Trump to win?

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

Why would you be so sure of that? A Supreme Court that decides fetuses have constitutional protections would not let the issue devolve to states. You're assuming they'll just lift the penumbra. I think a conservative court could be much more creative and hand a fetus due process rights, creating an instant ban in all US states, territories, and overseas possessions.

It's more of the same scare tactics Democrats and liberal activists have come to rely on by default. There's nothing to concern ourselves and we can go back to our lives with no fear that should we want an abortion, morning-after pill, IUD, Depo-Provera, the pill, damns, condoms, sponges or even those funny eyeglasses they issued me in the army, that all those services will be there for us just as they have before ('73 and some time prior).

Look it; we had 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of Bush I and 8 years of Bush 2. These were pro-life presidents and each had at some point in their administrations enough legislative mojo to pass some rather sizable bills with far reaching effects. Yet in all those years where these stridently pro-life presidents served, no serious or successful attempt has been made to overturn RvW and women have maintained consistent access to the full range of reproductive health options available. In and between those administrations, abortions have remained legal, widely available and at little or no charge to the persons receiving the services.

There is ZERO support for an "instant ban" and anyone who attempts to run such legislation now or in the next administration will be pissing into the wind. You folks do know that the "struggle" for reproductive rights is yet another of these false controversies used to gin up donations and attention to left/liberal activist groups? You do know it's a false controversy to keep us distracted and at each others throats, don't you?

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

A bit flippant for you ToB, that's more my style.... Talked with someone very close to the HRC transition team today. No one saw this coming. No one yet has a plan. No lecturing is required. We were wrong and lost 1986 Boston Red Sox style. The ball went though our legs in the 10th inning and we watched the winning run come in. It's fine to blame the groundskeeper during the game, but when the game is over you have to have a short memory and plan for the next series.

It's time to put the flame thrower away and allow the new president to set his agenda then work to nudge him in our direction. I think Obama, HRC and DJT all set a proper tone today. I'm deeply concerned but we won't really know anything until he takes office, appoints his staff, sets his 100 day agenda and appoints his cabinet members.

You ain't kidding. They never saw it coming because they never took time to understand really who they were running against and the source of his appeal. It was far easier to insult Trump supporters and to paint them as subhuman so as to make the social costs of support so high that folks chose to lie to each other and pollsters rather than to risk being called a racist, xenophobe, misogynist homophobe, etc. This has to be the worst electoral strategy in the history of American elections and the outcome proves it beyond a doubt as far as I am concerned.

Live by identity politics, die by it too.

The Democratic Party as currently organized is a zombie, a dead man walking. Its only hope is for the Clintonistas to be purged and the leadership to be replaced by Sanders people. If they aren't, then you can count on practically the whole of the Democratic leadership down even into the state level to be subject to intensive investigative scrutiny leading many to eventual arrest and conviction.

I think if we fail to clean house in the Democratic Party, if we allow the Clinton family to remain entrenched in the DNC and maintain control of all the levers of significance, they will continue to starve out any sort of political challenger and ensure a Trump second term. If the Democratic grassroots fails to clean house in their party, trust me when I tell you that President Trump and his GOP are preparing to do it for them.

More than enough dirty laundry has been aired to warrant further investigations. And with Clinton loyalists removed from power at DOJ and Trump's independent power base - he owes nothing to no one - the authority and inclination to appoint a special prosecutor is ripe. Once that happens, the criminal probes could be deep and far reaching indeed, threatening to wipe out nearly the entire DNC political structure, and probably even drag in several state level party organizers. When the dust clears, America could find itself governed by a one-party state. That is unless the Democratic Party grassroots that made Bernie successful steps up to the plate and fights against the corrupt Clinton leadership to gain the right to lead.

I still think the Democratic Party can be reformed and is worth reforming. But if that fails, it must be replaced.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Trump to win?

