Kamala Harris and busing

KH was indeed bused.

Harris began her elementary education during the second year of Berkeley's historic public school desegregation busing program, which pioneered the extensive use of busing to bring racial balance to all the city's schools.

Her parents divorced when she was seven, and her mother was granted custody of the children.

After the divorce, when Harris was 12, her mother moved with the children to Montreal, Québec, Canada, where Shyamala accepted a position doing research at Jewish General Hospital and teaching at McGill University.

After graduating from Westmount High School in Westmount, Quebec in 1981, Harris attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in political science and economics.

At Howard, she was elected to the liberal arts student council as freshman class representative, was a member of the debate team, and joined the Alpha Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Harris returned to California, where she earned her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, in 1989.

She was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1990.

According to this, she was bused the very year she entered the school system to a previously mostly white school.

She had not before been assigned any school.

According to data published by the school district, in 1963 “Negro” students comprised only 2.5% percent of the student body at Thousand Oaks Elementary School, while “Caucasian” students comprised 95.1% of the student body. 

Due to the district’s integration efforts, by 1969 those figures had shifted to 40.2% and 53.4%, respectively.

Kamala Harris, racial imposter? No. But there is nuance.

Quick fact check with Wikipedia.

Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to a Tamil Indian mother and a Jamaican father. 

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a breast cancer scientist who immigrated to the United States from Madras (present-day Chennai) in 1960.

Her father, Donald Harris, is a Stanford University economics professor who emigrated from Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study in economics at University of California, Berkeley.

Recalling the lives of his grandmothers, Donald Harris wrote that one was related to a plantation and slave owner while the other had unknown ancestry.

Looks like most of her coloredness comes from her mother's side.

Anyway, she is not descended from American slaves, or indeed American Negroes, at all.

And it looks like at least some of her ancestors owned slaves.

(As is undoubtedly true of many American blacks, come to that, given that before the Civil War free blacks or even slaves in some states could and did own black slaves, themselves.)

In a 2019 interview, Kamala Harris said, "'I am black and I am proud of it.'"

Harris's family lived in Berkeley, California, where both of her parents attended graduate school.

She was close to her maternal grandfather, P. V. Gopalan, an Indian diplomat.

As a child, she often visited her extended family in the Besant Nagar neighborhood of Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

She grew up going to both a black Baptist church and a Hindu temple.[12] She has one younger sister, Maya Harris.

They both sang in a Baptist choir.

Personally, I would say she is an American with an obvious dose of non-white ancestry.

Is she in any shape or form an African-American?

Ali himself admits she is.

People (on the Left and Right) need to stop sharing this picture. This is not her father, Donald Harris, Jr. 

Her father is a mix of Afro and white Jamaican.

Her mother is Tamil Indian (upper caste).

Kamala Harris is Indian-Jamaican and a first generation American.

So, less than half African, but truly African in part.

Yet neither she nor her supporters have pointed that out.

So who cares? you might ask.

Why all the fuss?

Well, Ms Harris, her supporters, leading Democrats, and the PC police are all wedded to the claim she is, entirely sans nuance, an African American.

She who so clearly wants and really, really needs to play that race card; and they, who so want her to be able to - though preferably not against other Democrats.

Anyway, "Death to deniers!", say she and they.

"Birther" tweet targets Kamala Harris. 2020 Democrats rushed to her defense.

2020 Democratic hopeful Kamala Harris was the target of a birtherism-like attack — retweeted and then deleted by President Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. — targeting her identity as "not an American Black."

. . . .

Harris was born in Oakland, California to parents who had emigrated to the U.S. from India and Jamaica. 

The viral tweet by right-wing personality Ali Alexander — whose Twitter bio claims that he "exposed" Harris and includes the hashtag #NeverKamala — mentioned her parents' background and said 

"I'm so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history. 
"It's disgusting. Now using it for debate time at #DemDebate2? These are my people not her people."

The tweet appeared to get the attention of Donald Trump Jr., who has more than three million followers. 

Trump Jr. wrote "Is this true? Wow" on Thursday, but soon deleted it. 

A spokesman told The New York Times Trump Jr. was "asking if it was true that Kamala Harris was half-Indian because it's not something he had ever heard before."

Yes, it is true.

But AA was accusing her of being a racial imposter even while admitting her African ancestry, far more substantial (apparently) than Elizabeth Warren's Indian ancestry.

She is more Indian than African, sure.

But still.

If KH were an American with one African grandparent and the other three snow-white Swedes, would she count as African-American?

God, what do we say to that, in an America apparently still wed to the one-drop rule for blackness?

Harris' campaign manager, Lily Adams, said in a statement to CBS News "this is the same type of racist attacks used to attack Barack Obama. It didn't work then and it won't work now." 

Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff, expressed his gratitude on Twitter to those who came to his wife's defense. "...Thx to all the 2020 candidates and everyone else for calling out this crap for what it is"... Emhoff tweeted.

On Saturday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was the first 2020 candidate to tweet in support of Harris. 

"The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly. We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it's within the power and obligation of tech companies to stop these vile lies dead in their tracks," Warren tweeted.

Pocahontas Warren, American Indian by the tiniest of hairs (and since when is there a one-drop rule for Indian-ness? Is half the NHL Indian?), defends Harris from the accusation of being a racial imposter?

What will the right make of that, eh?

And look at her, calling for the tech companies to collude in suppression of the charge.

A charge Ms. Warren just barely escaped, herself, by proving herself to be a thousandth, or hundred thousandth, or millionth red Indian with a DNA test, to pretty much universal laughter on the right and universal condemnation on the left.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey chimed in with a tweet saying "@kamalaharris doesn't have sh[**] to prove." 

Strong remarks also came from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. 

Biden, the current frontrunner, tweeted on Saturday "The same forces of hatred rooted in 'birtherism' that questioned @BarackObama's American citizenship, and even his racial identity, are now being used against Senator @KamalaHarris. 

"It's disgusting and we have to call it out when we see it. Racism has no place in America."

You can hire some pretty good talent for that money in India, I'll bet

Boeing's 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers

Looks like protectionist propaganda for American engineers.

At Bloomberg.

Bilge

I never liked him and I still don't like him.

Jimmy Carter Says Trump's Election Was Illegitimate

A doddering old fool who makes Joe B look robust and alert.

It is remotely possible that absent Russian interference the EC shares of the candidates would have been different and Hillary would have got to the White House.

But Russian interference comprised nothing but efforts to influence opinion in ways perfectly legal for Americans whose own rhetoric and views Russian bots imitated.

