“Why would they expect not to be fired?” said Kurt Schlicter, a conservative political commentator and Trump supporter, referring to the roughly half-dozen prosecutors and officials who worked in special counsel Robert Mueller’s office and are still employed by the Justice Department.
Tuesday Reads: The Corona Virus and Finally Vetting Bernie
Posted: February 25, 2020 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, cuba, Donald Trump, Fidel Castro, South Carolina primary 22 CommentsGood Morning!!
I had a flu shot in January, and since then I’ve had a week-long bout a stomach flu and now I have a full-blown case of the flu. I came down with it on Saturday morning and since then I’ve had a low grade fever that comes and goes along with a hacking cough, headaches, ear pain, and muscle aches. I felt better yesterday, and my temperature was normal until late last night. Now it’s already over 100 again.
I’m really not looking forward to catching the corona virus, but according to James Hamblin at The Atlantic, we are all likely to get it eventually: You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus. Most cases are not life-threatening, which is also what makes the virus a historic challenge to contain.
Coronaviruses are similar to influenza viruses in that they are both single strands of RNA. Four coronaviruses commonly infect humans, causing colds. These are believed to have evolved in humans to maximize their own spread—which means sickening, but not killing, people. By contrast, the two prior novel coronavirus outbreaks—SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome, named for where the first outbreak occurred)—were picked up from animals, as was H5N1. These diseases were highly fatal to humans. If there were mild or asymptomatic cases, they were extremely few. Had there been more of them, the disease would have spread widely. Ultimately, SARS and MERS each killed fewer than 1,000 people.
COVID-19 is already reported to have killed more than twice that number. With its potent mix of characteristics, this virus is unlike most that capture popular attention: It is deadly, but not too deadly. It makes people sick, but not in predictable, uniquely identifiable ways. Last week, 14 Americans tested positive on a cruise ship in Japan despite feeling fine—the new virus may be most dangerous because, it seems, it may sometimes cause no symptoms at all.
Hamblin explains that this COVID-19 is likely to spread and then keep coming back every year, because it is contagious even when people have no symptoms and it doesn’t kill off most of the people who get it.
The Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch is exacting in his diction, even for an epidemiologist. Twice in our conversation he started to say something, then paused and said, “Actually, let me start again.” So it’s striking when one of the points he wanted to get exactly right was this: “I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.”
Containment is the first step in responding to any outbreak. In the case of COVID-19, the possibility (however implausible) of preventing a pandemic seemed to play out in a matter of days. Starting in January, China began cordoning off progressively larger areas, radiating outward from Wuhan City and eventually encapsulating some 100 million people. People were barred from leaving home, and lectured by drones if they were caught outside. Nonetheless, the virus has now been found in 24 countries….
Lipsitch predicts that, within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses. “It’s likely that many will have mild disease, or may be asymptomatic,” he said. As with influenza, which is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care. (Overall, around 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)
Lipsitch is far from alone in his belief that this virus will continue to spread widely. The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease—a fifth “endemic” coronavirus. With the other four, people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this one follows suit, and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now, “cold and flu season” could become “cold and flu and COVID-19 season.”
The New York Times: ‘Recipe for a Massive Viral Outbreak’: Iran Emerges as a Worldwide Threat.
Religious pilgrims, migrant workers, businessmen, soldiers and clerics all flow constantly across Iran’s frontiers, often crossing into countries with few border controls, weak and ineffective governments and fragile health systems.
Now, as it struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Iran is also emerging as the second focal point after China for the spread of the disease. Cases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates — even one in Canada — have all been traced to Iran, sending tremors of fear rippling out from Kabul to Beirut.
The Middle East is in many ways the perfect place to spawn a pandemic, experts say, with the constant circulation of both Muslim pilgrims and itinerant workers who might carry the virus. Iran’s economy has been strangled by sanctions, its people have lost trust in their government and its leaders are isolated from much of the world, providing little clarity about the extent of the epidemic.
Civil wars or years of unrest have shattered the health systems of several neighboring countries, like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. And most of the region is governed largely by authoritarians with poor track records at providing public transparency, accountability and health services.
“It is a recipe for a massive viral outbreak,” said Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the former founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on H.I.V./AIDS.
An even more immediate threat is the rise of Bernie Sanders. Over the weekend Sanders used his 60 Minutes interview to defend his past support of Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
The reaction in Florida-home was swift and angry.
Marc Caputo at Politico: Florida Dems in uproar after Sanders’ Cuba comments.
Florida Democrats insist he‘s the worst-equipped [to defeat Donald Trump] after Sanders’ refusal Sunday night to thoroughly condemn the Cuban revolution. His comments on 60 Minutes sent shock waves through the nation’s biggest battleground state, where Democratic members of Congress, state legislators and party leaders warned that his nomination — and Sanders’ self-described “Democratic socialism” — will cost them the biggest battleground state of them all.
“Donald Trump wins Florida if Bernie is our nominee,” said state Rep. Javier Fernandez, a Democratic candidate in a majority-Hispanic state Senate district….
As a state with an influential cross-section of Latinos whose families fled leftist Latin American regimes and violence, Sanders embrace of far-left leaders and his past refusals to wholeheartedly condemn Latin American strongmen and the Soviet Union have long been seen as fatal flaws.
Sanders on Sunday did nothing to allay those concerns in a 60 Minutes interview in which he was asked about his 1985 comments stating that the Cuban people didn’t “rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro” because “he educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society.”
There was no mention of the firing squads, political purges and mass arrests that accompanied the 1959 revolution.
There’s much more at the link.
At least Sanders is finally getting vetted by the media. For example, Griffe Witte at The Washington Post: In Cold War travels, Bernie Sanders found much to admire behind enemy lines. Now that’s a problem for his campaign.
