Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
“Senators say they’ll look into Trump wiretapping claims”:
Graham also said that if the answer is that there was no warrant “we can move on.” Ridiculous.
SC @499, a lot of that staffing seems to reflect the wishes of Steve Bannon. When staffers were former Breitbart or WorldNetDaily writers, that spells trouble.
In other news, here is a follow-up to comments 456 and 483. Nurses are also condemning the Republican health care plan.
Link
So now team Trump is telling us not to listen to doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators. How many groups of experts have team Trump told us not to trust?
bass mike @497:
Yes, that’s about right. It would be kind of like an entertaining, but very dark comic book if it wasn’t real life.
Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/02/03/discuss-political-madness-all-the-time/#ixzz4aqCX0vtf
From comment 467:
Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/02/03/discuss-political-madness-all-the-time/#ixzz4aqD5jYxd
This article makes an interesting suggestion:
It’s certainly also possible that the Kremlin had a mole or found a turncoat among the people who had access to this information.
SC @1, I look at that as Senators Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse calling Trump’s bluff.
In healthcare news, the ongoing debate in the House has produced a few fiery moments. Democratic U.S. House Representative Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts, for example, highlighted the fact that the Republican plan could cut coverage for people suffering from mental illness:
One of Trump’s ignorant appointees is busy proving his ignorance:
Think Progress link
Pruitt is the guy that cut-and-pasted oil and gas industry recommendations onto Oklahoma Attorney General letterhead, and then sent those missives to the EPA. He is, essentially, an industry lackey.
“Cork Wine Bar Sues Trump Hotel Over Unfair Competition”:
So just Nigel Farage visits Assange just hours after TSG runs a blockbuster story about Roger Stone having private communications with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker identified as the source of the DNC emails given to wikileaks and purported by US intelligence agencies as being GRU, a state sponsored Russian hacking group.
Even if the TSG story is BS, which it could be because it’s not corroborated yet or being reported anywhere else, How ignorant of optics are these guys? Crazy.
ughh, copy paste typo, ignore my first “just” in #7.
Jeff Sessions, who is now Attorney General of the USA and supposedly a nonpartisan top law enforcement official, is so nakedly partisan that its breathtaking:
Link
One top administrator still working for team Trump has spoken out against the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare:
Talking Points Memo
Team Trump will likely dismiss Ostrovsky’s criticism as coming form an Obama appointee. Sally Yates may have some company soon.
Another interesting BuzzFeed article: “The British Press Can’t Stop Writing About Marine Le Pen”
It’s quite annoying. Seems to be the same with Wilders (here’s a decent article about him, though; but, typically, it doesn’t talk about any other candidates or discuss policy differences in any detail). And there’s nothing really new or exciting or interesting about these people. They’re just rehashing bankrupt fascist ideology from the 1930s.
By the way, I’m sure they’ll start writing more about Macron if PutiLeaks drops some stolen documents related to him.
So much for Trump’s promise to fix “inner cities.”
Link
What Trump said in July of 2016:
About 1/3 of African Americans live in cities, but Trump seems to think they all live there.
Poor and low-income people who live in cities are a diverse population. They all need affordable housing. Trump said one thing, and he is doing the opposite.
SC @11, sounds like the kind of coverage Trump got during his campaign.
In other news, Trump is slashing the environmental safety net.
Think Progress link
So, yeah, we can look forward not only to plagues of disease and reduced health care; we can also look forward to a lack of federal help when environmental disaster strikes. Sounds biblical.
“Paul Ryan Demanded a Speedy Analysis of Obamacare. For the GOP Bill? No Rush. Republicans are trying to rewrite the history of the Affordable Care Act.”
Wonkette covered a Rachel Maddow segment with admirable gusto:
Scroll down at the link to watch the video.
Did Trump weaken the State Department as part of a collusion agreement with Russia?
hmmmm.
Twin Cities Pioneer Press link
“Approached by BuzzFeed News as he left to get into a car waiting round the corner, Farage said he couldn’t remember what he had been doing in the building.”
Hillary Clinton’s message to women: Never lose your resistance.
Maddow has long been far too indulgent of the (erstwhile) State Department’s propaganda.
@ #17
Some of the protesters even had “apparent anti-fascist leanings.” Imagine the horror when that was discovered.
SC @18, FFS.
Farage has also been spending a lot of time in Washington D.C. with Trump.
The UK Independent confirmed that Farage met with Assange, so maybe Nigel can read that.
I think Bannon and Trump sent Farage to meet with Assange because they were afraid that electronic communication would be tapped.
From Jonathan Cohn:
Yes, that’s right, Paul Ryan gave a long speech/PowerPoint torture session today during which he proved that he does not know how insurance works.
I have always thought the Paul Ryan’s intellectual prowess was overrated. He can speak in complete sentences and projects confidence, but his ability to analyze policy decisions is remarkably shallow.
Trump’s contribution to the health care debate:
It’s not just the press questioning your plan, you doofus. AARP, the American Medical Association, lots of hospital trade associations, nurses, the chief medical officer at the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, and even some insurance industry groups are against the Trumpcare/Ryancare.
“Welcome to Pleistocene Park: In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists are trying to stave off catastrophic climate change—by resurrecting an Ice Age biome complete with lab-grown woolly mammoths.”
This sentence is haunting:
I agree. He’s another mediocre white man who was able to rise to prominence by dancing to the tune of his rich white masters and be credited for abilities and knowledge he doesn’t possess.
More on the Cork Wine Bar suit.
Oh, I think so, too. But the idea that after debunking his libelous claim about Obama and the intelligence community, which he then called on congress to investigate, everyone should just “move on” adds insult to injury.
Only PowerPoint slide necessary.
“Justice Dept. Declines to Back Claim Trump Is Not Under Investigation”:
* There are no questions swirling over that bullshit.
I think these cancellations are due to their awareness that Trump doesn’t know anything about healthcare, the ACA, or his own bill. They’re talking about how he’s going to be going around “selling” it, but he wouldn’t be able to answer the most basic questions about it. He doesn’t speak policy – he speaks con.
@SC
“If you were an anthropologist specializing in human ecological relationships, you may well conclude that one of our distinguishing features as a species is an inability to coexist peacefully with elephants.”
Actually, it depends on the elephants. Asian elephants have been domesticated for centuries, and while the occasional villager gets trampled, and the elephants often resent the hell out of it, the relationship has been mostly successful.
African elephants…not so much. I was never charged by an elephant with serious intent to do harm. Friends of mine were, and were damned lucky to escape.
I lived 20 km from an elephant reserve when I was in the Peace Corps. A single elephant can take out a whole mango grove in a night. Sometimes, we’d ride out there just to watch them…amazing, even though we knew they’d as soon stomp us into red and pink ooze.
Re @11/@14, I predicted to myself before reading that Buzzfeed article it wasn’t talking so much about the sneakily-implied all British press as the mostly-English conservative-leaning press, including the so-called “red top” tabloids (which, as a rule of thumb, are not reliable but are where Murdork does much of his damage). Yep, albeit they do, buried down in the article, acknowledge not all the press is le penazi sycophants.
Fortunately, it’s the French press which is more important (for the upcoming French presidential election). I neither have my own impression about, nor read any analysis of, any such shenanigans in the French press — which must not be construed as meaning there isn’t any…
Today’s Grauniad article on the French election, Emmanuel Macron leads in French presidential election poll for first time (“Harris Interactive poll shows Macron one percentage point ahead of National Front’s Marine Le Pen in the first round”).
The more interesting English-language article is in today’s dead-tree edition of the INYT (ex-IHT), and is about the Dutch election, Geert Wilders’s Far-Right Dutch Party Sees Drop in U.S. Money:
Did you read the article?
The part about disproportionate coverage – the main headline – was based on a standard Nexis search:
The other aspect of the article was the sycophantic coverage of the rightwing tabloidy papers, but the Nexis search determining the amount of coverage included all.
“Spicer Asked About Farage, Ducks Question”
WTH – did Farage think he was invisible?
SC @28, I agree. Rightwingers are not going to move on, no matter what facts are unearthed by Lindsey Graham. If necessary, rightwingers will just adjust their current conspiracy theories, and/or they will invent new conspiracy theories.
There’s no way they are going to drop the satisfying theory that intelligence agencies spied on Donald Trump, and that they are trying to bring him down.
My take is that Trump and his minions are doing a damned good job of bringing themselves down. They just have to caught over and over until the facts overwhelm the lies.
It will help, marginally, if Graham proves that no warrants were issued to allow for electronic eavesdropping on Trump.
Tweet o’ the day.
Washington (state) is joining Hawaii in challenging Muslim Ban 2.0.
Sorry – I was too vague. I just meant that no one should move on until Trump issues a formal apology to everyone he libeled, and to everyone else for the waste of time and resources. Of course, he won’t, but Graham shouldn’t be helping him out by suggesting that debunking should be the end of it. It was an outrageous smear. He’s not held to any reasonable standard, and it encourages more of the same.
“Death in al Ghayil: Women and Children in Yemeni Village Recall Horror of Trump’s ‘Highly Successful’ SEAL Raid”
Fahrenthold, asking questions.
@ #39
Oregon and New York are joining Washington.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrote a letter asking Congress to “raise the federal debt limit at the first opportunity.” Mnuchin’s letter does not propose balancing the debt limit increase with spending cuts or tax increases.
https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/839911784387608576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Yep, it looks like team Trump is going to spend a lot of money, and they are going to increase the debt. During his campaign, Trump said that he would be “very very strong on the debt limit,” and that he would not agree to an increase in the debt limit without requiring “a very big pound of flesh.”
Trump is finding that he can’t increase military spending; give tax cuts to corporations and wealthy people; and fund his proposed health care plan without raising the debt ceiling. And … there’s that damned wall on the southern border. He has to pay for that.
When Sean Spicer was asked about Mnuchin’s request, Spicer replied that the debt issue is “beyond our control.”
Jake Tapper:
“Secretary of State Tillerson about to embark on first major trip to Asia in the midst of North Korean crisis.
Not bringing any reporters.”
“Not bringing press on a trip like that is unusual & insulting to any American who is looking for anything but a state-run version of events.”
More fun with memes.
Stop and think: There were N pro–le penazi articles in A (and about zero which weren’t), N+ in B (also about zero which weren’t), and essentially 0 (zero) in C (with N– which weren’t), so therefore all the press is pro–le penazi. The implied “all (UK press)” is simply transparent bullshite.
I’ve made this point before about the term “MSM” (or if your prefer, “lamestream media”) — that is usually not-qualified, with a clear intent to be read as “all …”. Which is so not-true it rivals a typical hair furor tweet for guilt-by-implication.
It case you are not getting my hints yet again, then in this case a summary / statement more supported by the presented evidence would be “most surveyed UK press…”, which can be abbreviated as (e.g.) “most UK press…”.
I repeat (for the feckteenth time): It is the sneakily-implied “all” I take serious exception to.
Sean Spicer is unaware of the meanings of words.
Congressman Joe Kennedy III pointed out a few more problems with the lack of logic in the Republican health care plan:
Kennedy also pointed out that studies have shown repeatedly that health centers cannot meet the increased demand for services if Planned Parenthood clinics are shut down. Kennedy asked where people are supposed to get those services:
Just breathtaking.
White House aide Sebastian Gorka wants to assure us that he is completely clueless:
Gorka is a former Breitbart News editor
The quoted text is excerpted from, and summarized from, a Talking Points Memo article.
Writing for Think Progress, Ian Millhiser educates Paul Ryan:
Sigh. There are two aspects to the article. One deals with the amount of coverage and the other with the nature of the coverage. The amount of coverage aspect is based on a Nexis search, which includes basically all the news. They did a search for how much coverage the different candidates got throughout all the news. That argument isn’t saying all of the coverage of Le Pen has been positive – just that she gets more. If you’re suggesting that the numbers are skewed by the heavy coverage in a handful of rightwing outlets, that could be. The article doesn’t break it down enough – I’d like to see the figures for the Guardian, BBC, etc. On the other hand, we know Trump’s hugely disproportionate coverage in the US wasn’t just driven by pro-Trump outlets.
In any case, you’re conflating two separate arguments: “The British press gives Le Pen disproportionate coverage” – which he is arguing, perhaps with insufficient granularity – and “The British press gives Le Pen positive coverage” – which he isn’t arguing, although he talks about a certain group of outlets that are flogging a pro-Le Pen narrative.
That’s unnecessarily snotty.
Trump has taken actions to sabotage Obamacare so that it will be more likely to “implode,” as Republicans keep claiming it will do.
I don’t know if Trump’s sabotage activities will succeed. Obamacare is more robust than Republicans will admit, but Trump is certainly trying to make his “disaster” characterization come true.
I think he worries that Republicans will make a complete hash of health care, and he is trying to make conditions ripe for blaming Obamacare and the Democrats.
Trump’s plan B is to have Obamacare implode and/or get shakier while Republicans bumble around.
Think Progress link
The USA just deployed about 400 heavily armed marines to Syria. This is in addition to advisory troops and special operators that were already there.
Did President Trump make this decision?
Sean Spicer said:
So, that would be a “No” then.
Projection, French style.
I didn’t pick a tweet o’ the day yesterday, so I get two today.
The OGE is still pushing back against the profound corruption of this regime.
Maddow is crushing it tonight. She brought up Stone and his wikileaks ties and the newest shadow figure who is a verified Russian GRU agent who had meetings with Manafort while he was campaign manager and around the time of the GOP platform change, which JD Gordon now admits was the work of Manafort and Trump. This GUR agent bragged to friends that he was behind the platform change. Yet another connection.
I honestly think there’s enough known evidence to convict Trump and everyone on his team, publicly known and confirmed evidence. I’m not sure what they are waiting for, but this HAS to end in an arrest and a trial, it has to. If it doesn’t, it will be the greatest travesty in the history of modern global politics.
Vice President Mike Pence commented on Michael Flynn’s work for the government of Turkey.
Note that “first I heard of it” part. Team Trump is still claiming that they had no idea Flynn was working as a foreign agent for Turkey while he was also working for Trump.
@60 – Notice that Pence is playing the role of the outsider. It was him Flynn lied to, he knows nothing, nothing connects him to the Russia scandal. Drip drip drip…. *Imagine the x-wing pilot from Star wars* Stay on target, stay on target! That’s how I view Pence and Ryan and their allies right now, they are just waiting for their time to turn on Trump and run him out and take over.
If anyone is watching Maddow, it struck me that she spent a great deal of time painting the Trump administration as clearing house at the state dept, and painted her guest as a victim of that house clearing, but then he says during the interview that he was not fired, he decided to retire.
She does tend to warp things a little when she’s riffing.
That’s disgraceful – how could he betray his Russian handlers like that?
erikthebassist @62:
I was born in 1966. That means that I can retire at age 56 and 4 months. I am not unique among federal civil service employees. Once I hit my Minimum Retirement Age (which the government insists on referring to as MRA), it is my choice as to whether I retire. Okay, nothing new there.
Consider this, though: 43% of federal FERS (Federal Employee Retirement System) hit their MRAs in the next 5 years OR ARE ALREADY THERE. Almost 1 in 4 federal workers can retire TODAY and be done with it.
It is very difficult to fire federal workers. This is deliberate. It depoliticizes the civil service. We serve the government no matter who is in charge. I cannot be replaced based on who I voted for. Which means that the only real way to get rid of senior civil servants (not the political appointees that are the purview of the President) is by making life so intolerable that we just say, “Screw it,” and leave.
I do not know if I will retire at my MRA. If management at my park turns to liquid shit (right now it is just shit), I’ll pull the trigger. If the GOPholes continue to defund what I and my agency do, I’ll pull the trigger.
I suspect that Maddow’s guest has been around long enough to be eligible for retirement. So yeah, he may have been pushed into making a decision which, maybe, he didn’t want to make because the Trumpoids have made work intolerable.
