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Thread: US elections, 2016 - Page 102







Post#2526 at 02-26-2016 03:54 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump



30% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 3% or less
40% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 4% or more
60% -- lead with 50-54%
70% -- lead with 55-59%
90% -- lead with 60% or more

White -- tie or someone leading with less than 40%.
I think Donald Trump is going to have a hard time winning Nevada, or Colorado for that matter. I don't know where you got those polls, but hispanics give Trump an 80%+ unfavorable rating. That should at a minimum doom him in Nevada.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#2527 at 02-26-2016 04:22 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Some comments about the maps so far:

1. John Kasich has a very strong Favorite Son effect. Should he win the Republican nomination, he could win Ohio and lose nationwide. Could -- because I lack data for a definitive statement. He does not have enough support within the GOP to win the nomination. He has some interesting demographics behind him: in South Carolina he got 36% of the Republican vote among primary voters with more than a bachelor's degree. He got less than 10% of the vote among those with education described as "high school or less".

By far the sanest and least demagogic of Republican candidate for the Presidential nomination still in it, I thought him the candidate most likely to poach some Obama voters from 2012. Republicans may continue to have a problem with the highly-educated voters, the sorts whose demographics suggested that they would vote for Eisenhower in the 1950s and Obama in recent elections.

2. Barack Obama is no burden in Florida. In a time in which most politicians are held in contempt by near majorities, he is underwater by only 2% in Florida on approval (46-48). Were it not for the pesky 22nd Amendment, he would have more than a 50-50 chance of re-election. Approval for Senator Rubio (R-FL) is underwater 31-55. It is no wonder that he is not running for re-election to the US Senate; Floridians are onto him!

On others, PPP shows favorability, a different word with a different meaning.

Clinton 39-53
Cruz 23-62
Rubio 33-53 (slight difference from approval)
Sanders 35-47
Trump 39-51

Sanders is the only one for whom the value for unfavorability is below 50%.


3. Republicans have no reasonable chance of winning without Florida on their side. Oddly the two Cuban-Americans so far project to lose Florida. Floridians likely know Senator Rubio better than do other Americans, and his low ratings for approval and favorability suggest that the more they get to know him the more they will dislike him. I expect him to fade into irrelevancy very fast.

4. Florida usually closes late for Democrats. Trump leads Clinton by 2% and Sanders by 3%, which is not a significant difference. Neither is the lead. Romney had a lead like this over Obama for most of 2012, only to lose it.

5. Virginia looks like the clinching state for either Democrat. Pennsylvania looks like the clinching state for any Republican.

6. No matter who wins, Obama nostalgia begins about a year from now.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#2528 at 02-26-2016 04:27 PM by XYMOX_4AD_84 [at joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,073]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
Some comments about the maps so far:

1. John Kasich has a very strong Favorite Son effect. Should he win the Republican nomination, he could win Ohio and lose nationwide. Could -- because I lack data for a definitive statement. He does not have enough support within the GOP to win the nomination. He has some interesting demographics behind him: in South Carolina he got 36% of the Republican vote among primary voters with more than a bachelor's degree. He got less than 10% of the vote among those with education described as "high school or less".

By far the sanest and least demagogic of Republican candidate for the Presidential nomination still in it, I thought him the candidate most likely to poach some Obama voters from 2012. Republicans may continue to have a problem with the highly-educated voters, the sorts whose demographics suggested that they would vote for Eisenhower in the 1950s and Obama in recent elections.

2. Barack Obama is no burden in Florida. In a time in which most politicians are held in contempt by near majorities, he is underwater by only 2% in Florida on approval (46-48). Were it not for the pesky 22nd Amendment, he would have more than a 50-50 chance of re-election. Approval for Senator Rubio (R-FL) is underwater 31-55. It is no wonder that he is not running for re-election to the US Senate; Floridians are onto him!

On others, PPP shows favorability, a different word with a different meaning.

Clinton 39-53
Cruz 23-62
Rubio 33-53 (slight difference from approval)
Sanders 35-47
Trump 39-51

Sanders is the only one for whom the value for unfavorability is below 50%.


3. Republicans have no reasonable chance of winning without Florida on their side. Oddly the two Cuban-Americans so far project to lose Florida. Floridians likely know Senator Rubio better than do other Americans, and his low ratings for approval and favorability suggest that the more they get to know him the more they will dislike him. I expect him to fade into irrelevancy very fast.

4. Florida usually closes late for Democrats. Trump leads Clinton by 2% and Sanders by 3%, which is not a significant difference. Neither is the lead. Romney had a lead like this over Obama for most of 2012, only to lose it.

5. Virginia looks like the clinching state for either Democrat. Pennsylvania looks like the clinching state for any Republican.

