Lurker > Antifar

Buy an Xbox Elite Controller
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There's way more of that dude's voice than hers in that video
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Tag
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It's a bad idea
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They already have, my dude. And their chief concern is healthcare costs, not salary, as evidenced by the fact that they've stayed out following the deal struck between leadership and the governor.
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https://fair.org/home/msnbcs-big-names-completely-ignore-west-virginia-teachers-strike/

Eight days into the first wildcat strike by West Virginia teachers in 27 yearsorganized by rank-and-file union members in all 55 West Virginia countiesAmericas largest liberal cable network, MSNBC, is a virtual no-show in reporting on the momentous labor unrest.

Save for one two-minute throwaway report from daytime show Velshi and Ruhle (2/27/18), MSNBC hasnt dedicated a single segment to the strikedespite the strikes unprecedented size and scope, which garnered major coverage from major outlets like CNN (3/1/18), the New York Times (3/1/18), Washington Post (3/2/18), Vox (2/24/18) and dozens of others.

The most glaring omission is from the three highly paid primetime hosts: Rachel Maddow, Lawrence ODonnell and former In These Times and Nation writer Chris Hayes. None of the three big hosts have tweeted about it, much less mentioned the subject on air.

The more than 30,000-strong work action, in protest of low pay and soaring healthcare costs, is being ignored as the right wing escalates the campaign to gut public-sector unions, with oral arguments in the Janus Supreme Court case opening just days after the strike began. West Virginias rank-and-file teachers and school employees, on the front lines of efforts to stem this attack, are now continuing their work stoppage in defiance of a tentative agreement announced Tuesday night by Republican Gov. Jim Justice and union leadership. This wildcat strike, organized outside of the official channels of top union leadership, is being waged in a right to work state as attacks on teachers unions escalate.

Another major topic thats non grata at the Comcast-owned cable network is recent efforts by senators Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy and Mike Lee to end US backing for the brutal, human rights-abusing war on Yemen. Wednesday, the independent, Democrat and Republican introduced a bill to cut off financial and logistical support for Saudi Arabias bombing and blockade of Yemen, which has left over 15,000 dead and created more than a million cases of cholera.

As FAIR has noted before, the US-created humanitarian crisis is a total non-issue to MSNBC. During the Obama years, it was ignored entirely (FAIR.org, 10/14/16), and MSNBC hasnt done much better under Trumps tenurereporting on Russia-related stories 5,000 percent more often than on the largest man-made famine on Earth (FAIR.org, 1/8/18).

If congressional Democrats or DoJ officials fed a story to CNN or the Daily Beast, detailing how West Virginia teachers shared a handful of Russian memes in the run-up to the strike, or claiming that a Saudi bombing victim moonlighted as a Kremlin-paid troll, MSNBC would likely have given the stories six segments apiece. Not that the Mueller probe or the larger Russia investigation arent newsworthythey are objectively importantbut the nonstop firehose of Russia coverage, as FAIR has shown before, is crowding out other issues important to activists and progressives.

Perhaps this evening, one of the three multi-millionaire hosts can carve out 5 minutes for a story that doesnt involve the graphics department mocking up a blood-red St. Basils Cathedral and a backwards R. Perhaps they can take time out to interview a striking teacher or union representative, or any of the thousands of people involved in this major act of actual, real-life resistance.

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It's hard to say he isn't, in a world where Donald Trump is president
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The 6th amendment of the constitution is not a technicality.
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The implied separation of powers here confuses me: is the president unable to fire his own advisers?
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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

So let's make it worse? I don't follow.

My point is that I don't believe guns provide a "check" on government malfeasance in any meaningful sense.
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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

removing one of the checks and balances upon government

By pretty much any standard our government is less in-check than elsewhere.
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https://kotaku.com/the-switch-apparently-stops-counting-your-play-time-aft-1823475541

This would annoy the hell out of me
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For some reason stories about non-Russia corruption don't get much traction.
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Jeremy Corbyn
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https://usat.ly/2tf6EdK
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bump
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masticatingman posted...

If youre asking why its like that, its because of degenerate gamblers who become obsessed with the spread.

