Here’s a lovely salt marsh located near Cedar Key, Florida:
There was a beautiful roseate spoonbill trolling for shrimp, but the bastard jumped behind the grass when I tried to get a picture of him.
I was up in the northern part of the state visiting my grandma this weekend. I also had dinner and drinks with my uncle, who shocked me by saying he was considering a vote for Trump. Sweet babby jeebus.
Long story short: He thinks the entrenched political class needs to be eradicated root and branch, and while he recognizes that Trump is a raging buffoon, he sees him as a protest vote who would be no worse than any of the others.
I think I was successful in securing his primary vote for Sanders, but he doesn’t believe Sanders will be the Democratic nominee, and he’s probably right about that. In a contest between Hillary Clinton and Trump, my uncle says he would vote for Trump. And he’s not a racist or a stupid person, at all. He’s just one of millions of fed-up people.
So, that’s one data point among many other across a vast country, but I found it personally alarming enough to stop being amused by the Trump circus and hope for its speedy implosion. YMMV.
Open thread!
Baud
Hmmmm.
Srv
The second Obama depression is good news for Trump.
Gin & Tonic
I really like salt marshes.
I’ve been thinking for a while, that you can imagine a winning scenario for Trump without first ingesting hallucinogenics. That scares me.
Germy Shoemangler
I read Charles Pierce and Balloon-Juice and assume everyone does, but they don’t. Most people pick up a few things here and there from tv and mostly from the car radio, and then go with their gut.
EDIT: is balloon-juice outrageously slow today or is my computer dying?
Southern Beale
And that’s how asshole buffoons get elected. Thank you, Murrica.
Germy: it’s not just you.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Heading out to the eye doctor this afternoon to be evaluated for laser surgery. I still haven’t made up my mind if I should do it, but I really hate the thought of being in a retirement home someday and being virtually blind because they forgot to put my glasses on for me.
(I’m about a -6 in one eye and a -8 in the other, so I have very very bad eyesight.)
dedc79
We can’t let people get too comfortable saying “I’m not a racist, i’m just fed up.” There are a whole host of options available to people who are fed up that don’t include voting for a racist/race-baiter for President. Voting for Trump amounts to endorsing racism and the implementation of racist policies.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: What my uncle’s flirtation with Trump’s candidacy tells me is that to dismiss all of Trump’s potential voters as white power morons is perhaps ill-considered. I don’t doubt many of them — maybe even most of them — are. But there are plenty of non-morons who are really pissed off about this hand-basket we’re in and where it’s heading.
@Germy Shoemangler: It’s slow for me too.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Good luck, whatever you decide.
Also, why in this world do people who love movies have eye trouble, and people who love classical music have ear problems?
indycat32
Remember those protest votes in 2000 for Nader? Good times.
Baud
@dedc79:
Yeah, somehow I think if the Dems nominated someone who wanted to put whitey in his place, the entrenched political class would look a lot more attractive.
Hildebrand
Two bits says the level of a person’s ‘fed-upness’ correlates to their attitudes toward the current occupant of the White House.
RaflW
I’m sure folks with more media pull than our pet troll will be blaming Obama for the stock market drop – even if it has much more to do with global economic doldrums and an over-eager Fed.
Prepare for the latest Carter-ization of Obama, folks. I am not generally a conspiracy theorist, but I can see the wizards of Wall Street being quite pleased to preside over a late-in-his-presidency downturn to move the electorate to sour on him.
And since they win when you lose (I’m sure they’ve been selling short for a while now…), they can ratf*k the economy for fun, profit and electoral leverage.
raven
There’s red’s where there’s srimps
catclub
After Trump gets the nomination, the meme I want to generate is that he would be worse than Palin. It shows the default bias in favor of white males that this is not already obvious.
Bobby Thomson
@dedc79: voting for Trump as protest is also quintessential white privilege.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Also, too, I guess I’m not worried about Trump yet because I can still hear my late father telling me in 2012 that he was planning to vote for “Dr. Ron Paul.” I guess I still think the Establishment Republicans will be able to put down the rebellion long enough to get one of their own nominated.
Plus I think Trump would be freakin’ destroyed by a professional politician like Hillary or Bernie. He would probably ragequit within the first month, at best. Probably at the first real debate.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
We got our new dog at last. Pictures forthcoming, when I get around to sending them to one of the front pagers.
RaflW
@Hildebrand: Well, I do think it has a lot to do with the stagnancy of most American’s earnings and overall financial well being.
It is not unexpected that people feel they need a change. Its just that the GOP has an absurd analysis of why family income is flat-to-down, and what to do about it.
Trump says he wants to address middle-class people-s challenges. I don’t believe him for a second that he has meaningful answers, but he is speaking to them as an insecure and upset constituency in ways that Hillary so far can’t. Bernie, yes. But he is still a media pariah, and Trump makes their clickbait go mad, so the field is (surprise!!) tilted. Badly.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@indycat32:
Hey, if it’s the Republicans protest voting, I’m all for it. :-)
Not That Guy
Don’t all jump on my head, but if one of these GOP bozos had to win, would Trump really be the worst option? Is Jeb? really so moderate? When his brother
tookstole office, I remember thinking “oh well, how bad could a moderate republican be?”We have our answer, and once bitten, forever shy.
Hal
Via a patient’s insistence that I change the clinic TV station, I ended up listening to Fox News for a solid hour today. Did you all know HRC could have saved those 4 brave souls lost in Benghazi? Did you also know that the stock market is Obama’s fault because his administration is terrible? They actually did blame Bush too, but Obama is terrible. Bush has some responsibility also, but really Obama. Also, how are people supposed to protect themselves against gunman? We really do need to start “self profiling” people and gosh, France and those strict gun laws.
It was like living in the twilight zone. The Dems have a weak presidential bench and anyone would love to run against Hillary.
Oh, and per this patient’s husband and another gentleman waiting for his appointment; Obama sucks, Hillary sucks, and Trump just needs to say things with more finesse. But he is a smart business man. VERY smart. Yeesh.
catclub
@RaflW:
Not very likely. Where George W Bush and Carter were unlucky, Obama has been very lucky. I see no reason for that not to continue. Carter had the economy contract by 5% in 1980. IN 2008 jobs were already dropping like crazy and the gas price was $140/barrel. Today, oil is $45/barrel. Today, no signs of any jobs disappearing, No signs of a recession. fed is competent. No Fed raising interest rates to 18% to kill inflation. Obama is a supremely lucky man – and that is good luck for all the US.
catclub
@Hal:
Ask them if he is also responsible for it going up for six years since march 2009. More than doubling.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
And they will continue to do what they’ve done since 1980 and vote for the Republican nominee.
dedc79
@Bobby Thomson: I grew up in NJ, and even though I haven’t lived there for well over a decade, I’m still up there a lot and in touch with people who do live there. Betty’s uncle’s comments remind me a lot of what white NJ voters (including some who identify as democrats) tended to say about Christie when he was running for governor. That’s alarming for a number of obvious reasons.
David Koch
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@catclub:
You people just don’t get it. Obama is responsible only for bad things. If it’s good, it was the Republicans who made it happen. How hard can this be to understand?
Amir Khalid
I tend to think that in any democratic country, there shouldn’t be such a thing as an entrenched political class. My own country would certainly have been better off without one.
Yet such a class is still a somewhat lesser political evil than destructive buffoons like Trump and Berlusconi. Politicians of an entrenched class at least know how the machine of governance works, even when they wind up working it for their own profit and that of their friends. Make the Donald president and he’ll crash the machine.
Now, as to Bernie — As I think I’ve made clear, I’m not convinced he’s a better choice for president than Hillary. It remains to be seen whether he can lead a national political campaign, and maybe he can. But I don’t think he’s as good as she at thinking on his feet. I don’t see him as having quite her level of political and diplomatic chops, which he’ll need to do business with Congress or America’s allies (and not-so-allies) abroad.
Seanly
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I was a -6.5 when I got it done about 12 years ago. A couple of points – when you get into your 40’s you will still go farsighted. Without the lasik I would’ve been some horrible combination of extremely nearsighted and some farsightedness. Farsightedness doesn’t just reduce the nearsightedness when you’re very nearsighted.
I was 35 when I got it done & they slightly undercorrected one eye so it would still be okay as I got farsighted. Skip that.
I enjoyed a few years with no glasses whatsoever. Now I need reading glasses with a very slight distance correction. I mostly leave the glasses on.
My wife who also got lasik does need a distance correction but hasn’t developed any farsightedness yet.
M. Bouffant
Trump’s got my vote. Who better to destroy America once & for all, if we can’t get Palin to try?
Ruckus
Betty C.
He’s just one of millions of fed-up people.
Without any idea of what caused him to actually be fed up. Or any realistic idea on how to change that.
I believe that cause and effect has seemingly been ruled out as a plausible theory at this point in our devolution.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Stop being rational.
OT, the news is saying that Malaysia is getting hit even worse due to the China downturn. How are things over there?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Germy Shoemangler:
Fun fact: Andre de Toth, director of most of the best 3D movies of the 1950s (including “House of Wax”) could not see in 3D. He only had one eye (can’t remember why, it was lost in either a war or an accident).
dedc79
@Amir Khalid: out of curiosity, who are the “not-so-allies” that you’re concerned he can’t handle, while Hillary can? Isn’t Hillary far more hawkish than Sanders?
