This makes me laugh. It is written like it is meant to soothe tantrum-throwing-toddler Trump. This is the statement from Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb:
Today, Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI.
The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year. Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel’s work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion.
The only explanation I can come up with for the line Ty Cobb is taking is that he’s trying to prevent Trump from doing something desperate and self-destructive. He can’t really be as ignorant as he appears to be.
SC in comment 500 in the previous chapter of this thread:
The second lie – about Flynn’s request that the Russians delay or block the UNSC resolution re Israel – is interesting. I wonder if this investigation will extend to Netanyahu and his dealings with Kushner….
Good point about Kushner!
SC in comment 1 above, yes, it looks like the scam will be passed. And the tax plan will be worse than we thought. I’ll link back to my comment 499 about the debacle surrounding the funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Kamala Harris: “UPDATE: We still haven’t seen the text of the tax bill Republicans are scrambling to rewrite in secret. I’d imagine some Republican Senators haven’t either. Our constituents didn’t send us here to govern this way.”
From the New York Times, concerning the Republican re-engineering of U.S. social structure via a tax bill that gives more money to rich people by taking that money from poor people and the middle class:
“This is a repudiation of the social contract that Franklin Roosevelt announced at the New Deal,” Joseph J. Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian, said of trimming benefits for lower- and middle-income families to finance bigger rewards for the wealthy. Health coverage would shrink under the Republican plan while multimillion-dollar estates would not have to pay a penny in taxes. […]
With a potentially far-reaching dimension, elements in both the House and Senate bills could constrain the ability of states and local governments to levy their own taxes, pressuring them to limit spending on health care, education, public transportation and social services. […]
The result is a behemoth piece of legislation that could widen American economic inequality while diminishing the power of local communities to marshal relief for vulnerable people. […]
But the trickle-down story has yet to achieve its promised happy ending. Only the beginning reliably transpires, the part where wealthy people get relief. The spoils of resulting economic growth have largely been monopolized by those with the highest incomes. Pay for most American workers has been stagnant since the mid-1970s, after the rising costs of housing, health care and other basics are factored in. […]
Economists and tax experts are overwhelmingly skeptical that the bills in the House and Senate can generate meaningful job growth and economic expansion. Many view the legislation not as a product of genuine deliberation, but as a transfer of wealth to corporations and affluent individuals — both generous purveyors of campaign contributions. […]
But recent history suggests that when corporations get tax relief, they find abundant uses for money that do not involve paying higher wages. They give dividends to shareholders and stock options to executives. They stash earnings in tax havens. […]
“It’s not aimed at growth. It is not aimed at the middle class. It is at every turn carefully engineered to deliver a kiss to the donor class.”
“Michael Flynn ‘is prepared to testify…against Pres. Trump, against members of the Trump family, and others in the White House’, @BrianRoss reports.”
“Flynn felt abandoned by Trump in recent weeks, close confidant tells @ABC, and told friends about decision to make plea deal within last 24 hours as he grew increasingly concerned about crippling legal costs.”
Mueller doc clearly implies Trump team, Kremlin cut deal BEFORE inauguration on how Moscow would respond to Obama sanctions, expulsions of Russian diplomats.
Senate Republicans are refusing to believe the facts about their tax plan.
[…] Just as the Senate was about to vote on Thursday on whether to advance their tax plan, the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation released a troubling report. The JCT report found that the $1.4 trillion dollar tax plan would generate around $400 billion dollars worth of growth, leaving the total net cost of the plan to be $1 trillion dollars — completely eviscerating any notion that the plan would pay for itself, a key White House talking point.
Furthermore, that analysis employed the rainbows-and-unicorns magic “dynamic” scoring in which Republicans believe. And the bottom line still does not support their fairy tale.
“We think we can pay for the entire tax cut through growth over the cycle,” said Chief White Economic Adviser Gary Cohn told CNBC in September.
In reality, according to the JCT, the plan won’t even make up for a third of what it costs and increase GDP by 0.8 percent over the next decade.
In the face of such bleak numbers, rather than sending the legislation back to committee to keep working on it, Republicans have decided to brush aside the analysis. Multiple Republicans are now saying the JCT’s findings can’t be trusted because the report underestimates the economic growth lawmakers are confident will result from tax reform.
The numbers are even more bleak if you remove the rainbows-and-unicorns faux math entirely.
“I think it’s pretty clear they’re wrong,” Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) said in reference to the JCT’s findings, telling reporters he thought the JCT had “lowballed” economic growth. […]
The full “Statement of the Offense” is now available on the Special Counsel’s site. It’s something. Flynn’s requests to Kislyak were made at the behest of a “Very Senior Member” of the transition team, who was at Mar-a-Lago, and to whom he reported back with Kislyak’s responses.
It appears Kushner wasn’t at Mar-a-Lago during the time in question (when Flynn spoke with a Very Senior Member of the transition team who was there about the sanctions*). This incident happened at JFK on December 22nd, when he and Ivanka were heading to Hawaii. They were in Hawaii for New Year’s Eve. It might well be Trump himself with whom Flynn was speaking.
* He could still have talked to Kushner about the UNSC resolution.
…still unclear whether Pence or Sessions were there.
And actually it doesn’t really matter, for Trump at least. Even if he wasn’t speaking directly with Trump but with Pence or Sessions, he was communicating with Trump and the other members of the transition team who were at Mar-a-Lago and who communicated their collective view (“The PTT official and Flynn also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation”). There’s no possible way Trump could spin this off. But obviously it would be a lot better for Pence or Sessions if they weren’t there.
Mueller’s “statement of the offense,” outlining how Flynn told Trump transition team of his sanctions conversations w/Russians: “these facts do not constitute all of the facts known to the parties concerning the charged offense”
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, called Michael Flynn in December 2016 and told him to call members of the UN Security Council in an effort to stop a vote on a resolution critical of Israeli settlement policy, according to a person who was present in the room when Flynn took the call.
Flynn then called Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States to seek his assistance, and later lied to the FBI about having done so, according to documents filed in federal court Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller that explained Flynn’s guilty plea on two counts of lying to federal agents….
According to a pool report from December 29, 2016, Stephen Miller, K.T. McFarland, Conway, Bannon and Priebus were all at Mar-a- Lago at that time. I don’t know about Pence, but I doubt the document could be referring to him (or Sessions?) since the person to whom Flynn spoke is described as a “senior official” on the transition. Given that Kushner is described as a “very senior member” of the team, I have to assume this was someone below his level – therefore not Pence, who was the head of the team. Sessions would probably have been mentioned in the pool report if he was there, I’d think, as would Pence, but it’s possible one or both of them were present. Flynn probably talked to one of the people listed above, which is even worse for Trump, as the document says they were speaking for the team at M-a-L at the time and none of those people would remotely have freelanced this in any case.
This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in [tax] bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them.
Unreal – Claire McCaskill: “This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them.”
After Flynn appeared in court today, Fox News featured a large photo with a caption in a huge font size. It read “WHACK A MOLE, secret emails detail FBI’s hunt for leaker after infamous Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting.”
When the Fox News on-air crew did get around to discussing Flynn, they spun the news so hard I thought they might create a tornado.
[…] There was former White House official and current chairman of the American Conservative Union Matt Schlapp, who tried valiantly to spin the Flynn news as an indictment of President Obama.
“The fact that the charge is a serious one, but legally a rather minor one…remember, he wasn’t put under oath,” he told Fox News host Sandra Smith. “They’re simply saying in their conversations with him, they believe that he wasn’t honest. This is not collusion with the Russians over fixing the election. It has nothing to do with why the special counsel was actually brought in. What it does have to do with, interestingly enough, is this whole question about what was the Obama administration doing in monitoring members of team Trump? That’s the real interesting part of this that I want to learn more about.”
Moments later, Andrew Napolitano, a frequent guest on Fox News for any legal-related stories, again sought to tie Flynn to the Obama administration, noting that the early reporting about Flynn’s contact with Russia were leaked to the press while Obama was still in office.
“Somebody in the White House asked either the NSA or the FBI for transcripts of conversations that Ambassador Kislyak was having with Americans,” said Napolitano. “Either the NSA or FBI — we don’t know who had it at this point — told somebody in the Obama White House ‘this is Mike Flynn, this Person A. Person B is the ambassador.’ A portion of that was leaked to the Washington Post. That act of leaking is a felony.” […]
Mueller’s Grand Jury is every bit as lawless and vindictive as #KateSteinle jury. It is time for @realDonaldTrump to fire Mueller, these are lives he’s ruining, savings he’s draining, potential deaths he’s causing.
…There’s plenty of reason to believe, in fact, that Bob Mueller and his team of prosecutors in the special counsel’s office are only getting started. Based on news reports, it appears that there are entire avenues of Mueller’s investigation that still haven’t seen the light of day—including a wide-ranging search warrant to Facebook about the influence Russian advertising on the platform during the election, as well active investigations centering around Wikileaks, the Trump campaign’s data company Cambridge Analytica, and campaign advisors like Carter Page, among others.
Plus, both Flynn and foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos, who also pleaded guilty to a 1001 violation earlier this fall, have evidently provided investigative information significant enough to merit reduced charges—information that has not yet been made public.
Those still-hidden avenues and not-yet-public incriminating information are deeply significant because of one of Mueller’s defining characteristics: He doesn’t do fishing expeditions. Unlike Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr, whose years-long investigation sprawled far beyond its original mission to look at a failed Arkansas land deal, an examination of Mueller’s career shows that, if anything, he more regularly errs on the side of narrowly interpreting his mission, doggedly and tirelessly pursuing his own assigned task while ignoring ancillary avenues, or unrelated troubling behavior….
As chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) used $150,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle with a former aide who alleged he was fired in part because he was not willing to focus his investigative work on Hillary Clinton.
The Post confirmed the confidential settlement reached between Gowdy and the Benghazi panel and Bradley Podliska after it appeared in a list of settlements released Friday by the congressional Office of Compliance. Gowdy is now the chairman of the House Oversight Committee….
In the future, the pages @ #s 32 and 33 will be in a museum, exhibits from the era when the Republican Party attempted to undermine the republic and destroy democratic institutions.
So many of the TV discussions are exasperating. Even as more bits of the iceberg are revealed, a shocking number of people who should know better continue to insist that this is all there is and that it’s unlikely (and even more unlikely) that Mueller’s probe will reveal any coordination or conspiracy with Putin or Trump’s involvement in it. That’s a completely unreasonable assumption given what we know about the evidence, how these things work, and Trump’s character.
Steve Schmidt: “The United States Senate has gone completely off the rails. Lobbyists are writing the bill in secret and duly elected Democratic US Senators have no idea what’s in it. The corruption of what used to be the worlds greatest deliberative body is a tragedy.”
Joy Reid: “What you’re witnessing tonight in the United States Senate is the weaponization of pure, unmitigated greed. Lobbyists are writing the bill in pen at the last minute. And Republicans are no longer even pretending to care about anyone but the super rich. What a shameful night.”
So the populists have passed a bill, written in large part by lobbyists in back rooms, that will suck money from health care and other services and give it to the very rich and corporations. Trump, his family, and his cronies will rake in even more than they have in the past. 13 million people will lose health coverage, and taxes and premiums will rise for millions more struggling people. After holding no hearings and refusing to wait for a score on the final legislation, they voted down an amendment to allow members of the Senate (and the public) to even have the weekend to read the bill. Next on their agenda: more cuts to vital social services.
This is very good – “The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election”: “A pervasive theme of all of these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was that she was dishonest and unlikable. These recent harassment allegations suggest that perhaps the problem wasn’t that Mrs. Clinton was untruthful or inherently hard to connect with, but that these particular men hold deep biases against women who seek power instead of sticking to acquiescent sex-object status.”
(Incidentally, when I was looking at old news reports yesterday trying to figure out who was at Mar-a-Lago on December 29, 2016, I noticed that one of the people with whom Trump was meeting that week was David Koch.)
a_ray_in_dilbert_spacesays
SC: While I agree with everything Jill Filipovic says in her piece, I find it somewhat ironic that it appears in the Times–one of the most vigorously anti-Hillary rags on the (slightly) left of center press.
[…] a combination of late night wrangling, horse-trading, and promises for future votes secured the support of enough senators to get the bill across the finish line.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who just a few days ago threatened to withhold his vote over concerns the bill will blow at $1 trillion hole in the federal deficit, announced Friday morning that he had been won over with a promise from the Trump administration not to pass a fix for undocumented young people stripped of legal protections, but to simply include him [Flake] in future negotiations on the topic.
“They committed to move forward with me and work with me on it,” he told reporters. [Duped]
Another former holdout, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), also based her vote on promises from the Trump administration and Senate leadership: one to pass two health care bills to mitigate the damage wrought by the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate, and another to waive the deep automatic cuts to Medicare that would be triggered by the tax bill’s enormous price tag. […]
Both of McConnell’s promises to Collins, however, depend on what Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House of Representatives do—groups well beyond his control. [Duped]
The looming automatic federal spending cuts can only be waived by a majority of the House and a 60-vote supermajority of the Senate. [Super duped]
[…] As for the health care bills to protect the health insurance market from the repeal of the individual mandate, there is widespread hostility to them in the House, and experts say even if they do pass, at least 13 million more people will be uninsured as a result of the mandate’s repeal. […]
In addition to their joy over successfully guaranteeing that rich people will get richer and poor people will suffer, I guess Republicans are wildly happy to have probably dealt Obamacare a death blow.
[…] Now it’s great for Donald Trump and his family, it’s great for the billionaires who support him, but it’s going to make life much harder for middle-class families and poor families. it even cuts the tax deduction for teachers who buy supplies for their classrooms and students.
Now it takes care of you if you have a private yacht or a private plane, but heaven forbid if you buy some extra books or crayons or audio-visual or laptop help or anything. If you do that and you’re a teacher, you don’t get to deduct it. […]
“The bill is investing heavily in the wealthy and their children — by boosting the value of their stock portfolios, creating new loopholes for them to avoid tax on their labor income, and cutting taxes on massive inheritances,” Lily Batchelder, a New York University professor who worked as an economist under President Barack Obama, said. “At the same time, it leaves low- and middle-income workers with even fewer resources to invest in their children, and increases the number of Americans without health insurance.”
“The bill makes the economic playing field even more tilted toward the most fortunate,” Batchelder said, “which means over time the distributional effects of the bill will be even worse than these estimates suggest.”
Jason Furman, (leader the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama), summarized five ways the Republican tax bill could, beyond the obvious, deepen inequality:
1. Raising taxes on students, universities and training would have a disproportionate impact on access to more moderate-income students, reducing their upward mobility.
2. At the same time, estate tax cuts or repeal would further expand the opportunities of the most affluent.
3. Reducing or eliminating the state and local tax deduction would lead many states to cut taxes and with them cut services like education, training and the like that help to boost incomes and reduce inequality. States and localities could also shift more of their tax base to more regressive sales taxes.
4. The larger federal deficit will come at the expense of other government transfers for middle/bottom households and/or programs like education, nutrition assistance and Medicaid that have all demonstrated a tremendous impact on upward mobility.
5. More speculatively, cutting the tax rate on monopoly profits could help reduce competition with further consequences for inequality and growth.
The text above is excerpted from a much longer article that also includes some startling graphs showing how disproportionately the tax bill favors the rich.
[…] What we do know about the bill is that it is really really good for the rich, and not so good for everyone else.
We know that it eliminates the health insurance mandate, which means 13 million people will lose their health insurance.
We know that it requires grad students to count their tuition wavers as taxable income, making it even more expensive to get a graduate degree than it was previously.
We know that it officially declares that life begins at conception and allows oil drilling in Alaska, which definitely makes sense for a tax bill.
We know that it eliminates the Johnson Amendment, which will allow people to write off their political donations as charitable donations — but not their home offices, or their staggering old-age medical bills and nursing homes.
We know that it pretty much eliminates the estate tax, which will eventually lead to the extinction of the middle class in favor of two very distinct classes — the very rich and their inherited wealth, and the very, very poor.
And it adds $1.5 trillion dollars to the deficit! […]
You do realize that the more expensive it is to become a doctor, the more it is going to cost to see a doctor, right? Especially when you don’t have insurance, which you probably will not.
But on the bright side, there is a tax break for private jet owners! […]
The Bank of France ruled Tuesday that the closure of Marine Le Pen’s personal bank account and those of her National Front party did not violate regulations. Claiming political persecution, Le Pen has vowed to fight on.
[…] Le Pen hit a new low last week when Société Générale and its Crédit du Nord subsidiary shut down the bank accounts of her far-right National Front party. To add insult to injury, HSBC also shuttered her personal account.
Ever pugnacious, Le Pen accused the financial institutions of launching a banking fatwa against her [against HER — by shutting the le penazi’s bank accounts? –blf]. The banks didn’t explain why they shut the accounts, simply stating that they were complying with regulations.
In response, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire asked the central Bank of France to examine whether the law had been complied with. On Tuesday, the Bank of France ruled that it had.
“The closure of the National Front’s accounts by the banks does not appear to reflect wrongdoing vis-à-vis their regulatory obligations, and leaves no reason to believe they acted with discrimination,” it said on Tuesday.
[…]
Money has long been an issue for the National Front. During her presidential bid, Le Pen complained that French banks wouldn’t lend her money to finance her more than €12 million campaign. Things got worse after the party’s poor showing in the June legislative elections, which were reported to have cost an additional €15 million. The party called on its members to lend it money directly.
Trouble borrowing money is nothing new for Le Pen. In 2014 when French banks stopped lending to her, she turned to Russia. She ran into trouble this January when one of those Russian-based banks called in a €9 million loan after the bank was dissolved.
[…]
Hair furor claims to be a zillionaire, just ask him, teh biggest and bestest evar. Ask Putin to order him to lend your brand of nazis money.
Mitch McConnell is still too much of a coward to speak out about Roy Moore’s lack of character:
[…] “We’re going to let the people of Alabama decide, a week from Tuesday, who they want to send to the Senate, and then we’ll address the matter appropriately.”
“Do you believe that Judge Moore should be in the Senate?” George Stephanopoulos asked McConnell.
“I’m going to let the people of Alabama make the call,” he replied. “The Ethics Committee will have to consider the matters that have been litigated in the campaign should that particular candidate win.
I really don’t get this idea that matters of criminality or lack of ethics can be settled during a campaign. When a candidate is elected does that mean that all of the questions about his/her past misdeeds have been “litigated?” I think not.
Jared Kushner is even more trouble in regards to failing to disclose to the Office of Government Ethics an association he should have disclosed:
Jared Kushner failed to disclose his role as a co-director of the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation from 2006 to 2015, a time when the group funded an Israeli settlement considered to be illegal under international law, on financial records he filed with the Office of Government Ethics earlier this year.
The latest development follows reports on Friday indicating the White House senior adviser attempted to sway a United Nations Security Council vote against an anti-settlement resolution passed just before Donald Trump took office, which condemned the structure of West Bank settlements. The failure to disclose his role in the foundation—at a time when he was being tasked with serving as the president’s Middle East peace envoy—follows a pattern of egregious omissions that would bar any other official from continuing to serve in the West Wing, experts and officials told Newsweek. […]
Wild and crazy Hair Furor, he of the disintegrating mind, tweeted this today:
I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!
Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI “agent’s role in Clinton probe under review.” Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge.
After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.
This is a follow-up to comments 5 and 9. It concerns a correction from ABC.
ABC News on Saturday apologized and suspended Brian Ross over a bombshell — but incorrect — report on President Donald Trump and former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s previous outreach to Russian officials.
“We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday. The reporting conveyed by Brian Ross during the special report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process,” ABC News said in a statement.
Ross will be suspended for four weeks without pay.
As news of Flynn’s plea deal for lying to the FBI was breaking Friday, Ross incorrectly reported, based on information from an unnamed source, that Flynn would testify that then-candidate Trump “directed him to make contact with the Russians.”
The network later issued an on-air “clarification” that the source had explained that it was only after the election, and during the transition period, that “President-elect Trump asked [Flynn] to contact Russia on issues including working together to fight ISIS.”
Conservatives and prominent commentators lambasted ABC News for taking hours to correct its report. The network then issued a full correction.
Trump on Saturday night praised ABC for its decision to suspend Ross. The president added that more news organizations should take similar actions, claiming “fake news.” […]
I have to give Alabama Republicans credit, this was a clever move: by offering the ability to vote by party affiliation, even though there’s only one partisan race on the ballot, voters can tick “Republican” instead of “Roy Moore.”
snuffcurrysays
It’s a holdover from another era and I haven’t seen many Republicans push that line, but, yeah, it just makes the con all the more heavy-handed. “Let them choose him, specifically,” they concern-troll, pretending to support a democracy, while also signaling their willingness (eagerness, even) to disenfranchise Alabama voters, to reverse the results of their own primary, by immediately replacing him once elected*. I wonder who they have in mind?
*it’s exceedingly common for political parties to practice My Party, Right or Wrong, to nose-hold their way into electoral victories, but it’s more than a little crass to admit that your identikit rabid conservative cum pedophile is just a place-holder for whomever you choose to install. Wasn’t this election all about anti-coronations?
Hair Furor thinks he is above the law, and he is getting backup for this extraordinary claim from his lawyer and from Alan Dershowitz:
[…] John Dowd, who’s helping lead Trump’s legal defense, got into a little trouble over the weekend with a tweet he claims to have written for his client, but Dowd went much further in an interview with Axios.
John Dowd, President Trump’s outside lawyer, outlined to me a new and highly controversial defense/theory in the Russia probe: A president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice.
The “President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,” Dowd claims.
On a related note, Trump tweeted this morning that Alan Dershowitz’s segment on Fox News this morning was “a must watch.” And what exactly did Dershowitz have to say? “You cannot charge a president with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional power,” he argued. […]
As the obstruction allegations against the president becomes more obvious, Trump’s allies are laying the groundwork for the idea that he shouldn’t, and can’t, face such a charge.
The trouble, of course, is that reality keeps getting in the way. In 1974, for example, the House Judiciary Committee wrote articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, and the first article was on obstruction of justice. Two decades later, the House actually did impeach Bill Clinton on two counts – one of which was obstruction of justice. […]
Chuck Grassley’s excuse for repealing the estate tax:
I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.
From Steve Benen:
[…] In other words, if you’re not rich enough to qualify for the estate tax, it’s probably your fault — which is why congressional Republicans don’t see the need to “recognize” you. […]
There’s a deep strain of thought in contemporary GOP politics that says the wealthy are entitled to special benefits because they’re wealthy, while those on the lower end of the economic spectrum deserve less because they have less.
Earlier this year, for example one Republican congressman justified a vote on ACA repeal by saying Americans would be able to afford health security, without assistance, by giving up “getting that new iPhone.”
One of my favorite moments from the 2012 campaign came when Mitt Romney praised “the entrepreneurial spirit” by pointing to Jim Liautaud, who struggled in school, but who borrowed some money from his father, created a sandwich business, and ended up with 1,200 Jimmy John restaurants across this country.
For Romney, this was clear proof that Americans “don’t need the government” to get ahead. Individuals, the Republican said, simply need to “look to themselves and say, ‘What can I do to make myself better?’”
The part of the story that Romney conveniently overlooked is the fact that the hero of the tale succeeded because he had a father with thousands of dollars he could lend to his son. Much of the country, meanwhile, doesn’t have enough money in the bank to cover a $400 emergency expense. What can you do to make yourself better? Romney’s suggestion was you can choose wealthier parents, though I’m afraid that’s impractical advice. […]
Benen’s post includes additional links to sources that back up his factual claims, including the “$400 emergency expense” fact. I can relate.
I’m still stuck on the idea that “movies” are classified as an immoral expense in Grassley’s litany. And, of course, he unthinkingly adopted the view that men are responsible: it’s men that are spending money on “women.” At least I think that is what’s going on in Grassley’s head.
The FBI is in “tatters”? No. The only thing in tatters is the President’s respect for the rule of law. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better.
Follow-up to comment 69. I don’t have a new iPhone. My parents, who were poor most of their lives, and who struggled to climb into the lower-middle-class category, are dead. By Republican standards, I think maybe this equals being cursed by God.
Billy Bush has had enough of Trump’s lying. Bush wrote an editorial that was published by The New York Times.
He said it. “Grab ‘em by the [P-word].” Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real. We now know better.
[…] To these women: I will never know the fear you felt or the frustration of being summarily dismissed and called a liar, but I do know a lot about the anguish of being inexorably linked to Donald Trump. You have my respect and admiration. You are culture warriors at the forefront of necessary change. […]
More analysis of the “tax boondoggle” that Republicans are still working on as they try to reconcile the House bill and the Senate bill.
[…] Far from simplifying taxes, the bill opened up a whole range of tactics to lower the amount owed to the Internal Revenue Service. “Business owners or managers that plan well and pay for good advice will be able to achieve much more favorable rates,” said Adam Looney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Treasury Department official. “I’m not sure if that is a loophole or the intent of the legislation.” [Spoiler alert: it’s the intent.] […]
The ever-lengthening list of income that will be taxed at a cut-rate could be seen as “a Donald J. Trump loophole,” said Steven M. Rosenthal of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. A large amount of that kind of income is on Mr. Trump’s 2005 tax return, two pages of which became public in March, and on his 2017 financial disclosure forms, which show more than 500 pass-through entities, Mr. Rosenthal said. […]
Thanks to an amendment offered by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, certain income from gas and oil operators could also qualify for the new, lower rate. Industry representatives said they would have been excluded from the intended benefits that the real estate investment trusts and other publicly traded industries were getting.
“The Senate went out of its way to confirm that passive investors in these publicly traded investment vehicles get the benefit of the pass-through discount tax rate,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a professor of tax law at the University of Southern California and a former chief of staff for the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. “This is a working definition of a tax boondoggle.” […]
As a lawyer, I can confirm that I frequently compose tweets confessing to crimes and send them from my clients’ twitter accounts. It’s the first thing you learn at law school.
[…] That’s a lot of sex, liquor, and cinema. Under current law, estates up to $5.49 million for an individual or nearly $11 million for a married couple are not taxed. The Senate tax bill that Grassley voted for would double this exemption to about $11 million for individuals and $22 million for married couples. According to the Washington Post, only about 1,800 families a year will pay the estate tax under the bill Grassley supported.
Grassley appears to believe that rich people become rich because they engage in virtuous practices like saving, while non-rich people remain that way because they spend too much on vices. The reality, however, is often quite different. Wealth tends to perpetuate itself across generations, even if individual rich people spend quite lavishly. […]
Trump made another claim that is easily proven to be wrong. Trump lied.
[…] “Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI”, Trump told reporters ahead of boarding Marine One for a trip to Utah. “Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and they destroyed his life. I think it’s a shame. Hillary Clinton, on the 4th of July weekend, went to the FBI, not under oath. It was the most incredible thing anyone’s ever seen. She lied many times. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it’s like they ruined his life. It’s unfair.” […]
Trump’s statement about Clinton is completely unsupported. After Clinton was informally interviewed by FBI in July over her use of a private email server, former director James Comey testified to the House Oversight Committee. “We have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI,” Comey told House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), adding that in his opinion Clinton did not break the law […]
Trump’s relentless focus on Clinton amid the latest developments in the Russia investigation was mirrored on Fox News, […] […]
The President of the U.S. just libeled a private citizen, Hillary Clinton. He claimed, with no supporting facts whatsoever, that she lied. We have facts that show it is Trump lying in this case.
Trump’s lawyer John Dowd said that, “[President Trump] cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer.”
Former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara took issue with that statement:
[…]“I have a lot of experience with John Dowd,” Bharara […] “He represented some high profile people in cases before my office. And he said then, as he’s saying now, a lot of incorrect, mistaken and, on occasion, ludicrous things, so I don’t put a lot of stock in it.”
“The mere fact that the President is the President doesn’t immunize him from an accusation of obstruction,” Bharara added.
Trump fired Bharara in March after he refused to step down at the President’s request. Trump had originally promised Bharara that he would keep his job as U.S. attorney.
Dowd on Sunday claimed responsibility for drafting a tweet sent from Trump’s Twitter account in which Trump claimed to have fired former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn “because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.”
The President hadn’t previously claimed to know that Flynn had lied to the FBI prior to his firing. Bharara explained the significance of the tweet.
“It matters because it’s a change from what the reasoning was that was given by the President in the first place,” he said. “A few days after [Flynn] became the national security adviser, the President said only that he’d fired Michael Flynn because he had lied to the vice president.”
“And now you have the interjection of a new reason, apparently, which was that he knew, the President knew, that there was a lie to the FBI, which then suggests, that if he did that and knew that before he asked Jim Comey, the FBI director, to back off the investigation— That shows a level of knowledge and intent that was previously unknown,” he said.
Obstruction of justice, Bharara added, is “clearly one of the things that’s being looked at by special counsel Mueller and his team.”
Yikes. Very bad news. The Supreme Court voted to allow full enforcement Trump’s travel ban (Muslim ban) when the ban is applied to six countries.
The Supreme Court on Monday gave President Trump another major win by granting his administration’s request to fully reinstate the third version of his travel ban.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and a federal district court in Maryland had said the president could only block nationals from the designated eight countries if they lacked a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. The high court’s decision now puts those rulings on hold.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the government’s request.
Trump stripped the “National Monument” designation from about two million acres in Utah today.
[…] “You know how best to conserve this land for many, many years to come,” Trump told a phalanx of the state’s Republican lawmakers in Salt Lake City, as he took yet another swipe at the conservation legacies of former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — and at regulators in Washington. “They don’t know your land and truly they don’t care for your land like you do. From now on that won’t matter.”
[…] a victory for Sen. Orrin Hatch, Rep. Rob Bishop and other Utah Republicans who had pressed the administration to shrink the territories of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments from their combined 3.2 million acres. But Trump’s action enraged environmentalists and some Utah residents, who see the move as a first step toward allowing fossil fuel extraction near the monuments. […]
The new borders would shrink the 1.353-million-acre Bears Ears down to about 201,400 acres and break it into two new monuments called Indian Creek and Shash Jaa. That would free up oil, natural gas and uranium deposits for possible extraction.
Trump would also cleave the nearly 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument into three parts, totaling 997,490 acres: Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits and Escalante Canyons. The move would free up protections over areas high in mineral resources. […]
Environmental groups and Native American tribes have vowed to tie up Trump’s move in courts. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance plans to file a suit “within days, if not hours,” legal director Steve Bloch said.
“The general gist of the argument regarding both national monuments is that the Antiquities Act is a limited grant of authority from Congress to the president to establish national monuments,” Bloch said. “Nowhere in the act does Congress give the president the power to revoke or diminish national monuments, and by doing so the president is acting beyond his authority and unlawfully.”
The Navajo Nation also promised to fight Trump’s decision. The Navajos, who consider the Bears Ears monument of “critical importance” to the culture of many tribes in the region, said the White House ignored their requests to meet and discuss the issue.
“The decision to reduce the size of the Monument is being made with no tribal consultation,” Navajo President Russell Begaye said in a press release. “The reduction in the size of the monument leaves us no choice but to litigate this decision.” […]
Update on U.S. reaction to the election in Honduras, (see comment 53, from SC).
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified Honduras for fighting corruption and protecting the opposition’s political rights two days after a controversial election that’s led to accusations of fraud and government oppression, reported Reuters.
The State Department regularly certifies Central American countries so they can receive aid from the United States under an Obama-era program.
An official document showed Tillerson renewed Honduras’s certification on Nov. 28, in the wake of a presidential election held Nov. 26 that still hasn’t presented a clear winner.
President Juan Orlando Hernandez, widely perceived as an ally of Washington, has claimed victory over his main opponent, Salvador Nasralla.
But Nasralla and his allies, including former President Manuel Zelaya — ousted in a coup in 2009 — have claimed widespread fraud and taken to the streets in protest.
The opposition claims the government is delaying official election results to fraudulently erase a 5-point lead Nasralla held a week before the election, certifying a 1.5-point victory for Hernandez.
Despite the questions about the election and the Hernandez administration’s response to subsequent protests, Tillerson cleared the way for Honduras to receive its share of $644 million assigned to Central America under the Obama-era aid program.
The program was designed to help countries in the region fight corruption, impunity and crime at home, thus preventing potential migration to the United States. […]
[…] Trump’s declaration today notwithstanding, it could be years before the land is completely fucked over by mining, drilling, and logging interests, because while the Antiquities Act grants the president the power to designate national monuments for the protection of lands, the act has never been used by a president to withdraw such protections. There will be lawsuits, […]
Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian that Obama’s declaration hadn’t just been a whim of a president who hates coal mines, noting that the earliest proposals to protect Bears Ears went back 75 years, that efforts to protect Bears Ears had originated in Congress, and that the monument had been supported by five tribes in the area, the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute, who often disagree on other matters, but were united in wanting tribal land protected:
In the past century, tribal leaders have witnessed looting of grave sites, irreparable harm to petroglyphs by vandalism, sacred places torn up by indiscriminate off-road-vehicle use, and damage to a unique, intact landscape. I have seen these impacts myself – and as an American, I am ashamed we have let this happen.
As secretary of the interior, I understood that my job was about listening. That’s why Bears Ears national monument is the first monument ever created through tribal advocacy, and the first monument that directly engaged tribes with management.
[…] There’s more at stake here than just one national monument. Trump is expected to announce rollbacks of other protected areas in Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Nevada, and even an underwater preserve off the New England coast. Democrats designated them, so they are obviously bad. Beyond the obsessive desire to undo everything Barack Obama ever did, this sets a dangerous precedent, says Jewell:
[Trump’s action] will ignore the 2.8 million Americans who have spoken out in defense of these public lands, and will undercut the jobs and revenues they bring to local economies from outdoor recreation and tourism. More fundamentally, it will break the promise to these tribes – and to the American people – that, once established, national monuments are protected in perpetuity. […]
An email sent during the transition by President Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, K.T. McFarland, appears to contradict the testimony she gave to Congress over the summer about contacts between the Russian ambassador and Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.
Ms. McFarland had told lawmakers that she did not discuss or know anything about interactions between Sergey I. Kislyak, who had been Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, and Mr. Flynn, according to Senate documents.
But emails obtained by The New York Times appear to undermine those statements. In a Dec. 29 message about newly imposed Obama administration sanctions against Russia for its election interference, Ms. McFarland, then serving on Mr. Trump’s transition team, told another transition official that Mr. Flynn would be talking to the Russian ambassador that evening….
The apparent lie was in a written response to a written question from Corey Booker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where her sworn testimony was part of her confirmation process.
SC @82, bad news for Manafort. Kind of funny, though. Manafort’s bail conditions included NOT hanging around with any Russians. So, Manafort worked with a Russian, and not just any Russian, but one with ties to Russian intelligence. Sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Trump’s Department of Labor has come up with yet one more way to screw low-wage earners:
The Department of Labor released a proposed rule rescinding portions of its tip regulations, including current restrictions on “tip pooling”—which would mean that, for example, restaurants would be able to pool the tips servers receive and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers. But, crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute pooled tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips.
From Christine Owens of the National Employment Law Project:
If companies have trouble retaining non-tipped workers because their pay is so low, the solution is for the companies to raise the wages of those workers—not for the labor department to rig the rules so employers can essentially steal earnings from tipped workers to subsidize the businesses’ low wage model.
Follow-up to comment 56, in which we discussed the fact that Senator Susan Collins was likely duped into voting for the Senate’s version of the tax bill by Mitch McConnell.
From Topher Spiro:
BREAKING: The 3 big promises @SenatorCollins got will NOT be done before the final vote on the tax bill. The bill to keep the govt open does NOT include Alexander-Murray, reinsurance, or waiver of Medicare cuts.
One of the women that Roy Moore claimed not to know has proof that he knew her, and that he dated her when she was 17 and he was in his thirties.
Debbie Wesson Gibson was 17 years old when she was involved in a relationship with a 34-year-old Roy Moore, who is now the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Alabama. It was a very public relationship, according to Gibson, who provided the Washington Post with her account. After Moore decided to publicly deny even knowing Gibson, she decided to show the Post some of her keepsakes in the hopes of jogging Mr. Moore’s memory.
Gibson said that after finding the scrapbook, she was not sure whether to make it public given the threats she received after publication of the original story. Then she heard what Moore said last week, she said, and contacted The Post.
“He called me a liar,” said Gibson, who says she not only openly dated Moore when she was 17 but later joined him in passing out fliers during his campaign for circuit court judge in 1982 and exchanged Christmas cards with him over the years. “Roy Moore made an egregious mistake to attack that one thing — my integrity.” […]
She said that she held Moore “in high esteem,” despite political differences with him, until she began hearing stories from other women who alleged that Moore pursued them as teenagers. She said that at first she did not want to believe the women.
“It takes what I thought was a very lovely part of my past, and it colors it, and it changes it irrevocably,” she said. “It changes it permanently.”
Further to my #76, various commentators have been suggesting that a deal on the Irish border will be concluded, but I’m sceptical. Typically, the diplomatic solution to irreconcilable positions is ambiguous language, but neither the DUP nor their Tory fellow-travellers seem likely to accept anything that will satisfy the Irish government – which still seems to have the full backing of the EU. To obviate the need for border controls on the island of Ireland, regulations have to be more or less the same in northern Ireland as in the Republic – that is, as in the EU. But that would mean either that northern Ireland would have different regulations from the rest of the UK – the prospects of which has the dUP frothing at the mouth, although of course they are insistent on retaining their homophobic and misogynist laws while the rest of the UK has moved on – or that the whole of the UK, in effect, remains in the customs union (if not the single market). The latter is wholly unacceptable to the Brexiteers in the Tory party, particularly since May has already backed down on the so-called “divorce bill” (I.e., the UK meeting obligations it has already accepted), and on a role for the European Court of Justice in protecting the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK. Meanwhile the leaders of Scotland, Wales and London have all said that if northern Ireland gets a special arrangement with the EU, they want one too! Even if some form of words is cobbled together that the DUP deign to accept, May comes out of this even weaker than before – and as Fintan O’Toole argues in the Grauniad (which has several articles covering the debacle), it also shows that the UK is now politically weaker than the Republic of Ireland!
While it’s still difficult to see either the DUP or the Tories risking another general election – the Tories because they might well lose power, the DUP because they almost certainly would lose their key role, which depends on the exact balance of forces, the chances of one happening have certainly risen sharply.
KGsays
A Spanish court has withdrawn the European Arrest Warrants against Carlos Puigdemont and other Catalonian separatists who fled to Belgium. The judge claimed they had shown a willingness to return to Spain (they haven’t) and that withdrawing the warrants would enable Spain to be in charge of the whole process. My guess is that the Belgians told Spain on the quiet that there was no chance of extradition being agreed by the Belgian courts for what were clearly political offences.
More discussion on the ways in which the Republican tax plan punishes Democrats:
[…] those who stand to fare the worst under the GOP tax overhaul are graduate students, government workers, school teachers, and blue-state residents.
It’s easy to get the impression that Republican policymakers aren’t just trying to cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations; they’re also doing so in a way to punish Democratic voters.
[…] paying for those changes has come in large part at the expense of breaks that are important to residents of high-tax states, which tend to be Democratic.
Benefits used by universities and graduate students are also on the chopping block. And the repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate to buy insurance — a centerpiece of Democrats’ biggest achievement in a generation — is estimated to generate some $300 billion to pay for tax cuts.
The Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who worked with the Trump campaign last year, told Bloomberg Politics the GOP tax policy is “death to Democrats.”
“They go after state and local taxes, which weakens public employee unions,” Moore said. “They go after university endowments, and universities have become play pens of the left. And getting rid of the mandate is to eventually dismantle Obamacare.”
[…] Jon Chait had a great piece highlighting “the use of government as a tool of vengeance.”
Moore argues that subjecting income spent on state and local taxes to federal taxation – a change Republicans might be expected to oppose as a form of double taxation – will have the delicious secondary effect of pressuring state government to shrink. “The big blue states either cut their taxes and costs, or the stampede of high-income residents from these states accelerates,” he gloats. “The big losers here are the public employee unions – the mortal enemies of Republicans. This all works out nicely.” […]
Supply-side economics has given way to revenge-o-nomics.
For eight years, the notion of a gangster government using its power to punish its enemies existed as a lurid persecution fantasy on the right. Now it is being touted as a governing blueprint.
[Republicans will say] the fact that their tax plan happens to punish likely Democratic voters is an incidental byproduct.
But Moore’s candor, coupled with the details of the GOP’s package, speaks volumes.
KG @90, thanks for that update. I think your analysis is likely correct.
In other news, here is a follow-up to comments 79 and 81.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told The Salt Lake Tribune:
The president is delivering on his campaign promise to give the state and local communities a voice, which I think is absolutely important. Public lands are for public use and not for special interests.
A clear case of “up is down.” Zinke and Trump want public lands to serve special interests. Trump talked about “responsible economic development” being hampered by “harmful and unnecessary restrictions.” Zinke made it clear that the economic development activities they want to foster are drilling, mining, and logging.
Emily Atkin, writing for The New Republic, noted that extractive industries have their eye on Bears Ears:
Trump says shrinking Utah’s monuments is about “states’ rights,” but it’s really about drilling rights. […]
This summer, a Tribune investigation found that oil and gas interests “hope to tap hydrocarbon deposits under parts of the Bears Ears region that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke may soon recommend removing from the monument.” Specifically, the Tribune found that industry has been eyeing a 2.7-million-acre area called the San Juan County Energy Zone, which the Utah legislature had previously been considering to open up to the industry. Much of that area became off limits when former President Barack Obama proclaimed Bears Ears a monument in December 2016.
Public land advocate Randi Spivak told the Tribune that drilling in Bears Ears was “a clear and present danger,” and that “the only thing staying in the way is monument status.”
Comments associated with the Salt Lake Tribune article:
Trump, as well as most of Utah’s national representatives, are offensive to the majority of Utahan’s in terms of environmental stewardship of public lands. But these fools want to hear only what they believe. For example, Hatch is completely out of touch with the view of majority of Utahans on environmental issues.
—————
Reducing Bears Ears by 85% is “mostly disappear.”
—————–
The PEOPLE of Utah don’t want this. Greedy politicians want this.
I loathe Hatch.
I loathe Lee.
And I really loathe Trump.
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Is it designed to be ironic that last century’s energy choice, coal, is buried within current GSENM boundaries? The same Utah dimwits that believe in “clean” coal fail to acknowledge reality. The market has moved on, and natural gas is the choice.
After listening to Mike Noel’s interview on NPR Sunday morning, it is no wonder that people have a negative image of Utah citizens, and their stewardship of federal lands….
A sampling of comments from the other side of the political fence:
The Washington comPost?
You might as well be citing the Onion. [In reference to sources for facts cited in the comments.]
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Try citing a source that doesn’t function as an arm of the Democratic Party’s PR Dept. for a change.
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They are no longer even pretending not to be an arm of the Utah Democrat’s PR Dept. [In reference to the Salt Lake Tribune]
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he [Trump] is undoing what two presidential idiots did before him, right. Where were you then?
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Have you ever been to the Kaiparowits Plateau? If you are the one in a million people that has you know that nothing there would warrant monument designation. [This comment drew a reply: “Except of course for the vast paleontological resources, the amazing geology, the peace and quiet, and the stunning night sky… and much more.”]
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I for one would be happy if people stopped coming to Utah………period…..for any reason. This place cannot sustain the amount of people that trudge around here as is.
In a remarkable development, the Honduran police, including elite units (many of whom are trained in the US), are refusing to enforce the curfew proclaimed by JOH in the face of protests over his apparent attempt to steal the election. They’re saying they want peace and aren’t interested in repressing the citizenry.
Today’s Democracy Now! has a good segment about the events in Honduras and the role of the US. Allan Nairn, one of the guests, is in Honduras and says he’s talked to a large number of people in the army and the police who have basically implied that they – members of the military aren’t allowed to vote, evidently – and their families support Nasralla. Again, remarkable. Even members of the electoral tribunal seem reluctant to go along with any fraud. JOH might be on a shoogly peg.
Another guest was Rep. Jan Schakowsky from Ohio. Here’s her NYT oped from just before the election.
Special prosecutor Robert Mueller zeroed in on President Donald Trump’s business dealings with Deutsche Bank AG as his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections widens.
