Saturday, January 11, 2020

The Weekly Twenty Twenty Update, Part 2

With a host of developments surrounding the White House incumbent this past week -- the most recent being that Speaker Pelosi has at last decided to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate -- I'll forgo extended mention of the warring, lying, megalomanic for now.


News flash: Bernie's going to win.


Establishment Democrats Can’t Stop Sanders’ Surge

Bernie Sanders is surging in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary polls, and, as CNN analyst Harry Enten wrote Sunday, “It’s becoming more apparent” that the Vermont senator and former Vice President Joe Biden “are the candidates to beat.” Sanders, according to Enten, has an extra advantage: “Biden’s fundraising is not anywhere near as strong as Sanders’.” As a recent Politico story observed, Sanders’ campaign is “being taken seriously” among Democratic party insiders.

Sanders’ ascension is scaring acolytes of former President Barack Obama, but according to a new story from the Daily Beast, they can’t figure out a way to stop him.

“As Sanders gained new flashes of traction in recent weeks,” the Daily Beast reports, “the former president’s lack of official guidance to halt his momentum, and the scattering of his inner circle to rival campaigns, have hampered any meaningful #NeverBernie movement.”


Proof Bernie Sanders has the Billionaire Class' Attention

Billionaire Jeff Gundlach told fellow wealthy investors late Tuesday that Sen. Bernie Sanders is the “odds-on favorite” to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination -- and warned the senator’s potential general election victory could pose a serious threat to Wall Street profits.

“Bernie is stronger than people think,” Gundlach, who correctly predicted Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, said during his annual 'Just Markets' webcast.

Gundlach, CEO of investment firm DoubleLine Capital, said Sanders’ possible win over Trump in November represents the “biggest risk” to financial markets.

“I think it’s Bernie Sanders becoming more believed in as a real force, and we have to start taking him more seriously,” Gundlach said. “If people get more worried about Bernie Sanders and they start to price in his spending programs, then you could really start to see trouble in both [long-term Treasury] bonds and stocks, which could really be on a rough ride.”

Asked by CNN reporter Ryan Nobles about Gundlach’s assessment of the 2020 race, Sanders’ communications director Mike Casca offered a snappy response: “A stopped Rolex is right twice a day.”



In response to Larry David's complaint the previous night on Colbert, regarding a Bernie Sanders victory in November ...


So there's all of that, a splendid week for Tio Bernard.

Uncle Joe?  Not so much.


Try to keep in mind that facts are not attacks.


Trump's conflict with Iran exposes the real difference between Biden and Sanders

Sanders is a longtime antiwar advocate who voted not to authorize the use of force in Iraq. He’s staked out distinct positions on foreign policy, including America’s relationship with Israel and its role in the Middle East. Biden represents the establishment wing of the party’s views. He chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years, voted for the Iraq War, and is running on a platform of a return to normalcy.

“Joe Biden voted and helped lead the effort for the war in Iraq, the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in the modern history of this country,” Sanders said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper Monday night.

Sanders co-introduced a bill late last week to block funding for any military action in Iran and put out a video saying he’s “not sorry” for his long history of opposing US wars.





We're working pretty hard on it. The message seems to be slowly sinking in, though it would be grand if I could get my Boomer Black friends to read this blog.

Now it's not as if the criticism of Bernie has been muted.  The Neera Tandens and Joy Reids and Mimi Rocahs are having brunch this weekend to plot a new strategy.  Nervous Nellies among blue progressives are crying for a unity ticket, presumably to avoid a disputed national convention.  Those to the left of Bernie are making the more cogent arguments, as usual.  <<-- The two links in this sentence are the best in this post, IMHO.  But about 90% of you who try to read them are going to have your heads explode before you can finish them.  Give it a go anyway.

Here's a collection of topics relevant to the election generally.

-- So Facebook Cleared Things Up for 2020: Politicians Can Totally Lie to Users

Please #DeleteYourFacebook.  Especially if you are a member of the Resistance terrified by Russian hacking (sic), still blaming Jill Stein for 2016, or just generally suffering from an undiagnosed case of cranial-rectal inversion.

