Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah wrote in an essay published July 4 that the nation is suffering from a “malady of denial, deceit, and distrust” that would only heighten if former president Donald Trump returns to power.
In a sweeping and critical assessment of both sides of the political spectrum, the former Massachusetts governor warned the divides fracturing the country could lead to “serious consequences” if sound leadership does not emerge to “rise above the din to unite us behind the truth.”
“A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable,” Romney wrote in The Atlantic.
Romney criticized “wishful thinking” that he said is occurring across the board — from ignorance over the existence of climate change and its impacts to “MAGA loyalists snicker[ing]” when “a renowned conservative former federal appellate judge testifies that we are already in a war for our democracy.” …
Mitt Romney got his political start in here in MA, which is how it happens articles about him appear so often in the Boston Globe. He was quite the moderate when he was here – he was the original advocate for what came to be known as ObamaCare after all. He deserves some consideration, as a Dem, since the GOP leadership hates him.
So does AOC, of course, who was not mentioned above. She will be old enuf in 2024 to seek the presidency, and many will support her.
I don’t know if I have ever read anything more foolish in my life. Romney? Words cannot describe how insanely stupid that is. AOC? Yeah, at least she is a Democrat. But a Democrat who at this point in her life is best known for her tweets. Christ.
Worried about inflation and dissatisfied with President Biden, many moderate women have been drifting away from Democrats. Now the party hopes the fight for abortion rights will drive them back. …
High inflation remains the overriding concern for many voters, and Republicans are betting that most Americans will vent about pocketbook frustrations above all else. Mr. Biden has long struggled with anemic approval ratings. Americans also overwhelmingly believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, another troubling sign for the party in power. And some Democrats doubt that even something as significant as the overturning of Roe will dramatically alter the political environment. …
Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, has promised to veto “any bill that would restrict abortion rights.”
The Pennsylvania governor’s race is one of several, including governor’s contests in Michigan and Wisconsin, that could directly affect abortion rights in battleground states. …
On June 24 the Supreme Court laid waste to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey on the grounds that the right to an abortion is not enumerated in the Constitution and is not deeply rooted in the history and traditions of the United States. As many commentators have noted, similar objections could be lodged against precedents like Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognize constitutional protections for contraception, sex and marriage.
It is curious, then, to see today’s conservatives celebrating the prospect of overruling privacy rights. Such rights have for years protected Americans who have chosen the path less traveled — those who have bucked traditional ideas about sex and family. Without those rights, it would be much harder for Americans to make choices about some of the most intimate aspects of their lives, like whether and when to have children and with whom to partner and make a family.
There is something profoundly un-American about challenging these cases and the principles that underlie them, at least according to the American ideals that liberals and conservatives alike used to profess. In a 1928 presidential campaign speech, for instance, Herbert Hoover, a Republican, invoked “the American system of rugged individualism” — the notion that America was a place of free markets, individual thought and a dogged skepticism of state-imposed conformity. …
… the loss of the right to not conform makes it harder for this country to continue as a multiracial, multiethnic, multifaith democracy. And perhaps that is the point.
The ODAction website reports that over 5 million gallons of crude oil from the strategic reserve were shipped to overseas refineries instead of US refineries for refining into gasoline and other oil demand products. How does that help reduce US gasoline prices?
(The US is doing this to assist allies deprived of Russian oil exports.)
HOUSTON, July 5 (Reuters) – More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.
The export of crude and fuel is blunting the impact of the moves by U.S. President Joe Biden to lower record pump prices. …
No doubt that’s why he did it but it defeated the stated purpose of the release and the average voter still sees high gas prices and could care less about the allies.
no doubt. but i’d rather win the war than save two bucks on a gallon of gas. Even us liberals have been known to go to war against a Hitler, even if he is a Russian.
Heck, I’d rather walk than lose the planet, which is what cheap gas is doing for us.
The average voter needs to grow a spine as well as a brain. We need totalk to them about something other that the horror of a statue of Robert E. Lee
I agree but have to acknowledge the realities of politics with the voters we have as opposed to the ones we want (as I think Rumsfeld commented about our army.).
Rumsfeld’s army should have stayed home. They just gave Putin ideas.
As for our voters, they are all just about the same. They would follow a real leader, but I don’t see any men on horseback riding to our rescue. I have been disappointed with Biden, but I wasn’t expecting a basketball player or even an eleven dimensional chess player, and I don’t see any better choices out there.
Exchanging Biden for Romney would by like exchanging Polonius for a pimp.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I wonder how many of our average voters just consider nihilism a reasonable alternative to our existing political duopoly? Certainly if one treats their own child as stupid, then it will not grow up to be smart.
In previous gasoline-crises, such diversions to Europe or wherever involved further diversions into the US from elsewhere, in the global crude-oil supply chain. Anyone know if that is the case here?
It seems likely that whatever is going on with gasoline supply around the world, it has to involve opportunistic pricing (‘profiteering’) by OPEC and also Russia. (The ruble is doing very nicely it seems,)
This always hits the US very hard, being a vast country with many millions of truck & car drivers.
“with many millions of car and truck drivers”… who have been made too stupid by cheap gas to learn how to drive less, slower, and shorter distances …
I was thinking more of long-haul truck drivers and diesel-electric freight trains. Our vast country has a lot of that going on. Not to mention airline-based flights to mitigate our vast distances & get across the country in a few hours, carrying freight as well as passengers.
Indeed. Even if arch GOPster Donald Rumsfeld would not have fully endorsed the metaphor of armed support for domestic political kerfuffles … (‘You go to war with the army you have…’)
The Trump faction of the GOP see3ms to be ok with it, to the point of suggesting that the real purpose of the 2nd amendment is to protect the citizenry from guv’mint excess.
In the end, the only real/practical reason for the GOP to exist is the reality that (traditionally), we have to have two ‘major’ political parties for our congressional system to work, and the GOP rolls along on the conceit that they may as well be one of them.
Various Arab-Israeli wars jacked up petroleum-based fuel prices by a factor of five (at least) back in the seventies. So far the Russo-Ukraine war has only roughly doubled them. It could be worse, and it probably will be. Eventually this war will be over, fuel prices will fall back to only a dollar or so more per gallon than before, you’ll see. It’ll be great!
“with many millions of car and truck drivers”… who have been made too stupid by cheap gas to learn how to drive less, slower, and shorter distances, in cars designed for getting you from here to there and not as sexual displays.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Washington (George) warned against political parties. I wonder if that makes them not deeply rooted in American traditions. But since the Republican Party in name ony got it’s start by electing Abraham Lincoln, who would have had a hard time getting elected without them (and they, him) I can’t object.
But s far as the 2nd being for the purpose of protecting the people from the government I would have it no other way. Right now that seems a forlorn hope. Right ow you may not see the point. But after the R’s win the next election by fair means or foul, you may see the point, if not which way it is pointed.
Try to keep in mind that the Framers had had recent experience with needing an armed citizenry to protect them from the government. Life is so confusing.
Trouble, as you can see, is that the modern R’s have seen how to explit these litte quirks before the D’s had a clue. We were expecting common sense and a degree of human decency. Which worked until Ike’s “they’re few and they are stupid” turned out to be smart enough and rich enough to pull off a coup.
and how do you know this? It sems a little far fetched to me that the Framers were thinking of someone taking away the Plznters’ rights to put down slave rebellion. That was a given.
On the other hand, they did, as said, have recent experience of a militia protecting the people from a government coming to take away their arms.
Otherwise it’s a little hard to understand the story of Paul Revere’s Ride. Or “the shot heard round the world.”
I understand your dislike of mass murders and of guns in general. I feel the same way. But leave making up history out of whole cloth to the Scalias and Scalitos of the world, who, being judges, expect to be believed.
They dropped from $5.69 to $5.39/gallon. He needs to get in the $4-something range, And you are correct on where the oil is being sent. Much of it was heavy oil which the US has the ability to process better than the lighter, sweet oil.
“Consequently, using heavy oil requires substantial capital investments in additional refining processes, such as cracking or coking, or so-called conversion capacity. With the requisite additional investment and processing cost, heavy oil typically has been priced less than light oil. In May, for example, Bloomberg data show that Western Canadian Select (WCS) heavy oil averaged $54 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) light crude oil averaged just above $70 per barrel.
The ability to process the heaviest crude oils has vastly expanded the Western Hemisphere’s oil resource and supply potential, as these oils come mainly from Canada and Venezuela. Therefore, many U.S. refiners are configured generally to process heavy crude oil.”
It may have to do with the type of oil it is. The US lacks capacity to refine the light or what they call sweet oil. “Light crude production already exceeds refiners’ ability to process it at certain times of the year and that is expected to get worse as more oil is produced. Experts agree the United States should export to refineries set up to process light oil in other countries and import heavy oil to refine at home.” Why Importing and Exporting Oil Makes Sense today . . .
They need more refineries capable of to handling the sweet oil which we have greater inventory of as compared to capacity to refine.
That just adds to the confusion surrounding the release of the strategic reserves’ crude which was ostensibly supposed to relieve the price pressure on gasoline in the U.S. Makes it seem as though the administration didn’t know what it was doing or was conning people. Either way, it doesn’t look good.
That oil goes to countries which have capacity to refine it and not place their demand on the open market. That it is confusing is the result of political interests lying to the public that they have the ability to lower prices. They do not. We are dealing with an international economy and half the world at war.
If people want to have an impact on gasoline prices? Quit driving 10 to 20mph over the speed limit. That would be about a 5% saving in usage.
The administration knows what it is doing. If we take inflation into consideration, gasoline prices are still lower than what they were in 2008.
This is the stuff which annoys me to no end. 2021 and 2022 could have been 2008, 9, and 10 all over again. The only thing saving the publics ass’s from another 2008 were those stimulus packages Biden put in place. U3 is still low, people are still being hired, PR is almost back to normal.
No worries though. If you read New Deal Democrats’ latest, the housing market is getting ready to drop.
I think Biden has a far better grip on things than trump, Bush, etc. ever had. Obama’s economic plan was too small and cut short by McConnell
Perhaps so but I don’t think the public knows any of that and the administration’s comments about releasing crude didn’t help. The administration needs a good marketing consultant.
(MA, a Deep Blue state since 1960 often has a GOP guv’nah, even with a legislature that is 90% Dem. After this year, most likely not, The convention-chosen GOP candidate is Geoff Diehl, a certified Trumper who barely stands a chance. His opponent is attorney-general Maura Healey, who will probably win by around 25% at least. Does this set her up for a presidential run in 2024. Why not?)
Sure, a Donald Trump supporter like Massachusetts Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl could beat Democrat Maura Healey in November — when elephants can flap their ears and fly in some place other than an old Disney movie.
In addition to the heavy Trump baggage he already carries in this race, Diehl must now also contend with fallout from a decision by a Trump-stacked Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in a state that strongly supports abortion rights. A UMass Lowell poll that surveyed 1,000 voters a week before the court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization put Healey ahead of Diehl by over 30 points. Asked whether there should “definitely be a right to get an abortion in every state,” 62 percent of all voters surveyed said yes and 18 percent said probably. Those results put Healey, a longtime abortion rights advocate, in synch with voters on an issue that’s center stage across the country. The overturning of Roe, tweeted Healey, represents “a dark day in our history,” and she pledged to fight to reverse that. …
Yes, I think any Democrat will win considering what has occurred in the Supreme Court, with more to come. I believe Dems will turn out in 2024 like never before, and am hoping they turn out in 2022 in record numbers.
