"Without Precedent" but WITH looking at Scotus through left hand of the duopoly framing

Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights by Lisa Graves
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars rounded down. 3.0 stars period at the end of my thoughts, per the bottom. Little new for a deep reader. I hadn't before read the details of Gorsuch's frat-boy college life, but could have found them elsewhere, and didn't know that Barrett, as well as Roberts and Kavanaugh, was involved with Bush v. Gore work.

And, that's it.

It's written from the left hand of the duopoly.

And, as a non-duopoly voter (and no, I didn't "really" vote for Trump; shut up), it's got holes.

Take the "god" chapter. Never mentions the Bladensberg Cross case (technically American Legion v American Humanist Association, nor Breyer's disastrous concurring opinion (with Kagan riding along), written in part, IMO, to make his opinion in Van Orton into precedent.

Or, beyond "god," take the "First Amendment" chapter.

I'm sorry, there is none. So we don't get to read the reality of Ginsburg bagging on Colin Kaepernick and other issues.

Beyond that, Democratic-appointed justices past and present have at times been squishes on civil rights and related issues, especially if they involve people arrested for crimes. So far, Ketanji Brown Jackson has been pretty good, but who knows if that will last. (Related? Don't forget that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was passed while the Slickster was prez. The Senate could have easily overriden a veto, but he might have gotten enough representatives to change their minds to sustain. That, of course, was just one of several issues where Clinton squished out in 1996.)

And, IMO, contra the author, this is as serious issue as Congress, in 1988, passing the Supreme Court Case Selections Act of 1988 that, as cited by her, lessened the Supreme Court's mandatory cases. But, Reagan was president in 1988, so from a duopoly framework, it's easier to bag on this than bag on Clinton.

This Wiki page shows a decline in rulings before 1988 that moderately accelerated for a few years after that, but looked like the decline might be slowing down again, until after 1996.

Finally, per her epilogue, and the background to it, Trump v United States, one can indeed argue it was wrongly decided, but the ruling was not 100 percent de novo. Related? Blame the Nixon Administration's Office of Legal Counsel within the DOJ for wrongly claiming that sitting presidents can't be indicted, and blame John Sirica and Leon Jaworski for accepting that idea. See here.

In other words, the idea of the president as king has a longer history than Graves presents, and the left hand of the duopoly, or at least people touted by it, have played their part in making that what it is.

I could rate it lower than 3.0 stars, and I could give it the mendaciousness tag, but I'm holding off. Graves believes these things sincerely, so I won't accuse her of conscious mendaciousness. Yes, I could say "Mendacity," but I used the other word for my bookshelf and besides, I'm an editor; I can invent that word. For similar reasons, it didn't get the "disappointment" tag but it DID get the "meh" tag. Otherwise, I won't rate it lower than 3 stars because it's good for showing how the left hand of the two-party duopoly can go down a tribalist road. 

Yes, the left hand of the duopoly is better than the right hand, but that's small potatoes. And, per what I said early in the review, it wouldn't surprise me if Graves saw my takes and did claim that I "really voted for Trump."

And, all of the above is once again why the annual four-year cry of #BlueAnon, "Oh the SCOTUS," sways me not.

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Top blogging of 2025

As with my monthly roundups, while these were the most read pieces of 2025, not all of them were written IN 2025. 

And, as with the monthly roundups, I'll note the original date of "evergreen" pieces. I'll also, if they are older than 2024, take a guess as to their ongoing, or renewed, popularity.

And, with that?

No. 10: "Fuck r/NationalPark for a duopoly tribalist ban." It was an additional piss-off because I had extensive facts to document the non-duopoly comment that got me banned, and because r/Texas had pulled the same shit not too much earlier. 

No. 9 came from early in 2025, just a couple of months into Trump 2.0's reign, and explains the title of the short piece: "The Resistance 2.0 wants to relitigate Russiagate 1.0." That said, Trump continues to give BlueAnon and Never Trumper Rethuglicans ammo for this, and no, MAGAts, not in a trolling way, but in an increasingly Trumpian stupidity way. 

No. 8 was political prognostication. "Oh, Canada, can the Liberals win again?" They and PM Mark Carney did indeed, but Canada lost in large part due to the utter implosion of the New Democratic Party, which saw the radioactivity of its previous confidence and supply agreement with Trudeau come home to roost. Meanwhile, for denizens of parliamentary democracies who laugh at, or scratch their heads over, the lengthiness of US presidential elections, why does it take a full year for the NDP to choose a new party leader, or over in Britain, a new party, the Your Party, the same amount of time to choose an official first party leader. In addition, if your country's upper house of government is not that much more democratic than the US Senate (looking at Canada, Great Britain, Germany and France for starters), you have additional lack of room to mock.

Speaking of mocking?

No. 7, "The REAL Footprints in the Sand," mocked indeed that hoary old Christian chestnut. 

No. 6 was one iteration from the weekly Texas Progressives blog roundup. I have no idea why it trended, but it did.

No. 5 was from way back in 2018, about my approval of the St. Louis Cardinals trading for Paul Goldschmidt. I'm guessing it trended because of him being let go by the Cards after the 2024 offseason, then signing a deal with the Yankees.

No. 4 was a brief post from last summer, "Trump is actually right on California's high-speed rail." 

No. 3? Cannabis is always a good hot topic. That said, while I said, or claimed, back in 2021, that there was "More pressure on Texas to loosen pot rules," the state has done no such thing other than to have Strangeabbott and Dannie Goeb get in a fight over THC gummies last summer. 

No. 2? "Three Dems on SCOTUS, no environmentalists," summarizes part of why I'm a non-duopoly voter. 

And the most popular post of last year?

.....

Drumroll ...

Was from 2019.

"Early 2020 Democratic presidential oddsmaking, desirability" ranked all halfway serious contenders on both, the latter ranking from a non-duopoly leftist point of view. I wasn't totally wrong on odds. Saint Bernard of Sanders was No. 1 on that for me, followed by Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala is a Cop tying for second and Dementia Joe in fourth. 

