speaking of unrepresentative branches of government…

by

by russell

In the SCOTUS post, Sebastian raised the problem of the Supreme Court making rulings that result in laws and policies that do not reflect the will of the people, i.e., do not align with what the majority of people want.

Which is something to be concerned about.  If governance drifts too far from the popular will, we have trouble.

Then, this, from the Washington Post, appears in my in-box.

The take-away:

by 2040 or so, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent.

30 percent of the population will elect 70 percent of the Senate.  That 30% will, by and large, be unlike the other 70%.  Will have different interests, require different things from government, want different laws and policies enacted.

Un-representative SCOTUS rulings may be the least of our troubles.

 

250 thoughts on “speaking of unrepresentative branches of government…”

  1. My first thought is that the minute we try to tinker with the system (different # of justices, eliminating/revamping the EC, changing the composition of the Senate), the whole house of cards is going to collapse and we will have Michael Cain’s prediction coming true in some form or other.
    Short of that, maybe it’s worth noting that the states do their upper houses in a variety of ways. In Maine, a state senator represents more people than a state representative, but they both serve two-year terms. In other states, senators serve longer terms.
    So I wonder: is there any proposal floating around to make the US senate somewhat more representative?
    Numbers:
    In 1790, Virginia and PA had not quite 10 times the population of Delaware, the smallest state. Now, California has almost 68 times the population of Wyoming.
    Then there’s the House::

    Congress has capped the number of Representatives at 435 since the Apportionment Act of 1911 except for a temporary increase to 437 during the admission of Hawaii and Alaska as states in 1959. As a result, over the last century, congressional districts have more than tripled in size—from an average of roughly 212,000 inhabitants after the 1910 Census to about 710,000 inhabitants following the 2010 Census.

    In 1790ish, a US House member represented about 60,000 people. Right now, a Maine senator represents about 37,000 people.
    It’s not all that surprising that a system originally designed in a way that made it roughly proportional to what we have right now in the overgrown village called Maine is getting a little worn and unwieldly.

  2. So I wonder: is there any proposal floating around to make the US senate somewhat more representative?
    here’s my proposal: abolish it. use the space as a place to put 1000 new house members.
    replace it with a 6-year term House, if you think we need two legislative houses.
    but, the way it stands now, it’s merely yet another way that the minority of the country dominates the majority.

  3. The Senate was deliberately set up that way, to “equalize” representation between large and small states. It would be interesting to know if the Framers imagined a situation like now, with the electorate so polarized that we no longer share a common understanding of something as basic as “the common good.”
    If the current trend bears true, so that the majority city/coast dwellers are essentially captives of rural/inland voters, the country will absolutely come apart at the seams. Particularly as climate change gets worse and entire swaths of the country become uninhabitable due to a lack of water. Those, BTW, are precisely the areas which will be over-represented in Congress.

  4. The Senate was deliberately set up that way, to “equalize” representation between large and small states.
    Yes, but.
    The Senate was set up that way to represent the interests of the states. Not the interests of the population of the states, but of the states as entities themselves. Since the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators) a century ago, that is no longer the case.
    There is something to be said for having a second house of the legislature. One with longer terms, and therefore less subject to the political fad of the moment. There is also something to be said for one small enough that all the members can personally know each other as individuals, and so have a chance to deal on something other than a group/institution basis.**
    The current Senate seems to accomplish those ends increasingly poorly. The question becomes:
    — What would be better solutions?
    — Of those, which might have a prayer of being implemented? That is, can we get from here to there?
    ** As a side note, we have also discussed the increasing polarization and incivility in the legislature. There are multiple causes for that. But I would suggest that a significant factor is the fad for legislators to leave their families back at home in their districts. That leads to 3 day “work weeks” and long weekends, so less gets accomplished. And without weekends, school events, etc. with fellow legislators, it’s easier to see opponents as enemies and not real people.

  5. The Senate was deliberately set up that way, to “equalize” representation between large and small states. It would be interesting to know if the Framers imagined a situation…
    Though I didn’t make it explicit, this was why I brought up the ratios then and now. The framers obviously thought it was okay to have the 10 to 1 ratio that existed at the time. But this is one of those issues where I don’t much care what the framers would have thought about the current 68 to 1 ratio. I don’t think I’d go as far as cleek, but I do think the current imbalance is lethally unfair, and not sustainable in the long run.

  7. “As a side note, we have also discussed the increasing polarization and incivility in the legislature. There are multiple causes for that. But I would suggest that a significant factor is the fad for legislators to leave their families back at home in their districts. That leads to 3 day “work weeks” and long weekends, so less gets accomplished. And without weekends, school events, etc. with fellow legislators, it’s easier to see opponents as enemies and not real people.”
    Newt Gingrich, a diabolical, despicable piece of unAmerican garbage, the most devisive politician in American history, maybe on a par with John Calhoun and Preston Brooks in the 1850s leading up to the Civil War, with Luntz’s help, devised that crap.
    Delay, Armey, that entire crew will required Second Amendment remedies.
    He also discouraged any fraternization between his rabid caucus and their enemies across the aisle.
    When Civil War redux begins and Gingrich bursts into fire, encourage the flames by pouring gasoline on him.
    Gingrich assassinated Seth Rich.

  9. An interim step would be to reduce Senate membership to a guarantee of one per state and then parcel the rest out according to population.
    Another issue is, how much can one Presidential candidate win the popular vote by yet not win the Presidency before the winning party admits the result is unjust and agrees to change the system I used to think 5million votes but now I think there is no such number.

  11. The GOP’s nationwide voter suppression effort is disgraceful and disgusting. Yet it persists through all evidence. That really should be enough for people of rational means to abandon it. And yet.

  12. The voter suppression efforts, like the more extreme examples of gerrymandering, are basically efforts to hold back the rising tide with piles of sand. Effective enough in the very short term, but inevitably doomed in the long run. The big question being: does it work long enough to make the eventual collapse a catastrophic one?
    My expectation is, it won’t. Even the imbalances we are discussing here can only hold things back so long. If they get bad enough, I could see a big (paid) population relocation for the purpose of swinging a few elections.
    How hard would it be, just for example, for the Democrats to decide to site their national HQ in Wyoming and move a bunch of their supporters there? Enough, given Wyoming’s low population, to flip the state blue. If it works, it wouldn’t be the last example.

  13. The Senate was deliberately set up that way, to “equalize” representation between large and small states.
    Sort of. The debate at the time was whether representation should be proportional to population, or not.
    The answer they came up with was “both”. One house one way, one house the other.
    It would be interesting to know if the Framers imagined a situation like now, with the electorate so polarized that we no longer share a common understanding of something as basic as “the common good.”
    I’m not sure there was ever a common understanding of what “the common good” means.
    For “polarized electorate”, I refer you to the election year 1800. Which was the third one ever. Polarization goes back a long ways.
    Nowadays, I don’t think there is a consensus that “the common good” is even a desiderata in the first place. Which is, perhaps, a more profound problem.

  14. It isn’t a total solution, but taking federalism seriously and letting states do VERY different things, is one possible solution.

  15. @wj: Jim Crow lasted for 100 years after black Americans were allegedly given the vote. They could string it along for a long time.
    I’m thinking they’re going to try to strip citizenship (and therefore voting rights) from basically all naturalized citizens, and then from native-born descendants of immigrants going back a few generations, after overturning US v. Wong Kim Ark and reinterpreting “under the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment as meaning some wacky thing about parentage. That’d probably be enough to give the Republican majority of the dwindling white plurality political dominance for a long time.

  16. It isn’t a total solution, but taking federalism seriously and letting states do VERY different things, is one possible solution.
    Is that a solution at all, and if so, what problem does it address other than the desire of one group to live in a different country from another ?

  17. Of the post-civil war amendments to the constitution, todays GOP would oppose the 16th, 17th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 26th.
    And maybe the 19th, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.
    I’m actually kind of astonished that the 23rd and 24th passed when they did.

  18. To the SCOTUS point, the GOP has won the popular vote for POTUS exactly once since 1988, and that was by an incumbent President who did not win the popular vote on his first try.
    Yet they will have appointed half the Justices in that time (I’m excepting Thomas).
    The NYTimes article in the link below notes that if Kavanaugh is confirmed, which he surely will be absent a LBDG revelation (and maybe even then, hi Roy!), it “will cement a solid pro-business majority on the nation’s highest court”.
    Pro-business and Justice don’t really go together, he says, expecting the answer no. Feh.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/politics/judge-brett-kavanaugh.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  20. Hamilton

    Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.
    There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

    Fed 51.
    so, Hamilton expected a patchwork of overlapping factions. he was mistaken that it would be sufficient.

  21. What is LBDG?
    Live boy, dead girl.
    The canonical only things that can destroy a political career in Washington when found in one’s bed.

  22. It isn’t a total solution, but taking federalism seriously and letting states do VERY different things, is one possible solution.
    The states can already do whatever very different things they want except where the Constitution doesn’t let them (directly, or as interpreted by SCOTUS). So — sure. Let’s rescind the Constitution and start over. But as I said at the top: if that happens we will not end up as one united country, absent the victory of some kind of tyranny that will make all these questions moot.

  23. And yes, I’m aware that the federal government uses all kinds of carrot and stick mechanisms to induce the states to do “the same thing” in a lot of ways. (Right on red with caution or no highway funds comes to mind, incongruously. But I lived in Mass. at the time and it was a big deal.)
    Even so. To let go of all that and massively reduce the role of the federal government would be tantamount to dissolving the US as it currently exists. And (for the third time) I don’t think it would survive as a single country if that happened.

  24. To let go of all that and massively reduce the role of the federal government would be tantamount to dissolving the US as it currently exists.
    Putin apparently wants to weaken the EU and NATO.
    it occurs to me that that might not be his only target.

  27. I’m thinking they’re going to try to strip citizenship (and therefore voting rights) from basically all naturalized citizens, and then from native-born descendants of immigrants going back a few generations, after overturning US v. Wong Kim Ark and reinterpreting “under the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment as meaning some wacky thing about parentage. That’d probably be enough to give the Republican majority of the dwindling white plurality political dominance for a long time.
    Matthew, a couple things. As a minor point, I’m not sure you could make it last long unless you set the number of generations pretty high and insist that it apply to all ancestors, on both sides of the family. And that’s going to be discovered to disenfranchise a huge chunk of the conservative base as well. Awkward! (Although it would be amusing to watch Ted Cruz’ reaction to having his right to vote revoked.)
    But more important, to date most of the effectively “whites only” folks have been very careful to conceal their intent. In a lot of cases, I suspect, even from themselves. Going very far down this road would make that impossible.
    Also if it was applied retroactively, things get dicey when you are taking things away from people. Try to do it en masse and you discover the hard way that minority rule has problems — not least because a big chunk of your enforcement tools (i.e. the police and the military) are made up of people you are disenfranchising.

  29. You can be sure that fascist ICE mpers, under orders from the White House, are rifling thru Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s entire extended family’s immigration documents as we speak.
    Expect arrests in late October.
    I think Matthew McIrvin’s dystopian musings on conservative plans for immigration are right on. You can’t exaggerate or go far wrong in gaming out what conservative scum have in mind for this country, popular opinion and honest ballots be damned.
    Tell me one ridiculous-sounding claim/threat about the conservative program over the past 40 years hasn’t been put into operation by those malign thugs.
    Nah, they’d NEVER try that.
    Meanwhile, when it comes to ballot box corruption, don’t underestimate how widely the net of savage violence against those who steal the vote may have to be cast in this entire country:
    https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/07/15/vengeance-is-mine-sayeth-joseph-crowley/
    The Other in America have no friends.

