O gets on board with Medicare for All

Joe Biden led him to public acceptance of gay marriage.

Now he has come out for Medicare for All.

Obama, a centrist himself, abruptly announced that he had moved to the left now that he is out of office. He said,

So Democrats aren’t just running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they’re running on good new ideas like Medicare for all, giving workers seats on corporate boards, reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts to make sure college students graduate debt-free.

I’m not sure either Schumer or Pelosi themselves could get behind these things, inasmuch as they are deeply beholden to the corporations. Of course, Obama wasn’t a leader on Medicare For All (single-payer) when he was actually in office.

But I think Obama’s speech demonstrates that even the old centrist warhorses among the Democrats are terrified that the blue wave won’t appear.

India's Supremes act for change

Campaigners celebrate as India decriminalises homosexuality

Celebrations have erupted in India after the supreme court unanimously ruled to decriminalise homosexual sex in a landmark judgment for gay rights.

A five-judge bench at the country’s highest court ruled that a 160-year-old law banning sex “against the order of nature” amounted to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and was unconstitutional.

The judgment, after 24 years of legal challenges, triggered elation among LBGT Indians and their allies across the country and plans for all-night parties in nightclubs in major cities.

In Mumbai, people marched carrying a giant rainbow banner; in Bangalore they draped themselves in the LBGT flag and let off scores of balloons. 

In Delhi’s luxury Lalit hotel, run by one of the activists who fought Thursday’s case, and home to one of the city’s furtively gay-friendly nightclubs, staff danced in the lobby.

“Criminalising carnal intercourse under section 377 Indian penal code is irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary,” said the chief justice, Dipak Misra, in his decision, announced at about 11.30am on Thursday.

Misra’s was one of four written judgments agreeing to scrap the ban. The rulings quoted Lord Alfred Douglas (“The love that dare not speak its name”), Leonard Cohen (“From the ashes of the gay/ democracy is coming”), William Shakespeare (“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”) and the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (“I am what I am, so take me as I am”).

Misra said: “Social exclusion, identity seclusion and isolation from the social mainstream are still the stark realities faced by individuals today, and it is only when each and every individual is liberated from the shackles of such bondage … that we can call ourselves a truly free society.”

Kavanaugh vs the constitution

Conservatives lie when they say they love and abide by the constitution.

Even more so when they pontificate on the rule of law, and that no one is above the law.

Kavanaugh: the president may pardon anyone, or decline to prosecute anyone . . . .because of policy objections to the law, among other reasons.

See that the laws are faithfully executed?

How is declining to prosecute - which I guess means ordering the Justice Department not to prosecute violators (all? any? some?) of law X - practically different from a totally unrestricted veto power?

How is it not a license for utterly arbitrary selective non-prosecution?

This really is a get out of jail free card for the president and his fellow criminals and lawbreaking executive browshirts and even murderers.

Of course Trump wants this guy on the court.

No skeptics allowed

'Plaid Shirt Guy' Ejected From Trump Rally Says Secret Service ‘Told Me Not To Come Back’

Is that even legal?

Secret Service acting like Trump's personal brownshirt guard?

How is that more OK than, say, a Trump supporting just punching the guy, to applause from the Duce and the crowd?

Kavanaugh will be confirmed. So pack the court.

Kavanaugh Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Begin

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh opened on a contentious note Tuesday, with Senate Democrats raising noisy objections that much of Kavanaugh's lengthy paper trail is still off limits.

The hearing proceeded despite Democrats' call for delay. 

Republicans, who control the Senate, hope to confirm Kavanaugh in time to join the high court when its fall term begins next month, cementing a 5-4 conservative majority.

At 53, Kavanaugh would be the second-youngest member of the court and the second appointed by President Trump.

Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings To Focus On 6 Hot-Button Issues

Roe, Obamacare, and even Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will all be in significant jeopardy.

Democrats can do nothing to protect their signal achievements if they lack the will the Republicans have had for many years.

They will have to pack the court, despite objections from boobs who think that if bad guys like X, X must be intrinsically evil (street lights? SUVs? Public parks?).

There will be no basis for impeaching any of the Republican justices, so the only thing to do is add several Democrats, pushing the size of the court as high as 11 or 13.

The Republicans will scream bloody murder, but too bad.

Remember what they did to Obama, denying him any opportunity in his last term, keeping the seat open while they waited for the off-chance win in 2016.

To hell with them.

They cannot pose as defenders of tradition, bipartisanship, and procedural and constitutional respectability after their wretched behavior spanning decades.

Labor Day in Pittsburgh

Joe Biden

Former Vice President Joe Biden drew contrasts with President Donald Trump in style and on substance during a series of Labor Day appearances here on Monday, even as he continued to dodge questions about his 2020 plans.

"We're in a fight for the soul of America," Biden said from the steps of a Catholic church following morning services, as he prepared to march with workers in one of the largest Labor Day parades in the country. 

"Everything" is at stake in the coming midterm elections, Biden added.

Biden's appearance Monday marked his third stop at the parade in four years, and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, whose re-election campaign Biden sought to boost with his visit, said he has become "a familiar face" at the event.

But the timing of Biden's appearance raised further suspicions about his plans as he mulls another presidential bid in 2020, a process that has seen the 75-year-old raise his public profile at political events in recent months. 

As he marched and mingled Monday, union members urged him to run, with Biden grinning noncommittally in response. 

He literally did run, however -- down the street through crowds of people, with some cheering him on -- in order to catch up to his assigned position in the parade after greeting onlookers, prompting numerous puns on social media.

