"Biden withdrawing or not" becoming like "Chomsky dead or not"

Earlier today, in stories published less than 15 minutes apart, we first had, from the NYT:

Followed by Agence France-Press at Irish site RTE — and with different header and update, apparently via the NYT story, at Barron's:

Well, obviously both of these can't be true.

What we almost certainly have are dueling leakers, whether Biden White House staffers or family, or a mix, hitting dueling outlets, not so much because they're concerned about the future of the Democratic Party, or the future of democracy (dying in darkness along with the Washington Post), but the present of their status as first-tier insiders. This is the classic DC leaking game on steroids.

And, here's why:

Franklin Foer, who chronicled Biden’s first term in a book: “To his closest advisers, Joe Biden is a figure frozen in time…To admit his end is to provoke a crisis in their own professional life. If I’m not whispering in Biden’s ear, then what am I?”

There you go. (From the Counterpunch link below.)

And, yes, it reminded me of the rush to proclaim Chomsky dead two weeks ago, which left at least one alleged Chomsky insider with egg on his face.

Looking under the hood on this one, the NYT does NOT cite White House press spox Karine Jean-Pierre; the AFP does. The NYT cites a "key ally" in the lede; that's someone outside the White House. Probably not Pelosi, as the piece ends with saying they haven't spoken, though that could be a ruse. Schumer's also mentioned, so probably not him but see above. Or Dear Leader. Don't think it's Jill.

AFP does cite KJP for its denial. But then has a "senior Democratic operative" saying, along the lines of cover-ups, it's not the debate, it's the aftermath. Senior Dem operative could be the NYT's "key ally." And, would again make sense as Schumer if the NYT is running a ruse; he's NOT mentioned by name in the AFP article. Or, Dear Leader. Or one of Dear Leader's henchmen, like Axelrod. I don't think, riffing on Counterpunch, that it's Ted Kaufman.

Oh, speaking of Obama, or Obamas? Get a fucking clue and a fucking grip, Blue Anon. Michelle Obama ain't running.

Oh, and speaking of Obamas, Dear Leader side? If he could clear the field for Biden four years ago, by early spring, why couldn't he get Biden to honor the one-term idea and step out, four months ago this spring?

==

Per Jared Yates Sexton, what happened is that possible "insurrectionists" caved. It's the old story about, when you come after the king, you gotta kill him. People who want Biden off the ballot wouldn't forcefully stand up to him and his family, didn't recruit enough allied White House staffers, and weren't settled on a replacement (and on how to dirk Kamala is a Cop, as well as JoePa, if she was deemed not to be the Golden Child).

Other than that bit of analysis, though, the rest of the piece is straight Blue Anon: "We're stuck with Biden, gotta beat Trump (and the unspoken "third parties aren't an alternative)."

==

Semafor gets the analysis better, from the other side of the street, saying Biden is ready and willing to get MAD, as in the old Mutually Assured Destruction, if there's any more push for him to step aside.

More Israel-Palestine thoughts: 'Nobody's hands are clean'

Dear Leader has said "nobody's hands are clean." He didn't explicitly include his own, and like some fellow leftist types, it would be easy to scoff at him talking around an issue, as the podcast excerpt at least doesn't have him offering a solution, or even explicitly calling for a cease-fire. But, it's more than either Genocide Joe, Fatuous Fetterman, or St. Bernard of Sanders have said.

And, speaking of that sheepdogger, gotta "love" how many Berners like "Beth: An Alien" are only just now freaked out by St. Bernard of Sanders' visceral hatred of Gaza, despite him having people arrested 30 years ago for protesting the bombing of Serbia, having hated on Gaza before, and having a long history of lusting for F-35s. Also, note to David Klion, re this piece: Norman Finkelstein has the same Holocaust family heritage as Sanders.

Reality or wishful thinking? I'll take the under, so to speak on David Rothkopf's claim that Biden and Netanyahu are near a "breakup" on how genocidal Israel gets in Gaza. Rather than wishful thinking, let's call this what it is: #BlueAnon hopium. That said, Mondoweiss wonders somewhat the same.

"A Textbook Case of Genocide" at Jewish Currents, by Jewish academic Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, is BIGLY stirring the shit within the Jewish world. And, uh, no, it's not referring to Hamas as that textbook case.

Nathan J. Robinson has a good backgrounder on what led to this point. But, as I, Sabby Sabs and others know, unless his feet are held to the first nine months from now, he may still go off Democratic sheepdogging. In other words, your hands aren't clean either, Nathan, as I believe you sheepdogged in 2020. And, they won't at all be clean if you push "safe states OK, tight states sheepdogging" or something next year.

Ditto in spades for The Nation, David Klion and all others. (Since The Nation is sheepdoggers, they'll stay that way.)

You're especially a sheepdogger given that a now-suspended Israeli Cabinet minister mulled nuking Gaza. (Eliyahu is NOT "ex-cabinet".)

Meanwhile, CNN has officially agreed to be IDF's hasbara-peddler.

And, PsyPost's hands certainly aren't clean, trying to psychologically weaponize a deliberate conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

House Dems' hands certainly aren't clean, not any who wind up supporting an attempted gag order against Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a censure that since went through.

And fuck Twitter Security, which has a "thing" about the word ZioNazi, whether directed at a person or not. (It eventually allowed that, after the #ZionismIsNazism hashtag started trending.)

Disgusting: Warmonger Joe citing MLK

Almost as much disgust as a wingnut citing Martin Luther King's color of their skin as an excuse to junk affirmative action and pretend it worked, or if you're a Black wingnut like Clarence Thomas, to ignore that it worked to some degree and you benefited.

Anyway, here's Warmonger Joe Biden, per the WaPost, riffing on King's "I Have a Dream" speech itself, given 60 years ago this week.

First, this:

Trickle-down economics holds that taxes should be cut for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, that public investments in priorities such as education, infrastructure and health care should be shrunk, and good jobs shipped overseas. It has exacerbated inequality and systemic barriers that make it harder for Black Americans to start a business, own a home, send their children to school and retire with dignity.

You've done nothing to reverse the Trump tax cuts that exacerbated that, or the Bush tax cuts that became the Obama tax cuts, when your then-boss, Dear Leader, accepted them. And, don't tell me you have a Republican House now; you didn't in the first two years. You've also, while attacking Republicans on Social Security, have offered no concrete plan for shoring it up. And, while in the Senate, you supported partial privatization, like both Dear Leader and Slick Willie did as president.

Second, Martin Luther King didn't die a week after that speech. And as Jonathan Eig knows, and states, in his truly magisterial new bio of King, with an extended version of my Goodreads review here, he went on to protest the Vietnam War, and some degree, militarism in general, as well as the non-racial as well as racial causes behind poverty.

I quote, as he noted in the epilogue:

The epilogue is good in noting Reagan’s resistance to making his birthday a holiday, and how we still have failed to address King’s “call for an end to the triple evils of materialism, militarism, and racism.”

