Elizabeth Warren looking good in the polls

August 27, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk

Why is Elizabeth Warren moving up in the polls?  

Elizabeth Warren 2020

The question would have been moot a week or two earlier when Joe Biden looked like a sure thing. Apparently a few gaffes and a couple of misstatements have convinced some of the left that he may not be the right candidate. Monday's Monmouth University poll revealed surprising results...

"It found a virtual three-way tie among Biden at 19% and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who each had 20%."

However, the "Real Clear Politics’ aggregation of polls still shows Biden well ahead, at 28.8%, followed by Sanders at 16% and Warren at 15.4%." If we are to believe Monmouth, and it is a credible pollster, then might we expect the same trend to begin in other polls? Jennifer Rubin, a conservative writer for The Washington Post says, "There’s a reason Elizabeth Warren is surging," and that is because she is appealing to "ordinary" Americans.

We know there are a lot of ordinary Americans out there that have had absolutely no voice since Donald Trump entered the White House. And my guess is that there are many ordinary Americans supporting T-rump that must be having second thoughts now. Not the core, but the fringe. Rubin comments...

"she’s not telling exactly the same story as she did earlier. Using family stories she has gotten 'looser' and funnier. She interacts with the crowd more. She has less anger, more determination and more confidence. She is high-energy."

Elizabeth Warren gaining momentum...

But, it would appear that the voting public still favors a candidate who can win over one who is heated in the issues, for example, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. And it is interesting to note here that even after all the rhetoric, talk of being a socialist, and losing the primary to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Bernie Sanders is yet able to hold on to the second position in the 2020 Democratic Primary. I still say a Sanders/Warren ticket would be dynamite.

For some reason, the media is now beginning to focus on a two-way race between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, With Biden's recent gaffes and misstatements, he could easily lose the edge, and Bernie is still suffering over his age, which I find ludicrous. Here's the current scenario...

"She [Warren] drew an estimated 15,000 people to a rally in Seattle after holding an event nearly as large in Minneapolis last week. Biden spent the weekend talking to small gatherings in New Hampshire and Iowa. This led to a new meme: the rock star versus the rock."

Here are some more of the latest...

"Warren is doing better than Sanders in Iowa but the reverse is the case in New Hampshire. The most recent polls out of South Carolina show Warren and Sanders essentially tied in a distant fight for second place that might not even give either of them any delegates at all, and the two most recent polls out of Nevada disagree about which of them is doing better."

I still have a hankering to see a Bernie Sanders surge that takes him to the top capped off by winning the primary. But I am not naive, the primary thrust of the left in 2020 is beating Donald Trump. And there is still a year to go.  

The dictator in Donald Trump has become rampant

August 27, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk

Donald Trump doesn’t actually do anything, but he dominates everything. 

The chosen one

The headline, above, perfectly encapsulates the first two years of the Donald Trump administration in the White House. Isn't this tragic when you are talking about running the most powerful country in the world? Most other countries wonder, along with many Americans, how could the United States elect an egomaniac like Donald Trump to the presidency? Easy, when you consider the number of double-digits out there who are unable to think for themselves.

Lucian K. Truscott of Salon coined the above phrase, "He [Trump] doesn’t actually do anything, but he dominates everything." He adds this...

"Another week of shaking our heads and wondering how much longer we can survive him. Yet again, Donald Trump overwhelmed practically everything with the force of his obscene personality, running his mouth and his thumbs even while he was failing to run the country in any sort of conventional sense."

There's more...

"Living in America today is like being trapped in a room with him — no doors, no windows, no exits, only Trump and the sound of Trump and the hideous image of Trump, all day, every day, for day after day after day."

A dictator admires a dictator...

My wife and I sit down to the dinner where we usually discuss at least some politics. I tell her what I have found that day on the Internet about T-rump, and after a couple of these comments she just shakes her head, because, according to her, what else could you possibly say after hearing this for two years. A frustrated Neil Young, discussing modern music in the New York Times Magazine said, “I’ve got great melodies, and the words are all profanities.”

That's the age of Donald Trump...

"Our senses dictate how we experience the world — our hearing and sight and touch and smell, even the ineffable stuff like intuition and belief. But when our senses are overwhelmed by someone like Trump, when our lives seem filled with a man who does nothing but endlessly tweet and lie and hate, it kills us inside. Trump is killing us."

