Random Thoughts 6/27/26: Asylum No More

Yesterday I was doing some 'weeding thinking' and mulling over the Supreme Court decision allowing the administration to keep asylum seekers out of the country. Effectively, the decision eliminates asylum as an option for immigrants, because our law requires them to 'arrive' in the US to begin the process.

Here's where my mind wandered:

The person who might figure out how to cure Alzheimer’s is waiting on the other side of the border; so, too might be the person who can end our reliance on things that generate all the bad crap we get in our food, water, and the air we breathe.

The person who might come up with a way to allow us to identify who's sending all those UAP/UFOs, and help us interact with lifeforms from other planets, could be standing right next to her, staring up at the stars.

Someone who could figure out how to effectively provide reliable energy for new and existing homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, the dreaded data centers, and vehicles, without putting the environment and people’s health at risk, could be there, too.

The person who can calculate how to reliably fund a responsive government without spending trillions of dollars it doesn't have, and without unfairly taking from those who have less while favoring those who have more, might be waiting in their shadows.

The team of people who can figure out how to better and/or more cost-effectively prepare our children for their future (and for protecting ours) while we navigate AI, environmental calamity, global economic and military threats, and challenges that are not yet fully understood could be there, waiting, too.

The young adult who might eventually write the next Great American Novel could be standing at our border, eager to come in and go through our lengthy, underfunded, understaffed, misunderstood, neglected, outdated, and almost incomprehensible immigration process, all to have a chance to experience their own American Dream, the one they’ve heard about all their life.

Now, those things - the cures and the science and the ideas, might not happen.

Now, that book might never get written.

Instead, the book could tell a story of a great divide, far wider than any of our actual borders, between who Americans think we are and how we are presented to the world, or between who the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents of the author understood Americans to be, compared to today's Americans who slammed the door shut.

It could tell of an America that will send thousands of people back to the "shithole countries" they fled (the president's term, not mine), countries our government has declared totally unsafe - for Americans, anyway.

It could tell of an America only welcoming to wealthy white people fleeing a black majority country, or to Christians being 'persecuted' by religious majorities, while feigning ignorance of the promises we made to refugees from other countries, including those whose lives are at risk solely because they helped America during our wars against their country.

It could tell of a president who has said that America, once the beacon of hope to the entire world, was a ‘dead country’ until he got back into office, that only he can save us, and who has worked to strip America of the things that make us ‘America’ as he labors to cement his legacy, the country's legacy be damned.

It could tell any of those stories, and more, seen through the eyes of someone stuck on the outside looking in, rather than the story we love to read about us: that of an outsider, threatened where they lived, who was welcomed into our country’s embrace and offered the experience of a lifetime: a fresh start, here, in America.

This morning, sitting on the porch with my coffee and sleepy kitties, I'm still mulling this over, and thinking about what we stand to lose compared to what we stand to gain with this decision.

On the losing side? The interwebs gave me a list of notable asylees, which, if correct, includes Albert Einstein, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, Elie Wiesel, and Gloria Estefan. Four of the five are recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Einstein died before the honor was created, but he, Kissinger, and Wiesel were awarded Nobel Prizes. Two were Secretaries of State; one is a Kennedy Center honoree. Their collective other accomplishments would fill a page or two, I'm sure. Would we have been better off not letting these folks in?

Also on the losing side: any effort to address what I described above as our "lengthy, underfunded, understaffed, misunderstood, neglected, outdated, and almost incomprehensible immigration process." What would be the point of trying to fix it when the current administration's goal, and that of those on the successor shortlist, is simply to slam the door shut on anyone who doesn't meet a very narrow definition of an ideal American?

I can think of lots more that could fall on this side of the ledger, but what's on the other side, the 'winning' side?

It's been several minutes since I typed the sentence above, and I've not come up with much for the win column, other than financial benefits.

Oh, sure - we have better control of who's being let into the country through legal channels (because asylum-seeking *was* a legal channel) if we don't let anyone in.

More importantly, based on what I've read and heard? We may save money because we won't have to temporarily house and care for these folks until they get jobs and start paying taxes, including the critical contributions they make to Social Security. We won't have to pay to educate their children, and, at least in theory, there'll be more jobs for Americans, assuming Americans are willing to take the jobs these folks will be leaving behind.

And, we might be able to clear the backlog of pending asylum cases, assuming anyone wants to address the backlog in the first place, and assuming there are still folks here who've applied for asylum and haven't self-deported out of fear and frustration, or haven't been detained and deported as the administration rounded up "the worst of the worst," or whatever it was it claimed to be doing.

Do those 'wins' outweigh the losses? I'm not at all convinced they do, although I'm convinced I could name several people in my own circles who'd disagree with me.

That may be the most American thing about this whole mess.

Sidebar: Mr. Speaker

Before we get all gaga over the Republican caucus coming together and electing Rep. Kevin McCarthy as their Speaker, it's important to remember that this is still the Republican caucus, and we know who they are. 

Lest we forget, they're happy to remind us at every turn, as McCarthy did in Saturday's wee hours. As I noted in my Mr. Speaker post, he told us

I know the night is late, but when we come back, our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 IRS agents. You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.

Their first order of business is worse than a solution in search of a problem - it's a solution in service to a lie.

There are no plans to hire 87,000 IRS agents to "go after you" or to go after anyone else. There are plans to hire additional staff for the IRS, according to Time.

The Inflation Reduction Act... includes roughly $78 billion for the IRS to be phased in over 10 years. A Treasury Department report from May 2021 estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031. But most of those hires would not be Internal Revenue agents, and wouldn’t be new positions. (All emphasis throughout the post I've added.)

There are many good reasons for the funding, which will bring on IT staff and customer service folks - the government employees "who should help you," as McCarthy said. And yes, there will be auditors, who "would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders." According to folks at Treasury, 

It is wholly inaccurate to describe any of these resources as being about increasing audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses.  

So, what is accurate?

There's a big wave of attrition that's coming and a lot of these resources are just about filling those positions.

More than half of current IRS employees are retirement-eligible, and expected to leave in the next few years. The new funding might lead to a net employee gain of 20,000 - 30,000 people. That will bring staffing back to levels last seen over a decade ago.

The IRS currently has roughly 78,000 employees. According to John Koskinen, who served as IRS commissioner from 2013 to 2017, that’s down from around 100,000 when he first started. By the time he resigned four years later, he said, it was clear that the agency was in the grip of a systematic attempt by the GOP to weaken it. 

