Lily Salter's Blog, page 1023
August 11, 2015
Rand Paul: Tea Party’s been “hijacked and hoodwinked” by “false conservative” Donald Trump
Third Way Dems’ new war on Elizabeth Warren progressives: Why their centrist pitch is a political loser
Moderates are tired of being overshadowed in a party where liberals have long dominated the agenda, even as Democrats slipped further into the House minority after the 2014 midterm elections. They’ve accused the White House and party leaders of focusing too much on niche economic issues like the minimum wage and pay equity — policies, moderates argue, that turn off suburban voters Democrats need if they want to take back the House. And top Democratic leaders have released them to break with the party’s liberal base, in many cases an acknowledgement that many moderates come from tightly contested districts.It's clear that whatever House Democrats have been doing the last few cycles has not been working. The chief piece of evidence here would be that Democrats do not hold the House. Democrats owe it to their voters and the rank-and-file donors whom the DCCC milks dry every two years not to be content with this sort of thing and come up with a real plan for increasing their ranks. Even though New Democrats are terrible, they, and anyone else who's got an idea, should feel welcome to put forth their suggestions for how to adjust the party's policies and messaging. The Democratic Party's failure in the House is more of a crisis than too many Democratic commentators seem to let on, and the party should field any and all suggestions thrown its way. The floor's all yours, New Democrats. What policy ideas would sharpen House Democrats' appeal to moderate voters? • Trade deals. "When Obama needed support from his own party to pass landmark trade legislation, he turned to the New Democrat Coalition. The group mustered just enough votes — 28 in total — to clear fast-track trade authority through Congress, despite opposition from the party’s left, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California." • Dynamic scoring. "Reps. John Delaney of Maryland and Scott Peters of California introduced a 'dynamic scoring' bill — an issue normally favored by Republicans — that would encourage budget scorekeepers to score tax cuts favorably to reevaluate how Congress spends money on infrastructure, research and education." • "Reforming" Dodd-Frank. "Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes is one of the most outspoken advocates for reforming the Dodd-Frank financial regulations bill." [Jim Himes seems like a nice fellow and has a good-by-congressmen-standards Twitter account. He is also owned by the banks.] • Corporate tax reform. "Lawmakers in the coalition repeatedly stressed that reevaluating how the U.S. taxes corporate profits from overseas operations could be an area of compromise between the moderate Democrats and Republicans." OK OK, I think I see the problem here. This article and the quotes within it frame New Democrats' proposal as geared toward appealing to voters. You know, voters! Humans who visit polling stations and cast their ballots for either Democratic or Republican candidates. But these policy proposals are quite obviously ones that are not geared directly toward winning these voters back to the Democratic ticket. Can we be real here? Moderate voters -- again, the actual humans who do the voting and have moderate political beliefs -- did not forsake a Democratic House majority because they weren't working hard enough to grease the skids for opaque free trade deals, or because they weren't slashing corporate tax rates fast enough. They weren't punishing Democrats for taking it too hard on the banks in Dodd-Frank or for insisting on static scoring of legislation. The policies that the New Democrats are championing here would not seem, at all, to cast the party image in a new, more positive light among the "suburban voters Democrats need if they want to take back the House." (And here I'd thought that it was white working-class voters, not "suburban voters," that the Democrats needed to stave off midterm-cycle death? It seems that the centrist politicians themselves also get confused about which amorphous demographic to use as a prop to convince liberals to stop talking about the "divisive" concerns of women and black people.) New Democrats' policy agenda makes much more sense once we recognize that these appeals aren't targeted toward voters so much as they are to donors in the worlds of business and high finance. The list of policies above sounds a lot like a 60-second pitch that a DCCC finance director might deliver to the political wing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Fortunately we have New Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly right there in the Politico piece to confirm that corporate donors are the real project here.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said the coalition — which announced Wednesday it had reached $1 million in fundraising through its super PAC at the quickest rate ever — is also refocusing on business groups that have traditionally been Republican allies. He said Democrats have an opportunity to reach new voters and donors with the congressional fight over the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank and immigration. [...] “We are more expansive in our economic policy and our economic message than many in the Democratic Party,” Connolly said. “We want to reach out to a pro-business community that we believe is really receptive to a Democratic message if we reach out to them and include them.”The "pro-business community" has been well aware that there are enough free-trade Democrats in the House Democratic caucus to move whatever they need to move, just as there are enough to tuck whatever Dodd-Frank-gutting riders they want into appropriations bills. The party has been working formally with the "pro-business community" for years to pass comprehensive immigration reform and more recently to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank. Everyone is open to tax reform for corporations and individuals, though specifics are a matter of contentious debate. And indeed, a solid majority of these proposals have gone nowhere because of the right-wing of the Republican Party. And you know what happens when the right-wing of the Republican Party shoots down something strongly favored by the "pro-business community"? The "pro-business community"... continues throwing money at the Republican Party. The Chamber of Commerce has thrown hundreds of millions of dollars towards Republican candidates the last few cycles, even when the Republican candidates themselves trash the Chamber of Commerce's top policy priorities. That's because the Republican Party is still the party of big business and deregulation. These New Democrats are offering little technocratic tweaks to regulations here and there, while Republicans are offering total obliteration of all regulations. Kissing Wall Street's ass more is probably not the solution that Democrats need to retake the House of Representatives. (Not that there are really any great options. The sad truth is that House Democrats probably need a crappy Republican president in office in order to make serious congressional gains.)The dream of the '90s is alive among a modest collection of House Democrats. The whittled-down number of House Democrats comprising the New Democrat coalition is pushing back against Nancy Pelosi and the scatterbrained leftists she keeps under her thumb to "force the Democratic Caucus to the center" as a means of retaking control of the chamber, Politico reports.
