Posting History for JoeCarl
| Title | Author | Published |  |
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| Whatever Happened to Unions? We Are So Bad at History I started out find when and why the Democratic Party separated from unions. This is the tenth and final post in a series. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
Whatever Happened to Unions?... |
JoeCarl | 03/05/2017 | 64 | 34 | - | - |
| Republicans' ACA Replacement: The Great Pretenders On TPM EDBLOG, Josh Marshall writes that the health-care goalposts were moved while Republicans weren’t looking.
“The problem is that over the course of seven years Republicans have essentially accepted the premise of the ACA: which is to say, the... |
JoeCarl | 03/09/2017 | 2 | - | - | - |
| H.R.1313 Allows Corporations to Require Genetic Testing of Employees. Here's an Actionable Response Remember the GOP, the party of “Let’s get government out of your healthcare decisions”? If you thought Republican commitment to your personal freedom, choice, and privacy would stand guard also against corporate intrusions, Republicans would like to... |
JoeCarl | 03/16/2017 | 10 | 6 | - | - |
| Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Thievery Is the Issue. Make the Debate About Him. The headline on the Washington Post’s home page, Sunday morning, March 19, 2017:
“With Gorsuch hearings starting, Democrats face a stark dilemma”
No. We do not. And if we buy into the Post’s line, we’ve already lost.
That is not to say... |
JoeCarl | 03/19/2017 | 14 | 16 | - | - |
| Perspective There recently have been a few posts that take the Republicans to task by comparing their policies to the teachings of Jesus. I’d like to present an alternative approach that gets us to the same ... |
JoeCarl | 03/27/2017 | 7 | 3 | - | - |
| Not All Trump Voters are Alike. Democrats Need to Get Past Their Resentment and Use That. I still see posts, here and elsewhere, telling us not to waste our breath on Trump voters. The articles usually feature visuals of fat white people with ugly scowls waving Confederate battle flags, |
JoeCarl | 04/05/2017 | 161 | 12 | - | - |
| It Has Begun in Earnest: the Normalization of Donald Trump This is not a good day for logic, reason, or the United States.
Republicans are jumping on their first opportunity to normalize Trump. You could see this coming after Trumps first, massive flip-flop in Syria. It accelerated as other reversals... |
JoeCarl | 04/14/2017 | 10 | 8 | - | - |
| Just in Case There Was Any Doubt ... From Bill Gardner at The Incidental Economist:
The AHCA and the ACA in Two Charts
Gardner’s Chart 1 (below): Income Improvement due to the ACA by Income Distribution (net transfer effect)
Gardner’s Chart 2 (below): Same for the AHCA. |
JoeCarl | 05/05/2017 | 5 | 6 | - | - |
| Trump Admires Putin, But Mitch McConnell Emulates Him. That’s the Real Threat. Trump is a clown, a dangerous one, but a clown. He looks at Putin and imagines himself wielding total power. McConnell looks at Putin and exercises what power he has. McConnell’s imitation is weakened by having to feign respect for our democracy,... |
JoeCarl | 05/10/2017 | 9 | 9 | - | - |
| Trump Has No Reason NOT to Fire Robert Mueller, and That is Worse Than the Act Itself Current speculation seems to be turning against the prospect that Trump will fire Special Council Robert Mueller. I believe he will: maybe this week or next, maybe later, as things close in.
After all, what price has he paid for unashamed,... |
JoeCarl | 06/13/2017 | 10 | 10 | - | - |
| If You Want to Start Winning Elections, Look Back to When We Were Winning. The Democratic Party has done right by the people of this country. We need to say that. Too many are too young to know, too disengaged to know, have too short a memory to know, or are avoiding cognitive dissonance. For all of them, for us, the best... |
JoeCarl | 06/22/2017 | 238 | 118 | - | - |
| Republicans Bemoan Democratic Obstruction of Their Anti Health-Care Bill: Some Context. With what conservatives consider health care looking more and more like road kill, the excuses are starting. Kellyanne Conway has whined, “There are no Democrats that want to support health care reform.” The President, such as he is, has complained,... |
JoeCarl | 06/30/2017 | 19 | 39 | - | - |
| How is This Not Treason? Have Republicans, right-wing media, and mainstream media so normalized Trump that, even after his surrender in Hamburg, few will say what seems so frighteningly obvious?
Senator Schumer declared Trump’s actions in Hamburg “disgraceful” and a... |
JoeCarl | 07/13/2017 | 29 | 5 | - | - |
| Ideological Purity Won't Win Elections. Raging Against Inequality and Corporate Power Might. Give Americans the right cause, and they will rise above their differences. It’s part of our legacy. Now, the Democratic Party might have figured out how to reclaim that legacy.