Forty three percent of us hit MRA in the next five years (that almost includes me). In order to be eligible for MRA, the worker must have a minimum of 30 years creditable service. There are about 14 million federal workers who are in FERS. So, 14,000.000 * .43 = 6,030,000 employees who can retire in the next five years. At a minimum of 30 years service, that is 180,600,000 years of institutional memory, of knowing the rules, the regulations and the laws, of knowing how to get things done, of knowing the resources, of understanding, that will be gone when we retire. One hundred and eighty million years of memory will be gone. (and these are conservative numbers — I’m taking a wild guess that 1/3 of the 22 million or so federal employees are term, temporary or non-career seasonal, so the numbers are probably higher)
So, when senior bureaucrats take their retirement at the earliest date, or before they planned to,because of intolerable working conditions or because of political meddling, then yes, that is cleaning house. That is making the agency more compliant. Because they are removing the institutional memory. Choice between getting an ulcer, getting stress-related diseases, and retirement is not really a choice.
So yes, he was not fired, he decided to retire. The situation got so bad that he decided to leave the career he chose, the job he worked, the position he attained, the cause he devoted his adult life to, the job most likely loved. Yeah, that’s clearing house by the Fascicons.
“Conservative media figures are embracing a wild WikiLeaks conspiracy theory that the CIA hacked the DNC, and then framed Russia”
I’d like to hear one of them explain in a couple of sentences what the CIA’s purpose would be in doing this and how it worked.
Andy Slavitt summarizes the potential impact of TrumpCare.
The new episode of Pod Save America – “The dogs who caught the car” – is as usual very good. They focus on healthcare policy and talk to Ezra Klein.
Trump and Pence are claiming that they were unaware of Flynn’s working as a foreign agent for Turkey prior to the most recent reports about the DOJ FARA filing. They’re lying through their teeth. Josh Marshall provides a list of news reports about it from November and December (I’m sure Lynna or I posted about it here at the time) and an 11/18 letter sent from Elijah Cummings directly to Mike Pence, which reads in part:
Brother Og,
Hey, you and I reach our retirement age at about the same time. In 2022, my pension will max out, and I’ll be 62 and able to retire without penalty to that pension. Will I last that long? I don’t know. Rather than name my agency, I will refer to it as the International Worldwide House of Rocket Exploration (IWHORE).
My agency is one of those that the new administration wants desperately to keep from pointing instruments at Earth for fear of revealing how badly we are fucking up the planet. When I became a civil servant, I took an oath to uphold and defend the constitution. The question now is how I defend said compact when the constitutionally legitimate President wipes his arse with the constitution thrice daily.
Our agency is aware of the precarious position it is in with regard to loss of technical expertise. They have tried to develop remedies under the last administration. Now, the current administration views civil servants as the enemy. The next president will have a very different country than the one we have now.
Follow-up to #67 – Politico is pointing out that the Trump transition was asked for a comment, which they didn’t provide, for its 11/14 story about Flynn’s foreign-agent work:
The 11/19 AP report, also linked at Marshall’s article, also noted that their request for comment wasn’t responded to. I assume CNN and others also contacted the Trump gang to ask for comment.
Correction: Someone else, not Politico, pointed that out about the Politico article.
LOL. (*cry*)
@71 your link is borked.
Sorry –
LOL. *cry*
“Ryan On Millions Losing Care: ‘Never Going To Win A Coverage Beauty Contest'”:
I still can’t quite get over Spicer contemptuously calling the AARP a special interest that won’t be catered to in the new bill.
This seems completely above board.
The astounding thing to me is that Ryan almost admits that the free market will produce an inferior outcome, but endorses it because it is ideologically pure! Ayn Rand would be so proud.
It’s hard to believe this argument is still being made, but it is.
From 2009 hearings on health care (Affordable Care Act/Obamacare):
From the Washington Post, this week:
From New Republic:
The Affordable Care Act does not penalize women for being women. Under the ACA, women do not pay more for coverage than men. That’s a good thing.
Follow-up to comment 78. Women will not need a prostrate exam, so perhaps they should not have to pay for coverage for that? Viagra? Testicular cancer treatment?
The premise is ridiculous, and it doesn’t work well in the insurance market.
Also, it is often the case that men are involved when women get pregnant.
SC @65:
Something, something, take away our guns, probably.
The whole healthcare debate boils down to whether or not you believe that healthcare is a right or a privilege. Republicans believe that only the people that can afford it should get it, democrats believe everyone should have equal access.
Health care isn’t housing or automobiles. One can survive poor housing or not having a car. As miserable a life as it can be, it won’t kill you. Not going to the doctor when you have signs of a heart attack, stroke or cancer because you are afraid of the bill it will generate will. Not getting regular health checks because you are afraid of the bill can kill you.
Unfortunately, this is still the case even with obamacare. It is basically catastrophic insurance, but it still puts people in to crushing debt when something goes wrong, so the end effect in many cases is the same.
I have more medical debt than I make in 2 years, and I was insured during every visit to the hospital. I’ll never be able to pay it. I can’t even afford to try and make a dent in it, so I have no choice but to let it ruin my credit, so I’ll never be able to have a credit card or finance a house or a car. I am now a permanent member of the lower class because of medical debt, when I was once comfortably middle class.
Until we start talking about socialized healthcare, we are never going to have anything approaching a fair system that works for everybody. Health insurance companies are useless middlemen who add nothing of value, nothing necessary to the system yet they reap outrageously high profits off of it’s back.
So republicans can argue with each other and Trump all day long about how they are going to fix the problem, but they can’t, because they won’t consider single payer.
Steve Benen pointed out that Republicans are working hard to discredit the Congressional Budget Office before a report is issued on Trumpcare/Ryancare.
Benen’s article goes on to present a Republican trust/mistrust comparison.
Mistrust:
Congressional Budget office
Journalists
Doctors, nurses, hospitals
Climate scientists
Scholars and subject-matter experts
Pollsters
Intelligence agencies
Judges and the court system
Trust:
Republicans in Congress
Republicans in the White House
Conservative media aligned with Republicans in the White House.
erik @81, thanks for that analysis. I am close to being in the same situation. Paying for health care that saved my life moved me from middle class to lower-middle class, and for a period of time into poverty. I have paid off my medical debt (that took years), but now I still can’t afford the kind of medical care I need.
I have insurance now, but I can’t afford to pay the deductible.
Paul Ryan:
Translation: I don’t care if millions of people lose their health insurance.
These are the people that are deciding health care for the country. Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), is a member of the GOP Doctors Caucus, an influential group of 16 Republican representatives who are at the center of the fight. In an interview with STAT, Marshall said, “Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.” Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged. “Just, like, homeless people. … I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care,” he said.
Eric Trump:
In other news, here is a follow-up to comment 84: Talking Points Memo link to Paul Ryan making offensive “beauty contest” comments.
House Republicans do not know how many of their constituents are on Obamacare.
Think Progress link
This kind of ignorance is not a virtue.
“The Republican health plan is a huge betrayal of Trump’s campaign promises”:
Yes to this. It’s frustrating that more Democrats and people in the media aren’t calling attention to it. And people are largely letting them get away with claiming that this was the plan Trump ran on. It’s plainly false – this is something they cobbled together from a scrapyard of rightwing talking points in the past few weeks. But it obviously can’t be what he ran on, because it’s not what he fucking ran on.
Writing for Mother Jones, Josh Harkinson investigated the influence of the “alt-right” in Silicon Valley.
Read the full article at the link for more details.
And what makes it even more infuriating is that Clinton actually ran on a set of policies to improve and expand access to healthcare, with a demonstrated record of substantive healthcare policy work over decades, but Trump’s con artist routine was given equal credit and no one demanded that he even try to move beyond his big promises.
Roger Stone appeared on RT (Russian Television) again. Stone is pushing the lie that someone wiretapped Trump and Trump Tower.
Media Matters link
Trump thinks that Obamacare was “meant to explode” in 2017:
SC @90, all too true.
Wonkette covered the fact that Republican men do not want to pay for insurance that covers prenatal care and other medical needs related to maternity.
Lynna @82
Under the Trust list you forgot
Oligarchs that aren’t George Soros
This is one of those “oh, FFS” moments.
Link
Offensive and infuriating video is available at the link.
It struck me at the time of the Muir ABC interview. He actually said it in a manner of praising Obama (the Obama of his sick imagination) – Obama arranged things that way because “he’s a smart guy” and “Why not?” do it. It was bonkers, and didn’t bode well.
miltantagnostic @94, I considered just adding Vladimir Putin, and maybe Julian Assange.
On the “trust” list, Trump would add himself. We had “Republicans in the White House” on the list of people team Trump wants us to trust, but I think Trump himself deserves an individual listing. Here’s an example of why we can’t do that trust thing, why we don’t believe him. Trump said on January 15, 2017:
So, according to the AP, Don McGahn also knew prior to the inauguration about Flynn being a foreign agent and the potential problems that could result. The WH counsel is supposed to help them avoid legal issues, not cover them up.
Lynna @83
So effectively you don’t have insurance except for something completely catastrophic?
@Lynna OM #93
Asking consumers what specific things they want covered is ridiculous from both a consumer and a business perspective. No one would ever be able to calculate a premium for something that complicated, and consumers have a hard enough time understanding their coverage now. Imagine if they had to tic 500 boxes on what they wanted covered? And how often would they fail to tic the box for what actually happens to them?
SC @ 98
This is Trumpigula were talking about. The primary role of a legal adviser is to tell him what he wants to hear. Covering things up when the shit hits fan as the result of the primary role is the secondary role. In the past this was done be wearing to the people he stiffed and settling out of court when that failed.
The apostrophe in my comment #101 went the way of Trump’s promises to ensure that no-one would lose coverage.
Answering for myself not Lynna, but essentially yes, this is Obamacare. It was never a great law, mainly because republicans obstructed any attempt by dems to make a good law. It was a poor compromise and largely understood to be a stop gap, and in that respect it worked. Now if we had a dem congress and whitehouse, we could have further improved it and ultimately gotten to a single payer solution, but that hope is gone now.
It’s worth noting that preventative care, iow regular check ups and screenings, have to be 100% covered sans deductible under the ACA so we have that going for us which is nice.
So not as bad as I thought it was. Is the case with the proposed replacement?
I had a checkup yesterday – I showed up, got weighed saw the doctor and left – zero paperwork on my part (and probably very little for them) since they already had my Alberta Health Care number. Tell me again how private enterprise is so more efficient than socialism.
militantagnostic (104):
Tell me about it. It once took over a month for me to be told “no, we only do pediatric neurology”. Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ve ever had a DMV visit lasting more than half an hour, and that’s what people always point to as their example of “bloated bureaucracy”. Where did this idea that government is always less efficient than the market come from?
militant agnostic @99, correct. I do receive a certain amount of wellness/preventative care (stuff that Obamacare mandated when adjustments were made to the insurance market regulations).
Right wing/libertarian billionaires (like the Koch family) setting up think tanks like the Heritage Foundation to push for less government in people’s lives. Usually meaning theirs, and their money doesn’t get spent helping the shameless immoral/poor people.
Another, “oh, FFS!” moment. During his press briefing today, Sean Spicer confirmed a rapidly metastasizing rightwing conspiracy theory:
Another “oh, FFS” moment, courtesy of Sean Spicer:
As expected, Fox News ignored Nigel Farage’s visit to the Ecuadorian embassy in London to meet with Julian Assange.
Farage is a paid contributor for the Fox News network (has been since January). Nevertheless, Fox News has not featured Farage talking about his meeting with Assange, nor has any other Fox News host questioned Farage about the meeting.
Hmmm, sounds like a different kind of mass deportation. Jeff Sessions just asked all the attorneys appointed by Obama, 46 of them, to resign.
Daily Beast link
Star Tribune link
@ #103
“Now if we had a dem congress and whitehouse, we could have further improved it and ultimately gotten to a single payer solution, but that hope is gone now.”
There was a Democratic Congress, both houses, and a Democrat in the White House when the ACA was passed. Single payer was never an option, too many Democrats oppose it. The ACA was pretty much the best compromise (and that’s compromise with right leaning Democrats, not Republicans) that could be passed at the time, and there’s little indication that it would have been changed much if the Democrats had held on to the majority.
@112 – That’s some interesting revisionist history:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/the-real-story-of-obamacares-birth/397742/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/health/policy/30health.html
I can’t copy paste from the above, but there’s a bit in there about Baucus, one of the senators who voted against the public option in committee doing so because he didn’t think anything with a public option could get past a republican filibuster.
addon to #113 – http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2009/10/did_lieberman_just_kill_the_public_option.html
It was Lieberman who tipped the scales, and he was NOT a democrat.
Where’s the revisionism? Here’s an AP article, 10/27/2009 that leads off, “Democratic moderates who control the balance of power on health care legislation, balked Tuesday at a government-run insurance option for millions of Americans.” If you were paying attention in 2009 you would know that many Democrats opposed the public option. I think you have an exalted ideal of how invested Democrats are in health care in general and a public option in particular.
And Lieberman was as much a Democrat as Bernie Sanders, more so even, since he actually ran for VP on the Democratic ticket.
Lieberman was simply the face of the opposition within the democratic party. When Obama was in the IL Senate, he shared a desk with the democratic whip, who has been my state senator for years. He learned to count the votes prior to voting, and see what the who the in-party opposition was, and what was their complaints.
Obama knew there was too much opposition within the democrats for a public option of any sort. So he didn’t bother to fight for it, being a realist. I’m sure he would have gone there if he thought he could get it passed.
Sometimes folks here think that all the democrats are all on the far left, like most of the rethugs are on the far right. Those on the left haven’t fought tooth and nail for party purity like the religious right/reactionary/libertarian end of the rethugs. Some democrats are really about 40-60% on the left (0) right (100) axis. The public option is pushed by those who are lower than 35-40% on that axis. It does include me, but not all democrats.
Do you buy this? Sean Spicer said the Michael Flynn’s lobbying for Turkish interests was a “personal matter.” How is it a “personal matter” that Flynn was working as a foreign agent for Turkey at the same time that he was working for Trump?
It may have been personally important to Flynn, but it was also a conflict of interest during the campaign season, the transition, and after January 20 when Trump took office.
@115 – For one thing you said it was “Never an option” because “too many democrats opposed it”. In both my links and the one you provided, it’s clear that it was an option, an option that was voted down. In most cases, the dems that opposed it only did so because they didn’t think it was realistic to get the 60 votes needed to get it through, and could probably not get past a filibuster.
Joe Lieberman was no democrat, he was more conservative than a lot of republicans. The fact that he was on that ticket was a mistake. He was always a snake in the grass.
Bottom line is, the overwhelming majority of dems supported a public option. Only a few balked, mostly for political reasons and not because they actually opposed it, and Joe Lieberman was the main spearhead in getting it shot down.
So yes, revisionist. If you are going to claim the democrats are the reason we don’t have a public option, you are out in left field.
I’m not claiming the dems are pure and monolithic, I’m just saying to lay blame at the feet of the dems when it was clear the ruthugs would filibuster and stand unified against any bill with a public option is just wrong. With any support from the other side of the aisle at all they could have gotten it through.
The idea that “the overwhelming majority of dems supported a public option” is revisionism in the extreme. And if you think most decisions aren’t made for “political reasons,” I don’t know what to tell you. The public option was painted as “socialized medicine,” support for which, in many districts, would be a death blow to re-election hopes. So for whatever reasons, many Democrats opposed it. I don’t know why you’re arguing about that.
I think that it was SC who first predicted on this thread a decline in tourism in the U.S. thanks to Trump.
Time/Money link
Fine, please link to the support from ANY Rethugs…..
