Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) faced criticism Friday
afternoon for the way in which she chose to vote against a provision to
gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour ― with an exaggerated
thumbs-down hand gesture.
Seven Democratic senators and one independent ended up
joining Republicans in voting down a motion to include the wage hike in the new
round of coronavirus relief, saying it didn’t comply with rules on budget
legislation.
Although hand gestures are commonplace on the Senate floor,
particularly in the coronavirus era, Sinema’s casual body language was
disappointing to some who saw the gesture as belittling the fight to end
poverty wages.
Sinema’s office responded to a question about the gesture by
making the absurd claim that the inquiry is sexist. “Commentary about a female
senator’s body language, clothing, or physical demeanor does not belong in a
serious media outlet,” Hannah Hurley, a spokesperson for Sinema, told HuffPost.
As is widely known now
If a male Senator had appeared in a flannel shirt- or even
dressed without a tie- a whole lot of people would notice. Sinema's outfit wasn't appropriate to the
occasion- but that's clothing and as long as she doesn't violate the dress code for members while on the floor, she is entitled to wear whatever she wants.
But physical demeanor and body language? That was the whole
point of Sinema's ostentatious display. The Young Turk's Cenk Uygur believes (at 2:50 of the video below)
This is Sinema raising her hand going "I will do
anything for corporate donors, anything at all, and I'll have fun doing it...
So that explains the mystery of why kick us when we're down
because she's signaling to corporations "I'm the worst of the worst. So
make sure you back me for my higher ambitions."
In the unlikely even Krysten Sinema has higher ambitions in
the Democratic Party, she will be sorely disappointed. And even Donald Trump
apparently has determined that the non-partisan, independent route is a dead
end in American politics (unless running for the US Senate from New England).
Further, corporate donors have no particular interest in whether an ally has
fun. Instead, I'll go with Steve M when he explains
Much of America thinks Democrats are awful. The message is
so pervasive that even politicians running as Democrats reinforce it. During
the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden couldn't stop telling us how many Republicans had
endorsed him. Hillary Clinton did this too, as did Barack Obama to a lesser
extent in 2008. The message was: I'm a Democrat, but I'm not one of the bad
Democrats. See? Even Republicans like me! Which helps explain why down ballot
Democrats didn't do as well as Biden. Republicans were trashing their party,
and in a subtler way, so was the guy at the top of their own ticket.
Sinema and Manchin are bashing the party. They're saying,
See? You can trust me. I'm a Democrat, but I hate Democrats, too. They vote
like Democrats reasonably often, but when the spotlight is on them, they need
to make a great show of contempt for their party.
As Uygur suggests, yet the Senator's spokesperson implicitly
denies, it was a signal. However, it was not meant to be a show of being the
worst of the worst but of being independent-minded and refusing to be one of
the bad Democrats, who believe living on $14,500 a year as a full-time employee
is suboptimal.
Conservatives an obsession with wrapping itself in the
cloak of God and accusing Democrats of being anti-religion, anti-God,
anti-Christian, or anti-Catholic. They've started in with Joe Biden:
Newsmax host: "There's a strong case against [Joe Biden] that he's not really a Catholic" pic.twitter.com/dz2tcltIl7
Nonetheless, probably nobody has been so attacked on
those grounds as Nancy Pelosi.
And so it is that Red State's Mike Miller, condemning the
Speaker of the House for allegedly being "Catholic in Name Only,"
quotes Dr. Paul Kangor, a proudly Catholic right-winger:
“The list of outrageous statements by Congresswoman Nancy
Pelosi, a Roman Catholic, is unending. Her statements—and actions—advancing
abortion have been nothing short of astounding, and extremely damaging. They
are scandalous.
“But her latest comment may be her worst yet.
“Asked why she refuses to support a bill banning late-term
abortions, Pelosi said: ‘As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is
sacred ground to me…. This shouldn’t have anything to do with politics.’
“Her statement speaks for itself. And frankly, I’m grateful
she said it. Clearly, this is where Nancy Pelosi’s heart and mind and soul is.
And she is speaking for countless other radical ‘abortion rights’ advocates.
“In the past, I’ve gotten nasty responses when I’ve referred
to abortion as a ‘holy sacrament’ in the ‘feminist church.’ I was told this was
over the top, too harsh, exaggerated. Well, it isn’t.
“For certain extreme liberal feminists, there’s nothing more
dear—nothing more sacred—than abortion. Nancy Pelosi has simply publicly reaffirmed
the fact.”
In this country alone, tens of
millions of Roman Catholics support reproductive freedom. Further ,the Protestant Christian
right has its roots in opposition to the the federal government's effort in the
1970s to deny segregated Christian academies tax-exempt status.
However, Miller's screed is Catholic-centric and he blasts Pelosi predominately for the hypocrisy he perceives because she cleaves to her Catholic faith while
being pro-abortion rights. Nonetheless, if Pelosi can be charged with heresy
solely because of her view of abortion rights and "untold numbers of her
actions and the causes she supports," Miller should aim a little higher.
For over five years the country was regaled with Donald Trump's personal insults: "Morning Psycho" (Joe Scarborough); "stone cold
Crazy" (Adam Schiff); "little Eric Schneiderman";
"weirdo" (Tom Steyer); "dumb as a rock" (Rex Tillerson);
"Crazy Bernie Sanders"; "the dumbest man on television"
(Don Lemon); with many other targets including, of course, "Crooked Hillary," she of "no strength, no stamina." The list is much, much longer.
From time to time, we all violate Jesus' warning (Matthew 15:11, ESV) "It is
not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the
mouth; this defiles a person.”
