2020 American Political Scene

[GVChamp]

Your tax cut? The one that threw a few pennies at your feet, for a few years?

Destroying (?) ISIS while throwing America's allies into the furnace?

Slapping sanctions on Iran...that are effectively meaningless?

North Korea stopped their missile tests? In what reality? And Trump did this without bringing the US to the brink of war with North Korea?

Trump normalized relations with Israel...or was it (like most things Trump) not as great as it sounds?

Crap ton of good judges....yeah, as long as you're a right-winger that believes the president is above all law, or that policing a woman's body is just fine and dandy or that gays shouldn't be allowed to get married.

Allowing Keystone? DAPL? Clean Power Plan? Yeah if you're into poisoning the soil and water that people depend on, yeah Trump's great for that, for sure.

An ACA revision? Never mind a "revision", how about the complete new healthcare plan that Trump said we would be signing "within two weeks"....back in JULY?

Yeah, Trump's done so much for Americans.

If you don't like any of those things, you're not center-right, or just generally misinformed, or just generally contrarian against whoever happens to be in the office at the time. I suspect the last, but it doesn't really matter. If you don't want your crummy pennies, you can feel free to send them to me.

From the actual center-right perspective, portions of Trump's tax cuts have a good chance of becoming permanent (same way the Bush tax cuts did). Those oil pipelines are substantially safer than many existing oil pipelines and will bring in some extra dollars. If you think gays should be married, whatever, that's the law of the land now, but that was an extreme liberal position until relatively recently, so you really shouldn't be surprised that fantastic jurists like Clarence Thomas are not persuaded by your online temper tantrums and will hold to their original views, since there was no Constitutional amendment passed in the last decade. Not to mention a huge warping of the actual position, which is that states (including blue states like California) should not have their marriage laws tossed out by the Supreme Court based on stuff that's not actually written in the law and the writers of said law did not think was in there. If Massachusetts wants to allow gay marriage, go for it.

Lessee...president above the law...okay, that's a mischaracterization, too. First, those were 7-2 decisions, which means even LIBERAL justices disagree with you. Which means, again, not a lot of center-right in your posts, please go ask Bernie and Warren how the fall leaves are in New England while you're up there. On the merits, the decision seems pretty reasonable, Congress shouldn't be able to just launch fishing expeditions against people it doesn't like, particularly the President. That's not saying the President is above the law, it's saying Congress doesn't have unlimited power.

Whatever health plan gets passed ultimately cannot be just Trump's plan, it has to get the votes necessary to pass the Senate. As ACA demonstrated when it was passed, massive schemes floated by the executive aren't going to get anywhere, they need to go through the sausage-making process to arrive at a final bill, and fringe senators like Lieberman, Manchin, McCain, Murkowsi, etc get a lot of say over the final bill.

TBM,
I am absolutely center-right, especially against the broad spectrum of the country. I am hard-right amongst Millennials, since so many of THEM are basically commies, but that's a generatonal measurement. People are my ideological tempermanent tend to vote for Hillary and Biden, if my Twitter and Facebook are any indication.

I am, however, hyper-partisan. I may be center-right, but I am NOT voting for Democrats. I think the people of my ideological stripe who ARE voting for Biden are ultimately short-sighted fools, and it is highly amusing to see them rail against what they see as excesses: all of those will get worse under Biden, just like they got worse under Obama, despite Obama portraying himself as a technocratic moderate.

[astralis]

If you don't like any of those things, you're not center-right, or just generally misinformed, or just generally contrarian against whoever happens to be in the office at the time. I suspect the last, but it doesn't really matter. If you don't want your crummy pennies, you can feel free to send them to me.

From the actual center-right perspective, portions of Trump's tax cuts have a good chance of becoming permanent (same way the Bush tax cuts did). Those oil pipelines are substantially safer than many existing oil pipelines and will bring in some extra dollars. If you think gays should be married, whatever, that's the law of the land now, but that was an extreme liberal position until relatively recently, so you really shouldn't be surprised that fantastic jurists like Clarence Thomas are not persuaded by your online temper tantrums and will hold to their original views, since there was no Constitutional amendment passed in the last decade. Not to mention a huge warping of the actual position, which is that states (including blue states like California) should not have their marriage laws tossed out by the Supreme Court based on stuff that's not actually written in the law and the writers of said law did not think was in there. If Massachusetts wants to allow gay marriage, go for it.

