Fortunately around here we don’t ingest the same substances that those writing for Salon do:
Don’t get suckered by the polls: Donald Trump will win again — unless we fight for democracy
It’s a fascinating claim, isn’t it? Winning an election is anti-democratic.
Sure, it’s anti-Democratic if the Republican wins but that’s rather the point of the system, isn’t it – that we out here get to do the choosing.
See MoreThere’s a somewhat desperate attempt to insist that Donald Trump was being racist when he described Baltimore as being “infested”. Sure, actual historical people have used the word to describe somewhere having a large number of a certain type of people. A certain Adolf H comes to mind as having done so and he very definitely was indeed a racist.
And yet there is a problem here. Which is that it is possible for a place to be infested with rats – you know, actual rattus rattus sorta stuff – and for someone to say a place is infested with rats and meaning that there are lots of rattus rattus around.…
See MoreIn one sense this makes no difference at all – Donald Trump must release his tax returns to appear on the primary ballot paper in California. In another it does make a difference – revealing to all who were too unobservant to note it that the primary rules in the varied states are subject to gross, gross, political interference.
That’s not quite how matters are supposed to be in a democracy but that’s how they are:
President Trump will be ineligible for California’s primary ballot next year unless he discloses his tax returns under a state law that immediately took effect Tuesday, an unprecedented mandate that is almost certain to spark a high-profile court fight and might encourage other states to adopt their own unconventional rules for presidential candidates.
There is going to be the most almighty catfight about this, the Trump Administration has decided to implement standard international law on asylum seekers:
The Trump administration says asylum-seeking immigrants from Central America must first apply for refugee status in the first country or countries they enter, rather than at the U.S. border. The new federal rule will likely face court challenges, opening a new front in the battle over U.S. immigration policies. The interim final rule will take effect immediately after it is published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, according to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
As innumerable of us have explained over the years there’s nothing wrong with a trade deficit anyway. But when that deficit is being wrongly counted anyway it’s even more trivial. Apple’s iPhone is used here as an example of why that deficit with China just isn’t what people seem to think it is:
The guts of an Apple iPhone show exactly what Trump gets wrong about trade
Crack open an iPhone and you’ll begin to see why President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China doesn’t make sense.…
See MoreThat one of the websites which came up with, popularised, the pussy hat doesn’t like Donald Trump should be obvious. That Ravelry has gone on to ban any mention of support for Trump from its forums might seem a little more extreme. The reason given is not the usual Orange Man Bad either. It’s that support for Trump is objectively white supremacy. Which is probably reading a little more – or less if you prefer – into his political stances than is actually merited.…
See MoreThat we probably shouldn’t give much prominence to the outpourings of actual fascists rings with a certain truth – and we don’t actually give much prominence to such. Oswald Moseley is little quoted these days. However, the idea of no-platforming is rather more dangerous – that we must not quote those who are a little to the right is where that ends up. As with this insistence that even a Republican President of a foreign country shouldn’t go around quoting someone on the British right:
Donald Trump has been criticised for spreading the “hateful and divisive” rhetoric of Katie Hopkins as part of an attack on the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
We have a story that William Happer, a physicist appointed by the Trump Administration to the National Security Council, consulted with climate deniers in order to frustrate the righteous and just reaction to the climate emergency. We should all be suspicious of this story – very suspicious indeed. For at least as far as I can see we’re being fed the occasional quote from the emails about that consultation. Not the emails themselves in which it would be possible to gain some context to the quotes.…
See MoreBoth John Cochrane and Don Boudreaux are decrying – if that’s a strong enough word – the new rules being put in place to try to define currency manipulation. The Trump Administration is worried, as many have been, over whether some other countries artificially reduce their exchange rate so as to boost exports to the United States.
That this is a silly thing to worry about is obvious. The point of our indulging in the practice of trade is so that we get those things which foreigners make better or cheaper than we do.…
See MoreSure, we all know how newspaper columns are written. There’s a fad or a fashion passing by, something must be found to say about it. That said columnist isn’t greatly informed on the subject under discussion isn’t the point. There’s the two basic templates all the same – “Gosh! Fab!” or the “How Terrible!” and from such things are the editor’s approval gained.
Today’s fashion is that Brexit will mean the end of the National Health Service.…
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