Trump's Card

[anton pulisov]

Dubya also smeared Al Gore for his association with Bill Clinton. "We're gonna clean up the Oval Office" was the talking point used, if I remember correctly.

[Erskine Bridges]

By the tone of Kirsty "almost as nice as Annie Lennox" Wark on Newsnight, it would seem the one thing Trump can do to gain bipartisan cooperation and the grudging approval of Concerned Citizens like her is to get his war on in Afghanistan/Pakistan. The Black Watch naturally don't recruit in her kids' school (okay maybe OTC shite goes on). Then she had some Blackwater ghoul coming on with a Bannon approved plan for a "Viceroy" structure for the US presence in Afghanistan, naturally involving East India style private armies (not mercenaries, oh no). The questioning from (please pension her now, and sack that sickly looking Dragons Den arse yesterday) Wark was pitiful, shitebag stuff.

I caught that. If he'd been in the studio with her, she'd have been on her knees on front of him slurping away. I kept waiting for a probing question, the guy was effectively advocating privatising war with all that entails but no, not a whisper of cross examination. But you can see where Erik Prince is coming from. Cut out the middle man but keep the money river flowing. Reduce the number of American soldiers dying but keep funding the 'defence' contractors and killing ragheads. Virtually no oversight, no embedded press, no come backs. Until that policy eventually creates a really effective resistance. An Isis that can strike right at America. And here. Using something a bit more scary than white vans.

And people like Wark will ask 'why?' She's always been a tartan neocon.

[Satchmo Distel]

I hope the Dems have Charlottesville on 24 hour ad cycles in 2020, for Trump or Pence, because Trump just digs himself in deeper and drags the GOP into an ugly mire every day it stays in the news.

[diggedy derek]

Erskine

I caught that. If he'd been in the studio with her, she'd have been on her knees on front of him slurping away.

As in, sucking his dick? I find that imagery pretty objectionable tbh.

[Nefertiti2]

Median wage.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html

N
I agree that maternity pay might raise the participation of women, but we don't know how much. I can't see anybody is near 5.3% yet.

You really are becoming more of a reactionary old buffer daily.

The United States is the only developed country not to offer paid maternity leave as part of federal policy. Just 59 percent of workers say their employers offer them paid leave, according to the council.

That may be affecting American competitiveness. Family-friendly policies in other countries explain nearly a third of the decrease in women’s labor force participation relative to those countries between 1990 and 2010, according to a 2013 study by Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn of Cornell University.

After California became the first state to offer paid parental leave, new mothers were more likely to return to work, according to a study by Maya Rossin-Slater and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University and Christopher J. Ruhm of the University of Virginia. One to three years later, mothers of small children were working more and at higher incomes. Paid leave provides job continuity, economists say, so women are less likely to leave the labor force. Paid leave is particularly important for low-income mothers, who more than doubled their maternity leaves in California.

[Nefertiti2]

It is pretty objectionalble but considerably less objectionable than the imagery of Newsnight going from two white American women demanding intervention in Afghanistan to a white man from blackwater. heavily involved in war crimes demanding that he should be contracted for the extrajudicial killing of brown people , and being unchallenged by one of the BBC's senior journalists,.

As if to put it in some context. the BBC then went on to discuss the traumatic effect of Grenfell on the inhabitants and neighbours two months on. the death toll in Grenfell is considerably less than Erik Prince and his goons treat as acceptable collateral damage- or deliberate murder.

[Tubby Isaacs]

You really are becoming more of a reactionary old buffer daily.

Jeez.

Obviously I agree with national paid maternity leave. Do you really think that I don't? And I am aware California has it, and a couple of more states have it on the way.

I still don't see 5.3% GDP growth from Sanders' plan. That's what we're talking about. Nor did lots of economists who know much more than I do,.

[Tubby Isaacs]

adjust it for inflation and household you must

As for how he gets the 5.3%, I dunno. I've never run an economic model.

