Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Compromise and the Civil War – Talking Points Memo

White House Image result for john kelly
Chief of Staff John Kelly continues to reveal himself not as an "adult in the room" but as a Trumpian and racist representative of the worst of Boston Irish culture.  The ilk that rioted over integration in south Boston in 1971.
Kelly's latest is to paint Gen. Robert E. Lee as a man of principle who loved his state more than his country - something Kelly says was ordinary back then.  He also pinned responsibility on the "inability to compromise".  Josh Marshall works on that theme. - gwc

Compromise and the Civil War – Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall
"...An even more critical driver of the South’s secession is tied to the structure of the electoral college. As I noted, for the first half of the 19th century, sectional peace was underwritten by allowing the South to dictate on the issue of slavery. More specifically, no party could hope to win the presidency without a solid political base in the South. Since the political class in the South was overwhelmingly (and eventually unanimously) in support of slavery, that meant no President who opposed slavery in any sense could ever be elected. But Lincoln won the presidency with only free states. This meant that the South’s ability to dictate national policy on slavery, at least at the presidential level, was at an end.
It would have taken a lot longer for things to change in the Senate. But that was enough to drive all but a handful of slave states into rebellion. The more embattled slavery became, the more the South demanded a right to dictate national policy on the issue. It was an issue on which the political class in the South could accept no compromise. That’s what triggered the Civil War...."

Monday, October 30, 2017

China's core socialist values - Flora Sapio and Larry Cata at Forgotten Archipelagoes

Flora Sapio and commentator Larry Cata theorize what China's leaders - the CP is undertakng- the development of a coherent theory of justice.  It is, of course, within the framework set by the nation's self-declared vanguard.  But that does not mean the undertaking should be dismissed.  It is coherent but not western liberal.  Notably absent is the liberty in liberty, fraternity, and equality.  Freedom is a much more constrained notion. - gwc


Sunday, October 29, 2017

James Madison’s Lessons in Racism - The New York Times

The historian Noah Feldman - author of the forthcoming Three Lives of James Madison - Genius, Partisan, President - has a very interesting take on Madison. Apt for our age he espoused freedom for slaves, but compromised due to economic pressures, including his own. - gwc
 James Madison’s Lessons in Racism - The New York Times 
by Noah Feldman
When we think about the framers of the Constitution and how they handled the issue of race, we conjure up the extremes: the hypocrites and the heroes. At one end is Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that “all men are created equal” but believed Africans were inferior and fathered children with an enslaved woman. At the other end is Alexander Hamilton, who, at least as depicted by admirers like the biographer Ron Chernow and the playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, was an ardent abolitionist.

 This framing, however, is simplistic and misleading. It is simplistic because it overlooks harder-to-categorize positions like that of James Madison, the lead drafter of the Constitution, who genuinely rejected the idea of racial inferiority yet still failed to put his beliefs in equality and liberty into practice. And it is misleading because it implies that as long as we avoid having racist attitudes, we can succeed in avoiding racist policies.

We think that if we’re not Jefferson, we must be Hamilton. But this is not the case. In this respect, Madison is the founding father who can teach Americans the most about our present contradictions on race. Madison insisted that enslaved Africans were entitled to a right to liberty and proposed that Congress purchase all the slaves in the United States and set them free.
Yet not only did he hold slaves on his plantation in Virginia and fail to free them upon his death, but he also originated the notorious three-fifths compromise in the Constitution, which counted a slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of legislative representation.

Friday, October 27, 2017

If All Else Fails - The New York Times

If All Else Fails - The New York Times
by Roger Cohen

 Remember that the advice Einstein scribbled on a scrap of paper is far more important than the $1.5 million it just fetched at auction: “A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.”
***
Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, explaining his decision not to run again for his seat: “We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.”

Thursday, October 26, 2017

The Party of Lincoln Is Now the Party of Trump - The New York Times

The Party of Lincoln Is Now the Party of Trump - The New York Times 
by Thomas Edsall

Last year, as it became clear that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination, analysts on both the right and the left speculated that millions of regular Republicans would be repulsed by his ethno-nationalism and misogyny.

