[y66]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

Quote

Eventually, Elizabeth Warren is going to need to find a different way to answer the Medicare question.

A central part of last night’s debate was the criticism she received from rivals over her unwillingness to talk about whether middle-class taxes will rise under her plan. Warren refused to answer the question, implicitly arguing that it’s irrelevant.

Her position is: Americans don’t care how much they pay in health care taxes; they care how much they pay for health care overall, combining taxes, premiums, deductibles and so on. So why get bogged down in the hoary old tax question?

On the narrow substance of the issue, she’s right. Focusing only on taxes is pointless. But in a larger way, she’s wrong.

The No. 1 reason to question her version of Medicare for All — in which private health insurance would be eliminated — is its political viability. It would be an enormous disruption to the health care system, and history shows that health care disruptions are very hard to pass and usually unpopular at first. Polls show that her plan is already unpopular, and it would be a bigger disruption than Obamacare or Bill Clinton’s failed plan.

Given all that, she needs to engage with the political realities — with how she would overcome people’s resistance to giving up their health insurance for a larger new program that, yes, would require a tax increase.

I think Warren has run an excellent campaign on the whole, and I think she has the most thoughtful agenda for addressing the stagnating living standards of most Americans. I’m surprised that she has chosen to focus so much of her candidacy on the most aggressive version of Medicare for All. But she has. Now it’s time for her to tell voters how she will deal with the politics of passing it.

In my view, her best answer involves finding a way to signal her openness to a transition, in which people who want to keep their private insurance can do so (and taxes don’t yet need to rise) while Medicare initially expands voluntarily. That idea is hugely popular.

I hope her vagueness is a first step toward that position. But it isn’t very satisfying in the moment.

Tom Steyer impressed me last night in his 7 minutes or so of airtime as a guy who could make mincemeat of Trump. Not saying that's a sufficient qualification but he did pique my interest.

[MrAce]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-16, 08:13, said:

A better idea was proposed by John Lennon in 1971:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Amen!

[hrothgar]

y66, on 2019-October-16, 08:27, said:

From David Leonhardt at NYT:


Tom Steyer impressed me last night in his 7 minutes or so of airtime as a guy who could make mincemeat of Trump. Not saying that's a sufficient qualification but he did pique my interest.

I tried so hard to stay awake through the debate

failed miserably

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-15, 11:53, said:

IJFK was able to separate his religious beliefs from his job as president; why do you think others should not?

I understand that people at the time were worried that electing a Cathoic would allow the Pope to dictate US policy, and I agree that he didn't do that.

But do you really think that none of the moral lessons he learned from religious sermons influenced his decisions? Jesus taught the Golden Rule, does that mean it can't be used as a justification for government policy?

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-16, 08:13, said:

A better idea was proposed by John Lennon in 1971:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

As he admitted later on in the song, he was a dreamer.

Imagining is easy -- making it happen is much harder.

[y66]

hrothgar, on 2019-October-16, 08:56, said:

I tried so hard to stay awake through the debate

failed miserably

It helps if your favorite baseball team is also playing for their first berth in the World Series.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2019-October-16, 08:59, said:

I understand that people at the time were worried that electing a Cathoic would allow the Pope to dictate US policy, and I agree that he didn't do that.

But do you really think that none of the moral lessons he learned from religious sermons influenced his decisions? Jesus taught the Golden Rule, does that mean it can't be used as a justification for government policy?

No, I don't mean that at all.

Consider this. Suppose a situation where the president and most of his cabinet along with a majority in Congress and a majority on the Supreme Court all believed that God gave white Christians moral superiority.

If that were the case, would you be surprised to find a predominance of minority prisoners in prisons, white police exonerated of wrongdoing, minority voting rights infringed, tax laws favorable to rich white and penalizing to poor minorities, and on and on?

Note, none of that happens with a government created religion. This is the problem the framers tried to address in the constitution and with the separation of powers. The framers were as concerned about unbridled democracy as they were tyranny. The secular Constitution was designed as the rule book to protect against both.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-16, 09:50, said:

No, I don't mean that at all.

Consider this. Suppose a situation where the president and most of his cabinet along with a majority in Congress and a majority on the Supreme Court all believed that God gave white Christians moral superiority.

If that were the case, would you be surprised to find a predominance of minority prisoners in prisons, white police exonerated of wrongdoing, minority voting rights infringed, tax laws favorable to rich white and penalizing to poor minorities, and on and on?

Note, none of that happens with a government created religion. This is the problem the framers tried to address in the constitution and with the separation of powers. The framers were as concerned about unbridled democracy as they were tyranny. The secular Constitution was designed as the rule book to protect against both.

