“Why would you want to be associated with a party that’s so awful?”
This morning I overheard a part of a conversation between two 30-ish old high school friends, both from career-military families; their high school was on a military base. One is a disabled Marine veteran, having lost his right leg below the knee, significant muscle in his left leg, a good part of the movement in his right hand (he’s right-handed), and enough of his colon to wear a colostomy bag, when he stepped on an explosive during deployment in Afghanistan, ending his plan to be career Marine. During an earlier deployment in Iraq he watched as a friend of his was blown up by a suicide bomb in a car.
His friend was in the Navy for two years and then in a National Guard unit for several more.
Neither is a college graduate, although both of their wives are. At least one, the Navy vet, is a comedy-talk-radio devotee, which I think means right-leaning. Both of their families are decades-long Republicans.
Their conversation was about junk mail. The Navy vet, one of my neighbors (I live in a college town, but one that has a good number of military vets and a major veterans’ hospital, which makes for a nice mix, in my opinion), made some off-hand comment about it, which I didn’t hear. The disabled Marine vet responded, “Oh, yeah. It’s all that campaign stuff. I said to [I think he said, his mother, but I’m not sure], ‘Why would you want to be associated with a party that’s so awful?” His friend said, “Yeah.”
What struck me was the indictment of the party, not merely of Trump.
I was so glad to read this morning about Obama’s speech last night in Ohio, in which he indicted the Republican Party itself for Trumpism—a change from the tack he took in his convention speech in July. The purpose is to–finally–force Clinton to make a serious effort to swing control of the Senate and the House.
I also was struck by Paul Krugman’s column this morning, the purpose of which–notwithstanding its title, “The Clinton Agenda”—is to try to shift the discussion from the Clinton-Trump contest, whose outcome no longer is in doubt, but to which party controls Congress. Because which party controls Congress will determine whether or not federal policy shifts to what a large majority of Americans want—especially on climate-change-related law, but also on so much else on which there is broad public consensus.
The WikiLeaks-released emails from John Podesta seem to be largely-irrelevant history. They show the dismaying extent to which Clinton and her aides, other than Podesta, failed so completely, for so very long, to grasp the nature of this election cycle. But they continue to matter unless Clinton finally does recognize that most of the policies that progressives so care about—foremost, I believe, the policies (a.k.a., law) that the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts and federal agency heads will determine—are supported by the moderates she so fears reminding that she’s a Democrat, and who may decide to vote Democratic for Senate and House precisely on that basis.
Obama talked yesterday only about the Trumpian awfulness of the Republican Party itself—a subject that certainly deserved a speech all its own. But Clinton should pick up the fiscal and regulatory mantle from her biggest cheerleader pundit and campaign for a Democratic-controlled Congress. He says she’s done enough on that, but then belies that in the rest of his column.
“The policies (a.k.a., law) that the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts and federal agency heads will determine…”
Wait — is that “legislating from the bench”?
“…are supported by the moderates she so fears reminding that she’s a Democrat, and who may decide to vote Democratic for Senate and House precisely on that basis.”
What policies would those be?
gee an epiphany . . .
since the top of the ticket is a choice between the lesser of two evils, those who hold their nose and vote for Cliinton to keep Trump out of the White House might also vote for Republicans in the House and Senate races in an attempt to limit the power of the Clintons…
I know. I’d be much happier with a narrower margin of victory for Clinton, lower turnout by Republicans, and Dem control of the Senate and the House. I’m guessing that most other progressives feel the same.
Certainly we need more public comment on issues such as the PPACA mandate, where the parties stand, and what sort of justices each party would like to see on SCOTUS.
If your view of Congress’s supposed power under the commerce clause to regulate each person’s economic decisions is so popular amongst progressives, why aren’t Dems screaming from the roof tops how those regressive republicans want to deny this power to Congress?
If so many progressives think CU was wrongly decided and that Congress ought to have the power to ban the publishing of books, then by all means the public ought to know where progressives stand.
Let us have a full airing of the issues, Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The silver lining to a crooked Hillary victory is that progressive Dems would then have to clean up their own messes (Obama Care, exploding debts, promises that cannot be kept and should have never been made, etc.). There is not enough money to bail out every state and every big city that has indebted themselves to the point of insolvency, at some point the few remaining honest Dems will have to admit the promises made in the past to get votes from the gullible simply cannot be kept. Even the dishonest Dems might in unguarded moments speak the truth as Bill Clinton did recently when discussing the craziness of Obama Care.
The truth will out, but will it come out in time or will we leave a shit sandwich to our children?
The progressive Dems has been fashioning chains for the people, but it is a kindler, gentler servitude based on debt they plan to shackle us with rather than old fashioned irons -so progressive, so caring.
One of the silliest rightwing obsessions about the PPACA—and one that at least two prominent Conservative Legal Movement appellate judges, Jeffrey Sutton and (of all people) Brett Kavanaugh, shot down back in 2011 when the first of the two cases challenging the statute was speeding toward the Supreme Court—is this claim that the ACA means that Congress can regulate each person’s economic decisions but that taxation or such things as Social Security and Medicare, highway funding, and a slew of other things, does not. It’s asinine.
But what most progressives want is a Medicare-for-all type of healthcare insurance system. Which, as Sutton and Kavanaugh pointed out, would not be susceptible to the charge of the-Commerce-Clause-doesn’t-authorize-Congress-to-regulate-each-person’s-economic-decisions charge.
No one claims that Congress can regulate each person’s economic decisions. It’s a cute soundbite, but utter nonsense.
Mike:
It will come to the point where companies will not longer have ESI. The movement is towards a public option with controlled healthcare costs not allowing the healthcare industry to force its wildly inflationary cost with little benefit returned for the cost upon an unknowing public at which point Mike if you wish to opt out, sign the DNR and we will play you out on stilts to die when it is necessary. Your stance on “no” healthcare has “no” alternative other than die quickly which is most popular amongst Republicans and Libertarians who offer nothing else and have garnered “Trump” as their cough, cough candidate. Where are your voices silly for this candidate, a perfect candidate to represent you and the others who have brought this upon yourselves do to willful ignorance and a failure to take care of the masses.
There is no insolvency other than in your own mind. These platitudes have been disproved so many times it is ridiculous. There is not enough money is laughable as a monetary sovereign nation. Instead of weaseling a greater percentage of income and wealth to a feudal few, how about paying attention to what needs to be done which have been ignored by Repubs in allowing the people who follow Repub silliness to wallow mostly at a lesser standard of life. You ignored your constituency and reaped a “Trump.”
How many investigations of Benghazi, how many investigations of emails, how many investigations of the foundation, how many investigations of Whitewater and things in the past at how many $millions to arrive at supposition, conjecture and opinion? Crooked Hillary based on what councilor? Maybe you can resurrect Ken Starr another time from his excellent service at Baylor to lead another phony charge? This is what the ignorant Republicans have come to over the last few decades a party built on willful ignorance and suppression of the truth. More commentary by Republicans on the PPACA, laughable councilor or perhaps more supposition, conjecture, opinion, and mistruths by Republicans who have offered nothing more than willful and deceitful blockage of government once a Black Man took office in The Big White House and nonsense in passing. Don’t add to the silliness with an aura of self rightness. Stay silent and at least then we do not also have to acknowledge the ignorance in passing.
Mike Hansberry,
First, there will and will not be silver linings to a “crooked” Hillary victory, for sure. But the morning after Trump’s defeat will be a Golden Dawn for anyone who loves their country and has the intelligence to understand what a menace to the constitutional order he truly is. Your hatred for Hillary blinds you.
Second, Citizens United was decided wrongly, foundationally by granting a corporation the right of “freedom of speech” (as a girl-friend of mine said, “I’ll believe a corporation is a person when it gets a period.”). If you aren’t aware of the deep concerns many of the Founders had regarding concentrations of wealth in the form of corporations and the threat such power posed to a true democracy; if you aren’t aware of the 40 years of near (and in some cases, total) monopolistic power from 1870-1910 and the corrosive, corrupting effects such power had on electoral politics; and if you can’t see it happening now right before your eyes — well, read a book, open a newspaper other than Breitbart News and the Drudge Report.
