JustOneMinute

Down In Venezuela

There may or may not be an uprising or coup taking place in Venezuela. CNN has been taken off the air down there. The NY Times has coverage.

I Don't Like Mondays

Another synagogue shooting. Reality is kind of beat right now. I'd rather noodle over The Avengers, or Game of Thrones, or whether the Good Celtics can continue to contain the Freak, or the success of the Yankee Triple-A lineup - escapism, basically.

Saturday Morning

Away we go.

If You Lack For Worries

Bret Stephens argues we are overspending on a military preparing to fight the last war. He's probably right and we can only hope the future does not prove it.

Left unmentioned - the next Democratic Presidential nominee will have no trouble finding places to cut the defense budget. Sensible investments in our defense? There is a bipartisan blind spot when it comes to reform and re-direction:

So what stops it? The answer is what Brose’s old boss, the late John McCain, called the military-industrial-congressional complex.

“Military pilots and ship drivers are no more eager to lose their jobs to intelligent machines than factory workers are,” Brose writes. “Defense companies that make billions selling traditional systems are as welcoming of disruptions to their business model as the taxi cab industry has been of Uber and Lyft. And as all this resistance inevitably translates into disgruntled constituents, members of Congress will have enormous incentives to stymie change.”

When the top brass rose through the ranks aspiring to lead a carrier fleet it is harder to find someone pounding the table for unmanned drones. OK, that is an example of a weapon that has literally and figuratively taken off, but still - unmanned boats and subs ought to be off the drawing boards by now.

 

Lots Of News

So much news, so little time...

Elizabeth Warren's Latest Worst Idea Yet

What America needs to do to spark the economy and restore social justice is subsidize its college graduates and the schools that churned them out. Or so says Elizabeth Warren, who wants to spend $640 billion on debt relief for folks who owe money on student loans, and another $585 billion on free college for all (or mostly free for most) going forward. All paid for by her proposed (and Constitutionally dubious) "wealth tax".

What's to like? Well, as a random wealth redistribution scheme this is impressive. Folks who wrote their final loan payment a year or two ago should not have been so hasty. People who took summer jobs instead of borrowing? They shoulda gone to the beach!

Frankly, fine-tuning this aspect of the "Make It Rain" cash toss would not be difficult: marshal loan and tax records going back ten years ad compensate everyone, including those who sacrificed previously in order to pay their voluntarily undertaken debt.

But there are thoughtful progressives who wonder whether we can find even better uses for the wealth tax jackpot then subsidizing college grads. Here is Mayor Pete in the NY Times:

The idea has been dismissed by some more moderate candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president, like Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.

“Americans who have a college degree earn more than Americans who don’t,” Mr. Buttigieg said while addressing college students in Boston. “As a progressive, I have a hard time getting my head around the idea of a majority who earn less because they didn’t go to college subsidizing a minority who earn more because they did.”

The NY Times found some "conservative and libertarian" think tanks (Manhattan Institute and Cato) making similar points. They missed the left-leaning Urban Institute, as presented by CBNC and on Twitter:

While experts who study student loan debt say widespread forgiveness would boost the economy, some question whether it is the most effective way to stimulate the economy — or the best method to ease the strain on the borrowers who need relief most. Backlash could even come from the political left, as blanket debt relief is expected to benefit people with higher incomes who borrowed more to get advanced degrees.

“I think you also are going to see some concerns from the left that if you are wiping out all the debt, that that would be a pretty regressive thing to do,” said Matthew Chingos, the vice president of education data and policy at the Urban Institute. “And once you look at the numbers, this looks like the Trump tax cuts in terms of who it benefits. So it’s a little hard to be out there saying, well, ‘I’m against tax cuts for the wealthy, but at the same time I want to give this big handout to the wealthy.’”

There are undoubtedly issues with the student debt market. Do let me add - if borrowers take seriously the idea of debt forgiveness in a year or two, they are likely to increase the delinquency rate today. And a particular problem with student debt is experienced by those who borrowed but never completed a degree program. They are not earning the premium associated with a college degree, so repayment is a problem, so a special look at that makes sense.

