That is the only good option. Donald Trump is so thoroughly bad only a total defeat is good enough.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Debate 2
Trump tried to dismiss his sexist talks as "just locker room talk.... just words." These were words spoken in the most public of places, during media appearances. The glass ceiling Hillary is trying to break is made of precisely such words. Words matter.
In 2000 Rick Lazio invaded Hillary Clinton's personal space once. In 2016 the count is again one. There was this one time Trump did not invade Hillary Clinton's personal space. Call 911.
'Gorilla' Trump Accused of 'Stalking' Clinton on Stage
Hillary Clinton's Lead Grew to 11 Points After Lewd Video, Before Debate, in WSJ Poll
I get the impression women are about to break decisively in Hillary Clinton's direction. The first female president thing was an abstract concept. But Trump’s sexist, vile remarks and horrendous body language during debate 2 is as concrete as it gets. I don't see how any woman is going to struggle with those.
Currently Hillary is on schedule to beat Trump by 15 points. That is what I am looking at.
I don't expect him to drop out. He would not do such a loser thing.
CNN poll: 57 percent of viewers say Clinton won the debate - POLITICO
UGLIEST DEBATE EVER - POLITICO
Donald Trump’s "I will jail her" comment makes him someone aspiring to be a Third World third rate dictator.
A US presidential debate a high school civics class should be able to watch together. None of the Trump debates pass that test. But this one was a new low. You had to be shameless to watch it. I watched it shamelessly.
The second presidential debate: Donald Trump threatens to lock up Hillary Clinton | The Economist
When she expressed relief that someone with a temperament like his was not in charge of the law, he said, “Because you’d be in jail.”
If that exchange took place in a foreign country, American diplomats would be denouncing it. It ought to be regarded as the evening’s most important moment, and its most shameful: the violation of a democratic principle that distinguishes free polities from authoritarian ones.
If Mr Trump’s predicament at the start of the debate was parlous, Mrs Clinton’s was delicate. Debating him in this mood is a bit like negotiating with Russia’s foreign minister. He confronted her with “an absolute avalanche of falsehoods”, as she put it afterwards, the lies superseding each other so relentlessly that addressing all of them would have been impossible. In effect he invited her to take a roll in the gutter with him—inadvisable, as Marco Rubio can testify. Stoop down or back down, the thug’s perennial one-two: whatever response she mounted, the terms were set by him.
it was a telling, lamentable milestone in America’s politics. Mr Trump had already shattered taboos surrounding decency, honesty and intellectual incoherence. With his threats against Mrs Clinton he took a step down a dark road that should frighten every American.
Poll: After Trump Tape Revelation, Clinton's Lead Up to Double Digits - NBC News
And among all registered voters, Clinton's lead is 13 points, her largest advantage over Trump since the poll began testing the pair last September.
Forty-nine percent of voters say they'd like to see Democrats in power on Capitol Hill, compared to 42 percent who chose the GOP.
That's up from a three-point advantage for Democrats (48 percent to 45 percent) last month, and it's the largest advantage for Democrats since the October 2013 government shutdown.
Post-Debate Polls Say Hillary Clinton Crushed Donald Trump For A Second Time
57% saying Clinton won, as opposed to 34% for Trump
Trump's Daughter Was So Disgusted That She Wouldn't Kiss Him After The Debate
Trump Ignores Hillary Clinton And Attacks Paul Ryan The Day After Presidential Debate
By going after Paul Ryan, Donald Trump has lit the match that burns the Republican Party to the ground.
For the First Time Ever, Foreign Policy Magazine Endorses a Candidate: Hillary Clinton
“A Donald Trump presidency is among the greatest threats facing America, and the Republican standard-bearer is the worst major-party candidate for the job in U.S. history.”
that makes Trump the worst candidate for president in over 200 years of American history, since George Washington in 1789. If you want to be precise, that is 227 years and 44 presidents.
He is, as experts warn, a danger to not only US national security, but to global security.
Donald Trump's mission: Make Clinton's life hell for next month - CNNPolitics.com
Donald Trump issued an unmistakable threat to Hillary Clinton Sunday night: I am willing to cross any line to make the next 30 days of your life hell.
Pro Athletes Say No One Talks Like Trump In Locker Rooms | Huffington Post
Sunday, October 09, 2016
The Obama Factor
GOP Eaten by Barack Obama Hate Monster They Created
For eight years straight, the starting point of conversation coming from so many in the GOP is not about ideas or policy, it’s about what they hate and who they want to stop. What were the choices after Trump? Hater Cruz or empty-suit Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) who spoke more on Obama than the current nominee Hillary Clinton? Once being a “real conservative” meant running campaigns on “stopping Obama” the voters landed on Trump.
The GOP has been transformed from a party of policy ideas to a party galvanized around “who we want to bring down.” It’s unrecognizable as compared to the presidencies of George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. Despite scandals, paranoia and lists of enemies, even Richard Nixon was generally policy driven. That Republican Party is gone. Republican voters nominated a candidate whose most dominant public act was lying about the first Black President of the United States’ birthplace in a relentless effort to undermine Obama’s authority and legitimacy in the name of ego. Trump couldn’t get his mind around the fact that a Black man in America has ascended higher than himself. Trump’s effort has 300 years of legacy behind it and it was given oxygen by many in the GOP universe.
