DEMOCRATIC AD-MAKER MARK PUTNAM has cut the first paid ad from the hearing, funded by TOM STEYER’S Need to Impeach, a spot that’s going to grab many eyeballs in the coming days. The group is spending in the mid-six figures to air the ad on CNN and MSNBC before and after the second presidential debate (which airs tonight and Wednesday night on CNN live from Detroit). Needless to say, this is prime time for millions of politically active TV viewers.
BREAKING: Tonight on CNN AND MSNBC during #DemDebate. Americans will get to hear the unfiltered facts about Mueller's report Donald Trump is trying to cover up. #NeedToImpeach Watch "What Mueller said" https://t.co/ahtSJXsiBJ
— Need To Impeach ? (@Need2Impeach) July 30, 2019
Yeah, I know Tom Steyer. But I think every candidate should do something similar. Make it a series of increasing complexity and edited to give the finger to all the “oh, it was sooo boring” pundits (who should all drunk stumble into the tar pits in LA and be lost forever, IMHO).
StringOnAStick
Agreed. More like this; flood the zone. Talk about tRump’s corruption, racism and love of brutal dictators while he tells our allies to go to hell.
TaMara (HFG)
@StringOnAStick: I’d also be head over heels if they did a series of 30-second videos on Trump is a Rascist.
Patricia Kayden
Get it on Fox News and CNN.
MattF
Another case where the Trumpies ‘won’ the overnight argument, but are badly losing the long war. It’s vital to just keep on pushing— there really are voters with attention spans of longer than a nanosecond, even right-leaners.
rikyrah
That’s a good ad
Yarrow
I don’t know why but this ad kind of leaves me cold. Maybe because I watched the thing in real time. Maybe the dramatic! music! It’s good to get Mueller’s statements out there for low info people, though.
@StringOnAStick:
I generally agree with this. A good framing for it is talking about how Trump’s behavior is unAmerican, not patriotic, not holding up his oath of office, and damages us as a country. Hurts our alliances, hurts our economy, hurts everyone but rich people.
rikyrah
The Fed’s real message: Save the economy from Trump
The central bank is expected to cut rates this week in part to offset President Donald Trump’s trade war.
July 30, 2019 at 9:25 am EDT
Central bank officials are expected to cut interest rates for the first time since the global financial crisis not because Trump demanded it. Instead, they will move in part because the president’s bruising trade policy has helped fuel a global manufacturing slowdown and injected deep uncertainty into executive suites around the world.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell won’t directly say it directly after his meetings Tuesday and Wednesday. But the central bank will reverse course at least in part to save the Trump economy from Trump.
rikyrah
Trump poised to take major step to politicizing US intelligence
Ned Price, former intelligence officer at the CIA and former National Security Council spokesman, talks about the damage Donald Trump is doing to the United States intelligence community by looking to staff top positions with sycophants, with the latest example being the nomination of John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as DNI.
rikyrah
Trump settles into racist insults as campaign foundation
Rev. Al Sharpton and Michael Steele, former RNC chairman, talk about Donald Trump’s escalating use of racism and demagoguery as the basis of his 2020 re-election campaign, and the meekness of elected Republicans who refrain from speaking out.
rikyrah
Calls for impeachment inquiry surge in wake of Mueller testimony
Rep. Dina Titus discusses what it was about Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress, and what other factors, moved her to join the calls from the opening of an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, and how the issue registers with her constituents.
rikyrah
Mass arrests at Moscow protest point to cracks in Putin control
Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, discusses the arrests of over a thousand people in Moscow at a protest over city council elections, and wonders what has Vladimir Putin so anxious about what is arguably a minor election.
rikyrah
Sexual assault allegations to feature at Joint Chiefs hearing
Joy Reid alerts viewers to the beginning of confirmation hearings for General John Hyten, Donald Trump’s nominee to be vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been accused of sexual assault by an Army Colonel.
tobie
@rikyrah: There are so many absolutely terrifying things happening right now but the effort to use the federal govt to target enemies and rig elections is at the top of the list. That and the camps are the things that frighten me the most.
jl
@rikyrah: If downturn begins before election, lower interest rates now will mean fewer tools for cushioning downturn, and that would definitely sink Trump in 2020. There are very good arguments either way for rate cut now. Trump has done so much dumb stuff on economy, no reliable way to save the economy if and when it goes south. IMHO.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): Maybe call attention to his mental acuity also
JPL
@JPL: Should have said decreasing mental acuity.
A Ghost To Most
Finally, Steyer is putting his money to good use.
JPL
OT Trump said that more African Americans have called the White House last week than before. How does he know that? Do you now have to identify yourself by color when you call and is it verified? It sounds as if an aide made it up to placate the orange asshole.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: Yep. Trump flunkies like Giuliani have already openly worked with foreign governments to try to dig up dirt on Biden. This Ratcliffe hack will have a lot more tools at his disposal to smear whoever the 2020 nominee is. It’s both deeply frightening and pathetic that our best hope may be that Ratcliffe is too dumb and inexperienced to fully use that toolkit and that career professionals have enough integrity to resist the politicization of the intel community. I don’t have a ton of faith in either of those hopes.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Susan Collins will say it’s unfortunate.
