Thunderstorms
So last night was a night (see the updates yesterday if you haven’t already, and yet another thunderstorm, less dramatic but still, came in after that) and I still woke up with sweat pouring off my body this morning and my sheets drenched. As of 6:00 this morning:
The pattern remains in place.
Joe Biden
I’m not (yet anyway) seeing coverage of this:
In a somewhat odd moment at tonight's AFT town hall, Biden tells a 10-year-old girl, “I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking." He takes her over to the assembled reporters, then stands behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders while he's talking.
— Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) May 28, 2019
I’ve long characterized a two-party system’s electoral choices as the lesser of two evils.[1]
But with Joe Biden the presumptive neoliberal (why even call them ‘Democrats’ anymore?) nominee, the race in 2020 looks to be a choice of the lesser of two perverts. I have previously addressed the issue of Joe Biden’s inappropriate behavior towards women.
Employment
It’s called selective observation:
It happened again this am — I keep encountering not-very-competent workers at retail establishments and it makes me very happy and I want to say to the other (impatient) customers "guys! this is great! it's a sign of a tight labor market!" Good stuff.
— Melissa S. Kearney (@kearney_melissa) May 28, 2019
According to her Twitter profile, Melissa Kearney is an economics professor, which tells you most of what you need to know here. As anyone in the real world knows, incompetence long predates the alleged “tight labor market” and has long been preferred (incompetent subordinates do not threaten their incompetent superiors). Indeed, it’s obviously how she got her job.
James Comey
Robert Mueller announced the closure of the special prosecutor’s office and expressed reluctance to appear before Congress. Otherwise, absolutely nothing here is new.[2]
The glaring problem here, which Mueller did not address, is that only self-interested people are now in control of his unredacted report. As long as that is the case, it is not possible for “the office’s written work [to] speak for itself.”
I need to emphasize here that a redacted report is no substitute for the full report. Not only has William Barr cast considerable suspicion upon himself by priming the public with a—to put it mildly—likely biased and apparently misleading framing of Mueller’s conclusions, but the only thing that truly speaks for the report is the report itself, not selected passages. A redacted report simply does not constitute acceptable evidence.
Mueller’s statement, being work of the U.S. government, is in the public domain. I have archived a copy here.
Robert S. Mueller, III, “Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III Makes Statement on Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election,” Department of Justice, May 29, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/special-counsel-robert-s-mueller-iii-makes-statement-investigation-russian-interference
Brexit
The question seems not to be so much about whether Boris Johnson lied about the amount of money the United Kingdom would save in campaigning for Brexit—he did, and continued to do so even after “[t]he chair of the U.K. statistics authority disputed the figure, saying it didn’t account for rebates Britain receives from the EU, and wrote to Mr. Johnson in 2017 complaining about his continued citation of it”—but rather whether this lying rises to the standard of misconduct.[3]
Max Colchester, “U.K.’s Boris Johnson to Appear in Court Over Brexit Claims,” Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-s-boris-johnson-to-appear-in-court-over-brexit-claims-11559136361
Israel
Loveday Morris and Miriam Berger, “Israel will hold unprecedented second election after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fails to form a governing coalition,” Washington Post, May 29, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/prospect-of-new-israeli-vote-looms-as-netanyahu-struggles-with-coalition/2019/05/29/9155b71a-8171-11e9-b585-e36b16a531aa_story.html
- [1]David Benfell, “A false dichotomy view of politics,” Not Housebroken, November 2, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/2016/11/02/a-false-dichotomy-view-of-politics/; David Benfell, “The lesser of two evils? The more successful con artist,” Not Housebroken, May 15, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/05/15/the-lesser-of-two-evils-the-more-successful-con-artist/↩
- [2]Robert S. Mueller, III, “Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III Makes Statement on Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election,” Department of Justice, May 29, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/special-counsel-robert-s-mueller-iii-makes-statement-investigation-russian-interference↩
- [3]Max Colchester, “U.K.’s Boris Johnson to Appear in Court Over Brexit Claims,” Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-s-boris-johnson-to-appear-in-court-over-brexit-claims-11559136361↩