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A reported just asked Trump what he was going to do about N Korea. This reporter is actually paid money to display his stupidity.
I assume, perhaps, this reporter mistakenly thought Obama was still president. Had it been Obama he would probably have replied he was going to withdraw American troops from S Korea by next Thursday at noon.
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This is what I was talking about in my previous memo.
."I can't believe you really think if we go ahead and bomb N.K. into oblivion China and Russia will just stand by. I think it is obvious to N. K. that we have the capacity to obliterate their country, and therefore they may bluster without attacking. Even if they have only a single nuke that could reach us, we have a less than 50% chance of intercepting it. Our anti rocket defense has proven only reliable about half the time. If I believed your scenario I would have to move to Israel and take my chances there."
If my friend is as certain about N Korea, China and Russia as he is about my being wrong then I replied: "If you are so correct and have such confidence in your own thinking then please let me know where Irma is going."
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What is it that makes us such a fractured nation?
Is it all the polling and focus on wedge issues by politicians hoping to get re-elected? Is it because we are such an enlarged cauldron of different racial and ethnic groups we no longer think of ourselves as Americans? is it because politicians and the public mass media focus on heightening tensions because it sells and enhances revenue streams?
Is it simply, we became so prosperous that when upward mobility stopped and the middle class shrank we began to come apart at the seams as a nation? Possibly it is due to the family break up and the fact that we were too busy spending and acquiring and we failed to save enough for that proverbial rainy day. Americans are born spenders and borrowers.
Has the Puritan character of our nation so changed that we no longer have the same ethics and values that made us great? Does it have anything to do with the lousy education we are imposing on our children or is it simply time for America to fade along with all nations that reach their peak?
Perhaps the survey/poll I am citing is wrong. After all surveys/polls are a by product of those who prepare them and those who are surveyed/polled. Surveys can be tilted just as much as the news can be slanted.
As for myself, I believe once Americans began to feel comfortable losing, and here I am referring to The Korean and Viet Nam Wars, and we allowed the attitudes of the '60's to infuse themselves into our society and determine how we dressed,how we acted and flaunted laws and authority, the downward spiral took root.
That said, I have no answers and am not sure I am even posing the right questions. You decide.( See 1 below.)
When in doubt we can always blame GW and now we even can blame Trump. Obama is too exalted to be blamed for anything.
But there still is a "smidgen" of hope because a former basketball player has offered to dig us out of the N Korean mess. Stay tuned. (See 1a below.)
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Betcha only "deplorables" own boats or are willing to get their feet wet. (See 2 below)
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Dick
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1)
Political Divisions in U.S. Are Widening, Long-Lasting, Poll Shows
WSJ/NBC News survey indicates a wide split on cultural, economic issues
By Janet Hook
Divisions in America reach far beyond Washington into the nation’s culture, economy and social fabric, and the polarization began long before the rise of President Donald Trump, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey of social trends has found.
The findings help explain why political divisions are now especially hard to bridge. People who identify with either party increasingly disagree not just on policy; they inhabit separate worlds of differing social and cultural values and even see their economic outlook through a partisan lens.
The wide gulf is visible in an array of issues and attitudes: Democrats are twice as likely to say they never go to church as are Republicans, and they are eight times as likely to favor action on climate change. One-third of Republicans say they support the National Rifle Association, while just 4% of Democrats do. More than three-quarters of Democrats, but less than one-third of Republicans, said they felt comfortable with societal changes that have made the U.S. more diverse.
What is more, Americans’ view of the economy, the direction of the nation and the future has even come to be closely aligned with their feelings about the current president, the survey found.
“Our political compass is totally dominating our economic and world views about the country,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Fred Yang.“Political polarization is not a new thing. The level under Trump is the logical outcome of a generation-long trend.”
The poll found deep splits along geographic and educational lines. Rural Americans and people without a four-year college degree are notably more pessimistic about the economy and more conservative on social issues. Those groups make up an increasingly large share of the GOP.
