This week in electoral politics includes a Nebraska GOP primary and a West Virginia primary. And there will be plenty of other topics to raise at this evening’s Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. We start at 8:00pm.
Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight, the Federal Way, Tri-Cities and Redmond chapters meet. On Thursday, the Kent chapter meets. Finally, on Monday, the Yakima chapter meets.
There are 178 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find (or start!) a chapter near you.
Just a reminder folks:
Having resoundingly defeated all other candidates from a very large and diverse field of “conservative” political leaders, Donald Trump is now the top dog and official leader of the Republican Party.
As such, his stated plans and objectives for the United States are the plans and objectives of the Republican Party. When Donald announces his ambition to build a border wall, that is the ambition of the Republican Party. When Mr. Trump declares his intention to deploy an army of militarized police into our communities to round up and deport 11 million people, that is the official intention of the Republican party. When Donald Trump declares it will be his policy to compel religious minorities to register with the federal government, that is the policy of the Republican Party. And when Donald Trump signals his willingness to default on debt securities held in retirement funds by millions of American military veterans, police officers, first responders, public servants, private citizens, insurance companies, and financial institutions, that is the policy of the Republican Party.
Trump speaks for them now. That is their choice. They made it willingly and rather decisively. As Democrats and progressives it is our job to make sure nobody forgets it. As Trump pivots to the general election we must pivot as well. This is no longer about Trump, his personal brand, or his flavor of identity politics. From now through election day this is about the Republican Party.
Speculation about the Pariah Party nominee’s running mate is focusing not on who Drumpf will pick, but on who won’t turn him down. That’s a rather short list of desperadoes, has-beens, and never-weres.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/co.....trumps-vp/
Meanwhile, Ted Crud is being sued for intellectual property theft.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cr.....in-videos/
@2,
my guess would be Sessions. Doesn’t help him with conservative women, and certainly not with conservative Latino voters. But helps him in the ways he cares about – hard core evangelicals, establishment party donors, and security hawks.
Arkansas. Good old boy. Southern justice.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ar.....young-men/
AAA says a test used by Washington and other states to determine whether drivers are impaired by pot use doesn’t work and results in innocent drivers being convicted and guilty drivers getting off scot-free.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/te.....lawed-aaa/
Whenever Texas politicians complain they don’t have money for basic public services, someone should ask about that state’s habit of building $60 million stadiums for its high school football teams.
http://bleacherreport.com/arti.....=editorial
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It isn’t about money, it’s about priorities. People whose values differ from ours spend just as much (if not more) taxpayer money; they just spend it on different stuff. We might hire teachers and buy textbooks; they covet shiny stadiums.
This reminds me of when then-governor Rick Perry, who will never be president thank God, cut Texasses’ firefighting budget by 85%, and then when wildfires raged out of control and burned up his state, hopped a plane to D.C. and begged Two Term President Obama for federal aid. He got $50 million. That may sound like a lot, but these days, it doesn’t even pay for a high school football stadium, at least not in Texass.
Maybe instead of spending $62.8 million on a stadium for kids, Texassians should’ve paid back the $50 million we lent them to save them from their own bad judgment.
The only good thing about Donald Trump is that he’s not Hillary Clinton.
The only good thing about Hillary Clinton is that she’s not Donald Trump.
The choices this election are dismal.
I’ve heard people complain that Two Term President Obama is “weak.” I don’t know where they get this from. Same place they get their other partisan talking points, I guess — they pull it out of their asses. Obama certainly recognizes the threat posed by an increasingly aggressive China, and has responded to it by assigning more U.S. military assets to the Far East and asserting U.S. navigation rights in the South China Sea.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/10/.....index.html
China is not yet shooting at American ships for exercising their right under international law and treaties to navigate in international waters. But the Chinese are becoming more belligerent. Their response to these incursions has escalated from verbal “warnings” to scrambling ships and fighters.
Anyone who thinks China will never sink an American Navy ship is dreaming. The only reason they’re not doing it yet is because they’re not ready to challenge U.S. military power. But they’re building that capability as quickly as they can, and not for show; they intend to use it after they get it.
China is smart. They send their best students to America, to be educated by us in our universities, and we send trained scientists, engineers, and computer experts back to China. These people are then employed in their home country on a wide range of activities that include hacking into our national security computers, figuring out ways to disrupt our communications, and designing weapons to destroy our satellites, ships, and planes.
