2016 Election – Page 23 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 29, 2019

Happy almost New Year! It only recently dawned on Wrongo that we’re not just coming to the end of another year, but also the end of the decade. There have already been many “end of the decade” summaries, but Wrongo is more interested in the future.

The only comment about the past that matters now is that we went from being optimistic after Obama’s election to being pessimistic after Trump was elected. To get elected, our first black president had to be a nearly perfect human being.

Trump only had to meet the low bar of representing the worst of us to gain power. And now, we’re even more divided than we were in 2016.

2020 will start with an impeachment trial, and a partisan acquittal. 2020 will end with a presidential election. Realistically, should we be expecting change? The answer is possibly: The Republican Senate majority suddenly looks to be in jeopardy. Republican strategists and campaign staffers said that with the polarization of the Trump era, key House and Senate races will depend even more than usual on the presidential race.

Democrats are raising more money and are polling better than Republican incumbents in several battleground states. Dems are outraising the Repubs in Arizona, Iowa and Maine, and they only need three net new seats to be the majority in the Senate.

Trump’s Impeachment trial works as a political strategy to get Republican senators on the record about Trump. Putting those GOP swing state senators on the hot seat may be very important in November 2020.

If you look at polls from the swing states, it’s possible that Trump can win again in 2020. OTOH, it is difficult to believe that, after four years of living with him, America will see Donald Trump as their best option for the next four years.

On to cartoons. The Christmas week always brings a shortage of good things to present, but this kinda sums up the season:

GOP’s 2020 strategy:

Dems 2020 resolutions:

2020’s New Year’s babies get dose of reality:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 22, 2019

(Wrongo’s taking a bit of a Christmas break, so after Monday, posting will be light. We’ll be back on a normal schedule NLT Monday, January 6th. Wrongo truly appreciates you guys sticking around for all these years!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year — let’s hope it brings change we can believe in.)

A succinct summation of the week’s news:

Branding has consequences:

The never ending story:

Who to believe:

Rollerball broke out at the Dem Debate:

2019’s alternative “Away in the Manger” story:

What’s in a name?

Saturday Soother – “Where’s the Impeachment?” Edition

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Shuksan, North Cascades NP, WA – 2018 photo by sluu99

As Atrios says:

“You go to impeachment with the Mitch McConnell you have, not the one you want.”

We need to remember the history of how Democrats created the Mitch we have. To do that, we must go back to November 21, 2013. Here’s the WaPo from that day: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.

Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.

The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — the most recent examples of what Democrats have long considered unreasonably partisan obstruction by Republicans.”

Back then, the main combatants were Harry Reid (D-NV) the Majority Leader, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The vote for the “nuclear option” was 52 to 48, with all but three Democrats backing the move, and every Republican opposing it. After the vote, Obama said that Republicans had turned nomination fights into a “reckless and relentless tool” to grind the gears of government to a halt and noted that “neither party has been blameless for these tactics.” But, he said, “today’s pattern of obstruction…just isn’t normal; it’s not what our founders envisioned.”

Fast forward to 2019. The Senate is split 53-47 now, with the Republicans in charge. Mitch has used Harry Reid’s rule change to appoint two Supreme Court justices, 50 appeals court judges, and 120 district court judges in less than three years.

Today, 20% of judges on all of the federal courts, and 25% on the appeals courts are Trump appointees. On the same day that Trump was impeached, the Senate confirmed 13 new district court judges.

Suddenly, Democrats are waking up to the reality that Trump’s judges will shape American law with a conservative bias for 30-40 years to come.

We can blame Harry Reid and Barack Obama for not thinking ahead.

You ought to be thinking ahead to the weekend, and all of the little things that you need to do so that Santa can do his job next week. It’s at least as challenging a task as locating the missing Trump Impeachment.

Before you shift into drive and start on that big to-do list, it’s time for a Saturday Soother, a brief few moments when you relax, and try to center yourself in the calm before the storm.

