Reports are today that we've threatened military action with China over their sand islands (they replied "unless Washington plans to wage a large-scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories, If Trump's diplomatic team shapes future Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash."), Iran, and ....wait for it....Mexico.
The AP reports to have read the transcript of a phone conversation between Presidents Nieto and Trump where Trump threatened "You've got a bunch of bad hombres down there. You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I might just send them down to take care of it."
So, in short order we're poised to start 3 new wars, one with a nuclear super power, one in the middle east, and one on our southern border.
And alienated Australia.

Seems like a lot more than pissing in the soup already, he's flavoring it with broken glass and jagged metal Krusty O's.

Why does it have to be one or the other? It's pretty clear a huge group of racist/misogynistic people rallied around Trump for saying the things that they thought but couldn't say out loud in public. Him saying those things and not getting absolutely destroyed for it (thanks to mass media which just ate it up as fuel for ratings) brought them out of the woodwork, if not the woods exactly.

On the other hand, Hillary herself failed time and again to capitalize on his gaffs. Clearly her strategy of just letting him implode without actually trying to push him off a cliff herself backfired. Burr is right that the advice she got not to sink to his level, not to outright challenge the outrageous stuff he was saying (and now doing) was wrong. She picked the wrong team of people to advise her. She didn't campaign in key swing states. She (and to honest most Americans) vastly underestimated the desperation of the poorest blue collar workers around the U.S. She never had a clear campaign platform other than to show up, look smug, and essentially say "Hey, at least I'm not THAT guy!" There were people who took that to mean she represented the status quo. They might have hated what Trump was saying but they hated the status quo even more and voted accordingly.

So, in my mind, it's both things. She absolutely made mistakes AND a shitload of emboldened bigots came out to vote. It was the combination of these things that caused her downfall.

I find the history of how the Dems got here interesting. This isn't something I know much about. Is it accurate?

Personally, I'd like to see a third (and more) party. I think the Independents which are a majority in number could come together around a platform and be a force. Bluntly, fuck both the Dems and the Republicans.

One more point is that I don't think the state of the Democratic party is as dire as Cerk suggests. There were still 3 million more votes for Hillary without a fifty state strategy and with horrible gerrymandering and vote suppression.

The technology to load shift is available, but getting it developed and implemented is one of the components that is missing from the overall power strategy in Aus.

Energy companies, like Ergon (Queensland) are actively trying to limit input, with a hard cap of 5kVa input for residential, and sometimes even as little as 3kVa in some more remote areas.

And while technology like liquid vanadium battery cells (long life, expandable by adding extra tanks of liquid electrolyte) exist, they are still prohibitively expensive.

There are plenty of solutions, but little appetite from the companies and governments, and very little knowledge among the end users. So while we're throwing cheap Chinese panels on rooves with gay abandon, I think it's a little early to brag about what a rampaging success Aus solar is because "lots of panels yo!".

Few points...

We have no options for serious load shifting to utilise all that solar power in the evenings when it would make a difference. And power companies refuse to trust it for baseload power, so they still generate what they estimate they need for base load,and pay for rapid generation to handle spikes. Most electricity generated from home solar in Aus is wasted.

Without battery backups, the best production of the day goes to the energy company for 8 cents, and we buy back power from them (generated by coal of course) at night for 36 cents. Our energy companies aren't going to pay a premium for power they really don't give a crap about.

Most panels in Aus face north/east, to generate the largest amount of energy. When most people aren't home to use it. Instead, panels should face north/west to generate the most power in the afternoon when we come home from work/fire up air conditioners/start cooking etc. And even then, the power than is generated is but a fraction of what is consumed during peak periods due to the setting sun.

Annnnd most people in Australia do not even check their systems to see if they're still doing anything... It's estimated 14% of all home solar systems are currently non-functional due to faulty panels, inverter or both.

Until the point in time comes when energy companies can create a way to load shift solar production to ensure continuity of power, or household power storage units pricing comes down enough to be viable, non industrial solar in Australia is mostly feel good propaganda.

And while a number of coal plants have closed recently, it's not due to lack of demand as solar take up reduces requirement for coal fired power... It's because the plants are not viable any more to run and owners do not want to run at a loss. Each one that closes represents a significant portion of our overall generation being lost, with no core plan for continuity (wind and solar are not being considered as a core strategy currently).