And they’re building their military with our money. We send them our factory jobs, and they send us crappy “Made In China” goods, for which we send them our money, which they use to build weapons to use against us.
Americans need to wake up to this threat. This isn’t a conservative talking point. It isn’t a conservative-versus-liberal issue. Centrist policy thinkers are sounding alarms. The vast majority of Americans, including many of our political leaders and policymakers, have deluded themselves into thinking China’s intentions are peaceful and they’re only interested in building their economy and creating a prosperous middle class. The China experts closest to the situation, who’ve spent a lifetime studying China, its culture, people, government, and policies, are telling us that’s dead wrong.
Leaders and influential opinion shapers in countries bordering the South China Sea are nervous. In Japan, they’re talking about acquiring their own nuclear deterrent. Vietnam, against whom we fought a bloody war two generations ago, not only doesn’t hate us but is looking to the United States for protection from their neighbor, whom they fear far more than they resent what we did to their country. The Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, and lesser countries like Brunei are all concerned about China’s claim to own the entire South China Sea, right up to their shores, and all its resources; and China’s plainly visible moves to back up those claims with military aggression. Most nervous of all, of course, is Taiwan, which China claims as a province.
The 20th century was bloodied by the collapse of monarchies and colonial empires, revolutions, and two world wars birthed by fascism. An exhausted world hoped for a more peaceful 21st century focused on commerce, more broadly shared prosperity, growth of a global middle class, and spreading democracy and capitalism.
But a growing body of policy experts now foresees Chinese aggression, and a likely major war between China and the United States over which of these countries will be king of the hill, as the probable signal event of the new century.
That war is coming, whether we want it or not, because China wants it. What the Chinese people want is irrelevant, because China is still ruled by a ruthless communist dictatorship. Despite the liberalization of their economy, their political system isn’t freer or more liberal at all. Beijing’s semi-embrace of capitalism should be seen as just a tactical move to make China richer and therefore more able to acquire the technology, and better able to afford the military buildup, they’re undertaking for the purpose of defeating the United States in a future military confrontation that they consider the cornerstone of their national policies.
You may think this is some brainwashed rabbit or Roger Rabbit impersonator posting rightwing bleating. It’s not. I’ve been studying and reading about this issue for some time now. Persuasive to me is the fact that alarms are being raised by serious thinkers who are anything but rightwing, some of whom have worked for Obama or are close to the Clinton campaign. And, of course, I believe the last thing America needs in order to face the Chinese threat is putting a dilettante in the person of one Donald J. Trump, or an idiot like George W. Bush, in charge of our national security and defense.
The Chinese are smart, cagey, devious, and deadly serious. We need a smart and serious leader to prepare us for the challenge they pose. I believe the best response to China is a strong defense that will persuade them to stand down by making them realize they can’t beat us on the battlefield and will lose if they try. The worst thing we can do is not keep up with, and stay ahead of, their growing military capabilities because that will give them the confidence to attack us.
There is no such leader in today’s Republican Party, which has devolved into a collection of fools who worship ignorance and stupidity. Brainless saber rattling doesn’t get you there; it gets you killed. We need smart leadership and that can only come from the Democrats. What I’m saying is, a strong and prepared U.S. military is what will allow us to be pacifists in the future, so that’s not a place where we want to cut corners. Making sure we have the ability to defend ourselves, and having the means of deterring aggression, doesn’t make us warmongers. It’s what you do with a strong military that determines whether you’re a peacekeeper or a warmonger. On this point, too, Democrats have been consistently right and Republicans have been consistently wrong. Supporting military spending and being in favor of a strong U.S. military capable of deterring China doesn’t make me a Republican.
@8,
I’d like to see better choices too. But I have to disagree with your overall characterization. I think the choice is becoming very clear.
We still have a two-party system, such as it is. While one of those two parties is transforming its national agenda into an ongoing program of racial nationalism, global isolationism, and domestic nihilism, the other party is struggling to overcome obstructionism to take on the serious challenges that face us. At the national level only one of the two parties demonstrates any capacity for effective governance. Rhetoric aside, the history of Republican Presidencies and Republican Congressional control has been in steady decline for a few decades. The answer, as I see it, is not less partisanship but more. There may be plenty about a President Clinton II that I’m not happy about. But I’m more committed than ever to fight for the Democratic Party to win the White House and begin to win back the Congress. That’s an easy and positive choice for me.
