[kenberg]

 Winstonm, on 2019-February-26, 09:45, said:

Ken, you make good points. The question I have is how does one combat the Republican onslaught of demonizing every progressive idea as "socialism". Although I get what you are saying, that the attention span of most voters is so short that a bumper sticker is all they will take it, it seems long-term the better solution is to educate the public. Unfortunately, there is no time for that prior to 2020 so it's back to he said/she said argument instead of genuine debate.

I was not exactly bemoaning short attention spans. I can have a short attention span, depending on the discussion. Consider a 20 year old. Let's suppose that s/he plans on someday, probably not tomorrow, getting married, having kids, sending them to public schools. At the public library there is a meeting to discuss plans for improving the public school system. At the local community college there is a panel discussion, open to the public, on the relative merits of Socialism and Democratic Socialism. Which meeting do you think this young person will attend? Yes, I might have attended the latter, but I was seriously weird.

[johnu]

Lyin Mitch the Hypocrite strikes again

Mitch McConnell Says Democrats Are To Blame For Election Fraud That Benefited GOP

Quote

Voter ID would not have prevented the absentee ballot fraud that took place in North Carolina, but McConnell said Democratic opposition to measures like it had enabled what took place.

Spineless Lyin Mitch upholds his reputation as a hyper partisan political hack who is only interested in getting reelected and holding power. I will withhold my negative thoughts about Lyin Mitch.

[johnu]

 kenberg, on 2019-February-26, 08:22, said:

Medicare is very good, it is also a pain in the butt to deal with them. There was an instance when the doctor's office insisted that a certain treatment would not be covered bu Medicare, I called Medicare and found them completely useless in providing information, so I said give me what I need and I'll pay for it. I got what I needed and Medicare paid for it. There are many variants of this story. Still, it's very nice to have it. Just don't expect them to be helpful when you have a question.

It seems to me that the admin people at your doctor's office need some more training, as well as Medicare improving their hotline. A lot of seniors pay extra to get either a Medigap or Medicare Advantage plan. The cost to the patient is still a fraction of what it costs non seniors for a premium Cadillac medical plan.

[kenberg]

 johnu, on 2019-February-26, 14:44, said:

It seems to me that the admin people at your doctor's office need some more training, as well as Medicare improving their hotline. A lot of seniors pay extra to get either a Medigap or Medicare Advantage plan. The cost to the patient is still a fraction of what it costs non seniors for a premium Cadillac medical plan.

Yes, I no longer use that doctor.

I have a supplemental plan as well. It certainly makes life easy for me. From others, I am very aware of how difficult this can be for people in other situations. Very difficult.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2019-February-26, 12:44, said:

I was not exactly bemoaning short attention spans. I can have a short attention span, depending on the discussion. Consider a 20 year old. Let's suppose that s/he plans on someday, probably not tomorrow, getting married, having kids, sending them to public schools. At the public library there is a meeting to discuss plans for improving the public school system. At the local community college there is a panel discussion, open to the public, on the relative merits of Socialism and Democratic Socialism. Which meeting do you think this young person will attend? Yes, I might have attended the latter, but I was seriously weird.

So, you are saying you have to target your audience and use appropriate means to reach them. Seems reasonable and valid.

[Winstonm]

With tensions rising between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, isn't it reassuring that we have such a level-headed statesman in the White House.

PS: Michael Cohen testifies publicly tomorrow - just in case Individual-1 is listening.

[johnu]

No surprises here:

The 10 Most Jaw-Dropping Lines From Michael Cohen’s Leaked Testimony

At least, not if you've been following the news the past 2 years.

If this was about any other US president, this would be front page news for weeks, maybe months. These revelations probably will almost certainly be backpage news after tomorrow.

[johnu]

Criminal incompetence?

Trump Administration Refuses To Admit It Had No System To Reunite Separated Families

Quote

Carla Provost, chief of U.S. Border Patrol, said there was no automatic way to search CBP and HHS databases, meaning officials had to manually go through records to match parents with their children. (Provost said the system has since been updated to include this function.)

However, she would not admit that CBP was unprepared to track family separation and disputed a January report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services saying there was never “an existing, integrated data system to track separated families.”

Quote

But when House Democrats asked whether the government planned to locate and reunite the potentially thousands more families separated before the zero tolerance policy ― a task HHS officials have already described as a “burden” ― White said ORR’s legal authority over children ends once they are released from the agency

Rep Ted Lieu gave a softball summary of those involved:

Quote

“It was just simply mass incompetence,” Lieu said. “The folks involved in that should just be ashamed with themselves.”

[y66]

re: Cohen's hearing today,

Cohen delivered a message to Republicans: Don’t follow Trump blindly. “Look what’s happened to me?”

Maggie Haberman (NYT) pointed out that it's really something to hear Republicans repeatedly saying people shouldn’t listen to someone who lies.

Jonathan Weisman (NYT) summed up first 2 hours: So far, Cohen is confirming a lot of reporting that has been public for awhile, but he is doing it with some bravura showmanship.

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2019-February-27, 11:09, said:

re: Cohen's hearing today,

Cohen delivered a message to Republicans: Don’t follow Trump blindly. “Look what’s happened to me?”

Maggie Haberman (NYT) pointed out that it's really something to hear Republicans repeatedly saying people shouldn’t listen to someone who lies.