When the GOP took control of the House after the 2010 election, Koskinen says, they "immediately instituted a series of crippling cuts..." Overall funding has "fallen further, by more than 20%" since then. And enforcement funding? That's dropped by 31%, making it easier now for "high-net-worth tax cheats and major corporations" to avoid paying their fair share, costing us billions.

Audit rates on the largest companies dropped from nearly 100% to 50%; audits on the wealthiest individuals dropped from 8.4% to 2.4% from 2010 to 2019, according to Janet Holtzblatt of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

All of us agree a non-responsive government is a bad thing.

McCarthy's right - government should help us. But how can they do that on something as important as the income taxes we pay, if there's no one to answer the phone or process our tax returns? Or if the IT systems are so out-of-date, they can't find qualified folks to work on them, making it necessary to use manual processes instead? 

Back in August, about the same time the Rs started threatening us with the 87,000 auditors lie, the Washington Post Opinion page shared an eye-opening piece, with photos, on why the IRS needed this funding. It showed the cafeteria at the IRS center in Austin, jam-packed with paper files as far as the eye can see.

 It’s part of what the IRS calls the “Pipeline”: a 1970s-era assembly line used to process tax returns at several locations around the country. And it might give you a sense of why Congress is on the verge of handing the agency $80 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act — not only for more enforcement but also for tech modernization.

There's a massive backlog - over 10 million individual returns as of last July, partly from the pandemic, but also from

the agency’s embarrassingly outdated, paper-based system, which leaves stacks and stacks of returns cluttering shelves, hallways and even the cafeteria. 

On the Pipeline, paper tax returns aren’t scanned into computers; instead, IRS employees manually keystroke the numbers from each document into the system, digit by digit.

All of this happens - the lack of audits on the people who have the most to lose if they get caught cheating, the lack of access to taxpayer assistance, the old technology and the mess of paper - all of this happens

despite the agency receiving evermore responsibilities: stimulus checks, child tax credit payments, Obamacare enforcement, foreign bank account tracking and, lately, hunting down Russian yachts. Without reliable, long-term funding guarantees, the IRS has struggled to upgrade its systems.

What will the service, technology, and audit programs be able to do if the funding is maintained? The Congressional Budget Office estimates the IRS will "increase revenue by $204B over the next decade." That money will help pay for all the programs the government creates - programs championed by Democrats and Republicans alike. 

One more thing.

Should you be angry because the IRS is going to be able to better perform all aspects of its job, if it gets the funding? Nope.

I used to say there’s no Democratic or Republican way to run the IRS,” Koskinen says. “The people who are significantly disadvantaged are the average taxpayers who have a simple question and can’t get through. Those are Republicans as well as independents and Democrats.” 

McCarthy's starting his tenure with a lie; I'll end this post with a truth. In a December 15, 2022 report, the Government Accountability Office said the IRS

... addressed its backlog of 2021 paper returns. However, as of late September 2022, IRS had about 12.4 million returns to process, resulting in refund delays for millions of taxpayers. 

That's a two-million-plus increase in the backlog - since last July. It's only going to get worse if this funding is cancelled. 

Poll Watch: Ratings Through the Roof!

It seems it's been a while since we looked at any polling data, so I thought it was time to dive in again and share what other people are thinking.

For starters, let's look at a CNN poll from earlier this month. Here's the small print: The study was conducted for CNN via telephone by SSRS, an independent research company. Interviews were conducted from May 7-10, 2020 among a sample of 1,112 respondents. The landline total respondents were 435 and there were 677 cell phone respondents. The margin of sampling error for total respondents is +/- 3.7 at the 95% confidence level.

The survey tracks responses by gender (M/F only); race (white/non-white); age (18-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65+, under 45; 45 and up); college grad (Y/N), and whites by college grad or non-college grad. In addition, there're party affiliation breakdowns (Democrat, Independent/Other, and Republican); leaning Democrat or Republican; politics (liberal, moderate, or conservative); voter registration (Y/N), and sense of the outbreak (worst is behind us, or worst is yet to come).

We know much all politicians, but the president in particular, are driven by public opinion. I mean, who else will spend time while coping with a pandemic to talk about his Facebook ratings? I think he might not be quite happy with this survey, though.  Here are a few quick highlights:

• 45% of respondents approve of how the president's doing his job, while 51% disapprove, giving him a -6 net score. On the plus side? His approval has ticked up 1% since the April survey. Only four of the demographic cohorts show an approval rate of over 50%: non-college educated whites (57%), whites (53%), folks aged 35-49 (53%), and men (51%).
• However, only 42% approve of how he's handling the coronavirus outbreak, with 55% disapproving, for a -13 net score; the approval dropped 3% since last month. And only two cohorts, non-college educated whites (56%) and whites (51%) pass the 50% threshold here.
• And finally, he's way underwater, by -26, on whether people trust the information they get from him on the coronavirus outbreak: 62% do not trust what he says, compared to only 36% that do. 

Let's look a little deeper, starting with the 'trust' question. It's not like we don't trust anybody - although, you might think that looking at social media, where it often seems that no one trusts science, data, or facts. But, according to the survey, we do trust  what Dr. Anthony Fauci (+47), the CDC (+52), and even CNN (+15) tell us. However, as is the case with the president himself, folks don't trust Fox News (-23) when it comes to coronavirus information.

And of course, the folks at Fox News and in the GOP are ramping up their efforts to create doubt in the Fauci. trust metric. For example, yesterday during Fauci's remote appearance at a Senate hearing, Kentucky's Rand Paul said this.

As much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all. I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge, that we can safely reopen the economy, and the facts will bear this out.

Fauci's response?

I have never made myself out to be the end-all and only voice in this. I’m a scientist, a physician and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence.

And later, there was this, from Tucker Carlson, suggesting that some thought Fauci should be a dictator or something, and that he was a buffoon, and pointing out that he wasn't elected to anything. So, the one thing I can say for sure? The president has seen this survey, and has seen that he's 42 points underwater on trust compared to Fauci (62% don't trust vs 20%) - so now's a good time for the minions to attack.

One more note: demographically, Fauci kills it. Gender, age group, race, education level, income level, voter registration - he has a net positive in every single one of them. Not only that, but more than half of Republicans (61%), Independents (61%), conservatives (56%), people who think the worst is behind us (60%) and even those who think the worst is yet to come (74%) trust him.

What else does the survey show?

• Most people - 60% - don't personally know anyone who's been diagnosed with COVID-19, but the number who do is on the rise. In the survey taken April 3-7, only 22% knew someone who had been diagnosed; in the latest, it's up to 40%. 