I believe most of us are PO now, enough so to make the midterm very competitive. Enough so, The Dems could pick up a couple of Senate seats. Graham is refusing to talk with the January 6 Committee which will anger people even more. It was pretty apparent he and Cruz were going along with the charade. And with trump stomping round, none of them will say a damn thing to rebut his actions.
The GOP seems to regard the Jan 6 investigation has a threat to their party’s survival, so non-cooperation is essential as far as they are concerned. Obviously, there are a few exceptions. Very few.
The GOP has to deny that there was every any threat to US democracy, if they want their party to continue to exist. And they have to win back the House, gain control of the Senate, and put Trump back in office.
It’s a lie that roughly a third of the electorate is willing to accept, it would seem. But, we’ll know more about this in November.
Note: Mitt Romney is probably ok with the first of these two steps, but not with the last one.
Not so obvious but the internecine battle within the party will certainly heat up with the prospective argument about who should run instead. There’s certainly precedent for not giving it to the VP. Ask Joe Biden who stepped out of the way at Obama’s request to let Hillary run.
I certainly didn’t mean to endorse Rumsfeld’s use of our army. i do get frustrated with the circular firing squad that is the party with each faction pointing at the other and claiming they don’t “do enough”. They need to get down to business and work the ground game that gets the voters out. There ain’t no FDR channeling the pied piper. Biden was no more inspirational in 2020 than he is now.
After the latest in a series of scandals prompted a rebellion by members of his Conservative Party, Mr. Johnson said he would step down. He plans to remain as prime minister until a successor is chosen.
Boris Johnson said on Thursday that he would step down as Britain’s prime minister, after a wholesale rebellion of his cabinet, a wave of government resignations and a devastating loss of party support prompted by his handling of the the latest scandal that has engulfed his leadership.
Mr. Johnson said he would stay on in his post until the Conservative Party chooses a new leader, which could take several months. He said he expected the timetable for his departure and the selection of a successor to be decided on Monday by a committee of senior Conservative lawmakers.
“It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader,” Mr. Johnson said in remarks outside Downing Street. “The process of choosing that new leader should begin now.” …
(AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation Thursday amid a mass revolt by top members of his government, marking an end to three tumultuous years in power in which he brazenly bent and sometimes broke the rules of British politics.
Months of defiance ended almost with a shrug as Johnson stood outside No. 10 Downing St. and conceded that his party wanted him gone.
“Them’s the breaks,” he said. …
… It was a humiliating defeat for Johnson, who not only pulled off Brexit but was credited with rolling out one of the world’s most successful mass vaccination campaigns to combat COVID-19.
But the perpetually rumpled, shaggy-haired leader known for greeting critics with bombast and bluster was also dogged by criticism that he acted as if the rules did not apply to him.
He managed to remain in power despite allegations that he was too close to party donors, that he protected supporters from bullying and corruption allegations, and that he misled Parliament about government office parties that broke COVID-19 lockdown rules. …
Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, succeeding Theresa May, who resigned after Parliament rejected the Brexit agreement she negotiated with the EU. Johnson pushed his own Brexit deal through in an often messy and turbulent debate. …
He became known for his loose regard for the truth and his glib and offensive marks. He called Papua New Guineans cannibals and likened Muslim women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes.”
Recent disclosures that Johnson knew about sexual misconduct allegations against a Conservative lawmaker before he promoted him to a senior position in government proved to be one scandal too many. …
The Southern states were the ones urging the 2d Amendment. The planters individually didn’t have the man or fire power to put down a serious rebellion. The notion that the unified states were afraid their government was going to turn into King George is just that, a notion.
I should add that the basic argument over the adoption of the 2d Amendment was an objection to standing armies and the insistence that militias would suffice to deal with invasions or insurrections and mob actions as was experienced with Shay’s Rebellion. One potential source of insurrections and/or mob actions were slave uprisings. The focus of the debates on the amendment never mentioned overcoming a tyrannical federal government. The historical arguments at this point have become irrelevant and the issue has become a matter of ideology.
absolutely just a notion. but it’s one that makes more sense to me than the idea that the Planters thought they would need a “right” to bear arms to put down a slave rebellion. i think i know that they were expecting non slave states to help them out in case of serious “insurrection”, which of course we did. just no what they expected.
who was going to take their guns away? the federal government? for a slave uprising?
I certainly agree with the last sentence. can you point me to a source for the “debates.” I don’t think they would mention a tyrannical government while they were inventing one. But they would have had their recent experience with Great Britain in mind.
See: Carol Anderson, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally UnequalAmerica”, reviewed on NPR, and “Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment?”, NYT, 5/24/2018. Both discuss the debates on adopting the 2d Amendment.
thanks for trying. i was hoping for something like a transcript of the debates. i will credit you with at least a draw on this subject. but i like your earlier conclusion better: the history is now irrelevant, it has become a matter of “steeped in the traditions.”
of course it could be, as you said, “a matter of ideology.” i don’t think i have an “ideology” but i know i don’t trust anyone with an agenda.
i mostly couldn’t make your links work, but i’ll try again later.
this is not meant to push any particular position, just to suggest what we might be up against. “The Politics of Gun Control” by Robert Spitzer, published 1995, talks a little about the origins of the 2nd. He does not mention race. He does mention fear of a Federal government by…the usual suspects. The possibility of insurretion is mentioned..apparently by no party that sees the irony of the United States recent beginnings in insurrection. I could read either your or my interpretation into what he says. Ms Anderson, on the other hand, seems to have settled on her interpretation as THE truth. Unfortunately she sounds to me like the many people I hear nowadays who find racism at the root of everything, and whom I believe to be hurting their own cause.