MattF
@JPL: Or, most likely, it’s just a lie. You have to keep in mind that’s always the first choice for an explanation.
Yarrow
Was this insane tweet posted here yesterday? You have to click through to see the image but the tweet is by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL-by-way-of-Russia) and it’s an image of an email by Dershowitz to Gaetz expressing support for Charles Johnson (Rage Furby). Apparently Johnson worked for Dershowitz. Of course he did. They’re all connected.
zhena gogolia
And you can tell from a nanosecond of watching Mueller that he isn’t senile, just as you can tell from a nanosecond of watching POTUS that he is.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
I doubt Trump needs an aide to make up his lies for him. He could be that lazy, but he’s surely not that helpless.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
This shit is what Steyer should be spending his money on. This way, he could really do something worth doing.
germy
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015 with racist speech targeting Mexican migrants so why should he stop now? It has worked for him. Look at all the havoc he’s wreaking with a suppliant Senate and sympathetic SCOTUS. He has no reason to stop being openly racist.
Sab
@Betty Cracker: I also don’t believe Ratcliffe is stupid, he just plays stupid on t.v.. That makes the nomination even more frightening.
Sloane Ranger
I was listening to BBC Radio 2 this morning when the news came on and I swear the newsreader mispronounced “Trump” as “Chump”. I think he realised it as well as there was a short pause afterwards where I think he was wondering whether to correct himself. He didn’t!
A Ghost To Most
@Sab: True believer, or grifter? Or both?
jl
Since open thread, I think Krugman has finished a long tweet storm on Warren’s foreign trade plan. Krugman rates is ‘so-so’ I don’t think Krugman’s arguments are very strong. Right now he uses buzzwords as placeholders for the substance of his argument.
He seems to imply that the FDR approach to trade policy cannot be changed substantially without unraveling it. He seems to call balancing interests of large corporations with everyone else ‘favoring’ some special interests over others. He says the plan would have been bad in 1980 (but it is not 1980 now). Krugman seems to conflate a more open process with a more balanced representation of different stakeholders, as opening the door for Trumpster style helter skelter abortive tariff wars. Krugman admits that the main goals of FDR post-WWII approach to foreign trade negotiations have been been almost entirely met (another success for FDR style social democracy!), but then calls addressing other issues, such as minimum labor and environmental standards side shows (with just a nod at how trade deals interact with global warming policy, which Krugman thinks is the over riding existential crisis of our time). He doesn’t mention the double standard on what is considered relevant for trade policy and what is not. Corporations are very aggressive in arguing to governing bodies that anything and everything done inside a country that interferes with their short run profits are relevant to trade policy, but he balks at measures needed to correct that double standard.
Conclusion is that goals of US approach to trade policy since FDR have largely been met, and now trade deal negotiations are about very different things, like IP rights and definition of what constitutes unfair barriers to trade, but he doesn’t want to change the process much.
Maybe Krugman can fill in the buzzwords and incoherent claims with real arguments later. But right now, I think his critique today is very weak. So, go Warren!
artem1s
@Patricia Kayden:
bingo. Rub it in the MAGA and GOP’s faces. Until this happens it’s just another “Dems in disarray” and “Pelosi isn’t giving us a rainbow and a pony” story for the MSM to whinge over. Air these ads in every district with a NeverTrump candidate who is facing a TeaParty challenger in his primary. Run it in every GOP district period so they have to go on record in some town hall in the next few months. Scare the crap out of all of them. If the Dem candidates have to declare their position on impeachment, then the GOP candidates should too.
Another Scott
@jl: The interest rates that the Fed controls are already so low that cutting them won’t matter much as far as lessening or preventing a recession is concerned (IMHO). They’ll have to do the Quantitative Easing stuff again, and that’s fine.
I still don’t see a recession coming, myself. Nothing’s overheating in the real economy. Donnie wants lower rates because he wants a booming economy. Of course, he doesn’t understand enough about the economy to get there, but he does know that falling interest rates help him. So he’s been screaming at Powell to cut rates or he’d be looking for a new job. And Powell is seeing weak numbers, and the fact that inflation has been and continues to be below their 2% target (which is to be an average and not an upper bound), so it’s clear that they began raising rates too quickly. Etc., etc.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: White House switchboard operators are probably required by Dump to ask “Ask you a Negro?” to anyone who calls with congratulations.
Fair Economist
@jl: Although I normally like Krugman, I’ll take Warren over Krugman.
