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The Trump Nightmare is Over!
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 The Trump Nightmare is Over!
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Joe Biden has just been declared the winner in the Presidential race. I am certainly glad he pulled that out. Trump far and away has been the absolute worst president we have ever had, bar none. He is so incredibly ignorant you have to wonder how he became president in the first place. He doesn’t believe in science or medical expertise; he doesn’t believe in free trade (He actually is more a Mercantilist, much like 17th century Spain!); he is a conspiracy theorist (Obama’s birth certificate was false); he trashed John McCain when he was dying, as having been “captured” and made a POW in Vietnam; and he has called our military members “losers.”
Worst of all, from my personal point of view, he and his minions have gutted the State Department and our diplomatic corps (I dropped my State Department consulting gigs overseas in 2017.); he places more faith in Vladimir Putin’s word than he does in our intelligence organizations, who actually know what they are talking about; and he has trashed our allies while cozying up to North Korea and getting nothing from it because he fails to adequately prepare.
I no doubt will disagree with some of Biden’s policies, but he at least falls within the reasonable spectrum of American politics. Biden is a man of the center-left, and if he can keep his Democratic Party left-wing at bay (Sanders, Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, and their ilk), he should do just fine. But it will take time to bring the United States back from the diminished role it has had under Trump. I’m confident we can do it, but it will take time and effort to regain the trust of our allies.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 7 2020 21:22:37
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ernandez R
Posts: 737
Joined: Mar. 25 2019
From: Alaska USA
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Sadly our current president is a reflection of the electorate. Sure most of them have been bamboozled into hating cultures they don't understand and voting against their own interest. There are various doorways into the level of hate and ignorance that allowed him to win in '16.
The one number that has haunted me since his election is 48% of white collage educated women voted for a man of sickening personal disregard for their gender rather then vote for the lady who by breaking the last glass ceiling in America would have opened doorways of opportunity into this new millennium. Instead they, like so many millions, voted for four years of the worst and another twenty or more to correct. Hundreds of thousands dead and who knows how many more without regard for public safety or science.
Trade, what a joke.
Four weeks ago Alaska had about one hundred new Covid cases a day, then it was three hundred, just hit six hundred yesterday. About 900,000 souls in a state three times the size of Texas.
We have 32 ICU beds available.
For the whole state.
We are next, it's going to get ugly.
Where I am going with this is we have over two months of a lame duck president who refuses science, pushing a non existent vaccine, refusing to abide and inforce the most basic science protocol. We have a governor who is hardly any better. Cases have increased sixfold in the last thirty days but still no mandate, just some lame-wa rhetoric about liberty and the cost of quarantine being worse then the disease. Governor Dunlevy, tell that, I dare you, tell that to the ninety plus Alaskans who have died, their friends and family, their partners and children.
How many more have to die before we have our real American president.
HR
ps. short video:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHThaVKnckC/
_____________________________
I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy,
doesn't have to be fast,
should have some meat on the bones,
can be raw or well done,
as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.
www.instagram.com/threeriversguitars
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Date Nov. 8 2020 0:55:21
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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I agree, Bill.
At about 10:30 PM CST on November 8, 2016 I experienced a deep mental and strongly physical sensation of disappointment and dread, as I concluded how the election would turn out. I poured the first of two stiff glasses of scotch whisky. After drinking both I went to bed. I didn't get up until noon the next day.
Larisa and I puzzled over the electorate's blindness to Trump's prodigious flaws of character, intelligence, and policy, and to his utter lack of information. To us these flaws were flagrant from the very beginning. Larisa's diagnosis was that "people follow the biggest monkey." It was the fruit of more than 13 years of bitter experience growing up in the Soviet Union.
At age 78 I was astonished that nearly half of the voters seemed oblivious to the severity of Trump's flaws, and maybe 40% were strongly attracted to such an inept demagogue.
I thought, "How could I have failed to meet anyone who would vote for Trump?" But it soon turned out that I had four good friends who had. It took longer to sink in that many of my well educated and quite prosperous relatives had voted for him too.
Having bitten my tongue a number of times so as not to alienate myself from them, I suspect that they may have reacted to the present election much as I did to the last, though perhaps more gradually as their expectations were undermined over a period of days.
My relatives who voted for Trump are white evangelicals. They voted for Trump on wedge issues like abortion. They never defended his character, nor disputed me when I said things like, "Arbitrarily separating young children from their parents is simply evil."
