Summations Only

Maybe I missed part of the conversation, but I don't think RAZD is for illegal immigration. I think you'd be hard put to find anyone in favor of illegal immigration.But speaking just for myself but also as a human being with compassion and empathy, I believe it is wrong to go all hardass on people who came to this country years ago to build a better life for themselves. An immigration system that makes it impossible for desperate people to immigrate doesn't remove their desperation, and so they will come in illegally. Looked at this way casts the blame on us for their illegal status, not them.Also speaking just for myself, but I know many others think the same, I think our immigration system has long been in need of broad reform. Naturally there should be annual ceilings, but waiting periods that can range beyond 10 years are absurd. And criteria should include humanitarianism, in a way that would mean that the Jews of eastern Europe of 80 years ago and the Hondurans of today would be given top priority. I won't get more detailed than that since this isn't a thread about immigration reform.--Percy

The day after the midterms President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replaced him with Sessions' former chief of staff Matthew G. Whitaker, giving him the role of acting Attorney General.Whitaker has a shady background, as related here: Before he led the Justice Department, Matthew G. Whitaker promoted company accused of deceiving clients. In his role on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing, a company eventually shut down by the FTC as a scam that bilked customers under the guise of promising to promote their patent ideas, he acted as a strongman by intimidating unsatisfied customers. Key excerpts:

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World Patent Marketing founded by Miami businessman Scott J. Cooper, who had donated $2,600 to Whitaker’s Senate campaign prominently highlighted Whitaker’s rsum as a former U.S. attorney, which helped lend the company credibility.

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But Whitaker seems to have been more than a figurehead. He spoke about inventions of the company’s clients in online videos including a special hot-tub seat for people with mobility issues. He also penned a response to at least one complaint writing a threatening email in which he cited his role as a former U.S. attorney, according to court filings.
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There was no evidence that Whitaker knew company salespeople were making false promises to inventors, court receiver Jonathan Perlman said in an interview.
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Whitaker was paid at least $10,000 by the company, according to court filings. [While the article makes no comments about any other compensation, there can be little doubt that Whitaker must have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, otherwise his work for the company makes no sense.]
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According to the FTC, however, the company falsely promised clients it would patent and market their ideas in exchange for hefty fees and then pocketed the money.
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For the last three years, Defendants have operated an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars, the agency alleged in a recently unsealed court filing. In truth and in fact, Defendants fail to fulfill almost every promise they make to consumers.
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Many people ended up in debt or lost their life savings, according to the FTC.
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Mason [Penn Mason, a former customer] said he believes that paid advisory board members like Whitaker essentially pocketed money from unsuspecting victims.
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When investors began to complain that they had paid the company large sums with little to show for it, they were threatened, according to interviews and court documents.
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Mason said that after he began to complain, he got a call from Cooper, the CEO, who threatened to sue him for slander. He really scared me, Mason said. You feel like you’re dealing with all these bigwigs.

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The Miami New Times, which published in an in-depth investigation of the company last year, reported that Cooper would sometimes tell people who had posted negative reviews of the company that he had security with specialized training in the Israeli martial art Krav Maga.

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In an August 2015 email included in court documents, Whitaker wrote to a complainant who threatened to go to the Better Business Bureau, I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you. He noted he was a former U.S. attorney. [While the article makes no comment about any other threats by Whitaker against unsatisfied customers, there can be little doubt that this was neither the first nor the last. This is just that the only one reported by customers so far.]
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As he was advising World Patent Marketing, Whitaker ran a conservative watchdog group called the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust. The group lodged numerous ethics complaints and calls for investigations, targeting Hillary Clinton and Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, as well as some Republicans.
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On its website, FACT lists a downtown Washington address. But it is one of some 200 virtual members who use a K Street location to claim a presence in the nation’s capital, according to Brian Bullock, assistant general manager of Carr Workplaces, the firm that operates the site. [In other words, FACT "bought" a Washington address that was actually just a maildrop.]
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Whitaker received $402,000 in 2016 as FACT’s president and director nearly a third of the donations the group received that year, according to its tax filings. He received $252,000 in 2015, more than half the charity’s receipts that year, tax filings show. [In other words, FACT was mostly just a scam to garner donations to give Whitaker a salary.]

