Bill O

Wonkette has a great Bill O post here:

Bill O’Reilly So Sad No One Will Talk About The Murderous Blacks | Wonkette:

"The thing that hurts O’Reilly the most though? It is the liberal media’s absolute refusal to talk about how violent and murderous the blacks are. Oh, how beautiful life would be if only Bill O’Reilly could turn his tee-vee on and hear the nightly “How Are Black People Failing Us Today?” report. But NO, they cover allllllll of that up, so when Bill O’Reilly comes in with his NO SPIN ZONE talk about black people, like how they are violent criminals who refuse to pull their pants up even though he has repeatedly stated that he does not care for that look, everyone thinks he is a racist. Even though he is just being totally objective. Because, again, it is the NO SPIN ZONE, so all of his opinions are actually facts. Them’s the rules of the NO SPIN ZONE!"

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Howard Dean's Fall

I'd bet this ......

Under fire for saying that the United States should be even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, 2004 Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean... 

found here:
CNN.com - Dean defends Middle East remarks - Sep. 10, 2003:

had more to do with the fall of Howard Dean than this

The Dean Scream

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Gaza isn't occupied...

it's an open air prison



Reality Check: Gaza is still occupied - Al Jazeera English:



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HRC? The D's are screwing up.

How the Hell We Got Here: Why the Democratic Party is Splitting :: Politics :: Features :: Paste:

The D's are splitting for the same reason the R's have split and now have Trump.

The people are tired of government that doesn't work for them. The two parties have absolute control over a government that works for elite-corporate interests but not for the people. The people are voting against that this time. They've thrown out the R party candidates and chosen Trump. They are making HRC's coronation difficult and may yet throw her out. It is an anti-establishment year.

If it comes down to an HRC vs Trump general election, HRC is in trouble. She's the establishment candidate in an election filled with anti-establishment rage.

And, she's a crappy candidate anyway as noted in the link above

Right now, the Democratic Party is on the verge of nominating a candidate who would be the least popular presidential nominee since David Duke if not for her rival on the Republican side. It is about to run a candidate who, despite claims to the contrary, is currently being investigated by the FBI, and who, by all rights, would be at home as a Republican if not for some social issues. In a year of outsider insurgency, Democrats are about to rally behind the candidate who most exemplifies the political establishment, save for the fact that Hillary Clinton is not a white man. They’re about to stake the future on someone most people associate with the word “dishonest,” and who polls show is the weaker candidate; someone who is almost certain to lose her reelection bid in 2020 — a Census year in which down-ballot voting is essential if the Democrats want a chance to retake the House of Representatives before 2031. The establishment of the party has seemingly done all it can to guarantee this outcome.

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Bernie's Health Care Plan

Jeffrey Sachs: Bernie Sanders easily wins the policy debate - The Washington Post:

On health care, Sanders’s proposal for a single-payer system has been roundly attacked as too expensive. His campaign (for which I briefly served as a foreign policy adviser) is told that his plan will raise taxes and burst the budget. But this attack misses the whole point of his health proposals. While health spending by the government would go up in the Sanders health plan, private insurance payments would disappear, generating huge net savings for the American people. 

Countries such as Canada, Germany, Sweden and Britain all follow something like a single-payer approach and pay much less for health care than the United States does. While the United States spent 16.4 percent of gross domestic product on health care in 2013, Canada paid only 10.2 percent; Germany, 11 percent; Sweden, 11 percent; and Britain, 8.5 percent. U.S. overspending is about 5 percent of GDP, or nearly $1 trillion as of 2016, mainly because of the excessive market power of private health insurers and big drug companies. An authoritative study by the U.S. Institute of Medicine confirms this extent of excess costs, finding losses of about 5 percent of GDP in 2009. Critics of Sanders’s health plan have failed to recognize or acknowledge the huge savings and cost reductions that would accompany a single-payer system.

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HRC vs Bernie

Why won't Bernie Sanders step down for the sake of the American Left? | Voices | The Independent:

"Why won't Bernie Sanders step down for the sake of the American Left?"

Because he's the only one running for the "sake of the American Left".

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US Foreign Aid

Israel and Saudi Arabia: Strange Bedfellows in the New Middle East - FPIF:

Oppressive, aggressive, religious regimes. A good reason to end all US aid to both.

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Obamacare

A good post here on the health care market.

The Problem with Obamacare — Medium:

Markets work by making people pay for what they get; the more health care you “consume,” the more you pay, either in insurance premiums or at the hospital. But the vast majority of Americans are not comfortable with the idea that rich people get good health care, middle-class people get passable health care (until they get seriously ill, in which case they go bankrupt), and poor people get no health care to begin with.

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Hillary Clinton’s Problem

Yep. Bringing a knife to a gunfight.The most anti-insider election in most of a century and the D's bring one of the most insider candidates ever to the table.

This is one weak nominee: Hillary Clinton’s problem isn’t Bernie Sanders. It’s Hillary Clinton - Salon.com:

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Quit the Country Club

Nice post here that gets to the root of the problem with our government.

