U.S. Electile Dysfunction 2016

[ewmayer]

Hilarious random-sound-bites summary of last night's GOP debate from NC reader Fresno Dan - note that FD provides context for Jeb!'s "I could drop my pants and moon everyone" quote a few replies down. (Yes, for those unfortunate few of you who missed the epiphanic political-seismological event, there really was debate about you-did-so-talk-about-dropping-your-pants-and-mooning-the-american-people at last night's debate of 'presidential' - and we use the term *very* loosely - candidates.)

[davar55]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Hilarious random-sound-bites summary of last night's GOP debate from NC reader Fresno Dan - note that FD provides context for Jeb!'s "I could drop my pants and moon everyone" quote a few replies down. (Yes, for those unfortunate few of you who missed the epiphanic political-seismological event, there really was debate about you-did-so-talk-about-dropping-your-pants-and-mooning-the-american-people at last night's debate of 'presidential' - and we use the term *very* loosely - candidates.)

This washes all the candidates with the same cloth.
Some are better than others, and the dems are not so hot either.
But I do get the significance of the thread's (current) title.

[Nick]

English translation of an opinion article written by Thomas Piketty on recent U.S. history and the rise of Bernie Sanders:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/c...-election-2016

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Nick

English translation of an opinion article written by Thomas Piketty on recent U.S. history and the rise of Bernie Sanders:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/c...-election-2016

Glosses over the fact that those very high tax rates led to rampant tax-dodging (e.g. by way of participation in bogus 'limited partnerships') by the moneyed classes, but nonetheless quite interesting. Even with the aforementioned tax avoidance by the wealthy the average wage disparity between the C-suiters and the mailroom clerks was an order of magnitude less than it is today, and since the US economy was still predominantly based on 'making stuff' there was more real wealth to go around, too boot, as opposed to the huge levels of 'borrowed prosperity' which predominate nowadays among the 'precarious middle'. And the always-parasitical-and-fraud-prone financial sector was [a] much smaller as a fraction of GDP than today and [b] still largely based on in some way, shape or form helping the making-stuff economy do its thing, as opposed to our latter-day almost-purely-parasitical paradigm. The excellent book by heterodox - as in 'does not ignore history and actually cares about real wealth-creation' economist Michael Hudson which covers this tectonic socioeconomic shift is aptly titled Killing the Host.

[xilman]

As I'm not a Christian, I couldn't possibly comment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-35607597

[ewmayer]

The Clinton Monster That Won't Die | Counterpunch

In the end, this Janus-faced Machiavelli had it both ways. On one hand, he maintained a rhetoric of empathy for the poor, the blue-collar worker, the paycheck-to-paycheck laborer, and never hesitated to express his sympathies on his whistle-stop tours. Tears crept into the crow-footed corners of faces in the crowd. He felt our pain. On the other hand—or with the other hand—he palmed check after check from large corporate interests, assuring them, in deed if not word, that his rhetoric was little more than a ruse to retain the progressive vote.

In office, Clinton pursued Republican objectives. He launched a prison-building empire, gutted welfare, deregulated the financial markets, produced astonishing tax breaks for the rich, passed a trade bill that destroyed American jobs and wrecked Mexican agribusiness, and decided there was no good reason to maintain a wall between the unscrupulous capitalist investor and unwitting depositor. After all, as the Nineties refrain went, banks can police themselves. All the while, of course, he continued to peddle his sincerest sympathies to Main Street.

[ewmayer]

How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

The combination of the pro wrasslin imagery - including a reference to famous late-80s WWE heel Ravishing Rick Rude! - and referring to Jeb! as "[Trump's] favorite wrestling foil, Prince Dinkley McBirthright" and to Ted Cruz's backpfeifengesicht (a lovely German compound-word colloquialism combining the word for cheek, whistling-noise and face ... that word also came up recently in regard to pharma grifter-extortionist poster boy Martin Shkreli) ... precious.

But aside from the opening-section funsies, Taibbi does us the service of pointing out that Trump is the only one of the GOP candidates - and the only one, period, but for Bernie "ultra-lefty pie-in-the-sky socialist" [to hear the MSM tell it] Sanders - who is speaking hard truths on the singular Washington War Party, government ownership by Big Finance/Pharma/Insurance, and how both major parties have conspired to eviscerate the American middle class for over 30 years. And even a master characterizer such as Taibbi is clearly struggles with the conundrum which is The Donald, a guy who loudly spouts inane ideas like building a Great Wall of Anti-Mexican one moment, then speaks coherently about the terrible anticompetitive market-rigging ushered in by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, the basis for the anti-trust exemption enjoyed by insurance companies, the next.

[ewmayer]

Former Clinton Labor Secretary also seems to get what's afoot:

Robert Reich: Are We Witnessing the Death of America's Political Establishment? | naked capitalism

[Tiny quibble: It's "shoo-in" - same root as shoo-fly pie]

Regarding the article headline, to quote great English playwright Bill Wigglestick, 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Former Clinton Labor Secretary also seems to get what's afoot:

Robert Reich: Are We Witnessing the Death of America's Political Establishment? | naked capitalism

[Tiny quibble: It's "shoo-in" - same root as shoo-fly pie]

Regarding the article headline, to quote great English playwright Bill Wigglestick, 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

[kladner]

No Warmongers here! Just us Progressives^®!

Hillary Clinton has spent much of her presidential campaign running away from her responsibility for the United States’ disastrous 2011 intervention in Libya. The February 19 release of more emails from her private server may make it harder for her to do so.

In an email with the subject “bravo!” sent on March 19, 2011—the day the United States and its allies began bombing Libya—Clinton confidant and former employee Anne-Marie Slaughter appears to praise then-Secretary of State Clinton for convincing a reluctant President Obama to take military action in Libya.

“I cannot imagine how exhausted you must be after this week, but I have NEVER been prouder of having worked for you,” writes Slaughter, who worked as an advisor to Clinton in the State Department from 2009 to February 3, 2011, and then remained a consultant to the policy planning bureau. “Turning POTUS around on this is a major win for everything we have worked for.” An earlier email release, which I reported on previously, showed that Slaughter had spent February 2011 imploring Clinton to involve the United States militarily in Libya, insisting that it would “change the image of the United States overnight.”

“Keep your fingers crossed and pray for a soft landing for everyone’s sake,” Clinton replies.

(emphasis mine)

[Xyzzy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us...can-party.html

Despite all the forces arrayed against Mr. Trump, the interviews show, the party has been gripped by a nearly incapacitating leadership vacuum and a paralytic sense of indecision and despair, as he has won smashing victories in South Carolina and Nevada.

Two of Mr. Trump’s opponents have openly acknowledged that they may have to wrest the Republican nomination from him in a deadlocked convention.