After the coming election, when Bernie becomes the President elect, the (hopefully brand new) Governor would appoint someone to fill Bernie's unexpired term. Folks would need to run for election at the next term.
In and near London tornadoes are exceedingly rare (like only one reported, I think), winters aren't too bad, I think there have not been any floods since a flood control dam was built, and houses are affordable. Several generations of my family lived in a small town near London that disappeared quite some time ago, like so many others in that area. London a nice looking city. The economy seems to have moved on from manufacturing, and to be doing well.
Bloomberg Overtakes Biden In Florida [Click] Florida votes March 17th, two weeks after Super Tuesday. A lot of Florida voters probably aren’t paying attention yet.
A new Las Vegas Review-Journal/WPA Nevada poll finds Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic presidential race with 25%, followed by Joe Biden at 18%, Elizabeth Warren at 13%, Tom Steyer at 11%, Pete Buttigieg at 10% and Amy Klobuchar at 10%.
Details here. [Click] “Sanders enters Nevada with momentum from the first two early states, Iowa and New Hampshire, strong polling in the Silver State over the past year and tons of resources, including 200 staff members and more than 1,000 volunteers.”
Sanders Would Defeat All Rivals If Head-to-Head [Click] A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Sen. Bernie Sanders would defeat each of the other Democratic presidential candidates in a one-on-one race — in many instances by double-digit margins.
Astronomers to sweep entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life [Click] Several other SETI studies under way or under development. Maybe I should watch “Contact” again, although the explicitly religious questions in the congressional hearings are rather irritating.
Graduate students strike at UC Santa Cruz [Click] When I was a graduate student there (1969-1975) a graduate student’s salary was enough to get by and either afford one luxury (e.g. a car OR a girlfriend) or save a bit of money, if one were stingy.
Sorry, Alan. I know you weren't, in all likelihood, trying to be funny, but your equation of a car or a girlfriend as the one affordable luxury made me laugh. Dare one ask which, if either, you splurged on? Or were you stingy? :)
I did without both automobile and girlfriend, and had a bit of money saved up after six and a half years of graduate school. As for being stingy, I gave up on store-bought bread, gave up on meat, and substituted cracked wheat for rice. Followed the guidance of "Diet For a Small Planet" to get enough protein (used a lot of dried milk). Giving up on meat meant I hardly had any need for paper towels, too.
For bread at breakfast and lunch I mostly ate biscuits, oat bannocks and soda bread. I tried making corn dodgers once, but they turned out pretty hard. Once in a while I made spoon bread, but that would be for dinner.
Donald Trump is acquitted by the Senate, adored by his supporters and wholly unrepentant United States Feb 6th 2020 edition Feb 6th 2020
IN ANNOUNCING her decision to vote to acquit Donald Trump this week, Susan Collins said she believed the president had learned a “pretty big lesson” from his impeachment. When next tempted to extort a foreign leader to frame a political rival, the senator from Maine predicted, he would be “much more cautious”. Another view is that, having established Congress’s inability to restrain him, because of the tribalism of Republicans such as Ms Collins, Mr Trump may feel even more emboldened to disregard any rule or convention that stands in the way of his interests. His third state-of-the-union address, delivered to a packed House chamber on the eve of his acquittal on February 4th, offered evidence for that.
Unlike Bill Clinton, who expressed contrition during his mid-impeachment SOTU speech, Mr Trump did not mention his Ukraine scheme or Senate trial it occasioned—which ended in his acquittal on partisan lines the next day: Mitt Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict. Yet he had already repudiated Ms Collins, telling journalists he had nothing to learn, because his approach to President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect”. And his SOTU performance underlined that he truly believes this.
For most of American history, the annual presidential report to Congress was delivered by letter, because of Thomas Jefferson’s fear that a live address might seem too kingly. Yet an elected despot, with fawning courtiers and freedom to mingle personal and public interests at will, is what Mr Trump aspires to be. It is what he maintains, in his claim to unbridled executive power and attacks on institutions that would constrain him, it means to be president. On the eve of his party’s final capitulation to Trumpism, his last pre-election SOTU was an enactment of that unAmerican fantasy.
