It is easy to despair lately with Australia burning and America in a Trumped up war. But things aren’t always as hopeless as they seem. Behind the curtain, do Republicans fear they’ve gone too far and that a backlash is on the way to wipe them out? I’m not sure robotic Trump worshipers have feelings but it’s fun to think that they may be experiencing some level of anxiety about possibly being held accountable by constituents (us) for their horrible actions.
Regulations are protections.
It’s caucus time. February 3rd. The moment we’ve been waiting for.
In November 2018 our votes made it possible to take back the House of Representatives which allowed impeachment of this accidental president. In November 2020 we must take back the Senate, The White House, and the Iowa legislature. We have to stop the Republicans from continuing their march of corporate greed, environmental degradation and knocking down the pillars of Democracy. To borrow a cliche, let’s do this!
Over the weekend the IDP rolled out thecaucuses.org, a website specifically for helping folks participate in the Iowa caucuses. It is a very user-friendly site where you can click on a separate box if you are a caucus goer, a caucus leader or press. If you click on caucus goer, you will see Caucus #101 in 4 easy steps including how to find your caucus location. You can sign up in advance to save time on caucus night or request an accommodation. They have also provided a caucus hotline 800# and an FAQ page. Please check out this site if you have never attended a caucus before or even if you have.
From our inbox: Here is an important caucus message from the Iowa Democratic Party
Today we’re launching our online hub for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses! You can find all the information you will need to prepare for caucus night in one central hub — from making sure you’re a registered Democrat to confirming your caucus location and more — at thecaucuses.org.
Caucuses represent the purest form of democracy in action. They’re gatherings of neighbors where Democrats meet to organize their precinct for the upcoming election, discuss important issues, and declare their Presidential preference.
And in 2020, the caucuses couldn’t be more important because they are the first official step in the presidential nominating process — and it’s our first opportunity to take back our state and our country.
The eyes of the nation — and the world — will be on Iowa’s caucuses on Feb 3rd, 2020. The future of our country is up to us, and so many are counting on us. That’s why it’s so imperative you participate in the caucuses!!
credit to Soph0571 at democraticunderground.com
Almost a year ago I wrote a few short paragraphs about the possibility of the current president starting a war with one of several possible enemies and timed so that the execution of the war would dovetail nicely with the 2020 election campaign: (this was very predictable)
One of the recent unwritten rules of an incumbent Republican president running for re-election is that they must have a war for Americans to rally around. It must be a war they are almost certain to win. They must control nearly all stories about the war. We saw this with George W in Iraq, his Daddy with Desert Storm, which ended too soon, Reagan with the great victory in Grenada and to a degree Nixon in Vietnam.
The logic is that Americans won’t vote out a leader who is conducting a war. No matter how badly. With the next presidential election 22 months away and the polls going south, Dear Leader is most likely looking around for a nice little war where he can show – bone spurs or not – that he can lead the mighty US army to victory over…. WHO? Auditions are now being held.
- Once again we are shaking the war sabres at Iran. But the question is, can we really beat them or nearly beat them by November of 2020?
- What about Venezuela? They are in such a mess that a Boy Scout troop may have a chance. We are already making war rumblings in their direction. It could be a victory AND put the 1% back in charge.
- How about North Korea? But their guy is crazy too – he may not understand the game.
- What about some really small weak country like Montenegro?
Timing is important also. We have to invade and time things to have victory or near victory about the middle of October 2020.
credit to Soph0571 at democraticunderground.com
Remember back in 2006 when a Republican Congress and a Republican president required the US Postal Service to pre-fund health care for retirees fo 75 years? Most of us thought it was crazy then and obviously set up to make the USPS to fail. As many thought then, when it comes to pass that the USPS can’t make payments to pre-fund this health care fund, Republicans would come looking to dismantle the USPS.
Well, guess what? That time has come and unless we put up a huge stink, the administration will go about dismantling the USPS this year BEFORE the election. I fear that once the process starts it will be nearly impossible to stop.
Apparently the sale of the USPS falls within the auspices of the administration, so it will take some monumental effort to block a sale by congress, especially with Republicans still in control of the senate with Mr. Grim Reaper (McConnell) deciding what legislation will be acted on.
From MSN on the impending changes:
The United States Postal Service shipped more than 13 billion pieces of mail and packages this holiday season. But now that gift-giving has abated, the agency, which falls under President Trump’s jurisdiction, is facing another deadline: find a new Postmaster General by January 2020.