Bernie of course got shivved by a mix of Dear Leader and Harry Reid, who rallied the insiders around Dementia Joe at the same time. That said, as I documented elsewhere, Bernie showed his own balllessness in the campaign, which didn't help. Kamala got the token (it was) Veep nod, while Gillibrand disappeared. 

The Resistance 2.0 gears up for Trump 2.0

And looks about as stupid. Take this Political Atheist dude on both Fuckbook and Shitter. The load for their Hucksterman page said "political independent" but they still self-identify as Berniecrat on Shitter. As in, Democrat. And, his (has to be a dood) pinned post on Shitter indicates they're Camelot-based politically illiterate about JFK.

And, follow you on Threads? Hucksterman already kissed Trump's ass. And, helped Cambridge Analytica two election cycles ago. Why would you join a second Hucksterman outlet?

Blue Sky? Perhaps better than at startup, but started by Twitter's old boss, Ice Bath Balls Jack Dorsey.

As for the idea that atheism is political? There's plenty of wingnut atheists out there. Two of the three worst mass-murderer dictators of the 20th century were clear atheists, and Hitler was a Samuel Huntington type cultural Christianist, if that.

And, pre-Nov. 5, 2024, dude has not one word about the genocide in Gaza on his Shitter feed. None.

So, we have The Resistance 2.0. (Pussy hats optional.)

Trump 2.0.

And Tribalism 2.0.

Even Rodney Latstetter, who should know better, appears to buy into bits of a revived Russiagate on Shitter.

Shitter in particular, and social media in general, in the US will be a cesspool of duopoly tribalism for at least 3 years and 11 months.

#AbandonBiden is lying to itself

Or, at a minimum, one of the leaders of the move to vote "Uncommitted" is lying to herself. 

Michael Arria of Mondoweiss, like me, rightly wondered where this movement goes now that the Democratic National Convention is nearly hear and #GenocideJoe has sewn up the nomination. (He forgot to mention Team Biden's push to make much of the convention "virtual" to keep Chicago 2024 from becoming Chicago 1968, but we'll set that aside.)

So, he interviewed Listen to Michigan Co-Director Lexis Zeidan.

Here's his big ask, question No. 3:

I’m wondering how you think this movement can exert pressure on the Biden administration. I’m also wondering how many supporters will never vote for Biden based on what’s happened so far vs. how many might support him if they see some tangible shifts.

And, her schwaffling response:

To go back to your original question around exerting pressure on the Biden administration, and this is a conversation I’ve been having quite often, the Uncommitted Movement didn’t get started to particularly highlight this Trump versus Biden election. I think a lot of the conversation that people are having is around the idea of Trump vs. Biden, but I think really that the pressure is being exerted to shift the Democratic Party in general around its human rights policies when it comes to Palestinians.

Really?

The schwaffling gets better when Zeidan ignores third-party options.

At the end of the day, we’re not here to save Biden and we’re not here to hand this election over to Biden. We’re also most definitely not here to hand this this election over to Trump. This core base is a Democratic base.

If she's an activist, even of kiddie-pool age, she either should know or does know that there are alternatives outside the duopoly. Probably a DSA Rosey.

Finally, the lying to herself/themselves? This:

We really want to ensure that our delegate are uplifting Palestinian human rights and voices at the DNC. I think this presence is vital in both pushing the party towards more human policies, similar to the efforts by civil rights activists of the 1960s, and really trying to continue to exert pressure on Biden, the administration, and the party to really shift course on Gaza as quickly as possible.

Is spoken as if they think it will happen.

It won't, Zeidan, so again, what are you going to do next? Keep lying to yourself? Pull a Jerry Rubin and sell defense stocks on Wall Street?

So, if she's representative of #AbandonBiden in general, that movement can go "jump in a lake" (since this is linked at Mondoweiss). I would give Zeidan a kiddie-pool pass if she didn't explicitly double and triple down on duopoly-only politics.

Progressives, national roundup

Duopolist Liza Featherstone (Mrs. Duopolist Doug Henwood) calls out Dear Leader Obama at duopolist Jacobin magazine. What she says is true, but it's from inside a glass house.

Ryan Cooper shows he's not to be taken seriously if he uses the excuse of "China's going to do it if nothing else" to actively push geoengineering. He's not a left-liberal, he's a left-neoliberal solutionist.

Carbonmonger Joe's Department of Energy passed out more than $1 billion in grants for project-level carbon capture plants here in Tex-ass and in Louisiana. DeSmog has more, including the reminder that energy giant Oxy has one of these, as a greenwashing license to drill more oil

Per Ballotpedia, the number of bills about ranked-choice voting, many by duopoly-controlled state legislatures trying to shut down local options, grew a lot this year. MAGA and BlueMAGA know they're hated, and their only response is to try to block the #duopolyexit exits.

Good piece by Al Jazeera about all the countries jockeying for influence with Pacific Island nations.

I did not have "Who is Brandon Phillips for $500, Alex?" on my Democratic challengers to Warmonger Joe Jeopardy Bingo card.

Hand-counting ballots is pricey and still error-laden. And, it's not some elite academics who said that, but Movaje County, Arizona's county government.

RFK Jr.: Anti-abortion rights grifter and liar. And, yeah, Bob, you were lying about misunderstanding the question.

Seymour Hersh's good Substack, with Thomas Frank

And it's one of the few that's not paywalled.

Sy interviews "Listen, Liberal" author Thomas Frank. Unfortunately, the national Democrats won't listen, and the national GOP, because Trump stole enough from the New Deal on worker-related stuff (or pretended to; Trump has never really cared about employees) it thinks it doesn't have to.

Some of its takeaways?

• Crying wolf on Russiagate by Dems is part of why more people who aren't total BlueAnon don't accept the reality of Jan. 6
• The national Democrat-mainstream media alliance is semi-incestuous
• Neither duopoly party really wants to change right now
  
• We need viable third parties, but in the wake of the Populists of the 1880s-90s, the duopoly continues to raise walls higher.

To summarize where we're at, off one Tweet?