Lessee...president above the law...okay, that's a mischaracterization, too. First, those were 7-2 decisions, which means even LIBERAL justices disagree with you. Which means, again, not a lot of center-right in your posts, please go ask Bernie and Warren how the fall leaves are in New England while you're up there. On the merits, the decision seems pretty reasonable, Congress shouldn't be able to just launch fishing expeditions against people it doesn't like, particularly the President. That's not saying the President is above the law, it's saying Congress doesn't have unlimited power.

Whatever health plan gets passed ultimately cannot be just Trump's plan, it has to get the votes necessary to pass the Senate. As ACA demonstrated when it was passed, massive schemes floated by the executive aren't going to get anywhere, they need to go through the sausage-making process to arrive at a final bill, and fringe senators like Lieberman, Manchin, McCain, Murkowsi, etc get a lot of say over the final bill.

TBM,
I am absolutely center-right, especially against the broad spectrum of the country. I am hard-right amongst Millennials, since so many of THEM are basically commies, but that's a generatonal measurement. People are my ideological tempermanent tend to vote for Hillary and Biden, if my Twitter and Facebook are any indication.

I am, however, hyper-partisan. I may be center-right, but I am NOT voting for Democrats. I think the people of my ideological stripe who ARE voting for Biden are ultimately short-sighted fools, and it is highly amusing to see them rail against what they see as excesses: all of those will get worse under Biden, just like they got worse under Obama, despite Obama portraying himself as a technocratic moderate.

see, I think this is simply short-term thinking, even if you're taking a center-right perspective.

IE, if we look back to 2016, a Clinton Presidency would have almost certainly led to continued bleeding of Congressional Dems, not to mention state governors; the highest probability chance would have been absolute legislative gridlock, with the GOP holding the House and Senate for the entire Presidency.

on the state level, same thing.

with vacancies on the Supreme Court, Clinton by inclination and by political reality would have been forced to choose moderates like Garland.

there would certainly be no talk of blowing up the legislative filibuster, or packing the Supreme Court, etc.

Clinton would likely have been either a one-term President, or win a second term by the skin of her teeth, which would mean continued bleeding at the legislative levels...just in time for the 2020 census, which would have slaughtered Dems for another 10 years-- probably worse, because the GOP would control the levers of apportionment even more than previously. that would have probably offset Dem demographic gains. my God, the Dems would probably be at 160-170 House seats right now, and 40 Senate seats in this scenario.

instead, with Trump, -South Carolina- is in play at the Senate level; there's a Dem Senator from -Alabama-.

the way things are going, we're likely going to end up with Dems have 240-250 seats in the House, maybe even 260 if we get lucky; LIKELY 51 or 52 seats in the Senate, and 53-54 if we get lucky. at the Presidential level, Trump will likely be defeated as bad as Dole was in '96; with a bit of luck, as bad as Mike Dukakis in '88.

and, by God, I hope shortly thereafter we'll see the destruction of the legislative filibuster and at a minimum, DC and Puerto Rico as states.

plus, with the Trump family still kicking around, Dems will certainly not go back to sleep.

I don't think tax cuts and the judges are a good trade off.

[tbm3fan]

TBM,
I am absolutely center-right, especially against the broad spectrum of the country. I am hard-right amongst Millennials, since so many of THEM are basically commies, but that's a generatonal measurement. People are my ideological tempermanent tend to vote for Hillary and Biden, if my Twitter and Facebook are any indication.

I am, however, hyper-partisan. I may be center-right, but I am NOT voting for Democrats. I think the people of my ideological stripe who ARE voting for Biden are ultimately short-sighted fools, and it is highly amusing to see them rail against what they see as excesses: all of those will get worse under Biden, just like they got worse under Obama, despite Obama portraying himself as a technocratic moderate.

