US politics: Alabama Jones and the Temple of Moore

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Yukle said:

The USA Senate has done this before, the precedent is fairly clear. In fact, Mitch McConnell has voted in favour of it for his own party. I can't remember the name: anyone recall it?

Senator Bob Packwood (R-Oregon). Though he resigned under threat of expulsion before the vote was held. Reporters always treat McConnell's involvement in the matter to be some profile in courage. And, while it wasn't nothing, he shouldn't get too much credit either.

McConnell was chair of the Senate Ethics Committee when it issued a unanimous recommendation that the senate vote to expel Packwood (which triggered his resignation). However, that Committee is always evenly divided between 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans, so the chair does not have any particular power over it; Richard Bryan, the Democratic vice-chair of the committee at the time was a bigger drive voice on the issue.

McConnell, and the other 2 Republicans on the Committee, did vote in favor of the expulsion recommendation, so like I said, it wasn't nothing. But Packwood had turned over his personal diary to the committee, which, even though he tried editing it beforehand, still covered in significant detail his history of sexual abuse and assault. There was no "he said/she said" defense available, he admitted to the allegations; so Republicans had no cover to try to support him.

Also worth noting, Packwood was one of the most moderate Republican senators at the time. He had even voted against Clarence Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court, over concern that Thomas would try to restrict abortion rights; so he was actually to the left of 11 Senate Democrats. Getting him out of the Senate could be considered a beneficial purge to a GOP caucus that was unifying and undergoing its rightward shift towards where it is now.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Nasty LongRider said:

If that were to happen, I would hope that Moore would end up 'borked'.   Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and the fight was on.  Even some R's voted against him.  Could that happen again?  Moore is Bannon's man, and McConnell is no fan of Bannon I think, so who can say.

Wikipedia link about Bork's nomination.

There’s no need to hope, as this topic is moot. If they’d kick him out of the Senate then there’s a 0% chance they’d confirm his Supreme Court nomination.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Also, it looks like we might be going back to "Lock Her Up!":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-considering-second-special-counsel-to-investigate-republican-concerns-letter-shows/2017/11/13/bc92ef3c-c8d2-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html?utm_term=.c9932477b2f6

[Guest]

Alabama GOP steering committee meeting later this week to decide Moore's fate.

[Morpheus]

29 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Also, it looks like we might be going back to "Lock Her Up!":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-considering-second-special-counsel-to-investigate-republican-concerns-letter-shows/2017/11/13/bc92ef3c-c8d2-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html?utm_term=.c9932477b2f6

It would be another blatant abuse of power, Trump tells Sessions and the DoJ to investigate Clinton and they do it, getting closer to emulating his strong man idols every day.

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Alabama GOP steering committee meeting later this week to decide Moore's fate.

That is a really good article for clearing up some of the confusion about what's going on.  Useful bits:

Quote

 

The 21 members of Alabama’s Republican Party central steering committee are the only ones who can pull Roy Moore’s nomination and potentially block his path to the Senate.

Under state law, it is too late to remove Moore’s name from the ballot or replace him with another candidate. If his nomination is withdrawn but he still gets the most votes in the Dec. 12 election against Democratic nominee Doug Jones, it’s unclear what happens. Some interpret the law as saying the election would be null and void and the governor would need to call a new one, while others say the second-place finisher would be declared the winner, whether that’s Jones or a write-in. Lawsuits would be likely.

That explains why nobody knows what happens if Moore is forceably withdrawn by the state GOP and then wins the election anyway.

Quote

Two sources close to Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he’s told Alabama Republicans he’s “not interested” in returning to the Senate seat he gave up to become attorney general. Session’s appointed successor, Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL), who lost to Moore in the GOP primary, told reporters Monday that it’s “highly unlikely” that he will run.

So Strange and Sessions are trying to keep their names out of the mix.

[DanteGabriel]

Just now, Morpheus said:

It would be another blatant abuse of power, Trump tells Sessions and the DoJ to investigate Clinton and they do it, getting closer emulating his strong man idols everyday.

With so many monstrous stories constantly demanding our attention, it's easy to lose track of the thousand more subtle ways Trump is trying to become a dictator -- including his vendetta against the press, and his DOJ's efforts to try to fuck with CNN:

Quote

“AT&T is buying Time Warner, and thus CNN,” he told his audience, calling the proposed merger an example of a media “power structure” that was working to suppress his vote and the voices of his supporters. It was, he said, “a deal we will not approve in my administration.”

He specifically cited media concentration. But his singling out of CNN in the context of an alleged plot against him was lost on no one.

Now, CNN is at the heart of a dispute between the Justice Department and AT&T and Time Warner. Three people from the companies said Wednesday that the department insisted that AT&T divest either CNN’s parent company, Turner Broadcasting, or its valuable DirecTV service in return for approval.