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Whitaker is a Trump lackey who will do whatever Trump wants, including reining in or halting the Mueller investigation and then taking the heat for it.It is important to note that Whitaker is only *acting* Attorney General. He is expected to be replaced by a permanent appointee. Chris Christee, former governor of New Jersey, is a potential candidate. But it would be especially Trumpian if Whitaker killed the Mueller investigation and then disappeared into the sunset after being replaced by a permanent appointee.--Percy

It's the one person one vote issue, and this only works with two candidates.I like to think of the the primaries as a whittling process, weeding out the worst candidates, but also a means to introduce the candidates to the voters. Bernie had little name-recognition compared to Clinton in the early primaries. Indeed, but we can start with the Democrat primaries.Enjoy

No, he isn't. The statement was not directed at RAZD. It was in regards to tactics many on the left use as a knee jerk reaction to specific policies or opinions on illegal immigration. RAZD and I were positing ideas on how to improve things for Democrats by citing different ways of operating. Granted. The problem is that the Democrats don't offer any cohesive solution. They champion sanctuary cities and and amnesty, but they don't offer any concrete answers to the problem as a whole. As you said, we can't be unsympathetic to the plight of people. That would make us heartless. But we have to be cognizant of the fact that endorsing policies that encourage illegal immigration makes us appear as though we think the rules shouldn't apply.The USA and most western nations have a very strong sense of the rule of law. I won't discount that racists also use illegal immigration as a way to push their moronic agenda. But the counter to that should not be 'just ignore the rules and we will let you in anyway'. That causes liberals to lose credibility in the eyes of the American people and gives ammunition to the radical racists.I've said before that one policy that Democrats should be pushing is for ending the idiotic drug war. There is a direct correlation between our drug war and the fact that drug cartels and gangs have essentially taken over many of these countries, turning them into war zones. If the Democrats take more time explaining that notion to people and indicate that ending the drug war will likely curb illegal immigration, that will likely resonate with voters.One sidebar to mention: we also have to consider the broader picture when considering how we take in refugees. Note that the countries they are leaving are in bad shape, but if they continue to hemorrhage good people who flee to other countries, they will continue their downward spiral. That makes things infinitely worse for those that remain in the country. While we need a policy of empathy for those who seek refuge, I am all for policies of helping these countries get back to normality.

So if amnesty offered to illegals who have been here for many years is encouraging illegal immigration, and if deporting them blindly ignores our own role in encouraging their illegal entry, then what is the answer. You propose one here: I agree they should (and so should the Republicans), but given that the Democrats don't hold the Senate, don't hold the presidency, don't have a sympathetic Supreme Court, don't have a majority of governorships, and don't have a majority of state legislatures, it is unlikely to have any effect unless you somehow see it as one facet of a pathway back to having a meaningful role in governing the nation. I understand that you do see it that way because you next say: But how do we end the drug war? What's the strategy? I've said the same thing. Unfortunately Trump wants to punish countries that contribute to illegal immigration, which will only make things worse, at which time he'll again say what he already says a lot: "Not my fault."--Percy

I don't have a problem with amnesty per se. But what I propose is not a blanket policy of any sorts and to tackle amnesty on a case by case basis. Simply offering amnesty wholesale is just going to ensure that the influx of illegal immigration will increase by large amounts. That is what happened in Europe in 2015 when Merkel just blindly said anyone could come in. And with the open border policy of the Eurozone, it caused a massive influx and huge pressures on countries like Greece and Italy that took the brunt of it. The end result was the massive wave of populism that they are now facing. You can only end it when you have the legislative power. My assertion is the Democrats need to campaign on that notion and explain the rationale. They can even utilize Republican philosophy against them. Make it a state's rights issue. Indicate that they want to decriminalize drugs at the federal level and give more autonomy to the states on what they want to criminalize or not. It's not a perfect solution, but it puts the Republicans in a difficult position because they are all about state's rights. And therein lies the endgame. I would like to see Trump voted out of office in the next election. My concern is the Democrats focus only on Trump himself and his antics and don't put forther any cohesive policies. My strategy would be policy based. Trump will always say something stupid or provocative. That is his nature. But by continuously being outraged, we are literally playing his game. Remember, this is a salesman and a reality TV star. By keeping the focus on him, he can easily just continue to spew nonsense and just say the Democrats are focusing too much on his antics and not on policy. He is literally baiting them daily and they continue to fall for it.What's the old adage when it comes to surfing the internet? Don't feed the trolls.

