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Month: June 2016

The ponies aren’t coming

Published by digby on June 24, 2016

The ponies aren’t coming 

by digby

Unbelievable:

Of course the real issue was immigration. And let’s see how people deal with the fact that they aren’t going to ever have a Merrie Olde England without all those you-know-whats everywhere unless something very, very ugly happens. Maybe that’s what they want.

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Brexit: “Leave” wins. Now what? by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 24, 2016

Brexit: “Leave” wins. Now what?
by Tom Sullivan

Donald Trump, who weeks ago didn’t know what #Brexit was, suddenly does. He won’t understand it any better. (Not that I do. This will take time to digest.)

If you are just waking up, Britain voted 52-48 to leave the European Union. Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Tony Cameron is the first casualty:

Britain has voted to leave the European Union, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and dealing the biggest blow to the European project of greater unity since World War Two.

Global financial markets plunged on Friday as results from a referendum showed a near 52-48 percent split for leaving a bloc that Britain joined more than 40 years ago.

The pound fell as much as 10 percent against the dollar to touch levels last seen in 1985, on fears the decision could hit investment in the world’s fifth-largest economy, threaten London’s role as a global financial capital and usher in months of political uncertainty.

World stocks headed for one of the biggest slumps on record, and billions of dollars were wiped off the value of European companies. Britain’s big banks took a $130 billion battering, with Lloyds (LLOY.L) and Barclays (BARC.L) falling as much as 30 percent at the opening of trade. [MKTS/GLOB]

Trump was more interested in how it might affect his golf course, because there’s nothing that’s not about Donald Trump:

As Nigel Farage of the “once-fringe United Kingdom Independence Party” celebrated, other far-right leaders sent congratulations:

Farage and his colleagues were quickly congratulated by the leaders of nationalist, far-right parties in the Netherlands and France, Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, who both called for similar referendums in their countries.

Closer to home, however, another part of Farage’s statement seemed at odds with the mood in some parts of the country. Namely, his confidant assertion that citizens of the United Kingdom comprise a single nation. As the results were tallied, it became obvious that there was a clear disparity of outcomes across the kingdom’s four nations: while England and Wales voted to leave the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted to stay in it, which raised the possibility that the decision to withdraw from one union could trigger the imminent collapse of another.

Scotland is already considering another independence vote:

Nicola Sturgeon said it was “democratically unacceptable” that Scotland faced the prospect of being taken out of the EU against its will.

She said the Scottish government would begin preparing legislation to enable another independence vote.

Scotland voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38%.

Writing for the Guardian, Diane Abbott summed up the Brexit results as a false promise:

For many Brexit voters the prime minister just confirmed to them how little the winners of globalisation like him cared about them, the losers.

If only the false promise that Britain’s malaise of disenfranchisement, voicelessness and an economic system that rewards the rich at the expense of the poor could be fixed by leaving the EU. The idea that migrants or politicians in Brussels are the problem with modern, unequal Britain was the canard at the core the referendum debate.

Britain’s problems come from a place much closer to home. They come from successive government policies that have promoted the financialisation of our economies and public services, thereby valuing profit over people. They come from a Tory government slashing public services and widening inequality under the dubious banner of austerity. And they come from a prime minister who was passionate about nothing but his own political survival.

These problems are so systemic today that fixing them will take a radical change to the structure of both our economy and political class. More of the past will not do to resolve the very real and interconnected global issues of our time: vast and rising wealth inequality, climate change and a foreign policy trapped in a cycle of destruction.

That feels about right. Because similar sentiments are boiling up here among those who feel like globalization’s losers and the political class’ victims. (A lot of us, frankly.) Sadly, for those easily swayed by mountebanks, TRUMP is the remedy for anything that ails ya. Just ask him. Got Mexicans? No problemo. TRUMP stops unwanted immigrants in their tracks. Pesky establishment? TRUMP politically incorrects for that. Lost your job? TRUMP again. Whites not white enough? TRUMP will make them bolder if not brighter.

