Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Always the case that it matters more; no one was immune and in other states it may have played into some of the lower ballot races. Luckily, Mass. had no close elections of any significance this election, but a little less party loyalty in NH and we could have lost a Senate and a Congressional seat, easily. Big reason why Bernie spent a lot of time in NH.

Re: Great piece
 

Well, surely Hillary would have tried to destroy NATO, or something else equally dangerous to freedom -- it's all the same, so maybe Sebby is on to something.

Re: Great piece
 

Meet the new boss... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ

It's a debate over whose oxe gets gored for four years... who exerts control for a few years. Do we let neoliberal economists with shit for brains hold the wheel (the circle jerk in Davos this week), or do we let the autocrats Balkanize us like the old days? Either way, automation soldiers forward, the math regarding the promises both parties have made doesn't work, inequality continues its inexorable rise, and we argue about who's best to steward a largely rudderless vessel.

If insanity's doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result, is a hand grenade candidate really the end of the world? Or is it possibly just accelerating the inevitable?

The status quo can't persist. Capitalism needs to either have the mother of all resets, which allows the little guy a chance once again (and resets a far too significant advantage of capital over labor), or it needs to cede to more socialism. None of these things can happen so long as we have parties running people like Clinton and Bush, whose chief aims - above all else - were preservation of a doomed status quo. Trump might be the hand grenade that ushers in some serious socialism. Have you considered that? His failure, which is likely, might be the catalyst for the significant change the Left has desired for years, but been unable to obtain.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Pence is a true ideologue Jesus Freak. Trump's a self-serving pragmatist with no clear beliefs. With whom would you rather negotiate? I'm taking the blank slate I can buy off every day of the week.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You think the Tea Party is organized? You, sir, don't know the Tea Party.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

It is. And it's highly encouraging. Now all we need to do is create a moderate third party that can win.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I think that is mainly a reflection that both major parties put up terrible candidates. I don't believe it was a bunch of people so secure with a HRC victory they felt they had the luxury of a vote for Stein.

I saw as many bumper stickers asking the Sweet Meteor of Death to end it all as I did for each of the major party candidates. I think that was a one-off, not a trend.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

There was no shortage of people around here who voted Stein or Johnson thinking Hillary had it sewn up. Weld made a respectable effort to kill that thinking among his many fans, which probably helped in NH, where it mattered; I'm sure he cost the Johnson ticket a fair number of votes.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Third parties in America are rarely moderate.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

1968: Nixon* v. Humphrey** v. Wallace***
1972: Nixon* v. McGovern****
1976: Ford**** v. Carter****
1980: Carter**** v. Reagan*****
1984: Reagan***** v. Mondale**
1988: Bush**** v. Dukakis****
1992: Bush**** v. Clinton***** v. Perot****
1996: Clinton***** v. Dole****
2000: Gore**** v. Bush******
2004: Bush****** v. Kerry**
2008: Obama***** v. McCain****
2012: Obama***** v. Romney****

It's a trend. With the exception of Obama, Clinton, and Reagan, we've been offered lackluster shit for a long time. My suspicion is most good candidates couldn't or wouldn't run because they had some libertine proclivities which would have rendered them unqualified to the Moral Majority assholes and elderly Puritan sorts who made up a lot of the voting public.

If there's a silver lining to Trump, it's the passing grade of the Presidency's moral litmus test has dropped from the traditional 70 to about 30 percent. (In fairness, however, Bush and Obama also deserve some credit. Bush couldn't run from his drinking or coked up past, and Obama honorably owned up to the recreational activities of his life.)

_____________
* Powermad would-be dictator
** Stuffed shirt zero
*** Vile lunatic
**** Good person, but hopeless politician
***** Truly charismatic statesman with mixed record in office
****** Dangerous neocon enabler

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Where most everybody's picked a side and is raving and ranting from the poles, the moderate trying to balance in the middle is an extremist.

Third rail?
 

Why is an "America First" position something to be excoriated?

I've seen a number of economists rip it as bad policy to the extent it involves tariffs, trade wars, etc. That I fully understand.

But I've also seen a good bit of non-economist criticism of an America First policy, on the basis that it's somehow wrong (unethical, immoral... it's never fully fleshed out) to put US interests first. But... isn't that exactly what we do all the time? Isn't that kind of an essential behavior of a state -- that it act first and foremost in the interests of its citizens initially, all others secondarily? Hasn't our national policy, and the national policies of every other state, been to act in its own interests?

If this seems to borrow some logic from Louis CK's "Of course, but maybe..." routine, it's intentional.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

If Trump were a pragmatist with no clear beliefs, that would be good trade.

Re: Third rail?
 

Let's set aside this question and have you ask it again after the first of the coming wars. My prediction is Trump will pick a small country that he views as an easy victory, probably just at the point when the corruption starts catching up with him.

in Sydney eating breakfast
 

And an ancient tune from this band came on.

Not a fan of the rapping but the grooves and lead singer are solid

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-F1cYvqgIVo

Re: Third rail?
 

When Trump says "America First," do you think he's proposing to do exactly what we do all the time? No. So when he says that, what do you think he means?

Re: Third rail?
 

Isolationism. He's going to more formally recognize the region of influence which is Putin's, as Obama did tacitly.

As to Europe, he's going to leave them to unwind or reconnect as they will.

As to China, I suspect he thinks they're fucked far worse in a trade war than us. If I'm reading him, and it's hard, I think he thinks he can disconnect and, remaining the least on fire of block full of burning homes, retain an advantage while setting back China's long range plan by 50 years.

If the rest of everything goes to shit and we simply stay afloat, we win, for the time being. There is no move more Trumpian than taking the ball the rest of the world cannot play without and leaving the game.

Le Pen and Grillo are the next interesting pieces. I don't see her winning, but it's for the same reasons I doubted Brexit and was sure Trump was a joke.

Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

Because it's an expression used by isolationist pro Nazi anti-Semites who opposed American support of the British (like Lend Lease and the destroyers for islands deal) in pre-Pearl Harbor WWII. Since then, everyone* has mainly agreed that is mostly correct that U.S. isolationism** is Not Good.

By the way, aren't you always arguing that it's impossible to stop globalization? How did the unfairness of criticizing Trump for an "America First" position even make your radar?

* With some exceptions on the left and right - see e.g. McGovern's "Come Home, America."

** With the caveat, of course, that "isolationism" is in the eye of the beholder. But Trump deliberately uses the phrase "America First," so that's the version he's talking about. And when he belittles NATO, he makes it clear.

Re: Third rail?
 

Over the last 15 years, we've gotten a lot of benefit from our European alliances. They have committed troops to our actions and have played ball with us when we've deployed sanctions that included secondary boycotts. That magnifies American power and influence; indeed, a couple decades of Iran sanctions were pretty ineffective until Obama engineered the secondary boycott. The decline of those relationships isn't going to benefit us.

Right now in Asia, Japan and China are both in full court diplomatic presses looking to fill the vacuum that is about to occur. China in particular is pushing a trade deal along the TPP lines, which we'd cut them out of; it looks like Australia will be working with them on it. The TPP hostility was always poorly thought out, but in the context of a potential trade war between the US and the rest of world, alliances be damned, it's just epic stupidity.

Trump seems to believe his foreign policy reset is occurring in the world of the 1950s. It's a world where the Soviet Union is the world's no. 2 GDP at 40% of the US', and where the Asian powers barely squeak into the top 10. It's not the world where China's GDP approaches ours with Japan third and Russia out of the top ten and well below 10% of ours.

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

I have been expecting that we'll see what the hardest core neo-cons have been pushing for years: not so much isolationism as American triumphalism, an attempt to impose our terms on the world economic and geopolitical order. That's what people like Flynn and Tillerson push.

The Russian connection is the bat-shit-crazy element in it. The Russian oligarchs are really just old-fashioned third-world commodity barons; is Trump looking to play in the oil baron business? He can't be happy just privatizing our national parks to benefit little Barron?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I don't know. I mean, it depends on whether Trump is going to be a check on the House GOP or not. Right now, he doesn't look all that different than Pence in terms of substance, in that he's going to go along with whatever they want, just way more volatile.

But maybe that's wrong and Trump will say no to something like voucherizing medicare, which would make the volatility worthwhile.

Re: Great piece
 

I used to think that Greenwald was worth reading as a dissident voice. He's even further discredited himself during this election cycle.

He poses as some sort of radical advocate for freedom while being clearly pretty okay with Putin and Trump.

It's relative freedom versus potential actual autocracy. Haven't we already been over how dangerous your inability to see relative difference is?

Name one.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I've heard "turnout" for 20 years. I don't buy it anymore. Yes, there are voter suppression efforts. Yes, there's an outreach problem. But it's also a messaging problem. AND if we KNOW that a certain population isn't going to show up, why do we ignore the population that DOES show up?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Those, sir, are fighting astrices.

It's also some massive motivated reasoning. They lost, so they were lackluster stuffed shirts. Okay.

Re: Third rail?
 

Because the phrase has been adopted by racists and when you say it, they will think you're talking their language.

Otherwise, of course we put national interests first all the time.

ETA: And even giving a massive benefit of the doubt, the person using that phrase almost certainly has a ridiculously narrow view of what's in our self interest (things like abandoning NATO and putting in place tariffs).

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Dunno why he dissed Fritz, but my guess on why he dissed the Hube is because Sebby read Hunter Thompson at an impressionable age. The good doctor did not care for HHH and ripped him as an evil hack in "Fear & Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" (an awesome book, btw).

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'll stay tuned for thoughts on how to message to win Texas. The state is so large and diverse, it's tough to have a clue on that from outside.

Re: Third rail?
 

Longer than that. We fought two global wars in the twentieth century that started in Europe. It is very much in the United States' interest that we don't have a World War III, and the NATO and the EU are fundamentally aimed at preventing it.

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

You'll admit there's a wee bit of cognitive dissonance floating about when people are accusing Trump and Jared Kushner (his tech guru... and husband of his converted and observant Jewish daughter) of dog whistling to anti-Semites.

But, having had no idea "America First" was the exact phrase used by the Charles Lindbergh wing of the isolationist camp, I do acknowledge your point. I'm not sure I buy it, but I see the argument.

I do think it's impossible to stop globalization. Putting America's interests first and globalization aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

I'm also not defending Trump putting America first. I was merely wondering, "Isn't this whatever every President does?"

Re: Third rail?
 

Agreed. I was just focusing on what they'd done for us lately, but, really, it's worked for us for a long time.

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

Why does a Jewish relative prevent you from aligning with anti-Semites?

As to the history of America First, the people organizing white nationalist movements are well aware of this. This is what they read. These are their heroes.

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

And yet they are.

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

Who knows anything about 4th amendment issues?

My daughter was on a bus in Rochester this am. Border Control comes on. Two big guys block the door to the bus, and the others go through the bus asking people what country they are from. They ask some people for passports - mostly people of color. If they don't have passports they ask for other ID. After they go through the whole bus they leave. No indication of any probable cause (but you never know what they have).

Is this a constitutional stop? The closest border is two hours away. The bus is going from one part of NY (Rochester) to another (Ithaca).

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

2

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

Did anybody just tell them "Fuck you, no, I don't need to show you my papers, you jack-booted thug?"

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

No. But it sounds like there were some shell-shocked kids.

We're thinking about going to the Congresswoman and Mayor. But it would be good to get some weigh-in from someone who actually knows this stuff cold.

It was definitely a jack-boot thug thing. It sounds like they were looking to make some kids very uncomfortable.

Who's the prez? That's easy, man. He used to be on Death Valley Days, John Wayne
 

With the caveat that it has been a few years since I looked into this for a friend ...

By statute, the Border Patrol can establish checkpoints (temporary or permanent) within 100 miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders. Case law (including a Supreme Court case from the 1970s) says such activity does not violate the 4th Amendment.

But that doesn't surprise us, really, does it? Complain anyway.

Re: Send the word/that the Yanks are a coming.
 

So, like, I totally don't understand why everybody gets their undies in a bunch about the whole All Lives Matter thing. I mean, like, think about it, right? It's LITERALLY true, right? I mean, are you actually saying that all lives do not matter? OMG, that's totally messed up, I know, right? Yet everybody on Facebook is all like "You can't say that, it's totally racist" but that can't be because I know a guy who has some black friends and he is still totally like hashtag "All Lives Matter" all the time, and I think it's just because he thinks life is precious and that life matters, amirite? I think the people who call it racist are racists.

In non-Sebastian-total-fucking-nonsense news, I met Kool Keith this weekend. Which was weird, and hilarious. Today's Daily Dose is The Meters with "Little Old Money Maker":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKsfIymQ9hY

Which is sampled in the Ultramagnetic MCs song "Ease Back":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KSRhQidyms

Re: Who's the prez? That's easy, man. He used to be on Death Valley Days, John Wayne
 

About 80 miles to the border from there. Is a bus sitting in a station a check point?

I have complaints in the Congresswoman and Mayor. Just want to add to the pile of stuff I'm publicly pissed about.

Re: Who's the prez? That's easy, man. He used to be on Death Valley Days, John Wayne