Start by brewing up a mug of Coffee and Chicory coffee ($6.70/15oz.) from New Orleans’ own Café Du Monde. Now sit back in a comfy chair and watch and listen to a Holiday Season flash mob by the US Air Force Band at the National Air and Space Museum in 2013:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Pelosi: We’re Making It up as We Go

The Daily Escape:

Hat tip – A. James

“When you’re born into this world, you’re given a ticket to the freak show. If you’re born in America you get a front row seat.” –George Carlin

Donald Trump was impeached on Wednesday. Wrongo sees Trump as dangerously incompetent and personally corrupt. But the way Democrats have gone about the impeachment isn’t winning the hearts and minds of independents, a group of voters they need if they are to take back the Presidency in 2020 and hold on to the House.

It’s helpful to remember that the only reason the impeachment is going forward is that the 2018 midterms gave Democrats a significant majority in the House. Even with uncontested evidence that the president abused his power, Republicans have demonstrated no interest in holding Trump accountable. It is clear that if they were still in the majority, none of this would be happening.

A side note on Tulsi Gabbard, the only person who voted “present” on both impeachment motions: Wrongo has kind of admired her principled political stands. He’s agreed with a few of them. But voting “present”? Apparently she couldn’t decide on the two motions. She’s a presidential candidate. The ability to decide and lead are core competencies of the job. She has disqualified herself.

It’s always been clear that Trump wouldn’t be convicted in the Senate. It seems that, as with the Mueller investigation, the Dems were unclear about the likely outcome of their efforts. Did they expect Trump would simply resign in shame, or maybe run a half-hearted campaign in 2020? Trump is a fighter and a blockhead, so they should have known he would love the chance to talk about impeachment from now until next November.

The move that caught everyone, including reporters at the hearing, by surprise, was Pelosi’s statement that she had not set a time for sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate. This was surprising since they had been saying all along that they’d impeach Trump by Christmas. They sounded as if they were eager to move the process forward.

Is this a political calculation? It runs the risk of making them look either too clever by half, or worried about the impeachment fallout with voters. After all, voter approval of impeachment peaked in October. Support for it has now fallen, and Trump’s approval ratings have risen since then.

Pelosi seems to be saying that the delay is because they are tussling with the openly partisan Mitch McConnell over the rules for the hearing. There is something to that if you consider that with the Clinton impeachment, the Senate impeachment process was negotiated in private between the Parties, and was approved by a 100-0 vote when Republican Trent Lott was Majority Leader.

That isn’t happening with Mitch in charge. This time, the Republicans want a quick trial, and then to declare victory.

Wrongo thinks that Trump deserves to be impeached, but as someone who was around for the Nixon and Clinton impeachment efforts, it seems as if the Democrats have made the same mistake this time that the Republicans made with Clinton: The Ukrainian case is just too small an offense. Guilt isn’t the issue, but to the average person, the punishment doesn’t match the crime.

With Clinton, 79% of the public thought Clinton was guilty. But the vast majority thought that lying about consensual sex was too small a crime to merit impeachment.

Democrats have a similar problem today. Trump did it, or at least, tried to do it. He’s incorrigible, too. He won’t have any hesitation about abusing his office again if it means gaining some personal advantage.

But because the Trump impeachment case has been so tightly limited to the Ukraine episode, the Democrats have lowered the stakes. People shrug: Ukraine got its aid eventually, and the Ukies aren’t investigating Hunter Biden, so….whatever.

Public support for impeaching Trump is about 50/50 and hasn’t moved appreciably in months. As much as Trump is a terrible president, Dems have managed to make him look borderline acceptable in this case.

Most of our DC politicians live in the beltway bubble. You can be sure that in 2016 many Dems said “It’s going to be a landslide. No woman or minority is going to vote for him.”

Then, the Dems were shocked by the Mueller report non-event.