Thomas Jefferson “had the strongest Anti-Federalist instincts of any... |
JoeCarl | 07/22/2017 | 28 | 25 | - | - |
| Only Republicans Could Turn Freedom into a Scam Not all freedoms accrue to everyone. Some are exclusively held, and they advantage exclusively the groups that hold them. Freedoms claimed by the religious right place their beliefs above ours. Freedoms claimed by the wealthy place their speech... |
JoeCarl | 07/26/2017 | 20 | 10 | - | - |
| They Will Never Quit. It is Who They Are. It is What They Are. Never Turn Your Back. On July 28, 2017, Senator John McCain turned thumbs down on a conservative plan to cull the population of the weak, the sick, and the elderly. At 1:30 AM Eastern, the Republican anti-healthcare ... |
JoeCarl | 07/31/2017 | 64 | 105 | - | - |
| Republicans are Hobbesians, But Please Don’t Say That I just came across an old article in which George Will had called out Senate Democrats for supporting campaign finance reform. He said it was an attempt to allow “government to regulate the ... |
JoeCarl | 08/10/2017 | 18 | 16 | - | - |
| Bannon, Gorka, Miller, and Sessions Must Go. Trump Must Go. Renounce them and remove them: Bannon, Gorka, Miller, Sessions, and Trump. That should be the new mantra of Democrats. None of these pieces of wretched, human detritus belongs in a twenty-first century White House. Demand that people choose: basic... |
JoeCarl | 08/13/2017 | 7 | 7 | - | - |
| Our “Turnout” Problem Has Been 40 Years in the Making An argument constructed after the last election says that our problem is turnout. Get the base out, and we’ll be fine. Well, let’s see. The Republican Party controls
the presidency,
... |
JoeCarl | 08/17/2017 | 10 | 7 | - | - |
| The Alt-Right is ISIS. We’ve Been Warned. Trump’s most reviled supporters are, in one important way, one and the same as his favorite bogymen. That is not intentional; Trump doesn’t have the wit. But it’s not a coincidence either, ... |
JoeCarl | 08/25/2017 | 13 | 15 | - | - |
| Republicans Are Not Just Another Political Party Donald Trump is a train wreck for America, but it is the Republican Party that tore up the tracks. The Republican Party is at odds with the values on which our republic was founded. Democrats ... |
JoeCarl | 08/29/2017 | 6 | 10 | - | - |
| The Great, Conservative, Rugged-Individual Scam: Now Appearing with the Cajun Navy. Modern conservatism barely bothers to disguise its contempt for the average man. The lethal cruelty of the Republican anti-healthcare bills were just the latest examples. This conservative candor has been made possible by a medical development: an... |
JoeCarl | 09/07/2017 | 49 | 25 | - | - |
| Senator Lindsey Graham Wants to Stop the March Toward Socialism Senator Lindsey Graham says that repealing the Affordable Care Act is the only way to “ stop a march toward socialism ." Therein lies the essence of the savagery of modern American conservatism. � |
JoeCarl | 09/20/2017 | 16 | 9 | - | - |
| As Democrats Approach Irrelevance, the Data Say We Need More Than a Turnout Plan. Republicans own government at both the state and federal levels because Democrats have a turnout problem. That’s what I’m told. If so, it’s a turnout problem in the same sense that the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground: it’s technically accurate... |
JoeCarl | 09/25/2017 | 95 | 39 | - | - |
| Donald Trump and The Republican Party Share a Contempt for Our War Dead Thomas Paine, having helped transform a mutiny over taxes into a revolution in the principles of government, said, “An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.” Since then, the wars that define us as a nation have been about... |
JoeCarl | 11/19/2017 | 4 | 6 | - | - |
| Alabama 14, Auburn 26. A Judgement From God God has shown his displeasure, Alabama. He could not clearer: Thou Shalt Not Vote for Child Molesters. Your sins have festered in God’s nostrils for too long. REPENT! Vote for Democrats from this point on, or all your first born shall be molested... |
JoeCarl | 11/25/2017 | 36 | 7 | - | - |
| Prince Harry, Please, Do Not Do This Prince Harry, we are your cousins once removed. Some would say twice, but 1812 was just a big misunderstanding; please don’t take it the wrong way. We have fallen on hard times, struggling, now, under an unstable, corrupt, puppet of a foreign power.... |
JoeCarl | 11/28/2017 | 18 | 4 | - | - |
