HistoryBuff

A story got published in the New York Post saying that the US government was giving out thousands of copies of Kamela Harris' book to migrant children crossing the border. This apparently caused a stir on the right where they spread this story as evidence of Kamela being corrupt. It turns out the entire story was a straight up lie. One (1) copy of the book was donated and photographed. And from that one copy of the book, the Post decided to lie and say that the government was giving them out to everyone. 

The reporter in question has now resigned saying that they were ordered to write the entirely false story. 

This is just yet another example of how low the right will sink to try to smear anyone and everyone they don't like. And as an added side note, when their lies were exposed, they didn't even take down the story. The took it down just long enough to modify it slightly to remove the obvious lies, but left the rest of the smear article up. So even though they now acknowledge they straight up lied, most of the people who read it will never realize that it was fake news. They will continue to believe that the US government is passing out Harris' book and it will be one more in a long line of right wing lies that they internalize. 

Over the weekend both fox news and news max ran segments admitting that there is no evidence that dominion voting systems or smartmatic were used in or involved in any type of fraud. They had to do this because those companies are going to sue them for slander if they don't since there is no evidence any of this is true.

I had trouble finding a clip that was just the segment so here is one where there is also a bunch of analysis stuff after it which i didn't watch and don't know what's in it. I only intend for people to be able to see the 1st 1:50 of the video. 

So, now that the people pushing the conspiracy theories are openly admitting that they are all conspiracy theories that there is no evidence for, do people still believe this nonsense? 

I was skimming through CNN when I came across this article. My take away from this article is that the author believes that Biden was a strong candidate. They use the fact that biden outran democrats in house elections as evidence of this. But they have entirely missed the point. Biden didn't outrun the house democrats because people like or want Biden. He outran them because people are sick of trump. 

The fact that people voted to get rid of trump, but still voted against the democrats down ballot is evidence that they don't like the democratic platform. And that platform was decided by Biden and his team. The democrats massively underperformed polls and only narrowly beat a president who is widely hated. 

This is a stinging rebuke of the crappy democratic platform of "return to normal". People don't want that, they want change. But democratic leadership and analysts look like they are gearing up to point the blame for their failures at others and continue to learn nothing. 

I opened up the news and read how no one did anything wrong in the "unmasking" investigation. I had no idea anyone thought this was a thing, but apparently Hannity and Lou Dobs said this was "the greatest scandal in american history". But there was absolutely no scandal to be found. 

So my question is, did right wing people actually believe this? Does this not make you question what fox news tells you when they hype a "scandal" just for it to turn out to be absolutely nothing?

Here is a recent tweet from Trump. He thinks it is a crime for negative stories about him to trend on twitter. He really cannot understand just how unpopular he is. He thinks it must be a big conspiracy to try to make him look bad, when the reality is he just looks really bad and so people respond to what a asshole he is. 

Having a president saying that free speech should be illegal is rather disturbing though. 

In Trump's briefing last night trump did a huge change on his take on Corona and masks. Up until now he has constantly downplayed the severity of the crisis. He has downplayed the importance of masks and social distancing. He has argued that testing needs to slow, if not stop (and tried to cut funding for testing). He has basically tried to wish the virus away this whole time. 

In the briefing last night Trump (while reading from his prompter) was clear. You need to social distance, if you can't social distance you should wear a mask. This is some pretty basic stuff that he should have been saying for the last 4 months. But it shows that he has some level of cognizance that his approach and language has been disastrous for his campaign and is making an effort to change course. Whether it will actually help is unclear as everyone has seen that he really doesn't give a shit. And he is pretty famous by this point of saying one thing when people push him, but then he pushes in the other direction and undermines his comments very quickly. 

I wonder 2 things:

1) will his lip service attempt at looking like he gives a shit about people and the crisis actually win people back?

2) can he actually keep this up? Will he revert back to his instinctual response (which is to ignore the crisis)?

here is a link to a video of the US police department union president. He is standing in front of a wall of cops. They are all male. they are all white despite the city they "protect" being diverse. He then goes on to whine about how great New York cops are and that he is proud of the work they do. It is inter-cut with some of the behavior of new york cops to peaceful protesters. 

I think he honestly believes the things he is saying. He believes that the police are acting nobly as they club and beat people whose only crime is protesting or not "giving them respect". He doesn't understand that respect is earned. And the actions of the NYPD during the protests proved they don't deserve that respect. They did act like thugs. Their actions were shameful. The fact that he doesn't see that is a huge problem. 

Bernie Sanders is having a huge surge. The national average shows the gap between Biden and Sanders closing significantly.

The average for Iowa shows Sanders leading (i believe within the margin of error).

The average for New Hampshire shows sanders really leading. 

There hasn't been much polling for Nevada lately, but the 2 done in early January (before his big surge) show biden and sanders almost statistically tied with 1 point and 5 points between them. 

