Sorry for dropping out for a bit … between computer issues (damn you, Microsoft!), countdown to BabyWatch 2016 (#3 preggers with her first, (a girl!) and due in 5 weeks, I’ve been in high-alert grandma mode – co-hostessing a baby shower, finishing a crocheted blanket, did 3 watercolor paintings for nursery … eek) and being generally put off by politics …
… on the other hand, my 87 y/o dad is having a ball … he says as nasty as this all is, it doesn’t quite compare to the Truman/Dewey match up of 1948. In addition, he states listening to Sanders is deja vu to Norman Thomas. Commie Thomas was very popular with the college kids of the day; though since Dad was just starting college at 20 y/o after three years in the army (46-48 in Japan), he figured they were all as sheltered snowflakes as today’s Bernardistas. Dad says this is the most entertaining election he’s experienced.
Yes, entertaining is the word he uses. Heh.
I’ll be back soon … have a couple of other projects that got severely delayed and I need to attend to them. It means a little extra scratch towards our trip to Japan this fall. (yes, I’m also spending time each day learning conversational Japanese, punishment glutton that I am)
Please, I know many of you have posting privileges. Get crackin’!
series title:
“the little elephant and the little donkey are best buddies under the rainbow coalition”
the donkey gets the ball in the end.
good luck in your endeavors!
ps : i like the one with the balloons. how much for a print?
Yeah, I gotta say, the people clutching their pearls over the “vulgarian” Trump I find pretty entertaining. I mean, we’ve had presidential knee pads, stained blue dresses, all kinda presidential aspirerents caught in adultery, not to mention the speaker of the house. We had congressional pages, and Huma standing in for the lgbt crowd. The military gets represented from tail hook to Patraus, and Letterman making jokes about Palins underage daughter doing the dirty in Yankee stadium. Then we get Rubio making implications about Trumps hands
But Trump says Kelly has blood coming out her nose and the country collapses on their fainting couch.
Too funny!
Lee
Trump is entertaining, for a Liberal playacting as the Leftist-caricature of a Conservative.
I have yet to see any evidence he’s not in it to secure the White House
for Hillary.
/2 cents
Trump is
entertaining, fora Liberal playacting as the Leftist-caricature of a Conservative.Pearl clutching
Speaking of pearls (and mics), Glenn Miller could play trombone, compose, arrange, conduct, and swing: a musically versatile man. He was from Iowa.
“Liberal playacting ” Funny, my Dad had the same thing to wrt R. Reagan.
to say about Add as needed.
I was eight in 1980, so I wouldn’t know. I seem to remember however, that the hit on Reagan (besides the “B-List” actor hit, I mean) was that he was too old and too conservative.
Darleen, I have changed my mind that Trump can win due to so many Republicans believing he is no different than Hillary/Obama/ Hitler/ Musilini/ Kim Jong-un/ ISIS/Stalin/Pol-Pot take your pick.
The next president will be the democrat nominee because the voters are the same that elected Obama the second time. Proggs and republicans that stayed home because Romney wasn’t conservative enough.
I still think Cruz has less of a chance than Trump.
“When the people find out they can vote themselves money, it will herald the end of the republic”
Franklin
May as well pop some corn and listen to the band play on as the Titanic goes down.
Trevor Story, gee-yikes — so hot he’s like human lava flowing around the bags four at a time, everytime.
“I was eight in 1980, so I wouldn’t know. I seem to remember however, that the hit on Reagan (besides the “B-List” actor hit, I mean) was that he was too old and too conservative.”
And previously a democrat. Of course you know that, you’re erudite AND credentialed and all that crap.
Ah yeah, I forgot about the Democratic Governor of California part
/sarc
Look, I don’t remember off the top of my head when Reagan split from the Democrat party. But he was clearly associated with the Conservative wing of the Republican party from 1964 on.
When was Trump clearly associated with anything that didn’t have “Trump” in the title?
Let me dial the smart-ass back to 11 for a minute.
On Reagan, I was wondering if there was a reason why someone might think he was a liberal, other than he was an FDR Democrat way back in the day before he ever ran for office; i.e. was there something in the public record, like supporting the Torrijos-Carter treaties, for example.
