Nothing to see here:
The Republican Party has largely abandoned its platform of fiscal restraint, pivoting sharply in a way that could add trillions of dollars in federal debt over the next decade.
Cutting spending to balance the budget was almost religion to the Republican Party for much of the past eight years. But all year long, despite their control of the White House and Congress, Republicans have not taken steps to balance the budget, to overhaul entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, or to arrest the growth of the country’s $20 trillion in debt.
With the House passing a critical budget resolution this past week, GOP lawmakers are charging forward next week with plans to cut taxes in a way that could add more than $1.5 trillion to the government’s debt over 10 years, with the goal of legislation by early next month. That is on top of an effort to significantly increase military spending. White House officials say their focus is on growing the economy now and dealing with the debt later.
This is nothing new, and not a switch at all. This is the Republican MO, and quite consistent. When they are in power, they spend wildly, enacting irresponsible tax cuts for the rich, blowing up the military budget, and if that doesn’t do the trick, starting a recreational war or two. Then, when they inevitably lose power briefly because of their own hubris, and money is once again tight and the budgets blown out of control from their feckless behavior, they become budget hawks to constrain anything done by liberals.
And the media plays along with it every time, pretending that the GOP and a couple of douchebag bluedogs like Evan Bayh and Harold Ford actually care about the national debt and the deficit. And they fall for it every time. They don’t want to shrink government to the size that they can drown it in the bathtub, they just want to transfer all the money to the Koch and Mercer families bathtubs to roll in it.
aimai
When you are right, you are right. Do you think I should stop thinking about GOP politics as meaningfully informed by their stated principles? AFAF.
Baud
I agree, although a lot of people continue to believe that the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility. Maybe if the mainstream media actually reports that the GOP has “abandoned” that, some of the people will finally understand.
germy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/07/democrats-are-winning-some-impressive-special-elections-at-the-state-level-why/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-politics%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.c841de1daea0
rikyrah
The EVIL ONE told you years ago;
‘ Deficits don’t matter’
Yes. You have nailed it, Cole.
Their budget is by sociopaths, for sociopaths.
The.entire.lot.of.them.???
rikyrah
@Baud:
Their sociopathy is laid out bare in the budget. THAT is who they are.
satby
@Baud: The media in this country is the largest enabler and cover for the slow rolling coup being carried out against our democracy.
guachi
Back in 2006 or so when Andrew Sullivan still had his website I wrote in and actually got published as a reader comment.
My comment was what you said but with numbers. That is, deficits as a % of GDP went up under Republican Presidents but down under Democratic Presidents. And this was *before* the massive deficits at the end of Bush in 2008 and 2009.
Every Democratic President post-WWII has lowered the deficit. Every single one.
germy
Here’s what I don’t understand: The professional republican politicians can turn on a dime. They’re shameless in how they pivot from “libruls are bankrupting this country!” to “deficits don’t matter.”
But what happens to all the amateur conservatives who spent the last eight years screaming about the out of control deficit in the comments section of every online media I visit, both local news and national?
I notice more than a few of them have gone silent. I wonder what logic they’ll use when they start commenting again. I’m guessing they’re waiting for fox talking points to parrot.
SFAW
Suggested edit to Paletta’s opening line.
germy
Was there any pushback from his conservative commenters?
Baud
@rikyrah:
@satby:
You don’t have to convince me. Nonetheless, polls show that, even after Bush and Obama, voters still think more favorably of Republicans when it comes to the economy and fiscal issues. I can’t understand it, but it would be great if we could break that thinking.
debbie
@Baud:
If this administration doesn’t convince them that their belief in the GOP is misplaced, nothing will.
SFAW
@germy:
Such a kidder, you are!
germy
@SFAW: You’re right. No logic from the “checkmate, libtards!” folks starring in the comments section of my local news.
randy khan
And you may ask yourself, well
How did I get here?
Mai.naem.mobile
I listen to this small time asshole RW talk show host as long as I can handle it. One of his routine rants is blaming Obama for the debt that was from the 08 bailout. He’ll bitch about Dubbya in general but never blames for that debt. Assholes.I am just tired of being outraged.
mad citizen
It’s just a matter of nonstop repeating the facts. I wish the Democratic leaders would do so, ALL THE TIME!
Also so tired of how the Democratic president always gets to clean up the mess. We’ve not been able to see the full extent of Democratic leadership and policies because by the time they’re done cleaning up the Republican messes, somehow (Electoral College, Russians, etc.) an R gets into power.
As a lifelong Hoosier, completely agree that Evan Bayh is a douchebag. A totally empty suit.
MattF
@guachi: Well. One of the defining characteristics of Sullivan’s worldview is innumeracy. He tried, once, to make some point about economics– but it was such a spectacular failure that I don’t think he ever tried again.
ETA: Just to make the point, Republican policy is to comfort the comfortable. Period.
debbie
@Mai.naem.mobile:
I do the same with Glenn Beck from time to time. It is maddening. I’d share the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard him say, but it’s impossible to pick just one.
Gvg
Lower taxes and wishful thinking. Republican’s usually lower taxes. People usually want lower taxes for themselves. People usually want to think they are good. Lower deficit spending is popularly deemed good ( truth is, it depends). Therefore people assume willfully that their preferred policy will result in all good things including lower deficits, plus whatever spending they approve of. Trying to counter this is hard because…it’s something like trying to convince someone of the truth when their paycheck depends on the opposite. Or like revealing there is no Santa Clause.
rikyrah
@germy:
They never gave two shyts about the deficit until a Black man became President.
So now, they are back to not caring.
p.a.
Not snark: what % of the not-conservative-shill media lets Rethugs get away with this b/c they are lazy and it’s the CW, vs what % is just too stoopid to understand what is really basic math? Is our juornamalists learning?
Jonny Scrum-half
@rikyrah: You don’t think they “cared” about deficits under Clinton?
germy
Stayed up to watch SNL last night. At 10pm, NBC played a 1979 episode (musical guest Tom Petty) and then Jason Aldean did the intro to the new episode; sang Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”
Honus
@Baud: um, and nobody seems to recall that Clinton left office with essentially negative unemployment and a trillion dollar surplus. That Bush promptly squandered.
MattF
@p.a.: They believe that the politics works, that policy = choice of slogans, that a political edge overrides any conceiveable long-term issue. It’s all politics, it’s only politics
debbie
@germy:
Loved them both! Did you stay up for Weekend Update?
Amir Khalid
As I’ve read many a time in these threads, die Republikanische Partei von heute has but two principles: feed the rich, and fuck the poor.
debbie
@Honus:
The GOP took credit for the surplus after Clinton. That’s what they do.
Steeplejack
The (always unsupported) phrase “overhaul [or ‘reform’] entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid” makes me want to scream. They never explain what actually needs to be overhauled, except for too much aid/money going to the peons and/or “those people.”
ETA: Or “It’s going to go broke in 30 years, so we need to gut it right now!”
germy
@Mai.naem.mobile:
They’re usually the most appalling because their raw ambition compels them to spout extra outrageous bullshit. They’re dreaming of the big time. The top dogs like shannity and beck are crazy, but they’ve got that mellow, self-satisfied thing going on, knowing they’re at the top of their game.
My college radio station a few years ago had some young republicans on. They had a regular show and repeated the usual stuff. It was sort of obvious they were hoping to land juicy jobs with a major wingnut market.
I was tempted to prank them. Call in and tell them I was a fox producer and how impressed I was with their professionalism, and offer them a “job” but I didn’t do it. Twenty years ago I would have, but I’ve lost the comic spark that sustained me.
germy
@debbie: Yes, the notorious RBG!
Amir Khalid
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Yes, Republicans did care about deficits during Bill Clinton’s presidency. I remember this well: when his Administration was running a surplus and starting to reduce America’s national debt, they argued in favour of deficits and keeping the national debt up.
Honus
@debbie: I don’t know that they took credit for it but they made a big deal about “giving it back to the taxpayers” and then starting a costly useless war that’s still costing us and will for decades in the future. At a time when the Syrians and the Iranians were reaching out to us to help us defeat al Qaeda. Yeah, I remember that and want to flay those right wing assholes when they talk about patriotism. They’ve killed more aamericans than any terrorist organization.
Gvg
@Jonny Scrum-half: they cared a lot about deficits under Clinton and used it to the point of nonsense. I recall it was also used against Republican’s back before Reagan but not recently at least not effectively. People are largely wrong about what they know about macroeconomics and it’s easy to get them upset about the deficit. All of them, including the democrats. The change to not attacking when it’s a republican president started around Reagan but he still got some attacks over it and so did Bush 1. Bush 2 didn’t get much of an attack and it was ineffective and died out. This shows that tribalism had infected the voters to a serious degree and that many of the party leaders knew they were lying.