Catturd is indeed a top non-generally famous Trumpian social media influencer on Twitter. (And, in another tweet, despite having a blue check, presumably gratis from Musk, claims Musk gave him no money for Twitter ads etc. last month. Probably got $8 and change and Musk deducted it.) 

A heartfelt message, and for the best that he didn’t go with the first title “Catturd is 54 and Unemployed.” pic.twitter.com/IcIdODC5SP

— Gary Peterson 🇺🇸 (@GaryPetersonUSA) July 19, 2023

The "deal" on how he reinforces Frank is that, this is the type of people that Trump listens to (and probably DeSantis and some others). Note also the junior-league messianic overtones, tying right in with #MAGAts proclaiming Trump the new Father Moon of Reunification Church Christology.

And, at the same time, even a triply-saner version of a "Catturd" is the type of people that Bill Clinton on have ignored. (This sets aside Catturd's slipstreaming on the late Actual Flatticus, who indeed passed away 5-plus years ago.)

The piece isn't perfect, I'll state.

FDR wasn't quite as radical as Frank paints. National Dems first shot themselves in the foot over Vietnam. (If civil rights handed the South to the Republicans and for more than a generation, LBJ expanding the war footing as much as he did made the Northeast and Great Lakes less Democratic-fertile.)

And, on working class America, as America turns more nonwhite, Frank doesn't wrestle with the issue of how well a class-based (but also focused on racism etc.) Democratic Party could retain working-class whites. It would do better than it's doing now, but ... how much better? I mean, this goes back to St. Ronald of Reagan's dogwhistle at the Neosheba County Fair. 

There's also a demographic issue. We've added 100 million people since that 1980 dogwhistling time. I think more and more of Merikkka feels an anomie of isolation and diminished focus.

It's still worth a read, for how the current status of the duopoly is ties to the walls against third parties.

'Vaccinate' against misinformation? We think not

This Nielsen Lab piece crystallizes thoughts I've had for some time. Contra the fact checkers, the Facebook and (pre-Smelling Musky) Twitter reporting, etc., first, misinformation isn't as powerful as claimed. Second, neither is information.

And, that relates to the idea that you can't "vaccinate" against misinformation.

Unfortunately, that idea is part of what's apparently behind centrist liberal Kevin Kruse's new book. "Myth America" (nice pun) by him and Julian Zelizer, gets roasted on Slate. The authors of that piece report various problems with the book. 

The biggest problem, they say, is claiming that misinformation is the primary problem behind our current tribalism.

One is claiming misinfo is exclusively far right, to the degree the book authors give a pass to Never Trumper Rethugs like Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark.

Two is that by claiming Rethugs are anti-regulation, it ignores neoliberal Democrats. Sadly, someone like Naomi Oreskes plays along in her essay in the book. That's even as, re her and writing on climate change, Democraps fetishize "market solutions."

Three is that it's only Rethugs saying things like "socialism is un-American." Easily refuted, as the authors do. And, as half of House Democrats recently did!

And, yeah, they're right that Kruse and Zelizer are writing this for the Maddow crowd.

And, here's a condensed version of my own review:

Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past by Kevin M. Kruse
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Howlers include one from Joshua Zeitz, in his chapter on "The Great Society." He notes that, in her campaign memoir, Hillary Clinton says she came very close to proposing a basic income. Sure she did, but Zeitz appears to take this claim at face value.

Some chapters are good, like the one on "good protests" and the one on "police violence." Others are ... OK. Akil Reed Amar's chapter is good for noting "democracy" and "republic" were used interchangably back in the day. He doth protest too much about Madison not being "The Father of the Constitution." As I've understood it, Madison got that moniker from the Bill of Rights about as much as Philadelphia 1787. Besides, liberal originalism is warmed-over shite. Immerwahr's chapter on American imperialism is of course good, but — most of the Kruse target audience, both neoliberal Dems and never-Trumper Republicans — likely either rejects the idea, or says that an "American exceptionalism" empire is different. Speaking of?

Bell's chapter on the history of American exceptionalism? I didn't realize the idea originally came from Stalin, and has transmuted. That said, the idea that Trump rejects American exceptionalism? He may reject the phraseology, but the idea? No, he's totally behind it.

Sarah Churchwell's America First chapter gets Henry Cabot Lodge wrong and thus itself perpetuates a myth. He was OK with the League of Nations as long as the Versailles Treaty included the well-known "Lodge reservations" — which Wilson refused to accept. He was NOT William Randolph Hearst on this. She also seems to state that Pat Buchanan created the Reform Party. He hijacked it, of course, but didn't create it.

Per the Salon link? Yes, Slickster Bill Clinton arguably DID do more to peddle neoliberalism in America than did Milton Friedman. Oreskes and Conway miss this, peddling deregulation and similar issues as Republican-only.

Summary? If your voting history is Bernie Sanders or leftward, you can take a pass on this book and not miss a lot. 

Sadly, on Twitter, Nathan J. Robinson was touting an interview with Oreskes and Conway recently. I sent him the link to my review. And, speaking of? I offered some degree of defense of him on the union-busting charges a year ago, based on broader facts, but since then, he's shown "slippage" in other ways.

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Update: This Smithsonian piece, which looks in-depth at things like people seeing Monticello updated with a detailed history of Thomas Jefferson's enslaving and what slavery was like there, then the vast majority of them not remembering any of this, show in more detail why you can't "vaccinate" against misinformation.

It's called "motivated reasoning," generally, a version of "thinking" with your emotions and your ego. If you don't want to accept that Jefferson was a fairly bad enslaver, that Bobby Lee was a harsh slave master, or other similar such things? You won't accept it. It's like the old psychological blind spot of people being told to count the number of basketball passes in a video and getting so focused on this that they ignore the person in a gorilla suit walking through the video. Only in this case, it's a much more willful blind spot, not an "attentional bias." And yes, per the likes of Daniel Wegner, subconscious intentionality is indeed possible.

I totally agree with Laurajane Smith, a professor at Australian National University. Smith, who had done studies on this, says that less than 3 percent of people in such cases have their minds changed by "conventional" new displays.