That anti-militarism would surely extend today to poor Ukrainians going into a proxy war meatgrinder, as well as the poor Russians also in that meat-grinder because we never really fully abandoned Cold War politics vis-a-vis Russia, other than when exploiting the nation.

As for the racism? Let's not forget that Warmonger Joe, like Bill and Hillary, was Superpredator Joe back in the 1990s.

Is it any wonder that Biden and #BlueAnon surrogates fear a third-party presidential run by a Black man, Cornel West, who is hitting on all three of these things?

The Iraq War at 20

After that start-off by Two-Party Opera, let's add a few more thoughts. March 20 is the official start, but, I'm jumping the gun a day with Brian's prodding, and it may still have been March 19 in DC when "go was the word" anyway.

First, like World War I and II are really part of a thread, so are the original Gulf War and the Iraq War. Connection? House of Bush.

Actually, there's three parts to that thread, arguably. The first being the Carter-era Iran hostage crisis. 

According to former Texas House speaker Barnes, Poppy Bush was not part of that, it seems. Rather, in a big twist? John Connally was.

The Gulf War? Before my blogging time. Before there really was a civilian internet. But, I remember the controversy over depleted uranium tank shells. I remember Poppy Bush later being attacked from his right for stopping the war early. 

And, of course, connecting it to the Iraq War? I remember the sanctions and their punishment on Iraq. I remember Madeleine Albright, as Clinton's Secretary of State, writing off the many thousands of deaths they caused.

The Iraq War itself? We know the only "Mission Accomplished" by Shrub Bush was Turd Blossom Rove's politicizing the war run-up in the 2002 midterms, then again in the 2004 general, as the cowardly Dems warhawked with John Kerry. This was when and why I became a Green.

We know how Obama flip-flopped on the "surge."

And, we know that Lying Glenn Greenwald supported the war, in the preface to the book that made him famous. And lied about it to the point of attacking others who pointed out his lies. Then doubled down on his lying.

Part of why I became a Green? A decade after the invasion, and 8 years after Glennwald supported the invasion in his first big book, a BlueAnon wanker at Daily Kos was STILL regurgitating his lies.

And, 20 years later? Iraq is still a hellhole; Sadrites not under Iran's thumb battle other Shi'ites who are. Sunnis are semi-marginalized. Kurds want still more autonomy and may still push for an independent nation. ISIS lurks at their edges, still.

And, BlueAnon never learned. Dear Leader, with Shillary as his Secretary of State, pushed to bomb Libya, figuring that it too would succumb to shock and awe, then easily be rebuilt. Actual result? North Africa's strongest economy wrecked, and replaced by open slave markets. And, people smart enough in other fields to know better, like Massimo Pigliucci, or Juan Cole, or Bernie Sanders, signed off. (Bernie also voted for the first, and all subsequent, "support the troops" resolutions in Iraq.)

And, BlueAnon still hasn't learned. Even Pope Francis talked about NATO "barking" at Russia, but Warmonger Joe won't listen to him or the Goldilocks Three Bears and start peace talks. And, even within BlueAnon, showing Dem tribalism on war, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including the Fraud, er the Squad, supports the warmongering.

Don't forget that all these wars were started by, or abetted by, lies.

Gulf War? We're still not sure what Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein; I believe it was indeed the claim that the Bush Administration had no big problems with him taking Kuwait. I also wrote an op-ed column about that. We know, during the run-up to war, about the incubator babies who weren't real, and the Emir of Kuwait hiring Western PR flak.

Iraq War? The lies about the aluminum artillery tubes by Powell et al. Tenet going Hearst reporter to Shrub Bush's William Randolph Hearst in 1898 Cuba. Condi Rice's "smoking gun - mushroom cloud."

Libya? The lies about how easy this would be. The lies about our real intent. The lies, post-Iraq, about how regime change could be done without boots on the ground.

Russia-Ukraine? The lies that we never promised "not one inch further eastward" on NATO expansion, when we did; even Gorby lied about that later in life, just because he hated Putin that much. The lies behind the Minsk Agreements. And more. That's even as Warmonger Joe still opposes real peace talks.

==

Sidebar, and not noted immediately? Our media's responsibility. Via Jeff St. Clair, the New York Slimes' 20th anniversary piece "somehow" never mentions the name of Judith Miller.

And, directly related to that, at Counterpunch, Jeff has a good piece about the selling of the war.

Sidebar: Here's my story about meeting a guy in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, with a VERY interesting conspiracy theory on how the Gulf War started.

'But Republicans' on Medicare and Social Security is but bullshit by Team Blue thought leaders

Saw this piece tweeted by Molly Jong-Fast, talking about how a number of House Republicans have already indicated they plan to hold Neoliberal Joe hostage over the debt ceiling being hit again next year, assuming they regain the House, take top spots on major committees, etc. and their price is going to be hiking the age on both Social Security and Medicare, among other things.

First, as an aside yet not an aside, why didn't Dear Leader fix this whole debt ceiling bullshit in his first two years, along with getting the Reproductive Freedom of Choice Act passed, etc.?

Now, to our main story.

First, it's not like Neoliberal Joe hasn't talked about partial privatization before himself. Or cuts. Or other things. He's got a long history. (So did Dear Leader, his boss for eight years.) So, contra Jong-Fast clutching her pearls, and Fancy Nancy Pelosi palavering, this would actually be Jason Smith et al pushing against a semi-open door.

Second, it's not like Dear Leader didn't push Medicare Advantage expansion when he was prez, since he did.

Third, don't say the "first" and "second" are old news. As we speak, Biden is continuing a Trump Admin program that expands the privatization of Medicare. And nominated an American Enterprise Institute staffer who is pro-Social Security privatization to serve on SSA's Advisory Board.

As for Medicare? A good step one would be simplifying it. A better step two would be addressing the whole problem of fee-for-service medicine. That includes, from here, calling out Green Party thought leaders and MDs Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers.

I'll keep a Jong-Fast friended on whichever of my Twitter accounts it is, precisely because it's good to know what a Team Blue thought leader is claiming.

Bye Bye Madame Secretary Albright

Just because you make "firsts" doesn't make you good.

Madeleine Albright, the first female US Secretary of State, died earlier today. 

And, yes, this is a takedown type obit. And, it's HUGELY deserved.

Albright, as CNN notes at the link, as Slick Willie Clinton's SoS, pushed for the expansion of NATO that pissed off then Russian president Boris Yeltsin just like it pisses off today's Russian president Vladimir Putin.

And, she probably knew it would do just that.

Meanwhile, per her Wiki page, she once called Putin a snake. Many right-knowing people on Twitter have espoused variants of "it takes one to know one."

And, as Huff Post notes, she also claimed that if half a million Iraqi kids were killed by sanctions, it was worth it.

Full quote, with exchange with Lesley Stahl, via Fair:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? 

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it. —60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Fair notes that the mainstream media largely buried under the rug when she uttered it. 

