UK climate lunatics from Just Stop Oil jailed for years for blocking traffic in four-day incident in November 2022

 Five environmental activists who organised protests that brought part of the M25 to a standstill over four days have been jailed.

Forty-five Just Stop Oil protesters climbed gantries on the motorway in November 2022, forcing police to stop the traffic, in an attempt to cause gridlock across southern England.

Judge Christopher Hehir said Roger Hallam, 58, Daniel Shaw, 38, Louise Lancaster, 58, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 35, and Cressida Gethin, 22, had "crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic".

At Southwark Crown Court, Hallam was sentenced to five years' imprisonment while the other defendants each received four-year jail terms. ...

Hallam, a veteran environmental campaigner, was described as the "ideas man" of the movement, while the judge said Shaw was "up to his neck" in the planning of the protest.

More.

Good gridlock politics: Impeach 'em all

 

The House Should Impeach the Entire Biden Admin

Jeremiah Poff, DC Examiner

 

Direct link here:

 

It is an administration replete with lawless officials who have abused their authority to the detriment of the people of the United States. President Joe Biden should be at the very top of the list for impeachment ... 

 

Attorney General Merrick Garland has overseen the systemic persecution of the Biden administration’s political opponents ... 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s impeachment case begins with his dereliction of duty when he failed to inform the White House when he was incapacitated by a medical procedure. Under Austin’s watch, the Pentagon has also blatantly disregarded the Hyde Amendment and is facilitating the procurement of abortions for servicewomen using taxpayer funds. ...

With a Democratic-controlled Senate, these impeachments will not be successful in removing these officials from power, but that is not the point. As Democrats set the standard in 2019, impeachment is now an exercise of partisan political power, and it should be treated as such. ...

Furthermore, it would also have the strategic effect of jamming the schedule of the Democratic-controlled Senate. If the upper chamber were forced to contend with numerous impeachment trials, it would have less time to vote on judicial nominations and billions of dollars in foreign aid.

Is George Will dead? 5 more years of Trump will mean more utter gridlock, the very definition of his brand of conservatism.

But George Will is nowhere to be found, and is seldom discussed.

Is he dead?

He of all people should be ECSTATIC that Trump and the Democrats keep fighting, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. After all, he continuously praised gridlock to high heaven when Barack Obama was president.

But George never appears in my copious, daily reviewing of who's who, saying what's what.

OK, I'm too cheap to pay for WaPo.

I also have standards.

The truth is the more the two sides fight, the fewer the opportunities they have to come together, "get something done" for the American people, and pick our pockets.

We've had way too much pocket picking.

Surely George Will must be keeping quiet these days, repentantly pondering the Ineffable Truth of Trump?

If you plan to vote for Trump in November, dear KAGA, remember to make sure you split your vote to keep Republicans from controlling the US House.

It is under the circumstances Nancy Pelosi at the helm in the House who makes Trump great again, every frickin' day after all, along with Cocaine Mitch in the Senate.

Little new bad spending should pass if this arrangement is maintained indefinitely.

Honestly, don't make me laugh. Kevin McCarthy is not an alternative.

Chuckie Schumer?

A horror show on two legs.

We need more of the current gridlock so that the US Senate judge confirmation machine keeps on spitting out Trump appointments, the only thing Trump seems relatively good at.

So vote for Martha McSally in AZ, for example, who beat Bernie Sanders to the punch when she recently called CNN's Manu Raju a political hack.

Times that try men's souls bring out the best in heroes, and Martha has risen to the occasion. Yes, a brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt! from the gun of her A-10 Warthog would have been better, but hey, politics is war by different means.

The best part of Martha winning won't simply be warming a seat along with loser Bernie in the US Senate, but when every time he votes not to confirm a judge she does, and nothing much else gets done.

We must continue to keep George happy, and silent.

Yesterday showed us that Trump is in fact 25th Amendment material

He didn't remember he let the drug dealers out of prison by just recently signing the criminal justice reform bill when he was riffing on executing them in the Rose Garden yesterday.

That means even if he read what was in the border deal, it didn't penetrate, didn't register, and didn't matter to him. Nothing was going to get in the way of signing the bill.

