Month: March 2019

I Will Use Their Tears to Season My Supper

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New York City real estate brokers, despondent over it becoming more for them to profit off money from drug dealer, despots, and corrupt businessmen are saying that the so called “Pied-a-Terre Tax” is “class warfare” on their clients:

High-end real estate brokers in New York worry that foreign second-home buyers are feeling under assault from all sides and may end up going elsewhere. Already wary of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, they now see a planned tax on absentee owners as a swipe from the political left.

“The international buyer has basically gone away over the past two years,” said real estate broker Martin Eiden at Compass, who sells about $50 million of residential property a year. “There’s only so much that people will take — they’ll either go somewhere else or they’ll just get a hotel room.”

 The proposed tax would apply to properties above $5 million owned by non-residents. Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state needs it to pay for transit fixes. Mayor Bill de Blasio says the rich should pay more, especially those who pay no income taxes while full-time residents bear the costs of services that make New York City so attractive to foreigners and out-of-staters.

These people are paying enormous amounts of cash for properties where they spend a week a year because they are laundering money.

It makes no economic sense otherwise:

Properties over $5 million would be subject to the tax surcharge, starting at 0.5 percent of the home value to a maximum rate of 4 percent on homes above $25 million. A part-time owner of a $10 million unit, for example, would have to shell out an extra $45,000 a year.

These guys blow more money than that on a birthday party.

They object to the tax because they want to be worshiped, and taxes are antithetical to this.

F%$# them.

Now that Theresa Has Made a Complete Dogs Breakfast of It

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And a “hard” Brexit seems increasingly likely, the Bank of England is moderating its predictions of a post-apocalyptic wasteland following a crash-out.

It’s almost like their earlier predictions were intended to influence, and perhaps prevent, Brexit.

But that couldn’t be true, central banks never meddle in domestic politics, and according Gilbert and Sullivan, “Married men never flirt”.

Earlier this month (March 5, 2019), the Governor of the Bank of England fronted the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs for his annual grilling. The details of his evidence, covered in the transcript produced – Uncorrected oral evidence: Annual session with the Governor of the Bank of England – should have generated headlines in all the major British press outlets but the UK Guardian, noticeably, avoided reporting the details. The Guardian has jumped on every negative projection since before the 2016 Referendum and published volumes of Op Ed pieces from various correspondents amplifying the negativity. But it largely failed to report the Mark Carney’s backtracking. Turns out that the Bank of England thinks Brexit will be considerably less damaging than its headlined Project Fear estimates published last November, And that is without factoring in any fiscal response from government. It seems that the Bank now believes that a no-deal (disorderly) Brexit won’t be all that damaging at all and an orderly Brexit would be associated with an over-full employment boom over the next three years. Quite a different story to that offered in November 2018. The latest revelations will give Remainers some headaches – their collapse scenarios are evaporating.

I have long held the view that the real problem confronting the British economy has been the neoliberal policy positions taken by the current government which has reduced the incentive of British firms to invest in new productive infrastructure and equipment.

While the Remainers have been hysterical in their focus on the damage that the Brexit decision has ’caused’ (their assertion), and, seize on all the ridiculously overblown estimates coming from the likes of HM Treasury, the Bank of England and other private groups, such as the NIESR, to prosecute their case, the real game has been the decline in business investment and the reliance on increasing household debt as the austerity straitjacket has been tightened.

Note, that, unlike many of the Remainers who just want to overturn the Leave decision in any way they can, I distinguish between the decision to leave (the Referendum result) and the incompetent process that the Tories have pursued in implementing that decision.

I continue to fully support the Leave decision but find the process so ridiculously mismanaged that it is little wonder that the long-standing pessimism of investors (firms), driven by the painful austerity, has been exacerbated.

In fact, it appears that the mismanagement of Brexit is such that about 40 Tory opponents to her deal have demanded her resignation in exchange for their vote.

When one considers that she needs to flip about 40 votes to win another vote (if that can even happen under parliamentary rules)

Conservative MPs have told Theresa May and her aides in phone calls and meetings over the weekend that she must publicly commit to standing down as prime minister to secure their votes for her Brexit deal.

As Downing Street struggles to persuade enough rebel MPs to back May’s withdrawal agreement in time for the third meaningful vote scheduled for Tuesday, a group of 40 backbenchers have warned they will not vote for the deal unless she agrees to step aside so a new PM lead the next stage of Brexit negotiations.

In conversations with May, her senior advisers in Number 10 and chief whip Julian Smith on Saturday and Sunday, details of which have been shared with BuzzFeed News, MPs on both the Remain and Leave wings of the Tory party said the price for getting the deal through is her departure.

