USA Politics (redux)

Started by bhodges, November 10, 2020, 01:09:34 PM

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Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 14, 2021, 10:39:13 AM
Of course, the horrible fact is, we're not yet out of the woods.
Yes, too true!  :(  Had you heard/read this news yet Karel?

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

71 dB

Andrew Yang to start third party.

Without ranked-choice voting this will end up being pretty useless effort I'm afraid.  :P
Spatial distortion is a serious problem deteriorating headphone listening.
Crossfeeders reduce spatial distortion and make the sound more natural
and less tiresome in headphone listening.

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Karl Henning

Quote from: 71 dB on September 14, 2021, 01:21:22 PM
Andrew Yang to start third party.

Without ranked-choice voting this will end up being pretty useless effort I'm afraid.  :P

Yiou're right, at that.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on September 14, 2021, 10:48:59 AM
Yes, too true!  :(  Had you heard/read this news yet Karel?

PD

Just saw a piece today.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

SimonNZ

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on September 14, 2021, 09:19:08 AM
Just been listening to some stunning news on CNN regarding information/research in the new Woodward/Costa book titled Peril.  I'm in shock!  Gen. Milley held a secret meeting due to concerns that he felt that Trump might go rogue.  Too much to write about it here.  Really want to read this book.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/14/politics/woodward-book-trump-nuclear/index.html

PD

Magaworld will say this confirms their "deep state" conspiracy theories and that it's "unconstitutional" to try to stop a madman from potentially launching a completely unjustified nuclear strike to distract from his election loss and declare a state of emergency.

greg

Quote from: 71 dB on September 14, 2021, 01:21:22 PM
Andrew Yang to start third party.

Without ranked-choice voting this will end up being pretty useless effort I'm afraid.  :P
Can't wait for leftists on Twitter to call it a fascist party if he refuses to play identity politics.
Wagie wagie get back in the cagie

71 dB

Spatial distortion is a serious problem deteriorating headphone listening.
Crossfeeders reduce spatial distortion and make the sound more natural
and less tiresome in headphone listening.

My Sound Cloud page <-- NEW Jan. 2024 "Harpeggiator"

milk

Quote from: greg on September 14, 2021, 04:57:21 PM
Can't wait for leftists on Twitter to call it a fascist party if he refuses to play identity politics.
I was disappointed that he did just that towards the end of his mayoral campaign. That surprised me. It was a pretty lame and desperate attempt at jumping on the victim train. I hope he recovers his integrity for this new political venture because I'd quite liked him.

Fëanor

#2928
Quote from: 71 dB on September 14, 2021, 01:21:22 PM
Andrew Yang to start third party.

Without ranked-choice voting this will end up being pretty useless effort I'm afraid.  :P

Let me indulge in an aside re. rank-choice balloting.

Here in Canada a couple of elections ago the Liberal Partly leader, Justin Trudeau vowed that would be the last "first-past-the-post", (plurality wins), election.  After the election and a LP victory there was a multi-partisan Parliamentary committee appointed to look into the issue ...

As soon as it became apparent that the committee's consensus was leaning to proportional representation rather than ranked ballot, Trudeau shut committee down and shelved all consideration of electoral reform indefinitely.

You see, as the only centrist party the Liberal Party insiders deemed that ranked ballot would ensure LP majorities for decades to come -- whereas proportional representation would have a much different affect.  :o  Ranked ballot is merely an formalization of strategic voting.

Of course, Canadians can have as many as five significant parties on their ballot, much different than the USA where there is always only two significant parties' candidates.

71 dB

Quote from: milk on September 15, 2021, 03:05:19 AM
I was disappointed that he did just that towards the end of his mayoral campaign. That surprised me. It was a pretty lame and desperate attempt at jumping on the victim train. I hope he recovers his integrity for this new political venture because I'd quite liked him.

I heard he hired completely wrong people for his campaign and that's why it went down to toilet.

Quote from: Fëanor on September 15, 2021, 03:47:53 AM
Let me indulge in an aside re. rank-choice balloting.

