Month: April 2016

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Oy, it’s been a week. But this will cheer you up immensely:

After more than a century without a single baby tortoise sighting on the Galapagos island of Pinzón, a small group of the tiny, shelled youngsters have been spotted again.

The recent births are helping to pull the critically endangered animals back from the brink of extinction after they were nearly laid to waste as a result of human activity.

“I’m amazed that the tortoises gave us the opportunity to make up for our mistakes after so long,” researcher James Gibbs who was among the first to see the hatchlings in December, told The Dodo.

When sailors first landed on Pinzón Island in the mid-18th century, they inadvertently triggered an environmental catastrophe that has taken generations to correct. Rats aboard those early vessels quickly gained a foothold in the fragile ecosystem, feasting on the eggs and hatchlings of the island’s tortoises who, up until then, had few natural predators.

The rats were so devastating, in fact, that over the following decades not a single tortoise offspring survived the onslaught — setting the species on the path to extinction.

But just as human activity nearly spelled doom for the imperiled animals, it has also helped to save them.

In the 1960s, with only 100 tortoises remaining, conservationists launched a concerted effort to preserve the species. The few unhatched eggs that could be found were carefully collected and incubated on another island, where they were hatched and raised for five years — until they were large enough not to be attacked by rats — before being released back on Pinzón. But the rodent problem still plagued any eggs that remained on the island.

Then, in 2012, biologists used helicopters to distribute poison designed to attract only rats. It was a first-of-its-kind operation, but it worked; Pinzón was recently declared rat-free.

“The incredible eradication of rats on this island, done by the park service and others, has created the opportunity for the tortoises to breed for the first time,” says Gibbs.

“We did a survey [in December] to see if it was working for the tortoises, and we found 10 new hatchlings. This is the first time they’ve bred in the wild in more than a century.”

While 10 might hardly seem like a baby boom, Gibbs says it’s just the tip of the iceberg:

“Given projection probabilities, I’m sure there were a hundred times more hatchlings out there.”

These baby tortoises could live into the 22nd century if we manage to keep the planet from burning up before then.

It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that among the remaining giant tortoises of the Galápagos Islands, there exists an old-timer that was a hatchling at the time of Charles Darwin’s famous visit in 1835. Giant tortoises are the longest-lived of all vertebrates, averaging over 100 years. The oldest on record lived to be 152.

	Photograph by	O. Castro Jr

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A painful week full of Palin

by digby

There’s this:

“How dare they?” Palin asked, denouncing “arrogant political operatives who underestimate the wisdom of the people.”

If party leaders try to intervene at the July convention, “we will rise up and say our vote does count, our activism does count,” she said.

Palin said she is not convinced by pledges from party leaders that the GOP nominee will be chosen from among those running for president.

“There are some snakes in there,” she said of party leaders. “I’ve had to deal with the political machinery my whole career.”

Palin said she plans to attend the convention in Cleveland, but she conceded that she may have to “invite myself to the party.”

“I can’t see any of them inviting me,” she said of party leaders. “I think they are afraid of what I would say.”

Palin, who has endorsed Trump, said she is confident he will win the GOP nomination, but said she can support Cruz if he emerges as the nominee.

She said she backs Trump because he is “so reasonable and so full of common sense and knows that for America to be great again we have to develop our natural resources” such as oil and natural gas.

While some GOP leaders worry that Trump’s disparaging comments about women, minorities and others have him struggling in the polls with key voter blocs, Palin said Trump would be the GOP’s strongest nominee. Trump has created the “big tent” that party leaders have long been seeking, she said, citing the billionaire businessman’s appeal to independents and “blue dog Democrats” in the South and other rural areas.

Palin said she was not concerned about some of Trump’s comments about women, saying she has known him for years “and I know the respect he has for women.”

Trump “doesn’t have high-paid consultants and pollsters and spinsters trying to spin him into something he’s not,” she said. “He takes advice from strong, confident women in his life, like his wife and daughter.”

While Palin said she could support Cruz, she said it was “unfortunate that he has people around him who are not truthful. I sure want to believe it’s the people around him and not Cruz as a person who would flip-flop on so many issues,” including trade and immigration.