However, an earnest progressive might imagine other uses for the $640 billion Sen. Warren is targeting for (mostly) college grads. What could be done with $64 billion a year for ten years, a conventional CBO horizon? Well the current budget for the Department of Education is $68 billion - why not double it? Putting more money into K-12 public education might be a much better investment in social justice. 

We spent $668 billion annually (2014-15, Federal, state ad local) on public K-12 education. An extra $64 billion would be a 9.5% increase. New York City has roughly 1 million (2%) of the nation's 50 million public school students. Give them 2% of $64 billion and they can increase their annual spending by $1.3 billion on a budget of $24 billion. Mayor deBlasio could probably find uses for the money. Or we could give some of the money to AOC, who used her economics degree to score a job as a bartender and is bemoaning her $25,000 debt burden. Well, her new income will partially disqualify her, but only partially.

Well. Moving away from education, maybe progressives could identify unmet, unfunded opportunities with worker retraining, opioid treatment centers, or other programs that might benefit the working- and under-classes, rather than college grads, professors and administrators. OTOH, if Elizabeth Warren hopes to muster an army of student volunteers and see a flurry of "Great idea" endorsement from leading academics, she is on the right path.

Unexpected Candor In The New York Times

Sen. Kamala Harris has a pen and a phone and she's not afraid to shriek into it! The NY Times explains that she won't pin her hopes for gun control on Congress and will rely on executive orders. They include this surprisingly candid assessment (my mockery):

The executive actions would also include more strident regulation of gun manufacturers...

SpelChechnyan is an uncertain ally. Although I guess I should roll the videotape before concluding this was a mistake.

TRUST BUT VERIFY: I actually will be happier when the Times correct this, but meanwhile...

Send Better Watchdogs

Appearing on Meet The Press, Rep. Jerry Nadler explained he wants Don Trump Jr. indicted. However, he seems to be inventing facts:

What [Mueller] couldn't prove, was that there was -- beyond a reasonable doubt, was that there was a criminal conspiracy, although, in the one case, I do not understand why he didn't charge Don Jr., and others in that famous meetings with criminal conspiracy. Because they were -- he said that he didn't charge them because you couldn't prove that they willfully intended to commit a crime. Well, you don't have to prove that. All you have to prove for conspiracy, is that they entered into a meeting of the minds to do something wrong and had one overt act. They entered into a meeting of the minds to attend a meeting, to get stolen material on Hillary. They went to the meeting. That's conspiracy, right there.

A "meeting to get stolen material on Hillary"? Not according to the email chain, the original NY Times story, or anything I noticed in the Mueller report. Trump Jr. was offered "official documents" held by a Russian prosecutor.

From the story:

The precise nature of the promised damaging information about Mrs. Clinton is unclear, and there is no evidence to suggest that it was related to Russian-government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.

...

The initial email outreach came from Rob Goldstone, a British-born former tabloid reporter and entertainment publicist who first met the future president when the Trump Organization was trying to do business in Russia.

...

“Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” Mr. Goldstone wrote in the email. “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”

He added, “What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?”

There is no such title as crown prosecutor in Russia — the Crown Prosecution Service is a British term — but the equivalent in Russia is the prosecutor general of Russia.

Hmm. "Official documents" held by a state prosecutor would be an odd way to describe hacked emails.

So if the meeting was not an attempt to haggle over stolen goods, just what criminal conspiracy charge does Rep. Nadler imagine? 

I have no idea either. Great follow-ups from Chuck Todd, btw, who lets this seemingly obvious point slide.

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

Giuliani: "There's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians".

Weird. I did not expect to see Rudy riding to Hillary's defense.

Happy Easter

The traditional Easter Sunday open thread. I don't think reading the news will improve my mood so I may boycott reality (or the Times version of it) for a few hours.

As I Trudge Through The Mueller Report...