You ain't kidding. They never saw it coming because they never took time to understand really who they were running against and the source of his appeal. It was far easier to insult Trump supporters and to paint them as subhuman so as to make the social costs of support so high that folks chose to lie to each other and pollsters rather than to risk being called a racist, xenophobe, misogynist homophobe, etc. This has to be the worst electoral strategy in the history of American elections and the outcome proves it beyond a doubt as far as I am concerned. Live by identity politics, die by it too.

The Democratic Party as currently organized is a zombie, a dead man walking. Its only hope is for the Clintonistas to be purged and the leadership to be replaced by Sanders people. If they aren't, then you can count on practically the whole of the Democratic leadership down even into the state level to be subject to intensive investigative scrutiny leading many to eventual arrest and conviction.

I think if we fail to clean house in the Democratic Party, if we allow the Clinton family to remain entrenched in the DNC and maintain control of all the levers of significance, they will continue to starve out any sort of political challenger and ensure a Trump second term. If the Democratic grassroots fails to clean house in their party, trust me when I tell you that President Trump and his GOP are preparing to do it for them.

More than enough dirty laundry has been aired to warrant further investigations. And with Clinton loyalists removed from power at DOJ and Trump's independent power base - he owes nothing to no one - the authority and inclination to appoint a special prosecutor is ripe. Once that happens, the criminal probes could be deep and far reaching indeed, threatening to wipe out nearly the entire DNC political structure, and probably even drag in several state level party organizers. When the dust clears, America could find itself governed by a one-party state. That is unless the Democratic Party grassroots that made Bernie successful steps up to the plate and fights against the corrupt Clinton leadership to gain the right to lead.

I still think the Democratic Party can be reformed and is worth reforming. But if that fails, it must be replaced.

That still leaves the underlying problem of the corrupt civil, (as against political), administration that has so successfully supported the corrupt politicals; I must add, that that is not just an American problem.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

That still leaves the underlying problem of the corrupt civil, (as against political), administration that has so successfully supported the corrupt politicals; I must add, that that is not just an American problem.

On top of all the other problems underlying everything else. I'm not minimizing your point Chris, except maybe by suggesting that there are limits to what can be reasonably expected in the short term. We can hope for three signature outcomes this term and little else - a big effort against corruption, border and immigration enforcement, and infrastructure investment. Trump will be successful to the extent that he can focus and deliver on those items. He's got until the midterms to show progress on all three.

Everybody is playing nice right now, in that strange DC tradition of calling your opponent awful names on Monday only to praise him on Tuesday. We'll see how long that lasts because Trump has to show seriousness in meeting the promise to drain the swamp. In practice, that's going to mean taking down several DNC and related lobbyist bigwigs and likely one or two from the GOP side to demonstrate independence. Knowing Trump, I bet they might even have a "stretch goal" of bagging a Lloyd Blankenfeld-sized bankster before 2020 is out. I expect HRC will be pardoned if it looks as bad as it seems for her and they can't find a fall guy of sufficient status to serve as a proxy sacrifice. But there will be perp walks, count on it.

Unless the Sanders people and other responsible adults in the DNC preempt Trump by kicking the worst of the bunch out of the inner party, I expect the Clintonistas will go to the mattresses and try to rally the troops around them. Usually they're at they're best when they have their back to the wall like this, only without the benefits of state power, they're defanged, stripped of their ability to deliver gifts, and so more vulnerable now than ever before.

I think the principals are coordinating and getting their stories straight in expectation of the Hell to be unleashed on them come the next Congress. If they're smart - and they are - they're doing everything possible to avoid organizing themselves into a circular firing squad.



The time for the Sanders people to act is short. Game of Thrones and House of Cards has nothing on the drama unfolding behind the curtain now.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Trump to win?

...When the dust clears, America could find itself governed by a one-party state....

Isn't that where we are right now?
The democratic party exists, but it does not govern at any level, except in a few states.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

Isn't that where we are right now?
The democratic party exists, but it does not govern at any level, except in a few states.