Mueller issued a subpoena to Germany’s largest lender several weeks ago, forcing the bank to submit documents on its relationship with Trump and his family, according to a person briefed on the matter, who asked not to be identified because the action has not been announced.
…
Deutsche Bank for months has rebuffed calls by Democratic lawmakers to provide more transparency over the roughly $300 million Trump owed to the bank for his real estate dealings prior to becoming president….
…
Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank stretches back some two decades and the roughly $300 million he owed to the bank represented nearly half of his outstanding debt, according to a July 2016 analysis by Bloomberg. That figure includes a $170-million loan Trump took out to finish a hotel in Washington. He also has two mortgages against his Trump National Doral Miami resort and a loan against his tower in Chicago….
Patrick Harvie MSP, Co-convener of the Scottish Greens, said: “Steve Bannon is a far right extremist, a notorious white nationalist and pioneer of hateful ‘fake news’ propaganda.”
[Labour MSP James] Kelly said: “Steve Bannon’s hateful views have no place in civilised society. Donald Trump has rightly been condemned for promoting Britain First – and far-right figures such as Mr Bannon should not be given a platform, however small, to air similar views.”
MSNBC’s decision to drop Sam Seder was…less good. (Actually, he’s rarely on, and I’ve long suspected that was because they found him too blunt and honest about Trump.) At the same time, the other day Donna Brazile was a panelist, they gave Alan Dershowitz half a show to serve as TV’s voice of treason, Hugh Hewitt has his own program, Larry Summers makes frequent appearances, Breitbart’s Joel Pollak has returned after acting as an apologist for Roy Moore, and Chuck Todd did a long interview on MTP on Sunday with Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.
Update to #82: “Oleg Voloshyn, a former spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, said in an interview that he drafted the unpublished editorial that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused Manafort on Dec. 4. of ghostwriting in order to influence public opinion about his work in Ukraine. Voloshyn said he wrote the piece on his own initiative. He said he sent it to Manafort only to check facts and incorporated a few of his suggestions.”
Re #95 – Manu Raju: “Schiff reveals that Republicans on House Intel refused to subpoena Deutsche Bank for Trump Organization financial records. He says it’s a “troubling double-standard” bc Rs sent subpoenas for Fusion GPS bank records.”
[…] “So the story can no longer be that Flynn – bad apple, rogue actor – lied to the vice president and that’s why the vice president told those unwitting lies to the American public. That is over. That can no longer be their rational contention.
The story now has to be that not just Mike Flynn but the entire transition team that Mike Pence was overseeing all conspired together to lie to Mike Pence, and then agreed to keep the lie going for weeks and weeks as the vice president kept unwittingly repeating the lie to the American public. It’s either that or the vice president was lying on purpose, telling the American people something that he also knew was not true. […]
The RNC is probably doing what they have to do now that Trump has openly endorsed Roy Moore. But this sounds a bit like a slap in Moore’s face:
The Republican National Committee isn’t exactly scrambling the jets for controversial Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore after all.
The committee has agreed to give just $50,000 to the Alabama Republican Party and will not send any staff in to help Moore in the final week of his campaign after a lengthy series of negotiations with Alabama Republicans, […]
That sum is a pittance in the realm of modern campaign funding, especially coming just a week before the election. The RNC’s decision not to send staffers also means it won’t help Moore in the biggest way it could, with a huge push to boost turnout for him using field staff. Those moves suggest that the RNC is doing the bare minimum to help Moore that it can get away with in light of Trump’s re-endorsement while attempting to keep its local members happy. […]
I postulated that Senator Susan Collins had been duped when Mitch McConnell made promises to her. Now I have my doubts. Did she not do her homework? Is she lying? Was she duped?
On Meet the Press Sunday, Chuck Todd asked Susan Collins how she could support a huge tax cut after having complained about excessive debt. “Economic growth produces more revenue and that will help to offset this tax cut and actually lower the debt,” she calmly replied. An incredulous Todd asked Collins how she could defend such a claim when every study has concluded the opposite. She cited Glenn Hubbard, Larry Lindsey, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
Jennifer Rubin got ahold of two of the three, Hubbard and Holtz-Eakin. Both economists denied having ever claimed the Republican tax cuts would produce enough growth to recoup the lost revenue. […]
[…] A ThinkProgress review of contributions to the Republican National Committee so far in this 2017 to 2018 campaign cycle, at least 15 companies have donated $15,000 or more each from their corporate political action committees (PACs) to the party, and are thus contributing to the pro-Moore efforts. The totals include donations through the end of September. According to Federal Election Commission data from the subscription online Political MoneyLine, these include:
Comcast Corporation & NBCUniversal with at least $100,000.
AT&T Inc with at least $60,000.
Leo A Daly Company with at least $30,000.
Amerisourcebergen Corporation with at least $15,000.
Lockheed Martin Corporation with at least $15,000.
Honeywell International with at least $15,000.
Pricewaterhousecoopers with at least $15,000.
AFLAC with at least $15,000.
Pfizer Inc. with at least $15,000.
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company with at least $15,000.
Textron Inc with at least $15,000.
Exelon Corporation with at least $15,000.
The Boeing Company with at least $15,000.
Microsoft Corporation with at least $15,000.
BNSF Railway Company with at least $15,000.
[…]
Ogvorbis: Swimming without a parachute.says
From Lynna @107:
I am confuzzled. If Moore’s mouthpiece says:
We need to make it clear that there’s a group of non-accusers, that have not accused the judge of any sexual misconduct or anything illegal.
Does that mean that, since he has not tried to rape or assault every teenage girl in the state, he’s innocent of trying to date or assault any? Or does that mean that, out of the hundreds he tried to rape, or assaulted, only a few have come forward, so he’s innocent of all accusations?
Putin’s regime has designated several US news entities as foreign agents. The headlines about nine organizations might mislead. It’s not CNNi or the like. It’s Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and their subsidiaries. They’re actually…foreign agents. I’ll be up in arms if this expands to news organizations that aren’t government-backed or they step up their harassment of the designated entities.
CNN is reporting that Gates’s lawyer is saying more charges are coming from the special counsel’s office. I wonder if they have to do with the revelations about the Deutsche Bank subpoena…
Apparently, Moore’s spokesperson was not the only one to make that argument. To me it just looks desperate. “Hey, Roy Moore didn’t molest me when I was a teenager! He didn’t molest my sister. All those accusers must be lying.” Or perhaps, “There are more women in Alabama who say Roy Moore did not molest them than women who say he did.” Majority wins?
…Hernandez has spent years working to ensure the outcome of this election….
So when Hondurans headed to the polls two Sundays ago, there was little reason to believe Hernandez could possibly lose. In fact, there seemed little incentive to turn out at all. Everything in Hondurans’ experience suggested that this election would be only a scripted performance of democracy, not the real thing.
But turn out they did. From villages perched on forested slopes, where indigenous farmers plant coffee and stand up to mining corporations, from the gang-controlled barrios — they turned out. Factory workers, who sew the clothes and assemble the electronics we pounce on in post-Thanksgiving cyber-sales, turned out. Agricultural laborers who pick the cantaloupes, haul the bananas and harvest the shrimp that stock our supermarkets turned out. Nurses and teachers whose pensions have been lost to corruption, people recently deported from the United States — they all turned out.
Twenty-four hours after the polls closed, with 57 percent of ballots counted, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla held a commanding five-point lead. “The technical experts here say it’s irreversible,” one of the electoral tribunal’s magistrates told Reuters. Hardly daring to believe what they had achieved, euphoric crowds spilled into the streets.
Then the machinations began….
…
Hondurans have sent an inspiring message of faith in the power of democracy to deliver a better future to their beleaguered country. They deserve U.S. support. Two months ago, Tillerson assured Hondurans of the U.S. commitment to “our joint efforts to strengthen democratic institutions in the region.”
Washington should stand by those words. The United States must demand a full and impartial recount, making the release of aid contingent on that step. Without action, declarations in praise of democracy are just hollow words. They feed the despair that drives people whose hopes of accountable government have been trampled to give up on their country and leave.
For now, Hondurans are standing and fighting for good government. This time, let’s stand with them.
“It’s possible to be AGAINST the rights of women and girls.”
KGsays
Yesterday, the BBC were suggesting that the debacle over the Irish border in the Brexit negotiations would be sorted within days (at second hand, by reporting the optimistic spin of the UK government and the EU negotiators, but without any scepticism). Today, we have The phone call that never was – the one that was supposed to take place between Theresa May and Arlene Foster, leader of the “D”UP. The article is by Laura Kuenssberg, notoriously pro-Tory BBC political editor*. It reports that the “D”UP is demanding “radical surgery” on the draft agreement. I will be astonished if this demand is conceded. It would show that the DUP tail is not only wagging the Tory dog, as Labour’s Keir Starmer said yesterday, but wagging the whole EU pack as well!
*Which does not, of course, justify any of the misogynist abuse aimed at her.
This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don’t even seem to know that boundaries exist. They’ve had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can’t afford to lose. They’ve had it with the code of going along to get along. They’ve had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.
The women and men who have broken their silence span all races, all income classes, all occupations and virtually all corners of the globe. They might labor in California fields, or behind the front desk at New York City’s regal Plaza Hotel, or in the European Parliament. They’re part of a movement that has no formal name. But now they have a voice.
As others have pointed out, there’s a commandment about that. But honestly I had no idea she had been married before or had a child when she met Moore. Her WP page makes no mention of the previous marriage. His story about their meeting in 1984 involves his recalling her performance at a girls’ dance recital he had attended* years earlier when she was a teenager and revolves around her saying her name and his remembering the initials “KK.” But Kisor is her maiden name, and she doesn’t strike me as someone who wouldn’t have taken her first husband’s name like she took Moore’s. So that sounds like more bullshit from Roy and Kayla Moore. They deserve each other.
* (a totally healthy thing for a single man in his 30s who isn’t involved with dance to be doing)
…Seder, who is on his third annual contract and began appearing on MSNBC in 2004, described himself as the “most left-leaning” contributor left at the network. He argued MSNBC is repositioning itself to feature more conservative views and Republican commentators, and that his politics rendered him “more disposable” than others. Still, he called the situation around his exit “disturbing” and expressed concern at MSNBC’s handling of it.
“We tune in to news companies for them to give us some sense of grounded assessment of what the truth is,” he said. “If MSNBC cannot make an assessment of what words mean, but are cowed by a man who has a reputation … If a news outlet cannot make the assessment of what the reality is in that moment, then there is only ‘fake news’ and this society’s in big trouble.”…
Also, I linked to a petition calling on MSNBC to reinstate Seder @ #119. I continue to be perplexed by MSNBC’s interest in moving more to the Right. I can’t imagine anyone in their core audience is calling for this. We want the opposite.
Yes, even conservative economists know that the Republican tax plan will be, as Alice Ollstein called it, “an epic disaster.”
As Republicans in the House and Senate hash out their tax bill differences in a conference committee behind closed doors, with the goal of producing a final bill before the holiday break, conservative economists tell TPM that the policies likely to become law will wreak havoc on the country for many years to come. […]
Instead, the economists and former government officials predicted, the bill will drive up the federal deficit, shrink and destabilize the health care market, exacerbate already historic income inequality, and pressure Congress to make deep cuts to the social safety net and government programs.
[…] In the face of two official government bodies scoring the bill, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, as well as independent studies by the Tax Policy Center, the Tax Foundation and the Wharton School of Businesses, GOP lawmakers insisted that the tax cuts would spur so much economic growth that they would pay for themselves and then some.
“I am absolutely convinced that this bill will end up reducing the deficit,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) told reporters. “I feel very good about the fiscal situation.”
They provided zero evidence to support this claim. (A promised report from the Treasury Department showing a surge of economic growth turned out not to exist—prompting an investigation by the department’s inspector general.)
Instead, GOP lawmakers coordinated to undermine and discredit the reports showing their bill would bleed the government of more than a trillion dollars in the coming decade. […]
“It never was a question in my mind that tax cuts do not pay for themselves,” Hoagland told TPM. “Adding this much to the debt, which is already growing, is a tax on future generations. I think what this tells you is that Republicans were so desperate for a victory that policy didn’t matter.”
[…] Bruce Bartlett, an economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan [said], “There is no historical evidence that any tax cut in history comes anywhere near paying for itself,” he said bluntly. “At the most you get back a third of the revenue you lose, but that might be overly optimistic.” […]
Stan Collender, a former top staffer on the House and Senate Budget Committees, [said], “Unless the laws of economics have been repealed, and not even Trump can do that, this has the potential for being one of the biggest disasters in American history. The deficit hawks who for the last few months have been in a witness protection program are going to emerge with a vengeance to demand the deficit they just increased exponentially is a problem, and the pressure on Social Security and Medicaid is going to be pretty intense.” […]
Roy Moore is vying for the title of “Worst Republican Senate Candidate Ever.” This is what Moore had to to say about George Soros:
“He is pushing an agenda and his agenda is sexual in nature, his agenda is liberal, and not what Americans need,” said Moore. “It’s not our American culture. Soros comes from another world that I don’t identify with.” […]
“No matter how much money he’s got, he’s still going to the same place that people who don’t recognize God and morality and accept his salvation are going. And that’s not a good place.”
George Soros is a Jew, so Roy Moore claims that Soros is going to hell, and that Soros in un-American.
Any time Moore uses a phrase like “sexual in nature,” I shudder. Yuck.
Kirsten Gillibrand, Mazie Hirono, Claire McCaskill, and Maggie Hassan are simultaneously calling on Franken to resign. I don’t think I’ve heard Republicans say anything about Farenthold.
Ben Shapiro: “Democrats are going to dump Franken now in order to seize the moral high ground on Moore. …Which, of course, is why Republicans should not endorse a credibly accused child molester.”
Uh…no. They should not endorse him because he’s a credibly accused child molester. I can’t imagine how that’s difficult to grasp.
It’s now 11 Senators and the DNC calling for Franken’s resignation. That’s getting all the attention, but the legislation just introduced should get more:
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation that would eliminate forced arbitration clauses in employment agreements that advocates say silence women in sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases.
Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill. and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., are sponsoring the legislation, Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act. GOP co-sponsors are Sen. Lindsey Graham and Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.
…
Arbitration clauses, which are often a condition of employment, affect an estimated 60 million Americans. Voiding these clauses in sexual harassment and discrimination cases would deter sexual harassment and aid victims by pulling back the veil of secrecy on bad behavior in the workplace….
a_ray_in_dilbert_spacesays
Right to life, my ass. This study just published shows that pollution may be responsible for up to 3% of the low-birth-weight infants: http://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5299
Low birth weight is strongly correlated with risk for infant mortality. If the right-wing nutjobs were serious about saving fetuses/infants, they’d be lobbying for electric vehicles rather than protesting outside of women’s health clinics.
NBC: “When the News4 I-Team asked Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if he was satisfied with the work thus far of the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel, Rosenstein said yes.”
Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, told a former business associate that economic sanctions against Russia would be “ripped up” as one of the Trump administration’s first acts, according to an account by a whistle-blower made public on Wednesday.
Mr. Flynn believed that ending the sanctions could allow a business project he had once participated in to move forward, according to the whistle-blower. The account is the strongest evidence to date that the Trump administration wanted to end the sanctions immediately, and suggests that Mr. Flynn had a possible economic incentive for the United States to forge a closer relationship with Russia.
Mr. Flynn had worked on a business venture to partner with Russia to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East until June 2016, but remained close with the people involved afterward. On Inauguration Day, according to the whistle-blower, Mr. Flynn texted the former business associate to say that the project was “good to go.”
The account is detailed in a letter written by Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
…
“These grave allegations compel a full, credible and bipartisan congressional investigation,” Mr. Cummings wrote.
…
In his letter, Mr. Cummings also said that his staff had been in consultations with Mr. Mueller’s team, which brought the criminal charge against Mr. Flynn. Staffers for the special counsel asked Mr. Cummings not to make the whistle-blower’s account public until “they completed certain investigative steps,” he wrote.
According to the account detailed in the letter, the whistle-blower had a conversation on Inauguration Day with Alex Copson of ACU Strategic Partners, a company that hired Mr. Flynn in 2015 as an adviser to develop a plan to work with Russia to build nuclear power plants throughout the Middle East. Mr. Flynn served as an adviser until June 2016….
“MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) — A gay man who was denied a marriage license by a Kentucky county clerk will run to unseat her in 2018. Democrat David Ermold announced his candidacy Wednesday to challenge Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis.”
I’ve been watching coverage of the Jerusalem decision today on the cable networks, especially CNN. It’s telling, almost painful, watching real experts trying – really trying – to interpret this decision as part of an effort to push the peace process forward. Maybe Trump’s gotten some secret concession from Prime Minister Netanyahu in exchange for this? […]
The idea that you would just do something like this purely to gratify the Republican base, spurred by the President’s boredom and desire to upset people. That’s all unthinkable. Yet that is pretty clearly what is going on here.
I would say that this is 90% political and a matter of satisfying the President’s need for an act of self-assertion. The other 10% does slightly fall into the category of forward-moving gambits. […]
It basically goes like this: What keeps the conflict going is Israel’s and the international community’s indulgence of unrealistic expectations on the part of the Palestinians. The path to peace is to make it totally clear, with established facts, that the Palestinians will essentially get nothing. Nothing here would be defined as a few autonomous self-governing zones within the West Bank under over-arching Israeli security control. […] No geographical contiguity. Nothing. Basically the right to self-govern in civil matters in the parts of the West Bank where there are too many Palestinians to outnumber with Israeli settlers. Once Palestinians expectations are set to a realistic level, you can get down to negotiations.
[…] I would be remiss if I didn’t note the obvious. Not only did the President put the region’s issues in the hands of his neophyte son-in-law. He put it in the hands of a settlement activist. Obviously nothing possibly good can come of this.
The tax bill provision to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling is totally short-sighted. […]
Senate Republicans narrowly passed a controversial tax bill which […] will open up 1.5-million acres of the pristine, 20-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas drilling.
The fate of the ANWR has been a decades-long tug-o-war between Republicans and Democrats, with the right seeing the massive oil reserves within the park as a source of revenue for Alaska and the country, and the left insisting on preserving the land, which supports hundreds of bird species, arctic foxes, caribou, and polar bears. First designated a “wildlife range” in 1960 and then later a refuge in 1980, the land is also home to the Native Alaskan Gwich’in tribe, which relies on the land for subsistence. […]
The ANWR measure was added to the tax bill late last month in an effort to secure the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), […] The move worked; after the vote, Murkowski said in a statement that the bill’s passing was a “critical milestone in our efforts to secure Alaska’s future.”
Murkowski’s prediction, though, is an optimistic one. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that drilling in the ANWR would raise $1.1 billion for the federal government over the next 10 years and another 1.1 billion for Alaska over the same time period. This would, in theory, help offset the unprecedented cost of tax cuts proposed in the bill, which is estimated to add a whooping $1.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
[…] According to data prepared for the nonprofit Alaska Wilderness League by David Murphy, an assistant professor of environmental studies at St. Lawrence University, and analyzed by Bloomberg, the federal government is actually likely to raise less than a fifth of that 10-year-goal, or about $145 million. This lower estimate is based on historic sales in the region; the average bid for drilling along Alaska’s North Slope since 2000 is $194 per acre. So, bids for ANWR land would need to be nearly seven times higher than that in order to match the $1.1 billion federal estimate. […]
Throwing even more confusion into the situation, when the Trump administration released its 2018 fiscal budget report in May, it claimed said that drilling in the ANWR would raise a staggering $1.8 billion over the next 10 years, but didn’t provide reasoning for the estimate in the report.
[…] the bigger issue might be that it’s not even clear if oil companies still want and are willing to drill in the ANWR—a contentious and also costly site for oil extraction. Due to differences in how the oil is held in the ground, oil production in the Arctic costs, on average, $78 per barrel, while production in the lower 48 states ranges from $40-60 per barrel, according to Murphy’s analysis. Moreover, there is no existing oil extraction infrastructure located on the reserve, and building wells from scratch would cost, on average, more than $6 million per well, […]
“We have a significant position now that’s close to where we have infrastructure and a long history of strong operating capability,” said Al Hirshberg, the executive vice president of production, drilling, and projects for ConocoPhillips, in a statement. The company leases about 70 percent of the Petroleum Reserve’s sold acreage, and recently discovered a store of 300-million barrels of oil in the reserve. The company tells Mother Jones they “would consider” operations in the ANWR, but it sees “tremendous potential” in the Petroleum Reserve and remains “focused on our projects and exploration plans there”—a statement similar to what the company shared with Bloomberg.
Finally, there’s still a lot of un-leased land left in the Petroleum Reserve. [over half]
[…] “Current presidential and congressional budget projections are unrealistic,” Murphy writes in his report. “It would be fiscally irresponsible to pursue this path on a budget justification.”
There are a lot of U.S. troops in Syria, four times more than we thought.
[…] the U.S. has roughly 2,000 troops on the ground in Syria, four times more than what officials had claimed just a month ago.
The number does not represent an increase in troop levels in the country, a Pentagon spokesman said, but instead reflects a more accurate count. The U.S. military had as recently as November said the official troop count in Syria was 503.
Army Col. Rob Manning told reporters that troop numbers are actually “trending downward” in Syria, with the recent departure of 400 artillery Marines. […]
The current official troop count under an accounting system known as the Force Management Level (FML) does not always reflect the U.S. commitment on the ground accurately, as commanders bring in temporary forces or hire more contractors.
Pentagon officials in August, for example, acknowledged that there are about 11,000 U.S. troops currently serving in Afghanistan — well above the 8,400 forces previously reported. That number is now at closer to 14,000 after the Pentagon sent roughly 3,000 additional U.S. troops […]
– the sheer abundance of lies and omissions from Flynn in security clearance renewal and background check investigations, both on paper and in interviews.
– the November 16, 2017, Copson memo about the “TRUMP/Putin ME Marshall plan CONCEPT” described at the bottom of page 4!
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that congressional Republicans will aim next year to reduce spending on both federal health care and anti-poverty programs, citing the need to reduce America’s deficit.
“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an appearance on Ross Kaminsky’s talk radio show. “… Frankly, it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”
Ryan said that he believes he has begun convincing President Donald Trump in their private conversations about the need to rein in Medicare, the federal health program that primarily insures the elderly. As a candidate, Trump vowed not to cut spending on Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid….
…
While whipping votes for the tax bill, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) attacked “liberal programs” for the poor and said Congress needed to stop wasting Americans’ money.
“We’re spending ourselves into bankruptcy,” Hatch said. “Now, let’s just be honest about it: We’re in trouble. This country is in deep debt. You don’t help the poor by not solving the problems of debt, and you don’t help the poor by continually pushing more and more liberal programs through.”
…
But it may be particularly difficult for Republicans to push those measures ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, in which many in swing states and districts face well-funded Democratic challengers hoping to ride an anti-Trump wave into office.
Ryan said he’s optimistic, adding that Republicans could target the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid next year in addition to Medicare, despite their failure to repeal the health care law in 2017….
“I was determined to get to know her, but Kayla, divorced and with a beautiful little girl, Heather, who was nearly a year old, was not interested in a relationship with anyone,” he later wrote of the encounter in his book, AL.com reported.
So she was not interested in starting a relationship. Moore was determined to get to know her. Sheesh. Talk about not respecting boundaries.
Two freelancers from the US have been refused entry to Honduras, where they were planning to cover the tumultuous aftermath of the country’s disputed recent presidential election. The reporters, Jihan Hafiz and Reed Lindsay, say they were turned away from the Central American country for dubious reasons, and that when they called the US Embassy for assistance they were told by a staffer, “It’s not my problem. You’re an adult, figure it out.”
Honduras, which has been one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists since a military coup in 2009, has been roiled by last week’s election, the outcome of which is disputed between incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández and opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla, a former TV sportscaster running on an anti-corruption platform. As mass demonstrations swept the country, several civilians were killed, including a 19-year-old woman shot by police in the capital, Tegucigalpa, on Saturday.
…
Hafiz says that while they were detained in the airport, they tried contacting the US State Department, but were told to talk first to the US Embassy in Honduras. When they did, Hafiz says officials hung up on them, before ultimately dismissing them. “We were quite insulted by the way they treated us,” Hafiz says. “They did not help us.”
…
Sarah Kinosian, who has written for The Guardian and appeared on the BBC and Democracy Now since entering Honduras a week ago, got a press pass through a local reporter. The pass has mostly allowed her to move freely, but her physical safety had already been compromised. Before she got it, Kinosian was beaten by a police officer as she reported on a protest a few days ago. “I mentioned it to some other Honduran journalists, and they said, ‘Yeah, this is Honduras, they don’t care, they’ll do that to anyone,’” she says.
Domestically, critical coverage of the government is limited….
…
“What’s happening is of such historical proportions, not just in Honduras, but in Latin America,” says Andrés Thomas Conteris, the founder of Democracy Now’s Spanish-language edition who is currently freelancing in Honduras. “[Big media outlets] don’t consider this story important enough to send reporters to, which is just pathetic.”
Hse Intel Cmte hrng w/Donald Trump Jr ends after more than 10 hrs. Schiff says Trmp Jr invoked atty/client privilege when discussing issue with his father because an atty was present. Schiff doubts there is any atty/client privilege shield in that instance.
IANAL, but if the lawyer was only representing one of them, the presence of the other would negate the privilege. And the question was about the communication between Trump and Jr. Did anyone ask Jr. or his lawyer what claim he was trying to make and what attorney he was talking about?
One day last week, Ari Melber’s show was a mock mini-trial in which Renato Mariotti and Alan Dershowitz presented opening arguments about Trump-Russia and obstruction of justice to a jury. It was strange and fairly pointless. But Dershowitz’ opening argument was interesting in that he tried to scare the jurors with this “There’s no crime here. If they can go after Trump, they could come for anyone. It could be any of you next” nonsense.
Afterwards, he was bragging about how he’s always known it was more effective if you could tell jurors a story. Setting aside that he didn’t really tell a story, it struck me that this sort of rhetoric, which he’s used elsewhere, wouldn’t be very effective – few jurors would identify with Trump if they gave this any thought. When a powerful person is investigated for or charged with crimes like obstruction or abuse of power, it’s more likely they can imagine a situation in which they’re the victims of the accused than the accused. Because it’s far, far, far more likely to be the case in reality. A rich, powerful man has assaulted or cheated you or someone you know and is under investigation, but due to his wealth and power he’s able to shut down the investigation or use other means to get away with it or face minor penalties. Happens frequently. Trump has done it his whole life. Not many people are going to look at this investigation into Trump and his associates and think “That could be me,”* any more than they feared that the CFPB investigating Wells Fargo meant they might be next.
Also, Dershowitz then immediately launched into his dangerous and false spiel about how the president can’t obstruct justice because he has kinglike power. No acts that are within the power of the president can be criminal, even if done with corrupt intent. Not only is that not the law and contrary to bedrock principles of US democracy; it’s wholly inconsistent with the previous argument. People are being asked (against all facts and logic) to imagine that Trump is in the same position as they are regarding the justice system, and in the next breath being asked to accept that he isn’t in fact vulnerable to the justice system at all because he’s above the law.
No one who gives such claims a moment’s thought can find them convincing. The audience for these autocracy-promoting arguments is limited to the most diehard, authoritarian, conspiracy-prone followers of Trump’s, who are probably about the same 27% who supported Nixon at the time of his resignation. That’s still a disturbing percentage, and what people like Dershowitz and Hannity are arguing is hugely damaging (and that’s not even to mention the anti-Semitism suggested in the quote above).
* There are groups historically targeted by the FBI/DoJ who have good reason to be suspicious of them. They don’t include white male Christian heirs who’ve skated their whole lives.
Here’s a summary with video clips (I can’t bring myself to watch) of Anderson Cooper’s interview with Roy Moore’s spokeswoman last night. Did Cooper find the time to ask about: how Moore would vote on cuts to Medicare or Social Security or tax breaks for corporations, rural hospitals closing in AL (which Jones is discussing on the campaign trail), economic and racial inequality, voting rights, the sorry state of public education in AL, laws protecting children from predators, sentencing reform, why he won’t debate Jones, his foundation’s corruption, the textbook to which he contributed arguing that women shouldn’t hold positions of political power,…?
Progressive radio and television personality Sam Seder will be offered his MSNBC contributor job back and plans to accept, according to multiple MSNBC sources.
Seder and MSNBC were set to part ways when his contributor contract expired next year, with reports indicating the departure had to do with a 2009 tweet from Seder surfaced by the far-right provocateur Mike Cernovich. After initially caving in to right-wing internet outrage over the tweet, MSNBC reversed its decision to not renew Seder’s contract.
“I appreciate MSNBC’s thoughtful reconsideration and willingness to understand the cynical motives of those who intentionally misrepresented my tweet for their own toxic, political purposes,” Seder said in a statement to The Intercept.
…
“Sometimes you just get one wrong,” said MSNBC president Phil Griffin in a statement to The Intercept, “and that’s what happened here. We made our initial decision for the right reasons — because we don’t consider rape to be a funny topic to be joked about. But we’ve heard the feedback, and we understand the point Sam was trying to make in that tweet was actually in line with our values, even though the language was not. Sam will be welcome on our air going forward.”
…
As with Sherrod, MSNBC’s reversal on Seder could mark a turning point. Cernovich, fresh off his momentary victory, announced he was now rummaging through the old twitter feeds of other liberal personalities, hoping to land them in the unemployment line, too. But MSNBC’s decision sends a signal that the news channel recognized it caved too quickly and shouldn’t let Nazi-adjacent online activists call the shots at a major network. After facing public humiliation for misreading the tweet, they and other outlets will be less likely collapse under pressure so quickly the next time a journalist has an old tweet surfaced….
SC @162, such good news! I see the reinstatement of Sam Seder as a correction after a mistake was made. NBC and MSNBC are capable of correcting mistakes. Seems like a low bar, but with about 36% of the U.S. population declaring the Washington Post and CNN to be “fake news,” and adhering to Fox News like a religion, I am ready to rejoice when even low-bar standards are upheld.
Paul Ryan pretends to care about “the debt and the deficit,” but he just promoted a tax plan that adds at least $1 trillion to the deficit, and that’s the low-ball estimate. He also voted for the George W. Bush era expenses related to the war in Iraq and a bailout for Wall Street, among other debt and deficit-increasing moves.
The reality is that Paul Ryan’s worship of “Atlas Shrugged” is his religion. He does not believe that government should provide a safety net of any kind for poor or for low-income people; and not for the elderly either. Ryan has no empathy.
Ryan does seem to think that it is right, just and proper to reward the rich for being rich.
On the subject of the Republican tax plan, here is the take from The New York Times that offers the best summary:
By 2027, people making $40,000 to $50,000 would pay a combined $5.3 billion more in taxes, while the group earning $1 million or more would get a $5.8 billion cut, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office.
Rachel Maddow recently highlighted that same sentence.Taketh from the poor, and giveth to the rich. Paul Ryan’s fantasy come true.
Trump does not understand the implications of what he just did:
Several advisers said he did not seem to have a full understanding of the issue and instead appeared to be focused on “seeming pro-Israel,” in the words of one, and “making a deal,” in the words of another. […]
The debate came to a head at a White House meeting Nov. 27 to hash out the waiver issue. According to people briefed on the meeting, Trump repeated his earlier assertions that he had to follow through on his campaign pledge, seemingly irritated by objections over security and the break with previous policy.
“The decision wasn’t driven by the peace process,” one senior official said. “The decision was driven by his campaign promise.”
The quoted text is from the Washington Post.
From Steve Benen:
[…] Secretary of State Rex Tillerson advised him not to do this, and he didn’t care. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis encouraged the president to pursue a different course, and Trump ignored him, too. U.S. allies from across the globe implored the president to be more responsible, and Trump paid them no mind. […]
I think Trump takes a toddler-like pleasure in saying “No!” to the grown-ups.
Trump was playing a role when he signed the order to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And now, because Trump likes saying, “I am delivering,” straight into the camera while the world watches, our news today shows Israeli forces firing rubber bullets and tear gas into gatherings of protestors.
As you see/hear renewed attacks on the Russia special counsel, remember these things: Robert Mueller is a registered Republican. Robert Mueller has been nominated by both Democratic and Republican presidents for key law enforcement posts for the past 30-odd years. Criticism about the special counsel and his team began soon after Mueller hired some of the country’s top fraud, terrorism and mob prosecutors to conduct the Russia investigation. Critics renewed their attacks after the president’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller last week. Lawyers working for Mueller have made political donations to both Ds and Rs. Federal law prohibits evaluating people on that issue for career jobs.
It’s quite astonishing. In the FBI Director’s testimony this morning, GOP Congressman are openly backing the President’s claim that the FBI’s reputation is “in tatters.” In response Director Wray is avoiding the charge but simply not pushing back against it.
Video segment is available at the link.
Alex the Pretty Goodsays
@SC, 166 and comparable posts…
So basically this tax bill is a reverse Robin Hood?
Dooh Nibor … Almost sounds like a Star Wars villain.
The full quote from Franken: “There is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault, sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls, campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.”
A summary of reactions so far to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital:
[…] it looks like things might get worse, as the decision carries critical security implications, not just for the Middle East, but for U.S. troops and embassies there, as well.
Less than 24 hours after Trump’s announcement:
Hamas has called for a third intifada — or uprising — against Israel, with protests already under way and more planned in the following days.
Al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group al Shabab has issued a call to arms in response to U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, urging “all Muslims to raise arms and defend the blessed al-Aqsa from the Zionist occupiers supported by America, because what was taken by force can only be restored by force,” said spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah — which has fought wars pushing Israel out of the country’s south — called Trump’s decision a “treacherous and malicious aggression,” with the group’s parliamentary spokesman Hassan Fadlallah, saying the only way out is via armed “resistance.”
Protests have broken out in several cities across Jordan, including the capital of Amman. Jordan has also called an emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation this weekend to cope with the consequences of Trump’s decision.
Iraq, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, has urged Trump to reverse his decision, with the leader of a major Shia militia group, the Harakt Hezbollah al-Nujaba, saying that, “Trump’s stupid decision to make Jerusalem a capital for the Zionist will be the big spark for removing this entity from the body of the Islamic nation, and a legitimate reason to target American forces.” There have also been protests against the decision in the capital of Baghdad.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded to the announcement by accusing Trump of throwing the region “into a ring of fire,” while his government spokesman said Trump had set “a fire with no end in sight.”
United Arab Emirates called the move a “complete defiance of the historic and permanent rights of the Palestinian people.” It also urged Arabs and Muslims to unite against the U.S. position on Jerusalem.
Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami has also called for country-wide protests against the United States — already, American and Israeli flags have been burned at rallies there. […]
This is not the first time that Trump seemed determined to fuel terrorist propaganda, and not the first time that he has ignored good advice from U.S. allies.
…The same Trump lawyers who said that they wrote a tweet confessing that Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI?
You’re right. I have no idea if the Trumps had a Joint Defense Agreement in place or if they even know what one is.
But competent federal criminal defense attorneys absolutely would.
There’s no reason to believe the Trumps or their lawyers are being remotely honest or competent here. At this point, they should get no benefit of the doubt. Hasn’t it been established that Trump helped craft the statement aboard AF1 with a bunch of people? We’re to believe that he had one(?) conversation about it with Jr. which included their respective lawyers and conformed to all of the conditions necessary for the privilege to hold? It’s beyond doubtful.
A summary of Trump’s response to the Hollywood Access tape, a response that echoes the strategy now being used to excuse Roy Moore’s behavior:
[Trump] responded to the allegations by framing them as part of a global conspiracy to thwart his nationalist movement, echoing the anti-Semitic rallying cries of the alt-right. He claimed it was all orchestrated by Hillary Clinton, who “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty.” Moore has taken a similar tack, claiming a vast conspiracy to discredit him. On Tuesday, he even lashed out at billionaire (and conservative bête noire) George Soros, saying Soros fosters an agenda that is “sexual in nature” and implying that Soros is going to hell. […]
“Daily Show” host Trevor Noah found the black comedy is Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jersulem:
[…] Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is like getting an apartment in your ex-girlfriend’s building. “It’s not technically illegal, but you’re trying to start some shit, that’s what you’re doing. […]
I’m not saying I know how to solve the Middle East crisis, but I know how you break it — this is how! Trump probably wants to put out the California fires by throwing Samsung phones at them. […]
Noah went on to show Trump’s markedly slurred speech at the end of the pronouncement:
[…] I say forget the Mueller investigation, bring on the molar investigation,” he added. “We need to know what’s happening, people. I need to know now; this is sherioush.
But we all know, we all know what’s going on here. [Trump] is wearing dentures. […] There’s no shame in having dentures — but there is shame in Donald Trump having dentures, because he’s vain as hell. Can you imagine how he would feel if people started tweeting ‘#DentureDonald’? He would be — don’t do it, don’t do it, I’m just saying can you imagine how he’d feel? But don’t do it, guys, he’s very shenshuhtive.
It passed by too quickly for me to be sure – I was reading while half-listening to the speech – but it seemed to me when Franken spoke of his replacement he said “she” or “her.” Elijah Cummings also referred to the Flynn/Copson alleged whistleblower as “she.”
More Republicans have joined Senator Jeff Flake in contributing to the campaign of Doug Jones, the Democrat running for a Senate seat in Alabama.
Republican strategist John Weaver, who helped run John McCain’s and John Kasich’s presidential campaigns, announced yesterday’s he’s contributed to Doug Jones’ campaign. Mark Salter, another former McCain aide, has done the same thing.
[…] Donald Trump Jr has made a run for the prize of Trump insider with most dogged effort to collude with Russia, even partly sidelining the efforts of Trump lawyer and enforcer Michael Cohen.
But perhaps Cohen has yet to cede the title.
[…] congressional investigators – especially congressional Democrats – are actively scrutinizing travel to Europe by several key Trump campaign associates. Michael Cohen seems to be high on that list.
I wanted to focus specifically on what the Steele Dossier alleges was a meeting with Russian intelligence agents in Prague in August 2016. There is no other evidence outside of the dossier that such a meeting or even such a trip took place. It is also important to note that a collection of raw intelligence isn’t meant to be like a newspaper article. It’s not presented to the reader as all verified and true. It’s assumed that some significant amount of the information may not be accurate. […]
At the time of the dossier’s original release, Cohen showily displayed his passport which shows no visits to the Czech Republic. But as a number of people noted at the time, this doesn’t necessarily answer the question. There is free passport-less passage through the EU once you enter an EU country. Cohen’s passport did show a trip to Italy in July. July isn’t August. But that’s the kind of dating issue that might get mixed up in the chain of information transition.
In any case, point being: Cohen was in the EU zone, relatively close to the Czech Republic only a couple weeks before August. So his passport by no means rules out a visit to Prague. Since most press coverage has seemed to take Cohen’s denial at face value, I had assumed or left open the possibility that he’d provided investigators with other evidence we’re not aware of. But that seems not to be the case.
Politico has this passage …
Cohen’s passport would not show any record of a visit to Prague if he entered the EU through Italy, traveled to the Czech Republic, and then returned to his point of EU entry. A congressional official said the issue is “still active” for investigators.
Reading the article it seems clear that Cohen simply denied ever being in Prague and majority Republicans saw no basis to disbelieve him and thus would not require him to provide items like credit card records and other documents which might confirm his account. […]
Adam Schiff has made the point several times that Republicans on investigative committees take witnesses at their word, and that they refuse to ask for proof; or, in the case of Donald Trump Junior, they refuse to press him to answer questions when he claims bogus attorney-client privilege.
Adam Schiff has made the point several times that Republicans on investigative committees take witnesses at their word, and that they refuse to ask for proof; or, in the case of Donald Trump Junior, they refuse to press him to answer questions when he claims bogus attorney-client privilege.
But we can be sure Mueller’s team has combed through Cohen’s receipts and any comings and goings and such from Capri. The dossier suggests that for purposes of plausible deniability the cover used was “the Russian parastatal organisation, Rossotrudnichestvo” and that a Russian legislator named Konstantin Kosachev was involved in setting it up. Known affiliates of that organization in the area at that time, especially those based in Prague, could definitely be tracked.
Consistent with other studies of media coverage of the election, our analysis finds that The New York Times focused much more on “dramatic” issues like the horserace or personal scandals than on substantive policy issues. Moreover, when the paper did write about policy issues, it failed to mention important details, in some cases giving readers a misleading impression of the true state of affairs. If voters had wanted to educate themselves on issues such as healthcare, immigration, taxes, and economic policy—or how these issues would likely be affected by the election of either candidate as president—they would not have learned much from reading the Times.
I have to wonder, especially today, how the hell the story @ #31 above hasn’t broken through and become a major scandal. Gowdy and the others used taxpayer money to settle secretly with an aide who refused to go along with their partisan witch hunt!
From Josh Marshall, warning that “we need to keep a close eye on Erik Prince”:
[…] you had this amazing report from The Intercept a couple days ago about Prince pitching the Trump White House on setting up a parallel spy network reporting directly to the President and the CIA Director to go around the President’s “deep state” enemies.
This may sound weird and scary. I’d argue it’s weirder and scarier than it sounds. This is precisely the kind of stuff Prince has always been trying to do – use ex-military and intelligence operatives to build parallel national security forces that operate for profit and outside the rule of law. In this case, he has a President who is particularly, perhaps uniquely, open to that idea. He’s also clearly pitching his plans to his potential client’s mix of paranoia and mendacious blame-shifting.
The world of military contracting long predates Trump and Prince, as have its inherent challenges to accountability and democratic governance. There are many different factors pushing in money in the direction of privatizing military and national security services. But few Presidents would find the attractions, both for evading the law and for acting with quasi-dictatorial power, more inviting than Donald Trump.
With his mix of post-national allegiance, hyper-authoritarian views and need for new clients, we need to keep a very close eye on Prince, both in terms of the Russia probe and also more generally.
This is funny, and educational. Representative Mark Takano used his teacher’s red pen to grade Mitch McConnell’s pitch to voters about the Republican tax scam.
[…] Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low, according to a national poll released Thursday.
The Pew Research Center poll finds that just 32 percent of Americans approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 63 percent say they disapprove.
Trump’s approval rating is down 2 points from the previous Pew poll conducted in October, which was itself down from the 39 percent in polls going back to February. […]
OMG, Roy Moore says America should be more like it was when there was a big slave population. Really.
[…] When asked earlier this year when America was last great, Moore acknowledged, according to the Los Angeles Times, that the country had a history of racial tensions. Then he answered the question: “I think it was great at the time when families were united — even though we had slavery — they cared for one another. … Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”
The quote comes from a Los Angeles Times report published in September, but it was recently resurfaced by a viral tweet from former Obama administration official Eric Columbus. […]
For one, which families, exactly, were “united” and “strong,” as Moore claims? Black families were regularly torn apart — and tortured — by slave masters at the time. Slaves often couldn’t even marry, because their marriages were legally considered void.
[…] when, exactly, America was so much better than it is today.
When black people were slaves? When the country committed genocide and ethnic cleansing against Native Americans? Was it when the country looked the other way as white supremacists lynched thousands of black people? When women and black people were denied the right to vote? When black people were legally barred from white-only schools and restaurants?
Was it when women were shunned from having meaningful careers? When same-sex couples couldn’t get married, or even go out into public holding hands without fearing for their safety? The list could really go on. (And some of these still apply today.)
[…] The rhetoric of “make America great again” suggests that those Americans — black, Native American, LGBTQ, women, and so on — just don’t matter, or at least that their plights could be overlooked for whatever benefits the country was supposedly producing — for white men — back then. […]
“Ethics panel wants to interview Farenthold accuser”: “The House Ethics Committee is seeking an interview with Lauren Greene, the former aide to GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold who alleges she was sexually harassed by the Texas Republican….”
From yesterday: “Today a bunch of neo-Fascists attacked our @repubblica newsroom in Rome with smoke-bombs and threatned us all as journalists after our articles about the rise of far-right in Italy. Please share to defend journalism and freedom against new fascisms.”
“Wanted to share a video of Roy Moore in 1997 arguing that kids commit drive-by shooting because they are taught evolution in school: ‘They’re acting like animals because we’ve taught them they come from animals’.”
