Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[kenberg]

There is still no shortage of buns in need of throwing out.

[Winstonm]

There is still no shortage of buns in need of throwing out.

 

I don't mind the bums so much as the grifters.

[rmnka447]

No, that was 2018 midterms.

 

The electorate want the Congress to work at solving the nation's problems, but the 2018 "replacements" seem to be faring no better. Maybe, there's another flip of the House in 2020. We shall see.

[rmnka447]

There is still no shortage of buns in need of throwing out.

 

Da Nang Dick?

[johnu]

Da Nang Dick?

 

Putin's Puppet, the Manchurian President, President Fake Bone Spurs, has no beef with anybody's military history and shouldn't be going near the subject in case his own sorry draft history sees the light of day.

[cherdano]

Welcome back rmnka. Now that you are, care to tell us whether you still consider Bill Barr a straight shooter? Cause I'd be interested whether you are here to genuinely discuss the issues, or just to score talking points and jump to the next one when the previous one has run its course turned out to be utter BS.

[johnu]

We all recall how ACA was passed and it was ugly -- back room deals, sweetheart arrangements, etc. -- to keep the required Senate 60 votes. And, of course, the iconic comment by Speaker Pelosi on the ACA "Pass it, so we can find out what's in it." It was a kluge from the start pushed through without any bipartisanship. It was not a shining moment for our democracy.

 

The demise of Dem majorities was the result of the electorate recognizing how opposed they were to what the Dems/Obama administration was pushing. Simple answer, throw the bums out. And, they did.

 

There was too much bipartisanship. The Democrats let the Republicans make all sorts of amendments to the ACA and some parts of them even made it into the final bill. When push came to shove, there wasn't a single Republican who would step up and vote for the bill. Ironic, since the basis of the bill came from a Republican proposal years before.

 

Contrast this with Dennison tax cut bill that was done in complete secrecy by senior Republicans and then had to be voted on before anybody could read what was in the bill, or before the actual cost of the bill could be costed out by the Joint Committee on Taxation. Of course, who could blame them. :rolleyes: If the cost of the bill was publicized before the vote, it would have caused serious problems for many who voted for it because it blew a hole in the budget that hasn't stopped growing.

 

Of course, it's better to be a bum, than a grifter, a conman, a traitor to the country, a felon, a criminal conspirator, a foreign puppet, in other words, most of Dennison's administration and campaign staff.

[y66]

We all recall how ACA was passed and it was ugly -- back room deals, sweetheart arrangements, etc. -- to keep the required Senate 60 votes. And, of course, the iconic comment by Speaker Pelosi on the ACA "Pass it, so we can find out what's in it." It was a kluge from the start pushed through without any bipartisanship. It was not a shining moment for our democracy.

 

The demise of Dem majorities was the result of the electorate recognizing how opposed they were to what the Dems/Obama administration was pushing. Simple answer, throw the bums out. And, they did.

The electorate was *so* opposed?

 

In 2008, 51% of Americans polled by Pew Research said that it is the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage. In 2016, that number increased to 60%.

Since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, Republicans have promised repeatedly to come up with a replacement that increases coverage, increases quality and reduces cost.

 

In May 2017, with Republicans controlling all three branches of government, Paul Ryan succeeded in getting the House to pass a bill that Business Insider described as "the least popular major bill in decades" and which major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, strongly condemned.

 

In July 2017, the Senate rejected Ryan's bill in a 51-to-49 vote, with Republican senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain joining all Senate Democrats in voting against it.

 

I wouldn't go so far as to call that a shining moment for democracy but it was definitely a glimmer.

[Winstonm]

The electorate want the Congress to work at solving the nation's problems, but the 2018 "replacements" seem to be faring no better. Maybe, there's another flip of the House in 2020. We shall see.

 

Many of the red-state electorate who were bombarded with right-wing propaganda did not know that Obamacare and the ACA were the same thing. Maybe by 2020 a few in Kentucky and Pennsylvania will grasp that coal isn't coming back, that Russia is indeed an enemy of democracies, and that Individual-1 is using their support to line his pockets.

[y66]

A betrayal by Schumer? Sounds like the House Dems have only themselves to blame for failing to hammer out a consensus:

 

WASHINGTON — For all the talk of a Tea Party of the left, the true power in the House revealed its face last week — the Mighty Moderates.

 

The failure of House liberals to attach strict conditions to billions of dollars in emergency border aid requested by President Trump highlighted the outsize power of about two dozen centrist Democrats, mainly from Republican-leaning districts, who are asserting themselves to pull the chamber to the right.

 

Their views diverge sharply from the mostly liberal cast of Democrats seeking their party’s presidential nomination and from the diverse new crop of outspoken liberals in the House who have captured the public’s imagination and infused new energy into the progressive majority of their caucus. But their victories in districts that Mr. Trump won in 2016 are the reason Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, a staunch liberal herself, holds her gavel. For now, they are proving far more effective at wielding their influence than those in the party’s vocal and headline-grabbing left.

 

“Where they come from is crucial to holding the House, and that makes them very influential,” said Laura Hall of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “If you’re Speaker Pelosi or another member of the Democratic leadership, you have to always be thinking about those members whose seats went from red to blue and helped to flip the House.”

 

The moderates’ latest use of that clout played out in sometimes ugly fashion last week in the Capitol, in heated scrums on the House floor, angry exchanges between erstwhile allies, mudslinging on Twitter, and late-night meetings with leadership. One liberal accused his moderate colleagues of enabling child abuse. A moderate clapped back that the name-caller, Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, was just chasing followers on social media.

 

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, whose rock-starlike popularity on the left has given her a louder than usual microphone for a first-term lawmaker, accused the moderates of being the new Tea Party.

 

Their tactics, she huffed, are “just horrifying.”

 

The nasty intraparty divisions looked familiar to Republicans, who could scarcely restrain their glee as Ms. Pelosi grappled with the same dynamics their party faced when it held the House majority. The former speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and his predecessor, John A. Boehner of Ohio, had to contend with the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, the ideological outgrowth of the Tea Party, which routinely threatened to vote against crucial measures they considered insufficiently conservative.

 

“It seems to me that Nancy Pelosi’s facing exactly the same set of problems that John Boehner faced,” Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, said with a chuckle. “She’s very able, but it’s rough. We've been there.”

 

Well, not quite. The Tea Party, which drew its name from the mantra “Taxed Enough Already,” represented the far-right of the Republican Party, while the coalition of Democrats that is now asserting itself is in the center, often allied with moderate Republicans across the aisle.

 

But unlike Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her like-minded colleagues, the moderates have taken a tactical page from the roughly 40 Republicans who make up the Freedom Caucus, whose sway in the Republican majority came from their willingness to defect from the party line on crucial votes unless they received concessions.

 

While the House’s liberal superstars are adept at promoting their progressive positions and routinely generate headlines for breaking with the party line, they have not made a habit of lobbying their colleagues to defy Ms. Pelosi en masse. Last week, the foursome known as The Squad — Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts — announced their opposition to a Democratic border spending bill that included strict rules on the way the money could be used, saying it was not liberal enough. But when that first vote was tallied, they were the only four Democrats opposed, and the measure passed easily.

 

The moderates, in contrast, have been ready and willing to bring legislation down. In a majority that holds the House by a narrow margin, Ms. Pelosi can afford to lose no more than 17 of her fellow Democrats on any vote. That gives a potent weapon to any faction that can hold together that many lawmakers to insist on its position.

 

The moderates began demonstrating their penchant for breaking with their leaders on the House floor early this year, siding with Republicans on procedural votes meant to put Democrats in a tough political spot. They also balked at a two-year budget measure they worried would worsen a fiscal picture already badly stained by red ink. Threats to block any effort by liberals to increase domestic spending essentially assured that the bill would not have the necessary support to pass, and the vote was postponed indefinitely.

