Echo Trump’s Tough Talk, or Lift Tariffs? Democrats Clash Over Trade
Neither Obama nor any other Democrat is or has lately been a real free trader in the history Republican style.
He is a fair-trader, which means a free-trader with add-ons to protect the environment and workers and otherwise advance social and other liberal goals having nothing much to do with trade per se, and nothing at all to do with protecting American jobs.
The whole tariff thing, however, is true-blue protectionism, and so both stupid and harmful to those slated to go unprotected.
It was the subject of trade, which has become the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s agenda, that most animated the candidates.
They argued over whether to revisit Obama-era multilateralism or double down on Mr. Trump’s brand of economic isolationism, which has upended how both Republicans and Democrats think about international commerce.
The most striking example of the fissures came during a heated exchange between Senator Elizabeth Warren, a progressive from Massachusetts, and John Delaney, a moderate former congressman from Maryland, during an argument over what should be done about Mr. Trump’s steel tariffs.
“I’m the only one running for president who actually supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Mr. Delaney said, referring to the 12-nation trade pact that Mr. Trump abandoned upon taking office.
“President Obama was right about that. We should be getting back in that.”
Deriding Ms. Warren as an isolationist on trade, he added: “We have to engage.”
Ms. Warren unveiled a trade plan this week that included a raft of strict preconditions on human rights and environmental standards that would be required for kicking off any negotiations with other countries.
On Tuesday night, she vowed to sideline big corporations and make sure that unions, small farmers and environmentalists took priority in future trade talks.
. . . .
For good measure, Ms. Warren went on to assail Mr. Trump’s rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which she called Nafta 2.0, as a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would lead to higher drug prices.
Not to be outdone, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said that he would stop giving military contracts to companies that did not employ American workers to manufacture their products.
“If anybody here thinks that corporate America gives one damn about the average American worker, you’re mistaken,” said Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
“If they can save 5 cents to Mexico or China or Vietnam, that’s what they’ll do.”
As can be easily seen, he really doesn't approve the way capitalism works. The way it essentially works.
<snip>
The more moderate Democrats were more cautious in their attacks on Mr. Trump’s stewardship of the economy, largely taking issue with sluggish income growth and what they called the unfairness of the tax code while criticizing his methods on trade.
For instance, when asked whether they would repeal Mr. Trump’s tariffs on steel imports, most of the 10 candidates hedged.
. . . .
Despite the strength of the economy, some economists argue that it has thrived in spite of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
The trade tensions caused by his tariffs are widely acknowledged to have been a drag on economic growth.
The federal budget deficit has increased an average of 15 percent for each fiscal year he has been in office.
Moreover, Mr. Trump’s handling of trade negotiations has called into question his deal-making prowess.
The overhaul of Nafta is languishing in Congress, where it must be ratified.
A new trade war with Europe is brewing over digital taxes.
Negotiations with China, which resumed this week in Shanghai, appear to be making little progress.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Demography and destiny
Can the Dems win by abandoning the old to the GOP and trying to motivate the young?
Maybe not.
When It Comes to 2020, Up Is Down and Down Is Up
The Democrats’ ability to wrest back Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa faces a steep hurdle.
The population of the Rust Belt is aging at a much faster pace than the rest of the country.
Exit polls show that people over the age of 50 put Donald Trump in the White House, and the Midwest has them in droves.
In five states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin — the number of 18-to-35-year-olds, the most liberal age group, grew by 56,448 between 2016 and 2018, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings.
That growth pales in comparison with the rising number of people 65 and older, a core of Republican support, which grew by 685,005 — an advantage of better than 12 old people for each young person.
Nationwide, from 2016 to 2018, 18-to-35-year-olds grew by 677,853 while the 65 and over population grew by 3,207,209 — a smaller advantage of 4.7 old people for each young person, according to Muro.
But still . . . .
Maybe not.
When It Comes to 2020, Up Is Down and Down Is Up
The Democrats’ ability to wrest back Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa faces a steep hurdle.
The population of the Rust Belt is aging at a much faster pace than the rest of the country.
Exit polls show that people over the age of 50 put Donald Trump in the White House, and the Midwest has them in droves.
In five states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin — the number of 18-to-35-year-olds, the most liberal age group, grew by 56,448 between 2016 and 2018, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings.
That growth pales in comparison with the rising number of people 65 and older, a core of Republican support, which grew by 685,005 — an advantage of better than 12 old people for each young person.
Nationwide, from 2016 to 2018, 18-to-35-year-olds grew by 677,853 while the 65 and over population grew by 3,207,209 — a smaller advantage of 4.7 old people for each young person, according to Muro.
But still . . . .
With boring predictability . . . .
. . . . the Dem blogs this morning are crowing a big victory for their long-established favorites, the beloved leftists, over the klutzy, hated DINOs on the stage, heretofore known as "moderates", "centrists", or . . . "Democrats".
As for Chuck Todd "using Republican framing" isn't that what he's supposed to do?
Or did you think he was supposed to lob softballs right into the zone all night?
Oddly, the Times' headline - not so much, the story - is the least left-spinning of those in Dem media I have seen, today.
Sanders and Warren Battle Accusations of ‘Fairy Tale’ Promises as Intraparty Rift Flares
There was former Representative John Delaney of Maryland, who accused Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren of making “fairy tale” promises; Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who lamented liberal “wish-list economics”; and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, imploring the left not to overreach and “FedEx the election to Donald Trump.”
Arguing in somewhat subtler terms was Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who declined multiple chances to lash her liberal rivals by name but questioned the viability of their progressive stances on health care and education.
“I have bold ideas,” Ms. Klobuchar said, “but they are grounded in reality.”
With Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren refusing to yield an inch, the debate laid bare the stark choice before Democratic primary voters: whether to embrace an agenda of transformational economic change in an effort to motivate young and nonwhite voters, or to proceed more cautiously by embracing more incremental appeals that could win over moderates.
Or, here's a radical thought, the Dem voters could support candidates whose advertised agendas comport with their (the voters') own politics rather than so obviously playing bare-naked horse-race politics, treating agendas and aspirations as of no intrinsic importance, at all.
Though of course each group insisted a candidate (and party) with their type of agenda would do better in the general against the Duce (and the GOP on the whole).
<snip>
The most protracted exchanges of the night, and by far the most substantive ones, concerned Mr. Sanders’s signature proposal to replace private health insurance with a single-payer system of the kind employed in Canada and a number of European countries.
Mr. Delaney and the other moderates attacked the proposal from the first minutes of the debate, calling it a politically toxic idea that would void the health care plans of union members and of employees of private businesses.
“We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction, and telling half the country, who has private health insurance, that their health insurance is illegal,” Mr. Delaney said.
Mr. Sanders defended his plan ferociously, with periodic help from Ms. Warren.
He cast Mr. Delaney and other Democratic doubters as champions of an indefensible system, and argued that opponents of the single-payer format tended to brand it with traits — like costliness and unpredictability — that the American health care system already possesses.
“The answer,” Mr. Sanders said, “is to get rid of the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies, move to ‘Medicare for all.’”
Spoken like "profit" is a dirty word, in the manner of a true socialist in the real sense of the word, entailing and usually motivated by anti-capitalism.
Visceral, in Sanders' case.
Both he and Ms. Warren depicted skeptics of single-payer health care as being in league with the G.O.P.: Mr. Sanders accused a CNN moderator, Jake Tapper, of using a “Republican talking point” when raising questions about his plan, and noted that “the health care industry will be advertising tonight on this program.”
In a similar complaint, Ms. Warren urged Democrats to “stop using Republican talking points” on the issue.
. . . .
The harshest counterattack on the moderates, however, may not have come from Mr. Sanders or Ms. Warren.
“I wonder why you’re Democrats,” said Marianne Williamson, the author and spiritualist. “You think there’s something wrong about using the instruments of government to help people.”
. . . .
The same center-versus-left divide evident on health care was also on display as the candidates clashed over trade and immigration, and whether some of the proposals offered by the liberal candidates would represent a boon to Mr. Trump.
“We got a hundred thousand people showing up at the border right now,” said Mr. Bullock. “If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that.”
Turning to Ms. Warren, he accused her of “playing into Donald Trump’s hands” for wanting to make illegal immigration a civil penalty and seeking to provide federal benefits to undocumented migrants.
Ms. Warren fired back that “seeking refuge, seeking asylum” is “not a crime.”
A similar crossfire unfolded on trade, as Mr. Hickenlooper and Mr. Delaney accused Ms. Warren of pursuing a trade agenda closer to Mr. Trump’s than to that of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama.
Ms. Warren’s agenda, Mr. Delaney said, “would isolate America’s economy around the world.”
. . . .
The evening seemed to expose the rifts in the party that might ultimately define the Democratic race once the party’s primary field narrows, and Mr. Biden comes face to face in future debates with Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren.
. . . .
Ms. Warren ignored a question about her boasts that she’s a proud capitalist — a barely-veiled contrast with Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist — and used the prompt instead to talk of her battles with Wall Street.
Mr. Sanders even praised his colleague at one point, echoing her tough talk on corporate America.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “is absolutely right.”
Of wolves in sheep's clothing, one thinks, thinking about her protestations of non-socialism, of commitment to capitalism.
What we are looking at is a small group of fierce anti-capitalists who really are socialists in their hearts masquerading as capitalism-preferring and -loyal progressives, vs a coterie of actual progressives whom they are trying to portray as Republican bare-knuckle reactionaries.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Marooned Together on Fantasy Island
Of course, Bernie and Pocahontas are perfectly right that those candidates who belabored their agendas as fantasies oppose them, and would react with horror if they turned out not to be so fantastic, after all.
And the same is generally true, I suppose, in the commentariat.
But I am not at all sure about Frank Bruni.
As for Chuck Todd "using Republican framing" isn't that what he's supposed to do?
Or did you think he was supposed to lob softballs right into the zone all night?
Oddly, the Times' headline - not so much, the story - is the least left-spinning of those in Dem media I have seen, today.
Sanders and Warren Battle Accusations of ‘Fairy Tale’ Promises as Intraparty Rift Flares
There was former Representative John Delaney of Maryland, who accused Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren of making “fairy tale” promises; Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who lamented liberal “wish-list economics”; and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, imploring the left not to overreach and “FedEx the election to Donald Trump.”
Arguing in somewhat subtler terms was Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who declined multiple chances to lash her liberal rivals by name but questioned the viability of their progressive stances on health care and education.
“I have bold ideas,” Ms. Klobuchar said, “but they are grounded in reality.”
With Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren refusing to yield an inch, the debate laid bare the stark choice before Democratic primary voters: whether to embrace an agenda of transformational economic change in an effort to motivate young and nonwhite voters, or to proceed more cautiously by embracing more incremental appeals that could win over moderates.
Or, here's a radical thought, the Dem voters could support candidates whose advertised agendas comport with their (the voters') own politics rather than so obviously playing bare-naked horse-race politics, treating agendas and aspirations as of no intrinsic importance, at all.
Though of course each group insisted a candidate (and party) with their type of agenda would do better in the general against the Duce (and the GOP on the whole).
<snip>
The most protracted exchanges of the night, and by far the most substantive ones, concerned Mr. Sanders’s signature proposal to replace private health insurance with a single-payer system of the kind employed in Canada and a number of European countries.
Mr. Delaney and the other moderates attacked the proposal from the first minutes of the debate, calling it a politically toxic idea that would void the health care plans of union members and of employees of private businesses.
“We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction, and telling half the country, who has private health insurance, that their health insurance is illegal,” Mr. Delaney said.
Mr. Sanders defended his plan ferociously, with periodic help from Ms. Warren.
