I thought often during the latter Trump years about the contrast with Barack Obama's "stray voltage" strategy, which involved saying provocative and often flatly untrue things to prompt discussion of Obama's preferred topics for political gain.

Time once again to demonstrate that "presidents have no mandate to wield power after close elections" is a scam directed solely and entirely at Republicans. By any objective standard, Biden has less of a "mandate" than anyone in memory, but no one in the media will say that.

The "mandate" narrative is silly as a matter of constitutional law. Nowhere is it written that a president's authority is diminished if the election was close, or people who didn't vote for him think his victory was illegitimate. But that's all we heard for years after Trump won.

Of course, not a single such complaint will be leveled at Biden. No one in the political/media class will insist he has an asterisk after his name and should be prevented from exercising the full powers of office, and then some.

Biden won't have to worry about "resistance" bureaucrats sabotaging his administration from Minute One or crazy Hawaiian judges stalling his policy agenda. If anyone tries it, the media will absolutely savage them, instead of cheering them on. Their very lives would be in danger.

As a matter of politics, it's fair enough to suggest that policies should be crafted with due recognition for the feelings of the opposition, and if the election was razor-close, extra care should be taken to recognize the divided electorate.

Time once again to emphasize the differences between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism. They're often used as synonyms but they are different, although they do tend to lead to each other. Order one, and the other two are usually delivered soon enough.

Totalitarianism is best understood as the politicization of everything. Every facet of life is infused with political meaning... and subjected to political control. There is little room for privacy or individualism. Every word and deed is seen as a political action.

Totalitarianism does *not* require authoritarian government, although it usually leads to such. You can be totalitarian without having any real government power at all, enforcing your political will through mob actions and corporate power. Examples from recent history abound.

Totalitarianism is the easiest of the three deadly "isms" to slide into, because it can easily be disguised with claims of its good intentions. Totalitarians usually claim to be motivated by the Greater Good. They claim to represent the interests of sympathetic victims.

Totalitarians claim that society is unjust and must be corrected by force. Before they gain the power to become authoritarians, they often assert the right to use force outside of the law because the government is corrupt or serves the interests of their ideological enemies.

Argentina legalizing abortion offers an opportunity to reflect on the great unwritten media narrative of the past few generations: the lives of women and children got worse in so many ways after Roe v. Wade.

Media would never, ever write that narrative, of course - would never string stories together and search for a pattern that could be refined into a political point - but it's the net impact of their reporting on women's issues. Everything started getting worse in the 70s.

There is a valid "narrative" to be discerned from that ocean of bad news about women and children over the past few decades. It's not a coincidence. It's a direct result of the Big Lie pushed by the abortion lobby: that only one person is involved in the decision to give birth.

That's so obviously untrue that entire civilizations are driven mad when they are forced to accept it. It's like forcing everyone to agree that the sky is green or gravity is a myth. Cognitive dissonance inflicts far more social damage than politicians or academics want to admit.

Women and (born) children suffer after abortion becomes broadly legalized because men are erased from the picture. A lot of men - including rich and powerful men - LIKE being erased from that particular picture. Others are intimidated out of insisting they belong in it.

Is it possible to fight against totalitarian statists without ever compromising conservative "principles?" Is it better to play "fair," and constantly lose? Can you grapple with monsters without becoming a monster? That's the question at the heart of the schism on the Right.

Just as no amount of flat temperature data would dissuade the climate cult, so no amount of flat (or even negative!) data on mask effectiveness will shake the faith of the Church of Covid. Beautiful Theories cannot be disproven by mere information.

The "Covid emergency" will never be over. It will mutate and seek out new missions when this particular virus threat abates, repurposing its funding and clinging to its power. They're already talking up the "next pandemic" and how we must forever remain at DEFCON 2 to be ready.

Masks are now a visible and tangible symbol of an entire agenda. Its champions will use every means possible to force you to wear them forever, including corporate pressure, their new favorite tool. Expect commercial mask requirements to linger, especially big corporations.

True believers, meanwhile, will wear their masks with grim determination and scowl ostentatiously at everyone who refuses to join them. It's a new virtue signal that will not go away any time soon. Mask scolding is a quick, easy, heady power rush.

All the while, studies will keep rolling out that masks don't help, and might even hurt. That was fairly common medical knowledge before the pandemic began, but it was aggressively suppressed when masks became a political symbol, and a totem for people desperate to DO SOMETHING.

1/Today's @bopinion post is about Trump's taxes, and what they show about how America allocates capital.

We appear to have some big problems.

2/Trump has a bunch of businesses that lose money. Our financial system has lent him money to throw into unsuccessful golf courses, hotels, and so

3/A lot of these loans are loans that Trump hasn't even paid back yet, using loopholes in the tax system to avoid paying taxes on those unpaid debts.

Why would creditors give money to a guy who wastes the money on bad businesses and doesn't even pay them back?

4/One seemingly obvious answer is that capital is just really cheap these days. Companies are able to borrow more easily than at any time in the last few decades.

5/But this presents us with a mystery.

Why hasn't an abundance of cheap capital caused the return on financial capital to fall? Interest rates are low, but stock returns have held up strongly.

1⃣
At the moment #POTUS is sitting on a stack of #Trump cards, he's just waiting to unleash a royal flush!
He has court cases that will go to #SCOTUS and thanks to the Texas case, he's now aware how to file them properly under article 3 not 2, so SCOTUS will be forced to listen.

2⃣
#Trump now has the #DNI report. #Barr stepped down and can now be a witness, he did his job. #Durham is special counsel and can prosecute, in any state.
He’s letting civil, criminal and federal courts fail to handle the situation properly so he can use military tribunals.

3⃣
#Trump has ALL the data from the #NSA, the #Kraken supercomputer, the #Alice #supercomputer, and likely many more computers, unknown to us.
He has the dueling electors from 7 state legislatures. He has VP #Pence, as the final arbiter of which ballots to accept.

4⃣
#Trump has the #InsurrectionAct, the #NDAA, the national emergency, the 14th amendment, the 2018 executive order, the 2017 very first EO, the #Patriot Act, the #FISA warrants, the Declassification of everything, people swearing affidavits by the 1000s.

5⃣
#Trump has all the statistical data being analyzed along with the videos, emails, phone calls and bank transfer statements showing the coordination of the #coup d'etat.
He has #RICO and he has the #CrimesAgainstHumanity videos. #Wikileaks just dropped extensive information

24 January 20210 #MAGAanalysisisMini

"In the month leading up to the riot, Mr. Trump was devising his own plan: He and a Justice Department official plotted to oust the acting attorney general to try to advance baseless election claims, interviews showed...

So you’d think that under Trump there would’ve been more successful filibusters than ever given Democratic opposition.

Nope.

The vast majority of cloture votes passed — the Senate already nuked the filibuster for things Republicans care about



During the Trump era, there were an historic number of cloture motions filed in the Senate: 529 of them. 466 of them got votes — 93% of them passed

Compare to Obama’s first term: only 70% passed the first half, 57% in the

Why? In 2013, Senate Dems nuked the 60 vote threshold to get past a filibuster on nominees, except for SCOTUS, but left it for legislation

But when controlling Congress and the WH, the GOP didn’t move much legislation. They got what they wanted

So when Mitch McConnell says “no no, you have to keep the filibuster for legislation” it’s because he knows that it doesn’t matter when the GOP is a majority

The filibuster isn’t a useful tool for Democratic minorities — just Republicans

This essay is brought to you by several hours of combing through cloture motions for this spreadsheet, which shows a major drop in the filibuster blocking cloture after 2013 — with one exception highlighted, which I’ll explain in a second