• About
  • Contact
  • Editorial
  • Policies
  • Archives
Angry Bear
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics
« Back

Open thread June 22, 2018

Dan Crawford | June 22, 2018 10:34 am

Tags: open thread Comments (6) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
6 Comments
  • EMichael says:
    June 22, 2018 at 10:48 am

    Yes, Dems need to stop bringing knives to a gun fight. Even if it means you have to be mean to people who more than deserve it.

    “Perhaps, and I’m just spitballing here, we shouldn’t equate the words of the goddamn President* of the United States with the comments of television stars and aging actors. Maybe what the president* said from a podium in Duluth carries more weight behind it than what Peter Fonda said in Cannes? The Times piece poses an interesting question that it is far too timid to answer.

    This approach traces back to the day Mr. Trump first announced his campaign for president in 2015, when he labeled many Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” a portrayal that drew furious protests.

    Mr. Trump recalled that controversy just this week and doubled down on it. “Remember I made that speech and I was badly criticized? ‘Oh, it’s so terrible, what he said,’ ” he said with derision during a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business on Tuesday. “Turned out I was 100 percent right. That’s why I got elected.” Indeed, the lesson that Mr. Trump took from his nastier-than-thou campaign was that the more outrageous he was, the more incendiary his rhetoric, the more attention he drew and the more votes he received. Any expectation that he would put the harsh language aside to become more of a moral leader as president has proved illusory.

    Maybe the country is full of enough racists, xenophobes, nativists, and angry idiots that it elected a dangerous buffoon to lead it, and maybe that’s a more important subject than whether or not somebody said a mean thing to Ivanka Trump. Maybe calling the Trump voters what they are, based on what they’ve done to the rest of us, is more important to the survival of the Republic than what three jamokes in a diner think of brown people who are coming to murder them in their beds.

    Jesus, Duluth is 1676 miles from the southern border at Brownsville and, anyway, immigration has been good for Duluth’s local economy. So why did people there on Wednesday night applaud wildly this brand of truthless slander?

    “The Democrats want open borders. Let everybody come in. Let everybody pour in, we don’t care, let them come in from the Middle East, let them come in from all over the place. We don’t care. We’re not going to let it happen. Today I signed an executive order. We are going to keep families together, but the border is going to be just as tough as it’s been. Democrats don’t care about the impact of uncontrolled migration on your communities. Democrats put illegal immigrants before they put American citizens. What the hell is going on?”

    I guarantee you it wasn’t because Kathy Griffin made a video.”

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21750189/donald-trump-incivility-new-york-times/

    • run75441 says:
      June 22, 2018 at 11:25 am

      White Amerika has already started to disappear. For the first time ever, the population of whites decreased. Between 2016 and 2017, the non-Hispanic white population declined about 0.02 percent, to 197.8 million people. Black and Hispanic America increased in population. Us whities are aging out and we are also waiting long to have children and fewer of them. There is nothing White America can do to change the momentum of racial dynamics of the US.Trump and his merry band of bigots are doomed.

      What remains is for Dems to answer the question of a meaningful existeence in the US. If you believe many economists there are plenty of jobs out there; but, the income is less which no one talks about and the competition is keen. Business has more control over wages. PGL referenced Baucol’s disease. The decrease in manufacturing and the increase of service costs. Unfortunately the costs of surviving has out stripped the rise in wages as NDD points point. ervice jobs do not pay as much as manufacturing jobs even at reduced hourly rates. These are all interrealted.

      Then there is Trump spewing forth racist and bigoted commentary. Blame the Hispanics, Muslims, Blacks from the “sh*thole countries.” Trump is another Goebbels preaching the dialogue of hate and discrimination. Still the question remains about what will Dems do to take away the premise of lack of income for those who have lost well paying jobs to process change, automation, labor intensive jobs going overseas, and not reaping the benefit of increased productivity gains from capital (sans derivatives).

      EM, that is the argument.

  • EMichael says:
    June 22, 2018 at 11:58 am

    Run,

    As Dennis has posted many times, the answer is labor organizations combined with a living wage minimum.

    One party has tired to do both, one party has tried to destroy both.

    The problem with the anticipated lack of control by the white working class voters is voter suppression combined with our totally undemocratic electoral system(which cannot be changed).

    People always seem to discount that the 2016 election was the first Presidential election since the Supreme Court decimated the voting rights act. Has a huge effect on the election and it will continue to grow.

    And it sure does not favor minority voters.

  • JackD says:
    June 22, 2018 at 3:31 pm

    In 2016 Clinton got twice as many votes as Trump in Duluth.

  • EMichael says:
    June 24, 2018 at 9:03 am

    Of course they do.

    “Evangelicals boldly back ex-pimp for state senator in Nevada.

    Dennis Hof, owner of a strip club and five brothels as well as author of the book The Art of the Pimp, is on track to becoming a state senator in Nevada, thanks in part to support from evangelicals. Hof won the Republican party’s nomination in a seat that is safely GOP.

    Victor Fuentes, an evangelical pastor, is among the holy rollers who are backing the flesh-peddling politician. “People want to know how an evangelical can support a self-proclaimed pimp,” Fuentes told Reuters. “We have politicians, they might speak good words, not sleep with prostitutes, be a good neighbor. But by their decisions, they have evil in their heart. Dennis Hof is not like that.”

