This Would Be Big

Apparently, there's a way for the Queen to dismiss Boris Johnson.  Technically, it would be Members of Parliament who write the petition, but the idea would be to create a unity government from moderates on all sides.

Is there any way we can get the Queen to dismiss our straw-haired arsehole?

Public Opinion

We are starting to see our first polls on impeachment. Remember that most Americans don't follow politics that closely and even fewer have much idea how either impeachment works or how what Trump did was illegal.  Generally speaking, we can expect that support for impeachment will grow in proportion to how well Democrats explain those two processes. Campaign finance law is fairly arcane, which is why the "treason" line is working better, even if it's not exactly accurate.

We also know that opposition to impeachment is unlikely to drop much below 35%.  That's roughly been Trump's floor, and it's unlikely to drop below that.  Even Nixon never dropped below about 25%.

Impeachment may appeal politically to members of the Democratic Party's base, but the real audience has to be that mushy 20% in the middle of the electorate.  Combined with a message about Trump's corruption, it has to be about those broader trends leading up to the election.  Unfortunately, we are already seeing the GOP playbook, which is to equate Hunter Biden's actions with the myriad crimes of this administration.  It's unlikely the media will perform any better on this "Both Side" issue than they did in 2016.  I hope they do.  The legitimacy of our Republic rests on them doing so.

One Stop Summary

Jon Chait has a nice summary of how the Ukraine scandal represents all of Trump's many sins. It shows how Trump's predilection for small-time mobsterism has bled into his presidency. It also notes how he sees lawyers.  Giuliani and Barr are perfect lawyers for him.  It reminds me of this scene in Breaking Bad:

Trump found his criminal lawyers.  And they have infected the Judicial Department.

The Next Inquiry

Currently the House Intelligence Committee will be investigating the Ukrainian scandal, as it purports to show how Trump abused his power by soliciting help from a foreign power against his political enemies.  Some of the Twitter-sterics are apoplectic that the inquiry "will be limited to the Ukrainian scandal."

But that scandal opens up a lot of other doors to investigate.  For instance, during the phone call, Zelensky pointedly says that he stayed at Trump properties.  This could open an investigation into Trump for bribery and other emoluments.  The actual felonies Trump may have committed are kinda murky.  Sure seems like campaign finance laws were broken.  Sure seems like extortion.  Sure seems like obstruction of justice.  But those can be trickier to prove than "abuse of power." 

If Democrats use Zelensky's boast about staying at a Trump property to open a broader investigation into how Trump has funnelled business and foreign actors to his property...that's a target rich environment.  It would also reinforce the accusations that Trump has been personally profiting off his presidency, which should be the focus of the 2020 election, presuming - as we all do - that the Senate won't remove him.

"Only investigating Ukraine" is still a potentially very wide ranging investigation.

It's The Corruption

The whistleblower's account of Trump's behavior is, not surprisingly, incredibly damning. It lays out the context of the withholding of aid to Ukraine with Trump's requests for help in the 2020 election. It also talks about how the Trump White House tried to bury this from Congressional oversight.  My guess is that the release of the damaging transcript yesterday was thought to inoculate Trump, because it ended the efforts by his team to actively obstruct the lawful requirements of the whistleblower law.  They ended the "cover up" but exposed the crime.

What's significant is that this wasn't just Trump making an off the cuff strong-arm request of Zelensky.  This involved not only Trump and Giuliani, but also - at the very least - Attorney General Bill Barr. With the usual "if true" caveat, this calls into question just how much work Barr has been doing to prevent other illegal acts from seeing the light of day.  Because this leak came from the national security apparatus, it came with momentum that Barr and Trump couldn't contain.  The other corrupt acts - and we can be certain there are many more - may have been quashed. 

We already know there is a whistleblower surrounding Trump's taxes.  Depending on what happens over the next couple of weeks, we might see more and more of these allegations from whistleblowers throughout the bureaucracy.

In some ways, if this does happen, it strengthens Elizabeth Warren's case to be the Democratic nominee.  Biden is basically running as the antithesis of Trump.  But Warren (and Sanders) has been running against the "culture of corruption" at the heart of the government. 

Quid Pro Quo

Josh Marshall's analysis of the "transcript" is very good. There's a key point that I hadn't noticed in other reports.  First, he notes that Bill Barr was hip deep in this.  Second, Trump presses a bunch of conspiracy theories. Third, there's the issue of firing the ambassador to Ukraine.

Fourth and most importantly, Marshall points to about as close an example of quid pro quo as you can get without the Latin:

Zelensky: "We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javellin (missiles) from the United States for defense purposes."
Trump: "I would like you to do us a favor though..." he then goes on to talk about helping with his campaign and the Mueller Report, which had been the focal point of the previous day in DC.

In other words, Trump pivoted immediately from Zelensky's request for the military funds that he knows he has been promised and that Trump has withheld to a request for help with the server and some other issues.

Paired with Trump's refusal to release the funds appropriated by Congress...it's pretty damned clear that he is making those funds contingent on Zelensky helping his re-election campaign.

As Jon Chait shows, it's the context.

The Muddled Middle

This is a great analysis of what constitutes "moderate," "independent," and "undecided" voters.  They aren't a unified bloc, but they SHOULD lean Democratic.  While the author's point is that you can't really predict this group, because they are ideologically all over the map, the greatest number rest in the socially and economically "liberal" quadrant.  It's also interesting that the "pro-immigration"/"pro-markets" quadrant is basically empty.  That's the traditional Wall Street Republican position.  Trump ran as "anti-immigrant"/"pro-equality" candidate, saying he would expand health care and drain the swamp.  He's governed as an "anti-immigrant"/"pro-market" populist, but it's unclear that there are enough votes there.

Rudes

Rudy Giuliani being the one to rid us of Trump through his sheer incompetence would be so very, very sweet.

This Is Bonkers

Britain has no written constitution in the sense the US and other countries do, so judicial review has been pretty spotty. How do you declare an act of Parliament unconstitutional when there's no real constitution to compare it to?

So, today's ruling is an unbelievable step. Johnson has now been rejected by the courts, members of his own party and still has no plan for Brexit.  (Labour is scarcely more coherent, so it's not like he's under an immediate threat.)

Really the only solution is to have another referendum with a "No-Deal Brexit" vs No Brexit, because it certainly seems like those are the only two things that can result from all this.  The Leave campaign made a bunch of promises that turned out to be lies, and now all of that is coming home to roost.

Our Failed Media Experiment

If the Ukraine Scandal succeeds in destroying Trump, Ken Vogel will be the anti-Woodward and Bernstein. While some outlets like the Post have done a decent job of covering Trump, cable news and the NY Times have basically been hacked into becoming even hackier than they were before.

As many have noted, Trump's malfeasance in Ukraine is more or less out in the open.  He's admitted to much of what he's accused of.  But the media's inability to explain and focus on any one thing means that it gets lost in the blizzard of bullshit that emanates from the White House.  That's why I think there has to be a tape for this to really destroy him.  There has to be something that even the NY Times can't screw up.

How To Proceed...

Nancy Pelosi is not going to get out ahead of her caucus on impeachment. My guess is that she doesn't have a critical mass of Democrats in the House on board with impeachment. So, if you want Trump impeached, call you House member. 

Once that happens, Martin Longman has a nice roadmap of how to proceed.

Not Supremely Confident

Will the Ukraine Scandal be the thing that sinks Trump?  I'm not seeing it yet.  First of all, we don't know precisely what Trump said to the Ukrainian government.  Best guess is that he threatened to hold up aid payments until they dug up dirt on Hunter Biden.  If the whistleblower has some sort of tape, and on the tape is the President threatening aid payments and perhaps telling them to manufacture evidence...OK, now we are talking rank criminality.

The reality is more likely that we don't have a tape and that Trump violated campaign laws by asking a foreign government for help with his campaign. As we have seen, his cultists will excuse anything, so the GOP - which is terrified of his mouth breathing supporters - will not break with him over the arcana of campaign finance law.  (It is worth remembering that campaign law violations were at the heart of Watergate, and much of our current laws were in response to this.)