 

Their influence has also been felt on one major initiative that has not taken off; concern for their fates is one reason that Democratic leaders seldom talk about impeaching Mr. Trump, a move that is now supported by more than 80 House Democrats, about one-third of the caucus, almost all of them progressives.

 

But last week was the centrists’ most visible and audacious power play yet.

 

With the Senate and House at a stalemate over the $4.6 billion humanitarian aid package, several of the moderates banded together and threatened to side with Republicans to block a Democratic alternative that contained less money for immigration enforcement and more conditions for the administration. The move pushed Ms. Pelosi to abandon her plan to pass the more restrictive bill, which had higher standards for facilities holding migrant children. Instead she brought up a Senate version that had bipartisan support and swiftly cleared it to become law.

 

The move left Ms. Pelosi’s natural allies in the House’s Hispanic and progressive caucuses stunned and feeling betrayed. “Since when did the Problem Solvers Caucus become the Child Abuse Caucus?” Mr. Pocan said on Twitter. Representatives Max Rose, Democrat of New York, and Dean Phillips, Democrat of Minnesota, were later seen angrily confronting him on the House floor.

 

Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona and a former co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the episode left him “very resentful,” and feeling as if the moderates had essentially forced the House to silence its natural inclinations.

 

“I just hope that in forcing us to do nothing, they don’t feel like they’ve actually accomplished anything,” Mr. Grijalva said. “I don’t know what the motivation was, to try to assert some power or what, but in the future, we shouldn’t hesitate bringing our agenda and our legislation forward because it might offend 23 or 24” centrists.

 

The episode also exposed divisions among the moderates themselves. On the House floor on Thursday, about 10 moderate freshman Democrats huddled near the marble dais, arguing about the way forward. One lawmaker said if they sided with the other party in a bid to force the House to consider the weaker Senate bill, “we might as well be Republicans,” according to one person familiar with the exchange who described it on the condition of anonymity.

 

Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, grew red-faced and emotional during the exchange, and stormed off the House floor, returning a short time later and accepting an embrace from Representative Katie Porter, Democrat of California. Both ultimately supported the bill.

 

It was a version of a point that had been made, in much gentler fashion, during floor remarks by Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Rules Committee. He warned that the procedural move the moderates were threatening to join “is a vote to give control of the House floor to the Republicans.”

 

But the moderates said they had done the party a favor, getting the House to the only tenable position as quickly as possible.

 

“The question was, would you rather just obstruct and delay, as some wanted to, or were we going to get humanitarian aid to children at the border right now?” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and the co-chairman of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 23 Republicans and 23 Democrats that presses for bipartisan compromises.

 

The group met on Wednesday and discussed the mounting anxiety many of them had about going home for a July 4 recess having failed to pass the border bill. After taking a vote, members decided to issue a news release calling for the House to pass the Senate bill, effectively surrendering a politically risky fight over immigration so the aid could go through.

 

“There was a very significant and real concern that we wouldn’t act at all and leave town with no immediate humanitarian aid for children at the border,” Mr. Gottheimer said. “That was unacceptable.”

 

The result was a bitter pill for liberals who had insisted they could not vote for the aid package without tough new restrictions and higher standards for facilities that hold migrant children.

 

Ms. Pressley conceded that the left had work to do to figure out how to wield its power more effectively.

 

“We are building new muscle,” she said in an interview, “and as we build that new muscle, we will better understand how to flex it.”

Source: Julie Hirschfeld Davis at NYT:

[y66]

Quote of the day from Matt Yglesias:

 

The split screen between Trump scuttling a reasonable non-proliferation agreement with Iran + falling all over himself to do photo ops with Kim Jong Un is just too much for me.