Moderates are tired of being overshadowed in a party where liberals have long dominated the agenda, even as Democrats slipped further into the House minority after the 2014 midterm elections. They’ve accused the White House and party leaders of focusing too much on niche economic issues like the minimum wage and pay equity — policies, moderates argue, that turn off suburban voters Democrats need if they want to take back the House. And top Democratic leaders have released them to break with the party’s liberal base, in many cases an acknowledgement that many moderates come from tightly contested districts.It's clear that whatever House Democrats have been doing the last few cycles has not been working. The chief piece of evidence here would be that Democrats do not hold the House. Democrats owe it to their voters and the rank-and-file donors whom the DCCC milks dry every two years not to be content with this sort of thing and come up with a real plan for increasing their ranks. Even though New Democrats are terrible, they, and anyone else who's got an idea, should feel welcome to put forth their suggestions for how to adjust the party's policies and messaging. The Democratic Party's failure in the House is more of a crisis than too many Democratic commentators seem to let on, and the party should field any and all suggestions thrown its way. The floor's all yours, New Democrats. What policy ideas would sharpen House Democrats' appeal to moderate voters? • Trade deals. "When Obama needed support from his own party to pass landmark trade legislation, he turned to the New Democrat Coalition. The group mustered just enough votes — 28 in total — to clear fast-track trade authority through Congress, despite opposition from the party’s left, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California." • Dynamic scoring. "Reps. John Delaney of Maryland and Scott Peters of California introduced a 'dynamic scoring' bill — an issue normally favored by Republicans — that would encourage budget scorekeepers to score tax cuts favorably to reevaluate how Congress spends money on infrastructure, research and education." • "Reforming" Dodd-Frank. "Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes is one of the most outspoken advocates for reforming the Dodd-Frank financial regulations bill." [Jim Himes seems like a nice fellow and has a good-by-congressmen-standards Twitter account. He is also owned by the banks.] • Corporate tax reform. "Lawmakers in the coalition repeatedly stressed that reevaluating how the U.S. taxes corporate profits from overseas operations could be an area of compromise between the moderate Democrats and Republicans." OK OK, I think I see the problem here. This article and the quotes within it frame New Democrats' proposal as geared toward appealing to voters. You know, voters! Humans who visit polling stations and cast their ballots for either Democratic or Republican candidates. But these policy proposals are quite obviously ones that are not geared directly toward winning these voters back to the Democratic ticket. Can we be real here? Moderate voters -- again, the actual humans who do the voting and have moderate political beliefs -- did not forsake a Democratic House majority because they weren't working hard enough to grease the skids for opaque free trade deals, or because they weren't slashing corporate tax rates fast enough. They weren't punishing Democrats for taking it too hard on the banks in Dodd-Frank or for insisting on static scoring of legislation. The policies that the New Democrats are championing here would not seem, at all, to cast the party image in a new, more positive light among the "suburban voters Democrats need if they want to take back the House." (And here I'd thought that it was white working-class voters, not "suburban voters," that the Democrats needed to stave off midterm-cycle death? It seems that the centrist politicians themselves also get confused about which amorphous demographic to use as a prop to convince liberals to stop talking about the "divisive" concerns of women and black people.) New Democrats' policy agenda makes much more sense once we recognize that these appeals aren't targeted toward voters so much as they are to donors in the worlds of business and high finance. The list of policies above sounds a lot like a 60-second pitch that a DCCC finance director might deliver to the political wing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Fortunately we have New Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly right there in the Politico piece to confirm that corporate donors are the real project here.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said the coalition — which announced Wednesday it had reached $1 million in fundraising through its super PAC at the quickest rate ever — is also refocusing on business groups that have traditionally been Republican allies. He said Democrats have an opportunity to reach new voters and donors with the congressional fight over the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank and immigration. [...] “We are more expansive in our economic policy and our economic message than many in the Democratic Party,” Connolly said. “We want to reach out to a pro-business community that we believe is really receptive to a Democratic message if we reach out to them and include them.”The "pro-business community" has been well aware that there are enough free-trade Democrats in the House Democratic caucus to move whatever they need to move, just as there are enough to tuck whatever Dodd-Frank-gutting riders they want into appropriations bills. The party has been working formally with the "pro-business community" for years to pass comprehensive immigration reform and more recently to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank. Everyone is open to tax reform for corporations and individuals, though specifics are a matter of contentious debate. And indeed, a solid majority of these proposals have gone nowhere because of the right-wing of the Republican Party. And you know what happens when the right-wing of the Republican Party shoots down something strongly favored by the "pro-business community"? The "pro-business community"... continues throwing money at the Republican Party. The Chamber of Commerce has thrown hundreds of millions of dollars towards Republican candidates the last few cycles, even when the Republican candidates themselves trash the Chamber of Commerce's top policy priorities. That's because the Republican Party is still the party of big business and deregulation. These New Democrats are offering little technocratic tweaks to regulations here and there, while Republicans are offering total obliteration of all regulations. Kissing Wall Street's ass more is probably not the solution that Democrats need to retake the House of Representatives. (Not that there are really any great options. The sad truth is that House Democrats probably need a crappy Republican president in office in order to make serious congressional gains.)