The dictator surfaces in Trump's ordering of U.S. companies to pull out of China and not do business with them. Whether he carries through on this order or not, he has cited the IEEPA law to support his threat. We are living in a dictatorship with the loose guidelines of a maniac who has no idea what he is doing but thinks that everything he does is right. And that is so frightening that every sane person in this country will lose sleep until Donald Trump is gone.

Donald dufus says, 'I am the chosen one'...

Here's a digest of Trump's recent comical but freakish moves...

"Trump announced that signs of an economic downturn were the results of a 'conspiracy' against him personally."

"Trump accused Jews who decide to vote for Democrats as being guilty of 'great disloyalty.'”

"Trump held a completely unhinged press 'gaggle' on the lawn of the White House during which he referred to himself as 'the chosen one.'”

"He hurled insults at the prime minister of Denmark because she wouldn’t sell him the island of Greenland."

"He joked about still being in office 10 to 14 years from now, an apparent attack on the 25th Amendment, suggested overturning the right of birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, but assured his gun-totin’ base that 'our Second Amendment will remain strong.'”

Well, you get the idea. The question is, what bizarre things can we expect from Donald Trump this week?

The whole world knows of Donald Trump mental instability

August 26, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk

Donald Trump is going down

The lunatic in the White House  

'Megalomaniacal, paranoid, and psychopathic’: Economist sounds the alarm on Trump’s ‘bottomless malevolence,' says Brad Reed in RawStory. It is the alarming warning of Economist Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University "about President Donald Trump’s 'paranoid and psychopathic' leadership style, and he says it could have disastrous consequences for the world if he wins a second term."

The above are the three big words that would describe someone completely out of control and ready to drop over the edge. And that would be the Oval Office lunatic that Sachs says...

"it would be a grave mistake to treat Trump like a cynical politician, when in reality he is an impulsive and vindictive narcissist who acts on his angry whims."

Bingo! There's more...

“The situation is far more dangerous,” Sachs explains. “Trump is mentally disordered: megalomaniacal, paranoid, and psychopathic. This is not name-calling. Trump’s mental condition leaves him unable to keep his word, control his animosities, and restrain his actions. He must be opposed, not appeased.”

Donald Trump is a lunatic...

Sachs continues in a disquieting evaluation that should make all Americans really think about 2020. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” panelists found T-rump's recent foreign policy antics as not only a wrong thing to do but also served as an indication that he is "crazy." Now these folks probably aren't that studied in psychology, but they see hundreds of people in their jobs and the comparison of behavior like Trump's isn't hard when it comes to normal human beings.

Here's a classic example...

"The president canceled a trip to Denmark after its prime minister refused to entertain his offer to buy Greenland, offered a stunningly vapid assessment of the situation in Kashmir, and reiterated his interest in seeing Russia rejoin the G7."

Yes, Donald dufus wants to buy Greenland...

Why the hell would the U.S want to buy Greenland? The question is why all this bizarre behavior that has been going on at some level since this maniac's election, but which has accelerated lately...

"Former Trump administration officials are concerned about the president's behavior in recent days, speculating that his increasingly erratic outbursts are linked to private worries that a recession in the US could torpedo his chances of reelection in 2020"

And this dufus might even know that a majority of the country (at least 54%) is hoping the torpedo takes him down in flames. But the epitome of trump insanity surfaced recently when he proclaimed he was the "chosen one." Here's Tom McCarthy's coverage in the Guardian...

"Over an ensuing half-hour rant, Trump trucked in antisemitic tropes, insulted the Danish prime minister, insisted he wasn’t racist, bragged about the performance of his former Apprentice reality show, denied starting a trade war with China, praised Vladimir Putin and told reporters that he, Trump, was the 'Chosen One' – all within hours of referring to himself as the “King of Israel” and tweeting in all caps: “WHERE IS THE FEDERAL RESERVE?”

There is no way I could top this and, anyway, his evangelical supporters agreed.

David Koch dead: Do not RIP

August 26, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk

As far as David Kochs' demise, who gives a flying f*ck  

Koch Bros: Ogres of destruction and devastation

David Koch is dead and many in this country are either openly or silently rejoicing and waiting for the other shoe to drop. That would be his brother Charles; his demise can't come soon enough for anyone who values life over the profits of industry. Here's the scenario...