He cast Mr. Delaney and other Democratic doubters as champions of an indefensible system, and argued that opponents of the single-payer format tended to brand it with traits — like costliness and unpredictability — that the American health care system already possesses.
“The answer,” Mr. Sanders said, “is to get rid of the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies, move to ‘Medicare for all.’”
Spoken like "profit" is a dirty word, in the manner of a true socialist in the real sense of the word, entailing and usually motivated by anti-capitalism.
Visceral, in Sanders' case.
Both he and Ms. Warren depicted skeptics of single-payer health care as being in league with the G.O.P.: Mr. Sanders accused a CNN moderator, Jake Tapper, of using a “Republican talking point” when raising questions about his plan, and noted that “the health care industry will be advertising tonight on this program.”
In a similar complaint, Ms. Warren urged Democrats to “stop using Republican talking points” on the issue.
. . . .
The harshest counterattack on the moderates, however, may not have come from Mr. Sanders or Ms. Warren.
“I wonder why you’re Democrats,” said Marianne Williamson, the author and spiritualist. “You think there’s something wrong about using the instruments of government to help people.”
. . . .
The same center-versus-left divide evident on health care was also on display as the candidates clashed over trade and immigration, and whether some of the proposals offered by the liberal candidates would represent a boon to Mr. Trump.
“We got a hundred thousand people showing up at the border right now,” said Mr. Bullock. “If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that.”
Turning to Ms. Warren, he accused her of “playing into Donald Trump’s hands” for wanting to make illegal immigration a civil penalty and seeking to provide federal benefits to undocumented migrants.
Ms. Warren fired back that “seeking refuge, seeking asylum” is “not a crime.”
A similar crossfire unfolded on trade, as Mr. Hickenlooper and Mr. Delaney accused Ms. Warren of pursuing a trade agenda closer to Mr. Trump’s than to that of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama.
Ms. Warren’s agenda, Mr. Delaney said, “would isolate America’s economy around the world.”
. . . .
The evening seemed to expose the rifts in the party that might ultimately define the Democratic race once the party’s primary field narrows, and Mr. Biden comes face to face in future debates with Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren.
. . . .
Ms. Warren ignored a question about her boasts that she’s a proud capitalist — a barely-veiled contrast with Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist — and used the prompt instead to talk of her battles with Wall Street.
Mr. Sanders even praised his colleague at one point, echoing her tough talk on corporate America.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “is absolutely right.”
Of wolves in sheep's clothing, one thinks, thinking about her protestations of non-socialism, of commitment to capitalism.
What we are looking at is a small group of fierce anti-capitalists who really are socialists in their hearts masquerading as capitalism-preferring and -loyal progressives, vs a coterie of actual progressives whom they are trying to portray as Republican bare-knuckle reactionaries.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Marooned Together on Fantasy Island
Of course, Bernie and Pocahontas are perfectly right that those candidates who belabored their agendas as fantasies oppose them, and would react with horror if they turned out not to be so fantastic, after all.
And the same is generally true, I suppose, in the commentariat.
But I am not at all sure about Frank Bruni.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Will I watch the debates?
Sorry, not really a fan of blood sports.
And, that aside, debates are not the best way to learn about what the candidates or their parties favor or oppose.
And, that aside, debates are not the best way to learn about what the candidates or their parties favor or oppose.
The real Baltimore
Donald Trump faces wave of criticism over 'bigoted and racist' attack on Baltimore
Pretty much how Marylanders feel about the place, both those who live in the city and those who don't, and probably not only whites but blacks, too.
Baltimore has the fifth highest murder rate among US cities this year.
It is the ninth most dangerous US city, this year and the 19th poorest.
The beautiful inner harbor is a thin gentrified layer between the bay and dangerous, mostly black slums.
And the Baltimore riots, the response of black pundits and local black authorities, and the final court dispositions of all those absurd prosecutions tell you a whole lot about crime, race, and the power of the rabble in that city.
Still, hardly Cummings' fault.
Pretty much how Marylanders feel about the place, both those who live in the city and those who don't, and probably not only whites but blacks, too.
Baltimore has the fifth highest murder rate among US cities this year.
It is the ninth most dangerous US city, this year and the 19th poorest.
The beautiful inner harbor is a thin gentrified layer between the bay and dangerous, mostly black slums.
And the Baltimore riots, the response of black pundits and local black authorities, and the final court dispositions of all those absurd prosecutions tell you a whole lot about crime, race, and the power of the rabble in that city.
Still, hardly Cummings' fault.
Boris refuses talks
Johnson refuses to meet EU leaders unless they scrap backstop
Trying to scare them with the prospect of a no-deal Brexit?
Or does he crave a no-deal Brexit?
A bit of both?
Trying to scare them with the prospect of a no-deal Brexit?
Or does he crave a no-deal Brexit?
A bit of both?
C&L in the lead, this morning.
The Russians are coming and racism, racism!
That's all they've got, the left-wing-noise-machine.
A furious shit-storm of both.
That's all they've got, the left-wing-noise-machine.
A furious shit-storm of both.
Monday, July 29, 2019
So, not a globalist, that means, I think.
Trump's intelligence pick is attempt to 'neutralise' spy agencies, say ex-officials
John Ratcliffe’s nomination follows announcement Dan Coats will leave after disagreements with Trump over policy and intelligence
Donald Trump’s nomination of an inexperienced but loyal partisan to become the director of national intelligence (DNI) is an attempt to “neutralise” US spy agencies as an independent and objective voice on global affairs, former intelligence officials warned.
Oh, is that what they are? They don't have their own, Cold War II, globalist agenda?
<snip>
“Trump is consolidating his personal control over the intelligence community,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA intelligence officer. He said the current directors of the CIA and FBI have found their hands tied increasingly when it comes to accurate intelligence assessment, by risk of being fired for something at odds with Trump’s views.
“I fear that there is a slow takeover of the norms and procedures of governance by this president, amassing unprecedented executive power,” Mowatt-Larssen, now at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, added.
“To do that he needs to neutralise or at least silence the intelligence community. He has been doing that for three years, but this takes it to the new level.”
The story emphasizes Ratcliffe is an ardent, Hannity-like Trumpist trumpet.
The idea is that he will corrupt the intelligence community and heap discredit upon its clear-eyed, candid, and disinterested vision.
Um.
But that isn't really the main issue, is it?
John Ratcliffe’s nomination follows announcement Dan Coats will leave after disagreements with Trump over policy and intelligence
Donald Trump’s nomination of an inexperienced but loyal partisan to become the director of national intelligence (DNI) is an attempt to “neutralise” US spy agencies as an independent and objective voice on global affairs, former intelligence officials warned.
Oh, is that what they are? They don't have their own, Cold War II, globalist agenda?
<snip>
“Trump is consolidating his personal control over the intelligence community,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA intelligence officer. He said the current directors of the CIA and FBI have found their hands tied increasingly when it comes to accurate intelligence assessment, by risk of being fired for something at odds with Trump’s views.
“I fear that there is a slow takeover of the norms and procedures of governance by this president, amassing unprecedented executive power,” Mowatt-Larssen, now at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, added.
“To do that he needs to neutralise or at least silence the intelligence community. He has been doing that for three years, but this takes it to the new level.”
The story emphasizes Ratcliffe is an ardent, Hannity-like Trumpist trumpet.
The idea is that he will corrupt the intelligence community and heap discredit upon its clear-eyed, candid, and disinterested vision.
Um.
But that isn't really the main issue, is it?
This was on TV?
Bryan Magee, Who Brought Philosophy to British TV, Dies at 89
On the television program “Men of Ideas,” he interviewed prominent philosophers of his time, including Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch and Noam Chomsky.
“There is, throughout television, an urge to translate all subject matter into entertainment, and because this militates against the making of serious demands on the viewer, the result is a common refusal to confront the making of difficult things clear as a task to be tackled,” he wrote in the introduction to his book “Men of Ideas,”in 1979, which was based on the television show.
. . . .
His programs on the BBC, “The Great Philosophers” and “Men of Ideas,” did not look like much. One critic described them as “two boffins on a sofa.” Mr. Magee and a contemporary philosopher would sit on a sofa against a gray or brown background, exploring the seminal works of the likes of Plato and Wittgenstein, or talking about modern philosophy.
But the format gave scores of students and others a concise and effective introduction to philosophy that left a lasting impression.
Mr. Magee also wrote and edited 23 books, including memoirs, social commentary, a volume of poetry and a novel.
On the television program “Men of Ideas,” he interviewed prominent philosophers of his time, including Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch and Noam Chomsky.
“There is, throughout television, an urge to translate all subject matter into entertainment, and because this militates against the making of serious demands on the viewer, the result is a common refusal to confront the making of difficult things clear as a task to be tackled,” he wrote in the introduction to his book “Men of Ideas,”in 1979, which was based on the television show.
. . . .
His programs on the BBC, “The Great Philosophers” and “Men of Ideas,” did not look like much. One critic described them as “two boffins on a sofa.” Mr. Magee and a contemporary philosopher would sit on a sofa against a gray or brown background, exploring the seminal works of the likes of Plato and Wittgenstein, or talking about modern philosophy.
But the format gave scores of students and others a concise and effective introduction to philosophy that left a lasting impression.
Mr. Magee also wrote and edited 23 books, including memoirs, social commentary, a volume of poetry and a novel.
“The Story of Philosophy” and “The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy” were among his most popular works, providing generations of students with a summary of the principal schools of thought.
. . . .
Among his later works was “Ultimate Questions,” which examined some of the hardest questions confronting humankind, such as “do we cease to exist when we die?”
“The future is full,” he wrote. “We just do not yet know what it is. The events that will fill it are as concrete, factual and specific as those that fill our past.”
“Each one of us has no choice but to live the whole of his life in his own little bit of time. That is his ration, his all. In life as we know it, time is the cruellest, the most lethal of all the forms of our limitation.”
. . . .
Among his later works was “Ultimate Questions,” which examined some of the hardest questions confronting humankind, such as “do we cease to exist when we die?”
“The future is full,” he wrote. “We just do not yet know what it is. The events that will fill it are as concrete, factual and specific as those that fill our past.”
“Each one of us has no choice but to live the whole of his life in his own little bit of time. That is his ration, his all. In life as we know it, time is the cruellest, the most lethal of all the forms of our limitation.”
Murder is a political tool of authoritarians
And as natural as breathing to an ex-KGB man.
Fears of Navalny Poisoning Are Rooted in Previous Attacks on Kremlin Foes
Mr. Navalny, 43, the most prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin and his government, was rushed to the hospital on Sunday from his jail cell, suffering from swelling and hives, which officials described as an allergic reaction.
He was sentenced last week to 30 days in jail for organizing an illegal protest, days before a demonstration he had called drew thousands of people in Moscow on Saturday.
Dr. Vasilyeva, who had treated him previously, said on Sunday that Mr. Navalny might have been poisoned with an unknown chemical substance.
The Interfax news agency quoted a doctor at the government hospital where he was admitted as saying that he had suffered from an attack of hives, but had improved.
Unease among his fellow opposition members and supporters stemmed from the Kremlin’s long history of eliminating its opponents, often by poisoning them.
Mr. Putin has tried to build an image of a powerful, united Russia, and anyone who would undermine that strength or point out that much of the country lives in poverty is often the target of official ire.
Independent journalists, rights advocates, opposition politicians, government whistle-blowers and others are smeared in the media, jailed on dubious charges and, in some cases, killed.
Mr. Navalny himself temporarily lost most of the vision in one eye when someone threw a caustic liquid into his face in 2017.