Obama was attacked by racists but it wasn’t the only thing going on then and even the racism was affecting how white democrats were treated before him. I don’t see any way to avoid it while still doing right things so we just have to keep on keeping on. Oh and I would like economics to become more taught starting in middle school. I hate to pile more on the kids since my nephews have had more homework from preschool on then I ever had but economic ignorance is killing us.
Baud
@Honus:
I think some of that is our fault. How often do we talk favorably about the good things Clinton did, as opposed to arguing over the negative things? You see some of that with Obama too.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Well before Clinton. Reagan bashed Carter’s deficits.
patrick II
It is called the two Santa Claus theory. A republican named Jude Wanninski made up the strategy in 1974. When the republicans are in office they lower taxes and keep or heighten government spending (usually on Military) (the two santa clauses) when democrats are in republicans complain about deficits and government excess. They have been doing it as a conscience strategy since the 1970’s. The goal is that eventually there will be so much debt the government will be shrunk in size and it will all be the fault of the democrats. It’s a long term, purposeful strategy that everyone, particularly our free press and gutless democrats, can’t seem to remember happening. Its a long-term strategy, we fight it as a tactic, arguing each cut or each tax piecemeal.
kindness
It’s more insideous that that John. When the inevitable comes and Republicans fall from power they then use the huge hole they just finished blowing in the national treasury as justification to cut all the social programs they’ve hated and wanted to cut since their inception 90 years ago.
Rinse & Repeat. And the band keeps playin’ on.
germy
Promising to “slash taxes” is popular because many people see corruption and wastefulness in their own local governments. And so unfortunately they come to believe paying taxes is throwing money away. This notion is reinforced when they hear drive time talk radio.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
And then, as President, Reagan posted deficits way bigger than Carter’s.
the Conster
When Dems are in power “big government” means “those people” are successfully laying equal claim to the benefits of government programs. When Republicans are in power it’s implicitly understood that “big government” is working to keep “those people” down, and everyone in the Establishment and media looks away while the Treasury is looted. Rinse repeat.
debbie
@Honus:
Ah, you haven’t been listening. John Kasich et. al still constantly wave that surplus around like it was their achievement. Baud’s right; it was our fault for not loudly objecting to that lie.
JPL
Trump is going after Corker today, so I assume that Fox news must have mentioned Corker’s concerns.
Senator Bob Corker “begged” me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said “NO” and he dropped out (said he could not win without…
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster: When Republicans say “deficit” they mean “welfare.” I don’t know if media figures miss this, because even though it’s obvious they’re not that bright, or choose to cover it up because they agree with the gist.
Citizen_X
There’s a “moral” component, too. Any redistribution of wealth downwards is a moral outrage. Redistribution upwards is the natural order of things. And because the racist and fundamentalist factions are, at base, all about heirarchy, they support this even when it leaves them impoverished.
MazeDancer
A woman in West Virginia who can’t live on her $735 monthly disability check, even though her “home” is an actual shack with no water, sometimes digs for roots at the end of the month to sell them. Apparently, not unheard of in WV.
There was an article about her in WaPo couple days ago, if you missed it. Thought of John Cole, of course, because it was WV. And the article had that WV juxtaposition of impossible poverty and richness of natural beauty. The woods where she digs looked beautiful in the picture. Her life looked like sheer misery. Very sobering.
schrodingers_cat
The media bats for the Rs because most of them are Rs. Look at the faces on your TV, most of them belong to the demographic that supported T the most. Old, white, male and wealthy.
Best Peasant
I’d say the Republicans have this Two Santa Claus thing down pat.
AnonPhenom
Republicans and their donors don’t care about deficits or government spending, per se.
They care WHAT government spends money on. If it goes directly in their pockets, great.
But if it is used to reduce the risk and uncertainty in the lives belonging to the work force and general population, that directly reduces Republican donors social and political influence. Hence, their hatred of SSI, Medicare, the ACA, Food Stamps, etc…
They are only concerned with “The Debt” when they want “Entitlement Reform”
Fuck. Them.
danielx
Lather, rinse, repeat. Been watching it for decades; the playbook has not changed. The only surprising thing is the number of people who still fall for itl
Patricia Kayden
@germy: Yay!!!! That’s something to be happy about. Hope that portends well for Democrats next November. Trump can only get worse and tick more voters off. I don’t see how passing tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires is a winning strategy for the GOP.
JPL
@MazeDancer: According to the repubs, she should just pick up and move to where the jobs are. Nickel and Dimed by Ehrenreich, should be required reading for anyone interested in running for state or federal office.
germy
@Patricia Kayden: I personally can’t wait to vote.
Baud
@germy: Early and often.
OzarkHillbilly
@MazeDancer: Root digging is a common practice in the hills and hollers. When jobs are few and far between it is a source of income. Sadly, a fair # of root diggers are very short sighted and don’t leave enough plants to propagate future generations.
gene108
@Baud:
Bill did a lot of good things as President. But he was too conservative for the tastes of liberals, who focused on what they deemed as negative.
We saw the impact last year, when younger Bernie, the under 30 crowd, who weren’t old enough to remember the 1990’s, zeroed in on all the negative cticism from the Left like welfare reform, the crime bill, etc., as well as whatever Russian bots were pushing.
We need to understand there is a whole industry of right-wingers to shout about how awful Democrats are. We don’t need to make their jobs easier by constantly criticizing Democrats, and not talking about the good things Democrats do.
Baud
@gene108: Yes, I agree. I left Daily Kos for Balloon Juice in 2010 for just this reason, although it was Obama rather than Clinton who could do nothing right.
aimai
@rikyrah: I’m not so sure that is true. I believe Democrats have been accused of being the free spending, liberal, party spending on the undeserving and specifically urban and non white communities for a long time. Deficit hawks, in both parties, were always trying to reign in all spending on butter and bread while pushing up spending on guns.
matt
Our media is actively trying to kill us. That includes Facebook and Twitter.
Ohio Mom
@Gvg: Be careful what you wish for. In our well-regarded suburban school district, my kid had a unit on economics every year, starting in early elementary school.
He learned lots of gems, including my all-time favorite from sixth grade: “a Public Good is a business run by the government.”
It’s just as easy for the state to mandate a right-wing and libertarian curriculum as it it is for them to mandate a liberal one.
When I was growing up in NYC, my high school economics class focused half on the history of banking and half on labor history. My assigned presentation was on the Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and boy, did that make an impression on me.
But in those days, teachers had much more leeway, there were hardly any standardized tests to teach to. My kid’s teachers had to bite their tongues and teach what was going to be on the big end-of-year test.
aimai
@MazeDancer: I just read that article. When POC try to make ends meet on the low end of the economy–i.e. Eric Garner and the selling of “loosies” they are excoriated, attacked, and killed. This poor woman was scavenging to make ends meet but she was also living an isolated life in that shack because her own relatives, who were relatively wealthier, who were living right next to her would not share their wealth with her. She borrowed water from her close relative but she was right down the street from other relatives with running water and laundry facilities. There was an enormous, cruel, hideous amount of dysfunction and family exhaustion and isolation behind her current situation. If her entire family clubbed together they could substantially raise their standing but instead each of the more dysfunctional/ill/disorganized members were left to fall on their own.
Ohio Mom
@aimai: I was similarly stunned by the lack of family coehesiveness. Also wondered why SNAP/food stamps weren’t mentioned — aren’t they in the mix?
Another thing that struck me was that some of the people mentioned in that article were getting pretty expensive medical care, for example chemo. Now of course I want everyone to get the medical care they need, this is not a criticism. Just weird to me that some sources of assistance, like medical care, are accessible but others that are even more basic — food, water, shelter — are not. The “system” is as disorganized and dysfunctional as that family.
Kelly
@Gvg:
This is so frustrating and the other reason we can’t have nice things.
germy
Someone dropped their lunch on the sidewalk, and it looks oddly familiar
https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/image/166150480659
Kelly
@Ohio Mom:
AAARGH
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Pretty much. My impression is that “conservative” ideology says that rich people respond only to rewards, while poor people respond only to punishment. So we need to lavish rich people with praise and shower them with money in the hopes they’ll stop behaving like sociopaths, while we need to make poverty as miserable and dehumanizing as possible to punish the poor for not making more money.
Patricia Kayden
@guachi: And yet you always hear Republicans running their mouths about deficits. I rarely ever hear about Democrats doing so although they’re the ones to bring them down during their administrations. It’s a mixed up, crazy world.
Ohio Mom
@Kelly: There were many other infuriating bits over the years but that is the one that requires no background or set-up so it is the one I use as an example.
When I spoke to the teacher, she indicated she knew better but was in an impossible spot.
