美国总统候选人简评

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-3-23 11:53
原来比利时已经这么恐怖了。。。

比利时说法语和说Flemish族群的对立造成其政治上的瘫痪，有其特殊的问题。

http://www.bloombergview.com/art ... ountry-is-in-denial

Belgium, My Country, Is in Denial

There was a time when Belgium was at Europe's vanguard. It was the second country in the world to industrialize, the founder of art deco and surrealism, and a producer of Nobel scientists who discovered -- among other things -- the God particle.

I was born and bred in this country, but I fear we are now trailblazing a much less positive path for Europe.

Although Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels, they were also symptoms of a profoundly Belgian failure. The institutions of a well-policed and efficiently governed state have been evaporating for decades.

Belgium has been torn by the demands of its warring Flemish- and French-speaking communities. At the same time it has been squeezed by an ambitious European project that subsidized and empowered the country's regions at the expense of the state. Belgian institutions were left hollowed out, impotent to address the strains of immigration and incompetent to penetrate a rising extremist threat.

This is at root a story of failed investment in all forms of capital -- physical, human and institutional. For election cycle after election cycle, politicians squandered the wealth of the state to buy their way back to power. Investment became superfluous, vote-buying and social spending the priority. Belgian voters, who allowed this state of affairs to persist, share some of the blame.

When Belgium's ironworks and coal mines were closed, governments preferred to deny the inevitable outcome and borrow to subsidize these loss-making industries. The nation's public debt burden soared to a peak of 140 percent of gross domestic product. Rather than meet debt reduction requirements for joining the new euro currency in the 1990s, Belgium's government chose to fudge budgets, airbrush statistics, sell assets at fire-sale prices and bring critical investment to a standstill. The result was catastrophic.

Public spending on investment fell by more than half, to just above 2 percent of GDP, from 5 percent in 1980. At first, the effects could be ignored, because Belgium was able to rely on past stock, but that cushion disappeared long ago.

For 30 years, there has been talk of building a Brussels commuter train service, similar to the RER in Paris or London's new Crossrail. The land was bought, but the track remains half-built. Nor have we maintained the infrastructure we have. Potholes on the highways routinely force four bands of traffic to cram into one. Museum roofs leak while masterpieces stand unprotected. Recently, the tunnels of the capital's main traffic artery were closed for months, because 20 years without proper maintenance had left them a safety hazard.

Funds were available for all of these priorities, but politicians funneled the money elsewhere. Social transfers, a sure vote winner, increased from to 30.7 percent of GDP in 2014, from 23.5 percent in 1980. The increase, went to handouts such as lifelong unemployment benefits and early-retirement pensions starting at 50.  

As if that wasn't enough, Belgium's political parties divided public sector employment between them. To be a journalist in the public television station, one needs to have a political party affiliation. The same goes for even minor jobs at the municipal level. Political connections, rather than merit or hard work determined advancement.

Brussels, my city, was worst affected. Unable to agree on a peaceful divorce, because both sides claimed the capital, French-speaking Wallonia and Flemish-speaking Flanders plundered it. Brussels may be Europe's third wealthiest region in per capita terms, providing a fifth of Belgian GDP, but it can only collect taxes from its residents, not from the many workers who commute from outside the city limits. The city treasury is forever empty as a result.

Police districts and the city's 19 councils weren't merged because the Flemish community, which accounts for just 10 percent of the capital's population, would by law hold half of the city's ministerial posts. Inefficiencies and lack of coordination followed.

This is why it took so long for police to find Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man after November's terrorist attacks in Paris. For four months he hid under the nose of Belgium's security apparatus, in the Brussels district of Molenbeek.

Faced with soaring marginal labor tax rates, too many of the able young have left the country. High levels of remittances and of Belgian graduates moving to other developed economies suggest a brain drain. Those who stay go into the private sector, depriving public institutions -- including the police and security services -- of excellence. Those who try their best are overwhelmed by the size of the problems, running from one emergency to another, unable to focus on the long term challenges.