Albright then showed exactly the type of bullshit the establishment can engage in. She claimed that Lesley Stahl had asked her a loaded question, and that Stahl was promoting Iraqi propaganda. At about the same time, when someone asked why are we arming Israel to bomb Palestinians, she accused them of supporting Hussein. There's video at that Twitter link, and yeah, really, she's pretty loathsome.

More on Albright, Palestinians and speeches? She spoke at Berkeley's commencement in 2000, at the same event where a Palestinian was recognized as a University Medalist. A Mondoweiss writer, who worked on student newspaper The Daily Californian, reminisces.

As for whether the death toll was real, Saddam Hussein propaganda, or somewhere in between? A. Doesn't matter. Even if totally untrue, she accepted as true for the sake of argument. B. At the time, on the show, she didn't claim it was untrue.

She also, per The Nation, was a loathsome promoter of American exceptionalism, specifically what Andrew Bacevich calls "Indispensible Nation Syndrome," with her as originator.

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

No wonder Dear Leader gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dear Leader who bombed the shit out of Libya, with the best economy in Mediterranean Africa, and left it with slave markets a decade later. (And even Bernie Sanders' protest about that one was weak."

Don't forget, as Colin Powell didn't, that even pre-SoS, as Clinton's UN ambassador, she was a warhawk:

“My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we could not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective,” Powell wrote in his memoir, “My American Journey.” Albright, he wrote, “asked me, ‘What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.”

Yep.

And, for Kosovans talking about how she freed their country? It was at a price — literally. Wiki also notes that her investment company originally planned to bid on the privatization of Kosovo's telecom and postal company. (That's beyond the issue, that Wiki doesn't note, of the same Harvard types who advised Boris Yeltsin about privatization surely talking the same talk to Kosovans.)

Wiki's page also gives us a friendly reminder of other things, like her serving at the National Security Agency under Henry Kissinger's Democratic doppelgänger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, under whom she took graduate courses. She also led the effort to deny UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali a second term. That said, HIS Wiki page notes that his initial election was due to many countries withdrawing support from another African candidate under fears the US was trying to torpedo both.

To do her some fairness, she wasn't all wrong on Serbia, at least vis-a-vis Bosnia. But? Croatia had its own initially thuggish post-Yugoslav breakup leadership. And, Franjo Tudjman was "our" thug, with Croatia being eyed for NATO membership well in advance. And Milosevic was Russia's thug when Yeltsin raised some mild objections to the bombing and beyond. And, the bombing didn't work, any more than Russia's does today. Boutros-Ghali? Maybe he was sluggish on Rwanda, but I think it was posterior covering on her part, in part.

Dear Leader's memoir — dreck and more dreck, Vol. 1

This is an expanded version of my Goodreads review, in part because I remembered more of the dreck from his first term that Dear Leader Obama tried to whistle past, half an hour after I posted my review, and I added one item to that, then thought ...

"Shit, might be all sorts of stuff pop up that I forget about, so I'll post this on my blog to publish a couple of weeks down the road, which will give thought plenty of time to percolate."

So, here you go.

A Promised Land by Barack Obama
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this so you wouldn’t have to, like Custer died for your sins.

The Obama memoir, from 200-plus pages in? 3-star bland neoliberal dreck. Just like his presidency. Or, so I thought at first.

I eventually decided to drop it yet another star.

First?

Missing from the new Obama memoir:

• Almost all stuff pre-presidential
• Sheila Jager
• Almost nothing about his complicity of sharp elbows in the state Senate run
• Almost nothing about what he actually supported in the state Senate

See David Garrow’s book for more, reviewed by me here. Speculate as to why this isn’t in there.

Obama’s previous memoirs did get us through his state Senate years, but not really his brief span in the U.S. Senate. And, of course, he’s never talked about No. 2, and little about 3-4.

So, what IS in here? (And, what's deliberately omitted from here?)

Chides protestors for Bush “war criminal” signs on Jan. 20, 2009

Shows that he early on had a bromance hard-on for “bipartisanship”

At this point, I decided to check the index, given the man Status Quo Joe decided to invite back to run USDA again, Tom Vilsack.

And? No mention of Shirley Sherrod.

Note: This is the first item that I added to the original review, and then thought ... you know, let's post this to the blog. I will post this, and other additions, in italics.

Remember, this is a man who, BEFORE he got played by Breitbart over Sherrod, later got played by James O'Keefe — via Breitbart, no less — over ACORN. Oh, that also is not mentioned in the book, nor is the fact that our "constitutional law scholar" prez signed into law an unconstitutional bill of attainder against ACORN. [The district court got that right; the Second Circuit, overturning on appeal, got that wrong. More on the background of that case and bills of attainder in the court system in general here.]

From there? The stimulus. Doesn’t talk about compromising away the compromise in advance in public. Doesn’t talk about trying to get the initial numbers higher. Doesn’t talk about problems with HARP.

Anwar al-Awlaki does get one mention, but only as someone who stirred up Fort Hood’s Maj. Nidal Hasan, not as an American citizen Obama had drone-assassinated. The process by which Obama decided to knock him off, and the feedback, and Obama’s feeling about that pushback? Not here.

AS for the US recovering from the Great Recession faster than Western Europe? Neoliberal and left-neolib analysis says it wasn’t the stimulus funds nearly as much as looser US bankrtuptcy laws plus ‘no-recourse” mortgages. This couples with different homeownership rates, especially between the US and continental Europe, and what triggered the recession, in part. (None of this excuses austerity within the EU by Germany, the UK and elsewhere. But it does say that Obama’s “American exceptionalism, stimulus division,” ain’t quite that.)

I will give him a partial pass, per the book, about why he agreed to keep the Bush tax cuts in place during the lame-duck Congress session after the midterms. I'll give him a partial pass for Dems losing the House, but they shouldn't have lost it that badly.

Talks about UN’s “one-sided condemnations of Israel.” Doesn’t even discuss Resolution 242. Doesn’t discuss the Security Council’s one-sided silence toward Palestine.

Talks about “Chinese surveillance capabilities were impressive.” Ignores US ones. That said, and I know this is just Volume 1, before the man became president in 2013, but it’s interesting Xi Jinping is not mentioned.

The Paris Agreement was not a “breakthrough.” It was Jell-O. (We won’t actually get there until Volume 2, of course, but since he talks ahead about it in discussing the Copenhagen climate summit, it needs to be mentioned now.)

Claims Volcker Rule replaced substantive parts of Glass-Steagall.

Claims Holder et al did fine with bank/bankster prosecutions. Ignores no criminal sentences.

Through much of this, ignores pre-inauguration claims that he asked the “left” to push back against him as needed and that he then got bitchy when it happened. The closest he gets to this is talking about Samantha Power’s idealism. Or, "idealism." Speaking of, in discussion of Libya, into which Power kind of provoked him, mentions Christ Stevens. Doesn't mention his grisly demise. [For that matter, Dear Leader doesn't mention the open slave markets that eventually developed in post-Gaddafi Libya.]

