May 17, 2018

When faced with the a choice of continuing with corruption, Malaysia took the Mandela option.

Good update on the situation in Malaysia here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-politics-anwar-malaysia/exclusive-malaysias-anwar-says-shattered-najib-called-him-twice-on-election-night-idUSKCN1II1U2

When faced with a fork in the road between continuing with a very corrupted status quo or taking a radical risk with a man who sat in a prison cell unjustly accused, Malaysia chose Mandela. I say that because the only parallel I can think of going from prison to Prime Minister by a demand of the people is Mandela. It is also a fundamental political change in the structure of the country.

This is not simply a change of party or coalition but a fundamental opening of the system. Following independence the Malays found themselves a minority of the population and owning only 20% of the assets of their own country. In order to secure their position in their own homeland they expelled Singapore from the Malay federation which enabled them create UMNO and a paternal state that brought in favourable conditions for the Malays to bring parity against the Chinese and Indian populations that dominated the cities.

This election shows that the Malays no longer feel pressured to follow an ethnically balkanized Malaysia but now are pursuing typical middle class values of fairness, anti corruption and transparency in government. It is the most astonishing political development in Asia in 3 decades.

Here are statements from Anwar in the article that also echo some of the tempering that you could hear in Mandela as a result of the suffering he had in prison.

A great beginning to the Malaysian Ramadan Season.

May 17, 2018

Exclusive: Malaysia's Anwar says 'shattered' Najib called him twice on election night

Source: Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia’s ousted former premier Najib Razak was “totally shattered” the night he lost the general election and called his jailed rival Anwar Ibrahim twice for advice on what he should do, Anwar said on Thursday.

Najib was handed a shocking election loss last week which ended the dominance of the Barisan Nasional coalition that has ruled Malaysia for more than six decades.

BN’s defeat in the May 9 polls was attributed to rising anger over corruption and an unlikely alliance struck between 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad and his former rival, Anwar, who got together to oust the scandal-tainted Najib.

Anwar, who was pardoned and released from his five-year jail term for sodomy on Wednesday, said he had received two calls from Najib.

“When he called on the night of the election, I advised him as a friend to concede and move on,” Anwar told Reuters in an interview at his home on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

Anwar said he asked Najib to come out with a statement quickly rather than delay and be perceived as trying to scuttle the process


Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-politics-anwar-malaysia/exclusive-malaysias-anwar-says-shattered-najib-called-him-twice-on-election-night-idUSKCN1II1U2

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The only parallel I can think of going from prison to Prime Minister by a demand of the people is Mandela.

This is not simply a change of party or coalition but a fundamental opening of the system. Following independence the Malays found themselves a minority of the population and owning only 20% of the assets of their own country. In order to secure their position in their own homeland they expelled Singapore from the Malay federation which enabled them create UMNO and a paternal state that brought in favourable conditions for the Malays to bring parity against the Chinese and Indian populations that dominated the cities.

This election shows that the Malays no longer feel pressured to follow an ethnically balkanized Malaysia but now are pursuing typical middle class values of fairness, anti corruption and transparency in government. It is the most astonishing political development in Asia in 3 decades.

Here are statements from Anwar in the article that also echo some of the tempering that you could hear in Mandela as a result of the suffering he had in prison.

May 14, 2018

Happy Mother's Day for all mothers, including those lost and found whose

children are still on the other side of civility or maturity and were too self absorbed to make a call.

You may think that people don't know of your sacrifice but people do see it but out of deference to your privacy and dignity would prefer to not speak of it explicitly.

Thanks to the mothers who bring the neighborhood cast inside for some cookies or along for a trip.

Thanks to the women who are in blended families and extend their care to all.

Thanks to some of the greatest moms who happened to be men raising kids by themselves.

Thanks to the mom of us all, Mitochondrial Eve our first common ancestor, the woman whose DNA ever single one of us share and lived about 130,000 years ago.

May 13, 2018

Pull out of TPP and watch the jobs go overseas: First up Harley Davidson

In this timely thread Union Leaders complain about jobs moving from the US to Thailand.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210610419

Sounds like just another company moving to cut costs, but it isn't. It is an American company desperately trying to maintain its market now that the US will be out of the TPP.