For the left, Bernie Sanders more than his rival has focused on the harm the financialization of the economy has done to working Americans (and to those who once worked). Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton is poised to be the presidential candidate for Democrats this fall. Sanders told MSNBC this morning he will vote for her and “do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump.” With Sanders having come so far attacking economic inequality and a calcified establishment, with Trump peddling economic snake oil to the disenfranchised, and with Britain having given EU austerity the middle finger, the question for the left here is: Are Democrats listening? This week’s sit-in on the House floor suggests they might be, finally. Those who know her say Hillary Clinton is a good listener. She has a chance now to prove that to the rest of the country.

My recommendation? Get out there and register people to vote.

The comment section at Breitbart doesn’t count as “facts”

Published by digby on June 24, 2016
The comment section at Breitbart doesn’t count as “facts”

by digby

NBC’s Lester Holt asked Trump what proof he’d seen that Clinton’s server had been hacked. Trump proceeded to argue that it was illegal for Clinton to have a private email server in the first place and lamented that she would not be charged because of a “rigged system.” 

“You don’t know that it hasn’t been [hacked],” Trump said. “What she did is illegal. She shouldn’t have had a server.” 

When Holt pressed Trump to say what evidence he’d seen of a hack, Trump struggled to respond. 

“I think I read that and I heard it and somebody—” Trump said. 

“Where?” Holt asked. 

“Somebody gave me that information,” Trump said. “I will report back to you.”

This is what he said in his speech:

[Clinton’s] server was easily hacked by foreign governments, perhaps even by her financial backers in communist China. Sure they have it. Putting all of America and our citizens in danger, great danger. Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted. We may not know what’s in those deleted emails. Our enemies probably know every single one of them. So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be the president of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency. 

Her financial backers in communist China …

 Remember when everyone called Ted Cruz Joe McCarthy for implying that Chuck Hagel had been taking money from North Korea? John McCain admonished him publicly over it. Everyone was aghast. But Trump has so lowered the bar for decency that he can say this in a formal speech and it doesn’t even garner any notice.

Update: There’s more:

Donald Trump sleep-walked back his remark that Hillary Clinton was ‘asleep’ during the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi Libya in 2012, saying whether Clinton was snoozing or not she was ‘asleep at the wheel.’

He modified his comment a handful of times, saying Clinton ‘might have been sleeping’ and that the attack went on for ‘a long time.

Trump got a wake up call about his comment in an appearance on NBC News Thursday, when Lester Holt asked him about his comment during a blistering speech Wednesday.

Trump had said in his anti-Clinton speech that Hillary ‘spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched’ as secretary of state.

‘Among the victims was our late Ambassador Chris Stevens. I mean what she did with him was absolutely horrible. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed. That’s right. When the phone rang, at 3:00 in the morning, Hillary Clinton was sleeping,’ Trump said, in one of the harshest lines of his attack.

Holt asked Trump about the comment, saying that fact-checkers found the attack occurred during the day. Politifact reported that the attack occurred at 3:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time.

‘It happened all during the day and it was going on for a long period of time,’ Trump responded, as Holt pressed him.

‘Excuse me, it was going on for a long period of time,’ Trump continued.

‘And she was a sleep at the wheel. Whether she was sleeping or not – who knows if she was sleeping? She might have been sleeping,’ Trump continued.

Then he tried to knock down the idea that she was awake because she sent a tweet.

‘Why, because she put out a Tweet. Somebody said she put out a tweet therefore she wasn’t be sleeping. Nobody else could put out a tweet?’

‘I can tell you this, whether she was sleeping or not – and she might have been sleeping – it was a disaster.

There was no tweet.

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Are the Democrats seeing red?

Published by digby on June 23, 2016

Are the Democrats seeing red?

by digby

They might be:

A new poll shows Hillary Clinton running ahead of Donald Trump in Arizona, where a Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state only once in the last 64 years.

A survey by Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights found Clinton taking 46.5 percent support over Trump at 42.2 percent.

About 6 percent of respondents said they would vote for an unspecified third-party candidate, while 5.6 percent said they’re undecided.
Former President Bill Clinton is the last Democrat to carry the state, narrowly defeating Bob Dole there in 1996, when Reform Party candidate Ross Perot was also on the ballot. Prior to Clinton, the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state was Harry Truman, in 1948.