The new leadership will be handpicked and approved by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors: a group of five men (mostly with investment banking and private banking experience), three of whom were appointed by Trump, along with the current Postmaster General and her deputy.
Once the new leadership is in place, the board will also be tasked by the Trump administration with creating a package of large, structural changes intended to help the ailing Postal Service. Those changes will likely include privatizing and selling pieces of the public service off, according to the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which represents more than 200,000 current and retired postal employees.
In 2018, Trump issued an executive order to create a postal task force, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The group was charged with figuring out how to make the postal service a more profitable entity. They recommended that the agency roll back collective bargaining rights for postal workers and sell off pieces of the service to private industry.
There is nothing in the Constitution that says the government will run a Post Office, only that Congress will establish Post Offices and Post Roads. From wikipedia:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress “To establish Post Offices and Post Roads“.[1]
Based on that there is nothing to stop the administration from privatizing the USPS. It doesn’t take a genius to understand (although I am sure few Republicans understand this) that the service that the USPS provides will be dramatically changed. Daily delivery to your door may become an option instead of standard service. How about that famous “last mile” service? That ain’t cheap.
And the cost? We can now send a first class letter anyplace in the US for 55 cents. That won’t last long. Once privatized that probably won’t get that same letter across town.
The American Postal Workers Union is trying to fight back. They have set up a website to get information out to the public.
There is also a petition to sign that is a bit hard to find. This should get you there.
And since we are all political leading up to the caucuses, be sure to contact your US representative and your senators and ask them what they will do to stop the sale of the our Postal Service?
I am back with the quiz after a month of visiting and having visitors. ’Twas fun but exhausting. So let’s jump right into the most important election ever.
Now we have a situation in the Middle East that looks very scary. As we look for reasons and answers we remember that this is an administration that has made a policy of lying at every turn. So will we get the truth? Unfortunately, this administration also has a a track record if creating diversions in order to change attention from another bad situation. A movie was made about this in the 90s called “Wag The Dog.”
Is this a “Wag The Dog” moment? Our current president is so erratic and secretive we don’t know and may never really know.
Here we go – less than a month to caucuses. We will include some memories from the past year.
Mike Birbiglia:
One day he’s gonna set up a direct deposit from the federal reserve into one of his failing hotels and then 51 senators will simultaneously mutter “I’m deeply concerned” and then we’ll move on to the next thing. –
Answers:
Dr. Maureen McCue advocating for the Iran Deal at Congressman Dave Loebsack’s Iowa City Office August 2015
The politics of Iran has been on my radar since the Iranian Revolution when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979 and an Islamic republic replaced the monarchy.
I lived in Mainz, Germany that year. I was a mechanized infantry battalion adjutant in the Eighth Infantry Division, which, as part of V Corps, was training for a war in the Middle East over oil. Across the Rhine river from us was Wiesbaden, the evacuation point for American citizens fleeing Iran in the wake of the revolution. Our unit provided support to the Wiesbaden operation during the evacuation.
One of the choices I made during that time was which of my peers in the battalion would be sent to Iran during the aftermath of the Shah’s overthrow. I picked someone whose family wasn’t with him in Germany. My friend was never deployed to Iran and we were all grateful for that.
In this context it is natural that the United States assassination of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force would catch my attention. What I wasn’t prepared for was spending so much time following developments. When I write “developments” what I really mean is the slow, uneven release of information about what happened and what it means. Yesterday’s post is a list of the main questions raised early on in the discovery process. Answers have proven complicated and elusive.
I was reading the news right when I wrote Soleimani was a target of opportunity. That means the U.S. intelligence community had long been tracking his movements and after President Trump gave the order to slay him, when his movements at the Baghdad airport exposed him and his entourage, there was an opportunity to take action and our military did. While our president seems impulsive, in this case there was a developed plan to assassinate Soleimani.
Two things make this different. First, Soleimani was revered in Shia Muslim culture. His death by unmanned drone attack elevated him to martyrdom and could bring a ruptured Iranian society together in opposition to the United States. Second, he was part of the Iranian government the way Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Mark Milley is. It is important to note Soleimani’s status was distinct from a figure like Osama bin Laden who was a rogue, non-state actor. People who make a proportional comparison between Soleimani and bin Laden are wrong to do so.