• The percentage of folks thinking that the worst of this darn thing is behind us is moving in a positive direction. In April, only 17% thought that, while in the new survey, it's  up to 44%. But still, more than half - 52% - think the worst is yet to come. 

Respondents are not particularly happy with how the federal government is handling things.  

• In the April and May surveys, more than 50% of respondents said the feds are doing a poor job, and over the course of four surveys, the percentage of people who say a good job is being done hasn't reached 50%. 

• Most respondents are at least 'concerned' (with fewer 'afraid') about some specific issues related to the virus. Take a look.

• And, what do folks think about how the government is handling those issues? Not good, as you can see below. With one exception, more people than not think the feds aren't doing enough, and on three of the remaining four issues, more than 55% have that opinion. (Comically, it's pretty much a split decision on cleaning supplies...)

If you were the president, would you be thrilled with these numbers, or would you be trying to deflect, dissuade, and deny that any issues even exist? If you said the latter, you've hit the nail on the head.

You understand his crazy tweetstorms, and why he's talking about the Obama administration, and about the wall, and about nasty questions at press conferences, and about Mother's Day... anything to avoid addressing how unappreciated he and his team's efforts really are, at a time when all he really wants is to be appreciated.

I'll have some more polling data in the next couple of days. 

Splitting the Empire (Part 2)

In Monday's post, I reviewed one of the options for splitting New York to allow for better representation for folks in the vast upstate area. This is necessary, the thinking goes, because those pesky downstate liberal Democrats who own the Assembly, the Senate and the Governorship are not paying any attention to us, now that the Republicans have lost control of the State Senate.

Yesterday's option was to make a completely new state encompassing what's generally referred to as upstate New York.

Today, we'll look at the plan put forth by Assemblyman David DiPietro, from Erie County. Instead of making a separate state out of Red New York, DiPietro's plan would keep NY a state, but one with three autonomous regions: New York, which includes Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens and Richmond counties (the five boroughs); Montauk, consisting of Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester counties, and New Amsterdam, which would include the other 53 counties of the state. For federal purposes, though, "New York" would still mean the entire state.

This is necessary, we're told on the SplitTheState website, where DiPietro has a petition supporting this idea, because

New York City has taxed us out of our homes and our businesses. Our values are ignored and our resources are shipped downstate where we never see the benefits. 

Under the plan, outlined in this bill, each region would have its own governor, legislature, and judiciary, and most state responsibilities would be eliminated.  Under DiPietro's bill, we'd need to do some significant remodeling on the state Constitution to accommodate the split plan.

The Update Desk: STiR Projects

Back in November, I wrote in this Grains of Salt post about a new innovative program the City of Syracuse was participating in.

What's a city to do when there are more services needed than it can possibly provide?

Try something completely different, that's what.  And that's what Syracuse is looking to do, by joining the Startup in Residence  (STiR) program.

STiR connects governments with start up companies via a 'challenge' process; when there's a match between a governmental jurisdiction and a startup willing to work on the problem, a sixteen-week 'residency' begins, with the goal of having a viable solution at the end of the collaboration.

Syracuse put five challenges out for review, and we just learned which ones will be moving ahead:

• Camino will develop a permit management platform that allows for collaboration and communication between both permit applicants and city employees.
  
• Vite Labs is tasked with creating a crowd-funding platform to connect low-income renters to people willing to provide short-term no-interest loans for security deposits.
• Local company Zivics will work on a citizen engagement tool for the city's Trauma Response Team (TRT) to engage residents after traumatic events, such as violent crimes. 

Two other challenges, related to waste management and autonomous snow removal technology, did not get selected to move forward.

TGIF 1/25/19

Wow -- what a week this one was!

I don't know about you, but I got a little tired trying to keep up with who was staring down who, and who was or wasn't blinking, and stuff like that.  Let's take a look.

Covington Catholic had a down and up week when a video appeared to show their #MAGA hat-wearing, women's rights-protesting students engaged in what appeared to be a racist, tomahawk-chopping, chanting in the face of a Native American elder and Vietnam War veteran.

Even their diocese pounced on them, promising a full investigation of their behavior.  And then, more video cropped up, and the race to condemnation turned away (somewhat, but not completely) from the kids and onto the vet, and more particularly onto the media.

There was lots of condemnation to go around on this one, for sure. In the end, the kids were not the instigators; the veteran was of the Vietnam War era, but never served out of the country, and the media? Well, yeah, there's still plenty of condemnation for them, all around: for the original reporting, for being too slow to respond when additional videos were made public, for their treatment of the Native American elder, for their interview with the start of the protest, and for their explanations and apologies, or the lack thereof.

No one was happy, I think - or, maybe I should say no one should be happy.   I expect the students will be invited to the White House, as survivors of the war on religion AND the war against the #fakenews.

But someone definitely had a worse week than the entire city of Covington, Kentucky.

I'm Not Smarter Than a Michigan First Grader

I was going through some stacks of reading (a trend I've noticed, lately) and came upon a tiny blurb in the 'Only in America' section of The Week, a magazine that compiles US and international media reports. 

Here's what I saw that caught my eye:

Conservative lawmakers have stripped Michigan's social studies curriculum of any reference to civil rights, climate change, or "core democratic values." State Sen. Patrick Colbeck said these phrases are "not politically neutral."  Other referenced removed include Roe v. Wade, the NAACP, and gay rights. Students will be taught that "the expansion of rights for some groups can be viewed as an infringement of rights and freedoms of others."

Now, as the daughter of a social studies teacher (and a straight A student throughout my elementary and secondary educational career in that particular subject), you can probably imagine why this one was intriguing.

My dad was a creative social studies teacher back in the day, working to get kids thinking about his favorite subject not as a standalone thing, but as something connected to the world we live in. He also tried to have fun; I distinctly remember his trivia questions (pre-Internet, folks) and having to get the answers right myself so I could grade those while he read the essays he was famous for assigning. One question I was sure he had to have made up was the one about a river catching on fire (Cuyahoga River, 1969). I also remember shortened summer vacations, as he frequently was involved in negotiations and also curriculum development - stuff like they're doing around the country these days.

Anyway -- back to the Michiganders and their abolishment of the facts, or whatever it is they're trying to do. What they're trying to do is what many red states have tried to do: take back their curriculum from the liberals. This happens when there's a flip in the balance of power from D to R, from L to R, as it were.