Sure we got plenty of racists around, north and south, and slavery in its time (whh was since the beginning of time, and you don’t have to look very hard to find it, but you have to look very hard to see it as the root of everything, and fail to notice the slow growing anti-racism that has been there, at least in English speaking countries since 1770 or therabouts. I don’t know about other countries. America and England happened to be situated at the eadt place and time wehre and when the Atlantic slave trade became profittable. We are till paying for the sins of our fathers, but it’s becomeing a bit of a neurosis.With t least two sides working hard to keep the wounds open. MOre profitable thqn the slave trade ever was.
your first reference, campbell, seems tp be sauomg about what i was saying. no reference to race. mostly concern about relation between federal government and state government. no strong evidence of “individual right to bear arms” (they were all afraid of insurrection. slave rebellion in the south, tax and debt rebellion in the north.)
but it’s hard for me to imagine they were not thinking of individual right… in the way a fish thinks about water… every man at the time had a gun for hunting and defending himself and his home… from indians if not redcoats.
that said, the dispute between “states rights” and federal domination, between militia and standing army… translates easily in my mind into the current claimed concern that gun nuts have about defending us from a rogue (federal) government. they think of themselves as “the militia” however well regulated. they are . none of it is strictly logical, but then nothing is. in the end it’s emotions that count, and who votes…before it comes to shooting.
The essential argument was pro or con on a standing federal army. There were a variety of reasons to oppose it, one of which was costs. From a states rights perspective, control was also an obvious issue. As to racism being seen everywhere, my opinion is that is because it is everywhere. That people don’t like hearing that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I agree that, over time, it is dissipating but agonizingly slowly. The arc may bend toward justice, as MLK said, but that is an extremely gentle bend. If people object to their actions being judged racist (like police behavior, for example), they should stop acting the way they do. They won’t change their ways by being ignored.
I can agree with you up to a point. But you make a dangerous mistake by assuming that the only people being called racists are racists. The shout racist every time the wind blows is just another form of racism. Perfectly decent people get pretty tired of hearing it.
And when you push your “war against racism” too far too fast you create a backlash that only helps the people who like keeping us at each others’ throats so they can pick our pockets while we think we are fighting a holy crusade.
I think you exaggerate as much as you accuse me of doing. Driving while black is not illegal nor is driving while hispanic. Neighborhood and resulting school segregation are not accidental. Folks in western Illinois objected to the construction of I80 because they didn’t want “those people” coming out there. That isn’t a rumor; I heard it from them directly. Hillary shouldn’t have called them “deplorables” but not because it wasn’t true. I can agree that calling names in political campaigning is a mistake as is using phrases like “defund the police” but ignoring the truth doesn’t help the situation either. The city of Chicago pays out enormous sums of money annually for adverse jury verdicts against the police department under Section 1983 actions. Those juries are largely composed of white people. Other parts of the country have similar experiences.
“Those juries are largely composed of white people” I assume you mean juries handing out awards to black people who have been abused by cops. does that tell you anything?
for what it’s worth I got my fair share of abuse by cops for running because I felt like it, cutting ctoss an empty field while weaaring white tennis shoes, sitting down while be written a ticket… aa friend of mine, who was japanese did nothave these problems because he dressed like a law abiding citizen, while I dressed like I wanted to..which also got me abused by white people when I went to a college where they din’t like that sort of thing…and so on. Abuse by people in “authority” is as common as “racism” which is in the genes of every living thing.
We can overcome pernicious racism, but not by poking it in the eye. I would say your assertion that racism is everywhere…is proof of what i say when i say you see racism everywhere.
if i understand that. you see a lot of racism that IS there. but you also see a lot of racism that ISN’T there.
there is a lot of pernicious racism out there, but trying to make us all feel guilty as a race is not the way to get there.
especially when the racism you see is imaginary, or the fixes you demand are felt as threats to what ordinary people regard as the foundation of their life and hope.
it would help if you found a way to say “we’re all in this together, which we are.”
I was hoping we could agree on a couple of things that might be more important than they look:
There is no compelling evidence that the 2nd was about personal right to bear arms.
There is no compelling evidence that it was paticularly about race and slave revolt,
It was about the fear of “standing armies” and the fear that a tyrrany might arise in which the “government ” (federal” began by disarming the “militias.”
At that time most or many men owned guns equivalent to or better than the guns oned by the army. They onsidered themselves a militia without respect to how well “regulated” it might be.
There was fear in more stantes than the South of “insurrection,”…by the rich with respect to “levellers ” who wanted debt relief, and farmers who hated the whiskey tax and other abuses by “the rich”. Nevertheless most people thought of themselves as “citizens” first…that is they would join with their fellow citizens to resist both “insurrection” and an abusive government.
the preent day “militias” and “militias of one” might be excused if they believed the 2nd applied to them.
there was no great outcry against private ownership of guns for about the first two hundred years of “the Republic,” though I imagine it was true in some places that if the local sheriff said “deposit your guns in the jail or get out of town, most people deposited their guns in the jail or got out of town,
I don’t know anything about the politics of gun ownership during prohibition and the depression, but there was folk myth at least that the bad guys were fighting aginst the evil bnks that stole the farmers land.
now i m going too far, but just suggesting that gun ownership in America is a little more complicted than hat some people say the 2nd says, or >meant” to the framers.
