12.30 Axios: During the 2010s, the global 1% accumulated unfathomable wealth, while the rate of extreme poverty around the world was cut in half (15.7% in 2010 to 7.7% now), and all but eradicated in China. A tipping point was reached in 2018, when more than half the worldwas part of the middle class or above for the first time in history. Along with that came massive declines in mortality rates for women and infants, both of which have been halved since 1990. Meanwhile, primary education has become near-universal in nearly all of the world, including for girls. The global youth literacy rate was up to 91% as of 2016, though sub-Saharan Africa (75%) lags behind. The average income of the world’s bottom 50% of earners nearly doubled between 1980 and 2016, There was only one group that fared better over that time — the global 1%. “The rich in already rich countries plus an increasing number of superrich in the developing world … captured an astounding 27% of global growth.” As the global 1% captured more and more of the pie, the 49% of people below them, which includes almost everybody in the United States and Europe, lost out, and their incomes stagnated.” Forbes’ billionaire lists from the past decade tell much of the story: In 2009, the world had 793 billionaires with a combined wealth of $2.4 trillion.As of 2019, the world had 2,153 billionaires with a total net worth of $8.7 trillion. To qualify as one of the world’s 100 richest people, you’d now need not $4.9 billion, as was the case a decade ago, but $14.4 billion. There were 130 billionaires in Asia a decade ago. Now there are 729.12.27 Don Imus dies at 79
12.23 Albany
12.23 Albany
12.21 Albany
12.21 Trump: “We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody I know. It’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly — very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured tremendous — if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint — fumes are spewing into the air. Right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?
12.19 Mark Galli in Christianity Today: Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments. To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?. . . .[W]w have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try to understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump. To use an old cliché, it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.
12.19 George Conway in The Washington Post: “I n his unhinged letter Tuesday, President Trump accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of having “cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!” A few days earlier, he accused Democrats of “trivializing impeachment.” If anything has cheapened or trivialized the process by which Trump was impeached, it was House Republicans’ refusal to treat the proceedings with the seriousness the Constitution demands. Unable to defend the president’s conduct on the merits, GOP members of the House resorted to deception, distortion and deflection: pretending that Trump didn’t ask President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival; claiming that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election; and throwing up all manner of silly assertions of procedural unfairness. Now, as the process moves to the Senate, Republican senators threaten the ultimate cheapening and trivialization of Congress’s constitutional obligations: holding a “trial” that would be nothing but a sham
12.19 George Conway in The Washington Post: “I n his unhinged letter Tuesday, President Trump accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of having “cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!” A few days earlier, he accused Democrats of “trivializing impeachment.” If anything has cheapened or trivialized the process by which Trump was impeached, it was House Republicans’ refusal to treat the proceedings with the seriousness the Constitution demands. Unable to defend the president’s conduct on the merits, GOP members of the House resorted to deception, distortion and deflection: pretending that Trump didn’t ask President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival; claiming that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election; and throwing up all manner of silly assertions of procedural unfairness. Now, as the process moves to the Senate, Republican senators threaten the ultimate cheapening and trivialization of Congress’s constitutional obligations: holding a “trial” that would be nothing but a sham
12.18 Rep. Tom Malinowski in the Post: “I ask people to imagine that their house is on fire, and they call 911, and the dispatcher says, ‘We’d love to help. We’re going to need a favor, though,’”
12.18 Trump impeached for abuse of power and lying to Congress
12.18 Barry Cole Poyne, a Missouri Church of Christ leader, allegedly tried to pay for sex on the gay hookup app Grindr with an Arby’s card
12.17 Pelosi‘s reply: “Very sick.”
12.17 Trump, in a six-page letter to Nancy Pelosi: “You are the ones interfering in America’s elections. You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.” Also: “More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” Also: “You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!” President Trump wrote in the letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday. “By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy.”
12.17 U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, sentencing former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates: “Politics doesn’t corrupt people. People corrupt politics.”
12.16 Albany
12.16 William Webster in the Times: I am deeply disturbed by the assertion of President Trump that our “current director” — as he refers to the man he selected for the job of running the F.B.I. — cannot fix what the president calls a broken agency. The 10-year term given to all directors following J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure was created to provide independence for the director and for the bureau. The president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly. The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director is critical and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.
