#bidenism

[odinsblog]

This ties in nicely with an old (ongoing) post/philosophy of mine that I have discussed here numerous times: “Means Testing is a conservative canard; a disingenuous red herring”:

THINK OF IT THIS WAY: Whenever a politician says: “This specific group of people (red herring: millionaires & billionaires) needs to be means tested,” what they REALLY mean is, “let’s carve out a group of people who should be means tested but when it comes down to it, we will means test and deny the same old groups we have always denied services (women, the elderly, Black & brown people, poor people, people with disabilities, etc. etc. etc.)”

Stated differently, saying that rich people need to be ‘means tested’ (which they never are), is a slick way of saying that POOR people need to be means tested: “Oh my gosh, if we means tested Elon Musk, then doesn’t it make sense that we should also means test the millions and mans millions of POOR people who genuinely dO need public assistance??!”

PLEASE MAKE NO MISTAKE: “Means testing” is a scam. A canard, used to deny poor people access to public assistance.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trump’s Tiktok two-step is a lesson for future presidents

I'm about to leave for a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me on Feb 14 in BOSTON for FREE at BOSKONE , and on Feb 15 for a virtual event with YANIS VAROUFAKIS. More tour dates here.

Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will. Maybe Tiktok'll buy so many trumpcoins that he forgets about. Whatevs.

The important thing here is: Congress passed a (stupid) law and Trump said, "I've decided not to enforce that law" and then that was it:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-01-31-trump-administration-test-supreme-court-tiktok/

Sure, there's some big rule of law/checks and balances/separation of powers problems here, and there are plenty of laws I'm mad about Trump not enforcing (like the law that says corporations can't bribe foreign governments, say). But this one? Sure, it's fine. The problem with Tiktok is that it invades our privacy in creepy ways, not that it is owned by a Chinese company. I don't want Zuck or Musk or (especially) Trump invading my privacy.

Congress hasn't passed a consumer privacy law since 1988, when they banned video store clerks from telling newspapers about your VHS viewing habits. That's why Tiktok is a problem. Pass that law, and if any president decides not to enforce it, I'll be mad as hell and I'll be right there in the streets next to you, in head-to-toe CV dazzle, with all my distraction rectangles in Faraday pouches, shlepping a placard bearing the Social Security Numbers of every Cabinet member in giant writing.

But the point is, the president defied Congress, which is a thing that Very Serious Grownups told us radicals Joe Biden mustn't do under any circumstances, lest the resulting constitutional crisis tear the country apart, or, at the very least, alienate so many voters that Donald Trump would become the next president.

We let Very Serious Grownups call the shots, and Donald Trump is president. Maybe we should stop listening to Very Serious Grownups?

Look, presidents ignore Congress's laws all the time. The Comstock Act (which effectively bans transporting pornography and contraception) is almost entirely ignored, and has been for generations (though Trump's creepy Heritage Foundation puppetmasters have promised to bring it back). The Robinson-Patman Act hasn't been enforced since the Reagan years, which is a damned shame, because Robinson-Patman would put Walmart, Amazon, Dollartree and Dollar General out of business (Biden started to enforce Robinson-Patman again during his last year in office):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities

I'm not trying to say that enforcing (or ignoring) the Comstock Act is the same as ignoring (or enforcing) the Robinson-Patman Act. The Comstock Act is bad, and the Robinson-Patman Act is good. I am capable of making that moral judgment, and I would like to have a president who does the same.

The fear about Trump ignoring the laws and procedures is justified, but not because of the damage he's doing to laws and procedures – it's because of the damage he's doing to the people of this country and the world.

Take the records that Trump has destroyed – vital data about public health and other subjects (thankfully, most of this was saved from destruction by the Internet Archive). The most important fact about that act of destruction is the harm that will result from it, not the failure to follow procedure.

There are plenty of times in which I am OK with people ignoring the law and destroying records. In 1943, Dutch guerrillas bombed the civil registry building in Amsterdam, to keep the records of where Jews and other disfavored minorities lived out of the hands of occupying Nazis. The firefighters on the scene kept their hoses running until any paper that hadn't been burned was reduced to slurry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing

I'm fine with destroying records that wicked, vicious authoritarians would use to harm my neighbors.