Texas almost let students and dinosaurs walk to school together. Florida let any citizen challenge the curriculum, including statements that the United States is a democracy; it's a constitutional republic, in Florida and too, Michigan. You can read more about that in this article from the Washington Post back in 2015, which concludes after a detailed argument,

But there is no basis for saying that the United States is somehow "not a democracy but a republic." "Democracy" and "republic" aren't just words that a speaker can arbitrarily define to mean something (e.g., defining democracy as "a form of government in which all laws are made directly by the people"). They are terms that have been given meaning by English speakers more broadly. And both today and in the Framing era, "democracy" has been generally understood to include representative democracy as well as direct democracy.

I'm sure that settles nothing, right?

So - Michigan has slowed the process considerably on the modifications, which you can read for yourself  - all 142 pages of it. The documents outline the entire social studies education plan from K-12. I haven't yet read the whole thing but what I did read scares the crap out of me.

Why? Because, to be honest, I'm not going to be able to pass first grade.

Seriously.

 Assuming the edits get approved in their entirety, here's what I'm supposed to know at the age of 6. Under the goal of 'Understand the core values and principles of our unique form of democracy, called a constitutional republic' I should be able to:

Explain fair ways to make decisions and resolve conflicts in the school community. 

The example provided for that first one is majority rule. Which wouldn't have meant all that much to me at that age. I mean, if my brothers and I all wanted to stay up past our bedtime, that would have meant 100% of the children wanted to do the same thing; not only that, but the three of us outnumbered the two parents - so what's am I supposed to be learning here, again?

Next, I should be able to:

Identify and explain how important symbols of the United States of America represent core values.  

And here are the examples of important symbols: Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam, White House, Bald Eagle. OK, those I can handle, I think. I could probably even color pictures of them, with the right crayons.

The core values? This where it gets fun:

• equality 
• rule of law 
• unalienable rights 
• limited government 
• social compact theory, and 
• the right of the people to alter or abolish an oppressive government

Limited government? Social compact theory? Altering or abolishing an oppressive government?  Come on! I'm SIX!

I get told when to get up, what to eat, what to wear (or perhaps, what not to wear would be more accurate), and when to go to bed. I have no unalienable rights, my 'government' is my mom and dad, and my rights to alter or abolish them is nonexistent.

I'm not going to get out of first grade, I swear.

Wondering on Wednesday (v120)

It's Wednesday -- you know what that means, right?

Why, I wonder, is the president so fixated on having a nice little American Bastille Day. Or North Korea Day. Or Russia Day? I don't know that anyone knows for sure what exactly he's looking for - is it to show that his whatever is bigger than everybody's whatever? Or, to show that he likes out veterans so much he'd make them suffer through an hours-long parade? Or maybe in his cold war dreams, a parade's the only thing that makes sense to show American power? Or, is it just a play for attention?  Regardless, this is a great rendition of the classic "I Love a Parade" to get you in the mood.

What else is on mind tonight? My three nephews; two are Navy men, the third is a civilian Department of Defense employee.  All of them need their paychecks, thank you very much, and so we're all very focused on efforts to ensure the government stays open, even though the president would love a SHUTdown, we'll do a SHUTdown, we need a SHUTdown and together my husband and I said he needs to SHUT up already!

Meanwhile, 

On Wednesday, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a deal on budget caps that would increase investments in domestic programs and the military by roughly $300 billion over the next two years: the deal lifts funding for domestic programs by $128B and hikes defense budgets by $160B.

Also on Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi broke the record for the longest speech on the House floor since the House had a floor - or, at least since 1909.  Pelosi, of whom I am not a fan, was protesting that McSchumer's plan did not include anything about Dreamers, who are not a deportation priority, according to the Trump administration, and also don't appear to be a legislative priority, if Senators are willing to try and fund the government without ensuring protections for them.

I wonder about $300 billion in new spending in two years -- two years! -- no matter what it's for. I wonder why we can't just agree to address DACA and Dreamers without having to tie that to all of the 'bad' immigration - you know, the killers who come her to kill American teenagers; the chain migration that allows someone to come here and kill American adults, and the drug dealers that come here to kill everyone. THAT immigration, the Trump vision of immigration, is something I will also continue to wonder about, for reasons I've spoken of many times in these pages.

Now, we all have to wonder whether the House will approve what the Senate leaders worked out. As usual, I expect there are almost as many reasons to disapprove of the plan as their are House members, and likely fewer reasons to approve it.

And I'll continue to wonder why the people we send to Congress can't do their jobs - but will get paid anyway, in a shutdown - while my three nephews all can do theirs without any issues, and may not get paid at all.

Taking Notice, and Taking Names

Remember when UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said we'd be taking names at the UN?

That list-making was to make sure we didn't miss any of the countries that voted against us by voting for a resolution condemning the United States for moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; people who voted against the resolution, and for us, were invited to a party!

Tonight, I'm taking names, but the first list is for the opposite reason from Ambassador Haley. This is the good kind of name-taking, the kind we don't get to do all that often, especially when it comes to talking about stuff that happens in Washington DC.

Lamar Alexander (R-TX)

Susan Collins (R- ME)

Chris Coons (D-DE)

Bob Corker  (R-TN)

Joe Donnelly (D-IN)

Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

Cory Gardner (R-CO)

Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Maggie Hassan (D-NH)

Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)

Johnny Isakson (R- GA)

Doug Jones (D-AL)

Tim Kaine (D- VA)

Angus King (I-ME)

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Joe Manchin III (D-WV)

Claire McCaskill (D-MO)

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Bill Nelson (D-FL)

Gary Peters (D-MI)

Mike Rounds (R-SD)

Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Mark Warner (D-VA)

This is the bipartisan group of senators who managed to convince their leadership, and some 50 something of their closest honorable friends to vote to end the #stupidshutdown, reopen the government and stop playing chicken with the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of  government employees and members of the military. 

And here are the senators who voted against reopening the government. 

Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)

Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Kamala Harris (D-CA)

Mazie Hirono (D-HI)

Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Mike Lee (R-UT)

Edward Markey (D-MA)

Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Christopher Murphy (D-CT)

Rand Paul (R-KY)

Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Jon Tester (D-MT)

Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Ron Wyden (D-OR)

I don't pretend to know why these folks voted against reopening the government; maybe they're still mad at Mitch McConnell, or at Donald Trump. For all I know, they're made as hell at Hillary Clinton for not winning.  And, to be honest, I also don't know what's in the heart of hearts of the people who worked so hard to get the compromise that this second group of folks had the pleasure of voting against. 

I just know which list I'd use if I were throwing a party for the people whose names I took.

