Time to restore U.S. shipbuilding? The Taxes-are-Theft crowd are the Makers-and-Takers crowd are Entitlement-Reform crowd are the Government-Never-Created-a-Job crowd. Somehow, 25 percent of U.S. food grown on an inland desert just gets watered and manifests in the local supermarket (along with foreign produce; we’ll get to that). Somehow, the national system of interstate highways over which they travel just appeared overnight. Somehow, water appears out of their taps and what they shit disappears just as magically. Entitlement? There’s a whole lot goin’ ’round. We used to call it taking things for granted. Like bank deposits being safe. Sen. Elizabeth Warren Monday night reminded Rachel Maddow’s viewers how banking should work. It should be boring. Something that, like those other things, we hardly notice. That was the point of Michael Lewis’ “The Fifth Risk.” When government works as it should, it’s almost unnoticeable. We take it for granted. We don’t know a fraction of what it does. On that, retired Navy captain Jerry Hendrix reminds The Atlantic readers how much of global trade depends on freedom of the seas.
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Short-term anxiety Watch this clip of Guy Cecil, the departing chair of Priorities USA PAC. He provides a pretty concise breakdown of where Democrats go wrong. The right takes a long view of politics, Cecil argues. They invest in long-term ideological change. It took the conservative movement 50 years to repeal Roe, but they retained that focus and worked at it until they did. Democrats’ think in election cycles. They need a broader, longer approach to building their coalition and infrastructure. “One of my concerns is that we have fetishized the use of data and analytics,” Cecil tells MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. In so doing, Democrats reduce their electoral coalition to “a confederacy of caricatures.” This groups cares about this issue, and that group cares about another. In fact, people are people, and they care about many things. I wrote recently about the fixation on data: Young, presidential-campaign staffers fresh off primary races and with visions of West Wing jobs dancing in their heads are all about data. Data is how superiors evaluate their job performance. How many volunteers, how many calls, how many knocks today? Get those 9 p.m.
Jennifer Rubin on the latest Hunter Biden harassment: Right-wing House Republicans have left little doubt that they want to spend the bulk of their time and energy investigating phony conspiracies and made-up scandals. Their main obsession appears to be Hunter Biden, whose very name has become a buzzword in right-wing media. The contents of one of his laptops, revealed in 2020, have inspired a fantastical conspiracy theory that has been comprehensively debunked by, among others, Asha Rangappa, a senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and former FBI agent. She persuasively applies a “a basic three-part formula” employed by psychologists who study conspiracy theories “for disentangling truth from fiction, one that activates the rational, analytical side, rather than the lizard, fight-or-flight side, of the brain.” Her takeaway: The conspiracy theorists have reached the “temper tantrum” stage of the Hunter Biden “scandal.” […] Obviously, there is no legitimate basis for congressional “oversight” of the matter.
Their voters are very sensitive, you know Fox knows they are awful people… New text messages revealed in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News showed a former Tucker Carlson producer trash the network’s audience. Newly revealed text messages show that Alex Pfeiffer, a former producer for “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” was uneasy about covering false election conspiracy theories purported by disgraced pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell. Powell claimed to have an affidavit showing that a large number of votes had been covertly flipped by Dominion “at the direction” of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died years earlier. Powell also said the voting software company had ties to the Clinton Foundation and Soros, claims which are also unfounded and untrue. The Washington Post reported that Fox executive and former Trump aide Raj Shah tried to play both sides when it came to covering Powell’s lies. When former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, along with Powell, endorsed false election claims during a press conference on Nov 19, 2020, Carlson expressed doubts.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has many parents. Twitter is alight with fingers pointing at venture capitalists for starting a run against a bank whose many wealthy customers had deposits far in excess of the maximum that is guaranteed in the event of a bank failure ($250,000). Michael Hudson blames the aftermath of the … Continue reading "Silicon Valley Bank: The Fed’s Role in its Downfall"
May 24, 2018: President Donald Trump signed the biggest rollback of bank regulations since the global financial crisis into law Thursday. The measure designed to ease rules on all but the largest banks passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. Backers say the legislation will lift burdens unnecessarily put on small and medium-sized lenders by the Dodd-Frank financial reform act and boost economic growth. Opponents, however, have argued the changes could open taxpayers to more liability if the financial system collapses or increase the chances of discrimination in mortgage lending. “Dodd-Frank was something they said could not be touched. And honestly, a lot of great Democrats knew that it had to be done and they joined us in the effort,” Trump said before he signed the bill, surrounded by lawmakers from both major parties. “And there is something so nice about bipartisan, and we’re going to have to try more of it. Let’s do more of it.” The measure eases restrictions on all but the largest banks.
This is so ridiculous I’m reluctant to even comment. But the sad fact is that there really is a convergence of some on the left and right, particularly on the issue of Russia and it’s starting to bleed into other areas. Sigh: When they take the microphones behind a DJ booth at the New York Young Republican Club party, Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan have a less-than-captive audience. The event’s headliner, longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, has just finished speaking and is on his way to the bar to make martinis, setting off a small stampede of young conservatives. Nekrasova and Khachiyan, co-hosts of the podcast Red Scare, address the remaining crowd. “Hey, we’re all Republicans here,” Nekrasova says. “I’m a Democrat now,” Khachiyan deadpans. “Yeah, we’re actually Democrats.” “After tonight, I changed my mind. I am registering as a Democrat.
Pence fully breaks with Trump on J6 Pence is cruisin’ for a bruisin’: Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday harshly criticized former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, widening the rift between the two men as they prepare to battle over the Republican nomination in next year’s election. “President Trump was wrong,” Pence said during remarks at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner attended by politicians and journalists. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.” Pence’s remarks were the sharpest condemnation yet from the once-loyal lieutenant who has often shied away from confronting his former boss. Trump has already declared his candidacy. Pence has not, but he’s been laying the groundwork to run. In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Trump pressured Pence to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory as he presided over the ceremonial certification of the results.
Another Big Lie What an ass. I was reminded of this piece when I heard that Melania was actually the one who persuaded Trump to be seen with that dog. I know it’s the least of his problems, but his hatred for animals said everything about him: When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died following a raid by American special forces in his Syrian bolthole, Donald Trump was delighted to report, in October, that the Islamic State leader had “died like a dog”. You mean enfolded by love and grief, Mr President? You mean surrounded by human beings who feel like they have just had their hearts ripped out? Not quite. If anyone was in any doubt about how a dog dies, Trump was happy to elaborate: al-Baghdadi had “whimpered, cried and screamed like a coward”, he chortled. “[He] spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread!” But that is not how a dog dies, Mr President. There are almost 90 million dogs in the United States and all of their owners will have winced to hear their president gloating about how a dog slips this mortal coil.
What fresh hell is this? Is there even one political scandal of the past few years that Steve Bannon isn’t in the middle of? Jeffrey Epstein said in an unaired interview that he distanced himself from former President Donald Trump after realizing Trump was “a crook,” according to his brother, Mark Epstein. Mark Epstein told Insider he viewed a clip of the interview, conducted by Trump’s former White House advisor Steve Bannon, after his brother forwarded it to him in the spring of 2019. At the time, Bannon was conducting filmed interviews with the now-dead pedophile financier. Bannon sent Jeffrey Epstein a Dropbox link to a clip, which he forwarded to his brother. The link is no longer active, according to Mark. “Jeffrey showed me the link to one of these interviews,” Mark Epstein said. “And in that interview, Jeffrey said he stopped hanging out with Trump when he realized Trump was a crook.” Insider has not been able to independently view the video. Bannon could not be reached for comment.