It is too much to expect all the kids to understand that “This isn’t true, I am only telling you this because this is the “right” answer on the test you will eventually have to take.” After all, half of all students have below average IQs, and even the ones in the top half aren’t all paying very good attention.
And the teacher has the entire district’s house values on her shoulders: the test scores have to be as high as possible so that the district retains its A+ rating so that people want to live there and vote for school levies.
bemused
@Baud:
Deficits only bother R voters when Dems are in control. They are fine with Republican deficits because they think money is going to rain on them and not those moochers when Dems have the wallet. Dick Cheney famously said deficits don’t matter. Guess they didn’t hear that on Fox. R’s in power aren’t going to give tax cuts to lower and middle classes or at best, throw a few pennies at them. I don’t know why those voters are ok with that when the bulk of tax cuts go to the top draining government services and benefits they like and count on. They get taken for easy marks every time. It’s a mental illness, imo.
bemused
@Amir Khalid:
A tiny quibble. I think it’s more accurate to say they feed the rich and fuck everyone else.
Honus
@aimai: I read the article yesterday. First, it’s Logan County, Which is about as far from Cole as You can get and still be in West Virginia (in a lot of ways, not just geographically). I recall it said her brother lives just down the road and has a new pickup and a boat and makes 150k as a mine electrician. No doubt the whole clan voted for Trump and Shelly capito. She’ll be lucky to have her 735month disability in a few years.
Patricia Kayden
@matt: I wonder if someone on the Left couldn’t come up with social media to compete with Twitter and Facebook. Facebook allows its users to threaten violence. And even kicks of its users who complain about being harassed such as Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station.
mai naem mobile
I doubt I will be alive for it because Dolt45 is going to cause me to stroke out,but shit coming out about Dolt45 in 25-40 years as stuff is declassified is going to be really interesting and I am guessing jawdropping. Like the Billy Graham and Nixon anti semitic stuff.
Cheryl Rofer
@JPL: And Corker responds:
Kelly
@Ohio Mom: I am sympathetic to school teachers. Dang few are in it for the money or the summers off. The money isn’t that good and the summers are spent taking classes to maintain certification and skills or earning just a bit more money on a side job. Better schools are one of the nice things we really can afford but the right wingers convince enough people that it’ll be fine if the atheist commie teachers didn’t do so much fraud and waste. The other terrible bind for schools is teaching can’t be automated much. We need smart, caring, talented people.
CarolDuhart2
@Patricia Kayden: We used to rely on blogs which can be monitored and controlled. Facebook and Twitter, are like what, 7-10 years old?
Roger Moore
@AnonPhenom:
Shorter: Republicans want to shrink government until it’s too small to help Those People.
bemused
@Cheryl Rofer:
Funny but Corker is going out, right? I’d be impressed if any R planning to run again would say what they think but zero chance of that happening.
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: lol
Sadly, it’s true.
James Powell
@Baud:
Right. I didn’t leave Daily Kos, Daily Kos left me. During the Bush/Cheney years I pretty much had Daily Kos on background. Now it’s like the only time I go there is if someone I know directs me there.
For reasons that have been discussed to death, hysterical extremism doesn’t fuel the Democratic electorate like it does the Republican base.
Cheryl Rofer
@bemused: Corker has said he’s not up for re-election.
This is the opposite of what Trump said.
Amir Khalid
@bemused:
Or more succinctly: feed the rich and fuck the rest.
Amir Khalid
@Cheryl Rofer:
Poor Dotard. He just doesn’t have the attention span to keep his lies straight, does he?
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
That’s unbelievable, coming from a Republican! Hope it’s the first of many from more than a few GOPers.
James Powell
@Ohio Mom:
No, it’s easier. Liberals do not show up with pitchforks and torches to demand that right-wing curricula be changed or rejected. Right-wingers get stuff banned. They get people fired.
It’s surely more complicated than this, but there is a failure on the part of educators to recognize the political propaganda included in what is supposed to be politically neutral economics education.
GregB
@James Powell:
Kos still does a great job at electoral updates, rundowns and analysis on the daily election post.
But yes, I don’t frequent the threads there anymore.
mai naem mobile
@Cheryl Rofer: Corker is wrong about one thing. It’s a children’s day care center not an adult day care center. A specialozed daycare for children with special behavioral needs. Adults in an adult day care center behave better.
mai naem mobile
Bob Corker with no fuck left to give. Didn’t think I would ever see that out of a Tennessee GOPr. Shit,any Southern GOPr.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@satby:
I was reminded this morning – again – of the embargoed “Apprentice” outtakes. The story rolling now is that the idiot was trashing black, Latino, Jew, female.
This should have seen the program shuttered. Instead, somebody continued the 35 year campaign to foist his idiot opinions and face into the mainstream. I want to know who and why.
debbie
@JPL:
and it got even better, following the dot dots:
Patricia Kayden
@germy: Republicans have shown that being hypocritical doesn’t matter. They’ll just spout the latest Conservative talking points and have amnesia about what they said just a few months ago. They’re professional at it by now since they’ve been doing it for decades.
Cheryl Rofer
There is always a breaking point. Republicans supported Nixon until they didn’t.
Corker is a serious Republican – helped to get the Iran deal past Congress – and understands the stakes.
We won’t know if this is a breaking point until we see how others respond. My suspicion is that we’re not there yet. But each move in the right direction makes subsequent moves easier.
GregB
It’s going to be fun and games and paper towel tossing and insults and the hope of massive tax cuts until Trump starts a war in North Korea and there are 10,000 dead American soldiers and half a million dead on the Korean peninsula.
bemused
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yes and Corker has many, many months to needle Demented Donnie. I just saw a photo of Corker surrounded by reporters and he had this half smirk on his face. Gotta hunch he plans to enjoy himself not giving a fuck.
J R in WV
@guachi:
Not only do deficits decrease under Dem administrations and rise under Repub administrations, universally. Incomes for every level of society increase under Democratic administrations MORE than the comparable incomes do under Republican administrations.
Even the very wealthy have better income growth during Democratic Administrations.
So the only reason to support Republican candidates is because of their hateful social attitudes, like racism and inequality, forced birth, end of contraception, etc, etc.
Cheryl Rofer
@bemused: Corker is smart enough that this is not just enjoying himself, although there’s probably that. He’s got something in mind, like heading up the committee that visits Donnie and tells him it’s time.
Mike in NC
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Mark Burnett, the king of shitty reality TV programming. Made him fabulously wealthy.
Steeplejack (phone)
@mai naem mobile:
Fuck brave Sir Bob Corker. These Republican quislings never say boo until they’re out of office or have announced that they’re not running again.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
You seem to be assuming that he cares about that. When has anything stopped him from lying*, and when has anything stopped him from telling both “A” and “not A” lies within the same day. (Which I guess is impressive, at some level.)
*I have said more than a couple of times: since he started his campaign, he has not intentionally told the truth. About anything. He makes Tommy Flanagan and Joe Isuzu look like the most honestest guys evah.
oldgold
Given Corker’s tweet, shouldn’t he be pressed as to why he is not pressing for a 25th Amendment intervention?
FlipYrWhig
If I were Corker I’d get Luther Strange on the phone and tell him they were about to become Trump’s newest nightmare.
SFAW
@Steeplejack (phone):
Fie upon you, sir! Fie, I say! The esteemed Senator Marco Rubio has proved himself to be a paragon of honesty and integrity, at a time when some others in the Republican Party have adopted the role of lickspittle.
Note to Betty Cracker: No, I am NOT PAYING for a new monitor for you. And I hope Mr. Cracker is nearby with a towel to de-froth your mouth.
MattF
@Cheryl Rofer: Welp. Corker, now saying what he actually thinks about Trump. I’m in favor of that. His grade is now ‘above abject failure’. But he’s got a long, long ways to go.
J R in WV
@MazeDancer:
I have friends who live such a frugal lifestyle that when they reached Social Security age and began receiving a few hundred dollars a month, they reacted as though they had won a Powerball jackpot. Hippies in the WV woods, growing the bulk of their food, driving a 25 y o Toyota, no utility bills, etc.
W made some cash money playing banjo in an eclectic rock band, had a tiny inheritance, owned his farm, grew all his own food, still does in fact. But getting an additional tiny Social Security payment was like a 200% increase in his net income.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (phone): No fan of Corkdog. But IIRC he did signal some of this several weeks ago, pre-announcement, in an interview where he said para “This admin has not displayed the stability or competence to date”.
So more forceful, but maybe not all new news.
Steeplejack (phone)
@SFAW:
Your argument is specious and entirely without merit. I will say only good day to you, sir.
I said good day!
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Luther signals off hardcore craven weakness, IMO. He’s still looking for a grift somewhere. So I doubt he’s going to spine-up.