“He was there at the border incentivizing illegal families coming on over the border with gift baskets of soccer balls and teddy bears and now he says he was never for amnesty. Yes, you were, dude, come on,” Palin said.

Inane as always. But this is even better:

Sarah Palin tore into Bill Nye’s scientific qualifications on Thursday, saying he has no authority to say climate-change skeptics are wrong.

Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, said the man known for his show “Bill Nye the Science Guy” is using his position of authority to harm children by teaching them that climate change is real and man-made.

“Bill Nye is as much a scientist as I am,” Palin said at a Capitol Hill event held to roll out a film that aims to discredit climate scientists. “He’s a kids’ show actor; he’s not a scientist.
Palin said behind the “alarmism” that the climate is changing is a “predetermined” and political agenda “of those, I think, who are controlling the narrative right now on changes in the weather.”

She repeatedly dismissed climate change as changes in weather and said scientists who believe the consensus that humans are the main cause of global warming are trying to shut down human progress.

Palin encouraged parents to teach their children to doubt climate change and to “ask those questions and not just believe what Bill Nye the Science Guy is trying to tell them.”

Yes, Palin’s scientific credentials are unmatched:

After graduating from high school in 1982, Palin enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.Shortly after arriving in Hawaii, Palin transferred to Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for a semester in the fall of 1982 and then to North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d’Alene, for the spring and fall semesters of 1983 She enrolled at the University of Idaho in Moscow for an academic year starting in August 1984 and then attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska in the fall of 1985. Palin returned to the University of Idaho in January 1986 and received her bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism in May 1987

Nye taught at Cornel, but whatever. Palin is the expert on this because … well, she wear geek glasses, I guess?

I’m looking forward to seeing her crash the convention though and make a spectacle of herself. The American people need to see what’s become of the person the Republicans nominated to be first in line for the presidency just eight years ago in her full glory.

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How to make a violent person

by digby

Everything about this story is troubling:

It is a video that has been shared to the FOX 5 Atlanta Facebook page several dozen times and has drawn sharp criticism. The video appears to show school officials about to paddle a young Georgia boy. FOX 5 News reached out to the child’s mother as well as school officials and law enforcement on Thursday regarding the incident.

The social media post has been shared across the country this week and posters are buzzing in outrage. In the video, 5-year-old Thomas Perez is wailing, apparently trying to escape his upcoming paddling. FOX 5’s George Franco got in touch with Thomas’ mother who said he was being punished for misbehaving.

He tried to hit another child and they said he, I guess, he missed, but he tried to run around the school lot and they were all trying to stop him, and he spit on somebody,” said Shana Perez.

Thomas’ mother said she consented to the paddling because she felt pressured since she had previously been arrested for truancy after Thomas had missed 18 days. She said he was absent because he was being checked after symptoms which falsely pointed to cancer surfaced. She showed FOX 5 News a school calendar with the missed days, but did not have medical papers.

First, the paddling. Corporal punishment for five year olds (for anyone frankly) bothers me. A lot. I am against physical violence in all cases except self-defense and I don’t think that little boy posed any threat to the women who were paddling him. They certainly did not need to use a piece of wood to hit him.

I know it is a contentious subject so I’ll just leave it at that.

But what about putting a parent in jail for a kid’s truancy? Does that make any sense at all? And then threatening her with more jail if she didn’t agree to let her kid be hit?

She said for this offense, the principal gave her two options: Have Thomas suspended or have him paddled. She said she believed she could go back to jail for another day for truancy if Thomas was out of school.

“She [the principal] never said ‘Well, you won’t go to jail if he’s suspended.’ She said ‘There’s nothing else, no other way possible that they could do or could be done for him, but to be paddled,’” said Perez.

The Jasper County School District released a statement: “The Jasper County School District is aware of the video released by Ms. Perez. Unfortunately, the District is barred by State and Federal law from commenting about the specifics of this incident. The District respects every student’s right to privacy.

However, we can speak generally about the District’s code of conduct which allows corporal punishment as one of the consequences for behavior. That code of conduct is provided to all parents. When corporal punishment is used, it is with parental consent. The District is investigating the incident and looking into its’ discipline policies at this time.”

Jasper County Sheriff Donnie Pope confirmed Perez had been previously arrested for truancy, but was not under a threat of being rearrested.

