Tag: Political Attitudes

Just What Makes Trump’s Policies Attractive?

I have asked myself that question many times….I cannot see where a normal rational person could find anything Trump has to offer appealing in the least.

But that is just me…..and I do not fall for fear mongering and race baiting.

Now I read an article that could explain this phenom somewhat…..

Today I want to suggest why so many working-class Americans are attracted to a sociopathic liar who advocates neofascism.

IN 2010, A MAJORITY OF THE SUPREME COURT decided in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission that corporations are people under the First Amendment, entitled to freedom of speech. Therefore, said the court, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (commonly referred to as the McCain-Feingold Act), which had limited spending by corporations on political advertisements, violated the Constitution and was no longer the law of the land.

Yet as a practical matter, freedom of speech is the freedom to be heard, and most citizens’ freedom to be heard has been reduced as big corporations with deep pockets get the loudest political voice.

Nowhere did the five members in the majority acknowledge the imbalance of power between ordinary citizens and big corporations able to bribe politicians with campaign donations. In practice, the “freedom of speech” granted by the Supreme Court to big corporations has drowned out the speech of ordinary people — especially those without college degrees who had been losing economic ground for decades.

Nowhere did the five members in the majority acknowledge the imbalance of power between ordinary citizens and big corporations able to bribe politicians with campaign donations. In practice, the “freedom of speech” granted by the Supreme Court to big corporations has drowned out the speech of ordinary people — especially those without college degrees who had been losing economic ground for decades.

There is no countervailing power. By the 2016 campaign cycle, corporations and Wall Street contributed $34 to political campaigns for every $1 donated by labor unions and all public interest organizations combined. (And the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent of Americans accounted for 40 percent of all personal donations.)

Citizens United opened the floodgates to big money, but big money was already polluting American politics. The flow really began in 1971, when future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell wrote a memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urging corporate America to finance a massive lobbying operation in Washington,

WHAT HAVE BIG CORPORATIONS and the ultra-wealthy received for all their money? Among other things:

https://www.rawstory.com/why-so-many-americans-feel-powerless-and-some-are-turning-to-trump-s-neofascism/

Whatcha think?  Is this characterization accurate?

But before you answer….a little something to think about….read it and be amazed.

Donald Trump believes in eugenics. He really does. Of course, his understanding of it is purely based upon his own belief in his superior genes and good “German blood.” He’s said it many times in public:

…

Trump’s out campaigning in earnest now as the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are just weeks away. And if anyone thought he was going to soft-peddle the “Hitleresque” rhetoric, they were way off base. His basic stump speech is all about banning immigration by those who don’t “share our ideology” (whatever he means by that), and rounding people up here in the U.S. and putting them in camps. He’s not being subtle about who he’s talking about.

…

Trump is always looking for a way to thrill his followers with a new outrage so it’s easy to say he’s just putting on a show. But I think he means it. He’s very bitter and angry at half of America for not loving him unconditionally and his thirst for revenge is overwhelming. It’s not about ideology, it’s personal. But the program that he’s contemplating as his instrument to pay back all those who’ve refused to bow and scrape before him is a full-on fascist agenda. And he knows it (the man watches a lot of TV.) He just believes it will work for him.

https://www.salon.com/2023/12/18/echoes-hitler–and-maga-hears-it-loud-and-clear/

This is a person that has about a 40% approval rating among GOPers.

Are amazed yet?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

America The Beautiful

The other day Sue and I went grocery shopping and parked next to us was a white Jeep (Junk Each and Every Part)….behind the wheel was an old fat white dude and on the bumper were an American flag and a Trump flag…..I thought how disgusting that was for in my mind that is like spitting on the symbol of our country.

That experience got me to thinking about our country and our government…..and yes our democracy.

Democracy is in trouble in the U.S. “Illiberal democracies” exist in Hungary, Poland and elsewhere. Why is democracy dying? How to save it? Harvard Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that democracies don’t die from outside forces such as coup d’états. “We must prevent it [democracy] from dying within,” they write at the conclusion of How Democracies Die, their comparative analysis of how democracies have died and how to save them. “Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves,” they warn, with obvious reference to Donald J. Trump and his past and potential future presidency. But what they miss is that “elected governments” were chosen by citizens. Despite all the brouhaha about Trump’s legal difficulties and his attacks on democratic institutions, Trump remains extremely popular among Republicans; he is neck-and-neck with President Biden in a potential 2024 contest.

