March 31, 2017

what do we do about blue dogs?

in part this is inspired by a thread or got heated arguments with someone who, come election time, would still be considered a comrade in arms. However this person defends the blue dogs that sided with Neil Gorsuch. Time and time again, there is a debate about whether or not the primary people who do stab the party in the back, or to work with them because admittedly they are in a red state where the Republican Party usually has some psychopath to the right of Adolf Hitler ready to run. Because I'm angry at the blue dogs, I usually get labeled as simplistic.

The problem is while we understand that Red America is not democratic, there are some battles that we really could use the support of the blue dogs on, ones that do go ahead and change the way the country works. It's one thing for a certain senator from West Virginia to always cheer for coal mining. Despite the number of black lungs his voters cough up, West Virginia has decided they want coal. Okay, some of us do not have to like that, and if global warming kicks in, some of us will go ahead and point the folks in West Virginia and say" you know it wasn't worth it in the end" but, we can at least see that we can disagree on that for now and try to work on it in a Democratic administration. This Supreme Court justice is long term damage, let me say it again, the damage was done to our constitutional process when the Republicans deliberately try to prevent Pres. Obama from doing his constitutional duty. It was his duty, not just the right. Even if whoever the opposition party picks turned out to be a pink unicorn with a sparkly halo, the damage to the very Constitution of our country has been done. It's one thing to go ahead and debate coal mining, it is another to make the Constitution worthless. That is above and beyond any election.

Now, it certainly does not help the matter that this person that is picked is someone who has been to the right of the current court. this very week, the Supreme Court ruled against him because he felt that disabled students needed barely above the minimum.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/us/politics/gorsuch-education.html?_r=0
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/22/supreme-court-unanimously-overruled-neil-gorsuchs-strict-interpretation-of-a-law-while-he-testified-at-his-scotus-confirmation-hearing/

Now please note the people who made this ruling against him: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, we are talking about a unanimous rejection, or even the people who were part of the Scalia Vanguard thought this man was to far to the right. Let's also not forget this is the man responsible for the Hobby lobby decision, which gave employers the right to deny birth control on religious grounds. He is a young man, and he is set to go ahead and affect the Supreme Court potentially for decades. Let's put this in on his terms: today's teenage girls will have to deal with this man well into their silver years, and they will be the ones who get hit with the consequences of an abortion ban.

Of course, trying to primary a blue dog is impossible, in part because the very blue dogs often conspire with her GOP friends so that the GOP can have a lot of slack. However, if you are going to go ahead and ask people like myself, but much more importantly, that 18-year-old young woman that is going to go ahead and spend the rest of her life dealing with everything from her body being controlled to the effects of global warming, you need to now answer a question: what mechanism do we have to make sure that on key issues we do not get stabbed in the back, that we at least get half of the mythical loaf rather than no crumbs. I gave a certain senator from West Virginia some leeway, because we can debate about coal and another administration. However, if this Supreme Court justice gets in, not only do we empower a right wing ideologue, we basically tell every Republican Congress out there that even if a Democrat gets elected in 2020, all they have to do is hold their breath and throw a temper tantrum and they will ensure that no Democratic president gets the right to pick a Supreme Court justice. That is not local politics that is the Constitution, and if we cannot defend the the Constitution, if we cannot defend the right of a Democratic president to fulfill the duties under back Constitution, which is also a nice way of saying if we tell the GOP that we can see the right to have any say in picking a Supreme Court justice, then we are worth nothing as a party.

March 28, 2017

The Las Vegas raiders (yes this is political not sports)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/sports/football/nfl-oakland-raiders-las-vegas.html?_r=0

Normally sports is a distraction from politics, but here we have an opportunity to use the sports world to focus on exactly what is wrong with politics. I'm speaking of the fact that the Oakland Raiders are moving to Las Vegas. First, let's go ahead and focus on the fact that most sports owners are billionaires and that most of them are Republican. However, despite having enough business acumen to be able to pay the salaries of multimillionaires, they always seem to need public funding for stadiums.

