[johnu]

Winstonm, on 2020-July-29, 11:44, said:

Heaven forbid - just think - Putin might get mad - he might even frown. Shudder. Oh, the horrors.

Or Putin might release the pee tape, or maybe cancel their agreement to build hotels in Russia.

[shyams]

I'm sure many of you may have heard of this matter from before he decided to run for President, but I found this one of the memorable incidents which (to me) defined how shallow Trump really is.

Why Donald Trump Has Been Sending Vanity Fair Editor Pictures of His Hands for 25 Years
Nobody calls Donald Trump a "short-fingered vulgarian!"

https://people.com/c...s-of-his-hands/

[shyams]

Winstonm, on 2020-July-30, 06:38, said:

Curious take on ways to make it not look so bad - and the question is: why don't they simply show both instead of a number of which people are unfamiliar seeing?

I think the proposal to quote the lower (i.e. non-annualised) figure is a representation with more clarity. To quote Ben Casselman,
"Forecasters expect the report to show that gross domestic product — the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the United States — fell at an annual rate of about 35 percent.
But wait. If you read that last paragraph quickly, you might have come away with the impression that the economy shrank by more than a third in a mere three months. That’s wrong."

Today's BBC article (titled "Republicans to Trump: You can't delay 2020 election" -- link here) contains a sentence that reads "Mr Trump's intervention came as new figures showed the US economy contracted by nearly a third (32.9%) between April and June - the worst contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s". The sentence is obviously misleading; the contraction is in the range 8.0-8.5% during the one Qtr alone. Another useful reference point is that the Q2 '20 GDP is 9.5% lower than Q2 '19 (a year ago) which clearly shows that the phrase "contracted by nearly a third" is illogical.

When Qtr-on-Qtr movements are small (which used to happen during normal times), the "annualised" metric is probably adequate. However, it does fail badly in conveying information during such exceptional times when the Qtr-on-Qtr swings are gargantuan.

[Trinidad]

shyams, on 2020-July-30, 14:59, said:

Another useful reference point is that the Q2 '20 GDP is 9.5% lower than Q2 '19 (a year ago)

FWIW, this is what the Dutch news media showed. (E.g NRC)

Rik

[shyams]

Trinidad, on 2020-July-30, 15:25, said:

FWIW, this is what the Dutch news media showed. (E.g NRC)

Rik

Thank you for sharing.

The article you shared contains this sentence (translated using Google)

"The Department of Commerce estimated the fall in the U.S. economy in the second quarter of this year at 9.5 percent of gross domestic product, or $ 1.8 trillion. In the United States, quarterly figures are extrapolated to an annual figure, giving Americans a shocking figure on Thursday morning: 32.9 percent, the worst downturn since World War II."

They also have included an info-box at the end of the article that compares European style of reporting with the American one (which I have not included here)

I like how much clearer this reads compared to the other reports I have read elsewhere.

[Winstonm]

As advertisec, the DC circuit court of appeals has tossed aside Rao's BS and will review Flynn mandamus en banc. This is good news for the rule of law; bad new for Billy Barr, but then I repeat myself.

[y66]

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg said:

As the economy tanks, ...

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has sent the Senate home for the weekend. That means, even as dismal economic news keeps mounting, there won’t be a last-minute deal to keep expanded unemployment insurance intact. It’s been hard all along to figure out what the Republican plan might be, and it’s getting harder.

To be sure, quite a few Republicans — maybe 20 in the Senate, according to reports, and many more in the House — seem to be comfortable with no deal at all. They appear to think that additional spending will hurt, not help, the economy, whether it’s aid to state and local governments (which the party is almost unified against) or additional benefits for the millions out of work. At least one Republican, Representative Roger Williams of Texas, apparently believes stimulus is irrelevant because, “with low interest, low taxes and cash in the system, the economy’s pretty good.” How that squares with the worst quarter since records began, along with signs that a tentative recovery has stalled, is a mystery. Others seem to understand that the virus-induced recession is real, but just don’t think the government can do much about it. In particular, they’re convinced that the reason for mass unemployment is expanded benefits, not the virus and a lengthening list of failed businesses.

That leaves McConnell, and the White House, in an extremely difficult bargaining position, made worse by their decision to wait until the last minute. Democrats are united behind their own proposal, which passed the House in May. McConnell can’t put his bill on the Senate floor because it would be defeated — not by a Democratic filibuster, but because he doesn’t even have a simple majority in favor of it.

Democrats do want a deal. But they also think that politically an impasse mainly hurts the Republicans. Of course, partisans will just blame the other party, and most others will blame “Washington” or “the government.” But since Donald Trump is president, voters are likely to take such general anger out on the Republican Party. In fact, three factors are working against the party. Voters may in the abstract think the government is handling things badly. Those who are unemployed are certainly going to notice a $600 cut in the checks they’ve been getting, and will blame the party that is insisting those benefits should be smaller. And then there are the indirect effects, such as decreased consumer spending, that will be felt throughout the economy and that should also hurt Republicans. (See Jared Bernstein’s helpful run-through of the economics involved.)

