Biden Got It Wrong

If the importance of the Biden-Sanders feud on Social Security highlighted by Sunday night's debate in Washington, D.C. would rate as an "8" on a scale of 0 to 10, this would be no more than a "2." Still, it's worth considering this exchange:

Ilia Calderón: (01:27)

To be clear, Senator Sanders, Cuba has been a dictatorship for decades. Shouldn’t we judge dictators by the violation of human rights and not by any of their alleged achievements?

Bernie Sanders: (01:39)

Well, I think you can make the same point about China. China is undoubtedly an authoritarian society. Okay? But would anybody deny, any economists deny that extreme poverty in China today is much less than what it was 40 or 50 years ago? That’s a fact. So I think we condemn authoritarianism, whether it’s in China, Russia, Cuba, any place else. But to simply say that nothing ever done by any of those administrations had a positive impact on their people, would I think be incorrect.

Ilia Calderón: (02:14)

Vice president Biden, you have criticized Senator Sanders for bracing Castro’s education system, but in 2016 president Obama said Cuba made “A great progress in educating young people and that its healthcare system is a huge achievement that they should be congratulated for” How is that different from what Senator Sanders has said?

Joe Biden: (02:36)

He was trying to change Cuban policies so the Cuban people would get out from under the thumb of the Castro and his brother. That is to change the policy so that we can impact on Cuba’s policy by getting them opened up. That was about, but the praising of the Sandinistas, the praising of Cuba, the praising just now of China. China is an authoritarian dictatorship. That’s what it is. We have to deal with them because they’re there.

The transcript of the speech of President Barack Obama on Monday, March 21, 2016 included

The United States recognizes the progress that Cuba has made as a nation, its enormous achievements in education and in health care. And perhaps most importantly, I affirm that Cuba’s destiny will not be decided by the United States or any other nation. Cuba is sovereign and rightly has great pride and the future of Cuba will be decided by Cubans, not by anybody else.

At the same time, as we do wherever we go around the world, I made it clear that the United States will continue to speak up on behalf of democracy, including the right of the Cuban people to decide their own future. We’ll speak out on behalf of universal human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly and religion. Indeed, I look forward to meeting with and hearing from Cuban civil society leaders tomorrow.

These two paragraphs suggest that President Obama focused on the importance of a more liberal society in Cuba or, as Biden would put it, "opening up."  However, the President continued (and note the "but")

But as you heard, President Castro also addressed what he views as shortcomings in the United States around basic needs for people and poverty and inequality and race relations, and we welcome that constructive dialogue as well because we believe that when we share our deepest beliefs and ideas with an attitude of mutual respect that we can both learn and make the lives of our people better.

A part of normalizing relationships means that we discuss these differences directly, so I’m very pleased that we’ve agreed to hold our next U.S.-Cuba human rights dialogue here in Havana this year. And both of our countries will welcome our visits by independent United Nations experts as we combat human trafficking, which we agree is a profound violation of human rights.

Well, o.k., the American system was not perfect, even before President Trump. However, the tone- and words- of equivalence are startling.  Clearly, Obama is suggesting that "mak(ing) the lives of our people better" is as much an imperative in the USA as it is in Cuba.

That is not accurate, and is in stark contrast to "trying to change Cuban policies so the Cuban people would get out from under the thumb of the Castro and his brother." Nonetheless, it gets worse with an acceptance of agree to disagree:

Even as we discuss these differences, we share a belief we can continue to make progress in those areas that we have in common. President Castro, you said in Panama that we might disagree on something today on which we would agree tomorrow. And that has certainly been the case over the past 15 months and the days leading up to this visit.

And today, I can report that we continue to move forward on many fronts when it comes to normalizing relations. We’re moving ahead with more opportunities for Americans to travel to Cuba and interact with the Cuban people.

Toward the end of his statement, President Obama pressed on with his emphasis on detente, friendliness, and the quaint notion that Havana and Washington aren't much different from each other. He stated

And although we didn’t have an extensive discussion of Venezuela, we did touch on the subject. And I believe the whole region has an interest in a country that is addressing their economic challenges, is responsive to the aspirations of its people and is a source of stability in the region.