Or, suppose the president and most of his cabinet along with a majority in Congress and a majority on the Supreme Court, perhaps all atheists, all believed that white people are morally superior. I suppose some people once argued that black people should sit in the back of the bus because Good said so, but others would say that they should sit in the back because, well, who cares about the because, they just should. The counter-argument was partly that the D of I said that all men were created equal, but religious ideas played a prominent role as well. in getting people to see that this was wrong.

Religion has often been used badly. When I was 14 I attended a church service, as i usually did. My parents had not attended, as they usually didn't. So the minister took me aside and explained that I was 14 and it was now my responsibility to get my parents to come to church more often so that they would not burn in the fires of Hell. Ok, we can probably all agree that it's a good idea to avoid that minster and I did. It would be a bad idea to judge all religion, or all religious people, by that minister.

People come to their values in one manner or another. I guess Kant thought that moral issues could be decided by pure reason but try reading his arguments. In college I sat down with one of his arguments and promised myself I would not get up until I understood it. Had I kept that promise I would still be sitting there. Our moral views come from experience and discussion, but probably also from some sort of faith. I think of faith as a decision to just go with a way of looking at things, acknowledging that we cannot prove we are right.

People of strong religious beliefs differ about same sex marriage and many other things but so do non-religious people.

That minister you cited as leading the discussion seemed to me to be someone I would have nothing to do with. But many of the religious people that I have known would feel the same. Way to sanctimonious and full of himself. If he offers Kool-Aid, don't drink it. But I have no problem with people getting together to discuss their religious beliefs.

[johnu]

y66, on 2019-October-16, 09:46, said:

It helps if your favorite baseball team is also playing for their first berth in the World Series.

My local team was basically eliminated from the playoffs in early May which was progress as they are usually entrenched in last place in their division and headed South by the end of April.

[y66]

Perhaps this explains what has happened to the trolls: Fourth defendant in Giuliani associates’ case arrested at New York airport

If that's not them, I hope nothing more serious has happened to the poor bastards.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-October-16, 12:05, said:

Perhaps this explains what has happened to the trolls: Fourth defendant in Giuliani associates’ case arrested at New York airport

If that's not them, I hope nothing more serious has happened to the poor bastards.

I think The Cowsills had a better explanation:

The Rain, Trolls, and Other Things

I saw him fumbling in the rain
umbralla drops outside the plane
I was sure he didn't care
cause his hair looked good to me

Then I knew (I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew)
He was who I'd vote for (vote for, vote for)
Corruption in the air
Corruption everywhere

I love his flowing mane
the orangish of his skin, I want to follow him
I love the long red tie
I really don't know why, I guess I love his lies

But never mind

I knew I had to see his show
Hear his voice for real
Found a seat among the throng
Clapped and cheered as he came on

And I knew (I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew)
He was who I'd vote for (vote for, vote for)
Corruption in the air
Corruption everywhere

I love his flowing mane
the orangish of his skin, I want to follow him
I love the long red tie
I really don't know why, I guess I love his lies

But never mind

Suddenly Ukraine came through (see Ukraine)
I turned toward the sound (what was the sound)
It was sad to hear truth
The Fake news had just left town

But I had thought (I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought)
He would make me happy (happy, happy)
Impeachment in the air
Impeachment everywhere

(This guy really sucks), (This guy really sucks)
tv was his reality
was he a dream to me?
(This guy really sucks), (This guy really sucks)
His crime taught me that day
to look another's way
(Another's way)(another's way, another's way)

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2019-October-16, 11:29, said:

Or, suppose the president and most of his cabinet along with a majority in Congress and a majority on the Supreme Court, perhaps all atheists, all believed that white people are morally superior. I suppose some people once argued that black people should sit in the back of the bus because Good said so, but others would say that they should sit in the back because, well, who cares about the because, they just should. The counter-argument was partly that the D of I said that all men were created equal, but religious ideas played a prominent role as well. in getting people to see that this was wrong.

Religion has often been used badly. When I was 14 I attended a church service, as i usually did. My parents had not attended, as they usually didn't. So the minister took me aside and explained that I was 14 and it was now my responsibility to get my parents to come to church more often so that they would not burn in the fires of Hell. Ok, we can probably all agree that it's a good idea to avoid that minster and I did. It would be a bad idea to judge all religion, or all religious people, by that minister.

People come to their values in one manner or another. I guess Kant thought that moral issues could be decided by pure reason but try reading his arguments. In college I sat down with one of his arguments and promised myself I would not get up until I understood it. Had I kept that promise I would still be sitting there. Our moral views come from experience and discussion, but probably also from some sort of faith. I think of faith as a decision to just go with a way of looking at things, acknowledging that we cannot prove we are right.

People of strong religious beliefs differ about same sex marriage and many other things but so do non-religious people.