Here in Canada a couple of elections ago the Liberal Partly leader, Justin Trudeau vowed that would be the last "first-past-the-post", (plurality wins), election.  After the election and a LP victory there was a multi-partisan Parliamentary committee appointed to look into the issue ...

As soon as it became apparent that the committee's consensus was leaning to proportional representation rather than ranked ballot, Trudeau shut committee down and shelved all consideration of electoral reform indefinitely.

You see, as the only centrist party the Liberal Party insiders deemed that ranked ballot would ensure LP majorities for decades to come -- whereas proportional representation would have a much different affect.  :o  Ranked ballot is merely an formalization of strategic voting.

Of course, Canadians can have as many as five significant parties on their ballot, much different than the USA where there is always only two significant parties' candidates.

Yes, the US being so strongly two party system makes the difference.
Spatial distortion is a serious problem deteriorating headphone listening.
Crossfeeders reduce spatial distortion and make the sound more natural
and less tiresome in headphone listening.

My Sound Cloud page <-- NEW Jan. 2024 "Harpeggiator"


Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: T. D. on September 16, 2021, 12:25:32 PM
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/16/trump-supports-jan-6-riot-defendants-police-brace-for-capitol-rally.html
>:(  With all of the crazy stuff going on in the world--including Covid--we have to waste money, officers and other resources and also pray that no one gets hurt!

Found this (by accident when googling about the protest) on Yahoo:

"WASHINGTON – Organizers of a Saturday rally supporting defendants charged in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 are urging participants not to wear clothing or carry signs supporting former President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden.

Matt Braynard, the former Trump campaign staffer who organized the rally, said participants who supported the political figures would be considered infiltrators.

'We request that anybody attending our events not wear any clothing or have signs supportive of either President Trump or Biden," Braynard said in a tweet. "Anyone not honoring this request will be assumed to be an infiltrator and we will take your picture, find out who you are, and make you famous.'"


So, is this person, Matt Braynard, really the organizer of the rally?  It looks like it....

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

T. D.

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on September 17, 2021, 05:28:47 AM
>:(  With all of the crazy stuff going on in the world--including Covid--we have to waste money, officers and other resources and also pray that no one gets hurt!

Found this (by accident when googling about the protest) on Yahoo:

"WASHINGTON – Organizers of a Saturday rally supporting defendants charged in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 are urging participants not to wear clothing or carry signs supporting former President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden.

Matt Braynard, the former Trump campaign staffer who organized the rally, said participants who supported the political figures would be considered infiltrators.

'We request that anybody attending our events not wear any clothing or have signs supportive of either President Trump or Biden," Braynard said in a tweet. "Anyone not honoring this request will be assumed to be an infiltrator and we will take your picture, find out who you are, and make you famous.'"


So, is this person, Matt Braynard, really the organizer of the rally?  It looks like it....

PD

Don't care enough to investigate. And you'd get into the question of figurehead vs. "real" organizer.

Apparently the cognoscenti feel this is a "false flag" operation and intend to give it a miss  :o :-X: https://www.yahoo.com/now/paranoia-accusations-cloud-efforts-launch-191150555.html

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: T. D. on September 17, 2021, 07:35:03 AM
Don't care enough to investigate. And you'd get into the question of figurehead vs. "real" organizer.

Apparently the cognoscenti feel this is a "false flag" operation and intend to give it a miss  :o :-X: https://www.yahoo.com/now/paranoia-accusations-cloud-efforts-launch-191150555.html
Interesting.  I was just reading a short time ago that folks were scared/concerned about attending.  In any event, what I've been reading is that it's basically been a non-event.  Only several hundred attended with notable absences by any current politicians and anyone from Trump's family/former admin/aides including Trump himself.  Interesting about some of the excuses, like one by Matt Gaetz who said that he had already promised to spend time with his wife that day.