Besides, you are wrong – grossly mistaken; incorrect; in error — to argue that progressives alone stand strongly against CU and recognize the anti-democratic effects it has in democratic electoral politics.
NEWSFLASH: 78% of Americans agree:
“Americans may be sharply divided on other issues, but they are united in their view of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that unleashed a torrent of political spending: They hate it.
In a new Bloomberg Politics national poll, 78 percent of those responding said the Citizens United ruling should be overturned, compared with 17 percent who called it a good decision.
“Wow. Wow. I’m stunned,” said David Strauss, a constitutional law professor who teaches at the University of Chicago. “What it suggests is that Citizens United has become a symbol for what people perceive to be a much larger problem, which is the undue influence of wealth in politics.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-28/bloomberg-poll-americans-want-supreme-court-to-turn-off-political-spending-spigot
Third, your objection to the ACA as a tax is not with progressives but with an extremely conservative Supreme Court. They affirmed that the scheme is constitutional. And if you haven’t heard “Dems screaming from the roof tops how those regressive republicans want to deny this power to Congress,” then you are deaf – or else spend all your time in the rightist bubble of Fox News and Alex Jones, let alone in the cult of personality surrounding Der Donald.
Progressives responsible for exploding deficits? On W.’s first day in office, he faced a budget surplus. On Obama’s first day in office, he faced a $1.1 trillion budget deficit.
But, yes, you’ve caught us out – when we progressives attend our secret meetings in thousands of cabals across the country, all funded by George Soros (you should come some time, all dark robes and torchlight – fabulous shows), we often discuss which books we’d like to burn.
A reactionary is “a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which they believe possessed characteristics (discipline, respect for authority, etc.) that are negatively absent from the contemporary status quo of a society. Political reactionaries are at the right-wing of a political spectrum; yet, reactionary ideologies can be radical, in the sense of political extremism, in service to re-establishing the status quo ante.”
You, my friend, are a reactionary ideologue. For your standard bearer you have chosen an ignorant cur, a narcissist, a creep who ogles 10-year old girls and who now threatens at the least civil discord, at the worst violence when he is defeated. So much for 240 years of political tradition, so much for “domestic tranquility.” The Donald doesn’t lose; The Donald cannot lose, ever: He is never responsible. Instead it will be that the election was stolen, that immigrants are pouring across the border to vote, that “Hillary Clinton is the vessel for all of the global, special interests seeking to run our government and our lives.”
Your dream of returning to a state of affairs, to a country that never existed, and you folks threaten to take up arms if your dreams don’t come true. Islamic terrorists scream Allahu Akhbar when they set off their bombs. You’ll be chanting Make America Great Again and singing the Star Spangled Banner when you set off yours.
RJS,
Can you tell me why a Dem Congress could not be as effective in “an attempt to limit the power of the Clintons…” as a Rep Congress?
RJS is referring to Repub motives, not his own. Although I think a lot of moderates would be quite supportive of some Clinton proposals that a Repub House or Senate would block.
To all the dribble from the box of rox people out there . It has become redundant to keep say this but the Clintons and everything they say do and stand for is corrupt as one could most possibly be, to the bone. They make El Chapo look like a petty criminal in comparison. Not only have they corrupted just about everything they have ever done and touched, they now are corrupting the DOJ and the FBI and you my also throw in the White House. Now you want them to win the election so they can further corrupt the Congress and Senate. Next you will want them to corrupt the Supreme Court to take away peoples rights and liberties and to promote more unethical publically funded abortions. So as bad a picture as you, the Clinton Cartel and the MSNM can possibly draw of Trump it as a question of character, morality, temperament, personal integrity, honor, pride, trust and respect is not even close. HRC will only ruin this country more than she already has in many ways as soon as she can expand her false flag war machine with Russia. In my view HRC is about 1000 times worse than Trump by every measure.