Solution? Go to those emotions:

Smith, the professor who studies visitor responses to heritage sites, told me that she thinks these sites need to shift their focus from education to emotion. Since research reveals that people aren’t going to historical sites to learn, she believes sites should “provide the resources to allow visitors to work through difficult and challenging emotions in in a way that is constructive.” As an example, Smith pointed to the Immigration Museum of Melbourne, Australia, which uses tools like an interactive simulation of a hate speech incident on a tram to guide visitors into thinking about the experience of discrimination from different points of view. This experience can be uncomfortable, but Smith insists that the heritage is not “cuddly and warm and fuzzy.” What happened in history, and what that should mean to us, is always contested.

Now, how do museums and historic sites DO that? Especially on the budget limits many generally face?

Update: Motivated reasoning is emotional reasoning, and so, preaching against misinformation is the correct approach. 

Update 3: Michael Kazin's piece on socialism is also laughable, as Slate notes. That said, since Wiki notes he's a DSA Rosey, that's WHY he makes such a laughable claim. It's also why, to put it more bluntly than my Goodreads review of his William Jennings Bryan bio, he often turd-polishes the Great Commoner.

Happy Fourth: How close is America to being a failed state?

As a non-duopoly independent leftist, this is not an idle question on the 245th anniversary of the passing of our Declaration of Independence.

Four main issues lead discussion of this, followed by some others.

The first is climate change, including both the denialism by many wingnuts and the denialism of just JUST how serious it is by most elected-level Democrats, and indirectly, by #BlueAnon backers.

If you included all the carbon dioxide pollution, along with other pollution, despite some tightening of pollution there since the Clinton years, that the US has exported to China, we're still really the world's largest CO2 emitter. And, as wingnuts either still continue to deny this is a thing at all, or else minimize it, even in the face of the latest heatwave, it's not good.

It's also not good that the best Status Quo Joe can even talk about is a watered-down version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's already watered down Green New Deal, the original being stolen from the Green Party by the Sunrise Movement, essentially the youth division of Gang Green neoliberal environmentalist group Sierra Club.

Per David Wallace-Wells, we're already entering a permanent climate emergency. Details from a leaked report at the most recent climate meetings here.

America, as the richest nation on earth, will find it harder and harder to move office towers in places facing more climate change flooding ... places like New York and Miami. Our nation's capital will face more of this in the future. And, the petrochemical industry adding to the problem will face this in southern Louisiana and Houston (and likely expect a bailout).

Second is energy in general. How are we going to get enough energy not only to replace the fossil fuels used for air conditioning, heating and manufacturing, but also to stop building fossil fuel cars? Sorry, some Greens, but I don't see this being possible without nuclear power. And, you carmakers who say you'll build electrics only by 2035, what are YOU doing to make sure your cars will have juice by then? Nuclear power is not perfect. Concrete containment domes and the work of mining are carbon emitters; that said, mining lithium also generates carbon. There is the security issue. Security can be fixed; it will take money, but it can be fixed. On-site waste disposal should be part of the issue. But, this will surely add to tearing America apart.

Second, part 2? To the degree America still depends on oil? Fracking's day is dying and it's back to the Saudis and the rest of OPEC more and more.

Third is income inequality. It's already as bad as Mexico, and likely will slide further.

Fourth is lack of national healthcare. As income inequality increases, and private health insurance, when offered by a job, also increases, this pinches more and more. Three and four combined will probably affect tribalism on the right with neoliberal Dems continuing to refuse to have answers in the center.

So, by the time all-electric car fleets start hitting in 2035, it will probably be too late. Compared to where we're at today, the U.S. will probably be on an irreversible slide to be at least a semi-failed state.

That said, the people who need to be convinced of this — leaders of and voters for duopoly parties — won't be. American exceptionalism reigns supreme.

More coronavirus tribalism about Vietnam

Vox reports on Vietnam's alleged COVID miracle (with noting some caveats), which I've questioned before, along with other pro-developing world tribalism, noting late last summer that it was easy for Vietnam to claim it had "beat COVID" when it hadn't tested anybody to see if they had it in the first place. Since that time, it's gotten WORSE! From 164th to 175 in per capita testing! Neither Vox nor the Western reporter of a trio — nice polite Canadian, if her Twitter handle's correct — responded to a callout. Shock me. So, I've called it out — AND commenters swallowing the Vox Kool-Aid, presumably BlueAnon / BlueMAGA tribalists — on its Facebook page.

I've still not received feedback from there, either, at least from Vox.

In addition, Vox and the other touters of an alleged Vietnamese COVID miracle also ignore that the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the COVID-stricken aircraft carrier, appeared to pick up the coronavirus from a stop in Da Nang. For the carrier to have been that COVID-stricken, it had to hit a number of COVID-positive residents while on leave.

Anyway, this is tribalism at its most simplistic.

(And, update May 29, it's even more fallacious than ever. Vietnam didn't "crush" COVID either earlier this year, nor last year per my "questioned before" link, and it now faces a new wave, based on the Indian variant reportedly combining with the British one.)

First (and doorknob help me for sounding like Robert Wright), but this type of tribalism engages in zero-sum thought when this isn't a zero-sum situation. That is, even if Vietnam WERE a miracle, that by itself is no proof that the US blew it. Or, for the Trumpeys, even if Trump WERE right on everything from interior heat and light (cue Sarah Cooper) to HCQ (cue Ben Carson) that doesn't mean Vietnam was wrong. 

(There may be some types of tribalism that aren't founded on zero-sum tussling, but, in general, it seems to be a foundational idea.)

Second, with Vox being one of those net-only news sites that likes to talk about ideas similar to "fearless journalism" of Daily Beast, my inductive undercutting of their whole story took FIVE SECONDS. I've already got Worldometers' US data for COVID as a standing tab in my browser. I just had to Mac-right-click "countries" to get that to open in a separate tab, click the "testing per 1M" row header to get countries to list by that, do an Apple-F and search for "Vietnam" and then see a "175" next to its name.

