Wednesday Reads
Posted: March 30, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads, Diplomacy Nightmares, Foreign Affairs, Surreality, the GOP 62 CommentsGood Afternoon!
Well, I’m holding down the fort today! Both BB and JJ are off surfing samsara which is my little way of saying they’re dealing with a series of life’s little unpleasantness. That seems to be the order of the day. There’s a war on life’s pleasantries out there! The majority of us are losing the fight.
So, I watched the Republican Townhall last night. One hour with each of them is an hour wasted in Bizarro. Ted Cruz is a sociopath. He dodged all questions choosing to spin a series of anecdotes with no relation to the question asked by Anderson Cooper or the participants. The fact he thought these anecdotes charming given his self congratulatory manner–when they definitely were not–says a lot about his inability to even fake being human for short periods of time. He’s positively reptilian. Donald Trump is walking, savage ID. He has no conception of anything remotely related to the rest of the world that hasn’t been directly in his face and interests. The sentence I bolded below pretty much sums the Trump exchange.
During a CNN town-hall forum Tuesday night, Donald Trump reiterated the falsehood that Sen. Ted Cruz was responsible for spreading around an image of his wife Melania in a nude pose. “I thought it was a nice picture of Heidi,” Trump said of an image he retweeted clearly meant to make her look unattractive compared to his wife. “Come on,” Anderson Cooper responded. “I thought it was fine,” Trump insisted. Continuing to deny culpability, he said “I didn’t start it.” Cooper sensibly retorted, “That’s the argument of a 5-year-old.”
That sentence pretty much sums up the behavior of most of the politicians associated with the Republican Party who basically have not been doing their actual jobs for some time. They won’t examine or confirm SCOTUS nominees. They continually vote to get rid of the ACA when they know the bill will go no where. They are obsessed with Planned Parenthood based on outright lies. They deny the impact and causes of Climate Science. It’s the behavior of a 5-year-old that doesn’t get his way.
The unraveling of the Republican party is not good for this country. Candidates like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are signs that something has gone supremely wrong. Kasich appears to be the only sane one left unless you count Rubio who seems to be angling to hold on to his delegates in some weird hope that a brokered convention will anoint him. Both may be sane. Neither are presidential material. Rubio is dumb and Kasich wanders that ethereal wasteland between being pragmatic and preaching radical religious right sermons worthy of any common religious fanatic.
It is a full on war between the Republican Establishment and the white, working class base it has used as a foil to push through bad tax policy since the Pied Piper of Hollywood spun a tune to romance them into the Republican fold. Ronald Reagan’s dogwhistles and tales of a white utopia, a city on the hill, enticed them to vote Republican for a few decades. Dubya’s uncanny ability to sound homespun and create wars to appeal to their patriotic nature may have held them for awhile. But now they are unleashed with wide open eyes and a distaste of all things Romneyesque. The want real brutes. Karl Rove no longer can manipulate their lesser angels with empty promises and heads. They want the real deal.
If you listen to establishment gurus, you’d be led to believe that the Republican primary voter revolt was birthed by the governance of President Obama, creating fertile ground for the emergence of one Donald Trump. This fairy tale version of reality casts Trump as the villain who has swept in to capitalize on voter frustration with Obama’s alleged weakness, lawlessness and rampant liberalism.
The villain must be stopped or the Republican Party will be destroyed. Or so we are told.
The old saw that you have to first acknowledge that you have a problem to solve the problem applies here. What the GOP “leaders” refuse to accept is that Trump is not the problem. They are.
The dissatisfaction among a large cohort of GOP voters is directly attributable to their unhappiness with a party that they believe does not represent their interests. In exit polls, high percentages of GOP voters registered displeasure with their leadership. In Tennessee, 58% of Republican voters said they felt “betrayed” by their leaders, as did 47% in New Hampshire, 52% in South Carolina and 54% in Ohio.
