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Wusses

Thursday, January 26, 2017

One of the very first blog posts that I ever put up on the internet complained about the fact that Democrats were wusses. I don’t think that post is findable, as it was put up on an short lived blog that resided on my Apple IDisk, a service long since shuttered. The problem lives on, and it’s good to see that Markos, of the Daily Kos, is hammering away at the hapless Democrats. This time Elizabeth Warren, of all people, reveals her inner wuss by saying she will vote for the stunningly unqualified Ben Carson for Secretary of HUD

Sen. Elizabeth Warren explains why she will be voting to confirm Ben Carson as head of HUD:

Yes, I have serious, deep, profound concerns about Dr. Carson’s inexperience to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Yes, I adamantly disagree with many of the outrageous things that Dr. Carson said during his presidential campaign. Yes, he is not the nominee I wanted.

But “the nominee I wanted” is not the test.

You have a vote. You can either cast a vote saying “I want this guy heading the department,“ or you cast one that says “Oh hell no, I don’t want this person heading the department.” So yeah, that is exactly the test. 

via Daily Kos

Exactly right. On Saturday three million people demonstrated that they understand what has happened to this nation, and millions more who could not be with them in body were with them in spirit. Yet few if any of the Democrats in Washington really get it. It seems like a no-brainer to me. We’re I a Senator, I’d vote against every single one of his nominees. They are all unqualified, or if qualified at all, they are qualified to destroy what they will be sworn to protect. If the Democrats want to channel the energy of those three millions they have to prove they get it too. It’s time to fight. No compromises.

I’ve mentioned before that I was impressed with an article in Scientific American in which the author or authors demonstrated that the best way to get someone to change his or her behavior was to engage in tit for tat. We’ve been tatted for eight years, and even if a newly elected Republican were sane, at least four years of titting would be in order. So far as the appointees are concerned, as Markos points out, they are going to get in anyway. They don’t need Democratic votes, and Democrats will get nothing in exchange for those votes. The Democrats need to demonstrate that they will resist as much as they can. It’s truly remarkable that after the last eight years any Democrat in the Senate, much less almost all of them, would think there is any advantage to trying to work with the Republicans.

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A con man should really know his audience

Saturday, January 21, 2017

I’m beginning to be a little more sanguine about the survival of the Republic, partly because of the level of resistance shown by today’s demonstrations, and partly because of the level of cluelessness displayed by the person who lost the popular vote.

In case you missed it, Trump blatantly lied to a group of CIA personnel. He told two whoppers; the first being that it was the media, not he, that had said derogatory things about the CIA. The second: that the media had lied about the size of the crowds at his pathetic inauguration.

Our Hitler wannabe is simply not as capable as the original. Trump actually believes that he can treat an audience of CIA people, who are paid to analyze facts, the same as an audience of rubes who have had their brains rotted out by a steady diet of Fox News. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s much percentage in insulting the intelligence of an audience like that, particularly when its members are probably wary already of a guy who is playing footsie with a country they are practically genetically engineered to distrust. These are people who can cause him real harm, should they have a mind to do so, and I suspect that they do.

I once was involved in litigation with a guy who was an inveterate con-man. He didn’t see himself that way, but everyone else who got to know him over a reasonable period of time saw him for what he was. One judge pretty much called him that from the bench. He’s still at it, but I doubt that he’s any more self aware than he was. One side effect of that lack of self awareness is that he, like Trump, didn’t know when to stop. Trump may be able to fool some of the people all of the time, but it’s unlikely many of them work for the CIA.

UPDATE: No surprise here, but I can’t resist pointing out that I called this one:

Donald Trump’s impromptu visit and speech to the CIA Saturday had the adverse effect on the intelligence community as US sources tell CBS his sppearance, “made relations with the intelligence community worse” and described the visit as “uncomfortable.”

