Day: July 22, 2016

The Speech: Will It Be Famous Or Infamous?

The GOP nominee, Donald J. Trump, made is acceptance speech last night….according to C-SPAN it was the longe4st speech since 1972………and after it was given the media has been tossing it around as a speech like NO other….some attack it and others defend it….

So will it be a famous speech or an infamous speech?

What is being said?

Foes and fans alike can agree on one thing about Donald Trump’s big speech at the GOP convention: It was really, really long. According to C-SPAN, the 76-minute acceptance speech was the longest since at least 1972. The speech—in which Trump portrayed America as a very troubled place and himself as the man to fix it—was a lot less uplifting than the typical acceptance speech, analysts say, though it certainly met with approval from the crowd at the Quicken Loans Arena. A roundup of reactions:

  • Critics said the speech “offered a gloomy, forbidding vision to a nation that prides itself on optimism,” writes Niall Stanage at the Hill, but it was good enough to stabilize the GOP as the spotlight turns to Hillary Clinton, and it ended a messy convention on a positive note.
  • Trump gave the crowd what it wanted: “a command performance of the tough-talking, details-free approach that won him the nomination in the first place,” writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post, who decides the speech probably helped Trump, though undecided voters might not agree with his “deeply dystopian and dark” perception of America in 2016.

 

  • Democratic and Republican speechwriters alike were “stupefied” by Trump’s failure to use the speech to tell his own story. “It’s a lost opportunity,” says former George W. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer, who had been expecting anecdotes that would make the candidate seem like less of a caricature. “A little humanity and self-reflection is usually very powerful in a speech,” he says.
  • The “raw, at times powerful, at times meandering” address was the Trump “stump speech on steroids,” and while it was easily “the most competent, professional, pre-written and telepromptered address of Trump’s career,” it’s not going to do much to expand his voter base, writes Glenn Thrush at Politico.
  • “Give him credit for this: @realDonaldTrump is a dark, disturbed man & he sees in the country what he sees in the mirror,” tweeted former Mitt Romney speechwriter Stuart Stevens.
  • This was “probably the best speech he could have given,” writes Marc Ambinder at the Week, who believes it was aimed squarely at angry white working-class voters in the Rust Belt—a group that could hand Trump the presidency. “If he can motivate a million more people across five states to vote and a million fewer people in another five states to stay home—Donald Trump can win,” he writes.
  • Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight believes it’s too early to say how the speech will play out. “This speech will either be famous or infamous for many years to come,” he writes, adding that “Trump could become president, obviously. Or he could lose by 15 points.”
  • The Washington Post notes that in a “radical departure” from the speeches of previous GOP nominees, Trump didn’t mention God or his faith once—and in a sign of rapidly changing attitudes, the RNC audience cheered when he vowed to “protect our LGBTQ citizens.”
  • Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Trump wasn’t offering answers, but just “more fear, more division, more anger, more hate.” “America is better than Donald Trump,” campaign spokesman John Podesta said. “Next week in Philadelphia, Democrats will focus on issues, not anger,” he said. “We’ll offer a positive vision for the future based on lifting America up, not tearing Americans down.”

Personally, I did not like it…..as a foreign policy junkie I heard nothing that would give me confidence in Trump’s plans for his presidency.

Any thoughts?

Damn! Whata Speech!

I was on the edge of my chair as Trump gave his acceptance speech……well not really….I sat there shaking my head…..there were so many falsehoods in it and with those red meat BS the applause was echoing through the rafters…..

Making America Afraid Again!

Despite promising “the truth, and nothing else” in his convention speech, Donald Trump presented the nation with a series of previously debunked claims and some new ones Thursday night—about the US tax burden, the perils facing police, Hillary Clinton’s record and more. Here’s what fact-checkers at the AP, the New York Times, and the Washington Post made of his claims, which painted a bleak portrait of the USA in 2016:

  • “The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen almost 50% compared to this point last year.” False: According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, line-of-duty deaths are up 8% this year, from 62 at this point last year to 67 so far this year.
  • “Homicides last year increased by 17% in America’s 50 largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years.” True, though analysts say Trump cherry-picked those figures, omitting that the statistical jump was so large because homicides are still very low by historical standards—and are down again so far in 2016.
  • “Two million more Latinos are in poverty today than when President Obama took his oath of office less than eight years ago.” True, but misleading: The Hispanic population has risen since Obama while the poverty rate has fallen. The Pew Research Center found that 23.5% of the country’s 55.3 million Latinos live in poverty, compared with 24.7% in 2010.
  • “Nearly four in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58 percent of African-American youth are not employed.” False: The correct youth unemployment figure is 31%, compared to 14% for whites.
  • “America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.” False: The U.S. tax burden is actually the fourth lowest among the 34 developed and large emerging-market economies that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, below only Chile, South Korea, and Mexico. Taxes made up 26% of the total US economy in 2014, according to the OECD, far below Sweden’s tax burden of 42.7% or Germany’s 36.1%.
  • “Household incomes are down more than $4,000 since the year 2000.” This would have been true in 2014, when median household income was $53,657, compared to $57,724 in 2000. The most recent report puts median household income at $57,206, almost the same as in 2000, though the figures haven’t been adjusted for inflation.
  • “President Obama has doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing.” Almost true: the debt has gone from $10.6 trillion to when Obama took office to $19.2 trillion as of April.

