Lately, Trump’s stupendous instability has actually been looking like a plus. There he was, telling Democrats that he didn’t want to cut taxes on the rich. Trying to find a way to save the Dreamers
.. Better insane than sorry.
.. Then came the U.N. speech, and the reminder that the one big plus on Pence’s scorecard is that he seems less likely to get the planet blown up.
.. Nikki Haley, our U.N. ambassador, argued that the president’s speech was a diplomatic win because “every other international community” has now started calling Kim “Rocket Man,” too.
.. Does this sound like a triumph to you, people? It’s perfectly possible Kim takes it for a compliment since he does like rockets. And I’ll bet he likes Elton John songs, too.
.. But about the “totally destroy North Korea” part: I believe I am not alone in feeling that the best plan for dealing with a deranged dictator holding nuclear weapons is not threatening to blow him up.
.. We tell ourselves that the president is surrounded by men who are too stable to let him plunge us into a war that will annihilate the planet. But Trump’s U.N. speech was a read-from-the-teleprompter performance, not a case of his just blurting out something awful. People in the White House read it and talked about it in advance.
.. He tried to be super-nice at a luncheon with African leaders, assuring them, “I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich.”.. The big takeaway, however, was that the president of the United States had threatened to destroy a country with 25 million people.Comments:
We can survive an ultra conservative president who is not totally insane and who listens to advisors…at least until 2020. It’s not at all clear that we or the rest of the world can survive the insanity of the Child in Chief now in the Oval Office... There’s little doubt that Democrats stand to gain politically from the train-wreck presidency of impulsive and short-sighted Trump. But the Democrats must choose country before party. A sane, hard-line conservative like Pence is better for the nation than an irrational narcissist who could plunge the entire world into war.
.. A president Pence would give the right just what they wanted a twitterless occupant of the Oval Office. If anyone would like to know how a Pence would run the 50 states just look at how he ran the state he was governor of.
.. Trump, while not exactly the devil I know, is at least fairly predictable in that his main concerns are self preservation and self enrichment.
.. It is time for this fantasy of impeachment to stop. An election is not “fraudulent” because a foreign power releases information that persuades Americans to vote one way or another. Absent evidence that Russia actually hacked the voting machines and changed votes, or that Trump personally colluded with Russia to influence the elections, there is no shot at impeachment, and such evidence seems unlikely to emerge. Russia should pay a price for its actions, and the Democrats – and I am one- should forget about Hillary, stop the apocalyptic rhetoric, stop fantasizing and demonstrating, and concentrate on winning state, local, and. Congressional elections in the short term, and the next presidential election after that.
.. Threats like these only ADD to Kim’s determination to escape the fate of Iraq and Libya. The US has a “big stick.” It should “speak softly.”
.. 70 percent of the voters in Pennsylvania were Democrats and yet Pennsylvania is represented by a majority of Republicans.
.. That’s called gerrymandering.
.. In Pence’s favor he does not have a legion of “supporters” who back him no matter what he does or says. Pence doesn’t seem to have won allies either as a governor or a representative from Indiana. Trump supporters seem to tolerate him, but reserve their adoration for Trump himself.
.. there will be no easy end to the Trump/Pence administration. Their crimes against the people of the US will linger for generations. They will not go quietly by vote or impeachment.
.. As awful as he is, I’ll still take Trump over Pence. Trump is so ignorant and unhinged that he’s not helping the Republicans destroy our own country with their selfish, hate-the-people agenda. Pence would be the driving force that would allow the destruction to move ahead unchecked. We’d lose Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, women’s reproductive rights, and religious freedom. (The Republicans and their extreme-right-wing Christian supporters believe in religious freedom only for themselves and want their beliefs turned into law.)
Donald Trump Is the Godfather of a Democratic Renaissance
After decades of getting out-organized and outspent in battles to control state legislatures, Democratic strategists have woken up to the importance of defending against Republican gains at the grass roots.
.. In 2009, according to the National Council of State Legislatures, there were 4,082 Democrats serving in state legislatures and 3,223 Republicans. By 2016, the numbers had reversed: 3,135 Democrats and 4,177 Republicans.