On Trump, my problem with the Donald isn’t just that he’s voted for and donated to Democrats as recently as yesterday, or earlier this week (metaphorically speaking –I don’t know when he donated what to whom or when he changed his registration or even if he bothered to show up and vote recently). My problem is that at best he talks like a Scoop Jackson Democrat.
Getting serious again about terrorism, and finally doing something about illegal immigration is great (assuming Trump means it*), but this protectionism crap is a bridge too far. The professional conservatives, like the professional Republicans, are right in pointing out that a Trump takeover of the party is going to fundamentally change the GOP. And I for one have had enough of fundamental transformation.
*And all this talk about deals and negotiating, as well as the David Duke and abortion missteps has he thinking he either doesn’t mean it or is prepared to deal away on it.
“The professional conservatives, like the professional Republicans, are right in pointing out that a Trump takeover of the party is going to fundamentally change the GOP.”
Entered into evidence without comment.
And not for nothing: ” a Trump takeover of the party is going to fundamentally change the GOP.”
From your lips to GOD’S ear.
Remind me again: How’d the new left takeover of the Democrat Party work out?
We think the alt right is going to do better because . . . ?
I’ll grant you, I’m more concerned about free markets than the free press –if only because the press has pretty much sacrificed it’s freedom in the pursuit of cronyism.
For the record, when the GOPe, in all its glorious fuckheaded stupidity, engineers the nomination of Kasich (Ryan, Romney, Bush) at the convention, I’ll be right there with you in the “let it all burn” caucus. But as long as there’s a viable alternative, I’m going to go with that.
Dad was wrong.
Parents, Children and spouses are off limits. Or ought to be.
Not if dad inserts himself and suggests Reagan was playacting.
Maybe someday threadjackings about The Unfalsifiable Orange will no longer make me nostalgic for a certain anime character’s opinion of Tim Tebow. Until then I regard this commentariat as fractured and unentertaining.
Ernst, I believe in free enterprise, but see so called free trade as a globalist position. For your consideration:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/04/on-being-underwhelmed-by-economists.html
Just as we can’t have open borders coupled with a generous welfare state, I don’t see how we can have free trade with a country that allows 12y.o. workers making a quarter an hour while imposing a $10 minimum wage and OSHA on businesses here.
By the way, I’m trying not to be confrontational, I just don’t think “free trade is the cornerstone of western civilization” is a given. I’m no economist (and actually view economists like meteorologists, they understand theory but overall complexity means future predictions are mostly educated guesses) but common sense gives me huge reservations over politicians selling their so called free trade agreements.
By the way, at the time of the founding, before 1910, weren’t tariffs the main (or at least major) source of government revenue?
I hear you, but I don’t see imposing tarrifs and duties on foreign imports doing anything to solve the problems of overregulation of the market place.
And it’s my understanding that the biggest source of Federal Revenue before 1919 was taxes on alcohol.
I just discovered this site and am still checking it out, seems pretty good so far. Here’s a different link to posts specifically on the free trade topic: http://voxday.blogspot.com/search/label/free%20trade
I wouldn’t say tariffs address over regulation here, but they level the playing field with international trade partners. If we have a trade deal with China, for example, and they devalue their currency to fix the deal in their favor,it would be dumb to devalue OUR currency in response, better if we impose a tariff.
Even Reagan imposed tariffs, I don’t recall conservatives hating it then.
It wouldn’t hurt to recall the interstate trade wars (including tariff impositions) under the Articles of Confederation which led Madison and Hamilton to call for the Convention of States in Annapolis, 1786 in order to effect remedies to the impending disaster — that Convention failed for lack of attendance, but did result in the call for a follow-up Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, which resulted in writing the Constitution of the United States, creating in fact a free trade zone across all the states. Free trade is a foundational need.
That misses the point of nationalism vs. Globalism though sdferr which is core to my argument.
McGhee, if it helps you in your perspective, I just came across this in the blog I linked:
“…and that got me interested, so I started looking into it. I’m very fortunate in that I have a pretty active and intelligent blog readership and they really like to engage and they have absolutely no respect for me so they’re quite happy to argue with me.”
