Candid Camera obscura- USA could get Trumpunk'd in 2016
With revisionists spinning tehDonald as the rebirth of Lincoln or Reagan, so much will be made of the early, recent closeness of polling for Hillary versus tRump. And certainly Hillary is no Jimmy Carter, centrism notwithstanding. And even though the general theme has been neoliberalism, it was a Democratic version that improved the economy, not the vaunted Reagan years or the WMD Bush snipe hunt that has given us Daesh. And yet the weary Reaganism’s zombie myth is rewoven like tehDonald’s dome.
“Not one of the elders” got behind candidate Reagan in the beginning, Arthur Laffer said. He joked that when Reagan — perceived by critics as a lightweight, a bigot and a war monger — won the 1980 primaries, the Republican establishment “poured on us like a waterfall of cockroaches.”This doesn’t mean that Clinton would blow out Trump by 10 points, or even that Trump can’t come back. General election polls at this point are not a reliable indicator of the outcome. But Trump would have to climb a far steeper hill than Reagan did. Indeed, Reagan barely had any hill at all. He was far more popular than Trump is, and the incumbent president, Carter, was far less popular than Obama.
”Supply-side ideologues refuse to accept this most basic reality: Their principles are fundamentally flawed and do not work. To continue to base our economic policy, our regulatory policy and our financial policy on their misguided assumptions makes about as much sense as adopting the governing principles of the CCCP.”When the press fails to even comment on the laughable notion that Republicans are inherently good fiscal managers, it creates a space where their discredited economic philosophy can be accepted without discussion — implicitly maintaining Reaganomics’ 30-year Jedi Mind Trick over the American people and our docile political press. “Reaganomics,” more commonly referred to these days as “supply-side economics,” “trickle-down economics” and “neoliberalism,” is dangerous both in the power that it continues to wield over its adherents (who follow its precepts with a rigidity bordering on extremism) and duplicitous in its use of esoteric arguments to prop up its counter-factual vision of the world. It has done more damage to the world economy over the last 30 years than any single country, criminal enterprise, rogue nation or corrupt and incompetent bank, and unlike fascism or communism, the seat of power for neoliberal doctrine exists right here, in the good ol’ U. S. of A.
A Bernie-Donald debate (now alas refused) would have had tRump’s ass kicked all over the stage simply on the issue of corporatism and the 1%.
More voters might support Trump if he can persuade them he will bring back some of the economic successes of the era when he penned his bestselling book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.”
Kudlow and Moore have been working with the campaign on its tax plan, advising Trump to cut some deductions for high-income Americans and “raise money by broadening the tax base,” said Moore, a visiting fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation who served as an economic adviser in Reagan’s administration.
“This is really for the economy and the future of our country, and the most important election since Reagan’s election in 1980,” Moore said. “Every conversation that we have with either Mr. Trump or the Trump campaign staff, we say, ‘This is the JFK-Reagan, supply-side, tax-cutting agenda that worked to cause a big economic boom in the ’60s and ’80s, and we can do it again.’ ”…
Not every old Reagan hand has been brimming with praise for Trump. When Martin Feldstein, who led Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, was asked by Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo earlier this month what he thought of Trump’s economic plan, he answered, “I don’t think he knows what his plan is.” He said he thought Trump has “done a wonderful job of marketing himself” but has left a lot of uncertainty about his policies, and Feldstein said he doubted the Republican can beat Democrat Hillary Clinton…
contracting a case of trump
Trump also has some of the former president’s political muscle behind him. Ed Rollins, who ran Reagan’s 1984 campaign, is helping out the Great America political action committee backing Trump’s run. And Jeffrey Lord, who worked in the Reagan White House’s political arm, wrote a book, “What America Needs: The Case for Trump.” At an April rally, Trump said, whenever Lord is “in a little doubt he says, ‘He reminds me of Ronald Reagan.’ ”
“Philosophically speaking, I just don’t see them as that far apart,” Lord said of Trump and Reagan.
In short, the Reagan economy was a story of recession and recovery, but not of any sustained improvement in performance. That didn’t come until the middle Clinton years.
MTV Prank Series ‘Punk’d’ Revived by BET
BET didn’t reveal whether their Punk’d would feature a full-time host or a revolving door of tricksters..Punk’d‘s MTV original run, hosted by Ashton Kutcher, pranked unsuspecting celebrities from 2003 to 2007, though BET made no mention whether Kutcher would be involved in the series’ reboot.
After five years of celebrities breathing easy, MTV briefly resuscitated Punk’d with a rotation of hosts including Justin Bieber (who pranked Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift), former Punk’d prankster Dax Shepard and, for the final episode, Kutcher himself.
If only this event could be restaged in the first season of BET’s Punk’d
On November 28, 2008, Plaxico Burress suffered an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wound to his right thigh at the nightclub LQ on Lexington Avenue in New York City when his Glock pistol in the pocket of his black-colored jeans began sliding down his leg; apparently in reaching for his gun, he inadvertently pressed the trigger, causing the gun to fire. The Manhattan District Attorney stated Burress was wearing jeans. The injury was not life-threatening and Burress was released from an area hospital the next afternoon. Two days later, Burress turned himself in to police to face charges of criminal possession of a handgun. It was later discovered that New York City police learned about the incident only after seeing it on television and were not called by New York-Presbyterian Hospital as required by law.