Not a single phony vote was cast by Russian interferers, nor was a single actual voting machine compromised, nor were vote totals in any district or any state altered.

The votes were all legitimate and the counts none the worse.

The election was valid and Trump, though there against the wishes of most voters, is in the White House in a constitutionally legitimate manner.

JIMMY CARTER: If fully investigated, it would show that Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election and he was put in office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.

JON MEACHAM: So do you believe President Trump is an illegitimate president?"

CARTER: Based on what I just said, which I can't retract. [laughter]

1972, again?

Dems, Please Don’t Drive Me Away

David Brooks, Republican, asks,

I could never in a million years vote for Donald Trump. 

So my question to Democrats is: Will there be a candidate I can vote for?

For a while, he actually sounds like a center-left Democrat concerned his party is going too far left.

According to a Hill-HarrisX survey, only 13 percent of Americans say they would prefer a health insurance system with no private plans. 

Warren and Sanders pin themselves, and perhaps the Democratic Party, to a 13 percent policy idea. 

Trump is smiling.

. . . .

Second, there is the economy. 

All of the Democrats seem to have decided to run a Trump-style American carnage campaign. 

The economy is completely broken. 

It only benefits a tiny sliver. 

Yet in a CNN poll, 71 percent of Americans say that the economy is very or somewhat good. 

We’re in the longest recovery in American history and the benefits are finally beginning to flow to those who need them most. 

Overall wages are rising by 3.5 percent, and wages for those in the lowest pay quartile are rising by well over 4 percent, the highest of all groups.

Democrats have caught the catastrophizing virus that inflicts the Trumpian right. 

They take a good point — that capitalism needs to be reformed to reduce inequality — and they radicalize it so one gets the impression they want to undermine capitalism altogether.

Third, Democrats are wandering into dangerous territory on immigration. 

They properly trumpet the glories immigrants bring to this country. 

But the candidates can’t let anybody get to the left of them on this issue. 

So now you’ve got a lot of candidates who sound operationally open borders. 

Progressive parties all over the world are getting decimated because they have fallen into this pattern.

But then he sounds like a Republican who wants to pretend the class war is between the guy who stocks the shelves at the neighborhood mom and pop and the guy who owns it.

Fourth, Democrats are trying to start a populist v. populist campaign against Trump, which is a fight they cannot win. 

Democratic populists talk as if the only elite in America is big business, big pharma — the top 1 percent. 

This allows them to sound populist without actually going after their donor bases — the highly educated affluent people along the coasts.

But the big divide in America is not between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99. 

It’s between the top 20 percent and the rest.

. . . .

The debates illustrate the dilemma for moderate Democrats. 

If they take on progressives they get squashed by the passionate intensity of the left. 

If they don’t, the party moves so far left that it can’t win in the fall.

Right now we’ve got two parties trying to make moderates homeless.

Let's be clear.

We don't need Brooks' vote or the votes of the other, relatively few Republicans who want to find somebody to vote for who isn't Trump but doesn't offend their Republican values.

Republicans whose preferred candidates Trump crushed in 2016.

But we do need the votes of a lot of people who are on the whole to the left of all Republicans but to the right of, say, Bernie.

And we do need the votes of whites and males whom Obama never told were not welcome in the Democratic Party or could not continue to be welcome as candidates for the Democratic Party.

And what message are those whites and males hearing, today?

Personally, I would prefer a candidate who is both more centrist in substance and rhetoric than the AOC/Warren/Bernie types and not all three of old, white, and male.

I think that sort of candidate could and should win in a walk.

But is that the sort of candidate we will have?

A pleasant surprise from an opinionator at the Times

There are Depression Era murals on the walls of courthouses and other public buildings all over America, many of them done by reds of various sorts or others more than a little friendly toward them and their views.

Yesterday, a piece was published that was, on the whole, sympathetic to a move by San Francisco to forever destroy such murals on the walls of a high school.

San Francisco School Will Cover Controversial George Washington Murals

Some of the scenes depict blacks and Indians as victims of the young American republic, and implicate Washington, himself.

So you might have guessed this was a decision made by white Republicans or other contemporary whites more than a little tired of politically weaponized history aimed specifically at them.

Nope.

It was actually snowflakes - grandchildren of Zinn, as we might say - and their elder protectors who saw in these murals exactly the opposite of what the artist intended and what decades of viewers have seen.

What was painted and understood for so long as a condemnation was and is perceived, so they say, by the snowflake generation as a glorification of white supremacy, racism, slavery, and even genocide.

And so, of course, they have to be destroyed.

San Francisco Will Spend $600,000 to Erase History

By now stories of progressive Puritanism (or perhaps the better word is Philistinism) are so commonplace — snowflakes seek safe space! — that it can feel tedious to track the details of the latest outrage. 

But this case is so absurd that it’s worth reviewing the specifics.

Victor Arnautoff, the Russian immigrant who made the paintings in question, was perhaps the most important muralist in the Bay Area during the Depression. 

Thanks to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, he had the opportunity to make some enduring public artworks. 

Among them is “City Life” in Coit Tower, in which the artist painted himself standing in front of a newspaper rack conspicuously missing the mainstream San Francisco Chronicle and packed with publications like The Daily Worker.

Arnautoff, who had assisted Diego Rivera in Mexico, was a committed Communist. “‘Art for art’s sake’ or art as perfume have never appealed to me,” he said in 1935. 

“The artist is a critic of society.”

This is why his freshly banned work, “Life of Washington,” does not show the clichéd image of our first president kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge. 

Instead, the 13-panel, 1,600-square-foot mural, which was painted in 1936 in the just-built George Washington High School, depicts his slaves picking cotton in the fields of Mount Vernon and a group of colonizers walking past the corpse of a Native American.

“At the time, high school history classes typically ignored the incongruity that Washington and others among the nation’s founders subscribed to the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ and yet owned other human beings as chattel,” Robert W. Cherny writes in “Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art.”

In other words, Arnautoff’s purpose was to unsettle the viewer, to provoke young people into looking at American history from a different, darker perspective. 

Over the past months, art historians, New Deal scholars and even a group called the Congress of Russian Americans have tried to make exactly that point.

“This is a radical and critical work of art,” the school’s alumni association argued. 

“There are many New Deal murals depicting the founding of our country; very few even acknowledge slavery or the Native genocide.

Of course, there wasn't a native genocide, though there was widespread ethnic cleansing, some of it egregiously and undeniably motivated by unabashed racism, such as the Cherokee Removal.

