... what have you noticed lately? That photograph is something Meade just made a point of writing down.
March 13, 2016
At the Subliminal Café...
... what have you noticed lately? That photograph is something Meade just made a point of writing down.
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The bizarreness of Trump being this year's every-man and populist is in a way Trumanesque.
I can barely move right now because of my intense workouts.
Do any of you know how amazing the feeling of pumped and stressed muscles feel-it is fucking intense.
I love it big time.
I like to show off my tight body too.
Sometimes I pretend I have to wipe my brow so I lift my shirt so fellow employees and passersby on the street can see my six pack. I don't even mind when women check me out!
I just need to do that.
Warmer months are aHead and I am ready for the fitted t to perform well on my walks to work.
Also, I am afraid I am hitting middle age-gasp, but I still am able to have a 19 year Harvard CS student from UK come over and service me.
Not many my age are able to pull in young quality cock and pussy, but I fucking do!
I am like Trump, except without the billions.
At this point, all attempts to analogize the Trump phenomenon to some political event of the past have been either (a) boring, (b) lazy, or (c) both. Really, how hard is it at this point to make sense of nationalist-populist movements? Blue-collar, working-class types feel (correctly) that they have been sold out, operated against, and betrayed by internationalist elitist forces who disproportionately gain from the same sources. The same thing has happened across Europe as the EU's immigration and refugee policies have taken their toll. Over the past few years, nationalist resentments flared in places like Singapore over the number of foreign workers. The dynamic is a clearly understood piece of anthropology and well documented in the historical record. But the social sciences is so consumed with the side issues of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and various other thought crimes that they cannot see the forest for the trees. Despite its benefit as propaganda, comparisons of Trump to Putin are actually quite apt. Both draw from wellsprings of nationalist support as both are seen as restoring national pride. The 90s are widely regarded as a period of national humiliation for Russia, and Putin's promised correctives have made him a political star in Russia. I am actually hoping Trump can deliver something similar, though I am extremely skeptical. As I think I have made it clear on here before, I basically believe America is doomed.
Tremor sucks.
I have noticed not a peep this season from Andrew Sullivan. Did he move back to the UK?
@sydney:
"I have noticed not a peep this season from Andrew Sullivan. Did he move back to the UK?"
As far as I know, since retiring from blogging back in February 2015, Andrew Sullivan has not commented publicly on current events except for the US Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision in June of that year. Last I heard, while appearing on Bill Maher's show, Sullivan said that his next professional project was a book on Christianity.
I am very disappointed in Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. They were never favorites of mine - I am still up for a constitutional amendment barring congress critters from running for president until they have sat out for at least two full years - and I think that their latest statements re Trump show my instincts were right - they just do not measure up for the office.
"I am very disappointed in Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio."
Same shit stacked differently. Both took the familiar path of high school > undergrad > law school > government. The notion that too lifelong technocrats are principally committed to the limitation of state power is laughable. Both want the US to maintain a massive global military presence, after all. Kind of hard to do that with a small, decentralized federal state. If Obama's lack of executive experience was fair game in 2008 (and it was), it's hard to see how the exact same criticisms cannot be leveled against Cruz and Rubio.
@ J Farmer you aren't often right but you 7.16 is spot on except for belief that America is doomed. Americans are tired of the Democrat's running the decline with the GOPe as their sidekicks. I remember well the crap said about Reagan in 80 and how he was going to be beaten like a rented mule all the way until he won. And then again by a 49 state landslide in 84. Trump isn't Reagan and the country isn't the same as it was in 80 but all of that aside Trump has enough of the 'it' that Reagan had to get the voters out with enthusiasm. I voted for Cruz in my primary (early voting for this Tuesday's election) but there is no way if Trump is the candidate that I will sit this one out or worse vote for Hillary the felonious traitor. And the sense is that there are many, many millions of people that feel the same way and will vote accordingly as no chance ever for the grifter, criminal and traitor.
J. Farmer,
A book on Christianity?
@cubanbob:
" is spot on except for belief that America is doomed."
Demography is destiny.
@sydney:
"A book on Christianity?"
Sullivan appeared on Maher's show in October 2015. During the online "overtime" segment, the first submitted question was about Sullivan's post-retirement work schedule. He responded that he was working on a book on Christianity. You can view the video here if you like.
"But the social sciences is so consumed with the side issues of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and various other thought crimes that they cannot see the forest for the trees."
I agree and the take over of the "Social Sciences" by the political left has left them with almost no insight. The best we have is Charles Murray with "The Bell Curve" followed by "Coming Apart" which have done a lot to explain the social stratification of the past two decades.
Speaking of the past two decades, I cannot recommend too highly this 1994 interview of Sir James Goldsmith on GATT, the new tariff law.
It is eerie to see him predict what has happened but to do it 22 years ago.
" If Obama's lack of executive experience was fair game in 2008 (and it was), it's hard to see how the exact same criticisms cannot be leveled against Cruz and Rubio."
Agreed again. I was supporting Walker and Jindal but they are gone. I am watching Trump and it is interesting.
I think he is going to be president unless he is assassinated this year. I worry about huge riots this summer.
