American Politics

[mullokintyre]

One of the army of geriatrics in US political positions has been given the nod and will retire.
From WSJ

Fenstein waited till she was 89, and obviously not with it.
Patrick Leahy stepped down last year at 82.
Besides Biden and Tump, There are still people like Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn who are all well into their 80's.
There needs to be a bit more shoulder tapping.
mick

 

[Knobby22]

Besides Biden and Tump, There are still people like Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn who are all well into their 80's.
There needs to be a bit more shoulder tapping.
mick

Tap on the shoulder?

 

[basilio]

I watched the first episode of Turning Point on Netflix last night. Thought it was an outstanding presentation on the history of the Cold War.

The first episode focused on how the US handled WW2 and the use of the atomic bomb to redefine diplomacy and power politics.
These reviews gives an idea of its quality and scope. Powerful, balanced, meticulous doco.

New Netflix Doc Asks If Putin Restarted the Cold War -- Or If It Ever Ended in the First Place

'Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War' talks with everyone from Daniel Ellsberg to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

www.rollingstone.com

What is Turning Point about? Netflix documentary explained - Dexerto

Here’s what Netflix documentary Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War is about, who’s in it, and if it’s worth watching.

www.dexerto.com

 

[DB008]

​

 

[sptrawler]

Wow when Trump put tariffs on Chinese gear there was an uproar.
Now crickets, as some would say. Lol

Why Chinese car brands could soon be flooding our roads: Cars like the BYD Seal, GWM Cannon and Haval Jolion are just the start after US government imposes heavy tariffs | Analysis - Car News

The US government this week has taken aim at Chinese electric car makers and it could have giant consequences for Australia. The Biden administration has slapped Chinese EVs with a 100 per cent tariff, up from the current 25 per cent, snatching away their competitive edge with the stroke of a...

www.carsguide.com.au

The U.S to put 100% tariffs on Chinese EV's. Lol

 

[Knobby22]

Wow when Trump put tariffs on Chinese gear there was an uproar.
Now crickets, as some would say. Lol

Why Chinese car brands could soon be flooding our roads: Cars like the BYD Seal, GWM Cannon and Haval Jolion are just the start after US government imposes heavy tariffs | Analysis - Car News

The US government this week has taken aim at Chinese electric car makers and it could have giant consequences for Australia. The Biden administration has slapped Chinese EVs with a 100 per cent tariff, up from the current 25 per cent, snatching away their competitive edge with the stroke of a...

www.carsguide.com.au

The U.S to put 100% tariffs on Chinese EV's. Lol

Biden has seriously hurt China in many areas. Trump started with some tarrifs that set the tone but achieved little at the time however there are now also passed laws related to specific industries and technology transfer.The USA is acting no matter who wins the next election.

FACT SHEET: President Biden Takes Action to Protect American Workers and Businesses from China’s Unfair Trade Practices | The White House

President Biden’s economic plan is supporting investments and creating good jobs in key sectors that are vital for America’s economic future and national

www.whitehouse.gov

 

[IFocus]

This from Ray Dalio points out the massive divide in the US

How is the US Doing? The Big Dichotomies​

"exceptional immigrants who come to the US, usually via exceptional American universities, both of which are increasingly under siege. If you look at those companies that have produced ~95% of the innovations that in recent years have produced most of the US stock market and economic outperformance relative to other countries, it comes down to something like a million people, roughly half of whom are immigrants (out of a US population of 333 million people). As a corollary of this, the top 10% of Americans have 48% of the income, 71% of the wealth, and pay 76%, of the taxes, while the bottom 50% have 10% of the income, 1.5% of the wealth, and receive more money than they pay in taxes."

How is the US Doing? The Big Dichotomies

How is the US doing? It depends on what and who you look at because there are huge dichotomies. Wow! Did you see what the new ChatGPT can do? And did you see how the stocks of those technology companies and the people who started them and built them are doing? Unicorns are popping up like spring wil

www.linkedin.com

 

[basilio]

A heads up of why the Political Violence in the US could happen anywhere...