12.15 Paul Krugman on Twitter: Going in to the end of the year, Trump is going to be claiming victory in his trade war. The truth is that there are almost never winners in trade wars — but there are losers. And however Trump may try to spin this, he lost. . . . [F]armers have suffered, with a number going bankrupt, despite a bailout *twice the size of Obama‘s auto bailout* . . . . the Chinese have learned the same lesson North Korea’s Kim learned: Trump talks loudly but carries a small stick, and can be rolled. Trump has made us weak, neither trusted by our allies nor feared by our enemies.”
12.15 Trump. after Pelosi responded to a question about why bribery wasn’t one of the impeachment charges: “Nancy’s teeth were falling out of her mouth, and she didn’t have time to think!”
12.14 Felix Rohatyn dies at 91
12.13 Trump, about an hour after the House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against him: “You’re trivializing impeachment, and I tell you what, someday they’ll be a Democrat president and they’ll be a Republican House, and I suspect they’re going to remember it. Because when you do — when you use impeachment for absolutely nothing other than to try and get political gain. I think it’s a horrible thing to be using the tool of impeachment, which is supposed to be used in an emergency and, it would seem, many, many, many years apart – to be using this for a perfect phone call where the president of that country said there was no pressure whatsoever, didn’t even know what we were talking about, it was perfect.”
12.13 in the Washington Post: After three years in which Democrats accused President Trump of a host of criminal acts — from bribery and extortion to campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and even treason — they have finally introduced articles of impeachment that allege none of those things. Not only have they dropped the charge of bribery, the words that gripped Washington — “quid pro quo” — don’t even appear in the document. This is a major retreat by Democrats, who have effectively admitted the president did not commit any statutory crimes. Indeed, if these articles are approved, this will be the first presidential impeachment in history in which no statutory crimes are even alleged. In that alone, Trump can claim vindication.
12.13 House Judiciary Committee approves two articles of impeachment
12.13 Albany
12.12 Albany
12.12 Cuomie Award Winner
12 Danny Aiello dies at 86
12.12 Boris Johnson elected PM
12.11 Eric Holder in the Washington Post: Virtually since the moment he took office, though, Barr’s words and actions have been fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution. Which is why I now fear that his conduct — running political interference for an increasingly lawless president — will wreak lasting damage.
12.10 Trump at a rally in Hershey: “Look how [the FBI has] hurt people. They’ve destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people. Their lives have been destroyed by scum. Okay, by scum.”
12.11 The Washington Post: Since 2001, Washington has spent more on nation-building in Afghanistan than in any country ever, allocating $133 billion for reconstruction, aid programs and the Afghan security forces. Adjusted for inflation, that is more than the United States spent in Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II. Unlike the Marshall Plan, however, the exorbitant nation-building project for Afghanistan went awry from the start and grew worse as the war dragged on, according to a trove of confidential government interviews with diplomats, military officials and aid workers who played a direct role in the conflict. Instead of bringing stability and peace, they said, the United States inadvertently built a corrupt, dysfunctional Afghan government that remains dependent on U.S. military power for its survival. Assuming it does not collapse, U.S. officials have said it will need billions more dollars in aid annually, for decades. . . .By some measures, life in Afghanistan has improved markedly since 2001. Infant mortality rates have dropped. The number of children in school has soared. The size of the Afghan economy has nearly quintupled. But the U.S. nation-building project backfired in so many other ways that even foreign-aid advocates questioned whether Afghanistan, in the abstract, might have been better off without any U.S. help at all, according to the documents. “I mean, the writing is on the wall now,” Michael Callen, an economist with the University of California at San Diego and a specialist in the Afghan public sector, told government interviewers. “We spent so much money and there is so little to show for it.” Callen and others blamed an array of mistakes committed again and again over 18 years — haphazard planning, misguided policies, bureaucratic feuding. Many said the overall nation-building strategy was further undermined by hubris, impatience, ignorance and a belief that money can fix anything. Much of the money, they said, ended up in the pockets of overpriced contractors or corrupt Afghan officials, while U.S.-financed schools, clinics and roads fell into disrepair, if they were built at all.
