Nothing really matters, anyone can see, Nothing really matters…

by

by Ugh

BREAKING:* In June 2019 President Trump pointed a loaded gun at a National Security staffer and attempted to pull the trigger, only to be thwarted by his substandard hand-size.  This according to a White House transcript released today in response to a whistle-blower complaint that, quote, "the President tried to murder someone."  The White House transcript reveals "POTUS then raised the weapon mere feet from XXXXXXX's head and attempted to fire (POTUS was heard grunting and seen sweating profusely), only POTUS' index finger was not long enough to provide the necessary leverage.  YYYYYY staff then calmly disarmed POTUS who was heard shouting 'I'll kill you you son of a b—–!'"

Responding to these revelations, GOP Congressman Jim Jordan stated "What's the problem here?  Did someone get murdered?  No. Even harmed?  Not at all.  And who is this staffer anyway?  He was likely a national security threat POTUS was trying to personally neutralize.  Also, I heard the whistle-blower once talked to a Democrat, so there's obvious bias.  And it's not like there is any evidence the President was shouting 'I'll kill you you son of a bitch' or something similar, is there?  This is all a scheme by Hunter Biden, and what about Hillary?"

…….

We're all gonna die.

*Not really

654 thoughts on “Nothing really matters, anyone can see, Nothing really matters…”

  3. careful, one of the Republican regulars might start clamoring for you to resign as a poster for such a flagrant misrepresentation of reality.

  4. What russell said.
    Somebody who doesn’t even have the courage to fire someone in person (outside a TV show) is hardly going to dare try to shoot someone.
    Between Trump and the Republican members of Congress, a history of the Trump presidency should be titled Profiles in Cowardice.

  5. It was further learned the weapon trump attempted to fire was an electrical solar-powered semi-automatic pistol featuring organic gunpowder and as the thing was wrestled from his grip, KellyAnne Conway, who was relaxing on the Oval Office couch with her legs curled up under her, was heard to gasp, but with a smile so inanely and maniacally sweet that diabetics in the vicinity pricked their fingers to test their glucose levels, “Our sovereignty, I say, our sovereignty has been take from us! The liberal Demon enemies have compromised our gun manufacturers too! Long live Carl Schmitt!!”
    In a man on the street interview on the very street where Trump last shot a guy down in cold blood, a passing Trump supporter was asked if he thought it was “OK” that Trump pulled a gun on a guy in the Oval office and he blinked a few times and sputtered: “Well, tell me who the greatest President in history tried to shoot to kill and I’ll tell YOU whether it was OK or not.”
    “It was Abraham Lincoln”
    “Didn’t we already shoot that traitor to the cause? I guess he could stand a second killing for what he pulled.”

  7. he’s not the kind of guy to do his own killing.
    Always ask yourself, “How would the head of a crime family in a bad 1980s Mafia novel who has reached the point of trying to fit in with the rich and famous behave?”

  8. It occurs to me that all those Republicans complaining about the President’s due process rights being trampled on may have half a point. Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. So legal rights don’t apply.
    But what they are saying is that what he did IS criminal, too. Oh.

  14. Review of a book by Fintan O’Toole regarding the roots of Brexit and the rise of nationalism.
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/from-little-englanders-to-brexiteers
    Have it on order from the library, but the review is worth it on the stand alone:
    “O’Toole makes a startling comparison, late in his book, between Brexit and the Confederacy. Brexit won an initial victory in the form of the referendum, but is doomed to fail, he believes, because it was based on deception—the Europeans will never give the United Kingdom a favorable deal. And then: “The self-pity of Lost Causism will meld with the rage of betrayal. Without the EU as whipping boy and scapegoat, there will be no end of blame and no shortage of candidates to be saddled with it: anyone and everyone except the Brexiteers themselves. That most virulent of poisons, the ‘stab-in-the-back,’ is in the bloodstream now and it will work its harm for a long time.” If Powellite open racism partially gave way to anti-European sentiment, the political currents may change direction yet again, guiding anti-European sentiment toward a different target. It is not easy to decipher which country is following which in the latest transatlantic dance, but both America and the United Kingdom appear to be heading somewhere very dark indeed.”

  18. Review of a book by Fintan O’Toole
    I heard Fintan O’Toole talking about Brexit on NPR last spring. One of his assertions was that there was no more than “the thickness of a cigarette paper’s” difference between the position of the EU and the position of the Republic on the subject of Brexit.
    Only an Irishman.
    I could listen to O’Toole talk for hours and never get tired of it.
    (Translation: I miss Ireland.)

  19. This is not an unusual idiom here, Janie. Some people here still roll their own! But I too love the Irish….

  20. It is not easy to decipher which country is following which in the latest transatlantic dance, but both America and the United Kingdom appear to be heading somewhere very dark indeed.
    I have to say, I have been sensing and fearing this very thing for a while now. I hope to God it’s wrong.

  21. I have to say, I have been sensing and fearing this very thing for a while now. I hope to God it’s wrong.
    Don’t turn a one-note singer, GftNC.

  23. both America and the United Kingdom appear to be heading somewhere very dark indeed.
    I don’t know enough about the UK to say, but this is certainly true for the US.
    If Trump wins reelection – especially if he does so while losing the popular vote – I think the country will split apart.
    I myself, living in MA, would favor (peaceful) secession by the northeastern states – New England, NY, and down the east coast however far – maybe even through VA. I suspect many on the Pacific coast would feel the same.

  24. both America and the United Kingdom appear to be heading somewhere very dark indeed.
    When I think of where we’ve been – both countries, really – today seems not so much dark as profoundly dysfunctional.
    A lot of the really ugly stuff that we see now – Nazis, for example – is stuff that’s always been there, the current climate just gives it an opportunity to come out and play. Again. We’re shocked by people who are, for example, openly racist in positions of power, but that used to basically be the norm.
    I think there is the opportunity for a lot of stuff to get broken, which could actually get very very bad indeed. But I can’t imagine all of the people who have, finally, won a place in the world going back.
    Whatever cannot continue, will stop. All systems seek equilibrium. I’m sure that seems glib but I don’t mean it to be. Sometimes “equilibrium” is achieved by things like hurricanes, and tornados, and earthquake. But, sooner or later, one way of another, equilibrium is achieved.
    To Bernie’s point, I’d be open to secession, or simply dividing the nation on regional grounds, simply because I’m not sure I have that many interests in common with people in e.g. Texas or Arizona or Nebraska. It’s a stretch for the US to function as a single nation, it may not make sense to continue that way. I don’t know. I’m sort of agnostically in the Michael Cain camp on that one.
    A lot of other things would probably have to shift for that to happen, for instance our position in the world would probably have to be different. But maybe that’s on its way, given the antics of the current administration.
    To me, the priority at the moment is getting the horse’s ass that currently sits in the Oval Office the hell out. The man generates chaos faster than anybody can deal with it. No constructive progress of any kind will be made until he’s out. Because he’ll FUBAR it before it gets out of the gate, because that’s his nature. If it’s not absolutely and completely about him, and to his personal advantage, he will move heaven and earth to keep it from happening, or fnck it up if it does happen.
    So we’re probably just all gonna keep yelling at each other and getting nowhere in particular until he is the hell out of there.
    That’ll be somewhere between six months and five years from now, depending. The six months is unlikely.
    So buckle up and don’t freak out.
    Members don’t get weary.

  25. I myself, living in MA, would favor (peaceful) secession by the northeastern states – New England, NY, and down the east coast however far – maybe even through VA.
    Not entirely clear why you’re excluding North Carolina. Absent gerrymandering, they’re probably in, too. For that matter, without vote suppression Georgia may be thete, too.

  26. I’m thinking it would be a stretch for NC and Georgia to include themselves. Maybe Virginia, but south of that there is no affinity for the northeast.

  27. I’d agree with Marty there (but as a non-USian that opinion of mine is not bolstered by first-hand experience and thus expertise).

  28. I myself, living in MA, would favor (peaceful) secession by the northeastern states – New England, NY, and down the east coast however far – maybe even through VA.
    don’t forget for a second that Trump is a NYer, through and through.
    there’s no line of civility anywhere.

  29. south of that there is no affinity for the northeast.
    Not a lot of love for e.g. NY in much of New England for that matter. Except maybe in CT, but they’re sketchy, too.
    Most of upstate NY hates NYC. Most of NYC hates Manhattan.
    Philly’s not so crazy about NYC for that matter. Everybody in PA other than Philly hates Philly.
    Everybody hates somebody.
    But yeah, pretty much everybody freaking hates the Northeast. It can be a little annoying.

  30. But yeah, pretty much everybody freaking hates the Northeast. It can be a little annoying.
    now having lived in NC for nearly as long as i lived in upstate NY, i can say that a lot of this comes from the amount of smug that NE generates, combined with its almost comical blindness to the fact that it has vast reserves of all of the evils it likes to lecture the south about.
    people are people.

  31. Yes, it’s true, we suck. And, of course, there is no other part of the country that thinks their particular regional sensibilty is the bee’s knees.
    Tiresome, isn’t it?
    Live where you want to live, live however you want to live, and maybe spend less time worrying about what other people think about it.
    That’s my motto.
    Can’t we all just get along? Actually, yes, wd can, if we can remove the freaking chips from shoulders.
    FWIW, reading “evils” here as racism, you’ll get no argument from me.
    people are people.
    Pretty much my point.

  32. Were there to be a “regional split” in the USA, the denizens of the ungovernable tribal regions of Outer Dumbfnckistan, deprived of their regular infusion of $$$ from The People’s Sneering Republic of Libtardia, would soon initiate hostilities to get the “respect” that they are convinced that they “deserve”.
    See also, 1861.
    Nuke ’em before they get started.

  34. all that said, i’d move back to the NE in a second, if Mrs wanted to.
    i actually like a real hard cold winter – the feeling that the air outside could hurt you if you let it, the months of never seeing the dead grass because of the snow, the need for bulky heavy coats that become a burden when you get inside, slush boulders in your wheel wells, boots. winter in the south is like three months of NY mid-November. boring.
    and i could do with fewer weeks of temps in the mid-90s.

  35. and i could do with fewer weeks of temps in the mid-90s.
    And I could do with more. With a fan, I’m comfortable up to about 95 degrees. But I spend winters feeling cold about all the time. And that’s in Texas. My metabolism is just too slow for cold weather.

  36. Yes, it’s true, we suck.
    i don’t think you suck.
    the south has its prejudices too. so does the west and the north-west, and don’t get me started on the “heartland”.

  37. i don’t think you suck.
    dude, no worries.
    I’m just looking forward to the day when we can all talk about real stuff again and stop worrying about who likes to hunt and who eats avocado toast.

  40. Yovanovich testimony very damning. But in all probability, still not enough (partly because to a certain kind of person US diplomats are called “cookie pushers”). I can’t believe I’m actually saying that, but it goes to show how far and how fast the disgrace/abuse bar has fallen.

  41. Nunes will continue repeating conspiracy theories. Jordan will keep screaming, “But it didn’t happen! They got the aid! There was no investigation!”

  42. I’m thinking it would be a stretch for NC and Georgia to include themselves. Maybe Virginia, but south of that there is no affinity for the northeast.
    Most of the people who do “megaregion” kinds of speculation put the urban parts of NC into a region with Atlanta rather than DC (eg, here).
    This is complicated stuff. Relative to the question of NC or GA, what would happen to Washington, DC when the federal government located there is much smaller than it is today?
    The only border I feel confident about predicting, and that’s under some specific (but likely, IMO) future circumstances, is one drawn down the center of the Great Plains.

  43. Jordan will keep screaming, “But it didn’t happen! They got the aid! There was no investigation!”
    Say what you want about the man, he has his talking points and he is working them.

  44. Jordan will keep screaming
    it’s really amazing how intellectually weak the House GOP is. true, the facts don’t give them much to actually defend Trump with, but everything they’ve come up with so far has just been sheer nonsense.
    i guess it’s just theater for the GOP base at this point.

  45. I wasn’t thinking so much about a region per se as about red states vs blue states. That is, not total fragmentation, just a simple two way split. Hence my comments about North Carolina and Georgia.

  46. it’s really amazing how intellectually weak the House GOP is.
    Especially in light of this:
    https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/07/politics/volodymyr-zelensky-fareed-zakaria-ukraine-aid/index.html

    The New York Times reported on Thursday that Zelensky had planned to announce an investigation into Trump’s political rivals during a September interview on CNN, but those plans had been scrapped once Trump released promised security aid.

    It’s so fncking stupid.

  47. Just so we are clear, no one has said they heard anyone actually tie the investigation to the aid. That would make it harder for them.

  48. I think it’s the juxtaposition of “We’re ready to buy Javelins” and “We need a favor” that is the source of the smell.
    It’s not a criminal proceeding, the rules are different than a criminal trial. Bribery, treason, or abuse of power and office is the bar.
    It’ll land where it lands.

  49. the ‘transcript’ of the first Trump / Zelenskyy call is out.
    other than several variations of “congratulations”, the only thing Trump mentions is that Ukraine was always well represented at Trump’s Miss Universe pageant. Trump never mentioned ‘corruption’ in Ukraine. he didn’t give even the slightest hint that he was concerned about it. what’s up with that? how could the intrepid corruption fighter not have been laser-focused on corruption?

  51. I’m very confused about that memorandum of the phone call, as also tweeted by Trump.
    1. It doesn’t seem to cover many of the issues in the previous release (no “do us a favour, though”). Is this supposed to be another conversation?
    2. It specifically says it is a memorandum of telephone conversation, and should not be viewed as a verbatim transcript.
    Also, what hsh said @11.24 above. That makes it awfully clear that Zelensky had understood the aid to be conditional upon an announcement of the investigation.

  52. it’s really amazing how intellectually weak the House GOP is. true, the facts don’t give them much to actually defend Trump with, but everything they’ve come up with so far has just been sheer nonsense.
    It’s not just that the facts are against them**. It’s that by now they know that any reasoned argument they might contrive is subject to being overturned by tweet at any moment. Crazy conspiracy theories are about the only safe ground they’ve got.
    ** My uncle, an attorney, used to offer this summary:

    • If the facts are against you, argue the law. (Not really useful in a situation which is not actually bound by anything except whatever rules the House might wish to apply. Although they are trying.)
    • If the law is against you, argue the facts. (Not available, at least in the real world. The facts having been largely stipulated by the defendent — although additional damning details keep appearing. And undercutting previous defenses.)
    • If both are against you, pound on the table. (Which is, indeed, what we are seeing.)

  53. Oh I see, the newly released memorandum is for a call on the 21st, “do us a favour though” was in a call on the 25th.

  54. Just so we are clear, no one has said they heard anyone actually tie the investigation to the aid.
    Circumstantial evidence of that is getting stronger all the time, and most of the people who would have heard such a thing, or might have said it, have been prohibited from or have refused to testify (so far…).
    If we do get someone who heard someone say or who admits to saying to Ukrainian officials that the aid and/or meeting was tied to an investigation of or an announcement of an investigation (which is actually worse by being more political than substantive) of the Bidens, I assume you’re going to reverse your judgement on the validity of the impeachment investigation, Marty.
    Or is that not enough, because you think the Ukrainian’s investigating the Bidens (and announcing it publicly on US television) is a high priority in the furtherance of US foreign policy?

  55. Meanwhile, according to USA Today, Roger Stone has just been found guilty of “lying to Congress and obstructing its investigation into Russia in order to protect Trump and his presidential campaign”.

  57. Or is that not enough….
    A rhetorical question, no doubt! Today’s GOP and/or “the conservative movement” is the outcome of 50 years of pandering to the worst elements of our political culture…racists, misogynists, authoritarians, outright fascists, fundy religious fanatics, etc….all now soundly in its corner and constituting its base. Fed by a nonstop torrent of right wing hate propaganda, This rabid base must be satisfied and cannot be opposed by GOP officeholders. They are trapped.
    Nothing will be “good enough”.
    This movement must be utterly destroyed, or you can kiss our democracy good-bye.

  58. Just so we are clear, no one has said they heard anyone actually tie the investigation to the aid.
    we already have a record of Trump doing exactly that.
    1. we know Sondland and Guiliani and others had been tying the investigations to the Presidential visit (which Z clearly wants on the first call) for weeks. so the Ukranians know this is what Trump wants.
    2. we know that the Ukranians had been wrestling with the dilemma of getting involved with US internal politics or not. we know they eventually agreed to do it.
    3. in the second call, once the pleasantries are done, Zelensky has asked about the possibility of a visit, and Trump has complained about not receiving enough thanks, Zelensky asks about the Javelins.
    4. Trump immediately responds with “do me a favor though”. and talks about the investigations. again, Z already knows Trump wants this. Z knows what the investigations are. Z knows they were already used as leverage for the Presidential visit.
    5. Z asks again for the visit.
    6. Trump tells Z to talk to Rudy G, who has been laying the groundwork for the smear campaign against Biden.
    tl;dr: the investigations were already the leverage for the visit. Trump, when asked about Javelins, makes another demand for investigations. there was the qpq for the presidential visit, first. then Trump attempted to use the aid as more pressure.
    qpq

  60. Good job, cleek. But the Marty’s of the world will remain unconvinced. Even if the ‘effing piece of puke broke down in public tears and confessed to his crimes they would still be all in and claim the “deep state” forced his hand.
    There is nothing we can do or say to these people. They are lost to us. They have made us “the other”. They are like the 1932 nazis.
    They cannot be accommodated. They cannot be reasoned with. They can only be stopped.

  61. Yovanovich testimony very damning.
    when Schiff tells her about Trump’s latest twitter-tantrum (in which Trump attacks Yovanovich) :
    Y: It’s very intimidating. I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do. But I think the effect is to be intimidating.
    Schiff: We take witness intimidation very seriously.
    lock that bastard up.

  62. Roger Stone has just been found guilty.
    So, does Trump wait until after the Senate hearing to pardon him? (The smarter move, on balance.) Or does he pardon him now, to help assure other potential witnesses not to flip on him?

  63. Because the Ukrainians took part in investigating Manafort, they were undermining the Trump campaign. Manafort, the guy who’s now in jail, who Trump chose to run his campaign. So it’s not Trump’s fault for choosing a criminal to run his campaign. It’s the fault of the people who looked into his criminality. It just shows that they were out to get Trump.

  65. Trump’s ability to shoot himself in the foot truly is awesome. One almost has to posit self-destructive intent (albeit, perhaps, not conscious).

  66. Roger Stone has just been found guilty.
    What strikes me here is that Stone has been a rat-fncker living on the edge of the law for almost 50 years. And, the law has never touched him.
    But he plays with Trump, and now he’s going to jail. Just another frog offering the scorpion a lift across the river.
    Ask Flynn or Manafort (or any of several others) about that pardon thing. Scooter got a pardon, Joe Arpaio got a pardon. Trump’s associates, as of yet not so much.
    Nothing in it for Trump, apparently.

  67. Nothing in it for Trump, apparently.
    At some point (maybe not the impeachment hearings but the actual trial in the Senate) the Democrats are going to call as a witness someone with direct, first hand, knowledge of Trump’s actions and the motivation that he stated for them.
    If Trump wants them to refuse to testify, he’ll have to give them something; or at least a reason to think they might not get punished for refusing. Which pretty much has to be a pardon. If nobody involved with him has gotten one, who would believe they’d be the first? To run a con, you have to give the marks something to expect . . . whether or not you have any intention of delivering.

  68. “The Ohio House on Wednesday passed the “Student Religious Liberties Act.” Under the law, students can’t be penalized if their work is scientifically wrong as long as the reasoning is because of their religious beliefs. Instead, students are graded on substance and relevance.”
    In Ohio, one hopes this could be an acceptable passing grade answer on both a comparative religion exam AND a pop quiz in 10th Grade Biology class:
    https://www.pinterest.com/babutanakia/khajuraho/
    Somewhere, I have slides of those metaphorial reliefs from my visit to the Temple 40 years ago.
    Will these sick-ass crypto-christian conservatives accept a reliquary of the Virgin Mary’s intact hymen as proof in biology lab of God’s super-duper penetrating money (the original prosperity gospel) shot, during which he yelled “Jesus Fucking Christ!”, which is purportedly what Trump also exclaimed near the end of his many assaults on women, thus the depth of the support among his evangelical base.
    Nothing matters.

  71. I expect a certain number of students to suddenly find a profound religious belief the answer to all math questions is “God”.
    Because, really, where can you find “zero” or “pi” or a hypotenuse in the Bible?

  72. No one is forcing anyone to believe in science. But when studying science in school, you should be expected to understand what the current, prevailing science says. If you want to think the earth is 6000 years old, go ahead. Deny the science all you like. Just don’t misquote it.

  73. Q: π = sin(y/2). solve for y.
    A:

    In 1884, meridian time personnel met in Washington to change Earth time. First words said was that only 1 day could be used on Earth to not change the 1 day marshmallow. So they applied the 1 day and ignored the other 3 days. The marshmallow time was wrong then and it proved wrong today. This a major lie has so much boring feed from it’s wrong. No man on Earth has no belly-button, it proves every believer on Earth a liar.

    A+!

  74. There was the time the Indiana legislature wanted to redefine pi as 3. Just 3, no .14159 etc.
    Some people like integers, what can I say.

  75. I’m somewhere in the agnostic-to-atheist part of the spectrum of religious belief, but if someone asks me what the Ten Commandments are, I don’t list the first 10 elements on the periodic chart.

  76. if someone asks me what the Ten Commandments are, I don’t list the first 10 elements on the periodic chart
    Obviously the Ten Commandments = the 5th Amendment twice.
    Duh!

  77. I myself, living in MA, would favor (peaceful) secession by the northeastern states…
    Much blood has been shed to establish the principle that unilateral secession is not an option.
    And, as Marty reminds us, the Constitution was framed to protect the right of Republicans in small states to vote themselves subsidies to be paid by Democrats in large states. Anything else would be frightening to devout believers in small government.

  78. There was the time the Indiana legislature wanted to redefine pi as 3. Just 3, no .14159 etc.
    One year while I was on the staff of the Colorado legislature I got asked to research the details of this during the intersession. The bill — bill #256 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana legislature — actually asserted a method for squaring the circle*. The bill provided that the State of Indiana could use the method without paying royalties if they adopted it into statute. The example given made π equal to 16/5, and the square root of two equal to 10/7. The bill passed in the house and died in the senate.
    * Given a circle, and using only a straightedge and compass, construct a square with the same area as the circle in a finite number of steps.

  79. The example given made π equal to 16/5, and the square root of two equal to 10/7.
    Hah, those are just rounding errors! We’ll fix it with shims.

  80. The bill (#246 of 1897) asserts that “the ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths to four”. That is, it claims that pi is 3.2

  81. You know, the Ohio House passing that bill is infuriating (maybe it won’t ultimately become law…I don’t know enough about Ohio dynamics to guess whether it will).
    But then we get Michael’s example, and Pro Bono’s cite, and I’m forced to remember that religious fanaticism isn’t the only explanation for gobsmacking stupidity.

  82. I apologize for my slander of the Indiana legislature of 1897, in which I falsely claimed they wanted to make pi equal to 3 by legislative fiat, rather than 3.2.
    3.2 is, in fact, closer to the actual number than plain old 3 is.
    Meanwhile, now that it has been established that Roger Stone lied to Congress and to investigators, is it time to take a second look at the whole Russian collusion thing?

  83. π = sin(y/2). solve for y.
    I thought the sinus function can only have values between -1 and 1, so this equation has no correct solution.
    ‘π = arcsin(y/2). solve for y’ on the other hand…

  86. 3.2 is, in fact, closer to the actual number than plain old 3 is.
    Of course, the ancient Egyptians circa 1600 BCE got to at least 256/81 (3.1604). Archimedes put it between 22/7 and 223/71 (3.1408 and 3.1428). Hindu mathematicians around 500 CE got to an estimate of 62832/20000 (3.1416), which was passed on to the Persians. Those have been reconstructed from archeological finds. Bless Gutenberg, who made it possible to create enough copies that a lot more things stayed in circulation.

  90. Zu Chongzhi calculated a range for pi between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927, around 480 CE.
    More stuff that disappeared until it could be recovered hundreds of years later. I shouldn’t give moderns too much credit, of course. I learned Kuhn-Tucker conditions. Sometimes after I finished that degree, it became Karush-Kuhn-Tucker because Karush beat them by a decade in his master’s thesis.
    Mathematicians can be so childish. At one point, for about six months, I held the world’s record for computer code to solve large linear network optimization problems. I told my supervising prof that I wouldn’t claim it because all I had done was take the previous record-holding code and remove the obvious inefficiencies.

  91. May I say, with reference to my comment about a NE secession and responses, that NC is a PITA.
    For the past 50 years that damn state has been on the verge of becoming a sensible place. And for the past 50 years it has fallen short, some occasional glimmers of hope notwithstanding
    So I’m tired of it. Let it join the neo-Confederacy if that’s what it wants.

  92. neo-confederacy? what you talkin bout byomtov?
    in 2010, NC GOP won the state house and gerrymandered the fuck out of the state. the result being that even with essentially 50/50 statewide vote distribution, the GOP currently dominates the state house and Congressional representation.
    the GOP current has a 10/3 advantage in Congressional representation in NC. the GOP got 50.3% of the total votes – including an entire district where the Republican ran unopposed. think about that: in 1/13th of the state, no Democrat ran, and the GOP still only got 50.3%.
    gerrymandering is doing all of work for them.
    but now, thanks to an NC Supreme Court ruling, the district maps are being redrawn!
    and, it looks like the Trump-humping asshat who has been pretending to represent me, here in leafy suburban Pittsboro, just got his dumb self drawn out of the map. because there’s NO FUCKING WAY NW Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill are going to elect that Trumpkin Wormtongue Mark Walker in 2020.
    and Mark Walker (may he burn in a lake of fire forever) isn’t the only one!
    even so, the new maps aren’t great. they give a 5/8 split (vs 3/10). but the NC dems are still fighting, so it could get better.
    and it’s been 15 years since the GOP last got more than 50.5% in a Presidential election in NC.
    you want neo-confederate, look to MS or AL. NC isn’t it. NC is changing.

  93. Hartmut: I thought the sinus function can only have values between -1 and 1, so this equation has no correct solution.
    The extension of the function to the complex numbers does allow for values with absolute value greater than 1. For example, cos i = (e + 1/e)/2.

