Month: December 2015

Can the GOP field out-psycho Trump tonight? We’re about to find out

by digby

I previewed the debate for Salon this morning:

If you haven’t heard that there’s another “game-changing” Republican debate tonight, you’ve either been in a coma or have sworn off cable news for the holidays. It’s all they were able to talk about yesterday. Sitting outside Uncle Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian hotel, lacquered hair whipping in the cold Las Vegas winter wind, every talking head in the land was on hand to predict, lay odds, and prophesize what was going to happen today. It’s a very good thing that absolutely nothing else happened in the world yesterday.

With all that prognosticating going on, some obvious themes emerged. First and foremost, according to these pundits, the entire country is in a full-fledged panic over the violence that’s tearing our society apart. They are not referring to the daily bloodletting we face day in and day out from uncontrolled firearms killing people by the tens of thousands, of course. That’s just the natural price citizens pay for someone else’s freedom to carry lethal weapons. No, according to these commentators, Americans are hysterical over the extremely remote possibility that the bullet that might kill them could come from a gun fired by a Muslim. Evidently, the unique awfulness of that possibility has the whole country hysterical with fear.

So tonight’s debate is now advertised as a wing-nut schtick measuring contest for which warmongering demagogue can be the most bellicose. The bar has been set rather high, as you know, with Donald Trump recently proposing torture, mass deportation of any foreigners he thinks are a threat, and banning all Muslims from entry to the US. The rest of the pack is going to have to really use their imaginations to beat that.

Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and Rick Santorum may have gotten some ideas from their attendance at the National Security Action Summit held yesterday in Las Vegas which was sponsored by none other than Donald Trump’s Islamophobic pollster and adviser, Frank Gaffney. The conference attendees were convinced that President Obama is a secret Muslim running the country on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. There’s no word on whether the three presidential hopefuls agree, but they should be reminded that Trump was way out ahead on that one too going back to 2012 when he anointed himself as King of the Birthers.

Chris Christie is out with a blistering web ad criticizing President Obama for “giving away the store” to the Iranians and claiming it was terribly negotiated. He says he would have walked away from the table. This might be a way to establish his foreign policy belligerent bona fides but again, Trump got there first, saying it was negotiated by “stupid, incompetent people. There is something wrong with them.” In fact, Trump appeared with Ted Cruz at a Stop the Iran Deal rally at the Capitol last summer where Cruz laid down the gauntlet by calling President Obama “the leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism.” Christie’s little web ad is a baby slap by comparison. He’s going to have to reach deeper into his bag of nasty (and that bag is well stocked) to compete with this one.

Alleged establishment frontrunner Marco Rubio started running an ad in New Hampshire this week and he sounds downright depressed. It’s him looking in the camera saying:

“This election is about the essence of America. About all of us who feel out of place in our own country. A government incredibly out of touch and millions with traditional values branded bigots and haters. This is about wages growing slower than the cost of living. A generation drowning in debt, and a president humiliated by Putin, Iran, and Islamic jihadists.

“I’m Marco Rubio. I approve this message because this is about the greatest country in the world and acting like it.”

It’s hard to know what he’s trying to achieve there other than driving people to even deeper despair. But you’ll notice that he’s also taking the line that the president has been “humiliated” by Putin, Iran and Jihadists. It would be interesting to hear him explain what he means by that. One assumes the Iran comment is about the nuclear non-proliferation deal which he, like all the others on the stage, are against. The humiliation by “jihadis” probably refers to San Bernardino, and as for Putin, well … who knows? The right has formed an affection for Putin whom they see as a much more manly leader they could really get behind if he weren’t such a foreigner and a commie and all. But again, Trump’s already been there on all three. Rubio can try to be tough but The Donald’s Muslim bashing is unparalleled and he’s on record calling Putin a “thug and a gangster” he could get along with.

We can probably dispense with Bush who will try to sound angry but will come off as a bespectacled muppet. Rand Paul may make a point or two about the inefficacy of the Patriot Act before he once again declares that we should close all of our borders to half the world’s population. Kasich will say Trump is crazy (and Frank Luntz’s focus group will hate him more than anyone else on the stage).