So while a Democracy can die as a formal political system, democracies die because of a failing civic culture. In that sense, Levitsky and Ziblatt are wrong. Democracies don’t die because of elected governments; it is citizens who choose the elected governments. It is citizens who cause democracies to live or die.

75 million American citizens voted for Trump in 2020, and his popularity continues. Despite indictments – Trump faces 91 criminal charges across four cases – Trump dominates all Republican challengers by widening margins in national polls. A Quinnipiac University poll — conducted after Trump’s Aug. 1 federal indictment but before his indictment in Georgia — had Trump with a 39-point lead over Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination. Trump got support from 57% of Republican registered voters, DeSantis 18%. No other Republican candidate got more than 3% in the Quinnipiac poll.

In terms of a 2024 rematch of the 2020 presidential election between Trump and Biden, Trump trailed Biden by one percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. A one percentage point difference is a small number between a sitting president and someone historically twice impeached and currently facing four major indictments.

As the indictments continue, Trump’s fundraising improves as well. He raised about $12 million in the first three months of this year. Seven days after the first indictment, he raised $13 million. As he quipped after one of his indictments: “I need one more indictment to ensure my election!” he joked.

Democracy, “democracy,” and Trump’s Faithful Followers

I wish I could be optimistic but all I see and read tends to the pessimistic side.

The divisions are looking insurmountable at this time….I know things can change but I think the biases, hatred and no concern for the rule of law will be our undoing.

But that is just me….if you have a different perspective then please share.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Paralysis Of American Politics

This poor country is in the death grip of political paralysis….one side offers ideas for moving the country forward and the other side is pulling the country into the past.

Nothing gets accomplished by our government other words and promises and lies….and it is both sides that play this hideous game….the more we try to move on the more we become stuck in the mud of political paralysis.

There’s an old saying, the more things change, the more they stay the same. But perhaps a more apt description of the modern-day United States might be the more things don’t change, the worse it gets.

That’s certainly true for wealth inequality. The average net worth of the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans was 15 times greater in 2022 than it was in 1982, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Indeed, the richest one percent of Americans now owns more than half of all stock and mutual fund investments.

Meanwhile, the top five executives at the largest S&P 500 U.S. corporations held $8.9 billion in tax-deferred retirement accounts as of 2021. Hyatt Corporation’s chief executive held $91 million in his 401(k), while 36 percent of Hyatt employees had nothing in their accounts. Walmart’s CEO held more than $169 million in his retirement plan. Walmart employees? Nearly half had nothing in their 401(k)s.

That’s the American Dream in digest form, a paradise of wealth for the corporate elite but elusive prosperity for the many millions of working Americans who actually create that wealth. Welcome to the “rich” nation where nearly 25 percent of the population regularly experiences food insecurity, the ranks of reported homeless persons is over half a million, and close to 38 million people live in official poverty.

Along with the growth of poverty, since 2019 life expectancy in the United States has also been on the decline, registering the largest two-year drop in a century. The United States now fares worse in maternal, infant, and youth mortality rates compared to many other high-income nations. The poor public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic, lack of universal health care coverage, and a fragmented health system infrastructure are key factors driving this decline.

The Paralysis of Modern Politics: A Socialist Perspective

We have an election on the horizon and we have a chance to change the backward slide in the past.

Political ignorance will prevent any progress this time around (yet again).

Keep in mind that democracies die because of a failing civic culture.

And do we have a major failure going on!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Is A Conservative?

College of Political Knowledge

Election series

Since we are entering into the 2024 election cycle and so many people are floundering around politically I thought it would be a good idea for people to understand terms that they are throwing about….words like ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’….and that is where I want to pick this up.

Let’s start with those aggravating conservatives….

Let’s dispense with one popular answer to this question, asserted by many American conservatives and liberals alike: that proper conservatives are devoted to “small government” or engaged in protecting “individual liberties” from a big government. These are slogans of today’s Republican Party, but there’s no good argument to believe that the party behind the War on Drugs (Richard Nixon, and later Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and every Republican since), the PATRIOT Act (George W. Bush), the first and second Iraq War (Both Bushes), massive police funding, eliminating the right to abortion, Don’t Say Gay laws, and school book bans is, in any way that makes sense, devoted to “limiting” the power of the government. To make sense of the word “conservative” we have to dig deeper than headlines and slogans.