But Donald Trump did this as President. And none of us (except possibly the extremely
mentally ill) ever has claimed "I am the Chosen One." Few of us has been so contemptuous of Jesus
Christ's warning "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s
clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their
fruits” (Matthew 7:15-16).
And Donald
Trump's fruits, culminating - or maybe not- with the riot he instigated on
January 6 are clear. By contrast, according to Michael Miller, this is one of Nancy Pelosi's greatest sins:
.@SpeakerPelosi: "Our nation is blessed with Joe Biden as President of the United States. He is an extraordinary president. He knows how to get the job done." pic.twitter.com/0n4HtdMxVs
There is no reason Democrats should eat their own when Republicans glorify theirs. Mike Allen of Axios may be auditioning for a stand-up gig
when he writes
Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be facing explicit calls to resign
from President Biden on down, if you apply the standard that Democrats set for
similar allegations against Republicans. And it's not a close call.
I don't remember Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
asking for Donald Trump's resignation.
It's true that the all 26 women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual
harassment or assault allege that the misconduct took place before Trump was
elected President. It's also true that he ordered payment of hush money to
Stormy Daniels/Stephanie Clifford shortly before that election so that he might
become President Donald Trump.
Why it matters: The #MeToo moment saw men in power run out
of town for exploiting young women. Democrats led the charge. So the silence of
so many of them seems more strange — and unacceptable by their own standards —
by the hour.
The most notable man "run out of town" for sexual impropriety was Al Franken after charges of sexual
impropriety, behavior which would have taken place before he was a US Senator. He was run out of town by Democrats, because that's what Democrats do.
Their only plausible explanation would be to argue that
three women are exaggerating or misremembering things. This is precisely what Democrats said was unacceptable in
GOP cases.
Democrats didn't say the behavior was unacceptable because
they were committed by Republicans. They said it was unacceptable regardless
of party. And they were wrong- wrong because each case deserves to be
considered on its own merits rather than a blanket "believe
women." Men don't always tell the
truth. Unless women are of a super
gender, they, too, are capable of exaggerating, forgetting details, or-
occasionally- lying. It's the human condition.
One top New York Democrat told me the reaction has been
"disheartening" — an approach by both parties of believing women
"except if they accuse a member of your party."
As pointed out by Axios Sneak Peek on Sunday: Democrats
hammered Donald Trump after "Access Hollywood," pilloried Brett
Kavanaugh over Christine Blasey Ford and defended Joe Biden when he was accused
of inappropriate touching.
The reference to Brett Kavanaugh is the most telling in this
hit piece. Were Andrew Cuomo to have a sense of humor, he would urge an
investigation of the allegations against him similar to the one conducted by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation of charges against Brett Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh was not serving in an elected position, had never
served in an elective position, and had been nominated for a lifetime
appointment. It would be (is) a lifetime appointment to the United States
Supreme Court, to serve alongside a mere eight other individuals to make
rulings which are not reviewable.
If ever there needs to be a thorough review by law
enforcement of a nominee for any position, it would not be of an individual who
was elected to his position and could not continue in the position without
again facing the voters. It would be of
someone tapped to serve on the High Court.
Nonetheless, the FBI "investigation" of
accusations against Brett Kavanaugh took a mere five days in which neither of the two principals- Kavanaugh and Ford- was interviewed. . One of the accusers,
Deborah Ramirez, had been at a drunken dormitory party at Yale when, according to the authors of "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An
Investigation,"
a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and
thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch
it. Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in
the evening, laughed.
Therefore, Ms. Ramirez's legal team
gave the F.B.I. a list of at least 25 individuals who may
have had corroborating evidence. But the bureau — in its supplemental
background investigation — interviewed none of them, though we learned many of
these potential witnesses tried in vain to reach the F.B.I. on their own.
Two F.B.I. agents interviewed Ms. Ramirez, telling her that
they found her “credible.” But the Republican-controlled Senate had imposed
strict limits on the investigation. “‘We have to wait to get authorization to
do anything else,’” Bill Pittard, one of Ms. Ramirez’s lawyers, recalled the
agents saying. “It was almost a little apologetic.”
Nonetheless, maybe Donald Trump is a victim, as Jonathan Allen seems to
believe.
Trump was a victim who bragged about routinely sexually
assaulting women. He then got elected President, tried to pressure a foreign government into investigating his political rival, then obstructed an investigation
into his actions, and gained nearly nearly unanimous support from his party's
members of Congress. On his way out the door, he incited an insurrection
against the United States government, receiving the support of the vast majority
of those members of Congress. He now is extended the privileges of all former
Presidents: office space and staffing
allowances; travel expenses (up to $1 million in costs annually); health
annuities, lifetime Secret Service protection, and the right to burial with
full honors at Arlington National Cemetery, next to individuals he has called
"losers" and "suckers."
Whatever the future may hold for him, Trump has enjoyed a
charmed life- and charmed presidency, thanks to a party whose leaders have
found no crime, no grift, and no contempt for Americans unacceptable as long as
it's committed by Donald Trump. When the governor of New York gets 5% of the
breaks the 45th President has, or 20% what Brett Kavanaugh has, Mike Allen can legitimately accuse Democrats of hypocrisy.
At 2:18 of the video below, Senator Elizabeth Warren can be
seen asking General Gustave F. Perna, Chief Operating Officer, Federal COVID-19
Response For Vaccine, "will D.O.D. commit to procurement transparency on
our federal vaccine efforts?" Perna deferred to an aide but justifiably dissatisfied with the answer given, Warren a moment later stated
The terms of these contracts were bad, too. Public interest groups had to fight OWS to release its contract and when it did it became clear that the Trump Administration had sold out the American public. Key contracts including contracts with Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson excluded critical taxpayer pricing protections.