 Writing in the Washington Post in August of 2016, Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, warned: Republicans running for election this year have watched the wheels coming off the Trump Train with increasing alarm. How can Republican candidates in down-ballot races survive such a calamitous nominee at the top of their ticket? Come Election Day, however, Republican voters did not abandon their party. The Republican share of the electorate grew slightly, from 32 percent in 2008 and 2012 to 33 percent in 2016, and Trump carried these voters 11 to 1.

 This pattern has continued into the present and shows no signs of letting up. In recent days, prominent Republicans, including George W. Bush, Bob Corker, John McCain and Jeff Flake, have warned in various ways that Trump is leading their party and the country in a very dangerous direction. For the moment, however, it is the president’s critics who are butting their heads against a brick wall.

The reality is that neither Flake nor Corker is seeking re-election, and both would have struggled to win renomination if they presented themselves as adversaries of President Trump. In short, the Trump-Steve Bannon-Laura Ingraham wing of the Republican party is ascendant. As Mike Allen headlined his post on Axios Wednesday: “Virtually every Republican now a Trump Republican.” Allen went on: Trump enjoys public support (despite private gripes) from most of the 49 other Senate Republicans and 239 House Republicans, including every person in elected leadership.

Why is this still true, despite their “private gripes”? Because of the “strong, sustained support of G.O.P. voters” that the president enjoys. In an email, Alex Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of California-Merced, put the state of play in a larger perspective: “The real story of Election 2016 is that the vast majority of Republicans voted for Trump” despite the fact that he was an outlier candidate who “lacked the normal credentials in terms of experience, ideology and character.”

The nomination of an untraditional candidate from outside the party’s mainstream turned the 2016 election into “a stress test for Republican partisanship, and it passed with flying colors,” Theodoridis wrote. “Republicans identify, at a deep psychological level, more strongly with their party than do Democrats,” according to Theodoridis: The evidence is rather clear that the modern hyper-polarization is far more characterized by tribal division than by ideological distance.

The real story seems to be the growing us-versus-them, in-group/out-group dynamic. If you look at what we call thermometer scores, which have respondents rate their feelings about groups from cold to warm, zero degrees to 100 degrees, the average rating of the other party has dropped from nearly 50 degrees in the early 1980s to temperatures in the 30s today. Theodoridis summed up the conclusions he and his colleagues reached in a blog post in Scientific American in November 2016: Partisanship for many Americans today takes the form of a visceral, even subconscious, attachment to a party group. Our party becomes a part of our self-concept in deep and meaningful ways.
KEEP READING

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

The Senate Was Touched by Greatness Today: In Praise of Jeff Flake - Lawfare

Time will tell on the impact of Jeff Flake's address.  But he said things of great importance about the dangers we face with the self-absorbed "many standing ovations!" man who holds the highest office in the country. - gwc
The Senate Was Touched by Greatness Today: In Praise of Jeff Flake - Lawfare 
by Benjamin Wittes We are no longer used to great Senate speeches. The Greatest Deliberative Body on Earth has long since given up anything a thinking person would confuse with deliberation. The Senate speech, once form of storied oratory, has withered as the body itself has degraded. It's partly the fault of C-SPAN, which made possible the address to an empty chamber, the confusion of an actual audience with a television audience—the idea that a Senate speech was a vehicle for national dissemination of talking points, rather than a means of persuading one's colleagues of things one truly believed. We don't expect real ideas to come in Senate speeches, actual emotion to be associated with this form of political communication. Today a Senate speech is expected to be an actor's rendition of what a Senate speech once was—Senator So-and-So playing Mr. Smith playing a senator. And then rises one Jeff Flake and delivers not merely a great speech but also a genuinely important one, perhaps the single most important address given on the Senate floor in my memory. This speech will be remembered not merely for its eloquence and its moral correctness but also for its intellectual content and its courage at a particular moment in time. Here's the speech, which I urge people to watch in its 17-and-a-half-minute entirety:

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

On Safari in Trump's America - The Atlantic

On Safari in Trump's America - The Atlantic Molly Ball rides alongside centrist Dems on a listening tour. Their conclusions seem to be the ones they started out with. - gwc

Monday, October 23, 2017

How ‘Unraveled’ Does Trump Have to Be? Presidential Disability and the 25th Amendment. - Lawfare


There's a lot of loose talk about the 25th Amendment as a mechanism for removing Trump from office.  Not so fast...