No, I don't think it's quite as grim as that. There are hundreds of Democrats in the House and Senate, thousands more in the state houses, tens and hundreds of thousands working the various agencies, and they dominate K street and the NGOs. Not dead yet.

We need to give this time to shake out and see what Trump will do. See what the Democrats will do in counter. Both parties need to go after and keep/win the voters who put Trump in the White House by promoting policies that help them directly and with immediacy. There are powerful and massively capitalized centrifugal forces that will move Heaven and Earth to keep Trump and the Democrats from doing precisely that, because it's their ass if they don't.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Trump to win?

On top of all the other problems underlying everything else. I'm not minimizing your point Chris, except maybe by suggesting that there are limits to what can be reasonably expected in the short term. We can hope for three signature outcomes this term and little else - a big effort against corruption, border and immigration enforcement, and infrastructure investment. Trump will be successful to the extent that he can focus and deliver on those items. He's got until the midterms to show progress on all three.

Everybody is playing nice right now, in that strange DC tradition of calling your opponent awful names on Monday only to praise him on Tuesday. We'll see how long that lasts because Trump has to show seriousness in meeting the promise to drain the swamp. In practice, that's going to mean taking down several DNC and related lobbyist bigwigs and likely one or two from the GOP side to demonstrate independence. Knowing Trump, I bet they might even have a "stretch goal" of bagging a Lloyd Blankenfeld-sized bankster before 2020 is out. I expect HRC will be pardoned if it looks as bad as it seems for her and they can't find a fall guy of sufficient status to serve as a proxy sacrifice. But there will be perp walks, count on it.

Unless the Sanders people and other responsible adults in the DNC preempt Trump by kicking the worst of the bunch out of the inner party, I expect the Clintonistas will go to the mattresses and try to rally the troops around them. Usually they're at they're best when they have their back to the wall like this, only without the benefits of state power, they're defanged, stripped of their ability to deliver gifts, and so more vulnerable now than ever before.

I think the principals are coordinating and getting their stories straight in expectation of the Hell to be unleashed on them come the next Congress. If they're smart - and they are - they're doing everything possible to avoid organizing themselves into a circular firing squad.



The time for the Sanders people to act is short. Game of Thrones and House of Cards has nothing on the drama unfolding behind the curtain now.

You are missing the point I was trying to make; which was not about any form of political name or institution; instead I want to talk about where/who spends the money..... Once we look beyond a congress or parliament, it is who actually spends the money that is where I am placing this part of the debate. Here in the UK we call that organisation the Civil Service, I do not have a similar name for the US, but let me use "Administration". If we look at this as a matter of ethics, and we assume either the civil service or the US administration has been formed, over more than the past century, to act within what one might describe as the highest ethics, then it is surely possible to argue that none of what we are debating today could have ever occurred for the very simple reason that neither the civil service nor the US administration would have permitted it to set off in the first place; they would have refused to.

Instead, what we each have, on either side of the pond, is administrations that have grown large on the back of the political corruption. One can also argue that they have no incentive whatever to change their ways; that their systematic cover-up of everything that has been wrong is the real, underlying problem that must be addressed; perhaps with even more urgency than the political.

Indeed, this is as urgent a problem within almost every so called Western nation today.

[vt]

Re: Trump to win?

The worst that will happen is an attempt to prevent very late term abortions where the fetus can live outside the womb.And the mother's health will be the key; if an abortion is necessary to save the mother it will be permitted even with very late term situations.

A woman has a right to an abortion but also a responsibility to get it done in the first two trimesters.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Trump to win?

You are missing the point I was trying to make; which was not about any form of political name or institution; instead I want to talk about where/who spends the money..... Once we look beyond a congress or parliament, it is who actually spends the money that is where I am placing this part of the debate. Here in the UK we call that organisation the Civil Service, I do not have a similar name for the US, but let me use "Administration". If we look at this as a matter of ethics, and we assume either the civil service or the US administration has been formed, over more than the past century, to act within what one might describe as the highest ethics, then it is surely possible to argue that none of what we are debating today could have ever occurred for the very simple reason that neither the civil service nor the US administration would have permitted it to set off in the first place; they would have refused to.

