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
Nancy, on fire, let fly. After telling those who voted for this nonsense that they can’t hide, that it is tattooed on their foreheads, she left no doubt, saying, “You will glow in the dark on this one.”
Over recent days we’ve seen reports Susan Rice repeatedly asked to unmask the identities of Trump transition members who were incidentally surveilled. Sources: Bloomberg, NYT, Fox, 
Rice has not commented on the report. It would likely be legal for Rice to request the unmasking — “The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything,” Lake notes.
So what’s all this lead me to? It leads me to the acronym posted at the top of this post. What The Hell Is Going On Here? I frankly can’t make sense of it any longer. What have we heard this week?