This denial of reality is religious fanaticism level stuff, courtesy of Norman Vincent Peale but grown especially virulent in this unique DNA combination known as Donald Trump.

What he needs is deprogramming, but the best thing we can do is depend on the sturdiness of our institutions, the separation of powers and the ensuing gridlock to sequester him until the voters do the intervention in 2020.  This is the gift of the founders and we should embrace it and thank them for it.

Unfortunately, expect Democrats to have no mercy, but to press their advantage against crazy King Ludwig. If Republicans know what's good for them, they'll refrain from any more big compromises, but they should work with Democrats to give Trump some nice shiny objects to stroke his vanity in the meantime and keep him distracted.  

Obama beat Romney but never got the House back, best case scenario now for Trump

No, until Hillary Clinton the GOP had no path.

Six more years of gridlock is the future, at best.

And to think, he coulda been a contenda.

"I used to love her, but it's all over now."

What matters to Rush Limbaugh is that Trump get reelected in 2020, not that we get jobs, pay raises and The Wall

Politics, not people, is what matters to Rush Limbaugh.

We now face two years of gridlock, attacks, investigations and impeachment because feckless Republicans lost the US House.

Trump and the Republicans squandered their first year, and delivered nothing consequential for average Americans in their second, and now they've paid the political price. Losing 30+ seats and not even running in 30+ more is retreating, not fighting.

Meanwhile we get bupkis, as usual.

The only redeeming thing is that we might get some good judges because Republicans still control the US Senate, but that doesn't pay the mortgage.

Complaints about Senate gridlock aren't new, it's just the Republicans' turn

Over 200 bills are stalled awaiting action in the Republican-controlled Senate, according to a story at The Hill.

That's nothing compared to 2010 when the Democrats ran the whole show. Over 400 bills languished then unactioned in the Senate.

The problem isn't a bug, it's a feature.

The Senate is designed to slow things down. But the Senate sets its own rules, and could speed things along by changing them without doing any offense to anything except the tradition of doing as little as possible. And generally speaking, the less they do the better, since what they produce sucks most of the time.

Congress sucks: Let's make it bigger!

As we all know, Congress sucks.

About only 17% of Americans approved of the Congress in 2016 according to Gallup, which is indicative of the historical lack of esteem for it. The average is just 31% approval since 1974. Real Clear Politics has its own tracker here, going back only to 2009. It is a composite of various polls, yielding an even lower average of 14.5% approval than Gallup's current 18%.

You get the idea. At best only about a third of the people approve of the job Congress is doing at any given time. And the top reasons given are 1) gridlock, bickering, not compromising and 2) not getting anything done, not making decisions.

So why make Congress bigger?

In a word, to make it more representative, end the gridlock and get something done.

In short, make Congress overwhelmingly Republican . . . because the country is.

Currently, just 435 congressmen and women represent districts unnaturally carved out of America's 3,144 counties, parishes, boroughs, census areas, independent cities and the District of Columbia.

I say unnaturally carved out because after every census the gerrymandering fight begins to redraw the congressional district lines to favor incumbents of the party in power whose boundaries transgress all over those counties, parishes, boroughs, census areas, independent cities and DC.

We've already got all these boundaries and units that go back to the beginning of the country in many cases, so we don't need these 435 fake Congressional districts anymore.

My own county with a population of just over 600,000 is carved up by two congressmen who each represent over 700,000 spanning many other counties. That doesn't make any sense.

The constitution never intended this.

It intended representation to grow with population, but in the 1920s Congress saw a loophole and fixed representation at the then current 435. There's nothing magic about 435. Why not 439? 394? 943? Did Moses decree 435? George Washington? The founders never settled the question, but they never intended representation to stop growing with population. If we followed an early formula, we'd have one Congressman for every 50,000 people. That would mean 6,473 in the US House today!

Ever since the 1920s we've been treated to an increase in oligarchy where just 218 votes are needed to ram something down the throats of more and more people.

You know, like Obamacare, which was passed without a single Republican vote.

Meanwhile Republicans just showed that they own the grassroots politically, winning the counties 2623 to 489. Here's the map that shows that, from brilliant maps dot com:

If you want to end the gridlock and get something done, reform the Congress to represent the country for a change. Abolish the Congressional districts, and elect representatives to the US House from every county across this land.

You say you want a revolution . . ..

Paul Ryan proves again he's the wrong man for Speaker: Gridlock is the constitutional SOLUTION, and he's tired of it

Fire the bum.

Here he is:

“I’m tired of divided government. It doesn’t work very well,” Ryan said. “We’re just at loggerheads. We’ve gotten some good things done. But the big things — poverty, the debt crisis, the economy, health care — these things are stuck in divided government, and that’s why we think a unified Republican government’s the way to go.”

Trump's dim view of gridlock isn't encouraging

Gridlock is built in: It's called the separation of powers.

Bruce Bartlett goes off his meds again

Here:

[T]he system is out of balance, creating gridlock even as the public cries out for action on serious problems such as our deteriorating public infrastructure, epitomized by that in Flint, Michigan. ... The government was shut down, increases in the debt limit are constantly at risk, nominations to even the most minor administration positions are blocked and, now, the president has been denied the opportunity, which is his right under the Constitution, to name a new justice to the Supreme Court.

Let's see.

Incompetent Democrats failed to treat the water of the Flint River properly before tapping it, ruining Flint's infrastructure.

Republicans gained seats after the government shutdown. Maybe they should do it more often.

Republicans subsequently extended the debt limit until after Mr Teflon is gone so as not to interfere with the president's many golf outings and vacations.

The president still can name whoever he wants to whatever he wants.

Meanwhile the public cries out for Donald Trump, not action.

Carnage in Commodities: Gold/Oil Ratio soars to 18.08

Gold continues to lose ground to plunging oil prices, making oil the preferred investment of the two, if you had to chose between them. Gold would have to plunge to 987.60 to restore the ratio to parity of 15 at the current price of oil, 65.84, or 17%.

Gold is presently about 200 off its 2014 high of 1385 (London fix), about 14%, while West Texas Intermediate Crude is down over 35% from its June close at 102.07.

The surging dollar in 2014 has been deflationary for commodities. Closing as low as 79.09 in early May, .DXY closed yesterday at 89.36, up almost 13% in just seven months.

Behind that no doubt has been the Yellen Federal Reserve's commitment to end QE, which it did in October, and the continued Republican stranglehold on spendthrift liberalism, creating positive fiscal conditions liked by markets. Federal revenues are at an all time high of $2.775 trillion in fiscal 2013 while outlays remain stabilized at about $3.5 trillion for each of the last five fiscal years in a row. At $3.4 trillion in fiscal 2013, the often ugly dance between a Republican House and a Democrat Senate and Executive has meant that federal spending has risen only 2.75% in nominal terms for each fiscal year since the 2008 baseline. The S&P500 is up over 12% year-to-date on top of last year's stellar 32% gain.

The permanency of the Bush tax cuts and the AMT fix which heralded in the new year in 2013 continue to work their magic in combination with the stronger dollar and Washington gridlock, for which neither John Boehner nor Barack Obama will ever get their due.

What a country.

"House Republicans are doing the people’s business by obstructing"

So says Jerry Shenk for PennLive.com here:

Reacting to Democratic overreach, American voters chose gridlock over “productivity” by awarding Republicans the House of Representatives following the 2010 mid-term tsunami and preserving their majority in 2012. House Republicans are doing the people’s business by obstructing the ambitions of President Obama and Washington Democrats.

Just 6% Think Immigration Reform Is Our Number One Issue

"barking up the wrong tree"

So reported Bloomberg a week ago, here:

In a June 1-4 Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans named either the economy or employment and jobs as the No. 1 issue facing the U.S., while 6 percent said immigration topped their list of concerns.

The US Dollar Has A Long Way To Go, But The Trend Has Been Up

The US dollar is up for a number of reasons: 

permanency in the tax code effective January 1, 2013;

elevated spending by the federal government arrested, due to PARTISAN gridlock (hurrah!);

and increased US DOMESTIC oil production from technology advances, despite the most anti-oil president ever to sit in the Oval.

Just think where we would be if we actually had a pro-US president.

Well, for one thing, we'd be WORKING, most likely.

