Eu 2019: Swing left, swing wrong

Left and Liberal = 362 (slight increase 358⇒362)
Unknowns = 38 (increase 21⇒38)
Centre-wrong = 180 (decrease 217⇒180)
Wrong = 59 (decrease 76⇒59)
Far-wrong = 112 (increase 78⇒112)

Geographic distribution of wrong versus liberal in 2019

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48417191 .

Sure, the Populists Gained, but the Real Winners May Be for Europe

The results this week of the European Parliament elections were a humiliating blow at home to President Emmanuel Macron of France, as his party finished second to the far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen.

But in the Parliament itself, his party could be the kingmaker because there will be no working majority without it.

That gives Mr. Macron, who has been the biggest booster among European leaders of deeper integration between European Union members, an opportunity to push through change — and to counter the populist and nationalist right.

Mr. Macron’s party — which did not even exist in the last European elections in 2014 — together with a group of liberal parties can create a sustainable working majority of pro-European parties.


These parties, and in particular the Green Party, which did especially well with young voters worried about climate change, have made clear they intend to use their new position to effect change in both who runs the European Union and its policies.

The new majority will also be able to stand up to, and potentially block, the more emboldened populist and nationalist right, which increased its share as a group by five percentage points and now holds about 25 percent of seats.

Altogether, the pro-European parties, along with the Greens, will control 502 of the 751 seats, limiting the power of the populists to gum up the system, and providing leverage for Mr. Macron and his allies in their desire to shake Europe to embrace a different future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/world/europe/european-union-elections-populists.html .

https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c7zzdg3pmgpt/european-elections-2019

DiEM 25 - MeRA 25

With results from the May 26 elections for European Parliament showing his new Diem MeRA25 party would win one seat in the 751-member body, former Greek finance chief Yanis Varoufakis said it was “a small political revolution.”

https://www.thenationalherald.com/246022/varoufakis-mera25-is-launching-its-campaign-for-greeces-national-elections/ .

Can Yanis Varoufakis save Europe? > .
? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=diem25 ?

In March 2018, Varoufakis announced the launch of his own political party, MeRA 25, with a stated aim of freeing Greece from "debt bondage". He stated that he hoped the party would be based on an alliance of "people of the left and liberalism, greens and feminists". The party, whose name stands for "European Realistic Disobedience Front", is affiliated to DiEM25.

On 25 November 2018, Varoufakis was selected to head the list of Democracy in Motion (the German section of DiEM25) for the 2019 European elections.

On 13 September, Varoufakis penned an op-ed piece in The Guardian about the need for an international progressive movement, alongside a similar piece by fellow progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. On 26 October in Rome, Varoufakis announced the Progressive International, which was described as a "common blueprint for an International New Deal, a progressive New Bretton Woods". The organization officially launched on 30 November in Sanders' home town of Burlington, Vermont.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis .

Our new international movement will fight rising fascism and globalists .

Our task is not unprecedented. Fascists did not come to power in the mid-war period by promising violence, war or concentration camps. They came to power by addressing good people who, following a severe capitalist crisis, had been treated for too long like livestock that had lost its market value. Instead of treating them like “deplorables”, fascists looked at them in the eye and promised to restore their pride, offered their friendship, gave them a sense that they belonged to a larger ideal, allowed them to think of themselves as something more than sovereign consumers.

That injection of self-esteem was accompanied by warnings against the lurking “alien” who threatened their revived hope. The politics of “us versus them” took over, bleached of social class characteristics and defined solely in terms of identities. The fear of losing status turned into tolerance of human rights abuses first against the suspect “others” and then against any and all dissent. Soon, as the establishment’s control over politics waned under the weight of the economic crisis it had caused, the progressives ended up marginalised or in prison. By then it was all over.

Is this not how Donald Trump first conquered the White House and is now winning the discursive war against a Democratic party establishment? Is this not reminiscent of the Conservative Brexiteers’ sudden appreciation of a National Health Service they had starved of funds for decades, or the energetic embracing of democracy that Thatcherism had subordinated to the logic of market forces? Are these not the ways of the hard right governments in Austria, Hungary and Poland, of Greece’s Golden Dawn Nazis and, most poignantly, of Matteo Salvini, the strongman steering the new Italian government? Everywhere we look today we see manifestations of the resurgence of an ambitious Nationalist International, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s. As for the establishment, they are behaving as if with a penchant to repeat the Weimar Republic’s every mistake.

But enough of the diagnosis. The pertinent question now is: what must we do? A tactical alliance with the globalist establishment is out of the question. Tony Blair, Hilary Clinton, the social democratic establishment in continental Europe are too compromised by their monetary links to a degenerating financialised capitalism and its accompanying ideology. For decades they relied on free market populism: the false promise that everyone can become better off as long as we submit to commodification. They’d like us to believe in a never-ending escalator that will take us to the heights of consumer satisfaction, but it doesn’t exist.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2018/sep/13/our-new-international-movement-will-fight-rising-fascism-and-globalists .

