Where is/can Donald Trump take US (sic)?

[SirRumpole]

I think we are getting a bit fussed over Trump.

He's entertainment value, Clinton has the experience in matters of State which is what the POTUS is all about, all the other candidates are sideshows that won't make the grade.

 

[wayneL]

Your problem Wayne is assuming that my only points of reference are Sceptical Science and the Guardian.

Your other huge problem is offering a knee jerk rejection of anything that is referenced by these organisations because you see them as biased.

That is just total BS. If you want to dispute something I say find evidence from another source to show that the alleged facts are untrue.

The Donald Trump example was straightforward. As I said, and can easily prove, the facts surrounding the imprisonment of the Central Park 5 and their subsequent exoneration are across a score of media sources. The only point I was making was highlighting the viciousness of Donald Trump in 1989 and his total dismissal of reality when the guys were pardoned. I think these are very relevant when considering his standing as the leading Republican candidate for Presidency

Attempting to summarily dismiss all the content from The Guardian as advocacy or biased is intellectually mindless. If that works for you - go for it . Just don't expect anyone to take you seriously

Show me some dirt digging on Hillary (plenty of material there), or Bernie (Oh my Gawd), in the Guardian and I'll doff my cap.

Meanwhile, I expect only those on the far left wing would agree with you

 

[luutzu]

In his own words:

 

[wayneL]

I think we are getting a bit fussed over Trump.

He's entertainment value, Clinton has the experience in matters of State which is what the POTUS is all about, all the other candidates are sideshows that won't make the grade.

She's panicking and will blow it. IMNTBCHO

 

[luutzu]

Show me some dirt digging on Hillary (plenty of material there), or Bernie (Oh my Gawd), in the Guardian and I'll doff my cap.

Meanwhile, I expect only those on the far left wing would agree with you

I don't think being "balanced" mean you have to dig dirt equally on everyone. Or you'd have to show the same amount of dirt, story for story. Ideally, sure... but these papers got to a market to sell to right?

But that in no way diminished how messed up the Donald is. I mean it might be understandable to call for the death penalty blah blah after seeing the crime... but when the court later dismiss the case, the "wildings" were completely innocent, may the least you'd do when you were calling the loudest for their death... is some self examination, some apology. Not doubling down and call into question the justice system because it didn't go your way.

What a psycho. But I do hope the Republican chooses him though.

 

[luutzu]

I think we are getting a bit fussed over Trump.

He's entertainment value, Clinton has the experience in matters of State which is what the POTUS is all about, all the other candidates are sideshows that won't make the grade.

I thought so too... thought he got the Apprentice to promote. But seems it's different this time. Scary/

 

[luutzu]

Opinions vary on that. Austrian ecoomists maintain it prolonged the depression... we will never know due to a lack of a control.

Bernie would be an unmitigated disaster for America. You think there is acrimony between left and right now? Bernie is so incongruous to the qualities of America that made it great once upon a time, there will be strife... mark my words.

No,we do know.

The Great Depression made countless people homeless, jobless, hopeless, living in Hoovervilles and tent cities; There were a couple of riots in the heartland where the gov't was practically overthrown there.

The entire country was on the brink of revolution, capitalism was on its way out and Soviet style communism was sounding real nice to a lot of Americans.

FDR himself said that if he failed, he'd be its last president.

What did he succeeded in doing?

Spend and invest: Hire unemployed artists to paint city halls, teach art; performers to go into country towns and perform plays; building roads and infrastructures; hired people to clean up and keep public parks and national parks etc. etc.

Regulate the financial industry. The Feds, the SEC; regulate the banks and financial services.

Then WW2 and Pearl Harbour happen and that really put these Keysian ideas into practice and all gov't since have always follow similar policies to jump start their economy. Until recently when Austerity was all the rage. That's why the Great Depression is still going on.

Beside waring a few wars and making the arms industry a bunch of money (and the banks, and the Insurance), nothing much is being done under Obama. Things just got worst.

If the next president follow the same path, or if they are obstructed and the lobbyist have their way... the US may not recover. If it does, it will be a shadow of itself - much like the way the British empire came out of WW2.

I think Chris Hedges was saying how no empire ever really fall due to an external enemy. They fall because their own policies and ruling elite hollow the country from within... then came an external force with a push and it will just collapse onto itself.

 

[basilio]

I'm not sure about Trump being "entertainment" value in this election campaign.

When he started perhaps. But six months and leading the Republican ticket by a street suggests he has tapped/created a very large support basis.

He has also changed the conversation. He has seemingly normalised the idea of building a huge wall across the Mexican border and "somehow" forcing the Mexicans to pay for it. He still wants to ban Muslims from coming to America ! He talks of bring back some real torture in the attack on terrorists.

And while he saying this mad, hateful stuff the rest of the Republicans are shuffling their feet and not disagreeing.. It appears there is a race amongst the Republican candidates to sprout the most aggressive and impractical thought bubbles they can create to keep up with Trump.

Meanwhile the rest of the world wonders just what is happening in the most powerful country on the planet.

 

[SirRumpole]

I'm not sure about Trump being "entertainment" value in this election campaign.

When he started perhaps. But six months and leading the Republican ticket by a street suggests he has tapped/created a very large support basis.

He has also changed the conversation. He has seemingly normalised the idea of building a huge wall across the Mexican border and "somehow" forcing the Mexicans to pay for it. He still wants to ban Muslims from coming to America ! He talks of bring back some real torture in the attack on terrorists.

And while he saying this mad, hateful stuff the rest of the Republicans are shuffling their feet and not disagreeing.. It appears there is a race amongst the Republican candidates to sprout the most aggressive and impractical thought bubbles they can create to keep up with Trump.

Meanwhile the rest of the world wonders just what is happening in the most powerful country on the planet.

I suppose that's true, but isn't it just really like members of the Labor Party choosing their leader and members of the Liberal Party choosing their leader, that doesn't mean that uncommitted voters necessarily will vote for them in November.

You don't have to be a member of either party to vote in the Presidential election, whereas in the Primaries you have to be a registered Democrat or Republican.

That's my understanding anyway.

 

[wayneL]

I'm not sure about Trump being "entertainment" value in this election campaign.

When he started perhaps. But six months and leading the Republican ticket by a street suggests he has tapped/created a very large support basis.

He has also changed the conversation. He has seemingly normalised the idea of building a huge wall across the Mexican border and "somehow" forcing the Mexicans to pay for it. He still wants to ban Muslims from coming to America ! He talks of bring back some real torture in the attack on terrorists.

And while he saying this mad, hateful stuff the rest of the Republicans are shuffling their feet and not disagreeing.. It appears there is a race amongst the Republican candidates to sprout the most aggressive and impractical thought bubbles they can create to keep up with Trump.

Meanwhile the rest of the world wonders just what is happening in the most powerful country on the planet.

What happened?

Obama happened. Promises of sweetness and light, nauseating chants of yes we can, and like all socislists, completely unreal expectations of what can be done in the US.

As much as anything, the Trump phenomenon is a reaction to the utter disappointment of two terms of Obama and the left of Dem agenda. You net he's changed the conversation. While I don't necessarily agree with him, these conversations are the ones people want to have, without being stifled by the thought police brownshirts.

He deserves to be congratulated for having the cajones to initiate them.

 

[wayneL]

No,we do know.

The Great Depression made countless people homeless, jobless, hopeless, living in Hoovervilles and tent cities; There were a couple of riots in the heartland where the gov't was practically overthrown there.

The entire country was on the brink of revolution, capitalism was on its way out and Soviet style communism was sounding real nice to a lot of Americans.

FDR himself said that if he failed, he'd be its last president.

What did he succeeded in doing?

Spend and invest: Hire unemployed artists to paint city halls, teach art; performers to go into country towns and perform plays; building roads and infrastructures; hired people to clean up and keep public parks and national parks etc. etc.

Regulate the financial industry. The Feds, the SEC; regulate the banks and financial services.

Then WW2 and Pearl Harbour happen and that really put these Keysian ideas into practice and all gov't since have always follow similar policies to jump start their economy. Until recently when Austerity was all the rage. That's why the Great Depression is still going on.

Beside waring a few wars and making the arms industry a bunch of money (and the banks, and the Insurance), nothing much is being done under Obama. Things just got worst.

If the next president follow the same path, or if they are obstructed and the lobbyist have their way... the US may not recover. If it does, it will be a shadow of itself - much like the way the British empire came out of WW2.

I think Chris Hedges was saying how no empire ever really fall due to an external enemy. They fall because their own policies and ruling elite hollow the country from within... then came an external force with a push and it will just collapse onto itself.

Grasshopper, Grasshopper. You are confusing the political narrative of the day for empirical fact. Now go do your unabridged economic history again plus 5000 pushups.

 

[basilio]

What happened?

Obama happened. Promises of sweetness and light, nauseating chants of yes we can, and like all socislists, completely unreal expectations of what can be done in the US.