As Belgians left, poor uneducated migrants from North Africa arrived. Heavily subsidized by Belgium's over-generous welfare system, but at the same time despised, much of this immigrant population has turned inward, alienated from wider society. Too many young men and women have been radicalized. A failing state was unable to either stem illegal immigration, or to generate a business environment in which the private sector could create jobs for young second generation immigrants. They were left instead to fester in ghettos such as Molenbeek, marred by high unemployment, crime and an extensive drug economy.

Terrorist attacks such as those that struck Zaventem Airport and the Brussels metro system on Tuesday can happen to any country -- Belgium did not invent the Islamic State. But my country needs to stop living in denial. It was the logical conclusion of our failures that Brussels should produce so many of the perpetrators of jihadist atrocities in Europe. We need to keep calm, as the British say, but not to carry on. This week's tragedy must, finally, become the catalyst that forces Belgium to change.

Dracula

海天 发表于 2016-3-7 05:39
如果提升到这样的高度（第六政党系统的终结），那还真值得好好关注一下初选

加拿大这里喜欢川普的看起 ...

How Republicans Rebuild After the Trump Disaster

By Megan McArdle

http://www.bloombergview.com/art ... -the-trump-disaster

A few weeks back, I interviewed Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics about strategic #NeverTrump voting: How would people do it, and was it a real effect? This week, as the race consolidates, I followed up with Trende to talk about we’ve learned from recent primaries, and more importantly, what the prognosis is for the Republican Party.

People have started throwing around the word “realignment” -- the tectonic upheavals that periodically roil American politics, as previously solid coalitions suddenly rupture, and a new political order emerges around different issues and different coalitions of interest groups. The last such realignment was the emergence of Reagan and the solidification of the Republican Party around small government ideology. Could we be witnessing another such moment today? And if so, what would that look like? I asked Sean, who among his many accomplishments is the author of "The Lost Majority," a terrific book on coalition politics.

Our conversation follows, lightly edited for format and flow.

Megan McArdle: To follow up from our last chat, I have to ask: Did we see strategic #NeverTrump voting? Is it a thing?

Sean Trende: Obviously not enough of it for Rubio, but I do think we saw some.

I think if you look at Ohio, for example, Rubio got 3 percent of the vote. That's waaaay lower than in any other state. Kasich's 7 percent in Florida was likewise quite a bit lower than what we've seen post-Super Tuesday. So some of this is hometown favorites, but some of it is strategic voting.

MM: So we really are seeing the #NeverTrump folks come out! Where does the party go from here? It seems unlikely that Cruz can get to 1,237 delegates.

ST: Right, it is virtually impossible for him to get there at this point.

The only question is whether *Trump* gets 1,237. Or in that general vicinity. I mean, Trump has to get about 60 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to clinch. Cruz needs 90 percent of the remaining pledged delegates, while Kasich needs 120 percent. (In other words, he’s mathematically eliminated.) There are winner-take-all states remaining that complicate the calculus somewhat, but most of them are at the very least Trump-curious, so I think it's either a brokered convention or Trump at this point.

MM: Is there any chance that Cruz even starts beating Trump in the late states?

ST: The answer is "it depends." So much depends on what Kasich decides to do.

Given demographics and the way these primaries have turned out, Rubio's voters probably go disproportionately to Kasich, when the Cruz folk desperately need them.

So, this race probably comes down to Kasich. If he stays in, there's a good chance Trump clinches. If he drops out after a couple of races, it probably goes to the convention.

These last races split between races west of the Mississippi, where Cruz has run well, and east, where Trump has dominated, so the playing field makes it possible.

MM: So let's say that Trump goes to the convention with more of the delegates, but not enough to win outright. The party has two unappetizing choices: Hand it to a guy who didn't get the plurality, or give it to the guy who is going to destroy your party downticket. They could always stage a third-party run to protect those downticket races, whether or not he gets an outright majority, but that creates quite a few problems. Most notably the one that David Frum has talked about: Whoever bolts the party probably loses control over its future.

ST: Right. I personally think the third party is a terrible idea for Republicans. Ever since Perot (and Nader with Democrats) the mantra of the GOP elite has been "you can't run a third party, you'll just hand the race to the Democrats." And a lot of people have sucked it up and voted for candidates they really didn't like because of this logic. Now, the first time the establishment loses a race, it's going to pick up its toys and go home? There will be a splinter candidate every four years forthcoming.