No Drought No More
Lest we Forget: The democratic party threw in with the Bush-Cheney plot to war. How much American treasure is the rank and file of the party responsible for throwing down that rat hole as a consequence? Why that fact remains a taboo subject even in 2017 beats the hell out of me. It is, of course, a very convenient taboo for some very prominent politicians, i.e., those very people-and-powers that stampeded us into that war in the first place.
Amir Khalid
@oldgold:
Removing an unfit POTUS is, alas, a somewhat bigger deal than even the most brilliant Twitter putdown.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Corner Stone:
Point taken, but probably after he had decided not to run again.
Corkdog knows what he did.
Corner Stone
@Kelly: My son’s Science teacher was complaining in class the other day about “taxes”. He was doing it in a way that my son picked up on his dogwhistling. When he got home he did a pretty good parody mix of his teacher and his relatives who use the same coding. I am waiting for something actionable to bring this to the admin’s attention as that is not going to be enough.
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
They don’t care about absolute numbers. They only care about getting further ahead of the rest of us. Similarly, there are plenty of middle class and poor whites who care more about staying ahead of minorities than they do about getting ahead in absolute terms. Those are the people the Republicans are catering to.
divF
@No Drought No More: Thanks for showing up and reminding me to add you to my pie filter list.
d58826
I think Corker has won the internet for the next 6 months. Going to be hard to top that putdown
oldgold
@Amir Khalid:
It is? Well, I’ll be danged!
Corner Stone
It’s all fun and games until we see how Corker votes on the next disastrous bill Trump wants passed.
bemused
@Cheryl Rofer:
It’s always opposite of reality. George Costanza was amusing when he used the opposite method. Numpty makes me want to vomit.
bemused
@Amir Khalid:
Thx, that flows better.
GregB
Perhaps Corker is going to rise to the needs of the world and he just innoculated himself against the biggest dread of an incumbent.
Trump is marching this nation into a boxed canyon, maybe a few more people with an ounce of decency left in them in Washington of the right side of the political aisle will stop Trump before it is too late.
Jeffro
Except this time, it’s front page news and duly reported?? Why are we banging on the media about this – why not bang on GOP officials instead?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Corner Stone:
Okay, that’s truth right there.
bemused
@Cheryl Rofer:
Aha, that sounds probable or something going on under the radar. GOP not near as leaky as the WH.
aimai
@No Drought No More: Oh fuck off and die. The democrats could not have stopped Bush/Cheney.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I thought it was: I got mine, fuck you. Or maybe: fuck ’em all and let the invisible hand sort them out.
Amir Khalid
@oldgold:
Most people don’t know that.
Jeffro
@Steeplejack (phone): beats them not saying anything
Still waiting for that last, mostly sane 20% of the Repubs to realize…they don’t have the numbers to start a viable third party, and the Dems are pretty centrist, and the Trumpov Tea Party has completely swallowed the GOP…so, where else ya gonna go, folks?
Gvg
@Steeplejack (phone): it takes several loud mouths not running to set up for a loud mouth that is. I think it’s kind of a tipping point right now and GOP voters may react with “that’s right” over some truths, but still close ranks against hearing and agreeing on others. Each voter is different too on which truths he is ready to accept. Someone who is actually running has to calculate these different angles and it would limit what they could say. If Coker was running and saying everything, he would lose. That would chill out the others who want to tell the truth. That in turn works against what we want. I think the dynamic is different when someone ins ‘the running. People listen differently. Coker and the few others standing up to Trump should gradually get more powerful and have more influence. They are making a path for some who will try for reelection. JMO….a guess and a hope.
oldgold
@Amir Khalid:
I disagree.
Frank Wilhoit
It isn’t going to work this time.
On the previous occasions when the Republicans have tried force-feeding, they succeeded in creating bubbles of false prosperity. This time, it won’t work. The economy will not grow, because business will not play along. They’re pretending to hold hostages, but the hostages are dead. Give them everything they say they want: they still won’t hire. During eight years of sabotage, they figured out how to make money without doing what it says on the sign. Big business (the only kind that counts) has two profit centers: (1) Federal procurement; (2) cash management. The Trumpist Republicans are foolish enough to believe that having got Obama out of the way, we can now go back, pretty much instantaneously, to the Good Old Days. But business are playing them for suckers. There are no inducements and no countervailing powers that can persuade business to hire. The “jobs” are never coming back — except maybe a few directly driven by DOD procurement.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Cheryl Rofer:
If so, then Corker knows or suspects something that leads him to believe Trump will be gone by the end of next year. Interesting.
Mnemosyne
@No Drought No More:
Greetings, comrade! How is the weather is Moscow today?
I hope you’re not stuck in Macedonia. My friend who did some research there said it’s the worst shithole in Eastern Europe. Even Romania was better.
MattF
@Cheryl Rofer: I think you’re overestimating the rationality of the Senate’s leading lights.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Any chance Corker is fixing to run for Prez in ’20? He could argue he was the Republican adult alternative station to Trump’s industrial death blather station.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jeffro:
The mostly sane Republicans are still single-issue racism voters. They would rather their racism not come with blowing up the country, but the Republican Party gives them racism and the Democratic Party promotes equality. They have to stick with what they’ve got.
A Ghost to Most
@randy khan:
Steeplejack (phone)
@Jeffro, @Gvg:
Don’t get me wrong: I am delighted that Corker has taken his balls out of the lockbox and is speaking up. I do object to his being immediately short-listed for the Profile in Courage Award, Speaking Truth to Power Category, based on a tweet and an interview sound bite.
As Corner Stone said, let’s see what he actually does over the next year and a half.
mai naem mobile
I read the Corker/Dolt45 tweek feud and initially I get caught up in it and then I remember – nooooo, it’s a Dolt faux feud so there’s got to be something bad coming up on the Russia deal with Corker being on Foreign Relations. Then I go on the twitter machine and there’s speculation that this feud is a faux faux twitfeud and Corker is just putting on a show. Really? This faux faux double triple cross shit is just above my paygrade. Also too, I think Putin planned shit to develop in this fashion.
Cheryl Rofer
@Steeplejack (phone): @MattF: It’s hard to say exactly what Corker is up to until we see more. But he’s smart enough to be up to more than Twitter harassment.
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
Come on Roger, read my whole comment. Right after the one sentence you quoted, I said: “So the only reason to support Republican candidates is because of their hateful social attitudes, like racism and inequality, forced birth, end of contraception, etc, etc.”
So aren’t we pretty much in total agreement here?
SFAW
@Steeplejack (phone):
Thanks! Much obliged.
Corner Stone
@mai naem mobile:
Are you saying it’s some version of The Triple Lindy ?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Cheryl Rofer:
Definitely. But, as we’re always saying around here, let’s watch what Corker does and not what he says. Getting into a Twitter fight with Donald Trump is like wrestling a pig in the mud: you get dirty and Trump loves it.
Psych1
@No Drought No More: See what they’re like. If you’re against the war you must be a Russian troll.
They’re are some good people here but a lot of them are really terrible
Frankensteinbeck
@Steeplejack (phone):
I’m not sure Trump does. Bear in mind how shockingly insecure Trump is. All signs are that being criticized hurts as well as angers him.
Steeplejack (phone)
@SFAW:
Why, I oughta . . .
:: Moe eye-poke ::
SFAW
@J R in WV:
Although he can certainly speak for himself, I saw Roger’s point as a sort of parallel to those nameless Wall Street analysts, who, when a company beats earnings expectations for a quarter, the analysts downgrade the stock because the company didn’t beat earnings expectations by as much as the analysts wanted them to. Similarly, the wealthy do better during Dem administrations, but not by as much ass they want to — especially when compared to the serfs.
Baud
Я заметил, что россияне недавно назначили двух агентов для наблюдения за этим блогом.
SFAW
@Steeplejack (phone):
:: Throws up Curly block, foils Steeplejack YET AGAIN!!!!!1!!2! ::
Nyuk nyuk.
Baud
In moderation for speaking Russian. Fascinating.
Corner Stone
@SFAW:
Somehow, it always comes down to the hookers.
James Powell
@No Drought No More:
It wasn’t the whole Democratic Party, but it was the whole of the party leadership. They ganged up on Howard Dean because they were afraid he would be another McGovern or Dukakis. They may have been right, but that decision produced a schism in the Democratic base, particularly the activist base, that has yet to be healed.
Obama, God bless him, did almost nothing to heal it. Instead he spent his entire first term trying to bridge with the handful of Republicans who are not insane right-wingers in order to construct a governing coalition. The project was a total failure.
The schism was still there in 2016 and it allowed the whole Bernie thing to be a distraction and maybe a decisive one. Even now people still argue about the 2016 primaries. The reason is that no leader or leaders have emerged to pull the two factions together to support a common agenda of opposition.