The truth is that it should be relatively easy to find a compromise. If, that is, most Republicans accept mainstream economics and realize that they should pump serious money into the economy at the moment. And if they’re willing to vote for a package that will invite criticism from those who claim to be True Conservatives. And if they’re willing to risk being undercut by Trump after they produce the bill, just as he’s done several times before.

Unfortunately — for the economy, for people in need and for Republicans in November — that might be two or three “ifs” too many.

Jules: You got to appreciate what an explosive element this Bonnie situation is. If she comes home from a hard day's work and finds a bunch of gangster Republicans doin' a bunch of gangsta' sh#t in her kitchen, ain't no tellin' what she's apt to do.

Marsellus: [calmly] Yeah, I grasp that, Jules. All I'm doing is contemplating the ifs.

Jules: [nervous] I don't wanna hear 'bout no motherf#cking ifs. All I wanna hear from your ass is, "You ain't got no problem, Jules, I'm on the motherf#cker. Go back in there, chill them niggas out and wait for the cavalry, which should be coming directly".

Marsellus: You ain't got no problem, Jules. I'm on the motherf#cker. Go back in there and chill them niggas out and wait for The Wolf, who should be coming directly.

Jules: [Jules pauses and becomes calm] You sending the Wolf?

Marsellus: Oh, you feel better, motherf#cker?

Jules: [laughing] Sh#t, negro, that's all you had to say!

In TrumpWorld, which is stranger than Pulp Fiction, Marcellus "takes no responsibility", the Wolf is a DHS lackey, the cavalry are federal stormtroopers, and situations like the Bonnie situation "just disappear".

[y66]

Andrew Baker said:

How is the flagrant use of WhatsApp just something that we accept from the Trump team now?

Quote

Inside the White House, over much of March and early April, Kushner’s handpicked group of young business associates, which included a former college roommate, teamed up with several top experts from the diagnostic-testing industry. Together, they hammered out the outline of a national testing strategy. The group—working night and day, using the encrypted platform WhatsApp—emerged with a detailed plan obtained by Vanity Fair.

https://www.vanityfa...f-into-thin-air

[y66]

Does Trump Want to Save His Economy? by Jim Tankersly at NYT

Quote

The president is showing little urgency or strategy as the economic recovery stalls ahead of the November election.

Paul Krugman said:

One thing I don't think is fully appreciated is the fact that Republicans in general, and Trump a fortiori, have no idea what causes recessions. If they've even heard of Keynes, they imagine his as a left-wing agitator, probably an antifa terrorist.

People are mocking Judy Shelton over her goldbug views, but they forget that Paul Ryan — remember, the celebrated intellectual leader of the party — declared that he learned all his monetary economics from Ayn Rand.

During the financial crisis even tenured Chicago professors reinvented old fallacies, such as Say's Law, and imagined that they were deep insights.

Basically the GOP and its pet economists don't believe it's even possible for an economy to suffer from inadequate demand; if unemployment is high it must be because we're taxing the rich too much, or being too nice to the unemployed.

So the looming catastrophe as Pandemic Unemployment Compensation expires, sucking purchasing power out of the economy at a $900 billion per year annual rate, just doesn't register in their worldview.

Governing is way harder than tweeting, golfing and teargassing moms, dads and vets.

[Winstonm]

Mystery solved! Why do evangelicals support the Republican party? Answer: they thought the Republicans had said American needs to be on its knees more when in reality what they said was, America, bend over!

[Winstonm]

Frankly, I could use this kind of levelheadedness right now but I think their must be a purge of the tea party Republicans to make much difference.

Quote

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s leaders were deadlocked and on the verge of financial catastrophe in 2008. Five negotiators, including Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, couldn’t agree on a budget that would guide the nation’s most populous state through the Great Recession.

Enter Karen Bass, who became Assembly speaker that May, the first Black woman to hold the role. She shifted the tone of the talks, helping the group find common ground.

“When Karen came into the Big 5, everything changed,” said Mike Villines, then the Republican Assembly leader. “We started to make little progress on little things, and it led to bigger progress.”

[shyams]

Winstonm, on 2020-July-31, 14:45, said:

Frankly, I could use this kind of levelheadedness right now but I think their must be a purge of the tea party Republicans to make much difference.

I have nothing against Karen Bass or any other candidate for that matter but I get a sneaking suspicion that the entire establishment (i.e. wealthy donors, political operatives and the ruling class) have collectively decided to sing from the same hymn sheet to create an aura around Karen Bass. I guess the wealthy donors can't stomach Kamala Harris; is she a bit too strong-willed for their liking?

