Re: Hey Sebby!
 

No, I didn't. I simply don't think data tells the full story. And even the economic data he mentions doesn't tell the whole picture. Ok, the economy overall is Not Bad based on growth and inflation and other metrics - but what about wage stagnation, for example?

Well, now I feel like shit. I incorrectly assumed that he chose not to do shoe leather reporting.

You did see that Arnade interviewed 200 people, right? That may actually be more than the number of people questioned in the polls Drum cites.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Your ability to explain away the craziest behavior without a substantive thought (or to liken it--ridiculously, I may add--to what you think is the equivalent on the left) is stunning. People are already talking trade war. If you think Bush's cronyism, which resulted in needless deaths of poor people in New Orleans and countless deaths based on a war he was bullied or tricked into starting, is bad, just wait til Trump gets in office.

You are comparing apples to turds. You're not making sense.

TM

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Billy Bragg is not mad, but he's veeeeeery disappointed in you.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Dani Rodrik says Sebby is right. Or at least isn't entirely wrong.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

You are batshit crazy if you think that Summers has "held sway over policy" anywhere at any time. He couldn't even hold sway over Harvard. (Although while he was President, he ran an enterprise worth far more than Trump's businesses, and I'll bet it appreciated during that time.)

Why you can't accept that Republicans have run Congress for the last six years? I don't get it. You're in denial. You can call them cretins, but you can't accept that anything is their fault.

for GGG
 

We need some Alien Overlords to Welcome
 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/743d91b8-d...#axzz43GZoUrIc

But just in case Sebby doesn't click through.

'Yet, as Robert Kagan, a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.

Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough. This is not about the last seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, they go back all the way to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.
Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.'

TM

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/a6/a61d...f99e90c52a.jpg

TM

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

On Fridays, I think it might be a good idea to get the Daily Dose of Funk out a bit earlier. So it can do more good. If the opening guitar line sounds weirdly familiar, imagine it sped up considerably. Right? You know what I'm talking about now. PE sampled it for Timebomb off their first album. It's Daily Dose of Funk #3 - Just Kissed My Baby from the Meters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoBIp817miY

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

http://uproxx.com/tv/who-said-it-don...ump-or-archer/

Archer or Trump- who said it?

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Flower as introductory survey course professor of music is my favorite Flower. Not Kidding. He reminds me of my Econ 101 professor who tried to get us interested in macroeconomics without belittling our ignorance. And he was entertaining, too. He demonstrated elasticity of supply with a bra strap (probably Not Kosher, but I didn't know better) and would show pictures of Buffalo Bill Jack Kemp getting tackled when he was using then-current GOP economic policy to illustrate some point he was making in class.

Anyway, I liked the first two Flower assignments (really do sound like something from Sly and the Family Stone).

ETA: Until I googled, I did not realize how long the Meters have been around. No wonder they sound like classic funk - they are. Anyway, carry on.

Re: We need some Alien Overlords to Welcome
 

I think it goes back even farther. The Whigs of this country, that is, the protectors of moneyed privilege, have always needed an alliance with the know-nothings, the angry, hateful lynch mob, to win elections. This goes back to Millard Fillmore and the traitors who brought us the civil war.

Re: We need some Alien Overlords to Welcome
 

I think that we can safely put the Democrats down as the party that caused the Civil War. The Mexican War was viewed at the time as driven by a desire to add slave states to the Union to strengthen and spread slavery. Who pushed it? Democrats like Stephen Douglas. Who opposed it? Whigs like Abraham Lincoln (and Winfield Scott, who nonetheless followed orders from his civilian bosses as a good general does, and kicked the ass of the Napoleon of the Americas).

The party allowed itself to become the vessel of slaveholders and pushed pro-slavery policies even when non-southern Democrats like Pierce and Buchanan were President. It is the shame that stains the party that it was the party of -anti-black racism until, maybe (if you are a generous soul), FDR. And was more realistically the party of anti-black racism until LBJ.

Re: We need some Alien Overlords to Welcome
 

That no-nothing element went from the whigs to the dems, form Filmore to Pierce and Buchanan.... whoever had them on board was reprehensible. The southern whigs of Bell were probably less reprehensible than the southern dems of Breckenridge, but that's a Trump/Cruz kind of difference.

But it's an interesting time because the parties were so fluid, with different factions moving back and forth. The Republicans really gathered good guys from both the defunct whig party and the split up democratic party (like van Buren's free-soilers). But you're right, my point was off - the whigs can win by allying with other groups, not just the no-nothings. But like most factions, they do need an alliance and the no-nothings are a common one, and they've been the favored choice of the whigs at least since Reagan.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Punch "Summers," "Rubin," and "Greenspan," in any order, into Google.

And you took my comment in an unintended direction. I'm not blaming him for the GOP Congress's blunders. That's not his fault at all. I just detest the guy because his guidance helped to create the mess we're in today, and now, at this late date, unlike Rubin and Greenspan, who've refrained from getting involved, that fat fuck still can't shut his mouth.

I'm sure Larry's technically a brilliant economist, and he sounds impressive waxing academic and theoretical between bear claws, Frappucinos, and Big Macs. But we're past the time of mandarins. To tweak the economy to better deliver for all classes requires a person with some actual understanding of business. Someone whose private sector resume includes a bit more than a brief stint consulting for a quant fund.

That person is not Trump, whose business record shows way too much appetite for risk. But truth be told, if you had to pick one of the two to run a business, you'd have to err on Trump. Summers ran a University. That's nice. But it's a "can't lose" job -- nearly govt work by another name. (And his big mouth even fucked up that gig for him.)