TGIF 1/19/18

Well.

It seems I've been ignoring the call of the TGIF for a bit - sorry about that.  Let's put some perspective on this week, shall we?

Who should we blame for it? That seems to be the big question, at least today. Who will be the blame for shutting down the government, the Rs or the Ds?

And, if a miracle occurs tonight at 10PM Washington Swamp Time (WST) and the shutdown is avoided, who deserves the credit?  We know who will take the credit, of course - but will he deserve it?

What else happened this week, which I'm glad is over? There were arguments about whether or not the president, who insists he is the least racist person ever, or the least racist person ever interviewed by the Washington press corps, pretty darn well seems to be a racist.

And the Republicans, who are practically tripping over themselves to stay in Trump's good graces, are working diligently (one of my favorite Buzzword Bingo squares) to divert the conversation away from what the president said and instead direct it towards their individual interpretations of what the president thought or meant. As in, saying that African nations were shitholes meant we need a wall across our southern border.

Speaking of that wall, there was an interesting disconnect between the president and his Chief of Staff General, who thought saying the president believed in evolution had experienced an 'evolutionary process.'

There's been an evolutionary process that this president has gone through...and I pointed out to all the members that were in the room that they all say things during the course of campaigns that may or may not be fully informed.

In the same interview earlier this week, Kelly shared his thoughts about the possible government shutdown I mentioned at the top of the post.

I spent a fair amount of time on the hill today speaking to members of Congress, both sides of the aisle...and it would seem to have the votes to continue funding the military, take care of the child health care issue, and perhaps some other things. As I understand it, they have the votes and they are fairly confident.

So, there's that. Maybe he'll end up on the right side of this, who knows? I just don't want the Dems on the wrong side of it, that much I do know.

One last thing about the shutdown: sadly, it's of such importance that the poor president couldn't go running off to Mar-a-Lago for some golf rest work. He was scheduled to leave this afternoon, but supposedly is hanging around until he gets to sign a continuing resolution.

What's worse, it seems his inauguration anniversary celebration, scheduled for tomorrow night, may also be in jeopardy if that darn Mitch McConnell can't get his chamber in order. According to this report the shindig is going to be a doozy - $100,000 per couple for dinner and a photo op; for another $150,000, the happy couple could participate in a round table conversation, too.

Sadly I have to rearrange my sock drawer tomorrow - otherwise I'd be there. Honest.

TGIF.

Don't Do It, Democrats

On Saturday, Donald Trump will have been in office for a year, and on Friday there's (currently at least) a good chance that the government will shut down. Heck of a way to celebrate your first year of full control of the government, eh Republicans?

You've got the White House, you've got Senate, and you've got the House, and you might lose the keys to the buildings. Oh, sure, your majority in the Senate is not enough to get everything done, only the stuff that can be finagled into some kind of reconciliation language. So you need Democrats to do real work, like passing another short-term spending package to give yourselves one more month to start acting like adults. You know -- legislating and all that.

Stinks to be in Mitch McConnell's shoes, don't you think? Yeah, he needs Dems to bring it home for the party, for the president, and for the country. And, dammit, they better be right there to do it.

I know, I know -- you think I'm crazy suggesting that 'we' do anything to help 'them' get what 'they' want, at 'our' expense, or that 'we' do anything to help Trump accomplish anything. But in my eyes, if 'we' cause the shutdown, 'we' will suffer the consequences even though 'they' hold the reins to all of the horses.

The House passed a short-term bill tonight, fairly easily, that will fund the government for a month.

The House approved the measure 230 to 197, despite conflicting signals by President Trump sent throughout the day and a threatened rebellion from conservatives that failed to materialize. The bill's chances had appeared in  question until shortly before the vote, providing only a faint glimmer of hope that a crisis could be averted before much of the government exhausts its funds at midnight on Friday. The bill would fund the government through February 16.

The plan would fund CHIP for six years, which is something that Dems care greatly about. It would also apparently do some more 'repealing' of Obamacare taxes, and that's something about which Dems should care considerably less. And yes, I understand this is the House not the Senate, but look - it's Republicans protecting CHIP, right? This is an opportunity not to be wasted.

Trump has been saying all along that a shutdown is on the Dems; I think he started saying it even before it became a real possibility.

The #schumershutdown is picking up steam on social media, and people are saying that Dems care more about illegals than they do American children, the military, and all the people who run all of the programs that all the Dems are all in favor of... Trump and his minions will hammer Dems on this, and what's the answer?

As with much of the 2016 election cycle, we still don't know what the Dems stand for, even as we know without question what they stand against. The party tried to reinvent itself through the DNC and its dance with Bernie Sanders; it tried (and failed, unfortunately) to get Dems elected to replace Trump administration hires by throwing money into races all across the country, and now we even see Dems primarying other Dems, which hardly seems like a good idea.

The Democratic Party has to stand for something, and as I see it now, the best thing to do is to stand for keeping the government open, not shutting it down, and to stand for action on other bills in return for the favor, including DACA, comprehensive immigration, and whatever other priorities there are. 

And when they do stand, they need to do it at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Challenge the president to ignore them. Do it all day, every day -- but do it from a position of strength, not of weakness.

Trump is despicable - no argument there - but being the people that Trump can't govern without is much better than the alternative.

Don't do it. Be the better party. Be the party of yes, and don't let the government shut down tomorrow.

Poll Watch: Taxes, Politics and More

The House of Representatives passed a budget bill by a slim but safe margin, making for the government to borrow up to $1.5 trillion bucks to pay for their "middle class" tax reform program.

How do everyday Americans think about the plan? Well, we don't know any more than Congress does about what will actually be on the table - loopholes will be closed, and we'll be able to file our taxes on  a postcard, or at least on a single sheet of paper depending on whether you listen to House Speaker Paul Ryan or president Trump - but we don't seem to be very excited about it.

According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, we really wish our elected officials would do something completely different. First, some information about the poll itself.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. It gathered responses from 1862 people, including 1079 who said they were aware of the Republican tax plan. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.

(I feel kinda like the small print voiceover lady on car commercials.)

Here are some highlights, first looking at the relative importance of deficit reduction and tax cuts for the three populations: poor, rich, and corporations:

• more than two thirds of registered voters said reducing the deficit was more important than cutting taxes for the wealthy or for corporations;
• even 63% of Republicans favored reducing the deficit over corporate tax cuts, and 75% felt that way about tax cuts for rich people;
• more than 50% of adults in the survey said cutting taxes on poor people was more important than reducing the deficit; by party affiliation, both Democrats (68%) and Republicans (47%) agreed 

About the tax plan itself, what did respondents think?