In 2009, Democrats controlled both the state senate and house in 27 states, the Republicans 14. After the 2016 elections, Republicans controlled both branches of the legislatures in 32 states to 14 for the Democrats.
- State legislatures not only control redistricting in most states — a key to determining which party will control the House after the 2020 census — but
- also serve as a training ground where politicians learn the ropes of winning elections and governing. In this respect, state legislatures are a key source of new talent.
.. Emerge pointedly does not have a litmus test requiring its candidates to back abortion rights.
.. On a larger scale, the immense network of organizations created by the Koch brothers and other conservative donors far outstrips the structures that Democrats and liberals are piecing together. USA Today reported in June that in 2017-18 the Koch machine plans to spend $300- $400 million on elections and lobbying at every level.
.. the renewed vitality on the left is most heavily concentrated in New York, Massachusetts and California, which are already Democratic.
.. The combination of Republican gerrymandering and the clustering of Democratic voters in urban centers “has moved the median House seat well to the right of the nation,” Wasserman notes.
The result is what Wasserman calls a structural “partisan bias” favoring Republicans in Congressional elections:
Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, but Republicans won the median House seat by 3.4 points and the median Senate seat by 3.6 points.
.. If, as Wasserman’s data suggests, a major victory is beyond reach in November 2018, will these players regroup and fight on? Or will they retreat at the state and local level, as they have in the past,
The U.S. could be free of gerrymandering. Here’s how other countries do redistricting.
What does redistricting look like elsewhere in the world?
1. Larger districts send more than one representative to the legislature
Most democracies outside the English-speaking world elect more than one representative per district. When the number of seats per district can be adjusted, the principle of “one person, one vote” can often be achieved without redrawing boundaries lines at all. You simply add a seat to a district that has grown, and subtract that seat from the ones that shrink. That vastly reduces the possibility of reshaping outcomes by manipulating boundaries.
.. 2. Politically neutral bodies draw districts
In most other long-term democracies, a politically neutral body draws new districts — perhaps a quasi-judicial body or nonpartisan administrative board or commission. The redistricting bodies of some countries, such as New Zealand, include representatives of the major parties.
But the more common pattern is to explicitly exclude anyone with partisan connections, as is true in Canada and India. In Britain, the ‘redistribution of parliamentary constituencies is carried out by a nonpartisan Boundary Commission.
.. 3. District boundaries are harder to manipulate
Americans might be surprised to learn that the single-member districts in Mexico are drawn in concordance with an algorithmdeveloped by a so-called technical committee implementing “good government” criteria of districting. The committee’s map is then submitted for two rounds of review by the political parties. Modifications are accepted only if they improve the value of a pre-established scoring function.
How Jared Kushner built a luxury skyscraper using loans meant for job-starved areas
They worked with state officials in New Jersey to come up with a map that defined the area around 65 Bay Street as a swath of land that stretched nearly four miles and included some of the city’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods. At the same time, they excluded some wealthy neighborhoods only blocks away.
.. The tactic — critics liken it to the gerrymandering of legislative districts — made it appear that the luxury tower was in an area with extraordinarily high unemployment, allowing Kushner Companies and its partners to get $50 million in low-cost financing through the EB-5 visa program.
.. Apartments in the Bay Street building, marketed as Trump Bay Street, rent for up to $4,700 a month and offer sweeping views of Lower Manhattan. A nearby commuter train shuttles passengers to the World Trade Center within minutes. The area within a roughly three-block radius around the building had an unemployment rate of just 2.6 percent in 2015, according to census data.
..Under the EB-5 program, a wealthy foreigner can get a fast-track residence visa by investing at least $500,000 in a project in a “targeted employment area.”..Kushner Companies, meanwhile, is rushing to raise $150 million in low-cost financing through EB-5 for a separate project in Jersey City: a pair of luxury towers in an area called Journal Square...He also said jobs created by the project could be filled by workers from the depressed areas only miles away...Developers typically pay only 4 to 8 percent interest annually on money raised through EB-5, experts said. Conventional financing can carry interest rates of between 12 and 18 percent.