12.11 in the Washington Post: “A newly released poll from the Pew Research Center suggests a problem in President Trump’s economic argument. While he touts the economy as the greatest ever, the question Americans are asking is: Great for whom? Pew finds, “By many measures, the U.S. economy is doing well. Unemployment is near a 50-year low, consumer spending is strong and the stock market is delivering solid returns for investors. Despite these positive indicators, public assessments of the economy are mixed, and they differ significantly by income, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.” Perhaps not surprising in a time of great economic inequality, “Majorities of upper-income and middle-income Americans say current economic conditions are excellent or good. But only about four-in-ten lower-income adults share that view, while a majority say the economy is only fair or poor.” The numbers are quite striking. “Roughly seven-in-ten adults (69%) say today’s economy is helping people who are wealthy (only 10% say the wealthy are being hurt).” Only 32 percent say it is helping the middle class, and just 22 percent say it is helping the poor. There is also a stark divide in the economic lives of richer and not-so-rich Americans: `Two-thirds of lower-income adults (65%) say they worry almost daily about paying their bills, compared with about one-third of middle-income Americans (35%) and a small share of upper-income Americans (14%). The cost of health care is also a worry that weighs on the minds of many Americans, particularly those in the lower-income tier. More than half of lower-income adults (55%) say they frequently worry about the cost of health care for themselves and their families; fewer middle-income (37%) and upper-income Americans (18%) share this worry.’ Most surprising is that a substantial number of Republicans think the middle and lower class are getting a raw deal. Though views of the economy are highly partisan, “income gaps persist within these party groups. In fact, lower-income Republicans are roughly four times as likely as those in the upper-income tier to give the economy an only fair or poor rating.” Despite overwhelming support for Trump, the level of concern among lower-income Republicans is extraordinarily high: `While roughly nine-in-ten upper-income Republicans (89%) feel positively about current economic conditions, lower-income Republicans are far less likely to share that opinion. Some 57% of lower-income Republicans say current economic conditions are excellent or good, roughly similar to the share of upper-income Democrats who say this (55%). Only about one-third of lower-income Democrats (34%) rate current economic conditions positively’
12.10 At a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said that any Democrat who votes for the “flimsy, pathetic, ridiculous” articles of impeachment against him would be sacrificing their dignity. “Everybody said, ‘this is impeachment lite. This is the lightest impeachment in the history of the country by far,’” Trump said. “It’s not even like an impeachment, these people are stone-cold crooked.”
12.10 Rep. Adam Schiff: “The facts are not seriously contested.”
12.10 House Democrats unveiled two narrowly drawn articles of impeachment against President Trump on Tuesday, saying he had abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress in its investigation of his conduct regarding Ukraine.
12.10 Gerrit Cole signs with Yankees for $324 million for nine years
12.10 Housatonic Civil War Roundtable in Shelton CT. Good crowd!
12.9 Sports Illustrated names Megan Rapinoe, captain of the world champion U.S. women’s soccer team, Sportsperson of the Year. “Playing the world’s game, on the world’s stage, under attack by a world leader, she dominated. And in doing so without fear, Megan Rapinoe became a voice for so many across the world.”
12.9 Christopher Kolenda, an Army colonel who deployed to Afghanistan several times and advised three U.S. generals in charge of the war, said that the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai had “self-organized into a kleptocracy” by 2006 — and that U.S. officials failed to recognize the lethal threat it posed to their strategy. “I like to use a cancer analogy,” Kolenda told government interviewers. “Petty corruption is like skin cancer; there are ways to deal with it and you’ll probably be just fine. Corruption within the ministries, higher level, is like colon cancer; it’s worse, but if you catch it in time, you’re probably ok. Kleptocracy, however, is like brain cancer; it’s fatal.”
12.9 Christopher Kolenda, an Army colonel who deployed to Afghanistan several times and advised three U.S. generals in charge of the war, said that the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai had “self-organized into a kleptocracy” by 2006 — and that U.S. officials failed to recognize the lethal threat it posed to their strategy. “I like to use a cancer analogy,” Kolenda told government interviewers. “Petty corruption is like skin cancer; there are ways to deal with it and you’ll probably be just fine. Corruption within the ministries, higher level, is like colon cancer; it’s worse, but if you catch it in time, you’re probably ok. Kleptocracy, however, is like brain cancer; it’s fatal.”
12.8 Paul Volckler dies at 92
12.8 Carroll Spinney dies at 85
12.8 René Auberjonois dies at 79
12.7 Trump at Israeli-American Summit Dinner: “A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers. Not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me; you have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that … You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax.”
12.7 Knives Out with Ginny, Molly, Shawn, Cara.
12.6 Ron Liebman dies at 81
12.6 84% of institutional investors told the Edelman Trust Barometer that “maximizing shareholder returns can no longer be the primary goal of the corporation.
12.6 Biden to Axios: “You guys got it all wrong about what happened. It’s just bad judgment. You all thought that what happened was the party moved extremely to the left after Hillary. AOC was a new party. She’s a bright, wonderful person. But where’s the party? Come on, man.”12.6 Quartz: Uber said there were more than 3,000 reports of sexual assaults on its US rides last year. The figure, in the ride-hailing company’s long-awaited safety report, includes 229 rapes across 1.3 billion rides, with both riders and drivers as victims.
12.5 On his `No Malarky’ bus tour in Iowa, Joe Biden angrily challenged a man at a town hall meeting. “You’re a damn liar, man.”
12.5 Dana Milbank in the Washington Post: “It was raw. It was angry. And it was powerful, in a way her prepared statements on impeachment, full of Founders’ quotes and Latin phrases, were not. She got at the essence of impeachment: This isn’t a personality dispute or a political disagreement, much as Republicans try to make it so. The president abused his office for personal gain — plain and simple. . . . I once doubted that Pelosi, about to turn 80, was the right leader for Democrats against Trump. But she was made for this moment. She uniquely gets under Trump’s skin, routinely beating him in standoffs with her blend of sorrow and bewilderment: “This is a strain of cat that I don’t have the medical credentials to analyze nor the religious credentials to judge,” she told the New Yorker.”
12.5 Washington Post: As Pelosi started walking away from the podium, James Rosen, a former Fox News reporter who now works for the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, asked: “Do you hate the president?” Pelosi, pointing a finger at Rosen, snapped back: “I don’t hate anybody. I was raised in a Catholic house. We don’t hate anyone, not anybody in the world,” Pelosi said. “So don’t you accuse me —” Said Rosen, “I did not accuse you. I asked you a question.” He said his question was based on Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Doug Collins’ suggestion a day earlier that Democrats were impeaching Trump merely because “they don’t like the guy. Pelosi returned to the podium. “I think the president is a coward when it comes to helping our kids who are afraid of gun violence. I think he is cruel when he doesn’t deal with helping our ‘dreamers,’ of which we are very proud. I think he’s in denial about the climate crisis. I don’t hate anybody. However, that’s about the election. Take it up in the election. This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that leads to the president’s violation of his oath of office. As a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone. I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love, and always pray for the president, and I still pray for the president. I pray for the president all the time. So, don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.”
12.5 Pelosi: “Sometimes people say, ‘Well I don’t know about Ukraine. I don’t know that much about Ukraine. Well, our adversary in this is Russia. All roads lead to Putin. Understand that.”
12.4 On The Howard Stern Show, Hillary Clinton, who sat with George and Laura Bush during President Trump‘s inauguration in 2017, said that after the “dystopian” address, “George W. Bush says to me, ‘Well that was some weird shit.'”
12.4 Washington Post: “The prosecutor handpicked by Attorney General William P. Barr to scrutinize how U.S. agencies investigated President Trump’s 2016 campaign said he could not offer evidence to the Justice Department’s inspector general to support the suspicions of some conservatives that the case was a setup by American intelligence.”
12.4 Four law professors testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan: “Everything I know about our Constitution and its values, and my review of the evidentiary record, tells me that when President Trump invited, indeed, demanded foreign involvement in our upcoming election, he struck at the very heart of what makes this country to which we pledge allegiance.” University of North Carolina professor Michael Gerhardt: Ignoring subpoenas “is a direct assault on the legitimacy of this inquiry.” Harvard Law’s Noah Feldman: “I believe the framers would identify President Trump’s conduct as exactly the kind of abuse of office, high crime and misdemeanors that they were worried about.” George Washington University Law’s Jonathan Turley: “Impeachments require a certain period of saturation and maturation. That is, the public has to catch up. I’m not prejudging what your record would show, but if you rush this impeachment, you’re going to leave half the country behind. And certainly that’s not what the framers wanted. You have to give the time to build a record. This isn’t an impulse-buy item.”
12.3 Kamala Harris ends her campaign.
12.3 At a meeting of NATO leaders. a group including Justin Trudeau, Emmanual MacroN, Boris Johnson and Princess Margaret appeared laughing about President Trump behind his back. “He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference,” Trudeau was overheard saying.. “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.”
12.3 French President Emmanuel Macron confronted President Donald Trump over his assertion that ISIS has been vanquished from Syria and the broader Middle East: “Let’s be serious.”