  94. The Dr. Bronner of nutjob physics.
    thankfully, Gene Ray used a font size that i can read. Bronner’s wisdom remains hidden to my worn-out eyes.

  95. Sorry to lower the tone, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it there is an excellent piece in the New Yorker headlined In Trump’s Jaded Capital, Marie Yovanovich’s Uncynical Outrage which I commend to you.
    A couple of extracts (and sorry about the length, cannot post links using Chrome, Explorer or Firefox):
    As with most truly memorable public moments, there was something raw and unexpected about Yovanovitch’s appearance on Friday; it cut through the rote posturing and partisanship to get at an essential fact. Yovanovitch reminded us that all of this is, in fact, amazing and shocking and outrageous. It is not normal. Trump is not on the brink of impeachment because of some arcane dispute over differing philosophies about anti-corruption policies in Ukraine. Yovanovitch, who spent her career fighting corruption in the former Soviet Union, was dumped because the President had allied himself with Ukrainians who wanted to stop America’s anti-corruption efforts. He personally ordered her fired. He spoke threateningly of her during a phone call with Ukraine’s new President and did it again, on Twitter, while she was testifying on Capitol Hill. No previous President—of either party—has ever acted in this way.
    ***
    As Fiona Hill, Trump’s former senior Russia adviser at the National Security Council, told the committee in her deposition, Yovanovitch’s firing was “a real turning point,” the head-snapping moment when the handful of officials in charge of America’s Ukraine policy realized that something had gone terribly wrong and the President was going to war against the executors of his own Administration’s policy. Schiff identified its significance in his opening statement, pointing out that, while “the powers of the Presidency are immense, they are not absolute. And they cannot be used for corrupt purpose.” Those powers, he added, are meant to be used “in service of the nation, not to destroy others to advance his personal or political interests.”
    ***
    “Partisan politics stops at the water’s edge,” Vandenberg was famous for saying, even if the two parties were never as bipartisan about foreign policy as his statement implied. At least the aspiration was there, even if the execution faltered. Yovanovitch still seemed to want to believe it. She insisted upon the idea that there remains an American national interest, as opposed to a Republican interest, a Democratic interest, or a Presidential interest. She was an Ambassador from our past, and maybe from our future. But not, sadly, from our present.

  97. Cleek,
    Maybe NC is changing, but I’ve been hearing that for a long time.
    What is the outlook for Tillis’ Senate seat?

  98. Zu Chongzhi calculated a range for pi between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927, around 480 CE.
    How did he do that?
    I suppose some of the early close estimates were obtained by measurement, but that doesn’t seem likely here.
    I’m also curious as to when it was discovered that pi is a constant. It seems utterly mundane that the ratio is the same for all circles, but is that just intuitively obvious?

  99. What is the outlook for Tillis’ Senate seat?
    polling is still thin. but the last one i can find (from Sept) shows him losing to the Dem. he’s got a sub-40 approval rating in the state right now. and he has a GOP primary challenger to deal with, first.

  100. Because, really, where can you find “zero” or “pi” or a hypotenuse in the Bible?

    Zu Chongzhi calculated a range for pi between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927, around 480 CE.

    How did he do that?
    “Chinese mathematician Zhu Chongzhi (AD 429-500) used a similar method to approximate the value of pi, using a 12,288-sided polygon. His best approximation was 355/113.
    The approximate ratio for pi also appears in the Bible in 1 Kings 7:23:

    “And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.”

    (I should point out that the Biblical ratio for pi could be more accurate than one might think, since cubits changed depending on a person’s forearm length. So, assuming the Bible isn’t quoting cubits from the same person each time…)”
    A brief history of pi

  101. also… NC is likely to gain one, maybe two, seats from the next census.
    so, 2020 is going to be an absolutely crucial election.

  102. https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-miller-can-push-racist-crap-but-the-president-has-his-back?ref=scroll
    Cohen and trump and the entire nest of vipers are merely the latest malign instruments of the anti-American conservative movement conceived of decades ago.
    Already, murderous evolving evil even worse is being gestated within the conservative movement to succeed the vermin like Cohen and trump.
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/11/1/1896408/-Alt-right-trolls-make-life-miserable-for-Charlie-Kirk-and-his-Turning-Point-USA-Culture-War-tour
    If Stephen Cohen and most of the rest of the White House staff are not publicly executed along with the traitors Trump and Pence, then all of this “process” is a fucking waste of America’s time.
    These filthy hateful predators cannot be permitted to melt back into the political opposition where they will continue to fuck America and Americans.
    No more politically correct “tolerance” for these vermin.
    And there are plenty more of the ratfuckers where they come from.
    Notice how quiet malignant beasts like Ryan and Norquist are lately? They lurk as their evil political movement circles the drain, hoping to re-emerge among the smoking wreckage as voices of reason by comparison.
    No. Fucking goddamned NO!
    My bones speak.
    They know the horrific future America is looking down the conservative movement gun barrel of. They know what needs to happen in savage self-defense and who it needs to happen to.
    The President of the United States and his crypto-religious demon base want violent Civil War.
    I want to be one of the millions of Demons who will fulfill their wishes.

  103. JDT, that Daily Beast article is titled:
    Stephen Miller Can Push Racist Crap But the President Has His Back
    This surprises anyone why? That Trump personally is a flaming racist has been obvious for decades. Why would one of his top advisors being a racist be anything but a recommendation as far as he’s concerned?

  104. Yet another country falls to the subhuman, murderous worldwide conservative movement led by trump, Putin, Bolsonaro and company.
    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/11/bolivia-the-white-revenge
    But the Chilean people show the world how to disobey, disrupt, and destroy predatory oligarchs, like our home-grown filth.
    I wish Milton Freidman was still alive to be extradited and placed on trial In Chile for his crimes in support of the murderous Pinochet putsch.
    We could always dig him and seal his mouth with salt, just to make sure.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cvenzmgyg45t/chile
    Maduro of Venezuela must of course be slaughtered as well, but fascist conservative populism imported from America must be resisted in that country by brutal force.

  105. “This surprises anyone, WHY?”
    It’s completely normalized now, just as the conservative movement has wished it to be since it emerged as the cuck subsidiary of the John Birch Society and Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which recruited racist confederate Democrats as the centerpiece of virulent anti-government cultural and economic war.
    It would be good if it WAS a surprise. But the dark heart of racist nationalist America has been normalized at the highest levels of government and formerly polite society, which means the measures that Will be taken to eradicate this prion disease once and for all from my country will be horrific.
    We’re not doing this any longer. We’re fucking done with these monsters.

  107. I’m also curious as to when it was discovered that pi is a constant. It seems utterly mundane that the ratio is the same for all circles, but is that just intuitively obvious?
    Archimedes’s method for estimating the ratio, at least, based on inscribed and circumscribed polygons and the length of sides of triangles, is independent of the value of the radius, so must be a constant. He lacked the tools to prove that the two infinite series would converge to the same value, but that’s at least intuitively comfortable.

  108. “ Yet another country falls to the subhuman, murderous worldwide conservative movement led by trump, Putin, Bolsonaro and company.”
    You mean the coup supported by the liberal NYT editors and HRW grand poobah Kenneth Roth in alliance with Trump and Marco Rubio? Ah, bipartisanship.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/opinion/evo-morales-bolivia.html
    Unlike Loomis, I don’t think this is due to naive American liberal ignorance regarding how fascist the Latin American right is. Some people, including some liberals, prefer fascism in other countries over an anti American leftist populist who might or might not have done something irregular in the election. ( as is typical of the NYT, they leave out arguments of people who question the claims of the largely US funded OAS.). Morales is not exactly clean here, but he was forced from office months earlier than the end of his term by the military. Didn’t matter— they were already holding Morales responsible if things didn’t go smoothly.
    If Trump were a Bolivian and not American, he could have led the coup and the NYT editors would make fun of people who called it a coup.

  110. Thanks John. I still lurk here sometimes. But most of the time I don’t feel like ranting. The Bolivian thing ticked me off— not your remark— it gave me an excuse to vent—as the hypocritical applause given to the coup not just by Trumpists, but by some liberals. Leftwing Twitter was well ahead of the mainstream press in reporting violence by the coup supporters.
    As I was ranting ( in private, to real life friends) the other day, it would be nice if we had news organizations that really tried to report the news without spinning it one way or another. My far left sources spin things one way, but it isn’t hard to see the level of BS in the supposedly responsible msm. Bolivia was obviously a coup and yet the msm was straining not to call it that.
    Back to lurking.

  111. For sort-of-unbiased news, I generally look at Reuters, maybe Christian Science Monitor, and (believe it or not) USA Today.
    I’m curious to know if others either find the above to actually be not-so-unbiased, or if you know of other good, relatively neutral sources.
    I haven’t read the NYTimes since the Bill Keller days.

  112. I like The Washington Post these days, and give them as much love as I can. It was my family’s paper growing up, and although I boycotted it for awhile, they’ve redeemed themselves very well for the most part. They have many despicable columnists (and I occasionally weigh in and complain, but mostly just don’t click), but their web front page is usually pretty good. I find that the arrangement of the front page of the web version is very important to me, and usually I don’t have a beef.
    The Washington Post usually focuses on Washington politics, which I like because that was my upbringing, and it’s my interest. They fall somewhat short on international news. Maybe it’s there, but not prominently, and I tend not to loo for it online.
    I think russell’s news sources are good. More than one news source is essential because one can’t align one’s views perfectly with one editor, and if that’s happening you have to wonder whether your own critical thinking is working.
    I hate to say it, but I am a Twitter addict. People can choose to follow people they trust, and click links accordingly. Hilzoy is someone I follow, for example. Never disappointed in where she sends me.

  113. Just reminding people here that our good friend nombrilisme vide, you know – the longtime commenter who hasn’t showed up since 2016, hated and tried to discredit Andrea Chalupa, whose sister, Alexandra Chalupa, has been vilified by Trumpists based on Ukraine politics.
    The right-wing smear conspiracy pumping up Putin’s Ukraine puppets: just be aware. These people find collaborators, or willing dupes, or whatever.
    Nice people all. Some have children or pets.

  114. This reminded me that I hadn’t looked at hilzoy’s twitter feed in ages. To my great joy, I find that on November 12th, talking about the Ukraine situation and what Zelensky had said about the Trump call, she quoted Monty Python’s Piranha Brothers sketch (as I have often done here). Oh the bliss.

    hilzoy: When I read the line about how Zelensky said there was no pressure, I think of this:
    “Interviewer: I’ve been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.
    Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.”

    I read the NYT every day, and have held off on a WaPo subscription because of cost. I sort of feel that I should only have one at the moment. (I am currently on a special, cheap subscription to the New Yorker, but probably won’t continue it when the few initial weeks are up.)

  115. Nice people all. Some have children or pets.
    When I reread that, it almost seemed that I might have been saying something against kids or pets. Hope y’all didn’t read it that way – my point is that people can be loving towards creatures around them, while being completely horrendous to others.

  116. GftNC, I was so glad to read that connection with Hilzoy!
    I’m mad at the NYT. I read links occasionally but don’t pay for it. I pay for the Post, and have watched the hearings on the Post’s live feed.

  117. I wish I’d had Marie Yovanovitch as a role model in my youth. So grateful that she spoke out. I love her so much.

  118. NYT i do not understand; they seem so sloppy with facts sometimes – i can’t even attribute it to bias because they’re sloppy in all directions.
    WaPo hates Trump. and that makes me smile.

  119. WaPo hates Trump. and that makes me smile.
    I’m not sure that’s really true — stipulating that Trump certainly sees it that way. They hate how he behaves. They hate what he is doing (and trying to do) to the country. But there’s nothing personal in it.

  120. “ Just reminding people here that our good friend nombrilisme vide, you know – the longtime commenter who hasn’t showed up since 2016, hated and tried to discredit Andrea Chalupa, whose sister, Alexandra Chalupa, has been vilified by Trumpists based on Ukraine politics.”
    Kinda hate to break it to you, but some lefties don’t like our policies in the Ukraine. I could do links, but I don’t feel like I know enough to really get into ranty mode on Ukrainian issues. But I have seen this on the far left, just in case you think this is supposed to prove Putin or Trumpian sympathies. I saw it in 2016 and I actually think I once linked to an article critical of Chalupa.
    Politics is kind of complicated and there are often multiple factions arguing about the same events. It is a mistake trying to force everyone into one of two categories, but Americans often do this. Hell, a few times Trump himself has actually said things that echo far left criticisms of US foreign policy. Usually within 30 seconds or so he is pardoning war criminals, advocating blatant imperialism ( taking Syrian oil ) or advocating the killing of families of terrorists, which spoils the effect.
    I gotta stop lurking for a bit or old patterns will reassert themselves.

  122. Pitch perfect – and probably smarted more than the most coruscating of insults…
    ”Tonight, the people of Louisiana have chosen to chart their own path,” Mr Edwards told a crowd of supporters on Saturday.
    “And as for the president, God bless his heart,” he added, drawing laughter from some onlookers…

  123. Of course we have been saying all along that if the Democrats will nominate an antiabortion, gun rights advocate it becomes easier to win elections in the south. I’m pretty sure Edwards wouldnt win a MA Republican primary, he would be too conservative.

  124. Naturally, Marty.
    But if Louisiana elects Democrats like that to Congress, they won’t vote to confirm presidential lickspittles like Bill Barr.
    Or attempt to repeal Obamacare.

  127. Oh you mean they present a compromise position. Where purity test voters on the left or right actually have to make a choice?
    What a novel idea.
    Although I’m not sure they dont vote for Bill Barr.

  129. I gave him two years, then suffered through the next six. Zero chance is not what he got. Like this President he was surprised that the most powerful person in the world needed other people to get things done.
    Elections have consequences, he just didnt understand what that really meant.

  132. Fox News. Pretty concise summary.
    Get him the hell out.
    I look forward to the day when “scandal” means something like tan suits and putting your feet on the desk.

  133. And with reference to that, some of us remember when Trump was tweeting about Napolitano calling him “a certain very talented legal mind” and a “very talented lawyer on Fox [News]” In fact, I seem to remember even more lavish praise, but can’t be bothered to find it.

  134. unsurprisingly, over on the Fox News site the comments aren’t supportive of Napolitano.
    lots of people are pointing out that Napolitano is unaware of specific parts of the imaginary Constitutions they have all memorized.

  136. No, Marty. I mean that rational conservatives have no place in the party of Trump, and are running as Democrats.
    If the US cannot have a rational conservative party, then the Democrats may become a very broad church.

  142. “They’re screwed,” Pareene wrote of conservatives, “because they and their predecessors engineered a perpetual misinformation machine, and then a bunch of people addicted to their product took over the government.”

    yup x 60M.

  143. That is what a tribalist like Trump wants: for communication and compromise across tribal lines to become impossible, so that loyalty becomes the only measure and everything is reduced to pure struggle for dominance. If he makes it through impeachment unscathed, he and the right will have learned once and for all that facts and evidence have no hold on them. Both “sides” have free rein to choose the facts and evidence that suit them. Only power matters.

    Trump has already proved that, decisively.
    he lies more often than not. he lies so brazenly and so frequently that it’s not even news when he does it. and he’s violated every principle the right has ever claimed to hold. and the GOP base does not care. they only care that the GOP has the ball. absolutely nothing else matters. ain’t that right, Marty?
    the GOP is a cult.

  144. From JDT’s NYT link:

    From another vantage point altogether, there is the dilemma of the conservative who finds Trump repugnant, but also views Democrats as worse.
    Charles Murray, a political scientist affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Coming Apart,” believes that Trump is
    a malignant narcissist, which includes as symptoms some of the most unattractive qualities that human beings can have. He also exhibits textbook traits of mental decline that have worsened measurably over the last three years. I find in him no evidence of redeeming traits — no instance of loyalty to a friend in trouble or of unconditional generosity. I despise him and think he is unfit to be president.
    Despite that, Murray continued, “it is also quite possible that I will find myself voting for him next year.” The conservative scholar said he approves of many of the things that have happened during the Trump years — especially “the judges he has appointed and the steps to roll back stupid and obstructive regulations. I also think that the nation needs to control its borders and limit low-skill immigration.”
    While Joe Biden might be an acceptable choice, in Murray’s view, “a Warren or Sanders presidency would be a disaster for the nation.”
    Murray concluded:
    So there you have it: I despise the man, worry that he will make terrible foreign policy blunders, but from my perspective policies under Trump are vastly superior to the policies that would be pursued by the leading Democratic candidates. It’s a Hobson’s choice.

    This jumped out at me as being very similar to what Marty has written here. That happened before I saw cleek’s last comment, so I don’t intend this as a pile-on.

  145. the conservative who finds Trump repugnant
    oh what a lonely boy.
    it’s been a year since Gallup last showed Trump below 87% approval among Republicans.

  147. Trump . . . 87% approval among Republicans.
    Just because we’re a (13%) minority doesn’t mean we should be disrespected. 😉

  148. That Vox piece bobbyp links to @12.47 is excellent, and articulates many of my worst fears and preoccupations. I tried to choose bits to quote, but it’s all true and all too good (i.e. bad). The last three sentences of the part cleek quotes @02.51 were one of my choices, until I caught up with the thread.

  149. Just because we’re a (13%) minority doesn’t mean we should be disrespected. 😉
    somehow i know (and ‘know’) more people in the 13% than i do in the 87%.

  150. “This would have been far better off if we would’ve just taken care of this behind the scenes,” [Wisconsin Senator] Johnson said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “We have two branches of government. Most people, most people wanted to support Ukraine. We were trying to convince President Trump.”

    So, you’re saying you knew about this ?

  151. We have two branches of government
    Can we require candidates for Congress to pass the same test that immigrants have to pass to become citizens?

  152. Can we require candidates for Congress to pass the same test that immigrants have to pass to become citizens?
    No kidding.

  153. For anybody interested in watching it, Tim Berners-Lee has just given the Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2019 on his plan/plea for the future of the web on BBC1.

  154. Can we require candidates for Congress to pass the same test that immigrants have to pass to become citizens?
    Being very careful that the fine print doesn’t “grandfather” any of the current members!

  155. Or rather, I should have said:
    For anybody interested in watching it, Tim Berners-Lee has just given the Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2019 (on BBC1) on his plan/plea for the future of the web.
    Huh, in the Q+A he has just given a shout-out to Carole Cadwalladr – excellent!
    Cor blimey, the next questioner announces himself as Alex Younger, chief of the secret intelligence service MI6. What an audience!

  156. Representative from the Russian Embassy refuses invitation from the moderator to respond to something TB-L says! But then goes on to ask another question. OK, I’m going to stop now…

  157. Cor blimey, the next questioner announces himself as Alex Younger, chief of the secret intelligence service MI6. What an audience!
    Not sure if I’m doing it right, but I can’t get this although I’ve created an account. Damn! I mean Darn! I mean Bloody hell!

  158. I’m sure you will be able to get it on some BBC website, but probably not yet (maybe tomorrow). It’s just finished – I haven’t seen most of it yet, recorded it, but just caught the end live. Look it up under the title Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2019 (and FYI, the moderator is Dimbleby’s son).

  159. I’m sure you will be able to get it on some BBC website, but probably not yet (maybe tomorrow). It’s just finished – I haven’t seen most of it yet, recorded it, but just caught the end live. Look it up under the title Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2019 (and FYI, the moderator is Dimbleby’s son).

  161. cleek wins.
    George Conway is telling people his wife, KellyAnne, is in a cult. Irony is dead, so it can’t be that.
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-supporters-are-in-a-cult-and-mitch-mcconnell-is-one-of-them-says-dan-rather-2019-11-17?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
    Demonology may be the new political science.
    Paddy Chayefsky and Walker Percy surely deserve writing credit for foretelling the main elements of the dark, violent, and absolutely cracked fall of the United States of America.
    I hope we can avoid cannibalism, just when Beyond Meat is getting off the ground.

  162. Charles Murray, a political scientist affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Coming Apart”
    Charles Murray, a political scientist affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Coming Apart: The State Of White America 1950-1980”.
    In which he discovers, to his chagrin, that people with white skin exhibit all of the social pathologies that people with black skin do, when their social circumstances are similar. I.e., no money and no political clout.
    Sadly, he does not appear to draw the obvious conclusion that one’s skin color has bugger all to do with it.
    Really, I’m sick of these people. Sorry that’s so, but I am.

  163. Wow:

    Gideon raised $1 million more than Collins in the most recent reporting cycle. But Collins has raised far more money – $8.6 million – the largest of any political candidate in Maine history. Pundits suggest upward of $80 million to $100 million could be spent on this race before Election Day 2020.

  166. This makes an interesting counterpoint to Marty’s anxieties about the preservation of the electoral college…
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/electoral-college-racist-origins/601918/
    America’s institutions boosted white political power in less obvious ways, too, and the nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College….
    …The delegates to the Philadelphia convention had scant conception of the American presidency—the duties, powers, and limits of the office. But they did have a handful of ideas about the method for selecting the chief executive. When the idea of a popular vote was raised, they griped openly that it could result in too much democracy. With few objections, they quickly dispensed with the notion that the people might choose their leader.
    But delegates from the slaveholding South had another rationale for opposing the direct election method, and they had no qualms about articulating it: Doing so would be to their disadvantage. Even James Madison, who professed a theoretical commitment to popular democracy, succumbed to the realities of the situation. The future president acknowledged that “the people at large was in his opinion the fittest” to select the chief executive. And yet, in the same breath, he captured the sentiment of the South in the most “diplomatic” terms:
    “There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections”

  167. To play the literal devil’s advocate*: the intent may then have been nefarious but it’s effect to-day is beneficient,e.g.by having prevented two Dems from becoming POTUS and not unlikely to do so again soon, also forcing all serious candidates to not just frequent the populous states but to concentrate on the otherwise ignored ‘minor’ ones.
    *insert Mephisto quote from Goethe’s Faust I about the (hellish) power always wishing evil but always doing good nonetheless.

  168. … also forcing all serious candidates to not just frequent the populous states but to concentrate on the otherwise ignored ‘minor’ ones.
    This argument always seems a bit strange to me. If I’m a candidate, I’ll go after voters regardless of where they are.
    Yes, there are some places which have fewer voters. But their media markets are also a lot cheaper, so your spending per voter isn’t so different.
    The one difference I see is that it would no longer be worthwhile to spend lots more time campaigning in person there than the number of voters would warrant. Because you allocate your time per voter, rather than per elector. In other words, urban areas stop getting less attention than their number of voters should attract.

  170. One difference I should note is that the post my friend shared named the whistleblower, but it was the name that’s been going around (which I’m not repeating here) and not Alexander Soros.
    (I guess that makes it even more ridiculous, with a name that doesn’t match the face.)

  171. I sometimes wonder. Does Soros ever read about the overwhelming influence he supposedly has, and say to himself: “Wow. If only….”

  172. This argument always seems a bit strange to me. If I’m a candidate, I’ll go after voters regardless of where they are.
    This might make sense if electoral votes were allocated in each state in approximate proportion to the popular vote in that state. So, if your state had 10 electoral votes, and the popular vote as 60-40 (in whatever direction), 6 electors would vote for one candidate, 4 for the other.
    Most states are all-or-nothing, however, which means that if a given state has a history of being majority (R) or (D), it’s unlikely to get any attention at all, because the assumption is that all of its votes are going to go (R) or (D). There’s no value in reaching out to the million or so (R)’s in MA, for example, because MA is majority (D), and there is no mechanism by which a (R) candidate can pick up the almost-half of the electoral votes that they might otherwise be entitled to.
    These days, support for the EC is less (or even at all) a matter of race, and more a matter of less-populous areas being afraid of being utterly dominated by the dreaded urban sectors. Especially NYC and LA, but basically any urban area.
    It’s not an unreasonable fear, in the sense of the pure math of the population distribution. But it is unreasonable in its assumption that everybody in Those Big Cities votes the same way. Because they don’t, and neither do people in rural areas.
    As a practical matter, presidential elections now are basically a process of each party gaming the electoral math. And the electoral math often has almost no resemblance to the actual popular vote. In 2016 Clinton won about 48% of the popular vote, but 43% of the electoral vote.
    Trump’s numbers were 46% and 56%. So, a 2 point gap, vs a 13 point gap in the other direction, so a total divergence of 15%.
    The wider that gets, the less legitimate the claim to the office will be. If the winner starts losing the popular vote by double-digit numbers – which is more than possible – the POTUS’ claim to represent the “will of the people” will be undermined. And, should be.
    The POTUS will be the winner of a tricksy political game, rather than a representative of the American people.
    If we want to privilege people in small states by enhancing the effective weight of their vote, fine. Don’t know if that is still a reasonable thing to do, but whatever. If it gets people down off the ledge, I can live with it.
    If we’re going to do that, we should allocate electoral votes in each state according to the popular vote count in each state. If only to preserve some realistic correspondence between the popular vote outcome and the person who ends up holding the office.

  173. If we’re going to do that, we should allocate electoral votes in each state according to the popular vote count in each state.
    270towin.com ran this scenario (and several others) after the 2016 election. The final tally would have been Trump 267, Clinton 265, third parties 6. The election would have gone to the House of Representatives where Trump would have won easily. The third-party EC votes would have been three from California and one each from New York, Texas, and Utah. Odd things can happen in the House: Colorado’s delegation would have voted Republican despite Clinton winning the popular vote in the state.
    Obviously, if the election were run under that rule, campaigns would have allocated their efforts somewhat differently.

  174. i’ve mentioned this before, but a lot of people really don’t know how a Presidential election works; and many learn about it for the first time, every four years. and they’re astounded when they learn how it works.
    you’re not voting for the candidate. you are voting for an anonymous pool of other people to cast a handful of votes for the person you chose. those people belong to something called a “college” that doesn’t have a campus or even a web site.
    should your pool win, the individuals in that pool could vote for someone completely different than the person you voted for, if your state allows that.
    some states allow the pools to split their votes based on how many actual people voted for each candidate. most don’t.
    the size of the pool depends on the size of your state. smaller states get bigger votes. bigger states get smaller votes.
    none of this makes any sense when you first hear it. and when you do hear it, the feeling is not “YES! THIS MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I’M AN IMPORTANT PART OF A TOTALLY TRANSPARENT AND FAIR SYSTEM!” it’s actually “WTF? did i just waste my afternoon?”

