Comments

  2. says

    “I didn’t think I’d ever leave the CIA. But because of Trump, I quit.”:

    …Despite working proudly for Republican and Democratic presidents, I reluctantly concluded that I cannot in good faith serve this administration as an intelligence professional.

    …

    …Intelligence informing policy — this is how the system is supposed to work. I saw that up close for the past three years at the White House, where I worked on loan from the CIA until last month.

    As a candidate, Donald Trump’s rhetoric suggested that he intended to take a different approach….

    Trump’s actions in office have been even more disturbing….

    The final straw came late last month, when the White House issued a directive reorganizing the National Security Council, on whose staff I served from 2014 until earlier this year….

    The public outcry led the administration to reverse course and name the CIA director an NSC principal, but the White House’s inclination was clear. It has little need for intelligence professionals who, in speaking truth to power, might challenge the so-called “America First” orthodoxy that sees Russia as an ally and Australia as a punching bag. That’s why the president’s trusted White House advisers, not career professionals, reportedly have final say over what intelligence reaches his desk.

    …

    The CIA will continue to serve important functions — including undertaking covert action and sharing information with close allies and partners around the globe. If this administration is serious about building trust with the intelligence community, however, it will require more than rallies at CIA headquarters or press statements. What intelligence professionals want most is to know that the fruits of their labor — sometimes at the risk of life or limb — are accorded due deference in the policymaking process.

    Until that happens, President Trump and his team are doing another disservice to these dedicated men and women and the nation they proudly, if quietly, serve.

  3. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    A follow-up to SC’s 500 on the previous page. A somewhat fuller clip discussing the costs of the Trump’s clan travel can be found here (scroll down to the second clip). Don Lemon does a great job of calling out the Trupista’s use of “fake news”.

  4. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    Lynna linked to an article claiming that Trump has no foreign policy. An even scarier take can be found here.

    Under President Trump, American foreign policy is returning, many commentators say, to the isolationism that preceded World War II. This line of interpretation (and often attack) emerged during the election: While Hillary Clinton warned that her opponent would “tear up our alliances,” an array of experts supplied such fears with a historical pedigree. As Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass put it, Trump stood for a “new isolationism,” a revival of the 1930s dream of “turning away from global engagement.”

    The problem is, Trump isn’t an isolationist. He is a militarist, something far worse. And calling Trump an isolationist isn’t an effective critique.
    […]
    Scholars define militarism, broadly, as the excessive use and veneration of force for political ends, or even for its own sake, extending at times to full military control of the state. (Trump has appointed two Marine generals, Jim Mattis and John F. Kelly, to his Cabinet.) Militarism, the pioneering historian Alfred Vagts wrote in 1937, promotes values “associated with armies and wars and yet transcending true military purposes.” Militarism can be a policy and an ethos, corrupting the pursuit of rational goals.
    […]
    Trump’s sense of abuse and humiliation is potent. “The world is laughing at us,” he endlessly repeats. It’s a cry more common to revolutionary states and movements than to the world’s sole superpower. Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany did not conquer territory for the thrill of it; their leaders acted out of perceived desperation, believing that they were losing a ruthless competition for power and status.

    Facing a vicious world, Trump promises to turn the tables, not turn his back. He talks of grabbing wealth from other countries, most vividly in his mantra to “take the oil” in Iraq. “Maybe we’ll have another chance,” he said in a speech at the CIA. Trump may be posturing, but the posture is militaristic. To announce a lust for oil, to chest-thump about torture, to envisage military parades down Pennsylvania Avenue — these do not achieve strategic objectives so much as exalt brute force. “I’m the most militaristic person there is,” Trump said in the primaries. Perhaps he was telling the truth.

    Trump’s cultural militarism bears watching, even if it never translates into foreign policy. Drawing a moral equivalence between the United States and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Trump rejects America’s traditional identity as an exceptional nation shining the light of freedom to the world. What identity does he offer instead? While ignoring the Founding Fathers, he constantly invokes the “old days of General MacArthur and General Patton,” the most extreme generals of the mid-20th century. In Trump’s imagination, the generals demanded absolute victory, ensuring that “we never lost a war” before Vietnam. Trump’s mythologizing recalls the veneration that imperial Germany bestowed upon its army, which had forged the nation by defeating France in 1871. MacArthur and Patton are Trump’s new founders.

    And Trump may not be posturing. He may pursue a program of intervention the world over. Tactics could begin with bluster and tariffs. Where they would end is anyone’s guess, but Trump’s disavowal of nation-building offers little comfort. His predecessors said the same during their presidential campaigns. Trump will avoid large-scale conflict only if he sets limited objectives and acts prudently.

    Thus far, he has signaled the opposite. “Our military dominance must be unquestioned,” the White House declared on Day One, and Trump plans to build up America’s already supreme military. How will he use it? In his inaugural address, he pledged not only to take on “radical Islamic terrorism” but to “eradicate [it] from the face of the Earth.” Last year Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, professed “no doubt” that “we’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years” — and that’s on top of the “global war against Islamic fascism” that he believes to be in its opening stages.

  5. says

    @#3

    Woosh, well, I disagree what that take. Trump isn’t really an isolationist, he’s a white nationalist. As such, he’ll align with the white countries and not align with the brown ones, and that’s patently obvious is his approach. The alt-right is setting this up as the battle between white and non-white. Russia is white, so are vast swaths of europe. The countries that are allowing their population to be deluded by non-white immigrants are weak and will fail according this ideology. It was patently obvious with the Sweden attack, this is their message, this is their MO.

  8. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    erikthebassist,

    Woosh, well, I disagree what that take. Trump isn’t really an isolationist, he’s a white nationalist.

    I’m not sure where the disagreement is. The author is also saying that Trump isn’t an isolationist, and militarism is compatible with white nationalism. He compares Trump’s doctrine to Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, both of which had toxic mixtures of nationalism and imperialism (and I don’t think anyone would accuse Hitler of isolationism).

  12. blf says

    SC@8, I note you have self-corrected (@9), but it is Guillermo Lasso who has clearly indicated he wants Julian Assange out (Ecuador election: Moreno facing runoff as 40% vote looks out of reach, dated Monday):

    With almost 90% of votes counted, candidate for incumbent party just short of 40% required for outright victory

    A runoff vote appears likely in Ecuador’s presidential election with Lenín Moreno appearing to fall just short of the 40% required for outright victory over his rightwing rival Guillermo Lasso.

    With 87% of votes counted early on Monday morning, the national electoral council gave 39.09% to Moreno, who was a former vice-president under the outgoing Rafael Correa, and 28.28% to Lasso, a 61-year-old former banker. For an outright win a candidate needs 40% and a 10-point lead over his nearest rival.

    […]

    A second round is not expected to favour 63-year-old Moreno, say analysts. They predict Ecuador’s opposition could join forces around Lasso, who has vehemently attacked the government, blaming it for an economic downturn and corruption scandals.

    […]

    The two candidates offer very different visions of Ecuador’s future and its place in the world. Moreno represents the continuity of the nation’s leftwing government, with its focus on poverty reduction, disability rights and closer Latin American integration. But supporters say he represents a change of style, being more of a listener and less confrontational towards the media compared to his predecessor, Correa.

    Lasso has vowed to cut taxes, boost employment, trim government spending and evict the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. […]

    I’m unsure what, if anything, Lenín Moreno has said on the matter.

  13. says

    I’m unsure what, if anything, Lenín Moreno has said on the matter.

    Yes, I honestly had it in my head that he was the one who said they’d end the policy. I know Correa isn’t especially happy with the situation.

    They won’t announce the results until tomorrow, I guess, so we’ll see. (Obviously, I don’t want Lasso to win, regardless of Assange’s fate.)

  15. says

    What a Maroon – Yeah I could have written that better. What I was objecting to in the piece was the lack of mention of the white nationalist aspect to his motivations, although he did run his campaign based on the idea of isolationism. Close up the boarders, shred trade deals, bring our troops home etc… Of course he contradicted himself left and right so anybody reading between the lines realized it was a militant strategy, not isolationist, but that’s what his ignorant voters believed anyways.

  16. says

    So after a campaign season filled with threats to Jewish journalists, a candidacy supported by the KKK and multiple neo-Nazi groups, bomb threats at synagogues, a steep spike in attacks motivated by religious bigotry, a choice of a senior advisor who’s a white supremacist, retweets of white supremacists, two attempts in the past week to get a response on growing antisemitism met with evasion and hostility, repeated desperate calls for him to condemn this publicly and talk about what’s being done to stop it, and most recently the destruction of a Jewish cemetery…Trump finally offers a condemnation, while falsely claiming he denounces antisemitism every chance he gets, disavowing any role he or his campaign have played in the resurgence of these movements, and offering nothing in the way of a government effort to address the problem.

  17. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    Got it. Of course it’s hard to attribute any kind of coherent philosophy to Trump; the real question is who is influencing him at the moment, and unfortunately Bannon and Gorka seem to have his ear right now.

  18. blf says

    On hair furor and Australia, looking at the reported situation in terms of rent-seeking (Trump’s economic-, and very possibly entire world-, view), it seems to follow naturally. The idea is teh trum-prat sees everything as a zero-sum game, and is greedy. With that mind-set, what more does Australia have to offer him(or if you prefer, the States)? Not a lot (in that rent-seeking zero-sum mindset!): Australia runs a c.$32bn deficit with the States, and ranks fairly low (depending on what you measuring, c.26th). Excepting specialist instruments (medical, &tc), imports from Australia were mostly natural resources (ores, gems, meat, and so on). Basically, in hair furor’s rent-seeking mind-set, the current situation is mostly Ok.

    Combined with the Obama-era deal to take in some refugees, Australia’s general friendliness with China (another one of trum-prat’s numerous bogeymen), and trump-prat’s apparent inability to imagine himself in someone else’s position / “shoes”, then it does not seem too surprising the dalekocracy is dismissive of Australia.

    This may seem to be — and quite probably is — simplistic, perhaps even over-simplified, but we are dealing with eejits & ideologues. In Reality™ there are numerous reasons not to be antagonistic towards Australia, but like, e.g., “science” or “freedom of press” they simply don’t factor into hair furor’s postulated rent-seeking zero-sum world-view.

  20. says

    SC @8, Assange adopted the same tactic that some other defenders of Milo Yiannopoulus have used: they reduce Yiannopoulus’ comments about 13-year-old-boys have sex with 26-year-old-men (and older) to a “comment about teen sex.” No, it was not a comment about teen sex.

    Losing his book contract, and being kicked out of CPAC may be only the beginning of Yiannopoulus’ downfall.

    In other news, here is an update on Republican efforts to craft a healthcare policy:

    […] Republican leaders in the House and Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services released a plan last week that would provide insurance that is far inferior, shift more medical costs onto families and cover far fewer people.

    In a half-baked policy paper released on Thursday, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, trotted out washed-up ideas for “improving” the country’s health care system that would do anything but. For example, the paper calls for reducing spending on Medicaid, which now provides insurance to more than 74 million poor, disabled and older people. Many millions of them would be cast out of the program.

    The Republican plan would also force most people who don’t get their health insurance through an employer to pay more by slashing subsidies that the A.C.A., or Obamacare, now provides. The proposal would allow families to sock away more money in health savings accounts, which may sound good at first but would primarily benefit affluent people who can afford to save more.

    NY Times link

  23. says

    Here is another excerpt from the healthcare editorial in the New York Times, the one written by “the Editorial Board.” The link is in comment 19.

    […] To understand how far out of the mainstream the House Republican plan is, consider its ideas for Medicaid. It would roll back the A.C.A. provisions that helped more than 11 million people gain Medicaid coverage. Republican governors like John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan have praised the expansion because it has helped reduce uncompensated care at hospitals and provided addiction treatment to people suffering from the opioid epidemic. “Thank God we expanded Medicaid, because that Medicaid money is helping to rehab people,” Mr. Kasich said last month.

    Next, the Republicans want to slash spending on Medicaid over all by giving states the option of a block grant or a per capita allotment. The current program pays for the health care of everyone who is eligible. During recessions, when the number of people in poverty increases, the government spends more. Without the flexibility that was built into Medicaid, Congress would have to vote to give states more money when health care costs rise. Politically, that is in the “impossible dream” category, which is why most experts believe that, over time, states would cover fewer people and cut benefits.

    Another pillar of the Republican proposal scraps the income-based Obamacare subsidies that help families buy affordable insurance. Instead, Mr. Ryan wants to offer a flat subsidy that would be the same whether families earn $500,000 or $50,000. Residents of Minnesota would get the same support as residents of Alaska, where premiums on average are three times as high. […]

    If you read this editorial at the link, you will have access to multiple embedded links that lead to data and/or analysis to back up the claims that are made.

  24. says

    “Trump admin to rescind trans student protections: source”:

    Despite pleas from parents of transgender children and LGBT employees, the Trump administration is set Tuesday to rescind Obama-era guidance to schools barring discrimination against transgender students and ensuring they have access to the restroom consistent with their gender identity.

    Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told the Washington Blade on Monday she’s heard from “reliable sources” President Trump has green-lighted the plan for the Justice Department and Education Department to send a “Dear Colleague” letter to schools rescinding the guidance.

    “This is the first day of the president’s second month in office and he is now fully coming after LGBT people,” Keisling said. “I’m angry; I’m outraged. This is about kids who just want to go to school who just want to be themselves, and to hear the president a week or two ago talk about how supportive he is of LGBT people, it’s just outrageous that he go after trans kids this way.”

    …

    A decision to withdraw the guidance could be an initial signal of the Trump administration’s position in the case before the U.S. Supreme Court known as Gloucester County Schools v. G.G., which resulted from transgender student Gavin Grimm suing his high school to use the restroom consistent with his gender identity. The questions before the court are to evaluate the guidance and whether the prohibition of sex discrimination under Title IX applies to transgender students seeking to use the restroom in school consistent with their gender identity.

    The Trump administration would be rescinding the guidance weeks after the White House issued a statement declaring Trump is “respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights” and would preserve a separate order from President Obama barring anti-LGBT workplace discrimination among federal contractors.

    Even if the U.S. government rescinds the guidance, transgender advocates have insisted students are still able to sue on their own under Title IX if they feel they’ve experienced discrimination as a result of their gender identity.

    “It doesn’t take away trans kids’ rights,” Keisling said. “It’s Title IX that protects us, not Donald Trump or Attorney General Sessions agreeing with us on Title IX.”

    Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement the Trump administration must affirm the guidance for transgender students must remain in place….

  25. blf says

    This is a neat idea, Cologne library opens its doors to refugees: ‘You fill this room with life’ (the Grauniad has changed some of the people’s names):

    The Cologne Public Library is serving as a social and educational space for the city’s refugees, as counterparts across Germany increasingly become places for community engagement. […]

    While a flurry of snow threatens to fall outside at any moment, Sanaw, a 30-year-old Kurdish Christian from western Iran, is proudly describing his involvement in a nativity play over Christmas.

    He holds court at a table of eight fellow refugees, explaining in coherent German how the local theatre group, of which he has only been a member for a matter of months, has helped to improve his sense of belonging in Cologne, his home city for just over a year.

    “Even though I’m living in a refugee camp, I was able to interact with a few locals,” he says, as the group listen intently. “And I was also able to learn German without doing a course.”

    Sanaw, a graphic designer who ran his own agency back home, is one of the growing number of users of Cologne Public Library’s sprachraum (language space).

    The sprachraum, a large ground-floor room that sits opposite the main library building, serves as both a meeting point and learning hub for the city’s migrant community […]

    […]

    Many public libraries in Germany, including Cologne, now include “maker spaces”, in which users can experiment with new technologies, including 3D printers and virtual reality glasses. For every study room, there is likely to be a cafe or children’s play area.

    On this cold Saturday afternoon, the group is here for “Offene Deutschhilfe” (literally “Open German Help”), a weekly workshop aimed at helping refugees in a range of matters, from German vocabulary to filling in job applications and finding accommodation.

    As Susanne — one of the two volunteers hosting the session — recommends to Sanaw an free recital held by the Chamber Philharmonia Cologne, one-to-one language lessons are taking place on tables dotted around the space. Others are at workstations reading emails; a man in an oversized bomber jacket pours himself a coffee.

    […]

    The sprachraum was conceived by Dr Hanne Vogt, the Cologne Public Library’s director, in 2015 […].

    “The idea actually came about before the first huge wave of refugees came to Germany,” explains Vogt. “I was seeing a lot of people who were coming to the central library for language lessons, who were asking if there was any additional space where they could go for extra classes. At that time, we didn’t have anything.”

    It was around this point that Vogt discovered an abandoned room across the square abutting onto the library’s main entrance. The librarian pitched the idea of a space exclusively for refugees to City Hall, which was paying rent on the property.

    “They agreed instantly,” says Vogt. “It then took us three or four months to finalise the room and get all the furniture. It’s now been open for around 18 months, and it’s in good condition. If you have a nice space, people will always take good care of it.”

    Today, the sprachraum counts the Red Cross as one of its key partners […]. It has also seen its number of volunteers […] increase from 20 to over 50 in the last year.

    […]

  26. says

    Trump spoke at the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture today. During that speech, he thanked states where he “won by double, double, double digits.” You would think that, considering where he was, and the fact that this is Black History Month, that he could of stuck to the subject.

    Reading from a script, Trump did try to get past his previous displays of ignorance. He even included Frederick Douglass:

    […] This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes, heroes like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, the Greensboro students and the African-American Medal of Honor recipients, among so many other really incredible heroes. […]

    [Trump said,] we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms.

    The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil. […]

    “I like the state of South Carolina. [A reference to a Senator who joined the tour] I like all those states where I won by double, double, double digits. […]

    [Trump said the museum was built with] “tremendous love and passion,” not to mention “lots of money.”

    “I just have to say that what they’ve done here is something that can probably not be duplicated. It was done with love and lots of money.” Trump said. “Lots of money. We can’t avoid that.” […]

  29. blf says

    Just a quick link-drop (I admit I haven’t been following this recent story), British Muslim teacher taken off US-bound flight: I was treated like a criminal:

    Juhel Miah […†] calls for explanation for treatment by US officials, which left him feeling angry and humiliated

    A young British Muslim teacher escorted off a New York-bound flight by US officials in front of the school party he was helping lead has spoken of his concerns that he was targeted simply because of his religion.

    Maths teacher Juhel Miah […†] who was born in Birmingham and brought up in Swansea, said his treatment left him feeling humiliated. Both he and his school are demanding an explanation from the US authorities.

    […]

    There is also a video interview with Mr Miah at the link.

      † <rant>What is it with this inclusion-of-age in stories where it’s not relevant?! The description “young” (first sentence) isn’t really relevant either, but at least isn’t as intrusive-seeming(-to-me) as the actual age. And get off my lawn!</rant>

  30. says

    WTF, Iowa? What are the legislators trying to accomplish here?

    The legislation proposes that a “person shall not be hired as a professor or instructor member of the faculty at such an institution if the person’s political party affiliation on the date of hire would cause the percentage of faculty belonging to one political party to exceed by ten percent the percentage of faculty belonging to the other political party.”

    The Secretary of State’s office would be directed to provide voter registration lists to the colleges so that new job applicants’ party affiliation could be checked before the hiring process gets underway. Graciously, Chelgren allows for people registered as No Party to slip through the process without facing the litmus test.

    The obvious impact and purpose of this bill would be to ban Democrats from getting hired anymore at Iowa colleges. If you took a survey right now, it’s highly likely that Iowa professors are registered as Democrats at a much higher rate than Republican. So any new hires would be strictly limited to Republican or No Party voters.

    Iowa Starting Line Line link

    Purging Democrats from positions of leadership/teaching in Iowa universities sounds like a move a dictator would make.

  31. says

    This just gets worse and worse:

    The Homeland Security Department is greatly expanding the number of people living in the U.S. illegally who are considered a deportation priority.

    The new guidelines under President Donald Trump call for the deportation of any individuals in the country illegally if they are convicted, charged or suspected of a crime, which could include traffic infractions. […]

    Link

    Traffic infractions? Really? That is not a good excuse for tearing families apart, or for deporting anyone.

  32. says

    This is a follow-up to comment 30.

    The private prison industry will benefit from the expanded number of people being rounded up by ICE.

    […] given that America’s detention system for immigrants has been running at full capacity for some time now, where is the president going to put all of these people before deporting them?

    In new jails, for starters. In the same executive order that called for the construction of a southern border wall, Trump instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to build out its sprawling network of immigration detention centers.

    Starting “immediately,” his order said, ICE should construct new facilities, lease space for immigrants alongside inmates in existing local jails, and sign new contracts—likely with private prison companies. […]

    Last year, ICE detained more than 352,000 people. […] doubling the daily capacity to 80,000 “would require ICE to sprint to add more capacity than the agency has ever added in its entire history,” says Carl Takei, staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Prison Project. It would also take an extra $2 billion in government funding per year, detention experts interviewed by Mother Jones estimated. And, Takei warned, “we don’t know if 80,000 is where he’ll stop.”

    […] Trump ordered ICE to prioritize deporting not only immigrants who been convicted or charged with crimes, but also those who had “committed acts that constitute a chargeable offense”—a category that could include entering the country illegally and driving without a license. […]

    a whopping 65 percent of ICE detainees were held in facilities run by private prison companies, which typically earn a fee per detainee per night and whose business model depends upon minimizing costs to return profits to their shareholders. […]

    Occasionally, the local government agrees to hold ICE detainees alongside inmates in their publicly run jail—an arrangement a Department of Homeland Security subcommittee recently called “the most problematic” option for holding detainees. But most of the time, local governments simply act as middlemen in deals between ICE and private prison companies.

    The opaque nature of the process allows all parties to avoid public outcry before the deals are signed […]

    conditions inside detention facilities could deteriorate without proper oversight from the Department of Homeland Security. ” […]

    The bottom of the barrel, in this case, included a prison in Cibola County, New Mexico, owned by CoreCivic. Last summer, after an investigation by The Nation revealed a pattern of severe, longtime medical neglect in the 1,100-bed facility—which had gone months without a doctor—the US Bureau of Prisons decided to pull its inmates out and cancel its contract with CoreCivic. Yet less than a month after the last federal prisoner was transferred out, ICE was already negotiating an agreement with the county and CoreCivic to detain immigrants in the newly vacant facility. Four hundred immigrants are currently detained there. […]

    Link

  34. blf says

    This is from Aug-2015, but is somewhat interesting / relevant, Russian publisher prints books about Putin under names of western authors:

    […]
    A Russian publishing house has printed a series of books about Vladimir Putin under the names of prominent western analysts and journalists — without the knowledge or permission of the so-called authors.

    The Guardian’s Luke Harding, The Economist’s Edward Lucas and US-based Russia expert Donald Jensen say that they did not know anything about Russian-language books attributed to them and produced by the Moscow publishers Algoritm in a series called Project Putin.

    […]

    The only updates I’ve been able to locate are in Russian at Algoritm’s site. Paraphrasing Generalissimo Google’s translation, they seem to be claiming the books are nothing more than excerpts from the “author’s” other writings (plus some argy-bargy about the book ascribed to Mr Harding).

  35. says

    Reuters is reporting that Artemenko now plans to come to the US to push his plan openly. The article says that “On Monday, the New York Times reported that Andriy Artemenko had sent a proposal to associates of Trump that was designed to end a three years of fighting in eastern Ukraine.” No, they reported that he met in person with a shady Trump associate and Trump’s lawyer, who then hand-delivered it to the desk of the NSA. It included to plot to use alleged kompromat to oust the current Ukrainian leader.

    Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t gone over well in his country:

    On Monday, his party expelled him as a member, but Artemenko said this and the treason allegations were “hysteria” and signs the Ukrainian authorities could not accept any alternative points of view.

    A treason investigation has begun. Also,

    In an interview, Artemenko said he was not deterred and that he had the support of some U.S. Congress and Senate members.

    “It’s agreed that in the coming weeks there will be a presentation (of the initiative) in Washington with the Congressmen and Senators who support me,” he said, declining to mention any officials by name.

    This story is so far from over.

  36. says

    Trump says he is the “least racist person” on the planet, so why is he partying with Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy and radio host Michael Savage at Mar-a-Lago?

    […] Savage, a conspiracy theorist with an extensive history of bigotry […] In 2006, Savage called for “kill[ing] 100 million” Muslims. Following the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, in March 2016, Savage asked Trump to consider “closing the radical mosques in America.” [He] argued that if you “interpret” the Quran “literally, you’ll wind up cutting everyone’s throat, blowing things up, and killing children.”

    Savage was also a birther, like Trump, who said Obama’s birth certificate was not valid, and claimed that Obama was gearing up to “fight a war against white people” and that Obama was engaging in “genocide” against white people. […]

    Savage regularly hosted Trump on his program […] Last year after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, Trump went on Savage’s show and questioned whether Scalia had been murdered. Savage claimed that Scalia “was found dead under suspicious circumstances,” and Trump said that “they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow.”

    […] Ruddy, a longtime personal friend of Trump’s and the CEO of Newsmax […] The website also repeatedly pushed the false claim that Obama’s birth certificate was not real. Ruddy himself said in 2009 that while there was “no evidence” Obama wasn’t born in the United States […]

    Another radio host, Laura Ingraham, who also was in Florida with Trump, shared the same photo on Twitter of the Mar-a-Lago event as Savage. Ingraham […] has a history of using xenophobic rhetoric, such as claiming that Mexicans “have come here to murder and rape our people,” suggesting that northern Virginia is “a problem” because of an “illegal immigrant population” and “mosques going up,” and saying that she doesn’t “think of Jewish people as minorities because they’re so successful.” […]

    Link

  38. says

    Also from Reuters – “Exclusive: White House delivered EU-skeptic message before Pence visit – sources”:

    In the week before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Brussels and pledged America’s “steadfast and enduring” commitment to the European Union, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon met with a German diplomat and delivered a different message, according to people familiar with the talks.

    Bannon, these people said, signalled to Germany’s ambassador to Washington that he viewed the EU as a flawed construct and favoured conducting relations with Europe on a bilateral basis.

    Three people who were briefed on the meeting spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. The German government and the ambassador, Peter Wittig, declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of the talks.

    A White House official who checked with Bannon in response to a Reuters query confirmed the meeting had taken place but said the account provided to Reuters was inaccurate. “They only spoke for about three minutes and it was just a quick hello,” the official said.

    The sources described a longer meeting in which Bannon took the time to spell out his world view. They said his message was similar to the one he delivered to a Vatican conference back in 2014 when he was running the right-wing website Breitbart News.

    …

    With elections looming in the Netherlands, France and Germany this year, European officials said they hoped Pence, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could convince Trump to work constructively with the EU.

    The worst-case scenario from Europe’s point of view was described by Ischinger in an article published last week, entitled “How Europe should deal with Trump”.

    He said that if the U.S. administration actively supported right-wing populists in the looming election campaigns it would trigger a “major transatlantic crisis”.

  42. says

    SC @37, This kind of news makes me want to back up the people who are calling for Bannon’s ouster, who are making the removal of Bannon from team Trump a priority. Bannon is a fringe rightwing doofus who is unfit for any White House post. The new Secretary of State, and the National Security Advisor, the Vice President, as well as others, are being undercut by Bannon. They should call for his ouster.

    SC @38, so now that Cohen has told story #1 to the Times, #2 to the Washington Post, and #3 to NBC, I’m thinking that he is confident that no one will find enough proof to show that he did help to make the Trump-Putin-Ukraine connection. On the other hand, we certainly know that Cohen is a liar. All three stories can’t be true. Each contradicts the others.

  44. says

    During the White House press briefing today, Sean Spicer answered a question about anti-Muslim hate groups in America by taking about terrorism committed by Muslims.

    […] The Southern Poverty Law Center’s report, released last week, found a 197 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate groups, and pinned the rise in large part on the rhetoric employed by President Donald Trump during his campaign. [snipped the question referencing the report]

    “I think that the President, in terms of his desire to combat radical Islamic terrorism, he understands that people who want to express a peaceful position have every right in our Constitution,” he said. “But if you come here or want to express views that seek to do our country, or our people, harm, he is going fight it aggressively, whether it’s domestic acts that are going on here or attempts through people abroad to come into this country.”

    “So there is a big difference between preventing attacks and making sure that we keep this country safe, so there is no loss of life and allowing people to express themselves in accordance with our First Amendment. Those are two very, very different, different different things.”

    link

    Hmmm. One would have to stretch “express views that seek to do our country, or our people harm” a lot to think that Spicer actually answered the question.

  45. blf says

    There is a what I’d term a deranged opinion column in the Grauniad (albeit not written by their in-house kook, Simon Jenkins), Could Donald Trump’s ‘junta’ be his salvation?:

    The president’s choice of respected military men such as lieutenant general HR McMaster for key roles may be his best protection from himself

    [… talking about 25th Amendment provisions for removing an incapable president –blf] there is no sign whatever that Donald Trump is going anywhere […]. The wishful parallels with opposition to Brexit here in the UK […] betray the same reluctance on the part of the losers to face facts. The new president’s style may be unorthodox, and the substance may as yet be hard to detect, but any evidence of actual incapacity is hard to find — indeed, the frenetic activity suggests the very opposite.

    My eyebrows went so high I had to climb up the stairs to retrieve them.

    Where the world has to be grateful is that the constraints on executive power provided for in the constitution are demonstrably working. Not only that, at least some of Trump’s appointees appear already to be exerting a sobering influence on his wilder instincts. Mercifully, he appears not to be recruiting top officials in his own image. […]

    Kook detector is blinking.

    [… segueing from a discussion of McMaster’s selection –blf] several features of the process stand out. The first is the methodical approach. For all his senior positions Trump has compiled a shortlist, conducted interviews and made his decision.

    For most of the posts, the shortlist has been made public. […]

    Eh? Note the author is talking about the appointments which must be, in general, approved by the Senate. She hasn’t mentioned (and doesn’t) the vetting & ethics problems, the transition problems and on-going related chaos, the resignation or firing of an unusually large number of senior people, and so on. Without actually saying so (misleading impressions are a common theme in this opinion piece), she implies essentially everything is hunky-dory and as per usual.

    And now we enter full-kook mode (fasten your safety-belts, secure your helmets, and put down any drinks!):

    Leave aside for a moment the controversies attending to the Breitbart group and members of the Trump family — not insignificant but not the whole story. Consider instead the selection of Mike Pence as a running mate exemplifying almost everything Trump himself was not. Consider […] the oil executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, whose main black mark appeared to be having once supped with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

    […]

    Oh for feck’s sake!

    The one thing the author is perhaps not too far off on is people like McMasters might be able to nudge hair furor in more sensible directions. Of course they have to obtain a chance to do so, which is one place where Bannon et al are a problem — which is all-but-ignored other than the above-quoted controversies attending to the Breitbart group and members of the Trump family (the only mention made). Without actually saying so (again…!), the author seems to assume McMasters et al will have useful access to teh trum-prat, and that hair furor will listen and understood (and engage constructively). It is also theoretically possible pigs pilot spaceships.

    What makes this whole highly dubious opinion column interesting is the author, Mary Dejevsky: “[…] She is a member of the Valdai Group, invited since 2004 to meet Russian leaders each autumn. She is a past honorary research fellow at the University of Buckingham and contributed the introductory essay to The Britannica Guide to Russia”.

    Russia. Again. Indeed, note the claims would not look too out-of-place in RT (Russia Today), or from Sputnik or the Kremlin. (In fairness, she apparently has a reputation for being a contrarian, and is published in a number of “serious” publications.)

    (To be clear, I have no problem with the Grauniad publishing this, or other, “odd” opinion pieces / columns, not even those by their own sodding nutter, Jenkins.)

  46. microraptor says

    SC @42:

    Looks like the Right finally found a low they’re not willing to publicly tolerate.

  47. blf says

    Milo Yiannopoulos isn’t the only bigot Republicans are cozy with:

    The sad fact is that, while the former Breitbart editor has been disinvited from CPAC, someone else who has repulsive views will likely take his place

    It’s odd to watch conservatives distance themselves from writer Milo Yiannopoulos because he condoned child sex abuse. After all, they just elected a president who has a history of making inappropriate sexual comments about children — including his own daughter — and was accused of walking into the dressing rooms of changing teenagers.

    So excuse me if I don’t buy the outrage.

    For those of us who have been writing about feminism online for a long time, Yiannapoulos is old news. We’ve long warned about his noxious harassment, his incitements and the danger he poses to marginalized communities. Yet again, feminists are the canaries in the coal mine. (Or as my friend Kate Harding put it to me recently, “canaries in the troll mine.”)

    The truth, though, is that this is an issue not so much about one hateful writer, but about conservatives’ tolerance and support of hateful ideology more generally. There’s been an inarguable rise of white nationalist misogynists in the public sphere, a phenomenon the leader [sic] of our country does little to distance himself from. But being unapologetically vile comes naturally to Trump.

    […]

    The only thing this latest controversy proves is that supporting Yiannopoulos was never about “free speech.” Those who canceled his speech […] and pulled his book […] are essentially conceding that everything he said previous [sic] was tolerable. That the racism, misogyny, xenophobia were just fine. That they could live with Yiannapoulos outing trans students — putting them at risk for violence — and emboldening online mobs to attack women and people of color.

    [… C]hildren of color and kids from marginalized communities are far more likely to be abused because predators target those who are unprotected. [Conservatives’s] policies make certain children are much more vulnerable to abuse, so I’m quite over hearing how much they care about kids.

    […]

  48. blf says

    I don’t recall if hair furor attacked legal aid or not during his “campaign”, but his dalekocracy looks like it will do so, Draft of first Trump budget would cut legal aid for millions of poor Americans (my added emboldening):

    Draft proposes elimination of Legal Services Corporation, which provides free legal assistance to low-income people, victims of domestic violence and others

    Cuts in Donald Trump’s first draft budget to funding for legal aid for millions of Americans could strip much-needed protections from victims of domestic violence, people with disabilities, families facing foreclosure and veterans in need, justice equality advocates warned Tuesday.

    A Trump draft budget circulated over the weekend called for the elimination of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which has a $375m annual budget and provides free legal assistance to low-income people and others in need of help, with cases involving disability benefits, disaster relief, elder abuse, fair pay, wheelchair access, low-income tax credits, unlawful eviction, child support, consumer scams, school lunch, predatory lending and much more.

    The legal aid program, which represents a miniscule portion of the government’s projected $4tn budget, is one of many small but mighty programs flagged for elimination in Trump’s draft budget. Others included the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Americorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. Critics of the cuts point out that they won’t budge the deficit but would erode quality of life and threaten the most vulnerable.

    The possible legal aid cuts would come at a time when potentially softer enforcement by the Trump administration of laws to punish domestic violence, protect Americans with disabilities and combat discriminatory housing practices could create a spike in demand, said Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, a fellow at the Center for American Progress […]

    […]

    Republicans going back to Ronald Reagan have opposed funding for the Legal Services Corporation and related funding […]. As a 1973 federal racial discrimination lawsuit against Donald Trump and his real estate company illustrated, however, legal proceedings can be crucial to protecting American freedoms and rights against unsavory actors.

    “These are obviously critical, livelihood-related, day-to-day issues for people who certainly can’t afford a lawyer on their own,” Buckwalter-Poza said.

    The article notes that “Trump’s recently confirmed budget director, Mick Mulvaney, twice co-sponsored legislation as a member of Congress from South Carolina to abolish the Legal Services Corporation.” Sounds like another case of a rabid fox guarding the chickens.

  49. says

    From Walter Pincus, writing for the CIPHER Brief:

    […] The first thing to note was Priebus’ answer to a question from NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Did he [Flynn] mislead the FBI or lie to the FBI” when agents interviewed him on January 23 about his telephone conversations last December 28 and 29 with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak?

    “I’m just not in the position to answer it,” Priebus said, but then he added, “Certainly we’ve talked about that issue with leadership at the FBI, but I’m not in a position to talk about that with you.”

    That raises the question: What are the conflicts of interest involved with the White House talking with “FBI leadership” about whether a senior White House official “misled” or “lied” to agents? If Flynn lied to FBI agents, that could be a felony. Who from the White House, talked to whom at the FBI, about what?[…]

    And since the next step, whether to investigate further or even prosecute is “up to” the Justice Department, isn’t this cause enough for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself, since he and Flynn were colleagues in the Trump campaign when the calls took place? […]

    In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said retaliatory measures were being considered, but the sanctions “obviously [were] to deal a blow to the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect,” Peskov said.

