ISideWith poll

[moda0306]

Oh, and MG, I actually liked crazy old Ross Perot.  He was a legitimate 3rd party candidate.  He was pretty geeky, and had way too many pie charts, but he was a good dude.  And if he was a Bill Clinton plant, as you claim, then I can't wait to see how horrified you'll be when you realize that Trump is a Clinton plant as well, but this time by the true grand wizard in the race, the one and only Hillary! (insert diabolical laughter here).  But seriously, Hillary's gotta be licking her ample chops at the thought of running against her buddy Trump.

The thought has already crossed my mind numerous times.  I would put nothing past the corrupt evil bitch.  I tell you, if that indeed turns out to be the case again, it will be a sad day for any real political reform in America.  But, then again, maybe it will wake people up into even more anger and action.  At some point we've got to get out the pitchforks and take back the country from the political class and Wall Street and do it from the ground up.

This says a couple things:

1) we can't even really trust that Trump isn't a Hillary plant. While I'm warming to the idea of him as President, if we can entertain this as a possibility, what do we really know about the dude?

2) this is just a symptom of our f'ked up two-party system and primary process. We need runoff voting. Plurality voting will always result in this f'ked up system we have. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this. Instead they vote for Perot or Ralph Nader and wonder why nobody votes third party, or they vote for the lesser of two evils and plug their nose.

[moda0306]

I really think Trump is just a different brand of war-monger. He has suggested that we should bomb the crap out of ISIS and have a ring of troops set up in the Middle East protecting Exxon while they take all the oil. I am not exaggerating in the least. He has actually said this. Very clearly.

Put it within context:

About a week after his interview with Evans, Trump elaborated, suggesting that America’s losses in Iraq deserved compensation in the form of Iraqi oil. “In the old days, you know when you had a war, to the victor belong the spoils,” he told George Stephanopoulos in 2011. “You go in. You win the war and you take it. . . . You’re not stealing anything. . . . We’re taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.”

I'm not apologizing for this, but its interesting how much the perspective on war has changed.

This was not sold as that kind of "war."  It was sold as a liberation. We went in and bombed them and did all sorts of damage pretending to "liberate" them from their horrible leader. If this was conquest, our government should have sold it as such. The people of Iraq shouldn't have to pay for an invasion that they didn't want. Americans who vote in warmongers should.

And let's not forget, war is perhaps the worst kind of theft there is. You collect tax dollars at gunpoint to send men to kill and die and destroy. Sure our opinion of it has changed. Now we are in perpetual quasi-war rather than short all-out wars.


To your other responses, I'm singling out Trump because many here are supporting him.  While I'm warming to the idea of him, I'm trying to point out areas where I think people are delusional. Most people rightfully don't like most of the other republican candidates. I don't need to debate them because we agree.

Economics was very much a science in the 1920's. Or at least to the degree one could ever call economics a science. Hoover was a laissez faire capitalist (and a great dude).  He was a former businessman. And when the depression hit he did nothing, and we had an absolute disaster of a recession. He carried his business principles to government and it failed him. Now perhaps Trump will design an awesome bullet train system or get us to Mars or simply be a huge blow to the corporatocratic stranglehold on government. Who knows. But I don't find there to be much evidence that business savvy makes a great president. I wish it did. It'd make finding good presidents a lot easier.

[Pointedstick]

Economics was very much a science in the 1920's. Or at least to the degree one could ever call economics a science. Hoover was a laissez faire capitalist (and a great dude).  He was a former businessman. And when the depression hit he did nothing, and we had an absolute disaster of a recession. He carried his business principles to government and it failed him.

One of the things I like about Trump is that when there's something he doesn't really know, and someone asks him about it, his default answer is some variation of "I'm going to get the very best people out there who are experts on this subject, and believe me, in the Trump administration, we're going to handle this thing properly!"

I like this answer because it isn't the standard lie of feigned omniscience that most politicians try to pull off ("Oh, I'm an expert on that and I already have a terrible plan!") or else aspiration to it in the form of a failed attempt at this, or else just dumbfounded silence as though they never considered that they weren't already an expert at everything.