  31. NO COLLUSION!!
    Pretty sure Trump’s position would be “Two great minds [his and Putin’s] with but a single thought.” Those with a more accurate take on the quality of his mind might naturally be disinclined to agree.

  33. Pretty sure Trump’s position would be
    I’m pretty sure that, when all is said and done, Trump’s position is going to be “Yeah, I did it. So what?”.
    And then we’ll see what we will see.

  35. Pretty sure Trump’s position would be…
    Again, Lin Manuel’s historical musical proves prescient….
    JEFFERSON]
    Yeah, you know what? We can change that. You know why?
    [MADISON]
    Why?
    [JEFFERSON]
    ‘cuz I’m the President.

  40. And you can bet those thrity percent wil spend all their time whing about coastal elites while demanding that other people’s tax dollars be spent on them.

  41. via Hullabaloo:
    https://thinkprogress.org/russia-election-interference-robert-mueller-conservatives-guccifer-dcleaks-donald-trump-sean-hannity-russian-propaganda-046a2f90a237/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5b4a01f84b7385000745f162&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
    They requested the material and then lied, with meticulous coordinated organization, about what was in the shit.
    A brazenly stolen presidential like 2016 in a country serious about maintaining its form of government would lead to absolute chaos and savagely violent retribution.
    America is a joke, not a country with rule of law.

  42. The new American prototype personality:
    …
    White, male, asshole, jagoff, billionaire, republican.
    You left out “immigrant” and “(ex-)South African“. Plenty for the far right to hate there, too.

  43. Yep, his naming of ships after Culture Minds just stopped being enough to generate any liking.

  48. It isn’t a total solution, but taking federalism seriously and letting states do VERY different things, is one possible solution.
    “Taking federalism seriously” led directly to a bloody civil war.
    “Taking federalism seriously” cemented the odious construct of state sponsored racial segregation and overt racial subjugation.
    “Taking federalism seriously” placed the fate of LGBT rights at the whim of the Supreme Court.
    “Taking (fucking) federalism seriously” is a fundamentally unserious concept, because it is just a legalistic fig leaf for conservative ascendancy.
    Let us, just for once, call it out for what it really is, OK?
    Appreciated.

  49. Taking federalism seriously gave us a higher minimum wage in many states that needed it.
    Taking federalism seriously allows stronger building standards in California and better gas mileage cars.
    Taking federalism seriously allowed breaks in the stupid federal pot regime leading (it looks like) to a huge change nationwide.
    And those are things I can come up with while I’m tired and unwilling to research. 😉

  51. Sapient, if you can’t keep up, I can relieve you of the burden of figuring out if you like. Quick rule, if you have to ask, you are probably doing something wrong.
    Stop with the smart-alecky shit, not only do you you not do yourself any favors, it’s disruptive of any attempt at a conversation. I say this as a person who is generally sympathetic to your point of view. If you’d like to talk about something that is being discussed here, do so, stop trying to make things personal.

  52. how much can one Presidential candidate win the popular vote by yet not win the Presidency before the winning party admits the result is unjust
    There is no limit. The Republican Party wants power, however much it’s in the minority. It will gerrymander, suppress votes, and abuse process to get it. It holds the presidency, the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House, despite being the minority party, and it uses that power to change procedure and force through policy which will please its donors, regardless of the good of the people.
    Sapient’s link is an example. The point of it is that the guidelines make it a bit harder for rich people to get richer selling expensive but ineffective medical procedures.
    This is not the “tyranny of the majority” Mill and then Hamilton warned of, it’s tyranny of the minority covered by a figleaf of democratic legitimacy.
    Hamilton wrote that the Electoral College was created so that “the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications”. And now we have Trump. The US system of governance is no longer fit for purpose. Throw it away and build something better.
    You’ll have to win elections first, despite the thumbs on the scales.

  54. And those are things I can come up with while I’m tired and unwilling to research. 😉
    two-shay.

  55. Stop with the smart-alecky shit
    it’s about to get real quiet in here if smart-alecky shit is forbidden.

  56. federalism is the default, so, ya’ know, if it’s not forbidden it’s permissible, not the other way ’round

  57. It isn’t a total solution, but taking federalism seriously and letting states do VERY different things, is one possible solution.
    a lot hangs on the word VERY.
    i’m generally in the ‘do what you like’ camp. i don’t object to federalism on principle. but i think our experience has been that it doesn’t take long for one state’s preferences to create problems for other states.
    see also, acid rain.
    in any case, the powers granted in article I, while limited, are quite broad. any way you want to read them. and the senate is a consequential institution, not just for legislation, but as a barrier to the judiciary.
    70% of the senate appointed by 30% of the population, where the 30% are fairly homogenous and not representative of the majority of the population, is gonna be a problem.

  58. Federalism, like originalism, sounds perfectly reasonable and straightforward in the abstract. It gets more complicated in practice. That’s why these conversations tend to go down the rabbit hole pretty quickly.

  59. The originally random and corruptly chosen location of state boundaries kills me. Maybe we should reconfigure, re-gerrymander them every so often like we do voting districts.
    Gerrymandering is basically vote-packing. Why CAN’T we pack the Supreme Court too, if we do the former.
    Why is there a North AND a South Dakota? (Hint: because it was gerrymandered by a guess what) Why not a West and an East Dakota? Same with the Carolinas. Are you telling me Jesse Helms couldn’t have been a bonafide southern racist asshole just as well on the other side of the Carolina border?
    http://mentalfloss.com/article/55274/why-are-there-two-carolinas-and-two-dakotas
    When you look at the shrugging surveyor make-it-up-as-we-go-along reasons why things are as they are and then compare them to the idea that it’s all set in constitutional stone, you really just wanna re-start a drinking habit and not fail at it a second time.
    If a guy sleeping in a bed in Pennsylvania 100 feet to the east of the Ohio border wakes up in the morning to find the border has been moved one mile to his east overnight so he now is an Ohioan, why does he care?
    “Hey, hold on, I’m a Pennsylvanian born and raised.”
    Well, yeah, but only by a hundred feet or so. Do you really feel any different whether you are an Ohioan or a Pennsylvanian, whatever those are?
    I see the point of Billy Joel’s song “New York State of Mind” and maybe “California, Here We Come”, but John Denver’s “West Virginia” not so much. True, I wish they all could be California girl, but drive through West Virginia from southwestern Pennsylvania to southeastern Ohio.
    You are the same person, and so are the girls, the entire trip, as is the geography, though maybe in a different watershed.
    Water is water.

  61. It isn’t a total solution, but taking federalism seriously and letting states do VERY different things, is one possible solution.
    a lot hangs on the word VERY.
    A lot also hangs on the word “different”. I’m OK with a bit of this federalism thing as long as it is not used in the traditional sense to promote racism, segregation, sexism, misogyny, voter suppression, using the state to impose moral and/or religious preferences, shoveling pure pork to rich people, and generally using the state to fuck people over because the Constitution does not “explicitly” forbid it. LOL.
    Other than that, have at it.

  64. Federalism is beneficial when it lets a couple of states try out a new idea, and work some of the bugs out. See the Massachusetts trial run for Obamacare. (Although they didn’t catch the issue with the website not being up to the task.)
    On the other hand, when it lets some states maintain an old bad idea indefinitely, it becomes a different story. We definitely need to have a mechanism (or two) in place to address that when it happens. Which, I would argue, we do — even if not perfect ones.
    We can all find cases of both, of course. So the question is how the costs and benefits balance out. Discussing that requires more than just tossing out a couple of examples which validate our pre-existing preferences. Anybody know of an actual big study on the question?

  66. what’s the federalist solution to acid rain in NY caused by coal-burning powerplants in OH?
    Federalism, at least as I understand it, still gives the Federal government authority to address cases like this, where something happening in one state impacts other states.
    As a side note, IMHO that would apply to gun control laws as well. After all being able to buy military grade equipment in one place definitely impacts it’s prevalence in places which forbid it. And no, the 2nd Amendment is not in conflict with regulation of guns. It even says “well regulated” right there in the text of the amendment!

  67. what’s the federalist solution to acid rain in NY caused by coal-burning powerplants in OH?
    The absence of all heavy handed thuggish regulation by the State + the pure competition theory of the firm + acid rain futures will capture all market externalities and deliver the greatest social benefit at the optimum cost.
    Trust me on this.

  69. Our country has faced an existential threat and succumbed.
    Say rather that a big chunk of the country has acquiesced. But a bigger part of the country is not.

  70. wj: Say rather that a big chunk of the country has acquiesced.
    Which part?
    The “white working class”?
    The “pro-life” evangelicals?
    The tax-cuts-grow-the-economy morons?
    The Federalist Society?
    The NRA?
    Mitch McConnell?
    You want to take back your party, wj? I wish you luck winning over those chunks.
    –TP

  71. You want to take back your party, wj? I wish you luck winning over those chunks.
    At this point, it’s pretty clear that it will take an enormous amount of luck. Doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth trying. At least until a better alternative alternate party comes along.

  72. Today Trump announced in public that he believes Putin’s claims over carefully evidenced analysis from the FBI.
    Impeach him.

  73. lj (to sapient): Stop with the smart-alecky shit
    cleek: it’s about to get real quiet in here if smart-alecky shit is forbidden.
    I second cleek.
    My sensitivities were probably blunted by extensive exposure to usenet long ago, and I recognize that blogs are a different thing, but I must say:
    1) Asking what certain regular commenters might have to say about a recent news story is hardly offensive. I’ve done it myself.
    2) Snark is great, snark is good; let us thank it for our food (for thought).
    –TP

  74. Morning all,
    I was directly addressing sapient, so to add some more detail
    Stop with the smart-alecky [of constantly questioning moderation requests and acting like you can’t figure out what ‘personal’ entails] shit
    Asking regular commenters to voice their opinion is not the problem, it is 1)the asking when the questioner is only looking to score points and 2) the constant pushing of the envelope.
    It would have been tempting to match snark for snark, either the ‘I don’t have a clue what you are talking about, why in the world would you want to know what Donald and McT think about this?’ or the probably more enraging ‘gee, aren’t you going to thank me for letting you back in? I did it right as Macron was trying to put a move on Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović in her fascist one piece* ‘, but I’m past that.
    Given the time differential, I don’t want to be waking up and opening a thread that started talking about something interesting but is now a smoking ruin because one commentator in particular can’t respect that she can’t demand that other commenters be at her beck and call whenever she wants them to pop up. “I just wanted to know what so and so thought” is the defense, I’m sure. If anyone believes that sapient was actually interested in Donald or McT’s opinions, I have some deeds to the Brooklyn Bridge that might be of interest.
    I wrote about privilege to Sebastian, but to pick that thread up here, privilege is really about assumptions. If you assume that someone is supposed to pop up and answer whatever comes into your head whenever you stroll over to the keyboard and type it in, and then badger them when they don’t, the temp here is going to rise quite quickly.
    Of course, that ignoring can be weaponised, and if a person commenting on something clearly ignores reasonable questions put to him or her, that increases the temperature as well. This is why ‘just ignore them’ really only works because it provokes the troll to step over clearly demarcated lines, which then forces whoever has (or takes) responsibility to then do something. Maybe I’m doing something too early, but if it is too late, it won’t be me doing anything.
    I hope that might give some food for thought, though I’m afraid it is not in a snarky package, though I hope that I have sprinkled enough snark throughout this to make it digestible for those who require it.
    *in reference to the fact that the red and white design is from the flag of the Ustashe, who were a Nazi puppet state during WWII. Others would point out that the design precedes that period, so it’s no problem. Discuss.