The mayor of tiny Burlington, Vt., was back from Nicaragua and eager to share the good news.
The country’s Soviet-backed government — forged via armed rebellion — was cutting infant mortality, reducing illiteracy and redistributing land to peasant farmers. Its Sandinista leaders, branded terrorists by the U.S. government, impressed him with “their intelligence and their sincerity.”
Three years later, Bernie Sanders was fresh off the plane from Moscow, reveling in the beauty of the land and the contentedness of the people.
And a year after that, he returned from Cuba having tapped into a revolutionary spirit “far deeper and more profound than I understood it to be.”
With Sanders now surging to the top of the Democratic presidential field, those three-decade-old impressions introduced a volatile new element in the race Monday as rivals reacted to Sanders’s decision to defend his remarks, not disclaim them….
The fact that Sanders’s long-ago travels in the communist world have become an issue in the 2020 campaign reflects how unorthodox a choice he would be to lead the Democratic Party….
Returning home from visits to some of the United States’ most avowed enemies, Sanders offered some criticism but also plenty of praise in Vermont community television recordings. Many of the videos were kept in storage for decades — including during his 2016 campaign — and, even after being posted online, have remained relatively unknown.
Now, Sanders’s comments are coming back to life as opponents say his warm feelings toward his hosts decades ago make him vulnerable to attack and reveal a soft spot for left-wing despots.
Read the rest at the WaPo. More Bernie critiques:
Jonathan Chait: If Democrats Aren’t Terrified of Bernie, They’re Not Paying Attention.
William Saletan at Slate: The Great Socialism Gap. Socialism doesn’t freak out Democratic voters the way it freaks out other Americans. That’s a problem.
Never Trumper Michael Gerson at The Washington Post: A Trump-Sanders election would destroy our politics.
The South Carolina primary is coming up on Saturday, followed three days later by Super Tuesday. There’s another debate tonight, and I hope Elizabeth Warren will finally get up the nerve to address Sanders’ many weaknesses instead continuing to focus on Mike Bloomberg. I’m pretty sure the other candidates won’t hesitate to attack Bernie.
Natasha Korecki at Politico: Sanders under fire in South Carolina from all directions.
Joe Biden’s campaign is airing a new digital ad in South Carolina accusing Bernie Sanders of trying to undermine Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection by threatening to primary him. Pete Buttigieg was on TV in South Carolina hitting Sanders over health care and Mike Bloomberg targeted Sanders’ past gun votes.
“When it comes to building on Barack Obama’s legacy, Bernie Sanders just can’t be trusted,” the Biden ad, first obtained by POLITICO, warns.
The fusillade targeting Sanders on the eve of a Democratic debate in the fourth early state of South Carolina marked the latest turn in a Democratic primary that now has a decisive frontrunner. Each of the candidates, competing for a fraction of the moderate vote, are attempting to blunt the Vermont senator’s momentum coming off a landslide win in Nevada.
“When we rallied together to defend our president and all the progress he made they had his back,” the narrator says. Panning to then-Vice President Biden, the voice-over continues, “He had his back,” and moving to images of African American supporters at an Obama rally, says: “And you had his back.”
“But back in Washington, there was one guy with another plan,” the narrator says before an audio clip is heard of Sanders saying, “I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.”
More at the WaPo.
Are you going to watch the debate? I might give it a try. The last one was pretty entertaining, and it would be fun to see Bernie get his ass kicked. As always, this is an open thread.
Mixed Emotions Monday Reads: Fatal Carnival and Political Purges
Posted: February 24, 2020 Filed under: morning reads 32 Comments
Skeleton Krewes photo by @VarleyPix
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m entering my second coughing, sniffling, miserable week of influenza Type 2 and there are only two people I would wish it on. We will get to both of them later because frankly I’m stressed and worried. Not only did we not get an infrastructure week and a signed bill that would help us revitalize our country’s roads, grids, and public goods and services provisions, we’ve got less infrastructure than we did two years ago.
We are facing climate change essentially leaderless. We are facing the potential of the corona virus essentially leaderless and without a fully functional CDC. We are staring down Hurricane and Tornado season and undoubtedly more fires, mudslides, and floods. We essentially have dysfunctional, leaderless agencies ill prepared and staffed for that too.
Okay, I couldn’t make it to the second paragraph with up bringing the two guys least prepared to deal with any of this and who could use a good dose of a bad virus. The current President needs a good dose of something and he can just hang out with the other old white pure ID Geezer and discuss why philosophical diatribes and political purges accomplish anything out here in the real world. Maybe if either of them actually had a few real problems they would go away and we could find some people that actually have lived through some real problems and can deal with it
So, down here in New Orleans we’ve been living in dysfunctional infrastructure hell since Katrina. We lack a basic tax commitment to public health and safety. Our sewers and pumping systems do not work adequately. The mega privatized utility that gives us our gas and electricity can’t keep their grid up and the lights on. Building inspectors that okay-ed the Hard Rock Hotel site which collapsed, killed people,and still serves as a macabre sepulchre were shown by their GPS trackers to never, ever been near the site.
And, we’re so stretched by things we’ve ceased doing Carnival safely this year. Two people were killed by floats. Two people fell off floats. Two people fell of a balcony. I feel like Mardi Gras 2020 is way too symbolic of symptoms plaguing our tired old country.
‘A man was hit and killed by a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans on Saturday evening, the second such death in a week.’ That headline comes from The Guardian. This is probably why the only thing I want to see on the actual Mardi Gras Day are the skeleton Krewes and the Indians. The rest can just take those sewer cluttering, earth damaging plastic beads and slip on mule dung on Bourbon Street. I’m now firmly committed to the stodgy ideas that superkrewes are not a super idea where ever thing is oversized but our public safety and infrastructure commitments. And screw all those Hard Rock Hotel Developers and AirBnB parasites while we’re at it.