I'm all for saving the planet, but the science/facts on solar outweigh the feel goods. Perhaps instead of patting ourselves on the back, we should be thinking about a better plan.

Interesting that a fundamentalist Christian is arguing a completely nihilist position. Nye could have done much better in responding to him: that we have a moral obligation to future generations to enable the species to continue to evolve and survive indefinitely. A scientific treatment of global climate change can provide us direction in how to ameliorate adverse changes that current and prior generations have created, whereas the "Christian" position, that global climate change is the result of sins by our current culture, doesn't lead to an effective strategy to ensure survival of the species.

The whiny camera dude needs to rethink his negotiating strategy: Leading off with asking the repairman to put his truck in a driveway is about the same as asking him to commit suicide by idiot. Props to the comcast guy for not smacking him upside the head.

I don't doubt that the conage is substandard, but the level of driving shown is abysmal. Don't they have plow trucks in driveways and kids playing by the side of the road in Indiana? What are those drivers thinking?

When I become king, drivers like that will have their dented vehicles ceremonially crushed before their faces, and their driving privileges revoked until a solid week, Sunday to Sunday, elapses without the temperature going below freezing. 55F for anyone who was driving a black pickup.

I'm so angry this man is not my president elect right now.

Good work douchebags. You thought you were so clever with your fucked up voting strategies, bitching about "lesser of two evil" choices, refusing to vote and taking a stand against...whatever the fuck you thought you were doing. Now we have a thin skinned, narcissistic, ignorant, man-child for our president.

Stop trying to rationalize this. This is not a voter revolt, this is not a paradigm shift in politics, this is not Hillary Clinton's fault or Debbie Wasserman Schultz's doing; this is the result of the masses falling for decades of misinformation combined with an emotional appeal to our worst instincts by a demagogue. You fell for it while you patted yourself on the back for being so much smarter than everyone else. Now we're fucked.

So grow the fuck up and do something to fix this.

Ignoring the apt title, I started off hoping he would think about it for a second and maybe adjust his strategy and was cheering for him a little.

By the end I was damn annoyed at him and now figure he was last seen scudding into the middle of a lake and then sinking when he let the damn lid fly up yet again!

If Hillary couldn't beat an unknown socialist in a fair fight, why did the Democratic party think she could beat any Republican front runner?

Did they really think that no one would read the wikileaks? Did they think that none of their backroom shenanigans to keep additional candidates from running (e.g. Lawrence Lessig) and push Clinton to the front of the pile just because it was her turn would be a winning strategy? It backfired, and it turned people off.

Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party, basically handed the presidency to Trump.

Bill is trying to get through to exactly people with your voting strategy.

He's saying :

Don't throw away your vote by voting for a 3rd person, just because you don't want either Trump or Clinton.

What people have to accept is that the president will either be Trump or Clinton. So the only sensible thing to do is to vote Clinton, just to be doubly sure that Trump is not going to get in.

Save your protest against Clinton for the next election (assuming we don't have Trump again!) Because voting for anyone but Clinton, is basically a vote for Trump.

You lose either way this election, so voting is now just a matter of making sure you lose as best as possible.

That's what Bill is saying in terms of false equivalency: Just because they are both bad, doesn't mean that they are of equal badness

Anyway I'm not in the US but the knock on effects of your vote will still effect me so please vote Clinton

Ohhhh, so you just reassert your point about Democrats never backing down, but Republicans do without any factual basis whatsoever! What a novel losing debate strategy!

Obamacare isn't perfect and needs to be fixed or replaced with something better. Not the Trumpian "something great" if it should be replaced, but something that is well thought out and addresses what Obamacare couldn't accomplish if the entire premise is systemically not going to work.

Did you see what I did there? I *gasp* recognize that sometimes things don't work! OMG! IT'S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also didn't say it's a "fucking disaster", because it isn't. If it were that, explain how the uninsured rate has dropped very significantly. It was never going to achieve 100% insurance rate. The only way that happens is with single payer.

Here's how stupid you are. You don't seem to understand that if Obamacare isn't the answer, you're just making single payer universal health care more likely to be enacted. The American people are not going to go back to being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They're just not gonna. Obamacare is the least left policy you could possibly enact that would help control costs and decrease the number of people who are uninsured.

You can scream to the top of your lungs, but Obamacare was enacted to remedy real problems. I'm even sympathetic to the argument that those were real problems, but Obamacare isn't the answer, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to propose something that has historical precedent and rationale to solve those problems. And you simply don't have one.

So again, keep struggling in the quicksand until it swallows you whole, and single payer is enacted.

Your evidence about health insurance premiums is anecdotal, and quite frankly, you don't seem to understand that your numbers and description of what happened to her is absolutely ridiculous. You don't get on medicaid because your insurance premiums go up under Obamacare. You qualify for Medicaid because of a lack of income.

Secondly, the claim is absolutely ridiculous that her premiums went up that much. For data we have available, *unsubsidized* premiums for the lowest cost silver plans for data we have in the Obamacare exchanges was $257 a month for a single person.

http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/analysis-of-2017-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marke
tplaces/

If she qualifies for Medicaid, then surely she could go on a silver plan in the Obamacare exchanges and come out likely paying less. Oh, and, on top of that, she would EASILY qualify for federal subsidies if she qualified for medicaid.

Oh, and btw, without Obamacare, if health care companies decided to raise those premiums just to price gouge, what protection would she have? Not much. Obamacare insures that you can only take in so much that isn't spent on health care.

Your story is completely utterly full of crap on so many levels, it's clear you made it up.

I'm dismissing all your numbers are being unsubstantiated bullshit. Have premiums gone up? Sure have. Were they going up before Obamacare? Yep! There's a healthy debate about how much Obamacare is contributing to premium increases. Obamacare isn't perfect. I'm happy to discuss rationally what could be done to improve Obamacare, or another plausible alternative. But not with you, since you pull numbers out of your ass that easily are completely debunked.

BTW, FYI, Obamacare was not intended to lower premiums nor to completely eliminate the number of uninsured. It was to control costs in all forms and reduce the amount of uninsured, as well as reform the health care system to eliminate problems like being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, people having to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, etc.

Some of its goals it succeeded in, and some not so much. That's a fair assessment at this point. Medical related bankruptcies have not declined. Being denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition has been eliminated. Premiums have gone up, but we simply don't have enough data to determine if they've slowed or accelerated since Obamacare was implemented. If you go by the immediate years after Obamacare was fully implemented, they slowed.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/Adler_Exhibit1.png

More recently, they've accelerated. It's important to note that health care costs are not solely determined by premiums alone. It's interesting you cherry picked premiums only to prove costs haven't been controlled because premiums are your best case to make that point. Copays, coinsurance, deductibles, prescription drugs, all those play a role. IE, if the average American pays more in premiums but less everywhere else, it's possible the net average is lower for total costs paid for health care.

These are complex topics that have no room for bringing in rose colored ideologically tinted lenses to force the outcome to be "a fucking disaster", where you'll bring in anecdotal evidence, some of which is completely utterly made up.

Just how far are you willing to make stuff up? Hillary Clinton, according to you, has never in the last 40 years done anything substantially positive.

REALLY?! Look, I understand not necessarily wanting her to be President. OK, fine. But that claim is absolutely ridiculous. Over $2 billion has been raised by the Clinton Foundation, and over 90% of that has gone to charitable work according to independent studies. Before you go down the path of "paid access", blah blah blah, even if that were true, the reality is $1.8 billion went to charitable works around the world through the Clinton Foundation Hillary Clinton helped to create and run.

That's not substantial?!?!

Dude, just stop. The only people who believe that BS are people within your bubble. You're not convincing anyone else who didn't already think Hillary Clinton personally killed Vince Foster. You're just making people like me think you're a complete loon.

Bernie and Trump are similarly attractive to disenfranchised, frustrated people who want change. The difference is in their perspective and tactics.

Bernie attracts people who believe the country has been stolen by the wealthy and want a more egalitarian society.

Trump appeals to people who are given to fear, anger and violence.

The problem is that a segment of the conservative movement found it beneficial to stoke that anger and fear in people to win votes and then that fire got away from them. Trump's mantra, "you're screwed and I'm the only one who can save you", is the same one that got Bush Jr. elected. It's the same message that made Fox news the most watched news channel on cable. People with money and conservative economic beliefs have used that message for decades to consolidate their power and make more money. They've used it to get scared and angry people to vote against their own best interest. Trump is the predictable, but somehow shocking, natural result of that strategy.

