tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post5515063566614718853..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Ru Paul: "I'm A Realist"Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-39468862067733234492016-08-14T21:38:44.226-07:002016-08-14T21:38:44.226-07:00I do wonder if online communication has made me me...I do wonder if online communication has made me meaner.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-69100167842745816412016-08-14T11:28:50.515-07:002016-08-14T11:28:50.515-07:00> What do you think about Hillary Clinton and t...> What do you think about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats?<br />><br />> "I'm A Realist"<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-perfect-gop-nominee.html<br />---------------<br />The Perfect G.O.P. Nominee<br />Maureen Dowd<br />AUG. 13, 2016<br /><br />SPEAKING of crazy. . .<br /><br />All these woebegone Republicans whining that they can’t rally<br />behind their flawed candidate is crazy. The G.O.P. angst, the<br />gnashing and wailing and searching for last-minute substitutes<br />and exit strategies, is getting old.<br /><br />They already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in<br />the Oval Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street,<br />boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with hedge funds,<br />secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek<br />guidance from Henry Kissinger and hawk it up -- unleashing<br />hell on Syria and heaven knows where else.<br /><br />The Republicans have their candidate: It’s Hillary.<br /><br />They can’t go with Donald Trump. He’s too volatile and unhinged.<br /><br />The erstwhile Goldwater Girl and Goldman Sachs busker can be<br />counted on to do the normal political things, not the abnormal<br />haywire things. Trump’s propounding could drag us into war,<br />plunge us into a recession and shatter Washington into a thousand<br />tiny bits.<br /><br />Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an<br />establishment figure, after all? Her husband was president, and<br />he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act<br />and got rid of those pesky welfare queens. . .<br /><br />Hillary often seems more Republican than the Gotham bling king,<br />who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates before<br />he jumped the turnstile.<br /><br />Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. . .<br /><br />Unlike Trump, she hasn’t been trashing leading Republicans.<br />You know that her pals John McCain and Lindsey Graham are secretly<br />rooting for her. . .<br /><br />Another neocon, James Kirchick, keened in The Daily Beast,<br />“Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss.”. . .<br /><br />Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see<br />if Kissinger, the Voldemort of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer<br />of Saddam’s apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary.<br /><br />Hillary has written that Kissinger is an “idealistic” friend whose<br />counsel she valued as secretary of state, drawing a rebuke from<br />Bernie Sanders during the primaries: “I’m proud to say Henry Kissinger<br />is not my friend.”<br /><br />[T]he specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon to prolong the<br />Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that<br />“the Democratic nominee has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is<br />again taking progressives for granted.”. . .<br /><br />Hillary. . . understands her way around political language and<br />Washington rituals. Of course you do favors for wealthy donors.<br />And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to the country,<br />like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder<br />in U.S. history, don’t shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts<br />from a microphone. . .<br /><br />As Republican strategist Steve Schmidt noted on MSNBC, “the candidate<br />in the race most like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a<br />foreign policy perspective is in fact Hillary Clinton, not the<br />Republican nominee.”<br /><br />And that’s how Republicans prefer their crazy — not like Trump,<br />but like Cheney.<br />====<br /><br /><br />Ouch! ;-><br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-30552242485861952372016-08-14T11:17:51.061-07:002016-08-14T11:17:51.061-07:00> THE white working-class men who are planning ...> THE white working-class men who are planning to vote for<br />> Donald J. Trump this November<br /><br />But what about the white upper-middle-class men who are planning<br />to vote for Donald J. Trump this November?<br /><br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/fashion/marriage-politics-donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html<br />----------------<br />He Likes Trump. She Doesn’t. Can This Marriage Be Saved?<br />By SRIDHAR PAPPU<br />AUG. 13, 2016<br /><br />In early May, when Dr. Thomas Stossel told his wife, Dr. Kerry Maguire,<br />of his plan to vote for Donald J. Trump in the general election,<br />she hit him with an ultimatum.<br /><br />“If you vote for Trump, I will divorce you and move to Canada,”<br />she recalled telling him. He tried to laugh it off.<br /><br />“I’m serious,” Dr. Maguire told him.<br /><br />Before this spat, through nearly 20 years of marriage, politics<br />had never caused much friction between Dr. Maguire, a dentist<br />who is the director of the children’s outreach program at the<br />Forsyth Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and Dr. Stossel, a]<br />hematologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. . .