    On December 29, Flynn spoke with Ambassador Kislyak.[…] the Obama sanction actions were discussed in that Flynn/Kislyak phone call. Flynn described it in an interview with The Daily Caller on the morning of February 13, hours before he was fired.

    Describing what he said in the call, Flynn said, “It wasn’t about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys being thrown out,” he told The Daily Caller reporter. “It was basically, ‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll review everything. I never said anything such as, ‘We’re going to review sanctions,’ or anything like that,” Flynn said, according to The Daily Caller story. […]

    Since Russian diplomats being expelled were part of the sanctions, saying sanctions were not discussed in the conversation is a distinction without a difference.

    Questions remain about how much Trump and others on the transition team knew about Flynn’s call to Kislyak at the time it happened. It is clear that Flynn’s message to Kislyak had an effect on Putin. […]

  50. says

    Trump’s new head of the Department of Homeland Security, John Kelly, is spreading lies:

    A Department of Homeland Security memo authored by Secretary John Kelly asserts that “criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents.”

    The memo, entitled “Enforcement of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest,” creates a new federal office meant to work with those victims.

    “Accordingly, I am establishing the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office within the Office of the Director of ICE, which will create a programmatic liaison between ICE and the known victims of crimes committed by removable aliens,” Kelly writes. “To that end, I direct the Director of ICE to immediately reallocate any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens to the new VOICE Office, and to immediately terminate the provision of such outreach or advocacy services to illegal aliens.”

    But Homeland Security’s new VOICE office is based on a false premise. Data indicates undocumented immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than American citizens, and are actually less likely to be criminals in some cases. […]

    Think Progress link

  51. says

    The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, gave a speech to staffers at the EPA. Excerpt:

    I know it’s very difficult to capture in one speech the vision and direction of an agency. […] Regulations ought to make things regular. Regulators exist to give certainty to those they regulate. […] Process matters and we should respect that and focus on that, and try to avoid, do avoid, abuses that occur sometimes.

    […] Congress has provided a very robust, important role of the states. […]

    A current and career EPA staffer spoke to Mother Jones about Pruitt’s speech:

    Pruitt’s talk [was] as bad as expected. Not one word about public health. And talking about the rule of law as if we didn’t do EVERYTHING with the realization that it WILL end up in court. It was condescending and hypocritical.

  52. says

    Am I dreaming? We saw a victory for gun safety laws in the courts today:

    On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect assault weapons—an extraordinary decision keenly attuned to the brutal havoc these firearms can wreak. Issued by the court sitting en banc, Tuesday’s decision reversed a previous ruling in which a panel of judges had struck down Maryland’s ban on assault weapons and detachable large capacity magazines. Today’s ruling is a remarkable victory for gun safety advocates and a serious setback for gun proponents who believe the Second Amendment exempts weapons of war from regulation. […]

    A majority of the 4th Circuit agreed with Maryland, holding that the weapons it forbade were sufficiently similar to M-16 rifles to fall outside the ambit of the Second Amendment. […]

    “The next effect of these military combat features,” the majority concluded, “is a capability for lethality—more wounds, more serious, in more victims—far beyond that of other firearms in general, including other semiautomatic guns.” Likewise, the banned large-capacity magazines “are particularly designed and most suitable for military and law enforcement applications”—specifically, to “enable a shooter to hit multiple human targets very rapidly.” It is a weapon of war, not the tool of self-defense envisioned by the Heller court.

    Although the majority held that these weapons fell outside the scope of the Second Amendment altogether, it also noted, as an “alternative basis,” that even if the amendment applied, the Maryland law would still be constitutional. […]

    Slate link

  53. says

    The Conservative Political Action Conference disinvited Milo Yiannopoulos, but they have plenty of other obnoxious dunderheads lined up to speak.

    […] CPAC is still set to bring together Republican elected officials with the conservative movement’s far-right fringe. […]

    Conservative author Trevor Loudon is convinced that the “Marxist” and “completely anti-American” Barack Obama was part of a grand Communist conspiracy against America, claiming he has “been mentored and guided by hardcore communists, anti-American Islamic radicals and people who despise the United States Constitution” who have trained him “from the cradle to achieve some position of power.” […]

    He is slated to speak at a CPAC panel called, “When Did WWIII Begin? Part A: Threats at Home,” moderated by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

    […] Speaking on the same panel is Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who despite being roundly criticized for his handling of the 2012 Sikh Temple shooting and multiple deaths at his prisons, has emerged as a conservative icon. […]

    Clarke has also lashed out at Obama as a “heartless, soulless bastard,” likened Beyoncé to a member of the Ku Klux Klan and said that the Great Seal of the United States should be amended to include a semi-automatic rifle. […]

    Clarke has also built close ties with the extremist Oath Keepers militia group and an organization of sheriffs with radical anti-government views. […]

    Clare Lopez, […]the Center for Security Policy’s Vice President for Research and Analysis, has praised figures like Joseph McCarthy and promoted several conspiracy theories:

    Lopez has claimed that President Obama “switched sides in the war on terror” and warned of the “infiltration” of the Obama administration by the Muslim Brotherhood. […]

    Lopez has also claimed that while those in “bona fide religions” such as Christians, Hindus and Jews “become better people” when they “follow their doctrines,” “when Muslims follow their doctrine, they become jihadists.” […]

    Center for Security Policy head Frank Gaffney is so extreme that he was actually banned by CPAC in 2011 for making baseless claims that two American Conservative Union board members, one Muslim and the other married to a Muslim woman, are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. […]

    Gaffney believes that everyone from U2 singer Bono to Chris Christie is aiding an Islamist plot to take over America and install Sharia law, warning that the Muslim Brotherhood has completely infiltrated the government, as demonstrated by the logo of the Missile Defense Agency.

    He has also been active in pushing the birther conspiracy theory […]

    White House strategist Steve Bannon plans to sit down for an on-stage interview with Matt Schlapp, the head of the ACU, despite Schlapp’s insistence that he wants to distance conservatives from the bigoted Alt-Right. […]

    Former Breitbart writer Ben Shapiro commented that “under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart openly embraced the white supremacist Alt-Right,” noting that it published Yiannopoulos’s approving description of the Alt-Right as a natural resurgence of white tribal identity.

    Breitbart has become an outlet devoted to reporting on “black crime” and supposed violence carried out by refugees, and Bannon himself has reached out to European neofascists, alluded to a coming civilizational clash between the West and Islam, stoked fears that the U.S. could soon turn into an Islamist state and pointed to the book “The Camp of Saints,” a favorite among white supremacists, to denounce the “Muslim invasion of Europe.” […].

    Right Wing Watch link

  56. Tethys says

    Conservative Political Action Conference disinvited Milo Yiannopoulos

    Simon and Shuster cancelled his book, and he has been fired from Breitbart. It’s the best news I’ve heard in weeks. I guess someone finally thought to do a little google search into the slime contingent, and was understandably repulsed by the discussions of the pros and cons of pedophilia and rape. Too bad it took so long, but perhaps they can deport the evil little fuck too? That would be sweet poetic justice.

  57. says

    Tethys – Yeah I wonder about his immigration status? Is he here on a work visa? If so, wouldn’t becoming unemployed invalidate that work visa? Things that make you go hmmm…

  59. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Holy shit – Maxine Waters called the Trump “Kremlin Clan” “a bunch of scumbags” on Chris Hayes.

    Well DUH!

  63. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Rachael Maddow on MSNBC tonight (hence to link at this point in time) does a good job of showing the reaction to the orange rug. In various congressional districts in Virginia, where there has not be a democrat run in decades, suddenly find several people willing to take that public service….

  67. says

    Representative Barbara Lee of California has introduced a bill that requires Congress to vote on Steve Bannon’s National Security role.
    Link

    Excerpt from House Resolution 140:

    RESOLUTION
    Condemning the appointment of Steve Bannon to the National Security Council and urging his immediate removal.

    Whereas Steve Bannon was the Chairman of Breitbart News, a website for the “alt-right” movement, which includes White Supremacists, anti-Semites, anti-Muslims, nativists, and other political extremists;

    Whereas under Steve Bannon, Breitbart News published inflammatory pieces about women, Muslims and other groups;

    Whereas Steve Bannon once described Breitbart as the “platform” of the alt-right;

    Whereas Steve Bannon has been praised by White nationalist groups and the KKK;

    Whereas Steve Bannon has also espoused a false theory of a violent clash of civilizations between the West and Islam that only serves to fuel violent extremism; […]

  70. says

    Whereas Steve Bannon has openly relished an opportunity to go to war with China and has openly espoused the idea that WWIII is going to be between white Christians and everybody else…

  71. says

    “The rise and fall of Milo Yiannopoulos – how a shallow actor played the bad guy for money”:

    …So what is his “important perspective”? What does he stand for? It’s telling that he was banned from Twitter (no easy feat) for ringleading a campaign of harassment against actor Leslie Jones for the crime of daring to appear in the female-led reboot of Ghostbusters – hardly a vital cause. He is a gay man who hates the gay rights movement. A libertarian who calls an authoritarian president “Daddy”. A vigorous opponent of Black Lives Matter who says he can’t be racist because “I just like fucking blacks”. A self-styled second-wave feminist who sells hoodies reading “Feminism is cancer”. A conservative pin-up who claims: “I don’t care about politics.” A writer and speaker who claims his provocative statements are just “facts” while celebrating the “post-fact era”. Penny wrote that she wouldn’t debate him in public, “because I know I’ll lose, because I care and he doesn’t – and that means he has already won”. If he is indeed a supervillain, then he’s Ben Kingsley’s character in Iron Man 3: a shallow, amoral actor who plays the bad guy for money.

    How was this smirking void ever taken seriously? He had enablers. Not just CPac, Breitbart and Simon & Schuster, but his editors at the Telegraph, magazines who cooed over him, and every TV producer who booked him to say something outrageous while batting his eyelashes like Princess Diana. Like Trump, he is the logical outcome of a grotesque convergence of politics, entertainment and the internet in which an empty vessel can thrive unchecked by turning hate speech into showbusiness. Well, until now. Until the clown prince of outrage finally outraged the wrong people….

    Laurie Penny is very insightful; seems like a good moment to link to this bit from Sartre about arguing with bigots.

    The least surprising element of the story was that Yiannopoulos grew up in an “emotionally fraught family” and “rarely speaks to his own parents.”

  72. says

    So, we the taxpayers have paid $10 million for Trump’s weekends at Mar-a-Lago, and we will soon pay for 5000 more border patrol agents and for 10,000 more ICE agents. But we can’t support daycare for the children of military families stationed in Germany.

    Why? The answer lies in Trump’s executive order to freeze hiring for federal jobs.

    […] effective 1 March 2017, all Part-Day programs (Strong Beginnings, Part-Day Preschool, Part-Day Toddler) currently offered by USAG Wiesbaden CYS will close.

    This closure is a result of staff shortage due to the Federal Hiring Freeze. This Hiring Freeze prevents CYS from replacing staff who depart for any reason to include normal rotation […]

    https://twitter.com/dabeard/status/834383021608415233

    Way to go, Trump administration. Way to show your love for and support of the military.

  73. says

    Coverage of the effects of Trump’s “Hiring Freeze” from Think Progress.:

    Announcing his pick for Secretary of Defense last December, Trump promised that, when he became president, “all men and women in uniform will have the supplies, support, equipment, training, services, medical care, and resources they need to get the job done incredibly well and perfectly.”
    It’s not turning out that way.

    On January 23, Trump announced a hiring freeze for federal workers. While the freeze included exemptions for those “working in the military” and other national security positions, members of the Armed Forces are feeling the effects.

    At least two Army bases are suspending childcare programs, citing staff shortages related to the hiring freeze.

    In Fort Knox, Kentucky, garrison commander Col. Stephen Aiton sent a memo on February 17 immediately suspending new enrollment in the childcare program. He also announced that hourly and part-day services would be eliminated at the end of the month “until further notice.” Those part-day services includes preschool.

    Aiton explained that “due to the federal hiring freeze” the facility was “prevented from bringing on new caregivers” to replace those that are leaving. The freeze is making it a challenge to provide “quality childcare,” Alton wrote. […]

  74. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    SC,
    That Sartre quote applies not just to anti-semites and bigots, but climate change deniers, MRA assclams and all the other chuckleheaded clowns that pollute the Intertubes. They don’t care if they are wrong. They only care if they are embarrassed.

    I also saw that contrary to the SNL cold open of a couple of weeks ago, Robert Mugabe is a big fan of President Shitstain.

  75. says

    This is a follow to comment 46 from blf, and comment 52.

    Facebook is donating to CPAC.

    […] Facebook donated more than $120,000 to the American Conservative Union’s annual event the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Zuckerberg’s donation comes after he held a meeting with conservative media personalities such as Glenn Beck and Fox’s Dana Perino following allegations that the website had been suppressing conservative views.

    During the meeting, Zuckerberg lauded President Donald Trump for having “more fans on Facebook than any other presidential candidate” and Fox News for driving “more interactions on its Facebook page than any other news outlet in the world.” […]

    Media Matters link

  76. says

    Bill O’Reilly can tell you why the statistics from Sweden don’t match up with Trump’s claim that Sweden has huge problems as a result of taking in migrants:

    […] The big picture is this, the Swedish government doesn’t want to admit to the world that they have a migrant problem. […]

    The suburb, Rinkeby — I have never been there, but the word is that cops don’t even want to go in there, it’s the same kind of ghettoized situation, so that all the people from North Africa and the Middle East, the migrants and the refugees assemble there and keep their own culture, don’t assimilate into the Swedish culture, and the government cracks down, and now it makes it harder for migrants to get in. Yet, they don’t want to tell the world what is going on in Sweden. They just don’t.

    Link
    Leave it to O’Reilly to add another lie on top of the lie Trump told.

  77. says

    Ecuador will go to a runoff in April. This report is relatively fair, as English-language sources on Latin America go. If Lasso were to win, they could say goodbye to all of the progress made over the past decade and to any chance of being able to stand up to the US.

  78. says

    “French elections: centrist Bayrou offers alliance with Macron”:

    Heavyweight centrist François Bayrou, the eternal “third man” of French politics, has surprised his supporters by offering to stand in an alliance with Emmanuel Macron in April’s presidential elections.

    Bayrou said the country was at “extreme risk” and needed what he described as an “exceptional response”.

    …

    “I have two paths, to stand myself or to look for an unusual solution,” he told a press conference. “I have decided to offer Emmanuel Macron an alliance.

    “I have examined for several weeks all the elements allowing me to judge our country and I want to say at what point the seriousness of the situation has hit me. Never in the 50 years past has the democracy in France known such a situation.”…

  80. says

    “Le Pen aides taken into French police custody”:

    French police detained far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s bodyguard and chief of staff in custody on Wednesday for questioning over alleged misuse of European Union funds to pay parliamentary assistants, Le Pen’s lawyer said.

    Le Pen denounced the latest move in a financial sleaze case that has landed her in the spotlight alongside another leading candidate, Francois Fillon, a right-winger being investigated over public funds he paid to his wife and children.

    …

    The two held for questioning are Le Pen’s bodyguard, Thierry Legier, and her chief of staff, Catherine Griset, key figures in an investigation opened following demands by the European Parliament that Le Pen repay money she is accused of wrongly paying the two.

    …

    Wednesday’s detentions followed a police raid on Monday on Le Pen’s National Front party headquarters on the western edge of Paris, while she was abroad….

  82. says

    Writers and artists are pushing back against Trump’s travel/immigration ban:

    Dozens of writers and artists have signed an open letter this week imploring President Trump to “rescind” his executive action that bans individuals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S.

    “Its restriction is inconsistent with the values of the United States and the freedoms for which it stands,” the letter reads.

    Some of the more than 60 notable writers and poets who signed it include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Rita Dove, Jonathan Franzen, Khaled Hosseini, Azar Nafisi and George Packer.

    The advocacy group PEN America led the effort, reportedly saying that the travel ban “hindered the free flow of artists and thinkers — and did so at a time when vibrant, open intercultural dialogue is indispensable in the fight against terror and oppression.” […]

    “Preventing international artists from contributing to American cultural life will not make America safer, and will damage its international prestige and influence,” the letter adds. […]

    Link

  83. blf says

    The Grauniad cranks up its snark machine, Banning poor people from jobs — and other talks from the CPac conference (edits for formatting reasons not marked):

    […] While Milo might not be appearing at CPac, there’s still plenty of rightwing rhetoric to go around. Here are some of the highlights:

    Fake Climate News Camouflaging an Anti-Capitalist Agenda — And What President Trump Plans To Do About It: Talk sponsored by the charming folks at Energy and Environment Legal Institute, an organisation that litigiously pursues climate scientists.

    Fake News and the Lame Stream Media: If you had “lame stream media” in “Republican buzzword bingo”, please mark your card.

    FREE stuff vs FREE-dom: Millenials’ Love Affair with Bernie Sanders: The right tries to understand what millennials want, all while being unable to spell the world millennial.

    Banning Poor People From Jobs: Presumably not a guide to doing it, though you never know.

    Brexit and What it Means for the World: There will be tweed as Breitbart lickspittle Raheem Kassam introduces Nigel Farage for the latest leg of his neverending Leaver victory tour.

    Armed and Fabulous: The New Normal: Four glamorous NRA members discuss why the AR-15 assault rifle is 2017’s must-have accessory, probably.

    If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America?: The question we’ve all been asking.

    Facts, Not Feelings: Snowflakes, Safe Spaces and Trigger warnings: The irony of CPac being a massive “safe space” for conservative thinkers may have been lost on its organisers.

    […]

  84. says

    SC @78, I think there’s going to be violence at the DAPL site. The people organizing the eviction are too ready to employ violence, and a hardened core of protestors will not leave.

    SC, thanks for the updates on politics in France. The alliance between François Bayrou and Emmanuel Macron sounds like a good idea to me. That would shut LePen down.

    In other news, the Washington Post has a new motto or slogan on it’s homepage: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Some people are making fun of it, but I like it.

  86. says

    In other news, the Washington Post has a new motto or slogan on it’s homepage: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Some people are making fun of it, but I like it.

    I think it’s excellent.

  87. blf says

    To almost nobody’s surprise, New EPA head Scott Pruitt’s emails reveal close ties with fossil fuel interests:

    Documents suggest former Oklahoma AG followed lobby group’s guidance on challenging environmental regulations, and put letterhead to oil firm complaints more than once

    The close relationship between Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and fossil fuel interests including the billionaire Koch brothers has been highlighted in more than 7,500 emails and other records released by the Oklahoma attorney general’s office on Wednesday.

    The documents show that Pruitt, while Oklahoma attorney general, acted in close concert with oil and gas companies to challenge environmental regulations, even putting his letterhead to a complaint filed by one firm, Devon Energy. This practice was first revealed in 2014, but it now appears that it occurred more than once.

    The emails also show that American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an oil and gas lobby group, provided Pruitt’s office with template language to oppose ozone limits and the renewable fuel standard program in 2013. AFPM encouraged Oklahoma to challenge the rules, noting: This argument is more credible coming from a state. Later that year, Pruitt did file opposition to both of these regulations.

    The letters also show the cosy relationship between Pruitt and the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the influential US lobbying network of Republican politicians and big businesses, and other lobby groups sponsored by the Koch brothers, the billionaire energy investors who have spent decades fighting against environmental regulation.

    Alec has consistently challenged the science on climate change and fought against tougher environmental regulation. […]

    More details at the link, including a request from the Grauniad to “help us search the cache of Scott Pruitt’s emails”.

  88. says

    A deeper dive into Trump’s delusions about his supposed status as the “least anti-semitic person”:

    […] You may have missed it amid the distraction of Trump’s insult to a Jewish reporter, but in the same press conference, SiriusXM’s Jared Rizzi circled back to the hate crimes question. “I’ll follow up on my colleague’s question about anti-Semitism,” Rizzi said. “It’s not about your personality or your beliefs. We’re talking about a rise in anti-Semitism around the country. Some of it by supporters in your name. What can you do to deter that?”

    Trump’s reply: “Some of it is written by our opponents. You do know that? Do you understand that? You don’t think anybody would do a thing like that?”

    Yeah, right. After misunderstanding a Jewish reporter, and then insulting that reporter, Trump circles right back to the idea of false-flag events. He thinks the anti-semitism is not real.

    In case he wasn’t being sufficiently clear, he added, “Some of the signs you’ll see are not put up by the people that love or live Donald Trump. They’re put up by the other side, and you think it’s like playing it straight? No. But you have some of those signs, and some of that anger is caused by the other side. They’ll do signs, and they’ll do drawings that are inappropriate. It won’t be my people. It will be the people on the other side to anger people like you.”

    Not his people?! Deluded buffoon.

    Allison Kaplan Sommer, commenting at Haaretz, explained over the weekend that this—and not the insults directed to a Jewish reporter—was the real story about Trump and anti-Jewish hate speech:

    “Trump’s words echoed the theory that the threats to Jewish community centers and other anti-Semitic incidents have been contrived to support the premise that Trump’s presidency is ushering in greater racism.”

    These “false flag” claims are rampant among anti-Semites and have been pushed by David Duke himself. “I wonder who could be placing all those calls?” Duke tweeted recently, referencing the threats to Jewish community centers. “Seems they’d be able to track that down rather easily … such a dramatic photo.”

    So please don’t be too grateful that President Trump has finally said that anti-Semitism is “horrible.” It’s more notable and more telling that he has also given voice and cover to the vile argument that these attacks and threats are not really happening to Jews or, worse, that Jews are doing this to their own communities in an effort to delegitimize Trump.

    The real question we should be asking Donald Trump today isn’t whether he deplores episodes of racial hatred. It should be whether he even believes they are happening or whether he truly thinks they are staged by his enemies to malign him.

    Link

  90. tomh says

    According to the NYT, our wacko Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, actually tried standing up for transgender rights in schools, in opposing Trump’s planned reversal of Obama’s order on protections for transgender students. She was opposed by the virulent anti-rights AG, Jeff Sessions, and Trump sided with Sessions. It came down to go along (since the reversal required her consent to go forward) or resign for DeVos, so she went along. All this from the NYT, “according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the internal discussions.”

  91. says

    Talking Points Memo posted a summary of town hall events. There’s a list, with links, that expands the discussion.

    At the events, lawmakers faced questions about plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and concerns about President Donald Trump. Some Republicans were met with jeers and boos from the crowd, like Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), and Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA). Protesters even gathered outside events that were not billed as public town halls, as was the case with a luncheon Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) attended.

    Video excerpts are available at the link.

  92. says

    Here’s our “Oh, FFS!” moment for today:

    […] Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), whose district is just over 100 miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border, referenced the illicit drug trade in a discussion Wednesday with CNN’s Brianna Keilar on President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.

    “The reality, Brianna, is that we have to measure all of the costs, ancillary and otherwise, and make the best decision that we can. But I can suggest to you that there are national security implications here for a porous border,” Franks said. “We sometimes used to make the point that if someone wanted to smuggle in a dangerous weapon, even a nuclear weapon, into America, how would they do it? And the suggestion was made, ‘Well, we’ll simply hide it in a bale of marijuana.’”

    “So the implications of a porous border have national security dimensions that are very significant and that bear a lot of conversation when we talk about costs,” he said.

    This was not Frank’s first reference to a nuclear weapon traveling across the border in a bale of marijuana. In fact, he raised the possibility on the floor of the U.S. House during an Aug. 2, 2012 speech, according to his website.

    “Specifically imagine for a moment, Mr. Speaker, the scenario of Hezbollah, one of Iran’s terrorist proxies, gaining possession of just two nuclear warheads and bringing them across the border into the United States concealed, say, in bales of marijuana,” he said, “then transporting them into the heart of two different, crowded, unnamed cities. Then calling and telling the White House exactly when and where the first one will be detonated, and then following through 60 seconds later.”

    Link

    I think that is Trent Franks’ argument for paying any price, no matter how many billions, to build Trump’s ill-conceived wall.

  93. says

    Follow-up to SC’s comment 53.

    Activist Linda Sarsour has raised $71,000 less than a day after launching a fundraiser to benefit the Jewish cemetery in Missouri that was the subject of a massive act of vandalism.

    As many as 200 headstones were vandalized over the weekend at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, Missouri. On Tuesday, Sarsour, a prominent Muslim activist and recently one of four principal organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, established a fundraising page for the cemetery. […]

    “Through this campaign, we hope to send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America,” the fundraising page reads. “We pray that this restores a sense of security and peace to the Jewish-American community who has undoubtedly been shaken by this event.” […]

    Link

  94. blf says

    On the situation in France, Reuters reported about a week ago that Benoît Hamon and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon are in discussions to co-operate (French left candidates seek to bridge policy gulf before election). What makes this interesting is, as Reuters reports, “opinion polls suggest their combined vote might provide the Left with a chance of going through to face the far-right’s Marine Le Pen in the May 7 second round of voting.”

    What makes it unlikely is Mélenchon is very anti-EU (like the le penazis), and also anti-Nato; both positions are unacceptable to Hamon’s party. Weird things have been known to happen, however…

  96. blf says

    From memory, a shipping container on a freighter(ship) is the usually cited as the most likely delivery vector for a foreign-built biological, chemical, nuclear, or “dirty” bomb (today’s WTF in @91).

  98. blf says

    More snarking in the Grauniad on the If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America? silliness (see @82 and @96), Heaven has extreme vetting? When Republicans legislate from the Bible:

    A panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference suggests America can have walls, gates and extreme vetting because heaven does. Come again?

    [… H]ave you ever stopped to wonder exactly why Heaven is so wonderful? Well, it’s their strict approach to immigration obviously! The border agents at the pearly gates have a rigorous entry criteria and don’t just let just any riff-raff sneak in.

    Heaven’s model immigration policies haven’t gone unnoticed by the great and the good of conservative America. Indeed, a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference […] is titled: If Heaven Has a Gate, A Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America?

    Sceptics, heathens, and Stephen Hawking might say: well, you know, because heaven is a fairy story. But sceptics, heathens and Stephen Hawking are not in charge of America. Evangelical fundamentalists like Vice President Mike Pence, who doesn’t believe in evolution, are.

    [… A]s a lawful permanent resident alien of the United States I would like to do my best to help. So I’ve had a look through the bible for other great examples of public policy we can import to America. [… H]ere are a few suggestions for ways we can help make heaven a place on earth.

    (1) If Adam can marry his own rib why can’t we?
      As we all know, God made Adam and Eve (the artist formerly known as a long carved bone in Adam’s ribcage), not Adam and Steve. This catchy slogan has been trotted out as justification for denying gay rights by many fundamentalist Christians over the years. So it seems reasonable to take things to their logical conclusion and encourage people to just marry their own ribs. Surely someone can make an app for that? It really would make dating so much easier.

    (2) If Peter can pay his taxes with magic fish, why can’t Americans?
    […]

    (3) If Lot can turn his wife into a pillar of salt then why shouldn’t ordinary Americans do the same?
      Logistically, this seems tricky I know. But if we can send men into space then surely we can turn women into salt? Imagine how sweet women would be if they were suddenly faced with an ever-present threat of being transmogrified into sodium chloride. It would solve America’s nasty women problem for once and for all. I reckon we should get Elon Musk, who says he is doing good on Trump’s advisory council, to set up a SaltX project stat.

    (4) If Lot can offer up his virgin daughters to be raped by all the menfolk in Sodom as a consolation for them not being able to rape two visiting angels then …
      Uh, you know, that’s a tough one. And a good reminder that some parts of the bible are just too difficult for mere women like me to understand. Probably best if we forget the details of this particular episode and use it to justify demonizing gay people instead.

    […]

  99. KG says

    The alliance between François Bayrou and Emmanuel Macron sounds like a good idea to me. That would shut LePen down. – Lynna, OM@83

    Actually, polls indicate Le Pen is unlikely to win anyway – likely to get through to the second round, but then be easily defeated by either Fillon or Macron*. But Fillon is not much better than Le Pen – he’s an authoritarian Catholic, hard right on economic issues, and a suck-up to Putin. Bayrou backing Macron should improve the latter’s chances of beating Fillon in the first round and so going in to a run-off with Le Pen though.

    *This assumes Hamon and Mélenchon do not come to an agreement; it seems unlikely they will, given their policy differences.

  100. blf says

    The Grauniad is now reporting French elections: Emmanuel Macron accepts alliance with centrist Bayrou:

    Macron says he has accepted deal, including demand for law to clean up French politics, to form alliance with Bayrou, veteran of three previous elections

    […]

    Polls suggest the bulk, though not all, of Bayrou’s support — thought to be worth 5-6% of the vote in a race that may come down to two or three percentage points — will transfer to Macron, increasing his chances of advancing to the second round runoff ahead of his scandal-hit centre-right rival, François Fillon.

    Bayrou said the country was at “extreme risk” and needed what he described as an “exceptional response”. What he was proposing, he added, was an alliance of partners and not a move for his centrist party to be subsumed by Macron’s En Marche! (Let’s Go!) movement.

    […]

    This will certainly put the focus more on Macron (who is something of an unknown), and the new En Marche!

  101. says

    Sceptics, heathens, and Stephen Hawking might say: well, you know, because heaven is a fairy story. But sceptics, heathens and Stephen Hawking are not in charge of America. Evangelical fundamentalists like Vice President Mike Pence, who doesn’t believe in evolution, are.

    The results of a new Pew poll are worth noting (my emphasis):

    Muslims and atheists still rank at the bottom of the poll, which asked respondents to rate their attitudes toward religious groups on a “feeling thermometer.” However, Muslims and atheists — who have long been targets of prejudice in the United States — received substantially warmer ratings on the scale than they did in a survey in 2014: Muslims rose to 48 percent from 40, and atheists to 50 percent from 41.

    The religious groups that ranked highest, as they did three years ago, were Jews (67 percent) and Catholics (66 percent). Mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, who were measured for the first time, came in at 65 percent. Buddhists rose on the scale to 60 percent from 53, Hindus to 58 from 50, and Mormons to 54 from 48.

    Evangelical Christians were the only group that did not improve their standing from three years ago, plateauing at 61 percent.

    All of the research, to the best of my knowledge, shows them declining in strength and numbers. Feelings toward them aren’t improving. They know they’re losing their hold on power and cultural dominance, and this is their last, desperate gasp.

  103. says

    Bayrou backing Macron should improve the latter’s chances of beating Fillon in the first round and so going in to a run-off with Le Pen though.

    I can’t remember if I posted about it back then, but a couple of weeks ago Assange said that he had “interesting” information about Macron from the hacked Clinton emails. The French media and people should be prepared for the dishonest spin he’ll give to whatever he has. (I love how RT has to go through the pretense of saying that he confirmed it with Izvestia.)

  106. blf says

    SC@102, As both the BBC (France election: Macron laughs off gay affair rumours) and Washington Post (Russian media leap on French presidential candidate with rumors and innuendo) pointed out at the time, the le penazis are clearly Russia’s favourite frog flavouring. Le penazis are also known to be financed by Russian money (In the Kremlin’s pocket: “Who backs Putin, and why”). The Russian-money connection is well-known here in France, but I don’t think any of the nonsense about Macron has gotten any traction outside of fringe / dubious sites like RT.

    As an aside, I must admit I didn’t even know there was an RT en Français. Fortunately, the proposed Breitbart en Français is still non-existent; and there is now a European version of Politico (mostly(? all?) in English, I currently believe…). Amusingly, the current headline story there is Breitbart’s European offensive: all talk, no action: “The provocative website promised to conquer the Continent — but has yet to roll out sites in France or Germany ahead of elections.”

  107. says

    SC@102, As both the BBC (France election: Macron laughs off gay affair rumours) and Washington Post (Russian media leap on French presidential candidate with rumors and innuendo) pointed out at the time, the le penazis are clearly Russia’s favourite frog flavouring. Le penazis are also known to be financed by Russian money (In the Kremlin’s pocket: “Who backs Putin, and why”). The Russian-money connection is well-known here in France, but I don’t think any of the nonsense about Macron has gotten any traction outside of fringe / dubious sites like RT.

    Yes, I know all that. The information WL is claiming they have on Macron hasn’t been released yet. I’m sure they’re waiting for the moment when it’ll have the greatest effect, as they did here. The problem most likely won’t be the material itself (the DNC and Podesta emails were far from scandalous, and in fact painted most involved in a relatively good light); it’ll be the dishonest way Assange and his goons misrepresent, selectively release, and possibly alter it. If the French media and public refuse to go along, things will be OK, but as Neera Tanden warns it will require awareness and self-discipline on their part if PutiLeaks decides to drop something at a dangerous moment.

  108. says

    Amusingly, the current headline story there is Breitbart’s European offensive: all talk, no action: “The provocative website promised to conquer the Continent — but has yet to roll out sites in France or Germany ahead of elections.”

    Interesting article.

  109. blf says

    A follow-up of sorts to @88 / @90, on constituents’s anger expressed at “town hall” meetings, Republican lawmakers face town hall crowds’ fury during ‘resistance recess’ (editing for formatting reasons not marked):

    Frustrated constituents make their views known to representatives around the country, focusing anger on Trump’s immigration and healthcare plans

    Congresspeople nationwide have been facing angry crowds, protests and tough questions during this week’s congressional recess, a time when senators and representatives often return to their home districts and hold “town hall” events.

    […]

    The president [sic] himself, the indirect target of most of the protesting, had his own take on the protester turnout: The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!

    Here are some of the most notable exchanges from across the US:

    Iowa: ‘Who is going to save me?’
      […] “Who is going to save me?” an Afghan US military veteran asked [senator Chuck] Grassley, referencing the president’s now suspended travel ban […]. “I am a person from a Muslim country and I am a Muslim. Who is going to save me here? Who is going to stand behind me?” Zalmay Niazy continued to applause. […]

    Florida: ‘No one has paid me to be here’
      At the town hall with Representative Dennis Ross, several attendees took on Trump’s tweet. “I’m gainfully employed, I’m a mother of four, and no one has paid me to be here tonight. I took unpaid time off so I could attend this meeting,” said one Florida resident.

    Ross replied [to a question about the costs of hair furor’s weekends in Florida –blf] that he would like to look into it. You’re the first one that has brought this to my attention, he said [almost certainly a lie –blf], adding that he would like to compare it to other presidents’ spending on trips to Hawaii [gee, I wonder why he picked that example? –blf] and elsewhere.

    Kentucky: ‘Sit down and shut up like Elizabeth Warren’
      The most powerful member of the US Senate faced jeers from nearly 1,000 people as he arrived on Tuesday to address a group of local business leaders. In Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, they chanted as the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, entered the American Legion Post 34 Fairgrounds in a black limousine.
    […]
    McConnell said he was proud of the demonstrators for expressing their views but told the mostly friendly audience inside that the protesters had had their shot, adding: Winners make policy and the losers go home.

    [… and so on…]

    And “[i]n Pennsylvania, a healthcare ‘town hall’ organized by citizens addressed questions and concerns to an empty suit at the front of the assembly, intended to represent Senator Pat Toomey, who declined to attend.”

  111. says

    The Trump administration thinks that their relationship with leaders in Mexico is “phenomenal.” Everything is hunky dory according to what Sean Spicer said during the press briefing today. Meanwhile, leaders in Mexico are not going along with that characterization.

    […] “We have a very healthy and robust relationship with the Mexican government, and Mexican officials and I think they would echo that same sentiment. President Peña Nieto has echoed that at well,” Spicer said at his daily news briefing. “I think the relationship with Mexico is phenomenal right now, and I think there’s an unbelievable and robust dialogue between our two nations.”

    Spicer’s preview of the upcoming meeting [Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly are going to Mexico]ndiffered from that of Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, who said Wednesday that his nation will not accept the “unilateral” immigration policies currently being pursued by the Trump administration, according to a report from Reuters. […].

    “I want to say clearly and emphatically that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other,” the Mexican foreign minister said. “We will not accept it, because there’s no reason why we should, and because it is not in the interests of Mexico.”

    […] Among other guidelines, the memos issued Tuesday will seek to deport all undocumented immigrants who enter via Mexico back to Mexico, regardless of their country of origin.

