U.S. Politics: And a Happy "Shithole" Year

[Mexal]

6 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

All this lying, forgetting, and re-remembering what Trump did (not) say reminds me of Orwell's "1984", when all of the sudden alliances of the superpower changed and everyone insisted it had always been that way... And that's only after a couple of (very typical) Trump's remarks, horrible as they are... What will they do after he does launch a missile first, or kills a little child in public, I wonder...

This was my first thought. Doublespeak is coming to America.

[Martell Spy]

22 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

All this lying, forgetting, and re-remembering what Trump did (not) say reminds me of Orwell's "1984", when all of the sudden alliances of the superpower changed and everyone insisted it had always been that way... And that's only after a couple of (very typical) Trump's remarks, horrible as they are... What will they do after he does launch a missile first, or kills a little child in public, I wonder...

Considering Trump incited Nazis in an American city, who then killed an American citizen, I'd say the chances are they'd do very little. Hopefully we won't get a chance to find out. Now, the American killed was a liberal, so perhaps their life doesn't matter to these people.

Now if Trump say launches missiles and gets South Korea or Fiji destroyed, the world may act. We really don't want to end up there though. For example sanctions put on Trump will be sanctions put on us Americans.

[Martell Spy]

27 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

1984 was supposed to be a warning. Not a "how to" guide.

A warning about Stalinism, which kind of tells you what Trump is trying to do to America.

South Africa to Lodge Formal Protest to Trump’s Derogatory Remarks

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/south-africa-to-lodge-formal-protest-to-trumps-derogatory-remarks.html

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

33 minutes ago, Mexal said:

This was my first thought. Doublespeak is coming to America.

Is it double speak or the big lie theory? What Trump et al are doing is very Goebbelsish.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

They contend that democratic norms were “coming unmoored” in America long before Trump’s ascent to power, hastened by political polarization. And they maintain that Trump himself—in rejecting democratic rules, denying the legitimacy of political rivals, tolerating political violence, and considering restrictions on the civil liberties of critics—tests positive as an “authoritarian.” Yet they note that “little actual [democratic] backsliding occurred in 2017” in the U.S.

So how can both of these things—American democracy’s acute vulnerability and stubborn resilience—be true? In an interview, Levitsky and Ziblatt explained the seeming paradox. They told me that while democracy is “not dying” in the United States, certain “alarm bells” are ringing. They pointed out that the first year in office of a democratically elected, would-be authoritarian is an unreliable indicator of future democratic breakdown, and compared the United States with 1930s Spain, 1970s Chile, and contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela. They rejected the argument recently advanced by The Wall Street Journal, among others, that fears of rising anti-democratic forces in the U.S. amount to a liberal fever dream, while warning that Trump’s opponents on the left could stoke those forces themselves.

“Our democratic institutions have weakened and we have, for the first time in our memory, elected a [president] who is not fully committed to democratic rules of the game,” Levitsky said. What happens next depends on a number of factors, including whether the United States experiences a security crisis such as a war or terrorist attack. “George Bush Junior saw his approval ratings soar to 90 percent” after the 9/11 attacks, Levitsky recalled, and Bush “governed with quite a bit of forbearance despite that popularity. What Trump would do with 90 percent approval—who knows.”

 

How's Democracy Holding Up After Trump's First Year?
It’s not dying, but alarm bells are ringing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-democracy-ziblatt-levitsky/550340/

I drove from one of the healthiest counties in the country to the least-healthy, both in the same state. Here’s what I learned about work, well-being, and happiness.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/life-in-the-sickest-town-in-america/384718/

[Martell Spy]

So, how much of Trump's authoritarian tendencies are real? I'm not sure we know the answer to this due to actions he has taken and hasn't taken yet against various institutions/parties/individuals. It's an unusual style in 2018, but Trump isn't the first right wing American politician to use authoritarian language to scare liberals and rile up the right wing base.

Obviously, Trump fired Comey, and is quite possible planning to fire Mueller.

On the Media, he has taken no real action yet. When I hear Trump talk about the Media, it sounds to me like a cocaine addict, talking about how he hates his drug of choice.

On Clintion, he has talked a big game, but taken no real action. The referral to the FBI was pretty much nothing since the FBI already had this information.

The FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation however, is extremely concerning and a sign that the FBI is possibly politically corrupted.

[lokisnow]

On 1/13/2018 at 6:55 AM, GAROVORKIN said:

Let's give everything a way for free. What a novelly bad idea that it. 

I got a better idea, why can't  the Universities and colleges simply lower their tuition and make themselves more affordable.  If anyone can solve this dilemma ,  it should be the  learned luminaries running those  hallowed institutions of higher learning. They're supposed to be  knowledgeable in the issues of higher education and its financing and  they should be able devise solutions that don't involve the US government and its  taxpayers  having  to shell out the money by making it free for everyone.

 

 

 

One, it is simple practicality. Because the boomers defunded education after they were done with it, their children have insane student debt, because their children have insane student debt they can’t materially participate in society as normal consumers. This creates a massive drag on the economy. That’s where the practical comes in, the drag is so massive it cannot be overcome in our low inflation environment, and the only solution is large scale reductions in those debts. Widespread debt jubilees of modest amounts (modest meaning not one penny less of the total spent on quantitative easing), would help jump start the economy out of the debt trap people under forty are stuck in.

and yes we should approach the cost in college the same way we approach climate change, both have accelerated unacceptably to basically the same hockey stock degree. With climate change we sign laws demanding the amount of carbon be below 1990 levels by 2025ish, we need to place similarly modeled laws to fight the cost insanity of colleges. And the main thing driving colleges isn’t the cost of teaching students (because instructors sure as shit haven’t had a commensurate hockey stick graph  increase in wages), or feeding students. Almost all the cost is driven by massive amounts of do-nothing jobs for mid level administrators.

the NYT recently had an article about the costs of subway construction in NYC, and a lot of it is because there are hundreds of excess do-nothing jobs paying $100 per hour with a fifty hour per week guarantee (that’s ten hours of $150 per hour btw). One example they site is that only in NYC are they required to employ elevator operators, whose only job is to press the floor button, on construction sites. This sort of bloat is exactly the problem in thebcosts of college, and eradicating the administrative equivalent of elevator button pusher, is how we reverse the price inflation in college attendance and get in a couple decades of cost deflation to restore some kind of sanity to the system.

[GAROVORKIN]

3 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

There are good journalists out there doing good work. They're just a little harder to find. It's not surprising you'd wave your hands and say "they all suck" and stop paying attention (mirrors your lazy attitude to politics) so you can continue to issue proclamations based on your own discerning analysis of the scent of your own farts, though.

 

As rants go Dante I would  have to give you a D - . Your really not very good at it. 

 

[LongRider]

Boo hoo hoo, his face got red.  Poor racist snowflake.

Quote

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD. (WUSA9) - During a service attended by Vice President Mike Pence and his wife on Sunday morning, a pastor in Prince George’s County denounced remarks made by President Trump earlier this week. 

“I stand today as your Pastor to vehemently denounce and reject any such characterizations of The nations of Africa and of our brothers and sisters in Haiti,” said Pastor Dr. Maurice Watson of the Metropolitan Baptist Church.

In his speech, the pastor mentioned that some congregation members were from Haiti and African countries. He called the president’s comments “hurtful” and “dehumanizing.” He went on to call for the president to be held accountable for his words.

The Vice President reportedly became visibly red-faced at times throughout the speech.

Following his comments, members of the congregation rose out of their seats in support.

http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/maryland/dehumanizing-pastor-denounces-trumps-remarks-during-service-attended-by-vp-pence/508027658

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is it double speak or the big lie theory? What Trump et al are doing is very Goebbelsish.

Fair. It's more the latter. 

[GAROVORKIN]

4 hours ago, Mexal said:

Sure, on cable news. Read a newspaper. Journalists exist.

Cable news tells you what  you should think and that pretty much goes for all of them .   Old style Journalists even those with given political points of view, would tend to tell you the facts and  not what you should think . The old time tv journalists of Yesteryear had far better standards them what we have now.  

[Mexal]

1 minute ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Cable news tells you what  you should think and that pretty much goes for all of them .   Old style Journalists even those with given political point of view, would tend to tell you the facts and  not what you should think . The old time tv journalists of Yesteryear had far better standards them what we have now.  

Oh I completely agree. I was just arguing that there are journalists still out there and they're all print. You won't find many on tv these days outside of a 2 minute spot on one of the shows to give updates on a story they wrote.

[Ormond]

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I don’t have the precise numbers in front of me. I’ll see if I can find something to quantify the problem and post it later.

But, for now I have a few comments. We know two things. One is if you were unemployed for over six months, you faced significant headwinds getting back in the labor market. Employers simply discriminated against people unemployed for that period of time, even if they had good experience. Secondly, age discrimination is significant.

If you happened to be over 40 and lost your job during the Great Recession, you likely faced severe headwinds because of your age and because there was a good chance you’d hit the critical six month mark. I’m quite sure that many people caught in that situation just gave up and dropped out of the labor market. This is of course why the U3 unemployment statistic isn’t the only one to look at.

And if course if you were one of those people, and faced a long bout of unemployment, and are just getting back into the labor market, then there is probably a good chance you’ll never be able to retire, as you probably burned through most of your financial resources and now your in your 50s or 60s and maybe have few years left you can work. 

People of course can complain about some of these people not retiring, but many of them don’t have a choice. It’s either work until they drop dead or eat cat food.

And even though, labor markets are tightening and marginalized people are getting a chance to get back into the labor force, this is one reason why I’m still on the war path about this issue. It did not have to be this painful and protracted. Unfortunately, people like me who know this wasn’t mainly a “structural” problem, for the most part, had to deal with people like Casey Mulligan who made up structural fairy tales, along with the CEO Business Clowntable crowd who pushed this narrative. And then we had to deal with inflation fear mongering, gold bugism, Poor Savers!, and asset mispricing concern trolling.

Thanks for the above explanations.

There really is a big difference in consequences for someone in my friend's position in being 55 vs. 63 when this happens to you. 

[GAROVORKIN]

4 hours ago, Mexal said:

This was my first thought. Doublespeak is coming to America.

I wonder what George Orwell would make of todays's Social Media. 

[ThinkerX]

6 hours ago, Ormond said:

This is a serious question and not by any means an attempt to defend the economists who predict long term high unemployment. 

But as this board's expert on economics, do you have any idea how much of the fall in unemployment could be from older workers who feel they were forced to retire before they really wanted to, and so have dropped out of the labor force completely and wouldn't be counted in unemployment statistics? We are now at a point where about half of the Baby Boomers would be 62 or older, and I am wondering if a lot of people who are laid off when they are older, or whose working conditions change for the worse, just retire earlier than planned because of the perception that age discrimination would make it extremely difficult for them to find a new job anyway. I know younger people often complain that older Boomers in highly educated professions like college professor don't retire soon enough, but that might not be the cause in blue collar or even lesser skilled white collar professions. (I have a friend who was a bachelor's degree level social worker who this happened to last year -- his job conditions got very stressful because of some changes his agency implemented due to new rules from the state government, so he retired suddenly at age 63, three years before he had planned to.)

I can't comment on the country overall, but I can say that USPS has been pushing the early retirement thing really, really hard.  This was felt at the shop level because a lot of the early retirees are/were the ones who understood how to get things done...despite often incomprehensible directives from on high.

[DanteGabriel]

57 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

I wonder what George Orwell would make of todays's Social Media. 

He may have noticed that the convenience and power of our smartphones has convinced us to invite private companies to surveil and manipulate us in a way far more comprehensive than the government in 1984 could possibly have dreamed of.

But what do you think Orwell would say about social media?

[Erik of Hazelfield]

If Trump is using any of the 1984 tricks, it’s the two-minute hate. Redirecting people’s hatred towards some abstract enemy to avoid focus on the faults of their own government.

 

[Ser Reptitious]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

I wonder what George Orwell would make of todays's Social Media. 

What do you think George Orwell would make of the Republicans'* constantly shifting response to Trump's "shithole" comment? 

(*specifically the ones who were present at the moment)

[TerraPrime]

46 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

He may have noticed that the convenience and power of our smartphones has convinced us to invite private companies to surveil and manipulate us in a way far more comprehensive than the government in 1984 could possibly have dreamed of.

But what do you think Orwell would say about social media?

I don't think it's the technology - smart phones and internet. I think it's that we're using the platforms for free. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, etc., are all "free" to use. There is no monetary cost. What we pay is instead our privacy, our information reach, and our cultural context. By using it for free, we agreed to give up control in those areas. That's the problem, imo. 

[GAROVORKIN]

1 hour ago, Ser Reptitious said:

What do you think George Orwell would make of the Republicans'* constantly shifting response to Trump's "shithole" comment? 

(*specifically the ones who were present at the moment)

He would probably call it double speak and be appalled but not really surprised.  But I think thats not only place he'd find examples of double speak.