That minister you cited as leading the discussion seemed to me to be someone I would have nothing to do with. But many of the religious people that I have known would feel the same. Way to sanctimonious and full of himself. If he offers Kool-Aid, don't drink it. But I have no problem with people getting together to discuss their religious beliefs.

Ken, like you I form my opinions (as best I can) based on my personal experience (including listening to those I presume to be wise and intelligent) and my own reading/studies/etc. So my response comes in part from your pal, Paul Krugman, but also from Bill Barr himself, from his speech just last week at Notre Dame:

Quote

Barr gave a fiery speech denouncing the threat to America posed by “militant secularists,” whom he accused of conspiring to destroy the “traditional moral order,” blaming them for rising mental illness, drug dependency and violence.

And compare that to George Lakoff's description of the conservative idea of moral hierarchy (especially Barr's "traditional moral order" where a strict father sits at the head:

Quote

The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, America above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Nonwhites, Christians above nonChristians, Straights above Gays.

I'm sure you see the parallels between the strict father worldview and many Christian teachings, especially those of the so-termed evangelical Christians. Whether this moral code was incorporated into Christianity or grew out of Christianity is, like the chicken or the egg, irrelevant. But I do note that the U.S. Constitution is at odds with this construct.

Better than meeting to discuss religion, I would recommend that our leaders would be better served meeting to discuss the Federalist Papers.

[y66]

I heard there was a meltdown at the White House today. No doubt Ms. Pelosi knows from her experience as a mother and grandmother that when you're dealing with someone who is having a meltdown, it's impossible to reason with them. Sometimes it helps to acknowledge their feelings as in "Mr. President, I understand you're angry because the House rebuked your decision to withdraw from Syria" but that's not guaranteed to work and if it doesn't, the best thing, according to my daughter-in-law, is to say "I'm leaving the room now".

[Zelandakh]

y66, on 2019-October-16, 16:51, said:

I heard there was a meltdown at the White House today. No doubt Ms. Pelosi knows from her experience as a mother and grandmother that when you're dealing with someone who is having a meltdown, it's impossible to reason with them. Sometimes it helps to acknowledge their feelings as in "Mr. President, I understand you're angry because the House rebuked your decision to withdraw from Syria" but that's not guaranteed to work and if it doesn't, the best thing, according to my daughter-in-law, is to say "I'm leaving the room now".

Have you never watched The Nanny? You just sit him on the Naughty Step for one minute per year of age.

[y66]

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

Quote

Wednesday, the 1,000th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, went badly. That’s no surprise; most of the first 999 days went badly too. I have no idea if he’s going to wind up getting ousted from office, either as a result of the impeachment House Democrats are readying or the 2020 election. But things are getting worse for Trump — whether he realizes it or not.

Every once in a while, some event offers a clarifying reminder of the president’s poor judgment. On Wednesday, it was the release of a letter Trump wrote to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The letter itself was an embarrassment, in which Trump, soon after telling Erdogan on the phone that U.S. forces would move out of his way to enable Turkey’s invasion of Syria, tried to walk things back. Sort of. As Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman put it at the Monkey Cage, the president opted for “threatening rhetoric reminiscent of a Mafia boss” to “make loud threats that he may not be able to deliver on.” As soon as the letter was published, professional diplomats and historians said they had never seen something so amateurish from a U.S. president.

But what really underlined Trump’s problem for me wasn’t that he wrote an incompetent letter to follow up on what seems to have been an incompetent phone call. Or that his Syria policy, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Eli Lake notes, has resulted in chaos and death. Or that, on a crass political level, he’s managed to alienate his congressional allies just as he needs them most, with House Republicans voting overwhelmingly on Wednesday to condemn his decision.

No, what really got to me was that Trump distributed copies of this letter to congressional leaders when they showed up at the White House for a briefing. Think of it. Even if the letter had been perfectly normal, what Trump was handing them was an Oct. 9 request to Erdogan to halt his invasion — a request that Erdogan has, as we’ve seen, totally ignored. Trump was bragging about what he considered to be a sign of his own brilliance without realizing that it was instead evidence of abject failure.

This isn’t new, of course. Trump still brags about how the 2018 election was a glorious victory for Republicans (it wasn’t). He brags that a published summary of his call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy cleared him of wrongdoing (it incriminated him). And on and on. The thing is, it’s possible for others within the political system to deal with a liar. But how do you deal with a president who can’t tell the difference between victories and losses? Someone for whom normal incentives don’t apply because he doesn’t seem to realize when things are going badly?

Every president has policy fiascoes at some point. Every president slumps in the polls. Every president makes hiring decisions that go wrong. But normal presidents, most of the time, recognize their errors — even if they don’t admit them publicly — and work hard to improve things. Trump, to be blunt, doesn’t. It’s destroying his presidency, and damaging the nation.