@8 That’s pretty infantile. These are the candidates the American people have chosen. They got the most votes. Sorry your preferred candidate lost, but as a voter in a minority faction, you don’t get to run the country. That’s how our majority-rule system works.
The GOP’s voters have chosen to follow a lying, dishonest, racist, misogynistic demagogue who’s so repulsive most of the leading politicians of his own party refuse to support him. That’s their problem.
Anyone who didn’t see this coming is blind. These are voters who, for years now, have supported a fascist party that suppresses votes, denies science, tolerates racists and pedophiles, and robs its own base of their jobs, pensions, and health care. This is the part of America that puts stupidity on a pedestal and worships it. We should have limited expectations of Republican voters and their nominating process.
Of course, if you’re an ignoramus who leans Republican (but maybe aren’t quite sure you want to be personally associated with their brand, such as it is), maybe you also believe all the invective the GOP’s professional hatemongers have hurled at Hillary Clinton over the years. The fact is, she’s never been indicted for, much less convicted of, a crime. (The same can’t be said of many Republican politicians that Republican voters gleefully vote for.) Hillary is so utterly despised by the right that don’t you think if she’s the evil person they portray her as, their overzealous witch hunters and prosecutors would have gotten at least a misdemeanor conviction against her by now?
Get off the crack, my friend. Stop believing your own bullshit. This election presents us with the clearest choice of our lifetimes. Trump is a man of no character with totalitarian tendencies. Hillary Clinton has far more integrity than you’re giving her credit for, is experienced, is a pragmatist, and by virtue of having faced and survived the fire of America’s virulent domestic rightwing politics, has the smarts and toughness to stand up against our country’s foreign adversaries. Who to vote for in November is a no-brainer, and if you can’t figure it out, you have no brains.
“Get off the crack, my friend.”
Take your own advice, rodent.
Another bad day on Wall Street for mattress investors, shorts, and people hiding under rocks or stashing their money in bank accounts paying 0.1% a year of interest. The DJIA is up almost 200 points and my stocks are gaining about $4,500 this morning.
Republicans talk like things are falling about. The truth is, while the stock market’s daily movements have been choppy over the last year, stock prices are holding very firmly at valuations above historical averages, and companies continue to shovel trainloads of money to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividend raises. Companies raising dividends this week include Wells Fargo and Exxon. I own both those stocks, so my income just went up again.
You won’t see Republicans running on the economy this year. Why? Because unemployment is below 5%, job growth is running over 200,000 in most months, and wages are beginning to rise. Yeah, GDP growth is slow, but that’s true of all countries and has far more to do with demographics that nobody can control than the policies of incumbent parties and politicians. Things were much, much worse in our country when Two Term President Obama took office, so it’s very tough for Republicans to run against the Democrats’ economic record. Especially seeing as the economy would be doing better if Republicans hadn’t done everything they could to sabotage the post-2008 recovery.
As for me, I’m doing fine, because capitalism is alive and well. Anyone who thinks I’m a socialist is just plain nuts. I concede I’m a lot like Republicans in terms of temperament, because I’m lazy, greedy, don’t work, and live off the labor of others. But I vote for Democrats because Republicans are bad for business. Their stupid economic policies lead to recessions, stock market crashes, and lower corporate profits.
Needless to say, I’m highly amused by the antics of Republican idiots like Puffybutt who brag about stashing their money in bank accounts paying 0.1% interest and advertise their “investing strategy” on this blog. Just to play a math game with this, let’s assume Piddles has $1 million to invest, his bank account earned all of $2.74 today. ($1,000,000 x .001 / 365) Fuck that, I’d rather have the $4,500 I’m making today.
What I do isn’t some secret strategy, nor does it require a genius IQ. It doesn’t even require any work. My formula is stupidly simple: (1) Get out of debt, then stay out of debt. (2) Save money instead of spending it. (3) Buy stocks of large blue-chip companies that are well-managed, profitable, and pay dividends they regularly increase. (4) Sit on those stocks; don’t trade in and out of them, and above all, don’t try to “time” the market because absolutely no one can do that successfully. (5) Reinvest the dividends so you’re compounding your returns.
Compounding is the key to this. If you don’t yet understanding how powerful compounding is, then grab your calculator, and I’ll show you. Let’s assume a modest rate of return, say 2% a year in capital gains, a 3% dividend yield, and 1% a year of dividend growth, on average. Now punch in $1 and multiply it by 6%, again and again, and see what your dollar is worth 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now. And there you are.
The beauty of this is you don’t have to beat the market. You don’t have to make great stock picks. You don’t have to find the next Starbucks or Apple. All you have to do is make ordinary pedestrian returns from ordinary pedestrian stocks. It works every time, because $1 x 1.06 will always equal $1.06, and $1.06 x 1.06 will always equal $1.12, no matter how many times you do it. It works exactly the same for rich people, poor people, white people, black people, brown people, etc., because math is infallible.
People who say there is no God are wrong. They’re hung up on the conception of God as a creature-like being that looks, thinks, and acts like a human. There is in fact an infallible, omniscient, and unvarying power in the universe, and that power is math. Mathematical compounding of money ALWAYS works. It’s impossible to screw it up. If you save instead of spend, put the money in stocks earning even a piddling return, and compound the earnings, you will end up rich. It is not humanly possible to fuck this up, because the math will work the same no matter how much you abuse it. The only way you can fuck this up is to sell your stock and stash the proceeds under a mattress or in a bank account paying 0.1% interest.
So don’t take financial advice from Poodypoof, take it from the rabbit. The rabbit is wise and knows what he’s talking about. Math works, stupidity doesn’t, it’s that simple.
And it sure beats working for a living. Working is the worst way of getting money there is. Having a job means you do all the work and other people get most of the money from your hard work. I don’t want to live like that. Do you? Nobody should work. The moral corruption of the capitalist system is able to thrive only because most people accept it and dutifully report to their jobs day after day while lazy and unproductive capitalist thieves like me rob them of the fruits of their labor. Capitalists produce nothing; ALL the wealth is produced by workers, yet somehow it ends up in the bank accounts of capitalists. Under a system like that, any rabbit with half a brain would rather be a capitalist than a worker.
@12 What makes you think I don’t? The thing about smug idiots like you is they don’t realize they’re being smug and don’t know they’re idiots. I was an idiot once, too, but I wised up. It didn’t take me very long once I got out into the real world. None of us are born with wisdom; what matters is whether you acquire curiosity and a capacity to learn, and that’s a matter of conscious choice. Back in 1964, I was a pro-Goldwater naif. Fifty years later, you won’t see me voting for the likes of Trump or any other Republican.
@12 (continued) So explain to me how ranting about the unsatisfactory choices in this election constitutes a constructive plan for deciding how you’re going to vote on November 8?
You have a choice between Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Tell me what you’re going to do with that. Tell me what you think I should do with that. Crying isn’t useful, so try being a grownup. What does a grownup do in this situation?
He makes the best choice possible. And given what the choices are, that’s so easy little kids should be able to do it without difficulty.
Texans being asses:
“Target’s (TGT) policy of letting transgender customers and employees use the bathroom of their choice is now drawing fire from Texas officials. The state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, wants the retailer to spell out how it will protect customers who he suggested could be endangered by the policy. ‘Regardless of whether Texas legislates on this topic, it is possible that allowing men in women’s restrooms could lead to criminal and otherwise unwanted activity,’ he said in a May 3 letter to Target CEO Brian Cornell. ‘As chief lawyer and law enforcement officer for the State of Texas, I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from those who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes.'”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lo.....er-policy/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I guess now Republicans aren’t even going to wait until they can pass laws legalizing discrimination; they want to fuck with LGBTs, so they’re going to fuck with them, with or without discriminatory laws with which to do so. Welcome to the Lawless Republican States of What Used to be the Land of the Free.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from those who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”
A safety policy stating that “No Republicans are allowed to use toilet rooms” should keep the people of Texas safe.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from zombies who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from land sharks who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from evil killer clowns who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from sexy werewolves who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from Jade Helm agents who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from yrch, goblins, and Balrogs who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”.
“I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from Chemtrails attacks who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes”.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
This is the 21st century Republican Party.
“What does a grownup do in this situation?”
Well, if you ar republican you run into little Suzzies toilet room and cry with her.
@26. Ireland – true home of the Free and the Brave.
@17 Yeah, make Republicans pee in the bushes, that’s pretty much what they do now.
A Republican is someone who thinks background checks should be required for voting, but not for packing heat in bathrooms.
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/.....37971.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I think it should be the other way around. But then, I’m a wise old rabbit, not one of you stupid humans.
Cruz now saying that if he should win Hell, that maybe then he’ll get back in, after that popular demand.