As for the non-plural option, I just don't accept the framing. You can't win the nomination without a majority of the votes, period. So no one with a plurality of delegates will win.

MM: I'm not arguing that it's unjust, just arguing that the Trump supporters will probably perceive it that way and stay home if they don't get their man.

I don't think he'll run third party, because he doesn't have enough money. But I assume that means the GOP loses in November.

ST: Oh I know you're not! I just think it's important for readers to realize that this is a 160-year-old rule, not something ginned up to cheat Trump. A lot depends on how Trump handles it (not well, I assume). But regardless, I think the GOP thinking is that it either loses with Trump or without him. But you'd probably keep the House and have an outside shot at the Senate without him.

MM: So let's get to the future forecasting. People are starting to talk about realignment. I myself have been trying to game out what a realignment might look like in the future, and I have just failed to see it. There are too many groups that can't be in the same party with both the anti-immigrationists and the evangelicals (who I assume stay).

It's one thing to say the cosmopolitan pro-business types move to the Democrats, but who moves to the GOP? Do we end up with a rump party that can't win national elections?

And if no one's moving, what do the suburban establishment types get out of the Democrats, except not being associated with Donald Trump?

ST: I wrote this piece back in 2012 after Iowa:

Rick Santorum may well be the future of the Republican Party. While I find it highly unlikely that he’ll be the nominee this time out, there’s a good chance that the Republican coalition will fundamentally change in the next 20 years and move toward Santorum’s style of politics. Twice in a row now, the party has toyed with nominating a candidate who combined social conservatism with economic populism; Santorum’s speech last night was essentially a northern version of a speech Mike Huckabee could have delivered in 2008.

It goes on, but you get the gist. Finding an outsider to build a new coalition is always tricky. I mean, no one really thought Democrats could win without working-class whites -- Howard Dean's point post-2004 -- yet Barack Obama showed the way they could. And I'm not sure anyone else could have put together that coalition.

The key for Republicans would be finding the right candidate. A candidate like Trump, but without his, erm, excesses.

Quite frankly, I think the only way Republicans break away African-Americans and Hispanics from Democrats is with a sort of class-based appeal like Trump makes. The problem is that the folk who make these appeals often have heavily racialized sentiments.

MM: And can that appeal be made without the racial/immigration element?

ST: That's the tricky part! I think there is a way to be opposed to immigration reform (which I'm not) without the accusations of raping and pillaging that Trump makes. And I think the trade/immigration combo has quite a bit of salience to African-American voters, whose attitudes on immigration look a lot more like whites' than Hispanics'.

But like I said, it is tricky. There's probably no one besides Obama who could have increased African-American turnout like he did without scaring away an awful lot of whites. It is just a matter of finding the right candidate.

MM: So let's say that happens. There are a number of people in my Facebook feed who seem to be excited by the prospect of uniting all the cosmopolitan professionals into one party. Yet it seems to me that putting the 20 percent of the country that's doing pretty well into one party is not a recipe for a calmer, less gridlocked politics, but rather, for a war of the 80 percent on the 20 percent. Which the 20 percent seems likely to lose, so I’m not clear on why my educated, secular, urban friends are so excited about it.

ST: Indeed. I think upper-middle-class seculars -- and even upper-middle-class religious folk -- don't realize just how much of a minority they are in this country.

People go apoplectic on both sides whenever a candidate says something critical of evolution, and I always think to myself: "Yeah, but you do know that the evolution viewpoint is still a minority in this country, right?"

I'm guessing most of my friends never interact with people who think the world is 6,000 years old, or who are strongly opposed to gay marriage, or who didn't go to college, but these are not obscure viewpoints/experiences in this world. And the more the "elite" decide to band together in a single party, the more the anti-elite folk will congeal.

I remember a few years after I graduated high school, this horribly unpopular guy won homecoming king. And he did it by putting up posters all over the school that just said "there are more of us than there are of them." I could see a similar thing happening in U.S. politics, and it isn't going to be pretty.

