January 11, 2024

Trump says foreign payments to him while in office were "for services" (PS, Jasmine Crockett is a national treasure)

Please scroll down and watch the video to get the full story. As a Houstonian, it greatly pains me to say anything nice about someone from Dallas. But Jasmine Crockett is a true rising star in Congress. She's sharp, fearless, and keeps it very real when explaining Republican malfeasance. Being from Dallas, she is a fashionista, but she's a fashionista with substance.

Anyhoo, follow this link, scroll down to click the "keep reading" and watch her drop T-bombs all over the GOP:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-his-businesses-got-money-from-foreign-governments-because-he-was-doing-services-for-them/ar-AA1mMRpb

January 10, 2024

Bertrand Russell at 80 talking about his childhood

sweet old cat led a simple, if privileged life...

January 7, 2024

Article on Nikki Haley. ... TDLR: she's anti-worker & pro-Koch

She's bad news in a pretty dress.

Nikki Haley Is an Anti-Worker Fanatic, Not a “Moderate"
By Luke Savage

Nikki Haley, now second in polls for the Republican presidential nomination, is being portrayed as a broadly appealing, pragmatic alternative to Donald Trump. In fact, she’s a proud union buster with a bloodthirsty neoconservative streak, not a moderate.

{snip}

Aside from her debate performances and subsequent media kayfabe, the single biggest factor in Haley’s supposed ascent in the polls has been a surge in interest and campaign cash from big donors and Wall Street power brokers. Having spent $5.7 million on advertising so far, Haley’s allies at the Charles Koch–connected super PAC Americans for Prosperity have recently pumped out some $4 million worth of pro-Haley ad spending. Ken Griffin, head of the multinational hedge fund Citadel (and the thirty-seventh richest person in the world) is reportedly giving her campaign a look, as is fellow billionaire and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Speaking to an audience of wealthy corporate leaders last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon offered his endorsement, saying: “Even if you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley too. Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump.”

Haley’s edge in the Wall Street primary comes as no surprise given her tenure in South Carolina. As governor, Haley was so deferential to big business and so openly hostile to workers and unions that her record stands out even within the decidedly chamber of commerce–aligned and anti-labor party to which she belongs. As the Huffington Post’s Dave Jamieson details, Haley has never hidden her virulent hatred of unions and, despite her state boasting the lowest union density of any in America at just 1.7 percent, she never relented in her crusade to purge it of union jobs altogether. “Any truly objective review of South Carolina’s business landscape notes the benefit we get from the minimal role unions play in our state,” she declared in a 2015 address to the state’s legislature. “We don’t have unions in South Carolina because we don’t need unions in South Carolina.”

As a lover of democracy you should be happy to see someone threatening Trump's stranglehold on the Republicans. But as a Democrat, you need to worry that she's a very appealing candidate, if she avoids saying things of substance (a tactic Republican and moderate voters truly love), could unify their divided party if nominated, and might even tempt some Democrats to play our weakest cards in the fall.

Too frequently I see post from good Democrats here in DU and in other forums, snarkiness about her going by Nikki, her middle name, instead of her very Indian sounding first name. They seem to think that points out some kind of hypocrisy.

And it does, only it points out the hypocrisy of those Democrats who try to use xenophobic dog whistles while claiming to be the party of tolerance and diversity. It's no different than the Republicans who leaned into Barack Obama's middle name when attacking him. Please leave ethnic prejudices to the experts. If Republicans can stomach a Desi candidate, we can stand to fight an opponent on her merits (or lack thereof) without stooping to bigotry.

After all, what signal does it send to the rest of our rainbow coalition when we try to make a big negative deal about somebody being an ethnic minority?

Anyway, Trump, DeSantis, and Ramaswany have all tried harsh personal attacks on Nikki Haley. They don't work; it just makes the person attacking a prominent female candidate look like a bully and a cad. That may help Trump get the nomination, in the Republican Party, but among Democrats and independents, it will only turn voters off to voting for Biden.

If Haley somehow magically pulls off an upset for the nomination, she would be hella tough to beat, and we shouldn't undermine our own side when the stakes are this high.

January 3, 2024

Russel Brand, Narcissism, Anti-Vaxxers, the Great Reset, Narrow News Consumption, and Conspiracy Belief

I normally don't like and never recommend hour-long videos. But this one I am.
Bookmark it. Find time to watch this, seriously. It's a great video essay

This chap connects how media stovepiping and the hypnotic handflapping narcissism of people like Russel Brand (including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, and (I'd argue) even a few of my favorite MSNBC hosts to a lesser extent, is creating a public of non-critical thinkers who fall for stupid conspiracy theories that, despite resenting the people in power and the status quo, actually do nothing to actually reform the societal problems created by the people in power and the status quo.

It's a 78-minute video essay, but it's balanced, cynical, even handed, nakedly truthful, and makes a compelling case why we all need to do better, including learning to watch what's going on in right-leaning news outlets we disagree with. It really helped me understand what makes me instinctively dislike their narcissistic news entertainers and to be alert to signs of the same on our side of the cultural divide.

January 2, 2024

Oh look, Republicans are worried about not being substantive enough. Isn't that cute?

House Republicans stew over members who caused upheaval (The Hill)
By Emily Brooks 01/02/24 5am

House Republicans are stewing over a lack of consequences for those in their ranks who were at the center of much of the internal upheaval that dominated last year — and bemoaning incentives that some worry reward being loud over being substantive.