"The Arnautoff murals should be preserved for their artistic, historical and educational value. 

"Whitewashing them will simply result in another ‘whitewash’ of the full truth about American history.”

Such appeals to reason and history failed to sway the school board. 

On Tuesday, it dismissed the option to pull an Ashcroft and simply cover the murals, instead voting unanimously to paint them over.

One of the commissioners, Faauuga Moliga, said before the vote on Tuesday that his chief concern was that “kids are mentally and emotionally feeling safe at their schools.” 

Thus he wanted “the murals to be painted down.” 

Mark Sanchez, the school board’s vice president, later told me that simply concealing the murals wasn’t an option because it would “allow for the possibility of them being uncovered in the future.” 

Destroying them was worth it regardless of the cost, he argued at the hearing, saying, “This is reparations.”

These and other explanations from the board’s members reflected the logic of the Reflection and Action Working Group, a committee of activists, students, artists and others put together last year by the district. 

Arnautoff’s work, the group concluded in February, “glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, Manifest Destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc.” 

The art does not reflect “social justice,” the group said, and it “is not student-centered if it’s focused on the legacy of artists, rather than the experience of the students.”

. . . .

“In my entire life, no one has ever, ever accused me of being a ‘white supremacist,’” Lope Yap Jr., a filmmaker and the vice president of the alumni association, told me. 

But if you buy into the expansive notion of “white supremacy” put forward by Alison Collins, one of the board commissioners, that is exactly what Mr. Yap, who is Filipino, is. 

“One of the earmarks of white supremacy culture is valuing (white) property over (Black & Brown) ppl,” Ms. Collins recently wrote on Twitter. 

“I think about this when I read comments from folks arguing to ‘protect’ the ‘Life of Washington’ murals.”

Mr. Sanchez, the board vice president, told me: 

“A grave mistake was made 80 years ago to paint a mural at a school without Native American or African-American input. 

"For impressionable young people who attend school to have any representation that diminishes people, specifically students from communities that have already been diminished, it’s an aggressive thing. 

"It’s hurtful and I don’t think our students need to bear that burden.”

What is fair and what is unfair

Kamala Harris responds to criticism that she delivered "low blow" to Joe Biden

The low blow is the charge - or even suggestion - that he supported or liked segregationist senators in the past.

That is untrue.

But it is not a low blow and is indeed true that in the past he opposed the use of busing to correct what was then and is still now called "de facto segregation", of which there was and is no such thing, though there was and is residential separation resulting in far from uniform representation of the races across schools even within the same school systems or districts.

A lack of uniformity in the schools many Democrats and perhaps all liberals felt then and now to be a social evil in need of remedy, often by such means as simply busing children.

2020 contender Kamala Harris came out swinging with a memorable performance in the second night of Democratic debates in Miami. 

 It was Harris' confrontation with former Vice President Joe Biden where she pressured to get him on the record on his past support of segregation-endorsing Democrats and as well as his past stance against busing to desegregate public schools, that left a mark on would-be voters' minds.

In her only network TV interview, Harris responded to criticism from Biden's camp that the contentious moment was a "low blow."

"It was about just speaking truth and as I've said many times, I have a great deal of respect for Joe Biden...but he and I disagree on that," Harris told "CBS This Morning" on Friday.

She added, "My purpose was to really just make sure that in this conversation we are appreciating the impact on real people of policies that have been pushed in the history of our country."

The Harris version of Medicare for All

Kamala Harris says she misinterpreted question on abolishing private insurance

NBC's Lester Holt asked for the 10 candidates on stage [Thursday night] to raise their hands if their health care plans would "abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?"

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Harris were the only two candidates who put their hands up, but Harris said Friday she does not support getting rid of all private insurance.

The California Democrat said she misunderstood the question and believed it was about whether she, personally, would give up her private plan in favor of Medicare.

. . . .

"I am supportive of a Medicare for All policy, and under a Medicare for All policy, private insurance would certainly exist for supplemental coverage," she added on CBS.

Not at all Bernie's goal, is it?

Are schools being "re-segregated"?

Sanders and Gillibrand Open to New Federally Mandated Busing Policies

No, though they are becoming less racially diverse, partly because of changing patterns of population residency and partly because the white share of school-age kids is in rather steep decline.

It is an oft-spoken conviction of the left that a relatively uniform mix of races in all schools is necessary to properly encourage learning among non-white students.

And they are only just less oft-spoken convictions of the left that good budgets and good teachers follow the white kids, and that anything like equal educational opportunity requires equally good teachers and equally good budgets.

Add the unswerving commitments of the left to the fantasies of equal opportunity for all individuals and at least equal opportunity for persons of all races - or otherwise defined identities - with white males, and none of this will surprise you.

[W]hat, if anything, would a future Democratic president do about busing?

When asked after the debate if he supported reinstating busing policies that Biden opposed in the 1970s, Bernie Sanders told National Review: “I am really concerned about the growing segregation — once again — the resegregation of communities all over this country. 

"We’re seeing more and more schools which are being segregated. And that is something we have to deal with.” 

Would he use busing to deal with it? 

“Busing is one tool,” Sanders replied. 

Kirsten Gillibrand also told reporters after the debate that she would impose new federally mandated busing policies on local schools if necessary. 

“I think every child should be able to go to a good public school. And as president I will assure that. If it needs busing, it needs busing,” Gillibrand told reporters.

And what about Kamala Harris? 

Would she implement new busing policies if elected president? 

“We haven’t put a plan out on that or anything, but she supports desegregation,” Harris communications director Ian Sams told National Review.

But as Harris herself said during her exchange with Biden on race and busing: “On this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.”

. . . .

In Biden’s home state of Delaware in the 1970s, the busing order imposed “racial quotas, sweeping pupil reassignments, school closings and reconfigurations, and bus rides up to an hour each way,” according to one account. 

“Widespread loss of confidence in the public schools and resistance to busing in the 1980s gave rise to a reversal of the busing order and sparked the charter school movement in the 1990s, and finally led to a legislative reaffirmation of neighborhood schools in 2000.”

“The real problem with busing,” Biden said in the 1970s, was that “you take people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school . . . and you’re going to fill them with hatred.”

Krugman, exasperated, is perfectly right

Guess which party is unAmerican

Except that AOC and Bernie, at least, are cutely hiding a real commitment to real socialism behind a coy and entirely disingenuous commitment to mush socialism.

