Trump Outflanks Dems from the Left

There’s a lot of thin ice at the end of the year. Pelosi can’t promise a $1600 check next year, because the 116th Congress cannot tell the 117th Congress what to do. Just like the “sequester” was a massive lie, since it was committing future Congresses to a specific course of action.

Trump has always been too weak to give much effect to his populist impulses. His lack of intellect, his authoritarian bent and his deep personal insecurities made him weak even befote he acquired lame duck status.

Still, the outburst is illuminating the reality of the neoliberal political process. Pelosi complaining that the slimy Mnuchin never gave her “a number” and offering unanimous consent to get it done is extremely cynical. We are all supoosed to think the Dems are heroes and only the evil McConnell and the Senate Republicans are preventing the Dems from doing all manner of good things. Ha! (If the House Dem caucus were possessed of a collective good will, they are the worst political negotiaters imaginable.)

This is just one of an array of policy issues where an iron consensus has swallowed all common sense, and a child like Trump can speak the truth and everyone is shocked. The U.S. cannot get out of Afganistan either.

If the combined omnibus / covid relief bill sent over to him stays in his pocket, if he just doesn’t sign it and send it back – a pocket veto, everything shuts down Tuesday.

Two things to unpack here: first is everyone seems to be confusing the omnibus government appropriations with the covid relief package. They’re not the same, they’re two different bills lumped into one voting action. And two… upon vetoing the Defense Appropriations Bill he pocketed the combined omnibus appropriations / covid relief bills while boarding a plane for parts unknown, ostensibly Merde a’Lardo though Jeff Epstein’s island is not much farther.

He has no intention of signing anything, all of this is a waste of air.

Everything shuts down Tuesday.

Gotta’ admire it.

This is all true in the general case, about tactics. But it doesn’t really apply to the current situation. Trump has no interest in getting more dollars to people, nor has he any of the other times. He’s actually doing exactly what the Democrats have been doing: Counting on Mitch McConnell to block anything useful from happening. Throughout the process that got this miserable bill through to Trump to sign in the first place, the Democrats have been asking for more, McConnell has simply been refusing to budge, and the Democrats have been caving in while breathing a sigh of relief, happy that they can say they tried without actually ending up having to spend money on the proles. Useless but it’s the Republicans’ fault is the modern Democrat’s happy place.
Trump has been doing something similar, but perhaps even more cynical. The Dems at least I think are pleased enough to pass whatever minimal thing they can get past McConnell. Trump has been talking about bigger stimulus, but generally his interventions have just added one more layer of complexity and blockage, making it less likely anything will get passed at all and even if it does, seriously slowing the process down. His goal seems to be to collaborate with McConnell to sabotage getting any bill passed; he and McConnell have been batting the Dems back and forth like a frigging badminton bird. But he gets to talk like he’s offering good stuff.

On the third hand, of course, Mitch McConnell is just evil. But he’s the evil everyone else is depending on–without him to play the bad guy, everyone else would have to admit they don’t actually want to help; his evil lets them all pretend to be good.

As I have said all along, Trump is to the left of neoD’s on a number of serious issues. Since, at least the 90’s, [though not a politician] Trump has been consistent on a number issues in his public speaking engagements.

That is why you can hear the neoDs above bleeting like sheep before slaughter, why you hear an endless stream of ridiculous accusations harmoniously coming from both neoD’s and R’s singing in concert.

The key to moving the country back towards the middle has always been to get an R willing to move back to center.

Which is why the neoD’s bleet about Trump, it has been Al From’s realized dream [founder of the DLC, director of the House Democratic Caucus from 1981 to 198] to annihilate FDRism and to return the Democratic party to the cesspool it once was before it annexed the goody-goodies of the Progressive Party. Hence my use of the term “neoD” it is an attempt at creating a rhetorical shorthand to bifurcate the party of FDR from the D party of today.

Looks like we will have to face an endless stream of Hugh/Willy commentary spinning why Trump flanking neoD’s to the left is really the work of [insert an ad hominem here] head faking to enact [insert nutty conspiracy theory here].