  75. If anyone believes that sapient was actually interested in Donald or McT’s opinions, I have some deeds to the Brooklyn Bridge that might be of interest.
    If you’ll notice, McKinney and I had a reasonably civil exchange once he showed up.
    I obviously have less power than you in this relationship, lj, but let me just point out that the conversation had moved on when you decided to post your lengthy recap. As I’ve explained, apologized, and relented before, I’m sometimes impulsive, and let my anger get the best of me. Maybe that flaw will eventually get me permanently banned. I hope not, because I like looking in here. I would apologize, but I’m sure it will happen again, not because I want it to.
    I have put a blocker on the whole site that I have to unlock every time I enter to see if that helps to inspire me to exhibit the appropriate amount of reverence.
    Is this comment too snarky, smarmy or smart-alecky?
    I suggest that we move on to discuss the fact that our country has been taken over by a foreign government, and what we’re going to do about it, especially since the integrity of our elections is at risk, and our hopes for 2018 may be thwarted. If I have to be banned again while the rest of the people here talk about that, whatever. I hope not. I can still look in, though, to see if you have any ideas about what to do. If you’re organizing something, I’m going to try like hell to be there.

  76. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/07/16/another-huge-arrest-in-the-russia-investigation/
    Think of all of the time and money spent to uncover everything I and others have been revealing here for three years, and longer.
    Take the all of the NRA leadership’s and five million membership’s weapons and ammo away from them. If they resist, kill them.
    They are Red Dawn. They are the “queers and commies” under every bed and in every gun safe in America who McCarthy, a straight racist Nazi, sought to eliminate.
    Finally, we’ve found them. It’s like Smiley’s People meets Ben Hur and a cast of thousands.
    Atlas Burst An Aneursym.
    The five million dead will be a downpayment on what’s coming to the republican party and conservatism at large in this country, formerly known as America.
    We’re gonna skip the expensive hearings this time around on account of the fucking budget deficit.

  77. Oh goody, something to parse!
    If you’ll notice, McKinney and I had a reasonably civil exchange once he showed up.
    Which was after I gave you a warning. See, it works!
    I obviously have less power than you in this relationship, lj, but let me just point out that the conversation had moved on when you decided to post your lengthy recap. As I’ve explained, apologized, and relented before, I’m sometimes impulsive, and let my anger get the best of me. Maybe that flaw will eventually get me permanently banned. I hope not, because I like looking in here. I would apologize, but I’m sure it will happen again, not because I want it to.
    Yes, but I don’t have the power that I want to have, which is to create the situation where I don’t have to worry about you participating on this list in a way that makes it descend into petty shit. So, when I am forced to use my power, it is either to warn you, give you a cooling off period, or aw a last resort, ban you. Given that I can’t control that power to a fine level, it falls to you to avoid having me use it. And given that you’ve gone thru the first two levels, you do realize that the only power I have now to exercise is the final one. I realize that has the quality of victim blaming (oh why oh why did you make me ban you?) But when you get unbanned and immediately pop up with this bs, I’m thinking that that’s what you want. Convince me I’m wrong. Only you can do it.
    I have put a blocker on the whole site that I have to unlock every time I enter to see if that helps to inspire me to exhibit the appropriate amount of reverence.
    You see, rather than look at the blocker as a way to help you take responsibility for what you write, you make the last word ‘reverence’ to suggest that I want you to genuflect to me. I could answer that with a fuck you, but I assume that you have the emotional intelligence to see that you are just trying to get a rise out of me? Or are you so out of touch with your rhetoric that you can’t see that?
    Is this comment too snarky, smarmy or smart-alecky?
    Again, if you have to ask the question, you probably shouldn’t be asking it.
    I suggest that we move on to discuss the fact that our country has been taken over by a foreign government, and what we’re going to do about it, especially since the integrity of our elections is at risk, and our hopes for 2018 may be thwarted.
    I suggest that _you_ learn how to moderate your interactions and stop “suggesting” to the people here, who are much more diverse than you seem to credit. If you believe that ObWi should be a hub for organizing resistance to the government, I think you should try to find some other space.
    If I have to be banned again while the rest of the people here talk about that, whatever. I hope not.
    ‘Oh Lord, please make my sacrifice worthy”. You do realize you are acting out Nietzsche’s slave morality to a T? I also hope that you don’t have to be banned, but looking below the surface of this reply, I don’t hold out a lot of hope.
    I can still look in, though, to see if you have any ideas about what to do. If you’re organizing something, I’m going to try like hell to be there.
    Now this, maybe you just don’t realize, is pretty meaningless. It seems like the only thing worth doing is what you think is worth doing and even then, if it is not done in a way you feel is sufficiently robust, it is worth denigration.
    Stop trying to be so clever, I do think you are going to be hurt more by getting kicked off this board than we are by the lack of your presence. If I were you, I would do my best to reverse that.

  78. “Where’s Donald Johnson, and what does he have to say? “
    Your snark frequently doesn’t make sense. I read your link and agree with you that this is yet another despicable thing Trump has done. Our arguments, nasty as they have been, have generally been about foreign policy. I mostly just lurk on other issues because others here defend the positions I would take much more effectively than I would.
    I avoided jumping into the Nazi discussion a week or so back, but the regulars know what I would say —Yemen is ( so far) the closest thing to a crime against humanity that Trump has committed. The scale is far short of Nazi level killing, but there is a clear Saudi intent to kill civilians, wreck the economy, and cause children to starve to death. And the UAE is busy torturing people too. But US support for that disgusting war began in 2015 and its blatant sadism was evident very early on.

  79. Evidence, particularly from his wife and Roy Cohn, reveals Joe McCarthy may well have been gay.
    Political conservatives been been discriminating against all sorts of people for the wrong reasons for way too long. Pol Pot was a conservative; he didn’t approve of the four-eyes among us, but like McCarthy, he was nearsighted and wore eyeglasses in private.
    Time to discriminate against conservatives and republicans for the right reasons .. because they are republican and conservative, a conscious decision.
    Their plumbing and sexual preferences, their race, their ancestry, their religion, their need for eyeglasses, all things they are pretty much born into, have nothing to do with anything.

  80. Their plumbing and sexual preferences, their race, their ancestry, their religion, their need for eyeglasses, all things they are pretty much born into, have nothing to do with anything.
    That’s true. I’m wondering what inspired that comment though. It’s usually not Republicans who have to explain their plumbing, etc. It’s the rest of us, right? What did I miss?

  81. I read your link and agree with you that this is yet another despicable thing Trump has done.
    Thanks.

  82. Milo Yiannapoulos can wave his plumbing all over college campuses and it’s fine by me. If he wants to alter his plumbing, come back and show us that too, Barnum.
    It’s the other end, the talking end, of his alimentary canal that needs to be shut down permanently. He’s at best a witting dupe, as are most republicans, and I expect he is at worst a paid agent of the Russian/right wing conspiracy.
    Republicans pretty much accept what he does with his plumbing because the other end of his alimentary canal talks anti-American funny like they do and furthers their murderous plans for America.
    All other gays not in the bag for the right wing shit show, natch, will be forbidden marriage and cake.

  84. It isn’t a total solution, but taking federalism seriously and letting states do VERY different things, is one possible solution.
    It’s no solution at all, IMO.
    I’m fine with states dealing with strictly state-level issues. (By the way, I wish the advocates of decentralized government would speak up for letting cities mange their affairs as well.)
    The problem is that Congress deals with national issues – foreign policy, the federal budget, environmental law, confirming federal judges, etc.
    Lots of other things can’t be handled at the state level either, if you want to retain the right f people to move freely to another state. .

  86. As John Adams, founding father, stated to Abigail:
    “There will come a day when Americans will thank us for looking far into the future and bequeathing them the God-given intelligently designed First Amendment right to the fully automatic AR-15 in public affairs. Call Ben Franklin on the cellphone we knew would be invented, my little pug-nosed feminazi, and ask him how he’s progressing on that nuclear bomb contraption. I see Texas in our future and our poor citizenry in 2018 will find it a handy preventative to national insanity.”

  87. Ho, out of his hoohaw, provided the bedrock reasoning for Citizens United.
    If you want to murder post-born Americans, you have to be free to pony up the big bucks to the hit men.

  88. https://www.balloon-juice.com/2018/07/17/russias-ministry-of-defense-is-ready-to-implement-the-international-security-agreement-negotiated-at-the-helsinki-summit-wait-what/
    All it means is that Russia will be permitted to have six floats featuring their long-range nuclear warheads in mp’s next July 4’s military goosestepping parade down the National Mall.
    The warheads will then be deployed near Bethesda and aimed at California, for national security purposes. wj will identify one california republican who will express reservations about this deployment in a press release: “Please don’t nuke us before we are able to cut off food stamps to postborn children and can cackle over their emaciation. Give us that at least.”
    Russia will also be permitted to contract with U.S. Defense contractors and the steel and aluminum industries to employ the latter’s American workers in the manufacture of the latest military technology for the Russian Army, Navy, their space-based deployment.
    mp will order Medicare to begin accepting rubles from the workers’ paychecks for their bi-weekly contributions.
    But they’ll have to solicit medical care from doctors in the very narrow Lubyanka Soviet doctor’s network.
    Use the back basement entrance.
    The password is “dupe”.

  95. Count, I totally understand how outraged Monday has made you. (You and pretty much everyone. Even the White House has had to fall back to a “Trump is simply insane” meme to deal with it.) But still, it may be time to step back and go play ball or something for a bit.
    Just a thought.

  96. Count, I hope you’ve seen the original video for that song, it’s hysterical. Not to mention (I hate to be so literal) London is overrun by urban foxes, and everybody who has the fortune or misfortune to have them in their back gardens knows exactly what they say. However, with regard to the wolf, you give me the opportunity to post (not for the first time – but now with a sick feeling) my favourite New Yorker cartoon from before the 2016 election:
    https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-is-paul-noth.html

  98. When the so-called president of the so-called United States is allowed back into the country after openly meeting with his KGB case officer and kissing his kleptocratic ass on international television, “play ball” takes on a whole new meaning.
    –TP

  100. “play ball” takes on a whole new meaning.
    Well he must be playing Putin’s. Since, manifestly, he has none.

  101. It ain’t just He, Trump playing ball.
    At the start of His No-means-Yes “meeting” just now He, Trump received the usual warm tongue-bath from some Republican doofus whose name I did not catch from the TV in the other room. As best I can judge from the footage currently available on the web, all the other Republican doofuses (doofusi?) around the table did NOT rise up and spit on He, Trump for using them as catcher’s mitts. They “played ball”.
    –TP

  102. oh, McTx…?