The Post notes that not only has Trump cherry-picked or inflated many figures, he has simply ignored positive ones, “such as rising incomes and an unemployment rate under 5%,” as well as the fact that the violent crime rate is still around half what it was 25 years ago.

It sounded more like a practice State of the Union than an acceptance…..

I know that this info will fall on deaf ears and that I will be labeled one of the fave insults for people that post on their chosen Messiah….but I hope that someone will want to know about the misinformation (polite way to say “lies”)…..after all you will be voting on the leader of this country and its people….ALL the people!

The Show Of Shows–The Finale

Finally the agony of the GOP convention has come to a merciful end…..and it is totally official….Donald has accepted the nomination for the GOP…..

In these lovely 4 days I have heard the term “Constitution” used more than I have in a long time…..these people are the very people that have ideas that crap all over the foundation of the republic…..but yet they are the sole guardian of the document…..go figure.

Any way….let’s talk about the final day of days…..

The evening began……(insert long uncomfortable pause)…..the truth is the night was f*cking boring so I watched a couple of episodes of “Tyrant” while waiting for the acceptance speech…..I would expect a positive, up-beat speech but instead the people were given a negative dark speech on the value of fear…..

MY GOD!  Trump is a long winded tool…the speech was about an hour and half long….he rattled on and on and the more talked the more negative he sounded……..

Donald Trump delivered the biggest speech of his life Thursday night at the GOP convention and his fans will not have been disappointed. Trump joined the crowd in its chant of “U-S-A” after he “humbly and gratefully,” accepted the nomination, the Washington Post reports. In his speech, Trump painted a frightening picture of America’s problems, but vowed to make the country strong, proud, safe, and great again, while also denouncing Hillary Clinton for her “terrible, terrible crimes.” Five of his biggest lines:

  • “When a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can’t see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form, and faces no consequence—I know that corruption has reached a level like never before,” said Trump. Cries of “Lock her up” could be heard as he went on to say Clinton hadn’t faced justice for “terrible, terrible crimes.”
  • “In this race for the White House, I am the law and order candidate,” Trump said. “The irresponsible rhetoric of our president, who has used the pulpit of the presidency to divide us by race and color, has made America a more dangerous environment than frankly I have seen or anybody in this room has ever watched or seen.”
  • “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” Trump said. “I have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders—he never had a chance,” he continued.
  • “I have made billions of dollars in business making deals—now I’m going to make our country rich again,” Trump said, promising to bring jobs back to Ohio and Michigan He promised to renegotiate “horrible trade agreements” with China and other countries. “That includes renegotiating NAFTA to get a much better deal for America—and we’ll walk away if we don’t get that kind of a deal,” he continued. “Our country is going to start building and making things again.”
  • Trump said he had an alternative to Clinton’s “I’m With Her” pledge: “My pledge reads ‘I’m with you—the American people,” he vowed. “I am your voice. So to every parent who dreams for their child, and every child who dreams for their future, I say these words to you tonight: I’m with you, I will fight for you, and I will win for you.”

I am sorry but I still have NO idea what he will use to accomplish his goals and not sure what those are….other than some platitudes to gain some applause.

I guess I will just have wait for the campaigns to begin in earnest…maybe then I can learn more of his issues.

On to Philly and the Big Dance they will call the Dem convention.

If that does not interest you then there is always Pokemon….it maybe more your style.

 

The case for constructive populism

2016 has been billed as many things…one of which was the election of the rise of populism…..Americans are just pissed they would not know a populist from a vegan…….

Many of the issues that the campaigns have used to excite the people are pure populism….the Brookings Institute has issued a paper about populism….

The Brexit vote has unleashed a huge amount of commentary on anti-establishment politics, the failure of experts, the abdication of the left, and much else. Juxtaposed to the presidential campaign in the United States, Brexit is regarded by many as a wake-up call.

In response, former US Treasury Secretary and former president of Harvard Larry Summers is calling for “responsible nationalism” to counter the often chauvinistic, anti-immigrant, and protectionist language of the populist right. It would be “understood that countries are expected to pursue their citizens’ economic welfare as a primary objective but where their ability to harm the interests of citizens elsewhere is circumscribed.” We would judge international agreements “not by how much is harmonized or by how many barriers are torn down but whether citizens are empowered.”

Source: The case for constructive populism

The American people are pissed….but will they actually do anything to change their pissitude?

After watching the political process for 50 years I can safely say….NOPE!

This silly process will continue along the lines that it has traveled for over 240 years…..a worthless waste of time and energy.