Near the end, comes close to accusing Al-Jazeera of fomenting terrorist. Direct quote? “Al Jazeera, the Qatari-controlled media outlet that had become the dominant news source in the region, having built its popularity by fanning the flames of anger and resentment among Arabs with the same algorithmic precision that Fox News deployed so skillfully with conservative white voters in the States.”

I was leaning further and further away from three stars. And, I know that Al Jazeera America isn’t exactly what’s seen in the Gulf world. Nonetheless, this is over the top and was a ratings tipping point.

Oh, speaking of the media? No mention of AG Holder spying on the Associated Press, which started about the time this volume ends. No mention of his war on whistleblowers and the inhumane treatment of Chelsea Manning. This too started before his first term was over.

And, along with not mentioning this, he's not bothering to explain these things away.

It’s still on the 2/3 star border because it does illustrate the one constant good about a memoir vs. a biography, especially when the biography is NOT an “authorized” one. A memoir will show the author-subject’s true beliefs, even when they’re self-delusional or close to it.

At the same time, seeing Dear Leader peddle an autographed deluxe edition for nearly one thousand large confirms the two-star rating. This book isn’t for plebians. But, it confirms where Obama's heart lies — per Garrow, it's wherever Michelle's purse needs some more Benjamins.

Speaking of that, that probably illustrates, indirectly, what the memoir is like. It's about Barack Obama, this guy who just happens to be president. Forrest Barack (and family) anybody?

View all my reviews

Ryan Cooper reads Dear Leader's dreck so you don't have to

Looking for good takedown reviews, rather than NY Review of Books or New York Times book reviews pages, of Dear Leader Obama's volume 1 of dreck? Ryan Cooper is a good starting point. 

Here's a couple of the nut grafs, early on, or sections from them:

Obama attempts to grapple with the massive failures of his presidency in A Promised Land, his new memoir describing his rise to power and early presidency, but ultimately the book is slippery and unconvincing. America is circling the political toilet in part because Obama had the chance to fix many longstanding problems and did not rise to the occasion, a fact the former president is still stubbornly unwilling or unable to see. 

Obama elsewhere evinces a political naivete and passivity that borders on the incomprehensible. For the sake of brevity, let me address just the three most important policy decisions of his presidency: the 2008 bank bailout, the 2009 Recovery Act stimulus, and his foreclosure policy.

Couldn't have said it much better myself.

Well, actually .... one caveat. 

Passivity, probably. Naivete? No.

Rather, as I tweeted to Cooper:

.@ryanlcooper One asterisk to your generally good review of Dear Leader's new dreck. I don't think Obama was naive, and not totally passive. Rather,I think he truly thought his mellifluous dulcet tones would be that persuasive of GOP Congresscritter types. https://t.co/lPKTjX9UXY

— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) November 24, 2020

No other way to say it.

Cooper himself, in noting comments like Austan Goolsbee's about Hank Paulson, leaves the door open that subconsciously, he accepts this explanation.

Nathan J. Robinson hasn't come out with his takedown yet, but I'm waiting.

Coronavirus and a likely new Cold War (longer read)

Atlantic Monthly had a good speculative piece on likely fallouts from COVID. Neocons and many centrists wanted a new Cold War after 1989. Thanks to the toxic mix of the Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby of Xi Jinping Thought (a good read is here from the Beeb) and Donald Trump Mouth (evident to any non-MAGA American), they likely have gotten it. This is not to exonorate China in general or Xi in particular for technology theft far beyond the old USSR or modern Russia (or democracies like France, or like the US, for that matter) nor its forcing companies to surrender trade and business secrets (which they always could have resisted).

Some specific factors in both Xi's and Trump's makeups, while not making a new Cold War inevitable, at least made it more likely. Hubris, a certain amount of which is necessary to becoming a leader, is one that is toxic in too high of amounts, per the biblical statement that "pride goes before a fall." It's one that both of them have in excess. The photo at left underscores how much disdain they have for each other at bottom line, though Xi better masks his.

Let's start with Xi.

I'm not such a close China-watcher that I know that he had an excess of hubris early in his his first term. But, asking for, and being granted, the possibility of being president for life rather than being restricted to the two terms that had been on the books since Deng Xiaping's time, put it on full display. It's clear, by the CCP's rubber-stamping of the idea, that Xi had been wanting this for what, a a full year in advance? (He publicly broached the idea six months before his second-term election by not providing an apparent successor. And clearly, that also had been planned.)

That said, whether directly connected to imperial hubris or not, Xi's actions during his first term had helped grease the skids. His anti-corruption campaign surely not only eliminated actual corruption, but per Franz Joseph's old bon mot, "Is he a patriot for ME?" eliminated people who refused to be corrupt directly for and to Xi and Xi alone.

And then, just 18 months later, Xi became the first of two people to learn that you can't bully a pandemic.

And, it's "interesting," or "ironic," while ultimately tragic and worse that his mindset and Trump's on the coronavirus appeared to mirror each other. Both essentially, in their own ways, tried to pretend it away.

Xi had the advantage, or disadvantage, of being able to use brute force. Telling government agencies to destroy records, for example. Oh, wait, Trump told the CDC to scrub its website. Actual records are still available, but trying to hide stuff from the public? That said, the good side of American federalism meant that Trump couldn't get state health departments to outrightly lie, like we know Xi did with Chinese national stats and continues to do so. See here for more.

Pre-coronavirus, Trump wasn't totally wrong about China. It was all of the above, and given the growth of its economy, also arguably a currency manipulator and more.

But, he was totally wrong on how he handled this.

First, while globalization is not all good, it's not all bad, either.

Second, his America Firsterism cut out potential allies in battling China, namely Canada and the EU.

Third, his record of semi-failures in the business world, with something that looks like long-term success being achieved only through six US bankruptcy filings, a likely infusion or three of Mafia money (beyond what we know of his willingness to do business with mob-controlled companies in his early days), some known infusions of Russian money (but no, Putin didn't collude to elect him president, and doubly no, he hasn't been a Russian asset since the 1980s), and the Deutsche Bank ongoing lending to him that has raised eyebrows as to possible ultimate reasons, fueled an already high level of hubris. Well, international affairs isn't like one-off business deals, first. Second, the only ultimate results to bailing out a country are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and given that both are ultimately based on the dollar, that would have meant harikiri for them.

Fourth, per my post on how Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" has insight for human reactions to the coronavirus, Trump is a poster child for human nature's general willingness to throw good money after bad, plus the human, and definitely not-Asia specific, worry about losing face.

So, in international affairs, he had a history of wreckage, carnage and more before this. Specific to Xi, he had a history of insults, some of them at least marginally racist in nature long before his description of the coronavirus, and a refusal to really negotiate with Xi on any terms other than at least a partial surrender in advance by Xi.

Then this. We know Trump had some national-intelligence knowledge of the severity of COVID even while Xi was trying to cover it up, before that failed. And Trump? Like the stereotypical Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Denialism Don entered his usual mode when there's bad news he can't fully control.

The US will have more total cases and deaths than China by the time this is done, even with the most liberal allowance for Xi's lies. For US, and global by country, deaths and cases, click those links. (With notes that China's, especially is of course inaccurate.)

The fallout of all of this will be, as Atlantic notes, an increase in lack of cooperation between the US and China. Whether China's supply of help to EU nations can buy off knowledge of its lies remains to be seen. So, too, does the issue of other EU countries largely leaving Italy adrift in its early days.

Given that the EU doesn't border China, or Chinese satellites, and neither does NATO, of course, assuming we're already in the start of a new Cold War, this one will be different from the last. If COVID drives more austerity, it's likely that more European nations that are NATO members will look at further military budget-cutting.

As for the EU? Union-wide bonds for its short-term post-COVID future sound great. Germany continuing to keep a budget surplus sounds great to Chancellor Angela Merkel, I'm sure. It probably sounds even better to the AfD. The next six months are going to determine if she'll go down in history as the first leader of 21st-century Europe or "just" as a great chancellor of Germany.

Odds? 50-50, in my opinion.  Yes, as head of a parliamentary-based government, she has more restrictions than a President Macron. But, she's not running for re-election, and she still has some wiggle room outside the Bundestag. The 50-50 includes a guess on how much she'll try to use that wiggle room, or not.

Some of the Cold War 2.0 picture will depend on the US presidential election.

If Trump does get re-elected (shut up, Dems, it's a real possibility, and your claiming it isn't just makes it more real) of course, Trump's personality and everything driving the Cold War from his side just gets worse, and per my "Tar Baby," it just gets worse on Xi's side as well.

If Biden is elected (shut up, Berners, he's not getting the nomination, and that's in part due to him being a bad candidate, not your conspiracy theories), he'll do his best to undo the worst of Trump's damage. Unfortunately, it will be on the path of pursuing the bipartisan foreign policy establishment's idea of "engagement" with Beijing, which Xi will see as weakness.

Xi will also have no problem smiling when the allegedly outside the box stenos, the cadre within leftist American journalists who think America is almost always wrong on foreign policy, keep that up, as well as folks like the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay.

 Russia's own president for life, Vladimir Putin, remains a wild card. The median age of the Russian population as a whole isn't much higher than the US, and is well below, say Italy (and Germany). BUT? The median age of ethnic Russians, plus Belorussians and Ukrainians inside its borders, is higher than the various minorities, like those at the edge of Russia's Central Asian neighbors or those in the Caucuses. On the other hand, it's relatively non-dense, even in the European side; Moscow and Petersburg are the only metro areas of more than 5 million in Russia.

On the other hand, Putin's already treating this just like Xi did, to the point of arresting one doctor. And, Dr. Anastasia Vasilieva had been challenging Putin's official numbers.

So, it could survive COVID fairly well. It could survive the oil price wars fairly well. Climate change could improve its agricultural situation. If farm mechanization increases, Russia could be the next US.

==

Update, April 28: For purely domestic political reasons, Mitch McDonnell's senatorial campaign committee wants to push a new Cold War.

No, Trump is not a fascist; he's a disjunctive president

Rather, per Corey Robin, as most recently articulated here, and originally expressed here, he is a "disjunctive" president, usually the last type of president in each round of what has come to be known as the First through Sixth Party Systems.

The First Party System was our original 1789 start.

The Second Party System began with Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren teaming with him to form the antecedents of the modern Democratic party after original parties disintegrated under Monroe's Era of Good Feelings.

The Third Party System started with Lincoln as first Republican president. Free-soil movements outside the Democratic and Whig parties, as well as some within the party, helped lead to the end of the Whigs and the formation of the new movement.

The Fourth Party System began with McKinley. Republicans worked, as did Democrats, to accommodate at least some ideas of the Populist, then the Progressive, movements.

The Fifth Party System started with FDR. FDR's Democrats had to accommodate surging union rights, then Socialist turned Democrat Upton Sinclair's EPIC and Huey Long's Share the Wealth, which lead FDR to the Second New Deal. Per Robin, myself and many historians and political scientists and contra Wiki's expressed uncertainty, it ended with Jimmy Carter.

We're now in the Sixth Party System. Is it ending, is the question.

And, we need to look at Robin now to consider that.

Robin, and others, postulate four types of presidents, explained at his second link. The first, who will kick off a new system, he calls "reconstructive." The second, he calls an "articulation" president. Think of LBJ working to broaden, deepen and expand the New Deal. The third is a "preemptive" president. These presidents usually come from the minority party in a system, and attempt to pick off elements of the majority party's program while rebaptizing them. Think of Nixon, as Robin says, agreeing to the creation of the EPA, among other things, recognizing that environmentalism was bipartisan, but pandering to whites on things like crime and integration.

The fourth is the "disjunctive" president mentioned up top. Robin notes that previous examples include Carter, Herbert Hoover and Frank Pierce. (I'd add Buchanan here, with the Second Party System ending with back-to-back disjunctive presidents.) They are, or have been in the past, of the presidential majority party, and essentially go down with the ship of a dying program, at least to some degree.

Now, we get to a key point.

Robin notes, as I have outlined above, that other than the fading-away disintegration of the First System, the others up to this point have had their demise hastened by outside pressures. At the same time, he notes that these disjunctive presidents often see the problems and try to reach outside their current structures, to the degree they feel they can.

Now, this didn't happen at all with Pierce-Buchanan. And, arguably, it didn't with Benjamin Harrison. However, Grover Cleveland, second presidency, weirdly acts almost like a Republican in this. It certainly did happen with Hoover, who did try some stimulus, and some parts of which, like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, carried on under FDR. And Carter, arguably the first fully, or nearly fully, neoliberal Democratic president, deregulated airlines, trucking and other industries.

And, he says that that doesn't really seem to be the case, as he explains in detail at his first link.

Anti-free trade, Trump's one bellwether, has no more support among the ruling class of Democrats than among Republicans. It's the only real way he's reached outside his traditional party.

Is that alone anything like the free-soil movement, Populism or Progressivism? I think not and neither does Robin. Meanwhile, single-payer national health care has yet to reach that critical mass to prod leadership Democrats.

So, are we stuck with a Sixth Party System that won't die, but just becomes more broken? Maybe.

I certainly agree with Robin otherwise. Trump is not a fascist, no more than he's a colluder with Putin. But he does have some other parallels with Carter. Neither won a majority of popular votes in their respective primary drives; related, both had fractured primaries with multiple seemingly viable candidates.

To explain more, and adapted from a response comment by me below.

Robin's idea is that Trump is not a fascist precisely because he fits in an established arc of types of presidencies. A disjunctive-type presidency isn't really compatible with stereotypical fascist actions. I suppose in some sort of theoretical outlier, you could have a fascist president lurking behind seemingly disjunctive activities, or you could have an inept fascist who winds up as a disjunctive president but I see those as really hypothetical.