Why conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders: “We are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape”
I’ve written previously about the growing fear among elites that they’ve pushed economic inequality too far. That fear is proliferating, according to a New York Times Op-Ed this weekend by former marketing conglomerate CEO Peter Georgescu. Joined by his friend Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, Georgescu warns his fellow 1 percenters that “[w]e are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape.” The column raises the specter of “major social unrest” if inequality is not addressed.
Georgescu writes:
I’m scared. The billionaire hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones is scared. My friend Ken Langone, a founder of the Home Depot, is scared. So are many other chief executives. Not of Al Qaeda, or the vicious Islamic State or some other evolving radical group from the Middle East, Africa or Asia. We are afraid where income inequality will lead.
In June, Cartier chief Johann Rupert -- worth an estimated $7.5 billion -- delivered the same message to his wealthy colleagues, telling them that the intensifying inequality and what it portends “keeps me awake at night.” He told his fellow elites that “We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us.” Like Georgescu and Langone, Rupert feared unrest and asked, “How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare?”
But while Rupert only mused about the prospects for continuing to hawk jewelry and the restfulness of his nights amid the tumult, Georgescu and Langone are being proactive. Georgescu writes that he and Langone “have been meeting with chief executives, trying to get action on inequality,” taking advantage of Langone’s tremendous access to business leaders. “You'd be hard-pressed to find a major CEO that wouldn't take his call,” said a close associate of Rudy Giuliani of Langone in 2012. Georgescu and Langone are telling their patrician peers that if “inequality is not addressed, the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes.” The word seems to be getting around at the global aristocracy’s water cooler, and Georgescu writes that they “find almost unanimous agreement on the nature of the problem and the urgent need for solutions.”
It is remarkable that Langone is partnered with Georgescu on this crusade for social justice. Langone served on the board of a leading populist philanthropy group called the New York Stock Exchange, and his deep concern for the downtrodden led him to chair that gang of do-gooders. He’s a longtime generous contributor to Republican presidential candidates who have been on the front lines of the battle to institute supply-side and neoliberal economics. “[T]here’s nobody better than him,” said Rudy Giuliani last year about Langone’s prowess as a bundler for GOP politicians. And when he isn’t giving money and raising funds for the political friends of big business, Langone gives the invaluable gift of his careful insight, last year comparing progressives’ attention to income inequality to Hitler’s political project in 1933.
The only thing Langone had right was the year: 1933. It was in that year that President Franklin Roosevelt took office at the height of the Great Depression, inequality peaked to record levels, and fears of revolt circulated among that era’s fat-cat elite. Capitalism, unreined during the 1920s, had hit another of its cyclical failures, this time its worst yet. The powerful feared revolution, and the New Deal constituted a sort of bargain made between capitalists and the people: A bit of socialism to save capitalism from itself.
That year, John Maynard Keynes issued an open letter to the newly inaugurated Roosevelt in the New York Times, whose two opening sentences of the more than 2,500-word manifesto defined the stakes and posed revolution as the price of failure of severely altering capitalism as it was practiced. Keynes was no radical. He urged the new president to work “within the framework of the existing social system,” that is, to reform capitalism without allowing it to be abandoned or abolished.
It was later revealed that when in 1938 a year-long recession threatened the gains made against the Depression, as conservative Democratic legislators urged severe cuts in public works and farm aid, Roosevelt feared revolution. “The president remarked that this would mean calling out the troops to preserve order,” wrote a cabinet member in his diary. “It might even mean a revolution, or an attempted revolution.”
