One more reason Trump is unqualified to be President

So, let me get this straight....

Trump urges Russia to trace hacked Democrat emails

There is strong evidence that a foreign power is attempting to intervene in a Federal election.... and the nominee of a major party encourages them, saying he's not at all concerned because he stands to benefit from it.

Needless to say, if it were GOP emails being released rather than Hillarymail, there would be howls of outrage.

This has been another episode in an ongoing series, "It's OK if you're a Republican."

I just wonder....

...how many years of his tax returns did Congressman Ryan have to provide to the Romney team as part of the vetting process?

Just saying.

McArdle on Poverty II

She is on a roll...! Seriously. Go read it. This should be required reading.

More on Poverty

Following up on yesterday's post...

One of the most pernicious aspects of poverty is touched on by a post over at Sullivan, relating to what the deterrent effect (if any) of the death penalty (news flash: There doesn't seem to be one).

The issue relates to what's called locus of control: Basically, do you see what happens to you as the result of choices you make that are under your control, or the result of events outside your control.

As Megan McArdle pointed out in the post I linked yesterday, there's no margin for error when you're poor. A careless, frivolous expense early in the month may mean you live on PBJ (or just skip a few meals) by the end of the month. Yes, you can save for something--but an unexpected car repair can wreck your plans completely. (And of course, since a beater was all you could afford, it's more likely to break down in the first place.) There was an NPR interview I heard a while back of someone trying an experiment of living on food stamps for a few months, and then writing about it. What she described was interesting--she said she expected money to be tight, but she wasn't ready for how exhausting it was. You couldn't just decide "that looks good, and it's on sale, I'll get it." You still had to think through how much you had left, what else you needed to get, what other expenses you had this month...on and on. Day after day.

Or, as my mom once said, "There's no shame in being poor, but it's damned inconvenient."

And eventually, the grind wears you down. And you stop considering possibilities. You saved up for the class at the community college but then your car broke down the 4th week of classes and by the time you got it fixed you'd missed two weeks of classes and couldn't catch up. You tried to get into that training program but your job changed your schedule and you couldn't go. The kids got sick and you couldn't get anyone to care for them so you had to stay home, and that got you fired.

And eventually, it really does seem as if life is happening to you rather than being under your control. Your locus of control has been externalized; and once that's happened, changing that way of thinking is very difficult. The narrowing of possibilities, the not even considering certain options because "that isn't for people like me" or "that wouldn't work anyway" or "I'd never be able to afford it," the lowering of ambitions and goals until it's "Just make it through to the weekend." Keep your head down, don't make waves.

Unfortunately, the "ground down and kicked around until ready to just give up" state can also be interpreted as "some people just prefer poverty to getting off their butts and doing something about it." Because, of course, when an unexpected $500 car repair bill is inconvenient but not catastrophic, when a day's work doesn't involve backbreaking labor--in short, when you're comfortably middle class and have convinced yourself it's all entirely because of your own achievements--it's plainly self-evident that anyone else could do it too. And as Heinlein pointed out, "Anytime 'everyone knows' thus-and-such, it ain't so, by at least a thousand to one."

In answer to your question

Mark Kleiman asks:

Aren’t there any grown-ups left in the GOP?

No.

Next, please....

Interesting week.

Two steps forward.... One step back.

I miss Teddy...

... Roosevelt, that is.

Here's an excerpt from a 1910 speech that seems prescient.

Party Orthodoxy and Craziness

Glenn Greenwald hits a home run.

Quote of the day

America needs two viable, principled political parties--Democrats vs. Republicans. Not Democrats vs. the Stoopid Puppet Dittoheads.

--John A. Farrell, US News & World Report

Headline of the day

[h/t: Political Carnival]

That's not what it says....

Jonathan Bernstein, a guest blogger for Andrew Sullivan, has an extremely off-base post about the alleged supermajority needed to pass anything, and why California's supermajority-to-pass-the-budget is a particularly bad idea.

His basic point, of course--that requiring a supermajority to pass the budget has caused all sorts of gridlock, the ability of a committed minority to hold the majority hostage, etc. And he's right. But he seems to think Congress also requires a supermajority for almost everything:

While most things are subject to a supermajority in the Senate...