Very good piece: “The aura of lawlessness around Trump is a struggle for us all”
OK, I’ve reached my limit today. There is no end to the corruption and lies.
erikthebassist @ # 113: … Baucus… didn’t think anything with a public option could get past a republican filibuster.
As I recall from following the debate fairly closely (remember, Obama promised an end to back-room deals, then got his signature program through mostly by same), Max Baucus was notoriously in the pocket of insurance and financial interests and had a reputation for, ah, negotiable virtue generally. I advise treating his excuses and rationales with the same credence you’d give, say, Sean Spicer.
Nerd @ 122 – did I ever say a single ruthug supported it? That’s my point. They weren’t going to let it get through.
Tomh, nevermind, I don’t want to derail this thread with a silly argument. I just get pissed when people try and make the “dems are just as bad” argument. The parties are not the same, and I’m proud to be a dem. Even though they aren’t perfect, they are generally on the right side of history.
Oh please, I never said or implied that the “dems are just as bad.” I’ve been a Democrat my whole life and I’m over 70. My father worked in the FDR administration, for crying out loud, I never implied there’s any equivalency between the two parties. I merely pointed out that single payer wasn’t going to happen, and a lot of Democrats weren’t (and still aren’t) in favor of it. No big deal.
@127 – Fair enough. I hold out hope however that the backlash against Trump and the GOP is going to be severe enough that we will again be able to hope for socialized health care. We’re the last western liberal democracy to not have it.
I think one thing everyone can agree on is that Joe Lieberman – as a Democrat, an “Independent Democrat,” an endorser of Republicans, and a cheerleader for Trumplings – is and has always been an assclam.
*
“WikiLeaks CIA cache: Fool me once”
PSA:
These events are being held across the US this afternoon, and there are a lot of them! There’s a map at the link. They also say in the responses that the resistance training will be live streamed on Facebook and YouTube and available after that, but going to your local watch party, if you can make it, is the best way to get involved.
“Trump’s Bigly Health Insurance Promises”
Great news from last night: “A District Court Just Ruled That Texas Gerrymandering Violated the Voting Rights Act”
Update, of sorts, to #124 – I can’t get over this. MSNBC is asking right now if there’s really “a ‘deep state’ in the Trump admin.?” At the same time that it’s coming out that McCauley, a former FBI agent, alleged in October an attempted quid pro quo effort with the State Department regarding Benghazi-related emails while he was being secretly paid by Michael Flynn as part of Flynn’s work as an agent of the Turkish regime. How are they not asking about a cabal in the FBI working as a shadow state, in league with the Trump campaign, to sabotage Clinton’s candidacy?
Update to #76 – A “senior city official briefed by the medical examiner’s office” in New York is saying Churkin died from a heart attack and that no foul play is suspected. If that’s true, I have no idea why there was resistance to this information being released.
Tweet o’ the day.
Preet Bharara is refusing to resign, making them fire him.
LOL.
Louise Mensch is about to be on MSNBC to talk about her reporting on FISA warrants against Trump.
Darrell Issa just said in his town hall that he will not allow Planned Parenthood to be defunded.
Live link:
https://www.facebook.com/darrellissa/videos/10154476236882993/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED
https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/840404093407514624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As far as I can tell, Rachel Maddow showed quite plainly that Vice President Pence also lied about the entire Mike Flynn story. The video is 23:08 minutes long.
Speaking of lies, Chris Hayes covered the first 50 days of the Trump administration and came to the conclusion that “nothing can be taken at face value.” This is Chris Hayes at his best. The video is 6:47 minutes long. Excerpt:
SC @132, so glad to see that court decision. Republicans in Texas had diluted Latino voting strength, and/or had packed Latinos into fewer districts.
In other news, here is an update on US Attorney Preet Bharara:
It looks like team Trump watched a Hannity show on Fox News in which Hannity urged Trump to fire everyone, so Trump did. As was already pointed out, in November both Trump and Sessions had asked Bharara to stay on.
A concise response from Robert Baer to the Trump administration’s “Deep State” conspiracy theory:
And for more on the “alt-right” and its influence within the Trump administration watch this video from John Kerr, Sarah Wasko, Dayanita Ramesh, and Alazar Moges. The video is only 1:47 minutes long, but covers a lot of material.
Michael Flynn’s good buddy and former boss, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was exceptionally obnoxious in referring to the Dutch government today. Erdogan was trying to bully the Dutch. Emphasis is mine.
Link
Matthew Miller: “If Preet wasn’t investigating Trump in any way, this will all blow over quickly. If he was, hang on to your hats.”
I think I heard one of the people on CNN say earlier that he was investigating some Russians who were unusually rich possibly due to their links to Putin (but I was on the treadmill trying to follow two TVs at once, so didn’t quite catch it). I’ve also heard that there was also a request a couple of days ago for him to investigate something related to Trump, and an investigation of the Ailes payout at Fox. I’m not very clear about any of it.
Oh, FFS, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, is being wildly inappropriate with this praise for Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn:
Nunes is the guy in charge of holding the committee’s public hearings on issues related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
In case you are keeping track, Trump is now on his ninth golf course visit. That’s nine golf games in seven weeks.
In related news, I’m starting to see articles that are more specific about the costs of Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago, and perhaps more importantly, about how the visits to Mar-a-Lago are a spy’s dream and security personnel’s nightmare.
Follow-up to SC’s comment 145.
NPR link
“Ex-Trump Adviser Roger Stone Was In Contact With DNC Hacking Suspect”
(Marshall’s assumption that Guccifer 2.0 is an individual is questionable. I think many experts believe it’s a persona created as a front for a Kremlin team.)
Pretty sure I posted about the Stone thing way upthread, but it’s good to see AP picked it up finally.
Yeah, “Guccifer 2.0” is a group, not one person.
The Hannity connection to the sudden purges of “Obama holdovers” in the Justice Department was covered by Ryan Koronowski, writing for Think Progress.
So Trump has fired career professionals from the State Department, the Justice Department, and others. Who is he hiring?
Mother Jones link
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is heaven — for spies.
re: Lynna’s last 3 comments, this is turning into an outright war.
I love the phrase “casual and professional spies.” You don’t even have to work at it to crack the Trump administration’s security. You can be casual about it; just kinda lean over at the next table and put a hand to your ear. It’s almost democratic, except that most of us couldn’t afford to get into Mar-a-Lago in the first place.
Ok, I need a recap, a sort of “Where are we now?” sorta post. There are so many scandals and injustices happening at such a rapid pace that I just can’t keep up with them all.
I propose PZ create 3 new threads:
1. #russiagate – Here we aggregate everything relating to Trump and his war with IC and his attempts to strangle the Justice Dept.’s ability to investigate this aspect of his presidency.
2. #fuckthegop – Here we document how the GOP is enabling the dismantling of our government, our constitution, and our idea of liberal democracy.
3. #indivisible – here we talk about news related to the fight for a morally and ethically redeemable culture. Protest, stand up, sue, use the law, use your voice, use everything in your power to be heard. Celebrate heroes and expose injustice.
Preet Bharara was banned from Russia in 2013.
You did. I think the news is that now he’s admitted to it.
That’s as much a smoking gun as anything in my mind and should definitely predict the end of the trump dynasty
But then I remember Cheney and his shit eating grin as he and his cronies bit off chunks of the american pie and threw the crumbs on the floor. I’m a little disgusted by this liberal urge to reach out to classic conservatives as if they are somehow better than what we have. GHWB is starting to gain sainthood with liberals.
wow that was a typo, that second paragraph was supposed to go on an entirely different post and discussion. If it doesn’t make sense to you, it shouldn’t… lol?
So the ACLU meeting/watch party was longer than I’d expected, but good. Here’s the video of the livestream we watched (doesn’t start until 6 minutes in). I have to say, Padma Lakshmi was an engaging speaker. (She was on AM Joy today talking about this, and said that before the Women’s March she’d never been “political” or publicly protested anything. I was surprised since she was married to Salman Rushdie for a time.)
I forgot to mention: There were over 2000 meetings today, covering every state, and the ACLU claimed total attendance was 200,000.
“Preet Bharara Is Fired After Refusing to Step Down as U.S. Attorney”:
SC @163, right away Trump knew that Preet Bharara was not the kind of guy who break the rules just for Trump.
In other news, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price told a blatant lie (or several lies):
Oh, FFS. Congress critter Steve King, a Republican representative from Iowa, is lauding Dutch white nationalist Geert Wilders. King is blatantly promoting white nationalism:
So, of course, David Duke (former KKK Imperial Wizard) thinks Steve King is just wonderful:
Update to #133 – …and Flynn promoted the tale told by the ex-FBI guy he was secretly paying. When does it all end, indeed.
Hee.
I was wondering about this when I read the line in the NYT story. The Smoking Gun says Roger Stone lied to the NYT when he told them he gave TSG the DM exchange he had with Guccifer 2.0. He didn’t; in fact he said he couldn’t remember it. It’s an infinite regress of sleaziness.
SNL Ivanka Trump perfume ad.
Trump unfollowed Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Twitter over the weekend.
Nicola Sturgeon has announced she’s going for a new referendum on Scottish independence. The UK Parliament has to agree for it to be legally binding, but next week she will ask for a vote of the Scottish Parliament, where there’s a small pro-indy majority, to negotiate terms for it with the UK government, who are unlikely to refuse outright, may try to delay it beyond the end of the Brexit process. There’s already been some world-class hypocrisy from Tory spokespersons on both sides of the border, complaining about a new referendum causing uncertaity and being divisive!
Mike Pence went to Kentucky to tell lies on Saturday:
WTF? Let’s looks at the facts. As Steve Benen summarized:
Pence is turning more and more to lies when he tries to promote Trump’s policies. Pence is more articulate that Trump when he tells blatant lies, but otherwise the two seem to be converging toward an all-lies-all-the-time modus operandi.
Pence lied about when he learned that Flynn was working as a foreign agent for Turkey. Pence lied about job creation claims.
Pence’s lies should be scrutinized and discussed by Fox News. (I dream big.)
Representative Mike Kelly, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said some stupid and inflammatory stuff:
After spewing that bullshit at a GOP Lincoln Day Dinner, Kelly’s office offered an explanation:
The quoted text is from the Washington Post.
Additional details: Philadelphia Inquirer link
Later, Kelly’s office gave a different statement of explanation to the Associated Press:
Follow-up to comment 173. Steve Bannon is running a shadow government.
Follow-up to comment 133. In other news, SC commented on the fact that Michael Flynn paid Brian McCauley (a former FBI agent that worked out of the notorious New York office) tens of thousands of dollars while the presidential campaign was in progress. The source of that money should be investigated. My bet is that Flynn did not personally pay McCauley. He was given those funds. Did the funds come from Trump? From Bannon? From campaign coffers? From Russians? From Trump supporters or Super PACs?
McCauley is a smoking gun because he played a role in hyping the email controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton. And he played a role in disseminating misleading information. He also worked to get the classification of some emails changed so that it would look more like Clinton sent and/or received classified information on her private server.
Debunking Sean Spicer’s lie that the CBO was “way, way off” when it scored Obamacare:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/cbo-obamacare-american-health-care-act
Trump’s stupid and half-threatening tweet from early this morning:
Trump may have been referring to interviews in which Kellyanne Conway was questioned on NSNBC’s “The Bergen Record” and on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/841249846120075265?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I included more of a transcript than was presented in the Twitter feed so that you would get a better idea of how true it is that Kellyanne Conway should be put back in her box.
Kellyanne’s explanation is that she was speaking generally, and she doesn’t know why people take her answers to mean that she was answering specifically. She was asked a specific question, and she wants us to understand, I guess, that she was not answering that question. [eyeroll]
Here’s the claim Trump made about his salary as president:
That’s just one example out of many.
From CNBC:
Trump promises to make donations. He does not make those donations. That’s his modus operandi.
From David Fahrenthold:
Fahrenthold said that he cannot find any evidence that the Trump Organization is donating hotel profits it receives from foreign governments to … well, anyone. However, Fahrenthold is still looking. He sent requests for information to the Trump Organization.
Sean Spicer is in the middle of giving his daily press briefing. He said that Trump will be signing an executive order to “reorganize the federal government.”
Right. I’m sure that will go well.
erikthebassist:
I don’t agree with the idea of breaking things up into separate threads, but I compiled (from this thread) a summary of the past couple of weeks of scandals, injustice, and resistance in the US (and it only took me…several hours):
Court decisions concerning Virginia and Texas have challenged Republican gerrymandering efforts for racial bias.
After Sessions withdrew DOJ support, the Supreme Court sent Gavin Grimm’s case back to the lower court, vacating the lower court’s decision in Grimm’s favor.
Attacks on and threats to Jewish organizations and institutions continued, as did other hate crimes.
The climate news has been terrible. Meanwhile, Trump and his minions continue to cut regulations and destroy environmental/monitoring agencies from within. The head of the EPA publicly suggested that CO2 doesn’t contribute to global warming, and the EPA deleted the word “science” from its Science Mission Statement.
Questions continue to be raised about the disastrous Yemen raid the motives for it. Reporting in the Intercept described the slaughter of civilians in the raid, while the Trump regime hinted at changes that would weaken or eliminate further the (already insufficient) protections for civilians during US military operations at the same time these operations appear to be expanding.
The terrorizing of immigrants through raids, threats, detentions, and deportations continued apace. ICE continued to operate largely in secret, with little accountability. It was reported that Trump wanted to expand the organization by hiring 10,000 more people, tripling its current staff levels.
There were reports of Trump’s would-be regime contemplating huge increases in immigrant detention – which would probably be done by for-profit companies – and separating undocumented mothers and children crossing the border.
The Trumpublican regulatory rollback – including efforts to make it harder for workers and others to fight back against corporations or hold them accountable – accelerated. Trump put out an official statement that was a slightly altered version of an ExxonMobil press release. Called on it, they were happy to let it stand.
On the resistance front: More packed, energetic Republican town halls. More resistance to ICE detentions and deportations. The Day Without a Woman and International Women’s Strike renewed attention to women’s resistance. On March 11th, people organized 2300 watch parties/meetings for the inauguration of the ACLU’s People Power initiative. 200,000 people across every state attended the events. Other governments held a conference dedicated to working to set aside funds to compensate for those withheld by the US’ global gag rule. Planned pro-Trump rallies were sparsely attended and sad.
On March 1st, the NYT published a story about how “in the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government.”
The same night, WaPo published another blockbuster: “Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.”
In response to the WaPo article, some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and many others called out Sessions for having lied during his confirmation hearings both in person and in writing when he denied communications with the Russians. His letter “updating” his testimony (note: he had several weeks to update his testimony prior to this) was inadequate and, in Al Franken’s words, “insulting,” and Franken and others have called for him to return before the committee in person to explain his actions. While a number of people called on him to resign, Sessions recused himself from campaign-related investigations. His press conference announcing his recusal only raised more questions, and reporters found that no other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee met with Kislyak in 2016. In response to Sessions’ recusal, Trump issued a ridiculous statement and tried to use silly photos to insinuate improper connections between Democrats and Putin.
In the wake of the Sessions revelations, several others in Trump’s camp either came forward or were named by others as having communicated with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign, including Carter Page and JD Gordon, who admitted what was previously denied (even though everyone knew it was true) – that they worked to block the proposal to add the supply of weapons of lethal force to Ukraine for defense against Russian incursions to the Republican Platform. Gordon claimed that they were acting on Trump’s wishes as expressed in a meeting – also attended by Jeff Sessions – at Trump’s unfinished DC hotel in March 2016. The campaign’s previous denials were shown to be replete with falsehoods and evasions.
More questions arose about Kislyak’s attendance at Trump’s (very Russia-friendly) foreign-policy speech on April 27, 2016 following reports that Trump personally – despite previous denials – met briefly with Kislyak at a reception prior to the speech. (Kislyak was also seated in the front row for the speech, which was attended by Jeff Sessions.) There was some renewed attention to Trump’s wildly changing story about his relationship with Putin and Russia.