As he entered the chamber, Republicans jostled to shout praise in his ear, touch him, ask him to sign their clothing. At least it was familiar: Democrats drooled over Barack Obama too. The SOTU had become a partisan performance, watched by a president’s supporters and ignored by almost everyone else, before Mr Trump was elected. Yet no recent president has demanded, and received, the fealty that has become a cover for his rule-breaking. [To be continued]
[continued] Woodrow Wilson restored the in-person SOTU address with a view to humanising the presidency. Mr Trump uses it to suggest his precedence over not only his party, but all three branches of the government. He snubbed the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, refusing to shake her hand (she later responded by ripping up a copy of his speech). He boasted of his efforts to politicise the judiciary, by nominating the “187 new federal judges” his followers are counting on to pass judgments they like. (The smirks of his two Supreme Court appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, after he named them, probably did more to incite Democratic countermeasures than their elevations.)
Ronald Reagan started the tradition of inviting common folk as SOTU guests to express his modesty and empathy. Mr Trump uses his invitees as props to display beneficence and power. He conferred a surprise scholarship on a poor fourth-grader from Philadelphia, sitting in the gallery. He shocked a service wife by producing her husband, an army sergeant deployed to Afghanistan. He asked his wife Melania to fasten the Presidential Medal of Freedom—then and there!—around the neck of the talk-radio megastar, Rush Limbaugh, cancer-stricken and weeping besides her. Such boons owe less to reality TV than to Medieval kingship.
To what does Mr Trump owe his hold on his supporters? Some Trump defenders urge critics to look beyond the president’s excesses to his achievements. As he noted in his address, the economy is strong. Yet if his record were half as good as his defenders say, why does he misrepresent it so extremely? He claims endless things that are demonstrably false—to have vanquished ISIS though it is resurgent; to have cut the cost of prescription drugs though they have soared; to be guaranteeing health-insurance provisions his administration is suing to dismantle. If his supporters were primarily drawn to Mr Trump by his record, they might be expected to discern the facts from the nonsense; most know he is not honest. Yet, for the sake of political argument at least, they seem to accept whatever he claims. And in so doing they cede Mr Trump a power no other American president has claimed: over truth itself. [To be concluded]
[Concluded] The real reason Republicans are so solidly behind Mr Trump is his genius at needling their political resentments and fears—against the liberal media, socialist Democrats, “illegal aliens”. Political scientists call this negative partisanship, and Mr Trump’s SOTU address was a masterclass in it. In the climax of its second half, he mentioned the word “alien” four times; also “socialist takeover”, “brutal rape”, “terror” and “evil”. The frightful language of his partisanship (which he learned from Mr Limbaugh, a fellow disseminator of the racist “birther” slur against the first black president) has helped drive his supporters’ increasing loyalty. Republicans are either scared by the fears he stirs; or having ridden along thus far with Mr Trump’s chauvinism it has become too hard for them to acknowledge. It is no wonder few deserted him over the relatively remote matter of his leaning on Mr Zelensky. UnAmerican activities
Republicans such as Ms Collins say an election is the only proper means of holding Mr Trump to account. Yet in the grip of their partisan affiliations, few voters will recall Mr Trump’s Ukraine scam next November—and if he wins re-election, will he have a licence to repeat it? Exonerated by the Senate, he may even do worse before then. He has fresh grudges to settle and political cover to do so.
Mr Trump’s sometimes comical strangeness long made the fears of despotism he stirred seem overblown. But think of authoritarianism as a corrosive process, not a dictatorial end-state, and they no longer do. He has never looked more threatening to American democracy. And thanks to Senate Republicans, with one laudable exception, it has never looked more vulnerable to him.