That is, I believe, an interest we should all share. So, again, President Castro, I want to thank you for welcoming me. I think it’s fair to say the United States and Cuba are now engaged in many areas and with each passing day more Americans are coming to Cuba, more U.S. business and school and faith groups are working to forge new partnerships with the Cuban people.

That was not "the whole region should have an interest" in its people and regional stability. It was "the whole region has an interest...."

Maybe the President was setting the right tone. The Cold War was over- but you'd never know it from Biden's demonization of Senator Sanders for finding something a little praiseworthy in the Cuban regime. "Cuba is sovereign and rightly has great pride" did not come from democratic socialist Bernie Sanders but from the 44th President.

Early in his speech, Barack Obama had stated "the sight of a U.S. president here in Havana would have been unimaginable, but this is a new day."  Joe Biden's "new day" is this: Barack Obama was always right and when Bernie Sanders agrees with him, Sanders is wrong. If that seems to make no sense, feel free to take it up with Democratic voters and politicos who believe the former vice-president should be their standard-bearer.

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God's Will?

WDBJ in Lynchburg, Va. has reported

In-person classes at Liberty University will go on, even after most schools across the country are moving online. Now, residents and students are making their voices heard.

"I'm from the area and I have a lot of family that have cancer or lung problems in general," Alexis Valle, a freshman at Liberty University, said.

She thinks it's a bad idea for in-person classes to resume after spring break with the coronavirus continuing to spread.

"I don't want to risk taking it home and spreading it to my family because with the cancer they have, that could potentially really hurt them and potentially even result in death," she explained.

That's why she signed a petition that asks Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. for an extended break and a switch to online classes.

Valle commented on the petition: "This is a serious issue and Jerry needs to treat it as such."

"It's a little annoying for the fact we're still open when all the other colleges have closed, and even high school, like K-12 have closed, and Jerry is still not closing it," she said.

Jerry Jr. is a lawyer, not a member of the clergy. Still, he is considered a leading figure in the (white) evangelical movement, was an early and loyal supporter of candidate Donald Trump, and remains a supporter. And so his willingness to jeopardize lives, directly and indirectly, is no surprise. Three Washington Post reporters write

In Arkansas, the Rev. Josh King met with the pastors of five other churches on Thursday to decide whether to continue holding service. Their religious beliefs told them that meeting in person to worship each Sunday remained an essential part of their faith, and some of their members signed on to Trump’s claims that the media and Democrats were overblowing the danger posed by the virus.

“One pastor said half of his church is ready to lick the floor, to prove there’s no actual virus,” said King, lead pastor at Second Baptist church in Conway, Ark.

But King and his colleagues were concerned: They believed the virus was a serious threat, and mass gatherings such as church services could spread it. He and the other Arkansas pastors ultimately decided that they would hold services as usual this Sunday, with some extra precautions.

They hired cleaning teams to scour their buildings. They asked the greeters to open the doors, so no one would touch the doorknobs, and asked members to donate online or at the door, so they wouldn’t need to pass a communal offering plate. No more coffee after the service, they told members, and no hugs or handshakes either.

“In your more politically conservative regions, closing is not interpreted as caring for you. It’s interpreted as liberalism, or buying into the hype,” said King, whose church draws about 1,100 worshipers on a typical Sunday.

It's very likely that most of the churches held services on May 15 didn't do so to enable individuals to pray. Parishioners  could do that at home. But they can't stick it to liberals if they stay home.

Another factor may at work.  For most believing Christians, God is in control determines and directs everything which transpires.  That is a mistaken notion of "control" and there is no better time to quote President Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who once wrote

A closing thought. God is in charge of history. He asks us to work, to try, to pour ourselves out to make things better. But he is an actor in history also. He chastises and rescues, he intervenes in ways seen and unseen. Or chooses not to.

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Hacks Need Not Apply

Presenting the Surgeon General of the United States of America, Jerold Adams, at 1:03:04 of the video below:

.... No more bickering, no more partisanship, no more criticism or finger-pointing. There'll be plenty of time for that. But we all need to hit the reset button and move into leaning forward, prioritizing the health and safety of the American people.

And now the President of the United States of America,Donald J. Trump:

The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American.”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020

It's bad enough that the "no more criticism' Surgeon General doesn't understand the notion of accountability. If he wants to be partisan, there is no stopping him. However

And lose that damn 3 star admiral costume you parade around in.

