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Next Steps: Clean Up The Democratic Party, Oppose Trump
People have now learned and accepted that Trump is inevitably the new president of the United States. They try to figure out what that means. We do not know, neither does anyone else. A lot of rumors and speculation are circling of who will take up this or that job in a Trump administration. These rumors are mostly created by those who would like that job, or their personal lobbies. They should be ignored.
The mainstream media is barely able to issue a mea culpa for their extreme pro-Clinton campaign and total failure of reporting the real state of the union. It is now looking for obfuscations like claiming no one could have gotten it right. That is a cheap excuse for incompetence.
It is astonishing that THE media outlet that did the most to shine lights on Clinton is ignored in any of the main stream after-election reporting. I am talking of Wikileaks and Julian Assange who did their very best, under high personal risk, to report the truth about Clinton's and the DNC's utter corruption. A big thank you to them!
Clinton in her very late concession speech, found no words for her culpability or that of the campaign she ran. But the loss of the running is her personal failure. The "bernie bros" and "deplorables" thanked her hostility by not showing up to vote. She had 6 million votes less than Obama while Trump got about the same number as Romney! Instead of focusing on Trump's disastrous economic program she ran a warmongering "blame Putin" campaign. Her economic program was tinkering on the margins of the neoliberal status quo. Certainly not what voters in difficult financial situations, and there are a lots of those in today's U.S., needed to hear. There are now attempts to get Clinton pardoned for breaking classification laws and rules with her private email server as well as for her tax cheating, private slush fund "charity", the Clinton Foundation. If the Democrats want to keep at least some appearance of uprightness they should fight all such attempts. Let her pay a very heft penalty for her shenanigans.
The Democratic party apparatus is corrupt and was completely on Clinton's side. It cost the party the presidency as well as the House and any progress in the Senate. I find it very likely that Sanders would have won the primaries if the party apparatus had acted as neutral as it should have. He had a much better chance of beating Trump. With Sanders as candidate in the general election House and Senate seats would have been easier to keep or to win. There is an urgent and thorough cleanup needed in the party from top to bottom. Sanders should be given the lead of the party and be tasked to again win a majority in the House and/or Senate in the 2018 midterm election.
Trumps true program will now come to the fore. A lot of stuff he said during the campaign will soon be forgotten. His economic program is a repeat of Reaganomics with a dose of isolationism in trade. How that is going to work out with the pivot to Asia and countering China is a mystery. His stand against Muslims was fake, as he let the embassies of the Gulf states know early on.
The military will get more money for lots of funny programs. That is nothing new. It just build some $7.5 billion a piece battleships solely for their new, very special guns which now will not be used because their special ammunition is, at $800,000 a shot, too expensive. A total waste of money but at least it paid for some good jobs. (More jobs could have been created with that money in more important, non-military programs.)
Trump will cut taxes for big enterprises and the rich. He will cut social programs. The general budget will go deep into red. In a few years he will have to, just like Reagan, increase taxes to regain some budget balance.
His campaign unleashed a new wave of racism. Racism had not vanished – indeed it was very much in the open during Obama's time. But open hostile incidents against "the other" will probably increase. It will be difficult and take some time to reign it in again.
It will be important to oppose Trump as much as possible. He is a somewhat megalomaniac and he currently has party majorities in both houses. He will have to be taught that not everything he tries is good or even possible. Trump will want a reelection and another four years as president. He can face opposition on the ground, from people who voted for him, if those people can see a plausible alternative. Clintonian tinkering on the edges of the status quo is no such alternative. There needs to be broad stroke economic policy, plausible and explainable, that offers a better world to them. If the Democrats, or a third party, can develop and present such a program there is good chance that the era of Trump will be a short unremarkable chapter in the history books.
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I believe Trump only has ‘energy’ for putting the Trump brand out there, in a sort of WWE Raw bombastic fashion, and that both he and Rodham are having mental breakdowns right now. You can tell by looking at them, and those around them.
I posited here six months or so ago that Sander’s job was to hold down the Left, so Rodham could move Center Right, and Trump’s job was to hold down the Radical Rabbinical Right, that Rodham could never reach, to keep the RRR’s under control. There were powerful, powerful, $4,000,000,000,000 a year forces at work there.
I truly believe Mil.Gov.Fed’s psychology of getting the mob of proletariat fired up, completely bought-in to the Red and Blue Koolaid charade, and eagerly stress- positioning and waterboarding each other out, is *essential* to the One Party’s Rule. That’s the only way they are able to steal $4,000,000,000,000 a year, from zeks who have seen their wages and job opportunities cratering since about 1973.
‘The (stressed out) frog in the (red and blue faux) pot’ psychology of ‘buy-in’.
When Bern flipped his Left votes to Rodham, that fit my theory. I believe that Trump was also *supposed* to take the RRR over the cliff, just close enough to winning, except for Puerto Ricans flown into FL and NC to vote, to lose, then gracefully accept, The Right made a ‘good fight’, now we all have to get along.
In fact, that was his acceptance speech.
Like WWE Raw, he was supposed to lose after a ‘titanic struggle in the cage’.
The Clinton Mafia was mortified at this outcome, as we saw at her announcement. The Clinton Foundation’s raisson d’etre is now gone, finito. I’m sure they will have to disappear their funds to Qatar, if they haven’t already. The whole game plan to mobilize and ‘buy-in’ the American public to another 8 years of Clinton Mafia Bleed, with Sanders and Trump riding flank, has just gone a little too far.
Trump has neither the experience, nor the stamina nor the interest. Look at him! You can tell. Insiders in his campaign said his offer to VP picks was that they would run all the day to day operations of civilian and military, and Trump would just fly in for speeches and parties. He’s Mr Fancy Pants. His Bubble-Boy son will become a trembling pale ghost, his chi-chi nuevo rico family spattered with mud and cow dung and horrible tattle-tale news stories. Trump can’t survive it.
But right now I just can’t stop CRYING!! (lol)
Posted by: chipnik | Nov 11 2016 0:30 utc | 50
Trump has the air of Augustus about him. Here’s the late, great Gibbon from the Decline and Fall of Rome on Augustus. He notes that “Augustus summoned to his aid whatever remained in those fierce minds of Roman prejudices….” as he completed the destruction of the Republic begun with the murder of the Gracchi and the dictatorship of Sulla.
The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism….”
Every barrier of the Roman constitution had been levelled by the vast ambition of the dictator; every fence had been extirpated by the cruel hand of the triumvir…. The provinces, long oppressed by the ministers of the republic, sighed for the government of a single person, who would be the master, not the accomplice, of those petty tyrants. The people of Rome, viewing, with a secret pleasure, the humiliation of the aristocracy, demanded only bread and public shows; and were supplied with both by the liberal hand of Augustus. The rich and polite Italians, who had almost universally embraced the philosophy of Epicurus, enjoyed the present blessings of ease and tranquility, and suffered not the pleasing dream to be interrupted by the memory of their old tumultuous freedom….
I am so looking forward to the spectacle of “Apprentice: Cabinet Edition.” Interesting to note, the other two triumvirs, Christie and Giuliani, are also major-league bullies. I look for them to have starring roles.
The reformation of the senate was one of the first steps in which Augustus laid aside the tyrant, and professed himself the father of his country. He was elected censor; and, in concert with his faithful Agrippa, he examined the list of the senators, expelled a few members, whose vices or whose obstinacy required a public example, persuaded near two hundred to prevent the shame of an expulsion by a voluntary retreat, raised the qualification of a senator to about ten thousand pounds, created a sufficient number of patrician families, and accepted for himself the honorable title of Prince of the Senate, which had always been bestowed, by the censors, on the citizen the most eminent for his honors and services. But whilst he thus restored the dignity, he destroyed the independence, of the senate. The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
Our Fearless Leader will have to resort to the more cumbersome method of primarying them. Well, until they stage themselves a nice Reichstag fire. We’ll have neither independence nor dignity.
It was dangerous to trust the sincerity of Augustus; to seem to distrust it was still more dangerous…. After a decent resistance, the crafty tyrant submitted to the orders of the senate; and consented to receive the government of the provinces, and the general command of the Roman armies….
The names and forms of the ancient administration were preserved by Augustus with the most anxious care. The usual number of consuls, praetors, and tribunes, were annually invested with their respective ensigns of office, and continued to discharge some of their least important functions.
All Hail Caesar! Long live the Senate and People of America! Don’t forget, plebeians, show your loyalty to our Orange Imperator who has freed you into slavery by enthusiastically voting for his choices for consuls, praetors and tribunes!
Posted by: rufus magister | Nov 11 2016 1:22 utc | 60
Well, well, well, isn’t this interesting. Apparently the Russian Federation was in touch with the Day-Glo Dictator’s campaign after all. So says the Assistant FM Ryabakov. I, for one, am shocked that both a sitting and a campaigning politician uttered falsehoods.
Oh, and did I mention, pro-Kremlin commentator Markov says “they were feeding Wikileaks too”? Maybe that’s why Assange did nothing to provide a little needed transparency as to The Donald’s murky business and tax affairs.
For the record, I don’t have a problem with the FSB and their minions rummaging around the files, what with all of the “color revolutions” we’ve run and that. I do have trouble with Americans conspiring with them. The Donald’s earlier call for help with missing emails seems even less a joke now.
This was an interesting rant to see at site devoted to shipping news. The author, Andrew Craig-Bennett, has long experience in shipping in the Pacific and maritime journalism. He has an interesting notion — we’re out of Gutenberg’s world of print and accuracy and into the internet age of clickbait echochambers. The author identifies Trump, as well as Duterte, Farage, and Johnson, as “traitors” to the elite who —
…have, with the use of the internet social media, most especially Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, successfully suckered the soggy mass of lazy, ill-educated, ill-read and ill-informed proles, and a good supply of what V.I. Lenin called “useful idiots”, in three nations, into putting them into power, by telling lies and by promising the proles what they want.
What the proles want is ‘good jobs’ but with the ability to buy the stuff they buy now at cheap prices, because it is made by under paid, hardworking, men and women in other countries who have ‘stolen their jobs’, and they want ‘no foreigners’. They can’t have this, of course, but no matter, they don’t read, they just look at ‘memes’, and the damage is done.
The toffish high-minded tone of condescension towards us workers notwithstanding, it does reflect what the lumpenproletariat expects of their Fearless Leader. They’re being set up for a big disappointment.
He quite entertainingly reworks a well-known statement by the first English ambassador to the Forbidden City, Lord Macartney. The original spoke of China fading and England rising in the late 1700’s:
“The United States of America is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbors merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom”
“The breaking-up of the power of the USA (no very improbable event) would occasion a complete subversion of the commerce, not only of Europe and North America, but a very sensible change in the other quarters of the world. The industry and the ingenuity of the Americans would be checked and enfeebled, but they would not be annihilated. Her ports would no longer be protected by her Navy; they would be attempted by all the adventurers of all trading nations, who would search every channel, creek, and cranny of Europe and America for a market, and for some time be the cause of much rivalry and disorder. Nevertheless, as China, from the weight of her riches and the genius and spirits of her people, is become the first political, marine, and commercial Power on the globe, it is reasonable to think that she would prove the greatest gainer by such a revolution as I have alluded to, and rise superior over every competitor.”
In the course of the “rivalry and disorder”, there will be fortunes to be made, amidst the general collapse. And our industry is very good at finding those. The really good news is that there will be such a shortage of investment capital that shipping returns will rise as investment becomes scarcer.
I believe he is suggesting here that the present glut of shipping capacity will cease to grow, as financing for new building dries up. In containers, the bankruptcy of Hanjin Line and the ongoing consolidation will likely accelerate. Perhaps the present 20K TEU vessels being built by Maersk and others will be the only ones launched for a few years.
Back to The Donald, yes, he does rather give the appearance of “an insufficient man” on the quarterdeck. Safety and good order and discipline seem of little concern to the good Captain. Queeg or Bligh, do you think? I’m thinking Queeg. He will find who ate his strawberries.
Were I on the CC of CCP, I would be arguing to cut exports to America and redirect the goods and investment towards expanding domestic demand. The Chinese have been trying to engineer such a move, if memory serves. I might be tempted to start dropping some surplus bond and T-bills into the market as well.
But of course the real crisis will come when diners fail to get their meals at swanky restaurants, the lawns of the McMansions are untended, that new deck or addition languishes unbuilt, and our one percenters forced to care for their own children.
“Oh, the humanity….”
Posted by: rufus magister | Nov 11 2016 3:40 utc | 70
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