"many Americans will remember him as one of the major players behind the Tea Party, and using his vast wealth to help massively reconstruct American politics into, some say, the vitriolic insanity we see today."

Yes, he and his brother, Charles, are at least somewhat responsible for the shape of the planet today as it fights to survive ecologically. We can also thank the two Kochs for the state of a political scene that is fraught with lies and underhanded governing, plus the use of illicit power to promote their libertarian beliefs. Both brothers were former members of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, which their father, Fred, helped found. You can't get much more radical right.

Good Koch expose from book: “Sons of Wichita”  A great read!

Charles convinced his younger brother David to run for Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket, which called for...

"abolishing all federal income taxes and virtually every federal agency, including the I.R.S., the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the F.E.C., the E.P.A., the F.D.A., and the S.E.C. The party also opposed Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, public education, and minimum-wage and child-labor laws."

The severity of these issues shows just how greedy these two brothers were, along with their libertarian party. Charles and David "regarded" centralized government as a scourge akin to Communism." Of course, it was always obvious why the pair despised government; it was the only thing keeping them in line from totally screwing the American public. Another conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., called the Kochs’ views “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”

Steven Rosenfeld, in an AlterNet Commentary provides "11 things the Koch brothers didn’t want you to know." It ranges from " The family’s $100 billion fortune comes mostly from a massive network of oil and gas pipelines, and investments in other polluting industries like paper and plastics." To "The Koch brothers’ massive investments and holdings are literally killing the planet, because their primary business is transporting gas and oil." Worth reading!

Another good Koch expose...

But my favorite is Bill Maher's reaction to David Kochs' death on HBO “Real Time”...

“He and his brother have done more than anybody to fund climate science deniers — for decades.” “So f*ck him, cause the Amazon is burning up, I’m glad he’s dead and I hope the end was painful.”

Surely, at least many conservationists are adding, 'May he burn in hell.'

More on the Koch Brothers:

"The slime (Koch) Bros. are at it again"
"KOCH BROTHERS ALLIES/BIG DONORS POUT OVER THEIR IMAGE"
"The ALEC conspiracy broadens"

"Political Satire: Charles Koch sneaks into White House and..."

Obama's deficit numbers yugely better than Trump's

August 25, 2019; PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk

Obama's deficit numbers yugely better than Trump's  

Donald Trump and his favorite bank

Republicans have run for cover since Donald Trump's budget deficit "is skyrocketing, projected to rise 25 percent over last year and heading to over $1 trillion next year." Here's the scenario...

"Tax revenues are $430 billion below where they were expected to be before the Trump tax cuts while spending is in drunken sailor territory adding $1.7 trillion in the next decade.”

There's more from RawStory's Tom Boggioni...

“Put it another way, deficits have risen from a decade low of 2.4 percent over Obama to a projected average 4.7 percent of GDP over the next decade. Remember, all this is happening during the nation’s longest economic expansion when deficits should be shrinking.”

Clearly, former President Barack Obama was doing something that T-rump can't seem to do: 'Run the country competently. How about Trump's tax cut that was eventually supposed to trickle down into the middle-class and lower; it has only made the wealthy even wealthier? And perpetual battle with China over tariffs that most recently has been judged as costing American consumers $1,000 annually in the near future? How about the fight with fed chairman Powell?

These are all issues given to us by the Oval Office lunatic who appears to be teetering on madness based on his maniacal tweets. It's not only the rich and corporations that will profit. Get this...

"Trump stands to save millions of dollars annually in interest on outstanding loans on his hotels and resorts if the Federal Reserve lowers rates as he has been demanding, according to public filings and financial experts."

Pathetic Trump official defends tax budget/deficit...

That's why he is constantly on the back of fed chairman Jerome Powell, calling him every name in the book. Here's the deal on Donald Trump's potential savings on his hotel properties...

"The payments on all four properties vary with interest rate changes, according to Trump’s official financial disclosures. That means he has already benefited from falling interest rates that were spurred in part by a cut the Federal Reserve announced in July, the first in more than a decade — and his payments could drop by millions of dollars more annually if the central bank grants Trump’s wish and further lowers short-term rates."

Once again we're talking about T-rump's buddies, Deutsche Bank, which was "one of Trump’s biggest lenders, sticking by the real estate mogul when other US banks refused to lend after he went through a series of bankruptcies." But are interest rates the most important threat to the economy?...

"most economists and business leaders say Trump’s trade war is the biggest threat to the economy, not interest rates, which are already at historically low levels."

Yet Donald dufus plods right along with yet more tariffs, while pressuring the feds for lower interest rates that will benefit him. Go figure. 

The dictator has ordered: block China-Is anyone listening?

August 24, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk

The tyrant raises his ugly head again  

Donald Trump-Xi Jinping-Who's winning?

The Oval Office lunatic didn't get his way with the China tariffs. Although the Asian nation seems to be hurting, its president, Xi, always calls Donald Trump's hand, and just raised him with $75 billion added to U.S. goods. It's hard to say whether T-rump is winning or losing this battle, but it is more about the way it is being played than anything else. The machinations of Trump so far would lead one to believe we have an ego maniac running this country. We do.

When US companies were ordered to stop doing business with China, well, you can probably imagine the flabbergasted looks on the faces of hundreds of CEOs. Here's the scenario...

"President Donald Trump claimed he has the 'absolute right' to 'order' US companies to stop doing business with China that would involve using his broad executive authority in a new and unprecedented way under a 1977 law."

Trump lies about Trade War with China...

On the way to the G7 summit in France, Trump told reporters, "I have the absolute right to do that," citing the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). He also threatened Mexico with the IEEPA but reneged in another of his buffoon bluffs. The law gives "broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency." But Trump must...

"consult with Congress before invoking his authority and, after declaring a national emergency, send a report to Congress explaining why."

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas and a CNN legal analyst says, "The idea behind these authorities is that the President is better situated to make those kinds of determinations than Congress, especially when they're time-sensitive." He added, "I very much doubt this kind of exercise of the authority conferred by the statute is what Congress had in mind." What he didn't say was the fact that it is a moron making the decisions.

Trump in danger of engineering a global manufacturing recession

August 23, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk

Donald Trump's inept administration will doom his second term 

The clown and his minions

If the country should go into recession, the misfits Donald Trump has put in place to run the economy wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do, including the Oval Office lunatic.  Here's the scenario...

"Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell on Friday warned that President Donald Trump’s team of economic advisers is woefully unprepared to handle a recession should one strike within the next year."

There is no plan she laments...

“We have this clown car of economic advisers… you have a guy who plays an economist on TV, you have a former Hollywood producer. This is not the dream team who will be handling a crisis if we face one."

Trump in danger of engineering a global manufacturing recession...

The stock market is tanking and the White House ego maniac is still playing games with China, resulting in their latest $75 billion tariff on U.S. goods just today. You have to wonder when this will all end until the realization hits; it won't until we get rid of Donald Trump. But perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel with the fact that some GOP donors are running scared that T-rump's tactics will result in Republicans losing big in 2020. Former Sen. Jeff Flake says...

"he’s received calls from several nervous Republican donors who fear a slowing or shrinking economy will doom the GOP in 2020 — and they’re looking to find a primary challenger for President Donald Trump."

These donors took the step even further...

"Some donors even asked Flake if he would personally consider running a primary challenge against the president, but he said he does not want to run right now and admitted that the odds of such a challenge succeeding are slim to none."

Impeachment or voted out in 2020?...

There's additional reason for trump to worry and wonder about his crazy antics that have screwed up the country and turned a large portion of the population against him. He won in 2016 with the Electoral College, the popular vote went heavily for Hillary Clinton (3 million more votes) but this time around polls show Trump's...

"net approval ratios being underwater (i.e., negative) in 10 states he carried in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin."

This translates into only 119 electoral votes for T-rump when 270 are needed to win the presidency. There is another factor that has been responsible for Trump's downfall; the fact that he has been solidly and accurately labeled a racist. It is a label that is sticking, and this is driving him crazy since he is one of branding's biggest advocates. Taegan Goddard's Political Wire says...

“Being called a racist has led Trump in recent days to lash out — in tweets and in public comments — behavior his advisers and allies explain as the natural reaction of anyone who does not consider himself a racist but is accused of being one.”

And finally, this CNN's Anderson Cooper video is a must see in a documentation of Donald Trump's blatant racism. I have said this repeatedly, having come from a South of the 19402/1950s, where the Ku Klux Klan ran rampant over the black population and committed unimaginable atrocities, I still cannot comprehend what this white fascination of dominance over those of color is all about. I left the South to get away from this but quickly discovered...racism is everywhere.