As I page through the Mueller report I cannot shake an alternative script: The DNC learns they've been hacked, probably by the Russians. Embarrassment looms! Unless... what if, suggests some bright light at Democratic or Hillary headquarters, we can link the Russian hackers to the Trump campaign? Then the emails and documents (eg, Hillary's Goldman Sachs speech) become toxic, Trump is a Russian stooge and the media will cover for us!

This sets the Maltese Phantom in motion against George Papadopoulos, and away we go. Obviously, the plan was not a complete success, even though (IIRC) the Democrats did manage to get leaks of the investigation into the media before the election.

That sort of hypothetical scheming answers one of the glaring questions of the whole story - why not just ask Team Trump WTF was going on? George P had not been with the Trump campaign long enough for his coffee to get cold and was away from the action in London. Who in their right mind could have thought that the Trump inner circle would protect him rather than drop him? Or, if they did not drop him, that would be revealing.

Obviously we (and Andrew McCarthy) have the same questions about Carter Page, who had previously cooperated with the FBI - why not just ask?

Well. As a straw in the wind, the NY Times splashes some ink today on the likelihood of renewed scrutiny of the Steele dossier and the FISA warrant is spawned.

Easter Weekend

It's Easter Weekend so let me take a break from my customary media-bashing and instead segue to Easter-related media-bashing.

Kathleen Parker still wears the crown for this "Christ has died, Christ has... hmm, my latte is cold" moment, from back in the days when Ted Cruz was hoping to win Iowa (he did!):

One observation. I don’t know… this seems to have slipped through the cracks a little bit but Ted Cruz said something that I found rather astonishing. He said, you know, “It’s time for the body of Christ to rise up and support me.” I don’t know anyone who takes their religion seriously who would think that Jesus should rise from the grave and resurrect himself to serve Ted Cruz. I know so many people who were offended by that comment.

Ms. Parker later went with a "JK!" defense. Yeahk yeah - they laughed when she said she was going to try her hand at television comedy, but they're not laughing now.

That pleasant flashback was inspired by recent Times coverage of the disaster at Notre Dame, here mocked by Alex Griswold of the Free Beacon:

A Priest Saved ‘The Body of Christ’ From Notre Dame, and NY Times Thought He Meant a Statue

Sweet, uhh, jiminy.

I AM WEAK, I AM FALLEN... A better man would resist but since we're talking resurrection let me flash forward to Memorial Day and backward to happier times.

 

Bracing For Mueller

Keep your reading glasses handy! The 400 page Mueller report is due at, presumably with the 9:30 AM (Eastern) press conference.

The only certainty: in those 400 pages there will be material that inspires the "Impeach Now!" crowd as well as material that enrages those who want the senior FBI and DoJ leadership who instigated and this investigation locked up.

The first casualty of 24/7 media (and Twitter) is context.

Peter Pan For President

The WaPo puzzles over the popularity of Mayor Pete, now third in polling behind Biden and Sanders; Ann Althouse summarizes.

My take: Democrats always pine for the next JFK. They want a candidate who is young, charismatic, smart, and unburdened by a legacy of policy decisions that might antagonize one faction or another. The attractive blank slate! Past players in this role include Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, John Edwards, and of course Barack Obama. (John Kerry sort of fits the template as well. As the war hero who turned war against the war and did nothing thereafter, Kerry induced a 60's flashback that made everyone else feel young again, so he had that going for him.)

What I find more interesting is whether Mayor Pete and Beto can survive each other's presence in the same lane.

Just Awful In Paris

Notre Dame burns.

On the life/lemonade spectrum, no one was hurt and this will give France, and much of the world, an opportunity to unite for a worthy cause. I don't know how much expertise the US can contribute but we will surely pitch in.

Furthermore:

A French firefighter official told reporters the main structure of the cathedral has been saved and the two iconic main towers are intact and have been saved as well.