Instead, what we each have, on either side of the pond, is administrations that have grown large on the back of the political corruption. One can also argue that they have no incentive whatever to change their ways; that their systematic cover-up of everything that has been wrong is the real, underlying problem that must be addressed; perhaps with even more urgency than the political.

Indeed, this is as urgent a problem within almost every so called Western nation today.

I see your point, Chris. Here in the U.S. we also call that part of our government the Civil Service - employees who report to a desk every day to collect taxes and fees, and spend that money buying goods and services.

One thing that confounds these conversations is our specific meaning of the word "corruption"
Because it is such a powerfully negative word filled with awful connotation, people have starting using it to describe almost any behavior they don't like, legal or not.

[shiny!]

Trump Appointments

I'm starting to get a bad deja-vu. According to Zerocred, Trump is considering his financial advisor, Mnuchin, a 17-year-veteran of Goldman Sachs for Treasury Secretary: "[Mnuchin] ... who now works as the chairman and chief executive of the private investment firm Dune Capital Management. Mnuchin has also worked for OneWest Bank, which was later sold to CIT Group in 2015."

This, IMO is akin to Obama naming Geithner to Treasury.

I'm not familiar with The Intercept so can't attest to their veracity, but according to this article, Trump has appointed neocon James Woolsey as his National Security Advisor. If true it doesn't bode well:

Donald Trump named former CIA director and extremist neoconservative James Woolsey his senior adviser on national security issues on Monday. Woolsey, who left the CIA in 1995, went on to become one of Washington’s most outspoken promoters of U.S. war in Iraq and the Middle East.

As such, Woolsey’s selection either clashes with Trump’s noninterventionist rhetoric — or represents a pivot towards a more muscular, neoconservative approach to resolving international conflicts.
Trump has called the Iraq War “a disaster.”
Woolsey, by contrast, was a key member of the Project for the New American Century — a neoconservative think tank largely founded to encourage a second war with Iraq. Woolsey signed a letter in 1998 calling on Clinton to depose Saddam Hussein and only hours after the 9/11 attacks appeared on CNN and blamed the attacks on Iraq. Woolsey has continued to insist on such a connection despite the complete lack of evidence to support his argument. He also blames Iran.
Weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Woolsey called for broader war in the Middle East, saying “World War IV” was already underway.
Woolsey has also put himself in a position to profit from the wars he has promoted. He has served as vice president of Pentagon contracting giant Booz Allen, and as chairman of Paladin Capital Group, a private equity fund that invests in national security and cybersecurity.
He chairs the leadership council at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a hawkish national security nonprofit, and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management, which invests in emerging technologies like drones, satellite imaging, and artificial intelligence.
Woolsey went on CNN on Monday and said that he was principally motivated to support Trump because of his plans to expand U.S. military spending.
Trump gave a speech last week in which he proposed dramatic expansions of the Army and Marines, and hundred-billion-dollar weapons systems for the Navy and Air Force. He offered no justification — aside from citing a few officials who claimed they wanted more firepower.
Woolsey stood by Trump’s proposal on Monday.
“I think the problem is her budget,” Woolsey said of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. “She is spending so much money on domestic programs — including ones that we don’t even have now, and the ones we have now are underfunded — I think there can be very little room for the improvements in defense and intelligence that have to be made.”
Woolsey has previously called for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted.”
In the past, Woolsey has publicly disagreed with Trump on a number of national security issues — including Trump’s plan to ban Muslim immigration. On Monday, Woolsey told CNN that such a plan would raise First Amendment issues, but that he supported a temporary immigration block from certain Muslim countries.
Thus far, at least, most prominent war hawks have found they had more in common with Clinton than Trump. “I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump,” leading neoconservative Robert Kagan told a group in July.