“If Political Violence Can Happen in America, It Can Happen in Any Country Where 400m Firearms Result in 50,000 Deaths Annually”​

OPINION “As we come to terms with the assassination attempt of Donald Trump this week, we need to remind ourselves that this type of political violence could be replicated in any country that has a per-capita gun ratio of 120 firearms per 100 people.

Yes, it was the US this time around. And the last time around. And the time before that. And, sure, probably the time before that too. But we need to be alert to the fact that this sort of politically-charged shooting could happen literally anywhere that has a pathological obsession with guns to the point where school shootings pass almost without notice, and massacres lead to calls for even more guns.

Don’t think that just because fifteen US Presidents and Presidential candidates have faced assassination attempts in America that this is some sort of American phenomenon. Any country that fetishes gun-rights, celebrates open carry laws and idolises members of Government who wear AR-15 pins to work could be subject to this type of thing.

We like to think that a 20-year-old kid climbing onto a roof with a rifle to shoot at a Presidential candidate is some sort of uniquely American thing. But let’s be clear – this could happen in any country that calls for its teachers to be armed, lets its citizens own guns before they can drink, and has a per-capita gun ownership rate eight times that of Australia or twenty-five times that of England”.

 

[basilio]

About guns in the US. One proud family and their progeny of guns. By the way there are a scores of rifles on the roof under the Culture banner

How the American Dream came to represent both a utopia and a dystopia

Images in a new book explore the concept of the American Dream – and how it came to represent both a utopia and a dystopia.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[basilio]

I've been checking out clips from VEEP recently. Some really great stuff.
This clip however on political homicide is at the top of the tree.
Awesome writing and acting.



Look out for "The gash of least resistance"

 

[basilio]

x

 

[basilio]

50 ways to win an election.

 

[basilio]

This is a long read. I believe it's worth reading in full. The Bulwark is a conservative website with some excellent contributors.
The post is a year old but as pertinent as ever

Republicans F*cked Around. Now We All Have to Find Out.​

Everything we are seeing is fruit of the Big Lie. And it’s going to get worse.​

Jonathan V. Last
Aug 02, 2023
∙ Paid





(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos: GettyImages)

1. The January 6th Committee
​

Before we go to the indictment, I want to remind you of an extraordinary moment during the House January 6th Committee hearings when former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann recounted an exchange he had with John Eastman on January 7, 2021:

“[Eastman] started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal, and I said to him ‘are you out of your f–king mind?’” Herschmann told the panel.
“I said ‘I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: ‘orderly transition.’ I said ‘I don’t want to hear any other ******* words coming out of your mouth no matter what, other than ‘orderly transition,’” he continued.
“Eventually he said ‘orderly transition.’ I said ‘Good John. Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: get a great ******* criminal defense lawyer, you’re going to need it.’ And then I hung up on him.”

Think about this for a minute. Herschmann is not a Never-Trump, Deep-State cuck. He’s a high-powered lawyer who did time as an assistant DA in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. He defended Trump during the first impeachment trial. He worked hard to push the Hunter Biden laptop story.

This is the man who stood in the White House during the weeks leading up to January 6th and concluded that a bunch of the people running around trying to overturn democracy might ******* go to jail.

Today John Eastman is unindicted co-conspirator #2.

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One of the phrases small-town, MAGA stalwarts like to use is, “Fxck around. Find out.” I’m sure you’ve seen it on the bumper stickers, on the t-shirts.

Well.

Last night the people who thought that the Constitution and the peaceful transfer of power were toothless pieties, who thought that going where no American president had dared go before was just a game, who thought that legal shitposting was a troll you did for the lulz, arrived at the Finding Out stage.

You can see how this stage might be a good thing: if the legal consequences of what Trump and his confederates did shocked both Republican voters and elites; pulled the scales from their eyes; convinced them to disavow this mode of politics.