Now, let's dig a bit deeper. These billionaire sports team owners make their money from the lower and middle classes. Even those that live nowhere near the people that their team represents still make their money from selling something. However, the politics they pick almost always demands that a community spends less on itself. If community wants to spend on schools, they attack it. If community wants to spend the keep toxins out of its environment, and the words for clean water and keep the trash of the streets, they get mad. But whenever it comes to something that can make them richer, all the sudden they need to be the first priority, because if not this community will be punished because they did not offer precious sacrifices of gold to sports team owners.

First off, if you guys are such geniuses that you can own a sports team and even provide one of the few acceptable outlets for black and brown millionaires in this society, why do you have to keep coming to the public did demand funds? Let's not pretend that you are asking the stadiums to be built for our benefit, you want that stadium to make more money for you, because when a sports team does not make money, you blame the stadium. It's not like a franchise like the Oakland Raiders, a team that had such fan loyalty it might as well have been a religion, was not able to make money. No, the son of the team owner wanted to make more money. After all, it's not like he had his father's talent to make his own fortune, no, he just had to sell the team to make more money. Then again, this country is currently run by a brilliant businessman (sarcasm flag flown way high) who inherited his money from his father, who inherited money from his father, but supposedly is self-made, just as his children will claim that they were self-made, especially his daughter who has an office in the White House.

Of course, all the NFL's sports franchises except one agreed with this, because everywhere from San Diego to Houston to Tennessee a bunch of old sports owners see a chance for their family to make lots of money. Many cities want sports franchises, and are willing to go ahead and hock their children's future to get them. My own Tampa Bay was very much one of the cities, indeed, the construction of my local high school was held hostage as part of the deal to approve a tax to build Raymond James Stadium. Raymond James Stadium is often held up as the example of why city should cave in and give a sports owner a stadium. After all, camp has had a few Super Bowl since then, and the Republican national convention, in part, as a sort of reward for being among the first cities to cave in. Cities like Philadelphia caved in and or to imitate Tampa.

Of course, I can tell you that despite having that new stadium, and despite all these little prizes that we won, our schools are awful, our roads are awful, and thanks in part to this "tax", the sort of tax that we would never use to educate our children or fix our roads, we have even less ability to solve our problems. But we kept the Buccaneers from being stolen by Orlando! When we won our one Super Bowl, against the Oakland, soon to be Las Vegas Raiders, the media pretty much repeated the mantra "if we did not do that stadium deal, we would not have had the Buccaneers when our Super Bowl for us!" The foolishness of those in Tampa Bay that bought that con job is a sad contrast to the strength of those in Oakland who refused to get fooled.

As one of the great rivals of Oakland, as someone who remembers how much greater nation aided in our guts because we stole their coach John "Chucky" Gruden, as someone who saw Oakland fans in Tampa, like an invading army, earning one of the most there are some reputations in professional sports, I will testify that no one, especially Mark Davis, a.k.a. another rich boy pimple on his dad's ass, can dared doubt the strength of greater fandom. It is a shame to see one of the great sports nations outright disrespected and yes punished, emphasize punished, because they did not offer human sacrifice or two in addition to the mound of gold. Oakland, this is going to take a lot for a Buccaneers fan like me to say, but as of right now, you won the bigger game, because you showed guts that we should of showed.

So to sum, sports franchise owners encourage the belief that these billionaires automatically benefit the society, and therefore demand the first cut of our meat, what none Dare call socialism for the rich. The fact that they do this for no other reason than to get richer shows the sheer craven, crass, crude faces behind the mask of gold, or in this case, black and silver. Whenever the billionaires and the pawns that they buying Congress start talking as if they are some Atlas holding up the world, we need to remind them of who pays their salary, and thanks to Trump not even bothering to wear such a mask, we're coming closer, and closer, where the illusion that is held their power no longer works. This is politics, this is the force behind politics.

Postscript: I do not think it is ironic that a team that stole Oakland Raiders is a town like Las Vegas. Hey, I know Nevada went for Trump, and I know many people in Vegas are the sons and daughters of union workers. However, let us be fully honest, Las Vegas is a town that was founded by gangsters that wanted to run casinos, stole money from labor unions to fund those casinos, and built the fairyland of fake Eiffel towers and pyramids to attract the middle-class into spending money there.