Why is the Times striking so hard at Biden's age? But not once at Sanders, who is older?

The hammer is really out there in this patronizing and denigrating report, for example.

Kamala Harris Makes the Case That Joe Biden Should Pass That Torch to Her

Phooey.

What they - the other candidates to his left and writers of articles like this one - are really attacking is his position as a moderate, despised as such by the AOC/Bernie wing.

But is that the only reason why nobody making these attacks whines that Bernie is too old, past it, out of touch, blah blah blah?

Biden is 76; Sanders is 77.

I have said from the beginning that Joe B looks frail, looks old, looks like he might fall over.

Sanders, older, does not.

No more than 70 year old Warren or the Duce, 73.

That's a part of it, I think.

Of course, Mr. Biden is not the only candidate who would be over 70 on Election Day. 

But the others atop the field, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have been at the vanguard of the party’s leftward tilt, sharpening their economic arguments to a fine point in recent years and making plain their urgency not just to remove and replace Mr. Trump but to address the root conditions that produced his election in the first place.

In a few important moments, Mr. Biden managed to jolt himself toward the future and outline a progressive agenda he would pursue as president. 

Having unveiled only a few signature proposals so far on the campaign trail, he pledged to take aggressive action to combat climate change, and to reinforce the middle class with new benefits like an optional government health care plan.

It remains to be seen, however, whether Democratic voters will embrace as an exciting vision a package of ideas that represent, in aggregate, much of the unfinished business of the Obama administration.

It remains to be seen? Isn't he already and still the front runner?

Will the party's left wing fuck us again?

1972 was the last time the party's left wing let its freak flag fly, and that year Nixon got the greatest EC landslide in US history.

He left McGovern only the EC votes of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Nobody has ever seen a worse disaster.

Might it be that bad, this time?

The Democrats and their party are captives of the further left, says the Times

As the authors of this article see it, the voices of the AOC/Warren/Bernie wing are speaking for the party, and candidates who reject their demands and their radical rhetoric are out of step opponents of the positions of their own party.

Of course, left Democratic media have been mendaciously claiming exactly that for weeks.

And now, when the major media adopt their own claims as very truth, they whine the media are unfairly painting Democrats as a bunch of scary, fiery radicals.

Democrats Diverge on Economy and Immigration in First Debate, says the Times

And yet the Democrats' most popular candidate - most popular among Democrats - was not in last night's debate, does not embrace that rhetoric, and does not support that agenda.

If the AOC/Warren/Bernie faction speak for the party why is Joe Biden the most popular of the candidates?

Why are most of the congressional Democrats far from enthused by their agenda, their rhetoric, and their rejection and condemnation of "the system"?

The strength of the party’s progressive wing was on vivid display in South Florida, starting in the first minutes of the debate when Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts branded the federal government as thoroughly corrupt. 

Ms. Warren, the highest-polling candidate onstage, called for the government to bring to heel oil companies and pharmaceutical companies, and embraced the replacement of private health insurance with single-payer care.

“We need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country,” Ms. Warren said, setting the tone for the handful of populists in the debate.

. . . .

The debate, the first of two featuring 10 candidates each, underscored just how sharply Democrats have veered in a liberal direction since Mr. Trump’s election. 

On issues ranging from immigration and health care to gun control and foreign policy, they demonstrated that they were far more uneasy about being perceived as insufficiently progressive by primary voters than about inviting Republican attacks in the general election.

Primary voters tend to be further left than Democratic voters as a whole, true, but not by all that much.

Hillary, after all, soundly squashed lifelong non- and generally anti-Democrat Bernie Sanders among actual primary voters, though she did less well with the activists who dominate caucuses.

And she didn't skid very far left to do it.

And right now Joe Biden is a lot more popular among Democrats in general than Senator Warren.

But there were also several avowed pragmatists who voiced hesitation or outright disagreement over some of their party’s most ambitious policy demands. 

Most prominent among them was Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who expressed doubts about liberal plans for single-payer health care and free college education; she instead called for more modest alternatives like the creation of an optional government-backed health insurance plan.

I have no idea what the following idea would even mean.

Mr. Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, dominated the segment devoted to immigration, promoting his proposal to decriminalize illegal immigration — a policy that Ms. Warren has adopted in recent days and that Republicans have gleefully highlighted to argue that Democrats support open borders.

Turning to Mr. O’Rourke, whose unsuccessful 2018 Senate bid and presidential candidacy have overshadowed him, Mr. Castro asked his fellow Texan why he would not support making illegal immigration a civil offense.

“I just think it’s a mistake, Beto,” said Mr. Castro.

Mr. O’Rourke noted that he had introduced legislation in Congress to decriminalize “those seeking asylum” and said that he had unveiled a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

But Mr. Castro interjected that it was not sufficient to relieve only those seeking asylum from criminal penalty, because many of those charged for crossing the border illegally are “undocumented immigrants.”

Mr. Booker made clear that he sided with Mr. Castro on the question, an illustration of the party’s shifting center of gravity on perhaps the dominant issue of the Trump era.

And this surprises whom?

Supreme Court Bars Challenges to Partisan Gerrymandering

Some have suggested this conservative court of rapists and theocrats would try to be as little provocative as possible lest outrage move an incoming Democratic administration, if supported by majorities in the legislature, to pack the court or otherwise undermine their power to conduct ideological warfare.

But maybe not.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that federal courts are powerless to hear challenges to partisan gerrymandering, the practice in which the party that controls the state legislature draws voting maps to help elect its candidates.

The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s more conservative members in the majority. In a momentous decision, the court closed the door on such claims.

The drafters of the Constitution, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority, understood that politics would play a role in drawing election districts when they gave the task to state legislatures. 

Judges, the chief justice said, are not entitled to second-guess lawmakers’ judgments.

“We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” the chief justice wrote.

Any historian will tell you the Framers did not anticipate the development, relevance, and power of political parties, at all.

A failure of foresight that notably screwed up presidential elections in such wise as they sought later to fix with the 12th Amendment.

It is absurd to suppose that, while they did not foresee parties, they did foresee partisan gerrymandering, and were just fine with it.

The second set of objections to Descartes' Meditations

Mersenne gets right to it, and his first objection is to demand how D knows, at that point in his exposition (meditation 2) where he rejects the existence of bodies, that he has not rejected his own existence?

How does he know, at that point or at all, that a thinking thing is not a body, that each of its actions - thoughts or perhaps "thinkings" - is not nothing but a movement of bodies or parts of his body?