Like a lot of our political vocabulary — see also: “left” and “right,” — the political meaning of “conservative” came as a result of the French Revolution of 1789, when democratic radicals deposed the monarchy and the aristocracy. Soon after, in 1818, defenders of the French Old Regime founded a pro-monarchy journal, Le Conservateur, that first used “conservative” in the modern, political sense. The magazine listed what it stood for in its first issue: “religion, the King, liberty…and upstanding people.” These were the things under threat from the new society formed after the Revolution.

Modern-day conservatives don’t necessarily want to protect or “conserve” the same things as their 19th-century brethren. (Not too many Americans will admit to being monarchists.) But they do share a fundamental dilemma with their French forebears: Defining yourself in terms of an old order and its enemies makes it difficult to explain the sort of future you want to build. On one hand, conservatives defend tradition and duty; on the other, the definitions of these things shift with every generation. And what good is a tradition if it changes all the time?

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-a-conservative

In short a conservative is a hypocritical slug that uses misinformation and lies to function in government….they champion small government but expand it whenever in power….they spend like a drunken sailor and go to battle over spending…..

Not to worry I will be critiquing ‘liberals’ soon (hint they are not what they seem)….no more Left than your right foot.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Coming Civil War

This may be my only post today for my best friend died yesterday and I need some time to process the loss.

You may think this is a dead topic…..but look around there is still plenty of life left in the old girl.

We all have heard it before that the US is heading for a new civil war thanx to the Orange Man from Florida….actually that is a bit of a bullsh*t piece of rhetoric.

In reality this ‘civil war’ has been brewing for many decades….it got a little closer with the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 and then the shots were fired with the rise of Trump and his minions of sickos.

And now it is here and here to stay for many years until the hatred for others is diminished….and when we start acting like the country we all know we deserve.

This civil war will be fought over political ideology.

There remains an argument that the United States is tragically headed for a second civil war – this one fought over political ideology.

It is seen literally as a war that could be fought between the left and right in this country.  (This is manure!  There is no Left in this country only in the minds of idiots.  All there is is a Right and a moldy old Center.)

“American politics turned hyper toxic several years ago, and ever since commentators have raised the specter of a second civil war. No other historical parallel, it seems, captures so viscerally today’s national division into two hostile camps, each convinced the other poses a mortal threat to the republic,” the Council on Foreign Relations noted in a piece looking at how today is not like the 1850s – the years leading up to the Civil War.

It argued that we are not all that close to the same type of open conflict we witnessed 160 years ago. There are several factors at play that need to be considered.

…

America simply isn’t headed for Civil War because we’re 21st-century Americans. A few hotheads will continue to make trouble – and they should be punished accordingly if they go too far, as they did on January 6, 2021. But an actual American Civil War 2.0 won’t happen because we like our conveniences just too much, while the checks and balances are in place. 

Instead, we are likely to remain in an uncivil war where we just do not like each other all that much. 

A Second American Civil War?

I agree that there will be nothing like our first Civil War….but that does not mean that this one will not be bloody, not in the sense of gunshot wounds but rather in the sense of the loss of rights.

Will you be a spectator or will you be on the front lines to protect and preserve all Americans rights?

Will you sit idly by while group after group loses its way and its privileges?

Will you be a true American can  stand-up for what is right and just?

Will you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Poverty A Political Choice?

I decided to changes things up for today and what better place to start than my state of Mississippi.

An interesting question that made me think about stuff….while the article focused on governmental programs during the pandemic….but the question is still an interesting one.

In case you want to see what made this post possible….

The data is in: Poverty is a political choice

Although this post is not so much about governmental programs but rather about the voter, especially in my state of Mississippi…..

Mississippi is less than a week away from its primaries and most of the GOP candidates are running ahead….but why?

Before I go any further let me share a bit of info about my state….

  • March 2022 unemployment rate: 4.2%
  • Year-over-year change in unemployment Feb. 2021: 2.5%
  • Q4 2021 GDP per capita: $57,769
  • GDP growth Q3 2021-Q4 2021: 5.7%
  • Average weekly wages Sept. 2020: $1,021
  • Percent change in average weekly wages Sept. 2020-Sept. 2021: 5.4%
  • Percent of population below the poverty line in 2020: 16.7%

Economic prosperity and hardship often coincide, even within state borders. For Mississippi, that couldn’t be more true. For instance, the state has seen $1.3 billion of corporate investments in 2022, helping the state add 4,149 new jobs in 2021…..Also, consider that more than one-fifth of the state has no access to broadband internet. Mississippi also has a nearly 17% poverty rate, the highest in the nation.