That leaves Senator Ted Cruz, the man of the hour…

Read on …

Making America great again

by digby

Notice the man saying “light the motherfucker on fire” which does harken back to the good old days. Especially since the proposed victim is African American.

And about ten minutes into the Trump rally, this happens. pic.twitter.com/65pXHjsJ3x

— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) December 15, 2015

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The GOP counter-establishment IS the GOP establishment

by digby

This piece by Matt Yglesias explains well why Cruz may end up being the establishment choice even though they hate him:

Tim Alberta from National Review has a great report about Ted Cruz winning the allegiance of a group of conservative factional leaders who met under the auspices of Family Research Council president Tony Perkins at a Sheraton hotel in Tysons Corner to decide on how to unite behind a single conservative candidate for the presidency. Read Alberta for the color, but the tl;dr is that once upon a time it looked like Jeb Bush would be a strong player, but as he faded in favor of Marco Rubio it came down to Rubio and Cruz, and even though there was some tough resistance to Cruz, he had the most backers from the get-go and eventually secured the supermajority. 

This is the clearest sign of some institutional support for Cruz emerging, and potentially sets the stage for him to become the GOP establishment’s preferred Stop Trump candidate, even though GOP congressional leaders can’t stand him.

So whose support has Cruz won? Alberta describes it as “a loose coalition of some 50 like-minded conservative leaders from around the country.” 

Looking at the names he mentions, I would say it’s specifically social conservative leaders associated with causes that have become a bit unfashionable in today’s political climate. There’s Perkins, and Alberta also names Richard Viguerie, Brian Brown, Bob Vander Plaats, James Dobson, Ken Cuccinelli, Penny Nance, Jonathan Falwell, Ken Blackwell, Kelley Shackleford, Rick Scarborough, and Henry Jackson as involved in the group.
By contrast, Alberta reports that Phyllis Schlafly, Grover Norquist, and Ralph Reed all “rejected from the outset Perkins’ plot to unite the movement.” 

The non-participation of Norquist, in particular, underscores the limits of this group, which does not seem to include many people focused on economic policy issues and is mostly composed of conservative leaders who see themselves — like Ted Cruz — as at odds with the party’s formal leadership. In normal times, this would be the harbinger of a factional evangelical candidacy — something like the Mike Huckabee 2008 campaign or the Rick Santorum 2012 campaign — rather than a successful bid for the nomination. But the combination of establishment terror of Trump and a clearer party consensus against immigration reform than existed in 2008 may change the calculus this time around. 

If you’ve been watching the antics in the House or read any of the missives that are shot out daily from the activist right you know that “the establishment” is not the determining factor in Party politics anymore. In fact, the counter-establishment institutions are pretty much running the asylum. If Cruz becomes the establishment choice it just means the counter-establishment has officially become the establishment.

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The Paris climate conundrum — three facts and a question

by Gaius Publius

I’ll publish a fuller analysis of the Paris climate agreement in due time — yes, climate negotiators in Paris did reach an agreement — but for those fresh to the news, I’d like you to put three facts together, then ask a question. Note: This is not a “give up” post. It’s a “what the right next move” post. First, the three facts. 

1. World Leaders Agree — Two Degrees Warming Is Too Much

I’ll let Bill McKibben tell this part of the story:

In the agreement, the world promises to hold the rise in the planet’s temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius. Heck, it promises to aim for 1.5 degrees, which is extraordinary. It’s what actually needs to be done; if we succeeded, it might just head off complete calamity. (We’re now at 1 degree above average pre-industrial temperatures, and considering what that’s already done in terms of melt, flood, and drought, 1.5 C will still be trouble, but maybe manageable trouble.)

He quotes the preamble to the Paris agreement (pdf):

Emphasizing with serious concern the urgent need to address the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C …

So that’s fact one, and your first major takeaway. World leaders want to hold global warming to “well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels” and are shooting to “limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C”.

2. If We Stop Emissions Today, 1.5 Degrees Is Still Guaranteed

If your car is moving at 60 mph and you slam on the brakes, will it stop instantly? Of course not. It will continue to move a certain amount. That “certain amount” in the world of DMV tests is called the “braking distance” for a given speed. You’d be foolish not to take it into account. If you put take a roast out of a hot oven and set it on a cool surface, it will continue to cook for a while, and a meat thermometer would show that. (Same with your hand, by the way, if you touch a hot stove. Done that.)

