U.S. Politics: Who's Cohen Down?

[Martell Spy]

He seems to be betting that the Germans are terrible at keeping records. Perhaps he also thinks they can't keep the trains running on time.

Cohen Again Denies He Made Prague Visit During Trump Campaign

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/cohen-again-denies-prague-visit-during-trump-campaign.html

 

Quote

 

Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, tweeted on Saturdaythat the story was “bad reporting, bad information and [a] bad story.”

“No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague,” he continued. “I was in LA with my son. Proven."

 

 

[The guy from the Vale]

 I can assure you that we Germans are absolutely terrible at having the trains run on time.

[Darth Richard II]

I don't know wtf is goign on IN THIS THREAD let alone the rest of the world.

[LongRider]

17 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Maher asked last night, or rather stated, something like "I don't think he ever leaves willingly."  One never knows, but I don't think it's conspiratorial in the least to wonder how Trump would ever actually leave office.  Kander was on the show and reiterated how important November's elections are.  That seems to jive with what Mounck and some others have been saying about nations leaning authoritarian:  that it really matters what happens in the subsequent elections after the would-be authoritarian emerges.  

I wish that I had a way to voodoo doll all of you so that I could jab you any time you flirt with anti-Trump infighting.  Every person who isn't a right-wing authoritarian needs to get out and vote in seven months.

I think what happens with Cohen will affect Trump deeply and have be a factor of if he stays or goes.  If Cohen flips, and I can't/won't make any prediction, that could of course be devastating for Trump, but then, what is found in Cohen's files and tapes and emails might just sink Trump even if Cohen doesn't flip.  From what I've been reading in several places, Cohen's stash could be a treasure trove of Trump and family crime, and things could get really bad for him.  (please FSM, touch Trump with your noodley appendage and make it so) 

Would Trump resign if the evidence for Trumps many crimes goes past the 'fake news' hand waving stage?  I would hope so, but then he's an idiot, so perhaps not.   You are correct about voting this fall, it's vital.

[Bonnot OG]

Trump would not resign. He can't even accept the fact he lost the popular vote. You think this orange fuck bag is gonna say okay, I admit I was doing illegal and shady shit? fucking please. You're one naive person if you think he won't have to be led out at gun point in handcuffs and a black hood over his head.

[Kalbear]

52 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Would Trump resign if the evidence for Trumps many crimes goes past the 'fake news' hand waving stage?  I would hope so, but then he's an idiot, so perhaps not.   You are correct about voting this fall, it's vital.

Let's go through this thought experiment.

let's say that there exists evidence of Trump committing a crime prior to his becoming POTUS. Possibly a rape, or a massive financial scandal. And the evidence is actually pretty sound and would normally result in a conviction or at least a trial with a lot of discovery. 

What percentage of Republicans would continue to support him? My suspicion is that it would be well above 60%. And as long as it is well above 60%, it is absolutely fatal for Republican congress to do anything bipartisan against him.

Furthermore, his leaving the office gives him less actual power to deal with things, less clout, fewer allies, and in general makes him far more vulnerable. His leaving the office doesn't make his problems go away magically, and there's no guarantee that the next POTUS could pardon him even if they wanted to, because chances are good that his crimes would not be federal-level crimes.

[HoodedCrow]

Trump holds Republicans hostage like a good crime boss.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Triskele said:

And we're now at a point where one could argue that Trump's best shot at looking out for Trump which is obviously all he cares about is to try to obstruct / resist / hold on to power.  One way or the other this issue is really being forced.

In Kal's scenario, which seems increasingly likely, one hopes that said crimes emerging would help the Dems even more in the midterms.  As would, presumably, the impending massacre of Rosenstein et al.  So much depends on November.  

I'm not sure much changes in November. The House having Democrat-led committees and investigations might be nice and all, but it's not going to result in a conviction in the senate any time soon. 

Maybe working backwards would be better. What situation could exist such that Trump was effectively denied his power by the Republicans in the senate, or at least about 15 of them? What would it take? I'm honestly not sure there exists something he did prior to being POTUS that would result in that ouster, including any campaign shenanigans with Russia where he directly colluded with them. We know what doesn't work:

• Corruption in the millions of dollars scale
• Emolument clause violations
• ethics violations
• Use of military illegally
• Admitting to obstructing justice
• Nepotism
• Incompetence
• Incoherence

What would actually work?