[rmnka447]

Welcome back rmnka. Now that you are, care to tell us whether you still consider Bill Barr a straight shooter? Cause I'd be interested whether you are here to genuinely discuss the issues, or just to score talking points and jump to the next one when the previous one has run its course turned out to be utter BS.

 

Genuine discussion? Are you kidding? Most of the posters on this thread are such progressive zealots that any sensible discussion will never happen.

 

I happen to be toward the other end of the political spectrum.

 

I didn't like President Obama because I thought his policies and agenda were wrong headed. But I would never in my wildest dreams engage in the name calling and vitriol toward him that more than a few of you engage in toward our current President. If that's your idea of moral superiority, I pity you.

 

I laugh at the incestuous way that you engage in trying to prove that everything you think is true. You proffer tons and tons of BS analyses by people who obviously dislike President Trump to prove how deplorable he is. Gee, those conclusions are no surprise. What would be a surprise would be if some of those experts didn't come to those conclusions some time. It's too much Quiggian logic. (Think -Wouk's The Caine Mutiny)

 

Yes, I still consider AG Barr a straight shooter. I think he has legitimate concerns about how the investigation of the Trump campaign got started. I think he did exactly the right thing in appointing Connecticut US Atty Jon Durham to look into it. He has an impeccable reputation for investigating and prosecuting political corruption cases. He also operates in a state that is not exactly right-wing. There's been enough information coming out through FOIA lawsuits to at least justify an inquiry into what happened.

 

Ultimately, I'd like to see that the DOJ/FBI are perceived to be completely free from bias in the investigation, prosecution, and administering of our laws. With the information that has come out over the last 2 years, there is at least a cloud of uncertainty about that now.

 

Unfortunately, I'm going to be dealing with some serious health issues over the next 6-8 months, so I probably won't be available to toss an occasional grenade into this thread and attempt to wake you up. It might be an impossible task, but I keep hoping. Prospects are pretty good that following that period I'll be back better than ever. See you then.

[hrothgar]

Unfortunately, I'm going to be dealing with some serious health issues over the next 6-8 months,

 

Hope that things work out for the best.

[johnu]

Genuine discussion? Are you kidding? Most of the posters on this thread are such progressive zealots that any sensible discussion will never happen.

 

I happen to be toward the other end of the political spectrum.

From what I've seen, you are from the teabag wing that has adopted Dennison as their moral authority. Nothing wrong with that. Right fringe media has made millionaires and semi-celebrities out of many of the craziest people you'll ever meet.

 

I didn't like President Obama because I thought his policies and agenda were wrong headed. But I would never in my wildest dreams engage in the name calling and vitriol toward him that more than a few of you engage in toward our current President. If that's your idea of moral superiority, I pity you.

I stand by everything I have called Dennison which are backed up by cold hard facts. Unfortunately, right fringe media has corrupted and ignored the truth. One example of this was that senior lady at Rep. Amash's town hall meeting who admitted that she had never heard that the Mueller report said that Dennison had committed crimes because she (only) watched Fox Propaganda Channel which somehow only showed Dennison's government paid personal attorney Barr's summary about 1000 times which left no doubt that Dennison was not guilty of anything.

 

I laugh at the incestuous way that you engage in trying to prove that everything you think is true. You proffer tons and tons of BS analyses by people who obviously dislike President Trump to prove how deplorable he is. Gee, those conclusions are no surprise. What would be a surprise would be if some of those experts didn't come to those conclusions some time. It's too much Quiggian logic. (Think -Wouk's The Caine Mutiny)

 

Yes, I still consider AG Barr a straight shooter. I think he has legitimate concerns about how the investigation of the Trump campaign got started. I think he did exactly the right thing in appointing Connecticut US Atty Jon Durham to look into it. He has an impeccable reputation for investigating and prosecuting political corruption cases. He also operates in a state that is not exactly right-wing. There's been enough information coming out through FOIA lawsuits to at least justify an inquiry into what happened.

:lol: :lol: :lol: Barr a straight shooter :rolleyes:

 

Barr's been corrupt since at least his first stint with the Bush administration

 

Barr’s Playbook: He Misled Congress When Omitting Parts of Justice Dep’t Memo in 1989

 

Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.

When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions.

At least the lying SOB is consistent B-)

 

Ultimately, I'd like to see that the DOJ/FBI are perceived to be completely free from bias in the investigation, prosecution, and administering of our laws. With the information that has come out over the last 2 years, there is at least a cloud of uncertainty about that now.

You really took the bait on that one, hook, line and sinker. There's a reason that Dennison and Fox Propaganda push these nutty conspiracy theories. A certain percentage of the population believes everything they say, so why stop when they are so successful. B-)

[jjbrr]

I suppose this is a personal flaw in myself, but I have never - not a single time in my life - not even once, ever - found someone who uses the word "vitriol" unironically to deserve even a modicum of respect or serious consideration.

 

Won't somebody please think of the children with all these insults being slung around. These pearls aren't going to clutch themselves.

[Winstonm]

Genuine discussion? Are you kidding? Most of the posters on this thread are such progressive zealots that any sensible discussion will never happen.

 

I happen to be toward the other end of the political spectrum.

 

I didn't like President Obama because I thought his policies and agenda were wrong headed. But I would never in my wildest dreams engage in the name calling and vitriol toward him that more than a few of you engage in toward our current President. If that's your idea of moral superiority, I pity you.

 

I laugh at the incestuous way that you engage in trying to prove that everything you think is true. You proffer tons and tons of BS analyses by people who obviously dislike President Trump to prove how deplorable he is. Gee, those conclusions are no surprise. What would be a surprise would be if some of those experts didn't come to those conclusions some time. It's too much Quiggian logic. (Think -Wouk's The Caine Mutiny)

 

Yes, I still consider AG Barr a straight shooter. I think he has legitimate concerns about how the investigation of the Trump campaign got started. I think he did exactly the right thing in appointing Connecticut US Atty Jon Durham to look into it. He has an impeccable reputation for investigating and prosecuting political corruption cases. He also operates in a state that is not exactly right-wing. There's been enough information coming out through FOIA lawsuits to at least justify an inquiry into what happened.

 

Ultimately, I'd like to see that the DOJ/FBI are perceived to be completely free from bias in the investigation, prosecution, and administering of our laws. With the information that has come out over the last 2 years, there is at least a cloud of uncertainty about that now.

 

Unfortunately, I'm going to be dealing with some serious health issues over the next 6-8 months, so I probably won't be available to toss an occasional grenade into this thread and attempt to wake you up. It might be an impossible task, but I keep hoping. Prospects are pretty good that following that period I'll be back better than ever. See you then.

 

If you don't recognize the nature of Donald Trump there is no hope for you so let's forget that part. You like autocrats. Fine. That you claim posters like Kenberg and PassedOut are wildly leftist makes me question your integrity or at the very least the integrity of your statements.

 

But "disliked his policies" is such a meaningless phrase that it requires definition. Tell us which policies of the Obama administration you found objectionable and perhaps we could talk about them. What "agenda" do you think he had?

 

I do agree with you that AG Barr is a straight-shooter insomuch as he strictly adheres and tries to advance his conception of an imperial presidency without bounds to its power. That concept of presidential power that he promotes and works to implement is for most of us antipathy to our concept of the presidency and how U.S. democratic Republic is supposed to work, and certainly not what the originators thought.

 

Congress for many, many years has been complicit in allowing their own powers to be supplanted by presidential, btw, so it is not about Barr and Trump other than they are using that weakness to their advantage - Barr for idealistic ones; Trump for personal gain.

 

But the way Barr conducts his operation is underhanded, even giving him credit for his point of view - and he is aware that there is no power that is willing to dissuade him from his goals. As head of justice in America, he is a dangerous man. Trump is only echoing what he has been told about his powers. Barr is the whisperer. Perhaps you think the US should have an imperial president. That is a genuine ideological claim. We don't. But to support Barr and Trump is to support that ideology, whether or not you want to admit it.

 

I don't care about the investigations Barr has started. What concerns me is whether the results can be trusted and if faked or cherry-picked results will be used politically to try to sway elections.

 

It seems obvious that the Republican party no longer supports democracy but is only interested in holding to power - that is the purpose of the gerrymandering and voter suppression that Republican party promotes. And now, with the SCOTUS on that side, there will be many more losses of democratic protections. Maybe we will survive. Maybe we won't.

 

You are helping the won't side.

[Winstonm]

A pre-rebuke to Jim Jordan's question of Robert Mueller:

 

From Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel.net

 

The Mueller team told Amy Berman Jackson that Paul Manafort had breached his plea agreement on November 26, 2018. His last grand jury appearance — on November 2 — did not show up in his breach discussion (meaning he may have told the truth, including about Trump’s personal involvement in optimizing the WikiLeaks releases). But in his October 26 grand jury appearance, he tried to hide the fact that he continued to pursue a plan to carve up Ukraine well into 2018, and continued to generally lie about what that plan to carve up Ukraine had to do with winning Michigan and Wisconsin, such that Manafort took time away from running Trump’s campaign on August 2, 2016 to discuss both of them with his co-conspirator Konstantin Kilimnik. Mueller never did determine what that August 2 meeting was about or what Kilimnik and Viktor Boyarkin did with the Trump polling data Manafort was sharing with them. But the delay in determining that Manafort’s obstruction had succeeded was set by Manafort, not Mueller.

my emphasis

I think it is important for rmnka447 and other supporters of this president to closely read the above facts as laid out by Dr. Wheeler.

 

Manafort shared polling data and the campaign plans to win two critical states with a Russian known to be associated with the GRU. Due to lack of cooperation and other factors, Mueller was unable to uncover how that information was used.

 

That Elliot Ness could not charge Al Capone with murder and racketeering does not mean Capone did not orchestrate murders and rackets.

 

Likewise, the proven facts of the Trump campaign's knowledge of, appreciation of, and expectation of help from the Russians' activities does not exonerate the campaign and its members.

 

Unable to prove is not the same as finding no proof of - and Mueller went on to say that had no proof been found he would have so stated.

 

Anyone who refuses to see that there was plenty of smoke and a lot of people trying to hide fires is being blinded by loyalty to ideology.

[Winstonm]

A friendly invitation to our Republican neighbors to read a critical article from a fellow Republican:

 

Having known Barr for four decades, including preceding him as deputy attorney general in the Bush administration, I knew him to be a fierce advocate of unchecked presidential power, so my own hopes were outweighed by skepticism that this would come true. But the first few months of his current tenure, and in particular his handling of the Mueller report, suggest something very different—that he is using the office he holds to advance his extraordinary lifetime project of assigning unchecked power to the president.

[johnu]

‘The Daily Show’ Finds No Difference Between Fox News And North Korea State TV

 

An outrageous claim if true. I, for one, see no similarities. For starters, North Korea State TV broadcasts in Korean. Secondly, .... I'm going to have to get back to you when somebody sends me some talking points.

 

Whew, I thought I was only going to have 1 point. Second point, North Korean State TV only has North Korean anchors and news people. 3rd point, North Korean State TV is broadcast to North Koreans, Fox Propaganda broadcasts to the US. 3 major points I came up with in only a couple of hours. B-)

 

The differences are staggering :rolleyes:

[y66]

From The Welcome Humiliation of John Bolton by Michelle Goldberg at NYT:

 

Say this for Donald Trump. He may be transforming American politics into a kleptocratic fascist reality show and turning our once-great country into a global laughingstock, but at least he’s humiliating John Bolton in the process.

 

Many people who get involved with this president end up diminished, embarrassed or, in quite a few cases, indicted. Rex Tillerson, once known as a corporate titan, will now be remembered for his brief, ineffectual record as secretary of state. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, and Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, are in prison.

 

Bolton’s comeuppance is of a different kind. By taking to Fox News to kiss up to Trump, he became national security adviser, a job that no other president would have ever given to a discredited warmonger. His reward is that, after devoting his life to the expansion of American power globally, he’s a hapless party to its contraction. For a person to sell out his putative ideals for such a hollow victory would be like a Greek drama, if the Greeks had written dramas about such small men.

 

Bolton is sometimes described as a neoconservative, but that’s not really right. Neoconservatives purported to champion the expansion of American values, while Bolton just wants to impose American might. On the surface, he seems an excellent fit with Trump, who is also uninterested in human rights and contemptuous of multilateral institutions. Both are bellicose nationalists, dismissive of climate change, eager to empower the Israeli right, hostile to Islam but solicitous of Saudi Arabia.

 

But the uber-hawk Bolton, who still refuses to admit that the Iraq war was a mistake, has long believed that America’s most implacable enemies include North Korea, Russia and Iran. One multilateral organization he appears to value is NATO, a counterweight to Russia that he once called “the most successful political-military alliance in human history.” Now, at the summit of his career, he’s part of an administration that makes a mockery of his longtime foreign policy philosophy.

 

When the George W. Bush administration, in which Bolton also served, lifted some sanctions on North Korea in 2008, Bolton seemed almost heartsick. “Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

 

So one can only imagine the ineffable sadness he felt over the weekend, when Trump stepped into North Korea to shake the hand of his friend Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s totalitarian leader. On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was considering putting aside the goal of getting North Korea to surrender the nuclear weapons it already has, instead trying to get the country to stop making new nuclear material.

 

Given Trump’s limitations as a statesman, that’s probably the best that can be hoped for. But it’s almost certainly not what Bolton, who was calling for pre-emptive strikes on North Korea just before Trump appointed him, thought he was signing up for. In response to the Times article, Bolton tweeted angrily that he’d heard of no such plan, though he might have simply been out of the loop. After all, while Trump was flattering Kim, Bolton was in Mongolia.

 

Also on Sunday, Politico reported on a white paper prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff about expanding Russian power. “Russia has a growing and demonstrated capacity and willingness to exercise malign influence in Europe and abroad, including in the United States,” the paper said.

 

Bolton used to decry this influence. Vladimir Putin’s efforts in the 2016 election, wrote Bolton in 2017, was “a casus belli, a true act of war, and one Washington will never tolerate.” When Putin lied to Trump’s face during their first meeting in Hamburg, Germany, Bolton hoped Trump would take it as a “highly salutary lesson about the character of Russia’s leadership.” Obviously, Trump learned no such lesson. At the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, last week, the president joked with Putin about election interference and the murder of journalists, a scene that will now be part of Bolton’s legacy.

 

There is one major issue left on which Bolton could shape history. On Monday, news broke that Iran had breached a limit on how much nuclear fuel it can possess under the 2015 nuclear deal, which the Trump administration abandoned. That comes after months of escalation on both sides, and the threat remains that Bolton could goad an erratic Trump into war.

 

Standing between us and that apocalyptic possibility is the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been urging Trump away from a military confrontation with Iran. Last month, Carlson used his opening monologue to eviscerate Bolton, calling him a “bureaucratic tapeworm” for whom war is “always good business.” In normal administrations, national security advisers have more authority than cable news hosts, but it was Carlson, not Bolton, who was with Trump at the Korean Demilitarized Zone this weekend. (Carlson later called into “Fox & Friends” and rationalized North Korean atrocities, said that leading a country “means killing people.”)

 

It’s nightmarish to live in a country where our foreign policy has been reduced to an intramural battle between Fox News reactionaries. And there’s still a danger that Bolton could outmaneuver the isolationists. But right now there is a thin, bitter consolation in knowing that he, like so many others who’ve worked for Trump, sacrificed his principles for power and will likely end up with neither.

Talk about hanging your partner.

[y66]

From Democrats are learning the wrong lesson from Donald Trump by Matt Yglesias at Vox:

 

Many progressives have what they believe to be a knock-down answer to nervous Nellies who fret that talking about desegregation busing, decriminalizing illegal entry into the United States, banning assault weapons, and replacing private health insurance will kill them at the polls in 2020: Donald Trump is president.

 

If Trump is president, the thinking goes, it’s the ultimate proof of “lol nothing matters” politics. And if anything does matter, it’s riling up your base to go to war, not trimming and tucking to persuade precious swing voters. The old rules no longer apply, or perhaps they were never true at all.

 

Activists are pressing candidates to take aggressively progressive stands on broad issues like Medicare-for-all but also narrower ones like including undocumented immigrants in health care plans and providing relief from graduate school debt.

 

This is, however, precisely the wrong lesson to learn from the Trump era.

 

It’s true that Trump is president, but it’s not true that Trump ran and won as an ideological extremist. He paired extremely offensive rhetoric on racial issues with positioning on key economic policy topics that led him to be perceived by the electorate as a whole as the most moderate GOP nominee in generations. His campaign was almost paint-by-numbers pragmatic moderation. He ditched a couple of unpopular GOP positions that were much cherished by party elites, like cutting Medicare benefits, delivered victory, and is beloved by the rank and file for it.

 

The research case that moderation matters for electoral wins, meanwhile, remains pretty solid. Lots of other things matter too, and it would be foolish to label any particular position or candidate as categorically “unelectable.” But overall, moderate candidates are more likely to win; more precisely, candidates who take popular positions on the issues are more likely to win than candidates who take unpopular ones.

[Winstonm]

From The Welcome Humiliation of John Bolton by Michelle Goldberg at NYT:

 

 

Talk about hanging your partner.

 

....hostile to Islam but solicitous of Saudi Arabia.

 

This should go into the "antithetical phrases" hall of fame.

[Winstonm]

In the spirit of the 4th considering this particular executive branch:

 

Here in the water of our greatest city stands

his likeness, with 5-iron, whose shaft

is graphite, on his balls his name:

Fooker of Mothers. From his empty hand

comes a middle finger, a world-wide gesture, a command

The air-brain dead-ender in a city of fame.

"Shitehole countries, the arseholes!" cries he

from metal lips. "Give me your whites, your rich,

your Norwegians who've been yearning to meet me.

The wretched refuse of your shitehole countries?

Lock them in cages, take away their kids,

Whack 'em with this ugly lamp....

at least the door is golden.

I don't know. We'll see.

[y66]

There will be tanks but no citizenship question apparently.

[johnu]

It's been well documented that many professional psychiatrists who have gone to medical school and had years of advanced training have agreed the Dennison checks all, or almost all, the boxes for being a psychopath. Nothing new here.

 

What's becoming more evident that Dennison is on the verge of a psychotic breakdown.

 

Trump claims homelessness is 'phenomenon that started 2 years ago,' blames 'liberal' mayors

 

President Donald Trump in an interview with Fox News painted a dark picture of people "living in hell" due to homelessness in major U.S. cities, claiming that it is "a phenomenon that started two years ago," blaming Democratic mayors for the problem.

Homelessness as a problem started 2 years ago??? :rolleyes:

 

And with Dennison taking 200% of the credit for continued economic growth and lower unemployment, why would he take "credit" for creating homelessness as a problem?

 

As for facts in the matter:

 

According to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness overall has decreased by 15% since 2007. Between 2016 and 2018, the rate of homelessness has stayed between 550,000 to 553,000 per year, the HUD figures show.

 

So the facts say that homelessness has been trending downward for the last 11 years. One more example of Dennison losing his already tenuous grip on reality.