Fears of Navalny Poisoning Are Rooted in Previous Attacks on Kremlin Foes
Mr. Navalny, 43, the most prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin and his government, was rushed to the hospital on Sunday from his jail cell, suffering from swelling and hives, which officials described as an allergic reaction.
He was sentenced last week to 30 days in jail for organizing an illegal protest, days before a demonstration he had called drew thousands of people in Moscow on Saturday.
Dr. Vasilyeva, who had treated him previously, said on Sunday that Mr. Navalny might have been poisoned with an unknown chemical substance.
The Interfax news agency quoted a doctor at the government hospital where he was admitted as saying that he had suffered from an attack of hives, but had improved.
Unease among his fellow opposition members and supporters stemmed from the Kremlin’s long history of eliminating its opponents, often by poisoning them.
Mr. Putin has tried to build an image of a powerful, united Russia, and anyone who would undermine that strength or point out that much of the country lives in poverty is often the target of official ire.
Independent journalists, rights advocates, opposition politicians, government whistle-blowers and others are smeared in the media, jailed on dubious charges and, in some cases, killed.
Mr. Navalny himself temporarily lost most of the vision in one eye when someone threw a caustic liquid into his face in 2017.
Lying left wing noise machine attacks Trump
As if that could possibly be news.
Trump wrote about rats using language tenants associations use to label white landlords racists, along with white politicians who don't spend tax money coping.
He tweeted, of an area that is very likely rat-infested, that it is rat-infested.
Ever since, the lying left wing noise machine has been claiming he was using "infested" to refer to black people in an act of egregious racism.
What Trump Talks About When He Talks About Infestations
The frightening political history of the word “infest.”
A ridiculous history of blah.
Trump wrote about rats using language tenants associations use to label white landlords racists, along with white politicians who don't spend tax money coping.
He tweeted, of an area that is very likely rat-infested, that it is rat-infested.
Ever since, the lying left wing noise machine has been claiming he was using "infested" to refer to black people in an act of egregious racism.
What Trump Talks About When He Talks About Infestations
The frightening political history of the word “infest.”
A ridiculous history of blah.
Probably true, still, on the whole
Trump Says Al Sharpton ‘Hates Whites’
It takes the Times a lot of column space before it gets to the Tawana Brawley affair, and then it unsurprisingly does not dwell.
It was very hard to believe at the time, and still is, that Rev. Al did not conspire with her and her other attorneys and supporters in an intentional fraud as blatant and egregious as Jussie Smollett's.
And this explanation of the motives of nonwhite hate crime hoaxers is absolutely offensive in its blatant whitewashing.
Here's the scoop on Bozo.
President Trump, after a weekend spent assailing a leading African-American congressman from Baltimore, widened his war on critics of color on Monday morning as he denounced the Rev. Al Sharpton as “a con man” who “Hates Whites & Cops!”
Mr. Trump seemed to be responding to a Twitter post in which Mr. Sharpton showed himself at an airport “headed to Baltimore,” presumably a reference to the president’s attacks on Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Democrat who represents much of Maryland’s largest city.
“I have known Al for 25 years,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter as he reposted Mr. Sharpton’s tweet. “Went to fights with him & Don King, always got along well. He ‘loved Trump!’ He would ask me for favors often. Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops!”
It takes the Times a lot of column space before it gets to the Tawana Brawley affair, and then it unsurprisingly does not dwell.
It was very hard to believe at the time, and still is, that Rev. Al did not conspire with her and her other attorneys and supporters in an intentional fraud as blatant and egregious as Jussie Smollett's.
And this explanation of the motives of nonwhite hate crime hoaxers is absolutely offensive in its blatant whitewashing.
Here's the scoop on Bozo.
President Trump, after a weekend spent assailing a leading African-American congressman from Baltimore, widened his war on critics of color on Monday morning as he denounced the Rev. Al Sharpton as “a con man” who “Hates Whites & Cops!”
Mr. Trump seemed to be responding to a Twitter post in which Mr. Sharpton showed himself at an airport “headed to Baltimore,” presumably a reference to the president’s attacks on Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Democrat who represents much of Maryland’s largest city.
“I have known Al for 25 years,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter as he reposted Mr. Sharpton’s tweet. “Went to fights with him & Don King, always got along well. He ‘loved Trump!’ He would ask me for favors often. Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops!”
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Playing chicken? Or does he just want to shove the blame onto the EU?
UK on course for no-deal Brexit as Johnson rejects EU agreement
God knows what will happen if he calls an election in the fall.
That jackass in charge of Labour is also pro-Brexit, though his party mostly is not.
If both Labor and the Conservatives run as pro-Brexit this could be the end of the era of their political dominance, perhaps putting the Lib-Dems in place of the Tories but whom in place of Labor?
God knows what will happen if he calls an election in the fall.
That jackass in charge of Labour is also pro-Brexit, though his party mostly is not.
If both Labor and the Conservatives run as pro-Brexit this could be the end of the era of their political dominance, perhaps putting the Lib-Dems in place of the Tories but whom in place of Labor?
Unnecessary roughness
Vicious pols just can't help themselves.
It's in their nature, like the scorpion that kills the frog he's riding across the water.
Nixon was ruined by the Watergate break-in, a totally unnecessary "dirty trick" in an election campaign he won by the greatest landslide in American history.
Moscow police arrest hundreds of protesters ahead of election
Putin has enormous popular support, as do his allies.
And so?
It's in their nature, like the scorpion that kills the frog he's riding across the water.
Nixon was ruined by the Watergate break-in, a totally unnecessary "dirty trick" in an election campaign he won by the greatest landslide in American history.
Moscow police arrest hundreds of protesters ahead of election
Putin has enormous popular support, as do his allies.
And so?
Resurgent nationalism
We are told it's about racist and ethno-nationalist reaction to mass immigration from outside Europe and the lesser migrations of Europeans among the nations of the EU.
The ethno-nationalist right believe they can do a better job maintaining national identity - and that's not just about keeping out the blacks - outside the EU than in.
That's a big part of it.
And they are probably right.
We are told that, in most European countries where nationalism is resurgent, it's about the right believing they can keep economies more business-friendly out of the EU than in it.
That's part of it.
But it's all a bit dicey, since some of the left notably think exactly the opposite, that they could take their societies further left outside the EU than in.
And anyway the whole trade picture makes it all a bit foggy; broadly speaking, free trade among the states of the EU is better for business than dealing with a lot of real borders and the various forms of trade restrictions that accompany them.
Last, a really big part of it that seems under-reported is resistance to the cultural revolution taking place in all Christian and post-Christian lands, perhaps only excepting Africa.
The soft spot in the heart of the American right for Putin is all about that.
So it's about abortion, yes, but also gay marriage and other offences against the traditional European morality, which is, of course, the traditional Christian morality.
It's about lots of people believing that they can keep their laws and their culture more in tune with traditional European morality out of the EU than in it.
And how far that is true may vary considerably by country.
PS. Didn't the left media used to rage it was all about Islamophobia?
There was truth to that, too, though it's not as though there wasn't plenty of reason to fear Islam.
Haven't heard much about that in a while, at least in the US.
The ethno-nationalist right believe they can do a better job maintaining national identity - and that's not just about keeping out the blacks - outside the EU than in.
That's a big part of it.
And they are probably right.
We are told that, in most European countries where nationalism is resurgent, it's about the right believing they can keep economies more business-friendly out of the EU than in it.
That's part of it.
But it's all a bit dicey, since some of the left notably think exactly the opposite, that they could take their societies further left outside the EU than in.
And anyway the whole trade picture makes it all a bit foggy; broadly speaking, free trade among the states of the EU is better for business than dealing with a lot of real borders and the various forms of trade restrictions that accompany them.
Last, a really big part of it that seems under-reported is resistance to the cultural revolution taking place in all Christian and post-Christian lands, perhaps only excepting Africa.
The soft spot in the heart of the American right for Putin is all about that.
So it's about abortion, yes, but also gay marriage and other offences against the traditional European morality, which is, of course, the traditional Christian morality.
It's about lots of people believing that they can keep their laws and their culture more in tune with traditional European morality out of the EU than in it.
And how far that is true may vary considerably by country.
PS. Didn't the left media used to rage it was all about Islamophobia?
There was truth to that, too, though it's not as though there wasn't plenty of reason to fear Islam.
Haven't heard much about that in a while, at least in the US.
Friday, July 26, 2019
Boris starts right in
Both yesterday and today, EU leaders told Boris the only deal that is, was, or ever will be available to the UK is the deal offered to May long ago.
And he has insisted it will be either no deal or a new deal, and the new deal must not include the Irish backstop.
This ballocks will continue until October.
Brexit: Boris Johnson mis en garde par Paris et Dublin
Take it or leave it, they said.
And he has insisted it will be either no deal or a new deal, and the new deal must not include the Irish backstop.
This ballocks will continue until October.
Brexit: Boris Johnson mis en garde par Paris et Dublin
Take it or leave it, they said.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
A story that makes Americans hate our medical system
First kidney failure, then a $540,842 bill for dialysis
The wife, a doctor, should absolutely have known better.
But this is nuts, anyway.
Pure gouging.
The wife, a doctor, should absolutely have known better.
But this is nuts, anyway.
Pure gouging.
Teach us to rely on forensics, eh?
When the FBI lab isn't lying to everybody morons or outright liars like this at on the job.
Georgia man's death ruled a homicide after funeral home finds stab wounds
Blood in the house, in the shower, on the rug.
The ME said his arteries exploded, natural causes.
No kidding.
The guy has since resigned, but he'd been on the job for two years.
Georgia man's death ruled a homicide after funeral home finds stab wounds
Blood in the house, in the shower, on the rug.
The ME said his arteries exploded, natural causes.
No kidding.
The guy has since resigned, but he'd been on the job for two years.
Go ahead with impeachment hearings
And take your time.
Take all the time from now until the next election.
Maybe don't start until January 2020.
Make sure the public knows very well everything Bozo and his cohorts have done, right when we need them to know it.
Take all the time from now until the next election.
Maybe don't start until January 2020.
Make sure the public knows very well everything Bozo and his cohorts have done, right when we need them to know it.
Do it or drop it
The death penalty
U.S. to Resume Executions of Death-Row Inmates
The federal government will resume executions of death-row inmates after a nearly two-decade hiatus, Attorney General William P. Barr said Thursday, countering a broad national shift away from the death penalty as public support for it has dwindled.
The announcement reverses what had been essentially a moratorium on the federal death penalty.
Five men convicted of murdering children will be executed in December or January at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Barr said, and additional executions will be scheduled later.
Prosecutors still seek the death penalty in some federal cases, including for Dylann S. Roof, an avowed white supremacist who gunned down nine African-American churchgoers in 2015, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.
But the federal government has only executed only three inmates since it reinstated the death penalty in 1988, including the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, who was put to death in 2001, and Louis Jones Jr., who was executed in 2003 for the rape and murder of a female soldier.
“Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals,” Mr. Barr said in a statement.
“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
U.S. to Resume Executions of Death-Row Inmates
The federal government will resume executions of death-row inmates after a nearly two-decade hiatus, Attorney General William P. Barr said Thursday, countering a broad national shift away from the death penalty as public support for it has dwindled.
The announcement reverses what had been essentially a moratorium on the federal death penalty.
Five men convicted of murdering children will be executed in December or January at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Barr said, and additional executions will be scheduled later.
Prosecutors still seek the death penalty in some federal cases, including for Dylann S. Roof, an avowed white supremacist who gunned down nine African-American churchgoers in 2015, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.