As I have said many time before, had the genuine left/liberals/D’s treated Trump on an issue by issue basis rather than accepting verbatim the neoD’s/3Letter-Agencies/MediaCorp’s comic-book cutout of a villain that rivals the worst of the 30’s the nation would have marched forward on some critical issues.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, I can hardly wait to hear 10-feathers to opine on his favorite Russian Spy [Tulsi-Gabbard] refusing to vote for either of Pelosi & McConnell’s vile concoctions, the NDA [w/BigTech immunity] and the Obama inspired, Covid-Relief-Bill.

Now I gotta go get me some popcorn and come back in a few hours and read the DNC’s lickspittles endless apoligia for Pelosi’s vile machinations.

If this was 1945, SB would be telling whoever was left about how smart the Führer was suckering the Russian army into attacking Berlin. At best, true believers are these odd, funny, opposite side down people. At worst, they are a dead end if there is a real problem to be solved. They don’t want a solution. They want the rest of us to follow their whack leader over the cliff.

Whether Trump’s proposal, though a head fake, would even represent an increased stimulus is unknown, remember he blabs about offsetting it by cutting “unnecessary spending”, whatever that is, probably conflating the covid bill with the budget bill. So

The other day after Hugh was back footed in an argument and he did what he always does…change to a new line of attack.

Hugh’s DNC-supplied line of attack emphasized how villainous Trump was abusing the power of Pardons and Commutations. Fine. But since Hugh job here is to endlessly repeat lies..I took the trouble to find out how deceitful Hugh was being on the “pardons issue” and it turns out that Hugh outdid himself.

As this graph shows,[ https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/7709.jpeg ] to date, Trump has the fewest pardons of any US prez.

Let that sink in. Hugh’s lie was to convince you that Trump has pardon more than any Prez in History and by chance, the exact opposite is true. Now we all that Hugh will claim that he might have left that impression but, he did explicitly say that…not only that even if he did you don’t have a court ruling that would convert evidence in to “proof”.

Remember that when you see Hugh’s name, he deals in deceit, his currency is ad hominem, he offers up the neoD’s swill to those scrofa domesticas unwilling to notice they are being fattened to provide frying grease for the plantation.

Thank you, SB, for illustrating my point.

Should have been written as:

As this graph shows,[ https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/7709.jpeg ] to date, Trump has the fewest pardons of any US Prez.

Let that sink in. Hugh’s lie was to convince you that Trump has [used the] pardon more than any Prez in History and by chance, the exact opposite is true. Now we all [know] that Hugh will claim that he might have left that impression but, he did explicitly say that…not only that, even if he did, you don’t have a court ruling that would convert evidence in to “proof”.

Whether Trump’s proposal, though a head fake, would even represent an increased stimulus is unknown, remember he blabs about offsetting it by cutting “unnecessary spending”, whatever that is, probably conflating the covid bill with the budget bill.

It seems as though all throughout Trump’s presidency, the idea that he would move to the left of the Democrats is something Ian desperately *wants* to be true, but never actually ended up being true.

Trump never had Bernie Sanders intentions. I know because he always ends up taking Republican actions. And who gives a fuck anyway when he has deliberately hamstrung the Federal governments power to mitigate the epidemic? He caused that to happen; so many more deaths than there had to be.

Yeah, A $600 one-time payout is an insult. A $2,000 one-time payout is an insult. Anything other than a plan to support individuals, small businesses, city and state governments over an extended period of time is an insult. Also trying to sell the idea that Trump and his enablers are capable of taking a progressive position to own the libs is an insult. At most he planned to con his supporters into donating a lot of that $2,000 to his election scam PAC. But we’re supposed to twist ourselves into knots thinking that it goes deeper and more calculating than that. It doesn’t.

Ha, who gives a F anyway at this point is right.

I mean if more money is added without strings great, but if Trump plans to run on it and people are instructed to ignore 4 years of actual governance, 5 months in which he could have pushed for real changes to the stimulus, and do for the sake of some last minute bloviating promises, then they fully deserve whatever they get. Truthfully I don’t even believe Trump wants office ever again though, he’s just wants to grift and evade punishment.

