Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

Whatever, Sidd. I've never demanded purity in anything. I'm just not buying into the idea that I have to vote for a cynical hack who looks out for the people who pay her and fuck everybody else because if I don't Ted Cruz and his white-sheet cowboys are going to march me off to the American Auschwitz like a Japanese internee. And before you accuse anybody of being smug I suggest you clean your mirror.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

And, of course, they really didn't. Nader would have been a terrible president, while Gore would likely have been decidedly competent.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

And here you see it, this is what the Citizen's United folks, Gingrich, Issa and the crew have been trying to achieve for all these years....

Money works.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

The embrace of torture is a horrible thing. About as horrible as the fact that it's still ongoing under the current administration and was blessed by Hilary as Secretary of State, as was dropping bombs on American citizens overseas.

While you're at it, let's take a moment to ponder Ed Snowden and the way the NSA and CIA are crawling through your computer, driving, and tv watching habits because both parties think that's just alright. As long as we can keep an eye on those radicalized muslims and their sympathizers. Like you and I.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

Carried interest is indefensible. But we're talking about a rounding error in terms of the budget. That's not a good enough reason to cast a Nader vote.

But here's some comfort for you. Whoever wins will be viewed by more than half the country as an illegitimate President. This person will not be respected or treated with dignity by the public or our increasingly audience-participatory media.

Trump is proof the office, and politics in general, has degraded to a point where people are probably, in the next decade or so, as things worsen, going to challenge the enforcement capabilities of authorities. Look at Chicago right now. Look at silly things like the Bundy family lunatics. To borrow from the title of a recent great book, there's an "Unwinding" going on all around us.* The suit ascending to the Presidency is MC at the biggest kook carnival in history.

If you really hate Hillary so much, vote for her.

_______________
* We don't see it so much because we're not of the desperate masses. Trust me, in flyover land, or in the lower middle class to impoverished enclaves of cities, people are fucking nuts. And it's getting loonier by the day.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

No it wouldn't. At most, it would have meant that instead of Citi, for example, doing it themselves they would have sold their loans to non-banks like Bear, Lehman, and Merrill.

Don't hold your breath. It's one thing to say it, but it's not happening.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

Comfort > Liberty. That ship sailed long ago. Most of this country thinks the NSA is a misspelling of the NBA. Snowden's a forward who went to play in the Russian league.

Clueless, moronic rabble - that's your typical American. He doesn't give a damn about his privacy. Hell, he wants to give it up, to collect the most likes of his buddies on FB!

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

To be honest, I have never been a huge fan of the National Review. It skewed a bit Establishment for my taste. It didn't offend me, and I would read it in a doctor's office or someplace like that, but it wouldn't be my first choice. I actually hold it in much higher esteem after their anti-Trump issue, which caused them to lose the sponsorship of a GOP debate. I read the Weekly Standard, which is similar in tone, but that is because I have a gift subscription. I probably wouldn't subscribe on my own. I am not a Rush listener, but from what I understand his show is now The Trump Show featuring Rush Limbaugh. Breitbart used to be respectable, but had evealed itself to be Trumpbart well before the Michelle Fields incident. Andrew Breitbart is probably turning over in his grave.

I used to be an avid reader of Drudge, but that has been entirely replaced in my list of favorites with Redstate, which is decidedly #NeverTrump. Most of the Fox News personalities on the Trump bandwagon were buffoons before (Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Eric Bolling, Andrea Tantaros, O'Reilly), so that has just made those personalities even more unpalatable.

I always considered Beck a loon, but have given him a second glance because of his anti-Trump position. I still don't care to listen to him personally, but TheBlaze now supplants Redstate. Mr. Chick recently subscribed to the Conservative Review.

There has been a fairly substantial shift in my consumption of conservative media, and I do not think I can ever go back. It is an unfathomable that I could trust a source that I know supported *him*.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

I'll talk more about UBS, the Chase settlement, and carried interests on Monday. My analysis won't be the perfect curry. But it will be a pretty good gumbo.

For now, it's enough to say that the reason we have carried interests is because rich people don't like to pay taxes and they have the money to buy Congressmen and Presidents to ensure they don't have to.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

These all still strike me as insubstantial pap for the ideological. There's not much published by any of them where someone like me might read them and learn something more than some blowhard's opinion.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

There's no need to buy the Dems who advocate for it. It benefits their districts. If you raised enormous sums for these people from pure-as-silk Bernie donors, who are not insignificant portions of the vote in their districts, they'd still vote for it.

I say this as a Dem in a Dem state that would eliminate carried interests in a second. And one who is active in trying to figure out how to get techies and VCs to give to Dems (they're very stingy constituencies when it comes to political giving).

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

You should give the Weekly Standard a chance, it's fairly nuanced and policy wonkish (and was the source of the article I posted about Hamilton yesterday). If for no other reason, their book review section may turn you on to something worthy of attention.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/issue

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

Not unless that's on the ballot. And it isn't this time.

I am way sympathetic to the lefties who want more fundamental change. But it takes a lot of work. If you want that on the ballot, you have to get that on the ballot.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

Yes, I meant Congress matters too, not instead.

Re: As the choppers hover outside my window
 

How does the carried interest benefit any congressional district? All it does is allow wealthy people to avoid paying income and employment tax on their compensation. The rest of the taxpayers are further burdened by having to make up the revenue shortfall through higher taxes on their significantly lower incomes.