    The solution comes in a pill: Taken daily, Truvada, the brand name for a type of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is up to 99 percent effective at preventing H.I.V. infection. Used as directed, it’s one of the most effective methods of preventing a viral infection ever discovered, as good as the polio vaccine, the miracle of modern medicine.
    …
    Less than 10 percent of the 1.2 million Americans who might benefit from PrEP are actually getting it. The major reason is quite clear: pricing. With a list price over $20,000 a year,..
    Infuriatingly, American taxpayers and private charities — not Gilead — paid for almost all of the clinical research used to develop Truvada as PrEP. Yet the price stays out of reach for millions, and will for at least several more years.

  104. “Healthcare for those who can’t afford it is an unknown unknown in the land of it’s free to die, and we plan to keep it that way.”
    Donald Rumsfeld, former Chairman of Gilead Sciences

  105. I think Trump might now be done.
    ‘I misspoke’ is so absurd, and, more significantly, weak, I think he might just have lost whatever bizarre hold he has on half of America.
    The one thing would be autocrats can’t be is weak.
    Much as I despise the word, I think the term here is ‘cuck’.

  107. His favorable polling among Republicans will rise shortly from 87% to over 90%, especially once patients with pre-existing conditions start croaking without insurance.
    I spotted a Soviet tank rolling down I-25 to Colorado Springs yesterday.

  108. I think Trump just claimed that he’s so mentally impaired that he can’t construct a double negative.
    Well, I have to acknowledge that that’s better than being a traitor.

  109. I think Trump might now be done.
    From your lips to God’s ear.
    But I fear this may be wishful thinking…I saw some R campaign hacks interviewed somewhere in flyover country who were just laughing and saying “It’s the swamp creatures getting hysterical, Trump’s people love him and all they care about and should care about is their jobs, and the economy, and the wonderful job figures” Trump/Fox talking points, yadda yadda yadda. When the C4 News interviewer asked about Russian interference and the joint press conference etc, they were blythe and uncaring, and I bet they’re right that his base will be too.
    Unless the politicians from his own party comprehensively turn against him in a much more convincing way than they have, and than refusing to appear on interviews (and if I’m right about his base they probably won’t) this will just be another outrage that disappears down the plughole until the next one. The Republican Party and politicians have sold their tattered souls to the devil, and unless the Dems really manage to get it together for 2018 and 2020 it’s hard to see how this can be salvaged.

  110. “Trump’s people love him and all they care about and should care about is their jobs, and the economy, and the wonderful job figures.”
    Hold that thought while the tariff wars trash their jobs and the economy. The only question is, will the pain hit significantly before November…?

  111. Hold that thought while the tariff wars trash their jobs and the economy. The only question is, will the pain hit significantly before November…?
    Or will they make the fucking connection once it does hit? They seem to ignore the ever upward trend under Obama which has merely been continued, and attribute it all to Trump, so presumably when the economy crashes that will be Obama’s fault too.

  113. I really hope you’re right, Nigel.
    And on that comforting thought, I’m off to bed. We’ll see what tomorrow brings….

  114. What tomorrow since November 9, 2016 has NOT been more full of republican/mp dog shit than the previous day?
    Every republican/mp tomorrow is a horror sequel with bigger jaws and new ways to fucking kill America.
    Fuck elections.

  115. This:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/house-republican-says-rising-sea-levels-caused-by-dirt-rocks/2018/05/17/42c3871a-5a05-11e8-9889-07bcc1327f4b_video.html?utm_term=.9a7992bc8e9e
    Notice how timid, how polite, the fucking scientist is.
    It’s time to merge the First and Second Amendments.
    We need more guns available to witnesses called before congressional republican vermin.
    Gunfire should be permitted as part of their opening statements.
    But if republican dog puke want to go in this direction, let me help.
    As the Chinese become more affluent because they fuck Americans on trade, they tend to take more beach vacations each year. All of those millions of chinks, as republican filth in the White House and Congress and Moscow refer to them, to mimic their political base, wading into the ocean at the same time cause ocean surges and coastal inundations as far away as Palm Beach, Florida.
    The Chinese are gaining weight too as they feast on shit American cheeseburgers and Papa Adolph’s Pizza, and Kentucky Fried Lynched Slaves.
    Therefore, they displace more ocean water while doing the sidestroke, resulting in beachfront property sold by lying shithead bucketshop Americans in Boca Raton being underwater most of the year, rather than only half the year outta town American suckers have been complaining about for decades.

  117. “It’s the swamp creatures getting hysterical….”
    Breitbart’s take has been “The Deep State is furious at Trump!”
    and the Derp State will buy it.
    they bought Trump, after all. they aren’t very bright.

  118. oh, McTx…?
    I presume this is a reference to my position on capitalism. Fine, I’ll bite. First, take a look at this link:
    https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/guidelines/html/1/adult-and-adolescent-arv/459/cost-considerations-and-antiretroviral-therapy
    As it happens, there is a generic alternative, courtesy of capitalism, i.e. competition. It is Emtricitabine and Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Tablets. See: https://www.raps.org/regulatory-focus%E2%84%A2/news-articles/2017/6/fda-approves-first-generic-version-of-gilead-s-hiv-drug-truvada
    The first link reflects the high cost of HIV treatment generally. Truvada runs about 1K a month more than the generic (you have to tease the pricing out of the first link).
    I infer your premise is that, in a non-capitalist system, Truvada would be much cheaper. Ok, how much cheaper? Second, which non-capitalist country/system is producing high quality and effective new medicines?
    Innovation and competition demonstrably drive down costs over time on a macro basis. Outlier, seemingly bad behavior is part of it.
    I’m open to a solution that rewards continued R&D in the pharma field.
    Back to you.

  119. Second, which non-capitalist country/system is producing high quality and effective new medicines?
    FWIW, Cuba.
    Some people do stuff to make a lot of money, other people do stuff for other reasons.

  120. I presume this is a reference to my position on capitalism.
    rather, to your repeated incorrect assertion that R&D of useful drugs only happens at private companies.
    I’m open to a solution that rewards continued R&D in the pharma field.
    pharma routinely has the highest profit margin of any industry.

  121. Competition has very little to do with the pharmaceuticals market, which operates through the granting of monopolies by the patent system.
    This gives us the harmful situation where a patient will often not receive a drug which would help them, despite being willing and able to pay many times the marginal cost of producing it.
    Because almost all of the sale price is to recover sunk development costs. Or in some cases is simply profiteering.
    It would be much more efficient and better for humanity to abolish drug patents altogether, and instead have a reward system for drug development, funded by governments globally and administered by an independent panel.

  122. pharma routinely has the highest profit margin of any industry.
    Gross profit margin on individual products, sure. Overall, not so much.
    ROCA is pretty low these days.
    It would be much more efficient and better for humanity to abolish drug patents altogether, and instead have a reward system for drug development, funded by governments globally and administered by an independent panel.
    Would certainly be a sensible idea for antibiotics, where the incentives are particularly perverse.
    Abolishing patents wouldn’t help so much for biologicals (which tend to be the most expensive drugs, too).

  123. One of the most effective breast cancer drugs was developed by neither government or corporate funded research. But by donations and fundraising done by Revlon Cosmetics.

  124. Second, which non-capitalist country/system is producing high quality and effective new medicines?
    Since one can count the number of “non-captialist contry/system(s)” on two thumbs, it seems unlikely. russell suggested Cuba, but does Cuba even count as “non-captalist” any more?
    IMO, it’s not “capitalist vs. non-capitalist”, but rather “robber-baron capitalism vs. constrained-greed capitalism”.
    After Trump and his GOP enablers gut the NIH, and declare war on triple-digit IQs, the resulting exodus of bio talent will show us whether the USA can still compete. IIRC, there was an exodus after Dubya restricted stem-cell research, but the effect was temporary.

  125. Let me play McKinney for a moment:
    A business that can not “recover sunk development costs” out of its “profit margin” will go bankrupt pretty quick. Doesn’t matter whether it “develops” medicines, videogames, or mousetraps.
    Products that go un-developed can’t help anybody. If you had to choose between
    1) No drug to treat a particular fatal disease, or
    2) A very expensive drug to treat that disease,
    you’d effectively have to choose between
    1) More people die, or
    2) More people go broke.
    The people who die because they can’t afford the drug while it enjoys monopoly pricing would have died just as dead if nobody could afford to “develop” the drug without some period of monopoly pricing.
    That’s my best shot at understanding McKinney’s POV.
    Naturally, I don’t share McKinney’s POV because I am aware of the many ways to finance drug “development” besides the doctrinaire “free market” model — which of course relies on government intervention anyway; the USPTO is as much a government agency as the Pentagon is.
    Speaking of which, a nation is a population, not just a territory. Protecting the US population from microbes and pathogens is “national defense”. Tax-funded “development” of pharmaceuticals to fight against those enemies ought not be anathema to even the hardest of hard-core capitalists.
    –TP

  127. As often happens with the Just Foreign Policy organization, I get emails with material I can’t find on their website. So I can’t post a link. This is annoying. I can cut and paste the email. Here it is —
    ——————————————————————————
    North Carolina Republican Walter Jones and Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard have introduced H.Res. 922, a bipartisan resolution which states explicitly that initiating wars without explicit prior congressional authorization constitutes impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors” within the meaning of Article II, section 4 of the Constitution.
    Unconstitutional war is already an impeachable offense; an impeachable offense is whatever the House says it is, just as an unauthorized “war” constitutes “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution if Members of Congress say it does. But the Jones-Gabbard resolution would make explicit that unconstitutional war is an impeachable offense, improving the prospects for calling the question in the House on unconstitutional war in the future.
    The bill explicitly states that unauthorized co-belligerency in a war, such as the ongoing, unauthorized U.S. co-belligerency in the famine-producing Saudi war in Yemen, is prohibited. The bill explicitly states that the U.S. becomes a co-belligerent if it “systematically or substantially supplies war materials” to a belligerent.
    The bill states: “This resolution shall be interpreted to prohibit the President from making the United States a co-belligerent in an ongoing war without a congressional declaration under the Declare War Clause. For purposes of this section, the United States becomes a co-belligerent if it systematically or substantially supplies war materials, military troops, trainers, or advisers, military intelligence, financial support or their equivalent in association, cooperation, assistance, or common cause with another belligerent.”
    Under House rules and precedents, impeachment resolutions raise a question of the House’s constitutional privileges, and that makes them eligible for expedited floor consideration. Thus, the Jones-Gabbard bill would improve the ability of House members to force floor votes on unconstitutional wars such as unauthorized U.S. co-belligerency in the famine-producing Saudi war in Yemen.
    Urge your Representative to co-sponsor the Jones-Gabbard bill by signing our petition.
    —————————————-

  129. I googled the Cuban pharmaceutical industry. Didn’t come up with much. I won’t get into the debate about patents. I disagree with the premise that protecting IP is the equivalent of granting a monopoly. TP misses my point again. That’s ok. I’m not changing any minds there.
    I will say this: if we had to depend on publicly developed drugs for our well-being, we’d all be much worse off. I take three prescription drugs everyday. I need all three. I’m glad they are there. All three have competitive products on the market, which makes the cost competitive.