6. No matter who wins, Obama nostalgia begins about a year from now.
I am 100% confident I will have Obama nostalgia. Again, for me, that is saying a lot. I am personally now in uncharted waters politically.







Post#2529 at 02-26-2016 04:46 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Using brower's method and the electionatlas.org site, this is the map I get for Clinton vs. Trump:



Using the latest polls from the wikipedia site:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statew...election,_2016

Using the latest opinion poll only, and filling in states with Bush/generic (where Trump is not asked for), and 2012 results (where no poll has been taken yet for 2016). As with brower's maps, red is Democratic and Blue is Republican, as per the electionatlas.org color convention. Darker color = stronger opinion.

Hillary Clinton still ahead 302 to 230

States where polls have been taken:
state Clinton Trump/generic
AK 44 49
AZ 42 44
AR 38 47
CA 55 35
CO 37 48
CT 47 40
FL 45 38
GA 41 50
ID 33 50
IL 51 33
IA 42 42
KS 38 49
KY 45 42
LA 39 47
ME 55 32
MD 52 35
MA 64 27
MI 43 41
MN 43 38
MS 42 47
MO 39 48
MT 30 51
NV 48 42
NH 45 40
NJ 53 33
NM 50 36
NY 57 32
NC 47 41
OH 42 44
OK 33 67
OR 51 36
PA 43 45
SC 42 47
TX 42 50
UT 28 33
VA 52 35
WA 45 37
WV 30 53
WI 47 38
WY 31 58
Last edited by Eric the Green; 02-26-2016 at 04:57 PM.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#2530 at 02-26-2016 04:58 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post

(to)
Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump



30% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 3% or less
40% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 4% or more
60% -- lead with 50-54%
70% -- lead with 55-59%
90% -- lead with 60% or more

White -- tie or someone leading with less than 40%.

I think Donald Trump is going to have a hard time winning Nevada, or Colorado for that matter. I don't know where you got those polls, but hispanics give Trump an 80%+ unfavorable rating. That should at a minimum doom him in Nevada.
More problematic is the age of the polls in question. I have more trouble with the poll in Pennsylvania because it comes from before the attempted inquisition against Hillary Clinton. Colorado? Likewise. I find it harder to believe that she is nearly tied in Kentucky, in view of a very recent poll which shows her being absolutely crushed in West Virginia, a state with very similar demographics to those of West Virginia.

With Utah, the last poll that I saw involving Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump gave Donald Trump a lead with something like 37-35. That sort of shown lead is practically worthless. In 2008 I saw polls with Obama leading McCain 38-36% or so. As it turns out, Obama got little more than the 38%. Other Republicans absolutely crush Hillary Clinton in Utah, and Senator Mike Lee is practically assured of getting about 70% of the vote in his re-election bid even in what is beginning to look like a bad year for Republicans in the Senate.

What's the problem? Donald Trump not only does not exemplify Mormon values; he violates them as no prior nominee for President for a very long time. He has multiple divorces, a huge non-no in Mormon life. He has been a big investor in gambling casinos, which fall just short of whore-houses as offenders of Mormon life. Not only is there gambling in casinos; casinos are dens of horrible iniquity by Mormon standards (lots of drinking and smoking). Mormons are as a rule heavily-educated people, and they have cause to reject demagoguery even if it is largely conservative.

Should the hierarchy of the Latter Day Saints tell Mormons to split their ticket, then Mormons will so do. They might vote for Clinton or Sanders or vote for some third-party on the Right (Libertarian?)... but that throws Utah out of the Republican column. That is only six electoral votes.

Before I get to Nevada, let me discuss Arizona. Arizona has a huge Mormon presence, and if Mormons in Utah vote with little enthusiasm for the Republican nominee or reject him completely, then that is enough to swing Arizona. I suspect that Mormons will find it far easier to reach Hispanics as possible converts to Mormonism if the Hispanics are still in America and not deported to Latin America. Mormons believe strongly in intact families, even if those are not their own, and Donald Trump has suggested that deportation of illegal aliens (in Arizona those would largely be Hispanic) would be more important than keeping families intact. Politics can make some unlikely allies.

Nevada and Utah could hardly be more different except that both are highly urbanized. The casino business is huge in the Nevada economy, and as an entrepreneur heavily involved with casinos, Donald Trump might be something of a hero there. Add to this, Nevada is much below average in formal education by US standards. That said, the poll that I show for Nevada is old. See also the one for Kentucky.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#2531 at 02-26-2016 06:09 PM by playwrite [at NYC joined Jul 2005 #posts 10,443]
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Christie endorses Trump.
A big signal for Establishment to get on board
Also who will be VP.
Also Rubio will be afraid.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service

“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke


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Post#2532 at 02-26-2016 06:16 PM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
I think Donald Trump is going to have a hard time winning Nevada, or Colorado for that matter. I don't know where you got those polls, but hispanics give Trump an 80%+ unfavorable rating. That should at a minimum doom him in Nevada.
Actually, the key to winning both Nevada and Colorado (especially Colorado) is Donald Trump's pledge to keep the federal government's hands off legal, recreational marijuana in states where weed is legal. This is where Hillary's authoritarianism (and unwillingness to consider marijuana other than medical marijuana) hurts her. Being against recreational weed in Colorado is like being against recreational tobacco in Kentucky and North Carolina and Virginia.