Here's hoping this was just a dreadful construction accident and not terrorist-inspired. There does seem to be a slight possibility that some wave of attacks on Catholic churches in France has been underway, although evidence free speculation is inappropriate.

Two Weeks Too Late

The NY Times celebrates Tax Appreciation Day with one of their dumber guest pieces ever.

Everyone’s Income Taxes Should Be Public

Disclosure of tax payments would make it easier to hold politicians accountable. It also would help to reduce fraud and economic inequality.

Say what? The NSA is hoovering up my cell phone metadata in an attempt to track terrorists and the Time freaks out, but publish everyone's tax returns? Great idea!

Social scientists would love this, and maybe we would move closer to Equal Pay For Equal Work if people knew each other's paychecks.

But as to just what he is proposing, it's hard to say. Early on, its about Trump:

Almost a century later, it’s time to revisit the merits of universal public disclosure. Democrats in Congress are fighting to obtain President Trump’s tax returns under a separate 1924 law, written in response to related concerns about public corruption. That issue could be resolved, at least in part, if Congress embraced the broader case for publishing everyone’s tax bill.

Now as then, disclosure could help to ensure that people pay a fair share of taxes.

A bit later, we are following the property tax model, which is a ridiculous analogy (sales and liens are publicly recorded, unlike my salary, and low-ball appraisals for a mayor's friends would stick out like a sore thumb, but still:

Calling for more disclosure may seem discordant at a time of growing concern about privacy. But income taxation is an act of government, not an aspect of private life. Property tax records provide a reasonable model. Local governments disclose the name of the property owner, the value of the property and the amount of taxes owed and paid. The same information should be available for income taxes — nothing more is necessary.

Well, with Medicare and soon enough, Medicare For All, my use of medical services is very much a matter of public interest. I don't foresee a groundswell to put that on the web.

But if the suggestion is to include a top-line income figure and a bottom-line tax liability, how will that help my colleagues gauge my salary relative to theirs? What if my also spouse works? What if I have investment income? Or deductions for medical care I'd rather not publicize?

If he is calling for detailed disclosure researchers will be grateful but no one will agree. If it is cursury summary data, it won't mean anything. Sounds like another well-thought through progressive proposal induced by Trump Derangement Syndrome. Should have been run on April 1.

NO DEAD HORSE LEFT UNBEATEN: The Earnest Author forgot to include his own tax info with this op-ed piece, and he fails to note that the NY Times could disclose many more salaries of their top reporters and staff than they do. Despite mentioning the Scandinavian practice he also omits this sort of detail:

“It is obvious that openness is significant,” said Stein Reegard, chief economist of the Norwegian Confederation of Trades Unions. “At least for a better-informed public debate about the different levels of wages in society, whether it’s a question of leaders’ wages or equal pay.”

But the evidence is unclear and OECD economist Herwig Immervoll said there was no obvious correlation between income transparency and pay disparities. A 2015 Eurostat report showed a gender pay gap of around 15 percent in Sweden and nearly 19 percent in Finland, compared to an EU average of just over 16 percent.

Yeah, well, whatever.

Breakfast At Augusta

The non-traditional Sunday morning at the Masters. A ghastly weather forecast for Sunday afternoon moved up the schedule.

Since we were rooting for the Auburn Tigers last weekend we have to get behind Tiger again.

Almost Like Journalism

The Times reports on decisions at the DoJ to decline to defend two laws. One is the Affordable Care Act. The other, which apparently has experts divided, involves a technical dispute (what makes this a Federal and not state-level offense? See BACKGROUND below.) about a 1996 ban on female genital mutilation (hard to feel the political wind blowing from the right in favor of overturning that ban, inspired by immigrant behavior, but here we are...)

Sparking my ire is this ahistorical diatribe, my emphasis:

While there are important differences between the two cases — Republicans have attacked the Affordable Care Act in the courts for years, while legal experts are debating whether the circumcision law is defensible — critics were troubled by what they fear is an emerging view inside the Justice Department that it is up to the Trump administration, not members of Congress, to decide whether a law has merit and should be enforced.