The individual, who was not immediately named, was killed at around 7pm after he appeared to fall underneath a large tandem float during the Krewe of Endymion parade near the city centre.
Witness video posted online suggested the man fell at a point in the parade route where there were no barricades to separate onlookers from floats, which often pass close to the roadside.
Eyewitnesses speaking to local media suggested the man jumped to catch an item thrown from the float then slipped on beads left on the floor.
On Wednesday, 58-year-old Geraldine Carmouche was run over and killed by a tandem float. Witnesses suggested Carmouche tripped on a hitch holding the two floats together and fell underneath the second trailer.
Such deaths are rare at the annual carnival event. Local reports suggested the last similar incident occurred in 2008, when a man was struck by a float after the parade ended. In 1981 a three year-old girl was killed by a rolling float.
New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell instructed all remaining parades to end the use of tandem floats.
CL Thomas of Nashville blogs about and photographs Skeleton Krewe
I will now briefly discuss some of the floats for Krewe D’etat whose good ol boy designers still don’t seem to have gotten over Hillary being succesful or Bill Clinton’s blow job in an “Epstein didn’t kill himself float”, took a huge whack at Bernie in a “communist float”, and then did an ugly parody on the impeachment with a horrible portrayal of Speaker Pelosi. I turned off the TV pretty quickly and returned to coughing fits.
This one was way over the top for the family route imho and you’ll remember I raised very young two daughters in the French Quarter for five years. There is satire and then there is tasteless, tacky, mean, and unfunny. I thought the dick stuff at KDV was a bit much. This was just tacky and gross.
Also, there was a huge Trump 2020 signs at the top of one of the big floats. That’s shenanigans imho. This was clearly just more Trumpy White Male mean spiritedness on display. Save that crap for protests and rallies creeps!!!!
For some reason, all of this clusterfuck seems appropriate during the Trumpist Regime Chaos with the Berner steriods thrown in. All it needed was a bunch of really old guys wagging their fingers and screaming and women and people of color. Really.
Here’s some real leadership from Forbes’ Jeff McMahon writing on a Climate Change Activist and Former UN Climate Change Christiana Figueres.
In a book out tomorrow, the woman who led the negotiations for the Paris Agreement calls for civil disobedience to force institutions to respond to the climate crisis.
“It’s time to participate in non-violent political movements wherever possible,” Christiana Figueres writes in “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis,” which will be released tomorrow by Knopf.
Figueres served as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-16. She co-authored the book with her strategic advisor, Tom Rivett-Carnac. The two also support voting:
“Large numbers of people must vote on climate change as their number one priority,” they write. “As we are in the midst of the most dire emergency, we must urgently demand that those who seek high office offer solutions commensurate with the scale of the problem.”
But they note that electoral politics have failed to meet the challenge, largely because of systemic roadblocks including corporate lobbying and partisan opposition.
Photo by Rick Olivier Mardi Gras Day With The Skull And Bones Gang
Science Denial or ignorance and profiting from trashing the planet and commiting acts of extraction terror typifies our two least favorite guys too. Remember Bernie making money from dumping toxic nuclear waste on a poor border town down in Texas? Well, read this in WAPO today written by Fred Hiatt. ” How Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both reject the reality of climate change.”
We have at hand a bipartisan, rigorous plan to address that danger.
And now it is more than possible that we will end up with two presidential candidates who reject that plan in favor of two varieties of utter unseriousness.
The first is the denialism of President Trump. He either believes or cynically pretends to believe that climate change is not a threat. His administration has gravely aggravated the threat, for example by recklessly relaxing regulation of the super-warming gas methane.
The second version is the fantasy extremism of Sen. Bernie Sanders. He would prosecute oil executives “for the destruction they have knowingly caused” (he “welcomes their hatred”) and phase out carbon-neutral nuclear power. The Vermont independent would ban the fracking of natural gas, which is — if you control the methane emissions — a useful transitional fuel from dirty coal to clean wind and solar.
As though by magic, Sanders’s proposals will “dramatically decrease the cost of energy storage” and (why not?) make electricity “virtually free” after 2035 (though, sadly, we would still have to pay for “operations and maintenance costs”). All fossil fuels will be gone by 2030, the renewable energy that takes its place will be “publicly owned,” and — not to worry — the plan “will pay for itself over 15 years.”
Unfortunately, there is no magic wand to make such things happen, as Patrick Pouyanné told me last week. Pouyanné is one of those people whose hatred Sanders might welcome; he is chairman and chief executive of Paris-based Total, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.
I particularly liked this point made by Pouyanné:
Pouyanné said a U.S. ban on fracking — or the jailing of oil executives, for that matter — would have little impact on climate change. Why? Because much of the world’s oil is located in poorer countries that depend desperately on oil exports, and they will gladly make up any shortfall.
“Change will not come from changing the source of supply,” he said. “You have to reduce demand.”
“Which brings us back to the plan, put forward this month by the Climate Leadership Council, that would actually work. Supported by energy companies (including Total) and environmental groups alike, it would impose a steadily rising tax on carbon. That would lead to reduced consumption and increased innovation in alternatives, including battery storage for solar and wind power. To get buy-in from industry, the plan would do away with a lot of regulation — but only so long as emissions were, in fact, going down.
And we’ve lost one of the best math minds on and off the planet. She was recently celebrated in a movie. “Katherine Johnson Dies at 101; Mathematician Broke Barriers at NASA” is the lede for her NYT Obit. Katherine Johnson was part of a small group of African-American women mathematicians who did crucial work at NASA, in 1966. They were featured in “Hidden Numbers” in 2016.
They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them.
Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday at a retirement home in Newport News, Va., calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history-making moonwalk, let it return to Earth.