Amendment XXV - Constitution of he United States of America
SEC. 2. If the President shall declare in writing that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
SEC. 3. If the President does not so declare, the Vice President, if satisfied of the President’s inability, and upon approval in writing of a majority of the heads of executive departments who are members of the President’s Cabinet, shall discharge the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
SEC. 4. Whenever the president declares in writing that his inability is terminated, the President shall forthwith discharge the powers and duties of his office.
How ‘Unraveled’ Does Trump Have to Be? Presidential Disability and the 25th Amendment. - Lawfare
by Matthew Kahn//Brookings Institution
Vanity Fair recently reported that White House sources believe the president is “unraveling.” As politicos across a widening swath of the ideological spectrum grow concerned with the president’s conduct, temperament and basic competence, references to the 25th Amendment have proliferated. It even showed up in the Vanity Fair piece: Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told Trump that the biggest threat to his presidency wasn’t impeachment but the 25th Amendment. Trump reportedly replied, “What’s that?”
It’s a good question.
***
In September, Jane Chong observed two myths about impeachment: that the process is purely political, and that the House cannot begin considering it without clear evidence of criminality. One can say something similar about the 25th Amendment. The process is not purely political, though the final mechanism is a political process. And there’s no particular threshold that needs to be reached before the relevant body—in this case the Cabinet—starts thinking about it. That said, objective criteria like medical considerations should be at the fore. (A 1983 Miller Center commission co-chaired by Sen. Birch Bayh and Attorney General Brownell endorses the view that science should be central to the judgment.) And a Cabinet should always be vigilant about signs of presidential disability; it is the constitutional duty of Cabinet officers.
Each citizen should draw his or her own conclusion about presidential disability. But make no mistake: Invoking Section 4 would have a dramatic and potentially dangerous effect on our politics. Even if meticulously executed, the process is fraught with political pitfalls that could further undermine divisions among the public and legitimacy in U.S. institutions.
So although Bannon might have been right that the 25th Amendment could pose a real threat to the Trump presidency, it should give the president's political opponents little, if any, solace.

Timeline~ Trump's obstruction of justice

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/a_complete_timeline_of_the_obstruction_of_justice_case_against_donald_trump.html

Friday, October 20, 2017

Lawrence O'Donnell on John Kellly's dreadful attack on M.C. Wilson about Trump Call to widow of St.

John Kelly, the White House Chief of Staff, insulted in racist fashion a female Black Member of Congress.  And he got his facts wrong.  Then went into self-righteous rant about how the country has gone to hell.  "Women used to be sacred, life used to be sacred...not know", he said with disgust.
Well I'm disgusted - and Lawrence O'Donnell shows why.  Kelly's racism is no accident - it is a self-indulgent relapse into the spiteful racism of the Boston Irish Catholic neighborhoods where he and O'Donnell grew up.  Remember the crowds in south Boston who threw stones at school buses crying Black children.

We like to forget the racism of our youths.  We grew up in Levittown, NY  - a 100% white town financed with FHA and VA backing.  We were not virulent - because we had no encounters with Black people.  When we did talk about them as kids (including in high school in Brooklyn) we casually used terms like spear-chuckers and jungle bunnies.  John Kelly knows what he is doing when he calls a Black woman an "empty barrel". among other offenses. - gwc

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Bevin Boys - WW2 conscription down the coal mines


In England 48,000 men from 18-25 were conscripted for National Employment Service to mine coal during WWII.
ART and ARCHITECTURE, mainly: Bevin Boys - WW2 conscription down the coal mines

Coal was essential for military production during WW2; somehow Britain had to match the quotas needed to keep fact­ories churn­ing out the munitions required at the front. And as Britain was unable to import coal in wartime, the production of coal from local mines had to be increased. But how? 36,000 miners were already cons­crip­t­ed for army duty and had left their collieries.

Ernest Bevin, wartime Minister of Labour and National Service and a former Trade Unionist, believed the short­age could be remedied by using conscripted men to fill the vacancies in the mines, keeping production at the rates requir­ed. In Dec 1943 he announced a scheme in Parliament.

