for ads calling her a criminal since Bill Clinton’s Administration. Which way did the influence run?

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/robert-muellers-distinctly-ameri
can-indictments
s

golly gee whiz. Are those actions as bad as hiring thugs to infiltrate peaceful gatherings and instgate riots, as Hilliary/Obama did? And did not the Russians amplify or aid this discord?

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Sunday, February 25, 2018 4:53 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

golly gee whiz. Are those actions as bad as hiring thugs to infiltrate peaceful gatherings and instgate riots, as Hilliary/Obama did? And did not the Russians amplify or aid this discord?

Tell me about that "riot", you lying sack of shit.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, February 25, 2018 7:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

golly gee whiz. Are those actions as bad as hiring thugs to infiltrate peaceful gatherings and instgate riots, as Hilliary/Obama did? And did not the Russians amplify or aid this discord?
Tell me about that "riot", you lying sack of shit.

lol... It's "riots", plural.

This happened all the time before the election. It's common knowledge.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, February 25, 2018 8:07 PM

rezident owtsidr

I hav herd several politicianz and commentatorz say 'its inexplicable why Trump haznt acted on the Russia sanctionz'.

Its completely explicable: He iz doing the job he wuz hired to do by Putin.

Maybe its a virus going around Washington that flips sum key neuronz connected to vocabulary. That woud explain why 'clear' now meanz 'murky, undefined, obtuse or obscure' to everybody in Trump's orbit and most Republicanz.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com

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Monday, February 26, 2018 6:59 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

golly gee whiz. Are those actions as bad as hiring thugs to infiltrate peaceful gatherings and instgate riots, as Hilliary/Obama did? And did not the Russians amplify or aid this discord?
Tell me about that "riot", you lying sack of shit.

lol... It's "riots", plural.

This happened all the time before the election. It's common knowledge.

If it is so common, then show me on the internet. And don't use Alex Jones' www.infowars.com as your source or that ilk. They truly are spinners of tall tales and lying sacks of shit. Moving on to reality:

www.axios.com/exclusive-trump-privately-pushing-personal-pilot-to-run-
faa-1519595187-5a735cc4-63e6-4348-b980-1aadf0b8e80d.html

Trump has told administration officials and associates that he wants John Dunkin — his longtime personal pilot, who flew him around the country on Trump Force One during the campaign — to helm the Federal Aviation Administration, which has a budget in the billions and which oversees all civil aviation in the United States. Dunkin would have very-hard-to-detect-by-law-enforcement opportunities to enrich himself from kickbacks on contracts, if Dunkin should be that kind of guy.

One industry insider equated this to the Seinfeld episode when Cosmo Kramer used his golf caddy as a jury consultant. A senior administration official told me that comparison is completely unfair.

Of course Trump wants his personal pilot to head the FAA. That’s the Trumpiest thing ever. #MAGA

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Monday, February 26, 2018 7:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
I hav herd several politicianz and commentatorz say 'its inexplicable why Trump haznt acted on the Russia sanctionz'.

Its completely explicable: He iz doing the job he wuz hired to do by Putin.

Maybe its a virus going around Washington that flips sum key neuronz connected to vocabulary. That woud explain why 'clear' now meanz 'murky, undefined, obtuse or obscure' to everybody in Trump's orbit and most Republicanz.

I find that believable, but Republicans won't believe it even if Trump, in a moment of candor, says it is all true. His fans will let Trump and his lawyers take back any admission of guilty. Here's something believable Trump said. I doubt Republicans will believe Trump on this, either:

Trump privately talks up executing all big drug dealers.

In Singapore, the death penalty is mandatory for drug trafficking offenses. And President Trump loves it. He’s been telling friends for months that the country’s policy to execute drug traffickers is the reason its drug consumption rates are so low.

"He says that a lot," said a source who's spoken to Trump at length about the subject. "He says, 'When I ask the prime minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem the prime minister replies, 'No. Death penalty'."

He often jokes about killing drug dealers... He’ll say, 'You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have a drug problem. They just kill them.' — A senior administration official to Axios

But the president doesn't just joke about it. According to five sources who've spoken with Trump about the subject, he often leaps into a passionate speech about how drug dealers are as bad as serial killers and should all get the death penalty.

Trump tells confidants a softer approach to drug reform — the kind where you show sympathy to the offenders and give them more lenient sentences — will never work. He tells friends and associates the government has got to teach children that they'll die if they take drugs. I look forward to Trump inspired death squads killing children. #MAGA

www.axios.com/exclusive-trump-privately-talks-up-executing-all-big-dru
g-dealers-1519595170-402cc386-8729-4684-a7ef-a5bf31876afa.html

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Monday, February 26, 2018 7:28 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

In this era of drones and driverless cars, President Trump often sounds and feels like a man from the bygone days of station wagons and smokestacks.
www.axios.com/donald-trump-worldview-past-success-1950s-china-4e778596
-522e-43f8-9fdb-3235c0568427.html

"He feels he’s the personification of the American dream. ... That means building things, going back to the era of his dad. He assumes the rest of the country pines for that. "
— A source close to President Trump

The source added: "He's not necessarily saying we need to go back to the past. He's saying we need ... the principles that made us successful in the past." Yeah, sure thing, buddy. That's what he meant. /sarcasm off

We see it in a "Mad Men" mentality that infuses his rhetoric, policies and personal life.

We see it in his attention to coal over forward-looking international trade.

We see it in testosterone-tinged chest thumping, in person and on Twitter.

We see it in his focus on steel and aluminum, when the next great war may be cyber- and satellite-driven.

We see it in his push for a Pennsylvania Avenue military parade (with "a lot of plane fly-overs"), expected to cost tens of millions of dollars.

We see it in his response to #MeToo.

We heard it in Trump's wistful remarks about Route 66 when speaking last summer in Springfield, Mo., birthplace of the now-outmoded Mother Road: "For many decades, Route 66 captured the American spirit. The communities along this historic route were a vivid symbol of America’s booming industry."

Even his diet and health routine are retro: golfing as exercise (with a cart), and a diet heavy on burgers and thick steaks.

Be smart: Trump's instincts and measures of success look back, while our most fearsome competitor, China, is projecting ahead with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and globalization.

But the nostalgia Trump evokes is a key part of his hold on his electorate — tapping into a lingering fear about a changing America that leaves many in his base feeling like strangers in their own land.

P.S. The White House says President Trump will attend Friday's funeral for the Rev. Billy Graham in Charlotte, N.C. (Graham died at the age of 199 years, give or take a century.)

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Monday, February 26, 2018 8:32 AM

Do your own research, Second.

I'm not going to go out of my way to look for things you could easily google yourself just because you're pretending they don't exist.

Here's a hint, the proof is in the DNC emails.

Just because the Russians might have been behind making them public doesn't erase what was in them.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, February 26, 2018 12:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced a policy idea that at a normal time would have dramatically moved financial markets. But nothing of the sort happened.

He said that unless he can get Mexico and Canada to agree to sweeping changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would eliminate the US-Mexico bilateral trade deficit, he “will terminate the deal and we’ll start over again.”

Specific companies that depend on the ability to easily import goods from Mexico to the United States should have seen their share prices plummet while firms that compete with Mexican imports should have seen prices soar. Instead, it was a blah day on financial markets, with the Dow up slightly and no particularly surprising moves from individual companies.

Corporate America just shrugs off his various pronouncements on trade policy. Trump also promised to eliminate the bilateral deficits with China and Vietnam, and nobody in the business world took note.

His rhetoric has nothing to do with the actual conduct of the Trump administration. And Trump’s CPAC speech was filled with such moments — moments that would be blockbuster news from a normal president but that are largely irrelevant given Trump’s marginal role in the Trump administration. He’s a Potemkin president who riles up crowds at rallies but has no real role in governing the country.

“We have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” said Trump, “one of our great natural resources.” Coal exports increased, but in fact, US coal consumption dropped in 2017 as natural gas and renewables continue to displace it, and Trump’s own Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointees killed Trump’s proposed bailout of US coal-burning electric generating plants.

Trump offered a desultory announcement of new sanctions on North Korea:

"I appreciate everything you’ve done. I do want to say, because people have asked, North Korea, we imposed today the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before. And frankly, hopefully something positive can happen. We will see. Hopefully something positive can happen. But that just was announced, and I wanted to let you know. We have imposed the heaviest sanctions ever imposed."

Trump doesn’t even appear to be particularly supportive of the new policy, just saying blandly that “hopefully something positive can happen.” Most strikingly of all, he says that the new policy “was just announced” when he himself just announced it.
Plagiarize much?
I see everything you copied was from a vox.com article posted at 1:10pm on Friday.
Trump's speech at CPAC was reportedly 75 minutes long, don't see when it started.
Stock Market started the day with a half percent gain and mostly stayed there for hours. Then the last 90 minutes of trading all 3 major indices started climbing, each gaining about 3/4 of a percent in 90 minutes. Perhaps the Market will continue this climb on Monday.