A single error, she well knew, could have dire consequences for craft and crew. Her impeccable calculations had already helped plot the successful flight of Alan B. Shepard Jr., who became the first American in space when his Mercury spacecraft went aloft in 1961.
The next year, she likewise helped make it possible for John Glenn, in the Mercury vessel Friendship 7, to become the first American to orbit the Earth.
Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson’s 33 years in NASA’s Flight Research Division — the office from which the American space program sprang — and for decades afterward, almost no one knew her name.
Vintage Mardi Gras Costumes
And the Corono Virus looks like it’s spreading. Italy is the latest country dealing with death and illness. This update is from WAPO.
OffBeat Magazine Photographer: Rick Olivier Chief Al Morris
This is bad news for the US Intelligence community. Eli Clifton writes this for Responsible Statecraft: “Trump’s new acting Director of National Intelligence conducted undisclosed work for Hungary’s far-right government”.
An investigation by Responsible Statecraft has found that President Trump’s newly installed acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, knowingly provided public relations services directed at U.S. media on behalf of a project funded by Hungary’s far-right government. Grenell didn’t register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which is a requirement applying to individuals and entities operating inside the U.S. as an “agent” of a “foreign principal.”
Grenell’s appointment as acting Director of National Intelligence, which was announced last week, was met with widespread ridicule and disbelief.
“President Trump selected an unqualified loyalist as his top spy,” said International Institute for Strategic Studies senior fellow Jonathan Stevenson in a New York Times op-ed.
“Mr. Grenell, who currently serves as ambassador to Germany, is manifestly unqualified for the job, even in an acting capacity,” the Washington Post editorial board said. “He has no experience in intelligence or in managing large organizations – like the 17 agencies that will now report to him.”
Craig Engle, Grenell’s attorney, told Responsible Statecraft that Grenell “knew that the Hungarian government was the sponsor” of work he undertook, but claimed that Grenell’s activities did not require him to file under FARA.
According to the Justice Department, activities requiring registration as an “agent” to a “foreign principal” includes engaging in “acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal.”
On Friday, ProPublica reported that Grenell took undisclosed payments for advocacy work on behalf of Vladimir Plahotniuc, a Moldovan politician who was later accused of corruption. Engle told ProPublica that Grenell was not required to file under the FARA because “he was not working at the direction of a foreign power.”
Grenell’s history as a Twitter troll and political operative is well documented, but his work for foreign entities and governments has largely gone unreported.
In 2009, Grenell founded Capitol Media Partners (CMP), a public relations firm with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC.
And then there is this:
If you haven’t watched the Production “The Music Makers of Gennett Records” about small town Richmond, Indiana and all the Roots music and popular music it recorded and pianos it made, you simply must!! It’s produced by the Indianapolis Public TV station. Hint: Louis Armstrong and a lot of the greats from down here figure prominently but it also includes Hopi Ritual music and Hill music. This was essentially one of three early recording studios. Its history is fascinating and you’ll hear a lot of that ragtime and blues in their early incarnations.
During the early 20th century, one tiny recording studio in Richmond, Indiana, had a big impact on the soundtrack of the Jazz Age. The Music Makers of Gennett Records tells the unlikely story of the Gennett Recording Studios, where many of the greatest artists in American jazz, blues, country, and gospel music first recorded.
Discover the unlikely story of the Gennett Recording Studios, where many of the greatest artists in American jazz, blues, country, and gospel music first recorded. The documentary traces the careers of early Gennett musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, and the singing cowboy Gene Autry, among other popular artists of the era, and features several of their rare 1920s recordings.
Produced by WTIU for Indiana Public Media. Click here to learn more about the film.
And, I have officially thrown in with Elizabeth Warren. I wrote her a check and I’m making phone calls for her. I’m really at a loss of what else to do at this point. I’m also slightly less panicked about Joe Biden because what will be a complete disappointment is better than the other two shitfests at the top of their respective nominations now.
If she gets through SC and Super Tuesday I will likely vote for her. I’m pretty sure that Louisiana will not be an important state for any one but I’m just going to do what I can.
So, that’s enough for me today. Back to coughing and escapism.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: February 22, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, California primary, Department of Homeland Security, Donald Trump, FEMA, intelligence community, national security, Nevada Caucuses, Richard Grenell, Russian election interference, Super Tuesday 8 CommentsGood Morning!!
The Nevada Caucuses will wrap up this afternoon, but thousands of people have already voted. Political pundits have already crowned Bernie Sanders the winner, but that may not be a sure thing.
David Byler at The Washington Post: We lack the data to predict Nevada’s outcome. Be wary of pundits’ gut instincts.
Nobody really knows what’s going on in the upcoming Nevada Democratic caucuses. Sure, we have a little bit of polling to go on — the RealClearPolitics average includes three recent polls, and it shows Bernie Sanders leading the pack at 30 percent, with Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Tom Steyer and Amy Klobuchar all clustered between 16 percent and 10 percent of the vote. But it’s hard to nail down the electorate in a caucus state, and Nevada is flush with the sort of young, Hispanic voters that pollsters often have trouble contacting. So all we really know is that Sanders has a lead, but that he’s not invincible.
In a normal election, this lack of concrete information wouldn’t be a problem: Nobody ever died because they didn’t see enough Nevada polling. But primaries aren’t normal elections. The trajectory of the race is often influenced by media-created “expectations” and narratives about “momentum.” And in Nevada, many political pros will be setting those crucially important expectations using gut feelings and groupthink rather than real information. That’s a riskier undertaking for them than they might acknowledge — and for the voters who listen to them.
Much more at the link.
Harry Enten at CNN: Why Nevada could surprise us.
There have been just eight polls released publicly over the last three months. Two of those were internal polls. Only five of those have been taken since the primary season began a few weeks ago, and of those, a grand total of zero meet CNN standards for publication….
