The trick that I don’t think either Bill or Hillary (or Obama) ever mastered was how to take the half-loaf while continuing to raise energy behind the full-loaf vision we really need. Bill Clinton showed how to minimize the damage of the conservative consensus that formed during the Reagan years, but he never reversed it or inspired a new liberal consensus. Neither has Obama, and I’m skeptical that Hillary will either.
Category Archives: Thought for the Day
Thought for the Day: 27 July 2015
Keep in mind our Constitution predates the Industrial Revolution. Our founders did not know about electricity, the train, telephones, radio, television, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, satellites, or space exploration. There’s a lot they didn’t know about. It would be interesting to see what kind of document they’d draft today. Just keeping it frozen in time won’t hack it.
– Ross Perot
Thought for the Day: 25 July 2015
Probabilities generate frequencies not the other way round.
– Fernando
That’s not so much a Thought for the Day as it is one of life’s guiding principles.
Thought for the Day: 23 July 2015
WWJTD?
(“What would John Tukey do?”)
Thought for the Day: 22 July 2015
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Thought for the Day: 21 July 2015
Trump has been calling Mexicans rapists for weeks but the thing that will finally sink him with journalists is being mean to John McCain.
(Source)
To be fair to Trump though, his comments were taken out of context.
It is interesting to me how some public figures can be multifaceted douchebags but the public will only care about one of those facets. For example, no one cares about Denny Hastert’s crooked land deals but the pedophilia is a showstopper. Similarly, Bill Clinton sells out pretty much everyone who ever supported him politically but it’s the blowjob from the intern that generates outrage. Go figure.
UPDATE 7/25/2015: Stewart on Trump.
UPDATE 8/22/2015: It’s now a month after the fact and no one seems to care that Trump insulted McCain. If they do it’s not obvious from his poll numbers. On the poll numbers, I want to know how it is that nearly half – half! – of registered Democrats in OH, PA, and FL haven’t heard enough about Bernie Sanders to have formed an opinion of him. For comparison, 90-95% of Democrats surveyed say they know enough about Clinton and Biden to have an opinion – so for those who have an opinion – and opinions are mostly favorable – please tell me what informs your opinion. What is it that causes you to like or not like them?
Thought for the Day: 8 July 2015
If we are not going to try to make good policies–and are not willing to risk that the electorate will ultimately reward good policies–why are we here? If we are going to enact the bad policies of our political adversaries, why not just let them govern?
Thought for the Day: 7 July 2015
[Greece’s referendum on whether to accept the Troika‘s proposed financial “bailout” package] showed that with the unemployment rate at 25 percent (and youth unemployment rate at 50 percent) there is only so much economic pain a sovereign nation will accept in the name of “austerity” without trying to fight back, even when the consequences of the “path less taken” (no country has ever exited the eurozone) are unknowable.
Thought for the day: 3 July 2015
“I don’t believe it is a terribly radical idea to say that someone who works 40 hours a week should not be living in poverty.”
Thought for the Day: 30 June 2015
Ask until you understand.