monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

As the ideologist in Trump’s inner circle, Bannon is a practitioner of Newt Gingrich’s mystic arts. Take some partially valid insight at the crossroads of pop economics, pop history and pop psychology; declare it an inexorable world-historic force; and, by implication, take credit for being the only one who sees the inner workings of reality.

For Bannon, it has something to do with “the fourth turning,” or maybe the fifth progression, or the third cataclysm. At any rate, it apparently involves cycles of discontent and disruption. Lots of disruption. Across the West, as he sees it, the victims of globalization — the victims of immigration, free trade and internationalism in general — are rising against their cosmopolitan oppressors. Institutions will crash and rise in new forms. And this restless world spirit takes human form in . . . Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.

Like many philosophies that can be derived entirely from an airport bookstore, this one has an element of truth. The beneficiaries of the liberal international order have not paid sufficient attention to the human costs of rapid economic change. (Just as the critics of internationalism have not paid sufficient attention to the nearly 1 billion people who have left extreme poverty during the past two decades.)

Jackie Kennedy believed Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the 1963 assassination of her husband President John F. Kennedy. In the sensational tapes recorded by the First Lady months after the President’s death, broadcast by ABC, Kennedy revealed her belief that Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons orchestrated the murder of her husband by gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy, who later became Jackie Onassis, claimed that the Dallas murder was part of a larger conspiracy to allow Johnson to become American President in his own right....They have been stored in a sealed vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston after orders from Mrs. Kennedy that they would remain secret for 50 years after her death.

Emerging consensus that LBJ killed JFK

Three books published in the time leading up to the 50th anniversary of the assassination present a common narrative that JFK was killed by a conspiracy led politically by Lyndon Johnson, and operationally by the CIA and J. Edger Hoover.

In them, we learn about a rush to advance the lone gunman narrative, about how evidence was mishandled and destroyed by the cleaning and refurbishment of the limousine, and how two mishandled autopsies on JFK's body forever buried evidence that could explain much of what happened....

We learn how the FBI, on authority by LBJ himself, would handle the cover-up, and how LBJ would then appoint a blue-ribbon commission who would confirm the cover-up of the prearranged narrative.

Lyndon Johnson was a loutish psychopathic willing to do anything to advance his rise to power. His rise was fueled by graft, corruption, and murder. Yes, murder. LBJ's hitman, Malcolm Wallace, had killed seven other people in Johnson's rise to power, including LBJ's own sister, Josefa Johnson.

There is no evidence that either of these popular elements of the ACA “were Republican provisions,” as Blackburn claims. In fact, Blackburn is on record as promoting the concept of federally funded “high-risk pools” even on the eve of the House vote for the Democratic bill that included a robust provision to bar insurance companies from refusing to cover preexisting conditions. Similarly, the Obama White House and House Democrats were the prime movers of the under-26 provision.

Blackburn earns Four Pinocchios.

There appears to be no coherent right-wing policy concerning "state's rights" issues. It's all very willy-nilly.

The changes are amazing. The one that really catches my attention is 'Dissatisfaction with government' which is the primary problem identified in the most recent polling. It has never been as high as it is right now (some years polled, it doesn't even show up as a concern at all).

Quote:

Danish Companies Seek to Hire, but Everyone’s Already Working

NYT
Those goddamn social democracies of Europe. Would someone please tell them that America is exceptional.

Unemployment Rate in Denmark increased to 4.30 percent in December from 4.20 percent in November of 2016. Unemployment Rate in Denmark averaged 4.91 percent from 2007 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 6.20 percent in July of 2010 and a record low of 2.40 percent in June of 2008.

In Denmark, the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is USD 26 945 a year, less than the OECD average of USD 29 016 a year. But there is a considerable gap between the richest and poorest – the top 20% of the population nearly four times as much as the bottom 20%.

blatham wrote:

The one that really catches my attention is 'Dissatisfaction with government' which is the primary problem identified in the most recent polling. It has never been as high as it is right now (some years polled, it doesn't even show up as a concern at all).

After 8 years of Obama, what else would anyone expect? That's why Trump was elected.

Good clarification, McG. Now let's look at the stats in the US
Now that's exceptional

The unemployment rate in Canada declined to 6.8 percent in January of 2017 from 6.9 percent in December and below market expectations of 6.9 percent. Employment rose by 48.3 thousand, beating expectations of a 5 thousand decline for the second month. Unemployment Rate in Canada averaged 7.71 percent from 1966 until 2017, reaching an all time high of 13.10 percent in December of 1982 and a record low of 2.90 percent in June of 1966.

Huh, I see that unemployment is down in America. That's great! Maybe you should be more concerned about this though?

House Republicans voted en mass to block a resolution that would have forced Trump to turn his tax returns over to Congress on Monday night.

“Paul Ryan: ‘We Know Russia Meddled in the Election, No One Is Disputing That.’ ”