Georgescu and Langone’s mission perhaps finds its best Depression-era analog in Joseph Kennedy, the millionaire father of the eventual president John F. Kennedy, who said of the Depression that “in those days I felt and said I would be willing to part with half of what I had if I could be sure of keeping, under law and order, the other half." Kennedy, like many (but hardly all) of his elite colleagues, knew that capitalism had to be bridled if it was to survive. “I knew that big drastic changes had to be made in our economic system,“ he later told Joe McCarthy. “I wanted him in the White House for my own security.”
Langone and Georgescu -- like Kennedy, Roosevelt and Keynes -- are urging another radical reformation of capitalism so that truly radical change doesn’t come. But they make serious mistakes in their judgment and prescription. They warn of “punitive,” “oppressive” levels of taxation -- an 80 percent upper marginal rate with a low upper-bracket threshold -- as a potentiality if their upper class doesn’t self-correct. But those levels of taxation wouldn’t be levied to punish or oppress; it would be to redistribute their collected wealth to the rest of us. Sharing isn’t being punished.
Second, they propose that the change has to come from the capitalists themselves, that some sort of agreement would be reached to willfully raise wages significantly in the absence of governmental mandate. This seems to ignore fundamental laws of competition. Even if some degree of consensus was reached, any dissenters would gain a fantastic advantage over their competitors in the form of profit levels far exceeding those of their rivals. It would be asking corporations to enter the ring with one arm tied behind their back and face off against unrestrained competitors.
They seem to know this and concede that “the most obvious choice is our government” to guide and enforce the change. Every major gain against the greed that animates capitalism has been implemented by mandate: the minimum wage, the right to collectively bargain, the 40-hour work week, the weekend, and a host of other rules of the road that marked the post-war economic and civil peace.
“But the current Congress has been paralyzed,” they acknowledge.
And why is it paralyzed? Has President Obama not faced resistance to his efforts to restore a modicum of equality by politicians bought by the very class to whom Georgescu and Langone make their appeal? They might try not shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of “pro-business” politicians who dutifully defy virtually any tax increase, regulation, and pro-union effort. Bernie Sanders forbids big-dollar donations of the sort sent to pro-business politicians of both parties, but they might consider, as I argued previously, working to elect him as a bulwark against the upheaval they fear. Sanders is merely proposing that we return to the bargain achieved in the 1930s and post-war years. I’m sure they’d scoff at the idea, but it’s not crazy. What’s crazy is to believe that capitalism can be saved by the capitalists themselves, like all lions agreeing to hunt without claws.
I’ve written previously about the growing fear among elites that they’ve pushed economic inequality too far. That fear is proliferating, according to a New York Times Op-Ed this weekend by former marketing conglomerate CEO Peter Georgescu. Joined by his friend Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, Georgescu warns his fellow 1 percenters that “[w]e are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape.” The column raises the specter of “major social unrest” if inequality is not addressed.
Georgescu writes:
I’m scared. The billionaire hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones is scared. My friend Ken Langone, a founder of the Home Depot, is scared. So are many other chief executives. Not of Al Qaeda, or the vicious Islamic State or some other evolving radical group from the Middle East, Africa or Asia. We are afraid where income inequality will lead.
In June, Cartier chief Johann Rupert -- worth an estimated $7.5 billion -- delivered the same message to his wealthy colleagues, telling them that the intensifying inequality and what it portends “keeps me awake at night.” He told his fellow elites that “We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us.” Like Georgescu and Langone, Rupert feared unrest and asked, “How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare?”
But while Rupert only mused about the prospects for continuing to hawk jewelry and the restfulness of his nights amid the tumult, Georgescu and Langone are being proactive. Georgescu writes that he and Langone “have been meeting with chief executives, trying to get action on inequality,” taking advantage of Langone’s tremendous access to business leaders. “You'd be hard-pressed to find a major CEO that wouldn't take his call,” said a close associate of Rudy Giuliani of Langone in 2012. Georgescu and Langone are telling their patrician peers that if “inequality is not addressed, the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes.” The word seems to be getting around at the global aristocracy’s water cooler, and Georgescu writes that they “find almost unanimous agreement on the nature of the problem and the urgent need for solutions.”
It is remarkable that Langone is partnered with Georgescu on this crusade for social justice. Langone served on the board of a leading populist philanthropy group called the New York Stock Exchange, and his deep concern for the downtrodden led him to chair that gang of do-gooders. He’s a longtime generous contributor to Republican presidential candidates who have been on the front lines of the battle to institute supply-side and neoliberal economics. “[T]here’s nobody better than him,” said Rudy Giuliani last year about Langone’s prowess as a bundler for GOP politicians. And when he isn’t giving money and raising funds for the political friends of big business, Langone gives the invaluable gift of his careful insight, last year comparing progressives’ attention to income inequality to Hitler’s political project in 1933.
