Overton's Window

Joseph P. Overton, who came up the Overton Window, died in a plane crash in 2003. 

His window is the range of ideas most voters are willing to consider. Ideas outside the window count for nothing in politics. For example, in 1980 most voters were not open to talk of socialism. 

The window shifts over time. Reform movements have to move the window to the left or right to make progress--to end a Gilded Age.  

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an avowed democratic socialist, won 22 primaries in the last Presidential contest. The Overton window shifted to include the arguments of Sanders, Trump and Warren. Voters became willing to consider their ideas. 

In the 2018 election several Muslims were elected to Congress. AOC won in New York. Ideas unthinkable in 1990 are now inside the window. The Republican oligarchs are cowed. Democratic oligarchs are suddenly backing left-leaning Elizabeth Warren (against Sanders), a sign that the window has moved quite a bit; panic has reached the editorial board of the New York Times. 

Who Is Ahead

It's obvious (for now) that the Democratic centrists, including Obama and the Times, are giving up on Biden. The centrists have been endorsing Warren, although she is somewhat to their left. Mainly their goal is to block Bernie Sanders. They see Warren as their best chance. 

I'm voting for Sanders because he will attempt to bring back the New Deal social democracy. But I will vote for Warren if she wins the nomination.

Can Warren unite the party? In the event she is nominated, the Clintons, Obamas and Sanders will support her, but some of Sander's voters  are angry with Warren. And some

Warren voters are angry with Sanders.

Warren's attempt to portray Sanders as anti-women didn't convince many, given Sanders' very long history on women's issues, but it did stir things up. The Democrats cannot afford factionalism. To win they must unite people of color, Sanders voters, Warren voters, Hillary supporters, etc. Keep things cool.

Demand in America

Suppose you live in an economy with 1,000 workers with 1,000 jobs. Five immigrants enter your economy each year (the usual immigration rate). According to the law of supply and demand, that means that five people will lose their jobs or maybe the bosses will pay each worker less as they compete for scarcer jobs. But in most cases nothing like that happens. Instead there are now 1005 workers in 1005 jobs. Why?

There are many reasons (economists are still studying and analyzing data), but perhaps the main reason is that the five new workers need rooms, clothing, meals, entertainment, etc. They buy things. The growing economic system requires an additional clerk or carpenter . The American carpenter who grew up in the United States might get promoted to foreman, because he knows the language and system better than the immigrants who joined his crew.

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Mitch

According to Conan, Mitch McConnell's parents decided, when he was born, to leave his neck uncircumcised.

Denial

The strangest thing about the current era is that one of our major political parties has almost completely divorced itself from reality, facts, consequences, truth, etc. 

We aren't alone in this folly. Great Britain seems intent on Brexiting itself into Shrimpy England. Europe is roiled by racist fears of immigrants, although only one-half of one percent of Europe is made up of newcomers each year. 

Most immigrants enter Europe because they have been been hired by job recruiters. 

Still, no one is as dangerously anti-reality as our Republicans and their willingness to make the planet uninhabitable. Why?  My guess is that we went astray at the start, when we proclaimed ourselves a democracy, created a white male oligarchy and made slavery legal. That required an mountainous denial of reality. We added another denial, a belief that each of us will never die, in which case we have eternity in which to regret our blunders.

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Royce Hall

Sometime around 1965 I was walking near Royce Hall at UCLA (where I was studying for a teaching degree), and I came across MLK talking to a group of students. He wasn't at the height of his fame yet, but he was recognizable. I stopped and joined the other students.

That was 55 years ago. I don't remember what MLK said. I was unfamiliar with his style--I wasn't from the South or religious or black. But I remember I once stood a few feet away from the greatest American of my lifetime.

CNN Takes a Side

The CNN performance at the last Democratic debate, designed to turn women against Bernie 
Sanders, was blatantly biased in ways that I have not seen CNN use before. Matt Taibbi nailed it in the article below. It's a long piece, so I have provided only the opening. The review gets worse as it continues. If interested you can search for the full review on the 'net.

The basic problem with CNN is that they push their ideology too hard. (Centrism is an ideology.)

CNN is no longer on my viewing list. 