  175. IMO, the only “plus” to the EC is that it amplifies vote margins, so that a razor-thin election win or loss only has to be adjudicated in a small number of states.
    Now, if the EC did what it’s been advertised to do, that is, use independent judgement to keep out manifestly unfit candidates, we wouldn’t be in the current situation.
    They had ONE JOB, dammit.

  176. …you are voting for an anonymous pool of other people…
    Part of the process of getting on the ballot in my state as a candidate for President is to name the specific nine people who will be the electors if you win the popular vote. Granted, you have to go look to see which electors you’re voting for, but the names and addresses are publicly available.
    You can get on the ballot for $5,000 here (in 2016 we got to choose from 22 candidates). I have a friend in Oregon who runs a Facebook page for the Cocktail Party every four years. I’ve told him that if we hit the lottery, the Cocktail Party will be on the ballot with him at the top of the ticket. I’ll have to run around and find nine people who are willing to be electors :^) I suspect that we can get more votes than the Prohibition Party, which was on the ballot in 2016.

  177. The final tally would have been Trump 267, Clinton 265, third parties 6. The election would have gone to the House of Representatives
    My own preference for POTUS is the same as Madison’s – straight up popular vote.
    Failing that, the above seems a reasonable compromise. To me.
    I’ll have to run around and find nine people who are willing to be electors
    I’m pretty sure you can find 9 people here on ObWi who would be electors for the Cocktail Party.
    Maybe even 9 in OR, if you recruit from lurkers…
    🙂

  178. Zu Chongzhi calculated a range for pi between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927, around 480 CE.
    How did he do that?
    I suppose some of the early close estimates were obtained by measurement, but that doesn’t seem likely here.
    I’m also curious as to when it was discovered that pi is a constant. It seems utterly mundane that the ratio is the same for all circles, but is that just intuitively obvious?
    Zu Chongzhi used a method devised by Liu Hui around 260 CE, but was more assiduous in applying it.
    No measurement was involved, it was all calculation.
    __
    Consider a regular hexagon inscribed in a unit circle (one can generalize to radius r, and all the rs will cancel). It consists of six equilateral triangles of unit side. The perimeter of the hexagon is 6, so pi is approximately 3.
    Now double the number of sides, getting a regular dodecagon and calculate the length of each side. Double it again and again until you’ve had enough. The perimeter converges on 2pi.
    Suppose the length of a side after n doublings is x_n. It’s easy to show, using just pythagoras’s theorem, that the length when you double the number of sides will be sqrt(2 – sqrt(4 – x_n^2)).
    If we put y_n = 2-x_n^2, this simplifies to y_n+1 = sqrt(2 + y_n). So we can do as many iterations as we like with only one square root calculation for each (which matters when you’re calculating square roots by hand) then do an additional calculation at the end to find the actual side length.
    Then there’s an additional trick, also discovered by Liu Hui. At each iteration, the side length of the regular polygon is slightly more than half the previous side length. One can do a power-series approximation to show that the “slightly more” is to first order x_n^3/32. Since there will be 6.2^(n+1) sides, the additional circumference is about 6.2^(n-4)x_n^3 and the addition to our pi estimate is therefore 3.2^(n-4)x_n^3. And since x_n roughly halves each time, each successive iteration will add about a quarter as much to the circumference, so all future iterations summed together will add about a third as much as the current one. So he added that in.

  180. When CA had a gubernatorial recall & replacement, IIRC it only took something like $5K to get on the ballot.
    Yes, Schwarzenegger won because of name recognition, but I remain astonished that getting on the ballot wasn’t given to kids as a High School graduation present, and that the ballot wasn’t the size of the old-style LA phone book.
    Mr. Aardmore Aardivan would have won.

  181. From Barr’s speech:

    The notion that the American Revolution was against the tyranny of a monarch, Barr said, was a “grammar school civics class version” and “misguided”

    There is sort of a point here, in that the taxation without representation thing was a matter of no representation in Parliament.
    But has Barr read the Declaration of Independence?

  182. “There is sort of a point here, in that the taxation without representation thing was a matter of no representation in Parliament.”
    Well, that “sort of a point” became pointless quite awhile ago during this most recent historical iteration of the vile, knavish (the Trevino/Tacitus in me comes in handy, even now) conservative movement when even “taxation WITH representation” was morphed into socialism, communism and theft (not that the conservative vermin during the Gilded Age leading into Teddy Roosevelt’s administration didn’t shit from the same mouth) and Grover Norquist made his pledge mandatory and unanimous among republican, anti-American filth.

  183. Here’s the full text:
    https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-19th-annual-barbara-k-olson-memorial-lecture
    it’s pretty wild.
    he loves him some Unitary Executive. and then…

    Let me turn now to what I believe has been the prime source of the erosion of separation-of-power principles generally, and Executive Branch authority specifically. I am speaking of the Judicial Branch.

    heh.
    but he does end with:

    In so many areas, it is critical to our Nation’s future that we restore and preserve in their full vigor our Founding principles. Not the least of these is the Framers’ vision of a strong, independent Executive, chosen by the country as a whole.

    i’ll just assume ‘as a whole’ means he’s a fan of direct election of the President by popular vote.

  185. Not the least of these is the Framers’ vision of a strong, independent Executive,…
    My impression is that the Framers viewed the Executive as begin largely an administrative position with the legislative being first among equals. A position the Congress has pretty much abdicated. They may be able to impeach a president but can’t bring themselves to tell him when he can and can’t go to war. And they pass vague, overly broad laws and leave it to the administration to make up and take the responsibility for the details.

  186. Devin Nunes is a hack on Tuesdays, too.
    PUPPET MASTERS!!!11!!@#1
    (makes sense if you heard his opening statement…)

  187. Not the least of these is the Framers’ vision of a strong, independent Executive, chosen by the country as a whole.
    And when there’s a (D) POTUS again, it’ll be back to Congress as the people’s advocate. If Congress has a (R) majority in either House, if not it’ll be back to the judiciary as the bulwark against despots gone wild.
    It’s a fncking power grab. Barr is, and is acting as, a partisan advocate of (R) power.
    And of course, this is the cue for “both sides”, but these guys don’t even try to pretend.

  188. But, will the U.S. Army protect Vindman and the other public servants, whom Marty in his contemptible disrespect for the people who protect him has accused of merely having “hurt fee-fees” (that projection is the same old sloppy sentimentalism), from the certainty of violent assassination attempts by NRA-armed conservative republican operative militias and lone wolves?
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/vindman-special-protection-army-fine-telling-truth
    If you want an example of purely insurrectionist “deep state” federal employees, see trump’s and republicans’ rancid, malignant appeals to the INS and Homeland Security and the New York FBI and right-wing elements in the armed forces during the Obama Administration and the 2016 campaign.
    Trump and Republicans even touted the Border Agent public employee union, infiltrated by thugs just as dangerous as Jimmy Hoffa, the only union the conservative movement hasn’t tried to destroy outside of the Union of Concerned Conservative Assholes … 70 million-strong and to whom I am forced to pay dues in the form of government-destroying tax cuts.

  189. South Korea should invite Chinese and Russian troops into their country to patrol the perimeters of U.S. military installations and make sure they don’t leave.
    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/11/19/in-non-impeachment-news-the-president-has-apparently-shifted-the-republic-of-korea-into-an-alliance-with-the-peoples-republic-of-china/
    That 90 minutes of precious time not spent by Trump learning all there is to know about nuclear weapons may come in handy as he looks up and asks WTF? as the missiles enter American airspace.
    The United States of America is in grave danger because of the actions of traitorous conservatives and republicans in bed with our enemies.
    I’ve waited 65 years since the republican conservative McCarthy hearings destroyed innocent Americans’ lives to say that about the real traitorous vermin among us.

  190. I see that Nunes is hammering on about someone named Alexandra Chalupa. Who the Republicans apparently see as part of the DNC/Ukraine conspiracy during the 2016 election. It will be interesting to see whether she is among the witnesses they call during these hearings. If nothing else, as a measure of how honestly they believe their conspiracy theory.

  192. Amb Volker (who, be it noted, is a Republican witness, says:
    “In retrospect, I should have seen that connection [between Burisma and Biden] differently, and had I done so, I would have raised my own objections.”
    So how problematic does that make the whole thing?

  193. It will be interesting to see whether she is among the witnesses they call during these hearings.
    I’m assuming “they” in this sentence is the Republican members of the committee. In that case, it will be interesting to see if Schiff allows her. As I understand it, he has been insisting that the Republicans lay at least minimal groundwork for why their witnesses are relevant to the matter under investigation, which is not the DNC/Ukraine conspiracy theory.
    And I’ll be really interested to see what Chief Justice Roberts allows if the whole thing comes to trial in the Senate. Myself, I expect the Senate defense to consist very largely of “The President has unlimited authority to conduct foreign policy as he/she sees fit.”

  194. I haven’t had a chance to watch the actual testimony today, but (for anybody who hasn’t read it) the New Yorker’s piece on Vindman’s testimony ended thus:
    What isn’t funny at all is for the elected representatives of a major political party to question, on live television, the loyalty of a decorated military officer who has served his country for more than twenty years, under four Presidents. That is where we are. Bereft of any substantive defense of Trump, the House Republicans are betting everything on their alternative narrative, in which the deep state and its media allies cooked up the entire Ukraine story. The point isn’t necessarily to make this narrative believable in any objective sense. For the purposes of the White House and its G.O.P. allies, it will suffice to make it believable enough for the conservative media and Trump’s supporters to rally around. That isn’t a high standard to meet.
    Still, nonpartisan public servants, like Vindman, who witnessed what actually happened and are willing to talk about it, stand in the way of this strategy, so the Republicans have to vilify and undermine them. Judging by Vindman’s unruffled manner and his occasional quips, he understands this and, at least to some extent, has inured himself to it. As he explained in his opening statement, he has enough faith in his country to believe that, ultimately, the truth will win out. If he’s proved wrong, it will be a tragedy for him and for the rest of us.

  195. American Representative Ilhan Omar appeals to the better angels of our nature, unlike the hateful anti-American rhetoric of the entire conservative movement against our public servants, the free press, anyone who is different or disagrees with them, any member of the Democratic Party, any foreigner, any immigrant, teachers, scholars, scientists …
    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/11/19/non-impeachment-thread/
    Good luck to her, may she remain unharmed by her mortal enemies, but there are no better angels left in America anymore:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE-wx_jpQUc

  198. Bereft of any substantive defense of Trump, the House Republicans are betting everything on their alternative narrative, in which the deep state and its media allies cooked up the entire Ukraine story.
    It’s actually worse than that. They’re still talking about the “Russia hoax”. I won’t say here what I think needs to happen to them, but y’all can probably guess.

  199. So, I listened to a couple of hours of the testimony today.
    Was the investigation ever actually started?
    Was the aid released, or not?
    Did you actually hear the President say he wanted an investigation in exchange for the aid to be released?
    Wasn’t the Ukraine pretty corrupt in the first place?
    Didn’t Hunter Biden actually get paid a lot of money by Burisma?
    Plus lots of “thank you for your service”.
    What a lot of noise.
    The President of the United States, in the context of acting as such, asked the president of another country to investigate his political rival. Plus look into some delusional BS about the 2016 election intended to distract from the assistance he received from the Russian government in that election.
    None of the above in dispute, the President has freely admitted to doing all of it, and has released a transcript of the conversation.
    We want you to do us a favor and look into the Bidens. And oh yeah, that whole Crowdstrike thing, one of your people has the server.
    Criminally corrupt, or simply insane? Hard to tell. Doesn’t matter.
    I have no doubt that the military aid and the POTUS photo op were being used as leverage, but I have no idea why any of that is even a necessary part of the equation. The POTUS solicited the assistance of a foreign power in undermining the reputation of his rival. Full stop.
    Trump is, personally and profoundly, a corrupt person. He is unable to relate to other people other than by transactional exchanges in which he, personally, benefits. Bonus points if the other person gets screwed.
    He corrupts everything he touches. As POTUS, he touches everything.

  200. Criminally corrupt, or simply insane? Hard to tell. Doesn’t matter.
    Go with
    Criminally corrupt, or and simply insane.
    The mental deterioration, even from the initial low, is quite visible over the course of his time in office.
    He corrupts everything he touches. As POTUS, he touches everything.
    Fortunately, not quite true. For example: Lt. Col. Vindman. But admittedly the fact that he seems to attract the corrupt, like a very high power magnet, does tend to conceal the fact that there some with sufficient moral fiber to resist. If the US survives and recovers, it will be due to those people.

  203. i started listening to the Volker section, but i started just as Nunes took over. i lasted about two sentences into his recitation of the day’s top conspiracy theories and had to switch over to Sirius for the rest of the drive.

  207. Trying to throw Taylor along with the rest of the State Dept, but we have it in writing that Taylor said QPQ was a problem, with Sondland replying there was no QPQ.

  209. “What? Who, me? Everybody was in on it. Everybody signed off. They all said I was doing a great job. What’s the big deal? Protocols were followed.”
    Sincerely,
    Gordie

  210. Oh boy, this is not looking good for Rudy or for Trump. But with all the usual caveats (i.e. probably spinnable in the alternate reality inhabited by 89% of the Republicans).

  211. The public announcement of the investigations apparently was the priority, more so than the investigations themselves. The argument is that the public announcement would force the Ukrainians to actually go through with them, rather than the Ukrainians privately committing to them but not following through. Yet we all know that announcing an investigation into someone is usually politically damaging in and of itself, regardless of whether the investigation happens or what the result of the investigation ends up being. You know, like her emails.

  212. “And what did they say?”
    “They said something about corruption and Burisma.”
    “But nothing about the Bidens?”
    “Nope. Nada…plural, singular-never came up.”
    “So, mr. ambassador, the words ‘corruption’ and ‘Burisma’ were casually linked and brought into just about every conversation you had with just about anybody you talked with about Ukraine during the period from May to September and nobody uttered the word, ‘Biden’?”
    “Yep. Pretty amazing, no?”
    “Indeed.”
    “You want some emails?”

  214. Aside from my altruistic concern for the US constitution, the world really doe need Trump to go next year at the latest.
    China is currently the largest CO2 producer. But they’re about #34 per capita producer. If they manage not to crash their economy, they’re going to be doing a lot of catching up in the coming years.
    YouTube bar chart animations:
    Which countries have emitted the most CO2?: Bar chart race: the countries with the largest cumulative CO2 emissions since 1750
    “This video shows the Top 20 countries by the total annual carbon dioxide emission (CO2 emission) from 1960 to 2017. United States contributed to almost 1/3 of the entire world’s CO2 emissions in the 1960s but China and India started catching up in the early 2000.”
    Top 20 Country Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emission History (1960-2017)
    Top Countries by CO₂ Emissions per Capita 1950 to 2018: Where in the world does the average person emit the most carbon dioxide (CO2) each year?

  217. Pompeo seems to be going under the bus as well. Which probably hurt his chances for that Kansas Senate seat. Perhaps more significantly, it ups the chances that Kobach gets the Republican nomination. Which, in turn, ups the chances that the Democrats manage to flip that seat.
    Potential fallout well beyond the White House here.

  218. Trump just retweeted Kevin McCarthy saying “Case closed. Ambassador Sondland just testified under oath that he NEVER heard the President say there were conditions on aid to Ukraine. Democrats’ smear campaign is falling apart.”
    He wishes. Of course it will work on the faithful.

  219. of course there is a mountain of evidence that Trump was conditioning the visit on the ‘investigations’. the aid thing was Trump trying to turn the screw a little harder. and, word hadn’t circulated about Trump’s new angle before it all fell apart.

  221. But does Trump really know anybody “well”?
    My sense is that he essentially views everybody as possible assets or temporary conveniences, nothing more. (Ivanka may be an exception. If so, she is the only one.)

  222. Remember the scene in Pulp Fiction when Vincent calls his drug dealer, Lance (played by Eric Stoltz), desperate to save Mia from overdosing?
    Lance realizes Vincent is calling from his car on his cell phone, and says, “Are you calling me on the cellular phone? I don’t know you. Who is this? Don’t come here, I’m hanging up the phone! Prank caller, prank caller!”
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-quotes-sondland-quoting-him-i-want-nothing-i-want-no-quid-pro-quo/

    President Trump quoted a portion of the testimony of EU Ambassador Sondland as he departed the White House Wednesday: “I want nothing. I want nothing,” Mr. Trump read to reporters outside the White House. “I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky — President Zelensky to do the right thing.”
    (…)
    The date of that conversation between Sondland and Mr. Trump was September 9, the date that the House Intelligence Committee received the anonymous whistleblower’s complaint at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

  223. hah!
    September 9,
    two days before the aid was released.
    and, that would have been the day after Trump was scheduled to have the Taliban over to Camp David!
    i can see why he’s so much better than a Democrat.

  224. Sondland characterized the call as being very abrupt and Trump as sounding like he was in a very bad mood. I wonder why?
    Rs are giving this call a lot of weight, as though it’s some kind of exoneration.

  226. I’m not sure who’s doing the questioning right now, but she’s asking Sondland why he thinks Trump would have responded to an open question very specifically with “No quid pro quo!”

  227. Trump’s life has been a massive flailing from the womb onwards.
    And look where he sits.
    It’s the type of flailing crocodiles and other predators do to stun and disorient their prey, in this case the fucking United States of America and its government.
    His vermin conservative base, including a vast part of the republican elected elite in this country love everything they see about the flailing and have internalized the dance steps for their own use.
    Measures are called for, and I don’t believe the Constitution is a reliable narrator of what they might be.
    Try to explain process to a rattlesnake or a shark .. or to a human psychopath.

  228. I’ve been watching lots of clips of Rs acting as if that call was definitive, “I want nothing, no QPQ”, but not seeing much pushback.
    I hope to God that that’s misleading, that the Dems have been pushing back at least as much as you guys, and pointing out that the date of that conversation was the same day as the whistleblower complaint was received, and two days before the aid was released. Because that really changes the whole narrative.

  232. In a reasonable world, this is the point where (R)’s in Congress would begin to start cutting Trump loose. Not all of them, nobody expects that, and that’s fine. But some of them, possibly a generous number of them.
    I don’t see that happening. What I expect is that the House will bring articles of impeachment on an almost purely party-line vote, and then the (R)’s in the Senate will vote as a bloc to not remove Trump from office. Maybe there will be two or three “defections”. If there are more than that, I will be shocked.
    What I see happening is this: Trump survives this, and something like 90% of the people who voted for him in 2016 will vote for him in 2020.
    For folks who don’t want four more years of Trump, the priority is getting the vote out in 2020, holding the House, and flipping as many (R) seats in the House and Senate as is possible.
    I fully support the impeachment inquiries, and fully support bringing as much information about all of the crap that has been going on into general public knowledge.
    But there is not one damned thing in the world that is going to dissuade Trump’s supporters from their point of view. Not one thing. Trump bargained military aid and/or other official forms of support for the new Ukrainian administration for a public statement about investigations into the Bidens and/or fictitious Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election? So what?
    And so you can probably count the number of (R) officeholders who are going to be able to cut Trump loose without losing their position on one hand. The folks who might have done so out of principle have already headed for the exit. They’re gonna spend more time with their families.
    Get out the vote. Keep the House and flip as much of the Senate as is possible. And vote that rancid SOB the hell out.
    The impeachment stuff has been useful and more than worth doing. But it is not going to accomplish removing Trump from office.
    I’d love to be wrong about that. I am more than sure that I am not.

  233. you’re not.
    the Fox News world has its own set of facts. they’ve left our world for a place that’s more comfortable to what they’ve been taught to believe. and they’re mad that they have to share the geography with anyone who doesn’t see their reality.
    it’s the largest cult the US has ever had.

  234. Hold the existing (D) seats in the House and flip as many (R) seats as possible.
    Flip as many (R) seats in the Senate as possible.
    Replace Trump with (D) POTUS Ham Sandwich.
    What makes all of that happen is GET OUT THE VOTE. Write postcards, spend money if you have it to spare, knock on doors, take election day off and volunteer with your local (D) party organization to give folks a ride to the voting booth.
    Get involved now, because it’s gonna be a long year and we need to get an early start. If all you can do is send $5 a month, do that.
    Get these MF’ers the hell out of government. They hate government anyway, they’ll land some sweet sweet consultancy or lobbying gig or board position. Or maybe they actually will just go spend time with their families. You’re not taking any bread out of their mouths. Send them on their damned way.
    The majority of the people in this country do not want another four years of Donald J Trump. Get out the vote and send his sorry corrupt obnoxious fat @ss on its way.

  235. russell, I submit that you need to reverse the priority of your goals.
    First, getting rid of Trump (or Pence, should the improbable happen) has to be Priority 1. First, for the simple competence of the judiciary. Second, for the sake of our foreign relations — we can recover, eventually, from 4 years of disaster and our word being shown to be worthless. IF we show that we recognize that we made a mistake. But a repeat of that mistake? I don’t think that’s recoverable.
    Second one thing we learn from McConnell is that the Senate is more critical than the House when it comes to damage limitation.
    Best to hold both houses, of course. But if you only get one, the Senate is the one you want.

  238. Why else would the Saudis be floating their oil company on the market ?
    The world’s largest oil producer recognises that its future lies in solar – and is perhaps fortunate that they are also one of the world’s best sites for solar, as they have less reason to fight the transition.
    The US has some pretty big sunny deserts, too……

  241. Speaking of technology and all things deregulatory to boot, this example of how long-standing corrupt conservative “principles” and predatory corporate practices peddled by elite conservative vermin in business schools and their clients in the republican party burrow themselves into the deep state (the murderous conservative real one) lead to masses of dead human beings, for which one day the conservative movement will be held personally responsible (“skinned in the game”) when they are flushed out of their hidey holes in the State of Delaware.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/
    When Charles Murray et al claim all government regulation is stupid, it’s too bad he wasn’t booked in a first class seat so he could recalibrate his murderous deregulatory algorithms during the ride down on one of those two Boeing jets.
    Also, I cited this SEC decision here a week or two ago, and ipso fatso, it’s all fake conservative pig shit in the corrupt paid-off corporate republican fully-captured SEC.
    Whoda thunk? Money is speech. But speech that might threaten money is illegal.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/sec-chairman-cites-fishy-letters-in-support-of-policy-change/ar-BBWZtRX
    America needs this. It’s coming and much worse will follow in every street in every federal courtroom in every corrupt corporate boardroom in every city in every state:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/11/photos-lasers-discontent/602263/
    Destroy.
    I don’t own Boeing stock.

  242. Those two Atlantic links are behind a paywall for me at the moment, until I toss my cookies, but you can access them yourselves for free.

  243. because of course:

    Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Rep. Devin Nunes in 2018, Parnas’ lawyer Ed MacMahon told The Daily Beast.
    Nunes aide Derek Harvey participated in the meetings, the lawyer said, which were arranged to help Nunes’ investigative work. MacMahon didn’t specify what those investigations entailed.

  244. When the dust settles on this god-awful mess, my guess is that we’re gonna find a handful of grifters trying to cash in on the corrupt mess that was post-Soviet Ukraine. And telling Trump stories so they could leverage the clout of the office of the POTUS to grease the skids.
    With Giuliani at the front of the line.
    It’s entirely possible that Trump wasn’t in on the deal, and that he was basically just the mark. Not that he innocent in any of this, just that he is vain and gullible and easily led.
    Who knows.
    Get him the hell out of the Oval Office.

  245. Giuliani has always been far from perfect, but it’s just crazy how much he’s fallen in respectability and, I don’t know, sanity or rationality. He was a sharp and capable guy seemingly not all that long ago. Now he’s a cartoon villain.
    Why did he mix himself up in all this nonsense? He could have coasted along giving paid speeches and doing spots on TV news shows. It would have been totally cush.

  246. “Giuliani has always been far from perfect, but it’s just crazy how much he’s fallen in respectability and, I don’t know, sanity or rationality.”
    9/11 + dementia = dotard

  251. Nunes is fearless in his irrelevance. (The subtext of the responses to his questions is, “Why are you asking me this?”)

  253. imagine if our President had the dignity and competence these witnesses have shown.
    and imagine being any of them and knowing the loony cartoon buffoon and his opportunist goon platoon are at the controls.

  254. imagine if our President had the dignity and competence these witnesses have shown.
    I’m so proud of these people. They represent most of us. We have to do whatever it takes to make sure that stays true.

  255. I didn’t see the testimony today, but I heard about it and am about to watch late night news program.
    The date of that conversation [Nothing! I want nothing! No QPQ!] between Sondland and Mr. Trump was September 9, the date that the House Intelligence Committee received the anonymous whistleblower’s complaint at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
    ***
    hah!
    September 9,
    two days before the aid was released.
    Goddamit, still not seeing this laid out anywhere as clearly and damningly as it is here. ObWi FTW, but somewhere with more clout would be preferable.

  256. still not seeing this laid out anywhere as clearly and damningly as it is here
    at least one of the Dems today brought it up.
    i didn’t catch that part live, but NPR was talking about it when i was driving home.

  257. One of those NPR blatherers (female, but I didn’t catch which one) said, at the start of an analysis, that Fiona Hill was a British citizen.
    This was within less than half an hour of what I took to be NPR’s own voiceover (prior to Hill’s testimony) saying that Hill had become an American citizen in 2002.
    In relation to a certain segment of the population, this is not a minor error, if error it was.

  258. Good. Let’s hope it goes viral (not fucking likely, unfortunately, unless some genius here or elsewhere comes up with a catchy meme).

  260. it was actually two days ago, Schiff:

    “My Republican colleagues, all they seem to be upset about with this is not that the president sought an investigation of his political rival, not that he withheld a White House meeting in $400 million of aides we all pass on a bipartisan meeting to pressure Ukraine into those investigation, their objection is he got caught! Their objection is that someone blew the whistle! And they would like this whistleblower identified. And the president wants this whistleblower punished. That’s their objection, not that the president engaged in this conduct, but that he got caught! Their defense is, ‘well, he ended up releasing the aid.’ Yes, after he got caught! That doesn’t make this any less odious.”

    https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/11/20/adam-schiff-closing-statement-gop-trump-caught-impeachment-hearing-vpx.cnn
    Nunes, of course, responded today with the now-standard GOP retort of “No, you are”:

    “The Democrats have tried to solve this dilemma with a simple slogan, ‘he got caught.’ President Trump, we are to believe, was just about to do something wrong and getting caught was the only reason he backed down from whatever nefarious thought crime the Democrats are accusing him of almost committing.”
    But, Nunes argued, “For the last three years it’s not President Trump who got caught, it’s the Democrats who got caught.”

    https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/susan-jones/nunes-democrats-got-caught-not-trump

  261. Probably worth pointing out that that no quid pro quo call was the day after Trump found out the whistleblower report was going public.
    I see this tweet by Josh Marshall from TPM retweeted by hilzoy, at the head of a thread where various people chime in to say not enough is being made of this point by Schiff et al.