This does point out an interesting thing. Does the Market always go up when Trump has a speech? The Market dropped when the Jobs Report showed too many jobs, and then higher interest rates. How to make money from this info?
With Obama it was easy. His speeches about how he explained how he would destroy the economy would drop the Market, at a period it was trying to grow, and did grow when Obama wasn't speaking. So I would sell out of the Market the day before his speech and immediately schedule a buy-in the day after his speech. I recall gaining 12% in a 3-day span, plus many lesser gains of 8%, 6%, 4%, etc.
But making $ off Trump speech schedule could be trickier.

And the Market continued on Monday, all 3 major indices rising another 1% at opening Bell.

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Monday, February 26, 2018 4:14 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Do your own research, Second.

Don't ever stop being stupid, 6ix. And on to the new: Trump could have taken the DACA-for-border-security deal with the Democrats. He would have gotten his $25 billion for a wall from the Democrats even if most of the Republicans (not all) in Congress would refuse to pay for Trump's wall. But now the Dreamers are still here and Trump got nothing.

The Supreme Court handed President Trump a significant defeat Monday, turning down the administration's plea for a quick ruling on the president's power to end special protections for so-called Dreamers. Trump wanted this to beat the Congressional Democrats into submission.

The court's decision not to immediately hear the administration's appeal could keep in place a legal shield for nearly 700,000 young immigrants for the rest of this year, and perhaps longer.

The Justice Department had sought to leapfrog the U.S. appeals courts in California and New York. The department had asked for an "immediate review" of a nationwide order by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco that required the government to maintain for now the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

The action the administration sought was rare. It has been nearly 30 years since the Supreme Court granted review of a district judge's ruling before an appeals court could weigh in. And the court said Monday it had no interest in following that course in the DACA case.

www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-court-daca-20180220-story.html

This removes a lot of Trump’s leverage. Democrats have no pressing reason to make a bad deal over DACA if they’ve got at least a year before it can be terminated. Why not wait until after the midterms and see what happens? That’s what Republicans did with Scalia’s Supreme Court seat after he died.

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Monday, February 26, 2018 6:05 PM

Question: Why do you and the people on your "side" here feel the need to start every reply with a personal attack?

Answer: That is what people who are losing the argument do.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, February 26, 2018 11:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Question: Why do you and the people on your "side" here feel the need to start every reply with a personal attack?

Answer: That is what people who are losing the argument do.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

I can't even figure out what is the tangential connection between the first dozen words of second's quoted topic, and the diversionary topic he shoehorns in next.
Half the time I assume he thinks he's in a different thread.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018 7:32 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Question: Why do you and the people on your "side" here feel the need to start every reply with a personal attack?

Answer: That is what people who are losing the argument do.

6ix, this is not about me persuading you. I am not into saving souls like a door-to-door minister who is distributing literature for the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_Tower_Bible_and_Tract_Society_of_P
ennsylvania

Do you remember that story I told you about me being raised as a Jehovah's Witness, but I vote while they don't? You said you didn't understand that story either. They are the finest people on Earth and I am not. There is a little key in that story to unlock what is going on here. It boils down to Armageddon. The bible version of Armaggedon has the bad people (the Republican voters) and the lukewarm people (the Independent voters) outnumbering the good (the Democratic voters). In the Bible the lukewarm people think they are good. Unsurprisingly, the bad people think they are good, too. www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation3:15-17 You might need to read the book of Revelations to find out how that movie ends, but the bad and the lukewarm people truly can't understand why God would judge them harshly.

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

I can't even figure out what is the tangential connection between the first dozen words of second's quoted topic, and the diversionary topic he shoehorns in next.
Half the time I assume he thinks he's in a different thread.

Dear JewelStaiteFan, I disrespect you too much to belabor the obvious. Look around. The wealthiest society on earth is currently subjected to the chaotic rule of a mean and vulgar charlatan who refined the manipulation of humanity through a TV show that was a ratings smash in its first season, continued under his guidance for more than a decade, and relied on the cruelty of whimsical humiliation for its frisson. Donald Trump had a solid education in the power of images, the flimsiness of objective reality, and the magnetism of authority.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, O.K.?” he declared during the campaign. Let’s hand it to Trump: he was right. Americans voted him into office after he said that. They were ready to roll the dice, even on nuclear war, if the alternative was to be bored. They were mad.

There’s not much new under the sun. Long before Facebook and Twitter and Russian trolls on social media, the potential to combine the bombardment of visual media, the “genius” of an individual (Trump’s word), and mass disorientation to forge dystopian madness had been imagined.