• only 15% of registered voters think Congress should be working on tax cuts instead of other priorities; 
• of those who said they had heard of the plan, only 28% support it; 41% oppose, and 31% don't know;
• a small 14% thought their taxes would go down; 30% thought their taxes would go up, and 35% expect no change;
• unsurprisingly, Republicans (56%) are more enamored of the plan than are Dems (9%)

We'll have to wait to see what the tax plan actually ends up bringing us middle class tax payers - I do know that a couple of the 'no' votes in the House came from my neck of the woods, in Central New York. That makes me feel a little better.

Did you hear about Dubya's speech, and Obama's comments, on our current political climate? The folks at Rasmussen Reports asked a question about that, and got an interesting answer. First, the fine print:

The (national) survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted (by telephone and online) on October 22-23, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-3 percentage points, with a 95% level of confidence. 902 of those surveyed were white.

In the part of the poll you can see outside the Rasmussen pay wall,

63% of likely US voters agree with Obama's statement: "If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you're not going to be able to govern. You won't be able to unite them later if that's how you start."

That one's kind of curious, I think. Rasmussen trends more conservative than many other polling outlets, so that's a pretty big number who appear to think that Trump won't be able to govern. And since we know Paul Ryan has little control over the House, and Mitch McConnell has little control over the Senate, who, exactly, is supposed to be governing?

Finally, let's look at another hot topic, discrimination. A new poll has come out, showing that people from all races, including whites, believe their group faces discrimination.

The NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health survey sampled 3453 adults in the US from January 26th to April 9th.

Results for whites show that 55% believe there is discrimination against whites in America today,and further that

19% say they've personally been discriminated against because they are white when applying for jobs; 13% say they experienced discrimination regarding fair pay or promotions, and 11% have felt discrimination when applying for or attending college.

There is some fascinating first-person information accompanying the survey; the information is being reported in the NPR series you, me and them: experiencing discrimination in the US.

I have never felt discriminated against for being white; I'm curious -- what's been your experience?

Mythbusting a Businessman in the White House

One benefit of the weekend is that I have more time to pay attention to interesting things that come across my various news and social media feeds. I stumbled upon a article on Alternet.org by Sophie A. McClennen, a Penn State professor of international affairs and comparative literature that caught my eye.

McClennen's article, which originally appeared on Salon, addresses a subject that I've covered in the past: the concept of having a CEO president - and why Trump may be the one who puts that idea to bed - for good.

I originally posted on this subject in May of 2016, admitting that I had considered the possible benefits of having an experienced businessman in the White House.

You know the drill -- we need someone who's actually run a business, met a payroll, fought through countless ridiculous regulations, someone who knows how to balance a budget, someone who understands the real world ramifications of what policy changes mean, someone who is accountable to auditors...  And maybe most importantly, someone who is accountable to customers and shareholders. 

I say the last two - customers and shareholders - are possibly the most important, because if nothing else,  those of us who bother to register and actually vote  year in and year out are the customers and shareholders of all politicians, even though they don't seem to act like as if that's the case. 

And, I expressed some specific concerns abut comments then-candidate Trump had made that suggested such a thing, with him in command, would be a no-go for me.

A year later, four months or so into this administration, I revisited the idea, and remained convinced that it would be a bad thing.

Seems I'm not alone; McClennen comes to the same conclusion. Along the way, using Anthony "the Mooch" Scaramucci and the Wall Street movie franchise as an example of how "weirdly confused" we have become, she says

For some bizarre reason the public is aware that businessmen, whether they work on Wall Street or are New York real estate moguls, are often shady, greedy and selfish, but they still believe somehow that they possess critical and valuable skills that could transfer to running government. There is the public sense that businessmen are effective leaders despite overwhelming evidence that businessmen can and have been vile, corrupt and incompetent. 

Generalizations are always a fraught enterprise: clearly not all businessmen are terrible people, but that isn't the point. The point is that the mistaken idea that businessmen are better equipped to run the country is exactly why our nation is poised for catastrophe. And that's not an exaggeration.  

She doesn't put politicians on a pedestal, nor should she. After all, there are more than enough examples of shady, greedy and selfish politicians to go around, in both parties and at every level of government. But she contends

...there is a basic difference between people trained to accumulate profit and people trained to foster public support.

Specifically in reference to the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave,

Put simply, there is not one facet of the job of president that Trump seems to have gotten even remotely right. Only a few months into the job it was stunningly clear that Trump wasn't just addicted to attention and overwhelmed by poor impulse control, but that he really didn't understand the job he was elected to do...

The list is literally endless at this point. But part of the reason why it is so long is because Trump had no idea how the shared governance of a democracy functions or what it means to work with allies because in his businessman model he really can make absolute decisions without building consensus or making compromises. He has zero appreciation for the notion of the public good, of the value in supporting allies and of the need to respect the opinions of other leaders.

The 'profit-accumulator' would think this type of thing is perfectly normal, but the 'foster public support' person would be, rightfully, aghast -- as has been the case time after time after time.  

For example, Trump has repeatedly called for Mitch McConnell to "go nuclear" and move all votes in the Senate to a simple majority - which it seems, would make Mike Pence the most important man in the country, as the tie-breaker in McConnell's fractured chamber.

There have been other occasions, too - for example, when Trump tweets and instead of marching in step, members of his administration jump back from his pronouncements; or when he calls for suing reporters who print mean things about him, or otherwise shutting down our 1st Amendment rights; or when he calls out the 'Mexican judge' for his assumed lack of impartiality, or other courts that disagree with him...

We love a businessman, even as he makes decisions that take away pensions and benefits; send our jobs overseas, or to cheap regions of the country; demand that taxpayers train their employees even as they sit on piles of money offshore to avoid paying taxes; raise prices beyond what we can afford; fight every regulation that protects workers, the environment, and our futures; buy politicians lock, stock, and barrel; and more.

Weirdly confused, indeed.

Back in May, here's what I said about future prospects of a businessman in the White House:

Since he became president, my opinion that Trump was the wrong one has only been confirmed, and he may have forever ruined the chances for any future businessman-candidate in my eyes.  

And here's how McClennen closed her piece:

None of this mess gets better until this nation takes responsibility for its unfounded adoration of businessmen. The notion that a businessman is better at politics than a politician isn't just wrong; it's led to the Trump administration. And if that doesn't kill the myth, I don't know what can.

