The schisms in the Michigan GOP

In Sri Lankan politics, one of the tendencies was for parties to splinter and become increasingly fragmented. On the right end of the spectrum, the parties tended to split due to factions centered around individuals while on the left they tended to split along ideological lines, as factions argued that the party had failed some purity test on one or more issues. Once started on this road, further splintering occurred along new ideological fault lines, until there were many tiny leftwing parties that no longer had much influence on politics but engaged in squabbles among themselves. That left an opening for more extreme parties to fill the vacuum.

I was reminded of the latter when reading Andy Kroll’s deep dive for ProPublica into what is going on in Michigan, one of the key states that both Biden and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) seek to win. It is a fascinating read for those who like to see how Republican politics plays out at the local level, with splintering occurring repeatedly. It is also worth following closely considering how important a role that state plays.
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Rishi Sunak’s election campaign gets off to a soggy start

The British prime minister announced that parliament will be dissolved next week and elections for a new parliament will be held on July 4th. This came as a bit of a surprise since it had been expected that he would hold off until later this year because his party is polling poorly at the moment and it was felt that more time was needed for things to improve.

As is the practice in the UK when the prime minister makes a major announcement like this, a small podium was placed outside his residence in Downing Street for him to speak. This is a quaint custom but risky in a country notorious for its rainy weather and while he was speaking there was a heavy downpour that soaked him and everyone present who did not have an umbrella. Added to that was the loud presence of perennial troller Stephen Bray who blasted out loud music from his portable device. When Boris Johnson announced his resignation, Bray blasted out Yakety Sax. Such things tend to take away from the gravitas of the situation.

Conservatives have been in power for 14 consecutive years and no doubt Labour is hoping to sweep them out, and even the Liberal Democrats are hoping to make gains at their expense.

The nice thing about UK election campaigns is that they are short, unlike in the US where they are pretty much a permanent feature of the political landscape.

As expected, Trump chickens out of testifying

Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) said that he wanted to testify at his trial but that the gag order prevented him from doing so. That was false, of course, and after the judge told him so, he said that he would testify but few believed he would have the guts to open himself up to cross-examination.

Sure enough, the defense rested their case today without him testifying. The judge scheduled closing arguments for the coming Tuesday after which the case goes to the jury.

It will be interesting to see if SSAT gives any reason for not testifying.

A big legal win for consumers

Before she became a Massachusetts US senator and while she was still an academic, Elizabeth Warren proposed the creation of a watchdog government agency that would look after the interests of consumers when it came to financial matters. That agency, known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, became a reality in 2010 during the Obama administration in the teeth of fierce opposition from business interest and the Republican party.

The CFPB was meant to ensure that people would be treated fairly by “banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, and other financial companies”. In order to ensure greater independence, the legislation creating the CFPB required that it be funded through the Federal Reserve and not through annual Congressional appropriations, where it could be eliminated during the budgetary process.
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More evidence that Rudy Giuliani is an idiot

A grand jury in Arizona recommended indictments against Rudy Giuliani and 17 other people for their involvement in the fake electors scheme they concocted to try and overturn the 2020 election.

Among the defendants in the Arizona case are 11 Arizona Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Trump won in Arizona in the 2020 presidential election — including a former state GOP chair, a 2022 US Senate candidate and two sitting state lawmakers. The other defendants are Mike Roman, who was Trump’s director of election day operations, and four attorneys accused of organizing an attempt to use fake documents to persuade Congress not to certify Biden’s victory: John Eastman, Christina Bobb, Boris Epshteyn and Jenna Ellis.

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Senator Robert Menendez must be really stupid

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart looks at the corruption trial of New Jersey senator Robert Menendez and his wife Nadine on charges that in his capacity as a senator, he did favors for individuals in exchange for bribes. Officials who raised their home found gold bars and stacks of cash all over the place.

As Stewart says, this shows that Menendez is kind of stupid to indulge in this kind of cartoonish corruption when he could learn from his colleagues in Congress how to make much more money such as using their access to inside information to make highly profitable stock trades with no risk of being arrested.

What political news reports should contain – but often do not

News reporters are supposed to use as a maxim that their articles provide answers to five questions: who, what, when, where, and why. But very often, they short-change the first four and go straight to the ‘why’ question, instead of first telling us the first four and letting us form our own opinions.

Some of the irritants are:

  1. In talking about upcoming elections, not giving the exact date but saying things like ‘next month’ or ‘three weeks from now’.
  2. In reporting election results, not giving us the actual votes or the percentages of at least the main candidates but instead just giving us the margin of victory or, even worse, using words such as ‘won easily’ or ‘won narrowly’ and similar formulations.
  3. In opinion polls, not giving us the numbers in favor of the candidates or positions but instead just telling us who or what is ahead. They also often omit important information as to whether the people polled were all citizens or registered voters or likely voters, and what the sample size (or margin of uncertainty) was.
  4. In economic news, they report in general terms, such as that ‘inflation has increased’ rather than telling us what the actual change was and whether it was year over year, or month over month, and what measure was used.
  5. When there is a vote in Congress in either body, they do not give the actual votes in favor or against the motion and the way that the parties split on it.
  6. In major legal decisions (say at the Supreme Court or Appeals Court levels where the result is by a panel of judges), not giving the votes in support of the majority and minority opinions and the names of the justices who voted on either side. Instead, they talk of how the ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ voted and only give names when there are unexpected alliances. They should also provide links to the actual opinions, but almost never do.

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Biden-Trump debates arranged

In a surprise development yesterday, Joe Biden and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) have agreed to two debates, one on June 27 hosted by CNN and the other on September 10 hosted by ABC. Both will start at 9:00 pm (ET). I say ‘surprise’ not because I did not think it would happen but because they came together so quickly, when usually these negotiations are quite protracted over all manner of details, such as who will host, the moderators, the venues, the format, and so on.

There will be no audience at the debates. This is a good thing. Audience reaction is very distracting. To take part, a candidate must get at least 15% in four national polls, a bar that is high enough to likely rule out third party and independent candidates.

SSAT’s acceptance of CNN and ABC as hosts signals a capitulation on his part since he has constantly whined about how they are biased against him. He must think that he will be so good in the debates, or is so desperate, that he can accept any terms.
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UCLA counter-protestors revealed to be neo-Nazis

The campus protests against the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza were largely peaceful, with much of the violence occurring due to heavy-handed and brutal acts by the police, at the instigation of university administrators.

However, there was one highly publicized fracas on the UCLA campus when masked counter-protestors arrived on the scene and attacked the demonstrators.

Many witnesses to the 30 April melee observed that the small group of assailants – many of them masked – did not appear to be students. More than 30 people were injured, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair). Authorities are still working to identify the perpetrators, and have not made any arrests.

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