The Department of Defense has not been the only cabinet-level agency to hide from the public. Only four days after that Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, we would learn from STAT News
The Trump administration quietly took around $10 billion
from a fund meant to help hospitals and health care providers affected by
Covid-19 and used the money to bankroll Operation Warp Speed contracts, four
former Trump administration officials told STAT.
The Department of Health and Human Services appears to have
used a financial maneuver that allowed officials to spend the money without
telling Congress, and the agency got permission from its top lawyer to do so.
Now, the Biden administration is refusing to say whether the outlay means there
will be less money available for hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, and
other providers.
Several provider groups said they had not heard that $10
billion for providers was spent on Warp Speed contracts until STAT’s reporting.
Congress set aside that money to help health care providers pay for
pandemic-related expenses including staffing, personal protective equipment,
care for uninsured patients, and vaccine distribution. One of the top hospital
lobbyists in D.C., who also did not know about the outlay, emphasized how much
some hospitals still need the funding.
Operation Warp Speed was widely celebrated in the media as one of the great successes of the Trump Administration. On November 13, Reason declared
President Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden at the White House this afternoon touting the truly amazing progress that Operation Warp Speed has made with respect to developing COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Launched officially on May 15, 2020, the Trump administration deserves much credit for the successes of Operation Warp Speed.
But as the AP observed in a fact check of the President's speech
Pfizer notably did not accept government money to develop, test or expand manufacturing capacity under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly find a vaccine and treatments for the disease sweeping the country.
In fact, Pfizer partnered with the vaccine’s original developer, Germany’s BioNTech, in March and the following month announced the first human study in Germany. The White House announced Operation Warp Speed in May.
Nonetheless, the propaganda from Reason and other portions of the media would have been politically crucial had Pfizer and BioNTech announced "evidence of efficacy" of its Covid-19 vaccine before a majority of the votes were cast in the last election cycle, rather than on November 9.
It's likely that the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense were manipulating levers of government to enhance the possibility of an announcement of a viable vaccine before the presidential election. Had that ensued, the impact of the propaganda from Reason and elsewhere would have had a much greater impact.
As Senator Warren summarized, the Department of Defense has been opaque. The Department of Health and Human Services was sneaky, sleazy, and dishonest with the $10 billion they kept from health care providers. Fortunately, their timing was off and, probably as a consequence, we're not now six weeks into a second Trump term.
Andrew Cuomo is to Coronavirus what Rudy Giuliani was to 9/11. In a crisis, his authoritarian tendencies get retconned as leadership and their destructive impacts on people forgotten. When it comes time for the next phase of his ambition, there’ll be bewilderment re his behavior. https://t.co/Np6yiAdAoY
It was spring and summer of 2020 and Andrew Cuomo,
presenting near-daily coronavirus news conferences and deftly showing
compassion mixed with a high degree of deference for facts and the scientific
method, was praised for his handling of the novel coronavirus. He even wrote a book entitled "American
Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic."
Once thought by the media to be America's governor, he's now embroiled in twin controversies. His administration allegedly lied to state legislators about the number of elderly individuals who had died from Covid-19. Many of those had been returned, at his urging, from hospitals to nursing homes after testing positive for he coronavirus. Additionally, two women
in his administration have accused the governor of sexual harassment. If the latter
seems far less serious than the former, you haven't recently noticed the
American media and contemporary political messaging.
Rudy Giuliani, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01,
was commonly labeled "America's mayor," with frequent and glowing
tributes. Seven years after the two
planes hit the World Trade Center, the New York Times (which should have known
better) printed a story by Michael Powell (who, remarkably, is still at the
paper), who wrote that the Mayor
was two blocks from the south tower, in an office on Barclay
Street, trying to get the vice president on the phone, when his world went dark
with smoke. Back at City Hall, Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington waited and wondered
and dialed the governor.
“We really didn’t know what had become of the mayor,” he
said. “I spoke to Governor Pataki, and we closed the schools and canceled the
election.”
Then Mr. Giuliani was led through a basement and out onto
Church Street, his head and shoulders dusted white with ash. He walked north
into the surreal brightness of that day, comforting a police officer and
dragooning reporters.
He would walk north two miles, pausing in the bay of a
deserted fire station in Greenwich Village to call a television station and
urge calm. Three hours later he stepped into a press conference with Gov.
George E. Pataki.
“Today is obviously one of the most difficult days in the
history of the city,” he said softly. “The tragedy that we are undergoing right
now is something that we’ve had nightmares about. My heart goes out to all the
innocent victims of this horrible and vicious act of terrorism. And our focus
now has to be to save as many lives as possible.”
Inevitably the question arose: How many lost? The mayor
looked up through his glasses, aware that among the viewers of this live
broadcast were the mothers, fathers, spouses, lovers and children of those who
labored in the smashed towers.
“The number of casualties,” he said, “will be more than any
of us can bear ultimately.”
That walk north, the spareness of his words and his passion
became the founding stones in the reconstruction of the mayor’s reputation,
transforming him from a grouchy pol slip-sliding into irrelevancy to the
Republican presidential candidate introduced as America’s mayor. The former
mayor has made this day the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, aware
that millions of Americans hold that heroic view in their collective mind’s eye.
He was "comforting a police officer and dragooning
reporters" so he could "urge calm" with "the spareness of
his words and his passion."