Of course, most of the current owners of the casinos are not gangsters who at least understand that if they make mistakes they can end up in a hole in the desert. They are not gangsters who at least had to prove themselves in Chicago or New York before being handed a casino in Vegas. No, most of the owners the casinos now or corporations straight from Wall Street, run by billionaires like a certain current president of the United States. Of course, unlike the gangsters that preceded him, he was allowed to run a casino, go broke running a casino, and wound up getting more money. If Trump was a mafiosi, he would've ended up like Bugsy Siegel by now, a.k.a. the founder of Las Vegas. Bugsy Siegel was in effect executed, even though his Las Vegas idea turned out to be more profitable than any of his fellow mafiosi could've ever dreamed of because he lost money that was a pittance compared to what your average billionaire manages to lose every year and still without a hint of shame attempt to rob taxpayers of the money we need to maintain our roads, maintain our schools and otherwise hold up the society that makes them money.

March 26, 2017

an ugly truth

There's some ugly facts here. Warning this will probably offend a lot of people. You cannot forget one thing about America; this nation was founded by people who had a lot of violence done against them, especially in the United Kingdom. The reason why we have so many Protestants, especially Calvinist like the Baptists, is that European nations treated them like crap. By treating these people like crap, European nations used the idea of charity and aid as a means of social warfare, note I did not say social engineering, I said warfare. If you can feed the sector of society that obeys you, and also point to that of her part of society and say "God wants them to die, aren't you happy you are not them" you have a means of keeping the people who want your head divided. All European nations did this, but you excel that it like England, because they used religion to divide the Celts who they dominated.

Now comes colonialism, which is very good for the kings and queens in two ways: one, it allows you to go ahead and get rid of a lot of those riffraff outcast who would otherwise be staying in your own country and waiting for revolution to happen. It is no accident that England set many of its Calvinist to America, in particular the parts that are now considered red states. It's no accident that the Confederate battle flag is basically a Union Jack modified.

The X-shaped bars represent Saint Patrick and Saint Andrew, the patron saints of Scotland and Ireland who happen to have a lot of those social outcast English liked to kill. The more typical cross is the symbol of St. George, the English saint associated with imperialism and the Church of England, so it's no accident that when the battle flag of Dixie was made, it celebrated the Celtic heritage, and snubbed the English one.

So what is all this bit about Celts and flags have to do with healthcare? The people that made up America were outcast that were used to having to fend for themselves and also who were told they could go from being dirt poor to getting land. All they have to do was kill whoever the home country considered needed killing, take their land, and to remember to send all that sugar tobacco and cotton to the home country. When we kicked the English out, we changed empires into corporations, so that whole generations of people, black and white were always kept in an debt so that a corporation can demand the fruits of their labors, and sadly, many of those churches thought that was a good thing. The system kept people busy, making sure that life have to be as trouble lest they start doing things like reading books.

Does anyone think it is an accident that the Republicans are trying to peel back child labor laws and anything that allows people to avoid and pay debt? A free people will demand respect and accountability, something our lead have avoided since the very founding of the nation. Of course one of the main ways that even middle-class people get in the debt is healthcare. If you can make even rich people fear about one thing can go ahead and make paupers of their children, you have control. I'm not talking about political power, I am talking control. Of course, since many of those people that founded our nation were used to having to take something from each other rather than add it into a pool, you will have people fighting for pennies instead of the dollars they could save. It is the main reason why, as you nation as we are, the government and basic culture has remained the same since 1776, and that's if you don't count the colonial era, which honestly we should.

Think of how many nations have at the same governments since 1776. Think of how many of those nations have not only maintain their original land, but tripled in size and population. I know that the phrase "exceptional nation" is overused and misused, especially when it is set as a compliment (which it is not very often). However, the truth is we cannot overlook the fact that we are different than most nations. Yes Canada and Australia were both colonial Enterprises, however, perhaps by the nature of having very hostile geography, a.k.a. hostile Canadian winters and hostile Australian heat, or by the nature that England did not use them as a direct steam release for the Calvinist movements that were literally threatening to destroy the United Kingdom at the top United States was founded, they were different. It's odd to think that the fact that America was so ready to grow all that sugar tobacco and cotton could've been a cultural pain, but it was.