 Quit the Country Club | Class War In America:

"But the real enemy is greed, the limitless greed of the very rich, who now control Congress, the laws Congress makes, and the practices and regulations that feed their greed ever more. The corporate billionaires are the classical opponents of Democrats and the friends of Republicans. By hating the dark-skinned groups Trump says they should hate, non-wealthy Trump Republicans are being played for suckers.

Trump would make everything worse for them, but Democrats have to prove it. Hard to do with a net worth of a hundred million."

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Quit the Country Club

Nice post here that gets to the root of the problem with our government.

 Quit the Country Club | Class War In America:

"But the real enemy is greed, the limitless greed of the very rich, who now control Congress, the laws Congress makes, and the practices and regulations that feed their greed ever more. The corporate billionaires are the classical opponents of Democrats and the friends of Republicans. By hating the dark-skinned groups Trump says they should hate, non-wealthy Trump Republicans are being played for suckers.

Trump would make everything worse for them, but Democrats have to prove it. Hard to do with a net worth of a hundred million."

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China is killing us with cheap labor?

Maybe not. China Is Building a Robot Army of Model Workers:

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Israel: Stealing Palestinian Land

The Middle East is going to be a key source of world issues until this is stopped.

Cochrane vs Economics

John Cochrane lobbies for the "Get Government out of the way" crowd here, The Grumpy Economist: WSJ Growth Oped:

Is timidly endorsed by GregMankiw who also runs with the "Get Government out of the way" crowd

Has his argument destroyed by Delong,

This Is Extraordinarily Unprofessional!!: The University of Chicago and the Wall Street Journal Have Very Serious Intellectual Quality Control Problems

Who's backed up by Noah Smith,

Cochrane fires back in what sounds to me like a smart-mouthed teenager yelling at his parents that they don't understand something that he actually doesn't understand and is destroyed again in the comments (image of a couple good ones below.)

How the hell does this guy stay in business?

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Why Trump?

This gets to the root of Trumps appeal. I think it's the reason Trump won overall. (emphasis by tnb)

No More Mister Nice Blog: TRUE CONSERVATISM HAS NEVER BEEN THE POINT FOR MUCH OF THE TRUE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT:

The problem for Cruz was that a lot of True Conservatives aren't in it for the conservatism. They're in it because they think the tougher and more aggressive a candidate is, the more likely it is that that candidate is going to kick the asses of conservatives' enemies -- liberals, Democrats, RINOs, non-whites, Muslims, poor people, women who have abortions, gun control supporters, and so on. 

Cruz was undermined when Trump came along with a different form of aggression -- one that, to Republican voters, seemed more likely to result in ass-kickings for their enemies. Trump spoke, and liberals had conniption fits! Plus, he'd been such a successful businessman! So he must be able to carry out all the ass-kicking he promises, which is more ass-kickings than Ted Cruz seems able to dish out!

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Our Media: PR vs News

America now has nearly 5 PR people for every reporter, double the rate from a decade ago - Muck Rack:

So 15 years ago, there were two PR people for every reporter in the country. Now there are 4.8 PR people for every reporter

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What is Justin Fox Smoking?

A good post here but to lump Sanders in with Trump and Cruz and quote this (emphasis by tnb) is pretty out there (actually "fucking ridiculous" is probably a better description).

In the paper, Wallach traces the intellectual history of what he calls “the technocratic administrative state,” which has been subject to many challenges through the decades but seldom quite the outright dismissiveness that he says is being preached by three of the remaining major candidates for president (Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump). Wallach offers a few suggestions for upgrading the accountability of government agencies, which seem pretty sensible. But I’m not quite sure how we get away from the fantasy -- espoused by Cruz, if not so much Sanders and Trump -- that doing away with big government will somehow fix everything.

Learning to Love (Tolerate?) Big Government - Bloomberg View:

Sanders is fine with "Big Government", (how much bigger can you get than free college and Medicare for all?)  He just wants it to work for the people instead of the corporate elite.

Honestly, Trump and Cruz are probably ok with big government too, as long as it's only big for "their" people.

And,... The line above is actually Mr. Fox quoting someone else but it shouldn't be in the post.

tnb







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Free Markets can't fix every Problem

Navigating like a Norwegian: How Norway Dispels the Private vs Public Sector Myth - Evonomics:

"One key insight is to dispel the myth, pervasive in America and dangerously infective elsewhere, that the private sector does everything well and the public sector does everything poorly. Modern society requires an extensive infrastructure, which does not emerge bottom-up from unregulated markets. This has always been the case, in America as elsewhere, as my recent interview with Daron Acemoglu attests. One reason that the Nordic nations work well might be because they have not—yet—succumbed to the siren’s song of free market fundamentalism."

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Drug War

Illegal Drugs? It's not about the drugs, It's about who profits from the drugs.

Kingpins;OxyContin, Heroin, and the Sackler-Sinaloa Connection:

"In Mexico, when you attempt to buy government favors, it’s called bribery." 

"In America, when you attempt to buy government favors, it’s called lobbying".

"After all, a kingpin is a kingpin. Isn’t it?" 

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