Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Wild Hoss]

LOL @ Dr Evil.

[Dr. Strangelove]

You'll need to paraphrase...I dont subscribe to Breitbart.


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From Russia With Love:

* No proofs Assad did this gassing? Where is your proofs?!?!
* Remember US Iraq WMD claims? Now they say Assad has gas! Pah!
* Worthless US missiles mostly went wildly off target
* Deadly US missiles killed mostly civilians; several children and babies
* Trump has been tricked by George Soros who controls Kushner and Neo-cons
* These illegal actions are denounced the world over!
* Will no longer cooperate with US to make sure in-air collisions don't happen

[hack]

Still, LOL @ autocrat. I can't imagine anyone seriously concerned with that. I mean, of course, man with absolute power hasn't had his two biggest initiatives bitchslapped by, well, ummm, republican government.

I'm right there with you. Regardless of whether Trump is a would-be autocrat or an evolving autocrat, and no matter the parallels, the system has stopped everything it should have so far save for the kleptocratic elements. And those are worrisome. But there's plenty about this first 100 days that are very good news. That doesn't mean the parallels Gessen, Sullivan et al see are non-existent. They exist. But I thought they were a stretch before and now there is even more evidence to support that. I'd like to see someone ask Gessen this.

Which is not to say it's impossible for a would-be autocrat to do some damage in this system as well as to it. We have one, and he's doing just that. But we're not gonna have tanks and goose-stepping cadets and parades and all that.

What's interesting about the fact that Trump has been blocked from doing the stuff he said he wants to do is that, well, nobody thought to ask during the campaign whether he can do it or not. Now, Bernie's agenda got all that skepticism. Can he reform Wall Street? Can he rebalance government to work for voters instead of campaign donors? A whole lot of low-grade skepticism, in which obstacles to part of his agenda were taken as evidence that none of it at all is possible. There could have been higher-quality skepticism in which we picked and chose.

But there was no skepticism about Trump. The vibe was that the stuff he says he will do is stuff he actually can do. Maybe it's because he's so cocksure, and that's an effective part of his hustle. But, bottom line, the campaign coverage picked and chose areas in which to apply skepticism, and elsewhere it just applied something else. Disdain or whatever. Rather than digging into the process -- he says xx, can he do it, etc.

[hack]

Reading Beinart now. I suspect the following is very true: “Trump does best among evangelicals with one key trait: They don’t really go to church.”

It's a failure of media to cover the anti-Trump evangelicals. They are out there. Mainstream media has done a better job pointing out pro-Trump people in that crowd.

[Wild Hoss]

Incidentally, Beinhart did a sort of pondering piece for The Atlantic a week or two ago wondering if the decline in religion has played a role in the decreasing civility.

Everybody is different of course, but I see opposite forces at play. The 2000s saw the rise of what I called the Angry Evangelicals. Folks that had no compunctions about slapping cheeks after decades of what they perceived as Christians being meek in the public square.

But we could all stand to be nicer to each other. We are 350 million people in a world 7 billion, not many of which like us very much.

[Dr. Strangelove]

There are exceptions to my statement. IMO, my statement is correct as a general rule. Those who actually make the argument sincerely are far more likely to be conservatives. There will be gads of folks making the argument insincerely. To reference Michael Barone -- there is nothing more insincere than a process argument (I saw that the other day wrt filibuster). There are, however, some conservatives who very much take the Constitution at face value.

Well what I'm saying is Obama proposed an airstrike similar to the one Trump just did back in 2013. He wanted Congressional approval. Republicans told him they didn't see the point of a limited, symbolic airstrike, and that nearly all of them would vote no. He then haughtily sniffed and said he could do the airstrike with or without their approval, but ultimately chickened out.

With a few Rand Paul-type exceptions, the Republicans who were against the symbolic airstrike in 2013 are now overwhelmingly for it in 2017. I suppose you can make an 'conditions are a lot different' argument because there were no Russians involved 4 years ago.

[iam416]

DJT, as far as I can, never really gave anyone a stationary target wrt "can he do it." With the exception of "repeal Obamacare." But most of his stuff was slogans and fluff. The stuff he was proposing wasn't particularly costly.

Bernie proposed single-payer, universal college and other things that were utterly infeasible. You'd could tax the "1%" at roughly 750% and not come close to paying for it.

So, I mean, the attacks on Sanders were justified in regard to cost. DJT didn't really propose things that were aberrant in terms of cost. I don't really recall Sanders getting blasted because he couldn't get his things through the process. We sort of all assume they will and figure out what happens if they do.

