nittany ram wrote:

bnw wrote:

Most americans, myself included, are in favor of gays having the same benefits as conferred through marriage. But calling it marriage is wrong. Marriage is only between a man and a woman.

Most Americans have no problem calling the formal union between two homosexuals ‘marriage’. Why do you? What is it about the term marriage as applied to homosexuals that’s offensive?

Good questions, Nittany.

The idea of “traditional marriage” has always been nonsense. Because it’s changed so often over the centuries, and has always been contingent on culture, region, era.

Right-wingers love to harp on “Judeo-Christian values” when they discuss this issue. But in the bible, marriage was between one man and several girls. It was forced. Those girls had no say in the matter. They had to obey their father and village elders and go off with some old man they barely knew, only to become his virtual slave. Women had no say in the matter right up into the 1800s in the so-called “civilized” world of Europe and the USA . . . and we had laws on the books as recently as 1981 that said a man could legally rape his wife, something that Trump did, according to his first wife, Ivana.

“Marriage” was, for millennial, legalized slavery. Its history isn’t anything to be proud of or hold up as some “sacred” institution. Extending it to gay people is actually “civilizing” it beyond where it was, and we should welcome this.

Oh, and btw, most right-wing fundamentalists either don’t know or conveniently ignore the fact that Jesus never discussed the issue — or abortion or contraception. Not a single word about same-sex relationships (or abortion or contraception).

PA,

I’ve never seen a right-winger answer your question in their own words. In their own words. They can’t come up with any “freedoms” they’ve lost under Obama that they had under Bush. They’ll talk in incredibly generalized terms of End of Days, that Obama has destroyed the country and civilization as we know it, but they can never actually point to anything he’s done that’s different enough from his predecessors to cause this. This is why they have to resort to paranoid lunatics and their Op Eds. They can’t express it themselves.

Another key here: The massive conflicting thoughts in their heads. They want to blame government for allowing job losses and so on. To them, it’s all the government’s fault that the economy crashed and that corporations ship jobs by the millions overseas. But when it comes to supposed answers to this, they say the government can’t create jobs and it needs to stay out of the way of the private sector. Which of course means the economy would crash more often, more severely, and millions of more jobs would be shipped overseas.

If the government can be blamed for our travails — and it does bare responsibility — it is in its failure to rein in capitalism, capitalists and an economic system designed to ravage the vast majority of human beings and concentrate wealth, income, access, opportunity and power at the very top. Government is guilty of hurting the people to the degree it doesn’t suppress capitalism’s natural, baked in oppression. Government is guilty to the degree it deregulates, props up, bails out, defends and lets capitalists do as they please. Ironically, the right-wing answer — and Trump’s — is to deregulate even more, slash the taxes of the rich even more, and let them run amok even more than they do already.

In short, their answer is the opposite of what we need to do, if the goal is higher standards of living for everyone, instead of just the 1%. If the goal is to help make life better for everyone, the Trump way, the GOP way, is the opposite of what we need to do. The Dems don’t have the answers, either. But Trump and the GOP want to aggressively, proactively make things a hell of a lot worse.

Socialism, to me, is really the only sane way to organize a society. Of course, then we get into the problem of how “socialism” is defined. It might be more accurate to say there are many socialisms, and then go from there.

My own view is that it really doesn’t make much sense to take money, after the fact, and then “redistribute” it to lift up the population, though this is light years better than our current way of doing things. To me, the most logical way to go is to make sure all work, all income, all the pricing for necessities, syncs up to guarantee comfortable standards of living without any back-end help. As in, up front, wages need to be sufficient to match up with goods and services so there is never any need of government supplements. Ever. For any person with a job, and everyone would be guaranteed that by right. Up front. As in, the original distribution and allocation of income, access, wealth, opportunity, resources, etc. etc. . . . all of that would work right off the bat to provide a healthy standard of living for all citizens — again, without exception.

To me, this can’t be done under capitalism. By definition, it can’t be done. Because capitalism automatically generates massive inequality, if for no other reason than it empowers the few to control the many, from the smallest business on up, and the few control all of that allocation of resources for the many. No way on earth will the few ever voluntarily distribute resources for the many with any remote connection to “fair” or “equal.” Reverse engineer this and you have to take away that power from the few and reestablish it among the many — rather, the “all.” There is no other way.

My view of “socialism” means egalitarian, fully democratic, cooperative economies, federated with each other . . . and I’d also do away with money as we think of it today, and any connection between “sales” and income. I’d sever that tie forever. Income (and all public funding) would come from absolutely separate public “banks” and would have nothing whatsoever to do with any sales totals for any good or service. And this would solve the problem of funding as well, and end the need for taxes, debt, etc. etc.

Trump has relied on intimidation, bullying, legal threats and his money for decades to squash his history of sexual predation. It’s worked for the most part, but it’s been well known for decades that he has engaged in sexual assaults.

