yallerdawg

yallerdawg's Journal

August 15, 2016

How Right-Wing Lies Become Mainstream News

August 15, 2016

Obama Is Right on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

"A well-informed electorate is a prerequisite for democracy."

Not who shouts loudest.

Bloomberg Editorial Board

Of course, it’s also worth reiterating the case for this deal in particular -- and free trade in general. The U.S. will be the TPP’s largest economic beneficiary in absolute terms. Its provisions have the potential to advance long-standing progressive goals on labor and the environment, dismantle a thicket of protectionist regulations, and reignite global trade liberalization largely on U.S. terms. The deal will also reinforce U.S. strategic interests in the world’s most dynamic region.

Moreover, the cost of walking away from the TPP will be measured in more than economic terms. As Singapore’s visiting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said this week, the TPP is a test of U.S. “credibility and seriousness of purpose.” In the face of growing Chinese assertiveness, a U.S. failure to approve the pact will undermine not only its regional alliances but its ability to set the terms of global trade.

One of the core tenets of economics is that free trade makes economies more efficient by increasing competition and thus innovation; consumers benefit by gaining access to better goods at lower prices. The impact of any single trade deal on employment is hard to gauge, but in the long run, workers do better in a more productive and competitive economy.

Yet such benefits have been overshadowed by campaign rhetoric that seeks to exploit economic insecurity. While Donald Trump promises to protect workers by building walls and starting trade wars, Hillary Clinton has abjured a trade deal she once supported. Political expedience is a powerful force, and it would be naïve to argue that free trade is a popular issue this year. But at least one of those candidates knows better.

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-04/obama-is-right-on-the-trans-pacific-partnership

August 14, 2016

How Trump Remixed the Republican 'Southern Strategy'

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in't." - Polonius, Hamlet

The presidential candidate has resurrected divisive GOP campaign tactics that target and alienate minorities.

Source: The Atlantic, by Robert P. Jones

One glaring, underreported clue about the method behind the post-primary Trump madness is his selection of Paul Manafort as chair of his national campaign. Manafort’s appointment, followed by the ousting of Corey Lewandowski in June, was widely seen as a move to professionalize Trump’s disorganized campaign staff just ahead of the convention. But along with credentials earned from working with top GOP politicians (and a raft of international dictators from the Philippines to Somalia), Manafort also brought decades of experience as an overseer of the Southern Strategy. Since the 1980s, Manafort’s business partners have included Charles Black, who helped launch the Senate career of outspoken segregationist Jessie Helms, and Lee Atwater, who was behind the infamously racist Willie Horton ads run by the George H. W. Bush campaign.

And here is one more clue about just how much life this resurrected strategy may yet have in it, at least among Trump’s core supporters. A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, of which I’m the CEO, conducted just after Trump declared his candidacy in the fall of 2015, asked Americans whether they see the Confederate flag more as a symbol of southern pride or as a symbol of racism. More than three-quarters of Republicans, including 83 percent of white working-class Republicans, reported that they see the Confederate flag more as a symbol of southern pride, compared to more than six in ten Democrats who said they see it more as a symbol of racism.

To be sure, Trump has not simply exhumed and dusted off the old Southern Strategy. He has characterized illegal immigrants rather than black Americans as a threat to white women’s safety. And he has redirected the Christian Right’s focus away from its preoccupation with a “godless Communism.” In its place, Trump has exploited the perception of Islam’s growing power abroad against a backdrop of genuinely declining white Christian influence at home, where the U.S. finds itself for the first time a minority white Christian nation. And, significantly—in a demonstration of just how successful the old strategy was—he’s discarded the dog whistle in favor of a bull horn.

Despite the efforts of RNC leaders to move on, Trump’s campaign is demonstrating how difficult it may be to disavow decades of cultural investment. Trump’s unlikely success with these old tactics is demonstrating William Faulkner famous aphorism: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Read it all at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/how-trump-remixed-the-republican-southern-strategy/495719/

August 14, 2016

The Future of America from the Heart of Trump Country

File under "It can't happen here."

August 13, 2016

"Mr. Robot" and the rabbit hole. Helpful spoilers?

"Mr. Robot isn't a TV show anymore. It's a video game."

Source: The Week, Lili Loufbourow

A critique:

Mr. Robot is in trouble with some viewers because its second season has been exceptionally slow. The Season 1 finale raised huge philosophical questions about the collapse of capitalism, the moral case for and against hacking, and the ways corporations might or might not be colluding with foreign powers to permanently change the world order. These are big issues and they require a big world. In lieu of advancing these plots, the second season has proliferated film and TV references, nostalgic riffs, and Elliot's efforts to fight Mr. Robot. If you're watching for the hacking, or the societal collapse, or the politics, or the philosophy, that sucks. Mr. Robot started on a gigantic canvas and so far the only part of it that's shaded in and detailed (almost to the point of absurdity) is Elliot's tortured inner life.

A revelation:

And it's this interactivity, that pleasant, ticklish, paranoid feeling that everything is connected, makes the show massively fun to consume. I found myself staring at the ads before and after the show, trying to figure out what was and wasn't part of Mr. Robot's universe, which had already transgressed by tweaking the sacred rules of the network time slot, and has now started messing with commercials too. Mr. Robot's fake E Corp ads were stylistically indistinguishable from USA's '90s ads.

That's FUN. More absorbing than the plot or the suspense or even the great cinematography is the show's friendly invitation to detect. People are scouring every frame for codes and secrets and (unlike in True Detective, which inspired a similar frenzy of paranoid readings) they're actually there.

An example:

If you keep your eyes peeled for IP addresses (they pop up in the unlikeliest places, like freeway signs), they might lead you to a BBS called TV TODAY where you can type in commands to see ANSI art of ALF or Bart Simpson and read bulletin boards about Doogie Howser, The Simpsons, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Full House, Step by Step, Head of the Class, Dear John, and The Cosby Show. If you want to see some other things in the BBS, try typing in the following commands: A P B P A P B. One of the images there...

...is on Angela's desk...

...in the episode. And hey: if you want to look up what "MARBLECAKE" means, that's up to you.

Much more at: http://theweek.com/articles/642386/mr-robot-isnt-tv-show-anymore-video-game

August 13, 2016

Donald Trump knows exactly what he's doing

Source: The Week, by Paul Waldman

So it was when Donald Trump decided a couple of days ago to say, "ISIS is honoring President Obama. He is the founder of ISIS. He is the founder of ISIS. He's the founder. He founded ISIS." It's so ludicrous that we don't actually need to assess the accuracy of the claim, right?

As an informed person, upon hearing this you probably said, "Oh, well Trump just means that by pulling out of Iraq, Obama helped create a situation which enabled ISIS to evolve out of a pre-existing radical terrorist group. He's not literally saying Obama founded the group, just that his decisions eventually led to their rise." But you'd be wrong, because conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt tried to give Trump that out, and Trump declined to take it. "I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace," Hewitt said when he had Trump on his show Thursday. "No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS. I do," Trump responded. "But he's not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He's trying to kill them," Hewitt replied. "I don't care," said Trump. "He was the founder."

To paraphrase Marco Rubio, don't think Donald Trump doesn't know what he's doing — he knows exactly what he's doing. In the same speech, Trump pointedly referred to "Barack Hussein Obama," just in case anyone forgot that the president isn't really one of us. Trump, of course, launched an effort in 2011 to prove once and for all that Obama is a foreigner who was not actually born in the United States, but what you may not realize is that to this day Trump has never admitted that the president is, in fact, an American.

And he's got a lot of company. You might have thought the lunatic conspiracy theory about Obama actually being born abroad and falsifying his birth records would have been relegated by now to a tiny fringe. Alas, it is not. An NBC/Survey Monkey poll taken just this week showed that only 27 percent of Republicans think Obama was born in the United States. Twenty-seven percent.

Read it at: http://theweek.com/articles/642393/donald-trump-knows-exactly-what-hes-doing

August 13, 2016

Intern Q&A with the President

"Becoming President involves a lot of luck...But being useful, and having a satisfying life, and making a contribution, that is entirely within your reach."

August 13, 2016

Bill Clinton Calls Comey's Statement On Email Classification “Biggest Load Of Bull I’ve Ever Heard”

We saw what you did there, Mr. "Above Partisanship" Comey (

)

True or false - ALL Republicans lie?

True -- they ALL do!

August 12, 2016

Something we may have noticed before?

Among many positive indicators in this poll, a familiar little tidbit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-08-10/bloomberg-politics-national-poll

Clinton’s voters are more positive about her candidacy than those backing Trump are about his, with 56 percent saying their alignment with her is more an act of support than to stop Trump. His fans, meanwhile, are more motivated by their disdain for her, with 56 percent saying their backing of Trump is more a vote against her than support for him.

August 11, 2016

This Supreme Court decision poisoned our campaign finance system

Fundraising email from Hillary campaign:

<name>,

Almost a decade ago, I learned that a film called “Hillary: The Movie” was being released by a conservative group called Citizens United. It took aim at me and other progressives. What we didn’t know at the time was how much damage this 90-minute film would do to our country -- because the movie set in motion a legal roller coaster that affected our entire democracy.

Citizens United -- a special interest group -- argued that the First Amendment protected their right to spend unlimited money to influence the outcome of elections. The case made its way to the Supreme Court. And on January 21, 2010, the Court handed down its landmark ruling, "Citizens United v. FEC," clearing the way for special interest groups to bankroll campaigns.

In the years since, we’ve seen the aftermath of that decision. Let’s be frank: that ruling has perverted and poisoned our campaign finance system. It has stifled the voices of ordinary Americans. Instead, it has amplified the opinions and interests of corporations and billionaires.

<name>, I used to teach law students -- and nowhere in the Constitution does it say that corporations and wealthy special interests have the right to control our elections. A Fortune 500 CEO should not have more sway over an election than an elementary school teacher.

That’s why, as your president, I will work tirelessly to put in place a constitutional amendment reversing that Supreme Court decision. I'll put that process in motion within the first month of my tenure in the Oval Office.

But I need your help to get there.

We cannot have people like the Koch brothers buying our elections. We need to work as hard as we can, for as long as we must, to protect the sanctity -- and transparency -- of our democratic process.

You understand that. And that’s part of the reason I’m so honored to have End Citizens United’s endorsement. You know the power of a grassroots movement. And you get that our foremothers and forefathers would be sick at the thought that -- in 2016! -- a few players at the top of the pyramid hold so much of our nation’s political power.

Our opponent in this election is on the side of the billionaires. Can you chip in $X now to my campaign and help me transform our broken campaign finance system?

Thank you for standing with me.

As your president, I promise -- I'll stand with you, too.

Hillary

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