A ballot would take place to put a fixed perc­ent­age of cons­cript­ed men into the underground collieries rather than into the armed services. “We need 720,000 men continuously employed in this industry. This is where you boys come in. Our fighting men will not be able to achieve their purpose unless we get an adequate supply of coal.” Any refusal to comply with the Direction Order would result in a heavy fine and/or imprisonment under the Emergency Powers Act in force back then.

Democracy Can Plant the Seeds of Its Own Destruction - Thoms Edsall - The New York Times

In case you thought that Orwell was wrong when he talked about The Big Lie in his dystopian classic 1984....think again.
Democracy Can Plant the Seeds of Its Own Destruction - The New York Times
by Thomas Edsall

Will President Trump’s assault on the norms underpinning constitutional democracy permanently alter American political life?
On a daily basis, Trump tests the willingness of the public to accept a president who lies as a matter of routine. So far, Trump has persuaded a large swath of America to swallow what he feeds them.
Asked whether the media makes up stories about Trump, nearly half the population of the United States, 46 percent, now says yes, according to a Politico/Morning Consult pollconducted Oct. 12-16. This compares to 37 percent who say that the media does not fabricate material about the president. While Republicans and Democrats diverge in the directions you would expect, a plurality of independents, 44 percent, says that the media produces false stories; 31 percent say the media is accurate.
Trump has flourished at a time when trust in basic institutions — organized religion, banks, medical services, Congress, the media, government, you name it — has eroded. His presidency is a product of this erosion, but it is also proving to be an accelerant of the process.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Abraham Lincoln ~ letter of condolence

Check out @YAppelbaum’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/YAppelbaum/status/920468791276032001?s=09

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Half-baked, spurious nationalism is unpatriotic | John McCain | Opinion | The Guardian

This speech has been reported for John McCain's denunciation of the "half-baked spurious  nationalism of blood and soil." VIDEO
But read the whole thing.  It is a kind of farewell as he confronts an aggressive brain cancer. - GWC
Half-baked, spurious nationalism is unpatriotic | John McCain | Opinion | The Guardian
by John McCain
hank you, Joe, my old, dear friend, for those mostly undeserved kind words. Vice-President Biden and I have known each other for a lot of years now, more than 40, if you’re counting. We knew each other back when we were young and handsome and smarter than everyone else but were too modest to say so.
Joe was already a senator, and I was the navy’s liaison to the Senate. My duties included escorting Senate delegations on overseas trips, and in that capacity, I supervised the disposition of the delegation’s luggage, which could require – now and again – when no one of lower rank was available for the job – that I carry someone worthy’s bag. Once or twice that worthy turned out to be the young senator from Delaware. I’ve resented it ever since.
Joe has heard me joke about that before. I hope he has heard, too, my profession of gratitude for his friendship these many years. It has meant a lot to me. We served in the Senate together for over 20 years, during some eventful times, as we passed from young men to the fossils who appear before you this evening.
We didn’t always agree on the issues. We often argued – sometimes passionately. But we believed in each other’s patriotism and the sincerity of each other’s convictions. We believed in the institution we were privileged to serve in. We believed in our mutual responsibility to help make the place work and to cooperate in finding solutions to our country’s problems. We believed in our country and in our country’s indispensability to international peace and stability and to the progress of humanity. And through it all, whether we argued or agreed, Joe was good company. Thank you, old friend, for your company and your service to America.
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Timeline of Trump and Obstruction of Justice: Key Dates and Events

Timeline of Trump and Obstruction of Justice: Key Dates and Events: A timeline of key dates and events related to whether President Donald Trump or other U.S. officials engaged in an obstruction of justice with respect to the Russia investigation.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

President Clinton Looks Back at President Grant - The New York Times

OTHERWISE: President Clinton Looks Back at President Grant - The New York Times

Bill Clinton's reputation has taken a lot of hits lately.  The foundation he started - though a brilliant success - was vilified because it accepted donations from foreign state while his wife Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.  Compromises were made as President - such as on criminal justice - that look worse in hindsight than they did at the time.  And of course there is his sexual dalliance with a young intern.

But his thoughtful review of Ron Chernow's new biography of Ulysses S. Grant reminds us of how thoughtful and reflective he is at his best - which is often.

