Day: August 9, 2016

MSM: Give Third Parties More Exposure

Believe it or not there are other candidates for the presidency beyond the corrupted 2 parties we hear about every day.

The Mainstream Media could do the right thing and let the American people know they have more choices than tweedle-dee and Tweedle -dum…….as a matter of fact CNN has gained some support from the town halls they held with Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson…..

The Libertarian Party Town Hall event hosted by CNN on Wednesday night was the highest rated show on cable news in the coveted 25-54 demographic for the night.

More than 1.6 million viewers tuned in to the hour-long event featuring Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and vice presidential candidate William Weld.

Perhaps more important than the raw numbers is the massive uptick in viewership for Wednesday’s event compared to a similar Libertarian Town Hall discussion hosted by CNN on June 22. Overall viewership was up 74 percent and viewership in the 25-54 demographic increased by 101 percent—more than doubling the “in demographic” audience for the first town hall with Johnson and Weld, CNN reported Thursday.

Source: Huge Ratings Uptick for CNN’s Second Libertarian Town Hall, As 1.6 Million Tune In – Hit & Run : Reason.com

My hat goes off to them for having the alternative townhall….the American voter needs more exposure to alternative candidates…..maybe then we can get down to repairing this f*cked up process.

Here’s a thought….why not do the same with the Green Party…..that require backbone and I just somehow do not think they can manage it.

After I wrote that thought about CNN…news has come down that they will hold a Green Party townhall on 17 August

As the Green Party convenes in Houston this weekend to formally nominate Dr. Jill Stein for president, the party’s stars appear more aligned than ever. The Greens have a catchy unofficial slogan: “Jill, Not Hill.” There’s a new generation of politically rootless democratic socialists to woo. The Green Party is predicting it will be on the most state ballots in its history. And Stein is getting more media coverage than any Green since 2000 nominee Ralph Nader, having just secured a prime-time CNN town hall for August 17.

The town hall is a critical opportunity, since Stein is the least known of the four top candidates, including Libertarian Party nominee and former Governor Gary Johnson. And while she has certainly been to political candidate school—male pundits won’t have to remind her to smile—she doesn’t have the inspiring cadence of an Obama or the gruff everyman shtick of a Sanders. Her even keel and consistently left-wing outlook goes down easily with the Democracy Now! audience, but she’ll need to raise her game if she’s to connect on CNN.

Source: Can the Green Party Win With ‘Jill, Not Hill’? – POLITICO Magazine

I stand corrected…..and I will be watching…..will you?

Trump: He Said What?

I know I have been hard on the GOP nominee about his policies….I have said that there is nothing that is clearly known other than some damn wall or the banning of a religion or people for that matter….

Unlike my Right wing counterparts I try to be fair and report on the issues of all the candidates….I may not like them but the American people should know all their stances.

Yesterday Mr. Trump made what was billed as an economic speech……

Donald Trump provided more details of his economic plan on Monday in what was billed as a major speech in Detroit. It’s big on tax breaks and critical of government regulation. Some coverage:

  • The basics: Trump called for all child-care expenses to be tax-deductible. He also wants to abolish the estate tax, put a 15% cap on business income tax, reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three, and put a temporary moratorium on new federal regulations. In addition, he reiterated his call to abolish or overhaul trade agreements. (Via the New York Times and Reuters.)
  • Hecklers: Trump had to stop 10 times in the first 20 minutes as protesters were removed, reports Politico.
  • Key quote: “The city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda. She supports the high taxes and radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community.”
  • Another on the estate tax: “American workers have paid taxes their whole lives and they should not be taxed again at death. It is just plain wrong, and most people agree with that.”
  • By comparison: ABC News compares Trump’s fiscal policies with Hillary Clinton’s here.
  • About that child-care proposal: “It wasn’t clear how such a tax break might be structured and whether it would be available to tens of millions of families that don’t pay income taxes because they have lower incomes. Making child-care expenses fully deductible would provide much larger benefits to the wealthiest families that have larger tax bills.” See the Wall Street Journal.

But if you do not like this breakdown then I suggest that you go to the transcript…..The full transcript is here.

Make up your own mind…you do have one, right?

There is even fact check section if my reader is interested……NPR fact-checks the speech and provides an annotated version of the text here.

The Thing We Have to Fear Most is Fear Itself

Where have I heard that before?

My continuing research into terrorism is producing some invaluable insights into the phenom that we are dealing with in the 21st century….Terrorism.

These days with every attack on civilians there is a wealth of media and others that want to spread fear….fear by the way fits in the hands of terrorists perfectly…….the paradigm runs the gambit of who is to blame….

Fear is the best weapon for a terrorist and the next best weapon is ignorance…..and these days there is a wealth of both.