— ben knight (@benknight8) March 15, 2020

According to this explanation, the US Public Health Service, headed by the Surgeon General, began around 1870 as the Marine Hospital Service to minister to merchant sailors, and whose members since then have been "given military-style commissions and naval-style ranks."

If the tradition of the US Public Service is upheld, so, too, should be the tradition in which those wearing the uniform strictly avoid politics and the appearance of partisanship. If Jerold Adams wants to be yet another mouthpiece for a corrupt Administration, he needs to appear as a civilian and shed the uniform.

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Trump's Alternate Path To Victory

NBC News' Jonathan Allen believes (hat tip to Steve M)

No one needs to "flatten the curve" more than President Donald Trump, and he may have begun to bend the politics of coronavirus on Friday.

Before Trump declared a national emergency, critics insisted, and some allies worried, that his response to the pandemic posed a greater threat to the health of the American public and the stability of the national economy than the disease itself....

 if Americans are able to slow the outbreak of coronavirus — to "flatten the curve" of infection, as epidemiologists say — if equity markets bounce back and the overall hit to the economy is contained, his Rose Garden news conference on Friday could amount to a turning point in which he finally signaled to the public that he would take the threat seriously enough to lead the fight against it.

His relatively somber and focused remarks accompanied a bear hug of congressional Democrats that could help him stabilize his standing if all goes well from here on out. Graded on a curve, Friday was a good day for the president, according to longtime observers of Washington politics.

That would help Donald Russia get re-elected. But it might not be necessary in order for him to remain President for 4+ more years. And it wouldn't even require him to cancel the election.

The President of the USA cannot constitutionally cancel the election, lawyer and Slate contributor Mark Joseph Stern points out. However, Trump could employ a similar, constitutional strategy also prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. Stern explains

There are 538 electors, and a candidate needs 270 of them to win. Currently, every state assigns electors to the candidate who won the popular vote statewide. (Two states add a twist that’s irrelevant here.) But the Constitution does not require states to assign their electors on the basis of the statewide vote. It does not even require a statewide vote. Rather, it explains that each state “shall appoint” its electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” In other words, each state legislature gets to decide how electors are appointed—and, by extension, who gets their votes.

Luckily for Donald Trump, Republicans constitute the majority of 28 legislatures of states which collectively have- control- 294 electoral votes.  (In Minnesota, Republicans are dominant in one chamber, Democrats in the other; Nebraska has a non-partisan, unicameral legislature.) The President

could ask these GOP-dominated legislatures to cancel their statewide presidential elections and assign their electors to him. It’s doubtful that we will face this situation in November. But imagine a worst-case scenario: The election is approaching, and the coronavirus remains rampant in our communities. States are unsure whether they have the personnel and resources to hold an election. Congress has failed to mandate no-excuse absentee balloting, and many states have declined to implement it. Or the postal service is so hard hit that it cannot reliably carry ballots to and from voters’ residences. It’s not difficult to envision Trump’s allies in state legislatures assigning their states’ electoral votes to the president, insisting that these dire circumstances justify pulling a constitutional fire alarm.

It also is constitutional, Stern notes, "for a state legislature to disregard the winner of the statewide vote and assign electors to the loser. And because the Constitution grants legislatures the authority to pick electors this way, Congress cannot stop them."

Neither scenario may come into play. The incumbent may win the Electoral College outright. Or perhaps these state legislatures may refuse to play ball with him.  But unless Trump cuts a deal with the campaign of the Democratic nominee (presumably Biden) before the election, he cannot risk the possibility that the 46th President would not pardon him.  He is keenly aware that he has more at stake than any presidential nominee in history, and he will let nothing stand in his way of remaining unencumbered by Lady Justice.

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Trump's Success Our Ruination

Julia Ioffe is approximately 98% right when she eloquently writes

None of this is surprising, just as there was nothing even remotely unexpected about President Trump’s Oval Office address on Wednesday night. The goal was to reassure a nation staring down a global pandemic and awash in conflicting information. Trump, true to type, did nothing of the kind. Dryly plowing through some words that his son-in-law and Stephen Miller reportedly put into a teleprompter for him, Trump still managed to get key facts wrong about his own government’s response, thereby sowing the very panic and lack of clarity the address was meant to allay. Late into the night on Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security was sending out clarifying statements on what Trump meant to say when he announced his ban on all cargo and passenger flights coming from Europe. In fact, what he was supposed to say was that the United States was banning non-U.S. residents from a select list of European countries but that cargo would continue coming and going as before. Trump’s decision was apparently made without consulting with America’s European allies, who were blindsided and, predictably, infuriated by the unilateral declaration. Panicked Americans surged into European airports on Thursday, paying as much as $20,000 for a last-minute flight home.

There was little in Trump’s address about increasing the availability of Covid-19 tests, about providing crucial help to hospitals to keep them from being overrun and strained as they have been in Italy, and the little he said about helping patients afford the emergency care and testing they might need as a result of the pandemic was not quite right either. The health insurance industry wasn’t consulted or warned of Trump’s pronouncements, and had to issue its own late-night comments clarifying that, contrary to Trump’s diktat, only copays for testing, not treatment, would be suspended....

You get a president who shuts down the global health security team in the National Security Council so that there’s no one but his son-in-law to advise him when a global pandemic reaches our country’s shores. You get a president who doesn’t care about whether people live or die, he just wants the numbers to look good for him, wants the number of cases down and the numbers on the stock indices up, and the best way to do that is to keep Covid-19 testing and public information at a minimum. You get a president who doesn’t believe in science when it doesn’t suit him and who, as recently as three days ago, declares a virus that had already claimed thousands of lives around the world a “hoax” and “fake news”—or a president that simply focuses, falsely, on how well his administration is responding to the crisis—because the pandemic might hurt the economy and jeopardize his reelection. You get a president who thinks he can do anything, who off-the-cuff announces a rally in Florida, where the governor has suspended all official travel as medical experts advise people practice “social distancing” by avoiding crowds. You get a president whose response to an invisible virus is to blame foreigners.

Trump blames foreigners, and this time it's not only "black and brown" people.  In his speech Wednesday night, the President blamed the pandemic on Europe, claiming "the E.U. failed."  He exempted the United Kingdom from travel restrictions because he has three golf courses in Europe, two of which, by sheer luck, are located in the UK's Scotland.

The other is in the Republic of Ireland, which Trump erroneously believed is in the United Kingdom, hence a third reason for giving the United Kingdom a pass.   If he had known otherwise, it would have been "these restrictions will also not apply to the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic."

Nonetheless, Trump is concerned not only with maximizing his business opportunities as President. He is concerned also with the American people- but not in a good way. 

Ioffe considers Trump "a president who doesn’t care about whether people live or die." Yet, he does care.  If he didn't believe in the racehorse theory of human development, that putting together a genetically superior man with a genetically superior woman produces a genetically superior baby, he wouldn't have said

Well I think I was born with the drive for success because I have a certain gene."

“I'm a gene believer... Hey, when you connect two race horses, you usually end up with a fast horse.

“I had a good gene pool from the standpoint of that, so I was pretty much driven.”

By and large, the people who die from Covid-19 will be the the elderly, the poor, those with a compromised immune syatem.  It's easy for Trump to believe they are not the individuals with this kind of gene, one who can be expected to survive, reproduce, and give birth to exceptional human beings as the product of two exceptional beings.

It's why Donald Trump (reportedly) once kept a Hitler's "My New Order" by his bed, why he wants immigrants only from Norway, why he has rejected widespread testing, and why he has promoted a policy he knows will lead to more deaths.

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Way Off The Mark, Bill

Although Bill Maher frequently hits the target in closing comments on Real Time, a portion of his remarks last Friday could have come from a press release from the Barack Obama White House. Maher claimed (beginning at 2:07 of the video below)

In 2008 nobody took more money from Wall Street than Obama. Then he got elected and passed the biggest Wall Street reform n generations. He made Elizabeth Warren's plan, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a reality.

So when he ran for re-election, Wall Street was pissed and did not give him nearly as much. But he took what they gave and then he f_ _ _ _ _ them again.

This is how you play the game- call him impure, a corporatist, a moderate. The fact is he did more to rein in Wall Street than all the peacocking, correct-board socialists combined.

Of course, we haven't had a socialist president ever and after primaries in South Carolina, on Super Tuesday, and on March 10, that streak will continue. As David Dayen wrote in 2016, that because "most" of Dodd-Frank (to which Maher was referring)

was designed to secure the system during a crisis rather than prevent that crisis from occurring, we cannot hypothesize about its effectiveness until that crisis hits. And since the basic structure for banks to take huge risks and connect them across the financial system remains in place, a crisis appears inevitable.

So we don't know how that (tepid) financial reform will function when the chips are down. However, some things are knowable. While acknowledging (modest) health care reform, advances for gay rights, and a stimulus program which brought us out of the Great Recession (into the weakest economic recovery in decades), Dayen in 2015 had noted President Obama

must also own this tragedy: the dispossession of at least 5.2 million US homeowner families, the explosion of inequality, and the largest ruination of middle-class wealth in nearly a century. Though some policy failures can be blamed on Republican obstruction, it was within Obama’s power to remedy this one — to ensure that a foreclosure crisis now in its eighth year would actually end, with relief for homeowners to rebuild wealth, and to preserve Americans’ faith that their government will aid them in times of economic struggle.

Faced with numerous options to limit the foreclosure damage, the administration settled on a policy called HAMP, the Home Affordable Modification Program, which was entirely voluntary. Under HAMP, mortgage companies were given financial inducements to modify loans for at-risk borrowers, but the companies alone, not the government, made the decisions on whom to aid and whom to cast off.

In the end, HAMP helped only about one million homeowners in five years, when 10 million were at risk. The program arguably created more foreclosures than it stopped, as it put homeowners through a maze of deception designed mainly to maximize mortgage industry profits.

Maher believes that the financial services industry gave to Obama in the 2008 election cycle because it expected more than it got. Then displeased at financial reform, it turned off the spigot in 2012. However, the reversal of course probably was not due to the Democratic nominee but rather his opposition. In 2012 Obama faced the Wall Street dream ticket of Romney-Ryan four years after a challenge from the unpredictable, "maverick" McCain-Palin ticket.  Dayen recognizes

Indeed, the administration missed or delayed several opportunities to provide relief and prevent foreclosures while also boosting the economy. During the 2008 presidential debates, John McCain proposed a $300 billion plan to buy up mortgages and renegotiate their terms, similar to the Depression-era Home Owner’s Loan Corporation. There were also bipartisan calls for a mass refinancing program for underwater homeowners, which would save them billions in monthly payments. Ultimately, the administration never tried to buy mortgages (though plenty of hedge funds did), and their refinancing program didn’t produce even its meager results until 2012, years after the crisis erupted.

There is a reason that Barack Obama is called a "corporatist" and a "moderate." He is both, and might even accept the latter characterization.  No one calls him "impure," which is merely Maher's interpretation of criticism of the President Who Is Beyond Reproach.

Give the guy credit- he was a better president than his predecessor and far better than his successor. That is not nothing.  However, it's not a portrait of a chief executive who struck fear and loathing in the financial services industry.

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Stay And Fight

Following on Friday yet another highly troubling news conference held by the President of the USA, Trump advisers, according to Gabriel Sherman

are numb to this kind of performance. “There’s very little that fazes anyone now,” a former official said. But one person who spoke to the president over the weekend saw the press conference as an ominous sign. “He’s just now waking up to the fact that this is bad, and he doesn’t know how to respond"...

Stories about Trump’s coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. “He’s definitely melting down over this,” the source said.

As alleged by "a person close to the adminstration," Donald Trump is afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One. 

President Trump will not perform his job. But someone has to do so, beginning with whomever believes that the President of the United States of America, usually considered to be the leader of the free world, believes journalists will try to contract a deadly virus so they can pass it on to him.

This, however, is not how the nation's legislative body should do theirs:

BREAKING from me & @AlexNBCNews : Members of Congress are becoming increasingly anxious about coronavirus and there is growing pressure on leadership to take steps to protect lawmakers — even potentially recessing for a period of weeks, according to two Democratic sources

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) March 9, 2020

The problem is not that Congress is doing too much. It is doing too little, including deciding five weeks ago that a President can do whatever he wants as long as it helps get him re-elected.

This is not a time for advisers to the President to remain silent members of Congress. Nor should Congress flee Washington, D.C., leaving the capital to a President who not only is the modern face of evil, but is not a well man. 

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