North Seattle: we are being basted by the Winds.
Earlier, the Winds lesser south in the University District.
We are about a mile West from Lake Washington: maybe a seagull in the sky usually, sometimes a lazy two.
Now: eight or ten seagulls, surfing the wind. They catch the blast, curve, arc, then go back about a half-mile and come back and ride again, no wing movement other than wide pure soar.
I have seen a few crows try to join them but they are too battered by the wind and come back in small circles.
I am not going to link to Neil Diamond's Jonathan Livingston Seagull but I think I just did.
I love Seattle.
I am Laslo.
@Michael K:
Agree on Bell Curve and Coming Apart. Both are superb pieces of contemporary social science. His In Our Hands and Real Education are also both great little reads. Murray has continuously produced interesting, thought provoking work. Micael Young's 1958 satirical novel The Rise of the Meritocracy actually anticipates Murray. For me personally, Bob Putnam's E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century was paradigm shifting. Read that along with Huntington's Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity and Schlesinger's The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, and you will being to see why I have concluded that America is, indeed, doomed.
We shall see. Truman was a unique man that was super competent and worked his ass off just like Trump. He also lead a charmed political career in the right place at the right time who was respected by both sides for his integrity.
Like Trump, Truman could not be made to take a Bribes, and like trump that was the same reason he was treated with contempt and attacked visciously by the Wall Street big boys and the entire Media of the day.
The polling companies refused to do anymore work because Truman was 40+ points behind in September, 1948. Truman was declared to be a country hick and a sad joke. Barely enough Dems showed up to nominate the sitting President, the Dixie crats walked out because Truman refused racism by executive order and hated the KKK on principle, and the Socialists also walked out to nominate FDR's old VP that Roosevelt had thrown off the 1944 Ticket. The northeastern New York/ New Englanders viscerally despised the little Scots Irish, Southern Baptist Missouri machine politician.
And then began two 30 day Train trips stopping at every small and large town across the midwest and west where Trump-like Massive crowds came out to cheer for him. Somehow, like Trump middle class Americans KNEW he was on their side. They flooded the polls.
And after serving 7 years and 9 months of an intense historical Presidency, Truman left office dead broke. Hopefully President Trump will not suffer the same fate. But he will never be forgotten by his defeated enemies like Joe Stalin and the Russian Army surrounding Berlin, the British Empires cabal to kill Israel and Tom Dewey's Wall Street GOP.
And... The Noth Koreans and the Wisconsin Senator Joe MacCarthy Red Hoaxers.
Truman's foreign policy was generally sound, I think. Containment of Soviet influence in Greece, Iran, and Turkey certainly had their drawbacks, but given the weight of historical evidence, they were probably good ideas. Truman's biggest foreign policy blunder was recognition of Israel, but then again, as I am often told, I am a vicious anti-semite. US cold war containment policy didn't really start going off a cliff until the Kennedy administration.
What is it all the hyperventilators are saying? "I don't want Trump to be the one who has his finger on the button!" Would Truman make them feel better? More Presidential? More dignified? More reasonable? He "pushed the button," you know. And not just once.
"I don't want Trump to be the one who has his finger on the button!"
And who, exactly, would Trump push "the button" on? The only useful targets are themselves nuclear-armed.
Despite the presence of two "world wars," there was essentially as much, if not more, violent bloodshed in the second half of the 20th century as the first. The only significant difference was that violence was largely directed across borders in the first half and within borders in the second.
Truman pushed the button on two cities to stop a suicidal Japanese Empire overnight. The Sun God understood enough about sun to convince Hirohito to avoid incineration in a the 30 million degree flash over his Palace.
Truman stood up to another god when he stopped McArthur from pushing 30 buttons on 30 Chinese Cities. This was after the Russians had developed a counter nuclear force and copied our B-29s.
Clinton is so inept that she is having trouble closing the deal on a nomination process completely fixed to her advantage. They spent their entire town hall taking feeble shots at Trump. This makes sense because when he aims his battleship at them they are going down like a couple of dinghies in his wake.
The asshole that stormed the stage at the Trump rally is now being given an open forum for all his insane views by the MSM. He is being covered by all the majors.
If a Trump supporter had done this at a Clinton or Sanders event do you think we would ever hear from him again?
Romney campaigning for Kasich in Ohio tomorrow. More votes move to Trump.
@traditionalguy:
Setting aside the complicated moral questions regarding the nuclear bombing of Japan, from Truman's perspective it was almost certain the strategically wise call to make. The US was correct to insist on unconditional surrender from the Japanese and was right to a quick resolution before the Soviets could begin making serious advances in Northeast Asia. Japanese colonial occupation in East and Southeast Asia had also been particularly brutal. Japanese behavior in Manchuria in the 1930s alone is a source of simmering anti-Japanese resentment throughout China.
Limited military engagement between two nuclear-armed states is possible (e.g. India/Pakistan), but the modern nuclear arsenal has greatly reduced the chances of a major great power war like those seen on the European continent over the previous five centuries.