No, it's not for the sake of the gamblers.
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The idea, from the casino's perspective, is to have a roughly equal amount of betting on each side. Simply betting on winning and losing would allow for bettors to game the system by only betting on the best teams against the worst opponents. If you can bet on the Patriots week in, week out, and win 75% of the time, that's bad news for casinos.
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https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Alessandro Pluchino at the University of Catania in Italy and a couple of colleagues. These guys have created a computer model of human talent and the way people use it to exploit opportunities in life. The model allows the team to study the role of chance in this process.

The results are something of an eye-opener. Their simulations accurately reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world. But the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest. And this has significant implications for the way societies can optimize the returns they get for investments in everything from business to science.

Pluchino and cos model is straightforward. It consists of N people, each with a certain level of talent (skill, intelligence, ability, and so on). This talent is distributed normally around some average level, with some standard deviation. So some people are more talented than average and some are less so, but nobody is orders of magnitude more talented than anybody else.

This is the same kind of distribution seen for various human skills, or even characteristics like height or weight. Some people are taller or smaller than average, but nobody is the size of an ant or a skyscraper. Indeed, we are all quite similar.

The computer model charts each individual through a working life of 40 years. During this time, the individuals experience lucky events that they can exploit to increase their wealth if they are talented enough.

However, they also experience unlucky events that reduce their wealth. These events occur at random.

At the end of the 40 years, Pluchino and co rank the individuals by wealth and study the characteristics of the most successful. They also calculate the wealth distribution. They then repeat the simulation many times to check the robustness of the outcome.

When the team rank individuals by wealth, the distribution is exactly like that seen in real-world societies. The 80-20 rule is respected, since 80 percent of the population owns only 20 percent of the total capital, while the remaining 20 percent owns 80 percent of the same capital, report Pluchino and co.

That may not be surprising or unfair if the wealthiest 20 percent turn out to be the most talented. But that isnt what happens. The wealthiest individuals are typically not the most talented or anywhere near it. The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice-versa, say the researchers.

So if not talent, what other factor causes this skewed wealth distribution? Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck, say Pluchino and co.

The team shows this by ranking individuals according to the number of lucky and unlucky events they experience throughout their 40-year careers. It is evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones, they say. And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.
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They use their model to explore different kinds of funding models to see which produce the best returns when luck is taken into account.

The team studied three models, in which research funding is distributed equally to all scientists; distributed randomly to a subset of scientists; or given preferentially to those who have been most successful in the past. Which of these is the best strategy?

The strategy that delivers the best returns, it turns out, is to divide the funding equally among all researchers. And the second- and third-best strategies involve distributing it at random to 10 or 20 percent of scientists.

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WRCfar
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I agree. The problem is that "his people" is a category that includes Carl Icahn and Jared Kushner
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-was-angry-unglued-when-he-started-trade-war-officials-n852641

With global markets shaken by President Donald Trump's surprise decision to impose strict tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the president went into battle mode on Friday: "Trade wars are good, and easy to win," he wrote on Twitter.

But the public show of confidence belies the fact that Trump's policy maneuver, which may ultimately harm U.S. companies and American consumers, was announced without any internal review by government lawyers or his own staff, according to a review of an internal White House document.

According to two officials, Trump's decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team.

On Wednesday evening, the president became "unglued," in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind.

A trifecta of events had set him off in a way that two officials said they had not seen before: Hope Hicks' testimony to lawmakers investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, conduct by his embattled attorney general and the treatment of his son-in-law by his chief of staff.

Trump, the two officials said, was angry and gunning for a fight, and he chose a trade war, spurred on by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, the White House director for trade.

Ross had already invited steel and aluminum executives to the White House for an 11 a.m. meeting on Thursday. But Ross, according to a person with direct knowledge, hadn't told the White House who the executives were. As a result, White House officials were unable to conduct a background check on the executives to make sure they were appropriate for the president to meet with and they were not able to be cleared for entry by secret service. According to a person with direct knowledge, even White House chief of staff John Kelly was unaware of their names.

