Progressives (Liberals)

I'm very interested to see if success by moderates might cause Bloomberg to drop out — he only got in because it looked as if the left-wing of the party was poised to dominate the field.

This constitutes an explicit admission that Barr has inserted himself into the Stone case to reduce the recommended sentence (which was established by sentencing guidelines for the acts Stone was found guilty of).

If you weren't previously convinced that Barr's corruption of the DOJ in aid of his corrupt boss was readily apparent, you better get to that conclusion now.

Hitler got the trains running on time. He was beloved.

nyt

Can someone explain why Buttigieg got more delegates than Sanders, even though Sanders got more votes???

You can't deny people's votes, and still keep them motivated to vote.

If you are talking about Iowa, they use a district system to allocate votes so it's kind of like the electoral college. You can win a lot of districts by a few votes and lose a few districts big and get more delegates with less votes. I think NH does something similar, allotting delegates by district.

And not just Vindman. His twin brother too who is strongly guilty of being Vindman's twin.

Yes. There will be many more purges and with them, substantial institutional memory and knowledge lost. As regards the military and the Pentagon, aside from Trump's constant pimping of them for photo ops, he does not miss any opportunity to **** all over them when they stand up for what they believe or know if those beliefs and knowledge do not correspond with Trump's need to be seen as dictator in charge.

As we say in French: "pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué?" ("why make it simple, when you can make it complicated?")

So the "lanes" are a lot more clear now. In the moderate lane, you have Klobuchar then Biden, in the somewhat progressive lane you have Buttigieg and in far progressive lane you have Sanders. Warren looks like she is out, Biden could bow out to Klobuchar if he doesn't turn it around. If that happens, we have a clear three way/three lane race.

So how do you see Bloomberg?

To the right of Biden/Klobuchar. Bloomberg is a member of a dying breed, the New England Republican. Those are fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republicans that were pushed out of the Republican Party when it went extreme on social issues. He wouldn't be a bad President, I think he would restore order, support social programs and civil rights and put a little more fiscal responsibility in place, but I doubt he would raise taxes (which need to be raised in a big way) or support regulations on businesses.

There is a body of evidence now, -in the wake of the fruitless and illicitly initiated, two year Mueller Investigation and the recent impeachment effort (over a phone call, leaked to the press & hostile member of Congress by hostile bureaucrats in the NSA and others, - emerging that strongly indicates the need for some housecleaning in state bureaucracies that have come to see themselves as a fourth branch of government coequal with the Executive, Congress and Judicial branches. There's nothing particularly unusual in all this; dying corporations, burdened with non-productive but self-protecting administrative staffs have faced similar things (General Electric is an example), as have dying tyrannies such as the late but unlamented tyrannies of the Soviet and Maoist empires. Indeed something like this appears to be developing in the ever growing bureaucracy that supports the ever closer "union" in the now increasingly shaky European Union.

There's plenty of evidence now emerging pointing to widespread systematic corruption in the Justice Department and intelligence services inherited from the previous Administration. A little corrective housecleaning of these agencies an actions to limit their recent excesses, appears entirely appropriate.

I like the idea of Bloomberg, too. But I don't think we'll get him.

You're actually blaming the Republicans for something? Amazing . . . you know, that investigation was started by the Republican controlled Congress. The Democrats did not take over the House until 2019.

You have a good & interesting point. The thing was indeed put together during the Trump Administration and in the face of a then divided Republican House of Representatives.

Trump entered office a good deal less prepared for assuming control of the Federal Bureaucracy than do most Presidents, particularly those with extensive experience Federal government experience and a well-developed network of Washington savants. One consequence was that he was very late and slow in bringing in a coterie of supportive senior bureaucrats, Ambassadors and other officials to replace the many holdover political appointees from the previous Administration who, as a group dominated(and in many cases continue to dominate) the second and third tier positions in most Government Agencies. The Justice Department was a Particularly relevant case, with a very weak Trump-appointed Attorney General who quickly recused himself from what emerged to be a long-term investigation, involving some apparently illicit FISA applications and obvious bias on the part of some involved, and which ended up with no prima facie basis for legal actions on any matter.

Historically there are only two lanes out of New Hampshire.

I think that based on history we can now narrow it down to only Sanders and Buttigieg.

In addition to what Engineer said, there is a rule in Iowa that if you don't clear 15% in a congressional district you get no delegates from that district. So if Sanders got 14% in a congressional district, he would have gotten zero delegates from that district.

I don't know if he did drop below 15% in any districts, but that's another possible explanation.