The countries that did stimulus better, it doesn’t seem it was so much a difference of how much was spent, but how it was spent.

S Brennan has predicted that his beloved TrumpHitler will see his vision through. For real this time. So let it be written, so let it be remembered. Let’s see what happens.

If Trump gets us $2K and pardons Assange and Snowden, I’m buying myself a MAGA hat and writing a thank you letter to Putin.

Z

S Brennan – So, you have nothing to say about Trump pardoning war criminals, then. Okay, got it.

Maybe TrumpHitler’s pardoned war criminals are all with him down at Mar-a-Lago working out the details of our new and improved covid relief plans?

Ya, know, if Trump really wanted to “outflank Dems from the left” he’d have floored the accelerator before the election. He could have told McConnell “either pass it, or I’m rescinding all my judicial appointments” (the only thing McConnell apparently cares about) and moreover have told McConnell he’d got to Kentucky to *campaign against* McConnell* if he stalled. The only thing that McConnell understands is hardball, so play it.

Hell, he would have started back in 2017; instead of the Paul Ryan-crapcare bill he allowed to go through he could have vastly improved Obamacare (I doubt he could have gotten MFA, though) and instead of going through just Ryan and McConnell he could have included Schumer and Pelosi and threatened to bypass the Repug Congressional Leadership from the get-go. The problem is that Trump trusted the Rs to keep his back but the Rs aren’t motivated by loyalty to Trump, but by fear of him.

So this latest stuff is just grandstanding. Like in everything else, he’ll change his position.

Thanks Ella. Trump couldn’t care less about tacking left and helping the 99%.

This move by Trump is not outflanking the dems but more like punking McConnell and the GOP for not helping him steal the election. McConnell wants those Senatorial seats in GA and getting something /anything passed period will supposedly help them. Now he’s in the position of getting his herd to go along with a bill he doesn’t like lest he put the GA seats in peril. $2000 isn’t enough for the suffering, but it’s better than $900.

Hopefully some sane dems will get the ear of the Biden camp and tell him that if he proactively pursues austerity in the next four years, the next medicine show of a GOP candidate selling the faux elixir of populism will make him a one term president.

I tend to doubt Trump will run 2024. The combination of his diet, his obesity, his age, and his laziness will not leave him in condition to do so.

Re SB, the initial Nuremberg trials were against 24 high ranking German political and military leaders and 7 German organizations. So not against just “flag officers”. The trial lasted from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. This first trial was presided over by the Four Powers: France, the UK, the USA, and the USSR. The USA held further trials at Nuremberg through 1949. Nuremberg was in its zone of occupation. Various war crimes trials relating to WWII, not just flag officers, were held over the years and, of course, many others covering other wars and conflicts.

SB’s quote comes from page 422 of the judgment of 1 October 1946, in The Trial of German Major War Criminals. Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 22 (22nd August, 1946 to 1st October, 1946) in a section entitled The Common Plan Or Conspiracy And Aggressive War. I do not see its relevance to any comment made by NR.

A result of this first trial was the subsequent development of the Nuremberg Principles which do define war crimes. Interestingly, while the German General Staff and High Command was not found to be a criminal organization in this first Nuremberg trial, the US in 1949 at Nuremberg did try 12 of its members.

You can wiki Nuremberg Principles if you are interested. Principle VI, part 2 defines war crimes as follows:

“Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”

I would note that those involved in the Nisour Square massacre whom Trump pardoned were guilty of murder of civilian population and are war criminals.

Maybe somebody would have the time to discern why Larry Summers appears criminally insane to the typical progressive. Is he that scared of plutocrats? Is he yet another well-connected crony idiot who’s faked all his credentials? Does Larry simply never get out, besides to other gated communities or yacht marinas, and for him those are the things which make up “the economy”?

On the other, far side, the wealthy Pelosi and the even wealthier Trump claim they want $2000 checks. Completely the opposite. No nuance here. The evidence sure seems to suggest that everything public figures say is a political calculation. Maybe nobody keeps score anymore.