Third, such tribalism, especially when of the easily refuted type, is often within the two duopoly parties, or related conservative-vs-liberal arrangement. It's inside a narrow political box and is shallow and stale. It also reflects that, to riff on Clauswitz and per a recent post, a reflection that American politics is becoming ersatz religiousness by other means. It gets even worse when SJW types populate the left hand of the duopoly's tribalism. It's the same type of tribalism that leads BlueMAGA types to give a pass to Fauci for his telling of Platonic noble lies.

Fourth, it's lazy and bad journalism. Plenty of Westerners have shown that elsewhere by naively and uncritically buying claims of the White Helmets while making no effort to be anywhere near Syria.

This all said, why Vox didn't respond, a Vietnamese national DID on its FB page. Here's our dialogue starting with his response to my testing numbers:

Tran Hai 

because why would you test the entire population if there is no breakout? Waste the money for what? Now, if you just look at the tests done per case - you would be in for a ride.  

Me 

Why would you assume there's no breakout if you're not doing more testing? And, tests per case vs general population testing is apples and oranges.  

Tran Hai 

Because 1st: mass testing were done after every breakout and the number of cases can actually be tracked 2nd: Covid is not invisible, as soon as an outbreak hits the hospital will be alerted 3rd: testing per case is using contact tracing, and contact tracing is vastly more efficient then using the whack-a-mole method 4th: using all that money for border screening and immigration testing is money well-spent  

Me

Since you're 175 in per-capita testing, I don't think mass testing was done every breakout. Besides, if Vietnam had only 35 or whatever deaths, there weren't mass breakouts in the first place, were there now? Ooops. Worldometers testing includes contact tracing as part of total tracing; your whack-a-mole comes close to strawmanning. 

Also, contra the first ... the USS Theodore Roosevelt got its mass coronavirus problems from leave on Da Nang, obviously.  

Tran Hai 

what apples and oranges: Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia - all successful countries with the same application of contact tracing having a similar level of tests per case is too tough for your brain to comprehend? You are the one who play apples and oranges here. 

Me 

Australia, 57th in per capita testing; New Zealand 84th; South Korea 121st; Taiwan 179th. And, all claim low COVID death rates, too. Rather than cite all as success stories, perhaps we need to be suspicious of all of them, too.

Let's go beyond this.

First, re all those countries above, asymptomatic transmission means that looking only at contact tracing means some numbers are missing, surely.

Second, re Vietnam itself? Not sure if the Rainier Sheas of the world would excoriate Vietnam for either right deviationism or left deviationism vs Glorious Xi Jinping Thought, but, it is a Communist nation exercising hard control over data release, just like Beijing:

In the case of Vietnam, only the Ministry of Health can declare the number of positive cases. Hospitals and clinics cannot independently publish numbers, while any unofficial counts can be subjected to a penalty.  ... 

Vietnam’s reporting of a low number of infections and zero deaths helps the Communist Party (CPV) overcome domestic distrust in light of recent legitimacy crises. Before the outbreak, the CPV was under intense pressure from dissidents at home and aboard. A deadly clash between the government and villagers over a longstanding land dispute took place in early January. ... 

However, the Covid-19 outbreak gave the CPV an opportunity to burnish its image after the land grab and other charges of corruption.

Now, it's true that the Lowy Institute of Australia is sort of a Down Under version of neocon-leaning, winger-leaning within the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, so these grafs above should be taken with a small grain of salt. But not, I think, a huge one. One of the links within the Lowy piece has the Vietnamese government claiming this:

According to information from the Ministry of Public Security, taking advantage of the COVID-19 epidemic, hostile and reactionary forces at home and abroad spread on cyberspace a lot of false information, distorting the epidemic situation. and the direction and administration of the Government, the Ministry of Health and ministries, branches and localities in epidemic prevention efforts.  

In addition, many people take advantage of the epidemic situation to spread false information or give information that is inaccurate, unconfirmed, and speculated according to their views, personal perceptions to sentence views, like sentences, and cause confusion. bring in the public opinion.

If a local hospital can't officially report a case as COVID, maybe it's not allowed to do contact tracing, among other things?  Given this above, I'd assume that's likely.

I would like to thank Tran Hai for inspiring me into the additional round of internet search on this issue.

Texas Progressives glad that DACA is back (on paper)

As Trump continues to lose election challenge suits, there's still a special election for the Texas Lege, Biden Cabinet nominees and infighting over them.

There's other things on the plate for this week, so let's dig in, and we shall do so.

Texas

The Observer eyeballs the high cost of traditional death in Texas, Texas' role in spreading this nationwide (the Dignity et al chain of semi-monopolistic funeral homes started here) and what some are doing to fight back.

Off the Kuff has wrapped up his look at recent Presidential results with analyses of East, Central, and West Texas.

"Let's go aggressively centric." Yep, Texas Dems, that's the idea of your Hollywood heartthrob that you have hard-on for as your 2022 guv candidate. More on Matt McConaghey's appearance on Russell Brand here.

Dr. Peter Hotez says "goodbye and good riddance" to Scott Atlas.  

Sanford Nowlin previews the legislative budget battle.  

The Bloggess presents Year Eleven of the James Garfield Miracle.  

Jessica Montoya Coggins worries about the next phase of anti-abortion legislation in Texas.

North Texas

Tarrant County went blue, just slightly, which started the mouthbreathers in the local GOP off with localized fake news claims about voting fraud. It's the first time since LBJ that that's happened, which explains the butt-hurt.

Shelley Luther is playing up the antimasking angle in her SD30 runoff against Drew Springer, but as COVID numbers soar, will that dog hunt?

Nancy Rodriguez will be bad for Dallas ISD. Schutze explains.

Is downtown Dallas walkable? Zac Crain says actually, yes, sort of. The Observer writes about his effort.

National

Ken Paxton, on state trial for corruption and under FBI investigation for more corruption, is of course the perfect poster child for vote theft #StartTheSteal corruption by suing other states.

Joe Biden, more than Status Quo Joe, is New Jim Crow Joe, Counterpunch details.

