The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Kirk Gallaway]

35 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

MK--

You know, the whole "blue vs. red" or "Donk vs. 'Phant" version of current affairs...strikes me as intentionally misleading. 

Washington is a globalist town, and the amount of foreign money gushing around should alarm anyone. 

China money, Ukraine money, Russia money...money from every kleptocrat on the globe. 

Ponder: William Cohen was the R-party Secy of Defense for the D-Party Clinton Administration. By all accounts, a tremendously smart and effective guy. 

Now, Cohen is the don of the China Lobby:

•  COMMENTARY--Wall Street Journal 

We Want to Rebuild U.S. Relations With China

Frank talks between business leaders can help restore trust.

---The Cohen Group

Cohen now says China is just a competitor, just like Great Britain, Germany or France. 

In other words, Cohen is mouthpiece for the CCP. 

Cohen also loathes Trump and writes op-eds in that regard. 

This is not to say Trump is a great guy. In my estimation, he is unfit for office, due to personality and character. 

But keep in mind, there are plenty of people for whom personality and character and principles mean nothing--and that have always had long knives out for Trump. 

Globalist elites want to use cheap China labor, and import cheap labor into the US. 

And they loathed Trump. Interesting. 

 

Ben I know you've been down on William Cohen a few times before for an article back in 2015. But your commentary link didn't open to a new article by William Cohen.

"We Want to Rebuild U.S. Relations With China"

And i checked this quote from the WSJ, and it lead to an a July article by Maurice Greenberg, not William Cohen. A 97 year old former AIG exec who does have political ties to Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio but not William Cohen and the Cohen group.

You have to be more accurate and not just throw a lazy  combination of things together when your points are being challenged.

[W. Niederhut]

Reality check, Ben. There's nothing "misleading" about focusing on the crucial policy differences between Democrats and Republicans in the upcoming U.S. mid-term elections.

In fact, a great deal is at stake with regard to control of both chambers of Congress.

Perhaps most crucially, the future of American democracy is at stake.

Our democracy has been threatened most directly by Trump's fascist/white supremacist cult, but also by systematic, multi-year Koch/GOP efforts to control the SCOTUS, suppress voting, and uphold dark money funding of elections per Citizens United.

There are also substantive policy differences between Democrats and Republicans about tax rates, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, gun control, immigration, and abortion.

The argument that issues related to globalization and the power of multinational corporations nullifies the significance of policy differences between Democrats and Republicans is, frankly, absurd.

[Kirk Gallaway]

13 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

There are also substantive policy differences between Democrats and Republicans about tax rates, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, gun control, immigration, and abortion.

The argument that issues related to globalization and the power of multinational corporations nullifies the significance of policy differences between Democrats and Republicans is, frankly, absurd.

W. -What makes this even stranger is that Ben has said he's contributed 50 years into the Social Security system as a U.S. citizen, but ignores all the bread and butter issues  he has the most personal interest in to pursue some fixation in foreign policy that the Democrats who are fighting for his interests, are like the Republicans, and not isolationists in World Trade.

Obviously nobody's going to stop world trade, and this has no effect at all on Ben living in Thailand.

This is what I mean when I say the average Joe may not know to vote in his own  personal interest, and sometimes for the kookiest reasons.

***

On a more substantive note, Congratulations! to my fellow Cesspudlians as we tread on to our inevitable millennial  page thread, which will be a truly fab moment indeed!!!

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Ben I know you've been down on William Cohen a few times before for an article back in 2015. But your commentary link didn't open to a new article by William Cohen.

"We Want to Rebuild U.S. Relations With China"

And i checked this quote from the WSJ, and it lead to an a July article by Maurice Greenberg, not William Cohen. A 97 year old former AIG exec who does have political ties to Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio but not William Cohen and the Cohen group.

You have to be more accurate and not just throw a lazy  combination of things together when your points are being challenged.

Correct. The op-ed was carried approvingly on The Cohen Group webpage. 

https://cohengroup.net/

From The Cohen Group webpage:

China

China is a market of enormous opportunity and complexity. The Cohen Group's (TCG) China Practice has a solid record of success with professionals in offices in Beijing, Tianjin and Washington, DC.

Building upon decades of experience, on-the-ground management expertise, and long-time personal and professional relationships throughout the region, TCG's China Practice helps companies succeed in the Chinese market. TCG enables Fortune 500 Companies, as well as small- and medium-sized enterprises, to achieve their commercial goals in China through tailored government, business, and media relations strategies.

As a global consultancy, TCG’s China Practice also uses its unique skill set to bring together East and West, facilitating constructive engagement and cooperation between leading multinational companies and Chinese enterprises around the world and helps support Chinese companies engaged in high-quality investments overseas. Such activities bring mutual benefit and strengthen the commercial relationships that underpin effective bilateral ties.