Post#2533 at 02-26-2016 06:21 PM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
More problematic is the age of the polls in question. I have more trouble with the poll in Pennsylvania because it comes from before the attempted inquisition against Hillary Clinton. Colorado? Likewise. I find it harder to believe that she is nearly tied in Kentucky, in view of a very recent poll which shows her being absolutely crushed in West Virginia, a state with very similar demographics to those of West Virginia.

With Utah, the last poll that I saw involving Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump gave Donald Trump a lead with something like 37-35. That sort of shown lead is practically worthless. In 2008 I saw polls with Obama leading McCain 38-36% or so. As it turns out, Obama got little more than the 38%. Other Republicans absolutely crush Hillary Clinton in Utah, and Senator Mike Lee is practically assured of getting about 70% of the vote in his re-election bid even in what is beginning to look like a bad year for Republicans in the Senate.

What's the problem? Donald Trump not only does not exemplify Mormon values; he violates them as no prior nominee for President for a very long time. He has multiple divorces, a huge non-no in Mormon life. He has been a big investor in gambling casinos, which fall just short of whore-houses as offenders of Mormon life. Not only is there gambling in casinos; casinos are dens of horrible iniquity by Mormon standards (lots of drinking and smoking). Mormons are as a rule heavily-educated people, and they have cause to reject demagoguery even if it is largely conservative.

Should the hierarchy of the Latter Day Saints tell Mormons to split their ticket, then Mormons will so do. They might vote for Clinton or Sanders or vote for some third-party on the Right (Libertarian?)... but that throws Utah out of the Republican column. That is only six electoral votes.

Before I get to Nevada, let me discuss Arizona. Arizona has a huge Mormon presence, and if Mormons in Utah vote with little enthusiasm for the Republican nominee or reject him completely, then that is enough to swing Arizona. I suspect that Mormons will find it far easier to reach Hispanics as possible converts to Mormonism if the Hispanics are still in America and not deported to Latin America. Mormons believe strongly in intact families, even if those are not their own, and Donald Trump has suggested that deportation of illegal aliens (in Arizona those would largely be Hispanic) would be more important than keeping families intact. Politics can make some unlikely allies.

Nevada and Utah could hardly be more different except that both are highly urbanized. The casino business is huge in the Nevada economy, and as an entrepreneur heavily involved with casinos, Donald Trump might be something of a hero there. Add to this, Nevada is much below average in formal education by US standards. That said, the poll that I show for Nevada is old. See also the one for Kentucky.
The two key states are still Ohio and Florida. And Trump appears to be ahead in both states. One factor that could perturb Ohio to the Democratic column is lead poisoning in Ohio cities, if that issue gains legs there before November. Media still seems to be trying to treat Flint as an isolated issue, but it isn't. I could easily see Trump winning a 2000 like election. The national polls still show Trump and Hillary a stable statistical tie.







Post#2534 at 02-26-2016 06:22 PM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by playwrite View Post
Christie endorses Trump.
A big signal for Establishment to get on board
Also who will be VP.
Also Rubio will be afraid.
Ben Carson would be the perfect choice. I think it's time for the GOP establishment to sit one out and learn how to win a national election by a landslide.
Last edited by Classic-X'er; 02-26-2016 at 06:29 PM.







Post#2535 at 02-26-2016 06:34 PM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
Some comments about the maps so far:

1. John Kasich has a very strong Favorite Son effect. Should he win the Republican nomination, he could win Ohio and lose nationwide. Could -- because I lack data for a definitive statement. He does not have enough support within the GOP to win the nomination. He has some interesting demographics behind him: in South Carolina he got 36% of the Republican vote among primary voters with more than a bachelor's degree. He got less than 10% of the vote among those with education described as "high school or less".

By far the sanest and least demagogic of Republican candidate for the Presidential nomination still in it, I thought him the candidate most likely to poach some Obama voters from 2012. Republicans may continue to have a problem with the highly-educated voters, the sorts whose demographics suggested that they would vote for Eisenhower in the 1950s and Obama in recent elections.

2. Barack Obama is no burden in Florida. In a time in which most politicians are held in contempt by near majorities, he is underwater by only 2% in Florida on approval (46-48). Were it not for the pesky 22nd Amendment, he would have more than a 50-50 chance of re-election. Approval for Senator Rubio (R-FL) is underwater 31-55. It is no wonder that he is not running for re-election to the US Senate; Floridians are onto him!