Car comment prouvez-vous qu'un corps ne peut penser, ou que des mouvements corporels ne sont point la pensee meme?

Indeed, how does he know, asks M, that it is not the brain that, by its movements, does the thinking?

D replies correctly that he doesn't actually address that question until the 6th meditation, though he concedes the possibility in the 2nd that he, a thing that thinks, is a body.

And he continues, beginning by quoting himself from the 6th meditation,

"C'est assez que je puisse clairement et distinctement concevoir une chose sans une autre pour être certain que l'une est distincte ou différente de l'autre", etc.

Et un peu apres: 

"Encore que j'aie un corps qui me soit fort etroitement conjoint, neanmoins, parce que, d'un cote, j'ai une claire et distincte idée de moi-meme en tant que je suis seulement une chose qui pense et non étendue, et que d'une autre j'ai une claire et distincte idée du corps en tant qu'il est seulement une chose étendue et qui ne pense point, il est certain que moi, c'est-a-dire mon esprit ou mon âme, par laquelle je suis ce que je suis, est entièrement et véritablement distincte de mon corps, et qu'elle peut être ou exister sans lui".

A quoi il est aisé d'ajouter:

"Tout ce qui peut penser est esprit ou s'appelle esprit."

Mais, puisque le corps et l'esprit sont réellement distinctes, nul corps n'est esprit: donc nul corps ne peut penser.

And then the challenge:

Et, certes, je ne vois rien en cela que vous puissiez nier; car nierez-vous qu'il suffit que nous concevions clairement une chose sans une autre pour savoir qu'elles sont réellement distinctes?

Donnez-nous donc quelque signe plus certain de la distinction reelle, si toutefois on en peut donner aucune.

D considers one might insist on experience as the test whether things can really exist apart and replies it can fail both when the same thing, appearing differently, seems to be two things existing apart in fact and when two things, always experienced together in fact, are on that account mistaken for inseparable.

But this is lame.

The challenge stands.

How can we say what is or what is not, though not actual in our experience -  or anyone's so far as is known -, metaphysically possible?

He seems to believe there is no real alternative and moves on to the next of Mersenne's issues.

Perhaps we should revisit D's discussion of substance and attribute in the 6th meditation, raised in just this connection?

Chartism, ch 2

The sorts of statistics we hear of every day - rates of saving, unemployment, average wages - none of that was available to Carlyle or anyone else.

Parliament had never troubled itself to ask whether people were saving at all -  C thought that a likely sign of the level of economic distress - , nor whether a "labouring man in this England of ours, who is willing to labour", can find work.

[Correction: information was available about savings accounts, but ordinary people were still in the habit of sticking cash under the bed or in the mattress, and nobody had any way of tracking money lent by individuals to other individuals at interest, says C.]

It had never occurred to Parliament that any of that was in the least their concern, evidently.

A committee of the bourgeoisie for managing their common affairs, Marx might say.

Best not to know or to ask how poor, miserable, or desperate the proletarian masses actually were, eh?

Let facts like that - good for business, handy for capitalists and their well-off dependents - remain quietly in the dark.

None of that is the proper concern of the state, anyway, is it?

The Objections of Caterus

The first set of objections to Descartes Meditations is by one Johannes Caterus, a priest of Alkmaar in the Netherlands.

In his reply, Descartes rejects the notion that the content (object) of a thought needs no other cause than the thought itself, to wit, the thinker, and reiterates the notion that the cause of the content of a thought must have at least as much reality formally or eminently as the content has objectively, a crucial premise in his most original proof of the existence of God.

No real argument, here, though D's discussion is more astute and more lucid than C's own.

Too, he repeats the more general claim (he never proves it) that any effect requires a cause containing, formally or eminently, at least as much reality as itself.

And he says (with questionable accuracy) that he never appeals to a first cause argument (see his arguments for God as cause of the idea of God in himself and as cause of himself) for the existence of God because he doesn't see how to show the sequence of efficient causes must have a first because it seems each in the series could have a predecessor.

This appears to be an instance of a fallacious, zombie argument often seen advanced in philosophy of religion.

As someone once put it rather fancifully, a train can always have another car.

But this only proves - or illustrates, rather - that there is no largest natural number and not that (which is false) there is an infinite natural number.

As to the spirituality of the self, he claims to be certain that nothing is part of or in him, the thinking thing, of which he does not know.

(Later, toutes les actions d'un esprit, comme serait celle de se conserver soi-meme si elle procedait de lui, etant des pensees, et partant etant presentes et connues a l'esprit, celle-la, comme les autres, lui serait aussi presente et connue, et par elle il viendrait necessairement a connaitre la faculte qui la produirait, toute action nous menant necessairement a la connaissance de la faculte qui la produit.)

And that he finds innate within himself his idea of God.

How do we in fact learn of God?

We are taught.

The cause of the idea of God being in us is just other people.

How the idea developed culturally is a question for anthropology, history, or the history of ideas.

Against C's objection D explains that saying God is the cause of himself means negatively that nothing other than himself causes him and he needs no such cause and positively that his power is so great he causes himself and preserves himself in being from moment to moment.

That is to say, he repeats the claim that C rejected that something can be the cause of itself. 

And claiming we do not find in ourselves the power to conserve ourselves from moment to moment, he further holds the cause of our conservation must be cause of its own (no chain of causes here is possible), since if it can conserve another it must be able to conserve itself.

[I]l me semble que c'est une chose de soi evident, et qui n'a pas besoin de preuve, que tout ce qui existe est ou par une cause, ou par soi comme par une cause .  .  .  . par une surabundance de don propre puissance, laquelle ne peut etre qu'en Dieu seul[.]

Watching the Dem debates?

Not a chance in hell.

I can't imagine anything less edifying that watching nearly two dozen Democrats nit-picking and hot-buttoning each other, to the glee of the White House and the RNC.

Like the chain dragged by Marley, eh?

Biden is no spring chicken.

Club for Growth, a conservative political group, will launch new attack ads against Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden

This is the CFG polling data.

Biden opposed abortion, "forced bussing", and reparations.

So did I, and many of that generation of Democrats, back in the day.

Many of us still oppose some or all of these things, today and retrospectively.

Me included.

And I voted twice for Barack Hussein Obama, and would again.

And I voted for Hillary the Likable Enough.

I am what I am and the Democrats are what they are: the lesser evil and the better package, in net, for me, for my wife, and for those in my extended family who are mostly too stupid to vote for them.

And I still say B is too much all three of old, white, and male.