<br /><br />[I]n an interview on July 28, Dr. Stossel restated his support<br />for the Republican nominee.<br /><br />“I’m reasonably convinced that Hillary is handcuffed to the<br />economic progressive populism that has totally taken over the<br />Democratic Party, a.k.a., socialism,” said Dr. Stossel, a<br />visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.<br />“I think that if she gets power and the party gets power,<br />there is a good likelihood that the agendas of that movement<br />will be enacted. To me, that counters what I consider to be<br />what brings us prosperity, which is entrepreneurship.”. . .<br /><br />Soon after learning that her husband was not backing away from<br />his decision to support Mr. Trump, Dr. Maguire picked him up at work. . .<br />In the car she asked him how he could actually vote for<br />Mr. Trump after everything that has happened. . .<br /><br />Dr. Stossel replied that checks and balances were in place that<br />would keep a President Trump from putting the country in any real danger. . .<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-6475973693092841592016-08-14T11:16:05.948-07:002016-08-14T11:16:05.948-07:00http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/t...http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-decline-of-unions-and-the-rise-of-trump.html<br />----------------<br />The Decline of Unions and the Rise of Trump<br />By NEIL GROSS<br />AUG. 12, 2016<br /><br />THE white working-class men who are planning to vote for<br />Donald J. Trump this November have been called many things:<br />xenophobic, racist, misogynist, dangerously naïve. . .<br />[But] they might have been out front in the fight against Mr. Trump --<br />if only the American labor movement weren’t a shell of its former self.<br /><br />When we think about unions, what typically come to mind are<br />interest groups concerned with wages, benefits and working conditions. . .<br />[But u]nions are also political organizations that. . . can powerfully<br />channel the working-class vote.<br /><br />[S]ociologist Seymour Martin Lipset[, i]n a 1959 paper, . . .<br />demonstrated that while the working class in most countries favors<br />economic liberalism, it also displays an authoritarian streak.<br />Using evidence from surveys, Mr. Lipset found blue-collar workers<br />to be less committed to democratic norms like tolerance for<br />political opponents, preference for rational argumentation over<br />charismatic appeals and support for the rights of ethnic and<br />racial minorities.<br /><br />These tendencies, he claimed, were a function of lower levels<br />of education and the isolation of many workers (for example, coal miners)<br />from people who were different from them. Authoritarian attitudes<br />also owed something to the work itself. Controversially, he suggested<br />that manual work was at odds with the abstract thinking required<br />to appreciate complex, pluralistic solutions to political problems.<br /><br />Yet in Mr. Lipset’s view unions had the potential to counter such<br />tendencies. . .<br /><br />In Europe, as in the United States, working-class men are a key<br />constituency for the far-right political parties that are now ascendant.<br />Yet. . . a study published last month. . . found that union membership<br />helps inoculate workers against the far right’s message. . .<br />(It is not an accident of history that Hitler abolished German trade<br />unions as part of his consolidation of power, or that farmers and<br />small business owners were more sympathetic to the Nazi cause than<br />were industrial workers reared on unionism.) . . .<br /><br />unions have been profoundly weakened. . . by decades of<br />assaults against them by the Republican Party.<br /><br />In the post-World War II era, one in three American workers belonged<br />to a union; now it’s down to one in 10. In terms of representing the<br />traditional working class, the number is even smaller, since a large<br />and growing share of union members consists of public sector employees<br />with college degrees (like teachers).<br /><br />Union decline has left the working class politically and economically<br />vulnerable, and it’s this vulnerability Mr. Trump has been able to exploit. . .<br />If unions had anything like their former influence, how many workers<br />would buy the empty economic promises Mr. Trump is making -- a man whose<br />recently announced economic advisory team is made up largely of<br />fellow billionaires, and who has said that hourly wages are too high? . . .<br /><br />American unions have a checkered history and are far from perfect.<br />But as an institution, unions are an essential bulwark for democracy.<br />We’ve allowed them to wither at our peril.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Neil Gross, a professor of sociology at Colby College, is the<br />author of “Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?”<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-32590527541630642182016-08-14T10:55:09.442-07:002016-08-14T10:55:09.442-07:00http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/d...http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-courts-the-gun-zealots.html<br />------------<br />Donald Trump Courts the Gun Zealots<br />By THE EDITORIAL BOARD<br />AUG. 13, 2016<br /><br />The mutual embrace of Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association<br />grew tighter last week with Mr. Trump’s incendiary suggestion that<br />Second Amendment advocates could “maybe” find a way to deal with<br />Hillary Clinton and her gun safety agenda if she reached the<br />White House.<br /><br />Whether calculated or clumsy, Mr. Trump’s ugly pronouncement left<br />a whiff of lethal intimidation in the air.