So here’s a little test. The following three passages are not in chronological order. Which came first, and when do they date from?

“We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you.”

Here’s the second: “This whole country’s just like my flock of sheep! Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers — everybody that’s got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle….. They’re mine. I own ’em. They think like I do. Only they’re even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for them.”

And finally: “The stresses set up by the social changes wrought by the advent of technology are straining the structure of civilization beyond the limits of tolerance. The machine does our work for us and meekly comes and goes at our bidding. But it inexorably demands its wages.”

The answers are: the first dates from 1976 and is from the extraordinary Sidney Lumet movie “Network,” written by Paddy Chayefsky. The second, from 1957, appears in the equally prescient Elia Kazan movie “A Face in the Crowd,” written by Budd Schulberg. (Watch them both if you want to understand Trump.) The third dates from 1938. It’s a passage from my father’s high school magazine in Johannesburg that I stumbled on while researching my last book. “Civilization,” of course, would collapse a year later when Hitler invaded Poland.

“Network” traces the apotheosis of a news anchor, Howard Beale, who goes off-script on TV, raging against the world and television — their lies and manipulations — and develops a following with his unforgettable cri de coeur: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!” His ratings, previously in a dive, soar. “A Face in the Crowd” also follows a media sensation, Lonesome Rhodes, who parlays his charm and popular touch into a meteoric rise to national television. He is a fraud, with startling instincts for human weakness, who takes everyone in.

Beale, whose rise begins when he announces he will commit suicide live on TV, succumbs in the end to the terrible logic of his success when he is assassinated during his show.

Rhodes is undone by a hot mic as he dissects the idiocy of the Americans he has entranced: “Those morons out there? Shheh, I can take chicken fertilizer and sell it to ’em for caviar. I can make them eat dog food and they’ll think it’s steak ... You know what the public’s like? A cage full of guinea pigs."

Somewhere, a hot mic is waiting for Trump. Its name might be the Mueller investigation, whose painstaking nature is making him hotheaded. People are dumb, but they know when their president is compromised. As a wise man once observed, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.”

Roger Cohen FEB. 20, 2018
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/opinion/trump-network-film-populism.html

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018 8:02 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Question: Why do you and the people on your "side" here feel the need to start every reply with a personal attack?

Answer: That is what people who are losing the argument do.
6ix, this is not about me persuading you. I am not into saving souls like a door-to-door minister who is distributing literature for the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_Tower_Bible_and_Tract_Society_of_P
ennsylvania

Do you remember that story I told you about me being raised as a Jehovah's Witness, but I vote while they don't? You said you didn't understand that story either. They are the finest people on Earth and I am not. There is a little key in that story to unlock what is going on here. It boils down to Armageddon. The bible version of Armaggedon has the bad people (the Republican voters) and the lukewarm people (the Independent voters) outnumbering the good (the Democratic voters). In the Bible the lukewarm people think they are good. Unsurprisingly, the bad people think they are good, too. www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation3:15-17 You might need to read the book of Revelations to find out how that movie ends, but the bad and the lukewarm people truly can't understand why God would judge them harshly.

I don't need an anecdote of yours to know that you're a dick. You prove that here everyday without needing to know anything about your background.

Don't be so hard on yourself though. Nothing you've done in here is going to lead to God judging you harshly man. FFF.net is child's play compared to what they say to each other on Facebook and Twitter, and those idiots are saying it to people they know and even care about. And any vitriol we have toward each other here can't hold a candle to "/b/" over at 4chan.

If God sends you to hell for your behavior here, he's having a shitty week.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018 10:51 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

A Snake Responds To Trump's 'Snake' Poem.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018 11:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Congress passed an anti-nepotism law in the wake of John Kennedy's appointment of his brother, Bobby, as attorney general.

Here's what the law says:
"A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official."
www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3110

How did Trump get around this statute to hire his daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner? Because "agency" in the law above is interpreted by Trump's lawyers (and why distrust them?) to not include the White House. So, Trump couldn't make Ivanka the Treasury Secretary. But, according to the current interpretation of the law, he is fine with having her in a senior role within the White House.

Which is OK (I guess, if you can trust Trump's lawyers), legally speaking. But, as a practical matter, it simply doesn't work -- as this latest Ivanka response to NBC's question makes clear. You can't be both a daughter and a senior presidential adviser. The rules of engagement -- and response -- that cover one simply don't apply to the other.

