Friday, December 28, 2018

Eclectic


17 comments:

  1. A couple of Walter Shapiro columns:

    The Train Is Leaving the Station for the Last Rational Republicans [Click] Has left, more like.

    Democrats Upend Iowa Caucuses [Click] Probably more than three tickets out of Iowa this time. And voting starts in California at the same time as the official date of the Iowa “caucuses.” After a short search, I don’t find any evidence of early voting in Iowa, but it would presumably be inherent in the new vote by mail system.
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    Pelosi names Castor chair of Select Committee on Climate Crisis [Click] Two thirds of a loaf, it seems to me; not bad at all. If the new members [including AOC] had not stood up, it wouldn’t have happened.

    How Pelosi Will Move to End the Shutdown [Click]

    Cohen’s cell phone was in Prague [Click]

    WaPo: Trump bragged to service members in Iraq about a [more than] 10 percent raise they haven’t been given [Click]

    How Trump's secret trip to Iraq became not-so-secret [Click]

    MSNBC ratings top Fox News for first time in 18 years [Click]

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    1. That last is the most encouraging!

      Y’know, I can’t help wondering how long any of us would keep our job if we were failing at every turn the way DT is, and if the well being of the whole was being so affected by our failures. Democracy doesn’t work if there is no means to rid the whole of such a poor performer.

      We need a major YOU’RE FiRED! nationwide protest.

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    2. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about early voting in connection with the Iowa caucuses. Caucuses are real-time in-person by definition. Like a Town Meeting rather than a pirmary.

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    3. Bill--in 2020 absentee voting will be permitted in the Iowa "caucuses" (that's why I put the word in quotation marks), and the total raw votes will be reported as well as the state convention delegates earned. That way candidates who get 14.99% of the votes will get some recognition. It's going to be quite a change, and the Iowa Democratic Party seems not to have worked it all out just yet. I should not be surprised if the number of active candidates were dramatically reduced in the first 30 days or so. Looks like a series of sudden death matches. Fortune certainly favors the bold--but also the well-prepared. That first 30 days or so includes Iowa, California, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. Colorado, Maine, Minnesota and probably others in March, but dates evidently not yet established. Large scale fundraising is bound to start soon.

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    4. Thanks Alan. I hadn't heard about the Iowa "caucuses" becoming a primary in all but name.

      Illinois primaries have always been mid-March, and I've heard nothing about a change. The deadline for filing ballot petitions is early the preceding December.

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  2. listener--here's a "You're fired" opinion piece:
    The Inevitability of Impeachment [Click] By Elizabeth Drew, in the New York Times

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  3. River's sheeting across the bridge, and Mr. Boy went swimming. Both across, and with some hesitancy, back. One very wet dawg on my hands.

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    1. I'm guessing you got a free shower. 😅

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    2. Nope. Cooter, neither--he knew what was coming, and stayed well back, lol!

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    1. That sounds far too much like Br'er Rabbit, "Oh, please don't throw me in that briar patch!" The day we let Republicans choose our candidates is the time to give up and go home.

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    2. Interesting. I had a similar thought...along the lines of smoke and mirrors.

      I still want Bernie for President.

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  5. I read that too, and took it to mean that the "senior Republican insiders" who were asked to opine don't know [manure] from Shinola [which, the last I heard, is nowadays a brand of watch manufactured in Detroit]. They are also probably of the opinion that DT will certainly be the 2020 Republican nominee; and he might not, yanno? Then again, Gene Debs ran for President in the 1920 election while incarcerated at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. [Click]

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  6. WaPo: Is Mueller’s investigation nearing the ‘worst-case scenario’? Garrett Graff thinks so. [Click] “In most cases, Mueller is running four to six months ahead of where we think he is publicly.”

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