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UK Unable to Find Replacement Ambassador Who Does Not Think Trump Is an Idiot |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Wednesday, 10 July 2019 13:33 |
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Borowitz writes: "Following the resignation of its Ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, the government of the United Kingdom has disclosed that it has been unable to find a replacement for Darroch who does not also think that Donald J. Trump is a blithering idiot."
U.K. prime minister Theresa May. (photo: Luke Dray/Getty)
UK Unable to Find Replacement Ambassador Who Does Not Think Trump Is an Idiot
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
10 July 19
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 ollowing the resignation of its Ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, the government of the United Kingdom has disclosed that it has been unable to find a replacement for Darroch who does not also think that Donald J. Trump is a blithering idiot.
At a press conference at 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, revealed that the search for a new ambassador who does not believe that Trump is an imbecile has thus far come up empty.
“We did not want a repeat of the unfortunate Kim Darroch incident, so we made the first question on the job application, ‘Do you think Donald Trump is a moron?’ ” May said. “So far, none of the applicants has checked the ‘no’ box.”
May acknowledged that the government might have to expand its search for applicants beyond those with diplomatic experience in order to find a replacement for Darroch who does not consider Trump a dolt.
“We will search high and low until we find someone in this country who doesn’t think Donald Trump is a nitwit,” she said. “We’re starting by interviewing people who don’t think Boris Johnson is a nitwit.”
While affirming her government’s determination to find someone in the U.K. who does not think Trump is an unmitigated bonehead, May warned that the difficulty of the task must not be underestimated. “This is turning out to be harder than Brexit,” she said.
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FOCUS: America Is Drowning in Student Debt. Here's My Plan to End It |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=45897"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Fortune</span></a>
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Wednesday, 10 July 2019 12:22 |
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Sanders writes: "A decade ago, America committed trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street banks, whose greed had cratered the economy. Now, it is time to commit a fraction of that to cancel the student debt that is crushing 45 million Americans and dragging down our economy."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Scott Eisen/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Sanders on Steyer's 2020 Bid: 'Tired of Seeing Billionaires
Trying to Buy Political Power'
America Is Drowning in Student Debt. Here's My Plan to End It
By Bernie Sanders, Fortune
10 July 19
 decade ago, America committed trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street banks, whose greed had cratered the economy. Now, it is time to commit a fraction of that to cancel the student debt that is crushing 45 million Americans and dragging down our economy.
Let’s be clear: The younger generation was dealt an enormous blow by the Wall Street crash of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed. Millions of them saw their parents lose their jobs, homes, and life savings because of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of a handful of financial executives.
While those financial executives were rescued by the government, young people were told to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps—specifically, by getting a higher education. But as financial support from state governments declined, millions of them graduated college or dropped out of college with suffocating and oppressive debt.
In the wealthiest country in human history, it does not have to be this way—and in fact, it was not this way for earlier generations.
In 1944, as World War II was coming to an end, the U.S. government did the right thing and passed the G.I. Bill, which made free higher education available to all those who served in the Armed Forces. That act not only improved the financial well-being of the Greatest Generation, but it also laid the groundwork for the biggest expansion of the American middle class in modern history.
A half-century ago, the cost of attending some of our best public colleges and universities was virtually free. And 40 years ago, the maximum federal Pell Grant paid for nearly 80% of tuition, fees, room, and board at a four-year public college.
By contrast, today it costs over $21,000 a year to attend those same schools, and maximum Pell Grants cover only about 30% of those expenses.
That means the average college senior graduates with over $30,000 in student debt—and more and more, this debt lasts a lifetime. Since 2004, the number of Americans 60 and over with student loan debt has more than quintupled—from 600,000 to 3.2 million—and tens of thousands of older borrowers have had their Social Security benefits seized by the government to pay for student loans.
Not surprisingly, at a time when workers’ real wages have stagnated, this debt hits students from lower income and minority families the hardest.
One 2013 study found that students from families making between $40,000 and $59,000 a year racked up $13,000 more debt than did those from wealthier families who make $150,000 or more a year. Meanwhile, upon graduating African Americans have about $7,400 more in student debt than white graduates do, and just four years after graduating, the debt gap widens to nearly $25,000.
It is not merely immoral to doom an entire generation to endless educational debt—it is also bad for our economy.
The Federal Reserve reported that in 2014 alone, student loan debt prevented 400,000 young Americans from purchasing homes. Karthik Krishnan, a professor at Northeastern University who specializes in student debt, told CNBC last year that people with $30,000 in student loan debt are 11% less likely to start businesses than are those without debt.
“You do stand to see longer-term negative effects on people who can’t pay off their student loans,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told Congress in March 2018. “It hurts their credit rating; it impacts the entire half of their economic life.”
Under our legislation to cancel all $1.6 trillion of student debt, the economy would get a boost of approximately $1 trillion over the next decade and up to 1.6 million new jobs would be created each year, according to a report from the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. At the same time, millions of Americans would have the financial resources they need to buy new homes, buy new cars, or open up small businesses.
Moving forward, our legislation will also make every public college and university, historically black college and university, trade school, and apprenticeship program in America tuition-free and debt-free, because we understand that education must be an economic right for all, not a privilege for the few.
Of course, doing all of this will take resources—and that is where Wall Street comes in. We will pay for this initiative by imposing a tax on Wall Street speculators, similar to what exists in dozens of other advanced economies. Ten years ago, the working class bailed out Wall Street. Now, it’s Wall Street’s turn to pay them back.
If we do not act boldly, our younger generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents and grandparents did. We cannot let that happen.
It is time to end the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation—the millennial generation—to a lifetime of debt for the “crime” of doing the right thing: getting a college education.
Wall Street will almost certainly fight us at every turn, as will the student loan servicers who make big profits off the status quo. But I am confident that if we stand together and build a grassroots movement, we can treat education the way we should: as an inalienable human right.
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RSN: Failure to Impeach Trump Is a Way to Reaffirm Him |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 10 July 2019 10:33 |
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Boardman writes: "Would the American people re-elect a president caught in the midst of a multi-faceted impeachment inquiry? One never knows. Or would the American people be more likely to re-elect a president free from any impeachment inquiry?"
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Failure to Impeach Trump Is a Way to Reaffirm Him
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
10 July 19
 ould the American people re-elect a president caught in the midst of a multi-faceted impeachment inquiry? One never knows.
Or would the American people be more likely to re-elect a president free from any impeachment inquiry?
With no commanding presidential candidate likely to emerge till well after the Iowa caucus on February 3, 2020, the center of Democratic Power is now in the House of Representatives, largely in the hands of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi is so determined to give Trump a pass on impeachment that Trump’s lawyers cite her position in their court briefs. That seems like a pretty bad place for a supposed opposition party to find itself.
Pelosi and other Democratic Party leaders have indicated a willingness to pursue impeachment if “the people want it.” Then the same leaders do little or nothing to encourage the people to want it. That is the opposite of leadership. That is also a failure to understand how the impeachment of Richard Nixon became supportable through the conscientious evidence-gathering that persuaded the public that Nixon had committed impeachable offenses.
Pelosi is slippery to the point of dishonesty on the question of impeachment. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a long wet-kiss article titled “It’s Nancy’s Parade” in the Sunday Times of July 7. Dowd asked Pelosi if she had said about Trump, as reported, “I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison.” That’s a classic false-choice deflection to begin with, but Pelosi danced it disingenuously further:
I didn’t exactly say that…. You can’t impeach everybody. People wanted Reagan impeached but that didn’t happen. O.K., they impeached Clinton for something so ridiculous — getting impeached for doing a dumb thing as a guy. Then they wanted to impeach Obama…. [Trump] has given real cause for impeachment.
This is scattershot distraction Trump-style, seeming to make some point while avoiding the underlying question. If Trump, as Pelosi says, “has given real cause for impeachment,” then why has the House not begun to impeach him?
There is a glaring omission in Pelosi’s list of recent presidents – Reagan, Clinton, Obama, but neither Bush. The second Bush lied the country into war, a war that continues to cost us. Even that was not enough for Pelosi. She opposed impeaching Bush for the war crimes he so plainly committed. Does she lack principle? Does she lack courage? Does she always make her decisions on the narrowest partisan political calculation? What is really going on?
Democrats have the power to initiate impeachment proceedings. Democrats have the power to control the pace of those proceedings. There are numerous impeachable offenses, in almost every area – climate, immigration, census, war-making, regulating contrary to statute, emoluments – the list of failures to faithfully execute the laws or the office of the President is long and easily demonstrated. Even Pelosi says, “he every day practically self-impeaches by obstructing justice and ignoring the subpoenas” – which he is allowed to do with impunity.
There are about 80 Democratic House members reportedly in favor of moving ahead on impeachment. That leaves another 155 Democratic House members either uncommitted or opposed to impeachment. These Democrats are not outspoken on the question and many of them oppose impeaching a flagrantly dishonest, probably criminal president mainly because it might put their own re-election at risk. No profiles in courage there. We saw them flex their muscles recently when they forced Pelosi to capitulate on protecting immigrant children and accept the Senate bill that would do little to assure that the Department of Homeland Security follows the law.
Pelosi misleadingly talks about impeachment, characterizing it as if it’s a compact, unitary event. It’s not. “Impeachment” itself is only a formal accusation, a Congressional indictment that requires an investigation of uncertain length by the House Judiciary Committee, including having hearings, drawing of articles of impeachment, publicly debating and voting on them, and delivering those approved to the full House for a final vote. Only then do the articles of impeachment go to the Senate for a trial of indeterminate length and a final vote.
The impeachment process for Bill Clinton began in January 1994 with the appointment of a special prosecutor (Ken Starr took over in August 1994). The process ended more than five years later when the Senate acquitted Clinton on February 12, 1999.
The impeachment process for Richard Nixon began formally with the creation of the Senate Watergate Committee in February 1973, less than eight months after the Watergate burglary. The House Judiciary Committee started its investigation in October, voting for articles of impeachment at the end of July 1974. Nixon resigned on August 9, before the full House considered the impeachment articles. That abbreviated impeachment process took about 550 days.
As of July 9, the November 3, 2020, presidential election was 483 days away. That is plenty of time for the House Judiciary Committee to accomplish something meaningful without having to risk defeat in the Senate.
So it’s a calculated question for 2020: Would a prolonged, careful, substantive impeachment inquiry make Trump stronger or weaker by election day? Would a prolonged period of sniping at Trump’s faults, without daring to impeach him, make Trump stronger or weaker on election day? Regardless of who the Democratic candidate turns out to be, it seems more likely that he or she will be strengthened by a House impeachment inquiry carried on with integrity before the election. Yes, it will be partisan, but that is offset if it is also principled. But first, Pelosi has to help it happen. According to Dowd:
Now Pelosi is in her element, ready for the fight of her life with Trump…. Pelosi keeps moving forward, a shark with a permagrin…. If combating an inhumane Trump requires a superhuman effort, Pelosi may be just the woman to do it.
But Dowd does not say how this will be done. She supports the hope with an anecdote about Pelosi carrying on bravely at an Irish political event just after having her right hand smashed in a car door. This shows grit, to be sure. But it was only for one night, and the struggle with Trump has more than a year to go.
Reflecting the traditional political timidity of mainline Democrats, Pelosi has taken potshots at fellow Democrats in the House like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, mocking the Green New Deal, or Ilhan Omar, reinforcing the right wing’s anti-Semitic canard. Pelosi has demonstrated that, in a pinch, she does not have their backs or Rashida Tlaib’s or Ayanna Pressley’s. Pelosi again denigrated all four women of color to Dowd. This is ugly, gratuitous infighting, not principled leadership. Little wonder, perhaps, that Corbin Trent, an aide to Ocasio-Cortez, told reporter Ryan Grim that the Democratic leadership is “driven by fear. They seem to be unable to lead.”
“The greatest threat to mankind,” according to Trent, a co-founder of Justice Democrats, “is the cowardice of the Democratic Party.”
The Democrats Pelosi denigrates are all agents of change. Pelosi talks about defeating Trump, but she doesn’t embrace much change of any other sort. She cavils at the more ambitious proposals of Democratic presidential candidates. Why has the House pushed so little legislation that challenges the status quo? Is there anything Pelosi truly believes in besides herself? Dowd characterizes her as the most powerful woman in the country (with Trump the most powerful man). She seems to have made the calculation that she’d rather preserve her speakership than take any serious risk. Are the ambitions of a 79-year-old multimillionaire really more important than the good of the country? If this is really “Nancy’s Parade,” where is it headed?
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Joe Biden, Closet Republican |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7261"><span class="small">Frank Bruni, The New York Times</span></a>
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Wednesday, 10 July 2019 08:29 |
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Bruni writes: "It didn't come to me right away, but finally I recognized the model for Joe Biden's unusual campaign, the former president whose pitch Biden's most closely resembles: George W. Bush."
Joe Biden on Saturday at a campaign stop in South Carolina. (photo: Demetrius Freeman/NYT)
Joe Biden, Closet Republican
By Frank Bruni, The New York Times
10 July 19
He’s the liberal Bob Dole, the looser Mitt Romney, the supposedly safe bet who’s owed a shot.
 t didn’t come to me right away, but finally I recognized the model for Joe Biden’s unusual campaign, the former president whose pitch Biden’s most closely resembles:
George W. Bush.
I’m referring to Bush’s first presidential bid, in 2000, which is remembered mostly for its surreal climax: the seesawing returns on election night, the Florida recount, the Supreme Court ruling that effectively decided the contest in his favor. To the limited extent that political junkies recall his slogans and stump speeches, the phrase “compassionate conservative” comes quickest to mind.
But Bush’s strategy and success arguably hinged less on selling himself as a new kind of Republican than on being seen as a tested, trusted, traditional brand. His surname did much of that work, and he augmented it with a sustained oratorical emphasis on propriety. He pledged to “restore honor and integrity” to the White House in the wake of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and subsequent impeachment. He would end the melodrama of the Clinton years and expunge the shame by having the nation essentially pick up where it had left off — with a Bush at the helm.
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oday, the FBI arrested two former senior officials who served with Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, along with four other suspects in a corruption scandal, 