If you think you would be unable to communicate with high skool pals or family or associated whatnot, try to remember what you did BFB: email listservs.

-- In a captivating interview with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Dennis Kucinich addresses his legacy as a Democrat before his time.


I muse about this very same premise, as well as the Texas version of the 2000s Kucinich, David Van Os.  I would imagine that DVO would prefer to be compared to Bernie Sanders ... except for lacking any electoral success.

-- In a smattering of Libertarian developments, we have the former head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair (note the misspelling in Tom Sullivan's take) concern-trolling Democrats for her vote.  Mentioned at the very end there is the biggest news of the week for the Libs.

(On January 8), at the National Press Club in Washington, former Republican Senator, Independent Governor, and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, formally announced he is seeking the Libertarian Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

Born into a politically connected family, Chafee succeeded his father, John Chafee, as U.S. Senator in 1999 and established himself as a Liberal Republican, emphasizing support for gun control and environmental protections.  He was the only Senate Republican to vote against the authorization for the Iraq War in 2002, but supported the Patriot Act the previous year.  In the 2004 presidential election, he wrote-in former President George H.W. Bush.  Chafee was voted out of office in the Democratic wave election of 2006.  The next year he publicly endorsed the presidential campaign of future president Barack Obama and officially left the Republican Party.  He was elected Governor of Rhode Island as an Independent in 2010 but did not seek re-election.  He endorsed the re-election of President Obama in 2012 and joined the Democratic Party in 2013.  He sought the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination and participated in a widely criticized Democratic debate in which he called for the adoption of the metric system. Due to a lack of support, he withdrew before the primaries and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

[...]

Chafee joins a growing field of candidates that includes New Hampshire representative Max Abramson, anti-war activist Adam Kokesh, businessman John McAfee, former Vice chair Arvin Vohra, 1996 Vice presidential nominee Jo Jorgensen, 2000 presidential candidate Jacob Hornberger, software engineer Dan Behrman, Radical caucus vice chair Kim Ruff and performance artist Vermin Supreme.

Others speculated to make a run include former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, Independent Congressman Justin Amash, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, and businessman Rocky De La Fuente.

More about McAfee at the very end of this post.  VS was referenced at the bottom of the Update two weeks ago.  Walsh was a Republican primary opponent to Trump earlier in 2019 but dropped out.  Weld and De La Fuente have already filed in various states as GOP primary challengers.

It's snark time.


(Here's the reference.)






I had so many more, too.
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Friday, January 10, 2020

The Weekly Twenty Twenty Update, Part 1

Lots of developments to cover since last week's Update.  These are just from today, part of why this post comes later than usual.

Writer, entrepreneur and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson has ended her presidential campaign, months after garnering viral attention in early debates, earning curiosity but little support from Democratic voters.

"The primaries might be tightly contested among the top contenders, and I don't want to get in the way of a progressive candidate winning any of them," Williamson wrote in a letter to supporters. "As of today, therefore, I'm suspending my campaign."


She was indeed the most progressive candidate on reparations.

Williamson's campaign revolved around several policies, including allocating $500 billion for reparations to African Americans and Native Americans, as well as other proposals for tackling economic inequality. She advocated for the creation of several new governmental organizations, including a Department of Peace and U.S. Department of Children and Youth.

I doubt whether a future in politics is in the offing despite her recent history in California and this White House shot, but one never knows, does one.


This is spot on.  It's a two-old white man race from here.  Before we get to that, let's glance at next Tuesday's CNN-moderated debate lineup.

We’re fairly confident in the debate roster at this point, though, because no one else is close to qualifying. ... (T)wo polls from Fox News dropped late Thursday, putting billionaire activist Tom Steyer on the debate stage. In the end, he qualified for the debate via the early-state polling method (at least 7 percent in two early-state polls), picking up a startling 15 percent in South Carolina (he’d hit 4 percent previously in October) and 12 percent in Nevada (5 percent previously in November). So far, he’s the only candidate to have qualified solely via the early-state method.