But that isn’t going to happen. So now the rest of us are at the Finding Out stage, too. Because while I don’t know what happens next, I can promise you it won’t be good. These same people are now going to try to tear down the rule of law and they will bring their political movements with them.

One of the things I like to say is that “We’re all in this together.” And normally I mean that in the hopeful sense. But there’s a fatalistic version, too. The further this movement strays from the tenets of classical liberalism, the worse it gets for everyone. Societal fissures open. Barricades get manned. Overton windows shift. You cannot have a healthy polity if 40 percent of the country has gone insane.



This is going to get worse before it gets better. Let me explain why.

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2. Dogma
​

Here is one of the signs that the Republican party is a broken institution: Right now there are almost a dozen politicians running to beat Donald Trump and become the 2024 presidential nominee.

Normally, in the course of campaigns, candidates will blow up every little problem and use it to assassinate the character of their opponents.

But the GOP isn’t a political party; it’s an authoritarian movement. And so Trump’s supposed “opponents” have moved to defend him from these charges.

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Quick aside on Vivek: He’s got such a hard-on for “law and order” that a few hours before this tweet he insisted that anyone who enters the country illegally should never be granted citizenship because “We are a nation built on the rule of law. You can’t be American if your first act of entering the country is a lawbreaking one.”

What a terrible human being.

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As for Nikki Haley, she has been silent on the Trump indictment. Compared to the guys in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place, though, that’s preferable. I guess.

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It’s not all bad, though! You know who was great? Mike Forking Pence.



And Asa!



And Chris Christie was okay.



But that’s about it. Will Hurd tried to be good.



But then he had to go and try to alibi himself by pretending that Trump has changed, man.

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Consider that of the candidates running to beat Trump, the ones criticizing him for being indicted as a criminal who tried to overthrow an election, combine for 7 percent of the Republican primary vote.

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I want to leave you today with a single thought that illustrates how the Republican party has ceased to be a functioning political party and become an authoritarian institution.

Why has the “stolen 2020 election” become dogma for Republicans? There is only one reason: Because Trump said so.

Imagine that, the day after the 2020 election, Trump had said, “It was close and if things had broken differently we would have won. But don’t worry: I’ll be back in 2024 and I’m going to beat Sleepy Joe like a drum.”

In that alternate reality no one in Republican politics would have said that the election was stolen because there was no evidence that it was stolen.

No serious person in Republican politics would have even thought to suggest that the election had been “stolen” absent that command from Trump.

We are where we are because the Republican party is an autocracy and the maximum leader declared an idea to be true; adherence to this falsehood became a loyalty test.

And anyone who failed this loyalty test has been read out of the party.

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Here is something I wrote shortly after January 6th:

There are always people who believe elections are fraudulent and that the government of the United States is illegitimate. (See Timothy McVeigh and the long history of American militias.)
What is different today is that at no point in living memory has the defeated president of the United States, along with the majority of his party, proclaimed that a national election was fraudulent and that the incoming president is illegitimate. In all prior instances, they did exactly the opposite: They testified to the legitimacy of the new government in an effort to tamp down the conspiratorial falsehoods which always exist in small numbers.
Today, the president and his party are the wellspring of these falsehoods.
And here is the point which you must understand:
Nothing can get better in American politics until this lie is repudiated by the main body of the Republican party in the public square, with enough force and repetition that the majority of Republican voters cease to believe it.
Even if armed insurrection is not a weekly occurrence, a government cannot function when a third of the citizens believe it is literally, not rhetorically, illegitimate. It is not be possible to legislate or build consensus or even enforce the laws when you begin with a substantial minority who literally believe that the government is the product of a coup.
What the Republican party has done over the last two months is akin to having dropped polonium into America’s political groundwater.
And the radiation from their lie has poisoned everything.

This latest indictment, in itself, cannot save us from the consequence of this poisoning. Only the Republican party can do that.

