mathjax

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Classic passive-aggressive abuser tactics: Clinton takes role of the victim to attack Trump the same way





“I really deplore the tone of his campaign, the inflammatory rhetoric that he is using to divide people, and his going after groups of people with hateful, incendiary rhetoric,” the Democratic front-runner for president said in an interview with The Des Moines Register

Hillary Clinton, who lied about Trump being ISIS's best recruiting weapon, has now demonstrated she's just as nasty only in passive-aggressive form. She is using classic abuser tactics to seem like a helpless victim so you won't notice she's slinging as much mud as Trump.  These are deceptive oppressive tactics of a narcissistic superiority complex. She is just as divisive as Trump, only you are made to believe she's a helpless victim.

This is like the office nag that complains about the size of the cake piece you took, so no one notices she's got two end pieces...

Monday, December 21, 2015

Obama: Attack the media, don't point out the problem.



The media is a narcissistic self-possessed mirror watcher. It can't help but gaze at its' own work and see it in the best light. When Obama points out the hysteria caused by the media, he shouldn't make it a talking point - he should attack them for making things worse.

When Obama points out like a rational person:

"If you've been watching television for the last month, all you have been seeing, all you have been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you," he said in the NPR interview. "So I understand why people are concerned about it."
"Look, the media is pursuing ratings," he added later. "This is a legitimate news story. I think that, you know, it's up to the media to make a determination about how they want to cover things."


The modern president is not familiar with wartime propaganda. The leaders of old understood that while media should be free it's power for ill in a time of war was a serious problem if not checked. Obama needs to ridicule that same free press that is self-consumed with non-critical analysis and fear mongering that drives their profits at the expense of the people that they supposedly represent.

The fact is that 1100 people killed by ISIS is a tiny blip on the map lost in the noise of car crashes.   The USA could kill 10,000 people a day forever. So in reality ISIS is a tiny shit stain on humanity that is overblown to elephantine status by stupid people over-estimating their lack of thought on the subject.

Time for Obama to summon his inner-Trump and blast them for their incompetence. At least then he would be in quorum with the American people.

Friday, December 18, 2015

The Great Sleaze Off

Hillary Clinton vs. Ted Cruz









I can't imagine a more repugnant sleaze-off than those two.  Trump may be insrutable, but he's not phoney in the same league as these two.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

You want good economic advice? Listen to Marc Faber

There are few economists that stay inside the right variance on economic assessment and prediction like Marc Faber. Or Dr. Doom:

Marc Faber: This is ‘precisely the wrong time’ for Fed to hike


http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/15/marc-faber-this-is-precisely-the-wrong-time-for-fed-to-hike.html


Part of the reason the economy does badly is that people listen to the wrong analysis, that leads to the wrong advice, and then they make bad investments, or make bad decisions like when to raise interest rates.  Some people like Marc Faber and even apocalyptic doomsayer Max Keiser are really the only sane people in the room.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The maddening thing about Trump: he does get results...

While he can be described in many ways that are negative or neutralizing in nature, one must say that he is effective.



His Muslim ban policy is pure nonsense but his angry unintelligible overreaction galvanized anger from without and support from within but it has forced the hands of people like Saudi princes that are now dancing to his tune.  If they don't do more to quelch radical Islam, they will lose their US visit privileges. They will also face the wrath of their own people for their loss of visits. They will be seen as helpless and weak in their own peoples' eyes.

Did Hillary Clinton's access get the Saudi king to move? Did Obama get cooperation from Saudis for a coalition against ISIS?

The simple fact is: while he may be a blundering fool, his rambling motion pushes the establishment out of their comfort zone and into progress...

Even Putin would welcome greater relations with Trump than Obama.
While Putin's ringing endorsement of Trump as "bright and talented" might be European wry humor, or more maskirovka i.e. lying ,  it is at least an acknowledgement that they have to plan for Trump. Again, Trump is making people react to him whether or not he understands it.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

The Full Trumpian

I hereby declare the definition of a new term: Trumpian.

