Quo Vadis GOP?

[The Minsky Moment]

So Trump is apparently saying he's already made the decision as to whether he's going to run in 2024.

Not sure how he can do that as there are several possible prisons he could be assigned to and not all them have inmate rep elections.

[Eddie Teach]

So Trump is apparently saying he's already made the decision as to whether he's going to run in 2024.

Not sure how he can do that as there are several possible prisons he could be assigned to and not all them have inmate rep elections.

You in the market for Florida swampland by any chance?

[Zoupa]

So Trump is apparently saying he's already made the decision as to whether he's going to run in 2024.

He's such an attention whore. Everyone on the planet knows he's running.

[Threviel]

To go back to the debate on Swedish schools.

A few days ago an article was published in one of the most reputable morning papers by a reputable scientist that had done some research on the Pisa results.

https://www.dn.se/debatt/den-svenska-grundskolan-ar-bland-de-basta-i-varlden/

The idea is that the development of the schools need to count out the immigrants and focus on the Swedish students, otherwise the results won't be comparable to previous measurements with fewer immigrants. That way one can also compare like with like with other countries.

It seems that the 2010 result was indicative of a lowering of the quality, probably due to the things that Brainy talked about, all across the board.

Later results indicate that since 2010 the quality drop has vanished (now we're talking about non-immigrants) and students today are better than they were in the early 2000s.

So the result of national Swedish testing indicate that the quality has gone up significantly.

Comparing 2018 OECD Pisa results with different countries and only taking natives into account takes Sweden up to second place in the rankings. Fully comparable to Finland, Japan and the like.

So, Swedish schools got bad due to idiotic politics, got fixed and improved significantly but then the Pisa results did not show that due to immigrants lowering the average.

The conclusion is that the schools are good,, but the poor areas need more resources and perhaps special solutions. Which seems quite obvious and sensible.

[The Brain]

...

The conclusion is that the schools are good,, but the poor areas need more resources and perhaps special solutions. Which seems quite obvious and sensible.

What kind of resources do they need?

[Threviel]

...

The conclusion is that the schools are good,, but the poor areas need more resources and perhaps special solutions. Which seems quite obvious and sensible.

What kind of resources do they need?

I dunno, read the thing.

I would guess a more resources primarily to social services and schools, but also to the justice system.

[crazy canuck]

The clip of Hawley running away is making my Twitter feed erupt in joyous laughter.

[The Minsky Moment]

Louis Gohmert on the house floor: "The gentleman just impugned our integrity. I would demand that his words be taken down. He is not allowed under the rules to impugn false statements by this side ."

 

[Razgovory]

So Rand Paul now wants to legalize... treason.


https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-calls-espionage-act-repeal-trump-fumes-over-fbi-search-1733488

enator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, called for repealing the Espionage Act less than a week after the FBI executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump's Florida residence, with the legal document citing a provision of the federal law that the federal agency suspected had been violated.

The FBI, with the approval of Attorney General Merrick Garland, carried out the Monday raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort home, searching for top secret and sensitive compartmentalized information, as well as other classified documents. Trump and his allies have condemned the raid, with the ex-president calling it part of a "hoax" and an ongoing "witch hunt" targeting him.

On Friday, the warrant for the search was unsealed, revealing that it cited potential violations of federal laws 18 USC 2071—Concealment, removal or mutilation, 18 USC 793—Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, and 18 USC 1519—Destruction, alteration or falsification of records in Federal investigations. The federal statute 18 USC 793 is part of the Espionage Act.

Paul, a supporter of the former president, took issue with the Espionage Act in a Saturday Twitter post.

"The espionage act was abused from the beginning to jail dissenters of WWI. It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment," he wrote. The GOP senator included a link to a June 2019 article titled "Repeal the Espionage Act" published by The Future of Freedom Foundation.


The article shared by the senator, which was written by the foundation's founder and president, Jacob Hornberger, said that the World War I-era law should be repealed in connection to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Hornberger called the Espionage Act "a tyrannical law" that had been enacted and used to "punish" political dissidents.