He's also the New Warmonger Joe, giving us a career military man, retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, instead of warmongering neoliberal-con Michele Flournoy, as Secretary of Defense.

SocraticGadfly, noting Biden's fall-offs vs. Hillary Clinton, and of course vs. Obama, looks at minority voters vs the Democratic reservation, and about minorities looking beyond the two-party box. 

A federal judge ruled that some teens should be allowed to apply for DACA again.

Friendly reminder that Trump was mostly talk, little action on ending "forever wars," contra Maté, Blumenthal and other not always useful idiots. Friendly additional reminder that his mindset, frozen in amber from 50 years ago, includes being frozen in amber on wanting to fight Cold War wars.

It's fun watching the Biden Hispanic Cabinet calf scramble!

Blacks and Browns and the Democratic reservation

Joe Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton on African-American and Hispanic voting. Related? He underperformed her in many central cities.

You Democrats can cite "COVID worries" on not going door-to-door in central cities all you want. I don't buy it. You can cite "money" all you want, and as, at the presidential level, Biden outraised Trump, I certainly don't buy it.

Instead, per the header, the "reservation effect" seems bigger than ever among many national Democrats. And, that is an operating assumption that Blacks, and to a lesser degree, Hispanics, will "stay on the reservation."

But, you know what? Even with a president with a known history of racism long before he became president (as in the 1970s HUD suit), they DIDN'T stay on the reservation.

The sad part, for Blacks and Hispanics, for the nation's voting and more, is the twosiderism that's connected to this.

Many of these minorities assume their only alternative to Democrats is Republicans.

And, of course, it's not.

Libertarians have made a pitch for minority votes on the grounds that the ending of affirmative action will free minority entrepreneurs from being stereotyped as getting unfair assistance. It may work, but what sets that apart from similar Republican claims? I've not heard GOP-type racism from Libertarians. I've also not heard Libertarians telling minority voters that. It's strange not to be playing that up, but ... hey, Libertarians, you want to waste ammo? Your biz.

Greens have in some places, like the Philly where Biden lost votes, made inroads with central city minorities. But, they're hampered by other problems. One is the perception of being just an environmental party, with the related perception of environmentalism being a "white" issue. Both are wrong, but the GP's own early history was highly white. The other is the resistance of many Greens to Howie Hawkins' attempt to move the party in a more directly ecosocialist realm. I think he was right, even though I didn't vote for him for other reasons. But, the GP imploding in 2024 wouldn't totally surprise me.

A real #RIPSmithee — take #VoteGreen action, #DuopolyExit

If you are a person who really cares about the core message of worry over campaign finance that Christopher Chopin, aka Actual Flatticus as Alan Smithee, did on Twitter, you'd be serious about not taking half measures.

First, this problem didn't start with Citizens United. It started with Buckley v Valero in 1976. And, until McCain-Feingold, most national politicians of both halves of the duopoly tinkered with the problem at the edges at best, ignored it at worst. And it, even, was not a whole lot more than heavier tinkering around the edges.

And, I just mentioned that word "duopoly."

Second, you'd realize that if the current Republican and Democratic parties stay anything close to as they are, things won't change on campaign finance. Period. Note that "reform" DNC chair Tom Perez is down with lobbyists being superdelegates. And placing Donna Brazile on the rules committee.

And, apparently, per that second link, the DNC either actually believes Bernie's "$27 donor" claims or else thinks it can reduplicate his email list which it still hasn't gotten and certainly won't now.

So, per another hashtag, #VoteGreen.

Yes, here, you'll be ignoring the messenger while noting that there is a message first.

Follow ideas, not people.

Chopin, for whatever reason, wasn't sold on the GP. Kind of dissing about it, in fact, it seems. No, more than that. He sarcastically hated it. More Twitter evidence he hated the Green Party.

And more here, though this, plus my interactions with him, make me wonder how much of this was Green Party hatred in general, and how much was misogyny toward Jill Stein as a female Green Party presidential candidate.

His problem, and the problem of those who won't move outside the duopoly box.

What are your options? Lesser evilism? Not voting?

I don't care, right now, whether you vote Green because you actually believe in its principles more than those of the Democratic Party, or if it's just to "send a message." We'll cross that bridge more later. Just do it, first.

Hell, vote Socialist Party USA if you want. (I almost voted Soltysik instead of Stein, last year, and thus show that I take voting more seriously than most duopolists, who probably don't even know Soltysik's first name.)

DO NOT vote Democrat, and then complain.

Per Einstein's definition of insanity? You're part of the problem. I'm sorry, but that is true.

Also, do not "not vote." Actually voting for a third party sends a more active message, even if Greens don't win.

Vote D instead of R at the state legislature level, maybe. But, by the time you get to governor, let alone House and Senate outside the presidency at the federal? If you have a non-duopoly choice on the left, TAKE IT.

And, frankly, if you're a centrist, I don't care that much if you vote Libertarian if it undercuts the GOP. If you're an actual capital-L Libertarian, not sure why you followed Flatty on Twitter.

Oh, and instead of just bitching about dark money, you might even throw a few of your enlightened dollars at the GP, or at a Green candidate, presidential level or lower.

In short, make the clichéd slogan "Be the change you want" a little more actual.

And, despite claims otherwise by his groupies, by and large, per this exchange, Flatty WAS, if not "All" talk, more talk than deeds himself. Or per this, where he claims to be a leftist.

Or, if Spike Lee's your flavor?

"You got to fight the power. You got to fight the power that be."

I'm not perfect, no, BUT ...

I've voted Green for prez every election this century, and most other races where I had a Green alternative and it was reasonable. (In other words, no Brandon Parmer candidates.)

Of course, this would be the SPIRIT of a Platonically idealistic Flatty.

Per another Twitter friend, it would be fun, possibly great, if Greens actually replaced Democrats as the second major party. That said, in my semi-idealistic world, I'd prefer multi-party parliamentary democracy.

Third, support related ballot issues, especially at the state level.

I'm talking about getting states who bar fusion candidates to allow them again. Better yet, press states for proportional representation.