It is certain that there is racism everywhere but not Every where. Vicious exploitation of black people by the law and by people who could get away with it because it was happens when exploiters meet exploitable people…pernicious racism grows in a climate like that.
you would not agree with me about the next step, but my experience since the sixties, and even late fifties, is that gains against exploitation, if not racism, were real, BUT HAVE BEEN LOST BECAUSE THE EXPLOITERS WERE SARTER THAN THE “anti-racists” who keep overreaching…mistakkng the fight for justeice with a fight to defeat racism…which they see everywhere the way Joe McCarthy saw a commonist under every bed.
the all-my computer won’t let me see what i am typing so i hope this is readable.
It seems clear that Joe Biden should not run again. Given that, who should? Liz Warren, Gavin Newsom, Amy Klobuchar, Kathy Hochul? Others?
Maybe Mitt Romney will run as a Democrat.
Romney says the return of Trump would ‘feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable’
Boston Globe – July 5
dobbs
i hope you are joking.
Mitt Romney got his political start in here in MA, which is how it happens articles about him appear so often in the Boston Globe. He was quite the moderate when he was here – he was the original advocate for what came to be known as ObamaCare after all. He deserves some consideration, as a Dem, since the GOP leadership hates him.
So does AOC, of course, who was not mentioned above. She will be old enuf in 2024 to seek the presidency, and many will support her.
I don’t know if I have ever read anything more foolish in my life. Romney? Words cannot describe how insanely stupid that is. AOC? Yeah, at least she is a Democrat. But a Democrat who at this point in her life is best known for her tweets. Christ.
Maybe one of Biden’s esteemed Cabinet members then.
Or perhaps Beto O’Rourke? Who strikes yer fancy?
Hannan
clear to you perhaps. but some of the rest of us need reasons.
The main reason is that Joe Biden would be 82 years old in January, 2025. The US Presidency is simply not a job for octogenarians.
Anyway, gotta be someone brave enuf to campaign against the somewhat younger septuagenarian Donald Trump.
Will the Abortion Debate Keep Moderate Women in the Democrats’ Camp?
NY Times – July 5
Americans Are Losing Their Right to Not Conform
NY Times – July 6
Americans Are Losing Their Right to Not Conform
NY Times – July 6
… the loss of the right to not conform makes it harder for this country to continue as a multiracial, multiethnic, multifaith democracy. And perhaps that is the point.
The ODAction website reports that over 5 million gallons of crude oil from the strategic reserve were shipped to overseas refineries instead of US refineries for refining into gasoline and other oil demand products. How does that help reduce US gasoline prices?
(The US is doing this to assist allies deprived of Russian oil exports.)
HOUSTON, July 5 (Reuters) – More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.
The export of crude and fuel is blunting the impact of the moves by U.S. President Joe Biden to lower record pump prices. …
No doubt that’s why he did it but it defeated the stated purpose of the release and the average voter still sees high gas prices and could care less about the allies.
JackD
no doubt. but i’d rather win the war than save two bucks on a gallon of gas. Even us liberals have been known to go to war against a Hitler, even if he is a Russian.
Heck, I’d rather walk than lose the planet, which is what cheap gas is doing for us.
The average voter needs to grow a spine as well as a brain. We need totalk to them about something other that the horror of a statue of Robert E. Lee
I agree but have to acknowledge the realities of politics with the voters we have as opposed to the ones we want (as I think Rumsfeld commented about our army.).
Rumsfeld’s army should have stayed home. They just gave Putin ideas.
As for our voters, they are all just about the same. They would follow a real leader, but I don’t see any men on horseback riding to our rescue. I have been disappointed with Biden, but I wasn’t expecting a basketball player or even an eleven dimensional chess player, and I don’t see any better choices out there.
Exchanging Biden for Romney would by like exchanging Polonius for a pimp.
Coberly,
I wonder how many of our average voters just consider nihilism a reasonable alternative to our existing political duopoly? Certainly if one treats their own child as stupid, then it will not grow up to be smart.
In previous gasoline-crises, such diversions to Europe or wherever involved further diversions into the US from elsewhere, in the global crude-oil supply chain. Anyone know if that is the case here?
It seems likely that whatever is going on with gasoline supply around the world, it has to involve opportunistic pricing (‘profiteering’) by OPEC and also Russia. (The ruble is doing very nicely it seems,)
This always hits the US very hard, being a vast country with many millions of truck & car drivers.
“with many millions of car and truck drivers”… who have been made too stupid by cheap gas to learn how to drive less, slower, and shorter distances …
I was thinking more of long-haul truck drivers and diesel-electric freight trains. Our vast country has a lot of that going on. Not to mention airline-based flights to mitigate our vast distances & get across the country in a few hours, carrying freight as well as passengers.
Indeed. Even if arch GOPster Donald Rumsfeld would not have fully endorsed the metaphor of armed support for domestic political kerfuffles … (‘You go to war with the army you have…’)
The Trump faction of the GOP see3ms to be ok with it, to the point of suggesting that the real purpose of the 2nd amendment is to protect the citizenry from guv’mint excess.
In the end, the only real/practical reason for the GOP to exist is the reality that (traditionally), we have to have two ‘major’ political parties for our congressional system to work, and the GOP rolls along on the conceit that they may as well be one of them.
Various Arab-Israeli wars jacked up petroleum-based fuel prices by a factor of five (at least) back in the seventies. So far the Russo-Ukraine war has only roughly doubled them. It could be worse, and it probably will be. Eventually this war will be over, fuel prices will fall back to only a dollar or so more per gallon than before, you’ll see. It’ll be great!