CBS News is reporting that these sources also said the CIA workforce did not cheer the president while he was speaking, but that the first three rows in attendance were filled with loyal Trump supports.
Are you surprised by this?

And another Kellyanne Conway lie was knocked down too.

On ABC’s THIS WEEK, Conway said, “The president went to the intelligence community yesterday to establish good relationships with them, and we had over 1,000 requests to attend? We could — we can only accommodate a few hundred.”

The CBS report refutes her version of events and says, “There were about 400 members of the workforce who RSVP’d for the event out of thousands who received an invitation in their email late last week. Officials dismiss White House claims that there were people waiting to get into the event.

via Crooks and Liars

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Women’s March, Local Edition

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Second attempt at this, as the first time all the pictures I put up were wildly distorted. I scrapped the post, and forgot to save the text. So, here goes again.

As I said yesterday, we here in Mystic had our own little demonstration by the statue of Johnny Kelley, one of three Boston Marathon winners (the others being Tarzan Brown and Amby Burfoot), to win the Boston Marathon. Johnny was an institution around here, and I’m sure he would have approved of our choice of locale. Here he is, all dressed up for the demonstration.


So,as I understand it, the demonstration were “yuge” all over the world. Our son is in Chicago, and he told us that the demonstration there so far exceeded expectation that it had to be cancelled. We’ll know how much this got under the Donald’s skin by seeing how early he gets up to tweet about what he will say, despite all the evidence, was a low turnout. I truly believe that we need to keep the pressure on him, both this sort of thing, and a constant stream of belittling jokes and memes. 

During the time I was there (we were among the last to leave) I only witnessed two examples of negative feedback from the passing cars. For the most part, there was a constant stream of supportive honking. It seems the, at least in the Land of Steady Habits, the Orange One is not popular, and his numbers will likely never go up.

A few more pictures, which, hopefully will be undistorted.



I don’t know why, but these pictures were a bit of a struggle. You can see them full size by clicking on them. Anyway, we did our bit, and the tourists seemed to respond well.

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Impeachable Offense #5

Friday, January 20, 2017

Okay, I realize that I’ve been scratching the surface here, but in my defense, I have a day job and it would surely be a full time endeavor to catalog all of Trump’s impeachable offenses. Here’s the latest:

Visitors to the newly revamped White House website get more than a simple rundown of first lady Melania Trump’s charitable works and interests — they also get a list of her magazine cover appearances and details on her jewelry line at QVC.

via The Washington Post

Is this grounds for impeachment? I think so. Using a public office, and a government website, paid for by taxpayers, for private gain would appear to be a misuse of one’s office. This is yet another example of a situation where one is sorely tempted to engage in the “what if” game, so I’ll do it. What if Obama had done something similar. It wouldn’t have been only Fox that would have savaged him. But this story will be a blip on the radar screen. By tomorrow it will be far in the rear view mirror. This is the new normal, and they want us to get used to it.

I’m happy to say that we’ll be having a little demonstration here in our neck of the woods tomorrow at 1:00 PM. There will be a little gathering by the statue of Johnny Kelley in Mystic. I didn’t know Kelley personally, though I often saw him running through the streets of Mystic, but from what I’ve heard about him, I think he’d be happy to know he’s hosting us.

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Random thoughts before the bad moon rises