Why do democrats struggle to get a majority of people to vote for policies that are consistently more fiscally responsible and in the interest of the majority of voters? Because there will always be a segment of scared, angry people who can swayed by anyone willing to give them an outlet for their hatred.

@eric3579, I agree with you. Hillary's reputation took a big hit after the DNC Leaks broke during the convention.

@newtboy, here's how I think of the campaign. (Please pardon me for this silly fable. I just kinda got writing and my creative side just sorta took over, and I just kinda had fun with it.)

.. ..

As the primary campaign advanced it was clear that Scissors was the front runner in the Rep's side. Unless something changed drastically, he would be become the nominee.

On the Dem’s side, the race was not yet decided. Rock was behind, but not by much. He was quickly closing in on Paper’s lead. Rock was hoping that his strategy of being consistent over time would prevail and win him votes. In the beginning Paper had taken off an airplane. Laughing at how slow Rock was to gain speed. But now Paper’s once comfortable head start was being called into question. Could Rock’s momentum grow fast enough to overtake her?

Paper had gone through extensive planning (on paper) long before the election. Paper wanted to keep news of Rock from reaching the voters. The idea as was to keep Rock "covered over" to the point that many of voters just didn't know about him. They just saw the old familiar name of "Paper" on the ballot and went with that. They had little or no exposure to Rock.

Rock was on a roll, and it was clear that it was gathering no moss.

Since so many voters relied on “traditional” media for information, it wasn’t too difficult to keep pro-Paper ads on the radio, and television, and in newspapers. It was expensive, but Paper seemed to have an unlimited supply of money to fund the campaign. It was almost like Paper had bought the press...

Though Rock started to break through into the areas that Paper had been dominant, the Strategy worked. Rocks downhill momentum wasn’t able to fully catch Paper’s airplane—head-start.

Paper would win the primary and go on to face Scissors in the general.

But at the Democratic Candidate Coronation Ceremony, something terrible happened!

It turns out that someone was keeping a paper-trail on Paper’s dealings. Paper had written many correspondences, and many of those letters had reached the hands of Wikileaks, which had finally chosen to publish the secrets!

The strategies Paper had used to ensure victory over Rock—the Cover-Up Campaign—were revealed. The fundraising done by The Paper Foundation to keep money flowing around laws were becoming clear.

And each week and new secret seemed to drip onto Paper’s hat…

What happens next? We don’t know. There are so many questions! Could a boat float if made of Panama Papers? How deep will the leaks get? What other secrets will be revealed before the final election? Will Paper win over former Rock supporters now that the reality of the Cover-Up-Campaign had been uncovered? Who will win the final election? Can Paper beat Scissors?

Could Scissors have been secretly helping Paper out behind the scenes out of a fear of facing Rock? Could Paper have been helping Scissors in the early parts of his primary campaign out of a fear of facing Ben Carson?

Tune in again for out next episode of House of Cards I mean Rock-Paper-Scissors to find out!

//

//

Okay, I hope you read that with in the lighthearted voice it was intended. And I’m not hiding my bias. This story was mostly about Paper—who (at first) I thought would be a fine second choice.

(I was rooting for Rock the whole time! I liked they way he rolled!)

Trump was Scissors: Wouldn't hesitate to cut his opponents with his uh.. 'wit.'
Sanders was Rock: Consistent over time. (Not blown around by the wind)
Hillary was like Paper: Thin, like her integrity.

And now we got much further from understanding each other again.

Would we have any luck coming at this from an entirely different angle. What do you propose that Jewish Europeans, Jewish Palestinians and the Jewish populations around the Middle East should have done between around 1910 through 1948? Staying in Europe was a death sentence and it's just good fortune the allies were able to retake it while any of them were left alive. The jewish population of Palestine was being similarly disenfranchised, but unlike in Europe they weren't as badly outnumbered. The confrontations with the Arab Palestinians had turned violent, and their leadership openly admired Hitler. As preparations for WW2 got underway, British and Allied strategy was taking the strategic route of marginalizing the Jewish minority because the Arab majority support was more important to holding the region.

I don't see anything but death and suffering to the jewish population if they just follow what I gather as your position of basically living by the rules and the law of the land, whether they like it or not.