Friday, August 19, 2016

After Destroying the GOP in November, Will Donald Trump Go After Fox News Next?

by Nomad

TrumpHere's probably the best explanation for Donald Trump's strange presidential run. As crazy as it seems, in a Trumpish way, it makes perfect sense.  


Like Poe's purloined letter, sometimes the obvious explanation is hidden right under your nose.
Nothing has been quite as inexplicable as this election cycle. It's hard to get a grip on the insanity of it. Most of it is coming from the Right and Donald Trump. Without resorting to a psychological ailment, coming up with an explanation for Trump's decisions and behavior isn't easy.

The Hiring of Ailes and Bannon 

The June's issue of Vanity Fair, however, offers one theory that makes pretty good sense. The writer postulated that Trump's run for president was nothing less than an ingenious form of self-promotion. Not an earthshaking observation, I understand. 
According to insiders, Trump was never interested in being president. And, no, he hasn't even been making a big fat joke (my pet theory)
Nope.
Actually, his entire campaign has been a promotion of his next business project, the creation of his media empire, a la NewsCorp's Rupert Murdoch. 
Fox News but without the decency and intelligence.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Ditat Deus: How Red-State Arizona's Failed Policies on Poverty Just Got a little Worse

by Nomad

Arizona is a showcase of Republican policy when it comes to helping needy families. But that's not meant to be praise. Poverty has become an intractable problem and legislators seem to be intent on making life more difficult for the poor.


No Hope, No Change

Arizona's state motto is Ditat Deus which in Latin, translates as "God Enriches" and, for some Arizonans that might be true, but for many others, God seems to have all but forgotten them. Actually, it's not necessary to lay the blame on divinities but on the easily-distracted Republican legislators. 

When the US Census Bureau updated its poverty estimates last year, the bad news about Arizona should have been hard for state officals to ignore. The state ranked third in the nation when it came to the percentage who were at or below the federal poverty line. That's an estimated 21 percent of the state's population.

You'd think those numbers would set off alarm bells that past policies just weren't working. You'd think politicians would realize that changes had to be made as soon as possible. 
That's not what happened. 
Last summer, coincidentally, Arizona became the first state to cut poor families’ access to welfare assistance to a maximum of 12 months over a lifetime.  With the passage of the law, Arizona will have the harshest limit of all the states, most of which offer benefits for five years, the duration allowed under federal law. 
As a local source noted last month:
It means an estimated 2,500 people — including 1,500 kids — will no longer qualify for the modest stipends the program provides. The average payment is $278.
Democrats lawmakers and advocates for the poor struggled in vain to keep the program at its two-year limit went unheeded.

In the debate, Republican Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City. delivered the standard Republican approach to poverty: 
“I tell my kids all the time that the decisions we make have rewards or consequences, and if I don’t ever let them face those consequences, they can’t get back on the path to rewards. As a society, we are encouraging people at times to make poor decisions and then we reward them.”
It's a pretty pathetic excuse for parsimony. Reagan taught us that the poor don't need our pity or our assistance. And ever since then, the conservatives have been saying that poor have only themelves to blame. We must assume such a rationalization allows them to feel superior and look at themselves in the mirror.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Future News Headlines: GOP Nominee Trump Quits, Announces his Entire Campaign Has Been "Sarcasm"

by Nomad

"Gotcha!" says Donald Trump, in a recent news spoof in the North Carolina Charlotte Observer.


A recent satirical op-ed piece by Walker Lundy of the Charlotte Observer reports that the GOP nominee Donald Trump has announced his intention to delete his entire campaign and endorse the Democrat Hillary Clinton for president.
Furthermore, the presidential candidate gave this startling admission.
Trump said the only point of his campaign was to show how stupid and gullible many Republican voters are.
Even though he had been a Democrat for most of his life, Trump declared, he knew that if he ran as a Republican and said "increasingly ridiculous, idiotic, racist and sexist things" he had a good chance of picking up a lot of votes. 

Beyond Belief

Of course, he says in the Lundy spoof, Trump had never imagined that he would "win the Republican nomination and poll 40 percent or better in a national race against Clinton." 
(Ask me two years ago and I would have definitely said the same thing.)
He also pointed out that he had offered no real solutions to any of the country’s problems and nobody, even the news media, took much notice that “there was no there there in my campaign,” he said.