The politics of this have been predictable as Heather Cox Richardson pointed out in her daily Letters from an American:
Last night’s news about the assassination of Iran’s military leader Qassem Soleimani has today turned into a predictable split. Defenders of the president insist that Soleimani was an evildoer and the United States absolutely should have taken him out. They have no patience for anyone questioning Trump’s decision, suggesting that those questioners are anti-American and pro-terrorist if they do not support the killing of a man they insist has been one of our key enemies for years.
Those questioning the president’s decision to assassinate a member of a foreign government as a terrorist freely acknowledge that Soleimani was a dangerous man. But they are concerned that Trump appears to have ordered the man assassinated illegally and has, in the process, ignited a firestorm.
If you are reading this post, you should consider subscribing to Richardson’s daily emails.
Whether President Trump had constitutional or legal authority to assassinate a member of the Iranian government without consulting the Congress remains an open question. The administration claimed it was free to act under the 2002 Authority for the Use of Military Force enacted by congress in the wake of the 911 terrorist attacks. The U.S. named the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of which Quds Force is a part, a terrorist organization. Friends Committee on National Legislation has been lobbying the Congress to repeal the 2002 AUMF. The incident yesterday in Baghdad highlights the pressing nature of Congress reasserting its authority over the executive branch of government in matters of war and peace.
In today’s Iowa City Press Citizen, Zachary Oren Smith posted the reactions of three people running for congress. Smith’s framing was “early reactions to the U.S. military strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani fell along party lines in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.“
Democrat Newman Abuissa, a native of Damascus, Syria, reacted to the assassination, “If the goal of the U.S. is a regime change or to negotiate a better deal, this attack makes both goals impossible to achieve. It strengthens the government of Iran and makes it impossible for them to sit down with the U.S. president.”
Both Republicans supported the president and Schilling was quoted at length, parroting long-debunked talking points.
What makes easy media narratives like Smith’s difficult is the decades-long context in which Thursday’s assassination took place. Simple comparisons serve little purpose and push a struggling news outlet closer to irrelevance.
My questions from yesterday aren’t answered. After spending too much time following the news, my work on other projects lagged behind. I need to keep moving. 2020 is here and there is much I want to accomplish.
I did make time to visit a friend whose spouse died Wednesday. She said of him, “at least he got out of here before all this shit happened.” It remains for those of us living to deal with it and carry on.
Here it is. Election year. We have been waiting. Now we act.
Each and every one of us needs to act this year. Not just vote, but join the campaign and act. We need lots and lots of team players because the playing field has been drastically tilted in favor of the opposition especially in the past decade, since 2010 and “RedMap.”
RedMap was one of the basic underlying strategies for using the power of state legislatures to redistrict and thus gerrymander not only national legislative districts but also state legislative districts in such a way the Republicans almost can’t lose. With districts redesigned in such a way that Republicans would usually win a majority, Republicans in state legislatures could then go about the business of changing election laws to greatly tilt the playing field to their advantage.
Thus without the fear of being voted out of office for passing laws that weakened democracy greatly, Republicans went about passing laws and working behind the scenes to ensure their advantage was permanent and would work at all levels.
Along with RedMap, a major case in the Supreme Court that was decided in 2010 also gave a huge advantage to the party with money which is not the Democrats. On January 21st, 2010 the SCOTUS decided in the case of Citizens United vs. the FEC that essentially ended contribution limits in campaigns. This was a huge blow to democracy.
Armed with gerrymandered state legislative districts and the power that a nearly unlimited checkbook brings, Republicans have been able to batter democracy across the country. Therefore the Democratic candidates for office will not only be battling their opponents but also laws and systems that have been built to ensure one side wins most of the time.
One of the very first things Republican state governments started doing was restricting people from voting. Laws were structured to deny people from voting based on very shaky grounds. It appeared that the criteria at the very bottom of the these voter purges are whether a person may be likely to vote for Democratic candidates. Voter rolls were “purged” in state after state. Trying to get reregistered was made extremely difficult often requiring documents that few had and were often hard to obtain.
Along with that polling places were often closed particularly in Democratic leaning precincts such as inner cities. Voting machines in many states have no paper trail so they are unverifiable. Software code in many voting machines have been shown to be easily vulnerable to hacking. In short legislatures have put rough restrictions on voters. If a person does get to vote there is no way in most states to tell if a person’s vote was either recorded accurately and not changed.
As if that wasn’t enough, the opinion in Citizens United pretty much ended restrictions on money in politics. Now “issue oriented” PACs can accumulate a vast amount of money that is often used in negative advertising that makes voters just want to sit out elections. This is a tactic that works very well.