So Manafort’s lawyer has submitted his response to the SCO and judge re #82. It’s…bad, but I did notice one thing: the reference to the Bail Reform Act. These Trumpists’ claims and those of their followers as applied to their specific cases are almost uniformly bullshit and bad faith, but they might provide an opportunity to talk about the rights of people in the criminal justice system, defendants’ rights, prisoners’ rights, etc., as well as the hypocrisy of their demanding respect for these rights when it comes to them while demanding their abandonment for poor people, minorities, immigrants.
I stopped reading after this: “These reflect some of the fundamental fault lines of human conflict and are unlikely ever to be resolved or settled because we can’t just be socialized or educated out of our stances on these issues, as they are the product of deep-seated, largely heritable predispositions that cause us to vary in our preference for and in our ability to cope with freedom and diversity, novelty and complexity, vs oneness and sameness.”
It is! I suspect there’s more about Franks that he’s not revealing, but regardless all of this needs to be part of the discussion as well. In my brief career or whatever, I was expected to do nonsexual…
no…wait! Not entirely nonsexual, because I had to listen to personal romantic sexual stories and, I assume, sympathize with his point of view. But also to do childcare for benefits which guys received (and then some) with no such expectations. And was still disparaged for insufficient gratitude. I’m reading Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny and, while I have my arguments with it, it couldn’t be more timely.
These people are SO FUCKING AWFUL. We all make decisions that are questionable and regrettable, but they stand apart in their desire to justify and profit from them.
Note that the Prince family are huge funders of the Family Research Council and Focus n the Family.
“And at that moment I knew that neo-imperialism was the answer for my dying wife and mistress and assorted children whoever they may be. Whatever it takes, I will steal the natural resources of Afghanistan.“
…Mr. Trump, who prizes loyalty and seldom forgets a slight, left Democratic members of Congress off his Hanukkah list this year, according to congressional aides tracking the invites. He also did not invite Reform Jewish leaders who have been critical of him or progressive Jewish activists who have differed with him publicly on policy issues.
The move injected a partisan tinge into a normally bipartisan celebration at the White House, where on Thursday Mr. Trump spoke to a crowd standing amid Christmas trees….
What’s President Trump hearing when he watches Fox News?
He’s hearing that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is “illegitimate and corrupt.” That it’s led by a “band of merry Trump-haters” who are trying to reverse the results of the election. And that it must be stopped.
He’s also hearing that the FBI is becoming “America’s secret police,” akin to the KGB in Russia, full of “sickness” and “corruption.”
These are all actual quotes from some of the president’s favorite pro-Trump talk shows.
The overarching message from “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity” is unmistakable: Mr. President, you’re the victim of a “deep state” plot to take you down. Don’t let it happen….
The framing is a little odd. It presents Trump as a passive consumer of this propaganda, but there’s good reason to believe he’s involved in pushing both this media offensive and the Republicans’ orchestrated attack during the Wray hearing yesterday. It all looks a little too coordinated to be a bunch of independent efforts. Trump has been advised that trying to get rid of Mueller would be disastrous, so this is the approach they’re taking to sabotage the investigation and obstruct justice. I wouldn’t assume Trump’s tweets are merely a reaction to what he sees on Fox rather than part of a campaign.
a_ray_in_dilbert_spacesays
Lynna@196 A private spy agency run by an authoritarian theocrat, because, really, what could go wrong? Plus, it will provide script writers with material for generations. Oh, wait. It’s been done. Watch “Burn Notice”.
SC, thank you for comment 224. I watched some of the Fox News presentations. Then I checked some online rightwing media outlets. The attack on Mueller, the attempt to discredit Mueller’s investigation, is full-on. This is no half measure. The rightwing is full steam ahead with this attack, which is not founded on facts.
The intensity and size of the attack has me really worried.
In addition to that attack, we have, (as you noted), Devin Nunes returning to more openly head the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation. He was always in the mix, even after he supposedly, half-assedly recused himself. Every step Nunes has taken was obstructionist. Well, some of his steps were to misdirect attention. The House investigation is now a dead letter box, or a void … choose your metaphor.
While questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee were almost comically partisan:
Director, thank you for being here. And I know this has been touched on a couple of times, and I just want to reiterate something that I hear regularly from my constituents in South Texas. And that’s a concern, we have a special counsel investigating the Trump administration, but it seems like no one is addressing the Clinton administration.
I know the chairman touched on this, as do — did some of the other questions. And I really don’t have a question here, other than to reiterate that it is a pretty strong concern of a lot of the folks that I represent.
That’s from Representative Blake Farenthold, a Republican from Texas.
Other Republicans asked questions that referred to Mueller’s supposed bias, as in, “Did Mueller hire anti-Trump investigators.”
This is from Representative Steve Russell of Oklahoma:
I think that you have to look at the fact that we already have a special investigator that’s been appointed by the President, one that, you know, quite frankly many people see that he is not being favorable to the President, depending upon what political viewpoint you have.
I don’t think there’s some issue on the other side of the aisle that, you know, Mr. Mueller is being unfair.
Good for Evan McMullin. Stand Up Republic, a group founded by McMullin and others, is “spending $500,000 on digital and TV ads that ask Alabama conservatives to reject Republican nominee Roy Moore’s Senate bid.”
The report is in the Washington Post. McMullin says he is an independent, not aligned with either major party, but lately he has edged closer to Democratic Party policies.
KGsays
Lynna, OM@176,
I think I see Trump’s “cunnning plan”! By recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he has unified Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Lebanon, Egypt, Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, Al Qaeda… against him, thus hopefully bringing an end to the internecine strife among Middle Eastern Muslim countries. Clearly, Trump is a secret Muslim, dedicated to unifying the Ummah against the “Zionist entity”!!!!
In any case, point being: Cohen was in the EU zone, relatively close to the Czech Republic only a couple weeks before August. – Josh Marshall, quoted by Lynna, OM@183
Strictly speaking it’s the Schengen Area, which includes 22 of the 28 EU countries, plus the 4 EFTA states and, de facto, 3 microstates, but since Italy and the Czech Republic are both part of it, the point holds. Moreover, you don’t necessarily get your passport stamped when entering a country that requires to see that passport, although I don’t know if this is the case for an American arriving in the Czech Republic directly from the USA.
More wastefulness and arrogance on the part of members of Trump’s cabinet:
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spent more than $14,000 on government helicopters this summer to take himself and staff to and from official events near Washington, D.C., in order to accommodate his attendance at a swearing-in ceremony for his replacement in Congress and a horseback ride with Vice President Mike Pence, according to previously undisclosed official travel documents.
The travel logs, released to POLITICO via a Freedom of Information Act request, show Zinke using taxpayer-funded vehicles from the U.S. Park Police to help accommodate his political events schedule. […]
Zinke also ordered a Park Police helicopter to fly him and another Interior official to and from Yorktown, Va., on July 7 in order to be back in Washington in time for a 4 p.m. horseback ride with Pence. The trip cost about $6,250, according to the documents.
The horseback ride through Rock Creek Park also included Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and CMS Administrator Seema Verma, according to a post on Pence’s Facebook page. […]
I’ve wanted to, but haven’t had the time, to pull together a sampling of the rapid ramping up of demands on the right, particularly on Fox News, for President Trump to fire Robert Mueller. Yesterday, when FBI Director Christopher Wray was testifying, I was surprised to see just how aggressively several GOP Reps backed President Trump’s claims about the FBI’s reputation being in tatters.
Here CNN has put together a good quick sampling of where they’re going.
Let’s face it, what we’re seeing here is a pattern and practice of Mueller hiring known Clinton and Obama political insiders and boosters, supporters, to undo a presidential election—that was the election of Donald Trump. [Laura Ingraham on air.]
—————
Robert Mueller’s partisan, extremely biased, hyper-partisan attack team: we’re gonna name names tonight and explain exactly who these Trump-hating investigators really are, and why this entire witch hunt needs to be shut down, and shut down immediately. [Sean Hannity on air]
And those are just snippets. There’s much more where that came from.
This article about a study of Trump’s lying is very good. He tells an unusually high number of lies, which isn’t that surprising a finding, but also an extraordinary percentage of the lies he tells are malicious and cruel.
Specifically on Ireland, the document commits the UK to the following:
In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with
those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.
– but also to no difference between how northern Ireland and the rest of the UK are treated, unless the Northern Ireland Assembly agrees. In practice, it’s hard to see how both conditions can be met without the whole of the UK remaining, de facto if not de jure, within the Customs Union and the Single Market – so it turns out that Brexit may not after all mean Brexit, contrary to May’s stupid soundbite. This will not go down well with the actual enthusiasts for Brexit within the Tory Parrty (or elsewhere). Nor will the facts that the agreement also allows the decisions of the European Court of Justice a post-Brexit role in protecting EU citizens living in the UK, and commits the UK to something approaching £40 billion as a “divorce settlement”.
I must admit to mixed feelings about this. I had hoped the Government would fall, precipitating a new general election – but OTOH, a “hard Brexit”, especially one with no agreement at all, would be perhaps as disastrous for most people in the UK (including, of course, most of those who voted Leave) as the Republican tax scam will be for most people in the USA. If the final agreement on Ireland is close to this provisional one, it will also make it much harder for the UK government to claim that Scotland could not become independent without a hard border with England.
Some Republicans seem to be finding out what is actually in their Tax bill. They dumbfounded, astonished … and a bit late to the party:
[…] In a letter to their party’s leaders in the House and Senate, 31 Republican House members criticized a provision in their chamber’s tax plan that imposes an income tax on graduate students’ tuition waivers, which give free or discounted enrollment to students who teach or perform research as part of their degree programs.
“A tax on graduate tuition waivers would be unfair, would undermine our competitive position, and would inhibit the economic growth that tax reform promises,” the letter states. It further notes that the policy undermines the goals of tax reform—“to fuel economic growth, create jobs, and raise wages”—contending that a well-educated workforce is necessary to do so.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) led the effort, following office visits with graduate students and schools in his district who came to Washington to voice their concerns. […]
About 145,000 graduate students got tuition waivers in 2011-2012, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. I don’t have more recent statistics.
[…] At the original press conference, Nelson [Beverly Young Nelson] said Moore had signed the yearbook, but made no references to annotations she may have added. On Friday, however, Nelson wrote she had simply added a note at the bottom of his inscription writing the date, “12-22-77,” and “Olde Hickory House,” the restaurant of where the two had met.
This discrepancy is nothing new, however. Moore’s defenders have pointed to the difference between the 7s in “Christmas 1977,” which Moore wrote, and “12-22-77,” which Nelson wrote. As Will Saletan noted in Slate, the inscription and the appended text were obviously written by different people, with Moore writing the former. […] Nelson is confirming that the she wrote one part while Moore wrote the other, but now right-wing media has begun to use this against her by saying the entirety of the inscription is fake. If this were the case, both the handwriting on inscription and the annotation would be the same. […]
Right-wing media outlets are using the “forgery” narrative to undermine the credibility of Nelson’s story and in by extension, the stories of other women who have come forward to accuse Moore of preying on them when they were young girls.
Breitbart’s headline reads, “Bombshell: Roy Moore Accuser Beverly Nelson Admits She Forged Yearbook.”
Right-wing conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec have also used this opportunity to attack Nelson and absolve Moore of any guilt.
The media will spread fabricated and forged documents to attack people. After this Roy Moore yearbook forgery, what can you ever believe?
—————-
The entire media peddled fabricated documents to attack a Republican candidate for Senate
They can never be trusted again
[…] Fox News ran an article on their website using the word “forged” in their headline, although annotations are very different from forgeries. […]
Representative Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, said what he really thinks. It’s not pretty:
Diversity is not our strength. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, “Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one.” Assimilation has become a dirty word to the multiculturalist Left. Assimilation, not diversity, is our American strength.
In the past, King also praised Geert Wilders in a similar fashion:
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.
All the Republicans who signed the letter also voted for the Republican tax bill. Doofuses.
What the hell? This wasn’t an obscure provision. There were dozens of articles about it at the time they were voting. I think universities sent letters complaining.
More examples of Republican Congress critters trying to discredit Robert Muller during the questioning of FBI Director Chris Wray:
JIM JORDAN: “If you kicked everybody off Mueller’s team who was anti-Trump, I don’t think you’d have anybody left!
RAUL LABRADOR: “I have begun to have serious doubts about some in the FBI, serious doubts about the integrity of some of the highest levels of the FBI.”
MATT GAETZ: “Did Bob Mueller recruit people to his probe that had a bias against the president?”
And here are some more examples from Fox News:
JARRETT: I think we now know that the Mueller investigation is illegitimate and corrupt. And Mueller has been using the FBI as a political weapon. And the FBI has become America’s secret police … It’s like the old KGB that comes for you in the dark of the night, banging through your door!
HANNITY: By the way, this is not a game. This is not hyperbole you’re using here!
WONKETTE: Surely not!
JARRETT: No! Ask Paul Manafort. They came for him and broke through his front door …
SC @241, the Republican bubble of misinformation, and of no information whatsoever, is protected by a force field the likes of which the earth has never seen before.
Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who has had several brushes with the law of his own, is thinking about running for the open Senate seat that will be vacated at the end of 2018 by the retiring Jeff Flake. Arpaio told ABC News he was “strongly considering” mounting a run, and also told the Daily Beast Thursday that he wanted to take Flake’s seat. […]
[…] contained within the horrendous Republican tax bill is a literal tax hike on people whose property is destroyed or damaged by “natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes.” This will also affect “losses from fires, accidents, thefts or vandalism.” It turns out the Republicans decided to help pay for their tax cuts for the super-wealthy by eliminating the “casualty loss” tax deduction for victims of these natural disasters. An exemption in the law apparently excludes the victims of the Northern California fires […]
Victims of the fires happening right now in L.A. will not be exempted, however, at least according to the current iteration of the law. Rep. Mike Thompson, a Northern California Democrat, has described this tax hike as “cruel” and “heartless.”
Additionally, a law passed back in September provided a tax deduction for victims of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. Future hurricane victims will, of course, be slammed by the Trump tax bill and the casualty repeal.
Nevertheless, the very fact that Republicans thought it would be an excellent idea to raise taxes on victims of natural disasters is astonishingly tone-deaf and downright vindictive. […]
Disguised Russian agents on Twitter rushed to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump just before last year’s presidential election while straining to refocus criticism on the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to an Associated Press analysis of since-deleted accounts.
Tweets by Russia-backed accounts such as “America_1st_” and “BatonRougeVoice” on Oct. 7, 2016, actively pivoted away from news of an audio recording in which Mr. Trump made crude comments about groping women, and instead touted damaging emails hacked from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
…
AP’s analysis illuminates the obvious strategy behind the Russian cyber meddling: swiftly react, distort and distract attention from any negative Mr. Trump news.
The AP examined 36,210 tweets from Aug. 31, 2015, to Nov. 10, 2016, posted by 382 of the Russian accounts that Twitter shared with congressional investigators last week. Twitter deactivated the accounts, deleting the tweets and making them inaccessible on the internet. But a limited selection of the accounts’ Twitter activity was retrieved by matching account handles against an archive obtained by AP.
…
Within an hour of the Post’s story [about the Access Hollywood tape], WikiLeaks unleashed its own bombshell about hacked email from Podesta’s account, a release the Russian accounts had been foreshadowing for days.*
“WikiLeaks’ Assange signals release of documents before U.S. election,” tweeted both “SpecialAffair” and “ScreamyMonkey” within a second of each other on Oct. 4. “SpecialAffair,” an account describing itself as a “Political junkie in action,” had 11,255 followers at the time. “ScreamyMonkey,” self-described as a “First frontier.News aggregator,” had 13,224. Both accounts were created within three days of each other in late December 2014.**…
Tose specific accounts have been deactivated, but others continue using these exact same tactics.
* Interesting.
** Very interesting – already in 2014.
Hope Hicks has been interviewed by Mueller’s team for the past two days. (Ken Dilanian was on MSNBC earlier talking about how he’s spoken with some lawyers who have clients who’ve appeared before Mueller’s grand jury and were amazed by the thoroughness of the investigation – said they knew the clients’ every move.) The article says the FBI warned her in January and February about emails she was receiving from Russian operatives who were apparently impersonating others.
quotetheunquotesays
The anti-immigrant loony fringe in Canada has a face to put to it, and it belongs to Mark Phillips.
This … individual… approached a family in a strip-mall parking lot in St. Thomas, Ontario (a small city about an hour from where I live) and told them they were “under arrest” for being “terrorists”. He then started swinging a baseball bat at them, and screaming “ISIS! ISIS!” and other nonesense. It seems very likely that the victims of the attack, who were not known to their assailant, were singled out only because they “looked foreign” (they are, in fact, naturalized Canadians of Colombian origin). Fortunately, the … individual… is now in police custody, charged with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one of aggravated assault.
I am so angry, angry that we’ve been brought down to this level, that I want to break things. Better turn off the computer (and the radio) for a while.
Update to #s 100 and 207 – Mueller has, as far as I can tell, asked the judge for leave to respond to Manafort’s submission (see #207) and requested and been granted permission to release certain documents pertaining to the oped. The paperwork and supporting documents (including Manafort/Gates interesting emails re their PR strategy from the fall of 2016) are at the link here. (I don’t know why none of this is on the Special Counsel site.) The exhibits include Manafort’s editing of the oped, including the extensive tracked changes made by him – which the final document mirrors – and an email Voloshin sent to the US embassy in Ukraine falsely claiming that he was the sole author and only sent the draft to Kilimnik for fact-checking, who sent it on to Manafort to “have a look at” because his name is mentioned. Amazingly, Manafort and his lawyers went along with this to a large extent even though they had to know – because it was in Mueller’s request that the judge not accept the changes to Manafort’s bail – that Mueller had these communications.
One aspect of note are the passages Manafort deleted from the draft. They’re actually pretty funny.
“This Erik Prince Transcript Is Unbelievable”: “…The day before Junior’s appearance, a friendly member of Congress not unfamiliar with the shebeen gave me a heads-up. Wait until the transcript of Erik Prince’s testimony is released, this friendly person said. You won’t believe it. It was the considered opinion that Prince possibly was the most arrogant jackass ever to appear before a congressional committee. The transcript was released on Thursday and it will be hard to trust my pal again, considering how far he low-balled Prince’s attitude. The witness did everything except drop trou and moon the committee. There was a time, and not so long ago, when a person who treated a congressional committee like a group of not-very-competent valet parking attendants would have been introduced to institutional dining for a few months, But this is the present Congress with the present Republican majorities, so Prince looked up from the witness table and saw what he perceived to be a gathering of ambulatory doormats….”
The man who launched America’s largest and longest-running Christian music festival has been “indefinitely suspended” from the ministry and his church following his arrest Wednesday on charges of child molestation.
Harry L. Thomas, founder of the Creation Festival and senior pastor of Come Alive New Testament Church in Medford, New Jersey, has been accused of sexually assaulting four children over a 16-year period between 1999 and 2015.
…
Thomas, 74, has been charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault, three counts of sexual assault, and four counts of endangering the welfare of children, according to the prosecutor’s office in Burlington County, New Jersey, where Thomas lives and where his church is located.
…
According to the South Jersey Courier-Post, Thomas advocated for a couple in his church who were accused of starving four foster kids in their care in 2003 and were sentenced to prison for “endangering the welfare of the children.”
Thomas’s Come Alive Ministries puts on the Creation Festivals, a pair of multi-day Christian music events in Pennsylvania and Washington state, that draw up to 100,000 attendees a year….
Between December 1 and December 8, we examined 60 articles that were among the top URLs shared by Kremlin-oriented accounts on Twitter. The most prominent theme (featured in 18% of examined URLs) was an attempt to discredit the FBI, especially after it was revealed that an agent had been demoted for sending anti-Trump texts. The Michael Flynn plea was the subject of 15% of URLs; of those URLs, 45% attacked the credibility of the FBI and the remaining 55% criticized ABC for an erroneous Trump-Flynn report or the Obama administration for allegedly “green lighting” communication between Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak. Other prominent topics were the IOC’s decision to ban Russia from the 2018 Winter Games (8%), the not-guilty verdict in the Kate Steinle case/immigration issues (7%), and sexual misconduct (14% – half attacked accused Democrats and the other half defended Roy Moore). Articles on geopolitics featured Syria (6 URLs), immigration in the EU (2 URLs), Ukraine (1 URL), and North Korea (1 URL). The article on North Korea was the only URL critical of President Trump.
This WNYC segment gets at how pathetic and intellectually dishonest* Cernovich is. He’s dangerous, but also very sad.
* “I did not misrepresent Seder. But the media lies about me, so I was right to misrepresent him, and how dare they complain about misrepresentation. But I didn’t misrepresent him. And my misrepresentation was justified by theirs.”
Re: @PageSix story: Yes, it’s true. And though I’m offended by his comments on ‘other matters’ – as I said on @77WABCradio & @BillSchulz’s show yesterday – I was neither threatened nor offended in elevator. End of story. Now, plz let me get back to @TheCrownNetflix.
But it wasn’t the end of the story, because the Page Six piece quotes more from her description:
“Now I have matured I think I would say, ‘Woah, no’, but at the time I was younger and I was a little shocked. I thought maybe he didn’t mean to do it, but I was kind of making excuses. The elevator incident and the lunch was 2005 or 2006,” she added. Trump married Melania in January 2005.
She also describes how she was angry that Trump rejected the accusations, including by her, about O’Reilly.
Trump was lobbied “almost daily” by evangelical Christians regarding recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel:
Evangelical leaders have urged supporters to email the White House about moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They have advocated on television. And since Mr. Trump took office, they have spoken about it frequently with him and other White House officials, according to multiple evangelical leaders close to Mr. Trump.
“While this decision was not made exclusively in response to evangelicals, it would not have been made without the evangelical influence,” said Johnnie Moore, a member of Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory board…. Mr. Moore said recognizing Jerusalem as the capital has been a frequent topic of conversation when evangelical leaders visit the White House, which under Mr. Trump has been almost daily.
[…] Radical TV preacher Pat Robertson [told viewers], “The last battle is going to be over Jerusalem … that is the holy city. You go in favor of breaking up Jerusalem, you’re going against the direct word of Jesus, and this is a prophecy that has stood for hundreds of years.” Robert Jeffress, a Texas megachurch pastor and prominent White House ally, added that Jerusalem is the place Jesus “will set foot again on earth at his second coming.”
[…] while the White House confronts international criticisms for abandoning a delicate U.S. policy, and deals with the regional unrest generated by Trump’s announcement, it’s worth recognizing who had the administration’s ear. And in this case, those who had access and influence with the president’s team had a faith-based vision that came to fruition this week.
The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, another close White House ally, added this week that U.S. foreign policy towards Israel “is coming into alignment with biblical truth,” at least as the religious right movement sees it. […]
Donald Trump stating that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel likely pleases pro-Israel GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, plus Trump’s Christian right supporters, for purely religious reasons. Joy Reid and her guest discuss the deeper background.
The video is 10:22 minutes long. Well worth watching. The discussion of the “deeper background” is excellent.
Excerpts from the short speech Trump gave today when he visited the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil rights Museum:
The civil rights museum records the oppression, cruelty and injustice inflicted on the African-American community, the fight to bring down Jim Crow and end segregation, to gain the right to vote and to achieve the sacred birthright of equality. And it’s big stuff. That’s big stuff.
Those are very big phrases, very big words. Here we memorialize the brave men and women who struggled to sacrifice and sacrifice so much so that others might live in freedom.
From the opposition to Trump:
[…] The national president of the NAACP and the mayor of Mississippi’s capital city said they kept their distance from Trump because of his “pompous disregard” for the values embodied by the civil rights movement.
Derrick Johnson, head of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, and Mayor Chokwe Lumumba said at a news conference that they looked forward to a “grander opening” of the museum that they can attend.
Johnson, a Mississippian, charged that Trump opposes labor rights, education, health care and voting rights for all Americans.
“We will never cede the stage to an individual who will fight against us,” Johnson said. “We will not allow the history of those who sacrificed to be tarnished for political expediency.” […]
Adding some details to the decision by Trump and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by more than a million acres:
[…] A uranium company lobbied the Trump administration to shrink the size of Bears Ears National Monument […]
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has repeatedly denied that the administration’s decision was influenced by energy opportunities, telling reporters on Tuesday that “this is not about energy” and repeatedly pointing out that there are “no measurable oil and gas opportunities in Bears Ears.” […]
According to the documents obtained by the Washington Post, however, Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of a Canadian firm that operates the nation’s last uranium mill just outside of the monument, argued that reducing the monument would allow them to access deposits of uranium located within the monuments’ original boundaries which could “provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.” […]
Trump decimated two National Monuments and proclaimed, “Our precious natural treasures must be protected, and they, from now on, will be protected.” Trump lied.
[…] Frank Montoya, Jr. told Business Insider that the intelligence community is frustrated the president does not rail against Russia to the same degree he shares his criticism of the Justice Department and intelligence agencies.
“There is a lot of anger in the FBI (the entire intelligence community, for that matter) over how this president will say nary a negative word about the Russians, but will insult us every chance he gets,” Montoya, Jr. said. […]
From Wonkette, “Roy Moore Supporters Just Dunning-Kruegered The Hell Out Of This Focus Group”
If you are anything like us, or are just a normal human person who would not go out and vote an accused ephebophile into the United States Senate, you are probably wondering what the hell is wrong with people who would. […]
Last night, a segment on Vice News on HBO featured a Roy Moore supporter focus group, moderated by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, in hopes of giving us all some insight into the minds of these disturbed voters.
The primary gist is that most of these voters think that Roy Moore’s accusers are lying and possibly being paid to do so — but also that the things they are accusing him of are totally fine anyway and they see absolutely nothing wrong with them. You know, because people are often paid by mysterious entities to falsely accuse politicians of things that there is nothing wrong with them having done. […]
“If Roy Moore was guilty, if he was at the mall hitting on this 14-year-old… Forty years ago in Alabama, there’s a lotta Mamas and Daddies that’d be thrilled that their 14-year-old was getting hit on by a district attorney.” […]
One man’s answer, perhaps ironically, was that “Because they listen to people that have influence over them,” and also because they are “stupid.” One woman opined that race relations in Alabama had been absolutely fantastic from the 1980s up until Obama was elected, which does not exactly sound like a thing that was true for the black people living there.
Another woman wondered why it is that they wanted all the immigrants to steal their jobs, and why they wanted babies to be aborted at 9 months (which, shockingly, is not a thing). […]
Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, will be Roy Moore’s colleague if Moore wins. Shelby is not looking forward to that:
The state of Alabama deserves better.
If he wins, we have to seat him. Then there will immediately be an ethics investigation. The allegations are significantly stronger than the denial. […]
When it got to the 14-year-old story, that was enough for me. I said, I can’t vote for Roy Moore.
Lindsey Graham has jumped the shark. He is fulling supporting various conspiracy theories coming out of the White House. He is also backing Trump’s call for more investigations of Hillary Clinton:
Was there collusion between DOJ and Fusion GPS to use Democratic funded dossier for political and legal purposes?
We need to know the answer to those questions.
———————-
It’s long past time for a Special Counsel to investigate Clinton email scandal, Uranium One, role of Fusion GPS, and FBI and DOJ bias during 2016 campaign.
—————-
I will be challenging Rs and Ds on Senate Judiciary Committee to support a Special Counsel to investigate ALL THINGS 2016 — not just Trump and Russia.
[…] Note here the things that Graham is including in his call. They range from things that are fairly unreasonable or without significant merit to things that are totally crazy. He is asking for a Special Counsel to reinvestigate Clinton’s private server, the Uranium One story, which is completely ludicrous, and anti-GOP bias at the FBI, which is not only factually nonsensical but seems intended to lay the groundwork for ideological purges of the primary national law enforcement agency which already has a very Republican-leaning political culture. […]
Fox News is loving the fact that Lindsey Vonn, an Olympic skiing champion, was injured. Why would you cheer when an athlete is injured? Because Vonn committed the sin of being critical of Trump.
Lindsey Vonn, the most successful American ski racer in history, suffered a back injury while competing at the World Cup in Switzerland, threatening her participation in the Olympic games next year.
Fox News could barely contain its glee.
In an article posted without a byline, the network quickly connected Vonn’s injury to her criticism of President Trump days earlier. The clear implication is that, as a result of her comments, Vonn deserved to get hurt. [The headline was “Lindsey Vonn suffers back injury in World Cup race after Trump comments.”] […]
Also from Fox News: “The injury occurred two days after she criticized President Donald Trump in an interview about the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea.”
Vonn’s comments were mild, and she has a right to voice her views:
I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president. I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremony. I want to represent our country well. I don’t think that there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that.
Even Sarah Huckabee Sanders dissed Vonn:
If you don’t want to represent our country, that says a lot more about your character than it does the president’s. The president is proud to represent this country. He’s very proud to be an American.
Vonn added that if she does win an Olympic medal, she will not visit the White House.
Ainsley Earhardt, a co-host of Fox & Friends, called Vonn “very un-American.”
More fallout from Trump’s ill-considered recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital:
[…] the Palestinian Authority canceled a scheduled meeting with Pence […]
“It’s unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is walking away again from an opportunity to discuss the future of the region, but the Administration remains undeterred in its efforts to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and our peace team remains hard at work putting together a plan,” Pence’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, said in a statement.
Pence is scheduled to visit the Middle East later this month, but will no longer be meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, nor Pope Tawadros II, the head of Egypt’s Coptic Church. Both said there decisions were in response to Wednesday’s announcement by President Donald Trump that the U.S. was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.. […]
“NEW: Women who have publicly accused President Trump of sexual harassment and assault will speak at a news conference, hosted by @bravenewfilms, Monday at 10:30 a.m. ET. The women are calling for an investigation by Congress of sexual misconduct by the president.”
I’ve had it with the way cable news is treating the AL Senate race.
Pundits resorting to the same tropes they did with the VA elections – Jones isn’t a “strong presence” in AL and doesn’t have a “good message” to rally black voters – just like they went on and on about what a terrible campaign Northam was running and what a boring candidate he was. (Jones has been a tireless campaigner with a very well-run effort; Moore is nowhere to be seen – refusing to debate his opponent, not campaigning or addressing the voters, and unwilling to do interviews about policy.) When they do mention Moore’s non-campaign, it’s almost always to ask whether this is good strategy for him. (How about what it means for democracy to have a Senate candidate who refuses to appear publicly to speak to matters of urgent public interest and engage with his opponent and potential constituents?)
An almost exclusive focus on Moore and his scandals, with almost no discussion of policy. They’ve learned nothing from their coverage of the 2016 campaigns. (Moore is woefully ignorant about policy and resting on a handful of racist and Religious Right talking points while Jones talks about actual policy concerning health care, education, and equality. Moore is running to be a US Senator – it matters to all of us in the US, and beyond, that he has no policy knowledge, 19th-century ideas, no respect for the Constitution, and a demonstrated lack of interest in participating in a deliberative body with people who have different views and backgrounds.)
Extraordinarily little airtime devoted to Jones or his platform. I don’t even know who Jones’ spokesperson is, that’s how little attention they’ve paid to his candidacy, and to the extent that they do cover him it’s almost exclusively to talk about what he’s saying about Moore. (Meanwhile Vaughn Hillyard is doing great work covering the campaign; they interview him and then proceed to ignore what he’s said to fall back into their preset tropes and emphases.)
…Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro called for the “cleansing” of law enforcement officials who are investigating the president on her show Saturday night. She said the FBI and Justice Department have too many “political hacks” embedded and called on a whole bunch of federal law enforcement officials to be arrested.
“There have been times in our history where corruption and lawlessness were so pervasive that examples had to be made. This is one of those times,” she said. “I for one am tired of investigations, politicians posturing. Something more has to be done.”
…
Pirro called Comey a “political wh[*]re” during her show last week.
She continued on Saturday: “There is a cleansing needed in our FBI and Department of Justice — it needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in cuffs!”
“Handcuffs for Andrew McCabe, deputy director of the FBI. The man at the hub, protecting Hillary and attempting to destroy Trump.”…
Our democratic republic is in far more danger than it was even a few weeks ago.
Until this point, there was an underlying faith in much of the political world that if Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian collusion in the election turned up unmistakably damning material about Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress would feel obligated by their commitment to the country’s well-being to accept Mueller’s findings and challenge the president.
…
Surely, said the optimists, we have not drifted so far from decency that this sort of patriotism is beyond us.
Well, it sure seems to be. It’s not surprising that Trump and those on his payroll want to protect him at all costs. But we learned last week that Republicans are deepening their complicity in derailing Mueller’s investigation and burying the facts. The more Mueller imperils Trump, the more McCarthyite the GOP becomes.
…
Because we are inured to extreme partisanship and to the political right’s habit of rejecting inconvenient facts, we risk overlooking the profound political crisis that a Trumpified Republican Party could create. And the conflagration may come sooner rather than later, as Mueller zeroes in on Trump and his inner circle.
…
Trump himself told us plainly on Friday night in Pensacola, Fla., that he will do whatever it takes to hold power, and he should be taken seriously. “There are powerful forces in Washington trying to sabotage our movement,” he declared. “These are bad people, these are very, very bad and evil people. . . . But you know what, we’re stopping them. You’re seeing that right now.”
We are far closer to the edge than we want to think.
SC @ 276, when Congress critters were questioning him, I noticed that Christopher Wray, (the current director of the FBI), was surprised when one of the committee members, (a Republican of course), prefaced a question with the assumption that Andrew McCabe, deputy director of the FBI, was biased against Trump.
I think it was Louie Gohmert who inserted that false assumption into his questions.
Director Wray had not heard that before, or at least he seemed surprised by that particular conspiracy theory. He took issue with Gohmert’s assumption about McCabe. Then Wray answered Gohmert’s series of offensive questions about particular individuals within the FBI voicing bias against Trump. “No,” Wray said, over and over again.
It occurs to me that even well-informed people like Christopher Wray do not know the full extent of rightwing folderol that is arrayed against them.
SC @274, Trump is unbelievably stupid … and repetitive. I’m sure that the way NATO works has been explained to him many times. Once Trump gets a wrong idea, (or a “fact” that’s wrong), into his head, the damage is permanent.
Trump reminds me of one of my relatives who died of Alzheimer’s disease. A few favorite tropes were repeated over and over. No new information was admitted. Bigoted and/or clearly inaccurate information was bolstered through repetition.
[…] What we found is that Trump is misunderstanding how NATO’s joint defense is paid for, and that Germany doesn’t owe anything. […]
NATO, formally the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was created in 1949 to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. Currently, 28 countries (including the United States and Germany) are members.
The members agreed that “an armed attack against one or more of them … shall be considered an attack against them all” […]
As of 2014, NATO’s collective agreement directed members to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense spending by 2024. According to NATO, only five counties meet that obligation today: the United States, Greece, Estonia, Poland and the United Kingdom. […]
Germany only pays 1.2 percent of their GDP on defense spending. German leaders have said they intend to boost military spending.
The problem with Trump’s claim, however, is that Germany doesn’t pay that money to NATO or the United States or any other country, said Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
[…] “[…] there is no central bank this money goes into, and there is no transaction.”
[…] “The relatively low levels of military spending among U.S. allies is completely rational,” said Christopher Preble, the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. “They don’t see a pressing need to spend more.”
Trump’s argument that the United States needs to be paid more also misrepresents how NATO works, experts told us.
“Trump seems to represent the NATO alliance as a licensing deal — one in which countries like Germany pay the United States for its power and influence,” said Laicie Heeley, a military budget expert at the Stimson Center, a defense policy think tank. “This is not the case.”
The United States does provide an outsized military commitment to NATO, but this is not done as a favor for Europe; it’s done to benefit all countries in the alliance, experts said. And the United States has several high-profile military bases in Germany that are vital, serving as a key launching point for attacks against terrorists in the Middle East. […]
NATO members agreed to spend 2 percent of their country’s GDP on defense by 2024. But that’s not in payments to NATO. Each country funds its own defense, while NATO serves as an umbrella organization meant to protect all members.
Experts say Trump is mistaken.
We rate this claim False.
Additional link to information showing that Trump is also wrong when he takes credit for refocusing NATO members on combating terrorism.
State and local government spending on jails and prisons has risen at more than three times the spending on education in the last two and a half decades. […]
While I sought harsh punishments for violent offenders as U.S. attorney, not all cases require severe sentences. My hands were tied by mandatory minimum sentences during my time with the Justice Department. Judges and prosecutors should be given flexibility and be empowered to decide the fate of those before them in the justice system.
As both a former federal prosecutor and practicing attorney, I disagree with the attorney general rolling back sentencing reform efforts. Those sentencing reforms reduced the prison population, saving money that could be better utilized to provide education and services to families. […]
Along with sentencing reform, we must reduce sentencing disparities that see a disproportionate number of black and Latino Americans sentenced to prison. People of color make up 67 percent of the prison population, even though they make up only 37 percent of the population of the United States.
I also support modifying the three-strikes law to provide alternatives to lifetime sentences for men and women convicted of non-violent offenses capable of returning to their families and to society as productive citizens. […]
From Steve Benen, a more thorough look at one aspect of the Republican tax plan. The plan will damage educational institutions in the U.S.:
[…] Under the GOP’s vision, student loans would become more expensive, employer-based tuition assistance would get taxed, college endowment would take a significant hint, teachers would see key tax breaks disappears, and graduate students would find their tuition waivers treated as taxable income.
[…] college presidents contend that the GOP package “would be a devastating blow that would make college – especially graduate school – more expensive, and further out of reach of low- and middle-income families.”
The effects on the American workforce, as well as American society, would likely be significant. It’s against this backdrop that the Dallas Morning News reported the other day that some Republican lawmakers are rethinking some of their party’s plans.
Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions is pressing GOP leadership to ensure that the party’s final tax revamp preserves the tax-exempt status of a critical tuition reduction used by tens of thousands of graduate students across the U.S.
That tax-free standing, tied to those students’ work as teaching or research assistants, has hung in the balance for weeks after the House-approved version of the tax bill marked it for elimination.
Such a change would make the reductions count as taxable income, skyrocketing the burden for many grad students already feeling a financial squeeze. […]
[…] there are still all kinds of elements of the Republican tax plan that would push the nation backwards on education policy. Are GOP lawmakers prepared to reject those “misguided” provisions, too?
In addition, other aspects of the tax plan take money away from public schools and funnel it into the hands of fairly well-off parents who want to send their children to private schools for their elementary and high school education.
[…] In 2011, Alabama lawmakers passed a photo ID law, ostensibly to combat voter fraud. But “voter impersonation” at polling places virtually never happens. The truth is that the lawmakers wanted to keep black and Latino voters from the ballot box. We know this because they’ve always been clear about their intentions.
A state senator who had tried for over a decade to get the bill into law, told The Huntsville Times that a photo ID law would undermine Alabama’s “black power structure.” In The Montgomery Advertiser, he said that the absence of an ID law “benefits black elected leaders.”
The bill’s sponsors were even caught on tape devising a plan to depress the turnout of black voters — whom they called “aborigines” and “illiterates” who would ride “H.U.D.-financed buses” to the polls […]
For many of us, it might be easy to take a few hours off from work, drive to the nearest department of motor vehicles office, wait in line, take some tests, hand over $40 and leave with a driver’s license that we can use to vote. But this requires resources that many rural, low-income people around the country simply do not have.
I work with poor, black Alabamians. Many of them don’t have cars or driver’s licenses and make under $10,000 a year. They cannot afford to pay someone to drive them to the motor vehicles or registrar’s office, which is often miles away.
Photo ID laws are written to make it difficult for people like them to vote. And that’s exactly what happens. A study by Zoltan Hajnal, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, comparing the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, found that the voter ID law kept black voters from the polls. After Alabama implemented its strict voter ID law, turnout in its most racially diverse counties declined by almost 5 percentage points, which is even more than the drop in diverse counties in other states. […]
In Alabama, an estimated 118,000 registered voters do not have a photo ID they can use to vote. Black and Latino voters are nearly twice as likely as white voters to lack such documentation. […]
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a United States senator, applauded the ruling as “good news” for the South. For Mr. Sessions, who called the Voting Rights Act an “intrusive” piece of legislation, it was a victory. But for voters in Alabama and the rest of the South, it was terrible news. […]
SC @284, Working with Trump has amplified the worst impulses in Jeff Sessions. Ditto for General Kelly. Ditto for Lindsey Graham. It’s alarming.
In other news, the wall-to-wall coverage of Roy Moore’s failure to appear on the campaign trail doesn’t seem to recognize that there’s an easy explanation: when you have a candidate that says America was greater when we had slavery, it’s a good idea to hide him away and have him say nothing. When Moore doesn’t say some newly awful shit for a few days, Republican voters go back to supporting him. I think they project whatever they want onto the Republican candidate.
From Josh Marshall, seeing Steve Bannon as “the King of Bullshit Mountain.”
[…] the tide has turned dramatically. The President is full-force endorsing [Roy Moore]. The RNC is back in formal support. Fox News is maniacally on board.
What was the turning point? […] Sean Hannity appeared to make a weak defense of Moore and then came back a day later giving him a 24 ultimatum to clear his name or drop out of the race. Clearly, in the nature of things, there was no way Moore could prove his innocence in 24 hours. Even if we posit the unlikely scenario that he was, in fact, innocent of the accusations against him, it would still be impossible. What made Hannity’s demand so potent, in addition to his role as chief alligator of the GOP fever swamp, is the perception (seemingly accurate) that he speaks for President Trump and President Trump speaks for him. It was apparently Bannon who interceded with Hannity to lift his ultimatum.
From Josh’s piece:
Even so, Bannon was most alarmed by Hannity’s ultimatum to Moore and moved to intervene, according to three people familiar with his actions. Along with Breitbart’s Washington editor, Matthew Boyle, he besieged the Fox News host with phone calls and texts. Bannon, who recently told the New York Times that Hannity is “the single most important voice for the ‘deplorables’” — his term for Trump supporters — asked the Fox host not to call on Moore to withdraw and instead to let Alabama voters decide, said people familiar with Bannon’s activities.
[…] No doubt it was Bannon – still in regular communication with the President, despite his nominal firing – who cajoled Trump into going back to full-scale support. […] By this weekend Trump was all in.
Again, we see that Bannon is the preeminent, most successful strategist and foot soldier of all the poison that is assembled under the banner of Trumpism. Not terribly well-known, it was Bannon and then-Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz who led the charge in attempting to discredit the wave of harassment accusers who seemed certain to derail Trump’s campaign in October 2016. He is also the one in the background pushing the increasingly virulent calls emanating out of Fox News to fire Bob Mueller and lead some kind of purge of the FBI to protect the President.[…].
This makes me laugh. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin released a one-page (one page!) report that supposedly proves that the Republican tax cut will pay for itself.
[…] it’s a little skimpy on details. But those welfare cuts and the increase to the annual growth rate of 0.7 percent, they say, will lead to “an increase in tax revenues during the 10-year period of approximately $1.8 trillion.” See! We’re going to come out at least $300 billion ahead of where every single other analysis says we will! But this time it’s not just the magical unicorn of “growth” doing it. It also means cutting the welfare of all those slackers out there. Because freedom.
Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer calls it. It’s “fake math,” he says. “It’s clear the White House and Republicans are grasping at straws to prove the unprovable and garner votes for a bill that nearly every single independent analysis has concluded will blow up the deficit and generate almost no additional economic activity to make up for it.” But it might be enough to get the inspector general off Mnuchin’s ass.
A failed suicide bomb attack in NYC injured the bomber (not fatally), and caused minor hearing damage to three other people. Here is how Trump responded … well, failed to respond, really:
Another false story, this time in the Failing @nytimes, that I watch 4-8 hours of television a day – Wrong! Also, I seldom, if ever, watch CNN or MSNBC, both of which I consider Fake News. I never watch Don Lemon, who I once called the “dumbest man on television!” Bad Reporting.
Here’s the response from The New York Times:
We stand by our reporting, sourced from interviews with 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.
During the press conference held today by three of Trump’s accusers, new details emerged about his form of sexual harassment:
[…] Trump called Jessica Leeds a [C-word] after allegedly groping her on an airplane in the late 1970’s, Leeds said on Megyn Kelly Today Monday morning.