Now, they’re flummoxed that impeachment is becoming less popular. They were sure it was going to popular with even the few Republican moderates and most independent voters.

Where do Dems go from here?

Military is Less Supportive of Trump

The Daily Escape:

The Olympic Range from Mt. Elinor trail – 2019 photo by malevolint

A new poll by the Military Times (MT) shows that half of active-duty service members are unhappy with Trump as their Commander-in-Chief. This represented a decline in his approval rating since he was elected in 2016.

The top line numbers show Trump is viewed very favorably or favorably by 41.6% of those surveyed, while 49.9% view him very unfavorably or unfavorably. 8.5% were neutral on the question. By comparison, when the MT surveyed the troops after Trump won in November 2016, 46% of troops surveyed had a positive view of Trump, while only 37% had a negative opinion.

The poll surveyed 1,630 active-duty MT subscribers between October 23 and December 2, 2019, in partnership with the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University. The numbers have a margin of error of ± 2%. The survey audience was 92% male and 8% female. Respondents identified themselves as 75% white, 14% Hispanic, 13% African American, 5% Asian and 5% other ethnicities. Here is a chart of the top line changes over time:

Trump’s overall favorability is similar to what he receives in the civilian population.

Some of the big drivers of the increase in his unfavorability have to do with military decisions. While troops supported Trump’s steps to disengage in Afghanistan (59% approve of negotiating with the Taliban), 58% disapproved of his decision to withdraw US forces from northern Syria. When asked about using military funds to build the southern border wall, 59% disapproved of his decision. More than half rated current US relations with “traditional allies” like NATO as poor.

Some other findings:

Military men are more supportive of Trump than military women: 43% of men rate him favorably, while among women service members, 53% expressed a “very unfavorable” rating, and 56% responded negatively.
By race, there were key differences: 46% of whites had a favorable view, versus 45% unfavorable. Among non-white service members, about 66% held a negative view of Trump.
33% of respondents identified as conservative, outnumbering liberals (25%).
There was a shift toward more service members identifying as political independents. They now are 45% of respondents, up by 3% since 2018.
There was a 3% increase in the number of Democrats, and a 7% decrease in the number who considered themselves Republicans, or Libertarians.
Regarding impeachment, 47% backed impeachment, while 46% were opposed, roughly the same as the rest of the American public.
More than 75% said they think the military community has become more politically polarized, with about 40% now saying they have seen significantly more division in the ranks.

While historically male, white and Republican, the military is changing rapidly. The swing in the numbers of self-declared Democrats and Republicans is important. Many are confused about the military’s role, and America’s global mission.

Mark Bowden has a current article in The Atlantic about the negative view of Trump held by recently retired generals. Here is the key takeaway:

“In 20 years of writing about the military, I have never heard officers in high positions express such alarm about a president.”

Bowden is a highly respected military historian who wrote Black Hawk Down, and Huế 1968. He quotes a general saying that Trump: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…doesn’t understand the warrior ethos…it’s sort of a sacred covenant not just among members of the military profession, but between the profession and the society in whose name we fight and serve…. Trump [just] doesn’t understand.”

There is an opening for Democrats here. Plenty of issues are up for grabs, like the fact that the military spouse unemployment rate floats around 20%, or that homeless veterans are overrepresented at 11% of all homeless adults, and commit suicide at 1.5 times the rate of their non-veteran adult counterparts.

There are serious problems with lead in both military housing paint, and in their drinking water. Reuters did a special report on this last year.

Democrats have pushed policies for limits on payday lenders, while Trump and the Republicans support them.

Military sexual assault, energized by Sen. Gillibrand (D-NY), still has yet to pass. Gillibrand’s law would require that all sexual assault cases are placed in the hands of experienced military prosecutors, outside the chain of command.

So far, Democrats haven’t offered a clear alternative that our military can endorse. Dems need to speak in a voice that conceptualizes the military not just as a special interest looking for a pay raise, but as a unique community that defends us against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Can the Democrats running for president embrace the military?

Monday Wake Up Call Afghanistan Edition – December 16, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Light snow and morning fog, Yosemite NP CA – December 2019 photo by worldpins

Wrongo and Ms. Right visited the WWII museum in New Orleans last week. In most ways, it was the last war that engaged all of America. At the start of the war, we were woefully under resourced, our army had more horses than tanks. People became deeply involved in the war effort.

During the war, Wrongo as a very young boy, managed to lose our family’s sugar ration card. Businesses gave their production capacity over to the country’s war needs. President Roosevelt was on the radio each week, keeping support for the war effort high. WWII lasted for six years, from 1939-1945.

You know where this is going: Last week, we learned that our government has covered up the reality of how we were doing in Afghanistan, much like our government covered up the truth during the Vietnam War.

We learned this due to work by WaPo reporter Craig Whitlock who has given us an indispensable look into our continuing failure in Afghanistan. The documents include transcripts of interviews with soldiers, diplomats, and others with direct experience in the war effort. Excerpts:

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction. . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of US military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”

“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?” Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, “After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.”

The WaPo documents contradict years of public statements from US presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that we were making progress in Afghanistan and that the war was worth fighting:

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to US military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

Bush, Obama and so far, Trump, have all failed us miserably for the past 18+ years. The war has cost America $975 billion-plus tens of $ billions spent by the VA on the wounds of Afghanistan veterans, a price that will rise for the next six decades. The most serious costs are the 2,434 US deaths and 20,646 wounded in action.

The Afghan mess was made worse by piling lie upon lie. We now know that the top brass in the military knew all along that we were losing, and that three successive White Houses also knew.

The greatest tragedy is that the losing is still ongoing.

These revelations are an indictment of our senior military leaders. We had advantages in resources and technology in Afghanistan (we often outnumbered the insurgents on the battlefield) and still lost. But beyond that, it indicts our political leaders, who need to understand our strategy, and be a check on our military.

Time to wake up America! This is also an indictment of all of us, for not paying attention. For not insisting on ending it years ago!

We’ve managed to blow through vast resources that were desperately needed at home. We’ve stood by while our government fruitlessly sacrificed the lives of many of our men and women. We grew our National Debt beyond what we needed to do, and got stuck in another foreign quagmire.

When we finally feel either shame or anger about Afghanistan and that we were lied to, we can take the first steps to political reform.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 15, 2019

Paul Volcker died last week. It’s likely that few readers know who he was, or what he did. He was one of the most important persons in finance in the last 50 years.

Volcker was Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Carter and Reagan, until Reagan fired him in 1986. He is widely credited with having ended the high levels of inflation in the US during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Earlier, he was an important part of Nixon’s team that took the US off the gold standard in 1971.

In that time of red-hot inflation, Volcker’s goal was to stop the growth of prices, while keeping the dollar strong globally. Back then, Americans saw inflation as our most pressing economic problem. Volcker’s goal was to reduce wages as a way to reduce price inflation. As an example, during his time as Fed Chair, Volcker carried a card listing the wages of unions in his pocket to remind himself that his early goal was to crush the unions.

When Reagan and his people complained that interest rates were too high, Volcker would pull out his card on union wages and say that inflation would not come down permanently until labor “got the message and surrendered.” Volcker said that the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s was a:

“hall of mirrors”, and that the…”standard of living of the average American must decline.”

Volcker’s jacking up of interest rates eventually purged inflation from the system. Along the way, it hurt small businesses, farms, banks, and home owners who needed a mortgage. Mortgage rates reached a peak of 18.63% in October 1981.

While Wrongo briefly worked for Volcker at the big bank in the early 1970’s, we had no relationship. Wrongo reported to a guy, who reported to a guy, who reported to Volcker. Despite that (minimal) connection, Wrongo knows that Volcker’s stint at the Fed helped to shatter the American middle class. It might not have been his intent, but it was what he did. On to cartoons.

Trump outdoes Obama:

McConnell says he’ll take his instructions from the defendant:

Trump’s Xmas list:

The people would rather have a lump of coal:

21^st Century Wise Men:

Greta vs. the Rest:

Saturday Soother – December 14, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Lover’s Leap, New Milford CT after this week’s snow – December 2019 drone photo by Quadco Joe

The House Judiciary Committee voted to send two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the full House. The vote took just two minutes, and as Wrongo said yesterday, it will be portrayed as the party line vote it was, with 23 Democrats in favor, and 17 Republicans against.

It was a tribute to the political polarization in today’s America, with striking diversity on the Democrats’ side, as well as lack of diversity on the Republicans’ side. From Marcy Wheeler:

“The Democrats who voted in favor included 11 women, and 13 Latinx and people of color (Ted Lieu missed the vote recovering from a heart procedure). Three (plus Lieu) are immigrants. One is gay. These Democrats voted to uphold the Constitution a bunch of white men, several of them owners of African-American slaves, wrote hundreds of years ago.”

All the Republicans who voted against were white, and just two were women. They voted to permit a racist white male President to cheat in order to get reelected, in violation of the rule of law.

This is a clash between the America that is coming, and its past. It’s unclear who will win this battle, but the stakes are high, and will become even higher in 2020.

Wrongo believes that rushing to an impeachment finding was a strategic error by Democrats. This should have been moved along slowly. House Democrats needed to go through discovery on all the obstruction of justice, Constitutional emoluments and separation of powers violations, campaign finance violations, and bribery violations. They should have taken the time to use their Article I power to get the oversight disclosure and testimony they have been denied by the Trump White House.

But, no. The House Democrats didn’t do any of that. Instead, they focused on one phone call when there was little reason to rush, and plenty to be gained by keeping Trump on the defensive for the next year.

A deeper dive into the issues could have made an Impeachment Resolution with a more effective result. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the vote in a Senate trial. But it would have provided continuing education to the public, along with fuel for effective articles and ads about Trump’s lawlessness.

With the weekend upon us, it’s time to contemplate all that must get done between here and New Year’s. Wrongo’s list is too long, but somehow, he hopes everything is done by then. However, let’s start by kicking back and forgetting about the list, the Impeachment and budget deal. Let’s clear our minds, and have another Saturday Soother.

Start by brewing up a large cup of Mexico Chiapas Dark Roast ($13/12oz.) with its notes of dark chocolate, hints of molasses and brown sugar. It’s from Sacred Grounds Coffee in Sherman CT, who we’ve featured here once before.

Now, listen to Nocturne “Reverie Op. 19” by Giulio Regondi. Regondi was a Swiss-born classical guitarist, and composer active in France and (mainly) the UK. It is played by Drew Henderson:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Trump Defrauded Veterans and Nobody Cares

The Daily Escape:

Replica New Orleans Trolley made of gingerbread, Ritz Carlton Hotel, New Orleans. It took two months to make. – December 2019 iPhone photo by Wrongo

From Tuesday’s NYT:

“President Trump has paid $2 million to eight charities as part of a settlement in which the president admitted he misused funds raised by the Donald J. Trump Foundation to promote his presidential bid and pay off business debts, the New York State attorney general said on Tuesday.”

Wrongo wrote about this in November, calling it “The Only Article of Impeachment We Need”:

“We should stop the current impeachment deliberations in Washington, because we know all that we need to know right now. An American president who defrauds veterans has met the bar of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’. We shouldn’t need any more testimony about bribery and extortion of a foreign power.”

While the fraud was committed before Trump became president, it is by itself, the greatest presidential crime in American history. And the case has already been decided in front of a judge. In the end, the president admitted in court documents that he had used the foundation’s money to settle legal obligations of his businesses, and to purchase a portrait of himself.

Trump also used the charity to boost political campaigns — first, Pamela Bondi’s Florida attorney general campaign, and then his own 2016 campaign. Trump gave away Trump Foundation checks onstage at rallies, despite strict rules barring nonprofit charities from participating in political campaigns.

Trump settled the case, because the alternative would have been litigation that would have exposed parts of his finances. Think about what his finances look like when his lawyers tell him that the better option is to admit that he stole $2 million from American veterans.

As part of the settlement, Trump’s adult children; Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump all of whom were on the board of the foundation although they never met to discuss its operations, will have to take training to make sure they don’t make similar missteps in the future. That’s a minor wrist-slap.

This story was reported by major outlets but it doesn’t seem to have made a dent in the public consciousness. You’d think a story about $2 million worth of admitted presidential crimes would break through the noise but there’s always competition. Today, it’s a possible trade deal, the ongoing impeachment inquiry and Boris Johnson winning in the UK.

Nobody really cares. Outrage fatigue is a real thing. After a while, you just get worn down and become numb to the next headline. His admission of fraud would have ended any other presidency. But for him, it was Tuesday. Maybe the red hats are immune to outrage fatigue.

The Dem’s impeachment strategy is a farce, as will be the Senate’s “show trial”. Impeaching him will happen by a straight Party line vote, followed by the Senate’s acquittal by a Party line vote by the other Party. This means that both houses of Congress are a farce.

OTOH, not impeaching him would also be a farce. Because not impeaching someone who has done the things Trump has done, someone who makes a mockery of the law every day he’s in office, would make the rule of law a farce as well.

Defrauding veterans is something that the public can understand, and can get angry about. It’s not complicated, most citizens won’t be able to tune it out. His counter argument is weak, despite incessant talking about the Clinton foundation.

These things are not equal. This isn’t a “both sides” situation.

Democrats should be shouting about this every day until November, 2020. This is an arrow right at the heart of Trump’s base: Those purported law and order, military-loving people who populate his rallies. It’s indefensible, and it’s unlikely they will take kindly to his being guilty of defrauding veterans.

Remember when the Republicans were the “Party of Principle“?

Have we seen anything from them (or from Trump) that makes you think that they truly believe in providing a safety net? They think that the primary benefit of charitable giving is to telegraph their relatively high position in society compared to that of the needy.

Conservatives have always used their supposed morality as a cudgel to beat others. Alleviating suffering isn’t really important. They like the “virtue signaling”. That is, feigned righteousness intended to make the speaker appear superior by condemning others.

And they plan on keeping it that way.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 8, 2019

(Wrongo and Ms. Right are off to New Orleans for a few days. Regular posting will return on December 13^th)

Trump’s former UN ambassador and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Friday that the Confederate flag represented “service, sacrifice and heritage” for people in her state before mass murderer Dylann Roof “hijacked” its meaning when he shot and killed black Americans at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, SC in 2015:

‘Here is this guy that comes out with his manifesto, holding the Confederate flag, and had just hijacked everything that people thought of…people saw [the Confederate flag] as service and sacrifice and heritage, but once he did that, there was no way to overcome it.’

Here’s Nikki Haley going all in on winning the David Duke vote. Haley’s comment is of a piece with Trump’s comment that there are “good people on both sides.” Dylann Roof didn’t hijack the “meaning” of the Confederate flag, he lived out its meaning of hate, racism and white supremacy.

The Confederate flag is a symbol of the institutional racism that many in this country refuse to acknowledge, let alone fully rectify. People who regard the Confederate flag as an icon, with a glorious past that should be retained, ignore that it represents a social and economic structure that enriched a very small group of white people by enslaving and brutalizing a large group of black people.

That same small group was willing to destroy the US to preserve their oligarchy. The Confederate flag is about “heritage” the same way the swastika is about heritage.

What Haley said is incredible. What Wrongo means by incredible, is Nikki Haley has no credibility. On to cartoons. Dems and GOP are playing their hands: