dajoki
dajoki's JournalDeficit shrinks in the first year of Joe Biden's presidency
Defncit shrinks in the first year of Joe Biden's presidency
When it comes to the deficit, we've endured a consistent pattern for four decades. As the deficit shrinks in the Biden era, the pattern remains intact.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/deficit-shrinks-first-year-joe-biden-s-presidency-n1282276
It starts with a Republican presidential candidate denouncing the deficit and vowing to balance the budget if elected. That Republican then takes office, abandons interest in the issue, and expresses indifference when the deficit becomes vastly larger. Then a Democrat takes office, at which point GOP lawmakers who didn't care at all about the deficit suddenly decide it's a critical issue that the new center-left president must immediately prioritize.
During the Democratic administration, the deficit invariably shrinks — a development Republicans tend to ignore — at which point the entire cycle starts over with a new round of national GOP candidates denouncing the deficit and vowing to balance the budget if elected.
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That was plainly true. The White House and congressional Republicans swore up and down in late 2017 that they could slash taxes for the wealthy and big corporations without increasing the deficit because, as they repeatedly insisted, "tax cuts pay for themselves." We didn't need additional evidence that their ridiculous belief was, and is, wrong, but the evidence soon followed anyway.
And then, of course, the pandemic hit, at which point the deficit reached record levels.
The latest data shows the deficit shrinking once more, just in time for GOP officials and candidates to start pretending to care about the issue again.
Why journalists are failing the public with 'both-siderism' in political coverage
Why journalists are failing the public with ‘both-siderism’ in political coverage
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-15/republicans-democrats-both-siderism-political-failures?
American politics has changed dramatically since my post-Watergate generation of journalists began covering the story. Political journalism hasn’t kept up.
For years it was easy to cover “both sides” — Republicans and Democrats — as equally worthy, and blameworthy, partners in democracy. While we reporters had come of age as witnesses to the unprecedented resignation of a Republican president who’d tried to corrupt the institutions of government to affect an election — imagine! — what remained was a Republican Party still capable of a creditable role in a healthy two-party system. After all, Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign when congressional leaders of his party began abandoning him. Again, imagine that, Kevin McCarthy.
Now, when reporters or pundits use the words “both sides” in regard to some political problem, I stop reading or listening.
I started to chafe at false equivalence a quarter-century ago, as a congressional reporter amid Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolution. One party — his — was demonstrably more responsible for the nasty divisiveness, government gridlock and norm-busting, yet journalistic pressure to produce seemingly “balanced” stories — pressure both ingrained and imposed by editors — prevented reporters from sufficiently reflecting the new truth.
By 2012, as President Obama dealt with the willful obstructionists, conspiracists and racists of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, political scientists and long-respected Washington watchers Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein put the onus for the dysfunction squarely on the GOP in their provocative book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.” Significantly, they implicated journalists: “A balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon is a distortion of reality and a disservice to your consumers.”
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Democrats can’t be expected to deal with these guys like they’re on the level. Nor should journalists cover them as if they are.
I read an article in the NYT this morning...
authored by a bunch of so called "moderate repubs" about joining forces with conservative Democrats to vote to keep the Q's from winning Congress back in the midterms. They say they want to protect the country from extremists in both parties. To me it's classic bothsiderism, there is no comparison between the wingnuts on the right and our progressive lawmakers. To top it off they say they respect and admire McTurtle. That was it for me, they can't be be taken seriously if that is what they want to end up going back to.
And then I saw Christie Whitman on Air Melber's show and she spewed the same bothsiderism talking points. So before we join with the people that brought us this madness we better be sure what we would be getting into.
The three biggest and least accountable power centers in America
The three biggest and least accountable power centers in America
The Supreme Court, the Fed, and Big Tech increasingly shape our lives but are less and less answerable to us
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-three-biggest-and-least-accountable
Every morning this week I’ve opened up the news and read stories about the Supreme Court (whose term began Monday), the Fed (and whether it will start responding to inflation by raising interest rates), and Facebook (which a whistle-blower claimed intentionally seeks to enrage and divide Americans in order to generate engagement and ad revenue).
The common thread is the growing influence of these three power centers over our lives, even as they’re becoming less accountable to us. As such, they present a fundamental challenge to democracy.
