If there are two things that should have become clear over the last two weeks, it’s that the Democratic Party apparatus has become thoroughly Clintonized while the Republican Party has nearly completed the project of becoming completely Trumpified. What does that mean?
The Democratic Party apparatus has been revealed to be deceitful, corrupt, dishonest, vain, arrogant, out for personal gain, and hypocritical. When fully Trumpified the Republican Party will be ignorant, egotistical, self-promoting, opinionated, mendacious, and self-contradictory.
And people say I should prefer one over the other.
I never thought I would say this to you, Dave, but you are being childish, narcissistic and misogynistic.
Trump is unhinged. He is dangerous. Giving him 4500 nuclear weapons is an act of incredible recklessness bordering on suicide. And unless you’ve suffered a major stroke, you know it. You’re letting your anger over Rahm and your personal distaste, and frankly your egotistical need to stand out, overwhelm your reason.
It is depressing to watch.
It’s depressing to me to watch people digging desperately, trying to find a jewel in the pile of crap that is Hillary Clinton. I don’t oppose her because she’s a woman. That assertion is sexist on its face. I oppose her despite the fact that she’s a woman. She’s repeatedly demonstrated that she’s a warmonger; her plans to increase taxes will reduce private sector growth, something we very much need.
I would add that painting any principled opposition as bigoted is antithetical to republican government. It has been a critical flaw in Obama’s term of office and I’m not sure we can survive another four years of it let alone eight.
It must be horrifying to see the peasants up in revolt, and now, your own peasants will soon be revolting against their side as well. The most galling must be the knowledge that the minorities you have segregated yourself apart from so well for all these decades will soon be at the gates.
It is not an accident that the party of George Wallace would try to label the opposite party “dark”. I believe it is called a dog whistle, and I was informed that they were blown by racists. BLM, Bernie Sanders supporters, and all the other “darkies” are not going to care that the robes and hoods are made out of 800 count Egyptian cotton designer sheets.
Donald Trump is old news. It does not matter whether he wins or loses the election, The Trump supporters, Bernie Sanders supporters, and all the other people being who do not benefit from the rigged system have won. When the Democrat’s peasants begin looking for heads, they will begin looking for Democrat heads.
Foe myself, it is amusing. You all thought you had the peasants by the balls, but it turns out the peasants have had you by the balls all along. Welcome to the new world order. Even if Hillary Clinton wins, you had better keep looking over your shoulder and checking under the bed before you go to sleep, and it might not be a bad idea to only sleep with one eye closed.
Your own people are tired and finished with your bullshit, and the opposing side has less respect for you than their own scumbags. The millennials that you thought were your salvation have learned the lessons you taught them. Actually, they have learned the better than you could possibly have imagined. Your little monsters are going to have a field day with you.
Dave, he’ll be calling you an antisemite next, for opposing the brilliance of Rahmbo.
As for which is the more dangerous – only one candidate running is a falling down drunk who has already been fomenting war with Russia at every turn, and it isn’t Trump.
Really, I don’t know how Hillary’s obvious alcoholism isn’t getting more play.
“her plans to increase taxes will reduce private sector growth”
Care to expand on that. I just read over the Tax Policy Center’s details and analysis of the two plans. Clinton’s increases largely amount to an increase in income tax to those making over $1 million, raising the estate tax and capital gains taxes. As I cannot find any evidence that decreasing or increasing taxes on rich people affects growth, maybe you have some. (I thought we had gone over this in the past and you had acknowledged a lack of evidence along these lines.)
Looking at the Trump plan you see huge cuts for rich people, small ones for everyone else, and a huge increase in debt. Standard GOP. So we tried this with Bush II. Why would it work this time?
Steve
Taking money out of the private sector by whatever strategy reduces private sector growth. I’m pretty sure that Ben will bear me out on that.
Growth for whom? I am pretty sure your own data submitted recently suggests it is growth largely limited to those same wealthy people. Besides which there are quite a number of studies showing that wealthy people will often work more to make up their income losses just like the rest of us. They don’t always engage in more leisure.
Steve
Then we devise strategies for ensuring growth for the incomes of those other than than the wealthiest. We don’t say “No growth it is!”
Unless this is true from your other cited article.