The only thing Langone had right was the year: 1933. It was in that year that President Franklin Roosevelt took office at the height of the Great Depression, inequality peaked to record levels, and fears of revolt circulated among that era’s fat-cat elite. Capitalism, unreined during the 1920s, had hit another of its cyclical failures, this time its worst yet. The powerful feared revolution, and the New Deal constituted a sort of bargain made between capitalists and the people: A bit of socialism to save capitalism from itself.
That year, John Maynard Keynes issued an open letter to the newly inaugurated Roosevelt in the New York Times, whose two opening sentences of the more than 2,500-word manifesto defined the stakes and posed revolution as the price of failure of severely altering capitalism as it was practiced. Keynes was no radical. He urged the new president to work “within the framework of the existing social system,” that is, to reform capitalism without allowing it to be abandoned or abolished.
It was later revealed that when in 1938 a year-long recession threatened the gains made against the Depression, as conservative Democratic legislators urged severe cuts in public works and farm aid, Roosevelt feared revolution. “The president remarked that this would mean calling out the troops to preserve order,” wrote a cabinet member in his diary. “It might even mean a revolution, or an attempted revolution.”
Georgescu and Langone’s mission perhaps finds its best Depression-era analog in Joseph Kennedy, the millionaire father of the eventual president John F. Kennedy, who said of the Depression that “in those days I felt and said I would be willing to part with half of what I had if I could be sure of keeping, under law and order, the other half." Kennedy, like many (but hardly all) of his elite colleagues, knew that capitalism had to be bridled if it was to survive. “I knew that big drastic changes had to be made in our economic system,“ he later told Joe McCarthy. “I wanted him in the White House for my own security.”
Langone and Georgescu -- like Kennedy, Roosevelt and Keynes -- are urging another radical reformation of capitalism so that truly radical change doesn’t come. But they make serious mistakes in their judgment and prescription. They warn of “punitive,” “oppressive” levels of taxation -- an 80 percent upper marginal rate with a low upper-bracket threshold -- as a potentiality if their upper class doesn’t self-correct. But those levels of taxation wouldn’t be levied to punish or oppress; it would be to redistribute their collected wealth to the rest of us. Sharing isn’t being punished.
Second, they propose that the change has to come from the capitalists themselves, that some sort of agreement would be reached to willfully raise wages significantly in the absence of governmental mandate. This seems to ignore fundamental laws of competition. Even if some degree of consensus was reached, any dissenters would gain a fantastic advantage over their competitors in the form of profit levels far exceeding those of their rivals. It would be asking corporations to enter the ring with one arm tied behind their back and face off against unrestrained competitors.
They seem to know this and concede that “the most obvious choice is our government” to guide and enforce the change. Every major gain against the greed that animates capitalism has been implemented by mandate: the minimum wage, the right to collectively bargain, the 40-hour work week, the weekend, and a host of other rules of the road that marked the post-war economic and civil peace.
“But the current Congress has been paralyzed,” they acknowledge.
And why is it paralyzed? Has President Obama not faced resistance to his efforts to restore a modicum of equality by politicians bought by the very class to whom Georgescu and Langone make their appeal? They might try not shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of “pro-business” politicians who dutifully defy virtually any tax increase, regulation, and pro-union effort. Bernie Sanders forbids big-dollar donations of the sort sent to pro-business politicians of both parties, but they might consider, as I argued previously, working to elect him as a bulwark against the upheaval they fear. Sanders is merely proposing that we return to the bargain achieved in the 1930s and post-war years. I’m sure they’d scoff at the idea, but it’s not crazy. What’s crazy is to believe that capitalism can be saved by the capitalists themselves, like all lions agreeing to hunt without claws.
Divine inspiration or pure politics: What’s behind Charles Schumer’s opposition to Obama’s Iran deal
Megyn Kelly strikes back at Donald Trump: “I will not apologize for doing good journalism”
Rand Paul’s desperate Trump gambit: Convenient shape-shifter blasts The Donald’s convenient shape-shifting
Several campaign staffers made the same point: No one is cutting through the fog of Donald Trump. Why send the candidate to the same all-day cattle calls the rest of the field has been dutifully trucking to, only to wind up earning him one paragraph, one moment of B-roll, in yet another story about the rampaging billionaire?Apparently that strategy is no longer operative – assuming it was the actual strategy and not just an attempt at rationalizing Rand’s diminished standing and conspicuously low media profile. Either way, the candidate is now working doggedly to steal that one paragraph of coverage and that one moment of B-roll from Trump. But it’s also something of a bold play for Rand Paul to try and play up conservative doubts about another candidate, given that he’s making his own ideologically heterodox pitch to Republican base voters and trying to convince them that he’s conservative enough to merit their approval. “Are conservatives really willing to gamble about what Donald Trump really believes in?” Rand Paul asks in a question that could just as easily be turned around on him. The idea animating Rand Paul’s presidential run is that he is, in his own words, “a different kind of Republican.” These differences show up in various policy positions he’s taken that conservatives won’t readily approve: cutting off foreign aid to Israel, slashing the military budget, marijuana decriminalization, and restricting government surveillance programs. He’s further complicated this already fraught dynamic by abandoning or discreetly modifying positions he’s taken in the past, insisting all the while that he’s never once changed his mind. Who is the real Rand Paul when it comes to defense spending? Is it the Rand Paul who once wanted to slash the military budget to cut overall spending, or the Rand Paul who proposed additional military spending offset by cuts to domestic programs? What would President Rand Paul do on immigration policy? That’s a difficult question to answer, given that in the five-plus years he’s been a U.S. senator, Paul has taken just about every position on immigration reform, from hardline opposition to any sort of “amnesty” to support for a path to citizenship. He is in many ways the political chameleon he accuses Trump of being. The difference is that Rand Paul casts his deviations from Republican orthodoxy as a political asset that will imbue him with “crossover” appeal and enable him to eat into the Democrats’ traditional constituencies. When it comes to Trump, he casts those deviations and disqualifying political heresies. He’s making the case that Trump is too far outside of the GOP mainstream, while he’s just the right amount outside of it.