Put all together, Sanders is something around a seven in 10 favorite to win in Nevada. That’s based off of the prediction markets and how good the polling in Nevada has been since 2008 (the first year in which Nevada was one of the first four states to vote). Biden and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg are next with somewhere around a one in 10 chance to win. Everybody has less than a one in 10 shot in Nevada.
Sanders clearly has a better shot than anyone else to win, but a seven in 10 shot is not an overwhelming favorite. It means that there’s a decent chance Sanders won’t win.
The lack of confidence we should have in the Nevada outcome is partially because of the lack of polling data, but also because the polling data has not been particularly predictive in the past.Since 2008, Nevada has b een a polling wasteland. Looking at all candidates who polled at 10% or better after undecideds were allocated, Nevada polls taken after the Iowa caucuses have had an average error per candidate of 8 points. The 95% confidence interval for each candidate above 10% is something closer to +/- 20 points. That is, to put it mildly, a huge range.
Read the rest at CNN.
Cat Nap – A Pink Chair by the Window, Lara Meintjes
And we can’t forget that early voting has already been going on in many Super Tuesday states. I’ll be voting early here in Massachusetts next week.
Kelly Mena at CNN: Forget Nevada. Almost 2 million votes have already been cast in Super Tuesday states.
Super Tuesday is still more than a week away, but almost 2 million ballots have already been cast — including in delegate-rich California and Texas.
More than 1.3 million vote-by-mail ballots have been returned in California since February 3, according to county data provided by Sam Mahood, a spokesman for Secretary of State Alex Padilla. That’s out of more than 16 million ballots sent out — a flood that allows the vast majority of the state’s more than 20 million registered voters to cast their ballots before March 3.
“The California presidential primary may be on Super Tuesday, but for millions of Californians, it is really Super February,” Padilla said in a news release earlier this month.
California, with 494 delegates at stake — the most of any single state — has taken on new prominence this year after moving its primary date up in the calendar. Democratic candidates need 1,991 to clinch the nomination.The other big delegate haul up for grabs on Super Tuesday is Texas, with 261 delegates. Almost half a million ballots have already been cast since early and by-mail voting opened on February 18, according to the secretary of state’s office. Texas has more than 16 million registered voters.
Unfortunately, Bernie is also leading in California polls; and he’s so confident of winning Nevada that he has already left to campaign in CA.
Cat on a chair, Diane Hoepner
Two polls released this week in California show Bernie Sanders holding a comfortable lead. The latest poll from The Public Policy Institute of California, released on Tuesday, shows Sanders ahead at 32%, with Joe Biden (14%), Elizabeth Warren (13%), Pete Buttigieg (12%) and Michael Bloomberg (12%) closely knotted in a race for second. Amy Klobuchar stood at 5% in that poll, with Tom Steyer at 3% and Tulsi Gabbard at 1%.
Monmouth University also released a California poll this week. Their poll finds Sanders leading with 24%, Biden at 17%, Bloomberg at 13%, Warren at 10% and Buttigieg at 9%. Behind them, Steyer (5%) and Klobuchar (4%) were about even, with Gabbard at 2%.
Yesterday we learned that Russia is trying to help Bernie win the Democratic nomination. The Washington Post reports:
U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.
President Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill also have been informed about the Russian assistance to the Vermont senator, those people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken. U.S. prosecutors found a Russian effort in 2016 to use social media to boost Sanders’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, part of a broader effort to hurt Clinton, sow dissension in the American electorate and ultimately help elect Donald Trump.
So Bernie has known this for a month and did and said nothing about it. And he’s not happy with the media for reporting the news. He attacked the Post for reporting the story.
He is also furious with MSNBC for some reason. As far as I can tell, he is getting full support from Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Ali Velshi, but I guess he’s angry with some of the guests on the network. Page Six: Bernie Sanders calls out MSNBC over campaign coverage.
Bernie Sanders went ballistic at NBC and MSNBC execs ahead of the Democratic debate this week — jabbing one top TV exec repeatedly in the face with his finger and accusing the networks of offensive negative coverage.
Surging Sanders stormed through the walk-through for the Las Vegas debate, singling out one top producer at the end and aggressively sticking his finger in his face. One shocked witness said, “Bernie marched right up to NBC and MSNBC’s head of creative production and began jabbing his finger right in his face, yelling, ‘Your coverage of my campaign is not fair . . . Your questions tonight are not going to be fair to me.’ ”
Sanders did not hold back as he continued to rant about MSNBC coverage. According to the witness, “The NBC exec told Sanders he would be treated fairly.”
A separate insider confirmed the confrontation, saying Sanders was so steamed he also sparred with MSNBC boss Phil Griffin outside the green room moments before the debate began. “Sen. Sanders stated, ‘Phil, your network has not been playing a fair role in this campaign. I am upset. Is anything going to change? . . . I hope you will do better.’ ”
The Democratic front-runner has been left seeing red over repeated slights against him by liberal MSNBC pundits and hosts, including Chris Matthews, who suggested the senator might cheer socialist executions in Central Park. And Chuck Todd — a moderator of Wednesday’s debate — even quoted a story that described Sanders supporters as a “digital brownshirt brigade.” Todd was also tackled by seething Sanders onstage after the debate: “I do not appreciate your comment about my supporters,” adding the Holocaust reference was “offensive.”
Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir has said that even Fox News has been “more fair than MSNBC . . . which . . . is constantly undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that Bernie is just a “socialist” mirror image of Trump. But Trump is actually president right now, and he’s undermining democracy in every way he and his thugs can think of. His latest efforts include a Stalinist-style purge of anyone who crosses him and a hostile takeover of the Intelligence community.
The Washington Post: Trump embarks on expansive search for disloyalty as administration-wide purge escalates.