And in the 2016 election we had the Republican candidate openly calling for help from foreign nations in defiance of the law. As we all know he has already done it again in advance of the 2020 election.
So there you go. If the Democratic candidate – nearly any Democratic candidate – were to face the current IMPEACHED president in an election where all the election rules and norms treated both sides equally most believe that the Democrat would win in a landslide. But that is not what will happen in 2020.
What will happen in 2020 is that the Democratic candidate will be facing not just his or her opponent, but they will also be facing a playing field that is greatly tilted to ensure a Republican win:
I believe we can win on the issues. Republicans have basically one issue – how to transfer more wealth into fewer hands. At this point I don’t believe I need to list Democratic issues.
What we need more than anything is people working and working hard to get OUR voters to the polls. We need help from everybody. So set aside time for next summer and fall to work to elect the Democratic candidate and throw out the most corrupt administration ever.
What is at stake is the planet, your health care, education, our economy, and our democracy. This is no time to sit out.
{ed. note: With the assassination of the Iranian General in Iraq Friday, media relationship with the administration and the mainstream’s apparent lack of independence becomes a big issue}
Over the Christmas holiday Rolling Stone snuck in a little story that should shake Americans faith in their system to the core. Chuck Todd, who inherited one of the most cherished chairs in corporate news a few years back when he took over NBC’s Sunday talker “Meet The Press,” admitted that he was naive that he was being used by administration to spread their lies.
Sadly, that should surprise few of us. As Hunter over at dailykos.com notes is that the question now is which direction should Todd and Meet The Press go? And, of course, MTP is not the only player here.
I will borrow extensively from Hunter’s article. Kos has a very liberal policy for reprinting their material. In this case so much of what Hunter said was so on the money concerning an issue that is at the very heart of a functional democracy – an independent press that will hold government officials feet to the fire:
At the website PressThink, Jay Rosen had a post-Christmas examination of Meet The Press host Chuck Todd’s startling new realization that, golly gee, it turns out that Republicans have been intentionally using his show and others to spread false information. Yes, Todd just realized that now. Yes, he is one of the top political “minds” in Washington, which ought to clarify just how boned we all are, as the nation’s political press continues to somehow degrade into something even worse and more vapid than the chummy gullibles that brought us the Iraq War.
I don’t have much to add to Rosen’s diagnosis, so go read that, but here’s a key point.
So what will they do now? My answer: they have no earthly idea. This is what I mean by an epistemological crisis. Chuck Todd has essentially said that on the right there is an incentive structure that compels Republican office holders to use their time on Meet the Press for the spread of disinformation. So do you keep inviting them on air to do just that? If so, then you break faith with the audience and create a massive problem in real time fact-checking. If not, then you just broke the show in half.
Whether we truly believe that Todd or any of the other hosts on any of the other shows have been previously mystified as to why Kellyanne Conway, Ted Cruz, the phalanx of House Republican Trump defenders, Trump himself, or the rest of the Republican Party moved into overt disinformation and propagandizing, with the networks’ willing help, is irrelevant. We have our suspicions, but it is irrelevant. The pertinent question is what happens to Meet the Press now that its host has confirmed, in his own mind and to the public, that Republican guests have been intentionally lying to the American public, relying on network and journalistic conventions to broadcast those lies with little or no pushback.
There are a few possibilities, and all of them would require an integrity among the Sunday shows that I don’t think any of the Sunday shows have, or want. First, pervasive liars such as Conway and the vaporous White House press secretary do not need to be on the airwaves at all: There is no information they can convey to guests that cannot be accessed elsewhere and more accurately, and both have a proven record of repeatedly using media as disinformation outlets.
Second: If House or Senate politicians begin spouting Russian propaganda claims about how Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in U.S. elections, or some other claim that goes directly against reality as we all know it, that should be a showstopper: no Moving on to the next question, no We’ll have to leave it there, but a slam on the brakes. The host should note the true version, note that the guest’s version is false, and grill the guest as to why they have given that false answer. Is it because they believe it? Is it hyperbole, something they will disown when pressed?
Is it because they are crooked—are lying to the public intentionally, in order to mislead the public? That is a possibility. If a host is convinced that this is the case, the host has a responsibility to say so. If the host has insufficient facts at their disposal at the moment, there is tremendous public value in following up with the true facts, on air, in the next segment, or even the next week.
Third: Do these interviews truly need to be conducted “live” in the case of guests with a history of disinformation? A mere 20-minute delay would allow network graphics departments to note, in the forms of chyrons and other text, when a guest has claimed something that is brazenly untrue.