One measure of how much more polarized the electorate is than a generation ago can be found in views of the president. Eight months into the 1950s presidency of Republican Dwight Eisenhower, 60% of Democrats approved of the job he was doing. That level of cross-party support for a new president remained above 40% until Bill Clinton, when only 20% of Republicans approved of his performance after eight months in 1993. For Barack Obama, Republican support dropped to 16% at this point in his presidency in 2009.
Under Mr. Trump, that trend has continued and intensified. His job-approval rating among Americans overall has remained in recent months at about 40%, but just 8% of Democrats approve of the job he is doing, the survey found. By contrast, 80% of Republicans approve.
Mr. Trump’s election has brought a sharp mood swing among Republicans. In August 2014, 88% of Republicans said they weren’t confident that life for their children’s generation would be better than their own, a gloomy view of a central element of the American dream. Eight months into the Trump presidency, just 46% of Republicans say they lack confidence in their children’s future—a 42-point swing that is more dramatic than improvements in the economy would seem to justify.
The survey found changes over the years in attitudes on cultural and economic issues, such as gun control, immigration and globalization, that were key issues of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Views of gun rights used to be less partisan: Asked if they were concerned that the government would go too far in restricting gun-ownership rights or, alternatively, that the government wouldn’t do enough, Republicans in 1995 were about evenly split. Democrats were divided 26% to 67%.
Now, 77% of Republicans say they are concerned the government would go too far, and just 18% worry the government wouldn’t do enough. Democratic opinion is the mirror image, 24% to 71%.
Views of immigration have also become more partisan. In an April 2005 poll that asked whether immigration strengthened or weakened the U.S., a plurality of 48% said it weakened the nation, with 41% saying immigration strengthened the country.
Now, a substantial majority of 64% view immigration as strengthening the country, while 28% say it weakens the U.S. The change is due almost entirely to a sharp shift in Democrats’ views. In 2005, just 45% of Democrats said the country was strengthened by immigration; now the share is 81%.
Democrats also are now more inclined to see globalization as beneficial, compared with 20 years ago, when both parties had largely similar views of the matter.
Two groups in particular have a relatively pessimistic view of the economy—rural Americans and those with less education.
Some 43% of rural residents gave a high rating to their local economy’s health, compared with 57% of urban dwellers. Among people without a four-year college degree, only 47% viewed the economy in their area as good or excellent, compared with two-thirds of people with a degree.
Both groups have been moving from the Democratic Party to the GOP.
Among people without a four-year college degree, a plurality of 44% identified as Democrats in 2010. Now, only 36% do. Among those who are college graduates, just 36% now identify as Republican, versus 41% in 2010.
While there is broad agreement that the country is riven by division, there is no consensus on why.
Fully 80% of those surveyed saw the country as mainly or totally divided. But Democrats and independents tended to see the division as rooted in economics—the income gap between the rich and the poor.
Republicans saw the split as political, with people divided based on their party affiliation, and as a function of which media outlets they follow.
“It’s as if everyone agrees that it’s too divisive and we can’t get along, but also that everyone else is wrong,” said Mr. Yang.
The Journal/NBC News poll surveyed 1,200 people from August 5-9. The margin of error for the full sample was plus or minus 2.82 percentage points.
1a)
Famous American Could Be Only Hope To Stopping New Korean War
Retired basketball star Dennis Rodman has offered to play mediator between the U.S. and North Korea amid a nuclear standoff.
Rodman has visited North Korea several times to meet with the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.
“For me to go over there and see [Kim] as much as I have, I basically hang out with him all the time. We laugh, we sing karaoke, we do a lot of cool things together. We ride horses, we hang out, we go skiing, we hardly ever talk politics, and that’s the good thing,” Rodman told British TV show “Good Morning Britain.”
“I don’t love [Kim]. I just want to try to straighten things out for everyone to get along together,” Rodman continued.