As for the five other candidates who have made it, four of them sit above 5 percent in the national polls: former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. As for Sen. Amy Klobuchar, she, like Steyer, is polling below 5 percent nationally (she’s at 3 percent, on average; Steyer’s at 2 percent), but she’s still managed to crack 5 percent in six polls (a mix of early-state and national surveys) to qualify.

As for the other major candidates still in the race, only billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has reached the polling threshold. But because he isn’t seeking donations, he’s unlikely to attract enough individual contributors to qualify for the debate. But that probably doesn’t faze Bloomberg much, as he’s said making the debates isn’t really part of his strategy. Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang and Sen. Cory Booker have enough donors to qualify (though Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is also close to the donor threshold), but have likely come up short on the polling front. Yang was the only other candidate to pick up a qualifying poll, but he needs three more to make it ...

Until (yesterday), there had been a pronounced dearth in polling since late December, with only two qualifying polls released since the Dec. 19 debate. The lack of polling prompted Yang to ask the DNC to sponsor some surveys, but the DNC declined to do so, telling the New York Times that the organizations on the DNC’s polling list “should conduct more independent polling.” Of course, many pollsters avoid polling during holiday periods because of depressed response rates, which is one reason there are fewer qualifying polls this time around. But another culprit for the lack of polls may be the ongoing impeachment of President Trump. Conducting high quality polls is expensive, and some pollsters may have prioritized surveys on that question over horse-race polls of the Democratic primary, as impeachment -- not Iowa -- was the political story of December. But then it started raining polls on Thursday, when three new surveys came out. At least one more poll is expected Friday, though that wouldn’t be enough to change things for any of the candidates on the outside looking in.

The candidates have stratified into the following tiers:

1. Biden and Sanders

2. Warren and Buttigieg

3. (a) Klobuchar

3. (b) Yang, Steyer, Bloomberg

4. (and functionally extinguished): Booker, Bennet, Delaney, Gabbard, and Patrick

The longest shots to pop at a price, as they say down at the paddock, are the billionaires.  They are spending whatever it takes on their way to the nomination.  One -- I doubt both -- could very well be left standing in July.  Of the pair, I believe that Steyer has the stronger hand as an outsider who's been running on two systemic changes: climate and impeachment.  Bloomberg has baggage as a former Republican, "stop and frisk", some #MeToo issues and a few other things.

But Bloomey is building the Democratic Party for future victories in purple states, and at some point he will be rewarded for that.  What his reward will be, and who gives it to him remains to be seen.

Part 2 will focus on Bernie and Uncle Joe, with some of the odds and ends that are piling up on the fringes of the presidential campaign.  And the snark, as always.
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Wednesday, January 08, 2020

Sometimes the Funnies aren't so funny





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Monday, January 06, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle

With the holidays over and the primary election season fast approaching, this week's round-up of the best of the Texas Progressive Alliance's blogs, Tweets, and other lefty news sources has a bit more political focus and intensity.


Because we pick our presidents in the Electoral College and not by national popular vote, it's important to look at state polling for clues as to how the Democratic presidential candidates may begin to sort themselves out.  State polls also give us clues as to what's most important to their respective electorates.

(O)ne should not assume, like national polls often do, that social and political problems are national in scope and should be addressed by the national government. Many issues, like policing, school funding and mass transit, fall under the purview of the state and local authorities.

Additionally, social and political problems vary in their importance from national to state and from state to state.

For example, in October, Gallup found that 34% of Americans cited “the government/poor leadership” as the most important problem facing the country, 13% cited immigration and 11% said the economy.

In Texas, however, immigration and border security ranked as the most important problems, whereas “political corruption/leader” was of less concern.

In Ohio, a third of voters cited the economy as the most important issue, followed by health care, social issues and the environment.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs posted his first presidential primary update of the new year, leading off with the possible effects of Trump's 'Wag the Dog' war.  Carlos Sanchez at Texas Monthly gives Julian Castro's presidential campaign a fond farewell.  Castro has, at the time of this posting, endorsed Elizabeth Warren.  And Andrew Schneider for HPM reports that despite some accounts indicating Trump's evangelical support is waning, here in Texas that's far from true.