“We should tackle these problems. But we should remember that the key drivers of growth are science, education and innovation, not low taxes, lax regulations or greater exploitation of natural resources.”
Please present evidence that one or more of them are true and achievable. “Science” and “innovation” are pretty vague. They can mean practically anything. Is there actual evidence that increasing real spending on science increases prosperity? I suspect there’s better evidence that increasing spending on mass engineering projects, e.g. the space program, increases prosperity. In contrast I think we could spend another trillion on medical research and have very little to show for it.
Let’s use their definition of education, i.e. people with bachelor’s degrees or post-graduate education. I see little evidence that will result in prosperity for most people without opening many, many more positions in, for example, medicine or finance than are presently available. If there’s evidence, please present it.
On the other side of the equation I’m more interested in stable and predictably enforced regulation than in lax regulation. And on the tax side I think that we should bring our taxes on corporations into line with those in other OECD countries. Increasing corporate taxes won’t do that and may not even increase revenue. What it will increase is the utility of tax departments for large companies.
If you think that increasing corporate tax rates will result in more revenues, please present evidence to that effect.
In contrast I think we could spend another trillion on medical research and have very little to show for it.
Oh, I’m sure SOMEONE would benefit from spending another trillion on medical research. So it depends on who you mean by “we”, pale face.
“Dave, but you are being childish, narcissistic and misogynistic.”
Says the guy whose principal arguments are to call people who disagree with him stupid, racist, homophobic……
Perfect.
“If you think that increasing corporate tax rates will result in more revenues, please present evidence to that effect.”
I just re-read the Clinton and Trump tax plans at the Tax Policy Center. As I recall, Clinton does not propose increasing corporate taxes. As I have said in the past, I think we should eliminate corporate taxes.
” Is there actual evidence that increasing real spending on science increases prosperity?”
There is plenty of evidence that basic research done by the government or funded by it has lead to much (most?) of our innovation. Heck, we are discussing this on the internet and we know where that started. The antigovernment types always say that it is engineers that create everything and make stuff commercially viable. That is true to some extent, but the engineers can’t do anything w/o the basic science they need to get started. You aren’t going to bioengineer the molecules that will eliminate arthritis in the knee (no more total knee surgeries) w/o the basic science that tells you how the disease process works. There are whole books written on this, but you can also just think of the major advances we have had and realize how often government funded research played a part.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/24/innovation-government-was-crucial-after-all/
Steve
Good example. The Internet didn’t come out of basic research. It was an engineering project.
The same is true of PC boards, the microcomputer, and a lot of the other developments that led to modern personal computers, networking, and smartphones. The basic science behind them had been understood for decades.
An engineering project sponsored by the government, run by scientists, and engineers. The computer science had not been understood for that long and then I guess it depends upon whether you count materials science as engineering or science. Probably some of both.
Query-My uncle who taught engineering at Purdue used to get irritated when folks said engineers did not do science as he thought they did. Was he wrong?
Steve
I’m not opposed to government projects. I just think that government is better suited for some projects than others.
Private industry is reluctant to tackle very largescale projects, for example. That’s why I think that serious improvements to the power grid will need to be a government project, somewhat reminiscent of the Interstate Highway System. We wouldn’t have anything resembling an IHS without the federal government.
That’s not basic science. It’s engineering.
Let me give you an example of basic science: most of mathematics. I had a friend once who was working in an extremely abstruse and theoretical branch of topology. One day he came by my place, looking extremely crestfallen. “Pete, what happened?”, I asked. He replied “Some jerk found an application for my research.” That’s basic science.
And you’re just going to have to take my word for this. Developing the Internet didn’t require any groundbreaking computer science. Oddly, developing Ethernet did and that was done by private companies (Xerox, then 3Com).
“I never thought I would say this to you, Dave, but you are being childish, narcissistic and misogynistic.”
Another winning argument from our esteemed author – keep saying that and independents are sure to flock to Clinton’s camp.
Let me try to articulate what I’m trying to say better, steve. The objective of science is discovery. The objective of engineering is making things work.
Scientists try to discover how nature works. Engineers apply that knowledge. There’s no distinction between them other than one of objective.
At least in the the United States government has been much more effective at funding things with defined deliverables (engineering projects) than it has at funding abstract scientific discovery.