Pompeo Secretly Met Russian Foreign Minister February 14, 2020 at 10:01 pm EST By Taegan Goddard
“U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday in an encounter the American side apparently wanted to keep under wraps,” Politico reports.
“The State Department made no announcement of the meeting, which took place in Lavrov’s own dedicated meeting room at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the major annual conference of politicians, policymakers and security experts is held. Pompeo’s aides also did not provide any readout after the meeting ended.”
Bernie Sanders leaps to first among Texas Democrats in latest UT/TT Poll [Click] There hadn't been any recent polls in Texas; is this an augury of what will happen in other early states that haven't been polled lately?
ReplyDeleteWe can but hope.
DeleteVPR reported today that Vermont’s Sen. Leahy and Rep. Welch will Co-Chair Bernie’s re-election campaign in Vermont! Yeah!!
DeleteShould Bernie not be able to serve as Senator due to other demands on his time, how would Vermont fill the seat?
DeleteMost of us think Peter Welch would then move to the Senate. Maybe Howard Dean would become a Representative?
DeleteWould it be done by gubernatorial appointment, election, appointment followed by election, or some other means? Just wondering.
DeleteAfter the coming election, when Bernie becomes the President elect, the (hopefully brand new) Governor would appoint someone to fill Bernie's unexpired term. Folks would need to run for election at the next term.
DeleteBernie was re-elected in 2018 to a third 6 year term. The next ejection would be 2024.
DeleteA special election is occasionally possible.
'Not just a space potato': Nasa unveils 'astonishing' details of most distant object ever visited [Click] “It’s red, it’s cold, it’s 4bn years old: Nasa data from Arrokoth reveals ‘profound truths’ about the solar system”
ReplyDeleteThanks, Alan. Fascinating!
DeleteSurprising how much information they could gather from such a fast fly-by.
Delete'Escaping the madness': steep rise in Londoners moving to northern England [Click]
ReplyDeleteI'm still thinking Leicester in the East Midlands, myself. Not that such a move will ever be possible... *sigh*
DeleteI continue thinking about London, Ontario, although that isn't going to happen either.
DeleteOooooo! London, Ontario would suit me fine! Author Lucy Maud Montgomery lived there!
DeleteIn and near London tornadoes are exceedingly rare (like only one reported, I think), winters aren't too bad, I think there have not been any floods since a flood control dam was built, and houses are affordable. Several generations of my family lived in a small town near London that disappeared quite some time ago, like so many others in that area. London a nice looking city. The economy seems to have moved on from manufacturing, and to be doing well.
DeleteBernie Sanders is leading the 2 most important states on Super Tuesday [Click] California and Texas
ReplyDeleteBloomberg Overtakes Biden In Florida [Click] Florida votes March 17th, two weeks after Super Tuesday. A lot of Florida voters probably aren’t paying attention yet.
A new Las Vegas Review-Journal/WPA Nevada poll finds Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic presidential race with 25%, followed by Joe Biden at 18%, Elizabeth Warren at 13%, Tom Steyer at 11%, Pete Buttigieg at 10% and Amy Klobuchar at 10%.
ReplyDeleteI never knew of the Works Progress Administration doing polls...
DeleteDetails here. [Click] “Sanders enters Nevada with momentum from the first two early states, Iowa and New Hampshire, strong polling in the Silver State over the past year and tons of resources, including 200 staff members and more than 1,000 volunteers.”
DeleteTrump just got bad news from Neil Gorsuch’s mentor in a big Medicaid case [Click]
ReplyDeleteHow Democrats Ruined the Iowa Caucuses By Thinking Like Management Consultants [Click]
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that such thinking explains a lot of Democrats' recent woes.
DeleteIt seems to me that it is further evidence that the Democratic Party establishment is way past its use-by date.
DeleteMother Jones: Frontrunner [Click] “Bernie Sanders now leads the Democratic primary, thanks to a campaign that became its own message.”