By midnight Wednesday, less than 12 hours before the executives were expected to arrive, no one on the president's team had prepared any position paper for an announcement on tariff policy, the official said. In fact, according to the official, the White House counsel's office had advised that they were as much as two weeks away from being able to complete a legal review on steel tariffs.

In response to NBC News, another White House official said that the communications team "was well-prepared to support the president's announcement" and that "many of the attendees had been in the White House before and had already been vetted for attendance at a presidential event." A different official said of the decision, "everyone in the world has known where the president's head was on this issue since the beginning of his administration."

There were no prepared, approved remarks for the president to give at the planned meeting, there was no diplomatic strategy for how to alert foreign trade partners, there was no legislative strategy in place for informing Congress and no agreed upon communications plan beyond an email cobbled together by Ross's team at the Commerce Department late Wednesday that had not been approved by the White House.

No one at the State Department, the Treasury Department or the Defense Department had been told that a new policy was about to be announced or given an opportunity to weigh in in advance.

The Thursday morning meeting did not originally appear on the president's public schedule. Shortly after it began, reporters were told that Ross had convened a "listening" session at the White House with 15 executives from the steel and aluminum industry.

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The entirety of Paul's Boutique by the Beastie Boys

But specifically the way they took a chord from Pink Floyd's "Time" and totally recontextualized it on "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"


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IIRC my district offered it as an elective. I didn't take it.

I would also note, FWIW, that that Florida school has a large Jewish population, something like 40 percent.
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I dunno this feels like a big deal
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https://theintercept.com/2018/03/02/jared-kushner-real-estate-qatar-blockade/

THE REAL ESTATE firm tied to the family of presidential son-in-law and top White House adviser Jared Kushner made a direct pitch to Qatars minister of finance in April 2017 in an attempt to secure investment in a critically distressed asset in the companys portfolio, according to two sources. At the previously unreported meeting, Jared Kushners father Charles, who runs Kushner Companies, and Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi discussed financing for the Kushners signature 666 Fifth Avenue property in New York City.

The 30-minute meeting, according to two sources in the financial industry who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the potential transaction, included aides to both parties, and was held at a suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.

A follow-up meeting was held the next day in a glass-walled conference room at the Kushner property itself, though Al Emadi did not attend the second gathering in person.

The failure to broker the deal would be followed only a month later by a Middle Eastern diplomatic row in which Jared Kushner provided critical support to Qatars neighbors. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Kushners backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. Kushner, according to reports at the time, subsequently undermined efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to bring an end to the standoff.

The Gulf crisis involving Qatar and its neighbors will likely be Kushners defining foreign policy legacy. The crisis followed a May visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, by Kushner and President Donald Trump, who subsequently took credit for Saudi Arabia and its allies efforts against Qatar. The fallout has reshaped geopolitical alliances in the region, splitting the Gulf Cooperation Council and pushing Qatar, home to the Middle Easts largest U.S. military base, closer to Turkey and Iran.

Mohammed Hitme, chief of staff to the Qatari finance minister, did not respond to emails or phone calls seeking comment. White House Spokesperson Hope Hicks referred questions to Kushner Companies, whose spokesperson Christine Taylor said, We dont comment on who Charlie meets with. She added, We dont do business with any sovereign funds.

THE KUSHNER COMPANIES meetings with the Qataris were held the week of April 24. While Al Emadi was in New York, he appeared on Bloomberg TV to talk about the strategy of the Qatar Investment Authority, or QIA, the nations sovereign wealth fund. A host asked Al Emadi about whether the investment fund did business on the basis of geopolitics. Al Emadi answered the only way he could. I think if you look at what we do in QIA, or in our sovereign wealth fund, its purely commercially driven. So we go where we think were going to have value, he said. We like what we see here. We performed very well in the last two years. The market has been very good to us. And hopefully we can continue the same strategy in the U.S.

This was not the first time Charles Kushner solicited funds from the Qataris, but it is the first direct pitch known to be made to the minister of finance himself. Notably, the play came after Trumps election.
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The news of Kushner Companies direct pitch to the Qatari government puts a Wednesday report from the Washington Post into broader context. U.S. intelligence services, the paper reported, had determined that officials in four countries the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel, and Mexico had been privately discussing how to use Jared Kushners real-estate investments as a way to gain leverage over him in order to influence official U.S. policy.

"Let's put the real estate moron in charge of foreign policy, what could go wrong?"
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https://twitter.com/imraansiddiqi/status/969407729566547968
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Is that what Joe Rogan looks like? Huh.
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https://thinkprogress.org/trump-ichan-steel-imports-cf7deb8beaf0/

Billionaire investor and longtime Trump confidant Carl Icahn dumped $31.3 million of stock in a company heavily dependent on steel last week, just days before Trump announced plans to impose steep tariffs on steel imports.

In a little-noticed SEC filing submitted on February 22, 2018, Icahn disclosed that he systematically sold off nearly 1 million shares of Manitowoc Company Inc. Manitowoc is a is a leading global manufacturer of cranes and lifting solutions and, therefore, heavily dependent on steel to make its products.

The filing came just seven days before a White House event where Trump announced his intention of imposing a 25 percent tariff on steel imports.

Trumps announcement rattled the markets, with steel-dependent stocks hardest hit. Manitowoc stock plunged, losing about 6 percent of its value. Reuters attributed the drop to the fact that Manitowoc is a major consumer of steel. As of 10:20 a.m. Friday, the stock had lost an additional 6 percent, trading at $26.21.

Icahn was required to make the disclosure because of the large volume of his sale. The filing reveals that he began systematically selling the stock on February 12, when he was able to sell the stock for $32 to $34.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross publicly released a report on February 16 calling for a 24 percent tariff. But, as the chart in the SEC filing indicates, Icahn started selling his Manitowoc stock on February 12, prior to the public release of that report. Moreover, the sharp drop in steel-related stocks did not occur until Trump announced he would accept the Commerce Departments recommendations.

Before February, Icahn was not actively trading Manitowoc stock. According to regulatory filings, he did not buy or sell any shares of Manitowoc between January 17, 2015 and February 11, 2018. The February 22 filing was required because his ownership stake dropped below 5 percent. Now that he owns less than 5 percent of the company, he is not required to make another disclosure about his holdings until May. So while the latest filing shows him still retaining some stock in Manitowoc, Icahn could have continued selling the stock. If Manitowoc is not listed on the eventual May filing called a Schedule 13F that would mean he has liquidated all his holdings.

Icahn, a billionaire investor with far-flung holdings, is a close associate of Trump who invoked Icahns name repeatedly on the campaign trail. Once in office, Trump installed Icahn as a special adviser, although Icahn did not not unwind his business entanglements before accepting the position.

Icahn resigned in August, in advance of a New Yorker article which detailed how he used his position in the White House and his connection to Trump to protect his investments.

In his resignation letter, Icahn acknowledged discussing regulation of the refining industry with Trump, although he denied seeking to benefit any of his specific holdings. Icahn claimed that, despite being named an adviser, he had no duties whatsoever.

In an interview on CNBC on Thursday, Icahn appeared to acknowledge at least occasional ongoing conversations with Trump, saying the two had not had much interaction in the last four to five months.

The White House and a representative for Icahn did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Lucky him
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GOATTHlEF posted...

Seems like that dude, and a lot of right-wing mouth breathers in this topic need to learn some basic WW2 history. There was armed resistance by Jews during the holocaust. It didn't stop it.

That's what I came here to post.
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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/nancy-pelosi-just-endorsed-a-congressman-who-opposes-abortion-and-gay-rights/

Illinois Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinskis career is on life-support. The seven-term congressman from the Chicago area, who inherited his seat from his father, is facing a formidable primary challenge from businesswoman Marie Newman, whose campaign has been fueled by progressive anger at Lipinskis opposition to reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and Obamacare. EMILYs List, the national organization that supports pro-choice women candidates, has backed Newman and, along with a host of progressive groupsincluding Planned Parenthood and the pro-LGBT rights Human Rights Campaignhas spent heavily on ads against Lipinski:

Elected Democratsincluding New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and fellow Chicago-area Rep. Jan Schakowskyhave waded into the primary to back Newman. And in an unusual step for a race with a Democratic incumbent, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had declined to endorse Lipinski.

