Shoblongoo

...kind of like how tons of people got through mortgage payments they couldn't afford on home equity loans and junk securities??? Student debt crisis is going to be the next subprime housing crisis. Millions of kids taking out 200K principle loans that they'll never be able to pay back to make tuition payments they can't afford, all being pushed through a system where its just accepted now that that's the way its supposed to work. All from the same government-backed lending institutions. And all being set up to default at the same time. Hmmmmmmmm--wonder where this is heading. "its good...they'll pay it off..." We seriously didn't learn a damn thing from the Crash of 2008.

best Private Colleges. Our public universities are...well... Its the exact opposite of how it works in a country like--say--Taiwan. (i.e. one of the best education systems in the world) Where the public universities are considered the best in the country. Admittance into a school where the government pays for you to study is the highest aspiration of every student; no one from any economic background doubts that if they study hard and ace their exams and rise to the top of their class, they will have the means to attend the best schools. And attendance at a private university with outrageous tuition that will put you into debt for the rest of your life, unless you come from a family that can afford to float the bill, is the fallback of students who didn't study hard enough to get into a top-tier public university. America does it ass-backwards. You have to fork up $70,000 per year to attend our best universities--the Harvards. The Yales. The Princetons. An education at a top university is as much a luxury to be purchased as an achievement to be earned. ...then the attitude towards Community College is well its a place you go if you don't have the grades or the money to get into an elite university.

...because we use private insurance premiums as the primary means of healthcare financing, instead of public option, like every other sane country with a population living into its early 80s... Really now. If that bothers you, Bernie should be your guy. He was literally the only candidate talking about how you bring our costs down in line with other countries by moving towards the system they use, instead of trying to tinker-around-the-edges with the insurance market. (HINT: if we're doing one thing and every other country is doing something different, and those are the numbers we're getting, we should be doing what they do instead)

^^^ Bingo We have the most overused, over-funded, over-prioritized military in the industrialized world. We also have the worst healthcare and public education. ...this is not a coincidence...

If at any point you think I am trying to defend Clinton, you have completely misunderstood my last post I will say this on the raid though. From whats been reported; Hillary and Biden were both in the room with Obama when the raid went down and giving him their advice on the matter. Hillary advised that this was their best chance to capture or kill Osama, that their plan was sound, and that they could execute it. She recommended that Obama order Seal Team 6 to conduct the raid. Biden advised that the risk of civilian casualties was high, that the raid could inflame relations with the Pakistanis, and that the possibility of killing or capturing Osama wasn't worth the potential fallout. He recommended that the president order Seal Team 6 to stand down and abort the mission. The raid was carried out and Osama was killed because Obama sided with Hillary over Biden. Make of that what you will.