Mnemosyne
@Psych1:
No, if you blame a war that Republicans started 14 years ago to bash Democrats today, then you’re a Russian troll.
Funny how all of you guys have decided that the Iraq War was all the Democrats’ fault when it was the Republican president and vice-president who planned it, the Republican Secretary of State who lied to the UN, and the Republican-controlled Congress that voted for it. But it was all Hillary Clinton’s fault because shut up, that’s why.
And one of you morons even cast your vote for Colin Powell in the Electoral College last year, the actual Republican who lied to the UN was preferable to you over one of the Democratic senators who believed the Republican lies.
Baud
@James Powell: We’re more divided on race than we are on Iraq.
WereBear
That is because teaching the actual facts tend to make the Pitchfork People, and their leaders, look bad and stupid.
Can’t have that. Not fair.
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
There is no leader who will be able to do more than paper over the differences, because it’s a conflict between white men who want white men to be in charge again, and everyone else.
And I will repeat to you what I keep saying about the last Great White Hope that people are clinging to: Dean. Got. Fewer. Votes.
He didn’t get unfairly driven out of the primary in 2004. In fact, he was given a leadership position afterwards. But he didn’t get the nomination because He. Got. Fewer. Votes.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
As well you should be.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Hey, you! I hope you haven’t been around as much because your website is flourishing. I don’t get out of this boat much.
Kathleen
@Baud: That’s because to Republicans “fiscal responsibility” equals “Not giving stuff to ‘those people”.
mai naem mobile
I watched some Maria Antoinette Bartiromo this AM on Fox with Mick Mulvaney. Mulvaney is talking about not hurting the middle class and making the high tax states not get the state tax deduction blah blah blah. Bartiromo ignores that(pretty sure she’s a NY resident) and days she doesn’t care about the lower income people paying more taxes but what about the top.10.percent the heat pay 80.percent of federal taxes waaahhh waahhhh. This woman(I really want to use another term but my fingers are holding back) has been making a few million annually for possibly two decades. Her husband is from wealth. She grew up middle class. I am sure she is in the multi luxury homes,private plane,yacht,multi luxury vacations wealth bracket but its never enough for these people. What more does this woman need? The greed just eats them up.
Kay
The cyclical nature of the fake concern for the debt and deficit makes it more and more difficult to believe media aren’t in on it.
You could spot it from space. There is no way they are omitting this accidentally. Yet. In 2010 they all jumped on the Fix The Debt bandwagon as if we all hadn’t watched this same cycle already. Do you remember how big it was in 2010? EVERY newspaper and political pundit- austerity, austerity, austerity. This was RIGHT AFTER every working and middle class person in the country had just taken a huge hit from the financial crash.
Amazing.
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: Хорошо
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
благодаря
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
I need another assist. Was just trying to say thanks.
Mnemosyne
@No Drought No More:
@Psych1:
Here, let me amplify this for you again:
Three Democratic electors from Washington state who were butthurt that their hero lost the nomination made the very anti-war and pacifist decision to cast their votes for Colin Powell, the Republican who lied to the UN about Iraq.
Funny how all of you “anti-war” types only blame Democratic women for the war, and not the Republican men who actually planned and started it. ?
mai naem mobile
@Kay: Don’t forget they treat David Walker like he is some independent person when it’s obvious he’s a GOPr. Another GOPR who didn’t say anything when he was US comptroller but once he was out he got all brave about asking for cuts in “entitlement” programs. He’s not brave enough to ask for the rich or corps to pay more taxes except for some tiny little raises at the edges.
WereBear
Yes, and it drives me to the brink of madness that I am surrounded by fools who choose that.
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne:
Well, of course, because people busy falsely accusing the Democrats of being responsible for the Iraq War (which would have gone forward if every single Democrat had voted against) are really Republicans (or Russian trolls) and they really *would* prefer the guy that lied us into Iraq.
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
I think you’re missing my bigger point: they care only about relative position and not absolute amounts. Those regressive social attitudes aren’t a separate issue; they’re part of the same issue of maintaining relative social standing. The ultra-rich care more about lording their wealth over the rest of us than they do about the absolute amount they can buy with it. That even makes some kind of sense, since they already have so much they don’t really benefit from being able to buy more.
What makes less sense, but seems to be true nonetheless, is the attitude summed up by Davis X. Machina’s comment about sparrows and curtain rods. I don’t think his comment is literally true- losing a lot of absolute standard of living hurts, even if you keep ahead of Those People*- but it summarizes the attitude fairly well. There are a lot of people who will happily put up with a smaller pie as long as their piece grows faster than their social inferiors’. Regressive social attitudes are primarily a way of maintaining that relative status- a way of keeping uppity people down socially and economically- and not an independent idea.
*I think this explains a lot about why Obama won. The Great Recession focused enough people’s attention on their absolute well-being rather than relative status that they were willing to vote for the Democrats for a change.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
That was pretty damn good, though. Was that googletranslate?
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
I think it explains a lot about how Trump got close enough to steal it, too. I’ve been saying since November that white people were feeling economically secure enough again after the Obama years that they could turn their attention back to shoring up the racist social hierarchy.
Zinsky
Republipukes long ago figured out that the American people (1) are by and large very stupid, and (2) have extremely short memories. As a result, they can shamelessly lie to the public and it has no impact on their political ratings. If we could only find a way to truly inform then, then maybe Democrats could win more elections!
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: пожалуйста
James Powell
@Baud:
By “we” do you mean Americans or Democratic base? No doubt race is huge in anything American, but I feel like we Democrats are much less divided now than we were 20 years ago – back when “distancing from [prominent black person of the moment]” was a requirement for any Democrat to be taken seriously in the Village.
@Mnemosyne:
I think you’re reading something into my comment that wasn’t there. That Dean lost is obvious and he may well have lost anyway. But the fact that he was subjected to a full on attack by the Democratic Party establishment cannot be denied. They did not want an anti-war candidate while Our Brave Troops were still fighting in two wars and the reality of those invasions had not yet become apparent. That’s all I’m saying and it has really nothing to do with any Great White Hope.
Redshift
@James Powell: Oh, bullshit. There isn’t a consistent split going back to 2004; the Deaniacs and the Berners aren’t the same people (despite the fact that DFA decided to cash in on the Wilmerites.) Every Dean person I know enthusiastically campaigned for Obama; the ones who were “disappointed” when he didn’t follow the beliefs they projected into him (which he never espoused) became Wilmerites.
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
Links to prove your claim, please. Dean lost fair and square because he had an inexperienced campaign manager who mistook Internet enthusiasm for a true groundswell. He. Got. Fewer. Votes.
Steeplejack
@WereBear, @Roger Moore:
Thought experiment:
Kay
@mai naem mobile:
I’m naturally cheap so I used to think they should slow growth of entitlement programs but they lie too much so now I don’t trust them. I’m in the “no cuts of any kind” camp. They can’t be trusted. This budget shows they can’t be trusted.
I’m 100% opposed to the Trump tax cuts- the man lies constantly. It’s insane to negotiate with him.
Also, if you’re asking me to choose between possible wasteful spending on private sector health care providers or defense contractors I choose “health care providers”. Let’s just tell the truth. “Spending” isn’t the issue. They SPEND plenty. I choose to spend elsewhere.
Don K
Oh for fuck sake, can these media morons be so clueless that they can’t engage in pattern recognition?
Yes. SATSQ
Kay
@mai naem mobile:
If I were a Democrat in Congress and they went after Social Security I would start the debate with “are you INSANE? You want to give peoples’ rock bottom survival money TO WALL STREET?”
They wanted to do that which means they’re insane so there should be no debate. They’re reckless. They can’t have big pots of money. They haven’t been responsible stewards.
Redshift
Democrats haven’t just failed to speak up for Democratic accomplishments, we’ve failed to speak up for government. I was on a committee about ten years ago with some old local Dems, and they were sighing about how we had “lost the argument” about taxes. Any time the argument is only about taxes, the “lower taxes” side is going to win! To “win” that argument, we need to make it about all the things you need every day that it gets you, and how we’re the “responsible” ones who pay the bills instead of telling you lies about how the magic growth fairy will pay for it all.
No one likes paying taxes, but taxes are the price we pay for civilization. We can have a rational argument about the appropriate level, but anyone whose basic view is that they’re evil is really saying rich people should have more money and you should be left holding the bag.
Redshift
@Kay: Also, Obamacare slowed the growth of entitlement programs and they hate it. That alone should tell you any concerns they express aren’t about whether those programs are going to run out of money, only that they’re going to run out of money before they get the chance to loot them.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: Thanks, the website is flourishing, and I have learned that when my condition yells at me, I must listen :)
WereBear
@Steeplejack: They have zero-sum thinking, too.