    Roberto Campa, head of the human rights department of Mexico’s interior ministry, called that guidance “hostile” and “unacceptable,” according to Reuters. […]

    Politico link

  112. says

    Ezra Klein discussed why he thinks Donald Trump is dangerous when he’s losing.

    Here is an excerpt from the much longer article, all of which is worth reading:

    […] The distinction you need to make with Trump, Mounk [Yascha Mounk, who studies the way liberal democracies tip back toward authoritarianism] argues, is that he’s not an ideological authoritarian but a contextual one. He is not entering office with a program to weaken the judiciary and bulldoze legislative roadblocks, as Viktor Orbán did in Hungary. His dangerous tendencies, rather, are reactive to the situations in which he finds himself.

    “In a world where institutions let him do what he wants, he doesn’t have a problem with institutions,” Mounk says. […]

    “But,” Mounk continues, “in a world where they don’t let him do what he wants, he thinks these institutions are unpatriotic and need to be destroyed.” That would have sounded hyperbolic to me if, later that day, Trump hadn’t tweeted that the New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN were “the enemy of the American people.”

    This is a strange facet of Trump’s persona, but it’s an important one. His illiberal instincts come out when he’s losing, not when he’s winning. Think back to the presidential debates. When they began, Trump had pulled nearly even with Clinton, and he entered the first debate with a calm, presidential strategy. It was only once he was losing that he threatened to throw Hillary Clinton in jail.

    Of course, losing makes you weaker, not stronger. Trump’s anger at the press or at the courts or at Congress poses little threat if his approval ratings linger in the 40s or 30s. But imagine Trump spends years being stymied by the system and marinating in fury toward the institutions he feels have foiled him. He spends years telling his supporters that the courts are making them less safe, that the press is their enemy, that the congress is corrupt. And then, all at once, Trump gains the power and popularity to do something about it.

    “The dangerous scenario is where things have been going badly for a while,” Mounk says. “Trump is angry at the media, angry at the courts. And then there’s an external event that gives him a moment of opportunity to push through those changes.” […]

    The balance is delicate. I feel Democracy in the USA is walking a tightrope.

  113. says

    The Center for Media and Democracy has posted 7,564 pages of Scott Pruitt’s emails online.

    In confirmation of old news, Trump’s staffers try to keep Trump from tweeting about or speaking about some petulant sense of persecution by constantly feeding him praise all day long.

    [… The key to keeping Trump’s Twitter habit under control, according to six former campaign officials, is to ensure that his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise. And when no such praise was to be found, staff would turn to friendly outlets to drum some up — and make sure it made its way to Trump’s desk. […]

    The in-person touch is also important to keeping Trump from running too hot. One Trump associate said it’s important to show Trump deference and offer him praise and respect, as that will lead him to more often listen. And If Trump becomes obsessed with a grudge, aides need to try and change the subject, friends say. Leaving him alone for several hours can prove damaging, because he consumes too much television and gripes to people outside the White House. […]

    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-twitter-staffer-235263

  114. blf says

    A follow-up of sorts to @111, As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a ‘Deep State’ in America:

    A wave of leaks from government officials has hobbled the Trump administration, leading some to draw comparisons to countries like Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, where shadowy networks within government bureaucracies, often referred to as “deep states,” undermine and coerce elected governments.

    So is the United States seeing the rise of its own deep state?

    Not quite, experts say, but the echoes are real — and disturbing.

    Though leaks can be a normal and healthy check on a president’s power, what’s happening now extends much further. The United States, those experts warn, risks developing an entrenched culture of conflict between the president and his own bureaucracy.

    […]

    Though the deep state is sometimes discussed as a shadowy conspiracy, it helps to think of it instead as a political conflict between a nation’s leader and its governing institutions.

    That can be deeply destabilizing, leading both sides to wield state powers like the security services or courts against one another, corrupting those institutions in the process.

    […]

    “We’re in a world now where the president is playing to the edge of his powers, and I think there are real concerns about the constitutional implications of some of the actions he’s taken,” said Amy Zegart, the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

    That has forced officials in agencies to ask how far they will go themselves. As each side begins to perceive itself as under attack and the other as making dangerous power-grabs, it will justify more and more extreme behavior.

    […]

    Mr Trump’s tendency to treat each leak as an attack rather than an attempt to influence policy has created an atmosphere in Washington of open institutional conflict.

    […]

    Mr Trump has said he might appoint Stephen A. Feinberg, a finance executive who was an early supporter of his campaign, to review the intelligence agencies.

    “It looks, sounds and feels like a political witch hunt,” said Ms Zegart. “It’s like pouring gasoline on the fire.”

    […]

    [… T]here is still a risk that bureaucratic resistance against the president could become an enduring feature of American politics. Once trust is broken, it is difficult to rebuild.

    […]

    And a related podcast, Is the ‘Deep State’ to Blame for White House Leaks?

  115. says

    “GOP senator wants Flynn to testify on Russia ties”:

    Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Wednesday she wants former national security adviser Michael Flynn to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

    …

    Collins also said Wednesday she is open to issuing subpoenas for Donald Trump’s tax returns to determine whether the president has financial ties to Russia.

    “I don’t know whether we will need to do that,” she said. “If it’s necessary to get to the answers, then I suspect that we would.”

    Collins said she and other members of the Intelligence Committee would request that Flynn be called to testify as part of its larger investigation into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election….

  118. says

    “Reported Trump Ambassador Pick Raises Conflict-of-Interest Questions”:

    On January 20th, around the time Donald Trump was being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, James “Wally” Brewster was tendering his resignation as the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Now, Trump reportedly is giving that post to vocal supporter and business associate Robin Bernstein – a founding member of Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club – raising questions about potential conflicts of interest, given that the Trump Organization is considering a licensing deal on a luxury resort in the island nation.

    “We cannot have a situation where the ambassador is giving favorable treatment to Eric Trump, or lobbying the Dominican Republic government on his behalf,” says Richard Painter, who was a White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush….

  119. blf says

    We see here a difference between hair furor and the VP’s understanding of proper reactions, Mike Pence condemns vandalism at Jewish cemetery amid outpouring of support:

    Cleanup volunteers and financial donors of many faiths offer backing to Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in suburban St Louis

    […]

    Muslim groups have launched a crowdfunding campaign for the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in University City, Missouri, with a goal of $20,000. It has raised nearly $75,000.

    […]

    Vice-President Mike Pence, speaking to small business owners at a business Wednesday in the St Louis suburb of Fenton, Missouri, condemned “this vile act of vandalism and those who perpetrate it in the strongest possible terms”. But he lauded people from across Missouri who have “rallied with compassion and support.”

    “You have inspired this nation,” Pence said, not long before making an unannounced visit to the cemetery. With [Governor Eric] Greitens by his side, Pence told volunteers, many of them clutching yard rakes they used to beautify the graveyard: “There’s no place in America for hatred or acts of prejudice or violence or antisemitism.”

    […]

    He might have been a bit slow off the mark, but has not only hit the right tone with both his comments and visit. Now teh trum-prat, on the other hand…

  122. says

    Closer analysis of the new Department of Homeland Security’s deportation guidelines reveal a lot of potential problems.

    From the New York Times:

    Documents released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security revealed the broad scope of the president’s ambitions: to publicize crimes by undocumented immigrants; strip such immigrants of privacy protections; enlist local police officers as enforcers; erect new detention facilities; discourage asylum seekers; and, ultimately, speed up deportations.

    From Bloomberg Politics:

    […] Trump’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants will strain an already tight U.S. job market, with one study suggesting that removing all of them would cost the economy as much as $5 trillion over 10 years.

    That represents the contribution of the millions of unauthorized workers to the world’s largest economy, about 3 percent of private-sector gross domestic product, according to a recent paper issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research. At an average of $500 billion in output a year, removing all such immigrants would be like lopping off the equivalent of Massachusetts from the U.S. economy, […]

    The plan to strip immigrants of basic privacy protections is unconstitutional. Note the use of “any person” in the 14th Amendment:

    No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

    From the ACLU:

    Even undocumented immigrants have the right to freedom of speech and religion, the right to be treated fairly, the right to privacy, and the other fundamental rights U.S. citizens enjoy.

    From NPR:

    We received authorization to institute a polygraph screening program and ran those first exams in February of 2008, towards the end of the initial Border Patrol hiring. […] The results were shocking. More than half of the applicants failed to clear the exam, with the overwhelming majority giving us detailed admissions as to why it was they failed the exam. It was what these applicants had done in their past that most concerned us. They included serious felony crimes, active involvement in smuggling activities and several confirmed infiltrators who actually were employed by drug trafficking organizations who had been directed to seek out positions within Customs and Border Protection to advance ongoing criminal conspiracies, essentially be spies in our midst. […]

    The reality is the hiring initiative, time and time again, visited southwest border communities over the course of those two years and four months that that initial hiring initiative moved forward. At some point in time, the quality of the applicant pool sharply declined. And yet, the mandate to double the size of the Border Patrol remained in progress.

    Also from NPR:

    The cooperation and the coordination that you need from Mexico to pull this off would have to be great. And Mexico – I can just tell you that Mexico is not in any mood to help the U.S. lately, given the hostile relationships that they’re having. And it’s just something that’s not going to go over well with Mexicans.

    Financially, economically, Trump’s plan is all wrong. (Unless you own a private prison near the border.)

    Constitutionally, Trump’s plan is all wrong.

    No one’s safety will be improved.

    In terms of good management, Trump’s plan is all wrong.

  123. says

    Follow-up to SC’s comment 109.

    “President Donald Trump’s popularity is sinking like a rock,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll. “He gets slammed on honesty, empathy, level-headedness and the ability to unite. And two of his strong points, leadership and intelligence, are sinking to new lows. This is a terrible survey one month in.”

    Link

    Trump’s approval rating sank to 38%.

  124. says

    “Judge blocks Texas from defunding Planned Parenthood”

    …Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would appeal the ruling. “Today’s decision is disappointing and flies in the face of basic human decency,” he lied.

    “No taxpayer in Texas should have to subsidize this repugnant and illegal conduct,” Paxton added, citing an internet video secretly recorded by anti-abortion wackos as evidence that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue, which they do not….

  125. says

    Ah, team Trump is punting the executive order on travel and refugees to next week. I wonder if they are getting a clue that the entire endeavor should be scrapped?

    The White House is pushing back the release of a revised executive order on travel and refugees until next week, an official said Wednesday.

    No explanation was given for the delay, and it remains unclear how the White House will tweak the travel ban to avoid future legal pitfalls.

    “Fundamentally you’re going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country,” White House policy adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News on Tuesday night.

    He said the new order will largely resemble the old one, but that the changes will be “mostly minor technical differences.”

    President Trump said last Thursday he would unveil a more tailored travel ban this week after his initial directive was blocked by a federal court.

    White House officials have been scrambling to draft a new executive order, while stressing they are taking steps to ensure a smoother rollout than the last one. […]

    Link

    Wait a minute, Trump said the rollout of the past ban was perfect, was very smooth — if only that “bad court decision” hadn’t gotten in the way. Now they are admitting that it needs to be smoother.

    I don’t believe anything that comes out of Stephen Miller’s mouth, including “minor technical difficulties.”

  127. blf says

    Trump’s feminist critics gagged by Chinese internet giant Weibo:

    Ban may reflect Beijing’s nervousness about the state of US-China relations in the Trump era

    Chinese feminists have hit out at their country’s answer to Twitter after it gagged one of their movement’s most visible social media accounts in an apparent bid to stifle criticism of US president [sic] Donald Trump.

    The “Feminist Voice in China” account on social networking site Sina Weibo was handed a 30-day ban on Monday for allegedly violating Chinese law.

    The punishment came six days after the group posted a Chinese translation of an article — first published in the Guardian — in which US-based feminist academics called for a new “militant feminist struggle”, partly in response to Trump’s “aggressively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist policies”.

    The article urged activists to launch an “international strike” on 8 March to protest male violence and support reproductive rights.

    Xiong Jing, an editor for the “Feminist Voice”, told the Guardian that Weibo had sent the group a private message on Monday night informing it that the account, which was set up in 2010 and has more than 80,000 followers, had been temporarily blocked. Weibo blamed recent publications {that} violated the state’s relevant laws.

    […]

    A propaganda directive leaked to the China Digital Times website last month showed Chinese newsrooms had been instructed to tow the Communist party line when covering Trump.

    Any news about Trump must be handled carefully; unauthorized criticism of Trump’s words or actions is not allowed, it said.

    The live broadcast of Trump’s inaugural speech was forbidden while news outlets were ordered only to use stories about Trump produced by Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency.

    […]

  128. blf says

    Toxic political agenda is dehumanising entire groups, Amnesty warns:

    NGO’s annual report warns that aggressive political rhetoric is creating a ‘hostile climate for refugees and migrants’

    Toxic political rhetoric with echoes of 1930s hate speech is stirring up violence worldwide — including in the UK and US, Amnesty International has warned.

    Kerry Moscoguiri, Amnesty UK’s director of campaigns, said that campaigning for the Brexit referendum “was a particular low point, with all too real consequences” – pointing to a 57% spike in reported hate crime the week after the vote.

    She accused the British government of “creating a hostile climate for refugees and migrants” as it shirked its responsibilities to them, particularly unaccompanied children.

    […]

    She pointed particularly to violence stirred up by Donald Trump, right-wing Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who called a controversial referendum on refugees, and the Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte who has launched a war on drugs that has cost thousands of lives.

    “This report documents the very real human consequences of politicians like Trump, Orbán, Duterte, wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanises entire groups of people,” Hassan said.

    […]

    “Have we forgotten that human rights protections were created after the mass atrocities of the second world war as a way of making sure that ‘never again’ actually meant ‘never again’?” [I think that is quoting Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK –blf]

    It was a year filled with contempt for those ideals, Amnesty warned, from the almost “routine” bombing of hospitals in Syria and Yemen, to violent suppression of dissent and attacks on refugees and migrants.

    Worldwide, 36 countries broke international law [on refugees –blf]

    […]

    AI’s report (English, PDF).

  130. raven says

    Tonight’s headlines:

    The new plans would also see the US deport immigrants to the country from which they arrived, regardless of their country of origin.

    1. I don’t believe this is legal under international laws.
    We aren’t required to accept foreign nationals involuntarily except under laws of asylum.
    Either is Mexico. Or anyone.
    2. This appears to be merely people dumping.
    We wouldn’t like it if anyone else dumped their people on us.

    3. Oddly enough, Mexico cooperates with us on immigration issues.
    They intercept a lot of Central Americans on their southern border.

    4. Trump missed kindergarten.
    We learned in kindergarten to be nice to our friends. Or we wouldn’t have any.

    5. The legal solution, the better one is obvious. If we are going to send people back, send them back to their native country.

  132. blf says

    Trump administration revokes transgender students’ bathroom protections:

    US withdrew guidance stating federal law requires transgender students to have unfettered access to bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identity

    [… T]he departments of justice and education on Wednesday withdrew a piece of guidance stating that federal law requires trans students to have unfettered access to bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identity.

    […]

    Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said of the Obama-era directive: “The guidance, which told schools to treat trans students with the same respect as any other student, is literally lifesaving for many children.”

    […]

    Chase Strangio, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday: “Rescinding the guidance is cruel and will accomplish nothing but to hurt kids that are trans.

    “What is also true, though, and very important, is that rescinding the guidance does not change the rights of students under Title IX {the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education and activities}. Trans students are protected from discrimination by federal law and the administration can’t change that.”

    […]

    Several federal appeals courts have already ruled that discriminating against transgender people based on their gender identity is a violation of federal law.

    […]

    Sessions, who has long been hostile to LGBT rights, reportedly fought for Wednesday’s order over the objections of Betsy DeVos, the new dducation [sic†] secretary. Spicer insisted on Wednesday that DeVos was onboard.

    The conclusions, everyone in the administration is agreed upon, he told reporters. There’s no daylight between anybody, between the president and any of the secretaries. […]

    […]

      † Yes, really, the Grauniad lived up to its reputation for amusing misspellings by doing a hairfurorian-scale goof on, of all words, education.

  133. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    *PSA*
    MSNBC is having a 2 hour special on the first 100 days of the Trump Ashholery, starting at 10 pm ET.
    */PSA*

  134. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Dang, in #132 should say only the first disfunctional month of the Trumpf misadministration.

  135. says

    I wish MSNBC would set up a panel without Chris Matthews. I find him repetitive and sometimes hard to parse. I think he detracts rather than adds to the panel.

    Rachel Maddow is wearing her “American Carnage” t-shirt (American metal band tour memorabilia).

  136. says

    Keith Ellison strongly stated a case for impeachment “investigations:

    […] “I think that Donald Trump has already done a number of things which legitimately raise the question of impeachment,” Ellison said Wednesday night during CNN’s debate among the eight candidates to lead the Democratic National Committee.

    He went on to accuse Trump of being in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from receiving payments from foreign states. In the mind of Ellison and others, Trump’s ownership of his Washington D.C. hotel, which has been frequented by foreign diplomats, puts him in violation of that law.

    “We need to begin investigations not to go after Donald Trump but protect the presidency of the United States to make sure nobody can monetize the presidency and make profit off it for his own game,” he said. […]

    Link

  137. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I noticed Rachael is wearing heavy glasses, where on her show she seems to normally eschew vision correction. Being someone who can’t see clearly beyond about 8 inches with glasses, I wish she would also wear her glasses on her show. To me, it would make her more authentic (not that she really needs any help based on her subject matter).

  138. says

    Ryan: “Freedom is the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need. Obamacare is Washington telling you what to buy regardless of your needs.”

    Pence: “ObamaCare will be replaced with something that actually works—bringing freedom and individual responsibility back to American health care.”

    Good thing they have great health care, because their ideology is sick. Also, they’re not fooling anybody.

  139. says

    “Air Force Stumped by Trump’s Claim of $1 Billion Savings on Jet”:

    The Air Force can’t account for $1 billion in savings that President Donald Trump said he’s negotiated for the program to develop, purchase and operate two new Boeing Co. jets to serve as Air Force One.

    “To my knowledge I have not been told that we have that information,” Colonel Pat Ryder, an Air Force spokesman, told reporters Wednesday when asked how Trump had managed to reduce the price for the new presidential plane. “I refer you to the White House,” Ryder said. A White House spokesman didn’t respond to repeated inquiries about Trump’s comments.

    Trump has boasted that he’s personally intervened to cut costs of two military aircraft — the F-35, the fighter jet built by Lockheed Martin Corp., and Boeing’s Air Force One….

  140. Saad says

    Ryan: “Freedom is the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need. Obamacare is Washington telling you what to buy regardless of your needs.”

    Trying to sprinkle your sentences with “freedom” is so Bush II. We all know what the real key words there are…

  142. Saad says

    SC, #14

    Same here. And I recently added the words “tough stance” to that list after reading CNN describe Trump’s Muslim ban as a “tough stance on immigration”, like we’re talking about workplace harassment or plagiarism or something.

  144. says

    “GOP to bury House resolution on Trump conflicts”:

    House Republicans next week plan to derail a Democratic resolution that would have forced disclosure of President Donald Trump’s potential ties with Russia and any possible business conflicts of interest, according to multiple House sources.

    Seeking to avoid a full House vote on the so-called “resolution of inquiry” — a roll call that would be particularly embarrassing and divisive for the right — Republicans will send proposal by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to the House Judiciary Committee for a panel vote on Tuesday, two Democratic sources said. The GOP-controlled committee is expected to kill the resolution.

    Without committee action, obscure parliamentary procedures would allow Democrats to call the resolution to the floor for a vote by the full House. But rejection by the Judiciary panel all but assures the measure will never see a floor vote….

  145. blf says

    Islamophobia grows louder in North Carolina: Can we not kill them all?:

    The meeting of a far-right group in Kernersville has stirred fears across the state as Muslim leaders call on authorities to take action

    […]

    A tactic that the [Muslim] Brotherhood has established over the years is establishing the presence of Islamic centers or mosques, which for them means a recruitment center for jihad, and forming a permanent foundation wherever they’re allowed to exist, [Tom] Jones said, continuing to read from [conservative author Erick] Stakelbeck’s book [The Terrorist Next Door].

    Jones’s presentation was repeatedly interrupted by comments about killing Muslims from Frank del Valle, a staunchly anticommunist Cuban immigrant, with little or no pushback from the others in the room.

    Can we not kill them all? Del Valle asked, about 15 minutes into the presentation, during a discussion about the differences between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.

    […]

    Revelations about the violent talk spread rapidly through North Carolina’s Muslim community when the news broke on 18 February.

    “The community is completely traumatized,” Abdullah Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University, said. “When they hear someone talk about killing Muslims, they know that could happen to any of their loved ones. When they hear about that meeting, it just brings up the maximum level of fear.”

    […]

    Those present [at Jones’s lie-a-thon] laid out a scenario based on false representations of Islam and tangled conspiracy theories suggesting mainstream Muslims were stealthily plotting to kill non-believers.

    […]

    There’s a huge pushback coming, Goodwill said. Political correctness is being thrown away. A lot of people are meeting like this. We’re making progress in the positive direction.

    I am beyond that point, Del Valle replied. “I’m ready to start taking people out.

    […]

    Throughout the presentation, guests excitedly discussed two area mosques, along with the chairman of the local Democratic party, who is the brother of the US congressman Keith Ellison — the first Muslim member of Congress and a leading candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee.

    News about a person casually discussing the indiscriminate killing of Muslims in an open meeting was particularly chilling, Antepli said […]

    […]

    Antepli planned to meet with members of the Muslim community […]

    “I don’t know what I will tell them,” [Antepli] said. “I don’t know what the comforting message is. This needs to be taken absolutely seriously. The response from law enforcement has been very disappointing, to say the least.”

    In response to the violent talk, the Council on American-Islamic Relations […] requested a federal and state investigation.

    […]

    The front page of today’s dead-tree edition of the INYT (ex-IHT) had an column by Gehad El-Haddad (I Am a Member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Not a Terrorist), which begins “I write this from the darkness of solitary confinement in Egypt’s most notorious prison, where I have been held for more than three years. I am forced to write these words because an inquiry is underway in the United States regarding charges that the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization to which I have devoted years of my life, is a terrorist group.

    “We are not terrorists. […]”

  146. blf says

    New Jersey congressman grilled at town hall amid ‘resistance recess’ protests:

    Leonard Lance faces questions over healthcare, Russia and pushing back against Donald Trump from mostly hostile crowd

    A packed auditorium crowd booed, jeered and shook “thumbs down” signs at congressman Leonard Lance […].

    The mostly hostile crowd in central New Jersey shouted throughout the event, with interjections such as: “What about the taxes?”, “Answer the question!”, “Issue a subpoena!” and “Do your job!” Topics ran the gamut from Russian election interference and Donald Trump’s travel ban to the environment, abortion and healthcare.

    “When you say that you’re pro-healthcare and you’re going to help regular people, that doesn’t sound right when you vote on bills like this,” said Liz Mulholland, about Lance’s party-line vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act in February.

    Outside the auditorium […], protesters gathered hours before the town hall began and stayed after [the standing-room-only event] concluded […]. Many [who could not get in] watched a live stream of the event on their cellphones.

    […]

    “When you make these decisions that affect the rest of us, it hurts many people, and in the case of Planned Parenthood, it affects primarily teenagers and those in poverty, and that is just wrong,” Mulholland said.

    Tough questions were met with raucous applause. The most well-received of the evening came when Annette Cordasco asked Lance and other Republicans to “push back” against Trump and members of his administration when they made false statements and target the press. “I think I struck a chord,” Cordasco quipped when the noise died down.

    […]

  148. says

    Political correctness is being thrown away. A lot of people are meeting like this. We’re making progress in the positive direction.

    I am beyond that point, Del Valle replied. “I’m ready to start taking people out.

    Ah, yes, first there is the telltale use of supposedly heroic resistance to “political correctness” as cover for bigotry. Next there is the call to action, which includes killing people.

    This swill sounds like a KKK or John Birch Society meeting, with Muslims substituted for N-words and communists. (The “N-word” is a reference to the actual vocabulary used at KKK meetings.)

    I think the people present at what blf called “Jones’s lie-a-thon” fit a pattern. They have to have an enemy, one they have largely created, in order to feel like they have a purpose. I don’t think they can get themselves going without fantasizing about killing entire categories of their fellow humans.

    Trump’s self-delusion concerning the fact that he has made this kind of talk more acceptable, more openly expressed, is a big part of the problem. “A lot of people are meeting like this.” That’s what worries me.

  149. blf says

    Here is an interesting point which hadn’t occurred to me (at least not in any detail), Deportation orders threaten Trump’s own turf: the real estate market:

    Immigrants ‘represent a large share of the demand supporting house values’, says a demographics expert amid warnings the system could be tested

    Is Donald Trump, the property tycoon turned president, about to bust the housing market? That’s potentially one of the unanticipated impacts of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, according to demographics experts and immigrants’ rights groups.

    The effect of the mass deportations outlined in Department of Homeland Security memos released this week may not only affect real estate values at the lower and middle end of the housing market, they warn: they could resonate up to the top of the housing chain, testing the entire system in ways that are both novel and not clearly understood.

    “There are consequences for the economy and the whole of society, and the public doesn’t understand the value immigrants bring to the housing market,” warns Dowell Myers, director of the Population Dynamics Research Group at the University of California.

    […]

    In a comprehensive 2013 study, Immigrant Contributions to Housing Demand in the United States, Myers estimated that in this decade, immigrants nationwide will account for 32.2% of the growth in all households, 35.7% of growth in homeowners and 26.4% of growth in renter households.

    The study found that the volume of growth in foreign-born homeowners has increased each decade, rising from 0.8 million added immigrant homeowners in the United States during the period from 1980–1990 to 2.8 million in the current decade.

    […]

    According to Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst for the Cato Institute, the effect of an immigrant crackdown on property values has already been seen, albeit on a small scale, after Arizona passed its controversial SB 1070 and Legal Arizona Workers Act.

    “Two hundred thousand people left because of those immigration laws at the same time as we had a housing collapse. So Phoenix suffered more than any other city except for Las Vegas,” Nowrasteh says. “We saw a huge increase in rental vacancies and a decline in home prices immediately after these laws were passed.”

    […]

    “It’s pretty clear what will happen,” warns Myers. “One way that people afford houses is by pooling incomes. So if you were to deport one of the three mortgage payers, that can destabilize the whole rest of the household. Immigrants are so interwoven into many communities that when you unravel one thread, you can destabilize it entirely.”

    House values, he considers, are like a pyramid. “If you pull out a chunk from the bottom, the pyramid starts to collapse. The loss of the immigrants coming in at the bottom end doesn’t directly affect prices in Beverly Hills or Silicon Valley but it will undermine the whole structure of pricing in a way that hasn’t been tested before.”

    […]

    “The housing market may not be the first concern, but President Trump’s immigration orders could destabilize whole communities,” says Myers. “We’re not playing around here. This is a serious business. It’s pretty clear what could happen.”

  150. blf says

    A follow-up to @28, Juhel Miah, barred entry to the US, is part of our school family. We will defend him, written Alan Rowlands, the headteacher at Mr Miah’s school:

    No official reason has been given for refusing our colleague entry. But as his headteacher, I know one thing: his pupils have witnessed an act of discrimination

    […]

    The experience itself was terrible, but more infuriating is the fact that no explanation has yet been given by the American authorities. Following the debacle of Trump’s failed attempt to ban people from certain Muslim countries entering the US, is this event an example of the authorities randomly selecting Muslims and preventing them from entering the US?

    […]

    The outpouring of empathy we have received from around the world has only intensified our bafflement at what Juhel endured. As one Washington state elementary teacher who wrote to us put it: “I cannot express the depth of my concern, embarrassment, and contempt for my country’s behaviour.” […] The humility and compassion displayed by the vast majority of those who have been in contact reassures me that society is resolute in standing up to bigotry. Trump may be spinning his own web of “fake news”, but most decent people can see beyond this, including the students in my school.

    But what impact does an event like this have on the views of people? Well history tells us quite clearly. Look at the drip-drip effect of propaganda in Germany in the 1930s. […]

  151. says

    @148 – Having been a cable guy in San Diego for some years, I can tell you anecdotally that immigrants are a huge driver of the housing market there. They always buy their homes and usually live in extended family situations, sometimes having 2-3 people sharing each bedroom. (I know they own the homes because I have to know that to so any work on them like drilling through walls.) Very often they are housing immigrant workers who are sending a decent chuck of their pay back home, the rest goes to rent and food.

  153. blf says

    erikthebassist@150, “immigrant workers [send] a decent chuck of their pay back home”. Another very good point, which I also admit to overlooking… I have no recollection of the figures for the States, but (from memory) immigrants in the UK repatriate somewhere around $(? £?)10bn per year, so the figure for the States almost certainly must be larger. A notable decrease in that will have numerous nasty knock-on effects, possibly most of which aren’t very pretty.

  154. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    In a refreshing twist on an old tale, a couple was removed from a flight for racist statements.

    The WaPo has a more detailed version.

    The confrontation on Flight 1113 from Chicago to Houston began several minutes earlier, when a Pakistani man and woman wearing traditional clothing were boarding the plane, according to VHF affiliate KHOU.

    As the couple placed their bags in an overheard bin, a male passenger — who was not identified by the airline — asked the couple if they had a bomb in their luggage, another passenger sitting nearby told KHOU.

    That’s not a bomb in your bag, is it? the man said, according to the passenger who was not identified by KHOU. The passenger added that the couple did not immediately hear the comment, which prompted the man to repeat his remark.

    KHOU reported that a woman sitting nearby alerted a flight attendant, which led other passengers to also complain about the man’s questions. When the Indian American boyfriend of the woman who alerted the attendant complained, a heated exchange followed.

    “The person ahead of us turned around and asked where my boyfriend was from; my boyfriend said it’s none of your business,” the woman told KHOU. “At that point he said all illegals and all foreigners need to leave the country.”[…]

    “Happy flight home,” he added seconds later while his female companion holds her middle finger up to the person filming. “I hope you stay there.”

    “Get out of here,” a woman responded. “Racists aren’t welcome in America! This is not Trump’s America!”

    “Goooodbyeee raaacists!” the woman added.

    “Hey, I’ll come back, but you’ll be gone,” the man said as he walked away.

    Both links include video.

  156. says

    blf @148, I don’t think Trump is capable of thinking that far ahead. All indications so far are that long-term consequences simply don’t register in the Dumpster brain. That is, however, an interesting take on the issue of immigration.

    The financial fallout from Trump’s deportation plans (and from his other anti-immigrant actions) is likely to plunge the USA into recession. An excerpt from comment 121:

    From Bloomberg Politics:

    […] Trump’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants will strain an already tight U.S. job market, with one study suggesting that removing all of them would cost the economy as much as $5 trillion over 10 years.

    That represents the contribution of the millions of unauthorized workers to the world’s largest economy, about 3 percent of private-sector gross domestic product, according to a recent paper issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research. At an average of $500 billion in output a year, removing all such immigrants would be like lopping off the equivalent of Massachusetts from the U.S. economy, […]

  157. says

    Good point BLF. It will most certainly have a huge impact on the economy of Mexico and other Latin American countries, which could create a snowball effect, returning immigrants with no jobs and no longer sending money home. It could easily create a humanitarian crisis.

    Sorry for the typos in that post by the way. I’m remoted in to my home PC from work and getting some lag and typing between calls.

  159. says

    Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chief, may have been blackmailed over his Russian/Ukraine connections:

    […] The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.

    Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to “bulletproof” evidence related to Manafort’s financial arrangement with Ukraine’s former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub. […]

    The White House did not respond to a question about whether Trump had met with Tulub, a hunting buddy of Yanukovych’s who had served as part of government when Yanukovych was prime minister. […]

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/2/23/1636862/-Paul-Manafort-blackmailed-over-meeting-between-Trump-and-pro-Russian-forces-in-Ukraine

  162. says

    Now that John Boehner is no longer Speaker of the House, he sometimes says exactly what he thinks, with no diplomatic sugar coating:

    Former House Speaker John Boehner predicted on Thursday that a full repeal and replace of Obamacare is “not going to happen.”

    Boehner, who resigned in 2015 amid unrest among conservatives, said at an Orlando health care conference that the idea that a repeal-and-replace plan would blitz through Congress is just “happy talk.”

    Instead, he said changes to former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement would likely be relatively modest.

    “[Congressional Republicans are] going to fix Obamacare – I shouldn’t call it repeal-and-replace, because it’s not going to happen,” he said. […]

    Politico link

  163. says

    Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chief, may have been blackmailed over his Russian/Ukraine connections:…

    I read that earlier and, at the risk of sounding overly conspiratorial, it sounds like possibly a Russian effort to discredit Leshchenko and the ledger listing Manafort.

  164. says

    This does not bode well. Trump is calling the ouster of undocumented immigrants a “military operation.”

    You see what’s happening at the border, all of the sudden for the first time, we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country. And at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before, and they’re the bad ones, and it’s a military operation because that has been allowed to come into our country. And you see gang violence that you’ve read about like never before, all of the things, much of that is people that are here illegally. And they’re rough and they’re tough but they’re not tough like our people.

    Link

    Trump made those comments at the meeting he held today with manufacturing CEOs. Note also the reference to “our people.”

    ICE and border patrol officials are not military personnel. They are civilian law enforcement officials.

    Undocumented immigrants are not responsible for “much” of the violence in the USA.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/trump-illegal-immigrants-crime.html

  165. says

    SC @162, possibly. Tangled webs.

    In other news, Kellyanne Conway is spinning like a top today. She is working hard to dismiss the real issues brought up at recent town hall meetings:

    Some people are upset with an election result they didn’t see coming. And the fact that this president, a man of action and impact is actually keeping his promises at very fast clip early in his administration.

    You know, the Democratic National Committee has been without a permanent chair for seven months. The opposition party is exactly that these days. They belly ache and moan and complain about most things. I haven’t heard any solutions. […]

    She sounds like the groupie of a cult leader.

  167. says

    Ted Cruz spoke at CPAC. Among other things, he claimed that Democrats smell bad. He also said that the Democratic Party base is “bat-crap crazy.”

    Cruz also said: “This summer, I think we’ll have another Supreme Court vacancy this summer. If that happens, as much as the left is crazy now, they will go full Armageddon meltdown.”

    No clarification for Cruz’s remarks was offered.

  168. says

    SC @165. That information does come off as cooked in the manipulation/propaganda stew. At the very least, obfuscation is achieved.

    In other news, Kellyanne Conway said some more stupid stuff during her presentation at CPAC:

    […] One thing that’s been a little bit disappointing and revealing — and that I hope will get better — is it turns out a lot of women just have a problem with women in power. You know this whole sisterhood, this whole let’s go march for women’s rights, just constantly talking about what women look like or what they wear, or making fun of their choices or presuming that they’re not as powerful as the men around, this presumptive negativity about women in power is very unfortunate. [I think she is taking criticism of herself and extending it to imply a larger agenda that the thinks is meant to disparage conservative women.]

    It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist in a classic sense because it seems to me to be very anti-male and it seems to me to be very pro-abortion.

    My mother didn’t feel sorry for herself. She was left with no child support and no alimony at a very young age with a child to raise, a high school education, and she just figured it out. She didn’t complain. She didn’t rely upon government, she relied upon her own skill set, her own self confidence, her own drive and moxie. […]

  169. says

    More oddities from Trump’s twisted and many-layered financial history:

    […] According to the [financial] disclosure, in 2012, Trump borrowed more than $50 million from a company called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. (The true value of the loan could be much higher; the form requires Trump only to state the range of the loan’s value, and he selected the top range, “over $50,000,000.”) Elsewhere in the same document, Trump notes that he owns this LLC. That is, he made the loan to himself. There’s nothing necessarily unusual about that.