But the federal government has only executed only three inmates since it reinstated the death penalty in 1988, including the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, who was put to death in 2001, and Louis Jones Jr., who was executed in 2003 for the rape and murder of a female soldier.
“Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals,” Mr. Barr said in a statement.
“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
The Times has given Ilhan Omar a pulpit
It Is Not Enough to Condemn Trump’s Racism
She writes in part,
The reasons for weaponizing division are not mysterious.
Racial fear prevents Americans from building community with one another — and community is the lifeblood of a functioning democratic society.
Perfectly true.
Throughout our history, racist language has been used to turn American against American in order to benefit the wealthy elite.
True, sort of, but not the whole truth.
That isn't why Democrats and their allies use it, for example.
Nor does it explain why Democrats constantly accuse Republicans of racism and exaggerate the threat of such racism as there is.
Later, she writes,
The only way to push back is to be unequivocal about our values.
It is not enough to condemn Mr. Trump’s racism.
We must affirmatively confront racist policies — whether the caging of immigrant children at the border or the banning of Muslim immigrants . . .
Have Muslim immigrants been banned?
. . . or the allowing of segregation in public housing.
Is that allowed?
She continues,
The consequences of this fight will not just be felt here at home but around the world.
From the look of things, true, but not very much.
Right-wing nationalism in Hungary, Russia, France, Britain and elsewhere is on the march in ways not seen in decades.
America has been a beacon of democratic ideals for the world.
If we succumb to the fever of right-wing nationalism, it will have consequences far beyond our borders.
Have we not already succumbed?
What more does she fear by way of succumbing?
And what consequences beyond our borders?
Today, democracy is under attack once again.
Where? Not in America, really.
It’s time to respond with the kind of conviction that has made America great before.
By doing what, does she think, besides electing Democrats, I wonder.
She writes in part,
The reasons for weaponizing division are not mysterious.
Racial fear prevents Americans from building community with one another — and community is the lifeblood of a functioning democratic society.
Perfectly true.
Throughout our history, racist language has been used to turn American against American in order to benefit the wealthy elite.
True, sort of, but not the whole truth.
That isn't why Democrats and their allies use it, for example.
Nor does it explain why Democrats constantly accuse Republicans of racism and exaggerate the threat of such racism as there is.
Later, she writes,
The only way to push back is to be unequivocal about our values.
It is not enough to condemn Mr. Trump’s racism.
We must affirmatively confront racist policies — whether the caging of immigrant children at the border or the banning of Muslim immigrants . . .
Have Muslim immigrants been banned?
. . . or the allowing of segregation in public housing.
Is that allowed?
She continues,
The consequences of this fight will not just be felt here at home but around the world.
From the look of things, true, but not very much.
Right-wing nationalism in Hungary, Russia, France, Britain and elsewhere is on the march in ways not seen in decades.
America has been a beacon of democratic ideals for the world.
If we succumb to the fever of right-wing nationalism, it will have consequences far beyond our borders.
Have we not already succumbed?
What more does she fear by way of succumbing?
And what consequences beyond our borders?
Today, democracy is under attack once again.
Where? Not in America, really.
It’s time to respond with the kind of conviction that has made America great before.
By doing what, does she think, besides electing Democrats, I wonder.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Out of the mouths of babes and indiscreet politicians
Of course, CNN is delighted to do him as much harm as it can, as quickly as it can.
What a wonderful stroke of the hatchet!
'Watermelon smiles' and 'piccaninnies': What Boris Johnson has said previously about people in Africa
Many are those who agree with his assessments of who is at fault for what.
Rather fewer are those who share the scornful dismissiveness of his "watermelon smiles" remarks.
Maybe Trump, though.
Who will ever forget his tirade about immigration from "shithole countries", referring to Haiti and various other places, including some African states.
What a wonderful stroke of the hatchet!
'Watermelon smiles' and 'piccaninnies': What Boris Johnson has said previously about people in Africa
Many are those who agree with his assessments of who is at fault for what.
Rather fewer are those who share the scornful dismissiveness of his "watermelon smiles" remarks.
Maybe Trump, though.
Who will ever forget his tirade about immigration from "shithole countries", referring to Haiti and various other places, including some African states.
A natural ally for the nationalist parties of Europe
Italian PM to address claims League sought money from Russia
The Cold War is soooo over.
And in European eyes, Communism is just gone.
Russian power, much diminished in any case, is no threat at all to capitalism or representative government, and Russia is not exporting any sort of revolutionary and crazy ideology just the thing to terrify everyone.
And Putin's authoritarianism, for these folks, just doesn't much matter; if it's anybody's problem, it's the Russians'.
Fewer Europeans, every day, have any interest in NATO and its Cold War II.
More and more people, not just in America but in Europe, and anywhere on the political spectrum but notably on the right, when asked "Should you or your kids be willing to fight and die in a full-scale, pan-European and maybe even global war for the independence of Estonia?", are inclined to answer with a wholly unabashed, "No."
They are equally skeptical of NATO and wholly opposed to the EU superseding Europe's individual nations as a military power.
And just as European parties of the West were not much bothered by, and often actually colluded in, American meddling in their elections to keep power out of the hands of anybody soft on defense against the Soviet bloc back in the day, some parties now seek or tolerate Russian meddling on behalf of nationalists seeking to lead their countries away from the old Cold War alliances and even, sometimes openly and specifically, the power of the US.
The Cold War is soooo over.
And in European eyes, Communism is just gone.
Russian power, much diminished in any case, is no threat at all to capitalism or representative government, and Russia is not exporting any sort of revolutionary and crazy ideology just the thing to terrify everyone.
And Putin's authoritarianism, for these folks, just doesn't much matter; if it's anybody's problem, it's the Russians'.
Fewer Europeans, every day, have any interest in NATO and its Cold War II.
More and more people, not just in America but in Europe, and anywhere on the political spectrum but notably on the right, when asked "Should you or your kids be willing to fight and die in a full-scale, pan-European and maybe even global war for the independence of Estonia?", are inclined to answer with a wholly unabashed, "No."
They are equally skeptical of NATO and wholly opposed to the EU superseding Europe's individual nations as a military power.
And just as European parties of the West were not much bothered by, and often actually colluded in, American meddling in their elections to keep power out of the hands of anybody soft on defense against the Soviet bloc back in the day, some parties now seek or tolerate Russian meddling on behalf of nationalists seeking to lead their countries away from the old Cold War alliances and even, sometimes openly and specifically, the power of the US.
The most disgraceful PM, ever
Boris Johnson becomes PM with promise of Brexit by 31 October
New prime minister claims he can reach agreement with EU but will prepare for no deal
New prime minister claims he can reach agreement with EU but will prepare for no deal
How to speed the death of the EU
Europe’s patchwork of abortion laws is absurd. Rights must be made universal
That will thrill the voters in Poland.
Brexit effect forces women to go to Netherlands for abortions
Of course, the objection isn't that rules need to be all the same, but that rules need to be all equally permissive of abortions throughout Europe.
Or some women interested in killing their unborn babies might find it inconvenient, confusing, and annoying, poor things.
A stronger push for control of the laws regarding sex throughout Europe by the post-Christian, PC, feminist, liberal morality, and especially laws regarding abortion, will help drive the breakup of the EU almost as much as liberal, post-national and post-nationalist convictions regarding the morality of immigration and the rights of prospective and actual migrants have done.
That is unfortunate in many ways, for Europe and for Europeans.
But the truth is that liberals, like anybody else, are only willing to tolerate kinds of diversity that they just don't really care about.
Those they hate they want to outlaw, persecute, and abolish.
Leaving the EU is an obvious way for more conservative European countries to escape domination by the nearly universal post-Christian moral orthodoxy.
The more liberal countries, on the other hand, would be free to legalize infanticide at will, suicide and assisted suicide, and euthanasia, probably rather more often than I would.
And I am confident they would.
That will thrill the voters in Poland.
Brexit effect forces women to go to Netherlands for abortions
Of course, the objection isn't that rules need to be all the same, but that rules need to be all equally permissive of abortions throughout Europe.
Or some women interested in killing their unborn babies might find it inconvenient, confusing, and annoying, poor things.
A stronger push for control of the laws regarding sex throughout Europe by the post-Christian, PC, feminist, liberal morality, and especially laws regarding abortion, will help drive the breakup of the EU almost as much as liberal, post-national and post-nationalist convictions regarding the morality of immigration and the rights of prospective and actual migrants have done.
That is unfortunate in many ways, for Europe and for Europeans.
But the truth is that liberals, like anybody else, are only willing to tolerate kinds of diversity that they just don't really care about.
Those they hate they want to outlaw, persecute, and abolish.
Leaving the EU is an obvious way for more conservative European countries to escape domination by the nearly universal post-Christian moral orthodoxy.
The more liberal countries, on the other hand, would be free to legalize infanticide at will, suicide and assisted suicide, and euthanasia, probably rather more often than I would.
And I am confident they would.
We're supposed to shrug this off. Just part of the cost of keeping our country safe, right?
An American Citizen Is Released From Immigration Custody After Nearly a Month
Francisco Erwin Galicia, 18, was born in Dallas and, according to his birth certificate, is an American citizen.
But he was held in federal immigration custody for nearly four weeks after he was detained at a Border Patrol traffic checkpoint in South Texas.
Mr. Galicia showed the agents the proof of his birth in the United States when he was stopped at the checkpoint one night in June, when he was on his way to a college soccer tryout. But the agents, his lawyer said, told him they believed it was fake.
They took him into custody, taking him first to a Border Patrol facility in the border city of McAllen and then to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Pearsall, Tex., southwest of San Antonio.
Late Tuesday afternoon, 26 days after he was first detained, Mr. Galicia was released after the news media, Democratic lawmakers and migrant advocacy groups put his case in the national spotlight.
And that's what it takes to make the Border Patrol honor the law?
Francisco Erwin Galicia, 18, was born in Dallas and, according to his birth certificate, is an American citizen.
But he was held in federal immigration custody for nearly four weeks after he was detained at a Border Patrol traffic checkpoint in South Texas.
Mr. Galicia showed the agents the proof of his birth in the United States when he was stopped at the checkpoint one night in June, when he was on his way to a college soccer tryout. But the agents, his lawyer said, told him they believed it was fake.
They took him into custody, taking him first to a Border Patrol facility in the border city of McAllen and then to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Pearsall, Tex., southwest of San Antonio.
Late Tuesday afternoon, 26 days after he was first detained, Mr. Galicia was released after the news media, Democratic lawmakers and migrant advocacy groups put his case in the national spotlight.
And that's what it takes to make the Border Patrol honor the law?
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
MSNBC and Bill de Blasio
Andrea Mitchell had him on spending at least half his time beating up Joe Biden, painting him as taking the lead in passing legislation now blamed for mass incarceration and that everybody, including Biden, is running against.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Certain to be labeled racist within seconds. Or Islamophobe. Or both.
Already fleeing in terror, they are.
Illinois GOP group shares meme depicting minority Dem congresswomen as 'the jihad squad'
Two top Illinois GOP officials are condemning a meme recently posted to the Facebook page of the Illinois Republican County Chairmen's Association that depicted four minority congresswomen as being "THE JIHAD SQUAD."
The image, which has since been taken down from the group's page, is modeled after an action movie poster and edited to include the four lawmakers' faces on the bodies of various characters.
The women in the photo are Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
The image includes the words "THE JIHAD SQUAD" below the names along with the words "POLITICAL JIHAD IS THEIR GAME" and "IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH THEIR SOCIALIST IDEOLOGY, YOU'RE RACIST."
