He seems like a guy I could vote for.

The problem is that the DNC and RNC have a stranglehold on the candidates and make them fit into a box to get the nomination. I'm don't think the DNC would allow him.

Take Joe Lieberman as an example. By all accounts, he was a pretty moderate Dem that I could find common ground with. Once he was added to the Al Gore ticket he was a different guy. I might group John Kasich into that same group.

Democrat. Republican. Democan. Republicrat.

The last thing I would ever do is vote for a Democrat, and that includes for town dog catcher. Because the poor captured dogs would end up with even more fleas. ;-) What did the late, great Charles Krauthammer (Peace Be Upon Him) once say about Democrats and Socialist? Oh, yes: Democrats are just Socialists with a filter.

The last thing I would ever do is vote for a Republican, and that includes for town dog catcher. Because the poor captured dogs would end up commoditized and quickly sold off to Korea, where they'd end up as delicacies of one sort or another. ;-)

The GOP is truly the Stupid Party. The Democratic Party seems to be turning into the "Party of Hatred of Anyone Who Doesn't Religiously Toe the Liberal Line."

To paraphrase that song by The Turtles; they're so happy together. As the Uniparty.

Example: Unfettered immigration (leaving aside the question, asked in an op-ed in the WaPo a couple days ago, just why a nation of 320 million people even needs immigration). The Democan-Republicrat Uniparty adores it.

Democrats love it because they believe they're importing guaranteed Democratic voters and compliant drones they can turn into beggars for the goodies that flow from Uncle Sugar's teat (courtesy of Democrats, of course).

Republicans love it because it pleases their Chamber of Commerce paymasters, who want large numbers of immigrants because they flood the job market, increasing worker supply and depressing wages that would rise in what should be tight job markets and a 3.9 percent U3 unemployment rate (notice I didn't attack guest worker visas for those with skills).

No thankee, meester! I'm sitting this one out or voting for the other-party folks. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

this is a theme you occasionally raise, it's sort of at the top of your list of why you're chapped at the other side. you want to talk about this. this is a grievance of yours. so, perhaps we can just get it out there, and deal with it, and then we'll probably disagree and go on our ways, but at least we'll understand each other.

you pretty much can't get more nanny statish, if that's your view of it, than the franklin roosevelt legislation during the great depression. FDR and LBJ are the two who're responsible for this. and i think the 2 administrations are illustrative, because FDR's voting bloc consisted of southern white democrats, who were overwhelmingly segregationists. one of FDR's New Deal remedies (for the housing collapse, much like our own recent housing collapse in 2008) was the FHA (federal housing admnistration). but roosevelt's FHA has largely been considered grossly unfair to blacks, because it was constructed to appease the segregationist south. FDR needed racists. get it? FDR needed the racist vote. he relied on it, he catered to it, he governed to appease it. roosevelt, the democrat. clear on that? i want us to agree on this, because i'm not saying that republicans have always coddled racists. democrats coddled them for a century.

now, here comes LBJ 30 years after roosevelt, and one of his legacies was the fair housing act, which was designed to fix the segregationist elements embedded in roosevelt's FHA. also, and better known, are the voting rights act and other "civil rights legislation" that is LBJ's legacy. LBJ put the nail in the coffin of the southern voting bloc roosevelt relied upon. this started, actually, with truman, who began with his own first steps toward anti-racist legislation in 1948, and if you've heard the term "dixiecrat", these were the democrats who bolted the party in response.

starting with truman, and ending with LBJ, the democrats lost the south. the south, by reagan, 15 years later, had become a solidly republican voting bloc. look at voting maps. look at the map as late as 1960. look at the map every election starting in 1968. the only break in this pattern is in 1976, when a southerner (carter) ran against a highly unpopular post-watergate, post-vietnam republican administration.

so, we have this, to start with: the south is still dealing with the legacy of racism. you may want to bone up on your memory of jim crow laws and then look at the parallels today among southern states. it's not fun to write this. but one must actively take a blindly partisan stance to ignore the legacy of racism that is still extent in the south.

beyond this, there's trump's very obvious (to those who have unplugged ears) appeals to those who have an antipathy to anyone not fair skinned, starting with obama, who was born in a shithole country; and trump's clear messaging to white supremacists (starting with his failure to acknowledge he knew who david duke even was).

