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Info, articles, etc. This is very disturbing. Eight senators were asked what the purpose of the AHCA/Trumpcare bill was. It shouldn't have been that difficult to answer that question. But yeah, they fully intend to ram through the bill anyway. Woo-hoo! President Trump has set a record! It took Richard Nixon 1,580 days for a federal investigation of him to begin. For Bill Clinton, it was 1,835 days, Trump has achieved that landmark in only 145 days! Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calls for regime change in Iran. This just strikes me as an amazingly, incredibly fantastically bad idea! Conquering Iraq was relatively easy, holding onto it proved incredibly tough. Iran's army won't fall anywhere near as easily and they've had years to prepare a behind-the-lines guerrilla war. Fox News drops
its "Fair and Balanced" slogan. I've never had a problem with fair.
Fair is always good, always appropriate and always welcome. Balance has
always been tougher and more problematic. Earthjustice: "In a victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Court finds that approval of Dakota Access Pipeline violated the law." Hmm, eleventy-dimensional chess or an old man's confused ramblings? President Trump "“...said we shouldn’t worry about rising sea levels,” Eskridge said. “He said that ‘your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.’” President Trump has caused problems for Senate Republicans by calling their AHCA/Trumpcare proposal "mean." Apparently, this unmasking has made it harder to pass a bill that will plainly cause serious problems for regular Americans. *Sigh* No, Bill Cosby is a living, breathing human being with flaws that he can be held legally liable for. Cliff Huxtable is a TV character who has not been damaged in any way by Cosby's actions. Hmm. Very interesting. I am, of course, in complete agreement with the resolution that says white supremacy is a "toxic menace." Interesting to see how controversial the resolution was. Horrified to hear of the shooting in Virginia at a practice for a Congressional baseball game. Thoughts and prayers for Representative Steve Scalise. Good point: Virginia: Yes, the shooting was political. The now-deceased shooter was a supporter of Senator Sanders (Who is sickened by the act) and anti-President Trump. Of course, supporters of Trump react by blaming liberals for provoking the shooting with heated language. Some thoughts. Nah, Senator Sanders is correct. Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin repeats a lot of talking points that were old and long-debunked when the younger George Bush put them out. There's no evidence that the planned tax cuts will spur anything. This is just impoverishing the poor in order to enrich the already-rich. Troubles in the Middle East constitute a really, really good reason to get our country off of fossil fuels and onto wind and solar energy. From TPM: “I’m not able to
discuss with you, or confirm or deny, the
nature of private conversations that I may have had with the
President on this subject or others,” Sessions told Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D-CA) in one typical exchange.
Problem is, there's no legal basis for this assertion. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has become a liberal internet sensation because her questioning of AG Sessions showed a black woman causing a whte man to get all defensive. I think what's more to the point is that she shows that Sessions' defense is BS. He has no legal basis for not commenting on conversations with the President. Good summary of AG Sessions' testimony yesterday. "Everybody on that committee knew that JeffBo's memory lapses were at best highly convenient." And yeah, on Lawrence O'Donnell, he and Senator Franken reviewed this "rambling question" of Franken's. It was a pretty direct and to the point question. The Russians hacked as many as 39 state electoral systems! Absolutely amazing! The Senate AHCA/Trumpcare bill is going to be kept secret until the last possible minute, after which it will be rammed through as quickly as possible, with no hearings, no chance to examine it. Description's of the President's Cabinet meeting ranges from "creepy" to "creepy as f###" to "third-world dictator creepy" (Are we sensing a theme here?). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer mocks it. Woo hoo! Muslim ban still illegal! Government unequivocally loses case in Ninth Circuit. Golly gee willikers Ivanka! You poor, misunderstood guys are simply trying to enable global warming which will then destroy the human race, you're trying to take out Dodd-Frank which was put in place after the Great Recession and that prevents a repeat of same and you're trying to take away the health care plans of tens of millions of people! Dang, those darned liberals are so judgmental! The Young Turks comment. And again. Whuuh?!?! How could Iran possibly accuse the US of ... oh ... yeah .. this guy. "Idiot Republican Congressman Suggests We Back ISIS" A 2016 story about a 2007 case. In a 140-page deposition, they caught Trump lying 30 times. First off, I wholly and completely agree with Senator Bob Casey's view of the pregnancy/abortion issue. But what that means is that there is no "middle" or "compromis" position on the issue, The opponent that the article quotes, Bob Salera, makes the very good point that Casey has abandoned his father's view "to fall in line with the liberal base." Casey accepts a pro-choice framing for the issue. That the best way to reduce abortions is not through legal restrictions and shaming and punishing, but through better medical care, contraceptives and education. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment group, with $5 trillion in assets, says the last decade's slide in coal is irreversible and with the improvement in batteries, electric cars are looking better and better. From The