  130. Maybe I’m just an innocent here. But it appears to me that the resolution has a gaping hole in it. That is, it doesn’t define what constitutes “war”.
    Consider.
    – Was sending Seal Team 6 in to take out bin Laden an act of war against Pakistan? (Which would require a Congressional action before it could happen.) Why or why not?
    – Does a cyber attack constitute “war”? Which ones — hacking in to gather information vs hacking in to cause something to fail to work (see the Stuxnet worm). How about hacking into voting systems?
    The world just isn’t as simple as it was when “war” only consisted of an actual military force shooting guns.

  131. It’s an interesting experiment where the US subsidizes drug development for the entire world. I guess we do other things in that veIn.
    It’s also probably not better than the alternative because the alternative is tax cuts.

  133. McTX: I disagree with the premise that protecting IP is the equivalent of granting a monopoly. TP misses my point again.
    Who is missing whose point here?
    You can “protect IP” in many ways; just ask Coca Cola. You can establish a monopoly in many ways; just ask Standard Oil. The concepts are somewhat orthogonal, so yes: not “equivalent”.
    But when the government grants you the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling your invention, in what possible sense is it NOT granting you a monopoly?
    Is it the time limit on the grant that makes it not a monopoly, McKinney?
    Note that to get a patent, you have to publish your IP: your patent must explain to the world exactly how to “practice the invention”. How does that “protect” your “intellectual” property?
    –TP

  134. I disagree with the premise that protecting IP is the equivalent of granting a monopoly.
    In economics terms a patent or copyright is a monopoly for analytical purposes as the effect on prices and production are the same. Patents and copyrights artificially raise prices higher than the ‘competitive market’ price and restrict supply.
    I’m not changing any minds there.
    Haha…you bring a series of weak assertions and are not surprised to not change anybody’s mind? Funny stuff, McTex.
    if we had to depend on publicly developed drugs for our well-being, we’d all be much worse off.
    Actually, no, we would not. But perhaps a citation from you would bolster your otherwise absurd claims.
    As for other countries doing it different, how about India?
    Also check out this AM’s NPR report on the marketing of drugs to the US medical community.
    Molinari wins the Open.

  136. That profit margin figure is from 2012; returns have fallen quite a bit since then, though as you can see from the figures for the top 25 pharmaceutical companies, vary greatly from company to company (and indeed over time)
    http://client.globaldata.com/static/PR1298.jpg
    Of course patents effectively grant temporary monopolies – though for many biopharmaceuticals, the effective monopoly remains after patent expiration as producing biosimilars and demonstrating bioequivalence is far more complicated (and expensive) than copying simple chemical drugs. Though techniques are improving.
    About 14% of US healthcare spend is on prescription drugs, so even if they were made for nothing, you’d still have the most expensive healthcare system in the world…
    I don’t think the answer is abolishing patents – rather, I think the system could be improved by government intervening/competing in various ways.
    Vaccines are the area which could be improved most (and would make the most significance improvement to healthcare worldwide).
    The patent system is utterly inadequate to properly incentivise their development and production.
    Similar considerations apply to antibiotics – which ideally ought to be used as little as possible to,prevent the development of resistance, which means most novel antibiotics will never earn back their R&D costs.
    Government might also usefully fund research into existing off patent drugs for other indications than they were developed for. These will usually not have much value for manufacturers, as they can be produced and sold so cheaply, so expensive clinical,trials don’t get done by private industry, but can have great value for the customer and/or patient.

  137. Didn’t come up with much.
    From here:

    Cuba has also produced innovations in medical research. In 1985 the country pioneered the first and only vaccine against meningitis B. The country’s scientists developed new treatments for hepatitis B, diabetic foot, vitiligo and psoriasis. They also developed a lung cancer vaccine that is currently being tested in the United States. Cuba was also the first country on earth to eliminate the transmission of HIV and syphilis from mother to child, a feat recognized by the WHO in 2015.

    The health care system in Cuba is actually under some stress now, because the economy is getting stratified, because money. But for a small-ish, poor country, they have a really good track record in medical innovation.
    I’m fine with patents and IP, and I recognize that the profit motive plays a part in making stuff available to us. I’m not a communist, and I’m not against people making a living.
    To reiterate my point:
    Some people do stuff to make a lot of money, other people do stuff for other reasons.

  139. so who funds pharmacy research ?
    The answer is complicated.
    “ended up helping the development of 84 first-in-class drugs….” is not the same thing at all as saying developed 84 first in class drugs.
    The world’s best selling drug was developed in the UK by a company called Cambridge Antibody Technology, based on research originally funded by the Medical Research Council.
    They could’t afford the very expensive clinical trials, so it was licensed to a US company. CAT got a 3% royalty on sales (of which they have to pay a proportion to the MRC) – and anyway they are now owned by Astra Zeneca…

  141. Reasons to abolish drug patents, #1.
    When a drug patent is held by a corporate, its aim will be to maximise revenue from the drug. The price point it will choose will be the one which maximises price*volume. Unless all potential customers have (almost exactly) the same money available to pay for the drug, that ‘optimum’ price point will price some of them out of the market.
    So the effect of the patent is inevitably that some patients who would benefit from the drug don’t get it.

  142. “But it appears to me that the resolution has a gaping hole in it. That is, it doesn’t define what constitutes “war”.”
    Bin Laden was an assassination. I think at one point during the 70’s we outlawed assassinations because of what it turned out the CIA had been doing, but that prohibition went away during the war on terror. But yes, obviously Congress should have ultimate authority over whether a President can wage assassination programs. In the case of drone strikes they are pretty much small scale wars anyway.
    If election interference is war, then the US has been warring on other countries dozens of times. I don’t think the current uproar about our 2016 election suddenly makes this kind of thing “ war” just because we don’t like it when it is done to us.
    Cyberwar is new. If it kills people it would be war or terrorism or something like that. I am sure we would call it terrorism if people destroyed our secret military programs and assassinated our scientists. Congress should be able to put a stop to such programs. I assume that at least in theory there is secret Congressional oversight, but in the case of Iran I don’t know if there was or if Congress could have stopped it if they had wanted to.
    Yemen is straightforwardly war. Our wonderful democracy should vote on it if we want to help the Saudis make war on children.

  143. Bin Laden was an assassination.
    But was it? Bin Ladin was the leader of a group which had attacked the US. Which attack was the proximate cause of our massive military effort (a war beyond question) in Afghanistan. A sniper with a rifle, or an introduction of poison would be an assassination. But a military team, collecting intelligence as well? I would say that, at minimum, muddies the water.
    Hence my desire for a definition in the bill. You appear have a clear idea of what is and is not “war.” Others also have clear ideas on the subject. However, they are different ideas. Better to get that sorted out up front, rather than have an enormously frustrating fight over terms when there has been an actual, arguable (and it would be) instance.

  144. Reasons to abolish drug patents, #1.
    A simpler and less disruptive approach might be for the government to negotiate drug prices – as they do in the UK, and quite a few other places ?

  145. After all, the US government is a pretty massive customer (via Medicare/Obamacare) of the drug companies – and it doesn’t do so.

  146. This was quite amusing.
    https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/jul/18/was-the-queen-sending-coded-messages-to-donald-trump-via-her-brooches-absolutely
    Twitter user @SamuraiKnitter has pointed out that on the first day of the Trump visit, the Queen wore a simple green brooch that was given to her by the Obamas to signify their friendship. On the second day, she wore a brooch given to her by Canada, a country with which Trump is less than pleased at the moment (also, it was in the shape of a snowflake, a classic Trump term for people who disagree with him.) And, for the last day, she chose a brooch the Queen Mother wore to the funeral of King George VI, so not one associated with happiness and joy. Queen’s brooches: 3. Trump: 0.

  147. One thing you can be sure of with Trump. Subtle messages will go right by him. Leaving the rest of the world laughing, and him clueless . . . until someone explains to him later, in simple words, what happened.

  149. A simpler and less disruptive approach might be for the government to negotiate drug prices – as they do in the UK, and quite a few other places ?
    The UK does not negotiate prices as such. The manufacturer sets a price, and NICE either approves the use of the drug at that price, or it doesn’t. There’s also an overall limit on how much profit a manufacturer can make from the NHS. And if NICE says a drug is not worth the money, there’s some wiggle room for the manufacturer to offer sweeteners to change its mind.
    Several other countries base their pricing on what NICE agrees for the UK. There’s a lot at stake.
    This is certainly better than what happens in the US. But it’s built into the system that some beneficial drugs will be priced too high. Because the manufacturers need to push prices up, and NICE needs to hold them down. So it’s still the case that some patients don’t get drugs which would help them.

  150. In the early 60’s my father teamed up with a hydraulic engineering professor and developed a heart valve. The work was funded by the hospital and the college. Cutter Labrotory manufactured the device for a good profit. My father and the professor donated their royalties to the hospital lab and the college. Sometime people are modivatex by something other than making money.

  151. Because the manufacturers need to push prices up, and NICE needs to hold them down. So it’s still the case that some patients don’t get drugs which would help them….
    That still sounds like a negotiation to me; it’s certainly very different to what happens in the US.

  153. Sometime people are modivated by something other than making money…
    Absolutely – and any well functioning system should recognise and facilitate that.
    (Note that the UK’s biggest medical charity was endowed with proceeds from the sale of pharmaceutical company Wellcome to what was then Glaxo.)
    Some people aren’t, though.
    In the end the human genome project benefitted from the competition (and collaboration) between the commercial and the government funded academic projects.
    Surely the aim should be to design a system which gets the best out of both ?

  155. WJ—
    I think there are always going to be gray areas. In a way I would welcome a debate about all the various cases, because Presidents have the powers of an absolute monarch when it comes to killing and sabotage. So if the proposal is ambiguous, it gives us an opportunity for challenging excessive Presidential power in other cases.
    But cases like Yemen are clearly in the war category.

  156. Republican Senators doing nothing about Trump’s betrayal of the country
    they’re doing what representatives are elected to do: they’re representing their voters.
    it’s not a Senator’s fault if his voters are treasonous idiots who have no principles beyond “Stick It To Teh Libz!” right ? he has to do what they want.
    the GOP is a cult.

  158. Sometime people are modivatex by something other than making money
    Not about drugs, but I believe it was Janie who previously referred to the shining example of Tim Berners-Lee and the Worldwide Web….

  159. Indeed, there are a host of people (in IETF and ICANN) who are continuing to volunteer to work out how the Internet will function. None of them are getting rich off their work. But the work keeps getting done.

  162. 79% of Republicans approve of how Trump handled the Putin meeting.
    the GOP is a cult.
    I know there’s no logic to it, but I keep marveling (not in a good way) that this is the party of St. Ronnie the Destroyer of Communism.

  163. Indeed, there are a host of people (in IETF and ICANN) who are continuing to volunteer to work out how the Internet will function.
    It’s been a very long time since I was involved in IETF work, but even then most of the people doing the work were getting paid by an employer. Certainly I was. Perhaps, “Companies who depend on the Internet functioning properly pay engineers to work out the details in a cooperative open-rather-than-proprietary fashion.”

  164. What’s to marvel at, Janie? Putin is not a communist, he’s a kleptocrat. He’s exactly the sort of guy for whom the “white working class” would demand tax cuts, just like Saint Ronnie taught them.
    –TP

  165. TP, do you actually think the “communists” were actual communists, and not kleptocrats? Putin was a KGB officer. The break in continuity from the former to the current regime, in terms of how power is wielded and in terms of ambitions on the world stage, isn’t more than skin deep.

