Jan 03 2019
Unidicted Co-conspirator Trump holds an impromptu (or at least unscheduled) Press Conference because he feels lonely.
This is the kind of thing you won’t be seeing on MSNBC. They don’t carry them live anymore.
Update: It’s always unsettling when Bill Kristol agrees with me. The general consensus is that it was entirely a stunt to distract from Pelosi.
Jan 03 2019
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
E. J. Dionne Jr.: Nancy Pelosi vows that House Democrats won’t act like Republicans
Incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to be clear about what the new Democratic House majority will not be: They will not, she insists, act like the Republicans.
“We believe that we will not become them,” she said in a New Year’s Day phone interview during a visit to her native Baltimore. “We’re not going to do to them what they did to President Obama. . . . It’s really important for us not to become them and certainly not to become like the president of the United States in terms of how he speaks without any basis of fact, evidence, data or truth.
“We will respect each other’s opinions, and respect the truth.” Note: She said this before President Trump’s series of false claims in advance of his Wednesday meeting with congressional leaders about the government shutdown he precipitated in pursuit of his border wall.
Pelosi also pushed back hard against the idea that, in holding Trump and his administration accountable, Democrats would be engaging in some sort of investigative orgy. On the contrary, she said, Article I of the Constitution grants Congress responsibility for “oversight over the agencies of government.” [..]
The Democrats’ assumption of power in the House this week will alter U.S. politics in ways that go well beyond their capacity to make life miserable for the president and his lieutenants.
Arwa Mahdawi: Elizabeth Warren’s ‘likability’? The US media has learned nothing from 2016
The countdown to the US 2020 election has only just begun, but it’s already starting to look like a hellish repeat of 2016.
On Monday, senator Elizabeth Warren became the first major Democrat to announce her intention to run for president. As you may be aware, Warren is a woman, which means that it is basically illegal not to compare her with Hillary Clinton, despite the two being very different politicians. It is also mandatory to analyse her “likability”, which we all know is the most important issue when it comes to female candidates. Indeed, less than 24 hours after Warren had announced her bid, Politico published a story headlined “Warren battles the ghosts of Hillary”. They publicised the story with a widely derided tweet, asking: “How does Elizabeth Warren avoid a Clinton redux – written off as too unlikable before her campaign gets off the ground?”
I’ll tell you how Warren avoids a Clinton redux. It’s actually very simple: the media focuses on the issues the Massachusetts senator stands for instead of fixating on her “likability”. The media stops using “likability” as lazy shorthand for: “Is the US too misogynistic to vote in a female president?” The media stops perpetuating the narrative that powerful women are unlikable. The media starts treating her as a candidate, rather than a female candidate.
Jan 03 2019
Livestream from the Well of the House-
So, yay us?
Nancy is a fighter, well suited to take it to Unidicted Co-conspirator Trump. There is probably no one better.
The problem is that despite the constant demonization by Republicans, Pelosi is not particularly “Progressive” let alone Left. Frankly she has some very stupid ideas about policy and if you have a memory that reaches back a mere 12 years to her last Speakership you’ll recall she did little to reign in W‘s War Crimes.
During her partnership with Obama she continually failed to advance ideas like Single Payer, instead working actively with him and Harry Reid in pursuit of Republican votes that were never there to begin with and anyone with eyes and the least bit of savvy knew it.
We got rolled on Obamacare and yes, it is a big deal and Nancy was in the thick of it.
She wasn’t particularly helpful in punishing and preventing the Financial Crimes of the Banksters either, preferring to stand aside and let Obama Foam the Runway that their Institutional Failure was crashing into.
She continually appointed New Dems, Blue Dogs, and Third Wayers to run Democratic Congressional Campaigns and thereby consigned the Party to inevitable and disastrous losses that eventually cost her the Speakership.
Not all roses.
Incoming she has promised some institutional reforms that address a few of the issues which result in disproportionate Conservative dominance. Good.
But some of her positions are incredibly retrograde and dumb, for instance Paygo-
Dems urged to vote down ‘brainless Republican idea’ as Nancy Pelosi plows ahead with PayGo
by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
January 3, 2019
After the incoming House Democratic majority’s newly released rules package made clear that presumptive Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is moving to ram through a fiscally conservative “pay-go” measure despite widespread grassroots opposition, progressives condemned the proposed rule as a harmful “roadblock” to a bold agenda and urged their representatives to vote it down.
