monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

@Olivier5,

We shall entitle each other to our opinions then.

Matt Yglesias has a very good piece on why the GOP is so eager to repeal Obamacare. http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/17/14263918/affordable-care-act-tax-cut

But I'd add the rationale that was originally given by Bill Kristol in his '93 memo to the GOP. He argued that if the program was allowed to proceed and become law, it would renew American citizens' understanding that government programs could make their lives better. To think of this another way, it would turn citizens back from the Reaganite/libertarian notion that "government is the problem, not the solution". As such, it would work to invalidate a or the fundamental modern conservative rationale for why they should be leading government and would present dire electoral consequences down the road.

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Didn't John Lewis INITIATE the attack on @realDonaldTrump before he got a taste of his own medicine?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2YJdtWWgAAV2gz.jpg:large

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@blatham,

He supported the Iraq war, Blat. That's not a proof of intelligence in my book. Moore in contrast was right about it.

The problem with intellectual types such as him is their lack of street wisdom, their naïveté. Hitchens' fear of Islam was what doomed him, probably connected to his broader fear of religion as a whole. A simplistic, purely theoretical and contemptuous view which made him trip over to the dark side so easily.

Moore likes to carricature things for stronger effect, but he is not simplistic, naïve or an adept of wishful thinking.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

I have no idea what layman said but I certainly don't agree with you that Hitchens was a fool. [..] In debate, he was never crude nor dismissive of others (or if he was dismissive, it was done with with wit and the targets usually deserved it). He was never, that I ever saw, stupidly rude in the manner of, say, Dershowitz.

One can adhere to all niceties of debate and never once be "stupidly rude" and yet be a fool. One way in which the polite company of Beltway elites has ended up making costly mistakes (though they were costly to, say, Iraqi lives rather than their own - they ended up fine) is by assuming that people who acted sophisticated like them must be credible, and those who crudely protested must be unreliable.

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Trump's favorability rating is now at 37%. That's dismal. There's no precedent for this nor anything close. That is worse then when he won the election.

Worst. Honeymoon. Ever.

The thing is, it didn't have to turn out this way. He could have behaved differently and that number could have gone up rather than down. But he instead continued to do all the things that hurt him with the majority of American. He promoted division and conflict. He continued to lie with complete facility pretty much every day. He continued to loudly insult anyone who said something he didn't like. He continued to be a bully and to be a bully as a matter of pride as if to say, "I won. I'm the boss. Come against me and I'm going to crush you. I'm not accountable to anyone or any standard or norm, everything and everyone else is accountable to me. And I want everyone to know this."

That he has operated in this manner when he could have restrained himself and behaved with a sense of community, responsibility and with dignity, is the indicator of what this man's mind and personality are. And if that doesn't frighten you, you're very, very foolish.

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@nimh,

There's definitely something to what you say. "Sophistication" or the respect for that thing as perceived can, and often is, a reflection of a certain sort of class-consciousness. Cruder voices can have more value, intellectual or social, than voices that match a "high culture" description. But of course the recognition of that, or the distaste for it, ought not to lead to a converse formulation (eg Palin and "common sense"). One has to try and tease these things apart and that's not always easy. Hunter Thompson could be very rude and crude but was a genius.

One rather wonderful example here is a debate from years ago between John Cleese and Michael Palin on the one hand and Malcolm Muggeridge with the Bishop of Southwark on the other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl8acXl3qVs&t=5s

Muggeridge comes off as just the sort of high class twit that Monty Python skewered so perfectly. The Bishop was even worse. Palin is relatively silent in this but Cleese is taking no crap whatsoever. He's brilliant.

But it is also the case that Cleese and Palin had very high quality education behind them which is quite evident in this wonderful debate.

For me, the criterion is who can I learn from? Who provides ideas and perspectives that provide clarity and revelation?

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@layman,

Quote:

"Fisk suffers from John Pilgers tendency to exaggerate; everything Fisk covers, from mundane conversations to journeys on dirt roads, is loaded with deep meanings, ominous portents, and unspeakable dangers---Id love to read Fisks account of a shopping trip....

"The towering stack of bread loaves, great cumulous formations of baked dough, cast a grim shadow over my shopping trolley. Its wheels creaked menacingly. I was still two aisles away from the frozen vegetables, but comforted myself with the knowledge that when you believe in jihad, it is easy."

I think Blatham has fairly little in common with Fisk and Pilger, but that was a pretty funny take-down of the style of those two.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:
I never mentioned Cicero. I had a lifetime dose of him in High School.
One of the very few things where I totally agree with you!

Hey, Cicero helped me a bunch. Approaching final high school exams, I was doing OK grades-wise except for Latin. But the final exams counted for 50%, and we got Cicero. Since he was easier to translate than, say, Seneca or Virgil, I did well and graduated with good grades. :-)

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@nimh,

I hated Seneca pretty much immediately. I thought, "This is the asshole who started the thing where churches and carpet-stores roll out a sign in the morning with some vapidness like, 'Smile at three people today and triple the happiness in the world!'" If I had a time machine with one ticket, it would be him or Hitler. I'm undecided.

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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2YKgxIWQAEZhPg.jpg:large

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After eight years, Obama leaves a legacy of a wider racial rift

Minorities are most likely to see worse relations after eight years

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Americans are more enthusiastic about 4 years of POTUS Trump
than they ever were during 0bama's 8 dismal years in office.

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@blatham,

Gallup said it's the lowest approval rating pre-innaugeral. Is anyone surprised?

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@cicerone imposter,

Gallup said HRC would win in a landslide - trust them at your own peril.

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@cicerone imposter,

The Trump team has a response to these polling numbers. Actually, they have two responses. One denies them. The other accepts but justifies them.

Trump says:

Quote:

“The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before,”

But Sean Duffy says:

Quote:

“What's actually happening here is the public fight that Mr. Trump is having with CNN and other media groups is taking some skin off his poll numbers and it's gone down,”

And I suppose we ought to note here that while during the campaign, Trump said this same line, he later admitted he thought he was going to lose the election because of the polls - he thought they were correct.

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Quote:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama is seeking to undermine the incoming one of President-elect Donald Trump.

Speaking at a press conference, Putin accused the Obama administration of attempting to “undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect,” according to the Associated Press. The Russian president called Trump’s victory in last year’s presidential election “convincing.”

Politico

Identical messaging from Putin and from the Trump campaign. Identical.

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The Democrat leadership "pout out" tells me that they continue to reinforce failure.....

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