Thursday, January 19, 2017

We are heading into some difficult times. It may very well be that we are at a critical juncture, and that we will never recapture any semblance of representative democratic governance. But while it’s important to resist, it’s also important to remember how we got here. For us Democrats, it’s important that we acknowledge that our party helped get us here by abandoning the working people of this country in exchange for Wall Street dollars, and that formula has helped bring us to where we are today. We might have been able to overcome the racist dog whistles employed by the Republicans to lure the white working class to vote against its interests if we had provided a meaningful alternative, but we didn’t.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this post at Naked Capitalism, but I think it sums up a lot of our most recent mistakes. We have bought into the deficit hawks view of the universe. Unlike Republicans, who forget about deficits as soon as they are in power, we buy into austerity policies, even when any competent economist could tell you it’s the wrong thing to do. I still believe that Obama gave away his majorities in both houses in 2009 when he settled for a tiny stimulus program, and then, while he still had that majority (as the linked post points out) making deficit reduction a high priority. If the Democrats had passed a good stimulus package in 2009, one that didn’t just stop the bleeding but brought us quickly back, we might have a far different country right now. Sure, the Republicans would have screamed, but they screamed anyway. If it had worked, and it would have worked if done right, none of that would have mattered. Instead of getting swept in 2010 we would have kept control. 2010 might have been the last chance the country had to rein in the plutocrats. It’s unlikely that people will be allowed to vote to turn out the Republicans in 2020. Trump is irrelevant in this equation. The Republicans may find it convenient to shunt him aside, but soon we will all be North Carolina. Votes will be suppressed nationwide, and our choices will more and more be between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Elections in many parts of this country are already a sham, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Sort of riffing off of the above, I direct your attention to this post at Down with Tyranny! which asks a question: how much slack should progressives give to corporate shills like Chuck Schumer, who helped get us here in the first place. On the one hand, it hardly seems like the time to get into an internecine battle, on the other, we’ve been had before. We step up to deliver the goods, and folks like Schumer use our work to transfer those goods to their corporate backers. Think about 2006, when we took over the Congress. You can’t give the corporate Democrats credit for that. We took over in spite of them, not because of them. They then proceeded to do practically nothing, for normal people, with their majority, which was acceptable while Bush was president, but not when the Democrats controlled both the executive and the presidency. The Democrats have specialized, over the last 30 years or so, in squandering their majority’s by concentrating either on screwing workers (e.g., NAFTA), giving presents to Wall Street (e.g., repeal of Glass Steagall), or passing halfway measures that get no political payback (e.g., the inadequate stimulus). Do we ignore that reality, or make it clear while trying to make common cause that we won’t tolerate it happening again. It really is a tough question, for which I’ve no answer.

So, for sure, no blogging tomorrow. It’s impossible to type when you’re wrapped in a fetal position.

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Can’t make this stuff up

Monday, January 16, 2017

When clearly senile Rudy Giuliani was appointed to be Trump’s cybersecurity expert, I read somewhere that Rudy actually had no technical expertise and that all his “firm” did was provide legal advice about cyber security, advice that was probably 99% bullshit, although I don’t know that for sure.

Anyway, today I ran into this:

The former New York Mayor is credited with cleaning up the streets of that city and has said the US is “so far behind” when it comes to cyber security.

But online experts have been quick to point out that the 72-year-old had apparently failed to adequately protect his own company website.

His site giulianisecurity.com is apparently run on an out dated version of Joomla! a free content management system (CMS).

Flaws in this system were pointed out on Twitter who outlined more than a dozen vulnerabilities.

Vvia The Sun (from England)

Check out the tweets reproduced at the link. You’d think that the guy would at least make a gesture toward making his own site secure, giving that he’s giving advice to other people about it.

Just wondering who Trump will put in charge of FEMA. Here’s hoping that the first disaster takes place in Trump country in some swing state.

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History repeats itself

Sunday, January 15, 2017

A bit of a heads up for folks who aren’t from this neck of the woods. Heather Somers, who ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2014 is gunning for statewide office again. You remember Heather. She was such a strong vote getter that she managed to swing exactly no districts in the Groton area to the rich guy the Republicans nominated the last time. She was just elected State Senator, thanks in part to the determined efforts of the New London Day, despite the fact that she utterly failed Dave Collins’ Trump Test.