So to sum it up, America from its founding was made of people were used to looking at each other of some measure of hostility, and they thought of government largess as a political weapon to be used to enslave and control. It's easy to go ahead and judge, the fact is the people who founded this nation as a colonial enterprise did not want various people to trust each other, if the French did not go ahead and do their best to support the Thomas Jefferson's and George Washington's, we might very well still be part of what eventually became Canada. FDR did a lot to undo this sort of culture, but keep my the Democrats only get a chance to speak when the Republican administration has done a terrible job of crashing the car.

March 25, 2017

About today, not to be a downer, but

Look, I am as happy as everyone else to see Donald Trump have the worst week of his life, the sort of week that would ruin many in administration. His ability to be a deal maker has been shown to be false. Please remember, it was not the Paul Ryan wing of the party, nor was Democrats that brought him down (more on that point later.) Donald was brought down by people who thought his plan was actually not mean enough. No matter how many times he promised in the campaign to "repeal and replace" the the ACA, it turns out that his party did not want to replace anything. They wanted more people to die so that they can keep more of their money and spend it on more of their ego. Even with the far right wing of his party, the ones who are using Trump to do everything from making racism normal to giving cops a hunting license for young black men and Muslims still were not satisfied, they wanted more, the same way crack addicts who know that every hit can be their death blow, wanted more. Nevermind the fact that it makes Trump look awful right out the gate, and brings attention to a lot of things he did not need paid attention to, be it Russia, China, North Korea, Germany you name it. So yes we have every right to celebrate the fact that Trump has egg on his face. Heaven knows we needed a bit of sunshine.

So why am I about to play Cassandra,and warn of dangers to come? bear with me on this.

One: while the media is certainly enjoying yet another Trump provided feeding frenzy, do keep in mind that they are not our friends. They were willing to pillory Obama as he made the ACA, and despite what should be at least a partial vindication of Obama's work, Bill be the first to assist Trump as he plans to demonize and start that program. You will hear the mantra over and over again that Obama care was doomed from the start, and the fact that it will be just in time to try to influence the midterm elections is just a coincidence right? The media may be enjoying free food now, but they know that they can enjoy making us the free dinner in about a year, especially as their coverage of Trump has not evolved one iota,, and they also know it does not need to because the money is rolling in.

Two: in many ways, this is the return of the Coke brothers. Yes the misspelling is intentional, because they put out a lot of addictive money. remember that Trump actually ran to the left of the Coke brothers, something they are still mad about, and please remember this is the family religion is vindictive revenge. they will go ahead and appeal to everyone to the right, and sad to say the deplorables will gladly eat up whatever the Coke brothers serve, because long before Steve Bannon, they wrote the playbook on it. We can actually expect to see a tea party rise that makes the original tea party look like Bernie Sanders, especially as many neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, gun nuts, and every son of Aaron Burr knows that Trump invited them into the party with open arms, and they will use their right to bear arms to threaten second amendment remedies. What's Trump going to do?, Send the feds after a bunch of skinheads?


Three: good old Steve Bannon. Supposedly he has already made a hit list of those who need to be punished for embarrassing Trump. You know he is going to fight even dirtier than he typically does, because he knows that if Trump goes he goes. Pence isn't going to keep him, and you know Paul Ryan won't. And that makes a wonderful laid up to:

Four: Paul Ryan. At this point, he can go ahead and blame Trump and continue his quest to steal the presidency. All he would need to do is join John McCain in the "Trump is a Russian spy " banter and he has a way of not only getting rid of Trump, but of compromising Pence. You can hear it in the smoke-filled rooms now "Mike, if you were to leave, it would give our party a chance to start a new, with a fresh young conservative leader like Paul Ryan."

My point is not to be a downer. My point is that the same problems we had before are not only still around, but now the GOP knows that we can make it bleed. They will step things up. The only thing that is ever been able to stop Trump from doing something bad is intense, consistent pressure. Until the day that any Democrat is inaugurated in January 2021, we cannot let up for a bit. Would sadly brings me to point number five, the worst point.