Keith P.
“If you cast a vote for Donald Trump, mark my words, I will see to it that you spend the rest of your days sitting in a soiled diaper in a the kind of nursing home where they beat you, dear uncle.”
That’s how it’s done.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
It’s not just you. Balloon Juice often take a day and a half (well, it feels like it!) to refresh. Sometimes, I think it’s because of the slow overland Internet route between the US and Asia.
joel hanes
He thinks the entrenched political class needs to be eradicated root and branch, and while he recognizes that Trump is a raging buffoon, he sees him as a protest vote who would be no worse than any of the others.
One of my uncles said much the same thing right after he proudly/defiantly announced that he was voting for George Wallace for President in 1968.
Baud
@Keith P.:
He’d just blame it on Obamacare.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Mobile site is working fine right now.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: No, that was job creators.
Baud
@catclub:
Ironically, part of the stock market dip is due to the fact that the Fed may raise rates because the economy is doing better.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: My uncle voted for Obama in 2008 and wrote in some 3rd party crank in 2012. He’s not a “Reagan Democrat” or a solid GOP voter by any stretch. I hope he comes to his senses, but his anger is real, and it’s not about immigration or the deficit or political correctness, etc., i.e., the stereotypical concerns of the potential Trump voter. It’s more about the political process being completely rigged, which it is.
Trump isn’t the answer, of course, but he’s addressing concerns that Democrats better damn sure address too, and not just Bernie. My uncle’s startling admission makes me wonder if there’s not more anti-establishment anger than I realized out here. Of course, he’s just one guy. But it brought it home to me in a way that reading a hundred musings on the topic couldn’t.
@Keith P.: LMAO!
Hildebrand
@RaflW: It was Trump’s rabid anti-immigrant knavery that primed the pump. Economic populism works for Trump because he first gives folks a bogey-man to fear and hate.
Peale
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): In this case, he needs to come up with some kind of plan to keep the Chinese economy from contracting.
rikyrah
@dedc79:
yeah, that.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Seanly:
From what I’ve read, presbyopia (the thing that causes you to need reading glasses) is caused by changes to the lens of the eye, while nearsightedness/farsightedness is caused by the shape of the eyeball (or cornea, can’t remember which). So there really isn’t a fix for presbyopia short of doing major surgery on the eye.
I’m okay with having reading glasses, I’m just tired of not being able to see a thing without my regular glasses. And I never did like contacts.
gratuitous
Open note to Betty’s not stupid and not racist uncle: You’re upset with the state of the union now. I get that. Lots of people are. It certainly makes sense to give a good listen to a candidate who can forcefully promise to change all the bad things in the system. Two things to consider:
First, what are the bad things in the system that need changing? And do you think a billionaire, who’s been made so fabulously wealthy by running the system as currently constituted, is going to have a list of bad things that comes anywhere close to your list?
Just chew on that for a little while.
Ruckus
@Seanly:
Nearsightedness is caused by the lens being misshapen, which is why it can be corrected by a laser. Farsightedness is caused by muscles becoming stiffer, which they normally do as we age. The rate that happens determines when (or hopefully if) you need reading glasses and what power they need to be.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
As an over 20 yr laser eye surgery patient whose far vision is still good (even for an old man!) I tell folks that it is the about the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Had to wear correction for almost 40 yrs and that sucked. Used hard contacts, soft contacts, throwaway contacts and of course glasses. This is better. Lots better. And as a side note, lasik had not been out very long when I got mine done and so I had a different procedure with much longer healing times. Lasik is better. And I’d still do it again.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Sorry, Betty. I’ve lost all faith in all these voters. Until I see evidence otherwise, I don’t think they are reachable by Democrats (or Bernie if he wins the nom). If we lose, we lose.
AliceBlue
I’m curious as to what all these “fed up” people think Trump is specifically going to do as president. Personally, I think if he wins the nomination or goes independent, the Koch brothers will have him assassinated.
jl
Thanks for a beautiful salt water marsh pic, BC.
If you uncle wants cast a protest vote, why does he care whether Sanders is nominated or not. He can always cast a write in vote?
I didn’t have much hope for Trump on policy but was curious. Now I am horrified by the specifics of what he doesn’t know. Trumps doesn’t seem to understand how NATO works. As I said in a previous thread, a war with Russia because Trump doesn’t understand NATO would not be cool, but it would at least make the Iraq invasion crime/blunder look not so bad and raise Dub’s reputation, relatively speaking.
The Establishment GOP is so whupped irrelevant and useless that Reince Priebus is reduced to bleating that
Reince Priebus: Having Donald Trump in the race a ‘net positive’ for GOP
http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/todd-milewski/reince-priebus-having-donald-trump-in-the-race-a-net/article_fc0461bc-523d-5525-a3a6-25a0ba063edd.html
Hildebrand
@Betty Cracker: My glibertarian brother-in-law is all in for Trump because he is a tough-talking, no-nonsense, bidnessman – who happens to rip on immigrants. He is a bank president, so not exactly hurting. He has no anger at the process, just wants to screw everyone who ‘hasn’t worked hard.’
catclub
@Betty Cracker:
Of course, given deadlock in the congress, nothing will be addressed as long as the president remains a Democrat.
That is going to be something that neither side will particularly want to address.
Civics lessons on the House and Senate, titled, ‘This is where change goes to die’ do not make for inspiring voters.
Brachiator
@dedc79:
But it is pointless to keep insisting that these people are racists who won’t admit it. I still think that Trump’s campaign is going to collapse, but if it doesn’t you might find that he has some appeal to Democrats as well.
There are too many people, including Balloon Juicers who think that everyone loves Democrats and progressives, or should love Democrats and progressives. But there are plenty of folks who feel abandoned by the current political parties, or they see politicians who gladly sell out to special interests and pretend that they still have citizens’ interests at heart.
I don’t see a whole lot of options for people who want to vote for a Republican.
Belafon
@Baud: I wonder who they vote for in off-year elections.
Brent
You identified the 2 truly scary parts of Trumpism–most are fed up, and he wouldn’t be worse than any alternative. I think he will be the nominee and may win
feebog
Betty, since you have teen kids and this is your Uncle, I would guess he is in his 60s or 70s. Which is my age. I’m curious as to what he is fed up with. Medicare? Social Security? The Stock Market going up 900 points the last 6 years? That middle class and poor people can now get affordable health insurance? That we have stopped wasting millions of dollars a month, not to mention lives in Iraq and Afghanistan? Cuba? China? What is there to be so pissed off about?
catclub
@jl:
Please note my previous post comparing him to Palin, and noting the default bias of competence that rich white males get.
Baud
@Belafon:
Turn out drops a lot for both parties. It’s just a lot worse for Democrats.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Ruckus:
It may be a choice between LASIK and Lasek because I have some issues with dry eyes, inflammation, and other things that may make me a not-good candidate for LASIK. But we shall see.
Greg
They may or may not be personally prejudiced, but they are certainly enormously white privileged if they can choose to just ignore the blatant racist elements. It’s the political equivalent of depraved indifference.
JMG
Dear Ms. Cracker: If your uncle is like most voters, he will be much more “fed up” this summer then he will be in the voting booth next November. It’s easy to say “throw the bums out and tear it all down” until you start thinking of what’s left after that happens.
Ross Perot, just as crazy if less hateful than Trump, got 19 percent. That’s the maximum threshold for the permanently disaffected.
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
Is Hillary really more hawkish than Bernie? She’s learned a lot from her years working with Obama, we’ve all seen that in the campaign she’s running. She was his Secretary of State for four years, after all. I think she’s learned something there, in particular.
Maybe my own suspicions about Bernie have to do with his being an older white guy from a mostly-white state with relatively little experience speaking for, or to, other people. But from what I’ve seen, he has less intellectual flexibility than she. It’s a bit harder for him to think outside the box. There are plenty of tricky relationships abroad for America, with allies as well as not-so-allies (we all know who they are). A Bernie or a Hillary administration will need to think as creatively as Obama’s has.
Belafon
@Baud: Part of my point being that are they voting at all.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Huh? We know full well how much we are hated. And why shouldn’t we feel people should support us more? We think we are correct on most things.
PaulW
The thing is, if Trump does indeed carry this all the way to the GOP convention as a credible candidate with enough delegates to make it a brokered convention, then we are royally screwed as a nation. Because that means one of our two major parties is filled with enough batsh-t crazy voters obsessing over illegals stealing our jobs to make a significant voting bloc that will still be there come general election time.
Unless you can convince we we’re only talking about 15-20 million voters total being that far gone into racism, and that 80-90 million voters are still there willing to vote for a more sane candidate on the Democratic ticket, I am absolutely terrified by all this.
jl
And I do not think Trump is good for the GOP or he has a chance in the general election.
I don’t think polls mean much now because most people are not following closely and base their responses on name recognition or whatever sound bite or quote or mindless corporate news hack blurb they heard most recently on the news.
Trump has pushed abolition of birthright citizenship into front of GOP debate, with about half of the candidates on board. If a candidate who is favorable to that gets nomination, that issue is going to get a lot of attention. The GOP can kiss any group with a sizable community or recent immigrants goodbey, and goodbye to a lot of others after the disaster that policy would be is discussed in detail.
Trump is lying that he has military advisers, and rattled off the names of guys he watched in TV. Of the ones he mentioned, Bolton is only one who would ever deal with Trump. Bolton will scare the crap out of people.