And of course, sadly, we will be dependent on the news media to report on what's really happening and so far, so bad. If there is one thing the NY Times has shown since 2015 is an absolute complete lack of perspective when it comes to violations by Trump as opposed to Democrats.  Most mainstream politicians push against the various rules that govern their behavior.  Trump shreds them with a chainsaw, burns the tattered remnants and then pees on the ashes. 

Because so much of this Ukraine scandal actually played out in the public domain this summer (Which is why I predicted it. Did I tell you I predicted it?  I predicted it.), Trump and the World's Worst Lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, have basically taken the tack of "How can it be a crime if it was so obvious what we did?"  Calling on Ukraine to tackle corruption before aid payments were to be released is completely legitimate.  So, again, unless there's a transcript or tape of him specifically targeting Biden (and there might be), then there is enough wiggle room for the GOP to excuse his behavior.  Again.

Giuliani - again, the World's Worst Lawyer - is now on record saying that Trump did not talk about a quid pro quo between the military aid and targeting Hunter Biden.  Given his previous performance, it seems now almost inevitable that there was a quid pro quo.  However, even this transparent lawlessness is unlikely to make a difference to the GOP.  They will simply say it's politics as usual.  Who WOULDN'T want dirt on their opponent, laws be damned.

Of course, Twitteramus Impatientica is demanding that Trump be impeached yesterday, despite our not having a clear idea of what was said or whether there was a tape.  This thread is a succinct corrective to the IMPEACH YESTERDAY crowd.  The simple fact that one of our political parties has embraced lawlessness means that we will not be unable to remove him from office before January 2021.  The variation of Murc's Law that suggests that Democrats have some sort of superpowers that they aren't using is damaging to people's understanding of the reality of the situation. 

The House has enough information right now to proceed with some articles of impeachment.  They could refer them to the Senate by Thanksgiving.  By Valentine's Day, Trump will be acquitted in the Senate.  Then what?  Probably by then, there will be new evidence of more wrong doing.  Impeach him again? You can, but most neutral people will see this as political grandstanding. The best plan is to drag the investigations into the winter and collect all the various threads of his lawlessness and dump them on the Senate in the spring.  Make Trump's corruption the theme of the 2020 election.  To a certain degree, Biden and Warren are already making this their general election focus.  (Warren is saying this goes beyond Trump, which is a better message that Biden who focuses on Trump's unique terribleness.)

As the Twitter thread above shows, a bunch of people who usually think they have some control over things are discovering that they can't get exactly what they want, when they want it.  DoorDash or UberEats can deliver any food to your door, while you stream whatever show you want exactly when you want to see it. But the political world doesn't work that way.

I wish I could say that there was a way to hold Trump accountable for his lawlessness and rampant obstruction of justice, but I'm struggling to find it.

Called It!

About an hour before a leak established that the foreign leader that Trump made an inappropriate request of was Ukraine, I called it on Twitter.

This means I get my own cable show.

I don't make the rules....

Good Thread

This is a great Twitter thread about the strident, desperate cries to "do something."

Most people simply aren't caring about Trump's violation of political norms.  They don't live and die by the news feed. There's a horse loose in the hospital, and they simply don't want to deal with it. This is why impeachment polls badly: most people simply don't care.  But most people want the horse out of the hospital.

The wailing about the timeline for getting the horse out of the hospital is largely a by-product of the closeness you feel towards the hospital and the amount of time you spend following the story.

Is This A Big Deal?

Every week, Donald Trump does or says something that should end his ability to function as President of the United States.  He engages in naked corruption, he uses inflammatory rhetoric, he divides the country, instead of uniting it, he is an objectively awful human being.

So, everytime a new revelation crests our horizon, we should take it with a grain of salt, if we are waiting for the thing that finally "gets him."