Mississippi is the least economically healthy state in the Union….its ranking is 100….let me explain that for you non-economically inclined….Index of state economic conditions based on crowded housing, dependency, education, income, poverty and unemployment; normalized values are 1 to 100, with a higher value indicating worse economic conditions.

In 2022, the state of Mississippi has a population of 2,940,184, having declined an annualized -0.3% over the five years to 2022, which ranks it 49th out of all 50 US states by growth rate. Mississippi’s gross state product (GSP) in 2022 reached $104.7b, with growth of 0.6% over the 5 years to 2022. Businesses in Mississippi employed a total of 1,098,569 people in 2022, with average annual employment growth over the past five years of 0.1%.

Then there is the education in the state…there are about 30+ institutions of higher learning but only about 8.5% of the population has a degree in higher learning.  To say the education is of low priority is a gross understatement.

This brings us to my thought…Is poverty a political decision?

My thought is that it is.

2023 is a major voting year for the state of Mississippi and as listed above there are many issues that need to be corrected to move the state forward.

But as usual the major issues for candidates are such non-productive issues as bathrooms, book banning, educational confusion, etc.

The candidates promise that to make the state a better place to live if their visions are put into action….and for 50 years it has been the same and for 50 years the state of Mississippi remains backwards and uneducated.

In less than a week the voter will once again vote of issues that nothing to do with their ascent into poverty….they pretend that banning books will save the state or that a fixation on bathrooms will somehow equate to better pay and they will vote for the loudest mouth and in doing so will remain at the bottom of an economic success.

What will it take to wake up the voter?  Apparently poverty will not do for they vote for it on every occasion.

Sad for the state has great potential but no one wants it to succeed.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine: Answers Not Given

This is a post that few will care about or will give a lot of unrelated answers….but what the Hell.

Questions?

When I was in school a teacher gave me some good advice.

“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions. “

It is the answers, not the questions, that are embarrassing…..and I ask embarrassing questions and get few substantive answers….but I will continue to ask.
 
It is what I do.
 
Since the war began a year ago I have been asking questions….some hard questions….and so far the answer I get are boiler plate responses….by boiler plate I mean the rubbish the media throws out with little facts behind the garbage they spread.
 
Recently I posted on the debate around this conflict….
 
 
The media has not always been so gung-ho in Ukraine’s corner….

The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian titled “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war” by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn.

I bring this up because the perspectives you’ll find in that article are jarring in how severely they deviate from anything you’ll see published in the mainstream press about Ukraine in 2023. It places the brunt of the blame for the violence and tensions in that nation at that time squarely at Washington’s feet, opening with a warning that the “threat of war in Ukraine is growing” and saying there’s an “unelected government in Kiev,” and it only gets naughtier from there.

I strongly recommend reading the article in full if you want some perspective in just how dramatically the mass media has clamped down on dissenting ideas about Ukraine and Russia, beginning with the frenzied stoking of Russia hysteria in 2016 and exploding exponentially with the Russian invasion last year. I doubt there’s a single paragraph which could get published in any mainstream outlet in the media environment of today.

Milne writes about how “the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover,” and about “the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime.” He says that “Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia,” and that “you don’t hear much about the Ukrainian government’s veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government’s ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down.” He says that “after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west’s attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure.”

 
It is fascinating but that would be for those that are interested and from what I have read few are that interested in what has been written and only embrace the manure spread by the MSM.
 
Then I read about a ignored settlement of this situation….and from an Israeli….
 

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday that the US and its Western allies “blocked” his efforts of mediating between Russia and Ukraine to bring an end to the war in its early days.

On March 4, 2022, Bennett traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. In the interview, he detailed his mediation at the time between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he said he coordinated with the US, France, Germany, and the UK.

Bennett said that both sides agreed to major concessions during his mediation effort. For the Russian side, he said they dropped “denazification” as a requirement for a ceasefire. Bennett defined “denazification” as the removal of Zelensky. During his meeting in Moscow with Putin, Bennett said the Russian leader guaranteed that he wouldn’t try to kill Zelensky.