No. Not correct.

The Constitution specifies that legislation passes by simple majority. The filibuster and the 60-vote rule to cloture aren't in the Constitution; they're Senate rules, and only apply if invoked. As has been discussed in earlier posts, this week, on the same blog, the "filibuster everything" approach of this Congress is an historical aberration. The historical norm was to filibuster only on major issues of principle; starting in the early 90s the filibuster was used more, but this Congress is on track to shatter all records, with triple the record number of filibusters of previous Congresses already.

But that indicates that the GOP has determined its best electoral chances lie in causing total gridlock. I'm not sure I agree with them on that, but that's another question. Back to Bernstein:

There's a reasonable argument that Congress should need a supermajority to pass ordinary bills.

As much as I enjoy Heinlein's "The more impediments to legislation the better" outlook, I'm not sure I agree. At any rate, while such an argument might exist, Bernstein hasn't made it, and it's not what the Constitution envisioned. Simply assuming that "of course Congress needs a supermajority to pass most legislation" indicates a depth of historical ignorance that Bernstein's other writings didn't suggest.

Again, his point that even if you need a supermajority for most things, the budget is the worst place to require the supermajority, because the budget simply must be passed, is correct in my view. (And I'm sure he'll sleep better knowing he has my approval...) But the "supermajority" isn't a requirement on the federal level at all, at least not in the sense he seems to be using it. As a practical matter, in the face of a GOP that's going to maintain lockstep even if it drives the country over the cliff? Yes. But that's an argument for changing Senate rules.

[sigh] Of course, changing the Senate rules requires an even bigger supermajority of Senators...


Update: A followup post indicates that his first post wasn't quite what he meant (possible), that I misinterpreted it (more likely), or that he had a sudden epiphany (listed for the sake of completeness). At any rate, he points out, correctly, that the 60-vote rule isn't included in the Constitution and probably wasn't forseen by the Founders.

But to extrapolate [...] to the idea that the Senate was intended to have a 60 vote filibuster rule is...well, Yglesias calls it abject nonsense, and that seems fair to me.

Culture & Politics

Andrew Sullivan linked to an interesting follow-up by Julian Sanchez on the politics of resentment. Sanchez is making the point that the resentment isn't a psychological diagnosis, and isn't necessarily a code for something else, that the internet has allowed previously marginalized groups to suddenly find each other and organize in a way they couldn't before. But I think the bit Sullivan excerpts isn't the most relevant point in the article; it's this one:

People have read racial undertones into the rallying cry “I want my country back!” and its cognates—probably because this is a strange way to present opposition to a policy agenda, however misguided you might find it. The instinct is right, but I think the conclusion is wrong: Race—and communism, as Tim Curry would remind us—is another red herring. What we’re seeing is the natural sentiment of people who think of themselves as quintessentially American looking at an American popular and public culture that presents them as marginal.

Yes. That's the biggest reason why so much of the politics of the right currently involves resentment of so-called elites, exclusion by "the mainstream media" (um, hello, FOX gets higher ratings than CNN or MSNBC), and an insistence that "real Americans" agree with them--and by implication, anyone who doesn't, therefore isn't a real American.

I don't see things improving for at least another full election cycle. The GOP right is currently where the Democratic left was after Reagan shellacked them--dazed, confused, out of ideas, and not quite believing that the old truths aren't holding anymore. The craziness has to burn itself out, and the remainder has to grow up.

And the sooner, the better. Yes, I'm an unabashed lefty partisan, but a healthy democracy needs a healthy opposition party, and today's GOP isn't it. They've adopted the tactics of the old left--identity politics, a political catechism that must be accepted without question, a total unwillingness to consider any other view as being anything other than hopelessly corrupt--and charged it up on tribal identification, with a good healthy dose of religious fervor and nativism. And, like the old left, have become more concerned with all of the above than the realities of governing or of addressing the problems in front of us today, rather than the problems of 30 years ago. (1980's Democrats couldn't quite grasp the idea that the heyday of the civil rights movement and the Great Society were over; today's GOP wants to apply Regan's platform from 30 years ago to today's problems.)