The anti-austerity maverick will head the list of Demokratie In Europa, a German political party that is part of the pan-European, cross-border movement DiEM25 set up by Varoufakis in 2016. It will seek to gain seats for the first time in the European Parliament.

Although he is not a German citizen, Varoufakis and his movement said he meets the conditions to stand as a candidate in Germany as he is an EU citizen who has a residential address in the country.

The 57-year-old economics professor said in a statement on Sunday that his party will offer a "Green New Deal for Europe: a realistic, credible, rational and immediately implementable policy agenda for the whole of Europe".

According to the party's campaign programme, it will push to "ban tax havens within the EU" and put those outside the bloc on a black list.

It will also seek a "new EU budget" to fund projects like building up green infrastructure, fighting poverty and integrating immigrants.

The budget would be partly financed by taxes on carbon and financial transactions, said the programme.

Varoufakis bitterly opposed Chancellor Angela Merkel's austerity-for-aid insistence in the Greek debt crisis, but has praised her for keeping Germany's doors open to asylum seekers.

https://www.thelocal.de/20181126/greeces-former-finance-minister-to-stand-for-election-in-germany .

Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives

An eminent anatomist and obstetrician, Hunter confined himself to a specific topic (late pregnancy) and "subject" (the dissection of a woman who died near the end of term). Illustrations that represent only "what was actually seen.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy/da_g_II-B-1.html .

Abortion Myths Shattered by a Real Gynecologist | NowThis > .
Every pregnancy poses a “serious health risk” to the mother.

Pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. Women die from being pregnant. We have known that for thousands of years.

They die from hemorrhage, infection, pre-eclampsia (which can lead to fatal seizures), obstructed labor, amniotic fluid embolism, thromboembolism, a ruptured uterus, retained placenta, hydatidiform mole, choriocarcinoma and many other causes that fill the obstetrics textbooks. Modern medicine can prevent and treat many, but not all, of these conditions. Some potentially fatal problems cannot be foreseen or prevented. Pregnancy always comes with some irreducible risk of death.

There are factors that put some women at higher-than-average risk of death from pregnancy: age (to be an early adolescent is more dangerous), high blood pressure, many previous pregnancies, diabetes, obesity, a history of cesarean delivery, uterine abnormalities, a scarred cervix, a placenta previa (in which the placenta covers the cervix). A placenta previa can result in sudden, catastrophic hemorrhage that is fatal, and it can require a cesarean delivery — which carries its own risks — since a normal vaginal delivery is impossible.

The measure of risk to a woman’s life from pregnancy itself is called the “maternal mortality ratio.” That is the number of women who die of causes related to or aggravated by pregnancy per 100,000 live births.

In Alabama, the overall maternal mortality ratio in 2018 was 11.9 per 100,000. Among white women, the 2018 maternal mortality ratio was 5.6; among black women, it was 27.6, making black women in Alabama almost five times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy than white women. For the United States overall, the maternal mortality ratio was 20.7 [per 100,000 live births].

By comparison, a study in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology on abortion mortality from 1998 to 2010 found that for the 16.1 million [legal] abortions performed during that time, the overall death rate was 0.7 per 100,000 procedures. The death rate for early-abortion procedures — those that took place within the first eight weeks of the pregnancy — was less: 0.3 per 100,000.

UK

While Collusion and Obstruction continue unabated ...

"What [the USA] needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship. Whether they like it or not, Republicans RepuGNicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country. Mueller’s report leaves many unanswered questions — in part because of Attorney General William P. Barr’s redactions and obfuscations. But it is a road map. It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nation’s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless."
.......
"We Congress have has to get this right. The Mueller report isn’t just a reckoning about our America's recent history; it’s a warning about the future. Unless checked, the Russians will interfere again in 2020, and possibly other adversaries, such as China or North Korea, will as well. This is an urgent threat. Nobody but Americans should be able to decide America’s future. And, unless he’s  held accountable, the president [crooked, treasonous, pathological LIAR] may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office. He will likely redouble his efforts to advance Putin’s agenda, including rolling back sanctions, weakening NATO and undermining the European Union.

Of all the lessons from our the USA's history, the one that’s most important may be that each of us [decent American] has a vital role to play as citizens. A crime was committed against all Americans, and all Americans should demand action and accountability. Our America's founders envisioned the danger we they face today and designed a system to meet it. Now it’s up to us [rational Americans] to prove the wisdom of our Constitution, the resilience of our [their] democracy and the strength of our [their] nation."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hillary-clinton-mueller-documented-a-serious-crime-against-all-americans-heres-how-to-respond/2019/04/24/1e8f7e16-66b7-11e9-82ba-fcfeff232e8f_story.html .