Illinois GOP group shares meme depicting minority Dem congresswomen as 'the jihad squad'
Two top Illinois GOP officials are condemning a meme recently posted to the Facebook page of the Illinois Republican County Chairmen's Association that depicted four minority congresswomen as being "THE JIHAD SQUAD."
The image, which has since been taken down from the group's page, is modeled after an action movie poster and edited to include the four lawmakers' faces on the bodies of various characters.
The women in the photo are Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
The image includes the words "THE JIHAD SQUAD" below the names along with the words "POLITICAL JIHAD IS THEIR GAME" and "IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH THEIR SOCIALIST IDEOLOGY, YOU'RE RACIST."
Qui bono?
Dem media clearly think, and have for a long time, that screaming at US women and minorities, "Danger! Danger! Bad white people are coming! And bad white men!" works for them at the polls, and has since the last decades of the last century.
But Trump thinks shouting "Hey white people! And white men! Everybody hates you and is out to get you!" works for him and for the GOP.
He is by no means alone among GOPsters to think that, or to have thought that for some decades.
Sometimes both sides take it into their heads to scream that way and only that way, at the top of their lungs, for weeks at a time.
The rest of us just have to wait for it to blow over.
And hope the cities don't burst into flames in the meantime.
Or the right wing loonies don't start out on spree killings.
But Trump thinks shouting "Hey white people! And white men! Everybody hates you and is out to get you!" works for him and for the GOP.
He is by no means alone among GOPsters to think that, or to have thought that for some decades.
Sometimes both sides take it into their heads to scream that way and only that way, at the top of their lungs, for weeks at a time.
The rest of us just have to wait for it to blow over.
And hope the cities don't burst into flames in the meantime.
Or the right wing loonies don't start out on spree killings.
The slow ruin of the Tory Party
The Tories are split between the pro and anti Brexiteers.
Anti Brexit Tories, when dismayed their party is going to pull the plug for real, defect to the Lib Dems.
Lib Dems: Jo Swinson elected new leader
Pro Brexit Tories, when dismayed their party is going to stall indefinitely and never pull the plug for real, defect to a different place.
Brexit Party MEPs tear into Remainer 'EU peace' claim with key point - 'EU army threat'
Anti Brexit Tories, when dismayed their party is going to pull the plug for real, defect to the Lib Dems.
Lib Dems: Jo Swinson elected new leader
Pro Brexit Tories, when dismayed their party is going to stall indefinitely and never pull the plug for real, defect to a different place.
Brexit Party MEPs tear into Remainer 'EU peace' claim with key point - 'EU army threat'
Sunday, July 21, 2019
A brilliant and learned specialist in an oddly forgotten history
Anne Applebaum, Communism, and the Cold War
Take a look at her write-up on Scammell's bio of Arthur Koestler.
And at this marvelous review of Spies.
And here is something we might share with AOC, given her personal concern with the matter.
Take a look at her write-up on Scammell's bio of Arthur Koestler.
And at this marvelous review of Spies.
And here is something we might share with AOC, given her personal concern with the matter.
Clear and true vs fuzzy, murky, and wrong
Fuzzy, murky, and wrong:
Five myths about socialism
Clear and true:
What Americans Must Know About Socialism
Five myths about socialism
Clear and true:
What Americans Must Know About Socialism
Now they want to rehabilitate the Soviet Union?
During my lifetime I have seen Hollywood first prefer Nazi villains to reds and then prefer American villains to both.
The CIA and American corporations are standard sources of evil in the entire world, according to the contemporary entertainment media, even if sometimes receiving little more than casual mention as some sort of threat.
But now this?
Now the PC commissars are gunning for ‘Stranger Things’
Even though the Soviet Union has been no more since 1991, some unthinking liberals writing for influential publications have been taking exception to negative depictions of the Soviet Union in popular culture lately.
My favorite example comes from Variety film critic Peter Debruge. He recently reviewed a movie about the Russian ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, who defected to the West in 1961: “The film remains maddeningly ambiguous about his motives for cutting ties with the Soviet Union. . . .
"[Nureyev] developed an ego somewhere along the way of the sort better suited to Western countries, where self-interest (versus personal sacrifice for the greater good) is a way of life.”
. . . .
On July 4, Netflix released the third season of its hit teen-horror show “Stranger Things,” set in a small Indiana town in the 1980s.
This inventive mash-up of 1980s pop-culture themes has previously featured a US government conspiracy involving the torture of children along with evil supernatural creatures from an alternate dimension.
This season, however, there’s a new villain.
It turns out the Soviet government has secretly funded the construction of a lavish shopping mall in the town to disguise its efforts to open a portal to the other dimension.
Our heroes must fight unambiguously evil Russians to save the day and the world.
. . . .
Quoth Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic: “The setup for the entire eight episodes of Season 3 seems at first to be based on a simplistic premise of good and evil, one that the show’s previous seasons resisted. . . .
"All eight episodes are being released by Netflix on July 4, and the Uncle Sam-against-the-Russkies plot configuration leans heavily on red-blooded patriotism.”
She then claims the show is more nuanced than this because it shows how capitalism can destroy the commerce of small towns through things like the mall — when the best joke of the show is that the mall was only built there to serve the interests of the Russkies!
. . . .
And in The Week, Aaron Bady opines that “instead of reminding us of what we have lost — our youth, our innocence, our sense of play — the show gets caught up in the kind of patriotic fantasies that adults love so much, things like romance and defeating communism in a mall with fireworks on the Fourth of July.”
The CIA and American corporations are standard sources of evil in the entire world, according to the contemporary entertainment media, even if sometimes receiving little more than casual mention as some sort of threat.
But now this?
Now the PC commissars are gunning for ‘Stranger Things’
Even though the Soviet Union has been no more since 1991, some unthinking liberals writing for influential publications have been taking exception to negative depictions of the Soviet Union in popular culture lately.
My favorite example comes from Variety film critic Peter Debruge. He recently reviewed a movie about the Russian ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, who defected to the West in 1961: “The film remains maddeningly ambiguous about his motives for cutting ties with the Soviet Union. . . .
"[Nureyev] developed an ego somewhere along the way of the sort better suited to Western countries, where self-interest (versus personal sacrifice for the greater good) is a way of life.”
. . . .
On July 4, Netflix released the third season of its hit teen-horror show “Stranger Things,” set in a small Indiana town in the 1980s.
This inventive mash-up of 1980s pop-culture themes has previously featured a US government conspiracy involving the torture of children along with evil supernatural creatures from an alternate dimension.
This season, however, there’s a new villain.
It turns out the Soviet government has secretly funded the construction of a lavish shopping mall in the town to disguise its efforts to open a portal to the other dimension.
Our heroes must fight unambiguously evil Russians to save the day and the world.
. . . .
Quoth Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic: “The setup for the entire eight episodes of Season 3 seems at first to be based on a simplistic premise of good and evil, one that the show’s previous seasons resisted. . . .
"All eight episodes are being released by Netflix on July 4, and the Uncle Sam-against-the-Russkies plot configuration leans heavily on red-blooded patriotism.”
She then claims the show is more nuanced than this because it shows how capitalism can destroy the commerce of small towns through things like the mall — when the best joke of the show is that the mall was only built there to serve the interests of the Russkies!
. . . .
And in The Week, Aaron Bady opines that “instead of reminding us of what we have lost — our youth, our innocence, our sense of play — the show gets caught up in the kind of patriotic fantasies that adults love so much, things like romance and defeating communism in a mall with fireworks on the Fourth of July.”
The author of the article didn't bother to explain what that even means, or why (or exactly to whom) it matters
But he did make clear it's an endorsement of the most absurd imaginable layer of PC.
My guess is this actually costs her votes, the better known it becomes.
'She/hers': In progressive move, 3 presidential hopefuls add pronouns to their bios
Truly, this year it looks like the Dems are headed straight for a re-run of the McGovern campaign.
And it's by no means just the pols.
Think of all those Times articles using feminine pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric men who have decided they are "really" women because . . . well, because.
It's now liberal/PC dogma.
People's actual sex is irrelevant.
They get to tell us what pronouns to use to refer to them, and we have to obey or we're wicked and evil bigots, the most cruel of narrow-minded blah, blah, blah.
My guess is this actually costs her votes, the better known it becomes.
'She/hers': In progressive move, 3 presidential hopefuls add pronouns to their bios
Truly, this year it looks like the Dems are headed straight for a re-run of the McGovern campaign.
And it's by no means just the pols.
Think of all those Times articles using feminine pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric men who have decided they are "really" women because . . . well, because.
It's now liberal/PC dogma.
People's actual sex is irrelevant.
They get to tell us what pronouns to use to refer to them, and we have to obey or we're wicked and evil bigots, the most cruel of narrow-minded blah, blah, blah.
An isolated act of moral courage.
GOP strategists weigh in on Trump’s attacks on Rep. Omar and the Squad
Ms. Tarkanian, oddly not on Wikipedia, was absolutely right and even courageous to go on MSNBC and flat out reject the lying claim that the Duce's "go back where you came from" tweets addressed to the Gang of Four (the Squad) were racist.
She repeatedly rejected that view.
My only caveat is that she all but enthusiastically accepted the view that the tweets were "stupid".
Jury's still out on that.
Update.
Well, she's not totally alone.
Ms. Tarkanian, oddly not on Wikipedia, was absolutely right and even courageous to go on MSNBC and flat out reject the lying claim that the Duce's "go back where you came from" tweets addressed to the Gang of Four (the Squad) were racist.
She repeatedly rejected that view.
My only caveat is that she all but enthusiastically accepted the view that the tweets were "stupid".
Jury's still out on that.
Update.
Well, she's not totally alone.
Hammering home the key point: 2018 was a huge victory for center-left Democrats, not for Squaddies
Frank Bruni
If Trump has his way, this campaign will be a bogus referendum on a bastard definition of patriotism.
It will be a race-obsessed and racist jubilee.
Don’t play along.
But, you say, his racism must be called out.
A demagogue must be branded as such.
Not to condemn incipient fascism is to play midwife to the real thing.
That’s a virtuous take, but is there really any reason to believe that it’s the recipe for Trump’s demise?
We used all those words in 2016 — racist, demagogue, fascist — and he won.
Voters saw indelible examples of this same behavior, and he won.
Check out the Times, the Guardian, and every Dem site in the known universe.
They're doing it again.
Race-baiting the GOP, 24/7.
Again.
How Democrats Defeat Donald Trump
Stop hypothesizing about Democratic voters’ political priorities and policy appetites and look at the actual evidence of where Americans really are.
That’s the 2018 midterms.
It may have minted young progressive superstars like the congresswomen in the squad, but they aren’t especially popular beyond their progressive fan clubs.
More important, their victories had zilch to do with why or how Democrats regained control of Congress and have dubious relevance to how Democrats can do the same with the White House in 2020.
The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.
Other first-term House candidates’ bids did offer such lessons, so look harder at that crew.
Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York — these four defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier.
None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
They touted more restrained agendas.
And they didn’t talk that much about Trump.
They knew they didn’t need to.
For voters offended by him, he’s his own negative ad, playing 24/7 on cable news.
Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care.
Both lost.
While first-time candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Justice Democrats or Our Revolution certainly won House elections last year, not one flipped a seat.
The party did pick up 40 seats overall — just not with the most progressive candidates.
. . . .
Polling has shown that when voters are told that Medicare for all would mean an end to private insurance or an increase in taxes, support for it drops below 40 percent.
And according to a Politico/Morning Consult survey published a few days ago, 51 percent of voters support the sweeping raids by ICE that the president trumpets, while just 35 percent oppose them.