Can't we at least have somebody who's not all three?

And perhaps someone less inclined to constantly remind everyone how old and frail he is with constant, nostalgic walks down his long, long Memory Lane?

Trillions indefensibly squandered on the already privileged? Or a sensible step toward social justice?

Does social justice require that education be free at all levels?

Then this is perhaps defensible as a step toward that.

Or are we about to spend a trillion or so making life a lot easier for people who are going to become doctors, lawyers, and other rather well-heeled types?

People whose ability to acquire these debts in the first place is already a measure of the extent of their privilege?

A pile of loot that real social justice would have us spend on a whole lot of folks who are and will all their lives be far less privileged?

If it isn't all rather too much, anyway.

I mean, in addition to the Green New Deal and Medicare for All?

Really?

Bernie Sanders Unveils Sweeping Bill To Cancel All Student Debt

Pardon me if I say this looks a lot like a bidding war for the votes of the young, and especially the young already in or heading toward college.

A public intellectual

A longtime friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle had a widespread audience, a widespread influence in the Britain of his age.

A personal acquaintance of J. S. Mill - whose maid burned the only manuscript of C's history of the French Revolution - , Dickens read him as research for both his only two historical novels.

For his treatment of the Gordon Riots, D was influenced by C's essay on Chartism.

Chapter I is full of bombastic clichés appealing to smug, middle class moralism and assurance of class superiority.

Class moral superiority.

The perfect tone for a public intellectual.

Wikipedia says C was a Scottish philosopher, but never in my academic career was he even mention by anyone in philosophy.

It is perhaps worth noting that in a quarrel over Negro slavery C and Mill were on opposite sides, and regarding the handling of a rebellion in Jamaica, Mill and some others argued the governor of the colony ought to be hanged for the bloody suppression he ordered, while Carlyle and some others defended the governor.

Dickens, no admirer of the mob or the rabble, was on Carlyle's side in the Jamaica dispute, though the sympathy his novels display for the innocent and best among the lower orders has led some to try to claim him as a socialist, though he never said he was that or wrote in its favor, or against capitalism per se.

Mill was a longtime opponent of slavery, serfdom, and what he called "the subjection of women", and a defender of what we today call democracy, a misnomer for representative government.

Carlyle was on the opposite side of all of that, denigrating the black race, defending slavery and serfdom, and urging some sort of aristocracy in the sense of "the rule of the best".

Whose $ 50 billion are these?

Kushner unveils economic part of 'deal of the century' Middle East peace plan

A technology whose time is not yet. Not by a very long ways.

L.A. to Vegas and Back by Electric Car: 8 Hours Driving; 5 More Plugged In

Most electric cars need to be plugged in after they’ve traveled 200 to 250 miles — a much shorter distance than similarly sized gasoline vehicles can run on a full tank — and charging them can take an hour or more.

. . . .

To better understand what life with an electric car is like, I hopped into a Chevrolet Bolt recently and traveled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, a 540-mile round trip that many people make regularly.

The Bolt is the first in a lineup of electric cars that General Motors hopes to sell in the coming years. 

The hatchback, which costs about $37,500 before federal and state tax breaks, can travel about 240 miles on a full charge, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

But for Bolts as for other electric vehicles, experts generally recommend keeping it 30 to 80 percent charged for optimal battery life.

I rode with representatives of EVgo, a company that is building fast-charging stations across the country. 

On top of the eight hours or so that we were actually on the road, we spent close to five and a half hours charging the car.

In one case, the Bolt could not accept the fastest charging speeds from the most powerful units. 

In another, the charger could not deliver the power as fast as the Bolt could accept it. 

It could have been worse: We always found a charger available, though more than once we got the last one, and drivers arriving after us had to wait.

. . . .

On our way to Las Vegas, we met Alina Yamaeva, a 27-year-old law student from West Hollywood, Calif., who was napping while her BMW i3 charged at an EVgo charger behind a J. C. Penney at the Mall of Victor Valley in Victorville, Calif., on Interstate 15.

Her two-year-old car cannot charge as fast as more recent models — for each hour it was plugged in, the car’s range increased by just 10 miles. 

All told, her i3 travels less than 120 miles on a full charge, though it also has a gasoline engine that can add 66 miles.

. . . .

Heading back to Los Angeles, we met Tiaerra Young, a Chevy Bolt owner, at the same station. 

Though she was more satisfied with her vehicle, she was huddled under a blanket at 11 p.m. because it would take about an hour to charge her car.

Ms. Young estimated that it would take her and a friend a full day to get to Las Vegas from her home near San Francisco, a trip that would require about 10 hours in a conventional car. 

“It’s been fun, though,” she said cheerfully, noting that they had watched three movies at their charging stops, including the Beyoncé documentary “Homecoming” and “The Emperor’s New Groove.

. . . .

Engineers haven’t created batteries that can store as much energy as a gas tank, or be filled as quickly. 

While costs have come down a lot, batteries remain expensive, adding to the cost of the car, and they degrade over time, which means maximum mileage might decrease.

These cars have been held back partly by decisions that automakers and other businesses have made. 

Companies have often gone their own way, rather than adopting universal standards. 

Tesla, for example, has built more than 1,500 charging stations around the world, but they can fill up only Tesla cars; Teslas can generally be fueled at stations built by other businesses.

There is not a single standard for plugs, so some electric-car drivers have to carry multiple adapters. 

Nor is there a single approach for how car owners pay for electricity, with some companies charging by the power consumed — as with a home utility bill — and others charging by the time spent at the charger.

. . . .

Charging on average costs $10 for about 200 miles, depending on the car, or about half the typical cost of gasoline for that distance, according to AAA. 

Our experience was not as economical: We spent about $67 on electricity, perhaps $10 less than we might have on gas.

. . . .

All told, the United States has about 24,000 public charging stations, with an average of fewer than three charging posts. 

By comparison, there are about 150,000 gas stations, some with dozens of pumps.

. . . .

Chargers are classified by how quickly they dispense electricity. 

A Level 1 charger is about as fast as a standard wall outlet and can take a day or more to fill a car battery, depending on the model. 

A Level 2 charger, akin to a 240-volt outlet used for dryers and other large appliances, can replenish a car battery in a few hours. 

Level 3 chargers can achieve similar results in a fraction of the time but can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The fastest Level 3 public chargers available fill up electric cars like the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model S in 30 minutes to an hour.

Later this year, Porsche will start selling a Taycan for $130,000 that it claims can be topped up in 10 minutes at newer, faster Level 3 chargers. 

