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Biden moving a tad left

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Just saw this article. Joe Biden has (somewhat) embraced some progressive positions, albeit not quite all the way there. He’s suggested lowering the Medicare eligible age to 60, and forgiving student debt in certain situations. It’s the latter that I’m wondering about:

The concept I’m announcing today will align my student debt relief proposal with my forward-looking college tuition proposal. Under this plan, I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for debt-holders earning up to $125,000, with appropriate phase-outs to avoid a cliff. The federal government would pay the monthly payment in lieu of the borrower until the forgivable portion of the loan was paid off. This benefit would also apply to individuals holding federal student loans for tuition from private HBCUs and MSIs.

HBCU stands for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and MSI stands for Minority Serving Institutions. 

I’m wondering if there is some legal reason why it might be impossible to extend this benefit to debtors who attended private colleges or universities. I guess one could argue that they voluntarily incurred greater debt as those institution generally cost more, but that seems like a fairly niggling objection. If it’s legal, it should apply to everyone with student debt, particularly given the fact that the folks who meet the income requirements and have greater student debt are not exactly benefitting from their more expensive educations. Extending it to everyone also avoids resentment on the part of the ineligible.

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All Together Now

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Now we know.
We’re going with Joe.
That’s the whole show
We can’t say it ain’t so.

Okay, drivel out of the way. Bernie is out, and I think, under all the circumstances, that’s a good thing. And who knows, it’s always possible that over the next few months Biden will come to understand the realities of this time in history, and will stop insisting that things are just like they were in 1980, or whatever year it is in which he still resides. Maybe too, he’ll come to see that almost everything must fundamentally change, instead of nothing.

All that being said, one way or another, we are on the cusp of the most important election since 1860. This is it. If we lose it, we lose the last semblance of representative democracy. Joe Biden isn’t exactly the hero for which the times call, but he’s all we’ve got.

There’s a lot of angst out there about disappointed Bernie folks who will refuse to vote for anyone but Bernie, and I’ve no doubt such people exist. Their numbers can only increase if the party as a whole, or significant sections of it, treats them like pariahs or with scorn. 

I don’t spend a lot of time on twitter, and, of course, my twitter feed is skewed by my own preferences, but I’m surprised by the fact that, since Bernie’s announcement, I’ve seen little of the Bernie or bust reaction, but quite a bit more scorn heaped on Bernie or his backers. It’s hard to believe that anyone who actually wants Biden elected would engage in that sort of behavior, since he’s going to need every vote, but that reaction is definitely out there. It’s never been more important than now that we pull together, and there’s nobody with more of a reason to court Bernie’s backers than those who backed Biden from the start. He can’t win unless he gets more votes than Trump. In fact, he can’t win unless he gets a lot more votes than Trump, since a close election gives the Supreme Court room to rule in Trump’s favor when he tries to steal it.

So, it’s time for everyone to play nice. As the Beatles sang in one of their more obscure songs: All Together Now!

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Fox Nation Folks Dying

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Entirely predictable. The virus is setting down roots in Trump country. I guess, among other things, these folks are still going to diners, where, as the New York Times can tell you, all the customers are Trumpers.

While the number of cases and deaths related to coronavirus in Martin County is fairly low (34 cases and 4 deaths), it dwarfs those in the metro counties on a per capita basis. For example, per 100,000 people, Martin County’s numbers represent 170 cases and 20 deaths, compared to 17 cases and 0.7 deaths per 100,000 in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis.

No one knows why this virus has taken hold in Martin County, but that hasn’t stopped speculation. Here is what Tim Langer, public health sanitarian with Martin County Human Services, ventured.

“My personal opinion is there are some folks listening to some media outlets that were not taking this seriously. That can be a factor, too. It’s hard to prove that. I don’t want to get political. But there were outlets saying it’s a hoax, it’s no worse than a cold, and those are things people listen to.”

On the surface, it seems strange that Fox and the Republicans should be propagandizing their voters into killing themselves, but they’re between a rock and a hard place on this issue. They have to cover for their massive incompetence, and one way to do that is to argue that there’s not really any problem that requires competence in the first place. They also have to choose between using the crisis as a chance to grift for themselves and serve their corporate masters, or doing the right thing by the American people, and when have they ever done the latter? 

