Category: Uncategorized

There once was a Donald named Trump.

His poll numbers were in a slump.

His party was beggin’

For a new Ronald Reagan

But he’s more like a new Forrest Gump.

 

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are sitting in Ryan’s office.  Ryan is behind his big desk; Trump is in a small chair in front of the desk.

PR:  Do you know why you’re here, Donald?

DT:  To win the election!

PR:  And why else?

DT:  I don’t know.  Why?

PR:  Because, as the Republican nominee, you need to know what our party stands for.  We can’t have people thinking we’re just a bunch of racist thugs. We’re the party of Lincoln!

DT:  I’ve heard of him!  He was a winner, and he has a big monument in Washington!  When I’m President, I’ll be an even bigger winner, and have an even bigger monument!  It’ll be huge!

PR:  Whatever.  Let’s begin.  Where do we stand on abortion?

DT:  We’re pro-life, of course.

PR:  Why?

DT:  Who would be against life?

PR:  It’s not that simple.  We support the death penalty, a militaristic foreign policy, and cuts to domestic programs which benefit children and the poor.

DT:  Then what does it mean?

PR:  It means that a fertilized egg is a human being, and anyone who kills it is a murderer.  Of course, after it’s born, it’s on its own.

DT:  That doesn’t seem very logical to me.

PR:  Logic doesn’t enter into it.  It’s in The Bible.  What happens to women who have an abortion?

DT:  Why, they’re punished, of course.

PR:  No.  They’re victims of predatory physicians.  They need to be protected.

DT:  I thought you were encouraging me to treat women as equals, not children.

PR:  Don’t be impertinent.  What about climate change?

DT:  It’s a scam!  A hoax!

PR:  How do you know?

DT:  Who would know more about scams than I do?

PR:  You have a point there.  What about tax cuts?

DT:  I love them!  I proposed a huge one!  Everyone loves it!

PR:  What will it do to the deficit?

DT:  My tax cut will create such a large boom, the deficit will disappear!

PR:  Based on what historical evidence?

DT:  None.  It’s a matter of faith.

PR:  You’re catching on.  What about entitlements?

DT:  I’m entitled to be President, of course!

PR:  No, like Social Security and Medicare.  Why do we want to cut them?

DT:  Thinks for a minute.  Because we need money for my huge tax cut.

PR:  By George, I think he’s got it!

While most American politicians celebrate American exceptionalism (however they may choose to define it), Sanders and Trump, in very different ways, despise it.  For Bernie, the American affinity for limited government has led to a socioeconomic system characterized by rampant inequality, overmighty capitalists, and an inadequate safety net.  He thinks America should aspire to be more “European.”  Trump, on the other hand, believes that our penchant for spreading our values around the world results in our “friends” and enemies alike playing us for suckers.  If Trump wins the election, he will treat our values as being identical to our interests, much as, say, the Russians and Chinese do.

In my view, both of these critiques are horribly overblown, but both contain a kernel of truth.  I agree with Sanders that we need a somewhat larger and clearly more effective safety net, but I don’t believe we need to be as “European” as Denmark. There is room in the world for a society which tolerates a bit more inequality in exchange for more dynamism.  As for Trump’s realism, I would concur that, on occasion, we don’t ask enough of our allies in exchange for our financial and military support;  for example, what do we get from the Baltic states that justifies our commitment to go to war against Russia for them?  On the other hand, it is both practically and morally impossible for us to completely ignore our values in our dealings with the rest of the world, so public opinion would prohibit even a President Trump from doing so.

Trump will give a relatively restrained (for him) speech from a teleprompter at the convention.  It will be uninspiring and completely devoid of any serious intellectual content, but it won’t be overtly racist or outrageous, and there will be no Trump Steaks as props.  The GOP leadership, Fox News, and the WSJ will subsequently celebrate the belated arrival of the “New Trump.”  Euphoria will reign in the GOP camp, unity will be the order of the day, and Trump will get a substantial bounce in the polls.

Until, of course, Trump gets bored with his buttoned-down persona and reverts back to Captain Outrageous.  That should take about two weeks at the max.

Gerson has a column in today’s WaPo in which he laments the willingness of the vast majority of GOP leaders to support Trump in spite of his racism and innumerable other intellectual and moral failings.  To him, this is the beginning of the end of the “Party of Lincoln.”

Gerson is an intelligent and eminently decent man, but I wish he’d get real on this issue.  The GOP stopped being the “Party of Lincoln” when it turned its back on civil rights in exchange for the votes of bigots and electoral control of the Deep South in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Trump didn’t create that condition; he merely exposed it in a way that has made it impossible for anyone to ignore.

Or, to put it another way, you can no longer say with any credibility that Trump and his supporters are just a racist, swaggering, authoritarian caricature version of the GOP created by liberals–they are the GOP.  How else could he get the nomination?

Yes, I know the truth hurts.  If Gerson can’t stand it,  he should go start a third party based on his ideals of freedom and limited government and see how many votes he gets.

During the early and middle 18th Century, the UK’s relationship with Europe was a highly-charged political issue.  The Whigs, by and large, felt that French aggression had to be addressed by sending large subsidies and armies to the continent;  this was particularly necessary after the Hanoverian succession.  The Tories, on the other hand, disliked the large expenses involved in this approach, were skeptical of continental entanglements with unreliable allies, and preferred to put money into the navy to fight the French over colonies.

Does this sound at all familiar?  Three hundred years later, it’s SSDD.

There is a 19th Century angle to this, too, that will be discussed next Friday.

So let us all speak against Brexit.

The vote is the week after next-it.

We’ll watch and we’ll wonder.

To leave is a blunder.

If it passes, can Cameron fix it?

Most of the commentators have analogized the Trump campaign to a reality show, which makes sense, based on his media background.  However, it appears to me that right-wing talk radio has been a much greater influence on Trump’s style: loud; angry; spontaneous; never apologetic; fond of conspiracy theories; loose with facts; and oozing with heavy metal testosterone.

That also sounds a lot like the WWE, which I will discuss another day.

Campaigning as Rush Limbaugh makes sense when you are dealing with an electorate that is effectively limited to a small number of right-wing activists. The problem for Trump is that about 80 percent of the general election voters, including many Republicans, would rather eat ground glass than listen to Rush. If he moderates his style, however, he will forfeit the “authenticity” argument against Hillary.  What is he to do?

That is the central dilemma of his campaign, and he clearly hasn’t figured it out yet.  My guess is that he will veer back and forth and hope to get the best of both worlds.  Expect to see lots of stories about “New Trump” and “Old Trump” in the MSM over the next several months.

 

There once was a Donald named Trump.

His fans were all down in the dumps.

He called out a judge

But then started to fudge.

His road’s full of potholes and bumps.

 

There once was a woman named Hill.

Her victory gave women a thrill.

The Bern’s come and gone

Now she’ll take on the Don.

If she won’t bash him daily, I will.

I don’t know of any conservative columnist or publication that has anything good to say about Donald Trump.  The Economist bashes him on a weekly basis. National Review devoted an entire issue to pieces attacking him.  David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson, George Will, and Jennifer Rubin clearly all despise him.  Even Charles Krauthammer, a dependable source of thoughtless hard right-wing tripe, has been critical.  And yet, there he stands.  What are the pundits to do?

The first thing you need to realize is that, unlike other GOP politicians, conservative columnists are unlikely to pay much of a price for their disloyalty. It is unlikely that many strong Trump supporters read the NYT, or even the Washington Post, so it isn’t as if Brooks, just to use one example, is likely to lose his job for his apostacy.  Being a Trump opponent might reduce the number of parties to which you’re invited, but that’s about it, particularly since even the insiders reconciled to Trump obviously have concerns about him, as well.

If I were in this group, I would avoid commenting directly on the election and just write in the abstract about conservative principles, which is exactly what I think they will do.

Talk radio is a completely different story.  More on that at a later date.

Use your imagination to add the great Lindsey Buckingham guitar solo at the end.

Go Your Own Way

Backing you

Isn’t the right thing to do.

How can I

When you’ve so betrayed me?

If I could

I would turn back the clock.

Give money

To the Bush Super PAC.

 

You can go your own way.

You’re just another loser today.

You can go your own way.

 

Tell me why

Everything turned around.

Building walls

Busting balls is all you want to do.

If I could

Baby, I’d find another guy.

Goodbye now.

I’d pick Clinton over you.

 

You can go your own way.

You’re just another loser today.

You can go your own way.

 

Parody of “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac.

It has been a big week for the UBI.  On Sunday, a referendum in Switzerland failed, although the mere fact that the issue was on the ballot was viewed by its supporters as a victory in the long run.  The NYT, The Economist, and Vox.com also had several opinion pieces on the subject.

The pros and cons of the UBI are not much in doubt; many of them are opposite sides of the same coin.  Here they are, in a nutshell:

Pros

1.  If the amount of the stipend is computed properly, it will put a huge dent in poverty.  No further elaboration necessary.

2.  The universal nature of the benefit turns it into an entitlement program, builds a broad constituency for it, and makes it harder to cut.  Just like Social Security, and unlike many other anti-poverty programs that have been vulnerable to GOP cost-cutting plans.

3.  It is relatively cheap to administer, unlike most anti-poverty programs, many of which could be eliminated.  Again, in that respect, it is similar to Social Security.

4.  It avoids the poverty trap.  Because it doesn’t decrease when wages increase, it doesn’t discourage higher paying work in the same way as, say, the EITC.

5.  It leaves more room for individual choice on issues of consumption than most anti-poverty programs.  As a result, it has some support from libertarians.

Cons

1.  Because the benefits are universal, not targeted, the program is extremely expensive, and would result in enormous tax increases.  Adoption of the UBI would, in fact, make the US look like Denmark in terms of the amount of public spending as a percentage of GDP.

2.  It discourages work.  Someone has to produce the goods and services on which we rely.  The robots haven’t taken over yet.

3.  It makes immigration an even more fraught issue.  The notion of paying the UBI to immigrants would be very troubling to most.

My reactions are as follows:

1.  This is the kind of debate about the future of the welfare system that we should be having.  I would have more interest in Bernie Sanders if he made the case for the UBI instead of, for example, his bogus proposal for free public college.

2.  The politics of this issue would be very painful.  Most of the right in this country believe the left just represents a moocher class.  This proposal would do nothing but reinforce that opinion.

3.  The relationship between the UBI and Social Security is uncertain.  Logically, the UBI could replace Social Security at some point, and thereby actually save some money, but there is no way that is going to happen for current beneficiaries, who largely believe that they are being repaid the money they put into the system.  Operating both Social Security and the UBI during a transition period would drive the costs up even more.

4.  We haven’t reached the point where technological and demographic change makes the moocher argument irrelevant.  Ten years from now, however, we might–we just don’t know right now.

5.  The UBI does nothing to address the problem of stagnant wages.  As I have indicated before, stagnant wages are a bigger political problem than increasing inequality or poverty.

6.  It would work best if it is adopted throughout the West.  Otherwise, capital will flee to countries with lower taxes.

On the whole, therefore, my attitude towards the UBI is that it is an idea whose time has not come yet, and may never come.  On the other hand, it has some real merits, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it on the table for real in 2024, or possibly even 2020.

 

There was never any doubt that Ryan would endorse Trump; he couldn’t very well run the convention as his declared opponent.  On the other hand, Ryan fancies himself a principled conservative, and he undoubtedly views Trump as an apostate, an obstacle to his agenda and future ambitions, and a likely electoral disaster.  The relationship between the two, therefore, was always going to be tricky.

I would describe Ryan’s approach to Trump as “love the sinner; hate the sin.” Ryan clearly believes he can square the circle in the eyes of the public by formally endorsing Trump, but making public his disagreements with him, and thereby keeping what he thinks is a safe distance.

I don’t know if it will work or not, but it might.  In any event, I think it would make a good template for our relations with friendly Third World dictators.

The GOP Speaker Paul Ryan.

His conservative heart must be cryin’.

His embrace of the Don

Seems a little bit wan.

If he tells you he’s happy, he’s lyin’.

1.  I need a job, and I might as well go to the very top.  Fortunately, I don’t know of any candidate meeting this description who ever made it anywhere close to the White House.  2016 example:  Carly Fiorina.

2.  I have a calling to be President.  Most people who feel this way do so practically from birth, and live their lives accordingly.  2016 example:  Ted Cruz.

3.  I don’t care about personal ambition; I’m just a vessel for an ideology that will help the country.  2016 example:  Bernie Sanders.

4.  It’s all about me and my ego.  I’ll be the most important person on the planet!  There’s just nothing like having the band play “Hail to the Chief” when you pop out of Air Force One.  2016 example:  Too obvious to mention.