As much as anything, the Trump phenomenon is a reaction to the utter disappointment of two terms of Obama and the left of Dem agenda. You net he's changed the conversation. While I don't necessarily agree with him, these conversations are the ones people want to have, without being stifled by the thought police brownshirts.

He deserves to be congratulated for having the cajones to initiate them.

Interesting... So where do you stand on the Presidential election Wayne? Who do you believe is best suited to be POTUS ?

 

[wayneL]

I like Rand Paul, but not a chance.

 

[luutzu]

Grasshopper, Grasshopper. You are confusing the political narrative of the day for empirical fact. Now go do your unabridged economic history again plus 5000 pushups.

Sifu, Sifu. Not enough sunscreens you may have. Land Down Under it is hot in summer and drought in winter. Sunstroke is a common ailment, more so with Climate Change and its four seasons in a week catching people unaware. Particularly harmful to those of advanced age.

Thy grasshopper swear the political climate of the past 3 decades is one of Austerity and not of Gov't-can-also-do-things-too. But if soever wise and old Sifu refers to the political climate of the 1930s, then you too may be mistaken (ahem, wrong) for the political climate at the time was to mobilise the people to first defend, then to fight, evil fascism.

The means by which a country and a people were united and mobilised against a common enemy was to have the gov't taking charge; the gov't making investment (spending) on manufacturing, on rapid research and development, on putting people to work, on giving them hope and purpose.

Further to this objective, banks and financial institutions were regulated real and proper; monopolies were not tolerated and unions that protect workers' rights were welcomed.

Then out of this necessity to employ the masses; of needing a gov't to make investment (because private enterprise and Fat Cats all hide their cash and gold, not making any investment, not spending on anything other than a few banquets now and then... Out of this proved Keynes' theory of economic stimulus during recession; the multiplier effect of gov't spending and investment... out of this put to bed the then popular idea of Austerity and "living within our means" that was prevalent all over the Western economies; ideas that forced Germany to repay debt but make no investment (kinda like Greece and Spain and Italy now isn't it?) then Hitler rises and put all German people to work (waging war and making propanda and stuff) kinda got them out of their depression and onto superior grounds with dream of a million year Reich or something.

Where was I? haha...

Yeaa.... no you're wrong Sifu.

 

[orr]

From a longer, timely, piece in today's;
http://economistsview.typepad.com

Delong makes an interesting 3 point conclusion, for those that go to the article.


'Quantitative Easing: Walking the Walk without Talking the Talk?'

Brad DeLong:

Quantitative Easing: Walking the Walk without Talking the Talk?: The extremely-sharp Joe Gagnon is approaching the edge of shrillness: he seeks to praise the Bank of Japan for what it has done, and yet stress and stress again that what it has done is far too little than it should and needs to do ...

Those of us who are, like me, broadly in Joe Gagnon's camp are now having to grapple with an unexpected intellectual shock. When 2010 came around and when the "Recovery Summers" and "V-Shaped Recoveries" that had been confidently predicted by others refused to arrive, we once again reached back to the 1930s. We remembered the reflationary policies of Neville Chamberlain, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Takahashi Korekiyo, and Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht gave us considerable confidence that quantitative easing supported by promises that reflation was the goal of policy would be effective. They had been effective in the major catastrophe of the Great Depression. They should, we thought, also be effective in the less-major catastrophe that we started by calling the "Great Recession", but should now have shifted to calling the "Lesser Depression", and in all likelihood will soon be calling the "Longer Depression".

 

[Macquack]

Obama happened. Promises of sweetness and light, nauseating chants of yes we can, and like all socialists, completely unreal expectations of what can be done in the US.

The idea of a national health scheme (Obamacare), what a "completely unreal expectation" even though the rest of the first world have adopted such a system.

Like all capitalist pigs, Trump would love to turn the US into a third world nation where the existing rich become richer by default.

 

[wayneL]

1/ Obamacare is not a universal health scheme.

2/ In any case, that us but one aspect of the 8 year debacle.

 

[wayneL]

Yeaa.... no you're wrong Sifu.

Sifu can never wrong, it is just not Tao.

Grasshoppers, on the other hand.....

Subjectivism is not objective, Grasshopper.

 

[basilio]

The Donald has trumped home in S Carolina. Jeb Bush has withdrawn from the Republican race.

On history Donald Trump has high probability of being the Republican nomination for POTUS.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...caucus-live-coverage-us-presidential-election

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-south-carolina-primary-results-election-2016

 

[basilio]

Another view of The Great Trump