“In order for pay-go to go into effect, it needs to pass the House,” Warren Gunnels, policy director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), pointed out on Twitter. “If some 18 Democrats vote no, it fails. The vote will take place on Thursday. Will enough progressives have the courage to vote no on the first roadblock to Medicare for All, Green New Deal, and college for all? Let’s see.”
In a petition pressuring House Democrats to vote against any rules package containing pay-go, Social Security Works declared that the proposed provision “would leave Democrats fighting for working families with one arm tied behind their backs.”
“Reject the pay-go rules that perpetuate deficit scaremongering and bolster claims that we need to cut Social Security and Medicare,” reads the group’s petition, which currently has over 23,800 signatures.
…
If implemented, pay-go would require all new spending to be offset by budget cuts or tax hikes. Such a restriction, progressive lawmakers and economists argue, would unnecessarily hamstring the House Democratic majority’s ability to pursue the bold agenda that voters demanded in the November midterms.“This is a terrible move from Pelosi and Democratic Party leadership and a slap in the face for movements demanding justice and prosperity for all—not just a privileged few,” argued Justice Democrats communications director Waleed Shahid.
“There’s enormous appetite in the Democratic Party and among all Americans for major public investment to tackle our nation’s major crises: deepening inequality and structural racism and climate disaster,” Shahid added in a statement. “Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership’s support of pay-go makes actually solving these crises all but impossible. The Democratic Party leadership is unilaterally disarming and shooting themselves in the foot.”
…
Just hours after the House Democrats’ proposed rules package was made public, Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—who will be sworn in on Thursday—and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) became the first lawmakers to vow to vote no if pay-go is included.In a tweet, Khanna declared: “I will be voting no on the rules package with pay-go. It is terrible economics. The austerians were wrong about the Great Recession and Great Depression. At some point, politicians need to learn from mistakes and read economic history.”
Echoing Khanna’s opposition, Ocasio-Cortez announced that she will also oppose the rules package, arguing that pay-go is “a dark political maneuver designed to hamstring progress on healthcare and other legislation.”
“We shouldn’t hinder ourselves from the start,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded.
…
As Common Dreams reported at the time, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) in December successfully killed a deeply regressive, Pelosi-backed tax rule that would have made progressive policy priorities like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal impossible to fund.With a vote on the rules package slated for Thursday, advocacy groups and policy experts argued that the pay-go fight is another chance for the growing and emboldened CPC to flex its muscle and signal that it is prepared to fight for an ambitious agenda.
“We urge them to recognize that this era calls for bold leadership,” declared Social Security Works. “That means improved Medicare for All, expanded Social Security, and taking on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug prices. Our government’s priority should be delivering results for the people, not appeasing the Wall Street Journal editorial page.”
“Let’s stop this fiscal madness in its tracks,” concluded Stony Brook University economics professor Stephanie Kelton, who has urged Democrats to ditch their deficit obsession and unleash “the power of the public purse” on behalf of progressive policies. “We need a flexible budget to rebalance our economy.”
New Sheriff? We’ll see.
Same thing a little longer and more detailed by our friend dday at The Intercept.
Jan 03 2019
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Washington’s army routs the British in the Battle of New Jersey; Manuel Noriega surrenders to U.S. forces; Jack Ruby dies; Author J.R.R. Tolkien is born.
The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.
Jan 02 2019
The United States is not the only country with a Criminal in Chief. Benjamin Netanyahu (who just called snap elections and is favored to win) is under increasing pressure in at least 3 corruption cases and is almost certainly guilty.
Vox has a summary.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu could be indicted. Here’s what you need to know.
By Alexia Underwood, Vox
Jan 2, 2019
There are currently three cases in which Netanyahu himself is a suspect. There’s also another case where his wife, Sara Netanyahu, is under indictment. And there’s yet another case that involves procurement of submarines and corruption of the military, in which people very close to the prime minister are suspects, though not Netanyahu himself.
In the first of the three cases, Israeli police allege that for years, Netanyahu and his wife Sara received gifts in the form of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of champagne, jewelry and cigars from wealthy individuals in the United States and Australia. In exchange, Netanyahu reportedly tried to extend tax exemption legislation that would have benefitted at least one of the men involved.