Heather apparently things it’s a good idea to follow the John Scott playbook, only with a bit of a twist. Here are the description of two bills she recently introduced:

Proposed S.B. No. 82 SEN. SOMERS, 18th DIST. ‘AN ACT REPEALING THE ESTATE TAX’, to incentivize residents to remain in Connecticut by repealing the estate tax. REF. FINANCE, REVENUE AND BONDING

Proposed S.B. No. 83 SEN. SOMERS, 18th DIST. ‘AN ACT REPEALING THE BUSINESS ENTITY TAX’, to provide economic growth incentives by repealing the business entity tax. REF. FINANCE, REVENUE AND BONDING

I’ve written in the past about now ex-Representative John Scott, who introduced a couple of bills designed to line the pockets of insurance agents, particulary insurance agents who placed health insurance for UConn students, of whom John was one of a very few. That didn’t go over so well with his former constituents, who were well aware of it, even though the New London Day took pains not to mention it. John now has more time to spend with his family.

Heather’s proposals are not quite that targeted, but among her constituents, she’s probably one of the few that would benefit, not that she’s likely to stay in the state anyway once she’s finished doing her best to line the pockets of the rich. But these proposals are bound to go over well in Greenwich and those environs.

Somers has proposed repealing the estate tax, a tax that falls only on the under burdened rich. It’s the Republican philosophy: millions for the rich and for Heather herself, but not a penny for the rest of us. She has also proposed repealing the business entity tax, yet another way of shifting money to the rich from the rest of us.

There are two ways to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The first is to raise taxes on the rest of us. The second is to cut the services for which we pay our taxes, such as schools, roads, libraries, health services, courts, and police. Either way, Heather and the rich gain, the rest of us lose.

It truly escapes me why we should relieve the rich from paying the estate tax in order to encourage them to stay here once they grow old and gray. If they’re not going to pay their fair share of taxes, who needs them. If they move away in droves, that would make for more affordable housing in the western part of the state.

Heather clearly ran for the Senate as a springboard for yet another run for statewide office. If she wants to get nominated for a statewide office, the last people she needs to please over the course of the next few years are her own constituents, so we can’t really expect much different from her. Can’t say we shouldn’t have known. When Heather was on the Town Council, she was in favor of letting non-resident property owners vote in our town wide elections. You know, the folks who have such a stake in the quality of our schools and other services. Other than that, which she never got (thankfully) I can’t think of a single thing she ever accomplished in all her years on the counsel. With Heather, it’s all about Heather.

So watch out folks. I don’t know which office she has her eye on, but whichever it is, be sure she wants it out of ambition alone.

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We really can’t complain

Thursday, January 12, 2017

A friend sent me this link, to an opinion piece in the Boston Globe that makes the obvious point that we have been “hacking” election for years, so we really don’t have much right to be outraged by what the Russians may have done.

Some of our politicians tell us we are a Christian country, but in this respect, we don’t even measure up to the Confucians, who formulated the Golden Rule a little differently. It’s called the silver rule and it goes like this:

“What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.”

Not quite as noble as the Golden Rule, but we’d be a lot better off if we took even the silver rule to heart.

As contemptible as Trump is, and as treasonous as it was to collude with the Russians, which he surely did, the fact is that their efforts probably had little to do with the election’s outcome. Our government has been much more effective at stealing elections . No, this one was stolen by a homegrown fascist, the hypocritical James Comey. Let us not forget, as well, that this election was yet another casualty of the Democrats’ perverse need to appear to be bipartisan. Had Obama appointed a Democrat to head the FBI, Hillary Clinton would be the president-elect, and the American Republic would not be at this fearsome crossroads. I just wonder if the Democrats will learn anything from all of this. No, I don’t. I already know the answer.