And sad little Scott Walker is making McCain babbling about suspending the presidential campaign in 2008 look wise and resolute on economics by panicking over what is so far, a stock market correction in China.
These people are jokes. They can only survive in the early horse race, beauty contest, name recognition stages of a campaign. Facing either HRC, or Sanders, or Biden, or O’Malley, they will get chewed to pieces in a general campaign, even thought the corporate media will try to hide the incompetence and monstrosity of the GOP. HRC would come at them with a jack hammer. Not sure how Sanders would do it, since it says he doesn’t do negative ads, but I suppose he has his methods. I suppose Sanders would put out very strong issue oriented ads and the media would bleat about him promising not to do negative campaigning and Sanders would eat the corporate news actors alive on TV.
JPL
According to tpm.com, Scott Walker wants Obama to cancel the state dinner planned with the Chinese president, because they made our stock market fall.
boatboy_srq
@Keith P.: @Betty Cracker: I know one or two not too far south of BC where that actually happens. It’s funny – until it happens to a parent.
Iowa Old Lady
Burning the whole place down sounds good until you realize you live there too.
RaflW
@catclub: Last I checked, there’s still a bit over 14 months of Obama’s presidency before the election. Are you predicting that the stock market will calm down, global growth will tick up, and we’ll end the O years singing ‘happy days are here again’?
I’m not feeling that sanguine. Yes oil is down well below the peak, but the economy seems fragile again, and may well sour. My contention above is that it may be in the interests of the big institutional traders to punish the electorate for the next year so that folks go into the voting booth scared crapless once again.
And being able to bet heavily against growth as a source of huge profit is a shitty incentive that I don’t trust hedge funders with for a second.
Brachiator
@Not That Guy:
Certainly one of the worst. He doesn’t demonstrate the smallest degree of political competence. He almost makes Sarah Palin look presidential.
Last week or so, he was asked who his foreign policy advisors were, and he answered that he learned stuff watching TV, and mentioned John Bolton as someone he thought was on the ball.
Shit, would you even hire somebody as a pee wee league football coach who said, “well, I learned coaching by watching some football games on TV.” And yet people still consider Trump to be a viable candidate.
There are some conservatives who somehow still have this fantasy picture of the founding fathers as part-time legislators who went back home and ran all American free market businesses when they returned to non-political life. But this ignores professional politicians, as well as the fact that many of these people were from the elite, which allowed them time to engage in politics while others looked after their business interests. And people like Madison, Jefferson, Adams and others had spent time studying political history and regularly engaging in state and local politics.
Whenever Trump opens up on his policy positions, it is a huge bunch of nonsense that perhaps appeals to some people because it is about on the same level that you would hear from blowhards in a bar after a few pitchers of beer.
Iowa Old Lady
@Germy Shoemangler: Thank goodness you said that about BJ being slow! I’ve been clearing my cache and restarting, thinking it was my computer.
jl
@catclub: I didn’t have much hope Trump could be better than Palin.
Edit: Palin could function as an actual governor, at least for awhile, until an irresistible grifting opportunity came up and she decided to changer her career arc. Remember back before McCain picked her, she had the rep of being a moderate GOPer.
dedc79
@Brachiator:
Well you definitely have to adjust the message to the audience. I think priority #1 would be to go after the candidate and campaign as racist. There are a ton of people (many of them unaffiliated with the democratic party) who do not want to be associated with racists and may not yet be fully aware of some of the things Trump has said and/or stands for.
So for some people I think it might actually be effective to say “I know you and I know you don’t have a racist bone in your body. That’s why I’m having trouble understanding why you would support a candidate who has said X,Y and Z….” For others, it may have to be an even softer sell. “Are you aware that Trump said _____ at his last campaign appearance? Isn’t that disgusting? If you’re interested in an outsider candidate – someone who speaks his/her mind and isn’t beholden to a political party – take a look at Bernie Sanders’ positions on ______.” Betty didn’t elaborate, but it sounds like she tried that softer sell with her uncle, and maybe even had some success with it.
Gene108
@dedc79:
Kay (the front pager) commented about Trump’s appeal to working class voters, when he visited an auto factory in Michigan.
People in the trades have been hurt the most by illegal immigration. Auto workers and others in factories feel trade deals have screwed them over.
Kicking out the illegals and “just say no” to trade has appeal to a lot of voters.
What is fascinating about Trump is how off-handedly he brushes off the Fundies, by just saying ” yeah, I agree with you now… forget everything else I did.. VOTE TRUMP…” and it seems to be working
Ruckus
@gratuitous:
This.
There is a path to lessen the damage of the last 30-40 yrs. It isn’t in the hands of the conservative party, for they are primarily responsible for that damage. Not totally, that’s for sure, but primarily responsible. Putting one of them in charge would just continue the policies that got us here. President Obama has tried hard to lessen that damage but 6 yrs isn’t enough. And he is one person.
Gin & Tonic
@Hildebrand: Just for grins, have him name one single implementable policy position of Trump’s, on any issue.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Reminds me that Brian Wilson is deaf in one ear. Can’t hear stereo headphones.
Betty Cracker
@feebog: Yep, sounds like you’re about the same age as my uncle. We talked for hours about these issues, so it’s hard to summarize, but the bottom line is he thinks the political establishment on both sides is focused on maintaining the status quo to benefit the super-wealthy. Part of Trump’s appeal is that he’s already a plutocrat and thus theoretically can’t be bought.
Of course, I remonstrated on multiple points, and he conceded that the ACA is better than nothing, troop draw-downs in Afghanistan and Iraq are preferable to increased involvement, stock market gains that mostly go to the wealthy are better than Great Depression II, etc. We also discussed the fact that no one can turn things around due to Congress.
But what it boils down to for him is that it’s not enough to elect someone who is marginally better than the alternative — he believes the whole system needs to be upended. He thinks the election of someone like Trump would be a step down that path. I don’t agree, but I can see the logic of it.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Forgot to mention, good luck in any case.
I have dry eyes and have to use artificial tears once in a while. Had them with glasses and contacts so nothing is really changed. But even if you have to go with the type of surgery that I had, PRK, to me it has been worth it. Now if you aren’t a candidate at all, very sorry about that.
dedc79
@Amir Khalid: He passed the most significant foreign policy test we’ve had in the past 15 years, while she failed. And by that I mean the Iraq War. I’m not aware of a single foreign policy issue where he’s taken a more hawkish stance than she has. And in some ways it’s far easier to get a handle on a senator’s FP stances than a Sec of State. Clinton was following the White House’s lead. I judge her on her Senate record way more than her record as Secretary of State.
Maybe part of my confusion is that I can’t tell if you’re using “not-so-allies” to mean enemies (e.g. ISIS, the North Korean regime) or to mean quasi allies (ie countries that are supposedly allies but aren’t actually allies in practice). If it’s the latter category that you’re referring to, then I think there’s no reason to assume that I (or anyone else) would necessarily know whom you mean.
RaflW
@JPL:
Walker really, truly is an idiot. The more he does shit like this and his me-too/walk-back of birthright citizenship, etc, the more I just scratch my head as I look east to WI (where I just had a lovely 5 day vacation, even). I guess 1.26 million Wisconsinites are just flat-out stooopid, too.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
As I remember, that’s why in the 1960s the Beach Boys kept putting out so much stuff in mono, after everyone else had gone stereo.
Gene108
@RaflW:
Bernie’s media problem is he is so far outside what other politicians have crafted as their personna, with his gruff almost rude times manner, where he’ll just bluster through what people are saying, when he disagrees, that it will either be a refreshing change or get him boxed in by attack ads as a doddering old drone.
Also, compared to the attention Trump and the Republicans have attracted, even Hillary is being ignored.
I think if Democrats put raising the minimum wage to $15/hr, they would shore up a lot of support really fast.
schrodinger's cat
We had my husband kitteh’s friends over this weekend. They are recent immigrants from India, both work for big pharma, they have been in US for over 15 years now. They have a son, about 8 or 9. When we started discussing the Presidential race he innocently asked whether he was an anchor baby?
So no, I don’t find Trump and his stupid, funny, at all.
ETA: Being a Trump supporter or even flirting with the idea is the ultimate white privilege.
JPL
@RaflW: Wait until thel GOP candidates, demand that we end trade with China.
Then the fun times will begin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So he’s gonna vote for somebody who in all likelihood (and I still think Trump is an extreme longshot for the nomination, assuming he really wants it) would let whatever Republican Senator is most flattering to him (Cruz and Sessions top that list so far) pick Supreme Court justices, strengthening the hand of the Roberts courts, authors of the Citizens United decision? Has he noticed that after almost forty years, trickle-down economics don’t? I don’t mean to be snotty and antagonistic about your uncle, or to you at all, but doesn’t there come a point where a person has to put some kind of effort into being that uninformed about politics (as opposed to policy)? Unless you want a neocon foreign policy, or you’re a fetus fetishist, or some substantial part of your financial status is based in capital gains or a large inheritance (or some combination thereof) what the hell justification is there for voting for a Republican at this point? God knows the Democrats are far from perfect, but over the last twenty years the Republicans have doubled-down on rigging the system
catclub
@RaflW:
A qualified yes to that. Unemployment was 10% at the start of the Obama admin. It is now 5% and looks to stay there. That is actually very good news that is not mentioned enough. Slight wage inflation, which is a good thing, could be coming. Housing construction is looking pretty good, after 7 years of not very good. [Irvine housing blog had various predictions (in 2007-8) that the market would take until 2014 to recover. They were pretty accurate, it looks.] The recovery has been frustratingly weak, but the positive side to that is that there is less likely to be a recession.
