Month: September 2016

Yes I admit to enjoying the spectacle of a nut case scrambling the brains of a Washington establishment I’ve come to see as disconnected from the plight and cause of most Americans.

But the time has come to acknowledge that Donald Trump is not the way to change that.

The man is simply crazy. Even his own party, staff, maybe even his family implicitly or explicitly are demonstrating they get that.

Too bad for me I feel this isn’t an election about real change, other than electing our first woman president, which is huge and wonderful.

On to governing. A month plus of politics to go, but let’s get ready for helping, pushing, demanding, whatever it takes, to see that President Hillary Clinton delivers her promises.

By Pogo, a Trail Mix Contributor

The colloquy yesterday between Bink and Craig got me to thinking, as they say in these parts. So below are my jumbled and disjointed thoughts about the choice we face 40 days or so from now.

I view this election as a binary election – it’s Clinton or Trump.  If that is establishment versus change, with the type of change drumpf foreshadows, I’ll take establishment any day and every day for a myriad of reasons, including her roots in and support for the middle class.

Clinton is an easy choice for me. Even putting that aside, the folks Hillary will put into the federal courts from bottom to top make the decision very easy for me as a lawyer who believes the Constitution is not embodied in one amendment (a point on which Craig and I agree).

Whether I, Craig, or anyone is in the top or bottom 1, 5, or 10 percent, or somewhere in the middle, so long as they vote for the one candidate IMHO who gives a crap about and represents any hope for the middle class I don’t care how many cars, homes, dollars, eyes or whatever they have or whether they are low, middle or high income, or are unemployed, working or living off dividends and trust funds, and I count among my friends folks who fall into all of those baskets and who support Hillary — and none are deplorable.

I reject the “change” meme in this election as illegitimate and not in the best interests of the country. Large scale change in the past 100 years or so has been a result of catastrophic events, and I don’t see that underlying cause now — eight years ago, yes, but the responses to the 2008 crash have stabilized the economy (hopefully) even if the middle class has not recovered to its pre-crash level, although I am somewhat skeptical of that. Manufacturing has been leaving the country since the 70s at least, long before Obama’s birthplace was questioned. That’s when Japan moved from trinkets and began competing with us in the steel and electronics industries. It could ship US scrap to Japan, manufacture steel products and ship them back to the US at prices below what we could produce the same products for using the same scrap without the transportation costs. It built better TVs and stereos we could afford (remember them?) and we bought them.

China’s inroads into our manufacturing economy have been dramatic, but we buy their crap at Walmart and everywhere else, and other countries including Honduras, Indonesia, Korea and India just to name a few have followed suit.  NAFTA didn’t do that.  I haven’t seen the US be overwhelmed by Mexican and Canadian goods, and there are competing studies that have reached conflicting results. (See this Politifact article).  Ironically, one of the major employers in our area is a Canadian company (Bombardiere) and the largest office building in our “downtown” area (I use the term advisedly) — which was effectively abandoned by Chase Bank is now Canadian owned (Olymbec). Americans provide the labor in both.

OK, to support US manufacturers and bakers I won’t eat Oreos any longer and any Fender guitar I buy will be made in the US – and I’ll pay double for it, but it will be 20% better made.  Have there been job losses as a result of emerging economic powers south of our border and across the Pacific?  You betcha.  Are Americans willing to compete with those markets?  Yes and no.  But regardless, if you think change as offered by the Cheeto Bandito (apologies to Frito Lay) will improve that, well, I’ve got a bridge to Queens to sell you.

Would bringing back the Glass-Steagall reforms help?  Probably.  Will they come back with an orange idiot repug in the white house and a repug congress?  Not in a million years.  Could Dodd-Frank be made stronger instead?  See my Glass-Steagall comment.

Will trump bring back coal?  Doubtful so long as natural gas is cheap.  Will Hillary kill coal?  With a repug congress and coal lobbying money to keep idiots like McConnell in Congress and in line?  No damn way. (Natural gas will do that if it happens).

But the most compelling reason to reject trump change (chump change is more like it) is what I can foresee 4-8 years from now.  With drumpf at the helm I cannot imagine what this country and the world will look like, but I can’t see it looking better for most Americans, or for the world as a whole for that matter.  Putin might disagree with me here.  But I can see drumpf and his brood carefully studying and analyzing moves for the US while profiting nicely and counting their money as it grows – they think a blind trust is having his 3 spawn run his companies. With Hillary at the helm I similarly can’t see where we go, but I know it will be through careful study and analysis and right or wrong, decisions based upon that. So in the end, I’ll be voting for Hillary, like I did 8 years ago, and again I’ll be doing it for what I see as the best choice for the country.

More Posts by Pogo

The Obama Administration standing between 9/11 victims and Saudi Arabia is stunning. Congress, including Democrats, today repudiated President Obama’s effort to protect the Saudis from lawsuits. What is going on here? This is a monarchy that seems to have controlled our presidents for decades. Why?

Here’s how America debates. Eighty million viewers, give or take 80 million because the folks at Nielson just make this stuff up, tuned in thinking their favorite cop show would be on, but instead found a woman in red and a man with orange hair talking about TPP, which sounds like yet another drug for medicating children on airline flights.

Then they hear the orange guy call the woman in red a liar, followed by the woman in red calling the orange guy a tax cheat.

Which provokes a fight over the remote. Suddenly buying costume jewelry from aging TV stars on shopping channels seems riveting. Or maybe it’s time to consider a reverse mortgage.

Tune back in to the post-debate “analysis” and we find out who won. Turns out the red lady was “presidential” and the orange guy was a lunatic. Give lunacy a chance.

Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.  The Lorax, Dr. Suess

By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor

Banned book week has once again arrived.  Each year the power of the Internet has shown light on the various efforts to ban books in school libraries, in public libraries and from the printer’s presses. The ‘net provides communication between the smallest villages and the largest cities about efforts to prevent writings from being seen.

Censorship is a step towards subjugation of the people. If children are not allowed to learn, and seeds of dreams are not sown, the results are a people fettered from knowing their potential.  Hiding what others have written, does not make a world, quite the opposite.  Taking a thought from others and multiplying it many times is what makes a great world.

This year’s list from the American Library Association:

The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) receives reports from libraries, schools, and the media on attempts to ban books in communities across the country. We compile lists of challenged books in order to inform the public about censorship efforts that affect libraries and schools. The top ten most challenged books of 2015 include:

1. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
2. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
   Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).
3. I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
   Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
4. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
   Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).
5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
   Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
6. The Holy Bible
   Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
7. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
   Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
8. Habibi, by Craig Thompson
   Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
9. Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
   Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.
10. Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
    Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).

More Posts by Blue Bronc