And the evidence of the last 12 hours suggests that they are doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on the lie that their leader demands of them.

Republicans forked around. But it’s the rest of us who have to find out.

Leave a comment

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3. Stuart Stevens
​

My buddy Stuart Stevens has a new book coming out. I haven’t read the galleys yet, but I don’t need to: Everything he writes is gold.

It’s called The Conspiracy to End America and I preordered my copy this morning.

Republicans F*cked Around. Now We All Have to Find Out.

Everything we are seeing is fruit of the Big Lie. And it’s going to get worse.

www.thebulwark.com

 

[basilio]

I don't know if a link will show all this story. I believe it offers enough insight into the US economic/political system to be worth posting in full. Certainly highlights to imbalance between capital and workers that has led to a struggling US labour market and an exceptionally profitable business community.

Kamalanomics​

What it might look like (fingers crossed)​

Robert Reich Aug 13

Friends,
Kamala Harris is doing wonderfully well, but voters’ biggest concern continues to be the cost of living. In coming days, she’ll respond with her own economic plan.

I expect her to trumpet many of the important accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration: cracking down on corporate rip-offs — including junk fees, price gouging, and shrinking packages to hide price increases; taking on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug costs and cap insulin at $35 a month; requiring banks to bring down overdraft fees from $35 to $4 and major airlines to eliminate family seating fees.

But I hope she goes further by saying how she’ll bring down the costs of food, fuel, and housing — the three biggest items in most consumers’ budgets, whose prices remain sky-high. And more generally, how she’ll attack the scourge of corporate concentration.
Let me suggest what she might do.

1. Food prices remain high because there’s little to no competition across the entire food supply chain. This has allowed big corporations to engage in a price gouging free-for-all.
Four companies control most food industries, allowing them to coordinate prices instead of compete on the basis of lower prices. Take a look:

Harris should announce that as president she’ll bust up food monopolies. She’ll give more resources to Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter, chief of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, to restore competitiveness in the food sector of our economy and thereby bring food prices down.

2. Fuel costs remain high because the energy sector is dominated by a handful of giant corporations that are keeping prices high.

In 2019 (the most recent year for which we have good data), more than two-thirds of all energy was produced by six giant global corporations, which have been coordinating their pricing to maximize their profits.
In the two years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, oil giants Shell, BP, Exxon, Chevron, and Total made $281 billion and paid out over $200 billion to enrich their executives and shareholders rather than invest in renewables.

Market concentration has also given these few corporations (and their billionaire owners) unprecedented power and influence over our political institutions. Trump recently asked Big Oil for $1 billion in campaign donations, in return for which he’d get rid of environmental protections and incentives for renewables.

Harris should announce she’ll do the opposite. She’ll strengthen protections for the environment and expand incentives for renewables. She’ll also direct the FTC and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department to take on energy monopolies to bring down fuel prices.

3. Rent is skyrocketing and homebuying is out of reach for millions partly because of Wall Street.
Hedge funds and private equity firms have been buying up hundreds of thousands of homes that would otherwise be purchased by people.

Wall Street’s appetite for housing ramped up after the 2008 financial crisis. When the Street’s excessive greed created a housing bubble that burst, millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure.

The Street got bailed out and then began picking off the scraps of the housing market it had just destroyed, gobbling up foreclosed homes at fire-sale prices — which it then sold or rented for big profits.

Investor purchases hit their peak in 2022, accounting for around 28 percent of all home sales in America. If the present trend continues, by 2030, Wall Street investors may control 40 percent of U.S. single-family rental homes.

The lack of supply is the biggest reason home prices and rents have soared. Wall Street is worsening the supply problem.
Harris should announce her support of a bill now in both houses of Congress to ban hedge funds and private equity firms from buying or owning single-family homes. If it comes to her desk, she’ll sign it.