Dobbs
those things can be mitigated as well, but that would involve serious planning. which would be against our sacred capitalist way of life.
Ron
I always thought that was the job of the public schools.
Dobbs
“with many millions of car and truck drivers”… who have been made too stupid by cheap gas to learn how to drive less, slower, and shorter distances, in cars designed for getting you from here to there and not as sexual displays.
Coberly,
Well yes, if you meant by “that” as treating our children as if they were stupid, then “that” is the job of public schools. …and they do it well.
Ron
yes to that.
Dobbs
Washington (George) warned against political parties. I wonder if that makes them not deeply rooted in American traditions. But since the Republican Party in name ony got it’s start by electing Abraham Lincoln, who would have had a hard time getting elected without them (and they, him) I can’t object.
But s far as the 2nd being for the purpose of protecting the people from the government I would have it no other way. Right now that seems a forlorn hope. Right ow you may not see the point. But after the R’s win the next election by fair means or foul, you may see the point, if not which way it is pointed.
Try to keep in mind that the Framers had had recent experience with needing an armed citizenry to protect them from the government. Life is so confusing.
Trouble, as you can see, is that the modern R’s have seen how to explit these litte quirks before the D’s had a clue. We were expecting common sense and a degree of human decency. Which worked until Ike’s “they’re few and they are stupid” turned out to be smart enough and rich enough to pull off a coup.
The 2d Amendment was designed to permit state militias that could suppress slave revolts. Scalia’s account of history was made up out of whole cloth.
JackD
and how do you know this? It sems a little far fetched to me that the Framers were thinking of someone taking away the Plznters’ rights to put down slave rebellion. That was a given.
On the other hand, they did, as said, have recent experience of a militia protecting the people from a government coming to take away their arms.
Otherwise it’s a little hard to understand the story of Paul Revere’s Ride. Or “the shot heard round the world.”
I understand your dislike of mass murders and of guns in general. I feel the same way. But leave making up history out of whole cloth to the Scalias and Scalitos of the world, who, being judges, expect to be believed.
Fred:
They dropped from $5.69 to $5.39/gallon. He needs to get in the $4-something range, And you are correct on where the oil is being sent. Much of it was heavy oil which the US has the ability to process better than the lighter, sweet oil.
“Consequently, using heavy oil requires substantial capital investments in additional refining processes, such as cracking or coking, or so-called conversion capacity. With the requisite additional investment and processing cost, heavy oil typically has been priced less than light oil. In May, for example, Bloomberg data show that Western Canadian Select (WCS) heavy oil averaged $54 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) light crude oil averaged just above $70 per barrel.
The ability to process the heaviest crude oils has vastly expanded the Western Hemisphere’s oil resource and supply potential, as these oils come mainly from Canada and Venezuela. Therefore, many U.S. refiners are configured generally to process heavy crude oil.”
Why the US must Import and Export Oil
Jack:
It may have to do with the type of oil it is. The US lacks capacity to refine the light or what they call sweet oil. “Light crude production already exceeds refiners’ ability to process it at certain times of the year and that is expected to get worse as more oil is produced. Experts agree the United States should export to refineries set up to process light oil in other countries and import heavy oil to refine at home.” Why Importing and Exporting Oil Makes Sense today . . .
They need more refineries capable of to handling the sweet oil which we have greater inventory of as compared to capacity to refine.
That just adds to the confusion surrounding the release of the strategic reserves’ crude which was ostensibly supposed to relieve the price pressure on gasoline in the U.S. Makes it seem as though the administration didn’t know what it was doing or was conning people. Either way, it doesn’t look good.
Jack:
That oil goes to countries which have capacity to refine it and not place their demand on the open market. That it is confusing is the result of political interests lying to the public that they have the ability to lower prices. They do not. We are dealing with an international economy and half the world at war.
In 2020, trump and Jarod told MbN to cut oil supply or lose US military support.Special Report: Trump told Saudi: Cut oil supply or lose U.S. military support – sources
Guess what, they kept production low.
If people want to have an impact on gasoline prices? Quit driving 10 to 20mph over the speed limit. That would be about a 5% saving in usage.
The administration knows what it is doing. If we take inflation into consideration, gasoline prices are still lower than what they were in 2008.
This is the stuff which annoys me to no end. 2021 and 2022 could have been 2008, 9, and 10 all over again. The only thing saving the publics ass’s from another 2008 were those stimulus packages Biden put in place. U3 is still low, people are still being hired, PR is almost back to normal.
No worries though. If you read New Deal Democrats’ latest, the housing market is getting ready to drop.
I think Biden has a far better grip on things than trump, Bush, etc. ever had. Obama’s economic plan was too small and cut short by McConnell
Perhaps so but I don’t think the public knows any of that and the administration’s comments about releasing crude didn’t help. The administration needs a good marketing consultant.
Speaking of Massachusetts…
MA GOP gubernatorial candidate’s stance is out of synch with voters
Boston Globe – June 27
(MA, a Deep Blue state since 1960 often has a GOP guv’nah, even with a legislature that is 90% Dem. After this year, most likely not, The convention-chosen GOP candidate is Geoff Diehl, a certified Trumper who barely stands a chance. His opponent is attorney-general Maura Healey, who will probably win by around 25% at least. Does this set her up for a presidential run in 2024. Why not?)
While it is much too early to think about 2024, the obvious choice is Harris if Biden does not run.
Do you think that she could win?
Yes, I think any Democrat will win considering what has occurred in the Supreme Court, with more to come. I believe Dems will turn out in 2024 like never before, and am hoping they turn out in 2022 in record numbers.