Three of my friends posted memes in the last few weeks which showed they were deeply fearful of the Democrat party.They characterized it as "the party of hate" among other things. As I have said before, these men are not stupid. They are very competent, with multiple top level certifications in highly skilled trades. They have been financially secure, even well off for decades. But apparently fears and resentments just under the surface when I spent time with them could be exploited to make Trump their hero, fighting to right the wrongs of the world. They are still my friends. I sympathize with their disappointment, since I remember mine in 2016 so vividly. But disappointment has not translated into disillusionment yet, if it ever will. They cheer on the lawsuits begun by Trump's campaign and the Republican party. My friends seem oblivious to the near certainty the lawsuits will never change the outcome. I just respond, "We'll know the result on January 6, when the Senate counts and certifies the votes of the Electoral College.
Reporters speculate that some parts of the party and the campaign may just be cynically going through lawsuit motions to mime support for their still-delusional boss. Maybe so. But they've been seriously wrong about these people before now and so have I.
At present the near term fate of the country appears to hinge upon the outcome of a couple of Georgia Senate runoffs coming up on January 5. Fear of Trump demonstrated the shameless cynicism of the Republican Senate. McConnell showed his colors under Obama. I don't think a Republican Senate would dare to tamper with the Electoral College vote, but as I said.... However they would continue to do their damnedest to screw the country, out of partisan rancor, sheer spite, and a sizable dose of ignorance.
Time for some chicken cacciatore and a glass of some pretty good cabernet sauvignon. Then maybe a snifter of Martell Cordon Bleu before bedtime.
Hoping for better days,
RNJ
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Date Nov. 8 2020 2:29:28
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Fascinating- I have not studied the exit and polls yet, but I don’t think suburban women voted as strongly as we figured they would. 2016 was largely the result of misogyny, conservative white men ( except Bill) hate women to have power. The trump phenomena has been spurred on by hate-pundits and TV news that makes money by drawing ratings by labeling parties as enemies. And the notion of total political war that was brought to force by Newt Gingrich. McConnell is very much his heir in continuing and escalating the war.
Rush Limbaugh and Gingrich began a campaign of political war in which Gingrich said to republicans “do not fraternize with democrats or you will be ostracized from the party”. Dems and republicans stopped eating together and drinking together. The republicans started it and then closed ranks. During the first years of the Obama admin the republicans tried to break out of war mode under John Boehner, but a backlash from a contingent that would eventually be known as the freedom caucus prevented him from working with democrats, then he left in frustration and McConnell picked up where Gingrich left off with threatening republicans to stay distant from bipartisan work.
You know rest, but 2016 was special as it was a perfect storm of Hillary Clinton being investigated for things she didn’t do, James Comey putting his thumb on the scale and a populist who fit in with the total war mentality of Fox News. Plus the need to punish democrats for daring to run a woman candidate and to have elected a black man. 2016 was retribution from white men for taking their beards. It was trump, because he was the most horrific thing they could come up with as a weapon to antagonize liberals and women.
The war is going to continue, but with a difference, Biden has a mandate to make peace. McConnell will not accept peace, but Biden is such an old hand in politics and politics and Washington that he’s got a chance to convince republicans to repeal and replace Mitch for the good of the country. He can say you want to end total war by recalling Mitch and getting a new leader, or do you want a million COVID deaths on your heads?
In the next two months the infection rate will exponentially rise, I think Biden will work in back channels to circumvent McConnell. By the time the votes are all counted Biden will have a mandate of over 81 million votes. And he’ll pick a smart cabinet who will rebuild state Dept and give the CDC what it needs.
Piss on Donald trump, let him go into exile in Saudi Arabia. He won’t be prosecuted, it’s unlikely, maybe Southern District of New York will prosecute him, but it will reek of political retribution to his cult following. It will be counterproductive on that level. I think nature and fate will probably take care of him.
As for us, trump was part of the national karma we have to work off for starting our wars. Our internal partisan war is also our payment for starting the wars. We’re a great strange country and we aren’t always nice, but we learned a good lesson, one of many we have upcoming.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Nov. 8 2020 4:57:19
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to gerundino63)
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quote:
So, it is official already?
For all practical purposes it is over. The Trumpsters are hoping to have some court cases, and already have filed several that have been rejected by the courts. None of the cases appear to be substantial enough to affect the outcome. For example, one case was about "observers" being allowed to stand six feet away from the counting rather than ten feet.
Nevertheless, it will not be "official" until the Electoral College vote is officially certified by a joint session of Congress. On January 6, 2021 at 1:00pm, The sitting Vice President, acting as the Senate president, will preside over a joint session of Congress to read aloud the certificates cast by the electors representing all 50 states and D.C. in alphabetical order to finalize the vote count.