  166. Janie, we both know the Soviets were not actual communists. But tell that to the “white working class” who learned at Saint Ronnie’s knee to talk about “communism’s death toll”.
    –TP

  167. do you actually think the “communists” were actual communists, and not kleptocrats?
    Yes, I would wager that most of them (those who wielded actual power) were, at worst, rather jaded communists who nonetheless wholeheartedly believed in the tenets of dialectical materialism.* We tend to overlook and discount the idealism embodied in the Marxist canon. That’s because we observe the rather dismal/horrifying results.
    Putin strikes me as an authoritarian nationalist trying to restore the lost power and prestige of 19th century Czarist Russia or the post WW2 Soviet Union.
    *They might have lived a bit high on the hog in relation to a typical citizen, but they did not stuff $billions in foreign banks…like true kleptocrats.

  168. Yeah, well, remember when Uranium One was such a horror when the other party was in charge?
    I actually saw a meme a RWNJ friend of mine posted a couple days ago listing all the great things Putin has done and asking how it was he “suddenly” became the enemy.

  169. Where this is all going to land, is this:
    The connections between Trump and/or his campaign and Russian nationals aligned with Putin, quite likely including Putin, will be demonstrated.
    Trump will say, “Yes, that’s all true. So what?”
    Trump’s base will be more than good with all of it. If that’s what it took to get their guy in, they’re fine with it. Everybody does it, what’s the big deal.
    And then we’ll see what happens from there.
    Depending on the makeup up the House and the Senate at that point, articles of impeachment may or may not be brought, and if brought, may or may not be sustained.
    Some of the issues involved may end up before the SCOTUS, and they either will or won’t be favorable toward Trump.
    And we’ll end up on one side of the looking glass, or the other.
    The alternative is to burn it the hell down, because our form of government doesn’t really give us too many more options than what I’ve outlined.
    The fact that the man has not yet been impeached on grounds of violating the emoluments clause makes me skeptical that anything of consequence will come of out of all of this. Which is to say, it’s completely likely that Trump will skate, on all of it. He quite well may be POTUS until 2025.
    Tough shit for Manafort, Flynn, Papadopoulos, et al. Shoulda watched their backs. It ain’t show friends, it’s show business.
    Good luck to all.

  170. this is the party of St. Ronnie the Destroyer of Communism.
    my favorite is still how they pretended to be the party of family values.
    LOLSTFU

  172. “The alternative is to burn it the hell down, because our form of government doesn’t really give us too many more options than what I’ve outlined.”
    They will take it all. For it is written.
    Aside from everything else, the Federalist Society’s ultimate goals are to declare Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional, which will follow on quickly after all abortion, insurance for pre-existing conditions, including pregnancy, all union political activity, all immigration (including removing citizenship from U.S.-born citizens*), all LGBT rights, all regulation that protects the civil rights of blacks, women, and the environment, are dead.
    What we will learn about traitorous republicans and conservatives, the entire malign anti-American movement, in this country …. is that many dozens of millions of them, possible 100 million, are the “queers and commies” .. in so many of THEIR words for the past 65-plus years, so let’s use their fucking words and their fucking bullets against them for a change … their beloved Joe McCarthy fingered as the mortal enemies of America.
    There will be much gnashing of teeth regarding our friends and family members who will be destroyed among these internal enemies of America, but let’s learn a lesson from Abraham Lincoln, who didn’t flinch at personal loss in executing his duties to the country.
    https://chch.oncell.com/en/benjamin-helm-119305.html
    Helm was killed in battle, leading Confederate enemy troops, in 1863.
    Lincoln continued to butcher the Confederate enemy for two more years, despite his personal grief.
    If Lincoln was living today, he would be shot dead by a contemporary conservative movement bullet.
    Probably some fuck who kinda likes the tax cuts AND the Russian hookers run out of Mar-a-Lago.
    Trust no one. No conservative or republican. Not one. All of them are under our beds.
    And when we are done killing these ratfuckers on U.S. soil, we’ll provide massive foreign aid to movements who butcher the fascist vermin elsewhere as well.**
    *https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/citizenship-shouldnt-be-a-birthright/2018/07/18/7d0e2998-8912-11e8-85ae-511bc1146b0b_story.html?utm_term=.83bdf815d6
    ** https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/07/austria-wants-to-register-anyone-who-buys-kosher-or-halal-meat
    If they were a cult, mere amateurs, we could count on them committing mass suicide.
    No. They are something else.
    These are professional, sadistic motherfuckers. And they want everyone but themselves dead:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRBI1VSO7hc

  173. https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/07/19/us/politics/ap-us-congress-election-security.html
    2018 and 2020 elections are already stolen. Savage violence is the only viable response.
    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/07/republican-war-public-sector-unions-won-2020-elections
    Just as the cuck c*nts will make it possible for workers to sue unions for back dues, in addition to disallowing any dues-paying going forward, thus bankrupting unions, once they declare affirmative action unconstitutional, they want to make it possible for those who feel they were adversely affected by affirmative action any time in the past 30 years to sue for damages, thus bankrupting much of higher education in America.
    All aimed at one-party fascist government.
    I hope mp successfully does this, so we can begin necklacing republicans with burning tires in the streets.
    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2018/07/18/the-white-house-needs-to-knock-back-putins-offer-of-assistance-in-exchange-for-interviewing-investigating-ambassador-mcfaul-several-other-us-officials-and-bill-browder/

  175. The Deep State might yet save us.
    He, Trump and his KGB handlers, NRA co-conspirators, and MAGA-hat-wearing dupes all seem to think that their boy can do their bidding by dint of his own mighty arms. This is of course not true. Even absolute monarchs can only operate through agents willing to follow their orders.
    Imagine for instance that He, Trump decided to ship Mike McFaul to Russia. Could He tackle and handcuff McFaul all by Himself? No: He would have to issue orders to people who issue orders to people who issue orders to lower-level people who work for a living.
    I don’t know how many levels “Deep” the “State” is, but Putin’s Little Bitch needs to count on an unbroken chain of loyalty between Himself and the FBI field agent who physically handcuffs McFaul — not to mention the prosecutors, judges, and so forth, who would be involved.
    In principle, we want everyone in The Government to obey orders from a “democratically” elected POTUS like automatons who are not programmed to care whether the POTUS is a Republican, a foreign agent, a crook, or a nutjob. In principle. In our current situation, we have to hope that some of them are actual American human beings and not brainless stooges of the Kremlin.
    I’m not betting on that, mind you. I fully recognize that the Deep State may already be in Putin’s pocket — in which case we are all fucked.
    –TP

  178. The Deep State is retiring
    Sometimes there is a job that needs doing, but your boss refuses to let you do it. In such circumstances someone with a sense of responsibility may decide to seek another situation, where he can do what is necessary.

  180. wj, I think, might be in a similar position to the DNI (setting aside, of course, the latter’s self-proclaimed ‘good relationship’ with Trump).
    The news appeared to shock Dan Coats, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who has underscored his assessment that Russia is continuing to target the United States, despite Trump publicly casting doubt on the idea.
    “Say that again,” Coats said when informed of the White House’s invitation to Putin during a panel discussion at the Aspen Security Forum. “Did I hear you? Ok…that’s gonna be special.”
    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/19/michael-mcfaul-trump-russia-question-732356
    “Obviously, I wished he had made a different statement, but I think that now that has been clarified,” Coats said, referring to Trump in Helsinki.
    “I don’t think I want to go any further than that,” Coats added.

  181. Reasons to abolish drug patents, #2.
    Drug companies spend a huge amount of money, similar to what they spend on R&D, marketing their drugs in high-price markets. This spending is if anything harmful – it persuades physicians to prescribe drugs they wouldn’t prescribe without it. And it feeds into drug prices.
    Consider how this would change in a world where drugs were free of patent, and development were paid for by rewards. There would still be an incentive to get your drugs widely used, because that would increase the reward. But the reward for one additional user would be much smaller, because the high-price markets would be gone – an additional user anywhere would have the same value.
    Furthermore, the reward system itself would publish the information behind its decisions about the effectiveness of drugs. So there would be an independent, well-evidenced source to guide prescribing.
    The result of introducing such a system is that marketing spending would collapse. That in itself is a big reason why the change is not being discussed – the very well funded marketing people lobby against any such ideas dangerous to them.

  184. Consider how this would change in a world where drugs were free of patent, and development were paid for by rewards….
    How would that system work ? If you think about the mechanics of it, setting up a complete replacement for the existing system would be incredibly complicated and fraught with difficulties.
    (As a particular example, ‘me too’ drugs, even if second or third to market, are often improvements on the product that got there first – how do you incentivise that with a ‘reward’ system ?)
    I am in complete accord with you that a ‘prize’ system could work in individual cases – tow sectors particularly suited to this approach which I mentioned above are antibiotics and vaccines (and indeed vaccine manufacturing systems – the egg based flu vaccine production is both inefficient and very slow, but there is a lack of incentive to develop a replacement).
    Government could usefully complete with the commercial pharmaceutical companies in other ways – funding research into existing off patent drugs, for example, or the long term health benefits of diet and exercise; set up its own generic manufacturing for niche off patent drugs which are often massively overpriced etc.

  185. Comparisons of marketing spends with other industries are not to the point.
    And the marketing of in-patent drugs should be understood differently from the marketing of generic drugs.
    For generic drugs, in a healthy market (which doesn’t always exist) your competition is other manufacturers producing the same molecule. Your marketing is aimed at building brand recognition which will persuade the consumer (or prescriber) to trust you over them. It’s not much different to persuading me to buy your memory stick rather than someone else’s.
    In a rewards-based system, all drugs would be like this – there would be no legally enforced monopolies on manufacture and sale.
    Marketing of in-patent drugs is different. It spends vast amounts of money persuading patients to demand unsuitable drugs, and persuading doctors to prescribe them. This is simply bad. Prescribing decisions should be evidenced-based, not marketing based.
    Because manufacturing costs (separate from development costs) are usually a small part of the sales price, it’s profitable to spend nearly all of the unit sales price to sell one more unit. In high-price markets (the USA) sales prices are very high, so marketing spends are correspondingly high. This incentive would simply cease to exist in a rewards-based scheme.
    (The most striking thing for a Briton watching US television is the volume of drug adverts. This direct-to-patient advertising doesn’t exist in the EU, as a matter of law.)

  186. How would that system work ? If you think about the mechanics of it, setting up a complete replacement for the existing system would be incredibly complicated and fraught with difficulties.
    I don’t claim it would be easy. But the patent-based system is intrinsically so inefficient and harmful that a new system needn’t be perfect to be vastly better.
    The biggest difficulty would be creating a system for bestowing awards which is (sufficiently) free from financial or political influence. It would need to be very strongly evidence based. Which is a good thing.
    Me-too drugs? They’d be rewarded according to how much better they are for (some) patients compared with the drug they emulate. Since the rewards would be less, there would be fewer me-too drugs. That’s a feature.

  187. Since the rewards would be less, there would be fewer me-too drugs. That’s a feature.
    Except that me-two drugs, like generics, are another form of competition. So reducing their number seems like a bug rather than a feature.