Worse, he would "walk two miles," which someone
should have noticed was a centerpiece of the public relations spectacle being promoted,
especially because the major criterion for placement of the center was that it
be within walking distance of city hall.
Four months later, a different NYT reporter would explain
The New York Police Department produced a detailed analysis
in 1998 opposing plans by the city to locate its emergency command center at
the World Trade Center, but the Giuliani administration overrode those
objections. The command center later collapsed from damage in the Sept. 11
terrorist attack.
“Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a
crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York,” a panel
of police experts, which was aided by the Secret Service, concluded in a
confidential Police Department memorandum.
Well, no, it was an excellent choice for a mayor whose image
was invaluably enhanced by the enduring image of him walking around the city, seemingly
sensitive yet strong, portrayed as having a love for his city second only to his love for these United States of America.
Giuliani was catapulted into a leading candidate for the 2008 Republican
presidential nomination.
If the decision to place the emergency command center at
arguably the most vulnerable site in New York City didn't directly cost lives,
another Giuliani policy did.
The bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 prompted New
York city officials, spurred by first responders, to replace inadequate analog
radios with new, digital radios. They were developed after a no-bid deal with Motorola in which the city (according
to its comptroller) "willfully violated" contracting rules.
They had not been properly tested and failed in an emergency
situation in early 2001. The city returned to its insufficient analog radios,
when
at 9:32 am. on Sept. 11, an FDNY Chief ordered all members
in the North Tower to the lobby. Even though he repeated the order, not a
single company responded.
At 9:59 the WTC South Tower collapsed; and at 10 am the
order to abandon the North Tower was repeated. Inside the North Tower were 121
firefighters who never heard that order. They perished when the North Tower
collapsed at 10:28 am.
“On 9/11 firefighters went into the North Tower and started
ascending the tower, yet they were being called back and they kept going,” said
Richard Salem, an attorney who has been representing several of the
firefighters’ families who lost loved ones when the North Tower collapsed. “Not
one other uniform[ed] officer from any other department [who had functioning
radios], perished in that tower other than the FDNY.”
So when various figures in cable news speculate as to where
it all went wrong for Giuliani, when America's Mayor was magically transformed
into a reactionary, lying hot mess for Donald Trump, recall that the man was
in fact a bad mayor.
Opinions differ as to whether Giuliani functioned well or
poorly aside from the 9/11/01 catastrophe, but his sterling reputation was
founded on the grossly faulty perception of his handling of that crisis.
Similarly, Andrew Cuomo was exalted because of the grossly faulty perception of his response to SARS-CoV-2.
Governor Cuomo, if as likely he still harbors a desire for
higher office, would do well strategically to take a page from Giuliani's
response to questions about 9/11/01. The ex-mayor has never taken any
responsibility nor conceded any failure, even denying that a different site for
the command center was recommended to him.
Consequently, Andrew Cuomo would be wise- albeit unethical- to deny,
deny, deny. It took nineteen years,
abominable behavior followed by an effort to overturn a democratic election, to
understand clearly that Rudolph Giuliani is indeed a sub-human creature.
"Bill Maher" was trending on Twitter Saturday morning as he frequently
does after having the audacity on Real Time to suggest
that freedom of expression is a liberal value liberals shouldn't erase.
Tweeters responded to an interview the evening before in
which Maher, in what was probably not his finest 10-15 minutes, chatted with
Megyn Kelly about the now fashionable (both as behavior and as cliche)
"cancel culture." Most of the
comments were negative, including "Bill Maher giving a platform to Megyn
Blackface Kelly why?"; "Bill Maher and Megyn Kelly feel the biggest
problem in America right now is white people being targeted;" "Can’t wait for Bill Maher to
go the way of Chris Matthews. Wake up people;."
Of course, we must not have good interviews (though this one
uncharacteristically fell short) on television.. Although the Megyn Kelly
interview was not up to his standards, Maher's "New Rule"
commentary at the close of the show continued the theme of the Kelly segment. The comedian remarked
In an era where everyone is online, everyone is a
public figure. It's like we're all trapped in the hills, have eyes and wi-fi.
Take Mr. Emmanuel Cafferty. He is- was- a San Diego Gas and
Electric worker but he got fired because someone reported him making a
white supremacist hand gesture outside the window of his truck.
But he's not a white supremacist, he's a Latino and he
wasn't making a hand gesture. He's probably just flicking a booger.
Is this really who we want to become- a society of phony
clenched asshole avatars walking on eggshells always looking over your shoulder about
getting ratted out for something that actually has nothing to do with your
character or morals?
When expressing a conservative viewpoint, even liberals can
play fast and loose with the truth, and a fact-check thus is critical.
In June, 2020, in midst of the
protests over the killing of George Floyd, Cafferty was indeed employed by San
Diego Gas and Electric. According to a piece written by The Atlantic's Yascha
Mounk at the time, Cafferty is of Mexican and Irish descent on his father's
side and Mexican on his mother's side. That doesn't completely preclude someone
from being a white supremacist but makes highly questionable any suggestion
that he is. As to the event to which Maher alluded, Mounk explained
At the end of a long shift mapping underground utility
lines, he was on his way home, his left handcasually hanging out the window of
the white pickup truck issued to him by the San Diego Gas & Electric
company. When he came to a halt at a traffic light, another driver flipped him
off.
Then, Cafferty told me a few days ago, the other driver
began to act even more strangely. He flashed what looked to Cafferty like an
“okay” hand gesture and started cussing him out. When the light turned green,
Cafferty drove off, hoping to put an end to the disconcerting encounter.
