The Next President is...

[sqwatch]

The following is slightly out of the lane of the way this thread is going but important nonetheless.

I'm a right wing guy, but this lefty professor has my respect and attention. Beside his profoundly insightful books on human behavior, he and some of his colleagues have formed the "heterodox academy" to promote a politically neutral college education system that holds accountable bat sh1t crazy commie schools that squash free speech. Here is his annual letter on the state of his organization. It is insightful like the rest of his writings.

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/01/03/heterodox-academy-our-plans-for-2017/


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[matmacwc]

It's a trap!

[SurelySerious]

 

Just some humorous Saturday night juxtaposition.

Edited January 8, 2017 by SurelySerious

[tk1313]

Paul Ryan when asked if he doubted the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia meddled in the presidential election:

"...Russia didn’t tell Hillary Clinton not to go to Wisconsin or Michigan. They didn’t put the server in her basement or put the stuff on Anthony Weiner’s laptop...”

He went on to throw a bone to the intelligence community and say how he trusts their assessment and whatnot... Just thought his quote was a direct hit to the quibbling the Clinton campaign has been spewing to explain why it's not her fault she lost.

[pawnman]

9 hours ago, tk1313 said:

Paul Ryan when asked if he doubted the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia meddled in the presidential election:

"...Russia didn’t tell Hillary Clinton not to go to Wisconsin or Michigan. They didn’t put the server in her basement or put the stuff on Anthony Weiner’s laptop...”

He went on to throw a bone to the intelligence community and say how he trusts their assessment and whatnot... Just thought his quote was a direct hit to the quibbling the Clinton campaign has been spewing to explain why it's not her fault she lost.

Bingo.  The Russian hackers may have been targeting Hillary, but she gave them a target in the first place.  It wasn't the hack, it was the content of the emails that hurt the campaign.

[HerkPerfMan]

On 1/5/2017 at 6:11 PM, Kiloalpha said:

The 17th Amendment was a mistake.

I disagree. Senators should be accountable to their constituency, just like all other elected officials. States are still given equal weight in the Senate, and the Senators are chosen by the citizens on each state. Even in a Republic, I think layers of separation between a constituency and their representatives create opportunity for misplaced loyalty, entrenched interests, and corruption. Plus, I wouldn't trust my state legislature to choose qualified senators - hell, I don't trust them to do much of anything but bicker and waste my money.

I'm no scholar of the 17th amendment so I won't comment on your assessment. But I wouldn't use the dirty word of Presentism to describe my view - more of "living" view with priority still placed on original meaning. The founding fathers were some smart guys and they created something new and comprehensive in the Constitution. But they also acknowledged that they didn't know everything, that they wouldn't get it right on the first try, and that the world was dynamic. One of the greatest and most insightful inclusions in the Constitution is Article 5 - the ability to amend it. It is an arduous process with a high barrier, as it should be. There have been 27 amendments since the Constitution was ratified, including 1 to repeal a previous amendment (Prohibition). I believe that the framers wanted future generations to apply their guiding principles to learn from experience and modify when necessary. The framers themselves learned that the original EC construct wasn't working and in 1804 the 12th amendment was ratified to solve their contemporary problem of deadlocked elections and opposing candidates potentially becoming President and Vice President. Amendments have been fairly regular until recently, when the Constitution has been viewed as some holy document passed down from on high. Originalism is one thing, but exulting the Constitution (and its creators) to religious status is something else. We need to learn from our history and experience, and adapt in a dynamic world using the very tools that the framers gave us - hence the American Experiment. 

Anyway, I veered off the topic a bit, but this will be my last post about it. To summarize my position : The Constitution is truly remarkable and I will defend it to my death; the framers wanted us to change it based on our experience; the EC could use an amendment to account for the national popular vote. I certainly appreciate the debate.

