Thursday, December 5, 2019
Biden in the cat bird seat: Just as Bernie tanked after promising criminals will get to vote, Warren has tanked after hedging on Medicare for all
Ezra Klein, here:
One lesson of the past few weeks is that the Medicare-for-all debate has become a minefield for Democrats — and it’s not clear that any candidate has a safe path through it.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has dropped 14 points since October 8, when she briefly led the Democratic field in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Most attribute her decline to her handling of Medicare-for-all — the financing plan she released made her the target of attacks from the moderates, and then the transition plan she released, which envisions a robust public option in the first year of her presidency and only moving to Medicare-for-all in year three, left single-payer advocates unnerved about her commitment to the cause.
The Democrat left has been its own worst enemy.
In addition to alienating working people by going soft on crime, the people who bear the brunt of it, Bernie has notably lost ground with the working class by flipping on immigration restriction. Every new immigrant drives down their wages when immigrants are not taking their jobs outright.
For her part, on top of hedging on Medicare for all, Warren has rolled out a veritable cornucopia of crazy in this campaign, including a ban on all fracking in the US and ending the Electoral College. Combined with the recent lying about the little details of her life, voters justifiably doubt her sincerity on these larger issues and suspect that she cares about little except getting the power into her hands.
Hence the default candidate still on top, Joe Biden.
America's political institutions are still so structured that even when radicals like Obama do win, those institutions frustrate their aims. The upside of this is that harmful radicalism is usually stopped in its tracks. The downside is that mediocrities and grotesques are produced.
Just as Obama was content to let his Clinton retreads handle the Great Financial Crisis resulting in the still poor full time employment, moribund GDP, unaffordable housing and low interest rates catastrophic to income portfolios of the present time, Obama provided zero leadership on healthcare reform. This resulted in the competing Democrat House and Senate versions which consumed his first year in office, and eventually produced the Affordable Care Act camel, a horse designed by a committee. He sure did enjoy watching basketball in the private residence, though, and went on to make the Bush tax cuts permanent after winning re-election in 2012. Some radical, huh?
The same thing has happened with Trump. Although promising us the moon about immigration, healthcare reform and foreign wars, he instead delivered tax reform mostly for the corporations and huge spending increases for the military industrial complex, which is the basic consensus of the Republican caucus in Congress, foolishly hoping that they would give him a little somethin' somethin' in return.
Nothing doing. Even trade realignment will disappear when Trump does.
Trump's problem is that he never had a political faction holding any seats in Congress to drive his agenda. He just assumed the existing members would adopt his positions, which is pretty damn naive considering how he attacked and alienated them all throughout 2015-2016. Instead, Trump has steadily moved away from his own positions and adopted theirs, for his own political survival.
Trump's porous bollard fencing instead of the real wall he promised is simply the most public symbol of this, going back as it does to the George W. Bush administration.
The only radical realignment we have seen is the realignment of the radicals with their respective parties, and Election 2020 will be the same old, same old fight between them.
Those who won't realign get discarded.
This is the tyranny of the legislative. And the only way to remedy this is to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, the great mistake of 1951. Only the threat of a Trump or an Obama perpetually in the White House will restore the balance of power between the three branches of government and advance the interests of the people who vote for the president.
As things stand, the best we can hope for is a president desperately stacking the courts to increase his power in a tyranny of the judiciary, which is hardly the remedy intended by the founders and is unacceptable to Americans loyal to the constitution and the nation as founded. The three stooges of the law schools on display at the impeachment hearing yesterday are proof enough of that.
Betsy's right: High crimes and misdemeanors means offenses committed while in high office
It's not the severity of the crime which makes it high, but it damn well better be a crime. Democrats haven't been able to come up with one despite turning themselves and the country into pretzels.
And Trump's tax returns from the past and his dalliances from the past and why he named his son "Barron" are all completely irrelevant, as is everything else he's done while not in office. Those things matter only at election time.
Here's Betsy:
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the framers considered grounds for impeachment. On Sept. 8, George Mason suggested that bribery and treason were too narrow, and proposed adding "maladministration." But James Madison objected, explaining that "so vague a term will be equivalent to" saying the president serves at the pleasure of the Congress. The framers did not want to duplicate the British system, which made the executive dependent on Parliament. Mason's idea was dropped, and the framers instead agreed to the more specific term, "high crimes and misdemeanors," where "high" meant offenses committed while in high office, such as embezzling public funds.
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Whaddayamean we don't have a king?
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| King of Shitty GDP |
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| King of Unemployment |
Or was it the other way around, I can't remember now.