EM
I believe most of us are PO now, enough so to make the midterm very competitive. Enough so, The Dems could pick up a couple of Senate seats. Graham is refusing to talk with the January 6 Committee which will anger people even more. It was pretty apparent he and Cruz were going along with the charade. And with trump stomping round, none of them will say a damn thing to rebut his actions.
The GOP seems to regard the Jan 6 investigation has a threat to their party’s survival, so non-cooperation is essential as far as they are concerned. Obviously, there are a few exceptions. Very few.
The GOP has to deny that there was every any threat to US democracy, if they want their party to continue to exist. And they have to win back the House, gain control of the Senate, and put Trump back in office.
It’s a lie that roughly a third of the electorate is willing to accept, it would seem. But, we’ll know more about this in November.
Note: Mitt Romney is probably ok with the first of these two steps, but not with the last one.
Fred:
Thank you . . . I already assumed such.
Not so obvious but the internecine battle within the party will certainly heat up with the prospective argument about who should run instead. There’s certainly precedent for not giving it to the VP. Ask Joe Biden who stepped out of the way at Obama’s request to let Hillary run.
I certainly didn’t mean to endorse Rumsfeld’s use of our army. i do get frustrated with the circular firing squad that is the party with each faction pointing at the other and claiming they don’t “do enough”. They need to get down to business and work the ground game that gets the voters out. There ain’t no FDR channeling the pied piper. Biden was no more inspirational in 2020 than he is now.
In other news…
Boris Johnson Agrees to Resign as UK Prime Minister
After the latest in a series of scandals prompted a rebellion by members of his Conservative Party, Mr. Johnson said he would step down. He plans to remain as prime minister until a successor is chosen.
Boris Johnson said on Thursday that he would step down as Britain’s prime minister, after a wholesale rebellion of his cabinet, a wave of government resignations and a devastating loss of party support prompted by his handling of the the latest scandal that has engulfed his leadership.
Mr. Johnson said he would stay on in his post until the Conservative Party chooses a new leader, which could take several months. He said he expected the timetable for his departure and the selection of a successor to be decided on Monday by a committee of senior Conservative lawmakers.
“It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader,” Mr. Johnson said in remarks outside Downing Street. “The process of choosing that new leader should begin now.” …
Boris Johnson resigns as British prime minister amid scandal
Boston Globe – July 7
The Southern states were the ones urging the 2d Amendment. The planters individually didn’t have the man or fire power to put down a serious rebellion. The notion that the unified states were afraid their government was going to turn into King George is just that, a notion.
I should add that the basic argument over the adoption of the 2d Amendment was an objection to standing armies and the insistence that militias would suffice to deal with invasions or insurrections and mob actions as was experienced with Shay’s Rebellion. One potential source of insurrections and/or mob actions were slave uprisings. The focus of the debates on the amendment never mentioned overcoming a tyrannical federal government. The historical arguments at this point have become irrelevant and the issue has become a matter of ideology.
JackD
absolutely just a notion. but it’s one that makes more sense to me than the idea that the Planters thought they would need a “right” to bear arms to put down a slave rebellion. i think i know that they were expecting non slave states to help them out in case of serious “insurrection”, which of course we did. just no what they expected.
who was going to take their guns away? the federal government? for a slave uprising?
JackD
I certainly agree with the last sentence. can you point me to a source for the “debates.” I don’t think they would mention a tyrannical government while they were inventing one. But they would have had their recent experience with Great Britain in mind.
Coberly,
A thorough academic paper online is by Jeffrey P. Campbell, “The Original Intent of the Second Amendment”, Oklahoma State University.
JackD
thanks.
I couldn’t locate the one I read last year discussing the specific issue of slavery.
Coberly,
See: Carol Anderson, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally UnequalAmerica”, reviewed on NPR, and “Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment?”, NYT, 5/24/2018. Both discuss the debates on adopting the 2d Amendment.
JackD
thanks for trying. i was hoping for something like a transcript of the debates. i will credit you with at least a draw on this subject. but i like your earlier conclusion better: the history is now irrelevant, it has become a matter of “steeped in the traditions.”
of course it could be, as you said, “a matter of ideology.” i don’t think i have an “ideology” but i know i don’t trust anyone with an agenda.
i mostly couldn’t make your links work, but i’ll try again later.
Coberly,
They weren’t linked. Type them into google and they’ll come up.
There won’t be a transcript of the debates; mostly written commentaries and notes.
JackD
this is not meant to push any particular position, just to suggest what we might be up against. “The Politics of Gun Control” by Robert Spitzer, published 1995, talks a little about the origins of the 2nd. He does not mention race. He does mention fear of a Federal government by…the usual suspects. The possibility of insurretion is mentioned..apparently by no party that sees the irony of the United States recent beginnings in insurrection. I could read either your or my interpretation into what he says. Ms Anderson, on the other hand, seems to have settled on her interpretation as THE truth. Unfortunately she sounds to me like the many people I hear nowadays who find racism at the root of everything, and whom I believe to be hurting their own cause.
Sure we got plenty of racists around, north and south, and slavery in its time (whh was since the beginning of time, and you don’t have to look very hard to find it, but you have to look very hard to see it as the root of everything, and fail to notice the slow growing anti-racism that has been there, at least in English speaking countries since 1770 or therabouts. I don’t know about other countries. America and England happened to be situated at the eadt place and time wehre and when the Atlantic slave trade became profittable. We are till paying for the sins of our fathers, but it’s becomeing a bit of a neurosis.With t least two sides working hard to keep the wounds open. MOre profitable thqn the slave trade ever was.