On others, PPP shows favorability, a different word with a different meaning.

Clinton 39-53
Cruz 23-62
Rubio 33-53 (slight difference from approval)
Sanders 35-47
Trump 39-51

Sanders is the only one for whom the value for unfavorability is below 50%.


3. Republicans have no reasonable chance of winning without Florida on their side. Oddly the two Cuban-Americans so far project to lose Florida. Floridians likely know Senator Rubio better than do other Americans, and his low ratings for approval and favorability suggest that the more they get to know him the more they will dislike him. I expect him to fade into irrelevancy very fast.

4. Florida usually closes late for Democrats. Trump leads Clinton by 2% and Sanders by 3%, which is not a significant difference. Neither is the lead. Romney had a lead like this over Obama for most of 2012, only to lose it.

5. Virginia looks like the clinching state for either Democrat. Pennsylvania looks like the clinching state for any Republican.

6. No matter who wins, Obama nostalgia begins about a year from now.
1. Count on Trump fighting a near, recount level loss as hard or harder than Bush did in 2000. Trump has the money for such a fight even if the RNC isn't behind him. A Trump v Clinton election could be the most divisive election in this country's history since 1912. Maybe even 1860. Trump v Sanders would be divisive unless one of the other won big too.
2. I'm not sure that I would call Kasich all that sane. The guy has presided over cover-ups of lead poisoning of residents of Toledo, Cleveland, Sebring (near Akron) and Cincinnati. And what is sane about a neo-conservatism that is leading this country to war with Russia and China? Following the conventional wisdom may look sane to people who hold to the conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom eventually becomes divorced from objective reality leading to a rude awakening when Crisis hits.







Post#2536 at 02-26-2016 10:41 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Quote Originally Posted by MordecaiK View Post
1. Count on Trump fighting a near, recount level loss as hard or harder than Bush did in 2000. Trump has the money for such a fight even if the RNC isn't behind him. A Trump v Clinton election could be the most divisive election in this country's history since 1912. Maybe even 1860. Trump v Sanders would be divisive unless one of the other won big too.
Would Trump cheat like Bush did? Trump doesn't have a brother to help him cheat either.

Trump vs. Clinton would be loud, but no more divisive than any of the recent divisive elections.

Cruz vs. Clinton or Sanders; now THAT would be divisive.

2. I'm not sure that I would call Kasich all that sane. The guy has presided over cover-ups of lead poisoning of residents of Toledo, Cleveland, Sebring (near Akron) and Cincinnati. And what is sane about a neo-conservatism that is leading this country to war with Russia and China? Following the conventional wisdom may look sane to people who hold to the conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom eventually becomes divorced from objective reality leading to a rude awakening when Crisis hits.
If you define sending support to Ukraine as insane. Did he say he would send troops there?
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#2537 at 02-26-2016 10:45 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Quote Originally Posted by MordecaiK View Post
Actually, the key to winning both Nevada and Colorado (especially Colorado) is Donald Trump's pledge to keep the federal government's hands off legal, recreational marijuana in states where weed is legal. This is where Hillary's authoritarianism (and unwillingness to consider marijuana other than medical marijuana) hurts her. Being against recreational weed in Colorado is like being against recreational tobacco in Kentucky and North Carolina and Virginia.
Again you may be reading policies into Trump's mind. I haven't heard anything about his marijuana policy.

Right now Colorado leans Republican. But a Trump candidacy would turn off Latinos there. Trump will not win Nevada, where marijuana is not legal, and Latinos are a major portion of voters.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#2538 at 02-26-2016 11:04 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by MordecaiK View Post
The two key states are still Ohio and Florida. And Trump appears to be ahead in both states. One factor that could perturb Ohio to the Democratic column is lead poisoning in Ohio cities, if that issue gains legs there before November. Media still seems to be trying to treat Flint as an isolated issue, but it isn't. I could easily see Trump winning a 2000 like election. The national polls still show Trump and Hillary a stable statistical tie.
Very possible. Conservatives love to do public services on the cheap; that, after all, is capitalism in the raw.

I have yet to see any polls of Michigan after the lead scandal... but lead poisoning is easy to understand and impossible to excuse. For good reason we no longer use leaded gasoline.

I saw a campaign ad by Bernie Sanders that mentioned the lead scandal in very general terms -- that if the local and state governments fail to do their appropriate jobs, then the federal government must step in. It did not say "Michigan", "Flint", or "Snyder"... but in Michigan we know what it means. I am unaware of which Ohio city has "Menace 82" wrecking lives, but that campaign ad can work on consciences.