The Thin Black Duke
Maybe it’s a simplification, but when people choose to vote for a guy who proudly spews racist garbage about Hispanics, why is it wrong to assume that they’re most likely racist as well? To my mind, the only difference between Trump and his supporters is that the Donald is willing to do the dirty work.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As far as I know Red Kitten has offered John and crew, sanctuary from the nuts to the south. It might be time, to make friends with a Canadian.
RaflW
@Gene108: People in the trades have been hurt the most by
illegal immigrationcorporate outsourcing that gets blamed on easily available scapegoats.Auto workers and others in factories feel trade deals have screwed them over. Yep. Obama completely missed this point in pushing his trade deal. I think folks have rightly been very suspicious of new trade authorities, and it is just wrong to blame all this on immigration when it is mostly outsourcing to low- and ultra-low wage nations that has screwed US laborers.
I was reading something on immigration last night (in print, not sure what to link to now) that in the 50s was blaming immigrants on job dislocation. This is 60+ years of immigrant bashing that’s been going on in service of companies that a) can blameshift to immigrants their own malfeasance and that b) also hire the undocumented here in the US to avoid paying a fair wage to US workers.
Both of these are corporate behaviors, yet the immigrants so often – and for so long – have ended up holding the bag.
schrodinger's cat
We had my husband kitteh’s friends over this weekend. They are recent immigrants from India, both work for big pharma, they have been in US for over 15 years now. They have a son, about 8 or 9. When we started discussing the Presidential race he innocently asked whether he was an anchor baby?
So no, I don’t find Trump and his stupid, funny, at all.
ETA: Being a Trump supporter or even flirting with the idea is the ultimate white privilege. His candidacy is a scary prospect for almost anyone else.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: yup I hope you told him, that he’s an American.
Tom
My opinion is that Trump is the Stephen Colbert of politics.
jl
TPM says Trump got his first mega-donor contribution. I assume he will get more.
I’m not sure, but media seems to be at zenith of giving a pass to the asinine GOPer BS being emitted. I suppose they want as many of the sad seventeen to limp into the primary season for that sweet high margin campaign spot cash. I wonder if Murdoch and Ailes are phoning around to see if some of their buddies can throw Perry a lifeline to get him through the second GOP primary debate.
Trump, Walker, Christie, Jeb!? are allowed to get away with nonsense that would seriously damage their campaigns if they had serious opponents to counter them. Right now, probably not worth the effort to respond other than a tweet or stump speech comment by HRC or Sanders.
Nice to see Walker panic over the, historically speaking, almost unnoticeable little blip in the stock market today. Yeezus hep us if this dolt get elected.
Betty Cracker
@dedc79:
I said something very much like that, and my uncle’s response was that Trump’s horrible anti-immigrant comments and stupid bloviating about having Mexico build a border fence are an opening gambit in a negotiation about immigration. He says of course Trump isn’t actually going to round up 12 million undocumented immigrants or build a Mexico-financed gold-plated fence with “Trump” spelled out in diamonds but that by taking such a hard line, Trump may be able to bring the parties — i.e., the US Chamber types, Mexican government and pro-immigration groups — to the table and get some movement by uniting them in opposition to his draconian proposal. Eleventy-dimensional chess, in other words.
JustRuss
I get the “I’m fed up and let’s throw the bums out” attitude, but really, when hasn’t that been the case? Our leaders are human, they screw up, yet eventually, progress is made. “Burn it down and start fresh” sounds appealing, but with very few exceptions, it rarely turns out well.
RaflW
@Betty Cracker:
Well, yeah, I am starting to worry that Trump might just do that. Unfortunately, the upending I imagine has more of a president-for-life, banana republic feel to it that I think your uncle is fantasizing about.
Ruckus
@Gene108:
The problem with a $15/hr minimum is that people who don’t think things through (and probably a lot of business owners) and think this becomes not the base but the norm. And they may be making more than $15 so they don’t think it will help them. Also they seem to think that it will go to $15 directly rather than all the plans that I’ve seen that step up the rate over time. Raising the minimum has to be sold properly not just as a number but as steps to get to that number.
satby
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Hey, I was -8 in both eyes until I got lots older and presbyopia set in. Now I’m about a -4.5 in both eyes. Hold off unless you’re more than a decade away from the slide trombone years, because nearsighted people get improved sight with age as a rule.
schrodinger's cat
This entire anchor baby concept is down right ridiculous. First of all citizens cannot sponsor their parents until they are adults themselves. So having children as an immigration plan would be downright stupid.
JPL
@JustRuss: That happened in 2010 to the dems and it didn’t work out well.
David Koch
If Sanders or Trump were elected how would they un-rig the system?
I think if Sanders were elected he could get 1 to 3 items passed during the honeymoon period, but afterward his poll number would come back to earth and he’d be faced with a hostile corporate media, the filibuster, and conserva-dems. And that’s the base case scenario. If he doesn’t get the house and senate, he won’t get anything passed.
jl
@RaflW: Illegal rapist immigrants sent by the Mexican government have sneaked NAFTA auto assembly plants and low quality slave labor produce fields over the border, and are running them night and day on secret Amero plots out in the desert! We need the Trump Taj-ma-Wall, now!
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
It was 12 years ago. I wouldn’t obsess on this. It’s true that as secretary of state Hillary was under Obama, but she has shown an ability to learn from him, and I don’t think it’s in dispute that she was a very capable secretary of state.
And remember that there are always degrees of alliance between “is” and “ain’t”. Even the countries that seem closest to the US don’t always care to be seen as marching in lockstep with it. I can’t prove it, of course, but I suspect that a President Bernie would be a step or two behind a President Hillary in managing relationships with allies and other countries.
JustRuss
@Tom: I’ve considered that theory, but once Trump went all-in on the immigrant bashing….no. You don’t play with those matches unless you want to burn something.
Gindy51
@jl: Correction, her HUSBAND was the functioning governor while she went shopping or back home to watch YV and eat Taco Bell.
Ruckus
@Tom:
Stephen Colbert knows he’s spoofing everyone. He is paid to be a comedian. T Rump, if he doesn’t believe the crap that comes out of that ferrets ass on top his head, is just pandering for his own vanity. If he believes it, and I think he does, he’s just plain crazy. But as I’ve been saying for a while, he’s rich and crazy, and that gives him a yooooge bullshithorn.
Baud
You know what’s really rigged the system. The fact that Democrats can’t win elections in large swaths of the country no matter how much better they are than their Republican rivals. That there is a rigged system.
RaflW
@catclub: I think we look at similar indicators and see a different future. A Fed rate hike this fall would be quite bad for US growth prospects. I also fully expect Texas, particularly Houston but probably more of the state, to really start to have a hangover from the huge drop in oil prices.
What looks great to most consumers is a disaster in TX, the Dakotas, a segment of Colorado and other energy states. Add in a Chinese recession and more austerity idiocy in Europe and the past couple years may just have been a macro equivalent of a dead cat bounce.*
I put a lot of weight on Krugman (maybe too much?) but I tend to trust him that the global economy is very weakly recovered, and could easily fall apart given all the VSPs having abandoned rational economic thought.
*Apologies to all the Juicers, but that is the trader term that comes to mind.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: The Smart One strikes again
Is it possible that Jeb is the Stephen Colbert of this campaign, and we are all caught up in the most elaborate ever acting-out of an old, sibling rivalry-inspired, middle-child grudge against his parents?
dedc79
@Amir Khalid: If it’s that you think Bernie doesn’t have the art of diplomacy down (and that Hillary, based in part on her time spent as Secretary of State, does) I can certainly understand the argument and concern.
But if it’s that you think Bernie is more of a hawk than Hillary, more likely to get us into additional foreign entanglements, etc… Well, then I’d want to know what action/vote/statement/interview/whatever is making you think that.
OGLiberal
I don’t worry about Trump as a third-party candidate – he’ll get as much support as Perot and help the Dem candidate. I worry about him as the GOP candidate – and while the GOP establishment wants that less than a heart attack I no longer am confident about it not happening. (it’s hard to oppo research somebody who has no shame – somebody said that recently, maybe in the comments here) GOP voters will vote for whoever is the GOP nominee, even if the nominee were Carrot Top or Crispin Glover in that episode of Letterman. Because lazy brown people and Demon Hillary and Self-Hating Jew Bernie. Hearing Betty’s story is unnerving and worrying.
In short, I worry about a Trump GOP candidacy because, for the love of Pete, Americans are fucking stupid. Especially the white ones. (and I am white and American…and a dude…and the white dudes are the stupidest)
That said – and something that makes me even more sad about the 45%+ of this nation who will never vote for a Democrat – is that Trump is probably the most progressive of the GOP bunch. Yeah, he’s said nasty stuff about Mexicans but the other jagoffs’ policies wouldn’t be much different, even folks like Rubio, Cruz and Bush who have personal/family reasons to be a bit more compassionate on that front. Anything for votes, and their votes hate them some brown people.
gene108
@RaflW:
There are a couple of issues with regard to trade deals.