MM: One way of telling the story is that over the last 40 years, the elites have banded together to do a bunch of stuff that wasn't popular: trade, immigration, deregulation. All of that stuff works in an economics textbook, but it doesn't work politically. And on both sides, the elites won by sublimating those impulses to other stuff -- culture war stuff.

Now that the culture war has been largely "won," what you're left with is rearguard skirmishes about religious liberty. And the populist identity politics that was sublimated is now unleashed.

ST: And the PC identity politics stuff as well, which seems to be of increasing salience. But that's exactly right: What do the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times agree on? Trade and immigration. Even this rough truce we have on the top tax rate being between 35 and 39.6 percent.

The problem is that there really are short-term losers with trade and immigration. Anyone who points this out gets a healthy dose of "listen to your betters!" Which I'm guilty of at times, even though I'm aware I'm a clear economic winner in these fights.

MM: I look at the list of policies that Democrats are offering, and with the exception of the mass incarceration stuff -- which is also gaining currency on the right, so it's not even that big of a wedge issue -- and the $15-an-hour minimum wage, it's all stuff the professional class wants, which may also benefit the working class, but really isn't primarily for them.

And of course, the GOP has tax cuts. I regret that text cannot convey the volume of the sigh I would like to issue about their fixation on tax cuts.

ST: But Reagan! Really, that's what it comes down to, even though there's a world of difference between a top rate of 70 percent and 40 percent.

At a time when we're having a slow recovery that really does skew to the benefit of the upper classes, it's just odd that no one is really making suggestions for working- and lower-middle-class folks. I think Democrats assume that they can keep African Americans and Hispanics in the tent with identity politics, and Republicans seem determined to prove them correct.

However, I'm not sure that works in the medium to long term. Tom Edsall had a good piece in the Times a few days back that asked whether there would be an African-American revolt against the Democratic Party in the near future. I think he's probably correct.

MM: Interesting. Why do you think that?

ST: Y'know, before Trump, if you looked at the African-American vote in 2012 by age, and registration numbers, there was less loyalty to the Democratic Party among younger blacks than older blacks. Not massive, but still notable, and replicated across multiple datasets.

If you look at how blacks left the Republican Party, it is just a familiar story. Republicans started to take blacks for granted, had no solution to the Great Depression, and the last generation that remembered Lincoln was dying off.

It's a sort of similar situation today. I'm not talking about 80 percent of blacks voting for Republicans anytime soon, or even 20 percent. But I think as identity politics gradually lose salience and especially because Clinton (I assume she will be president) is almost certainly going to be hit with a recession, it makes things a bit interesting for the first time in a long time.

MM: I keep coming back to the same question, though: How do you get African-Americans in the same party with what we saw at the Trump rallies?

ST: That was the Democrats' problem for decades, and it is part of the Republicans'!

Look, Trump has certainly set this back quite a bit. No doubt about that. But I also don't know that African-Americans are naturally part of a coalition that is dedicated to making sure that it is as easy as possible for capital to flow across border, to automate everything, etc.

It's an odd moment in American politics. We've had this red/blue map basically since 1992, and this political divide since 1968. Now it just feels like things are falling apart. And when things have fallen apart in the past, the outcomes are very strange. Who would have thought that 12 years after the Democratic convention deadlocked over whether to condemn the KKK (in 1924), a Democratic president who refused to pursue an anti-lynching law (Franklin D. Roosevelt) would win 70 percent of the black vote?

MM: Yes, that's the thing that people always forget: When realignments happen, they usually break open over issues that haven't been issues in politics for the previous few decades. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't be a realignment.

海天

Dracula 发表于 2016-3-23 10:57
我昨天看了两篇关于他的obituary，觉得他这个人很有意思。希望将来能有人写一本高水平有深度的关于他一生 ...

本市某高速公路边上有福特的一张特大幅照片，原来一直写的是“best mayor for ever",
昨天再次路过发现改成了”1969-2016 in loving memory“。

如以前所说，他是个相当富于争议的人物，人们对他的看法严重分裂，有点两极化的意思。

嗯，提一件他当市长之前的事，即2008年的“东方人像狗一样工作”的发言，所记不错的话，
当时大陆移民社区也是“有所反应”的，不过这并不妨碍大陆移民成为他的粉丝，我们的一位羽毛
球友就说，这只能说明福特是个“直肠直肚的汉子”，更应该关注的是“他为大家减了税，
政府不再乱花钱，还有对工会这个毒瘤绝不退缩”

网上搜到几篇关于此事的报道，中英皆有：

英文
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ ... asian_comments.html

中文
http://info.51.ca/news/canada/2008-03/147751.html
http://info.51.ca/news/canada/2008-03/147340.html

常挨揍

tangotango 发表于 2016-3-23 09:50
这个典型支持者的素描里，Trump的支持者男性身高18X体重100公斤这还容易理解，希拉里和桑德斯的女性165-1 ...

看人家1米4，65公斤的


还有船长贴的
http://www.aswetalk.net/bbs/home ... o=blog&id=57894

Dracula

It’s Probably First Ballot Or Bust For Donald Trump At The GOP Convention

Dracula

What Sarah Palin Should Have Taught Donald Trump

By James Fallows



I made one very bad call about the 2016 election, which I quickly confessed! It was the same bad call most other people made: that Donald Trump’s lack of political experience and knowledge would make him the Herman Cain of this campaign cycle, and he would not get this far in the race. (I’m sticking by my call that he is not going to become president.)

To be fair, I made a very good call two cycles earlier concerning the Trump of that era, Sarah Palin. As soon as her selection was announced as John McCain’s running mate in 2008, I wrote in this space (in the middle of the night, from China) that despite her then-red-hot popularity she would be a huge liability for the ticket. Why? Because running for national office is a lot, lot harder than it looks. And if you come to it with no experience, you are simply guaranteed to make a lot of gaffes.

Let’s go to the charts. Here’s what I wrote when McCain announced her as his choice:

Unless you have seen it first first-hand, as part of the press scrum or as a campaign staffer, it is almost impossible to imagine how grueling the process of running for national office is… The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble. Why do candidates so often stick to a stump speech that they repeat event after event and day after day? Because they've worked out the exact way to put their positions on endless thorny issues -- Iraq, abortion, the Middle East, you name it -- and they know that creative variation mainly opens new complications.

You can see where I am going with this, after Trump’s misadventures of the past week:

The point about every one of those issues is that there is a certain phrase or formulation that might seem perfectly innocent to a normal person but that can cause a big uproar. Without going into the details, there is all the difference in the world between saying "Taiwan and mainland China" versus "Taiwan and China." The first is policy as normal; the second -- from an important US official -- would light up the hotline between DC and Beijing.

So back in 2008 I was arguing that in just two months on the campaign trail, no beginner in national-level campaigning, like Palin, could learn all the lingo on these issues. Thus gaffes were sure to ensue, as they did. (This accurate call is all the more heroic in retrospect, since we’ve now learned that I was practically at death’s door, in China, when I filed that post! Ah the plucky life of the reporter.)

***

Until this point in Trump’s campaign, he would seem to be the walking refutation of all such established wisdom. Gaffes? Never heard of ‘em! I’ll say whatever comes to mind, and the crowds will cheer for more!

The difference we’ve seen, with Trump’s sequential fumbles on abortion policy, and nuclear policy, and war-and-peace in Europe and Asia, etc is that until the past ten days he’s managed to be “outrageous” mainly on personal-performance matters. He’s been (as often noted) a figure straight from pro wrestling. He is not Rush Limbaugh called from behind the microphone; he’s Howard Stern. You can’t make fun of John McCain for his war record, can you??? Trump could! And did. You can’t mock your opponents to their face — Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted — and be taken seriously, can you??? Trump could! And did. The equally outrageous Howard Stern-style policy claims he made — let’s build a wall! and make Mexico pay for it — somehow didn’t register as “gaffes,” precisely because there is no chance whatsoever he could actually deliver on them. It was all in the fashion of pre-bout preening before a wrestling match: “I’m gonna smash him down so hard he’ll be cryin’ for his Mama, and the only words he’ll remember will be Wee, wee, wee all the way home!”

