February 28, 2018

By the way, Papadopoulos Russian handler, Joseph Mifsud, has "vanished"

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/the-mysterious-professor-at-the-center-of-the-russia-trump?utm_term=.bfal3WDP5#.phrRXQ4Vv

The "cut out" from Russia who met with Papadopoulos to offer "dirt on Hillary Clinton"




Fascinating story by the student newspaper where he "taught"

https://brignews.com/2017/11/04/what-we-know-so-far-about-joseph-mifsud/


You think that Russian intelligence would have provided a better name than Mifsud, lol.

February 26, 2018

The Trump Conundrum

Is he a intelligent but not very well educated person who has a basic evil intent and is clever at hitting the hot button of the vile?

or

Is he an idiot with less brains than God gave a grapefruit?


And no "both" is not an acceptable answer.


I have several friends who play this game on a daily basis and we have been asking this question for the past two years. It isn't as easy as it looks, the analysis can run very deep and it is not at all unusual for people playing the "Trump Conundrum Game" to switch from the former to the latter on a daily basis, if not several times during the day.

I normally tend to the former answer. Today has pushed me into the "less brains than God gave a grapefruit" camp and I may never leave it.

The "I would have run in without a gun" statement has no real upside to it, he is reminding everyone of a problem that he has no solution to it. Even if you are a Trumpster and believe that nonsense to be true you still don't have an answer because he isn't going to spend time outside schools so even his base isn't going to feel good about it. It shows how really out of touch and delusional he is, the guy who nearly fainted at the site of blood running into a violent lethal situation with only his vulgarity to defend him.

That is not the critical factor in deciding the "evil vs. idiocy" question however. He didn't shout it in front gym filled with of his normal sycophantic beer guzzling "Friends of Fox" flat earthers, he said it in front of a gathering of the country's governors, none of whom were likely to accept any part of what he was saying as tethered to a rational point in the universe.

He is not only delusional with fantasies of grandeur, he can't focus on what room he is in.

Today we are back at the "less brains than large citric fruit" camp and may never leave it.

February 15, 2018

The family who took him in.

CNN is reporting that the shooter who had been orphaned twice was taken in by a family who opened their home to take in someone that wasn't doing well.

A good deed never goes unpunished and in this case this family will suffer for years. Ours is a throwaway society and we throw away families, children, women, vets or anyone when they no longer fit. Hillary was right that it takes a village to raise a child and when that village gets infected by the aggressive Ayn Rand philosophy of the far right Republican party it comes down to individual families doing heroic things.

Even before the victims were identified harsh sentiments were raining down on the "parents" who enabled this shooter, except that his parents have been long dead and the single mother who adopted him died of flu/pneumonia in November. Even on DU judgements were being made. Even if they had not allowed him to bring the guns into the house he would have easily found a place to store them.

The family who took him in appeared to be an example of the best of us and today, with the rest of the shooter's victims I think about the kindness of the family who took him in and all of the abuse that they will have to endure on top of their own sadness.

All I can say is thank you for the kindness that you showed him.

January 26, 2018

Who is really behind the leaks, an alternate theory

Trump announces a path for citizenship and arrives in Switzerland to glorify among the world's elite . . .

except that when he lands the only story is that he had eliminated his "I didn't know this was bad" defense because last June he tried to fire Mueller and was cock blocked by the WH Counsel. It makes look weak, stupid, careless and guilty.

Now the working presumption is that the Republican Party is both stupid and evil. What if they are evil but not stupid.

It is rather remarkable that every single time that Trump gets on a plane and goes somewhere, Saudi Arabia or China for example, there is a very serious leak and it undermines Trump's news cycle when he should be getting good press, if he didn't do stupid things like grab an orb in SA.

Next week the whole dynamics of the Republican Party will change with Romney's announcement that he will be a candidate in Utah's Senate race. Preliminary indications are that he will win in a super landslide, 70%. He will steal the winning aurora and present a scandal free (both personal, business and as Governor) alternative to Trump.

Perhaps there is an inner circle of Republicans who know enough about what is happening in the WH to know that Trump's fall is inevitable and that within 6 months Trump will be forced to resign. Pence appoints Romney to VP and Pence leaves to a huge payoff leaving Romney as the President and he brings back Ryan as his VP.