Nice Rant Ms 57. Well constructed and shows the vacuity of the anti Hillary crowd. Even if everything the right claims about Hillary is true she does not pose anywhere near the danger to this country that Trump does
Terry you and the rest of the liberal blind who think that supporting HRC is a vote for democracy are totally wrong. HRC has sold your democracy to the devil oligarchs but you refuse to see the bigger picture. This country will never be the same as the oligarchs have take control of every aspect of your life but many think that riding along for all the false free bees from the establishment elite is fine with them. As long as they get theirs stupidity thinking again. Realistically a vote for Clinton is totally delusional thinking from any aspect, national security, trade, border control , economy. What planet are you from it is surely not this planet . Do you realize that just the big 6 banks and the big six corps have control of about 90% of the worlds wealth which equals power and control that HRC has already sold us out to.. What about open borders? Are you kidding me? We will not have a country left to worry about with that insanity from HRC. If she gets elected we will become toast for the oligarchs power and control as just another banana republic. Obama’s legacy has become that of HRC and nothing else…
Terry,
“Donald Trump asked a foreign policy expert advising him why the U.S. can’t use nuclear weapons, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said on the air Wednesday, citing an unnamed source who claimed he had spoken with the GOP presidential nominee.
“Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said on his “Morning Joe” program.
Scarborough made the Trump comments 52 seconds into an interview with former Director of Central Intelligence and ex-National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden.”
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html
From the Boston Globe today – coming soon to a town near you:
“[I]f Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem. ‘If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,’ Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. ‘We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take… I would do whatever I can for my country.’ ‘Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,’ said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio. ‘I’ll look for… well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.'”
Racism and Intimidation! – the Trump motto. How it stinks.
Beverly,
Read and weep, directly from PPACA:
“The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased. ”
I am sure you can comprehend that the activity the PPACA attempts to regulate is an economic decision. THAT is asinine, so much so that it must be denied by those who claim to support the supposedly progressive agenda.
But how can you plausibly deny that when the 4 members of SCOTUS you hold so dear said the same damn thing?
From Justice Ginsberg’s Opinion:
“Given these far-reaching effects on interstate commerce, the decision to forgo insurance is hardly inconsequential or equivalent to “doing nothing,” ante, at 20; it is, instead, an economic decision Congress has the authority to address under the Commerce Clause.”
If only we had one more liberal nutcase on the court Congress could regulate our economic decisions.
Mike:
Instead of another conservative fool like Scalia. What planet are you from Mike?
Mike,
You need to read Ginsberg’s statement about a million times. Then maybe you will understand it.
I doubt it. But it is your only shot.
MS57,
So you believe Congress can ban the publishing of books within some specified period before an election? Tell the people what you stand for!
Which publishing houses are not corporations?
Which corporations are protected by the first amendment?
PPACA
Had the mandate been written as a provision of the Income tax code like so many other programs I would have had no constitutional objections. But I do agree with you that one could and should object to the asinine rewrite by the Chief Justice which made it a tax rather than a regulation of commerce.
Your comment regarding “this power” is a silly dodge. The power I referred to was plainly the supposed power to regulate each person’s economic decision. So-called progressives can pretend Congress never attempted such, and can pretend further the courts never addressed that question, but the PPACA legislation itself and the NFIB and Mead v, Holder decisions are part of the record for all to see. When progressives start throwing things down the memory hole rather than address them head on, they cease to be progressives.
Do you believe Congress has the power to regulate each person’s economic decisions?
EMichael,
I understood it the first time. I also understand why progressives must deny Congress ever attempted such a thing, or that they ever supported such a thing.
When Ginsberg wrote “economic decision” as quoted in my post at 12:04PM what do you suppose she meant? Do you seriously believe she was not referring to economic decisions? Pray tell -what ever did she mean if not what she plainly wrote?
When Judge Kessler in Mead v Holder wrote the following:
“As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical
activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making,
there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls
within Congress’s power. See Thomas More Law Ctr., 720 F.Supp.2d at
893 (describing the “activity/inactivity distinction” as an issue
of first impression). However, this Court finds the distinction,
which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It
is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to
forgo health insurance is not “acting,” especially given the
serious economic and health-related consequences to every
individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative
action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.