One critical fact about trade agreements, almost universally ignored, is that shifts *within* the countries affect more people and involve more money than the shifts *between* them. Increasing trade means an overall increase in economic efficiency over the long term, but in each country there’s a much larger loss to the industries getting replaced by imports. There’s also a large effect to the competitive and legal environments which is almost unstudied.
Krugman is an expert on trade; which means on the inter-country effects of shifting trade. But Warren is an expert in bankruptcy and corporate law – effects of the intra-country disruption shifting trade produces. In effect, Krugman is an expert on the visible part of the iceberg above the water and Warren on the invisible part beneath the water (which is the part that can sink your ship). I think her expertise on this matter is more important and relevant than his.
Fleeting Expletive
Recap on my fool cat: She got fly-strip glue all down her tail and backside yesterday and screamed like a ninja banshee for a while. Eventually I decided to eat sardines for dinner already, and swabbed her down with olive/sardine oil, followed with vaseline and a wet washcloth. She’s still workin’ it, and it’s a big job, but so far so good. I might should have reconsidered the sardine oil because she’s still wandering the entire house (phew!) but seems no worse for wear. Also will reconsider using fly strips in the future but the cat gets to stay. I guess. We’re still friends. Really.
Miss Bianca
@A Ghost To Most: Agreed. If he confined himself to ads and billboards all over the country, I would applaud him.
jl
@Another Scott: I largely agree. Problem for any policy is that we’ll be entering a downturn with lower nominal rates and lower inflation rate than eve before since WWII. But that reduces effectiveness of all policy tools,since puts a floor on short run real rates, which Fed would like to push to be more negative, (as in below zero), than will be possible.
I disagree on signs of a recession, long run indicators are pointing to downturn. Exports and investment is in the dumpster, consumer spending is only component growing, but how can that be sustained with real compensation growth that is still stagnant? I think interaction of world growth slowdown and Trump’s tariff nonsense most likely cause of next downturn. Indicators that get the news headlines, like consumer confidence and unemployment rate are coinciding or lagging indicators. By the time those turn down, the recession is on you.
Miss Bianca
@Fleeting Expletive: uh-huh. Sure. You’re “still friends” till she sits on your face and smothers you in your sleep.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
I glad I followed your link because it wasn’t clear to me that you were talking about a cat.
jl
@Fair Economist: I think you have a point, given where world trade situation is now. Especially given that the FDR approach has been successful in lowering average tariff rates to something equivalent, or actually less than, a state sales tax in the US. Really not much more efficiency gains from remaining high tariffs, which can’t affect trade flows very much. Vast majority of recent and proposed trade deals are about other things these days, and what tariff reductions that are in them, is in the big picture, window dressing. Need a few tariffs reduced, even it it on sea urchin eggs, to claim a proposed deal is about ‘free trade’. And actually meanwhile big tariff barriers re agriculture between, say, US and Canada are never addressed.
Krugman seems to recognize that, but is afraid to change with the times. So he puts out a weak argument. I think current process has turned into a dishonest, cynical, mess, that large corporations have gamed to their advantage.
He’s been willing to change his mind and admit mistakes before. I hope he revisits Warren’s proposal and give a more coherent analysis.
Fleeting Expletive
@Miss Bianca: @Miss Bianca: Relationship status: “It’s complicated”. In the pantheon of magnificent cats I’ve shared my life with, well, this one is … okay. We all come with baggage.
Baud: !!!
MattF
OT. Just to note that in her latest WaPo column, Jen Rubin lumps John Bolton with ‘bootlickers and yes-men’. Foreign policy was her last ditch of support for Republicans, but… no more.
Yarrow
Oh, look. Rupert Murdoch is nervous enough he had the WSJ defend #MoscowMitch.
Reminder: Murdoch visited #MoscowMitch’s office and later that same day the Fox News Twitter feed went dark.
jl
@Fair Economist: And as you are aware, in the wonderful paradise of international trade theory, all intra-country adjustment costs are either assumed away, and deemed to be zero, or if reality is too obstinate for that fairy tale to fly, they are deemed to be trivial or the individual country’s problem to solve so excluded from the analysis.
rikyrah
There are 2 dozen 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, but it’s really only a 5 person race
Joe Perticone
The field of Democratic presidential candidates all vying to unseat President Donald Trump from the White House in 2020 is historically massive. While there are 24 legitimate candidates, it is more or less a five-candidate race by all realistic measurements: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg.
What each poll shows, whether in a national scope or narrowed down to specific early voting states, is that only a few candidates emerge at the top of the field, while the remaining dozen-and-a-half candidates barely crack 1%.