Those who feel betrayed have been most likely to vote for Trump. Trump has been a particular draw to white working-class voters who feel left behind economically. Such voters have been treated with dismissal and outright contempt by the GOP establishment even as this group has become more critical to Republican success. Pew reported in 2012 that “lower-income and less educated whites … have shifted substantially toward the Republican Party since 2008.”
In other words, their peasants are revolting. Given this, how can the party’s elite make their way through a brokered convention when the party itself is so positively unmoored? Its main policy goal is tax avoidance for the very wealthy. After that’s accomplished, they throw bits and pieces of radical religious bills at the wall to see what will stick while railing against minorities, women, and immigrants.
The modern Republican Party has devolved into a tax avoidance scam for rich people. The scam is a masterpiece of psychological manipulation, in which the racial, cultural and economic anxieties of (mostly white) voters are exploited, in order to get those voters to support policies that transfer ever-greater percentages of wealth from themselves to the top 0.1 percent.
It really isn’t any more complicated than that. Everything else – the “culture wars,” the continual hysteria about terrorism, the non-stop rhetoric about how the mainstream media, the universities, the scientists, and basically the rest of the modern world are all biased against conservatives – it’s all just so much noise, designed to solve the tricky problem of how to get ordinary people to support economic policies that make them poorer and rich people richer.You couldn’t come up with a better illustration of this principle than the ongoing GOP campaign to eliminate the estate tax. Last year the House voted to get rid of it, and a majority of Republican senators have pledged to do the same.
The Republican propaganda machine has waged a multi-decade war against the estate tax, which it has rebranded the “death tax.” Because of these efforts, the tax has been watered down to the point where, under current law, only a tiny group of wealthy people will ever pay any estate taxes at all.
But of course that isn’t enough, since it means that some taxes still have to be paid on truly enormous inheritances, and protecting the economic interests of people who have a net worth in the eight, nine, 10 or 11 figures is the contemporary GOP’s entire reason for being.
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
The emergence of Trump as a leading Republican candidate is something found incredulous by enabling media types who have been equivocating between Democrats and Republicans for some time. They’ve refused to hold any one accountable for outright lies.
One of the most amazing things to see is the panic in our allies as major Republican candidates want to dump NATO, dally with war crimes and nuclear weapons, and ignore treaties and trade agreements. That’s how equivocal Republicans and Democrats really are from the view here on USA Main Street. The one thing that’s been fairly consistent in American governance is the respect for pre-existing foreign agreements and diplomacy. Each President–even while holding different visions of the country–basically finds value in remaining on a stable and predictable path in foreign affairs. The Republican historical area of expertise used to be foreign policy until now.
Lobbyists in Washington say they are being flooded with questions and concerns from foreign governments about the rise of Donald Trump.Officials around the globe are closely following the U.S. presidential race, to the point where some have asked their American lobbyists to explain, in great detail, what a contested GOP convention would look like. There is nothing conservative about Trump or the Republican party these days other than their tax avoidance schemes. They are a party of insurgents and radicals hellbent on an agenda to turn back modernity.
The questions about Trump are “almost all-consuming,” said Richard Mintz, the managing director of Washington-based firm The Harbour Group, whose client list includes the governments of Georgia and the United Arab Emirates.
After a recent trip to London, Abu Dhabi and Beijing, “it’s fair to say that all anyone wants to talk about is the U.S. presidential election,” Mintz added. “People are confused and perplexed.”
The Hill conducted interviews with more than a half-dozen lobbyists, many of whom said they are grappling with how to explain Trump and his unusual foreign policy views to clients who have a lot riding on their relationship with the United States.
“We’re in uncharted territory here,” said one lobbyist with foreign government clients who asked not to be identified.
“The questions coming from the international community are not different than the things, categorically, we’re asking ourselves,” said Nathan Daschle, the president and chief operating officer of the Daschle Group, a firm run by his father, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).
“There’s an added level of bafflement because this is not the United States that they’ve been living with for so long,” Daschle said. “This is not the image the United States has been projecting.”