They only want a bigger slice of the small pie, rather than realizing they should make the pie bigger. ‘Cuz that’s dammedliberalpointyhead talk.
Kay
What clowns these people are. They’re planning on spending another week race-baiting on the “take a knee” protest.
What about doing some work? I mean Jesus Christ. After the protests the players WORK for 4 hours, which is more than I can say for the Trump Administration.
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
I think the classic example of this is Trump’s attitude toward trade and international relations generally. You can see his basic assumption about trade and treaties is that they’re zero-sum games: if the other country is doing well, it must be coming at our expense. He simply can’t wrap his head around the concept of a mutually beneficial arrangement.
You see the same attitude all over Republican policy. A huge argument against expanding healthcare was the assumption that providing access to people who lacked it would necessarily make things worse for the people who already had it. They just don’t get that things can get better for you without making them worse for me.
Woodrowfan
@guachi: even Carter? I thought it went up slightly under him.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
This. I can’t help but think about “So Much for So Little“, a post-war animated short trying to convince people of the value of public health agencies. If the government tried to make the same kind of thing today, it would be denounced as a propaganda production using government money to justify more government spending.
Carol
republicans first will dole out tax cuts to their benefactors and then announce that there’s no way the country can afford medicare, social security and all the rest of the so-called entitlements.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Conservatives talk about making the pie higher.
SFAW
@Kay:
Oh, I don’t know, I think the Maladministration is up to 4 hours by now. Since January, that is.
Shitgibbon himself, on the other hand: not so much. He might be up to four hours, total, if he’s still President in January, 2021.
debbie
@Kay:
Fucking Pence.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Typical libtard logic. Next you’ll be trying to claim that allowing Teh Gheys to “marry” did not make hetero marriage worse.
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
I guess I’m feeling ranty today, because I have another one coming on. Please note that this one is NOT aimed at you (and I will try to keep the phrasing third-person), but these trolls are reminding me of it:
The reason I don’t trust the “anti-war” crowd to dictate strategy for Democrats is that they’re really bad at it. The one trick they have is to refuse to vote for an “unacceptable” candidate, and that trick backfires on them again and again and again, and yet they absolutely refuse to learn from their repeated failures.
Take 2004. By the time of the election, the Iraq War was less than a year old. If Kerry had been elected, it would have been quite easy for him to wind the war down, and we would have been out of there by the end of 2005.
But because Kerry had stupidly voted for the authorization of force, “anti-war” voters refused to vote for him even though he wanted to end the war and withdraw our troops, so instead Bush and his crew got an additional four years to thoroughly fuck things up.
So, basically, “anti-war” voters ensured that the war would drag on, kill more Iraquis, and further destabilize the Middle East. And then, in 2016, they decided that out-and-out white supremacist fascism was preferable to voting for someone who had made a wrong-headed vote 14 years ago and vocally regretted it.
Nice going, assholes. Every action you take ensures the opposite of what you claim you want, and then you blame everyone else because it turns out there wasn’t actually a pony in that pile of manure you all insisted we jump into as part of your brilliant “strategy.”
WereBear
Exactly. If they had their way, we’d have three overworked doctors who have taken out three appendixes among them…
Access to health care for more people improves the health care system!
James Powell
@Redshift:
It’s really not bullshit, not at all. The split doesn’t go back to 2004 in a consistent issues sense and it’s not Naderite = Deaniac = Bernie Bro. I never said anything to suggest that. What I see, hear, and read goes back a little bit further and it’s about the lack of trust in the Democratic Party leadership. It’s really no more than that but it’s enough that it hurts organizing, especially at the state & local levels.
aimai
@James Powell: The Democratic party wants to win. Its only goal is to win. You might not like that–you might think that the most important thing is to put up the purest, nicest, candidate that you like but if he’s not going to win he’s not going to win whether the Democratic Party backs him or not. They don’t submarine winning candidates for shits and giggles –not that I particularly think they did submarine Dean who, by the way, I supported!–Dean just didn’t win because the media attacked the crap out of him and destroyed him as a candidate. The national democratic party feared that that would happen and ended up backing someone else who didn’t blow up/fall apart as early as Dean did. That will happen in every cycle not because someone like dean is too pure for this dirty dirty world but because novice/outsiders often just don’t have the experience and staying power to make the grade. obama was the obvious exception but he was a superbly disciplined and flexible candidate with an enormously talented team.
J R in WV
And now, for my final Trumpism-defeating accomplishment, I’m going to write an essay showing how to stop illegal immigration once and for all. No wall !!
If living conditions in foreign countries were roughly equivalent to conditions in America, there would be much less pressure for people to escape tragic and humiliating living conditions in their home nations. The rule of law (not that we have a perfect rule of law here, but better than in many third-world nations!) does not exist in most of Africa and some of South America.
So we have thousands of African refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, where there is a rule of law, a stable civilization (so far) and real jobs doing real work for a living wage. And here in the Americas, we have refugees fleeing sadistic gang warfare, brutal regimes, starvation for lack of work and destroyed economies, crossing our southern border.
Note the primary noun here: Refugees! These people are seeking refuge from a collapse of civilization! Rape, torture, famine and starvation, earthquakes and hurricanes, landslides from climactic events outside the normal range, the list of things to seek refuge from is nearly endless.
When people are in fear for their lives, fearing the death of their children, they will do desperate things in order to even their odds of survival, to attempt to save their families. Nothing we do here in American civilization will stop the refugees from flowing away from misery and death, seeking their own civilization somewhere. The “Wall” will not work, as most of our coast won’t have a wall. Most illegal immigrants fly in anyway, and overstay their legal visit.
The best thing modern civilizations can do to stop floods of refugees is to raise the level of civilization in those nations without the rule of law, without functioning economies, without government providing education and a peaceful environment. In effect, these regions are demolished, as if they had been destroyed in warfare, colonies left in rubble by departing imperial first world nations during and after WW II.
When the First World was largely laid waste by total war from 1938-1945, Europe and Asia was shattered. Industrial output was effectively zero. Agricultural production was nearly zero, and certainly unable to feed the survivors of the hugely violent combat of the war.
The only industrialized economy remaining in the world was American.
If today’s Republican party had been in total control of the American political system, as they are today, it is hard to predict what would have happened. They may have attempted to take political and military control of the whole world, for example. One thing is sure, they would never have entertained the thought of creating a Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and rebuilding Japan and much of Asia as well.
Creating a successful WORLD, with the rule of law and effective government, building agricultural and economic capacity, providing medical care including reproductive rights for women everywhere, eliminating violence and starvation, creating transportation systems to eliminate famine, these are the methods we and Europe and the Asian first world nations can use to end the sea of refugees seeking desperately to survive.
If people can be assured of a good life for their families where they have lived for centuries, they won’t risk everything to flee that good life in their home culture. The only reason people would have to travel will be to see the wonders of the world, returning to their good lives back at home. And in a world with equality of opportunity, would it be so easy to drum up hate and fear against trained and qualified people in a society with unfilled jobs?
Currently individual national economies act as if the world economy is a zero sum game, with no ability to grow and thrive without taking from other national economies. This is much as if Texas knew that new employment and productivity couldn’t happen without taking those jobs and that productivity from New York or Florida.
But we know that isn’t the case in America, and it seems that in a world working together to provide the rule of law and economic development universally in every nation of the world, it won’t be the case then either. We still have rural third world nations being exploited by first world nations for their natural resources, from energy sources to rare earth elements. Changing that paradigm would obviously be difficult.
But we do have a United Nations, where these issues can be debated. If the US was determined to bring development to the third world, and if the European Union was determined to work towards that goal, then bringing China and the other first world nations of Asia would go a long way towards improving conditions in the third world.
Something like the Marshall plan being executed across the third world, putting people to constructive paid labor, would be bound to reduce the number of refugees fleeing, well, everything about their failed states. Of course, this all assumes the US won’t become a failed state, with the non-leadership of our Republican overlords, especially President* Trump.
Also, Russia would continue to be an obstacle to bringing the rule of law the any nation where it doesn’t already exist, as their kleptocracy needs rule of law free nations to stash their stolen monies. So I’m not suggesting this would be an easy slam dunk. No such luck. It would be a challenge for any political administration, and would take the leadership talents of FDR, Obama, and George Washington. Oh yeah, George Marshall, him too.
But we know already that military border enforcement, a wall (which mostly already exists anywhere border crossing is possible) and fascist work by ICE inside the nation does not successfully inhibit immigration into the US. Military interdiction doesn’t appear to work in the EU either.
So improving the lives of people now turning in to refugees to eliminate the things they must flee to save their lives would seem to be the logical and moral choice in order to end illegal immigration.
