You’re upset about guns. You’re upset about abortion. The only way to fix the problem is to vote for Democrats, and only Democrats. There is no point in voting for Republicans, since they created the problems in the first place.

Posted under General

Many Americans were surprised and shocked when Donald Trump was elected President last November, not least of them the candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, principally. Trump seemed to take the victory as his due, while Hillary has tried to explain her unexpected loss by blaming everyone else–the Russians, James Comey, Bernie Sanders. 

But the problem with this is, in my opinion, that all the blame she casts on Comey, for example, rests on one statement he made a week before the vote regarding her emails. I think the election should never have been so close that one statement could shift the vote enough to cost her the election. The reason the election was close was because Hillary, in my opinion, was the worst candidate the Democrats could have nominated. 

Two charts from 538 demonstrate that “Trump and Clinton were the No. 1 and No. 2 least-popular nominees on record, and it wasn’t particularly close. It seems very likely that if Clinton had been as well-liked as John Kerry, Al Gore, or Michael Dukakis that she would be president today, and that if Trump had been as well-liked as Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Bob Dole he’d have won the popular vote.” The quote is from Vox. 

Most supporters of either candidate will need no education about why the opponent is so unpopular. Trump is a lying egomaniac with the attention span of a hummingbird. He never keeps his promises, doesn’t pay his bills, and thinks the Presidency is his personal cash register. Clinton cheated to get the nomination, destroyed 30,000 emails that she says were personal, ran an inept campaign highlighted by a series of blunders, and gave fawning speeches to Goldman Sachs for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is it any wonder these two are the least popular candidates we know about?

During the campaign, Trump promised a lot of popular things. But he was lying, and he hasn’t done much to get them done since he was elected. But Clinton based her campaign on continuing what Obama had done. But Obama disappointed a lot of people. He ran on a platform of “the change you can believe in.” Remember?

He said he would fight for universal health care. As someone said, “I don’t mind that Obama couldn’t get single-payer health care. I mind that he didn’t try.” That was my own issue, and why I didn’t vote for Obama’s re-election, although I did the first time. He also bailed out the big banks, but no homeowners who were duped into loans they could not pay. He did not prosecute any of the bankers, who should all be in jail for lengthy terms. 

Obama did issue some usefully progressive executive orders, but he made no effort to cultivate any Republican legislators, as far as I can tell. He gave none of them rides on Air Force One, a popular perk for congressmen in the past; didn’t invite them to join him in a round of golf; rarely invited Republicans to White House dinners. And he did nothing to build the Democratic Party, which resulted in more than 1,000 legislative seats being lost to Republicans. You could, I think, say that Obama brought about Trump’s election.

For my money, Clinton’s pledge to continue Obama’s policies probably doomed her with Sanders supporters. In addition, Clinton took pains to stress that she would only promise what she could accomplish. Politicians traditionally try to present their ideas of what America should be. That’s what other presidential candidates have done. She complained that she and Sanders had similar progressive views, but Sanders supporters vociferously disagreed. Sanders offered a picture of his ideal programs, not what he felt he could achieve. That made Clinton’s ideas look incrementally small, which they were. 

A far better guide to what happened in the 2016 election is not Clinton’s self-serving memoir, but Shattered, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.

Posted under General

News media everywhere are reporting that the President apologized for something about Obamacare–what for is not quite clear to me. The quote I’ve seen is:

“I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me,” Obama said.

I don’t see how this is an apology. Just because he said “I am sorry” doesn’t make it an apology. I am sorry the L.A. Dodgers didn’t get to the World Series, but I am not apologizing for it because I had no power to do anything about it. It sounds to me like the President is saying, “I am sorry people are having problems,” but he’s not claiming responsibility for it. He also is not saying he misled the people who have individual policies, which I think you could make a strong case for, since other news reports have said the White House knew three years ago that a lot of individual policies would not meet the minimum standards in Obamacare and would be cancelled. 

Regrettably, this is not an unusual stance for this President–to cobble together a “sort of” apology that isn’t, and to push blame off on other people. 

Posted under Politics

Who would have guessed that Obama would be such a colossal, dismal failure in the first Presidential debate of this election?

It’s a little late to try to get back the edge the day after, which the President was trying to do today. I think he’s going to have to come out with some explanation of why he as so bad during the debate. Otherwise, I suspect no one will believe him. I don’t, and I should be one of his natural supporters. But right now, the President is seeming pretty lame.

I’ve never had a high opinion of Obama’s debating or speaking ability. I always felt he was overrated because of his Democratic convention speech in 2004, which was excellent. But without teleprompters, Obama seems unable to put together a coherent sentence. And in the debate, he was submissive, stammering, and completely out of sync.

Posted under America

I recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party. Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly –Teddy Roosevelt

Posted under General

The Consumer Products Safety Commission runs a database to which anyone can submit information about being harmed by a product. Before anything gets entered into the actual database, it is vetted by CPSC staff and the manufacturer is given ten days to respond. Apparently Republicans do not want the public to know about defective or dangerous products, because the Republican House of Representatives approved a Republican (Mike Pompeo, Kansas) bill last week to deny funding for the database. Pompeo is concerned for the financial health of manufacturers and other businesses, who might be harmed by “false information.” He doesn’t have any examples of false information, mind you, but this is such a danger to commercial interests that immediate action is essential. Meanwhile babies will be injured in defective cribs and toasters will start fires in empty homes. But businesses will be saved! Next time you vote, remember which politicians protect consumers and which protect businesses.

Posted under Class Warfare, General, Republicans

By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights – the right to belong to a free trade union. – Ronald Reagan, 1982 

Posted under Class Warfare

The 2010 Winter Olympics kicked off Friday night in Canada with what I thought was the worst opening ceremony I’ve ever seen. Read More…

Posted under General

The headline below is from MSNBC, and ran above an AP story. I show it here because it represents a common grammatical error in English: a misplaced hyphen. People often think when there are two adjectives modifying a noun, there should be a hyphen connecting them. Or perhaps people think when the two adjectives are related, they need a hyphen. But in fact, that is almost never the case. A hyphen is used most often when one of the adjectives modifies the other, and not always then. The rule seems to be changing in common usage lately, but this example is still wrong.

No. 18 Florida stunned for third-straight loss

Posted under Grammar Police, Journalism

Sacramento woke up today to its first measurable snowfall in 33 years.

Posted under General