Dear White America: I know it’s hard, but you have to acknowledge what’s happening in this country
Scott Walker is America’s biggest hypocrite: The “fiscal conservative” is giving $450 million to wealthy sports owners
Look out, Dan Brown: Scientists discover second da Vinci smile
Ed. Note:
Some of the information here about the Mona Lisa was previously described in: Martinez-Conde, S. and Macknik, S.L. (2010, May 1st). What's in a Face? Scientific American, 3-4. Perhaps The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in history because her enchanting smile is art’s most enigmatic mystery. By looking directly at Mona Lisa's lips, we notice that her smile is understated, almost nonexistent. But after looking into her eyes or the part in her hair (while paying attention to her mouth), her smile becomes much wider. Indeed, as we gaze around Mona Lisa's face, our eyes’ movements animate her smile—a dancing grin that is altered with our perceptions. These mechanisms distinguish stimuli in the middle versus the margins of our sight, which scientists refer to as the central versus peripheral retina. In the visual field, the center and the periphery possess a different initial effect on perception. While the neurons at the center of our vision see a very small portion of the world—giving us high-resolution vision—neurons in the periphery perceive larger portions of the visual scene, and hence possess lesser resolution. THE DA VINCI CODE OF PERCEPTION Mona Lisa's ambiguous smirk has thus been explained by a simple visual principle: when images are blurred in the periphery of our vision, her smile is also blurred: Professor Margaret Livingstone at Harvard Medical School first explained this conundrum through a simulation. She wanted to know how the visual system saw Mona Lisa's smile in the far periphery, the near periphery, and in the center of our gaze. The experiment was conducted in Adobe Photoshop. By merely obscuring and clarifying the painting to replicate the transformation in resolution from the center of our visual field to the far periphery, Livingstone got her answer: Mona Lisa’s smile deepens in the figure below as it becomes more blurred towards the right. It is also explained through the notion that different retinal neurons are adjusted to varying the content of spatial size information in the image, which scientists refer to as its spatial frequency distribution. By some estimations, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa as a fusion; a happy Mona Lisa overlaid on a sad one, with each possessing a different spatial-frequency. A veritable cottage industry of scientific studies on Mona Lisa followed. Now a new study examines another enigmatic da Vinci smile, from a painting that—until recently—was lost. LA BELLA PRINCIPESSA Alessandro Soranzo and Michael Newberry from Sheffield Hallam University have examined a painting called La Bella Principessa that only recently was shown to be painted by da Vinci himself. The study, published in—Vision Research—determined that the smile’s enigmatic qualities followed from the same principles as the Mona Lisa Smile. They confirmed that it did, and that a similar painting (by a different artist) from the same period, did not. They argue that Mona Lisa’s own enigmatic smile—which was painted after La Bella Principessa’s—was therefore not a fluke, but an intentional feature of da Vinci’s mastery in expressing subtle emotions. 
Top: Progressively blurred La Bella Principessa (da Vinci). Middle: The Mona Lisa (da Vinci). Bottom: Portrait of a Girl (Piero del Pollaiuolo, 1470). From: Soranzo A., Newberry M. (2015) “The uncatchable smile in Leonardo da Vinci’s La Bella Principessa portrait”. Vision Research. Volume 113, pp. 78-86.