The former Vice President insisted his decision to march in the parade "doesn't mean anything for my political future."

"I've been with these guys my whole life," Biden said of the workers who walked with him, some pressing him for handshakes and selfies. 

"These are the guys that brung me to the dance, as the saying goes."

Biden did take an opportunity to criticize Trump on trade policy, however, an issue that was at the crux of Trump's pitch to blue collar voters in the 2016 election and has become a flashpoint in his presidency.

Asked whether he would renegotiate NAFTA, Biden drew a contrast with Trump's adversarial approach toward Canada and Mexico in hashing out a new deal, with tensions rising in recent days.

"No, we always can renegotiate everything we have to make it better, but not the way (Trump) is going about this," Biden said. 

Asked to explain where he differs from the President on trade policy, Biden laughed, adding, "You don't have enough time."

Trump has said it would be "a dream" to take on Biden, who has previously sought the presidency without success.

"I'd love to have it be Biden," Trump told CBS News earlier this summer.

Although Pennsylvania swung for Trump in 2016, Pittsburgh was solidly in Hillary Clinton's column, and for Biden, a proud son of Scranton, the city felt like home turf Monday. 

The message he brought to the home crowd sounded at times like a budding stump speech for the Trump era.

At a picnic for electrical workers -- where Biden shared a stage with Conor Lamb, who won a narrow victory in the special election for Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District -- the former Vice President spoke of his optimism for the country.

Kamala Harris

Saw her on the tube the other day, talking about some Trump outrage or other.

I must say I found her impressive.

On that basis I would tentatively favor her for the nomination, certainly over Pocahontas, though I would prefer she had more of a senate track record.

Please, please, please, not Hillary, again.

And Bernie is too old.

Who they are

That White Nationalist Who Quit Last Week Was Attending Immigration Meetings

The story quotes WAPO.

Smith quit his job Tuesday after being questioned about personal emails he sent and received between 2014 and 2016, before he joined the Trump administration. 

The messages, obtained by the Atlantic and detailed in a report published Tuesday, depict Smith engaging in friendly, casual conversations with prominent white supremacists and racists.

In one email from 2015, Smith responded to a group dinner invitation whose host said his home would be “judenfrei,” a German word used by the Nazis during World War II to describe territory that had been “cleansed” of Jews during the Holocaust.

“They don’t call it Freitag for nothing,” Smith replied, using the German word for “Friday,” according to the Atlantic. 

“I was planning to hit the bar during the dinner hours and talk to people like Matt Parrot, etc.,” Smith added, a reference to the former spokesman for the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party.

And the story reports he used to write for National Review, a journal whose founder, William F. Buckley, Jr., still beloved and admired among movement conservatives, used that magazine and his TV show to publicly and unreservedly support segregation in America and exclusion of blacks in the South from the franchise, as well as white supremacy and Apartheid in South Africa.

Monkey Business

Days later, left media are still whining about DeSantis's warnings against "monkeying around".

GOPsters are responding by shifting to repeated shouts of "socialist agenda!", "high taxes!", "Bernie Sanders!", and now even "Venezuela!" to attack Gillum.

DeSantis: Gillum wants to turn Florida 'into Venezuela'

"I would say it's very untraditional for Florida, [though] not anything to do with me, I'm a solid conservative in the Reagan tradition and I've been supportive of the president's agenda," DeSantis said.

In 1965, Ronald Reagan told America that passing the bill to create Medicare would end American freedom and impose communism.

So, yes, DeSantis is indeed in that tradition.

The crazy on the right has been around for a long, long time.

And it has included movement conservatism for all of that long, long time.

"This Andrew Gillum, he's on the far-left socialist fringe," DeSantis continued. 

"He's a Bernie Sanders, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez type candidate."

"If you have a guy like this enacting a socialist agenda it's going to absolutely destroy all the progress that Florida has made," he added. 

"He wants to turn Florida in to Venezuela."

And why are the major media playing along, joining into the GOP lie that the Gillum/Sanders agenda is "far left" and even "extreme left"?

Seen this?

This is the new mainstream, people.

The new center.

70% of Americans now support Medicare-for-all

The vast majority of Americans, 70 percent, now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. 

That includes 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. 

Only 20 percent of Americans say they outright oppose the idea.

Free college tuition is equally popular, though abolishing ICE is still an idea - and not really a good one - whose time has not come.

But even the Guardian is still calling such agenda items "left wing".

Democratic nominee defends leftwing policies and calls for Trump-endorsed opponent to ‘rise above’ racist attacks.

. . . .

Gillum, the 39-year-old mayor of Tallahassee, was the surprise winner of the Democratic nominating contest. 

He is endorsed by Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. 

Ocasio-Cortez, a young leftwinger from New York, won a primary in June and will run for election in November.

Trump greeted Gillum’s win with a tweet, saying “a failed socialist mayor … who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city … is not what Florida wants or needs!”

Speaking to Catsimatidis, DeSantis duly highlighted Gillum’s support for leftwing priorities such as “Medicare for all” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). 

The mayor has also promised to suspend the death penalty and has a low rating from the National Rifle Association.

. . . .

Gillum also defended his record on crime in Tallahassee and said he wanted to reform Ice, rather than abolish it, as part of opposition to Trump policies he said were “wholly unAmerican”.

Rudy Giuliani this morning

Asked for comment on the local Weather on the 8's, Rudy insisted the president was not mentioned even once and the report had nothing to do with Russian interference in the election of 2016, and finished with "Fake news! No collusion!"