I must correct myself and removed center from center right. The first clue was "so many of them are basically commies" There are very few commies in this country compared to fascists by a wide, wide margin. Now while there are some things about Millennials that bug me being commie is not one of them as I see very few through my glasses compared to what you see through your blinders. The next clue was everything else you said which looks like it was lifted off a FOX website therefore making it babble.

[TopHatter]

If you don't like any of those things, you're not center-right, or just generally misinformed, or just generally contrarian against whoever happens to be in the office at the time. I suspect the last, but it doesn't really matter. If you don't want your crummy pennies, you can feel free to send them to me.

From the actual center-right perspective, portions of Trump's tax cuts have a good chance of becoming permanent (same way the Bush tax cuts did). Those oil pipelines are substantially safer than many existing oil pipelines and will bring in some extra dollars. If you think gays should be married, whatever, that's the law of the land now, but that was an extreme liberal position until relatively recently, so you really shouldn't be surprised that fantastic jurists like Clarence Thomas are not persuaded by your online temper tantrums and will hold to their original views, since there was no Constitutional amendment passed in the last decade. Not to mention a huge warping of the actual position, which is that states (including blue states like California) should not have their marriage laws tossed out by the Supreme Court based on stuff that's not actually written in the law and the writers of said law did not think was in there. If Massachusetts wants to allow gay marriage, go for it.

Lessee...president above the law...okay, that's a mischaracterization, too. First, those were 7-2 decisions, which means even LIBERAL justices disagree with you. Which means, again, not a lot of center-right in your posts, please go ask Bernie and Warren how the fall leaves are in New England while you're up there. On the merits, the decision seems pretty reasonable, Congress shouldn't be able to just launch fishing expeditions against people it doesn't like, particularly the President. That's not saying the President is above the law, it's saying Congress doesn't have unlimited power.

Whatever health plan gets passed ultimately cannot be just Trump's plan, it has to get the votes necessary to pass the Senate. As ACA demonstrated when it was passed, massive schemes floated by the executive aren't going to get anywhere, they need to go through the sausage-making process to arrive at a final bill, and fringe senators like Lieberman, Manchin, McCain, Murkowsi, etc get a lot of say over the final bill.

TBM,
I am absolutely center-right, especially against the broad spectrum of the country. I am hard-right amongst Millennials, since so many of THEM are basically commies, but that's a generatonal measurement. People are my ideological tempermanent tend to vote for Hillary and Biden, if my Twitter and Facebook are any indication.

I am, however, hyper-partisan. I may be center-right, but I am NOT voting for Democrats. I think the people of my ideological stripe who ARE voting for Biden are ultimately short-sighted fools, and it is highly amusing to see them rail against what they see as excesses: all of those will get worse under Biden, just like they got worse under Obama, despite Obama portraying himself as a technocratic moderate.

I'm going to guess that you didn't actually look at the links provided. You mentioned you're quite busy, so I'll spell things out right here:

Unnecessary tax cuts cause the deficit to balloon? No, I don't like the deficit to balloon. Not sure how liking that would make me center right. Also, my taxes apparently went up so I don't even have a few pennies to add to yours. You say they have a chance to become permanent. Well, give me a call when they do. Because right now it's only corporations and the wealthy that have permanent ones in the bag, not you or I.

The oil pipelines aren't safer than existing ones because I'm fairly certain that the Keystone 1 Pipeline that leaked about 383,040 gallons of oil wasn't exactly "safe". That's just one example but I don't know if you have time or the care to read any more. Not sure how liking a 383,000 gallon oil leak would make me center right.

No, ISIS is not defeated and they are in fact growing again. And, no, I don't like it when America's allies are thrown into the furnace. Not sure how liking that would make me center right.

No, thinking that gays should be allowed to get married if they want was not only an "extreme liberal" position. It's also a libertarian position. Also I've never once spoken even passionately about gay marriage until now, let alone "temper tantrums", but by all means, please provide WAB links to where I have.

No, "president above the law" is not a mischaracterization. It's literally what Trump and his lawyers have been arguing all the way up to the Supreme Court. This is not a liberal or media talking point, as surfgun likes to pretend. To repeat: It's literally what Trump and his lawyers have been arguing all the way up to the Supreme Court. This is part of the court record.

