- it seems like a lot of qualifications are negative this year: not-Trump vs. not-establishment; not-Clinton vs. not-"socialist."
- Like what some conservative voices are saying, the GOP needs to be about more than being against Obama and progressive programs. What are they going to do for Americans?So far I've heard:
-get Mexico to build a border wall
-defeat ISIS somehow
-bring back waterboarding
-get Putin to behave somehow
-de nuclearize Iran and NK somehow
-lower taxes and fewer regs
-tariffs on China
-get China to stop hacking us somehow - Yeah I think with the Republican complaints that Obama has been too weak/passive on foreign policy by the more hawkish candidates, it's hard to get support for more restraint/withdrawal, even when that is the soundest course of action for the US. Rand tried to reinvent himself as a "hawk libertarian" and he failed in both respects.So now it's a la mode to wave the big American phallus around and be the strong global cop again. I suppose it's been a sufficient number of years since the Bushie neocons left DC in shame, so their ideas are making a comeback with weak memory conservatives?
- Well,
if you're compiling a list of Rubio's qualifications, you should
probably include his stint in the Florida House of Representatives,
including serving as speaker.And I'm hardly the first person to observe that his main resume line items of:
- State legislature
- Non-tenured teaching position at a university
- First term US Senator
do sound rather reminiscent of another recent presidential candidate. (Rubio did them in a different order, of course, and no amount of educational egalitarianism is going to make me treat FIU as being in the same league as the University of Chicago, but still.) - To
be a little tongue-in-cheek, I have not been that impressed with some
of the speakers/majority leaders in the CA Legislature, so in comparison
I am not sure how prestigious the SOTH of FL is. :)And at least Obama was also editor of the Harvard Law Review.Maybe that is why Rubio repeated himself so much at the debate; from his FIU days he's used to rehashing the same basic facts to his distracted students until they get it? :)
- I
clearly don't put Bush on the Obama/BillC intelligence level. However
maybe he wasn't the bumbling moron that some critics painted. He was
just really living in a bubble and surrounded by enablers, so based on
the slanted info he was fed, he really believed that Iraqis would
welcome us as liberators and Katrina wasn't a big deal. But the fault's on him for not being more inquisitive/skeptical, and hiring a "team of rivals" to make sure that he was getting diverse viewpoints and info. Powell was the only non-Evangelical non-Neocon he had, and he seemed to get over-ruled a lot. Plus he didn't really make much of a stink/protest on key controversial decisions, I guess trying to be the good soldier and all.
- Heh
yeah - Jeb embodies "pathetic" at this point. I almost feel sorry for
him, but then I remember Florida 2000 (and that he is the #1 fan of the
Dubya foreign policy). Even his campaign logo looks
juvenile and desperate. And yet he's raised as much $ as Clinton,
driven by his family's network and establishment/pro-business cred I
guess.Imagine what it must be like to be one of his grassroots supporters (they must need heroin too)! This Sam. Bee segment captures that.His debate exchanges with his BFF Trump remind me of this sheltered rich kid, who always was the center of attn and got his way (which he is), now sent off to boarding school and has to deal with the big, bad bully from NYC.
- I haven't laughed this hard in a long time:Maybe it was the cutaway to Talladega Nights?
- I think that you're grotesquely misrepresenting Nate's
position, not just in that article but since Trump announced, which I
read as "early polls don't tell you very much, so let's wait until
something actually happens before going off the Trump end":
- Many voters aren't paying much attention yet.
- Even those voters who are paying attention have a high likelihood of changing their minds between, say, August, and whenever they actually participate in a primary or caucus.
- It's very hard to interpret polling results in a very crowded field. Sixteen candidates simply give you too many degrees of freedom.
- It's practically pointless to look at national polls early in the nomination process, because the early voting states play a massively disproportionate role in determining the outcome.
The above are generic to all early polling for a nomination contest and they explain why it would have been foolish to expect, say, Herman Cain to win the nomination based on strong early polling when he was the 2012 not-Romney du jour.Add to all of the above the simple empirical fact that no one like Trump has ever won or come close to winning either party's nomination. The social scientist should at least be open to the possibility that that fact isn't an accident and that such candidates (or potential candidates) may face hurdles which aren't immediately obvious. - I'm honestly more scared of Trump than Cruz, on the grounds that the latter is a particularly loathsome manifestation of a disease from which American politics has long suffered. The former may be a wholely new ailment.My main hope of being right in my prediction may now rest on the avalanche of negative advertising that's coming Trump's way. So here's to the super PACs; may their aim not falter.
