U.S. Electile Dysfunction 2016

[ewmayer]

Couldn't stomach to watch any of the blather/pander-fest, especially after having a few seconds of the hype-filled super-bowl-esque intro inflicted on my senses.

Did follow a few post-debate live-blog discussions, and contrasted those with the late local n00z, which had apparently anointed HillBillary as Queen a long time ago, and was busily fitting all the happenings into that pre-set 'narrative'.

I do hope Bernie's 'enough with the e-mails!' was more public show of magnanimity than otherwise, because I consider 'one law for the elites, quite another for the plebs' to be as substantive an issue as can be.

[only_human]

Fed officials seem ready to deploy negative rates in next crisis

Federal Reserve officials now seem open to deploying negative interest rates to combat the next serious recession even though they rejected that option during the darkest days of the financial crisis in 2009 and 2010.

“Some of the experiences [in Europe] suggest maybe can we use negative interest rates and the costs aren’t as great as you anticipate,” said William Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, in an interview on CNBC on Friday.

[ewmayer]

@Ross: More suitable for the MET thread? But consider - the level of upward wealth transfer from multiple bubble-bust-bailout cycles and 7 years of ZIRP is apparently not enough for the plutocrat-serving folks at the Fed, now they propose to resort to out-and-out asset theft. When Dudley says "the costs aren’t as great as you anticipate", he means of course, the costs to "the Fed's narrow constituency." Because you can bet that those negative rates sure as hell won't be on *loans* to hoi polloi. (Making all the more inane the notion that "the prospect of us stealing their savings will encourage them to run and spend, spend, spend, and then borrow to spend some more.")

---------

Re. the opinion I gave in my previous post about "what debate were the MSM pundits watching, exactly?", here a post from NC which puts some numbers on the disconnect between the punditocracy and reality:

Sanders Debate "Results" as Case Study of the Modern Versailles Hall of Mirrors | naked capitalism

And while we have both subjects in play, here is Matt Taibbi on Hillary's attempt last night to pin the real dangers of the still-[too-big/too-crooked/too-un-reined-in] financial sector not on the rackets operating in plain sight with the blessing and generous subsidization of the US government but on a spooky, mysterious "shadow banking" sector which certainly is worrisomely huge and unregulated - but in China, not the US:

Hillary Clinton's Take on Banks Won't Hold Up | Rolling Stone

[chappy]

The first (orange text) is predebate, gambling site odds. The second is post debate. According to the pool of people wagering on the election (which some economists think is an accurate prediction model) Jeb!'s campaign is on it's last leg. Nate Silver agrees.

Since I think Kasich has at least a 25% chance of winning the nomination, making the 18 to 1 a steal from a return on investment betting strategy.

The ribs refer to a bet I have going with a friend (he has Jeb! winning the nomination--I have the field) and I'm feeling pretty good about my ribs.

[davar55]

Originally Posted by chappy

The first (orange text) is predebate, gambling site odds. The second is post debate. According to the pool of people wagering on the election (which some economists think is an accurate prediction model) Jeb!'s campaign is on it's last leg. Nate Silver agrees.
Since I think Kasich has at least a 25% chance of winning the nomination, making the 18 to 1 a steal from a return on investment betting strategy.
The ribs refer to a bet I have going with a friend (he has Jeb! winning the nomination--I have the field) and I'm feeling pretty good about my ribs.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find that GAMBLING is going on in this election!

(Where can I collect my winnings?)

[kladner]

I suppose it really belongs in Silly Pictures, but Hey!

[kladner]

"The media response to the Sanders campaign has been alternately predictable, condescending, confused and condescending again."

The tone of most of the coverage shows reporters deigning to treat his campaign like it's real, like he has a chance. John Cassidy of The New Yorker, for instance, swore he wouldn't be patronizing about the Sanders run. "Indeed, I welcomed Sanders to the race!" Cassidy wrote recently.


But Cassidy's hokey "Welcome to the 2016 Race, Bernie Sanders!" piece from last spring had a small catch. It basically said that Sanders was welcome because he would be a boon to the real candidate, Hillary Clinton. "[Sanders] can't win the primary," Cassidy wrote. "And he will occupy the space to the left of Clinton, thus denying it to more plausible candidates, such as Martin O'Malley." (!)


Noting that Sanders held positions that were "eminently defensible, if unrealistic," Cassidy nonetheless said he was glad Sanders was running, because he would "provide a voice to those Democrats who agree with him that the U.S. political system has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel."


This passage he wrote just after arguing that Sanders cannot win and was only useful insofar as he would help the bought-off candidate win.

So what Cassidy really meant is that the Sanders campaign was allowing people who are justifiably pissed about our corrupted system to blow off steam, before they ultimately surrender to give their support to the system candidate.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by kladner

"The media response to the Sanders campaign has been alternately predictable, condescending, confused and condescending again."

I liked this passage from the above Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone piece:

Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means to be a public servant. The Times remarks upon his “grumpy demeanor.” But Bernie is grumpy because he’s thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest workers who’ve had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more or less all the time.

I first met Bernie Sanders ten years ago, and I don’t believe there’s anything else he really thinks about. There’s no other endgame for him. He’s not looking for a book deal or a membership in a Martha’s Vineyard golf club or a cameo in a Guy Ritchie movie. This election isn’t a game to him; it’s not the awesomely repulsive dark joke it is to me and many others.

And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely believes the system is not beyond repair.

Not all of us can say that. But that doesn’t make us right, and him “unrealistic.” More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It’s the rest of us who are lost.

[Brian-E]

Three Republican presidential candidates, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal, spoke at the recent National Religious Liberties Conference organised by someone called Kevin Swanson, who closed out his conference with an awe-inspiring speech. I find his advocation of putting a millstone around some parents' necks and drowning them at the bottom of the sea particularly arresting. For our edification, Mr. Swanson's performance has been saved for posterity in the recording below. Does anyone know if the three GOP presidential candidates were actually in the audience at the time to cheer Mr. Swanson on in his epic release?



(Source: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conten...osexual-mentor)

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

Three Republican presidential candidates, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal, spoke at the recent National Religious Liberties Conference organised by someone called Kevin Swanson, who closed out his conference with an awe-inspiring speech. I find his advocation of putting a millstone around some parents' necks and drowning them at the bottom of the sea particularly arresting. For our edification, Mr. Swanson's performance has been saved for posterity in the recording below. Does anyone know if the three GOP presidential candidates were actually in the audience at the time to cheer Mr. Swanson on in his epic release?



(Source: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conten...osexual-mentor)

Yep. Republicans. The party of bigotry, intolerance, irrational fear, and unbridled hate.

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

Yep. Republicans. The party of bigotry, intolerance, irrational fear, and unbridled hate.

And the bat shit crazy Ben Carson just said that (paraphrased)

In war, nothing matters but destroying the enemy. It is OK to kill
innocent women and children.

See:

http://theweek.com/speedreads/587962...al-correctness

More hatred. A popular complaint about Muslims is that their attitude is
"kill the infidel".

What then, is this?