Three years after the incident, Leeds said she ran into Trump when she was working at a fundraising gala in New York City.
“I knew and I recognized him, immediately,” Leeds said. “He stands there, as I’m handing him his table assignment and he says, I remember you. You were that” — Leeds paused — “woman from the airplane. He called me the worst name ever.”
Kelly asked Leeds if there was a descriptor before woman, and Leeds said yes, adding, “It’s the worst one.”
“You don’t want to say it out loud. Does it begin with a ‘C’?” Kelly asked. Leeds said yes, and Kelly asked if the word ended with a “T,” and Leeds said yes again.
Leeds joined Kelly Monday morning along with two other women, Samantha Holvey and Rachel Crooks, who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Crooks says Trump forcibly kissed her in Trump Tower in 2005, and Holvey says Trump “inspected” her and other Miss USA pageant contestants, calling the interaction “the dirtiest I felt in my entire life.” […]
In a statement released to Kelly during the taping Monday, the White House said, “These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign. And the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory. The timing and absurdity of these claims speaks volumes. And the publicity tour only confirms the political motives behind them.” […]
“It is heartbreaking,” Holvey said Monday when Kelly asked if speaking out was scary. “We’re private citizens and for us to put ourselves out there to try to show America who this man is and especially how he views women and for them to say, ‘We don’t care,’ it hurt. And so, you know, now, it’s just like, all right, let’s try round two. The environment’s different. Let’s try again.” […]
Leeds also said Monday that she wants to see an Congressional inquiry into Trump’s behavior, too.
“I think that’s fair. They were more than willing to do that for Senator Franken,” she said. “Why is the president immune to that?” […]
Update to #252 – Manafort remains under house arrest, has been warned by the judge about further communications to the media about the case, and will appear in court again on January 16th.
[…] Unfortunately, for the past 11 months, the response to Iran’s good faith has been tantrums from the Trump administration. But the unreliability of the United States — from climate change to Palestine— has become predictable.
Our main concern now is cautioning European countries against wavering on issues beyond the scope of the nuclear agreement and following in lock step behind the White House. As the nuclear deal and the Middle East enter uncharted and potentially combustible territory, it is imperative that Europe helps ensure that we don’t soon find ourselves repeating history. […]
The quoted text if from an op-ed published in The New York Times.
When Beverly Nelson told her story on CNN about the night in the 1970s when she says Roy Moore sexually assaulted her, her voice quavered, and tears streamed down her face. “Instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck,” Nelson said, “to force my head onto his crotch.”
Laughter breaks out around me.
I’m at a community center in Opelika, Alabama, in an office where residents are trickling in to register to vote. I came here to meet Roy Moore supporters, and to play this YouTube clip of Nelson to understand what they saw in it. To them, it was an amusing performance of a political plant, a liar — or, at least, an embellisher — crying “crocodile tears.” […]
If Moore wins, it will feel a lot like the 2016 election in miniature. Donald Trump won despite a damning video where he admitted to groping women without their permission. […]
For the past few years, I’ve been reporting on political psychology, probing the scientific theories about how voters think and why. […]
Here’s the first thing to know about political psychology: When we’re deeply loyal to a team, we see the world differently. In sports, penalties are always the other team’s fault.
It’s called motivated reasoning, and we often don’t realize we’re doing it. We automatically have an easier time remembering information that fits our world views. We’re quicker to recognize information that confirms what we already know, which makes us blind to facts that discount it.
[…] one crucial reason why Moore’s most adamant supporters don’t see a scandalized politician is that they see a folk hero. “He’s our Johnny Appleseed, our Davy Crockett,” says Thomas Sparrow, who works on the Moore campaign as a volunteer.
[…] Ann Bennett, a third-generation Alabama Republican living in Opelika, has a very different view. She says Moore’s actions were like the biblical figures Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to bow down to, and worship, a golden statue of a king, and were thrown into a furnace for their disobedience. “Roy Moore has to be one of the highest integrity people who have ever entered politics,” Bennett says. “Who else gives up the most powerful positions in the state of Alabama, and the money that came with it?” At one point, Bennett joked Moore may be “far too ethical” for the Senate.
[…] “What happened to Roy Moore is the scariest thing in the world,” Bennett says. “That any of us could live a life of complete integrity, and have your name ruined forever. And then have your name ruined with false allegations.”
[…] It’s like we have an immune system for uncomfortable thoughts. And you can see it working in real time, trying to sort out why a damning piece of evidence may not be so bad after all.
In the CNN clip, Nelson says Moore locked the door when she protested. This is ridiculous, my companions in Opelika laughed. “The only way you can’t get out of a locked door is with child-proof locks,” Bennett says. And child-proof locks didn’t exist in the ’70s.
But he was larger than her, I say. He could have forced her to stay inside, regardless.
Exactly, Bennett says.
“If he wanted to do anything, he would have done it,” she says. “If he was turned on, he would have done it. He’s strong, he was into martial arts, he would have done it. He would have raped her.” The fact that Moore didn’t rape her (Nelson does not allege rape), that he relented, is proof enough. […]
Throughout history, different groups of people have always interpreted political stories in different ways. Here’s what’s different today: There are more structures, technologies, and social norms in place to further wedge us apart. There’s a whole conservative media ecosystem built to fortify the conservative worldview. There’s Facebook, whose algorithm makes sure we never have to read an opposing viewpoint. […]
And then there’s Trump, throwing gasoline on this motivated reasoning engine. […]
And the denials of misconduct around Roy Moore are tinged with conspiracy theory. How else should we describe arguments made by Moore backers that someone, maybe George Soros, must be paying these women? […]
“I am so angry at the thought that they might not seat him,” Bennett says. “That is like Civil War stuff for me.” […]
This time last year, Alabama’s chief elections official landed in the national spotlight for delivering a screed against nonvoters that many people interpreted as an attack on African Americans in the state, who have long faced barriers to voting. “If you’re too sorry or lazy to get up off of your rear and to go register to vote, or to register electronically, and then to go vote, then you don’t deserve that privilege,” Republican John Merrill said in an interview with documentary filmmaker Brian Jenkins. Jenkins had asked why he opposed automatically registering Alabamians when they reach voting age, and his response sizzled with anger toward people who “think they deserve the right because they’ve turned 18.” So he made a pledge: “As long as I’m secretary of state of Alabama, you’re going to have to show some initiative to become a registered voter in this state.”
In the year since he made those comments, Merrill has in many ways made good on his promise. When Alabamians go to the polls on Tuesday to elect Republican Roy Moore or Democrat Doug Jones as their new senator, an untold number will not participate due to the decisions made by Merrill’s office—which is in charge of ensuring a fair voting process—and by the Republicans who run the state. These laws and policies overwhelmingly make it harder for minorities to vote.
…
In recent years, Alabama Republicans have taken steps to protect their grip on power by making it harder for African Americans and Latinos to vote. They passed a law requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID, a measure that has been found to disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans and Latinos, who are more likely to lack such an ID and face impediments to getting one. The ID law also applied to absentee voting, which is used by many elderly black voters in rural counties, who now must mail in copies of their photo IDs with their ballots. (The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is challenging the law in federal court as intentionally discriminatory.) They reformed campaign finance laws to weaken the political organizations that mobilize African American voters. They closed 31 DMV offices across the state, disproportionately affecting rural majority-black counties. In every county in which African Americans made up more than 75 percent of registered voters, the local DMV was slated for closure. (After a federal civil rights investigation, Alabama agreed to increase DMV service in rural African American counties, partially reversing the closures.) Since the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, allowing states like Alabama to change voting procedures without federal approval, Alabama has closed about 200 voting precincts, creating longer lines and sowing confusion among voters….
The Roy Moore campaign issued a “primer” describing ways to discredit Moore’s accusers. Link
[…] “We have prepared a primer that lists the ‘fake news’ put out by four women followed by some of the evidence and responses that has been uncovered and that show the claims to be entirely false,” the document begins. […]
As SC noted up-thread, John Conyers resigned in response to accusations of sexual harassment. Wonkette covered the bullshit idea of keeping that seat open for 11 months:
Why the hell is the Michigan Democratic Party down with Rick Snyder’s plan to hold John Conyers’s seat open for 11 whole months? We get why the Republican governor wants to deny representation to the Democratic residents of Detroit — and we’re sure that Paul Ryan was thrilled to unwrap that early Christmas present. But why are Michigan Democrats going along with him? Can they really be craven enough to deprive 700,000 people of Congressional representation just to leave the field open for one of their own to take the seat? […]
[…]Despite having no relevant political experience and a prior domestic violence arrest, Conyers endorsed his son John Conyers III to take over for him. At the same time, his nephew Ian Conyers, a state senator, is also claiming the endorsement, exacerbating the appearance of a dynastic sense of entitlement to the seat. […]
Let’s slow-walk through the stupid here. […] As of today, residents in most of Detroit and parts of Wayne county have no Congressman. On August 7, they will cast a vote in the special election primary to fill Conyers’s seat. They will ALSO cast a vote in the regularly scheduled primary for the same seat. On November 6, they will again cast two votes. The winner of the special election will be sworn in, just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas recess. The winner of the general election will be sworn in for a full term on January 3, 2019. […]
And we get why [Governor] Snyder thinks this is a wonderful plan. Not only does it decrease the margin House Republicans need to ram through their rape’n’pillage legislation, it deprives Michigan Democrats of a national voice on the ongoing water crisis in Flint. And it’s a final Fuck You to John Conyers, who slammed Snyder for poisoning the water in Flint and said the Governor should be arrested. […]
WTF??? Michigan voters should have no voice in Congress for almost a year to avoid a low-turnout special election? The district office is a substitute for Congressional representation? Is there something special about “this seat” that entitles the holder to a 50-year term? FFS, they’ll be lucky if the seat exists at all after the 2020 census when Michigan is likely to lose one of its congressional districts.
Goddamit, Democrats! Rick Snyder is a scorpion, of course he bit you. But you didn’t have to bend over and offer up your ass for a stinging. It’s pathetic!
From Steve Benen, who analyzed Mnuchin’s embarrassing one-pare “analysis” of the Republican tax plan:
[…] The Treasury Department argued this morning that the Republican promise will prove to be true if (a) we assume that the regressive tax breaks supercharge the economy; and (b) policymakers also agree to pass Trump’s non-existent infrastructure plan, Trump’s non-existent welfare reform plan, and wait for Trump’s regulatory reform plan to work wonders.
In other words, the Trump administration is conceding that Republicans are wrong about one of the core promises of the party’s own tax plan. The Treasury effectively declared this morning, “The tax plan will pay for itself if everyone agrees to pass a bunch of other proposals, which haven’t been written, and which have nothing to do with the tax plan.”
Second, let’s not skip past that “welfare reform” tidbit too quickly. Trump’s Treasury Department is now saying, in writing, that Republicans can pay for tax breaks for the wealthy, not only by raising taxes on the middle class, but by cutting benefits to the nation’s most vulnerable. The document is describing class warfare at its most depraved – taking money from food-stamp beneficiaries, and giving it to millionaires.
And third, the entire Treasury Department analysis literally fits on one page. If we exclude the headline, the document isn’t quite 400 words (by comparison, the blog post you’re reading right now is 622 words).
What the Trump administration released this morning isn’t an analysis of tax legislation; it’s a joke. […]
Some Republicans are not sticking by Roy Moore, Trump’s embarrassing robocalls encouraging people to vote for Moore notwithstanding:
An official has quit the Republican National Committee over the GOP’s support of Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who faces accusations of sexual assault and harassment.
Joyce Simmons, the GOP national committeewoman from Nebraska, emailed the 168-member governing body Monday to inform them that she had tendered her resignation. She writes: “I strongly disagree with the recent RNC financial support directed to the Alabama Republican Party for use in the Roy Moore race.”
Simmons adds that she wishes she could have continued her service “to the national Republican Party that I used to know well.” […]
The White House issued a statement full of lies, and one of those lies was based on lies proffered by a serial liar (not Trump, but some other serial lier):
[…] three women who have accused Trump of sexual assaulting them appeared on Megyn Kelly’s talk show, […] They are among at least 14 women who accuse Trump of sexual assault. In response, the White House issued a statement claiming these women are lying. […]
These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory. The timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes, and the publicity tour that has begun only further confirms the political motives behind them.
This is a lie.
Only one “eyewitness” has ever emerged to dispute a claim of sexual assault against Trump. That man, Anthony Gilberthorpe, is a serial fableist with a history of pushing false stories for a few minutes of attention.
Gilberthorpe claims that he was in the first-class cabin with Trump and Jessica Leeds during a cross-country flight in 1980. Gilberthorpe presented no actual evidence that he was on the flight, “just his self-described excellent memory.” He also did not explain why he might have been on a first-class domestic flight in the U.S. as an 18-year-old British boy. He also did not explain why, if he had been on such a flight, he would remember an interaction between Trump and Leeds in which “nothing inappropriate” occurred. He also claims that Leeds, who was in her 30s at the time, confided in him during the flight that she wanted to marry Trump.
Oh, yeah, very convincing. Not. WTF. Even Mike Pence previously cited this bogus “eyewitness.”
But even more telling is Gilberthorpe’s long history as a fraud and a liar.
In 1987, for example, he told newspapers in England that he was engaged to fashion designer in California named Miss Leah Bergdorf-Hunt. “Both our families are delighted,” he told The Gloucester Express. It was later revealed that he was not engaged. Also there was no Miss Bergdorf-Hunt. He invented the whole thing.
[snipped other examples of Gilberthorpe’s lies]
Trump’s eagerness to rely on such an unreliable account suggests he has little information that contradict the allegations against him. During the campaign, Trump and Mike Pence promised information that would prove all the allegations against Trump are “all categorically false.” They later confirmed that they were alluding to Gilberthorpe’s story.
[…] there haven’t been eyewitnesses, even unreliable ones, that contradict Trump’s accusers in “most” cases. […]
In today’s press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was her usual thick-headed self:
[…] during her Monday briefing [Sanders] sparred with reporters over errors made by media outlets in reports on President Trump.
Sanders disputed the notion that mistakes made by news outlets were “honest mistakes” during a heated exchange with CNN’s Jim Acosta.
“You cannot say it’s an honest mistake when you’re purposely putting out information you know is false,” Sanders said.
Sanders and Acosta talked over one another during the exchange.
“I’m not finished,” she responded when reporter Brian Karem tried to cut in.
The exchange began when another reporter asked Sanders about Trump’s attacks on a Washington Post reporter for tweets showing a small crowd size at his Saturday rally in Florida.
The reporter deleted the tweet after it was pointed out the photo was from before the event.
[…] Making sure that enough people know him is one of Jones’s larger hurdles as a candidate. The race has been almost entirely about Moore. “Most of the focus has been about him, for sure,” Jones acknowledged. “When I do radio and media, I try to talk about education and jobs. How I’m a hunter and I support the Second Amendment. I’m for strong military defense. How I did a lot as a prosecutor to protect communities in this state. But the media doesn’t always let us focus in on that. It’s ‘Well, Steve Bannon said this,’ or ‘Roy Moore said that.’ ” Jones added, “There are just so many things he’s done. You may as well put a blindfold on and throw a dart.”
“[…] I unequivocally do not support late-term procedures, except in the case of medical necessity.” He went on, “I think the extreme view on this issue is Roy Moore’s. He would criminalize it even in the case of rape, incest, even with the life of the mother in jeopardy.” Jones acknowledged that it was a tricky topic. “It’s always a challenge, talking about this issue, but I think we’ve met it. We’ll see what happens.” […]
Heh. In #252 I said: “One aspect of note are the passages Manafort deleted from the draft. They’re actually pretty funny.”
Newly released emails have Manafort writing to Kilimnik about the revised draft he sent Voloshin: “It keeps his approach but takes out pieces that would not be good to mention.”
…This October, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his extensive efforts to connect Trump’s presidential campaign with senior Russian officials. Trump has since dismissed Papadopoulos as a “low level volunteer.”
But in his ancestral homeland, the man whom Trump had named in March 2016 as one of five top foreign policy advisers and an “excellent guy” was regarded as a critical interlocutor, first to the Trump campaign and later to the incoming Trump White House.
He may have carried on like “a second-rate actor in a political thriller,” as one acquaintance described his manner. But when he bragged that he had helped Trump win the presidency, many here believed it.
Before his spectacular fall, he was lavishly wined and dined by local business kingpins, celebrated in official tweets and rewarded with the perks — judge in an island beauty contest — of a favorite Greek son.
He also received access to officials at the highest levels of the Greek government, many of whom shared links to Russia and sympathies that would be unusual in other Western capitals. [Defense Minister Panos] Kammenos, in particular, stood out both for his pro-Russian views and his determination to forge a bond with the young Trump adviser.
Although Papadopoulos’s plea deal focused on his contacts with an obscure and mysterious Maltese professor who claimed Russian ties, Greek politicians and analysts say his best and most obvious path to Moscow would have run through Athens.
…
“Papadopoulos was totally unknown. But then Kammenos took him by the hand and promoted him everywhere,” Georgiadis said.
In short order, Papadopoulos had soon had meetings not only with the defense minister, but also with Greece’s foreign minister, its president and a former prime minister — a remarkable level of access for such a young aide.
All are considered relatively pro-Russian. At the time of the meetings, internal Trump campaign documents show that Papadopoulos was working aggressively to connect with senior Russian officials and was hoping to broker a meeting between Putin and Trump.
It is not known whether Papadopoulos met any members of Putin’s entourage in May 2016, when both were in Athens and the president was accompanied by his foreign minister, plus state oil and gas executives. But Georgiadis said he believed that Kammenos would have been able to put the two sides in touch — and had good reason to do so.
…
When Papadopoulos returned to Greece the next month [after the election], he told Marianna Kakaounaki, an investigative reporter for Kathimerini, that he had “a blank check” for any job he wanted in the Trump administration because of his services to the campaign.
“Everyone knows I helped him [get] elected, now I want to help him with the presidency,” Papadopoulos boasted in a text message.
…
Eight days later, Papadopoulos was interviewed by the FBI — and lied, according to his plea agreement, about the timing and nature of his interaction with the Maltese professor. There would be no White House job. In both Athens and Washington, Papadopoulos virtually disappeared from view.
But he became a frequent guest on Mykonos, the Greek island that’s a paradise for the well-heeled.
During the late spring and into the summer, locals said he was a regular if discreet visitor at the island’s poshest clubs. He judged a beauty contest — watching impassively as bikini-clad contestants marched by — and onlookers at the clubs described him as partying hard and spending freely.
“He didn’t say where he got the money,” said one witness to an expensive night of revelry. “He just told us he worked for the Trump administration.”…
As a child, I had a pen pal from rural Alabama. Our lives were so different, even though we were both in Baptist churches. Interestingly enough, kids in rural AL were doing things sexually that weren’t even on our radar at that age. I don’t know what ever became of her. I hope she’s doing well and not voting for Moore, though given her background she would be a likely supporter.
I’ve only seen clips of Bannon’s performance at the Moore rally last night. As noted above, he – a 64-year-old man – took the opportunity to mock Joe Scarborough for not attending the elite schools he did. Scarborough attended…the University of Alabama. He went on about his evil horseshit teleological view of history. He suggested that Moore’s election would put an end to people paying attention to the allegations against Trump and presumably to that fight for justice (despite all indications to the contrary). He bashed McConnell, Condoleezza Rice, and “Little Bobby Corker,”* claiming that the Republican establishment doesn’t have Trump’s back and is just using him to get their corporate tax cuts, which was an odd take to present to an audience of Trump supporters.
This morning, Trump tweeted: “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!”
Gillibrand (an aide said she was called out of a “bipartisan Bible study group” to be told about the tweet) later responded: “You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office.”
She later called it a “sexist smear” and reiterated her call for the allegations against him to be investigated.
Elizabeth Warren, among others, has answered: “Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you’re picking a fight with? Good luck with that, @realDonaldTrump. Nevertheless, #shepersisted.”
I’m guessing there won’t be a vote in the Senate to censure him.
Approval ratings for Obamacare are at their highest.
Overall support for the health care law also has grown since last year. Currently, 56% of the public approves of the law while 38% disapproves, according to a new national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 4.
Despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the Democrats have been unable to show any collusion with Russia – so now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met. FAKE NEWS!
Um, the White House recently repeated the “eyewitness” exoneration (see comments 290 and 302). An eyewitness to Trump not meeting women?
And then there’s this:
[…] One of his accusers is Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter whom Trump has already said he met. Another accuser, Summer Zervos, was a contestant Trump met as part of his reality television show. Another accuser, Jill Harth, was a former business associate of Trump’s.
Among the other accusers are women who competed in beauty pageants that Trump owned. […]
And, last but not least, there is evidence of collusion. From House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff:
The Russians offered help. The campaign accepted help. The Russians gave help. And the president made full use of that help. And that’s pretty damming.
In the early 2000s, I was assigned the Trump beat for PEOPLE magazine. For years I reported on all things Donald.
I tracked his hit show The Apprentice, attended his wedding to Melania Knauss and roamed the halls of his lavish Trump Tower abode. Melania was kind and sweet during our many chats, and Donald was as bombastic and entertaining as you would expect. We had a very friendly, professional relationship.
Then, in December 2005, around the time Trump had his now infamous conversation with Billy Bush, I traveled to Mar-a-Lago to interview the couple for a first-wedding-anniversary feature story.
Our photo team shot the Trumps on the lush grounds of their Florida estate, and I interviewed them about how happy their first year of marriage had been. When we took a break for the then-very-pregnant Melania to go upstairs and change wardrobe for more photos, Donald wanted to show me around the mansion. There was one “tremendous” room in particular, he said, that I just had to see….
From Josh Marshall, in reference to Trump’s sexualized attack against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York:
[…] To the President, soliciting political contributions creates a bond of subservience against which any subsequent caviling about mammoth political differences is either sleazy, hypocritical or disloyal.
What it all amounts is that personal loyalty, a kind of mafia-like allegiance, is the only legitimate mode of interaction. Which is to say, in Trumpthink, only corruption has legitimacy.
Eventually, you grow tired of this grubby hucksterism. You grow tired of the people who cheer for it. You grow tired of it all, and exhausted in the attempt to make sense of human beings so obviously jonesing for the kind of illusions in which a former investment banker in a camo jacket and 31 dress shirts is really one of them, and in which a judge who has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls is really as close a friend to Jesus as they are.
Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, looks more and more like a criminal. The European Parliament is now accusing Ross of insider trading.
Senate Democrats recently called for an investigation into Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ finances, following reports that he vastly overvalued his wealth and failed to disclose his holdings in a Russian shipping company partly owned by Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law. Now the embattled mogul, whose long relationship with Donald Trump has been tested by the disclosures, is facing scrutiny by European lawmakers over allegations that he engaged in insider trading related to his 2014 sale of shares in the Bank of Ireland.
Earlier this year, Luke Ming Flanagan, an Irish politician and member of the European Parliament, the European Union’s governing body, commissioned a report on the 2008 eurozone banking crisis. The final version of this report, written by two Irish financial analysts, was presented in Brussels last week to a group of 52 European Parliament members affiliated with left-leaning parties. And it included a section covering Ross’ investment in the Bank of Ireland, in which he was a major shareholder and a member of the board of directors. The report alleges that when Ross sold off his holdings in the bank for a massive profit in 2014, he possessed inside information that the bank was relying on deceptive accounting practices to mask its losses and embellish its financial position. […]
Ross “had access to the loss details that Bank of Ireland kept hidden from retail shareholders,” the report states. “The profit that Mr. Ross accumulated was largely at their expense.”
Ross’ profit, Flanagan said in a statement to Mother Jones, was “money lost to the Irish people.” Flanagan also wants to know how Ross was able purchase his shares on apparently preferential terms. “Wilbur Ross and others have serious questions to answer on the purchase of Bank of Ireland shares,” he said in the statement. “How did they manage to purchase those shares for 10 cents each, when two months previously they were trading for nearly thrice that?” […]
Lynna @ #327: “Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, looks more and more like a criminal. The European Parliament is now accusing Ross of insider trading.”
When Texas Sen. John Cornyn slipped an obscure tax break for pipeline giants into the GOP tax bill, he wasn’t just helping major Republican Party donors, he was also potentially helping 16 of his congressional colleagues. Together those 16 lawmakers — 13 Republicans, three Democrats — own multimillion-dollar stakes in the special investment vehicles that stand to benefit from Cornyn’s amendment. They include three of members of the Texas Congressional delegation: Sen. Ted Cruz and two top Republicans in the U.S. House.
Cornyn’s amendment, which was introduced just hours before the Senate passed the tax bill on Dec. 2, provides a tax deduction for investors in energy-related master limited partnerships (MLPs) — investment entities primarily used by oil and gas pipeline corporations.
…
“Trump has set the tone for Republican officials, from the White House to the administration to Congress: self-dealing by public officials for personal gain is to be treated as business as usual and, if politically possible, no longer subject to ethics constraints,” Public Citizen’s Craig Holman told IBT after learning of lawmakers’ personal financial interest in the tax provision. “Public officials in the Trump administration and the Republican Congress today have a green light to use their trusted positions to enrich themselves — and they are doing so.”…
The number of Senators asking Trump to resign has gone up. We can now add Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii.
In an NBC News interview, Hirono said that Trump is an “admitted sexual predator,” that he has a “narcissistic need for attention,” and that he is a “misogynist.”
The only thing that will stop him from attacking us — because nobody’s safe — is his resignation.
The list (so far) of Senators calling for Trump to resign:
Mazie Hirono
Kirsten Gillibrand
Ron Wyden
Jeff Merkley
Cory Booker
Bernie Sanders
“Feminism” is Merriam-Webster’s 2017 word of the year.
No one word can ever encapsulate all the news, events, or stories of a given year. But when we look back at the past twelve months and combine an analysis of words that have been looked up much more frequently than during the previous year along with instances of intense spikes of interest because of news events, we see that one word stands out in both categories.
So I voted but let me tell you a quick story about this here special election:
I have voted at the same place all my life. Even when I’ve lived elsewhere, I’ve driven home. Or twice, I’ve done absentee.
We literally JUST had an election that I voted in. Drove home and everything.
But because this election is high stakes, suddenly I and tons of others in my small town were marked as inactive.
Folks who have lived here longer than I’ve been alive….inactive.
So they make the inactive people go to a special table to fill out a form and guess what fam? If you don’t remember your birth county you can’t fill out the form. Sucks for you if you were born out of state like me.
BUT YA GIRL PEEPED GAME SO SHE BROUGHT HER BIRTH CERTIFICATE LIKE A BAWSE
Y’all they literally tried to play me like I was a punk. Imagine all the NORMAL people who don’t travel with additional ID. […]
Wonkette covered Kayla Moore, Roy Moore’s wife, telling the audience at a rally, “One of our attorneys is A JEW!” (She did emphasize that bit, so I’m sticking by the all-caps and the exclamation mark.)
Fake news would tell you that we don’t care for Jews. I tell you all this because I’ve seen it all and I just want to set the record straight while they’re here. One of our attorneys is A JEW. We have very close friends that are Jewish and rabbis, and we also fellowship with them.
Note that Kayla Moore also waved to media personnel in the audience while saying, “I just wanna set the record straight while they’re here.” She must have seen Bernie Bernstein.
I don’t agree that this is honestly open to interpretation. I do agree that – in addition to being fixated on real or perceived disloyalty or criticism, since as an authoritarian he demands absolute loyalty and obsequiousness – he expected it might succeed among Democrats because some are annoyed with Gillibrand for other reasons. But it’s very similar to the Comey firing, when he was surprised that Democrats didn’t support it out of anger at Comey. It’s another example of both how psychologically disturbed and how stupid he is. He’s not capable of understanding that other people don’t share his insecure fixations and that they have principles and priorities that can transcend personal or political grievances or ambitions; nor does he grasp that no one’s buying his bad-faith attempts to exploit divisions.
Jim Acosta from CNN tried to question Trump at the bill signing about his tweet about Gillibrand, and received no response.
He tweeted: “Prior to this morment, @presssec issued a warning to me. She said if I asked a question of Trump at the bill signing ‘I can’t promise you will be allowed into a pool spray again’. Sorry Sarah.. we won’t be intimidated.”
SC @336, and why on earth does Trump put “begging” in quote marks like that when he refers to Gillibrand. I agree with you that the phrase, “(would do anything for them)”, which Trump put in parenthesis, is not open to interpretation. He meant to insinuate that Gillibrand would prostitute herself for campaign contributions.
[…] Oh, Donald! You glorious fucking idiot! On the day when Alabama’s making its final decision on whether to vote for a sexual predator, a decision that will hinge on turn-out from African-Americans and pissed off women, you LITERALLY TWEETED that the wonderful, highly respected female senator from New York BEGS you for campaign contributions (and would do anything for them, by which you, the president, mean she is willing to fuck or blow you for them). You did this in the middle of the #MeToo awakening, when women are not fucking taking it anymore. […]
To add more delicious detail to what I think is going to turn into one of the deepest holes Trump has dug for himself, Maggie Haberman tweeted:
Gillibrand aide says she was attending bipartisan bible study group when Trump tweeted, she had to be pulled out by aides to hear what was happening.
Also, Trump lied, according to this additional tweet from Haberman.
Aide also says she [Gillibrand] had one meeting w Trump, Ivanka was there and it was 2010
From Wonkette:
[…] To be clear, this may be the dumbest and most ill-advised fight the man has ever started, and that’s saying something.
In part, this is a typically stupid lie from Trump. He always likes to claim people are in his office BEGGING him for endorsements or contributions. And it’s typical that Trump, in the face of a strong woman demanding his orange shithole face resign from office, would fall back on being a sexist pig, because he doesn’t have the mental capacity to say anything better.
But it’s funny because, if you are not familiar with Senator Gillibrand, this is her fucking issue. Gillibrand has been fighting the fight on sexual harassment and abuse, particularly in the military, for years, and sometimes she’s been a lone voice in the darkness. […]
I snipped text containing P-word, etc. in reference to Trump’s past actions.
What’s that old expression about bringing a knife to a gun-fight? We should make up a new version about how you shouldn’t bring your tiny pathetic orange puss-grabbing hands to a Kirsten Gillibrand fight. […]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today that anyone who thinks Trump was using sexualized language when he dissed Kirsten Gillibrand today “has their head in the gutter.”
Yeah, right. She says that Trump just meant that Gillibrand was corrupt in the way that Trump meant all manner of male and female politicians are corrupt. “Drain the swamp.”
I’m not buying that.
Video of relevant statements during the press conference today can be viewed here. Sanders claimed the tweet was “in no way sexist.”
Correction to comment 342, minor wording error corrected. I was going by memory.
“Is Gillibrand owed an apology for the misunderstanding of the President’s tweet this morning?” American Urban Radio Networks’ April Ryan asked Sanders. “Many, including the senator, think that it’s about sexual innuendoes.”
“I think only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read it that way,” Sanders replied. “So, no.”
I’m at the Dothan police department with Pastor Glasgow getting a print-out of Chazarius Harden’s mug shot. The city says he can use it as a photo ID to vote
When you’ve gone too far for Chuck Grassley, Senate Judiciary Chairman, you are really out on a limb.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said on Tuesday that the White House should reconsider the judicial nominations of a horror novelist who has never tried a case and a religious right activist who said that a transgender first grade student is part of “Satan’s plan.”
The first nominee, Brett Talley, is a 36-year-old Trump administration official who bounced between political and legal jobs after graduating from law school in 2007. Though he is nominated to a trial judgeship in Alabama, Talley has never tried a case. He has, however, written several Lovecraftian works of fiction with titles like “The Void” and “That Which Should Not Be.”
The second nominee, Jeff Mateer, is a senior attorney with the Texas attorney general’s office and a former senior executive at a Christian right legal shop. In addition to his idiosyncratic views on the role schoolchildren play in The Devil’s machinations, Mateer also defended so-called “conversion therapy” and warned that an unlikely set of consequences will result if same-sex couples are allowed to marry. […]
[…] In this video, you will meet Nathan Mathis, a peanut farmer from southern Alabama. Mr. Mathis is just about as country Alabama as it gets, and he seems like a pretty conservative gentleman. But he didn’t show up at Monday night’s Roy Moore rally to clap his hands when Kayla Moore said she had once palled around with a known Hebrew. He didn’t come to be reassured by Roy Moore’s Vietnam pal’s moving story of That Time Roy Moore Coulda Fucked Some Kids But Refrained. Mathis came to stand outside and deliver a message about his daughter Patti Sue Mathis, who died in 1995 when she took her own life because she couldn’t deal with the fact she was a lesbian: […]
[…] “I was anti-gay, myself. I said bad things to my daughter, myself, which I regret. But I can’t take back what happened to my daughter. But stuff like saying my daughter’s a pervert, I’m sure that bothered her. Now, you know Judge Moore … he didn’t call my daughter by name. He said all gay people are perverts. Abominations. That’s not true. We don’t need a person like that representing us in Washington. That’s why I’m here.” […]
[…] The winner of Hannity’s “Worst Example of Fake News” derby was, by a landslide, Sean Hannity. Most of the Twitter responses contained the single word “You.”. Coming in second was the Seth Rich story that Hannity himself propagated for weeks, even after his comrades at Fox News admitted that it wasn’t true and deleted their story about it. That sort of admission is something that Fox has trouble doing. Even though they have no trouble with airing false reports. It will be interesting to see what Hannity does after this failed effort at crowd sourcing his research. But don’t look for him to do a penetrating exposé on the fake news he discovered emanating from the Hannity show.
AND THIS JUST IN: Politifact just announced their 2017 Lie of the Year. You’ll never guess who won by a landslide? Trump Calling Russia’s Election Interference a ‘Hoax’
The Dutch subsidiary of Russia’s Alfa Bank, owned by billionaire Mikhail Fridman, was searched last week as part of an investigation into possible money laundering, the Dutch financial crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday.
Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB) is suspected of violating anti-money laundering laws by withholding information on “unusual transactions” made by clients and failing to do adequate background checks on its clients, the prosecutor’s office, FIOD, said in a statement.
…
ATB, part of the Alfa Bank Group, serves private clients in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union and had total assets worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) at the end of last year, according to its most recent annual report….
I don’t know if I’m more offended by Bannon’s Nazi influence or the fact that this article would talk about him as a “filmmaker” in the same breath as Riefenstahl or Eisenstein. And “revive” Moore’s campaign? It wasn’t even supposed to be a race! And his final rally was a total shitshow!
Two more hours of voting in AL. Both CNN and NBC exit polls have Trump approval/disapproval at 48%/48%, which is astonishingly low for Alabama. Turnout seems to be high (relatively speaking) across the board.
Thank you for posting that. I still remember the story of Ferdinand and how he stuck it to the man by being himself. My parents read it to me when I was 4 or 5.
Thank you for posting that. I still remember the story of Ferdinand and how he stuck it to the man by being himself. My parents read it to me when I was 4 or 5.
I had forgotten all about it until I read Philip Greven’s Spare the Child a while back and it came back to me in a rush. I could picture the drawings and my emotional reaction. I can’t believe the movie is coming out!
I’m going to make protest signs with pictures of Ferdidand.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Enjoying watching Steve Kornacki at the board on MSNBC. Have to respect a numbers “nerd”.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Enjoying watching Steve Kornacki at the board on MSNBC. Have to respect a numbers “nerd”.
Before I could post, Jones is now leading by 11,000 and his areas aren’t fully reporting unlike Moore and his rural strongholds.
*crossed tentacles*
tomhsays
NYT projecting Jones as winner.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Steve Kornacki and MSNBC has Jones up by 10,000 with only democratic areas left unreported.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
MSNBC just called for Jones. *clenched tetacle salute to the people of Alabama*
Danica Roem: “Just as a reminder, while we’re excited about the results in Alabama tonight, @flippable_org lists three special elections next Tuesday for state Senate seats in Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi. You can help elect the Democrats in all three states here:…”
Ogvorbis wants to know: WTF!?!?!?!says
re: Ferdinand
That is my favourite book from my childhood. That is also the book that has had more of an influence on who I am than any other book.
SC @353, Bannon is King of Shit Mountain … and the mountain is crumbling.
Trump is not likely to see himself as a loser after Roy Moore, the guy for whom Trump recorded robocalls, lost, but Trump is likely to see Bannon as a loser. A breach between Breitbart and Trump would be good.
Ogvorbis wants to know: WTF!?!?!?!says
(I just posted this comment over at Mano Singham’s blog, but I decided that it was also apropos here)
The most schadefreudeistic part of this, for me, is that Trump, even after seeing the damage that the sexual predation was doing, decided to make the election about him, not about Moore. All about Trump, not about the GOP. All about the tiny tyrant, not about tax cuts and gutting health care and destroying the social safety net. He made it all about Trump. And now Moore has lost.
I fully expect Trump to do something really stupid (er, more stupid? stupider? stupidest? stupiderest?) in the next few days to try to get the press talking about Trump the President, not Trump the guy who backed the pedophile loser. And I am confident that he will fuck it up and make himself look even worse.
This is just hilarious. They didn’t like Doug Jones before, but now the Republicans are courting him:
[…] NRSC [National Republican Senatorial Committee] Chairman Cory Gardner made the following statement regarding the results of the Alabama special election:
“Tonight’s results are clear — the people of Alabama deemed Roy Moore unfit to serve in the U.S. Senate,” said NRSC Chairman Cory Gardner. “I hope Senator-elect Doug Jones will do the right thing and truly represent Alabama by choosing to vote with the Senate Republican Majority.” […]
Ogvorbis @381, yeah, I noticed that Trump instructed voters in Alabama to vote for Roy Moore because Trump needed his vote to MAGA. It was all about Trump.
A follow-up to comment 380, in which the other LOSER, Steve Bannon, is receiving a nice big portion of blame from his fellow Republicans:
Republicans members of Congress and conservative media are united in blaming one person for their party’s loss in the deep red state of Alabama Tuesday night: Steve Bannon.
In a scathing editorial published late Tuesday evening, the Wall Street Journal ignited the revolt, declaring that “Bannon is for losers.”
“The Alabama result shows that Mr. Bannon cares less about conservative policy victories than he does personal king-making,” the editorial board wrote. “He wants to depose Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader even if it costs Republicans Senate control. GOP voters, take note: Mr. Bannon is for losers.”
After Alabama disaster GOP must do right thing and DUMP Steve Bannon. His act is tired, inane and morally vacuous. If we are to Make America Great Again for all Americans, Bannon must go! And go NOW!!
From Meghan McCain:
Suck it, Bannon
From Rich Lowry:
Lesson for the GOP: if there is a bridge too far in Alabama, there is a bridge too far in every other state where Steve Bannon wants to run a fringy candidate
From Josh Holmes:
Before we get the results, I’d just like to thank Steve Bannon for showing us how to lose the reddest state in the union and Governor Ivey for the opportunity to make this national embarrassment a reality
None of those people spoke up that strongly before Roy Moore lost. All of those Republicans should thank black voters in Alabama. Black voters in Alabama saved Republicans from themselves. The rescue is probably temporary. They’ll dive into another sludge pond soon enough.
Ogvorbis wants to know: WTF!?!?!?!says
Lynna @382:
Notice the phrasing. The people of Alabama did not choose Jones, they rejected Moore. They didn’t vote for Jones, they voted against Moore. Nice way to try to invalidate an election in the minds of supporters.
I will not be surprised if the Moore campaign files lawsuits (alleging voter fraud, disenfranchisement of white men, disenfranchisement of real Christians, whatever) to delay the certification of the election and trying to prevent Jones being seated in the Senate for as long as possible. Moore may not know how the legal system works, but he sure knows judges and lawyers.
Ogvorbis @384, Yeah, I see your point. Language pointing to the write-in votes is another way to try to invalidate the election of Doug Jones.
I am worried about Roy Moore’s failure to concede the race. He quoted, from memory, long biblical passages as part of his “this is not over” speech. He thinks this is a holy war and that God is on his side. I expect trouble. I would also not put it past some Republicans to try to adjust the vote count illegally after the fact. The Democrats better have lawyers and investigators standing by. They can’t count on Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice to help them.
OMG, and LOL. Really? Sean Hannity and Fox News have decided to blame Mitch McConnell for Roy Moore’s loss. I guess that is also now Steve Bannon’s tactic for shifting blame.
And there’s this from Hair Furor:
The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!
This is one area in which Republicans are transparent. We see right through them.
The Department of Energy (DOE) instructed its officials to withhold $91 million from an energy program that the Trump administration had targeted for elimination, a clear and deliberate violation of a law that requires already-appropriated funds to be released, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The fiscal-year 2017 funds were illegally withheld from Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), a program founded in 2009 during the Obama administration that provides funds to early-stage energy technologies. The program was created to make sure that the United States maintained a competitive advantage in developing emerging energy technologies.
“I hope that the administration now understands that federal agencies must provide lawfully directed appropriations to the programs to which they are dedicated,” Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the top Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, said in a statement released late Tuesday. “It cannot attempt to shut down an agency or starve a program it doesn’t like by withholding funds. It is illegal and we in Congress will not allow it.” […]
Just confirmed that the Justice Department invited reporters over to DOJ last night to look at the Strzok/Page texts — and report them out — in case they did not leak in time for Rosenstein’s hearing today. Story TK.
Many of the Strzok/Page texts were read aloud during the questioning of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein by the House Judiciary Committee today. The texts were used by Republicans on the committee as proof that Mueller should be fired because his investigation is supposedly partisan.
[…] Republicans at the hearing zeroed in on anti-Donald Trump texts that Peter Strzok — a top FBI agent who worked on the Russia probe as well as the Hillary Clinton email investigation — sent another DOJ official during the campaign. The texts were revealed as part of a Justice Department inspector general investigation into the DOJ’s handling of matters related to the presidential race, and Strzok was booted from Mueller’s team upon the texts’ discovery
Rosenstein told Nadler that Mueller acted appropriately in removing Strzok from his team.
Rosenstein batted down GOP lawmakers’ suggestions that other Mueller team attorneys’ donations to Democratic candidates amounted to an appearance of bias in the investigation.
“I’m not aware of impropriety,” Rosenstein told Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). “We do have regulations. The special counsel is subject to all the Department’s rules and subject to oversight by the Department, including the inspector general. I’m not aware of any violation of those rules by the special counsel employees.”
Republicans have amped up their campaign to cast doubt on Mueller’s probe as his investigation has picked up steam and has brought indictments against four Trump associates. Rosenstein repeatedly denied that attorneys on Mueller’s team having political opinions meant that they were biased in their investigation.
“We recognize we have employees with political opinions. It’s our responsibility to make sure those opinions do not influence their actions,” Rosenstein told Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH). “I believe that Director Mueller understands that and that he is running that office appropriately, recognizing that people have political views, but ensuring those views are not in any way a factor in how they conduct themselves in office.”
Rosenstein was effusive in his praise for Mueller, telling lawmakers that it would be hard to find someone else “better qualified for this job.”
Republicans members of the committee failed to convince Rosenstein, but they did manage to air their grievances about the Strzok/Page texts in an open hearing that will play well on Fox News.
Representative Louie Gohmert read out the political contributions to Democratic candidates of nine lawyers on Mueller’s team. Gohmert also failed to convince Rosenstein to fire Mueller.
“If you were ordered today to fire Mr. Mueller, what would do?” Nadler [Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler] asked.
“As I’ve explained previously, I would follow regulations. If there were good cause, I would act. If there were no good cause, I would not,” Rosenstein said.
“And you see no good cause so far?” Nadler continued.
“Correct,” Rosenstein said.
The Republican members of the committee seemed to be both frustrated and angry. They felt they had presented enough evidence to have Mueller fired, and that they had presented enough evidence to have a special counsel appointed to investigate the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Several Republican members of the committee also mentioned investigating Hillary Clinton. Absurdity reigned.
It’s about time Omarosa was kicked out of the Trump administration. She should not have had a job in a presidential administration in the first place.
The White House story is that the parting of ways was amicable, but the reality is quite different according to some reports.
Omarosa Manigault Newman’s resignation from President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday unfolded more like an anecdote from her days as a reality show contestant than the amicable departure the White House described, according to several reports.