Five: Democrats. To be honest, I was really offended when Nancy Pelosi was doing a victory lap as if she had somehow managed to win. The Democrats are not putting nearly enough pressure on Trump. Granted, this could be a wonderful lesson on why no Democrats should cross party lines on anything. Yes the house Democrats stayed firm, but we know that Joe Manchin would've crossed the line, as would many have. If someone like Elizabeth Warren can actually vote yes to allow our not so favorite brain surgeon to become the head of HUD, we cannot count on any vote.. Let's also be honest, what we are really saying is that Democrats are very much used to crossing party lines and the pressure will be on them to do more of that. What we need to do is place pressure against them, something which we have been reluctant to do. I don't care if the people whipping them into a frenzy wind up being Obama, Clinton, Sanders, Michael Moore, insert liberal here; we need to make the Democrats actually hold a line, and if that means directly ripping off of the Mitch McConnell playbook, all I have to say is that our goal is to make Trump a one term president. Actually should go for more, our goal is to go ahead and make sure that Trump dies in prison. Lock him up locked him up locked him up!

March 22, 2017

No Normalizing Neil!!!!

This was a response to an op, but some people wanted me to post this separately. Here goes:

to the author of the original OP, what I'm going to say is going to sound harsh, but I don't mean it that way. Normalizing Neil is deadly. Yes he is very much not a clown like Trump, that is exactly what makes him deadly. The Heritage foundation picked him, and they knew that they want someone who, even if Trump crashed the clown car in the Washington Monument,, would be slick enough to last and not be challenged. They picked this young, smart, charming fellow who just happens to believe that corporations should be only do whatever the hell they want to their employees and that agencies should not be able to do anything to protect people. Let's not forget, the whole reason of the Chevron ruling, which he opposes, was that when you deal for federal agency, the people who actually are the experts should be deferred to. In other words a judge should not be able to override an astronomer at NASA, a surgeon at the CDC, and other scenarios were frankly you do not want the equivalent of a plumber doing your brain surgery. If Neil gets in, he is going to do his best to make sure that federal agencies have to defer to judges, namely because the judges will be conservative, which means that the billionaires will have already told them what to say or at least made it very clear.

I mean, look at this quote:
In an article titled “Liberals’N’Lawsuits” for National Review, Gorsuch argued that “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education.”


Let's be attention to the language: he says that liberals have become an "addicted to the courtroom", which coincidentally is the one area where Corporations were and churches can be held accountable. It's no accident he uses the language of addicts, which she of course can easily interpret as criminals, to describe the one area were Corporation can actually lose. He also uses the term "social agenda", as if trying to go ahead and take tax dollars and pay everyone from private Christian schools to private prison companies is not some sort of social agenda. This is a person who does not believe that people who have been failed by their elected leaders, and yes failed at the ballot box, should have any defense. This is not someone we want on the Supreme Court, and yes Trump could've picked a fire breather, but the fact this guy is wrapped in some sort of slick package again makes them more dangerous because we do not pay attention to the actual words he says. Those words will outlive him, they will outlive us, and thereby probably shorten the lives of our children and grandchildren!

No normalizing Neil,.! He needs to be opposed, because even if the short-term fight is not one, thanks to be bought and paid for Congress, an honest critique of them will pave the way to where we can and start to help undo the agenda that the GOP is set in motion.

NO NORMALIZING NEIL! Let's not forget, the very field the GOP is currently playing on is stolen. Remember that they said if Hillary was president, they could hold out for years until they got a chance to nominate the Supreme Court justice they wanted. If they want to go but Mitch McConnell playbook, they need to be accountable to those rules, which means that we do not have to accommodate their desires.

March 21, 2017

Republicans' biggest white lie: that they represent the working class

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/09/republicans-healthcare-poor-voters-representation-jason-chaffetz

March 21, 2017

No Sympathy for the Hillbilly

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/frank-rich-no-sympathy-for-the-hillbilly.html

While the right is expert at channeling darker emotions like anger into ruthless political action, the Democrats’ default inclination is still to feel everyone’s pain, hang their hats on hope, and enter the fray in a softened state of unilateral disarmament. “Stronger Together,” the Clinton-campaign slogan, sounded more like an invitation to join a food co-op than a call to arms. After the debacle of 2016, might the time have at last come for Democrats to weaponize their anger instead of swallowing it?