| Conservatism is Evil Whatever conservatism once may have been, it is no longer. Modern American conservatism is evil. There is no other word for it. The proof is the tax crime that conservatives are about to pull off and for which they have sold their souls to their... |
JoeCarl | 11/30/2017 | 6 | 6 | - | - |
| Well OF COURSE Republicans Embraced Child Molestation Mitch McConnell began the process of normalizing child molestation. It didn’t take long, either. But then, Republicans know the drill, having been through it already when normalizing the irredeemably abnormal Donald Trump. Put this into context,... |
JoeCarl | 12/05/2017 | 14 | 13 | - | - |
| Trump May Be Priming His Base for a Power Grab A lot of lies and invective came out of Trump’s Pensacola Speech. His endorsement of Roy Moore got most of the attention, yet only some of the media noted, and that with painful circumspection, the irony of a credibly accused, sexual molester of women... |
JoeCarl | 12/11/2017 | 38 | 31 | - | - |
| Are We Watching a Slow-Motion, Right-Wing Coup, and, if so, Would That be Treason? I know; I’ve been told; treason applies only to acts against the United States during times of war. Plotting to overthrow the government of the United States in peace time is something else, something less, but not treason. Chief-Justice John Marshal... |
JoeCarl | 12/20/2017 | 27 | 27 | - | - |
| Traditional Conservatism is Dead. Modern Conservatism Deconstructed. Some people dream of a cure for cancer. Some dream of eliminating poverty. Others dream of world peace. The Republican Speaker of the House dreams of taking health care away from poor people. That is modern conservatism.
Once, conservatism had a... |
JoeCarl | 01/06/2018 | 8 | 8 | - | - |
| Trump Lies to Farmers and Rural America, as Have Republicans for Decades. Fight Back. Wright Patman was a Texas Democrat. He represented Texarkana from 1929 to 1976. That durability was due, in part, to campaign literature like a flier titled, “Here Is What Our Democratic ... |
JoeCarl | 01/09/2018 | 6 | 9 | - | - |
| Don't Let Republicans Get Away with Crocodile Tears Over the Military in a Government Shutdown Our very own Very Stable Genius wants to avoid a government shut down because the “worst thing is what happens to our military,” and we “just about never needed our military more than now.” Never. A spokesman says that the Very Stable Genius “wants... |
JoeCarl | 01/18/2018 | 10 | 9 | - | - |
| Only One Thing Matters, Right Now: Electing Democrats. I was angry when Democrats voted to end the shutdown. By the next morning, though, I noticed that knowledgeable people were making compelling arguments that Democrats had gotten what they could.(1)(2)(3)(4)(5) Some of the posts on this site offered... |
JoeCarl | 01/29/2018 | 16 | 18 | - | - |
| There are No Unalienable Rights but Only Those We Fight For. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The man who wrote those words... |
JoeCarl | 02/02/2018 | 4 | 4 | - | - |
| Steal a March on Republicans. Take on the Mantle of National Defense. Russia attacked our sovereignty and continues to do so. That is the unanimous conclusion of the nation’s intelligence agencies. Semantic wrangling about which legal terms apply or don’t is half a century out of date. Cyber warfare is warfare. A... |
JoeCarl | 02/13/2018 | 3 | 1 | - | - |
| Credit Where Credit is Due: Thank a Republican Today After yet another gun atrocity, I noted to a friend that we are the only, the only, advanced country in which this happens, thanks to Republicans. He noted that the same was true of our refusal to provide universal healthcare coverage. I said,... |
JoeCarl | 02/14/2018 | 8 | 25 | - | - |
| It Affected the Election. Stop being Stupid. Donald Trump wants you to know that, even if it wasn’t done by some 400 pound guy sitting on a bed, any interference with the 2016 election had no effect, none, less than none. So, special counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on conspiracy,... |
JoeCarl | 02/22/2018 | 28 | 18 | - | - |
| Do Not Argue Original Intent with NRA Apologists There are ideas in the constitution that transcend time and place. The principle of sovereignty of the people is an example.
There are ideas in the constitution that are trapped in time and place. The nod to the slave power is an example. ... |
JoeCarl | 02/26/2018 | 20 | 9 | - | - |
| Donald Trump Couldn’t Negotiate Himself a Candy Bar on Halloween, and Kim Jong-un Knows That. Donald Trump has agreed to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. What could go wrong?
Along with racism and hate, Donald Trump offered his voters business acumen, especially his ability to make deals. He constantly attacked President Obama and... |
JoeCarl | 03/09/2018 | 7 | 4 | - | - |
| My Concern About “Black Panther” and “Wonder Woman.” It’s not about the movies. It’s about the inordinate hope being placed on them and about the cynical provenance of so much of that hope. It’s about the rain of hyperbole from commentators wanting to establish diversity credentials or to assuage guilt... |
JoeCarl | 03/13/2018 | 62 | - | - | - |
| Turns Out We Do Need Those White, Working-Class Voters The white working-class accounts for 44% of registered voters. They also make up 33% of Democrats or those who lean Democratic. If those numbers don’t sound right, it’s because many of us have been working with the wrong numbers since the last... |
JoeCarl | 04/10/2018 | 90 | 18 | - | - |
| What Religious Liberty Is Not. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson produced, somewhat optimistically, a draft constitution for Virginia. It in, he writes,
“All persons shall have full & free liberty of religious opinion ….”
In 1783, in yet another draft constitution for... |
JoeCarl | 06/04/2018 | 6 | 8 | - | - |
| It is Time to Attack Giuliani We all had a good laugh, several in fact, when Giuliani first reappeared, stammering his way through one factual or logical faux pas after another. But he didn’t care. Trump didn’t care, either.
They knew the power of persistent repetition, of... |
JoeCarl | 06/06/2018 | 23 | 18 | - | - |
| Democrats Should Embrace This Economy. After All, It’s Obama’s. The economy is in it’s ninth year of steady recovery. Trump, of course, is taking credit for this in his usual, understated, rigorously honest way: "In many ways this is the greatest economy in the HISTORY of America….” Unfortunately, that is working... |
JoeCarl | 06/16/2018 | 16 | 4 | - | - |
| Stand Up, Paul Ryan, Just Once Before You Are Forgotten You started out as an elite, a frat boy whose highest life’s ambition was to take medical care away from poor people. Then, you became one of the youngest members of the House, where the news media proclaimed you a golden boy, a policy guy, the future... |
JoeCarl | 06/14/2018 | 6 | 5 | - | - |
| Trump is Hitler. Immigrants are his Jews. Maybe not fully, not yet, but the differences, stark as they may be, are of magnitude, of potency, not of kind. So much of what Trump has said and done shouts at us that, secretly, he would be Hitler. So, never having paid any price for his... |
JoeCarl | 06/19/2018 | 4 | 1 | - | - |
| Will Barack Obama Be the Last American President? Donald Trump’s appearance beside Vladimir Putin, following their hastily put-together, one-on-one “summit,” was a disaster for this country and our democracy. Trump stood next to a dictator who wants nothing so much as to destroy the West and who has... |
JoeCarl | 07/16/2018 | 7 | 6 | - | - |
| Illegitimacy Begets Illegitimacy An illegitimate President now has given us an illegitimate Supreme Court. Yes, he had the help of a Senate majority leader for whom democracy and the rule of law are not priorities. Yes, he had the help of the racists, the misogynists, the... |
JoeCarl | 10/06/2018 | 3 | 2 | - | - |
| The Bizarro-World Election From the New York Times: “‘False Flag’ Theory on Pipe Bombs Zooms From Right-Wing Fringe to Mainstream.”
From the next day: “Bombing Suspect Arrested in Florida; Van With Pro-Trump Stickers Seized”
“Mr. Sayoc, a registered Republican …..”... |
JoeCarl | 10/26/2018 | 1 | 1 | - | - |
| “House Democrats to offer Trump higher border security spending ….” From the Washington Post:
“House Democrats are prepared to support increased spending on border security, but not a wall, if President Trump agrees to reopen the government first, lawmakers and aides said Wednesday.”
No.
Democrats need... |
JoeCarl | 01/23/2019 | 26 | 6 | - | - |
| Senator Barbara Boxer: “We have to keep reminding people ….” Former Senator Barbara Boxer has given Democrats their marching orders. It happened during a discussion, on MSNBC’s “All In”, of Trump’s failings. At one point, out of frustration with Trump’s foreshortened news cycle, the Senator said, “We have to... |
JoeCarl | 08/22/2019 | 4 | 9 | - | - |
| Republican Evolution on Trump’s Ukraine Crimes: We Know Where this is Heading It was a “perfect call.” Okay, maybe not perfect, but the bad stuff is all hearsay – nothing to indicate that he did anything wrong. Okay, the transcript he put out shows that he did something wrong, but only that one thing about asking a foreign power... |
JoeCarl | 11/05/2019 | 91 | 192 | - | - |
| The Schiff Supremacy Schiff has been remarkable throughout, but his closing tonight, and, in particular, the closing of his closing, was magnificent. When he turned to why Trump must be removed, must be removed, and the stone-cold logic that is the hallmark of his... |
JoeCarl | 01/23/2020 | 103 | 153 | - | - |