“Omarosa Manigault Newman resigned yesterday to pursue other opportunities,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement to pool reporters. “Her departure will not be effective until January 20, 2018. We wish her the best in future endeavors and are grateful for her service.”
American Urban Radio Networks’ April Ryan reported, citing unnamed sources, that Manigault Newman’s departure contained rather more “drama” than the White House’s account suggested.
I heard there was drama and she was escorted out of the building and off campus.
Sources say General Kelly did the firing and Omarosa is alleged to have acted very vulgar and cursed a lot and said she helped elect President Trump. The word is a General Kelly had it and got rid of her.
According to multiple sources Omarosa did not resign. She was even escorted out of he building and off campus. […]
[…] During Trump’s campaign, she worked on African-American outreach, and made a notable appearance in a PBS documentary where she claimed all Trump’s detractors would “have to bow down” if he won the presidency.
Ryan in February said that Manigault Newman “physically intimidated” her during one encounter and claimed the White House had “dossiers” of negative information on several journalists, including Ryan.
“She stood right in my face like she was going to hit me,” Ryan told the Washington Post. “I said, ‘You better back up.’”
“My comment: Fake news!” Manigault Newman responded. […] Link
This is more like gossip than like news that will affect Trump administration policy. However, it does show, once again, that Trump hired incompetent staff with no ethical core and with bad manners to boot.
Senate and House Republicans have reportedly come up with a compromise tax bill. Democrats were shut out of the negotiations.
The compromise gives an even bigger tax break to the richest people, reducing the top income tax bracket from 39.6% to 37 percent.
From Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:
It’s hard to believe they could make this new tax bill even worse than the last one. Their illogic is amazing. The idea was that [cutting] SALT [deductions for state and local taxes] would hurt the middle class, but instead of undoing their repeal of state and local deductibility, they reduced rates further on the rich. That doesn’t solve their SALT problem.
From Senator Ron Wyden:
They’re basically just rearranging the chairs at the country club. Maybe multinationals do better one day and well-to-do heirs do better the next day. But our message is still that the middle class is getting short shrift here.
Trump held a meeting/press avail today in which he announced that the finalization of the tax bill was “very close,” and that it would benefit the middle class.
Mitch McConnell hopes to ram the tax bill through before Doug Jones is sworn in.
The USA Today editorial board is fed up with Trump.
[…] With his latest tweet, clearly implying that a United States senator would trade sexual favors for campaign cash, President Trump has shown he is not fit for office. Rock bottom is no impediment for a president who can always find room for a new low.
A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush. […]
His sickening behavior is corrosive to the enterprise of a shared governance based on common values and the consent of the governed. […]
The nation doesn’t seek nor expect perfect presidents, and some have certainly been deeply flawed. But a president who shows such disrespect for the truth, for ethics, for the basic duties of the job and for decency toward others fails at the very essence of what has always made America great.
Just now on Fox News, in response to a question about Mueller’s impending report: “I just don’t see how Trump supporters will ever accept it.”
Excerpt from the testimony of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein today, in reference to President Trump calling the investigation a “witch hunt” as was read from the record of presidential tweets:
I don’t know exactly what the president meant by that, congressman. The special counsel’s investigation is not a witch hunt.
I do not know what the president meant by that, congressman, I can only answer for myself.
More dirt is emerging in connection with Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment of women:
After agreeing to produce [Salma] Hayek’s film “Frida,” Weinstein began harassing the actress, asking her to shower with him, showing up at her hotel unexpectedly and requesting massages, among other things, Hayek wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.
After Hayek refused his requests, Weinstein became furious at her, she wrote.
“The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, ‘I will kill you, don’t think I can’t,’” Hayek wrote.
Once filming started on “Frida,” Weinstein criticized the movie and told Hayek it needed more sex appeal. He threatened to shut down the production unless she filmed a sex scene with another woman. […]
“I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long,” Hayek wrote Wednesday. “Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can.”
Tears, gnashing of teeth, and wailing from the ranks of people like Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer when they see the results of the election in Alabama:
[…] White women were responsible for the Alabama election, voting for the Democrat at a rate of 9 points higher than men.
Just as they have been responsible for every nationalist defeat in the last 5 years.
Roy Moore was right when he said “repeal every amendment past the 10th.”
Letting these stupid [W-word, plural] vote was an absolutely insane decision, and something that our society may only recover from when there is no option but for women to once again become what nature designed them to be: the property of men. […]
Various people are also claiming that the Alabama election was rigged, and that “feminist bullshit” is to blame:
They figured out that white women are the key swing voters since Trump. Thats why we have had nothing but feminist bullshit, sexual assault allegations, the fucking dictionary makes “Feminism” the word of the year, Time makes the accusers the people of the year. This is their new strategy. Notice the massive amount of anti-woman hate on here recently? Its only there to turn away anyone new who would come. D&C. We have to get ahead of this shit. Dont fight women we have to make them our allies or we lose before it starts. We need a way to either bring the women to our side or to neutralize their vote on the left. Need more sexual allegations for the left. Need to show the left being anti woman, anti family.
Meanwhile, Breitbart is adopting the excuse we could see coming. Their headlines: “Republican Saboteurs Flip Seat to Dems,” and “Mitch’s Revenge: Establishment GOP Cheers”
Here are some comments and examples regarding texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page:
Responding to a Washington Post story about Trump saying it hadn’t been proven that Russian President Vladimir Putin had killed anyone, Page wrote: “What an utter idiot.”
In a March 2016 message, Page exclaimed: “God trump is a loathsome human….omg he’s an idiot.”
[…] In other texts, Strzok dared to say he wanted Hillary Clinton to win, like some sort of American citizen who has the right to vote. He was horrified at the idea of Jeff Sessions becoming attorney general (who with a brain wasn’t?), […]
As Politico notes, the texts between Strzok and Page stopped in December of 2016, so we’re not sure how they could have affected the Mueller investigation, which according to our back of the napkin math started in May 2017.
Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider reports that the DOJ invited reporters Tuesday night to look at 375 of the texts (out of 10,000 texts Fox News curiously claims to have) in advance of Rosenstein’s testimony, which is strange since they’re part of an ongoing investigation. This is not proper DOJ behavior, not at all […]
Jimmy Kimmel covered the Alabama senate race. The video is 6:52 minutes long.
Ogvorbis wants to know: WTF!?!?!?!says
So, if Strzok were a Trump-lover who, just to pull a wild example out of my arse, worked in the New York City office and, say, leaked some internal FBI memos that were, out of context, damaging to Hillary Clinton, would the congressional GOP be up in arms? I wonder if anyone on Mueller’s team texted any messages of support for Trump to their loved ones or family? Or is it only supporters of the center (there really ain’t much of a political left remaining in the US) who get retro-reamed?
KGsays
The UK government just lost a key vote in the Commons: a small number of Tory Remainers joined with all the opposition parties except the “D”UP to defeat them. The result should ensure that Parliament gets to say whether any Brexit deal negotiated with the EU is acceptable, rather than the Government being able to implement such a deal without any further vote. Of course, this doesn’t answer the question of what would happen if Parliament votes the deal down. Beyond the intrinsic significance of this, it’s a huge political blow to Theresa May.
The Trump administration is backing a criminal … again:
The Department of Justice is backing former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in his effort to appeal a district court’s decision to keep his contempt of court conviction on his criminal record, […]
In October, a federal judge denied Arpaio’s request to erase the conviction from his record, claiming that President Trump’s pardon of Arpaio was an “executive prerogative of mercy, not of judicial record-keeping,” Judge Susan Bolton said at the time.
Trump pardoned Arpaio in August after he was convicted for violating court orders that barred his office from conducting discriminatory policing practices. The conviction came after a civil lawsuit was filed against Arpaio. His office was issued a court order to halt its practice of racially discriminatory traffic stops. The suit argued he targeted and detained Latinos living in his county. […]
“The government intends to argue, as it did in the district court, that the motion to vacate should have been granted,” Cronan [Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan] wrote. […]
In September, the Justice Department asked the Arizona federal judge to toss the case against Arpaio after Trump pardoned the former Arizona sheriff. Bolton dropped the case, but ruled against removing the conviction from his record. […]
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman just released new information that points to twice as many fraudulent identity thefts connected to the net neutrality comment hack that telecom shill Ajit Pai and other Republicans continue to pretend isn’t important.
“Millions of fake comments have corrupted the FCC public process – including two million that stole the identities of real people, a crime under New York law,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Yet the FCC is moving full steam ahead with a vote based on this corrupted process, while refusing to cooperate with an investigation. As we’ve told the FCC: moving forward with this vote would make a mockery of our public comment process and reward those who perpetrated this fraud to advance their own hidden agenda. The FCC must postpone this vote and work with us to get to the bottom of what happened.”
The FCC’s lawyers and chair Ajit Pai have tried to hide from Schneiderman by saying that this issue is outside of his jurisdiction. […]
Attorney General Schneiderman’s latest analysis shows that as many as two million comments misused the identities of real Americans, including over 100,000 comments per state from New York, Florida, Texas, and California. […]
Despite widespread evidence that the public comment process was corrupted, the FCC’s General Counsel has said that the agency will not cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into the impersonation of New Yorkers, and that it will move forward with tomorrow’s scheduled vote.
There are only two possible reasons why someone or a group of someones refuse to investigate serious matters of fraud within their own system: they’re dumb or they’re corrupt as all get out.
A dunderhead with bad intentions approached several Washington D.C. news outlets to offer a 13-page PDF purporting to document sexual harassment and other misconduct by Senator Chuck Schumer. Wonkette and Axios covered the scheme and Schumer’s reaction:
The woman named in the document was a legislative staffer for Schumer from 2009 to 2012, and is now a career employee of the federal government.
The former staffer said she took the matter to Washington, D.C. police on Tuesday. She said the police told her they were unsure of their jurisdiction in the case. She said she now plans to go to Capitol Police.
She told me in a statement: “The claims in this document are completely false, my signature is forged, and even basic facts about me are wrong. I have contacted law enforcement to determine who is responsible. I parted with Senator Schumer’s office on good terms and have nothing but the fondest memories of my time there.”
See Axios link.
Move over, James O’Keefe! There’s a new scammer in town and his game is forgery. […]
You could smell the fuckery a mile off — “One of many red flags: No lawyer for the staffer is named.” But still Mike Cernovich […] and Chuck C. Johnson spent days promising they were going to TAKE DOWN A SENATOR. […]
In all seriousness, we are very glad that Schumer reported this to the police. James O’Keefe tried to trick a reporter into having sex on camera in 2010. This year he sent a fake sexual assault accuser in to try to discredit the real survivors uncovered by the Washington Post. If no one goes to jail for this shit, it will only get worse. As Schumer’s spokesman Matt House told Media Matters,
We believe the individual responsible for forging the document should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law to prevent other malicious actors from doing the same.
See Wonkette link.
militantagnosticsays
Lynna @408
Back in the the 60s in my atheist father used to tell a joke about an astronaut returning to Earth and saying “I have seen God and she is black.” AFAIK it was original to him.
miltantagnostic @408, Ha! big smiles for that one. Excellent.
In other news, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton will appoint Lt. Governor Tina Smith to Al Franken’s seat. That move makes Minnesota the fourth state currently represented by two women Senators. California, New Hampshire, and Washington are the other states with two women serving in the Senate.
If there’s one bit of good news to come out of Al Franken’s difficulties, it is the appointment of a woman. Tina Smith is well-qualified, well-respected, and she has the relevant experience needed for the job.
A White House official told CNN on Wednesday that the [Scott] Brown example is different because Democrats passed health care in 2010 using a process that allowed them to do so with only a 50-vote majority – at the time, they had more than 50 Democrats — rendering Brown’s vote less critical.
[Doug] Jones is different, the official said, because his vote could tip the balance on the tax measure because the Republican majority is far slimmer.
[“WTF @CNN?! ARE YOU STONED?!, Brian Beutler says.]
[…]Jay Sekulow, now a leading member of Donald Trump’s legal team, said in 2010 that Brown [Scott Brown of Massachusetts] should be seated before the results of his election were certified, and it’d be “outrageous” to suggest otherwise. Even Donald Trump himself made similar comments at the time.
Yesterday, Trump World apparently came up with a line to explain the double standard. [see above]
It’s important to understand how very wrong this is.
At issue is something called the “budget reconciliation” process, which allows senators to pass some bills with a bare majority, circumventing a filibuster. The trouble is, when Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, they didn’t use the reconciliation process – because with a 60-vote majority, they didn’t have to. It’s why the ACA passed in December 2009 with 60 votes. (Congress later passed a separate measure that included some health care provisions through reconciliation, but this wasn’t the core “Obamacare” bill.)
Brown’s election in 2010 didn’t make his vote “less critical,” it did the opposite, since it meant the Republican minority at the time could defeat practically every bill through filibusters.
In other words, while trying to defend Trump World’s hypocrisy, the White House appears to have lied, quite brazenly, to CNN.
And why is that? It’s possible the president’s team can’t think of a legitimate defense for the double standard, but this may also have something to do with the fact that they think they can get away with it. Note, for example, that CNN’s original report on this made no effort to tell the public that the White House’s argument was demonstrably wrong. […][
From Steve Benen, a discussion of the all-show, no-content tax plan presentations by the Trump administration:
[…] The first and only public meeting of the conference committee’s members was held on Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon, which theoretically offered Americans a chance to see a meaningful and deliberative debate about a proposal that will dramatically affect the world’s largest economy.
In practical terms, however, yesterday’s conference committee gathering was a joke: Republicans announced two hours before the meeting began that they’d already finalized the details of the new GOP tax blueprint.
It led Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) to note in his opening remarks, “It’s difficult not to feel like a prop here.”
[…] pointless political theater at its most inane. Committee members got together, ostensibly to begin discussions on a final bill, hours after Republicans said they’d already finished writing the bill in secret and behind closed doors.
[…] Slate’s Jim Newell explained:
The only purpose of the meeting was to serve as a photo-op for Republicans to argue that the conferencecommittee was conducted under “regular order.” […]
Several members noted that they would get more information about the final deal from reading reporters’ Twitter feeds than sitting in the hearing.
[…] This was a charade intended to create a talking point: Republican leaders can say they went through the motions, even if they were only pretending to care.
[…] Senate Republicans […] swore up and down that they’d followed “regular order.”
The claims were an extension of the larger sham. When major legislation is written quickly in secret, approved by committees without any real hearings or testimony from subject-matter experts, and passed with minimal debate in the middle of the night, it’s not really “regular order.”
[…] they’ve simply gone through the motions. Yesterday’s conference committee gathering, alas, was more of the same.
Paul Ryan says that in order to avoid cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare, women in the U.S. should start having more babies. Analysis from Josh Marshall:
[…] As Americans live longer and have fewer children, the political economy has needed more young people than what economists call ‘natural increase’ can manage. That’s a key reason why relatively high rates of immigration has become so key to sustaining not just economic growth but the ability of working age payroll taxes to sustain these programs which mainly but not exclusively go to older people. There are other ways to help these programs: like ending the tax breaks that allow wealthy people to pay lower rates than working people.
But fundamentally, we do need more working age people. That’s where immigration has been so key. Ryan is being quite candid here. With the dramatic reductions the GOP wants in immigration as well as the tax cuts he’s pushing, he needs American women to start having a lot more babies. As he says he’s “done his part.” Ryan and his wife Janna have three children.
An update on Net Neutrality news. This is bad news.
Net neutrality, the set of rules requiring internet service providers to treat all traffic as equal, is dead.
The five members of the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday 3-2 along party lines to scrap Obama-era net neutrality rules, returning to a “light touch” approach and ending what Chairman Ajit Pai has called the federal government’s “micromanaging” of the internet.
The end of net neutrality rules marks a huge victory for the big internet service providers. Depending on how they decide to act, the repeal could have massive implications for the way all Americans use the internet. […]
From Josh Marshall, “Don’t look away from the disgrace”:
You’ve seen the on-going pseudo-controversy about two FBI employees who sent texts to each other trashing now-President Trump. The two were having an affair at the time and Special Agent Peter Strzok was reassigned off the Mueller probe and in essence demoted over the texts.
Public employees are allowed to have political opinions. Indeed, there are laws specifically protecting government employees from being disciplined or having their work affected by their political views. The only real infraction here seems to be that the two used government devices to discuss their private political opinions when they should have reserved those for their personal devices – hardly a major infraction.
Nonetheless, defenders of the President have leaped from these emails to saying the entire Clinton emails probe – Strzok was involved in both probes – and the Mueller investigation are irreparably tainted. Others are going so far as to say the DOJ and the FBI need to undergo a political purge. The head of one prominent right-wing legal advocacy group went as far as to say the FBI should be shut down. […]
This is all nonsensical. Despite Strzok’s high-ranking role, he wasn’t in charge of either investigation. And no probes like this get decided on one person’s whim. […] there is zero evidence he did anything wrong or tainted the investigation in any way. The entire controversy is an effort to discredit the Mueller probe and give President Trump and his associates legal impunity. […]
The key point is there’s no evidence either did anything wrong. The only conceivable purpose of doing this was to humiliate the two, damage Mueller’s investigation and put wind in the sails of those pushing this pseudo-controversy. If it were found that the two had done something wrong, the emails might be evidence or context for their wrongdoing and the public interest in seeing the texts would change. But none of that has happened. And there’s little reason to think it ever will. […]
[…] The release of private correspondence between two Justice Department employees whose correspondence is the subject of an active inspector general investigation is not just wrong. It is cruel. It is not the practice of the Justice Department to turn over to Congress—let alone to give to reporters—active investigative material related to the private communications of its own employees. […]
Rosenstein here has, at a minimum, contributed to that circus—at the expense of his own employees. In throwing a career FBI agent and career FBI lawyer to the wolves by authorizing the release to the public of their private text messages—without any finding that they had done anything wrong—he once again sent a message to his workforce that he is not the sort of man with whom you want to share your foxhole. The DOJ and FBI workforces will not forget that. Nor should they. […]
From Josh Marshall:
[…] Rosenstein is clearly trying to thread the needle: protecting Mueller’s lawful and correct investigation while also kicking enough dirt and rubble into the gears of the rule of law to serve or perhaps keep at bay his ultimate master, President Trump. It’s comparable to his role in James Comey’s firing: writing a nominally reasonable memo which he knew would be used for an unreasonable, quite possibly illegal purpose. It is almost the definition of complicity – a largely passive and perhaps incomplete participation in corrupt acts. […]
Much of this is intended to lay the predicate and create room for President Trump to end the probe. But this whole episode is simply a disgrace. It is an example of how much the gravitational pull of Trump’s corruption has already affected Washington, the federal government and the entire country. […] mainly ethnical people under normal circumstances – I’m thinking of Rosenstein in this case – are bent and deformed by the pull.
Supporters of Trump demanded that the New York Times publish a comparison of Trump’s lies to the lies of other presidents. They shouldn’t have asked. A comparison was done:
[…] We applied the same conservative standard to Obama and Trump, counting only demonstrably and substantially false statements. The result: Trump is unlike any other modern president. He seems virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make.
In his first 10 months in office, he has told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly. Obama told 18 over his entire eight-year tenure. That’s an average of about two a year for Obama and about 124 a year for Trump.
If we had used a less strict standard, Trump would look even worse by comparison. He makes misleading statements and mild exaggerations – about economic statistics, his political opponents and many other subjects – far more often than Obama. We left out any statement that could be plausibly defended even if many people would disagree with the president’s interpretation. We also left out modest quantitative errors, such as Trump’s frequent imprecision with numbers. […]
Uh oh. This looks like an elaborately-staged attempt by the Trump administration to find an excuse to walk away permanently from the Iran nuclear deal. The presentation by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was theatrical.
[…] standing before military debris that she claimed to be of Iranian origin, [Haley] offered Thursday what she presented as “indisputable” evidence of Iran’s UN resolution-violating actions in the Middle East.
“The nuclear deal has done nothing to moderate the regime’s conduct in other areas. Aid from Iran’s revolutionary guard to dangerous militias and terror groups is increasing,” Haley said at a press conference at Joint Base Andrews, where reporters were invited to inspect the evidence on display behind her. “Its ballistic missile and advanced weapons are turning up in war zones across the region. It’s hard to find a conflict or a terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprints all over it.” […]
Trump’s critics warn such moves could lead to an eventual military confrontation between Washington and Tehran, and some say the U.S. rhetoric and actions on Iran have echoes of the Bush administration’s build-up to the invasion of Iraq. […]
The U.S. ambassador said Thursday that the debris she offered as proof of Iran’s inflammatory behavior was not directly related to the nuclear deal but was a violation of UN Security Council resolution 2231, which, among other provisions, prohibits Iran from progressing its ballistic missile program in certain ways and bans Iran from weapons transfers.
“We have said everything doesn’t have to be tied to the nuclear deal, but it does have to be tied to the security council resolutions. This is blatant violation of what they are not supposed to be doing,” Haley said. “Everybody has tip-toed around Iran in fear of them getting out of the nuclear deal, and they are allowing missiles like this to be fired over to innocent civilians.”
Last October, President Donald Trump announced that he would decertify Iran’s compliance with the Iran nuclear deal but not pull the U.S. out of it, declaring that the Islamic Republic had not lived up to “the spirit of the deal,” in part because of its non-nuclear activities.
Behind Haley on Thursday was debris that she said included a rocket with distinctive features that only Iranian models have that she said had been fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen at a commercial airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Also included in the display, Haley said, was material from an anti-tank guided missile, an explosive boat and a so-called “kamikaze drone,” all of which she claimed had parts from Iran. […]
Haley said the U.S. would invite every member of Congress to view the debris as well as every member of the UN Security Council. […]
“What I’ve seen from our foreign partners is that…now they actually see that the president was right,” Haley said. “Now they see that yes, there are problems. Yes, there are other activities because they’re feeling it in their own countries.”
Wonkette covered today’s Washington Post article that looks at how Russia attempted (is attempting) to destroy democracy in the U.S., and how Trump is helping Russia.
[…] Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus BEGGED the Baby to listen to the intelligence community about Russia during the transition.
But apparently this begging made the Baby CRY:
… [A]s aides persisted, Trump became agitated. He railed that the intelligence couldn’t be trusted and scoffed at the suggestion that his candidacy had been propelled by forces other than his own strategy, message and charisma.
Told that members of his incoming Cabinet had already publicly backed the intelligence report on Russia, Trump shot back, “So what?” Admitting that the Kremlin had hacked Democratic Party emails, he said, was a “trap.”
[…] And because of this, America is fucked.
Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House.
The result is without obvious parallel in U.S. history, a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president — and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality — have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat. The repercussions radiate across the government.
The Baby’s intelligence briefers are VERY DELICATE when telling him intelligence about Russia stealing American democracy, because they don’t want to hurt the Baby’s feelings.
[…] they have to structure his briefings so as NOT TO SAY MEAN STUFF ABOUT RUSSIA, because THAT UPSETS THE BABY:
U.S. officials declined to discuss whether the stream of recent intelligence on Russia has been shared with Trump. Current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him.
Russia-related intelligence that might draw Trump’s ire is in some cases included only in the written assessment and not raised orally, said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the matter. In other cases, Trump’s main briefer — a veteran CIA analyst — adjusts the order of his presentation and text, aiming to soften the impact.
“If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference — that takes the PDB off the rails,” said a second former senior U.S. intelligence official.
Not only that, but Trump has never talked to his Cabinet about Russian meddling, and the bigwigs on the National Security Council know better than to talk about it, […]
[…] WaPo describes intelligence intercepts over the past year that basically consist of Russian spies high-fiving each other, doing conga lines, and just generally being so excited about the success of their American operation […]
And all because Donald Trump REALLY IS that stupid:
U.S. officials said that a stream of intelligence from sources inside the Russian government indicates that Putin and his lieutenants regard the 2016 “active measures” campaign — as the Russians describe such covert propaganda operations — as a resounding, if incomplete, success. […]
But overall, U.S. officials said, the Kremlin believes it got a staggering return on an operation that by some estimates cost less than $500,000 to execute and was organized around two main objectives — destabilizing U.S. democracy and preventing Hillary Clinton, who is despised by Putin, from reaching the White House.
The bottom line for Putin, said one U.S. official briefed on the stream of post-election intelligence, is that the operation was “more than worth the effort.”
[…] Is the Trump administration doing anything about Russian interference NOW, considering we have midterms coming up next year?
THE FUCK YOU SAY.
How mad did it make Baby Trump when Congress passed new sanctions on his beloved Mother Russia?
SO MAD BRO:
Trump’s frustration had been building as the measure approached a final vote. He saw the bill as validation of the case that Russia had interfered, as an encroachment on his executive authority and as a potentially fatal blow to his aspirations for friendship with Putin, according to his advisers.
In the final days before passage, Trump watched MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program and stewed as hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski declared that the bill would be a slap in the face to the president.
“He was raging,” one adviser said. “He was raging mad.”
He was also “apoplectic” after the bill was passed, and it took four days for aides to convince the Baby that he had to sign them, because if he didn’t, Congress would just override him and he’d end up looking like an even sadder and weaker Russian intelligence asset than he did before.[…]
Black Lives Matter Activist DeRay Mckesson is suing Jeanine Pirro of Fox News. From Wonkette’s coverage:
Is there a purer distillation of Fox News poison than Jeanine Pirro? She’s like a speedball of vitriol, conspiracy theories, and white rage, injected into Middle America’s ears at 200 words a minute. […]
From DeRay:
.@JudgeJeanine, I was found not guilty & I didn’t direct any violence. In fact, I was protesting the violence of the police. Stop lying.
More from Wonkette:
[…] Pirro: In this particular case, DeRay Mckesson, the organizer, actually was directing people, directing the violence — you can sue him, but guess what the judge said? You know what, he was engaging in protected free speech. Now I want you to guess who appointed this federal judge.
Brian Kilmeade: Ronald Reagan?
Pirro: No.
Kilmeade: Didn’t think so.
Black judge, appointed by Obama, Black Lives Matter. Gosh, what could she be getting at here? It’s a mystery!
In point of fact, Mckesson directed no one and discouraged violence. Officer Doe’s suit was thrown out because FIRST AMENDMENT and SHUT UP, YOU CAN’T SUE A SOCIAL MOVEMENT […] And the City of Baton Rouge had to pay out $100,000 for all the illegal arrests they made that night, including of Mckesson himself. Naturally, Pirro howled out some more nonsense about black people getting compensated […]
[…] What is wrong with this country today? The problem is when you have federal judges who make decisions based on politics. … You’ve got a police officer who was injured. He was injured at the direction of DeRay Mckesson. DeRay Mckesson walks away with $100,000 for an organization that is amorphous. We got a problem in this country.
Ain’t she a peach! So now Mckesson is suing Pirro and Fox for defamation, since they made him the face of Scary Black Dudes Who Riot Against Hero Cops. Fox’s defense to the suit is that Pirro was quoting from Officer Doe’s complaint and thus it is “privileged.” […]
Except that Pirro wasn’t reporting these as allegations or attributing them to Officer Doe, and she wasn’t “quoting” from the complaint at all. […] She stated them as facts and refused to issue a retraction when Mckesson complained. There’s also the little matter of Pirro being NOT A JOURNALIST, but we’ll leave that for another day. […]
* I feel no sympathy for him. Putting himself in this hearing was grossly arrogant. His response when the call came about the nomination should have been “Thank you, I’m flattered, but woefully unqualified.”
[…] the advocacy group Free Press, and probably others, will challenge the FCC’s decision. The most likely argument: that the commission’s decision violates federal laws barring agencies from crafting “arbitrary and capricious” regulations. After all, the FCC’s net neutrality rules were just passed in 2015. […]
The FCC’s main argument for revoking the 2015 rules is that the regulations hurt investment in broadband infrastructure. But, as WIRED recently detailed, many broadband providers actually increased their investments, while those that cut back on spending told shareholders that the net neutrality rules didn’t affect their plans.
[…] net neutrality advocates could also argue that the agency’s decision-making process was corrupted by the flood of fake comments left by bots. But FCC Chair AJit Pai will argue that the agency discarded low-quality and repeated comments and focused only on matters of substance, which Martin says may well be enough to sway a court.
Beyond the Courts
Broadband providers say the public has nothing to worry about. AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, among others, have promised not to block or throttle content. But those promises leave internet providers with quite a bit of room to prioritize their own content, or content from their partners.
AT&T, for example, already allows its DirecTV Now video-streaming service to bypass mobile subscribers’ data limits. Verizon does much the same with its Go90 video service. Sling TV and Netflix, on the other hand, still count towards customers’ data caps. The end of the FCC’s current rules will allow companies to expand the ways they prioritize certain services over others. […]
FIGHT: The WIRED Guide to Net Neutrality
Just about everyone agrees that the real future of net neutrality will be decided in Congress. Free Press, Demand Progress, and other groups are pushing Congress to overturn the FCC’s decision to revoke the net neutrality rules; the group suggests Congress do this by a joint resolution, the same legal framework it employed earlier this year to undo internet-privacy rules the FCC adopted last year. […]
even if the courts or Congress reject the FCC’s reasoning, Pai will still be in charge of interpreting the old rules. A long-term solution to net neutrality will require Congress to pass laws that won’t change every time control of the White House passes to another party. […]
Trump spoke to the press this morning just before he boarded Marine One to go harass some FBI recruits who are ready to graduate. Here’s part of what Trump said:
We’re hoping for a very — let’s put it this way: There is absolutely no collusion. That has been proven. When you look at the committees, whether it’s the Senate or the House, everybody — my worst enemies, they walk out, they say, “There is no collusion but we’ll continue to look.” They’re spending millions and millions of dollars.
There is absolutely no collusion. I didn’t make a phone call to Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. Everybody knows it. That was a Democrat hoax. It was an excuse for losing the election, and it should have never been this way, where they spent all these millions of dollars.
So now even the Democrats admit there’s no collusion. There is no collusion — that’s it. And we got to get back to running a country.
I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens, let’s see. I can say this — when you look at what’s gone on with the FBI and with the Justice Department, people are very, very angry.
From Norm Eisen:
“yet”!!! Well Mr. President, if you do it to dodge liability for yourself, the naughty boys (Kush and Little Donny) or other friends/family, its OBSTRUCTION.
More about that phone call Trump made to Putin yesterday, (as mentioned in comment 427):
[…] Trump spoke by phone with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Thursday, talking about how they can work together to resolve the situation involving North Korea’s nuclear program […]
Trump also used the call to thank Putin for “acknowledging America’s strong economic performance in his annual press conference,” […]
The leaders talked for about 10 minutes, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster didn’t participate in the call, […]
The call offered fresh evidence that Trump will continue to work with Putin, despite potential political liabilities. […] Trump has continued to view Putin as a potential ally, particularly when it comes to dealing with North Korea.
At his news conference on Thursday, Putin dismissed talk of election interference as “invented” and blamed “spy-mania.”
“All of this has been invented, made up by people who are in opposition to President Trump,” he said.
Putin also noted during the news conference that he calls Trump “Donald” when they talk and that Trump calls him by his first name.
He also offered praise for Trump’s handling of the U.S. economy.
“We see some quite serious achievements, even in this short period of time that he’s been working,” Putin said. “Look at the markets, how they’ve risen. That shows investors’ confidence in the American economy. It shows they believe in what President Trump is doing in this area.”
As Rachel Maddow pointed out, we first learned about the phone call from Russian media outlets. Not from the White House. The White House acknowledged the call later, after press reports forced them to do so.
…The United States is the only developed [sic – I hate this term] country in which these kinds of problems consistently plague elections. Voters who cast ballots in every election should not be told that they have abruptly become inactive; the right to vote should not depend upon one’s ability to recall her county of birth; citizens should not fear arrest on their way to cast lawful ballots. But Alabama’s muddled, mystifying system seems designed to trip up voters at every possible turn; it is a testament to the tenacity of Jones’ supporters that they were able to elect him in spite of state-sanctioned chicanery. Alabama’s electorate already has plenty of initiative. What it needs now is a secretary of state who conducts truly free and fair elections.
Rupert Murdoch is working hard to remain in his bubble of delusion:
[…] During an interview with Sky News, […] Murdoch was asked whether he felt the sex scandals that have rocked the network in recent years hurt its economic bottom line.
“It’s all nonsense,” he said. “There was a problem with our chief executive, sort of over the year, isolated incidents.”
Murdoch was alluding to the ouster of former Fox News chief Roger Ailes.
[…] “As soon as we investigated, he was out of the place in hours. Well, three or four days,” he said. “And there has been nothing else since then.” […]
“That was largely political because we are conservative,” Murdoch told Sky. […]
“There are really bad cases and people should be moved aside,” he said. “There are other things — which probably amount to a bit of flirting,” he said. […]
“It’s unfortunate that he accepted the nomination, and I suppose that does not speak well of him, but it’s hard to throw the first stone there — how many of us would turn down such power and such an honor out of an awareness of our own shortcomings?”
I’m sorry, but no. White goes on to describe in detail the enormously difficult work of a district judge, the preparation it requires, and the impact of their decisions: “These decisions impact our fundamental rights. Our claims are won or lost. Our rights are vindicated or not. We are confined by the state, or not.”
People’s lives, rights, and freedoms are determined by their judgment. Of course a person who knows he’s completely unqualified for this weighty role and cares at all about other people or the institution should turn down the nomination. Of course it doesn’t speak well of him that he accepted it.
It’s becoming clear that Republican leaders in Congress won’t meet the conditions that Senator Susan Collins of Maine set out in the tax legislation. So now what?
The final version of the GOP’s tax bill, whose framework was unveiled in principle on Wednesday, ignores several of the senator’s stated principles.
Yet Collins, who defended her controversial vote to advance the tax bill on grounds she had “ironclad” assurances that her concerns would be addressed, is waffling. “I’m going to wait and look at the entire conference report and see what all the provisions are,” she said on Wednesday, as details emerged.
That sounds alarmingly like the first contortions of an epic flip-flop.
For Collins, the upcoming vote is no longer just about technical policy details. The way she handles the next week is shaping up as a test of her political independence, and to a certain extent even her credibility.
If she really meant what she has been telling the public, Collins should vote against the conference report.
…
The truth is that Collins made a huge blunder by voting for the Senate bill. She’s not the only one to miscalculate: Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona cast his vote for the bill on assurances that Congress would protect undocumented children. There has been no action there, either.
Those senators are left with two choices now: to insist on the deal they had, or back down. And that would expose them as bad negotiators, unprincipled, or both.
One thing is sure: To cast a vote for this bill would reinforce every cynical belief Americans have about politicians, and leave a lasting blot on Collins’s record.
At the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia today Trump proved that he has no idea how the lottery system for immigration works:
They have a lottery. You pick people. Do you think the country is giving us their best people? No. What kind of a system is that? They come in by lottery. They give us their worst people, they put them in a bin, but in his hand when he’s picking’em is the really the worst of the worst, congratulations you’re going to the United States. Okay. What a system. Lottery system.
How does the lottery system really work?
The Diversity Immigrant Visa program, also known as the green card lottery, is a United States congressional lottery program for receiving a United States Permanent Resident Card. […]
The lottery is administered by the Department of State and conducted under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as amended by the Immigration Act of 1990. The lottery makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually and aims to diversify the immigrant population in the United States, by selecting applicants from countries with low rates of immigration in the five years prior. As of 2017, around 20 million people apply for the lottery each year, and around 100,000 people (including family members of the winners) receive permanent residence as a result of it. […]
To enter the lottery, applicants must have been born in an eligible country. If selected, to qualify for the immigrant visa, they must have completed at least a high school education or at least two years of work experience in an occupation which requires at least two other years of training or experience. They must satisfy general immigration requirements, such as means of support, no criminal background, and good health. […]
Experts on immigration note that the chances of winning the lottery are low and those who do win the lottery still have to undergo background checks and vetting, which makes the diversity lottery program a poor choice for immigrants considering launching terrorist attacks in the United States.
According to the Cato Institute, immigrants from the countries with the highest percentage of diversity visas have vastly lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans. […]
At the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia today Trump also said this:
As I look out on the audience today I see many young, bright faces. To them and to many other young Americans watching at home, of which there are many. You see the fake news back there.
Fake news. No, actually, some of them are fine people. About, let’s see who’s back there? Yeah, about 30 percent.
Ann Coulter thinks along lines I just don’t understand. This is her criticism of Senator Marco Rubio for demanding a child tax credit increase in the Republican tax bill:
We singles live empty lives of quiet desperation and will die alone. Now Rubio is demanding that we also fund happy families with children who fill their days with joy.
I’m increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation at the end of the month. Here’s why:
Since March, our investigation has made important progress. We’ve interviewed numerous key witnesses behind closed doors, held public hearings, reviewed thousands of documents, identified new leads — all to understand and expose Russia’s meddling and protect our democracy.
Yet, Republicans have scheduled no witnesses after next Friday and none in 2017. We have dozens of outstanding witnesses on key aspects of our investigation that they refuse to contact and many document requests they continue to sit on.
It appears Republicans want to conduct just enough interviews to give the impression of a serious investigation.
Next week, they scheduled critical witness interviews out of state, when we are voting on the tax bill and vital government funding bills and no Members will be able to ask questions, in an effort to squeeze them in before end of year.
These witnesses are willing to come to DC.
Despite our repeated urging, Majority has declined to issue subpoenas in numerous avenues of the investigation, where there’s simply no other way to get the information. Some refusals we’ve made public, like witnesses hiding behind nonexistent privileges, many others we haven’t.
The responsibility to conduct a thorough investigation, or to prevent one, ultimately falls on @SpeakerRyan. I’m concerned he’s heeding the calls of Bannon and @POTUS to “DO SOMETHING” by closing down the Russia investigation & opening up another investigation of Hilary Clinton.
Beyond our investigation, here’s what has me really concerned: The attacks on Mueller, DOJ and FBI this week make it clear they plan to go after Mueller’s investigation.
Aggressively and soon.
By shutting down the congressional investigations when they continue to discover new and important evidence, the White House can exert tremendous pressure to end or curtail Mueller’s investigation or cast doubt on it. We cannot let that happen.
SC @441, Joy Reid is right about the regulations those pages represent. However, in reality, every page in Trump’s theatrical stacks of regulations was blank. All show, no content.
I don’t understand these predictions. Trump can’t fire Mueller. Literally can’t do it. Only Rosenstein can, and he only can for cause, which he’s said (publicly, more than once in the past week) doesn’t exist. Trump could fire Rosenstein for not doing it and then go down the line until he found someone who would…I don’t know, pull cause out of thin air or something, but I don’t think it would get him anywhere given the existing progress of the investigation and would add to the obstruction case. Plus, I’m not sure if he could ask anything like this from Rosenstein’s office on a federal holiday (maybe he can – I honestly don’t know).
FBI Deputy Director McCabe sscheduled to testify Tuesday to House Intelligence — but will he? “If McCabe is still there,” says one panel Republican. And another, Gowdy, tells FoxNews he’d a”be a little bit surprised if he is still an employee of the FBI this time next week.”
(And I repeat: HOW THE HELL IS THE STORY @ #31 NOT A HUGE FUCKING SCANDAL?)
Manafort is being released from house arrest: “Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort will be released from house arrest while his criminal case is pending, a judge ruled on Friday, but he’ll have to remain under GPS monitoring, be home daily by 11 p.m., and get the judge’s permission to travel outside of southern Florida, where he’ll be living.”
Onamission5says
It doesn’t work. A catastrophic link attempt. I hope you weren’t hurt. :)
Agh, that’s what I get for trying to link to a link to a link as to not give the original twitter source any hits. Let me try again, and if I can’t make tags to a HuffPo link I’m done internetting for the day.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Friday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing new rules that would allow virtually any employer to claim a religious or moral objection to Obamacare’s birth control coverage mandate.
Judge Wendy Beetlestone granted Pennsylvania’s request for a preliminary injunction, saying the commonwealth could suffer “serious and irreparable harm” from the rules. The long-anticipated policies, imposed Oct. 6, greatly expand the exemptions to the health law’s requirement to provide FDA-approved contraception at no cost.
“The Commonwealth’s concern is absent available cost-effective contraception, women will either forgo contraception entirely or choose cheaper but less effective methods — individual choices which will result in an increase in unintended pregnancies,” Beetlestone wrote in her 44-page opinion. “That in turn will inflict economic harm on the Commonwealth because unintended pregnancies are more likely to impose additional costs on Pennsylvania’s state-funded health programs.”…
Current and former female Fox News employees say they are stunned, disgusted and “hungry for justice” after media mogul Rupert Murdoch on Thursday dismissed allegations of sexual misconduct at the network as “nonsense” outside of a few “isolated incidents” with former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes.
…
For this story, HuffPost spoke with 10 current and former female Fox News staffers, all of whom are or were on-air talent and say they have faced harassment or assault by current and former Fox News executives and on-air talent. They said the comment by Murdoch, who controls the Fox News Channel along with his two sons Lachlan and James through 21st Century Fox, not only diminished the scandal that has plagued the network for over 17 months, it also virtually erased a flood of allegations, terminations, forced resignations and settlements.
…
Murdoch’s comment directly contradicts the public relations strategy of Fox News and 21st Century Fox, which has been to diligently tell reporters the era of Ailes, who died this year, and host Bill O’Reilly is over. Instead, the press reps say, Fox News has ushered in a new era of corporate responsibility and a workplace free of hostility and retaliation.
The comment is also unusual because Fox News has been the subject of a federal investigation into Ailes’ settlements for over a year. The U.S. Attorney, the FBI and the United States Postal Inspection Service are all assisting with the probe, which is looking at whether Ailes’ payouts violated federal law because they were not disclosed to shareholders. The Postal Service is involved because the investigation includes potential mail and wire fraud violations.
…
Some Fox News women who have never come forward publicly with their complaints say they are considering sharing what they experienced, and were willing to walk out if necessary. Some say Ailes sexually harassed them, while others have complaints about on-air talent and executives at the network.
“I’m contacting a lawyer tomorrow,” said one Fox News host. “I’m sick of this shit.”
Update to #423 – Natasha Bertrand: “NEW: DOJ Inspector General says in letter to House Judiciary that “the department did not consult with OIG before sharing the text messages with the press.” Full story TK”
The Justice Department’s spokeswoman was adamant in a series of email exchanges with Right Turn on Thursday evening that Rosenstein had no choice but to publicly release the information. “The IG personally cleared the release of these text messages saying that his investigation was nearly closed and he didn’t see any legitimate reason to keep them from Congress,” insisted Sarah Isgur Flores, director of public affairs. “Then career ethics officials cleared the release of these texts for privacy, legal and ethics concerns. So at that point, we had a number of requests from Congress and no legitimate reason we could decline to turn them over.” She defended the decision, reiterating: “We are all doing the best we can over here to ensure a fair and consistent process for all parties.”
Isgur Flores also tweeted the claim about the IG this morning: “As the DAG said, after initial inquiries from Congress, the DAG consulted with the IG, and the IG determined that he had no objection to the Department providing the material to the Congressional committees that had requested it (discussion w IG was only about Congress).”
Flores told Politico on Thursday that career ethics advisers “determined that there were no legal or ethical concerns, including under the Privacy Act, that prohibited the release of the information to the public either by members of Congress or by the department.”
But it is still unclear who authorized the decision, if not Horowitz.
And I want to know who these career ethics advisors were who thought this was fine.
One of the top executives of a consulting firm that the Environmental Protection Agency has recently hired to help it with media affairs has spent the past year investigating agency employees who have been critical of the Trump administration, federal records show.
The firm, Definers Public Affairs, based in Virginia, specializes in conducting opposition research to aid Republican Party causes, meaning that it seeks to find damaging information on Democratic political candidates in an effort to undermine their election bids.
A vice president for the firm, Allan Blutstein, federal records show, has submitted at least 40 Freedom of Information Act requests to the E.P.A. since President Trump was sworn in. Many of those requests target employees known to be questioning management at the E.P.A. since Scott Pruitt, the agency’s administrator, was confirmed.
Mr. Blutstein, in an interview, said he was taking aim at “resistance” figures in the federal government, adding that he hoped to discover whether they had done anything that might embarrass them or hurt their cause.