Terrorism is all too real a threat, and mass attacks cause a special kind of fear. Terrorist movements like ISIS kill innocents for the worst of causes and the worst of reasons. They seek to use fear to separate the West from the Muslim world, and to divide the Muslim world and dominate it. They try to use alienated Muslims in the West to create a growing climate of anger and distrust with Europe and the United States. They deliberately seek to get the West to overreact and lash out against all Muslims and Islam, just as they try to use extremism and violence to try to get the populations of Muslim countries to attack their own governments.

They also feed on Western ignorance of Islam, and the fear of new and unfamiliar risks. We in the West have learned to live with most forms of our mortality. We accept the fact that life has a wide range of risks, almost all of which are far more serious than terrorism: Lightning, suicide, traffic, disease, home accidents produce far more deaths than terrorism.

Source: Terrorism: The Thing We Have to Fear Most is Fear Itself | World Affairs Journal

There is way too much regurgitation on terrorism for there to be an understanding by the average person……they are filled with misinformation….not necessarily lies but rather incomplete information that plays into the dialog that some want to have…..the more fear the easier to mold into a the paradigm they want for this country.

I refuse to let Right wing bloggers or scum like Breibart or Alex Jones educate me on terrorism….I even do not trust such rags as NY Times or the WaPo to inform me properly…but then that is me and I have never been one to jump to a conclusion….especially when fear is the subject.

For all the dramatic headlines they generate, ISIS and similar groups are minor players in the scheme of things. Yes, al-Qaeda brought down the World Trade Center and even got a shot at the Pentagon, but it and its mutant offspring never represented an existential threat to the United States and its allies. The most they can do is harass, provoke – and provide a convenient pretext for Western governments to launch military expeditions and extend their powers on the home front.

It is their rhetoric that we seem to fear the most…..and like most rhetorical BS it is mostly….HOT AIR!

Syria: A Balkanizing Future?

The Middle East these days is a region with more problems than successes…..take for instance Syria…..After all this confusing and war can it remain as a solid country to venture into the future?  Or will it breakdown into regions like Iraq has done (although no one wants to admit it)?

What are the chances of a balkanizing of Syria?

Balkanizing?  WTF?

Balkanization [(bawl-kuh-nuh- zay -shuhn)]
Division of a place or country into several small political units, often unfriendly to one another. The term balkanization comes from the name of the Balkan Peninsula, which was divided into several small nations in the early twentieth century.

1920, first used in reference to the Baltic states, on the model of what had happened in the Balkans; said to have been coined by English editor James Louis Garvin (1868-1947), but A.J. Toynbee (1922) credited it to “German Socialists” describing the results of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Either way, the reference is to the political situation in the Balkans c.1878-1913, when the European section of the Ottoman Empire split up into small, warring nations. Balkanized and Balkanization both also are from 1920.

The reason I ask the question or bring up the subject at all is something I read in a report from the region…..

In comments at the Aspen Security Forum, CIA Director John Brennan warned that after five years of bloody civil war, he is no longer confident that it’s even possible for Syria to remain as a whole country, saying it may not be possible to avoid a partition.

Indeed, US officials have long resisted the notion of even couching partition as a possibility, insisting they want Syria to remain united, and with a powerful central government, albeit a different, more pro-US ruling faction. US officials have repeatedly spurning proposals that would involve keeping Syria nominally united but in a more federalized system, with significant regional autonomy. Such proposals have been common among both the Kurdish YPG and the Russians as possible solutions to the war.

We have a pretty clear division in Iraq along sectarian lines…Sunni, Shia and Kurds……what what about in Syria how would this possibly divide up of the country?

This would be the Kurdish territory, mostly in the far northeast, ISIS territory across the east, and al-Qaeda’s territory around Idlib Province….and then there would be the central government around Damascus…..

Is this possible?  An accepted area for ISIS and AQ?

Nuclear Power Is Losing Money

I try not to be a one trick pony meaning I try not to post on only one subject….I feel my readers would like an extended view of what is happening in the world these days.

For the past couple of elections there has been a solution to our energy problem….nukes.  It has been debated and debated but this time it is not so important because of fracking.

And now it looks like Nuclear Power may have been on its last leg…..

Half of existing nuclear power plants are no longer profitable. The New York Times and others have tried to blame renewable energy for this, but the admittedly astounding price drops of renewables aren’t the primary cause of the industry’s woes — cheap fracked gas is.

The point of blaming renewables, which currently receive significant government subsidies, is apparently to argue that existing nukes deserve some sort of additional subsidy to keep running — beyond the staggering $100+ billion in subsidies the nuclear industry has received over the decades. But a major reason solar and wind energy receive federal subsidies — which are being phased out over the next few years — is because they are emerging technologies whose prices are still rapidly coming down the learning curve, whereas nuclear is an incumbent technology with a negative learning curve.

Source: Nuclear Power Is Losing Money At An Astonishing Rate | ThinkProgress

Should we continue to explore this as an energy source even to the point of a bail-out…..a solution that many do not like……what should we do?