[barmar]

Quote

State and local governments, private parts of the health care system and ordinary citizens also take their cues from the president

Maybe I'm naive and optimistic, but I don't see this happening. CDC and WHO reports are clear about the severity of this, and I think everyone else can see through Trump's BS -- it's so obviously uninformed (he even called his opinion a "hunch" at one point). Congress just authorized $8 billion in emergency spending to combat it, and Trump signed it right away.

[y66]

[Winstonm]

I'm really hoping that by now that the vast majority of the US population is growing weary of the Trump clown show. After all, there is a limited time for spite to feel like accomplishment. When those you spite stop reacting or even caring about you or how small you really are, spite loses its strength and appeal. There is no doubt in my mind that other than the most ardent of right-wing faithfuls everyone else has come to realize that Trump is nothing but a monumental fraud who cannot be trusted in a genuine crisis. Let us hope all those fed up show up to vote for someone other than Trump and his troupe of clowns.

[y66]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-08, 09:22, said:

I'm really hoping that by now that the vast majority of the US population is growing weary of the Trump clown show. After all, there is a limited time for spite to feel like accomplishment. When those you spite stop reacting or even caring about you or how small you really are, spite loses its strength and appeal. There is no doubt in my mind that other than the most ardent of right-wing faithfuls everyone else has come to realize that Trump is nothing but a monumental fraud who cannot be trusted in a genuine crisis. Let us hope all those fed up show up to vote for someone other than Trump and his troupe of clowns.

Trump's disapproval rating is 52.7% nationwide. Not exactly the vast majority you might want but perhaps vast enough if they all vote, especially in Wisconsin (-13), Michigan (-10), Ohio (-4), Pennsylvania (-7), Florida (-2) and Texas (+2).

The #s in () represent net approval of Trump = approval rating minus disapproval rating.

[y66]

Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups

WC trolls must not be on the A-list.

[barmar]

y66, on 2020-March-08, 14:19, said:

Trump's disapproval rating is 52.7% nationwide.

Last month his approval rating hit a personal best at 49%. And among Reublicans he's at 94%, also a new high.

https://news.gallup....sonal-best.aspx

This was based on a poll from Jan 16-29, so it was before his idiotic remarks about Coronavirus.

[y66]

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

Quote

Might as well be blunt: Mick Mulvaney, ousted Friday evening, was probably the worst White House chief of staff ever. And there’s no reason to believe his replacement, Mark Meadows, will be any better. If anything, he looks like an even worse fit for the job than Mulvaney.

Mulvaney’s main accomplishment seems to be that he was able to hang on to the job, on an acting basis, for more than 14 months. He apparently didn't aspire to anything else. Unlike his predecessor, John Kelly, Mulvaney didn’t even try to make the White House run in a professional manner. He seemed happy to carve out a small fiefdom where he could try to implement policy ideas he liked, and that’s about it. The main effect at this point seems to be that he saddled Trump with a draconian budget that will be easy for Democrats to attack on the campaign trail (and which Congress tossed in the trash by bipartisan consensus).

Mulvaney reportedly opted out of the foreign policy and national security portions of the job, which means he contributed to the chaos that eventually produced the impeachment of the president. He also made that more likely with his disastrous October 2019 press conference in which he confirmed the quid pro quo alleged as the heart of the Ukraine scandal and told Trump’s critics to “get over it.” And of course he was the chief of staff for the crucial first weeks of the coronavirus outbreak.

So much for the old chief of staff.

At least Mulvaney sort of had credentials for the job; Meadows doesn’t even bring that to the table. He’s been in the House since 2013, where he was chair of the House Freedom Caucus from 2017 to 2019. He was one of the leaders in pushing for the 2013 government shutdown, and by all accounts he was advising Trump during the 2018-2019 shutdown. He also was a leader of the effort to remove John Boehner from the speakership, an effort that pretty much backfired on Republicans (and perhaps especially conservative Republicans). That those efforts failed miserably for Republicans seems to be Meadows’s most significant qualification for becoming White House chief of staff.

Of course his real qualifications are probably that he’s good at flattering Donald Trump, and at nodding along with his conspiracy theorizing and grievance-venting. Trump is said, too, to like Meadows’s appearances on Fox News.

None of this has anything to do with the ability to run the government well. Nor is it much of a qualification for helping Trump’s political situation.

Historically, the best White House chief of staffs have entered the job with a deep understanding of the federal government and national politics. James Baker, for example, had been undersecretary of Commerce and had run a presidential campaign before he became Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff. Leon Panetta had chaired the House Budget Committee and had been director of the Office of Management and Budget before becoming Bill Clinton’s second chief of staff. Other good chiefs of staff had served in the White House, giving them a good sense of how the place needed to be run. Meadows doesn’t have any of that.

