Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

But Republicans have a personnel problem as well as a policy problem. Since the 1980s, party leaders have maintained that the federal government needs to be slashed, and their determination to just say no has elevated lawmakers whose skill set features obstruction rather than the negotiation required to pass bills. Their goal is to stay in power to stop legislation from passing.

“Health care will prove to be an enormously healthy project for Clinton… and for the Democratic Party.” So predicts Stanley Greenberg, the president’s strategist and pollster. If a Clinton health care plan succeeds without principled Republican opposition, Mr. Greenberg will be right. Because the initiative’s inevitably destructive effect on American medical services will not be practically apparent for several years–no Carter-like gas lines, in other words–its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 1996. But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse–much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for “security” on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.

I saw McCaskill say that. It was on Nicolle Wallace's MSNBC show, Deadline: White House.

Be fair, at least he didn't call it football.

Unfortunately an Ivy League education, and even intelligence itself, is not an inoculation against bigotry.

Higher education is incredibly corrupt.

Most of the gits in the higher universities get there because of money and influence, not ability.

Have you seen Saltburn?

The Wall Street Journal ripped the current obsession of “Trumpy internet trolls” with Taylor Swift

Did you see it?

Quote:

Higher education is incredibly corrupt.

Most of the gits in the higher universities get there because of money and influence, not ability.

In my experience, this is a gross overstatement of what actually goes on in universities. There's no question that the high status (and expensive) institutions will attract the children of the wealthy and that money and connections are almost always influential in acceptance policies (overt or covert). But the number of such individuals as a ratio in the broad university population will be very, very small.

Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet and co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago case, was accused by three female service members of a years-long pattern of sexual misconduct that included his time with Trump in the White House, the Daily Beast reports:

Quote:

Navy officials had escorted him off White House grounds, reassigned him to a new post, and docked his White House security clearance in response to accusations of fraternization, adultery, harassment, and other inappropriate sexual conduct, including “revenge porn,” two people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast.

Despite the allegations, Trump brought Nauta down to Palm Beach later that same year to work for him there.

Federal authorities have been investigating sexual assault and sex trafficking allegations against WWE co-founder Vince McMahon, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Prosecutors in New York in recent months have been in contact with women who have accused McMahon of sexual misconduct, the people said.