  262. Schiff made enough of it that Nunes felt like he had to use it as a way to make himself look stupid. so, it’s out there. and since Schiff knows it there’s no way it’s not going to factor into the charges they eventually write up.

  263. The American public would need to hear it, and often enough to internalise it to immunise themselves against the RWNJ noise/distraction machine which is churning so hard to muddy the waters, and to some extent succeeding. But I just don’t see that happening, alas. Trump shouting “I said I want nothing!” is almost certainly going to be the main takeaway in the general culture among people who (unlike us) aren’t obsessives.

  264. It’s like I’ve been having an affair with a coworker, my wife offhandedly asks how my day was when I get home, and I say, “Well I sure wasn’t having sex with Gina from accounting at the Motel 6 on Route 70 during my lunch hour! I don’t even like her short skirts and pink panties! Yuck!”

  267. The Baldwin, Florida municipally-run grocery store is obviously a case of the creeping commie infiltration of small-town America and its values of self-reliance and gossip.
    The city fathers (first thing we do is hit them with paternity suits and sue them for child support) would do better to attract a bootstrap vendor to town so these sad dupes can learn to levitate the all-American free market way, by hovering with both feet off the ground in defiance of gravity, and don’t get me started on THAT fake news science foisted upon by us by pointed-headed elite physicists sucking up gummint grants, the better to lead us down the road to perdition, which turns left every chance it gets.
    Next thing they’ll tell us is that the municipality is supplying clean water to the citizens … wait … it says that right in the article .. see, that’s where the battle for America’s soul was lost, yer durn tootin’!
    On that slippery slope!
    I’ll bet you too that the water is deliberately fluorinated, which drove the last capitalist dentist out of town to the big city and the bright municipally-supplied energy-saving lights, ON those poorly-tended, pot-holed roads (this is pointed out about a dozen times in the article) to perdition (well, it says the town’s residents hate taxes, so it’s no wonder it takes ’em hours to get to the nearest Piggly Wiggly for their sugary treats).
    The fake photo-shopped photographs accompanying the article belie the real deprivation of such collectivist schemes, much as Soviet-era state propaganda in Russia had us thinking that a grinning Khrushchev showing Nixon around a gleaming, well-stocked Potemkin village grocery store, while the grey, emaciated masses, their hands partially protected by threadbare gloves with the fingers cut off in reality stand in line for days on shoe leather that might be fed to the kids next say for breakfast, to perchance cast a peckish eye on the only moldy potato within a hundred miles, which itself was stolen from a Ukrainian peasant by Hunter Biden.
    I mean, look at that city father in the accompanying photo. Hollow cheeks, the yellowish skin of the food-deprived, his hair falling out from lack of ordinary nutrition, and that fake news smile while his stomach (obviously showing the last declining swollen moments of commie deprivation; why if he had bootstraps, he wouldn’t be able to see them in order to pull them, and if he could, he’d probably eat them) pangs for meager collective sustenance, maybe a can of glue from the local Dollar Store for the sniffing.
    What these good folks need to do pronto is coax one of them Purdue Pharma-supplied doctors to town and start on a generous course of opioids so their eyes can glaze over knowing they have relied on good-ole American capitalist entrepreneurial ingenuity, you know, like them inner city blacks and THEIR self-inflicted pathologies.
    That would be the American dream!
    Ahh, who needs roads anyway?
    “The idea that a municipality should have to beg private companies to provide basic goods and services to its people is absurd.”
    I suppose these ingrates will be begging (oh, they wanna be choosers, is that it? Ohhhh …) for a taxpayer-supplied hospital next.
    I think Trump keeps one up his republican ass, so they can take that low road to emergency room wellness.

  268. Preamble: I’m kind of stupid as political strategy goes, but I’m not going to let that stop me!
    ———————————————-
    I’ve been wondering if House Democrats should forego a final vote on articles of impeachment and, instead, issue a statement saying that they have made their case, laid bare the evidence before the American people, and will leave it to them to decide via the 2020 election rather than passing articles of impeachment to the Senate to most certainly die. (Maybe leaving everything after “election” out.)
    I’m sure this could be spun negatively by Republicans a thousand ways that I can’t even think of. A couple of ways I can think of them spinning it are 1) that it would demonstrate what a monumental waste of time the inquiry was and 2) that Democrats failed to vote on impeachment out of a lack of courage or conviction.
    The reasons I’m entertaining this is that I like the “leave it the American people to decide” narrative, because it blunts the “anti-democratic coup” argument the Republicans have been making (and I simply like it as a message generally), and because it doesn’t give the Republicans in the Senate the opportunity to acquit the president.
    Thoughts?

  270. 2) that Democrats failed to vote on impeachment out of a lack of courage or conviction.
    i think the Dem base would agree.

  273. I like the “leave it the American people to decide” narrative
    Bringing articles of impeachment in no way prevents the American people from voting in 2020.
    The “anti-democratic coup” thing is contra-factual BS. There is a degree to which people in positions of responsibility need to recognize the practical realities of widespread BS, but there is also a limit to that. I think we’ve reached that limit.
    People are going to think whatever they think. At some point you simply can’t be constrained by that. You have to actually articulate, and act on, what actually is so.
    We’re there.

  274. You have to actually articulate, and act on, what actually is so.
    We have to be hopeful, strong and persistent. If we could win in Virginia, we can do it elsewhere. We know the Republicans are going to lie, and believe lies. We have to avoid that.

  278. Look, I’ll ask a different question:
    What could anyone possibly do or say that would persuade Trump supporters that they should reconsider?
    If the answer to that is “not one damned thing”, then IMO it falls into the category of things that you just have to not worry about. Or, maybe worry about, but stop trying to change or influence through your own actions or statements. It’s a dead end. There is no “there” there.
    People are gonna think what they think. Trump’s support is basically 40%, plus or minus. Has been, is now, probably will be, more or less forever.
    If the (D)’s impeach him, that won’t change. If they don’t impeach him, that won’t change. If they found him, literally, with a smoking gun standing over somebody’s warm corpse, they’d assume that the dead guy was somebody that simply needed killing.
    So screw it.

  279. I didn’t propose that because I thought it was going to change anyone’s mind in the ~40% cult.
    Without regard specifically to my proposal, there’s always the calculus of how many people you piss off in your base when trying to appeal to those people outside of your base who remain at all persuadable, even if a large opposition cult exists.

  280. I think declining to bring articles of impeachment at this point would be seen as an inexplicable and cowardly failure of nerve and a dereliction of responsibility.
    I would certainly see it that way, I doubt that I’m alone.
    They put the process in motion. See it through.

  281. maybe it will change once the Dems nominate someone and the election becomes a reality. but right now, according to Gallup, the GOP has the exact same share of the electorate – and gives Trump the same level of approval – as when he was elected. nothing has changed their minds. he has neither lost nor gained support among people Gallup polls.
    so, no, they can’t be reached. they can’t even be driven away.
    [no, i can’t square that with the three electoral shellackings the GOP has received since 2016. but that’s what Gallup says.]

  282. I’m no longer arguing for my proposal. I get what everyone is saying. I’m simply clarifying that my reasoning for it did not involve persuading Rump’s base.

  284. Bringing the articles will be portrayed as a “partisan political stunt” because “the president has done nothing wrong.”
    Not bringing the articles will be portrayed as a “partisan political stunt” because “they knew all along that the president had done nothing wrong.”
    Bringing the articles will piss off the cynical pox-on-both-houses types who will see this all as more government dysfunction, but something else is sure to replace the articles in their mind as the totem of corruption, so that too is a wash.
    The Dems need to actually take a stand and carry through. It’s both necessary and right. Avoiding that will only delay the inevitable confrontation, and the people who continue to support the president are being taken farther down the scale of what they will accept and do with every new provocation that is allowed to happen with scorn as the only penalty.
    Best to dig in now before violence is inevitable.

  287. I’ve been wondering if House Democrats should forego a final vote on articles of impeachment
    The thing is, to people outside Trump’s base, and who haven’t been paying close attention (i.e. most of the country), this validates the Republican talking point that the whole thing was much ado about nothing.
    At this point, and given the evidence in hand, I think the only options are:
    1) vote to impeach,
    2) vote thru a Constitutional amendment removing bribery from the list of impeachable offenses.

  288. HSH’s idea is the kind of thinking that, if either base were to regularly and seriously undertake it, would make for a much better situation in the country. Instead of everyone signing on to and defending to the death a particular party line, giving serious thought to different alternatives would be productive not to mention refreshing. So, nicely done for raising the topic.
    I disagree with everyone who thinks not going through with impeachment is somehow a betrayal or otherwise reflective of some defect in the Democratic Party. Impeachment isn’t about anybody’s party. It’s about the country and what the country–all of us–need.
    What the country needs, quite frankly, is for Donald Trump to face a trial in the senate and to have the senate act on the record. It would be nice if senators from both sides could act less like partisan freak shows and more like deliberative, reasonably open-mined adults, but that’s probably asking too much these days.
    I want Trump impeached. I would like to see Pence side-line himself and let someone like Mitt Romney run in 2020 (I’d vote for MR in a heartbeat). If Trump is not impeached, we will be looking at–McKT’s crystal ball in action once again–a Biden meltdown and a Warren nomination. Progressives seem to love Warren. None of my expressly Democrat friends have any use for her at all because they believe–and I agree–that she is so far left, so damn “I’m going to straighten that mess out no matter who’s toes I have to step on”, that even Trump can beat her.
    The worst of all worlds: Trump surviving impeachment AND winning in 2020.

  291. i could stomach Romney; he’s like the Platonic ideal of an ‘old-school’ Republican. he’d make a lot of decisions i wouldn’t like, but i wouldn’t be utterly disgusted by him as a human being and wouldn’t wake up every morning hoping to learn that he’d croaked overnight. it would improve my overall mood.
    Impeachment isn’t about anybody’s party.
    maybe it shouldn’t be. but it certainly is now. all of Hamilton’s lofty ideals about the honor and principles of our elected officials were sold to Russia for scrap.

  292. (It really went over well!)
    i think it is an interesting thought experiment. (we’re still talking about it, after all!)

  293. Since we’re still talking about it, this is at least part of what got me thinking about it (not this particular article, but what it’s describing):
    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/new-poll-suggests-democrats-impeachment-push-could-alienate-key-voters
    The intro:

    Data exclusive to Vanity Fair shows impeachment could be a losing issue for Democrats hoping to recruit Independents in 2020. “Lots of people who don’t like Trump who are still prepared to vote for him,” says one political science expert.

  294. If Trump is not impeached, we will be looking at–McKT’s crystal ball in action once again–a Biden meltdown and a Warren nomination
    Whether Trump is removed or not, we are looking — wj’s crystal ball — a Biden meltdown and someone else being nominated. I have my doubts that it will be Warren, however. I expect her and Sanders to continue splitting the far left vote. Until, after failing to win any primaries (thru Super Tuesday, possibly a little longer), one of them fades in the interests of consolidating their fans. And since Bernie’s fans are more my-way-or-the-highway, I expect it to be Warren who fades.
    However, it appears that, for a fair number of Warren supporters, Sanders is not their second choice. Who they go for instead, together with who Biden supporters got for as second choice will determine who gets the nomination.
    Since I don’t see the nominee being Sanders or Warren, I don’t think Trump’s odds are good. Absent the kind of screwy gaffe or meltdown that occasionally occurs during campaigns.

  295. actually… Hamilton knew this would happen, didn’t he…

    A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.

    and while he’s fretting about whether or not the Senate is a good place to hold an impeachment trial, he asks if the Supreme Court would be better:

    Could the Supreme Court have been relied upon as answering this description? It is much to be doubted, whether the members of that tribunal would at all times be endowed with so eminent a portion of fortitude, as would be called for in the execution of so difficult a task; and it is still more to be doubted, whether they would possess the degree of credit and authority, which might, on certain occasions, be indispensable towards reconciling the people to a decision that should happen to clash with an accusation brought by their immediate representatives.

    he doesn’t think much of the Court. 🙂

  296. A more interesting question, I think, is: What if Trump isn’t the Republican nominee? And does it matter whether that’s because of umpeanchment-and-removal, ill health, or (lowest probability) a sudden attack of sanity across the GOP?
    My guess is that any of the (to my mind) likely Democratic nominees would beat a President Pence. Romney would have the best chance, but would I think lose due to disgruntled (to put it mildly) Trump supporters sitting out the election.

  297. What the country needs, quite frankly, is for Donald Trump to face a trial in the senate and to have the senate act on the record.
    This.
    I don’t care who makes it happen. The (D)’s are likely to make it happen, the (R)’s will not make it happen in a million years.
    So, as regards the issue at hand, it’s the (D)’s ball to carry forward, or not.
    But yes, the issue is Trump’s behavior, not the letter after his name.
    I put the odds of Trump surviving impeachment and being re-elected at pretty much even. You can blame that on the (D)’s and their bad habit of nominating people who advocate for progressive policies, I guess, but I’d say at least some of the blame lies with people who vote for Trump.
    But agreed, if rule of law and separation of powers are to mean anything at all, Trump needs to face a trial in the Senate. And that is a larger and more important concern than the partisan aspects of it.

  298. I put the odds of Trump surviving impeachment and being re-elected at pretty much even. You can blame that on the (D)’s and their bad habit of nominating people who advocate for progressive policies, I guess, but I’d say at least some of the blame lies with people who vote for Trump.
    I’d say that there’s plenty of blame to go around. A more useful focus is on which group you have the best chance of influencing to do what needs to be done.

  299. As ham sandwiches go, Romney is vegetable matter on a Wonder Bread knockoff.
    As a Platonic ideal, Socrates would upchuck at the first bite, but here we are.
    I imagine were his image carved into Mount Rushmore, it would add TWO faces to the mix.
    Frankly, if Warren runs and is elected and the stock market plunges, hooray for bargain prices.
    I’d be buying with both hands.
    The Wall Street hedge fund jerks apparently shop differently than most Americans. They hate bargain prices.
    Look at their shoes. Top dollar there. Even when it’s two for the price of one.
    Of course, the market would then go on after the bear dip to outperform during a Democratic administration, as historical patterns repeat themselves again and again … the market inevitably crashes at some point and under performs while Republican administrations wreak feckless, self-dealing havoc for all excepting their offshore bankers.
    This bit of Kudlowesque (the worst kind) 12-step methadone nonsense I’m seeing recently from Wall Street analysts. A stock will rise to say $112 share and the next day, a bullish analyst will pound the table with a conviction buy recommendation (the stock’s a bargain, they bleat with a price target of …. $105 bucks a share.
    Yes, that happened.
    Wall Street loves price inflation, as long as they already own what’s inflating.

  300. “Lots of people who don’t like Trump who are still prepared to vote for him,” says one political science expert.
    Then this country will by god have four more years of Trump. And we’ll have four more years of becoming increasingly irrelevant if not annoying on the world stage, we’ll have four more years of businesses trying to plan around the whims of a truculent man-child, four more years of immigrants and brown people in general being harassed for the color of their skin and their apparent nation of origin, four more years of rampant and obvious corruption, four more years of Federalist Society knee-jerk jurisprudence, four more years of all of it.
    All of that will suck, and all of it will be what the people of this country have chosen for themselves.
    When the people who “don’t like Trump but will vote for him anyway” get sick of all of the bullshit he brings down on the nation, they’ll wise up. Or they won’t, and they’ll vote for whatever version of Trump II gets coughed up next time around.
    A lot of people fall on a spectrum from “I would take a bullet for Trump” to “I think he’s an embarrassing ass but I can put up with him and I’m making money so WTF”.
    Those are not points of view I can relate to, but neither are they points of view I can do one damned thing to change. People have to figure this stuff out for themselves.
    The (D)’s will nominate the person they want, for the reasons they want. I guess it would be helpful if they were to try to figure out exactly what (D) would be sufficiently palatable to the “I hate Trump but I’ll still vote for him” crowd, but I don’t see anyone who fits that mold who would have any stronger chance of beating Trump than e.g. Warren.
    Klobuchar? Butigieg? Harris maybe, but I’m not sure all that many people who would vote for Trump over Warren are going to vote for Harris over Trump.
    In any case, you can only put so much of this on the (D)’s. A hell of a lot of people are perfectly fine with voting for Trump. That’s where the problem is.
    Go see if you can convince them they should do otherwise, and tell me how you make out.

  301. Shorter me:
    IMO the (D)’s will be much better served by making sure all of the folks who already support them get to the polls and vote, then trying to persuade or cater to the folks who either hate them or are generally lukewarm to them.
    Not my field, I’m sure I could be more than wrong about all of that. But that’s how it looks to me.
    Focus on getting people who are already inclined to vote for you to do so.

  302. A more useful focus is on which group you have the best chance of influencing to do what needs to be done.
    Realistically, how many people does that amount to? How many people are actually on the fence right now, prepared to vote for Trump but open to voting for a (D) if the right one comes along?
    And how does that number compare to, for instance, making sure that 70% of 18-34 year olds actually show up, as opposed to 40%? Or making sure that black voters actually get to register and have polling places open long enough to get their votes cast?

  303. Realistically, how many people does that amount to? How many people are actually on the fence right now, prepared to vote for Trump but open to voting for a (D) if the right one comes along?
    That’s not what I was trying to say.
    If you blame those who voted for Trump, what does that get you? Can you persuade them to admit that they made a mistake? I’m guessing not — even if, in their heart of hearts they know it.
    On the other hand, as a Democrat you have some chance of persuading your fellow Democrats to nominate someone who could pull in the votes of some (and it wouldn’t take many) of those voters. Yes, more GOTV efforts will be helpful. But in this critical a situation you don’t want to write off any possible support.

  304. The VF piece wasn’t so much about figuring out which Dem nominee can get the votes of people who don’t like Rump but might still vote for him. It was about impeachment dissuading them from voting for whoever the Dem nominee ends up being.
    More generally, the decline in support for impeachment, after what seemed to me to be compelling supportive testimony, is what got me thinking. And it may well be less about people who are willing to vote for Rump and more about people who might vote D but will stay home if they get disgusted with the whole thing.

  305. Both sides don’t do it.
    One side is a cult and the other side is a club (McKinney’s Democratic friends, which is spelled differently than “Democrat”) with members who don’t want to join a club that wants them as a member.
    Hell, Sanders supporters may well have put Trump over the top in 2016.
    But Trump republicans … 89% of them … would never vote for, say Dwight Eisenhower or George Bush Senior if they ran as a Democrat.
    It would be interesting if Trump ran for President on both the Republican and Democratic tickets.
    He’d probably win in a tie, and then we can all go kill ourselves.
    The John Birch, southern confederate, Pat Buchanan, Federalist Society crank nut-case judge wing of the republican party are now the Republican party.
    Mitt Romney will cater to them, not the fucking country.
    They must be destroyed. It’s beyond fucked, neither meat or vegetable.
    If we get through this without massive punishment of the entire traitorous Trump administration, and his in-the-bag republican supporters Congress, with him going personally to the gallows, then this country will not go forward peaceably.

  308. If you blame those who voted for Trump, what does that get you?
    To me, it’s less about (or not at all about) “blaming those who voted for Trump” and more about (or completely about) pushing back on the idea that it’s the responsibility of people who do not support Trump to somehow sway the minds of those who do.
    People should vote for who they want. And people should own their choices. If you voted for Trump, the fact that he is the POTUS is down to you. Most if not all folks who voted for him are fine with that.
    as a Democrat you have some chance of persuading your fellow Democrats to nominate someone who could pull in the votes of some (and it wouldn’t take many) of those voters.
    First, I’m not a (D). Second, I’m not sure there is a (D) running who would pull in more undecideds than the number of (D) voters they would lose.
    I’m not disputing the logic of what you’re saying, I’m just not convinced that there is a useful upside, as a practical matter.
    Realistically, of the folks actually running, the ones that (I think) fit what you’re talking about are Biden, Klobuchar, or Butigieg. Warren and Sanders are “too far left”, Harris is too CA, plus woman plus black, which unfortunately is still a factor. The rest of the gang are too far back to be realistic. Klobuchar is really too far back to be realistic, to be honest.
    Biden has broad appeal to more centrist folks, but is not inspiring to people who actually are motivated by the ideas that folks like Warren and Sanders promote. So you’d gain some, and lose some.
    Not my field, I can’t say where it would land. My guess, or maybe intuition, is that it would be, at best, a wash.

  309. If you’re turning to Gordon Gekko for salvation, you really have a problem.
    Yes, but he’s the nice, polite Gordon Gekko.

  311. It was about impeachment dissuading them from voting for whoever the Dem nominee ends up being.
    the reasons that article lists add up, for me, to: these people are not people who pay close attention to politics and are probably the kind of people who say things like “there’s no real difference between the parties”.
    i don’t know how a politician is supposed to reach them. “be an attractive politician to people who hate politics” is tough. it’s more about the personality and general narrative around the candidate: Obama was an engaging speaker with a unique package; Trump was a “billionaire” celebrity; W was an unassuming aw-shucks kind of guy after 8 years of raging Clinton scandals (even if many were manufactured).
    do we have anyone with a good personality and/or simple compelling narrative?
    about impeachment… odds are good it will be long over by the time of the conventions. everybody will be sick of hearing about it – and you know Trump will be unable to STFU about it. so, maybe it will hurt him in the end.
    hope

  313. It was about impeachment dissuading them from voting for whoever the Dem nominee ends up being.
    Yes, that was my understanding as well.
    I guess my opinion is that it’s gone too far at this point. The time to worry about possible electoral impact was probably before having the public hearings – a couple of weeks ago, they could probably have folded their tents and hoped for the best in 2020.
    If they were to pack it in now, I think they’d lose all credibility. The line in the sand has been drawn, they need to carry it through.
    Plus, what McK said.

  314. I’m not sure there is a (D) running who would pull in more undecideds than the number of (D) voters they would lose.
    I suppose my views are colored by remembering my second election, where the Democrats nominating McGovern resulted in Nixon getting reelected.
    There seems to be a notion in some quarters (including here) that the reason Democrats lose elections is that they don’t run far enough to the left. Yet it appears that, whenever they decide to go that way, they end up losing. There’s always an alternative explanation for the specific case. But it happens often enough that the case for causation rather than mere correlation seems viable.

  315. I’ve always pictured Trump as a sort of Beyond Meat Hannibal Lechter who somehow, thru sheer force of malignant presence, when he is in the vicinity, can convince, say, just about any republican to feed on his own brains:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibfBDKiw1ac
    I don’t think anyone knows what it is to be in trump’s orbit until they’ve spent time in a room alone with him.
    He’s a mesmerist, like a cobra, rising to greet you and then spitting poison in your eyes.
    But he expects a thank you.
    Regarding Romney, I would turn McKinney’s statement from a couple of weeks ago (Just because a person doesn’t support trump and wants him impeached, doesn’t mean that person must support Sanders or Warren) around and point out that the same logic applies to Romney.
    Romney is a face man. Both of them.
    Even his insincerity is shallow.
    I would never turn my back on the guy after reaching a deal.

  316. However this ends, Lindsay Graham must follow trump out the door. Resign or be hounded by vengeance the rest of his short days.
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/11/22/1901224/-Watch-Lindsey-Graham-run-when-a-Marine-veteran-asks-him-about-staying-true-to-his-oath-of-office
    The fucking ex-Marines who inhabit the Oath Keepers and other vermin armed republican militias always carry a weapon.
    Why can’t Marines on my side do the same?
    Honorable behavior counts for squat in rule of lawlessness conservative America.

  317. The idea that there are still “good” people not actively supporting the party opposing these traitors makes me wonder. The Republican Party is malignant, and we’re quickly approaching Stage 4.

  318. It was about impeachment dissuading them from voting for whoever the Dem nominee ends up being.
    I’m rather sceptical about this. Everyone is getting very excited about a single poll which doesn’t show a movement much greater than the margin of error.
    And the subset analysis of independent voters is surely even more hazy statistically ?
    Also, let’s see this pans out. To me, it looks as though Trump is losing it.

  320. cleek invoked Hamilton upthread.
    Here’s more:
    When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents . . . is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”
    From here:
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/the-sober-clarity-of-the-impeachment-witnesses
    But we aren’t dealing with the Hamiltons, and the Adams’s, and the Madisons, are we? We aren;teven dealing with anyone as
    No, this:
    “Try to impeach him. Just try it. You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen. Both sides are heavily armed, my friend. This is not 1974. The people will not stand for impeachment. A politician who votes for it would be endangering their own life.”
    Roger Stone.
    Trump, the President of the United States, and much of his 89% following endorse every word of that.
    Only one side is heavily armed. They don’t give a shit about legal process.
    These are ruthless, violent, enemies, divinely inspired in their goals and the means to them.

  323. “Try to impeach him. Just try it. You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen. Both sides are heavily armed, my friend. This is not 1974. The people will not stand for impeachment. A politician who votes for it would be endangering their own life.”
    Roger Stone.
    from jail.
    Everybody thinks they are “the people”. The other people are also “the people”.
    Enjoy your orange jumpsuit Roger. If we’re in luck you’ll get the whole 50 years.

  324. We have checks and balances not because those things exist in the Constitution, but because we insist on following the procedures to which we agreed when we set the protocol for checking and balancing the different parts of our government.
    If we don’t act, we have no checks and there is no balance.
    There is a political cost to be paid for insisting that our country follow its Constitution. Deciding that the cost is too high is just admitting that we are not, in fact, a constitutional republic, but a set of habits formed around a formal agreement that we have decided was too inconvenient to follow.
    A republic, if you can keep it. But also *if you want to* keep it. We may not be able to keep it. But deciding not to act is, in some sense, deciding that we’d rather keep whatever we have in place of a republic than take the risk of fighting to keep an actual republic.
    Either way, though. We have lots of people with a say in the matter, and more than the 3% that the threepers toss around are willing to fight to prevent the majority of voters from putting a check on their runaway attempt to protect their world from the change that would be required of them in a functioning republic.
    So the D’s get their say, and then whoever stands in for the R’s right now get their say, and we see what it will take to keep a republic, or if such a thing is even possible any longer.