Companies like EVgo and Electrify America have begun installing such chargers.

But in practice, car chargers are often much slower than their advertised top speeds, especially when many cars are plugged in at the same time. 

That’s because banks of chargers typically share a single power source.

John de Lancie, the Hollywood actor, didn’t realize that limitation until he recently showed up at Tesla’s charging station in Hawthorne, Calif., with his Model S for the first time. 

When he arrived, one charger was available among eight stalls. 

He was lucky. 

Tesla owners have been known to wait an hour or more for a charger to open up.

Media overreaction?

Stories are now appearing that indicate Trump - who is not Bolton - is not looking for war or even for some sort of tit for tat.

And that he does not seek and does not foresee regime change.

Trump downplays Iran tensions after drone shot down

Trump, the anti-globalist, re-emerges.

President Donald Trump downplayed the dramatic escalation in tensionswith Iran Thursday, after the downing of a US drone near the Persian Gulf sparked fears that tensions with Tehran could spill over into confrontation.

Calling the shootdown "a new wrinkle, a new fly in the ointment," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office he finds it "hard to believe it was intentional."

Earlier in the day, Trump had tweeted that "Iran made a very big mistake!" as he and his national security officials huddled to weigh possible responses. 

Some lawmakers called for restraint and others warned Iran should prepare for "severe pain."

Trump's ominous -- if vague -- tweet came after Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it had shot down an "intruding American spy drone" after it entered into the country's territory Thursday. 

Trump told reporters later Thursday morning that the drone had been over international waters. 

Asked if the US would respond or go to war, Trump said, "you'll find out."

"Probably Iran made a mistake. I would imagine it was a general or somebody who made a mistake in shooting that drone down," Trump said during an exchange with CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

"I find it hard to believe it was intentional. I think it could've been somebody that was loose and stupid," Trump said, noting that the drone was unarmed and had no pilot. 

"It was a very foolish move, that I can tell you."

Trump assured that the situation is "all going to work out." 

And with the 2020 elections looming, he picked up a refrain from his first campaign, telling reporters: "I want to get out of these endless wars, I campaign on that."

. . . .

At the same time, Trump has sought to calm nerves, and continues to privately express wariness at wading into another foreign conflict.

"Don't worry about a thing," Trump told interviewer Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday evening. 

"Everything's under control."

. . . .

In meetings with his national security team over the past several weeks, Trump has maintained his skepticism toward going to war with Iran, telling advisers he isn't interested in sending American troops into another engagement in the Middle East.

He has also told his team that regime change should not be in the cards -- a position he reiterated during a news conference in Japan at the end of May.

That stance has sometimes been at odds with other members of his national security team, including Bolton and Pompeo. 

Both have offered hawkish warnings to Iran over its behavior.

So this is better?

House votes to repeal Authorization for Use of Military Force

So now anything Trump does, or anyone else does, of a military nature in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, or anywhere at all against Jihaders and terrorists, even al-Qaeda itself, is without congressional sanction and hence unconstitutional?

So this is actually what Democrats want?

Or is it just posturing to satisfy, well, whom, exactly?

And how are Democrats supposed to plausibly criticize Trump for undermining US globalism while themselves pulling the rug out from under US efforts to respond to terrorists and Jihaders "over there rather than over here"?

What if ISIS does a comeback?

Not to worry.

Trump won't give a shit, nor will the Republicans in the congress.

How to lie when you tell the truth, and walk away all innocent like

Ocasio-Cortez compares ICE detention to 'concentration camps'

"The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday night in an emotional Instagram live video. 

"They are concentration camps," she reiterated to her viewers, who flooded the feed with comments.

Check a dictionary.

She is strictly correct, on the most general and innocuous definition of the term.

So used, the expression does not mean "death camp" and there is no necessary implication of any particular inhumanity of fact or intention.

And in truth our border detention centers seem to compare well with refugee camps in Europe or elsewhere, packed with illegal migrants as they are.

But dictionaries also note the term is sometimes used specifically to refer to the Nazi death or work camps or camps just as bad, or more generally to camps in which conditions are notably harsh and inhumane.

And from her remarks that is the sort of meaning she intended, and she extended the claim to cover the US internment camps where the Japanese were held during WW2.

And that makes her an egregious liar about both the border camps and the internment camps.

A flap ensued, with her devout left-winger defenders doubling down stupidly, ignorantly, or just fatuously.

The more she runs her mouth the more absurd she reveals herself to be and the less I like her.

Thank the Times for this

18 Questions. 21 Democrats. Here’s What They Said.

Their news stories are nowadays thoroughly given to values-driven journalism.

That is to say they are full of propaganda, editorializing, opinionating, and booing/hurrahing in an egregiously partisan fashion, just like Fox or even Breitbart stories.

But they are still all over it.

Where is Joe Biden?

He refused to participate despite repeated requests going back to late April, says the Times.

Only he refused.

Check out the answers regarding the 2nd Amendment (pretty cowardly, on the whole), the death penalty (almost all are frankly opposed), and court packing (not many support this and Bullock even talks about insuring the court "isn't reflective of politics", so he's a moron or an utter fraud.).

It is interesting the question about having a billion dollars is even there.

The answers show the candidates are mostly OK with capitalism and inequality per se, and are comfortable with the idea that one can fairly and justly acquire and keep a billion dollars.

Bernie dodges and says we have way too much inequality.

Gillibrand says no, outright.

O'Rourke is close to that.

Biden doesn't understand the history or our country? Really?

Or is it Harris, Booker, and the others who are seizing an opportunity to pretend they don't get it and lambaste the front runner though he doesn't deserve it and they know perfectly well he doesn't?

They haven't put a dent in his lead and, desperate, they are trying to paint him as a racist, as one who too much tolerates racism, or just a doddering old fool well past his use-by date.

And, really, De Blasio gets to decide what is acceptable in the Democratic Party?

De blasio?

Joe Biden and Democratic Rivals Exchange Attacks Over His Remarks on Segregationists

Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday lashed out at his Democratic rivals who had condemned his fond recollections of working relationships with segregationists in the Senate, declining to apologize and defending his record on civil rights. 

The angry exchange shattered, at least for now, the relative comity that had marked the Democratic presidential primary.

Until Wednesday, many of the Democratic candidates had largely taken oblique swipes at Mr. Biden, while the former vice president sought to stay above the fray, training his sights on President Trump instead.