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2) Howie Carr Column in Boston Herald, Sunday, September 2, 2017
When will all the Lefties do the right thing?
"How many flood victims in South Texas have been rescued by the antifa navy?
Just asking, because on TV this week I've been watching the "Cajun Navy" pull one Dunkirk after another all around the Gulf Coast.
And those good old boys look like they just came off the set of "Duck Dynasty." They could be wearing MAGA hats. Hell, I'll bet one or two of them may have even been falsely accused of committing a fake hate crime or two since the election by some unhinged Social Justice Warrior.
They are, to coin a phrase, deplorables.
Hell, a Chick-fil-A franchise in Houston sent out a power boat to rescue a couple of elderly customers, which is exactly one more rescue boat than George Soros, Tom Steyer, Evergreen State, Black Lives Matter and moveon.org have dispatched .... combined
And the old folks didn't even ask if Chick-fil-A's CEO is still opposed to gay marriage.
Is Michael Moore hosting an All-U-Can-Eat buffet for first responders in Harris County? If he were, surely MSNBC would be covering it, live.
Where are Elizabeth Warren, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Colbert, etc. etc.?
Seriously, doesn't it look like almost all of the heavy lifting in the wake of Harvey is being done by people who belong to what the Southern Poverty Law Center would describe as "hate groups?"
Speaking of which, when does the SPLC's food drive begin?
Are the non-workers of the Socialist Workers Party and the Spartacist League loading any southbound 18-wheelers with relief supplies this weekend?
Maybe everyone in "the Resistance" is worn out from wearing pink hats and black masks and tipping over statues and sucker punching passersby with bicycle locks in Berkeley and grabbing an old lady's flag on the Boston Common and burning it – all those wonderful manifestations of how Love Trumps Hate, as they say.
Of course, it's the last weekend of summer, so you can't expect the likes of Jeffrey Epstein to be scrambling his private 747 out of the Hamptons to airlift foodstuffs to Galveston and Beaumont. You can't be asking Brooklyn hipsters or Occupy Wall Street to occupy a relief shelter when the Beautiful People are jetting into Nantucket for brunch at the Chanticleer Inn.
Besides, as assorted adjunct professors at third-rate colleges have been tweeting out all week, those are Trump voters stranded down there in the Lone Star State – bitter clingers and irredeemables.
Do we even know if the Salvation Army has transgender bathrooms at its shelter in Port Arthur?
It's Labor Day and Jerry Lewis is gone, but maybe Colin Kaepernick could stage a Harvey telethon outside NFL headquarters on Park Avenue. Why should J.J. Watt and his white privilege have all the fun raising charitable donations?
Then there's John Kerry – he did sell his second wife's first husband's trust fund's yacht when he moved from Nantucket to the Vineyard, but he could still enlist in the Cajun Navy. America's Gigolo has other plans this weekend, though. According to The Hill, Liveshot is busy – "Kerry races to save American cycling team."
Well, first things first.
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"Kerry, an avid cyclist, has been working the phones to find new supporters for the team, Cannondale-Drapac, after one of its lead sponsors pulled its funding unexpectedly last week." Now there is a real tragedy!
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How about the Clinton Foundation? They have more money than God, but if you go to their website, all it has is a list of links to other organizations. For flood relief, I guess it takes a village, but not the Clinton Foundation.
Hillary is about to begin her new book tour. It only costs $2400 per person to attend the Toronto fete. How about a charity book signing in Lafayette LA? Call it, "Harvey – What Happened?"
Al Gore's new "documentary" is tanking. Maybe he should offer free showings to the volunteer Tea Party types trying to lend a hand.
Joel Osteen took a lot of grief this week, but his church is open. Has anyone seen La Raza? Which of his three mansions is Bernie Sanders opening for flood victims?
Victims of Hurricane Harvey, when the phone don't ring, you'll know it's #resist.
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