[Winstonm]

shyams, on 2020-July-31, 15:32, said:

I have nothing against Karen Bass or any other candidate for that matter but I get a sneaking suspicion that the entire establishment (i.e. wealthy donors, political operatives and the ruling class) have collectively decided to sing from the same hymn sheet to create an aura around Karen Bass. I guess the wealthy donors can't stomach Kamala Harris; is she a bit too strong-willed for their liking?

Kamala Harris has a lot of baggage about her time as a prosecutor and because of that she can't be counted on to help draw African-American voters.

[y66]

McConnell to Republican Senate Candidates: Distance yourself from Trump if necessary

https://www.cnn.com/...wall/index.html

Quote

Republicans currently have a three-seat majority and at least six incumbent senators who face serious Democratic challengers. Senior Republicans say the most vulnerable are Sens. Martha McSally of Arizona, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Cory Gardner of Colorado. Despite polls showing a tight race in Maine, GOP sources in recent weeks have sounded more optimistic about Sen. Susan Collins, long a target of Democrats and liberal interest groups.

Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Steve Daines of Montana are also of concern. While some Republicans believe they are both in good shape, other GOP sources tell CNN those races are exceedingly tight and that both candidates' fortunes may ultimately depend on how Trump does on Election Day in both states. The senior Capitol Hill Republican even expressed caution about Sen. Dan Sullivan, the first-term Alaska Republican otherwise thought to be relatively safe.

With Republican nominee Tommy Tuberville expected to defeat Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November, McConnell can afford to lose up to three of those endangered seats and still keep a slim majority.

But the size of a net defeat for the GOP matters. Even if they lose control of the majority, Senate Republicans can effectively play defense against Democratic legislation with a large enough minority and a handful of moderate Democratic defectors. But if GOP losses in the Senate are too great, their ability to use the filibuster to force a supermajority vote to proceed on legislation will be rendered meaningless.

"Even if we lose the majority, it matters that we have 49 seats," said the senior Republican on the Hill. "If we have 45, we can't stop (with) the filibuster. Every seat counts."

And the trajectory of the presidential race -- Joe Biden leads Trump by 14 points nationally in the most recent CNN poll -- and the persistence of the coronavirus pandemic have made the project of protecting the GOP's margin even more urgent.

"GOP major donors are redirecting money to the Senate races," said Fred Zeidman, a Republican donor from Texas. "The Senate is the firewall. We have got to make sure that we hold the Senate no matter who is elected president."

Meanwhile: The economy is in dire shape, millions of Americans are about to lose federal aid and the Senate is going on vacation.

[johnu]

Americans Increasingly Believe U.S. Is Handling Coronavirus Worse Than Other Nations

Quote

A 46% plurality of the public now says the U.S. is handling the outbreak worse than other countries, with 24% saying it’s handling the outbreak as well as other countries and just 19% saying it’s doing better than most.

Quote

Views of the country’s relative performance are shapely divided along partisan lines, although dissatisfaction has risen on both sides of the aisle. A 71% majority of Democrats say the U.S. is doing especially poorly in its fight against the pandemic, up from 49% who said the same in March. Among Republicans, 19% share that judgment, up from just 2% in March.

Some 38% of Republicans and just 8% of Democrats currently think the U.S. is faring better than most other countries. In March, 12% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans thought the U.S. stood out positively.

I guess 54% of this country either doesn't follow the news at all, or worse, think the propaganda on the Fox Propaganda Channel is actually news. The only country in the world that I know of that has had an actively incompetent, disastrous response like the US is Brazil.

[awm]

johnu, on 2020-August-01, 01:05, said:

Americans Increasingly Believe U.S. Is Handling Coronavirus Worse Than Other Nations




I guess 54% of this country either doesn't follow the news at all, or worse, think the propaganda on the Fox Propaganda Channel is actually news. The only country in the world that I know of that has had an actively incompetent, disastrous response like the US is Brazil.

Sweden seems to have been pretty bad, and the UK was bad (at least until Boris Johnson came down with the virus). Both countries still have a higher rate of Covid deaths per population than the US. I agree that many/most countries handled this better than the US but it’s not clear to me that the US has done the worst of all countries. The US has shifted a lot of authority to the state and local level, which is generally a bad idea but has had the effect that some states are doing a lot better than others.

[johnu]

awm, on 2020-August-01, 02:20, said:

Sweden seems to have been pretty bad, and the UK was bad (at least until Boris Johnson came down with the virus). Both countries still have a higher rate of Covid deaths per population than the US. I agree that many/most countries handled this better than the US but it’s not clear to me that the US has done the worst of all countries. The US has shifted a lot of authority to the state and local level, which is generally a bad idea but has had the effect that some states are doing a lot better than others.