Consistently, each poll paints a similar picture in which Biden holds a commanding lead, which has slimmed down a bit since he underwhelmed at the first primary debate in Miami, followed by a mix of Harris, Sanders, and the resurgent Warren. Buttigieg has maintained a strong showing after emerging from obscurity into an unlikely frontrunner.
rikyrah
UH UH UH
EXCLUSIVE: Murdered Ole Miss student Ally Kostial, 21, was ‘PREGNANT with accused killer’s baby’ and was shot shortly after she told him and refused when he demanded that she have an abortion
Friends of Ally Kostial, 21, claim she was pregnant with her accused killer Brandon Theesfeld’s child
They said she told him the news not long before she was found dead on Saturday morning
Kostial and Theesfeld, 22, ‘had dated on and off since her freshman year’ and Kostial’s pregnancy was not a secret on the Oxford, Mississippi campus
‘Her sorority sisters say they knew knew she was pregnant and that she had told Brandon. He was really upset about it, that it would ruin his life and his future,’ a friend said
She added: ‘He was really mad that she wouldn’t get an abortion. She was like, ”No, I don’t believe in that”’
The friend, who asked not to be named, said she believes Kostial told Theesfeld that she was pregnant on the same day she was killed
‘Her sorority sisters thought it was Brandon because he was in a rage earlier in the day,’ she said
Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to DailyMailTV that they were aware of the claims that Kostial was pregnant and it was part of the ongoing investigation
By LOUISE BOYLE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 10:47 EDT, 30 July 2019 | UPDATED: 12:28 EDT, 30 July 2019
Betty Cracker
@Fair Economist: Excellent points.
patrick II
@jl:
Right now we are buying consumables and selling assets. About a third of corporate assets in the U.S. are owned by foreign interests, more than U.S. corporations own abroad.
I hate to write this out loud, but the one thing Trump is right about, in broad outline at least, is that we need to do something about trade, particularly with China. Of course, having said that the way Trump goes about improving trade relationships is insanely harmful.
rikyrah
Of course, he’s a lying muthaphucka just like his boss.
The Curve for Unqualified White Men is REAL.
Did Trump’s pick for intelligence director misrepresent his record?
07/30/19 10:05 AM
By Steve Benen
gene108
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
What someone really needs to do is run ads on TV, radio, billboards, etc. highlighting the total failure of tax cuts for the rich doing any good for the non rich. And that’s the only economic plan they have.
jl
@patrick II: A lot of other people, far more knowledgeable than Trump, have been criticizing US trade policy, so no reason to give Trump any credit. Trump has been a broken record for decades, spouting the same ignorant incoherent nonsense, when his critiques addressed real issues and when they absolutely did not address anything in the real world. And when he has power to do something he does ignorant incoherent nonsense.
Another way to put it, is Mussolini made the trains run on time. But others knew how to make the trains run on time, and no every mass transit engineer is a Mussolini, or a fan of Mussolini.
Edit: the only thing Trump really understands about US foreign trade policy is that, when he criticized it at campaign rallies, he go big cheers. So he repeated the same nonsense over and over again, to get more big cheers.
A Ghost To Most
@Yarrow:
Dana Milbank really rattled the Snapper’s shell.
Another Scott
@patrick II:
Although it probably had some problems, I believe that the TPP was one mechanism to address issues with trade with China…
I assume that we’ll end up joining, eventually.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@rikyrah:
Given that analysis will be looking to see if there is a trade war backoff now that Trump has a (small) rate cut. That would indicate an unexpected level of cunning.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Fleeting Expletive:
Fortunately for survival of the species (ours) cats seem to have short memories for offense. We get the business any time we return from being out of town, but the storm seems to blow over within a couple hours.
Yarrow
Moscow Mitch has the best friends.
TenguPhule
Senator who survived sexual assault defends Trump’s pick to be military’s No. 2 against similar allegations
They are a fucking cult.
Nothing but the dregs are being promoted into the top slots.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
Trump is so stupid and ignorant that when he gets anything right (we have trade problems with China) we feel obligated to give him credit for that even though he doesn’t understand what the problems are and his solutions make things much worse.
TenguPhule
@Another Scott:
Feeling optimistic today, I see.
TenguPhule
@jl:
No, he did not. He changed the clocks to make it appear that way.
germy
TenguPhule
@Another Scott:
Car Sales are dropping, Real Estate is bubbling again. Machinery costs are way up due to Tariffs. Farming production is looking worse by the month.
There are dozens of armed grenades being juggled in the economy right now.
rikyrah
Meet The Right-Wing Consultant Who Goes From State To State Slashing Budgets
By Matt Shuham
July 29, 2019 3:50 pm
Yarrow
@TenguPhule:
I saw one of those infomercials on how to flip homes and make tons of money. That’s a sure sign real estate is in a bubble.
Bill Arnold
@germy:
I know nothing!
MisterForkbeard
@germy: It’s nice that Trump is admitting he’s retained literally no information about how Russia is influencing our elections despite being told repeatedly and having the news publicly blasted over the media for the past 3 years.
You’d think this kind of admitted memory issues would qualify as a reason to remove him from office, right? :)
germy
Searcher
@rikyrah: Also this bit:
Ruckus
@germy:
Well he’s right on that one point.