Every approach, however, is a means of accomplishing the same thing: creating a mechanism by which those that spout disinformation to the public can incur damage, and not just rewards. This is not the same as attempting to shame politicians into honest behavior; there is no such thing as political shame. Stop expecting it; stop presuming it. There is only advantage or disadvantage. Liars will stop lying in public when the penalties for public lying are consequential enough to outweigh the advantages of broadcasting the lie.
Being publicly and rigorously branded as a source of false information would do that—not because it would impart shame, but because it would weaken the ability of the propagandist to be effective with the large majority of the semi-informed, nonrabidly-partisan public that is the propagandist’s main target. Declining to provide a venue for past liars would do more damage still.
Few in the top ranks of media journalism, either at the networks or in the pages of The New York Times, have any stomach for inflicting damage on those that lie to the public. It is a transactional relationship in which propagandists get a nationwide audience, and those that report what they say get column space or air time filled, and with the required spice of conflict. Meet the Press exists to broadcast the thoughts of the powerful, regardless of whether those thoughts are true or false and whether their notions are ethical or are horrific. Industry lobbyists are queried for talking points they formulate only upon receiving the necessary industry check; yesterday’s advocate for state-sponsored torture can be tomorrow’s valued expert on an assortment of other topics. The Sunday shows were issuing societal pardons for atrocities long before Trump set himself to the formal version.
So none of us, I think, has any faith that the networks will work in the interests of our nation here, even as the very foundation of democracy itself is unthreaded. Democracy cannot exist if a nation’s leaders are free to simply invent whichever version of reality best suits their own priorities and ambitions. We are seeing it happen: Republicans became convinced that the economy was bad in 2016 and was tremendous in 2017 because it was repeated endlessly, and with false evidence. The chocolate rations were down; now they are up. Russia committed an attack on our very government in 2016—or perhaps our real enemy, the opposition party, manufactured the entire scheme from a Ukrainian basement.
This is an unraveling. It is historic, in the worst way: It is a national story with implications beyond those of any front page or Exclusive Special Report of the last four decades. It has the Chuck Todds of Washington wondering if, at long last, choreographed journalistic playdates with chummy falsehood-spewers have gone too far.
But media paychecks depend on finding a way to save the nation that will not damage ratings, and it is as simple as that. Will calling out the new American propagandist movement be as entertaining, as titillating, as reputation-boosting in Washington as hosting and amplifying the propagandists is now? If the networks and papers cannot find a way to make it so, we can be absolutely certain they will not try.
I wish to thank Hunter very much for this insightful article. Also a real tip of the hat to dailykos for allowing us to reprint articles like this.
Now that we appear to be on the very tip of yet again another ill thought out adventure in the Middle East, a truly independent media – including independent bloggers on a neutral internet – are a must to keep leaders feet to the fire.
Jan. 18, 2016 – Photo Credit – Des Moines Register
At 3:15 a.m. CST my phone rang. It was an international call from Jordan. I don’t know anyone in Jordan and the caller did not leave a message.
I know a few people who travel in the Middle East from time to time. None of them stood out as a person who might be calling the morning our country assassinated Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Quds Force, as a target of opportunity at the Baghdad airport.
I had not heard of Soleimani so I found and read Dexter Filkins Sept. 23, 2013 New Yorker profile. However this decision was made, intentionally or not, the U.S. Government kicked the beehive of Shia efforts toward hegemony in the Middle East. We will likely be stung by this extrajudicial exercise of American military force.
There is not enough information despite the rapid response of social media. The vacuum generates questions:
Why didn’t the president inform the gang of eight of the imminent assassination? Given the prominence of the target in Iranian and Middle East society he should have. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was clear he hadn’t.
Why didn’t the administration seek an authorization for the use of force from the U.S. Congress? According to Pelosi, there is no existing authorization relative to Iran.
When will the president address the public on what he did and why?
Was this assassination retaliation for the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad or part of a long-term plan to enter war with Iran?
What will be the consequences for U.S. interests in the region? Iranian officials have already stated publicly there will be revenge for the slaying. We can expect them to act with thoughtful reserve and to think outside the box.
Who will replace Soleimani in the established and future operations for which he was responsible?
What was the benefit to U.S. interests of elevating Soleimani to the status of martyr?
There are a lot of questions, few answers, and a grim pall has been cast over this Friday in Iowa.