“Imagine a world where an administration of one party passes a law and then a different president effectively invalidates it by having the Justice Department refuse to defend it in court,” said Joshua Geltzer, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law School.

“You want elected lawmakers to draft laws, not lawyers at the Justice Department,” Mr. Geltzer said.

Wow, to imagine that I'd have to imagine a President explaining he can't act until Congress changes the current law and then imagine that same President reversing himself after the legislative effort stalls and unilaterally instructing the DoJ to simply exercise its prosecutorial discretion and decline to enforce the law. Unthinkable!

Or if that memory is too raw, what about that other Clinton legacy project, the Defense of Marriage Act? The DoJ cut that loose as well in response to a shift in the political winds, that time from the left.

For the Times to pretend even for a second that this is a new problem under Trump is absurd.

BACKGROUND on female genital mutilation issue:

In drafting that law, Congress relied on its power to regulate interstate commerce. Lawmakers had increasingly used that authority to overcome the fact that they cannot simply make local crimes federal matters, no matter how evil, unless they violate some federal power that Congress wields.

“For this to work, Congress has to show that there is some connection between the criminal conduct and interstate commerce,” said Mr. Dellinger, now a partner at the O’Melveny & Myers law firm.

But in 2000, four years after the female circumcision law was enacted, the Supreme Court examined Congress’s use of the Interstate Commerce Act in drafting the Violence Against Women Act. In that case, United States v. Morrison, the government lost in part because the court had greatly narrowed Congress’s ability to use its power over interstate commerce to draft criminal laws.

Last year, in the first court case involving the genital mutilation law, the judge in Michigan cited the Morrison case to rule that Congress had failed to clearly draw a connection between interstate commerce and the practice of female genital mutilation.

In his letter to Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Francisco sent a list of possible changes to the law to strengthen the connection with interstate commerce and keep the ban on female circumcisions in place, like outlawing the use of the banking or telecommunications systems to perform the act.

“Essentially, the Justice Department is urging Congress to fix the law before a case gets to the Supreme Court, where there is a good chance it would be struck down,” Mr. Dellinger said, adding that the government’s action in this case was appropriate. “The constitutional fix is relatively straightforward, and should be uncontroversial.

Nothing is uncontroversial. This will be portrayed by some nutter somewhere as an attempt to attack immigrants and embarrass Ilhan Omar.

The Border Is On Fire

The NY Times looks at the crisis on the southern border and yes, they seem to acknowledge it IS a crisis:

The U.S. Immigration System May Have Reached a Breaking Point

For years, there have been warnings that America’s immigration system was going to fail. That time may be now.

Too big to fail? Evidently not. They note that comparisons with the higher illegal entry numbers of decades past is irrelevant, which will come as news to a lot of lefty talking heads:

Gone are the days when young, strong men waited on the Tijuana River levees for their chance to wade across the water, evade capture and find work for the summer. These days, thousands of people a day simply walk up to the border and surrender. Most of them are from Central America, seeking to escape from gang violence, sexual abuse, death threats and persistent poverty. The smugglers have told them they will be quickly released, as long as they bring a child, and that they will be allowed to remain in the United States for years while they pursue their asylum cases.

The very nature of immigration to America changed after 2014, when families first began showing up in large numbers. The resulting crisis has overwhelmed a system unable to detain, care for and quickly decide the fate of tens of thousands of people who claim to be fleeing for their lives. For years, both political parties have tried — and failed — to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, mindful that someday the government would reach a breaking point.

That moment has arrived. The country is now unable to provide either the necessary humanitarian relief for desperate migrants or even basic controls on the number and nature of who is entering the United States.

Trump draws unfriendly fire as they note a paradox - his 'border closing soon' rhetoric contributed to the current 'beat the wall' stampede:

Yet, perversely, the president’s own anti-immigrant rhetoric has helped supercharge the pipeline of migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Smugglers lately have been buying radio ads in Central America, warning that Mr. Trump is about to shut down all immigration. If you ever want to go to the United States, they say, go now!