He knows absolutely nothing.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: Not everyone lives in a black hole of despair and blood lust.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@germy:
Well, Trump said one thing truthful today.
Yarrow
The UK is joining us in the race to the bottom:
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus: Its the price I pay for being one of the few remaining sane people left in a world gone mad.
cmorenc
One problem with getting through to a substantial portion of the electorate is that they have hermetically sealed themselves off from information outside the Fox/Sinclair bubble. True, most of those who have deliberately sealed themselves off thusly aren’t open to contrary info presented to them anyways – but those among them in control of what network the TV is turned to for news also thereby curtail exposure of less engaged members of the household to contrary information, who might be more receptive to it.
As for less-engaged members of the electorate not trapped in the Fox bubble, a still-early round democratic candidate debate isn’t the most likely venue they’re likely to be paying much attention to, and so an ad placed in that context will be largely preaching to the choir.
Nevertheless, I agree that further efforta to present the key moment in the Mueller hearing are a worthwhile enterprise, but to be effective it’s got to reach more of the public outside the already-woke-and-engaged democratic base.
Fair Economist
@Another Scott: Somewhat ironically, it would be much better if we joined the TPP now rather than as lead negotiator originally. Once our negotiators stopped pushing for particularly egregious provisions for idea monopolies and unelected unappealable courts the worst provisions were removed and the current agreement is much less obnoxious.
catclub
@rikyrah:
I would put it as GOP racism. Michael Steele has a great case for that. 2010 election GOP does great. Fire the black guy who was leader.
Michael Steele.
2012 GOP does not win presidency, keep the white guy who was at the top. Reince Preibus. Funny how that works.
rikyrah
Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) Tweeted:
We had a meeting about this @TheLastWord. I began & ended with the admission that I don’t know how to cover a presidential campaign of full throttle racism. We must begin by not pretending we know how to cover Trump. It’s a new challenge everyday & our old tools don’t work. https://t.co/VNTyKxcwd2 https://twitter.com/Lawrence/status/1156244753719209984?s=17
Yarrow
Oh, Nikki. You’re on their list as a POC. You might think your sucking up to Jared will save you. It won’t.
catclub
@Searcher:
That is the only part that make sense. It makes is sound like she was trying to self-abort, but then refused to get an abortion when the killer asked her to do so. just odd.
A Ghost To Most
@Yarrow: I read an article that showed house prices are leveling off in many hot markets. That’s true in Denver.
MCA1
@rikyrah: It’s like he’s been reading our very own Kay’s posts the last couple years! She’s made that point repeatedly – it’s a different landscape and the traditional brushes don’t paint it very well. O’Donnell is smart and eloquent, so it’s heartening to know that he’s trying. He’ll have a better chance of figuring out how to fashion some new tools than most of his profession. Maybe he and Joy Reid can brainstorm and then hold a weekend retreat for all of NBC News.
O. Felix Culpa
Interesting: New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland (CD1) Endorses Warren for President.
Haaland endorsed the Massachusetts U.S. Senator along with a number of other members of Congress ahead of Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, which Warren will debate against Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and six other candidates.
In a statement announcing her endorsement, Haaland said she made the endorsement “because it is time for the American people to have a champion.”
“We’ve worked together to introduce legislation that demands a solution to unsafe military housing, tackles the opioid crisis, and provides universal child care. Elizabeth has been a great friend to me and a great partner for Indian Country,” Haaland said.
catclub
@Another Scott:
If you think 2% is not an upper bound, you have not been paying attention. I agree that average inflation of 2% would and should be a useful target,
but the only thing the Fed knows how to do is kill inflation, and they will – it takes money away from creditors, rather than debtors.
Peale
@Yarrow: scratch any conservative long enough and eventually you’ll get that nerve that wonders why we really need child labor laws and thinks the modern troubles all started when we freed the serfs.
Yarrow
@MCA1: Recently there have been several good Twitter threads discussing how to cover Trump. Here’s one:
You have to click through to read the whole thing.
Yarrow
@Yarrow:
Her’s one from Jay Rosen:
Again, click through to read the whole thing.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: I think the kind of trade problems with China that Trump talks about, were problems 10 to 20 years ago. Not so much now. Now we have more complicated problems with China that deal more with IP rights, and interact with US trade policy that protects the IP rights of large corporations too much. China’s policies still hurt the US, but in more subtle and indirect ways.
Though the effect of damage China (and US trade policy) did to US workers lingers, so talking about an old problem still resonates with them. And don’t forget both China and US cooperated in measures the benefited large corporations to the expense of US workers. That is another problem with Trump solving the problem, he ain’t going to do anything that hurts large corporations, as long as they don’t criticize him.
As Krugman puts it, China policies ran over the US worker like a bus 10 to 20 years ago. But a lot of solutions, particularly those by Trump is just backing the bus over the workers again. What Krugman misses, is that, even if you don’t try to solve the workers’ problems by backing the bus over them again, they’ve still been run over by a bus, and you need to do something. Krugman doesn’t have much to say about that problem.