[y66]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

Quote

The recent decline in Delaware’s abortion rate is pretty stunning. Between 2014 and 2017 — the latest years for which data exist — the rate fell 37 percent. There is now only about one abortion for every 100 women of childbearing age each year in the state.

This decline was the biggest of any state in the country. It was also in keeping with a larger trend: The abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level since the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The best part is that both sides of the abortion debate should welcome the decline. Abortions don’t appear to be decreasing because of reduced access (although that is a problem in some places). The rate seems to be falling because of increased use of effective birth control.

That’s why I want to highlight Delaware. It has been arguably the most aggressive state in expanding access to long-acting forms of birth control, like IUDs and implants. Less than a decade ago, Delaware had the nation’s highest rate of unplanned pregnancies, and its governor at the time — Jack Markell, a Democrat — came to believe it was a major cause of economic hardship for mothers and their families.

“We launched this effort several years ago because we feel so strongly about the link between unintended pregnancies and reduced economic opportunities,” Markell told me yesterday.

Or as PBS NewsHour has put it: “Contraceptives allow women greater control of whether and when to become mothers. As a result, they improve women’s ability to invest in their education and careers, which can have a positive impact on lifelong earnings.”

In a Times story last year, Margot Sanger-Katz described the program that Delaware has created:

When a woman of childbearing age goes to the doctor in most places, she gets standard queries about her smoking, drinking, seatbelt use and allergies. In Delaware, she is now also asked: ‘Do you want to get pregnant in the next year?’

If her answer is no, clinics are being trained to ensure she gets whatever form of birth control she wants that very day, whether a prescription or an implant in her arm. … Working with an organization called Upstream, Delaware has rolled out the program to nearly every medical provider in the state over the past three years. It’s having big effects on the number of women requesting and receiving contraception.

There is still a lot of room for progress, though — especially in states that have not been as ambitious about expanding access to IUDs.

[Winstonm]

The MSM keeps failing as journalists by reporting Trump's "sanctions' against Turkey. CNBC is the only article I've seen that points out that these tarriffs are basically meaningless as only 1% of US steel imports comes from Turkey. They report that the reason for any tarriff at all was to placate Congressional Republicans - a tarriff "for show", so to speak, which fits in perfectly with Trumps worldview where everything is done to create a particular image.

Quote

“Just 0.5% of Turkish exports were steel sales to the U.S. in 2018,” Charlie Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, told CNBC. “Turkey won’t allow its sovereignty to be undermined by the U.S. refusing to buy the steel, which Turkey can sell elsewhere.”

“Trump may be exaggerating the importance to deflect criticism.”

[andrei]

johnu, on 2019-October-15, 14:17, said:

Are progressives psychologically unfit to recognize hypocrisy?

Surely you see no problem with:

Now who's interfering in an election
Barack Obama’s endorsement of Justin Trudeau is an unjustifiable American intrusion

How about 2015 Canada?

Millions in foreign funds spent in 2015 federal election to defeat Harper government

How about 2015 Israel?
Not gonna post any links about this, you know very well how hard Obama worked against BN.

[Winstonm]

The White House will have to buy a few hundred cases of FeBreeze after reading this news: Yahoo reports:

Quote

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed a new law on Wednesday that gives the state the authority to prosecute those accused of crimes even if they have a presidential pardon.

The bill effectively closes a double jeopardy loophole that usually prevents individuals charged on the federal level from being prosecuted by a state for the same offense. The measure was written to specifically target former Trump administration officials who may receive a pardon, an idea the president has regularly suggested for aides who have run afoul of the law.

“No one is above the law and New York will not turn a blind eye to criminality, no matter who seeks to protect them,” Cuomo said in a statement Wednesday. “The closure of this egregious loophole gives prosecutors the ability to stand up against any abuse of power, and helps ensure that no politically motivated, self-serving action is sanctioned under law.

The law goes into effect immediately and applies to all past and future offenses. New York officials will be able to prosecute any pardoned individual who served in the executive branch, worked for a president’s election or transition team or for a for-profit or nonprofit group controlled by a president.

President are able to pardon only federal crimes, not those committed at the state level.

[hrothgar]

andrei, on 2019-October-17, 07:52, said:

Surely you see no problem with:

Now who's interfering in an election
Barack Obama’s endorsement of Justin Trudeau is an unjustifiable American intrusion

How about 2015 Canada?

Millions in foreign funds spent in 2015 federal election to defeat Harper government

How about 2015 Israel?
Not gonna post any links about this, you know very well how hard Obama worked against BN.

If any of these accusations have merit, then the governments of Canada and Israel are more than welcome to raise this as an issue...

None of which has any bearing on the issue at hand.
That being actions taken by Trump, Giuliani, and the like to swing domestic US elections.