1. Start with the current Supreme Court. What’s the underlying issue?
Don’t for a moment believe the Supreme Court bases its decisions on neutral, objective criteria. I’ve argued before it and seen up close that justices have particular (and differing) ideas about what’s good for the country. So it matters who they are and how they got there.
A majority of the current nine justices – all appointed for life -- were put there by presidents who lost the popular vote (George W. and Trump); three by a president who instigated a coup.
Yet they are about to revolutionize American life in ways most Americans don’t want. This new court, whose term began this week, seems ready to overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that anchored reproductive rights in the 14th Amendment; declare a 108-year-old New York law against carrying firearms unconstitutional; and strip federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency of the power to regulate private businesses. And much more.
Only 40 percent of the public now approves of the Supreme Court’s performance, a new low. If the justices rule in ways anticipated, that number will drop further. If so, expect renewed efforts to expand the court’s size and limit the terms of its members.
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Being Kyrsten Sinema
Being Kyrsten Sinema
How wonderful to be wrapped up in herself
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/being-kyrsten-sinema
Can you imagine how thrilling it is to be Kyrsten Sinema?
The President of the United States invites you for a one-on-one in the Oval Office – not once, but three times in a single day!
Senior White House officials sit in your office for hours on end!
Every Democratic senator checks in to see how you’re doing!
All official Washington is talking about you!
You’re in all the headlines. You’ve got invitations from all the talk shows.
You trend on Twitter!
Corporate lobbyists are lining up to write checks for your next campaign!
And in a city where your best friend is typically someone who stabs you in the front, no one dares cross you. You’re mollified, stroked, complemented. You’re wined, dined, courted
This is what it means to have made it!
And to think you once lived in an abandoned gas station without indoor plumbing or electricity. You were once even a social worker.
Now you’re single-handedly able to stop tens of millions of Americans from getting childcare, pre-K, health care, free community college, paid family leave!
You’ve come a long way!
How many politicians in American history start politics in the Green Party and work on Ralph Nader’s presidential election, and years later vote with Donald Trump 25 percent of the time, and are now on the verge of sinking the largest climate-change initiative in history?
How many have the power to destroy the Democratic Party?
It must give you goosebumps.
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A Trump lawyer wrote an instruction manual for a coup. Why haven't you seen it on the news?
A Trump lawyer wrote an instruction manual for a coup. Why haven’t you seen it on the news?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/sullivan-eastman-memo/2021/09/29/68d93000-211f-11ec-9309-b743b79abc59_story.html
In a normal world, the “Eastman memo” would be infamous by now, the way “Access Hollywood” became the popular shorthand in 2016 for the damning recording of Donald Trump’s bragging about groping women.
But it’s a good bet that most people have never even heard of the Eastman memo.
That says something troubling about how blasé the mainstream press has become about the attempted coup in the aftermath of the 2020 election — and how easily a coup could succeed next time.
The memo, unearthed in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, is a stunner. Written by Trump legal adviser John Eastman — a serious Establishment Type with Federalist Society cred and a law school deanship under his belt — it offered Mike Pence, then in his final days as vice president, a detailed plan to declare the 2020 election invalid and give the presidency to Trump.
In other words, how to run a coup in six easy steps.
Pretty huge stuff, right? You’d think so, but the mainstream press has largely looked the other way. Immediately after the memo was revealed, according to a study by left-leaning Media Matters for America, there was no on-air news coverage — literally zero on the three major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. Not on the evening newscasts watched by more than 20 million Americans, far greater than the audience for cable news. Not on the morning shows the next day. And when Sunday rolled around, NBC’s “Meet the Press” was the only broadcast network show that bothered to mention it. (Some late-night hosts did manage to play it for laughs.)
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Will his supporters ever realize he hates them?
Trump's planning to run again in 2024: Will his supporters ever realize he hates them?
Trump claims to love his supporters — but his malicious and careless actions speak louder than his empty words
https://www.salon.com/2021/09/27/planning-to-run-again-in-2024-will-his-supporters-ever-realize-he-hates-them/
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Trump's humiliating defeat to Joe Biden — which he refuses to acknowledge even occurred — has fomented a yearning for redemption. Whether he actually runs again remains uncertain, but he wants his supporters to be ready, willing and primed.