Mitt Romney defeated President Obama in Arizona in 2012 by 9 points.

“It’s shocking to think that a Democratic presidential candidate would carry Arizona if the election were held today, considering that every statewide office in Arizona is held by a Republican as well as significant majorities in the Arizona House and Senate,” Wes Gullett, a partner at OH Predictive Insights, told the Phoenix Business Journal. “Arizona should be a reliable red state.”

There are a handful of states with diverse electorates and growing minority populations that Democrats believe they can compete in with Trump at the top of the ticket.


 Trump’s good pal isn’t helping:

Joe Arpaio may be a local sheriff, but his national profile has helped him build a war chest three times the size of Donald Trump’s.

According to Arpaio’s latest campaign finance disclosure (PDF), the combative immigration hardliner has raised nearly $9.9 million for his November bid for a 7th term as Maricopa County sheriff, including $1.94 million since January alone.

But despite the famous sheriff’s enormous fundraising haul, Democrats are convinced that an ongoing federal trial against Arpaio, along with Arizona’s growing Latino voting population, will not only make the sheriff vulnerable, but will also make him as much of a drag on Arizona’s Republican ticket as Trump, especially for Sen. John McCain’s bid for a 5th Senate term.
The 84-year-old sheriff’s national appeal shows up in his massive small-dollar donor list. Of the more than 100,000 people in his active donor file, 26 percent come from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, while the rest are a hodgepodge of retirees, teachers, cops, cashiers, and electricians from California to North Carolina.

Most of those have probably seen Arpaio on Fox News, where he has long been a fixture as a conservative attack dog on everything from President Obama’s “fake” birth certificate to the finer points of Donald Trump’s candidacy. Arpaio endorsed Trump before nearly any other Republican elected official in the country and recently hammered Republican leaders as “gutless” for not getting behind Trump more strongly.

Probably not the smartest thing in the world for the Republicans to nominate an unreconstructed racist for president under these circumstances. But maybe they figure they can sneak in since the Dems are putting a woman for the first time. If they can start deporting a bunch of these immigrants for various reasons and roll this back long enough to end birthright citizenship and force white women to give birth to many more children,they might just have a chance to turn this thing around. That’s Ann Coulter’s advice anyway.

Unfortunately, the man they chose for this important task turns out to be an incompetent scam artist. They just aren’t making authoritarian racists the way they used to …

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A brand new Supahstah!

Published by digby on June 23, 2016

A brand new Supahstah!

by digby

Roger Stone must be jealous. He got fired by Trump and all he got was a lousy weekly stint on Alex Jones’ show.

Former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is joining CNN as a political commentator, according to a source familiar with the arrangement.

It’s a salaried position and will make Lewandowski exclusive to CNN, effective immediately.
Trump fired Lewandowski on Monday, ending the tenure of the fiery operative who faced a steady string of controversies while guiding Trump’s skeleton campaign operation to a shocking victory in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. That same afternoon, his first in-studio interview was with CNN’s Dana Bash (an NBC News reporter caught up with him outside of Lewandowski’s apartment as he headed down to the studio).

I’ll looks forward to his completely unpredictable commentary.

Actually, who knows? Maybe he’s so mad or stupid that he’ll spill some dirt on The Donald. But I doubt it…

Sneaky, sneaky

Published by digby on June 23, 2016

Sneaky, sneaky

 by digby

You can take this off the “human decency” side of Paul Ryan’s ledger:

A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday. 

The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.

He gets no credit for this kind of maneuver to make himself look good and then quietly remove it at the behest of his caucus. That’s the price he pays for being Speaker. He is responsible for which items he uses as bargaining chips and this was evidently one of them.

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Trump’s Wall Street Wingnut backers

Published by digby on June 23, 2016

Trump’s Wall Street Wingnut backers

by digby

I wrote about Trump’s outreach the super-rich for Salon this morning:

Yesterday hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, Ted Cruz’s former sugar daddy, announced that he had formed a Super PAC for wealthy Republicans who were too cowardly to own up to being Trump supporters. It’s subtly called the “Defeat Crooked Hillary Pac” and it being sold as a way for rich donors to contribute without having to sully their reputations by associating with that awful Donald Trump. Mercer hired professional Clinton character assassin David Bossie to head up the project, which is perfect. His Clinton stalking goes all the way back to the 1990s with his organization called Citizens United. Yes, it’s that Citizens United.