But when Cafferty reached another red light, the man, now
holding a cellphone camera, was there again. “Do it! Do it!” he shouted. Unsure
what to do, Cafferty copied the gesture the other driver kept making. The man
appeared to take a video, or perhaps a photo.
Two hours later, Cafferty got a call from his supervisor,
who told him that somebody had seen Cafferty making a white-supremacist hand
gesture, and had posted photographic evidence on Twitter. (Likely unbeknownst
to most Americans, the alt-right has appropriated a version of the “okay”
symbol for their own purposes because it looks like the initials for “white
power”; this is the symbol the man accused Cafferty of making when his hand was
dangling out of his truck.) Dozens of people were now calling the company to
demand Cafferty’s dismissal.
By the end of the call, Cafferty had been suspended without
pay. By the end of the day, his colleagues had come by his house to pick up the
company truck. By the following Monday, he was out of a job....
When Cafferty was wrongly accused of being a white
supremacist, he fought hard to keep his job. He said he explained to the people
carrying out the investigation—all of them were white—that he had no earthly
idea some racists had tried to appropriate the “okay” sign for their sinister
purposes. He told them he simply wasn’t interested in politics; as far as he
remembered, he had not voted in a single election. Eventually, he told me, “I
got so desperate, I was showing them the color of my skin. I was saying, ‘Look
at me. Look at the color of my skin.’”
It was all to no avail. SDG&E, Cafferty told me, never
presented him with any evidence that he held racist beliefs or knew about the
meaning of his gesture. Yet he was terminated.
Sadly, the incident did occur as Maher scantily described it, and there are other incidents which threaten to have a significant political
effect. Republicans now are continuallycomplaining about "cancel culture" and being cancelled, even when
(especially when) there is no cancellation involved, because they recognize the
political power in it. The theme of this year's CPAC is "America Uncanceled."
Mounk understands
such injustices are liable to provoke a political backlash.
If a lot of Americans come to feel that those who supposedly oppose racism are
willing to punish the innocent to look good in the public’s eyes, they could
well grow cynical about the enterprise as a whole.
However, the primary reason this rush to judgement against
anyone who at any time said something which might have offended a protected
class is destructive. As philosophy professor Luke Cuddy argues
One of the core tenets of liberal democracy is that people
should not be punished for accusations against them that are unsubstantiated,
for actions that are perfectly reasonable, or for offenses that were committed
by others. No matter how worthy the cause they invoke, you should not trust
anyone who seeks to abandon these fundamental principles.
Or as Maher recommends, the left should begin to "stand
your ground (and) stop apologizing."
Senate Minority Whip John Thune on Wednesday explained his
reasoning for opposing a major minimum wage hike and stated
And I can tell you, as somebody like Senator Scott who was
growing up in a small town, I worked for less than the minimum wage. I worked
for the minimum wage. I started busing tables at a dollar an hour. I went up to
$2.25 when they moved me up in the place and I finally made it up to cook,
which was big-time. That was six bucks an hour.
I started working by bussing tables at the Star Family Restaurant for $1/hour & slowly moved up to cook – the big leagues for a kid like me– to earn $6/hour. Businesses in small towns survive on narrow margins. Mandating a $15 minimum wage would put many of them out of business. pic.twitter.com/izQDOGRAH1
Thune apparently worked at Star Family Restaurant, a
diner-like eatery in Murdo, South Dakota.
(The service is praised but it closes early, so go for breakfast or
lunch.) He evidently worked there in the
1970s because he graduated high school in South Dakota in 1979, then went to
college in California.
The senator stated that he was paid $6.00 per hour, which is
meant to sound as if he had a humble beginning earning wages which pale in
comparison to the $15 per hour Democrats are seeking in the coronavirus
stimulus package.
Let's assume for a moment that Thune's hourly wage was $6.00
an hour as late as 1979, which would be a less generous wage than if, for
example, he was referring to 1975 or 1976.
The $6.00 in 1979 is worth $23.08 in 2021.
Senator Thune thus has made the argument that $23.08 is today a
modest wage. It is, if his words mean anything, one fitting for a chef without a formal education in the culinary
arts and working in a small town in a state with a relatively low cost of
living.
That's $5.08 more than congressional Democrats are pursuing, and which virtually every Republican is opposing. But that's not surprising because Thune gave it away when he claimed "the minimum wage is something that is particularly troubling and harmful at a time when you're trying to get people back to work and trying to create jobs again."
Thune therein did not blast an increase in the minimum wage but the minimum wage itself. Now that is particularly troubling.
Politico has reported that nearly three dozen
House Democrats have sent to the White House a letter proposing that the
President relinquish sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. Alternatives
suggested include one which would require the Speaker of the House or the vice
president "neither of whom can be removed by the
president if they disagree — to concur with a launch order.”
As usual, the right-wing propaganda machine is not arguing
against the merits of the proposal, instead borrowing from their bag of ad hominem
attacks. This includes Gateway Pundit retweeting the
remark "Joe Biden is mentally compromised and they know it" and concluding "Biden is not nearly as sharp as he used to be. Anyone
who has watched him trying to speak knows this."
In 2019 Elizabeth Warren introduced (with six co-sponsors)
the Senate version of a bill to declare as USA policy no first use of nuclear
weapons. The proposal was met with hostility from Republicans and skepticism
from some Democrats. However, it should bring to mind this BBC story of a Cold War near-miss:
In the early hours of the morning, the Soviet Union's
early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United
States. Computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched. The
protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear
attack of its own.