Edit: and big push now on China and IP is mainly something that affects large corporations (setting aside industrial espionage). To the extent that China is made to bend to large corporations desires on IP, the harder it will be to solve remaining problems with China that directly affect workers in US export industries. It has become a much more complex issue over the last decade.
Quinerly
@Yarrow: That’s some Twitter feed.
Love the hash tag creepyDershowitz.
A Ghost To Most
@O. Felix Culpa:
Interesting choice of phrase
MCA1
@Yarrow: I’ve been seeing various flavors of this GOP talking point all over the place today. “He just wants to help, and here you snowflakes are, biting the hand that wants to feed you.” It’s just infuriating. It’s like two outrageously transparent gaslighting lies chopped up and mixed together, rolled into a pastry of disgusting projection, and topped with the sort of both-sides chutzpah that makes you want to punch someone in the face.
Dotard went after Cummings personally, because Cummings subpoenaed Jarvanka’s e-mails. The only reason his District was invoked was to further the racism angle. It’s not like people didn’t see this. It was a complete ad hominem and Agent Orange didn’t actually know the first f’ing thing about that District or its higher than average per capita income. And he sure as hell never offered any assistance – all he did was suggest Cummings should spend his time “fixing” his own District. And no one outside of degenerate Red Hats and the trollbot brigade is calling Cummings a racist. It’s not a “Hey, let’s simmer down, we’re all equally to blame here” situation. For god’s sake. Stop insulting us, Nikki. We can read the tweets, you know?
Yarrow
There’s video of this if you click through. Maybe his face is so plastic he can’t feel the bug?
Looks like Trump’s infested.
Another Scott
@catclub: The Fed has shown over the past 7 or more years that they cannot tweak the economy to have their preferred inflation number any more. If they were able to, then inflation would have reached 2%. It hasn’t. They’re stuck in the 1970s and still don’t understand that the world has changed. They’ve learned the wrong lessons (they seemingly believe that any sustained, real growth in wages will lead to 15% inflation) and have thus been unable to do what they say they want to do (hit a 2% average in the PCD).
Dean Baker (from yesterday):
I don’t see the logic in saying that the Fed needed to raise interest rates early to have space to cut them if/when the next recession comes. There was too much risk in strangling the recovery early for those that haven’t seen real economic progress since 1980. Rather than accepting the dogma that the NAIRU is 5%, no 4.5%, no 4.0%, … maybe the Fed should actually see what the NAIRU is. And maybe letting an economy keep growing is more valuable than dogma. We know that the Fed can raise interest rates quickly. It can’t cut them below zero (except in special cases).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
O. Felix Culpa
@A Ghost To Most: Good catch. You’d almost think it was deliberate.
MattF
@Yarrow: Best comment:
Lulymay
@rikyrah:
Esquire magazine has an interesting piece on this dude as well. Looks like your POTUS has just about finished setting up his defensive line.
Jay
More on Moscow Mitch,
Jay
germy
@Another Scott:
And that’s the interest rate on my savings account.
Yarrow
@rikyrah:
We’ll see. Some speculation that Ratcliffe may be the sacrificial lamb destined to flame out so Nunes can get confirmed. Again, we’ll see.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
If the tag fits……..
CaseyL
@A Ghost To Most: I worked with a Tribal Court law clinic for 2 years, and much to my amazement, the terms “Indian Country” and “Indian Law” are used all the time. By Indians, about Indians, for Indians.
They said if I want to refer to “Native American,” that’s fine, too.
Or “First Nations,” which is usually my preferred nomenclature.
germy
The Hunt Trailer: The Rich Hunt People in Blumhouse’s Horror Film
https://screenrant.com/hunt-2019-movie-trailer/
germy
@Yarrow: Can Nunes get confirmed?
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
Whenever I read this kind of bullshit grief and excuses from the press/media, I want to tell them this: Just pretend it’s a Clinton or any Democrat and do what you always do.
What O’Donnell and the rest of them will not say and maybe can’t say is that the American press/media has been covering for racists and bigots forever. Who was it who called people like Strom Thurmond and Jessie Helms conservatives instead of racist demagogues? Who was it who called gay-hating religious bigots “values voters”?
I wondering if anyone at the meeting suggested telling the truth?
Yarrow
@germy: I don’t think so, but who even knows anymore. Maybe a bruising fight over Ratcliffe would make Senators more likely to confirm the second candidate. Or something.
Another Scott
@germy: Well aren’t you Mr. Rockefeller!
Aren’t we all. :-/
Unless you’re one of those brave souls willing to sign up for the teaser rate at Betterment or Marcus and the like. (Always remember – TANSTAAFL.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@catclub:
My pet conspiracy theory for years was that Sarah Palin was personally opposed to abortion so she tried to trigger a miscarriage by pushing herself physically right up to the due date which is what led to that weirdness surrounding Trig’s birth that led Crazy Andrew Sullivan to believe that Trig was actually someone else’s child.
Yarrow
Baud
@James E Powell:
Good advice.
Jay
Martin
@Another Scott: I’m not sure they’re stuck in the 70s as much as they’ve missed the punchline of why there’s $12T in negative yield bonds. There’s $12T floating around out there doing no economic work, because there isn’t demand for that money. (Taxation is supposed to ensure that money isn’t unproductive – it’d be nice if Democrats would make that argument).
I’m tipping up some new infrastructure at work. 10 years ago I would have gone to my bosses and asked for $100K-$200K in setup capital for hardware, and the like. I would have had to justify the initial spend as well as capital needs for growth. But I don’t do that now. I can now build for $0 and I can balance the costs of the services providing that infrastructure against my existing operating budget, staff costs, etc. Amazon owns the infrastructure. They’re doing the capex and they have plenty of cashflow, so they don’t need to borrow. I can buy it incrementally based on demand, so I don’t need the capex or have to borrow either. On a larger scale we might have had to talk about a renovation – expanding the data center, etc. and the capex associated with that. We never need to have that conversation now.
The financial crisis was fundamentally a lending crisis. The reason the government needed to bail out the automakers is that literally no other entity (other than Apple at the time) had enough cash to do it. They couldn’t go to banks. Banks had no cash to lend. They couldn’t go to hedge funds. They had no cash either. No financial entity had that money. It was the government or a hard bankruptcy. One result of that is that a lot of capex financing is now happening outside of the financial system. Amazon is the worlds data center, using cashflow from us buying diapers. Google, Apple, Microsoft, venture capital – they’re doing all the things the fed used to support, without the need for the Fed, because things were so badly fucked in 2008 that companies don’t want to rely on the traditional lending system at the scale they used to.
Anyone doing capex already has the cash. Anyone without the cash isn’t doing capex, they’re servicing from the previous group. Interest rates are dependent on demand, and there is no demand for borrowing. Inflation is a byproduct of the cost of borrowing.
The Fed doesn’t know what to do with a financial sector with too much cash. Reallocation isn’t what they’re charged with handling.
catclub
@Another Scott: This is where the ‘hack gap’ that Kevin Drum talks about is real. If I were just a partisan,
I would insist that interest rates must go up to kill the economy under the GOP president. But I agree with you (and Trump, post election),
that the Fed was too early in raising rates, ‘just because we need to normalize rates’.
MisterForkbeard
I just got around to watching this video. It’s good. Ideally something like this would have been recut by Democratic groups a day or so after the testimony, and our media REALLY should have done this themselves, as it nicely highlights the important bits.
@Jay: On one hand: Rich people are terrible. What can I say? >_<
On the other hand: A lot of rich people GET rich by being thrifty and/or manipulating the system. Some of the richest people I know are incredibly cheap because they've basically hoarded their money their whole lives.
On the gripping hand: I am completely unsurprised that these folks either don't know or don't care that they're screwing poor people to save a little extra for their kids' education. And I'd love to know what their 'friends' got out of it, because they don't even have the excuse of being a rich asshole.
O. Felix Culpa
@CaseyL: Your observation about the use of Indian Country and Indian Law is correct. I think that what Ghost was pointing out was the oblique reference to Indian support of Elizabeth Warren, despite the mockery (almost entirely by non-Native Americans) of her heritage claims.
Citizen Alan
@germy:
That movie looks ridiculously implausible. Everyone knows that rich people are too fat and lazy to hunt poor people down and kill them. They’d just have poor people tied down and tortured while they watch instead.
Jay
Mike in NC
Happily still out of the damn country. Tonight we are underway for Dublin (500 nm from England).
Jay
Martin
@Jay: Not surprising.
There’s an idea floating around UC that college would be free, but you’d be taxed (just as an example) 2% for a BA/BS, + 1% for a MA/MS, +1% for a PhD, for 20 years or something with the proceeds going back to the institutions you earned your degrees from. The problem is that it can’t be easily implemented at a state level because states cannot chase residents out of state unless you put a lien or something similar on the person. But you could do it at the federal level.
It’d end a lot of these shenanigans, and open up some new ones. But putting the cost on the back end has a lot of benefits.
schrodingers_cat
@Jay: If immigrants did this for immigration benefits, they would deport them for immigration fraud.
Martin
I like the goal of the video, but unfortunately it looks like a deceptive video where Muellers responses are taken from other questions. I’m not sure how you fix that.
Jay
TenguPhule
@germy:
Zombie Hitler could get confirmed as DNI by this Senate.
Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
If POC do this to get their kids into better public schools, they go to jail.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule:
Don’t know about that, I’ve heard that he’s a bit of a squish.
catclub
@Jay: One suspects at least THAT set of parents won’t get what they intended. News travels.