One wonders who they think they’re fooling by pretending that trashing Hillary Clinton does something other than help Donald Trump but it turns out the donor class isn’t always as bright as they like to think they are. After all, as the New York Times pointed out in its big Atlantic City expose the other day, supposedly sophisticated Wall Street investors repeatedly gave Donald Trump vast sums of money which he squandered even as he personally made a fortune. It took four bankruptcies before they finally wised up that the man wasn’t a business genius, he just played one on TV.

Some still believe it. Take this fellow quoted in Adam Davidson’s scathing profile of Trump’s business ventures in the New York Times Magazine:

Andrew Beal, a billionaire banker and investor, called me the other day to talk Trump. I had been leaving messages for every prominent business executive I could find who has publicly expressed support of the Republican candidate.

Before I could ask my first question, Beal told me he wanted to get something out of the way. He knew that I would ask about specifics. “Everybody wants to be real specific,” he said. But Beal’s support for Trump has nothing to do with specifics. He grants that he doesn’t know much about Trump’s policy goals or about whom he might choose for key economic positions. He doesn’t even think Trump knows. And that, he explained, is exactly why he supports him. “All these politicians with all these specific plans,” he said. “I think it’s total [expletive].”

His point was that business doesn’t run this way: If you’re hiring someone to be a chief executive, you don’t ask them to lay out every decision they’ll make, years ahead of when they’ll make it. You hire someone whom you trust, and you let them run things. Beal says he knows that Trump will do the right things to make the economy perform better. “You’re going to say, ‘How?’ ” he told me. “I don’t know how. I know that sounds crazy. That’s how the real world operates.”

That would be one of the so-called Masters of the Universe who allegedly keep the engine of capitalism working with their strategic insight and keen grasp of complex issues. When you read something like that you realize how easily all those rich investors got taken in by Trump. It turns out they’re even more clueless than those poor dupes who ran up their credit cards to attend Trump University. They were dazzled by The Donald like everyone else.

And he’s not the only one. Get a load of NY magazine’s Michelle Celarier’s rundown of the cast of characters who got together Tuesday night for a high dollar fundraiser at Le Cirque in New York. It was hosted by hedge fund billionaire John Paulson and raised between five and seven million dollars:

The bigger gift among Paulson and his fellow hosts might have been attaching their names to the event in the face of a generally souring view of Trump — too erratic, too offensive — among the top ranks on Wall Street. At least in the case of Paulson, there may have been a business motive for supporting Trump: As of last July, the presumptive GOP nominee was an investor in Paulson’s funds at a time when others were fleeing because of poor performance. But whatever his reason, the hedge-fund titan is now officially part of the small band of financiers publicly throwing their support behind Trump — others include investors Carl Icahn and Wilbur Ross, Cerberus’s Stephen Feinberg, hedge-funders Robert Mercer and Anthony Scaramucci, and former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin — even as many of their peers question whether doing so will prove to be reputational poison.

That’s a Wall Street wingnut rogues gallery with Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci (who I wrote about here) as co-sponsor of the event and Stephen Feinberg, a gun nut so extreme that he probably even scares Wayne LaPierre a little bit. And this was the event that reportedly brought Ted Cruz’s richest fanboy Robert Mercer fully on board the Trump train.

One wonders if any of them were shaken by this Moody’s analysis released on the day after the fundraiser:

“The economy will be significantly weaker if Mr. Trump’s economic proposals are adopted. Under the scenario in which all his stated policies become law in the manner proposed, the economy suffers a lengthy recession and is smaller at the end of his four-year term than when he took office,” the report said. “By the end of his presidency, there are close to 3.5 million fewer jobs and the unemployment rate rises to as high as 7 percent, compared with below 5 percent today. “During Mr. Trump’s presidency, the average American household’s after-inflation income will stagnate, and stock prices and real house values will decline.”

That doesn’t sound like such a great America, does it?