Theoretically, one can lie 20,000 times, routinely break promises, and consistently demonstrate mediocrity or even insanity, yet still be carefully listened to with applause and cheers.

I’m aware that the conservative operatives primary goal was to change all of American culture. But were they aware, or did they even care, that a sociopathically political survival culture could emerge?

Reuters reported from financial disclosures released in 2009 on Summers 2008 income, after leaving Harvard and before joining the Obama Administration:

Summers, who was a part-time managing director of D.E. Shaw after stepping down as Harvard president, had speaking fees of $67,500 from JP Morgan, $45,000 from Citigroup, $135,000 from Goldman Sachs and $67,500 from Lehman Brothers. Altogether, Summers was paid $2.7 million in speaking fees by a range of organizations and companies. Lawrence Summers was paid about $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw.

Summers wins by making the right people happy. He lost the Harvard Endowment billions, but his friends in the hedge funds where he put the money got very high fees. Rich Americans got richer investing in his plans that privatized Russian national assets. He’s Larry on the Spot for any U.S. administration that want to fire the money cannon at the very rich and immiserate the rest.

As Hugh says, this is an economics cast as thinly disguised monarchism, where we are expected to defer to and honor the Crown Prince and never take notice of his debility or corruption. One of the mysteries to me is how people who encounter him in person are not instantly suspicious or simply repulsed. He is physically ugly: he just looks degenerate, his arrogance drips off of him and he is remarkably ill-mannered. But, that was always a hazard with royalty and the pretty ones were rarely better at governance than the in-bred imbeciles.

The fault must be found in the institution of economics not in its Princes, or even in that nobility conferred by reactionary Swedish bankers with their faux Nobels.

What makes economics so impenetrable that people would even consider deferring to the judgment of a serial incompetent like Larry Summers? What makes it possible to gain political advantage for bankers and financial managers that they would consider buying a Larry Summers?

I think it has to do with the impenetrability of economics for most people. So much effort goes into reducing economics either into over-simplified precepts (e.g. “no such thing as a free lunch”, ” trade-offs”) or paradoxes (e.g. “paradox of thrift”, “fiat money is inherently worthless”) while largely ignoring the baseline issues for an economic system (how do you create and manage a system of deep specialization in production, without squandering all the surplus in disputes, frauds, waste and predation?)

I do not know that Larry Summers actually lacks insight into how “the system works” on some very high (gross or macro) level. He might. I know he does not share that insight with the hoi polloi honestly and plainly. He speaks in the coded language of the noble lie, aiming to manipulate this audience or signal subtly that other audience.

Left to their own devices, informed by fear and anxiety but not by deliberate consideration, people do not do well with economics. The political governance of economic systems is prone to bonehead errors as well as subversion by hostile political forces, both endogenous and exogenous. (Terms like “endogenous” creeping into the exposition is a clear warning that the writer cannot escape his own training in economics.) The failure rate of intentional community suggests that ideals are insufficient guides to building societies with the crooked timber of humanity and our fathomless ignorance.

Re. Summers, what nihil obstet and Bruce W. say.

Bruce W: ‘The fault must be found in the institution of economics … What makes economics so impenetrable that people would even consider deferring to the judgment of a serial incompetent like Larry Summers? … I think it has to do with the impenetrability of economics for most people.’

I think it has as much to do, frankly, with the impenetrability that’s _not_ inherent, but deliberately _created_. That is, the deliberately-maintained edifice of lies.

After all, it ain’t just Summers. We have a Nobelist, Paul Krugman, much feted and regularly holding forth in outlets like the NYT and the NY Review of Books, who is apparently so stupid and ignorant that he doesn’t know how money is created.

Two old, obvious quotes come to mind.

‘The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.’

― John K. Galbraith

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

― Henry Ford

All becomes clear once one grasps that Summers et are in fact promoted as experts to help ensure that the people continue to _not_understand the banking and monetary system.

@ different clue.

Yes.