[Altherion]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Maybe working backwards would be better. What situation could exist such that Trump was effectively denied his power by the Republicans in the senate, or at least about 15 of them? What would it take? I'm honestly not sure there exists something he did prior to being POTUS that would result in that ouster, including any campaign shenanigans with Russia where he directly colluded with them. We know what doesn't work:

• Corruption in the millions of dollars scale
• Emolument clause violations
• ethics violations
• Use of military illegally
• Admitting to obstructing justice
• Nepotism
• Incompetence
• Incoherence

What would actually work?

Your list reminds me of the Boy Who Cried Wolf fable: while there are surely still some things that could be used to drive Trump out (e.g. if he openly tried to declare himself President For Life), there are fewer of them (and fewer still of those which happened prior to his election) than there would otherwise be simply because so many things have been thrown at the wall and didn't stick. In fact, I'm pretty sure that even the "Will the hitherto unknown but suddenly critical Trump flunky turn on him?" narrative has been done before with at least two other flunkies.

[ThinkerX]

30 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Let's go through this thought experiment.

let's say that there exists evidence of Trump committing a crime prior to his becoming POTUS. Possibly a rape, or a massive financial scandal. And the evidence is actually pretty sound and would normally result in a conviction or at least a trial with a lot of discovery. 

What percentage of Republicans would continue to support him? My suspicion is that it would be well above 60%. And as long as it is well above 60%, it is absolutely fatal for Republican congress to do anything bipartisan against him.

Furthermore, his leaving the office gives him less actual power to deal with things, less clout, fewer allies, and in general makes him far more vulnerable. His leaving the office doesn't make his problems go away magically, and there's no guarantee that the next POTUS could pardon him even if they wanted to, because chances are good that his crimes would not be federal-level crimes.

Trump faces reelection in 2020.  Pretty good odds he'll lose, unless the democratic party manages to nominate somebody with no charisma whatsoever. 

So, assume Trump loses in 2020.  At that point he very well could be facing state charges as a result of the Cohen thing.  Maybe even looking at prison.  Same situation if Trump resigns.  Even if his advisors negotiate a deal rendering him immune from the federal charges, or if he tries the 'pardon himself' stunt, the prospect of the state charges remain.  But...could a state government bring criminal charges against a sitting president and have them stick?  I have doubts.

Way I see it, Trumps continued freedom depends on him remaining in office - at all costs.  I'm wondering if he might attempt something really seriously dramatic to maintain power - state of emergency, or blatant election rigging or some such.

 

 

[LongRider]

23 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

Trump would not resign. He can't even accept the fact he lost the popular vote. You think this orange fuck bag is gonna say okay, I admit I was doing illegal and shady shit? fucking please. You're one naive person if you think he won't have to be led out at gun point in handcuffs and a black hood over his head.

It's fine if you don't think he would ever resign, but insults are not necessary.  No one here can predict how Trump's presidency will end, but sometime it will end.  He may be impeached, he may resign, he may stroke out.  He will do more damage to the country in the mean time, and at the same time, his crimes are slowly being uncovered.  Where is the tipping point?  What will it mean when it is reached?  I personally think some of the excessive gloom and doom on this thread is naïve as well, we all see through our own filters, it doesn't mean that any one of the us is right.   

[Jace, Extat]

Ben Stiller! IT'S BEEN STILLER as Cohen on SNL

[Prince of the North]

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Ben Stiller! IT'S BEEN STILLER as Cohen on SNL

Sorry I missed that!  Been busy with our daughter's birthday sleepover this evening so I 'll have to maybe catch it some other time.

I think the real question is: Has Ben Stiller ever been to Prague?!!

[S John]

3 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

 

Way I see it, Trumps continued freedom depends on him remaining in office - at all costs.  I'm wondering if he might attempt something really seriously dramatic to maintain power - state of emergency, or blatant election rigging or some such.

 

 

I could be totally wrong, but even though a lot of people make excuses for Trump, I really don’t think he is formidable enough to get away with a blatant power grab.

[redriver]

He gets thrown from the top of Trump Tower by a bunch of prostitutes.All the foreshadowing leads this way........

[Fragile Bird]

I keep seeing the numbers for Republicans who are not running again, how many Democrats are not running again?

eta: lol, CNN just answered my question, 18 Dems, 40 Reps, And one of their sources says it might be 8 more Republicans, 3 more for sure. 18 states have not hit their filing deadlines yet.

[OldGimletEye]

The Orange One shows he’s a bigger dumb ass than Dubya. That is one heck of a feat.
 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/14/17237788/trump-tweet-syria-mission-accomplished-bush

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Less than 24 hours after ordering missile strikes in Syria, President Donald Trump declared, “Mission Accomplished!” in a tweet on Saturday.