Before leaving the TPP it was expected that the US factories would be able to compete and export HD bikes to Asia, now they will be made in Asia. Guess what? Even IF the Idiot in Chief does to back to TPP and even IF they let the US back in, those HD jobs will not be returning, they are gone and gone forever, the TPP was the last chance to save those kinds of jobs.

The best peer review article on the TPP estimated that by the year 2030 the TPP would add about $ 140 billion to American incomes. The reason is simple: we exchange better penetration of US jobs that are based on higher capital, higher skill, higher tech and less fungible to give TPP countries better access to the US for jobs that are lower capital, lower skill, lower tech and highly fungible. That study below but first what happened to Harley Davidson:

On a macro scale the impact of TPP would have been significant to the US who would have been the biggest beneficiary:




International trade is a highly complex organism and a lot of it is not ideological. The greatest sin of the populist nationalist, in this case Idiot in Chief, is to implement policies that fit on a bumper sticker but actually will have a counter affect to its intention.

US tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum were made with the enthusiastic embrace of steel and aluminum manufacturers and their unions and it made for one of Trump's best photo ops. Last time we tried this it cost us a net loss of over 100,000 jobs and that is why Cohen left as economic advisor. The premise that China is a major disrupter in steel and aluminum is not only not true its laughable.

The major exporter of steel and aluminum to the US is Canada which has higher structural costs (like taxes) than the US.




Compare the announcement of the Idiot in Chief and the bad effects of leaving the TPP with the following article which is based on the US being in the TPP and having a really smart guy as President




This is the difference between an intelligent leader and an idiot, the difference between long term policy and a bumper sticker slogan.

For every year Trump is in office it will take five years to recover, and that is based on the assumption that the American people want to change and do the work of reading, understanding and discussing actual policies.

May 12, 2018

From Malaysia of all places a small but bright ray of hope, from prison to Prime Minister.

I have lived in Malaysia and I have a bias for Malays and all Malaysians; Indians, Malay and Chinese. I have a deep affection for them, but that also includes all of the other places I have stayed, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Pakistan, well you get the idea.

While Malaysia is one of the easiest places to make friends and where you can have honest conversations with people about history and politics it is a country that has been shrouded in a defensiveness for 50 years.

When the British left Malaysia the ethnic Malays were a minority in their homeland and only owned 20% of the country. They lived mostly in rural villages while the descendants of Indians (who came to build and run the railroad) and Chinese who came as labor and small businessmen had grown to run the urban economy prospered and dominated education and the bureaucracies.

The Malays kicked Singapore out of the Malay Federation and became 51% of the population and controlled the politics, army and police. A pro "Bhumiputra" policy came into force by the dominant coalition UMNO which gave big incentives for the Chinese and Indians to take on Malay partners.

UMNO lost one election and terrible riots occurred and since then a consensus between the groups was to let UMNO run the government, bring Malays to the city and gradually build up equity.

In the 80's Prime Minister Mahathir was Prime Minister and is protégé, Anwar Ibrahim, a bright star in the next generation joined as a Minister. Anwar railed against corruption in UMNO and an obviously trumped up charge of sodomy was levelled against him and Anwar went to prison. After prison he goes to England to teach at Oxford. After the requisite time that he was banned from politics (5 years) he runs in the opposition against UMNO and almost wins outright.

New charges of sodomy are brought against him. In 2012 he is found INNOCENT. On appeal he is found guilty. He goes to prison. He is in prison today.

Last week long retired Prime Minister Mahathir won a huge election victory with Anwar's wife as his deputy.

Today Anwar received a Royal Pardon. He will soon be the new Prime Minister of Malaysia. UMNO eventually became what Trump is trying to build with the Republican Party, stealing huge amounts of money for the leaders. Mahathir's sons are in the UMNO leadership.

In a dark international political leadership the people of Malaysia have created a ray of hope.



Former Prime Minister Mahathir stands next to his Deputy Ms Wan Azizah. Ms. Azizah is the wife of Anwar Ibrahim who was once Mahathir's protégé but who Mahathir imprisoned for sodomy. After release from prison Anwar made a political comeback and was imprisoned again for sodomy even though he was found innocent of the charges. Anwar Ibrahim will be going from prison to Prime Minister after receiving a Royal Pardon

That Anwar started on the political stage as a strong proponent of ethnic Malays and goes from prison to Prime Minister on a coalition of cross ethnic support is a bright ray of hope in a dark time.