They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to
ignore reality.”
what do you suppose she meant?
You can deny it until the cows come home, but your supposedly progressive judges are on record saying that Congress can indeed regulate our economic decisions.
“I am sure you can comprehend that the activity the PPACA attempts to regulate is an economic decision. THAT is asinine, so much so that it must be denied by those who claim to support the supposedly progressive agenda.”
MH
Perhaps the error is in your sentence here, which I was referring. She sure did not deny it, and then you next post says she isn’t denying it.
You can only have one of those two.
EMIchael,
The error is in attempting to deny that which is part of the public record.
Beverly wrote: “No one claims that Congress can regulate each person’s economic decisions. It’s a cute soundbite, but utter nonsense.”
And yet Justice Ginsberg said otherwise in NFIB, as did Judge Kessler in Mead v Holder. Moreover the text of PPACA itself plainly seeks to regulate economic decisions.
If progressives are so proud of PPACA and of the stance of the liberal members of SCOTUS in NFIB why aren’t progressives shouting from the roof tops that Congress can so regulate each person’s economic decisions? Instead we have progressives denying that such a claim was ever made. Why?
Seems it is one of those private stances that a progressive should not voice publically lest the rabble get the wrong impression (meaning the people just might see through the progressive BS).
Mike:
Just sign the DNR . . . You do not want to wear a helmet, sign the DNR . . . I do not see Congress interfering with helmet laws by states and maybe if states passed a requirement to have healthcare insurance your stance would be muted the same as Helmet Laws which would require the purchase of a helmet and having to where one. Lesser cost, yes; but, the principle is the same. Well Michigan requires Motorcycle riders to have $20,000 in healthcare insurance in order to ride without a helmet. The principle is the same only applied at a state level. Why aren’t you whining about state laws for insurance?
Mike Hansberry,
You are being obtuse. You keep repeating the phrase “regulate each person’s economic decisions” like Dorothy clicking the heels of her ruby red slippers. Congress is not standing over the shoulder of every citizen regulating all of their economic decisions. Congress passes laws that apply to all citizens and affect the economic decisions all citizens have to make. Your reactionary dream is to return to a glorious status quo ante where each person’s economic decisions are totally and completely unfettered in a Pure Land of splendid economic isolation. Step out of your ideological straitjacket and tell me when and where exactly did such unbounded economic freedom exist.
Justice Ginsburg: “The provision of health care is today a concern of national dimension, just as the provision of old-age and survivors’ benefits was in the 1930’s. In the Social Security Act, Congress installed a federal system to provide monthly benefits to retired wage earners and, eventually, to their survivors. Beyond question, Congress could have adopted a similar scheme for health care. Congress chose, instead, to preserve a central role for private insurers and state governments. According to THE CHIEF JUSTICE, the Commerce Clause does not permit that preservation. This rigid reading of the Clause makes scant sense and is stunningly retrogressive. Since 1937, our precedent has recognized Congress’ large authority to set the Nation’s course in the economic and social welfare realm…
THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s crabbed reading of the Commerce Clause harks back to the era in which the Court routinely thwarted Congress’ efforts to regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it.”
MS57,
I’ll take that as a long winded “yes”.
But why the need for so much obfuscation?
Why not profess to the country, loudly and proudly, your ever so progressive view of the commerce clause in which Congress has the power to regulate our economic decisions?
CONGRESS HAS THE POWER “TO REGULATE OUR ECONOMIC DECISIONS!”
CONGRESS HAS THE POWER TO REGULATE INTERSTATE COMMERCE.
“Congress had a rational basis for concluding that the uninsured, as a class, substantially affect interstate commerce. Those without insurance consume billions of dollars of health-care products and services each year. Those goods are produced, sold, and delivered largely by national and regional companies who routinely transact business across state lines. The uninsured also cross state lines to receive care.”
“In 2013, the cost of “uncompensated care” provided to uninsured individuals was $84.9 billion.”
MS57,
See, that wasn’t so hard.
Now you just need to urge Hillary to say that she wants to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court who will provide a 5th vote for that proposition.
Come on, you can do it!