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Millions of aggrieved Americans have tethered themselves to Trump's fake persona of superiority and strength. They think he is the answer to their prayers. They think he cares about their lot in life. They think he will remedy their grievances. But nothing could be further from the truth.
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Trump scorns those who are weak or foolish enough to need him. He does not want to be needed — he wants others to serve and satiate his needs. He thrives on their praise, adulation and unconditional loyalty. The whole concept of public service is foreign to him because he perceives every interaction is a transactional game that must be won. And winning, for him, inevitably means defeat and humiliation of the other person. In Trump's psyche, even his supporters need to be humiliated and defeated.
It is puzzling that Trump supporters have not realized that he does not give a damn about their grievances or station in life. His Republican Party literally has no platform or set of guiding principles — all that was abandoned during the 2020 campaign. Nor does the Republican Party have a single substantive policy initiative on the table. Other than conservative judicial appointments, Trump did absolutely nothing for his supporters during his miserable presidential term. Except, of course, to let them be killed by a virus and incite them to a failed overthrow of democracy.
Until Trump is gone and the Republican Party reinvents itself, Trump supporters are all alone to fend for themselves. Their cult leader is an illusion. He is a pied piper leading them only to destruction. He has brought them only pain and suffering and sold them a bill of goods consisting of lies and conspiracy theories.
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I found it galling to watch George W. Bush speak on Saturday
George W. Bush 2021, Meet George W. Bush 2001
Sept. 14, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/opinion/george-w-bush-911-speech.html
You can draw a straight line from the “war on terror” to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, from the state of exception that gave us mass surveillance, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition and “enhanced interrogation” to the insurrectionist conviction that the only way to save America is to subvert it.
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It is with all of this in mind that I found it galling to watch George W. Bush speak on Saturday.
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Bush spoke as if he were just an observer, a concerned elder statesman who fears for the future of his country. But that’s nonsense. Bush was an active participant in the politics he now bemoans.
In 2002, Bush said that the Senate, then controlled by Democrats, was “not interested in the security of the American people.” In 2004, he made his opposition to same-sex marriage a centerpiece of his campaign, weaponizing anti-gay prejudice to mobilize his conservative supporters. Ahead of the 2006 midterm elections, he denounced the Democratic Party as “soft” on terrorism and unable to defend the United States.
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It is frankly maddening to see anyone treat the former president as if he has the moral authority to speak on extremism, division and the crises facing our democracy. His critique of the Trump movement is not wrong, but it is fatally undermined by his own conduct in office.
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As much as he has been rehabilitated in the eyes of many Americans — as much as his defenders might want to separate him and his administration from Donald Trump — the truth is that Bush is one of the leading architects of our present crisis. We may not be able to hold him accountable, but we certainly shouldn’t forget his starring role in making this country more damaged and dysfunctional than it ought to be.
I'm Beginning to Understand How It Feels to Live in a Majority-oppressed Nation
I'm Beginning to Understand How It Feels to Live in a Majority-oppressed Nation
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/98256
As George W. Bush was blundering his way into a minoritarian Middle East nation he did not understand, I understood from a historical perspective how its Sunnis had managed to rule over the Shia, even though, as noted, the Sunnis were a minority. The Ottoman Empire — whose official religion was Sunni — once ruled over the territory that became Iraq and which provided a buffer to the Shiite empire of Iran. Following the Ottoman Empire's fall, British colonialism reinforced Iraq's powerful Sunni minority over the Shia majority, which ultimately led to the Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush's blunder.
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As an American born and raised, I possessed no real understanding of any of that — until now, living, as I do, in this American nation increasingly ruled by the arrogant, unlearned, chronically dyspeptic few.
Now obviously the United States of today is not another Iraq of the early 2000s; not yet, anyway. But we the American majority are now daily experiencing the frightful sensation of being ruled by boorish political warlords hatched from sparsely populated fiefdoms of unutterable ignorance and unremitting hostility to civilized life. We are the nation's predominant centrists, moderates, liberals, progressives, socialists, Never Trumpers and Mugwumps — known broadly as Democrats — committed to civil rights, human liberty, freedom of conscience and democratic rule. And yet where we've not already lost power, we're losing it to the other guys — those Husseinlike Republicans.
So much of our growing impotence is — to use that overused word — structural, coupled with a complete and rather innovative lack of Republican scruples. Barely, just barely do Democrats now control the executive and legislative branches; yet even though their rank and file vastly outnumber the opposition, that control is at huge risk of being lost in 2022 and 2024 because of built-in, perfectly legal Republican advantages. Which means there's not a helluva lot Democrats can do about it.
The Trump Party's ruthless gerrymandering that would embarrass yesterday's Tammany leaders will almost certainly permit a fevered few to recapture the House; control of the Senate is, as always, at the mercy of voters in less populous states, where the uncivil brood; and the archaic, nitwitted and grotesquely undemocratic Electoral College, which enthroned our last two Republican presidents — both receiving less votes than their opponents — could easily present a trifecta of minority-based executive power.
As for the third branch of U.S. government? That instantly returns us to those two Republican presidents who were never democratically elected. For they appointed, for life, six of our nine Supreme Court Justices, who have ruled of late that states run by Husseinlike Republicans may pass nakedly unconstitutional laws which can then stand for months and, while they're at it, inhibit the voting rights of whatever and however many citizens they choose.
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Where is George W. Bush-- the sensitive painter of humanity-- when Biden needs him?
Ending a Debacle Is Not For the Faint of Heart
The Ex-President In The Shower
https://thiscantbehappening.net/the-ex-president-in-the-shower/
Where is George W. Bush — the post-presidential, sensitive painter of humanity — when Joe Biden needs him? As chairman of the board of the US Constitution Center in Philadelphia, on Veterans’ Day 2018 Joe Biden arranged for Bush and his wife Laura to receive the coveted Liberty Medal for their work with veterans. Biden, for certain, did this out of his famous instinct to work across-the-aisle; in this case, he seemed to want to make a warm and friendly public gesture to a Republican ex-president who clearly needed a life ring.
Of course, one of the reasons Mr. Bush needed a political life ring was that it was he who made the two fateful decisions that involved the United States in two disastrous foreign wars that quickly turned into classic quagmires. The man is branded.
I’ve been a Biden critic in the past and could be in the future, but the criticism over his messy exit from Afghanistan is either partisan nonsense or fear of the inevitable Republican backlash. The biggest strike against Biden in the military violence department is that he’s a Democrat, which means whatever he does will be fodder for relentless Republican “gotcha!” attacks.
After 241 Marines were blown up in a 1983 terrorist bombing in Beirut, Ronald Reagan somehow fled Beirut with his tail between his legs and got away with it. He was a Republican. George W. Bush, of course, was re-elected after ignoring a lot of very wise opposition (most of it from the left) and setting in motion two foreign policy disasters. Now, many of the very same people who let these Republicans get away with their military fiascos and all the dead young soldiers on their watch are now piling on President Biden. If it was a thriller it’d be titled The Benghazi Protocol.
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I can hear the ex president’s conscience in the shower bemoaning his fate:
Woe is me. I was a two-term President! Now, everybody thinks I’m a fool. After 9/11, I tried to sell myself as a war president. What was I thinking? All I ever really wanted was to be liked and to play with my dog. I did like owning a baseball team. But I had to do something. I’d been caught like a deer in the headlights reading “The Pet Goat.” I had to show gravitas. The war president thing came naturally. It worked for a while. But then it didn’t work any more. I read a bio of LBJ, but I realized other than escalate, he didn’t know what to do, either. Everything led to more confusion, more violence, more horror, more lying to the American people. Shakespeare was right. Ohhhh, woe is me!”
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If George W. Bush is an honorable man, he might consider paying Joe Biden back for awarding him that Liberty Medal on Veterans’ Day 2018 in Philadelphia. Having the guy who started the debacle defend the messy exit would be helpful. As for the Veterans Day Liberty Medal event, I was able to get inside and, by phone, help direct the Iraq veterans and Gold Star mothers outside so their chant of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” could be heard by Biden and Bush inside.
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Our worst terrorist enemies are now home grown.
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Gender: MaleHome country: USA
Current location: PA
Member since: Wed May 11, 2005, 10:48 PM
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