And, I'm not sure what SCOTUS decision that you're talking about because no liberal judge disagreed with me. They disagreed with what Trump and his lawyers have been arguing all along: That the President is immune from prosecution (to say nothing of "mere" investigation) up to and including the President shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. In other words, Trump and his lawyers argued that the President is above the law. I mean, what would you call it if someone was immune to everything from murder charges on down to a jaywalking citation?

Healthcare has to get passed through the Senate? True! But you're putting the cart before the horse here. You have to have a plan, even a basic framework of a plan, to put before the Senate and Trump has spent the last 4 years doing fuck all about presenting a plan....other than lying about it with every breath. He Has No Plan And He Never Did.

[TopHatter]

Art of the Crazy: Trump’s Insane Twitter Negotiations
About last night’s eruption of more than 40 drug-induced tweets and retweets.

When I look at President Trump’s Twitter-centric negotiation over the possibility of a second COVID-19 stimulus package in the past 24 hours, I just gotta say, I think he might be fouling this up.

I know, I know.

He is the Great Negotiator. He “wrote” a whole book on the subject, you may have heard of it.

And here I am, a liberal arts major. A person who did not not go to Wharton Business School while pretending that I did. I’m no businessman (I don’t “Think Big” enough). I am merely a humble writer-at-large for a niche political webmagazine who is poor to quite poor at salary negotiations.

So I freely admit that maybe there is a method to the madness that I do not understand, having neither been versed in Jack Welch’s Six Sigma nor spun the wheel of domination.

But speaking as a novice, this stimulus negotiation looks like an epic self-own on par with bankrupting a casino or selling steaks in a home electronics store. For those who aren’t juiced up on steroids or slamming dexamethasone, it might be hard to keep up, so let’s look at how Tuesday’s absolutely bonkers self-negotiations played out on our nation’s premiere microblogging platform.

For the last few months, Democrats and Republicans have been—slowly, distractedly—fighting over the details of a supplemental COVID stimulus package that would address the severe economic hardships brought upon many families and businesses by the pandemic. On Tuesday, the president, who had been largely absent from these discussions previously, crashed through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man in an attempt to demonstrate his mediation prowess.

First, around 2:30 p.m., he executed one of his patented gambits straight out of Art of the Deal:

"Know when to walk away from the table." The Art of the Deal

The “economic populist” timed this power move on the heels of a conversation with Austerity-for-Thee Cocaine Mitch, blindsiding his own advisers (element of surprise!) in a series of tweets announcing that he will end negotiations on the stimulus package until after the election. As part of the tweetstorm, he also kindly ensured that people are aware that Nancy Pelosi wanted to pass a munificent $2.4 trillion in aid for people still struggling through a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Here—within half an hour after his tweeting began—is how the stock market responded to his announcement:




So, as an opening bid, it left a little bit to be desired, I would say. Jonathan Chait, another non-businessman mind you, called it “the worst political blunder in history.” A tad dramatic maybe, but not a great sign.

Regardless, it seemed like the dire reaction in the markets left Trump in a bad negotiating position vis-à-vis Speaker Pelosi—and she agreed, firing off a single tweet about how the president’s ploy exposed his heartlessness.

This sense was confirmed five hours later when the president took a new/old tack, recanting his earlier contention that Pelosi’s offer was overly generous and adding a dollop of his trademark schoolyard misogyny:

Crazy Nancy Pelosi and the Radical Left Democrats were just playing “games” with the desperately needed Workers Stimulus Payments.They just wanted to take care of Democrat failed, high crime, Cities and States. They were never in it to help the workers, and they never will be!

With balance restored to the negotiating table, you might think he would wait to see how Pelosi would respond.

Not this president.

No he needed to further demonstrate his position as the alpha.

So in between IVs, presumably during commercial breaks from the shows, possibly wearing his preferred nightgown, he began to unleash a torrent of tweets negotiating against himself like a person suffering from a bout of psychosis due to a corticosteroid therapy.

