Category: Politics

Some posts from my Facebook friends, many of whom have coastal elite jobs (e.g., university professor), regarding Michael Avenatti:

And, in case you missed it, Avenatti has released a sworn declaration from an eyewitness who knows both Dr. Blasey Ford, Julie Swetnick and Brett Kavanaugh, ready to testify to the sordid behavior Kavanaugh engaged in.

It’s good that the GOP left time this week for the can of worms to crack open. Kavanaugh’s freshman year roommate at Yale believes her (Debbie Ramirez). Meanwhile, Kavanaugh has taken to campaigning on Fox News (as one does?). Avenatti has a fourth victim. Dr. Ford is not alone: her courage allowed others to come forward. And since probabilities multiply, the chances of all of them being actors in a Democratic plot to torpedo this nominee are roughly zero.

Are Trump and his cronies sleazy thugs? Yep. Would Avenatti, a canny lawyer, make a baseless allegation? Not a chance.

I’m watching history being made … Not only did we all—most of us—hear the audio of a sobbing child who had been separated from her parents and relatives. Tonight, according to the tough-talking attorney, Michael Avenatti, I heard that some of those kids and parents were told that the kid was just going to be taken for a bath. The parent told her child it would be all right. Then the child didn’t see her parent again. Let’s hope that’s fake news. Resist!

Avenatti was not idly boasting when he said Trump would not serve out his term.

Related:

• “Judge Kavanaugh has gone from generic prep school douche to criminal mastermind in two weeks?” (note: I opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination and confirmation because he bragged about failing to hire clerks in a gender-neutral manner; he now has other Supreme Court justices speaking in glowing terms about gender discrimination)

“The Notorious Michael R. Bloomberg: His racist stop-and-frisk policy as New York mayor can’t be forgotten.” (NYT):

“Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O.,” Bloomberg said. “You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city.”

That could be considered a sexist (“male”) or ageist (“16-25”) statement just as easily as “racist” (“minorities”; but actually a “minority” race in NYC was white at the time).

CommonDreams:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that Democratic presidential candidate and businessman Michael Bloomberg is “just a billionaire trying to cover up authoritarian and racist policy” if he does not commit to providing relief to those ensnared by the racist stop and frisk policy he supported as mayor of New York City.

Why isn’t Mr. Bloomberg’s (“Mini Mike’s”?) identification of a gender ID and age category objectionable to anyone?

[Loosely related: My own definition of “racist”: someone who disagrees with me.]

How is my favorite Democratic Presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, doing? (previous post) Will he win the Iowa caucuses tonight or will it be one of the (barely) living fossils who get more press coverage?

In Bermuda, a comedian of color said “Pete Buttigieg is the rich white guy with one black friend”. I still think that he is by far the most soothing candidate and therefore ought to win.

How do my neighbors here in Boston feel? They’d like to “move on,” but still display bumper stickers from the 2016 election:

They don’t want anyone to think that they’re Republican:

And it turns out to be all about love:

(Perhaps a sign of the American Zeitgeist, but the driver who wants to communicate a message of “love” has a bumper sticker featuring former divorce plaintiff Elizabeth Warren. (see “Americans separating children and parents at the border and within”))

A BBC interview with the Nobel Peace Laureate, “Barack Obama: Women are better leaders than men”:

If women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes, former US President Barack Obama has said.

Speaking in Singapore, he said women aren’t perfect, but are “indisputably better” than men.

He said most of the problems in the world came from old people, mostly men, holding onto positions of power.

In other words, Here’s looking at you, Joe and Bernie!

[Also note that Obama gives a Presidential imprimatur to discredited gender binarism.]

“Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you’re better than us [men].

“I’m absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything… living standards and outcomes.”

When asked if he would ever consider going back into political leadership, he said he believed in leaders stepping aside when the time came.

“If you look at the world and look at the problems it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way,” he said.

But what stops Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders from identifying as young women? Problem solved!

Related:

• Turns out the Nobel Peace Laureate believes additional wars are one way to “see a significant improvement across the board”: “Don’t mess with a queen! Female rulers over the past 500 years have waged war more often than kings”
• Harvard Business Review says that Obama is right: “Women Score Higher Than Men in Most Leadership Skills” (but company owners are seldom smart enough to hire those who identify as “women” as CEOs and therefore leave $trillions in profit on the table)
• Harvard Magazine, though, says that, despite their inherent superiority, people identifying as “women” may need to work more than 35 hours per week in order to get paid the big $$ per hour: “Reassessing the Gender Wage Gap”

“The Impeachment Process Is Barely Functioning” (nytimes) is by Elizabeth Drew, “a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate” (i.e., she is not in what the French would call “her first youth”).

When the process of impeachment drove President Richard Nixon from office in 1974, there was widespread celebration that “the system worked.” But the 1974 impeachment process may turn out to have been unique, a model for how it should work that has yet to be replicated — and perhaps never will be.

Today, there’s a president who feels free to completely stonewall an impeachment inquiry. Even Nixon did not deem the entire process illegitimate. Yes, he tried to hold back damning recordings of Oval Office conversations, but when he was overruled by the Supreme Court he turned the tapes over to Congress. He also held back some documents from the House Judiciary Committee — an act that formed the basis of an article of impeachment against him. But he allowed his aides to appear before the Senate Watergate Committee, helping to seal his own doom.

In other words, even impeachments were better in the good old days!

(Alternative formulation of the article: A member of the coastal elite does not understand why a non-member would vote differently than she votes.)

Separately, what about the members of the Senate who are themselves running for President in 2020? Do they vote to remove Trump from office because they think the Republicans, in a country of 330 million, can’t find anyone more appealing to the non-elites whose voting rights they forgot to take away? Or do they vote to keep the hated authoritarian in office, for fear that Nikki Haley shows up to ruin their fun from 2021 through 2029?

(Democrats says that Republicans are misogynist, which is why they wouldn’t vote for the obviously superior Hillary Clinton, but have they ever found a Republican who says “I think I prefer Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to Nikki Haley”?)