Chernow's book is the most recent to rehabilitate rant's reputation.  Long slandered as a drunk and corrupt, the truth is the opposite.  He was a masterful commander, generous in victory, an advocate of the 15th Amendment and a firm supporter of post-civil war Reconstruction.
President Clinton Looks Back at President Grant - The New York Times
by Bill Clinton

President Clinton Looks Back at President Grant - The New York Times


Bill Clinton's reputation has taken a lot of hits lately.  The foundation he started - though a brilliant success - was vilified because it accepted donations from foreign state while his wife Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.  Compromises were made as President - such as on criminal justice - that look worse in hindsight than they did at the time.  And of course there is his sexual dalliance with a young intern.

But his thoughtful review of Ron Chernow's new biography of Ulysses S. Grant reminds us of how thoughtful and reflective he is at his best - which is often.

Chernow's book is the most recent to rehabilitate rant's reputation.  Long slandered as a drunk and corrupt, the truth is the opposite.  He was a masterful commander, generous in victory, an advocate of the 15th Amendment and a firm supporter of post-civil war Reconstruction.
President Clinton Looks Back at President Grant - The New York Times
by Bill Clinton

Why schools still can’t put segregation behind them

Why schools still can’t put segregation behind them: Segregation is supposed to be forbidden, but it still thrives. And it's coming back

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Friday, October 13, 2017

Trump’s Speech on Iran: Warmed-Over Rejectionism « LobeLog

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Trump’s Speech on Iran: Warmed-Over Rejectionism « LobeLog>>
by Paul Pillar (Senior Fellow, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies...His senior positions included National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, Deputy Chief of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. He is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired officer in the U.S. Army Reserve.)   October 13, 2017

"...Trump referred repeatedly in his speech to the “Iranian dictatorship.” There was no hint of recognition that the Iranian regime is currently one of the more democratic ones in the Middle East (and much more so than some other regimes in the region that Trump prefers to associate with). There was no acknowledgement that the JCPOA was negotiated with the government of a popularly elected Iranian president who won re-election over hardline opposition partly because of the promise of better relations, including economic relations, with the West under the JCPOA.
The misrepresentations in the speech were too numerous to catalog entirely, but one of the biggest was Trump’s assertion that “the previous administration lifted sanctions just before what would have been the complete collapse of the regime.” There is no evidence whatsoever that the Iranian regime was on the brink of any such collapse. Piling on more and more sanctions in the absence of engagement and diplomacy had merely seen the spinning of more and more centrifuges enriching uranium. This line in the speech points to the vacuity of what Trump is offering for a policy toward Iran: endless hostility and confrontation, and with it the risk of war, sustained by a baseless hope of regime change—a hope that has brought costs and chaos that the United States knows all too well."

Tired of winning, Joe Scarborough Quits GOP

The four term GP Congressman has had enough.


Torts Today: Roy Moore Led Charge Against Removing Segregation From Alabama Constitution – Talking Points Memo

Torts Today: Roy Moore Led Charge Against Removing Segregation From Alabama Constitution – Talking Points Memo Alabama’s state constitution still contains the following language: “Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race.”

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Why don't tenured professors support adjunct faculty?

There are, of course, many reasons. Full-time professors are fighting for their share of the same pot of money.   But there's more.
The Plight of Adjuncts https://nyti.ms/2yXoRKX

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

An impeachable offense

 

Constitution of United States of America 1789 (rev. 1992)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Fallows: Pence's Anthem Stunt

Check out @JamesFallows’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/917120642725613568?s=09

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Jesuits appeal for Puerto Rico

http://jesuits.org/news-detail?TN=NEWS-20171003045700

Brit spy's Trump dossier groes in importance

The Trump-Russia dossier: why its findings grow more significant by the day https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/07/trump-russia-steele-dossier-moscow?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Mark Mooney ~ his last byline

https://medium.com/@markmooney/my-last-byline-869a64f591d6

Friday, October 6, 2017

Iran deal a model for North Korea

http://lobelog.com/trumps-choice-iran-deal-model-or-north-korean-bomb/?utm_content=buffer68456&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#

Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University and a former chief of Iran’s National Security Council’s Foreign Relations Committee.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017