His wife Ivana said, in a sworn statement, that he raped her, and there is another rape accusation going to trial soon. The girl was thirteen at the time.

An Exhaustive List of the Allegations Women Have Made Against Donald Trump

Excerpt:

Raping Ex-Wife Ivana, But Not in the “Criminal Sense”

The 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump revealed that, in depositions for their contentious divorce case, Ivana Trump accused her then-husband of rape. The Daily Beast reported that, in the book, Harry Hurt III wrote that Trump confronted Ivana after a painful scalp reduction surgery to reduce his bald spot. He allegedly yelled that her “fucking doctor” ruined him, and then held back her arms and pulled out fistfuls of hair from Ivana’s scalp, before ripping off her clothes and forcing his penis inside her.

Trump previously denied the allegation, including the scalp surgery. “It’s obviously false,” Donald Trump reportedly said in 1993. “It’s incorrect and done by a guy without much talent … He is a guy that is an unattractive guy who is a vindictive and jealous person.” Trump’s legal counsel told the Daily Beast that Ivana was talking about how “she felt raped emotionally … She was not referring to it [as] a criminal matter, and not in its literal sense, though there’s many literal senses to the word.”

Raping a 13-Year-Old at Jeffrey Epstein’s Apartment

A woman has accused Trump of raping her in 1994 when she was just 13 years old, according to BuzzFeed News. Trump has “vehemently denied the rape claims, which are being filed in a New York civil court for the third time,” BuzzFeed News reported. According to the suit, Trump allegedly had forcible sex with the plaintiff during a party at the New York City apartment of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile who is a billionaire. In June 2016, Jezebel reported that the coverage of the lawsuit was “the culmination of an almost year-long campaign to quietly push these allegations into the public discussion, and maybe make some money in the process.”

Three more articles about Trump’s violence toward women:

Ivana Trump’s assertion of “rape” came in a deposition—part of the early ’90s divorce case between the Trumps, and revealed in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump.

The Violence of Donald Trump Trump’s leaked remarks about grabbing women are consistent with his history of alleged and admitted physical assaults

The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet The Republican nominee faces a series of allegations of sexual assault, an embarrassing tape in which he boasts about committing sexual assault, a series of old comments, and a civil suit accusing him of rape.

Thanks primarily to Trump, but also to the Dems’ insistence that it had to be HRC, American politics has fallen to lows we haven’t seen in more than a century.

Neither party should be in power. Neither party has earned the right to govern. And anyone who thinks Trump is the answer to this mess has lost their freakin’ mind. He and his party are a huge reason why things are so screwed up in the first place. The GOP is the dirty tricks party, and has decided to spend all of their time investigating Dems rather than solving any problems, all the while blaming the Dems for every evil in the world.

The usual caveat: Both candidates are awful. But Trump is beyond vile, despicable and grotesque. He used those women, exploited them, for his own miserable political gain, to deflect from his own admittance that he is a serial sexual predator:

The facts about Hillary Clinton and the Kathy Shelton rape case By Glenn Kessler October 11 at 3:00 AM

Excerpts:

The Facts

In 1975, Clinton — then Hillary Rodham — was a 27-year-old law professor running a legal aid clinic at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. After a 41-year-old factory worker was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, he asked the judge to replace his court-appointed male attorney with a female one. The judge went through the list of a half-dozen women practicing law in the county and picked Clinton. She has said she was not thrilled with the assignment but felt she had little choice but to take the court appointment — which the prosecutor in the case confirmed to CNN.

Court records describe a sad tale. Shelton, at the time 12 years old, went out for a late-night drive with Tom Taylor, then 41, a 20-year-old cousin, and a 15-year-old boy with whom she was apparently infatuated. They bought a pint of Old Grand-Dad whisky, which was mixed with Coca-Cola for Shelton. After hanging out at a bowling alley for a few hours, they allegedly drove to a ravine where the two older men left Shelton and the 15-year-old together. The two then had sex, the boy told police. After they were finished, Taylor approached the truck and apparently attacked Shelton. The boy reported that Shelton screamed and he saw Taylor hitching up his pants.

As part of her handling of the case, Clinton filed an affidavit July 28, 1975, requesting that the girl go through a psychiatric examination. “I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing,” Clinton said. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”

Clinton offered no source for the claims.

When Glenn Thrush, then a reporter for Newsday, showed the affidavit to Shelton in 2007, he wrote that she was visibly stunned. “It kind of shocks me – it’s not true,” she said. “I never said anybody attacked my body before, never in my life.”

But Shelton told Thrush at the time that she bore no ill will toward Clinton. “I have to understand that she was representing Taylor,” she said. “I’m sure Hillary was just doing her job.”

But in 2014, Shelton told the Daily Beast that she had been misquoted. “Hillary Clinton took me through hell,” she said.

