Three (No, two, um, make that three again) Commentaries on 2017
Commentary 1.
I was bouncing around twitter and landed on the following tweet. It may be the best commentary on where we are that I have read.
(click to embiggen or to see the whole picture)
Obligatory comment: I know nothing about the individual who left the tweet. To the best of my knowledge I have never seen a tweet by that person before. I haven’t checked his (her? zir?) other tweets to know whether I should endorse or denounce him (her? zir?). But I thought the tweet was clever.
Commentary 2.
From The Hill:
The Republican National Committee (RNC) expanded its massive fundraising lead over the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in July as the Democrats posted their worst July haul in a decade.
The DNC raised just $3.8 million in July, compared to the $10.2 million raised by the RNC in the same month. While the GOP has no debt, the DNC added slightly to its debt in July, which now sits at $3.4 million.
The Democrats haven’t raised that little money in a July since 2007, when the party raised $3.4 million.
The dynamics that have caused this are perfectly clear to me.
Commentary 3.
This weekend, for the third time in five weeks, I spent around four hours writing a post… and then I simply erased the final product. Each of the three posts dealt with the same topic: how to substantially reduce the homicide rate in the US, particularly in the most beleaguered communities. Each post was supported by a different analysis, which in turn was based on a different set of data. This is, after all, 2017 America. I almost deleted this paragraph too.
And then there’s this
Somewhere around the Evergreen College debacle things have gone from ridiculous to surreal. This sort of madness doesn’t end well.
how to substantially reduce the homicide rate in the US, particularly in the most beleaguered communities
Mike, should we suppose there a casual link between high homicide rates and low income and employment rates of shoot-em-up communities? Would that seem like a good place to begin (and end?) looking for a solution.
My solution to shoot-em-city: make something a felony that is not even a misdemeanor now: union busting.
With 6% union density in the private economy it’s all about market power, market power, labor market power — not some unfettered market efficiency dream that even too many our progressive economists seem trapped in.
It’s all about power.
I am very surprised at the fundraising disparity. You would think that with the nonstop media portrayal of Trump as the Antichrist, the numbers would be reversed.
The RNC has $47M cash on hand, while, net of debt, the DNC has $3.5M or about an 12:1 advantage http://ijr.com/the-declaration/2017/08/952601-rnc-vs-dnc-fundraising-numbers-indication-dems-rough-2018/
Sammy:
– “As of the end of June, 209 Democratic challengers had registered with the FEC and raised at least $5,000. That more than doubled the previous high mark since 2003. In 2009, the Republicans had 78 challengers with at least $5,000. The early GOP challengers in 2009 foreshadowed the party’s regaining majority control. ”
– “Among party committees established to raise money for candidates, Democrats are ahead of their GOP rivals as well, although not by such a lopsided margin. According to Federal Election Commission data, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s fundraising apparatus for House candidates, has brought in slightly more money so far than its Republican equivalent. Ditto for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. ActBlue, a third-party fundraising site, raised $27.6 million in July, compared to $13.7 million in the same month in 2015, and $5.9 million in 2013. Jon Ossoff, the losing Democratic nominee in a recent Georgia special election, brought in a record-breaking $30 million all by himself.”
Sammy, take your dog whistles and go elsewhere. Your comments are not needed at Angry Bear.
Dennis Drew,
1. Maybe that isn’t the biggest effect. You may recall the post I wrote recently about the study looking at all the kids born in Sweden over a period of several years. That study (and others) seems to indicate that the causality between crime and violence may run in the opposite direction than you think.
2. About union busting – I’ve noted (to you) before – the more idle labor there is, the less of a threat collective action is to an employer. In other words, unions are necessarily going to be very weak in an economy with poor economic growth and unlimited immigration. Under those circumstances, if you make union busting illegal, you are doing nothing more than ensuring that legacy unionized companies will quickly go bankrupt. If you want unions, either the economy needs to improve or the supply of labor (read immigration) has to fall.
Sammy,
All else being equal, it would be. But the media is also telling a lot of former and potential DNC voters that they are the Antichrist too.