1. Should the world assume, if a deal is negotiated with a Republican President that his Democratic successor will shit can the deal or visa versa? This is the situation Clinton was in with regards to NAFTA, where most of the deal was negotiated by GHWB’s administration, but passage was delayed, for whatever reason, until Clinton’s term in office. There’s not easy answer.
2. Trade deals are no longer about protectionism really. The WTO has a framework and tariffs around the world are relatively low and either you are part of the system or you are out of it looking in. Capital can pretty freely move around the world and no new trade deal will change this significantly. Trade deals now are about a lot of nuanced and maybe complex negotiations about pushing things to benefit a nation’s interest, like intellectual property protection for the USA.
As such, the reason jobs get shipped overseas has as much to do with a country’s industrial policy as anything else.
In the 1980’s. the Reagan Administration, to the surprise of Wall Street, green lighted a bunch of M&A activity. The age of leveraged buy outs and hostile take overs was born. The movie Wall Street highlights this, when Gordon Gecko buys the airline and says he’s going to strip it of its assets to make his money back.
That’s probably been the biggest driving factor of “why we cannot have nice things”, with regards to factory jobs going overseas, than anything else. The M&A activity that basically shuffles money from really rich people to other really rich people and in the process a lot of not really rich people lose their jobs is probably the biggest factor here.
The whole notion of what employee’s mean to a company and what a company mean’s to an employee has radically changed in the last 35 years, which is completely independent of trade deals.
Other industrialized countries, especially the Northern European countries, are able to protect their middle class jobs a lot better than anything we’ve done and they are all parties to various free trade deals.
Brachiator
@Greg:
And so? It’s not like you can hold these people accountable for their “depraved indifference.”
Also, I would not call it white privilege. It is being the active beneficiary of white racism. But let’s put this aside for a moment.
So you have someone who probably doesn’t live around nonwhite people, goes out of his or her way not to know nonwhite people, or who just doesn’t identify the issues important to nonwhite people to be high on his list of self-interest. Maybe this guy doesn’t have to worry about reproductive rights. And for eight years he has been comfortably stewing in the lie that Obama was the worst thing to ever happen to America, and he is waiting for the FEMA trailers to show up at his door and for a death panel to lay him out. Or he sees Obama as just another politician, a tax and spend Democrat.
And this person sees the gridlocked mess in Washington and reads about Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers laying out all that political money to buy political influence. And despite Romney in the last election cycle and a huge gang of standard issue Republican politicians trying to woo him, this guy looks for answers from Trump, and maybe even from Bernie Sanders.
This guy’s preferences are driving the GOP nuts. Absolutely driving them nuts.
You don’t have to like this guy, or even want him in your party. But it would be bad politics to ignore this guy or to simply write him off as racist. If Trump somehow manages to hang on, or if the GOP finds a way to latch onto some of his message and appeal, it might make for a tougher general election fight.
satby
@Seanly: Not really… my nearsightedness (see above) started improving with presbyopia in my 40s, and I’m 60 now. I’m still nearsighted and should wear bifocals, but I can read and use a computer without glasses.
When I was a teen ager and miserable because I had bad astigmatism and couldn’t wear contacts well, my eye doctor consoled me by telling me my vision would get better as I got much older. I thought he was BSing but he was right. And my current eye doctor told me I might as well hold off because I’ll end up with implants after cataract surgery anyway. Which is still about 10 years off.
But I have a low tolerance for surgery on my eyes, if I need to I hope it’s only once.
Fair Economist
@JPL:
He’s (unjustifiably) mad at somebody so he won’t let him visit? Apparently he’s running to be President of the sixth grade, not of the USA.
RaflW
FYWP has eaten my response to catclub twice, but suffice to say: I think the global economy is headed for a tough patch, and the US is not immune to China’s significant downturn. Elections often turn on the final year’s economy, and I believe our recovery is worryingly tenuous.
Kay
@Gene108:
I think it’s just this patronizing assumption that they don’t know it’s a global economy. Sure they do. They’ve been dealing with it for 25 years. The third largest employer in this county is a Japanese company that makes components for Honda. No one has to tell them it’s a global economy. My son is working for a company in Ohio where he maintains a manufacturing assembly process that was designed and produced in France. They ship what “he” (this process and these machines) make worldwide. You can’t lecture him about “pulling up the drawbridge” or whatever. None of that makes sense to him. He’s not pining away for 1952 or some notion of an assembly line that he’s supposedly clinging to. He’s only 21 years old.
They are the LAST people we should be lecturing on the global economy. They are past that. They want to know what the US will do in these trade deals to benefit US workers. These aren’t “US” companies, anyway, and they know that too. They’re multinational companies. They have no particular allegiance to “the US”, which is fine, but that’s why they need an advocate at the table.
dedc79
@Betty Cracker: I’ve encountered the “I’m not worried about voting for Candidate X because Candidate X is not actually going to do the awful things he says he’s going to do” argument from friends/family before, and I’ve never had any success arguing anyone out of it (at least not until after it was already too late).
That said, it’s a particularly odd fallback position, given that your uncle’s whole premise for supporting Trump is that he will bring real and significant change.
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
I don’t think Bernie is “more” or “less” of a hawk than Hillary. I am not even thinking of the foreign-policy difference between them in those terms. I think that given his relative lack of experience, he may be less adept than she at picking short- and medium-term FP objectives and working towards them.
gene108
@Ruckus:
I agree the whole thing has to be explained and sold about how it will lift all boats over time.
But I think there is a subset of “Trump curious” voters, or Bernie curious voters, or I don’t give a damn both Democrats and Republicans are only for rich people so I might as well stay home and not vote, who really want to see something tangible done to help them make have more money in their paycheck every week other than working longer hours.
eemom
I was honestly shocked recently when a high school classmate/FB friend, who is a woman and a Harvard educated MD, said that Trump was her “hands down” choice, based on similar bullshit about how government needs to be taken away from politicians. This was doubly appalling because we went to Hunter College High School, a formerly all girl school which has been empowering smart women for more than a century (also the alma mater of Elena Kagan, as I’ve mentioned before).
I’ve since discovered this woman is an anti-abortion zealot with 9 — yes, NINE — kids….but I don’t think that explains it.
Another, less insane classmate who also identifies as a republican said she has “issues” with Trump but she can certainly understand how one might think that a person who’s good at managing money would make a good president.
OMFG. That is all.
MomSense
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
We want pictures of Mingobat!!
Germy Shoemangler
all you doubters make me sick. Don’t you believe in miracles?
Trump’s face appeared in a tub of organic butter
Amir Khalid
@eemom:
… And given to buffoons and demagogues? I share your pain.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He really is bad at this.
Betty Cracker
@dedc79: He does think Trump could get an immigration deal passed, though. The point is he doesn’t buy that Trump’s horrible statements on immigration are where we’d end up (or where my uncle would WANT us to end up) but are rather starting from an extreme position to broker a deal in the middle. He believes Trump could actually make a deal, whereas he thinks the other candidates will just keep using immigrants as pawns.
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
Well in this case, you have Betty Cracker talking about a person she knows and who she says is not racist.
She might be wrong, or the person in this story might be deliberately downplaying or ignoring some of Trump’s racist rhetoric because he finds other aspects of Trump’s candidacy appealing.
dedc79
@Betty Cracker: eleventy dimensional chess, indeed.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Best wishes whatever you decide to do.
Kay
@gene108:
No one listens to me but this is the single-most under-rated politician in the Democratic Party:
I don’t care where you look- from voting rights to wages to criminal justice, he’s all over everything.
Baud
@dedc79:
Obama should have proposed immediate U.S. citizenship for all illegals!!!
With a public option!!!
Baud
@Kay:
I listen to you. Looking forward to many more good things from Perez.
Ruckus
@satby:
I got mad at my doc for not telling me that laser surgery actually burns tissue and of course it’s very close to your nose. You don’t forget that smell. Ever. But because it was PRK that I had they do each eye at separate times and the second eye it didn’t bother me at all.
But then how many people wouldn’t have the surgery if they knew or thought about that ahead of time?
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Not great. The low oil prices have not been good for a net oil exporter like Malaysia. The ringgit is looking weak. The introduction of the 6% goods and services tax in April has been a real drag on consumer spending and profoundly unpopular. The KLSE is getting hammered just like everyone else’s stock market. We could be looking at weak growth or maybe even a recession.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: part of the 2012 autopsy, a part that really confused a lot of white Republicans, was that lots of Asian-Americans were offended by all the birtherism and “he doesn’t understand what it means to be an American”. It triggered one of Bill O’Reillys classic moments of Archie Bunker style positive racism: “Why would Asians be liberals? They’re hard-working people!”
catclub
@RaflW: I have arrived! It is like when Yatsuno had to change to Yutsano, or vice-versa because all responses to Yutsy got eaten.
As to the merits: We agree that we have different views of the same world.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I’ve expected China to crash for a while now. Hopefully, things will stabilize soon, even if the growth rate won’t be as vigorous.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
If your uncle is willing to overlook the Donald’s racism, can you really be sure that deep down, he’s not a racist himself?
kindness
Oh Betty…. What are we going to do with you? Your Uncle might not be racist but if he actually votes for Trump over Hillary as a protest vote he is way stupid. Sorry. Might be a nice guy but….