I don't see Trump as a non-inept fascist, and to some degree, I think inept fascist is a contradiction in terms. (Mussolini made the mistake of taking an unprepared Italy to war; in domestic policy from 1922-1938, he was actually pretty ept, so he doesn't fit the definition of inept fascist.)

So, with all that explainer? Robin is showing how pretty much one can't be a fascist and be a disjunctive president, and then showing how Trump IS a disjunctive president.

Personally, I've rejected the idea Trump was a fascist from the time he took office, and for two reasons.

One is that, like Robin, I don’t think Trump’s a fascist.

The second is that #TheResistance was near the forefront of calling him a fascist, as an epithet if nothing else. It was sometimes tied to the Putin collusion claims, and we’ve seen how wrong it was on that. Even if it/Donut Twitter HAD been partially right, I wasn’t going to play along.

BUT … Corey notes previous great alignments have had outside pressures too and none currently exist.

What we seem to be mooting now is a purely political reconstruction, shorn of the social movements that helped make previous left reconstructions what they were. 

Robin notes that this means the increased polarization of the two mainstream parties is less open to outside movements.

If he’s right, then maybe we’re still in the Sixth Party System, and assuming Trump loses and it’s not to Bernie Sanders, the transition goes on for a while — if we’re even going to be in a transition.

And, if he's right, it's all the more reason to not be tempted by the duopoly.

Tax day: Thanks Obama! Thanks Obamacare

Due to a brief excursus to another job for two months in 2018, I have to pay two months of Obamacare penalty prorated off the $695 per year. (Thanks to Trump, and yes, a thanks of sorts if it helps kill Obamacare and forces Dumbocrats, I mean Democraps, to line up behind single payer, that penalty disappears on NEXT year's 1040.)

OK, the big deal of course is —

THE "rule" for benefits, the lusted after insurance "bennies" for which employers enserf employees even though they know, in many cases they'd save money with single-payer?

"You're eligible after 90 days."

My previous job, to which I returned, didn't "clear the decks" during my short absence, so I went right back on insurance there. But, had I stayed at the brief excursus, I would have had a three-month hit, not two months.

And, Dear Leader surely knew that 90-day rule.

Some countries that have national health care coverage use private insurers as part to nearly all of the system.

Switzerland, the most recent country of advanced nations to develop national health care coverage, is insurance-based. So is Taiwan, IIRC. Japan has a fair amount of its system insurance-based and German has a moderate amount that way.

But, in any of these countries, if there is employer-based insurance to fulfill the insurance coverage, there's NO "you're eligible after 90 days." Either Dear Leader knew that, too, and swept it under the rug, or, as in 2008 Democratic debates with Hillary Clinton and his ignorance over the need for an "individual mandate," he was that dumb.

Thanks Obama! Thanks Obamacare!

Trump signs Bibles? So did Dear Leader, others It's still grotesquely chasing Mammon as I see it

Everybody and their grandmother mentioned in the Biblical genealogy of Two Corinithians has by now heard of Trump autographing Bibles for Alabama tornado victims.

This:

President Trump is signing bibles for  volunteers and survivors at a Baptist church in Alabama. pic.twitter.com/9b8VfyZiKF

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) March 8, 2019

is yet another reason this leftist, contra Arlie Russell Hochschild and fellow librulz, doesn't do "listening tours."

And actually, Trump autographing bibles (did he sign the first page of "Two Corinthians"? did he get his "cracker" [of the many crackers there]?) is only half as vulgar and one quarter as irreligious as the people who asked him for the autographs.

And, it's not just "the left" calling Trump out, contra fellow travelers at Red State:

I don’t know who it is a worse commentary on: Trump actually signing Bibles in Alabama, or the people asking him to sign a Bible.  Lordy Moses.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) March 8, 2019

That said, if Obama also did it, even for MLK's family, it's still theologically grotesque in my corner of the world.

But, that's Merikan Xianity, especially Southern style, in my corner of the world.

And, if the "Mammon" of which Jesus warned includes fame as well as money, this secularist, looking from the outside, says it is un-christian. It's also halfway to being a success gospel.

And, as for you Trump train riders?  Matthew 7:6 is right here:

"Give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine."

Aren't you glad secularists know the Bible better than you?

Family separations in ICE cages end; what next?

Here's the Trump executive order ending the family separations.

(Update: Trump Admin says it will NOT apply to already separated families. So, how do we know it will be applied to new cases. This is a man who wakes up with a lie teed up for Twitter.)

So now, to the "what next"?

First, beyond any current "tent cities" that will be used for whole families, read Section 3. Per subsection (c), military bases will be used next, either with tent cities, or with unused barracks. (The Pentagon has now agreed to provide space for 20,000.) If there are former military bases that have been closed but not for too too long, that might come next. (Actually, it looks like they could come first.) Per subsection (d), note that other federal agencies have already been tasked about making facilities available.

Second, the fact that those two subsections are spelled out in his executive order means that Trump has in no way capitulated in his "no tolerance" stance.

Third, this will surely violate the Flores Settlement. That's what Trump and administration mouthpieces, along with Havana Ted Cruz and other Rethug Congresscritters, have (I think, god knows??) been referring to in claiming there is a law requiring family separations.

No there's not. And Trump's EO indicates there's not. And that his administration and those mouthpieces (tho maybe not Donald himself) have known this all along.

Obama was sued over violating the Flores Settlement in 2015. And lost. And lost with good reason, in the middle of his own "no-tolerance," or near it, that earned him the title of Deporter in Chief. That's also because he grossly expanded immigration law enforcement from where Bush had it, as The Nation noted in 2016. More background here. Trump has already indicated he'll fight and invite suits. Dara Lind says that's surely deliberate; Dolly Gee, the district judge who ruled against Obama, still has control from the bench of Flores Settlement issues. Trump spox Gene Hamilton at the Department of Justice indicated the administration will try to ratchet up PR against Gee just as if she were a Member of Congress.

Fourth, note the title of the EO: "Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation." He's already trying to punt the PR snafu back to the Hill.

Fifth, both duopoly parties have contributed to problems that have led to flight from Central America. This long and growing Twitter thread of mine has details. That's even as the National Endowment for Democracy, a bipartisan foreign policy establishment, boasts about plans to destabilize Nicaragua.

Sixth, family-based detention centers already exist and aren't quite full yet.

Seventh, a reminder to wingers. "Illegal presence" is a civil offense only. Only "illegal entry" is a criminal case, and like any other criminal case, must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. That's why immigration lawyers caution immigrants apprehended inside our borders not to talk to police without an attorney present. And, immigrants are entitled to many, though not all, Constitutional protections.

Finally, John Horgan is right. Let's not forget about all the children in the Middle East U.S. presidents of both parties have killed in the War on Terra.

==

And as of the start of July, the "what next" of Trump is to tell ICE to threaten family separations again if they try to get asylum hearings.