You have no argument that I can see, apart from spouting cliches you yourself admit you have not studied. Maybe start by reading Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and move on to David Ricardo on comparative advantage from there.
Maybe we should start by remembering Smoot-Hawley.
Nationalism is why a guy I know would rather buy an SUV built in Mexico than one built in Tennesee.
The American built one has the wrong badging, you see.
Still reading (oh, and fuck you sdferr) and came to this:
“But my argument against free trade does not rest on David Ricardo’s intellectual corpse. It is not even, strictly speaking, economic in nature. This is the four-step Vox Day Argument Against Free Trade.
Free trade, in its true, complete, and intellectually coherent form, is not limited to the free movement of goods, but includes the free movement of capital and labor as well. (The “invisible judicial line” doesn’t magically become visible simply because human bodies are involved.)
The difference between domestic economies and the global international economy is not trivial, but is substantive, material, and based on significant genetic, cultural, traditional, and legal differences between various self-identified peoples.
Free trade is totally incompatible with national sovereignty, democracy, and self-determination, as well as the existence of independent nation-states with the right and ability to set their own laws according to the preferences of their nationals.
Therefore, free trade must be opposed by every sovereign, democratic, or self-determined people, be they American, Chinese, German, or Zambian, who wish to preserve themselves as a free and distinct nation possessed of its own culture, traditions, and laws.”
Prefaced by this:
“David Ricardo IS economic ignorance. Ricardo believed in a) the cost-of-production theory of value, which is a precursor of Marx’s Labor Theory of Value, b) the price-of-corn theory of profit, and c) the theory of comparative advantage, all of which are widely recognized by modern economists to be intrinsically false. His mode of argument was so hopelessly inept that Joseph Schumpeter even mocked it in his epic History of Economic Analysis.”
Yeah sdferr, unlike you I don’t suffer the illusion I know it all..
LBascom, you do yourself no favors for want of thinking independently. On the contrary, you may do yourself a great deal of good were you to spend the time you so brusquely spend insulting other people (to no actual effect apart from diminishing yourself) by reading and thinking over things like economics, before you set out to instruct the world in how economics is best undertaken. Or, like Mr. Trump, you may seek to simply bull your way through on the strength (ha!) of intemperate twaddle.
So I should leave all the insulting to you?
Like I said, fuck you sdferr.
Hang on a minute there, I’ve offered no insult to you. I see you write “I’m no economist” and merely take you at your word.
Yeah, right. I make no claims to knowing all, but that don’t mean I’m stupid. Even I know not all insult requires vulgarity.
Which it seems is more than Theodore Beale knows, so maybe take what he has to say with a grain of salt?
Sure. But I read that second link which starts at the link you posted, look around at the state of our country, and see what he’s saying is manifest all around us.
And I’ve had problems with so called free trade since NAFTA, and having my suspicions confirmed since have done nothing to make me join the free trade “conservative” crowd. Cuz of my independent thinking. And my lying eyes.
“on the other hand, my 87 y/o dad is having a ball … he says as nasty as this all is, it doesn’t quite compare to the Truman/Dewey match up of 1948”
And Cruz does remind me of a latter day Robert Taft, not likeable but thoughtful and principled.
I guess if the Dewey Establishment candidates had been shut out and it was a smooth talking celebrity populist vs. Taft in the GOP primary of 1948, it would resemble the GOP of 2016 today.
I know the parallels are never precisely the same, but it is — sort of — comforting to know that from Taft Vs. Dewey to Goldwater vs. Rockefeller to Reagan Vs. Ford, we have been here before.
Trump, of course, is the unique wild card.
For the record, when the GOPe, in all its glorious fuckheaded stupidity, engineers the nomination of Kasich (Ryan, Romney, Bush) at the convention, I’ll be right there with you in the “let it all burn” caucus. But as long as there’s a viable alternative, I’m going to go with that.
I think LBascom and all his detractors should find harmony on this. I prefer Cruz, but if Trump somehow wins a fair delegate vote, then by gum, I will support him.
Let the Commiecrat Politboro rig their delegate votes to give it to Hillary the Bolshevik, no matter how well Bernie the Menshevik does in their Party primaries.