Ryan is awfully quiet and composed for a guy whose House is burning to the ground around him. This would give the Republicans a fresh face and significantly reduce losses in the House and provide what is needed for the Republicans to keep the Senate.

Romney does a deal on DACA and other broadly popular ideas. The move for the wall is replaced by improving technological advances to improve border security measures. The most powerful argument for the Democrats; "We aren't crazy and we aren't Trump" is eliminated and the Republicans will have a more even playing field for the off year elections.

There will also be a honeymoon period for Romney. He will be welcomed abroad. We will return to the climate treaty. All of our allies will rush their leaders here to praise the change.

I have no proof of any of this of course. This is what I would do if I was in the Republican inner circle.

Of course the first thing I would do is to keep Trump off balance. Every time he gets on a plane I would make sure that there was a crippling leak that would undermine his whole Presidency.

Just saying that is what I would do if I was in their shoes and wanted to pull their party over the greatest disaster they faced since Nixon. The leaks against Trump, both when he gets on a plane and the inevitable Friday night bombshell that will dominate the Sunday shows sure seems to fit a pattern.

January 22, 2018

Gallup: Trump first year breaks records for low support, weekly shows 3% decline in Jan.

Gallup has released their weekly Presidential Job Approval showing that after a brief uptick Trump's disapproval is heading north and his disapproval is heading south.

In Feb 2017 Trump's approval was 45 and his disapproval was 47. Today his approval is 36 and his disapproval is 59 so that the gap went from - 2 to - 23.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/203207/trump-job-approval-weekly.aspx?g_source=link_newsv9&g_campaign=item_185273&g_medium=copy

When it comes to his first year no President comes close to trump

January 17, 2018

Flake's speech is important

We don't have to like Flake's legislative record to understand, and cheer, his latest speech.

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/17/politics/jeff-flake-speech/index.html

It is important, and beneficial for three reasons:

1) It is obvious that he is putting down a marker for leadership in a post Trump Republican Party and that is also not an inherently bad thing because it is based on the premise that Trump will have to crash and burn before they can rebuild it.

2) Impeachment can be done with a majority of the House but it takes 2/3 for removal. President's aren't removed because they committed a crime, Reagan clearly broke the law with Iran/Contra. Removal of office is a political act and it cannot be done by a single party. It doesn't have to be unanimous but a significant number of the President's party must agree.

Flake makes the strongest case for Republicans to abandon the President because he bases it on a clear attack on First Amendment issues and attacks on basic American values of supporting a free and independent press. We will need more like this but getting the first Republican to stand up and call Trump a neo-Stalinist is a good first step.

3) It puts Republicans in the crucible. He is giving Democrats valuable footage for ads in November that will make the case that opposition to the President is a bipartisan affair and it gives cover for those Republicans who are looking for an excuse to vote for the Democrat.

AZ is clearly one of those places where it will make a difference. Trump didn't even get a majority here. He won with less than 4% of the vote and less than 100,000 votes. His speech was carefully crafted to pull on the heartstrings of Mormons. There are 400,000 Mormons in AZ.

More importantly it will force Republican candidates to answer questions whether or not they agree with Flake's speech. In the Congressional campaign season I expect that you will get some favourable Republican responses. More importantly it will drive many Republican candidates further to the right in the primary and sabotage their GE campaigns chances of winning.

In AZ McSally is the likely Republican Senatorial candidate but she is currently only polling at 31%

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2018/01/16/poll-shows-mcsally-frontrunner-arizona-senate-race-but-can-she-snag-donald-trumps-endorsemen/1036669001/

In order to win the primary she will have to be anti Flake and pro Trump. That may get her on to the GE ballot but it will likely be the difference in her being able to win in the GE. If she were to run a campaign based on "I am an independent" she might win, she is a good campaigner. Jeff Flake just did everything he could to force her to a pro-Trump position in a way that will undermine her GE chances.

It is possible that his speech will force other Republican primary candidates to have to answer tough questions that will make them more Trump for the primary and less electable in the general. If McSally loses by a small percentage and a Democrat takes his seat then his speech are likely to be the difference.

January 14, 2018

Why polls underestimate a wave election

One of the regular events that follow a wave election is a review why the polls underestimated just how big a wave it was.

This is an example of one of those reviews after 2014:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/14/polls-republican_n_6158158.html

Now we have Larry Sabato warning Dems that we shouldn't be "over confident" as posted in highplainsdem thread: https://demu.gr/100210098814

Sabato tries to sound reasonable but I remember when Romney was tanking and almost no donations were coming in Sabato started pimping all of the suspicious polling that showed Romney rebounding, Romney got a rebound in donations and I always suspected Sabato of being compensated for his strong opinions on what was obviously puff polling. His opinions at the time were all wrong.

What Sabato isn't saying is that this next election is "baked" and by that I mean that while, obviously, we shouldn't be over confident there are some key irreversible points in the election cycle that have already passed. The most important of these are incumbents retiring and candidate recruitment.

When you can't find candidates to run in high profile safe Senate seats it is an indicator of a tremendous blast that is coming because there are dozens of good candidates being recruited in Congressional and Gubernatorial and hundreds for down ticket races. That part of the election cycle is almost over and the Republicans are getting skunked. Nine plus months to go and the Republicans can't find a candidate for the Senate seat in North Dakota?

I recently had an extended trip to Eastern Washington where I grew up and stayed until 21 and I was struck that almost everyone, regardless of political affiliation said,

"I don't want to talk about it".

"I don't want to talk about it but Trump is an idiot" would be a typical Democratic response and "I don't want to talk about it but Trump is nuts" was a typical Republican response. A very close friend that I have had who has voted Republican for decades because of his position on abortion said "I don't want to talk about it but if the Democrats don't win in a landslide then the country is finished.

There are no more undecideds in the country. There are a lot of people who hate Trump including all Democrats, most Independents and many Republicans. There are a small number of Trump supporters but they are keeping their head down. The only unknown is how many Republicans who don't like Trump will simply stay home at the election.

The reason that the polls don't register an even larger number for each Congressional district is that most people are not just "baked" they are "burnt", they already have made up their mind and are trying to avoid any more nauseating news until the election, they don't want to talk to pollsters.

The most astonishing finding from my visit to Spokane, not a single person, Democrat or Republican, had a good thing to say about Morris-Rogers.

Everyone thought that the Democrat candidate Dr. Lisa Brown was going to win and here is what Sabato and the others are missing. Democrats aren't just recruiting candidates they are recruiting super stars to run.

Here is her wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brown_(Washington_politician)

The most impressive new urban redevelopment in Spokane was the join medical facility that brought a large leading age medical facility under WSU to the city. Dr. Brown was Chancellor of WSU. This is the kind of development that the polls for generic candidates don't register.

We still need to finish the job, and it is going to be rewarding this time but we should also be confident that something very big is going to happen in November.

December 19, 2017

Adverse Selection and how the Republicans just killed the ACA

The whole idea of insurance is to spread the risk among the largest population. Let's say that we want to help people who get Multiple Sclerosis a terrible condition that attacks people at random. If everyone is covered by MS insurance we can amortize it over 300 million and have a per capita charge of $ 1.00 per person.

If the number of people who buy the insurance is reduced the per capita charge increases.

If we force the insurance company to provide care for all of the MS but don't require a mandate this creates a situation of "ADVERSE SELECTION";

Legislative Adverse Selection occurs when legislation destabilizes the natural selection then it creates a death spiral for the insurance plan. When you mandate that the insurance company must accept everyone regardless of pre existing conditions BUT then takes away the individual mandate they are creating Legislative Adverse Selection.

If we require Health Insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions but don't have an individual mandate we will set up a death spiral for the ACA.




Unable to kill the ACA by guillotine the Republican Senators killed by slow strangulation.

Senator Collins, Senator Murkowski and all of the others who said that they would protect the ACA and healthcare for the middle class and poor lied.

The ACA is now a dead health plan walking. It will take a couple of years but without the mandate it will be a plan that will end up only with those who have current conditions signing up for it and others opting out as premiums will start to radically increase.

This is the most cynical move possible. Keep the popular requirement mandating insurance companies must take everyone and then take away the individual mandate so that the plan becomes unsustainable.

December 11, 2017

In Trumpism epistomology was the first casualty, and why there is still hope.

At some time in the 5th century BC Aeschylus enumerated a truth that has been repeatedly confirmed in our lifetime, "In war, truth is the first casualty."

We can now update that with “In neo fascism, epistemology is the first casualty”

Systemic philosophical or theological discussion doesn’t start with what you know but the more important question “how do you know what you think you know”. Up until Copernicus knowledge was thought to be the recitation of the obvious: God made us, we live by simple rules and noting that which can be easily observed.

When Copernicus established that the most obvious known fact, that the Sun “rose in the East and set in the West” was not a fact and that we were instead a sphere rotating through space, human reasoning went through a crises of epistemology. How should we know anything? Are we even human beings or could we be (in the absurd) a butterfly dreaming that we are humans. Descartes established a new foundation with “I think therefore I am”, that knowledge can be certain on the basis of rational discourse and the use of the scientific method.

In 1970 Alvin Toffler observed in “Future Shock” that technological change would continue to speed up until it would happen at a rate that was faster than the psychological ability of society to absorb it. It would create pockets of fear. That is exactly what we are witnessing.

Please take a minute and read this disturbing article by The Guardian. It documents that farmers in the US are committing suicide at a rate much higher than not just the population but higher than other high risk groups, like veterans.

When we look at the irrational embrace of neo fascism in Trump and scratch our heads why rural parts of the country (and other countries), even those that are located close to normal urban and progressive communities, embrace policies of tribalism, we can see the reason, they are filled with fear. Fear is the fuel that has empowered fascism for a hundred years. In their fear they cling to their guns, their bibles and the false memory of a simpler time when society could be ordered by the simple observation in known truths; The sun rises and sets and human society was based on families that had a simple formula – a man, a women and children, that all you needed to succeed in the work place was to show up and work hard.

We need to face that what we are seeing is in fact a new branch of fascism. It is a world view that is not based on reason or fact but the Nietzsche like birth of the “strong man” who intends to reorder society not by reason but as an extension of their personality camouflaged democratic institutions. In this way Trump is like other “strong men” of fascism like Mussolini.

Truth, for people like Trump, is simple; it is not in a fact but in bellicose repetition of a lie where the truth of a thing is established not by reason but by the forceful assertion of a phrase. In the New York media and property world Trump was able to establish a win by simply wearing down critics by an obstinate repetition of a lie and that is the game that he is playing now.

Where the News Media went wrong with Trump is when they allowed him to state a known lie and after a few attempts at questioning “went on” to the next object. When Trump entered the absurd world of “birtherism” the news media should have never asked him another question, never moved on. They should have repeatedly asked him to explain how he arrived at that lie. Until he conceded that lie then they should have not let him make any other point. He won by his persistence.

We must now re-establish reason as the currency of public conversation. We should never again let one of our courageous leaders be targeted by absurd allegations that parallel Trump’s tactics of bellicosity and repetition as a substitute for fact and reason.

We should also understand that for many in the rural areas of our country the embracement of Trump is a cry for help. The are afraid of the future that takes their children to live in urban areas far away and eliminates jobs that have provided stability for families for generations.

How can we take the higher road, understand the pain that has mobilized our political enemies into an eruption of fascist irrationality and find a path forward that unites our common interest based on shared values? I would suggest we could accomplish this by simply recalling the wise leadership of the man who spent 8 years doing it day in and day out. The strange reality we live in is the country that has tens of millions that support Trump is the same country that elected and re-elected President Obama.

We must insist on a return to compassion and reason. Exhaustion, lassitude and defeat are not options.

December 3, 2017

Russian Roulette Republicans

It is entirely possible that all 51 Republican Senators want to pass a terrible tax bill.

However there is, I believe, a much simpler explanation for the Senate vote.

They passed a terrible bill that will not get past the debt hawks in the House and the House Republicans will make substantial changes and return it to the Senate where it will lose at least two more Senators and fail.

Why would the Republican Senators who are seriously against this legislation (and there may be more than those that telegraphed a problem with it) vote for it?

They are tired of being blamed by the radicals in the Republican House and getting challenged in primaries by Tea Party. The House can pass the Senate bill without any changes and send it to the President. If they make any changes the Senate Republicans can say "we did what we had to do but it is the purists in the House that sabotaged it".

Of course if the House Republicans pass the Senate bill then it will hurt the Republican Senators in the General Election but not in the primaries and that is their greatest concern. Senator Lugar, Bennet and Murkowski all lost in the primary and would have easily won in the GE. Murkowski won on an independent ticket.

The Senate Republicans have put a bullet in the chamber and dared the House to pass it knowing that if it goes back to the Senate it will not pass, especially if they lose on Tuesday and the responsibility will be 100% on the House Republicans.