Elizabelle
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
@MomSense:
Mingobat!
Mingobat!
Mingobat!
I have come to really like that name.
jl
@Brachiator: @gene108:
Kay, I am confused about who are accusing of lecturing.
I think gene108 makes some good points. For example, the high dollar policy that the US has pursued on and off since Reagan, and with a vengeance since later part of the Bill Clinton administration has more impact on US manufacturing than any real ‘free trade’ aspects of the recent trade deals. So do picky definitions, and tariff and tax treatments of products at different stages of assembly, which have been a part of recent trade deals.
IP policyhas an impact indirectly, in that it diverts more foreign trade into paying sky high rents to large corporations.
The real dividing line is between large rent seeking US corporations and investment banks, and they are mostly indifferent to workers and smaller businesses. Except maybe large corporations interested in spreading US style IP economics and law around the world may be actively hostile to smaller companies.
I agree with gene108 that a lot of the debate over recent trade deals, and how they harm US workers and smaller businesses is misguided and spends too much time on minor issues, some of which are red herrings thrown out by large corporations to distract people from the real issues.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This is good news for Gov. Jindal. Michelle Malkin must be so proud.
Baud
Remember when liberals thought standing up for immigrants would be a winning strategy. Good times.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
My most racist uncles are dead (and the ones that are still with us are probably Trump-curious “Reagan Democrats”) , but if their ghosts are watching Fox, they think he did.
That was pretty much what made that one goober jump up and yell “You lie!”, IIRC, B Hussein O. wanted to give all the illegal free medicare
Kay
@Baud:
He keeps hinting that he’s going back to Baltimore ( I read about him once and he’s from NY but maybe he lives in Maryland?) He really is talented.
I’ve now heard twice that there’s some big corruption case coming with Ohio Democrats having to do with contracts for red light cameras. The first person who told me is a former Ohio politico who is literally a sex offender and may be crazy, so I discounted that but now I’ve heard it a second time. It would be mayors, if it’s red light camera contracts and mayors in larger cities are all Democrats. I hope it’s a rumor or some kind of bullshit Republicans are spreading.
Baud
@Kay:
Ugh. Hope the rumors are false. We have enough false scandals to deal with.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
It’s a fantastic name. I can’t believe no one (really no one) has ever thought of it before.
dedc79
@Baud: I know. I keep thinking — if only this stuff actually worked for us. The “public option” is the perfect example of how it doesn’t. Pursuing it didn’t bring a single republican to the table to negotiate over some middle ground. Progressive dems just ended up negotiating it away to chase Republican votes that never materialized and to win over frightened “centrist” dems.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: I knew more than a few Rick Scott voters who used that logic for their ballots. Needless to say they were unpleasantly surprised when he really did do all the awful things he promised – which they understood as campaign rhetoric and not actual policy.
Ruckus
@eemom:
OMFG. That is all.
Unfortunately that isn’t all. If it was only a few people who should know better, no big deal. But it isn’t only a few. T Rump speaks to a lot of people. He shouldn’t have anything close to the audience that he does but there you go. This is the crux of the problem, many dems (I think you have to include early President Obama in this) have tried to be the better part rather than any solution. That it has worked a bit in the last few years is rather amazing actually, but that idea that we should burn it all down and start over has real traction. That T Rump is not even within the definition of the word close to that ideal makes no nevermind. Logic is not a strong point to those that want to burn down everything and start over.
Frankensteinbeck
I had to hear all about the women my mother knew who were switching from Democrat to vote Republican because Palin was on the ballot. When the actual numbers came down, they were drowned out by the women who recoiled in disgust and decided they would never vote for McCain if he thought this was a female role model. For similar reasons, not real worried here.
jl
@Baud:
” I’ve expected China to crash for a while now. ”
Are you confusing Chinese economy with its stock market? Worry about the financial effects of its stock market crash on the real economy when the current stock market correction becomes large enough to harm longer term investors. It could fall another 20 percent and still give over 10 percent annual real return from a year ago. Chinese stock market has experienced a massive bubble and should have a massive correction sooner or later.
Government mishandling of foreign exchange stance may be making it worse. Krugman’s recent columns do a good job explaining. (Edit: Trump is 100 percent wrong saying ‘China is calling the tune’)
The correction could have a long way to go and still would not affect fundamentals of Chinese economy. The US has experienced some similar stock market ‘crashes’ in post WWII period with no visible effect on real economy.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Be sure they check pupil size.
http://www.usaeyes.org/lasik/faq/lasik-pupil-size.htm
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Our crack political media is over this, right? asking them them all to explain how it would work?
Mike in NC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The idea worked out so well for his idiot brother.
Kay
@Baud:
Well, this would be a real scandal. It would be horrible because mayors are the whole key to turnout for Democrats. In ’08 Clinton had most of the state Party people but Obama had the mayors. They need both, so it was kind of a draw. The cameras are hated. The feeling is it’s another way to levy fees and that falls hardest on poor people. True. If it’s also corrupt it will be very bad.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@boatboy_srq: I think the “Oh, they don’t really mean it” vote from affluent tote-baggers helps keep the GOP alive.
Hell, it’s, I think, the 2nd Tenant of Broderism: Whatever Republicans say, whatever they do, Republicans are the good sensible Eisenhower moderates they’ve always been, and ever shall be. Praised be comity in the Senate.
WereBear
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Congrats!
Greg
@Brachiator:
I dunno, personally I don’t see how any Democrat of the last 30 years is going to appeal to this hypothetical guy, so I would indeed write him off. I don’t think we need him.
You are describing a portion of the “Reagan Democrats” that the Democratic party has been trying and failing to entice back since 1980, and it just isn’t possible, nor would it be worth it if it was.
Iowa Old Lady
@boatboy_srq: I saw a study that I can’t locate that looked at whether politicians kept their campaign promises. Surprisingly, a large number of them did.
Of course, Trump is a whole different ballgame. I’m not sure he even knows what promises he’s making other than the wall.
ETA: Actually, maybe this was the study:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/03/study-candidates-really-d_n_140548.html
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: With the stipulation that it’s impossible to fully know another person’s heart, it’s my opinion that he’s not a racist. He doesn’t overlook Trump’s racist statements so much as he thinks the statements are stupid and cartoonish but doesn’t think they ultimately signify. At the risk of offering a “some of my best friends” defense, I will note he’s married to a Hispanic woman who is the child of immigrants herself.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I will never get the obsession with this. I know it’s a huge pot of money and they want to skim fees and put it in markets but can they leave nothing alone? I honestly think I am way more conservative than conservatives. They aren’t happy unless they’re wrecking something. Is it really necessary to put people thru this?
wuzzat
@Betty Cracker: It could be worse, Betty. At least he’s not voting for Huckabee.
dedc79
@boatboy_srq: My operating assumptions for evaluating right-wing candidates:
1) If elected, they will work to do all the crazy things they claim they’d do. And they’ll succeed at some of them.
2) If they prevaricate on an issue, assume the worst case scenario.
WereBear
Trump as a protest vote? I could see that happening. But really, Trump is such a hater.
I can understand Betty’s knowing her uncle better than I do. I’m still not comfortable with him thinking that this will “fix” anything.
What, we’ve been hiding the real government and this will make them come out and make things better? This isn’t a sitcom where bringing in a chimp with overalls and making him the CEO results in raises for everyone.
Uncle really wants Trump having access to the football? Really?
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yellow Peril!
Everything old getting barfed up anew.
dedc79
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If they cover this at all, it will be to praise him for bravely starting a conversation that other politicians are too cowardly to have.
some guy
been ages since I have driven out to Cedar Key, always so beautiful over there. The lighthouse is always a fun boat ride, and so tranquil. maybe this weekend
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve heard people say shockingly racist things about their own spouse’s ethnic group. And whether or not Trump means the racist things he says, it’s beyond the pale to say them at all. You’ve probably had occasion to make the latter point to your uncle.
Keith G
First, It is far too early to know who is just blowing the smoke of the day and who, when time to vote comes along, would actually vote for Trump. Folks like to talk shit.
IOW…Hurricane Donald is still too far out to be able to know anything about location or intensity at land fall (if that even occurs at all).
@Brachiator:
And later…
Those are good summations.
Warren is another person who finds a strong audience with the, “It’s a rotten system. It’s rigged…there’s a better way” line of discourse. It’s appealing and a politician who can enunciate these points with the right tone can get a lot of juice.
jl
@NotMax: If Jeb!? is a comic doing a spoof campaign he is the reincarnation of Andy Kaufman.From my experience with friends and students, Asian communities are at least as sensitive to racist xenophobic immigrant bashing as Hispanic. Vietnamese used to be predominantly GOP, but due to immigrant bashing, the GOP is dead dead dead to younger Vietnamese-Americans. Dead, hated and reviled. Because of immigration, and also, anti-science stance, support of student loan rip-offfs. A lot of them say they are independents rather than Democrats, but if their gag reflexes are any indication, they are not voting for the GOP.
Well, keep up the good work, Jeb!
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Nationally, McCain and Palin won 53% of the white woman vote. And fortunately, they did poorly in some of the key non-Southern states with big electoral votes. But that’s still a chunk of women voting for Palin, bless their hearts.
tybee
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
cataract surgery will cure your vision issues. if you need that sort of thing.