"Truman's biggest foreign policy blunder was recognition of Israel, but then again, as I am often told, I am a vicious anti-semite"
Israel was a special case and Truman, as you know, was influenced by an old friend. Still, Israel was supported by France and the USSR until the 1967 war.
My particular affection for Israel began with the Entebbe raid. It was so audacious and unlike something we would do that it just intrigued me.
One more Trump to Truman similarity is how they were treated by the men they had helped in their own party.
Although Harry had done everything the Roosevelts ever wanted done like the United Nations for Eleanor, once he ran for his own term, they all disavowed him out of pure snobbery as he was not a patrician like all of them and their friends...they supported Dewey. That was betrayal that they were sure no one could blame them for.
And so Money talks louder than loyalty.
Trump has met the same betrayal from a group he always helped and supported for years and finds that Bribe Money promised from Billionaire donors talks louder than loyalty.
The Trump campaign is like The Truman Show, except Trump knows he's a reality TV star, and the viewers think he's a successful businessman running for president.
Atomic bombs were developed with the view that they would be used against Germany, in keeping with the Allies' "Germany First" strategic plan. Germany represented a real existential threat to the free world whereas Japan's dominance in Asia and the Western Pacific was correctly seen to be a regional rather than a global threat and a transitory phenomenon to boot. In a war that began in 1937 (earlier, if you count Japan's conquest of Manchuria) the Japanese couldn't manage a victory over the third-rate power that was China. Germany on the other hand was bidding fair to become a world hegemon. Had the course of events in the summer/autumn of 1942 been different--namely, the Wehrmacht capturing Stalingrad and overrunning the Caucasus--Berlin and probably a few other German cities would eventually have been incinerated by the nukes that were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
@Roughcoat
I bet you're virtually unbeatable in Stratego.
Limited blogger said...
The asshole that stormed the stage at the Trump rally is now being given an open forum for all his insane views by the MSM. He is being covered by all the majors.
If a Trump supporter had done this at a Clinton or Sanders event do you think we would ever hear from him again?
3/13/16, 9:58 PM
See: Joe the Plumber.
As for my part, I'm listening to Robert Cray's 1990 "Midnight Stroll" release. It's one of those albums/CDs that we bought long, long ago and, then, burned [legally] onto our music server many, many years ago. Anyway, to be more specific: I'm grateful for Robert Cray's "Walk Around Time," and that I remembered it.
Does Meade really make his "u" with two motions? I've never seen that (and I've seen a lot of different handwriting, being a HS teacher).
Bid six.
Rough.
And the biggest fear. That Germany was well ahead of us on building a nuclear bomb.
@clint: "see joe the plumber"...
OK, I don't see any similarities at all. Joe the plumber asked Obama a question on a public sidewalk...he didn't storm the stage to ask it. As a result, he was pilloried in the media, his delinquent taxes were publicized (why?), and numerous state officials accessed his information illegally, which led to resignations and criminal charges.
Interesting point: The name Trump comes later in the alphabet than almost any president, even Truman (although the tie is settled only in the 5th letter of the name.)
He is beaten only by George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Martin Van Buren and John Tyler. (There are some candidates and Vice Presidents, too, who come later in alphabetical order.)
If Donald Trump realized that he beat Truman alphabetically he might make this into a big selling point.
Electing Donald Trump would be a step against rampant alphabetism. Unconscious discrimination, maybe, but nevertheless you can clearly show disparate impact:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/christianzamora/ways-your-end-of-the-alphabet-name-has-ruined-your-chance
...and perhaps we need some affirmative action.
On another website, in December, someone wrote on December 30:
"Imagine a proposal for a $10 tax on everyone whose surname begins with A-Y, with the proceeds split among anyone whose surname begins with Z. It wouldn’t be worth anyone’s time or money to lobby or campaign against it. The time it would take, or the cost of hiring a professional lobbyist to do it, is worth more than any one person has at stake.
The congressmen voting for it might genuinely believe it to be just and beneficial, because the Zs have carefully explained to them whatever cockamamie reasons they’ve managed to come up with to support it"
I posted something on that website on December 31, 2015, in response to that, that went, in part:
"The biggest lobbying against it would be mainly from people who wanted all letters from V – or maybe T, or Q, or even K or L included.
A good lobbyist would make maybe 75-25 the dividing point between the losers and winners.
And they would only ask Congress to authorize a class action lawsuit against – let’s say, corporations above a certain revenue total, and make the lawsuit easy to win.
That way, Congress would not have to appropriate any money and it would be left up to judges to actually decide this, and only if they won.
Maybe incoroporate it in a bigger bill authorizing other kinds of lawsuits, keeping in mind, though, the need to prevent the percentage of winners, or at least certain winners, from getting too high.
I think it might take close to 20 years of lobbying to get this bill passed. A huge investment – tax deductible of course – might be nneeded to get this started , but perhaps the organizer might approach billionaires whose names begin near the end of the alphabet to get this started.
Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps, could be persuaded to lay out the seed money.
That is an odd way to write a "U".
AHA! My comment days ago about the portrait of Truman is suddenly, perhaps subliminally, working its magic upon you Althouse!
Next, I expect a post on the morality of using nuclear weapons in this age of terrorism.
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