On 1/5/2017 at 6:11 PM, Kiloalpha said:

The National Popular Vote Compact people are like Jehovah's Witnesses in the state legislatures. They just show up in your office out of nowhere and tell you how wonderful their idea is. They love giving you their book and preaching about fairness and inequality. They won't leave when asked and usually take a Police Officer or two to get the hint that they're no longer welcome. 

And I bet they have big, goofy, bewildered smiles on their faces as they are dragged out in cuffs.

[SurelySerious]

I think you could make the case that direct election of the Senators makes them less accountable to the people, because the constituency has become those bankrolling the campaign. When there are two seats per state at a term of six years, wealthy people/corporations can find it easily palatable to throw their full weight behind a candidate that they'll then have an in with.

[SurelySerious]

Worth the listen: Brookings Cafeteria with Michael O'Hanlon on Trump's National Security and Defense Team
https://www.brookings.edu/podcast-episode/trumps-national-security-and-defense-team/

[WTFAF]

I thought Hillary was bad when it came to her signals/implications toward the bio-pharma industry. Now Trump is going after my asset class of choice. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/11/biotech-stocks-plunge-after-trump-says-drugmakers-are-getting-away-with-murder.html

The hit to my investments combined with Trump's populist tendencies, when convenient, are forcing me to re-think the implications of this incoming regime.

[17D_guy]

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/politics/donald-trump-press-conference-highlights/index.html

If nothing else, we'll get to see him back-pedal when finally presented with evidence repeatedly.

Perhaps while pissing on prostitutes...and blame "the intelligence agencies" for the leak of a clearly commercial dossier.

Or he just stops taking Intel Briefs again.  Who knows.  Strap in folks.

Edited January 12, 2017 by 17D_guy

[SurelySerious]

WSJ Trump May Herold a New Political Order: Seldom does a Presidential election mark a permanent shift. The Last time it happened was 1932.

Trump May Herald a New Political Order - WSJ.pdf

Interesting analysis of the historical contexts of large changes in US policy, and what allowed them to happen versus when some were constrained by opposing congressional moods.

Notable snippets

Quote

But by the 1970s the liberalism that had powered the New Deal and the Great Society had succumbed to one of the basic rules of political science: Movements tend to evolve toward the extreme. The struggle for civil rights had been decisively won in the 1960s, but liberals kept fighting that war, deepening racial divides with identity politics. Though union membership had been sliding for years, out-of-date laws kept labor politically powerful. The federal bureaucracy metastasized, as program after program was added with little overall planning. Many government offices, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, were captured by Democratic constituencies.

Liberal policies were increasingly tailored to the interests of a political elite, not the country as a whole. The people noticed. Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to capture the 1976 Democratic nomination, promising to clean up Washington. He failed, but Ronald Reagan, touting his own outside-the-Beltway bona fides, proved the most consequential president since FDR, both at home and abroad.

Quote

 

 

Quote

Barack Obama took office with strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. He pushed through a very liberal, and very unpopular, agenda. The Obama years have proved a disaster for Democrats. They lost the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, both tidal-wave elections. Republicans now control most governorships and state legislatures as well.

 

So does Donald Trump’s stunning election herald something permanent—a shift akin to those brought by Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley and FDR? That’s a fair bet, considering the GOP gains that preceded it. True, Mr. Trump did not win a plurality of the electorate. But Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin of 2.9 million was built on an extremely narrow base. Mrs. Clinton won only in coastal cities, academic enclaves and very poor areas such as the Mississippi Delta and the Alabama Black Belt. Subtract her margins in a mere five counties—the New York City boroughs, save Staten Island, and Los Angeles County—and she lost the popular vote in the remainder of the nation by more than 500,000.

Mr. Trump capitalized effectively on the Democratic Party’s alienation of white working-class voters, sometimes dismissed as “deplorables” or denizens of “flyover country.” That allowed him to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states where no Republican had prevailed since the 1980s. Whereas in 2012 Mitt Romney carried Brown County, Wis., which includes Green Bay, by 1.8 percentage points, Mr. Trump’s margin was 10.7 points. The GOP advantage in nearby rural Marinette County swung even more dramatically, from 3.5 points for Mr. Romney to 33 for Mr. Trump. That was more than enough to make up for Mr. Trump’s relative weakness in affluent Republican suburbs like Waukesha County, near Milwaukee, where Mr. Trump’s margin was 7.8 points narrower than Mr. Romney’s.

Edited January 15, 2017 by SurelySerious

[SurelySerious]

A reason the Democratic party is reeling: newly elected CA Senator Kamala Harris chose to use her allotted time with CIA nominee Pompeo inquiring about climate change. 

The Climate Intelligence Agency

Democrats must have concluded that climate change will defeat Donald Trump’s nominees, or perhaps the subject’s omnipresence at the confirmation hearings merely reflects their own political preoccupations, or their rich donors’. Whatever the reason, no job is too irrelevant for global warming to intrude.

Perhaps you think Mr. Trump named Mike Pompeo to the Central Intelligence Agency because of his spycraft expertise, or to defeat terror groups. Kamala Harris has other ideas. The new California Senator burned her question time on Thursday cross-examining Mr. Pompeo about “the scientific consensus” on global warming.

Citing NASA and “most of the leading scientific organizations world-wide,” Ms. Harris repeatedly asked about the human contribution to climate trends. “Do you have any reason to doubt NASA’s findings?” Mr. Pompeo replied that “I, frankly, as the director of CIA would prefer today not to get into the details of climate debate and science. It just seems—my role is going to be so different.”

When Ms. Harris kept pressing, Mr. Pompeo dryly replied, “I do know the agency’s role. Its role is to collect foreign intelligence.”

[17D_guy]

3 hours ago, SurelySerious said:

WSJ Trump May Herold a New Political Order: Seldom does a Presidential election mark a permanent shift. The Last time it happened was 1932.

Trump May Herald a New Political Order - WSJ.pdf

Interesting analysis of the historical contexts of large changes in US policy, and what allowed them to happen versus when some were constrained by opposing congressional moods.

Notable snippets

 

Thanks for all the links, good reads/listens.

 

2 hours ago, SurelySerious said:

A reason the Democratic party is reeling: newly elected CA Senator Kamala Harris chose to use her allotted time with CIA nominee Pompeo inquiring about climate change. 

The Climate Intelligence Agency

 

Really?  And they wonder why they can't even win the legislature back. Fixing/redoing the gerrymandering isn't going to overcome a complete out of step platform with the "fly-over" states.  Republican's ability to win state houses to secure the federal legislature is breathtaking.

NPR's fresh air had a good podcast on it.

Other notes, I've always hated the smoke-fire line of reasoning and dismissed the whole thing with Russia holding kompromat on Trump.  But then we find out Flynn had a holiday call with the Ruskies, where we're assured nothing political/sanction-related was discussed.  Trump also keeps tweeting negatively about the IC.  Also, there's interesting correlation between the non-IC dossier released on Trump and notable "deaths" in Russia of powerful information brokers.  Additionally, the Panama Papers highlighting the shell-game of corporations and money movement (at least) of Russian oil companies aligning with some of the dossier numbers/offers.

What's your thoughts on Trump's ties/non-ties with Russia or otherwise?

Edited January 16, 2017 by 17D_guy
add link

[pawnman]

3 hours ago, 17D_guy said:

Thanks for all the links, good reads/listens.

 

Really?  And they wonder why they can't even win the legislature back. Fixing/redoing the gerrymandering isn't going to overcome a complete out of step platform with the "fly-over" states.  Republican's ability to win state houses to secure the federal legislature is breathtaking.

NPR's fresh air had a good podcast on it.

Other notes, I've always hated the smoke-fire line of reasoning and dismissed the whole thing with Russia holding kompromat on Trump.  But then we find out Flynn had a holiday call with the Ruskies, where we're assured nothing political/sanction-related was discussed.  Trump also keeps tweeting negatively about the IC.  Also, there's interesting correlation between the non-IC dossier released on Trump and notable "deaths" in Russia of powerful information brokers.  Additionally, the Panama Papers highlighting the shell-game of corporations and money movement (at least) of Russian oil companies aligning with some of the dossier numbers/offers.

What's your thoughts on Trump's ties/non-ties with Russia or otherwise?

Sounds to me like the Republicans knew exactly what they needed to do to win, announced their strategy, and then executed it...all while the democrats fell asleep at the wheel.  I don't see the problem here.

[17D_guy]

45 minutes ago, pawnman said:

Sounds to me like the Republicans knew exactly what they needed to do to win, announced their strategy, and then executed it...all while the democrats fell asleep at the wheel.  I don't see the problem here.

I guess I didn't communicate well.  I've got no problem with it either.  It's genius, and the Demo's were absolutely asleep at the wheel.  It's local gov't, the way it should be.  The NPR podcast goes into a little more detail about how the R's even had... public memos (not press releases, can't think of the term) announcing what they were doing.  As a more conservative person, I'm fine with the way it happened.

D's just assumed they'd always be in power, I guess.  Even now they appear to be grasping at straws as to what led to the downfall.  

[tk1313]

8 hours ago, 17D_guy said:

I guess I didn't communicate well.  I've got no problem with it either.  It's genius, and the Demo's were absolutely asleep at the wheel.  It's local gov't, the way it should be.  The NPR podcast goes into a little more detail about how the R's even had... public memos (not press releases, can't think of the term) announcing what they were doing.  As a more conservative person, I'm fine with the way it happened.

D's just assumed they'd always be in power, I guess.  Even now they appear to be grasping at straws as to what led to the downfall.  

Deep down they know why they lost.... But they also know if you say her name 3 times you'll summon her and "commit suicide" by stabbing yourself in the back 69 times (most of which will be after you are already dead).

[HerkPerfMan]

I chuckled while reading this flashback to Andrew Jackson's inauguration in 1829 and the rager that followed at the White House. They draw some parallels to our current times, but my takeaway was simpler: Despite the feeling of uniqueness to our current times, there is little that is truly new. And party guests always follow the booze...always.

[Ram]

And if anyone doubted the "pay for play" status of the Clinton Foundation:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/16/clinton-global-initiative-lays-off-22-as-donations/

 

Color me surprised...

[afthunderchief16]

Chasing around assholes left and right. It'll be interesting to see if this continues in the coming weeks. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-bombers-hit-islamic-state-in-libya-1484828547

More details: https://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/01/19/b-2-bombers-strike-isis-in-libya.html

Edited January 19, 2017 by afthunderchief16

[waveshaper]

1 hour ago, afthunderchief16 said:

Chasing around assholes left and right. It'll be interesting to see if this continues in the coming weeks. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-bombers-hit-islamic-state-in-libya-1484828547

More details: https://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/01/19/b-2-bombers-strike-isis-in-libya.html

Hopefully we got the most bang for the buck with these long range/large payload bombers and swung by Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria to hit a few targets while enroute to Libya.

[SurelySerious]

Speaking of bang for the buck, this seems well thought out on DOD reform.
Unsure how implementing it will play out.

https://defense360.csis.org/defense-reform-in-a-new-administration/

[daynightindicator]

Hopefully we got the most bang for the buck with these long range/large payload bombers and swung by Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria to hit a few targets while enroute to Libya.

Two words...strategic messaging (IMHO)

Killing assholes in Hilux's could have been more cheaply and easily done with EUCOM assets, but wouldn't have caused Russia and China to look up from their desks.


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[Lawman]

Two words...strategic messaging (IMHO)

Killing assholes in Hilux's could have been more cheaply and easily done with EUCOM assets, but wouldn't have caused Russia and China to look up from their desks.


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There is a definite statement when we do something no other country can do.... send a bomber capable of carrying a nuclear payload half way across the planet with complete impunity. It's like a very clear "ok... your turn."


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[Homestar]

Meanwhile North Korea is warming up their silos

[Naviguesser]