---30---

 

 

 

[Matt Allison]

46 minutes ago, Miles Massicotte said:

Republicans love to rail against welfare, but they know that if they really campaigned on abolishing SS they would lose a massive voter base

Ron Johnson is anxious to test your theory:

"Johnson stated in early August that Social Security should become a discretionary spending program"

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/09/26/sen_johnsons_comments_on_social_security_endanger_effort_to_retake_senate_148239.html

 

47 minutes ago, Miles Massicotte said:

most social policies, the two parties are nearly identical. 

LOL You don't live here, do you?

[Benjamin Cole]

William Cohen: I think in terms of China we have to recognize that China is a great power – economic power, it is becoming a military power. And so I don’t have a problem saying that China is a competitor. We have competitors, our closest allies are competitors – the Brits, the French, the Germans and others. So being a competitor is fine with me. You can be a friendly competitor or you can be a much more combative competitor. What I would disagree with is labeling China an enemy. I don’t believe that to be the case. China is a fierce competitor. They have a country of 1.3 billion people; they’ve got a leader who has unrestricted power as such for some time to come for as long as he wants, who has a vision of where he wants to take his country, it’s going to have very little difference of opinion on how he gets there. So I see China as a major competitor to the United States.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/25/cnbc-transcript-william-cohen-chairman-and-ceo-the-cohen-group-and-former-u-s-secretary-of-defense.html

So, I did slip up on proper attribution of the WSJ op-ed. 

However, there is no denying that William Cohen, former R-Party  Secy Defense for the Clinton Administration, is now a front man for China. 

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

17 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Correct. The op-ed was carried approvingly on The Cohen Group webpage. 

https://cohengroup.net/

From The Cohen Group webpage:

China

China is a market of enormous opportunity and complexity. The Cohen Group's (TCG) China Practice has a solid record of success with professionals in offices in Beijing, Tianjin and Washington, DC.

Building upon decades of experience, on-the-ground management expertise, and long-time personal and professional relationships throughout the region, TCG's China Practice helps companies succeed in the Chinese market. TCG enables Fortune 500 Companies, as well as small- and medium-sized enterprises, to achieve their commercial goals in China through tailored government, business, and media relations strategies.

As a global consultancy, TCG’s China Practice also uses its unique skill set to bring together East and West, facilitating constructive engagement and cooperation between leading multinational companies and Chinese enterprises around the world and helps support Chinese companies engaged in high-quality investments overseas. Such activities bring mutual benefit and strengthen the commercial relationships that underpin effective bilateral ties.

---30---

 

 

 

"Carried approvingly"?

Again, you've provided a Cohen group link and there's no connection between your Maurice Greenberg quote and the Cohen Group. Provide the connection, and show your readers  that the article was"carried approvingly " by the Cohen group. 

If you can't provide the connection, and since you've already told us  3 times about Cohen. Maybe you should have innovated and  broken new ground and made the article about Greenberg. That might have been more interesting. but of course that would have involved more research on Greenberg. What a drag!

But then, you probably don't know this but Greenburg has a political affiliation with Marco Rubio who goes on Fox all the time as an anti Chinese trade guy. I'm a little miffed at that, actually having read his article. Did you?

 

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Reality check, Ben. There's nothing "misleading" about focusing on the crucial policy differences between Democrats and Republicans in the upcoming U.S. mid-term elections.

In fact, a great deal is at stake with regard to control of both chambers of Congress.

Perhaps most crucially, the future of American democracy is at stake.

Our democracy has been threatened most directly by Trump's fascist/white supremacist cult, but also by systematic, multi-year Koch/GOP efforts to control the SCOTUS, suppress voting, and uphold dark money funding of elections per Citizens United.

There are also substantive policy differences between Democrats and Republicans about tax rates, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, gun control, immigration, and abortion.

The argument that issues related to globalization and the power of multinational corporations nullifies the significance of policy differences between Democrats and Republicans is, frankly, absurd.

W--

You think your life would be different, or that of hundreds of millions of your countrymen, if Liz Cheney, or HRC, were president? 

Seems iffy to me. 

I get what you are saying on certain domestic policies. You are even right in some regards. 

IMHO, Unfortunately, you are wrong in many regards also, including some big, basic stuff. 

The Donk leadership has completely subscribed to a type of globalism that is eviscerating America's middle class. 

1. Open borders for cheap labor, and products made by overseas cheap labor.

2. A hyper-mobilized military, in essence a global guard service for multinationals--a $1.4 trillion a year monster (DoD, VA, black budget, and pro-rated interest on the national debt). 

3. A corrosive, divisive ID politics, in which are voters are trained not to think of themselves as employee-class (about 160 million Americans) but rather as transexuals, black lesbians, intersectionals, or women, or various racial or ethnic minority groups--evidently, any group except white males, and increasingly, Asian males. 

4. Globalism sold as cosmopolitanism, or inclusiveness. Yeah, BlackRock-Disney-Apple care about you and and appreciating other cultures an helping indigent coffee farmers. Even if multinationals wreck native cultures in search of profit. 

The GOP? Maybe even worse in their ways. 

But...there is a reason for the populists winning across the developed world (see Italy).

You can howl "racism" but isn't there something more to it?  

 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

3 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

"Carried approvingly"?

Again, you've provided a Cohen group link and there's no connection between your Maurice Greenberg quote and the Cohen Group. Provide the connection, and show your readers  that the article was"carried approvingly " by the Cohen group. 

If you can't provide the connection, and since you've already told us  3 times about Cohen. Maybe you should have innovated and  broken new ground and made the article about Greenberg. That might have been more interesting. but of course that would have involved more research on Greenberg. What a drag!

But then, you probably don't know this but Greenburg has a political affiliation with Marco Rubio who goes on Fox all the time as an anti Chinese trade guy. I'm a little miffed at that, actually having read his article. Did you?

 

Kirk:

 

OK, go here:

 

https://cohengroup.net/

 

Then scroll down to bottom left. 

 

You will see this:

 

August 26, 2022

The reckless rage of the lawless

The Washington Post features an op-ed by William S. Cohen of The Cohen Group and William H. Webster: "The reckless rage of the lawless"

The above is hyper-linked. 

Here is the link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/mar-a-lago-fbi-attacks-lawless-gop/

I am not sure what you are saying. As far as I can tell, I have provided the proper link. 

[Kirk Gallaway]

1 hour ago, Miles Massicotte said:

Overton window. Nearly all other first-world and many second/third world countries have some form of nationalised health care. Gun ownership, ease of gun purchase, and, naturally, gun deaths, are massively high in the United States compared to other first-world countries. No major candidate for the presidency in either party in the last 50 years has publically challenged the value and necessity of Social Security while running for office (Republicans love to rail against welfare, but they know that if they really campaigned on abolishing SS they would lose a massive voter base). Biden's immigration policies have been largely similar to Trump's.

Among the issues you listed, it is undeniable that the two major parties have differences on abortion and gun control. They also differ on tax rates, but do not believe in fundamentally different economic systems. On the issues of foreign policy, global relations, America's economic future, and most social policies, the two parties are nearly identical. 

We should be having a much larger and more important conversation in American politics than we allow ourselves to have.

Miles, Matt's completely right. You made the same such statement and I went into great detail about this specifically answering your questions  and I never heard from you again.

I told you at the time.There's is no greater difference between the 2 parties in your lifetime or in mine than now. They've politically polarized each other into completely different philosophical camps.

Miles:Nearly all other first-world and many second/third world countries have some form of nationalised health care.

That's very boiler plate Miles, as if read from a Poly Sci 101 textbook. But there is a marked difference between the 2 parties regarding health care, and Matt has highlighted one such example, and there are others..

Let me give you some history. In the 90's the Clinton's tried to initiate  an expanded health care system. Hilary Clinton was appointed by her husband to try to push it through Congress. If we could have pushed it through 30 years ago. Judging by the eventual acceptance of the ACA, We would have had much more expanded health benefits now. Probably to the degree that we wouldn't have needed the ACA, and having it done earlier, it would now be much cheaper, just as it would have been cheaper yet, if Hubert Humphrey as President had  started in 1968, which could easily have happened, but that's another story.*  Hilary Clinton was stopped by Dick Armey and the Republicans big money, and it never happened.
 

Part of reading politics is not what politicians or parties say, but what they don't say. The Republicans will always say when cornered that they are for expanded Health Care. When Obama came into office, he naively believed them. In order to try to get something going and get some consensus, he opted for a Health Care proposal from Republican Mitt Romney.  We then found out what many of us suspected all along, the Republicans never wanted to expand health care. 

In the next 6 weeks, you might get sucked into believing that Republicans do want decent health care because the Democrats are going to show the Republicans previous voting record on Health Care and hang it on them.. And you can be sure the Republicans won't come up with their own health care alternative,  but will just say that  all these rumors about cutting medicaid or social services are false Democrat propaganda. But we've had enough record  by now to know what's truly going on.

 

Miles:No major candidate for the presidency in either party in the last 50 years has publically challenged the value and necessity of Social Security while running for office (Republicans love to rail against welfare, but they know that if they really campaigned on abolishing SS they would lose a massive voter base)

No and the reason for that, is that they are extremely popular, and they are not fools!.

******

* Nobody talks about him. He was quite a letdown after Bobby was killed. But expanded Health Care was his baby.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Kirk Gallaway

[Douglas Caddy]

 

The Supreme Court’s Public Legitimacy Crisis Has Arrived | The New Republic

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

W--

You think your life would be different, or that of hundreds of millions of your countrymen, if Liz Cheney, or HRC, were president? 

Seems iffy to me. 

I get what you are saying on certain domestic policies. You are even right in some regards. 

IMHO, Unfortunately, you are wrong in many regards also, including some big, basic stuff. 

The Donk leadership has completely subscribed to a type of globalism that is eviscerating America's middle class. 

1. Open borders for cheap labor, and products made by overseas cheap labor.

2. A hyper-mobilized military, in essence a global guard service for multinationals--a $1.4 trillion a year monster (DoD, VA, black budget, and pro-rated interest on the national debt). 

3. A corrosive, divisive ID politics, in which are voters are trained not to think of themselves as employee-class (about 160 million Americans) but rather as transexuals, black lesbians, intersectionals, or women, or various racial or ethnic minority groups--evidently, any group except white males, and increasingly, Asian males. 

C'mon, Ben!  Stop kidding yourself, and others.

Study the history of the U.S. national debt and U.S. income distribution since 1980 (e.g., Thomas Piketty's Capitalism in the 21st Century.)

There have been substantial differences between Democratic and Republican (Trickle Down) tax policies since 1980.

Bill Clinton and the Democrats raised the top tax rate in 1993, and dramatically reduced the growth rate of our Reaganomic national debt from 1993-2001.  Then Bush and Cheney mushroomed the national debt by lowering top tax rates in 2001 and 2003.  Trump and the Koch/GOP Congress did the same thing in 2017.

There was nothing in the 2017 Trump/GOP tax cut bill that incentivized investment in U.S. jobs.

Similarly, the Koch/GOP has had a longstanding policy goal of de-funding Medicare and Social Security.  Paul Ryan and the Tea Party House quietly passed two budget bills after 2010 that would have effectively ended Medicare for retirees born after 1956!  Rick Scott and RoJo have spilled the beans about this most recently.

The Republicans in Congress have also repeatedly voted to abolish and/or sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

They have also stacked the courts with pro-corporate, plutocratic judges.

Republicans have also repeatedly sabotaged the EPA and climate change mitigation efforts.

Obviously, international trade and globalization are important issues, but they do not nullify the substantial policy differences between the Koch GOP and the progressive half of the Democratic Party.

Edited September 28, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Benjamin Cole]

10 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

C'mon, Ben!  Stop kidding yourself, and others.

Study the history of the U.S. national debt and U.S. income distribution since 1980 (e.g., Thomas Piketty's Capitalism in the 21st Century.)

There have been substantial differences between Democratic and Republican (Trickle Down) tax policies since 1980.

Bill Clinton and the Democrats raised the top tax rate in 1993, and dramatically reduced the growth rate of our Reaganomic national debt from 1993-2001.  Then Bush and Cheney mushroomed the national debt by lowering top tax rates in 2001 and 2003.  Trump and the Koch/GOP Congress did the same thing in 2017.

There was nothing in the 2017 Trump/GOP tax cut bill that incentivized investment in U.S. jobs.

Similarly, the Koch/GOP has had a longstanding policy goal of de-funding Medicare and Social Security.  Paul Ryan and the Tea Party House quietly passed two budget bills after 2010 that would have effectively ended Medicare for retirees born after 1956!  Rick Scott and RoJo have spilled the beans about this most recently.

The Republicans in Congress have also repeatedly voted to abolish and/or sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

They have also stacked the courts with pro-corporate, plutocratic judges.

Republicans have also repeatedly sabotaged the EPA and climate change mitigation efforts.

Obviously, international trade and globalization are important issues, but they do not nullify the substantial policy differences between the Koch GOP and the progressive half of the Democratic Party.

W-

I was a Democrat most of my life. 

In general, I align with people who work for a living or the middle-class, which describes the bulk of my life. 

Then, for a while, if I had to choose, I would choose D in the polling booth. 

Now...I am just not on one side or the other anymore, for the aforementioned reasons. 

The populist wing of the GOP, if it could shed its negative features, is actually the most appealing option out there....

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

You know, I thought Gaetz likely had an underage girlfriend, and also was a nut with his zany story about his family being blackmailed. 

Shame on me.

Now, the underage charges have been dropped...and the man who was blackmailing the Gaetz family has not only been charged, but found guilty in a court of law and sent to prison. 

In many ways, the follow-on story is much, much bigger than the initial story. 

Why did we give credence to the original story of Gaetz and sex charges?  

Are there lessons in this sordid turn of events? 

Has DC hardball devolved into Third-World style politics? 

Edited September 29, 2022 by Benjamin Cole

[Ron Bulman]

Good.  Those relatives of Young calling Fanone a pos need to look in the mirror if they want to see a real or bigger pos.  They're worse than the pot calling the kettle black.

Judge goes off on GOP leaders during Jan. 6 trial for being afraid to stand up to Trump (msn.com)