Barack Obama: Chester The Sequester Taxpayer Molester

According to The Des Moines Register here, Pres. Obama told two of its editors just two weeks before the 2012 election that he was COUNTING ON the sequestration cuts which he now says are going to hurt middle class Americans, and that he was COUNTING ON the expiration of the Bush tax rates, in tandem "to implode the partisan gridlock" referred to by his interlocutor at The Register (full transcript at the link), to which the following was part of the reply by the president:

"In the short term, the good news is that there’s going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have and how do we pay for it?

"So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent -- at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit -- but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business."

In other words, Obama said he was counting on the sequestration gambit and the expiration of the Bush tax rates gambit to accomplish his "balanced approach", which is tax rate increases combined with spending cuts "to reduce the deficit". Notice how he likes "force" especially when he can distance himself from it, and how that force can impose an ideological conclusion for which he otherwise is reticent to take responsibility. The man isn't really up to being the tyrant.

President Obama all along has wanted this sequestration event to occur, and any tax increase he could get along with it. The forced spending cut idea was his idea from the beginning according to Bob Woodward, but Obama could only welcome the forced expiration of the Bush tax rates idea. He's just sorry he was not the author of it. As it turned out, he got some tax increases on the rich in the year end tax deal ($60 billion annually), but more importantly he got the reset of the Social Security payroll tax ON EVERYBODY without so much as a shot being fired by anyone in Washington. The latter comes to about $100 billion annually. Add in a few spending cuts now on the backs of all these people he's been parading as victims, and Obama is as happy as a clam.

Yes, some of the American people are being actually molested by the president's policies, but they just don't know who the perp is because the creep can make himself invisible. Unfortunately for them, because they are mostly denizens of government, private sector Americans who have been living in greatly reduced circumstances for four years now because of Obama's on-going depression just aren't sympathetic to their plight.

The trouble is, neither is Obama.

Molly Ball Doth Espy The Flaccid Organ Called The Senate

For The Atlantic, here:

"The last time a major new piece of policy legislation passed the U.S. Senate was July 15, 2010.

"That's when the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill came through the Senate. And it was 951 days ago."

Just before the Republicans retook the House in 2010, over 400 bills passed by the then Democrat-controlled House under Speaker Pelosi languished unactioned in Sen. Harry Reid's Democrat-controlled Senate, on which, see here.

Internet Pioneer Comes Out For Gridlock

Marc Andreessen, here:

"The presumption is that we want the government to do things. I'm pro-gridlock," Andreessen said. "It doesn't bother me in the least if government is all ground to a halt." ...

"'Rise above' I completely disagree with it," Andreessen said, speaking of the motto coined by CNBC to resolve Washington's budget woes. "I think it's well-intentioned, but I think it's undesirable and I think it's dangerous."

Michael Tanner Is So Wrong. ObamaCare Is Emblematic Only Of The Congress.

The House version of healthcare reform, left, and the Senate version, right.

Michael Tanner for National Review, here:

The new health-care law is generally regarded as the signature achievement of the president’s first term. It’s certainly emblematic of Obama’s entire approach to government and what we can expect from his second-term initiatives.

Everything Mr. Tanner says about ObamaCare sounds right. The problem is, Obama played no role in it. The community organizer organized the legislative community under Democrat leadership, and they designed it, not him.

Obama provided zero leadership formulating what we call ObamaCare. He relinquished his leadership role entirely, allowing Pelosi's House and Reid's Senate to draft their versions of it and to hash the thing out, which ended up being an amalgam of the creations of the two chambers of the legislature. Obama contributed zero, zip, nada, nothing, and Michael Tanner misses entirely that ObamaCare turned out to look like the camel it is when it was supposed to look like a horse.

ObamaCare is healthcare disform, because Obama is a president who is largely absent and not up to the task in any case. Without control of both houses of the legislature, the future will provide no more such camels designed to be horses, unless the Republicans permit it.

Gridlock. Embrace it. Love it. Depend on it.

Why Obama Will Lose Ohio: Only 2,800 Show Up To Meet POTUS 4 Days B4 Election

Reported here:

“I’ve said I will work with anybody of any party to move this country forward,” President Obama told a crowd of 2,800 this morning in Hilliard, Ohio. “If you want to break the gridlock in Congress, you’ll vote for leaders who feel the same way whether they’re Democrat, Republican or independent.”