However, this seems like a Big Deal. Trump made a promise to a foreign leader, the Inspector General deemed this worthy of Congressional oversight, the Trump Administration is obstructing that legal requirement.  If it's something routinely horrifying, like Trump telling the Saudis he won't do anything about the assassination of Khashoggi, then it's probably just another log on the bonfire. But what if it's Putin?  Or Kim Jong Un? About something touching on state security?  The fact that they are violating the requirements of the whistle-blower law suggests that this is not some intemperate promise to Teresa May, but rather something truly troubling.  The IG agrees with the whistleblower.

But in 2019, it's so damned hard to believe anything will cause the Republicans to rebel against Trump.

Who Is The Constituency?

The Trump Administration is currently pursuing two policies that make very little sense.

First, they are going to hire out the US military to support Saudi Arabia, because....?

Second, they are going to actively work to make the climate worse.

Which Americans are served by this?  Does the military want to get involved in another war in the Middle East?  Are American troops eager to return to that theater?

And who is served by interfering with California emissions rules? Car makers don't want it.  California doesn't want it.  It has zero effect on other states really.  I suppose it helps gas companies, because cars might get worse gas mileage.  But will car makers really go all-in on making gas guzzlers when all the global trends are going the other direction and any Democratic administration will reverse this ruling.

Who are they working for?

What is the goal here?

Crises

I think about this a lot. The amazing thing about Trumpistan is that, so far, we haven't had a true crisis that will require a competent, cogent response from our government. Trump and the GOP have hollowed out much of the federal bureaucracy, especially at the policy level. The State department has been gutted, much of the financial policy team is filled with cranks and ideologues and national security is basically meatsack Mike Pompeo.

Staring at a potential war in the Gulf and/or a recession is scary for this reason.  Dubya was largely incompetent, but he had a Treasury Secretary in 2008 who wasn't a complete idiot. I guess Mnuchin isn't the WORST person in the executive, but....c'mon.

War Drums

A few things are likely simultaneously true:
- The attacks on the Saudi oil facility were likely carried out by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
- Iran likely supplied them with the weapons and possibly trained them how to use them, possibly even suggesting targets.
- Saudi Arabia has sponsored a vicious war against the Houthi.
- Iran is using the Houthi to strike at Saudi Arabia.

The ouster of John Bolton is a good thing for the coming weeks.  We have no coherent Middle East policy - Thanks, Jared! - and if Netanyahu wins re-election, that could drag the entire region closer to all-out war.

Iran is a bad actor.  Saudi Arabia is a bad actor. People who assume Saudi Arabia is our friend are the same sort of people who think their pot dealer is their buddy or that the stripper really likes them.  Because we are led by a blustering manchild, any one of the regional actors could think that he is easily manipulated, which he is, but that could lead to terrible miscalculations.

The amazing thing about the Trump Administration so far has been simultaneously its ability to shoot itself in the foot repeatedly, yet also not have to react to a truly global crisis.  Puerto Rico might be as close as we've come, but so far, Trump has only stepped on his own rakes.  He has yet to have the garden shed fall on top of him.  That could change soon.

Exactly Who They Thought They Were

Yesterday's report in the Times that the second person to allege that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted/harassed her - Deborah Ramirez - was not only credible by had corroborating witnesses that weren't interviewed by the FBI because the White House stopped it is among the least surprising reporting that is nevertheless a bombshell that I can recall.

Of course Brett Kavanaugh was a drunken, spoiled, abusive coil of shit.  Weren't we all watching?  His seething contempt for the women he assaulted was pretty much on display for the world to see.  By the way, his finances also don't add up, but I doubt we will know why any time soon.

Mitch McConnell's refusal to allow for Merrick Garland's hearings, combined with pushing through Kavanaugh might be exactly what the Democrats need in order to pack the Court.  There is no way that Gorsuch or Kavanaugh can be seen as legitimate neutral arbiters of the law. 

Oh, and Twitter? Impeaching Kavanaugh is well and good, but you aren't going to remove him from the Senate, so what good will it do?

Who Is Up For Grabs?

This piece by Dana Milbank makes a good, but tricky, point.  Trump is a racist, but calling him that explicitly might backfire against Democrats among persuadable voters.  Similarly, ignoring his racism might depress turnout among Democratic faithful.  Milbank goes on to note that there are ways of talking about Trump's racism that work better than just using the term racist.  There is good evidence that using the word racist can backfire and shut down important conversations.  Once racism is on the table, there's no progress.

A few caveats though.  Are there really persuadable voters who react negatively to calling Trump a racist?  Possibly, there are some of the Obama/Trump WWC voters who can be turned back.  My guess is those voters like Biden.  OK, Republicans reject the idea that the Confederacy was racist.  Who gives a fuck?  If you can't see that the Stars and Bars is a racist symbol, then you need to change.  You need to be educated that it is.  Of course, simply calling someone racist, again, stops the educative process.

I do think Milbank is on to something when he talks about framing Trump's actions as fundamentally Unamerican.  That fits into a broader frame: immigration is American; standing up to dictators is American; good government is American.  Trump is corrupt and he is racist, but it might work better in a different frame.

We Need To Replace the Debates

We've already had a half dozen of these things, haven't we?  And there are months to go before anyone casts a ballot? 

What exactly happens at these debates to change anything?  Unless a candidate lays a tremendous turd, it's all political theater.  I stopped watching them years ago and I feel like my understanding of American politics did not suffer a whit. 

Town halls are nice, but they can be problematic with so many candidates.  Still, having candidates talk to actual people and not cable news blowhards is likely to be an improvement.

Since we have a reality show president, I'd love to have something similar.  Something like a foreign policy escape room, where a candidate and a half dozen advisors are presented with a crisis that spins out of control - India/Pakistan for instance - and they have to react.  Or maybe an economic crisis.  That would be great television and might actually demonstrate how people would govern if we gave them the chance.  It would also expose mental insufficiencies in ways that memorizing canned applause lines doesn't.

Whatever, we need better electoral coverage than dueling press conferences masquerading as a "debate."

The US, Israel and World War III

This is a very comprehensive essay by Robert Kagan about the Netanyahu government's embrace of right wing nationalism around the world. Kagan notes that Israel has made close to ties to Putin's Russia, Orban's Hungary, even Bolsanaro's Brazil.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the Netanyahu government's embrace of the the Republican Party and evangelical US Christians. 

As Kagan implies, this has put Israel on a collision course with the "international liberal order" that is under assault from all sides.  Kagan also notes that the US-Israeli alliance has largely been based on shared values rather than US strategic interest.  Foreign policy realism would argue for jettisoning any unconditional support for Israel to woo the much more numerous and important Muslim states.  He uses the penetrating example of Iran, a country that likely poses no threat to the US, but does to Israel.  Our constant animosity towards Iran is largely in service to Israeli security interests and does not make for a stable Persian Gulf.

Eventually, there will be a Democratic president who is more willing to take on Netanyahu.  Do we really need to subsidize the Israeli military at the cost of $3B a year in order to subjugate the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza?  Do we need to continue to protect Israel in the UN? 

More broadly, the next Democratic president is going to have two huge tasks, even if s/he is inaugurated in 2021.  First, they will have to restaff and repair the basic functions of government.  A lot of the federal bureaucracy is being hollowed out by Republicans. Creating a government that can actually work again will be as important as whatever laws will be passed through a (potential) narrow Senate majority.

Secondly, the next President will have to repair America's standing in the world.  Famously, Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership was torpedoed from the Left in the 2016 election from a basic revulsion of free trade.  Yet, free trade is one of the pillars of the post-war international liberal order.  While free trade is complicated in both domestic and international economics, it does largely work.  However, it has very few defenders at the moment.  The TPP was designed to protect workers in ways that earlier trade deals didn't, but because it was lumped in with other free trade agreements, it was pilloried. But the TPP was more than a trade deal, it was an attempt to buttress the countries of Pacific basin against a powerful but illiberal China.

This trend towards nationalism and illiberalism has an end point: global war.  Nationalism feeds off military conflict.  (That Trump has largely resisted this impulse is one of the more curious aspects of his presidency.  His firing of John Bolton is an objectively good thing.  Trump is a man of simple ideas and impulses and somewhere deep in his tapioca brain he's internalized the idea that war is bad for business.)

As countries retreat into what Kagan and others call "blood and soil nationalism" the potential for wars increase.  As we saw in 1914, regional wars can trigger broader conflicts that can  engulf the whole world.  If militant rightist nationalism isn't thwarted politically, it's logical next step will be the sort of global war we saw last time a pair of powerful countries embraced this toxic idea.  While Japan and Germany are not likely to be next source of geopolitical instability, India/Pakistan; Iran/Saudi Arabia or perhaps even Ukraine/Russia could be the spark that ignites World War III.  If humanity survives, perhaps then we will relearn the lesson of 1945.

If humanity survives.

The Day That Broke America

It's been 18 years, and we are now seeing a generation come of age with no living memory of a pre-9/11 world.  Every year, I make the plea to remember but also to forget.  The attacks of 9/11 fundamentally broke parts of our country.  They militarized us in ways that we haven't yet fully grasped but threaten to undermine core tenets of America's attitude towards standing armies.  They created a fearful polity that has come to hate in ways that we were leaving behind.  Sure, the hate was still there, but 9/11 dug it up and dumped it into our living rooms. 

History is littered with "what if" moments.  Few are bigger than 9/11.  It changed our country.  Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is scattered.  But in the larger picture, they accomplished some of what they wanted.

This Needs To Change

While we don't have a "smoking gun" on this, Wilbur Ross is one of the creepiest, most corrupt members of this administration and it would be completely in character for him.

Again, this goes back to how important 2020 is for the basic functioning of our governmental systems.  Modern governance only works if everyone abides by some basic legal norms.  Trump and the GOP have absolutely trampled those norms.  Finding someone who can repair them and put of sturdier guardrails for the next Trump is vital if America is going to remain America.

Can We Make It?

Trump's ability to degrade American governance has largely been stymied by institutional inertia.  However, he's finding ways to finally erode the resistance of institutions to his demagoguery and corruption.  Trump's pathological insistence that Dorian was going to hit Alabama, and then having some flunky at NOAA back him up (only to get further push back from within NOAA) is one example.  The increasing self-dealing surrounding Trump's properties is another.

At this point, we should see the gears of impeachment starting to turn.  Tis the season...

The Point of History

This is a fascinating glimpse into the fragility of white people in the face of historical accuracy. A few years back, I went to the new Visitor's Center at Gettysburg (I had been to the old one), and I was heartened to see that they had centered slavery in their explanation of the Civil War. Nevertheless, I'm sure (white) people wanted to keep "politics" out of their Civil War fetish.  Don't talk about slavery...at a Civil War museum...

If you are going to understand America's development, you have to center slavery. Why was Jefferson able to sit back and read political theory and do scientific work? Because he had hundreds of people working for him who he owned. Jefferson is a man of tremendous contradictions. No bigger contradiction is his commitment to human liberty while owning slaves.  To ignore this is to ignore a real understanding of history.

But for some people, they don't want history, they want myths.  They want to be made to feel good.

That's a willing embrace of ignorance to bring comfort. I can't think of a better illustration of a certain segment of white America.

Bernie's Biggest Liability

The worst thing about Bernie is the people who like Bernie.

Woof

Donald Trump being stupid is still kind of funny.

Crenshaw

There was a mildly nice moment when SNL made fun of Rep. Dan Crenshaw and then had a nice moment when they invited him on.  Very...civil.

Anyway, Dan Crenshaw can go pound sand.

More Of This

I don't watch debates, because they are ridiculous theater.  I didn't watch the climate change town hall, but it strikes me that they are much more substantive and allow candidates a better chance to explain what policies they will pursue as opposed to how they can get in zingers.  American politics could use more of that.

Fixing Democracy

EJ Dionne makes some good points.  Every democratic government puts some restraints on popular will.  As Brexit has shown, majorities - especially thin ones on complicated issues - are not always correct.  Yet too many restraints - as exists in the US Senate - destroy government, too.

State Of The Field

Josh Marshall does a nice job explaining what he calls "Biden Realism." (sub.req.)  Basically, the race - despite all the minor candidates jumping in and out - has been remarkably steady. If the election were held today, Joe Biden would become the next president.  As Marshall points out, Biden has a steady and consistent lead in the polls.  Running against Trump may or may not mitigate his gaffe-prone style, but his basic decency would seem to suggest he's pulling in voters from the suburbs - marginal Democrats - in ways that others aren't.  He's also doing very well among African American voters, which is ironic given Harris and Booker's place in the field.  Warren is surging, whereas Sanders seems stuck at 15%.

The biggest takeaway from the recent polling is that Trump is mired at 38-40%.  No reputable polls have him beating that ceiling.

No Clue

The British Parliamentary system is a masterpiece of norms and traditions. Britain's "constitution" isn't a binding fundamental law like the US Constitution, so there is no such thing as judicial review. Anything Parliament does is de facto constitutional, though there are some decently strong guardrails that usually deal with unusual power plays or violations of the spirit of the system.  Sure, there are some documents like the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights of 1689 and some others that are the "constitution" but that is all about tradition.  If Parliament wanted to abolish the monarchy, they could do it with a simple majority vote. The Prime Minister is Prime Minister because they command a majority in the House of Commons, usually making it a much more efficient system than America's system of checks and balances.

All of this is to say that what is happening now is unprecedented. The Commons is in chaos because Boris Johnson - Britain's Trump - is currently Prime Minister without a working majority.  When this happens, there is usually an election, but no one knows exactly what an election will bring about so no one is too eager to have one.

The crux of the matter is that David Cameron tried to be too clever by half and called a referendum on Britain's continued membership in the EU.  Everyone expected it to fail the way the Scottish independence referendum failed.  It didn't, passing narrowly, and touching off a series of crises in British politics with no apparent end in sight. Johnson apparently negotiates like Trump, basically taking the country hostage and threatening to "prorogue" Parliament, or basically stop it from meeting but not dissolving it and having elections.  When Parliament returned from its proroguing, it would not have enough time to respond to whatever sort of Brexit Johnson negotiated.  Basically, it's a gun to the head of the Parliament, the British and European economies and the idea of Parliamentary supremacy.

Johnson has said repeatedly he's OK with a "no-deal" Brexit. That means there will suddenly be a customs logjam at British ports and a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Frankly, if a no-deal Brexit is as bad as people think it will be, I could the Scottish Parliament unilaterally declaring itself independent from that no-deal chaos.  It's just THAT messy.

Johnson clearly thinks he can hammer through a no-deal Brexit and then negotiate whatever it is that he wants while the European economy crumbles. The problem is that the population was repeatedly told that there would not be a no-deal Brexit.

They were conned, and many of them are beginning to realize this.  Still, a second referendum would soundly defeat no-deal Brexit, but likely also defeat remaining in the EU.  We just don't know.

Calling elections might help, except Britain has a weird two-and-a-half party system.  The Lib Dems were almost extinct as a party, but pro-EU Conservatives are bolting for LD.  Meanwhile, Labour has no idea what it wants as an end result.  So, it's plausible that a new election would give Johnson an outright majority with only 30% of the popular vote.  Almost all ruling parties get less than 50% of the vote, which usually doesn't matter, because - again - Britain has such strong rules and norms that most radical ideas are dismissed out of hand.  What Johnson is doing is profoundly radical.

So, there we are.

No clue.

Elephant In The Room

Trump is senile.  I mean, he was never really bright to begin with, and the collapse of his meager cognitive skills means that the effects are noticeable.  Frankly, we see some of the same in Joe Biden.

We need mandatory retirement ages for important public servants. 

And Another

I got on a plane from Atlanta to Hartford, and when I got off the plane, there was another mass shooting.  It has led to two interesting responses.

One is Beto O'Rourke saying "this is fucked up" and that we need to ban and buy back assault weapons.

Then you have this response which boggles my mind.  You read through the comments below the original tweet and you realize how broken some of the gun humpers are.  Most gun owners believe in a great deal more gun safety measures: licensing, background checks maybe even some liability.  And then you have this Cult of Death that basically prioritizes their property rights over human life.