John Podesta: The Mueller report shows an attack on our democracy. It’s time to act. .
Max Boot: The Mueller report reads like an impeachment referral .
Harry Litman: The most important day in the Mueller probe was deeply upsetting .
The Post’s View: The Mueller report is the opposite of exoneration .
Eugene Robinson: Democrats must seize and define this moment. Otherwise, Trump will. .

Time to eliminate the RepuGNicans from the former Republican Party

The Democratic Endgame > .

The Mistake of "Electability"

The Democratic Party of 2019 does not look much like Joe Biden. Women, African-American, Latino and Asian voters are all much more likely to say they support Democratic candidates than Republican ones. White voters, male voters and especially white male voters generally support Republicans.

Statistics on who votes Democratic also suggest that the Democratic Party is more diverse than the experts deciding who is electable.

Those assumptions about electability reflect entrenched biases more than political science, and have a dash of arrogance to boot. An electable candidate, the thinking goes, has to be authentic and broadly appealing. But authenticity itself is coded as white and male when it’s defined by white men.

This perpetual reading of the white working-class tea leaves (or beer hops?) only makes sense if those voters are actually more influential than all the others. In the Democratic Party, they’re not. Just under a third of white men without college degrees said they voted for a Democrat in the 2018 midterms. And Democrats don’t need anywhere near a majority of these men to win. Women vote in larger numbers than men; voters with college and post-graduate degrees turn out in larger shares than those without. These high-turnout groups are the same ones that are trending Democratic. If they're motivated to turn out to vote, a Democrat will wind up in the White House.

But what about those Obama-to-Trump swing voters who will reportedly make or break this election, as they did the last one? The Democratic Party shouldn’t leave anyone behind, but working-class white men are declining as a share of the Democratic base, while whites generally are declining as a share of the general population. The entire premise that white men without college degrees are the only possible swing voters is a faulty one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opinion/joe-biden-president.html .

Stacey

[Because Greedy Obstructionist Plutocrats cannot win without cheating]

Stacey Abrams: My Dad Was Arrested for Registering Black Voters in the 1960s: As more people of color claim their political power, efforts to block them will accelerate — unless we act.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/opinion/stacey-abrams-voting.html .

Stacey Abrams | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union > .

Because women are more community-oriented:

The research is clear: electing more women changes how government works

Women legislators sponsor more bills, pass more laws, and send their districts more money

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/27/12266378/electing-women-congress-hillary-clinton .

Why WRONG-wing politicians LOVE the poorly-informed

Brexit BrexTWIT: Fact vs Fear > .
BrexTWITtery >>> .

Fine-Back their Grifted Gains?
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/schiff-proposes-heavy-fines-for-stonewalling-congressional-probes-59353669605 .

Redactions - protecting ongoing investigations and the guilty

About 10 percent of the special counsel’s 448-page report is blacked out. A bird’s-eye view of the report reveals the pattern of redactions. More is kept secret in the first volume of the report, which covers Russian interference in the 2016 election, than in the second, which covers possible transparent obstruction of justice.

The report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was released to the public on Thursday. Its redactions, made by the Justice Department, fall into four categories. They are labeled in the document using color-coded text, with categories indicating the reason for the redactions.

A majority of the redactions, about 69 percent in total, were made because the material related to ongoing investigations.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/19/us/politics/redacted-mueller-report.html .
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-document.html .

The report released on Thursday revealed that his team of prosecutors had found enough evidence of potential crimes to make 14 different criminal referrals to other federal prosecutors.

So far, only two of those have officially been made public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-russian-interference-donald-trump.html .

No, Michelle. In a Functional Country, HRC would be POTUS

In a Functional Country, We Would Be on the Road to Impeachment

Mueller laid out the evidence for members of Congress to take action against President Trump. Will they?

By Michelle Goldberg

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/opinion/mueller-report-trump-barr-impeachment.html .
...........
In a "Functional Country", an antagonistic foreign power and a band of slime-bags could not have installed a transparently crooked incompetent who lost the popular vote.

An occasion for street parties > .

Flaw at the heart of democracy

Flaw at the heart of democracy

“The origin of civil government,” wrote David Hume in 1739, is that “men are not able radically to cure, either in themselves or others, that narrowness of soul, which makes them prefer the present to the remote.” The Scottish philosopher was convinced that the institutions of government – such as political representatives and parliamentary debates – would serve to temper our impulsive and selfish desires, and foster society’s long-term interests and welfare.
Today Hume’s view appears little more than wishful thinking, since it is so startlingly clear that our political systems have become a cause of rampant short-termism rather than a cure for it. Many politicians can barely see beyond the next election, and dance to the tune of the latest opinion poll or tweet. Governments typically prefer quick fixes, such as putting more criminals behind bars rather than dealing with the deeper social and economic causes of crime. Nations bicker around international conference tables, focused on their near-term interests, while the planet burns and species disappear.