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

Karl Henning

Greg Sargent of the WaPo:

"The right wing in this country, particularly under Donald Trump, has pulled off a spectacular trick. It has persuaded many neutral observers that its chronic anti-democratic bad acting is a natural and inevitable background feature of our politics that is properly seen as beyond accountability, and that forbearance in response is the price for future democratic stability.

"This is why the coming battle over Trump cronies who are likely to defy the Jan. 6 select committee's subpoenas is so important. At stake is not just whether we'll achieve basic accountability for a sustained effort to overturn U.S. democracy.

"Also at stake is whether our system can uphold the rule of law in the face of a concerted campaign to cow good faith actors into accepting that the price of peace is special treatment that places bad actors above the law.

"CNN reports that the select committee is likely to refer any Trump advisers and allies who defy subpoenas to the Justice Department for prosecution. As of now, one — Stephen K. Bannon — is not cooperating. What former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and political adviser Dan Scavino will do remains unclear.

"If they have not indicated cooperation by the deposition deadlines of Oct. 14 and Oct. 15, the next step should be to refer the matter for Justice Department prosecution. But as CNN reports, it's unclear what would happen then:

Holding non-compliant witnesses in criminal contempt would take the Justice Department agreeing to prosecute those individuals in federal court — a matter that Attorney General Merrick Garland has not weighed in on publicly to date or indicated if he would support.

"In an interview, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the select committee, weighed in strongly behind the idea that the Justice Department should act aggressively.

"Given the nature of the congressional investigation, the Department of Justice would have every reason to enforce criminal contempt referrals from Congress," Raskin told me. "This is about protecting the democracy against violent insurrections and coups."

The straightforward case for this is that it's essential to upholding the rule of law. As Raskin pointed out, the core dictum that no one is above the law is plainly at stake.

"People are held in criminal contempt all of the time, all over the country, for disobeying subpoenas and not showing up in court," Raskin said. "There's nothing remotely unusual about it."

In other words, this is something we should expect as a matter of due course, not something we should see as an extraordinary step that violates settled understandings.

We do not know how the Justice Department will react to criminal referrals. But in other situations, senior department officials have indicated a reluctance to be perceived as acting politically by re-litigating past battles over Trump, seeing this as a threat to the restoration of normalcy.

In this case, we should be particularly wary of such a mind-set.

That's because Trump and his GOP allies have sought to construct a barrier of immunity for their crimes against democracy and their assaults on civil order by casting efforts at accountability themselves as the real threat to future civil peace.

When Trump faced impeachment for inciting the mob to violently disrupt his election loss, he hinted more violence might result, posing a "tremendous danger to our country." His congressional allies fake-worried that such accountability might "incite further violence" or prevent the "healing of this great nation."

Separately, the House GOP leadership has openly threatened retribution against private companies that honor the Jan. 6 committee's lawful subpoenas. Again and again, in one way or another, Trump-allied Republicans have tacitly or overtly insisted that immunity from accountability is the price for national stability and future well being.

This sort of thing also games our discourse. It ends up portraying efforts at accountability as themselves representing disruptive norm-violations. This effectively reduces GOP bad faith and bad acting to a natural background feature of our politics, and recasts acting against it, or even efforts at communicating basic truths about it, as the real departure from normality.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Opinion: Pessimism about the Jan. 6 committee is unwarranted

Opinion by Jennifer Rubin

The punditocracy has repeatedly underestimated the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attempted coup.

When Republicans filibustered the formation of an independent commission to examine the monstrous act of domestic terrorism, many in the media chose to engage in a horse-race analysis (Pelosi loses! Republicans remain in Trump's corner!), rather than focusing of the utter abdication of responsibility by Republicans, many of whom hyped the "big lie" about a stolen election.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) decided to reject two of the Republicans nominated for the select committee for having publicly denounced the role of the committee and fanning MAGA conspiracy theories, the pundits shook their heads. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), they insisted, had outplayed her. (Look how angry Republicans are! The committee will look too partisan!)

Instead, Pelosi brought on two of the rare Republican House members who have not lost their spines or their minds. Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) not only made the committee bipartisan but also added gravitas and credibility to the undertaking.