First he did a complete 180 on his earlier position that Congress should pass no stimulus legislation, retweeting a news story about the Federal Reserve chair that implied Congress should spend even more!

Then he retweeted the esteemed Paul Sperry of Investor’s Business Daily—not once, not twice, but twenty-two separate times—on matters ranging from #Obamagate to the “disgraceful” moderator of the debate that Trump totally won to a not-all-that-veiled attack on Joe Biden for being concerned about health care when his wife and child died in a tragic car accident.

Trump followed that up with eight retweets of Fox News analyst Gregg Jarrett, calling for the jailing of his former opponent Hillary Clinton and disparaging Speaker Pelosi’s looks.

He then tweeted a meme depicting the late Chris Farley—in character as the thrice-divorced homeless motivational speaker Matt Foley from the classic SNL sketch—berating Attorney General Bill Barr for not arresting enough political opponents.

It’s unclear to me if any of these missives were part of the gamesmanship of the ongoing negotiations but I wanted to make sure that everyone had a clear picture of the state of play.

Around 10 p.m., on day five (we think) of the experimental drug regimen he is taking for combating the coronavirus, the president then launched back into the stimulus negotiations that at this stage are taking place only between himself and his earlier tweets.

No longer wanting to walk away completely, the president demanded that Congress pass two pieces of standalone legislation, the first bailing out the airline industry, the second sending a round of $1,200 stimulus checks out to our “great people.”

In the final tweet at the time of writing, he tagged Nancy Pelosi—whose visage he had insulted hours earlier and who has been silent as he dickered for hours—presumably in an attempt to reopen the line of communication with his counterparty.

Whew.

Given that I have never been “in a boardroom” for a high-stakes parley like this and that I cannot take the full measure of Donald Trump since he spent the day hiding from the cameras as the novel coronavirus infection consumed him, I can only turn to a celebrity negotiator for his expert analysis on what transpired:

“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.” —Donald J. Trump.

Hard to argue with that.
____________

Can somebody tell me why it's so important to ramrod a new Justice onto the SCOTUS before the election, but the American people who can't afford food or rent can wait until after the election?

Anybody?

[Albany Rifles]

I must correct myself and removed center from center right. The first clue was "so many of them are basically commies" There are very few commies in this country compared to fascists by a wide, wide margin. Now while there are some things about Millennials that bug me being commie is not one of them as I see very few through my glasses compared to what you see through your blinders. The next clue was everything else you said which looks like it was lifted off a FOX website therefore making it babble.

I was today years old before I knew....looks at notes....that I am a commie.

[TopHatter]

I was today years old before I knew....looks at notes....that I am a commie.

Of course you're a commie, wtf did you think you were?

[TopHatter]

‘Where are all of the arrests?’: Trump demands Barr lock up his foes
The day-long run of tweets and retweets marked the most frantic stretch of Trump’s public activity since he left Walter Reed.
Donald Trump mounted an overnight Twitter blitz demanding to jail his political enemies and call out allies he says are failing to arrest his rivals swiftly enough.

Trump twice amplified supporters’ criticisms of Attorney General William Barr, including one featuring a meme calling on him to “arrest somebody!” He wondered aloud why his rivals, like President Barack Obama, Democratic nominee Joe Biden and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton hadn’t been imprisoned for launching a “coup” against his administration.
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“Where are all of the arrests?” Trump said, after several dozen tweets on the subject over the past 24 hours. “Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Long term sentences would have started two years ago. Shameful!”

By early afternoon, Trump was letting loose his frustrations in an all-caps missive that seemed aimed at nobody in particular.

“DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!” Trump tweeted.

The day-long run of tweets and retweets marked the most frantic stretch of Trump’s public activity since he left the presidential suite at Walter Reed Medical Center and returned to treatment at the White House. They also underscored the degree to which Trump remains fixated on his grievances over the Russia probe, and often on obscure aspects of that investigation that are unintelligible to all but its most careful followers.

Since late Tuesday, Trump has vowed to declassify all documents he claims will show improper activity by Obama and his intelligence advisers — before quickly reversing himself and suggesting he had already done so “long ago” — and repeatedly cited Russian intelligence services’ claims that Clinton “stirred up” the Trump-Russia collusion scandal that has dogged his presidency.