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No need for pundits

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Slowly but surely I’m working my way back to normalcy so far as my daily intake of news is concerned. I still don’t read the papers as much as I did before the day the Republic died, but I’m coming around, and I’m pretty much back to full bore reading on my RSS reader. But there’s still an impediment to regular blogging and I fear it won’t go away. I give you this quote from Kellyanne Conway, in which she defends the Donald’s mocking a disabled reporter:

“Why is everything taken at face value?” she asked. “You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart, you always want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”

You see, the mission of a pundit, even a dime store one like me, is to shine a light on aspects of the news that might not occur to those who have other things to think about in their busy days. But is there a brain so weak, likely to read this blog, that needs any help in deconstructing the absurdity of a statement like that? I used to think shooting fish in a barrel referred to a barrel full of many swimming fish, meaning you could still miss, but now I see the light. The Trump administration is a barrel full of tightly packed fish. You can’t miss. In fact, there’s no point in shooting because the fish are already dead.

Is there really any point in pointing out that Jeff Sessions is a racist, or that Trump’s cabinet consist mainly of kleptocrats who have already all but announced that their main objective is to siphon as much as they can from the U.S. Treasury and shakedown foreign governments for even more?

Oh, wait. I understand that the intelligence community has concluded that the Russians have something on Trump, and that some people are actually surprised! Maybe there is a need for someone to point out the obvious.

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Book Plug and a bit more

Friday, January 6, 2017

My younger son (the Professor) gave me a book for Christmas, This Vast Southern Empire, written by Matthew Karp, a friend of his. I haven’t finished it, but if you’re a history buff I can certainly recommend it.

It shines a light on a portion of our history that I, for one, had never given much thought, specifically, the extent to which the South, and the slave interest, controlled our foreign policy in the years prior to the Civil War. The slaveowners had an interest in the survival of slavery in the Western Hemisphere, and the United States foreign policy was shaped, some might say distorted, by that interest.

Which brings us to another subject that I’ve been thinking about lately. We are raised to revere the Constitution, and to accept that if it is not god-given, it is certainly the result of a Miracle in Philadelphia, bequeathed to us by wise and disinterested patriots, who just happened to also be members of the 1% of the day, and, to a large extent, slaveowners.

Those slaveowners in 1840 could never have dominated American Foreign Policy had not the constitution been shaped, or misshapen, in order to give them a disproportionate influence over that policy. The United States Senate was designed to give disproportionate influence to the smaller states. The House or Representatives was similarly distorted, as each slave counted as two-thirds of a person for purposes of apportioning representatives, but no-thirds of a person so far as those representatives were concerned.

The two thirds issue is now a dead letter, but we are still burdened with a system that gives Wyoming the same influence in the Senate as California, as well as giving that state, and others like it, disproportionate influence over the selection of the President of the United States. The framers of the Constitution may truly have believed that the system they framed would prevent the election of demagogues and incompetents, but twice in this century we’ve seen that the people are a lot smarter than those scholars in the Electoral College. We’ve just gone through an election, which, had it been conducted as it would be in any other advanced nation, would have been considered a landslide victory for the candidate who lost. We have a United States Senate dominated by Republicans, yet:

The 48 members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate, in their most recent respective elections dating back to 2012, collectively earned 78.4 million votes on their way to victory. Republicans, by contrast, won just 54.8 million votes—even though there are 52 of them.

via Daily Kos

And then, of course, there’s the gerrymandered House of Representatives, enabled at least in part by the Constitution’s built in bias toward rural states.

The sad fact is that our constitution has doomed us to lose the Republic that Ben Franklin challenged us to keep. We are taught to be proud of the fact that the framers anticipated the need to change the constitution, but the fact is that the two methods provided in the constitution are both held hostage to the minority, which in this country is invariably reactionary. It is no doubt the case that the post Civil War Amendments, of which we can truly be proud, only passed because the Southern states were forced to approve them, though I believe Mississippi was somehow able to avoid voting to outlaw slavery until the fairly recent past.

Is there any doubt that if we were to hold a constitutional convention today, for which the constitution provides, which we desperately need to do since the document is so antiquated, that it would be dominated by the political heirs of the slaveowning aristocracy? We are probably in the final days of the Republic, and our vaunted constitution will likely prevent us from avoiding our fate.

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