  325. If you want a good idea of where we stand as a society right now, go read some Icelandic sagas.
    You have what rights you can enforce in the courts. You have courts that are shaped by the factions that control the appointment of judges. You pledge yourself to a faction or you go it alone. The faction works to extend its power through politics, threats, and economic power.
    If your faction is too weak or you have no connection to a faction, you are subject to the law without recourse under it.
    For those with no faction, or with too weak a faction to shift the power of the court, you have only the threats of public shame or extrajudicial violence with which to enforce your rights, whatever the law says.

  326. Following nous’s 6:30, from a BJ commenter recently:
    Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

  328. Just to state a theme from my past comments:
    This is a war.
    We have to pick sides. We have to figure out who our leaders are. We have to do the work (the hard work, because we’re all independent thinkers) of following them.
    That, obviously, means we have to pick right when it comes to our leaders.
    It would be great if there were a system to reevaluate, and we should do that if necessary or possible. But that will be really difficult, and will throw us off track for awhile. So good to evaluate people now.
    Democratic candidates [most of the ones in the debate] are worthy, and I hope they all have roles to play. Whomever we pick, we have to support. We’re an army now. We need to be united, and to be against someone in an election, we have to be for the other person. All together.

  329. Thank you, JanieM. It is imperative for all to understand the conservative movement, as embodied in the current GOP, sees attempts by Democrats to govern as essentially illegitimate. See Barr’s recent unhinged rants, for just one example. Therefore “all is permitted” when it comes to the effort of enhancing or retaining political power.
    Today’s GOP cannot be ‘reformed’. It must be destroyed.
    As a far out left wing whackadoodle, I am routinely admonished that there is no other effective political allegiance than the Democratic Party, deeply compromised as it may be. There is a great deal of truth to this. Similarly, there is no other place for ‘never trumpers’ to go either. Holding your nose but still clinging to the GOP is a political dead end. You are giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
    You have a choice to make, a side to pick. Thanks.

  332. Today’s GOP cannot be ‘reformed’. It must be destroyed.
    Sad to say (at least to me), this appears to be true.
    But I am disturbed that those outside the GOP seem to be embracing one part of the far right worldview that got us into this mess: that everyone on the otherside is not just wrong but irredeemably evil. That’s what all the “this is a war” and “they must be destroyed” rhetoric come too.
    If you want to argue for destroying the GOP, fine. If you want to argue for voting every single Republican out of public office at every level, also fine. I may not agree with all of that, but it’s an acceptable pisition. Arguing for the destruction of over a third of the pipulation, however? Not IMHO acceptable — no matter how infuriating their views and votes may be.

  333. Arguing for the destruction of over a third of the pipulation, however?
    Did anyone say that? I said “This is a war.”
    It is a war. That doesn’t mean over a third of the population dies. That’s not really the usual statistic, even in gruesome wars, like the Civil War, where 2% of the population died.
    And I’m not talking about a shooting war. I’m talking about being united against a common enemy. Nobody, in fact, has to die [except, of course, the people who are dying now as a result of Trump’s foreign and domestic policies].

  335. It’s war by other means.
    Nobody’s getting shot, mostly, but the (R)’s are not, remotely, acting in good faith.
    That’s tolerable, until it isn’t.

  336. That’s what all the “this is a war” and “they must be destroyed” rhetoric come too.
    And FWIW, nobody is talking about “destroying” a third of the population. With the exception of Thullen, nobody is talking about destroying any person as such.
    “Destroy the Republican party” means making a political organization a nullity. It happens, ask any Whig.

  338. From donald’s link, the reciprocal of the conservative project:
    The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
    I might want to lay a somewhat more generous table than that, but for sure we’re not getting anywhere worth getting to without that.
    Also FWIW, if I had to lay odds on which current party had better odds of continuing on into the future, it would be the (R)’s. They have much better message discipline, they are more cohesive, and they are far more comfortable with violence, rhetorical or otherwise.

  341. Don’t leave this out.
    “There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.”

  344. wj But I am disturbed that those outside the GOP seem to be embracing one part of the far right worldview that got us into this mess: that everyone on the otherside is not just wrong but irredeemably evil. That’s what all the “this is a war” and “they must be destroyed” rhetoric come too.
    I share your concern here. To be clear, I earned my grad degree trying my best to understand how war and worldview and rhetoric and identity shape each other. I’ve learned a fair bit both about the language and purpose of propaganda – especially that which dehumanizes those not like us to open up the possibility of violence that we would never permit against another human being. Such language and intent, and the worldviews that sanction it, unmake the world and civilization. I do not want that.
    But neither does that mean that I do not recognize and acknowledge when I see those things deployed and recognize that lines have been drawn and that license has been given.
    I said feud rather than war because feud happens within a society and wars happen between societies. Russell referenced Clausewitz earlier, but Clausewitz had no theory of civil war or of partisanship, and no theory of how to restore a society once the peace had been breached.
    The last thing that I want is actual war, and I will not lend my words to moving forward that end. But damned if I don’t see that moving forward if we do not stop the constant drag on decency and the Overton window. One side, determined enough, can force a war. Right now they are seeing how far we will let them go before we actually resist so that they can calculate whether or not they can get it all without death and ashes following.
    We need to make that stop before death and ashes are the only possible outcome.

  346. What wj and nous said.
    I am entirely onboard with the goal of getting rid of the Republican party as a political player, as I believe that its wholesale embrace of Trump has done it irreparable damage.
    Dehumanising your political opponents is another matter. I understand rhetorical hyperbole, and use it myself on occasion, but when it becomes a reflex, it is no longer hyperbole.
    I’ve learned a fair bit both about the language and purpose of propaganda – especially that which dehumanizes those not like us to open up the possibility of violence that we would never permit against another human being.
    This.
    In any society there are those who are predisposed to violence, and those who in the right circumstance (probably a majority) will acquiesce, willingly or unwillingly, to it.
    Those who would actively ‘never permit’ in any circumstances are quite unusual.

  347. I’ll speak for myself.
    I don’t actually know a single person that I consider to be evil, let alone irredeemably so. People, including myself, are a mix of things. Some of those things are bad, and some good.
    I have no interest in destroying any person for any reason. I can imagine using force to resist someone who is literally threatening some other person with direct physical harm, and that’s about it.
    So, that’s me, personally.
    This statement concerns me:

    Right now they are seeing how far we will let them go before we actually resist so that they can calculate whether or not they can get it all without death and ashes following.

    I don’t see people who Are Not Like Me, or who Vote For Trump, as trying to “get it all” per se. I think they are, in general, afraid. The things they are afraid of don’t make a lot of sense to me, but that doesn’t really matter much. Fear is often – maybe in most cases – not that rational. It is nonetheless powerful.
    The risk of “death and ashes” comes, I think, mostly from people acting out of that sense of fear. That sense of threat.
    I agree that the potential exists right now for, not civil war exactly, but violence as a common and even widespread expression of social and political conflict. We see some of it already, at the fringes – and frankly, mostly on the right. Violent rhetoric is, and has been, as common as dirt, for years, and again mostly on the right.
    I think all of that is driven less by some kind of will to power, and more from irrational fear. Which is to say, less by a desire to “get it all”, and more by fear.
    Fear of what is, for me, hard to grasp. And that’s what I find most concerning.
    I recently made the mistake of engaging my conservative sister on the topic of the Electoral College. She is afraid that, if the EC goes away, her voice will be “totally lost”, overwhelmed by people in “big cities”, by which she primarily means NYC and LA. As an aside, she lives in Phoenix, which at 1.6 M people is the fifth largest city in the nation.
    Not to pick on Marty, but he recently offered the opinion that Trump, bad as he is, is better than any (D), because the (D)’s want to “take control of everything”.
    “Totally lost” and “take control of everything” are pretty scary concepts. They are also not very realistic assessments of the facts on the ground.
    The combination of perceived threat and the embrace of beliefs that don’t reflect or account for reality is what is dangerous. Threat, because frightened people make bad decisions, and perceived danger justifies actions that would otherwise be unjustifiable. And embrace of beliefs divorced from reality, because it makes it impossible to walk people back from their sense of threat.
    That is what is dangerous.
    The blame I place on the (R) party is (what I see as) their cynical decision to exploit all of that to gain and hold power. If I say they “have to be crushed”, what I mean, very specifically and to the exclusion of other meanings, is that they need to lose elections – lots of them, and decisively – so that they will be motivated to abandon that tactic. They deserve to lose, because that tactic is toxic and harmful, and perpetuates the core problem. Anyone who cares about the future of the country should think twice about voting for any (R).
    But the (R)’s per se are not the core problem. The core problem is fear, based on distorted understandings of reality.
    If it ever actually does come down to shooting at each other, I guess I’ll defend myself. Or, frankly, I’ll go somewhere else until people come back to their senses, because I’m not really all that interested in killing anybody, for any reason. For “not really interested” please read “find it abhorrent”.
    But what will keep it from coming to that is figuring out what people are so freaking afraid of, and then figuring out how to get them not so afraid.
    Unfortunately, I don’t have great ideas about how to achieve that. But the intention to do so has to be the starting point.

  348. I will amend my comment to add: if our homegrown Nazis ever make the leap from cosplay Nazis to real Nazis, then all bets are off as far as my personal pacifism.
    You never know how brave you’ll be in the moment, but I hope I would not stand by and watch harmless people be slaughtered.
    Everything has a limit.

  349. Dehumanising your political opponents is another matter. I understand rhetorical hyperbole, and use it myself on occasion, but when it becomes a reflex, it is no longer hyperbole.
    Anyone watching the impeachment hearings saw Republicans flat out lying, maligning and attempting to target and ruin innocent people, and doing so in order to bring about a dictatorship. They are actively conspiring with corrupt foreign governments to enrich themselves and destroy the foundation of liberal democracy, something that millions have died for.
    I’m not going to worry whether I use words that hurt their feelings. They’re human, unfortunately. They represent the worst of what human history has been about.
    My suggestion, that we start looking at this as a war, is not about shooting anyone. It’s about being solid, united and resolute in beating them politically, and eradicating their evil influence on our society.
    They are hurting people now. This isn’t a hypothetical.

  352. Just a quicky: what nous, wj and Nigel said, albeit with russell’s caveat about fear versus greed (although no doubt some of “them” i.e. Trump supporters, are acting out of greed, some out of fear, and no doubt some out of both).

  353. Just a quicky: what nous, wj and Nigel said, albeit with russell’s caveat about fear versus greed (although no doubt some of “them” i.e. Trump supporters, are acting out of greed, some out of fear, and no doubt some out of both).

  354. Just a quicky: what nous, wj and Nigel said, albeit with russell’s caveat about fear versus greed (although no doubt some of “them” i.e. Trump supporters, are acting out of greed, some out of fear, and no doubt some out of both).

  355. some of “them” i.e. Trump supporters, are acting out of greed, some out of fear, and no doubt some out of both)
    Why, bless their hearts. They need to wake the f* up.

  357. They do. A excellent piece in the New Yorker yesterday, entitled The Awful Truth About Impeachment, contains this undeniable sentence in its first paragraph:
    After five days, twelve witnesses, lots of shouting, and dozens of angry tweets from the President, the House Intelligence Committee’s public impeachment hearings into Donald Trump’s Ukraine affair ended on Thursday with one unequivocal result: a Republican stonewall so complete that it cannot and will not be breached. The G.O.P. defense, in essence, is that facts are irrelevant, no matter how damning or inconvenient, and that Trump has the power to do whatever he wants, even if it seems inappropriate, improper, or simply wrong.
    And plenty more of great relevance later, including how after the testimonies of Yovanovich, Vindman, and particularly Hill’s authoritative debunking of the Ukraine-election- interference-conspiracy-theory:
    If anyone thought that Hill’s stirring insistence on the facts would have any effect, that notion was quickly dispelled. By 11:23 a.m., the Trump campaign had sent out a “rapid response” to its e-mail list, with the subject heading “Ukrainian election interference.” It was a two-sentence missive, introducing a new conspiracy linking the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Adam Schiff, to the one that Hill had just so eloquently debunked. “There’s a simple reason Adam Schiff wants to deny Ukraine interfered in U.S. politics,” the e-mail said. “He was willing to collude with them.”

  359. My final word on Mitt Romney.
    He’s a Trojan Horse, much like the second most dangerous man in America: William Barr
    Remember how anodyne Barr seemed to conservatives who don’t approve of Trump during his nomination “hearings”.
    Hearings in which no one heard.
    Find another ham sandwich.

  363. But the (R)’s per se are not the core problem. The core problem is fear, based on distorted understandings of reality.
    Thus the root cause is those who have chosen to create and exploit that distorted view of reality. Not because they, themselves, believe it, so much, as because it pays well. See Fox “News” (i.e. the commenters masquerading as news, rather than the actual reporters) and Rush Limbaugh.

  365. russell – This statement concerns me:
    “Right now they are seeing how far we will let them go before we actually resist so that they can calculate whether or not they can get it all without death and ashes following.”
    I don’t see people who Are Not Like Me, or who Vote For Trump, as trying to “get it all” per se. I think they are, in general, afraid. The things they are afraid of don’t make a lot of sense to me, but that doesn’t really matter much. Fear is often – maybe in most cases – not that rational. It is nonetheless powerful.
    There was a modulation in the “they” that was, perhaps, not clear. Internet-age right wing thinking is dominated by fear and tribalism. The Kochs and Murdochs and Limbaughs and Trumps and Hannitys are the one’s who are testing the waters of how far they can pull people before society cleaves. The Right to Lifers who lend their support to these people “want it all” only in the sense that they have decided that God requires then to act and they would sacrifice the constitution and fairness to achieve that goal. The Threepers are willing to undercut any and all constitutional principles in order to preserve the values and myths they believe defines America, which is to them a set of values, not a protocol for reaching consensus about what is fair.
    The “all” these groups want is outside of the public consensus. They are not committed to representational government. They are not afraid that their voices will not be heard, they are afraid that they will be ignored and that they will not get their way.
    Welcome to the world of blacks, women, gays, non-Christians, etc..
    Either we agree to listen and to work together or this is not a representative democracy.
    So it’s not All People Not Like Me. It’s only some, and in some ways. But they are sticking together rather than seeking agreement and trying to find ways to accommodate those with differing beliefs. And that’s not sustainable beyond a certain point.

  366. I’ve been mulling over hairshirthedonist’s other refreshing remark way upthread ….
    ‘I sometimes wonder. Does Soros ever read about the overwhelming influence he supposedly has, and say to himself: “Wow. If only….”‘
    … because it is a reveal, as it happens, with some elements of my recent reading, specifically “Modernity and the Holocaust” by Zygmunt Bauman.
    I’m not sure I fully buy into Bauman’s overarching theory, expressed in all of his writing, and which I won’t delve into in this comment, but I thought of George Soros, a Jew, as I read these bits, and in light of the most recent baldfaced antisemitism aimed in his by the worldwide conservative movement direction.
    First, of course Soros thinks about the hate directed at him. He’s a European Jew, so he has to think about the “Jewish Problem”, as it came to be termed by anti-Semites and acted upon to dreadful ends.
    These quotes from Bauman reveal the forces aligned against Soros the Jew, forces now once again malignantly ascendant across the globe.
    Soros has become the latest iteration in right-wing conservative minds of the conceptual Jew.
    “The conceptual Jew was a semantically overloaded entity, compromising and blending meanings which ought to be kept apart, and this reason a natural adversary of any force concerned with drawing borderlines and keeping them watertight.”
    More to the point, Bauman quotes Leo Pinsker who wrote of the Jews in 1882:
    “For the living, the Jew is a dead man; for the natives an alien and vagrant; for the poor and exploited a millionaire; for patriots a man without a country.”
    A finer point from Raoul Hilberg from his monumental “The Destruction of the European Jews”, quoted by Bauman:
    “The Jew could be represented as the embodiment of everything to be resented, feared, and despised. He was a carrier of bolshevism but, curiously enough, he simultaneously stood for the liberal spirit of rotten Western democracy. Economically, he was both capitalist and socialist. He was blamed as the indolent pacifist, but, by strange coincidence, he was also the eternal instigator of wars.”
    Of course, Soros has been maligned as a super-Jew and fake Jew by the right for decades, but here are examples of mortally dangerous antisemitism toward him by conservative vermin (yes, THEY are the vermin, not the OTHER; THEY dehumanize the OTHER and thus themselves are subhuman) in recent weeks:
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/11/the-george-soros-conspiracy-theory-at-the-heart-of-the-ukraine-scandal/
    Conservative Rick Lowry of National Review raises the specter of “elite cosmopolitanism” in the Democratic Party. The code words NEVER change, they merely find different mouths to be vomited from.
    and this ….
    https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/how-total-fabrication-connecting-george-soros-son-whistleblower-went-underbelly-internet
    This new little punk Jew-hating (joined by perhaps by the right-wing Stephen Cohen, who hates liberal Jews) fascist, Nick Fuentes is someone to watch, especially by decent conservatives, because he is the latest velociraptor to emerge, even to the right of Trump and Coulter and Cernovich and the rest of the filth, and believe me, the Republican Party as it is now constituted, will embrace him for their own malign ends. Michelle Malkin is already full-in with Fuentes, the spaniard in the works and always a leading indicator of the next many horrible miles of bad road the conservative movement is heading down:
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/11/1/1896408/-Alt-right-trolls-make-life-miserable-for-Charlie-Kirk-and-his-Turning-Point-USA-Culture-War-tour
    https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/groyper
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/don-trump-jr-booed/601807/
    These ilk must be removed from America. I dehumanize them because they dehumanize me and vast numbers of Americans. It’s self-defense.
    When fighting Comanche, do what the Texas Rangers finally figured out, become Comanche and fight them with their own methods.
    This is my penultimate comment and then my long-promised retirement from blogging shall commence.
    Huzzahs all around.

  367. here’s a fun read: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/16/20964281/impeachment-hearings-trump-america-epistemic-crisis

    This is what Republicans need more than anything on impeachment: for the general public to see it as just another round of partisan squabbling, another illustration of how “Washington” is broken. They need to prevent any hint of bipartisan consensus from emerging.
    Tribal epistemology is key to this. Republicans must render partisan not only judgments of right and wrong but judgments of what is and isn’t true or real. They must render facts themselves a matter of controversy that the media reports as a food fight and the public tunes out.
    That’s the main reason they are focusing their attacks so intently on process complaints. The investigation itself, the hearings, the whole process must come to be seen as partisan, which will serve as permission for the engaged on the right to attack it, the engaged on the left to embrace it, and the broader public to dismiss it.
    Aiding in the effort is the propaganda machine. One of the more notable findings from the aforementioned poll: “89% of Republicans who get most of their impeachment news from Fox oppose the inquiry because they think the allegations aren’t true; 59% of other Republicans say the same.”

  368. JDT: This is my penultimate comment and then my long-promised retirement from blogging shall commence.
    Have a wonderful vacation!

  369. Penultimate: last but one in a series of things; second last
    JDT: don’t retire. Please. I have assumed all along that your intention was to … maybe … change your nym … take a break … whatever. But don’t leave for good!

  373. 4thd, ad infinitum.
    Goddamit, how can the man who drew our attention to the magnificent Damn John Jay! Damn everyone who won’t damn John Jay!! Damn everyone that won’t put lights in his windows and sit up all night damning John Jay! among so much else just up and leave. It’s unconscionable. It’s unthinkable. Don’t do it.
    Your country needs you.

  374. I know some of you don’t read the NYT anymore, so I hope you won’t mind my giving a few paragraphs from Roger Cohen’s piece on Fiona Hill’s testimony:
    Hill rose in her adopted country to serve three presidents as an expert on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine. She was the top Russia and Europe expert on Trump’s National Security Council until she quit in July. It was devastating to hear her lambaste, without naming them, the shameless Republicans who have embraced a “fictional narrative” propagated “by the Russian security services themselves” under which Ukraine, not Russia, attacked American democratic institutions in 2016. “It is beyond dispute,” she declared, that Russia was the foreign power that “systematically” did this.
    Moscow succeeded, Hill suggested. “Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.” Russia aims at nothing less than destroying Americans’ faith in their democracy. American support for Ukraine, under attack from Russia, has been “politicized,” a succinct summation of Trump’s reduction of a major European country, struggling to emerge from the mind-bending legacy of the Soviet imperium, to a potential source of dirt on a political opponent. If this is not abuse of power, what is?
    Never before have I felt such overwhelming disgust at Trump’s weird, unexplained, unquestioning, total embrace of Vladimir Putin, in effect an act of presidential connivance in an attack on the United States. The cri de coeur of Hill, for whom America was hope, was shattering.
    Trump is Putin’s stooge. The American president’s contempt for Ukraine’s fate is quintessentially Russian, for, in the mythology of Greater Russia, Ukraine as an independent state is a mere illusion (hence Putin helps himself to Crimea). Never before have I felt with such acuity — except perhaps during the earlier testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine — how the public service of dedicated patriots is under attack from Trump’s diplomacy as an exercise in narcissism. In these two cases, of course, it’s narcissism compounded by misogyny.

  375. Trump is Putin’s stooge
    and yet, Trump’s support among his base has only strengthened.
    the GOP has decided it would rather live in its own mythology than deal with reality.
    not sure where the country goes from here. can’t be any place good.

  379. Never before have I felt such overwhelming disgust at Trump’s weird, unexplained, unquestioning, total embrace of Vladimir Putin, in effect an act of presidential connivance in an attack on the United States.
    I’m not a Cohen fan, but he’s on point here.
    It’s not just the US, though. Putin sees democracy as the west’s weakness, to be exploited by a Russia which can’t compete by more conventional means. On the evidence of the last few years, he’s not entirely wrong.

  380. Agree with Nigel. Autocracies have longer institutional cycles and more centralized message discipline for their propaganda machines and for their foreign policy. Putin has commented on this in public many times, even before 2015.
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/putin-russia-tv-113960
    Would you bet your survival on the US, where a turn in voting can reverse decades of foreign policy and aid, or Russia, where the chairs get rearranged, but the regime lasts for decades?

  381. On the evidence of the last few years, he’s not entirely wrong.
    This is too depressingly true. He has been helped in his exploitation, of course, by the enthusiastic collaboration of e.g. the narcissistic grifter in the White House, and the laissez-faire attitude of Facebook et al who have allowed the likes of Cambridge Analytica to game the system. But that’s our current democracy for you, and a perfect illustration of that wonderful quote about conservatism Janie reposted, which I cannot resist repeating:
    Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

  382. Autocracies have longer institutional cycles and more centralized message discipline for their propaganda machines and for their foreign policy.
    But their weakness is that, when the autocrat dies/falls/etc. they can have a long pause before they get a new one in place. And while some (e.g. Putin) can be quite deft at subverting other countries, others barely manage to hold their own together. See, for example, Kim in North Korea. Yes, he has some military strength to keep him safe. But his success at subverting anybody is nil.
    Which is a roundabout way of suggesting that Putin won’t be around forever. And whoever replaces him is likely to be rather different.

  384. Which has the positive aspect (desperately looking for a silver lining**) that they won’t bother to put any effort into making sure there is someone similar to follow after them.
    ** It’s not much. But I’m in grasping at straws mode….

  385. Perhaps the most depressing thing about all of this discussion of Russia and Putin is that from a pessimistic view, Russia and Putin are going to turn out to be a minor irritation compared to…what comes from the other direction in the wannabe global hegemon department.

  387. So, time to prepare the betting pool on whether The Donald will nominate Steven Menashi* for RBG’s seat? Close competition from judges that voted in favor of Him in all the cases He currently loses of course. And the Moss Cow Midge is on the record that he will have him/her confirmed even when the duck is already lame (wouldn’t put it past him to do so on inauguration day morning if need be). And we can unfortunately not rely on any Dem congressbeing 2nd-amending him in self-defense in that case.
    Something to think about should one suffer from low blood pressure or having trouble keeping awake.
    *likely most prominent judicial digestive rear exit currently around

  388. Will Cthulhu turn out to be the lesser evil after all?
    (for the pedants: I am aware that this particular Great Old One cannot legally become POTUS due to not being a natural born US citizen.)

  390. this particular Great Old One cannot legally become POTUS due to not being a natural born US citizen
    Well, as long as he was running as a Republican that wouldn’t be a problem would it? After all, he could count on the current Supreme Court to rule that the Constitution, like the law, doesn’t apply….

  392. If Cthulhu has a second residence in Y’ha-nthlei, he may qualify but then he would be from Massachusetts and thus not tenable.
    The GOP would run Nyarlathotep, although under a less oriental name, if they could.
    Better than the current Tsathoggua-in-a-wig though.

  394. IOKIYAR…The six wisest words in the English language.
    JDT – I shall deeply miss your literary truck bombs. Whatever your future brings, keep on truckin’.
    Russell’s sister and Marty and their deep fears: They fear the fact that there are those who historically have never had control will become ascendent and, yes, ‘take control’. History shows this happens from time to time, and those powerful who so ruthlessly cling to their power generally go down hard….a word to the wise.

  396. After all, he could count on the current Supreme Court to rule that the Constitution, like the law, doesn’t apply….
    We await John Roberts performance at the forthcoming Senate trial of Donnie Trump with great anticipation. Balls and strikes, y’all!