Shelton’s ire had risen with the 2014 discovery of previously unpublished audio recordings of Clinton discussing the case in the mid-1980s with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed for an article that was never published.

In the recorded interview, Clinton is heard laughing or giggling four times when discussing the case with unusual candor; the reporter is also heard laughing, and sometimes Clinton is responding to him.

For instance, Clinton laughed after she said: “Of course he [the defendant] claimed he didn’t [rape]. All this stuff. He took a lie-detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.”

The Daily Beast article said:

The victim was put through several forensic procedures, including a lie detector test. At first, she failed the lie detector test; she said that was because she didn’t understand one of the specific sex-related questions. Once that question was explained to her, she passed, she said. The victim positively identified her two attackers through one-way glass and they were arrested.

In an interview with the Daily Mail that appeared Aug. 9, Shelton agreed for the first time to be identified by name. This article strongly suggested that the psychiatric examination took place:

Although Clinton’s legal maneuver would likely be prohibited today under Arkansas rape shield act, the law was not passed until two years after the case.

Shelton said one of her worst memories of the case was being questioned repeatedly by appointed experts.

“It got so bad that I told my mom I wasn’t going back, and whatever happened, happened,” said Shelton. “It’s sad that a 12-year-old had to go through what I had to go through, because for days I cried and cried and cried over it.”

The gofundme site, which was established Aug. 13 and seeks to raise $10,000, quotes Shelton as explicitly saying that the test took place: “Hillary then began to attack my character, forcing me to undergo multiple polygraph tests where I was asked explicit sexual questions I didn’t even understand. Next I was sent for a psychiatric examination. It felt like I was the one on trial.”

But the court docket, unearthed by Pittsburgh attorney Norma Chase and for the first time made public, shows that one day after Clinton filed a request for psychiatric exam, it was denied by the judge. The court docket for July 28 says Clinton filed her motion for an exam. On July 29, it states: “Hearing on Motion for Psychiatric Examination — Motion denied. Defendant objects.” (There is also no evidence that Clinton was responsible for arranging Chase’s polygraph test.)

Here’s the docket sheet:

sdram wrote:

Since I believe that the election is finite, I truly suspect that Trumps latest performance was primarily about priming the pump(his loyal supporters) for the new Trump media empire that’s sure to magically spring up after Hillary wins the election.

Trump has a large batch of humans in his pocket that he’ll continue to exploit until he wears them out. His initial message will be to bag on Clinton and any other non right wingers(both republicans and democrats) for the next 4 years buoyed by these loyal supporters who constantly will need to be led. He can go from KKK meeting to Aryan nation webcast to Trump fund raisers for ever – talking, snorting, lying, lurking about, hurling insults, spouting nonsensical bullshit that Bannon’s team of degenerates feed him. Location, location, location was the mantra of the real estate shyster. Now it’s onto ratings, ratings, ratings. He’ll have Ailes and Breitbart boy at his beck and call.

He could give a shit less about helping anybody or real people in America and families and kids – he cares about money. That’s his honey. He wants it all.

Well said.

It’s too bizarre for words that he has any backers. He’s rarely anything but incoherent, and when he speak coherently, it’s always thuggish and vile.

Amazing thing about his supporters. They hold too conflicting things in their head at the same time without a care: They say they love him because he “tells it like it is.” But when confronted with something he has said that is obscenely ugly, racist, misogynist, xenophobic, etc. etc. they say he didn’t really mean it.

I used to think Ron Paul fans were the most oblivious to reality and the most obnoxiously diehard. But Trump supporters, in general, are worse.

Some MSM (WaPo) fact-checking and another article of possible interest.

My guess is leftist news sources aren’t going to comment much at all about the debate. Perhaps Jacobin will later. Will post that if it happens:

Fact-checking the second Clinton-Trump presidential debate

Trump wanted to put Bill Clinton’s accusers in his family box. Debate officials said no.

wv wrote:

Anybody watch the second debate?

Apparently CNN thinks Trump didnt win any new converts.

http://wtvr.com/2016/10/09/poll-who-won-2nd-presidential-debate-between-trump-and-clinton-st-louis/

“..Donald Trump exceeded expectations, but Hillary Clinton won the second presidential debate, according to a CNN / ORC poll of debate watchers. The results showed a clear victory for Clinton, with 57% saying Clinton won, as opposed to 34% for Donald Trump. It’s a strong showing for Clinton, but not as good as her performance at the first presidential debate, when 62% of debate watchers said she won. The results Sunday also track closely with watchers’ pre-debate preference. Fifty-eight percent of debate watchers said they were supporting Clinton before the debate…”

——–

w
v

I did. Am embarrassed to admit it. But I did. It was a circus, and showed American politics at its worst — or close to it. No other candidate could get away with doing what Trump did before and during the debate, but it appears he has. I’ve never seen such a spectacle — bringing together a group of (four) women who accused the spouse of one’s opponent of a range of sexual predations, from rape to harassment. An eleventh hour move to deflect from Trump’s own admittance of sexual assault.

Basically, “But mommy, mommy!! Joey did it too!! Waaaahhhgh!”

(Yes, Bill Clinton was a pig, and a terrible and all too conservative president. But he’s not running this time.)

Many of the talking heads this morning are saying it worked. But the most bizarre thing (IMO) is that no one is talking about the elephant in the room: Trump’s incredible incoherence throughout. When they become available, people should read the transcripts, because Trump spoke gibberish for nearly 90 minutes, and never answered any questions, went off on tangents within tangents, and made Sarah Palin sound like Cicero in comparison. I found myself yelling at the TV, asking him to say how he would accomplish all of these amazing things he promised. He never did, and hasn’t ever during this entire campaign.

How would he give America those rainbows and unicorns he promises?

All Trump does is talk about the living hell in place, but never says how he’d fix anything. Drives me up the wall, and it makes it all the worse that no talking head seems to care.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.

wv wrote:

Zooey wrote:

wv wrote:

Bill Maher on the trump shit-storm.

Yeah. How is Gary Johnson polling higher than Jill Stein?

Gary Johnson has no idea what the fuck is happening anywhere. He couldn’t find Canada on a map if you erased every continent but North America.

——————–
I saw a couple of confusing-articles that indicated that Johnson actually takes
more voters away from Clinton than from Trump. It surprised me.

The article didnt say who the pussy-grabbers were voting for this year. I’m guessing they are leaning toward Jill.

w
v

WV,

I think that’s because of millennials, primarily. The Dems have turned them off and they don’t like the GOP, either. So some have bought into the nonsense from the right-libertarians about “liberty,” even though it’s not the freedom and liberty of millennials at issue. American libertarians are always really talking about “freedom and liberty” for business owners and the rich, and couldn’t be more anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-social-justice if they were paid to be. And, well, they actually are, by folks like the Koch brothers.

As far as the reference to “pussy-grabbers.” I guess you missed the video with Trump bragging about his frequent sexual assaults. I don’t blame you for avoiding the teevee and the MSM. It is a cesspool. But that’s where the term comes from.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.

Bush inherited a huge surplus and no wars. Clinton ran surpluses four of his eight years. See table 1.1 (page 29) for this:

Fiscal Year 2016 Historical Tables

Bush cut taxes twice, revenues fell for his first three years and his last, and he doubled the debt.

(also on page 29)

Obama inherited a fiscal year 2009 budget deficit — Bush’s last — of 1.4 trillion, two wars and a worldwide economic catastrophe, caused by the Masters of the Universe and their center-right enablers in government (both parties). Deficits fell dramatically after we got out of the Bush recession. No president since Ike has seen a slower rate of increased spending — which is one of the main reasons for the slow recovery and an obvious sign of neoliberalism’s hold on the Democrats. Keynes, OTOH, would have pushed for a huge increase in demand-side spending to prime the pump. Instead, Obama, the Dems and the GOP decided to do trickle-down to one degree or another, especially with the bailouts which ALL went to the richest of the rich. That’s the opposite of Keynes.

No economist or economic historian of any stature says we’ve being following Keynes in the last four decades. We’ve been doing the opposite.

wv wrote:

An Undergraduate’s Question About Economic Policy: A Professor Replies

w
v

The Keynesian consensus in America was roughly from late FDR through LBJ and into part of Nixon’s presidency. It corresponds, almost exactly, with our one and only Middle Class boom (1947-1973). We had no such thing before it or after Keynesian economics was abandoned by the DC powers that be in the early 1970s. With the rise of neoliberalism roughly in 1973, through Obama’s presidency, we’ve been in an anti-Keynes consensus. Roughly 43 years now of opposition to Keynes, from both major parties.

My own view is that Marxian economists are the best, in general, when it comes to understanding and analyzing capitalism, with Keynesians number two. The worst of the bunch have always been the Austrians, followed by their kissing cousins, the Chicago School folks, who basically invented neoliberalism. Reagan/Thatcher consolidated all of that politically, took garbage (and voodoo) economics mainstream . . . and then, with the arrival of the tea party, we sunk even deeper into economic illiteracy with the rise of the neo-Austrians — the children of Von Mises and Hayek. Ron Paul and his fanboys set the table for that, but the tea party helped mainstream it. And the Pauls and the tea party folks added Ayn Rand to the Austrians to make the horrific even more odious. They helped give abject selfishness a “philosophical” veneer.

I wish America would evolve and grow up enough to bring in actual Marxians and libertarian socialist economists. But it likely never will, at least not in my lifetime. So the next best thing is to return to Keynes. Staying with right-wing economic idiocy is killing this country, and the world.