If no members of Congress object to any of the certificates in writing, the Senate president officially certifies the selection of the president-elect and vice president-elect.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 8 2020 16:27:40
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
I no doubt will disagree with some of Biden’s policies, but he at least falls within the reasonable spectrum of American politics. Biden is a man of the center-left, and if he can keep his Democratic Party left-wing at bay (Sanders, Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, and their ilk), he should do just fine.
Bill
In 1975 I began several years of part time work in the United Kingdom, some of it for U.S. corporations under contract by the U.K. government, some of it directly for the U.K. government itself.
The "Old" Labour Party was in office in 1975. Major parts of their program had been implemented. They had nationalized major industries like steel, coal mining, railroads and so on. Labourites dispensed with neckties, dedicated Tories wore rosebuds in the lapels of their suits--Savile Row suits for upper class Tories.
During the 1976 U.S. election campaign a Labourite asked me, "Why do you Yanks trouble yourselves with elections any way?"
"I suppose you could say that the Constitution is the predominant force bringing them about. But why do you ask?"
"Both parties are just the same. There's no difference between them."
"I can say that from a British perspective, that is only a mild exaggeration."
Then I quoted Dorothy Parker's quip about Katherine Hepburn during intermission at the Broadway play, "The Lake." Parker said, "Well, let's go back in and see Miss Hepburn run the gamut of human emotion from A to B."
The British soon tired of their experimant with socialism, and electied a Conservative Parliament in 1979. This made Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister. Her term lasted until 1990.
Thatcher and the Conservatives promptly set about dismantling collective ownership of industries. During the Conservative's term in office the economy prospered and economic inequality increased.
Some of my old Labourite friends are still angered by the mention of Thatcher's name. Some of my old Tory friends still tut-tut at the mention of the UK's "descent" into socialism.
Both groups were shocked and horrified by the election of Trump, and became even more agitated as he showed his true colors.
At present in the USA "socialism" is mainly a political curse word. There is no chance of any significant implementation of it. But my Trump-supporting friends posted memes on Facebook saying the choice in this election was "Between Freedom and Communism." They also claimed that a Biden administration would transform the USA into another Venezuela.
In 2014-2015 Larisa taught at an English language elementary school in Caracas. The students' parents were people who were still wealthy despite years of rule by people who claimed to be socialists. Larisa's diagnosis was that the Maduro government was an utterly inept dictatorship who held onto power by exploiting economic inequality and social class conflicts. It was nothing like the Marxist-Leninist version of Communism she had experienced in the Soviet Union. Her Kulak grandparents barely escaped with their lives, much less any material possession whatsoever, from Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture--implemented by Khruschev.
My experiences as a foreigner with socialized medicine in Europe and Britain have uniformly been positive, as has been my experience with Medicare in the USA. In the U.K. the equipment of the railroads and the timeliness of their operation was notably superior under government nationaliztion than in more recent times under "private" ownership. This hasn't made me an advocate of generalized socialism. But it does point out the extremes of exaggeration in the use of the word in this country.
The most successful political systems I have experienced personally, and vicariously through my ex-wife's wealthy relatives, are the Scandinavian "welfare states powered by capitalism."
The Scandinavian countries are far more unified socially than the USA ever has been. My college room mate, citing his experience as a senior vice president of Cyanamid International liked to say, "They're not countries, they're tribes." The exceptions to social integration in Sweden and Denmark are the small but significant immigrant communities.
My ex-wife's Norwegian cousin Asne Seierstad wrote a best selling biography of Anders Behring Breivik, the terrorist mass murderer. She titled it "One of Us." She says that foreigners found it particularly striking when, at the beginning of Breivik's trial, the prosecutors walked over to him, introduced themselves and shook his hand.
A comprehensive welfare state has been, and still is impossible in the USA due to the depth of divisiveness: the consequences of racism since the beginning, nearly fatal to the Republic; the deeply divisive attitudes toward successive waves of immigrants since at least the mid-19th century; and at least two episodes of steeply rising economic inequality.
My British friends can no longer call the U.S. political parties fraternal twins. If economic inequality contiues to increase at the present rate, we may see elements of true socialism in this country. It would lead to even deeper division.
Could there be deeper division?
There has been. Some of my ancestors served under General Washington in the Continental Army. Others foresaw the Revolution and left New Hampshire for Nova Scotia in 1750. My mother called them "United Empire Loyalists." A few generations later her grandfather returned to the USA. Two of my great-grandfathers fought for the Union, the other two for the Confederacy. All four were volunteers.