The setup of the GOP “debates” so far allowed Trump to get away with this, at least with his base. The “point” of each debate was to see who could bully or disconcert whom. And in his omnipresent “interviews,” Trump also got away with shunting any question into a discussion of how strong his polls were, how successful he had been, and how great things would be when he was in charge. Leading to this Onion-esque but apparently serious emission yesterday:


Why didn’t anyone think of that before?

Over the past two weeks, we’ve had the Washington Post editorial board interview, with its revelation of the vacuum that is Trump’s knowledge of policy; and the long NYT interview with Trump’s loose talks about bringing nukes to Korea and Japan; and his fateful interview with Chris Matthews, who to his credit was the first person really to push Trump for an answer on abortion; and the similar gaping-emptiness of Trump’s knowledge revealed in his Washington Post interview today.

What’s different now is Trump is being forced to talk about actual policy choices, like abortion, as opposed to talking about his own machismo, or striking purely symbolic “we’re gonna win again!” poses. And that he’s actually being forced, most impressively by Chris Matthews. You can never count him out, but the damage is beginning to show.

He is a more resourceful performer than Sarah Palin was, and he has changed politics more than she could. But she is actually better informed than he is, and finally that is catching up with him. That’s what we’re seeing now.

MacArthur

Dracula 发表于 2016-4-1 15:06
It’s Probably First Ballot Or Bust For Donald Trump At The GOP Convention

甭管别人说什么。。。 坚定不移地押床铺，一百大洋～

Dracula

MacArthur 发表于 2016-4-5 00:08
甭管别人说什么。。。 坚定不移地押床铺，一百大洋～

目前的betting market，Trump赢得共和党提名的概率已经跌倒50%以下，https://electionbettingodds.com/。我觉得Nate Silver讲的有道理，如果是contested convention的话，Ted Cruz赢的可能性更大，而昨天Wisconsin的结果出来后，contested convetion变得越来越现实。

http://fivethirtyeight.com/featu ... ntested-convention/

tanis

Dracula 发表于 2016-4-7 01:23
目前的betting market，Trump赢得共和党提名的概率已经跌倒50%以下，https://electionbettingodds.com/。 ...

然后Trump决定独立参选，希拉里成功当选。

holycow

Dracula 发表于 2016-4-6 09:23
目前的betting market，Trump赢得共和党提名的概率已经跌倒50%以下，https://electionbettingodds.com/。 ...

Contested convention我赌Paul Ryan

MacArthur

holycow 发表于 2016-4-6 14:34
Contested convention我赌Paul Ryan

Paul兄已经再三声称自己不感兴趣，爱谁谁。。。


不过这厮有放烟幕弹的前科。。。

holycow

MacArthur 发表于 2016-4-20 07:54
Paul兄已经再三声称自己不感兴趣，爱谁谁。。。

昨天Stephen Colbert在节目上想钓他的鱼，骗他说出来竞选的话，被这个老狐狸一一识破

testjhy

川普势不可挡了，好看！今年奥运会可能比不上川希大战了

mezhan

已有 黑人总统, 下位是 女总统,

再下位 该是 LGBT 总统.

tanis

突然发现Megyn Kelly 好性感~~

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-5-3 09:48
突然发现Megyn Kelly 好性感~~

Fox News在挑选女主持人的时候，好像外表性感是个特别重要的因素。Fox News我没怎么看过，但是瞟过几眼感觉里面的女主持长得都很不错。

tanis

Dracula 发表于 2016-5-3 22:04
Fox News在挑选女主持人的时候，好像外表性感是个特别重要的因素。Fox News我没怎么看过，但是瞟过几眼感 ...

哦~~ 原来是这样~ 我是看了她challenge Trump的视频，觉得很有气势~~~

Dracula

tanis 发表于 2016-5-3 23:43
哦~~ 原来是这样~ 我是看了她challenge Trump的视频，觉得很有气势~~~

美国新闻节目主持人里我觉得最漂亮的是CNBC 的Kelly Evans

南京老萝卜

克鲁兹刚刚输了印第安纳，宣布退选。

肯定是川普和希拉里对决了。

冰蚁

南京老萝卜 发表于 2016-5-3 21:25
克鲁兹刚刚输了印第安纳，宣布退选。

肯定是川普和希拉里对决了。

然后是trump 当总统