former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News who leaked the Steele Dossier argues that shouldn't have been done and journalists should reprise their role as gatekeepers of information, lest discourse turn into a mess of unsubstantiated mudslinging, which is what it was in 2016.
"In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience... the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience. I’d prefer to put my faith in Mr. Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms’ product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them."

almost any election scenario this fall is likely to lead to popular protests on a scale we have not seen this century

“What we need is a new social contract that will enable us to get past extreme polarization to find consensus, tip the shares of economic growth back toward workers and improve government funding for public health, education and infrastructure,” Goldstone and Turchin wrote in their Berggruen Institute article.

Can that really happen in today’s combat zone of weaponized social media, in which even modest proposals to ratchet back inequality are framed as “communism”?

It’s a sign of how far we’ve fallen that the president of the United States can accuse his predecessor of “treason” based on pure fictions, and his campaign can suggest that his challenger’s candidacy is illegitimate, only to see it largely ignored as typical conduct on his part.

To be clear, the “Obamagate” ploy will almost certainly fail. According to Axios, Attorney General William P. Barr will likely not release a “report” on his “review” of the origins of the Russia investigation by Election Day. You just can’t find good corrupt co-conspiratorial help these days, apparently.

Michigan lawmaker: “My fear is real that we are creating an environment that is a powder keg, and I don’t want to see citizens of all stripes getting hurt.”

Lynn said he was frustrated after last week’s protests when he saw black Americans sharing comments that they would never be allowed to carry guns in the capitol and scream into the faces of police officers.

"There is no reason to customize the case against her nomination to the tastes of moderate Republican senators. Instead, Democrats’ intended audience must be that idiosyncratic, endangered species of American we call “swing voters.” And that means focusing on policy, not personality."

Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean at the Emory School of Medicine, told POLITICO the CDC guidelines do not make sense because individuals who have been in close contact with a confirmed case of Covid-19 for at least 15 minutes could potentially be infected and should be tested.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo slammed the change as “political propaganda.” Officials in several other states, including California, Connecticut and Washington, said Wednesday that they would not alter their testing approach to match the new CDC guidelines.

"Suggesting that people without symptoms, who have known exposure to COVID-positive individuals, do not need testing is a recipe for community spread and more spikes in coronavirus," American Medical Association President Susan Bailey said.

The abrupt — and unannounced — changes have already intensified scrutiny of the CDC's independence, and the administration's broader coronavirus response ahead of the November election.

"The President of the United States is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon, cutting a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely during the most catastrophic public health crisis in over 100 years," Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for Joe Biden's campaign, said in a statement reacting to Trump's comments.

The Associated Press reported in May that CNP Action discussed recruiting doctors who were willing to push narratives about reopening the economy before safety benchmarks were met in a May 11 phone call.

Democrats went for a soundbite that still somehow over-estimated the intelligence of the American public, while still missing the entire meal

"Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security. I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.

These and innumerable other similar conversations with Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency. Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different."

it's almost like having a racist tyrant-wannabe in power matters

"According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."

also someone with a "reflex to try to talk his way out of anything, even a public-health crisis"

"The NSC biosecurity team functioned exactly as it was supposed to. It was the chair behind the Resolute desk that was empty."

policy of the world's superpower is based in narcissism and weakness

"Most important of all, will Trump’s current China pose last beyond election day? The Trump presidency is not grounded in philosophy, grand strategy or policy. It is grounded in Trump. That is something to think about for those, especially China realists, who believe they know what he will do in a second term."

"The lament one reads repeatedly is that they were "unfairly" forced to fund retirement benefits -- though what we're really talking about is retiree medical benefits which the Post Office neither prefunded nor accounted for at the time of benefit accrual, until the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. As reported in The Week in 2018, in an article the title of which ("How George Bush broke the Post Office") makes clear the author's point of view:"

if there's no chance of rescinding these benefits, and the USPS is backstopped by the Treasury, there should be no need to fully pre-fund these liabilities.

"Now, one might point to the private-sector practice of leaving retiree medical liabilities unfunded as justification for doing the same here, so that they sit as an expense item and a balance-sheet liability but don't require any cashflow, but, at the same time, a private-sector company can justify its lack of funding because they can eliminate these benefits at any time; can the Post Office realistically do the same?"

unnecessarily harsh in the execution due to short phase-in period, and additional restriction to invest only in US Treasuries.

"But all this being said, why do I say that Ocasio-Cortez is only "mostly" rather than "wholly" wrong in her statement? Based on private-sector precedents, the 10 year requirement for the plan to fund its retiree liabilities was unusually harsh. In the original 1974 ERISA legislation, plans were given 40 years to fully fund plans that had previously been pay-as-you-go, and 30 years to fund plan enhancements."

"In addition, the retiree medical fund is required to invest exclusively in U.S. Treasuries (see the Postal Service 10-K, page 35-36), and, as a result, the discount rate used in the valuation is considerably lower than a private-sector plan would be obliged to use, in the latter case based on high-quality corporate bonds."

I agree it's difficult to assign malice. but with the modern republican party, it's been borne out that even benign ideas like "addressing election security" are underpinned by malice (to lower voter turnout, in this case). if something smells of malice, what are the odds it isn't?

He'll throw a shit fit to protect 30,000 coal jobs but could give a fuck about 500,000 USPS employees.

More than that, the post office is an enemy because they would facilitate absentee and mail-in voting.

This is exactly it.

The GOP want the outbreak to last until November or at least cause another flair up at that time. Wisconsin was their test case. They want it so only the absolute crazies that have words painted all over their cars about Jesus will vote. Sure, you can vote...if you don't mind lining up 2 days before in only 52 polling stations across the whole country.

Republicans aren't fucking around any more. The fake democracy is over. They are cashing out and preparing for permanent dictatorship run by them.

There were only 5 polling stations in Milwaukee out of the usual 180. 5. Out of 180. There were lines literally over a mile long. Some of my friends waited for hours. I really hope that Jill gets that SC win. Wisconsin needs that right now.

Reagan literally rebuilt the Republican party in his image, I mean shit he literally helped build the right wing media infrastructure or at least early perfected the Rush Limbaugh-esque radio programming in the early 70s.

Reagan's presidential legacy above all else should be the"Unitary Executive" theory

, Ed Meese the AG under Reagan was aided in writing theory up by several Alex P. Keaton - young conservative movement type characters, such as Bill Barr, wrote up the theory that's essentially answered the Nixonian question of "whatever the president does isn't illegal.

The UET has opened the door for all proceeding administrations since Reagan to basically have unchecked power and namely most harmfully used by the Bush and Trump administrations. I think that the rise of the UET can be the key to understanding the sixth party system
that we are currently operating in.

I blame Newt.

The Man Who Broke Politics (Newt Gingrich)- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/

But few figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise. During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.

And his Padawan?

Pundits, aghast at the brazenness of the strategy, predicted backlash from voters—but few seemed to notice. Even some Republicans were surprised by what they were getting away with. Bill Kristol, then a GOP strategist, marveled at the success of his party’s “principled obstructionism.” An up-and-coming senator named Mitch McConnell was quoted crowing that opposing the Democrats’ agenda “gives gridlock a good name.” When the 103rd Congress

adjourned in October, The Washington Post declared it “perhaps the worst Congress” in 50 years.

"our democracy is a democracy in name only"

likelihood of policy passing insensitive to public support, but very sensitive to support by economic elites and interest groups

He got to go on stage in the debates and attack Sanders and Warren. We don’t know if that boosted Biden, but it likely didn’t hurt him. With Biden now in a much stronger position than when Bloomberg entered the race, you could argue that Bloomberg provided what he and other more center-left figures wanted — to steer the race towards a more moderate nominee.

He hired people in numerous states for his presidential campaign, and his employees were reportedly told that they would have jobs through November. It’s not clear if Bloomberg will end up retaining these staffers for some kind of operation to boost Biden against Sanders and Warren in the primary, have his team start focusing now on the general election against Trump or simply wind down his apparatus. But I expect him to stay out of the primary and focus on Trump.

A new poll finds that about only one in 10 registered voters want the equivalent of Medicare for all if it means abolishing private health insurance plans.

All of the candidates are proposing big improvements to healthcare — but experts are critical of their plans to pay for it.