WereBear
Yikes. You know dry eyes is very common and may not resolve, I’m sure. Get an honest surgeon.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: Some other commenters have noted the “white privilege” angle, and I think that’s a fair point. It’s easier to shove aside misgivings you’d have on the score if your ass isn’t personally on the line.
tybee
@raven:
truer words were never spoken. well, either reds or troots.
jl
It is interesting that ‘anchor babies’ and birthright citizenship, and actual immigrants coming across the border taking good right thinking white man jobs, is simultaneously the most inflammatory and one of the substantively least economically important issues wrt to lack of good jobs and stagnant compensation in the US.
I cannot help but suspect that its success with a certain subset of the GOP primary voters is bigotry and xenophobia of one sort or another, perhaps conscious, perhaps not.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Congrats!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Since it’s open, Tampa Bay Mayor Bob Buckhorn needs to give his speechwriter a massive raise:
It’s hard to top such superlative pregame trash talk. Having said that, I’ll note that there’s not too much shame in getting beat in the Super Bowl by the Niners with Montana in the last 2 minutes. Though twice is rather pushing it.
Tracy Ratcliff
@Kay: probably too late, the red-light camera vendor for Columbus and Cincinnati pled guilty to federal bribery charges. In Columbus, outgoing Mayor Coleman (D) and the Dem nominee for mayor Ginther say they are both cooperating with the investigation.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/former-red-light-camera-ceo-pleads-guilty-to-bribery-fraud-in-ohio/
http://nbc4i.com/2015/06/23/state-lawmaker-says-red-light-cameras-were-always-all-about-the-money/
SatanicPanic
I always wonder when people are like “the system’s broken” what it is they expect out of it? I mean, I get it, there’s too much money being spent on politics, too much croneyism, etc. But I wonder what it is they think will change in their personal life if the system is fixed, whatever that means.
Amir Khalid
Speaking of foreign-policy skills, here’s one presidential candidate who appears to be completely lacking in them.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Betty Cracker: My sister rails about “the Chinks.” Her daughter? Half Chinese.
Kay
@Tracy Ratcliff:
Right, and I knew Coleman was cooperating but the story I heard was “huge and interconnected and sweeping” so I guess there will be more.
Amir Khalid
@SatanicPanic:
Voting for someone like Trump to repair a broken political system — in my neck of the woods, we’d say that he would repair it the way a mouse would “repair” a pumpkin.
Peale
@SatanicPanic: yep. The institutions don’t work for me…until you look at a place like the Philippines or fairly soon, Brazil, and you realize that that is what going without functioning institutions really starts looking like.
jl
@Amir Khalid:
” he would repair it the way a mouse would “repair” a pumpkin. ”
That is a good one, I like it. Thanks. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I have the first Malaysian maxim for use here in the States.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Par for the course.
Goes along with all the other skills she lacks.
And yes I’ve tried to think of any skills she does have. My list is at zero but that is still above her on the job monetary results, which are all in the negative. OK one skill, negotiating a yooooge golden parachute in her contract. Which was probably done by her lawyer. ETA, for a cut.
TriassicSands
I’ve spoken with numerous people who share varying degrees of pleasure over Trump’s current success. Most, being lefties, just think it’s funny that this is what the GOP has come to. I think that is a terribly shortsighted view.
We have two viable parties in this country and in January 2017 a member of one of those parties is almost certainly going to move into the White House. Anyone who thinks it couldn’t be a Republican — even one of this incredibly sorry lot of thugs and buffoons — is seriously delusional.
Whenever one of the parties nominates its candidate, there is usually a surge in the polls for that candidate. I think most people assume that Clinton is going to be the nominee. When she’s paired against any of the possible Republican candidates, she should have a presumptive candidate advantage, but that certainly isn’t visible in the polls. Clinton is old news. Everyone but the young know her and generally, either like/love or hate her. Unfortunately, the number who hate her is substantial and there is nothing she can do at this point to change those minds. Looking at the early polling for president is scary. Clinton is losing to Trump, Bush, Kasich, and especially Rubio in a number of key states. She’s a weak candidate — she showed that in 2008, and there doesn’t seem to be much difference in 2015.
I’d vote for Sanders over anyone else running, but like most people, I doubt his ability to win the nomination and should he get it, I’m inclined to expect a McGovern type performance in the general election. Calling yourself any variety of socialist in the US is not a likely to be a vote getter. That label will be plastered all over Sanders by the GOP with the help of the media, and it’s hard for me to imagine 50% plus one Americans voting for someone who claims to be a socialist, even if it’s a Democratic socialist, which won’t mean anything to the majority of voters.
So, regardless of whether Trump implodes and one of the other noxious Republicans gets the nomination, I’m afraid there’s a good chance it will be a Republican who wins in 2016. If that’s true, then there is nothing to celebrate in either the turmoil in the GOP or the emergence of Trump. Any one of their candidates will be a disaster for this country and real people will suffer real harm — millions of them, mostly poor and lower class.
Joe Biden’s entry into the race would not improve Democratic chances at all. The single most important fact to keep in mind about the next election is just how stupid (a catch-all term for dumb, ignorant, evil, bigoted, etc.) the American electorate is. We look at Trump and think, how on earth could anyone consider voting for that loud-mouthed, racist buffoon. Meanwhile, millions of Americans, many of whom wouldn’t deny that description, are looking at Trump as a kind of savior. Meet Betty’s uncle.
jl
@Peale: This is just my opinion from talking with people doing voter registration and GOTV, but the complainers who dismiss the system are mostly the self-righteous narcissistic lazy types. They feel they are better or more pure or above the ugliness of social decision making, or they are really sad insecure people who are afraid to engage in actual discussion or debate for fear of not always coming out better than everyone else.
Kay
@Tracy Ratcliff:
To be clear it was always “all about the money” in that cities were using these fines as revenue-generation, I agree with that criticism I oppose that as a trend, fining people in order to fund operations. but “all about the money” gets much, much worse if they were also self-dealing with the contracts.
Chicago too.
What a great idea this was, huh? Fabulous.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
There’s not one decision, foreign policy wise during the Obama administration where Hillary Clinton was not on the side of going more Hawk.
Betty Cracker
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: That’s terrible. In my uncle’s defense, I’ve known him for decades and have never heard him utter a racial slur of any kind, unlike many of our relatives, who are overt racists. He recognizes that some of Trump’s statements are offensive. He just doesn’t think Trump is worse than any other Republican (arguably true) or that the damage he could inflict would be worse than continuing with the status quo (wrong, IMO).
rikyrah
@JPL:
Yeah…cancel the dinner.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Brachiator
@Keith G:
Yep. Absolutely agree. There is no way to know how much of Trump’s support is theoretical until we get some actual primaries. Backing Trump costs nothing now.
Also, the main importance of Trump’s presence is to put pressure on the GOP to keep to the right and to promise to do something (even if bad and disastrous) about immigration and economic policy. This may prevent a GOP candidate from pretending to be moderate in the general election.
rikyrah
@catclub:
AND
President Barack Obama accomplished all of this with one political party choosing to commit ECONOMIC TREASON against this country.
NotMax
@Triassic Sands
There’s an old country saying which applies to the R’s entire sorry lot of swinish wanna-bes, rapacious ignoramuses, blustering jingoists and puffed up poseurs.
They ain’t fit to tote guts to a bear.
bemused
@Hal:
I wonder how high the two men’s blood pressure was by the time they saw their docs. I doubt watching Fox and then having a blame fest in the waiting room just before doc appts relaxed them.
Can’t have been restful for you either.
rikyrah
@OGLiberal:
White folks fall for the okeydoke pretty much every single time. Follow the shiny object that the GOP throws their way to explain why they vote against their best interests. We have folks who do it election after election.
jl
This is taking things to a whole new level: There is a pic, so you can judge for yourself.
Woman Sees Trump’s Face In Her Tub Of Butter
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/butter-donald-trump-woman
J R in WV
@dedc79:
Ya know, there IS more to diplomacy than war versus not-war, right? I mean, that may be all the republicans see in their attitude about foreign relations.
But in the real world, there are serious diplomatic issues between friendly countries every day, as well as with not-so-friendly countries that aren’t yet deadly enemies. And this is where a difference between Sanders and Clinton may crop up.
The rest of the world, our allies, are democratic socialists – like Bernie. So his attitudes and beliefs may work better with our allies than Clinton’s.
Amir Khalid
@jl:
Yep, that looks like Trump all right.
Gwangung
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: particularly since Obama is from HAWAII.
raven
This website sucks.
Nutella
@Kay:
It is the red light camera company. They’ve been nailed for bribery in Chicago, Columbus, and Cincinnati so far. More to come, I expect.
Baud
@raven:
Tech-wise or content-wise or both?
NotMax
@jl
Pareidolia on parade.
If spread on the Jesus toast, the universe will implode in a puff of fatuousness.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Are you talking about the content or the speed?
chris
@Hildebrand:
Isn’t that always the case? I mean that being fed up with the current state of affairs doesn’t necessarily mean one is a racsist birther. A great many of us on the left are entirely fed up and don’t derive much comfort from the idea of Clinton as President. At least Trump doesn’t buy into the conventional wisdom nonsense about “entitlement reform” whereas I suspect that Clinton, along with the rest of the very serious people, thinks making grannies have to survive on dog food is the way to fix the economy.
Thoughtful Today
Bernie’s very sharp.