The questions about Trump often concern his foreign policy positions.
The businessman has boasted about keeping his options open on many crucial foreign policy questions, including on trade, troop-sharing agreements and the U.S. posture toward China.
“I don’t want to say what I’d do because, again, we need unpredictability,” Trump told The New York Times in an interview published over the weekend.
A second lobbyist who represents countries in Latin America, Asia and the Muslim world said answers like that have made Trump a “wild card” for leaders around the world.
“Nobody knows whether he believes anything of what he says because he’s changed his position so many times,” the lobbyist said.
Some of Trump’s comments — especially about Mexico, Muslims and trade with countries such as Japan and China — have also angered foreign leaders.
A third lobbyist for governments in Asia said part of his job has been telling countries how to react to some of Trump’s controversial remarks.
“If you come out and blast Donald Trump — for the people who are going to vote for Donald Trump, that could make them like him more,” the lobbyist, who also represents foreign companies with a large presence in the U.S., said he has told foreign leaders.
But it’s not just Trump making these comments. Cruz has suggested we carpet bomb all areas around ISIS including areas containing huge numbers of civilians leading our military leaders to suggest that they’ve trained their soldiers to disobey illegal and unconstitutional orders. Kasich discussed redefining NATO in the debate last night. There is nothing moderate or rational about any of these men. But, how out of line are these outrageous views with Americans? Polls still find that Americans approve of torture even though it violates our nation’s commitment to the Geneva Convention. Chances are that this poll reflects a huge number resident in the Republican base.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe torture can be justified to extract information from suspected terrorists, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, a level of support similar to that seen in countries like Nigeria where militant attacks are common.
The poll reflects a U.S. public on edge after the massacre of 14 people in San Bernardino in December and large-scale attacks in Europe in recent months, including a bombing claimed by the militant group Islamic State last week that killed at least 32 people in Belgium.
Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, has forcefully injected the issue of whether terrorism suspects should be tortured into the election campaign.
This can only be the result of years of letting our political discourse sink to bottom feeder levels through vehicles like Fox News, right wing radio and blogs, and astroturf organizations like the Tea Party. Former SOS Clinton indicated earlier this month that she was receiving tweets from World Leaders offering any help they can to her in the effort to defeat Trump in the general. Its hard to imagine Trump, Cruz or Kasich receiving tweets from any one on that level even as one of them caroms towards their party’s nomination.
Hillary Clinton says foreign leaders are privately reaching out to her to ask if they can endorse her to stop Donald Trump from becoming president of the United States.
“I am already receiving messages from leaders,” Clinton told an Ohio audience at a Democratic presidential town hall on Sunday night.
“I’m having foreign leaders ask if they can endorse me to stop Donald Trump.”
Trump has demonstrated virtually no knowledge of foreign policy. How dangerous is his world view?
He’s suggested using economic warfare to halt China’s territorial moves in the South China Sea and raised the prospect of a fundamental reconsideration of nuclear doctrine by musing about South Korea and Japan acquiring their own atomic arsenal. He says the U.S. should boycott Saudi Arabian oil if the kingdom doesn’t send ground troops to fight ISIS and believes NATO is an anachronism. And he warns he will renegotiate bedrock free trade deals, a prospect that could send serious reverberations through the global economy.
“It is rattling the windows of foreign ministries all over the world,” said CNN’s senior political analyst David Gergen, who has worked for a string of Democratic and Republican presidents.Trump has gone to great lengths over the past week to explain his foreign policy views, which are often criticized as overly vague. He’s participated in extensive interviews with The Washington Post and The New York Times and delivered a speech — notable because it was carefully pre-written — to the leading pro-Israel group in Washington. He’ll have another opportunity to address foreign policy Tuesday night during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.The interviews reveal Trump as someone who is just as willing to flout the foreign policy establishment as he is the GOP elite. His statements appear to fly in the face of the longstanding assumption underlying U.S. foreign policy — that supporting allies financially, diplomatically and militarily promotes a global system of unfettered free trade, democracy and stability that is overwhelmingly in the national interests of the United States.