What Trump desperately needs, and very much doesn’t want, is someone who will stand up to him and tell him what he has to hear. The next-best-thing is what Kelly did — to at least try to have a professional White House, even if they can’t do anything about an unprofessional president. It’s unlikely Meadows will rise to that level. Nor is it likely that Meadows will be helpful in coordinating government efforts to fight the pandemic and to react to market and economic turmoil.

What is interesting about Meadows from the point of view of the partisan presidency is the extent to which Trump has elevated House radicals over mainstream conservatives within the Republican Party. This seems unsurprising now, but it’s worth remembering that Trump was perceived as relatively moderate during both the 2016 primaries and the general election. Whether it will all lead to empowering or discrediting the radicals should depend largely on results, especially the outcome of the 2020 election. Given the dysfunction of the Republican Party, however, it’s hard to say what, if anything, could discredit that faction within the party.

[barmar]

Quote

None of this has anything to do with the ability to run the government well. Nor is it much of a qualification for helping Trump’s political situation.

Trump didn't have any qualifications, either. I guess it's a perfect fit.

Or a perfect storm.

[Zelandakh]

kenberg, on 2020-March-06, 07:53, said:

Hunter Biden

You mean optics such as being part of a company receiving $90 million from unknown foreign investorsand then selling the stock on using a tax loophole you helped to create? Or receiving between $1.4 and 4 billion from Qatar at a time when you are heavily involved in creating foreign policy for the region?

Sorry Ken but this is a made up scandal from the same playbook as 2016. If JB had been creating policy for Ukraine there would perhaps be a point but he was in fact just overseeing the implementation of policy agreed by every Western government to reduce corruption in the country. Focusing on HB is just playing the Reps' game. You should know better than this by now.

[cherdano]

Of course, repeating the playbook from 2016 also requires that Ken will keep posting and posting and posting about Hunter Biden, all the while acknowledging that it's not as bad as Trump, while keeping to post and post and post about Hunter Biden.

[cherdano]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-05, 10:24, said:

It is still a shame that Sherrod Brown did not run as I think he would have won in a cakewalk.

I think it's a shame Amy Klobuchar didn't run - she had all the advantages of Biden (moderate, proven electability track record), but none of the baggage. She'd have won in a cakewalk.

[kenberg]

cherdano, on 2020-March-10, 05:49, said:

Of course, repeating the playbook from 2016 also requires that Ken will keep posting and posting and posting about Hunter Biden, all the while acknowledging that it's not as bad as Trump, while keeping to post and post and post about Hunter Biden.

I probably will continue to say what I think.

[cherdano]

kenberg, on 2020-March-10, 06:36, said:

I probably will continue to say what I think.

Ken, I would just like to ask you this.

In the 2016 campaign, the media spent more time on Hillary's emails than on ALL POLICY ISSUES COMBINED. In your posts to this forum, the ratio was perhaps 3:1.

Do you think this was appropriate? Were Hillary's emails three times as important to discuss as Healthcare, climate change, judges, staffing of the CBFP, Trump's corruption etc. combined? Did your 50th post "Yes Trump is really bad but I also think Hillary shouldn't have done this" still provide marginal value? If it felt good to write it, why?

Obviously you are welcome to say what you think. It's just hard to understand why you spent so much time thinking about one non-issue, and at the same time you complained that you'd really like to know Hillary's position on X, Y, and Z (which you could all have looked up on her website).

[kenberg]

cherdano, on 2020-March-10, 06:45, said:

Ken, I would just like to ask you this.

In the 2016 campaign, the media spent more time on Hillary's emails than on ALL POLICY ISSUES COMBINED. In your posts to this forum, the ratio was perhaps 3:1.

Do you think this was appropriate? Were Hillary's emails three times as important to discuss as Healthcare, climate change, judges, staffing of the CBFP, Trump's corruption etc. combined? Did your 50th post "Yes Trump is really bad but I also think Hillary shouldn't have done this" still provide marginal value? If it felt good to write it, why?

Obviously you are welcome to say what you think. It's just hard to understand why you spent so much time thinking about one non-issue, and at the same time you complained that you'd really like to know Hillary's position on X, Y, and Z (which you could all have looked up on her website).

I could ask a question in return. Do you think the email problem contributed to her defeat? I am assuming your answer is yes. I am not asking whether it should have contributed to her defeat, but whether it did.

If we agree that id did, we can also ask what she might have done.

Before reliving that nightmare, I will move on to 2000. I have not reviewed my HB posts to see just how many, but think I recall the last one in general terms. HB got this highly paid job in Ukraine/ Very possibly JB was not at that time thinking of running in 2000. But, even if not, he might have foreseen a problem and taken some precautionary action.