<br /><br />The N.R.A. stands almost alone now with Mr. Trump, as one of<br />his few remaining stalwarts in the Republican coalition. Mr. Trump<br />cynically cast aside his earlier pro-gun-control position and<br />successfully pandered this year for the group’s endorsement<br />during the primaries. And while Mr. Trump denies any intent to<br />cue up gun-packing psychopaths, his new best friends in the<br />N.R.A. have begun a $3 million TV attack campaign against<br />Mrs. Clinton. . .<br />====<br /><br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/a-playboy-for-president.html<br />------------<br />A Playboy for President<br />Ross Douthat<br />AUG. 13, 2016<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />[I]t’s Trump rather than Clinton who has confirmed the full<br />triumph of the sexual revolutions. . .<br /><br />Trump and Hillary are both children of the ’60s — but of its<br />opposite ends, the Brat Pack era in Trump’s case and the<br />flowering of boomer liberalism in Hillary’s.<br /><br />Much of what seems strange and reactionary about Trump is tied<br />to what was normal to a certain kind of Sinatra and Mad Men-era man --<br />the casual sexism, the odd mix of sleaziness and formality,<br />even the insult-comic style. . .<br /><br />The men’s sexual revolution, in which freedom meant freedom to<br />take your pleasure while women took the pill, is still a potent<br />force, and not only in the halls of Fox News. From Hollywood<br />and college campuses to rock concert backstages and Bill Clinton’s<br />political operation, it has persisted as a pervasive but<br />unspoken philosophy in precincts officially committed to<br />cultural liberalism and sexual equality. . .<br /><br />[A]mong men who were promised pliant centerfolds and ended up<br />single with only high-speed internet to comfort them, the men’s<br />sexual revolution has curdled into a toxic subculture, resentful<br />of female empowerment in all its forms.<br /><br />This is where you find Trump’s strongest (and, yes, strangest) fans.<br />He’s become the Daddy Alpha for every alpha-aspiring beta male,<br />whose mix of moral liberation and misogyny keeps the<br />Ring-a-Ding-Ding dream alive.<br /><br />There aren’t nearly enough of these fans to win him the election.<br />Steinem’s revolution (Clintonian complications and all) should<br />easily beat Hef’s at the ballot box this year.<br /><br />But the cultural conflict between these two post-revolutionary<br />styles -- between frat guys and feminist bluestockings,<br />Gamergaters and the diversity police, alt-right provocateurs and<br />“woke” dudebros, the mouthbreathers who poured hate on the all-female<br />“Ghostbusters” and the tastemakers who pretended it was good --<br />is likely here to stay. . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-78149400432758806512016-08-14T10:45:13.976-07:002016-08-14T10:45:13.976-07:00> What do you think about what's going on w...> What do you think about what's going on with Donald Trump<br />> and the Republican Party? . . .<br /><br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-is-making-america-meaner.html<br />----------<br /><br />Donald Trump Is Making America Meaner<br />Nicholas Kristof<br />AUG. 13, 2016<br /><br />FOREST GROVE, Ore. — ALL across America, in little towns like this<br />one, Donald Trump is mainstreaming hate. . .<br /><br />“People now feel that it is O.K. to say things that they might not<br />have said a year ago” . . . “Trump played a big role.”<br /><br />Donald Trump is rending [the social fabric] with incendiary talk<br />about roughing up protesters and about gun owners solving the<br />problem of Hillary Clinton making judicial nominations. . .<br /><br />We need not be apocalyptic about it. This is not Kristallnacht.<br />But Trump’s harsh rhetoric tears away the veneer of civility. . .<br />He has unleashed a beast and fed its hunger, and long after<br />this campaign is over we will be struggling to corral it again. . .<br /><br />The tension reflects deep resentment among some white working-class<br />families. They are angry at immigrants who have taken over some<br />jobs, at the way communities they cherish are changing demographically<br />and linguistically, and at what they perceive as a stifling<br />political correctness that leaves whites accused of racism when<br />they speak up.<br /><br />Many of my old Oregon farm-town friends are strong Trump supporters,<br />and they will completely disagree with this column. Their headline<br />would be, “Big Media Suffocates Real Americans With Political<br />Correctness.”. . .<br /><br />I wrote a column recently exploring whether Trump is a racist,<br />and a result was anti-Semitic vitriol from Trump followers, one of<br />whom suggested I should be sent to the ovens for writing<br />“a typical Jewish hit piece.” In fact, I’m Armenian and Christian,<br />not Jewish, but the responses underscored that the Trump campaign<br />is enveloped by a cloud of racial, ethnic and religious<br />animosity -- much of it poorly informed. . .<br /><br />So far, Trump has arguably benefited from his fondness for<br />over-the-top rhetoric. He gets attention and television time and<br />is always at the center of his own hurricane. But in November,<br />after the ballots have been counted and the crowds have gone home,<br />we will still have a country to share. . .<br /><br />Inflammatory talk isn’t entertaining, but dangerous. It’s past time<br />for Trump to grow up. . .<br /><br />This is a wrenching, divisive, polarizing time in America, and we<br />have a major party nominee who is sowing hatred and perhaps violence.<br />Let’s not succumb. . .<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com