Instead, Trump knows what he doesn't know and wants to get outside experts to help him, which is, uh, what normal people do when confronted with something urgent but unfamiliar. This makes perfect sense if you remember that Trump is a billionaire business mogul. You don't get there by trying to do or know everything yourself. You have to delegate. You have to trust other people.

[moda0306]

Economics was very much a science in the 1920's. Or at least to the degree one could ever call economics a science. Hoover was a laissez faire capitalist (and a great dude).  He was a former businessman. And when the depression hit he did nothing, and we had an absolute disaster of a recession. He carried his business principles to government and it failed him.

One of the things I like about Trump is that when there's something he doesn't really know, and someone asks him about it, his default answer is some variation of "I'm going to get the very best people out there who are experts on this subject, and believe me, in the Trump administration, we're going to handle this thing properly!"

I like this answer because it isn't the standard lie of feigned omniscience that most politicians try to pull off ("Oh, I'm an expert on that and I already have a terrible plan!") or else aspiration to it in the form of a failed attempt at this, or else just dumbfounded silence as though they never considered that they weren't already an expert at everything.

Instead, Trump knows what he doesn't know and wants to get outside experts to help him, which is, uh, what normal people do when confronted with something urgent but unfamiliar. This makes perfect sense if you remember that Trump is a billionaire business mogul. You don't get there by trying to do or know everything yourself. You have to delegate. You have to trust other people.

This is fair. However it still leaves him with a shocking lack of perspective at times. For instance, the "experts" in military action are Generals. I don't want Generals dictating foreign policy. He also views things from the perspective of CEO. I don't think "executive restraint" will be in his vocabulary. And since executive overreach is IMO one of our largest problems in government, once again, this doesn't leave me trusting him.

Now perhaps his style will get us to nuclear power and bullet trains faster, but I don't think it will yield us better foreign policy or executive restraint.

Like I said, I'm warming to the idea. Simply put, a man who wears all of his flaws so glaringly on his sleeve the way he does is so abundantly useful compared to the $hit we deal with now.  And if most of his weaknesses will be rightly be examined and ridiculed by the leftern-most 1/3 of this country, perhaps it'd be worth it.

The civil libertarian in me just HATES the idea of advocating for a guy like Trump. The last thing we need is someone with his attitude towards whistle-blowers. However, perhaps that's exactly what we need to put in the White House for liberals to do their damn job and protest against surveillance and government secrecy.

[MachineGhost]

Come on, give the guy a break.  He was blindsided with a global Black Swan event that no pre-larvel economic theory of the time had a whiff of a clue about how to deal with.  It's easier to come in four years later as FDR did and claim many things about the incumbent administration whether or not you really knew what the hell you're talking about!

[quote=The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Vol. 3]As this volume will demonstrate, the "Great Depression" did not start in the United States. To be sure, we were due for some economic readjustment as a result  of  the  orgy  of  stock  speculation  in  1928-1929.  This  orgy  was  not  a consequence of my administrative policies. In the main it was the result of the Federal Reserve Board's pre-1928 enormous inflation of credit at the request of European bankers which, as this narrative shows, I persistently tried to stop, but I was overruled. Aside from the inevitable collapse of this Mississippi Bubble, some secondary economic forces also contributed to the October, 1929, events. But even this slump started in foreign countries before it occurred in the United States, and their difficulties were themselves a contributing factor to the stock market crack. Our domestic difficulties standing alone would have produced no more  than  the  usual  type  of  economic  readjustment  which  had  re-occurred  at intervals in our history.

Eighteen months later, by early 1931, we were convalescing from our own ills when  an  economic  hurricane  struck  us  from  abroad.  The  whole  financial  and economic structure of Europe collapsed at this time as a result of the delayed consequences  of  the  First  World  War,  the  Versailles  Treaty,  and  internal policies.

The  immediate  effect  of  Central  Europe's  collapse  was  the  terrible unsettlement of all economically sensitive nations everywhere. Among the dire consequences were Britain's suspension of payments to foreigners, abandonment of  the  gold  standard  by  scores  of  nations,  trade  wars,  political  revolutions  in more than a dozen countries outside of Europe, and disaster for the American economy.

The  eventual  effect  of  this  gigantic  catastrophe  was  to  kindle  political  and social  revolutions  in  all  the  defeated  nations  of  Central  and  Eastern  Europe. Communism reached its dread hand into those areas, and Fascist dictators arose as the antidote. In the end, these forces were to plunge the world into a Second World War.