However, a surprise!

Experts say the president is not wrong when he says that “legal loopholes” in America’s immigration system are partly responsible for encouraging migrants to bring children like Jeremias on a dangerous journey that in some cases ends in tragedy.

"Not wrong"? I guess their keyboards ignited when they tried to type "Trump is right".

The Times even delves into the basis for an asylum claim, which involves persecution, not poverty. However, they take a pass on noting the role played by America's War on Drugs, which will turn the Big 5-0 on June 18, 2021. Instead, there is this:

There is another problem with the wall: Slowing the exodus of migrants from Central America would need to start in those countries first.

Central America’s economies are still weak, and residents face drug and gang violence at levels largely unseen in other countries. Many are subject to deep poverty, a situation that recently reached a crisis with the collapse of coffee, corn and maize crops.

OK, the violence has been raging for many years. The collapse in commodity prices may be the precipitating event. 
Obama's Dream talk followed by Trump's rhetoric surely contributed. So where does the Times take this?

American diplomats say the best way to confront that kind of lawlessness is with the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid that has been flowing to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras for several years, designed to bolster the rule of law and improve the economy.

The State Department wants a bigger foreign aid budget. Yes, that might help but it is hardly 'outside the checkbook' thinking.

Ross Douthat On Immigration

Ross Douthat is excellent on the immigration box into which Trump has placed himself:

Across the decade that preceded Donald Trump’s election, American politicians of both parties consistently tried to pass big, sweeping immigration bills that would legalize most of the country’s illegal population and increase immigration overall. These bills failed because of populist opposition, at first bipartisan (the resistance of a certain socialist senator from Vermont helped doom the 2007 effort) but increasingly simply conservative, and over time the conservative opposition developed a well-founded suspicion of Republican elites, whose plans on immigration always seemed to require ignoring their own base.

This sense of betrayal was fertile ground for Trump, who used bigotry and bluster to sell himself to immigration hawks as a Republican who wouldn’t, indeed couldn’t, sell them out. 

Do note the reference to Bernie Sanders, who even recently has insisted on the obvious: a generous welfare state can not co-exist with open borders. "Medicare For All" can't mean "All who can show up, legally or otherwise". Not even Mitt Romney's grandkids AND Jeff Bezos can afford that, which is common sense to everyone except ardent progressives. (Even Paul Krugman admitted this in 2006 and again in 2010, but if has risked the wrath of his base since then I've missed it. Those books don't sell themselves!.)

However, Trump's impasse: Public opinion had swung in favor of stricter border control but "The Wall" was not the right tool to keep out asylum seekers. For that Trump would need to negotiate Congressional support to amend current laws, and stricter border control by the Mexican government. However...

For a different president these tasks would be challenging; for Trump, they seem impossible.

 

Which leaves Trump flailing and Democrats free to point accusing fingers:

The flailing also absolves the Democratic Party, currently torn between radicalism and evasion on immigration, from actually having to propose a coherent alternative to the White House’s approach. If this sort of crisis were happening on President Hillary Clinton’s watch, it would create all kinds of political problems for the Democrats; as it stands, they can point at the man who once boasted of Washington that “I alone can fix it” and say, well, why don’t you?

Oh, my.

All that said, I am still curious to see how Bernie Borders plays out in the primaries.

 

Monday Night NCAA Action

Away they go!

Darn, They Held That Tiger

Virginia prevails over Auburn in a wild see-saw finish. Auburn was dead in the water, down ten with five minutes to go. They roared back with a 14-0 run and had Virginia dead in the water, down four with less than a minute to go. Then, the big, controversial finish.

In the second game, yeah yeah gimme a T for Texas and gimme a T for.... well, Tech. Fun to see two newbs in the Final.

The Walls Are Closing In On Trump Again!