Sanders is well placed to win 2 or even 3 of the first 4 states. 

With Sanders leading in California and the only Texas poll in the last 2 months showing Biden and Sanders statistically tied in Texas (sorry the link for the poll itself appears to be down at the moment so here is the average page). Sanders is also well placed to do well on super tuesday too.

Trump released what he is charitably calling a peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians. Essentially, the plan gives Israel everything they want and screws over the Palestinians about as hard as it could have. 

Needless to say, the Israeli's love this plan, because they get everything they want. The Palestinians have dismissed it out of hand because it is stupid on the face of it. 

The people around Trump obviously know this plan isn't going anywhere. It is a political stunt. It will help to bolster Netanyahu who just got indicted for corruption and is desperate to hold onto power to avoid going to prison. It will bolster Trump in certain evangelical and Jewish circles.  But it has no chance of actually bringing peace. I mean the level to which the proposal is insulting to the Palestinians is likely to prompt an escalation of tensions. There's a decent chance this "deal" will make things worse. 

But i'm honestly not sure if trump is smart enough to understand this plan isn't going anywhere. He might know it is just a stunt for a few cheap political points. Or he might honestly believe that he is some kind of brilliant statesman who can solve the issues of the middle east by picking sides and pissing people off. If the people around him told him that was what this was, he would probably believe it. 

News about a hilary clinton interview came out. In the interview Hilary shows off what a bitter, entitled person she really is. She claim that "no one likes" bernie sanders when he is the most popular senator in the country. 

She refused to confirm whether she would endorse Sanders if he became the nominee. 

She is obviously still REALLY bitter about losing to trump and wants to find a way to make it bernie's fault. it doesn't matter that he did like 40 campaign events for her after she became the nominee. it doesn't matter that bernie fought harder for her than she did for Obama when he was the nominee. She can't deal with the fact that she was a shitty candidate that people didn't want and she needs someone to blame.

The fact that she would consider refusing to help bernie if he is the nominee when he fought for her is a really ugly look for her. 

The media released a baseless smear of bernie over the last few days. Members of warren's team leaked a story to the media (almost certainly with Warren's blessing) that bernie had told her in a private meeting that a woman couldn't win. They then spent the whole day the story came out refusing to comment fueling the media to keep reporting it. Warren eventually came out and said it was true. The point of all of this is to try to smear Sanders as some kind of chauvinist. 

Sanders has a long history of fighting for women's issues. He tried to get Warren to run in 2016, and only ran himself because she refused. There are also videos of him confirming he believes women can win the presidency dating back to the 80's. 

To run this attack on Sanders smacks of desperation. And even worse, she is attacking the person she has the most in common with while letting Biden, a man who has made TONS of terrible decisions, statements etc, completely off the hook. 

She can't possibly beat Sanders on the issues because he is the most trusted candidate on most of them. She can't beat him in popular appeal because he has the highest favorability rating among the candidates too. So she takes a cheap shot that cannot possibly be confirmed or disproven to try to undermine her closest ally. 

I think this desperate play is bad for her campaign. 

Elizabeth warren has provided more details about her healthcare plan, and it is a little baffling that she and her team thought this would go over well. Here is a link to her plan. And just as a heads up, yes this is likely to be heavy on opinion as the topic is speculative on events years in advance. If you think my opinions are incorrect, please let me know what you think. 

Passing any kind of healthcare reform, whether it is Biden's plan, Buttigieg's or medicare for all, is going to be a brutal fight. Every republican will fight it. Some of the democrats, like Joe Manchin, are likely to fight it too. 

Warren's plan is to have that brutal fight, but not to pass medicare for all (as she claims she supports) but to essentially do Pete's plan instead. Then 3 years later (before the end of the 1st term but likely after the midterm election) have the fight again to try to implement Medicare for all. This might be a good plan from a wonky, technocratic point of view. But from a political point of view it is insane. 

The way it will play it out is like this. Democrats will fight for pete's plan and maybe get it passed. Then 3 years later, assuming warren pushes for Medicare for all at all, she will find that very few elected democrats have any interest in passing it. They already passed a healthcare reform. Most of them don't support medicare for all anyway. They will be happy with Pete's plan and not want to implement medicare for all. By putting pete's plan in 1st, she will temporarily alleviate some of the worst symptoms of the broken healthcare system and remove some of the pressure that could help pass medicare for all. This will make it even less likely she can get the democratic establishment to implement medicare for all. Even worse, it assumes that she wins the midterms. Historically the midterms swing support away from the president's party. It is entirely possible that after the midterm she loses enough support to actually pass it anyway. 

In my opinion, this shows us 1 of 3 things. Potentially there could be elements of more than 1.

1) she doesn't have a solid enough understanding of politics to implement her plans. - If she thinks that splitting the healthcare reform into 2 separate political fights spaced a few years apart is a good political plan, that seems like she doesn't. It might be she is good at designing policy, but doesn't understand politics well enough to actually be in charge of implementing it.