Several responses. I assume the picture was staged–happens all the time and probably had Buffalo Springfield playing in the background. No question that the money is going to candidates not the DNC. Perez is not universally loved and the 2016 election debacle including Wasserman Schultz has left a really bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. Further by giving to candidates instead of committees you can be sure to oppose the worst elements of the GOP and Trump. I would think that this would have more of an effect on the RNC, but there were a lot of people who were lukewarm to Hillary because they saw her as a warmonger and there are any number of Democrats who fit that bill. Finally, Kimel you are so full of crap about unions bankrupting legacy firms and tying it to immigration that it defies imagination. Legacy firms go bankrupt because they are lead by unimaginative types who fail to keep up with the times. Those same substandard leaders love to blame labor for their lack of vision while at the same time clamoring for tax cuts “so they can grow the economy”. At the same time they get folks like you and our imbecile president to sign on to the notion that unions are bad and that they would nevertheless thrive if not for immigrant labor–immigrant labor seldom goes to unionized areas of the economy–one exception is service unions in places like Las Vegas where union busting is becoming an art form. The fact is that employers are in desperate need of low end and high end labor and that is the reason we have so much immigration,legal and non legal. Unions would thrive if they had a level playing field. The folks who get left out are in the businesses that can be exported or are rapidly becoming run by machines. Half of Trump’s base will become unemployed when machines take over all of the product moving in this country. That will be bad for the Teamsters but will have nothing to do with immigrants or the trucking companies going bankrupt.
The DNC fundraising debacle isn’t surprising. The big money donors are finally getting tired of flushing countless millions of dollars down the toilet on unwinnable elections, and small donors have no reason to donate to a party that doesn’t represent them.
Watch the idiot Democrats spend the whole 2018 cycle screeching about Russia while still courting “moderate” suburban Republicans who will never vote for them, and then be left scratching their heads when the Republicans score a veto proof majority in the Senate and majorities in enough state houses to call a constitutional convention.
Do any studies exist correlating homicide and suicide rates, or demonstrating no correlation? The reason I ask is that both responses could be made the the situations cited, either total despair and depression, or aggression. All be it that gang related shootings tend a lot to be an eye for an eye type of things.
Mike,
The DNC is linked to the CNN brand of the MSM. Anyone watching that network sees: commenters afflicted with three mental disorders: Deplorable Derangement Syndrome, Loser Derangement Syndrome and Trump* Derangement Syndrome.
Then we see DeLong and Emike running WEB DuBois+ up the “liberal” flag pole to justify spitting on the images+ of confederate soldiers.
* Thirteen months chasing Russians and no deep throat!
+Graven images are bad anyways!
Homicide rate: how many gang and drug related murders which would not happen if US treated “narcotics” as Netherlands does?
Ilsm:
EM is correct on his comments with you.
The statues are there as an expression of white supremacy and nothing more and they are meant to intimidate. Lee had it correct when he did not recommend the erection of statues in his letter to Gen. Rosser as it would support continued resistance rather than getting back to a normal life. People flying Nazi and confederate flags and displaying similar symbols are expressing a continuing dislike of what has come to be from the Civil War. It has little to do with Freedom of Speech.
The South was not wronged when Lincoln was elected, it chose to secede on its own from the Union of states because of slavery. Only one state did not mention slavery in its secession reasoning and then it went on to murder 150-300 freed Black Americans after they won an election during Reconstruction.
The Netherlands do not fit in this discussion; however with a decreased rate of crime Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is advocating harsher sentencing which has done little to stem the tide of addiction and usage the same as capital punishment.
Trump is a bigot, liar, racist, misogynist bully who has had the power to be such because he was never confronted. As he stated, he is following in his father’s footsteps. Trump is also mentally unstable to the point his own people wonder how much more can be tolerated.
13 months of investigation is not true. The appointment of a special prosecutor is only recent. How many years of investigations have been tolerated for the Clintons? All Republicans can prove is an event in the Oval Office. How may $millions were wasted and how much time was wasted by Republican Legislatures investigating and reinvestigating? Paranoid Trump deserves what he is getting.
If you do not like what the posters and commenters at AB have to say, there are many other places to voice your opinions. Try them. I grow weary of rebutting yours and Sammy’s baiting and silliness.
Kolchak,
You might be right. If I had given millions to the DNC and got the Hillary campaign in return, where they seemingly didn’t even understand the Electoral College, I would be reluctant too.
Also, they don’t have a candidate, or a message, so they are just waiting for unforced errors by Trump, which, if you listen to the media there are a lot of. But the big money donors did not get big money by being stupid. They need more evidence that their money will be well spent.
run,
“Sammy, take your dog whistles and go elsewhere.”
What dog whistle? What dog was I whistling? Why are you threatening and/or insulting every Conservative commenter that comes on here? I’ve enjoyed the give and take for maybe 15 years, being banned off and on. I used to provide many provocative main posts.
Maybe you don’t agree with the comment, but just rebut as you did above.
Sammy:
Your comments are meant to incite. They are not discussion points. Like Yves at NC who turned off the comments section because of people like you, to answer each and every silly comment by you takes time away from what I like to do. It just does not cease with you just like the others. You have a choice.
Run/Emike,
Nice laundry list, lacking enough logic to go to a jury.
Would you’alls statue wreckers have hanged* Lee?