Libertarianism means strengthening Chinese communist totalitarianism with every purchase
Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, ladies and gentlemen, Karl Marx's favorite Republican vacation spot.
Free movement of peoples to the US will destroy it, same as free trade
Generally speaking, the protectionist system today is conservative, whereas the Free Trade system has a destructive effect. It destroys the former nationalities and renders the contrast between proletariat and bourgeoisie more acute. In a word, the Free Trade system is precipitating the social revolution. And only in this revolutionary sense do I vote for Free Trade.
-- Karl Marx, Appendix to Elend der Philosophie, 1847.
I dunno, I think motion-activated machine guns in the no man's land in-between Trump's new fences would be more effective than electrifying them
This one got across before the Border Patrol could catch him.
You don't want to electrify the Mexican side of the fence. That just wouldn't be civilized.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Monday, December 2, 2019
Financial Times, 8/28/16: "Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, is backed by the pro-western government that took power after Mr Yanukovich was ousted"
https://www.ft.com/content/c98078d0-6ae7-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f :
The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election.
The editor isn't stupid. He just thinks you are.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for November 2019
Grand Rapids, MI, climate update for November 2019
Max temp 54, mean 66 (third lowest max since 1892)
Min temp 15, mean 17
Av temp 34.6, mean 39.1 (tied with 2018 for tenth coldest on record)
Precip 2.62, mean 2.84
Snow 6.5, mean 6.3
Heating Degree Days 910, mean 771 (ninth coldest on record)
HDD to date 1422, mean 1356 (4.9% colder than the mean, season to date)
I just hate it when Mark Zuckerberg says anything remotely reasonable
It means the robots will soon be almost impossible to detect.
America was an extremist country until 1913
So says this nut, Adam Grossman:
As a Libertarian, some of [Harry] Browne’s economic proposals were extreme—including, for instance, abolishing income taxes.
Well now, since the total public debt is today $23.076 trillion and climbing inexorably, I'd say the extremism is all post-1913. Measured in trillions, the public debt in 1913 was less than $0.00 trillion.
Isn't it obvious that income taxes have become irrelevant?
We spend in deficit every year and simply keep adding to the total owed. Might as well just stop collecting income taxes altogether, since we've decided we can borrow indefinitely. We never pay as we go, let alone make payments on what we owe.
Why are taxes even necessary anymore, since nothing has ever had to be paid for, or paid off?
Income taxes are dispensable.
Sunday, December 1, 2019
The FBI is in a shambles, but the DOJ is a complete train wreck
A 63-page report released last month found "numerous issues" with the
FBI's use of confidential sources during a period that included the
2016 election. That report revealed that the FBI lacked appropriate
procedures to vet and maintain oversight of sources like the ones used
against the Trump campaign. This created a security risk for the United
States. Yet no prosecutions have been announced.
Last August, an even more serious finding was released when the IG
determined that the FBI director himself [James Comey] had violated FBI policy and the
terms of his own employment agreement in disseminating classified
information for release to the media. Though the DOJ could have
prosecuted based on the report's findings, it declined to do so.
A May 2019 IG report implicated the FBI deputy assistant director for
unauthorized contacts with the media, illegally disclosing sealed court
documents and other sensitive information to the media, and accepting
gifts from the media. The DOJ declined to prosecute. But why? The IG
recommended prosecution.
The IG's June 2018 probe into the Hillary Clinton email investigation
implicated the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, of
repeatedly articulating a strong political bias even as he headed up the
investigation of Clinton's exposure of classified information. The
500-page report, which reviewed 1.2 million documents and included
interviews with more than 100 witnesses, documented numerous
questionable decisions that benefited Clinton or damaged Trump, though
the IG acknowledged the parties denied their political bias impacted
their decisions.
Finally, an April 2018 report implicated FBI Assistant Director
Andrew McCabe of inappropriately authorizing the disclosure of sensitive
information to a reporter and repeatedly lying to investigators about
it. The report found McCabe lied four times, three under oath, and that
it was done "in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at
the expense of Department leadership." Though McCabe was fired, he
wasn't prosecuted.
The story is here.
DPRK News Service drops mask in rare display of counter-revolutionary personal gloating after second victory over US propaganda organs
The victory belongs to all the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, not just you.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Friday, November 29, 2019
England's Brexit party has gone off the rails just like Trump
It's like the two "movements", in reality just evanescent phenomena, upon discovering their political power went straight for the aisle where the stupid pills are kept and bought every last bottle.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
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