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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[luee]

Another day another antiTrump book.

Author Christopher Buckley: 'Everything Trump touches dies'

https://news.yahoo.com/author-christopher-buckley-everything-trump-touches-dies-204111003.html

“It’s not really very funny when you think about it,” Buckley said during a Friday interview on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast. “If he gets another four years, I don’t think satire’s going to be possible.”
William F's son.

The AG is very busy stopping free speech.

[barton]

I'm just talking Black people who were treated uniquely awful for a long long time in the USofA.

I do agree with that housing article about the need to change zoning laws, which could make a big difference.

Like how?

  Handing out money to those in need helps the problem on one side, but breaking down the zoning barriers on the other is important as well. Biden picks up a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. James Clyburn to require localities that benefit from Community Development Block Grants or Surface Transportation Block Grants to develop plans to change zoning rules that block development of more housing types.

While expanding vouchers is a straightforward liberal pitch, changing exclusionary zoning involves more complicated politics. Many of the most exclusionary places in America are affluent inner-ring suburbs of big coastal cities — places that these days send Democrats to Congress, but that presumably don’t want to be made to change their zoning rules. The potential good news is that, conceptually at least, liberalizing regulation is something Republicans might support.

Emily Hamilton, an urban policy scholar at the libertarian Mercatus institute, does caution that “the surface transportation part would lose a lot of free market people” because it smacks of federal coercion to some degree, but adds she thinks it’s justified “given that the federal government has done so much to encourage exclusionary zoning through transportation spending and otherwise.”   

https://www.vox.com/2020/7/9/21316912/joe-biden-housing-plan-section-8

[bankshot1]

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/506878-romney-blasts-trumps-commutation-for-roger-stone-unprecedented-historic


"Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president," Romney tweeted Saturday morning.

after consulting with Mitich McConnell Susan Collins was heard to have said she was deeply concerned.

She may wring her hands in consternation.

[barton]

I apologize to everyone in my state and the states I am travelling to for gathering with my family last weekend.

Why?   If you wear a mask to contain your own aerosol droplets, maintain social distance,  and wash your hands after touching public surfaces,  you should minimize any chance of spreading the virus.   The only circumstance where an apology (fake or otherwise) would be merited would be if you had close contact at your gathering with someone at high risk of being infectious or who had symptoms within the past two weeks and was therefore still potentially shedding viruses.   If not,  the basic measures I described should be reasonable. 

[barton]

Collins may have experienced doubts, and is now wearing a mask so as to keep from spreading them to others.

[Echo4]

One thing I haven't mentioned enough is that China had a coordinated national response.  Provinces and cities were allowed to make their lockdowns and regulations tighter if desired, but they were mandated to lockdown and take precautions. 

It is admittedly easier to have a national response when there is effectively one national party that runs the country, top to bottom, with no pretensions of "states' rights" with the exceptions of Hong Kong and arguably Taiwan. It still required somebody to make incisive decisions, but that, too, is more likely when the leader is not purely capricious and self-serving.

There are few world leaders as feckless as Donald Trump, nor as vulnerable to ego-driven concerns. There are a bunch who are as prone to self-aggrandizement and who see themselves as being "in charge" of their countries. Most of them are right, in ways that he is not. (This is not, generally speaking, a good thing for their countries, but it does mean that when they follow the right ideas, the chances of those ideas getting implemented jumps.) Trump is neither "in charge" of the country nor capable of (or willing to) wield the aspects of law that would allow greater federal governmental control of things, abdicating that position, while trying to seize it in less effective (or legal) ways at other times.

He neither took enough or gave up enough authority, neither doing his job nor allowing others to do theirs, all while using his unique position and voice to mislead the public (and his party members) and hamper the efforts of everybody else in his government through fickle orders and demands of loyalty.

[Echo4]

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/506878-romney-blasts-trumps-commutation-for-roger-stone-unprecedented-historic


"Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president," Romney tweeted Saturday morning.

after consulting with Mitich McConnell Susan Collins was heard to have said she was deeply concerned.