But duty officer Stanislav Petrov - whose job it was to
register apparent enemy missile launches - decided not to report them to his
superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.
This was a breach of his instructions, a dereliction of
duty. The safe thing to do would have been to pass the responsibility on, to
refer up.
But his decision may have saved the world.
"I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing
missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would
have said a word against it," he told the BBC's Russian Service 30 years
after that overnight shift.
Mr Petrov - who retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel
and now lives in a small town near Moscow - was part of a well-trained team
which served at one of the Soviet Union's early warning bases, not far from
Moscow. His training was rigorous, his instructions very clear.
His job was to register any missile strikes and to report
them to the Soviet military and political leadership. In the political climate
of 1983, a retaliatory strike would have been almost certain.
And yet, when the moment came, he says he almost froze in
place.
"The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few
seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on
it," he says.
The system was telling him that the level of reliability of
that alert was "highest". There could be no doubt. America had
launched a missile.
"A minute later the siren went off again. The second
missile was launched. Then the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Computers
changed their alerts from 'launch' to 'missile strike'," he says.
Mr Petrov smokes cheap Russian cigarettes as he relates the
incidents he must have played over countless times in his mind.
"There was no rule about how long we were allowed to
think before we reported a strike. But we knew that every second of
procrastination took away valuable time; that the Soviet Union's military and
political leadership needed to be informed without delay.
"All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise
the direct line to our top commanders - but I couldn't move. I felt like I was
sitting on a hot frying pan," he told us.
Although the nature of the alert seemed to be abundantly
clear, Mr Petrov had some doubts.
Alongside IT specialists, like him, Soviet Union had other
experts, also watching America's missile forces. A group of satellite radar
operators told him they had registered no missiles.
But those people were only a support service. The protocol
said, very clearly, that the decision had to be based on computer readouts. And
that decision rested with him, the duty officer.
But what made him suspicious was just how strong and clear
that alert was.
"There were 28 or 29 security levels. After the target
was identified, it had to pass all of those 'checkpoints'. I was not quite sure
it was possible, under those circumstances," says the retired officer.
Mr Petrov called the duty officer in the Soviet army's
headquarters and reported a system malfunction.
If he was wrong, the first nuclear explosions would have
happened minutes later.
Twenty-three minutes later I realised that nothing had
happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it.
It was such a relief," he says with a smile.
One of President Reagan's favorite quips- "trust, but
verify"- was a translation of the Russian "Doveryai no proveryai."
It's critical that other nations trust that the USA will avoid using nuclear
weapons as a first option. When Senator Warren was asked at an 8/19/15 debate
about her bill, she explained "We don't expand trust around the world by
saying, ‘You know, we might be the first ones to use a nuclear
weapon."
In order to trust that a decision by the federal
government to order a nuclear strike is reasonable, there should be two very high-ranking officials, neither beholden to the other, to
agree. If that policy were known to our
rivals- as obviously it would be- they would be less likely to mistake an act
of ours for a nuclear attack. Thus, it probably wouldn't be necessary in the
coming decades or centuries for another Stanislav Petrov to save the world.
If there is one thing Donald Trump is right about (and there must be) it's Ted Cruz. The New York Daily News reports
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, bombarded with national criticism over
a Cancun getaway as his frozen state shivered in the dark last week, said
Tuesday that the incident illustrated “how ridiculously politicized” the
country is — but he didn’t stop there.
“Here’s a suggestion, just don’t be a--holes,” said Cruz
(R-Texas). “Yeah, like just you know treat each other as human beings. Have
some degree, some modicum of respect." Somehow, that was not the fault of
Heidi Cruz's friends, who leaked the information, nor to Mrs. Cruz herself,
who, as an executive of Goldman Sachs feels so entitled as to flaunt a trip to
coastal Mexico while her husband's state is being devastated. It was the fault
of the press, you see.
Complaining about a paparazzi
who photographed his wife wearing a bikini on the beach in Cancun, Cruz
nonetheless added "Heidi is smoking hot, so I looked at the pictures and
said, ‘Man, you look great.’” Fortunately, though he once called Ohio senator Sherrod Brown on the Senate floor a "complete ass," Cruz spared us his favorite "a" word in describing his wife's physique.
The whine took place on the podcast Ruth Less, not coincidentally
begun soon after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. However, Cruz is more than peculiarly classless. We recall March of 2016 when
After a super PAC unrelated to Cruz published an ad using a
suggestive photo of Trump’s wife, Melania, from GQ, Trump laid the blame on
Cruz anyway.
“Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot
in his ad,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the
beans on your wife!”
While it remains unclear what “beans” Trump was referring
to, he posted an image on his Twitter account Wednesday another user had
tweeted insulting the appearance of Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz.
Cruz has proven in the past four years that he’ll stand by
Trump in the president's most pressing times. During Trump's impeachment trial
early this year, Cruz joined forces with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
as part of the in-house impeachment advisory team and met with Trump and his
lawyers to help “frame their legal strategy,” which ultimately contributed to
the president’s acquittal.
And now, Cruz has been a leading voice in sowing doubt in
Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat.
Cruz even collaborated with Trump's legal team during the
more recent impeachment trial, when "after Democrats wrapped up their case
against Trump"
Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee huddled for
roughly an hour with Bruce Castor and David Schoen, evidently to go over
strategy. “I just wanted to sit down and say, ‘Okay, what are y’all looking to
put forward?’ and to share our thoughts in terms of where things are,” Cruz
recalled in a Fox News interview Thursday evening. “And certainly what I urged
to the Trump defense lawyers was to focus on [on the legal standard of
incitement].” On Friday morning, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins reported that the three
senators specifically intended to give Trump’s legal team “advice for the
rebuttal” to Democrats’ arguments.