President Trump has instructed his White House to identify and force out officials across his administration who are not seen as sufficiently loyal, a post-impeachment escalation that administration officials say reflects a new phase of a campaign of retribution and restructuring ahead of the November election.
Maine Coon Cat Sitting On Chair, by Rosanne Olson.
Johnny McEntee, Trump’s former personal aide who now leads the effort as director of presidential personnel, has begun combing through various agencies with a mandate from the president to oust or sideline political appointees who have not proved their loyalty, according to several administration officials and others familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The push comes in the aftermath of an impeachment process in which several members of Trump’s administration provided damning testimony about his behavior with regard to Ukraine. The stream of officials publicly criticizing Trump’s actions frustrated the president and caused him to fixate on cleaning house after his acquittal this month.
“We want bad people out of our government!” Trump tweeted Feb. 13, kicking off a tumultuous stretch of firings, resignations, controversial appointments and private skirmishes that have since spilled into public view.
The New York Times: Richard Grenell Begins Overhauling Intelligence Office, Prompting Fears of Partisanship.
Richard Grenell’s tenure as the nation’s top intelligence official may be short-lived, but he wasted no time this week starting to shape his team of advisers, ousting his office’s No. 2 official — a longtime intelligence officer — and bringing in an expert on Trump conspiracy theories to help lead the agency, according to officials.
Mr. Grenell has also requested the intelligence behind the classified briefing last week before the House Intelligence Committee where officials told lawmakers that Russia was interfering in November’s presidential election and that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia favored President Trump’s re-election. The briefing later prompted Mr. Trump’s anger as he complained that Democrats would use it against him.
Joseph Maguire, the former acting director of national intelligence, and his deputy, Andrew P. Hallman, resigned on Friday. Mr. Grenell told Mr. Hallman, popular in the office’s Liberty Crossing headquarters, that his service was no longer needed, according to two officials. Mr. Hallman, who has worked in the office or at the C.I.A. for three decades, expressed confidence in his colleagues in a statement but also referred to the “uncertainties that come with change.”
The ouster of Mr. Hallman and exit of Mr. Maguire, who also oversaw the National Counterterrorism Center, allowed Mr. Grenell to install his own leadership team.
Much more at the WaPo link.
Finally, here’s a deep dive into Trump’s attack on our National Security by Garrett Graff at Wired: How Trump Hollowed Out US National Security.
While vacancies and acting officials have become commonplace in this administration, the moves by President Donald Trump this week represent a troubling and potentially profound new danger to the country. There will soon be no Senate-confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, director of national intelligence, principal deputy director of national intelligence, homeland security secretary, deputy homeland security secretary, nor leaders of any of the three main border security and immigration agencies. Across the government, nearly 100,000 federal law enforcement agents, officers, and personnel are working today without permanent agency leaders, from Customs and Border Protection and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
All the posts, and many more top security jobs, are unfilled or staffed with leaders who have not been confirmed by the Senate. Trump has done an end-around, installing loyalists without subjecting them to legally mandated vetting and approval by Congress.
Trump’s surprise ouster of Maguire, who took over as acting director of national intelligence last summer, came apparently in a tantrum over a congressional briefing that outlined how Russia is already trying to interfere with the 2020 election and help reelect Trump.
But understanding the true cost of Maguire’s firing requires understanding how the role first came to be. The director of national intelligence position was created after 9/11 specifically to coordinate the work of the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies and help “connect the dots” on disparate data and threats, work that wasn’t done before September 11, 2001. DNI is an immensely challenging job that includes serving legally as the president’s top intelligence adviser, and traditionally involves giving the president’s daily briefing on potential threats.
Graff also address Trump’s destruction of the Department of Homeland Security–including FEMA. I hope you’ll read the whole article.
Have a great weekend, Sky Dancers! As always, this is an open thread.
Thursday Reads: Democratic Debate, Roger Stone Sentencing, and Other News
Posted: February 20, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 34 CommentsGood Morning!!
I ended up watching the debate last night, and I have to admit it was entertaining. I’m not sure how much it accomplished for the candidates. Elizabeth Warren opened with a vicious smackdown of Mike Bloomberg, and he never really recovered as she continued the beatdown throughout the two-hour debate. I actually started to warm up to her for the first time. There’s no doubt she clearly dominated last night. Here’s the full transcript at NBC News.
Unfortunately for Warren, her efforts will likely help Biden the most. There are many more moderate voters than those who support Sanders and Warren. If those voters consolidate around a candidate, it might be possible to stop Bernie, but it would be a moderate, not Warren.
What Warren needed to do was attack Bernie Sanders; and, although she got in a couple of jabs, she didn’t really do enough. I was absolutely stunned when she went on a long rant about the dumping of toxic chemicals in poor areas without mentioning Sanders’ role in doing just that. She did criticize his health care plan, calling it a “good start.” She also tore down all the other candidates’ plans pretty effectively. She also criticized Bernie’s mean bro supporters.
Bloomberg almost gave Sanders another heart attack when he called him out for being a millionaire with three houses. Warning: there’s a lot of screaming in this video.
Biden also had a good debate. If he had done as well in the previous debates, I don’t think he would be doing as poorly as he is now.
Finally, Klobuchar and Buttigieg mostly attacked each other.
Moving on from the debate, Roger Stone’s sentencing hearing is this morning. Here’s what I’ve seen on Twitter so far.
Click here to read a long thread on the hearing by Dan Friedman.
It looks like Judge Jackson is considering a longer sentence than Billy Barr would like.
Associated Press: Trump ally Roger Stone to be sentenced as case roils DOJ.
Roger Stone, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, faces sentencing Thursday on his convictions for witness tampering and lying to Congress.
The action in federal court comes amid Trump’s unrelenting defense of his longtime confidant that has led to a mini-revolt inside the Justice Department and allegations the president has interfered in the case.