A Businessman in the White House, Revisited

It was a year ago today that I questioned whether we needed a businessman in the White House.

You know, I wrote

someone who's actually run a business, met a payroll, fought through countless ridiculous regulations, someone who knows how to balance a budget, someone who understands the real world ramifications of what policy changes mean, someone who is accountable to auditors... And maybe most importantly, someone who is accountable to customers and shareholders.

Over the course of writing the post last year, I talked myself out of the idea, based on the words and actions of candidate Trump.

So - is this the businessman we need in the White House, one who's unaware of the laws, unclear on the situation, and who in response to just about every question anyone asks can only say how much he "loves" some bucket of people, or how much some bucket of people love him, and who can only point to what he did as a businessman? One who would even suggest putting the full faith and credit of the United States government on the negotiating table?

Since he became president, my opinion that Trump was the wrong one has only been confirmed, and he may have forever ruined the chances for any future businessman-candidate in my eyes.

• How many more times are we going to hear about how hard it is to do this job? 
• How many more times are we going to see him traipse off, leaving our House to go spend time at one of his houses, making money off his presidency?
• How many more times are we going to hear him praise despicable people, despots and dictators, and proclaim it would be an honor to be in their presence? 
• How many more times will we hear him blatantly lie about things that are of such little consequence they are unworthy of even the tiniest exaggeration?
• How many more times will we see him blur ethics lines, see others in his administration blur the lines, members of his family blur the lines between what most people intuitively know to be wrong and what is legally ethical? (Ethically legal?)
• How many more times will we hear him or see him shove blame onto someone else - another politician, someone on his staff, someone on Fox News - when he's called out for one lie or another? Does the buck not stop with the man at the top?

There are so many other reasons why he's not what we need. but don't take my word for it. Here's another opinion, published in The Week back in March.

But at any rate, the government is not a business, and not simply because its basic structure and function are dissimilar to that of a corporation. The really bedrock difference, as Charles Peters writes in his new book, We Do Our Part, is that quality government requires a sense of public spiritedness and a moral conscience. Sociopathic pursuit of profit at all costs - the defining characteristic of the modern American businessman - is a route to corruption and disaster. 

Yep.

Trump in Transition (v16)

Ah yes, the First 100 Days. The honeymoon, when the leader of the free world is typically at his most popular, with the support of the people in ways not likely to be seen for the rest of his term.

Some honeymoon.

President Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in recent memory, with barely 41% of us supporting him. He maintains the rock-solid support of his base, even in the face of actions that run counter to his promises, but that doesn't seem to matter much.

Trump told us that the 100 day measure is a 'ridiculous standard' while he touted his accomplishments of the first 90 days  - screw those last ten -  and at the same time he's told us how great he has done: strong borders, a SCOTUS pick, jobs, jobs, jobs, economic confidence, cleaning up the mess left him by the Obama administration and so on. And Executive Orders - 30 of them, more than any president since Truman - from the president who poo-pooed them on the campaign trail.

I want to not use too many executive orders, Executive orders sort of came about more recently. Nobody ever heard of an executive order, then all of a sudden Obama - because he couldn't get anybody to agree with him - he starts signing them like they're butter (ed. note: #whatthesniff) so I want to do away with executive orders for the most part. 

Maybe he'll stop issuing one every three days or so after he finishes dismantling the Obama legacy; after all, that's why Trump ran for president in the first place. Obama had a birth certificate the whole time, the bastage, and then there was the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner...

While president Trump thinks the 100 days thing is ridiculous, candidate Trump took it very seriously, even issuing a 100 Day Contract with America, full of promises against which he should be measured. Here's a scorecard from Quartz.com that uses Trumpian measures of success for their ratings, with these results for the 28 promises in the Contract:

• Tremendous! -- a complete success (5)
• Nice! -- a good result (0)
• Politics! -- something done/compromise made (3)
• Failing! -- little done/minimal success (2)
• Sad! -- nothing done/disappointing result  (13)
• Total Disaster! -- things are worse than before (5)

My scorecard will contain no surprises for regular readers, who know I'm a 'strongly disapprove' in polls. Let's take a look.

Cleaning up corruption and special interest collusion in Washington: A generally meaningless hiring freeze, a lobbying ban for the political class, and a two-for-one regulation trade off were put out there, but it's laughable to believe that special interests and 'corruption' in Washington will decrease under this administration.

This administration thinks running the country from the dining room of the president's private, for-profit club is OK. And hired POTUS' daughter and son-in-law as special advisers, antagonizing even Alex Jones, the administration's Conspiracy Theorist in Chief.

We did not elect Ivanka Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. I think she's talented, she's beautiful, I think the dresses she wears, the clothing line are cool. I have nothing against her personally. Or Jared Kushner, but we didn't elect him to be the president either. He's a Democrat...

And hired disgraced General Michael Flynn  for his strident anti-Obama stance; he's now under investigation by the Pentagon for taking money from foreign governments. (Trump tells us Flynn is Obama's fault; I wonder what two regulations were dropped for this new one requiring vetting someone after you fire them?)

And that won't release the president's taxes. Or the White House visitor logs. But boy, they have proudly met with all kinds of special interest groups and CEOs, promising who knows what beyond massive regulatory rollbacks, tax cuts, and, apparently, unfettered access to the administration.  Collusion? Corruption? Don't be silly.

Congressional term limits was on the list; that was actually a meaningful change. We knew it was going nowhere, but the Only I Can Fix This president should have at least given it shot, don't you think?

Protecting American workers. NAFTA; TPP; China; identify and immediately eliminate foreign trading abuses; lift restrictions on traditional energy production; allow energy infrastructure projects to go forward; cancel payments for global climate change and fix our own water and energy infrastructure were the promises here.

On NAFTA, he and his team have said both that we'll going to pull out (tradus interruptus) or renegotiate better terms (more foreplay, please) - I think in the same day. Looks like renegotiating has the upper hand, today.TPP is out. Like most Americans, I can't speak to the implications of that, so I don't know if it's a win or a loss.

On energy, he's been busy. The administration said yes to the Keystone XL pipeline (size matters and XL is way more bigly than a plain old ordinary pipeline). He said yes to the Dakota Access Pipeline. He ordered a review of national monuments, for ways to take the shale, oil, coal and natural gas from them. He overturned a number of the Obama climate change and environmental protections, preferring that the states control what happens within their own borders. He just issued additional orders for an America First Offshore Energy Strategy which includes the Atlantic coast, the Gulf Coast and the Arctic coast.