But on Thursday, less than three weeks before the March 20 primary, Lipinski did pick up one notable supporter: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi has shown a greater tolerance for Blue Dog Democrats than others in her caucus have. When progressives criticized the DCCC for refusing to apply a reproductive rights litmus test to 2018 candidatesit never hasPelosi insisted there was room in the party for anti-abortion candidates. This is the Democratic Party, this is not a rubber-stamp party, she told the Washington Post.

Notably, Pelosi is showing Lipinski a degree of loyalty that the congressman has never extended to herLipinski has routinely voted against Pelosi for minority leader. After helping elect Pelosi speaker of the house in 2009, he voted against her in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. Notably, he was also a major impediment to Pelosis top legislative accomplishmentthe Affordable Care Actand was one of only a few blue-district Democrats to vote against the measure.

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no
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https://twitter.com/RobertMaguire_/status/969286630833098752
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bumo
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https://newrepublic.com/article/147247/democrats-helping-trump-dismantle-dodd-frank

As the U.S. approaches the tenth anniversary of the 2008 financial meltdown, it faces a massive test of the post-crisis regulatory apparatusthanks in no small part to Democrats in Congress.

A deregulatory bill, S.2155, introduced by Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, proposes a major rollback of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Dubbed The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, it cruised through the committee in January. Although there are several elements to the bill, the most eye-popping provision is a significant shift in which banks are considered systemically important and thus subjected to greater oversight and tighter rules. Currently, banks with $50 billion in assets fall into that category. The proposal would move the threshold to $250 billiona 500 percent jump that would erase the mandate of enhanced scrutiny for 25 of the 38 largest banks in the country.

The measures framework is expected to eventually pass the Senate thanks to a dozen finance-friendly and swing-state Democrats who have openly announced their co-sponsorship. With Republicans in control of the House, the bill seems destined to reach President Donald Trumps desk this year.

Despite the vocal opposition of more liberal colleagues such as Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the bills leading Democratic co-sponsors expect it to be debated as soon as next week, according to a senior Senate aide involved in the process. The intra-party debate regarding the regulatory rollback is giving new insight into the battle for the direction and identity of the party ahead of this years midterms, hardening a divide between those who would move the party left to energize the base as well as populist independents and those attempting to appease more conservative voters and the partys deep-pocketed donors.

Many progressive activists, led by the anti-corruption organization Rootstrikers, have taken to calling the Democratic co-sponsors the #bailoutcaucus. Nine of the twelve Democrats supporting the deregulatory measure count the financial industry as either their biggest or second-biggest donor, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data listed by The Center for Responsive Politics.

When questioned about this correlation, and whether it would aggravate concerns that the Democrats in support of this bill are being affected by industry money, a spokesperson for Senator Tim Kaine responded, Campaign contributions do not influence Senator Kaines policy positions. He supports this bill because it provides relief for small community banks and credit unions in Virginia, helps prevent further harmful consolidation in the banking industry, and strengthens consumer protections for all Americans.

Hillary Clintons former running mate was not alone. Mark Warner, Kaines fellow senator from Virginia, is also co-sponsoring. Campaign contributions have never influenced Senator Warners decision making on policy matters and never will, his press office asserted in an email.
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Supporters are championing consumer benefits that have been tacked to the legislation, particularly a provision meant to protect veterans credit from medical debt and another that, inspired by the Equifax debacle, allows people to freeze and unfreeze their credit at will.

Americans for Financial Reform, a group that has been fighting for the strict enforcement of Dodd-Frank since its inception, have characterized those provisions as tokens designed to give cover to a bill that is largely made up of financial sector giveaways.

AFP also accuses the bill of rolling back certain mortgage-lending protections and weakening the Volcker Rulea centerpiece of Dodd-Frank that prevents banks from using their own money to trade in certain higher-risk, speculative securities.

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HiddenLurker posted...

If they hated her they would not be giving her so much money.

Who is giving Hillary Clinton money in the year of our lord 2018?
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Infinite 2003 posted...

I think you're forgetting hockey is a largely Canadian sport and black people don't face the extreme poverty here that they do in the US. The low number of black players is due to a lack of interest. Not a lack of finance.