May was told in direct terms by several MPs in one-on-one phone calls on Sunday that she should make a pact promising to resign if her deal passes, a source familiar with the conversations said.

In one of the phone calls, a former cabinet minister who last week swapped sides to vote for the deal told May she would win round other rebels if she announced she is willing to go. A source familiar with the conversation said the PM reacted with “surprise” and “faux astonishment” at the idea of a resignation pact.

I do not think that it is ,”FAUX astonishment.”

Theresa May is as dumb as a cabbage.

Walking the Walk, Bernie Sanders Again

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Sanders campaign staff is going to join a union:

Employees on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign are joining a labor union, officials announced Friday, a historic move that comes amid a Democratic primary featuring intense competition for working-class voters.

All campaign employees below the rank of deputy director will be represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400, the union said, adding that it will start negotiating a collective bargaining agreement as soon as possible.

“We expect this will mean pay parity and transparency on the campaign, with no gender bias or harassment, and equal treatment for every worker, whether they’re in Washington, D.C., Iowa, New Hampshire or anywhere else,” UFCW Local 400 President Mark Federici said in a statement.

Sanders (I-Vt.) has faced questions about the way his 2016 campaign handled allegations of sexual misconduct. Asked if the effort to unionize was a response to that, Jonathan Williams, the communications director for UFCW Local 400, said it was not. A Sanders spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that question.

The Sanders campaign applauded the move to unionize its members.

“We’re honored that his campaign will be the first to have a unionized workforce,” said Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir in a statement. The campaign said it helped pave the way for its workers to organize and did not require an election.

Bernie is walking the walk, unlike, for example, the sexual harassment in the Gillibrand Senate office, and the abusive environment in Klobuchar’s Senate office.

I think that a lot of the Democratic Presidential candidates are trying very hard to fake authenticity, and it shows.

New Jersey Does the Right Thing

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I know that this sounds like a typo, but the Garden State has passed a law banning cashless shops and restaurants.

This has increasingly become an issue as shops have gone cashless in order to refuse service to the unbanked and homeless:

On Monday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a bill banning cashless retail stores and restaurants in the Garden State. Murphy’s signature makes New Jersey the second state in the US to ban cashless stores, after Massachusetts banned them in 1978.

More recently, New Jersey’s move follows that of Philadelphia, which banned cashless stores earlier this month. Philadelphia’s legislation was a reaction to a growing number of stores that only accept credit cards or require customers to pay with an app, like Amazon’s new Amazon Go stores.

Ars contacted Amazon for comment on the new law, but the company did not respond.

Much like Philadelphia’s new law, New Jersey’s law makes an exception for parking garages and car rental companies, where a credit card is required upfront for incidentals. There is also an exception carved out for some airport stores, according to NJ.com.

Proponents of cashless stores say that they prevent theft, speed up customer convenience, and are generally more modern. Opponents say that cashless stores unfairly disadvantage people who don’t or can’t have credit cards and who don’t want the fees associated with prepaid debit cards.

According to NJ.com, State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty said in a statement that “Many people don’t have access to consumer credit, and any effort by retail establishments to ban the use of cash is discriminatory towards those people.”

It’s a good start.

Many of the so-called “innovations” coming out of tech seem to have as an unspoken selling point the ability to discriminate.

We’ve seen this in AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, etc.

I’d like to see this on the ballot in California.

This May be the Most Epic Self-Own of All Time

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Devin Nunes is suing Twitter and the Twitter parody accounts Devin Nunes’ Mom and Devin Nunes’ Cow, claiming that they are mean to him, and that Twitter is “Shadow Banning” conservatives.

Needless to say, the mocking has been trending:

A US congressman is getting a crash course in the Streisand Effect after filing a lawsuit this week against Twitter and a handful of his harshest critics on the antisocial network.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) seeks a $250m payout from the micro-blogging site, and three tweeters who lampooned him in recent years. He also seeks $350,000 in punitive damages for what his lawyers call “censorship” and “shadow banning” of political conservatives on the site.

Nunes’ complaints almost immediately started trending on Twitter and elsewhere on the web.

While Nunes hopes his legal action will expose what he believes is a secretive campaign within Twitter to silence the voices of Twitter addicts on the political right, the 40-page complaint is also a greatest hits album of people making fun of the SoCal congresscritter.

Devin Nunes just nominated himself for the self-own Hall of Fame.

— Tom Tomorrow (@tomtomorrow) March 18, 2019

The lawsuit paperwork – which seeks defamation payouts from San-Francisco-based Twitter, plus former Republican campaign strategist and tweeter Liz Mair and two Twitter accounts dubbed “Devin Nunes’ Mom” (since suspended) and “Devin Nunes’ Cow” (still active as @DevinCow) – at various times spotlights tweets that are, to say the least, not particularly flattering for the congressman.