    Hof himself credits president Donald Trump for opening politics to pimps. “Trump is the trailblazer,” Hof enthuses. “He is the Christopher Columbus of honest politics.” The procurer added that “I’m kind of rich, I’m kind of famous, and I’m surrounded by hot chicks. I don’t give a damn what anybody says about me.” Hof has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault—one claiming he “raped and battered [her] daily.” Hof denies those accusations.

    Pimps and preachers might seem to be natural enemies. But as a historical matter they have frequently been united a common patriarchy. Hof’s brothels exist to serve male pleasure, just as many evangelical churches teach that the household must be run at the pleasure of the man. Trump himself has shown that having a Playboy lifestyle is compatible with being the hero to countless white evangelical Christians. Trumpism appeals to those who want to shore up besieged patriarchy, a stance that brings sexual machos and a certain segment of the pious under the same roof.”

    https://newrepublic.com/minutes/149322/evangelicals-boldly-back-ex-pimp-state-senator-nevada

  • EMichael says:
    June 25, 2018 at 12:20 pm

    But we must be politically correct, and keep bringing knives to a gun fight.

    The Civility Debate Has Reached Peak Stupidity

    We got here around the time Newt Gingrich called for more civil discourse.

    “Right on cue, Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post editorial page, which has no compunction about publishing the words of torture-enthusiast Marc Thiessen, blurted out the most embarrassing single paragraph written about the events at the Red Hen. To wit:

    “We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?”

    How did any higher primate write this paragraph without coughing up a lung? How did any sentient mammal not red-pencil this paragraph into oblivion? How did Post truck drivers not save their employers severe embarrassment by tossing that entire day’s print run into the Potomac?

    For the benefit of those people also living in Fred Hiatt’s Land Without History: abortion providers have been stalked. Their children have been stalked. Their places of business have been vandalized. And, lest we forget, doctors who perform abortions have been f’ing killed! They’ve been gunned down in their clinics, in their kitchens, and in their churches. They have not been allowed to live peaceably with their families, Fred, you addlepated Beltway thooleramawn. They haven’t been allowed to live at all. I’m no expert, but I’m fairly sure that a bullet in the head is far more uncivil than a complementary f’ng cheese plate. What is wrong with these people?

    I’m old enough to remember the raucous town halls of 2010, when the AstroTurfed forces of the Tea Party shouted down members of Congress while men with automatic weapons strolled around the perimeter of arenas in which the President of the United States was speaking. I’m old enough to remember when N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization’s Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of The Civilizing Forces, was working out his Universal Lexicography of Insult for the benefit of a party that ate it up with an entrenching tool. Newt also emerged on the electric Twitter machine over the weekend, leaping to SarahHuck’s defense, and that was nearly enough to make me give up English as a hobby.

    You know who would’ve been baffled by this sudden debate over “civility”? Samuel Adams and John Hancock, that’s who. They were a helluva lot less civil to the crew of the Dartmouth than Stephanie Wilkinson was to the Sanders party, and the citizens of Boston did not comp Thomas Hutchinson to a cheese plate when they ran his sorry ass across the pond. And, who knows, maybe if Elliott Abrams had been chased out of a few DC bistros in the 1980s, Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns would still be alive.

    This debate is stupid. It’s also dangerously beside the point. SarahHuck is the lying mouthpiece of a lying regime that is one step away from simply hauling people off in trucks. That she was politely told to take her business elsewhere is a small step towards assigning public responsibility to public officials that enable a perilous brand of politics. There are bigger steps to be taken, but everyone in official Washington is too damn timid to do what really needs to be done about this band of pirates.

    So, Sarah, since I know it is hard for you to understand even short sentences, I’ll put it as briefly as I can: Take a hike.”

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21931194/sarah-huckabee-sanders-red-hen-civility/

Featured Stories

Macron Bypasses Parliament With ‘Nuclear Option’ on Retirement Age Hike

Angry Bear

All Electric comes to Heavy Equipment

Daniel Becker

Medicare Plan Commissions May Steer Beneficiaries to Wrong Coverage

run75441

Thoughts on Silicon Valley Bank: Why the FDIC plan isn’t (but also is) a Bailout

NewDealdemocrat

Contributors

Dan Crawford
Robert Waldmann
Barkley Rosser
Eric Kramer
ProGrowth Liberal
Daniel Becker
Ken Houghton
Linda Beale
Mike Kimel
Steve Roth
Michael Smith
Bill Haskell
NewDealdemocrat
Ken Melvin
Sandwichman
Peter Dorman
Kenneth Thomas
Bruce Webb
Rebecca Wilder
Spencer England
Beverly Mann
Joel Eissenberg

Subscribe

Blogs of note

    • Naked Capitalism
    • Atrios (Eschaton)
    • Crooks and Liars
    • Wash. Monthly
    • CEPR
    • Econospeak
    • EPI
    • Hullabaloo
    • Talking Points
    • Calculated Risk
    • Infidel753
    • ACA Signups
    • The one-handed economist
Angry Bear
Copyright © 2023 Angry Bear Blog

Topics

  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics
  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics

Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial
  • Policies
  • Archives