That suggests that anything that smacks of open borders — which is how President Barack Obama’s secretary for homeland security, Jeh Johnson, described Democratic presidential candidates’ positions in a recent op-ed essay in The Washington Post — puts those candidates at odds with public opinion.
. . . .
Nancy Pelosi knows this.
It’s why she hasn’t been talking up the Green New Deal, single-payer insurance or impeachment, and the suggestion that this makes her some squishy centrist pushover — some musty relic from a timid era — is bunk.
She has her eyes on the most meaningful prize, one she pursued successfully in the midterms: Democratic victory.
And she can see that in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published a little over a week ago, just 21 percent of registered voters said that there was enough evidence for Congress to begin impeachment hearings.
. . . .
I wonder what would happen if the Democratic nominee simply refused to talk about Trump.
No responding to whatever stupid nickname he comes up with.
No sweeping denunciation of some deed of his that any sensible American already knows is wrong.
Just the articulation of better solutions to America’s problems.
Trump would go mad with the lack of attention.
And maybe then, thank heaven, he’d go away.
If Trump has his way, this campaign will be a bogus referendum on a bastard definition of patriotism.
It will be a race-obsessed and racist jubilee.
Don’t play along.
But, you say, his racism must be called out.
A demagogue must be branded as such.
Not to condemn incipient fascism is to play midwife to the real thing.
That’s a virtuous take, but is there really any reason to believe that it’s the recipe for Trump’s demise?
We used all those words in 2016 — racist, demagogue, fascist — and he won.
Voters saw indelible examples of this same behavior, and he won.
Check out the Times, the Guardian, and every Dem site in the known universe.
They're doing it again.
Race-baiting the GOP, 24/7.
Again.
How Democrats Defeat Donald Trump
Stop hypothesizing about Democratic voters’ political priorities and policy appetites and look at the actual evidence of where Americans really are.
That’s the 2018 midterms.
It may have minted young progressive superstars like the congresswomen in the squad, but they aren’t especially popular beyond their progressive fan clubs.
More important, their victories had zilch to do with why or how Democrats regained control of Congress and have dubious relevance to how Democrats can do the same with the White House in 2020.
The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.
Other first-term House candidates’ bids did offer such lessons, so look harder at that crew.
Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York — these four defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier.
None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
They touted more restrained agendas.
And they didn’t talk that much about Trump.
They knew they didn’t need to.
For voters offended by him, he’s his own negative ad, playing 24/7 on cable news.
Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care.
Both lost.
While first-time candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Justice Democrats or Our Revolution certainly won House elections last year, not one flipped a seat.
The party did pick up 40 seats overall — just not with the most progressive candidates.
. . . .
Polling has shown that when voters are told that Medicare for all would mean an end to private insurance or an increase in taxes, support for it drops below 40 percent.
And according to a Politico/Morning Consult survey published a few days ago, 51 percent of voters support the sweeping raids by ICE that the president trumpets, while just 35 percent oppose them.
That suggests that anything that smacks of open borders — which is how President Barack Obama’s secretary for homeland security, Jeh Johnson, described Democratic presidential candidates’ positions in a recent op-ed essay in The Washington Post — puts those candidates at odds with public opinion.
. . . .
Nancy Pelosi knows this.
It’s why she hasn’t been talking up the Green New Deal, single-payer insurance or impeachment, and the suggestion that this makes her some squishy centrist pushover — some musty relic from a timid era — is bunk.
She has her eyes on the most meaningful prize, one she pursued successfully in the midterms: Democratic victory.
And she can see that in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published a little over a week ago, just 21 percent of registered voters said that there was enough evidence for Congress to begin impeachment hearings.
. . . .
I wonder what would happen if the Democratic nominee simply refused to talk about Trump.
No responding to whatever stupid nickname he comes up with.
No sweeping denunciation of some deed of his that any sensible American already knows is wrong.
Just the articulation of better solutions to America’s problems.
Trump would go mad with the lack of attention.
And maybe then, thank heaven, he’d go away.
China rising
A New Red Scare
In a ballroom across from the Capitol building, an unlikely group of military hawks, populist crusaders, Chinese Muslim freedom fighters and followers of the Falun Gong has been meeting to warn anyone who will listen that China poses an existential threat to the United States that will not end until the Communist Party is overthrown.
If the warnings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are.
The Committee on the Present Danger, a long-defunct group that campaigned against the dangers of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recently been revived with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, to warn against the dangers of China.
. . . .
Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century.
“These are two systems that are incompatible,” Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China.
“One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.”
China is not an existential threat, though it most likely will eventually eclipse the US as an individual global power.
And it is not at all clear that a China no longer controlled by its egregiously non-communist Communist Party would be less challenging.
Bannon might be hoping that the fall of the Chinese Communists might precipitate a somewhat disabling partial breakup of China, as the fall of Soviet Communism led to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
He might be right.
But still.
In a ballroom across from the Capitol building, an unlikely group of military hawks, populist crusaders, Chinese Muslim freedom fighters and followers of the Falun Gong has been meeting to warn anyone who will listen that China poses an existential threat to the United States that will not end until the Communist Party is overthrown.
If the warnings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are.
The Committee on the Present Danger, a long-defunct group that campaigned against the dangers of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recently been revived with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, to warn against the dangers of China.
. . . .
Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century.
“These are two systems that are incompatible,” Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China.
“One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.”
China is not an existential threat, though it most likely will eventually eclipse the US as an individual global power.
And it is not at all clear that a China no longer controlled by its egregiously non-communist Communist Party would be less challenging.
Bannon might be hoping that the fall of the Chinese Communists might precipitate a somewhat disabling partial breakup of China, as the fall of Soviet Communism led to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
He might be right.
But still.
Sounds like Chamberlain in Munich, eh?
So, feel safe, tankers?
UK defence minister rebuffs criticism over tanker seized in Gulf
Think of the costs of such a loss and consider how long commercial tankers will be able to continue in these waters, so clearly unprotected.
What does it tell you when even the hawks seem more afraid of war than of the message sent by their inaction?
Or are they?
Britain must seek to reduce tension but its first duty is to protect ships and crews
Phooey.
Bravado belied by the rest of the content of this op-ed.
While Britain alone cannot afford any longer to be anything like a real global power, the EU could and can.
Another proof the idiot Tories and Brexiteers are stupidly going in exactly the wrong direction.
And while all this goes on American media continue with their utter fixation on partisan propaganda, most of them pouring the most vile, lie-based hatred and outrageous vilification on Trump and the Republicans.
UK defence minister rebuffs criticism over tanker seized in Gulf
Think of the costs of such a loss and consider how long commercial tankers will be able to continue in these waters, so clearly unprotected.
What does it tell you when even the hawks seem more afraid of war than of the message sent by their inaction?
Or are they?
Britain must seek to reduce tension but its first duty is to protect ships and crews
Phooey.
Bravado belied by the rest of the content of this op-ed.
While Britain alone cannot afford any longer to be anything like a real global power, the EU could and can.
Another proof the idiot Tories and Brexiteers are stupidly going in exactly the wrong direction.
And while all this goes on American media continue with their utter fixation on partisan propaganda, most of them pouring the most vile, lie-based hatred and outrageous vilification on Trump and the Republicans.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Center-left Dems won the election of 2018, not the left wing of the party and not the Gang of Four
The moderate squad: swing-state Democrats wary of leftward path
The Gang of Four won in totally safe seats, seats that could have been won, as Nancy Pelosi said, by "a glass of water".
The hard work was done by center-left Democrats flipping seats that had gone to the GOP with the victory of Donald Trump in 2016.
And they are not happy with the large role assigned by the media to the party's left.
Of the 67 Democrats in the 2018 freshman class, roughly one-third are from districts Trump won in 2016.
At a gathering of centrist Democrats last month, Joe Cunningham of South Carolina and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia pleaded with more liberal members of the party to consider how their words might reverberate beyond New York, Detroit or Boston.
“Where we sometimes go wrong is if we allow each other to – or try to – speak for the entire caucus,” Spanberger said, suggesting members bracket comments with “in my district”.
Wexton says Virginia 10, a diverse and affluent district from the suburbs of Washington to the West Virginia border, is not interested in Trump’s outbursts or Democratic drama.
“People want us to do something about health insurance premiums and prescription drug prices, which we are working on,” she said.
“I don’t hear about socialism. I don’t hear about the Squad.
The Gang of Four won in totally safe seats, seats that could have been won, as Nancy Pelosi said, by "a glass of water".
The hard work was done by center-left Democrats flipping seats that had gone to the GOP with the victory of Donald Trump in 2016.
And they are not happy with the large role assigned by the media to the party's left.
Of the 67 Democrats in the 2018 freshman class, roughly one-third are from districts Trump won in 2016.
At a gathering of centrist Democrats last month, Joe Cunningham of South Carolina and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia pleaded with more liberal members of the party to consider how their words might reverberate beyond New York, Detroit or Boston.
“Where we sometimes go wrong is if we allow each other to – or try to – speak for the entire caucus,” Spanberger said, suggesting members bracket comments with “in my district”.
Wexton says Virginia 10, a diverse and affluent district from the suburbs of Washington to the West Virginia border, is not interested in Trump’s outbursts or Democratic drama.
“People want us to do something about health insurance premiums and prescription drug prices, which we are working on,” she said.
“I don’t hear about socialism. I don’t hear about the Squad.
Oh, so that's how this "responsible government" thingee works, huh?
U.K. Voters’ Frustration High as 99% Are Sidelined in Prime Minister Election
A small slice of party members within each party chooses that party's leader.
That leader is the person who will be PM, head the government, if the party is called upon to form a government.
That happens if the party has or gains a majority, or leads a coalition making up a majority in the Parliament.
The Tories have since since the parliamentary election of 2017 led a coalition majority with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland, and that has not changed just because Theresa May has resigned her post as Tory party leader and so as PM.
There isn't going to be another parliamentary election until 2022 unless an early election motion [is] passed by a super-majority of two-thirds in the House of Commons or a vote of no confidence in the government is passed which is not followed by a vote of confidence within 14 days.
The replacement of May involves only the party choosing for itself a replacement in the role of party leader, a replacement who, given the situation, will step into the role of PM of the UK.
Looks like it's going to be Boris Johnson, and it looks like he's going for a no-deal Brexit.
Something only a smallish minority of Brit voters actually want, though a majority of Conservatives support it.
A small slice of party members within each party chooses that party's leader.
That leader is the person who will be PM, head the government, if the party is called upon to form a government.
That happens if the party has or gains a majority, or leads a coalition making up a majority in the Parliament.
The Tories have since since the parliamentary election of 2017 led a coalition majority with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland, and that has not changed just because Theresa May has resigned her post as Tory party leader and so as PM.
There isn't going to be another parliamentary election until 2022 unless an early election motion [is] passed by a super-majority of two-thirds in the House of Commons or a vote of no confidence in the government is passed which is not followed by a vote of confidence within 14 days.
The replacement of May involves only the party choosing for itself a replacement in the role of party leader, a replacement who, given the situation, will step into the role of PM of the UK.
Looks like it's going to be Boris Johnson, and it looks like he's going for a no-deal Brexit.
Something only a smallish minority of Brit voters actually want, though a majority of Conservatives support it.
Wrong-footing white people. Again. Of course.
"White privilege" is about wrong-footing white people. Again.
It's a way to put white people in the wrong. Again.
It's a way to blame white people for not suffering the indignities, whatever they are, of minority status.
It's a way to blame them, not for what they do, but for what they don't suffer.
And we always need more and new and better ways to blame white people.
And that's racism, folks.
The racism of non-whites and the orthodox American left, from mainstream liberals onward.