no, the south isn't racist, per se. not in the cities. but during my lifetime - in fact, the entirety of my lifetime - southern states have struggled with integration, voting rights, and the fear of losing its white hegemony. i don't know why you think that's just, poof, gone. just as roosevelt had to cater to this in order to create a democratic majority, the republicans cater to it now. it's a fact of politics, and trump has simply ratcheted up, and made more overt, the appeal to those who're afraid of non-whites thru immigration rhetoric that is not designed to fix an immigration problem, rather to throw gas on the fear and hatred of non-whites that republicans rely upon for its majorities.

so, in sum, what i would say (and have said) to republicans today is what i would say to democrats were i alive in the 1930s: no, you are not racist if you vote for republicans (or for roosevelt, back then). however, your party relies on the racist voting bloc. your party's reliance on this racist bloc means it must back legislation that makes the racists happy (e.g., voter suppression laws). the difference today is that, while JFK was a democrat who relied on, but largely ignored, the racist elements of his party, george wallace was a democrat who embraced the racist elements. while the recent george bush was the republican's analog to JFK (he held his nose at his party's racist bloc), trump is the republican analog to george wallace (he has embraced his party's racist bloc).

what you do with this is up to you. if you want to get mad because you, who are not a racist, are unhappy with the heat the remainder of republicans are taking because of their posture toward this, then get mad. or remain mad (because it's clear you're already mad). the other alternative is to do what george will, steve schmidt, and others have done, which is to remain conservatives while decrying what the party (not the movement, but the party) has become.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

DNC RNC strangleholds. Bullshit! How the hell did we get Donald? RNC pick? Joe Lieberman and Gore? Maybe right ticket just the wrong time. It will be the right man, with the right message at the right time. It's all about timing. Always has been. Corrective action almost always comes out of true tragedy. The Donald is producing true tragedy. The time to solve the big problems is being thrust upon us.

Hickenlooper and Kasich squaring off in 2020 would be a Godsend.

A fine teaching moment. Thank you and well done.

I was trying to be diplomatic when I included the RNC. Really, it was only the DNC who was holding a shame primary.

Square off? I was reading talk of them being on the same ticket.

Ah, a diplomat! Thought your species to be extinct. Dem v Rep in 2020? How myopic, old school and uninformed of me. Your way or my way, it still is a better way.

Can we make sure the Bernie is effectively sidelined? It would be a shame for all those young impressionable folks to be offered and drink the kool-aid again.

on the Venn diagram of 'people who hold George Will in high regard' and 'Trump's base' the overlap is quite small.

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Roger their is no intersection of Will and the base. They don't read.


I think what the slowman might be hitting upon is that Trump's base can not / will not grow in number and that some consolidation of the rest of us might just be a winner. BK's argument of the immigration position by both parties is illustrative. The adults in the room understand that the currently constructed party platforms and positions is a non starter going forward. Let us leave them and Trump with his base behind to long for the past, complain and rift on about fear and such while we move forward away from the darkness.

The trick will be to get BK's head out of the sand and see this light. Somewhat tongue in cheek.

The question is who should feel this pain? Those currently already feeling lots of pain, or those who have the capacity to absorb some pain?

Example: raise the retirement age, or raise the cap on income subject to FICA/Medicare taxes?

Example: raise food stamp eligibility requirements, or give huge tax cuts to business in the vain hope that it will somehow trickle down?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

How many of us are really feeling any pain at all? You are right, we are rigidly adhering to idoelogy which prevents us from addressing solutions to actual prolems, but I daresay almost none of the LR denizens are hurting.

Britain is not polarized. We have Jacob, Boris and Nige on one side with the big JC

In the middle we have saint Tessa

And then we have Adonis and Blair on tother

;)

Unlike the US even if you think the former at the second coming of Satan you know Blair was the first.........

We are all screwed

Exactly, we refuse to ask more to chip in and pay taxes and push the narrative that the rich can afford it and are not paying their fair share when the data shows they actually pay the bulk of the taxes. And for the rich - they can insulate themselves in their bubbles and not see how a lot of America lives - out of sight, out of mind.

Politically, must of our challenges financially (IMHO) is actually demographics and not policy.

Individually, most of the pain to date is based on personal choices, in the future a lot of the pain coming will be out of your control.

I think ideally is what we are looking for is more unity. The kind of unity a country has when faced with a life defining moment - say WW2. I bet all of us in the LR actually have more in common than not if we actually shared real life together.

I know I am all over the map in this response...we are all better together; need to find a way to build more consensus.