People called more attention to the Russian connections of others in Trump’s circle, including Wilbur Ross; Dana Rohrabacher; David Clarke; Donald Jr.; Paul Manafort; Jared Kushner (who, along with Flynn, met with Kislyak in December when he was snuck into Trump Tower); Michael Cohen; and the NRA.
More questions emerged as more evidence (re)appeared surrounding Trump’s financial links to Russian people and organizations, including organized crime, that are connected to Putin. Sherrod Brown called for an investigation “to examine whether the President or his family is exposed to terrorist financing, sanctions, money laundering, and other imprudent associations through their business holdings and connections” around the world. Rep. Jerry Nadler promised more Resolutions of Inquiry concerning Trump’s finances, taxes, and Russian connections.
Photos spread of Kislyak at Trump’s recent speech to Congress.
Members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees indicated that they would like to have Christopher Steele testify. Meanwhile, Steele suddenly emerged from hiding and returned to work. The Independent reported that Steele had regularly been giving the FBI information in 2016, but that
The heads of the House Intelligence Committee said that the FBI/Comey is not giving them full information regarding the investigation into Russia and possible collusion. Republican chair Devin Nunes continued to show his lack of impartiality and his strong bias towards Trump.
The Smoking Gun reported that Trump chum and dirty-tricks operative Roger Stone was in contact during the campaign with the Russian front Guccifer 2.0, responsible for hacking Democratic organizations during the campaign. Stone later admitted to the contact. He told the NYT that he’d provided TSG with the messages when in fact he’d told them he didn’t recall the communications.
Michael Flynn, the circumstances of whose resignation as NSA are still suspicious and murky and about which the would-be regime clearly lied, registered retroactively with the DOJ (probably under pressure) as a foreign agent for the Turkish regime. Trump’s and Pence’s claims that they didn’t know about this work were completely implausible given: the numerous news accounts about it in November, some if not all of which had requested comment from the Trump transition; a November letter from Elijah Cummings directly to Mike Pence spelling it out in detail and alerting him to the clear conflict of interest; Flynn’s lawyers contacting Don McGahn and the transition team, headed by Pence, twice to inform them of the issue. There was renewed attention to Flynn’s election-day piece in The Hill celebrating the Turkish regime and railing against its opponents.
It also emerged that as part of his super-shady and mysterious efforts on behalf of Turkey, Flynn had hired several former law-enforcement and intelligence people. Among them was a Brian McCauley (formerly of the New York office, naturally), who in October, while he was being paid by Flynn, alleged an attempted quid pro quo deal with the State Department concerning the classification of some of Clinton’s emails, which he claimed he rejected when he heard the emails in question related to Benghazi. I believe he told this tale under oath, without revealing to anyone as far as I know the secret payments from Flynn. Flynn then promoted the scandalous story on Twitter.
More evidence emerged of continuing Russian hacking of liberal and leftwing organizations, though it’s unclear whether this is directed by the government or just criminals (to whatever extent that distinction applies). Bloomberg noted that:
There was a breach of voter data in GA ahead of the upcoming special election in the 6th district. The FBI is investigating.
Kremlin-supported media appeared to have cut most of their pro-Trump coverage, but remained active in promoting the rightwing conspiracies endorsed by Trump and his lackeys.
Trump awoke on March 4th and compulsively fired off a series of tweets alleging the Obama was a bad/sick guy who wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign, providing no evidence for this allegation which had earlier appeared at Breitbart. This was denied by a spokesman for Obama, Clapper publicly, and Comey behind the scenes, Faced with the incredulous response, Trump asked congress to investigate his claim, which they agreed to do. As I write this, the deadline for evidence to be produced for the libelous claim is today. John McCain has called on him to produce evidence or retract it.
The outrageous tweets about Obama and other actions in the past two weeks proved too much, at least for now, for “Intermittent Lackey” Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who publicly criticized him. Trump unfollowed the pair on Twitter over the weekend.
The claim could have been based on an absurdly exaggerated and spun version of a story about an FBI investigation into “odd” communications between two Russian banks and the Trump Organization. Reports this week suggested that this investigation is ongoing. Other investigations related to Kremlin-linked Russians and Trump associates also appear to be ongoing (if they’re not, they damn well should be). After Spicer said during a press briefing that Trump wasn’t under investigation, the DOJ said they weren’t the source of that claim and refused to back it.
The corrupt practices of the Trump family continued and expanded. Meanwhile, the OGE wrote to the White House after they refused to take serious action in response to Conway’s explicit promotion of Ivanka Trump’s business, challenging the regime’s claims to be above the law. A DC business filed suit against Trump’s Emoluments International Hotel claiming unfair competition. The family is spending tens of millions in public funds on travel and security, while continuing to promote their businesses and “brand” while the Trumpistas push for cuts to basic government services and aid, environmental protection, regulation and accountability, and the arts.
WikiLeaks dropped what they said was the first tranche of stolen CIA documents related to their spying methods. This was exploited by the rightwing fever swamp and Trump minions to suggest, astoundingly and nonsensically, that the CIA hacked the Democrats and framed the Kremlin and might have used these techniques to spy on Trump under Obama’s direction. The same day the documents were released Trump advisor/friend, Brexit cheerleader, and new Fox commentator Nigel Farage met with Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Confronted by BuzzFeed reporters as he left the building, Farage claimed he couldn’t remember what he’d been doing there.
The House Intelligence Committee scheduled its first public hearing on Russian interference for March 20th, and released the names of witnesses called to testify.
The Trump regime suggested cuts to the Coast Guard, TSA, and FEMA to fund a border wall.
Trump saw something on Fox and then lied on Twitter about people released from Guantánamo by Obama. Called out on the falsehood during press briefings, Spicer claimed that it was “obvious” that Trump meant something completely other than what he tweeted.
Trump celebrated the February jobs report (235,000 jobs added, which continued a longstanding trend and was comparable to February Obama numbers: 238,000 in Feb 2016, 237,000 in Feb 2016). When reporters pointed out that Trump had claimed throughout the campaign that the jobs numbers were fake, Spicer responded that Trump had told him to say “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now,” which he considered a good joke.
More investigative reports and academic studies were published showing the distortions and insularity of the rightwing media in the US, the size of the Russian military-political operation, and the techniques used by the Kremlin to interfere with elections in a number of countries. The latter included the targeting of Bernie Sanders supporters for a barrage of negative and distorted stories about Hillary Clinton.
The Trump would-be regime continued to be obsessed with leaks. News of its ham-handed, authoritarian efforts to stop leaks was quickly leaked to the media, to great amusement.
Republican-dominated state legislatures continued to propose and pass vicious, partisan, anti-democratic, anti-human rights bills.
The State Department: There was a purge of officials, including career diplomats, while many key positions remain unfilled. It’s been reported that Trump wants to cut State’s budget by 37% to fund increased military spending, despite warnings from top military people that national security requires diplomacy, and to make drastic cuts to foreign aid. Tillerson didn’t present the State Department’s human rights report. The longtime practice of daily press briefings came to an abrupt halt after the inauguration, and they aren’t set to resume. The first official briefing (with Obama State spokesman Mark Toner, of all people) wasn’t until March 7th. Tillerson continued to avoid public statements to the press, and when reporters attempted to ask questions during photo ops they were summarily removed. In a very unusual move, it was decided that the press wouldn’t accompany Tillerson on his trip to Asia; various bogus rationalizations were provided. There’s a widespread belief that Bannon and Trump want to gut the State Department.
It was revealed that Mike Pence used a private AOL account as governor of Indiana and that it was hacked.
After a petition opposing a state visit, large protests in London, and outspoken rejection in Parliament, Trump moved most of his British visit to Scotland, presumably to locations where protesting is more difficult.
Amidst a frenzy of “deep state” and “shadow government” claims and appeals to “purge” the government of “saboteurs,” Trump and Bannon quietly attempted to fill the government with far-Right kooks and ideologues, unqualified campaign staffers, and others presumed to be unquestioning Trump loyalists, as well as lobbyists and other corporate tools.
Over the past weekend, Sessions informed 46 US attorneys appointed by Obama that they were immediately relieved of their duties. This was unusual for its abruptness and for the fact that replacements weren’t lined up, which interferes with the work of these offices. Among those asked to resign was Preet Bharara, attorney for the SDNY, who Trump had previously told he would be staying on (as did Sessions recently, according to reports). Bharara refused to resign, forcing them to fire him. Afterwards, he tweeted “By the way, now I know what the Moreland Commission must have felt like.”
Trump released Muslim ban 2.0, which contained some changes reflecting the legal victories over the first attempt but remained largely unchanged in many respects and continues to have the same underlying intent. Several states’ attorneys general are already challenging it before it could come into effect this week.
Rachel Maddow was leaked a DHS document which, like the previous shorter report leaked to the AP, undercut the claimed national-security rationale for the Muslim ban.
The Republicans kept their repeal-and-replace bill secret and hidden in a basement room for several days, including from some Republican legislators.
The Republicans released their repeal-and-replace bill, which would throw 10-20 million people off their health care and raise prices while transferring hundreds of billions to rich people. The cuts will hurt millions of Trump supporters, especially older and rural voters, as well as children, women, people with disabilities, people with psychological problems, people who are addicted to drugs, people with Black Lung disease,… (There would also be funding cuts at the CDC, at a time when the risk of a global pandemic grows and is exacerbated by other Trumpublican policies.) These effects are in direct contradiction to the promises of expanded coverage at lower prices and the protection of Medicaid and Medicare that Trump ran on. The Trumpublican bill is opposed by the organizations of doctors, nurses, hospitals, medical schools, and the AARP, who care about health, and on the other side by the Kochs and others on the far Right who care about rich people. Rushing the bill through committees with virtually no opportunity for public comment, debates, or amendments, Republicans spent the week and weekend lying about what it would do and pre-emptively seeking to discredit the CBO before its score appears (possibly today), all the while revealing their ignorance and their profound contempt for the millions of people who would be harmed or killed by this policy. Trump, who knows and understands little if anything about health policy, avoided the press.
Trump supporter Steve King continued to openly espouse white supremacist views.
“No, The CBO Was Not ‘Way, Way Off’ On Scoring Obamacare”
Best part: The CBO prediction for the number of people who would be covered under the ACA was based on the Medicaid expansion provision. The Right fought this provision to the Supreme Court, which ruled that taking the Medicaid expansion was optional for states; then several states controlled by Republicans refused the Medicaid expansion so poor people in these states didn’t get that coverage. Now the Republicans argue that the CBO lacks credibility because its coverage estimates were too high.
SC @179, that was a tour de force! Thanks for that recap.
So much malfeasance would be funny (black comedy) in a TV serial, but since it is our reality, it is horrifying.
Steve King’s recent racist comments were mentioned. I’ll add one from King’s past in order to back up my claim that he’s always been a white nationalist (comment 165), and an ignorant one at that (comment 87). This is from September 2016:
Frauke Petry is the rightist, nationalist leader of Germany’s Alternative for Germany party. You already know who Geert Wilder is.
An excerpt from Sean Spicer’s daily briefing:
In the press briefing, Spicer continued to back up Trump’s claim of having been “wiretapped” by pointing to media reports. He did not provide any evidence.
Spicer criticized the press’ coverage of Obamacare as “puppies and rainbows.” He continued to repeat the misleading information/lie that only 10 million people are covered by Obamacare. (Still sounds like a big number to me.) See comment 175 for a debunking of Spicer’s lies.
Paul Ryan is “one of the best liars I have seen” said Arizona Representative Ruben Gallego at the SXSW festival in Austin.
https://twitter.com/ZachMontellaro/status/841340663228706817?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Video at the link. 56 seconds of telling it like it is.
Right Wing Watch published a thorough accounting of “Steve King’s Long History Of White Nationalism”.
White nationalists are praising Steve King.
From the Daily Stormer:
From Infostormer:
@179 – holy wowza, amazing, thank you! If I have some time later I might do a similar deep dive in to just the Russian angle.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, the chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, has teamed up with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to raise funds needed to redraw districting maps.
“The American people deserve confidence in their democracy,” Pelosi said, calling the NDRC an “important effort to undo Republican gerrymandering and build a fairer map for the decade to come.”
President Obama is staying in the background for now, but he is expected to participate in fundraising in the future. (No events featuring Obama have been scheduled so far.)
Politico link
The CBO found that 24 million more people would be uninsured under Trumpcare.
(by 2026, that is)
14 million more uninsured just by 2018.
That would be great!
The CBO score for Trumpcare has arrived.
Link to Congressional Budget Office PDF
Tweet o’ the day.
Trump seems to making sure that cutting federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities” will hurt poor people the most.
Think Progress link
No, Microwave Ovens Cannot Spy on You—for Lots of Reasons says Lily Hay Newman of WIRED magazine.
See comment 176.
“The CBO is *the* trusted expert; it is led by a Republican. Price helped pick the director. And Trump used CBO stats 13x to attack Obama.”
Kellyanne Conway added “I’m not in the job of having evidence” to her list of all time hits like, “alternative facts” and “the Bowling Green Massacre.”
Her self-styled job description of “not having evidence” may be accurate, but is not a good excuse for having no facts to back up Trump’s claim that President Obama wire tapped him. The Washington Post put it this way:
Preet Bharara leaving his office earlier, greeted by cheering employees.
Follow-up to comment 192.
From Brian Beutler:
From Josh Marshall:
What Donald Trump said on February 17, 2016:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said:
SC @198, Trump may have created political stars when he fired Preet Bharara and Sally Yates.
In other news, the American Medical Association has responded to the new CBO report.
The above text is excerpted from a Talking Points Memo article.
Dang, just saw former congresscritter from IL, Joe Walsh, on “Hardball”. Poor bigoted asshole, he was defeated for re-election by Tammy Duckworth (now our Jr. Senator), and he was trying to defend Rep. King (IA). He came off as a KKK member.
*psa*
Chris Hayes of MSNBC will be with Bernie Sanders at a Town Hall Meeting in WV at 8pm edt on MSNBC. (Sanders in Trump Country). Should be interesting.
*/psa*
Article about the recent ratings surge for liberal cable shows, especially Rachel Maddow.
In my summary @ #179 I referred to “the targeting of Bernie Sanders supporters for a barrage of negative and distorted stories about Hillary Clinton.” I don’t think the story I was referring to has been posted here. It was this one – “Major Bernie Sanders backers suspect Russians flooded their social sites with anti-Hillary memes”:
Re the CBO report on Ryancare, sure, 24 million people would lose coverage, but Paul Ryan has his priorities:
(Emphasis added.)
As an added benefit, all the extra deaths that are sure to result will mean reductions in Social Security payouts. Such is life under the yoke of the party.
On my drive home today I heard this interesting comparison of outcomes.
Canadians with Cystic Fibrosis live 10 years linger than their American counterparts
The differences were attributed to 3 factors:
Number of Lung Transplants
Universal Health Insurance
A high fat diet was adopted earlier in Canada
I think the greater number of lung transplants in Canada my be due in part to the Canadian single payer health insurance system. This leads me to wonder if transplantable organs ever get wasted in the US due to potential recipients inability to pay.
Paul Ryan from What a Maroon @207
When you never change the oil and oil filter operating costs for your car go down.
“‘I won’t defend Trump — not now, not in the future’: Paul Ryan caught on tape trashing Trump before election”:
“Kushners Set to Get $400 Million From Chinese Firm on Tower”:
This comes on the heels of news about China granting Trump 38 trademarks, all ahead of Xi Jinping’s visit to…Mar a Lago.
“Federal Inquiry of Fox News Moves to a Grand Jury, but Without Preet Bharara”:
A week ago, I wondered aloud about the status of the MA/NY case against ExxonMobil for hiding climate data. There’s a new development:
“Tillerson Used ‘Alias’ Email for Climate Messages, N.Y. Says”:
Here’s a segment from Lawrence O’Donnell last night about the Fox News investigation referred to in #212 above.
I’m citing this because a) it’s refreshingly about something other than the far-Right horror show and b) it gives me hope:
“In the Netherlands, a Party for Animals Is Winning Voters”
I remember this party getting media attention several years ago. Seems like another world.
Feeling good about getting an oil change the other day. :)
“White House analysis of Obamacare repeal sees even deeper insurance losses than CBO”:
“Yes, the media do underreport some terrorist attacks. Just not the ones most people think of.”:
Great interview – Joy Reid talks to Aodhán Ó Ríordáin about the Irish Stand rally, which will be at the Riverside Church in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, this Friday the 17th, at 7:30 PM.
You can get tickets at IrishStand.org. All proceeds benefit the NYCLU (New York chapter of the ACLU).
“I think our responsibility as Irish people is to to grab St. Patrick’s Day back from that white nationalist viewpoint, and to present it as a celebration of immigration. And if you’re an Irish-American who is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, or any sort of American who is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, you have to realize it’s a celebration of an immigrant people here. And what the Irish went through here in America is exactly what, as you say, Mexicans, or Puerto Ricans, or whoever else is going through now. It’s the same fight. It’s the same story.”
How did I never encounter the word “psephologist” before today?
Wow.
At this point, Hannity might as well be on RT.
Democrats are considering recruiting the dozens of U.S. Attorneys that Trump fired to run for elected offices in 2018. Sounds like a good idea to me.
In other news, as was pointed out several times up-thread, Trump and his minions are intensifying efforts to discredit the Congressional Budget Office. From the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent:
Steve Benen called this a “war on empiricism.”
Senator Tom Cotton, part-time Republican doofus, is currently speaking the truth (sort of, and from a narrow perspective) when it comes to the supposed “three-phase process” the White House is touting in reference to their health care bill(s).
Link
Some Republicans that are bothered by aspects of the current Ryan plan are being persuaded to vote “yes” with an argument that says flaws will be fixed in phase 2 and phase 3. Bullshit.
To the surprise of no one at all, yet another Youtube gaming douchebag has been exposed as a racist.
I want to call out special attention to the most upvoted comment on this post:
I have said before, and am becoming more and more convinced, that Youtube and Twitch are cesspools for racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia and primary outlets for disseminating racist and sexist viewpoints. I think it’s time for the general public to start putting pressure on Youtube and Twitch to reign this in because they are a huge part of the reason for the rise of white nationalism in my opinion.
I wrote @ #180:
Best part: The CBO prediction for the number of people who would be covered under the ACA was based on the Medicaid expansion provision. The Right fought this provision to the Supreme Court, which ruled that taking the Medicaid expansion was optional for states; then several states controlled by Republicans refused the Medicaid expansion so poor people in these states didn’t get that coverage. Now the Republicans argue that the CBO lacks credibility because its coverage estimates were too high.
I’ve been mulling this over. So in effect the CBO overestimated the number of people who would be covered under the ACA because they didn’t factor in Republican villainy. This suggests that the CBO estimate for the number of people who would lose coverage under the Trumpublican plan could well be too low. For example, Medicaid block grants to states could allow Republican-controlled states to divert funds away from people in need. In analyzing the potential consequences of any piece of legislation, RV has to be anticipated and taken into account.
Mike Pence touted a meeting he had with Greg Knox in Ohio: “a small biz owner hurting under Obamacare. Now, he’s at the @WhiteHouse to share his story.”
Uh, that’s not exactly the full story. Greg Knox is obnoxious. Here are some excerpst from a tirade Knox sent to General Motors President Troy Clark in December 2008:
Link. The full text of the letter is available at the link.
Another excerpt:
Needless to say, Greg Knox was proven wrong.
Here are comments from the White House that were released yesterday:
Yeah, right. Knox is a good example of the kind of people that Pence and Trump invite to the White House to give them advice. As Josh Marshall said, Knox is a “toxic right wing asshole.”
Phase 3 = Gold Elite level at Trump U.
PZ posted about Steve King, and he created a separate thread to discuss King and his assholery. I will post a short update here. Refer to PZ’s new post for more information.
Steve King is in a hole and still digging:
Link
Worth noting that the CBO also destroys the talking point that the ACA is imploding/in a death spiral.
Scarborough seems to have broken free.
“Close Trump friend says ditch Paul Ryan’s plan and embrace universal health care: Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy calls for Medicaid for all.”
We’ve talked before about Sean Spicer, (and the White House in general), bringing fringe rightwingers into the fold. Spicer amplifies and legitimizes total dunderheads by granting them a presence in the White House briefing room. Now we have another rightwing troll to add to out list, Lauren Southern.
Link
Southern also has many connections to Breitbart. Just the type of faux journalist we do not want in the White House briefing room.
Remember Monica Crowley? She’s the woman that was considered for a post in the White House Security Council until it was discovered that she plagiarized a significant amount of text for her book “What the (Bleep) Just Happened,” and that her Columbia University Ph.D. dissertation was largely plagiarized.
Crowley was dropped from team Trump. She offered an eyebrow-raising explanation for all that plagiarized text:
Bullshit. Nope, not debunked!
Crowley ended up with a soft landing, thanks (probably) to team Trump’s extensive connections to the small world of Russian oligarchs.
Link
Who promoted Crowley for a job on team Trump in the first place? Michael Flynn. (And probably Paul Manafort.)
Pinchuk has called on Ukrainian leaders to make additional concessions to Vladimir Putin’s government. Pinchuk also wants Ukraine to give up on its plans to join the European Union, and the plans to join NATO. Sounds very much like Trump policy, like Manafort policy, etc.
Back to the horrors associated with Steve Bannon, (with a tie-in to the novel, “The Camp of the Saints,” that was highlighted in PZ’s comments about Steve King):
Slate link
More details at the link.
Some people, especially people who rely on Social Security benefits, may die if the Republican health care plan passes. The analysis below is based on information in from a footnote on page 33 of the CBO report:
Think Progress link
That’s why the report projects that Social Security outlays would decrease: more dead old people.
I think that team Trump sees that the Republican health care plan is going to fail. They are setting up Paul Ryan to take the fall for its failure. Steve Bannon’s Breitbart site is repeatedly going after Ryan to set him up to take the blame.
Media Matters link
Writing for The New Yorker, John Cassidy made some excellent points when he analyzed the effects of proposed replacement for Obamacare:
Much more at the link.
Trump wants to cut $20 billion in funding from UN.
So the latest conspiracy theory is that Obama outsourced his surveillance of Trump to British intelligence. (Who I assume charged extra for adapting the plugs on their microwave-cameras for US outlets.)
Josh Rogin: “@LindseyGrahamSC says he’s close to calling for joint select committee on Russia/Trump.”
“The Executive Branch Is About to Be ‘Reorganized’ into Oblivion: Steve Bannon’s time has come.”:
“This Is How You Troll Male State Lawmakers Trying to Restrict Abortion Access”
Tweet o’ the day.
“@LindseyGrahamSC to hold open hearing tomorrow about Russian interference in US and other elections.”
It’s at 2:30.
So weird. I have no idea if this is true, or if so what to make of it. It’s so out there.
OMFG.
@247 no fucking way! All of them or just a few pages again like last time?
No clue! I’ve read a few things suggesting the involvement of David Cay Johnston. Won’t get carried away, but should be interesting in any event!
David Cay Johnston: “On @maddow I’ll break a big story about Trump and his taxes – 9PM eastern via @DCReportMedia Ill be on @lawrence, too.”
Lawrence O’Donnell: “Yes seriously! I will be watching, then Rachel will join @TheLastWord at 10pm. This is the night we’ve been waiting for.”
:D
There is this….
Good advice.
LOL.
2005 – Maddow confirms.
“NEWS: Comey privately told Sen. Whitehouse and Graham he’d confirm if Russia/Trump FBI inquiry exists by tomorrow.”
Trump statement on tax return.
Hannity.
dcreport.org !! It was mentioned here up-thread.
great set up Rachel… wow. I have the feeling though that there isn’t going to be a smoking gun here. I hope that feeling is wrong.
Yes. This could also be true. On the other hand, this should definitely reawaken the public interest in these forms, so if Trump leaked them it could well backfire. The public needs to see these fucking taxes. All of them.
*snicker* Alternative Minimum Tax. Spelled tax dodger….
@262 it could be but we’ll never know, although I now consider it likely. This is going to backfire on the dems and Rachel and now I’m disappointed she took the bait. This should have been back page in comparison to all the Russiagate news. Seems like some wagging the dog is going on here.
I swear if I read one more smartass scold using any word with the root distract- I will fucking lose it. More than one thing can be important: corruption, collusion, craziness, criminality, callous crooked policy. And they’re connected in many ways.
“People are talking about X when they should be focused exclusively on Y” serves no purpose.
@265 – Your comment seems like it took a bit of a side swipe at me in my 264, but I could be wrong, so I’m not taking it personally yet. However, I want to dig in to a level of nuance here and slightly disagree with you.
As skeptics, we should both be aware of some basic concepts from the world of magic, one of the most fundamental being ‘misdirection’. This basic tendency of people to be easily distracted can and does get capitalized on in politics, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pointing out that there might be some misdirection going on.
Rachel Maddow has been doing some dogged anchor work and digging into the heart of the Trump-Russia scandal. She’s been primarily focused on it and doing a bang up job of it.
I agree with you in principal that we should be pulling every loose thread of the sweater that is the Trump regime, but we can do so while being careful not to fall for the misdirection, and I think that’s what’s going on here.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh. Just talk about what you think is important. Just share information. It’s all fucking important.
ericthebassist
Based on the 2 Episodes of the Opening Arguments Podcast (Thomas Smith and Lawyer Andrew Torrez) that had a CPA discussing what could be determined from Trump’s tax returns your feeling is probably correct.
You’re wrong – not aimed at you at all.
But the thing is that none of these subjects – taxes, Russia, policy, kleptocracy, dishonesty, insanity, white male supremacy, authoritarianism, sabotage of the government from within,… – is misdirection. It’s very much intertwined, and it’s all significant. It’s an exhausting waste of everyone’s time to debate what’s allegedly important in any moment. In the past week, I’ve read several articles telling people not to focus on Russia, and several others instructing us to focus only on Russia. It’s pointless.
@269 – Oh OK, I know exactly what you are talking about and I apologize for making it about me. Rolling Stone and Vanity fair have both published articles “warning” progressives to not keep going down the #russiagate rabbithole. I was equally disgusted. Mea Culpa.
Right? I have nothing against the authors, but the articles were smug and intellectually dishonest.
Thank you, Charles Pierce.
I worry that there is a strategy for the republicans here that is fairly obvious, but one that could work. They are going to slowly leak legit information and keep painting the left as crazy when they jump on it and get let down. The only counter is to keep exposing the evidence that shows how shady and fucked up this administration is.
IOW, Trump is gaslighting us again.
Well, Comey at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon is certainly going to be interesting. He’s going to be speaking to a committee, under oath.
And I don’t think it hurts to let those republicans who are breaking ranks to have a clear path to retaining some level of personal power when the dust settles. If Lindsay Graham keeps going I’d be willing to give him a pass and let him keep his district.
^^ I didn’t mean to say that as if it were my decision, lol. Just saying, at some point the left has to let some key players on the right know that the fire is indeed better than the frying pan.
Hm. On the other hand… This showed once again that there’s intense public interest in Trump’s tax returns – blew up the internet. It brought renewed attention to the importance of the public knowing what’s in them (and Maddow did a good job of bringing in the many shady aspects he could be hiding in his taxes that are important for national security and constitutionality even though these two pages said nothing about it). True, it was a bit of a tease, but it distracted from other stories for about 2 1/2 hours, which is nothing. And there’s much more out there on a number of fronts. (I truly believe this, because my reading on the subject has made me aware that Trump is far worse than people realize. I strongly suspect that the reality is worse than people even imagine. And there’s a lot of smoke.)
He’s wholly owned and subsidized by a warped combination of Russian and Chinese power brokers. He’s only outwardly nationalist, and blatantly plays on the lowest common prejudices of cynical and fearful people in order to promote his own interests; yet he’s president of the United States of America. I don’t know how the reality could be any worse.
I think most rightwing media outlets, and most Trump supporters will adopt the same attitude that Donald Trump Jr. exhibited in response to Maddow’s show:
I don’t think the figure was $40 million, Don Jr., but what’s a couple of million here or there.
I think it is highly likely that most people will ignore the import of the fact that Trump is now, as president, in a position to push for tax policies that would obviously benefit him.
Politico link
I think it is likely that Trump and/or team Trump released the 2005 partial tax return in order to deflate the demands for the rest of his tax returns.
Background for massive deductions:
David Cay Johnston pointed out that Trump should not have been able to claim that deduction. He lost the bank’s money, not his own. The loophole allowing that deduction taken in 1995 was closed the next year.
From The Daily Beast:
Maybe more fuel for the theory that Trump himself leaked the 2005 tax return? Was it the last year in which he looked like a guy who earns a lot of money?
erik @278, I think Trump is also “owned” psychologically by Steve Bannon. That “reorganization” executive order has Bannon’s fingerprints all over it. (Comments 178 and 242)
Back to the tax return issue, there’s this from David Brock:
The DNC is pushing hard for more information:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/324021-dnc-trumps-audit-excuse-is-a-scam
Further to SC’s info about the UK press’s focus on Le Pen (#11, #35), the BBC is just as bad. Here is a disgraceful puff piece normalising this disgusting fascist. A similar process is evident over Wilders and the Dutch election (which happens today). Every BBC item on the latter leads on Wilders and the PVV (here is the latest). That one is obliged to admit that Wilders’ support appears to have fallen, so his* PVV is no longer likely to come first – but there’s nothing about the other very interesting aspects of these polls: the sharp fall in support for both the government parties (the VVD and PvdA – supposedly centre-right and centre-left respectively, but which have followed hardline “austerity” economic policies), to the advantage not just of the PVV, but of GroenLinks (Green Left), the CDA (a centrist, largely Catholic party) and others. If the polls are anywhere near correct, the pseudo-left PvdA will for the first time have fewer seats than either of the significant parties of the real left, GroenLinks and the SP (Socialist Party). I heard a BBC radio documentary – again focused exclusively on Wilders and the PVV – in which the reporter clearly didn’t even know there was a “Green Left” party.
I doubt that all this is because the BBC has suddenly been taken over by fascists – rather, it has been decided that the rise of the far right is the only “sexy” story about European politics at present – apart from Brexit. The two are conveniently linked, as the far-right parties are also anti-EU, and took great encouragement from the Brexit vote – although as it turns out, this may not actually help them as it becomes clear what a complete clusterfuck Brexit is going to be. Maybe there’s also a feeling that the BBC had better hedge its bets to ensure access to fascist leaders if they do come to power.
*The PVV is Wilders’ party in the most literal sense – he’s legally the only member. This is a scam to avoid revealing his sources of funding to a wider membership (see blf@34).
It seems as if the Huffpo read my mind and published a pretty extensive history of the Trump campaign / Russia ties.
There are some missing things like the real estate deal that netted Trump $60 mill from the Russian fertilizer king, and how that same fertilizer king later ended up on the board of Cypress bank with Wilbur Ross and another close Putin associate who was previously on the board of Deutsche Bank while it was being fined $630m for Russian money laundering.
There’s also some slightly more sketchy reporting that’s been done but has some merit about the Trump owned server that was curiously only ever being looked up by Alfa Bank and a company owned by Betsy Devos’ husband, reporting which was likely the source of Trump’s tweet rage about being wiretapped.
They also left out anything about Farage visiting Julian Assange on the same day Stone admitted to private communications with Guccifer2.0 and only days after the CIA vault7 wikileaks dump. Nigel Farage had spent the better part of the week or the inauguration in the personal company of Trump and his associates partying it up.
There’s also the whole Paul Manafort’s daughter’s texts thing which isn’t getting much play. If true, Trump’s former campaign manager may be guilty of things far more sinister than taking money from and lobbying for the ousted pro-russian Ukrainian leader, he may have had a direct hand in the deaths of 100 pro west protesters.
“America’s Top High School Science Students Are the Children of Immigrants”
*
I wasn’t talking about reality in general, but the reality of who he is. He’s awful. Months ago, Tony Schwartz, who wrote The Art of the Deal, said he has “no redeeming qualities.” And Schwartz and others have been clear that it goes beyond this. He doesn’t just lack compassion or a moral compass – his “moral code” is to destroy anyone who stands in his way. He’s sadistic, abusive, cruel, violent, and destructive. He doesn’t care who he hurts, and often delights in causing others pain. (Not only would he not consider this an insult, he’s bragged about it on many occasions.) He lies constantly, to anyone and everyone. He cheats gleefully. Since he has no core feeling of self-worth, when he feels threatened he lashes out viciously and compulsively. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to get more money or power or to keep them. His mentor was Roy Cohn. It goes well beyond his fascistic politics – I don’t think there’s ever been such a genuinely terrible person in US political life. (Like Schwartz, I say this with compassion – he’s the product of an authoritarian familial, institutional, and cultural environment, and a miserable empty shell of a human being.)
Minor observation re demands for Trump’s taxes: Historically, Trump has lied on his taxes. He’s been caught several times and paid fines and back taxes. So on the one hand his taxes wouldn’t necessarily show everything people might expect if they’re making the assumption that he’s always been truthful in his returns. But on the other, if what he said on his taxes can be shown to be false, he would be open to criminal prosecution.
He’s definitely hiding something, and if he did leak these pages to Johnston it raises even more questions. Congress and the public need to see his tax returns.
“‘People are scared’: Paranoia seizes Trump’s White House”:
SC @ 184
You say that like it (science) is a good thing,
Joe Scarborough tweeted: “This one tax return is not bad for him because he cherry picked one return from over a decade ago and had it leaked to the press.”
Infamous goon Michael Cohen responded: “As #potus @realDonaldTrump personal attorney, I know who has his taxes. You better have proof to back up your claim and big mouth!”
Cohen, who has zero credibility, could easily advise Trump to release several years’ full tax returns if he wants to show that there are no shenanigans. This is the expectation and the norm, and more than called for in this case.
*
Nunes and Schiff are doing a press conference. Announcing that they have no evidence that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower. It’s painful to watch Schiff have to gingerly deal with Nunes’ partisan insinuations.
This press conference is actually pretty funny. Politely dueling committee chairs.
The Justice Dept. is announcing that they’re indicting FSB people and paid hackers in 2013/2014 hacking of Yahoo and other US companies – calling it “foreign, state-sponsored criminal behavior.” At least one has been arrested.
But are they unplugging their microwave ovens?
Perhaps Trump will suffer the fate of Caligula.
“The FSB officers charged are Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, the criminal hackers- Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov (arrested in Canada)”
Trump tweeted: “Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mailbox’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!”
David Cay Johnston won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on taxes and tax loopholes. He’s also been reporting on Trump since like the ’80s or ’90s. Trump has his phone number and called him at home last year. Johnston said this morning that Trump followers are threatening his family over this.
Lynna @280
It is probably the last year he paid a significant amount of taxes.
During his campaign, Trump claimed that Ted Cruz “is in bed w/ Wall St. & is funded by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs owns [Cruz], he will do anything they demand. Not much of a reformer!”
Trump also claimed that Goldman Sachs had “total control” over Hillary Clinton.
Trump just added a seventh Goldman Sachs veteran to his team. From the New York Times:
Other Goldman Sachs vets already on the team:
– Steven Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary
– Steve Bannon, Chief White House strategist
– Gary Cohn, chief economics advisor (and ormer president of Goldman Sachs)
– Jay Clayton, nominated to head the Securities and Exchange Commission
– Dina Powell, on the economic team
– Anthony Scaramucci, White House “confidant” to the president —Scaramucci later withdrew
Trump’s morning tweet reveals, once again, that he knows less than almost everyone:
So, he doesn’t know who David Cay Johnston is. I do.
The White House already confirmed that the 2005 tax returns are the real deal, so that’s not fake.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out, she’s not fake.
Related links:
http://www.msnbc.com/sites/msnbc/files/trump2005tax_0.pdf
https://www.dcreport.org/2017/03/14/taxes/
militant agnostic @294
Right. That’s a better way to put it.
SC @293
Thanks for that info. Sorry I didn’t refresh before I posted comment 296.
Paul Ryan is getting desperate. He does not want to be the only one on the sinking Republican health care boat.
Josh Marshall noticed:
Although First Dog on the Moon’s Could you be a One Nation candidate? Take the quiz! (cartoon) is a test for the Ozland nazis, with a small number of tweaks (e.g., to ), it also a test for USAlienazis…
This is a follow-up to comment 279.
More from Donald Trump Jr.:
I guess he thought that last one was so clever that he had to repeat it. Maybe it was Don Jr.’s idea to release the tax return that looked most legit?
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spn4ed
Link
The copy of the two-page tax form is clearly marked “Client Copy,” which indicates it came from Donald or Melania Trump.
The Chinese American businesswoman who recently bought a $15.8 million penthouse in a Trump-owned building has ties to “an organization considered a front group for Chinese military intelligence.”
Mother Jones link
Chen paid cash for the penthouse.
More details regarding the “alt-right” scumbags who are threatening David Cay Johnston and his family:
Media Matters link
Writing for The Daily Beast, Michael Daly highlighted some more interesting facts related to Trump’s 2005 tax return, and the possibility that he leaked it himself in lieu of releasing all of his tax returns.
Stephen Colbert covered Paul Ryan’s reaction to the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the Republican health care plan. Scroll down for the video. This is a good one. The video is 6:17 minutes long.
Speculation about another source for the 2005 tax returns:
The Hill link
Not exactly: That means it was intended for the Trumps, and presumably is in their possession. As such, it does not mean either had anything to do with the making or sending the copy to Johnston (theoretically including ordering the leak). As the Grauniad says (02:17 mark), “The taxes [sic] themselves say ‘client copy’ on them, so whoever sent them to Johnston had access to Trump’s personal files, rather than those belonging to his accountant or the Internal Revenue Service.”
Which does not mean one of the Trumps isn’t responsible.
No apologies for being pedantic here: “The resistance” must avoid spreading lies and innuendos, and certainly not any of its own making. Please do not normalize the dalekocracy’s behaviour by doing the same-ish!
More doofuses and dunderheads joining team Trump:
http://www.vox.com/2017/3/15/14596938/david-malpass-treasury
blf @307, thank you for that correction, and for the explanation. I soon realized I had made a mistake earlier. Your correction was needed.
Wonkette covered the reaction to Maddow’s show:
Follow-up to comment 146.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman David Nunes, a Republican from California, may have finally gotten a clue, or at least half a clue:
Nunes soiled his moment-of-reasonableness by saying that that reporters are guilty of taking Trump’s tweets literally. Nevertheless, he took a baby step in the right direction.
From Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price:
This may be a ploy by Price to get Republican Freedom Caucus members to vote for Trumpcare. Let’s humiliate Medicaid recipients!
Jesus fuck, when will MSNBC and CNN learn that their audiences want to see Senate and House hearings more than Trump rallies, and in fact generally don’t believe there’s any obligation to show Trump’s rallies in the first place which contributes to his propaganda? (It’s true that I speak only for myself here, but if the developments cited @ #205 above are any indication many others agree.) They both actually cut away from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s public hearing about FBI investigations to go to Trump reading off a teleprompter and saying nothing.
Like I said @ #226, RV has to be factored into any analysis.
@312 cspan
State Department Correspondents’ Association statement on Secretary Tillerson’s trip to Asia
I don’t know why they keep rolling over. Show some rage on behalf of the public’s right to information, reporters.
Not the point. And there are a number of things (e.g., the recent Resolution of Inquiry committee vote) they don’t show.
Tweet o’ the day.
That said, C-SPAN2 is reshowing the joint Nunes/Schiff press conference from earlier, which I recommend.
Sorry – they just switched back to the Senate.
CNN and MSNBC are entertainment outlets that barely qualify as news most of the time, hearings are long boring dry affairs that do little to boost ratings. They rarely show committee hearings in their entirety, but they are likely to give a summary later.
Whoa – this Senate discussion is lively. John McCain, Jeanne Shaheen, and others are talking about supporting Montenegro and NATO. Rand Paul objected and then walked away without explanation. Now McCain and Shaheen are going after Paul. McCain: “The Senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.”
They were showing the short Senate hearing in which Graham and Whitehouse were talking about the FBI, alleged wiretapping, and Russia. There’s an enormous amount of interest in that. They cut away from that to go to a Trump teleprompter rally. I can pretty much guarantee that’s not what the vast majority of their viewers wanted.
Poor poor Geert.
When a Trump rally is aired on MSNBC, I tune out. Maybe they will notice that their ratings drop when they air repetitive nonsense from Hair Furor.
Oh, FFS. We know that President Obama rescued the American auto industry. But in the speech Trump gave at a campaign rally (a rally is untimely nonsense in and of itself), he said:
Trump seems to believe that Obama-era fuel-efficiency standards are an “assault.”
As far as keeping his word goes, he hasn’t made and real changes yet. The EPA has been asked by team Trump “to determine no later than April 2018 whether the 2022-2025 standards established are appropriate. If the EPA determines they are not appropriate, the agency will submit a new proposal next year.”
I don’t know what Trump thinks is “over,” but I don’t see any indication that Trump knows a damned thing about the auto industry.
erik @323, hooray! Good news. That makes me happy. Let’s hope those exits polls represent the true situation.
In other news, Daniel Ramirez Medina, a Dreamer from Seattle, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post.
Continuation of comment 326:
The state of Florida is changing its stand-your-ground laws so that it will be even easier to shoot someone and get away with it:
The quoted text is from the New York Times.
I really hope the exit polls prove accurate, because this is awesome (and I’m sick and grumpy and could use it right now). Also if correct, the Party for the Animals (mentioned @ #215) went from 2 to 5 seats.
Very high turnout.
Also if the exit poll is accurate (I’m not counting on anything anymore :(), GreenLeft and Party for the Animals together have more seats than the PVV.
“Animal Rights Party leader Thieme points out that parties with green-focused programmes have doubled their representation.”
(Everyone seems to be taking the exit polls as completely representative of the results. I hope they’re right.)
In my experience, exit polls in NL are usually quite accurate. They can be off by a few seats (so PVV could gain of loose 2 or 3 seats, as could the other number 2 polling parties or VVD) but the general story is normally on the money. And the general story today is that Wilders is NOT the largest faction; that his gain is smaller compared to the gain of other parties that profit of the fall of the governing parties and that the largest governing party clearly stays the largest.
It makes a difference of course that with a coalition government a difference of one percent isn’t typically make-or-break.
Also important is that the turn-out was significantly larger than last time… From 74% to over 80% . Clearly a lot of the voters did learn from Brexit and Trump that theorie vote dies make a difference.
Also important … The total of Eurosceptic parties did not break the 20% barrier. This is a positive vote for cooperation.
Right.
Thanks.
That’s also encouraging. It seems like rather than Brexit and Trump being the beginning of a far-Right wave sweeping across Europe, people are looking at them and like “Hard pass.”
Not good: “Dutch TV station RTV Rijnmond is reporting that PVV are the largest party Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second biggest city.”
Seriously.
Reuters is reporting that Dutch PM Rutte has a big lead over the rightists.
The Netherlands’ center-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte roundly saw off a challenge by anti-Islam, anti-EU Geert Wilders in an election on Wednesday, exit polls said, a huge relief to other EU governments facing a wave of nationalism.
Rutte’s VVD Party was projected to win 31 of parliament’s 150 seats, down from 41 at the last vote in 2012, but ahead of Wilders who tied in second place with two other parties at 19 each, according to the polls by national broadcaster NOS based on interviews with voters.
At 81 percent, turnout was the highest in 30 years in an election that was a test of whether the Dutch wanted to end decades of liberalism and choose a nationalist, nativist path by voting for Wilders and his promise to “de-Islamicise” the Netherlands and quit the European Union.
Dang, didn’t blockquote in my #337. Sorry.
OTOH, looks like GreenLeft won in Amsterdam.
Woohoo! “Judge In Hawaii Puts Trump’s Revised Federal Travel Ban On Hold”
@336 – I’m so sick of people wanting to reel in the movement to expose Trump and his cronies. Just based on the facts we know he should be impeached and indicted, just based on the lies and the known ties. This isn’t debatable, he’s crooked, beholden to the Russians and there’s plenty of verified and corroborated evidence to prove it.
That whole Buzzfeed article is basically one giant false equivalency. Typical conspiracy theorists go anomaly hunting, dismiss evidence that doesn’t fit their world view and make ridiculous leaps of logic to posit their harebrained theories. That is not what is happening with Russiagate. The only reason we don’t have “The Smoking Gun” yet, is that there is an ongoing investigation, with a lot of politics and maneuvering surrounding it.
I don’t think there’s going to be a single smoking gun, it’s going to be a mountain of evidence that adds up to the big picture.
By Buzzfeed logic, we should never ever investigate anything unless it falls in our laps our someone confesses ffs. We discussed that upthread with the Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair articles spouting the same bullshit.
Sigh… I guess there’s always going to be those journalists who are afraid to commit and want to appear like Switzerland so that they come out smelling like a rose regardless of the outcome, but fuck them. This real, not a conspiracy theory, and it obvious!
meta: it’s obvious* – as was my typo.
Unfortunately, he’s also rightist (but not far-Right like Wilders).
Right, and these articles can’t point to any actual people holding their breath for a smoking gun. What people want is a thorough, public investigation. And as you say, and he admits in the article, what we’ve already seen is sufficiently damning – if Trump were a Democrat he would already have been impeached – and suggestive of worse. We just need a public accounting.
SC @340, such good news! The hold is for 90 days. Trump shot himself in the foot when he was so obvious during the campaign about intending to ban Muslims.
SC, #340
Oooh, I can’t wait for the tweets!
This is interesting: “Sen. Feinstein on meeting with FBI Dir. Comey: ‘This briefing was all on sensitive matters and highly classified’.” (Video at the link.)
@SC, 343
VVD is right of center for the Netherlands but would probably be considered centrist or even left of center (especially on its social views) in the US from what I can see of all the discussion in the previous years here.
I would’t be surprised to find out that on average, VVD policies fall to the left of 8 years President Obama.
Also, VVD is (just like its former coalition partner PvdA) a strongly secular party, unlike the centrist Christian Democrats (CDA) who will become the kingmaker for either a possible center-right or a center-left coalition. So I wonder how the CDA will put a religious slant on policy in the coming years.
Thanks again. Yes, I have to remember the rightward warp in the US.
Update to #335 – now looking like VVD might have slightly edged out PVV in Rotterdam.
Dang, Chris Hayes on MSNBC is showing The Donald, who appears to be totally oblivious to the fact that his decisions must follow the US Constitution.
Well, I’ll say one thing about listening to part of a Trump campaign rally: it reminds me afresh of how awful he is, how ignorant, how willing to mislead his followers.
I can’t believe Trump referred to Muslim ban 2.0 as a “watered-down version” of the first ban.
He still enjoys the “Lock her up!” chants.
I’m a bit behind on Chris Hayes, but from what I’m seeing right now Trump’s not doing himself any favors.
Ha! Ari Melber agrees with me.
Trump threatening to break up the the Ninth Circuit Court is going to hurt him when his lawyers have to defend Muslin ban 2.0 in front of the …. wait for it … the Ninth Circuit Court.
That “lock her up” chant should come back to bite him, I hope. He has so many legal problems.
Update to #321 – Now Breitbart is going after McCain, calling him senile:
“Breitbart is already attacking the McCain-Montenegro story by intimating McCain is ‘senile’. Expect a fake news onslaught about his health.”
“This is bigger than Montenegro and NATO. Discrediting McCain is not only about Russia policy but also about silencing any GOP dissent.”
Um…
So with more than 50% of the results in, the Dutch election shows the samen picture as the exit polls. One extra seat (prognosis) for VVD and one less for Green Left. With more than 10 parties with enough votes to get at least one seat, “fractions of a seat” results will still cause minor shifts, but the general picture now stands: it will not be an easy coalition (probably 4 parties needed … Always messy) and though Wilders gained seats, he didn’t do so as much as the other medium-to-large parties and he still isn’t back at the highest score they had in 2010.
Final results of the Dutch election. I didn’t see the exit polls referred to above, but to judge by comments the main points remain, although perhaps slightly less good: Wilders’ PVV did come second, with 20 seats (a gain of 5), but three other parties gained more (CDA and D66, both centrist, and GroenLinks – Green Left – which gained more than any other party – 10 seats to take 14 altogether, not quite as many as some reent polls, but obviously a very good resul). PvA (Party for Animals) gained 3 seats for a total of 5. Both the parties of the current coalition lost seats – the VVD lost 8, the PvdA a disastrous 29, a good lesson for what happens to a supposedly leftish party that backs neoliberal “austerity” economic policies. However, the VVD is still clearly the largest party and will presumably cobble together some sort of coalition, excluding both the PVV and the left.
I’m sure the failure of Wilders to come anywhere near his goal will be a great disappointment not only to racists and fascists everywhere, but to all the journalists and commenters who have been boosting the far right over the last months and years just because it “makes a good story” – and fuck those who would be on the sharp end of fascist oppression and violence.
I had missed this – Roger Stone was in contact with Guccifer 2.0 at least 16 times.
A federal judge in Maryland has also blocked Trump’s Muslim ban.
Trump’s proposed budget in all its destructive glory. They want to cut Meals on Wheels. Meals on Wheels!
Also LIHEAP (heating assistance for low income people), and cleanup efforts for the great lakes.
Seems the rust belt is going to get hit hardest by this. Side note… one of the commenters at my link is disgustingly brazen about the typical Trump voter’s mindset:
– and no, she wasn’t trolling.
From Politico:
All of the legal experts on CNN and MSNBC seem to think these judges’ decisions are misguided and weak and that Trump would win at the Supreme Court. I’m not a lawyer and they could well be right, but I’m not convinced by their argument about judicial deference to the president in these matters. There’s overwhelming evidence of religious animus in the intent behind the ban, and not only are they not providing any real national security justification but their own national security agencies’ analyses have concluded that it wouldn’t help and would indeed harm national security. I don’t think deference to irrational bigotry is in keeping with the courts’ duty to uphold the Constitution, as many past horrors testify.
@366 – The point Dershowitz made is that the justification given by the judge in HI means that the same EO made by any other president who didn’t have Trump’s history would be considered constitutional, and I can’t seem to find fault in that argument. The order itself is either constitutional or it isn’t. Legally it has to be considered on it’s own merits.
I’m no lawyer either, but in my totally uneducated opinion I have the feeling SCOTUS might uphold it.
“How Trump’s Lawyer Placed A Big Casino Bet That Left Dozens Empty-Handed”
But like I said, and the judges so far have said, the record – not just Trump’s history but the history of the ban itself – offers clear evidence of religious animus, which is unconstitutional. Further, this appears to be the only intent; the national security justification is plainly retconned and undercut by their own analysis. I understand the point he’s making, but I think he’s leaving out key elements. (I have a personal anti-Dershowitz animus, but I’m trying to leave that to the side, especially because others I don’t necessarily dislike have made similar points.) He/they could well be right about the likelihood of a Supreme Court victory, but I think such a decision would be a betrayal of the Court’s constitutional obligation and of basic reasoning on the basis of the totality of the evidence. It wouldn’t be treating Trump or this ban differently, just recognizing the extensive evidence of discriminatory intent.
The country already has a shameful history of immigration and internment policies of this sort – we don’t need another for kids to be reading about in history books a few decades from now (that’s assuming there will still be schools and reality-based history lessons…) and wondering what otherwise intelligent judges were thinking.
So the official McDonald’s account tweeted “@realDonaldTrump You are actually a disgusting excuse of a president and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands.” Matt Yglesias retweeted it and I saw it before it disappeared.
They also managed to pin it.
“EXCLUSIVE: Nazi-Allied Group Claims Top Trump Aide Sebastian Gorka As Sworn Member”:
Follow-up to SC @364 and erik @365: For good measure, Trump’s budget cuts home-heating assistance funds. Poor, elderly, and disabled people he does not manage to starve may freeze to death in the winter.
I see rightwingers defending Trump’s budget by saying that the State Department will have less to do because Trump’s beefed up military will prevent wars.
[head-desk]
As erik pointed out in 365, that cut to LIHEAP (heating assistance for low income people) is going to hurt people who are already hurting. It’s going to hurt people that Trump promised to help.
To save money, I often turn my own heat down during the cool-to-cold months. It’s a hardship, but it is nothing like going without heat. A lack of heat also tends to ruin your living space in other ways. Pipes freeze and burst. People die when they try to heat one room by other means.
Trump defended his wiretapping claim, again.
I would just like to point out that the New York Times did not write about President Obama wiretapping anyone. Even Bret Baier’s presentation did not support the claim that Obama wiretapped Trump.
Also, Trump’s explanation is inadequate and clownish. He looked unstable and stupid during the interview.
Media Matters link. You can view the video there without having to go to Fox News. More of the transcript is also presented at the link.
SC, #370
It would be awesome if it wasn’t a hack and was just McDonald’s coming up with a way to troll the orange shitstain.
This could be a thing. Like every couple of weeks, a different major company’s Twitter gets “hacked”.
Writing for Think Progress, Jessica Goldstein pointed out that rural and underserved communities will suffer the most if Trump is successful in cutting arts funding.
From the Washington Post:
Goldstein’s comments on the planned cuts for meals on wheels and for home-heating assistance:
An excerpt from Goldstein’s conclusion:
Yeah, Trump lied. And Trump misinterpreted an article published in the New York Times in January. Trump even misinterpreted a presentation on Fox News. All around Fail at all levels.
Now we have a bipartisan statement from the Senate Intelligence Committee confirming that there is “no indication” that Trump Tower was under surveillance.
Talking Points Memo link
“Mike Flynn Worked for Several Russian Companies, Was Paid More Than $50,000, Documents Show”:
“Mr. Flynn resigned under pressure in February after he failed to tell White House officials about phone calls he had with Mr. Kislyak…” Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Jesus.
I’m sure this will come as a surprise to you: Mexico is not paying for Trump’s border wall.
Mick Mulvaney confirmed that U.S. taxpayers are paying for the wall by noting that the funds are “coming out of the treasury.” That is another way of saying “from U.S. taxpayers.”
Politico link
Last night, at his surreal campaign rally, Chief Orange Dunderhead said that the border wall is “way ahead of schedule.” There is no schedule, not yet anyway. The money to start the project is planned for by Mick Mulvaney, but nobody has that money yet. No schedule. No money. No way to be “way ahead.”
The $4.1 billion Mick Mulvaney is supposedly scaring up adds up to about 1/5th of the cost for the wall.
“Follow The Money, Donald Trump Edition”:
More details regarding the Education Department cuts that are proposed in Trump’s budget:
Daily Kos link</a<. Laura Clawson is the journalist.
Sounds like the kind of cuts that will have negative effects for decades, if not more.
Tweet o’ the day.
Dear world:
The man’s name is Devin Nunes, not Devin Nuñes. Thank you.
I think the link in 384 works, even though I borked the html code.
In other news, here is an “oh, FFS” moment for today.
Reddit and other rightwing sources for questionable conspiracy theories are blaming the latest judicial rulings against Trump’s Muslim ban 2.0 on … Obama. Of course they are.
That’s from @TheDonaldReddit.
This is from Freedom Daily:
This is from InfoWars:
Media Matters link.
There’s a lot more, but you get the idea.
On Fox News, Sean Hannity is now saying that the Hawaiian judge who approved the temporary restraining order on Trump’s Muslim ban 2.0 cannot be trusted because he supposedly did weed and blow with Obama in college. Sheesh!
“Not every day you see a press secretary going to such lengths to argue his boss is the subject of an FBI investigation.”
“PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY. YOU FEED THEM. ERGO, THE PROGRAM WORKS. YOU HEARTLESS BLOODLESS SOULLESS SMUG FUCK.”
Not exactly breaking news, but SC @ 389 reminds me of this. The background: back in the ’80s and early ’90s Virginia had a well-deserved reputation as the top source of guns for gun-runners up and down the east coast. Pretty much anyone could go into a gun store, buy as many guns as they liked, and do whatever they wanted with them. So back in ’93 VA did the unthinkable: it passed a simple, common-sense gun law that dried up the gun stream without unduly inconveniencing the 2nd Amendment crowd. The law limited purchases to one gun a month. Who could object, right? Even the fondliest gun fondler doesn’t have much use for more than twelve new guns a year.
So where’s the connection to @389? Flash forward to 2013, with good ol’ gopper Bob McDonnell in office, and the gop in control of the state legislature. VA decides to repeal the law. As I recall, one of the arguments for repeal was that the program had been successful and gun running wasn’t a problem anymore.
And so we’ve come full circle.
Did I mention that VA is where the NRA is headquartered?
Trump’s messing with the US immigration system is causing problems for some Canadians with jobs in the US. A group of Canadian nurses trying to go to work in the US were stopped at the border last week and told they had to apply for H1B visas, despite currently holding TN visas.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/trump-travel-ban-canada-visa-tn-nafta-hb1-nurse-detroit-1.4028260
Jesus.
Al Jazeera confirms there has been an airstrike on a mosque (see @392), but at the moment is not calling who did it: USAnnihilate!Annihilate!Annihilate! or Russia being the two main suspects.
Damn, I’m getting so tired of rethugs only talking about money, instead of the effects of their decisions upon the poor/lower income people.
@ 394
You must be following Budget Director Mick Mulvaney who said Thursday that cutting funding to several anti-poverty programs is “one of the most compassionate things we can do.” According to Mulvaney, your problem is that you’re focusing on the recipients of the funding, rather than the ones who provide the funding. You know, the rich who have to pay taxes, they’re the ones who need compassion.
Lynna @375
I don’t know about the other provinces, but in Alberta utilities can not shut off service for non-payment during the winter months.
There are similar laws in some European countries. And if I recall correctly, here in France, broadly speaking, an eviction cannot occur during the winter.
Gee, that should include me who only on my IRA and income. I don’t need compassion. My compassion is for those who weren’t able to save due to life’s uncertainties. They need help, not me.
Here in New York state they can and most certainly do. I had mine almost shut off, caught the guy and made him wait while I called customer service because I had submitted the payment the day before but it hadn’t processed yet.
FIFY – If I was a clueless, heartless rethuglican. That is not an exaggeration, it’s what they actually believe.
I don’t disagree with your showing what heartless rethugs believe. And I have absolutely no agreement with them. Tax my retirement, as I still have to support those less fortunate than me. I’ll deal with it.
I make $37k a year, have no savings and a mountain of medical debt, and I still say take my tax dollars so long as they are well spent. Taking care of the least among us, that’s well spent. Roads, fire, police, protecting the environment, reigning in corrupt corporations, national defence, education (with equal access to it), investments in science and the arts, enforcing civil rights, protecting us from each other, engaging with the world in an effort to bring about peace and reduce suffering, that’s all money well spent…
SC’s link at #392 isn’t.
And for my encore to 402…
Well spent indeed.
I’m just going to leave this right here.
I’m really interested in this community’s thoughts on that.
My take, Ivanka knows the truth about dad but knows she can’t stop him, and is positioning herself to win back liberal favor. Who knows where that leads but she’s not thinking about her Dad’s reputation, she’s thinking about her own. I think she’d let him burn.
Hee.
*
Rachel Maddow just reported that Schiff and Nunes sent a letter to the intelligence agencies demanding an answer on why Mike Flynn’s communications with Kislyak were recorded/preserved. The deadline is tomorrow. As she puts it, it’ll be a scandal whatever happens. A nonresponse to an oversight committee would be unprecedented. If he was illegally or mistakenly surveilled, that would be a scandal. And if he was the target of a criminal or counter-terrorism investigation, it would of course also be a scandal. I suppose they could do what Comey did with Feinstein and Grassley yesterday and meet in a SCIF to give information that can’t be shared…
I’m so glad Maddow is now talking about the cyberattack on the DCCC in 2016. I never understood why that didn’t get more attention.
Looks like she’ll have to write a note to the interviewee’s babysitter. Go Racheal Go. Write that note…
Amen.
Reason again fails to live up to its title.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-meals-on-wheels/
That was “Mostly False” hours ago, I know because I checked it. They are editing on the fly.
Well, well, well. At least one reporter for a conservative website has a line he will not cross when it comes to telling lies and/or pushing batcrap crazy conspiracy theories.
Politico link
IJR later pulled the story off the website.
I think they’re going to have to keep editing. It’s true that cutting MoW entirely isn’t part of the budget (although Mulvaney seemed fine with idea), which would be impossible because the program receives probably the majority of its funding from nongovernmental sources. However, the 3% figure isn’t correct. The nationwide network receives 35% of its funding through the Older Americans Act, which is administered through HHS. They also receive some funding through the Community Development Block Grant and/or other similar block grants.
Cutting the CDBG would eliminate this source of funding for MoW (as well as harm or destroy many other valuable and needed programs that rely on this entirely). More to the point, though, the proposed budget calls for cutting HHS by almost 18%, which would very likely translate into significant cuts to OAA funds. This could potentially include cutting all OAA funds to MoW, depending on how the cuts play out; it’s certainly a legitimate concern, given Mulvaney’s attitude. So the threat of losing 35%+ of its funding is real, and would very much affect the organization’s ability to carry out its work.
More broadly, an 18% cut to Health and Human Services – like cutting CDBG – would mean damaging cuts to, if not the elimination of, a good portion of programs with these sorts of missions. However the specific cuts were decided, it would make for a crueler, less compassionate, less hopeful, hungrier, sicker, lonelier, sadder country.
“US will ‘not repeat’ claims GCHQ wiretapped Donald Trump”:
From Time:
Trump’s proposed budget would cut counter-terrorism funding from the city where his wife and young child live.
CNN is reporting that Spicer and McMaster apologized for GCHQ claim.*
* (which I’m sure originated with Spicer alone)
This helps.
“White House Official May Have Violated Campaign Finance Laws: K.T. McFarland appears to have used exploratory committee funds to promote her career as a political commentator.”
“US Secy of State Tillerson cut short his visit to S. Korea because of ‘fatigue’, Korean officials tell Korea Herald.”
Rachel Maddow talked about this a bit last night. He also missed a meeting in Japan to take a nap.
Good. Action.
http://secure.artsactionfund.org/page/s/trump-arts-petition
Tillerson says diplomatic efforts towards North Korea have “failed” and that military action is “on the table.”
SC @418, I can imagine what they would say if Hillary Clinton did that.
In other news, Ben Carson may not know that Trump’s proposed budget cuts the very programs Carson is praising:
Link
From NBC:
From Steve Benen:
Remember how excited team Trump was when a single large insurance company vaguely and mildly expressed support for Trumpcare/Ryancare? Well, there’s a back story that explains that mild support.