Of “Devin Nunes’ Mom”, the suit alleges it “falsely stated that Nunes would probably join the Proud Boys, if it weren’t for that unfortunate ‘no masturbating’ rule” and “falsely accused Nunes of being part of the President’s taint team,” as well as “Devin might be a unscrupulous, craven, back-stabbing, charlatan and traitor, but he’s no Ted Cruz,” and “falsely stated that @Devin Nunes is DEFINITELY a feckless c%$#.”

This is the most amazing case of self-ownership since Barbara Streisand sued to remove pictures of her home from the internet. (See the Wiki for “Streisand effect“)

Linkage

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Kermit rapping, I Like Pig Butts:

Monty Python Abides, Brexit Edition

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I see the similarities

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said that Theresa May is like the legless knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

It’s an inspired analogy:

“Tis but a scratch.” “A scratch?! Your arm’s off!” “No it isn’t.”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte likened Theresa May to a Monty Python character who refuses to admit defeat despite losing all his limbs in a sword fight.

“I have a lot of respect for Theresa May. She reminds me occasionally of that Monty Python character where all his arms and legs are cut off and then says to his opponent: let’s call it a draw,” Rutte said in an interview on the “WNL op Zondag” TV show, Bloomberg reported.

He was referring to the Black Knight (played by John Cleese, a Brexiteer) in the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” who, even after having all of his limbs cut off by King Arthur, declares “I’m invincible.”

I have no clue as to why May has not been turfed out by her Tory colleagues, but the Dutch PM has her nailed.

What a Surprise: Ballot Fraud by Conservatives

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In this case, it was anti-gay bigots in the Methodist Church who were stuffing ballot boxes, because they need someone to hate:

It was a momentous vote for the United Methodist Church, as the future of the country’s second-largest Protestant church hung in the balance. In a former football stadium in St. Louis last month, church officials and lay leaders from around the world voted to strengthen their ban on same-sex marriage and gay clergy, a decision that could now split the church.

But at least four ballots were cast by individuals who were not authorized to vote, according to interviews and a review of the church’s records. The individuals were from African delegations whose votes were critical to restricting the church’s rules on homosexuality.

The final 54-vote margin against gay clergy and same-sex marriage exceeds the number of unauthorized votes discovered so far. But the voting irregularities raised questions about the process behind the divisive decision, which devastated progressive members. Some have discussed leaving the denomination and possibly creating a new alliance for gay-friendly churches.

Church leaders are now discussing whether new votes should be called, Bishop Thomas J. Bickerton, who serves on the commission on the general conference, said in a phone interview.

………

 The United Methodist legal structure does not have a clear procedure on how to investigate or adjudicate improper election activity. The relevant ethics committee does not have jurisdiction when the general conference is not in session.

I’m not sure of the exact words to describe this behavor, but, “Godly,” and “Humane,” are most certainly not on this list.

America’s Worst Export

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I am referring, of course, to mass shootings.

The trend has reached New Zealand:

America has long been known for its cultural exports of Hollywood movies and rock ‘n’ roll and the all-American cool that went with them. But as the whole world seems to lurch towards the abyss, our cultural products seem to be changing. Sure, we’re still cranking out 14 Marvel blockbusters a year. But it increasingly appears we are creating and spreading the aesthetics of modern fascism via an intricate web of siloed online communities. Since Gamergate, toxic ideas have popped into the Internet ether in the guise of ironic memes or nihilistic trolling and linger there until they become real in the minds of far too many. It also seems we’re spreading our national disease: the mass murder of innocents at the point of a gun.

Authorities in New Zealand say a man in his late 20s walked into two mosques in the town of Christchurch on Friday and started firing. He killed 49 people—41 at the al Noor mosque across from the sprawling Hagley Park, and 7 more at the Linwood mosque. There were more murders in New Zealand on Friday than there were nationwide in all of 2017, and gun homicides are normally in the single digits annually.

Why do young (and generally also white and Christian) men in the United States continue to do this, and why is it spreading world wide?

Credit Where Credit is Due

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  _   _
 ((___))
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   cDc

Beto O’Rorke is cool as f%$#.

It’s not the skateboarding, it’s the fact that he was a part of the grey hat hacker collective Cult of the Dead Cow, and he brought in the only female hacker member of the group.

So basically, he’s a part of internet history.

He’s Seriously chill.

Still, he has studiously avoided talking about his positions about almost everything.

If we nominate another blank slate who is devoted to the status quo, the next Republican President will make Donald Trump look like Ike Eisenhower.

This Sh%$ is About to Get Real

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It looks like the coverup of the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia and prostitution prosecution is about to become unraveled:

A federal court of appeals in New York on Monday took the first step in unsealing documents that could reveal evidence of an international sex trafficking operation allegedly run by multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his former partner, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

The three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit gave the parties until March 19 to establish good cause as to why they should remain sealed and, failing to do so, the summary judgment and supporting documents will be made public. The court reserved a ruling on the balance of the documents in the civil case, including discovery materials.

………

Most of the documents, including court orders and motions, were filed under seal or heavily redacted, similar to other cases in New York and Florida involving Epstein, a wealthy, politically connected money manager. Epstein, 66, was not a party to the lawsuit, which was filed against Maxwell in 2015 by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

………

But in an op-ed letter to The New York Times last week, Weinberg and three of Epstein’s other lawyers — including Kenneth Starr, known for his pursuit of President Bill Clinton over his sexual conduct — denied that Epstein ever ran a sex trafficking operation.

………

Attorneys for Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz and conservative social media blogger Michael Cernovich, two other parties to the appeal, also argued to unseal the entire case file. Dershowitz’s lawyer, Andrew G. Celli Jr., wanted the court to release three documents immediately, saying they were necessary to clear the name of his client, who has been accused of being involved in Epstein’s crimes.

Dershowitz was among a team of lawyers who represented Epstein when he came under criminal investigation in Palm Beach in 2005. Epstein was accused by more than three dozen girls, most of them 13 to 16, of luring them to his mansion to give him massages that turned into sex acts. He then used those same girls to recruit more girls over a period of several years, court and police records show.

………

In 2008, Epstein received a controversial plea deal that gave him and an untold number of others who were not named immunity from federal prosecution. The non-prosecution agreement, brokered by former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, is now the focus of a Justice Department investigation.

Acosta, now President Trump’s labor secretary, has said that the deal was approved at the highest levels of the agency.

………

A Miami Herald investigation, “Perversion of Justice,’’ showed that Acosta and other prosecutors deliberately kept Epstein’s victims in the dark so that they could not appear at his sentencing and possibly derail the deal. The sentencing judge was also misled about the scope of Epstein’s crimes and how many girls he abused, records indicate.

………

Epstein did not go to prison, but served 13 months in a private section of the Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed to leave for 12 hours a day to go to his office in West Palm Beach under a work release program that is normally not granted to convicted sex offenders.

There is a whole bunch of slime under these rocks, and I really want to see the rocks turned over.

Not Enough Bullets

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After misrepresenting the risks and addictive properties of Oxycontin and launching a destructive hard sell campaign, Purdue Pharma is now looking to get FDA approval of a drug that will allow them to profit from the disaster that they created:

Notorious OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma—which has been widely criticized for deceptively marketing its highly addictive painkiller and for its role in spurring the current nationwide epidemic of opioid abuse and overdose deaths—is moving ahead with a new, potent drug, one said to be an antidote to opioid overdoses.

The company announced this week that the US Food and Drug Administration has granted fast-track status to its investigational drug nalmefene hydrochloride (HCl), an injectable, emergency treatment intended to rescue people suspected of having an opioid overdose. Purdue suggests that nalmefene HCl’s effects last longer than the similar emergency opioid antagonist naloxone. As such, the company hopes nalmefene HCl will out-compete naloxone at reversing overdoses from the most highly potent opioid, namely fentanyl, which is currently driving the alarming numbers of opioid overdose deaths. The FDA’s fast-track status will speed the development and regulatory review of the drug.

………

Amid the crisis, Purdue has been fiercely condemned for initially downplaying the addictiveness of OxyContin, which it began aggressively marketing in the mid-1990s, earning the company billions of dollars in sales. In 2007, the company and three executives pleaded guilty in federal court to criminal charges that they deceived doctors, patients, and regulators over the addictiveness of the drug. Since then, Purdue has been pummeled by lawsuits blaming the company for helping to spur the rise in opioid abuse and overdoses. The company has vigorously defended itself against the claims but is now considering filing for bankruptcy, which would soften the blow of litigation and judgments.

………

Still, according to internal discussions at Purdue that were made public in a lawsuit brought by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Purdue and members of the wealthy Sackler family that owns the company had carefully researched the money-making potential of treatments aimed at reversing the epidemic.

An un-redacted section of the lawsuit describes a secret plan called Project Tango, which explored Purdue’s expansion into selling treatment options. The lawsuit states that Purdue and a member of the Sackler family determined that the millions of people who had become addicted to opioids were a prime business opportunity. Purdue staff wrote in internal documents quoted in the lawsuit that “It is an attractive market. Large unmet need for vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population suffering from substance abuse, dependence and addiction.” 

Seriously, there is not a hole deep enough for these people.

Linkage

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Yes, there is a promotional video for the penis cam: (Warning: [fake] Penis and base jumping)

Tweet of the Day

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"no idea put forth by Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is as harebrained or fantastical as the promise peddled by numerous leading Democrats that they will revive bipartisanship." https://t.co/rmLrabtR7o

— David Roberts (@drvox) March 13, 2019

Seriously, anyone who believes that the Republicans will behave in good faith absent a boot on their neck has the political acumen of Little Orphan Annie.

The Seinfeld Candidate

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I am referring, of course, to the candidate about nothing, Beto O’Rourke who has just announced his candidacy for President, and it appears that I am not the only one who notices that there is no “There” there:

Beto O’Rourke is finally ready to end the suspense. The former Texas congressman is expected to formally kick off his presidential campaign Thursday, one day after tipping his hand to a local TV station in Texas. “I’m really proud of what El Paso did and what El Paso represents,” O’Rourke told KTSM El Paso via text. “It’s a big part of why I’m running.” His apparent confirmation came on the heels of a new Vanity Fair cover story—complete with glossy photo shoot—in which he told the magazine that he wanted to run. “I want to be in it,” he said, after describing our current political moment as an existential fight. “Man, I’m just born to be in it, and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment.”

………

Beto is missing one important thing, though: an actual reason to run.

O’Rourke would enter the race as a man without a clear political ideology, a signature legislative achievement, a major policy issue, or a concrete agenda for the country. Those in the know tell the Atlantic that Beto is planning to run as a candidate “offering hope that America can be better than its current partisan and hate-filled politics, and that the country can come together,” but that—brace yourself—he hasn’t yet “landed on how he’ll propose to actually make that happen.” That’s more of the same empty words Beto’s been offering in public since his loss to Cruz. “I don’t know where I am on a [political] spectrum, and I almost could care less,” he said at a recent stop in Wisconsin. “I just want to get to better things for this country.”

………

Beto is missing one important thing, though: an actual reason to run.

O’Rourke would enter the race as a man without a clear political ideology, a signature legislative achievement, a major policy issue, or a concrete agenda for the country. Those in the know tell the Atlantic that Beto is planning to run as a candidate “offering hope that America can be better than its current partisan and hate-filled politics, and that the country can come together,” but that—brace yourself—he hasn’t yet “landed on how he’ll propose to actually make that happen.” That’s more of the same empty words Beto’s been offering in public since his loss to Cruz. “I don’t know where I am on a [political] spectrum, and I almost could care less,” he said at a recent stop in Wisconsin. “I just want to get to better things for this country.”

He is a telegenic candidate about nothing who hopes that voters will project their own opinions on him, with the help of some meaningless, but soaring, rhetoric.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

You’ve seen that T-shirt, the artist who did that logo was Shepard Fairey.

Not interested.

A Victory for Human Decency

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Thanks, Bernie

For the first time in longer than I can remember, The Senate has voted to stop US involvement in the war in Yemen:

The Senate on Wednesday again rebuked President Trump for his continued defense of Saudi Arabia after the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, voting for a second time to end American military assistance for the kingdom’s war in Yemen and to curtail presidential war powers.

The 54-to-46 vote, condemning a nearly four-year conflict in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians and inflicted a devastating famine, sets the foundation for what could become Mr. Trump’s first presidential veto, with the House expected to overwhelmingly pass the measure, possibly this month. The vote also might be the opening salvo in a week where Senate Republicans have the opportunity to hit back at the president’s aggressive use of executive power. On Thursday, the chamber will vote on a resolution that would overturn Mr. Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for his border wall.

“The United States Congress is going to reassert its constitutional responsibility over issues of war that have been abdicated for presidents, Democrats and Republicans, for too many years,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont.

………

Supporters of the Yemen resolution have faced a long and grueling road to get the legislation onto the president’s desk. The Senate — led by the resolution’s authors, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Lee — first passed the measure 56 to 41 in December, but Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker at the time, refused to take up the resolution.

………

The resolution is a rare use of the 1973 War Powers Act, which gave Congress the ability to compel the removal of military forces absent a formal declaration of war. Those powers, created after the Vietnam War, have almost never been used, as lawmakers have demurred from intervening in politically delicate matters of war, peace and support for the troops.

Bernie Sanders has been the a point man on this, and he has been relentless.

He gets sh%$ done.