  398. In September, while working my way thru a slot canyon (this one didn’t require technical climbing, skills I don’t possess) in the Escalante Staircase area of southern Utah, I rested roughly half way through the thing for a good half hour. It was completely quiet (I got into it at sun up before others arrived; other canyons were as crowded as a stroll down 5th Avenue in Manhatten).
    Each of my shoulders touched the walls to either side. There were much narrower places behind and ahead. About 20 feet up, there was a strip of brilliant blue, cloudless sky.
    The silence, other than my own breathing, was prehistorically impressive. Thoreau-like silence.
    And I thought to myself, I am sick of the noise. The political noise, the noise of the financial markets (which is where I supplement my income), the blaring, honking, quaking, senseless noise of the media, particularly the deafening fire-hosing crap on the internet.
    I’m sick of the noise I make. I don’t like it. I can’t hear myself think anymore. I try to make my noise, which is rough and insulting by contrivance because I mimic my enemies, the more reprehensible ones on the ascendant right, entertaining in its bombast, perhaps even vaguely literary.
    But that’s not me. Make no mistake, if the conservative movement keeps pushing, it WILL be me in real life, you know what I believe is going to happen, I won’t repeat it. It’s elemental with me … I don’t like the way they operate. I don’t like the cut of their jibs. I hate bullies, as I do in sports. I really hate militantly organized juggernauts of lying bullies. They are certain of everything.
    I’m not. Absolute certainty is fascist. Ambiguity is human.
    So, it’s that’s simple; I’m going to shut up. How many more ways can there be to say the same thing?
    I’ve done this before of course, (I loved wj’s remark “Have a great vacation!” He’s got my number.) only to be back shortly for “oh, and one more thing”, but this is like retiring from baseball, which I did to make time for travel. I’m merely doing this to make time for more important matters.
    Without the habit of blogging, I’ll have hours more each day to get the reading done. I’m going to make a fort of all of my books and crawl inside it.
    Like a slot canyon.
    Now that Harold Bloom is gone, someone has to continue the reading and the re-reading.
    And then there those guitars glaring at me from the corner.
    I also recall OCSteve hanging it up becuase hie head was about to explode from high blood pressure. Mine’s well within the normal range, but I’m tired of feeling like my eyeballs are going to explode all over the screen and my chest is going to burst open with nuclear-scale anxiety. And then there is that throbbing vein in my forehead.
    No doubt I will lurk. I admire Donald’s lurking technique.
    Thanks to all of you for listening. For those who stopped listening or may have left here because of my noise, come on back. Thank you for your forbearance.
    I get it.
    Near the end of the trip in September, while visiting a friend in SF, she introduced me to her boyfriend. Nice guy, but a die hard Trumper, he sets his clocks to the FOXNews schedule. He just inherited five million dollars from his father. He was, as these cracked things go, a 30-year career Federal retired civil servant. He hates taxes.
    Got it?
    I kept my mouth shut, which I do in real life, unlike my short fuse here, unless it gets personal.
    Besides, Trump diehards cannot be be talked to.
    But his sister, also a recipient of five million, in her sixties, invited the three us over for dinner. My friend warned me as we drove up the sister’s street that I would notice a huge banner hung from the gutters on the front of her house in this middle class neighborhood that read “Re-elect Donald trump, the greatest President in history and STOP the bullshit.”
    I girded my loins. These people have no idea of my politics and I kept my mouth busy with a glass of wine when in their company.
    But while this loose cannon of a woman was making dinner in the kitchen (her culinary skills and taste were as you would expect, pedestrian), for some reason the subject of the NRA and guns came up (not by me) and her brother asked her if she was a member (she was standing in front of the kitchen sink, we were 12 feet away in the living room) and she looked at us and said with a sneer “I certainly am. I own a 457 Magnum and I am ready to kill liberals!”
    Now, this is the second time in the last couple of years that this sort of brazen gun talk (I related the first story a couple of years, in which my brother’s teenaged stepson, an otherwise decent kid sat on the couch near me mock-firing a semi-automatic rifle (unloaded, but a real one) at images of Muslims and Hillary Clinton on the TV. I worked all of that out; they now have a gun safe in their basement, but it should put everyone really at ease that the kid is now in his second year of Navy Seal training .. great, hanh!).
    Anyway, the fleeting thought crossed my mind that this crazy Trump woman, encouraged literally in her behavior by the sitting President of the United States might open a drawer in the kitchen and haul the 457 out of it, and I spotted (this all occurred to me in a split second) a cast-iron pan sitting on the stove and imagined myself leaping over the coffee table and braining her with the edge of it.
    Instead, I heard these words come out of my mouth without really skipping a beat after her statement, “Well, here I am!”
    NOTHING happened. Not another word about guns or politics was spoken the rest of the evening. The other three (my friend is a liberal as well; in fact this is the friend whose second husband was murdered by Timothy McVeigh in the Murrah Building) found somewhere, anywhere else to look beside at me, their laps, the ceiling, out the window, and the rest of the evening passed in a sort of “How bout them Giants?” sort of mood.
    This occurred at a fucking dinner party.
    These people are lunatics.
    So, I’m gone but I’m right here.
    When the troubles start in earnest, you’ll hear from me, or about me.
    I’ll be damned if I’m going to be arrested for saying or writing things, which is where things are going. If I’m going to be arrested, it will be for doing things, as part of a resistant army.
    I’ll have my finger marking a place in book, but I’ll have one free hand.
    Peace and health to all of you, my dear friends.
    See you in the funny papers.

  400. See you in the funny papers.
    Back atcha.
    Shine on, you crazy diamond. It’s been more than good to have you aboard.

  402. A bit has been made here of rightwing violence and threatened violence. But where does Antifa fit into the political scheme of things? They’re described as being leftwing. Are they a counterpart of violent rightwing groups that most on the right disown.

  404. Some Antifa are probably a counterpart to the (much larger) alt-right, seeking redemptive violence, and are thus a corrosive force to be suppressed.
    But the bulk of Antifa exist only as an irregular group of volunteers that assemble while there are actual fascists showing up to march on the street with arms and disband when the fascists crawl back into their safe spaces. I’m not disowning or discouraging any of them.

  406. from the No Shit, Sherlock files:

    A confidential White House review of the President Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal, according to three people familiar with the records.

  407. Antifa
    Antifa are anti-fascist. nous’ description is seems accurate, to me.
    My biggest beef with antifa is that they give right-wingers somebody to point to to justify the “both sides” thing. They also can be unnecessarily provocative. They can be somewhat self-righteous and self-justifying. The anarchist / anti-capitalist wing of antifa is prone to breaking and burning stuff with no particular constructive purpose that I can see.
    So, I have my issues with them.
    All of that said, I recognize a distinction – a moral distinction – between Nazis and people who are willing to physically fight Nazis. And if things keep going in the direction they’re going, it may turn out that antifa was prescient.
    FWIW, they probably saved some lives, or at a minimum saved some people from serious physical harm, in Charlottesville. Probably other places as well.

  409. JDT—
    Yes, I highly recommend lurking. Though you should also abstain altogether when needed.
    My political views are somewhat different. I read a fair number of blogs across the spectrum and am mostly far left ( to the extent some comfortable bourgeois American can say this without it being a complete joke) and do it partly to understand where other people are coming from. If you start arguing with them it can consume your life. And for very little good.
    Nowadays if I expressed my real views everywhere I lurked I would quickly find myself in figurative screaming matches on virtually every blog I read, including this one. ( On this one, I can support the impeachment of Trump for using foreign policy for his personal political benefit without feeling the slightest inclination to support our policies in the Ukraine or lionize Foreign Service members with Cold War views.). But I think one should mostly avoid screaming matches.
    Good work at your dinner party. I think you handled that one perfectly. As someone who hangs out at Dreher’s blog, you have probably seen him echoing Haidt’s claim that conservatives understand liberals, but not vice versa. I am willing to concede that many lefties and liberals don’t understand righties. I don’t think we necessarily even understand each other. But I have been around rightwingers ( as we all have, presumably) and there is no way that rightwingers as a group understand lefties. Are there individual exceptions? Sure. But generally, no, or not in my experience, and certainly not people like your gun- toting rightwing friend. I think you probably embarrassed her and if so, you did her a big favor.

  410. my little town recently went through months of protests over a confederate statue (which was removed in the middle of the night, Wednesday). for months, Confederacy supporters would come to our town, because they believed Antifa would be there, and they wanted to fight what they think are the liberal vanguard. many arrests. barricades. businesses suffered because people were staying away.
    but Antifa isn’t liberal. they aren’t on my side, or on the side of anyone i know. they’re on their own side, and probably consider me an enemy.
    they come to protests to fight. which obliterates any message anyone else is trying to send. they hurt innocent people because it’s fun to throw rocks through windows.
    it’s selfish attention-seeking nihilism.
    i don’t want them even pretending to be associated with anything i want.

  415. Miller, the Lev tapes, the navy stuff, the Mulvaney ex post facto-justification emails, tangentially the Nunes-Ukraine connection. Will any of it matter?
    But tan suit.

  416. I think there’s a meme to be found here. There was so much talk about what was going to be “Obama’s Katrina” when he was in office. Now we can talk about what will be “Trump’s Tan Suit.”

  418. From bobbyp’s link:

    As a practical matter, Miller views nonwhite people as his enemies.

    Given his oft-stated views, they would have to be damn fools not to be. On the other hand, lots of us with Scandinavian ancestry are his enemies, too. It’s not like it’s exclusively a race thing.

  420. Max Boot:

    Republicans have turned their back on conservative principles to become a cult of personality for an aspiring authoritarian. All voters with a conscience should now turn their back on the Republican Party. For aiding and abetting the president’s egregious abuses of power, the Republican Party deserves to be destroyed from top to bottom. We need a center-right party in this country. What we have instead is a party with no fixed principles that is willing to do anything — no matter how vile — to serve its maximum leader, a.k.a. “the chosen one.”

    “All voters with a conscience”
    whelp.

  423. We need a center-right party in this country
    See also: any (D) endorsed by the DNC.
    And I’m not hating on the (D)’s, I’m calling attention to the fact that mainstream D’s are, by any reasonable standard, middle of the road conservative.
    E.g, Obama or either Clinton.

  424. by any reasonable standard, middle of the road conservative.
    E.g, Obama or either Clinton.
    Carter wasn’t exactly a flaming liberal either.
    Indeed you could make a fair case that the past half century’s Democratic Presidents were notably less liberal than the various Democratic presidential nominees who were not elected. Hmmm….

  425. Nixon/Ford/Carter was a transitional period in US politics marking the end of the economic expansion of the postwar period. Reagan was the paradigm change that set the way Americans think and talk about politics since then until Bush/Obama when 9/11, the financial crisis, and globalism upended Reaganomics.
    We are in another transitional period marked by the breakdown of protocol and open culture war. How that will play out in party politics remains to be written, but I would not count on centrism while the center is falling away under us like a sinkhole.

  426. I would not count on centrism while the center is falling away under us like a sinkhole
    The center is falling away in the conversation of the political class. And in the conversations of those who follow politics.
    Whether it is falling away among the population at large is far less clear. My sense is that those in the center find themselves faced with two political parties, both of which seem inclined to go for ideological purity around views which are far more extreme that they would like. Leaving them with a choice of “less bad” — a choice which is always far more fraught than being able to choose someone who is at least some approximation of what they (the center) believe.
    I also think those in the center find it difficult to wrap our heads around just how bad someone from outside the center (e.g. Trump) might actually be. And thus, unfortunately, have trouble believing the (totally accurate) descriptions of what he has been doing.

  427. In the rest of the developed world, universal healthcare, gun control, and fair elections are not partisan issues.

  428. Whether it is falling away among the population at large is far less clear.
    46% of the people who bothered to vote in 2016 voted for Donald J Trump.
    I think the evidence is against you.
    TBH, I think the country is broken.

  429. rather than build UHS, we should de-build the “conservative” mis-information industry.
    i kid. i kid.
    it would be very wrong of us to be less stupid overall.

  430. those in the center find themselves faced with two political parties, both of which seem inclined to go for ideological purity around views which are far more extreme that they would like.
    It’s also worth noting that the “ideological purists” on the “left” are calling for things that would have been, and were, endorsed by such radical firebrands as Truman and Eisenhower.
    I think nous’ analysis is as right on as anything else I’ve read, basically anywhere.
    Things are broken. They won’t be fixed until people in very large numbers decide to give a crap about it all again. I don’t know how or when that happens.

  432. i can’t see anything positive happening as long as we’re allowing Russia to participate in our elections. because their long term goal is not about Trump; they really want to weaken the country by destroying people’s trust in government and elections. Trump is just a useful idiot – he’s happy to play along because he’s too greedy and vain and stupid to know what he’s being used for.
    but the GOP, for the same reason it still supports him, can’t allow itself to admit this. they don’t want to admit that they backed a loser and that the left was right about something. they’ll let the ship crash and sink before they admit the liberal lookout was right about those rocks.

  433. they don’t want to admit that they backed a loser and that the left was right about something.
    I don’t think that’s it, really.
    It’s working for them, so they’re fine with it. Tax cuts, judges, de-regulation. If the Russians are helping to make that happen, then they’re welcome to do so. Even if the means by which they help make it happen is to fill people’s heads with malicious bullshit.
    If you ask 100 Trump supporters if they are concerned about Russian interference, 40 will say it never happened, another 40 will say they don’t give a crap as long as Donald beat Hilary, and 15 of the remaining 20 will say they hope they do it again in 2020. Or maybe it’s 15 that don’t care, and 40 that hope they do it again.
    3 of the remaining 5 will not understand the question. 2 will be concerned but it won’t change their support for Trump.

  434. On the very small bright side, polling as reported on FiveThirtyEight jumped sharply over the last few days in favor of impeachment. I don’t know if that’s simply a matter of normal lag in polls being conducted, data being compiled, and FiveThirtyEight collecting and aggregating it, or if it took time for people to absorb what they were seeing, hearing, and reading. Perhaps both.
    I still think another shoe will drop. These guys are too clownish not to have slipped up somewhere.

  436. i can’t see anything positive happening as long as we’re allowing Russia to participate in our elections. because their long term goal is not about Trump; they really want to weaken the country by destroying people’s trust in government and elections. Trump is just a useful idiot – he’s happy to play along because he’s too greedy and vain and stupid to know what he’s being used for.
    A perfect analysis. As for the slight disagreement between cleek and russell on what the GOP’s motivation is, I think you’re both right (they’re not mutually exclusive). I also particularly like russell’s theoretical focus-grouping of 100 Trump supporters, which I think is pretty exactly right.

  438. wj – when you write about the center you are writing about people of good faith who hold moderate views. When I was writing about the center, I was talking about a set of values and policy choices around which voters sort themselves. I have no doubt that there are still moderates in the world, nor that they are gazing on all this partisanship with bewildered disgust. I just don’t currently see any combination of political philosophy and policy choices that can be used to pull enough support away from the poles to make centrism viable under our election rules.

  439. By the way, there is an article in today’s NYT on Marianna Mazzucato, an eminent and rather innovative economist very well-thought of by lefties of my acquaintance. As I have often made clear, I know nothing about economics, but anyone curious about current lefty European thinking on it who doesn’t already know her work might be interested to take a look, particularly in view of some of the claims e.g. McKinney has made in the past about the origins of wealth. An extract:
    Dr. Mazzucato, an economist based at University College London, is trying to change something fundamental: the way society thinks about economic value. While many of her colleagues have been scolding capitalism lately, she has been reimagining its basic premises. Where does growth come from? What is the source of innovation? How can the state and private sector work together to create the dynamic economies we want? She asks questions about capitalism we long ago stopped asking. Her answers might rise to the most difficult challenges of our time.
    In two books of modern political economic theory — “The Entrepreneurial State” (2013) and “The Value of Everything” (2018) — Dr. Mazzucato argues against the long-accepted binary of an agile private sector and a lumbering, inefficient state. Citing markets and technologies like the internet, the iPhone and clean energy — all of which were funded at crucial stages by public dollars — she says the state has been an underappreciated driver of growth and innovation. “Personally, I think the left is losing around the world,” she said in an interview, “because they focus too much on redistribution and not enough on the creation of wealth.”

  440. It’s working for them, so they’re fine with it.
    Trump’s people are all about being Trump’s people, people who can get away with things.
    That’s how mafia-style government gets a grip. Sad that there are so many willing buyers.

  441. [Clickbait] is just a useful idiot – he’s happy to play along because he’s too greedy and vain and stupid to know what he’s being used for.
    Well, he’s greedy and vain and stupid (and cruel and vicious and racist), but I think he’s pretty much on board with most of what he’s being used for, if he weren’t too stupid to understand half of it.
    I mean….

    “I’m curious why wasn’t it done a long time ago? And also, I guess the answer to that is because now I’m president, we get things done.”
    President Trump signs the Woman’s Suffrage Centennial Coin Act. pic.twitter.com/jkcOCzQyNa
    — The Hill (@thehill) November 26, 2019

    (Courtesy of Betty Cracker at BJ.)
    I mean hmmmmmmm, why again wasn’t the centennial coin minted on some other, less brilliant, lazier president’s watch?

  442. LOL
    By the way, on Marianna Mazzucato, I didn’t know til I read the piece that she has been consulted so widely by e.g. Elizabeth Warren, or that certain Republicans have spoken fairly positively about her!

  443. LOL
    By the way, on Marianna Mazzucato, I didn’t know til I read the piece that she has been consulted so widely by e.g. Elizabeth Warren, or that certain Republicans have spoken fairly positively about her!

  444. here’s one way out of this mess:

    A new public health study released by University of Toronto researchers found that rising mortality in white Americans is partly due to perceptions that they are losing social status.
    The paper, titled “Growing sense of social status threat and concomitant deaths of despair among whites,” highlights this population health phenomenon that has been unfolding for the past two decades.
    Mortality rates seldom rise unless a society is subjected to something disastrous, like a major economic crisis, an infectious disease epidemic or war. But there has been an increase in working-age mortality rates for just one group in the United States since 1999, and that’s non-Hispanic whites.

    the fear-based demographic can just worry themselves to death.
    look over there! an immigrant! eeeek!

  445. “Personally, I think the left is losing around the world,” she said in an interview, “because they focus too much on redistribution and not enough on the creation of wealth.”
    This.
    And I would extend this. Not just the creation of wealth, but the distribution (not re-distribution) of wealth.

  447. I’d take it a step further to ask what wealth is, or maybe, more accurately, what value is. Can we be happier and healthier with a shrinking economy? Do we really need all this stuff? (Or, at least, do we need new stuff quite as often?)
    Can we conserve energy and raw materials while better maintaining the finished goods already in existence without leaving people to live in poverty without the income they would otherwise get producing new goods?

  448. And just like that, hsh takes the conversation here straight into the sort of discussions that get things clicking in my science fiction class.

  449. Can we be happier and healthier with a shrinking economy?
    some of we can. some of we will be lost without the happiness of watching the dollars pile up.
    right now, the only reason i’m working is because i want to live a lot longer and want to pile up as many dollars as i can before people decide to stop paying me.

  450. Technological progress is all about conserve energy and raw materials.
    Remember when you had to remember to keep your back straight and lift with your knees when lifting a 21-inch computer monitor? Now you can lift one with thumb and forefinger. And a smart phone replaces a hold pickup truck load of individual devices.

  451. The entire tech industry owes its current shape to the early and massive (by the standards of the time) funding of integrated circuit development for the Apollo program.
    Nor would VLSI development have happened in the manner it did without the direction and considerable funding of DARPA.
    The US government has shaped the computing industry from its outset:
    https://www.nap.edu/read/6323/chapter/6#94
    What appears to make the difference is nothing to do with public/private sector distinctions (either or which has at times been more bureaucratic than the other), but enabling talented individuals and groups to pursue their ideas without too much oversight,

  452. And whole books could be written on how governments obstruct and retard innovation. The government maintained the AT&T monopoly for many decades after it shouldn’t have been created in the first place. Except for a few stations that were shut down by the government, FM radio stations weren’t allowed to exist for three decades after the technology was available. The technology for cell phones was around for a couple of decades before they were allowed. The government contributed to the early development of the Internet and then retarded its further development for years by disallowing commercial use of it.
    On the whole, a mixed bag. And that doesn’t consider the possible opportunity costs of resources unavailable to the private sector because government used them.

  454. The government maintained the AT&T monopoly for many decades after it shouldn’t have been created in the first place.
    The most capable engineer I ever knew (MIT dorm-mate) mourned when AT&T was about to be broken up because, as he framed it, they plowed a lot of the fruits of their monopoly back into good equipment, and he figured we’d never have a well-engineered telephone again.
    Possibly related, I remember a huge billboard where Route 128 split off from I-95 (north to Maine) — must have been in the early 90s-ish. It was an ad from a cell carrier, and the big brag, in huge letters, was “FEWEST DROPPED CALLS!!!!”
    Um, huh?
    My friend, of course, had not been talking about mobile phones. I haven’t seen him in years so I don’t know what he’d say about high-end modern cell phones. Certainly every landline phone I had for the last 20 or so years I had one was crap. But then, I’m a cheapskate, so maybe it was my own fault.

  455. And whole books could be written on how governments obstruct and retard innovation.
    Perhaps it would be helpful to differentiate between government-sponsored research and government regulation. (Just for this. We can argue the merits of regulation in general later.)
    In general, the government sponsors (or does itself) research which otherwise would not happen. That is, there isn’t an obvious commercial application at the time that the research is being done.** Or the application is obvious, but the chances of success are small enough that the private sector is unwilling to take the risk.
    ** There may well be lots of applications later. Just not when the research was being done. See ARPANet and the Internet, for just one example. No doubt others can come up with lots of others without half trying.

  457. I’m just now finishing up Robert Reich’s Supercapitalism, a short but interesting read. A bit dated perhaps (2007), he argues that what we observe is an abundance of (not only US, but worldwide) firm/market competition that has led to great things for consumers (lots of stuff at low low prices) and investors (more money for them, but not for you).
    These developments have accelerated and have now largely replaced the post WWII system with its market regulation, unionization, oligopoly, and the idea of CEO’s as stewards, not financial gunslingers.
    cf CharlesWT above.
    This has also led to environmental degradation, alienation, economic maldistribution and its associated political power imbalances, big box stores, loss of community, job disruption, etc.
    So..trade-offs. Rending the social fabric so we can have cheap stuff is not my idea of a healthy society.

  458. Not just the creation of wealth, but the distribution (not re-distribution) of wealth.
    See Dean Baker’s Rigged. It’s all about the rules we adopt. The extremes of wealth we see are not something handed down by God. We assembled a set of social and economic rules that virtually guarantee that outcome.

  459. The extremes of wealth we see are not something handed down by God. We assembled a set of social and economic rules that virtually guarantee that outcome.
    We also have a significant amount of selective blindness on this score. That is, those on the receiving end of a bunch of government policy preferences honestly do not realize that any part of their success is due to that. Not just to their personal merits and hard work.
    Not that they necessarily are without merit. Not that they haven’t worked hard, as many have. But others who have worked equally hard, but not benefited from government preferences, have done less well.
    Get those blinders off (no, I have no idea how to make that happen) and a lot of bad policies would get changed.

  462. The government maintained the AT&T monopoly for many decades after it shouldn’t have been created in the first place.
    It’s not that simple.
    The 1930s were the decade of the big industrial labs: AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories, RCA’s Sarnoff Labs, etc, etc. Most were either protected monopolies (AT&T) or trusts that kept new companies out by way of a shared patent pool. This arrangement served the federal government extraordinarily well during WWII and well into the Cold War. These were the kinds of resources that the military could tell, “Make the radar work,” or “Run this national lab that’s working on critical weapons technology,” and then leave them alone. They also routinely generated Nobel prizes and spun off tech that turned out to be critical later: eg, transistors at Bell Labs, CMOS and thin-film fabrication at Sarnoff.
    In the 1960s and especially the 1970s the whole model fell apart. Not least because so much of new tech was being done in California, using a model with employees jumping from this company to that when they couldn’t sell a new idea to management. The big industrial labs were a place where an engineer spent their entire career, and were very much East Coast things.

  463. That’s not a complete account, either.
    It glosses over the central role of government in the early development of computing. From the beginning of the chapter 8n the link I posted upthread:
    In computing, the technical cutting edge, however, was usually pushed forward in government facilities, at government-funded research centers, or at private contractors doing government work. Government funding accounted for roughly three-quarters of the total computer field.
    A survey performed by the Army Ballistics Research Laboratory in 1957, 1959, and 1961 lists every electronic stored-program computer in use in the country (the very possibility of compiling such a list says a great deal about the community of computing at the time). The surveys reveal the large proportion of machines in use for government purposes, either by federal contractors or in government facilities…

  464. Of course in recent years, big tech and venture capital have taken over a large part of that role.
    Not necessarily for the better.

  465. “It’s not that simple.”
    LOL…only when you are behind the veil of the Pareto principle!
    But yes, even a rudimentary reading of the history of AT&T shows it to be a situation much more complex than your typical glibertarian ideologue would have you believe.

  466. the Pareto principle will try to assert itself at every turn.
    So does the weather. But if it looks like rain, I take an umbrella.

  467. Of course in recent years, big tech and venture capital have taken over a large part of that role…. Not necessarily for the better.
    As I was known to observe back in the 1990s, “The Bell Labs model was ‘We have smart people and will figure out a solution.’ The Cisco model was ‘We will let a dozen little start-ups try different solutions, then buy the one that looks best, and the others are just screwed.'” During that same period, the most important question the VC people asked little software outfits was “What is your strategy for getting acquired by Microsoft?”
    Tangentially, I think people’s concerns about the number of EE and CS people China is graduating is the wrong thing to worry about. Worry that China is finding EE and CS jobs for those graduates. Not having a bunch of them working on making Wall Street trading algorithms a millisecond faster, or getting kicked out of tech at age 45 as part of an acquisition.
    (Full disclosure: I was 49, but had managed to extract enough money from the giant corporations that I could do something entirely different.)

  472. “Quiet little Christian women for Trump” is a phrase that packs a world of cognitive dissonance in six little words.
    But, whatever. A lot of people are gonna vote for Trump, for whatever reason. Humans have complicated thought processes.
    It will turn out however it turns out, and we’ll all deal with that.

  474. Deep State links.
    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-the-deep-state-bullied-reagans-foreign-policy-chief/
    The writer is from the Cato Institute, so as libertarians I dislike their economics but like their foreign policy. I remember Renamo and how even the ReaganAdministration refused to support them, but other Republicans, including Bob Dole, did.
    http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/alexander-vindman-testimony-impeachment-hearing-ukraine-policy-deep-state.html
    I forget if I linked the above article before. It’s where I stand. Trump is guilty but don’t turn opposition to Trump into an endorsement for Cold War interventionism. About three years late on that, however.

  475. On the first piece though, I never understood why Schultz would support Savimbi’s UNITA but not Renamo. They really weren’t that different, atrocity wise.
    Gone for a few days.

  477. “ helping allies not be ingested into Russia is the opposite of interventionism.”
    Sure. It’s always pure nobility on our side this time.
    Anyway, I’m offline as of now.

  478. Trump Already Knew of the Whistleblower Complaint when he Released Aid to Ukraine
    Headline in the NYT. But why not “and when he said I want nothing, no quid pro quo?? That’s at least as (if not more) important…

  479. RIP Jonathan Miller.
    Maybe best known to ObWi as a quarter of Beyond the Fringe, but a man of many and varied talents.