You cannot use a recondite dogma that “enough blood was not spilled in the Civil War to expunge the stain of slavery” to tear the US apart in 2017 because Clinton lost, and the issue is TDS insanity!
Could slavery have been more humane, or even necessary, if the south did not suffer for protectionism of northern textiles?
Close monuments to Northern river powered textile mills, from the [deplorable] southerners’ view they are a proximate case of the US Civil War. With applied tariffs and protectionism the entrepreneurs, a tiny number of whom sponsored limiting slave expansion, were sectional dividers.
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/08/weekend-reading-james-m-mcpherson-2001-southern-comfort.html
My decades long study of the War Between the States sees the diminishing of slavery as proximate cause but tearing down statues of soldiers whom everyone from Lincoln to Sheridan considered honorable adversaries is radical extremism.
Parroting WEB DuBois’ 1920’s diatribes against surging Jim Crow is delusional, looking for trouble at a Stalinist level of Maoism.
You cannot repeat DuBois’ recondite dogma to expunge the sin of slavery” by tearing down statues because Clinton lost!
On several levels the rage over soldiers’ statue is purely evil. When do we stop flogging those deplorables, 150 odd years later?
“The Democrats, the longer they talk (like WEB DuBois) about identity politics, I got ‘em. I want them to talk about (Maoists’ response to) racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
― Steve Bannon, from his August 16 exit interview with Robert Kuttner in The American Prospect.
DuBois was ever the Stalinist!
*English rebels in the peerage who lost were treated to the headsman.
Monuments honoring treason against the Unites States have no place on public property.
“to tear the US apart in 2017 because Clinton lost”
This is just straight-up bullshit misdirection. Nobody objects to monuments honoring treason against the United States because Clinton lost.
Please stop trolling the thread.
Run,
My 1 cents worth regards Sammy’s comments on AB.
1. He’s a perennial conservative…he gives AB a view of things, emotionally based, unfounded, but a view reflecting most conservatives. I think it’s healthy for we liberals to keep abreast of what conservatives think … and especially their selective view of the world we live in.
2. He doesn’t make long comments and generally focus’s on a specific aspect of other commenters or the subject post. In other words, unlike my comments, Sammy’s are short, easily readable and don’t take up much cyberspace.
I would miss Sammy’s posts in fact. They remind us of another point of view on things by conservatives. What I am always intensely interested in is the range of what conservatives think about something which is invariably so selective that they live in a bubble. It’s important to know the size and shape of that bubble..
I don’t encourage Sammy, but don’t think he shouldn’t stop posting his short (considered, no name-calling) comments. AB would be the worse off if the only commenters were liberals.. something like talking to yourself.
LT:
He is still here the same as ilsm.
LT: Thanks for the support.
Joel:
“Monuments honoring treason against the Unites States have no place on public property.”
Once a state secedes, it is logically impossible for any of its members to commit “treason.” Maybe that is why no Confederate was charged, much less convicted, of “treason.” You are going to have to come up with a different “killer” reason to tear down all those statues.
run,
Thanks for not banning me. You could. I will try to be constructive with my comments. As a “moderator” you should try to be more understanding of conservative commenters. Shutting down conservatives is no way to build your readership or debate.
Sammy:
People who post comments numerous times in a thread, are off topic, are verbose, have several ids (Bert [3]) draw my attention really quick. NC did close their comments section due to commenters.
Joel,
If you think there is a better underlying motive to resurrecting WEB DuBois state it.
My observation and I see it: the media is playing to the “resistance” like they are tossing the continuous memes about Russia, unfit and dementia.
If you think I am trolling………..
Try observing.
In the Gospel there is a saying about seeing a speck in the other’s eyes while you should pull the plank out of your eye.
Run,
I was “here” when “cactus” and I ran the place.
Sammy,
The Confederate states didn’t follow a Constitutional process in secession. They just declared themselves a separate nation, without the consent of the nation to which they belonged. Then they attacked the United States, from which they pretended to have seceded. In this act, they committed treason. See: Constitution, the United States.
Ilsm posts:
“In the Gospel there is a saying about seeing a speck in the other’s eyes while you should pull the plank out of your eye.”
Indeed. Instead of projecting your deficiencies onto other, perhaps you should apply that to yourself.
Joel,
“In this act, they committed treason.”
To say this with certainty requires a conviction on the count of treason. They weren’t even charged, much less convicted, which shows the strength of your case.
So instead of saying “they committed treason, so their statues must come down” you have to preface that with “in Joel’s opinion………” or “Joel asserts……..” they committed treason, both of which are absolutely horrible arguments.
Besides, you haven’t checked your email, or spam folder, lately have you? The Dems are pulling back on The Statues issue, confederate and otherwise (did Washington, Jefferson, Columbus commit treason also?), as it is polling terribly. C’mon man, keep up!