…
The founders of Definers, Joe Pounder and Matt Rhoades, are longtime Republican political operatives. Mr. Pounder was the research director for the Republican National Committee and worked on the presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in 2016. Mr. Rhodes managed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012.
The two previously founded America Rising, a political action committee that works closely with Republicans. Mr. Blutstein serves as the vice president of Freedom of Information Act operations at America Rising and has filed the majority of his requests to the E.P.A. via that organization….
This is Orwellian: Trump admin gives CDC, the nation’s top public health agency, a list of words/phrases it is prohibited from using. Words/phrases are: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” & “science-based.”
I don’t actually see how this is different from what was said in the letter. Nor do I see how it squares with “The IG personally cleared the release of these text messages saying that his investigation was nearly closed and he didn’t see any legitimate reason to keep them from Congress.”
OK, I think I’m reading this statement differently from others.
They’re reading: “We told them they could divulge these text messages to Congress, and they didn’t consult with us further prior to divulging them.”
I’m reading: “We told them previously and generally – prior to the specific issue of these texts arising – that they could release records to Congress, but that they needed to ensure that this didn’t violate legal or ethical restrictions. They didn’t consult with us prior to releasing these texts to Congress or the media.”
My reading could be mistaken. I don’t think the two OIG statements are different. Neither one is consistent with Isgur Flores’ statements. What were the bases on which it was decided that the release to reporters (who, specifically?) and Congress was legally and ethically sound? Who are the career ethics professionals to whom SIF is referring? On what basis did they render their decision? Who authorized and arranged it?
Jesus, that’s one ambiguous statement. I’ve read it several times, and remain unclear about which terms are general or specific. It’s very annoying.
tomhsays
@ #446
I don’t think it’s far-fetched at all (though I don’t know about Christmas Eve.) For one thing, Rosenstein testified he would fire Mueller if there were “good cause.” With the drumbeat of right wing criticism building, and not just the nut jobs, after all, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is on record that Mueller should go because he can’t be impartial, Rosenstein could easily come up with “cause.” Look what he did with the Comey memo.
If Rosenstein somehow finds a backbone and resigns or is fired, Rachel Brand, Trump appointee and a favorite of the Federalist Society is next in line, and I think she would fire Mueller without hesitation. If not, it gets interesting. Next in line is the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to an executive order from March that outlines the order of succession. That attorney resigned in October and Trump has not yet nominated a potential successor. You can see the possibilities – fire Rosenstein, fire Brand, appoint a lackey who fires Mueller.
But I don’t think any of that will come to pass, because Rosenstein will simply re-write the WSJ editorial, find good cause, and fire Mueller. House Republicans will roll over and the investigation will wither away. In spite of everything, the GOP fears Trump as much as ever.
I don’t think it’s far-fetched at all (though I don’t know about Christmas Eve.) For one thing, Rosenstein testified he would fire Mueller if there were “good cause.”
The special counsel procedures were established by a Justice Department regulation, and the authors of this regulation tried to make it deliberately difficult for the special counsel to be fired. They wrote that only the attorney general can fire him or her, and that even then, there would have to be a good reason — that it could only be done for “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause.”
I don’t know exactly what happened with Rosenstein in the Comey firing and he hasn’t covered himself in glory in some other areas, but he’s the one who appointed Mueller (who he knew would do a thorough, professional job), and he’s said consistently – including this week – that he approves of the way the investigation is being carried out and sees no good cause to dismiss him. I just don’t think he would or could entirely reverse course.
With the drumbeat of right wing criticism building, and not just the nut jobs, after all, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is on record that Mueller should go because he can’t be impartial,
I don’t accept this distinction. There are some great journalists at the WSJ, but the editorial board are total raving wingnuts and it’s owned by Murdoch after all.
If Rosenstein somehow finds a backbone and resigns or is fired, Rachel Brand, Trump appointee and a favorite of the Federalist Society is next in line, and I think she would fire Mueller without hesitation.
From comments I’ve read about her by people who used to work at the DoJ, this doesn’t seem to be a given. She’s very conservative, but she’s seen as a professional and undoubtedly knows what’s at stake.
If not, it gets interesting. Next in line is the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to an executive order from March that outlines the order of succession. That attorney resigned in October and Trump has not yet nominated a potential successor. You can see the possibilities – fire Rosenstein, fire Brand, appoint a lackey who fires Mueller.
Boente’s resignation is another mysterious development, but he’s still in the job until a successor is confirmed.
But I don’t think any of that will come to pass, because Rosenstein will simply re-write the WSJ editorial, find good cause, and fire Mueller.
It’s possible, but I really don’t see this happening. In any case, my issue with the predictions I linked to wasn’t that it was far-fetched for Mueller to be fired in any scenario (I certainly think Trump is psychologically capable of attempting to shut him down, even though history suggests it wouldn’t stop the investigation and the blowback would be his undoing) but that they suggested Trump could just fire Mueller. He can’t.
But I hope he and the Republicans are happy about the additional anxiety they’re causing during the holiday season (even Christmas in Nazareth).
The editorials at the WSJ (Wall Street Journal), and its news content, have been distinct & divergent since prior to the Murdork seizure. The coverage of AGW is an example, with (pre-Murdork) the news pages being rational and the editorial pages being üdenierland. Post-Murdork, this distinction seems to be disappearing into delusional vapour, with the news pages appearing to become uncomfortably unreliable. My own rule-of-thumb from some years now has to ignore the WSJ editorials entirely, and also its news pages, excepting when independent reports confirm (or are the origin of) the WSJ news reports.
As I’ve said previously (July-2013†), “I myself stopped considering the WSJ to be a serious source of anything after it published an unsigned editorial that was nothing more than a fact-free rant objecting to the disclosure of the phone hacking — [yet] another example of a poor grasp of ‘either independent journalism or democracy itself’.”
In short:
● WSJ editorial — Überdubious (Only plausible in the same sense a broken clock is sometimes not wrong);
● WSJ news — Treat with caution ! (Assume it’s Faux-for-the-(pseudo-)rich, lacking independent reliable confirmation to anything plausible.)
† The WSJ editorial attack on independent press actually happened in 2011, and whilst I have (an admittedly somewhat vague (albeit implied by the above quote)) memory of ceasing to consider the WSJ reliable at that time, a quick search does not find any supporting reference.
…The problem for Republicans…is that they have no idea what crimes they’re preparing themselves to absolve. They may understand that convincing Trump to fire Mueller would be walking him into a trap, but if so, they have opted to walk themselves into one instead.
There is a debate underway among former federal prosecutors as to whether the plea deal Mueller struck with Trump’s disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn points to Flynn providing substantial cooperation or to Mueller hitting dead ends. If it’s the latter, then the political bet they are making, while ethically indefensible, makes some sense.
If it’s the former, they will soon find themselves forced to defend the view that Republicans are within their rights to team up with foreign spies to sabotage American elections, and that as long as Republicans win those elections, there will be no meaningful consequences for it.
Trump nominee Matthew Petersen is probably the single most ill-prepared and inexperienced person considered for any federal position in recent times:
[… A] boneheaded president [sic] has a remarkable ability to nominate boneheaded federal judges who will serve an unlimited term as they undermine public confidence in justice and government. Much like the man who put their names forward in the first place.
For now the focus is on the single most ill-prepared and inexperienced nominee for any federal position in recent times: Matthew Petersen.
Petersen is nominated for a lifetime’s job as a US district judge in Washington DC, where the courts regularly shape the conduct of the federal government.
This columnist may have no legal qualifications whatsoever. But having sat in the […] courthouse for months on end, it is our learned opinion that Petersen is an embarrassing fool who has no business wearing a judge’s robes.
Petersen wilted in the face of the simple and polite questioning by Senator John Kennedy, a Trump-supporting Republican from Louisiana, not previously known as a leader of the vast leftwing conspiracy.
Petersen has served as a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, which explains a lot about the FEC’s reputation for almost complete uselessness. A campaign finance lawyer by experience, Petersen has far less of a claim to a job on the federal bench than Judge Judy. (Note to the White House: this is not a suggestion to nominate Judge Judy.)
[…]
Petersen had never tried a case in any court, in front of a jury or otherwise. Never taken a deposition on his own. Never argued a motion in court. Couldn’t answer basic questions about accepting evidence in court.
“Do you know what a motion in limine is?” asked Kennedy, citing one of the most basic motions to exclude evidence before trial.
I haven’t had to, again, do a deep dive, fumbled the nominee. And I understand, and I appreciate this line of questioning. I understand the challenge that would be ahead of me if I were fortunate enough to become a district court judge. I understand that the path that many successful district court judges have taken has been a different one than I have taken. But as I mentioned in my earlier answer, I believe that the path that I have taken to be one who’s been in a decision-making role in somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 enforcement matters, overseen I don’t know how many cases in federal court …
At this point, the senator cut off the poor nominee, whose earnest efforts to justify his own inadequacies were wasting precious time.
It’s worth making the blindingly obvious hypothetical comparison to a notional nominee under the last president. Let’s say Barack Obama had put forward an utterly unqualified person for a lifetime judge’s job — someone so useless that they hadn’t even boned up on basic legal terms any judge would need to know. And let’s say that nominee was a person of color. What do you think the public reaction would be?
Now is the time to stand back and admire in all its glory the sight of the white male equivalent in the Trump era. In spite of his obvious ignorance, Petersen believes he can still do the job because he’s been a decision-maker on several hundred legal matters and court cases. You can only wonder how awesome those decisions have been.
You can also only wonder at the American Bar Association, which rated Petersen as qualified to be a federal judge. […]
There are reasons I am very very negative about lawyers (in general) and, amongst other specifics, their mafias (much of the time).
The opinion column goes on to discuss what several people here have observed: The (potential for) enormous damage the entire judicial system — and possibly to the rule-of-law itself — the thugs are inflicting with the help of Putin’s patsy. Federal judicial appointments are for life; it is very very difficult to remove a judge (recently, the New York Times(?) pointed out only eleven(?) federal judges have ever been impeached). That is, fixing the problem once the thugs are removed from control / power / disruption / funding is extremely difficult.
One of the readers’s comments claims “Kennedy still gave his vote to Peterson anyway.” I have not tried to verify or refute the reader’s claim, albeit Kennedy being hair furor supporter (read: nazi), it seems very very probable.
There’s a new provision in the 1,097-page tax scam that the Republicans released at 5:30 PM yesterday. That provision benefits Trump.
[…] the final tax legislation contains a brand-new provision that wasn’t included in the House or Senate bills. It benefits real estate developers like President Donald Trump and his family. The provision was first highlighted by the International Business Times.
The Republican tax legislation always provided a tax break for “pass-through” corporations, which is a type of corporation where the income is passed to the owners who pay personal income taxes on the money. The rationale for providing tax benefits to this kind of corporation, Republicans say, is that this is how many small businesses are set up.
In addition to lowering the tax rate for “pass-through” corporations, both the House and the Senate allowed corporations to deduct about 20 percent of this kind of income from all taxation. But how do you prevent everyone from declaring themselves a corporation to avail themselves of these new benefits? The House and Senate capped the availability of the deduction as a percentage of wages paid. In other words, you had to at least demonstrate that you were a real business employing people to receive this benefit.
The final legislation, however, includes a new way to qualify for this valuable deduction. You can qualify by paying wages or through owning property. This would benefit people who own businesses with large real estate holdings but few actual employees — a category that includes many businesses still owned by President Trump.
[…] Another big winner is likely Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, who is also in real estate. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) would also personally benefit from the new provision. Corker opposed the Senate version of the bill, citing deficit concerns, but announced his support for the final tax legislation, even though it has the exact same deficit impact.
Even prior to this new provision, the tax legislation was a love letter to the commercial real estate industry […]
“The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week,” Spier told KQED. “And on Dec. 22nd, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller.”
Of course she means have Rosenstein fire him. Or, since he’d still like to get rid of the disloyal AG, he could just replace Sessions with someone who would do the job. In addition, Speir feelsTrump is already trying to shut down the Congressional investigation.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained “many tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails, including sensitive emails of Jared Kushner, transition team sources tell Axios.
Trump officials discovered Mueller had the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses, the sources said.
The emails include 12 accounts, one of which contains about 7,000 emails, the sources said.
The accounts include the team’s political leadership and the foreign-policy team, the sources said….
Rick Wilson has been hinting that he’s heard via the rumor mill (allegedly due to reporters asking for confirmation) something about an impending action against Kushner. That could be the reason for the ratcheting up of the campaign against…the law.
tomh @478, “[…] the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week […]”
I do wish Trump and his lackeys would stop employing teasers like that. It makes every policy announcement sound like a reality TV show, a show that ends each episode with a cliffhanger. Also, we, the audience, have no way to judge the “significance” or triviality of the supposedly upcoming speech.
Meanwhile, Trump is taking a premature victory lap to celebrate the Republican tax scam.
“It’s going to be one of the great Christmas gifts to middle income people,” the president told reporters outside the White House before boarding Marine One for a weekend getaway at Camp David.
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill hit back at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for using a lightsaber in a video defending the agency’s repeal of net neutrality rules, saying Pai was “unworthy” of using a lightsaber.
“Cute video Ajit “Aren’t I Precious?” Pai – but you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber,” Hamill tweeted.
“A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man-NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations.”
The actor also hit Pai over his use of the “Star Wars” theme in the video, asking if Pai had paid composer John Williams his royalty.
Pai has already come under fire for the pro-net neutrality video, which was produced by conservative outlet The Daily Caller.
Baauer, the DJ behind “Harlem Shake” threatened to take legal action against Pai for using his viral song during part of the clip.
And one of the women featured in the video, Daily Caller video producer Martina Markota, was revealed to be a major proponent of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. […]
Another study backs up what we already knew, Trump was elected largely due to racial resentment:
Contrary to what some have suggested, white millennial Trump voters were not in more economically precarious situations than non-Trump voters. Fully 86 percent of them reported being employed, a rate similar to non-Trump voters; and they were 14 percent less likely to be low income than white voters who did not support Trump. Employment and income were not significantly related to that sense of white vulnerability.
So what was? Racial resentment.
Even when controlling for partisanship, ideology, region and a host of other factors, white millennials fit Michael Tesler’s analysis, explored here. As he put it, economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment; rather, racial resentment is driving economic anxiety. We found, as he has in a larger population, that racial resentment is the biggest predictor of white vulnerability among white millennials. Economic variables like education, income and employment made a negligible difference.
The text excerpt is from the Washington Post. The researchers included Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen. They focused on millennials because they will be the largest group in the voting-eligible population in 2018. More millennials backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 than backed Trump. 41% of millennials voted for Trump.
The devastating wildfires in California are still … well, devastating.
Strong winds helped fuel an already devastating California wildfire on Saturday, turning it into the third-largest on record for the state as authorities ordered new evacuations in Santa Barbara County. […]
The 404-square-mile Thomas fire first erupted on Dec. 4 for unknown reasons and has so far destroyed more than 259,000 acres and 1,000 structures along the coast in Southern California. The destruction is set to continue as the fire is headed toward wealthy communities northwest of Los Angeles known as a spot where some of the country’s biggest celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres, have homes. “It is right above the homes,” fire spokesman Jude Olivas said.
The fire is roaring amid what authorities are describing as “critical fire weather” because of the high winds and low humidity. The region has been in a “red flag” warning, which is what the National Weather Service uses to designate hot, dry, and windy conditions that can help spark wildfires, for an unprecedented number of days. […] “This has been the longest duration event that we have had a red flag warning out without any breaks.”
[…] A firefighter was killed Thursday while battling Thomas. […]
I heard (in passing, at a Scottish Green Party event, so I don’t know the details) that there’s a case going to be put forward to the European Court of Justice to determine whether Article 50 is unilaterally revocable – i.e., whether the UK could decide that it doesn’t want to leave the EU after all. Combined with the vote in the Commons last week, which (provided the government doesn’t find some way of reversing or evading it) ensures that Parliament gets a vote on whether the terms negotiated for leaving are acceptable, a ruling that it is revocable would open up a plausible (although not likely) route for avoiding the epic fuck-up that Brexit will otherwise be: Parliament rejects the terms, then votes to revoke Article 50. If it’s not revocable, rejecting the terms would just mean risking Brexit without any agreement, since renegotiation would be next to impossible, given that 27 countries plus the European Parliament need to agree the terms.
Update to #479 – As part of their propaganda campaign against the Mueller investigation, the Trump people, after leaking to Axios yesterday that Mueller’s team had these transition emails, sent a letter to Congress* and provided it to Fox claiming Mueller had obtained them inappropriately and that might have violated attorney-client privilege and the 4th Amendment. That they were going in this direction was hinted at in the way they framed it to Axios, so I wasn’t surprised when the letter emerged yesterday just before I went offline. It sounded like a political stunt, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine how the GSA and Mueller would shoot down the claims.
The GSA and Mueller have shot down the claims. The statement from Mueller’s spokesman is pretty amazing (my emphasis): “When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”
Even before these responses, the Trump lawyer’s arguments were weak and internally contradictory and never meant to stand as a legal claim; this is a desperate political ploy, and it’s all they have upon learning that Mueller has these messages. Ultimately, it makes them look worse – either the transition communications themselves contain incriminating information or leads, or Trump people have lied to investigators believing the investigators weren’t in possession of this evidence. As their legal jeopardy seems to increase, the propaganda campaign is ramping up.
* Which, the Trump campaign lawyers surely know, is not the appropriate venue for such an argument.
Here are some questions I still have as the year comes to a close:
– What was up with the (what I believe to be) fake Manafort blackmail plot that appeared to have been coordinated with the Kremlin?
– What’s happened with the investigation into the firebombing of the NC Republican headquarters?
– Why was there not more attention to Trump’s fake veterans’ event on the USS Iowa in 2015, at which he claimed the organization he was working with represented hundreds of thousands of veterans when it represented one shady Republican operative? Where did the money go?
– What role did the NRA play in Russian election interference/collusion?
– What role did US Christian-Right organizations play in Russian election interference/collusion?
– What role did Mohammed bin Zayed play in potential collusion?
– What role did Jill Stein play in Russian election interference/collusion?
– Which if any Republicans took money from Russian oligarchs?
– What shady connections did Nigel Farage (bless his heart) deploy in the Brexit and US presidential campaigns?
– Why did Dana Boente resign? (And what was up with the changes in the line of succession?)
– Why the hell is the Gowdy payoff @ #31 above not a huge fucking scandal?
– What’s happening with the Firtash extradition?
– What was Brian McCauley up to when he was working for the Flynn Group?
– What did the White Canvas Group do for the Trump campaign/Flynn?
– Why has Rudy Giuliani gone so quiet?
– Why has nothing come of the reports that showed Ivanka Trump and Donald Jr. apparently committing fraud related to the Trump SoHo (and Cy Vance’s involvement in non-prosecution)? How did she not have to resign from the WH?
– How does Jared Kushner still have a job and a security clearance?
– Has Kushner sought money for his 666 Fifth Ave. building since the election?
– Does Kushner have a corrupt relationship with Netanyahu or other rich Israeli interests? (And how is Netanyahu still in power?)
– Does the Reza Zarrab plea have any implications for people connected to Trump?
– What’s the story behind Fox’s Seth Rich conspiracy reports and their possible coordination with the WH and/or the Kremlin?
– Why did Stephen Paddock shoot all those people in Las Vegas?
– What was going on with that strange FBI archive Twitter account?
– Why did C-SPAN broadcast RT for several minutes in January?
– What happened here?
– Why did Georgia officials destroy election data after a lawsuit was filed, and is this being investigated?
– Were any voting systems successfully hacked? Why were states provided information so belatedly and confusingly?
– What is Mercer up to recently?
– Where is Joseph Mifsud? Is he in Malta?
– Who wrote the tweet about Flynn being fired because he lied to the FBI? Is Dowd’s claim that he wrote it now part of the investigation?
– Is there still more to the Obama/Biden response to Putin’s election interference yet to come?
As part of the current drive towards theocracy in America, the final tax bill extends Section 529 Qualified Tuition Programs to public, private or religious elementary or secondary schools. Section 529 plans are tax free savings plans, that can be used for higher education tuition. Unused amounts are tax-deferred, including income. Under the new tax code families can withdraw up to $10,000 per pupil per year for k-12 schools, including private and religious.
SC @494, Chris Matthews is one of the MSNBC hosts I don’t watch. His mannerisms include: overly vague conclusions from little or no evidence, and rudely interrupting his guests. No need to watch that. I didn’t know about him also insulting women.
SC @487, they’re taking the bogus claims about Mueller illegally obtaining emails to Congress and to Axios for the purposes of complaining and leaking. They are not taking their claim of illegality to the courts, where they know they would lose.
This is obviously part of their political/propaganda effort to discredit the Mueller investigation. It’s unethical and sneaky.
[…] One might speculate that Trump’s lawyers know they have no legal case here but are playing this up as part of a “Mueller’s out of control/breaking the law” narrative. It’s certainly being played that way on Fox. Certainly there’s some of that. But my guess is that they’re genuinely surprised. And since they’re surprised they assume Mueller cheated. (Is it possible Mueller did something wrong? Sure. Who knows? If so, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. But I doubt it. And none of the legal commentary I’ve seen suggests he did.) Beyond that, however, I suspect they now fear (no doubt rightly) that Trump officials lied during their interviews with the Special Counsel’s office and the investigators already had the emails that proved they were lying. That’s a real sinking feeling for everyone involved.
From the recent in-depth piece by the Washington Post, in which we see that Trump was presented with evidence of Russians interference in the election:
[…] The officials were escorted into a spacious conference room on the 14th floor of Trump Tower. Trump took a seat at one end of a large table, with Vice President-elect Mike Pence at the other. Among the others present were Priebus, Pompeo and designated national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Following a rehearsed plan, Clapper functioned as moderator, yielding to Brennan and others on key points in the briefing, which covered the most highly classified information U.S. spy agencies had assembled, including an extraordinary CIA stream of intelligence that had captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation.
The briefing was held on January 6, 2017. Trump has voiced doubts about Russian interference several times since that briefing. Is Trump lying? Has he been paid by Russia somehow to continue to put out false information? Is Trump completely divorced from reality? Is Trump so forgetful? Is Trump so married emotionally to the idea that he won the election without any help that he would implode if he admitted that the Russians interfered?
Trump promotes more environmental damage, and in doing so he screws over some Native Americans.
Uranium, it’s now part of Navajo DNA. With over 500 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation, people living near these mines are exposed daily to radiation exposure at a rate several times higher than normal background radiation. Last week, President Donald Trump announced he was summarily reducing the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent, thereby opening archaeologically rich sites to uranium mining.
Over the past two months, at administrative chapter houses adjacent to Bears Ears, 98 percent of Navajos voted in support of the national monument designation. These voters are likely voting for more than the protection of sacred sites. Many are likely also there for a say in the future of the uranium mining that has plagued Navajo communities since World War II, when the development of the atom bomb created a demand for yellowcake.
From the 1940s to the 1980s, 30 million tons of uranium were extracted from mines on the Navajo Nation. Today, more than 500 abandoned uranium mines remain on the reservation, which stretches 27,000 square miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon past Gallup, New Mexico, and north to the San Juan River in Utah, poisoning the water and carrying in the dust. Only one mine has been cleaned up. It is estimated that total cleanup will cost between $4 billion to $6 billion and could take a century to complete. A recent study by researchers from the University of New Mexico found 85 percent of Navajo homes had uranium contamination, and Navajos living near these mines have higher levels of uranium in their bones than 95 percent of the American population. Even infants have been found to have uranium in their urine. […]
What happens if you are an evangelical who speaks out against Trump?
[…] Jen Hatmaker, a popular evangelical author and speaker, started getting death threats. Readers mailed back her books to her home address, but not before some burned the pages or tore them into shreds. LifeWay Christian Stores, the behemoth retailer of the Southern Baptist Convention, pulled her titles off the shelves. […]
During the campaign, as other white evangelicals coalesced around the Republican nominee, Hatmaker effectively joined the coterie of “Never Trump” evangelicals, telling her more than half a million Facebook followers that Donald Trump made her “sad and horrified and despondent.” After the “Access Hollywood” tape leaked and prominent evangelical men came to Trump’s defense, she tweeted: “We will not forget. Nor will we forget the Christian leaders that betrayed their sisters in Christ for power.” […]
That’s when the full weight of conservative Christian outrage crashed down on Hatmaker. There were soon angry commenters and finger-wagging bloggers. She says people in her little town of Buda, Texas, just south of Austin, pulled her children aside and said terrible things about her and her husband. She was afraid to be in public, and she wasn’t sleeping or eating well. […]
“This year I became painfully aware of the machine, the Christian Machine,” she wrote in April on her blog. It was Good Friday, a somber day for Christians to observe the crucifixion of Jesus. Hatmaker wrote that she understood now the machine’s “systems and alliances and coded language and brand protection,” not as the insider she had long been, but “from the outside where I was no longer welcome.” During the election season, she added, the “Christian Machine malfunctioned.” It laid bare the civil war within her Christian community. […]
From Wonkette’s coverage of the emails to which Mueller has access (part of the previous discussion on this thread is here):
Let’s put aside the brain-melting irony of the guy who “loves Wikileaks” and encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails bitching about having his communications “unlawfully” accessed in a criminal investigation. If we stop to point out every clanging hypocrisy in Trumpland, we’ll never get to the point that this new tantrum from the Trump transition team lawyer is UTTER BULLSHIT!
But, like Evan told us on Friday, we do have to examine some of the monkeyshit the the Fox News howler brigade is flinging in the air to try to discredit the Mueller investigation. […]
Yesterday, Fox reported that Kory Langhofer, lawyer for that august legal institution Trump for America, had sent a letter to Congress protesting “unlawful conduct” by the General Services Administration (GSA) and possible violations of privilege and the 4th Amendment by the Mueller team. He didn’t elaborate on what privilege might have been violated or how the their 4th Amendment rights had been abridged. But, Fox News had their had their GOP marching orders, and they marched their worthless hearts out. […]
Oh, FFS! What had happened was, the Trump Administration installed Richard Beckler, a veteran of Rudy Giuliani’s law firm, to head the GSA. With their guy in charge they assumed that whatever incriminating shit they said in their presidential transition team emails would stay hidden […] Because they are just that stupid.
[…] Specifically, Loewentritt said, “in using our devices,” transition team members were informed that materials “would not be held back in any law enforcement” actions.
Loewentritt read to BuzzFeed News a series of agreements that anyone had to agree to when using GSA materials during the transition, including that there could be monitoring and auditing of devices and that, “Therefore, no expectation of privacy can be assumed.” […]
From Norm Eisen:
I was the Deputy GC of a Transition (Obama-Biden 08). I warned everyone: there is NO expectation of privacy in your transition emails. The clue: emails are “[email protected].” The whining letter from the Trump Transition tacitly admits this: it ends by asking for a legislative fix
From Kellyanne Conway:
The fix was in against @realDonaldTrump from the beginning, and they were pro-Hillary… They can’t possibly be seen as objective or transparent or even-handed or fair.
From Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro:
Members of the @FBI and @TheJusticeDept – some of whom actually ended up on Bob Mueller’s team to prosecute @realDonaldTrump – did everything they could to exonerate @HillaryClinton for her crimes and incriminate @POTUS with a non-existent crime.
More from Wonkette:
[…] And before we finish here, we’d just like to point out the Mueller has had these emails the whole time. He’s interviewed the entire Trump brain trust, asking hundreds of questions based on the transition emails, and it took them until now to figure it out. Was it White House counsel Don McGahn who finally had the Eureka! moment during his second interview this week? You know damn well it wasn’t Kushner, who is probably congratulating himself for using his own server and is too dimwitted to realize that Mueller has the emails he sent to other members of the team.
In sum, this is all just more bullshit to try to discredit Mueller. […]
Goddamnit – the Republicans are saying they have the votes to pass the tax scam.
This makes me laugh. It is written like it is meant to soothe tantrum-throwing-toddler Trump. This is the statement from Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb:
The only explanation I can come up with for the line Ty Cobb is taking is that he’s trying to prevent Trump from doing something desperate and self-destructive. He can’t really be as ignorant as he appears to be.
SC in comment 500 in the previous chapter of this thread:
Good point about Kushner!
SC in comment 1 above, yes, it looks like the scam will be passed. And the tax plan will be worse than we thought. I’ll link back to my comment 499 about the debacle surrounding the funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
For those who haven’t seen it yet, see SC’s comment 496 in the previous chapter of this thread. Mike Flynn will indeed put Trump in hot water when he
Lawyer Ty Cobb’s statement (comment 2, above) is a fairy tale.
Kamala Harris: “UPDATE: We still haven’t seen the text of the tax bill Republicans are scrambling to rewrite in secret. I’d imagine some Republican Senators haven’t either. Our constituents didn’t send us here to govern this way.”
Comey is tweeting Biblical passages.
From the New York Times, concerning the Republican re-engineering of U.S. social structure via a tax bill that gives more money to rich people by taking that money from poor people and the middle class:
More from ABC:
“Michael Flynn ‘is prepared to testify…against Pres. Trump, against members of the Trump family, and others in the White House’, @BrianRoss reports.”
“Flynn felt abandoned by Trump in recent weeks, close confidant tells @ABC, and told friends about decision to make plea deal within last 24 hours as he grew increasingly concerned about crippling legal costs.”
From Andrew S. Weiss:
Senate Republicans are refusing to believe the facts about their tax plan.
Furthermore, that analysis employed the rainbows-and-unicorns magic “dynamic” scoring in which Republicans believe. And the bottom line still does not support their fairy tale.
The numbers are even more bleak if you remove the rainbows-and-unicorns faux math entirely.
Think Progress link
More quotes from disbelieving Republicans can be read at the link.
The full “Statement of the Offense” is now available on the Special Counsel’s site. It’s something. Flynn’s requests to Kislyak were made at the behest of a “Very Senior Member” of the transition team, who was at Mar-a-Lago, and to whom he reported back with Kislyak’s responses.
It appears Kushner wasn’t at Mar-a-Lago during the time in question (when Flynn spoke with a Very Senior Member of the transition team who was there about the sanctions*). This incident happened at JFK on December 22nd, when he and Ivanka were heading to Hawaii. They were in Hawaii for New Year’s Eve. It might well be Trump himself with whom Flynn was speaking.
* He could still have talked to Kushner about the UNSC resolution.
As Natasha Bertrand points out, Trump was at Mar-a-Lago on that date; still unclear whether Pence or Sessions were there.
…still unclear whether Pence or Sessions were there.
And actually it doesn’t really matter, for Trump at least. Even if he wasn’t speaking directly with Trump but with Pence or Sessions, he was communicating with Trump and the other members of the transition team who were at Mar-a-Lago and who communicated their collective view (“The PTT official and Flynn also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation”). There’s no possible way Trump could spin this off. But obviously it would be a lot better for Pence or Sessions if they weren’t there.
Oh – I missed this:
Probably the least surprising of these revelations – “Lawmaker behind secret $84K sexual harassment settlement unmasked: Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) used taxpayer funds to end a dispute with his communications director in 2014.”
Adam Goldman, NYT reporter who covers the FBI and national security, a few minutes ago: “Not doing TV interviews. I have work to do. Stay tuned.”
Me @ #13 above – * He could still have talked to Kushner about the UNSC resolution.
Buzzfeed – “It Was Kushner Who Told Flynn To Make Calls About Israel UN Vote, Source Says”:
According to a pool report from December 29, 2016, Stephen Miller, K.T. McFarland, Conway, Bannon and Priebus were all at Mar-a- Lago at that time. I don’t know about Pence, but I doubt the document could be referring to him (or Sessions?) since the person to whom Flynn spoke is described as a “senior official” on the transition. Given that Kushner is described as a “very senior member” of the team, I have to assume this was someone below his level – therefore not Pence, who was the head of the team. Sessions would probably have been mentioned in the pool report if he was there, I’d think, as would Pence, but it’s possible one or both of them were present. Flynn probably talked to one of the people listed above, which is even worse for Trump, as the document says they were speaking for the team at M-a-L at the time and none of those people would remotely have freelanced this in any case.
From Senator Claire McCaskill:
https://twitter.com/clairecmc
Unreal – Claire McCaskill: “This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them.”
Jinx!
After Flynn appeared in court today, Fox News featured a large photo with a caption in a huge font size. It read “WHACK A MOLE, secret emails detail FBI’s hunt for leaker after infamous Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting.”
Current news, y’all.
When the Fox News on-air crew did get around to discussing Flynn, they spun the news so hard I thought they might create a tornado.
Link
From Mike Cernovich:
“Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea Shows That Robert Mueller Is Closing In”:
Intelligence supersleuth Tom Cotton at work. Masterful.
Lawfare: “The Flynn Plea: A Quick and Dirty Analysis.”
Brian Schatz: “Does anyone know a Republican lobbyist so I can get my hands on a copy of this bill?”
They’re still planning to vote tonight. It’s governmental malpractice.
“Gowdy, Benghazi panel settled wrongful firing suit with $150,000 in public funds”:
JFC.
This process is one of the most shameful things I’ve ever seen.
In the future, the pages @ #s 32 and 33 will be in a museum, exhibits from the era when the Republican Party attempted to undermine the republic and destroy democratic institutions.
“Sen. Durbin is trying to enter this page into the record, and can’t because nobody can read it.
This is a page of the tax bill. That we’re voting on. Tonight. In the United States Senate.”
I’ve been waiting for someone to put this up. No one talks about Priebus. He was at Mar-a-Lago with the other transition-team members on the day in question.
Jon Lovett re #31: “In a twist, a settlement for *refusing* to harass a woman.”
So many of the TV discussions are exasperating. Even as more bits of the iceberg are revealed, a shocking number of people who should know better continue to insist that this is all there is and that it’s unlikely (and even more unlikely) that Mueller’s probe will reveal any coordination or conspiracy with Putin or Trump’s involvement in it. That’s a completely unreasonable assumption given what we know about the evidence, how these things work, and Trump’s character.
Recall: “Of the wider Trump-Russia conspiracy, Steele said: ‘It’s massive. Absolutely massive’.”
Chris Hayes should be good tonight (starts at 8 ET).
I can picture the MASNI hats already.
“EVERY REPUBLICAN SENATOR voted against permanent middle class tax cuts.”
Steve Schmidt: “The United States Senate has gone completely off the rails. Lobbyists are writing the bill in secret and duly elected Democratic US Senators have no idea what’s in it. The corruption of what used to be the worlds greatest deliberative body is a tragedy.”
Editorial comment o’ the day.
Senators are literally tweeting out pages of the bill, demanding to know what the last-minute changes even are.
“The Hillsdale Handout. Burn it into your memory.”
“SCHUMER: ‘Historians will mark today as one of the darkest black letter days in the long history of this senate’.”
Joy Reid: “What you’re witnessing tonight in the United States Senate is the weaponization of pure, unmitigated greed. Lobbyists are writing the bill in pen at the last minute. And Republicans are no longer even pretending to care about anyone but the super rich. What a shameful night.”
Schatz: “Republicans are now in the process of voting NO on a motion to give us* a couple of days to READ THE BILL. This is appalling.”
* “Us” = Senators.
Putting the vote for this bill on hold until Monday is the bare minimum of…anything.
“BREAKING: A last-minute addition to the tax bill gives the Trump family a BILLION dollar tax cut.
Oh, wait. That’s been in the bill all along and for some reason it’s not mentioned in the lede of every story. I see.”
So the populists have passed a bill, written in large part by lobbyists in back rooms, that will suck money from health care and other services and give it to the very rich and corporations. Trump, his family, and his cronies will rake in even more than they have in the past. 13 million people will lose health coverage, and taxes and premiums will rise for millions more struggling people. After holding no hearings and refusing to wait for a score on the final legislation, they voted down an amendment to allow members of the Senate (and the public) to even have the weekend to read the bill. Next on their agenda: more cuts to vital social services.
Meanwhile, “Honduras suspends rights as violence spreads over delayed vote count.”
This is very good – “The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election”: “A pervasive theme of all of these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was that she was dishonest and unlikable. These recent harassment allegations suggest that perhaps the problem wasn’t that Mrs. Clinton was untruthful or inherently hard to connect with, but that these particular men hold deep biases against women who seek power instead of sticking to acquiescent sex-object status.”
Interview with Jane Mayer: “How dangerous is dark money?”
(Incidentally, when I was looking at old news reports yesterday trying to figure out who was at Mar-a-Lago on December 29, 2016, I noticed that one of the people with whom Trump was meeting that week was David Koch.)
SC: While I agree with everything Jill Filipovic says in her piece, I find it somewhat ironic that it appears in the Times–one of the most vigorously anti-Hillary rags on the (slightly) left of center press.
This is interesting.
Unethical, ignorant fools … and a few dupes:
Super deeply duped.
Link
In addition to their joy over successfully guaranteeing that rich people will get richer and poor people will suffer, I guess Republicans are wildly happy to have probably dealt Obamacare a death blow.
From Hillary Clinton:
“The bill is investing heavily in the wealthy and their children — by boosting the value of their stock portfolios, creating new loopholes for them to avoid tax on their labor income, and cutting taxes on massive inheritances,” Lily Batchelder, a New York University professor who worked as an economist under President Barack Obama, said. “At the same time, it leaves low- and middle-income workers with even fewer resources to invest in their children, and increases the number of Americans without health insurance.”
“The bill makes the economic playing field even more tilted toward the most fortunate,” Batchelder said, “which means over time the distributional effects of the bill will be even worse than these estimates suggest.”
Jason Furman, (leader the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama), summarized five ways the Republican tax bill could, beyond the obvious, deepen inequality:
1. Raising taxes on students, universities and training would have a disproportionate impact on access to more moderate-income students, reducing their upward mobility.
2. At the same time, estate tax cuts or repeal would further expand the opportunities of the most affluent.
3. Reducing or eliminating the state and local tax deduction would lead many states to cut taxes and with them cut services like education, training and the like that help to boost incomes and reduce inequality. States and localities could also shift more of their tax base to more regressive sales taxes.
4. The larger federal deficit will come at the expense of other government transfers for middle/bottom households and/or programs like education, nutrition assistance and Medicaid that have all demonstrated a tremendous impact on upward mobility.
5. More speculatively, cutting the tax rate on monopoly profits could help reduce competition with further consequences for inequality and growth.
Link
The text above is excerpted from a much longer article that also includes some startling graphs showing how disproportionately the tax bill favors the rich.
From Wonkette:
Some of the most encouraging news I’ve heard in weeks, Le Pen’s party faces shutdown of bank accounts:
Hair furor claims to be a zillionaire, just ask him, teh biggest and bestest evar. Ask Putin to order him to lend your brand of nazis money.
Mitch McConnell is still too much of a coward to speak out about Roy Moore’s lack of character:
Link
I really don’t get this idea that matters of criminality or lack of ethics can be settled during a campaign. When a candidate is elected does that mean that all of the questions about his/her past misdeeds have been “litigated?” I think not.
Jared Kushner is even more trouble in regards to failing to disclose to the Office of Government Ethics an association he should have disclosed:
Newsweek link
Wild and crazy Hair Furor, he of the disintegrating mind, tweeted this today:
This is a follow-up to comments 5 and 9. It concerns a correction from ABC.
Politico link
Yeah, we knew that Trump would seize the opportunity to shout, “Fake news!”
North Korea has stated it will negotiate with the United States if Russia is at the table.
Link to Joy Reid’s segment discussing this development.
The video is 8:03 minutes long.
I have to give Alabama Republicans credit, this was a clever move: by offering the ability to vote by party affiliation, even though there’s only one partisan race on the ballot, voters can tick “Republican” instead of “Roy Moore.”
It’s a holdover from another era and I haven’t seen many Republicans push that line, but, yeah, it just makes the con all the more heavy-handed. “Let them choose him, specifically,” they concern-troll, pretending to support a democracy, while also signaling their willingness (eagerness, even) to disenfranchise Alabama voters, to reverse the results of their own primary, by immediately replacing him once elected*. I wonder who they have in mind?
*it’s exceedingly common for political parties to practice My Party, Right or Wrong, to nose-hold their way into electoral victories, but it’s more than a little crass to admit that your identikit rabid conservative cum pedophile is just a place-holder for whomever you choose to install. Wasn’t this election all about anti-coronations?
Hair Furor thinks he is above the law, and he is getting backup for this extraordinary claim from his lawyer and from Alan Dershowitz:
Link
Chuck Grassley’s excuse for repealing the estate tax:
From Steve Benen:
Link
Benen’s post includes additional links to sources that back up his factual claims, including the “$400 emergency expense” fact. I can relate.
I’m still stuck on the idea that “movies” are classified as an immoral expense in Grassley’s litany. And, of course, he unthinkingly adopted the view that men are responsible: it’s men that are spending money on “women.” At least I think that is what’s going on in Grassley’s head.
Follow-up to comment 63.
From Sally Yates:
Follow-up to comment 69. I don’t have a new iPhone. My parents, who were poor most of their lives, and who struggled to climb into the lower-middle-class category, are dead. By Republican standards, I think maybe this equals being cursed by God.
Billy Bush has had enough of Trump’s lying. Bush wrote an editorial that was published by The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/opinion/billy-bush-trump-access-hollywood-tape.html
More analysis of the “tax boondoggle” that Republicans are still working on as they try to reconcile the House bill and the Senate bill.
Tax Bill Offers Last-Minute Breaks for Developers, Banks and Oil Industry
For SC’s category of “Tweet of the Day”:
https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/937249869219139584
Follow-up to comment 69.
Link
Trump made another claim that is easily proven to be wrong. Trump lied.
Link
The President of the U.S. just libeled a private citizen, Hillary Clinton. He claimed, with no supporting facts whatsoever, that she lied. We have facts that show it is Trump lying in this case.
Arlene Foster, leader of the authoritarian bigots of the “Democratic” Unionist Party, appears to have vetoed a deal between the UK government and the EU negotiators over what happens to the Irish border after Brexit. The minority Tory government depends on DUP support to get key measures through the Commons. It’s likely the DUP could count on considerable support among Tory MPs for their veto.
Follow-up to comments 68 and 73.
Trump’s lawyer John Dowd said that, “[President Trump] cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer.”
Former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara took issue with that statement:
Link
Yikes. Very bad news. The Supreme Court voted to allow full enforcement Trump’s travel ban (Muslim ban) when the ban is applied to six countries.
Link
Trump stripped the “National Monument” designation from about two million acres in Utah today.
Link
Update on U.S. reaction to the election in Honduras, (see comment 53, from SC).
Link
Follow-up to comment 79.
Coverage from Wonkette:
Mueller is asking the judge not to agree to Manafort’s motion to change the conditions of his bail, because Manafort was last week ghostwriting a self-promotional oped in English about his work for Ukrainian politicians. With a Russian person who’s in Russia and who has ties to Russian intelligence.
Also, “McFarland Contradicted Herself on Russia Contacts, Congressional Testimony Shows”:
The apparent lie was in a written response to a written question from Corey Booker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where her sworn testimony was part of her confirmation process.
SC @82, bad news for Manafort. Kind of funny, though. Manafort’s bail conditions included NOT hanging around with any Russians. So, Manafort worked with a Russian, and not just any Russian, but one with ties to Russian intelligence. Sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Trump’s Department of Labor has come up with yet one more way to screw low-wage earners:
Link
From Christine Owens of the National Employment Law Project:
Follow-up to comment 56, in which we discussed the fact that Senator Susan Collins was likely duped into voting for the Senate’s version of the tax bill by Mitch McConnell.
From Topher Spiro:
One of the women that Roy Moore claimed not to know has proof that he knew her, and that he dated her when she was 17 and he was in his thirties.
Link
The first episode of the new Slate podcast about Watergate is jawdropping. More than once, I literally gasped.