From the New York Times:
From Steve Benen:
From the Washington Post:
SC @420. Scary. And not an example of good diplomacy from Tillerson.
Trump is backing him up:
The tweet was posted at 7:07 AM this morning.
In other news, there are 500,000 military veterans who rely on Meals on Wheels.
In other, other news, Trump celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by reading an “Irish proverb” that is not Irish, its Nigerian. The display of Republican inability to use Google occurred during a welcome meeting for Ireland’s Prime Minister Edna Kenney, who was traveling with an Irish press pool. Both Pence and Trump looked and sounded foolish.
When Trump took the podium, he mispronounced Fionnuala, the name of the Prime Minister’s wife. Then Trump read from the poem “Remember to Forget” by poet Adam Alhassan, a Nigerian. This is a poem, not a proverb. It is not Irish, nor from Ireland, nor by anyone living in Ireland.
So just like Aetna. They’re all just so evil and corrupt.
This really is amazing.
“AARP to Alert 38 Million Members How Their Members of Congress Vote on Health Bill”:
Follow-up to 424.
From the Irish Times:
SC @425, yes, like Aetna. Makes you think that insurance company CEOs must all be scam artists and “deal makers” like Trump.
In other news, the White House has an explanation for reading out loud in the press briefing room an accusation that Obama used GCHQ, Britain’s spy agency, to spy on Trump. They didn’t mean it that way. Oh, FFS.
The White House statement said that Sean Spicer was ““simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story.” Bullshit. Spicer used that report and others to back up Trump’s claim, and to say that it is obvious that the issue needs to be investigated.
[head-meet-desk moment]
Link
The House of Representatives passed a bill that is likely to make it easier for veterans suffering from PTSD to kill themselves:
Think Progress link
The actual origin of the poem is unknown, but is probably not Mr Alhassan. He was born in the 1980s, but the poem bas been found “in volume 31 of the International Stereotypers’ and Electrotypers’ Union Journal, published in 1936 in America” (St Patrick’s Day: Trump’s ‘Irish proverb’ provokes derision on the web).
Seth Meyers took a closer look at Trump’s recent failures. After a summary of recent failures, Meyers excoriates Trump for cutting federal funds for programs like Meals on Wheels.
Meyers also covered Trump’s ridiculous attacks on the media.
Scroll down for the video, which is 9:58 minutes long.
@431 – More evidence that the Bannon philosophy is one of mass genocide. I think he honestly believes that we need a culling of the weak, the poor, the un-american and the undesirables.
And today, this.
blf @432, thanks for the correction.
In other news, the White House is using an article that mocks Trump’s budget blueprint to raise funds. They didn’t realize that the article mocked them.
Link
Follow-up to comment 436.
Alexandra Petri responded:
Follow-up to @392/@393, the attack on a mosque was by USAnnihilate!Annihilate!Annihilate! muppets, US admits Syria airstrike that killed 46 but denies targeting mosque. In fact, the muppets seem to think the mosque is still standing, “ said Col John J Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.” This is despite press and other observers reporting the destroyed building clearly was a mosque.
And who deliberately attacks a building only a few metres away from a place known to contain civilians at a time when civilians are known to be in that place? Not muppets, terrorists…
Trevor Noah covered Geert Wilders’ defeat in the Dutch election.
In a nice conclusion, Noah connects Wilders’s defeat to, in part, Trump’s manifest incompetence.
The video is a about five minutes long.
Update to #415 – They’re now denying that they apologized.
I haven’t seen this explicitly mentioned yet, but apparently Mick Mulvaney wants to eliminate (subsidized?) school meals, claiming — falsely — , ‘Outrageous’: expert slams White House for denying school meals’ link to learning: “Author of groundbreaking study of school meals’ impact on class achievement said proposed cuts to programs reflects ‘lack of knowledge or{…} dishonesty’.”
The article points out the Orwellian-named School Nutrition Association (“which campaigns for lowered nutritional standards in children’s meals”) seems likely to have influence in the matter.
An article with barely-controlled anger (the British are really fuming abut the GCHQ accusation), White House–GCHQ row reveals a leader [sic] willing to alienate allies to save face, concludes:
blf @441, I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone pointed out, using actual facts, that Mick Mulvaney was wrong. An “oh, FFS” moment for sure.
Even if there were no studies showing that feeding children helps them do better in school, anyone with a working brain and some empathy would know that feeding children helps them do better overall.
In other news, Trump’s proposed budget also fails to fulfill his promises related to investing in the nation’s infrastructure.
Trump is basing his support for the Republican health care plan largely on fear, on fear of impending disasters that are made up:
The Hill link
I can only imagine their rage will grow after today’s press conference. During it, Trump blew it off, saying Spicer had merely cited a “very talented” Fox commentator (Napolitano, the 9/11 truther). Afterwards, Spicer told reporters he didn’t regret anything he said.
(In response to a question about the false wiretapping claim, Trump turned to Merkel and said “As far as wiretapping by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps.”)
During it, Trump blew it off, saying Spicer had merely cited a “very talented” Fox commentator (Napolitano, the 9/11 truther).
“…And so you shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”
An excerpt from what the prime minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny, said while Trump was standing right there next to him:
“Dem Rep. Asks Trump To Confirm If Gorka Belongs To Nazi Ally-Linked Group”
(Spoiler alert: It’s Jerry Nadler.)
SC @446, team Trump is never going to take responsibility for relying on untrustworthy “news” sources.
Trump’s “blame somebody else” statement included another deflection from personal responsibility: “I didn’t make an opinion on it.”
Oh, FFS.
“As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps,” he [Trump] said, gesturing to a visibly uncomfortable Merkel. The crowd laughed several seconds later.
Trump, you buffoon, stop talking about the wiretapping story you made up in which you envision yourself being persecuted by President Obama.
Follow-up to comment 450.
Good video of Angela Merkel’s classic “what the fuck?” look can be viewed on Talking Points Memo.
She did not laugh.
“Fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara Said to Have Been Investigating HHS Secretary Tom Price: Trump’s head of the Department of Health and Human Services traded stocks of health-related companies while working on legislation affecting the firms. A source says Bharara was overseeing an investigation. The White House didn’t immediately comment.”
I didn’t attack the journalists in the briefing who laughed when Spicer made the “joke” about the jobs numbers, because it seemed in many cases like a nervous laugh or an expression of surprise rather than a real laugh. But Merkel shows how it’s done. She basically rolled her eyes without having to roll her eyes.
To summarize, this is where we are when it comes to hypocrite Trump and spending taxpayer dollars:
Link
Follow-up to comment 454:
Shep Smith just read a statement from Fox News saying they couldn’t confirm Napolitano’s claims, and that they know “of no evidence of any kind that the now president [sic] of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way. Full stop.”
Don Jr. is helping to spread the myth that President Obama used British spies to spy on Daddy Trump:
Link
Don Jr. is good at spreading baseless conspiracy theories.
From Patrick Healy of The New York Times:
In the Onion, ‘Curses!’ Shouts Fist-Shaking Meals On Wheels Ringleader As Trump Cuts Off Gravy Train:
“House Intelligence panel receives documents on wiretapping”
Doesn’t give much further information. I doubt that whatever is in the documents will be made public anytime soon.
Good news: the FBI have arrested the person who sent Kurt Eichenwald the strobing graphic that triggered an epileptic seizure.
Here’s the US attorney’s statement on the arrest. They have an almost comically strong case.
I’ve seen much from criminal enforcement that if criminals weren’t stupid enough to brag about their crimes, nobody would ever be convicted….
As I expected, Nunes read the materials and just released a statement saying the agencies had satisfied the committee’s request for information about surveillance. But it’s classified information, so he couldn’t say anything about the content of the documents. Schiff hasn’t had a chance to read through them since when they were delivered he (along with several others) was already on his way to the airport.
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/
Grow a spine, already.
Shockingly, Trump hasn’t been following through on his promises to donate his salary, ill-gotten business profits, or excess inaugural funds.
This is an old article, but it illustrates why I think dems need to add abolishing the electoral college to the party platform. One person, one vote. Besides, it was proven this past election that the EC stands no chance of ever doing the job it was created to do in the first place, which is keep the presidency out of the hands of a charismatic madman who lacks the qualifications for the job.
Trump followed up on his awkward meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by tweeting this:
The man has no class.
Trump had his daughter Ivanka sit in on a meeting with Merkel. Ivanka is not, officially, on the White House staff. What was she doing there? The White House is claiming that it was Merkel’s staff that asked Trump to set up a meeting with Ivanka. That might be a lie.
Japan Times link
Jared Kushner was also at the meeting.
Are you ready for yet another stupid idea from team trump: air pollution doesn’t really kill people.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/03/air-pollution-denial-climate-denial
Rightwing doofus, and the guy Trump praised vociferously during his press briefing with Angela Merkel, Andrew Napolitano, got his bogus claim that Obama used a British intelligence agency to spy on Trump from … wait for it … Russian media.
Link
He might be one or two steps away from the inner circle, but Trump is still doing Russia’s bidding.
Follow-up to comment 469.
Photo of Angela Merkel looking at Ivanka Trump during that meeting:
https://twitter.com/MKarnitschnig/status/842860765732397056
More good times brought to you by Angela Merkel’s face:
https://twitter.com/SarahWoodwriter/status/842900666288812032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Joy Reid took the time to thoroughly debunk the Republican talking point that Obamacare is in a “death spiral.”
The video is 16:16 minutes long. Reid covers a lot of issues related to health care. She had an expert panel to help her prove that the “death spiral” claim is false.
Joy Reid talked about the blatantly racist French novel, “The Camp of the Saints,” that rightwing leaders (including Steve Bannon) have referred to repeatedly.
Excerpt:
Kurt Eichenwald and other’s on the panel contributed to Joy’s discussion.
I’m sure this story has nothing to do with the wiki leaks CIA dump that revealed tools the CIA supposedly has to make hacks look like they came from someone else.
Tweet o’ the weekend.
The smoking glove.
In Preet Bharara retweet news…
This is a follow-up to comment 471.
Link
tales from the dark side II:
I’m watching this idiot Gutsfeld on Fox. It’s republicans attempting to be funny, and failing. Failing so bad in fact that they have an obvious laugh track overdubbed on top of the sporadic applause they do get from their hand picked idiot audience. Nothing is ad-libbed, everything is scripted, and poorly.
One skit was all about how bad it would be if kid rock had put a gun to obama’s head in a video (supposedly making fun of Snoop, and trying to equate the two)
It’s really embarrassing.
Loathsome bigot Narendra Modi has picked at least equally loathsome bigot Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, following the BJP’s election win there. The rise of the far right is, unfortunately, by no means limited to the USA, Russia and Europe.
Indeed. As I’ve pointed out before, with the sole exception of France, all of the world’s nuclear weapons are currently controlled by authoritarians.
Others have since pointed out that authoritarians tend to be paranoid and not-rational. A understandable suspicion is, therefore, one or more nuclear broadly-unconstrained “wars”, and the collapse of humanity.
On March 4, Trump tweeted that President Obama is a “Bad (or sick) guy!”
And now, Trump tells Jesse Watters on Fox News, “He’s been very nice to me personally, but his people haven’t been nice. While he’s nice personally, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of nice things happening behind the scenes, and that’s unfortunate.”
Trump just says whatever the fuck, and he doesn’t care if he contradicts himself.
To bring us up to date, Trump has offered no evidence for his claim that President Obama tapped his wires in Trump Tower.
Had AM Joy of MSNBC on this morning while doing some household chores. She had a congresscritter from the Georgia first district on to defend what she calls “Tryancare”. No doubt the congresscritter is a liberturd. He used buzz words like “free markets”, “choice”, “lower taxes”, and “debt reduction” religiously, and never could answer Joy’s question about how a 60 year old losing $8700 in subsidies under the ACA and making only $30,000 could afford to buy decent health care. Nothing but the non-sequitur buzzwords, and “those numbers are fake”. Not one ounce of compassion shown toward the people who would lose their health care.
That segment isn’t up yet, and not sure it will be.
Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, described the seriousness of the situation well. It matters what that doofus Trump posts on Twitter:
Link
Nerd @ 485. That was a good segment. Reid tried hard to hold the congress critter’s feet to the fire, but he stuck to his talking points like his life depended on it.
It’s as if Republicans believe that constant repetition of those talking points will actually make it possible for a 60-year-old person who loses $8,700 in subsidies to buy health insurance.
Repetition does not change the reality of the situation.
That’s not how it works’: Trump’s grasp of Nato questioned: “President’s [sic] claim that Germany owes the US shows a lack of understanding, says ex-Nato representative”, and Germany rejects Trump claim it owes Nato and US for defence. Hair furor’s assertions are what is to be expected from a rent-seeking monopolist with a zero-sum world-view: .
Typical response from a Trump follower who believes Trump’s wiretapping claims:
That’s Jesse Lee Peterson talking. Peterson is president and founder of BOND (Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny), a religious organization dedicated to “Rebuilding the Family by Rebuilding the Man.”
BOND is recognized as a church by the Internal Revenue Service.
From Right Wing Watch: “Peterson, a right-wing African American activist, has built an entire career out of calling African American Democrats racists while defending white people who are actually … you know … racist […]”
Link
Lynna @484:
It honestly looks like Trump may not have the memory or attention span necessary to tell when he contradicts himself.
Let’s see if this will work. The interview with Rep. Buddy Carter (R) hosted by Joy Reid on the AHCA. Worked in preview, so I’ll post.
This is in reference to my #485 and Lynna’s #487. Rethug/liberturd tapdancing/evading at its best. Anything but answer the direct question.
Trump said he was going to holding meetings this weekend, that he was not going to be playing golf. But he is playing golf, for the tenth time in eight weeks.
Daily Kos link.
Meanwhile, other members of Trump’s family are flying to Aspen, Colorado for a ski vacation:
Aspen Times link
As far as we know, Trump’s proposed budget for other Americans includes a plan to stop sending federal funds to programs that deliver food to elderly, homebound citizens.
Writing for The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb analyzed Congressman Steve King’s recent racist comments. Cobb put those comments into a well-described historical context.
Read the complete article to see all of Cobb’s elegant argument.
Dear Paul Ryan, your desperation is showing.
Now that many of Ryan’s Republican cohorts have criticized his health care plan, Ryan has finally admitted that he would be willing to make major changes.
However, he wants those changes made immediately (within the next few days), and he refuses to postpone the vote on the bill in order to give the Congressional Budget Office time to reassess the bill after the new changes are made. Ryan insists that the House of Representatives will still vote on the bill on Thursday.
Despite his effort to spin the last CBO report as positive, Ryan must be having nightmares about a report that showed that 14 million people would almost immediately lose their health insurance if his plan passed. And that was not the only downside to the ridiculous Republican
health care plantax break for rich people.Nancy Pelosi responded: “Republicans are terrified the American people will see the reality of their disastrous TrumpCare bill. If the GOP are afraid of the public having the facts about their bill, they shouldn’t be voting on it.”
More information can be found at Think Progress.
Big day today. If I had any PTO I’d take the day off and watch the hearings live. Unfortunately I’ll be working and will only be able to watch sporadically. I’m looking forward to some good “live blogging” in this thread of the Comey hearings!
Fareed Zakaria briefly on Trump as bullshitter.
More about Republican villainy in health policy (see #226 above): “Republicans Are Crying About Obamacare Problems They Helped Create: They’ve been trying to undermine the health care program — and they have.”
They’re also continuing to lie about the ACA, claiming the process was rushed and hidden, that Obama didn’t reach out to Republicans or ask for their ideas, and so on.
Neera Tanden: “Every single false Republican criticism of Obamacare applies perfectly to Trumpcare.”
Trump is fright-tweeting in anticipation of today’s and future hearings.
His Gallup approval/disapproval is now at 37/58, a historic low.
This interview with Bill Browder is interesting. Two significant passages: