tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14532302422219643062024-02-02T13:27:51.541-06:00The Sensible Center"The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right or left, are in the gutters." Dwight D. EisenhowerBallard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.comBlogger1310125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-72347489466296324512018-06-02T14:31:00.002-05:002018-06-02T16:39:54.995-05:00Trump-Russia: A Grand Unified TheoryThe Trump-Russia scandal is difficult to follow because of its complexity. It is hard to understand how the many characters and elements fit together.
Two journalists have stood out in their tracking and insightful understanding of this story: Josh Marshall of Talkingpointsmemo.com and Adam Davidson of The New Yorker. Their conversation in the most recent edition of Marshall's podcast is Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-91323693416270790942018-04-28T09:31:00.000-05:002018-04-28T09:31:49.412-05:00House GOP Russia Report: Bad Crime FictionFormer Rep. Steve Isreal (D-NY) says the House GOP Russia report is written with November's midterms in mind in The Hill.
The GOP’s House Intelligence Committee report acknowledging Russian meddling in our elections but no collusion by the Trump campaign is like any bad crime fiction. We know how it’ll end before finishing the first chapter. No stunners here, no twists of plot. This is a Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-60654029783399381062018-01-18T16:08:00.000-06:002018-01-19T07:45:36.548-06:00Trump, GOP Exploit FearTony Schwartz, Donald Trump's ghostwriter for "The Art of the Deal," knows him very well. He has an article up in The Guardian describing how Trump is driven by fear and exploits fear in others.
Fear is the hidden through-line in Trump’s life – fear of weakness, of inadequacy, of failure, of criticism and of insignificance. He has spent his life trying to outrun these fears by “winning” – as he Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-42075724926848892382018-01-03T17:38:00.002-06:002018-01-03T17:38:44.849-06:00Trump-Russia Turning PointJosh Marshall argues that we are at "the end of the beginning" of the Trump-Russia scandal on Talking Points Memo.
So where are we now in this story? A series of revelations in the final weeks of 2017 placed us at what we should think not as the beginning or the end but the end of the beginning. We are still only at the front end of this investigation. We still know only the outlines of what Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-7580768530591634352017-12-23T19:59:00.001-06:002017-12-26T10:30:52.574-06:00Today's Trump-Russia ThoughtThe likelihood that the Russians essentially own Donald Trump is an under-appreciated element to this whole story. After a string of bankruptcies following the collapse of his Atlantic City casino venture, Trump could not get financing. Enter hundreds of millions in investments in Trump ventures from oligarchs from the former Soviet republics who needed a way to launder stolen money.
Former DNI Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-85217389846064696732017-12-14T09:12:00.000-06:002017-12-14T09:29:12.034-06:00GOP Hypocrisy on FBI/Justice DepartmentJonathan Chait details the screaming Republican hypocrisy on the FBI and Justice Department handling of tbe Trump-Russia investigation in New York Magazine.
Tuesday night, officials from the Department of Justice invited reporters to see something scandalous: text messages by FBI agents sent during the presidential campaign expressing … opinions about the political campaign. One message called Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-72852347532619404512017-11-29T10:02:00.000-06:002017-11-29T10:02:41.526-06:00Trump in a NutshellChris Cillizza describes Donald Trump very well on cnn.com.
What explains Trump's decision to provoke Pelosi and Schumer in advance of the meeting? Some of Trump's allies will insist that he is playing a strategic game that people like me are just too dumb to see. That by forcing Democrats to walk away from the table, Trump will improve his party's leverage. Or something.
But the simpler Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-56972146585022899632017-11-20T09:29:00.001-06:002017-11-20T09:36:55.456-06:00Frum: GOP Blowing Tax ReformDavid Frum points out the latest example (tax reform) of Republicans' inabilty to govern in The Atlantic.
From the point of view of future U.S. growth and prosperity, the broad outline of tax reform seems obvious. Lower corporate rates to somewhere between 25 and 30 percent, the developed-world norm. Tighten collection so that the rate is actually paid. This is one reform that should come Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-73288069192437883692017-11-02T10:15:00.000-05:002017-11-02T10:15:36.342-05:00Trump's Real FearPaul Waldman breaks down Donald Trump's biggest fear from the Mueller investigation in The Week.
Trump is plainly sensitive about anything that might cast doubt on the legitimacy of his election victory. But that's not what he's really afraid of. The real threat Mueller poses, the thing that's probably keeping Trump up at night, is what he might find out about the president's finances. If Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-48926898812220738772017-10-30T21:20:00.000-05:002017-10-30T21:20:31.193-05:00GOP Silence on Trump/Russia Could BackfireDavid Frum points out the risks to Republican Senators of blind partisanship as the Trump/Russia scandal intensifies in The Atlantic.
Here’s your problem, senator: The Trump political and legal strategy is about to get very radical. This weekend, after months of hesitation and distraction mongering, The Wall Street Journal editorial page ran a column advocating the end-the-probe, pardon-everyoneBallard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-44387923754842651292017-10-07T10:16:00.000-05:002017-10-07T10:16:36.803-05:00Frum on Gun DebateDavid Frum comments on how we undermine the gun debate in The Atlantic.
But once you have accepted that it’s reasonable for citizens to accumulate firearms at the rate of 24 a year, it’s hard to imagine that there is really anything else you can do that will prevent a lot of gun deaths. Americans die from gunfire in proportions unparalleled in the civilized world because Americans own guns in Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-20447432506723598992017-09-26T18:21:00.000-05:002017-09-26T18:21:14.957-05:00Trump Will Never PivotEzra Klein explains that Donald Trump is beloved by the Republican base because he is one of them on vox.com.
It’s become a joke on politics Twitter that Trump’s pivot is always around the corner, that the media can’t stop announcing that this is the moment Trump finally became president. But there will be no pivot. There will be no moment Trump suddenly and permanently grows into the job. KellyBallard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-2955145364220819382017-09-19T20:56:00.000-05:002017-09-19T20:56:32.707-05:00Cassidy-Graham and GOP HypocrisyMatthew Yglesias details the dishonesty and hypocrisy of Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on vox.com.
Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator holding a safe seat in Louisiana, could easily have spent the past six months imitating his state’s other senator by basically lying low and voting for whichever health care bills leadership puts in front of him. But Cassidy was a medical doctor Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-9687829101300577132017-08-29T18:06:00.001-05:002017-08-29T18:06:21.249-05:00Lessons of GOP FailureFormer Reagan staffer Bruce Bartlett takes stock of the failure of Republicans to govern in the New York Daily News.
Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible, whereby politicians negotiate the issues of the day and arrive at compromises. Neither party gets all that they want, but each gets something.
In America, that ideal has been dead for some time. I’m not sure when it died, but Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-41304084652278458152017-08-17T14:52:00.000-05:002017-08-17T14:52:17.383-05:00Trump's Presidency: Predictable Train WreckJosh Marshall sums up this completely predictable train wreck of a Presidency on Talking Points Memo.
Everything we are seeing stems almost inevitably from the decisions the country made, collectively, last November. We elected a President driven by white racial grievance. That is the fulcrum and driving force of his politics. It’s no surprise that a big outbreak of white supremacist Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-67766018138494599812017-08-15T18:33:00.001-05:002017-08-15T18:33:45.696-05:00Robert E. Lee: Setting the Historical Record StraightJosh Marshall, who earned a PhD in history before becoming a journalist, tells the real story on Robert E. Lee's place in American history on Talking Points Memo.
What is Robert E. Lee known for? This is what I mean by the margins of the debate. Lee is known for one thing: being the key military leader in a violent rebellion against the United States and leading that rebellion to protect slaveryBallard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-9342511848601832912017-07-27T18:05:00.002-05:002017-07-27T18:05:55.069-05:00GOP Health Care Train WreckEzra Klein details the cynicism and dishonesty revealed by the Republican health care debate on vox.com.
The health care debate has revealed a political system unmoored and in crisis.
Part of it is the recklessness of the legislation under consideration. Putting all policy arguments aside, no one — including congressional Republicans — believes these bills to be carefully drafted. House Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-39687172172632063662017-07-19T16:54:00.000-05:002017-07-19T16:54:20.321-05:00Trump-Russia Relationship ExplainedSean Iling of vox.com explains the roots of the relationship between Donald Trump and Russia through the eyes of Seva Gunitsky, a politics professor at the University of Toronto.
Gunitsky, who was raised in Russia, has followed the evolving relationship between Donald Trump and Russia for more than a decade. He says the prevailing narrative about Putin interfering in the American Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-24133176865458952032017-07-18T09:36:00.000-05:002017-07-18T09:43:28.028-05:00Seeds of Trumpcare's CrashJosh Marshall explores the backstory beneath Trumpcare's implosion on Talking Points Memo.
Why did this happen?
A few critical reasons: The biggest reason is that Trumpcare is supremely unpopular. The bill’s mammoth unpopularity is scarcely even questioned. Nor is there much attempt to make it more popular. Nothing for weeks has been about anything more than assembling 50 votes. Closely Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-4083823032210098812017-07-14T10:02:00.000-05:002017-07-14T10:12:36.799-05:00GOP puts Party before CountryAndrew Sullivan gets to the heart of the Russia scandal in New York Magazine: when will Republicans put the good of our country before the political interests of their party?
My mind keeps traveling back to that moment in the second presidential debate when both candidates were asked what they admired about each other. I have to say, sitting at home, the question stumped me. I guess in a pinch Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-13241738434482361962017-07-12T13:25:00.000-05:002017-07-12T13:25:05.071-05:00Trump, etal, Don't Get the Trouble They Are InJosh Marshall spells out an important underlying theme in Donald Trump's scandal plagued administration on Talking Points Memo.
One issue I’ve touched on here and there in my posts on the Russia probe is my abiding sense that especially the younger generation of Trumpers: Kushner, Don Jr., et al. just don’t seem to grasp the magnitude of the trouble they’re in, or at least the magnitude ofBallard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-10610497821404299912017-07-12T10:06:00.000-05:002017-07-12T10:06:54.731-05:00Mike Lofgren on False EquivalenceMike Lofgren, former GOP Congressional staffer turned gadfly, offers an interesting and provocative take on false equivalence on BillMoyers.com.
It has been six years since I last saw Capitol Hill and the Republican Party in the rearview mirror. Ever since, I have been relentlessly critical of the GOP because, as nearly as I could determine, it is contemptuous of anyone who is not wealthy, runsBallard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-36255278183762372922017-06-30T08:29:00.000-05:002017-06-30T08:29:44.351-05:00Unintended Consequences of Trump TweetsAlyssa Rosenberg offers a surprising take on President Trump's disgusting attack on Mika Brzezinsky in The Washington Post.
President Trump has spent much of the past several years gaslighting America: Insisting he didn’t say things he clearly said, denying positions he previously claimed and accusing other people of the flaws he manifests in baroque fashion. From his “No, you’re the puppetBallard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-58715299410335420042017-06-23T08:57:00.001-05:002017-06-23T08:57:50.777-05:00GOP : Party of TrollsAndrew Sullivan describes the Trump administration's apparent goal of simply reversing the policies of Barak Obama in New York Magazine.
I was mulling, as one does, over this presidency, and something crystallized in my head that I had not quite grasped before. Its policies are best described as simply perverse. The new Senate health-care bill is just the latest shining example. As Peter Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1453230242221964306.post-53873242259513393542017-06-14T21:49:00.000-05:002017-06-14T21:49:51.106-05:00Trump-Russia Getting RealJosh Marshall explores the Washington Post bombshell on Trump being investigated for obstruction and his circle for financial crimes on Talking Points Memo.
Reading through this article, contemplating that the President less than five months in office is already being investigated for obstruction of justice, what is so mind-boggling is that the case isn’t even really a he said, he said dispute.Ballard Burgherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14815928621775599001noreply@blogger.com0