Well, no one will care much what the committee will do, some in the chattering class sniffed. And what's the point of bringing in police officers to testify as to what occurred on Jan. 6?

In fact, the officers' testimony was mesmerizing and stunning, reminding us of the mob's thuggishness, racism and contempt for democracy.

Next came the subpoenas for four of former president Donald Trump's associates and to those who may have helped organize the event. When Stephen K. Bannon raised an utterly bogus claim of executive privilege (which was not available to him in part because he was not a government employee at the time and because President Biden, not Trump, controls the privilege) more in the mainstream media threw up their hands. They'll never have the nerve to enforce it! The Trump side will run out the clock!

Wrong, and wrong. The committee is unanimous in demanding enforcement of the subpoenas. Cheney told reporters Tuesday, "In general, people are going to have to appear, or ... we will move contempt charges against them." This follows comments from other members including Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif), who declared in an appearance on CNN: "I think we are completely of one mind that if people refuse to respond to questions, refuse to produce documents without justification, that we will hold them in criminal contempt and refer them to the Justice Department."

Unlike the Trump Justice Department, which collaborated with the then-president's obstruction of investigations, the Biden Justice Department almost certainly will move to enforce the contempt citations swiftly. And for those expecting this to drag on or the Supreme Court to ride to Trump's rescue, let's remember that even the right-wing Supreme Court has upheld Congress's right to gather information despite regal claims of privilege.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, found in Trump v. Vance that even a sitting president could not enjoy immunity from subpoenas: "Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding. We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need." If a sitting president is not immune, the underlings of a former president surely are not.

Should Bannon decide to resist, the matter should get quickly resolved. Unlike the right-wing U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that played along with Texas's abortion bounty advocates, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit likely will not allow gamesmanship to override the Constitution. Could Bannon show up and take the Fifth? Sure, but the idea of a former consigliere of Trump claiming he might implicate himself criminally would be a nightmare for the "nothing to see here, just move along" crowd.

The Biden administration, as we saw with documents and witness testimony made available to the Senate Judiciary Committee, is going to cooperate to the greatest extent possible with the committee. Congress will get phone records, witness testimony and other compelling evidence.

The committee is already circling around at least one right-wing congressman who may have played a role in the attempted coup. The Senate report, which the Jan. 6 House committee now has in hand, details the interaction between Trump officials and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) in Trump's failed effort to get the Justice Department to help invalidate the election (including the effort to oust the acting attorney general). Perry will certainly be a witness. He is precisely the sort of person who might be interested in "flipping" to provide further evidence about higher-ups' wrongdoing.

In short, no one should underestimate the effectiveness of the Jan. 6 committee. It has already exceeded meager expectations and will, I am confident, turn over more stones. What it finds will probably deepen our understanding of Trump's determination to pull off a coup and the involvement of his cronies.

In doing so, the committee should enable Americans to grasp the extreme peril the country would face should those involved not be held legally accountable. And it might even prompt a couple Senate Democrats to break through the filibuster to ensure that a future presidential candidate does not try to pull off a similar scheme to undermine elections.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Herman

Thanks for making these WaPo pieces accessible.

T. D.


Karl Henning

Chris Truax: "Trump's claims of executive privilege were often absurd when he was president. Being an ex-president has not improved them. Nonetheless, until they are directly challenged and excised, they remain a festering carbuncle disfiguring the rule of law and our constitutional system. Maybe the first step in cleaning up Trump's mess will be establishing once and for all that executive privilege is a tool of good government rather than a shield for bad behavior."
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

BasilValentine

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on October 14, 2021, 12:30:37 PM
Chris Truax: "Trump's claims of executive privilege were often absurd when he was president. Being an ex-president has not improved them. Nonetheless, until they are directly challenged and excised, they remain a festering carbuncle disfiguring the rule of law and our constitutional system. Maybe the first step in cleaning up Trump's mess will be establishing once and for all that executive privilege is a tool of good government rather than a shield for bad behavior."

I'd settle for establishing that executive privilege is a privilege of the executive.