He's definitely keeping his word to energy companies, and for construction jobs, for sure, if anything comes from his orders. There could be millions or billions of jobs, who knows? There could also be millions or billions of desert, mountain, glacier, forest, and coastal acres destroyed in our job-creating assault on the environment, too - from the administration of a man who fought to keep less than two hands full of wind turbines from being built within eyesight of one of his resorts.

For Earth Day, he told us this:

My Administration is committed to advancing scientific research that leads to a better understanding of our environment and of environmental risks. As we do so, we should remember that rigorous science depends not on ideology, but on a spirit of honest inquiry and robust debate.  

This April 22nd, as we observe Earth Day, I hope that our Nation can come together to give thanks for the land we love and call home.

His policies, to date, don't lend themselves to what he said. There is simply no balance here.

Restoring security and the constitutional rule of law. Cancel all of Obama's "unconstitutional" orders; begin the process of filling the Scalia seat on the Supreme Court; cancel federal funding to sanctuary cities; begin removing two million criminal illegal immigrants and cancel visa if their countries won't take them back; and do the Muslim ban and institute extreme vetting.

Regardless of their constitutionality, which would be decided under the vaunted 'constitutional rule of law,' Trump will continue his assault on the last eight years of government, we know that.

He did fill the seat left open by the obstructionist Republican majority in the Senate who believed "eight is enough" unless and until there is a Republican president, and the seat got filled only after the rules were changed, something that was poison unless and until there was Republican president.

Trump proudly told us he's the first president in 136 years - 136 years!!!- to fill a SCOTUS seat in the first 100 days. He failed to mention that only he and Richard Nixon entered their terms with an open seat, but hey, who's counting?

To his credit, illegal border crossings are way down, and that's a good thing. And we are getting rid of people with drunk driving convictions. I'd rather see them getting the gang members and drug dealers and rapists and murderers he told us about out of our country, but I'm sure that will come with time once they figure out how to vet and prioritize.

The Muslim ban - sorry, travel ban, has been rejected twice by the courts; sanctioning sanctuary cities  has also been nipped in the bud temporarily; time will tell on these as well.

Some of the promised legislation he would "introduce and fight for" in the first 100 days that was included in the Contract have not really come to fruition, either.

• Repeal and Replace Obamacare - sorry, not yet. Stymied by Republicans, Paul Ryan's fault, trying, but not enough votes to bring it to the floor.
• Middle Class Tax Relief and Simplification - sorry, a bulleted list of priorities released on day 97 is not sufficient. His promise here, by the way, was a 35% reduction for a middle class family of four, and a corporate rate of 15%. That last one is on the list we saw last week. 
• American Energy and Infrastructure Act - sorry, not yet. Lots of talk and Executive Orders and stuff, but no deal for this trillion-dollar plan, or how the public-private thing will work.
• School Choice and Education Opportunity Act - sorry, not yet. This one will pay parents to take their children out of public schools, and end Common Core. 
• Affordable Child Care and Eldercare Act -- sorry, not yet. This one seems like a no go (sorry, Ivanka) since he's getting rid of all tax deductions other than mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
• End Illegal Immigration Act - aka The Wall - sorry, not yet. This one is so fraught with issues that it was pulled from the table last week so that the government would not be shut down.
• Restoring Community Safety Act - he gets a partial thumbs up on this; after all, they did roll out the hot line to report crime by illegal aliens and I think the task force is somewhere in the West Wing. Maybe 'he went to Jared' on this?

Importantly, over the first 100 days, it's become clear our allies can't be sure what we stand for, or what we're going to do, because it changes daily. Because it changes tweetly. Because it changes depending on who's talking at the time.  Just ask Canada, Mexico, China, Taiwan, and South Korea, to name just a few. 

We - you and me, American citizens -  can't depend on what the Administration says, either, for the same reasons noted above. But we do know that every crowd is a record, everything is wonderful, the media is fake and failing, polls are bad and Trump is great and everyone loves him.

Unless, of course, those things are not true? 

Helluva great first 100 days. Just ask anyone.

I'm Underwhelmed (part 1)

On the eve of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, I'm underwhelmed.

Historically, I've looked at the conventions as moments of optimism, even the convention of the party of which I'm not a member. Blame my late history teacher father, who taught me and his other students that knowing what was going on was the only way to form a reasonable opinion.

In his world, it was at least as important, if not more so, to know what people who think differently than you are thinking. After all, you already know what your team stands for, so understanding what the opposing vision was would either make you more secure in your own, more open to finding common ground where you could, or may even change what you thought you believed.

Huffington Post photo

I watched the Republicans in Cleveland, Dad, I did.

I watched the Trump children talk about how fabulous their father is as a dad, grandpa, businessman, paycheck-signer, and how he is not the misogynistic, race-baiting, elitist, bullying guy he's made himself out to be on the campaign trail.

That he's a wonderful businessman who gives money to his children's charitable funds even if he doesn't necessarily stick to his own charitable commitments until pressed to do so, and that he'll end bad trade deals even as he and his family promote products that are made in China instead of being made in America (his daughter even used her speech at the convention to push her foreign-made dress line), and how good he is to his employees, even though he's been accused of not paying people who work on his projects, extracting deals to force them to take pennies on the dollar for work performed (a trait that apparently is not uniquely Trumpian, if the largest development project in my neck of the woods is any indication).  And more.

I watched as the Republican party paraded with great fanfare families of victims of crime committed by 'others', by people who don't look like us, and blamed the Obama administration for it, to strike fear into the hearts of Americans like a dagger, even though the risk of being victims of those crimes is vastly lower than the risk of being a victim of crimes committed by people who look exactly like us, even though crime rates overall are down and have been down for years.

And I saw party members all throw up in their mouths a little as they stood on the stage and pledged their support to a man with a single vision: building a wall. Around everything: our southern border, around people of color, around immigrants, around those would who would fight for the civil rights of Americans in the justice system, Around bona fide heroes; around public schools; around uppity women who are not 10s; around our NATO allies.. around and around and around the wall goes.

I watched the candidate himself say, without hesitation, without humility, without sarcasm, without any qualification:

Nobody knows the system better than me. Which is why I alone can fix it.  

Yes, I watched the other guys, Dad, like you taught me. I watched this man, who so frequently looks like he's f-bombing our country, and I held my nose and shook my head and threw my hands in the air and muttered more than a few "what-the-hells" and similar comments under my breath (OK, out loud) as you would have, too. I did not see optimism, or very much room to come together, and I certainly did not change my mind on the fact that I don't stand with them.

And yet, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, I'm underwhelmed.