While I'm very disappointed about this, it should be good news to those who supported Hillary as for now it looks like there's no difference where Goldman and the neocons are concerned.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Trump to win?

It's more of the same scare tactics Democrats and liberal activists have come to rely on by default. There's nothing to concern ourselves and we can go back to our lives with no fear that should we want an abortion, morning-after pill, IUD, Depo-Provera, the pill, damns, condoms, sponges or even those funny eyeglasses they issued me in the army, that all those services will be there for us just as they have before ('73 and some time prior).

Look it; we had 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of Bush I and 8 years of Bush 2. These were pro-life presidents and each had at some point in their administrations enough legislative mojo to pass some rather sizable bills with far reaching effects. Yet in all those years where these stridently pro-life presidents served, no serious or successful attempt has been made to overturn RvW and women have maintained consistent access to the full range of reproductive health options available. In and between those administrations, abortions have remained legal, widely available and at little or no charge to the persons receiving the services.

There is ZERO support for an "instant ban" and anyone who attempts to run such legislation now or in the next administration will be pissing into the wind. You folks do know that the "struggle" for reproductive rights is yet another of these false controversies used to gin up donations and attention to left/liberal activist groups? You do know it's a false controversy to keep us distracted and at each others throats, don't you?

Woody, I'm not playing 4-D chess here. I didn't have any secret agenda with that comment. It was not meant to scare anyone nor advocate one party over another in any way.

I hope you'll take a second to go back and read my words rather than read into them. I can't prove to you I'm not operating on some secret agenda here, I'm just telling you so, and hoping whatever reputation I've earned after 10 years or whatever it has been is enough to convince you and everyone else.

In fact, I'm pretty sure over the last 10 years, I have never let my personal position on the matter of abortion be known here, just because it is so divisive a wedge issue.

That being said, I was responding to jk's hypothetical, and I'm too much a Catholic and too familiar with the pro-life argument not to point out what I saw as a glaring error in his hypothetical logic.

The pro-life movement's goal is not now, and never has been, to overturn Roe v. Wade the way jk (and probably lots of other people unfamiliar with the pro-life movement) believe it to be.

The pro-life movement generally has little interest in undoing privacy protections as civil liberties and following the Roe v. Wade logic back to Griswald v. CT, etc.

The pro-life movement makes both the legal and moral argument that the fetus is alive, and that's the wellspring from which it should have rights and abortion should be illegal. Very few, if any, in the pro-life movement think that Roe ought to be overturned on the grounds upon which it was decided, and that states ought to gain greater power to violate individual privacy rights.

The phrase "overturn Roe v. Wade" when used in national politics does not mean the same thing to a pro-life activist as it does to jk here. Few, if any, pro-life advocates are thinking "the decision will just go back to the states, and that's fine." The grounds on which Roe was decided are totally tangential to the central matter at hand for the pro-life movement, and overturning Roe in the minds of most pro-life activists is not actually simply overturning Roe, it's getting judicial recognition for fetal personhood and working to get equal protection and due process that way. That is what "overturn Roe v. Wade" means to the rank and file voter in the pro-life movement, not some devolution of authority to the states.

And that was all I was trying to say.

No more, no less.

Fire away.

[jk]

Re: Trump Appointments

attorney general giuliani? secty of the interior palin? secty of transportation- christie? [that last is a joke]

[dcarrigg]

Re: Trump to win?

No, I don't think it's quite as grim as that. There are hundreds of Democrats in the House and Senate, thousands more in the state houses, tens and hundreds of thousands working the various agencies, and they dominate K street and the NGOs. Not dead yet.

We need to give this time to shake out and see what Trump will do. See what the Democrats will do in counter. Both parties need to go after and keep/win the voters who put Trump in the White House by promoting policies that help them directly and with immediacy. There are powerful and massively capitalized centrifugal forces that will move Heaven and Earth to keep Trump and the Democrats from doing precisely that, because it's their ass if they don't.