    Here’s where the situation gets odd. With Trump owning the Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC—and the LLC being owed $50 million or more by Trump—this company should be listed on Trump’s disclosure as worth at least that much, unless it has debt offsetting this amount. Yet on Trump’s latest disclosure form, Chicago Unit Acquisition is not listed at all. The disclosure rules say that any asset worth more than $1,000 must be noted. So this is the mystery: Why is this Trump-owned firm that holds a $50 million-plus note from Trump not worth anything? […]

    A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that Trump pays a minimum of $4.4 million a year in interest in connection with his loan from Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. His disclosure form states he pays the prime interest rate plus 5 percent for this loan. (Consequently, Chicago Unit Acquisition would have at least that much in annual revenue, though none is reported.) And the Journal report deepened the mystery. It noted that it had paid two research firms to search for paperwork connected to this loan, but both came up empty-handed. […]

    On his 2015 disclosure form, Trump did list Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC as having a value, putting it at between $1,000 and $25,000—still substantially lower than the sum Trump reports owing to it. When the Times asked Trump why Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC was valued so low on his financial disclosure, he replied, “We don’t assess any value to it because we don’t care. I have the mortgage. That is all there is. Very simple. I am the bank.”

    “Whether or not Mr. Trump cares or not about a liability is irrelevant to his obligation to disclose information on the Form 278,” says Norm Eisen, who was a top ethics attorney in the Obama administration and who now co-chairs Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Questions about the apparent inconsistency in how the loan was and is treated on his disclosures are legitimate, and a normal president would provide additional information to clear them up.” […]

    Link

  171. says

    Speakers at CPAC are claiming that the “Alt-right” is “nothing but garden variety left-wing fascists.” Well that’s one way to obscure the white nationalist connections. But what does that make Steve Bannon, who bragged about Breitbart being the platform for the “Alt-right,” and who is speaking at CPAC?

    The other day, we noted how after years of helping to normalize the racist Alt-Right, the organizers of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) are now trying to distance themselves from the movement. […]

    This morning, Dan Schneider of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, delivered a speech titled “The Alt Right Ain’t Right at All” in which he tried to claim that the Alt-Right has no place within the conservative movement because the term “Alt-Right” has been hijacked by “a hate-filled left wing fascist group” for the purpose of confusing people about what conservatism really represents.

    “They stole the term specifically to confuse us,” Schneider stated. “They are anti-Semites, they are racists, they are sexists, they hate the Constitution, they hate free markets, they hate pluralism, they despise everything we believe in. They are not an extension of conservatism … They are nothing but garden variety left-wing fascists.” […]

    Right Wing Watch link

    WTF does Schneider’s rant mean? Is this just an example of the far rightwingers blaming their racism on the left? They’ve done that before.

  172. blf says

    They stole the term specifically to confuse us, Schneider stated. They are anti-Semites, they are racists, they are sexists, they hate the Constitution, they hate free markets, they hate pluralism, they despise everything we believe in. They are not an extension of conservatism … They are nothing but garden variety left-wing fascists.

    […] WTF does Schneider’s rant mean?

    My rabid-wingnut translator yields: “Liberals object to some Israeli policies, and to the KKK (and they support the SPLC and, worse, the ACLU!), and to theocrats and gun-fondlers, support unions and object to excessive disparity, and also to discrimination … Some are even sensible people including scientists!”

  174. says

    You see what’s happening at the border, all of the sudden for the first time, we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country…. And they’re rough and they’re tough but they’re not tough like our people.

    I know I feel safer knowing the mother here with her family since she was 14, the domestic-violence victim probably turned in by her abuser, and the woman with a brain tumor taken from the hospital are no longer circulating amongst us.

  175. blf says

    A follow-up to @463(previous page) on the famine in South Sudan, UK’s £100m response to South Sudan famine comes from cash already allocated:

    Initial optimism quashed after it emerges that announcement of ‘new’ government support for famine-hit country refers to funding already in place

    The British government is facing questions after announcing it was responding to the declaration of famine in South Sudan by allocating £100m of new money that had, in reality, already been reserved for the stricken country.

    […]

    [The UK’s Department for International Development (DfID)] refused to disclose when the money was signed off, or to clarify the identity of the intended recipients — whether the South Sudanese government, NGOs or UN agencies — citing security concerns.

    […]

    Ye Pfffft! of All Knowledge implies the response, to-date, has been pathetic.

  176. says

    One thing that’s been a little bit disappointing and revealing — and that I hope will get better — is it turns out a lot of women just have a problem with women in power.

    Says a person who just ran a misogynistic attack campaign for a man who bragged about his history of sexual assault against the first female major-party presidential candidate in history.

  178. says

    Sebastian “The Snowflake” Gorka called terrorism expert Michael Smith to whine about Smith’s critical tweets. After he threatened legal action, Smith started recording the call, then gave the recording to Newsweek. My favorite part:

    “I’ve never met you and I’ve never attacked you,” he said to Smith, his voice rising in frustration and anger. “And your Twitter feed is an incessant berating of my professional acumen. Put yourself in my shoes, Mr. Smith. Have you done that? How would you like it if someone you’ve never met, daily and professionally attacked you?”

    “Happens all the time,” Smith responded. Generally speaking, academics and journalists laboring in the field of public policy expect to be criticized for their views.

    “It’s not happened to me,” Gorka said, “I can tell you. Maybe you can show me some trick on how you deal with it. This is the first time ever.”

    My other favorite part is that this is bringing more attention to Gorka’s supposed credentials.

  181. says

    So Louie Gohmert “invoked the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords to explain why he is not hosting in-person town halls.” That was a mistake. Giffords responded:

    “To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls,” said Giffords in a statement.

    She added: “I was shot on a Saturday morning. By Monday morning my offices were open to the public. Ron Barber — at my side that Saturday, who was shot multiple times, then elected to Congress in my stead — held town halls. It’s what the people deserve in a representative.”

  183. says

    Seth Meyers hosted climate scientist Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Livermore National Laboratory. Excerpt below:

    MEYERS: I want to talk about this because I had Senator Ted Cruz on the show and we were talking about climate change. And he said something, and again, he’s a very smart guy, and of course I did not have any research to debate what he said. I’m going to play what he said on this show. And then I’m going to let you answer to it. Let’s take a look.

    [BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

    SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Many of the alarmists on global warming, they got a problem because the science doesn’t back them up. And in particular, satellite data demonstrates for the last 17 years, there’s been zero warming. None whatsoever.

    [END VIDEO CLIP]

    MEYERS: Okay, so the best I could have done then was, “Nuh-uh!” But, I’m going to turn it over to you. Satellite data, no change, 17 years. What do you have to say for yourself, you alarmist?

    SANTER: Or warmist is the word en vogue.

    MEYERS: Is that a climate change scientist joke?

    SANTER: Yeah. So he made a testable claim on your show.

    MEYERS: Yup.

    SANTER: Listen to what he said. Satellite data. So satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature show no significant warming over the last 17 years, and we tested it. We looked at all of the satellite data in the world, from all groups, and wanted to see, was he right or not? And he was wrong. Even if you focus on a small segment of the now 38-year satellite temperature record — the last 17 years — he was demonstrably wrong. More importantly, if you look at the entire record it shows strong evidence of a human effect on climate. Warming of the lower atmosphere. Cooling of the upper atmosphere. And that’s the fingerprint of human-caused changes in heat trapping greenhouse gases. So the bizarre thing is, Senator Cruz is a lawyer. He’s got to look at all of the evidence when he’s trying a case, when he’s involved in a case, not just one tiny segment of the evidence.

    Video of the segment is available at the link.

  185. Demeisen says

    @Lynna, OM (#170): That rant is yet another sign of the increasingly polarized and simplistic views held by the American right. They don’t acknowledge multiple dimensions to politics, only one dimension: Right/Good and Left/Bad. Fascism is bad, which means it has to be a left-wing movement. Never mind that it’s actually far-right and ultra-authoritarian; reality has no place in tribalism.

  187. says

    Rachel Maddow covered the fact that the state Republican Party chairman in Montana does not want voting to be made easier in that state. His reasoning? Higher voter turnout gives Democrats an advantage.

    Well, that was quite blatant. The governor of Montana is pushing back.

    In other news, a conservative group is paying to air a bunch of ads that tout a Republican health care plan that does not exist:

    The American Action Network, founded by veteran GOP fundraisers to support the speaker’s [Paul Ryan’s] agenda, will spend $2.2 million on TV and digital buys over the next two weeks to promote GOP efforts related to overhauling the law across two dozen media markets.

    That’s in addition to $5.2 million already spent on Obamacare-related advertising since the start of the year.

    The quoted text is from the Washington Post.

    From Steve Benen:

    The most recent ad features a woman who says, after criticizing the Affordable Care Act, “[W]e need to move forward with a new plan that Republicans are putting forward. I support the Republicans’ effort to fix health care for the American people.”

    This comes a month after a different ad from the American Action Network that touted a new GOP plan that provides “more choices and better care at lower costs” and “provides peace of mind to people with preexisting conditions.” The commercial added, “House Republicans have a plan to get there without disrupting existing coverage.”

    To which the obvious follow-up question is, “They do? Since when?”

    When Vox asked the American Action Network which “plan” the group was referring to, the organization pointed to the Better Way proposal the House Speaker unveiled last year. That’s nice, I suppose, but no serious person could possibly think Ryan’s blueprint constitutes an actual health care proposal. It included no details; it accompanied no legislation; it presented no numbers to scrutinize; and the document the Speaker’s office unveiled ultimately amounted to little more than “37 pages of talking points.”

    What’s more, even taken at face value, the broad goals Ryan pointed to are in conflict with the promises included in the American Action Network’s message. […]

    SC @181, I guess they are truly afraid of protestors … afraid the protestors will get their message out. You are right, that law will not pass muster in the courts.

  188. says

    Bad financial news:

    America’s three biggest banks — JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC) — earned more than $6.4 billion last year from ATM and overdraft fees, according to an analysis by CNNMoney that was verified by S&P Global Market Intelligence. […]

    Despite public outcry, banks show no sign of scaling back on fees. The big three banks collected nearly $300 million more in ATM and overdraft fees in 2016 than they did in 2015.

    The quoted text is from CNNMoney.

    How do Republicans react to this kind of data? They make sure that more money is squeezed from people who are struggling financially. Republicans are removing the small overdraft protections that are currently associated with prepaid debit cards.

    A lot of money is at stake. Because interest rates are so low, banks are relying more than ever on fees to cover the costs of holding onto customer cash. Overdraft fees made up 8 percent of banks’ net income last year, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates, or $11.2 billion.

    Some consumers have advised switching to credit unions for your banking needs.

  192. says

    Demeisen @183, true. An intractable situation.

    In other news, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said:

    Listen to this: no — repeat, no — use of military forces in immigration operations. None…. So again, I repeat, no use of military forces in immigration.

    I wonder why he felt the need to say that? (See comment 163.)

    Sean Spicer said Trump was using an “adjective.” To me, this is just one more instance of “Trump didn’t mean what he said.” All of Trump’s minions get miffed when journalists repeat what Trump said.

  193. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Louie Gohmert is a coward. He doesn’t have the courage to face his constituents. He doesn’t have the courage to face the facts about climate change. He doesn’t have the courage to admit the truth. He doesn’t have the courage to admit to the contradictions in his worldview. That’s why he’s a Republican.

  194. says

    The Nazi Spencer was kicked out CPAC while a CPAC leader “Blasts The alt-right”.

    So the GOP is finally ready to drop the alt-right now that they’ve used them to win the house, senate and Whitehouse which surprises absolutely nobody, except the idiot alt-righters who thought they had a voice. They will now be pushed back into their caves where they belong, while the GOP try to clean up their image in light of drastically declining poll numbers and outraged constituents.

    They’ll keep telling the lie that the alt-right were the racists and anti-semites all along, and that they alone have cleaned house (which means they’ll have to be coming for Bannon’s head at some point, unless they expect moderates and right leaning dems to believe he’s somehow reformed or was misunderstood or misrepresented.)

    Typical shifty politics by the Rethuglicans who will push this message until it sticks, then go about dismantling everything good the federal government does while continuing to cozy up to Russia and push their own racist, homophobic, misogynistic agenda.

    The alt-right is the new GOP scapegoat, thanks in no small part to Milo no less.

  195. says

    CNN is reporting that the FBI refused a request from the White House to disclaim recent Trump-Russia stories. Why the hell is the FBI communicating with them about ongoing investigations?

    “Law professors file misconduct complaint against Kellyanne Conway”:

    A group of law professors from around the country has filed a professional misconduct complaint against White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, a graduate of George Washington University Law School who was admitted to the D.C. Bar in 1995.

    The letter, filed with the office that handles misconduct by members of the D.C. Bar, said Conway should be sanctioned for violating government ethics rules and “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,” the letter says.

    …

    The letter was sent to the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the chief prosecutor for disciplinary matters that involve active or inactive attorneys who are members of the D.C. Bar. Conway is listed as a D.C. Bar member under her maiden name, Kellyanne E. Fitzpatrick, but is a suspended member for not paying her dues, according to the disciplinary filing.

    …

    Abbe Smith, a Georgetown Law Center professor and director of the Criminal Defense and Prisoner Advocacy Clinic, said she has never filed such a complaint before and generally does not believe that lawyers should routinely face discipline under the broad rule they cited, which includes conduct outside the practice of law.

    “But Ms. Conway’s conduct was so outside the norm for a member of the legal profession,” Smith said. “What prompted our complaint was a combination of the specific conduct that Ms. Conway engaged in plus the fact that she holds such a high public office.”

  198. says

    Trump said he wants to build up the U.S. nuclear arsenal to make it “top of the pack.”
    NBC News link

    A dream would be that no country would have nukes. But if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.

    The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.

    The first sentence is from an answer Trump gave to Reuters today. The second sentence above is from a tweet in December 2016.

  199. says

    Tearing down environmental protections … that’s a category of news I think we’ll see a lot during Trump’s disastrous reign. We can guess how this will go:

    […] Two lobbying groups representing auto manufacturers have written letters urging the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, to reverse a decision last month by the Obama administration to move forward with tougher fuel-economy standards that carmakers are supposed to meet by 2025. […]

    The Obama administration’s fuel-economy targets “threaten to depress an industry that can ill afford spiraling regulatory costs,” Mitch Bainwol, the chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, wrote in a letter on Tuesday. The group represents 12 manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. […]

    […] Environmentalists said the lobbying groups overstated the difficulty and cost of reaching the 2025 targets, which require an average fuel-economy rating of 54.5 miles per gallon across a company’s entire fleet sold in the United States. That number is based on a complicated formula, and automakers estimate it is the equivalent of about 40 miles per gallon in real-world driving.

    “An increasing number of cars achieve the goal now,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, an advocacy group.

    Vehicles already clearing that bar include hybrids like the Toyota Prius and electric cars — models that are drawing few buyers as gasoline sells for less than $3 a gallon. To comply with the 2025 targets, more popular models, like S.U.V.s, would need new technology, which could raise prices for consumers.

    Mr. Becker also said fuel-economy improvements in the last several years had not stopped automakers from earning record profits. “The industry is just trying to take advantage of Trump’s anti-regulation policies and put the health of people and the environment at risk,” he said. […]

    NY Times link

  200. says

    To return to this alleged Manafort attempted-blackmail story – since I’ve seen like a hundred people mention it today and I seem to be the only one with these suspicions – …from the Politico article on the subject:

    The Times story identified Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist who has built a reputation as an anti-corruption crusader, as a key player in revealing the documents [the “black ledger” in which Manafort is named as receiving under-the-table payments totaling $12.7 million from Yanukovych’s government]….

    Leshchenko held a news conference after the stories to highlight the documents, urging Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.

    “I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law — we have the proof from these books,” Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. “If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine,” Leshchenko added.

    Now here’s Manafort’s response to this week’s revelation of the purported blackmail texts:

    The screenshots of hacked texts sent to Manafort’s daughter do not include any information indicating the date on which they were sent.

    But Manafort said that the first of the texts arrived shortly before The New York Times published an August exposé revealing that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine had obtained documents — which have since come under scrutiny* — that appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments earmarked for Manafort.

    Manafort challenged the authenticity of the documents. And, while he said he could not be sure whether the texts apparently referencing them were in fact sent by Leshchenko, he said “I find it coincidental that I got these texts, and then he released these phony journals.”

    Which is more likely?:

    Paul Manafort received these blackmail notes, using his child, last year. He said nothing at the time, either before or after the ledger was made public, despite Leshchenko’s publicly demanding an investigation and being featured in global reporting, and despite an attempt to blackmail him via his child. In fact, he humbly resigned from the campaign. Then, when the texts mysteriously appear months later, he’s happy to confirm their existence, which coincidentally discredits the source of the inculpating ledger and the ledger itself, despite having them all along.

    Or

    (Some of) Manafort’s corrupt and illegal dealings with Yanukovych and other Putin operatives over several years were revealed in the ledger last summer. Leshchenko took the lead in making this public and calling for an investigation, which led Manafort to go dark – resigning as Trump’s campaign manager but continuing to be involved with the campaign while living at Trump Tower. Subsequently, the “Kremlin clan” mocked up these texts to discredit Leshchenko and the evidence against Manafort in case things go bad. Months later, after Trump’s election, investigations into the campaign and its dealings with Russia are picking up steam and the public is demanding answers. The bogus texts are released, in a turn favorable to Manafort-Yanukovych-Putin.

    Of course I have no way of knowing the latter is absolutely the case, but it seems more plausible to me than the former.

    * Not sure what they mean here, exactly.

  201. says

    Tweet o’ the day entry #3.

    It’s fascinating to me that their plan is to deconstruct (i.e., destroy) administrative government while demanding strong sovereignty. Like sovereignty is some abstract thing that requires no competent, functioning government agencies. In any case, Bannon has now made it clear that the plan is to demolish government from within, fully putting corporations in its place.

  204. says

    Followup to SC’s comment 184, an excerpt from the Atlantic article:

    The weeks leading up to the inauguration prepared me and my colleagues for what we thought would come, but not for what actually came. On Monday, January 23, I walked into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, with the new staffers there. Rather than the excitement I encountered when I first came to the White House under Obama, the new staff looked at me with a cold surprise. The diverse White House I had worked in became a monochromatic and male bastion.

    The days I spent in the Trump White House were strange, appalling and disturbing. As one staffer serving since the Reagan administration said, “This place has been turned upside down. It’s chaos. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.” This was not typical Republican leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism––legally questionable executive orders, accusations of the press being “fake,” peddling countless lies as “alternative facts,” and assertions by White House surrogates that the president’s national security authority would “not be questioned.”

    The entire presidential support structure of nonpartisan national security and legal experts within the White House complex and across federal agencies was being undermined. Decision-making authority was now centralized to a few in the West Wing. Frustration and mistrust developed as some staff felt out of the loop on issues within their purview. There was no structure or clear guidance. Hallways were eerily quiet as key positions and offices responsible for national security or engagement with Americans were left unfilled.

  205. microraptor says

    So I just found out that the state senator for my district has sponsored a bill to ban non-medical abortions in Oregon.

    Should I write him a letter expressing my disapproval over this or just have $10 worth of wire coat-hangers delivered to him?

  206. says

    Betsy Devos spoke at CPAC. She joked that school lunches should not be free.

    Followup to comment 199. Steve Bannon admits outright that, ““If you look at these Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.” He still has a top advisor spot in the Trump administration.

    […] The wholesale elimination of Federal agencies that ensure we receive such things as clean air, clean water, fair labor laws, fair housing standards, anti-discrimination laws, financial regulations, food and drug safety, national education standards and the like, has been a goal of far-right “thinkers” for decades.

    The rationale, propagated by corporate and industry-funded think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, has always been that that the existence of these “unelected” agencies represents a mortal threat to American “sovereignty and self-government.” This is exactly the line Bannon was peddling at CPAC today. It is delusional, right-wing garbage. […]

    Link

  208. says

    microraptor @203, both.

    Another look at the inappropriateness of the White House asking the FBI to refute stories about Russian contacts.

    CNN reported Thursday that the FBI and other federal agencies rejected the White House’s request to refute stories about contact between members of the Trump campaign and Russian nationals, including members of the Russian intelligence community.

    CNN’s report was based on multiple unnamed U.S. officials briefed on the matter.

    The New York Times and CNN reported last week that members of the Trump campaign and Russian nationals were in repeated contact during the campaign.

    Trump affiliates mentioned in the Times’ story all denied that they knowingly had untoward contact with Russians during the campaign. Roger Stone later denied any contact categorically.

    CNN reported that contact between the White House and FBI began on Feb. 15, the day after the stories were published. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus spoke about the story on the sidelines of a meeting about an unrelated matter, according to the network.

    The White House pushed back on CNN’s characterization of the exchange. McCabe apparently told Spicer that the reports were overstated, an unnamed White House official told CNN.

    [CNN has updated their story to reflect that an unnamed White House official later confirmed the network’s description of the exchange between McCabe and Priebus]

    The network reported that FBI Director James Comey refused to tamp down on the stories publicly, because the contacts between Trump campaign staff and Russians is the subject of an ongoing investigation.

    Talking Points Memo link

  209. says

    Lynna at 204 – If you go back to my 192, I think this is the beginning of the end for the alt-right and for Trump / Bannon. I really think the Koch brothers and Murdoch have it out for them and will use Fox to convince the base that it’s time for Trump to go, then do it. It might take a couple of months, but I think it will happen.

    Meanwhile we won’t be any better off as the GOP will position themselves as the saviors against fascism, steal the liberal’s thunder and go about dismantling government anyways, because ideologically, they still believe the same horseshit, they’re just smart enough to know there’s a sizeable portion of the conservative base that would prefer they go back to not being so open about it.

    However, I don’t think they will burn it to the ground, just the parts that don’t work well for them. Keep in mind, politicians have to maintain some leverage against the corporations to keep the money flowing in, otherwise they give up their power. Their only power is law making, so the smarte half of the GOP will keep enough federal power in place to keep milking the cow, they aren’t about to give the cow away.

  211. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re microraptor@203

    So I just found out that the state senator for my district has sponsored a bill to ban non-medical abortions in Oregon.

    how about a letter congratulating them for banning amateur procedures and requiring doctors to perform abortions as it is a medical procedure that requires appropriate safeguards. Thank them for making coat hanger abortions illegal (maybe include a bundle of wire coat hangers with the “now illegal” label attached) and how the law will advocate proper abortions.
    sigh
    I know the sarcasm would go way over their heads as they are outlawing abortions that aren’t mandated by medical concerns and are simply being requested by the woman for her personal reasons.
    phuuuuuuu

  213. says

    Rightwingers seem to hate the fact that abortion might be made easier when a pill can be taken in the earlier stages of a pregnancy. Don’t make it easy!

    This reminds me of the fear Republicans have that voting might be too easy. (See comment 185 for a particularly blatant and recent example from Montana.) Oh, no, more people might vote! What a catastrophe!

    It’s a campaign against people exercising their rights. You would think that the repetition of “freedom” in most rightwing rants would make them question all of the restrictions.

    Now they’re looking for ways to restrict protests and the rights of protestors.

  214. says

    “White House effort to justify travel ban causes growing concern for some intelligence officials”:

    President Donald Trump has assigned the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Justice Department, to help build the legal case for its temporary travel ban on individuals from seven countries, a senior White House official tells CNN.

    Other Trump administration sources tell CNN that this is an assignment that has caused concern among some administration intelligence officials, who see the White House charge as the politicization of intelligence — the notion of a conclusion in search of evidence to support it after being blocked by the courts. Still others in the intelligence community disagree with the conclusion and are finding their work disparaged by their own department.

    …

    The report was requested in light of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the Trump administration “has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.” The seven counties are Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

    The senior White House official said the desire to bolster the legal and public case that these seven countries pose a threat is a work in progress and as of now, it’s not clear if DHS and DOJ will offer separate reports or a joint report.

    …

    The senior White House official told CNN that the Ninth Circuit’s language that no one from those seven countries has “perpetrated a terrorist attack” or Nadler’s comment that none had “committed terrorist acts” is false.

    “It’s using the most narrow definition of the term you can use,” the official said — referring only to those who had successful killed an innocent civilian. That definition does not include those who wounded Americans, or those who plotted but failed in their attacks, or those who tried to join or provide material support to a terrorist group. Information will soon be presented to the public that makes this stronger case using the broader definition….

    This is stupid and backwards and misguided and dangerous on so many levels. But it’s also just ridiculous. The courts aren’t the media or the public – they don’t lose interest at the end of a news cycle. There’s evidence for why these countries were chosen in the attempt to make a Muslim ban look legalish. It exists, and will continue to exist if a new order is drafted. Even if they could find some transparent retroactive justification – and I’ll note that a broader definition of terrorist attacks would then also apply to all countries, ffs – it wouldn’t make their already demonstrated intent magically disappear.

  215. microraptor says

    Actually, I think I’m going to write him a letter congratulating him on having solved so many of Oregon’s issues that he feels like he can sponsor a bill that so obviously won’t succeed in making it into law because there are just no better uses of his time.

  216. says

    @212 – The only way their argument works here is IF, and that’s a huge fucking IF, they could show that they foiled a great number of attacks from those 7 countries specifically, that might lend some some non-religiously based credence to the choice of those seven countries, but they can’t. I guarantee they can’t, or they would have a long time ago.

  218. says

    followup to my 214 –

    The theory goes like this; If there had been “extreme vetting” prior to 911, we could have prevented those attacks, therefore we need “Extreme Vetting”. That’s what they think. It’s circular logic, no different than “The bible is true because it says so.”.

    Problem is, they are wrong about their base assumption. “Extreme Vetting”, or the lack there of is not would have stopped the 20 who perpetrated 911. The problem was a lack of interagency communication. We knew who they were, and by we I mean collectively, the FBI, the CIA and the NSA all had different data on them, that when looked at individually, didn’t amount to much, but when looked at collectively, painted a clear picture.

    So that was actually the major sea change in intelligence after 911. It was the sharing of data inter-agency that made it a lot easier to stop the bad guys either at the gate or before they did something bad, and they became VERY VERY good at that.

    This is what has largely protected the US for the past decade or so. I’m sure they have foiled lots of plots, but in the process, they have also collected a lot of data about americans and foreign officials and made a lot of connections that wouldn’t have been made without that sharing of intelligence and the broad expansion of the powers of these agencies to collect that data in the first place.

    This is the problem with these idiot republicans who think the wolf is at the gate. They don’t realize that they gave up the rights years ago that they needed to in order to keep the wolf outside the gate, but now they think that even more rights, from more people have to be sacrificed. This is the part they don’t have evidence for. This is the core of the argument.

    Yes, the wolf was at the gate, 15 years ago. The wolf is gone. The wolf is eating elsewhere. The question is, are you going to watch him eat because he isn’t eating you? Or are you going to go kill the fucking wolf?

    Sorry, got deep there. Putting the bong down but posting anyways for posterity.

  219. says

    Sorry, in re-reading my dramatic sign off I realize how that could sound. The Wolf in my metaphor is not muslims. That’s the republican Wolf, not the real Wolf. It’s not Catholics or religion period for that matter. In my mind, the Wolf represents anybody who seeks power at the expense of innocent lives.

  220. raven says

    BuzzFeed News
    See realtime coverage
    A Kansas Man Allegedly Shot Three People After Yelling “Get Out Of My Country”
    BuzzFeed News – ‎4 hours ago‎
    The gunman said he believed the men he shot were Middle Eastern, police said, but the victims were Indian engineers who worked at Garmin.

    I’m speechless and this isn’t even a verbal media.
    I’m sure we are going to see more mob violence against anyone who doesn’t look like a white inbred moron who voted for Trump.

  221. raven says

    I saw above that Jeff Sessions and Trump are rattling on about going after marijuana, a drug legal in one way or another where 60% of the US population lives.
    Haven’t they ever heard of Prohibition?

    Won’t effect me. Marijuana just isn’t my thing.
    It’s going to effect a few of my friends though.
    They are medical marijuana patients who are quite sick with serious chronic medical problems. It’s about the only thing that helps them get through the day sometimes.

    Cthulhu, these are callous, unfeeling evil people.

  222. militantagnostic says

    @218
    2 of the victims were East Indian – one of them has died. The third person was shot when he tried to intervene.

    “It’s not about where he (victim) was from or his ethnicity,” Grillot said. “We’re all humans, so I just did what was right to do.”

  224. says

    I was wondering about this…

    “The Travel Press is Reporting the ‘Trump Slump,’ a Devastating Drop in Tourism to the United States”:

    Though they may differ as to the wisdom of the move, the travel press and most travel experts are of one mind: They are currently drawing attention to an unintended consequence of the Trump-led efforts to stop many Muslims from coming to the U.S., pointing to a sharp drop in foreign tourism to our nation that imperils jobs and touristic income.

    It’s known as the “Trump Slump.” And I know of no reputable travel publication to deny it.

    Thus, the prestigious Travel Weekly magazine (as close to an “official” travel publication as they come) has set the decline in foreign tourism at 6.8%. And the fall-off is not limited to Muslim travelers, but also extends to all incoming foreign tourists. Apparently, an attack on one group of tourists is regarded as an assault on all.

    …

    A drop of that magnitude, if continued, would reduce the value of foreign travel within the U.S. by billions of dollars. And the number of jobs supported by foreign tourists and their expenditures in the United States—and thus lost—would easily exceed hundreds of thousands of workers in hotels, restaurants, transportation, stores, tour operations, travel agencies, and the like….

  225. says

    Sean Spicer said Trump was using an “adjective.” [when referring to a “military operation”]

    Conway:

    It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist in a classic sense because it seems to me to be very anti-male and it seems to me to be very pro-abortion.

    Both smacked down by the dictionary.

  226. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Poll showing strong support for keeping federal money in funding increased medicaid coverage under the ACA. 80%!

    Add Medicaid expansion to the list of health care provisions that Americans want to keep. A new poll finds that 8 in 10 say lawmakers should preserve federal funding that has allowed states to add coverage for some 11 million low-income people.

    The survey released Friday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation comes as the nation’s governors gather in Washington for their annual winter meeting, with Medicaid much on their minds. President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress want to repeal the 2010 health care law that expanded the program under former President Barack Obama.

    Many congressional Republicans also want to rewrite the basic financial contract for Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program covering low-income and disabled people. Republicans are proposing to limit future federal funding in exchange for allowing states much more leeway to run their programs. The poll raises new questions about both ideas.

    The survey found strong support across party lines for keeping the Medicaid expansion funding, with 69 percent of Republicans saying lawmakers should continue to provide the money, along with 84 percent of independents and 95 percent of Democrats. Overall, 84 percent of Americans said it’s important that any replacement for the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, continue to fund Medicaid expansion.

  228. blf says

    (Cross-posted from No spin poll, with minor modifications…)

    In today’s dead-tree edition of the INYT (ex-IHT), With Big Red Stamp, Russia Singles Out What It Calls Fake News:

    Russia’s Foreign Ministry got into the fake news business in a splashy way on Wednesday.

    No, not by creating it. That dark art seems to emanate from other, even more opaque branches of the Russian government.

    Rather, Maria V. Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the ministry, unveiled a new section on its website meant to highlight articles that it considers to be fake news, including one [Russia Deploys Missile, Violating Treaty and Challenging Trump] by The New York Times.

    Just in case anybody missed the point, each article on the Foreign Ministry website carried a big red label reading FAKE in English and a line saying that the information in the article does not correspond to reality.

    […] The Foreign Ministry’s new venture in singling out fake news seemed to fit a pattern identified by many analysts of creating alternative realities meant to sow confusion in people’s minds, in that way discrediting all news sources.

    It was hard for some critics to take the ministry’s fake news detector seriously, and some suggested that inclusion there was something of a badge of honor, an indication that the article had hit close to home.

    The Foreign Ministry has become a propaganda wing serving the Kremlin rather than a diplomatic service that establishes foreign policy, said Alexei A. Venediktov, the longtime editor of the respected Echo of Moscow radio station.

    “You shouldn’t worry at all,” he said, but should instead consider being singled out by the Foreign Ministry to be an honor “like a medal.”

    […] The spokeswoman emphasized that the Foreign Ministry would consider the news fake when it failed to include Russian reaction or the Russian position on the issue. […]

    Badge of Honour indeed!

    As the article goes on to note, “There is a rather distinct gap between what Russia is accused of disseminating and what it labeled fake news. […] Seemingly borrowing a practice from President Trump, Russia appears to be labeling as fake any articles it dislikes.”

  231. Ogvorbis: A bear of very little brains. says

    I suspect (which automatically makes this comment suspect) that private, for-profit insurance companies are scared shitless at what would happen to their market if anyone could sign up for Medicaid — low overhead, no need for profit, low rates. They claim that government is inefficient, that competition is good, but they are really afraid of it — especially with the efficiency of government health care.

  232. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Ogvorbis #229. One complaint about the ACA is the lack of competition in certain states. If only 2 providers or less offer policies on the exchange, the government should be able to put out a public option, either buying into medicaid or medicare for all. I’ll bet there will suddenly be a lot of choices.

  234. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 230 (sortof)
    Really, How dare the Feds force everyone to have health insurance. Gov shouldn’t care if we get medical services. Thanks NRA, for supplying health services with a never ending supply of customers who must pay full price in paper cash, and not those ephemeral electronic numbers over the interwebs between banks. ACA is a scurge (from the devil Obama) forcing people to invest in health, how dare they????
    /SARCASM obviously
    *clears phlegm*

    I am in serious fear of ACA repeal with replace of “next year we’ll think of something”

    ?

  235. says

    “Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation may have finally gone too far”:

    …In requesting a statement from the FBI that there were no contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives, Priebus was essentially demanding that the FBI publicly announce that an ongoing investigation was closed.

    Depending on the exact nature of Priebus’ conversations and contacts, this could constitute attempted obstruction of justice under federal law, Larry Tribe, a law professor at Harvard University, told ThinkProgress.

    “[I]t could well be attempted obstruction of justice, and it’s certainly so unethical that it would be a firing offense for a chief of staff in any White House that respects the rule of law,” Tribe said.

    Federal law prohibits any communication that “endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice.”

    The basic facts, that Priebus contacted the FBI and asked them to issue favorable public comments exonerating the Trump campaign do not appear to be in dispute.

    “We didn’t try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said.

    …

    Whether or not Priebus’ communications violated federal statutes, they appeared to almost certainly violate Department of Justice rules on communications between the White House and the Department of Justice regarding ongoing investigations.

    …

    Priebus’ contacts have made clear that the White House has politicized this investigation and has sought to use the FBI — and by extension, the Justice Department — as a public relations vehicle. Whether or not their efforts crossed legal lines, it has undoubtably cast doubt on the ability of the Department of Justice to independently assess the results of the investigation.

    Sessions is, after all, one of Trump’s top political advisers. He also served in that capacity during the campaign, which is the subject of the FBI inquiry.

    Priebus’ contacts with the FBI is “clear evidence that Sessions needs to appoint a respected special prosecutor to head this investigation,” Tribe said.

  236. Saad says

    From SC’s, #233

    “Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation may have finally gone too far”

    LOL, I love these naive headlines. So adorable.

  238. says

    Trump is speaking at CPAC. Here’s an excerpt:

    We also inherited a failed health care law that threatens our medical system with absolute and total catastrophe. Now I’ve been watching and nobody says it but Obamacare doesn’t work, folks. I could say, I could talk. And now people are starting to develop a little — but the people that you’re watching, they’re not you. They’re largely, many of them are the side that lost. They lost the election. It’s like how many elections do we have to have? They lost the election. But I always say Obamacare doesn’t work and these same people two years ago and a year ago were complaining about Obamacare.

  239. says

    Trump’s tweet rage from early this morning:

    The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security “leakers” that have permeated our government for a long time. They can’t even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW

    Part of the White House response to the CNN story about the FBI and other agencies refusing requests to push back against the Russian connection stories came from Sean Spicer:

    We didn’t try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth.

    What truth, Sean? Yours? Trump’s “truth”? Kellyanne Conway’s “truth”? Reince Priebus’ “truth”? Laughable.

    Also, what don’t they get about the fact that it is inappropriate for any Trump administration personnel to ask the FBI to make statements to the press about ongoing investigations?

    As for the “leakers,” it is possible that leaks are coming from congressional committees, staffers, the White House itself, or whistle blowers within government agencies.

  240. says

    More excerpts from Trump’s speech at CPAC:

    A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people.

    Because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none. I saw one story recently where they said nine people have confirmed. There are no nine people. I don’t believe there was one or two people. Nine people. And I said, ‘give me a break,’ because I know the people. I know who they talked to. […]

    In fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people, the fake news. They dropped off the word fake. And all of a sudden the story became the media is the enemy. They take the word fake out. And now I’m saying, oh, no, this is no good. But that’s the way they are. So I’m not against the media, I’m not against the press. I don’t mind bad stories if I deserve them, and I tell you, I love good stories but we won’t talk – I don’t get too many of them.

