The Glade 4.0

I'm just wondering what you all think of the effect Donald Trump is having on the GOP, and if it'll be able to recover, especially if the election is lost to the Democrats. I find it to be one of the most interesting and entertaining things happening in politics.

Also it seems that the Republican contenders who attack Trump the most are doing the worst in the polls.

I'm going to laugh my *** off if Trump is either nominated or runs third party, and his wins (either by state or, god help us, nationally) are bypassed by the electoral college via unfaithful electors.

Because Dems have been ***** about the electoral college for fifteen years, now, calling it outdated, oligarchical, and whatnot. Mostly because they're still whiny ***** about Gore's loss, but also because they expect that populists will be bluer rather than red, so they're blind to the scary radical **** that can thrive on populism, because it's mostly their scary radical ****.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm going to laugh my *** off almost no matter what happens. Trump's existence and sustained lead in the race is a massive FU towards all the establishment and media. Because they can't control him and the outlandish things he says. The political scene wasn't even worth paying attention to until he entered the race.

On a more serious note, the main thing I'm worried about is that the stock market might tank if Trump or any Republican is elected. Although maybe it would be fine because it would just reduce the P/E ratio.

I'm almost tempted to believe that he's running on behalf of the democrats to completely destroy all credibility the republicans might have left. I just can't accept that he's making a serious bid for the white house...

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Honestly I don't agree with many of his positions, but I'm considering voting for him because he is a disruptive person and I don't like the current establishment. Also he'd probably back lots of cool infrastructure projects. I could see him being a really good or really bad president. It's a toss up. I think Hillary would be a safe bet as a below average president.

This sentiment is where the vast majority of his support most likely comes from.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Donald Trump is our punishment for allowing reality television to flourish and thrive.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Trump honestly reminds me of Reagan. He's far less conservative than most people claim, and he has the same problem that Reagan did with Communists where his absolutely extreme and absurd levels of hate towards immigrants is clearly clouding his better judgment.

I know a bunch of former Republicans, who have left the party in the last couple years. They refuse to be associated with the idiots currently in the running. One said he is still very much a conservative, but what is being presented is not conservatism, its a bad Saturday Night Live episode. He has stated he plans to vote third party.

Can't say as how I blame him.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Yes because the Democrats are just rifle with Candidates, excitement, and fresh ideas.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Rife.

Bernie Sanders is fresh. I don't agree much with him, but I get the impression of sincerity and a wish to change the establishment.

So of course Hillary will get the nomination. You can't have two mavericks running against each other. The establishment must endure!

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah, they're not Republicans. Jeez.

I'd be more inclined to take Trump as the complete joke that he is if I didn't get the sense that he's running against opponents who either agree with him but don't have the balls to say it outright, or who don't agree with him but would sell out and say it anyway if they felt like it would get them a bump in the polls. And as it stands, it's difficult to claim with that degree of voting support behind him that he doesn't represent the most cohesive version of the current Republican party.

I am HOPING beyond hope that Trump is actually pulling some Kaufman level trolling here.

That said... I hope the Repugnican and the Democrap parties both implode never to recover. We need fresh ideas, not rehashed crap from the mouths of people who spin the same almost dogmatic worship me or die BS in different ways.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Me too, and I agree.

I've been thinking about it more, and I probably won't vote for Trump, but only for economic reasons. I think Republicans (including Trump) have bad economic policies and are too obsessed with preventing inflation and debt (see this article: www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/opinion/krug ... ssion.html)

Because "vote for my vagina" is definitely a convincing campaign platform. The Democrats definitely have great candidates; it must be that they're not Republicans. The fact that one is essentially Cersei Lannister and the other is a total lunatic can't be the problem.



The belief that Trump is a joke and a campaign like his is suicide is precisely what's led the Republican party to have a candidate it can't even begin to control leading its polls.

All Donald Trump has done is adapt NRA-style messaging to other things, like immigration. The left consistently gets its *** kicked by the NRA because they are putting forth gun control for gun control's sake, while the NRA has packaged up a message that appeals to people by being relevant to them - YOUR rights, YOUR self-defense or food, and most important the government out of YOUR life. Gun control is the left's gay marriage - they're intrusive, obnoxious, moralistic, and most importantly putting forth a solution to a problem that really doesn't exist.