“She said she was under the assumption that if she had another unexcused absence she would go back to jail, but she could not corroborate that the school told her that,” said Pope.

Sheriff Pope said Perez, like other parents, are subject to review from a truancy review board which examines the circumstances of the unexcused absences before a person is arrested. Pope said arrest is saved as a last resort.

This country is so arrest happy. Sure, if this woman was being negligent in not getting her kid to school that’s a problem. But putting her in jail for it is daft. The kid is five years old. What’s he going to miss, SAT prep? We’ve lost all common sense.

Here’s the video:

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And wear a burka too

by digby

John Kasich with more wonderful condescension toward women:

This is the great GOP “moderate.”

He is, of course, a genuine anti-feminist zealot. He recently signed one of the most far-reaching bills in the country to destroy Planned Parenthood.

But nothing really matches the lack of regard he has for the lives of women than this celebratory paean to a woman who chose to die rather than have an abortion:

My agnostic friend’s daughter was sick. One night, I managed to reach him at a tough time. His daughter was due to hear from her doctor the next day, and the expectation was that they’d be in for some more bad news.

[Shortly afterwards, I bumped into the daughter], pregnant with another child, the same young woman who had just received that awful diagnosis. She spoke as though I already knew about her condition. She was bubbly and cheerful and positive, saying, “Everybody in my church is praying for me, but what I really want is for them to look at my trial and to find their faith.”

Her doctors were not treating her cancer as aggressively as they wanted to because of her concern for her unborn child–an example of her selfless faith. I couldn’t believe the strength, and the strength of character, of this young woman, facing a miserable prognosis with her cancer, thinking not of herself but of others. I said, “Jesus would marvel at your faith.” She reminded me of Job, actually.

It’s obviously perfectly fine for a woman to make this decision for herself. But to treat it as anything but a solemn and terrible choice to have to make, to celebrate it as a beautiful act of martyrdom, is sickening.

This attitude is catching on in anti-choice circles, leading to a new consensus that there should be no exceptions to the ban on abortion even for the life of the mother. After all, they’d be just like Job! Dead.

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Just can’t get enough

by digby

… progressives in the Senate. Blue America is trying to change that:

The Grayson for Senate campaign is getting close to having it’s 100,000th contributor. The 100,000th contribution will happen in the next few days. And whoever that 100,000th person is, Blue America will be proud to award them a platinum album as rare in the world of Depeche Mode collectibles, as is Alan Grayson’s “policy of truth” within this corrupt Congress.

The 1991 “Violator” album went platinum in Mexico and Warner Bros Music Mexico, the Depeche Mode label there made a dozen hand-crafted awards and one of those gorgeous plaques is the one that is being given away to the 100,000th donor. Grayson’s average contribution is $18.12. Some people give $1,000 and some people give $5.00 but whatever you contribute to Grayson on our special Depeche Mode “Violator” page doesn’t make it more or less likely that you’ll be the “winner” of the plaque. Whether the 100,000th person gives $10 or $2,000, he or she will get the plaque.

Alan Grayson is the one of the most valuable members of Congress, if not the most valuable member. He’s accomplished more than any other member from either party and has been a leader on issues from fiscal responsibility and peace to health care and consumer protection. He’s an independent-minded, brilliant congressman and is very much needed in the Senate to hold McConnell and Schumer to a higher standard.

Grayson’s Republican-turned-New-Dem primary opponent, Patrick Murphy, is the top recipient of Wall Street money among any candidate for the U.S. Senate who isn’t an incumbent. Murphy pushes Wall Street’s agenda in the House Financial Services Committee and the banksters have rewarded Murphy with $1,054,300 so far, the only none incumbent candidate from either party already over a million dollars. Murphy is Wall Street’s #1 priority. Grayson doesn’t get bankster money. He’s dependent on small dollar contributors like us.

The race for the open Senate seat from Florida is one of the most important of the cycle. And this week, any contribution to Grayson’s Senate campaign on the special Blue America “Violator” page means you could be the lucky 100,000th contributor and own the very rare, very collectible Depeche Mode Mexican platinum award– not to mention help Alan win a seat in the Senate where he’ll be working alongside Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown.

Thanks for always doing what you can to make this a better world,

–Howie, for the entire Blue America team

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Trump’s “strategy” for getting his way: tantrums




by digby

I wrote about The Donald’s petulant pouting for Salon today:

Donald Trump always wins because he knows how to play the game better than anyone else, right? He’s so good at the “art of the deal” that he comes out ahead and the other side doesn’t even know what hit them. In fact, they are so dazzled by his fabulousness that they just give him whatever he wants and beg for the opportunity to give more. That’s just how good he is — at least to hear him tell it. So why is he whining like child about the system being “rigged” and having tantrums over the unfairness of the system? Shouldn’t he be able to simply renegotiate the rules in his favor? Isn’t that how the world works?

It is true that the nominating systems of both parties are byzantine and obscure. Our political system in general is convoluted and mystifying. And now Trump’s party is making it even worse with vote suppression tactics being enacted all over the country. But who doesn’t know this by now? It was only 16 years ago that we had a disputed election and a great national debate about whether we even have a constitutional right to vote — and the Supreme Court serenely told us that we do not. The party primary system doesn’t even fall under any constitutional guidelines. It’s considered a private matter decided by private organizations. If you don’t like how they do things you can join the party and try to change it or start your own. And good luck with that. It’s worked out so well in the past.

None of this is new, however. We have two national parties that operate in 50 states with 50 separate governments all of which handle elections their own way. We have caucuses and primaries and state conventions and delegate selection and it’s all nuts.And believe it or not it’s actually much more democratic than it used to be. The Democrats, for instance, have proportional voting which is much more fair than the old winner take all system. It draws out the primary for months and makes it a much more arduous campaign, but in the end a lot more Democrats have a say in the outcome than in the past.

The GOP primary process is admittedly much more complicated. But that Donald Trump made it all the way to April of the primary season as front runner for the presidential nomination without being aware of this says everything you need to know about his organizational acumen. It turns out that national politics isn’t as simple as a branding deal with Macy’s over ties and underwear. It isn’t a Manhattan real estate negotiation either. But like so many wealthy men, he assumed that making all that money must make him a genius, so much so that he’s capable of running the world by the seat of his pants.

Trump is not a genius. As this piece in the LA Times explains, he’s getting outmaneuvered and outclassed by Ted Cruz at every turn:

Trump may have won the vote in Louisiana’s primary, but Cruz came out with an equal number of delegates when the election results got sifted through the state party procedures. Cruz has pulled off similar maneuvers in numerous states. In Colorado, where delegates are picked at congressional district caucuses, Cruz has claimed all the delegates. In Texas, where Trump thought he had picked up 48 of the state’s 155 delegates even though he lost to Cruz in the primary, the Austin American-Statesman reports that all 155 will be Cruz supporters. Yes, 48 of them will be required to vote for Trump for two nominating ballots at the Republican convention in Cleveland this July, but they are free to vote with Cruz on procedural rules and will go to Cruz if a third ballot comes around. Even in states where Trump came in first, including South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Virginia, Cruz has gotten stealth delegates elected who will abandon the New York businessman for the Texas senator as quickly as they can legally do it.

In California, where the primary campaign will reach a grand climax on June 7, Trump now leads in polls, but he has to think about more than simply winning the statewide vote. Delegates are allocated to the winner in each congressional district. That means there are actually 53 distinct elections that will each choose three convention delegates. Winning the votes of the few Republicans in House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s liberal San Francisco district is as valuable as winning the votes of the many conservatives in the San Diego district of U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump.

Cruz has been organizing in the state for months. Trump just hired a staff. This doesn’t mean Cruz will win, of course. But it does mean that Trump’s not quite the dominating alpha wolf he claims to be.

In his second favorite book after the Bible, his own “Art of the Deal” one of Trump’s most important pieces of advice is to “know your market.” And he is proud that he doesn’t hire researchers or market analysts for that purpose. He relies on his instincts. So in running for president he listened to “the shows” and had his minions report on what talk radio was saying, but he didn’t bother to hire people who knew how the system worked until this month. He thought he could just hold big rallies and call in to the cable news programs and that would carry him.
But he didn’t bother to learn the most important market, which is delegates not rally attendees or TV ratings.