This raised the chilling possibility that Mr. Trump was making good on his threatening statements in Gettysburg.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/business/att-time-warner-cnn-trump.html

[OldGimletEye]

Yes, it’s time to tell Republicans that:

1. Wearing a leisure suit these days makes you look like a dork. And those mutton chop sideburns look silly. Almost as silly as some middle aged Republican guy dressed up as Paul Revere.

2. Time to turn in your Starsky & Hutch collection, dudes.

3. That eight track you're using is obsolete. Like at least upgrade to a cassette player or something.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16634930/tax-reform-debate-stuck-1970s

Quote

The biggest policy fight left in 2017 is stuck in the 1970s.

 

Quote

Tax reform is lining up like this: Republicans want big, business-friendly tax cuts to spur savings and investments while Democrats complain it’ll blow a hole in the deficit. These terms of debate made sense 30 to 40 years ago. Back then, the economy was stuck in a particular kind of rut. With inflation high and profits low, companies weren’t investing and creating new jobs even as a torrent of new workers was flooding the labor force. Very high interest rates lurked in the background.

 

Quote

Reagan’s argument with Jimmy Carter about tax cuts versus deficit reduction made sense because it related to what everyone agreed was the main problem of day. But that was a long time ago. America’s big contemporary problems — poor public health, weak labor force participation, ecological sustainability — won’t be addressed by policy ideas cooked up in the high-inflation, low-profit pressure cooker of the 1970s.

Anyway, the conservative version of events is something like:

That wild eyed ultra liberal Jimmy Carter got elected and with his irresponsible spending caused rampant inflation. And then Ronnie came ridin into town, like Shane style, and with Supply Side economics in hand, solved the 1970s stagflation problem, and America was great again.

The truth is a bit different.

1. In reality, Carter was rather moderate. He may have not been the most inspiring President, but really a lot of deregulation started under Carter.

2. If you're looking for Presidents to blame, then point the finger at LBJ and Richard Nixon. The Keynesian Walter Heller warned LBJ about inflation pressures. And Richard Nixon was famous for beating up on Arthur Burns, who usually complied with Nixon’s request.

3. Yes, some blame should go to Keynesians that believed in a very crude Phillips Curve. However, Milton Friedman’s claim that the Phillips Curve depends upon the state of inflation expectations is widely accepted.

4. Obviously oil supply shocks weren’t helpful.

5. Supply siders claimed that you need not worry about raising the nominal interest rate because all the supply side magic would offset monetary tightening. Volcker tightened and a recession occurred and swamped any alleged supply side effects. Then Volcker loosened and it was mornin’ in America. As Christina Romer says, “Keynes theorized aggregate demand matters and then Milton Friedman gave the evidence in A Monetary History of The United States.” Of course conservative dumb asses like Puke Gingrich were spewing conservative myths about the 1980s in 2012, when he was advocating for Mitt “47% of Americans are bums” Romney. Conservative myths about the 1980s just refuse to die.

6. On several metrics, it would appear the economy did better in Carter’s four years than Dubya’s eight.

And then roll to 2007 and onward:

1. You have conservative losers warning about rampant inflation. People tried to tell conservative losers that the demand for money is interest rate elastic. But, conservative losers did not listen. And when the FED’s monetary base expanded by about 400%-500%, conservative losers had no credible explanation why the rampant inflation did not appear.

2. In fact, conservative losers started talking about the gold standard to deal with a nonexistent inflation problem.

3. And then you had very well educated people, with prestigious jobs, like John Cochrane and Eugene Fama spewing fuckin’ nonsense like, “A dollar spent by the government is one that can’t be spent by the private sector” (also repeated by Cato Institute idiot Dan Mitchell) and conservatives just eating that shit up like it was manna from heaven. Except it’s and was nonsense. One might say it’s conservative nonsense. If the FED sets the interest rate at a certain level, the amount of money will depend on the public's demand for it, which in turn is influenced by the rate of spending.

4. And then you had people like Casey Mulligan (Cochrane’s and Fama’s colleague at U. of Chicago) running around claiming unemployment benefits prolonged the recession. But, if RBC guys like Mulligan were right, you should have seen inflation and low growth. But, that’s not what happened. And certainly you didn’t see rapid wage inflation.

5. And then you had idiots like Jamie Dimon claiming everything was due to a skills gap, because I guess nobody could be as talented and smart as Jamie Dimon, ergo, there is a skills gap. Jamie “I’m Barely A Democrat” (really he needs to take his self serving elitist bullshit to the Republican Party, where I think he’d be more comfortable) Dimon’s explanation however failed for reasons similar to Mulligan’s.

6. And then when “rampant inflation” just around the corner did not appear conservative sorts of people amazingly discovered that assets may be subject to mis-pricing, even though left of center to left types ranging from Schiller to Minsky have been warning about asset mis-pricing for years. One hand conservatives want to get rid of Dodd Frank because assets hit their rational expectations rational value equilibrium quickly, but then on the other hand they want monetary tightening, maintaining inflation expectations be damned, because I guess it doesn’t. Like conservatives make up your mind.