Unless Congress updates the anti-nepotism language to clear up the legal questions as to whether it applies (or does not) to the White House, we will have this Ivanka Trump situation again sometime -- and it won't end any differently (or better).

www.cnn.com/2018/02/26/politics/ivanka-trump-accusations/index.html

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018 12:07 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The rich support Trump because they knew it would make them even richer. That’s paid off for them.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/surprise-corporate-tax-cuts-are
-making-the-rich-even-richer/

Republicans fully expected this, and all their blather about “$4,000 in wage growth” was just the usual smokescreen to justify a giveaway to the rich. Back in October, Council of Economic Advisers head Kevin Hassett said “I would expect to see an immediate jump in wage growth.” Today he’s singing a different tune: “Right now we’re going to have an adjustment where you see probably more dividends and share buybacks than wage increases.” Wage growth will come later.

You betcha. You will be seeing those fat paychecks any day now.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018 1:15 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Bonuses and Bogosity

Paul Krugman FEB. 27, 2018
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/opinion/bonuses-and-bogosity.html

On Feb. 19 Walmart, America’s largest employer, announced broad-based pay hikes. In fact, it announced that it would be raising wages for half a million workers. The Trump tax cut is working! Oh, wait. That announcement was three years ago – it came on Feb. 19, 2015. And as far as I can tell, nobody gave the Obama administration credit for the move.

Why did Walmart raise wages? Partly because the labor market was tightening: unemployment had fallen more than 40 percent from its peak in 2009 (a decline for which the Obama administration’s stimulus and other policies actually do deserve some credit.) This tightening labor market meant that Walmart was having trouble attracting workers.

Walmart was also in the midst of a change in business strategy. Its policy of always low wages, always, was starting to look problematic: low pay meant high turnover and low morale, and management believed that moving at least partway to the Costco strategy of paying more and getting better performance as a result made sense.

The moral of this story is that unless the economy is deeply depressed, there will always be some companies, somewhere, raising wages and offering bonuses. Which brings me to the Trump tax cut and the very bad, no good job much of the media initially did of covering its effects.

Every card-carrying economist agrees that cutting corporate tax rates will have some trickle-down effect on wages – in the long run. How much of a trickle-down effect depends on a bunch of technical factors: what share of corporate profits represents monopoly rents rather than returns to capital, how responsive inflows of foreign capital are to the U.S. rate of return, what share of the capital stock is even affected by the corporate tax rate. Enthusiasts claim that the tax cut will eventually go 100% to workers; most serious modelers think the number is more like 20 or 25 percent.

Whatever the number, however, it’s about the long run. It requires a chain of events: lower taxes -> higher investment -> higher stock of capital -> higher demand for labor -> higher wages. And this chain of events should take a number of years, probably decades, to fully work itself through. Even in the most favorable analyses, there is no reason to expect any wage gains in the first few months after a tax cut.

Yet for a while there the news was full of stories about companies announcing that they were giving their workers bonuses thanks to the Trump tax cut. Why were they doing this?

Well, the tax cut provided no immediate incentive to raise wages. It did, however, give companies that benefited from the tax cut a strong political incentive to claim that the tax break was the reason for bonuses or wage hikes they would have given in any case. Why not? They want the tax cut to look good, since it’s good for them. And hyping its benefits is a cheap way to make a de facto campaign contribution to an administration that can do a lot to help companies it likes, say by removing pesky safety or environmental regulations.

In other words, the whole “bonuses thanks to tax cut” story was bogus, and obviously so. Yet much of the media fell for it.

There was also a big element of innumeracy involved. Most people have no idea just how big the U.S. economy is; if you say “company X just hired 1000 workers” or “company Y just gave 5000 workers a $1000 bonus” they imagine that these are big stories, when in reality they’re just noise in an economy where around 5 million workers are hired – and an almost equal number quit or are fired – every month.

The numbers we have so far show that the much-hyped bonuses are trivial – less than $6 billion, or 0.03% of GDP – while stock buybacks have been more than $170 billion. And many of those bonuses would probably have happened anyway, whereas stock buybacks are running far above historical levels.

Furthermore, the surge in stock buybacks suggests that the long run effect of the tax cut on wages will be small. Remember that the chain that should lead to trickle-down begins with lower taxes -> higher investment. If companies use the cuts to buy back stocks, not add to plant and equipment, the wage-growth story doesn’t even get started.

So the real news about the tax cut is that it is – I know you’ll be shocked – mainly a giveaway to corporations. Who could have predicted?

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Wednesday, February 28, 2018 6:38 AM