A Trumpian argument: an argument inspired by Grade 6 knowledge and thought processes, exploiting emotional demagoguery blaming the wrong victims, saturated with intellectual nonsense, and accentuated with domineering against any reasonable objection.

To be used in a sentence like,

"When Bill was rebuffed for his silly viewpoint on Muslims, he went full Trumpian in response."

A synonym for Trumpian might be a vitriolic incoherence. 

This new term is not to be misconstrued with Kennedian, Reaganism, nor Churchillian discourse. I don't need to underline the context here.

Who's the moron: Trump or a Saudi prince attacking Trump? Answer: Voters

Saudi prince insults Donald Trump. So a Saudi prince, not exactly a favourable figure in US politics for all the back dealing and inside politics of the Bush family, attacks Trump:

"You are a disgrace not only to the GOP [Republican Party] but to all America,"
"Withdraw from the US presidential race as you will never win."

Does he not realize that he is playing right into Donald Trump's plans? Is THIS a setup? Of course Donald Trump is going to hit back and look like a BIGGER hero to the people he is manipulating. Was this a ploy FOR Trump or FOR Clinton?

Prince Alwaleed cannot be that stupid.  I am sure he went to good schools, studied more than his napkin,  and  I have to think Prince Alwaleed tweeted to look like a defender of Islam, which appeals to his base, and yet also manipulated Americans TOWARDS Donald Trump.

So should you take his words at face value, or should you connect the dots to his major donation towards Clinton Foundation? 

I wrote this post stream of consciousness style, complete with typos,  and then considered I should be clear for those unfamiliar: a vote for Trump in the Republican primary is a vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election in the prince's estimation.  So by transitive properties, a vote for Trump is a vote for Prince Alwaleed. He is acting the foil. So if you don't want the prince to win, don't vote for either Clinton or Trump.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Freedom for all: Islamists should be allowed to leave for da'esh, only they agree to give up their passports and citizenship.



It's hypocritical for a free society to restrict people from joining a caliphate. Like allowing people to join christian missions or the peace corps, we do not make people stay away from all foreign participation - we certainly don't restrict people from going abroad for business.



So we should live up to the ideals of a free society and allow people to leave for the caliphate with one condition. If they choose to leave for Syria, their passports are invalid once they get there. They will give up their citizenship to follow their ideals but they will be free.  If they agree it's a one way trip, and understand they will be tracked as a foreign terror suspect.

If you have the freedom to kill yourself in a climbing accident or in a sky-diving accident, then why can't you die for your ideals?

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Bad phrases lead to bad ideas

If we want to change the future, the single biggest way we influence that is by use of words and phrases for the memes that they represent. Ideas are what people store in their minds and use to construct their belief about reality.  I didn't understand this until I read philosophy. We can confront a different future by exploiting ideas. We can reconstruct what other people think, by removing faulty ideas from the superstructure of beliefs.

If we want people to stop glorifying an imaginary friend, we need to stop using misleading phrases.
My daughter and I were trying to find a restaurant and couldn't see it nearby in a city we don't know. She punched in the name in a phone and used GPS to find it in a row of businesses you couldn't see from the highway. She called it a god send. That's the kind of stuff we all say without thinking.

That snapped me back to reality. I said, "you know, when you say that it takes away the credit from all the hard working scientists and engineers that worked for decades to make cellphones and the GPS satellite system."


This is nothing more than a comforting idea to religious people and it really has no place in our society.

It steals credit for the sacrifice that those people made; and by saying it we are perpetuating wrong ideas that are actually church doctrine and not reality.  We need the next generation to understand our parents made those things, not divine intervention, and not church doctrine. The god of the gaps argument is an indoctrination idea that we can't afford any longer.

Let's not undermine what humans did by praising the wrong things and allowing the wrong ideas.

Instead, let's teach our kids about the GPS satellites, how they were launched into space and how they orbit until they burn up and reenter. Nothing mysterious in that.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Ted Cruz is trying to be Trump Lite: only his phoneyness is what angry voters hate.