Guardian: Hey, did y'all know that last week was "Infrastructure Week"? Nah, neither did I. Kind of a problem with the plan is that, like all of the President's plans so far, there's no room for Democrats to participate in any meaningful way. A really big problem, though, is that there's no clearly proposed way to pay for it. The regular budget proposed slashes several tens of billions from infrastructure spending, then the plan put out last week adds several tens of billions back into it. Eleventy-dimensional chess or complete cluster####? Lawsuit is launched in 2015 to say that the administration is robbing young people of a future. The question of "standing" is usually one that knocks out many lawsuits. Not this one. Defendents can prove climate change affects them. The case continues. Qatar is a perfect example of having a problem that appears to be really simple and straightforward but, oops!, really isn't. Various statements from female politicians. Very happy to see the Senator Claire McCaskill statement being picked up and repeated a lot. "9
legal experts react to James Comey’s testimony: Trump
'crossed a line'" Good! I have problems with Senator Grassley over the Judge Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination, but he's 100% correct here. If the precedent is set that departments can ignore certain oversight requests, then when the current party is in the minority, they're going to very seriously regret that policy. A budget is a moral document. It tells us a great deal about a president's or party's priorities. What this budget tells us about our current president isn't good. "Bipartisan!
Kansas Legislature Overrides Brownback's Tax Cuts" IS/ISIL/ISIS is suffering severe setbacks from attacks on Raqqa and Mosul, but is clearly behind the attack in Iran. Good thinkpiece looking at the skills needed to gain office and the skills needed to do something with it once you've gotten it. "The dog who caught the car" problem. Whuuh? Aggressive immigration enforcement has impacted food producers in a way that it affects food prices?!?!?! Huh! Wonder how that happened? "‘They’re
not even people’: Bitter Eric Trump smears Democrats critical
of his father" Education Secretary DeVos robotically repeated the highly unsatisfactory answer that she'll follow the law, which would have been fine if the law was clear on LGBTQ issues, but it isn't. Oh, okay. The former Air Force linguist Reality Winner (Yes, that really was her name) was caught by the almost-invisible markings on the paper she copied the classified information onto. The markings told investigators when and on what machine the copies were made. Then it was just a matter of figuring out who was using that particular copier at that time. It's understandable if you don't like Kathy Griffith's politics (She showed herself with a bloody, chopped-off head of the President), but if Ted Nugent was okay by you (He screamed at a concert that he'd like to shove his guitar up into Clinton's crotch), then let's think about what you're really opposed to. Iran made itself very unpopular in 1979 with the hostage crisis, but with the signing of the nuclear deal between itself and the US and several other countries, it's going all-out to boost it's tourism industry. Wow! Judith Miller contradicts a Fox News host twice! She's right both times, BTW. Very interesting. Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol at the last minute before leaving office, leaving him no time to try and get it ratified. The younger George Bush wasn't interested and dropped it. That gave the US a reputation for not being serious or reliable and really hurt us in the long run. On the busting
of a 25-year old for spilling classfied information
on hacking
of voting software: Interesting. President Trump holds a
faux bill-signing ceremony,
but just
yesterday, Corey Lewandowski said: "Texas lawmakers spent
so much time bickering over abortion, they failed to address
pregnancy deaths" Piece on NY Times and climate indifference. Unfortunately, the Times and "false balance" are very much part of the problem. Unfortunately, the Europeans are probably right. America will probably never regain a leadership position after the current President. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley gives us a bunch of vague,
unclear
gobbledegook as to how the Trump Administration views global
warming.
