Month: September 2015
Trump’s ‘loyalty pledge’ – not so much
So we’re supposed to get excited about Donald Trump signing a “loyalty pledge” to the Republican Party that he will not run as an independent candidate?
Paul Waldman at the Washington Post had the best snark: What the RNC’s pathetic loyalty pledge says about the GOP: A club that people want to join doesn’t make you pinkie-swear not to leave.
Waldman’s colleague Greg Sargent adds, Donald Trump snookers the GOP establishment, again:
The much-ballyhooed “loyalty pledge” that the Republican National Committee demanded that Donald Trump sign was supposed to “box in” Trump, leaving him no way of running as a third party independent candidate if he fails to win the GOP nominee.
Trump announced today that he signed the pledge. Surely that is not an entirely insignificant get for Republican leaders — it makes it perhaps marginally less likely that Trump will launch a third party bid.
But it would not be at all surprising if GOP primary voters see this in strikingly different terms than GOP leaders intended. They may think Trump bent the GOP establishment to his will, rather than the other way around.
August jobs report: U.S. still growing as China, emerging markets slow down
The August jobs report was slightly below economists expectations, but based upon the trend of earlier months being revised upwards with each report as more data becomes available, it is likely the August jobs report will be revised upward in future reports. The U.S. economy added 173,000 jobs in August, and the overall unemployment rate dropped to 5.1%, which is the lowest point since April 2008.
I would not read China’s economic slowdown into the August jobs report, although it does portend to affect the U.S. economy with declining Chinese demand for U.S. products in coming months.
The volatile U.S. stock markets are not the economy — this represents a long overdue market correction, How A Single Country Fueled The U.S. Market Correction — “with the strong economic fundamentals we’ve seen, including continued positive economic performance here in the U.S., the Fed’s continued stimulative policy, low oil prices, and better-than-expected corporate earnings.” Most of what you are seeing is Chicken Little speculation over the FED raising interest rates, and genuine concern over the global economy.
Watch AZPM Metro Week – Ward 1 and Ward 2 Council candidates
Now that the City of Tucson primary is over, view these candidate interviews on AZPM Channel 6 Metro Week’s segment for September 4, 2015 : https://www.azpm.org/p/featured-news/2015/9/4/71474-metro-week-tucson-city-council-elections-candidates-in-wards-1-and-2/ Host Andrea Kelly asked the candidates about their priorities, the Sun Tran bus strike, other neighborhood issues. Who’s running for Ward 1 Council: Regina Romero, Democrat, incumbent 2 terms Bill Hunt, … Read more
Anti-choicers are out to replace Planned Parenthood with “clinics” that don’t offer birth control
Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
A lot of very naive people hold a cherished illusion that the abortion debate can be solved through respectful dialog leading to a truce where the pro-choice side cedes ground on things like later term abortions and parental consent and the anti-abortion side agrees to stop opposing birth control and sex ed. This will lead to a glorious permanent state of first term abortion remaining legal while gradually fading away, as formerly irresponsible women (the trollops!) will have finally reined in their capricious behavior, upon realizing how serious a thing abortion is!
As I’ve exhaustively explained here too many times to count, the naive illusion ignores how those compromises on abortion are actually terrible and imperil real women* and how relentless the anti-choice movement is in its quest to return America to the legal climate of 1964, when it was still legal for states to ban birth control. Opponents to full reproductive rights of women are not interested in a compromise. They are interested in a solution. Theirs. And they are highly adept at exploiting how little average people know about how laws and public policies work, while expertly taking advantage every possible way to game the system in their favor. They have demonstrated this since 1976, when they convinced Congress to ban Medicaid funding of abortion (Hyde Amendment) on the absurd theory that taxpayers should not pay for abortions (as opposed to any other medical intervention). Subsequently, anti-choicers convinced sympathetic majorities in the Supreme Court to allow states to restrict abortion procedures on spurious medical grounds.