"In fact, it is that World War I relic that U.S. officials are now relying on to secure the criminal indictment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks head who released a mountain of evidence disclosing the inner workings and grave wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, especially with respect to the manner in which it has waged it undeclared forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan," he wrote.

Paul has previously called for Assange to be granted immunity from prosecution.

"I think that he should be given immunity from prosecution in exchange for coming to the United States and testifying," the Kentucky Republican told The Gateway Pundit in August 2018. "I think he's been someone who has released a lot of information, and you can debate whether or not any of that has caused harm, but I think really he has information that is probably pertinent to the hacking of the Democratic emails that would be nice to hear."

Paul's Democratic opponent, former state Representative Charles Booker, slammed the GOP senator's call for repealing the federal law.

"Rand Paul is now calling to repeal the Espionage Act after the world learned Donald Trump is under investigation for violating it. When I am elected to the Senate, you will never have to question my loyalty to our country," Booker wrote in a Saturday tweet.

"Rand Paul's actions are shameful," the Democratic candidate added in a follow-up post.

Paul also previously said, without any evidence, that the FBI may have planted classified information at Mar-a-Lago during the raid. "Do I know that the boxes of material they took from Mar-a-Lago, that they won't put things into those boxes to entrap him?" Paul asked during an interview with Fox News show Fox & Friends on Wednesday. "How do we know?"

News first broke in early February that the former president had improperly taken classified documents to his Florida home, with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirming that it had been searching for 15 boxes of records. The ex-president did not deny the story at the time, saying that it was a mix-up as his staff hastily moved him out of the White House.

After the boxes were returned to the NARA, the collection led to additional concern that the former president still had additional classified materials. Federal investigators began interviewing Trump staffers to determine what had been taken from the White House. The interviews, and a broader investigation overseen by a U.S. attorney, resulted in a grand jury subpoena served against Trump in late May to produce specific documents.

When the documents were not turned over, the FBI and the Justice Department chose to take the unprecedented step of carrying out a search warrant against a former president. A federal judge, as is required due process, approved the warrant—believing that the FBI had demonstrated probable cause.

[Syt]

Hooray for the free market and deregulation ... or something 

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/24/texas-boycott-companies-fossil-fuels/

Texas bans local, state government entities from doing business with firms that "boycott" fossil fuels

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar singled out financial firms under a 2021 state law that prohibits most state entities from contracting with companies that have reduced or cut investments in the oil and gas industry

Texas banned 10 financial firms from doing business with the state after Comptroller Glenn Hegar said Wednesday that they did not support the oil and gas industry.

Hegar, a Republican running for reelection in November, banned BlackRock Inc., and other banks and investment firms — as well as some investment funds within large banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan — from entering into most contracts with state and local entities after Hegar's office said the firms "boycott" the fossil fuel sector.

Hegar sent inquiries to hundreds of financial companies earlier this year requesting information about whether they were avoiding investments in the oil and gas industry in favor of renewable energy companies. The survey was a result of a new Texas law that went into effect in September and prohibits most state agencies, as well as local governments, from contracting with firms that have cut ties with carbon-emitting energy companies.

State pension funds and local governments issuing municipal bonds will have to divest from the companies on the list, though there are some exemptions, Hegar said.

"The environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) movement has produced an opaque and perverse system in which some financial companies no longer make decisions in the best interest of their shareholders or their clients, but instead use their financial clout to push a social and political agenda shrouded in secrecy," Hegar said in a written statement on Wednesday.

New York-based BlackRock, which has publicly embraced investing more in renewable energy, criticized Hegar's decision.

"This is not a fact-based judgment," a spokesperson for the company said in a written statement. "BlackRock does not boycott fossil fuels — investing over $100 billion in Texas energy companies on behalf of our clients proves that.

"Elected and appointed public officials have a duty to act in the best interests of the people they serve," the spokesperson added. "Politicizing state pension funds, restricting access to investments, and impacting the financial returns of retirees, is not consistent with that duty."

The other nine companies banned completely are: BNP Paribas SA, a French international banking group; Swiss-based Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG; Danske Bank A/S, a Danish multinational banking and financial services corporation; London-based Jupiter Fund Management PLC, a fund management group; Nordea Bank ABP, a European financial services group based in Finland; Schroders PLC, a British multinational asset management company; and Swedish banks Svenska Handelsbanken AB and Swedbank AB.

The funds within larger companies are aimed at sustainable investing, such as Goldman Sachs' "Paris-aligned Climate US Large Cap Equity ETF" and JP Morgan's "U.S. Sustainable Leaders Fund."

Texas energy experts said the intent of the law, and Wednesday's announcement, was to punish financial firms that don't want to invest in the backbone of Texas' economy — oil and gas.

"But at the end of the day, it's all about a rate of return," said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston. "Quite honestly, fossil fuel companies, in particular oil and gas companies, have not been great performers in the (stock market) prior to this year."

The Lone Star Chapter of the environmental group Sierra Club said Hegar's "climate-denying publicity stunt will be costly for taxpayers."

��"Major financial institutions like the ones on this list are beginning to recognize that investments in fossil fuels bring significant risk in the face of an inevitable clean energy transition, and that addressing the financial risks of the climate crisis is essential to good business," said Sierra Club Fossil-Free Finance Campaign Manager Ben Cushing. "The fact that the Texas Comptroller has arbitrarily picked a handful of companies that, despite their climate commitments, continue to have massive fossil fuel investments, shows that this is nothing more than a political stunt at Texas taxpayers' expense."

James Coleman, an energy law professor at Southern Methodist University, said there is political pressure driving both sides of this debate.

"Not just from those hoping to reign in fossil fuels, but also from those worried that moving away from fossil fuels is an economic harm," Coleman said.

But Coleman said that "whenever the state limits the potential world that it can do business with, that potentially leaves some returns on the table."

The actual impact on Texas taxpayers is hard to predict, said Felix Mormann, a Texas A&M University School of Law professor who studies energy and climate change. He called Wednesday's move "a symbolic act by the Comptroller to protest the rise of ESG investing."

"Will this announcement give a boost to Texas oil and gas companies? Morally, perhaps," Mormann wrote in an email to The Texas Tribune. "But, financially, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and other Texas oil-and-gas majors play in the global league... In other words, I strongly doubt that the Comptroller is setting off the next oil-and-gas boom in Texas."

As political campaigning heats up ahead of the November elections, Hegar this week also accused Harris County of slashing its spending on its constables' offices, even though those offices would get big boosts to their budgets under a proposed budget. Republicans used Hegar's accusation as an opportunity to criticize County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county's Democratic chief executive who is seen as a rising star in the party, as she faces a reelection battle in November.

Last week, Hegar announced he supports Texas repealing state taxes on menstrual products such as tampons and sanitary pads, a position echoed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

[viper37]

Alaska has instituted a new voting scheme last year where voters rank their candidates by choices, and they can fill in a candidate name if he/she isn't on the ballot.

If a candidate wins 50%+1 votes, he/she is elected to the position, but if not, the other choices are added until the tally gives 50%+1.  Interesting system.  I think I prefer this to the list system proposed to our first past the post election system.

Anyway, the good news is, Sarah Palin lost her Alaskan election.

The predictable news is, she and other Republicans are now calling the election a scam.  They had no objetion before the vote took place, but now that they lost, it's unfair and unjust system.

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/01/scam-to-rig-elections-tom-cotton-fumes-over-sarah-palin-loss-as-fans-cry-stolen-election/

[The Brain]

This just in: Lone Star state not lonely enough.

[Valmy]

They cry the election was stolen even when they win. What else is new?

[The Minsky Moment]

Can anyone translate Steve Bannonish into English:

"Just days after being swatted three different times by deranged thugs from New York City inspired to be the Biden administration to assassinate me by police, the Soros-backed DA has now decided to pursue phony charges against me 60 days before the midterm election because WarRoom is the major source of the MAGA grassroots movement."

-His response to reports that the NY County DA is seeking to bring charges in the wall fundraising fraud.

[The Brain]

*rips off mask of the monster* So it was bmolsson all along!