[iam416]

He then haughtily sniffed and said he could do the airstrike with or without their approval, but ultimately chickened out.

As much as I mock Obama for this, I think he had his reasons and they were reasonably justified. There was a definite split in the administration, so it's not cut and dried either way.

As for the process argument, I think the significant majority of politicians and commentators are hypocrites on the issue. Those who aren't are, IMO, way more likely to be conservative.

[hack]

In his book Twilight of the Elites, the MSNBC host Chris Hayes divides American politics between “institutionalists,” who believe in preserving and adapting the political and economic system, and “insurrectionists,” who believe it’s rotten to the core. The 2016 election represents an extraordinary shift in power from the former to the latter. The loss of manufacturing jobs has made Americans more insurrectionist. So have the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and a black president’s inability to stop the police from killing unarmed African Americans. And so has disengagement from organized religion.


He had me until the last sentence. Just IMO but he's writing about the symptom, not the cause. The cause is economic. There's capitalism and there's free markets, and they mistakenly viewed as parallel forces rather than zero-sum. We have more of the former and less of the latter. Flip that, via the Sanders agenda or something akin to it that knocks out the rent-seeking and boosts meritocracy of people and ideas, and this becomes a non-story.

[iam416]

Everybody is different of course, but I see opposite forces at play. The 2000s saw the rise of what I called the Angry Evangelicals. Folks that had no compunctions about slapping cheeks after decades of what they perceived as Christians being meek in the public square.

Well, I'm not sure if Beinhart is correct or not. My experience corroborates his thinking out loud. And the community I grew up in now has a borderline "mega church." And while those families and kids may be very conservative and may hold some rather detestable views, they're nice a shit on the whole.

But you're in Kansas. The ol' Sunflower douchers have a long history of attracting the worst of humanity, including christians like John Brown that like to start wars and such in the name of their cause. They ain't turn no cheek for no motherfucker.

[hack]

DJT, as far as I can, never really gave anyone a stationary target wrt "can he do it." With the exception of "repeal Obamacare." But most of his stuff was slogans and fluff. The stuff he was proposing wasn't particularly costly.

Bernie proposed single-payer, universal college and other things that were utterly infeasible. You'd could tax the "1%" at roughly 750% and not come close to paying for it.

So, I mean, the attacks on Sanders were justified in regard to cost. DJT didn't really propose things that were aberrant in terms of cost. I don't really recall Sanders getting blasted because he couldn't get his things through the process. We sort of all assume they will and figure out what happens if they do.

Build the wall. Muslim travel ban.

I agree about single-payer health care and college tuition. Expensive without a big shift. But that's the thing -- nobody cared to take those platform points and evaluate them. Plenty of realistic people think that if Bernie can manage two or three of them, it's a big win. But in media it was all ``can he do it?" As if ``it'' is one thing. Things you could consider on their own include a new Glass-Steagall, overturning Citizens United, boost the minimum wage, special tax on financial speculation (IMF is helping plenty of countries with technical assistance here), renegotiate NAFTA, etc.

[hack]

A better piece on religion in politics would consider what happens in other countries. Americans aren't a different species. Start from that, do a comparative study.

[iam416]

Just IMO but he's writing about the symptom, not the cause. The cause is economic.

First, I think his primary point is that secularism has played a role in the rise of "ferocity" in politics. Second, I view that as a "minority" cause in that regard. There are lots of reasons for it. It may be that economic reasons are the primary driver. But when that primary reason ignites things, the fire burns more intense because of, among other things, the rise of secularism.

So, for those that want to read it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...-faith/517785/

[crashcourse]

Obama got my vote in 2012 because he had the balls to go into Pakistan and take out benladin

Obama took out a lot of targets with drone attacks

not sure why he didn't defend his line in the sand statement

maybe he should of done what DJT did and just not told congress

[iam416]

Build the wall. Muslim travel ban.

Yeah, again, I don't see those as big cost things that seem impossible. And I think he was roundly and routinely mocked for his "make them pay for it" line.

A better piece on religion in politics would consider what happens in other countries. Americans aren't a different species. Start from that, do a comparative study

There are lots of ways it could have been better, but I'm not sure his goal was to be exhaustive as much as it was to throw an idea out there that has some merit to it. And with that, I'm done defending Beinhart.

I just liked it because it hit on something I think is interesting and I'd been thinking about for awhile and made me think about it a little more. I've certainly reached no conclusion.