It’s unclear if there actually was a quid pro quo arrangement, but the charges could constitute bribery regardless. It’s worth noting that Netanyahu’s predecessor, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, went to prison after being convicted of accepting bribes, so it’s not a charge to be taken lightly.
In the second case, one of Netanyahu’s aides recorded lengthy conversations between the prime minister and the head of Israel’s largest opposition paper, in which they discussed making a deal where the paper would be less critical of Netanyahu.
In return, the prime minister would stop the weekend publication of their commercial rival, Israel Today, a paper owned by US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (which is sometimes known in Israel as the “Bibi paper” for its pro-Netanyahu stance). The deal apparently was never settled, but the conversations in themselves were damning enough.
But experts who I spoke to told me that the third and most recent case against the prime minister is the strongest.
On December 2, Israeli police accused Netanyahu of trading regulatory favors for positive media coverage of himself and his family. Over a period of five years, the prime minister reportedly intervened in the day-to-day coverage and affairs of Walla!, a news website run by the country’s telecommunications company, Bezeq.
In return, Netanyahu — in his role as minister of communications, which is one of his titles — rewarded the company by using his political power to give them more favorable regulations, despite political opposition.
This case is more powerful than the first one, Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, DC, told me. That’s because the deal actually took place. Police also interviewed close to 60 witnesses in order to piece their case together, so it doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy to sweep under the rug.
Unlike in the United States, Netanyahu is not protected from indictment by any rule though he did appoint the Attorney General who will decide whether charges are brought.
If he is indicted, he still may not have to leave office. There’s an ongoing legal debate about whether or not Netanyahu can be forced to resign if he has to sit trial. But leaders of other parties could likely say an indictment is a step too far, and call for his resignation.
If he’s convicted, however, the law is very clear, Sachs says: “He would have to resign.”
Bibi is a very bad man with very bad policies. It’s hard to see how progress can be made toward resolving any of the Middle East’s many conflicts as long as he is in office.
Once again- I/P? No. This is a piece about public corruption. I don’t mention Palestinians at all.
Jan 02 2019
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
New York Times Editorial: Trump’s Shutdown Is Not About Border Security
For a sense of the true cost of his government shutdown, now deep into its second week, President Trump should spend less time rage-tweeting about Democrats’ refusal to throw money away on his wasteful border wall and more time perusing the #shutdownstories making the rounds.
With even a quick peek beyond his bubble, the president could learn much about the legions of government employees and contractors who spent the holiday season agonizing over how to cover their next mortgage payment or electric bill or trip to the grocery store if this political charade drags on much longer. [..]
Let’s be clear: This fight is not about security. Contrary to Mr. Trump’s claims, there is no flood of savage foreigners pouring across the border. Even so, reasonable Democrats and Republicans acknowledge a need for some mix of a bigger staff, better technology and, yes, fencing — as well as humane and sensible immigration and asylum policies. Achieving all of that has proved a tall order even for competent administrations. But it’s why Congress, on a bipartisan basis, has already been allocating more money for border security — money this administration hasn’t even managed to spend so far.
Paul Krugman: The Trump Tax Cut: Even Worse Than You’ve Heard
The 2017 tax cut has received pretty bad press, and rightly so. Its proponents made big promises about soaring investment and wages, and also assured everyone that it would pay for itself; none of that has happened.
Yet coverage actually hasn’t been negative enough. The story you mostly read runs something like this: The tax cut has caused corporations to bring some money home, but they’ve used it for stock buybacks rather than to raise wages, and the boost to growth has been modest. That doesn’t sound great, but it’s still better than the reality: No money has, in fact, been brought home, and the tax cut has probably reduced national income. Indeed, at least 90 percent of Americans will end up poorer thanks to that cut.
Let me explain each point in turn.
Jan 02 2019
Today Unindicted Co-conspirator Trump is holding 2 big meetings. The second one is the Group of Eight meeting with the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate.
It’s the one people have been talking about because it’s being held in the high security Situation Room instead of one of the more usual spaces. Allegedly the reason is that Unindicted Co-conspirator Trump wishes to emphasize that his $5.6 Billion Public Penis of a White Elephant Boondoggle is a “National Security” issue. This is of course a lie.