Trump has captured this essential technique, even if he didn't specifically look at the NRA for it. He is putting things in the language people want to hear, like an average person. He's not talking like a politician or policy wonk. More critically, he is targeting issues where the left is highly vulnerable. The left is trying to sell immigration based on how it benefits the immigrants; its appeal to everyday people is either based on tribalism (appealing to Hispanics and to some degree other minorities) guilt (bringing up immigration a hundred + years ago under totally different circumstances) or ideology. People support immigration for abstract reasons, but they oppose it for concrete ones like "what's going to happen to the labor market?" or "what happens when all these immigrants get the free college the Democrats are promising?"

He doesn't need to establish complex policy-wonk plans because his plan basically amounts to "I'll come up with a general idea and then hire people that have some idea what the **** to figure out details" which is appealing because its easy to understand amid the morass of numbers and politi-speak. His message is basically Reagan's "are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" repackaged with additional bombastic.

The bombastic, by the way, is calculated. He knows huge numbers of Republicans are fed up with the left and the press getting to decide what is ok to talk about and what isn't. He is blatantly ignoring the rules for what's acceptable because people have been wanting someone to finally stand up to the political-correctness crowd for ages. It is not an accident that his appearance in an election cycle coincided with "black activists" that turned out to be whites pretending to be black, or the Mizzou/Yale protestors wailing in distress that Paris dared suffer a real terrorist attack, and distract from their spoiled brat histrionics. I mean, the **** gall of those French people.

The fact that Trump never gets hurt - and often goes up - when he says outrageous things ought to be an indication of just how tired and worn out the victim politics really are. Both parties are trying to employ their standard tactics and they aren't working on him because there's no donors to scare away. Trump stands up to the press and the political correctness brigade and they just reward him with more free airtime; he doesn't even need his wealth yet.

Trump has been created by one side having control of what's "acceptable" political debate for too long, and the other being too cowardly to stand up to it. Regardless of what you think about him, the greatest possible mistake is to think he's just a bombastic fool and his supporters are a bunch of bigoted idiots. That sort of thinking is why he exists in the first place, and he might ride that train all the way to the oval office.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Lex: Inflation is one of the government's ways of ensuring that nobody gets to keep their wealth, and fewer people get ahead of the system. Debt is the government's way of spending your grandchildren's money. Basically, it's ensuring we stay nice, subservient wage-slaves.

A balanced budget and a stable cost of living are FAR more important than unemployment, which will resolve itself if the conditions for businesses to thrive in are favorable.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

He's definitely trolling the living **** out of the press, and they just keep giving him more air time.



You're not likely to see new fresh ideas no matter what because there's these things called "reality" and "other countries" that influence what realistically can and can't be done.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I disagree. You can keep your wealth if you invest in ways that are inflation-proof. Also it's more important for people to have jobs than a "stable cost of living". If nobody is employed, there's no economy.

Debt can be a great tool to finance all sorts of projects. For example building highways, schools, skyscrapers, airports, etc. Using debt can actually increase economic growth and create jobs, although it also might cause more instability and inflation. If the debt is in the government's own currency, then it's not trapped in it because it could just print more in the worst case scenario. Governments that use debt effectively have an advantage over ones that don't.

That's the thinking that's **** up the economy for the last 85 years.

In short: Hayek was right. We've proven Keynes wrong with a century of **** with the economy to our own detriment.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Well not really because the government uses debt on retarded things typically, which is much worse than a balanced budget.

Sort of both. You can use debt in the short term to finance projects, particularly if there's an emergency, or for a war. that has to be followed by a period of much lower spending though, to pay off the principle, not just service the debt.

The problem we've had is that it's been used to endlessly finance projects that don't generate actual return as infrastructure does. You have to have a definite termination point and plan to pay off the debt. The problem is its just too tempting to keep spending that money generating projects that create jobs at home.

Politicians are addicted to spending because the public is. We are not "wage slaves"; we're crack addicts, and our politicians are our dealers who are getting high on their own supply. The public is to blame is the bottom line. People need to look at themself in the mirror first, then at D.C.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Government debt and the resulting inflation is just a more palatable form of taxation. We could balance the budget and have an effective tax rate of 70% like the Germans do, would that be better?

Most of the debt is due to Medicare and Medicaid and these are so expensive because the average lifetime healthcare cost for someone at age 65 is around $1.2 million right now. Who can afford this if the government doesn't pay?

Your health care system is fuxx0red. It shouldn't cost a third that much for healthcare.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

People forget that we subsidize Europe's socialized health care system via drug costs.

The cost of health care doesn't go down just because the government pays for it. Actually, federal funding is what caused housing, college tuition, and health care costs to rise. Those three industries scrambled to get that money.

There is no market pressure to reduce cost.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

FIFY.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."