Andrew J. Bacevich–writing for The Nation today–argues that Ted Cruz is worse and represents the degeneration of Republican Foreign 
Policy conservatism.
As the embodiment of this truculence, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, today finding favor among Republicans desperate to derail Donald Trump’s bid for the GOP nomination, stands alone. From the very outset of his candidacy, Cruz has depicted himself as the one genuinely principled conservative in the race. And in comparison to Trump, who is ideologically sui generis, Cruz does qualify as something of a conservative. When it comes to foreign policy, however, Cruz offers not principles but—like Trump himself—raw pugnacity.
Cruz has gone out of his way to deride the pretensions of democracy promoters, mocking “crazy neocon invade-every-country-on-earth” types wanting to “send our kids to die in the Middle East.” On the stump, Cruz advertises himself as Reagan’s one-and-only true heir. As such, he endorses “the clarity of Reagan’s four most important words: ‘We win, they lose.’” Upon closer examination, Cruz is actually advocating something quite different: “We win, they lose, then we walk away.”
The key to “winning” is to unleash American military might. “If I am elected president, we will utterly destroy ISIS,” Cruz vows. “We won’t weaken them. We won’t degrade them. We will utterly destroy them. We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion…. We will do everything necessary so that every militant on the face of the earth will know…if you wage jihad and declare war on America, you are signing your death warrant.”
Yet rather than Reaganesque, Cruz’s prescription for dealing with Islamist radicalism represents a throwback to bomb-them-back-to-the-Stone-Age precepts pioneered by Gen. Curtis LeMay and endorsed by the likes of Barry Goldwater back when obliteration was in fashion. The embryonic Cruz Doctrine offers an approximation of total war. “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!” he promises with evident enthusiasm.
Nowhere, however, does his outlook take into account costs, whether human, fiscal, or moral. Nor does it weigh the second-order consequences of, say, rendering large parts of Iraq and Syria a smoking ruin or of killing large numbers of noncombatants through campaigns of indiscriminate bombing. In essence, Cruz sees force as a way to circumvent history—a prospect that resonates with Americans annoyed by history’s stubborn complexities.
Kasich has survived so far by keeping his head down and winning his home state of Ohio. But now that he is one of only three candidates remaining in the race, the former congressman and current Governor of Ohio will face the kind of media scrutiny that he has managed to avoid since he announced his candidacy. It will show that he is an outright mediocrity.
Kasich served on the House Armed Services Committee for eighteen years, where his strong beliefs on fiscal responsibility and budget cutting earned him the moniker of the “cheap hawk.” He accomplished next to nothing, apart from limiting the procurement of B-2 bombers.
During his long tenure in Congress, Kasich casted a number of votes on war-and-peace issues, voting for the Gulf War in 1991 but opposing Ronald Reagan’s decision in 1983 to send U.S. Marines to Lebanon for a peacekeeping mission. He reminds voters during town hall meetings and debates that the United States should get out of the business of nation-building and should stay far away from manufacturing democracies around the world. But he also floated the preposterous idea that the way to stop ISIS in its tracks is for the next president to create a new government agency to “beam messages around the globe” about the American credo of liberty.
At times, it is difficult to pinpoint what kind of foreign policy doctrine a potential President John Kasich would follow. He’s asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin has gotten away with far too much during the Obama administration, including his annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, his military and economic support to separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, and his decision to send fighter jets into Syria to strengthen the defenses of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. “[I]t’s time that we punched the Russians in the nose,” Kasich told radio host Hugh Hewitt during a December presidential debate. “They’ve gotten away with too much in this world, and we need to stand up against them . . . in Eastern Europe where they threaten some of our most precious allies.”