It may make a big difference in the non-Southern states, such as Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, where the supply of Trump voters is limited. If it does, then these Trump voters will not have died in vain.

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Venting while quarantined. Why not?

Monday, April 6, 2020

Here’s an article I ran across with a title that raises an interesting issue: TV networks air Trump 10 hours a week-in 2014 they refused to air Obama for 10 minutes. It’s subtitled: Different rules for Democrats.

Indeed, there are different rules for Democrats, in large part because the Democrats fail to demand that the rules that apply to Republicans be applied to them. The Republicans have gotten the coverage they want by constantly accusing the media of being biased against them. This, even though an entire network is a Republican propaganda machine. Why aren’t the Democrats demanding that the networks stop covering Trump’s shitshows? It is obvious to everyone that they are full of self serving and self aggrandizing lies spewed by the genius, interspersed with attacks on the press. Those attacks serve their purpose: they keep the press coming back for more, because to do otherwise would somehow prove that they were biased. Since the Democrats demand nothing, giving them nothing shows no bias.

This Democratic failure to work the refs may very well lead us to defeat in 2020, thereby assuring the collapse of the Republic, ands it’s not the only problem with Democratic messaging. 

I read a fairly authoritative blog post recently (can’t remember where, and too lazy to look) to the effect that the Biden people have made a conscious decision to soft pedal any criticism of Trump’s disastrous incompetence with respect to the plague now afflicting us. Why? Because the American people don’t want that right now. Were the situation reversed, the Republicans would be on the attack day and night, and it would work out just fine for them. It doesn’t matter what the American people might say they want, what matters is the stimulus to which they’ll respond, and attacks work quite nicely. The situation reminds me of the geniuses who advised John Kerry not to respond to the Swift Boat attacks. That worked out just great, didn’t it? Biden will get minimal coverage unless he’s out there attacking Trump for incompetence, and the press for enabling him, and he needs back up from a chorus of other Democrats. All of this is self evident, yet it is also self evident that it won’t happen.

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Hey Susan, what lesson did Donald learn?

Saturday, April 4, 2020

The crumbling of the Republic proceeds apace, as Trump, t aking advantage of a plague he is responsible for amplifying, takes steps that will be mostly ignored by a distracted populace and press:

National Security Analyst Samantha Vinograd laid into Trump for firing Inspector General Michael Atkinson yesterday. IG Atkinson was doing his job, and doing it well, when he received and acted on a whistleblower’s report that Trump’s administration was withholding Congressionally-approved aid in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden and his son. This report led to Trump’s impeachment, and he is hell-bent on destroying anyone he can who played a role in it. Vinograd was beside herself.

Apparently Trump admitted that he did in to punish the guy for doing his job and reporting his criminal behavior with respect to Ukraine.

We now have a President who openly admits that he is playing favorites in the distribution of vital medical supplies in order to further his own political ends and admits to wreaking vengeance on government employees who, in the course of doing their jobs, make him unhappy. He have a media establishment that has come to terms with this behavior, essentially taking the position that this is Trump being Trump, and while, had Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama done any of these things the uproar would last months, with Donald Trump there is no uproar and the story is good for, if that, half a news cycle.

As the Liar in Chief continues the destruction of the American Republic, one must wonder if Susan Collins thinks he has learned his lesson. Tom Tomorrow has the answer for us:

 

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Told like it is

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

My wife and I subscribe to the Boston Globe, though we are more than a stone’s throw from that fair city, for reasons that, if not already known to the reader, will become obvious in the course of this post.

The Globe’s coverage of the genius has, compared, for example, to the New York Times, been pretty good. It’s reporters are not immune to both siderism or the tendency to normalize our Narcissist in Chief, but they’ve tended to be much less in the tank than the likes of Maggie Haberman.

Their editorials have been uniformly fair to the genius, in that they have called him out for exactly what he is. This recent editorial has attracted a fair bit of attention, because it quite bluntly points out that the genius “has blood on his hands”. A criminal indictment (which really should be coming down on January 21st) could not set forth the damning facts more thoroughly.

Full Disclosure: My first born son, who is twice as smart and twice the writer I am (Okay, that might not be saying much) is a member of the Globe Editorial Staff, and though I have no way of knowing, I prefer to think that he wrote every word of this editorial. We need more of the non-Fox media to tell it precisely how it is.