    But I am only against the fake news media or press. Fake. Fake. They have to leave that word. I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources. They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there. Let their name be put out. A source says that Donald Trump is a horrible, horrible human being. Let them say it to my face. Let there be no more sources.

    So just in finishing, I say it doesn’t represent the people, it never will represent the people and we’re going to do something about it because we have to go out and we have to speak our minds and we have to be honest.

    Ah, yes, name your source, Reince Priebus. Reince Priebus referred to intelligence officials (nameless sources) when he said the original New York Times story about the campaign’s contacts with Russians was “grossly overstated.”

    PRIEBUS: I can assure you, and I’ve been approved to say this, that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured that that story [from the New York Times] is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated, and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it. And so, if I can say that to the American people, then what does it say about the story? […]

    PRIEBUS: They’ve told me— Absolutely. They have made it very clear that that story in the New York Times is complete garbage. And quite frankly, they used different words than that.

    WALLACE: Who is it that said that?

    PRIEBUS: I’m not going to tell you.

    WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, Reince. You just complained about unnamed sources, you’re using an unnamed source.

    PRIEBUS: Well, because I didn’t ask for approval to use their name, but I will tell you this. When I say ‘top level people,’ I mean top level people.

    PRIEBUS: We don’t know of any contacts with Russian agents. And that gets to that New York Times story, Chuck. I mean we’ve spent days talking about a story that says that our campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies. And I can tell you, I’ve talked to the top levels of the intelligence community. And they’ve assured me that that New York Times story was grossly overstated, and inaccurate and totally wrong.

    I know what the intelligence committees in the House and the Senate were told by the FBI, and I know what I was told. And what I will tell you is that story was total baloney. And in fact, Devin Nunes, who is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, went on the record after he was informed by the FBI as to that story. And what did he say? He said it was total garbage. […]

  241. raven says

    Ogvorbis:
    They claim that government is inefficient, that competition is good, but they are really afraid of it — especially with the efficiency of government health care.

    This is correct.

    One of the characteristics of our form of capitalism is the search for market and pricing power.
    Huge amounts of money are made by rent seeking, monopolies, cartels, oligopolies and so on.
    The government is the 800 lb gorilla for getting pricing power by setting laws and rule.
    There is no such thing as the free market. Their may be freer or less free markets.

  243. says

    “Report: High-ranking Trump official has extensive ties to European neo-fascists”:

    A deputy assistant to President Donald Trump has spent years working closely with members of Hungary’s anti-Semitic hard right, according to a Friday report from The Forward, a publication for American Jews. The report says Sebastian Gorka, who advises the White House on national security, co-founded a political party with former members of Jobbik, which is frequently described as a fascist party.

    Gorka — who once said it would be “national suicide” to admit Muslim refugees — also spent time working for the Hungarian National Committee, a Jobbik-linked coalition led in part by the head of the ultra-nationalist 64 Counties Youth Movement, according to The Forward.

    Although Jobbik has tried to soften its image in recent years, party leaders have called for a registry of all Jewish government officials and indulged in nostalgia for the reign of Regent Miklós Horthy, a Nazi collaborator. The Forward reports Magyar Jelen, the official paper of the 64 Counties Movement, has said that Hungarians “need to take back our country” from the Jews, who are “sucking on our blood, getting rich off our blood.”…

  244. blf says

    Whilst this isn’t anywheres near as bad as the recent Russian law decriminalising some domestic violence, I’m tempted to suspect this misogynist nutter would really like such a law in the UK, Tory MP in 90-minute attempt to talk out domestic violence bill:

    Self-styled champion of men’s rights Philip Davies introduced 47 proposed new clauses in a failed attempt at Commons filibuster

    A Conservative MP with a reputation for targeting bills protecting women’s rights has broken his own record by talking for more than 90 minutes in an attempt to derail a measure demanding the government ratify a treaty [the Istanbul convention] on domestic violence.

    [… H]e failed in his attempt to talk out the bill, a procedure known as filibustering. It was eventually passed by 138 votes to one.

    The Istanbul convention, created by the Council of Europe, is aimed at preventing violence against women and domestic violence, and has been signed by almost 40 countries.

    Davies, who styles himself a champion of men’s rights, proposed amendments including that the convention be deemed, across the United Kingdom, to apply equally to men and women.

    The Istanbul convention “is based on the understanding that violence against women is a form of gender-based violence that is committed against women because they are women. […] The convention leaves no doubt: there can be no real equality between women and men if women experience gender-based violence on a large-scale and state agencies and institutions turn a blind eye.

    “Because it is not only women and girls who suffer domestic violence, parties to the convention are encouraged to apply the protective framework it creates to men who are exposed to violence within the family or domestic unit. Nevertheless, it should not be overlooked that the majority of victims of domestic violence are women and that domestic violence against them is part of a wider pattern of discrimination and inequality.”

    Back to the Grauniad’s article:

    Other amendments, many of which were also proposed by another Tory MP, David Nuttall, suggested the ratification should lapse if it did not reduce violence against women, and that the UK be exempt from any scrutiny or monitoring on the issue.

    […]

    Davies […] in December spoke for more than an hour in the Commons to try to derail a bill to protect women against violence […]

  245. blf says

    Retired navy admiral urges media to challenge Trump’s attacks (video): “Retired Navy admiral William McRaven has said Donald Trump’s description of the media as the enemy of the American people ‘may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime’. He told journalism students at the University of Texas the US has ‘the finest press in the world bar none’ and urged them to challenge Trump’s statement at every opportunity.”

    And from Trump attack on press is ‘biggest threat to democracy’ says ex-Navy Seal chief:

    To the president they are ‘the enemy’ but William McRaven, an architect of the Bin Laden raid, called the media the republic’s ‘single most important institution’

    A retired Navy Seal who was an architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden has warned that Donald Trump’s attack on the press as an enemy of the American people “may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime”.

    Retired admiral William McRaven, the former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command and later the US Special Operations Command, issued his defense of the media during a Tuesday late-afternoon lecture to journalism students at the University of Texas, where he serves as chancellor.

    McRaven, himself a journalism graduate of the school, referred to the press as “the single most important institution in this republic” and said: “This may be the most important time for journalism that I have seen in decades. Probably we need you now more than ever before.”

    […]

    McRaven, who has largely stayed out of US politics since retiring from the navy in 2014, holds tremendous prestige in US defense circles.

    […]

    McRaven encouraged journalists to “go to where the questions are” and “root out the answers. You really have to hold people accountable.” […]

    Challenging the sentiment of a disloyal press, McRaven implored the students, “you have to get the facts right.” He recalled his old journalism professors being “all over me” if he turned in an insufficiently sourced article and warned students to “be careful about your bias”.

    […]

    After discussing public disbelief in reported facts during the question-and-answer period, an audience member asked McRaven: “What if your commander-in-chief doesn’t believe in the facts?”

    McRaven said, “I’m not going to touch that,” prompting laughter. He continued: “But again, I think this is a function of reinforcing the facts, again, from the left and from the right.”

  246. says

    Trump is on CNN right now signing and executive order on de-regulation of corporations, surrounded by corporate ceo’s.

    The fox is in the henhouse indeed.

    Why do republicans think that higher profits automatically means more jobs? It doesn’t! Higher profits means higher profits! They hire exactly as many employees as they need, that’s it.

  247. says

    Wonkette covered Steve Bannon’s remarks at CPAC.

    Steve Bannon, […] who serves as Donald Trump’s president chief strategist and brain surrogate, thrilled the audience at CPAC with lots of nationalist red meat Thursday, explaining the Trump administration will save America from all its enemies, who are mostly other Americans like the media and our own government.

    He appeared with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus to prove they’re actually really great pals; Yr Wonkette is unable to confirm rumors that after the joint appearance, the two were returned to their usual place in the ninth circle of Hell, where they are eternally locked in ice with Bannon gnawing on Priebus’s head. […]

    Bannon promised the CPAC crowd the Trump administration would fight forever for the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” drawing scattered boos from fans of Jacques Derrida who insisted he was using the terminology all wrong. But don’t worry, he was merely confirming what many have suspected, namely that he and Trump picked their cabinet appointees based on their abilities to destroy the departments they were chosen to run. […]

    He also railed against the “corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has,” and even managed to say “nationalist” without leaping to his feet and shouting, “Mein fuhrer, I can valk!”

    He also explained that every single news source that isn’t Donald Trump’s Twitter stream has gotten it wrong all along […]

    Pay no attention to the clusterfuck behind the curtain. There’s no confusion, and there is no chaos […] And would you liberal media elitists please stop suggesting there’s anything strange about the fact that, of 549 positions requiring Senate confirmation, the Trumpers have yet to even name any candidates for 515 jobs? […]

    If nothing else, Bannon proved that his relationship to reality is entirely as non-monogamous as Donald Trump’s, praising the “president’s” speeches for having “a tremendous amount of content,” which is quite possibly true, if you’re going by word count (the number of uses of “very” is in the millions alone) and baseless assertions. Those are definitely “content,” of a sort.

    He then went on to hail Trump as “the greatest public speaker … since William Jennings Bryan,” which really may qualify Bannon as a postmodernist after all, or at least L’ecriture from the Black Lagoon. […]

    Also, we must give credit to New York magazine for what may be the most trenchant observation on Bannon’s CPAC interview: “Steve Bannon Wore Both His Collared Shirts to CPAC,” in which they noted:

    Bannon appeared at the event wearing a t-shirt, two collared shirts and a blazer. The wardrobe change was so noticeable that Bannon’s buddy comedy co-star Reince Priebus called attention to it during the panel. “I love how many collars he wears,” Priebus quipped in response to a question about what he likes about Bannon. “It’s an interesting look.” […]

  249. blf says

    Mexico tells US it will refuse deportees from other countries:

    Interior secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong says ‘there is no chance’ it will accept deported immigrants […]

    The Mexican government made clear to visiting US emissaries that it will not accept deportees from third countries under any circumstances[…].

    […]

    Osorio Chong also said on Friday that if the US government tries to pressure Mexico by threatening to withdraw funding from the nearly $2.5bn Mérida Initiative to fight organized crime, Mexico will let that money go.

    The initiative that was started in 2008 is winding down […]

    And Mexicans fear Trump deportation plan will lead to refugee camps along border:

    […]
    The only consensus so far in Mexico about the new policies of Donald Trump is that the country is not remotely prepared.

    “Not in any way, shape or form,” said the Rev Patrick Murphy, a priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in the border city of Tijuana, which currently houses about 55 Haitian immigrants. They were part of wave of thousands who rushed to the border in the closing months of the Obama administration in hope of getting asylum in the US.

    Tijuana was overwhelmed, and while the government did little, a string of private Christian groups pitched in to open shelters with improvised bedding, tents and sanitary facilities. Donated food kept the Haitians going.

    Mexicans quake at the thought of handling not thousands but hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a border region already struggling with drug gangs and violence.

    “Just look at the case of the Haitians in Tijuana — what were they, seven or eight thousand? And the situation was just out of control,” said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst. “Now imagine a situation 10 or 15 times that size. There aren’t enough resources to maintain them.”

    […]

    Hope said the new US policy could create an “explosive situation”, noting that some anti-foreigner sentiment already exists in Mexico’s northern border region and that Central American migrants have been recruited, sometimes by force, into drug gangs like the Zetas and the Gulf cartel.
    […]

  250. says

    Trump at CPAC:

    By the way, take a look at what’s happening in Europe, folks, take a look at what’s happening in Europe. I took a lot of heat on Sweden.

    (LAUGHTER)

    And then a day later, I said has anybody reported what’s going on? And it turned out that they didn’t — not too many of them did. Take a look at what happened in Sweden. I love Sweden, great country, great people, I love Sweden. But they understand. The people over there understand I’m right. Take a look at what’s happening in Sweden. Take a look at what’s happening in Germany. Take a look at what’s happened in France. Take a look at Nice and Paris.

    I have a friend, he’s a very, very substantial guy. He loves the city of lights, he loves Paris. For years, every year during the summer, he would go to Paris, was automatic with his wife and his family. Hadn’t seen him in a while. And I said, Jim, let me ask you a question, how’s Paris doing? “Paris? I don’t go there anymore, Paris is no longer Paris.” That was four years — four or five years hasn’t gone there. He wouldn’t miss it for anything. Now he doesn’t even think in terms of going there.

    Take a look at what’s happening to our world, folks. And we have to be smart. We have to be smart. We can’t let it happen to us.

    Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo responds. (Hidalgo long ago let her opinion of Trump be known.)

  251. says

    An excerpt from CPAC:

    TRUMP: The forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer…. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.

    AUDIENCE: Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!

    The extent to which Trump is stuck in campaign mode gets more alarming as he hangs onto old grievances for a longer and longer period of time. Also, the way he triggers “Lock her up!” chants looks cult-like to me.

    Trump even talked about Bernie Sanders and super delegates. Does he even know what month it is, that he is President, and that other issues need his attention? Not that he has any coherent, sustained attention to give.

    Here’s a campaign-style lie that Trump told at CPAC:

    By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK. But there are lines that go back six blocks.

    Trump was just informing the audience about his latest fantasy. That was a lie. No six-block long line existed.

    Another lie:

    Obamacare covers very few people.

    Another lie:

    We’re building the wall. In fact, it’s going to start soon. Way ahead of schedule, way ahead of schedule. Way, way, way ahead of schedule.

    Nope. Not true. There is no schedule for him to claim to be ahead of.

  252. blf says

    More misogynists, this time in India, India film censors ban movie for being lady oriented (the Grauniad’s edits in {curly braces}):

    Alankrita Shrivastava, the director of Lipstick Under My Burkha, calls Central Board of Film Certification’s decision ‘an anachronism’

    An award-winning Indian film with a feminist slant has been refused a certificate by the Indian censors.

    In a letter to the producers of Lipstick Under My Burkha, the Central Board of Film Certification denied the film a certificate because the story is lady oriented{…} there are sexual scenes, abusive words, audio pornography[†] and a bit sensitive touch {sic} about one particular section of society.

    […]

    Directed by Alankrita Shrivastava, Lipstick Under My Burkha describes itself as a story about “four feisty women in small-town India {who} try to chase their little dreams and desires through secret acts of rebellion”, and has won awards at the Tokyo and Mumbai film festivals.

    […]

    Here is a trailer for the film (English subtitles).

      † The Indian Express (Lipstick Under My Burkha denied certification: Censor board, we are grown ups. When will you?) explains that audio pornography is “commonly known as phone sex”.

  254. blf says

    Whilst it’s true I’m one of those people who is not too keen on Paris, hair furor’s comments (@248) has so ticked me off I’ve just started toying with the idea of paying a visit. Sweden too (a place I’ve never been), albeit since I’m already in France, visiting Paris (especially about-ish now-ish during the low-ish season) is more straightforward (thank you, TGV !)…

  255. Saad says

    TRUMP: The forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer…. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.

    AUDIENCE: Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!

    Wow. They’re cheering him on as he and his scumbag cronies are fucking them over.

    Is there a name for this fascinating phenomenon?

  256. Saad says

    Dammit.

    TRUMP: The forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer…. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.

    AUDIENCE: Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!

    Wow. They’re cheering him on as he and his scumbag cronies are fucking them over.

    Is there a name for this fascinating phenomenon?

  257. says

    Hope said the new US policy could create an “explosive situation”, noting that some anti-foreigner sentiment already exists in Mexico’s northern border region and that Central American migrants have been recruited, sometimes by force, into drug gangs like the Zetas and the Gulf cartel.

    So, Trump’s immigration policies will strengthen drug cartels, and they will increase crime. Way to go, King of Unintended Consequences. Way to fail at analysis and at long-term thinking (well … at thinking).

  258. blf says

    Several snarks in No Richard Spencer, Depeche Mode are not the official band of the alt-right:

    […]
    The neo[sic]-Nazi Richard Spencer is mostly famous for being punched in the face live on TV, but he bought himself to a whole new audience […] by declaring, just before being thrown out of the Conservative Political Action conference, that Depeche Mode are the official band of the alt-right.

    […]

    Is there any case at all to be made from Depeche Mode’s lyrics that they could support the far right? Well, they did go through a phase of doing quite a few songs that seemed to be about having sex in Berlin wearing kinky boots, which you imagine might appeal to the neo-Nazi mindset.

    […] And the band were always at pains in interviews to suggest that the lyrics of single Master And Servant weren’t about sadomasochistic sex at all, but about domination of all kinds, which sounds a little bit fascist.

    Perhaps they even pre-empted our #FakeNews problems when, on the 1990 Violator album, they sang that a policy of telling the truth only causes your problems to multiply. With Sean Spicer’s recent White House press briefings, we are certainly witnessing a policy of post-truth.

    […]

    But seriously, how could any self-respecting white supremacist really claim the support of a group who in 1986 released an entire album called Black Celebration? Or one who had a massive international hit with an anthem dedicated to the practice of no-platforming racists — Enjoy the Silence.

    […]

  260. says

    Josh Marshall made some good points about how and when it is appropriate to use anonymous sources. See the longer article at the link for more details.

    Excerpt:

    […] anonymity is critical for almost all real investigative journalism. There’s no reporter who has ever done any serious investigative journalism who would not agree with this. Anonymity, while certainly something that can be abused, is the critical tool in upending the dominance which the powerful have over the public in the control of and access to information.

    It’s really as simple as that. Of course, Donald Trump doesn’t like that. But it should remind us why anonymous sourcing is a great safeguard of journalism and free society generally.

  262. blf says

    The Grauniad is now reporting White House confirms chief of staff discussed Trump and Russia with FBI:

    Reince Priebus, FBI director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe had a conversation which appears to violate justice department rules

    The White House has confirmed that its chief of staff spoke with top FBI officials about the bureau’s inquiry into links between Donald Trump’s associates and Russia — a conversation which appears to violate justice department rules to ensure the integrity of investigations.

    The administration had sought to push back against reports from CNN and the Associated Press that the chief of staff, Reince Priebus, had asked the FBI’s top two officials to r [sic] rebut news reports about Trump allies’ ties to Russia.

    But in doing so, the White House on Friday acknowledged that Priebus, the FBI director, James Comey, and deputy director, Andrew McCabe, had discussed what the FBI knew about Russian ties to the Trump presidential campaign.

    “The White House appears to have violated accepted protocols and procedures,” said former FBI special agent Ali Soufan.

    […]

    Another retired FBI special agent, Michael German, said the FBI leadership had potentially jeopardized an investigation.

    “It is illegal for an FBI employee to take information from an ongoing criminal investigation and share it with a potential witness or subject of that investigation. Obviously, if the justice department ultimately initiates a prosecution in this matter, this purported conversation would be exculpating evidence. Again, if it is true that high bureau officials believe the current FBI investigation is {bullshit}, they should close the investigation and be prepared to justify this decision, not leak their opinion to anyone outside of the investigation”, German said.

    Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee — which is also investigating Trump’s ties to Russia — called on Comey to explain the communications.

    […]

    “If, as Priebus claimed, the FBI not only discussed this issue with the White House but coordinated the White House’s public statements, the American people would also have reason to doubt the impartiality both of the bureau and the Department of Justice to which the FBI is responsible. These claims deserve further investigation.”

    […]

    Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, said Priebus “has committed an outrageous breach of the FBI’s independence” and “tainted the integrity of the FBI”.

    The article also mentions “Trump again attacked what he called fake news and said news organizations shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. (This was apparently bellowed at CPac.)

  263. says

    The executive editor of the Washington Post, Marty Baron, responded to Trump’s stupid claims about “fake news.”

    Everything we published regarding Gen. Flynn was true, as confirmed by subsequent events and on-the-record statements from administration officials themselves. The story led directly to the general’s dismissal as national security adviser. Calling press reports fake doesn’t make them so.

  264. Ogvorbis: A bear of very little brains. says

    from blf’s quote @261:

    the American people would also have reason to doubt the impartiality both of the bureau and the Department of Justice to which the FBI is responsible.

    Given how the investigations of Clinton were handled, as well as the known contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian individuals during the campaign, there has been reason to doubt the FBI’s impartiality for a long time. The emails on the computer of a friend? Tell congress and let it leak. A Presidential campaign in frequent contact with Russians? Silence.

  265. says

    CNN is now reporting it: they, the NYT, the LA Times, and Politico have been denied entry to the press briefing, while Breitbart and other sycophantic garbage outlets are allowed in. I think someone just said others were refusing to go in, and I hope that’s true.

  266. says

    blf @260, here is what Trump said at CPAC:

    A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none. I saw one story recently where they said nine people have confirmed. There are no nine people. I don’t believe there was one or two people. Nine people. And I said, ‘give me a break,’ because I know the people. I know who they talked to.

    That is just part of a ten-minute rant about “fake news” and how “dishonest” the media is. Trump claimed that people who own certain media outlets also have an anti-Trump agenda.

  268. says

    SC @263, I am so alarmed. Seeing the NYT, LA Times, Politico and others banned from press briefings is such a fascistic move that I can hardly believe I’m seeing it happen in the USA. The press needs to stand together.

  270. says

    Followup to 263 and 266.

    […] Spicer decided to hold an off-camera “gaggle” with reporters inside his West Wing office instead of the traditional on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.

    Among the outlets not permitted to cover the gaggle were news organizations that President Trump has singled out for criticism, including CNN.

    The New York Times, The Hill, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News were among the other news organizations not permitted to attend.

    Several right-leaning outlets were allowed into Spicer’s office, including Breitbart, the Washington Times and One America News Network.

    A number of major news organizations were also let in to cover the gaggle. That group included ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters and Bloomberg.

    The White House Correspondents’ Association sharply criticized the decision.

    The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House.

    We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not. The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.

    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/321049-white-house-hand-picks-select-media-for-briefing

  271. says

    Aiyiyiyiy.

    A leaked draft copy of House Republicans’ plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was published Friday by Politico. While the language isn’t final, it’s a sweeping plan that would dismantle many foundational parts of Obamacare, including Medicaid expansion and many of the taxes that currently fund the health care law.

    And as promised by House Speaker Paul Ryan, the ACA repeal bill also defunds Planned Parenthood. It would strip the organization of hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicaid reimbursements, which make up the majority of the organization’s federal funding.

    But the draft bill goes even further than that. It threatens to dismantle the entire private insurance market for abortion coverage, not just public funding. […]

    Vox link

  273. blf says

    In the New York Daily News reporting on the Wacko House’s gaggle-ban, White House bars multiple outlets from receiving press briefing after Trump threatens to do something about the media:

    […]
    It seems to be a calculated decision, possibly aimed at getting reporters to focus on inside-the-Beltway stories about the White House blocking access and playing games rather than bigger stories on what major actions the Trump administration is doing.

    […]

    […] Reporters from a few outlets including Time and Associated Press refused to attend in protest.

    The highly unusual move led to howls from reporters, who one by one were waved away from entering Spicer’s office if they’d fallen on the wrong side of Trump’s naughty or nice list.

    CNN, the Daily News and others gathered to ask for an explanation of who was being allowed in, and White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham accused the reporters of threatening her when one reporter said that we would be filing stories about the issue.

    […]

    The daily “poolers” — those who were in the pool rotation — will send a transcript to the rest of the White House reporters on what Spicer said. But the move keeps him from having to answer questions from outlets he doesn’t want to deal with.

    […]

    The article also notes “Senior White House reporters said they’d never seen another presidential administration make this move.”

  274. says

    In solidarity with the media outlets that were banned, the Associated Press and Time boycotted the restricted media gaggle that Spicer held.

    The media outlets that were banned match pretty closely the best coverage on team Trump’s contacts/ties/collusion (?) with Russia.

  275. says

    This is cute, from the BB piece: “Solov said during the meeting he wants ‘to disclose as little as possible about financial and ownership structure’.” I’m sure he does.

  276. blf says

    The New York Times has also just confirmed, White House Bars Times and 2 Other News Outlets From Briefing:†

    […]
    “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. “We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.”
    […]

      † I wouldn’t get too excited about the current discrepancies in who was banned, as this is obviously a breaking-now story…

  277. says

    What Bannon said at CPAC:

    “It’s going to get worse every day for the media,” Bannon said, insisting that the “corporatist” media would continue to see Trump pursue exactly the sort of economic nationalism that journalism allegedly despises. Then he added this call to arms: “If you think they are giving you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.”

    From the Washington Post:

    But what Bannon and, by extension, Trump are up to is something very different than simply an adversarial working relationship with the media. Bannon doesn’t want to change the media. He wants to totally dismantle the media. He wants to break its back and leave it for dead by the side of the road.

    Bannon and Trump (and Spicer, etc.) are using the press to threaten the press.

  278. says

    Good for AP and Time. They all need to decide now that in this situation they need to stand by one another going forward. Their readers and viewers will respect them far more for it.

  279. says

    Another aspect of the cities-fighting-back category of news about the stepped-up activities on the part of ICE: Los Angeles says that immigration officials can’t identify themselves as “police.”

    In the wake of raids that resulted in the arrest of 161 undocumented immigrants in southern California earlier this month, the city of Los Angeles is demanding that federal immigration agents end the practice of identifying themselves as “police” with the Los Angeles Police Department. According to a letter signed by city officials, that tactic threatens to erode trust between local law enforcement officers and the immigrant communities they police. […]

    While there’s apparently nothing illegal about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents identifying themselves as “police,” the letter claims that the practice undermines the LAPD’s efforts to promise immigrant populations that they can provide “valuable information and cooperation” without fear of potential deportation. The letter says that the feds’ behavior is “especially corrosive” because the LAPD has a policy against stopping individuals for the purpose of checking their immigration status.

    The controversial tactic, which has been used by immigration agents for decades now, received renewed attention this month after an LA Times video showed an immigration agent identifying himself as a police officer, while attempting to gain entry into the home of an undocumented immigrant. The video raised questions from civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, that argue the misidentification potentially tricks people into allowing agents to search their homes without a warrant. […]

    Mother Jones link

  280. says

    “It’s going to get worse every day for the media,” Bannon said, insisting that the “corporatist” media would continue to see Trump pursue exactly the sort of economic nationalism that journalism allegedly despises.

    It’s hilarious that this would be quoted just below what I quoted @ #273. Right, the “corporatist” media enemies of Breitbart, which is funded by a shadowy group of mega-rich people who want to “disclose as little as possible” about themselves.

  281. blf says

    Merde-for-brains! Our real friends in the world speak English, Nigel Farage tells CPAC (video): “Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington DC on Friday and tells the audience that he feels more American every time he visits the US, following the election of Donald Trump. Farage touches on the result of the EU referendum in the UK in June as well as Trump’s first month in office, and says that 2016 was the beginning of a global political revolution“.

    Scheisse
    똥
    gówno
    sranje
    σκατά
    گه
    cachu

    (Translations via Generalissimo Google™.)

  282. says

    The New York Police Department is pushing back against Trump’s deportation plans:

    […] “Even if you’re a recidivist and jumped a turnstile for the fourth or tenth time, and we arrest you for the misdemeanor crime, that’s a misdemeanor — it’s not a qualifying” offense for deportation efforts, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs Larry Byrne told reporters today. “Nobody is getting deported for a minor offense.” […]

    Byrne said police do not help, or cooperate with deportation efforts unless two conditions are met: the existence of a “federal judicial arrest warrant,” and the person who is the subject of that warrant committed within the last five years at least one of 170 crimes the city deems serious. […]

    Byrne, a former federal prosecutor, said the NYPD cannot assist federal officials in deportation efforts without a suspect meeting those two criteria. He also said the “ICE detainer” requests the federal government sends to officials in New York “are just voluntary requests.” […]

    Byrne said people who commit low-level offenses in New York City — and have identification and no outstanding warrants — are given summonses and not fingerprinted. That process, he said, shields residents from having their information entered into computer systems which federal officials can then use in order to find undocumented residents.

    “Nobody is getting deported for jumping a turnstile,” Byrne said. “Our policy is, if you jump a turnstile, unless you are a transit recidivist, you don’t even get a criminal summons. You get a civil summons … where you are not fingerprinted and that does not go into any criminal system.” […]

    Politico link

  283. says

    John Kasich’s folksy wisdom after meeting with Trump: “If you’re on a plane, you root for the pilot.”

    Unless the pilot is incompetent, nuts, and fine with crashing. Then you storm the fucking cockpit.

  284. says

    In 1991, (and on other occasions), Trump pretended to be his own anonymous source. For example, he called People magazine to brag about the women with whom he was having sex, and about the women who were trying to have sex with him.

    […] “Miller” [Trump’s pseudonym for himself] told People that Trump “gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women,” had at least three girlfriends in addition to Maples, and was being pursued by both Madonna and Carla Bruni. (There is no evidence that Trump ever dated Madonna, and Bruni responded to the claims by calling Trump a “lunatic” who she’d only met once in passing.)

    Slate link

  285. says

    SC @281, ha!, good point.

    The Washington Post fact-checked Trump’s CPAC speech. Excerpt:

    […] 25 percent of the arrests [ICE arrests] were of people who had lesser charges and noncriminal convictions. According to anecdotes of recent arrests, undocumented people with traffic violations were subject to arrest. They are not the “bad dudes,” such as drug dealers or murderers, that he [Trump] describes.

    “In the Middle East, we’ve spent, as of four weeks ago, $6 trillion. Think of it.”

    Trump is lumping together the wars in Iraq (in the Middle East) and Afghanistan (in South Asia), which together cost about $1.6 trillion from 2001 to 2014. He is also adding in estimates of future spending, such as interest on the debt and veterans care for the next three decades.

    “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them. It was taken away from them.”

    Trump essentially repeats a false GOP talking point that previously earned Four Pinocchios. The Obama administration calculated that about 20 million people have gained health coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act, a figure that seems reasonable. […]

  286. says

    John Dean commented on the stories about Priebus’ contacts with FBI officials:

    I have expertise on this matter. Push back on an FBI investigation of the White House is better known as a COVER UP

  287. says

    I agree with this part of Josh Marshall’s article:

    Authoritarians always portray attacks on a free press as a sign of strength when in fact it’s sign of cowardice and weakness. Perhaps another way to put it is that weakness and strength have a particular meaning for free people. Fear of free people or violence against their mores is weakness. In our tradition if you fear free society, if you run to toadying sycophants to avoid being challenged, you’re a coward. You’re weak. You lack the strength to lead.

    This is absolutely true, and particularly so in Trump’s case because he’s an extremely damaged psyche with no inner core of self-esteem who needs constant attention and external approval just to get through the day. It’s a need so deep that he has to twist his understanding of reality to serve it. But we’ve seen so much of this more generally the past couple of weeks: Gorka’s phone call, Republicans running and hiding from their constituents and trying to criminalize protest, Spicer’s raging at and now exclusion of the press,… I hate that someone like Putin is called a “strongman” because he blocks free elections and works to silence and murder challengers. That’s not strong. Neither is it a sign of strength to manipulate public opinion through deceit. No one who understands psychology or democracy can see that as strong. Strong would be facing his critics, detractors, and opponents on the level of ideas and politics and on an even playing field. Authoritarians are weak.

  289. blf says

    Israel denies visas to staff from hostile Human Rights Watch:

    Decision to ban new HRW director from working in Israel is an ‘ominous turn’ and puts country in same league as North Korea says NGO

    Israel is refusing to issue visas to the international staff of one of the most prominent international human rights NGOs — Human Rights Watch — accusing the group of an extreme, hostile and anti-Israel agenda.

    The Israeli accusations against the organisation, which documents human rights abuses around the globe, follows a growth in official hostility to local human rights activists under the right wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Human Rights Watch condemned the move as “ominous turn” adding it “should worry anyone concerned about Israel’s commitment to basic democratic values.”

    The new policy emerged after Israeli authorities turned down a visa for its new Israel and Palestine director, Omar Shakir who is a US citizen. The rejection had been advised by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    In a letter rejecting Shakir’s visa application — and seen by the Guardian — Israel accused the New York based group of public activities and reports {and being} engaged in politics in the service of Palestinian propaganda, while falsely raising the banner of ‘human rights’.

    The group denied the claim pointing out it had written critical reports on human rights violations on both sides including the arbitrary detention of journalists and activists by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, an extrajudicial execution carried out by Hamas’s military wing, and on executions by Hamas authorities in Gaza.

    […]

    [… W]hy should we give working visas to people whose only purpose is to besmirch us and to attack us? [Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon] asked.

    Suggesting a wider policy, Nahshon said other organisations such as Amnesty International would be assessed on a case by case basis.

    […]

    The latest moves come in the midst of a wider chilling of the atmosphere in Israel against human rights activists.

    Commenting on the decision to deny his visa Omar Shakir compared Israel to a list of authoritarian regimes.

    “We have little relations with governments in North Korea, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Cuba and Venezuela where there is zero appetite for human rights engagement,” Shakir said. “With this decision, Israel is joining the list.”

  292. blf says

    Here in France, François Fillon ‘fake jobs’ allegations receive full judicial inquiry:

    French financial state prosecutor’s office announces further investigation of right-wing presidential candidate

    François Fillon, the right-wing French presidential candidate, is to be the subject of a full judicial inquiry over allegations that he paid family members for fake parliamentary assistant jobs.

    Following a preliminary investigation opened on 25 January, the financial state prosecutor’s office announced on Friday night it had decided to push forward and recommend a judicial investigation on various issues, including the misappropriation of public funds.

    A judge will be appointed to lead the inquiry and decide whether Fillon or his family members should be charged. There is no fixed timeframe and the judicial inquiry could take months.

    […]

    By appointing a magistrate for a full inquiry, the prosecutor is putting more resources into the investigation. The magistrate has more powers to investigate, including tapping phones or placing suspects under house arrest. The magistrate can decide to drop the case, charge the suspect or send the case to trial.

    […]

    And an amusing tweet, “One of the rare pictures of Penelope #Fillon working hard for her husband! #PenelopeGate”, found via France 24 (French right has no presidential candidate if Fillon steps down).

  294. blf says

    The Grauniad is now also confirming the gaggle-ban, and saying ot was one of the organisations banned, Multiple news outlets denied access to White House press briefing:

    The Guardian, New York Times, CNN and more were barred from ‘gaggle’ hours after Trump once again called much of the media an enemy of American people

    […]

    White House Correspondents Association president Jeff Mason said the organization’s board was “protesting strongly” against the Trump administration’s action.

    […]

    Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for the White House, said: Claims that outlets were excluded are not factual.

    In a statement, she added: The pool was there, so various media mediums were represented. The pool is a system by which a small group of reporters take turns covering the president and share their reports of his activities with a larger group.

    Contrary to Grisham’s statement, outlets who made requests to attend were told this would not be permitted.

    When the Guardian asked to participate, pointing to its possession of a “hard pass” that grants daily entry to the White House, an official declined.

    […] Catherine Hicks, a junior White House press aide, emailed in response […] The gaggle today is just today’s pool with the addition of a few others here at the White House.

    […]

    Some outlets lingered in the West Wing hallway out of frustration but were asked by a Secret Service agent, upon instructions from the White House press office, to leave the area.

    […]

    The article points out Spicer’s defense is we don’t need to do everything on camera every day, and the gaggle was held in his office (not the usual location).

  295. blf says

    Any doubts I had about the NRA, as a whole, being nazi wannabe-stormtroopers has just been removed, NRA’s Wayne LaPierre: travel ban ruling a molotov cocktail to US constitution:

    ● Gun rights group leader savages leftwing judicial activism
    ● LaPierre tells CPAC that liberal anti-Trump protesters are terrorists

    […]

    Folks, when unelected, unaccountable judges can take that clear unambiguous language and then twist it and pervert it to make it mean whatever they want, they might as well throw a molotov cocktail at the US constitution, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice-president and CEO, said in a CPAC speech on Friday.

    LaPierre called leftwing judicial activism a form of violence against our constitutional system.

    They do violence to the constitution’s separation of powers, they do violence to the US code and the supreme court precedent, and they do violence to the checks and balances that keep government under control, he said.

    Even for LaPierre, a flame-throwing political provocateur, the outright attack on America’s judiciary was a new escalation in rhetoric. It was met with only tepid applause from the conservative audience.