Jonathan Weisman (NYT) summed up first 2 hours: So far, Cohen is confirming a lot of reporting that has been public for awhile, but he is doing it with some bravura showmanship.

The most important aspect of his testimony is the evidence he furnished - checks, receipts, etc.

[y66]

Quote of the day goes to Jamie Raskin (D-MD) who told Cohen: “Our colleagues are not upset because you lied to Congress for the president. They’re upset that you stopped lying to Congress for the president.”

Raskin is a Harvard educated lawyer. He taught constitutional law and legislation at the American University. Sharp guy.

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2019-February-27, 20:49, said:

Quote of the day goes to Jamie Raskin (D-MD) who told Cohen: "Our colleagues are not upset because you lied to Congress for the president. They're upset that you stopped lying to Congress for the president."

Raskin is a Harvard educated lawyer. He taught constitutional law and legislation at the American University. Sharp guy.

That's my guy! I voted for him in the D primary and the election! No doubt he is at least a bit to my left but I agree he is a sharp guy.

We shall see if he is a little too fond of showing how clever he is.

[y66]

From Simon Wren-Lewis at mainly macro:

Quote

Brexit was not an aberration in an otherwise well functioning UK democracy, any more than Trump was in the US. They are symptoms of a deeper malaise. I cannot put it better than Anthony Barnett when he says if all you want to do is stop Brexit and Trump and go back to what you regard as normal, you miss that what was normal led to Brexit and Trump. Unless we have politicians in power who understand the need for radical change, the snake oil sellers who sold us Brexit and US voters Trump will happily carry on plying their wares.

[Winstonm]

Quote

U.S. Economy Grew 2.9% in 2018

It is also projected to have been the high point of the current business cycle - projections for 2019 are 2.3%.

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2019-February-28, 07:43, said:

From Simon Wren-Lewis at mainly macro:

I browsed around some on his blog and at related sites. I think it would take some serious effort to grasp what it's all about and even more effort to have a serious opinion concerning his view and competing views. MMT comes up a lot (Modern Monetary Theory). Everything today is thoroughly modern...

[y66]

From Ed Kilgore at NYMag:

Quote

Until today, I had been skeptical about the hype over new congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is, after all, a backbencher from a safe Democratic district in a heavily Democratic state. She won an impressive upset primary victory last year, but is still south of 30 years old and belongs to the small if interesting tribe of self-identified democratic socialists (to which I do not happen to belong). Maybe I don’t spend enough time on social media to understand her mastery of latter-day communications. But I figured she had become a self-perpetuating legend probably resented by her colleagues who spent years toiling for a tiny fraction of the attention she’s attracted.

But at the end of a long, tedious day in the House Oversight Committee marked by clumsy questioning of Michael Cohen by Democrats, and shrieking hostility to the witness from Trump-loving Republicans, AOC (as she is universally known in the political universe — you know, like FDR and JFK) put in perhaps the single most impressive appearance of the hearing.

She was crisp, succinct, and very focused on raising some previously undiscussed potential criminal liability issues for Trump that Cohen’s testimony suggested (e.g, insurance fraud), including several where the hot-button issue of Trump’s missing tax returns might be germane. I wasn’t the only viewer who was impressed; so was the fact-checker from the Washington Post, another person unlikely to be excessively biased toward AOC:

Quote

Glenn Kessler ✔ @GlennKesslerWP Some lessons that other lawmakers could learn from @AOC's good questioning of Cohen: a) follow-up on previously asked questions that still need answers b) be precise and detailed and c) avoid much grandstanding. You might elicit news. 4:52 PM - Feb 27, 019

Indeed, she was the opposite of a grandstander. True, she’s lucky to be the rare member of Congress who will get attention no matter what she does. But this time, she earned it, and if nothing else it’s a solid indication that she hasn’t let her early celebrity go to her head.

[kenberg]

AOC was very good. The interchange provided crisp questions and crisp answers.

Much of the news reporting concentrated on Cohen saying how much he regretted doing what he did, how it bothered his conscience, etc. Even in the unlikely event someone believed his statements of remorse, this is barely if at all relevant. Concrete statements that can be checked independently were the point. That was the purpose of having him there.

I think if Cohen really wanted to make a general statement of how bad a person Trump is, the following would do it: "He hired me, that should tell you all you need to know about Donald Trump"

[barmar]

I listened to the Cohen testimony for a couple of hours, but it got so tiresome that I switched it off after a while, so I unfortunately missed the AOC segment. I'm going to check it out on YouTube now.

She reminds me of "Mr Smith Goes to Washington", she's so young and earnest, trying to "do the right thing". I wish her the best of luck, but I wonder how long someone like that can really survive in the DC swamp.

[y66]

 barmar, on 2019-February-28, 10:04, said:

I listened to the Cohen testimony for a couple of hours, but it got so tiresome that I switched it off after a while, so I unfortunately missed the AOC segment. I'm going to check it out on YouTube now.

She reminds me of "Mr Smith Goes to Washington", she's so young and earnest, trying to "do the right thing". I wish her the best of luck, but I wonder how long someone like that can really survive in the DC swamp.

A couple hours? You deserve a BBO citizenship award. Yeah most of that was beyond tedious. I checked in with the NYT's live blogging every hour which I enjoyed.

[andrei]

 Winstonm, on 2018-December-27, 12:55, said:

WASHINGTON
A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.

During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.

McClatchy Washington Bureau

Ooops ...