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CNN's Debate Performance Was Villainous and Shameful

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

16 January 20

The 24-hour network combines a naked political hit with a cynical ploy for ratings

NN debate moderator Abby Phillip asked Bernie Sanders in the Tuesday debate in Des Moines:

“CNN reported yesterday — and Senator Sanders, Senator Warren confirmed in a statement — that, in 2018, you told her you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?”

Not “did you say that,” but “why did you say that?”

Sanders denied it, then listed the many reasons the story makes no sense: He urged Warren herself to run in 2016, campaigned for a female candidate who won the popular vote by 3 million votes, and has been saying the opposite in public for decades. “There’s a video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States,” he said.

Phillip asked him to clarify: He never said it? “That is correct,” Sanders said. Phillip turned to Warren and deadpanned: “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”

That “when” was as transparent a media “fuck you” as we’ve seen in a presidential debate. It evoked memories of another infamous CNN ambush, when Bernard Shaw in 1988 crotch-kicked Mike Dukakis with a question about whether he’d favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife, Kitty.

This time, the whole network tossed the mud. Over a 24-hour period before, during, and after the debate, CNN bid farewell to what remained of its reputation as a nonpolitical actor via a remarkable stretch of factually dubious reporting, bent commentary, and heavy-handed messaging.

Little Known Fact

Each year in the European Union newcomers make up about one-half of one percent of the total population. Many of the newcomers are responding to job offers. Not a problem--but politicians make it a crisis driven by racist alarmism.

People nearly always want to live in their own country.  

A Somali poet, Warson Shire, wrote:


no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.


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People in Water

Thanks to my brother, I have been reading about people in water.

When you dive down more than 40 feet, the weight of the water above you starts to push you deeper. You can't float up. You have to swim up.

The longest anyone has held his or her breath is over eleven minutes. That was done under water. In the water, the way your body uses oxygen changes. Remember, we evolved from a water creature. We haven't lost that adaptation completely. 

The deepest free dive (on one gulp of air) is over 700 feet.  Free divers seldom get the bends because they do not take in oxygen while they're in the water. Also, free diving is our second-most dangerous sport. Champions drown. (If you drown, your dive does not count.) 


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Idiots in Public Office

Republican Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen recently  introduced a bill to  to remove the word “homosexuality” from public school teaching materials. 

In 2015 she wanted to require all citizens of Arizona to attend church.

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Ibram Kendi

Ibram Kendi is a history professor at American University whose books on racism have brought some fresh ideas to how we behave. 

Like everyone reading this, I try not to be racist, but at times I've failed. Kendi points out that this experience is probably inevitable. He's had it himself.

Many racist positions are subtle (until someone analyzes them) and socially widespread. For example, when you say that black men can jump and white men can't, you are repeating a claim that goes back to the justifications of slavery. The ancient claim was that black men were not  smart or creative, but in compensation God made them magnificent animals. 

When I realize that I have failed (I've said or done something racist), I don't want to admit it. To be called a racist is an insult even to committed racists like Donald tRump.

Kendi would probably tell me to try again to understand the breadth of racism, including my own racism, and then to do something antiracist. Take an action.  I can do that.  

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Trump v. Putin

Comparing Putin and tRump is unfair. Yes, both have ordered underlings to go to foreign nations and murder people they consider enemies. But Putin commits these murders carefully, usually killing one specific person sitting on a park bench. tRump bombs and kills everyone in the park, from babies to chickadees.

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War

One of the rules of international relations is that you do not assassinate the leaders of other countries. It's too easy. Putin, famous for assassinations, did not attack Obama or vice versa. In World War Two, we did not assassinate Hitler (in part because strategists regarded his crazed leadership as a major contributor to his own defeat). 

The United States could have assassinated Gen. Soleimani at any point, but no prior administration was unhinged enough to do it. tRump, however, became desperate to divert attention from his impeachment. He ordered Soleimani killed. tRump would rather see 100,000 people die than live through a bad news cycle.

Today we will be hearing tRump's fake justifications. The problem is that tRump is notoriously an all-day liar. He has no credibility. He will pretend to rely on analyses by our intelligence institutions, which he has spent three years denouncing as corrupt and incompetent. He will lie and lie. And we may be at war without a plan, just reactions from an oval-office dipshit.

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