2) This is her attempt at a cop out to try to win over the democratic establishment - The establishment of the democratic party don't want medicare for all. The progressive wing of the party insist on it. She wants to be seen as a progressive (she largely is one, i'm not saying she isn't) but also wants to be palatable to people like pelosi or clinton. So she is pushing for an implementation that is unlikely to work in an attempt to appeal to both sides.

3) This is her attempt to run as a progressive, but not actually pass medicare for all - It's possible she knows this won't work. That she knows perfectly well that the outcome will be Pete's plan and medicare for all won't get passed. It's possible this is an attempt to run as a progressive but not actually pass the main progressive policy and she is building in a way to deflect blame when it fails to pass. 

Given that she is already being attacked from the right by Pete and Biden, it seems really odd that she has basically just opened up a huge target to be attacked from the left. In order to maintain support from progressives she needs to be crystal clear that she wants and will fight for medicare for all. This plan just creates more doubt. 

Michael Bloomberg, the 77 year old, billionaire former mayor of New York, is reportedly looking to get into the democratic race. There is a deadline to file your paperwork for (i think it was alabama) today. 

1st off, I think that Bloomberg thinking he has any hope of winning is hilarious. He'll be lucky if he cracks 5%, maybe 10% if he is really successful at undermining Butigeg and taking the upper middle class vote. He is exactly the kind of candidate who has little to no base. He is economically right wing but culturally liberal. There are lots of political donors and dem establishment types that love that. There are very few voters that do. 

2nd, i think it smacks of that centrist "liberal" bubble and hubris. He thinks that because he is well connected and has lots of money that he should be president. He thinks his plan of going after things like global warming and gun control will be super popular when he has nothing that makes him different than most of the other candidates. He is completely out of touch with what voters want. 

3rd, i kind of like the idea of him jumping in. He has no hope hope of winning, but he will pull centrist and upper middle class support away from other candidates. People like Warren, Butigeg and, to a lesser degree, Biden should be worried about losing a few points to Bloomberg. They also might have to worry about him taking their donors which could really hurt. Biden in particular is low on cash and needs those super pacs working over time for him. if they switch to bloomberg that would be bad for him. 

A candidate like Sanders will lose no support at all to someone like Bloomberg. Which to me makes it good news as it will weaken others and give Sanders a billionaire foil to play off of. 

This is just a funny example I came across. There was a poll in New Hampshire that shows Bernie Sanders in the lead. CNN wrote multiple stories about it but none of the headlines say that sanders is winning. 

They wrote things like "TL;DR: Sanders and Warren lead a very messy New Hampshire primary". Even "Buttigieg in fourth, but a strong fourth". 

They just cannot bring themselves to say that Sanders is winning. They have to phrase it as a tie with warren and that Buttigieg is "a strong fourth". If Buttigieg had been in 1st in that poll you can be certain their headlines would have read something like "Pistol Pete takes the lead!!"

The pistol pete thing was something Van Jones said just fyi. 

An emolument is any kind of payment. 

The Trump government has decided that the next G7 summit will be at a Trump owned and Trump managed resort in Florida. The US government is now going to pay 10's of millions of dollars to Donald trump's business. A business which Trump has not divested from. This means Trump directed the US government to pay him 10's of millions of dollars. 

This is a very clear breach of the constitution and therefore a breach of his oath of office. This is yet another impeachable offense. 

The fundraising numbers for the last quarter so far are:

Bernie Sanders - $25.3 million

Pete Buttigieg - $19.1 million

Joe Biden - $15.2 million

Kamala Harris - $11.6 million

Cory Booker - $6 million

It is important to note that warren's numbers aren't out yet. 

But those are not good numbers for Biden. He raised 30% less than last quarter. While Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker are all way up. (Yang 257%, Sanders 39%, Booker 33%). Harris has held steady and Buttigieg is down 23%. 

It is also worth noting that Sanders has not done any large dollar fundraisers. His average donation size was $18. It takes a whole lot of donations to get to $25.3 million when you are doing it $18 dollars at a time. 

Biden on the other hand has done dozens of large dollar fundraisers. if he is spending that much of his time trying to fundraise and he still can't beat Sanders or Buttigieg, that is not a good sign. He can't even hold his numbers steady from last quarter.

It is also critical to keep in mind that there are caps in place for how much you can donate. Over 99% of Sanders' donors have not hit that cap as they are all small dollar donors. So it is likely he can keep this up. Biden is relying on large cash donations, which means that many of his donors have likely hit their cap already and cannot donate again. I haven't seen a percentage for this quarter, but in his reporting for the previous quarter he reported that 38% of the $22 million Biden raised (in Q2) came from donors who gave the maximum amount possible to give in the primary. Which means that 38% of his donors from Q2 cannot donate any more money. That likely is part of the reason why his fundraising dropped by 30% in Q3.