The US Senate primary battle is heating up.


Gromer Jeffers and Robert Garrett at the Dallas News have been hard at work ...


... and one candidate has tripped herself up, twice, in the past week.



Cubic Tzirconia  Christina Costello  is NOT, contrary to her claim, the most progressive Democrat running for Senate.  And she is more than aware of this.


Elsewhere in our Great State, Iris Dimmick at The Rivard Report has seven Bexar County races worth knowing more about.  Kuff interviewed Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan and his Democratic primary opponents Ben Rose and Christian Menefee.  Nonsequiteuse makes the pro-choice case for defeating state Rep. Sarah Davis.  The Meyerland Democrats will host a forum for her Democratic challengers this Thursday evening.


And with 2020's first special election coming in just a few weeks, excitement in Fort Bend County is already at fever pitch.  Scattershooting a few more newsworthy items:


The Texas Signal laments our firearms-obsessed state government.  Newly re-elected Houston mayor Sylvester Turner picked Dave Martin, one of the most conservative members remaining on city council, to serve as mayor pro tem.


The Rio Grande Guardian considers the completion of the construction/expansion of Interstate 69 to be of essential importance in this new decade.





Closing out this first Wrangle of the Twenty Twenties with some soft news.

Paradise in Hell has ten reasons to be glad 2019 is over.  Mark Pitcavage remembers the New Year's Eve of Y2K.

Hitting the world of sports, SocraticGadfly, after laughing with schadenfreude over the Hatriots, offered his hot take on what Jethro Jerry Jones might do to replace Red Jesus Jason Garrett. Earlier, he tackled baseball, wondering why Cardinals top brass John Mozeliak isn't doing more to improve the rotation.  Gadfly's visit to Big Bend country, in last week's Wrangle, apparently encouraged the Texas Standard to recommend a west Texas road trip to Fort Davis, Alpine, Marfa, and Balmorhea.  (This blogger has made that trip a couple of times and highly recommends it, especially a stay at the newly-renovated Indian Lodge.)

Nightime at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, TX.

The Great God Pan Is Dead lists the ten best comics of the past decade.
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Sunday, January 05, 2020

Sunday 'The End is Near' Funnies












Slanted Toilets and the Curse of Productivity (Rear-End Stage Capitalism)


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Friday, January 03, 2020

The 2020 Update: Wag the Dog

The United States is now at war with Iran.


This is the inescapable result of President Donald Trump’s order to assassinate Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Forces, arguably the most powerful military leader in the Middle East and the most important person in Iran, except for the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

You don’t deliberately kill someone like Soleimani unless you’re at war with his country; and even then, you want to think long and hard before you do, given the near-certainty of blowback. The blowback may soon be coming. Friday morning, Khamenei called for three days of national mourning and a “forceful revenge.”

That's going to ruin a lot of people's Monday morning.

There's plenty of opinion and analysis to go around; the AP has the most sober.

You can expect Mitch McConnell to say something akin to "We can't impeach the president in the middle of a war" very soon, which should come as a great relief to just about everybody involved in that charade.

So to say that what happens from here -- everything from a fusillade of nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles fired at Mar-a-Lago, or the White House, or the Pentagon, all the way down to cyber- and terrorist attacks on American military installations in the Mid-East -- shakes up the Democratic race a little bit ... is the understatement of the new decade.  To this point.

It almost makes irrelevant all of the fundraising spin that would have ordinarily dominated this week's Update.  The news is still the news, though, even if it has to move off the front page.

Oh, but we should mention the dropouts first.


Castro deserved a better fate, and perhaps he will still earn a consolation prize in the forthcoming Sanders administration.


Marianne has always been a pleasant person; a little flaky, too much so for many, particularly on her recent rebranding as a "safe-vaxxer".  She's not leaving the race yet according to her, but when she does, I feel certain she will suddenly shimmer and disappear, her robes falling to the ground, like Luke Skywalker's in 'The Last Jedi'.

Funds raised for Q4, 2019.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said Friday that she raised $21.2 million from October through December, with more than $1.5 million coming on the last day of the year. The Massachusetts senator trailed three other rivals in fundraising and fell short of her total from the three previous months.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar also said she took in $11.4 million for her White House bid to close out the year. It was the best fundraising quarter of her campaign.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the strongest progressive voice along with Warren, said he raised more than $34.5 million in the same quarter, proving that his heart attack in October hasn’t slowed his fundraising prowess. Sanders and Warren both rely heavily on small donations from donors that primarily come online.

Former Vice President Joe Biden rebounded from a summer slump to take in $22.7 million, his best quarterly haul as a presidential candidate, while Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, raised $24.7 million. Both typically use more traditional fundraising methods, including frequent gatherings with big donors that Warren and Sanders have shunned.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who has not met the polling requirement to qualify for an upcoming Democratic presidential debate scheduled for Jan. 14, announced receiving $16.5 million.

In the third quarter last year, Warren raised $24.6 million as months of strong, summer polling lifted her to front runner status along with Biden and Sanders. But lately, Warren’s support has plateaued as Buttigieg has vaulted among the front runners. Warren and Buttigieg have feuded for weeks about fundraising tactics, but Warren’s latest donations total further suggests her overall momentum is slowing.

It could have been worse. In an email to supporters last week, Warren’s campaign said it had raised only about $17 million with just a few days to go in the quarter.

Your long read for the weekend, from Ryan Grim of The Intercept: "Can Bernie Sanders alter the course of the Democratic Party?"  One more thing about the money.

Sanders’ campaign has seen a torrent of fundraising dollars from an army of individual donors. Earlier, it said it had received contributions from 5 million people during the election cycle.

Polling, and a few more numbers.


So why is Goofy Old Joe still considered the front-runner?  Mostly because of the establishment's bias toward national polling and against Bernie generally.  And the Iron Law of Oligarchy.  If you're having trouble with this, then explain why Liz Warren's support is leaking to Biden.

War with Iran, the planet on fire, a generation lost to depressed wages, lack of affordable healthcare, and crushing student debt and all of the rest of Republican and neoliberal plutocratic ills notwithstanding, the Sanders campaign represents the last hope, the very last chance, for many to turn things around.  Despair is not an option.

Still ... they persist.


"Michael Bloomberg revs up Texas campaign with big plans":

In an announcement first shared with The Texas Tribune, his campaign said it will open a Texas headquarters in Houston and 16 field offices throughout the rest of the state between now and the March 3 primary. The offices will be spread across the Houston area, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Austin, East Texas, the San Antonio area, El Paso, Laredo, McAllen and the Killeen area.

The campaign also named its first Texas hires:

  • Carla Brailey, vice chair of the Texas Democratic Party, will serve as Bloomberg’s senior advisor.
  • Ashlea Turner, a government relations consultant who worked on Bill White’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign, will serve as Bloomberg’s state director.
  • Kevin Lo, who worked on presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ Iowa campaign before she ended her campaign earlier this month, will serve as Bloomberg’s organizing director.
  • Lizzie Lewis, communications director for 2018 gubernatorial nominee Lupe Valdez, will be Bloomberg’s press secretary.

Bloomberg headed to Texas last Sunday for his second trip to the state since launching his campaign in late November. He visited increasingly competitive Fort Bend County to meet with community leaders and elected officials and attend a block walk for state House candidate Eliz Markowitz. She is in a Jan. 28 special election runoff for a seat that Democrats are aiming to flip as they enter 2020 with hopes of capturing the lower-chamber majority.

Bloomer is skipping Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, aiming to strike it big in Texas and California and the rest on Super Tuesday, March 3rd, after more candidates have fallen by the wayside.  His strategy is to present himself as the only establishment option to Bernie, as Old Uncle Joe and the rest will be wheezing by then.

Let's mention those stragglers just for kicks.

Bill Maher's favorite progressive, Klobuchar, is chasing Iowa Trump voters.  Tulsi Gabbard is doing the same in New Hampshire.  Yang is a con man.


Gonna wrap it here with a message from indy candidate Mark Charles.

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Wednesday, January 01, 2020

С Новым Годом (pronounced "S novim godom"; Happy New Year in Russian)






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