Harping on it is almost as popular in liberal venues as screaming denunciations of Donald Trump's racism.
Though not quite, I admit.
I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.
Not a day goes by without repeated and vicious attacks on white people of one sort or another, lots of them, echoing across the left wing noise machine, all over America.
It's a way to put white people in the wrong. Again.
It's a way to blame white people for not suffering the indignities, whatever they are, of minority status.
It's a way to blame them, not for what they do, but for what they don't suffer.
And we always need more and new and better ways to blame white people.
And that's racism, folks.
The racism of non-whites and the orthodox American left, from mainstream liberals onward.
Harping on it is almost as popular in liberal venues as screaming denunciations of Donald Trump's racism.
Though not quite, I admit.
I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.
Not a day goes by without repeated and vicious attacks on white people of one sort or another, lots of them, echoing across the left wing noise machine, all over America.
Six days and nights of relentless attacks on the president charging racism
CNN and MSNBC online and on TV, The New York Times, The Guardian, and each and every last Democrat blog and news outlet, all have been roasting Trump with unrelenting charges of racism.
Apparently, not a lot else happening worthy of our attention.
And all of this in response to a series of Tweets lobbing pretty well-deserved attacks on the Gang of Four (the soi-disant Squad), charging them all with hatred of America and telling them all to "go back where you came from".
All but one are US born, but he either didn't realize or couldn't resist.
Not one word in the tweets was racist, though the dog-whistle was rather piercing ("What? You brown girls can't actually be real Americans, can you? You're kidding, right?").
Well, the racial joke, I suppose.
Is every racial joke racist? Is every Jewish joke predicated on anti-Semitism? Is every Polish joke somehow anti-Polish?
So hellish has been the fury of the left wing noise machine that, while only one or two GOPsters have endorsed these charges, the rest have been silent.
Not a lot of GOP support out there for the Duce, on this one.
Apparently, not a lot else happening worthy of our attention.
And all of this in response to a series of Tweets lobbing pretty well-deserved attacks on the Gang of Four (the soi-disant Squad), charging them all with hatred of America and telling them all to "go back where you came from".
All but one are US born, but he either didn't realize or couldn't resist.
Not one word in the tweets was racist, though the dog-whistle was rather piercing ("What? You brown girls can't actually be real Americans, can you? You're kidding, right?").
Well, the racial joke, I suppose.
Is every racial joke racist? Is every Jewish joke predicated on anti-Semitism? Is every Polish joke somehow anti-Polish?
So hellish has been the fury of the left wing noise machine that, while only one or two GOPsters have endorsed these charges, the rest have been silent.
Not a lot of GOP support out there for the Duce, on this one.
Friday, July 19, 2019
Why not the death penalty? Really?
You worried he's innocent, are you?
Samuel Little may be the most prolific serial killer in the US.
Samuel Little, who claims to be the most prolific serial killer in American history, has admitted killing a woman 25 years ago in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a Pine Bluff official tells CNN.
Terry Hopson said he investigated the death of 26-year-old Jolanda Jones in 1994 for the city police.
He told CNN at the time it looked like an "unexplained death."
Hopson, who is now a deputy police chief with Pine Bluff, said he spoke to Texas officials over the phone about Little's confession to Jones' murder.
He said he remembered the case clearly, and that police "fowarded the charge" to the county prosecutor's office.
Little, 79, claims he killed at least 90 people from 1970 to 2005, a Texas prosecutor said.
Little is serving three life sentences on California convictions and is cooperating with authorities from different states behind bars.
Detectives have linked him to 60 deaths, Ector County, Texas, District Attorney Bobby Blanda told CNN last June.
Samuel Little may be the most prolific serial killer in the US.
Samuel Little, who claims to be the most prolific serial killer in American history, has admitted killing a woman 25 years ago in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a Pine Bluff official tells CNN.
Terry Hopson said he investigated the death of 26-year-old Jolanda Jones in 1994 for the city police.
He told CNN at the time it looked like an "unexplained death."
Hopson, who is now a deputy police chief with Pine Bluff, said he spoke to Texas officials over the phone about Little's confession to Jones' murder.
He said he remembered the case clearly, and that police "fowarded the charge" to the county prosecutor's office.
Little, 79, claims he killed at least 90 people from 1970 to 2005, a Texas prosecutor said.
Little is serving three life sentences on California convictions and is cooperating with authorities from different states behind bars.
Detectives have linked him to 60 deaths, Ector County, Texas, District Attorney Bobby Blanda told CNN last June.
A professional liar tells a bald-faced lie
The Squad is a gift to Trump
The liar is Scott Jennings.
Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former campaign adviser to US Sen. Mitch McConnell.
He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky.
This is the lie.
No matter whom the Democrats nominate for president, the message and policies of The Squad will make up the heart of the nominee's platform.
Fewer than half the Dems seeking the nomination are close to them on policy, and Joe B (the most likely nominee, right now) is absolutely not.
And there is no reason to suppose that they will have more to say about the party's platform than the actual, eventual nominee.
The liar is Scott Jennings.
Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former campaign adviser to US Sen. Mitch McConnell.
He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky.
This is the lie.
No matter whom the Democrats nominate for president, the message and policies of The Squad will make up the heart of the nominee's platform.
Fewer than half the Dems seeking the nomination are close to them on policy, and Joe B (the most likely nominee, right now) is absolutely not.
And there is no reason to suppose that they will have more to say about the party's platform than the actual, eventual nominee.
What if you had to choose between death after 20 years of unremitting agony and death after 10 years of painless life as an addict?
Assuming your insurance wouldn't cut you off, say.
I'd go with door number two.
My wife likely would, too.
20 years of relentless horror?
That's supposed to be better?
But I don't think anyone involved in all this hoopla about opioid addiction and planning what to do about it is thinking like that.
Look how far America is still from sanely considering suicide, assisted suicide, or euthanasia.
Ex-pharma chief charged with flooding Appalachian towns with opioids
I'd go with door number two.
My wife likely would, too.
20 years of relentless horror?
That's supposed to be better?
But I don't think anyone involved in all this hoopla about opioid addiction and planning what to do about it is thinking like that.
Look how far America is still from sanely considering suicide, assisted suicide, or euthanasia.
Ex-pharma chief charged with flooding Appalachian towns with opioids
So maybe his attack on the Squad is paying off, after all?
Trump’s Electoral College Edge Could Grow in 2020, Rewarding Polarizing Campaign
He doesn't need and probably doesn't even hope for a win among the voters.
Imagine the fury of the Democrats.
President Trump’s approval ratings are under water in national polls.
President Trump’s approval ratings are under water in national polls.
His position for re-election, on the other hand, might not be quite so bleak.
His advantage in the Electoral College, relative to the national popular vote, may be even larger than it was in 2016, according to an Upshot analysis of election results and polling data.
That persistent edge leaves him closer to re-election than one would think based on national polls, and it might blunt any electoral cost of actions like his recent tweets attacking four minority congresswomen.
His advantage in the Electoral College, relative to the national popular vote, may be even larger than it was in 2016, according to an Upshot analysis of election results and polling data.
That persistent edge leaves him closer to re-election than one would think based on national polls, and it might blunt any electoral cost of actions like his recent tweets attacking four minority congresswomen.
. . . .
The president’s views on immigration and trade play relatively well in the Northern battlegrounds, including among the pivotal Obama-Trump voters.
There are signs that some of these voters have soured on his presidency, based on recent polling.
The president’s views on immigration and trade play relatively well in the Northern battlegrounds, including among the pivotal Obama-Trump voters.
There are signs that some of these voters have soured on his presidency, based on recent polling.
There is also reason to think that white working-class voters who supported Mr. Trump were relatively likely to stay home in last November’s midterm elections.
A strategy rooted in racial polarization could at once energize parts of the president’s base and rebuild support among wavering white working-class voters.
A strategy rooted in racial polarization could at once energize parts of the president’s base and rebuild support among wavering white working-class voters.
Many of these voters backed Mr. Trump in the first place in part because of his views on hot-button issues, including on immigration and race.
. . . .
But Mr. Trump’s approval rating has been stable even after seemingly big missteps.
But Mr. Trump’s approval rating has been stable even after seemingly big missteps.
And if it improves by a modest amount — not unusual for incumbents with a strong economy — he could have a distinct chance to win re-election while losing the popular vote by more than he did in 2016, when he lost it by 2.1 percentage points.
The president’s relative advantage in the Electoral College could grow even further in a high-turnout election, which could pad Democratic margins nationwide while doing little to help them in the Northern battleground states.
It is even possible that Mr. Trump could win while losing the national vote by as much as five percentage points.
. . . .
Many assume that the huge turnout expected in 2020 will benefit Democrats, but it’s not so straightforward.
The president’s relative advantage in the Electoral College could grow even further in a high-turnout election, which could pad Democratic margins nationwide while doing little to help them in the Northern battleground states.
It is even possible that Mr. Trump could win while losing the national vote by as much as five percentage points.
. . . .
Many assume that the huge turnout expected in 2020 will benefit Democrats, but it’s not so straightforward.
It could conceivably work to the advantage of either party, and either way, higher turnout could widen the gap between the Electoral College and the popular vote.
That’s because the major Democratic opportunity — to mobilize nonwhite and young voters on the periphery of politics — would disproportionately help Democrats in diverse, often noncompetitive states.
The major Republican opportunity — to mobilize less educated white voters, particularly those who voted in 2016 but sat out 2018 — would disproportionately help them in white, working-class areas overrepresented in the Northern battleground states.
That’s because the major Democratic opportunity — to mobilize nonwhite and young voters on the periphery of politics — would disproportionately help Democrats in diverse, often noncompetitive states.
The major Republican opportunity — to mobilize less educated white voters, particularly those who voted in 2016 but sat out 2018 — would disproportionately help them in white, working-class areas overrepresented in the Northern battleground states.
Looking for a naval battle?
Iran Said to Seize British Tanker in Persian Gulf
The certainly have it coming.
Iran said Friday that it had seized a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, and the tanker’s owner said it had lost contact with the vessel as it appeared to be heading toward Iran.
The British government said it was urgently seeking information about the incident.
The possible seizure of the ship, the Stena Impero, in the Strait of Hormuz, was the latest in three months of escalating tensions between Iran and the West.
It came a day after the United States claimed it had downed an Iranian drone in the area, which the Iranians denied.
Britain and Iran have been embroiled in a dispute for the past few weeks over Britain’s seizure of an Iranian tanker near Gibraltar. Iran had been vowing to retaliate.
Iran’s Fars News Agency said the Stena Impero had been impounded because it was “violating maritime rules and regulations.”
. . . .
The British Defense Ministry said it was urgently looking into what had happened to the Stena Impero, a 30,000-ton British-flagged ship, which was heading for Saudi Arabia when it abruptly left the international sea lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.
The certainly have it coming.
Iran said Friday that it had seized a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, and the tanker’s owner said it had lost contact with the vessel as it appeared to be heading toward Iran.
The British government said it was urgently seeking information about the incident.
The possible seizure of the ship, the Stena Impero, in the Strait of Hormuz, was the latest in three months of escalating tensions between Iran and the West.
It came a day after the United States claimed it had downed an Iranian drone in the area, which the Iranians denied.
Britain and Iran have been embroiled in a dispute for the past few weeks over Britain’s seizure of an Iranian tanker near Gibraltar. Iran had been vowing to retaliate.
Iran’s Fars News Agency said the Stena Impero had been impounded because it was “violating maritime rules and regulations.”
. . . .