Ed. Note:
Some of the information here about the Mona Lisa was previously described in: Martinez-Conde, S. and Macknik, S.L. (2010, May 1st). What's in a Face? Scientific American, 3-4. Perhaps The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in history because her enchanting smile is art’s most enigmatic mystery. By looking directly at Mona Lisa's lips, we notice that her smile is understated, almost nonexistent. But after looking into her eyes or the part in her hair (while paying attention to her mouth), her smile becomes much wider. Indeed, as we gaze around Mona Lisa's face, our eyes’ movements animate her smile—a dancing grin that is altered with our perceptions. These mechanisms distinguish stimuli in the middle versus the margins of our sight, which scientists refer to as the central versus peripheral retina. In the visual field, the center and the periphery possess a different initial effect on perception. While the neurons at the center of our vision see a very small portion of the world—giving us high-resolution vision—neurons in the periphery perceive larger portions of the visual scene, and hence possess lesser resolution. THE DA VINCI CODE OF PERCEPTION Mona Lisa's ambiguous smirk has thus been explained by a simple visual principle: when images are blurred in the periphery of our vision, her smile is also blurred: Professor Margaret Livingstone at Harvard Medical School first explained this conundrum through a simulation. She wanted to know how the visual system saw Mona Lisa's smile in the far periphery, the near periphery, and in the center of our gaze. The experiment was conducted in Adobe Photoshop. By merely obscuring and clarifying the painting to replicate the transformation in resolution from the center of our visual field to the far periphery, Livingstone got her answer: Mona Lisa’s smile deepens in the figure below as it becomes more blurred towards the right. It is also explained through the notion that different retinal neurons are adjusted to varying the content of spatial size information in the image, which scientists refer to as its spatial frequency distribution. By some estimations, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa as a fusion; a happy Mona Lisa overlaid on a sad one, with each possessing a different spatial-frequency. A veritable cottage industry of scientific studies on Mona Lisa followed. Now a new study examines another enigmatic da Vinci smile, from a painting that—until recently—was lost. LA BELLA PRINCIPESSA Alessandro Soranzo and Michael Newberry from Sheffield Hallam University have examined a painting called La Bella Principessa that only recently was shown to be painted by da Vinci himself. The study, published in—Vision Research—determined that the smile’s enigmatic qualities followed from the same principles as the Mona Lisa Smile. They confirmed that it did, and that a similar painting (by a different artist) from the same period, did not. They argue that Mona Lisa’s own enigmatic smile—which was painted after La Bella Principessa’s—was therefore not a fluke, but an intentional feature of da Vinci’s mastery in expressing subtle emotions. Top: Progressively blurred La Bella Principessa (da Vinci). Middle: The Mona Lisa (da Vinci). Bottom: Portrait of a Girl (Piero del Pollaiuolo, 1470). From: Soranzo A., Newberry M. (2015) “The uncatchable smile in Leonardo da Vinci’s La Bella Principessa portrait”. Vision Research. Volume 113, pp. 78-86. 
8 stories Donald Trump would really rather you not remember
Pando writer Mark Ames has dug up some old Spy Magazine issues from the 1980s and early '90s detailing the legendary satirical magazine's early spade work in revealing what a dedicated jerk Donald Trump is. Over the course of several issues, the magazine probed into the details of Trump's exploits and outrages.
Here are some of the highlights:
Lesson He Learned From Punching His Music Teacher: In a book he wrote in 1987, Trump admitted to punching his music teacher in the second grade. While many would look back at such an event as immature furor, Trump didn't seem reflective about it at all: “In the second grade...I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music....I’m not proud of that, but it’s clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way.”
Instant Missile Expertise: “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump boasted. “I think I know most of it anyway.” He claimed he should be in charge of nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.
Less Than Perfect Understanding of the Working Class: Trump claimed that electricians “make a hundred and some odd dollars an hour. The concrete people just make fortunes. Laborers make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”
Attacking Lawyers for Stopping His Unlawful Evictions: A group of lawyers defended tenants at one Trump property who claimed they were being unlawfully evicted. When the courts sided with the tenants, Trump tried to launch a racketeering lawsuit against the lawyers, claiming they were trying to “prevent, frustrate, and inhibit” him from making profits. The courts dismissed Trump's case.
Exploiting the Homeless, Bashing Refugees: Trump offered to put homeless tenants in his Central Park South building in a bid to try to drive the current tenants out so he could tear the whole thing down. The city offered to put Polish refugees there, but Trump countered he'd only allow “people who live in America now, not refugees.”
Bashing Ronald Reagan: Although not particularly crazy sounding, this may be a crazy thing for a leader in the polls of the Republican presidential primary to say. He compared rival developers to Ronald Reagan because they were “people who talk a good game but don't deliver.”
Telling the World African Americans Have It Easy: Spy quoted Trump telling reporters in 1989, “If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.”
Blaming Other People For His Business Failings: In the early 1990s, Trump made a deal with Poland's tourism minister to build a series of “hotels, shops and gambling casinos in Warsaw,” but two years after the $55 million payment was made, ground wasn't even broken. “They've been patient? I've been patient,” said Trump. “Did you ever try to get quality marble in Warsaw? It's pathetic.” What all this demonstrates is even though Trump may have changed his viewpoint on a number of things – such as his previous embrace of single-payer health care – one thing has not changed over the years. Trump remains an unrepentant blowhard, where it's 1985 or 2015.Pando writer Mark Ames has dug up some old Spy Magazine issues from the 1980s and early '90s detailing the legendary satirical magazine's early spade work in revealing what a dedicated jerk Donald Trump is. Over the course of several issues, the magazine probed into the details of Trump's exploits and outrages.
Here are some of the highlights:
Lesson He Learned From Punching His Music Teacher: In a book he wrote in 1987, Trump admitted to punching his music teacher in the second grade. While many would look back at such an event as immature furor, Trump didn't seem reflective about it at all: “In the second grade...I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music....I’m not proud of that, but it’s clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way.”
Instant Missile Expertise: “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump boasted. “I think I know most of it anyway.” He claimed he should be in charge of nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.
Less Than Perfect Understanding of the Working Class: Trump claimed that electricians “make a hundred and some odd dollars an hour. The concrete people just make fortunes. Laborers make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”
Attacking Lawyers for Stopping His Unlawful Evictions: A group of lawyers defended tenants at one Trump property who claimed they were being unlawfully evicted. When the courts sided with the tenants, Trump tried to launch a racketeering lawsuit against the lawyers, claiming they were trying to “prevent, frustrate, and inhibit” him from making profits. The courts dismissed Trump's case.
Exploiting the Homeless, Bashing Refugees: Trump offered to put homeless tenants in his Central Park South building in a bid to try to drive the current tenants out so he could tear the whole thing down. The city offered to put Polish refugees there, but Trump countered he'd only allow “people who live in America now, not refugees.”
Bashing Ronald Reagan: Although not particularly crazy sounding, this may be a crazy thing for a leader in the polls of the Republican presidential primary to say. He compared rival developers to Ronald Reagan because they were “people who talk a good game but don't deliver.”
Telling the World African Americans Have It Easy: Spy quoted Trump telling reporters in 1989, “If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.”
Blaming Other People For His Business Failings: In the early 1990s, Trump made a deal with Poland's tourism minister to build a series of “hotels, shops and gambling casinos in Warsaw,” but two years after the $55 million payment was made, ground wasn't even broken. “They've been patient? I've been patient,” said Trump. “Did you ever try to get quality marble in Warsaw? It's pathetic.” What all this demonstrates is even though Trump may have changed his viewpoint on a number of things – such as his previous embrace of single-payer health care – one thing has not changed over the years. Trump remains an unrepentant blowhard, where it's 1985 or 2015.Pando writer Mark Ames has dug up some old Spy Magazine issues from the 1980s and early '90s detailing the legendary satirical magazine's early spade work in revealing what a dedicated jerk Donald Trump is. Over the course of several issues, the magazine probed into the details of Trump's exploits and outrages.
Here are some of the highlights:
Lesson He Learned From Punching His Music Teacher: In a book he wrote in 1987, Trump admitted to punching his music teacher in the second grade. While many would look back at such an event as immature furor, Trump didn't seem reflective about it at all: “In the second grade...I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music....I’m not proud of that, but it’s clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way.”
Instant Missile Expertise: “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump boasted. “I think I know most of it anyway.” He claimed he should be in charge of nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.
Less Than Perfect Understanding of the Working Class: Trump claimed that electricians “make a hundred and some odd dollars an hour. The concrete people just make fortunes. Laborers make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”
Attacking Lawyers for Stopping His Unlawful Evictions: A group of lawyers defended tenants at one Trump property who claimed they were being unlawfully evicted. When the courts sided with the tenants, Trump tried to launch a racketeering lawsuit against the lawyers, claiming they were trying to “prevent, frustrate, and inhibit” him from making profits. The courts dismissed Trump's case.
Exploiting the Homeless, Bashing Refugees: Trump offered to put homeless tenants in his Central Park South building in a bid to try to drive the current tenants out so he could tear the whole thing down. The city offered to put Polish refugees there, but Trump countered he'd only allow “people who live in America now, not refugees.”
Bashing Ronald Reagan: Although not particularly crazy sounding, this may be a crazy thing for a leader in the polls of the Republican presidential primary to say. He compared rival developers to Ronald Reagan because they were “people who talk a good game but don't deliver.”
Telling the World African Americans Have It Easy: Spy quoted Trump telling reporters in 1989, “If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.”
Blaming Other People For His Business Failings: In the early 1990s, Trump made a deal with Poland's tourism minister to build a series of “hotels, shops and gambling casinos in Warsaw,” but two years after the $55 million payment was made, ground wasn't even broken. “They've been patient? I've been patient,” said Trump. “Did you ever try to get quality marble in Warsaw? It's pathetic.” What all this demonstrates is even though Trump may have changed his viewpoint on a number of things – such as his previous embrace of single-payer health care – one thing has not changed over the years. Trump remains an unrepentant blowhard, where it's 1985 or 2015.