Trump took to Twitter to denounce as a “miscarriage of justice” the initial recommendation by Justice Department prosecutors that Stone receive at least seven years in prison. Attorney General William Barr then backed off that recommendation, prompting four prosecutors to quit Stone’s case.
I’ll move on to other news,, while the hearing continues.
Yahoo News: Rohrabacher confirms he offered Trump pardon to Assange for proof Russia didn’t hack DNC email.
Former California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirmed in a new interview that during a three-hour meeting at the Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, he told Julian Assange he would get President Trump to give him a pardon if he turned over information proving the Russians had not been the source of internal Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks.
In a phone interview with Yahoo News, Rohrabacher said his goal during the meeting was to find proof for a widely debunked conspiracy theory: that WikiLeaks’ real source for the DNC emails was not Russian intelligence agents, as U.S. officials have since concluded, but former DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered on the streets of Washington in July 2016 in what police believe was a botched robbery.
A lawyer for Assange in London on Wednesday cited the pardon offer from Rohrabacher during a court hearing on the U.S. government’s request to extradite the WikiLeaks founder.
Rohrabacher said that not only did talk of a Trump pardon take place during his meeting, but he also followed up by calling then White House chief of staff John Kelly to discuss the proposal. He did not, however, ever speak to Trump about it, he said.
“I spoke to Julian Assange and told him if he would provide evidence about who gave WikiLeaks the emails I would petition the president to give him a pardon,” Rohrabacher said. “He knew I could get to the president.”
When he spoke to Kelly, the then chief of staff was “courteous” but made no commitment that he would even raise the matter directly with the president.
I think we’ll eventually learn that Trump did initiate this quid pro quo. It fits the pattern.
Another one of Trump’s “best people” has been appointed acting ODNI, even though he’s completely unqualified. The Washington Post: Trump to name Richard Grenell, U.S. ambassador to Germany, as acting head of intelligence.
Richard Grenell
Grenell would be the first openly gay member of the Trump Cabinet. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump was being pushed by some in the intelligence community to nominate the current acting intelligence director, Joseph Maguire, to take the job permanently, but the president has been fixated on appointing people he believes are loyal to him…
Politico: Trump allies target Mueller team, one by one.
For months, a loose network of pro-Trump commentators and outside agitators has been urging the president to purge his administration of anyone and everyone involved in the Russia probe.
They’ve celebrated as many of the FBI and Justice Department officials involved in the investigation have left government. And now, with an angry and newly liberated President Donald Trump seeking retribution in the wake of his impeachment acquittal, they’re pressing him to finish the job.
Trump’s allies have long called for a “cleaning out” of DOJ and FBI, aimed at career officials perceived as hostile to the president. Several of Trump’s top targets have been forced out, including former FBI Director James Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, and former FBI agent Peter Strzok, all of whom worked on the Russia probe.
Read the rest at Politico.
Bloomberg: White House Admits That Trump Trade Stance Did Depress Economy.
The White House acknowledged what many economists considered obvious through much of last year: President Donald Trump’s trade stance depressed economic growth and business investment.
“Uncertainty generated by trade negotiations dampened investment,” Trump chief economist Tomas Philipson told reporters in a briefing on the annual Economic Report of the President released on Thursday.
The admission contrasted with Trump’s repeated assertions that his tariff tactics hadn’t hurt the economy while swelling the government’s tax coffers.
Even so, the deleterious effect of trade uncertainty got barely a mention in a 435-page economic report that frequently extolled the president’s programs and argued that they’ve led to a “great expansion” that is benefiting a broader swathe of Americans.
Philipson, who is acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, declined to say how much of an effect trade uncertainty has had.
Finally, George Conway has an op-ed at The Washington Post on Trump’s pardon spree: Trump’s ‘King Kong’ nickname has come into full fruition.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: February 18, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg 13 Comments
Good Morning!!
Just shoot me now. Could we really end up with a general election choice of Sanders vs. Trump? Please tell me this isn’t really happening. The latest NPR/PBS national poll came out this morning.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has opened up a double-digit lead in the Democratic nominating contest, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
Sanders has 31% support nationally, up 9 points since December, the last time the poll asked about Democratic voters’ preferences.
His next closest contender has 19%. But that second-place rival is former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Many Americans have become familiar with Bloomberg lately in this race because of his ubiquitous TV ads. But now get ready to see him on the debate stage for the first time Wednesday. With this poll, Bloomberg has qualified for the Nevada debate, despite not being on the ballot there for Saturday’s caucuses.
You read that right. Joe Biden is now in third place, but he’s still running the strongest against Trump.
Third among Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents is former Vice President Joe Biden with 15%, down 9 points since December.
The debate Wednesday, as well as Biden’s performance in Nevada Saturday and South Carolina a week later, are critical to whether the former vice president has a real chance at the nomination after disappointing fourth- and fifth-place showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively….
Following Biden is Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 12%, also down from December — by 5 percentage points — after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Next is Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 9%. She’s up from 4% in December after surprisingly good finishes in the first two contests, and she has leaped ahead of Pete Buttigieg in this national survey.
The former South Bend, Ind., mayor is at just 8%, down from 13% in December, not a good sign for the candidate after very solid finishes in the first two contests [in Iowa and New Hampshire].
Politico reports: Major Latino group backs Sanders on eve of Nevada caucus.
A prominent national Latino group is endorsing Bernie Sanders four days ahead of the caucuses in Nevada, a state with a significant Hispanic electorate.
Mijente, a grass-roots organization that mobilizes Latinx and Chicanx voters, decided to make its first-ever presidential endorsement in response to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies targeting Latinos. The endorsement adds to the growing collection of progressive groups coalescing around the Vermont senator, after earlier expectations they would be divided between him and Elizabeth Warren.
