When the people of Syria came out to peacefully protest in large numbers, Assad went after them like Hitler was going into Poland. It was like the Iranian regime in 2009. The response was so vicious, so cruel, so large scale. Armies are supposed to fight external wars.
Assad is responsible for the Syria tragedy. But he does not feel it because Syria is not a democracy.
Raghuram Rajan, India's Departing Central Banker, Has a New Warning
2008 was a wasted crisis. It was a crisis that could have helped the world take one big leap towards a knowledge economy. The world had an opportunity to shape globoeconomics, a new third dimension to the traditional micro and macroeconomics. Some new global institutions were needed. America needed a three trillion stimulus with much of that money ending on Main Street, but instead ended up with a much bigger monetary stimulus with all the money ending up on Wall Street, pretty much free.
If the interest rates stay at near zero for long enough, it is no longer a tool, is it? But what if that has been your only tool? Then you have no available tool the next time a big crisis hits.
Just like the church state separation was enacted, there is a need to put in place a separation of nationalism and the state.
The nation state itself has to be reimagined.
The 2008 crisis was first and foremost a failure of the governments of the world. You can not globalize finance and not create a world government. Just like no government connected the computers of the world to the internet, finance globalized itself, spreading like a forest fire.
The kind of productivity gains that humanity has been fantasizing about for as long as there has been humanity are finally about to materialize and people are getting alarmed by it, because political and economic theory lag far behind the impending developments.
The heads of states of the world don't even have the political consciousness of the black marchers of the 1960s when they sought political equality.
Country after country across America and Europe are sprouting demagogues who are making all the wrong noise.
Political and economic theorists have to take the primary blame. And then the political leaders of the world.
The political landscape has to be thought anew. Global finance has to be reimagined. The world has been writing off trillions for lack of the right theoretical frameworks. Real lives are being impacted.
The political institutions are to meet political needs. A currency can't be a vehicle for nationalism either.
Nationalism is to do with culture, language, heritage, history, myths. It is not for political and economic institutions to meet those needs.
And, no, racism is not nationalism. Racism is racism. Racism is a heart disease, spiritually speaking. Racism is Satan saying hate each other.
God says love one another.
I vouch for separation of nationalism and state and separation of racism from the state. There should be zero tolerance for racism in the public sphere.
Donald Trump has a heart disease. He is a racist.
Trump is boorish. The guy is a clown passing for a presidential candidate. I take one look at Trump and think America perhaps is a sliding power. This guy would be a joke as the Independence Party nominee.
Should not the woman wanting to be the first woman president take Trump’s sexism head on?
Trump is so incoherent and haphazard I am not sure it is even sexism. It is, but it is so much more. The guy is a sinbag. A bag full of sins.
When you get into a fight with the pig, you get dirty and the pig loves it. Going insult for insult would not be any meaningful fight against sexism.
Hillary is fighting. She is running for president. That is the fight. It is a daily grind, there is a fight every hour.
Putting one woman in the White House will not end the sexism. But 160 million women waking up will.
America is a democracy. The power is with the individual citizens, not the president.
Deng Xiaoping established something called SEZs in China, special economic zones.
Donald Trump has a PVZ, a policy vacuum zone. That would be his head, his skull. There is nothing going on there.
He also has a DVZ, a dollar vacuum zone. That would be his pocket. His net worth is four billion. His debt is 11 billion. The guy is swimming in the negative zone.
If you were in his position, would you release your tax forms?
The dude is proposing a 500 billion dollar "infrastructure" spend. It is not to create construction jobs for the people he insults by calling "the poorly educated."
He wants him and all his construction industry friends to go on corporate welfare. Trump’s corporate welfare for his cronies is going to exceed America's defense budget.
CWZ, corporate welfare zone, Trump’s proposed budget is CWZ.
"But the theory behind “fundamentals” models is that economic conditions prevail because most other factors are fought to a draw. In a normal presidential election, both candidates raise essentially unlimited money and staff their campaigns with hundreds of experienced professionals. In a normal presidential election, both candidates are good representatives of their party’s traditional values and therefore unite almost all their party’s voters behind them. In a normal presidential election, both candidates have years of experience running for office and deftly pivot away from controversies to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses. In a normal presidential election, both candidates target a broad enough range of demographic groups to have a viable chance of reaching 51 percent of the vote. This may not be a normal presidential election because while most of those things are true for Clinton, it’s not clear that any of them apply to Trump....... At various points, polls have shown Clinton drawing within a few percentage points of Trump — and occasionally even leading him — in states such as Utah, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, Kansas and even Mississippi."
What A Clinton Landslide Would Look Like | FiveThirtyEight
From: The Economist
The US-Mexican border stretches 1,989 miles, but the wall itself needn’t be as long thanks to the preponderance of natural borders like Rio Grande. Assuming a length of 1,000 miles (1,600 km) and a height of 40 feet (12 metres), Bernstein reckon that the wall would require $711m of concrete and $240m of cement. Including labour, the total cost of $15bn-$25bn is a bit more than Mr Trump's suggested $10bn. (Bernstein’s estimates presumably do not factor in Mr Trump’s construction expertise.)