I would remind you that Republican pundits and right wing media spent the past eight (8) years leveling every charge of corruption and scandal in the books against Obama, in an attempt to bring his reputation down to the level of a Trump or a Clinton. (with more than just a light twinge of racial overtures) …it was said he was born in Kenya and falsified an American birth certificate. …it was said that his closest mentors and role models were a pastor who preached “God DAMN America! That’s in the Bible!” and a domestic terrorist responsible for bombing police stations. …it was said he was a closet homosexual with a gay lover in Chicago. … it was said he ran a crooked IRS that targeted his political opponents for audits. …it was said he ran a crooked justice department that prioritized prosecuting white’s over non-whites, and refused to prosecute Democrats. …it was said he ran a crooked EPA and energy department, using “green energy projects” to give tax payer money to his friends and donors. …it was said he ran a crooked ATF that illegally sold guns to Mexican drug gangs. Obama left office with a 59% approval rating and the adoration of the general public in spite of them, and has become even more popular in his post-presidency in juxtaposition against his successor. By all accounts, had he been eligible to run for a 3rd term, he would have beaten both Hillary in a primary challenge and Trump in a general election with upmost ease. The dirt never stuck to Obama (not with anyone beyond the core right-wing audience that was willing to believe any bad thing said about the guy) because he didn’t have a pre-existing reputation for gutter politics and scandals—he was an untarnished, aspirational figure. …whereas with Hillary…fake scandals and things that right wing media was just out-right making up with no basis in fact notwithstanding… …you have the Whitewater Investigations …you have the Bimbo Eruptions …you have the mysterious disappearance of Clinton Foundation charitable funds for earthquake relief in Haiti …you have the mixing of public and private business at the State Department under Clinton’s tenure, with Clinton in the capacity of her office soliciting donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign nationals + foreign nationals who donated to the Clinton Foundation receiving special access to the state Department. …you have positions reversed for seemingly no other reason than political expediency, on everything from criminal justice reform to living wage laws to Iraq, with plastic indignation at the suggestion that her position has changed. And insistence that it’s just another “right-wing smear” to suggest her stance on say—mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders and locking up urban “super predators” during her husband’s presidency is just slightly off-kilter from her sudden professions of love and solidarity with BLM. …you have the matter of a private server blown up into a “scandal”—whatever the nature of her underlying conduct—by the sheer volume of false statements Hillary put out that she had to later go back and correct when the true facts were disclosed, i.e.: I had this server, but I only used it for private correspondence. Okay…yes…I used it for private correspondence and state department matters, but I never used if for classified information. Okay…yes…I used it for classified information, but I never used it for anything that was marked classified at the time and I’ve fully cooperated in disclosing all emails to investigators; they will attest that this is correct. Okay…yes…I deleted several thousand emails and didn’t turn them over to investigators…but that was just talk about my daughter’s birthday party and silly, unrelated things. Nothing relevant to the investigation. Okay…yes…some of the deleted emails I failed to turn over contained information relevant to the investigation, but… (It’s the same stupid shit Trump is doing with the Russia investigation right now; if there’s no underlying misconduct then there is no need for the lies and the cover-up. You put all your cards on the table and get ahead of the story; you don’t erode your credibility by putting out false statement after false statement that is going to inevitably be proven false with the slow-drip from the investigation) …And that wasn’t shit that right-wing media made up. That happened. Because that happened, Hillary did not have the reputation for honesty and good character to rise above the fake shit, the way Obama did. There’s an old saying: shit sticks to a pig. And even without the fake scandals, there were a fair number of voters who would not have voted for Hillary under any circumstance purely because of the things she’s actually said and done. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say: “Donald Trump is the worst. There’s never been a candidate this rude and crude. There’s never been a candidate who knows this little about government or public policy. There’s never been a candidate this dirty in his business dealings. This is the worst candidate ever to be nominated for president of the United States—he shouldn’t even be anywhere near the fucking thing.” Then also say: “But the candidate that lost to him was a good candidate! It was just the right-wing smear machine. It was just conspiracy theories and fake scandals. It was just Russian interference. Hillary wasn’t a bad nominee.” No…that’s not how it works… A moment of introspection is needed here. Democrats have to take ownership of the candidate they put up. Because Trump is a skunk. And when you get into a shit-fight with a skunk, the skunk wins. They will lose again in 2020 if they don’t put up an aspirational figure who can rise above Trump’s gutter politics, instead of going tit-for-tat on who has the less disqualifying lies and scandals.

I don't want to relitigate the case against Hillary. But I think it's as foolish to disregard her reputation for corruption and dishonesty as the lies of the right-wing echo chamber as it is to disregard Trump's reputation for corruption and dishonesty as the lies of liberal media. Not do I think it's particularly helpful to excuse her conduct as "...well that's just how politicians act; you can say the same about any of them. She did some good things too." That's the kind of boundless cynicism that got Trump elected with every figure in the political establishment warning: this man is a national embarasment. Do not give him power, as though every figure in the political establishment holding this opinion of him was a GOOD thing. Take the lesson of 2016 to heart and do it right next time--Don't put up a candidate with a reputation for dishonesty and corruption that has to be excused or explained away. Then just expect progressives to swallow it, because--hey--it's her or the racist, sexist millionaire-coddler with the (R) next to his name.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

...White working class anger gets you to ~40%. Hillary blew an 11 point lead.