March 20, 2017

SCOTUS nominee Gorsuch said women 'manipulate' maternity leave

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/scotus-nominee-gorsuch-said-women-manipulate-maternity-leave/ar-BBypuMP?li=AA5a8k&ocid=spartandhp

"Sisk said Gorsuch, a visiting professor at Boulder, posed a hypothetical scenario in a Legal Ethics and Professionalism class in April that debated if a married job candidate with student debt should disclose to a potential employer that she wants to start a family.
"He asked the class to raise their hands if they knew of a female who had used a company to get maternity benefits and then left right after having a baby," Sisk wrote.
When only a fraction of the classroom acknowledged such a tactic, Gorsuch scoffed.
"C'mon guys," Gorsuch allegedly replied, adding that more students should have raised their hands.
Sisk claims that Gorsuch said “‘many’ women use their companies for maternity benefits and then leave the company after the baby is born."

geesh

March 17, 2017

a national virtue can easily become a sin

Americans are very tolerant of what politicians and tycoons will do because they believe that is the needed sacrifice for the greater whole.. It does not help that their idea of a greater whole is one that has been compromised by religion. Yes I know there are many great religious liberals, and no Richard Dawkins, I am not going to take them out of the boat because you want to be the next ideologue to purge the world of all rivals, even under the name of science. However, it does not help that many of these people believe that Jesus wants them to get rid of all those liberal programs, and for that matter of the liberals, and that he will make everything all right. Nevermind all the quotes about Jesus where he says in no uncertain terms "it is harder for a rich man to slide for the I have a needle but to enter the kingdom of heaven."

That is because America became a haven for version of Calvinism. Now, all the liberal Calvinist can feel free to private message me about how Calvinism is not just some faith that believes that rich people are loved more by God than the rest of us. I will read your quotes and your blue links and make a sincere effort to understand you. I am dead serious about that. But when I see people like Betsy Devos use Calvinism and its "Protestant work ethic", and seem folks like the Christian coalition quote its theology in order to sincerely say that taking food from poor children is actually a kindness and a virtue, then I have to conclude that whatever sincere intent John Calvin had was very successfully co-opted by Satan. It's no accident that the red states in the union had to be ones that quote how they are a Christian nation, and how the denominations that dominate those states happen to be from that strain of Scottish Calvinism that took root so well that the stars and bars is a cross of St. Andrew. We inherited the Enlightenment in this country, but we also inherited the counter Enlightenment, which was in a tent by rich men, and the peasants that wanted to be rich men to roll back civilization. It's no accident that these folks are also the ones who tend to hate American intellectuals, and that many of them happen to be in Trump's cabinet.


Oh yes, Steve Bannon, Paul Ryan, Antonin Scalia were all good Catholic boys, but even they knew that behind their backs the real power elite see their power in their faith, which is no use for any but themselves. if we're going to go ahead and convert Trump voters, we cannot appeal to higher ideals. we will need to appeal to two things which are the only things they care about, fear and greed. Fortunately, eeven as Trump's policies affect them the most and bring about true suffering, the sort of suffering that no civilized nation would ever allow to be inflicted upon itself, we will be able to appeal to greed, because there is only so long that they can go to church and be told that they are suffering for some greater good before they say "I'm making everyone else but me but I want money dammit!" and they will gladly screw over the GOP if we can convince them that their greed will be fulfilled.. Let me be clear, I am not talking about need, because their children can be starving, their teeth could be rotting, and yet the old ego boosters of the GOP will be fed to them in droves, especially black and brown dead bodies, that they can kick around and get their ego boost from. No, we will have to appeal to their greed and ego, which does not mean that we have to compromise ourselves,, it means that the people would have made hate and greed their mode of living for the past 20 years can have that energy directed at people who promised them ego boost, but who will not even wait to get out the door before blowing cigar smoke in their face.

I realize what I have said is nasty, and I admit I am ashamed to say it, but I'm even more ashamed of allowing the very wicked people to get away with murder because we are trying to play nice. These ladies, who represent Dixie at its finest, who reminded me that I cannot paint people from a certain region of the country with a red broadbrush, say far better than I ever could:

March 17, 2017

please

don't tell me that I'm the only one who smells the hand of Steve Bannon in this.key racks is been on the job all of barely one month and he is already ready to call failure on a venture that for all of its ups and downs, Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama have been chipping away at 12 years? am I the only one who remembers this little gem?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/steve-bannon-donald-trump-war-south-china-sea-no-doubt

“We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years,” he said in March 2016. “There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face – and you understand how important face is – and say it’s an ancient territorial sea.”

It could be that he Rex was just supposed to be the guy who gave Russia the chance to get sanctions and allowed Trump and Putin to get some of that estimate $500 billion of oil trade. However, he Rex is not going to be making a lot of oil money, even in WAR, because the Chinese taking the economy is going to make what he has worthless. People are not going to be driving SUVs to get hamburgers if our currency is shot. Keep in mind, Beijing would not need to get officially involved ever, I repeat Beijing would not have to fire a single bullet to win the war. all they would need to do is let him trash South Korea and then attack Japan. of course officially they would say that they are not supporting the North Koreans in this, but to be perfectly honest they would not have to. However, once the South Koreans and Japanese are unable to go ahead and maintain our debt, that puts China in the perfect position to use it to target our leash.


Now less some of you think I'm saying this to Beijing Bait, I will say this, the scenario described is definitely not what Beijing wants. one, they know that if this happens there will be no way in hell to ever get their money back. Two, they also know that, for all their shiny new cities and monorails, their economy depends on Americans buying their products. an American depression, as much is that might sound wonderful to some old Maoist in Beijing, the folks in Shanghai know that America is the only country willing and able to keep buying all this stuff that they have kept the peasants making. They also know that the only thing that is keeping the country from trying itself into bits is the fact that right now the economy is growing, already there are fears of what will happen when the Chinese economy, like every other economy tanks. I'll give you a hint, it's no accident that despite all their attempts to keep the peace,, many people in these "thriving cities" are getting tired of air so nasty you need to wear a mask, as well as the fact that in order to become a competitive economy, wages and benefits have to go down. The Chinese are even being undercut by African labor, Africans who were very often trained by, guess who, the Chinese. Jesus Beijing, that's just like a teenager whose parents died of lung cancer making sure to smoke two packs a day of the same brand of cigarettes that kill their parents; you imitated America and are getting burned for it!


So who really would benefit from a war between China and the United States. oh yes there are some here bringing the concern Bell that we are Russia baiting. Never mind that those who bring that they'll have seriously failed to look at Russia today and realize that no it is not be idealistically bound Soviet Union.the Russians mainly flowers on Stalin's grave, but they are not fighting the ideological war of communism anymore, they're fighting it less than the Chinese are. No they know that thanks to European bumbling they are about to inherit Western Europe, or rather what I have century Cold War failed to do, folks like Le Pen and Trump are going to throw at Putin's feet. when that is done, who is the only country that poses any sort of existential threat to the Russians, or for that matter the United States? It is not Canada, is not Japan, and know it sure isn't England. As much is Russia could flex its muscle, they know they have nothing that the Chinese cannot take, no military advantage,, even that fabled Russian winter, is going to stop with eight times their population and a lot of stolen American military technology from taking anything from them, including all that nice Russian oil. So what if the Chinese lose, let's say 300 million. Some folks in Beijing would pop champagne because that would make their job of running the country a lot easier.


Russia's only hope of containing their neighbor is to find someone stupid enough to go to war for them and willing to shock trillions if need be into the war effort despite the fact it is completely hopeless; sadly our nation is exactly what Putin ordered. So what the world is a mess, they will just go ahead and build a new Moscow in the center of the country. The idea of two potential rivals both being destroyed beyond repair will make quite a bit of champagne flow in Moscow. Sadly, for all the differences between our two nations, China and America both have an addiction to national myth. to quote Don Henley, "we been poisoned by these fairytales." yes, the Chinese fairytale is much older than ours, but that does not make it any more worthy to help destroy mankind and ours certainly is not worth it. If there is any future to be made for mankind, it will be when people old world learn to treat religion and nationalism as just the constructs of a bunch of old men trying to avoid being irrelevant.