But the GOP seems short of grown-ups at the moment; it's all tribal politics and red meat for the base. If it's got to burn out before it starts to change, then run, Sarah, run!

Edit/addendum: incredibly minor nit-pick. Tim Curry would remind us that it's socialism that's the red herring.

I am shocked, SHOCKED...

So it turns out that the CEO of Blackwater (now Xe), the biggest suppliers of mercenaries, er, private security forces, to the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, claims to have been involved in espionage operations, assassination squads, getting personnel into and out of areas where US personnel were technically not supposed to be, and various other things of questionable morality and legality.

Just one question.

Given Blackwater's track record, why is everyone pretending to be surprised by this?

His revelation that he's planning on teaching high school... now that's a surprise. And the source of an abundance of snark, but I'll save that for another day.

Song of the day

With a large tip of the hat to Andrew Sullivan...

Maine, the day after

A blogger at DKos nails it.

"Then at one o'clock you're heading out to the county jail to marry Carr the crack addict mother of eight and Blankenship the axe murderer before they send him up to maximum security for a hundred years. Then you've got Welch and Nutt at two-thirty. He's the neo-nazi anarchist and she's the former nun who got booted for schtupping sixteen priests, two bishops and a cardinal."

"Great. As long as they love each other..."

"Then at two you're joining Kettlebaum the porn addict and Ganz the kitten-drowner, and at three you'll unite Smith the deadbeat dad and Browlowski, who chain smokes in front of her kids."

"And then the gay couple at four, right?"

"Oh, no, sir! That's against the law. They're too unstable for marriage..."

Go read the whole thing, it's worth it.

[H/T: Louise, at Pam's]

Lest Anyone Doubt...

...that for some, religion is used as a tool to serve neo-con/GOP-style political ends, we present:

The Conservatising the Bible Project.

Here's the whole thing. Read it if you dare.

Wow. Just... wow. But it's nice to see the reversal of priorities being presented in such an up-front manner.

(H/T: Andrew Sullivan.)

Nailing it

I snark occasionally about Andrew Sullivan, but when he's right, he's right:

The protestors keep saying that they want their country back. Sorry, my fellow small-governmenters, but this country is a democracy, and you didn't lose your country, you just lost an election. You had your chance for eight years. You blew it, and you lost. What Obama is doing is what he was elected to do. The principled response is not a massive, extremist-riddled hissy fit a few months in, but a constructive set of proposals to build on universal care for a more market-friendly and cost-conscious system in the future. You have to win some political credibility for that; and then you have to beat the man you lost so badly to last year. That's the civil and civilized way forward for the right. It also seems, alas, to be the one they are currently refusing to take.

Least Surprising Headline of the Day Award

And today's award goes to CNN:

The Speech: Quick Reax

Once again, a solid speech.

Once again, I'm left wondering whether a speech is enough.

He presented a strong moral case for reform, using language that wouldn't have been strange coming from Reagan. Of course, if he'd cast it that way a month ago, this summer might have been much different.

The thing I'm worried about is that it's going to take more than a speech. This seems to fit the pattern of hanging back, letting things ripen, letting things ripen a bit more, perhaps too much, then stepping in, giving a great speech, and expecting that to fix everything. Too confident by half in the ability of his speechifyin' to bring everyone together. He's off to a great start, but now he's got to follow through with some of the leadership that's been lacking on this and SO. MANY. OTHER. issues for so long.

A community organizer doesn't get out too far in front of the community he's trying to organize; they might not follow. So he hangs back, works the phones, nudges people to sit down and talk with each other, and, if all goes well, at the end of the process people are amazed at what they've been able to accomplish.

The problem, of course, is that Mr Obama is not the Community Organizer In Chief. The situation doesn't call for cautious nudging, it calls for leadership. It looks like he's finally stepping up to the plate. But there has to be follow-through. One good speech, aided by an ill-mannered boor from South Carolina, won't do it.

Image of the day

[h/t: GottaLaff]