State politics and Texana news got to be enough in this week's roundup that I split off national news, and one national-global item. So, let's dig in!
National
Why did Trump almost win, and Republicans hold serve elsewhere? Will Wilkinson has a very cogent op-ed
at the NYT. His two biggest points: 1. Trump goosed the pre-COVID economy with tax
cuts for the rich, enough for him to have some sort of advantage; 2.
Dems not having a coherent response to Trump's "open up" callousness on
COVID. Biden is in trouble because he still doesn't, and per Wilkinson,
I've seen nothing of Biden's "messaging" to indicate this will change.
In other words, Biden opposes single-payer, opposes anything close to
basic income, and a repeat of the current Dem angles won't work. I mean, Biden has even in the past been open to partial privatization of Social Security. And now, Senate Republicans are talking again about doing what they always do — take a deficit exacerbated by a Republican president and cram austerity on his Democratic successor. Before Biden, Obama kind of self-crammed, of course, kneecapping his own stimulus.
A wingnut rancher in open-stock state Arizona uses the excuse of Ill Eagles to thank Trump for building him an international stock fence. The reality is, as noted, that the Peloncillo Mountains already deter immigration (and Fort Huachuca being in the general area offers an additional deterrent), so the claims of the mayor of Douglas, Arizona, about Ill Eagles in his town's back yards are bullshit.
A NYT op-ed, but a member of teh bipartisan foreign policy establishment, does plenty of hand-wringing
over the recent assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist
(presumably by Mossad, possibly with advance US knowledge, maybe advance
US push), while hand-waving away as different four such assassinations
while Dear Leader was president. I select this as but one piece to show
how the establishment is treating Fakhrizadeh's assassination as
different. (I'm not even linking to Teapot Tommy Friedman's "it's a new Middle East" bullshit pseudo-advice to Biden.)
Should Trump's lawyers be sanctioned, even disbarred,
for some of their more nutbar recent voting case filings? It's arguable
they've violated federal rules of proceeding as well as ABA standards. It's called "barratry," in a word.
Related: Carl Bernstein tweets a list of 21 GOP senators who have privately expressed "concerns" about Trump. Havana Ted's not on the list, but Big John Cornyn, his lapdog, is.
W. Joseph Campbell, linked on my blogroll for some time, may be getting the boot again after his second straight post that's election related and with a quasi-Trumpian slant. Citing Heritage Foundation and an anonymous Substack with just two posts, both post-Nov. 3, for vote fraud? It's laughable, and Campbell should know that from his own years in the media. I mean, Tucker Carlson and now National Review have called this laughable.
Facebook has continued to say, and some news reporting halfway backs them, that people really don't get that much political news, let alone politicized fake news, on their feeds. Charlie Warzel, with a deep dive into two Facebook users (yes N=2) but a much broader look via Facebook-owned Crowd Tangle (which it says "don't believe") says, Facebook is wrong, and worse, the real problem is comments. Crowd Tangle probably IS less than totally accurate that way, but not in Facebook's favor; rather, against it.
The NYT editorial board says we need higher wages, and not just that: we need a shift in labor-management power. Tell that to Biden.
National-global
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