Although few if any senators of either party would confront their colleagues, this does not make for credible jurors.. Nor was Cruz credible when on
his podcast he complained of the paparazzi's photograph "I will tell you,that she is pissed about." The senator was terribly concerned about his wife, once publicly humiliated by Donald Trump a few months before his boots were licked by Cruz.
And that is why Donald Trump understands Ted Cruz. The Washington Post noted a year ago after Trump's first acquittal
at a Jan. 29 event celebrating the ratification of a new
North American trade deal, Trump singled Cruz out for praise. “Thank you, Ted,
for everything,” he said. “You’ve been incredible.”
Incredible. That is
one of the best descriptions ever of Ted Cruz- incredible, as in "not
credible."
Emerging from his basement, Donald Trump will soon be making
his first public appearance, at the Conservative Political Action Conference,
since leaving the presidency. So Chris Cuomo on Monday night interviewed the
chairman of CPAC, veteran Republican strategist Matt Schlapp. They spoke about GOP claims of (imaginary) widespread voter fraud. But then the exchange turned (at 7:12 of the video below) to a related topic:
Schlapp: And you spent four years saying there was Russian collusion
and that there was not- and that the election should be questioned and Hillary
Clinton said Joe Biden should never, ever concede and this is like, this is
like hypocrisy I've never seen.
Cuomo: Not only, hold on, hold on, this is why. Not only did
I say there was collusion. I will say it now that there was collusion.
Collusion is not a crime; it's a behavior. And Trump's people did what they do
best. They did dumb things for bad reasons. But look, you made your arguments.
I gave you your time. We'll look to see what happens at CPAC. You're welcome on
the show.
Schlapp: Bob Mueller found no collusion, my friend. He did
not find no collusion.
Cuomo: Collusion is not a crime. He wasn't even looking at
it as such. Learn to read, my brother. It's right in the details. Good to see
you. I gotta go.
Schlapp: There was nothing inappropriate with Russia in the
2016 election.
Cuomo: He never said that; never said it. I'm glad to offer
you the platform. Let the people decide.
No collusion; nothing inappropriate with Russia in the 2016
election. Following Senate Judiciary
Committee hearings in June, 2018 about the Special Counsel's report, lawyers Barbara McQuade and
Joyce White Vance explained in June 2019
Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links
between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a
Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential
candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted
computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released
stolen documents.
While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between
members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he
made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish
particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact,
Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian
government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to
secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit
electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
Thanks in part to the pre-emptive report of then-Attorney
General Barr which flagrantly misrepresented the Special Counsel's findings,
the Republican base denies the link between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The
likes of Matt Schlapp know better but are well-versed in Mythmaking 101.
Nonetheless, lies about the election of 2016 and of 2020 both
serve to undermine public confidence in elections, thus laying the groundwork
for accelerated voter suppression. It's not bad strategy, actually. for a party
which knows it cannot win other than by preventing the other side from voting.
Anti-semitic, mostly left, Twitter is ablaze with support for Saturday Night Live's Michael Che, who claims "Israel is reporting that they vaccinated half their population. And I'm going to guess it's not the Jewish half." Unfortunately, Ryan Grim also is pleased:
As of a few days ago Israel had not allowed a single vaccine dose into Gaza. Stating that basic fact isn’t antisemitic. https://t.co/wZAIOU7ehw
Nice try, Ryan. But when one is criticizing a government for
alleged religious bias, one needs to have one's facts straight.
There is no documented bias in administration of Covid-19 vaccination in Israel. None. Although vaccination rates there are
higher than in most of the world, individuals in some groups have been
reluctant to receive their dose (s) and
Einav Shimron, the Health Ministry’s deputy director for
international relations, said the ministry is working with physicians and
religious leaders to counter misinformation, such as claims that the vaccine
can cause infertility.
The ministry manages a command center with 11 trackers who
monitor social media activity for anti-vaccination posts in Hebrew, Russian,
Amharic, Arabic and English on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram. The
center is adding more staffers in the coming days.
Hebrew- and Arabic? This does not sound like a government
pleased that its Arab residents are not receiving the vaccine. The
Palestinian Authority is responsible for vaccinating its own residents and, as
The Guardian recently reported, "after international pressure, Israel
agreed this month to transfer 5,000 Moderna vaccine doses to Palestinian
medical workers in the West Bank, while the Palestinian Authority intends to
source the majority of its doses elsewhere." (This has been its policy throughout.)
3/ PA Ministry of Health: “We are working on our own to obtain the vaccine from a number of sources. We are not a department in the Israeli Defense Ministry. We have our own government & Health Ministry, and they are making huge efforts to get the vaccine.”https://t.co/3lRjyHb3ro
Grim presumably was referring to vaccine doses held up on Monday, but allowed through on Wednesday, by Israeli security forces. There has been no word recently on the two Israeli citizens, nor of the remains of two Israeli soldiers, held by Hamas.
Last July, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recognized “anti-Semitic
tweets and posts from sports and entertainment celebrities (which) are a very
troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement.” While referring to Israel itself, Michael Che
may have been thinking about the West Bank. In which case he should have replaced
“Israel” with “the West Bank," the "occupied territories," or
the "land under control of the Palestinian Authority."
Instead, he believes attributing bias to Israel is good
sport, binding anti-Semites, some religious and secular Christians, and left-wing
Jews hurt that Israel has not been able to provide for Arab Palestinians the
prosperous and free homeland denied them for centuries by Arab nations.