The common thread to both of these is that an experienced political person should be able to foresee problems with how tings might look. There is an old adage something along the lines that a person must not only be honest it must be clear that they are honest.


With JB, my thought is that he should say "I should have seen this coming, I made a mistake:


I'm not sure it is profitable to go back to 2016, but my thought there was when the issue of HC's emails first arose and there was a request to turn them over, she should have told her staff "Give them everything. If I sent a cookie recipe to Chelsea, make sure that they get it. I do not want this issue re-surfacing in late October. "


The common thread is: Unfair things arise. A person running for office will be partly judged on how well they deal with this when it happens.


If we agree that the email issue significantly affected the 2016 outcome, then it follows that we should look for lessons to be learned from this.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2020-March-10, 07:06, said:

I could ask a question in return. Do you think the email problem contributed to her defeat? I am assuming your answer is yes. I am not asking whether it should have contributed to her defeat, but whether it did.

If we agree that id did, we can also ask what she might have done.

Before reliving that nightmare, I will move on to 2000. I have not reviewed my HB posts to see just how many, but think I recall the last one in general terms. HB got this highly paid job in Ukraine/ Very possibly JB was not at that time thinking of running in 2000. But, even if not, he might have foreseen a problem and taken some precautionary action.


The common thread to both of these is that an experienced political person should be able to foresee problems with how tings might look. There is an old adage something along the lines that a person must not only be honest it must be clear that they are honest.


With JB, my thought is that he should say "I should have seen this coming, I made a mistake:


I'm not sure it is profitable to go back to 2016, but my thought there was when the issue of HC's emails first arose and there was a request to turn them over, she should have told her staff "Give them everything. If I sent a cookie recipe to Chelsea, make sure that they get it. I do not want this issue re-surfacing in late October. "


The common thread is: Unfair things arise. A person running for office will be partly judged on how well they deal with this when it happens.


If we agree that the email issue significantly affected the 2016 outcome, then it follows that we should look for lessons to be learned from this.

Do you think Hillary would have been absolved had she taken the advice to acknowledge her mistake?

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-10, 07:46, said:

Do you think Hillary would have been absolved had she taken the advice to acknowledge her mistake?

I think it would have helped. When the issue first arose, long before October, she could have acknowledged error and made sure all errors were covered. When it re-surfaced in October, that might have been too late. The opportunity had passed her by.

As I said, you cannot stop crazies from being crazy. But most people are not crazy.
I am a little reluctant to get far into the 2016 email issue, it was not me that brought it up, but imagine that in late October or whenever it was there was a claim that some emails had not been examined. Now imagine that within one hour of that claim, HC could have said "The emails you are speaking of were fully disclosed along with all of my other emails. They were all available, all of them together, there are no undisclosed emails anywhere".

I really do not recall the details, but I think that was not what happened. The problem arose when in the course of different investigation involving some sort of computer sex stuff of her aide's spouse out popped these emails. You do not want new emails coming out and you definitely do not want them coming out in this manner.

A quick look at Wikipedia produces:

Quote

In early October 2016, FBI criminal investigators working on a case involving former Congressman Anthony Weiner allegedly sending sexually explicit texts to a fifteen-year-old girl discovered emails from Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, vice chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, that they considered potentially relevant to the Clinton server investigation. FBI officials reportedly decided to disclose the development despite its potential effect on the pending presidential election to preempt the possibility that it would be leaked in another way.

This suggests my memory is approximately right.

So the crazies might think this relates to the child sex ring HC was running. Non-crazies look at what happened and say "Can't she do something right? Turning over emails is not a highly difficult task, she should have been able to get this right". Add to this the fact that suddenly her name and Anthony Weiner's name are in the same story.

And then look and see that her support fell sharply after this.

I see a connection.

So only a crazy thinks she was running a sex ring. Others, not at all crazy, might question her judgment and her ability to kill a problem so that it stays dead.

Ok, history doesn't disclose its alternatives, but I think there are lessons to be learned.

HC and supporters are very good at explaining how unfair it was that she lost. I hope for a different ending in 2020. Complain about unfairness or learn a lesson, that's always a choice.

[y66]

From Brent Kendall and Byron Tau at WSJ March 10, 2021 1:41 PM ET:

Quote

WASHINGTON—A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Congress can have access to grand-jury materials from Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a 2-1 ruling, sided with the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which sought access to material that was redacted from the 448-page special counsel report. as well as some of the exhibits and transcripts referenced in the report.

The report was the culmination of Mr. Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether President Trump or his associates were connected with that interference.

Mr. Mueller didn’t find sufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy to bring such charges and said he couldn’t exonerate Mr. Trump of obstructing the probe. Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee previously said they needed the underlying Mueller materials to evaluate whether Mr. Trump committed an impeachable offense in the course of the investigation.

The appeals court, in an opinion by Judge Judith Rogers, said the committee had established that it had a valid need for the information, especially because Mr. Mueller stopped short of making conclusions about Mr. Trump’s conduct, in part to avoid pre-empting the House from doing so.

“The committee has established that it cannot fairly and diligently make a final determination about the conduct described in both volumes of the Mueller Report without the grand jury material referenced therein,” wrote Judge Rogers, who was joined in the majority by Judge Thomas Griffith.

Judge Griffith wrote the appeals court’s recent ruling against the Judiciary Committee that declined to enforce Democrats’ subpoena for testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn. The judge on Tuesday said the fight over the grand-jury materials involved different issues that gave the House the upper hand.

In dissent, Judge Neomi Rao said it wasn’t clear that the committee could still show that it needed the materials, given that the House already impeached the president and the Senate acquitted him. Judge Rao also maintained that the Judiciary Committee didn’t have standing to obtain a court order requiring the Justice Department to turn over the grand jury materials.

For Congress, the ruling is a narrow victory that affirms the legislature’s ability to receive evidence collected as part of criminal investigations to use as part of potential impeachment proceedings.

It is unlikely to have a significant impact on the majority of congressional oversight disputes, which don’t involve criminal information or impeachment proceedings.

“We are reviewing the decision,” said a spokeswoman for the Justice Department.

Tuesday’s decision echoes a precedent from 1974 when the chief judge of the Washington, D.C. federal court transmitted a report of grand-jury material to the House as part of its inquiry into whether President Nixon should be impeached.

The current court fight was sparked by a dispute between the Justice Department and Congress over the evidence collected by Mr. Mueller’s investigation using a grand jury, a typically secret process designed to keep investigative details from being revealed publicly.

The department claimed that it couldn’t disclose the materials to Congress under the federal rules governing the secrecy of grand-jury material, while Congress said that the law provided for exemptions for a judicial proceeding. It argued that its impeachment investigation qualified as such a proceeding, and that it needed the materials as part of the investigation.

The Justice Department earlier turned over a version of the Mueller report to Congress that revealed some of the sensitive information it had redacted from the public version of the report, but it has refused to provide any material obtained by a grand jury, citing the longstanding precedent that grand-jury investigations are by law secret.

The appeals court’s decision is the second Mueller-related case to be addressed by the federal courts in recent days. In a separate lawsuit brought by journalists and transparency activists, Judge Reggie Walton said last week that he would review the redactions made to the Mueller report—opening the door to making more of the report public in the coming months.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2020-March-10, 12:49, said:

From Brent Kendall and Byron Tau at WSJ March 10, 2021 1:41 PM ET:

And now it will go to the SCOTUS, which is a big deal decision. We will find out how corrupted that court has become.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2020-March-10, 11:02, said:

I think it would have helped. When the issue first arose, long before October, she could have acknowledged error and made sure all errors were covered. When it re-surfaced in October, that might have been too late. The opportunity had passed her by.

As I said, you cannot stop crazies from being crazy. But most people are not crazy.
I am a little reluctant to get far into the 2016 email issue, it was not me that brought it up, but imagine that in late October or whenever it was there was a claim that some emails had not been examined. Now imagine that within one hour of that claim, HC could have said "The emails you are speaking of were fully disclosed along with all of my other emails. They were all available, all of them together, there are no undisclosed emails anywhere".

I really do not recall the details, but I think that was not what happened. The problem arose when in the course of different investigation involving some sort of computer sex stuff of her aide's spouse out popped these emails. You do not want new emails coming out and you definitely do not want them coming out in this manner.

A quick look at Wikipedia produces:

[/font][/color]

This suggests my memory is approximately right.

So the crazies might think this relates to the child sex ring HC was running. Non-crazies look at what happened and say "Can't she do something right? Turning over emails is not a highly difficult task, she should have been able to get this right". Add to this the fact that suddenly her name and Anthony Weiner's name are in the same story.

And then look and see that her support fell sharply after this.

I see a connection.

So only a crazy thinks she was running a sex ring. Others, not at all crazy, might question her judgment and her ability to kill a problem so that it stays dead.

Ok, history doesn't disclose its alternatives, but I think there are lessons to be learned.

HC and supporters are very good at explaining how unfair it was that she lost. I hope for a different ending in 2020. Complain about unfairness or learn a lesson, that's always a choice.

I think that is reasonable. I don't know why it was so hard for Hillary to say she made a mistake in judgement.

[awm]

Winstonm, on 2020-March-10, 13:31, said:

I think that is reasonable. I don't know why it was so hard for Hillary to say she made a mistake in judgement.

She did apologize. When the media has decided on a narrative, they are loathe to give it up regardless of the facts.