On other issues, like the nuclear agreement with Iran, Kasich has oscillated between common sense (“You’re going to rip it up and then what?”), depressed resignation (“I’m sort of sick to my stomach about it because . . . Iran’s going to get a ton of money”) to defiant opposition (“if I were president, I would call them and say, I’m sorry, but we’re suspending this agreement”). With respect to the Islamic State, Kasich has emphasized coalition building with Arab allies similar to George H.W. Bush’s alliance building during the Persian Gulf War—a safe position that is just muscular enough to pass muster with Republican voters, but benign enough that it wouldn’t raise the eyebrows of realists who call the party home.
The looming question is whether John Kasich is hawkish enough for the GOP foreign policy establishment, a club that has been heavily influenced by neoconservative thinking for the past fifteen years.
At least “outright mediocrity” wont scare the children. It won’t scare ISIS either.
It’s been incredible to watch Bernie Sanders with his generalities and overreaching promises dodge serious foreign policies questions through out the Democratic Debates. He tends to fall back on insisting that his vote against the Iran Resolution just says it all. It doesn’t, however. His generalities fall way short of Clinton’s recall of names and her credentials as the nation’s chief foreign policy negotiator. I have to say that I learn a little bit more about the entire world each time she steps to the podium and takes a foreign policy question or makes a foreign policy speech.
Imagine what the debates and town halls in the general will look like when she takes on one of these candidates from the party in total disarray. My guess is that entire countries will be cheering for her.
I should close here but I’d like to share this with you so you can see that she will be our candidate for the fall despite the bleating and chest thumping of the cult of Bern. Here’s Nate Silver’s estimate of Bernie’s long shot path from today. It is beyond improbable that he can get 988 more pledged delegates and romance the Super D’s. Yes, there is one more campaign out there in Bizarro and it’s not a Republican one.
If you’re a Sanders supporter, you might look at the map and see some states — Oregon, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Montana and so forth — that look pretty good for Sanders, a lot like the ones that gave Sanders landslide wins earlier in the campaign. But those states have relatively few delegates. Instead, about 65 percent of the remaining delegates are in California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland — all states where Sanders trails Clinton in the polls and sometimes trails her by a lot.
To reach a pledged delegate majority, Sanders will have to win most of the delegates from those big states. A major loss in any of them could be fatal to his chances. He could afford to lose one or two of them narrowly, but then he’d need to make up ground elsewhere — he’d probably have to win California by double digits, for example.
Sanders will also need to gain ground on Clinton in a series of medium-sized states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and New Mexico. Demographics suggest that these states could be close, but close won’t be enough for Sanders. He’ll need to win several of them easily.
None of this is all that likely. Frankly, none of it is at all likely. If the remaining states vote based on the same demographic patterns established by the previous ones, Clinton will probably gain further ground on Sanders. If they vote as state-by-state polling suggests they will, Clinton could roughly double her current advantage over Sanders and wind up winning the nomination by 400 to 500 pledged delegates.
The nation and the world should breathe a collective sigh of relief when Clinton wins the nomination and the presidency. The alternatives to Hillary are the stuff of national nightmares. In fact, they would be a global nightmare and the majority of the US and the world knows it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
WTF?
Donald Trump talks about the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Trump: I’d pick justices who would look at Clinton’s email scandal
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/trump-supreme-court-clinton-email-221377#ixzz44PQAlqLL
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
They’d have to look at Colin Powell’s and Condaleeza Rice’s email “scandals” too. Fat chance. Besides, Trump’s showing his ignorance, once again, of how things work. The SCOTUS doesn’t initiate such inquiries, even if the issue was legitimate.
So, he thinks SCOTUS is a group of 9 Private Detectives? He is such an idiot! Not even a clue about how SCOTUS works.
This is what happens when you live in the bubble of privilege where everything you say is the gospel and nothing you say is ever challenged. He says whatever comes into his head without even thinking it through. He blurts out his first thoughts on the subject without any particular knowledge of the matter being discussed and without the experience or temperament to seek counsel before speaking about things he knows nothing about. Where I grew we call people like that Bullshitters!!!!
No. He merely doesn’t froth at the mouth so obviously as Trump & Cruz.
Exactly. He’s from the code word school of Republicanism.
Thanks Dak, I learned a bunch from this post.
The horror of the debate drove me to investigate their positions.
Wow, thank you, you’ve filled this with great information!
Thanks, dak. This was a great read. In my opinion you are a little to kind to Kasich, the most anti-choice governor in this country. He’s not moderate, he’s just hiding his insanity.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/wolf-sheeps-clothing-gov-kasichs-reproductive-rights-record
I live in Ohio, janicen, and can report that you are one hundred percent accurate about Kasich.
Excellent Post Dak. Thank you!!!
And it gets more outrageous!
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-03-30/trump-says-women-may-need-punishment-if-abortion-banned
He is a horrible excuse for a human being.
The War On Women has started full swing, albeit we did see hints in the name calling of women candidate Hillary Clinton…ala hashtag #whichhillary (mild one). We need to register women to vote ASAP! We need to get out the vote. Trump & Cruz are dangerous to women and humanity with their yearning to use nuclear weapons.
Good Grief.
The berniebros are pulling out all the stops to slow Hillary. I saw a poll today that has her behind in WI by 4. I’m not surprised because I believed that would be a close one, but if Bernie wins it their shrill voices will be unbearable until we get to NY on the 19th.
We need to protest with pens (Freedom of The Press) and HANGERS ( a woman’s right to choose). So, a rapist goes free, the woman or child goes to jail. How sick are these people and WHERE is Susan Sarandon who is Bernie of Bust saying that she would vote for TRUMP! Aaargh
Ok, but first there should be a law that the Father gets kicked in the nuts (because he should suffer some physical pain too) and put in jail for impregnating the woman to begin with.
Until the day comes when men have to carry a baby in their body for nine months and then provide most of the care to them until they become adults, I don’t want a man’s advice on what women should or shouldn’t do with our bodies. We don’t have recommendations or laws regarding what a man must do with his testicles or penis after conception, so men need to stop making laws to control our bodies.
Agree!
Donald Trump should be choked with his own ejaculate.
Hahahahahahahaha!
LOL!!!! That brought tears to my eyes!!!
And the punishment for Trumphy, whack his nuts off.
Donald Trump: Women deserve ‘some form of punishment’ for abortion
This is outrageous and Hillary needs to raise it as in issue and quickly
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/26/11308890/indiana-abortion-law-miscarriage
1) It makes an unprecedented requirement to bury or cremate all fetal remains, even from an early miscarriage.
All this will do is cause women to put off seeing a Doctor for as long as possible. When women do miscarry they will be burdened with the cost of burying or cremating what amounts to a mass of blood.
2) It bans getting abortions for specific reasons, which is both burdensome and hard to enforce
3) It bans fetal tissue research
Absurd!!!!!!!!!!
4) It beefs up some of Indiana’s existing anti-abortion laws
Yesterday Michaelangelo Signorile said there is also in provision in this bill that forces women to carry dead fetuses to term after a certain point in the pregnancy. I haven’t found that in anything that I’ve read about this bill so far, but I don’t doubt that it’s true.
Guess every time used tampon and pad goes to a graveyard there.
Exactly. I had at least one at about 6 weeks. My grandmother had 2 or 3 and a stillbirth.
Since the advent of ultrasound use early in pregnancies, we now know that up to 50% of all conceptions are rejected by the body due to malformations which are, in the medical terminology, incompatible with life. Early in term, these spontaneous abortions are often mistaken for a heavier menses.
A retained dead fetus will lead to systemic sepsis and the woman’s death. Or that may be what the Republican sadists want to happen to a woman who dares to not behave like a proper incubator.
Eve’s curse still.
The stupidity of these fuckers in Indiana, and everywhere else.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Bernie-Sanders-Faces-Ballot-Trouble-in-DC-After-Registration-Snafu-374042381.html
Lol …
A really good post, Dakinikat. Here are just a couple of general comments.
I am pretty sure that Sanders is going to win Wisconsin. I said the other day that I thought he would win by 10-15 points. Obama won big there in ’08 over Hillary. It is a perfect state for Sanders, with a very liberal Democratic voting base, with a massive university population. And I had not realized until yesterday that it is one of those pernicious open primaries. Sanders will win fairly handily, and then we are going to hear all sorts of unpleasant things. So we just have to put up with it until New York.
Like some carnival hustler, the Republicans try to hide their card under the cups. The card is of course that their only real domestic policy is to lower taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. I have never figured out if they think this will actually help the economy, or whether they just want the lower taxes, and then try to figure out how they are going to to trick the voters into assenting. The Republicans will hide this card under a cup saying, “We want to make the tax code fairer” They will cover it by saying, “We need to balance the budget for the economy to grow, and since we want to lower (the wealthy’s) taxes, we must cut out most of the social programs.” They will obfuscate and throw up smokescreens of all types, but it will always come down to them wanting the rich to pay far less in taxes.
The Republican Tea Party types have no foreign policy, other than general belligerence. I blame the Republicans in general, and particularly the Tea Party members. for this travesty. But I also blame the average voters, who apparently cannot be bothered to learn anything about the world, or about governance, so have a six-year old’s perception of how to solve complex problems. And the media is of course complicit in all of this, for they only want to create ratings-enhancing heat, rather than any illumination. Their quest for ratings bore Trump; their stupid “false equivalence” allowed the insane Radical Right to be given credibiilty by them as a legitimate intellectual force. And then of course we have Sanders, whom the media will cheerfully take a face value, and never question the fact that not only would his domestic proposals not get enacted, they would cost trillions of dollars; and that he has no foreign policy other than that he wants to “crush Isis,” and not to have had a war with Iraq. We are about at a point where Limbaugh, Hannity, Joe the Plumber, or the guy sitting on a barstool, all would have a chance to get elected President. The ultimate bitter triumph of American anti-intellectualism?
Great points! I think the media has gotten worse because huge corporate interests and profit seeking has really destroyed the news provision. That and I wish the Fairness Doctrine was back.
“I have never figured out if they think this will actually help the economy, or whether they just want the lower taxes, and then try to figure out how they are going to to trick the voters into assenting.”
It’s easy: Tax cuts are the solution when the economy is good. (Eg. Shrub going on about the gubmint not keeping people’s own money.) Tax cuts are also the solution when the economy is bad. (Stimulus! Jahb creatorz!)
It’s *always* the answer. So that would be B.
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325962/hillary-male-voters-trump-gender
Interesting essay on sexism in the race.
Doesn’t surprise me one bit. There is still a certain percentage of insecure men.
Hillary is on Rachel right now.
Thank you. Grabbed it late but I’m here.
Loved that bit about, Hey, I worked hard for Obama after he beat me, that’s what you do…
Sanders, are you listening?
Geez, she’s brilliant. 50 times smarter than all of the other candidates combined. How could you not support her?
Only if you’re an insecure Republican asshat. Or a ratcopulator.
Thank you bb. I’m so glad I caught that.
At the beginning she talked about abortion rights. Rachel said Bernie thought Trump’s remarks were stupid and just distracted from the important issues. Hillary strongly disagreed.
Good for Hillary! He’s an asshat when it comes to the rights of women and minorities.
Apparently the healthcare rights of 51% of the population don’t matter to him.
MSNBC is changing what Bernie Sanders said and this morning he is copying Hillary Clinton’s speaking points on health care, praising ACA and what ACA did.
Barney Frank on Bernie…
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/03/barney_frank_is_not_impressed_by_bernie_sanders.html
Great Article
I miss Barney Frank being in Congress.
That was a great article but ya know…he’s an insider. LOL!