Anyone saying otherwise has never listened to the man:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Bernie+Sanders
Bernie’s quick mind and compelling arguments are exactly why we’re not having more Democratic Presidential debates.
Baud
@chris:
Why do you think she believes that?
Kay
@Nutella:
Have to love that the regressive taxing mechanism is also corrupt. People will just adore that.
raven
Painfully slow!
Baud
@Thoughtful Today:
If he’s that quick and compelling, he shouldn’t need many.
Baud
@raven:
Tech-wise or content-wise or both?
rikyrah
@eemom:
If she is an anti-abortion zealot….then there is her shiny object. No amount of anything will have her vote Democratic. So, I could care less about which one of the GOP clown car will get her vote.
raven
@Baud: The content isn’t goin anywhere!
JPL
@raven: The site is going to be upgraded soon.. It will be huge and you will love it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Tom Perez is the REAL DEAL.
And, I can’t wait to vote for him for any office.
NotMax
@raven
Any ETA on getting the kitchen back?
Baud
@JPL:
Trump Juice!
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: I am wondering about the classiness of the upgrade. Are you privy to information about it?
Fair Economist
@Nutella: The company that’s been tagged for bribery ran the red light cameras in the city immediately south of mine, which once gave my husband a red light ticket for a rolling right turn. Charming.
J R in WV
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I had an uncle who would always ALWAYS after we were there for a few minutes tell a racist joke, really bad ones. We were all liberals, even my folks, who were (nearly) life-long Republicans, were against segregation.
Then one day my cousin brought her girlfriend down to visit Grandma. GF was a black woman, choir singer, teacher, sweet person.
Uncle never told another racist joke the rest of his life! Because Family came first for him, and his niece was a precious part of his family. That increased my regard for Uncle no end. People do change, for the better, sometimes.
Baud
@J R in WV:
Racists are more complex than we sometimes acknowledge, given our abhorrence of that belief system.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@satby:
I’m 46 and my eyesight is not budging, sadly. I’m definitely noticing some issues with reading, but it’s done nothing for my distance vision. I probably wouldn’t want to correct all the way to 20/20 since most of my hobbies are up close (knitting, reading, goofing off on the internet).
Post-exam, it looks like I’m still a very good candidate. Now I have to make the “frivolous elective surgery” decision.
Nutella
About those miscellaneous people being for Trump: Someone here reminded us of Jesse Ventura as the same kind of campaigner, a loud-mouthed outsider who a lot of different kinds of people voted for.
He had nothing except his outsiderness and his apparent boldness to offer so every voter imagined that Ventura agreed with his own particular issues. They voted for what they imagined he was and got a guy who really just didn’t want to be there running the place for years after the election.
I think a lot of these “At least Trump will be a change from the usual!” are like that: They assume he will change things in the direction they want without any evidence whatsoever that he has any direction other than loud.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Could be worse. Could be elective scalp reduction surgery.
:)
raven
@NotMax: They got the lions share of the ceiling done. It would have been quicker to just sheetrock it but saving the bead board was worth it. We had an issue with the height of the cabinets, they are going to be a good bit higher than they were, but we worked it out. Hopefully the trim will be done tomorrow and they can prime it. We are going with Trespa countertops so that will take a week or so to get from the supplier.
raven
@J R in WV: Are you going to be here more than two minutes???
I’ve posted this about 5 times! Are you sure Don West was fired by Emory??
“Forced to leave Oglethorpe during the period of Red-baiting, he continued to edit religious publications and teach creative writing. He testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in Memphis, Tennessee. He was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee but never testified.”
rikyrah
@Kay:
Red light cameras are nothing but graft. The scandal is real
OGLiberal
I’ve seen Donald appeal to people on both sides in my admittedly very small (by choice) Facebook world because:
a) they are ignorant….again, some are very smart people but just ignorant politically,,,
…and…
b) they want to hate on brown people but hating on people owned by our ancestors is a bit (although less, recently) unacceptable, so better to hate on brown people from South of the border. (and they were more than happy to hate on Ferguson and Ferguson-like protesters until rat-head made Mexicans the greatest fear ever – better to hate on the other-other than on the American-other)
If I recall, I don’t think Perot had a huge focus on immigrants. Trump breaks that mold – again, don’t think he cares either way but it’s a way for him to get folks from the other side – just a small amount – to support him. It’s politically correct to hate on brown people not born here. And I guess its politically correct to hate on brown people born here but whose parents are not legal citizens. That the former is acceptable is sad. That the latter is acceptable is not just un-American but un-Constitutional.
And, again, I don’t think these folks have a huge problem with these immigrants….it’s their way of hating on brown people by using some sort of “well, they’re here illegally” argument. Can’t use that with blacks since their ancestors forcibly brought them here. So let’s hate on the Mexicans.
Gin & Tonic
230+ comments down in an open thread is not the best place for maximum coverage, but here’s a photo from today, the Potemkin Steps in Odessa, Ukraine. It’s Independence Day, and those people, contrary to what you might read on RT, are supporters of Ukrainian independence.
NotMax
@raven
Sort of like soapstone, then.
Planning a special menu for the first meal preparation?
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Fascists.
/BiP
raven
@NotMax: Not sure, we’ve been doing ok with Trader Joe’s but we need to get back to better food soon. I guess we’ll wait for the whole shebang to be done before we have anyone over.
Brachiator
@TriassicSands:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You have elegantly summed up why Trump is appealing to an increasingly angry and frustrated group of voters. On the one hand you have the perception that the Republicans are a bunch of do-nothing politicians who are servants of the big money interests, and who have shipped off American jobs to China and other countries while forcing people to fight with illegal immigrants and tech visa holders for the remaining jobs here.
On the other side, you have a bunch of beneficent elitists who think that citizens are a bunch of dumb f# cks who must be dragged kicking and screaming towards some progressive promised land, whether they want it or not, and whether or not it will actually do anything for them.
Since no one actually believes that democracy works, some people figure that they might as well support the tyrant who listens to them, and who promises to protect them.
This rarely works out. But anyone who does not understand what is happening is clearly not as smart as they think they are.
Your assessment of Clinton is a little puzzling:
A couple of key passages in a 2008 retrospective come to mind:
I did not support Clinton in 2008 and am not blind to her vulnerabilities. The key question is whether she learned anything from her earlier defeat, and if she is a good enough politician to learn and to build on her strengths.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4978839&page=1&singlePage=true
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Nazi’s. /BiP
Thoughtful Today
Bernie’s message resonates, those that have listened to him understand that.
Bernie’s got an extensive record on YouTube that’s growing every day, it’s one of the factors making him a competitor and opening up the Democratic field.
Bernie on CNN’s Crossfire debating Republicans Rick Santorum and S.E. Cupp is worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UUfGhRWmTU
Thoughtful Today
“Good grief.” -Charlie Brown
dedc79
@J R in WV: I was responding to amir and specifically his suggestion that sanders might be more hawkish than clinton. Of course there’s more to FP than war or no war, but some of our biggest screwups in the past 25 years have involved that very decision. So I think assessing a candidates hawkish ness is important.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Looking for brown shirts, but I don’t see any.
Thoughtful Today
!-o
Gotta love how the worst foreign policy escapade, perhaps in all of American history, is simply waved away as inconsequential.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Bob would.
@Thoughtful Today: Who is waving what away?
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
My pre-surgery correction had been a little bit better than 20/20 and post it is 20/20. So my doc made me a pair of minimal correction lenses for night driving. I use them rarely as they make my correction about 20/15 which I like but make seeing the gauges difficult now that my near vision is getting worse. But I would suggest having correction to 20/20 if possible, your reading glass needs shouldn’t change but you will appreciate the distance correction, most likely even more at night. Anyway that’s my experience.
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
I don’t recall making any such suggestion.
dedc79
@Amir Khalid: you posed the question: “is hillary really more hawkish than bernie?”
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
I refer you to my comment #122.
Ruckus
@dedc79:
That’s not a suggestion, it’s a question. And while she may have been more “hawkish” than Sanders at one time, the question is, Is she really more hawkish than him now? Since her stint as senator and her vote on Iraq, which she has said was wrong, she has been SOS and seen/heard things that would be different than a senator would. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt now, which I wouldn’t have a few years ago. I’ll also give her that benefit specifically because she accepted SOS from President Obama and because she seemed to have done a good job at it.
I believe that is what Amir was getting at with his question.
Thoughtful Today
Yes.
Hillary is absolutely more hawkish than Bernie.
mclaren
That is not “a lovely salt marsh.”
That is a swamp, my dear.
Creature from the Black Lagoon ahoy!
Thoughtful Today
That’s no swamp!
That’s Iraq!
Because what could go wrong with a land war in Asia?
/facepalm
dedc79
@Amir Khalid: Thought i replied last night, but wordpress must have eaten the comment. Certainly didn’t mean to mischaracterize your position on Sanders. I’ve gone back and read your comments and I still can’t figure out what your concern is with him.
That he’s an old white man? Well, HiIlary is an old white woman. Hell, we had Condoleeza Rice as SOS for a while and that didn’t go so great. I’m not going to write off the merits of having a young, female SOS from a diverse background as a result.
That Vermont is not a very diverse state? It’s hard to see what that has to do with the conduct of foreign policy.
You appear to have some hunch that he won’t be good at diplomacy, but you haven’t provided a reason for it.