Nonetheless, most investors are with Trump:

A Bloomberg/Morning Consult national poll on investment, tax and economic issues shows voters with money in the market pick Trump over Clinton, 50 percent to 33 percent, as the person they think will be better for their portfolio. Those with more than $50,000 invested answer the question almost identically as smaller investors…

“Donald Trump has made his business experience a key point in his campaign, and it seems to be resonating with voters,” said Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at Morning Consult, a Washington-based media and technology company.

Some of this is driven by partisanship with six in ten self-identified Democrats saying they’ll be for Clinton and six in ten Republicans for Trump. Indies split two to one for Trump. The big difference is obviously that there are many more Republican investors than Democrats.

It’s a bit mind boggling how this notion that the GOP (even under Trump) is better for the economy continues in spite of so much evidence proving the contrary. By any measure, whether it’s the stock market, GDP, reducing inequality, unemployment, poverty or racial economic progress the country does better economically under Democrats. Of course the really wealthy ones aren’t really concerned about the economy in general. Many of them, like Trump donor John Paulson make fortunes from other people’s misfortunes. (He made a killing on the mortgage meltdown in 2007 although now he’s down to his last 13 billion or so.) What they care about is their own tax rates and any regulations that may impede their freedom to gamble with the economy as they see fit. On that score, the Republicans are much more responsive to their personal needs and so is Donald Trump.

In fairness, there are many Wall Street types who are appalled by Trump even as they loathe and despise Democrats like Clinton and Obama for being mean and calling them fat cats and forcing them to adhere to some regulations after they crashed the world economy with their reckless gambling. They really would prefer a nice, easy Republican like Mitt Romney who wouldn’t have a slavering mob of left-wing populists breathing down the new president’s neck watching his every move for signs of favored treatment for the 1%.

Instead they are stuck with Trump, a man so obnoxious and ignorant that even though he’s more or less “one of them” they recoil in horror at the prospect of supporting such a cretin. Luckily, there will be vehicles like the “Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC” available for them to express their dislike of both candidates without having to take responsibility for the result.

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“You’ve got to stand for something if you want to win” by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 23, 2016

“You’ve got to stand for something if you want to win”
by Tom Sullivan

The 2014 midterm elections were a disaster for Democrats across the country. Appearing on Meet the Press afterwards, former DNC chair Gov. Howard Dean complained about their lack of message, “Where the hell is the Democratic party? You’ve got to stand for something if you want to win.”

It takes more than that. You’ve got to demonstrate you are willing to fight for it too.

Yesterday, some Democrats finally did. By sitting down for over twelve hours to demand a vote on “no fly, no buy” gun control legislation. In the wake of the Orlando shootings, they’d had enough:

Georgia congressman John Lewis deployed a strategy from his days as a civil rights activist and coupled it with social media to stage a dramatic sit-in Wednesday on the House floor with his fellow Democrats to force a vote on gun control — and disrupt political business as normal well into the night.

[…]

“Sometimes you have to do something out of the ordinary, sometimes you have to make a way out of no way,” said Lewis, one of the last living icons of the civil rights movement. “There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise, when you have to move your feet. This is the time. Now is the time to get in the way. The time to act is now. We will be silent no more.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) refused to allow a vote, the presiding Republican recessed the body and shut off the cameras, but the protest continued, broadcast via social media.

Late last night, Ryan managed to adjourn the House until after the July 4th break:

After a chaotic, daylong occupation of the House floor, Republican leaders moved in the middle of the night to cut off House Democrats’ gun control “sit-in” by adjourning the House through the July 4 — without a vote on gun control.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sought to to quell the Democratic demonstration by having lawmakers vote at 2:30 a.m. on several bills they had to pass this week, including one to combat the Zika virus. After that, Republican leaders sent lawmakers home until July 5, starting their already-scheduled recess a few days earlier than planned.

I have no illusions that this is more than a one-off. But perhaps Democrats on the Hill have finally gotten Dean’s message. The rest of their candidates and their presidential nominee had best pay heed. Voters will stand with candidates who show they will fight for them.

Sing me no song, read me no rhyme
Don’t waste my time, show me!
Don’t talk of June, don’t talk of fall
Don’t talk at all!
Show me!

“Show Me” by Lerner & Loewe from My Fair Lady