She leaves very unclear just how the issue is understood by the
President. Very heartening to see states and cities overriding the President's decision to get out of the Paris Climate Accord. Also, Europe is willing to work with states and cities. Fox News people are probably correct that the Wonder Woman in this weekend's movie has been de-Americanized. Last year, people tried to get Wonder Woman appointed as an official international symbol of women. The idea was shot down precisely because of WW's overtly star-spangled, very American outfit. Good going NY Times [/snark]! Times provides propaganda assist to Trump Administration with climate dismissive columnist, enabling the administration to say "EvenTheLiberal NY Times agrees..." Oh, good grief! Local Philly columnist compares media treatment of the President to that of Emmanuel Goldstein of 1984. Erm, the President has the megaphone with which to set the media agenda, but after about five months in office, has gotten one major bill passed (AHCA/Trumpcare) through only one branch of Congress and it's a horrible cluster#### of a bill that everybody hates. Why is he deserving of better treatment? Worthwhile statement from UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, but it does more to raise questions than it does to provide answers. The purpose of pulling out of the Paris Climate agreement is now fuzzier than ever. As I pointed out here, there is no indication that anything about the climate agreement is open to re-negotiation. Horrors! IISIS launches a coordinated attack in the middle of London in an area full of bar and restaurants! If theACA/Obamacare collapses, the polls have remained rock-steady. A large majority will blame the Republican Party. Poses the famous question: "Stupid or evil?" Is the President aware that there is no agreed-upon tax bill, so it can't possibly be "moving along in Congress"? Many people arediscussing such a bill, but it hasn't been introduced yet. Is the man really that dim and uniformed and out of it? Just to be thorough, I read the President's speech on climate change and have a number of critical questions. Not at all impressed. OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has precisely the very same objection to the CBO that President Trump had to acting Attorney General Sally Yates and that is that the CBO is telling him something he doesn't want to hear. So, his proposed solution is also the same, to get rid of it. The NY Times has eliminated its Public Edtor position. No big loss. Interesting analysis behind what drives the President's climate change policy, the rage and fear behind it. Also interesting is that he consulted Kimberly Guilfoyle, a member of Fox News' The Five. On the Young Turks show (Available on Youtube) Cenk Uygur is a good deal more cynical than Ana Kasparian, but they have a good discussion of the fellow who thinks God will save us all from the bad consequences of climate change. Pulling out of the 197-nation climate agreement would irreversibly take away America's leadership role on this issue. The damage this would do to us can't be fixed. So what did people think of the President's climate speech? Kind of interesting that the press release can only quote reactions from members of the President's own party. More. Oh, lovely! As hurricane season begins, the Trump Administration has appointed neither the head of FEMA nor NOAA. Keep in mind that when Bill Clinton was running in 1992, he paid very close and careful attention to how the elder George Bush had handled a hurricane down in Florida. Clinton realized that his FEMA head would only get attention for 1% of Clinton's term, but for that 1%, ALL eyes would be upon him. Both he and Obama made good choices for that position. White House reveals details as to how its enforcing its ethics policy. 16 exceptions have already been made (The Obama Admnistration had this many over their full eight years). It's not much of a policy if it has that many exceptions. Woo hoo! VERY cool!! Exxon shareholders step up! The company must now consider climate change in calculating risks to its assets. From Sports
Illustrated twitter: The Obamas were renting an eight-bedroom house in Washington DC. They now just went ahead and bought it for $8.1 million. Oh good grief! Poor Press Secretary Sean Spicer tries to
push a ridiculous story
about how
"covfefe" was an intentional act when it's
obvious the President was up too late and should not have been
tweeting at that late hour. May President Trump wants to end the filbuster entirely. As I said, the President is a wannabe dictator. He can't work with democracy. His businesses were run as absolute autocracies. He never has and never will be comfortable with running the US in a give-and-take, cooperative fashion. Well, of course Presiden Trump wants to revive the old Cuba polcy. Because why not drag some old, useless unworkable policy out of mothballs and re-institute it? The President says in a tweet that: "I suggest that we add more dollars to Healthcare." What does that mean, exactly? Well, with other presidents, it would mean a serious policy statement. With this one, he's pretty much just rambling and doesn't understand his own policy. After the President's first big foreign trip, the good news is that Europeans don't see our President as dangerously out of control. They just see his constant flip-flops as weakness and amateurism. They don't think Trump will even finish out his term, either. So they're not very concerned about him. Well, the President's foreign trip is over and the big winners are Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia. The State Department
is trying to slim down and discharge 2000
employees, so hey, diplomatic
relations with the Muslim world will
have to be a casualty. It's all about priorities, y'see. President Donald Trump's son-in-law and White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner set up a backchannel line of comunication between himself and Russia last December. NY Times puts out piece defending Kushner. "Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Invest $277 Million in Abstinence-Only Education" As I recall, the younger George Bush put a fair amount of money into abstinence-only program. Liberals had many better things to concern themselves with, so his people had a free hand to design the programs however they felt might work. They were a complete bust and accomplished nothing. The Guttmacher Institute found that there was a decline in teenage pregnency during Bush's terms, but that the rate of decline was the same from a few years before Bush's terms to a few years after, so it's pretty clear that the policies he instituted during his time in office had little or nothing to do with the decline. After a terrorist attack in Manchester, England, killed some fans of the singer Ariana Grande and wounded many others, Alex Jones (who now has a press pass and can attend White House briefings) engages in some victim-blaming. Okay, so AG Jeff Sessions is engaged in a big drug war.