  480. But why not “and when he said I want nothing, no quid pro quo?? That’s at least as (if not more) important
    This is implied later on in the article, but they are using pretty fancy footwork to dance around the dates, because first they say
    There are discrepancies about whether Mr. Sondland spoke to the president on Sept. 7 or 9
    but later on they say
    Both Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Eisenberg, who briefed Mr. Trump in late August about the whistle-blower complaint, had been following up on other complaints by administration officials about the Ukraine matter since early July.
    So if he spoke to Sondland on Sept 7 or 9, and said “I want nothing, no quid pro quo, nothing”, but he was briefed by Mr Eisenberg about the whistleblower complaint in late August, why the timidity? What am I missing?

  482. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US promised Russia that it wouldn’t extend NATO to any of the former Eastern Block countries. And then it did. So, it’s assholes all around.

  483. Russia persists in invading its neighbors (Georgia, Ukraine). And in proclaiming its right to do so whenever an ethnic Russian minority in a neighboring country asked it to — and most of them have one. If it didn’t do that, there would be fewer of those countries begging to join NATO.

  484. What am I missing?
    Nothing.
    Trump wanted two things from the Ukrainians:
    1. Some kind of support for the idea that they, not the Russians, messed with the 2016 election, preferably in co-ordination with the (D)’s.
    2. A public claim that they were investigating the Bidens for possible corruption
    In exchange for this, Trump offered a WH meeting, which would give Zelensky needed credibility, and the release of military aid.
    All of this appears, to me, to be fairly obvious. Based on what is plainly in the public record, you’d have to bend your mind into 10-dimensional pretzel shapes to think otherwise. IMVHO.
    Whether we, as a country, give enough of a crap about it to do something about it is a different story. The (D)’s in the House are going to be able to bring articles of impeachment, and then the scope of their authority ends.
    If a lot of people decide they want Trump removed from office, they’ll make that clear to their Senators, and he’ll go. If not, not.
    If he isn’t removed from office, he’ll either be returned to office in 2020, or he won’t. That’s up to whoever decides it’s worth their while to actually show up and vote.
    As you can see in the piece Marty links to, there are lots of people whose interests and priorities are either well served by POTUS Trump, or at least aren’t in conflict with POTUS Trump, or who are sick of the whole thing and wish the (D)’s would shut up already. Or, who are generally doing OK and just don’t care that much either way.
    So, it could go either way.
    But no, you’re not missing anything.

  485. the US promised Russia that it wouldn’t extend NATO to any of the former Eastern Block countries
    Aren’t “promises” like that usually contained in things called “treaties”?

  486. More trouble for the GOP going forward:
    A report from the AMA says that
    a) after increasing from 1959 to 2014, life expectancy in the United States decreased for the next 3 years (i.e. until the end of the study). Major causes are increased suicides drug overdoses, and alcohol abuse.
    b) The increase in mortality rates was highest among non-college, non-Hispanic men. (Although the trend was seen across all demographic groups.)
    In short, in addition to all the other factors in demographic change, the folks most likely to support Trump are dying off faster than everybody else.

  487. Don’t be surprised, if millions of them still vote for His re-election. It’s not them that’ll get purged from the voter rolls in myny places.
    Afaict the constitution does not explicitly forbid dead citizens to vote provided they are 18 years of age or older. Which raises the question, whether people that died underage can vote once they are dead long enough to pass the threshold.
    Cue calls to allow aborted fetuses to vote (or at least their pro-life defenders in their name).

  488. Goddamit, Clive James gone too. I don’t know how well known he was in the US, but he was another renaissance man, perhaps best known here for his brilliant TV reviews in the 70s (he memorably described Arnold Shwarzenegger as looking “like a condom stuffed with walnuts”). So sorry for any offense but it made me think of that W H Auden limerick (it’s the “screamingly funny” bit which applies both to Jonathan Miller and Clive James, although the final line may have been of more interest to Auden):
    As the poets have mournfully sung,
    Death takes the innocent young,
    The rolling-in-money,
    The screamingly-funny,
    And those who are very well hung.

  489. So, it’s assholes all around.
    one of these statements is true:
    1. the US invaded and annexed part of Ukraine
    2. Russia invaded and annexed part of Ukraine
    3. only the US deserves anyone’s ire.

  490. I’m just watching an old piece of Clive James interviewing Jonathan Miller on Saturday Night Clive, and Miller, who was after all originally a doctor, (talking about the American/Californian cult of youth and beauty) has just said “I see people pounding down the green lawn in the centre of San Vicente, and I always imagine, 3 paces behind them, death following saying it’s all right, baby, I can keep up.” There was a great deal more to him than Beyond the Fringe, brilliant though that was – for example, apparently he was the first person to show Oliver Sacks’s writing to a publisher (they were very old friends). How weird to think, since Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are already dead, that the only one left is Alan Bennett.

  496. Really good piece on Clive James in the NYT, for anybody who’s interested. It gives a feel for his extraordinary multi-facetedness.

  498. The second was never completed.
    The gutting of the Fourteenth Amendment was a symptom of the counterrevolution, and the struggle continues.

  500. Nigel: well, well.
    According to a report by MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, Bolton said that he believes there is a “personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey.”
    And, for anyone who, like me, has limited bandwidth for all the details at the moment:
    For those who don’t want to wade into this particular Trumpian Black Sea, the tl;dr is:
    Trump enabled a despot who has significant leverage over his business in a brutal ethnic cleansing of our ally, cutting an opaque sweetheart deal negotiated by the sons-in-law of Erdogan, Trump, and Trump’s business partner.
    Meanwhile, Erdogan has empowered Trump’s business partner, making him Turkey’s key man in Washington, which gives him inordinate influence on the administration and ensures that the financial interests of all involved are maintained.
    Since I see that The Bulwark is a conservative organisation, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the rest of the media.

  501. Nigel: well, well.
    According to a report by MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, Bolton said that he believes there is a “personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey.”
    And, for anyone who, like me, has limited bandwidth for all the details at the moment:
    For those who don’t want to wade into this particular Trumpian Black Sea, the tl;dr is:
    Trump enabled a despot who has significant leverage over his business in a brutal ethnic cleansing of our ally, cutting an opaque sweetheart deal negotiated by the sons-in-law of Erdogan, Trump, and Trump’s business partner.
    Meanwhile, Erdogan has empowered Trump’s business partner, making him Turkey’s key man in Washington, which gives him inordinate influence on the administration and ensures that the financial interests of all involved are maintained.
    Since I see that The Bulwark is a conservative organisation, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the rest of the media.

  502. From Nigel’s link:

    John Bolton, the moustachioed one, the unlikeliest of potential #Resistance heroes, left another clue about his knowledge of President Donald Trump’s corrupt dealings during an investment event at Morgan Stanley.

    Bolton won’t talk to the House committees unless they subpoena him, which will of course result in the purchasing of second (or third or fourth) homes by every lawyer in greater Washington DC.
    But he’ll share this bit of information with the folks at Morgan Stanley.
    A true patriot.

  503. Apologies to anybody here who’s bored of references to Clive James, but in the hope that there are some who might be interested, there’s a terrific obit in the Telegraph, headed “A Tribute to Clive James, the Greatest – and Funniest – Critic of our age”. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but here are some extracts:
    The Observer hired him to write its own TV column in 1972. For the next 10 years, he was the best-loved TV columnist – perhaps even best-loved columnist full stop – in British newspapers.
    “It felt straight away, and still feels now, almost illegal to be paid for having such a good time,” he wrote in 1977, introducing Visions Before Midnight, the first collection of his TV columns.
    “There were (there still are) plenty of wiser heads to tell me I should avoid lavishing my attention on lowly ephemera, but I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t, if I felt like it. It wasn’t that I didn’t rate my attention that high – just that I didn’t rate the ephemera that low. Television was a natural part of my life… I watched just about everything, including the junk, which was often as edifying as the quality material and sometimes more so.”
    That last is a key sentence: Clive James was one of the first critics in England to see that no choice needed to be made between “high” art and “low”; he loved both, and he wrote about both, never patronising his reader either way. He was also among the first critics to see that preferring the former didn’t somehow make one a better, or even a more intelligent, person than preferring the latter.
    In 1982 he gave up writing about TV to spend more time being on TV himself. (“It is time to quit my chair,” he wrote in his valedictory column, “before I find myself reviewing my own programmes.”) But he continued to write literary criticism, the best of which can be found in Reliable Essays, Even As We Speak and The Meaning of Recognition.
    And earlier, on his style, which the writer rather brilliantly compares to Chandler’s Philip Marlowe :
    But the pleasure came not only from the jokes. It came also from the style. Most journalists batter out their copy in a deadline-crazed shower of typos. Clive James refined his prose as though it were poetry. And how it showed: read any article he wrote, and hear the satisfying click with which each succeeding sentence slots inevitably into place. The following line was one of his own favourites, the conclusion to a magisterial essay on George Orwell.
    “To write like him, you need a life like his, but times have changed, and he changed them.”
    Look at that. Two aphorisms in four clauses. Both punchlines doubling back on their respective set-ups. The wit, the precision, the balance. So easy to read. So difficult to write.

  504. Bolton is, an always has been, an arse.
    The upside is that he might make a more convincing witness if dragged along unwillingly to the Senate trial.

  505. A fine essay on the necessity of impeachment.
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/stop-saying-that-impeachment-is-political
    …This, for Burke, was a mortal sin in government. No one could act by “whim” or desire outside a framework of fixed and transparent law. “Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity,” he told the Lords. “Name me a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power, and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power. In every patent of office, the [idea of] duty is included.” All power is bound by duty; no magistrate—or President—can act badly and then just say that they do so by right. Impeachment is not a substitute for politics; it appeals to the principles of law and duty that make politics possible.
    It is the unprecedented gravity of our moment, still perhaps insufficiently felt, that makes this confrontation essential, whatever the political consequences. Pelosi, too, now acknowledges this fact. As she told The New Yorker in September, about Trump, “He has given us no choice. Politics has nothing to do with impeachment, in my view.” The political consequences of impeachment are no longer the primary or even the secondary issue at stake; more important is the survival of the principle of the rule of law against the unashamed assertion of arbitrary power…..

  506. The upside is that he might make a more convincing witness if dragged along unwillingly to the Senate trial.
    If.
    We can hope.

  507. I’m thinking that, whatever the merits (slim to none) of the arguments for ignoring subpoenas from a House committee considering impeachment, once there is an actual trial in progress in the Senate those are gone.
    Not that this necessarily means that Trump won’t try anyway. But I expect the Chief Justice to rule that the witnesses (and documents) must appear. Not to mention that, whatever their views otherwise, Senators are likely to take their own prerogatives to hear witnesses and see documents quite seriously. Never pays to irritate the jury if you are the defendant.

  508. But I expect the Chief Justice to rule that the witnesses (and documents) must appear. Not to mention that, whatever their views otherwise, Senators are likely to take their own prerogatives to hear witnesses and see documents quite seriously.
    I dunno, maybe I should bow to your greater expertise as a longtime observer and an American, but this strikes me as quite naive in the new dispensation of “My leader right or wrong”. And it’s always wrong, and that never makes a difference.

  509. this strikes me as quite naive in the new dispensation of “My leader right or wrong”
    That seems to be characteristic of legislators, and of politicians generally. But the Chief Justice has shown a lot of resistance to what he sees as attacks on the Judiciary — even when Trump was making them. Which leads me to expect that he wouldn’t take kindly to the kind of snub of a subpoena that Trump is making. Especially in what is, in part, HIS courtroom.

  511. I agree with wj on this.
    There are no good legal reasons for ignoring the House’s subpoenas, but the arguments would get dragged through the courts, taking considerable time. That would simply not happen with a trial in the Senate.

  513. “None is so convincing that the GOP can’t ignore.”
    Very true. And yet I hope that doing so will turn out to be a performance of suttee for the lot of them.
    I’ll bring matches.

  514. Which leads me to expect that he wouldn’t take kindly to the kind of snub of a subpoena that Trump is making. Especially in what is, in part, HIS courtroom.
    A courtroom where, under the current Senate rules for impeachment proceedings, any of his rulings can be challenged by any Senator and overturned by a simple majority. I think it would be terrible optics, but that’s me. Subpoenas matter only if the Republican majority let them.
    My standard rule of thumb for the Chief Justice doesn’t apply here. That is, CJ Roberts will rule in favor of large established corporate interests, as he sees them. That leaves me with wj’s thought — Roberts still seems to care about “his” court’s place in history and will work hard to avoid looking like he’s on a side.

  516. For an impeachment trial, the Senate sets its own rules. They may have codified rules, but can decide to alter them for a particular trial — either in advance or even on the fly.
    For example, normally both the House members presenting their case and the defendant would have some ability to call witnesses. But the Senate could decide that one side could subpoena (compel) witnesses, while the other could only ask nicely. Likewise for introducing documentation.
    Fairness of the rules, if any, is entirely up to a majority of tne Senators. The “optics” may be terrible if the rules are skewed enough, but they can do it.

  518. I’m hoping for a “Trial by Combat”.
    Not an option. Bone spurs, you know.
    (And intellectual combat is a non-starter for obvious reasons.)

  519. Maybe his opponent could be Boris Johnson (who is an expert in hiding his actual capacities).
    Otherwise I’d recommend Rod Blagojevich, so their hairpieces could be their individual champions.
    Or a cage fight between Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton (after checking that the former had no secret martial arts training to protect her from daddy’s lust).

  520. An Ivanka/Chelsea fight wouldn’t be a Steel Cage Death Match. It would be bikini mud wrestling.
    And thus do I endumacte Hartmut about the finer points of American “culture”.

  521. Looked up “endumacte” in pursuit of my ongoing ObWi education on e.g. acronyms etc, and no luck with the exception of an incomprehensible semi-googlewhack! However, I’m guessing Snarki might have meant “edumacate”, hitherto unknown word now known (contradiction happily welcomed):
    Edumacated: The term used commonly to poke fun at someone who has made either a spelling or gramatical error whilst trying to appear as a person of intelligence. This is emphasised with the intentional mispronounciation of the word “educated”.

  524. Crikey, I’ve just watched HRC being interviewed on Graham Norton, with Chelsea, to publicise her book. She said she hasn’t absolutely ruled out running again for 2020! I had no idea – lots of you probably did. Jesus, she has guts. But I hope she doesn’t do it, partly because I just couldn’t stand it if Trump beat her again. It would make another four years of Trump even worse, hard though that is to imagine.

  530. By the way, just saw that in countries without easy access to guns, bad guys with knives can be disarmed by good guys with narwhal tusks and fire extinguishers.

  532. Further to which, in these Brexit obsessed times I cannot resist posting this, tweeted by someone called Jakub Krupa:
    2017: a Romanian baker throws crates at terrorists at Borough Market
    2019: a Polish chef chases a terrorist down London Bridge with a narwhal tusk
    Oh, these awful Eastern European migrants.

  536. if narwhal tusks were legal to possess, more people could wield them. crime would cease to exist.
    Never happen. Narwhal tusk manufacturers (i.e. narwhals) don’t have a wealthy advertising (and lobbying) operation….

  537. They had once when their tusks were successfully marketed as unicorn horns throughout Europe. There was, alas, a whistleblower and spoilsport (Jón lærði Guðmundsson) who destroyed the whole business by spilling the beans to the Ol’ Worm of Denmark.

  538. I wonder if she isn’t just messing with Trump’s head here….
    I hope that’s what she’s doing. And I’ll vote for her if the Democratic party is unwise enough to nominate her, because four more years of the Rs running the country will be the end of the country as we have known it, and/or want it to be. It isn’t hard for me to see myself crossing a border permanently in that case, if anyone will have me.
    But.
    An analogy. (Long-winded, sorry.)
    My 96-y.o. mother was taken to the hospital from her little apartment in an over-55 “village” a couple of weeks ago. A few days later she was sent to “rehab.” She is blind (macular degeneration), deaf (hearing aids help), frail, and increasingly confused, plus there are the health problems that sent her to the ER in the first place.
    She will never go back to that apartment, she will either stay in the nursing home after the rehab period is over, or, if a miracle happens, she may be accepted into a small assisted living apartment in the same facility.
    That’s the background.
    For several years running, she had said to me, on my annual fall visit, “Well, this is probably my last winter at [name of where she lives].” (Implication: she knew she should move to assisted living. More hidden implication, which she will never talk about: she may be gone before she has to make that decision.)
    Then, for the past couple of years, she got very angry if assisted living was brought up, and refused to talk about it. This fall she furious with my sister and me for trying to butt in and get her more help in the apartment where she has lived for the past 13 years. She said she’d get more help herself, and we left her to it, and the result of that was the situation she’s in now, which is basically what we knew would happen. She could not manage on her own any more, even with the fair amount of help that she had, and she refused to admit that.
    In hindsight, the change from “this will be my last winter here” to “I’m not leaving here and I won’t talk about it and by the way I’m furious at you for even bringing it up” was a signal that she was losing her ability to assess her situation realistically.
    I hope wj is right that Hillary is just pulling Trump’s chain, because I think a decision on her part to run again would be analagous to my mother’s transition: from being somewhat realistic about her place in the polity to being so wrong-headed that it would be disqualifying for the presidency if any conceivable R alternative weren’t far worse.
    Among other things, it would be an arrogant slap in the face to the candidates who have already been at this for months, and among whom there are several whom I’d be delighted to see as the nominee, and most of the others of whom I’ll vote for happily enough.

  539. So much to say in response to Janie’s post, and excellent analogy (with which I only partly agree) and not enough time to say it in. There’s only enough time to say I’m sorry you’re having tough family times, Janie, and hope they resolve soon with the best possible outcome.
    For anybody still interested, there is a wonderful piece in today’s Observer by Rachel Cooke (who herself wrote beautifully about Larkin) headed Clive James: The Last Interview, in which they discuss Larkin, among other subjects. An extract from the set-up (bold bit one of my favourite ideas in life):
    Claerwen [James’s daughter] and I walked into a room to find Clive listening to Joan Sutherland singing Bellini’s opera Norma. He was in a state that seemed to me to be close to sexual ecstasy: legs apart, head thrown back, a look of pure bliss on his face. I knew nothing of opera then, but as he translated her words for us – he sprang out of his chair to do this – I thought to myself: I’ll have what he’s having, thanks. That recording of Norma was the first opera I ever owned on CD, bought that very week. Clive’s enthusiasm, as bright and as powerful as a Klieg light, could make you want to read, listen to, watch or look at almost anything.
    He was – this has already been said – very, very clever and very, very funny; he had a way of making you see that something could be both ridiculous and magnificent, and ever since I first learned this from him, I’ve always borne it in mind. He had, too, a sybaritic side that I adored. He could squeeze such pleasure from things. I’ve never seen anyone drink a bottle of Jacob’s Creek with so much enjoyment as him; it might as well have been Château Lafite in his glass. I thought of him, always, as deeply generous.

  540. he had a way of making you see that something could be both ridiculous and magnificent
    That pretty well sums up what an Iron Maiden concert is like.

  542. That pretty well sums up what an Iron Maiden concert is like.
    Made me laugh too.
    With a bit more time at my disposal: I suppose my only point of disagreement with Janie is that although she may be right that HRC’s assessment of “her place in the polity” is spectacularly wrongheaded (mainly, in my opinion, because unbelievably underestimating yet again the extent of the hatred for her among large swathes of the electorate), I don’t see this as disqualifying her for POTUS, if only she could be elected (I realise this is a pretty circular argument). I feel personally that since she is clearly very smart, very competent and very experienced she would be a perfectly good (maybe even a very good) POTUS. Not to mention able to observe the norms through which Trump has cut such a wide and destructive swathe. I also think her kind of policy preferences would be pretty good for the US. But my problem is it would be way too risky, given Trump’s rocksolid base, and the amount of Clinton hate there is out there, ready to be fanned into flame at the drop of a hat.
    As for Janie’s last paragraph, about the disrespect it would show to the current D field, this is true, but if she were able to beat Trump more easily than they are, it would be worth it.
    So I also think she shouldn’t run, but mainly because it would weight the result too much in Trump’s favour.

  543. What GftNC said re Clinton.
    I’m not clear on exactly why so many people hate her so much. (Straight misogyny, while doubtless a factor, seem inadequate to explain the depth and breadth.) But there’s no question they do.

  544. a generation of people have been raised on myths that cast HRC as pure evil. and now, all growed-up and stuff, they’re writing the second volume of myths using the older stuff as canon.

  545. a generation of people have been raised on myths that cast HRC as pure evil. and now, all growed-up and stuff, they’re writing the second volume of myths using the older stuff as canon.
    I agree. The Clinton hatred is unaccountable, and would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic e.g. people who are outraged by how “corrupt” she is (no proof given, no evidence ever found after investigation), yet perfectly happy to accept the extraordinary sinkhole of corruption in the White House. But nonetheless, a very substantial percentage of the population believes this stuff, and will be voting.

  546. a generation of people have been raised on myths that cast HRC as pure evil. and now, all growed-up and stuff, they’re writing the second volume of myths using the older stuff as canon.
    I agree. The Clinton hatred is unaccountable, and would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic e.g. people who are outraged by how “corrupt” she is (no proof given, no evidence ever found after investigation), yet perfectly happy to accept the extraordinary sinkhole of corruption in the White House. But nonetheless, a very substantial percentage of the population believes this stuff, and will be voting.

  547. a generation of people have been raised on myths that cast HRC as pure evil
    The same generation, over the same period of time was inculcated with Saddam Hussein being pure evil, and look how that turned out.
    Hillary should count herself lucky, I guess.
    No excuses for either; I really dislike the idea of a ‘hereditary presidency’.

  548. The crescendo of the culture wars has been building for nearly a quarter of a century when Bill Clinton, the avatar of the hippie boomer generation (and his feminist wife) stole the presidency from GHW Bush in 1992. This was also the period of the ascendancy of take no prisoners scorched earth GOP politics as embodied by Newt Gingrich.
    Clinton beat those assholes, and they have never gotten over it.
    The hatred has endured to this day.

  549. My impression is that in American politics one can be either impolitic or triangulating, but one should not be both. The Clintons are both, and the sexism of our culture ensures that Hillary bear the brunt of it for both of them.

  550. The one thing we know for sure about Hillary is that she lost to Trump. She has no business running again.

  551. Bill Clinton . . . stole the presidency from GHW Bush in 1992
    “stole”???
    Unless you think Clinton put Perot up to running, I’m hard pressed to see how that verb applies. (Much as I personally would have preferred Bush to be reelected.)

  553. With mordant irony, I think, wj.
    LOL…thanks, Nigel. Republicans and irony…still strangers after all these years. Apologies, wj, but I could not resist.

  555. speaking of “Read My Lips”:
    We’ve been due for a recession, and it will come. Sadly, it will be exacerbated by Trump’s trade war and the Fed’s war on interest rates, resulting in huge corporate debt.
    If D’s win the election, and the recession hits afterwards, D’s will pay for what Trump has done.
    I was/am horrified/freaked out by Trump. But things are going to get better only where we look for it, because a lot will get worse generally, no matter what happens.

  556. I was/am horrified/freaked out by Trump. But things are going to get better only where we look for it, because a lot will get worse generally, no matter what happens.
    By the way, all of this was predictable in 2010, although some of us held out hope that if all “liberal” or “progressive” people supported Democrats, the worst wouldn’t happen. Sadly, no. For the folks here who were wondering what I was on about, it was this. Sorry! My tone was wrong.

  557. Republicans and irony…still strangers after all these years. Apologies, wj, but I could not resist.
    No offense taken.
    One of the tragedies of the current day, IMHO, is that it’s so hard to tell what is sarcasm vs. what some moron means seriously. (No offense intended. Less of a problem here than most places.)

  558. The market is doing its thing on climate change:
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/02/coal-power-becoming-uninsurable-as-firms-refuse-cover
    The number of insurers withdrawing cover for coal projects more than doubled this year and for the first time US companies have taken action, leaving Lloyd’s of London and Asian insurers as the “last resort” for fossil fuels, according to a new report.
    The report, which rates the world’s 35 biggest insurers on their actions on fossil fuels, declares that coal – the biggest single contributor to climate change – “is on the way to becoming uninsurable” as most coal projects cannot be financed, built or operated without insurance…
    https://rmi.org/press-release/massive-investment-in-battery-technology-accelerating-the-energy-transition/
    …Battery cost and performance improvements are quickly outpacing forecasts: Increasing demand for EVs, grid-tied storage, and other emerging applications are further fueling the cycle of investment and cost declines in batteries and setting the stage for mass adoption. Total manufacturing investment, both previous and planned until 2023, represents around $150 billion dollars, and analysts expect the capital cost for new planned battery-manufacturing capacity to drop by more than half from 2018 to 2023.
    These improvements spell trouble for natural gas and internal combustion engine vehicle markets: As batteries become cheaper and make renewables-plus-storage more competitive, legacy energy infrastructure will struggle to keep up. RMI finds that new—and soon, existing—natural gas plants are likely to be out-competed by clean energy portfolios as early as 2021, leading to a much greater risk of stranded assets. This mirrors a similar risk for traditional ICE vehicles….
    it won’t be fast enough without a great deal of government intervention and money, but it does point out the idiocy of fighting the energy transformation, even if you are a capitalist climate change denier.

  560. Just wait for the GOP to propose a public option for coal insurance.
    The more usual tactic is to act at the state level — where most insurance is regulated — and make it illegal to discriminate against a particular class of large corporate customer. There’s always a risk that all the insurance companies will walk away from the state, but it’s relatively small.

  561. I suspect that the world is still a good way from the peak number of coal plants. The Chinese will build them around the world in spite of what anyone else does.

  562. The more usual tactic is to act at the state level — where most insurance is regulated — and make it illegal to discriminate against a particular class of large corporate customer.
    The fallback, for the insurance companies, is to simply set their insurance prices/rates high enough that coal companies can’t afford them. (Which is likely what Lloyd’s rates would be as well.)
    So we get to government insurance (or subsidies), just with an intermediate step. And since states where coal mining is big tend not to be particularly wealthy, they will push for a Federal solution. No matter what their proclaimed views on Federal intervention in state affairs.