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Another, yes another, Modest Proposal

Monday, March 30, 2020

It seems that the folks at Fox are at least a bit worried that they might have some legal liability for spreading disinformation about COVID-19. For a number of reasons I think the chance of such a suit being successful is low, given the First Amendment. I seem to recall that Fox defended a suit in Florida by arguing that it had a constitutional right to lie, and I believe it won. Oh, here’s a link. Looks like the court ruled on narrower grounds, because the judges were probably too ashamed to put their names on a decision that out and out said it was okay to lie, but they basically green-lighted it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep a daily journal. Samuel Pepys and Anais Nin, among others, rest easy as they perceive no threat to their reputations from this quarter, but, putting my literary deficiencies aside, what the app does do is show me what I wrote on “this day” in years past, and just recently one of my entries reminded me of how effective the Parkland kids were at hitting Fox where it hurts the most: advertising dollars.

I haven’t seen that anyone with a national audience has suggested that Fox advertisers be targeted anew for supporting a network that is literally lying to us about a plague. The fact that they are repeating presidential lies is of no moment, because everyone else at least points out those lies (labeling them anything but “lies”, of course), while Fox both amplifies and endorses them. 

I don’t have much of an audience, and, as I have no television, I can’t even identify the offending advertisers, but here’s hoping someone with some national oomph will take the lead on this.

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A Song for our Times

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Many years ago my then quite young son and I went to see Me and My Girl at the Weston Theater in Vermont. We had a great time and I subsequently bought the CD of the then recent Broadway version. Yesterday one of the songs from the show popped into my head and it occurred to me that it’s exactly the song we should all be singing “to counteract an attack of the [pandemic] blues” because, after all, as the song goes “after all is done and said…”.

Unfortunately, the Broadway version is not on YouTube, at least not with a respectable video, but I thought this one would do:

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Friday Night Music returns, if a bit of a bummer

Friday, March 27, 2020

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted what was once a regular Friday night feature, but today I stumbled on this Paul Simon video and I couldn’t resist.

I remember when this song came out. I though it was great, and that it perfectly caught the tenor of the times. Who would have thought that almost fifty years on every line would still be relevant, except moreso. Back then, the road we were traveling on seemed all wrong, but there was still hope that we could get back to the country in which “we lived so well so long”. Those times, I fear, are past. Today we got a postcard from the Center for Disease Control giving us President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America. As one might expect, it is full of health tips, most if not all of which Trump himself has disavowed or disregarded. But it is proof that our bureacracy, whether willingly or unwillingly, is now prisoner to an unprecedented cult of personality. It would surprise me not at all to learn that the postcard could only be sent if it included this obeisance to Dear Leader. I don’t believe that any other president has ever tried to institute such a personality cult before. Like all the other daily outrages, this one too will go virtually unremarked.

The Republic may not survive our current travails. Say this for the Roman Republic, at least it was brought down by a man of substance, who could both read and write. When the obituary for the American Republic is written, it is quite likely it will be noted that it was brought down by a snake oil salesman.

Anyway, here it is, Paul Simon singing American Tune.

When I watched it this morning it was followed by a promo for a right wing propaganda youtube station. We are surrounded by forces trying to destroy our nation.

UPDATE: A new low in sychophancy. A person with a medical degree alleges with a straight face that the genius is able to both read and understand scientific literature.

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Bad Moon Rising

Sunday, March 22, 2020

A few days ago I noted that the Republicans never let a crisis go to waste. This is probably the biggest domestic crisis we’ve had since the Civil War, so it presents all kinds of opportunities to destroy our institutions. There is no reason to suspend habeas corpus, other than to allow the genius to jail people at will. There is no reason to keep the corporate recipients of bailout money secret, except to cover the corruption of those distributing the money. There is no reason to resist putting money into the “rescue” bill (can’t call it a bailout when Republicans want it) to secure our elections, unless you are planning on stealing them.

It seems pretty clear that their sole objective is to squeeze whatever they can get out of this crisis. I tend to agree with this analysis, that in the end the national emergency will be transformed into a rationale to cancel November’s election and, in the process, transfer more power to the executive. The number of lives lost, and even the economic disruption, are secondary considerations to their need to hold power. I would not be surprised if Brent and Neal are figuring out a legal justification to permit the putsch as we speak.

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