Hillary is a crook, and had a million skeletons in her closet before the email scandal. The email scandal was as damaging as it was because it didn't happen in a vacuum--it played into ideas people already had about her lack of transparency and trustworthiness and inability to answer basic questions about her conduct in public office that had been swirling for over 20 years. Yes...the Russians interfered. But the Democrats have to come to terms with the fact that that's not the reason they lost. They lost because they put up a candidate so bad she couldn't even claim the moral high ground against a man as depraved and as blatantly unfit for office as Donald Trump; with or without Russian interference, any candidate with a good name to run on should have smoked him by double-digits.

The only thing Trumps "win" was a reaction to was what a god-awful candidate Hillary was in the alternative, tbh. He said nothing that resonated with a majority of voters and was deemed morally repugnant for his antics (and the media had to cover them--they were news). But was merely deemed to be the lesser of two evils by those who found Hillary's track-record of pay-to-play and changing positions on a dime and assorted scandals even more disqualifying then Trump being Trump. All we really learned this past election is that an unelectable candidate wins by running against another unelectable candidate.

The media's job is to report malfeasance in government, and now-more-than-ever thank goodness they're doing their job. If there has never been a modern politician subject to more negative treatment by the American media, it is because there has never been a modern American politician more openly malfeasant in every aspect of his public life.

McCain explains why he voted to kill the bill: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/344276-mccain-explains-why-he-voted-to-kill-obamacare-skinny-repeal#

The cynic in me says Trump doesn't care in the slightest about Trans-persons serving in the army, and did this as a give-away to the base at a moment when he senses they're becoming increasingly upset with his attacks on Jeff Sessions and lack of progress on healthcare. Alternatively, he's just an asshole. ...in any event... Top generals at the Joint Chiefs of Staff—in what in any other scenario would constitute an unprecedented act of insubordination and disregard for chain-of-command but herein just serves to underscore Trump’s incompetence and showmanship-over-substance approach to governing—are refusing to implement the President’s policy on transgendered persons in the military and say that at this time, the generals will disregard the president’s statements and continue to allow transgendered soldiers to openly serve. The Reason Why: “A tweet is not an order.” The General’s position is that Trump never actually consulted anyone about the policy or ordered anyone to change policy through recognized channels of command; he just posted an off-the-cuff change-of-policy announcement on his twitter feed. If he wants to order a change of policy the military will follow his orders; but the military will NOT give force-and-effect of orders from high command to Twitter Posts. Directly under-cutting the president’s message; from The Generals: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/27/trump-transgender-military-ban-no-modification-241029 http://thehill.com/policy/defense/344107-joint-chiefs-chairman-no-change-in-transgender-policy-until-trump-sends “I know there are questions about yesterday's announcement on the transgender policy by the President. There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received.” AND “We grow up and learn to obey the chain-of-command. We will work through the implementation guidance when we get it…To my knowledge, the Department of Defense has not received written directives.” …That’s as close as you will ever get to hearing a man of military disciple at the highest levels of leadership tell his chief officer: “Go fuck yourself, you wannabee-dictator disgrace-to-the-office.” Trump's own Generals just smacked him down. Congress will play games with an emotional toddler of a president who doesn't respect or follow regular order, but the military isn't messing around.