  563. No one is going to build new coal plants in the US.
    Even if Trump is re-elected, a five year timescale doesn’t begin to pay back the investment – and the risk is that they might be inoperable after that.
    China is a conundrum. They have more new coal capacity planned than anyone else, but it might not get built.
    Currently plant utilisation is lower than the rest of the world already:
    https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-coal-power-set-for-record-fall-in-2019
    A world habitable for our grandchildren is on a knife edge.

  565. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table….
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/02/why-trump-cant-take-yes-an-answer/
    Trump and his allies complained about secret proceedings. The proceedings were made public.
    They complained that there was no formal impeachment resolution. A formal resolution was passed.
    They complained that deposition transcripts weren’t released. The transcripts were released.
    And still, no cooperation.
    They complained that Democrats should hurry up and “move on” from impeachment. But as Democrats work to wrap up impeachment quickly, Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, complained Sunday that “we’re rushing this.”
    Now, we have the president’s lawyer complaining that Trump “was allowed absolutely no participation” — and yet refusing to participate when invited. It’s a bit like the administration blocking senior officials from testifying and then complaining that those who did testify lacked “first-hand” experience….

  567. the thing is, the outcome is already known: the Senate will acquit. that gives Trump zero incentive to participate or to defend himself.
    why bother with all that boring legal crap when you can do what you love to do: strut around and mock the Democrats?
    and, if you think he’s bad now. wait til he get acquitted.

  569. God knows what will be left of the justice system should Trump gain another term.
    I’m glad you used the term “gain” rather than “win” which would imply that he might win in a free and fair election. Although he might be defeated, we can be confident that his campaign is mired in illegitimacy.
    This Washington Post graphic novel approach to recounting the Mueller report is interesting.

  570. A splendid Jeremiad against the Republican religious hypocrites:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/donald-trump-modern-day-king-david/602830/
    …It was part of the genius of the Founders of the United States that they understood that by acknowledging religion yet prohibiting its establishment, they were enhancing its moral power. When the faithful draw on their belief to help us see evil for what it is, to mobilize our consciences and steel our hearts to fight against it, they make their country stronger. When they use it to excuse or, worse, glorify their political patrons, they are, as it were, building altars on the high places to baal, and bringing the souls of their followers that much closer to the fires of Moloch.

  573. yeah. i generally liked her.
    oh well, most of them are going to drop out eventually.
    my goal is to not fall in love with any of them, so i don’t get too disappointed if my guy/gal doesn’t make it.

  577. I still like her.
    Her campaign became a mess – not entirely her fault – but she’s talented, and I hope she will be back.

  579. At a minimum, she’ll be a Senator for another 4 years.
    Fingers crossed, knock on wood. All the superstitious things that we should always do. Because apparently we haven’t been taking those things seriously.

  580. All the superstitious things that we should always do.
    Hey, now. I stab my Trump voodoo doll everyday with a hat pin….sometimes more than that.

  581. Hey, now. I stab my Trump voodoo doll everyday with a hat pin….sometimes more than that.
    My bad! Obviously, I haven’t been trying as hard as you.

  582. Harris is out.
    I always thought her early strategy had to be to grab the Hispanic vote and have a huge day in California and Texas on March 3. Then Arizona and Florida two weeks later. So far as I can tell, no one is really targeting the Hispanic vote — almost everything I read about minority voting is about the black vote in South Carolina. Come the general election, no one is going to care about the black vote in SC, but oh, what GOTV for Hispanic voters in Florida could accomplish.

  583. Come the general election, no one is going to care about the black vote in SC
    Black voters nationally will care about outreach to black voters in SC and elsewhere.
    It’s absolutely true that reaching Hispanic voters everywhere (and getting them registered, mainly) would make a huge difference. But motivated black voters move elections. When they stay home, D’s are sunk. Hispanic voters can make a similar splash, but they have to actually do so. We all do. Every single one of us.

  584. I’ve thought from the beginning, even when donating to her campaign, that this was Harris’ shakedown cruise for her next presidential campaign. She was a regional name and she needs to build infrastructure for a national run. Hoping her stumbles don’t do too much damage to that infrastructure.
    If Buttigieg can get past Biden for the role of top centrist in the campaign, he’d do well to nab either Harris or Booker as his running mate. I could see the same for Warren, to be honest.

  585. The candidates could pick up some black votes if they told them that, just like upper-class white parents, they should also be able to choose the schools that their children go to.

  586. if they told them that, just like upper-class white parents, they should also be able to choose the schools that their children go to.
    They’ve been lied to many times. My guess is that they’re on to it.

  587. they should also be able to choose the schools that their children go to
    and when everyone can’t get into last year’s highest-ranked local school?

  588. and when everyone can’t get into last year’s highest-ranked local school?
    My guess is that “black votes” won’t be going to scam artists.

  593. before election interference 2016: GOP says we shouldn’t do anything about it, because of the election
    after election interference 2016: GOP says we shouldn’t do anything about it, because it would help Democrats win elections
    before election interference 2020: GOP says we shouldn’t do anything about it, because of the election
    is anyone unsure about what they’ll say after the 2020 election?

  594. is anyone unsure about what they’ll say after the 2020 election?
    Sure. They’ll say we absolutely have to do something about it because it helped the Democrats with the election. And it’s flat out evil of the Democrats to have not done something about it before the election. 😉

  596. In his column, Max Boot:

    The party’s transformation into a Russian lickspittle makes me sick; “GOP” might as well stand for “Gang of Putin.”

    How far we have fallen, from “Evil Empire” to this.

  598. “Ivory tower” will be a prominent feature of conservative discourse over the next few days.
    FWIW, all of this is basically theater. It’s not necessarily bad theater, or an illegitimate exercise because it’s theater. But everybody in the room, and most people listening or watching, already knows what they think about all of this. Nobody’s mind is being changed by the public hearings, they are purely to put information in the public record and establish legitimacy.
    The House is going to bring articles of impeachment, on a party-line vote, most likely a 100% party line vote.
    The Senate is going to decline to remove the POTUS from office, on a similarly party-line vote.
    People who support Trump have basically always supported Trump, and will continue to support Trump.
    People who don’t, basically never have, and never will.
    How that all plays out in 2020 is kind of a coin toss.
    The lack of confidence and trust in national government and public institutions in general will persist, no matter who wins. The fact that Trump continues to command support from something like 40% of the country tells me this place is broken in much deeper ways than are going to be addressed or resolved by the impeachment, the subsequent trial in the Senate, or the 2020 election, no matter how any of those things turn out.

  599. People who support Trump have basically always supported Trump, and will continue to support Trump.
    You overlook those (e.g. Senator Graham) who loudly and vocally opposed Trump. Until he won. Not quite “always supported”.
    Also, I would bet that, by 2030, at least 2/3 of the 40% of voters who persist in supporting Trump today will maintain that they never supported him. (The rest, of course, will be like those who, even today, are true believers in the Lost Cause.*)
    * For those outside the US, “the Lost Cause” is how those who still believe in it refer to the South in the Civil War.

  600. The fact that Trump continues to command support from something like 40% of the country tells me this place is broken in much deeper ways than are going to be addressed or resolved by the impeachment, the subsequent trial in the Senate, or the 2020 election, no matter how any of those things turn out.
    Of course, this is true. I do think it’s a good moment to see how Democratic and Republican representatives are behaving, and to just keep in mind what’s at stake here. No, impeachment won’t fix it. It’s unlikely the election will fix it, even if it goes well for us. But we have to begin the process of figuring out how to fix it. We do have to fix it, and we should start diagnosing the actual disease (not just the symptoms) and the possible cure.
    I know we talk about tribalism, authoritarianism, propaganda, racism and other manifestations of the Republican disease. Although those things have always been with us, it seems that the lip service that used to be paid to democracy and democratic institutions kept us from falling off the cliff. Why have Republicans all but abandoned that? There’s something that we just haven’t identified yet that have put us in this frightening and unsustainable place. I don’t think we’re helpless to make things better, but it has to be a long and sustained effort with a lot of discipline. I think that Russia has moved the needle a lot more than we have acknowledged, which accounts for Graham.

  601. This is not a threat against anyone’s life, but a demographic statement. What will fix our politics is death. Trump supporters will die off faster than the American population at large, mostly because they’re older, but also because they are less healthy. A decent percentage in the next decade.

  602. Although those things have always been with us, it seems that the lip service that used to be paid to democracy and democratic institutions kept us from falling off the cliff. Why have Republicans all but abandoned that?
    I think what it comes down to is this. In Trump they, specifically their voters, have found someone analogous to Jim Jones. Someone to follow with blind faith (thus avoiding both the effort of thinking for themselves and the responsibility for their own actions),
    At least he hasn’t announced that they all need to commit suicide. Yet. On the other hand, if he loses the election, all bets are off.

  603. i don’t know if any of you have encountered the latest wingnut fever dreams regarding US Atty John Durham, or not. but he was picked by Barr to see if there was anything wrong with how the Russia investigations ultimately started. wingnutland has been crowing about how Durham was going to take down the entire deep state and totally exonerate Trump (again!), etc., etc..
    well…
    not looking like that’s gonna hap’n

  604. At least he hasn’t announced that they all need to commit suicide. Yet.
    i’m seriously surprised he hasn’t told his cult to start killing his Enemies. yet.

  605. Please indulge we while I engage in a little wild optimism.
    I note two things. First, there are persistant reports that GOP members of Congress are privately disgusted with Trump. Second, the last couple of days saw multiple Republican Senators saying flat out that Ukraine didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, but Russia did. That is, Trump’s narrative on that is bullsh*t.
    Now suppose you are a Republican Senator** who has listened to/seen the publicly available evidence and knows damn well that Trump’s guilty. What do you do?
    Well what you don’t do is stand up right now and say so. All that gets you is weeks of pressure from Trump and his idolizers. Instead, you mostly keep quiet; maybe you even make a few minor supportive statements. Then, when the moment comes for the actual vote in the Senate, you do what must be done. It still gets howls of outrage from the true believers, of course. But chances are, by the next election, most of them will have new grievances to distract them.
    Likely? Probably not. At least not in the numbers required for actual removal. But then again….
    ** Apologies to anyone whose brain exploded as a result!

  606. My bet: there will be 0-2 GOP senators voting for removing Trump from office.
    Depending on the circumstances Susan Collins will get the permission from the Moss Cow Midge to do so in order to save her seat. If there is another one, it will be one of those retiring anyway. No GOP senator (apart from Collins) trying to get re-elected will vote against Jabba-Bonk.

  607. my guess is that they’re figuring that if they maintain total party unity, it will reinforce the lie that the whole thing is a purely partisan revenge stunt. and that will create enough doubt that they can hide under it.
    if one or two defect, it breaks that illusion. so i don’t think McConnell will be giving anyone permission. Trump certainly won’t, and he’s what they fear most.

  608. If even 2 (R) Senators vote to remove Trump from office, I’ll be astounded.
    The POTUS is corrupt, in ways that compromise his office and the country, and has been demonstrated to be so in the public record, repeatedly.
    And there is no effective remedy, because his party will get his back to the bitter end. We all just have to live with it, until at least January 2021, if not beyond.
    The nation is basically defenseless against an executive who is both thoroughly unscrupulous, and popular enough to win the Electoral College. There doesn’t appear to be a way to fix that is politically feasible, and also doesn’t break a lot of other stuff.
    So, we all get to share Marty’s sh*t sandwich. Yummy!
    Show up and vote next November, and in the meantime do what you can to mitigate the worst excesses of this venal clown show wherever you can.

  609. my guess is that they’re figuring that if they maintain total party unity, it will reinforce the lie that the whole thing is a purely partisan revenge stunt.
    I expect that’s McConnell’s take. The thing is, if a couple do defect, it could cascade. That kind of cascade is what we saw with Nixon.
    Today’s Republicans are more intimidated. And I think that likely to delay them coming out of the closet. But not, perhaps (repeat perhaps), enough to stop them altogether – “permission” or not. Still, as noted, a low probability, super-optimistic possibility. But not impossible.

  610. As I said the only calculation that would yield any GOP ‘defection’ would be an assumed certain loss of a senate seat (i.e. potentially Collins) or an angry ‘I am out of here, go to hell everyone!’ from someone who has no need to stay in the party leadership’s good graces because (s)he is really retiring for good and not on the lookout for a lucrative position afterwards (i.e. a true parting shot).
    Imo 0 is the likeliest outcome, 1 a non-negligible probability, 2 very unlikely and more than 2 practically zero.

  611. i wouldn’t even defect then. it would mean spending the rest of my life having to worry that some Republican vigilante is going to burn my house down or hang my dog to make me pay for blaspheming against St Trumpus.

  618. Matt Gaetz: “You actually can impeach a former President, FWIW”
    hmm… maybe the House Dems could keep an Article in their back pocket for later…

  620. “ A reminder there are vile regimes that Trump is not friends with.”
    Yes, we can all be overjoyed that Trump has imposed brutal sanctions that are meant to target the civilian population, in hopes of creating unrest with the brutal regime then cracking down and murdering hundreds of people. We can then condemn them and pose as defenders of freedom. Win, win. Well done,President Trump. Here at least he is acting within the broad mainstream of American foreign policy.
    https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/10/29/iran-sanctions-threatening-health

  621. SURE a former president could be impeached. It would just have to result in a lifetime ban on holding any further federal office.
    Why, there wasn’t any actual constitutional barrier to impeaching Trump *before he was elected*, with a lifetime bar on holding office. If the GOPers really, really REALLY didn’t like Trump, they could have done it: they held the House in 2016, a majority in the Senate, and I’d bet that nearly all of the Dems would join in voting to convict.
    So, if ever Dems get 2/3 of the Senate, a prophylactic impeachment of everyone who voted for Trump would be my choice.
    Either that, or crucifixion. Their choice.

  624. The Swans
    haha!! took me right back to days of listening to Glen Branca while wondering why my head hurt so much.
    beautiful painful loud noise.

  625. Planet flaming asshole.
    So, this planet then…
    Sunny Side Down: Avengers’ Josh Brolin’s bum is left ‘crazy burned’ after trying controversial ‘perineum sunning’ wellness trend

  627. The thing is, if a couple do defect, it could cascade. That kind of cascade is what we saw with Nixon.
    That ‘kind of cascade’ was driven by the total collapse of Nixon’s public support. Otherwise, the GOP was all in for him up until that moment.
    Absent that kind of cascade, it will remain total political civil war increasingly driven by those who don’t care to take any prisoners.
    Batten down the hatches.

  628. Certainly it’s a low probability scenario. Depending as it does on the GOP’s leaders making the radical decision to actually lead, rather than following the polls like sheep.

  630. But we have to look forward, not back.
    For openers, neither Bush no Obama are currently President. Trump, unfortunately, is.

  631. Just here to validate both the Iron Maiden comments earlier and the Swans reference. Y’all make me feel at home.
    And it’s Year End List time on the music websites, which means I’ll be discovering all manner of good new stuff that was under my radar during the year. I’ve got nine tabs open to bandcamp already as reminders to chase down what I’ve found.
    At least the Great American Meltdown and the Holocene Climapocalypse will have a good soundtrack. Blackened psychedelic post-metal drone for the death of mankind.

  632. I am fine with impeaching Trump. It would set a nice precedent. But we have a bunch of slime ball CIA people running around posturing as a Trump opponents, including John Brennan. Is there a statute of limitations on war crimes and covering up for war crimes
    The CIA committed war crimes. They destroyed some of the evidence. They spied on Congress when they were being investigated and the Obama Administration sided with them. Nothing was done. There really truly are unaccountable bureaucrats in the government and some liberals have made heroes of our wonderful intelligence agencies.
    The rule of law is a joke in this country and even if a Trump is impeached and convicted and booted from office, this will not change.

  633. The rule of law is a joke in this country and even if a Trump is impeached and convicted and booted from office, this will not change.
    Of course, no matter what the issue, any single step in the right direction must be utterly scorned if it does not involve a total solution.
    /sarcasm
    I confess I really do not understand the all-or-nothing mindset.

  634. https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1202784879957729280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1202784879957729280&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2019%2F12%2Flinks-12-8-19.html
    The “all or nothing” mindset is simply your dismissive description.
    The actual mindset is this. People who are morally outraged about the rule of law when it is politically convenient are not truly concerned about the rule of law and many of us know this. It actually leads to less respect for the rule of law. It is seen as what it is— a political weapon to be deployed when convenient, but otherwise ignored. Trump is hated because he doesn’t break the law the way it is supposed to be broken— with decorum. He is crude and open and contemptuous of the niceties. This actually matters, but so does the fact that lawbreaking in DC is more of a norm than we admit.
    Note that Nancy Pelosi says quite explicitly that she knew the Bush Administration was lying about the WMDs —the professed legal basis for starting the Iraq War,—but she did not think this was an impeachable offense.
    Literally launching a war of aggression on false pretenses is not impeachable. This from the current top Democratic politician in the country.
    I don’t want all or nothing. I want people to stop sending signals to politicians that it is okay for them to think like Pelosi. There should be widespread discussion about how there are greater crimes than Ukrainegate that went unpunished and which people don’t even label as crimes.

  635. There should be widespread discussion about how there are greater crimes than Ukrainegate that went unpunished and which people don’t even label as crimes.
    Take or teach a history class?

  637. There should be widespread discussion about how there are greater crimes than Ukrainegate that went unpunished and which people don’t even label as crimes.
    maybe there should be.
    but Trump is going to be impeached, nonetheless.

  638. maybe there should be.
    There actually is, and has been, among people who care about things – a lot of us started commenting here during the Bush era, exactly to discuss things like this.
    It’s interesting to me that Nancy Pelosi is the alleged villain cited as anti-rule-of-law. This doesn’t seem a discussion of what crimes should or shouldn’t go unpunished as much as an exercise in whataboutism.
    Pelosi spoke out strongly against the Bush-era abuses. Impeachment wasn’t going to fly, and she didn’t pursue it. During the Obama years, we certainly talked about the value and feasibility of locking people up for torture policies and financial crimes.
    Probably the best way to start holding people accountable is to start now holding them accountable instead of blaming our most honorable politicians for failing to do the impossible during an earlier time.

  640. I’m pretty “all or nothing” when it comes to torture.
    As in, two ways to rid the USA of the propensity to use torture:
    1. Give the the torturers, all of them, from Dubya on down, the ‘Nuremberg Treatment’: trial, conviction, short drop, long dangle.
    2. Expand torture to track down RW terroistic violence and collaboration with Russia. Start with Terry Nichols, already in federal custody for OK city bombing terrorism, and roll up the entire network. My bet? You waterboard Nichols long enough and he’ll mutter the word ‘Cheney’.
    All of the willful blindness in the past 15 years have just made it certain that the torture disease will re-erupt. It has to be burned out.

  641. I think we keep proving that our government works. Bush didn’t deserve impeachment,Clinton did but not removal, same is true for Trump, Nixon got what he deserved ,Pelosi has a pretty good sense of all that, Mitch has been quiet during the hearings because he does too.
    This could really be hurting our country more but I think Pelosi and McConnell are managing their bases expectations so we will get over this.
    Both expect Trump will be gone next year anyway.

  642. Snarki, I’m not suggesting that we take a single step and stop. I’m saying that we shouldn’t refuse to take that single step and wait until we can do the whole journey at once. Especially when there is some doubt that achieving a complete solution is even possible in our lifetime.
    I completely agree on torture. But even if burning it out doesn’t include life sentences for everyone involved in it in the past few decades, it would still be worth doing.
    What I hear Donald saying, quite clearly, is “there’s no point in impeaching Trump if we don’t punish everybody who did as bad or worse things in previous administrations.” And I just can’t see that.

  643. What I hear Donald saying, quite clearly, is “there’s no point in impeaching Trump if we don’t punish everybody who did as bad or worse things in previous administrations.” And I just can’t see that.
    wj,
    I do not feel that Donald is making that argument. What I hear is, “Others have done as bad or worse and gotten away with it, and we should recognize it for what it is….a deep political disease afflicting our country.” This is a fairly standard lefty critique.
    What snarki said, except I’m not a fan of his #2. If we cross that moral line and do the same as the evil ones, then it should be a public spectacle. Cheney, Bush, and Yoo should be stripped naked and waterboarded on national TV and everybody forced to watch and see for themselves how “harmless” it is. Hell, they might even confess.
    Clinton should not have been impeached. It was a right wing smear job. Congressional censure would have been enough. Bush lied us into a war. He should have been impeached. I don’t see Mitch’s silence as “managing the base”. I mean, really? But I do hope Marty is right about us “getting over this”. Time, as they say, will tell.

  644. This is an example of the deep, and commonly overlooked damage Trump is inflicting. His administration is doing similar things at EPA, Education, Interior, etc. Left untouched…our bloated military.
    This is not “draining the swamp”. It is, in conjunction with a fanatically wingnut judiciary, the crowning achievement of dismantling the New Deal and a return to a new Gilded Age.

  645. This is an example of the deep, and commonly overlooked damage Trump is inflicting.
    Overlooked in some circles. I’m pretty sure that the destruction of our institutional knowledge and expertise is noticed (and applauded) by the libertarian fanatics among the Republican donors and supporters. It is, after all, why the love Trump so much more than other GOP politicians.

  646. “ What I hear Donald saying, quite clearly, is “there’s no point in impeaching Trump if we don’t punish everybody who did as bad or worse things in previous administrations.””
    Not really. I do think that if we only invoke the rule of law when it is politically convenient it contributes to the cynicism people feel about government. Everything, including facts, becomes partisan.
    We should impeach Trump, if possible. He is breaking the norm that Presidents shouldn’t be openly corrupt. I’m not being sarcastic in saying that there really is some value to the tribute that vice pays to virtue. It is better to have a hypocritical society rather than one where our Presidents are open lawbreakers. ( I need to qualify that. I think they already are open lawbreakers, but people don’t see it when it comes to war crimes. We as a society only see the lesser crimes. Still, at least we see some things as crimes and it is a step backwards to throw away the pathetic norms we have.)
    We tend to slide downhill. So Trump has set the bar permanently lower unless rebuked in some fashion.
    But I am saying our political culture is corrupt and the problem is deeper than one incredibly narcissistic buffoon. And Pelosi didn’t say she couldn’t impeach Bush then. She said what Bush did, misrepresenting the evidence on WMD’s, didn’t merit impeachment. But it was a much worse crime than Ukrainegate by any rational standard. Starting a war on false pretenses is, if I understand correctly, a crime against humanity. Bush got away with it. I suspect Pelosi doesn’t think it was a crime because many politicians in both parties were complicit. Plus American politicians and the foreign policy “ blob” have a vested interest in pretending that only foreigners ( the ones who are our enemies at the moment) can be war criminals.
    As for torture, this was just five years ago that the Senate investigated and the CIA spied on them. People like John Brennan should be in jail. I don’t usually watch the pbs Newshour because it makes me angry, but I saw people associated with the movie “ The Report” a week or two ago and they presented it as a success story, because the report came out. Well, no. The CIA destroyed much of the evidence, the CIA spied on Congress and people got away with it. In this case there really was a deep state of unaccountable bureaucrats. The term “ deep state” isn’t generally useful because there isn’t some giant secretive organization controlling everything, but it kinda fits in this case.

  647. She said what Bush did, misrepresenting the evidence on WMD’s, didn’t merit impeachment.
    No, she didn’t.

  648. Yes, it’s true, during the Bush years, no-one here ever spoke out inopposition to the torture regime, or about the fabrication of evidence justifying the invasion of Iraq.
    Nobody ever critcized Obama for his ‘look forward, not back’ approach to dealing with that legacy.
    C’mon, man.
    I think we keep proving that our government works
    The proof of that will be the removal of Trump from office.

  649. Overlooked in some circles. I’m pretty sure that the destruction of our institutional knowledge and expertise is noticed (and applauded) by the libertarian fanatics among the Republican donors and supporters.
    And don’t forget how happy it’s making America’s enemies!
    As for the first part of that LGM/GQ article (I haven’t read the rest yet), surprise surprise (sarcasm).
    The DCM (deputy chief of mission) in London is the diplomat who actually runs the whole thing, because the Ambassador is a political appointee who normally knows nothing, and just does all the ceremonial stuff etc. I’m not a bit surprised that Woody Johnson fired Lukens: he (WJ) is a halfwit (as amply revealed in a recent documentary about the US embassy in London) who, among other feats, was the first to raise the inclusion of the NHS in any trade talks. Lukens is, by that account and also clearly by his position, an experienced diplomat doing his actual job in trying to keep relations between the two good countries good. Of course Johnson fired him.

  650. “ Nobody ever critcized Obama for his ‘look forward, not back’ approach to dealing with that legacy.
    C’mon, man.“
    I see people saying it is absolutely necessary that Trump be impeached even if he won’t be removed from office because we need t establish a line. It is the principle of the thing. Was that the majority Democratic view regarding war crimes? I don’t even think it was the majority view here. Countrywide, once Obama came in, interest in war crimes died. Obama committed his own.
    “ No, she didn’t.”
    Bull crap.
    Once Obama came into offfice, look f

  651. because we need t establish a line.
    I think in general the objections to Trump have to do with his personal corruption, his welcoming and even solicitation of foreign interference in US elections, and his absolute refusal to honor and respond to any attempt at oversight.
    So, lines.
    There are other lines that could be drawn, for instance actions that are arguably war crimes. As a nation, and across most political lines, those appear to be lines we are less interested in drawing.
    I think that’s the point you’re trying to make here, if not I am more than open to correction. In any case, whether it is or is not the point you’re trying to make, it’s not a point I have any disagreement with.

  652. I guess it’s good timing that this discussion is going on when the story breaks on lies spanning multiple administrations about the war in Afghanistan.

  653. He the Donald plans to use actual hands-on war criminals in his 2020 campaign. The same 3 ones he meddled with military justice for. I assume William Calley is not considered suitable anymore since he apologized for his deeds in 2009 (and He the Donald may like apologists but not those that apologize since that shows weakness).

  654. Here, btw, is Pelosi saying the other day that she didn’t think Bush’s misrepresentations on Iraqi weapons were an impeachable offense.
    https://mobile.twitter.com/indymaring/status/1204048948975022080
    I think I linked it above as well.
    On Trump, yes, I think he is being terrible in new ways. It actually does matter that Presidents accept oversight and aren’t openly corrupt. Being hypocritical at least acknowledges that there are norms that shouldn’t be crossed. Trump is shredding them.
    It will be hard to go back. OTOH, I don’t really want to go back to “ normal”, as I think normal was awful.

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