May 11, 2018

Giuliani was in court today, yep he was chasing an ambulance

Well not quite but almost.

It was a metaphorical ambulance.

It was a metaphorical ambulance chasing an insurance company, kind of a human bites dog case.

If you mean, 'chasing an ambulance' as in a low level fraud case where your client is a low level con trying to rip off an insurance company then this case is as about as close to an ambulance chaser as you can get.

Now remember that Giuliani said that he had to quit his partnership so he can work exclusively for the President.

In today's case Giuliani is defending a woman who got into a wreck and then 10 minutes after the wreck purchases auto insurance to defraud the insurance company

Giuliani out chasing ambulances so he can help defraud insurance companies.

What a guy.

May 7, 2018

Interestingly Nunes who was conspiring to impeach Rosenstein now is after Sessions

Trump's mini mini me Nunes was telling everybody who would listen last week that this week they were going to impeach Rosenstein.

Now they are bloviating about finding Session in contempt about handing over classified materials on an investigation that he is recused on and doesn't even have access to.

CNN is not clear on why they changed.

I can't help but wonder if somebody watched Maddow's inspiring segment on Rosenstein and the clip where he recognizes a random quote and could give the date and backstory on the quote from memory. If so it may have deterred these idiots from trying to take on someone who actually uses the brain that they were born with.

May 4, 2018

AZ 2 Democratic Candidate Forum - Unmitigated Disaster

AZ 2 Resistance group got very well organized a year ago and decided to form a PAC (Represent Me AZ) which is a pretty interesting way to go and its grass roots organization includes a lot of grey haired folks (like I am) who have done a surprisingly good job of getting things organized And by folks I mean women.

One of the things that they have organized is a candidates forum and they have done a very good job doing it but last night was a disaster. As a back story I have a little difficulty getting Mrs. grantcart to engage in these events because even though her English is quite good its still her second language and when the candidates start getting into complicated explanations of policy it can be hard for her to follow.

My 36 years with Mrs grantcart has taught me that in such situations a bribe in the form of a dinner invitation after the meeting works.

We head to Catalina Foothills High School and find only a single car in the parking lot (last day of the strike) and ask if he knows where the forum is and he informs me that its at the OTHER Catalina High school (we moved to Tucson after our kids finished school) and were unaware that there were 2 schools with the name Catalina in it.

We drive 15 minutes to the other high school with the similar name and I begin to see all of the elements of a disaster (I may have to upgrade to a better restaurant). The road to the high school is under construction and as I circle the High School I can see that my detour is going to cost me. Every parking place is filled. If we can't get parked at the High School its going to be a 5 block walk. We find someone going back to his car but are crestfallen when he gets a sweater and goes back in (the auditorium is going to be very cold).

I decide to go back down an alley over to the football field and take the last possible spot. We enter the school and find well organized tables for different Democratic interest groups and for each of the 6 candidates. We enter the huge auditorium and find that there are a few seats left in the back.

Hundreds of folks showing up for a candidates forum in Arizona. This seat is baked. People are angry. The candidates don't differ on any substantial issue but on presentation and explanation of how they are going to pay for it (my key interest). Medicaid for all is supported by all 6 candidates with load cheering by 500 or more who appear to be folks mostly already on Medicare. Two candidates have proposals on how they are going to pay for the 1.3 trillion it takes and my favourite candidate, Dr. Heinz is the strongest.

We had to sit so far away that we could barely recognize the faces of the candidates but the organizers have big screens on stage with closed circuit feeds so the huge crowd could be accommodated.

Republicans avoided parking disaster and crowd accommodation problems

This PAC was formed to defeat Rep. McSally and she gave up and decided to run for Senate in order to save herself the embarrassment of a huge loss. So the Republicans had their own candidate forum. In order to avoid parking problems they kept the location a secret and only invited well known party members to attend.

The Represent Me AZ is going to have to work a lot harder to avoid similar disasters in the future. They should look to getting much larger venues with much larger parking lots especially if the front runner, Ann Kirkpatrick, who was not even at the event shows up at the next one. Republicans just keep doing what you are doing, you aren't going to have to worry about parking problems.