Of course it would be better if people voted their consciences instead of their prejudices, superstition, and greed.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#2539 at 02-27-2016 01:08 AM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
Actually, we the people, through our governments, do fund your business. Are you that dense that you fail to understand the basic value of public goods and services? Do you educate your workers from early childhood? Do you operate your service vehicles on private roads? Is that a totally private internet you use? How about utilities: are you using individually contracted electricity, water and sewer? Do you call private security if you have a break-in; your private fire service if you have a fire?

At a more holistic level, do you establish and enforce the standards for your providers, inspect your own food and keep the air clean all by your little lonesome? All those entities you hate as meddlers: EPA, OSHA, EEOC and all the taxing entities, make life possible. That you fail to see that, because they tend to irritate you, is a blind-spot in the conservative eye the size of skyscraper. Move to Beijing for a week and experience the lack of effective services ... especially the EPA.

Even more to the point:
  • Spending in the public sector circulates though the economy no differently than private spending. It's money.
  • Public spending on things like roads and fiber networks generate profits that are passed to business people, but paid-for by taxpayers. You should be happy.
  • Buying those things with cheap borrowed money is exactly the same as you borrowing to buy a new truck/tool/computer for your business because it improves efficiency. It also generates more return than it costs.


Economics doesn't fail because money takes route A instead of route B.



Feel free to live wherever. Whining about San Jose or NYC is pretty funny, but whatever. The crime in any city is not evenly distributed. If you can afford to live UMC in the 'burbs, you can have similar results in the city, because you can live in a safe area by choice. If you live poor in either place, you're at risk. I live in the 'burbs myself, so I'm not advocating for urban living per se. I will say that I'll move to a more urban setting as I age, because the services are close and simply better.
Are you so dense that you are unable to present an argument to someone who is not a right wing anarchist? I'm an American taxpayer like yourself. If you are receiving social security and medicare, my payroll taxes are going to you right now. Do you value and appreciate it or not? I hope you're not so dense to actually believe that the republicans won't be able to function effectively as a society and adequately fund their government and keep their roads and freeways maintained and their public schools funded and their military equipped without the progressives. I hope you don't mind me sliding you in with the progressives.
Last edited by Classic-X'er; 02-27-2016 at 01:10 AM.







Post#2540 at 02-27-2016 01:51 AM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
Would Trump cheat like Bush did? Trump doesn't have a brother to help him cheat either.

Trump vs. Clinton would be loud, but no more divisive than any of the recent divisive elections.

Cruz vs. Clinton or Sanders; now THAT would be divisive.



If you define sending support to Ukraine as insane. Did he say he would send troops there?
Yes, I could see Trump fighting close races as hard or harder than Bush did. And Trump may not have a brother as Governor of Florida but he DOES have a second home there where he spends a lot of his time--and has gotten to know a lot of Florida politicos.
No, Kasich did not speak in terms of sending troops to Ukraine. But sending troops to Syria is equally dangerous.







Post#2541 at 02-27-2016 01:57 AM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by Einzige View Post
a Jewess daughter.
So you have gone full anti-Semite as well as full Fascist?
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#2542 at 02-27-2016 02:04 AM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
He is exactly that. He wants to lower taxes drastically. He wants to abolish government agencies like the EPA. He is a radical free-marketeer.

Demographics do not favor him. He alienates 8 out of 10 hispanics. That counts in a few swing states like Nevada. Colorado is unlikely too. Arizona may be in play. Forget New Mexico.

He lost the Iowa caucus; that does not bode well for him there either.
Trump says whatever gets him the most votes. Once he gets the nomination he will start sounding a lot more sane. He has to pretend to toe the GOP line econimically in order to get the nomination.

Ultimately it is impossible to know what a President Trump would actually do, because at this point it is all pandering. His comments of the Iraq War seem to be his only genuine statements.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#2543 at 02-27-2016 03:00 AM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Fight the soulless juggernaut: Big money, machine politics and the real issue separating Sanders and Clinton.

Despite Bernie Sanders being tied with her for pledged delegates after last weekend’s Nevada caucuses, the media herd has anointed Hillary Clinton yet again as the inevitable Democratic nominee. Superdelegates, those undemocratic figureheads and goons of the party establishment, are by definition unpledged and fluid and should never be added to the official column of any candidate until the national convention. To do so is an amoral tactic of intimidation that affects momentum and gives backstage wheeling and dealing primacy over the will of the electorate. Why are the media so servilely complicit with Clinton-campaign propaganda and trickery?

Democrats face a stark choice this year. A vote for the scandal-plagued Hillary is a resounding ratification of business as usual–the corrupt marriage of big money and machine politics, practiced by the Clintons with the zest of Boss Tweed, the gluttonous czar of New York’s ruthless Tammany Hall in the 1870s. What you also get with Hillary is a confused hawkish interventionism that has already dangerously destabilized North Africa and the Mideast. This is someone who declared her candidacy on April 12, 2015 via an email and slick video and then dragged her feet on making a formal statement of her presidential policies and goals until her pollsters had slapped together a crib list of what would push the right buttons. This isn’t leadership; it’s pandering.