Further to my #76, various commentators have been suggesting that a deal on the Irish border will be concluded, but I’m sceptical. Typically, the diplomatic solution to irreconcilable positions is ambiguous language, but neither the DUP nor their Tory fellow-travellers seem likely to accept anything that will satisfy the Irish government – which still seems to have the full backing of the EU. To obviate the need for border controls on the island of Ireland, regulations have to be more or less the same in northern Ireland as in the Republic – that is, as in the EU. But that would mean either that northern Ireland would have different regulations from the rest of the UK – the prospects of which has the dUP frothing at the mouth, although of course they are insistent on retaining their homophobic and misogynist laws while the rest of the UK has moved on – or that the whole of the UK, in effect, remains in the customs union (if not the single market). The latter is wholly unacceptable to the Brexiteers in the Tory party, particularly since May has already backed down on the so-called “divorce bill” (I.e., the UK meeting obligations it has already accepted), and on a role for the European Court of Justice in protecting the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK. Meanwhile the leaders of Scotland, Wales and London have all said that if northern Ireland gets a special arrangement with the EU, they want one too! Even if some form of words is cobbled together that the DUP deign to accept, May comes out of this even weaker than before – and as Fintan O’Toole argues in the Grauniad (which has several articles covering the debacle), it also shows that the UK is now politically weaker than the Republic of Ireland!
While it’s still difficult to see either the DUP or the Tories risking another general election – the Tories because they might well lose power, the DUP because they almost certainly would lose their key role, which depends on the exact balance of forces, the chances of one happening have certainly risen sharply.
A Spanish court has withdrawn the European Arrest Warrants against Carlos Puigdemont and other Catalonian separatists who fled to Belgium. The judge claimed they had shown a willingness to return to Spain (they haven’t) and that withdrawing the warrants would enable Spain to be in charge of the whole process. My guess is that the Belgians told Spain on the quiet that there was no chance of extradition being agreed by the Belgian courts for what were clearly political offences.
More discussion on the ways in which the Republican tax plan punishes Democrats:
Link
KG @90, thanks for that update. I think your analysis is likely correct.
In other news, here is a follow-up to comments 79 and 81.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told The Salt Lake Tribune:
Salt Lake Tribune link
A clear case of “up is down.” Zinke and Trump want public lands to serve special interests. Trump talked about “responsible economic development” being hampered by “harmful and unnecessary restrictions.” Zinke made it clear that the economic development activities they want to foster are drilling, mining, and logging.
Emily Atkin, writing for The New Republic, noted that extractive industries have their eye on Bears Ears:
Link
Follow-up to comment 92.
Comments associated with the Salt Lake Tribune article:
A sampling of comments from the other side of the political fence:
In a remarkable development, the Honduran police, including elite units (many of whom are trained in the US), are refusing to enforce the curfew proclaimed by JOH in the face of protests over his apparent attempt to steal the election. They’re saying they want peace and aren’t interested in repressing the citizenry.
Guardian: “Honduras: police refuse to obey government as post-election chaos deepens.”
Today’s Democracy Now! has a good segment about the events in Honduras and the role of the US. Allan Nairn, one of the guests, is in Honduras and says he’s talked to a large number of people in the army and the police who have basically implied that they – members of the military aren’t allowed to vote, evidently – and their families support Nasralla. Again, remarkable. Even members of the electoral tribunal seem reluctant to go along with any fraud. JOH might be on a shoogly peg.
Another guest was Rep. Jan Schakowsky from Ohio. Here’s her NYT oped from just before the election.
“Mueller Subpoenas Trump Deutsche Bank Records”:
Last week, Steve Bannon was in London meeting with Jacob Rees-Mogg and probably Nigel Farage, then on to Scotland where he appeared on a panel at a think-tank event (the other panelists were apparently so proud of appearing with him that they asked for their identity to be hidden).
TPM has a good timeline of Trumpworld lies about the Flynn-Kislyak communications. (My favorite lie remains Spicer’s claim that Flynn called Kislyak on December 25th to wish them a Merry Christmas when Russian Christmas is January 7th.)
Two other reports about the investigation:
NYT: “Operative Offered Trump Campaign ‘Kremlin Connection’ Using N.R.A. Ties.”
WaPo: “Inside the secretive nerve center of the Mueller investigation.” Interesting detail: “Mueller’s team is also newly scrutinizing an Alexandria-based office and advisers who worked there on foreign policy for the campaign.”
Conyers is finally resigning. Meanwhile, the RNC has resumed funding for Roy Moore.
Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell all covered the widespread protests against the tax scam last night.
Here’s Maddow’s segment: “Protesters out in droves objecting to Republican tax bill.”
MSNBC’s decision to drop Sam Seder was…less good. (Actually, he’s rarely on, and I’ve long suspected that was because they found him too blunt and honest about Trump.) At the same time, the other day Donna Brazile was a panelist, they gave Alan Dershowitz half a show to serve as TV’s voice of treason, Hugh Hewitt has his own program, Larry Summers makes frequent appearances, Breitbart’s Joel Pollak has returned after acting as an apologist for Roy Moore, and Chuck Todd did a long interview on MTP on Sunday with Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.
Update to #82: “Oleg Voloshyn, a former spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, said in an interview that he drafted the unpublished editorial that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused Manafort on Dec. 4. of ghostwriting in order to influence public opinion about his work in Ukraine. Voloshyn said he wrote the piece on his own initiative. He said he sent it to Manafort only to check facts and incorporated a few of his suggestions.”
LOL.
Holy shit. People should print quotes from this on signs and banners to carry at protests.
Re #95 – Manu Raju: “Schiff reveals that Republicans on House Intel refused to subpoena Deutsche Bank for Trump Organization financial records. He says it’s a “troubling double-standard” bc Rs sent subpoenas for Fusion GPS bank records.”
Interesting article: “Mueller Subpoenas Deutsche Bank, Friendly to the Trumps, Mercers, and Russians.”
Russia has been banned from participating in the 2018 Olympics. I’ll take the opportunity to once again recommend the Netflix documentary Icarus.
Update to #354 on the previous iteration – at long last, Netflix has booted Danny Masterson.
From Rachel Maddow:
Link to video segment that contains the above discussion of Pence. The video is 17:16 minutes long.
Jane Porter is a spokesperson for Roy Moore’s Senate campaign. Here is how Porter defended Roy Moore:
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/938040081880879105
The RNC is probably doing what they have to do now that Trump has openly endorsed Roy Moore. But this sounds a bit like a slap in Moore’s face:
Link
Follow-up to comments 56 and 86.
I postulated that Senator Susan Collins had been duped when Mitch McConnell made promises to her. Now I have my doubts. Did she not do her homework? Is she lying? Was she duped?
New York magazine link
These corporations are helping elect an alleged child sex abuser to the U.S. Senate:
From Lynna @107:
I am confuzzled. If Moore’s mouthpiece says:
Does that mean that, since he has not tried to rape or assault every teenage girl in the state, he’s innocent of trying to date or assault any? Or does that mean that, out of the hundreds he tried to rape, or assaulted, only a few have come forward, so he’s innocent of all accusations?
Putin’s regime has designated several US news entities as foreign agents. The headlines about nine organizations might mislead. It’s not CNNi or the like. It’s Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and their subsidiaries. They’re actually…foreign agents. I’ll be up in arms if this expands to news organizations that aren’t government-backed or they step up their harassment of the designated entities.
CNN is reporting that Gates’s lawyer is saying more charges are coming from the special counsel’s office. I wonder if they have to do with the revelations about the Deutsche Bank subpoena…
This is still Patagonia’s web site today.
Ogvorbis @111, I am as confuzzled as you.
Apparently, Moore’s spokesperson was not the only one to make that argument. To me it just looks desperate. “Hey, Roy Moore didn’t molest me when I was a teenager! He didn’t molest my sister. All those accusers must be lying.” Or perhaps, “There are more women in Alabama who say Roy Moore did not molest them than women who say he did.” Majority wins?
Anyway, that argument is morally bankrupt.
Tweet o’ the day.
PSA: This is wonderful.
SC #116, the sizzle from Doug Jones warmed my computer, and then me; thanks!
Re #99 – a new petition calling on MSNBC to rehire Sam Seder.
“Want to limit migration? We can start by supporting democracy in Honduras.”:
Heh – Doug Jones: “We don’t need an outside agitator like Steve Bannon carpetbagging in Alabama.”
“It’s possible to be AGAINST the rights of women and girls.”
Yesterday, the BBC were suggesting that the debacle over the Irish border in the Brexit negotiations would be sorted within days (at second hand, by reporting the optimistic spin of the UK government and the EU negotiators, but without any scepticism). Today, we have The phone call that never was – the one that was supposed to take place between Theresa May and Arlene Foster, leader of the “D”UP. The article is by Laura Kuenssberg, notoriously pro-Tory BBC political editor*. It reports that the “D”UP is demanding “radical surgery” on the draft agreement. I will be astonished if this demand is conceded. It would show that the DUP tail is not only wagging the Tory dog, as Labour’s Keir Starmer said yesterday, but wagging the whole EU pack as well!
*Which does not, of course, justify any of the misogynist abuse aimed at her.
Time‘s Person of the Year: “The Silence Breakers.”
More:
OK, it’s the Washington Examiner and whatnot, but still…: “Court records suggest Roy Moore dated wife while she was still married.”
As others have pointed out, there’s a commandment about that. But honestly I had no idea she had been married before or had a child when she met Moore. Her WP page makes no mention of the previous marriage. His story about their meeting in 1984 involves his recalling her performance at a girls’ dance recital he had attended* years earlier when she was a teenager and revolves around her saying her name and his remembering the initials “KK.” But Kisor is her maiden name, and she doesn’t strike me as someone who wouldn’t have taken her first husband’s name like she took Moore’s. So that sounds like more bullshit from Roy and Kayla Moore. They deserve each other.
* (a totally healthy thing for a single man in his 30s who isn’t involved with dance to be doing)
OMG.
Update to #99 – “Sam Seder speaks out on MSNBC’s decision to cut ties over controversial tweet”:
More on the subject – Jeet Heer’s “Weaponized Outrage Is a Threat to Free Speech.”
Also, I linked to a petition calling on MSNBC to reinstate Seder @ #119. I continue to be perplexed by MSNBC’s interest in moving more to the Right. I can’t imagine anyone in their core audience is calling for this. We want the opposite.
OMG – a longer video of #127.
Yes, even conservative economists know that the Republican tax plan will be, as Alice Ollstein called it, “an epic disaster.”
The Governor and Lt. Governor of Utah are telling angry schlub Steve Bannon in no uncertain terms to “#stayout.”
Roy Moore is vying for the title of “Worst Republican Senate Candidate Ever.” This is what Moore had to to say about George Soros:
George Soros is a Jew, so Roy Moore claims that Soros is going to hell, and that Soros in un-American.
Any time Moore uses a phrase like “sexual in nature,” I shudder. Yuck.
Kirsten Gillibrand, Mazie Hirono, Claire McCaskill, and Maggie Hassan are simultaneously calling on Franken to resign. I don’t think I’ve heard Republicans say anything about Farenthold.
This Saturday (December 9th) there will be a GOTV rally at noon in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, AL. The election is on Tuesday the 12th.
Patty Murray and Kamala Harris are now also calling on Franken to resign.
Further to #105 – important post by Mike Rinder on “Scientology, Danny Masterson and Law Enforcement.”
Ben Shapiro: “Democrats are going to dump Franken now in order to seize the moral high ground on Moore. …Which, of course, is why Republicans should not endorse a credibly accused child molester.”
Uh…no. They should not endorse him because he’s a credibly accused child molester. I can’t imagine how that’s difficult to grasp.
It’s now 11 Senators and the DNC calling for Franken’s resignation. That’s getting all the attention, but the legislation just introduced should get more:
“Bipartisan bill would eliminate forced arbitration, break silence in sexual harassment cases”:
Right to life, my ass. This study just published shows that pollution may be responsible for up to 3% of the low-birth-weight infants:
http://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5299
Low birth weight is strongly correlated with risk for infant mortality. If the right-wing nutjobs were serious about saving fetuses/infants, they’d be lobbying for electric vehicles rather than protesting outside of women’s health clinics.
NBC: “When the News4 I-Team asked Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if he was satisfied with the work thus far of the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel, Rosenstein said yes.”
Two Democratic women won state-representative special elections last night, one on Pennsylvania and one in Georgia. The Georgia victory ends the Republican supermajority in the chamber.
“Flynn Said Russian Sanctions Would be ‘Ripped Up,’ Whistle-Blower Says”:
“MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) — A gay man who was denied a marriage license by a Kentucky county clerk will run to unseat her in 2018. Democrat David Ermold announced his candidacy Wednesday to challenge Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis.”
From Josh Marshall:
Republicans Are Counting on a Ton of Demand to Drill in an Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. They’re Deluding Themselves.
There are a lot of U.S. troops in Syria, four times more than we thought.
Link
Update to #142 – the House Oversight Democrats have produced a timeline of events related to Flynn’s business ties and attempts to get sanctions lifted. It’s quite a read. In addition to the previous reporting on the nuclear project and the new revelations about the allegations made by an associate of Copson’s, I found especially noteworthy:
– the sheer abundance of lies and omissions from Flynn in security clearance renewal and background check investigations, both on paper and in interviews.
– the November 16, 2017, Copson memo about the “TRUMP/Putin ME Marshall plan CONCEPT” described at the bottom of page 4!
JFC.
“Ryan says Republicans to target welfare, Medicare, Medicaid spending in 2018”:
These are terrible, terrible people.
This is an addition to SC @126:
From an article on RawStory:
So she was not interested in starting a relationship. Moore was determined to get to know her. Sheesh. Talk about not respecting boundaries.
Vox – “How the alt-right duped MSNBC into firing one of its contributors”: “In giving in to Cernovich and his alt-right followers, MSNBC is confirming that their tactics work.”
CJR – “Journalists denied entry to Honduras say US Embassy told them to ‘figure it out’”:
“Rep. Schiff discusses Donald Trump Jr. interview: ‘In my view, there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son’.”
WTF? Did Jr. just watch an episode of Law & Order and think that sounded good?
Sam Seder is right.
Ah:
IANAL, but if the lawyer was only representing one of them, the presence of the other would negate the privilege. And the question was about the communication between Trump and Jr. Did anyone ask Jr. or his lawyer what claim he was trying to make and what attorney he was talking about?
“BREAKING: Australian Parliament allows same-sex marriage across nation, 1st weddings expected in February.”
“The opening from Hannity & Co. tonight is a doozy. FBI is coming for you in the dark of night. (((Weissman)))and (((Rosenstein))) committing ‘the biggest corruption I have ever seen’.”
One day last week, Ari Melber’s show was a mock mini-trial in which Renato Mariotti and Alan Dershowitz presented opening arguments about Trump-Russia and obstruction of justice to a jury. It was strange and fairly pointless. But Dershowitz’ opening argument was interesting in that he tried to scare the jurors with this “There’s no crime here. If they can go after Trump, they could come for anyone. It could be any of you next” nonsense.
Afterwards, he was bragging about how he’s always known it was more effective if you could tell jurors a story. Setting aside that he didn’t really tell a story, it struck me that this sort of rhetoric, which he’s used elsewhere, wouldn’t be very effective – few jurors would identify with Trump if they gave this any thought. When a powerful person is investigated for or charged with crimes like obstruction or abuse of power, it’s more likely they can imagine a situation in which they’re the victims of the accused than the accused. Because it’s far, far, far more likely to be the case in reality. A rich, powerful man has assaulted or cheated you or someone you know and is under investigation, but due to his wealth and power he’s able to shut down the investigation or use other means to get away with it or face minor penalties. Happens frequently. Trump has done it his whole life. Not many people are going to look at this investigation into Trump and his associates and think “That could be me,”* any more than they feared that the CFPB investigating Wells Fargo meant they might be next.
Also, Dershowitz then immediately launched into his dangerous and false spiel about how the president can’t obstruct justice because he has kinglike power. No acts that are within the power of the president can be criminal, even if done with corrupt intent. Not only is that not the law and contrary to bedrock principles of US democracy; it’s wholly inconsistent with the previous argument. People are being asked (against all facts and logic) to imagine that Trump is in the same position as they are regarding the justice system, and in the next breath being asked to accept that he isn’t in fact vulnerable to the justice system at all because he’s above the law.
No one who gives such claims a moment’s thought can find them convincing. The audience for these autocracy-promoting arguments is limited to the most diehard, authoritarian, conspiracy-prone followers of Trump’s, who are probably about the same 27% who supported Nixon at the time of his resignation. That’s still a disturbing percentage, and what people like Dershowitz and Hannity are arguing is hugely damaging (and that’s not even to mention the anti-Semitism suggested in the quote above).
* There are groups historically targeted by the FBI/DoJ who have good reason to be suspicious of them. They don’t include white male Christian heirs who’ve skated their whole lives.
Sarah Kinosian is mentioned in the article @ #152 above. Here’s her new report from Honduras: “Crisis of Honduras democracy has roots in US tacit support for 2009 coup.”
Here’s a summary with video clips (I can’t bring myself to watch) of Anderson Cooper’s interview with Roy Moore’s spokeswoman last night. Did Cooper find the time to ask about: how Moore would vote on cuts to Medicare or Social Security or tax breaks for corporations, rural hospitals closing in AL (which Jones is discussing on the campaign trail), economic and racial inequality, voting rights, the sorry state of public education in AL, laws protecting children from predators, sentencing reform, why he won’t debate Jones, his foundation’s corruption, the textbook to which he contributed arguing that women shouldn’t hold positions of political power,…?
Photo of the day.
Great update – “MSNBC Reverses Decision To Fire Contributor Sam Seder”:
Chris Hayes: “Welcome back, @SamSeder!”
:)
SC @162, such good news! I see the reinstatement of Sam Seder as a correction after a mistake was made. NBC and MSNBC are capable of correcting mistakes. Seems like a low bar, but with about 36% of the U.S. population declaring the Washington Post and CNN to be “fake news,” and adhering to Fox News like a religion, I am ready to rejoice when even low-bar standards are upheld.
Endorse.
Follow-up to SC’s comment 149.
Paul Ryan pretends to care about “the debt and the deficit,” but he just promoted a tax plan that adds at least $1 trillion to the deficit, and that’s the low-ball estimate. He also voted for the George W. Bush era expenses related to the war in Iraq and a bailout for Wall Street, among other debt and deficit-increasing moves.
The reality is that Paul Ryan’s worship of “Atlas Shrugged” is his religion. He does not believe that government should provide a safety net of any kind for poor or for low-income people; and not for the elderly either. Ryan has no empathy.
Ryan does seem to think that it is right, just and proper to reward the rich for being rich.
SC @164, Ha! I totally agree.
On the subject of the Republican tax plan, here is the take from The New York Times that offers the best summary:
Rachel Maddow recently highlighted that same sentence.Taketh from the poor, and giveth to the rich. Paul Ryan’s fantasy come true.
Re #164 – Of course. I should have recognized this.
Franken has resigned. He’s emotional.
“Franken: As I’m resigning, a man sits in the Oval Office accused of sexual assault and a man who preys on young women is running for Senate.”
Trump does not understand the implications of what he just did:
The quoted text is from the Washington Post.
From Steve Benen:
I think Trump takes a toddler-like pleasure in saying “No!” to the grown-ups.
Trump was playing a role when he signed the order to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And now, because Trump likes saying, “I am delivering,” straight into the camera while the world watches, our news today shows Israeli forces firing rubber bullets and tear gas into gatherings of protestors.
Carrie Johnson from NPR makes some important points:
Follow-up to SC’s comment 171.
From Josh Marshall:
Video segment is available at the link.
@SC, 166 and comparable posts…
So basically this tax bill is a reverse Robin Hood?
Dooh Nibor … Almost sounds like a Star Wars villain.
The full quote from Franken: “There is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault, sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls, campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.”
Re #174 – whoever typed that for C-SPAN doesn’t know how commas work.
A summary of reactions so far to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital:
Think Progress link
This is not the first time that Trump seemed determined to fuel terrorist propaganda, and not the first time that he has ignored good advice from U.S. allies.
I found this – “Lawsplainer: Donald Trump, Jr. and the Attorney-Client Privilege” – and the comments useful, but I think an underappreciated aspect of the situation can be found in this passage:
There’s no reason to believe the Trumps or their lawyers are being remotely honest or competent here. At this point, they should get no benefit of the doubt. Hasn’t it been established that Trump helped craft the statement aboard AF1 with a bunch of people? We’re to believe that he had one(?) conversation about it with Jr. which included their respective lawyers and conformed to all of the conditions necessary for the privilege to hold? It’s beyond doubtful.
A summary of Trump’s response to the Hollywood Access tape, a response that echoes the strategy now being used to excuse Roy Moore’s behavior:
Slate link
“Daily Show” host Trevor Noah found the black comedy is Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jersulem:
Noah went on to show Trump’s markedly slurred speech at the end of the pronouncement:
Salon link
Scroll down at the link to view the video.
BTW, the official explanation for Trump’s slurred speech is that his mouth was dry.
Stephen Colbert covered the same subjects: YouTube link to the Colbert segment.
It passed by too quickly for me to be sure – I was reading while half-listening to the speech – but it seemed to me when Franken spoke of his replacement he said “she” or “her.” Elijah Cummings also referred to the Flynn/Copson alleged whistleblower as “she.”
More Republicans have joined Senator Jeff Flake in contributing to the campaign of Doug Jones, the Democrat running for a Senate seat in Alabama.
Whoa – “SOURCES: @CNN and @washingtonpost working on exposing 20-30 congressional members 4 sexual harassment.”
Michael Cohen may be in news headlines again soon.
From Josh Marshall:
Adam Schiff has made the point several times that Republicans on investigative committees take witnesses at their word, and that they refuse to ask for proof; or, in the case of Donald Trump Junior, they refuse to press him to answer questions when he claims bogus attorney-client privilege.
SC @182, if that’s true, it seems likely that any Democrats will be forced out and that any Republicans will be given a pass.
Update to #126 – Hee. Kayla Moore’s WP page was changed yesterday to include her first marriage.
Lynna:
But we can be sure Mueller’s team has combed through Cohen’s receipts and any comings and goings and such from Capri. The dossier suggests that for purposes of plausible deniability the cover used was “the Russian parastatal organisation, Rossotrudnichestvo” and that a Russian legislator named Konstantin Kosachev was involved in setting it up. Known affiliates of that organization in the area at that time, especially those based in Prague, could definitely be tracked.
Several Republican operatives/strategists have now donated to Doug Jones.
LOL – here’s an AP interview with Kosachev (for some reason) about Flynn from the other day. It doesn’t mention the dossier.
I love the title: “AP Interview: Russian lawmaker wonders why Flynn lied to FBI.” Yeah, I’m sure he’s perplexed.
“Op-Ed Dylan Farrow: Why has the #MeToo revolution spared Woody Allen?”
Tweet o’ the day.
CJR – “Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media.”
SC @186, good points. Grateful to Mueller. Don’t know what we would do without him. A lot is riding on Mueller doing a good and thorough job.
I have to wonder, especially today, how the hell the story @ #31 above hasn’t broken through and become a major scandal. Gowdy and the others used taxpayer money to settle secretly with an aide who refused to go along with their partisan witch hunt!
From Josh Marshall, warning that “we need to keep a close eye on Erik Prince”:
CNN – “Exclusive: Previously undisclosed emails show follow-up after Trump Tower meeting.”
This is funny, and educational. Representative Mark Takano used his teacher’s red pen to grade Mitch McConnell’s pitch to voters about the Republican tax scam.
Link
Trump’s approval rating has dropped … again:
Link
That’s clearly what it is. You can see it plainly in the video.
OMG, Roy Moore says America should be more like it was when there was a big slave population. Really.
Link
“Ethics panel wants to interview Farenthold accuser”: “The House Ethics Committee is seeking an interview with Lauren Greene, the former aide to GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold who alleges she was sexually harassed by the Texas Republican….”
Interesting background provided in this report.
“Arizona’s Trent Franks Expected to Resign: Rumors of inappropriate behavior surround Freedom Caucus member’s anticipated exit.”
If he does, the governor has to call a special election.
Lynna @ #198 – I can’t get over some of the numbers/drops. His approval rating among liberal Democrats/lean Dems is 3%. 3%!
From yesterday: “Today a bunch of neo-Fascists attacked our @repubblica newsroom in Rome with smoke-bombs and threatned us all as journalists after our articles about the rise of far-right in Italy. Please share to defend journalism and freedom against new fascisms.”
“Wanted to share a video of Roy Moore in 1997 arguing that kids commit drive-by shooting because they are taught evolution in school: ‘They’re acting like animals because we’ve taught them they come from animals’.”
Still a(n imperfect) classic: James Rachels’ Created from Animals.
“huddled in what appears to be a prayer circle”
So Manafort’s lawyer has submitted his response to the SCO and judge re #82. It’s…bad, but I did notice one thing: the reference to the Bail Reform Act. These Trumpists’ claims and those of their followers as applied to their specific cases are almost uniformly bullshit and bad faith, but they might provide an opportunity to talk about the rights of people in the criminal justice system, defendants’ rights, prisoners’ rights, etc., as well as the hypocrisy of their demanding respect for these rights when it comes to them while demanding their abandonment for poor people, minorities, immigrants.
By the way, here’s the op ed in question. After reading it, be sure to read the chapter on Manafort in Luke Harding’s Collusion.
Yashar Ali is retweeting some of Blake Farenthold’s old missives.
I stopped reading after this: “These reflect some of the fundamental fault lines of human conflict and are unlikely ever to be resolved or settled because we can’t just be socialized or educated out of our stances on these issues, as they are the product of deep-seated, largely heritable predispositions that cause us to vary in our preference for and in our ability to cope with freedom and diversity, novelty and complexity, vs oneness and sameness.”
Bull. Shit.
“It’s like real life Handmaid’s Tale in the House.”
It is! I suspect there’s more about Franks that he’s not revealing, but regardless all of this needs to be part of the discussion as well. In my brief career or whatever, I was expected to do nonsexual…
no…wait! Not entirely nonsexual, because I had to listen to personal romantic sexual stories and, I assume, sympathize with his point of view. But also to do childcare for benefits which guys received (and then some) with no such expectations. And was still disparaged for insufficient gratitude. I’m reading Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny and, while I have my arguments with it, it couldn’t be more timely.
Grr.
This isn’t over, Nunes.
And…there you go.
Betsy Woodruff: “Got some DOJ news coming your way in a little bit”
This is the gif that keeps giffing.
Republican Rep. Mia Love is calling on Farenthold to resign.
These people are SO FUCKING AWFUL. We all make decisions that are questionable and regrettable, but they stand apart in their desire to justify and profit from them.
Note that the Prince family are huge funders of the Family Research Council and Focus n the Family.
Betsy Woodruff – “Justice Department Moves To Investigate Planned Parenthood’s Fetal Tissue Practices.”
Keep it up.
“And at that moment I knew that neo-imperialism was the answer for my dying wife and mistress and assorted children whoever they may be. Whatever it takes, I will steal the natural resources of Afghanistan.“
“JOHN LEWIS WAS THE CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER WHO MADE THE FUCKING SACRIFICE YOU TWIT!”
“One of the unreported stories of 2017. Why did Giuliani vanish?”
It appears he’s working for a rightwing faux-populist politician in Uruguay.
Fox.
“Congressional Democrats Left Out of White House Hanukkah Party”:
Apologies for the scattershot comments last night.
Here’s the full article referred to in #222 – “Stelter: Fox’s pro-Trump hosts are working overtime to discredit Robert Mueller”:
The framing is a little odd. It presents Trump as a passive consumer of this propaganda, but there’s good reason to believe he’s involved in pushing both this media offensive and the Republicans’ orchestrated attack during the Wray hearing yesterday. It all looks a little too coordinated to be a bunch of independent efforts. Trump has been advised that trying to get rid of Mueller would be disastrous, so this is the approach they’re taking to sabotage the investigation and obstruct justice. I wouldn’t assume Trump’s tweets are merely a reaction to what he sees on Fox rather than part of a campaign.
Lynna@196 A private spy agency run by an authoritarian theocrat, because, really, what could go wrong? Plus, it will provide script writers with material for generations. Oh, wait. It’s been done. Watch “Burn Notice”.
Tweet o’ the day.
SC, thank you for comment 224. I watched some of the Fox News presentations. Then I checked some online rightwing media outlets. The attack on Mueller, the attempt to discredit Mueller’s investigation, is full-on. This is no half measure. The rightwing is full steam ahead with this attack, which is not founded on facts.
The intensity and size of the attack has me really worried.
In addition to that attack, we have, (as you noted), Devin Nunes returning to more openly head the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation. He was always in the mix, even after he supposedly, half-assedly recused himself. Every step Nunes has taken was obstructionist. Well, some of his steps were to misdirect attention. The House investigation is now a dead letter box, or a void … choose your metaphor.
While questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee were almost comically partisan:
That’s from Representative Blake Farenthold, a Republican from Texas.
Other Republicans asked questions that referred to Mueller’s supposed bias, as in, “Did Mueller hire anti-Trump investigators.”
This is from Representative Steve Russell of Oklahoma:
Good for Evan McMullin. Stand Up Republic, a group founded by McMullin and others, is “spending $500,000 on digital and TV ads that ask Alabama conservatives to reject Republican nominee Roy Moore’s Senate bid.”
The report is in the Washington Post. McMullin says he is an independent, not aligned with either major party, but lately he has edged closer to Democratic Party policies.
Lynna, OM@176,
I think I see Trump’s “cunnning plan”! By recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he has unified Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Lebanon, Egypt, Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, Al Qaeda… against him, thus hopefully bringing an end to the internecine strife among Middle Eastern Muslim countries. Clearly, Trump is a secret Muslim, dedicated to unifying the Ummah against the “Zionist entity”!!!!
Strictly speaking it’s the Schengen Area, which includes 22 of the 28 EU countries, plus the 4 EFTA states and, de facto, 3 microstates, but since Italy and the Czech Republic are both part of it, the point holds. Moreover, you don’t necessarily get your passport stamped when entering a country that requires to see that passport, although I don’t know if this is the case for an American arriving in the Czech Republic directly from the USA.
More wastefulness and arrogance on the part of members of Trump’s cabinet:
Link
Follow-up to comment 227.
From Josh Marshall:
The video is available at the link.
“These Demands Have One Audience: Donald Trump”
From Fox News:
And those are just snippets. There’s much more where that came from.
This article about a study of Trump’s lying is very good. He tells an unusually high number of lies, which isn’t that surprising a finding, but also an extraordinary percentage of the lies he tells are malicious and cruel.
The next episode of the Slate Watergate podcast I linked to above @ #88 is out, and it’s as good as the first.
Rather to my surprise, the UK and EU negotiators have cobbled together a form of words that will allow them to proceed to negotiations on trade arrangements after the UK leaves the EU. As one might expect, the language is often vague and includes potential contradictions, but it looks like a provisional victory for the “soft Brexit” faction inside the UK government. The “D”UP has grumblingly accepted it, while reserving its position on any final agreement. Possibly, May called their bluff.
Specifically on Ireland, the document commits the UK to the following:
– but also to no difference between how northern Ireland and the rest of the UK are treated, unless the Northern Ireland Assembly agrees. In practice, it’s hard to see how both conditions can be met without the whole of the UK remaining, de facto if not de jure, within the Customs Union and the Single Market – so it turns out that Brexit may not after all mean Brexit, contrary to May’s stupid soundbite. This will not go down well with the actual enthusiasts for Brexit within the Tory Parrty (or elsewhere). Nor will the facts that the agreement also allows the decisions of the European Court of Justice a post-Brexit role in protecting EU citizens living in the UK, and commits the UK to something approaching £40 billion as a “divorce settlement”.
I must admit to mixed feelings about this. I had hoped the Government would fall, precipitating a new general election – but OTOH, a “hard Brexit”, especially one with no agreement at all, would be perhaps as disastrous for most people in the UK (including, of course, most of those who voted Leave) as the Republican tax scam will be for most people in the USA. If the final agreement on Ireland is close to this provisional one, it will also make it much harder for the UK government to claim that Scotland could not become independent without a hard border with England.
Some Republicans seem to be finding out what is actually in their Tax bill. They dumbfounded, astonished … and a bit late to the party:
Link
About 145,000 graduate students got tuition waivers in 2011-2012, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. I don’t have more recent statistics.
Follow-up to comment 236.
All the Republicans who signed the letter also voted for the Republican tax bill. Doofuses.
Right-wing media falsely discredits Roy Moore accuser
Representative Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, said what he really thinks. It’s not pretty:
In the past, King also praised Geert Wilders in a similar fashion:
Roy Moore and Vladimir Putin:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/10/alabama-senate-race-roy-moore-vladimir-putin-russia
The interview is from August, but was largely ignored at the time.
What the hell? This wasn’t an obscure provision. There were dozens of articles about it at the time they were voting. I think universities sent letters complaining.
Follow-up to comments 231 and 232.
More examples of Republican Congress critters trying to discredit Robert Muller during the questioning of FBI Director Chris Wray:
And here are some more examples from Fox News:
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/12/08/Fox-News-is-practically-begging-Trump-to-fire-Mueller/218781
SC @241, the Republican bubble of misinformation, and of no information whatsoever, is protected by a force field the likes of which the earth has never seen before.
What fresh hell is this?
Link
More bad news from the Republican tax bill:
Link
“AP: Russia Twitter trolls rushed to deflect Trump bad news”:
Tose specific accounts have been deactivated, but others continue using these exact same tactics.
* Interesting.
** Very interesting – already in 2014.
Surprisingly enough, Collins can’t rely on McConnell’s pledges.
Wow – this is the evidence Mueller’s team has collected on Manafort and Gates. 400,000 documents!
As expected, more Trent Franks creepiness is emerging. His resignation is now effective today.
Hope Hicks has been interviewed by Mueller’s team for the past two days. (Ken Dilanian was on MSNBC earlier talking about how he’s spoken with some lawyers who have clients who’ve appeared before Mueller’s grand jury and were amazed by the thoroughness of the investigation – said they knew the clients’ every move.) The article says the FBI warned her in January and February about emails she was receiving from Russian operatives who were apparently impersonating others.
The anti-immigrant loony fringe in Canada has a face to put to it, and it belongs to Mark Phillips.
This … individual… approached a family in a strip-mall parking lot in St. Thomas, Ontario (a small city about an hour from where I live) and told them they were “under arrest” for being “terrorists”. He then started swinging a baseball bat at them, and screaming “ISIS! ISIS!” and other nonesense. It seems very likely that the victims of the attack, who were not known to their assailant, were singled out only because they “looked foreign” (they are, in fact, naturalized Canadians of Colombian origin). Fortunately, the … individual… is now in police custody, charged with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one of aggravated assault.
I am so angry, angry that we’ve been brought down to this level, that I want to break things. Better turn off the computer (and the radio) for a while.
Update to #s 100 and 207 – Mueller has, as far as I can tell, asked the judge for leave to respond to Manafort’s submission (see #207) and requested and been granted permission to release certain documents pertaining to the oped. The paperwork and supporting documents (including Manafort/Gates interesting emails re their PR strategy from the fall of 2016) are at the link here. (I don’t know why none of this is on the Special Counsel site.) The exhibits include Manafort’s editing of the oped, including the extensive tracked changes made by him – which the final document mirrors – and an email Voloshin sent to the US embassy in Ukraine falsely claiming that he was the sole author and only sent the draft to Kilimnik for fact-checking, who sent it on to Manafort to “have a look at” because his name is mentioned. Amazingly, Manafort and his lawyers went along with this to a large extent even though they had to know – because it was in Mueller’s request that the judge not accept the changes to Manafort’s bail – that Mueller had these communications.
One aspect of note are the passages Manafort deleted from the draft. They’re actually pretty funny.
I’ll say.
“This Erik Prince Transcript Is Unbelievable”: “…The day before Junior’s appearance, a friendly member of Congress not unfamiliar with the shebeen gave me a heads-up. Wait until the transcript of Erik Prince’s testimony is released, this friendly person said. You won’t believe it. It was the considered opinion that Prince possibly was the most arrogant jackass ever to appear before a congressional committee. The transcript was released on Thursday and it will be hard to trust my pal again, considering how far he low-balled Prince’s attitude. The witness did everything except drop trou and moon the committee. There was a time, and not so long ago, when a person who treated a congressional committee like a group of not-very-competent valet parking attendants would have been introduced to institutional dining for a few months, But this is the present Congress with the present Republican majorities, so Prince looked up from the witness table and saw what he perceived to be a gathering of ambulatory doormats….”
“Creation Festival Founder Arrested for Alleged Child Molestation”:
New Doug Jones campaign video. It’s well done (notwithstanding the hunting portion).
This week’s summary of major themes from Kremlin Twitter accounts:
This WNYC segment gets at how pathetic and intellectually dishonest* Cernovich is. He’s dangerous, but also very sad.
* “I did not misrepresent Seder. But the media lies about me, so I was right to misrepresent him, and how dare they complain about misrepresentation. But I didn’t misrepresent him. And my misrepresentation was justified by theirs.”
The House Natural Resources Committee is using public funds to attack a private company trying to protect public lands.
Juliet Huddy said Trump tried to kiss her in a Trump Tower elevator after they had lunch together in 2005. She’s now tweeted:
But it wasn’t the end of the story, because the Page Six piece quotes more from her description:
She also describes how she was angry that Trump rejected the accusations, including by her, about O’Reilly.
Trump was lobbied “almost daily” by evangelical Christians regarding recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel:
Wall Street Journal link
From Steve Benen:
Joy Reid covered this issue:
Trump’s Jerusalem decision: Driven by religious extremism?
The video is 10:22 minutes long. Well worth watching. The discussion of the “deeper background” is excellent.
Excerpts from the short speech Trump gave today when he visited the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil rights Museum:
From the opposition to Trump:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-mississippi-civil-rights-museum-speech
Adding some details to the decision by Trump and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by more than a million acres:
https://thinkprogress.org/uranium-bears-ears-lobby-b2f75562d58a/
Zinke lied.
Trump decimated two National Monuments and proclaimed, “Our precious natural treasures must be protected, and they, from now on, will be protected.” Trump lied.
An ex-FBI agent spoke out against Trump:
Link
From Wonkette, “Roy Moore Supporters Just Dunning-Kruegered The Hell Out Of This Focus Group”
Video available at the link.
Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, will be Roy Moore’s colleague if Moore wins. Shelby is not looking forward to that:
The quoted is text is from an interview on CNN.
Lindsey Graham has jumped the shark. He is fulling supporting various conspiracy theories coming out of the White House. He is also backing Trump’s call for more investigations of Hillary Clinton:
Follow-up to comment 267.
From Josh Marshall:
Fox News is loving the fact that Lindsey Vonn, an Olympic skiing champion, was injured. Why would you cheer when an athlete is injured? Because Vonn committed the sin of being critical of Trump.
Also from Fox News: “The injury occurred two days after she criticized President Donald Trump in an interview about the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea.”
Think Progress link
Vonn’s comments were mild, and she has a right to voice her views:
Even Sarah Huckabee Sanders dissed Vonn:
Vonn added that if she does win an Olympic medal, she will not visit the White House.
Ainsley Earhardt, a co-host of Fox & Friends, called Vonn “very un-American.”
More fallout from Trump’s ill-considered recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital:
Link
“NEW: Women who have publicly accused President Trump of sexual harassment and assault will speak at a news conference, hosted by @bravenewfilms, Monday at 10:30 a.m. ET. The women are calling for an investigation by Congress of sexual misconduct by the president.”
I’ve had it with the way cable news is treating the AL Senate race.
Pundits resorting to the same tropes they did with the VA elections – Jones isn’t a “strong presence” in AL and doesn’t have a “good message” to rally black voters – just like they went on and on about what a terrible campaign Northam was running and what a boring candidate he was. (Jones has been a tireless campaigner with a very well-run effort; Moore is nowhere to be seen – refusing to debate his opponent, not campaigning or addressing the voters, and unwilling to do interviews about policy.) When they do mention Moore’s non-campaign, it’s almost always to ask whether this is good strategy for him. (How about what it means for democracy to have a Senate candidate who refuses to appear publicly to speak to matters of urgent public interest and engage with his opponent and potential constituents?)
An almost exclusive focus on Moore and his scandals, with almost no discussion of policy. They’ve learned nothing from their coverage of the 2016 campaigns. (Moore is woefully ignorant about policy and resting on a handful of racist and Religious Right talking points while Jones talks about actual policy concerning health care, education, and equality. Moore is running to be a US Senator – it matters to all of us in the US, and beyond, that he has no policy knowledge, 19th-century ideas, no respect for the Constitution, and a demonstrated lack of interest in participating in a deliberative body with people who have different views and backgrounds.)
Extraordinarily little airtime devoted to Jones or his platform. I don’t even know who Jones’ spokesperson is, that’s how little attention they’ve paid to his candidacy, and to the extent that they do cover him it’s almost exclusively to talk about what he’s saying about Moore. (Meanwhile Vaughn Hillyard is doing great work covering the campaign; they interview him and then proceed to ignore what he’s said to fall back into their preset tropes and emphases.)
Related to Lynna’s #167 and 168 – What on earth is going on with Lindsey Graham? In some of these cases, blackmail is looking increasingly plausible.
Wow – I hadn’t heard about this portion of Trump’s Pensacola speech. He’s demanding protection money from European countries who “get frisky” with Russia.
AZ governor Doug Ducey has announced re the special election to replace Trent Franks: the primary will be February 27th and the general April 24th.
Meanwhile, Jeanine “Leadfoot Lackey” Pirro is publicly calling for a Stalinist purge of the DoJ and federal law enforcement:
E. J. Dionne – “The attacks on Mueller push us closer to the precipice”:
So MSNBC acted like they were going to cover the press conference @ #271 and then…didn’t.
SC @ 276, when Congress critters were questioning him, I noticed that Christopher Wray, (the current director of the FBI), was surprised when one of the committee members, (a Republican of course), prefaced a question with the assumption that Andrew McCabe, deputy director of the FBI, was biased against Trump.
I think it was Louie Gohmert who inserted that false assumption into his questions.
Director Wray had not heard that before, or at least he seemed surprised by that particular conspiracy theory. He took issue with Gohmert’s assumption about McCabe. Then Wray answered Gohmert’s series of offensive questions about particular individuals within the FBI voicing bias against Trump. “No,” Wray said, over and over again.
It occurs to me that even well-informed people like Christopher Wray do not know the full extent of rightwing folderol that is arrayed against them.
SC @274, Trump is unbelievably stupid … and repetitive. I’m sure that the way NATO works has been explained to him many times. Once Trump gets a wrong idea, (or a “fact” that’s wrong), into his head, the damage is permanent.
Trump reminds me of one of my relatives who died of Alzheimer’s disease. A few favorite tropes were repeated over and over. No new information was admitted. Bigoted and/or clearly inaccurate information was bolstered through repetition.
Link for quoted text below:
Additional link to information showing that Trump is also wrong when he takes credit for refocusing NATO members on combating terrorism.
SC @272, I agree. Even so-called “liberal” or “progressive” media outlets are doing Doug Jones a disservice.
Here’s a summary of the platform on which Doug Jones is running:
For more details, see: https://dougjonesforsenate.com/priorities/
From the section on criminal justice:
Voter suppression and disenfranchisement are very real in AL.
From Steve Benen, a more thorough look at one aspect of the Republican tax plan. The plan will damage educational institutions in the U.S.:
In addition, other aspects of the tax plan take money away from public schools and funnel it into the hands of fairly well-off parents who want to send their children to private schools for their elementary and high school education.
FBI emails don’t support Sessions’ claim that the FBI told him he didn’t have to report foreign contacts on his SF-86.
From SC’s second link in comment 282:
SC @284, Working with Trump has amplified the worst impulses in Jeff Sessions. Ditto for General Kelly. Ditto for Lindsey Graham. It’s alarming.
In other news, the wall-to-wall coverage of Roy Moore’s failure to appear on the campaign trail doesn’t seem to recognize that there’s an easy explanation: when you have a candidate that says America was greater when we had slavery, it’s a good idea to hide him away and have him say nothing. When Moore doesn’t say some newly awful shit for a few days, Republican voters go back to supporting him. I think they project whatever they want onto the Republican candidate.
From Josh Marshall, seeing Steve Bannon as “the King of Bullshit Mountain.”
This makes me laugh. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin released a one-page (one page!) report that supposedly proves that the Republican tax cut will pay for itself.
Link
A failed suicide bomb attack in NYC injured the bomber (not fatally), and caused minor hearing damage to three other people. Here is how Trump responded … well, failed to respond, really:
Here’s the response from The New York Times:
Follow-up to SC’s comment 271.
During the press conference held today by three of Trump’s accusers, new details emerged about his form of sexual harassment:
Link
Update to #252 – Manafort remains under house arrest, has been warned by the judge about further communications to the media about the case, and will appear in court again on January 16th.
From Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad:
The quoted text if from an op-ed published in The New York Times.
OMG.
Vox link
Much more at the link.
“The Republican Overseeing the Alabama Election Doesn’t Think Voting Should Be Easy”:
“WASHINGTON (AP) _ Pentagon says it will allow transgender people to enlist in the military beginning Jan. 1, despite Trump’s opposition.”
LOL.
Clarification re #295 – the Pentagon is complying with a court order.
The Roy Moore campaign issued a “primer” describing ways to discredit Moore’s accusers. Link
As SC noted up-thread, John Conyers resigned in response to accusations of sexual harassment. Wonkette covered the bullshit idea of keeping that seat open for 11 months:
Follow-up to comment 288.
From Steve Benen, who analyzed Mnuchin’s embarrassing one-pare “analysis” of the Republican tax plan:
Some Republicans are not sticking by Roy Moore, Trump’s embarrassing robocalls encouraging people to vote for Moore notwithstanding:
Link
The White House issued a statement full of lies, and one of those lies was based on lies proffered by a serial liar (not Trump, but some other serial lier):
Oh, yeah, very convincing. Not. WTF. Even Mike Pence previously cited this bogus “eyewitness.”
Link
In today’s press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was her usual thick-headed self:
Link
Follow-up to comment 272 (SC) and 281.
New Yorker link
In today’s silence-broken news: chef Mario Batali and journalist Ryan Lizza.
PSA: Tomorrow – Tuesday, December 12th – “Break the Internet” protest to save net neutrality.
Update to #305 – Lizza’s statement calling his firing a “terrible mistake.” (Batali basically admitted the allegations against him were true.)
Heh. In #252 I said: “One aspect of note are the passages Manafort deleted from the draft. They’re actually pretty funny.”
Newly released emails have Manafort writing to Kilimnik about the revised draft he sent Voloshin: “It keeps his approach but takes out pieces that would not be good to mention.”
Indeed.
Sorry – here’s the link to the emails. (It also seems like they must have Kilimnik under surveillance.)
I have to say, this is the story Seth Abramson was telling breathlessly and in endless Twitter threads several weeks ago. He said mainstream publications were working on it, and it seems that was true – “For Trump adviser at center of Russia probe, a rapid rise and dramatic fall in his ancestral land”:
Update to #307 – response from Lizza’s accuser’s lawyer contesting his version.
The human cost of Roy Moore’s terrible ideas.
As a child, I had a pen pal from rural Alabama. Our lives were so different, even though we were both in Baptist churches. Interestingly enough, kids in rural AL were doing things sexually that weren’t even on our radar at that age. I don’t know what ever became of her. I hope she’s doing well and not voting for Moore, though given her background she would be a likely supporter.
Here’s video of the man @ #312 speaking about why he’s there.
Hahahahaha. Scarborough should have fun with this tomorrow morning.
:).
Two Maine newspapers call on Sen. Collins to vote No on the tax scam. Her constituents, who just voted overwhelmingly to expand Medicaid in their state, do not want this monstrosity to pass.
I’ve only seen clips of Bannon’s performance at the Moore rally last night. As noted above, he – a 64-year-old man – took the opportunity to mock Joe Scarborough for not attending the elite schools he did. Scarborough attended…the University of Alabama. He went on about his evil horseshit teleological view of history. He suggested that Moore’s election would put an end to people paying attention to the allegations against Trump and presumably to that fight for justice (despite all indications to the contrary). He bashed McConnell, Condoleezza Rice, and “Little Bobby Corker,”* claiming that the Republican establishment doesn’t have Trump’s back and is just using him to get their corporate tax cuts, which was an odd take to present to an audience of Trump supporters.
Oh, and this also happened.
* Who’s the same height as Vladimir Putin, incidentally.
This morning, Trump tweeted: “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!”
Gillibrand (an aide said she was called out of a “bipartisan Bible study group” to be told about the tweet) later responded: “You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office.”
She later called it a “sexist smear” and reiterated her call for the allegations against him to be investigated.
Elizabeth Warren, among others, has answered: “Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you’re picking a fight with? Good luck with that, @realDonaldTrump. Nevertheless, #shepersisted.”
I’m guessing there won’t be a vote in the Senate to censure him.
Approval ratings for Obamacare are at their highest.
Pew Research link
Obamacare is more popular than Trump (Trump is at 32%).
Follow-up to SC’s comment 318.
Four Democratic Senators have called for Trump to resign. Trump only lobbed sexist smears at one of them, Kirsten Gillibrand.
The others are male: Cory Booker, Jeff Merkley, and Bernie Sanders.
Trump digs the hole deeper with a tweet:
Um, the White House recently repeated the “eyewitness” exoneration (see comments 290 and 302). An eyewitness to Trump not meeting women?
And then there’s this:
And, last but not least, there is evidence of collusion. From House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff:
Quoted @ Lynna’s #321: “One of his accusers is Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter whom Trump has already said he met.”
Worth reposting Stoynoff’s story:
Six people corroborated her account.
Follow-up to 318 and 320.
From Josh Marshall, in reference to Trump’s sexualized attack against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York:
Jimmy Kimmel made a strong pitch for Congress to fund CHIP. Jimmy’s son Billy joined his father on stage.
Scroll down for the video, which is 4:37 minutes long.
Cute baby boy steals the show.
Charlie Pierce – “What I Saw Inside Roy Moore’s Barn Burner.”
LOL.
Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, looks more and more like a criminal. The European Parliament is now accusing Ross of insider trading.
Link
Tweet o’ the day.
Lynna @ #327: “Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, looks more and more like a criminal. The European Parliament is now accusing Ross of insider trading.”
It’s a staggering amount of corruption – “Tax Bill: John Cornyn’s Fossil Fuel Provision Would Personally Enrich Republican Lawmakers”:
How is this legal?
I don’t understand why they have the party-line section on the ballot at all when people are only voting for one office. Either it’s required by state law, or the shifty Republican SoS is trying to trick people.
The number of Senators asking Trump to resign has gone up. We can now add Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii.
In an NBC News interview, Hirono said that Trump is an “admitted sexual predator,” that he has a “narcissistic need for attention,” and that he is a “misogynist.”
The list (so far) of Senators calling for Trump to resign:
Mazie Hirono
Kirsten Gillibrand
Ron Wyden
Jeff Merkley
Cory Booker
Bernie Sanders
Voter suppression efforts are already being reported in AL.
“Feminism” is Merriam-Webster’s 2017 word of the year.
Follow-up to SC’s comment 332.
https://twitter.com/xobritdear/status/940607836912013317
Wonkette covered Kayla Moore, Roy Moore’s wife, telling the audience at a rally, “One of our attorneys is A JEW!” (She did emphasize that bit, so I’m sticking by the all-caps and the exclamation mark.)
Note that Kayla Moore also waved to media personnel in the audience while saying, “I just wanna set the record straight while they’re here.” She must have seen Bernie Bernstein.
Videos available at the link.
I don’t agree that this is honestly open to interpretation. I do agree that – in addition to being fixated on real or perceived disloyalty or criticism, since as an authoritarian he demands absolute loyalty and obsequiousness – he expected it might succeed among Democrats because some are annoyed with Gillibrand for other reasons. But it’s very similar to the Comey firing, when he was surprised that Democrats didn’t support it out of anger at Comey. It’s another example of both how psychologically disturbed and how stupid he is. He’s not capable of understanding that other people don’t share his insecure fixations and that they have principles and priorities that can transcend personal or political grievances or ambitions; nor does he grasp that no one’s buying his bad-faith attempts to exploit divisions.
Jim Acosta from CNN tried to question Trump at the bill signing about his tweet about Gillibrand, and received no response.
He tweeted: “Prior to this morment, @presssec issued a warning to me. She said if I asked a question of Trump at the bill signing ‘I can’t promise you will be allowed into a pool spray again’. Sorry Sarah.. we won’t be intimidated.”
SC @336, and why on earth does Trump put “begging” in quote marks like that when he refers to Gillibrand. I agree with you that the phrase, “(would do anything for them)”, which Trump put in parenthesis, is not open to interpretation. He meant to insinuate that Gillibrand would prostitute herself for campaign contributions.
From Wonkette’s coverage:
To add more delicious detail to what I think is going to turn into one of the deepest holes Trump has dug for himself, Maggie Haberman tweeted:
Also, Trump lied, according to this additional tweet from Haberman.
From Wonkette:
I snipped text containing P-word, etc. in reference to Trump’s past actions.
“Alabama is birthplace of Voting Rights Act
This is how hard it was to vote in the state before 1965
We can’t forget about this history…”
He seriously has no understanding of how they’re used.
I was wondering…has any progress been made on the investigation of the firebombing of the NC Republican headquarters more than a year ago?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today that anyone who thinks Trump was using sexualized language when he dissed Kirsten Gillibrand today “has their head in the gutter.”
Yeah, right. She says that Trump just meant that Gillibrand was corrupt in the way that Trump meant all manner of male and female politicians are corrupt. “Drain the swamp.”
I’m not buying that.
Video of relevant statements during the press conference today can be viewed here. Sanders claimed the tweet was “in no way sexist.”
Correction to comment 342, minor wording error corrected. I was going by memory.
From Representative Gwen Moore:
https://twitter.com/kira_lerner/status/940631853173821440
https://twitter.com/kira_lerner
When you’ve gone too far for Chuck Grassley, Senate Judiciary Chairman, you are really out on a limb.
Link
Link
Video available at the link.
Sean Hannity asked for it … and he got it.
Hannity tweeted:
Here are some responses.
From Kurt Eichenwald:
From Chris Beneke:
From Amber Michelle:
From Patricia Arquette:
From J.J.C.:
Follow-up to comment 349.
Link
“Did…you don’t know that?”
“Dutch subsidiary of Russia’s Alfa Bank raided in money laundering investigation”:
I don’t know if I’m more offended by Bannon’s Nazi influence or the fact that this article would talk about him as a “filmmaker” in the same breath as Riefenstahl or Eisenstein. And “revive” Moore’s campaign? It wasn’t even supposed to be a race! And his final rally was a total shitshow!
Two more hours of voting in AL. Both CNN and NBC exit polls have Trump approval/disapproval at 48%/48%, which is astonishingly low for Alabama. Turnout seems to be high (relatively speaking) across the board.
Some great images on Twitter today.
“IF YOU ARE IN LINE WHEN THE POLLS CLOSE STAY IN LINE YOU CAN STILL VOTE!
IF YOU ARE IN LINE WHEN THE POLLS CLOSE STAY IN LINE YOU CAN STILL VOTE!
IF YOU ARE IN LINE WHEN THE POLLS CLOSE STAY IN LINE YOU CAN STILL VOTE!“
BuzzFeed is reporting that Brett Talley has offered to withdraw his name from consideration.
OMG.
LOL.
LOL.
Neera Tanden: “Win or lose, @GDouglasJones has run an amazing race and I’m proud to have supported him.”
Josh Moon, who’s been on MSNBC from AL over the past weeks, is fucking hilarious.
Doug Jones: “This race could come down to your one vote- if you are in line, stay in line!”
“Roy Moore’s spokeswoman prays at Montgomery watch party for Moore’s vindication & that ‘every tongue that rises up against him will be put to shame’.”
Regardless of the outcome, your names will live in shame.
FUCK YOU.
SC @358
Thank you for posting that. I still remember the story of Ferdinand and how he stuck it to the man by being himself. My parents read it to me when I was 4 or 5.
militantagnostic:
I had forgotten all about it until I read Philip Greven’s Spare the Child a while back and it came back to me in a rush. I could picture the drawings and my emotional reaction. I can’t believe the movie is coming out!
I’m going to make protest signs with pictures of Ferdidand.
Enjoying watching Steve Kornacki at the board on MSNBC. Have to respect a numbers “nerd”.
Enjoying watching Steve Kornacki at the board on MSNBC. Have to respect a numbers “nerd”.
Before I could post, Jones is now leading by 11,000 and his areas aren’t fully reporting unlike Moore and his rural strongholds.
*crossed tentacles*
NYT projecting Jones as winner.
Steve Kornacki and MSNBC has Jones up by 10,000 with only democratic areas left unreported.
MSNBC just called for Jones. *clenched tetacle salute to the people of Alabama*
In your memory.
THANK YOU, ALABAMA.
Celebrate.
SC#374 Amen!
Danica Roem: “Just as a reminder, while we’re excited about the results in Alabama tonight, @flippable_org lists three special elections next Tuesday for state Senate seats in Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi. You can help elect the Democrats in all three states here:…”
re: Ferdinand
That is my favourite book from my childhood. That is also the book that has had more of an influence on who I am than any other book.
SC @353, Bannon is King of Shit Mountain … and the mountain is crumbling.
Trump is not likely to see himself as a loser after Roy Moore, the guy for whom Trump recorded robocalls, lost, but Trump is likely to see Bannon as a loser. A breach between Breitbart and Trump would be good.
(I just posted this comment over at Mano Singham’s blog, but I decided that it was also apropos here)
The most schadefreudeistic part of this, for me, is that Trump, even after seeing the damage that the sexual predation was doing, decided to make the election about him, not about Moore. All about Trump, not about the GOP. All about the tiny tyrant, not about tax cuts and gutting health care and destroying the social safety net. He made it all about Trump. And now Moore has lost.
I fully expect Trump to do something really stupid (er, more stupid? stupider? stupidest? stupiderest?) in the next few days to try to get the press talking about Trump the President, not Trump the guy who backed the pedophile loser. And I am confident that he will fuck it up and make himself look even worse.
This is just hilarious. They didn’t like Doug Jones before, but now the Republicans are courting him:
NRSC link
The platform on which Jones ran conflicts with Republican policies (see comment 281)
Ogvorbis @381, yeah, I noticed that Trump instructed voters in Alabama to vote for Roy Moore because Trump needed his vote to MAGA. It was all about Trump.
A follow-up to comment 380, in which the other LOSER, Steve Bannon, is receiving a nice big portion of blame from his fellow Republicans:
Link
From Representative Pete King:
From Meghan McCain:
From Rich Lowry:
From Josh Holmes:
None of those people spoke up that strongly before Roy Moore lost. All of those Republicans should thank black voters in Alabama. Black voters in Alabama saved Republicans from themselves. The rescue is probably temporary. They’ll dive into another sludge pond soon enough.
Lynna @382:
Notice the phrasing. The people of Alabama did not choose Jones, they rejected Moore. They didn’t vote for Jones, they voted against Moore. Nice way to try to invalidate an election in the minds of supporters.
I will not be surprised if the Moore campaign files lawsuits (alleging voter fraud, disenfranchisement of white men, disenfranchisement of real Christians, whatever) to delay the certification of the election and trying to prevent Jones being seated in the Senate for as long as possible. Moore may not know how the legal system works, but he sure knows judges and lawyers.
From the National Review’s David French:
Ogvorbis @384, Yeah, I see your point. Language pointing to the write-in votes is another way to try to invalidate the election of Doug Jones.
I am worried about Roy Moore’s failure to concede the race. He quoted, from memory, long biblical passages as part of his “this is not over” speech. He thinks this is a holy war and that God is on his side. I expect trouble. I would also not put it past some Republicans to try to adjust the vote count illegally after the fact. The Democrats better have lawyers and investigators standing by. They can’t count on Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice to help them.
OMG, and LOL. Really? Sean Hannity and Fox News have decided to blame Mitch McConnell for Roy Moore’s loss. I guess that is also now Steve Bannon’s tactic for shifting blame.
And there’s this from Hair Furor:
This is one area in which Republicans are transparent. We see right through them.
Follow-up to comment 387.
I wonder if Trump is now regretting that he deleted all those tweets backing Luther Strange as soon as Moore won the primary.
All of Trump’s rally comments backing Roy Moore are on videotape. Those robocalls will also live forever. He can’t erase this mistake.
Lynna @386:
More than just that. I think they are framing the votes for Doug Jones as votes against Moore, not votes for Jones.
Orgvorbis @384
If the lawyer he used to threaten his critics with is anything to go by, he may not know any lawyers capable of writing complete sentences.
I’m just gonna sit back and watch as the Republicans form a circular firing squad. READY! AIM! Exercise your second amendment rights!
militantagnostic @390:
Sorry. Trying for humour.
Orgvorbis @392
I should have known that you were aware of that abomination of legal communication.
The Trump administration broke the law … again.
Link
I agree with Matthew Miller.
https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/940960523407052800
Miller is responding to Natasha Bertrand:
Many of the Strzok/Page texts were read aloud during the questioning of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein by the House Judiciary Committee today. The texts were used by Republicans on the committee as proof that Mueller should be fired because his investigation is supposedly partisan.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/rosenstein-no-good-cause-fire-mueller
Republicans members of the committee failed to convince Rosenstein, but they did manage to air their grievances about the Strzok/Page texts in an open hearing that will play well on Fox News.
Representative Louie Gohmert read out the political contributions to Democratic candidates of nine lawyers on Mueller’s team. Gohmert also failed to convince Rosenstein to fire Mueller.
The Republican members of the committee seemed to be both frustrated and angry. They felt they had presented enough evidence to have Mueller fired, and that they had presented enough evidence to have a special counsel appointed to investigate the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Several Republican members of the committee also mentioned investigating Hillary Clinton. Absurdity reigned.
It’s about time Omarosa was kicked out of the Trump administration. She should not have had a job in a presidential administration in the first place.
The White House story is that the parting of ways was amicable, but the reality is quite different according to some reports.
I heard there was drama and she was escorted out of the building and off campus.
Sources say General Kelly did the firing and Omarosa is alleged to have acted very vulgar and cursed a lot and said she helped elect President Trump. The word is a General Kelly had it and got rid of her.
According to multiple sources Omarosa did not resign. She was even escorted out of he building and off campus. […]
[…] During Trump’s campaign, she worked on African-American outreach, and made a notable appearance in a PBS documentary where she claimed all Trump’s detractors would “have to bow down” if he won the presidency.
Ryan in February said that Manigault Newman “physically intimidated” her during one encounter and claimed the White House had “dossiers” of negative information on several journalists, including Ryan.
“She stood right in my face like she was going to hit me,” Ryan told the Washington Post. “I said, ‘You better back up.’”
“My comment: Fake news!” Manigault Newman responded. […]
Link
This is more like gossip than like news that will affect Trump administration policy. However, it does show, once again, that Trump hired incompetent staff with no ethical core and with bad manners to boot.
Senate and House Republicans have reportedly come up with a compromise tax bill. Democrats were shut out of the negotiations.
The compromise gives an even bigger tax break to the richest people, reducing the top income tax bracket from 39.6% to 37 percent.
From Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:
From Senator Ron Wyden:
Trump held a meeting/press avail today in which he announced that the finalization of the tax bill was “very close,” and that it would benefit the middle class.
Mitch McConnell hopes to ram the tax bill through before Doug Jones is sworn in.
The USA Today editorial board is fed up with Trump.
Just now on Fox News, in response to a question about Mueller’s impending report: “I just don’t see how Trump supporters will ever accept it.”
Excerpt from the testimony of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein today, in reference to President Trump calling the investigation a “witch hunt” as was read from the record of presidential tweets:
More dirt is emerging in connection with Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment of women:
Link
Tears, gnashing of teeth, and wailing from the ranks of people like Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer when they see the results of the election in Alabama:
Various people are also claiming that the Alabama election was rigged, and that “feminist bullshit” is to blame:
Meanwhile, Breitbart is adopting the excuse we could see coming. Their headlines: “Republican Saboteurs Flip Seat to Dems,” and “Mitch’s Revenge: Establishment GOP Cheers”
Follow-up to comment 395.
Here are some comments and examples regarding texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page:
From Wonkette:
Jimmy Kimmel covered the Alabama senate race. The video is 6:52 minutes long.
So, if Strzok were a Trump-lover who, just to pull a wild example out of my arse, worked in the New York City office and, say, leaked some internal FBI memos that were, out of context, damaging to Hillary Clinton, would the congressional GOP be up in arms? I wonder if anyone on Mueller’s team texted any messages of support for Trump to their loved ones or family? Or is it only supporters of the center (there really ain’t much of a political left remaining in the US) who get retro-reamed?
The UK government just lost a key vote in the Commons: a small number of Tory Remainers joined with all the opposition parties except the “D”UP to defeat them. The result should ensure that Parliament gets to say whether any Brexit deal negotiated with the EU is acceptable, rather than the Government being able to implement such a deal without any further vote. Of course, this doesn’t answer the question of what would happen if Parliament votes the deal down. Beyond the intrinsic significance of this, it’s a huge political blow to Theresa May.
The Trump administration is backing a criminal … again:
Link
Update on the Net Neutrality issue:
Link
From J.K. Rowling:
A dunderhead with bad intentions approached several Washington D.C. news outlets to offer a 13-page PDF purporting to document sexual harassment and other misconduct by Senator Chuck Schumer. Wonkette and Axios covered the scheme and Schumer’s reaction:
See Axios link.
See Wonkette link.
Lynna @408
Back in the the 60s in my atheist father used to tell a joke about an astronaut returning to Earth and saying “I have seen God and she is black.” AFAIK it was original to him.
miltantagnostic @408, Ha! big smiles for that one. Excellent.
In other news, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton will appoint Lt. Governor Tina Smith to Al Franken’s seat. That move makes Minnesota the fourth state currently represented by two women Senators. California, New Hampshire, and Washington are the other states with two women serving in the Senate.
If there’s one bit of good news to come out of Al Franken’s difficulties, it is the appointment of a woman. Tina Smith is well-qualified, well-respected, and she has the relevant experience needed for the job.
That’s from New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman.
https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/941181227431641089
[“WTF @CNN?! ARE YOU STONED?!, Brian Beutler says.]
From Steve Benen:
From Steve Benen, a discussion of the all-show, no-content tax plan presentations by the Trump administration:
Paul Ryan says that in order to avoid cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare, women in the U.S. should start having more babies. Analysis from Josh Marshall:
Link
Video of Ryan speaking is available at the link.
An update on Net Neutrality news. This is bad news.
NBC News link. Video available at the link.
Follow-up to comments 395, 402, and 404.
From Josh Marshall, “Don’t look away from the disgrace”:
Much more at the link.
I should have included this sentence in comment 416: “This is a transparently political move on the part of the Justice Department.”
Follow-up to comment 416.
From Ben Wittes:
From Josh Marshall:
Supporters of Trump demanded that the New York Times publish a comparison of Trump’s lies to the lies of other presidents. They shouldn’t have asked. A comparison was done:
Uh oh. This looks like an elaborately-staged attempt by the Trump administration to find an excuse to walk away permanently from the Iran nuclear deal. The presentation by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was theatrical.
Politico link.
Wonkette covered today’s Washington Post article that looks at how Russia attempted (is attempting) to destroy democracy in the U.S., and how Trump is helping Russia.
Black Lives Matter Activist DeRay Mckesson is suing Jeanine Pirro of Fox News. From Wonkette’s coverage:
From DeRay:
More from Wonkette:
Re #418 and others above – I still can’t get over how the DoJ has treated these two people. Now, the awful Sarah Isgur Flores is saying calling in reporters to read their personal texts the other day wasn’t authorized. How does that even make sense? Congress needs to obtain the alleged documents from the IG’s office and DoJ ethics people about this.
Ady Barkan on Chris Hayes last night was a force.
Here’s one of Trump’s judicial nominees (for a lifetime appointment) unable to answer questions about basic legal concepts.* He’s never tried a case; hasn’t even taken a deposition. Some background information that shouldn’t get lost: at the center of this travesty is WH counsel Don McGahn, who’s trying to push through his cronies.
* I feel no sympathy for him. Putting himself in this hearing was grossly arrogant. His response when the call came about the nomination should have been “Thank you, I’m flattered, but woefully unqualified.”
From Klint Finley, writing for WIRED, on the issue of Net Neutrality:
Much more at the link.
Trump spoke to the press this morning just before he boarded Marine One to go harass some FBI recruits who are ready to graduate. Here’s part of what Trump said:
Yesterday, Trump initiated a call to Putin.
Follow-up to comment 427.
Trump also said this:
From Norm Eisen:
Sarah Kendzior on Lindsey Graham and others throwing their lot in with Trump and Putin.
Meanwhile, Mueller has requested emails from Cambridge Analytica employees who worked for/with the Trump campaign; Parscale’s answers to congressional questions are suspicious.
More about that phone call Trump made to Putin yesterday, (as mentioned in comment 427):
Politico link
As Rachel Maddow pointed out, we first learned about the phone call from Russian media outlets. Not from the White House. The White House acknowledged the call later, after press reports forced them to do so.
Update to #s 332 and 334 above – “Did Alabama Just Violate Federal Voting Law?”:
Rupert Murdoch is working hard to remain in his bubble of delusion:
Link
Ken White on Matthew Spencer Peterson (the nominee @ #425 above).
“It’s unfortunate that he accepted the nomination, and I suppose that does not speak well of him, but it’s hard to throw the first stone there — how many of us would turn down such power and such an honor out of an awareness of our own shortcomings?”
I’m sorry, but no. White goes on to describe in detail the enormously difficult work of a district judge, the preparation it requires, and the impact of their decisions: “These decisions impact our fundamental rights. Our claims are won or lost. Our rights are vindicated or not. We are confined by the state, or not.”
People’s lives, rights, and freedoms are determined by their judgment. Of course a person who knows he’s completely unqualified for this weighty role and cares at all about other people or the institution should turn down the nomination. Of course it doesn’t speak well of him that he accepted it.
Boston Globe editorial – “One last chance for Collins to reject bad GOP tax bill”:
At the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia today Trump proved that he has no idea how the lottery system for immigration works:
How does the lottery system really work?
“New Mexico School Shooter Had Secret Life on Pro-Trump White-Supremacy Sites: For years before William Edward Atchison killed two students and himself, he lived a shadow life online—one full of crude alt-right memes and praise for school shooters.”
Looking good. Barack Obama donned a Santa hat and handed out gifts to children at the Boys & Girls Club in Washington D.C.
https://twitter.com/lydia_pok/status/941481538490912768
At the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia today Trump also said this:
Ann Coulter thinks along lines I just don’t understand. This is her criticism of Senator Marco Rubio for demanding a child tax credit increase in the Republican tax bill:
Not-so-fond memories of life before environmental regulations.
Yesterday’s tweet o’ the day.
Adam Schiff:
SC @441, Joy Reid is right about the regulations those pages represent. However, in reality, every page in Trump’s theatrical stacks of regulations was blank. All show, no content.
https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/status/941449349304745984
WTH, that had tags and everything.
Okay, let’s try a different way. Right wing conspiracist tries to light AL voting fraud rumor, accidentally ignites self. Details in prior comment.
I don’t understand these predictions. Trump can’t fire Mueller. Literally can’t do it. Only Rosenstein can, and he only can for cause, which he’s said (publicly, more than once in the past week) doesn’t exist. Trump could fire Rosenstein for not doing it and then go down the line until he found someone who would…I don’t know, pull cause out of thin air or something, but I don’t think it would get him anywhere given the existing progress of the investigation and would add to the obstruction case. Plus, I’m not sure if he could ask anything like this from Rosenstein’s office on a federal holiday (maybe he can – I honestly don’t know).
It doesn’t work. A catastrophic link attempt. I hope you weren’t hurt. :)
!!!:
(And I repeat: HOW THE HELL IS THE STORY @ #31 NOT A HUGE FUCKING SCANDAL?)
Corker and Rubio are now Yeses on the tax scam. Toxic, malevolent party.
Manafort is being released from house arrest: “Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort will be released from house arrest while his criminal case is pending, a judge ruled on Friday, but he’ll have to remain under GPS monitoring, be home daily by 11 p.m., and get the judge’s permission to travel outside of southern Florida, where he’ll be living.”
Agh, that’s what I get for trying to link to a link to a link as to not give the original twitter source any hits. Let me try again, and if I can’t make tags to a HuffPo link I’m done internetting for the day.
Goddamn HuffPo link
Twitter
“BREAKING: PA wins nationwide injunction blocking @POTUS’ contraception order and protecting women’s guaranteed access to health coverage.”
More re #452:
Update to Lynna’s #432 – “Fox News Women Furious Over Rupert Murdoch Comments On Sexual Misconduct”:
Update to #423 – Natasha Bertrand: “NEW: DOJ Inspector General says in letter to House Judiciary that “the department did not consult with OIG before sharing the text messages with the press.” Full story TK”
He really gets it.
So, Jennifer Rubin points out that Sarah Isgur Flores lied to her about the IG approving the release of the texts.
Isgur Flores also tweeted the claim about the IG this morning: “As the DAG said, after initial inquiries from Congress, the DAG consulted with the IG, and the IG determined that he had no objection to the Department providing the material to the Congressional committees that had requested it (discussion w IG was only about Congress).”
Tweet o’ the day.
What the hell?
Rosenstein said in his testimony that “we” consulted with the IG before releasing the texts to Congress. The IG says no.
I have no words – “Trump hosted the NRA at the White House on the anniversary of Sandy Hook massacre.”
Here’s Bertrand’s full article.
And I want to know who these career ethics advisors were who thought this was fine.
This is crazy. Scott Pruitt is off-the-charts corrupt and destructive – “Executive at Consultancy Hired by E.P.A. Scrutinized Agency Employees Critical of Trump”:
Much more at the link (NYT).
Aimee Mann tweets in support of Renato Mariotti’s candidacy for Illinois AG. (Her latest album is very good.)
I don’t actually see how this is different from what was said in the letter. Nor do I see how it squares with “The IG personally cleared the release of these text messages saying that his investigation was nearly closed and he didn’t see any legitimate reason to keep them from Congress.”
OK, I think I’m reading this statement differently from others.
They’re reading: “We told them they could divulge these text messages to Congress, and they didn’t consult with us further prior to divulging them.”
I’m reading: “We told them previously and generally – prior to the specific issue of these texts arising – that they could release records to Congress, but that they needed to ensure that this didn’t violate legal or ethical restrictions. They didn’t consult with us prior to releasing these texts to Congress or the media.”
My reading could be mistaken. I don’t think the two OIG statements are different. Neither one is consistent with Isgur Flores’ statements. What were the bases on which it was decided that the release to reporters (who, specifically?) and Congress was legally and ethically sound? Who are the career ethics professionals to whom SIF is referring? On what basis did they render their decision? Who authorized and arranged it?
Jesus, that’s one ambiguous statement. I’ve read it several times, and remain unclear about which terms are general or specific. It’s very annoying.
@ #446
I don’t think it’s far-fetched at all (though I don’t know about Christmas Eve.) For one thing, Rosenstein testified he would fire Mueller if there were “good cause.” With the drumbeat of right wing criticism building, and not just the nut jobs, after all, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is on record that Mueller should go because he can’t be impartial, Rosenstein could easily come up with “cause.” Look what he did with the Comey memo.
If Rosenstein somehow finds a backbone and resigns or is fired, Rachel Brand, Trump appointee and a favorite of the Federalist Society is next in line, and I think she would fire Mueller without hesitation. If not, it gets interesting. Next in line is the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to an executive order from March that outlines the order of succession. That attorney resigned in October and Trump has not yet nominated a potential successor. You can see the possibilities – fire Rosenstein, fire Brand, appoint a lackey who fires Mueller.
But I don’t think any of that will come to pass, because Rosenstein will simply re-write the WSJ editorial, find good cause, and fire Mueller. House Republicans will roll over and the investigation will wither away. In spite of everything, the GOP fears Trump as much as ever.
Well, he’s said that he would only fire Mueller for good cause:
I don’t know exactly what happened with Rosenstein in the Comey firing and he hasn’t covered himself in glory in some other areas, but he’s the one who appointed Mueller (who he knew would do a thorough, professional job), and he’s said consistently – including this week – that he approves of the way the investigation is being carried out and sees no good cause to dismiss him. I just don’t think he would or could entirely reverse course.
I don’t accept this distinction. There are some great journalists at the WSJ, but the editorial board are total raving wingnuts and it’s owned by Murdoch after all.
From comments I’ve read about her by people who used to work at the DoJ, this doesn’t seem to be a given. She’s very conservative, but she’s seen as a professional and undoubtedly knows what’s at stake.
Boente’s resignation is another mysterious development, but he’s still in the job until a successor is confirmed.
It’s possible, but I really don’t see this happening. In any case, my issue with the predictions I linked to wasn’t that it was far-fetched for Mueller to be fired in any scenario (I certainly think Trump is psychologically capable of attempting to shut him down, even though history suggests it wouldn’t stop the investigation and the blowback would be his undoing) but that they suggested Trump could just fire Mueller. He can’t.
But I hope he and the Republicans are happy about the additional anxiety they’re causing during the holiday season (even Christmas in Nazareth).
He sure as hell does.
The editorials at the WSJ (Wall Street Journal), and its news content, have been distinct & divergent since prior to the Murdork seizure. The coverage of AGW is an example, with (pre-Murdork) the news pages being rational and the editorial pages being üdenierland. Post-Murdork, this distinction seems to be disappearing into delusional vapour, with the news pages appearing to become uncomfortably unreliable. My own rule-of-thumb from some years now has to ignore the WSJ editorials entirely, and also its news pages, excepting when independent reports confirm (or are the origin of) the WSJ news reports.
As I’ve said previously (July-2013†), “I myself stopped considering the WSJ to be a serious source of anything after it published an unsigned editorial that was nothing more than a fact-free rant objecting to the disclosure of the phone hacking — [yet] another example of a poor grasp of ‘either independent journalism or democracy itself’.”
In short:
● WSJ editorial — Überdubious (Only plausible in the same sense a broken clock is sometimes not wrong);
● WSJ news — Treat with caution ! (Assume it’s Faux-for-the-(pseudo-)rich, lacking independent reliable confirmation to anything plausible.)
† The WSJ editorial attack on independent press actually happened in 2011, and whilst I have (an admittedly somewhat vague (albeit implied by the above quote)) memory of ceasing to consider the WSJ reliable at that time, a quick search does not find any supporting reference.
I agree with this Brian Beutler piece – “Republicans Have No Idea What Crimes They’re Covering Up”:
I thought this nutjob had come up before, but either I’m confusing the eejit with another one or my Generalissimo Google™-fu has fubared again, This man sums up all that is wrong about Trump’s takeover of the courts (my added emboldening, but the emphasis is in the original):
There are reasons I am very very negative about lawyers (in general) and, amongst other specifics, their mafias (much of the time).
The opinion column goes on to discuss what several people here have observed: The (potential for) enormous damage the entire judicial system — and possibly to the rule-of-law itself — the thugs are inflicting with the help of Putin’s patsy. Federal judicial appointments are for life; it is very very difficult to remove a judge (recently, the New York Times(?) pointed out only eleven(?) federal judges have ever been impeached). That is, fixing the problem once the thugs are removed from control / power / disruption / funding is extremely difficult.
One of the readers’s comments claims “Kennedy still gave his vote to Peterson anyway.” I have not tried to verify or refute the reader’s claim, albeit Kennedy being hair furor supporter (read: nazi), it seems very very probable.
This is a clear-eyed look at how Marco Rubio sold his soul to vote for Republican tax scam, and how he elaborated on the scam:
That’s from Andy Slavitt
There’s a new provision in the 1,097-page tax scam that the Republicans released at 5:30 PM yesterday. That provision benefits Trump.
Think Progress link
According to Jackie Speir:
“The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week,” Spier told KQED. “And on Dec. 22nd, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller.”
Of course she means have Rosenstein fire him. Or, since he’d still like to get rid of the disloyal AG, he could just replace Sessions with someone who would do the job. In addition, Speir feelsTrump is already trying to shut down the Congressional investigation.
“Scoop: Mueller obtains “tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails”:
Rick Wilson has been hinting that he’s heard via the rumor mill (allegedly due to reporters asking for confirmation) something about an impending action against Kushner. That could be the reason for the ratcheting up of the campaign against…the law.
“White House Special Counsel Ty Cobb says Robert Mueller will not be fired: ‘As the White House has consistently said for months, there is no consideration of firing the Special Counsel’.”
(I’m just relaying – not necessarily believing.)
tomh @478, “[…] the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week […]”
I do wish Trump and his lackeys would stop employing teasers like that. It makes every policy announcement sound like a reality TV show, a show that ends each episode with a cliffhanger. Also, we, the audience, have no way to judge the “significance” or triviality of the supposedly upcoming speech.
Meanwhile, Trump is taking a premature victory lap to celebrate the Republican tax scam.
Follow-up to SC @466.
Senator Jeff Merkley agrees. Along with a picture of George Orwell’s book “1984,” Merkley tweeted:
Beware of insulting Star Wars actors or fans:
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/365271-mark-hamill-fcc-chair-is-unworthy-of-using-lightsaber
Another study backs up what we already knew, Trump was elected largely due to racial resentment:
The text excerpt is from the Washington Post. The researchers included Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen. They focused on millennials because they will be the largest group in the voting-eligible population in 2018. More millennials backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 than backed Trump. 41% of millennials voted for Trump.
The devastating wildfires in California are still … well, devastating.
Link
I heard (in passing, at a Scottish Green Party event, so I don’t know the details) that there’s a case going to be put forward to the European Court of Justice to determine whether Article 50 is unilaterally revocable – i.e., whether the UK could decide that it doesn’t want to leave the EU after all. Combined with the vote in the Commons last week, which (provided the government doesn’t find some way of reversing or evading it) ensures that Parliament gets a vote on whether the terms negotiated for leaving are acceptable, a ruling that it is revocable would open up a plausible (although not likely) route for avoiding the epic fuck-up that Brexit will otherwise be: Parliament rejects the terms, then votes to revoke Article 50. If it’s not revocable, rejecting the terms would just mean risking Brexit without any agreement, since renegotiation would be next to impossible, given that 27 countries plus the European Parliament need to agree the terms.
Update to #479 – As part of their propaganda campaign against the Mueller investigation, the Trump people, after leaking to Axios yesterday that Mueller’s team had these transition emails, sent a letter to Congress* and provided it to Fox claiming Mueller had obtained them inappropriately and that might have violated attorney-client privilege and the 4th Amendment. That they were going in this direction was hinted at in the way they framed it to Axios, so I wasn’t surprised when the letter emerged yesterday just before I went offline. It sounded like a political stunt, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine how the GSA and Mueller would shoot down the claims.
The GSA and Mueller have shot down the claims. The statement from Mueller’s spokesman is pretty amazing (my emphasis): “When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”
Even before these responses, the Trump lawyer’s arguments were weak and internally contradictory and never meant to stand as a legal claim; this is a desperate political ploy, and it’s all they have upon learning that Mueller has these messages. Ultimately, it makes them look worse – either the transition communications themselves contain incriminating information or leads, or Trump people have lied to investigators believing the investigators weren’t in possession of this evidence. As their legal jeopardy seems to increase, the propaganda campaign is ramping up.
* Which, the Trump campaign lawyers surely know, is not the appropriate venue for such an argument.
And when I say it’s a desperate political ploy, I don’t mean to suggest that it’s not also a highly dangerous authoritarian play for power.
Lynna, do you have a link to the WaPo report @ #484? Thanks.
Here are some questions I still have as the year comes to a close:
– What was up with the (what I believe to be) fake Manafort blackmail plot that appeared to have been coordinated with the Kremlin?
– What’s happened with the investigation into the firebombing of the NC Republican headquarters?
– Why was there not more attention to Trump’s fake veterans’ event on the USS Iowa in 2015, at which he claimed the organization he was working with represented hundreds of thousands of veterans when it represented one shady Republican operative? Where did the money go?
– What role did the NRA play in Russian election interference/collusion?
– What role did US Christian-Right organizations play in Russian election interference/collusion?
– What role did Mohammed bin Zayed play in potential collusion?
– What role did Jill Stein play in Russian election interference/collusion?
– Which if any Republicans took money from Russian oligarchs?
– What shady connections did Nigel Farage (bless his heart) deploy in the Brexit and US presidential campaigns?
– Why did Dana Boente resign? (And what was up with the changes in the line of succession?)
– Why the hell is the Gowdy payoff @ #31 above not a huge fucking scandal?
– What’s happening with the Firtash extradition?
– What was Brian McCauley up to when he was working for the Flynn Group?
– What did the White Canvas Group do for the Trump campaign/Flynn?
– Why has Rudy Giuliani gone so quiet?
– Why has nothing come of the reports that showed Ivanka Trump and Donald Jr. apparently committing fraud related to the Trump SoHo (and Cy Vance’s involvement in non-prosecution)? How did she not have to resign from the WH?
– How does Jared Kushner still have a job and a security clearance?
– Has Kushner sought money for his 666 Fifth Ave. building since the election?
– Does Kushner have a corrupt relationship with Netanyahu or other rich Israeli interests? (And how is Netanyahu still in power?)
– Does the Reza Zarrab plea have any implications for people connected to Trump?
– What’s the story behind Fox’s Seth Rich conspiracy reports and their possible coordination with the WH and/or the Kremlin?
– Why did Stephen Paddock shoot all those people in Las Vegas?
– What was going on with that strange FBI archive Twitter account?
– Why did C-SPAN broadcast RT for several minutes in January?
– What happened here?
– Why did Georgia officials destroy election data after a lawsuit was filed, and is this being investigated?
– Were any voting systems successfully hacked? Why were states provided information so belatedly and confusingly?
– What is Mercer up to recently?
– Where is Joseph Mifsud? Is he in Malta?
– Who wrote the tweet about Flynn being fired because he lied to the FBI? Is Dowd’s claim that he wrote it now part of the investigation?
– Is there still more to the Obama/Biden response to Putin’s election interference yet to come?
I’m sure there are many I’m forgetting.
@ #489
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/12/15/racial-resentment-is-why-41-percent-of-white-millennials-voted-for-trump-in-2016/?utm_term=.a5a879c35ffa
Thanks, tomh!
WTH, Northam?
As part of the current drive towards theocracy in America, the final tax bill extends Section 529 Qualified Tuition Programs to public, private or religious elementary or secondary schools. Section 529 plans are tax free savings plans, that can be used for higher education tuition. Unused amounts are tax-deferred, including income. Under the new tax code families can withdraw up to $10,000 per pupil per year for k-12 schools, including private and religious.
Since I haven’t seen anyone link to it, The final tax bill is here.
I can’t stand Chris Matthews, and here’s another reason to dislike him.
SC @494, Chris Matthews is one of the MSNBC hosts I don’t watch. His mannerisms include: overly vague conclusions from little or no evidence, and rudely interrupting his guests. No need to watch that. I didn’t know about him also insulting women.
SC @489, here is the link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/12/15/racial-resentment-is-why-41-percent-of-white-millennials-voted-for-trump-in-2016/
SC @487, they’re taking the bogus claims about Mueller illegally obtaining emails to Congress and to Axios for the purposes of complaining and leaking. They are not taking their claim of illegality to the courts, where they know they would lose.
This is obviously part of their political/propaganda effort to discredit the Mueller investigation. It’s unethical and sneaky.
From Josh Marshall:
From the recent in-depth piece by the Washington Post, in which we see that Trump was presented with evidence of Russians interference in the election:
The briefing was held on January 6, 2017. Trump has voiced doubts about Russian interference several times since that briefing. Is Trump lying? Has he been paid by Russia somehow to continue to put out false information? Is Trump completely divorced from reality? Is Trump so forgetful? Is Trump so married emotionally to the idea that he won the election without any help that he would implode if he admitted that the Russians interfered?
Trump promotes more environmental damage, and in doing so he screws over some Native Americans.
Link
Much more at the link.
What happens if you are an evangelical who speaks out against Trump?
Link
Much more at the link, including Hatmaker’s support for the LGBT community, and her support for same-sex marriage.
From Wonkette’s coverage of the emails to which Mueller has access (part of the previous discussion on this thread is here):
From Norm Eisen:
From Kellyanne Conway:
From Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro:
More from Wonkette: