The Goat Pen

eCat wrote:Michael Savage has told Trump too much too soon

Pat Buchanan has told him the line in the sand with Iran was a mistake.

Like I said last week here, there is a reason every President in our nation's short history has been deliberate in making certain changes. This is not a small business. The stakes are high and the complexity is unmatched in comparison to any other business/institution.

Since the Berkeley riots the preorder for Milo Yiannopoulis' book is now #1 bestselling on amazon. Those idiots did a fine job for Milo.

You misspelled protest.

Milo is the Clarence Thomas of gay people.

And of course Trump is going to do away with the Johnson Amendment that threatened tax exemption for churches dealing in politics. That was his carrot to evangelicals and it'll slide in there amidst all of the frenzy to Make America Great Quick.

Trump: "I hear good things about these two guys. I follow them, as well as Frederick and Booker T."

eCat wrote:not sure I understand the timing or logic in rolling back Dodd Frank rule that required brokers to only make deals that are in the best interest of the client and not the brokerage firm.

common sense would say that if a brokerage firm is fucking over clients to pad their wallets, they won't have those clients very long so why is this rule necessary but the optics of it aren't very good coming from a standpoint of having a put the people first platform.

I'd like to know why this was a priority to Trump.

Dodd-Frank could certainly be fixed (it won't be). But, nixing the fiduciary rule is nothing more than a payout to the brokers. The idea that they are getting rid of it to protect the little guy is laughable.

The bitch is we've lost manufacturing jobs to countries who employ thousands of new humans who are kicking our butt with their tiny hands. So to speak. Whatever. It's fair to say our child labor laws haven't been examined in forever and probably are in need of fresh eyes. If we want to compete on a level playing field.

White House press secretary says Iran attacked a US Navy ship, an act of war. Problem is, it didn't happen. Oops. There is a precedent in American history for this kind of bullshit starting actual shooting wars (Gulf of Tonkin and Spanish-American War). Given that we have a reckless moron now in charge, I'm not betting against it happening again.

We may want to pay attention to what the Germans have to say about our current situation. They've got some experience in this field.

" In these cases, the small guy truly could lose, and a recent survey shows that advisors agree with this concern."

Oh, I'm sure they're very concerned about the small guy and that that's the main reason they want this rolled back...

Speaking of Rolled back, I hear your tiny dick is a turtle.

the family of the kid that disassembled a clock as a "project" had his defamation case thrown out of court and are required to pay legal fees.

good

Do you think that dragging that kid out of school and detaining him was the correct and appropriate move?

eCat wrote:the family of the kid that disassembled a clock as a "project" had his defamation case thrown out of court and are required to pay legal fees.

good

Why the fuck is that good? This is completely against what you claim to stand for as a quasi-libertarian.

Cletus wrote:Do you think that dragging that kid out of school and detaining him was the correct and appropriate move?

I don't know - I think it may have been the reaction they were looking for.


His sister got suspended for threatening to blow up the school 3 years earlier.

I suspect they felt there was a very sympathetic audience to them given Obama's stance on public issues - and they were right. Obama had to weigh in on it.

Saint wrote:

eCat wrote:the family of the kid that disassembled a clock as a "project" had his defamation case thrown out of court and are required to pay legal fees.

good

Why the fuck is that good? This is completely against what you claim to stand for as a quasi-libertarian.

trying to make a buck off defamation lawsuits against a free press is what I stand for as a libertarian?

Today at the White House CEO event President Trump, leaning on the say-so and presence of big Wall Street CEOs, started ripping up the reforms put in place to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. “We have some of the bankers here. There’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it,” Trump told JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon.

This should tell us several things. The most important is that 'populism' has always been the wrong name for what Trumpism represents. The unifying message of Trumpism is nationalism, and particularly an aggressive, zero-sum nationalism. It is also summed up simply in "Make America Great Again." The style may be 'populist' in some generic sense. But the message and agenda is nationalism. That is the focus around which all the actions of these rancorous 13 days come together into a unified whole - aggressive attacks on friends and foes alike, threats of tariffs against non-compliant foreign states, clampdowns on immigration, etc.

You'll notice that President Trump often talks about "workers" but it is almost always in the vein of protecting American workers from abuse by foreigners. Especially since the Trump virtually never speaks about wages. And he never spoke about wealth inequality, financial security provided by programs like Medicare and Social Security, let alone worker protections or labor unions. One might add job security, affordable education for children and retirement security generally to the list of the undiscussed. The real theme is one Trump articulated clearly yesterday in his National Prayer Breakfast speech: "We have to be tough. It's time we're going to be a little tough, folks. We're taking advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore. It's not going to happen anymore."

We may say that Trump is flipflopping or being hypocritical by embracing the individuals, policies and priorities of the country's financial elite, who he notionally campaigned against. Both are true in a way. But that doesn't tell us enough. The Trump message was about nationalism, power and aggression against the nations of the world who are 'taking advantage of" us and laughing at us. That kind of aggression against outsiders, with their domestic counterparts, the 'elites', can overlap with economic concerns. They're quite distinct.

But a proper understanding of Trumpism is also a political opportunity for Democrats. Trump is cozying up to the Wall Street barons he campaigned against. He's about to throw 25 million Americans off their health care. “We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, because frankly I have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses and they can’t borrow money,” he said again today, while he also talks about vast tax cuts for his wealthy friends and tax increases for many ordinary working and middle class families. This is a perfect evocation of government by the richest, for the richest, by the rich - and from the President's own lips. The complete indifference to the supposed interests of the people who voted for him has so many examples it's almost comical. Democrats need to be building this storyline now.

Before concluding, let me make a point about nationalism. Nationalism is not a bad word or a bad thing, in itself. I don't believe so at least. If you do, it is important to recognize that a strain of non-retributive nationalism is the default assumption of the great majority of Americans. Any politics which doesn't recognize that is doomed to fail. But there are xenophobic and non-xenophobic breeds of nationalism. As I've noted several times recently, an aggressive, defensive nationalism is in some sense natural and generally harmless for small, weak countries. They often are taken advantage of and ill-used by the nations of the world. It can be a realistic basis of national policy. But when strong countries, even the strongest country in the history of the world, start indulging fantasies of weakness and grievance things can get dangerous quickly. Weak and small countries by definition can't do that much harm. Their grievance and sense of victimization is inextricable from their very weakness. But when grievance and rage at outsiders takes hold among the strong, they are capable of committing great evil, precisely because of their power. Victimology is a powerful drug.

We should recognize what this is, the danger it represents and the open routes to mobilize politically against it.

eCat wrote:

Saint wrote:

eCat wrote:the family of the kid that disassembled a clock as a "project" had his defamation case thrown out of court and are required to pay legal fees.

good

Why the fuck is that good? This is completely against what you claim to stand for as a quasi-libertarian.

trying to make a buck off defamation lawsuits against a free press is what I stand for as a libertarian?

OK, well, that part I agree with. But you seriously don't think a kid threatening to blow up a school is a national security risk, do you? I would question a kid who, at some point in his or her life, didn't want to blow up their school.

I think the family wanted the attention