More generally, Harris should take on corporate concentration. Corporate profits are a bigger share of the economy than they’ve been in 75 years, while wages comprise the lowest share, due to the increase in corporate concentration. Workers and consumers have fewer options and have to accept the wages and prices these giant corporations offer.

Giant firms also provide significant campaign contributions and employ platoons of lobbyists and lawyers. The financial returns on their political investments are huge: They get tax loopholes, subsidies, bailouts, regulatory exemptions, and loan guarantees.

The sky-high profits at America’s biggest banks are due to their being too big to fail, along with their political power to keep regulators at bay.

High profits at the four remaining airlines come from inflated prices, overcrowded planes, overbooked flights, and weak unions.
High profits of Big Tech come from wanton invasions of personal privacy, the weaponizing of false information, and market power that’s discouraging innovation.

And so on.

The shift in bargaining power from workers to corporations and their shareholders has siphoned off a larger portion of national income into profits and left a lower portion in wages than at any time since World War II. Most of these profits are going into higher share prices — fueled by share buybacks — and higher executive pay rather than new investment.

Most of the increasing value of the stock market has come out of the pockets of American workers.*
America’s shift from farm to factory was accompanied by decades of bloody labor conflict. The shift from factory to office and other sedentary jobs created other social upheaval.

The more recent power shift from workers to large corporations and their shareholders — and consequentially, the dramatic widening of inequalities of income, wealth, and political power — has happened more quietly but has had an even more devastating consequence for the system: an angry working class vulnerable to demagogues peddling authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have an opportunity to restructure the American economy to benefit workers rather than big corporations, their executives, and major shareholders. I hope they take it.

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*See Greenwald, Lettau, and Ludvigson, “How the Wealth Was Won: Factors Shares as Market Fundamentals,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 25769, revised October 2023 at https://www.nber.org/papers/w25769.

 

[basilio]

From someone who spent years inside the KKK.

FBI informant’s book predicts far-right violence: ‘we should be afraid’​

Joe Moore, who for years investigated the Ku Klux Klan, issues a chilling warning for the 2024 election and beyond

Edward Helmore
Sun 25 Aug 2024 08.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 25 Aug 2024 08.27 EDT


America’s fraught 2024 election could be hit by far-right violence, warns a high-profile FBI informant who spent years infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan in a new book.
Joe Moore spent a decade tasked with infiltrating KKK chapters in Florida to investigate enduring ties between law enforcement and the white supremacist organization, an assignment that included disrupting a murder plot by a trio of Klansmen who worked as prison guards.

Now the former US army sniper is out with a book, White Robes and Broken Badges, detailing those experiences – and applying the lessons he learned to an approaching election freighted with fears of the impact of far-right and white supremacist groups.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll in May reported that two out of three Americans said they were concerned that political violence could follow the 5 November election.

“Unfortunately, I think it’s relevant to any time in our nation’s history, not just this election,” Moore says. Far-right ideology has two origins, he has come to learn. “One is geographical, where you are raised up in an area where that ideology is simply a part of a belief system. The second is a generational origin in which it’s handed down.”
And so begins a story of how Moore, living near Gainesville in the 2010s, became involved with white supremacists in Florida, rose to the position of Grand Knighthawk, the klan’s security official, and disrupted a plot by Klansmen, all prison guards, to murder a Black former inmate, and of bringing down two major KKK figures, Grand Dragon Jamie Ward and Exalted Cyclops Charles Newcomb.
“In my first tour inside the KKK – the nation’s first domestic terrorist group, founded more than 150 years ago – I foiled a plot to assassinate then candidate Barack Obama, only to witness the Klan use his election as a rallying cry and recruiting tool that ignited a firestorm within the white nationalist right,” Moore writes in the book.

Joe Moore spent a decade infiltrating KKK chapters in Florida to investigate enduring ties with law enforcement. Photograph: Harper

After serving in foreign authoritarian countries, he continues, “nothing I witnessed in any of them scares me as much what we’re facing at home now. Should we be afraid? With the 2024 election looming, and democracy itself on the ballot, the answer is yes, we should be very afraid.”