7. And conservative nonsense did a lot of damage to people. If you were a young person just getting out of school in 2007, 2008, 2009 etc., etc, and looking for your first job, there is a good chance you’ll never recover. And then to add insult to injury, you probably have some sorry ass middle age GOP guy telling you how lazy you are.

And now here we are. And conservatives think they just be taken seriously these days without being horse laughed right out of the room because they are stuck in believing their own bullshit about events that occurred 40 years ago.

[OldGimletEye]

Don't worry, I'm sure John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, and Dick Cheney will protect us.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/11/14/16589878/global-climate-change-conflict-environment

Quote

My belief is that we will see a renaissance of violent conflict in the 21st century, and that many of these conflicts will spring from climate change.”

That’s what Harald Welzer, author of Climate Wars: Why People Will Be Killed in the 21st Century, told me in a recent interview. A professor at the University of Flensburg in Germany, Welzer studies the cultural and political implications of climate change. His book, first published in 2012, was rereleased in paperback in October.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

4 hours ago, Seli said:

To be fair that letter was from when Moore was simply a terrible judge, before the allegations of child molestation came to be public knowledge.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I missed that bit.

[OldGimletEye]

The awesome intellectual firepower of Trump's judicial appointments.

He wasn't lying when he said he'd get the "best people".

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/things-get-worse-trumps-most-outlandish-judicial-nominee

Quote

Talley did, however, work as a blogger, where he pledged support for the NRA and published gems such as “Hillary Rotten Clinton.”

 

Quote

Talley also appears to have failed to disclose other work he published online, including his reaction to massacre of children at Sandy Hook elementary. “My solution would be to stop being a society of pansies and man up,” Talley wrote in 2012.

 

[Ormond]

5 hours ago, Seli said:

To be fair that letter was from when Moore was simply a terrible judge, before the allegations of child molestation came to be public knowledge.

And according to the "al.com" link that was posted before, three of the pastors have already asked that their name be removed from the list, pointing out that they were not contacted to see if they still endorsed Moore in light of the recent allegations. 

If many more of the pastors on the list make the same statement, posting that list of signatures may backfire on the Moore campaign.

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/53_pastors_sign_letter_of_supp.html

[Bonnot OG]

The right is really a cesspool. I honestly hate half of this country. 

[Guest]

Jeff Sessions is a weasel, but at least he's a smart weasel.

Asked by Jordan what it would take to get a special counsel investigation into the dossier or various Clinton-related accusations, Sessions pointed to department policies on the procedure, as well as to the fact that there has only been two special counsel investigations.

“Each of those are pretty special factual situations, and we will use the proper standards, and that’s the only thing I can tell you, Mr. Jordan” Sessions said. “You can have your idea, but sometimes we have to study what the facts are and to evaluate whether it meets the standard that requires a special counsel.”

[Morpheus]

Most of the Republicans at today's  hearing have decided that its purpose is to push Sessions to pursue Clinton, not to get him to clarify false or misleading statements.

[lokisnow]

One of the major things right wingers care about is purity, so democrats need to be hammering Moore on that axis of criticism , this is hard because left wingers care less about purity than any other issue. They keep defaulting to critiquing the party on a hypocrisy (fairness/anti-sanctity) axis, which is the opposite of what they should do and is a textbook approach to be the least persuasive possible to people who care about purity.

 

They need to be specific, target only Moore. and they need to repeatedly hammer that it is immoral to vote for a pedophile (I know ormand doesn't like that word but it is the best heuristic to use). so long as they are simple and specific they will discourage sanctity and purity voters. Any other approach will only help to elect him.

[Bonnot OG]

5 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

One of the major things right wingers care about is purity, so democrats need to be hammering Moore on that axis of criticism , this is hard because left wingers care less about purity than any other issue. They keep defaulting to critiquing the party on a hypocrisy (fairness/anti-sanctity) axis, which is the opposite of what they should do and is a textbook approach to be the least persuasive possible to people who care about purity.

 

They need to be specific, target only Moore. and they need to repeatedly hammer that it is immoral to vote for a pedophile (I know ormand doesn't like that word but it is the best heuristic to use). so long as they are simple and specific they will discourage sanctity and purity voters. Any other approach will only help to elect him.

No they don't lol.

[Sivin]

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

There have been probably been worse politicians even than Roy Moore, previously.

I was talking about the attempted sale of the U.S. Presidency to a foreign and malignant entity.

[Sivin]

And I think Donnie did a good job on this UCLA basketball players thing. Assuming he didn't sell California or anything, he did his job getting Americans back home. 

I wish I had some reasonable conservative government advocates to talk about that with, but they don't exist anymore.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, WinterFox said:

And I think Donnie did a good job on this UCLA basketball players thing. Assuming he didn't sell California or anything, he did his job getting Americans back home. 

I wish I had some reasonable conservative government advocates to talk about that with, but they don't exist anymore.  

If you stop and think about it, Donald Trump and LaVar Ball are essentially the same person, just one was born on third base.