Which is the conundrum: "rich are in intesne PAIN, because they pay such high taxes" and they are "so weathy that they are completely insulated from seeing any PAIN". They don't coexist, unless one realizes that 1.) We never actually look at the full revenue/benefit picture (include sales and payroll taxes, evaluate actual taxes paid, and the picture is vey different) and 2.) We never try to evualate indirect benefits which hugely benefit folks with capital. There is a reason why my wealth has grown by more than my (not insignificant) income for 6 years, even if I am not a business owner.

pardon the hijack, but i'm ambivalent about this. the tax rate thing. i'm against the estate tax because i really do feel it's a double taxation. but i also feel a sort of urgency to pay attention to the continual redistribution of wealth upward. i mean, we all hear about the redistribution downward, the sin of that, but in fact, on a year by year, generation by generation, basis, the redistribution is upward.

so, a part of me feels that, while yes, even on a graduated basis, the rich pay more in taxes (well, some pay taxes), in fact what happens is (in my view) an unsustainable aggregation in wealth among the very few.

so, that part of me says that the metric governing tax rates and tax policy shouldn't be fairness on the micro level (look how much tax i'm paying!) but fairness on the macro level. for example, the "bottom" 80 percent of america owned about 20 percent of the net worth of americans back in 1980. now it's about half that. and, if you exclude the value of everyone's homes (rich and poor alike) then it's half that again, that is, the bottom 80 percent own about 5 percent of america's wealth.

and, okay. that's what it is. but, that 5 percent is 60 or 70 percent less than it was when i was a young college graduate. so, when you really look at what causes the trumpists, the tea partiers, and the bernie sanders folks, all of whom are getting more and more militant and strident, perhaps it has to do with this.

sorry for the digression. carry on...

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Read "Dream Hoarders". The premise is that the present "meritocracy" is pretty much set up in such a way that the top 10-20% have significant advantages in accessing opportunities whcih maintain ther socio-economic security, and many of those are tied to specific policies that are regressive, and it is a problem. I would argue that things may collapse under the weight of pervasive inequality. Most moderate libs like me are pragmatic capitalists interested in nothing more radical that modifying present policies to a more sustainable status quo.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-hoarding-of-the-american-dream/530481/


(It is absolutely true that wealth is concentrating to a group that simply has "the right parents" (a growing "inheritocracy"). Disagree that an esate tax, which is a basic financial generational transfer is double taxation. That makes any monetary transfer "double taxation", but that has been covered endlessly here).

on the double taxation thing, i guess it depends on whether you're considering the person taxed, or the money taxed. the PERSON is not double taxed, but the MONEY is. and i can see both sides of it.

what is undeniable is that we have a democracy, or maybe we don't. maybe now it's a full blown plutocracy. it's certainly at least somewhere in between. the wealth drain is certainly not sustainable.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Actually we call him chickenlooper. I worked for the city while he was mayor and worked with him on several projects. As mayor he was a breath of fresh air after Wellington Web. A business owner that was looking out for the small business person in Denver. As Govenor, he has been awful (in my opinion). In fact he stated he was against pot legalization, but just let it go, and has been absentee ever sense. If I trusted we would ever see the old Hick again, maybe. But I no longer trust him. Also the thought of him and Kaisic was nauseating...

Still carry it? How? I left the GOP in pre election 2016 and almost every Day am reminded it was the right decision.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Show it to me. Here's the wiki page: link. This Republican controlled Congress has been together for 18 months. Show me the legislation pandering to the racists.

I didn't find any. However I did find these oddly named acts all passed and signed in the last 18 months:

Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission Act
Javier Vega, Jr. Memorial Act of 2017
Indian Employment, Training and Related Services Consolidation Act of 2017
400 Years of African-American History Commission Act
Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act
African American Civil Rights Network Act of 2017
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act of 2017
Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act of 2017
Kennedy-King National Commemorative Site Act
Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert in Indian Country Act

Let him rant on about racism. The reality is he has no clue what any Trump voter thinks because he lives in a bubble and knows none.

As for Hickenlooper. Guy is a joke. Decent mayor, horrible Governor. He disappeared around the time Hillary began running for President. Used to be somewhat moderate, wanted a job after term limited so he moved WAY to the left begging Hillary to be in her administration. She lost. Now he thinks he is going to get the Democratic nomination in 2020 so he pops his head up now and then to show the crazies that he is a true blue crazy leftist. He's a buffoon.