    […]

    The NRA leader’s attack on America’s court system was the most radical moment in an extreme speech that painted gun-loving NRA members as the nation’s best defense against violent, ruthless, out-of-control leftist protesters. The speech was filled with incendiary metaphors and accusations that liberal Trump protesters and Islamic State militants were both threats to America’s freedom — and should both be considered terrorists.

    Liberal groups arrayed against Trump all share one thing in common: they’re angry, they’re militant, and they’re willing to engage in criminal violence to get what they want, LaPierre said.

    After the election, some experts on the gun group wondered who would replace Hillary Clinton as the NRA’s enemy number one. LaPierre’s CPAC speech gave the answer: Americans who protest against Trump are now the enemy.

    LaPierre spoke approvingly of hanging people for leaking information about the president: A hundred years ago, if you eavesdropped and published the affairs of the head of state you would have been tracked down and hanged for treason, he said to applause.

    He drew a direct line between Islamic State fighters and college protesters at Berkeley. He suggested, with no evidence, that terrorists might take advantage of the ongoing protests against Trump’s agenda to harm Americans.

    With social media, it’s easy enough to find out where to go and when. So what happens when terrorists tag along with a flashmob protest at your local airport and gas the place like they did in Tokyo? he asked.

    Assuming he’s talking about the Tokyo subway gas attack in 1995, it did not happen anything like that.

    […]
    While some protesters at Trump’s inauguration were arrested, the largest protest so far against Trump, the day after his inauguration, was reportedly entirely peaceful, and was led by women wearing hand-knit pink hats.

    […]

    Our country is under siege from a media carpet-bombing campaign, LaPierre said. The media attack was aimed at “purposely and maliciously destroying the Trump presidency.

    In response to liberals who have pledged to fight in the “resistance” against Trump, the NRA and its members will mount the counter-resistance, the group promised in a series of videos advertising LaPierre’s speech this week.

    Trump took a moment to give LaPierre and the NRA special praise in his own CPAC speech on Friday. They love our country. They love our country. The NRA has been a great supporter, he said.

  297. says

    I’m amazed at the excuses made for Trump’s gang on cable news. On CNN just now an “analyst” said Priebus did it, but “he didn’t know what he was doing.” Yesterday another called it part of the “learning curve.” Priebus has been a lawyer for almost two decades. He was general counsel and chair of the RNC. FFS.

  298. says

    SC @285, true. I agree. What you said reminded me of some of the moments when we’ve the weakness even more blatantly displayed when a real-time fact check causes Trump to back down. Did you see his face and the change in his demeanor when Peter Alexander of NBC challenged him on the claim that his Electoral College win was the biggest since Reagan?
    http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-s-electoral-college-win-was-not-biggest-reagan-n722016

  299. blf says

    This seems promising, Major car paint suppliers join initiative against child labour in mica mines:

    PPG and Axalta join scheme after Guardian report linked paint used by Vauxhall, BMW and VW with mines in India reliant on child labour and debt bondage

    PPG and Axalta, two of the world’s largest car paint suppliers, have joined a global initiative to purge child labour from the mica industry after a Guardian investigation linked child labour in their supply chains to Vauxhall, Volkswagen and BMW.

    Although largely unknown to consumers, mica is one of the most widely used minerals globally, highly valued for its ability to reflect and refract light and found in a multitude of different products and industries.

    Roughly 25% of the world’s mica is mined in the impoverished Indian states of Jharkhand and Bihar, with an estimated 20,000 children engaged in illegal mines.

    The cosmetics industry has faced sustained criticism over its continued use of natural mica from Indian mines to produce makeup sold to global consumers.

    […]

    PPG and Axalta have now joined the Responsible Mica Initiative, already supported by cosmetics multinationals L’Oreál, Chanel, Estée Lauder, as well as major mica-sourcing companies including Merck and Chinese-owned Fujian Kuncai. The initiative pledges to eliminate child labour from mica production by 2022.

    The scheme marks the first comprehensive approach to tackling endemic child labour in mica mining since the industry was alerted to its existence more than a decade ago. […]

    […]

    No car brand is yet to join the initiative. Vauxhall [part of the GM group], VW and BMW told the Guardian that they have declined to participate.

    […]

    India officially produced about 12,500 tons of mica in 2014-15, while it exported more than ten times as much, about 140,000 tons, according to new data from the ministry of mines (PDF). The state of Jharkhand officially produced no mica at all in 2014-15, even though mining takes place there in hundreds of small-scale illegal mines.

    […]

    Catherine Peyreaud, director at Natural Resource Stewardship Circle, a sustainable sourcing company that co-founded the Responsible Mica Initiative […] said it was vital that brands as well as suppliers participate.

    “Brands cannot let their suppliers tackle this issue alone. It is a shared responsibility to make this supply chain sustainable,” she said.

    […]

    With India obviously in denial about the problem, or at least its scale, and major users of the stuff not being very assertive, the goal of “[eliminating] child labour from mica production by 2022” is quite ambitious. Good om the Responsible Mica Initiative!

  302. says

    SC @298, team Trump tried to order a report that would back up their non-reality-based claims about terrorism, especially terrorism from the seven Muslim-majority countries that Trump wants to include in his travel ban. They didn’t get what they wanted. The analysts at the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence group did their job. Trump is probably hopping mad.

    The analysts “found insufficient evidence that [people from countries included in the travel ban] pose a terror threat to the United States.”

  303. says

    Oh, FFS.

    […] “When Obama put his dog on Air Force One and then told us to give more to help poor people, it was a slap in the face to the entire country,” Chaulk, 60, a graphic designer from Columbus, Ohio, said on Wednesday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the marquee annual gathering for conservative activists.

    Her friend Elaine Kent, 58, chimed in: “And when Michelle Obama and her friends went to Spain and spent millions of dollars on a vacation? They did so much nickel-and-diming of taxpayers.”

    They are less concerned — which is to say, not concerned at all — with recent reports that suggest President Trump cost taxpayers nearly as much in his first month in office as Obama did in a year. […]

    “Mr. Obama went on so many vacations and played golf every week. The news media can say, ‘Trump went to Mar-a-Lago,’ and their hair catches on fire. But if they will look at this honestly — and I’m all for the truth — they’ll see Trump is just using his own resources and money to take care of things,” Chaulk said. “It doesn’t bother me one bit.” […]

    Donald Ely, 83, a Pennsylvania Republican Party official, had heard the stories of Trump’s travel expenses. But he wasn’t sure he could trust them.

    “I resented Obama going to all these places overseas, particularly because his agenda was anti-American,” Ely said. “But the way people make up the stories about the Trumps, I don’t know if I believe it. I don’t think it’s accurate.” […]

    “I believe that the story exists,” Herstein said. “But the facts in it can’t possibly be right. That absolutely can’t be right. How did Trump spend $10 million in one month and Obama spent $11 million in a year? It defies logic.” […]

    “I don’t trust the bookkeepers. I don’t trust the people who say, ‘This president spent X and this president spent Y,’” said Roy Postel, 58, a real estate developer from near Chicago. “The whole bureaucracy is against Trump, so I’d like to know who is getting greased to tell us what Obama spent. I wouldn’t trust anyone with an estimate of what the Trump administration has spent on travel.” […]

    http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/23/14703472/cpac-trump-travel-budget

  305. blf says

    The DHS I&A report (@298 and @300) is only three pages, which is two too many for teh trum-prat, in small-ish type with no maps and almost no other illustrations. It also uses paragraphs with full sentences, rather than exclusively bullet points. And words of more than one syllable, none of which are Dick, Jane, or Spot. Hence, hair furor is incapable of comprehending it, so whilst he’ll probably be told to be frothing mad, fire a few people, nuke some countries, and borrow a few billion more from Putin, he won’t actually have any idea why he is mad, &tc. Other than what he is told, that is, which could be something along the lines of the failing NYT has infiltrated DHS and is spreading their lies.

  306. says

    Representative Vicki Hartzler of Missouri is vying for Most Clueless Congress Critter.

    She thinks holding town halls to speak with her constituents would be “unproductive,” but he does have time to meet with industry doofuses celebrating the weakening of restrictions on the banking industry, and weakening consumer protections.

    At that meeting she said some dumb stuff. She said that the women who marched in D.C. the day after Trump’s inauguration were ” “radical liberals who don’t like the results of the election” […] “from the fringes of the Democratic Party.” Hmmm. That’s a really big fringe (about 3 million people).

    Hartzler went on to say,

    What has not been reported is the reality of a lot of their signs and a large proportion of the message was very, very graphic. It was very pornographic. Their signs, their posters, it was pornographic is all it was, and no media has talked about that, and it was very sad.

    http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2017/02/23/missouri-congresswoman-disses-womens-march-as-very-pornographic

  307. blf says

    Correction to @303’s snark, the scanned (leaked) report in @298 is only the first three content pages. There are probably additional pages, plus cover sheets and so on. Hence, it’s not “two too many” pages for hair furor, but “lots too many”…

  308. says

    From the Wall Street Journal:

    The Wall Street Journal strongly objects to the White House’s decision to bar certain media outlets from today’s gaggle. Had we known at the time, we would not have participated and we will not participate in such closed briefings in the future.

  309. says

    Rick Wilson exchange today on Twitter:

    RW: Wow. Just brief call I just had was FULL of interesting new data. #cryptic

    Response: I’m thinking a long stream of high velocity shit is incoming, about to hit multiple industrial fans.

    RW: you may be right

    Different response: will I have to wait 6-9 months to find out what this hints to like we did w/ the Steele dossier?

    RW: nah. Sooner.

  310. militantagnostic says

    blf @305

    Hence, it’s not “two too many” pages for hair furor, but “lots too many”…

    Actually one page is two too many for Trumpigula.

  311. says

    “Trump administration sought to enlist intelligence officials, key lawmakers to counter Russia stories”:

    The Trump administration has enlisted senior members of the intelligence community and Congress in efforts to counter news stories about Trump associates’ ties to Russia, a politically charged issue that has been under investigation by the FBI as well as lawmakers now defending the White House.

    Acting at the behest of the White House, the officials made calls to news organizations last week in attempts to challenge stories about alleged contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, U.S. officials said.

    The calls were orchestrated by the White House after unsuccessful attempts by the administration to get senior FBI officials to speak with news organizations and dispute the accuracy of stories on the alleged contacts with Russia.

    The White House on Friday acknowledged those interactions with the FBI but did not disclose that it then turned to other officials who agreed to do what the FBI would not — participate in White House-arranged calls with news organizations, including The Washington Post.

    The White House insisted the officials speak on the condition of anonymity — a practice President Trump has condemned.

    The officials broadly dismissed Trump associates’ contacts with Russia as infrequent and inconsequential. But the officials would not answer substantive questions about the issue, and their comments were not published by The Post and do not appear to have been reported elsewhere.

    The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

    …

    The effort also involved senior lawmakers with access to classified intelligence about Russia, including Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees….

    There needs to be an independent commission, Priebus needs to resign, and Sessions needs to recuse himself. Yesterday.

  316. John Morales says

    In Australian news: Mem Fox, Australian author, gets apology after being wrongfully detained at LA airport.

    Fox, who was questioned by Customs and Border Protection officers for two hours earlier this month as she was on her way to Milwaukee to address a conference, said she collapsed and sobbed at her hotel after she was released.

    She said the border agents appeared to have been given “turbocharged power” by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to “humiliate and insult” a room full of people they detained to check visas.
    […]
    “I felt like I had been physically assaulted which is why, when I got to my hotel room, I completely collapsed and sobbed like a baby, and I’m 70 years old.”

  317. Saad says

    SC, #311

    Are you fucking kidding me.

    So they’re straight up asking “Are you Muslim?” now.

    Cool. So I can expect to be detained when I come back from traveling abroad.

    Any tips?

  318. says

    Any tips?

    Lawyer up before you go and make sure your lawyer is very aware of your itinerary and leaps in to action with in minutes of not being able to communicate with you or know your whereabouts.

  319. says

    SC @ 311 – Could they not have fucking googled him?

    I had a moment when Jo Cox was murdered when I froze and thought things had changed. This is another. I won’t say anything about the agencies as a whole, but there’s a large contingent of SS-style thugs in CBP and ICE.

    This is intolerable. “Are you Muslim?” is intolerable.

    NO.

  320. says

    SC I am starting to feel like this kind of meat is being dangled intentionally in an effort to divide media attention. Given the amount of airtime that Kim Jong-un murdering his brother is getting, with nerve gas none the less, I’m starting to wonder if that isn’t a false flag as well.

  321. militantagnostic says

    John Morales @314
    She is an author of Children’s Books for fuck sake.
    These people are just authoritarian assholes plain and simple. No wonder they like Trumpigula. I expect we will be seeing conference and convention cancellations soon in addition to a significant drop in tourist traffic in the US.

  323. Ichthyic says

    Any tips?

    mail your electronics to your house, buy a burner phone and make a fake Facebook account so it looks like you at least have some history. Give them the password to your burner phone if they ask you for it.

    NOT KIDDING.

    after you get through?

    toss the burner phone in the trash, and head straight home.

    if you can’t spend the time to create some realistic looking fake accounts, believe it or not, there are companies out there that SELL realistic looking fake accounts specifically for this very thing. yes, that’s how bad it has gotten. Now, surely MOST people returning to the US are not gonna get the literal 3rd degree, but it’s certainly happened often enough now that it’s actually worth taking the time to do this I think.

    insane as that sounds?

    ugh.

  324. Ichthyic says

    … I just realized…

    basically, when traveling to the US? pretend you are an international drug smuggler, and act as if you were working not to get caught.

    might also be why there is already a market for fake accounts… drug smugglers and gun runners have been using those for years already.

    on the bright side, this makes traveling to the states “exciting”. OTOH, it’s fucking insane.

    remember also: you do NOT have the normal US citizen rights when at the border. 4th amendment does not apply, as all searches are considered “reasonable” for the purposes of border security. But, you don’t HAVE to share information with them. OTOH, they can hold you for as long as they want to as well. I was reading the current record is around 16 hours.

    seems the safest course of action is to “comply with bullshit” and move on. I’m thinking it’s probably not a bad idea for ALL Americans, and anyone thinking of traveling there, to start creating some fake public accounts for themselves. This current government (and the last one frankly) appear to have no qualms about making legal decisions about you based on your private email or Facebook profile, or your tweet history.

  325. Ichthyic says

    I won’t link to Maher, but people are reporting that Darrell Issa is calling for Sessions to recuse himself on Real Time.

    lol. Issa must really be enjoying not being “the numpy in the spotlight” for a change.

    I wouldn’t trust that guy as far as my cat could throw him.

  326. says

    Please, US Border Agents, keep doing this to nice white people until nobody will come to your country anymore who doesn’t absolutely have to. Kill all these “once in a lifetime dream holidays” for which middle class people save some 5 digit amounts of money.

    BTW, has Harris already explained why this is totally OK?

  327. says

    [Slightly misleading headline:] “UK officials now think Russia may have interfered with the Brexit vote”:

    Labour MPs are ratcheting up pressure on the government to reveal whether Russia interfered in the EU referendum.

    Former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw told Business Insider that the “public has a right to know” if the Kremlin attempted to influence the outcome of the Brexit vote in June last year.

    He is concerned that Prime Minister Theresa May’s government is not being transparent enough about the issue — particularly now there is acceptance in the US and other European nations that Russia has attempted to meddle in democratic decisions, he said.

    Bradshaw pressed the government on the matter in two separate House of Commons debates in December last year, during the second of which he asked the prime minister what is being done to investigate Kremlin interference.

    …

    “I was very suspicious about the UK government’s reticence in talking about this,” he told BI. “Our government clearly knows more than they’re letting on and I think it’s slightly suspicious that they’re not being more open about it. In fact, they’re being less open than any other Western democracy has been.”

    …

    Bradshaw is now stepping up the pressure on the government to reveal further information, including whether Russia provided direct political funding for Brexit campaigners. He is also keen to find out if Putin’s regime is behind fake news website[s], social media bots, and Twitter trolls in the UK.

    Bradshaw intends to carry on raising concerns in the House of Commons, while he has also asked cross-party select committees to examine Russian interference….

  328. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Interesting. DHS wrote a memo that was supposed to be used to back up the “Muslim Ban”.
    The summary of bullet points.
    * Restricting immigration based solely on citizenship is an unlikely indicator of terrorism threat.
    * Over half of terrorist attacks were by US citizens born in the US.
    * Most of the countries that have sent terrorist attackers are not in the travel ban.
    * The seven countries is the travel ban have NEVER send an attacker in a deadly terrorist attack in the US.
    * Terrorist organizations in Iran, Lybia, Sudan, and Somalia are regionally focused.

    Yep, there is overwhelming evidence to back the bad rugged mad President. *snicker*

  329. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    The title of this article says all you need to know about our president’s hypocrisy: Trump condemns anonymous sources as staff demands anonymity

    President Donald Trump has unloaded on the news media for using anonymous sources — just hours after members of his own staff insisted on briefing reporters only on condition their names be concealed.

    Unleashing a line of attack that energized an enthusiastic crowd at the nation’s largest gathering of conservative activists, Trump said Friday that unethical reporters “make up stories and make up sources.”

    “They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name,” he declared. “Let their name be put out there.”

    President Trump, show us the names of YOUR sources, or shut the fuck up.

  330. says

    “Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War: What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and what lies ahead?”

    (Provokes my usual complaints – lack of a structural framework situating events within global capitalism and, relatedly, lack of attention to the US government’s continuing subversion and destabilization efforts in Latin America and elsewhere – but a worthwhile read.)

    It’s not a central quote in the piece, but this seems the immediate central question in the US:

    “To me, the question might finally come down to this,” Celeste Wallander, President Obama’s senior adviser on Russia, said. “Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?”

  331. says

    Everyone who regularly reads this thread has probably already seen this, but just in case, here is Rachel Maddow’s coverage of the Washington Post report detailing the fact that the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were enlisted by the White House to call reporters to try to steer them away from the connections-to-Russia stories. Those are the committees investigating the Trump administration’s connections to Russia. So, yeah, highly inappropriate.

  334. says

    Everyone who regularly reads this thread has probably already seen this, but just in case, here is Rachel Maddow’s coverage of the Washington Post report detailing the fact that the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were enlisted by the White House to call reporters to try to steer them away from the connections-to-Russia stories.

    I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her appear so flabbergasted.

  335. says

    Josh Marshall posted more analysis and details concerning President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his connections to Andrii V. Artemenko, the Ukrainian MP who is currently under investigation in Ukraine for treason. (Artemenko is the guy who reportedly tried to get a “peace plan” for Ukraine to Trump, through Cohen and Flynn.)

    Cohen has a Ukrainian wife and perfectly legitimate connections to the Ukrainian-American community. Cohen also has a history of investing in ethanol production in Ukraine, also a legitimate enterprise.

    Emphasis is mine in this excerpt from Marshall’s article:

    […] In an interview at Strana.ua, he [Artemenko} says that while Sater [Felix Water] is a recent acquaintance, he’s known Cohen since back when Cohen was setting up the ethanol business in Ukraine. So at least according to to Artemenko, he and Cohen have known each other for some time. This wasn’t just a courtesy meeting Cohen took with a stranger as a favor to Sater.

    And then there’s this.

    Artemenko told Strana.ua that this wasn’t the first time they’d talked about the “peace plan.” He says that he was discussing the peace plan with Cohen and Sater “at the time of the primaries, when no one believed that Trump would even be nominated.”

    So at least according to Artemenko, discussions about the “peace plan” go back to the first half of 2016.

    That’s interesting.

    I should note this caution. Artemenko seems like a pretty shady character, based on this article and the other write-ups over recent days. He could certainly be lying about his contacts with Cohen before February 2017 for any number of reasons. This whole story is a swirl of confusion, lies and misinformation. So this isn’t just a perfunctory caveat. It’s a real possibility.

    But given the demonstrable lack of credibility of Cohen and the rest of the players on the Trump side, I see no reason to dismiss his claims out of hand. After all, in a period of 48 hours Cohen gave four different versions of his side of the story about this meeting, successively dismissing each of his previous stories as “fake news.” […]

    It has always struck me as highly odd that, in the current climate of suspicion over Russia’s ties to Trump, Cohen would take that moment to meet with Sater – a former business associate who Trump now claims he wouldn’t recognize – and a Ukrainian with a pro-Russian peace plan. It makes a bit more sense if the relationship goes back before this year.

    We shouldn’t take any of this at face value. But it seems like there’s a lot more here than one meeting.[…]

  336. says

    People associated with Breitbart are celebrating. Apparently, they think they are conquering heroes.

    Nigel Farage and Dog the Bounty Hunter walk onto a boat with Republican officials and Breitbart staffers to celebrate President Donald Trump, eat a dead pig, and party with scantily clad hula dancers.
    This isn’t the setup for a bad joke. It’s American political reality today.

    On Friday evening at National Harbor, following the penultimate day at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, Breitbart threw a dockside “Luau on the Potomac” party aboard a three-story boat.

    […] drunk Republican politicos, intoxicated activists, tipsy think tank dwellers, inebriated consultants, and similarly bombed journalists.

    […] this year the Breitbart crew returned to CPAC as victors. Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart honcho now serving as one of the most powerful people working in Trump’s inner circle, had spoken on the CPAC stage the day prior. […] Now more than ever, the GOP was starting to reflect and promote Breitbart’s nationalist, alt-right-friendly vision of how the party, subsumed into Trumpism, should be remade. […]

    He [Nigel Farage, the former leader for the United Kingdom Independence Party] entertained partygoers with stories of how it took him “considerable balls” to do what he did in U.K. politics, having been branded a racist and a bigot in political and media circles. He did his standard riffing on the “globalist left” and the “failure of conservative leaders” in the West, between taking iPhone selfies with excited Republican, #MAGA-hat-sporting millennials. […]

    Link

  337. says

    “Oscar foreign language film nominees decry fanaticism in U.S.”

    They jointly issued a strong statement dedicating the award, whoever wins, to “all the people, artists, journalists and activists who are working to foster unity and understanding, and who uphold freedom of expression and human dignity — values whose protection is now more important than ever. By dedicating the Oscar to them, we wish to express to them our deep respect and solidarity.”

  339. says

    Wonkette covered the gift the Trump administration just gave to the owners of private prisons.

    Gosh, here’s a heck of a surprise, and yet another phase-in of the New Cruelty: Attorney General Jeff Sessions […] announced Thursday night the Justice Department would reverse the Obama administration’s decision — announced last summer before we crossed over into this alternative crapsack universe we’re now stuck in — to stop contracting with private prisons. But now the bonanza for federal dollars is back on, thanks to Sessions, who actually rescinded the policy February 21, but for some reason didn’t announce it until two days later.

    The original Obama decision to move away from private prisons was memo-ed out to the world by then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who we had no idea at the time would become a hero for doing her job as acting attorney general really good and telling the DOJ it shouldn’t defend Donald Trump’s unconstitutional immigration order, and also advising Trump that Mike Flynn was a possible target of Russian blackmail, not that the Great Yam did anything with the information.

    Yates sent the memo following a DOJ inspector general’s report which determined private prisons were more likely to have “safety and security incidents” than government-run institutions. Coincidentally, it also came not long after Shane Bauer’s outstanding investigative piece for Mother Jones in which he got a job as a guard at a private prison and documented firsthand how shitty they can be.

    […] we now live in Trump’s America, so all good things must be systematically undone. Sessions argued that the main reason for reversing the policy was to prevent future overcrowding, […]

    [snipped details of large sums of money contributed to Trump-supporting Super PACs by private prison corporations]

    […] USA Today notes that roughly “65% of Homeland Security detainees last year were held in privately run facilities,” and that percentage seems likely to only expand under DHS’s plan to add more detention facilities for the mass deportations it denies are on the way but that it’s hiring 10,000 new agents to handle. […] stock prices for all private prisons have gone through the roof since the election. Imagine that!

    The ACLU weighed in:

    “Handing control of prisons over to for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse and neglect,” said David Fathi, who heads the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “The memo from Attorney General Sessions ignores this fact. Additionally, this memo is a further sign that under President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, the United States may be headed for a new federal prison boom, fueled in part by criminal prosecutions of immigrants for entering the country.”

  340. says

    An excerpt from Dan Rather’s “this is an emergency” post on Facebook:

    The time for normalizing, dissembling, and explaining away Donald Trump has long since passed. […].

    For all who excused Mr. Trump’s rhetoric in the campaign as just talk, the reckoning has come. […] There has been a wall of unbending support from virtually every Republican in Congress, and even some Democrats. […] No one needs to hear how you don’t agree with the President. What are you going to do about it? Do you maintain that an Administration that seeks to subvert the protections of our Constitution is fit to rule unchecked? Or fit to rule at all?

    This is an emergency that can no longer be placed solely at the feet of President Trump, or even the Trump Administration. This is a moment of judgement for everyone who willingly remains silent. It is gut check time, for those in a position of power, and for the nation.

    https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather/posts/10158259641415716

  341. says

    “Key Lawmaker Questions Senate Russia Probe After Trump Contacts”:

    The Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat warned the panel’s chairman over reports that the Republican worked with the White House to try to squash negative stories about Russian interference in last year’s U.S. elections, calling it a threat to the integrity of the top congressional probe into the issue.

    Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said [he] expressed his concerns to Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, warning that he could pull the plug on what has been the one major congressional probe with bipartisan support.

    …

    Warner said he will consult with the other Democrats on the panel to determine what to do next “so we can ensure that the American people get the thorough, impartial investigation that they deserve, free from White House interference.”

    …

    Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, also warned about the reports….

  343. says

    This is a follow-up to SC’s comments 212 and 298; erik’s comments @214 and 216; blf’s comment 303; Nerd’s comment 326; and my comment 300.

    Emphasis is mine.

    White House officials said a report disputing the threat posed by travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries included in President Donald Trump’s executive order was “not the intelligence assessment the president asked for,” according to a report published Saturday by the Wall Street Journal. […]

    Unnamed officials said that the report ignored information that supports the travel ban, per the report, and that they have not yet been presented with the report they requested.

    The Associated Press reported on Friday that it had obtained a draft document of the report, which concluded that citizenship of the countries included in Trump’s ban is an “unlikely indicator” of terrorism threat level.

    When Trump announced the now-blocked ban in January, however, he specifically cited “foreign terrorist entry” as one threat it would eliminate. […]

    Gillian M. Christensen, acting press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Wall Street Journal that the dispute over the report was on the basis of “sources and quality, not politics.” […]

    Talking Points Memo link

  346. says

    SC @342, the DHS department’s acting press secretary sounds like a Trump lackey. Certainly, Gillian Christensen’s statement will provide cover for the Trump team.

    Miller is a treasure. Articulate, informed, and able to looks at the details and the big picture at the same time.

    In other news, Scott Pruitt , Trump’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is in more hot water. He lied to Senators during his confirmation hearings. He told them he did not us a private email server for official state business, but he did.

    […] Although it is illegal under federal law to use private email accounts for official government business, under Oklahoma law, using private email to conduct state business is not illegal as long as those records are included in searches for public documents. However, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, testified that he had never used private email for state business:

    Senator Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, asked Pruitt directly, “Have you ever conducted business using your personal email accounts, nonofficial Oklahoma Attorney General email accounts, text messages, instant messenger, voicemails, or any other medium?”

    “I use only my official OAG [Office of the Attorney General] email address and government issued phone to conduct official business,” Pruitt replied.

    Link

    AG’s office confirms Pruitt used private email for state business

    That’s the second blatant lie that Pruitt told during the Senate hearings:

    […] When being questioned by New Jersey Senator Cory Booker about cases that he oversaw as Oklahoma’s Attorney General, Pruitt defended his actions on a case that his predecessor brought against several poultry companies in Arkansas. Oklahoma alleged that the companies had been dumping thousands of tons of waste into the Illinois River, which flows into the state of Oklahoma.

    The case received a full federal trial before Pruitt came into office in January 2011. Yet nearly seven years after the trial finished, federal judge Gregory Frizzell has yet to issue a ruling.

    Responding to Sen. Booker’s question on that case and on his record on fighting polluters, Attorney General Pruitt said of that case […]

    I had every authority to dismiss that case when I came into office. I did not. That case is still pending today, awaiting a federal judge’s decision. I have taken no action to undermine that case. I have done nothing but file briefs in support of the court making a decision. So that is a point of clarity on the litigation.

    However, a review of the federal court records shows not a single brief or motion of the sort he described has been filed in the case. Nearly all the court filings in the six year period since he took office have been from attorneys who were withdrawing their representation in the case.

    “There’s no evidence that [Pruitt’s] office did anything at all to ask the judge to issue an order in the case, and any claim that he did is not backed up by what we see in the public docket,” Dan Estrin, general counsel at Waterkeeper, a water-advocacy nonprofit group, told me. “It’s beyond bizarre for a judge to take so long to issue an opinion, and even more bizarre for there to be no communication about that fact from the plaintiffs.” […]

    Link

  347. says

    Texans pushing back against Trump’s border wall:

    […] Many of the Texas challenges are unique. Unlike in other states, most of the land along the border is privately held. To build there, the government probably would have to sue landowners to seize the land through eminent domain. […]

    In addition, a wall along the Texas border would slice through at least two golf courses, the rugged mountains of Big Bend National Park and historic towns and ranch lands founded before an independent U.S. or Mexico even existed.

    Wall Street Journal link

    Golf courses! Trump would surely be against that.

    From Daily Kos:

    […] Anyhoo, you can’t build a wall along many sections of the Rio Grande to begin with. It floods. There are treaties. It cuts through nearly inaccessible terrain. Rich Texas Republicans with views of the river don’t want that view blocked with a new Berlin Wall-style behemoth. And that is why people like Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and a bucketload of other big-name Republicans are, yup—against it. […]

  348. says

    Oh, dear, Fox News is trying so hard to back up Trump’s stupid claims about rampant crime in Sweden (it’s all the fault of immigrants). On “The O’Reilly Factor” Nils Bildt was identified as a “Swedish defense and national security advisor.” Not true.

    […] the Dagens Nyheter newspaper on Friday reported that Bildt is unknown to the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the armed forces.

    The Hill link

    Washington Post link

    […] Nils Bildt, billed as a “Swedish defense and national security advisor” by Fox News, told O’Reilly that Naslund was “rather incorrect” and that there had been big problems with integrating immigrants into Swedish society. “These things are not being openly and honestly discussed,” Bildt said. […]

  349. says

    A large number of people are suggesting that Perez and Ellison should just agree to be DNC co-chairs and be done with it. Makes sense especially now that Buttigieg has dropped out. I heard it suggested a while back and thought it was a good idea then, too.

  350. says

    SC @347, agreed. Practical. Chair of the DNC is a big job. Share the work load, while simultaneously including the viewpoints and preferences of more people.

  351. blf says

    A follow-up to @346, the Swedish site Dagens Nyheter (DN) — about which I know nothing — reports, in English, on this Nils Bildt goofball, Fake Sweden expert on Fox News — has criminal convictions in US, no connection to Swedish security:

    […]
    Nils Bildt, who spoke on Fox News about crime in Sweden, is convicted of a violent offence himself, according to documents from Arlington General District Court in Virginia. Bildt was arrested on the 19th of June, 2014, for assaulting a law enforcement person and for obstruction of justice, after threatening an official. He was sentenced to one year in prison on the 10th of November the same year. He was also convicted of public inebriation at the same time. Nils Bildt, in an e-mail to DN, says he is ”unaware of the allegations” and therefore cannot comment.

    Nils Bildt sent a short e-mail to DN late earlier on Friday, explaining why he was given the title of Swedish defense and national security advisor: I appeared on Bill O’Reillys’s show on Fox News. The title was chosen by Fox News’s editor — I had no personal control over what title they chose. I am an independent analyst based in the USA, he wrote.
    […]

  352. blf says

    Trump’s media war threatens journalists globally, protection group warns:

    Committee to Protect Journalists says president is sending a signal to countries such as Turkey, Ethiopia and Venezuela that it is OK to abuse journalists

    […]

    [The deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Rob] Mahoney also said attempts to favour conservative press outlets and declare the mainstream media the enemy of the American people looked like a deliberate effort by the White House to “inoculate itself from criticism”.

    “Any time the press now uncovers an scandal or wrongdoing the administration can dismiss it as false,” he said.

    […]

    Spicer later [after the gaggle-ban –blf] said the White House planned to aggressively push back against the press. We’re just not going to sit back and let false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there, he said.

    On Friday night, Trump kept up his attack, using Twitter to say: FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn’t tell the truth. A great danger to our country. The failing @nytimes has become a joke. Likewise @CNN. Sad!

    […]

    Opposing the mainstream media plays well with Trump’s base. Mahoney said it also serves the administration’s aim to protect itself against legitimate criticism.

    “If you go back to the early 1970s and the terrible relations between Nixon and the press,” he said, “it was nonetheless allowed to do its job, and we got Watergate.”

    Several organisations, including the Washington Post, are developing Trump-focused investigative units, which will likely rely on anonymously sourced stories.

    […]

    Moves to choose which outlets are briefed by the administration also conflicted with remarks made by Spicer as recently as December, when he said media outlets should not be stopped from covering the White House.

    […]

  355. says

    I’m not sure what to think of this: Trump announced that he will not attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

    Is he afraid to be in a room full of media experts? Is he afraid of the jokes? Does he harbor bad feelings about the jokes told about him at previous White House Correspondents’ Association dinners? Is he trying to punish the media.

    I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!

    Looks cowardly to me.

  356. says

    SC @352, that’s an interesting approach to the news that Trump won’t be at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Maybe he’s right: it will be a rollicking good time without Hair Furor on the premises.

  362. says

    “Thousands march in Moscow to honor Kremlin critic killed in 2015”:

    Thousands of Russians marched through the center of Moscow on Sunday to honor opposition leader Boris Nemtsov two years after he was gunned down near the Kremlin walls, and to call for further investigations into his killing.

    The 55-year-old Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin late in the evening of Feb. 27, 2015, as he walked home with his girlfriend from a restaurant.

    …

    “We gathered here to demand bringing of Boris Nemtsov’s killers to justice, not only its performers but also its organizers and those who ordered it,” Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition activist and an organizer of the march, told Reuters.

    “We gathered here to demand political reforms and release of political prisoners.”

    The march coincided with the release of an anti-Kremlin activist Ildar Dadin from a Siberian prison on Sunday. He was the first person jailed under new rules that made some forms of non-violent protest a criminal offense….

  363. says

    “Revealed: how US billionaire helped to back Brexit”:

    The US billionaire who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency played a key role in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, the Observer has learned.

    It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission.

    Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of a British company, SCL Group, which has 25 years’ experience in military disinformation campaigns and “election management”, claims to use cutting-edge technology to build intimate psychometric profiles of voters to find and target their emotional triggers. Trump’s team paid the firm more than $6m (£4.8m) to target swing voters, and it has now emerged that Mercer also introduced the firm – in which he has a major stake – to Farage.

    …

    The strategy involved harvesting data from people’s Facebook and other social media profiles and then using machine learning to “spread” through their networks. Wigmore admitted the technology and the level of information it gathered from people was “creepy”….

    By law, all donations of services-in-kind worth more than £7,500 must be reported to the electoral commission. A spokesman said that no donation from the company or Mercer to Leave.eu had been filed.

    …

    Breitbart, which has become the leading platform for the alt-right, is only one of a series of investments that aim to change the media landscape and political views not just in the US but also in Britain. A British version of Breitbart was launched in 2014, Bannon told the New York Times, explicitly to try to influence the upcoming general election. He and Farage have been close friends since at least 2012 and the site has been an important cheerleader for Ukip, with its editor, Raheem Kassam, at one point working as chief adviser to Farage.

    Until now, however, it was not known that Mercer had explicitly tried to influence the outcome of the referendum….

    A leading expert on the impact of technology on elections called the relevation “extremely disturbing and quite sinister”….

  365. says

    More details on the reaction of and statements from the father of the Navy Seal that was killed in the Yemen raid Trump ordered.

    […] “Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation,” William Owens, the father of Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens, said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “The government owes my son an investigation.”

    William “Ryan” Owens died Jan. 28 of wounds sustained during a raid on an al-Qaida base in Yemen. Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in February to join Owens’ family and meet his remains.

    “I told them I don’t want to meet the President,” William Owens said, as quoted by the Miami Herald. “I told them I didn’t want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him.” […]

    “Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why?” Owens said. “All of a sudden we had to make this grand display?” […]

    “I don’t want anybody to think I have an agenda, because I don’t,” he said. “I just want the truth.”

    White House press secretary Sean Spicer said earlier in February that anybody questioning the success of the raid was doing “a disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens.”

    “I think anybody who undermines the success of that raid owes an apology,” he said. […]

    Talking Points Memo link

  366. says

    This looks to me like Trump trying to sow dissension in the ranks of the Democratic Party, and, at the same time, this is yet another example of Trump confidently stating something for which he has no proof. And, of course, he gets to use one of his favorite words, “rigged.”

    The race for DNC Chairman was, of course, totally “rigged.” Bernie’s guy, like Bernie himself, never had a chance. Clinton demanded Perez!

  367. says

    Actor Bill Paxton died on Saturday, according to TMZ, after complications from surgery. The Emmy Award-winner was 61. “It is with heavy hearts we share the news that Bill Paxton has passed away due to complications from surgery,” his family said in a statement. “Bill’s passion for the arts was felt by all who knew him, and his warmth and tireless energy were undeniable.” Paxton starred in films including Titanic, Twister, Apollo 13, and The Terminator. Paxton leaves behind a wife and two children.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/02/26/actor-bill-paxton-dies-at-61.html

  368. says

    Do you think Trump will approve a U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC)?

    […] “There’s been a series of requests coming from the secretary of State’s office that suggests that he is questioning the value of the U.S. belonging to the Human Rights Council,” a former State Department official told Politico.

    The former official told Politico debate over membership in the council likely includes accusations of bias against Israel and questions over the countries that make up the council, some of which are known for human rights abuses, according to Politico.

    State Department spokesman Mark Toner told Politico that “our delegation will be fully involved in the work of the HRC session which starts Monday.” […]

    The Hill link

    Politico link

  369. says

    “Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media”

    There’s too much covered in this long piece for me to provide quotes that give the gist. My only problem with it is that it’s a bit alarmist in the same was as the books, articles, films, and scholarship about the possibilities for mass mind control were in the US in the 1950s. But I suppose in this moment being slightly too alarmist is preferable to being insufficiently alarmist.

    Certainly contains a good deal of information we need to know.

  370. blf says

    On the States and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC): Broadly, UNHRC has been critical of Russia, hair furor, and some of teh trum-prat’s investments:

    ●  Russia denied membership of UN human rights council: “General assembly fails to vote for Russia to be one of 14 new members after campaign by rights groups over its bombing of Syria” (Oct-2016).

    ● UN human rights boss says Trump would be a global danger as president: “United Nations’ Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said [Oct-2016]: ‘If Donald Trump is elected … he would be dangerous from an international point of view’.”

    ● Dakota Access pipeline protests: UN group investigates human rights abuses.

    Also, of course, it’s part of the UN, who are in league with FEMA and used their famous black helicopters to help President Obama hide millions of mooslins in the national parks…

  372. says

    This oughtta go well. I love this paragraph:

    Spicer also warned the group of more problems if news of the phone checks and the meeting about leaks was leaked to the media. It’s not the first time that warnings about leaks have promptly leaked. The State Department’s legal office issued a four-page memo warning of the dangers of leaks — that memo was immediately posted by the Washington Post.

  373. says

    @370 –

    It never ceases to amaze me how flabbergastingly stupid Spicer is. Does he actually think that whoever is doing the leaking is going to do it electronically?

  375. says

    This is interesting. A boy undergoing a gender transition was forced by the state to continue competing with the girls, even though he is on testosterone as part of the transition. Parents are correctly stating that this gives him and unfair advantage and wrongly calling him a “cheater”.

    He requested to wrestle the boys, and was denied. Should he not be allowed to wrestle at all then? He’s 17, so will be looking at colleges soon I assume. Will a college extend a scholarship to a state champion wrestler in this circumstance? Provided his grades are good, he would be a lock for a free ride in any other situation.

  377. says

    SC @367, the news that Mercer played a role in manipulating the Brexit vote, while simultaneously funding Breitbart, was enough for me. I’m already in alarm mode.

    SC @370, Ha! and ha! again. I enjoyed the leaks about the phone checks. Basically, Spicer is going after his own staffers. So, it was not the intelligence agencies leaking after all? More from the Politico coverage:

    […] Upon entering Spicer’s second floor office, staffers were told to dump their phones on a table for a “phone check,” to prove they had nothing to hide.

    Spicer, who consulted with White House counsel Don McGahn before calling the meeting, was accompanied by White House lawyers in the room, according to multiple sources. There, he explicitly warned staffers that using texting apps like Confide — an encrypted and screenshot-protected messaging app that automatically deletes texts after they are sent — and Signal, another encrypted messaging system, was a violation of the Federal Records Act, according to multiple sources in the room.

    The phone checks included whatever electronics staffers were carrying when they were summoned to the unexpected follow-up meeting, including government-issued and personal cell phones. […]

    So, yeah, “according to multiple sources in the room.” LOL.

    And note that Spicer had his Big Brother goons checking personal cell phones as well.

    Staffers must be feeling great.

  378. says

    It never ceases to amaze me how flabbergastingly stupid Spicer is. Does he actually think that whoever is doing the leaking is going to do it electronically?

    Using the phone they bring in to work, of course.

  379. says

    Spicer, who consulted with White House counsel Don McGahn before calling the meeting, was accompanied by White House lawyers in the room, according to multiple sources.

    Would also be funny if some of the lawyers were also leakers.

  380. blf says

    Was Spicer’s phone checked? Or the lawyers’s? Or the Secret Service agents’s (if any)? And do “they” really have the power / authority to “check” personal devices (phones or whatever)?

  382. blf says

    At the end of White House scrambles to damp down scandal over FBI inquiry into Russia ties (“Trump spokesman says FBI called links BS but agency has yet to comment; Ex-CIA chief John Brennan warns White House to ‘steer clear’ of investigation”) is this tidbit:

    […]
    As spokespeople were deployed on cable news to attack the media on Sunday morning, Trump tweeted an attack against the New York Times and a television commercial the newspaper planned to run during the broadcast of the Academy Awards.

    For first time the failing @nytimes will take an ad (a bad one) to help save its failing reputation, Trump wrote. Try reporting accurately & fairly!

    The ad [The Truth Is Hard (video)] asserts that “The truth is under attack. The truth is worth defending.” It’s unclear what Trump meant by for first time — the newspaper has created many television ads in the past.

    Whilst it’s a matter of opinion whether or not the ad (first embedded hyperlink in the above quote) is “bad” or not, it does make several good points hair furor ignores.

  383. blf says

    Update to @356, Leading French academic threatened with deportation at Houston airport:

    Henry Rousso[‘s … t]en-hour ordeal highlights ‘total arbitrariness and incompetence’

    […]

    Henry Rousso flew from Paris to Houston last Wednesday to take part in a symposium at Texas A&M University but was wrongly detained and almost sent back to France after a border guard failed to understand Rousso’s entitlements under visa rules, university officials said.

    […] Emmanuel Macron, a [French] presidential candidate, tweeted on Sunday to declare that “there is no excuse for what happened to Henry Rousso. Our country is open to scientists and intellectuals.”

    Fatma Marouf, director of the A&M Immigrant Rights Clinic, told the Guardian on Sunday that she found out about Rousso’s situation at about 10pm on Wednesday night and worked to get him freed, which happened three or four hours later. She said that Rousso came to the US on a visitor’s visa which normally does not allow recipients to work or receive compensation, but there are exceptions for some academic activities, such as giving lectures or speeches.

    “My best guess is that it was his honorarium, I don’t think the officer who decided to detain him really understood the visa requirement and the technicalities on getting an honorarium which are permitted under his visa,” Marouf said. […]

    […]

    He credited the intervention of the university officials with securing his release and said he did not know why he was singled out for special scrutiny, but doubted it was by chance. “I’m always wary of making any hasty conclusions. This incident has caused me a certain discomfort, it’s impossible to deny. I cannot, however stop myself from thinking of all those who have to suffer these humiliations and this legal attack without the protections which I was able to benefit from,” he wrote.

    “It is now necessary to face up to the total arbitrariness and incompetence on the other side of the Atlantic,” he wrote. “I don’t know which is worse. What I do know, loving this country as I always have, is that the United States is no longer quite the United States.” […]

  385. blf says

    These are from a British satire site somewhat like The Onion:

    ● Trump begins search for Secretary of Making shit up:

    US President Donald Trump has begun searching for a new position within his inner circle, the secretary of state for making stuff up.

    The successful candidate for the post, which was created over the weekend, will be in charge of the White House’s efforts to propagate ‘Fake news’ to the masses.

    “This a great opportunity.”, Trump said. “An excellent opportunity. We’re looking for a candidate with a creative mindset. One that can make things up on the spot, but not rubbish things, believable things.”
    […]

    ● Trump finally learns to read at Key Stage 2 level (quoted in full, this was just so funny I couldn’t work out how to best excerpt it):

    There has been jubilation in the Oval office this afternoon after the White House announced that Donald Trump has finally reached the same level of reading that most us could do when we were 7.

    Initially unaware that his tenure as president would require him to be able to read, Trump started his ‘Intensive’ reading course a day after his inauguration, exclusively taught to him by boffins from Stanford University.

    “He’s doing well.”, said Jonathan Peak, an English languages lecturer that was pulled from his day job of educating the countries [sic] brightest students to deal with Donald Trump.

    “We’ve finished the blue, red and yellow Biff, Chip and Kipper books from the Magic Key series. He absolutely loves them. You should see him jumping up and down, clapping his hands like a maniac when he gets a word right.”

    “At the moment we’re still working with two to three syllable words. The books are getting alot harder, but he seems to be going strong.”

    After finishing Key Stage 1 in record time for a 70 year old, Trump was rewarded with a chocolate Caterpillar cake and a bag of Chuppa Chups lollies for his efforts.

    Jon says he is ‘Confident’ that by the end of his term, Trump will be at least a Key Stage 4 reader.

    “There’s a lot of hard work to go and a lot of big words to learn, but I think Don can do it. He will actually be reading the Executive Orders he signs in no time at all.”

  387. says

    Mike Pence is going to have to tour the country cleaning up Jewish cemeteries.

    Desecration of a Jewish cemetery is, unfortunately, in the news again. This time, dozens of headstones at Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Pennsylvania were broken and/or tipped over. The police are not calling it a hate crime, not yet anyway.
    6ABC News link

    The previous desecration of a Jewish cemetery was in St. Louis, Missouri. Muslims raised money to repair that cemetery.

  388. says

    blf @383, both are funny. Thanks for the links. The satire about Trump not reading prompted a memory of watching him painfully read from the teleprompter, and, even worse, watching him haltingly read part of an Executive Order like he was seeing it for the first time … and like he has trouble reading the English language.

    Barack Obama, on the other hand, can not only read, he writes well.

  390. says

    The new DNC chair is criticizing Trump:

    […] Hours after he was sworn in as president, Trump “made it harder for first-time home buyers to buy a home,” [Tom] Perez said.

    “A few days later, he tried to make it harder for people to save for retirement,” he added.

    Perez also said the president has “governed from the far right in everything he’s done.”

    “Look at the ill-advised and frankly racist executive action against Muslims,” he added, referring to the president’s order barring refugees and people from seven predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S. […]

    After the DNC race Saturday, Trump tweeted his congratulations to Perez for his victory.

    “Congratulations to Thomas Perez, who has just been named Chairman of the DNC,” the president tweeted.

    “I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!”

    In another tweet on Sunday, Trump claimed the race for the DNC chairman was “rigged.”

    “The race for DNC Chairman was, of course, totally ‘rigged,'” he tweeted.

    “Bernie’s guy, like Bernie himself, never had a chance. Clinton demanded Perez!”

    Perez later shot back at Trump, dismissing the “rigged” tweet and emphasizing unity within the Democratic Party.

    Perez said he and Ellison got a “good kick” out of the president’s tweet.

    “Donald Trump up again in the morning, tweeting about us. Our unity as a party is our greatest strength and it’s his worst nightmare,” Perez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    He then pivoted to talking about the allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential race, calling for an independent investigation into the issue.

    “Frankly, what we need to be looking at is whether the election is rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy, Vladimir Putin,” he said. […]

    Link

  391. blf says

    And over in prototype-trumpratland, Polish judges urged to ‘fight every inch’ for their independence:

    Supreme court president says plans to change how judges are appointed could turn courts into ‘plaything’ for politicians

    The president of Poland’s supreme court has urged the country’s judges to “fight for every inch of justice” as the rightwing government pushes for changes that critics say would make judicial independence a “pure fiction”.

    […]

    In its latest battle with Poland’s legal system, the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) says it wants to “democratise” the way Polish judges are appointed, which at the moment is a job for the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), an autonomous body whose judicial members are chosen by their peers.

    Under the government’s proposals, however, the terms of all the judicial members of the council would be terminated within 90 days of the draft law’s enactment. Their replacements would be selected by the Polish parliament, with the speaker of the parliament given discretion as to which candidates should be put forward for consideration.

    Whereas the council’s judicial members presently enjoy a majority, under the government’s proposals the body would be split into two chambers, one for judicial members and the other for political representatives. Both chambers would have to agree to an appointment or a resolution, giving the political representatives a veto over decisions made by the judicial members.

    “The government’s proposals will be an instrument for ensuring the appointment of the ‘right’ kind of judges who will not be too critical of the authorities and their political programme,” said Ewa Łętowska, a professor at Poland’s Institute of Legal Sciences […].

    The council was given less than three working days to respond to the draft act, receiving it from the Ministry of Justice on a Thursday and expected to provide its official response by the following Tuesday. In a strongly worded statement, it described the proposals as “in obvious and gross contradiction with the Polish constitution”.

    […]

    The government describes the proposals as enhancing democracy and independence by freeing the appointments process from the corporate interests of the judicial environment, citing the judicial appointments process in countries such as Spain and Germany.

    I (currently) have no idea what the Spanish and German processes are, but presume the Polish nazis are lying, or ignoring important details.

    […]

    Shortly after assuming power in late 2015, the government merged the office of prosecutor general with that of the justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, a move that some analysts argue has already allowed the government to exert political pressure on judges.

    “We have already seen numerous examples of prosecutors answerable to the minister of justice initiating criminal proceedings against judges who have reached decisions they don’t agree with,” said Łętowska.

  392. says

    Poor, delicate Marco Rubio. He is really disturbed by what he has seen at other Republican town hall meetings. He is not going to subject himself to that.

    Copitito de nieve.

  395. says

    So true. Imagine if a woman said what Rubio and some of the other Republicans are saying about the town halls. (I’ve already noted Gabby Giffords’ response to Louie Gohmert above. Someone in this response thread mentions they just went to a town hall meeting for Rep. Jackie Speier, who was shot five times when she went to investigate Jonestown in Guyana and left for dead until help arrived 22 hours later.)

  396. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Democrats must overhaul party, attack big business, Sanders says.

    Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Sunday urged a major overhaul of his party, calling for more aggressive efforts to court working-class voters and fight big businesses from Wall Street to the pharmaceutical sector.

    Sanders, who spoke a day after Democrats chose Tom Perez, a veteran of former President Barack Obama’s administration, as their new party chairman, said it was also crucial for progressives to do more to mobilize grassroots supporters to take on Republican President Donald Trump.

    “We need a total transformation,” the 75-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    “We need to open up the party to working people, to young people and make it crystal clear that the Democratic Party is going to take on Wall Street, it’s going to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, it’s going to take on corporate America that is shutting down plants in this country and moving our jobs abroad,” he added

    One problem Sen. Sanders. Those of us relying upon our IRA’s for our total income, need a certain amount of corporate profits to not have a loss of capital in those savings. And we hire professionals to mange our money. We could be in dire straights in a few years with significant loss of income and capital under your complaints.

    Are YOU or SSA going to make up my difference in income if that happens (minus Trumps recession)?

  397. says

    “To Battle Fake News, Ukrainian Show Features Nothing but Lies”:

    …“StopFake News” is no Onion-style satire, but rather positions itself as serious public service journalism, identifying fake news and debunking it on the air. That is because Kiev, with its running battle with Moscow, was plagued by fake news long before concern over the problem spiked in Western Europe and the United States.

    During the Ukraine crisis in 2014, manipulative and often outright invented news poured in from Russia on satellite television and websites and into sympathetic local newspapers.

    Recurring themes emerged, becoming the talk at water coolers around the capital: An Islamic State training camp had opened in Ukraine; President Petro O. Poroshenko was a drunk and sometimes appeared inebriated in public; nationalists had taken to lynching or, in one infamous case, crucifying Russian-speaking children.

    Ukraine banned some Russian television broadcasts, a practice that raised free speech objections, and yet the fake news still circulates online. “StopFake News” has chosen public debunking, not banning, as the best defense — and has shown it can become its own form of appealing entertainment.

    StopFake, which is also the name of the organization that founded the newscast, began its work nearly three years before a report by American intelligence agencies into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election in the United States. And it predated by a year the European Union’s establishment of a department to identify and call out fake news plants from Russia. Facebook has recently hired fact checkers in the United States and Germany to flag false reports, not all of them Russian in origin.

    Russia, though, has been such a fountain of fake news inside Ukraine that debunking factual errors in Russian propaganda became the specialty of StopFake….

  398. blf says

    Apparently the far-right goofballs in Germany are having problems, Germany’s rightwing AfD party struggles to cope with internal crisis:

    Alternative für Deutschland’s support has slumped since a leading politician called for Germany to stop atoning for its Nazi past

    [… T]he rise of Germany’s rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland party has at times looked inevitable, leading one politician recently to predict a total victory for his party in the coming federal elections.

    With less than seven months to go, however, the AfD engine is suddenly sputtering. Over the past week, three separate polls have shown support for the party slip below 10%, down from a record high of 15% last September.

    […]

    The AfD’s current crisis was triggered in mid-January through a taboo-breaking speech by the rightwinger Björn Höcke, who in a beer hall in Dresden called for a 180 degree turn in Germany’s culture of remembering and atoning for the Nazi era.

    In the month since, the party has dithered over whether to expel Höcke for his comments, revealing a broader division about the group’s future direction.

    [AdF co-führer Frauke] Petry appears intent on modelling the AfD on France’s far-right Front National [(FN) …]

    […]

    But other politicians in the AfD, such as the deputy leader, Alexander Gauland, see their party’s future as distinct from that of other European populists groups such as the FN […]. To get enough votes in Germany, they argue, the AfD requires not one charismatic leader but several faces, appealing to both nationalists in the former east and economic liberals in the country’s wealthy south west.

    […]

    Ironically, both camps accuse each other of drifting off to the far right, either by being too soft on Höcke or by not distancing the party from the Front National.

    Melanie Amann, a journalist for the weekly Der Spiegel […], said the Höcke scandal had ended up hurting the party’s fortunes in more ways than one.

    “On the one hand, the speech genuinely shocked economic liberals who believed that the AfD is at heart a version of the Christian Democratic Union before Angela Merkel moved them to the political centre. On the other hand, the threat of expelling Höcke for his comments has alienated the party’s far-right nationalist support.”

    […]

  400. blf says

    From yet another British satire site:

    ● Donald Trump insists La La Land won Best Picture Oscar if you ignore the millions of illegal votes:

    […]
    Crooked Oscars stealing the award from La La Land. SAD! tweeted the man who probably should have been doing something more important.

    A White House spokesperson went on to clarify that millions of illegals had voted for Moonlight according to some guy on Twitter, and therefore it is the rightful winner of the Oscar.
    […]
    You can rest assured that the President will do all he can to ensure the success of things he likes in future.
    […]

    ● Donald Trump pledges to replace Constitution with the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition (Aug-2016):

    […]
    The news emerged after it became clear Trump’s campaign website would not allow supporters to cancel reoccurring donations, a move covered under Rule 239 as “Never be afraid to mislabel a product”.

    Trump, who believes he is running for the position of Grand Nagus of the United States, has a personal motto of “A man is only worth the sum of his possessions”, which is his favourite of the rules.

    Others of his favourite rules include ‘war is good for business’ and ‘Employees are rungs on the ladder of success — don’t hesitate to step on them’.

    Many supporters of Donald Trump already appear to be using at least the first three of the five stages of acquisition — infatuation, obsession, justification, appropriation and resale — to explain backing their candidate.

    Speaking from the plush Ferenginar Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, a spokesman for Trump confirmed that all 285 of the rules would be added to the Constitution as amendments.
    […]
    The first two amendments will be ‘Females and finances don’t mix’ and ‘It never hurts to suck up to the boss’. Donald was very clear about that for some reason.
    […]

    ● NewsThump barred from White House Press Pool (quoted in full, as it’s too funny to even begin to excerpt):

    British satirical website NewsThump has been banned from the White House Press Pool after press secretary Sean Spicer accused them of pushing ‘false narratives’ and ‘fake news’.

    Spicer cited examples such as reports that Voldemort had become the President’s Secretary of State and that he had signed an Executive Order to rescind the Ten Commandments.

    “NewsThump is an enemy of the people, total fake news,” he told remaining reporters.

    “Voldemort didn’t even make the shortlist, that is a total fabrication. As for the executive order on the ten commandments, that’s totally fake. It is nothing more than an exploratory working party reviewing the ten commandments, nothing else.

    “We will be happy to return their credentials as soon as they start telling the truth, like how good a golfer the president is, or how great his hair is looking today. Is that too much to ask?”

    When pushed by reporters from other organisations, Spicer was forced to admit that NewsThump had managed to publish one factual news item, and that plans to replace the constitution with the Ferengi Rules of Aquisition were now quite far advanced.

  401. blf says

    And from yet another British satire site:

    ● Unnamed president slams unnamed news agencies for using unnamed sources:

    UNNAMED LOCATION – An unnamed president furthered his or her unnamed fight against unnamed news organizations at an unnamed conference on a recent unnamed day. The unnamed president criticized use of unnamed sources for news and declared that whenever any unnamed news organization refers to the “unnamed”, that all who are “unnamed” are in fact fictitious elements of fake news. The unnamed president declared he expects unnamed news agencies to always name their sources, but did not elaborate why they should be named besides “fake news.”
    […]

    ● Trump to moon the Moon (quoted in full):

    Trump Wall, AZ – During a ground-breaking ceremony speech today, Trump outlined his goals for NASA. Local reporters are scratching their heads trying to see what the details of the Trump space program have to do with the wall or anything for that matter.

    Trump was quoted as follows:

    We’re building the wall. It’s good. Good. But I want to go for the moon. I want to climb on top of this wall and moon the Moon. And I want Mexico to see it. They can kiss it and pay for the wall. I’m going to totally destroy them. They will be looking at the full moon over the wall and they’ll see THIS.

    At this point he did something not very presidential.

  402. says

    This is interesting: an early regression analysis of the “house effects” of different pollsters (and of different survey methodologies) on Trump’s approval ratings, by two undergrad political science students. (I’d like to think most of my former students would understand what they did here.)

  404. says

    “The secret Swedish troll factory: They trick themselves to interviews under false identities. The purpose: spreading xenophobia and hatred towards politicians, opinion makers, journalists and regular citizens. Today newspaper Eskilstuna-Kuriren goes behind the scenes at Granskning Sverige (Auditing Sweden) – one of the country’s leading centres for xenophobic propaganda.”

    I’m very grateful they provided an English translation, though the translation itself isn’t great, and that combined with the formatting make it somewhat confusing at times. Otherwise, a very useful article about a far-Right, pro-Putin, pro-Trump hate site in Sweden that has people posing as regular citizens call journalists and others, record the calls, selectively edit the conversations and add in insults and accusations, and post it online. It’s all organized, and if a caller’s post gets a certain number of clicks they’re paid (the author doesn’t specify where the money might come from).

  405. says

    What Trump said about health care when he was a candidate:

    I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.

    What Trump said about health care after the election:

    We’re going to have insurance for everybody…. Everybody’s going to be taken care of.

    The GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act has appeared in various iterations, but now we have and actual bill. A draft of the bill was leaked to Politico. It does not fulfill Trump’s promises.

    A draft House Republican repeal bill would dismantle the Obamacare subsidies and scrap its Medicaid expansion, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by POLITICO.

    The legislation would take down the foundation of Obamacare, including the unpopular individual mandate, subsidies based on people’s income, and all of the law’s taxes. It would significantly roll back Medicaid spending and give states money to create high risk pools for some people with pre-existing conditions. Some elements would be effective right away; others not until 2020.

    The replacement would be paid for by limiting tax breaks on generous health plans people get at work – an idea that is similar to the Obamacare “Cadillac tax” that Republicans have fought to repeal. […]

    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/house-republicans-obamacare-repeal-package-235343

    An excerpt from Steve Benen’s analysis:

    […] By replacing the ACA with this Republican approach, the wealthy would get a massive tax break, while assistance to working families would be reduced and Medicaid expansion would face a big cut. To pay for their policy, GOP leaders intend to begin taxing employer-provided insurance – a policy that would cause massive disruptions and which many Republicans have already dismissed as a non-starter. […]

    An analysis presented by the National Governors Association, conducted by the health research firm Avalere Health and the consulting firm McKinsey and Company, told state chief executives that the Republican plan, in its current form, would likely do significant harm to the nation’s uninsured rate – which has dropped to unprecedented lows since the Affordable Care Act was implemented.

    While we wait for some of these detailed assessments to come together – unconfirmed rumors suggest the CBO already took a crack at it, and the results were so awful, Republicans buried the findings – it’s important to acknowledge that there’s a little something for everyone to hate in this plan. Democrats will scream bloody murder about the fact that this policy directs federal resources away from the poor and towards the rich. Republicans will balk at the new tax scheme that finances the policy.

    Seniors and their advocates will reject the increased costs for the elderly. Patient advocates will balk at the lack of protections for those with pre-existing conditions. And a variety of stakeholders – including governors and hospitals – will take aim at the cruel Medicaid cuts. […]

    And then, of course, there are the high-risk pools Paul Ryan is so fond of, which have proven “insufficient to meet the needs of sick Americans.”

    […] Trump still can’t be bothered to brush up on the details of health care policy, but if he intends to have a system in line with his own promises, the president will have no choice but to distance himself from the bill House Republican leaders put together. […]

    I think Trump will just claim that the Republican bill fulfills all of his promises. He will lie.

  406. blf says

    This is a misleading title to an interesting (and long) article, Rumbling Balkans threaten foreign policy headache for Trump (“In Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro, signs of ethnic tension are on the rise again”). The title is misleading as it does not discuss things as hair furor might construe them and react (I think we can rule out proactive steps).

    That article links to GOP Lawmaker Says Macedonia Is Not a Country, Macedonia Goes Ballistic:

    It’s not your run-of-the-mill diplomatic snafu. The Macedonian government is furious at Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) for saying Macedonia is not a country, when it is in fact a country.

    This is gonna make everybody mad at me but, uh, what the heck. Macedonia is not a country. I’m sorry, it’s not a country, Rohrabacher said in an interview with Albanian television station Vizion Plus aired Tuesday [7-Feb-2017]. Rohrabacher chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats.

    […]

    Other senior Republican lawmakers have rebuked Rohrabacher, once called “Putin’s favorite Congressman” for his foreign policy stances. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Rohrabacher a “lunatic fringe” after he said allegations of Russia’s human rights abuses were baloney in December.

    But Rohrabacher’s views may gain more traction during President Donald Trump’s decidedly more Russian-friendly administration; he claimed after the election to be on the shortlist for secretary of state.

    […]

    (The above excerpt is from Foreign Policy, which uses a paywall but has a one(!) free article a month exception.)

  407. says

    Trump is asking for a $54 billion increase in defense spending. Here is an excerpt of what he had to say this morning:

    […] We have to win. We have to start winning wars again. I have to say when I was young in high school and college, everybody used to say we never lost a war, we never lost a war. You remember. Some of you were right there with me and you remember we never lost a war. America never lost. And now we never win a war. We never win. And we don’t fight to win. We don’t fight to win. So we either got to win or don’t fight it at all. […]

    The U.S. allocates about $598 billion to defense spending. The top 14 countries other than the U.S. spend about $664 billion (all together, not individually). The 14 are China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, U.K., Germany, Japan, France, India, S. Korea, Iraq, Italy, Australia, Brazil and Israel. The rest of the world spends, collectively, about $317 billion.

  408. says

    Oh, FFS! Among other things, Trump said this morning:

    It’s an unbelievably complex subject, nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.

    More examples of stupidity from the same Trump speech:

    […] Referring to his own enthusiasm for tax reform, Trump explained, “I can’t do it until we do health care, because we have to know what the health care is going to cost and — statutorily — that’s the way it is. So for those people who say, ‘oh, gee, I wish we could do the tax first,’ it just doesn’t work that way. I would like to do the tax first.”

    Trump is wrong about this. There is no statutory requirement for him to do health care before he works on tax reform. What’s at issue is simply Paul Ryan’s legislative strategy. Ryan wants to pass a tax reform plan with a party-line vote, which means he needs to use the budget reconciliation process to avoid a Senate filibuster.

    You can’t write a reconciliation bill that increases the deficit over the long term. So Ryan’s plan is to repeal the Affordable Care Act — which, among other things, would sharply reduce taxes on the rich, but would avoid increasing the deficit since the cuts will be offset by spending less on insurance for the poor and middle class. Then, having locked that tax cut into place, Republicans could move on to a revenue-neutral tax reform using the lower revenue number as the baseline. […].

    http://www.vox.com/2017/2/27/14750944/trump-health-care-complicated

  412. says

    John Oliver presented an analysis of Obamacare and of Republican plans to replace it. The video is 18:52 minutes long. As usual, Oliver takes the time to thoroughly examine the lies, the facts, and the politics surrounding health care.

    […] Republicans have happily complained about the flaws in the law, taken no responsibility for fixing them, and, in fact, have often undermined the whole thing. […]

  413. blf says

    Update on @250, I’m fighting the ban on Lipstick Under My Burkha. Indian women need a voice:

    My film dares to tell a story from a female point of view. But that’s a narrative that the Indian film board — and India — isn’t comfortable with

    When I was making Lipstick Under My Burkha, I didn’t think I was making a film that would scare a democratic country like India. I certainly didn’t expect the Central Board of Film Certification there to refuse to certify the film, thereby blocking its release. Their reasons include that it is lady oriented, it contains sexual scenes and is audio pornography.

    The film tells the story of four feisty women in a small town in India who try to steal a piece of freedom from within the confines of their restrained lives. I never imagined that my feminist politics would rattle the board so much that they would refuse to let the film be shown. […]

    […]

    In a culture where female actors do “item-songs” — in which they dance among crowds of ogling men and the camera mindlessly moves up and down their bodies — a small, independent, spirited film like Lipstick Under My Burkha threatens to challenge the status quo. How dare women tell stories from their own points of view? How dare women strive for agency over their own bodies? How dare women share their intimate dreams? How dare an older woman express her sexuality? How dare these women exist?

    […]

    India is a difficult country for women. Violence, gender discrimination, glass ceilings in the work place, sexual harassment on the streets, dowry, forced marriages and female foeticide … the list goes on. In a country like this, shouldn’t the voices of women be encouraged and given more space? Instead we have a situation where a small film that dares to tell a story from a female point of view is being silenced. We are being told that our voices do not matter. We are being told it is better to shut up and comply.

    As a woman, and as a filmmaker, I have decided that I will not shut up. […]

    The Grauniad notes the film has now also won the Audience Award at Glasgow Film Festival 2017.

  416. says

    I have to say when I was young in high school and college, everybody used to say we never lost a war, we never lost a war. You remember. Some of you were right there with me…

    Others, of course, were in Vietnam.

  418. says

    Another one of Trump’s picks turns out to have connections to Russia. Wilbur Ross is the nominee for secretary of commerce.

    […] A study prepared exclusively for DCReport.org by James S. Henry reveals deep financial ties between Donald Trump’s nominee for Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, and three Russian oligarchs, whose lives and fortunes depend on staying in the good graces of Vladimir Putin. […]

    These relationships between nominee Ross and the oligarchs involve ownership and management of a European bank with a reputation for laundering Russian money and making bad loans. […]

    https://www.dcreport.org/2017/02/25/another-cabinet-pick-with-secret-ties-to-putin-and-oligarchs/

  419. says

    TPM article about the Department of (In)Justice’s predictable course change mentioned @ #413 above. It occurs to me that one thing local groups could do, if they’re not already, is start now bringing people where they need to go to get the forms of ID required to vote under these ridiculous laws. Just in case. Don’t wait until it’s close to the next election.

  420. says

    Other senior Republican lawmakers have rebuked Rohrabacher, once called “Putin’s favorite Congressman” for his foreign policy stances.

    I wonder if Rohrabacher is being looked at by any of the investigations.

  421. says

    Another round of bomb threats was made against Jewish community centers and some Jewish schools today (Monday, February 27).

    Here’s a list of the bomb threats from today.

    Jewish day schools in Miami, Florida; Rockville, Maryland; and Fairfax, Virginia

    Jewish community centers in
    Asheville, North Carolina
    York and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
    Staten Island and Tarrytown, New York
    Cherry Hill, New Jersey
    Ann Arbor, Michigan
    Indianapolis, Indiana
    Birmingham, Alabama
    Talleyville, Delaware

    This makes the fifth round of bomb threats. No one has been caught. No bombs have been found.

    The bomb threats are separate from the desecration of Jewish cemeteries (so far, two desecration crimes).

  424. says

    Wonkette reported on Trump “deporting the fuck out of everyone now.”

    […] Part of last week’s Department of Homeland Security orders on implementing the New Cruelty involved the expansion of “expedited removal,” a beautiful loophole in immigration enforcement allowing people to be deported immediately, without so much as a phone call or an appearance before a judge.

    Rights, after all, aren’t really for just anyone, you know. Under the Obama administration, the get-out-of-America-immediately policy was only applied to undocumented immigrants who’d been in the Land of the Free for under 14 days, and who were caught within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Last week’s orders loosened that up a whole bunch: Now, the policy applies nationwide, and can be used against anyone who can’t document they’ve been in the USA continuously for two years or more with some kind of utility receipts, phone records, or ID. No documentation, and the person can be deported within 24 hours.

    […] “the police officer who arrests you and interrogates you also convicts you.” […]

    […] No hearing, no phone call, just get ’em out, because after all, they’re all rapists and murderers, maybe. […]

    So if you take the shackles off a law enforcement agency, there’s no chance they might maybe get a tad overzealous about scooping up everyone they possibly can, would they? Nothing to worry about, says Sandra Hernandez, who reported on immigration from 2006 through 2010, and only lists a mere bunch of stories about ICE overreach, like green card holders being deported for minor infractions decades earlier, or for paperwork lost or bungled by the government. She notes that ICE loved to hold press conferences crowing about the dangerous fugitives they’d deported, but that plenty of those actually deported turned out to merely be “street vendors, construction workers, janitors and small business owners, albeit without papers.” […]

    An American citizen deported to Mexico after a drug possession conviction. His family had brought in his birth certificate, but the immigration judge decided it must be fake, and added a charge of “impersonating a U.S. citizen.” Once the story made the papers, the guy was eventually allowed to return.

    A Senegalese man who had a federal court stay allowing him to stay in the U.S. while his case was decided. ICE ignored the order and, “under a covert program that forcibly drugged immigrants with powerful psychotropics so they wouldn’t resist,” drugged him up and dragged him off to LAX to fly him back to Senegal. The airline refused to put him on the plane, he eventually won his court case, and he is now a permanent resident. […]

    A green card holder deported to Haiti after an immigration court illegally treated a minor drug charge as an aggravated felony. […]

    We bet tourism and international conferences are going to really thrive in Canada for the next few years. […]

  425. says

    Excerpts from Charles M. Blow’s op-ed, Trump, Archenemy of Truth in the New York Times.

    Donald Trump’s unrelenting assault on the media is in fact an assault on the implacability of truth, the notion of accountability and the power of free speech. It is also a bit of a bow to the conspiracy theorizing that Trump is wont to do.

    Last week at CPAC, the politically crippled Reince Priebus delivered a soliloquy lamenting Trump’s negative media coverage, saying, “We’re hoping that the media would catch up eventually.”

    Trump’s “boss,” Steve Bannon, immediately blasted the notion the way a shotgun blasts a quail rising from the brush:

    “The reason Reince and I are good partners is that we can disagree. It’s not only not going to get better. It’s going to get worse every day.” […]

    “And here’s why. By the way, the internal logic makes sense. They’re corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed — adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has.” […]

    The conspiracy theory Bannon posits here is perfectly shaped for the xenophobe: America’s media has economic interests that extend well beyond this country’s borders, and therefore Trump’s “America first” message and policies pose a very real, bottom-line threat to the media’s global prosperity. The threat is so urgent that the American media is willfully damaging the only real asset it has — credibility — by inventing falsehoods designed to damage Trump and insulate its own profitability.

    As far-fetched as this may sound to any reasonable person, one must always remember that Trump isn’t a reasonable person or even a particularly smart one, which makes him the perfect vessel for Bannon’s pseudo-intellectual vanities. […]

    At one point, Trump said: “We have to fight it, folks, we have to fight it. They’re very smart, they’re very cunning and they’re very dishonest.” At another he said of the media: “Many of these groups are part of the large media corporations that have their own agenda and it’s not your agenda and it’s not the country’s agenda, it’s their own agenda.”

    Trump is Bannon’s puppet, whose one sustaining parlor trick is to deliver incoherence with confidence. Strangely enough, people find comfort in this kind of imperfect parlance.

    Maundering is the rhetoric of the middlebrow. […] It can be quaint and even clumsy, all of which can give idiocy, incomprehensibility and untruth a false air of authenticity.

    So Trump and Bannon spin their folksy tale of media corruption to give Trump a needed enemy […]

    Trump doesn’t seem to register that lying — all the time! — is not allowed. […]

    So Trump lashes out with mindless twaddle, insinuating that the media has fully abandoned the pillars and principles of journalism to join the opposition.

    The fact is that Trump simply wants the truth not to be true, so he assaults its quality. […]

    The press is the light that makes the roaches scatter. […]

  427. blf says

    Chair of House intelligence panel sees no evil in claims of Trump-Russia links:

    Echoing Trump administration tactics, Republican Devin Nunes warns against witch-hunt, saying I’ve been told by many folks … that there’s nothing there

    [… House intelligence committee chairman Devin] Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition team, said he had not seen any evidence of contacts between associates of Trump and Russian officials.

    As of right now, I don’t have any evidence of any phone calls, Nunes told reporters on Capitol Hill. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I don’t have that. And what I’ve been told by many folks is that there’s nothing there.

    […]

    Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, disputed Nunes’s characterization of the investigation.

    “The fact is, we haven’t even begun to sit down with the FBI to talk about what have they looked at, who have they talked to, what leads have been pursued, what haven’t,” Schiff told MSNBC.

    “The reality is we don’t know whether there were contacts with Trump campaign officials. That’s one of the core issues that we’re going to investigate.

    “Having conversations with intelligence community leaders is not evidence.”

    […]

    According to a report by the Washington Post, the White House enlisted Nunes and his Republican counterpart on the Senate intelligence committee, Richard Burr, to help counter news reports about the Russia links.

    Addressing reporters on Monday, Nunes echoed Trump administration tactics by pivoting from the substance of the investigation to instead focus on the nature of anonymous leaks to the media.

    There’s been major crimes committed, Nunes said. What I’m concerned about is no one is focusing on major leaks that have occurred here. We can’t run a government like this. A government can’t function with massive leaks at the highest level.

    […]

    Nunes has previously defended Flynn and criticized the leaks that forced him out of the White House. Asked on Monday if he was not engaging in leaks of his own by telling reporters there was no evidence while his committee’s investigation was still ongoing, he said: I would never talk about classified information with any of you, because that would be a crime.

    He also rejected calls to subpoena Trump’s tax returns […]

    To the best of my knowledge, none of the leaked documents — scans, &tc — have been marked with any classification. My recollection is every page must always be marked. I call complete BS on the claim classified documents have leaked (for the leaks hair furor, et al., are raging about). And of course, it has been speculated a notable source of “leaks”, albeit probably not to the press, is teh trum-prat’s own smartphone.

  428. says

    This is a followup to blf’s comment 425.

    Quoting Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California who is the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee:

    We have, I think, reached no conclusion, nor could we, in terms of issues of collusion, because we haven’t called in a single witness or reviewed a single document on that issue as of yet.

    It’s very important, I think, that we not prejudge either the conclusions of our investigation or any conclusion that our intelligence agencies may or may not reach without doing our own independent analysis.

    Compare that to what the Major Doofus, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (Republican), said:

    The way it sounds like to me is, is it’s been looked into and there’s no evidence of anything there.

    Nunes has no basis for saying that. He repeated some of the hearsay from McCabe (an FBI agent who was from the notorious New York bureau that also trafficked in conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton). More tellingly, neither Nunes nor anyone else on that house committee has seen evidence or reports from the FBI. Neither Nunes nor anyone else on the committee has questioned any of the relevant players. It is, at best, premature for Nunes to be stating that “there’s no evidence of anything there” to anyone who will listen … and doing so at the behest of the White House.

  429. says

    Trump is calling his budget a “public safety and national security budget.” His plans will damage public safety and national security.

    […] the cuts from agencies that handle important diplomatic procedures do not help national security — they undermine it.

    “The Department of Defense is not the only federal agency responsible for protecting our national security,” Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and assistant secretary of defense from 1981 through 1985, said in a testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. “The State Department, the Agency for International Development, and the Department of Homeland Security all play a vital role in protecting this country. If we provide so much of our limited resources to the Pentagon that we cannot fund these agencies adequately, our national security will suffer.” […]

    The White House is expected to announce “dollar for dollar cuts,” according to a senior administration official interviewed by Politico. […]

    Bannon has been a big proponent of ‘‘economic nationalism” and American “sovereignty,” terms that underline his protectionist ideology. Trump has meanwhile spoken regularly about his perception that the American military has deteriorated under the Obama administration, even though top experts have described the power of the armed forces as “awesome.”

    Link

  430. says

    Follow-up to comments 425 and 426.

    “There’s nothing there” seems to be the Trump administration’s favorite phrase when it comes to refusing to investigate or discuss contacts between Trump associates and Russian intelligence officials.

    That’s the line they fed to House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes … and Nunes dutifully repeated that line to reporters.

    Here’s what Sean Spicer said during today’s press briefing:

    How many people have to say that there’s nothing there before you realize there’s nothing there?

    All I’m saying is the people who’ve done the investigating about Russia overall and its activities in the United States — specifically now with respect to our election — haven’t provided anything that lead me to believe or should lead you to believe

    When the reporters contacted us and we said, “No, to the best of our knowledge that’s not true,” they were asking us, “Can you point to anybody else that can substantiate this?” And I think we did a good job of saying, “Sure, we will share with reporters other people who have come to the same conclusion.”

    I think we did our job very effectively by making sure that reporters who had had questions about the accuracy and the claims made in The New York Times, that we were pointing them to subject matter experts who understood whether or not that story was accurate or not.

    I think that Russia’s involvement and activity has been investigated up and down. So the question becomes at some point: If there’s nothing further to investigate, what are you asking people to investigate?

    Chairman Nunes spoke very clearly today when asked over and over and over again about all of this and said that he has seen nothing that leads him to believe that there’s anything there. The president has spoken forcefully time and time again, that he has no interest in Russia, he hasn’t talked to people in Russia in years, and yet you keep asking […]

    It’s the same stuff over and over again that we’ve heard for literally six months. And so the question becomes at some point: What do you need to further investigate if there is nothing that has come out?

    Not convincing, Mr. Spicer. For one thing, it is not the “same stuff over and over.” New facts, new connections, are revealed almost daily. I don’t think you can rebut reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times by saying “there’s nothing there.”

  431. says

    “U.S. State Department tweets, then deletes congratulations for Iran Oscar win”

    *

    I was just gobsmacked after hearing Schiff’s comments. I had no idea the House committee hadn’t even been briefed yet or received any documents. So Nunes is basing his preconceptions on some private conversations before the investigation has really even begun, and then basically saying there’s no need for an investigation at all. It’s crazy wrong, and no way can he be trusted to run this. I have to wonder why the FBI is taking so long to provide them with anything…. There needs to be an independent commission.

  432. says

    What Trump suggested:

    Maybe the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN should have their own rally. It would be the biggest of them all!

    Breitbart said they would plan “Spirit of America” rallies for people who wanted to show their support for Trump. Today is the the day.

    Spirit of American rallies drew a few dozen supporters here and there (sometimes less).

    https://twitter.com/thebigotbasher/status/836304799163363329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

    Photo evidence 3 billion people showed up for the #Breitbart #spiritofamerica rally for #Trump. Billions. #resist.

    https://twitter.com/LoriWilsonWSB/status/836258564788322304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

    https://twitter.com/KimberleiDavis/status/836264321059549185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

    https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/836287806939009027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

  433. says

    Follow-up to SC’s comment @29.

    Schiff was very clear. He basically refuted this part of what Sean Spicer said at the press briefing today:

    I think that both the House and Senate have looked at it, you know as well as I do that the intelligence community has looked at it as well.

    Both the House and Senate have not looked into the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russian officials. As Schiff said, they have not “called in a single witness or reviewed a single document on that issue […]”

  434. tomh says

    ” they have not “called in a single witness or reviewed a single document on that issue”
    What makes me think that, with Republicans in charge, they never will.

  435. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    What makes me think that, with Republicans in charge, they never will.

    Depends on the “bad rug’s” approval numbers. If they look bad enough to sink their reeelection, every congresscritter who wants to keep their job, which is already under attack from their stupid and inane attempts to repeal/replace the ACA.

  436. says

    What Spicer is unwittingly confirming is that the current investigations are compromised. He is firming up the need for an independent investigation run by a special prosecutor.

    Here are the three compromised investigations:

    1. House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes. In addition to his current job, Nunes was also a Trump-for-president supporter and an official member of the Trump transition team. Nunes does not think he did anything wrong. In fact, he thinks everyone else is wrong:

    “This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” he told reporters, calling the investigation and calls for a special prosecutor a “witch hunt.”

    “At this point, there’s nothing there,” Nunes said. “We can’t go on a witch hunt against the American people, any American people who have not had any contact, just because they appeared in a news story.”

    2. Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Richard Burr. Like Nunes, Burr called reporters to say that there was nothing there.

    3. Department of Justice investigation, led by the FBI. Results of that investigation (not yet complete), will be given to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He will decide if the FBI report requires or does not require action. Sessions worked with the Trump campaign, and he is a Trump appointee.

    Burr and Nunes hold power over who is called as a witness in their investigation. They can also decide to retain or to discard records of that investigation. They have power over the use of subpoenas. They decide what is ultimately released to the public.

    Sessions has not recused himself.

  437. says

    More emoluments:

    Last week, Donald Trump’s company sealed its first big post-inaugural real estate transaction, selling a $15.8 million penthouse to a Chinese-American business executive who runs a company that touts its ability to exploit connections with powerful people to broker business deals in China.

    New York City property records show that Xiao Yan Chen, the founder and managing director of a business consulting firm called Global Alliance Associates, purchased the four-bedroom, six-bathroom condo in Trump’s Park Avenue high-rise on February 21. Before taking office, Trump signed documents removing himself from the board of directors of Trump Park Avenue LLC, the entity that sold the unit, but he remains the LLC’s owner. […]

    According to Chen’s bio on the Global Alliance website, she previously worked for Prudential Insurance, helping the company establish a private banking group in China, where she “developed and managed the Group’s high net worth private client base.” Before that, Chen’s biography says she worked at Merrill Lynch […]

    Until Chen’s purchase, none of Trump’s major real estate properties had reported any major sales since he became president. The condo was never publicly listed for sale, although Chen lists her current address as a smaller apartment in the Trump Park Avenue building. (It’s unclear whether she owns that unit, which was last purchased in 2004 by an entity called Lancer Trust.) […]

    The sale agreement for Chen’s penthouse was signed by Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, whom Trump tapped to serve along with his sons on the three-person panel that will run his company while he serves as president. […]

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/donald-trump-sells-park-avenue-penthouse-angela-chen

  438. says

    David Corn commented on the question of whether or not Republicans can be trusted to investigate Trump’s Russia scandal(s):

    […] Much depends on the chairmen of the two committees. How hard will they push if they encounter a roadblock at the FBI or elsewhere? And how far will they go? Will they devote sufficient resources? Will they issue subpoenas for witnesses not eager to accept a committee invitation? A chairman has much discretion in determining the course of an investigation. Imagine that a staffer has located a witness who might possess significant information but that this witness is now living in South Korea. Will the chairman send staff there to locate the witness and obtain a statement? Or might he say, We have to let this one go? […]

    Even with the FBI investigating, the congressional investigations are crucial. The FBI inquiry is either a counterintelligence probe or a criminal investigation (or maybe both). Neither of those are designed or intended to provide a full accounting to the public. An FBI criminal inquiry (usually) only yields public information if someone ends up being charged with a crime and the case goes to trial. And in such instances, the only information that emerges is material necessary for the prosecution of the case. That could be a small slice of whatever the bureau obtained. […]

  439. says

    Trump bashes the New York Times … again:

    If you read the New York Times, it’s — the intent is so evil and so bad. The stories are wrong in many cases, but it’s the overall intent. […]

    Did they apologize? No. I call them the failing New York Times and they write lies. They write lies.

    The quoted text is from an interview Trump granted to Breitbart News.

  440. says

    He just had to do it. Trump commented on the Oscars:

    I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end. It was a little sad. It took away from the glamour of the Oscars.

    It didn’t feel like a very glamorous evening. I’ve been to the Oscars. There was something very special missing, and then to end that way was sad.

    The quoted text is from an interview Trump granted to Breitbart News.

  441. says

    Tonight is the premiere of the ABC mini-series “When We Rise.” Here’s the description:

    This mini-series event chronicles the real-life personal and political struggles, set-backs and triumphs of a diverse family of LGBT men and women who helped pioneer one of the last legs of the U.S. Civil Rights movement from its turbulent infancy in the 20th century to the once unfathomable successes of today.

  442. says

    I think this has been discussed here before, but just a reminder: House Resolution 111, introduced by Jerry Nadler, will be debated by the Judiciary Committee tomorrow. The resolution of inquiry would

    [direct] Attorney General Jeff Sessions to give to the U.S. House documents “relating to the financial practices” of President Donald Trump, including “any criminal or counterintelligence investigation” targeting him, foreign government investment in any of Trump’s holdings, his “proposal to maintain an interest in his business holdings,” the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and any other documents relating to potential conflicts of interest.

    The Republicans want to kill it in committee so they don’t have to have a floor vote which would put their cravenness on display. They want to do it tomorrow because so much attention (foolishly) will be on Trump’s speech.

  458. says

    http://gizmodo.com/leaked-audio-trump-cares-about-food-safety-but-only-if-1792719325

    Trumpfuror talks about 10% tariffs to any product coming in to the US and using FDA regulations to punish foreign companies.

    I’m starting to wonder if his resentment towards foreign countries is all about his insecurities in business and getting his ass handed to him on a regular basis? Is it possible that his failures as a business person are manifesting in his foreign economic policy?

    How do libertarians square with isolationism and nationalism? Does the invisible hand only work with in our own borders?

  459. says

    I’m not sure which is more racist / homophobic, me thinking about what you are implying or you implying it.

    What on earth? I would’ve made the same little quip had it been the BBC. And the CBC includes both men and women. WTF are you talking about?

  460. says

    SC, I meant CBC as in Congressional Black Caucus. I typo’d BCC, which would traditionally mean blind carbon copy, which obviously makes no sense in this context. I corrected my typo and your response sounded like the kind of thing you would say when someone makes a freudian slip, or says something that betrays their deepest sexual desires.

    It was a joke riffing on your joke. You obviously didn’t get it which is my fault.

  461. Saad says

    SC, #450

    This isn’t real, right?

    The liberal’s utopia.

    (Yes, I know liberal isn’t the best word for them, but I can’t think of another one-word name to use.)

  462. says

    It was a joke riffing on your joke. You obviously didn’t get it which is my fault.

    Oh! Yes, my remark was on a much lower level – “He said ‘fuck me, [organization]’. *snicker*” (I did start writing a joke involving various rhyming organizations, but after the BBC the first to come to mind was CBP, which wasn’t funny at all…)

  467. Saad says

    SC, #463

    Some members of Congress are bringing undocumented immigrants to the speech. These are Trump’s guests.

    I wonder how pogroms get started.

  468. says

    @462 – How is that not a smoking gun? It’s a smoking fucking howitzer. Trump profits $60 million dollars from a Russian oligarch through his new secretary of commerce’s connections with Cypress bank, which is well known to launder Russian ill-gotten money, but Trump “Never does business in Russia, doesn’t know anybody in Russia.”

  470. blf says

    ‘Oui on peut’: 40,000 sign petition for Barack Obama as next French president:

    Campaign organisers came up with idea because they were disenchanted with the candidates running in France’s election

    Posters of Barack Obama have popped up around Paris in what started as a joke by four friends pretending to launch a campaign for the former US leader ahead of France’s presidential election.

    The posters bear the words “Oui on peut”, a French translation of Obama’s popular and effective 2008 campaign slogan Yes We Can.

    Even though the former US president, as a foreigner, cannot legally run in the two-round April–May election, an online petition posted by the group on their site Obama2017.fr has been signed by more than 40,000 people.

    The organisers, who came up with idea over beer, said they launched the website and began plastering Obama17 posters around Paris because they were disenchanted with the candidates running in France’s election.

    The movement’s website said it wants to coax France out of its “lethargy” and Obama has the experience to do it.

    […]

    The group aims to reach more than 1m signatures by 15 March.

    […]

    [… The] race has tightened, raising the prospect that the National Front leader [Marine Le Pen] could become the first far-right politician to win power through the ballot box in Western Europe since the second world war.

    It’s now at almost 43,000…
    I haven’t seen any of these posters locally, but returning from lunch today did see the first le penazi poster.

  472. blf says

    An Ozland spy agency has been given journalist’s phone & web data, Asio given access to journalists’ phone and web records:

    Spy agency head tells Senate hearing that small number of journalist information warrants granted in first such admission

    Australia’s attorney general, George Brandis, appears to have granted the country’s domestic spy agency access to journalists’ metadata in a small number of cases, the agency’s head has revealed.

    Duncan Lewis, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Agency (Asio), confirmed in parliament on Tuesday that the agency had been granted some journalist information warrants.

    Independent senator Nick Xenophon has been pursuing Asio over the details of the warrants, and focused repeated questioning on Lewis […].

    They warrants came into force in October 2015 in part to secure passage of Australia’s sweeping data retention laws that require telecommunications companies to store phone and web metadata for two years.

    The changes now require law enforcement to obtain warrants from a judge if they are seeking access to a journalist’s phone or web metadata. But Asio is not required to go to a judge, and must instead approach the attorney general directly to obtain a journalist information warrant.

    […]

    The article goes on to note how evasive the chief spook was in answering the senator’s questions. Journalist’s metadata is very compromising, as it can indicate who, when, &tc, the journalist has been talking to, both directly and also via patterns of behaviour.

  473. blf says

    Obama Derangement Syndrome is still twitching and ever more delusional, Trump accuses Obama of orchestrating protest against him:

    In interview with Fox, president says — without evidence — his predecessor is behind demonstrations over travel ban and national security leaks

    Donald Trump has accused former president Barack Obama and his people of organizing the demonstrations that have roiled city streets, airports and town halls during the first weeks of his presidency.

    [… T]he president [sic] also suggested Obama and his allies were behind the leaks of classified [sic] information from the White House to the press.

    There is no evidence that the former president has had any hand in either activity.

    […]

    Republicans and rightwing media outlets have accused the former president of directing the demonstrations though a group called Organizing for Action (OFA), a progressive group that grew out of Obama’s presidential campaigns. […]

    As a nonprofit, the group cannot advocate for a political candidate, though its agenda aligns closely with the Democratic party and Obama’s key policy positions. There is no evidence the former president is personally involved with the group.

    […]

    In response to a question about whether there was a method behind his recent spate of Twitter attacks, Trump reiterated his online criticism of John McCain. The senator had been critical of the Trump administration’s operation in Yemen last month, which resulted in the death of a US Navy Seal.

    I felt badly when a young man dies and John McCain said it was a bad mission … I thought it was inappropriate that he goes to foreign soil and he criticizes our government, Trump said on Fox, cautioning the Arizona senator to be careful.

  475. blf says

    Tweet and delete: US officials erase their praise for Iranian Oscar winner (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):

    Asghar Farhadi, director of best foreign film The Salesman, boycotted the awards ceremony, calling Trump’s travel ban ‘inhumane’

    The US state department has tweeted and then deleted a congratulatory message for an Oscar win by a prominent Iranian director who criticized President Donald Trump’s travel ban as “inhumane”.

    The state department’s official Persian-language Twitter account, @USAdarFarsi, tweeted congratulations to the Iranian people and Asghar Farhadi, director of The Salesman, after the movie won an Oscar for best foreign-language film on Sunday, according to screenshots of the message circulated on Twitter.

    […]

    “A congratulatory tweet was posted,” a state department spokeswoman said. We later removed the post to avoid any misperception that the USG {US government} endorsed the comments made in the acceptance speech.

    […]

  476. says

    SC @462 and 464, those were indeed two great segments, covering not just another Trump/Russia connection, but also showing how some wealthy people launder money. The tie-in with Wilbur Ross was well-done … and alarming. Ditto for the inclusion of Paul Manafort’s rise to power as having been pushed by Russia.

    Maddow’s coverage of David Remnick’s article was also good. Excerpt from Remnick’s article:

    […] Some officials believe that one reason the Russians compiled information on Trump during his 2013 trip was that he was meeting with Russian oligarchs who might be stashing money abroad—a sign of disloyalty, in Putin’s eyes. […]

    So much for Trump’s recent habit of repeating that he has not spoken to anyone in Russia for ten years. He traveled to Russia in 2013 and met with a lot of Russians. Previously, Trump bragged about the contacts (“direct and indirect”) he had with Putin when he was in Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant. Trump owned the pageant at the time.

    […] Not long before leaving the White House, Benjamin Rhodes said that the Obama Administration was convinced that Putin had gone into an “offensive mode beyond what he sees as his sphere of influence,” setting out to encourage the “breakup” of the European Union, destabilize nato, and unnerve the object of his keenest resentment—the United States. Rhodes said, “The new phase we’re in is that the Russians have moved into an offensive posture that threatens the very international order.” Samantha Power offered a similar warning, shortly before leaving her post as United Nations Ambassador. Russia, she said, was “taking steps that are weakening the rules-based order that we have benefitted from for seven decades.” […]

    The Kremlin, for its part, views the expansion of nato to Russia’s borders as itself a provocation, and points to such U.S. measures as the placement of a new ground-based missile-defense system in Deveselu, Romania. […]

    In speeches and interviews, Putin rarely mentions any sense of liberation after the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union; he recalls the nineteen-nineties as a period of unremitting chaos, in which Western partners tried to force their advantages, demanding that Russia swallow everything from the eastward expansion of nato to the invasion of its Slavic allies in the former Yugoslavia. This is a common narrative, but it ignores some stubborn facts. The West welcomed Russia into the G-8 economic alliance. The violence in the Balkans was the worst in Europe since the end of the Second World War and without intervention would likely have dragged on. And Russian security concerns were hardly the only issue at stake with respect to the expansion of nato; Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries in the region were now sovereign and wanted protection. […]

    For Putin, it was a story of misplaced hopes and rejection: he became convinced that, no matter how accommodating he might try to be, Western powers—the United States, above all—had an innate disinclination to treat Russia as a full partner and a respected member of the international order. At home, Putin was increasingly drawn to an authoritarian, nationalist conception of the Russian state. […]

    The last block of quoted text is included to show that Putin has a very different view of the world and of Russia’s place in it.

    Remnick’s article is long, thorough, and well-worth reading. He doesn’t skimp when it comes to explaining the history that led up to our current situation. Digital warfare is covered. “A retired K.G.B. colonel recently told the magazine Ogonyok that Russia had about a thousand people working in military and security operations online.”

  477. says

    Trump’s stupid remarks about the disastrous mission in Yemen:

    […] Well, this was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something that was, you know, just — they wanted to do. And they came to see me and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected. … And according to General Mattis, it was a very successful mission. They got tremendous amounts of information.

    No, the mission was not “started” before Trump got there. That lie has already been debunked. Obama did not authorize the raid.

    Next, Trump blames his generals instead of himself and his chaotic process (or lack of process) when it comes to making decisions.

    Then there’s the lie about “tremendous amounts of information.” Maybe. That claim is also questionable. (See SC’s comment 449.)

    Trump went on to show disrespect to the father of the Navy Seal that was killed. This is Trump’s answer to a question about the father of the Navy Seal saying that he wanted to talk to Trump:

    My generals are the most respected leadership that we have had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan. And I was at the airport when the casket came in, the body came. In and it was a very sad with the family and it’s a great family. Incredible wife and children. I met most of the family. And I can understand people saying that. I would feel — I would feel what’s worse? There is nothing worse. There is nothing worse. Again, this was something that they were looking at for a long time doing. And according to General Mattis it was a very successful mission. They got a tremendous amount of information.

    Blame the generals … again. Repeat the veiled “blame Obama” lie … again. Repeat the lie about the information obtained.

    Also, none of those generals belong to Trump. He keeps saying “my generals,” and I find that offensive.

    “The White House has really backed itself into a corner on the Yemen raid,” a Washington Post article by Aaron Blake.

  479. says

    Last night the Republicans in the House voted to keep Trump’s tax returns secret.

    Democrats made a good effort:

    The measure was introduced by Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), […] Under a 1924 law, the Ways and Means Committee is empowered to examine tax returns. The committee could then decide to release them to the full Congress, effectively making them public. […]

    Pascrell first brought his request to the Chairman of the Way and Mean Committee, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX). Brady rejected the request, citing concern for Trump’s “civil liberties.”

    Pascrell was able to bring the issue to a full vote on the floor through a vehicle known as a “privileged resolution.” […]

    Republicans in the House disagreed, virtually unanimously. Nearly every Republican voted to kill Pascrell’s resolution and keep Trump’s tax returns secret. No Republicans voted to require Trump to hand over his tax returns. (Two Republicans, including Mark Sanford of South Carolina, voted “present.”)

    185 Democrats voted in favor of Pascrell’s efforts.

    Nearly 1.1 million people have signed a White House petition demanding the immediate release of Trump’s tax returns.

    Trump promised to release his tax return if he ever ran for president.

    “If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns. Absolutely. I would love to do that,” Trump said in 2014.

    Link

  480. says

    Follow-up to comment 475.

    […] The Guardian, citing unnamed officials, reported that “the operation had been reviewed several times, but the underlying intelligence was not judged strong enough to justify the risks, and the case was left to the incoming Trump administration to make its own judgment.” Days later, Reuters reported that unnamed U.S. military officials told them Trump signed off on the raid “without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.”

    “As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists,” Reuters reports. […]

    Link

  481. says

    Greta Van Susteren on MSNBC is starting to irritate me.

    […] don’t be surprised if during President Trump’s speech he deliberately says certain things like “make America great again” because he knows all the Republicans will stand and applaud and what do the Democrats do? If they just sit there they look like they don’t want America to be great. That’ll be awful for them. That’s right. And so that plays right into Trump’s game plan for the night. Or how about if Trump says this; “bring the jobs back to America,” if the Democrats sit through that one, while the Republicans stand and clap, the Democrats will look like they don’t want jobs for fellow Americans. […]

    Her approach is just too simplistic for me.

  482. says

    “‘He’s a Performance Artist Pretending to be a Great Manager’”

    Also from Politico: “New NSC chief pushed Trump to moderate his language on terrorism”:

    President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, advised him in a closed-door meeting last week to stop using a phrase that was a frequent refrain during the campaign: “radical Islamic terrorism.”

    But the phrase will be in the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, according to a senior White House aide—even though McMaster reviewed drafts and his staff pressed the president’s chief speechwriter and senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, not to use it.

    What the president decides to say in his address will be an early indication of McMaster’s clout within the administration….

  484. says

    SC @480, regarding Trump’s continued use of “radical Islamic terrorism” against Lt. General H.R. McMaster’s advice, this is what I expected. Trump said he would defer to advice given by “my generals,” but he won’t.

    He didn’t defer to the one good piece of advice Betsy DeVos gave him either (regarding rights for transgender students).

    I think Trump only pretends to defer, and then he continues along the same, stupid, bigoted path. He has some well-worn paths in his mind, and he sticks to them.

    From your link:

    The president’s political advisers fear any sudden change in his rhetoric could open him to charges that he’s abandoning his promise to speak plainly and openly to the American people. Both sides say a gradual shift in the president’s rhetoric over time is possible.

    Nope. Not buying it. At most, Trump will appear to temporarily move toward a more reasonable approach. Soon after, he will revert to the well-worn path.

    Also, Trump has not spoken “plainly and openly to the American people.” He has lied to them repeatedly. When he is not blatantly lying, he is deflecting or misleading. He is a conman who makes a show of speaking plainly and openly.

    The “president’s political advisers” actually fear that people will realize that Trump has been lying to them.

  485. says

    Jon Stewart appeared on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” again. Scroll down for the video.

    Excerpt from the textual summary:

    […] Stewart proceeded to dismantle Trump’s lies about the size of his electoral college win, the country’s murder rate, and perhaps most disturbingly, his dismissal of concerns over anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish centers. Instead of condemning those incidents, Trump simply declared himself “the least anti-Semitic person you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”

    “I don’t think that’s true!” Stewart declared. “He said that to a guy wearing a yarmulke. Donald, you’re not even the least anti-Semitic person in that clip we showed.”

    But how does Stewart know Trump’s lying deliberately? “Because he constantly says the phrase ‘believe me.’ Nobody says ‘believe me’ unless they’re lying.” […]

    Speaking directly to the media, Stewart said,[…] it’s time for the media to “get its groove back” after “letting itself go,” “putting on a few pundits” over the years and “obsessing 24 hours a day over this one guy”: Donald Trump. “And the whole time you’re all chasing after Donny, the rest of us are thinking, ‘But can’t you see he’s an asshole?’”

    “You try to defend him. ‘Oh, no, no, that’s just primaries Donald. That’s just election Donald. You’ll see. We can change him! He’ll get presidential!’” Stewart said, imitating the media. “Yeah, how’d that work out? It didn’t. You know why? Because 70-year-old men don’t get less cranky or racist as time goes by.” […]

  486. says

    Update to #440 – Jerry Nadler is tweeting about the resolution of inquiry:

    “No matter any delays tactics, the members of Jud Comm will vote and be put on the record re: #Trumprussia today. #ResolutionofInquiry”

    “GOPers, no matter the time we get 2 vote on #Trumprussia #ResolutionofInquiry today, the eyes of the nation will be upon you. #ontherecord”

    Watching C-SPAN is painful. No greater inspiration for people to think they could run for office than seeing some of the bozos who’ve actually been elected.

    Nadler just tweeted:

    “Republicans are blocking off front row of seats while hallway is full of people to hear @HouseJudiciary hearing on #ResolutionofInquiry.”

  490. says

    What Trump said today about Mike Pence:

    Pence has been so wonderful to work with. He’s a real talent, a real guy. And he is central casting, do we agree? Central casting.

    What Trump said when he selected James Mattis:

    This is central casting. If I was doing a movie, I pick you, general.

    What Trump reportedly told his transition team when he was contemplating choosing Mitt Romney to head the State Department:

    Romney looks the part of a top diplomat right out of central casting.

    Trump thinks he is the producer of another reality show.

    Even clothing seems to matter. The Washington Post recently reported, “The new president believes that a single photograph, re-tweeted ad nauseam, can form the basis of a narrative. He believes the actors in his White House drama should look the part, whether patriotic or powerful. Fashion is costuming.” […]

    As regular readers know, every modern White House has taken an interest in media and public perceptions, but for Trump, “the look” appears to be at the top of his list of priorities – with everything else, including substantive policy, a distant second.

    In September, Trump sparked a brief controversy when he said Hillary Clinton didn’t have a “presidential look.” It was brazenly sexist, of course, but it was also a reminder that in this giant media production, Trump has an image in his mind of how every part should be filled. […]

    Link

  492. says

    Good news. More companies are refusing to advertise on Breitbart.

    […] Audi, Visa, T Mobile and Lufthansa have joined the growing list of companies to withdraw, according to Sleeping Giants, the group behind the campaign, which claims that at least 1,250 advertisers no longer wish to be associated with it. […]

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/breitbart-advertising-deals-companies-advertising-withdraw-pull-steve-bannon-alt-right-campaign-a7599156.html

  493. says

    And he is central casting, do we agree? Central casting.

    Just to point out: that whole idea about Pence being from “central casting” as a Republican president was discussed on Lawrence O’Donnell on maybe Friday.

  494. says

    SC @489, I see that a lot of people are trying to figure out what the heck Trump was trying to say. “Jews desecrate the cemeteries of vandals?”

    That’s not it. Trump thinks people are out to make him look bad. Maybe he thinks George Soros hired people to vandalize Jewish cemeteries in order to make Trump look bad?

    Or he blames Obama. Or he blames Hillary Clinton.

    No matter what, none of Trump’s rhetoric and policies are to blame. No matter what, the fact that Trump harbors anti-semites in his circle of advisors is not to blame. No matter what, Trump’s push for a white, christian USA is not to blame.

  496. says

    That’s not it. Trump thinks people are out to make him look bad. Maybe he thinks George Soros hired people to vandalize Jewish cemeteries in order to make Trump look bad?

    Or he blames Obama. Or he blames Hillary Clinton.

    Yes, that’s my reading as well. But I’m sure he and Bannon are happy to let his neo-Nazi supporters think he means it’s Jewish people doing it – that’s a standard trope.

    Since virtually every bad act he attributes to his real or perceived opponents is something he has done, is doing, is planning to do, or would do himself, I’m even more suspicious about the arson at the RNC office in North Carolina during the campaign.

  497. blf says

    Here in France, MEPs say Marine Le Pen can be prosecuted over violent Isis images:

    French prosecutors asked MEPs to lift Front National leader’s immunity after she tweeted gruesome pictures of IS [daesh] killings

    MEPs have voted to lift Marine Le Pen’s parliamentary immunity to allow French prosecutors to take legal action against the far-right leader for tweeting gruesome images of Isis killings.

    Members of the parliament’s legal affairs committee voted on Tuesday by an overwhelming majority to waive Le Pen’s immunity, following a request from the prosecutor of Nanterre in western Paris. The prosecutor opened an inquiry under a French law banning the distribution of violent images or those inciting terrorism.

    The Front National leader, an MEP since 2004, tweeted three uncensored pictures of Isis killings in December 2015, after a spat with a journalist who had compared the FN to Isis, known by the Arabic acronym, Daesh.

    […]

    The decision to end Le Pen’s immunity has still to be confirmed by MEPs at a European parliament plenary session on Thursday, but this is seen as a formality following the approval of the specialist committee. On the legal affairs committee, eighteen MEPs voted to lift Le Pen’s immunity, three opposed and no one abstained.

    Under French law, the maximum penalty for distributing violent images is three years in prison and a fine of up to €75,000 (£64,000). The case is not expected to be concluded until long after the French presidential elections […]

    As pointed out before, teh le penazis and their supporters are very anti-EU, so this very probably will not be seen as a problem by them. Her other EU problem, her misappropriation of funds (something several other le penazi MEPs also did), has not been seen as a problem by her supporters.

  498. says

    Ha! Sam Stein had the same thought. He’s absolutely contemplated (at the very least) such tactics. He suggested in a nationally televised interview that Obama had designed the ACA to fall apart the year after he left office, because he’s “a smart guy.” Trump has no moral constraints. None.

  499. says

    Update to #485 – The live stream is down. Nadler says “Not good.” cced the Chair. If they did it intentionally, that is outrageous.

    I’m also annoyed that the TV news has hours and hours for people to yap about the speech tonight an no time to cover this.

  500. says

    SC @496, yes! We all know how fond Trump is of projecting his own unethical plans onto his opponents:

    That Trump thinks Dems are behind JCC threats to make him look bad is sort of an admission he himself has contemplated these tactics [Sam Stein tweeted]

    I still think that of equal importance is Trump’s harboring of persecution fantasies. He feels so persecuted that I think he has at least that one trait of evangelical Chrisitians down pat.