The Trump administration has never held a firm position on whether the president’s tweets constitute direct orders; various tell-all books have described how top officials learned which of his instructions — lawful or otherwise — to ignore and which to accommodate. Courts have at times treated Trump’s tweets at official statements. But on other occasions they’ve been brushed off as political banter that lacks the force of law.

Trump’s Twitter feed tends to be a realtime barometer of his offline moods and whims, however — and themes he hits on repeatedly over 280 characters tend to surface in conversations he holds in private.

A Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about whether Trump had ever directly asked Barr to order the arrest of his rivals or if his tweet suggesting as much had veered into territory that Barr once said made his job “impossible.”

In past interviews, Barr has signaled that he has no intention of prosecuting senior Obama administration officials, though he has cast doubt on the motives behind the Russia probe and launched an investigation into its origins.

The review Barr ordered has disappointed Trump in recent weeks as the U.S. attorney tapped to lead it, John Durham, has signaled he might not pursue the kinds of high-profile prosecutions the president and his allies are demanding. Durham’s deputy in the review, veteran Justice Department prosecutor Nora Dennehy, recently quit the faltering effort and returned to the private sector.

“NOW THAT THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS GOT COUGHT [sic] COLD IN THE (NON) FRIENDLY TRANSFER OF GOVERNMENT, IN FACT, THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN AND WENT FOR A COUP, WE ARE ENTITLED TO ASK THE VOTERS FOR FOUR MORE YEARS,” Trump declared late Wednesday morning. “PLEASE REMEMBER THIS WHEN YOU VOTE!”

Trump’s tweet barrage was particularly jarring when set against the political backdrop. Biden has widened his lead over Trump in recent polls, as the president’s support has eroded among women, seniors and other voting blocs that helps him scratch out a victory in 2016. Trump flummoxed his allies Tuesday by summarily shutting down — also via Twitter — negotiations over a coronavirus stimulus bill, only to backtrack hours later by calling on Congress to pass more targeted measures.

But Trump has made clear that he remains focused on punishing perceived enemies regardless of the political cost. While recovering at Walter Reed Monday morning, his chief of staff Mark Meadows told Fox News that Trump had kept busy that morning in part by directing the declassification of documents related to the Russia probe — a set of files he claimed were conclusive proof that Clinton had concocted the notion that his campaign team had ties to Russia even though the Senate Intelligence Committee and the special counsel’s team had rejected the allegations as unverified.

In releasing them, Trump’s own hand-picked intel chief, John Ratcliffe, acknowledged the documents, sourced to Russian intelligence, might have been “exaggerated” or even “fabricated” to deflect from their culpability in the election interference effort.
__________
That poor stupid sick bastard is coming unglued faster and faster

Next he'll be stumbling through the halls of the West Wing at 3am screaming to have his crown brought to him...

[TopHatter]

Conservative Sites Spreading Russian Propaganda

“On any given day over the past two years, visitors to the home page of RealClearPolitics were likely to see its famous average of political polls, a roundup of news and center-right commentary—and, near the bottom, a link or two to stories from RT.com,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The provenance of the RT headlines was obscured. Readers didn’t immediately know they were clicking on headlines from a Russian state-backed publication that American intelligence officials considered the Kremlin’s ‘principal international propaganda outlet.'”

“The company responsible for RT’s presence on RealClearPolitics is Mixi.Media. Since its launch in 2018, Mixi has assembled a network of right-leaning publishers, including National Review, The Daily Caller and Newsmax, as well as mainstream sites like RealClearPolitics. Also in Mixi’s fold are RT and another Russian state-backed outlet, Sputnik.”
______________

From the comments section:

American conservatism is so fucking bankrupt they had to turn to the Russians. I love irony.

Very much like the Trump family's finances...

How many of these guys would have ended up in Sing-Sing for long stretches or the hot squat in the 1950s?