The organization will use its reach on social media, its roughly 1,000 dues-paying members and more than 300,000-person email list to mobilize Latinos to vote and hit the pavement for Sanders in Nevada and other states.
Marisa Franco, director and cofounder of Mijente, said the group’s members picked Sanders after a lengthy process that included sit-downs with multiple candidates. In January, its members voted on four options: endorsing Sanders, Warren, both of them, or no endorsement at all. In the end, 70 percent of its members voted to endorse Sanders.
Of course the powerful Culinary Workers Union in Nevada strongly opposes Sanders’ “Medicare for all” policy. And there’s this Telemundo poll:
Early voting is going on this week in Nevada and will continue until the caucus on Saturday.
Folks, we are in deep deep trouble. We can only hope that someone other than Bernie wins in South Carolina. Unfortunately, that someone could be Bloomberg if Black voters give up on Biden. This entire primary has been a disaster. Tom Perez should resign and slink off into the sunset.
The debate is tomorrow night, so Sanders and Bloomberg will have an opportunity to attack each other in person. I think I’ll skip watching it and just read about it on Thursday.
To give you a sense of how Trump would run against Bernie Sanders, read this piece by Never Trumper Tom Nichols in USA Today: Sanders was ridiculously naive about the Soviet Union. The Trump ads write themselves.
As a Soviet expert and a politically homeless Never Trump voter, I am certain of three things when it comes to Bernie and the Soviets. First, his comments about the USSR show that his judgment is terrible. Second, he will be unable to wave away his comments merely by appending “democratic” to his preferred version of Soviet ideology.
And third, the Republicans will weaponize his remarks, and this will likely cost him the election. Indeed, it would be professional malpractice if Trump’s campaign people passed up this chance. Were I still a Republican and hoping for a GOP win, I could write those ads myself.
…Sanders visited Yaroslavl and other cities — another coincidence, since that is a city I’ve visited as well — in 1988, when the Cold War was nearly over. By that point, Mikhail Gorbachev had been in power for three years and had welcomed Ronald Reagan to Moscow after they both had signed a landmark nuclear arms treaty.
Still, Sanders came back sounding like he had been bamboozled, like so many other credulous Westerners who visited the USSR and took what they were shown by their hosts at face value. Some of the juicier quotes, like the wince-inducing praise of Soviet youth organizations, are already floating around on social media.
Sanders was impressed with the Soviet Union’s government health care program. Nichols was actually part of a group that investigated it.
What we saw was grisly. Patients draining their wounds into open jars of pus. Post-operative infections worse than the problem that required surgery. Reusable metal hypodermics, dirty bedclothes, untended patients wandering about dimly lit hallways.
I saw an operating theater with windows — to the outside. As I looked at the trees and grass while standing next to the surgical table, I asked: “Do you open these? Ever?” When it gets hot, the Soviet doctors replied, nodding.
The American doctor was polite and professional, but at one point he leaned over to me and whispered that this was where American medicine was … in 1890.
The point here isn’t that Sanders should have known more about medicine. Rather, he should have known more about the Soviet Union. Maybe the Soviet health care system was behind by a decade in the best Kremlin hospitals. In the rest of the country, it was behind by a full century.
Of course the details are irrelevant. The Trump gang can just show all the videos of Sanders visiting and praising the Soviet Union.
No matter who wins the Democratic nomination, Trump will cheat again. Former Obama speechwriter Sarada Peri writes in the Atlantic: Trump Is Going to Cheat. How should Democrats fight against a president who has no moral or legal compass?
Democratic primary voters care deeply about electability. What most want is simple: a candidate who can beat President Donald Trump in November. So they worry about whether former Vice President Joe Biden will inspire young people, and about whether Senator Bernie Sanders will scare away old people. They debate whether a political revolution is necessary to energize the base, or whether the revolution will dissuade independents. Will the historic candidacy of a woman or a gay man take off or implode?
But these concerns about policy and broad cultural appeal are secondary to the true “electability” crisis facing whichever Democrat wins the nomination: He or she will need to run against a president seemingly prepared, and empowered, to lie and cheat his way to reelection….
If past is prologue, Trump will say absolutely anything necessary to attract and maintain support, including patent untruths. His pathological lying has been well documented and yet never ceases to stun….
How can Democrats run against a candidate who will simply deny his unpopular positions and make up nonexistent accomplishments? No amount of fact-checking can counter his constant stream of mendacity, which has become white noise in our political culture.
Peri enumerates all the ways Trump will cheat, and he will probably find others. I kept reading to learn her recommendations for how to deal with this, and I didn’t find any. Here’s her concluding paragraph:
Electability, ultimately, cannot rest on the shoulders of whomever the party nominates, talented though that person may be. Electability does not depend, simply, on the nominee’s ability to earn the votes of a wide array of Americans in a few battleground states. It depends on all Americans’ willingness to demand an election that is, indeed, free and fair.
Good luck with that.
I’m sorry to sound so discouraged but all we need is another narcissistic screamer who has no clue how to accomplish anything through legislation. Would Bloomberg be better? I don’t know. I can’t stand to think about it anymore today.
Stories to check out, links only:
USA Today: Federal judges’ association calls emergency meeting after DOJ intervenes in case of Trump ally Roger Stone.
The Washington Post: Jeff Bezos commits $10 billion to fight climate change.
Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes at The Atlantic: Imagine If a Democrat Behaved Like Bill Barr. What would the attorney general say were a future administration to follow his lead?
Rebecca Traister at New York Magazine: The Immoderate Susan Collins: After a long career voting across the aisle, why did the Maine senator gamble her legacy on Trump?
AP: Homeland Security waives contracting laws for border wall.
Raw Story: Trump’s grab for border wall funds could backfire spectacularly in a key swing state.
Financial Times letter to the editor: George Soros: Remove Zuckerberg and Sandberg from their posts.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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