The other concession Russia made, according to Bennett, is that it wouldn’t seek the disarmament of Ukraine. For the Ukrainian side, Zelensky “renounced” that he would seek NATO membership, which Bennett said was the “reason” for Russia’s invasion.

(antiwar.com)

Appears no one wants this conflict to end…..maybe there is too much cash to effectively find a solution.
 
Like I said….hard questions.
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

Chasing Shiny New Keys

The American people need something to put the sparkle in their eyes….kinda like a baby and the rattling of shiny keys.

All this began with that looming ‘Chinese’ balloon trans versing the US and the US shot it down for our protection.

Then the food gates were opened….

The Pentagon shot down an unknown “high-altitude” object flying in US airspace off the coast of Alaska on Friday, White House officials said. The object was flying at about 40,000 feet and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, said John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesman. Kirby said President Biden ordered the military to down the object, which he described as roughly the size of a small car—much smaller than the infamous Chinese balloon, per the Washington Post. No other details about what it was were immediately provided.

The object fell onto frozen US waters. The development comes after the US shot down a suspected spy balloon from China on Saturday. Officials are still recovering debris from that object, shot down off the coast of South Carolina. A fighter jet assigned to the US Northern Command conducted Friday’s mission, per Axios. It was not immediately clear who owned the object, which did not appear to be able to maneuver as well as the balloon, said Kirby. The US expected to be able to retrieve the debris.

The New York Times reports the object was flying over the Arctic Ocean, near the northeast border of Alaska and Canada, when it was shot down. Pilots confirmed it was unmanned before firing, said Kirby. The object previously had been flying over land. A US official describes the development as “fast-moving” to the Times. The official added that it’s possible the object had no military purpose and was a wayward commercial or scientific object.

Then the game continued…..

A US F-22 shot down an unidentified object flying at a high altitude over the Yukon territory on Saturday at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s request. Trudeau tweeted that he’d discussed the matter with President Biden and that Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled after the object was spotted, the Washington Post reports. No one provided any details about the object, though NORAD released a statement earlier in the day saying it had been positively identified. The command guards skies over North America and includes US and Canadian officials.

Trudeau said Canadian personnel will lead the effort to recover and analyze the wreckage debris, per the CBC. Defense Minister Anita Anand tweeted that she had discussed the matter with her US counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and that they “reaffirmed that we’ll always defend our sovereignty together,” per CNN.

Apparently Canada does not have the capabilities of handling this situation for themselves.

And the hits just keep coming…..

For the fourth time in less than two weeks, the US has shot down an unidentified object flying over North American airspace. A Michigan congresswoman tweeted that it happened over Lake Huron on Sunday. “The object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin posted, per the AP. Rep. Jack Bergman’s office reported that the craft was over US airspace at the time, per the Detroit News. American officials said that the craft went down in the lake and that it will be recovered. There was no sign that the shootdown caused any damage, they said, per NBC News. Airspace over the lake had been restricted earlier in the day by US and Canadian officials while planes were sent to identify the object.

Earlier Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer said that the objects shot down over Canada on Saturday and Alaska on Friday were—like the one the Air Force brought down earlier over the Atlantic near South Carolina—balloons. The majority leader told ABC’s This Week that he was briefed by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan after the US shot down an object flying over Canada. A Pentagon spokesperson didn’t quite confirm that the targets were all balloons, per Politico, saying they “were objects and did not closely resemble” the balloon China sent over the US. More will be known when the debris is recovered, Sabrina Singh said.

Either way, Schumer said, “the bottom line is, until a few months ago, we didn’t know of these balloons.” per ABC News. Schumer praised the military and intelligence work against the balloons but asked, “why as far back as the Trump administration did no one know about this?” Officials said they believe the object shot down Sunday is the same one that was being tracked over Montana beginning on Saturday night.

I have called all this as ‘chasing shiny keys’…..but to summarize this……

Comparisons: The US is pretty sure the Chinese balloon was used for spying, though Beijing denies it, but much less is known about the objects shot down over Alaska and Canada. US officials are using a vehicle comparison: The latter two objects are about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, reports the Washington Post, while the Chinese balloon was the size of three buses, per NPR.