In fact, he’s a much bigger loser at this stage than he knows. As Rich Lowry observed in this piece in Politico:

For all of Trump’s complaints, the nomination system was set up to favor the front-runner and get him over the top as soon as possible. It is a symptom of Trump’s weakness that, even as he romped through the first couple of months of the race and accumulated delegates out of proportion to his popular vote (about 45 percent of the delegates on 37 percent of the vote), he still might fall short of 1,237.

This is an extremely important point. The rules were rigged. But they were rigged to favor Donald Trump. For a man who is selling himself as the greatest deal maker the world has ever known, he’s having an awfully hard time closing one that was set-up for him to win from the very beginning.So now he’s claiming the election is being stolen.

Still, there’s plenty of life left in the Donald and he has some cards left to play. It’s unseemly that a man in his position would wring his hands about life being unfair, but he’s been doing this from the beginning of the campaign. His earliest flap over Megyn Kelly was all about her asking him unfair questions. You may recall that when Chris Cuomo repeated a quote from Rich Lowry calling him a “fabulous whiner” he readily admitted to it:

“I think he’s probably right. I am the most fabulous whiner. I do whine because I want to win. And I’m not happy if I’m not winning. And I am a whiner. And I’m a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win. And I’m going to win for the country and I’m going to make our country great again.”

There’s a word for that. It’s called a tantrum. It’s something little children do to get their way. And it often works.

Lowry thinks Trump is preparing to be a sore loser and burn what’s left of the Republican party in his wake as he flounces off in a huff if he isn’t given the nomination. The big question is whether his followers would go with him. I suspect they would. Trump may not have any real analytical or organizational skill but if there’s one “market” he understands it’s the disaffected faction of white America that feels persecuted and marginalized. His crude, ill-mannered, “politically incorrect” campaign has given their victimization complexes a shot of adrenaline. And you know what happens when that rush wears off. Trump will be able to retreat to his golden palace to lick his wounds. All his followers will have to show for it will be that stupid red hat.

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Derp from above
by Tom Sullivan

As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill makes its way through the Senate this week, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) have been arguing for new rules that would limit cargo pilots’ flight time to nine hours between rests. We don’t want any accidents.

“Fatigue is a killer,” Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who executed the 2009 emergency airliner landing in the Hudson River, told a press conference. Then again, if you are a drone pilot in the business of deliberately killing people, working six or seven days a week, twelve hours a day is not a problem.

The drone program remains controversial and has its detractors and defenders. Al Jazeera English this week published the confessions of former Air Force drone technician, Cian Westmoreland. He and three other former operators last year called on the president to stop the program, calling the strategy “self-defeating,” one that propagates anti-US hatred. Not to mention his own nightmares:

The nightmares encompassed everything I didn’t understand. I had nightmares about bombing villages, about being bombed, about killing children and trying to save them.

I was emotionally detached from loved ones and had a battle with alcoholism.

And that’s just one part – there’s also an insidious part – the moral injury side of things, where the more you learn, the worse it gets. You’re trying to figure out what you did, why you did it and what’s going on in that country.

That’s what brings you to a real point of hopelessness.

Where this story intersects with the FAA reauthorization is Section 334 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012: PUBLIC UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS. For the uninitiated, that section directs the FAA to make plans for integrating law enforcement and military drones into the national air space. There has been little public discussion about safety and privacy issues. And these drones are not the little quadracopters, mind you, but the big Corellian ships. Not that anybody in Congress is paying attention, unless it’s to defense contractors:

General Atomics expects to begin training Predator pilots for its overseas customers at the Grand Sky UAS aviation and business park near Grand Forks, North Dakota, in April.

“One of our tenants—General Atomics—is going to commence flight training they believe in the April timeframe,” said Tom Sowyer president of Grand Sky Development Co. “That means foreign countries—foreign militaries—are going to be sending their pilots to Grand Forks, North Dakota, to learn how to fly Predators.”

No one is suggesting the military drones flying over North Dakota, New York, Nevada, and the border with Mexico
will be armed anytime soon, or that the NSA will be hacking their video feeds to spy on unsuspecting Americans. But given Sens. Boxer’s and Klobuchar’s concerns about long hours for cargo pilots, if realism in training is important one wonders how many hours at a stretch General Atomics’ foreign customers will be flying their shiny new Predators over Grand Forks.

