But, better still, you can be a Russian Manchurian candidate or a Russian symp, particularly if you think pushing missile batteries in NATO always closer to Moscow is a lousy idea. It’s genuinely fascinating how my party became more cynically paranoid and pro-pre-thermonuclear war than the other side.
[If] there’s a common theme to this most recent wave of GOP dissenters, it’s just how eerily close they sound to Hillary Clinton’s talking points.
“He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood,??? the GOP national security leaders said in the letter. “He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be president and commander in chief, with command of the US nuclear arsenal.???
Trump is a cat’s paw of Putin. WikiLeaks, The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, others are all in the tank for Russia to influence the US infection. If you’re not pro-HRC, you’re for Russian hackers.
“[Let’s] hope the unlikely unity extends beyond the neocons and with any luck, lasts longer than the election,” writes the explainer at The Guardian.
Hulu has been pushing four seasons-worth of “Homeland,” a TV show I’ve read a lot about but still avoided. Finally took the plunge and watched season 1 (from way back in 2011) over the weekend. I laughed at the season finish: Nuts CIA operative Carrie Matheson being given electroshock, the cliff-hanger suspense delivered by whether or not she would remember the name “Issa”. For a show on terrorism, it consigns its “terrorists” to secondary roles and makes the idea of two Marines being traitors (Brody really isn’t, it seems, just someone with a conscience) more odious by shooting the African-American at the end just to wrap things up.
And the security of the “homeland,” resting on the result of electroshock? Please. “The first season received near universal acclaim,” reads Wiki. Did it fill a need for upper middle class Americans who wanted a war on terror drama about snivelling white people (Carrie, Saul, Nick)?
Do all teams of government agents drive Chevy Suburbans?
Perhaps the American Wehrmacht has been influenced by the high school science experiment in which you beat a magnet with a hammer which causes it to demagnetize, to be failed, so to speak. But if it it is totally demagnetized, the beating will restore a little magnetism to it. Or maybe not, it’s hard to follow.
But if you have known loved ones or friends who have died of cancer, you may have seen the phenomenon first hand in which cancer treatment, chemotherapy or radiotherapy, indeed kills cancer cells but also selects for the most hardy so that, eventually, the cancer doesn’t respond at all to treatment. And the patient dies.
And unlike the US military, often doctors stop treatment because it does no good, making even worse the time the patient has left.
The Pentagon’s treatment of terrorism in foreign countries is never halted, no matter the consequences for the patient.
Ashton Carter is just another high-button apparatchik whose career was in buying weapons systems and writing pamphlets about the MX missile and communications systems for thermonuclear war before becoming Sec’y of Defnse so perhaps another medical definition for the war on terror is in order.
By this time the US military, like the HIV, is off working over another country, perhaps a close neighbor, someone with which it normally had relations.
In America today, HIV is a very serious disease but manageable through the use of effective anti-viral drugs and medications to stop secondary infections. However, there is nothing that can be used to make a country survivable once the US military has been turned loose in and on it.
Every day delivers news of the allegedly rabid presidential candidate. A psychologist attests he’s mentally ill. Trump throws a baby out of one of his rallies. (At first I read the headline thinking he’d actually waded into a long rant attacking a crying child.) Trump is unfit, declares the president. There will be thermonuclear war with him in possession of “the football.” And, of course, full time now, the ongoing cruel feud with the Khan family.
This kind of news doesn’t have any effect on the people who are going to vote for him and against HRC.
They just don’t care. I don’t care, either. Which is not the same thing as saying they’re universally equally mean or as prone to great flights of unreason as Donald Trump.
Many obviously know exactly what he is and will vote for him to throw a bomb into the establishment and Clintonism. And while there MIGHT be more productive ways to show dissatisfaction with the rigged system that we have, it’s still an understandable human reaction.
The constant call of “look, look, look how horrible he is!??? and the we’ll all be doomed if he’s president thing that comes out of our side, the place of so-called betters, ahould be seen as a repetitive sneering. It deserves contempt, too. By now everyone knows Donald Trump.
If you’re in the ascendant half of the population – as I’ve pointed out here before, it’s inaccurate to tar them all as “elite” – it’s hard to see how anyone, let alone nearly half of Americans, could think otherwise. The U.S. has the best economy in the world and by far the finest universities, driving further global dominance; new technologies are opening up a host of even greater possibilities, from elimination of manual labor to the ability genetically to engineer longer life, better health and greater abilities; minorities and women increasingly succeed on equal terms and people can marry whomever they choose; and one can easily travel almost anywhere in this amazing world – but needn’t, because there are Thai restaurants on almost every corner.
Unfortunately, not everyone is part of that wonderful world. Rather, for many, it stands as a threat.
Include me in the Trump-half of America although I won’t vote for him. I find it astonishing that he’s been able to carve out positions to the left of the Democratic Party, positions most certainly meaningless. But still the Democratic Party’s candidate has left no place to go, which is acknowledged.
I have nothing in common with those whose world is the first paragraph. Almost all of my face-to-face friends in Pasadena are from it. And to them I appear as an outsider, at best a nice person, who appears odd but one who can be tolerated in various situations, trusted to look after pets or house-sit.
“[Today], that [other] half is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) white, male, religious and poorly educated. Since that’s pretty much the definition of what, until recently, has been the dominant culture in the U.S., basically no-one else cares,” continues the piece.
No, that’s not right, either. But there’s no way through the walls.
Economist N. Greg Mankiw of Harvard in the NYT this week on the unfortunate turn of events in which voters now don’t believe it when experts say trade is good:
“You see it in Donald Trump’s railing against immigrants and trade agreements. It may well be part of Hillary Clinton’s shift, under pressure from Bernie Sanders, against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she once embraced as ‘the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade.’
“You certainly see it in the British decision to exit the European Union, which has become known as Brexit. That vote flummoxed most political forecasters, and it makes one wonder whether Americans might also produce a surprise in November …”
The answer, according to Mankiw, is simple: more education. Although not stated baldly, those now opposed to “corporate America-style” (my words) global trade are the stupid — the less educated.
Mankiw: “In the long run … there is reason for optimism. As society slowly becomes more educated from generation to generation, the general public’s attitudes toward globalization should move toward the experts.’” Who are all for it.
N. Greg Mankiw was economic advisor to Mitt Romney. He is also opposed to raising the minimum wage. I would normally post the link to the NYT but globalism and all that hasn’t been good for me. I’m sore about it, even though I’m educated.
Also from the “Oh, That’s Rich!” channel, an explanation, now among the thousands, as to Why “The Tom Friedman Blues” needs to be on your gadget and reviewing stand.
“Thomas Friedman moves beyond his Flat World to divide the world into ‘Web People,’ who he likes, and ‘Wall People’ who he holds in contempt. Donald Trump is naturally the lodestar of the Wall People …
“Okay, so let’s work through some logic here. If you want to see a freer flow of ideas and technology, by replacing patent and copyright monopolies with more modern ways of promoting innovation and creative work, then you are a Wall Person. After all, Friedman’s Web People wouldn’t know how to get by in the world without these relics from the feudal guild system.
“If this means that life-saving drugs, which would be cheap in a free market, are priced beyond the reach of the people who need them, well get used to Thomas Friedman’s world. If it means that we have to turn the whole world into copyright cops to ensure that Disney can collect its royalties on Mickey Mouse, that’s a small price to pay to keep the Web People wealthy…”
I’d like to add that Hollywood got the FBI to confiscate the kickass torrents website and arrest its owner last week so that the Motion Picture Association of American and Marvel Studios would not be deprived of any of their due profits on Captain America: Civil War by the grasping BitTorrent clients of the leeching poors. And, of course, they have momentarily stymied me in my downloading of pirated eBooks on the inequalities and failures of the US system.
Of course, I will inform you as soon as an adequate replacement is put in place. Currently, the Pirate Bay and EasyTorrents don’t cut the mustard.
Hillary Clinton’s choice of Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate sends a message to Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and their progressive populist supporters: There’s a home for you in the Democratic Party, but I’m still the landlord.
Some voices on the left howled at the last minute hoping to wave Clinton off from making the seemingly safe pick, insisting that he would not be so safe. Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee founded by Howard Dean, called Kaine’s recent support for different regulatory standards on regional and community banks “disqualifying.??? The Intercept’s Ziad Jilani argued that Kaine’s “measured praise??? for the Trans-Pacific Partnership means that “by picking him, Clinton is signaling that her newly declared opposition to the agreement is not sincere???…
Take the pot off boil, let the people digest the progressive revolution in small bites rather than in the kind of sweeping changes that disorient and cause anxiety.
If a big part of this country is saying “Slower, please,” this is a nod to them.
For all these reasons, picking Kaine made sense. But that doesn’t mean that it was definitely the right call. There are other theories of the case, and they say that people are looking for fast change. That’s what Trump is betting on, and that’s why, in his acceptance speech, he kept emphasizing how quickly he could solve our problems.
Kaine doesn’t help mobilize the Democratic base, and he probably hurts the Democrats’ ability to counter Trump’s anti-free trade populism.
But, I’ll tell you one last thing. My biggest problem with the Clintons has been all the drama they bring with them. Trump’s antics have kind of obliterated that concern in the public mind, but I love No Drama Obama and if we have No Drama Kaine, that’s something I can celebrate.
It’s obvious I won’t be voting for her. From my POV, there’s no choice that would have changed my mind, so whatever.
At this point, it’s no surprise when an organization experiments with ways to use technology to advance the distribution of news. The New York Times is one of many doing so.
BitTorrent — a company based, of course, in San Francisco — is using news to advance technology.
Until fairly recently, BitTorrent didn’t have a news site. In fact, it wasn’t really a website at all. It’s a “protocol??? — a bunch of software used to transfer files across the internet.
BitTorrent’s technology, now about 12 years old, was a success among companies that distribute large amounts of data to large numbers of people at the same time, like Facebook or the online gaming company Blizzard.
More notoriously, pirate websites use the technology to offer illegal downloads. Erik Schwartz, a vice president for the company, was quick to say that his company does not offer those services …
BitTorrent — “a bunch of software” — actually, a utility, an application, used on a PC to get pirated movies, books, music and commercial software from sites like Kat.cr (aka KickAss torrents — see footnote), which aggregates “torrents,” collections of individual networked computers with the stolen stuff on their hard disks.
It’s how I steal all my stuff, since I can’t afford anything. In fact, I may steal a movie tonight using BitTorrent, along with thousands of others.
So, yes, let’s pretent BitTorrent is at the RNC getting into the news biz. Do that.
1. The Evil Empire Strikes Back:
Kickass Torrents’ alleged owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland as part of a lawsuit filed by the United States. Many of KAT’s domains have been seized in the lawsuit and, as a result, none of the popular torrent site’s webpages are currently working. The lawsuit was filed in Chicago, with the alleged owner, Artem Vaulin from Kharkiv, Ukraine, being sued for copyright infringement and money laundering conspiracy …
No stolen movie tonight. The US government, on the job, guaranteeing the intellectual property of the haves who’ve alredy made billions isn’t infringed by the dirty poors.
Nobody’s going to rip off Captain America: Civil War using BitTorrent anymore, I tell ya.
From the Blind Pig Finds Truffle Desk: Mainstream media and apparatchik upper class and its shoeshiners aghast that Trump might not defend NATO nations if they’re attacked.
Now, hold yer horses and unbunch yer panties ninny snobs. NATO was made to defend Europe against the Warsaw Pact. It was not made to push farther into territory (little countries on the Baltic, for the sake of selling ballistic missile shields that don’t work) where the Red Army crushed the Wehrmacht during the last years of the Great Patriotic War. (That’d be WWII, ninnies, in which the Red Army destroyed a helluva lot more of the Wehrmacht than we ever did, and, consequently suffered losses completely unimaginable to Americans.)
So you think the US should pledge to automatically get into a shooting war with the other thermonuclear superpower (Russia has 7,200 of ’em) on, um, Russia’s old border for the sake of “freedom” in those little places? Or maybe you think perhaps our uppercrust apparatchiks and their shoeshiners ought to go back and read some history of WWII and the reason for NATO, at which point you may reach the conclusion that occasionally the Blind Pig gets onto something. If only accidentally.
That “the establishment” is so roiled tells you who’s on the wrong side of history.
And here’s where Hillary Clinton spells trouble, my friends, with a capital T, and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for “PISS POOR.”
HRC was a lousy Sec’y of State, now retconned as an accomplished one. She’s entirely capable of stumbling into a shooting war with Russia in the Baltics, the Ukraine or Syria, because — “freedom” — but, primarily, because she’s a corporate hawk with no obvious clues from her story to indicate she thinks much about consequences.
Definitely, another one of those Culture of Lickspittle moments.