After a brief respite the media is back to Waiting For The Mueller Report: sources NOT on Mueller's now-disbanded team tell the Times that some of the team think the Barr summary went too easy on Trump. This is impressive 'sources say other sources say' journalism. High school - the wonder years! As in, I wonder why Times reporters never outgrew that.

Whatever. Mueller ran a tight ship for two years but now his gang is dispersed. Some are back in private practice and no one is worried that Mueller will fire them for chatting a bit. We'll see the report soon enough. Another week or two of staring down their rabbit hole won't hurt the Democrats any.

 

I'll Take The Crazy Old White Guy

2020 looks like a Hall of Mirrors to Dana Milbank of the WaPo:

Bernie Sanders has emerged as the Donald Trump of the left

In politics, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Hence, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s emergence as the Donald Trump of the left.

Fundraising and polls show that many Democrats think the best answer to an angry old white guy with crazy hair, New York accent and flair for demagoguery is, well, another angry old white guy with crazy hair, New York accent and flair for demagoguery. It’s not difficult to picture a scenario in which Bernie captures the Democratic presidential nomination with the same formula that worked for Trump with Republicans in 2016.

Which is why so many of us think Bernie would have been more successful than Hillary in 2016. Fortunately, the Dem Establishment was too stupid to see it.

Meanwhile, Sanders himself remains untouchable, in a Trumpian way. Claims of mistreatment by male staffers from women who worked on his 2016 campaign? Yawn. His resistance to releasing his tax returns? Whatever. The idea that Democrats need a unifying figure to lure disaffected Trump voters in key states? Never mind.

Sanders isn’t Trump in the race-baiting, lender-cheating, fact-avoiding, porn-actress-paying, Putin-loving sense. But their styles are similar: shouting and unsmiling, anti-establishment and anti-media, absolutely convinced of their own correctness, attacking boogeymen (the “1 percent” and CEOs in Sanders’s case, instead of immigrants and minorities), offering impractical promises with vague details, lacking nuance and nostalgic for the past.

Milbank left out "Authenticity" as part of their appeal. And as everyone in Hollywood knows, authenticity is essential to success - once you can fake that you've got it made (Hillary never could; her hubby was this generation's master.)

AOC Doubles Down On Dumb

[SPOILER: After recapping Ms. AOC's repeated mis-fires on how the 22nd Amendment was passed to block the then-deceased FDR from re-election, I dredge up a June 1943 NY Times article describing a proposed two-term limit amendment introduced by Sen Bailey (D,NC) that was tailored to exempt FDR in order to attract Democratic support. Ooops.]

IN the course of rambling on about the awesomeness of FDR, AOC explained that 

"[Congress] had to amend the Constitution of the United States to make sure Roosevelt dd not get reelected."

Hmm. The 22nd Amendment that was eventually adopted emerged from the 80th Congress which convened in 1947 (p. 69, "Amendments to the Constitution: A Brief Legislative History". FDR had died in 1945; as an attempt to prevent his re-election the 22nd Amendment was sure to succeed. So har de har, AOC don't know much about history. In any case, the text of the 22nd Amendment includes a clause that makes it inapplicable to the officeholder(s) during the period of proposal and ratification (which was 1951).

But wait! Newsweek and some AOC fans try to bring her zaniness back to life. Newsweek:

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ ATTACKED ON TWITTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL MISTAKE—BUT WAS SHE ACTUALLY RIGHT?

The Golden Rule of headlines is that if they ask a question the answer is no. But here they go:

However, some eagle-eyed social media commenters pointed out that the original architects of the 22nd Amendment were inspired by Roosevelt’s monopoly on the White House and began campaigning long before his death.

“FDR did die in office in ‘45 and the 22nd amendment did come in ‘47 but Congress did start the legislative process in 1944 prior to his death so that he would not be reelected,” another Twitter user wrote in Ocasio-Cortez’s defense. “It was not ratified soon enough and he won in ‘44. AOC did not misspeak, friends.”