Of course, bigots and racists would hate the idea of hiring millions of Americans into high paying jobs to build new economies in third world countries. Republicans, in other, more accurate words. Which is why it will be difficult to implement the WV_Hill_Billy Plan to save the nation from illegal immigration. Maybe we should call it the New Marshall Plan?
At least it isn’t off topic…. right?
James Powell
@Mnemosyne:
You’re really really way off here. I never said Dean lost unfairly and my comment wasn’t about Dean losing or why he lost.
You said he was the Great White Hope. This is just wrong. He lost to two guys who are whiter than him. Dean’s early popularity and later collapse was 100% – okay maybe 90% – that he was the anti-Iraq War candidate while everyone else with a legitimate shot at the nomination voted in favor of it. His opponents were Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards, and Lieberman. All white males. Between them, Kerry & Edwards won over 75% of the white male vote. So your characterization of Dean as the Great White Hope is completely unfounded.
You also said “it’s a conflict between white men who want white men to be in charge again, and everyone else.” That was certainly true of 2016, but I don’t think it’s the problem we Democrats face going forward.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I still think that the media had it in for Dean because he had the exact same background as W, but Dean wasn’t a frat boy asshole. It made W look bad to show that someone else could come from a rich, socially prominent background, only to reject that upbringing and go into public service instead, first as a doctor, and then as a politician.
Dean was a class traitor, just like FDR.
James Powell
@aimai:
Your response starts out like you’re disagreeing with me, but then the rest of it is in complete agreement with me. Is this a reading vs reading into problem?
You say
What did I ever say that would lead you to believe that I think any of that?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Dean was trashed by the media because hippies and college students liked him.
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
It’s easy to point to the fact that you didn’t vote for the Iraq War when you’re the governor of a state and never had to make that decision.
But you’re also ignoring the fact that all of the Democratic candidates ran on a platform of ending the Iraq War. Kerry was mocked as a “flip-flopper” because he voted for it and then ran against it.
So, no, your claim that Dean was the only candidate who wanted to end the Iraq War is not factual. He was merely the only candidate who had not voted to authorize force.
I’m on the iPad, so I’ll have to address your “75 percent of white men voted for Kerry/Edwards” in a second comment. No presidential candidate has gotten 75 percent of the white vote since Civil Rights — even Trump only got 65 percent.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
“It’s going to go broke in 30 years, but we need to broke it now!”
Sounds more realistic.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: he’s adding up Kerry and Edwards’ results among white men in the SC primary.
mai naem mobile
@Kay: it’s not just social security . In a way they’ve gotten smarter. They want to fe their hands on Post Office retirement and Teachers union money and then go after the big one – social security.
Major Major Major Major
From what I’ve heard and read the reason that Dean didn’t do so well in the early primaries is because his ground campaign was run by inexperienced people who parachuted in to the early states, which like lots of cultivation and coddling and ass-kissing. After he didn’t do well in Iowa his goose was cooked as far as the narrative went.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: Republican pushes for “getting the books in order” for social programs are such classic examples of the cynical politician’s syllogism. Something must be done about long-term forecasts showing deficits in social security; destroying social security is something; therefore destroying social security must be done.
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
As Major Major Major Major has pointed out, those are only the Democratic primary exit poll results from South Carolina, where it’s not surprising that Edwards did very well. California’s results were a bit different.
What did you think all of the Sanders bros continuing to run around and cause trouble is all about? They’re trying to disrupt the party so that the rightful owners — white dudes like themselves — can be in charge again. And they’re working to get people who may be disenchanted with the party for other reasons to join them, which is why they’re dangerous for 2018 and beyond. Spoilers want to spoil things.
James Powell
@Major Major Major Major:
Which is exactly the kind of state where a Great White Hope candidate would get more than 5% of the white male vote, no?
Or how about Maryland, where Kerry & Edwards got 80% of the white male vote? The only state I found where Dean got more than those two was his home state of Vermont. So please, let the Dean = Great White Hope remark pass from memory. It’s wrong.
James Powell
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, California’s results were different. Kerry + Edwards garnered 85% of the white male vote.
First, the evidence that “Sanders bros continuing to run around and cause trouble” are actual Democrats is not persuasive. Second, apart from spats like the one you are apparently engaged in with others, what trouble do such people cause?
Suzanne
@debbie:
There’s a lot of shit we’ve let them get away with. They have never had to answer for their hypocrisy. We play too nice.
Major Major Major Major
@James Powell: I was just answering the question of where the number came from for her.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
That’s because it’s not actually a system. It’s a group of separate programs, the money is separate, the process is separate, the goals are separate………
It has to do with the way we govern ourselves, a new house every 2 yrs, even if a lot of them get reelected, the senate old, stogy and actually rather wealthy, conservative bullshit about bootstraps, etc and it means that we never really have a cohesive system of help. Some of it is by design, a lot of people don’t want to help – unless they need it, the rich want to be richer and pay zero tax – taxes are for the little people, there is a thought that if you make the programs work well you will get a huge influx of people with their hands out – primarily because the people that write the laws always have their hands out – if for no other reason that reelection and think that everyone else would do the same if given the opportunity. And I’ve just scratched the surface.
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
I should have been more clear on my “Dean=Great White Hope” candidate remark. What I meant is that he’s come to represent that retroactively to the Sanders dead-enders, not that he was that candidate at the time. They’ve re-written history to claim that Dean was deliberately undermined by “establishment Democrats” to bolster their claims for why their guy failed to win. That’s why I get impatient with claims that Dean lost because the establishment Democrats ganged up on him — you’re excusing Dean’s many mistakes and bolstering the claims of the current dead-enders by letting them point to Dean as their prototyp.
If anything, Edwards was the Great White Hope candidate in 2004, which is why he did so well with white Democrats in the South. And holy fuck did we dodge a bullet there.
gene108
@Kelly:
Teaching can be automated in a heart beat. Inertia is keeping it from happening.
If you can become fluent in a language via an app on your phone like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo or learn DYI projects via YouTube teachers and classrooms become superfluous.
You can get graduate degrees from real established universities (public or private non-profit) on-line, thus no need for classrooms.
Teaching not being automated is due to parents wanting kids to go to classrooms and learn to socialize. There are people looking to automate teaching and some teaching functions can already be automated.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: what drives me bonkers is that the same people who do that were the ones saying oh HELL no, Howard Dean shouldn’t run the DNC again, that establishment sellout Hillbot!
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: I’ve had zero luck learning anything from formless, teacherless MOOC’s. But my Master’s was largely online. I think some people need the communication and structure, at least for certain content.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Are you saying that people lie about why they support conservative candidates? That it really isn’t about the economy but about, gasp, racism?
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
I guess you missed hearing about the ongoing battle for the chairmanship of the California Democratic Party by Sanders dead-enders. We also have Democratic commenters from Washington state and New Mexico telling us that their local parties are under great strain because the dead-enders are tying everything up and resisting any action that does not result in the local party declaring that B****e Woulda Won.
This is an actual, ongoing problem that is going to hurt us in 2018 if we don’t talk about it now.
James Powell
@Major Major Major Major:
Okay. And it should be noted that referring to anything after Mini-Super Tuesday – early February – and Super Tuesday – early March – is misleading because by then Dean’s campaign was over all but officiallly.
With respect to what you referred to above, the narrative given out was that inexperienced people in Iowa doomed Dean, but that’s not really what happened. Short as I can make it: Dean campaign originally ceded Iowa to Gephardt because he looked certain to win it big. Dean’s efforts were focused on beating Kerry in NH. Beginning in late October, Dean began to pull away in the polls nationally; Gephardt & Kerry were sinking. At some point Kerry had to lend his campaign his own money. So the decision was made to put everything into Iowa to try for the 1-2 knockout. By that time, nearly everyone in Iowa was already working for somebody else. As you no doubt know, campaigns are active there more than a year in advance. They got there late, without the right people, and it was a long shot to begin with.
gene108
@James Powell:
Economics is very politicized. It is a very non-neutral subject.
For example, price controls like rent control creates (a) affordable housing for people or (b) a housing shortage as demand exceeds supply?
Both are true and what you want to emphasize depends on your political slant.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: actually both of those being true is one of the few things most economists agree on.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
I think I see where your error is — all of those on-line courses still have human instructors. The fact that you don’t go to a physical classroom doesn’t mean that it’s “automated.” There’s still a person or people doing the actual teaching.
Not to mention the difference between teaching adults and teaching, say, 10-year-olds. Pray tell, who is going to stay home with the kids and make sure they’re dong their lessons when teaching is all “automated”? Isn’t it more efficient to have one adult watch 10 or 15 school-age kids than have one parent of each couple stay home so the kids can learn remotely?