  • Few answers: The US says the objects shot down over Alaska and Canada were flying at about 40,000 feet and thus posed a risk to commercial air traffic, reports CNN. By contrast, the Chinese balloon flew well above such traffic. The hunt for debris continues on all three shootdowns, and those recovery missions could answer a lot of questions about what the devices were doing and where they came from.
  • False alarm? Hours after the US shot down the object over Canada (after coordinating with that government), the FAA temporarily closed some airspace over Montana after a “radar anomaly” was detected by NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. A jet fighter investigated but found nothing, reports the AP. Amid the newly heightened concern, such “false positives” may become more common.
  • Pressure: The incidents already are having an effect on national policy. The Hill reports that Senate Republicans are now pushing to take any defense cuts off the table in negotiations over the debt ceiling. And GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, speaking after the shootdown in the skies above her state, told NBC News that “the first line of defense, again, is Alaska. … We need to send the message and we need to be clear and unequivocable that we don’t tolerate this, period.”
  • It’s classified: The New York Times reports that congressional lawmakers will receive an update on Monday of a classified report looking at more than 140 incidents of “aerial phenomena” between 2004 and 2021. Almost all remain officially unexplained, but they’re largely thought to be either foreign surveillance objects or weather balloons. Shootdowns are rare, but Pentagon spokesman Big. Gen. Patrick Ryder on Friday rejected the idea the administration was growing more aggressive because of political pressure.

Is there something happening or about to happen that the American people need to be fixated on something so it is not important for them?

I think I found the reason for all the faux interest…..

A growing number of Senate Republicans are saying that President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) should take defense spending cuts off the table in their negotiation over the debt ceiling.

The Republicans are digging in their heels after receiving a classified briefing on a Chinese spy balloon that floated over sensitive military installations.

“The entire civilized world should recognize that communist China is probably the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, more severe than Soviet Russia was because of its economic integration into the West,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) after receiving a briefing from senior administration officials on the spy balloon. “We should take every step we can to try to reduce our dependency on China [and] try to build stronger military deterrence against them. 

“I do not think that we should be talking about cutting the defense budget at all right now. If anything, substantial defense increases,” he said.  

Chinese spy balloon has GOP saying no cuts to defense

As usual the American media and public are chasing ‘shiny keys’….and more American cash will be thrown at non-existent problems….well done…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Do Americans Really Know About Politics?

The elections are less than 2 months away and time for us all to think about politics. So the big question is what do Americans really know about politics?

As statewide primaries continue through the summer, many Americans are beginning to think about which candidates they will support in the 2022 general election.

This decision-making process is fraught with difficulties, especially for inexperienced voters.

Voters must navigate angry, emotion-laden conversations about politics when trying to sort out whom to vote for. Americans are more likely than ever to view politics in moral terms, meaning their political conversations sometimes feel like epic battles between good and evil.

But political conversations are also shaped by, obviously, what Americans know – and, less obviously, what they think they know – about politics.

In recent research, I studied how Americans’ perceptions of their own political knowledge shape their political attitudes. My results show that many Americans think they know much more about politics than they really do.

Knowledge deficit, confidence surplus

Over the past five years, I have studied the phenomenon of what I call “political overconfidence.” My work, in tandem with other researchers’ studies, reveals the ways it thwarts democratic politics.

Political overconfidence can make people more defensive of factually wrong beliefs about politics. It also causes Americans to underestimate the political skill of their peers. And those who believe themselves to be political experts often dismiss the guidance of real experts.

Political overconfidence also interacts with political partisanship, making partisans less willing to listen to peers across the aisle.

The result is a breakdown in the ability to learn from one another about political issues and events.

https://theconversation.com/americans-think-they-know-a-lot-about-politics-and-its-bad-for-democracy-that-theyre-so-often-wrong-in-their-confidence-187524

Try carrying on a political conversation and it will turn into a debate…..we all know we are right and refuse to see anything but what we believe is true.

So the next question is will this election be an asterisk election?

This is an opinion from fivethirtyeight.com…..

In 2020, we took pains to emphasize that, although he was a significant underdog in our forecast, then-President Donald Trump could absolutely win reelection. Frankly, I’m not sure we’ve taken the same care this year when it comes to Democrats and the U.S. House. Their chances to hold the House started out in the Trump-in-2020 vicinity when we launched our forecast — 13 percent — and now they’ve risen to 20 percent amidst an improving political environment for Democrats.

It’s still not terribly likely Democrats win control of the House. But it also means that a GOP takeover is far from a foregone conclusion. So, let’s talk about that 20 percent chance.