  188. For generic drugs, in a healthy market (which doesn’t always exist) your competition is other manufacturers producing the same molecule.
    Which is why marketing spend is a similar percentage of sales.

  189. It’s all about the blind justice and rule of law:
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mcconnell-threatens-to-hold-kavanaugh-hearing-right-before-midterms.
    Happily, Brett Bellmore wins another one, but not like he thinks. Downloading is fucking bipartisan.
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/downloading-3-d-printed-guns-to-become-legal-next-month
    Drugs:
    https://other98.com/trumps-plan-to-lower-drug-prices-raise-them-for-everyone-else-on-earth/
    Folks in other countries can download weapons too. A reminder to Americans who travel to countries where mp America wants to fuck their highly workable medical delivery systems.
    “The biggest difficulty would be creating a system for bestowing awards which is (sufficiently) free from financial or political influence. It would need to be very strongly evidence based. Which is a good thing.”
    Up above, sapient, and me, probably on another thread, we posted a link detailing our republican psychopathic gummint’s efforts to defund and halt the highly workable system in place to evaluate the relative efficacy of medical procedures and drugs.
    As far as marketing goes, any attempt by government, including the provision of objective consumer information to curtail corporate superhuman four out of five dentists in marketing departments from lying and cheating about their producers will be stymied by the newly weaponized First Amendment, which provided rock solid constitutional penumbras for our freedom to lie, mislead, and yell “Viagra” in a movie theater full of terminal cancer patients.
    You can’t put a lid on lying in America.
    It’s tantamount to cutting out the tongues of the conservative minority of the population.
    Also, downloadable pistols for the lied to.
    Just in time.

  191. Since the rewards would be less, there would be fewer me-too drugs. That’s a feature.
    I’m less concerned about the me-too drugs because of people who do not respond to the existing drugs, or have an adverse reaction to them. I have a friend who cycles through several cholesterol-lowering drugs because he develops a tolerance to any of them over the course of three to six months.

  197. Except that me-two drugs, like generics, are another form of competition. So reducing their number seems like a bug rather than a feature.
    You’re the CEO of a pharmaceutical company. On your desk are two R&D proposals: one for a new gliflozin, which the proposal hopes will work similarly to existing gliflozins in managing type-2 diabetes, the other for a sleeping sickness cure. Resources being finite, you can commit to only one of the projects. So you look at the financial reports. They estimate that a successful gliflozin would net $1bn. And that a successful sleeping sickness cure would lose money. So you plump for the diabetes treatment.
    In a rewards-based system however, saving the lives of many thousands of Africans is worth more than offering a slightly different treatment to millions of Americans. So you’d choose the sleeping-sickness cure. This is the world I want to live in.
    In a world with unlimited R&D resources, the more me-too drugs we have the better. In the actual world, we should focus resources where they will do most good.

  198. Personally I would prefer a world where both projects could go forward. The problem of finite (corporate) resources being dealt with by readily available (and affordable, of course!) loans to fund things like the sleeping sickness cure. As long as we’re laying out alternative castles in the air, that’s the one I’d prefer.

  199. i’m sure there are many things that could be taken away from the pharma discussion on this thread.
    what I take away from it is the idea that there are some things – some goods and services, tangible things – which we should not rely on purely market forces to provide.
    there are always a million things for money to chase after, and most of them are probably more renumerative – certainly more reliably so – then developing medicines. for example. and, not just developing medicines, there are lots of things that are of profound social value, and which are going to have a lower ROI than, for instance, developing a ride sharing app. or, for that matter, a new and improved boner pill.
    if we want those things to happen, we have to find other ways to make them happen. ways other than somebody somewhere getting stupid rich from them.

  200. In a rewards-based system however, saving the lives of many thousands of Africans is worth more than offering a slightly different treatment to millions of Americans. So you’d choose the sleeping-sickness cure. This is the world I want to live in….
    And why could that not exist alongside the existing system, as I suggest ?
    The example you give is precisely one of those suitable for a rewards based approach which could work alongside what we have.
    And if you had a purely rewards based system as you advocate, who makes that choice ?
    Why would an adminstration as the US currently has (or indeed the next Democrat administration) choose to spend its healthcare dollars on an overseas problem, rather than improving outcomes for one of the US’s biggest healthcare challenges ?

  201. What Pro Bono is advocating for is essentially altruism – and I am in agreement with that.
    Rather than try to re-engineer the whole of society, though, an endeavour which is IMO likely to fail, why not try to nudge what we have now in that direction ?
    As an example the UK commits to spending 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid. Whether that is high enough (I think not, although it’s quite high in a global comparison), and whether it is well directed, which is also debatable, doesn’t matter in this context. It’s an example of a pot of resources which is being directed altruistically.
    It quite possible to imagine a fund along these lines committed to improving healthcare where the market does not provide incentives.
    I’d argue that this is both a better approach, and more likely to succeed, than Pro Bono’s alternative.

  202. Here is a little piece the Count, and others may find intetesting https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/07/20/how-i-miss-obama/

    How I miss Barack Obama.
    And I say that as someone who worked to defeat him: I was a foreign policy adviser to John McCain in 2008 and to Mitt Romney in 2012. I criticized Obama’s “lead from behind” foreign policy that resulted in a premature pullout from Iraq and a failure to stop the slaughter in Syria. I thought he was too weak on Iran and too tough on Israel. I feared that Obamacare would be too costly. I fumed that he was too professorial and too indecisive. I was left cold by his arrogance and his cult of personality.
    Now I would take Obama back in a nanosecond. His presidency appears to be a lost golden age when reason and morality reigned.

    Time, perhaps, to entertain the possibility that I’m not the only Republican who vastly prefers Obama to Trump.

  207. Two …. and counting.
    The longest journey begins with a single step.
    A good weekend to you as well.

  212. This is a very persuasive theory about what Putin’s hold over Trump might be:
    https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/a-theory-of-trump-kompromat
    The scenario that, to my mind, makes the most sense of the given facts and requires the fewest fantastical leaps is that, a decade or so ago, Trump, naïve, covetous, and struggling for cash, may have laundered money for a business partner from the former Soviet Union or engaged in some other financial crime. This placed him, unawares, squarely within sistema, where he remained, conducting business with other membuers of a handful of overlapping Central Asian networks. Had he never sought the Presidency, he may never have had to come to terms with these decisions. But now he is much like everyone else in sistema. He fears there is kompromat out there—maybe a lot of it—but he doesn’t know precisely what it is, who has it, or what might set them off.

  213. I saw Bill Browder interviewed on C4 News the other night, Nigel, you probably did too. I think, and have thought for a long time, that he is phenomenally brave. Not many people would have done what he has done, and exposed themselves to the kind of risk he has. I hope he survives.
    Do you still think that, after Helsinki, Trump is finished? It doesn’t (yet) look like it to me, but if by any chance you were right it might just be the mills grinding slowly (and hopefully exceeding small).

  214. This is a very persuasive theory about what Putin’s hold over Trump might be
    It seems quite possible, to me, that the mark in all of this mess is Trump. With the Russians, with Manafort, quite possibly with Cohen. Who knows, maybe with his son-in-law.
    He’s a vain, suspicious man, who thinks he’s a genius with “good genes”. Volatile, readily susceptible to provocation and flattery. Greedy.
    Vulnerable.
    As the author of the piece notes, there may not have even been a particularly well worked out long range plan. He might have simply wandered into the wrong playground.
    That’s all on him, he is who he is. What continually amazes me are all the folks who would believe the moon is made of green cheese before they’ll consider that their champion is not much than a malicious buffoon.

  215. While Mueller is hesitating to indict Trump (which he could; there is NOTHING in the constitution or Federal statutes or judicial rulings that says he can’t; just some handwaving by Admin lawyer-shills)….he CERTAINLY could indict a lot of Congress. And should.
    Being a 2018 congresscritter with an “(R)” after your name? Prima facie evidence of Treason.

  216. European statesmen should steal a page from Jim Crow era southern sheriffs and their “citizens” and disappear them thar outside agitators who sneak into town and stir up trouble:
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-bannons-plan-to-hijack-europe-for-the-far-right?via=newsletter&source=Weekend
    All Americans … tourists, business travelers, U.S. government agents, including me …. disembarking in NATO and EU countries should be held over by security forces for questioning and physical harassment regarding their political loyalties.
    Never trust a fucking American.

  217. This is a very persuasive theory about what Putin’s hold over Trump might be…
    I’ve been saying all along that the most likely thing Mueller would find given access to the Trump Organization’s books is that some years back the Russians bailed out the family. Either by making a timely loan, or not calling a note they could have called, and as a result the Trumps avoided one of those long slow cascading failure bankruptcies to which large complex family-held business empires are prone.
    None of the Emoluments Clause, financial disclosure laws, or expectations for a President to divest his business interests were/are equipped to handle a Trump sort of structure where it might take a decade to unwind things without taking huge losses. From my own background, I am reminded of John Malone in the days when cable TV took off. When John decided to simplify his life due to his wife’s health issues, it took years to shuffle all of the directly- and indirectly-owned parts into places where he could own big blocks of stock in and sit on the boards of publicly traded companies.

  218. Trump’s open fury at Cohen, as revealed in his latest tweet, seems to me an indication that this (and whatever else Cohen taped) is likely to be truly dangerous for him. Maybe not if it’s just sex stuff (we know already he survives that easily), but anything else about business or financial matters.

  219. Being a 2018 congresscritter with an “(R)” after your name? Prima facie evidence of Treason.
    Yes.

  220. no, Trump isn’t finished. he’s perfectly safe as long as the GOP Congress is afraid to cross the GOP base, which they are, because they’ve told us they are. and the GOP base adores their TV tough guy.

  221. Maybe not if it’s just sex stuff (we know already he survives that easily)…
    I want to see Melania’s pre-nup agreement. At what point can she just walk with Barron and a big pile of money?

  222. cleek, I’m rather inclined to agree with you, the rest is just wishful thinking (no false dawns til dawn etc).

  223. None of the Emoluments Clause, financial disclosure laws, or expectations for a President to divest his business interests were/are equipped to handle a Trump sort of structure where it might take a decade to unwind things without taking huge losses.
    Then that should disqualify you from holding office.
    If what you do for a living involves making deals with officials in other nations or the people who run them, holding licensing or other IP agreements from other nations or the people who run them, or doing any of that on behalf of somebody else in a way that benefits you, and you can’t step away from any of that in a credible way, YOU DON’T GET TO BE POTUS.
    Executives of any significant organization, public private or otherwise, are held to a bar no lower than that, every single freaking day.
    If you’re going to assume a position of responsibility, you have to remove yourself from things that will present obvious opportunities for conflicts of interest.
    The President is a crook, and we’re all going to pay for it.

  224. I want to see Melania’s pre-nup agreement. At what point can she just walk with Barron and a big pile of money?
    My bet is, at no point.
    Clickbait doesn’t enter into agreements like that. And where would Melania the recent immigrant have gotten a lawyer to negotiate for her in good faith? Clickbait probably got the lawyer for her, indirectly. We already know he did something like that with IIRC Stormy Daniels.
    Or, see the twists and turns of the Karen McDougal story. Clickbait didn’t pay her off, oh, no, but his fans at the National Enquirer paid her for her story and then sat on it.
    Also, I didn’t realize that Melania’s parents are in the country on……what kind of visa? I thought chain migration was anathema…….but of course not, because it’s okay if you’re the crook POTUS.