Res did a pretty good job addressing the bulk of this post, but... ...this needs to be called out... Humans are inherently rational and our concepts of "right" and "wrong" are constructs of reason. In the state-of-nature they do not exist. We as thinking animals, so-far-as-we-know unique in our capacity for higher reason and ability to conceptualize moral concepts, deemed "right" and "wrong" to be things which exist for the purpose of elevating ourselves from the state of nature. Why do we say a man who kills a woman's husband, kills their children, and then rapes the woman to make her bare his own has behaved immorally? ...Because a man has capacity to reason through the propriety of his actions--the ascertainable benefits to be gained and the harms to be inflicted by the nature and consequence of his acts--and to accordingly act or refrain from acting, or pursue an alternative course of conduct. Why don't we say a lion who kills a rival male, eats his cubs, and mates with his lioness has behaved immorally? ...Because a lion has no such capacity; It is a reasonless beast acting on irresistible impulse and feral instinct. Knowing this, it strikes us as exceedingly odd to even consider the question of ascribing morality or immorality to the creature's actions. Why do we hold insanity, reduced capacity, and mental defect to be full-and-complete defenses against charges that a man has committed a crime in carrying out an act of rape or murder? ...Because implicitly; we recognize the capacity-of-reason to appreciate the criminality of one's conduct to be an essential element of finding that one has committed a crime of moral turpitude. ___________ To divorce morality from rationality is to deny the very aspect of the human condition which allows morality to exist. Without reason there is no right. There is no wrong. There is only animals behaving like animals.

I'll keep this one short--Of course Trump isn't stupid. He lacks decency, truthfulness, and shame. Not intelligence.

McCain today gave one of the best speeches I have ever heard a public servant give in my life time, reminded me one-more-time why I love the guy. And at some point I'm going to see if I can find a copy of it to link here because in the age of Trump people actually need to be reminded what a respectable statesman sounds like. Dunno if you heard it. But he basically called out the entire Senate for being a bunch of partisan do-nothings--the worst he's seen in his 30 year career as a United States Senator. Called the current healthcare proposal Republicans are trying to ram through a "Hollow Shell of a Bill" that does nothing to fix any problems with the Healthcare system. Excoriated his party for refusing to work with Democrats. Said he would NOT vote for passage of the bill in its current form, but that he was voting to open debate purely in hopes that his party would grow up and put on its big-boy pants and work with Democrats to produce a bipartisan bill that fixes the problems with the American healthcare system. And said that he expected the bill to fail if Republicans did not change course, open the process, and continued to go the way they were going. He cemented his legacy today as one of the alll-time-greats. And one of the last men in Washington who's there for the right reasons. __________ EDIT: Here it is. McCain's full speech from the Senate floor. Just a little over 15 minutes long. Worth a listen. Its a sad rarity these days. This is what a serious political figure and man of good character sounds like: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/john-mccain-floor-speech/index.html