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The US just elected 9 new scientists to Congress, including an ocean expert, a nurse, and a biochemist

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2018 Midterms: New Scientists Elected to US House, SenateNow that is something I can smile about. And perhaps another idea for Democrats to consider. Being progressive isn't just about ethnic, racial or gender diversity. It's about electing non-lawyers to office. You know, the type of people whose job it is to actually analyze the data and come up with a solution? As opposed to just talking about it endlessly.

I think you're missing the point by fixating on the concept of two parties. You couldn't have two candidates from the same party in the top two spots because each party would only field one candidate. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, but he ran for the Democratic nomination because the system currently works such that you need the nomination of one of the two main parties to have a credible chance of winning. This would not be necessary in an electoral system which didn't allow all the spoils to go to a candidate with only a plurality of votes.The parties could choose their candidate however they liked, of course. In the last French Presidential election, the Republicans and the Socialists both used open primary systems modelled on the American approach to try to create a unified, popular candidate of the right and of the left. In the actual election, they finished third and fifth, respectively.I am unsure why you think an individual candidate from one party would have an advantage over five of the other (where I'm assuming by 'party' you actually mean some broad left and right blocs). The one party candidate could not win on a plurality; they could only win if most of the electorate voted for them. If the majority of the electorate prefers the one Republican to any of the five Democrats, why would one Democrat fare better?Now, what could theoretically happen with a runoff system as they use in France or Brazil would be where you have two candidates representing the right and 5 representing the left. If the two right candidates get 20% each and the five left candidates get 12% each, for example, you end up with a majority left-leaning electorate choosing between two right-wing candidates. This is a simplified idea that doesn't really happen, but it's not relevant to RAZD's proposal anyway.He wasn't arguing for a second round style of election, but for instant runoff voting. You don't need to choose between the top two. In an IRV system, the two right wing candidates cannot be elected unless those for voted for the left wing candidates prefer one of them to the other left-wing candidates. This would not be a flaw in the system, but would simply show that the left/right dichotomy I'd imposed on things is a poor reflection of the actual ideological divisions in the electorate.

According to Le Monde, when Trump met the Presidents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia last April, he opened their meeting by discussing their respective countries' responsibility for the Yugoslav wars.The three Presidents were briefly confused, before coming to the realisation that Trump had mixed up the Baltics and the Balkans.Now, it may be risible enough that Trump obviously does not do even the slightest bit of preparation before meeting foreign leaders (he criticised them for not meeting NATO defence spending requirements; while all three countries do; and for their participation in the NordStream 2 pipeline; in which none of them are participating); but his wife is from Slovenia! You'd think he'd at least know where Yugoslavia is.

CNN has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over Jim Acosta's press credentials.Named in the lawsuit are President Trump, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, the U.S. Secret Service, Secret Service director Randolph Alles, and an unnamed Secret Service agent.--Percy

Trump's recent visit to Paris puts an exclamation point on America's decline in world standing. The only world leader Trump greeted warmly was Vladimir Putin, and Trump skipped two gatherings of world leaders. A few details from The World Is Adapting to the Reality of Donald Trump as President:

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Last weekend's events in Paris offered a dramatic demonstration that "other things being equal" is not a safe assumption. The world is moving to adapt to the reality that Donald Trump is president of the United States. Our friends and allies may hope his election eventually will be reversed, and maybe they think America turned a corner with the 2018 midterm elections. But they can't count on it, so these countries must consider that America may be a different country from what they had believed.
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Trump set the NATO alliance wobbling from the day he took office, raising doubts about America's continued readiness to pay for other countries' defense. Europeans spent a year trying to make nice, but they seem to have gotten the message. American isn't a fully reliable protector anymore. Europeans do indeed have to take greater responsibility for their defense -- and depend less on a U.S.-led NATO. What Trump has done is folly, in my view, but it's precisely what he wanted.

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The world is moving on, in other ways, from Trump's "America First" idea of U.S. power. Macron announced Monday the "Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace." The document proposed a basic code of conduct to prevent meddling in elections and other malicious hacking. It was backed by more than 50 countries, 90 nonprofits and 130 private companies, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and IBM. Absent from the list was the U.S. -- along with Russia, China, Iran and Israel. Nice: The big five of cyberwar.
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As Trump's America retreats from global diplomatic engagements, other opportunistic countries are stepping forward. The most obvious example is Russia. President Vladimir Putin may hold a weak hand, but he's in the game. Russia talks with everyone: Israel and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the Taliban and the Afghan government. Putin may be a bullyboy, but he's wearing a diplomat's striped pants -- sponsoring negotiations on Syria, Afghanistan and other issues. Once upon a time, America owned this role of global broker, but not anymore.

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The greatest beneficiary of Trump's retreat is China, which openly proclaims its desire to challenge U.S. global primacy. A senior Australian official told me this week that everywhere Australia looks in Asia, it sees China seeking to find potential bases for its increasingly powerful military. Australia is one of the countries that has relied upon American power, and officials still hope that's a good bet. But looking at Trump, they have to wonder.
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America suffered a political hiccup in 2016, electing a man who was manifestly unprepared to be president. Most of the world hopes we'll find our balance again, but in the meantime, they must consider making other arrangements.

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Sorry for the lengthy excerpts, but what it's saying is that Trump has upset the global world order of American dominance in cultural, economic and military power, and we may never see its like again. We had our time as the central star on the world stage, but Trump has exited, stage right.--Percy

The US Constitution grants the presidency to the winner of the Electoral College. The winner does not require a majority, only a plurality. Therefore, you could have a situation where a single conservative candidate could get 20% of the Electoral College and beat out left leaning candidates who get 16% of the vote each.It comes down to Game Theory. In the infamous bar room scene in "A Beautiful Mind", Nash explains how if they all go after the same girl they will all lose out. However, they can ban together and help one person get the girl. The same happens in politics. If you compete with each other for the same electorate then you will all lose. However, if you ban together and field one candidate then you can get all of the votes that agree with that platform.This is why there are two major political parties in the US. It would take a serious overhaul of the US Constitution to change anything. People are very reticent to change the US Constitution so they have devised strategies to work within the US Constitution.

Today's New York Times reports that Michael Avenatti has been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence.I hope that lawyer gig continues to work out for him, because his political future is dead.I'm nonetheless saddened. The Democrats need someone who can dish it out as well as Trump can, and Avenatti has the additional advantage that the things he says are true. Avenatti would have been an unlikely 2020 candidate, but it would still have been nice to have his forceful voice articulating Democrat viewpoints.--Percy

The US Constitution (as amended) requires a majority in the electoral college to be elected President.If no candidate gets a majority, then the US House of Representatives chooses the President. In that case, each state gets one vote, and a majority of the states is required to become President.In the two times that the House had to choose the President, it took a lot of votes and a lot of politics before a candidate got a majority of the states.But 48 of the fifty states award all their electoral votes to the candidate who receives a plurality of votes in that state, so the shenanigans you point out are possible.

More on the Michael Avenatti arrest on suspicion of domestic violence in today's Washington Post: Michael Avenatti arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, calls allegations ‘completely bogus’I, like probably everyone else, assumed the complainant was Avenatti's wife. They are separated and getting a divorce. But Avenatti's wife denies she filed any complaint, and says that Avenatti never exhibited a violent side during their relationship. Avenatti says he wasn't with his wife on the night in question.And Avenatti's first wife posted on social media that Avenatti was a "loving father" who has "never been abusive."And though Avenatti was arrested on "suspicion of domestic violence" (whatever that is), no charges were filed.I originally assumed that Avenatti was arrested because a woman had reported him to the police for abusing her, but no victim filed a complaint. So who filed the complaint? Who was the abused woman? Where is the name, where are the pictures of black eyes and bruises. Nobody's talking, nobody has any hard information, so who knows. That Avenatti was arrested for "suspicion of domestic violence" instead of just "domestic violence" and that no victim has been named or evidence of any sort described raises suspicions. Is it possible that someone reported Avenatti to the LAPD for abusing a woman, and for some reason the LAPD acted on it? That seems strange, but recall that police departments have called out entire swat teams based on fake 911 calls.Avenatti has already suffered from this arrest. Stormy Daniels says she will drop him as her lawyer if there's any truth to the abuse complaint, and the Vermont Democratic Party has cancelled his upcoming scheduled appearances.I've shifted from condemning Avenatti to waiting for more news.--Percy