  225. Being a 2018 congresscritter with an “(R)” after your name? Prima facie evidence of Treason.
    Only if you believe that anyone on a jury who votes Not Guilty is therefore an accessory (after the fact) if it turns out the accused was guilty. Being stupid and/or gullible doesn’t mean you are culpable.
    Not to say that there aren’t some, Rohrabacher leaps to mind, who aren’t quite possibly agents of a foreign power. But I doubt that most of them are quite that far gone. Bad. Horrible even. But not treasonous.

  226. I should have put “chain migration” in quotes. It’s not a term that people of good faith should use literally.

  227. Another term people of good faith shouldn’t use literally: “white working class”.
    If I have ever failed to put quotes around “white working class” in these pages, it was by oversight. When I refer to the “white working class” as a demographic that voted for He, Trump I do so with full intent to be snarky. I do so with full intent to mock whoever it was that coined the term, and whoever it is that still uses it “literally”.
    More snark there: read literally it encompasses practically all of us who are white and work for a living, including Marty, McKinney, russell, JanieM, and of course myself.
    Read as a brand name, White Working Class (TM) is an insult to the father of Ms. Smarsh, who appears to be not racist, not xenophobic, and not stupid. Whoever coined the term was merely trying to white-wash (if you’ll pardon the expression) a darker and more sinister “identity” in our politics.
    –TP

  230. This is where we are headed.
    I don’t really have words for how angry this bullshit makes me. Trump’s people are breaking the nation. For a fucking tax cut.
    There is a point, which you can actually kind of see from here, where the wheels simply come off. Keep this shit up, Trumpers, and we will surely get there.
    I appreciate and respect wj’s desire for a sane (R) party, but I think that ship has sailed. (R)’s, at the national level, are a pack of scoundrels, beginning with the leadership and extending out from there.
    The worst thing about it is all of the people who think it’s just fine. Spoiled, frightened children, happy to see the world go to hell in a handbasket as long as their personal world is not disturbed.
    Dentists with boats.
    Enjoy your tax cut.

  231. i hope the ‘blue wave’ predictions are right. actually, i hope it’s more like a blue tsunami that washes the GOP clean out of DC – leave some remnants clinging on the rocks, maybe, so we don’t forget what they look like.
    even if Trump doesn’t get impeached, seeing a thorough repudiation of the cowardly GOP would be satisfying.

  232. I’d like to see a blue tsunami too, but I’m ever more pessimistic about it. I’m afraid that the constant drip drip of this kind of thing is going to get too many people disgusted with the Democrats in much the same way that too many people (I know some) were disgusted with Hillary Clinton in part because twenty-five years of (worse than) drip drip drip about her alleged failings distorted their impressions of her.
    My only hope is that all enough of politics is local so that we start with bottom-up enthusiasm for the candidates who are within our voting reach.

  233. After careful consideration, the DNI decides abasing himself before Trump is more important than honesty…
    And sadly he may be correct. Currently, the President can remove/waive sanctions on individuals (e.g Russian kleptocrats). But Congress is in the process of passing legislation which would mandate that the DNI make those decisions. In which case you wouldn’t want Coats fired and replaced by a toady who would just do whatever Trump wants for his Russian friends/handlers.

  234. Someone is probably going to come along and, in effect, accuse me of concern trolling about concern trolling. This is and will continue to be why I keep my real and metaphorical mouth mostly shut about this topic.
    Eh. Back to the attic.

  235. The worst thing about it is all of the people who think it’s just fine. Spoiled, frightened children, happy to see the world go to hell in a handbasket as long as their personal world is not disturbed.
    You left out the part about them also being (willfully?) blind to the obvious repercussions of what their awesome leader is doing on their behalf. Repercussions which will disturb their world far more.

  236. After careful consideration, the DNI decides abasing himself before Trump is more important than honesty…
    And sadly he may be correct
    I believe I raised this dilemma in the general case earlier on in the thread.
    It is essentially insoluble – except by electoral means.

  237. The Soviet Union infiltrated the Republican Party and captured our government with Citizens United.
    Their agents have all of the money.
    Who does Art Pope really work for? The Kochs, all that Soviet contact during the 1930s? What, they were merely picking up borscht recipes?
    The Soviet Union infiltrated the NRA and other so-called “guns rights” groups and created its own guerrilla militia on American soil to kill any and all domestic opposition from the citizenry when the time comes ripe.
    ICE and Immigration are now merely an auxiliary gummint militia to aid the NRA and the republican party in its conquest to kill all opposition.
    Their agents have all of the weapons.
    They have infiltrated the Armed Forces, especially among the enlisted. Mattis will be killed by them when the time comes …. unless he turns out to not be a simple dupe, but rather a confederate.
    They have infested our media and our internet.
    Gateway Pundit is run out of a dropbox in a sleepy
    Trust no republican or conservative, especially if they are family members or friends. You are being watched.
    These words are going directly to the NSA. Whose side are they on?
    All was foretold with bad acting, the only kind shithead subhuman conservatives appreciate. Pretty close:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qc8jJ0TjSY
    Or, if you prefer, we were tipped off by this allegory, ostensibly regarding Commie domination.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpNdzSxXw-I
    The republican party themselves and worldwide fascist conservative movement itself are the “queers and commies” republican pig hero Joseph McCarthy raged against.
    Maybe mp is handling Putin and we have it wrong.
    Or, maybe republican cadres in America, led by their conservative vermin in Congress, and Putin, together, are handling mp, each cooperatively to achieve their own ends.
    Did William F. Buckley throw Ayn Rand over because he learned she was a deep-cover Soviet agent, OR was it because she signed up for Medicare and therefore sullied her capitalist bonafides?
    WHO WAS William F. Buckley?
    Makes no difference. If we aren’t killing ALL of them within two years, we aren’t serious Americans.
    If ya’ll were conservatives and republicans and mpers, all scum, you’d be hanging on my every mimicked Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck/Jones word, sending me money and buying my swag, calling it Truth, while polishing your gun scopes on the sleeves of your tatty bathrobes as FOX News drones in the background.
    But we’re too smart and benign for that.
    Unfortunately, we are at a point in history, not the first, in which the stupid and the malignant and the willfully ignorant among rule the day.
    They are dangerous and deadly. They’ll wave with their middle fingers as our trains head east.
    Coats’ sloppy groveling is most dispiriting.
    You republicans are an impressive, courageous lot, you fucking shits.
    Despite rumors to the contrary, mp must have one hell of an impressive horse cock, that so many tens of millions can’t resist putting their mouths around it and whistling Dixie.
    What does Pence’s wife do when hubby is on his knees?
    Crochet pious homilies to leaking underground gasoline reservoirs?
    mp must have at least that perused that volume of Hitler’s speeches on his bedside, because this monstrousness is far beyond any of Dale Carnegie’s hokey inspirational nothings.

  239. They have infiltrated the Armed Forces, especially among the enlisted. Mattis will be killed by them when the time comes
    I think you seriously underestimate the extent to which the members of the military are committed to their oaths to support and defend the Constitution. And their commitment to the principle of Chain of Command. (Not to mention their understanding of their duty not to obey illegal orders.)

  240. I’ve seriously underestimated, try as I might all these years, everything, the malignant conservative movement has pulled off and the tactics it has employed to do so.
    Oaths and commitment and duty are mere norms.
    Norms are out the Overton window.

  241. Norms are out the Overton window.
    Norms are out the window among some groups. Not, however, among all groups. Some groups even expend significant effort to enforce their norms, whenever someone appears to have lost the thread.

  242. They have infiltrated the Armed Forces, especially among the enlisted.
    I think you seriously underestimate the extent to which the members of the military are committed to their oaths to support and defend the Constitution.
    Officers swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
    Enlisted military swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and to obey the orders of the POTUS and the officers above them in their chain of command.
    In the case of enlisted personnel, it’s not clear who wins the toss if the POTUS, their officers, and/or the Constitution are not in alignment.
    Hopefully this will remain an academic question.

  243. Enlisted military swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and to obey the orders of the POTUS and the officers above them in their chain of command.
    That’s “obey the lawful orders….” It’s an important detail.
    Granted there can be some challenges in determining whether a particular order is lawful; thete are always grey areas in the law. But absent an immediate combat situation, there’s usually time to get an expert (JAG) opinion. And things like assassinating American civilians or superior officers (e.g. the SecDef) aren’t gray areas — everybody knows those aren’t lawful orders.

  244. wj: considering that the troops stationed at Abu Ghraib, and the CIA officers at ‘black sites’, didn’t immediately shoot dead their superiors when ordered to torture, I have little confidence that that “Oath” thing will protect us from “all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC“.

  245. “Go to Stanford, arrest Michael McFaul, and fly him to Moscow.”
    Lawful order? Clearly unlawful? One that needs “consultation with advisers” to determine its legality?
    He, Trump is like any other president in this single respect: He cannot, all by Himself, tackle and handcuff anybody, drive him to the airport, load him on a plane, and pilot it to Russia. He needs to issue orders to people who issue orders to people who issue orders to people who work for a living.
    At each step, the orders become lower-level and more specific. “Fly this plane to Moscow” is a detailed order some Air Force general might issue to some Air Force pilot completely legally in totally benign circumstances — or it might be the order to execute the last operational step of a treason plot. How is the poor pilot to know the difference?
    I don’t know how far down the chain of command you have to go before the illegal high-level order has been reduced to operational orders of sufficiently limited scope that no individual one of them can reasonably be questioned. But it does seem to me that it’s the people at the top of the chain who stand the best chance of recognizing the illegality of an order from the POTUS. And since those people are all He, Trump’s toadies and lickspittles, the best chance is a slim one.
    –TP

  246. “Go to Stanford, arrest Michael McFaul, and fly him to Moscow.”
    Lawful order? Clearly unlawful? One that needs “consultation with advisers” to determine its legality?
    Clearly unlawful.
    As you say, a pilot ordered to fly a plane to Moscow might well be OK . . . assuming he didn’t know (as he well might not) who was aboard. But the folks picking up McFaul would be expected to have something resembling an arrest warrant. A civilian arrest warrant, unless he was being accused of a crime involving the military. The crime would have to be specified. And I’m not sure how transport outside the US would be rationalized.
    It’s possible that a sufficiently complex set of orders, to a big enough cast of actors, could be created to make it happen. In a more competent administration; in this one, I have my doubts.
    But while it might be possible to successfully pull off something aimed at a small number of individuals, what the Count, back where this started, was postulating was a broad military coup. Well before you get to that point, the difference in scale becomes a difference in kind.
    It’s possible, with some care in selection, to find a few “the ends justify the means” types to do a few bad things. (“few” being still a large number; but comparatively few.) But of the scale factor makes that impossible here.

  248. wj, the trick is the slow corruption. Issue borderline orders often enough that they become to seem nrmal, then shift the border a bit and reapeat the process. Let the slope be gentle and not overly (visibly) slippery and within a few years you can get even quite decent people to do horrible things without thinking twice. The few incorruptibles can be weeded out during the process.
    The corruptors just tend to be too impatient and try to do with the easily spotable bad eggs, not thinking about a steady supply.

  249. i’m less worried about rogue military, and more worried about the 3% and oath keeper style freelancers.

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