JackD,
thanks. i used “links” as a shorthand for “citations.”
btw
your first reference, campbell, seems tp be sauomg about what i was saying. no reference to race. mostly concern about relation between federal government and state government. no strong evidence of “individual right to bear arms” (they were all afraid of insurrection. slave rebellion in the south, tax and debt rebellion in the north.)
but it’s hard for me to imagine they were not thinking of individual right… in the way a fish thinks about water… every man at the time had a gun for hunting and defending himself and his home… from indians if not redcoats.
that said, the dispute between “states rights” and federal domination, between militia and standing army… translates easily in my mind into the current claimed concern that gun nuts have about defending us from a rogue (federal) government. they think of themselves as “the militia” however well regulated. they are . none of it is strictly logical, but then nothing is. in the end it’s emotions that count, and who votes…before it comes to shooting.
If you google the topic, a number of academic history papers will come up.
JackD
no doubt, do you remember which one you read?
Coberly,
The essential argument was pro or con on a standing federal army. There were a variety of reasons to oppose it, one of which was costs. From a states rights perspective, control was also an obvious issue. As to racism being seen everywhere, my opinion is that is because it is everywhere. That people don’t like hearing that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I agree that, over time, it is dissipating but agonizingly slowly. The arc may bend toward justice, as MLK said, but that is an extremely gentle bend. If people object to their actions being judged racist (like police behavior, for example), they should stop acting the way they do. They won’t change their ways by being ignored.
We can agree to disagree on this, I guess.
JackD
I can agree with you up to a point. But you make a dangerous mistake by assuming that the only people being called racists are racists. The shout racist every time the wind blows is just another form of racism. Perfectly decent people get pretty tired of hearing it.
And when you push your “war against racism” too far too fast you create a backlash that only helps the people who like keeping us at each others’ throats so they can pick our pockets while we think we are fighting a holy crusade.
I think you exaggerate as much as you accuse me of doing. Driving while black is not illegal nor is driving while hispanic. Neighborhood and resulting school segregation are not accidental. Folks in western Illinois objected to the construction of I80 because they didn’t want “those people” coming out there. That isn’t a rumor; I heard it from them directly. Hillary shouldn’t have called them “deplorables” but not because it wasn’t true. I can agree that calling names in political campaigning is a mistake as is using phrases like “defund the police” but ignoring the truth doesn’t help the situation either. The city of Chicago pays out enormous sums of money annually for adverse jury verdicts against the police department under Section 1983 actions. Those juries are largely composed of white people. Other parts of the country have similar experiences.
“Those juries are largely composed of white people” I assume you mean juries handing out awards to black people who have been abused by cops. does that tell you anything?
for what it’s worth I got my fair share of abuse by cops for running because I felt like it, cutting ctoss an empty field while weaaring white tennis shoes, sitting down while be written a ticket… aa friend of mine, who was japanese did nothave these problems because he dressed like a law abiding citizen, while I dressed like I wanted to..which also got me abused by white people when I went to a college where they din’t like that sort of thing…and so on. Abuse by people in “authority” is as common as “racism” which is in the genes of every living thing.
We can overcome pernicious racism, but not by poking it in the eye. I would say your assertion that racism is everywhere…is proof of what i say when i say you see racism everywhere.
You don’t seem to say what I see isn’t there; only that I see it.
if i understand that. you see a lot of racism that IS there. but you also see a lot of racism that ISN’T there.
there is a lot of pernicious racism out there, but trying to make us all feel guilty as a race is not the way to get there.
especially when the racism you see is imaginary, or the fixes you demand are felt as threats to what ordinary people regard as the foundation of their life and hope.
it would help if you found a way to say “we’re all in this together, which we are.”
I was hoping we could agree on a couple of things that might be more important than they look:
There is no compelling evidence that the 2nd was about personal right to bear arms.
There is no compelling evidence that it was paticularly about race and slave revolt,
It was about the fear of “standing armies” and the fear that a tyrrany might arise in which the “government ” (federal” began by disarming the “militias.”
At that time most or many men owned guns equivalent to or better than the guns oned by the army. They onsidered themselves a militia without respect to how well “regulated” it might be.
There was fear in more stantes than the South of “insurrection,”…by the rich with respect to “levellers ” who wanted debt relief, and farmers who hated the whiskey tax and other abuses by “the rich”. Nevertheless most people thought of themselves as “citizens” first…that is they would join with their fellow citizens to resist both “insurrection” and an abusive government.
the preent day “militias” and “militias of one” might be excused if they believed the 2nd applied to them.
there was no great outcry against private ownership of guns for about the first two hundred years of “the Republic,” though I imagine it was true in some places that if the local sheriff said “deposit your guns in the jail or get out of town, most people deposited their guns in the jail or got out of town,
I don’t know anything about the politics of gun ownership during prohibition and the depression, but there was folk myth at least that the bad guys were fighting aginst the evil bnks that stole the farmers land.
now i m going too far, but just suggesting that gun ownership in America is a little more complicted than hat some people say the 2nd says, or >meant” to the framers.
It is certain that there is racism everywhere but not Every where. Vicious exploitation of black people by the law and by people who could get away with it because it was happens when exploiters meet exploitable people…pernicious racism grows in a climate like that.
you would not agree with me about the next step, but my experience since the sixties, and even late fifties, is that gains against exploitation, if not racism, were real, BUT HAVE BEEN LOST BECAUSE THE EXPLOITERS WERE SARTER THAN THE “anti-racists” who keep overreaching…mistakkng the fight for justeice with a fight to defeat racism…which they see everywhere the way Joe McCarthy saw a commonist under every bed.
the all-my computer won’t let me see what i am typing so i hope this is readable.
It’s readable but I’m done with the discussion. Have a nice weekend.