Democrats started out with 222 House seats following the 2020 election, four more than the number required for a majority. According to our model, there’s a 7 percent chance that Democrats wind up with fewer than 222 seats after November but still enough seats to maintain a narrow majority. Meanwhile, there’s a 13 percent chance that they actually gain seats.1 Those numbers combined give them their 20 percent chances.

Time for a quick historical gut check. In 19 midterm elections since World War II, the president’s party lost fewer than five seats in the House once, in 1962. And they gained seats twice, in 1998 and 2002. That means three out of 19 times the president’s party would have a successful enough midterm to keep the House, or 16 percent of the time. That squares pretty well with our model’s 20 percent estimate. Of course, the closer we get to the election, the more we can rely on data specific to this year — but it’s good that we’re somewhere in the ballpark.

Will This Be An Asterisk* Election?

This upcoming election is not one that is easy to analyze…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Raid Makes Him Stronger

Over 300 classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago…..

The latest New York Times story about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid revolves around a key number: 300. As in, that’s how many classified documents the government has retrieved in total from former President Trump since he left office. The first was a batch of 150 recovered by the National Archives from Trump’s Florida estate early in the year, followed by a second set turned over by Trump aides in June. The number of sensitive documents in play after these first two retrievals “ignited intense concern at the Justice Department” and prompted the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago this month, during which another 11 boxes of classified material was retrieved.

The Times account is the most specific to date on the volume of classified documents Trump took with him from the White House, some of which had the highest level of classification. Trump’s defenders have made the case that he had standing orders to declassify any such documents. The Times story doesn’t have much new on the types of documents retrieved, though previous reports have said agents were particularly concerned about nuclear information. On Monday, Trump’s eldest son joked about that while ridiculing the search itself.

“By the way, for the record, I’d say that if Donald Trump actually still had the nuclear codes, it’d probably be good,” Donald Trump Jr. said at a campaign rally for Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, per HuffPost. “Our enemies might actually be like, ‘OK, maybe let’s not mess with them,’ unlike when they look at Joe Biden and they say, ‘You know what? We should attack now.’”

The documents could signal criminal activity….and that should saw the people to realize what he has done and is possibly doing…..you would think, right?

If so then you are badly mistaken.

By now we all know of the FBI raid on the Trump property in Florida…..you have your opinion and I have mine……all that aside it seems that the raid, just before an election, has done the opposite of what you may think…..Trump has gotten stronger….

After the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, the walls may feel like they’re closing in on former President Trump, at least from a legal standpoint. In the court of public opinion with fellow Republicans, however, that search may have helped to give Trump a boost, at least according to one new survey. An NBC News poll released Sunday, which surveyed respondents Aug. 12-16 (i.e., after the FBI visit to Mar-a-Lago), asked GOP voters if they considered themselves more supporters of Trump or of the Republican Party. When the same question was asked back in May, 34% picked Trump over party, with 58% choosing the GOP. This time around, the Trump-leaning figure jumped to 41%, while those picking the Republican Party fell to 50%.

Per Axios, other polls have been showing Trump gaining ground in recent weeks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’d previously been “surging in key states.” A June poll out of the University of New Hampshire, for example, showed the two men statistically tied for the GOP nomination in that state. However, a poll released by New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College last week showed GOP voters preferred Trump over DeSantis 50% to 29%. This is all now leading some “Never Trump” GOP strategists to express concern over how the FBI search might have tipped the scales in Trump’s favor, at least in terms of Republican sentiment. In fact, one source said to be close to Trump tells Axios that fundraising after the Aug. 8 search has been “yuge.”

The NBC poll wasn’t all bad news for Dems, especially regarding how they’ve closed the enthusiasm gap: Although 68% of Republicans said they were highly interested in the midterms, Dems came in close behind at 66%, per NBC. Contrast that 2-point gap with the 8-point gap in May, still in the favor of GOP voters, and the even bigger 17-point gap in March. And last week, the Washington Post‘s Philip Bump analyzed a YouGov poll conducted for the Economist that didn’t seem to show a “a virulent pro-Trump surge.” But Axios notes that the NBC poll’s stats on how Republicans feel about Trump after the raid may signify a “Republican mindset of ‘the more “they” hate him, the more I love him’—an effect Trump instinctively recognizes and exploits.”

Although we have NO official statement from the Trump camp on running in 2024….this should give them a bit more confidence in the next general election.

Scared yet?

Any thoughts on this possibility?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”