Trump has demonstrated how easily even a ridiculously transparent demagogue can inflame division in this country. I hope we will have learned something from it.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 9 2020 1:51:34
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
The British soon tired of their experiment with socialism, and elected a Conservative Parliament in 1979. This made Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister. Her term lasted until 1990.
In my opinion, Margaret Thatcher’s policies were, by and large, good for Britain. Prior to Thatcher’s election, Britain had descended to the level of a Third World country. It had a GDP lower than Italy’s at the time. Inflation was running at over 20 percent. The bloated public sector (which was most of the economy; a private sector hardly existed!) was feather-bedded with far too many employees who were inefficient, creating a drag on the economy, like barnacles on the hull of a ship. Productivity was low.
The British Miners’ Union held Britain in a stranglehold, and the British public was held hostage through Union demands and strikes. As a result, in the mid and late 1970s, Britain for a while went to a three-day work-week, there were power outages and brownouts, erratic heating, and garbage littered the streets. Meanwhile, the leader of the Miners’ Union, Arthur (“Red Arthur”) Scargill would take vacations on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria and visit his friend, Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhivkov. (I was assigned to the American Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria at the time and noted his presence.)
When Thatcher assumed the position of Prime Minister, she privatized much of the inefficient and unproductive state sector and, as a result, it became more efficient and productive. GDP went up. She reined in the Miners’ Union that had been the source of so many of the problems facing the British, from forcing the three-day work-week to the power outages and lack of heating. Using monetary policy, Thatcher raised interest rates and reined in galloping inflation. And, of course, when Argentina invaded the British territory of the Falkland Islands, she sent the British fleet and forces to repel the invading Argentine forces, defeating them and reclaiming the Falklands. As a result of Thatcher’s policies, Britain became competitive again and assumed its place as a vibrant, respectable, medium-sized political and economic player on the world stage.
Regarding Socialism, "Socialism" has come to mean anything it's advocates want it to mean. But just because many Americans lack precision in language and thought doesn't mean there is not a valid definition of Socialism. Socialism still means the public (i.e., government) ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. The Soviet Union and its Eastern European Satellites were all Socialist economies, although the Communist Party ruled.
On the other hand, Sweden and the Scandinavian countries, often called "Socialist" by those using sloppy, imprecise language and thinking, are not Socialist. Their economies are 80 to 90 percent in private hands and are market-based. They are Capitalist, although they have a strong welfare state that exists alongside a Capitalist economy. Capitalism and a welfare safety net are not mutually exclusive.
You note that The Scandinavian countries are far more unified socially than the USA ever has been. There is a simple explanation for that, as the Scandinavian countries are far more homogeneous than the US has been. That has changed somewhat over the past several years. As the Scandinavian countries have accepted more refugees and elements from non-Western cultures, there have been more instances of conflict between the Scandinavian population and the newcomers who in many cases have not adapted well to Scandinavian social and cultural mores.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 9 2020 2:20:16
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
That was good Richard, it’s always interesting to hear your perspective because, forgive the sentiment, it’s so far extended in actual lived experience.
My mentor and very good friend Spurgeon Eugene Smith wrote a science fiction/fantasy story. The narrator traveled to a different galaxy and landed on a planet closely resembling the Earth. It was densely populated by a race much like humans, with two exceptions. They were immortal, and their technology was notably more advanced than that of the people back on Earth.
Investigating, the narrator was surprised by two findings. The aliens’ civilization was slightly younger than Earth’s. The aliens’ immortality played little role in their technical advancement, since they essentially retired from economic life around the age of 90, and went on vacation. As they continued to age they began to shrink, requiring less and less space and resources to support them.
The working aliens seemed no more intelligent nor more active than Earthlings. The space farer felt he had found the key to their advanced technology when he learned that their fiscal year was three times as long as Earth’s. My friend Gene Smith was one of the founders of Austin’s first significant high tech firm. The majority of its income was from Defense contracts. Gene and his fellow founders often complained about the government treating its contractors like teenagers on an annual allowance.
The space traveler continued his research by arranging to interview groups of older and older people. As the people shrank they spoke faster, at a higher pitch. It came to the point where their replies had to be recorded and slowed down to be intelligible.
He asked a group of 500-year olds how life had been in their youth. They responded with a high pitched buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees.
When the noise was slowed down and played back it was revealed that the 500-year olds were laughing uproariously.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 9 2020 17:01:14
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