Cruz is trying to seem appealing to the same angry voters that support Donald Trump.  The only problem is Ted Cruz is a fake sneaky person in no way resembling Trump in any way.  Cruz is trying to be Trump Lite: the more reasonable outrageous candidate.  So far it's working. But  Cruz may draft in the shadow but when the light is shone on him those voters will not follow.




Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Obama's opportunity lost...



http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/obama-speech-isis-visas-guns/index.html

Obama tried to solve a marginal problem that Americans really want to solve, ISIS / daesh, with a real serious problem Americans should solve first but seem color-blind to: domestic gun violence.

It was a good attempt to spur American people to stop killing each other with weapons of war by linking it to a patriotic cause. Unfortunately, it really just shifts the blame and responsibility for terror violence from Obama's failing ISIS strategy to a domestic onus to sacrifice personal liberty.

By doubling down on his "stay the course" policy towards ISIS, Obama lost an opportunity to cement a real solution to that crisis.  Normal people will think the opposite to what Obama claimed; if radical Muslims are roaming the streets and might attack parties then why take guns away from citizens?  That seems counter intuitive.



Comparing Trump's ban Muslims to Obama's ban assault rifles solutions, neither plan will fix the problem and both of them are in denial of the reality.


Instead, Obama should have proposed that Americans DONATE their assault rifles to the CAUSE of fighting ISIS. To arm friends in the region to defeat a common enemy. To get rid of ISIS faster, arm allies faster and the best way is fight them over there. Get the guns OUT of America. That would stop the terror funding and lone wolf attacks.

THAT would solve both problems at once.



Trump's plan is almost genius


If Trump would change his "ban Muslims until Congress figures it out" plan just slightly it would both appeal to inner fear and seem reasonable.

If he would change it to:

"I will ban Muslims from entering the US until ISIS is defeated"

then it would seem more like a measured response to the actual situation. It would still be blatant fear mongering, but at least it would look like a reaction to the problem and not just straight discrimination.


Thursday, December 3, 2015

In denial about impact...



Obama has a real behavioral habit which is one reason why he's seen as a poor president by some corners of America that would otherwise react rationally to reasonable behaviour. It's not just that people hate him because he's a democrat or a black man. It's because he stakes a claim on opinion that is proven false which makes him seem stupid or in denial about the impact of those statements being wrong. It strips credibility from what he's trying to do.

Obama has a real disconnection from the reality and impact of speaking an opinion that is proved wrong very soon after uttering it.  When he claims that off shore drilling is safe when it's as dangerous as any offshore operations, it makes he seem out of touch.  Barack Obama reverses campaign promise and approves offshore drilling

This was one of the first times I noticed this habit. This is a bad habit and any tactician would tell you how devastating it is for confidence if you utter wishful thinking that falls over immediately. Thinking 3 moves ahead, you know it's unwise to start that way. So why do it again and again?


When he calls a serious terrorist organization amateur when he could be vaguer that makes him seem ill-informed or out of touch.  Spinning Obama’s reference to Islamic State as a ‘JV’ team

When he claims Americans are safe when a fraction of them will clearly die in terror violence that will get through the safest security system, then he is lying to the masses when they can see differently. Obama: U.S. safe against ISIS attack.


It doesn't matter he was proven wrong in hours, it might have been hours weeks or months it will eventually happen.

When he refuses to blame Islam in any way for the violence they commit and get away with he tarnishes the rights of non-Muslim Americans that don't want to live in fear of deceitful neighbors.  Obama Explains Why He Doesn't Use The Term 'Radical Islam' For Islamic State, Al Qaeda

He is wishing the statements to be true when there is little support for that opinion. That is what opponents seize on to discredit; some of the most facile and foolish work of an otherwise capable president.

He is tone-deaf to the outcome when he is proven wrong, that it shakes trust and confidence at a time when people need assurance the president is not in denial. That denial of impact is far worse than any pipe bomb or assault rifle.