It is easy for the reader to look back and say that from the very beginning we should  have  anticipated  the  European  storm  and  enacted  in  advance unprecedented measures to counteract it.
[/quote]

This should really scare anyone.  Inflation is a small price to pay to prevent this kind of SHTF scenario.

[Pointedstick]

This is fair. However it still leaves him with a shocking lack of perspective at times. For instance, the "experts" in military action are Generals. I don't want Generals dictating foreign policy.

I think there's probably plenty of diplomatic and foreign policy talent out there, like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

[MachineGhost]

[quote=The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Vol. 3]
I  give  more  attention  to  the  campaign  of  1932  than  might  be  otherwise desirable,  because  I  then  accurately  forecast  that  attempts  would  be  made  to revolutionize the American way of life. The effort to crossbreed some features of Fascism and Socialism with our American free system speedily developed in the Roosevelt administration. The result was that America failed to keep pace with world  recovery.  Instead  we  continued  with  subnormal  levels  of  lessened productivity,  high  unemployment,  and  costly  relief  measures  until  our  man power and industries were absorbed by the war eight years later, in 1941.

That our administration policies were right is amply evidenced by the fact that  after  the  world  turned  toward  recovery  in  July,  1932,  the  twelve  nations retaining their free economies, and pursuing our policies, fully recovered, within two or three years, to levels above the boom year of 1929.

All this will be illuminated in detail and conclusively proved in this volume. [/quote]

Sanders is such a fossil.  He belongs in a museum.

[Libertarian666]

As this volume will demonstrate, the "Great Depression" did not start in the United States. To be sure, we were due for some economic readjustment as a result  of  the  orgy  of  stock  speculation  in  1928-1929.  This  orgy  was  not  a consequence of my administrative policies. In the main it was the result of the Federal Reserve Board's pre-1928 enormous inflation of credit at the request of European bankers which, as this narrative shows, I persistently tried to stop, but I was overruled. Aside from the inevitable collapse of this Mississippi Bubble, some secondary economic forces also contributed to the October, 1929, events. But even this slump started in foreign countries before it occurred in the United States, and their difficulties were themselves a contributing factor to the stock market crack. Our domestic difficulties standing alone would have produced no more  than  the  usual  type  of  economic  readjustment  which  had  re-occurred  at intervals in our history.

Eighteen months later, by early 1931, we were convalescing from our own ills when  an  economic  hurricane  struck  us  from  abroad.  The  whole  financial  and economic structure of Europe collapsed at this time as a result of the delayed consequences  of  the  First  World  War,  the  Versailles  Treaty,  and  internal policies.

The  immediate  effect  of  Central  Europe's  collapse  was  the  terrible unsettlement of all economically sensitive nations everywhere. Among the dire consequences were Britain's suspension of payments to foreigners, abandonment of  the  gold  standard  by  scores  of  nations,  trade  wars,  political  revolutions  in more than a dozen countries outside of Europe, and disaster for the American economy.

The  eventual  effect  of  this  gigantic  catastrophe  was  to  kindle  political  and social  revolutions  in  all  the  defeated  nations  of  Central  and  Eastern  Europe. Communism reached its dread hand into those areas, and Fascist dictators arose as the antidote. In the end, these forces were to plunge the world into a Second World War.

It is easy for the reader to look back and say that from the very beginning we should  have  anticipated  the  European  storm  and  enacted  in  advance unprecedented measures to counteract it.

This should really scare anyone.  Inflation is a small price to pay to prevent this kind of SHTF scenario.

Apparently you didn't understand that inflation is what caused that scenario.

[MachineGhost]

Apparently you didn't understand that inflation is what caused that scenario.

Trust me, I understand it all a lot more than you will ever realize, but I'm referring to the fix after the SHTF already occured.  It's a popular liberal view, but I suspect ultimately wrong, that Hoover "did nothing".  My impression so far is no one listened to him when he did try to fix things.  That's just how people are...  never interested in coming out of of their comfortable self-absorbed selfishness bubble until the fire is actually felt -- at which point it is then too late not to be burned to a crisp.