Oops!
"Banamex and Citi officials knew of some 18,000 separate
suspicious account activities from 2007 to 2012 yet reported just six
to regulators." As to the Montana
special election, 538 said: "A 4-8 point win for Gianforte
would fall somewhere
between a pretty good/very good political environment for Dems." First sign of actual
collusion between Russian hackers and an American political
operative uncovered. In return, that
operative received valuable Democratic voter-turnout analyses, which
the newspaper found at least one GOP campaign consultant took advantage
of the information.
After Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte body-slammed a BBC repoter, some conservatives referred to that as "Montana Justice." Wow! Suppose Barack Obama did the same thing and called it "Chicago Justice"? Would they find that so humourous? Education Secretary DeVos responds
to question on schoools discrimination: From a twittter post: at briefing today, [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney told me Trump promise not to touch Medicaid had been overridden by Trump promise to repeal/replace Obamacare This is a rather interesting justification because it's not like the President suddenly discovered that the ACA/Obamacare needed to be repealed and that his earlier promise to not touch Medicaid couldn't be kept. He knew full well that 1. these promises couldn't both be kept when he made them and 2. is it necessary to touch Mediaic in the first place? The ACA didn't need to touch Medicaid, so it's not at all clear that the AHCA needs to either. CBO score in on AHCA/Trumpcare: passing the bill would be even worse for regular citizens than before the ACA/Obamacare was instituted. Montana Congressional candidate body-slams reporter. Reporter not wounded, but glasses broken. The candidate later won his contest. Yeah, "Idiot level: Hogan's Heroes facepalm" (photo of three of the characters all doing a facepalm). President has conversation with Filipino President Duterte and lets slip that we have two nuclear subs in the area. Senate
Majority Leader
"McConnell on why no Ds in healthcare talks: 'We're not going to waste
our time talking to people who have no interest in fixing the problem'" The deeply misogynist nature of the terrorist attack in England. From Snopes: Seth "Rich, a 27-year-old DNC staffer, was shot twice in the back at 4:20 in the morning on 10 July 2016 amid the run-up to the presidential election. Although none of his possessions were taken from him, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police consider it a botched robbery attempt, because there had been a spate of muggings in Rich’s Bloomingdale neighborhood at the time." Sean Hannity of Fox News and many others are convinced that the murder was far more sinister than that and have been pushing various conspiracy theories. Rich's family has sent conspiracy theorists a "cease and desist" order. Finally, Fox News management denounced Hannity and his wild theories. The polls taken on the make-up of Obama's support didn't change much throughout his eight years, so it's unlikely Trump's will change much, either. Trump has the really hard-core Bush Dead-Enders/Tea Partiers/Freedom Caucus in his corner, but mild Republican supporters are below 75% and everybody else is below 25% support. For Obama in contrast, all Democrats were above 75% support, mild Republicans and Independents were around 50%, it was only the hard-core opponents that were below 25%. . Interesting. The charge here is that an anti-Clinton young woman in the Anthony Weiner sexting case lied about her age (she was just under 17, not 15, when the sexting was reported) and made use of Weiner's known vulnerability to damage the Clinton campaign. "Hey, so we made a small bit of a slight slip-up! Gosh,
you
liberals are so
judgmental! So
we're off by $2 trillion! C'mon, who
hasn't made a teeny-tiny error like that?" Iranian President Hassan Rouhani defeated his closest rival, Ebrahim Raisi. Riding a large turnout from Iran's urban middle classes, President Hassan Rouhani won re-election in a landslide on Saturday, giving him a mandate to continue his quest to expand personal freedoms and open Iran's ailing economy to global investors. So we had these clear, unequivocal, repeated promises
from candidate Trump
concerning Medicaid. Absolutely
no cuts would be made. Now, of
course, we have proposals of $600 billion in cuts to not only
Medicaid, but SCHIP (the children's program) over a decade as well,
to be combined with the $820 billion in Medicaid cuts in the
AHCA/Trumpcare.