TX Progressives attack Trump, ICE,ConservaDems on immigration

The Texas Progressive Alliance has never needed a taint team, but it does call for firm opposition to warmongering, as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff casts a skeptical eye at a lawsuit filed against Dallas County claiming that white voters are being discriminated against.

SocraticGadfly wonders if Kawhi Leonard has already played his last game for the Spurs.

Neil at All People Have Value wrote an open letter to Democratic Party leaders about the  need for an assertive response to any effort by Trump to curtail the Robert Mueller investigation.  

Stace at Dos Centavos is (without names, so far) criticizing Democrats who even passively support Trump (and supported Obama) on immigration crackdowns, and may name names soon.

Ed Darrell at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub punctures the myth of violently criminal immigrants.

Does ICE need to be abolished? If, per Texas Monthly, it’s now no longer releasing pregnant women from detention facilities, yes.

====================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Down with Tyranny says Republicans are worried about Blake Farenthold’s Congressional district.

Dwight Silverman shares how you can check to see if Cambridge Analytica has your Facebook data.

Mark Bennett explains why you shouldn't argue while angry.

Better Texas Blog criticizes the latest farm bill.

Grits for Breakfast has a modest proposal for counties that complain about the cost of indigent defense.

Paradise in Hell remains our state's foremost interpreter of Donald Trump.

Juanita has a close encounter with Tom DeLay.

Downwinders at Risk wraps up disbursing the $2.3 million it got in a settlement with cement plants.

At the Dallas Observer, Stephen Young asks if Erin Brockovich is a “parachute enviromentalist” peddling poor information.

Also at the Dallas Observer, Jim Schuetze discusses early noises in the 2019 Dallas mayoral election.

A few quick thoughts on Uranium One re #TrumpTrain and #GOPTaxScam

Bill Clinton with Frank Giustra

I'm putting something up because the wingnuts are blathering about the DOJ's announced investigation of the Clinton Foundation getting money from international mercenary grifter Frank Giustra and friends in exchange for about 20 percent of US uranium production capability

First, the wingnuts aren't asking a word about the timing. To me, it seems classic "wag the dog," diverting the Trump Train from looking more at the massive locomotive that's the light at the end of the tunnel, aka, how a country with massive new debt in a decade has done nothing for them in the meantime.

Related to that, the fake leftists like ShirtLost DumbShit Zack Heller will use this to further their claims that Bill and Hillary Clinton are more corrupt than Donald Trump. Actual Flatticus might do the same, were he alive.

Related to THAT is some left-liberals to actual leftists on Twitter retweeting threads by people who either in the thread at hand or others go off into semi if not full conspiracy mode.

(That reminds me of the proper rephrasing of an old cliche, especially for Twitter. "Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but a temporary ally of convenience and nothing more." And sometimes, they're not even that.)

Reality? This actual leftist has no doubt they're corrupt, but still sees them as less corrupt fiscally in particular, or on broad ethics in general, than The Donald. Put that in your pipe and puff it, Zack.

Reality to this issue, now that the preliminaries are at hand?

Yes, the Uranium One deal is corrupt. Ethically corrupt for sure. In my opinion, possibly criminally corrupt, but that's going to be hard to prove.

What is the real problem behind Uranium One is that it's a bright, shiny mirror of bipartisan corruption. Beyond using it as a wag the dog to divert attention from the #GOPTaxScam, Trump's probably also using it to divert attention from the Robert Mueller investigation, which will show nothing about Vladimir Putin hacking US elections but which WILL show plenty about his own seeming money laundering.

So, no, Mueller's not being fired tomorrow. He's being overshadowed today.

The third thing is that Trump is probably jealous he didn't think of something like this. He's probably also jealous that he's not smooth enough to pull it off. (And he's not.)

Let's also remember that the Giustra grifting, related to uranium issues in Kazakhstan, started when Shrub Bush was still president. And, enough of this was known in 2012 that Mittens Romney had the chance to make a bigger issue out of it with Barack Obama's re-election campaign than he actually did.

Again: the real problem behind Uranium One is that it's a bright, shiny mirror of bipartisan corruption. The related issue is that the corruption is never dealt with until it becomes a handy political cudgel for one half of the duopoly.

And Jeff Sessions' investigation won't change that one bit.

One sidebar from all this is that, although Trump himself remains an idiot, somebody, whether White House staff or RNC staff, is thinking smartly on tactics issues. As news outlets noted yesterday, Trump getting Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to agree on a short-term funding bill to avoid a government shutdown gave the Congressional GOP time to ram the tax bill home before Christmas. (And, assuming Doug Jones wouldn't be a total sellout, just a partial one, that time now appears to have been quite valuable.)

==

Damn, I forgot that I blogged about the Clintons, Giustra and Kazakhstan way back in 2008.

A few quick notes on the #TrumpTaxScam and the #resistance

First, it's really, of course, a GOP Tax Scam. That said, I doubt they'd try it with Shrub Bush in office. I know they wouldn't with Poppy Bush and probably not with Reagan.

Of course, while Reagan was already trying to whittle away at America's safety net, it was around the edges, and he probably wouldn't have asked for that much with this Congress.

But, when the executive branch is led by an infant, with his on-the-ground Veep pandering to the worst of the Religious Right, the children are going to play in Congress, too.

And, the children got elected after Obama got elected.

I blame, for that:
1. Shrub, Poppy, and consiglieres of both for not calling out Tea Party Congressional candidates, or the entire movement, quickly.
2. Dear Leader for continuing to try to sing "Kumbaya" with them after more and more of them got elected to Congress specifically in backlash to him, and often in race-driven backlash.
2A. Preznit Kumbaya a second time for gutting the Democratic National Committee and doing nothing to help Democratic congressional candidates in 2010.
3. The few alleged GOP adults already in Congress.

Speaking of, vag-hat-wearing #Resistance folks, how do you feel now about your "normalizing" of both Schmuck Talk Express John McCain and Jeff Flake in the past few weeks?

Your "movement" is as thin as baby oatmeal with both of them, with Shrub Bush aforementioned, and others.

It's also as thin as oatmeal for those of you who rightly reject much of what Hillary Clinton stood for but still uncritically accept Obama. He rightfully earned the Dear Leader moniker for reasons like this.

I'll confess that I had some hope McCain would vote no, based on his Obamacare repeal stance. That said, this just proves again that he can be almost as much a weathervane as Trump himself at times.

#TrumpTaxScam vs. Dear Leader and Democrats on #BushTaxCuts

OK, just with the bare minimum of Trump's tax plan, or the Congressional GOP's and Trump's tax plan, out for public consumption, we all know it sucks at least as bad as expected, if not worse.

The worse is something that even Shrub Bush didn't try — the full elimination of both the estate tax, and worse yet, of the alternative minimum tax.