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
I got very little from whatever online classes I took, and I need to be in a classroom to learn, but there is a bunch of stuff right now trying to automate teachers and eliminate classrooms.
Right now it is on the fringes, but get enough DeVos and Mercer money behind it and it will become more mainstream and may supplant traditional education.
Elie
Someone has to spread the word to progressives with actual attempts to educate as to why your voting for a third party is not likely to do anything except defeat the Democrat. It will not set up a third party. I’ve gotten into two heated discussions lately with folks who did this in the last election and absolutely consider this an option for the future. It’s insane!
James Powell
@James Powell: @Major Major Major Major:
Here is the polling I referred to that I inadvertently left out.
The saga stretched out over four months, but at the time it seemed to be happening very rapidly.
Mnemosyne
@James Powell:
So Dean and his campaign made a bad strategic decision with Iowa, and that mistake ended up sinking the campaign.
I’m still not seeing how Establishment Democrats killed Dean’s campaign for being anti-war, which was your initial claim.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
Of course Dominionists like DeVos and Mercer want it — it will require women to stay home with their kids again, because you can’t leave a 6-year-old (or even a 12-year-old) alone at home to do their schoolwork by themselves.
They basically want to force every family in the country to homeschool, but it ain’t because they love technology.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
I remember some sci-fi stuff about kids in classrooms learning from a computer screen.
Send kids to a classroom, in a mall or some other storefront. Have low paid classroom monitor. Let them learn from prerecorded videos.
Sort of dystopian, but could be cheaper than traditional schools, and thus a way to lower taxes for the rich.
Just saying don’t take for granted teaching cannot be automated or more automated than it is today, with less human interaction.
People are working on ways to do this.
Edit: Some on-line stuff is a good supplement to traditional learning, while some of the K-12 on-line schools are trying to supplant traditional education. It is not all bad, but there is no good intentions conservatives cannot pervert to evil ends.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: there are people out there trying to do that, yes, but that doesn’t make it possible (eta possible to do *well*) or desirable. I will admit that The Diamond Age is one of my favorite books though.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
I absolutely am not taking it for granted. I think you’re misunderstanding the real reason they’re pushing this, which is to force working women back into the home. And, as usual, the children of poor or single-parent families who can’t afford to have one of the adults stop working or else the whole family will starve will get screwed the worst.
mai naem mobile
I was an early Dean supporter. Earlier than most people. He was on CSPANs Washington Journal at the end of 2002 and I was sold. He seemed like a genuine straight shooter. He was dressed in not the most flattering suit and tie get up but he was a breath of fresh air during the Dubbya era. Anyhow,I didn’t notice till after he lost, Dean had some arrogance in him that could easily rub people the wrong way. He’s gotten a lot smoother since but I think that’s a good part of the reason he didn’t get the help he needed in winning the nomination.
gene108
@Elie:
Someone needs to keep talking about the good things Democrats do.
Too much of the urge to vote third party is the belief that Democrats are the lesser evil, and not a group trying to do good.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I’d like to see a list of the ideas that make conservative “thought” so toxic.
Zero sum would be number one in my book.
It’s not even mathematics because it doesn’t go past addition and subtraction. Maybe it’s just because it’s so simple, it must be true. Even when it isn’t.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: automating the entire field of education to make sure women stay in the kitchen seems like a terribly baroque plan.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: conservatives have a rigidly dualistic view of the world, and zero-sum economics fits in perfectly. Nuance and countercyclical spending and all that invalidate zero-sum economic thinking, so they’re against that too, because all conservative thought stems from a fundamental faith in (usually apocalyptic, usually Christian) dualism, and faith must not be challenged.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Remember, we’re supposed to just “get over it” and not bring up the past unpleasantness. Though as comments from theads from the past few days shows, that’s somewhat one sided.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, I’m not saying that’s why the people working on education automation are doing it. I’m saying that’s why Dominionists like DeVos and Mercer are going to be pushing it.
The actual automation could potentially be a Godsend for kids in remote areas where it’s hard to get qualified teachers, or even enough kids for a decent-sized school, but it’s going to get hijacked by the Dominionists so they can continue expanding their crackpot homeschooling agenda.
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
I honestly think it’s less about what we’ve let them get away with and more about what the news media has let them get away with. Democrats have tried to call them out on their shit, but it’s hard to accomplish much when the MSM ignores it and pretends the Republicans are serious. If the Democrats are really guilty of any negligence, it’s in failing to set up the equivalent of the Republican puke funnel. We need a way of forcing the media to pay attention when we point out what the Republicans are doing.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yep, the calls by the dead-enders for us to “get over it” are basically shut up and do what I want. I’ve never been good at that. ?
Again, James Powell, when I say the above, I don’t mean you. If it’s not about you, it’s not about you.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Do remember that the employer pays 1/2 the SS/Medicare payroll tax. Yes they get credit for that on income tax but it is still a big chunk on paydays. 7.65%. Big business wants that to end. Small businesses aren’t real happy about that either. And neither are a lot of employees who pay the other 7.65%
We do a lousy job of explaining what and why we do for ourselves and we shouldn’t give the conservatives an excuse for fucking us. They don’t want to straighten out SS, but you know that. They want to end it, so they don’t have to contribute.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Exactly.
I’d still like to see a list. Break it down into it’s more easily understood parts. Maybe that will put a better spin on why people constantly vote against their immediate interests, let alone long term. I don’t think one person has the vision to see this, we all have blinders to one degree or another.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s a very interesting book, but I’m not eager to live in the world described therein.
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
He. Got. Fewer. Votes.
Yes.
But IMHO, the “Dean scream” kerfuffle was about as clear an instance of assassination by media narrative as I have ever witnessed, stronger than “sighs” and “earth-tones”, stronger than “over-prepared” and “shadows”.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Seriously?That’s total bullshit. Learning and teaching cannot be completely automated. I say that as a person who has taken a lot of classes online and in class from undergrad to graduate to PhD levels in variety of subjects and who has also taught classes (mostly math and physics)
joel hanes
@James Powell:
it’s about the lack of trust in the Democratic Party leadership
I think it’s much deeper: they’ve lost faith in institutions, and in the future.
My best friend for going on fifty years got his start as a union plumber, until he was a union journeyman plumber, and then a foreman, and then headed the work crew that built the Red Lion Inn in Durango, after which he became the facilities manager. He has nothing good to say about the union, because he believes the union leadership to be and have been corrupt, and to care nothing about the rank and file. He lives in Wisconsin, and feels helpless to oppose Walker, but can’t get around his antipathy to the unions to view them as allies.
Similarly, hardly any of the vets from Viet Nam and later ever joined the VFW or Foreign Legion.
Fraternal organizations such as the Masons and the Moose and the Elk are shrinking; the mainstream Protestant churches have shrunk dramatically. Skiiers used to club together in formal, long-lived organizations to rent and share cabins in pricy ski areas; I was treasurer of one such in its dying years, and although skiing was more popular than ever, we could not get young people to join a club.
People who go through life bowling alone aren’t loyal to institutions, even ones they use. So we have a large and growing tranche of people who often vote Democratic, and may even be registered as Democrats, but who do not regard themselves as “belonging to the Democratic Party”.
Joiners and loyalists and followers, meanwhile, have tended Republican for a long time.
joel hanes
@Psych1:
If you’re against the war
You’re laboring under a misunderstanding.
“Against the war” is fine, “against the war” is even approved — in fact, we’re pretty much all against the war.
But “against the war” plus misinformed plus stupid — that we reject.
Inch-deep generalizations that are mostly false just won’t get you very far with the BJ commentariat.
Mnemosyne
@joel hanes:
Oh, absolutely. Dean scared the media shitless because he was the mirror image of Bush — see my comments above about them having identical backgrounds from the same social class.
My only argument is against the notion that the Democratic Party torpedoed him because he was anti-war. By that point, all of the Democratic primary candidates were vocally against the Iraq War.
Barry
@MattF: “One of the defining characteristics of Sullivan’s worldview is innumeracy. ”
That’s a subset of his prime defining characteristic – gross and blatant dishonesty.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Liberals really, really don’t like to think of themselves as mindless team cheerleaders–and there’s always someone (Republicans, leftist radicals) loudly accusing them of being mindless team cheerleaders, which goads them into more public self-criticism. It’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to get them on the same page when election time comes around.
Matt McIrvin
@Elie:
My experience is that any attempt to do this backfires 100%–they’ll just hate you and resolve all the more strongly to never, ever vote for a Democrat. I know some people like this who just fly into a rage at the slightest suggestion that some kind of party authority figure is telling them how to vote. Which makes me think that the real motive here isn’t any kind of imagined strategy, it’s “you’re not the boss of me”.