Thank you sir may I have another

by digby

Has there ever been a bigger jerk than this?

Palm Beach County, Florida, State Attorney David Aronberg announced Thursday that he wouldn’t prosecute Lewandowski, who was charged with simple battery last month for allegedly forcefully grabbing former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields.

Trump, speaking with reporters during an interview organized by Rockland County Hasidic activists, told Lewandowski to “tell my friends from, in some cases, Israel, how loyal Mr. Trump was to you.”

“More than I could possibly fathom,” Lewandowski replied. “I am so grateful.”

“I’m proud of you, Corey,” Trump said, before turning toward the crowd. “He wasn’t quite as effective for the past couple of months.”

I just don’t know what to say.

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Deficit zombies are back in the saddle

by digby

Take a look at this atrocity (and I don’t men the zombie in the suit)

Think Progress has the definitive takedown:

This is false. The world’s investors continue to give us their money for historically low prices. The national debt never has to be repaid in the credit card-style manner the cover implies. And trying to do so would be economically disastrous for the entire world’s population, both the tiny fraction who are rich and the many billions who are clawing for a dignified life.

Putting that cover on newsstands in 2016 is the journalism equivalent of Ted Cruz’s campaign dressing up its fundraising emails as formal past-due notices. It’s a simple con: Alarm the eye, shock the brain, and collect a few nickels from the stunned rube who falls for it.

And if you need a re-cap of just how disastrous this obsession with the debt has been in very recent history:

Panic about the size of the national debt has undermined the country throughout the entire Obama presidency. After a cataclysmic financial industry collapse caused by very rich people in very expensive suits, a new round of well-heeled liars conspired to ensure that the nation’s economic recovery would be devastatingly slow and feeble.

In late 2008 and early 2009, it was obvious that the government needed to spend like hell to save the country from an outright depression. Official government forecasts showed a looming economic output loss of more than $2 trillion, and independent analysis suggested the problem was even larger.

But rather than enacting a $2 trillion injection of public stimulus, debt hawks insisted on something much more modest. The White House obliged, proposing less than half of what official forecasts would have required. White House economist Christina Romer fought for a much more ambitious package, lost, and quit the administration a little over a year later.

The debt panickers had won. With that victory under their belt, they got bolder – and Democrats got craven.

CNBC talking head Rick Santelli’s live-tv rant in 2010 that’s often credited with launching the Tea Party? At the surface he railed about specific spending policies and banker-friendly notions of fairness. But like the movement it sparked, it was fundamentally animated by debt panic.

The debt-whiner Gadsden flag crowd delivered the 2010 election wave that gave John Boehner the Speaker’s gavel, ensuring the legislative death of every Obama priority that hadn’t been finished yet. The media’s tendency to chase whatever is shiniest ensured that the Tea Party phenomenon dominated political conversations that spring and summer.

Democrats up for re-election that year decided they couldn’t push back against the fundamental economic errors underlying the debt fervor. Instead, they ran away from anything that even smelled like a spending bill.

Almost all of them tried to downplay their votes for the stimulus package, quietly validating the incorrect notion that the bill had been too big. That of course did nothing to stop the hundreds of thousands of attack ads that smeared the Recovery Act as a debt-laden boondoggle.

President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009. Republicans channeled a dishonest debt panic to ensure it would be the last ambitious investment in America’s economy he got to make.President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009. Republicans channeled a dishonest debt panic to ensure it would be the last ambitious investment in America’s economy he got to make.

Many Democrats even asked President Obama to stay away from their districts – even though the new president’s personal popularity among Democrats likely would have helped many of those defeated House members to keep their seats.

After the 2010 “shellacking,” the White House itself made a similar strategic error by entertaining the debt panic that had empowered the same Republicans who began sabotaging the economic recovery starting at the very outset of Obama’s tenure. Obama appointed a bipartisan commission to gin up ideas for reining in a supposedly-runaway national debt. It didn’t matter that the commission’s most damaging ideas never became law. The signal was clear: No blue states, no red states, just purple states where everyone agrees that The Debt Is A Problem That Must Be Solved.

