12-26-2018 |
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Monday, November 19, 2018
MSNBC "Betrayal" Documentary
Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018, MSNBC ran a program called, “Betrayal: The Plot that Won the White House" a documentary by Rachel Maddow.
Betrayal framed
its story (subtitle, The Plot That Won The
White House) with the idea that Trump’s campaign benefitted from Russian
interference.
On that issue, I think the evidence so far is that, per Don
Jr.’s email, Jared & Don, Jr. were way over their heads but others in or
around the campaign were conversant with the Russian players. Maybe Trump is beholden to the Russians and
other foreign regimes. But I think the
Russian misinformation/Facebook campaign was more effective for Putin (we still
do not know the extent of it nor does Congress or Facebook have the will to
expose and control it).
What Nixon did was illegal.
His acts are blamed for the continuation of the war and the resultant
deaths of more than 20,000 in the US military.
It is a political decision (or absence of decision) that leads to war
and a political decision to end a war. The
War in Vietnam, the decision to go in, and the vacillating in getting out were
shameful. Nixon’s acts influencing a foreign government with his promises were treason.
What Betrayal
didn’t do was to compare Johnson’s restraint in going after Nixon on the eve of
the election with Obama’s similar restraint.
What have we learned from history?
The analysis of Johnson’s not going public rests on (1) that he did not
have a smoking gun tying Nixon to South Vietnam’s withdrawal from the peace
talks and (2) not wanting to reveal that the FBI and NSA were used to spy
on the South Vietnam ambassador and Mrs. Chennault (a US citizen).
As Lawrence O’Donnell, in Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American
Politics, p. 404, said:
“Richard Nixon knew he had
committed the worst crime in American political history . . . . And he also knew it was the perfect crime.”
In Obama’s case, post Edward Snowden’s revelations, the fact
that Clinton was expected to win was probably the most important factor in Obama’s
not making more of a public effort to expose the Russian/Facebook
interference. Secondly, what exactly
could Obama do, at the last minute, without appearing to be supporting Clinton? It’s like the attorney at a trial who gets to
tell the jury something that the judge then rules out of order and instructs
the jury to disregard. Finally, the full
extent of Russian/Facebook interference was not known before the election and
is still not known.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Saturday, October 20, 2018
The Lottery and Voting
Mega Millions $1.6
Billion jackpot.
Buy a lottery ticket because it’s fun.
Vote because it is the responsible thing to do.
Buy a lottery ticket because it’s fun.
Vote because it is the responsible thing to do.
If you can take the time to buy lottery tickets, surely you
can take the time to vote in the mid-terms. One action is based on ignoring ridiculously absurd
probabilities. The other action is standing for basic American democratic concepts
such as checks and balances and three equal branches of government.
Here’s where voting for the Democratic Party candidate is
essential. The Republican Party simply
has not acted as a check and balance on the current administration.
Social Security & Disability Are At Stake
If the Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives
and the Senate, they will follow Mitch McConnell’s agenda as outlined by the Los Angeles
Times.
“At the root of the debate are interviews the Senate
majority leader gave to Bloomberg and Reuters on Tuesday and Wednesday. McConnell identified ‘entitlements’
— that’s Washington code for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — as ‘the
real drivers of the debt’ and called for them to be adjusted “to the
demographics of the future.’” In fact,
it is the “budget-blasting tax cut for corporations and the wealthy that is
estimated to cost some $2 trillion over the next 10 years.” As the LA Times put it: “the real driver of
the deficit is Republican fiscal policy and its relentless payouts to the
wealthy.” http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-mcconnell-social-security-20181019-story.html
The Republicans will continue to restrict health insurance
and maybe eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions. They will continue to take no action
regarding voter rights, respect for freedom of the press, respect for an
independent Justice Department and special counsel’s office, campaign finance
reform, climate change, consumer protection, and banking reforms.
Ask yourself what have the Republicans done to ban assault weapons or to make background checks effective, what have they done to guarantee proper veterans' care, what have they done on job training in the face of automation and what relief have they provided for college debt.
The Republicans lack empathy when considering issues involving the disabled and women and minorities and immigrants and children (all of whom are human beings). They will continue to allow American’s foreign policy and tariffs to be toyed with by an under-informed president characterized by questionable personal and business interests.
Ask yourself what have the Republicans done to ban assault weapons or to make background checks effective, what have they done to guarantee proper veterans' care, what have they done on job training in the face of automation and what relief have they provided for college debt.
The Republicans lack empathy when considering issues involving the disabled and women and minorities and immigrants and children (all of whom are human beings). They will continue to allow American’s foreign policy and tariffs to be toyed with by an under-informed president characterized by questionable personal and business interests.
Monday, October 15, 2018
The government is not stupid and bad
Michael Lewis interviewed the pre-Trump Energy Department’s “chief
risk officer” for The Fifth Risk. That official identified the fifth risk as “project
management.”
Lewis elaborates on the concept throughout the book as he
tell the stories of other pre-Trump government managers, focusing on the
department of energy and the weather bureaus of the department of commerce. More than institutional knowledge, project
management involves a passion to anticipate (imagine) service to the public. Good project management needs people who are
mission driven. It encompasses the
government’s providing services or solving problems that the government can provide
or solve or that the government does in the absence of action by other
institutions or business interests.
On the other hand, the Trump transition and the appointment
of cabinet secretaries and agency managers, with few exceptions, reveal
indifference, incompetency, lack of knowledge in general and an ignorance of
science in particular and an arrogant pre-disposition that everything government
does is “stupid and bad.” The Trump
Administration, as Lewis details with respect to the weather agencies, favors
exploitation of public data for narrow commercial motives. Just like Trump himself.
This is how Lewis characterized Rick Perry, the head of the
department of energy. “[Perry’s]
sporadic public communications have had in them something of the shell-shocked
grandmother trying to preside over a pleasant family Thanksgiving dinner while
pretending that her blind-drunk husband isn’t standing naked on the dining-room
table waving the carving knife over his head.”
The Fifth Risk also
describes the other cited risks, three of which involve nuclear matters. To borrow the title of an earlier Trump book
by David Cay Johnston, It’s
Even Worse Than You Think.
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