Thanks to several years of the Democratic party establishment strong-arming younger candidates off the field for Hillary, the only agent for fundamental change remains Bernie Sanders, an honest and vanity-free man who has been faithful to his core progressive principles for his entire career. It is absolutely phenomenal that Sanders has made such progress nationally against his near total blackout over the past year by the major media, including the New York Times. That he has inspired the hope and enthusiasm of an immense number of millennial women is very encouraging. Feminists who support Hillary for provincial gender reasons are guilty of a reactionary, reflex sexism, betraying that larger vision required for the ballot so hard-won by the suffrage movement.

The Democratic National Committee, as chaired since 2011 by Clinton sycophant Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has become a tyranny that must be checked and overthrown. Shock the system! Here are the flaming words of one of my heroes, Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1964, he declared from the steps of Sproul Hall to a crowd of 4,000 protesters: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!”

A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote against the machine, the obscenely money-mad and soulless juggernaut that the Democratic Party has become. Perhaps there was a time, during the Hubert Humphrey era, when Democrats could claim to be populists, alive to the needs and concerns of working-class people. But the party has become the playground of white, upper-middle-class professionals with elite-school degrees and me-first values. These liberal poseurs mouth racial and ethnic platitudes, acquired like trophy kills at their p.c. campuses, but every word rings hollow, because it is based on condescension, a patronizing projection of victimhood onto those outside their privileged circle. There is no better example of this arrogant class bias than Wellesley grad Hillary Clinton lapsing into her mush-mouthed, Southern-fried dialect when addressing African-American audiences.

Sanders is no Communist, bent on seizing centralized control of business and industry. He is a democratic socialist in the Scandinavian mode, where social welfare is predicated on cooperation and shared sacrifice. Whether such a system can work in the vastly larger and more culturally diverse U.S. is another matter. The financial viability of his proposals would certainly be stringently vetted by Congress, which holds the purse strings of the national budget. But Sanders’ attack on the crass excesses and unpunished ethical lapses of Wall Street is a great awakening call, at a time when the U.S. has disastrously lost its manufacturing base and when the super-rich have accumulated proportionally more wealth than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.

The Sanders theme that is closest to my heart is his call for free public universities. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, my father, returning from active duty as a paratrooper in occupied Japan, became the first member of his large family to attend college. I was born while he was still in school and meeting expenses by mopping the cafeteria floor. The State University of New York added Triple Cities College to its system in his final year; hence his class was the first to graduate from the newly named Harpur College, which soon relocated from the factory town of Endicott to Vestal, near Binghamton.

The public education that I received at Harpur College during the 1960s (I appear to have been its first second-generation graduate) was superb, not simply for its excellent faculty and cultural programs but for its dynamic student body with a large constituency of passionately progressive Jews (like Bernie Sanders) from metropolitan New York City. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, was pouring funds into the State University of New York in his attempt to rival the University of California. The cost to my parents for my four years of college was amazingly minimal.

It is an intolerable scandal that college costs, even at public universities, have been permitted to skyrocket in the U.S., burdening a generation of young adults with enormous debt for what in many cases are worthless degrees. The role played by the colleges themselves in luring applicants to take crippling, unsecured loans has never received focused scrutiny. Perhaps a series of punitive, class-action lawsuits might wake the education industry up. Until the colleges themselves pay a penalty for their part in this institutionalized extortion, things are unlikely to change.

As college became accessible to a wider and less privileged demographic following World War II, many state legislatures were initially generous in their funding. But that support rapidly diminished after the recession and oil embargo of the 1970s. Instead of prudently retrenching and economizing, public universities charged ahead and began raising tuition, in tandem with increasingly expensive private schools. Colleges became overtly commercialized and consumerist in their pursuit of paying customers. The annual college ranking by U.S. News & World Report, which began in 1983, triggered a brand-name hysteria among upwardly mobile parents and turned high school into the nightmarish, gerbil-wheel obsession with college applications that it remains today.

The steady rise in college tuition, leading to today’s stratospheric costs, began in the 1980s and was worsened by a malign development of the 1990s: the rapid swelling of a self-replicating campus bureaucracy, whose salaries exceeded those of most faculty. The new administrators, with their corporate and technocratic orientation, had an insular master race mentality and viewed faculty as subordinate employees. The flagrant corporatization of the university was outrageously ignored by the faux Leftists of academe, trendy careerist professors who sat twiddling their thumbs, as they played their puerile poststructuralist and deconstructionist word games. As a consequence, faculties nationwide have fatally lost power and are barraged by dictatorial directives from tin-eared campus bureaucrats enforcing a labyrinth of intrusive government regulations.

