These days when I think of Donald Trump the face that shows up on my mindscreen is that of Alec Baldwin.
What just happened?
Is the man really that unsmiling and ugly? And fat?
And devoid of ideas?
The guy is so lacking in anything that can even remotely be called public policy it looks like he is a cardboard cutout.
I can't tell the difference.
Will Alec Baldwin please show up for the third debate? He is equally ugly, what with all the makeup, but he is not sickening.
This is the first time a top Bollywood star has eased into being a top Hollywood star. This is big.
America and India now are what America and Britain used to be. The oldest modern democracy and the largest democracy are natural allies.
Priyanka Chopra is like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai. She is a role model.
And she stays Indian.
Donald Trump has threatened to jail his opponent. And before that he has threatened to silence the media.
That is all Idi Amin.
Idi Amin has come to America.
Entrepreneurs who do well should get excited about a 65% death tax after the 2016 race. You don't want your kids to end up like Donald Trump. Donald Trump is exhibit A for what a child should not end up like. This guy is an unrepentant sinner. He has no character, "no reputation to save," as the New York Times put it. Every sin in the book and Donald Trump is unrepentantly guilty of it. He is a fast food glutton, for example. The guy lies like nobody who has run for any office in this country. He has stiffed thousands of vendors who have done work for him. That is cheat and steal in spades. This guy is a "bozo," like Robert De Niro said.
Paying a 65% Death Tax is a small price to pay to make sure your kids don't end up in hell.
when it comes to Christian men still supporting Trump, “Disappointed seems like too soft a word. It’s devastating.”
Donald Trump is like a really, really, really bad student on his way to sitting for a final exam, a seventh grader with zero preparation sitting for a SAT, and potty mouthed, extremely, completely, shamelessly bad mannered, so bad mannered the parents have taken a cue from Elvis and left the building instead of owning up to as to whose child this might be.
The ideological tussle lasted almost seven full decades. The capitalism communism tussle defined the 20th century. It is said only the Bible has been circulated more than Lenin's works. The decades after World War II were stark, primarily due to the nuclear angle.
The dog eat dog capitalism that Lenin theorized against was much tempered by FDR who responded primarily to the Great Depression. Stalinism was basically authoritarianism. The basic human rights, the basic freedoms, freedom of religion are the bedrock. The economic part of it did not work either. Ends up free enterprise is fundamental. Property rights are basic.
But Russia has always loomed large in Europe even during the era of Tsars. By geographic size it is still the biggest country in the world. The Russians would like to believe they are a major power in the world. They would like their geopolitical pull to be felt. Between them America and Russia continue to have most of the nuclear weapons in the world. And Russia has a defense industry that looks for buyers all over the world. Saber rattling is good for business.
The ideological tussle is not final, it never is. American democracy is not a finished product but a work in progress. And the economic paradigms it has been functioning in will soon prove inadequate. The world is about to enter an unprecedented era of major productivity gains largely driven by technology. The capitalism communism tussle was liquid water physics. The era of steam physics is right round the corner. New political and economic paradigms will be needed. And such theoretical work should never be tied to nationalism of any culture or country. Was Einstein's theory of relativity Jewish? Nope.
Is Russia a democracy? Is Russia a market economy? Is Putin a new Tsar? Russia is not a democracy like the ones in Western Europe, obviously. And Russia does not seem to have a hard nosed focus on economic growth like China. At some level Russia would like a status of equals relationship with the United States that it thought it had during the Cold War, based primarily on the fact of its large nuclear arsenal and a still impressive military.
Saudi Arabia is no democracy by any stretch of imagination but America seems to do business with it just fine.
There is a fissure. Russia, Pakistan, China and North Korea form one ideological belt, America, Europe, India and Japan form another belt. Democracies and non democracies have a tendency to needle each other. But it is not clear cut. Russia and India have a friendship that is unique. That is a good thing. That perhaps is a safety valve lest things go a little out of hand between Russia and the West.
China is not a Saddam dictatorship. It can be argued China has campaign finance reform that American progressives wish they had.
America has campaign finance reform to do. Race relations in America are in a sorry state. So it is not like America has a perfect political system. The gender churn of the 2016 race is a global spectacle.
Jobs are being lost in all countries to automation but there are demagogues in many countries who are busy channeling the resultant anger in the direction of other countries.
The technological innovation is about to speed up so much it will not only ask for new political and economic theory it will also upend the geopolitical map of the world. Understood well it can be for the collective good of all humanity. Russia and America cooperating with the end goal of a nuclear weapon free world is what is best for the general welfare of the ordinary citizens in both those countries.
Nuclear technology is decades old. Showing off nuclear is like someone bragging about an early mobile phone in this era of smartphones. Nuclear is not the next big thing. It is old technology. The next is nano and bio.
Syria and Yemen make both America and Russia look bad, as if it is okay for a large number of innocent people to die while the big powers of the world play their geopolitical chess games.
Syria is top of the list. The world is failing Syria. Who violated the ceasefire? America? And if the American military action was a mistake, were the Syrians and Russians invited for detailed briefings and verifications?
The Arab world is in turmoil. It is a world primarily struggling with itself. It is a culture asking for validation. There is an aspiration for freedom and democracy where you can kick the can down the road but not forever.
I read Tolstoy's War And Peace cover to cover during what would be the freshman year in the American high school system, Class 9. That is all I did an entire vacation. The mind was blown, to say the least. Compared to it novels of western literature started looking like little short stories. Then I read Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment and the mind was blown all over again. The mind was blown a third time with Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years Of Solitude.
The GDP is not the only measure of greatness. The rat race of chasing the dollar is not the only meaningful life. In fact if the rat race is your only life it is not much of a life in the first place. Life has to have a higher meaning.
And if it is about wealth if humanity can conquer global warming it can take itself to an Age Of Abundance, an era that will make the America of today look like a Third World country. And it will be global. All world will have become one country long before 2050 anyways.
Both Russia and America should approach the present from that future. There is much common ground possible. There is much for the two powers to do together.
Russia is the country that gave political asylum to Snowden, the whistleblower who has ignited debate on privacy in the era of mass surveillance. Ends up the American state is as knee deep as the Chinese state when it comes to surveillance.
This debate concludes with a netizen bill of rights. The debate has not even started yet.
The Russian political system is itself an unsettled debate. The right system will give Russia good economic growth.
Putin has a modest background. Yeltsin basically handed over Russia to Putin impressed by his ability to execute, to get things done. In the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia was in free fall. There were bread lines, for example. Putin stabilized the country. But in the process became a new Tsar. One hopes for the sake of Russia that is not the final reality.
Democracy is good.
Trump once said on the campaign trail that he would approve of torture as President, “even if it doesn’t work.” With four weeks left to Election Day, he seemed to be testing the proposition on the public. Unshackled, he flirted with unhinged and erased the emollient line between a campaign aimed at the base and one intended to debase.
When protesters gathered outside the party’s white brick headquarters on Capitol Hill, the organizer turned out to be Trump’s Virginia campaign chairman. One sign waved at the RNC offices read, Better to grab a p-ssy than to be one.
Election Day “could be the start of the real civil war,” warns Kevin Sheridan, a GOP consultant and former adviser to Ryan. “Not the end of it.”
Trump’s stump speech is a sort of jazz riff, and one of his favorite themes involves reciting the lyrics of an old soul anthem, “The Snake,” a parable about the dangers of showing too much compassion to strangers. To the delight of his Wilkes-Barre audience, he wove it into this rally. “Oh shut up, silly woman,” Trump quoted. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.” Trump uses the tune to illustrate the dangers of welcoming Syrian refugees. But it can also be read as a rebuke to the GOP for letting Trump into the tent.
GOP caucus campaign chief Greg Walden told lobbyists the same day that Trump could be a drag in every race around the country.
It all points to a Republican civil war that is, if anything, just getting under way. “The fight you’re seeing now is a preview of what you’re going to see on steroids after the election”
“There’s going to be a schism”
thrice-married playboy who once said he had never asked God for forgiveness
Trump has exposed the disconnect between evangelicals’ words and their political deeds.
Trump is unlikely to recede from the spotlight. This campaign has cemented him as a star. GOP insiders from all points on the party’s ideological spectrum predict he may use his notoriety to launch a branded news outlet for his fervent fans.
Putin ally tells Americans: vote Trump or face nuclear war
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant veteran lawmaker known for his fiery rhetoric, told Reuters in an interview that Trump was the only person able to de-escalate dangerous tensions between Moscow and Washington.
By contrast, Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton could spark World War Three, said Zhirinovsky, who received a top state award from Putin after his pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) came third in Russia's parliamentary election last month.
Zhirinovsky, who said he met Trump in New York in 2002, revels in his similarities with the American businessman - they are the same age, favor coarse, sometimes misogynistic language and boast about putting their own country first. Zhirinovsky has even said he wants a DNA test to see if he is related to Trump.
"Most Americans should choose Trump because men have been leading for millions of year. You can't take the risk of having one of the richest, most powerful countries led by a woman president," he said.
"Victory for Trump would be a gift to humanity. But if Hillary Clinton wins it will be the last U.S. president ever."
Mozart and Einstein and Tesla would all be considered autistic if they were alive today.