As the 24/7 news media pumps out the latest twist in the Brexit eternal BrexTWIT negotiations or obsesses over a throwaway comment from the US UNpresident, the myopia of modern democratic politics is all too obvious. So is there an antidote to this political presentism that pushes the interests of future generations permanently beyond the horizon?
....
One problem is the electoral cycle, an inherent design flaw of democratic systems that produces short political time horizons. Politicians might offer enticing tax breaks to woo voters at the next electoral contest, while ignoring long-term issues out of which they can make little immediate political capital, such as dealing with ecological breakdown, pension reform or investing in early childhood education. Back in the 1970s, this form of myopic policy-making was dubbed the “political business cycle”.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term

The Contaminator & Co

James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr: Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive this president.

[edited to better reflect reality] "Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Crook-in-Chief that it took days for the [dimwitted] UNpresident to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein [the real targets of Comey's Faustian insights]. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive LIAR-in-Chief and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because LIAR-in-Chief eats your soul in small bites."

......
"You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You [along with more than 50% of individuals on the planet] are smarter than Idiot-in-Chief, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his "leadership", tout his commitment to values.

And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul."

[The problem that will remain when the venal RepuGNicans have been removed from undeserved office? Unpatriotic Americans too dim, duped, desperate, and/or deplorable to dump the Russia-installed devil.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html .

If DUHnocchio were UNpresident in South Korea, he would be incarcerated by now

Neal Katyal: Why Barr Can’t Whitewash the Mueller Report: We have a system in place for our government to uncover evidence against a sitting president. And it’s working.

"Many who watched Attorney General William Barr’s testimony on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which followed the revelation that the special counsel Robert Mueller had expressed misgivings about Mr. Barr’s characterization of his report, are despairing about the rule of law. I am not among them. I think the system is working, and inching, however slowly, toward justice.

When it comes to investigating a president, the special counsel regulations I had the privilege of drafting in 1998-99 say that such inquiries have one ultimate destination: Congress. That is where this process is going, and has to go. We are in the fifth inning, and we should celebrate a system in which our own government can uncover so much evidence against a sitting president.

Some commentators have attacked the special counsel regulations as giving the attorney general the power to close a case against the president, as Mr. Barr did with the obstruction of justice investigation into Conspirator-in-Chief. But the critics’ complaint here is not with the regulations but with the Constitution itself. Article II gives the executive branch control over prosecutions, so there isn’t an easy way to remove the attorney general from the process."

.......

"Mr. Barr’s deeply evasive testimony on Wednesday necessitates and tees up a full investigation in Congress. Those who say Congress shouldn’t do so because surveys show that the American public is not in favor of an impeachment inquiry must take into account the fact that the American people have been misled by Attorney General Barr’s characterizations of the report and its conclusions. These surveys are therefore not surprising. But there is no more sacred duty for Congress than getting to the bottom of whether our president has taken care that the laws of this country have been faithfully executed."

Maybe so, but those of us fortunate enough to live in functional Western nations guffaw at the "again" in "MAGA".

USA foreign

Dimbo outmaneuvered again

"I gotta say, it was very clever of Nancy Pelosi to steal Dimbo's strawberries, pushing him over the edge into self-evident lunacy.

As everyone knows, Infant-in-Chief stormed out of a meeting on infrastructure, apparently out of uncontrollable rage over Pelosi’s remarks pointing out that the administration’s stonewalling on all fronts, including raw defiance of the law requiring that it provide the UNpresident’s [crime-revealing] tax returns, obviously amount to a coverup of something (and maybe multiple things.) And Democrats should be grateful.

And I don’t just mean that they should be grateful to see Idiot-in-Chief displaying his unfitness for office, which has long been clear to close observers, in such a dramatically unhinged way that only cultists can fail to see it. He’s also helped them with a political dilemma.

You see, a major infrastructure push is a very good idea, one that Democrats would find it hard to oppose in good conscience. Yet it would also be politically good for Incompetent-in-Chief, helping the economy, giving the public a sense of progress, and also making him seem more like a normal president.
......
Let’s not try to pretend that there was any clever political strategy in Puppet-in-Chief’s walkout; it was just his immaturity and insecurity, but even more obvious than usual. And the attempt to portray Pelosi as out of control is so ludicrous that only totally deluded people – i.e., around a third of the country – could possibly believe it."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/opinion/trump-tantrums-dems-out-of-a-trap.html .