The reaction was swift: Twitter users and political pundits immediately drew parallels with President George W. Bush’s now-infamous 2003 speech just over a month into the Iraq war, in which he announced an end to “major combat operations” in Iraq under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. In actuality, the war was far from over, and would stretch on for years.

And conservative sorts people, I’d imagine, will eat that shit up, like its the best thing ever. Mmm. Hmmm. Taste good, can I have another serving?

Well not surprisingly, the C suite shows what its real priorities are.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/14/17237960/trump-tax-cuts-bank-earnings-tweets

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Late last week, the CEO of one of Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, laid out why the stock market and corporate America are just fine with President Donald Trump despite his volatile nature — because tax cuts outweigh Trump tweets.

Michael Corbat discussed the megabank’s first-quarter results in a call with analysts on Friday, explaining why he remains calm despite White House-generated uncertainty. “The volatility we see from morning tweets, or stances that vary from time to time — I wouldn’t say the world is numb or numbing to that, but the positive things that happen are overwhelmingly that,” he said.

In other words, despite concerns about a possible US-China trade war, Trump’s volatile reactions to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and the potential for escalating conflict in places such as Syria and North Korea, December’s Republican-passed tax cuts are keeping things peachy on Wall Street and in the C-suite.

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Not that I ever drink Starbuck’s over priced coffee, when regular old black gas station coffee is good enough for little old  me. In fact, I’d probably drink coffee strained through a dirty sock, if I were desperate enough. But, if I ever though about going into a Starbuck’s, this kills it.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/4/14/17238494/what-happened-at-starbucks-black-men-arrested-philadelphia

Quote

Two black men were arrested and escorted out of a Philadelphia Starbucks on Thursday after staff called the police to report they refused to leave; the men hadn’t ordered anything and were reportedly waiting for a business associate to arrive. The staff reportedly called 911 because Starbucks does “not allow nonpaying people from the public to come in and use the restroom,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross told the Philadelphia Inquirer. The employees said the men were trespassing and had refused to leave the restaurant.

A video of the incident has swept across the internet and sparked widespread outrage, prompting Starbucks to issue a less-than-satisfying apology on Saturday afternoon.

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Robert Skidelsky covers the sorry ass intellectual history of austerity.

What were the papers or articles that bolstered right wing austerity talking points? I'd say it was (a short list)

1. Cole and Ohanian's paper that the New Deal delayed the recovery. It was a horseshit paper for at least a few reasons.

2. Alberto Alesina's expansionary austerity paper.

3. Amity Schlaes book Forgotten Man (Conservative horseshit you should forget about). One of her main claims? The stock market didn't return to its pre 1929 level until the 1950s. Forget about showing actual GDP data.

4. Interns at the Cato Institute being allowed to hit the LINEST function on Excel without knowing what in the hell they were doing.

5. Random nonsensical horseshit from Cochrane, Fama, Dan Mitchell, Lucas, etc. etc.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/the-advanced-economies-lost-decade-by-robert-skidelsky-2018-04?

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NDON – Ten years after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, it is worth asking where the world’s developed economies are today, where they would have been had there been no crisis, and, perhaps more important, where they might have been had different policy choices prevailed before and after the collapse.
The first two questions can be answered with a single graph, which shows real (inflation-adjusted) per capita GDP growth for OECD countries from 2000 to 2018. As a bloc, the OECD spent five years getting back to where it was just before the crash (the eurozone took two years longer). And its average annual growth rate (1.5%) has remained at three-quarters of the pre-crash level (2%).

 

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Looking back, it is clear that policy interventions immediately following the 2008 crash did make a difference, at least in the near term. As the graph below shows, the 2008 collapse was as steep as that of 1929, but it lasted for a much shorter time. Unlike US Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon in 1929, no one in 2008 really wanted to “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” in order to “purge the rottenness out of the system.” In other words, no one wanted to create the conditions for another Adolf Hitler to emerge.1

 

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Yet in 2010, before the shoots had time to flower, OECD governments rolled back their stimulus policies and introduced austerity policies, or “fiscal consolidation,” designed to eliminate deficits and put debt/GDP ratios on a “declining path.” It is now generally agreed that these measures slowed down the recovery, and probably reduced the advanced economies’ productive capacity as well. In Europe, Stiglitz observed in 2014, the period of austerity had “been an utter and unmitigated disaster.” And in the United States, notes DeLong, “relative performance after the Great Recession [has been] nothing short of appalling.”

 

Quote

The first, least cautious argument for fiscal austerity came from Harvard University economist Alberto Alesina, who was much in vogue during the early phase of the crisis. In April 2010, Alesina published a paper assuring European finance ministers that, “Many even sharp reductions of budget deficits have been accompanied and immediately followed by sustained growth rather than recessions even in the very short run.” Alesina based this conclusion on historical studies of fiscal contractions, and argued that a credible program of deficit reduction would boost confidence enough to offset any adverse effects of the fiscal contraction itself.
A number of Project Syndicate commentators took Alesina to task for these claims. Nobel laureate economist Robert J. Shiller countered that, contrary to Alesina’s assurances, “There is no abstract theory that can predict how people will react to an austerity program.” Writing in 2012, Shiller correctly predicted that “austerity programs in Europe and elsewhere appear likely to yield disappointing results.”

Alesina's empirical methodology was latter shown to be very dubious.

Quote

Similarly, Harvard’s Jeffrey Frankel pointed out in May 2013 that Alesina’s co-author on two influential papers, Robert Perotti, had recanted, having identified flaws in their methodology. Following more criticism of his methodology by the International Monetary Fund and the OECD, Alesina himself became considerably more circumspect about the promise of austerity. Of course, by then, he had already contributed his mite to the sum of human misery.

Whether he became more circumspect or not, the damage had already been done.

Quote

Out of the Alesina wreckage emerged another case for austerity, based on the doctrine of “short-run pain for long-run gain.” As Daniel Gros of the Center for European Policy Studies explained in August 2013, “Austerity always involves huge social costs,” yet “almost all economic models imply that a cut in expenditures today should lead to higher GDP in the long run, because it allows for lower taxes (and thus reduces economic distortions).”

Well for one, it seems to assume output growth is a fairly deterministic process and that recessions are just temporary hick ups from the trend, which we are finding out is not the case.

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 And in a June 2012 Project Syndicatecommentary, Rogoff claimed that public debt levels above 90% of GDP imposed “stunning” cumulative costs on growth. The implication was clear: only by immediately reducing the growth of public debt could advanced economies avoid prolonged malaise.
This, it turned out, was another dubious recipe for recovery. Because Rogoff and Reinhart found a historical correlation between high debt and slow growth, they presumed that high debt caused slow growth. Yet it is just as likely that slow growth had caused high debt. Rogoff’s theory had led him to a particular interpretation of the data. Or, as Oscar Wilde wrote of Wordsworth, “He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.”

Also, that paper was shown to be empirically flawed by a graduate student who tried to replicate the results.

Quote

While the Rogoff/Reinhart school was calling for rapid reductions in the debt-to-GDP ratio to boost growth, Keynesians pointed out that austerity itself was limiting growth, by reducing demand. The Keynesian argument was straightforward. Because the slump had been caused by an increase in private-sector saving, the recovery would have to be driven by government dissaving – deficit spending – to offset the negative impact on aggregate demand.

In simple Robinson Caruso models where Robinson Caruso the firm owner knows what Robinson Caruso the consumer’s intended future spending plans are, and act of savings automatically translates into an act of investment. In the real world where firms don’t know what a consumer’s future plans are, not so much.

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Hysteresis, which helps to explain the decline in the growth rate shown in Figure 1, can also result from a large-scale switch to inferior employment. Flexible labor markets in the US and the United Kingdom have enabled both economies to return to pre-crisis unemployment levels (in the range of 4-5%). But the official unemployment rate excludes millions of workers who are involuntarily employed part-time, as well as others doing what the anthropologist David Graeber has described as “bullshit jobs.”

 

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This faulty theory of money was driven by pure ideology, as the Nobel laureate economist Robert E. Lucas, Jr. unwittingly intimated in a December 2008 Wall Street Journalcommentary. Unlike fiscal expansion, Lucas observed, monetary expansion “entails no new government enterprises, no government equity in private enterprises, no price fixing or other controls on the operation of individual business, and no government role in the allocation of capital across different activities.” In his view, these are all “important virtues” – which is to say, a faulty theory is better than one that entails any increased role for the state.   

Given Lucas' mindless neo-Walrasianism, one wonders why he thinks monetary policy does anything.

[Fragile Bird]

It was just pointed out on CNN that the special prosecutor who investigated Scooter Libby was appointed by James Comey.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

I keep seeing the numbers for Republicans who are not running again, how many Democrats are not running again?

eta: lol, CNN just answered my question, 18 Dems, 40 Reps, And one of their sources says it might be 8 more Republicans, 3 more for sure. 18 states have not hit their filing deadlines yet.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/the-2018-congressional-retirement-tracker/545723/

This link has R's, D's and info on who is seeking a higher office.

[LongRider]