I tuned in late, but I’ll tape the earlier part when it repeats. I was quite interested in the last part, where I learned that Sanders had actually said that if he is elected President in November, he will ask President Obama to witndraw Judge Garland’s name for the Supreme Court. Now, I was hoping that Obama would pick a more “liberal” candidate, but Garland is highly respected, and considered very smart and honorable. For me, Sanders position reflects arrogance, and a
lack of the human element which seems to exist behind all the abstract rhetoric.
Much as I do not like the idea of the Republicans having the situation where they can not approve Garland now, but then turn around and do it after November, to thwart a new Democratic president from picking a more liberal one; Sanders is demagoguing the situation for politicial profit. He is making it easier for Republicans to avoid hearings; they can point to his statement to support it. They can indeed, as Hillary said in response, act as if Obama’s term is over already. What Sanders is essentially saying is, “I am the President-to-be. I do not like Garland as a choice, I want someone else. So as soon as I am elected, I am essentially going to be running the country, and telling Obama what he should do.” Really inappropriate, in my opinion. And very callous as regards the highly respected Judge Garland.
FYI…….For those who remember Susan Sarandon jumping Delores Huerta at the NV caucuses and lecturing Huerta about a Hillary Pac receiving donations from Monsanto, I thought you might like to know that Tad Devine, Sanders Campaign Manger, worked at a Law Firm that represented Monsanto. According to what I read Tad himself was a Highly paid legal Consultant to Monsanto. Susan Sarandon, can shove that bit of info where the sun don’t shine.
I watched the two interviews Clinton & Sanders. Remarkably Rachel was very fair with Hillary. Her interview with Bernie was more surprising because for the first time she asked him serious questions and cornered him on the inconsistencies between what he is saying and what his campaign is saying. Bernie has been chastising the DNC for not having a 50 State strategy, yet Tad Davine told MSNBC that Bernie didn’t do well in the South because he didn’t really compete in those State. Rachel called the bluff with Bernie and Bernie said they put money into them, but they had to put time into places they knew they had a shot. Rachel said, well isn’t that the opposite of the 50 State Strategy? She actually made him sound like a man who speaks with forked tongue. About damn time because he’s been speaking out of both sides of his mouth for months.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/clinton-on-trump-outrageous-and-dangerous-655453763826?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Hills is amazing all day long! The question that baffles me most about Hillary haters is, “Are they watching her from some alternate dimension where they see an hear something different from what I see and hear?” Like that movie “They Live” with Roddy Piper and Keith David where you had to have special glasses to see that some of the people were aliens.
In interviews and debates, she knocks question after question out of the park and demonstrates a virtuoso grasp of every issue and policy, literally in a different league of understanding over every other candidate, and somehow these so-called progressive young voters, especially young women, continue to follow after what is clearly an inferior candidate. I don’t get it. Maybe they have the magic glasses that I don’t have.
Hills is the only person running who is actually qualified to be president. That is a manifest reality, not an opinion. IMO. 🙂
I don’t think they are listening except to find something to jump on.
I spoke with a friend yesterday who is uncertain about Hillary, although this friend is a feminist. She was for Obama eight years ago. I mentioned that I was working for Hillary’s campaign. She noted that I had been a Hillary supporter for years. I said that I had been “ever since I started carefully listening to her.” I said that because it’s true and because I suspect that this woman is not listening to her. That she has made up her mind and is tuning Hillary out. Because, as you say, if she were listening, she’d be on Hillary’s team.
I think Maddow’s kool-aid may be wearing off.
As my Aunt Mil used to say, “From your lips to God’s ears” 😏
I have that feeling too.
She’s always been data based. I think she’s beginning to see Sanders campaign is message only. Plus, when he called women’s access to abortion a stupid side issue she knew it wasn’t because she’s covered us down here and our trap laws. She spent time at the one clinic left in Mississippi.
New Hillary ad for NY. Brilliant editing. Inspiring!
Thank you for sharing that, it’s excellent.