Fourth, you have to note the problem is bigger than domestic issues.

Most of both halves of the duopoly are warmongers because of the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. (That said, he partially replaced it with a snooping-interference complex, with future presidents ramping up BOTH.)

Most of both halves of the duopoly, and not just elected officials, appointed leaders of agencies are the grifters and grafters H.L. Mencken and Counterpunch warn, and have warned, about.

Beyond that "bigger" spilling into foreign policy?

Fifth, it's wider on the domestic side.

If Chopin did care about social injustice, you have to fight for a minimum wage, with a COLA. Unionization re-empowerment. NLRB re-empowerment. Things that the national GOP and half of more of national Dems don't. (I blogged in early 2007 about wanting Nancy Pelosi to attach a COLA to the minimum wage hike then. Didn't happen.)

Sixth, re some of what I see on Twitter, you have to be critical thinkers for yourselves. REALLY don't accept what anybody else proposed.

Besides, Flatty said:

All posts are satirical and/or in the nature of parody. Nothing posted should ever be believed by anyone, ever, at any time, for any reason.

And, riffing on that, that may have applied to his own comments about the system.

And, drop the conspiracy thinking while you're at it, some of you.

Related? Drop the quest for Twitter or Facebook "likes."

"Speak the truth to power," per an old journalism phrase.

And, that truth is that Flatty, in his own way, between writing in Donald Duck for president, refusing to give the Green Party the time of day, and for ignoring state and local politics entirely, AFAIK, was part of the problem more than part of the solution.

Much of what he said that was true wasn't new and wasn't unique to him.

And, at least part of what he said that was new and unique to him wasn't necessarily true.

The bottom line?

A man who said he voted for ??? for president, while attacking the Green Party even while he mocked "vag hats" and called their wearers slacktivists, was a slacktivist himself if not an agent provocateur or similar.

Flatty is on record as saying that both he and his dad wrote in Donald Duck, for president. That's even though he claims to be a leftist. And all this while attacking so-called "vag hats" wearers as slacktivists. Another: per this exchange, Flatty WAS, if not "All" talk, more talk than deeds.

Flatty was a slacktivist himself if not an agent provocateur or similar.

Two lawsuit fails — one good, one bad

First, Sarah Palin lost her lawsuit with the New York Times, over a piece it did about her "gun targets" for certain Democratic congressional candidates shortly before Gabby Giffords (one of the targeted Dems) was actually shot.

Palin's a public figure, which makes the bar high, even in a news story. (Having blogged about Wendy Davis losing a similar lawsuit to the StartleGram, over op-eds, when she was on Fort Worth city council, I knew this would happen, contra "Cowfefe Owl Doctor" on Twitter.)

The second? Not so good.

Showing how much the American jurisprudence system is in the tank for the duopoly, the DNC fraud lawsuit was also dismissed. Some Sandernistas are rightfully appealing. If they lose, will they continue with their independent third party idea, ignoring the existence of the Greens?

Josh Marshall, enabler of the two-party duopoly

And, of a fair amount of neoliberalism.

Technically, he may be in New York, not DC, but with "grow up kids" pablum like this decrying progressives frustrated enough with Obamacrats to stay home from the polls this fall, the Talking Points Memo publisher richly deserves "inside the Beltway" opprobrium.

Here's what I e-mailed Josh:

Josh, I know you've got an American history Ph.D.

Therefore, you surely know the popularity of the Greenback Labor, Populist and other parties in the Plains and West in the late 19th century. They were popular enough to elect governors, members of Congress, and state legislators, and win presidential electoral votes.

In fact, it's quite arguable they **forced** the Democrats to nominate Bryan in 1896 and therefore forced progressive issues into the political mainstream.

Therefore, telling people to, in essence, get a grip, rather than accepting that, **like the spouse of an alcoholic,** they are tired of **enabling** Democrats, is historically shortsighted, as well as perhaps needing "a grip" yourself.

I tell people, instead of giving up, vote Green. Or Socialist. Make your discontent active, not passive.

And, I need to update this.

Sept. 28: Yes, as Josh himself notifies me by Twitter, he didn't write either this post, or another.

joshtpm @SocraticGadfly & you cite two posts I didn't even write. Great attention to detail!

True, Josh; David Kurtz did.

But, Josh, you're the publisher. By analogy with a newspaper, you, not just as an individual, but as an institution, don't disagree with Kurtz's take, or the tenor of it, if you don't directly say so. Yes, he wrote the equivalent of a column, not an editorial; nonetheless, as I tweeted back, you've not disavowed the sentiments, or even nuanced them. (And I don't I stand alone in that observation.

And, the historical background argument still stands.

Otherwise, I read less of TPM than I used to, since it's clear you have a certain "take" on issues, that you're in love with the Obama White House, and with things like eliminating reader blogs, that's not going to change.

The slide shows? The mainstream media pattern of anonymous quotes from inside the White House? Josh, those are all you, baby. And, again, I'm not the only person to note that.

In short, you're like a more intellectual, more inside-the-beltway version of what Daily Kos was like 4-5 years ago.

Ugh. BIG ugh.

I guess I need to read you less, and something like FDL more. And, tell others to do the same.

And, Josh, perhaps you could tell David that rather than criticize people who are expressing WHY they have an "enthusiasm gap," he needs to look in the mirror for being an enabler of that problem, too.

Also, Josh, Obama himself is fighting the enthusiasm gap. And, the hypocrisy gap.

More Americans want a third party - I'd settle for a second one

So says Gallup.

And, it's understandable why. We have one political party (GOP), its Dark Shadows alter ego (Tea Partiers) and a GOP Jaycees slouching toward Gomorrah (Democrats).

Unfortunately, the "third party" most Americans want is something between what Republicans are and what Democrats are stereotyped as being. In that case, we actually have a third party now in existence - THE DEMOCRATS.

Sad to say, though, we don't have a second party at the moment.

What the defenders of Robert Gibbs don’t get

While I like a lot of what Gene Lyons has to say as a columnist, his defense of Robert Gibbs is something I just don’t get, even after exchanging e-mails on his recent Salon column to that end.