But a day after he invoked the 1970s, an era when he said he could find common ground with other senators — even virulent segregationists — his opponents offered their sharpest criticism yet.

Senator Kamala Harris of California said the former vice president “doesn’t understand the history of our country and the dark history of our country,” and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said Mr. Biden should immediately apologize for using segregationists to make a point about civility in the Senate.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Booker, who are both black, were not alone: Other candidates including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont also weighed in with criticism. 

And even some of Mr. Biden’s senior campaign advisers were privately shaken by his remarks.

Yet for much of the day, Mr. Biden and his campaign appeared publicly unbowed and intent on defending, or at least explaining, his worldview of politics, which is rooted in his early days in the Senate when, he said, legislators who disagreed still worked together. 

He cited two defenders of segregation, Senators James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman E. Talmadge of Georgia, to make that point.

“Apologize for what?” he said Wednesday evening before appearing at a fund-raiser in Maryland, adding that he “could not have disagreed with Jim Eastland more.”

Asked by reporters about Mr. Booker’s demand that he apologize for his remarks, Mr. Biden said: “Cory should apologize. He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career, period, period, period.”

Biden, Recalling ‘Civility’ in Senate, Invokes Two Segregationist Senators

Mr. Biden, speaking at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City on Tuesday night, stressed the need to “be able to reach consensus under our system,” and cast his decades in the Senate as a time of relative comity. 

His remarks come as some in his party say that Mr. Biden, the former vice president, is too focused on overtures to the right as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination.

On the whole, but not entirely, they are right and he is wrong about that.

Today's Republicans, today's conservatives, today's white racists are not out to preserve a regime, as those guys were back in the day, but to tear one apart.

It makes a difference that he seems blind to.

But any attempt to paint B as a racist or as soft on racism or racists is crap.

At the event, Mr. Biden noted that he served with the late Senators James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, both Democrats who were staunch opponents of desegregation. 

Mr. Eastland was the powerful chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Mr. Biden entered the chamber in 1973.

“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” said Mr. Biden, 76, slipping briefly into a Southern accent, according to a pool report from the fund-raiser. 

“He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”

He called Mr. Talmadge “one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys.”

“Well guess what?” Mr. Biden continued. 

“At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. 

"But today you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”

But he is not entirely wrong.

Think of budgets, the debt ceiling, and a multitude of other things that cannot get passed, even now, without a degree of cooperation across the aisle.

And nobody is going to do any sort of deal on immigration without cooperation.

On Wednesday, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, one of two black candidates running for president, said Mr. Biden was “wrong” to use segregationists as examples for bringing the country together.

. . . .

Senator Kamala Harris of California, who is also black, said she found Mr. Biden’s comments concerning. 

“If those men had their way, I wouldn’t be in the United States Senate and on this elevator right now,” she said, referring to Mr. Eastland and Mr. Talmadge, according to ABC News.

Other presidential candidates weighed in as well. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York posted a photo of his multiracial family on Twitter and cited a racial epithet that Mr. Eastland used.

“It’s 2019 & @JoeBiden is longing for the good old days of ‘civility’ typified by James Eastland,” Mr. de Blasio wrote. 

“It’s past time for apologies or evolution from @JoeBiden. He repeatedly demonstrates that he is out of step with the values of the modern Democratic Party.”

De Blasio, especially, is way, way out of line.

The truth is that none of them is radical enough about methods, about killing the filibuster, about packing the court, to even stave off disaster (the GOP Supremes will do all the harm to the progressive state - the welfare state, the regulatory state, Social Security, etc. - that they dare and can, once the threat and maybe reality of a Dem presidency are past), let alone enable progress with anything remotely resembling the AOC/Bernie or Warren agenda.

They are not willing to do what they have to do to enable them to be a whit more effective than Joe would be.

It's all just posing, posturing, and bullshit if you haven't got the balls to do what has to be done.

War approaching?

Wesley Clark on MSNBC just repeated the peacenik, anti-FDR canard that US sanctions on the Japanese economy left that country no choice but to go to war with us.

Ballacks, the sanctions were intended to inhibit further expansion of Japanese conquests in the Far East, and had the Japanese been willing peace could have been preserved.

They just weren't, committed as they were to expansion of the Japanese Empire to include lots of territory then parts of various European Empires, and more of China, and other stray bits.

He'll be repeating that other canard, rightly and indignantly rejected by William L. Shirer, that the Versailles Treaty was so draconian that it forced the poor abused Germans, and poor abused Hitler, into war against the quondam allies.

Of course, no one complains about the far more draconian post WW2 European settlement that so prominently featured both the truncation and partition of Germany and kept the peace right up through the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and Communism in Eastern Europe.

Phooey.

All the same, Bolton has wanted an outright war of regime change against Iran for decades, and has got the moron in the White House to reject O's nuclear deal without cause and impose so draconian a regime of sanctions that the Mullahs genuinely fear an internal collapse unless they can get the US to back off.

Hence the rising military tensions.

Iran Shoots Down a U.S. Drone, Escalating Tensions

Iran shot down a United States surveillance drone early Thursday, both nations said, but they differed on the crucial issue of whether the aircraft had violated Iranian airspace, in the latest escalation in tensions that have raised fears of war between the two countries.

Iranian officials said that the drone was over Iran, which the American military denied — an important distinction in determining who was at fault — and each side accused the other of being the aggressor.

Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?

Or IKE's lies about the U2 flown by Francis Gary Powers?

Of course the US could be telling the truth, and it could come down to a disagreement about the extent of Iran's territorial waters.

But we all now who is aroused in the White House.

Iran’s Gambit: Force the World to Rein In Trump

The Trump administration has portrayed Iran’s recent moves, including its threat to resume stockpiling low-enriched uranium in violation of the nuclear agreement, as proof that Iran is an implacable rogue state, bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, that can be contained only through the threat of military force.

Iran has indeed often acted as a regional provocateur, but in this case some nonpartisan experts on Iran and on United States policy in the Middle East see something different.

They say Iran appears to be pursuing a provocative but calibrated strategy to counter what its leaders see as a potentially existential American threat — as severe economic sanctions strangle the economy and cut off vital oil revenues — as well as to preserve the nuclear agreement.

That would be an "existential threat" to the regime, not the nation.

And because Iran cannot defy American might on its own, it may be hoping to coerce European and Asian nations to rein in the United States.

The result, the experts say, is an Iranian strategy, rational but risky, that increases the likelihood of the nuclear agreement’s collapse and even of outright war in the hopes of compelling the world to avert both.