Simultaneously in the 1990s began the redefining of college as a comfortable extension of the bourgeois living room. Parents expected a big bang for their buck—bright and shiny dormitories with single rooms; lavish exercise facilities; cafeteria buffets of restaurant range and quality. Meanwhile, many large second-tier schools began to rely on an army of poorly paid and exploited adjunct teachers, who had to migrate from job to job for survival.

The American fixation on the bucolic residential campus as the ultimate definition of education has produced our present impasse, where students expect a homey “safe space” monitored and secured by hovering parental proxies. European universities, in contrast, focus on education and are rarely concerned with providing luxurious amenities or supervising students’ social lives. Similarly, there are few European parallels to the rah-rah campus sports ethos in the U.S., which began with Ivy League football in the late nineteenth century.

Perhaps the most serious problem in American education is the blind funneling of all high-school students into a now diluted and weakened college prep program. It’s become a giant boondoggle that is doing more harm than good, given this stagnant job market. Vocational high school lost favor in the 1970s, when college-for-all became the new credo. The educational reformer James Bryant Conant, who had promoted meritocracy in his tenure as president of Harvard (1933-53), opposed separate vocational facilities in his proposals for the “comprehensive high school.”

As a career teacher at art schools, which are vocational in admission and structure, I must protest the snobbery with which vocational training and trade schools are treated by the educational establishment in the U.S. It is irresponsible for teachers not to be concerned about the future employment and lifetime welfare of their students. Classes in business and entrepreneurship should be offered in every high school, especially in the inner city, and vocational tracks should be available to students who have no interest in college but want to start supporting themselves immediately after graduation. We need to adapt elements of the German apprenticeship system, where industry contributes to specialized job training while students are still in school.

I applaud Bernie Sanders for putting the urgent issue of free public universities on the national agenda. Let the private schools gorge themselves with cash—their pretentious, sticker-shock tuition rates, which only pampered trust-fund babies actually pay; the obscene multimillion-dollar salaries of their presidents; their mammoth endowments (fattening on Wall Street) that are unknown in Europe. But before taxpayer money is invested again in the great cause of public education, American universities must embark on a program of radical austerity, stripping themselves of luxuries and booting three-quarters of their parasitic administrators out the door. Every precious dollar must be devoted to the central mission of teaching and learning.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#2544 at 02-27-2016 01:10 PM by The Wonkette [at Arlington, VA 1956 joined Jul 2002 #posts 9,209]
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02-27-2016, 01:10 PM #2544
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
Ben Carson would be the perfect choice. I think it's time for the GOP establishment to sit one out and learn how to win a national election by a landslide.
The only problem with Carson is that he is in no way qualified to be President. He has no background in foreign policy or running bureaucracies. He'd be Sarah Palin redux.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008







Post#2545 at 02-28-2016 01:52 AM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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02-28-2016, 01:52 AM #2545
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Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA and CIA, thinks some of presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign promises are so unlawful that the U.S. Armed Forces could not follow them as orders.

These include Trump's claim that people deserve to be waterboarded even if it doesn't work and that he would target the families of terrorists. The internationally recognized Geneva Conventions bars such action.

"If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act," Hayden said Friday during an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher." "You are required not to follow an unlawful order that would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict."

Hayden added that he would be "incredibly concerned" if Trump followed through with his campaign promises as president.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0871f60eba2f3

Fair warning to anyone who wants to vote for Donald Trump.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice authorizes any member of the Armed Forces to disobey a criminal order and imposes severe penalties upon any soldier or sailor who commits war crimes.

My suggestion: don't give him the chance.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#2546 at 02-28-2016 02:12 AM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Wonkette View Post
The only problem with Carson is that he is in no way qualified to be President. He has no background in foreign policy or running bureaucracies. He'd be Sarah Palin redux.
I don't think so. He's a very intelligent man. The guy just needs an opportunity to be involved in the debates.







Post#2547 at 02-28-2016 02:23 AM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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02-28-2016, 02:23 AM #2547
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Quote Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84 View Post
I am 100% confident I will have Obama nostalgia. Again, for me, that is saying a lot. I am personally now in uncharted waters politically.


See https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater and https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater Not sure where this guy got his maps.







Post#2548 at 02-28-2016 02:32 AM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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02-28-2016, 02:32 AM #2548
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA and CIA, thinks some of presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign promises are so unlawful that the U.S. Armed Forces could not follow them as orders.

These include Trump's claim that people deserve to be waterboarded even if it doesn't work and that he would target the families of terrorists. The internationally recognized Geneva Conventions bars such action.

"If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act," Hayden said Friday during an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher." "You are required not to follow an unlawful order that would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict."