Canada is only 3% black, compared to the 11-12% in the US (which is disproportionately in the South, where ice is harder to come by).

So setting aside the socioeconomic factors, you'd expect 3% of Canadian players (who themselves are just under half the league) to be black. My hunch is that it's somewhat less than that, for reasons I can only guess at.
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halomonkey1_3_5 posted...

Antifar posted...

If Democrats win the Senate this year (I'm skeptical, but), there is no reason why they should confirm a Trump nominee.

we both know the Dems lack the balls to do that though

You're probably correct.
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Letron_James posted...

They are both communist countries for one,

Say what you will about China, but Russia isn't even nominally communist. It is not 1988.
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If Democrats win the Senate this year (I'm skeptical, but), there is no reason why they should confirm a Trump nominee.
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Morning bump
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I have never experienced this
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"Pentagon receives orders to execute military" is quite a start to a sentence, let me tell you
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Breitbart comments





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Meanwhile on Fox
https://twitter.com/JamesPindell/status/969031721462173701
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Okay, I checked out the ones with a lot of downvotes


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Well let's see








That's as much as I care to see
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/corporate-america-activism.html

... Corporate activism on social issues isnt in tension with corporate self-interest on tax policy and corporate stinginess in paychecks. Rather, the activism increasingly exists to protect the self-interest and the stinginess to justify the ways of C.E.O.s to cultural power brokers, so that those same power brokers will leave them alone (and forgive their support for Trumps economic agenda) in realms that matter more to the corporate bottom line.

In every era and every political dispensation, businessmen ask themselves: What am I required to do to make money unmolested by the government? Between the Depression and the 1950s, threatened by Communism and facing powerful unions and a New Deal-era majority willing and able to regulate and redistribute, corporate America reconciled itself to a family wage for its male-breadwinner workers and a certain modesty in how its upper echelons were paid and how conspicuously they consumed.
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But there are other ways to compromise besides on wages, and at an accelerating pace our corporate class is trying to negotiate a different kind of peace, a different deal from the one they struck with New Deal liberalism and Big Labor. Instead of the Treaty of Detroit we have, if you will, the Peace of Palo Alto, in which a certain kind of virtue-signaling on progressive social causes, a certain degree of performative wokeness, is offered to liberalism and the activist left pre-emptively, in the hopes that having corporate America take their side in the culture wars will blunt efforts to tax or regulate our new monopolies too heavily.
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In certain ways the Peace of Palo Alto wont be fully tested until the next time the Democrats hold real power, when well get to find out whether the lefts antimonopoly forays have any follow-through, whether more than a token portion of the Trump corporate tax cuts will get rolled back or whether corporate wokeness will suffice as a concession to the new spirit of liberalism, enabling the easy post-1980s relationship between corporate America and the Democratic Party to endure.
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Or some people may prefer it, at least the professional classes, blessed with material comfort, and those groups designated as being on the official winning side of history. For others, though, the Peace of Palo Alto has rather less to offer. It confirms the blue-collar suspicion that liberalism is no longer organized around working-class economic interests, and it encourages cultural conservatives in their feeling of general besiegement, their sense that all the major institutions of American life, corporate as well as intellectual and cultural, are arrayed against their mores and values and traditions.

Between them these trends and sentiments will help sustain the Republican Party even as it lurches deeper into demagogy and paranoia by making a vote for the G.O.P. the only way to protest a corporate-backed liberal politics that seems indifferent to the working man and an ascendant cultural liberalism that has boardrooms as well as Hollywood and academia in its corner.

But of course so long as this same Republican Party remains itself pro-corporate in its economic ideology as the Trumpified G.O.P., despite his populist forays, has determinedly remained the corporate interests themselves stand to lose little from these polarizing trends. Their wokeness buys them cover when liberalism is in power, and any backlash only helps prop up a G.O.P. that has their back when it comes time to write our tax laws.

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"The video games, movies, the internet stuff is so violent. It's incredible. I get to see things that you wouldn't be -- you would be amazed at. I have a very young son who I look at some of the things he's watching and I say, how is that possible?"

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/968979518991097856
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