After enduring a year with two drawn-out Speaker fights and other battles that spilled out onto the House floor, the slim House GOP majority is showing no signs of disciplining the rabble-rousers. And even as the hard-line Republicans at the center of the fights stand by their moves, members known for their behind-the-scenes productivity are heading for the exits.

“For a body that creates laws for the American people to live by, Congress lives in a lawless society to where members can do whatever they would like that goes against conference rules, and still have the ability to maintain the committee assignments — to still get, you know, whether it’s fundraising or extra dollars from leaders wherever it may be,” Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) said.

During the three weeks in October when frustrated Republicans struggled to elect a new Speaker, calls swirled to remove from committees or the GOP conference the eight Republicans who joined with Democrats to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). So did a discussion about changing the rule that allowed any one member to force a vote on ousting the Speaker.

Fuckin Doofi

They're not just the party that approves of and protects toddlers with a gun. They are toddlers with a gun.

Lord, please place Congress fully in the hands of adults again in 2024. 🙏

January 1, 2024

Normal vs Crazy

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January 1, 2024

Trump in top form, laying down the law

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December 21, 2023

As our Republican compatriots love pointing out, we're a republic, not a democracy

Of course as a government teacher for the last ten years, I should clarify that these aren't mutually exclusive terms. The US is a republic and a democracy... and a federation of fifty states that are all to be guaranteed "a republican form of government" (Article IV, Section 4) by our Constitution. We're complicated like that.

I like to think about it this way: as a nation, as one people indivisible as a nationality, Americans are culturally democratic. That's the part of you that finds it sketchy that Colorado's Supreme voted 4-3 to remove Trump from the primary ballot. If we want to put Trumpism down, it won't be with legal technicalities. It can only happen with a strong political repudiation of his cult-like following at the polls in November. The law alone won't stop a movement rooted in believing it's above the law.

But as a country, as a legally constituted political entity called the United States, Americanism is in large part defined by a commitment to the rule of law--the law that we should all stand equal before. That's what we mean by guaranteeing a republican form of government. And the letter of the law is quite plain: someone who has taken an oath of office but then went on to engage in insurrection can hold federal or state office.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Of course our Republican friends who no longer uphold the principles of either democracy or republicanism (or the fundamentals of truth) will cling to the idiotic argument that the presidency is not "an officer of the United States," and I fully expect Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito to cling to this fiction. They'll argue that the job of the president wasn't enumerated among the offices the rebs were disqualified from (Senator, Representative, elector), but as originalists they're also supposed to contend with the fact that the authors of the 14th never could have imagined any political party would be so foolish or so petty as to nominate a traitor to be president. Ha! Shows what they knew! Anyway, the argument that the president isn't an officer of the United States is moronic. Hence my expectations about Thomas and Alito.

But the grownup argument -- and this is what I've said from the beginning of this debate -- is that Donald Trump is so far accused of attempting to forcefully overthrow the government two weeks before his term ended, but hasn't been convicted of this specific charge. I think the evidence is overwhelming that he's guilty of it. But I admit I'm not unbiased. More importantly, there hasn't been a conviction by judge or jury on the charge--and I contend that because laws matter, because equal right for all matters, there needs to be a factual conclusion by a court of law reached proving that Trump rebelled against the United States. And maybe I'm being boneheaded in demanding legal certainty against the wild-eyed conjectures of Maga conspiracy theorists who don't even accede to the consensus reality. But where men fall for lies, we must always keep well lit the beacon of truth.

I am, as an American culturally, more eager to see Trump's threat to the nation put down by a small-d democratic vote, even if that's a risk that the "mobocracy" that the Founders feared could be hornswaggled by a demagogue into voting against their own liberty. And I am, as an American politically, convinced that the Coppertone Mussolini needs to be found legally guilty by a court before he can be disqualified under the laws of the Republic. The laws matter. Or at least, if civilization is on the line, the laws matter until they don't. Donald Trump is an agent of chaos. He threatens civilization. If civilization is to be held up, we have to uphold the laws that make us civilized.

In practical matters, of course, none of this matters. Regardless of how the SCOTUS rules on Trump's disqualification, he's only going to ever be removed from the ballot in a handful of Blue States where he couldn't have won the electors anyway. It's a hollow gesture to remove him from the ballot. It will have no effect, except to have validated his ridiculous argument that the system is rigged against him. As a partisan Democrat, I don't believe in validating ridiculous arguments.

December 21, 2023

Well, this is destressing... Russian person-in-street interviews on "Should we invade Poland next?"

Our greatest enemy is propaganda.

I love this YouTube channel, 1420, which does street interviews of ordinary Russians. Over time I've seen a big generation gap, at least in the Moscow and St Petersberg interviews. The people over 40 have bought Putin's "everyone's a Nazi" propaganda. Dmitri Medvedev comes in for some ruthless bashing in the interviews. In the small town interviews you rarely see young people, so the opinions in the hinterlands are lot more uniformly pro-war. The young people in the big cities have a more balanced view of the west and they usually take the pose of "I'm not a political person" before making anodyne statements about "everyone in the world should just get along."

But hoo-boy are the Russians ready to pile it onto the Poles. There's some beef there. One old lady seems to keep on saying some verb that gets bleeped -- even in the captions. From context, I think she's pro-genocide. Putin's propaganda only gets a C- in the west, now that the farce of it all has been exposed. But he's rocking a solid B+ on hardening his own peoples' hearts.

December 21, 2023

Enough!! Let's settle this once and for all

No more mamby pambying. Pick a side!!