Debate 2 Is The Voters' Living Room
She now also has the opportunity to stand as a powerful avatar for disgusted and depressed women across the country.
A few lines in the very beginning to denounce Trump’s sexist comments that are all over the media perhaps is unavoidable but the format of the second debate is perfect for Hillary to step into the voters' living rooms. And the average American is a decent person who believes in things like good manners and simple, basic human connection.
A US president is expected to maintain composure in the face of major global crises and just keep doing the job. That is what this is about. Trump should not have the power to distract Hillary who is an exemplary public servant.
But this is also a perfect opportunity for Hillary to address gender as a topic, something she has avoided so far. This is her Chicago pastor moment, only, we all know, Trump is no pastor.
Republican women are done with Trump - POLITICO
“However, I’m a mom and an American first, and I cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women.”
Saturday, October 08, 2016
Age Of Abundance
“Existential Issues And The Possible Age Of Abundance” @paramendra https://medium.com/@paramendra/existential-issues-and-the-possible-age-of-abundance-b1fc7bca5f0d
Friday, October 07, 2016
Climate Change To Climate Catastrophe?
It’s time to end the blackout on climate change as an issue. It needs to be front and center — and questions must be accompanied by real-time fact-checking, not relegated to the limbo of he-said-she-said, because this is one of the issues where the truth often gets lost in a blizzard of lies.
Russia Is Second World
Russia is Second World, India is Third World, soon to be the third largest economy is Third World, because it is about per capita income.
Russia lost the Cold War. It is an economy the size of Italy.
Syria is where Russia has decided to take its last stand before the world comes to realize Russia really, truly did lose the Cold War.
China was the biggest beneficiary of the end of the Cold War. It allowed China to ditch an economics that was obviously not working.
Putin is happy playing second fiddle to China. China does not think Russia is a superior military power. The two economies don't even compare. And it has been only a generation.
The irony is, in seeking power parity with America Russia is going down a path that takes it further and further away from true greatness. True greatness comes from growing the Russian economy.
Democracy and the market economy are it. Sooner or later Russia will have to come around to it for its own good.
It can also be said America did not manage the end of the Cold War as well as it could have. But then how much room to play was there?
The Russian people and leadership have to decide on their own to do right by Russia's future.
The tragedy is Syria. Innocents are getting killed in large numbers. That will be a drag on Russian stature in the long term.
Do Your Homework
“I said forget debate prep. I mean, give me a break,” Trump said at one point. “Do you really think that Hillary Clinton is debate-prepping for three or four days. Hillary Clinton is resting, okay?”
“This has nothing to do with Sunday,” Trump insisted of his New Hampshire stop. “It’s like they make you into a child.”
Trump’s Microphone Complaint: Legit
During the debate when Trump spoke I kept hearing sentence fragments, a disjointed phrase here, a random phrase there, and I was like, what's going on? Why can't I hear this guy straight?
Finally he helped me understand. The microphone was broken.
Thursday, October 06, 2016
Unfinished Business
How has a country that has benefited—perhaps more than any other—from immigration, trade and technological innovation suddenly developed a strain of anti-immigrant, anti-innovation protectionism? Why have some on the far left and even more on the far right embraced a crude populism that promises a return to a past that is not possible to restore—and that, for most Americans, never existed at all?
Over the past 25 years, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has fallen from nearly 40% to under 10%. Last year, American households enjoyed the largest income gains on record and the poverty rate fell faster than at any point since the 1960s. Wages have risen faster in real terms during this business cycle than in any since the 1970s. These gains would have been impossible without the globalisation and technological transformation that drives some of the anxiety behind our current political debate.
A world in which 1% of humanity controls as much wealth as the other 99% will never be stable. Gaps between rich and poor are not new but just as the child in a slum can see the skyscraper nearby, technology allows anyone with a smartphone to see how the most privileged live.
Over the past decade, America has enjoyed the fastest productivity growth in the G7, but it has slowed across nearly all advanced economies
American firms that export pay their workers up to 18% more on average than companies that do not
Research shows that growth is more fragile and recessions more frequent in countries with greater inequality. Concentrated wealth at the top means less of the broad-based consumer spending that drives market economies.
Under my administration, we will have boosted incomes for families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution by 18% by 2017
a free market only thrives when there are rules to guard against systemic failure and ensure fair competition.
fiscal policy must play a bigger role in combating future downturns; monetary policy should not bear the full burden of stabilising our economy. Unfortunately, good economics can be overridden by bad politics.
America’s political system can be frustrating. Believe me, I know. But it has been the source of more than two centuries of economic and social progress. The progress of the past eight years should also give the world some measure of hope. Despite all manner of division and discord, a second Great Depression was prevented. The financial system was stabilised without costing taxpayers a dime and the auto industry rescued. I enacted a larger and more front-loaded fiscal stimulus than even President Roosevelt’s New Deal and oversaw the most comprehensive rewriting of the rules of the financial system since the 1930s, as well as reforming health care and introducing new rules cutting emissions from vehicles and power plants.
20m more Americans with health insurance, while health-care costs grow at the slowest rate in 50 years
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