[InExile]

TBM,
I am absolutely center-right, especially against the broad spectrum of the country. I am hard-right amongst Millennials, since so many of THEM are basically commies, but that's a generatonal measurement. People are my ideological tempermanent tend to vote for Hillary and Biden, if my Twitter and Facebook are any indication.

I am, however, hyper-partisan. I may be center-right, but I am NOT voting for Democrats. I think the people of my ideological stripe who ARE voting for Biden are ultimately short-sighted fools, and it is highly amusing to see them rail against what they see as excesses: all of those will get worse under Biden, just like they got worse under Obama, despite Obama portraying himself as a technocratic moderate.

I still find it disappointing that most of the centre right in the United States chose to cast its lot with Donald Trump rather than align with centre to centre left forces like in countries like France or Germany to keep out the far right. Granted, this is partly due to the hyper partisanship of the two party system that makes co-operation with members from the opposite party more difficult.

The policy wins mentioned in the post above while not insignificant, would have probably been accomplished by any Republican President. On the other Trump's erratic behavior, his disdain for rules, deliberate inciting of racial and religious tensions, weakening of the Western Alliance has caused lasting damage, even from a centre right perspective.

And as said by Astralis, it is likely going to lead to a backlash against Trump and the Republicans that might lead to unified control of the US Government by Democrats, with an agitated and emboldened far left exerting increasing influence over the party.

I still find it hard to believe that many on the 'centre-right' consider all this a better outcome than enduring most likely four or at the most eight years of a weakened Hillary Presidency.

[DOR]

I was today years old before I knew....looks at notes....that I am a commie.

Welcome to the club, but the first rule is don't talk about the club.

= = =

On a more fiscal note, sudden surges in federal deficits are almost always the result of a shock loss of revenue. Spending simply takes too long to kick in.

Reagan's first, unprecedented round of deficits began to slow in 1986-87, when revenues finally caught up with spending. When the income ran out of steam in 1990-91, the deficits came roaring back, at unprecedented levels once again.

Big surge in 1990s revenues and a very temporary (1993) and small ($26 bn) reduction in spending contributed to Clinton's surpluses, but again, it was the revenues that did all the heavy lifting.

Bush Jr destroyed revenues – from annual $110-185 bn increases to a three-year combined fall of nearly $250 bn – while spending like a drunken sailor. By the time his economy crashed in 2008-09 it took six years to rebuild revenues to where they were in 2007.

Gosh, those tax crazy Obama years sure were something, weren't they?

[Albany Rifles]

By all means let's start arresting people....

Changing official documents, whether intentionally or inadvertently, is a federal crime.

How do I know? Because of my annual records management training I've been taking for over 20 years.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/polit...nts/index.html

[DOR]

Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University with ties to the all-regulation-is-bad Cato Institute, started a blog post with this:


“Simplistic summary of a long debate on paternalism:
Hard Paternalist:Government should force weak human beings to do what's in their own best interest.
Knee-Jerk Libertarian: No, that's totalitarian.
Soft Paternalist: Government should nudge weak human beings to do what's in their own best interests.

(Nowhere is there any mention of who should decide what's right and wrong, so don't even go there.)

He then goes on to suggest that there is no difference between forcing and nudging.

End of Prof Caplan's responsibility for anything posted here.

Later parts of the post weren't visible when I first saw this, so my mind filled in the blanks:

• Hard Paternalist:Government should force weak human beings to do what's in their own best interest.
• Knee-Jerk Libertarian: No, that's totalitarian.
• Soft Paternalist: Government should nudge weak human beings to do what's in their own best interests.
• Behaviorist Economist: No, that's much too inefficient.
• Democratic Policy Wonk: What if we simultaneously make it attractive to do what people should do, and unattractive to do what they shouldn't do?
• GOPer Spin Doctor: That proves it! Those Godless Commies are coming for your guns and bibles! Quick, enact a massive tax cut for the richest and most powerful people on earth! It's our only hope!

[Albany Rifles]

And more people who need arresting....

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/08/92165...itmer-fbi-says

[Bigfella]

And more people who need arresting....

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/08/92165...itmer-fbi-says

I'm sure there are some 'very fine people' in that group.

....what state does Surfy live in?