May 3, 2018

Alan Dershowitz just lied 4 times on MSNBC, and I can prove it

Dershowitz came on full of outrage at the Cohen wiretap. I was doing my morning walk so have to paraphrase the lies.

He started out stating that he knew that this was an absolute civil rights outrage and when everyone else responded you couldn't know that because Dershowitz had not seen the actual warrant and the facts that led to it he couldn't know "for a fact" that it was an abuse.

He then stated he knew it because in general "it is easy for federal prosecutors to get a warrant", that they frequently "abuse their power and hoodwink judges", target someone, "like they did Trump" and find a crime just like they would have done "if Hillary was President" and that his only interest is " because I am a civil libertarian".

Not only are these lies they are easily disprovable lies.

1) Federal wiretap warrants are NOT easy to get. My business clientele is federal employees. One of my client's full time job is to fill out applications for federal wiretap warrants. Even at relatively low levels they are very difficult to get. The originating office has to have the head attorney sign off of it and then it would go the attorney for the local law enforcement entity (in this case the FBI). Then it would go to the regional supervising office of both the federal prosecutors and FBI and then to the specialized offices at the Department of Justice and the FBI and then it would have to work its way down the chain.

That, however, is not the proof. The proof is the federal prosecution conviction rate nation wide runs around 90%. There are many prosecutors who have 100% conviction rate including many of the prosecutors working for Mueller. You do not get 98% conviction rate if you are hoodwinking judges, breaking the rules on evidence and not following Supreme Court guidelines.

Dershowitz states that he has been in practice 33 years. Show us 3 a year, 100 cases where there has been a case where federal prosecutors did not follow procedure on warrants. I doubt that he could name one a year, that is the proof, the appeal courts and the Supreme Court is not hearing and ruling on a lot of these cases, which they would if there was wide spread abuse.

2) Al Capone. Dershowitz said it was a common practice for federal prosecutors to decide to prosecute someone and then hunt for the infraction, like Al Capone. No that's what the House Republicans tried to do with Secretary of Clinton but it didn't work. They didn't start investigating Donald Trump. Trump hired people and gave them jobs and they were already under investigation. There already an investigation into Carter Page and Paul Manafort before they joined up with Trump. They were investigating Flynn before he was appointed NSC Chair. In fact they warned the President that he was a security risk and Trump fired Acting Director Yates and hired Flynn, so this is a lie.

As for the Al Capone reference. Yes it is true that when Al Capone, who was a mass murderer and was bribing thousands of police and public officials could not be prosecuting by the system he corrupted they eventually went to the IRS. Again this is the fallacy of taking an extreme example and calling it ordinary.

3) AD said that his only concern was because he was a "civil libertarian" and it was shameful that the ACLU was not on this, etc. etc. etc.

Alan Dershowitz is NOT a great civil libertarian. If he was he would be stridently denouncing Trump for his many attacks on civil liberties. He would have denounced the Muslim travel ban, the attack on DACA and the constant attacks on federal employees who are whistle blowing on illegal practices of the Trump Administration.

Or, and this is the issue I feel most strongly about, he would have denounced Trump for advocating for the arrest of the Central Park 5 who have been conclusively proven innocent.

Alan Dershowitz is NOT a civil libertarian. He is a legal gad fly that is drawn to celebrities like a moth to a light. The proof of this is had Alan Dershowitz been a true civil libertarian he would have been on Trump's enemies list, not on his invitation for private dinners at the White House.

4) Dershowitz condescendingly patronized the former federal prosecutor who worked for Giuliani and said that he had never seen any of these practices while he worked at the office. Dershowitz knew it for a fact that it was "common place". If that is true then name the prosecutors and judges who have not been following federal DOJ and Supreme Court guidelines by name. He won't because a) they don't exist and b) he doesn't want to be sued for defamation.

There was one more lie I noted but the walk was too long and by the time I got home I was so angry about these 4 I couldn't remember the other two, lol.



Edited to Add: Now that it has turned out that there was NO wiretap but only a "register of phone calls" who called who it makes Dershowitz's uninformed, over the top, mindless hysteria even more ridiculous.

Re: Giuliani's message to Rosenstein to examine the Cohen wiretap: Why in the hell is Giuliani commenting on a wiretap on Cohen, he doesn't represent him.

April 29, 2018

Given the context it is extremely cringe worthy, in fact it makes me naseous

1) The cringe worthy statements

Trump is more than your run of the mill racist misogynistic xenophobe. He also houses a deeply disturbed mind. He has learned over the years to mask it but the inner Donald is always scratching to come out. He thinks that he is more brilliant than the politically correct and if he were to say that which he knows people think is offensive in a clear way he can change everyone to his point of view.

This unvarnished Donald is extremely cringe worthy. It will actually make you nauseous.

The most terrible point in the 2018 campaign wasn't the "pussy tape" but his unprompted demand that the innocent Central Park 5 be re arrested (they were proven to be innocent and paid $ 40 million for forced false confessions) and presumably executed as he openly campaigned for

These are areas where he can't hide behind a policy, we see not just a bigoted mind but a sick one.

His vicious opinions about the disabled will also show the diseased nature of Trump's brain.

You may have forgotten this gem:



Even with Ivanka physically restraining him the inner Donald wants to come out. The inner Donald must come out and show everyone how being supportive to people with extraordinary problems is exactly what "the problem (is) with this whole country. Right that's our biggest problem, being supportive and caring.

We all witnessed his embarrassing characterization of the reporter. We all cringed.

And now this:



2) The Context

Shameful, embarrassing to the country, gut wrenching to anyone with a brain and an ounce of empathy.

But it is the context that makes this the most difficult, cringe worthy in our nation's history.

The fellow that finds the uplifting and inspiring Special Olympics "tough to watch too much" is the Commander in Chief. As you read this Secretary of State Pompeo is laying the ground work for a military attack on Iran, as we were reading Sunday lol cats this was released



1) There is no perfect deal. A good agreement is when both sides get a lot and both sides wish they had gotten more.

2) There isn't going to be any amendments or renegotiations. You can't have countries signing an agreement and then demanding a change every 2 years because somebody new has been elected. Europe isn't going to agree to it. China and Russia, who also signed on to the agreement isn't going to agree to it. Iran isn't going to agree to it.

3) Improvements between South and North Korea will embolden the inner Trump. Saber rattling has worked for Donald for 5 decades, and now he has nuclear sabers and a huge military.

4) In 1953 the US reversed its opposition to Britain's desire to overthrow the popularly elected Prime Minister (Mohammad Mosaddegh, the first Persian to get a doctorate in Europe) and reverse the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil co. After the CIA installed the Shah as the head of government resentment against the brutal 26 year dictatorship and loss of sovereignty erupted and sent US/Iranian relations downward, until this agreement. Trump is going to set us back another 50 years.

5) After decades of anti Iranian propaganda (which was assisted by the idiot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad populist statements - similar to Trump in kind and quality) most people have a more favourable view of Saudi Arabia but the comparison should make us more weary of Saudi Arabia than Iran
- civil rights are better (especially for women) in Iran than Saudi Arabia
- It is Saudi Arabia that is the sponsor of radical Salafi or Wahhabism which is the basis for all of the radical jihadist movements. Saudis were on the planes on 9/11 not Iranians.
- The administration will talk about the adventurous foreign policy of Iran but it is Saudi Arabia that is bombing an entire country (Yemen) back to nothing and throwing its weight around the gulf trying to dictate policy to the other smaller gulf states.

Why is Trump not worried about the mid term elections?

Simple. In a fight for his life against prosecutors, facing a blue wave he knows that if he can provoke a war by September he has a good chance of keeping the Senate and possibly the House. A good chance because that is what Americans have done before.

The unvarnished Trump who can't watch the Special Olympics is simply a window into the disturbed mind of Donald Trump who now has the enormous powers of state to carry out his fantastical schemes to get more power. A war with Iran will cost hundreds of thousands of lives and set relations in the region back decades, so I am not going to be distracted by the obvious hit on Joy Reid, the faux uproar about the comedian who shocked everyone by pointing out the President is someone who grabs women's 'pussies', or any of the other distractions they put in the way.

Pompeo is laying the foundation for war with the Saudis, Bolton is cherry picking the data to amp up anti-Iranian hostility and the President needs a war to survive Mueller in the House and the Senate.