ReplyDeleteSanders Would Defeat All Rivals If Head-to-Head [Click] A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Sen. Bernie Sanders would defeat each of the other Democratic presidential candidates in a one-on-one race — in many instances by double-digit margins.
ReplyDeleteLos Angeles moves to dismiss 66,000 marijuana convictions after legalization [Click] Computerized system made available to all District Attorneys in California—can analyze 10,000 cases per minute and generate forms to file in the courts.
ReplyDeleteAstronomers to sweep entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life [Click] Several other SETI studies under way or under development. Maybe I should watch “Contact” again, although the explicitly religious questions in the congressional hearings are rather irritating.
ReplyDeleteI recall Contact as a good movie. Haven't seen it in years. Maybe I'll schedule it for this weekend too. Thanks, Alan.
DeleteYes, it is a good movie.
DeleteGraduate students strike at UC Santa Cruz [Click] When I was a graduate student there (1969-1975) a graduate student’s salary was enough to get by and either afford one luxury (e.g. a car OR a girlfriend) or save a bit of money, if one were stingy.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Alan. I know you weren't, in all likelihood, trying to be funny, but your equation of a car or a girlfriend as the one affordable luxury made me laugh. Dare one ask which, if either, you splurged on? Or were you stingy? :)
DeleteI did without both automobile and girlfriend, and had a bit of money saved up after six and a half years of graduate school. As for being stingy, I gave up on store-bought bread, gave up on meat, and substituted cracked wheat for rice. Followed the guidance of "Diet For a Small Planet" to get enough protein (used a lot of dried milk). Giving up on meat meant I hardly had any need for paper towels, too.
DeleteFor bread at breakfast and lunch I mostly ate biscuits, oat bannocks and soda bread. I tried making corn dodgers once, but they turned out pretty hard. Once in a while I made spoon bread, but that would be for dinner.
DeleteFrom The Economist
ReplyDeleteLexington
Trump unbound
Donald Trump is acquitted by the Senate, adored by his supporters and wholly unrepentant
United States
Feb 6th 2020 edition
Feb 6th 2020
IN ANNOUNCING her decision to vote to acquit Donald Trump this week, Susan Collins said she believed the president had learned a “pretty big lesson” from his impeachment. When next tempted to extort a foreign leader to frame a political rival, the senator from Maine predicted, he would be “much more cautious”. Another view is that, having established Congress’s inability to restrain him, because of the tribalism of Republicans such as Ms Collins, Mr Trump may feel even more emboldened to disregard any rule or convention that stands in the way of his interests. His third state-of-the-union address, delivered to a packed House chamber on the eve of his acquittal on February 4th, offered evidence for that.
Unlike Bill Clinton, who expressed contrition during his mid-impeachment SOTU speech, Mr Trump did not mention his Ukraine scheme or Senate trial it occasioned—which ended in his acquittal on partisan lines the next day: Mitt Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict. Yet he had already repudiated Ms Collins, telling journalists he had nothing to learn, because his approach to President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect”. And his SOTU performance underlined that he truly believes this.
For most of American history, the annual presidential report to Congress was delivered by letter, because of Thomas Jefferson’s fear that a live address might seem too kingly. Yet an elected despot, with fawning courtiers and freedom to mingle personal and public interests at will, is what Mr Trump aspires to be. It is what he maintains, in his claim to unbridled executive power and attacks on institutions that would constrain him, it means to be president. On the eve of his party’s final capitulation to Trumpism, his last pre-election SOTU was an enactment of that unAmerican fantasy.
As he entered the chamber, Republicans jostled to shout praise in his ear, touch him, ask him to sign their clothing. At least it was familiar: Democrats drooled over Barack Obama too. The SOTU had become a partisan performance, watched by a president’s supporters and ignored by almost everyone else, before Mr Trump was elected. Yet no recent president has demanded, and received, the fealty that has become a cover for his rule-breaking.