The British Defense Ministry said it was urgently looking into what had happened to the Stena Impero, a 30,000-ton British-flagged ship, which was heading for Saudi Arabia when it abruptly left the international sea lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.
The lies grow more hysterical all the time
Donnie Deutsch On Trump Racism: 'This Is A Man With Nazi Tendencies'
Hitler, pursuant to his personal ideology and that of his party, established his dictatorship and made the German Republic a hollow shell before the end of his first year as Reichskanzler.
Neither Trump nor his party has taken a single step to follow that example and the ideology of the Republican Party is and has always been entirely and unreservedly republican and loyal to our Constitution, due allowance made for partisan fudgeing.
The Nazis planned to make Europe Judenrein all the way to the Urals.
First choice was mass deportation; second was mass extermination.
As for the slavs, the Nazis never planned to wipe them out, utterly, but did aim to cut their numbers roughly in half and make them collectively slaves or serfs for millions of good, clean Germans who would move into slavic territories to create a vast Nazi Aryan Empire.
At no time in its entire historic career did the KKK intend to make America wholly free of blacks or any other non-whites.
Nor was it their aim to reduce their numbers through mass deportation or slaughter.
Nor did they aim to reduce American blacks, or anyone else, to formal collective serfdom.
Despite the endless bleats of liars, Jim Crow was never aimed at any of those things.
On the other hand, global extermination of blacks, especially, and nonwhites in general, became an explicit fantasy goal of a global race war in The Turner Diaries, the most chilling racist tract I have ever read or even heard of.
The book is still widely circulated, read, and admired among terrorist or terrorist-learning organizations of white racists, but it is unclear whether the majority of white nationalist organizations harbor goals much different from those of the original, historic Klan.
Lately, it seems their most well-known and widespread concern has been whites becoming a demographic minority in the US.
They clearly want to avoid that, but so far as I know they entertain no means but immigration control, deportation of illegal aliens, and perhaps policies aimed at raising the white birth rate.
As for Trump, we have not a single word endorsing white nationalism or any expressly white nationalist policy; we have many and repeated denunciations of racism and claims to be an anti-racist.
He has not openly espoused a single agenda item in furtherance of any expressly white nationalist goal, much less anything white supremacist, and much, much less anything even a sliver worse.
We all assume the motive behind some of his policies, remarks, and positions is racism or some sort of white nationalist sentiment.
But there is nothing expressly that going on.
And all of those so busy urging hysterical warnings know the truth, and are simply lying.
Hitler, pursuant to his personal ideology and that of his party, established his dictatorship and made the German Republic a hollow shell before the end of his first year as Reichskanzler.
Neither Trump nor his party has taken a single step to follow that example and the ideology of the Republican Party is and has always been entirely and unreservedly republican and loyal to our Constitution, due allowance made for partisan fudgeing.
The Nazis planned to make Europe Judenrein all the way to the Urals.
First choice was mass deportation; second was mass extermination.
As for the slavs, the Nazis never planned to wipe them out, utterly, but did aim to cut their numbers roughly in half and make them collectively slaves or serfs for millions of good, clean Germans who would move into slavic territories to create a vast Nazi Aryan Empire.
At no time in its entire historic career did the KKK intend to make America wholly free of blacks or any other non-whites.
Nor was it their aim to reduce their numbers through mass deportation or slaughter.
Nor did they aim to reduce American blacks, or anyone else, to formal collective serfdom.
Despite the endless bleats of liars, Jim Crow was never aimed at any of those things.
On the other hand, global extermination of blacks, especially, and nonwhites in general, became an explicit fantasy goal of a global race war in The Turner Diaries, the most chilling racist tract I have ever read or even heard of.
The book is still widely circulated, read, and admired among terrorist or terrorist-learning organizations of white racists, but it is unclear whether the majority of white nationalist organizations harbor goals much different from those of the original, historic Klan.
Lately, it seems their most well-known and widespread concern has been whites becoming a demographic minority in the US.
They clearly want to avoid that, but so far as I know they entertain no means but immigration control, deportation of illegal aliens, and perhaps policies aimed at raising the white birth rate.
As for Trump, we have not a single word endorsing white nationalism or any expressly white nationalist policy; we have many and repeated denunciations of racism and claims to be an anti-racist.
He has not openly espoused a single agenda item in furtherance of any expressly white nationalist goal, much less anything white supremacist, and much, much less anything even a sliver worse.
We all assume the motive behind some of his policies, remarks, and positions is racism or some sort of white nationalist sentiment.
But there is nothing expressly that going on.
And all of those so busy urging hysterical warnings know the truth, and are simply lying.
True enough in ancient Rome, I suppose, when slaves could have been of any race. But the antebellum South?
New Hampshire Republican: 'Owning Slaves Doesn't Make You A Racist'
A lawmaker in New Hampshire said this week that American slavery had nothing to do with racism and was just purely about economics.
Economics supplied the motive. Racism supplied the legitimation.
Republican state Rep. Werner Horn raised eyebrows in a now-deleted social media post, insisting those who owned slaves weren’t racist and were just making a “business decision.”
How would he know they weren't racist?
And, really, given the ferocity and durability of racism emanating from the South to all points white in the USA, how could anyone actually believe anything so absurd?
But what's the point, if he's just lying, as he all but certainly is?
A lawmaker in New Hampshire said this week that American slavery had nothing to do with racism and was just purely about economics.
Economics supplied the motive. Racism supplied the legitimation.
Republican state Rep. Werner Horn raised eyebrows in a now-deleted social media post, insisting those who owned slaves weren’t racist and were just making a “business decision.”
How would he know they weren't racist?
And, really, given the ferocity and durability of racism emanating from the South to all points white in the USA, how could anyone actually believe anything so absurd?
But what's the point, if he's just lying, as he all but certainly is?
Aren't white Protestants already a minority in the US?
No more than 40% of Americans are white Protestants.
True enough, the founding and initial settling of America was mostly their doing.
But the country is no longer majority Protestant, let alone majority white Protestant.
Just saying.
David Brooks says Donald Trump Hates America
So apparently Donald Trump wants to make this an election about what it means to be American.
He’s got his vision of what it means to be American, and he’s challenging the rest of us to come up with a better one.
In Trump’s version, “American” is defined by three propositions. First, to be American is to be xenophobic.
The basic narrative he tells is that the good people of the heartland are under assault from aliens, elitists and outsiders.
Second, to be American is to be nostalgic.
America’s values were better during some golden past.
Third, a true American is white.
White Protestants created this country; everybody else is here on their sufferance.
The rest of the article is anti-Trump and post-racist patriotic boilerplate.
With a grain of truth, allowing the French and their Revolution their due place in showing the way to the supposed democratic capitalist future of mankind.
It is worth reminding everyone that that is exactly the ideal future O wanted America and its allies to lead the way toward, peaceably, but steadily.
True enough, the founding and initial settling of America was mostly their doing.
But the country is no longer majority Protestant, let alone majority white Protestant.
Just saying.
David Brooks says Donald Trump Hates America
So apparently Donald Trump wants to make this an election about what it means to be American.
He’s got his vision of what it means to be American, and he’s challenging the rest of us to come up with a better one.
In Trump’s version, “American” is defined by three propositions. First, to be American is to be xenophobic.
The basic narrative he tells is that the good people of the heartland are under assault from aliens, elitists and outsiders.
Second, to be American is to be nostalgic.
America’s values were better during some golden past.
Third, a true American is white.
White Protestants created this country; everybody else is here on their sufferance.
The rest of the article is anti-Trump and post-racist patriotic boilerplate.
With a grain of truth, allowing the French and their Revolution their due place in showing the way to the supposed democratic capitalist future of mankind.
It is worth reminding everyone that that is exactly the ideal future O wanted America and its allies to lead the way toward, peaceably, but steadily.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Everybody but white people . . . .
is allowed to be a racist and espouse racist theories of this, that, and the other thing.
Indigenism, for instance.
'Stolen lands': dozens arrested as Hawaiians protest $1.4bn telescope
Indigenism, for instance.
'Stolen lands': dozens arrested as Hawaiians protest $1.4bn telescope
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Dickens winding up
A happy ending, of course, for Barnaby Rudge, with betrothals previously prevented now arranged.
Hugh and the hangman are hanged while the legs of the treacherous 'prentice, his greatest pride, are crushed irremediably.
Haredale declaims, "Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone."
Barnaby is rescued and the treacherous Miggs, attempting to resume her job at the Vardens', is cast out.
Interestingly, D found it good for Haredale to kill Sir John Chester in the penultimate chapter.
Rounding out the happy endings.
Except that Gordon, surely guilty, ought not to have been acquitted in his trial for High Treason.
Hugh and the hangman are hanged while the legs of the treacherous 'prentice, his greatest pride, are crushed irremediably.
Haredale declaims, "Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone."
Barnaby is rescued and the treacherous Miggs, attempting to resume her job at the Vardens', is cast out.
Interestingly, D found it good for Haredale to kill Sir John Chester in the penultimate chapter.
Rounding out the happy endings.
Except that Gordon, surely guilty, ought not to have been acquitted in his trial for High Treason.
Monday, July 15, 2019
A good question to which there are ONLY foolish, childish answers
Unless the answer is "No", of course.
That's the right answer.
Is It Time to Play With [manned] Spaceships Again?
And this fellow, at the end of an article that's way, way too long, offers none to speak of, at all.
Which is not to deny there could be good enough reasons to play with unmanned spaceships.
Let the DoD do what they have to, and let Elon Musk and his silly ilk do the rest.
That's the right answer.
Is It Time to Play With [manned] Spaceships Again?
And this fellow, at the end of an article that's way, way too long, offers none to speak of, at all.
Which is not to deny there could be good enough reasons to play with unmanned spaceships.
Let the DoD do what they have to, and let Elon Musk and his silly ilk do the rest.
An idea born of fantasy, sci-fi, and envy
Billionaires Shouldn’t Live Forever
They won't.
Nor will anyone.
The sun will explode and turn the planet to space-ash and, if that doesn't quite do it, there's always heat-death at the end of the universe.
Krugman, class warrior.
Some writers of speculative fiction at least imagined something like what eventually happened.
Richard K. Morgan’s 2003 novel “Altered Carbon,” made into a TV series in 2018, envisioned a society in which wealthy “meths” (for Methuselah) could transfer their consciousness into newly grown clones.
That’s not how the actual technology works, and Morgan’s term never caught on; most of us prefer the portmanteau “evergarchs,” for oligarchs who seemingly go on forever.
But Morgan’s vision of a society utterly corrupted by near-immortal privilege turned out to be all too accurate.
. . . .
But nothing is forever, even in an era of life extension.
Public rage against the evergarchs has been building for decades, and it may now have reached boiling point.
So what should be done?
Some are proposing that we simply try to diminish the evergarchs’ influence with steep taxes on huge fortunes, which is a good idea in any case.
But there were real concerns about tax evasion even when oligarchs were merely mortal; imagine how good people can get at hiding their assets when they can spend decades, even generations, building their tax shelters.
No, life extension for a privileged few is, by its nature, a socially destructive technology, and the time has come to ban it.
Take the evergarchs off their treatments, so that they start aging like everyone else, and don’t let anyone else get started.
Prosecute anyone who tries to evade the ban, which shouldn’t be hard to determine: Billionaires may sometimes manage to hide their assets, but they can’t hide failure to age.
More hysterical raving from MSNBC
This guy is a regular and is not usually so nuts.
But his race-toe is really, really sore, today.
Malcolm Nance: if we mess up election 2020 we may never see another election
But his race-toe is really, really sore, today.
Malcolm Nance: if we mess up election 2020 we may never see another election
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