By worse than other countries, I think most people would think worse than the median or average country, not the absolute worst country in the world. Still, Sweden seems to have gotten control, and the UK, after following the US model of doing nothing, has done much better as of late. I didn't mention India which is still a 3rd world country with huge, crowded slums where coronavirus was/is rampant.

If you are going to look at deaths, Total confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 per million people, for the countries that are reported, only 9 countries have a higher number of deaths per million, and all the other 9 countries currently have COVID-19 under much better control than the US. At the current rate of deaths in the US, we are on pace to have more deaths per million than any other country except San Marino and Belgium, and even Belgium looks like it may be in reach by the end of the year. San Marino looks like it may be out of reach for the foreseeable future.

Quote

The US has shifted a lot of authority to the state and local level, which is generally a bad idea but has had the effect that some states are doing a lot better than others.

If "shift" means the Manchurian President pretty much totally abdicated any responsibility for taking any lead in developing a national plan, then I agree that's what happened. And that's why the current surging secondary waves were predicted by a number of epidemiological forecasting models. These models correctly predicted that inconsistent and very poor coronavirus mitigation by states that avoided the initial wave of infections would result in multiple hotspots around the country that would continue long after the initial states had weathered the crisis.

[y66]

NPR: Citing Election Delay Tweet, Influential Trump Ally Now Demands His Re-Impeachment

Quote

After voting for President Trump in 2016 and staunchly defending him in conservative publications, a Federalist Society leader appears to be having some very public buyer's remorse.

Steven Calabresi, co-founder of the powerful conservative legal organization, is now calling on the House of Representatives to do again what it has already done once this year: impeach Trump.

In a scathing opinion piece in The New York Times published online Thursday, the Northwestern University law professor points to what ignited his newfound ire with the president: a tweet Trump sent out shortly after news broke Thursday morning that the U.S. economy had suffered its biggest recorded contraction ever last quarter.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump said:

"With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA," the president intoned on Twitter. "Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"

Calabresi declared himself "appalled" by the tweet, which he characterized as "seeking to postpone the November election."

"Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats' assertion that President Trump is a fascist," the conservative legal scholar wrote. "But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president's immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate."

It was a remarkable turnaround for a man who as recently as November had accused House Democrats of conducting an "unconstitutional" and "Kafkaesque 'trial' " in their Trump impeachment proceedings.

Calabresi also had some stern advice for Republican lawmakers, many of whom have routinely approved conservative judicial nominees endorsed and promoted by the Federalist Society.

"President Trump needs to be told by every Republican in Congress that he cannot postpone the federal election. Doing so would be illegal, unconstitutional and without precedent in American history," Calabresi warned. "Anyone who says otherwise should never be elected to Congress again."

Calabresi's public distancing from the 45th president was applauded by other conservatives critical of Trump.

"Steve Calabresi, welcome to the Resistance," tweeted Washington attorney George Conway, the famously Trump-bashing husband of senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Former national security adviser John Bolton, whose scorching tell-all account of his time in the Trump White House was published last month over the objections of Trump's lawyers, tweeted that Calabresi's op-ed was "a must-read."

Trump, for his part, did not directly respond to his one-time ally's demand that he be re-impeached. Instead, the president sought to portray his provocative suggestion that the election be delayed as stirring a needed public debate.

"Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media," Trump tweeted later on Thursday, "to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting (not Absentee Voting, which I totally support!)."

Many news organizations — including NPR — have noted that, contrary to Trump's assertions, there is no universal mail-in voting for the November presidential election, just as there is essentially no difference between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots.

It's sad to see men of principle like Calabresi and Bolton abandoning our demented leader.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2020-August-01, 05:48, said:

NPR: Citing Election Delay Tweet, Influential Trump Ally Now Demands His Re-Impeachment


It's sad to see men of principle like Calabresi and Bolton abandoning our demented leader.

Don't kid yourself that they care about this tweet - the ONLY thing the Federalist Society is concerned with is Trump's affect on losing the Senate.

[Winstonm]

NYT reports:

Quote

House Democrats are demanding a reckoning from the U.S. ambassador to Brazil after news reports there said he was urging country officials to lower ethanol tariffs to help President Trump’s chances of reelection.

In a letter Friday to Ambassador Todd C. Chapman, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) and Western Hemisphere subcommittee Chairman Albio Sires (D-N.J.) cited a report in prominent Brazilian newspaper O Globo depicting Chapman telling Brazilian officials about “the importance for the [President Jair] Bolsonaro government of maintaining Donald Trump as U.S. President.” In the article, according to the letter, Chapman also communicated to Brazilian officials that it was important for their “government to do the U.S. a favor” by reducing ethanol tariffs, as those are important in the state of Iowa, a potential “key player” in 2020.

There is no bottom to the corruption. If you voted Trump and still wil vote Trump, you own all of it. You are guilty, as well.