[To be continued]
[continued]
DeleteWoodrow Wilson restored the in-person SOTU address with a view to humanising the presidency. Mr Trump uses it to suggest his precedence over not only his party, but all three branches of the government. He snubbed the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, refusing to shake her hand (she later responded by ripping up a copy of his speech). He boasted of his efforts to politicise the judiciary, by nominating the “187 new federal judges” his followers are counting on to pass judgments they like. (The smirks of his two Supreme Court appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, after he named them, probably did more to incite Democratic countermeasures than their elevations.)
Ronald Reagan started the tradition of inviting common folk as SOTU guests to express his modesty and empathy. Mr Trump uses his invitees as props to display beneficence and power. He conferred a surprise scholarship on a poor fourth-grader from Philadelphia, sitting in the gallery. He shocked a service wife by producing her husband, an army sergeant deployed to Afghanistan. He asked his wife Melania to fasten the Presidential Medal of Freedom—then and there!—around the neck of the talk-radio megastar, Rush Limbaugh, cancer-stricken and weeping besides her. Such boons owe less to reality TV than to Medieval kingship.
To what does Mr Trump owe his hold on his supporters? Some Trump defenders urge critics to look beyond the president’s excesses to his achievements. As he noted in his address, the economy is strong. Yet if his record were half as good as his defenders say, why does he misrepresent it so extremely? He claims endless things that are demonstrably false—to have vanquished ISIS though it is resurgent; to have cut the cost of prescription drugs though they have soared; to be guaranteeing health-insurance provisions his administration is suing to dismantle. If his supporters were primarily drawn to Mr Trump by his record, they might be expected to discern the facts from the nonsense; most know he is not honest. Yet, for the sake of political argument at least, they seem to accept whatever he claims. And in so doing they cede Mr Trump a power no other American president has claimed: over truth itself.
[To be concluded]
[Concluded]
DeleteThe real reason Republicans are so solidly behind Mr Trump is his genius at needling their political resentments and fears—against the liberal media, socialist Democrats, “illegal aliens”. Political scientists call this negative partisanship, and Mr Trump’s SOTU address was a masterclass in it. In the climax of its second half, he mentioned the word “alien” four times; also “socialist takeover”, “brutal rape”, “terror” and “evil”. The frightful language of his partisanship (which he learned from Mr Limbaugh, a fellow disseminator of the racist “birther” slur against the first black president) has helped drive his supporters’ increasing loyalty. Republicans are either scared by the fears he stirs; or having ridden along thus far with Mr Trump’s chauvinism it has become too hard for them to acknowledge. It is no wonder few deserted him over the relatively remote matter of his leaning on Mr Zelensky.
UnAmerican activities
Republicans such as Ms Collins say an election is the only proper means of holding Mr Trump to account. Yet in the grip of their partisan affiliations, few voters will recall Mr Trump’s Ukraine scam next November—and if he wins re-election, will he have a licence to repeat it? Exonerated by the Senate, he may even do worse before then. He has fresh grudges to settle and political cover to do so.
Mr Trump’s sometimes comical strangeness long made the fears of despotism he stirred seem overblown. But think of authoritarianism as a corrosive process, not a dictatorial end-state, and they no longer do. He has never looked more threatening to American democracy. And thanks to Senate Republicans, with one laudable exception, it has never looked more vulnerable to him.
Pompeo Secretly Met Russian Foreign Minister
ReplyDeleteFebruary 14, 2020 at 10:01 pm EST By Taegan Goddard
“U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday in an encounter the American side apparently wanted to keep under wraps,” Politico reports.
“The State Department made no announcement of the meeting, which took place in Lavrov’s own dedicated meeting room at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the major annual conference of politicians, policymakers and security experts is held. Pompeo’s aides also did not provide any readout after the meeting ended.”
Delta announces $1bn plan to be first carbon neutral airline [Click] ETA 2030
ReplyDelete