Another thing that’s controversial about it is that in Faux Noise-speak Pelosi, Hoyer, Schumer, and Durbin were “summoned” to attend as if they were Peasants to be ordered about like the illegal immigrants Unindicted Co-conspirator Trump routinely employs at his Golf properties, manufacturing fake paperwork to defraud ICE. This impression is reinforced by the fact that this hastily called meeting is no longer characterized as a “Discussion” and instead is a “Briefing”. That means Unindicted Co-conspirator Trump doesn’t want to listen, he wants to yell and scream at them. The Democratic leaders toyed with the idea that they would simply refuse to attend and that’s exactly what I would have advised- “I’m sorry. I’m busy supervising the installation of the curtains in my new office.”
The other meeting was with his Cabinet. Even before it was finished reaction to Unindicted Co-conspirator Trump’s fantastical and unhinged ramblings came pouring in.
Well, you know me and train wrecks
When I present these things I like to include the context. Fortunately the Washington Post put up a complete recording of the farcical madness.
It is long, 2:44. I expect for most it will be painful to endure, however one of our missions is to “document the atrocities”.
If you have a certain sense of humor though it’s screamingly funny. It’s like an extended Alec Baldwin cold open from Saturday Night Live. Drop the needle anywhere and watch as much as you can stand- pure comedy gold.
Jan 02 2019
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Highlights of Today in History: WV mine blast; JFK declares he’s running for President; Japan captures Manila, Philippines during WWII; Lindbergh baby trial; Annie closes on Broadway.
Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.
Jan 01 2019
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: Hope for a Green New Year
Let’s be honest with ourselves: The new Democratic majority in the House won’t be able to enact new legislation. I’ll be astonished if there are bipartisan deals on anything important — even on infrastructure, where both sides claim to want action but what the G.O.P. really wants is an excuse to privatize public assets.
So the immediate consequences of the power shift in Washington won’t involve actual policymaking; they’ll come mainly from Democrats’ new, subpoena-power-armed ability to investigate the fetid swamp of Trumpian corruption.
But that doesn’t mean that Democrats should ignore policy issues. On the contrary, the party should spend the next two years figuring out what, exactly, it will try to do if it gains policymaking power in 2021. Which brings me to the big policy slogan of the moment: the so-called Green New Deal. Is this actually a good idea?
Eugene Robinson: Who isn’t running for the Democratic presidential nomination?
It has begun.
The field of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is starting to form, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) announcing Monday that she has launched a campaign “exploratory committee” — the same step that former housing and urban development secretary Julián Castro took earlier in December. Spoiler alert: Exploratory committees always come to the same conclusion. They’re both running.
Actually, who isn’t running? At this point, by some counts, as many as 30 potential Democratic candidates either have expressed interest in taking the plunge or have significant constituencies urging them to do so. If you thought the 2016 GOP debates were crowded, just wait. This year, Democrats may have to debate in shifts, or perhaps stand on risers like a choir.
And, no, they won’t all be singing the same tune. That’s a good thing. Even more than it needs new blood, the party needs new ideas. In the wake of President Trump’s nihilistic vandalism, the next president will have much to do — not just healing the nation, but moving it forward.
Jan 01 2019
Marching Bands. Sigh.
Yeah, done my time. Trumpet and middle range Brass were my go-to musical weapons of choice, I never had to learn anything except March and Snap and Swing.
As an act of unmerited spite, I urged my cousin to take up drums and to compound the crime this ek’smas. I also urged Emily to give her kids an electronic piano and drum kit. Anything to spread the misery of the marching band, or joy, I guess it depends on your outlook in life or how much you enjoy playing the same few songs for a good portion of your lifespan.
Drumline Battle – Dover High School v. Sussex Tech
Looking at the video, I kind of like how the drum wraps match the ol’ Dover uniform, blue and white. The drums almost blend in, like a sort of drum camouflage, perfect for a sneak attack on the opposing band. Imagine being the band manager and having the prestigious task of picking out the Best Drum Wrap for the band. Now imagine picking out lightning bolts or Guy Fieri flames, maybe it’s not camouflage we need, but something to throw the opposition off and show we mean business.
Of course, that’s not how it goes. Our Drummers spent thousands of hours smoking weed and working on these routines. In other words, great team spirit and practice. It was exactly like this. I might mention we were the top-ranked Band in Connecticut.
Drumline Battle – Shadow v. 7th Regiment
Drum Corps International style.
Heavy Metal – Justice
I love Rock and Roll, put another dime in the Jukebox Baby.