Remember when Biden tried to cancel student debt? He could have started off by destroying the records of who owed what, so when the courts overturned his administrative action, it would have been hard or impossible to collect on the debts that were still held on federal books, or whose records the feds had (no, I'm not suggesting that Nazi death camp deportations are equivalent to unjust student debt collections, but if you agree that sometimes it's OK to illegally destroy records, then all we're left with is haggling over the specifics).

Sure, this would have been a constitutional crisis, but, as Ryan Grim says, "It is apparently unconstitutional for the president to instruct the Department of Education to restructure and forgive some student loan debt but it is ok for DOGE chair Elon Musk to just get rid of the whole department. Anywho."

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1888973174819164663?t=Cd8fl4FWjY5zsOlQWZGv4g

Canceling debt isn't forgiving debt. Student borrowers have been preyed upon by colleges and lenders. People who borrowed $79.000 and paid back $190,000 can somehow still owe $236,000 do not need to be forgiven, because (unlike Trump) they haven't sinned. Rather, their debts need to be canceled (like Trump):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Trump's shown us what a president should do when the courts get in their way: fight back. Worst case scenario is the court prevails, and a bunch of Fedsoc judges (up to and including the Supreme Court) set binding precedent that reduces the power of the president, which would be, you know, great. Best case scenario: Americans are freed from these crippling, fraudulent debts and, you know, vote for Democrats and against Trump, instead of staying home because they don't feel like the Democrats have their back.

Defying unjust court decisions isn't Trumpian – it's Rooseveltian. Roosevelt (following in Lincoln's footsteps) spent years discrediting and weakening the Supreme Court's power, using his bully pulpit to rob them of authority and build the political will to pack the court, which he was on the brink of doing when the Supreme Court surrendered:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

Democrats developed an online organizing playbook, and it worked, so Republicans took it, improved on it, and won elections. Republicans have developed a devastatingly effective constitutional hardball playbook. Democrats should steal that playbook and run with it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/18/states-rights/#cold-civil-war

I rang doorbells, made phone calls, and shelled out money for Democrats in the last cycle because I wanted them to do stuff that helps Americans, not because I wanted them to follow procedures. The fact that Trump is building offshore concentration camps and has deported our neighbors to them (to name just one of many cheap dystopian fanfics that Trump is LARPing) should be the kind of five-alarm fire that sent South Korean lawmakers scaling the barricades last month.

This is the kind of crisis where I'd expect Democrats on the Hill, at a minimum, to be refusing to give Trump and the GOP anything. Call quorum on every vote. Debate every amendment. Raise every objection. Vote against everyting. Do not confirm a single appointee. And any elected Dem that refuses to play along? Kick 'em out of the caucus. Oh, we can't afford to do that because we can't afford to lose a single lawmaker? How did that work out with Kirsten Synema and Joe Manchin? Shoulda kicked them out after the first vote, shoulda raised money for any real Dem willing to primary them. Should have shunned them in the hallways and refused to invite them to the Christmas parties. We should do that to Fetterman. Party unity got us nothing under Biden. Party unity got us Trump. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome isn't actually the formal definition of insanity, but it is nevertheless very, very stupid.

For the past four years, Very Serious Grownups in the Democratic machine kept telling us that we couldn't expect the president to do anything, or Congress to do anything, or the Senate to do anything, because the Republicans would stop them. Or the courts would stop them. Why fight when you know you're gonna lose? Because sometimes, you'll win. And even if you lose, you'll go down fighting.

Better yet, if you lose in just the right way, you'll force Trump's judges to take away powers from the President and the administrative agencies – take away the powers Trump is now wielding like a sledgehammer.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/11/you-and-what-army/#student-debt

[porterdavis]

Bidenomics works. Pass it on.

[odinsblog]

Democratic National Committee: “After courting Republican voters instead of progressives and still losing, maybe we need to focus even more on the poor old disaffected white male voter?”

Me:

[odinsblog]

Henry Kissinger's victims:

3 million + Vietnamese

2.5 million + Cambodians

200,000+ Laotians

3 million + Bangladeshis

10,000+ Indians

10,000+ Pakistanis

15,000+ Egyptians

3500+ Syrians

6500+ Cypriots

40,000+ Chileans

30,000+ Argentinians

10,000+ Zimbabweans

60,000+ Mozambiqueans

900,000+ Angolans

11,000+ Guinea Bisseauans

300,000+ East Timorians

1,000,000+ Indonesians

20,000+ Western Saharans

1,100,000+ Iraqis

and so so many more

“…it is very possible that Henry Kissinger has played a role in the mass murder of more people than anyone else in human history.”

Henry Kissinger was a vile, evil man through and through. And while good people are justifiably rejoicing at his long overdue death, please never forget that his evil brand of warmongering, unending “defensive” wars, and colonialism lives on in far too many media pundits, Hollywood + media influencers, and powerful politicians.

Kissinger is dead, but his cruel, cold-blooded, sadistic brand of militarism still lives on, and that is what we must bring an end to.

[odinsblog]

Joe Biden suddenly pardoning so many people and giving them commutations at the very last minute kinda makes you wonder: if he didn’t pardon his son Hunter, would he have even bothered with these other recent pardons? Please don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic for the people who are getting second chances from mass incarceration (let’s not talk about who had a big hand in making mass incarceration a thing), but when and where you plant your flag matters. Why so many people now? Why not earlier, or throughout his presidency? Yes, I know that it is normal for presidents to issue pardons at the tail end of their terms, but this number just screams of a convenient distraction for pardoning Hunter (yeah, yeah, I know that Trump is exponentially worse and will pardon J6 traitors, but he was gonna do that anyway, no matter what Biden did).

Sorry if you’re a liberal sycophant, but EYE am not here to blow sunshine up Biden’s ass. We must hold truth to power. Biden was as disastrous for social justice and democracy as Bill Clinton was, and in fact, history will show that Biden governed as a somewhat “moderate” conservative Republican, similar to Bill Clinton.

And that’s without even getting into how Biden, who valued following norms above achieving justice, ignored all norms and international human rights laws to support Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. That’s without even getting into how Biden changed immigration laws for the worse, and required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until our immigration system gets around to them—sometimes years or decades later. That’s without getting into Covid and how Biden blocking the Wellstone Act and siding with Gilead Sciences helped make life-saving medicines unaffordable. That’s without even getting into how Biden sued to continue using Trump’s immigration laws that were harder on Haitian refugees (see Title 42).

“Better than being in a car accident” is a shit metric for nominating our political leaders.

This is not rocket science. Democrats competing with Republicans for white conservative votes, while both parties shit on leftists and progressives, is stupid. Republican voters are n-e-v-e-r going to pick a Republican-lite candidate over an actual Republican!

If you disagree, then think about how, under his leadership, Democrats lost all three branches of government to openly racist politicians, many of whom are sexual predators and abusers. Why does the Democratic Party even want the votes of people who lionize racists and rapists?? The very best thing that the DNC could do would be to exorcize all traces of Clintonism and Bidenism, and stop trying to “triangulate” with conservatives.

Biden’s presidency was disastrous—better than Trump, but still disastrous—and where he really decided to use his power the most was even more disastrous.

[odinsblog]

And the lesson that the Democrats are taking from this is that actually need to go more to the right.

On MSNBC, Luis Jordan says, quote, “The progressive era has to end if Democrats want to win again.”

We have Harris surrogate, Lindy Lee, a member of the DNC National Finance Committee and Pennsylvania Commissioner told Fox News, quote, “People are wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket. And not only in terms of Pennsylvania, he's famously a moderate. So that would have signaled to the American people that Harris is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was. But she went with someone actually to her left.”

Chuck Todd on MSNBC said the night of the election that perhaps John Fetterman should be the North Star of the Democratic Party and points to his over-the-top loyalty to Israel as a main reason. Seth Moulton, who is a liberal in Congress, quote, “Identity politics hurt Democrats. I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid of saying that.”

This is all after the election outcome, by the way.

New York Congressman Tom Suzy, quote, “Democrats have got to stop pandering to the left. I don't want to discriminate against anybody, but I don't think biological boys should be playing in girls' sports.”

An anonymous House Democratic Party aide, quote, “AOC is toxic to the Democratic Party. Her primetime DNC speaking slot played directly into the narratives that lost us this election.”

—THEN BECOME A FUCKING REPUBLICAN, DUDE