Hold that thought. Back to Newsweek:

The National Constitution Center also had Ocasio-Cortez’s back. On its website, the nonpartisan organization explained: “Talk about a presidential term-limits amendment started in 1944, when Republican candidate Thomas Dewey said a potential 16-year term for Roosevelt was a threat to democracy.

Liz Cheney joined in the fun with this mocking tweet:

We knew the Democrats let dead people vote. According to @AOC, they can run for President, too.

AOC had Newsweek on her side, which might have prompted unease or at least inspired some independent research. But instead, she doubled down on dumb:

Hey Rep. Cheney, I see from your dead people comment that you get your news from Facebook memes, but the National Constitution Center + Newsweek are just two of many places where you can clarify your misunderstanding of the history of the 22nd Amendment: https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-attacked-twitter-constitutional-mistake-was-she-1381693 …

And now, the trapdoor: per the NY Times archives, Sen. Bailey (D, NC) unveiled a two-term limit amendment in June of 1943 with the goal of restoring the George Washington tradition. Now, this was in a Democrat controlled Senate and House. Not all Democrats were thrilled with the idea of an FDR fourth term but in order to preserve party unity the 1943 proposal was quite explicit in grandfathering FDR as the current officeholder, just as the eventual 22nd Amendment included a grandfather clause. The Times lead:

TWO-TERM RESOLUTION WAS LONG DELIBERATED

 

Both Houses of Congress Were Tested and Mr. Roosevelt Exempted From Operations of the Amendment

 

ITS EFFECT ON 1944 WEIGHED

 

WASHINGTON, June 5 — Weeks of consideration preceded the introduction by Senator Josiah Bailey of North Carolina of the legislation that has for its objective a two-term limit for future Presidents. Both branches of Congress, but especially the Senate, were carefully tested for favorable sentiment before Mr. Bailey offered his proposal — that Congress submit to the States an amendment to the Constitution limiting service in the Presidential office to eight years.

A picture of the .pdf includes the second paragraph, which spells out the FDR exemption.

The upshot: Congress never tried to amend the Constitution to bar Roosevelt from a fourth term, Newsweek's non-research notwithstanding. Liz Cheney up, AOC down.

 

 

Send Better Paranoia

Daniel Block of the Washington Monthly speculates on how Trump might cling to power despite losing in 2020. His gist revolves around allegations of election fraud, which we now know can only be executed by NC Republicans.

Yeah, yeah, take my advice and go long tin-foil because there will be a vast market for this genre. However, this passage is baffling:

The U.S. also lacks the kind of politicized military that lets some discredited autocrats, like Venezuela’s Nicholás Maduro, hang on. “I can’t imagine the military accepting an effort to turn them into a partisan arm of the executive,” said Robert Mickey, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who researches the history of authoritarianism in the American South.

What?!? I can imagine a December 2016 in which Pres. Obama showed Pentagon leaders convincing (but HIGHLY secret!) intel that Trump was a Putin asset. What would the Trump transition have looked like? Its not as if the military establishment was likely to be more pro-Trump than the rest of the Washington establishment, or deeply fearful of a Hillary ascendance.

So if I can imagine that, why can't progressives imagine Trump trumping up convincing evidence of Russian kompromat against President-Elect Bernie Bolshevik? Hey, the evidence might even be true! And there is no way the Pentagon would favor Sanders over Trump, so they might be willing to be convinced. Giving Bernie the nuclear football? My goodness, is Bernie enough of an American to even know that "football" involves concussions, extra points and TV time-outs to sell pick-up trucks and ED remedies, or does Bernie thinks 'football' is that Euro-footsie thing?

Well. Although I worry constantly about being overtaken it's reassuring that my paranoia remains second to none.

THIS IS HOW WE DO IT! Just to give Daniel Block a chance to watch a pro in action: the North Carolina election fraud was a Republican pawn sacrifice and 'proof of concept': one fall guy gets jailed but no one can say "fraud can't happen here". Smooths the way for Trump to dispute any close state in 2020.

Why is this blindingly obvious only to me?