Doubling of the standard deduction sounds great — until the realization that compressing tax brackets to just three mean that anybody making very much above minimum wage will likely pay more, with the bottom bracket rising by 2 percentage points. The idea that raising the standard deduction would simplify taxes for many may itself be a smokescreen, depending on what the income level is set at to jump to the dramatically higher second tier of 25 percent. (As a sidebar to the top link notes, the plan doesn't say where the new brackets would start at.) And, for middle-class to upper-middle-class people in pricier states, whether red or blue, with more state taxes — property, income, or both — killing these deductions would be a tough sled, the same link notes.

As for this being tax "reform," per a Tweet from the official GOP account?

As I tweeted back, actual tax reform would, at a minimum:
1. Include a corporate flat tax. (You know how much the old flat tax is a scam by the simple fact that GOP Congresscritters have repeatedly proposed one for individuals but never for corporations.)
2. Taxing hedge fund income as regular, ordinary income.
3. Overhauling the pass-through portion of corporate income taxes to eliminate them from being used by big business.

Otherwise, on the big picture side, it appears that there's not even an attempt to gussy this up with "supply-side trickle-down." Rather, in addition to screwing many individual taxpayers, even before we get a CBO scoring, I'm sure this would be at least a $50 billion a year deficit increaser. (Note that the Trumpster and GOP Congresscritters have said nothing, as far as I can see, about this being a revenue-neutral bill.)

And, that's surely not over one year, but the AP says it would have a net cost of more than $2 trillion.

But, you know, Democrats don't have room to crow. First, per the Liberal Values blog, with that nice graphic, millennials don't trust Democrats tremendously more than Republicans, and per one poll, white millennials distrust them just as much.

And, on taxes, they shouldn't.

Remember the Bush tax cuts? The ones that, per the Wikipedia link, had a sunset provision, but Dear Leader and a Democrat-majority Congress extended them in 2012. Then, as part of the 2012 budget staredown, Obama agreed to make them permanent for people making less than $400K?

That $400,000 is a big chunk of income, even in pricier states, unless one lives in Manhattan, or parts of San Francisco, Silicon Valley, or Hollywood. (All blue-ish as far as the Democratic donor class.)

Remember how Obama weaseled out of his original $250K, even though he, and Congressional Dems, could have done differently as final action was taken AFTER the midterm elections, during a lame-duck session when Democrats still controlled Congress?

So what if Senate Republicans blocked cloture? Democrats had the ultimate weapon — that the tax breaks were sunsetting.

Beyond that, Obama never offered up a constructive tax plan of his own. And, never coordinated to do this with Congressional Dems.

That said, even among modern presidents, Obama had a pretty high level of throwing his own Congressional party under the bus. We all know about the 2010 midterm blowouts. They didn't have to be that bad, if Obama had done some targeted campaigning for Congresscritters, governors and state legiscritters. At the state level, that of course led to the current reapportionment disaster.

Obama, #DACA and #hypocrisy shattered Dreamers

Yeah, I saw Obama call out Trump yesterday on wanting to end DACA.

But, how many of you knew that Obama deported more people than any other president? That he deported more than all 20th-century presidents combined?

Snopes tries to get Obama off the hook by saying this was in part due to a change in definition. It then undercuts itself by admitting this happened under Bush, but doesn't say exactly when, or what his stats were. This is one of those clear cases where Snopes, moving from narrow skepticism fact-checking to political analysis, fails. (Obama passed Bush by 750,000.)

And, if part of it was due to other legislative changes, Snopes, did Obama try to veto any of it? This is the man who kept the "Bush tax cuts" in place, after all.

Otherwise, quick Googling of the mainstream media shows poor data there on the main stories trying to compare Obama and Bush.

I am going to make what is, I think, a reasonable assumption, that the change in numbers of full, fingerprinted deportations vs turnarounds, and any definitional changes, started not too long after 9/11, and therefore, covered most of Shrub's presidenncy.

Therefore, at a minimum, with apples to apples for most of their presidencies, suffice it to say that Obama was at least as bad as Bush, I am very sure, and still probably worse. (If I generously say the two administrations were 80 percent apples-to-apples, Obama still deports 200,000 more.)

So why the sudden concern for DACA and the Dreamers?

Guilty conscience?

I doubt it.

Legacy?

Maybe.

He should be guilty for abandoning state and Congressional Dems in 2010. But, I'm not a Dem.

Anyway, I think that Obama created DACA by executive order precisely to let him get away with deporting more adults, at least as one part of the idea behind that.

You read that right.

Hence my header.

But why?

To appear tough on crime? But, he didn't make that part of his re-election platform.

So, ultimately, I don't know.

I just know he comes off as a hypocrite on this issue.

And, sure, he was facing the tail end of a Shrub Bush spike in illegal immigration, but it declined, modestly, under his own administration. Per that Pew link, more of them were long-term residents in the US, 10 or more years, especially from Mexico, which makes their deportation even worse.

Plus, more and more were from south of Mexico, escaping places like chronically right-wing wracked Guatemala, or the Honduras of the Obama-Clinton coup of 2009. (I originally called it a non-coup, then a semi-coup, then a coup, per Wiki.)

Donald Trump Obama meets Vladimir Putin Bush

So, after day one of the G20 summit, Donald Trump allegedly, according to Secretary of State Wayne Tracker, "pressed" Vladimir Putin on alleged Russian hacking of last year's U.S. elections — and then "moved on."

And, the MSM and the MSM commentariat class, like Politico and Anne Applebaum, is storming with fury.

Why?

Isn't this exactly what Dear Leader did in 2009? After having previously flip-flipped on warrantless snooping by telecommunications giants, just in time to get nice campaign finance money from them during the 2008 election, then said, even before taking office, that "we" (that wasn't ME in that "we") "need to look forward as opposed to looking backward."

And, hence the title of this piece.

Per the Politico piece, the parallels continue.

The weakness that Trump showed Putin? That's the weakness that Obama showed a defense of human rights.

The refusal to recognize the U.S. and Russia don't have similar interests? That's like Obama refusing to recognize that his mythos and his actions — in foreign as well as domestic policy — had different interests.

But, "look forward" meant the bipartisan foreign policy establishment saw that Obama wouldn't undercut American Empire.

#Hillbots vs #DevinNunes on #PutinDidIt

Subtitle for this brief post could be "Dumb Fuck and Dumber Fuck." And, the two protagonists could be flipped on which

Nunes has now clearly violated the everyday, real-world definition of ethics, whether he's violated any federal laws or not. And, we now have the names of Dumber Fuck-in-Chief's staff members who helped him.

On the other hand, you have the Guardian's US division, running light flak for Hillbots. Any time one has a story which links to a story in which Cuck Buchenwald, I mean, Kurt Eichenwald, figures prominently, you're probably skating on thin ice anyway. And, Spencer Ackerman, while perhaps not exactly a Hillbot, isn't outside the

And, on the third hand, in a sidebar, higher-ups in the Obama Administration may have kept FBI head James Comey from coming out in the open last summer about concerns he already had then.

Will Hillary throw a lamp at Barry next time they're both in Chicago, or next time she sees him kitesurfing with Richard Branson?