Well, truth be told, come 2017, Democrats are out everywhere by 13 states. They have no federal power at all. Not in the House. Not in the Senate. Not in the White House. Not in the Supreme Court.

Everything that happens from then on, for at least two years, and probably longer, will fall on the Republicans.

Republicans actually have to govern this time.

And it's not Trump personally I'm so worried about here. Actually, if he could get some movement on trade deals, I think that'd be good. His revolving door / lobby plan isn't bad. The defense spend is at least anti-austerity. It's not all garbage.

But what is the legislature going to do? They're not just protesting any more. They need ideas. And they have to be better than vouchers (Discounts are meaningless if you can't afford the thing anyways!) and tax-preferred savings accounts (Hahaha! What savings?) and slashing regulations (Wall Street give-away every time!) and slashing public employment (Not a good idea if you keep talking about jobs!) and tax cuts for millionaires and estates and corporations (It never has once trickled down!).

I mean, ideas aren't hard to come by. Instead of billionaire tax cuts, you could always put an equivalent amount of money into highways, housing, defense, energy, whatever. I don't know that with debt as high as it is right now we can do both. Maybe. But probably it will have to be one or the other. I just don't trust Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to pick the right one when it comes time to chose between national investment vs. taxpayer give-away to donor-class.

And you and I both know that HSAs are a joke--a spectacularly failed policy that has never worked and will never work. Even worse than 401(k)s, which are also a terrible joke.

I'm willing to hold judgement on Trump only because it seems like he's not a pure market-anarchist zealot. But I know that many of his fellow party members in the legislature are...and his Heritage Foundation policy people on the EOP side will be too. I don't trust them to come up with any productive ideas.

But we shall see.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Trump Appointments

I'm starting to get a bad deja-vu. According to Zerocred, Trump is considering his financial advisor, Mnuchin, a 17-year-veteran of Goldman Sachs for Treasury Secretary: "[Mnuchin] ... according to this article, Trump has appointed neocon James Woolsey as his National Security Advisor. If true it doesn't bode well:


While I'm very disappointed about this, it should be good news to those who supported Hillary as for now it looks like there's no difference where Goldman and the neocons are concerned.

This is kinder how I had it figured for a while now...

Just click and hit play.

http://embed.genfb.com/1162376937139173

Now that the theater for us plebeians is over, Ivanka and Chelsea are sipping $200 afternoon cocktails together at some swanky penthouse lounge in Manhattan that would never let you or I through door.

http://www.eonline.com/videos/embed/254297

No matter what happened in the election, the upper class was winning.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Trump to win?

I see your point, Chris. Here in the U.S. we also call that part of our government the Civil Service - employees who report to a desk every day to collect taxes and fees, and spend that money buying goods and services.

One thing that confounds these conversations is our specific meaning of the word "corruption"
Because it is such a powerfully negative word filled with awful connotation, people have starting using it to describe almost any behavior they don't like, legal or not.

You make a good point too, regarding the word corruption.

What I am trying to do is bring the matter of the, (agreed; civil service), responsibility to the people into view. What we have seen develop over the last few decades is the rise of the national interest over and above the needs of the people; wherein the "Nation" has become the interests of the civil services. That is a dichotomy that needs recognition. Again, returning to the word corruption we need to remember that in any court of the law, if any of us step back and knowingly let another; whomever; break the law; we too become equally responsible. It is all very well saying that "I have been given orders" when the orders involve not telling a true picture to the people to hide unhelpful facts.

Again, if the civil service set out to silence a critic, simply because such criticism opens an honest, reasonable debate, regarding the actions of the civil servants, at what point does the word ethics come into view? Everyone has their eye on the Clinton's of the world; From my viewpoint, we all need to take a very close look at the underlying mechanisms that allowed the political to create such a dysfunctional system and then take no responsibility for the dysfunction. It takes two to tango!