She may wring her hands in consternation.

She is very consternated, I am sure.

With luck (and money and hard work), she will be replaced in November, so that in January she will no longer have to constern herself with such issues.

[Echo4]

Collins may have experienced doubts, and is now wearing a mask so as to keep from spreading them to others.

[bankshot1]

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/506878-romney-blasts-trumps-commutation-for-roger-stone-unprecedented-historic


"Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president," Romney tweeted Saturday morning.

after consulting with Mitich McConnell Susan Collins was heard to have said she was deeply concerned.

She may wring her hands in consternation.

She is very consternated, I am sure.

With luck (and money and hard work), she will be replaced in November, so that in January she will no longer have to constern herself with such issues.

Last I checked it was a close, with Gideon holding about a 3% point edge. 45-42-ish, so still a toss-up w/the margin of error.

[Echo4]

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/07/11/why-fauci-not-on-tv-ebof-vpx-new.cnn/video/playlists/coronavirus/

Fauci has not been allowed to brief the president in two months. They haven't even talked at all since June 2nd. And he is not being allowed on television.

This is an example of what I mean. The pettiness that I have complained of before has national and global implications, no matter how much Kid insists that Trump has done a good job and Ward refuses to even discuss it.

[Echo4]

Stone, of course, explained that he was hoping for a pardon or some clemency, because "I could have turned on the president, but I didn't."

I'm pretty sure that is about as clear a declaration that there is guilt as one could ask for - and the president's then granting that clemency pretty much underscores it.

A loyal consigliere could not have asked for much better.

[REDSTATEWARD]

I'm just talking Black people who were treated uniquely awful for a long long time in the USofA.

I do agree with that housing article about the need to change zoning laws, which could make a big difference.

Like how?

  Handing out money to those in need helps the problem on one side, but breaking down the zoning barriers on the other is important as well. Biden picks up a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. James Clyburn to require localities that benefit from Community Development Block Grants or Surface Transportation Block Grants to develop plans to change zoning rules that block development of more housing types.

  Failed under LBJ (big time) in the 60’s.

[REDSTATEWARD]

Stone, of course, explained that he was hoping for a pardon or some clemency, because "I could have turned on the president, but I didn't."

I'm pretty sure that is about as clear a declaration that there is guilt as one could ask for - and the president's then granting that clemency pretty much underscores it.

A loyal consigliere could not have asked for much better.

This from a guy who wants no bail for felons.

[bankshot1]

Stone was very fortunate, he could have ended up in the NJ swamps.

Leave the gun take the cannoli.

[Echo4]

I'm just talking Black people who were treated uniquely awful for a long long time in the USofA.

I do agree with that housing article about the need to change zoning laws, which could make a big difference.

Like how?

  Handing out money to those in need helps the problem on one side, but breaking down the zoning barriers on the other is important as well. Biden picks up a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. James Clyburn to require localities that benefit from Community Development Block Grants or Surface Transportation Block Grants to develop plans to change zoning rules that block development of more housing types.

  Failed under LBJ (big time) in the 60’s.

The Model Cities program and various urban renewal programs were mostly busts or worst. They failed to counter the problems in most places while totally displacing and destroying functioning neighborhoods in other places.

But what is proposed doesn't align with what the Johnson administration tried, Ward, so your indictment of it is off base. That doesn't mean that the new proposals will work - it is certainly possible to find new ways to screw things up! But you sure can't claim (honestly) that what this administration has done for the cities has been effective.

Leaving it alone would be wrong. I would prefer that they find a couple areas to try things in, with community buy-in, rather than going everywhere at once, but this all in approach is a byproduct of our system of government and the animosity between parties such that if something is working that one party has started the other party tries to tear it down or block it. (I am sure the Democrats must have done that to some effective GOP program, but I cannot think of any at the moment.)