Universities will look at them as worse than the people who paid bribes to get into certain schools.
catclub
@Martin:
except if that happened, that would already be news in the right-wing bubble.
Instead, any curious people will go to check and find out it was not bad lip-syncing. And they might learn even more!
danielx
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Zombie Reagan would dismissed as a hopelessly liberal squish as this point.
Also, too:
I totally endorse this idea, especially if Maureen Must-Hate-Clinton Dowd is at the head of the line. I do not give a rusty goddamn about what a working class guy her father was, these days she wouldn’t soil her Louboutins by walking into a working class person’s home.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Elected Republicans can’t say shit, because they know that white supremacists voted them and Trump into office, and they’ll stay home if they don’t get the white supremacist state that Trump is promising them.
They sowed the wind and are reaping the whirlwind.
Chetan Murthy
130 comments in, so gonna go OT. Alexandra Petri is unable to find humor in our current national calvary. She is of course correct, and it’s a sign of how much we’ve descended.
Jay
https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-mississippi-emmett-till-fraternity-campus-investigation
opiejeanne
@A Ghost To Most: There are a lot of Native Americans who refer to themselves as Indians, at least part of the time. We shouldn’t worry about what they call themselves and just honor their choices.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Who you telling?
rikyrah
@Jay:
No lie told
TenguPhule
/SMH
TenguPhule
This fucking timeline.
TenguPhule
We need a word to describe what’s beyond “Big Lie”.
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
That’s why his approval rate from Black folks is 7%
Mike in NC
@TenguPhule: Fat Bastard: “Those ungrateful slaves never had it so good, believe me!”
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I don’t anyone who has actually done this but I do know that the standards to get a long term visa like say the student visa are higher than to be a member of the T cabinet.
Martin
@rikyrah: The only black people that matter are Ben Carson and Diamond and Silk. Maybe Kanye.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
If she miscarries because she was drinking and taking too many drugs, that’s God’s Will and she is blameless. If she schedules an abortion, she goes straight to Hell.
See also Sarah Palin deciding to fly for 8 hours while in labor with a fetus that was known to have Down syndrome — if the baby had been stillborn or died shortly after birth, that would have been God’s Will, unlike a medical abortion. Sometimes known as an “Irish abortion.”
Miss Bianca
@TenguPhule: Of course he doesn’t think it’s nepotism. He doesn’t even know what the word means.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Martin: also, don’t forget Don King.
Googling for this story, it seems like Ken Blackwell has followed a Lindsey Grahamish path with trump. Denounced him in the primary, endorsed him in the general, didn’t want to sully himself during the transition, out shilling for trump WRT Baltimore on this very day.
O. Felix Culpa
@opiejeanne: I think Ghost’s point was that Deb Haaland – as a Native American – may have used that term deliberately to support Elizabeth Warren in the face of her ancestry denigrators, not as a criticism of her choice of language. At least, that’s how I understood it.
Chetan Murthy
OT again: Jay posted this link last night: Bundyville: The Remnant. It’s about the Bundy/Malheur standoffs, and also about the Dominionist/Christian Identity movements in the West. Pretty chilling stuff. Well-written, though I feel like it’s just …. incomplete. I’m sure the writer (Leah Sottile) will have more to say about this, and it’ll be worth reading.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Didn’t know Blackwell was still around. Sorry to hear that.
Fair Economist
@Another Scott cites:
They *say* that, but their actions show they really treat it as a ceiling. We currently have a yield inversion, and the main reason is that the Fed was relentlessly raising rates last year even as inflation remained below 2% and wage increases were mediocre. Everybody sees this, and acts accordingly, which makes 2% even more of a ceiling because everybody expects (reasonably) the Fed will never even let it reach that for an extended period.
You mention the NAIRU, and there was a comparative study of various cities in Kansas that found it was about 3% – that was the level at which wages started to climb.
C Stars
@Jay: The parents could have sent their kids to state university but used this method to get financial aid for expensive, private, out of state colleges. And it was all perfectly legal, I guess. Although the things that are perfectly legal these days…yeesh…
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: One of my favorite dead horses to beat is this from 2015 (use a private browsing window):
I think US NAIRU these days is well below 3%. All the evidence seems to indicate that we’re not close.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sab
@Martin: Blackwell has been on wingnut welfare since he left office. He is on the board of the NRA and he also has done work for the Family Research Council.
debbie
I like this ad. We need more like it!
debbie
@rikyrah:
What! Have they forgotten he helped — a little — to free the slaves? //
debbie
@Chetan Murthy:
I won’t remove my blocker so I can’t read it, but if she’s complaining about people like Stephen Colbert, let me say he’s the only thing keeping me sane. Falling asleep after laughing through his monologue has held the nightmares at bay these last few years.
Omnes Omnibus
@C Stars:
If they are private, does it really matter if they are out of sate?