The Politico column I do get, because it’s an “inside baseball” piece.

Let’s set aside, as I told Lyons, Obama the Snooper being possibly worse than Bush, and focus just on domestic policy.

1. Lyons defends Obama on not doing more for gay marriage, while ignoring Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
2. He ignores the Obama Administration’s apparent post-Deepwater collusion with BP to hide how bad the spill was, and more.
3. He ignores that, not in 9 months, but in 16 months, Obama’s not-so-totally-environmentalist Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, had not done a lot to clean house not only in Minerals Management Service, but in the Bureau of Land Management and elsewhere.
4. He ignores the question of whether Obama ever really wanted a public option on the health care bill, and whether the legislation we actually got isn’t calculated to raise 2012 campaign dollars.
5. He ignores similar questions on the financial ‘reform’ legislation.
6. Finally, defenders of Obama in general overlook the question of whether his personality, even more than Bill Clinton’s, is simply not that of a “fighter.” And that’s the key to all of this. Especially when combined with Shirley Sherrod’s lament that he needs to get to know some real people.

I'm taking Lyons as symptomatic of the professional class of neoliberals, quasiliberals, diluted liberals, once-upon-a-time liberals, compromise liberals, Kumbaya liberals, infected-by-political-correctness liberals and more who all feel this way.

And, they too are part of the reason, as I told Lyons, that we need more people to vote Green, Socialist, or whatever. Stop enabling Barack Obama and his ... ilk.

Stop enabling a Democratic Party that keeps tacking right; eventually, we'll have another Grover Cleveland.

Stop getting breathless over Obama's accomplishments, especially if there's white liberal guilt still in the background.

Finally, admit that plenty of Dems were in on the bills/actions that led to the financial precipice that Obama allegedly has reformed, but in actuality hasn't, and along with that, stop enabling the two-party duopoly.

Next test on how "liberal" Obama is, or is not, and how liberal his blanket defenders are?

Whether or not he appoints Elizabeth Warren to run the new consumer protection agency AND what sort of freedom she has, if she is appointed.

Hey, pseudo-liberal Obamiacs – stop the MSM-bashing

I love all the dyed-in-the-wool Democrats seeing a “horse race” line coming out of the so-called mainstream media, or MSM, about how Tuesday’s election was a “referendum” on Obama that he lost due to the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races.

The truth? Not quite that.

Here, the New York Times, the old gray lady of the mainstream media, reports in detail on Republican party angst after an intra-party split cost it the NY-23 Congressional seat. Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee are quoted chiding fellow Republicans not to go to such a state again. Others comment as well.

Here, Politico, about as MSM as you can get in “new media,” being founded by Washington Post expats, interviews S.C. Sen. Lindsey Graham, warning his party not to move too far right for more such details.

Or, like Glenn Greenwald, why don’t you Obamiacs look at a race Obama may well have cost his party by being a no-show, namely, his refusal to campaign against New York City’s authoritarian plutocrat mayor?

Besides, you need to get at the back of the line, behind third-party supporters, for real rights to MSM bashing.

If the MSM is missing an angle, it’s not talking more about the two-party duopoly’s stranglehold on state and federal election laws. With Chris Daggett in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race and Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in NY-23, this was an ideal opportunity.

For that matter, what about the op-ed pages? Why isn’t the NYT editorializing for nationwide public financing of Congressional campaigns, including for third-party candidates? Here in Texas, why aren’t major papers calling on the Legislature to undo onerous third-party ballot access laws?

Or, gay rights activists. You have room to complain. The “Bradley effect,” after the late former Los Angeles mayor, Tom Bradley, is supposedly when polls report an assured black candidates win, but the actual vote is much closer, or he or she even loses. After the win of Prop 1, there, overturning the Maine Legislature’s gay-marriage bill, you have to wonder if the same applies on gay-rights initiatives, with people saying they’ll vote to support gay rights, then turning around and voting against.
-END-

A newspaper boost for third parties

The Star Ledger, New Jersey’s largest paper, is Read endorsing an independent for governor rather than either one of the duopoly’s candidates.

And, it’s about the duopoly more than the two candidates:

The newspaper’s decision is less a rejection of Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican Chris Christie than a repudiation of the parties they represent, both of which have forfeited any claim to the trust and confidence of the people of New Jersey. They share responsibility for the state’s current plight.

Only by breaking the hold of the Democratic and Republican mandarins on the governor’s office and putting a rein on their power will the state have any hope for the kind of change needed to halt its downward economic, political and ethical spiral.

New Jersey needs radical change in Trenton. Neither of the major parties is likely to provide it. Daggett’s election would send shock waves through New Jersey’s ossified political system and, we believe, provide a start in a new direction.

Would that the largest newspaper in every state would do this. Read the full editorial.

US political duopoly cannot let go of Cuba

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, AFTER the Organization of American States voted to readmit Cuba, albeit conditionally, uttered the following drivel, which surely is supported by The One:

"Cuba can come back into the OAS in the future if the OAS decides that its participation meets the purposes and principles of the organization, including democracy and human rights," Clinton said in a statement.

Well, we could get booted for torture, I suppose.

Beyond that, it’s apparent that the OAS kicked the can down the road because of Obama Administration intransigence personified by Clinton. But, if all other OAS members say, two years from now, “Cuba has made satisfactory process and we’re ready for a final vote,” will Obama’s State Department, whoever runs it then, insist on being a stinker?

Answer: 3-1 odds Yes.

From the ‘GOP in the wilderness’ department

Whatever genius inside the Republican National Committee had the bright idea that renaming the Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party” reflects why the Republicans remain doomed to wander in the wilderness.

And, actually, that’s a shame. The Democrats need more of a challenge of any sort, especially since most “progressives” refuse to initiate that challenge themselves by voting Green, Socialist (real Socialist) or other similar options.

Instead, the more benignly smiling half of the two-party duopoly will get more of a head start on getting its 2010, and 2012, electoral success ticket punched.