Democracy

One of the strong men we support.

Egyptian opposition calls for boycott of 'absurd' poll | News | Al Jazeera:

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The Cotton Doctrine

Tom Cotton, is dangerous and should be kept as far as possible from the levers of power.

 The Cotton Doctrine: More Wars, Less Security | The National Interest Blog:

Another early fan was the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin. A profile in November 2012 described the congressman-elect as “no ordinary freshman.” “Cotton certainly advocates a strong U.S. presence in the world,” Rubin noted approvingly. “You may be tired of war,” he recalled saying during the campaign, “but war is not tired of you.”

and

Cotton explained his preferred approach to negotiations, as reported by The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin: “One thing I learned in the Army is that when your opponent is on his knees you drive him to the ground and choke him out.”

and

 in 2014, Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel directed $960,000 to Cotton’s Senate campaign.

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Police State

Can Government Officials Have You Arrested for Speaking to Them? - The Atlantic:

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Fox Would have saved Nixon.

John Dean: Nixon ‘Might Have Survived If There’d Been a Fox News’ - POLITICO Magazine:

Dean said. “There’s more likelihood he might have survived if there’d been a Fox News.”

I agree. Fox would have been continuously knocking the media and prosecutors off  their feet by uniting the old people around hating hippies, brown people and the anti-war movement, bringing up and constantly repeating any Johnson scandal, pumping the war and the economy as roaring, and changing the discussion everyday. 

There would have been a lot more pressure on the prosecution side with Fox in the mix.

Nixon would have skated.



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Walmart's Wage Hike

The Real Reason for Walmart’s Wage Hike - POLITICO Magazine:

A decent Article about the Walmart wage increase and Sams Club layoffs.

Some thoughts

Working full time at Walmart for 11$ an hour is less than $25,000 per year.

The median wage (2016) in the US is $30,533 so 50% of workers make more than the new Walmart wage, 50% make less. [SSA.GOV].  With the raise, a full-time Walmart worker comes in about $5,000 per year less than the median earner in the US. Probably 60-70% of workers (guessing here) make more than a full-time Walmart worker.

Hell, poverty level for a family of four is $25,100 [HHS.GOV] so a Walmart job at the new increased wage puts your All-American Nuclear family right there at the edge of poverty.

You can't raise a family on a Walmart job. Maybe two full-time Walmart jobs could but even that would be difficult as child care, second vehicles, etc come into play

.. and, even with two working, the family might as well forget about saving for college or retirement, owning a home, building savings, etc.

.. and, i think this is often missed, with both earners working full time, someone else is raising the kids.

Now, anyone making that level of wages would get some support from the government. Medicaid, SNAP, and the earned income tax credit would add a little to the total and I'm sure there are other benefits out there but they aren't huge and Rs, and some Ds are constantly trying to take them away.

so, the benefits help but still ..


.. The All-American Nuclear family can't exist on 11$ an hour at Walmart.

and... Walmart is the largest employer in 22 states.

and... Walmart is not the only low-wage crappy paying employer out there.

so, this gets to what I think the MAGA voter is about.

The left is always asking them when they think America was great, and the MAGA voter never seems to have a good answer. Sure, there are some that think America was great when it was white, or before Gay marriage, or before women and brown people could vote, or before we were so politically correct, or before the war on xmas, etc. but most don't really have a good answer.

I (not a maga voter) think the real answer is

America was great when one wage earner could support a family.

That ain't happening today.

Today, in large swaths of America, both parents have to work and someone else is going to raise the kids.

Now, I'm not saying we should return to days of the man working while the wife stayed home to raise the kids but....

The need for two wage earners puts pressure on the American family that hasn't been there since before WWII.

Pressure that has been building for some time.

Pressure that helped sway a lot of MAGA voters in 2016.

We need a return to a modified nuclear family, someone working a good job that will pay the bills and provide a future and allow someone to stay home to raise the kids.

If the good job aren't there, then we're going to have to have additional government support to get us there.

A country full of two-earner working families barely getting buy while someone else raises their kids just a isn't working.

tnb


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Politically Correct

VOX shows you this...

With the tag.....

"Engraving from 1890: a greedy capitalist boss carried on the backs of his workers. Getty Images"

instead of showing the real image which might not be so politically correct.

Even left leaning publications can't be showing anything out of the American Capitalism norm.

What these early-20th-century scholars got right about 21st-century politics - Vox:

image from.... https://www.istockphoto.com/vector/victorian-satire-on-capitalism-and-labour-gm645168522-116933797.




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Medicare for All

and price regulation of Pharmaceuticals.

Pfizer, pocketing a big tax cut from Trump, will end investment in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research - LA Times:

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Fire, fury and the real trouble with Trump

Fire, fury and the real trouble with Trump:

Good post on Trump and the state of the state. (free but registration required)

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R's vs D's

The R's are a corrupt, swampy, nationalistic, racist bunch who focus on helping the rich and beating down the poor and powerless.

THE CRIME IS WORSE THAN THE COVERUP

The D's are a corrupt, swampy, milquetoast bunch who focus on helping the rich and beat on the poor and powerless just slightly less then the R's.

WITH SUPPORT FROM NANCY PELOSI, HOUSE GIVES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BROAD LATITUDE TO SPY ON AMERICANS

The American people... well... most of us are just fucked.

oh.. i forgot... Trump is an arrogant moron.

Those Nice Israelis

The only democracy in the middle east sure is tough on kids.

Shitholes

The GOP Plan To Overhaul Entitlements Misses The Real Problem | FiveThirtyEight:

America’s long-term budget problem is very real. Already, the federal government has a pile of publicly held debts amounting to around $15 trillion, or about 75 percent of the country’s entire gross domestic product. That’s the highest level since the 1940s, yet the debt burden is expected to double by 2047 and reach 150 percent of the GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

When you have a debt problem you can either increase income or cut expenditures.

The "shithole" we call the Republican led congress just cut income with it's tax cut for the rich and now wants to cut expenditures by cutting things poor and middle-class people use.

That is a "shithole"

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A Fox News Watcher

.. burned by their propaganda.

Dutch Reporters Stun Trump’s Ambassador by Pressing Him to Admit He Lied About “No-Go Zones”:

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A Fox News Watcher

.. burned by their propaganda.

Dutch Reporters Stun Trump’s Ambassador by Pressing Him to Admit He Lied About “No-Go Zones”:

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Israel's blacklists U.S. Quaker group

That's a nice only-democracy-in the-middle-east you have there Mr. Netanyahu

How a U.S. Quaker group that won the Nobel Peace Prize ended up on Israel's BDS blacklist - Israel News - Haaretz.com:

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About That Swamp - Kushner edition

SEC launches probe into Kushner Companies for use of EB-5 visa program - Business Insider:

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A New Wave

Move Over, Corporate Democrats. A New Wave of Left Populists Is on the Rise.: "RedditPrint"

“FIVE, 10 YEARS FROM NOW … YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE A WORKERS’ PARTY …. A PARTY OF PEOPLE THAT HAVEN’T HAD A REAL WAGE INCREASE IN 18 YEARS. THAT ARE ANGRY.”

Maybe, but you should never underestimate the ability of the U.S. voter's attention to be diverted.

Also, we could have had one in 2016 with Bernie if the corporate D's hadn't put their finger on the scales for HRC.

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Gaming the Republican Tax Plan

State Governments Are Already Gaming the Republican Tax Overhaul - Bloomberg:

Removing the state tax exemption looks like a direct attack on blue state voters. A we-don't-like-you- so-we're-going-to-make-you-pay-more move.

Have the D's ever created a policy to take money directly from Red state voters? I can't think of any. Sure the D's have forced some social policies on red states, gay marriage, civil rights, etc. but those were more a nationwide, trying to get us all on the same page thing. This looks like downright penalizing you because your a D sort of thing and seems a dangerous precedent.

Do we really want to start this kind of war with tax policy?

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Trump and populism

Trump never was a populist. He was a filthy-rich con-man who saw the world through Fox News eyes and learned that if he spouted the crap he heard on Fox, people would cheer.. that cheering eventually turned into votes.

The populism hasn't materialized because Trump doesn't really care about it and if he did he just isn't smart enough to make it happen.

This is a good paragraph though

How Trump abandoned populism:

Instead of this Bizarro Trump, we have the worst of all possible worlds. We have the kleptocracy and the autocracy: the self-dealing corruption of the Trump Organization, the norm-crushing attacks on the free press, the eye-winking approval of strongmen in Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines. And we have the absolute worst aspects of generic corporatist conservatism: an obsequiously lax regulatory environment for banks and the energy industry, plus a tax windfall for the wealthy that will make it harder to fight the next recession and easier to justify the next attempt to cut social spending. And instead of the sliver of Bannonism that held true political appeal, we're left with the hard edges of alt-right racialism and Roy Moore-style outrageousness.

Also, don't forget Israel in this .. "the eye-winking approval of strongmen in Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines."

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MIsc crap

A foreign leader -- Netanyahu -- is setting Trump's agenda on Jerusalem, Michael Wolff book says:  You won't see any stories about this on NPR, Fox, CNN its the one thing all U.S. media agree on.

Facebook didn't tilt the election.  I'm pretty sure 15 years of Fox News propaganda had more to do with the Trump win than Russia, Facebook, etc.. I mean, Fox has been programming their viewers for 15 years. Trump is one of their viewers so he's programmed for all the same stuff. He ran on a bunch of Fox News headlines, Benghazi, Obamacare, War on Christmas,  Crooked Hillary, etc. Why wouldn't they vote for him? His platform hits everything they've been told for 15 years. Hell, I think Bill O, Sean H, Lou Dobbs, any of them could have won.

More on Fox Power here. ENOUGH ABOUT STEVE BANNON. RUPERT MURDOCH’S INFLUENCE ON DONALD TRUMP IS MORE DANGEROUS.

Also.. Vote for Worker's rights.

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Biden ??

Ex-DNC chair: Biden would 'win overwhelmingly' against Trump in 2020 | TheHill:

Biden? Really?  Yeah, he might win win against Trump but what the hell does a Biden win do to set the U.S on a better path?

He's part of the D establishment that led directly to Trump in the first place. A middle-of-the-road, big city, business-suit D that speaks pretty well on social issues but plays the DC-Pol-Lobby-big-money game as well as anyone and has no connection with anyone except establishment D's 

The voters are pissed off at a system that favors big money and corporate interest over people. They put that on display pretty well in the last election throwing 50% or more of their votes to rebels in Sanders and Trump in the primaries and electing a moron that they though was from outside the system.

The D leaders look at that and think Biden is the man?

Talk about out of touch.

(in fairness, I said "D leaders" but this post quotes Ed Rendell. Maybe trial balloon and D leaders aren't pushing for Biden but Ed Rendell seems to be. He's an out of touch idiot.)






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Facebook: Deleting Accounts

 Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments:

"As is always true of censorship, there is one, and only one, principle driving all of this: power. Facebook will submit to and obey the censorship demands of governments and officials who actually wield power over it, while ignoring those who do not. That’s why declared enemies of the U.S. and Israeli governments are vulnerable to censorship measures by Facebook, whereas U.S and Israeli officials (and their most tyrannical and repressive allies) are not:"

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