Moore described meeting a regional Klan leader, or Grand Dragon, who lived near Rosewood, Florida, the site of a racist massacre of dozens of Black people and the destruction of the town in 1923. “After an evening at the Grand Dragon’s home I walked over to remnants of Rosewood and realized that I had the power to stop the next Rosewood,” he says.

Moore’s extraordinary tale has been told previously – both as an Associated Press story in 2021 corroborated using court records and trial transcripts, and as a documentary, Grand Knighthawk: Infiltrating the KKK, but Moore’s new account comes with an immediate political message.

FBI informant’s book predicts far-right violence: ‘we should be afraid’

Joe Moore, who for years investigated the Ku Klux Klan, issues a chilling warning for the 2024 election and beyond

www.theguardian.com

 

[basilio]

How does this sound to people who believe Donald Trump should be President again regardless of what he did after the last Presidential election ?​

​

How It Felt to Address the Democratic Convention as a Republican​

I never expected to do it, I paid a personal price for it, and I would definitely do it again.​

Adam Kinzinger
Aug 26, 2024


...... What was clear to me wasn’t as clear to my friends and former supporters: I wasn’t becoming a Democrat. They were just the only party offering me a chance to deliver my message to the whole country. It’s not about partisanship; it was about standing up for the principles I had sworn to protect, principles that transcended party lines, principles that inspired my career as a Republican politician in the first place.

Accepting the invitation wasn’t about agreeing with every policy position of the Democratic party. It was about uniting with those who still believe in the fundamental principles of our nation: the rule of law, the sanctity of our elections, and the peaceful transfer of power. These are the cornerstones of our democracy, and they are worth defending, no matter the political cost.

How It Felt to Address the Democratic Convention as a Republican

I never expected to do it, I paid a personal price for it, and I would definitely do it again.

www.thebulwark.com

 

[SirRumpole]

The Elephant in the room of the US Economy.

Debt.

Trump and Harris go quiet on America's biggest economic issue

There's an eerie quiet about what potentially is looming as a future crisis point for the US economy. Neither party is addressing America's burgeoning debt levels and the yawning gap between its income and its outlays.

www.abc.net.au

 

[sptrawler]

The Elephant in the room of the US Economy.

Debt.

Trump and Harris go quiet on America's biggest economic issue

There's an eerie quiet about what potentially is looming as a future crisis point for the US economy. Neither party is addressing America's burgeoning debt levels and the yawning gap between its income and its outlays.

www.abc.net.au

The problem is the narrative drivers want more of the same.
Meanwhile the plebs life is going down the toilet.
Life is fine in the U.S, UK, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,
If your financially set up and unfortunately it is that well set up group that control the narrative.
It isn't going to end well IMO, no matter which side gets in there will be a lot of pain, with one side the pain will go on forever.

 

[moXJO]

Wow when Trump put tariffs on Chinese gear there was an uproar.
Now crickets, as some would say. Lol

Why Chinese car brands could soon be flooding our roads: Cars like the BYD Seal, GWM Cannon and Haval Jolion are just the start after US government imposes heavy tariffs | Analysis - Car News

The US government this week has taken aim at Chinese electric car makers and it could have giant consequences for Australia. The Biden administration has slapped Chinese EVs with a 100 per cent tariff, up from the current 25 per cent, snatching away their competitive edge with the stroke of a...

www.carsguide.com.au

The U.S to put 100% tariffs on Chinese EV's. Lol

China was in the process of doing a deal with Mexico to manufacture there to try and circumvent the tariffs and push evs into the US

 

[basilio]

Implementation of Project 2025 if Trump is elected.
The laws are in place. The technology to oversee peoples lives is well sorted.
The desire to control women and their choice to decide is absolute.
And this is how it would play out.