Under some circumstances, criticizing Israel- or even Jews-
is legitimate. However, there is one
description for a brazenly inaccurate. religiously-based, attack: Anti-Semitism.
"Free markets." With all due respect to the
non-partisan Renew Democracy Initiative, which is dedicated to the critical
project of promoting liberal democracy in the USA and abroad, this is not a
good time:
“If we didn’t have free markets and freedom of ideas and freedom of thought and rule of law, we wouldn’t have the best economy in the world.” @DanielLubetzky, founder of @KINDSnacks, spoke about how democracy secures prosperity at our Democracy Rally. pic.twitter.com/aUstp41wPB
A non-profit media organization based in Austin notes
Millions of Texans have gone days without power or heat in
subfreezing temperatures brought on by snow and ice storms. Limited regulations
on companies that generate power and a history of isolating Texas from federal
oversight help explain the crisis, energy and policy experts told The Texas
Tribune.
In 1999, Texas deregulated its energy market. This meant
that instead of cities or other local entities completely controlling the
supply of energy to customers, the provision of electricity would be broken up
into three components -- generation, transmission, and retail. Under this new
regime, a customer would have the choice between various retail electric
providers, with the hopes that such a move would lower prices. However, as we
have experienced before and are learning yet again -- you often get what you
pay for.
As part of the change to a deregulated energy market, prices
were no longer fixed by the government. Companies were instead encouraged to
compete to attract customers. With that competition came fewer rules from the
state by which each of these players in the energy market had to abide.
Unfortunately, this system created incentives for energy
companies to cut corners and invest as little as possible in order to maximize
their profits. It would be easy to just blame the energy companies for doing
this, but it is the system that the state created that is truly to blame. When
electric generators are told they should take certain actions, like winterizing
their power plants, but that simply remains a suggestion, then most companies
will not do so out of fear that their competitor will choose not to and
ultimately make more money or attract more customers.
The free market functioned relatively well, creating great wealth and a vibrant middle class, before deregulation was promoted by President Jimmy Carter and
thereafter more robustly by President Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6). As deregulation and its first cousin,
privatization, gained steam, the size of the middle class declined and income
inequality grew.
Even now, as the Never Trump contingent of the GOP decries
the Trump wing for its racism, xenophobia, denial of global warming and other
scientific realities, and attack on democratic norms, there remain three
conservative nostrums which never can be challenged.
One is "pro-life" and another is "cutting
taxes," euphemism for slashing corporate taxes and income taxes of the
wealthy. The third is an attack on regulation. Democrats will advocate for
reproductive freedom and periodically assail Republicans for their fealty
to tax cuts for the wealthy. But notwithstanding the few progressive critiques
now being made of the deregulation of the energy market in Texas, rarely does
any Democrat, and nary a progressive, challenge deregulation in general. The obsession
with maintaining "free markets"- with as little regulation as possible- continues. The cost to consumers and the public in general is incalculable.
The unquestioning rhetorical devotion to a free market is a major stumbling block to efficient and productive regulation. The donor class, which reinforces the GOP's
ideological commitment to deregulation, desensitizes Democrats to the danger it poses to the middle and lower classes In
the long run, this obsessive commitment to "free markets, as the disaster
in Texas reveals, can be devastating.
The magazine of Decision, "The Evangelical Voice For Today," reported in January, 2019 that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's
pastor at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas remarked
We love Mike and Susan. Susan is warm and inviting, smart
and caring. Both are followers of Jesus. Mike was a small business owner when
he served as deacon. He was a humble, competent and hard-working man who cared
about his employees, his family and his church.
The truth, not so much.
According to The Washington Post. after an interview with NPR reporter
Mary Louise Kelly in January, 2020, Pompeo launched a profane tirade in which
“He asked me, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ ”
she continued. “He used the f-word in that sentence and many others. He asked
if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes; he called out for his aides to
bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. I pointed to
Ukraine; he put the map away. He said, ‘People will hear about this.’ ”
Despite an email chain which preceded the interview, Pompeo
"accused Kelly of having 'lied to me, twice,' first in setting up the
terms of the interview and then again in agreeing to keeping the
'post-interview conversation' off the record. " Moreover
The statement ended with a vague, unexplained assertion —
“It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine” — that seemed to imply
Kelly, who holds a master’s degree in European studies from Cambridge
University, got her geography wrong.
A week after the election, Pompeo was asked by a reporter at
a news conference "is the State Department planning to engage with the
Biden transition team...? He responded
in part "there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump
Administration." That didn't happen.
Moreover, now-private citizen Mike Pompeo is not done.
Ben Rhodes told @J_Insider that @netanyahu — and all Jews — are “corrupt and cruel.” While this view is taking root among some Democrats, does President Biden agree? I hope not.https://t.co/43aFOqgeC2
The article itself to which Pompeo helpfully linked described the
podcast hosted by Ben Rhodes, who served in the National Security Council under President Obama, in which
Rhodes speculated on
what drives Netanyahu’s world view: “Maybe the view is, ‘Jews have been screwed
throughout history, by a corrupt cruel world. And so you know what, we just
have to be corrupt and cruel ourselves. That’s the only way to survive in this
world.’”
Yet for Pompeo, that somehow became Rhodes stating "all
Jews are 'corrupt and cruel.'"
The fawning article in Decision was entitled "Mike
Pompeo's Non-Negotiable Faith." It
seems, though, that Mike Pompeo's most abiding faith is in (pardon the redundancy) deceit and Donald
Trump.