…oh its substantially worse than that… And understanding this is vital to understanding why he runs his White House the way he does because an old dog doesn’t learn new tricks. He’s the same scumbag as a dirty-dealing fraudster of a politician that he was as a dirty-dealing fraudster of a businessman—this is why a man of his character and background never should have been allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. Trump ran his business as a professional litigant. That is to say he engaged in a pattern and practice of the most unethical, underhanded, legally frowned-upon methods of unfair trade practice with a general attitude of: “They don’t like it? Fuck em! They can sue me!” KNOWING: 1) That he can outspend damn-near-anyone in court costs and attorney fees. He can certainly afford to spend more than—say—the general contractors who just put up one of his hotels for $200 million worth of labor and material, and are on the verge of becoming financially insolvent because they never got paid. 2) If he derails litigation hard enough that you have to spend half a million dollars on lawyers wading through frivolous cross-motions and counter-claims, before you can even take a shot at him on the underlying issue of “…hey asshole…we built a hotel for you and you never paid us for materials or labor…”, litigation will eventually become too expensive for his opponents to pursue and they will drop their case. 3) As long as he spends less in legal fees to litigate a matter than he would spend rendering performance in good faith on the matter in dispute—say—paying the general contractors who just put up his hotel for materials and labor, he comes out ahead-of-the-game. Donald Trump, before becoming president, appeared as a named party in over three thousand (3,000) lawsuits. He did this all the time. SPECIFICALLY AS IT RELATES TO THE LAWS OF BANKRUPTCY ...Donald Trump understood that declaring bankruptcy could legally discharge his duty to pay certain debts, and require persons seeking restitution for non-payment to appear as filing parties in bankruptcy court + institute actions to enforce creditor’s rights. So what Donald Trump got into the habit of doing was running up huge debts to his contractors. His sub-contractors. His investors. His employees. Just flat-out refuse to pay them agreed upon sums for their work in his various business ventures; instead making them sue him for fraud and breach of contract and unjust enrichment to receive payment. Then in the course of litigation, he declares bankruptcy. The bankruptcy proceedings put a hold on the civil action. The persons who Trump cheated out of payment now have to go to bankruptcy court, argue that Trump frivolously filed bankruptcy to defraud his creditors. Before they can get back to civil. Then on top of that, Trump files counter-suit for defamation or construction defect or something stupid. …And starts filing motions accusing you of litigating in bad faith to distract from your own misconduct + demanding to know why you haven’t produced evidence of [insert fabricated bad conduct here]. …And starts threatening to sue your attorneys for professional malpractice in instituting a frivolous lawsuit, if they don’t withdraw their “clearly frivolous” claim for payment against a bankrupt party. (side-note: that’s exactly how he’s treating the Russia investigation. EXACTLY how he’s treating the Russian matter.) …And then the persons defrauded by Trump withdraw their suit and eat their losses, because that’s more money than anyone who isn’t a billionaire can spend on court costs and attorney fees. So Trump just straight up cheated someone who was depending on getting paid for the work they did for him out-of-business. Using completely unethical and questionably legal tactics. Trump keeps all the money. And he walks away thinking: “I just spent $10 million on lawyers instead of $200 million on paying my contractors. I saved $190 million. I’m such a good businessman!” Then he goes out and sells it to the next poor sucker as him making all this money because hes such a great negotiator and makes the best deals—you’ll get rich too if you make a deal with him. ..and he does it again to the next guy… That’s why Donald Trump kept declaring bankruptcy. The man is a con artist piece of shit, through-and-through.

...ehhhhhhhhh... Rationalism is pretty much the one thing you can't commit atrocities in the name of; tautologically so. An atrocity by definition must constitute a breach of rationality--some inexcusable deviation from rationally construed and constructed standards of objective morality underlies an act which may be properly regarded as "atrocious." No act which is atrocious can be rational. And no act which is rational can be atrocious.

...Well of course you CAN commit atrocities in the name of anything. I could go forth and commit atrocities in the name of Ozzy Osbourne, if I wanted to be wierd about it. But let's not pretend like there haven't been certain modes of thinking throughout the course of human history that have proven substantially more likely to overrule good sense and decency, so as to invite atrocity. Among them: Tribalism, Nationalism, Racism, and Religion. (Science--not so much)

Petty blatant lies aren't a fireable offense at this White House--they're s basic job requirement.Sean's problem was he wasn't very good at it...he couldn't sell the lies. Thus new guy they got their now; Scaramucci. He gave Trump the full North Korean "Dear Leader" Treatment. Spent his entire first press conference gushing with love for the guy and proclaiming him the greatest politicical genius in history, and praising everything from his competitive drive and work ethic and competitive drive to his amazing athletic abilities and golf game. That's what Trump was looking for--fucking psycho.

He has the potential to be. But Fates non-existent writing proficiency just ruined it.

I'm 90% sure the precedent set by United States v. Nixon would compel a reviewing court to find: "No. He can't."

I am perpetually amazed by how many people don't understand this.

Every time a 90s rock star dies, Kieth Richard siphons his life force and lives another 2-5 years. ...he got another one today... R.I.P. Chester Bennington.