With Boehner installed as Speaker on the crest of a debt-panic wave, a fiscal game of chicken became almost inevitable. To resolve it, the White House ended up agreeing to the disaster known as sequestration.

The entire point of that exotic policy mechanic was to force hardline Republicans to back off of their budget-cutting obsession. It only sort of worked politically and didn’t really work on a policy level. It did not prevent Boehner from triggering a disastrous government shutdown.

Sequestration cuts hampered all manner of material public services: Job training programs, domestic violence shelters, housing support systems, health services for American Indians, food programs for seniors, and the system that keeps poor people from freezing to death in the winter all felt the squeeze, as did longer-term investments in things like scientific research and pre-school programs.

The debt panic didn’t just install Republican majorities. It caused substantive harm to millions of Americans who already live in precarious economic situations even when government programs are fully funded. It kept unemployment higher for longer than was necessary, prolonging the recession – and arguably causing thousands of premature deaths.

There’s a reason the deficit hawks are getting the band back together. It looks as if the Democrats might get a mandate to do things for the American people and we cannot have that. It’s vitally necessary to nip that idea in the bud right now.

Just keep in mind that this nonsense is designed for the purpose of keeping all Republicans and as many Democrats as they can muster in line to block any spending a Democratic president might propose. And they are very, very good at it. Don’t underestimate their ability to manipulate the media and the public with this nonsense. They’ve been successfully doing it for decades.

The good news is that if Trump wins he says he’ll retire the entire national debt within 8 years. With renegotiated trade deals. Or something. So there’s that.

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Long Staten Island psychic has a dream

by digby

This story about Trump supporters in Staten Island is just great. On some level you just have to smile at this stuff:

“Do you believe in psychics?”

The first question that Linda Vinciguerra asked me when I wandered into Linda Lingerie — her boutique on Staten Island’s New Dorp Avenue, where the people tend to be as straightforward as the names of their small businesses — was an unexpected one.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Why?”

Vinciguerra’s eyes lit up. She does believe in psychics, she told me — so much so that she regularly invites a woman with clairvoyant powers to set up in her store, where the woman charges $80 an hour for one-on-one readings with local proprietors and customers.

But Vinciguerra was having a crisis of confidence. During a recent session, she explained, she’d received some bad news from the psychic.

“I said, ‘Tell me about Donald Trump. Will he win?’” Vinciguerra recalled in her strong Noo Yawk accent, gesticulating with her hands for emphasis.

The short answer was a distinct “no.” Worse yet, the psychic added, the next president would be Hillary Clinton. However, the silver lining in all this was that a defeated Trump would launch an investigation into voting irregularities, the outcome of which was uncertain.

When she first received this news from the future, Vinciguerra was depressed. The psychic had been right about so much in the past that it was hard for her to continue supporting Trump knowing that he would lose the election.

But with Trump scheduled to appear on Staten Island this Sunday for a local Republican Party brunch and fundraiser, Vinciguerra is hoping she’ll have the chance to sound the alarm directly.

“I want to relay the message to Donald to make sure he has someone who can check to see that the polls aren’t rigged,” she said.

Vinciguerra said that most of the people she knows on Staten Island are avid Trump supporters like her, even if some of them are somewhat concerned that “he’ll start World War III because of his mouth.”

She acknowledges that Trump is a bully but admires that he’s not a coward and believes he’ll help small businesses like Linda Lingerie to prosper.

“I just believe he will turn this country around,” Vinciguerra said. “We are Staten Islanders. We believe in the American dream.”

I’m not making fun. Half the people I know here in LaLa Land swear by psychics. Maybe she did get this from the great beyond. But I’m going to be quite surprised if Trump takes on voting integrity as his mission in life when this is all over.

But you never know. His ego might very well demand this. I don’t know if it will work though. Trump’s supposed to be the guy who can see through the cheaters and outmaneuver them, right? Like the “cunning Chinese” and the “wily Mexicans.” If he couldn’t see through Reince Priebus and Ted Cruz well, I’m sorry. It doesn’t speak well for his ability to win so much we’ll be begging him to stop winning.

Correction: Title said Long Island, should have been Staten Island. I regret the error.