Horrors! ISIS suicide bomber attacks a concert in Manchester, England and kills 22. Anfrew Sullivan gives a pretty good summary of the President's trip so far. It's interesting that Scottie Neil Hughes, who's on after Sullivan here, thinks it's more praiseworthy for the President to speak to 50 friendly leaders than it is to make a deal with Iran. But isn't making a deal with an adversary more of a challenge than schmoozing with old buddies? Good, detailed examination of a hopelessly
confused cluster#### of
a policy. These aren’t flip-flops, exactly. They’re examples of Trump failing to take his own posturing seriously. For all of his rhetoric about “toughness” and “strength,” the president is only too pleased to retreat when forced to confront those he’s admonished. A right-wing blog looks at the Bill Maher-Cornel West argument. Gotta say, I'm in 100% agreement with the bloggers evaluation of how a race between Trump and Sanders would have gone. Sanders would have been crushed like a bug. He would have lost by way more than Clinton did. Good1 The President did not use the inflammatory language he suggested he would and used appropriate terms instead. The weeping and wailing of the hard-core right-wingers (They're referring to Trump as a "cuck") is music to my ears! "Trump
signs $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia" Update: The Obama Administration had a $115 billion arms deal planned with the Saudis, but nixed it because of human rights abuses in Yemen. The Trump Administration cares far more about money than other peoples' rights. Might be wrong, but I doubt that Clinton would be so blase on the subject. Hmm, the President appears to "bow" or "curtsy"
to receive a medal. Seems
a bit of a stretch to interpret it that
way, but I never saw the Obama "bow." Aww! The miserable, unhappy lives of Trump staffers. I've seen suggestions that Russian hacking and their semi-covert assistance to the Trump campaign is all a "Deep State" scam and that the CIA has been manipulating us all. That's hard to square with Speaker Ryan's reaction to being informed that the Russians might be paying Trump. Ryan appears to have genuinely believed that, and frankly, to still believe it. President Trump begins his first trip abroad. Saudi Arabia is first on the list. Yeah, two years ago, it was a scandal, A scandal I tell you!, that FLOTUS Michelle Obama didn't wear a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia. How about now, when FLOTUS Melania Trump does the same thing? Well ... erm ... um ... ya see ...aw, hey, it's different because Melania's a Republican! "Trump
administration puts indefinite hold on plan to measure carbon pollution
from cars and trucks" Senator Warren was
a co-sponsor of "21st Century Glass-Steagall." Then,
On March 18, Warren said "[President Trump] has claimed for
months that he supports reinstating Glass-Steagall - the law separating
commercial & investment banking." Representative Chaffetz just doesn't see any upside to being the head of the House Oversight Committee when a Republican President is being investigated for scandal. It'd be one thing if the scandal were a nothingburger, but I think Chaffetz knows otherwise. Upon hearing that Joe
Lieberman is the President's possible pick for FBI
Director: Swedish charges are dropped, but Julian Assange is still, for all intents and purposes, imprisioned in the London Ecuadrean Embassy. He's been there since 2012. Rather interesting that the charges were dropped right after Chelsea Manning was freed. So, more than 100 days after taking office, how's he doing on immigration reform? Well, numbers of arrests are way up, ICE has gotten a lot crueller and more vicious and ... hmm... yeah, that's about it. Hmm, keep the Confederate statue intact, but
move it to a graveyard. A
more appropriate place than in the middle of the city where
descendants of the people who didn't approve of the Confederate cause
don't have to see it. Education Secretary "Betsy DeVos Wants to Kill a Major Student Loan Forgiveness Program" because...hmm, I dunno. She just seems to be determined to prove that she's just as bad as everyone said she'd be for education in this country. She appears to be focused on short-term profits of lenders with no plans to see to the education of students. Chelsea Manning got out of jail today! On May 16th, Sean Hannity attacks Seth Rich, a dead man.
His
attack was discredited even before he made it. The President is very
unhappy about the decision to investigate
his dealings with Russia. Listen to how unhappy he is: "I
believe it hurts our country terribly, because it shows we're a
divided, mixed-up, not unified country." Hmm, the Pentagon is getting ready for an audit at the
same time
it's preparing to spend tens of billions of new dollars. Can it
successsfully do both? Ehh,
probably not.
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