- Yeah,
speaking of profitable - Trump claims that he has self-funded much of
his campaign, but in actuality he's made loans to businesses that he
controls. He barely buys ads (gets free pub from the media), and has
contracted Trump enterprises for catering, merch, and facilities. I
guess this fiasco did start out as a shameless cash grab + ego stroking,
as Eric mentioned last year!http://www.politico.com/story/
2015/10/donald-trump-fec- fundraising-214838 Wow, this is shaping up to be a really politically impactful year: https://www.yahoo.com/politics/what-does-justice- scalias-death-mean-for- pending-000410173.html Do you think Obama will be able to confirm a nominee before he vacates the WH, or will the GOP filibuster? - Yeah,
the GOP supposedly packed the SC debate audience with pro-establishment
types who were obviously hostile to Trump and more friendly to Bush and
Rubio (esp. Bush). Yet Trump still has a huge lead in the polls there. Trump proclaimed the undeniable facts that:
- 9/11 occurred while Bush was president
- No WMDs were found in Iraq
- Abortions aside, Planned Parenthood does have other positive impacts for its clients
- The Iraq War was a mistake, considering hindsight and alternative actions available at the time (some holdouts still disagree with this)
So of course he got gang-tackled by his rivals and booed by the crowd. - I guess that embodies the crisis in the GOP that x previously described. Those blindly loyal to the Establishment's record, and those who think the Establishment's led conservatism astray - and they need a fresh approach (even if it's xenophobic and unrealistic).A follow up to Trump's Bush criticisms. Maybe US memory is fairly short-term; it's been almost a decade since W was in the WH. Some folks forget (or don't want to acknowledge) what a truly historically disastrous presidency it was - almost across every important dimension of national leadership. AFAIK, Bush only really made noteworthy contributions to fighting AIDS; the rest of his job performance was lackluster at best or wildly inept/detrimental to the national interest at worst.He and the financial crisis (which his admin. failed to avoid even though there were warning signs) were the top reasons why an inexperienced half-black guy with a Muslim name succeeded him (not to take anything away from the great accomplishments of the Obama campaign, but conditions played a major role) - that is how fed up America was. Alas, in 2016 we're still fed up, but conservatives are mad about Obama "ruining everything" (even though conditions have greatly improved in many areas that conservatives supposedly care about: economic indicators, gov't spending, etc.). And progressives are mad about the rigged game and inability for supposedly liberal leaders to do anything about it (even Obama couldn't usher in a movement/revolution, hence the rise of Sanders).But Trump is not just running against Bushism. He's running against what it's a symptom of — the certain kind of insider sophistry that he says defines the political class. That's why he was onstage at all last night. That's why he's in first place now. And that's why he's more at home in the GOP than so many want to admit.To understand how that could possibly be, understand what he's not arguing.The typical critique of politics today is that the ruling class has been corrupted by privilege. There's too much money in politics; there's too much of a cult of access; the tropes go on and on. Trump's not saying that. Instead, he's saying, the ruling class has been corrupted by foolishness. The problem isn't that "the politicians" have vanished behind the velvet rope. It's that they've vanished up their own rear ends. Obsessed with themselves, they have forgotten who they are. They have lost their way — and ours.If Bush thinks he can win in 2016, he is COUNTING on America forgetting who he is ("Wah wah, I'm tired of that meanie Trump making fun of my family!" Well don't they deserve it, Jeb?). And that is not a very sound strategy. But hey, strategy is not exactly the Bushes' forte.
- Yeah
the blame can't fall solely on Bush's shoulders; his cabinet/appointees
was mostly comprised of Siths and/or imbeciles like Cheney, Rummy,
Ridge, Condi (a smart academic but imbecile leader), etc. And remember
that Bush wanted that unqualified quack Harriet Miers to be on the
SCOTUS? That shows his judgment - everyone from TX is A-OK!Maybe you saw this interview of FNC's Megyn Kelly tearing into Cheney on his record as VP, and why should anyone listen to him now when he was so wrong so often while in office? I think FNC/Ailes has also reflected the GOP schism we've been discussing - on one hand they are part of the establishment, but on the business side, they need to embrace the TP/Trump sentiment that the old-GOP is the problem. FNC is hilarious because a lot of their programming insinuates that the MSM is the problem, yet they are also representatives of the MSM.
- I'm curious to know where you got that impression, since it's at odds with what I'd thought and what I believe is the conventional wisdom (i.e., that Bush has been, until the past week, primarily focused on attacking Rubio). There's a link in the 538 piece you liked which shows Right to Rise spending about half again as much on attack ads against Rubio as against Trump (and about as much on attacking Kasich as on attacking Trump). If you have a very strong stomach, you can watch the ads for yourself at the Political TV Ad Archive. The recent ones are very anti-Trump, now that Bush has decided that he needs to take Trump seriously, but, if you look at the ads that Right to Rise was running in the run up to Iowa and New Hampshire, you could be forgiven for thinking that Marco Rubio was the Republican front-runner.In general, I'd say that a big part of the stamina shown by the Trump phenomenon is the fact that the non-Trump candidates have been individually rational but collectively irrational in attacking him. I think that they're each averse to doing the dirty work (and suffering the attendant backlash) and are still hoping to attract the largest share of the current Trump supporters once Donald drops out. (This is obviously Cruz's strategy; note little ill he's said of Trump throughout, even as Trump actually started to attack him; he sees each Trump voter as a potential Cruz voter and is doing everything in his power to keep from alienating them.)This is, of course, one of the things that can happen in a very crowded field and its why this sort of contest is very unpredictable. In its own amusing and ironic way, it's a market failure, as each candidate tries to free-ride on the attack ads that they hope the other guy's Super PAC is going to take out on Trump. (As a side note, I'd be curious to see what new regulations the RNC tries to impose on the nomination process in 2020, to correct the perceived failures of 2016. The free market may be good enough for me to buy my health insurance and my ground beef in, but it's clearly not good enough for choosing a GOP presidential nominee.)
- I'm curious to know where you got that impression, since it's at odds with what I'd thought and what I believe is the conventional wisdom (i.e., that Bush has been, until the past week, primarily focused on attacking Rubio). There's a link in the 538 piece you liked which shows Right to Rise spending about half again as much on attack ads against Rubio as against Trump (and about as much on attacking Kasich as on attacking Trump). If you have a very strong stomach, you can watch the ads for yourself at the Political TV Ad Archive. The recent ones are very anti-Trump, now that Bush has decided that he needs to take Trump seriously, but, if you look at the ads that Right to Rise was running in the run up to Iowa and New Hampshire, you could be forgiven for thinking that Marco Rubio was the Republican front-runner.In general, I'd say that a big part of the stamina shown by the Trump phenomenon is the fact that the non-Trump candidates have been individually rational but collectively irrational in attacking him. I think that they're each averse to doing the dirty work (and suffering the attendant backlash) and are still hoping to attract the largest share of the current Trump supporters once Donald drops out. (This is obviously Cruz's strategy; note little ill he's said of Trump throughout, even as Trump actually started to attack him; he sees each Trump voter as a potential Cruz voter and is doing everything in his power to keep from alienating them.)This is, of course, one of the things that can happen in a very crowded field and its why this sort of contest is very unpredictable. In its own amusing and ironic way, it's a market failure, as each candidate tries to free-ride on the attack ads that they hope the other guy's Super PAC is going to take out on Trump. (As a side note, I'd be curious to see what new regulations the RNC tries to impose on the nomination process in 2020, to correct the perceived failures of 2016. The free market may be good enough for me to buy my health insurance and my ground beef in, but it's clearly not good enough for choosing a GOP presidential nominee.)
- Yeah
it's also ironic that the democratic systems we established in Iraq and
Afghanistan are a lot more purely democratic than ours, and the
legislatures in those nations have diversity requirements so they get a
higher % of women/minorities
than the US Congress (there are pros and cons to quotas of course).
Yes, it's easier to create a "fair/pure" system when you build it from
scratch and don't have 200 years of biases/inertia/baggage, and by no
means are Iraq and Afghanistan's gov'ts the envy of the world, but just
to make a point. :)I am not sure if it's more or less comforting that Congressmen make up the majority of superdelegates. They are assumed to be more informed re: political-gov't affairs, but they already wield disproportionate power as legislators - doesn't that violate the separation of powers that they can affect who sits in the exec. branch too?
- Yeah
it's also ironic that the democratic systems we established in Iraq and
Afghanistan are a lot more purely democratic than ours, and the
legislatures in those nations have diversity requirements so they get a
higher % of women/minorities
than the US Congress (there are pros and cons to quotas of course).
Yes, it's easier to create a "fair/pure" system when you build it from
scratch and don't have 200 years of biases/inertia/baggage, and by no
means are Iraq and Afghanistan's gov'ts the envy of the world, but just
to make a point. :)I am not sure if it's more or less comforting that Congressmen make up the majority of superdelegates. They are assumed to be more informed re: political-gov't affairs, but they already wield disproportionate power as legislators - doesn't that violate the separation of powers that they can affect who sits in the exec. branch too?
- Don't
get me wrong, Cruz scares me, too. But he scares me in the
he'd-be-a-terrible-president way, whereas Trump scares me in the
him-being-president-would-have
-terrible-effects-for-the-enti re-political-system way. In other words, we could be rid of Cruz in 4 to 8 years; hopefully, he wouldn't have done much more permanent damage in that time than George W. Bush did. If Trump wins, though, I feel like that, ipso facto, would be permanently damaging, almost irrespective of what he did as president. - While I love the fact that we're getting articles about delegate allocation rules and imagining a race that continues until the last primary is over, I can't help but feel like Cillizza is assuming his hypothesis and then declaring it true. I agree that, if Donald Trump wins every state where he is currently leading in the polls and gets 30% of all the proportionally allocated delegates, then he will win the nomination. But whether he's able to do that is precisely the question; dressing it up with discussion about the delegate allocation rules doesn't change the fact that the article is essentially saying that, if circumstances don't change, they'll remain the same.
- Yeah I suppose Cruz is a known quantity (basically W but smarter and meaner, and at least Congress generally hates him so they wouldn't let him steamroll his agenda).But with Trump, lord knows WTF will happen to US culture and politics overall, as Eric said. I think already he's kicked off huge alarms within the media and GOP, and they are likely reconsidering their standard modes of operation. The GOP establishment partly created the current angry conservative anti-gov't ultra-nationalist Tea Party movement (like an attack dog to do its bidding that broke free of its leash), so now their choice is either to (a) join/embrace/encourage them or (b) set up campaign rules/safeguards to avoid a repeat of 2016 (similar to the Dems' superdelegates I guess?). Clearly (b) is not very democratic, but it's preferable to (a) at the moment.However, do we know what % of America truly support Trump/Cruz/Tea Party agenda? They only have like ~40 Reps and ~4 Senators, right? That's why they are extremists, they have limited numbers. Maybe 20% of voters at best? But then how many moderate GOPs or independents would side with them vs. Hillary?
- One man's opportunist is another man's demagogue.That said, my feeling is that the classic win-the-nomination-at-the-
extremes-then-move-to-the- center formula is going to get less and less useful as more and more pervasive and universally available media combines with the modern obsession with authenticity to prevent candidates from making such a move. It's already much harder than it used to be to tell every group of voters exactly what they want to hear, because what you say to any one of them has a high likelihood of making it to all of them (e.g., Mitt Romney and the 47%). Obama did a reasonably successful job of threading this needle in 2008, emphasizing his opposition to the Iraq War in the primaries, then leaning toward the center against McCain; but he was an unusually disciplined candidate, who kept his options for the general election open even in the difficult slog of the 2008 campaign for the nomination. To say that Trump is not as disciplined as Obama seems inadequate to the magnitude of the difference.But then again, I've been making a habit of underestimating Trump's appeal ever since August. This may just be the latest repetition of that same refrain. - I agree that that's the consensus, but, at this point, we need to at least give a hearing to x's previously articulated hypothesis that Trump may have succeeded (perhaps inadvertently) in bringing a new and ugly element into the GOP coalition.Technically, I suppose that it's an element which had already existed, but he's proved capable of tapping it for many more votes than had previously been thought possible and has really brought it to the forefront. It may even turn out that this group (whom I'm thinking of as the alienated and embittered, but who might well think of themselves in less pejorative terms) takes over the dominant role in the GOP coalition, previously the province of the Chamber of Commerce/libertarian light/establishment wing of the party, which occasionally shared the reins with the social conservative/evangelical wing. We already saw a foretaste of this with the Tea Party, but the Tea Party never actually managed to take over the party or set the agenda in anything other than amped up distaste for Obama and all his works.This (i.e., Trump voters setting the GOP agenda) is my nightmare, in a nutshell, and it's why I see Trump as potentially worse than Cruz. Fully realized, it could lead the GOP to become a slightly less well behaved version of the French Front National, which I'd see as a disaster.I still think that the above is a very low likelihood event, but I'm thinking about it now, having dismissed it out of hand four months ago.
- maybe Trump is a flu that the US just has to get out of our system; we learn our lesson and then we get immunity for a while. Nationalism/fundamentalism is a chronic issue that revisits societies now and then due to various factors. What's strange to me is that I can understand why extremists rise in shattered economies like Greece, but things are going pretty well in the US now (based on many macro indicators - though obviously we still have employment/affordability/econ. security issues in many places). Is it all media hype or the irrational frustration that some white men feel that they are "losing America"? When the zealots harm the economy, that is usually when the mainstream kicks them out. At least Trump doesn't hear the word of god in his ear, unlike Cruz. Already the Chamber-of-Commerce type GOP has declared war on the TP/Trump/Cruz, but I wonder if they would back a Dem over the TP (Lindsey Graham mentioned this).Haha we sure have put all our hopes with that bumbling man-child Rubio (he kinda reminds me of Quayle, and W)!
- It's
funny how likability/trustworthiness is such an important decision
factor for many folks. As a lifelong "progressive", I might agree with
half of Clinton's platform or more, but I just can't stand her
personally (for reasons that I can only partially articulate). I don't
think this is sexism (I love Warren, Gillebrand, Waters, etc.), but it's
just her,
and her manner of politicking. Maybe it's also cuz Hillary is rather
hawkish, like Feinstein who I also dislike. But sure, I'll vote for her
over any of the GOP, unless she does something really dirty to sink
Sanders.You're likable enough, Hillary. https://youtu.be/Mx_
Uk_VffcY?t=37 Well, Hillary was inevitable in 2008 also, so nothing is for sure. I think her campaign realizes that this time though, and the close calls with Sanders in IA and NV should be further evidence to not get complacent. - To
be very narrow-mindedly specific, that's net favorability, meaning that
Germans have a slightly more positive than negative view of the US.
(And meaning that the average German's view of the United States is a
bit more favorable than the average view expressed on this thread.) The
source for Tim's data, BTW, is the research that that Pew does on
international attitudes, and I think it's generally thought to be the
best source for how the US is perceived by the outside world. They've
got a number of other interesting questions, too.
For his part, Taibbi is typically hysterical and hyperbolic, but I don't find his contempt all that interesting or instructive. It beggars belief that he actually thinks that the US political class (a group which has pretty cheerfully welcomed Jesse Ventura, Sonny Bono, and Barack Obama) is somehow the "most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised". If he really thinks that, he needs to get out of the house and visit a real oligarchy.
On the other hand, once I got about two thirds of the way through the article, he started talking about something that I did find interesting (not least because it agrees with what I already think and is therefore, ipso facto, very well thought out and persuasive. The choice quote from the article, from my perspective, isElections, like criminal trials, are ultimately always about assigning blame.
This observation (which I think aligns neatly with my favorite concept of dirigibility as an essential element of democratic government) and the surrounding paragraphs hit the nail precisely on the head about the degree to which the post-Nixon Republican Party has relied on the not at all obvious coalition between business elites (the Chamber of Commerce wing) and frustrated and anxiety-filled White Middle America, in both their religious and nativist flavors (these are the Reagan Democrats that Ted Cruz says he'll win away from Hillary Clinton, as if they hadn't been voting Republican for a generation). In a lot of ways, this is an alliance between the people who are scared by the modern world (and especially the globalized, post-rich world manual labor economy) and some of the people who are most conspicuously profiting from it. That coalition has profited the Republicans well over the past 40 years, but has left them talking out of both sides of their collective mouth on a whole host of issues. This seems like something that can't go on forever and we may be witnessing one of the threads unravel, with Trump gleefully tugging on the thread. - Yeah exactly! What frustrates me about the rank-and-file GOP is that the things that bother them are partly/mostly driven by the capitalistic conservative elites of their own party:
- Globalization (which can be/is a net good, but not when it concentrates the benefits to a select few)
- And by extension, immigration (again, a net good but there always some losers, and businesses want/need cheap foreign labor)
- Increasing economic pressures on the middle class
- Also a deterioration of gov't institutions & the social safety net to pay for tax cuts to the rich
- An unstable world with many ambiguous security threats
- Including our hostile, trigger-happy society
And then the propagandists shift the blame to the War on Christmas, War on Cops, War on X, global-warming-is-a-hoax, abortion, and other crap so the rank-and-file blame liberals instead. I appreciate that Trump (and Paul) were at least calling out this hypocrisy re: war on drugs, Iraq, and wealth inequality - even if they wouldn't really do much about it as presidents (well maybe Paul would try to reduce our military footprint and reform the justice system and drug laws).
Showing posts with label congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label congress. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
TLDR campaign discussion 1
Shame on your guys, I'm discussing politics more at work now than with
my friends and family. :) Just don't tell my boss please. I'm trying to
limit it to 45 min/day haha, but Trump doesn't make it easy. Here are
some snippets FYI:
Monday, January 18, 2016
Where do fines levied on the big banks go?
In honor of the bank-bashing Dem debate (I didn't watch it but I
can imagine the content). And why is O'Malley still in the race (even
though he doesn't seem to be a half-bad politician)?
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.alternet.org/
- To be clear, these penalties are barely felt by the banks, but it's better than nothing
- Goldman settled for $5B recently (on top of the $550MM they previous paid for related financial crisis fraud)
- Their Q3 2015 sales were $6.9B and net income $1.4B (quite the profit margin!)
- And banks are often able to pass along the penalties to their customers, which seems messed up to me (the laws should require that the $ comes out of dividends and/or exec/board comp - to incentivize better corp. governance)
- But unlike the S&L scandal of the '80s (1K convictions) and how some European nations handled the 2008 financial crisis, no one from the major US banks will go to jail
- So the deterrence effect is minor, as limitations in the evidence/laws make it hard to build a case for individual willful conspiracy to defraud
- Some of the money goes to victims/customers/investors depending on the nature of the charges, but it's rare
- And the rest goes to various gov't agencies: SEC, CFPB, Fed, etc., and they generally route the proceeds to their general funds or the Treasury
- The intention is to use that money to fund future investigations
- But if that is true, shouldn't the # of investigations and settlements go up over time?
- I'm not sure if that has been the case since 2008
- To me, it seems like a waste for the $ to go to Treasury, since it's a drop in the bucket vs. our debt/deficit
- And as agencies are under more funding pressure (and at the mercy of a GOP Congress), at least the $ could help them continue to execute their missions
Friday, December 11, 2015
Army misdiagnosed and kicked out thousands of mentally ill vets
Previous
investigations revealed how the VA was underprepared to meet the
medical needs of the War on Terror vets, and the backlog for mental
health care was horrendous.
Not sure if it's related, but a new study found that the Army systematically under-diagnosed soldiers with "adjustment disorder"
rather than PTSD/depression (a vague classification from the Vietnam
era that suggests a soldier is *temporarily* experiencing poor
emotional/behavioral symptoms after a deployment). The former implied
that the soldier was unable to perform his/her duties stateside and
should be dishonorably discharged (i.e. it's the soldier's fault).
However, if they were diagnosed with PTSD/depression, that is considered
a debilitation due to their military service (i.e. it's the war's
fault), which is an honorable discharge that guarantees lifetime free
medical care for themselves, spouse, and kids (equivalent to losing a
leg or an eye). That Vietnam vets site above suggested that the military "saved" $12B on medical/disability payments for Vietnam vets who were misdiagnosed.
Since 2009, the Army has also kicked out 22,000 vets for various misconduct. But when a soldier has PTSD/depression, that increases the likelihood that they will fall into a misconduct situation (dereliction of duties, fighting, substance abuse, etc.). So we're not sure how many of the 22K were misdiagnosed, but I would bet it's at least a third. There is now a Congressional inquiry about this issue due to NPR's reporting.
Friday, December 4, 2015
"Prayer shaming" after the CA mass shooting
The tweet from this CT Senator sums up the issue: https://mobile.twitter.com/
Forgive
me for ranting and using foul language here, but for "religious pro-gun
conservatives" who find prayer-shaming "offensive and dismissive of
their faith," I say... go F yourselves.- Do not live by the sword; violence of any kind is unequivocly wrong
- Defeat your enemy with love, not with violence
- Protect the vulnerable, even if it kills you
- Blessed are the peacemakers
http://www.post-gazette.com/
Friday, October 9, 2015
How can we expect the "ungovernable House" to govern the US?
Maybe
you guys have been following the brouhaha, but basically Boehner
stepped down as Speaker, Majority Leader (and heir apparent) McCarthy
withdrew his candidacy, and now no one (who is capable of getting the
200+ votes to pass) wants to step up. The GOP is asking Paul Ryan to
step up to the plate, but he hasn't committed yet.
Speaker
is "2 bullets" away from the presidency; you'd think that our most
promising legislators would be lining up to apply! But the problem is
that the House is GOP majority, and a contingent of ~40 Teabaggers (the
"Freedom" Caucus, or "anarchists" as Brooks called them) are basically
impossible to work with unless you totally embrace the
~Norquist/Palin/Koch agenda. As Brooks said on PBS, only a "moron" would
want the Speaker job now. So how did the 3rd most powerful position in
US gov't become a third-rail job?- There really isn't much benefit for a party to have a majority in the House when the other party has 40+ in the Senate and/or the White House. And it's hard to be confident that we'll have a GOP president in 2017.
- We don't live in a dictatorship where the Tea Party are the dictators, so can they espouse more reasonable and civilized goals instead? No group is ever going to get all they want, but is it so terrible to make deals to advance some of your agenda, but allow other interests to do the same (if what you have to give up is not so harmful)?
- So the GOP Speaker is caught between a rock and a hard place: he/she is expected to use the majority to advance conservatism (or at least keep the country running - pass a budget, etc.), but also find a way to get the Teabaggers to not derail the whole process (which is their stated goal if they don't get 100% of what they want, which we established is impossible).
- I don't know why the Teabaggers are so "needed"; is it because the GOP still need those 40 votes? Why not reach out to the Dems instead - can't you get 40 from them Blue Dogs? Is it just intractable polarization?
- The TP's excuse is that they are merely doing what the voters expect (obstructionism/anarchy/
holding the country hostage). Well, there is no district in the US where 100% of the votes support the TP agenda. So it is wrong for them to ignore potentially 49% of their constituents (likely the % is much smaller due to gerrymandering). - Also, this is a false pretext because polling suggest that the majority of Americans do not want gov't shutdowns and do not approve of an unproductive Congress. So why don't they just cut the crap and admit that they are serving the narrow interests of the 1% Norquist/Koch agenda?
- Should we amend job descriptions for Congress and the oath that they swear to, in order to make sure that our legislators will actually legislate in the country's interests? There are other explicit or implicit criteria like age, residency, religion, and funding - why not this? Don't we want to make sure they are qualified and able to carry out the duties of the position?
- It's like Kim Davis - she can have her beliefs, but if they're not compatible with the demands of her job, then she needs to be replaced and find a different job, right?
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Netanyahu's Congressional address on the Iran nuclear deal
I
don't want to get into the weeds about how poorly argued and
substantiated his speech was (the guests in the interview above do that,
but just to give you a sense, Bibi said that Iran is competing with
ISIS for global domination). But I don't fault him for trying. Like in
game theory, it's all about the payoffs and priorities of each player.
And with the same set of facts, rational and smart people can come to
wildly different conclusions. From their point of view, they're totally
right based on their goals.
Re: Israel-Iran, obviously the
priority of a conservative Zionist regime is the preservation of the
Jewish State at all costs, and keeping pressure on their enemies in
perpetuity. No other cost consideration comes close (some IDF soldiers
killed - better than getting nuked, angering the Arab world - they can
live with that, upsetting the US and UN - they don't really need us
anymore, and there are still enough diehard pro-Israel folks here to
almost guarantee indefinite US support). So they will do anything to
prevent a nuclear Iran or anyone making concessions to Iran or other
enemies (which includes breaking protocol to address Congress). US presidents and Israeli PMs disagree on stuff, and it can cost the PM his job if the Israeli public perceives that the PM is endangering the US-Israeli special relationship. That contributed to Bibi's ouster the first time around, as he butted heads with Clinton one too many times. But currently, I think the Israeli public is so fearful of a nuclear Iran that US relations are a distant concern (or they take it for granted, hence the persistence on expanding West Bank settlements). Even liberal press in Israel support Bibi's view (but not necessarily his methods) that the US should not give an inch to Iran.
Even if Iran's leadership is more moderate now, and with the proposed controls it's highly unlikely that they can develop and test weapons covertly, Israel can't even tolerate a 0.1% chance. So they will bomb if they need to, which will trigger a regional war of course - which I bet they think they can win (might be right, but what about the consequences to other parties?). Or they will try to derail the current negotiations, which in their opinion won't curb the nuclear development, but will ease sanctions and enable Iran to get stronger. They're in the mindset that Israel's enemies are insane genocidal religious fanatics who can't be trusted under any circumstance. So there's no point to negotiate - you know, the typical justification between enemies.
(#s are guesses for demo purposes)
Negotiate -3
Don't Negotiate (keep status quo) 5
Fight Now 1
Negotiate 3
Don't Negotiate (keep status quo) -3
Fight Now -5
Negotiate 3
Don't Negotiate (keep status quo) -1
Fight Now -5Thursday, February 26, 2015
When Washington tries to fix immigration, it only gets worse
There were too many [immigration] cases for too few judges, and adding in the cases of
the unaccompanied minors only made matters worse. There are currently
more than 429,000 cases pending in the courts with just 223 judges. -NPR
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/23/
During
the Bush years, the Border Patrol went on a hiring binge, which led to
more apprehensions. Immigration raids and roundups increased under
Obama. But no one thought to consider the legal rights of all those
extra detained persons. The population of immigration courts and lawyers
remained about flat. So of course backlogs exploded, and now some
individuals are given courts dates in 2019. http://www.npr.org/2015/02/23/
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Congress avoids another shutdown, passes corporate-friendly budget with Obama's blessing
It
was a tough position for Dems: agree to basically roll back Dodd-Frank
regs on derivatives trading, and increase contribution limits to
political parties, or risk getting an even uglier, GOP-driven budget
proposal in January when the new legislators move in. It was sad to see
Obama and some other major Dems fold like a cheap suit in the face of
this raw deal. More left-leaning Pelosi and Warren were vehemently
opposed, but were ultimately overruled.
It was reported
that JP Morgan Chase literally wrote the section of the bill relating to
derivatives. This is not new, but it's sad to see Obama being such a
cheerleader for this bill considering his previous statements on
financial reform and Wall Street abuses.----
My mistake, it was Citigroup that wrote the rider, not Chase. But
it really doesn't make a difference. It implies that the rider is in the
Street's best interests, not the public's. The language relates to
bailouts from losses on derivatives trading. Dodd-Frank had an exception
(that would have gone live in 2015) to prohibit taxpayer bailouts for
derivatives losses from trading that was deemed too risky (trying to
reduce moral hazard). Well the big banks would have none of that - they
are like a degenerate gambler in Vegas demanding that Bellagio cover any
losses they incur (and then they try to tax dodge any gains they make).
Of course the Street insists that derivatives serve to lower systemic
risk, not increase it. That is true in some cases, like how gun
proponents say that firearms reduce violence. But then what about the
times when the opposite occurs? Banks just say, "Oh well, we tried our
best. Now pay us." While global wealth evaporates but they still get
their bonuses.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/
“I love the American political system, I really do, but the ability to sneak in substantive policy measures and make it take it or leave it, I think it’s appalling,” said Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who is a prominent critic of the nation’s big banks.
-NYThttp://billmoyers.com/2014/12/
“I love the American political system, I really do, but the ability to sneak in substantive policy measures and make it take it or leave it, I think it’s appalling,” said Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who is a prominent critic of the nation’s big banks.
----
It's hard to oppose the subtle, gradual rollbacks and changes that are eroding our democracy and "the soul of America". It's not like there was a coup and all of a sudden an evil regime took power. It's easy to fight back when it's a "Red Dawn" scenario, but Americans are lazy/easily distracted and we don't want to do the hard work of citizenship if it's not glamorous or urgent. The people who value power/profit are patient (and wealthy), so they chip away at our values bit by bit, at each election cycle and session of Congress/Supreme Court that the public barely pays attention to.
Reagan declared that we don't torture, and he was far from a dove. Now you have modern-day GOPers making all sorts of excuses to condone torture (or even argue that it's patriotic). In hindsight, Cheney was such a disaster for US ideals - and I think he had more of a negative impact on history than people like Qaddafi and Kim Jong Il (at least those guys practices overt evil, and were therefore easier to oppose). After the deaths of old-schoolers (and mostly straight shooters) like McCain and Hagel, I really fear what direction the GOP will go with unqualified political animals like Cruz and Ryan as the prominent voices. I mean, we already see the direction now: corporate plutocracy, oppression of women/minorities/foreigners, a disdain for science/logic, and unrestrained security state, to name a few.
I don't have much knowledge on this matter, but my personal feeling is that presidents who have the most reform potential have a greater view of themselves vs. the office of the president. What I mean by that is - they are either self-assured iconoclasts/visionaries like Lincoln, tremendously principled and conscientious like the Roosevelts, or chip-on-the-shoulder megalomaniacs like Nixon. They want to mold America into their image, and won't just be passive presidents who don't rock the boat and piss off the powerful. They never ask "is this what a president would do?" They do it because they know it's right, and they don't care if the pollsters and establishment approve or not (the opposite of Hillary).
That is the kind of leader we need to fight the negative trends now - and Sanders/Warren strike me as that type of personality, however their electability and charisma are another issue. Many thought Obama was going to be one of those reformers (he was mostly a DC outsider, "post-partisan", and one of the few presidents who grew up poor), but alas he is just a weak-willed bureaucrat who couldn't influence Congress, and deferred to the Pentagon and Wall St. to our detriment. He's a great campaigner but not a great leader of men. Considering the hand he was dealt, I wouldn't say he was a bad president, but he is a colossal failure in terms of missed opportunities (and the fact that some key issues got worse under his tenure - but not the things that the Tea Party would complain about). That's what's kind of ironic/tragic about Obama, both the left and right curse him for different reasons, which maybe suggests he doesn't have a good sense of his political identity, and tries to float in the center to please everyone, even though it's impossible. And unfortunately the modern US center is further to the right than most prominent European conservative parties. It's been scientifically shown that the US center has drifted right significantly since WWII.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
The US political merry-go-round
I
haven't really been following the midterms, but just wanted to share
some general concerns. It just seems like Groundhog Day to me. The
incumbents screw up (real or perceived, but the more interesting
question is: how was their performance vs. the hypothetical
alternative?), supporters are demoralized and fail to mobilize compared
to the fired up opposition, and the other party sweeps into power.
If it's a divided gov't, nothing gets done (and it's so unlikely for one party to control 60 Senate seats). If one party has a monopoly on the Executive and Legislative, then they invariably overstep their "mandate", attempt to reverse the recent progress of their rivals, and make their fair share of screw ups too. Then the whole cycle repeats in 2-4 years, and the American people (and the world) are stuck in this futile cycle. For example, the GOP has tried to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, even when they didn't have the Senate. Now that they do, I am sure they will try again, even though it won't get past the Obama veto. And all the while infrastructure, education, climate change, immigration, etc. initiatives just languish while the problems get worse.
The only exceptions to this pattern seem to be (hopefully) rare, unifying security events like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 (Bush's GOP gained seats in 2002), or an especially bullish sustained bubble economy combined with terrible behavior by the opposition legislators (Clinton's Dems gained seats in 1998).
If it's a divided gov't, nothing gets done (and it's so unlikely for one party to control 60 Senate seats). If one party has a monopoly on the Executive and Legislative, then they invariably overstep their "mandate", attempt to reverse the recent progress of their rivals, and make their fair share of screw ups too. Then the whole cycle repeats in 2-4 years, and the American people (and the world) are stuck in this futile cycle. For example, the GOP has tried to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, even when they didn't have the Senate. Now that they do, I am sure they will try again, even though it won't get past the Obama veto. And all the while infrastructure, education, climate change, immigration, etc. initiatives just languish while the problems get worse.
The only exceptions to this pattern seem to be (hopefully) rare, unifying security events like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 (Bush's GOP gained seats in 2002), or an especially bullish sustained bubble economy combined with terrible behavior by the opposition legislators (Clinton's Dems gained seats in 1998).
I'm
not sure what can be done about this in the short term. Obviously the
usual ideas surface: a more active and educated electorate, voting rules
reform, a truly popular vote, longer terms and/or term limits, less
unlimited dark money in politics, more time on politics and less on
campaigning/fundraising, more competitive districts, and frankly better
parties and candidates who can behave like gentlepeople and put country
first. Clearly our representative gov't is dysfunctional when a majority
of the public want tougher gun control, but our leaders are much less
amenable. Same goes for bipartisanship, climate change, pot, gay rights,
taxes on the rich, even Obamacare (when you peel away the
misinformation).
http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Where are the consequences for Israel for Gaza?
A pretty good summary of the Palestinian's plight from Rashid Khalidi: http://www.newyorker.com/news/
Maybe few people really care about the Palestinians' suffering, but I hope that these current atrocities
at least make the Israelis disgusted enough with their gov't/military
to demand some changes. If they follow the outside free press, Israelis
can't be happy with the commentary (much less the actual actions carried
out ostensibly for their protection). Possibly the int'l community
could consider boycotts/sanctions/colder relations with Tel Aviv,
because after all we did that to Apartheid South Africa, Cuba, and Iran -
and those regimes were far less murderous. Someone has to be held
accountable, but alas the US has veto power in the UN. It may not make much difference anyway, when the US continues to support the Israeli machine. Major figures on the Hill (incl. "progressive" leaders) denounced the UN report of Israeli war crimes and reiterated their unwavering support. In Washington, no major figure made a statement after the UN school bombing left 15 kids dead (only Obama's WH press secretary said it was "indefensible"), but when reports surfaced that Hamas may have kidnapped ONE Israeli soldier, you'd think Pearl Harbor was bombed again. In light of the outrageous body counts this month, the deadlocked Congress was able to overwhelmingly approve $225MM for the Iron Dome (maybe that is just a "defensive" system, but the donation frees up funds for Israel to buy offensive weapons). No infrastructure bill, no jobs bill, no immigration bill (until today at least), and no progress on the multitude of other pressing issues. In light of all the spending cuts and austerity, we will continue to finance the killing of unarmed noncombatants. I don't get it.
Millennials are less supportive of Israel than older Americans: link
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)