Ah ok, I thought you were sticking up specifically for the 5.3%. That's what I've mainly been thinking about. Sanders has some decent ideas to raise growth, I agree with you on that.

That's income rather than wages you've got there, and for households not individuals. Is that a better measure than mine?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Some interesting stories about Obamacare doing well. Just one county in Ohio without an insurer.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/..._for_2018.html

I was suprised to read recently how few people were chucked off their old plans "by Obamacare". Something like 1%.

[Incandenza]

Jeez.

Obviously I agree with national paid maternity leave. Do you really think that I don't? And I am aware California has it, and a couple of more states have it on the way.

It's not a universal program in California. You have to pay in to the State Disability Insurance, which not all employees do. I'm a state employee, and I don't pay in to SDI, for example. Federal employees don't either, same for a lot of temp/short term contract employees. It's certainly better than nothing, but just a FYI that not everyone gets the benefit.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Cheers, Inca.

Are there plans to expand it?

[Erskine Bridges]

Erskine



As in, sucking his dick? I find that imagery pretty objectionable tbh.

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking as I watched it. I'm sorry if you find that image objectionable.
There's a lot worse going on to be objecting to.

[Fussbudget]

I'm sorry if you find that image objectionable.

Haha, top non-apology. Yeah derek, how dare you object to flippantly sexist imagery you oversensitive snowflake.

[anton pulisov]

Ah ok, I thought you were sticking up specifically for the 5.3%. That's what I've mainly been thinking about. Sanders has some decent ideas to raise growth, I agree with you on that.

Well, I can't judge if the 5.3% was right or wrong, but an economist did some number crunching and came up with a figure. Other economists didn't agree. Difficult to know who is right.

That's income rather than wages you've got there, and for households not individuals. Is that a better measure than mine?

The median wage you showed was not corrected for inflation. My understanding is that US median wage has essentially stayed stagnant since it became decoupled from GDP since Reaganomics kicked off in the 80s and was continued by the Bushes and the Democrats. GDP was essentially siphoned off by the rentier class (Bane Capital and the like). Because the US controls all the oil, oil was denominated in US dollars, making it the reserve currency of the world. Petrodollars from oil states were repatriated to Wall Street as a safe investment and the US rentier class threw some of these petrodollars, in the form of credit card debt, at the ever poorer US working classes to keep them happy. Banks were deregulated to siphon off more money to the rentier class, but only after they promised Clinton that they'd throw some cheap mortgages at working class people. Cause slick Willy cares about the little guy. The rentier class got richer, and Joe Sixpack could buy his truck and his house on cheap credit. So everybody was happy. But Joe Sixpack didn't notice that his real wages were being whittled away and that he was actually in the pocket of his rentier class creditors. This successful charade went on for so long that everyone was convinced that Alan Greenspan was the new messiah and that there would never be a recession again. The only thing is, you can only throw credit at Joe Sixpack for so long until he can't pay anymore, and he is in a shit ton of debt that he can't pay off, because, well, his real wages haven't really increased since 1980. And that's when the real economy came crashing down.

There were so many fucking petrodollars streaming into the USA from the mid 1970s onwards that if they had chosen to invest it in public infrastructure, the USA would have a Swiss railway system, Nordic healthcare and colonies on Mars.

Roman warriors died securing Europe's resources so that Roman Emperors could build lavish monuments, entertain themselves in lavish surroundings, surround themselves with beautiful women and organise choreographed battles in large coliseums.

US soldiers died on the world's oil fields so that orange faced men could build gold plated towers, entertain themselves in gold plated rooms, surround themselves with beautiful women and watch WWF.

[Lang Spoon]

Preach.

[Hot Pepsi]

It's so depressing. When do the barbarians come and can I be on their side?

Visigoth culture seems alright to me.

[Etienne]

Wonder why Republican congressmen don't desert Trump?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, I know the median wage I put up wasn't adjusted for inflation. I wasn't needing to be more precise than say that I didn't see evidence of that scale of wage deterioration in you'd talked about. I'm just wondering what difference doing it in terms of households did. And of course income and wages are different.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I also think it's interesting that Corbyn, in his leadership campaigns and General Election campaign, didn't talk about China or anywhere else like Sanders did. Some overlap in terms of opposing TPIP but if he'd started banging on like Sanders, he'd have ruffled a few of his audience's feathers.

[Lang Spoon]

This is so shite. Leo Varadkar now looks a sober statesman next to the dribblers in Britain. A spoofer like Trudeau can manage the same trick next to Trump. The Visigoths don't seem too bad at all at all HP. They gave good arch. The mosque at Córdoba is based on (built by the same craftsmen, like the Dome on the Rock was built by Byzantine masons) Visigoth/Late Roman stylee. They had way more taste than Trump Tower.

[anton pulisov]

Varadkar has the added bonus of succeeding from Inda. That's always going to make you look good.

[anton pulisov]

I also think it's interesting that Corbyn, in his leadership campaigns and General Election campaign, didn't talk about China or anywhere else like Sanders did. Some overlap in terms of opposing TPIP but if he'd started banging on like Sanders, he'd have ruffled a few of his audience's feathers.

Well, US workers have been screwed over by Republicans and Democrats allowing corporations to outsource jobs to low wage countries.

But I don't think that's a genie that can be put back in the bottle now. The USA and China are in a death embrace to the bitter end, until every last barrel of oil has been dug out of the ground, turned into plastic and dumped into the ocean.

[Lang Spoon]

Now I fear the fucker could win an election. Ireland's 73, 79 moment. TINA rampant. Tax cuts and "focused" welfare. Then spending cuts when we fuck up with the tax giveaways again. All for the people Who Get Up Early In The Morning. And take the Indo.

[Hot Pepsi]

This is so shite. Leo Varadkar now looks a sober statesman next to the dribblers in Britain. A spoofer like Trudeau can manage the same trick next to Trump. The Visigoths don't seem too bad at all at all HP. They gave good arch. The mosque at Córdoba is based on (built by the same craftsmen, like the Dome on the Rock was built by Byzantine masons) Visigoth/Late Roman stylee. They had way more taste than Trump Tower.

A lot of good stuff came out of the "dark ages" and the Roman Empire was largely a disaster for most people who lived under it. But rich guys in the Renaissance and, I guess, right up through modernity have been heavily biased in favor of Greco-Roman culture.

I don't really see the coming apocalypse as caused by the US or China. It's causes by a transnational class of plutocrats who don't really have any loyalty to any country or idea but their own aggrandizement, mammon, and the shareholders who are mostly the same sort of assholes or people aspiring to be the same sort of assholes.

Same as it ever was. Kings and queens forced their offspring to marry the offspring of other kings and queens so their grandchildren would be tied to both empires. Etc. Same shit now.

And China's ownership class is, if anything, worse than ours. Ours - Trump and a few others excluded - at least usually pretend to be worried about their reputations or mortal souls. The European aristocracy pretends to have taste and some appreciation for culture. The Japanese have their whole thing. But the Chinese ownership class seem to be proud of how much money they can blow on worthless shit. A million Trumps.**


* Which is also a big reason why Christianity has been so distorted - so many of its later interpreters stripped it of its original Jewish context while tying it to Empire.

** I don't mean to disparage Chinese people in general or Chinese "culture" - as if a massive country of two-billion people has one culture or even a hundred cultures. They probably have a million.

Their food practices are, by and large, very cruel to animals, but then so are ours.

[anton pulisov]

Europe and China are in a death embrace as well. I was at a presentation in Sweden where some guy was showing off about how Sweden was leading the way in CO2 reductions. I called bullshit on it. Lots of Swedish manufacturing has been moved to China. And with it the CO2 emissions. But planet Earth doesn't care which country is producing the CO2 emissions.