In the climate world, the tendency to continue to cook is called “in the pipeline” warming, and it reflects what they call “climate latency” — the lag between a force applied (a single-pulse emission of a greenhouse gas, say) and the final effect on surface temperature after equilibrium is reached. It’s the temperature at equilibrium that counts, since that’s the world we’ll be living in. (Other temperatures, such as “global warming by 2100,” are called transient temperatures, since they’re on the way to something else.)

Turns out, if we stop today, most best-estimates of the equilibrium temperature — the temperature after everything still “in the pipeline” is accounted for — is 1.5°C. Let’s look at just a few of the people saying this:

Scientific American (my emphasis throughout):

It is still difficult to say how much temperatures will rise by 2050 or 2100 due to the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere known as the warming in the pipeline. There is a lag between any rise in CO2 levels and the heating that results, so the planet is locked in to further warming and to the chief repercussions such as further sea level rise. But the IPCC has released good estimates of the pipeline: the best case is that the average global temperature at the Earths surface will rise 1.5 degrees C by 2100, compared with 1990 levels. The worst case is 4.5 degrees C, and the most likely case is 3 degrees C.

In his own assessment of the numbers, Dana Nuccitelli, a physicist who writes at the Skeptical Science blog known for deep analysis of these matters notes that the 1.5 degrees C case would only be possible if the world stopped increasing emissions by 2020 and then began reducing them by 3.5 percent a year. As he notes, that scenario involves extremely aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Skeptical Science:

[Climate skeptic (!) Christopher] Monckton, on the other hand, is calculating how much surface warming remains “in the pipeline” from the CO2 we’ve already emitted, due to the thermal lag of warming the oceans, and the fact that there is still a planetary energy imbalance. We can calculate this by instead plugging in the current CO2 concentration (390 ppm [at that time]) into the formula above:

dT = 0.8*5.35*ln(390/280) = 1.4°C

Since the surface air has warmed about 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels thus far, there remains approximately 0.6°C warming “in the pipeline” from the CO2 we’ve emitted to this point, roughly consistent with Monckton’s calculations (0.7°C).

That was written in 2011, and we’ve certainly emitted a lot more since then, so the “pipeline”‘ number has moved. If you recalculate the formula with 400 ppm instead of 390, you get 1.526°C. Note that our emissions are also accelerating.

Finally, Dr. Michael Mann, from an interview I did with him in October 2014 (listen here). His best estimate of the “in the pipeline” number gives us a Stop Now equilibrium temperature of … 1.5°C. Remember, the final number depends on the climate system reaching equilibrium — “settling down,” in other words, after period of imbalance due to the force of new atmospheric CO2.

3. If We Never Stop Emissions, the In-the-Pipeline Number Keeps Going Up

And finally, to just say the obvious, the equilibrium number keeps going up with each new ton of atmospheric CO2 we add. Global carbon emissions are currently at 10 GtC (gigatons of carbon) per year. Our atmospheric concentration (ppm) is at 400 ppm and rising at more than 2.1 ppm per year. Our current “stop now” equilibrium number is already 1.5°C. We haven’t stopped, and Paris, so far, isn’t an agreement to stop emitting CO2, simply to slow down.

Those are simply facts. So…

Question: What Should We Do In Response?

This is the question. I don’t mean “what should world leaders do in response?” We know what they will do — the best the owners of the world’s wealth will let them.

The question is — what should we do, the ones who will be left behind when they take their corporate jets to Sweden and Canada forever, to inhabit their new, climate-safe homes and leave the wreck to us? We have time — I give us a window of 5-10 years unless truly catastrophic tipping points are reached. What should we do with that time?

I think the climate movement is clear on half the answer: We should do everything we can. I don’t think it’s as clear on the schedule: The press for the end result — zero emissions — has to start immediately and be pursued more aggressively than the “free market” will allow. Otherwise, the math is against us.

With that in mind, I challenge you — what next steps would you consider, assuming you chose to help, if you knew we had five years, and only that?

As I said, I’ll have a fuller analysis of Paris in due time. These are the big ones, though; three facts and a question. (If your answer to the question tends toward the electoral, you might consider supporting this guy, the only viable candidate who seems to get it; adjust the split any way you like at the link.)

GP

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A guy with a gun walks into a bar…
by Tom Sullivan

Incitement: It’s all fun and games until somebody shoots an eye out and you get called on it, as Carly Fiorina found out over the weekend. They are whipping themselves up into quite a frenzy on the right. This from Right Wing Watch:

Today is a big day for conservative activist and former Libertarian vice presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root, who, as the Republican presidential candidates descend on his home state of Nevada for tomorrow’s debate, joined Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and Rick Santorum at a summit hosted by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney before moving on to emcee a rally for Donald Trump.

The proximity of presidential candidates did not cause Root to hold back on his enthusiastic airing of conspiracy theories, telling the audience at Gaffney’s forum that Hillary Clinton has committed “a hanging, treasonous offense” involving foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation but is getting off the hook by blackmailing FBI Director James Comey and other Republicans in Washington.

“Can you imagine a Republican secretary of state working for a Republican president starting a foundation for charity that collects money from foreign governments by the hundreds of millions and billions and then takes the money and hands out government contracts to the same country that made the contribution from the State Department?” he asked. “That’s not a criminal offense, that’s a hanging, treasonous offense.”

Beset on all sides by lions and tigers and enemies of the state, this crowd will soon exhibit paranoia levels measurable on the Richter scale. Don’t be surprised if more are inspired to act on those fears.

Root wasn’t quite up to Dana Loesch’s B-movie acting. She was just a smidge over the top in her trailer for Independence Day: NRA Resurgence released on the anniversary of Sandy Hook. Expect the rhetoric to get even harsher if the NRA keeps getting its clock cleaned.

TBogg writes, “We have let a collection of kooks and armed sociopaths bully us into accepting that the watering the Tree of Liberty with blood of first graders is the price of freedom and vigilance.”

It’s like trying to reason with people who go drinking at bars known for violent brawls, and who strap on guns so they can defend themselves.

Dispatch from the fever swamp

by digby

I thought you’d want to know what their demands are:

Open Letter to House and Senate Republican Leaders

Defund Obama’s Disastrous Policies or be Complicit in the Destruction of Your Country

Due to the disastrous policies of President Barack Obama America is at a tipping point.

Illegal aliens are flooding our country, swamping our schools and emergency services and destroying the quality of life for millions of American families by inflating the labor pool, depressing wages and driving the crime rate ever upward.

We demand you defund Obama’s de facto amnesty program in this year’s Continuing Resolution (CR) and use the power of the purse to reestablish the rule of law in this great country. We won’t be fooled by another “show vote,” anyone who votes for the Rule to bring to the Floor a Continuing Resolution that funds Obama’s de facto amnesty for illegal aliens is just as guilty as one who votes for the bill itself.

The resettlement of hundreds of thousands of alleged refugees from radical Muslim terrorist hotspots represents an existential threat to our national security. Through this program Obama is importing jihad directly into the American heartland – and forcing taxpayers to fund it.

We demand you use this year’s CR to withhold funds from Obama’s “refugee” resettlement program until such time as air tight security investigations of any alleged refugee from a Muslim terrorist hotspot are in place that will guarantee that the safety of American citizens will not be compromised by this threat. We won’t be fooled by another “show vote,” anyone who votes for the Rule to bring to the Floor a Continuing Resolution that funds importing jihad to America is just as guilty as one who votes for the bill itself.

Obamacare is in a long-predicted death spiral. The socialist health insurance co-ops that Obama and the Democrats imposed upon America are going bankrupt or closing and now Democrats want to use taxpayer funds to bail them out. Republicans have been promising that they would defund Obamacare ever since the Tea Party wave swept them back into the House majority in 2010, now is the time to fulfill that promise or face the wrath of conservative voters.

We demand you defund Obamacare in this year’s CR and that the CR include an absolute prohibition on any taxpayer funds going to bailout a failed or failing Obamacare co-op or other health insurance provider. We won’t be fooled by another “show vote,” anyone who votes for the Rule to bring to the Floor a Continuing Resolution that funds an Obamacare bailout is just as guilty as one who votes for the bill itself.

Finally, for many years by funding Planned Parenthood, Republicans have been complicit in the moral sewer that is the American abortion industry. Billions of dollars have gone to kill millions of babies, and even more reprehensibly, the Center for Medical Progress undercover videos have demonstrated that Planned Parenthood traffics in the dismembered bodies of human babies.

We demand that you defund Planned Parenthood and that the use of federal taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions under the guise of “women’s health care” be ended once and for all. Murdering babies is not health care and anyone who votes for the Rule to bring to the Floor a Continuing Resolution that funds Planned Parenthood is just as guilty as one who votes for the bill itself.

We refuse to accept another “show vote” where Republican leaders give political cover to those Republican Members of Congress who refuse to stand for conservative principles. We are watching and we will remember when it comes time to vote in the 2016 Republican Congressional Primary.

The fact that their representatives have failed to do all this already is why they are so angry.

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The NRA gets subtle

by digby

Not really:

In a video released on December 14 — the three year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — conservative radio host and NRA News commentator Dana Loesch criticized reactions to the December 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino that claimed 14 lives. Loesch singled out a New York Daily Newscover that contended “God Isn’t Fixing This” as well as commentators who called for stronger gun laws, arguing that merely sending “thoughts and prayers” to the victims was not a sufficient response to the shooting.

Claiming that those who made this argument “mocked the entire concept of religion” and carried out a “coordinated assault” on “our right to believe,” Loesch said that “the Godless Left … share the same fanatical fervor to tear apart the foundations of America as the terrorists who threaten our very survival. And together, they march hand-in-hand toward the possible, purposeful destruction of us all.”

I knew these psychos worshipped guns but until now I didn’t know the NRA was a religion.

The NRA’s Dana Loesch is one angry, angry woman. She’s armed and she knows who the enemy is. The Left.

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Astonishingly Excellent!

by digby

This is a real thing:

“To whom my concern” …

No Limbaugh isn’t “turning” on Trump

by digby

So Limbaugh said something mildly critical of Trump today for his comments about Cruz and the entire cable news universe is exploding. Here’s basically what he said:

“That’s so unlike Trump. I mean, that’s a huge mistake. But on paper, it’s a huge mistake. Trump gets away with his mistakes. Such is the bond of loyalty that his support base has for him… Any of you who are holding out hope that Trump is a genuine conservative…a genuine conservative would not go after Cruz this way.”

And he called him “Donald McCain” which everyone sees as the ultimate Limbaugh insult.

Apparently, they don’t listen to Limbaugh very often. He does this sort of thing all the time. He will criticize Republicans, even his favorites, if they deviate from the conservative line (as he sees it.) He’s saying this about Trump as a warning to be careful about criticising the hardliners in the congress. That is a very big no-no among the wingnut crowd which believes that any compromise is a mistake.

Trump erred in saying that Cruz was wrong to adopt obstructionism and confrontation. Republican hardliners love that about Cruz more than anything else and Limbaugh’s doing him a favor by warning him off of it. I actually don’t think Trump meant it that way — he believes that he’s capable of making deals in which other people will completely capitulate to his demands. That’s what he’s selling and that’s what his followers think he’s capable of doing. I think you’ll see him refine his criticism of Cruz to say that he’s not very good at closing the deal which is a better argument for him.

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The Trump Cruz rivalry

by digby

I wrote about the latest for Salon this morning:

“You look like the way he’s dealt with the Senate, where he goes in there like — frankly like a little bit of a maniac. You’re never going to get things done that way. You can’t walk into the Senate and scream and call people liars and not be able to cajole and get along with people. He’ll never be able to get anything done, and that’s the problem with Ted.”

“Obviously I don’t agree with everything he says … but we can’t ignore that’s touched on some issues that people are concerned about.”

There’s more. People are really beginning to wonder if Rubio’s got the fire in the belly. He’s hardly working and it shows. So maybe we really do end up with Trump vs Cruz down the stretch. Good God.

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