Also, if someone goes over 15% in a congressional district in Iowa, they are entitled to at least one delegate from that district. With each district having only a handful of delegates to award, if too many people get just over 15%, that can siphon delegates away from the candidates who get well over 15%.


The New York Times had an article about it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/upshot/iowa-caucuses-multiple-winners.html

The section of the article titled "State delegate equivalency" covers the scenario that Engineer described.

The section of the article titled "Pledged delegates" covers the 15% situations that I described.

It'll be good to finally clear these deep state traitors out of the government.

It is a political fact of life that the bureaucracy gets "packed" by place-holders who are usually sympathetic to the administration which has held office when they joined. Mr. Obama was in office for eight years, so the effect was significant. By and large, however, the bureaucracy has been Republican-leaning. Mr. Reagan and the elder Bush were in office for twelve years, followed by eight years of Mr. Clinton, followed by eight years of the younger Bush, and then eight years of Mr. Obama. In forty years, there were sixteen years of Democratic administrations, and twenty-four years of Republican administrations (prior to the arrival of Plump). Most people don't serve or hold their places for forty years, however--in the thirty years before January, 2017, there were fourteen years of Republicans and sixteen years of Democrats. Roughly, that was a balance.

But Plump came in and began appointing some truly idiotic people, and others who were casually corrupt. Wilbur Ross was a no-brainer: he structured the deals from banks that allowed Plump to avoid personal bankruptcy in the 1990s, and brokered real estate deals for Plump and Jared Kushner. He is not technically corrupt, but he bailed out Plump in four failures of Plump's casinos and hotels, and made the deals with allowed Plump to avoid personal bankruptcy and to sell his name to those who took over his businesses. Ross was a registered Democrat, with a long history of donations to the party and Democratic candidates, until after the 2016 election, when he joined the Republicans.

Ryan Zinke, his first Secretary of the Interior, eventually left under a cloud of accusations, after an IG investigation, saying it wasn't worth the financial and moral cost to his family. Betsy Devos, his Secretary of Education has no allegations of personal corruption (that I know of), but when Plump was separating children from their parents at the border, her husband's cousin had many of those children directed to her shelter, to the tune of $750 of taxpayer money per night. Zinke and Devos are, as far as I know, life-long Republicans.

John Kelly, first his Secretary of Homeland Security and then the White House Chief of Staff, had conflict of interest charges brought against him, just as did Zinke and Devos. He also made some breathtakingly ignorant and often factually false remarks about the American civil war, especially stupid against the backdrop of the Charlottesville debacle. By and large, though, Kelly was the most capable of his early advisers.

I suspect that Plump, like most men and women who have run or attempted to run their own enterprises, is not good at taking advice, and doesn't really listen to advisers. It is only within the last year, at most 18 months, that he seems to have been getting, and actually listening to intelligent, experienced political advice. It's fortunate for him that the Democrats were stupid enough to go ahead with impeachment (against Pelosi's advice--they had to drag her, kicking and screaming behind the scenes, into that idiocy). It's the best thing to happen to him in this administration, with a view to re-election.

As Setanta notes, going back five presidencies, Republicans have held the office for longer and have thus "packed" government with their own chosen people to a greater extent than Dems.

But that's a formulation which presumes that such appointments are done entirely or mostly to cast a partisan color to each administration and it's choices for all departments. That's not merely absolutely cynical, it's a justification for anything Trump (or anyone else) might do not matter how corrupt. Why on earth would a reasoning leader concerned, one supposes, with protecting America, pack intel agencies or the foreign services, for example, with an eye to partisan gain? Do you really want your presidents surrounding themselves with "Yes" men? You think it a fine idea?

But rather more to the point, you're happy to label Dem appointees or aides as "corrupt" but not GOP appointees and aides. Fine people all.

Setanta laid out some examples of the corruption that has marked the Trump administration. There are lots more. Some are in jail or were jailed and there will be more.

I have to admit that I'm curious to watch how far into the toilet you are going to swirl along with your party. I'm guessing it's a lot further. If, say, Pete Buttigieg became President and said, "I know more than all the Generals" we all know how you'd react. If Warren or Sanders became President and said to an assemblage of top US military, "I wouldn't go to war with you people. You're a bunch of dopes and babies" we know too what you'd say. There is no prior President I know of who has **** all over the military like Trump has done, none who've disregarded their advices like he has. And you've said **** all about this. Please don't tell us that Trump is speaking truth because it wouldn't be "truth" if those others said it or if they were to act towards the military as Trump has done.