The dark days are not "coming". The dark days are here.
- Rachel Maddow (2-21-2020)
This week's featured posts are "What's Wrong With a Decision-Making Convention?" and "Accelerating Corruption and Autocracy".
This week everybody was talking about the Justice Department
I covered this in "Accelerating Corruption and Autocracy".
and Bernie Sanders as front-runner
Sanders' win in the Nevada caucuses was impressive. He was a clear winner among Latino voters, a demographic that wasn't behind him in 2016. Sanders is now the clear front-runner, partly due to his own strength and partly due to the fracturing of his opposition. Even if you wanted to vote for the stop-Bernie candidate (and from my comment stream, I can tell that a lot of you don't), who would that be?
Now that I'm a Massachusetts voter, I have to make my choice on March 3. I'm still undecided, but I promise to explain my thinking next week, the day before I vote.
Right now I'm wondering if I've given Bernie a fair shake. I've been rooting against him, and I'm not sure whether that's for justifiable reasons, or whether it's because I'm still annoyed from 2016. In 2016, I was part of his big majority in the New Hampshire primary, but I was voting more to send a message to Hillary than because I seriously intended to make Bernie president. As the campaign wore on, I came to regret that vote.
Unlike some people who voted for Hillary against Trump, I don't fault Bernie for not campaigning harder for her in the fall. I think he did as much as could have been reasonably expected. But I thought a lot of his late-primary-campaign criticism of Hillary was unfair, that it continued well past the point where he had a chance to win, and that it set up Trump's "crooked Hillary" rhetoric. It was irresponsible, and he should have known better.
That said, this is one of those situations where turnabout is not fair play. As Bernie becomes the front-runner, I think we all should bear in mind that he may well become the nominee. And while I'm all for every candidate's and every voter's right to criticize, I think we need to try very hard to criticize fairly. For example, I think it's fine to say that Bernie should release his medical records, or to ask how his plans will be paid for, or how he will get them through Congress. But I don't think it's fair to call him a "communist" or to lie about what his healthcare plan will do. Trump will want to do that in the fall, if Bernie is nominated, and his rhetoric will sound more convincing if it can be prefaced with "Even Democrats say ..."
On electability, I don't know what to think. Polls consistently show Sanders running as well or better against Trump than the other Democrats do -- worse than Biden in some polls, but never by much. At the same time, I have yet to meet a Republican who's afraid of facing Bernie in the fall. Many of them are actively rooting for him, including (it seems) Trump. Maybe they're just stupid, or maybe they have some insight.
and the continuing spread of the Chinese virus
It's now known as COVID-19. Outbreaks are now happening in Italy and South Korea, which might imply that they will eventually happen everywhere.
Even so, try to maintain some perspective. Staying away from Chinese restaurants is not going to make you safer.
but you should pay more attention to Trump's acting DNI
I also discussed this in "Accelerating Corruption and Autocracy". Few things are could be worse than a Director of National Intelligence who tells the CIA what the President wants to hear them say, rather than tells the President what the best experts think is true.
and you also might be interested in ...
As I write this morning, the stock market is plunging. The Dow is about 1300 points below the peak it hit a week or two ago. I don't think the fall is Trump's fault any more than the rise was, but if you live by the sword you die by the sword.
I don't know how good her chances are, but I've got to root for Amy McGrath to beat Mitch McConnell. This online ad is from last summer, but it's still worth looking at.
Remember the original justification for the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani? Supposedly it prevented one or more "imminent attacks".
Well, never mind. The White House has sent Congress its official explanation for the raid, and the imminent-attack justification has vanished. Now the purpose of the assassination was to "deter future attacks".
Without the threat of an imminent attack, there was no reason the administration couldn't have consulted Congress, as envisioned in the War Powers Act. Instead, the report makes the argument that Congress intended the pre-Iraq-invasion Authorization for the Use of Military Force to include Iran, which is patently absurd.
In short, the Soleimani attack was an illegal assassination, and the President's initial explanation of it was a lie.
Researchers at Scripps Oceanography Institute offer some good news on climate change: One of the tipping-point disaster scenarios is less likely than previously thought.
A long-feared scenario in which global warming causes Arctic permafrost to melt and release enough greenhouse gas to accelerate warming and cause catastrophe probably won’t happen.
and let's close with something ambiguous
Sometimes it's hard to tell who a satirist is satirizing. ABC News reported:
Pigeons wearing MAGA hats and Donald Trump wigs have been released by a shadowy protest group calling themselves P.U.T.I.N. – Pigeons United to Interfere Now -- across the city of Las Vegas, Nevada
When I saw that, my first thought (after some concern about the pigeons) was "What a clever protest against Trump!" Plainly, the stunt casts MAGA-hatters as pigeons -- stupid and gullible. When I heard the group was calling itself PUTIN, that cinched it.
But apparently not, at least if the Las Vegas Review-Journal has it right.
The pigeon release was done as an “aerial protest piece in response to the arrival of the 2020 Democratic debate,” the group said. Six Democratic presidential candidates will debate Wednesday night in Las Vegas.
“The release date was also coordinated to serve as a gesture of support and loyalty to President Trump,” said a group member who goes by the alias Coo Hand Luke.
Or maybe Coo Hand Luke is spoofing the local reporter, pretending to be precisely the kind pigeon-like Trumpist the birds represent. Or not. Maybe the satire is too subtle for any of us to grasp.
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