Hayden added that he would be "incredibly concerned" if Trump followed through with his campaign promises as president.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0871f60eba2f3

Fair warning to anyone who wants to vote for Donald Trump.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice authorizes any member of the Armed Forces to disobey a criminal order and imposes severe penalties upon any soldier or sailor who commits war crimes.

My suggestion: don't give him the chance.
Drowning as a corporal punishment like flogging?
Hayden is wrong about this, though. Nobody that I know of disobeyed an order to waterboard someone during the Bush Administration, or was punished in any way for waterboarding. The problem with torture is twofold:
One, Torture does not get at the truth. Evoked potential electroencephlography detects deception. Torture forces people to tell interrogators what the interrogator wants to hear and in many cases forces the tortured person to believe what he or she is saying.
Two: A significant portion of Trump's base believes strongly in physical punishment, has been severely physically punished as children and believes in the right to use corporal punishment on children.
Trump is basically telling his voters what they want to hear. I have my doubts that Trump would order much waterboarding since he has also said that he thinks interventions like Iraq (and presumably Syria) are the wrong thing to do. Frankly, Hillary is much more likely to order waterboarding if she should get into the White House.







Post#2549 at 02-28-2016 02:41 AM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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02-28-2016, 02:41 AM #2549
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
Trump says whatever gets him the most votes. Once he gets the nomination he will start sounding a lot more sane. He has to pretend to toe the GOP line econimically in order to get the nomination.

Ultimately it is impossible to know what a President Trump would actually do, because at this point it is all pandering. His comments of the Iraq War seem to be his only genuine statements.
Yes,. Trump does bluster. A lot. The Trump we hear blustering is not the Trump who has made the deals that keep him in business.
I think on an issue like Mexico and immigration, we are seeing pieces of a real strategy. Trump is threatening to impose economic sanctions on Mexico if Mexico will not seal it's border and take back illegal immigrants. It's a lot like a) the way Obama has prevailed on Mexico to try to prevent Central Americans from transiting Mexico to the US b) what Europe is doing with Turkey and Greece to try to stop THAT refugee flow and c) Nixon's Operation Intercept, in which the US imposed tight border controls to pressure Mexico to be more cooperative with US drug enforcement (or non-enforcement--a lot of drugs were run by the CIA). All of which is in the US's playbook IF the US abrogates the NAFTA Treaty. Which Trump has also said he will do.
This kind of economic hard ball is what nations historically have done fairly often. They just aren't part of this progressive move to ever freer trade--which Trump wants to throw into reverse. Trump wants a return to the economy of the 1980s, a time in which the US imposed quotas on Japanese cars to force Japanese automakers to open plants in the US. It is not an indefensible position to say that any new car must be made on US soil to be driven on US soil. Or, now that we have 3-D printing, to phase in the same kind of controls on such things as consumer electronics.







Post#2550 at 02-28-2016 02:56 AM by MordecaiK [at joined Mar 2014 #posts 1,086]
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02-28-2016, 02:56 AM #2550
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
Very possible. Conservatives love to do public services on the cheap; that, after all, is capitalism in the raw.

I have yet to see any polls of Michigan after the lead scandal... but lead poisoning is easy to understand and impossible to excuse. For good reason we no longer use leaded gasoline.

I saw a campaign ad by Bernie Sanders that mentioned the lead scandal in very general terms -- that if the local and state governments fail to do their appropriate jobs, then the federal government must step in. It did not say "Michigan", "Flint", or "Snyder"... but in Michigan we know what it means. I am unaware of which Ohio city has "Menace 82" wrecking lives, but that campaign ad can work on consciences.

Of course it would be better if people voted their consciences instead of their prejudices, superstition, and greed.
Menace 82 is a band or an album, apparently.
And lead poisoning similar to Flint is being found in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Saginaw, Midland and Bay City in Michigan, Toledo, Cleveland, Sebring and Cincinnati in Ohio, all over Chicago IL and likely East Saint Louis and Milwaukee and hundreds of towns with the exception of Madison, which has replaced it's lead mains and feeder pipes all over Wisconsin.
A good campaign strategy on this would involve getting union plumbers to send a dug up corroded lead pipe to the Sanders campaign for Bernie to brandish at some point in his speech on campaign stops in the area, saying "this pipe came from ____. It would have to be a different pipe found locally and couldn't be the same pipe since the Clinton Campaign WOULD compare photos looking for something like this.
Bernie does have a big campaign problem though which came through tonight in South Carolina and that is African-American antisemitism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...s-and-latinos/ . Something like 30% of African-Americans and Latinos have entrenched anti-semitic views according to this survey put out by the Bnai Brith Anti-defamation League. It's about the only thing that could account for Sanders's difficulty making headway with African Americans despite endorsements from spokespeople from people like Cornell West and Tavis Smiley.
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