Trump’s Full Speech On Immigration
Anyone with a skimpering knowledge of Politics 101, Economics 101, Geography 101, Wall Construction 101, Benefits Of Globalization 101, Productivity Gains Through Technological Innovation 101, No To Hate 101 will tell you Trump’s Wall is a wrong, hateful proposal. But the wall already exists. The Berlin Wall against inevitable globalization already exists in Donald Trump's mind.
In the modern era America started the trend of globalization. By now all world is on the bandwagon and rightly so.
But Donald Trump's hate is completely unhinged from facts and logic. He says Mexico will pay for it. How? Mexico runs a trade deficit with America "so we will use that money to get Mexico to pay for the wall." This guy obviously has no clue how trade deficits work.
That is like saying Obama is my pal, and he is going to pass a three trillion budget, and so I am going to get him to buy me Necker Island.
This dude actually sent people to Hawaii to do "research" on Obama's birth details.
Hate is its own fact. Hate is its own logic. Hate is its own reality. Donald Trump is proof.
In immigration speech, Donald Trump spurns softened tone and threatens Republican future - LA Times
Mexican president calls Trump's ideas 'a threat to the future of Mexico' - LA Times
Trump's Mexico visit stirs outrage: 'We don't want him' - LA Times The anger crossed political lines. Members of the conservative National Action Party were as vociferous as people on the left. Margarita Zavala, a possible 2018 presidential candidate for the party, said Mexicans “have dignity, and we repudiate his speech of hatred.”......... Mexico City's local parliament declared Trump a persona non grata........... “It feels like an insult,” said Elisenda Estrems, 41, an artist who was eating breakfast Wednesday morning at a Mexico City cafe. “The whole city will be up in arms. I hope they throw him out.” ......... Mexican shops now specialize in yellow-haired Trump piñatas, ready to be smashed to bits. And the candidate is mocked in running jokes on social media and even in song...... Peña Nieto has been critical of Trump in the past, saying there is “no way” Mexico will pay for a border wall, and even comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler........ Some people suggested Peña Nieto extended the invitation to both Trump and the candidate’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but did not expect either to accept. It’s a tradition in some parts of Mexico, a kind of false hospitality that allows people to seem welcoming even when they’re not.
A Clinton victory also promises to usher in four-to-eight years of the kind of down-and-dirty public misogyny you might expect from a stag party at Roger Ailes’s house.
As head of the Australian Labor Party, Gillard served as prime minister from 2010 to 2013. Her tenure was turbulent and notable for what Gillard termed in her exit speech the “gender wars.” What surprised the former PM most about the experience: that the sexist attacks grew worse as her time in office progressed. “I expected the maximum reaction to my being the first woman prime minister to come in the first few months,” she told me. “What I found living through the reality was that the sort of gendered stuff actually grew over time” as she tackled tough policy decisions. (Gillard too was derided as a “menopausal monster.”)
Then there were the two hecklers at a New Hampshire rally who waved signs and chanted, “Iron my shirt!” Clinton laughed it off, and the incident was reported mostly as dumbass 20-something guys acting like dumbass 20-something guys. But if someone had yelled an equivalently demeaning remark at Obama—like, say, “Shine my shoes!”—the public response likely would have been very different.
Why a Hillary Clinton Presidential Win Means a New Era of Public Misogyny - The Atlantic
The dude talks about Blac (Black Latino Asian Coalition) people with the mouth of a mad dog. The world has changed under his very feet and he doesn't even know.
Last August, Trump took issue with Bush’s statement that many undocumented immigrants came to the U.S. as an “act of love,” seeking a better life for their families. “There’s no act of love. It’s tough stuff,” he said at an Aug. 25 news conference. “They’re gonna be gone so fast if I win, your head will spin.” Weeks later, during a raucous rally in Dallas, Trump railed against “anchor babies” and vowed to boot undocumented immigrants if elected president. “You people are suffering,” Trump told the Texans. “I’m in New York, but they’re in New York, too. They’re all over the place.”
Then never recover.
Hillary Clinton Piles Up Research in Bid to Needle Donald Trump at First Debate http://nyti.ms/2c3Q0Be
Her team is also getting advice from psychology experts to help create a personality profile of Mr. Trump to gauge how he may respond to attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary on the debate stage...... he can barely conceal his disdain for laborious and theatrical practice sessions.
To Hillary this is about the House, and cementing a new American majority, to last a generation, of progressive whites, colorful people, millennials, and women of all ages. This is not about the electoral college. Much is at stake.
I trust her to slam dunk it.
Trump Won't Prepare For Debate. Clinton Hunkering Down. | Daily Wire
Trump's just gonna wing the debates / Boing Boing
Clinton at fundraiser: 'I do not know which Donald Trump will show up' at debates - CNNPolitics.com
Sounds like she’s got this… | Balloon Juice
When Nehru Refused American Bait on a Permanent Seat for India at the UN
One cannot underestimate how imminent Nehru and others felt a conflict of at least an equal degree to the Second World War was.
