Month: June 2017

If you hate boomers the GOP is delivering for you

by digby

They’re taking on the later boomers like me who tend not to vote for them as much. If they can pick off enough of us before we hit Medicare and SS age, properly suppress the vote of blacks and Hispanics they could set themselves up quite nicely for a future lock on the government.

The above chart tracks the increase in premium price for “silver plan” insurance coverage for a hypothetical 60-year-old with income at 350 percent of the poverty line in 2020.

The below chart tracks the decrease in premium tax credits for the the same hypothetical individual, except now the individual has an income slightly above 350 percent of the poverty line, so that they would not receive any federal tax credit to purchase insurance on the individual market.

CBPP took into account the Senate Republican bill’s cuts to tax credits for individuals purchasing insurance; the bill’s re-arrangement of the tax credit schedule, which would disfavor older people; the bill’s elimination of tax credits for individuals between 350 and 400 percent of the poverty line; and the bill’s stipulation that insurers would now be allowed to charge older people up to five times more than young people, as opposed to three times more under Obamacare. The bill would also eliminate Obamacare’s cost-sharing reductions, insurer subsidies to help low-income individuals afford care.

Suhweet! Look at all those potential sick, bankrupt and dead old people. It just gets better every day.

My way or the highway

by digby

2018 is going to be a real thrill. The bully in chief won by raking down 16 other Republicans in a primary and he’s going to do the same to members of the party who buck his agenda. Or that seems to be the plan anyway:

A new campaign by top White House allies targeting the GOP’s most vulnerable senator over health care sends a loud message to those resistant to the Trump agenda: We’re coming after you.

America First Policies, a White House-backed outside group led by the president’s top campaign advisers, has launched a $1 million attack against Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, who on Friday announced that he opposed the Senate’s recently unveiled Obamacare repeal plan.

That included a Twitter and digital ad campaign targeting the senator, including a video that accuses him of “standing with” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a reviled figure in conservative circles.

“Unacceptable,” the video says. “If you’re opposed to this bill, we’re opposed to you.”

America First Policies is set to expand its campaign early this week with TV ads that will go after the Nevada senator.

The offensive aims both to punish Heller and to sway his vote, and it is a stunning act of political retaliation against a member of the president’s own party — one who faces a perilous path to reelection in 2018. Senior Republicans, many of whom are deeply worried about Heller’s political standing and increasingly nervous about the midterms, were shocked and spent the weekend measuring the possible fallout.

Those close to the White House say the attack is an outgrowth of President Donald Trump’s mounting frustration over his stymied legislative agenda and anger at Capitol Hill Republicans whom he sees as unhelpful.

In a Saturday tweet, Trump hinted at his displeasure after multiple senators expressed concerns with the bill: “I cannot imagine that these very fine Republican Senators would allow the American people to suffer a broken ObamaCare any longer!”

By targeting Heller, America First Policies is telegraphing to recalcitrant Republican lawmakers — even those trying to navigate treacherous political waters at home — that they will be punished if they don’t go along with the Trump agenda. Other Republicans could soon face similar attacks.

Brian Walsh, president of America First Policies, said after Heller’s Friday news conference that the group’s senior leadership — including former Republican National Committee chief of staff Katie Walsh, Trump fundraiser Tommy Hicks, and Nick Ayers, a longtime top strategist for Vice President Mike Pence — determined that “it was time to make a strong statement.”

“For the greater part of a decade the GOP has promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, taken dozens of votes to do so, now, with the ability to keep that promise on the horizon, legislators are wavering,” Walsh said. “Sen. Heller’s decision to walk away is unacceptable and sends the wrong message to the rest of the senators who are still working to get to ‘yes.’”

Within 90 minutes of Heller’s announcement, the group had mobilized. Determined not to let the news fade on a summer Friday afternoon, Brad Parscale, the digital director on Trump’s presidential campaign who now works with America First Policies, directed an anti-Heller Twitter offensive aimed at ginning up anger among Trump supporters. Spending just over $100,000, the organization encouraged people to tweet at Heller and his staffers, created algorithms that tied Heller with Pelosi, and promoted a “HellerVotesYes” hashtag.

For America First Policies, the move represented something of an about-face. During the House health care debate this spring, White House officials said the group was too passive and should have pressured Republicans who opposed the repeal effort. As Congress entered the summer months, the group promised a more muscular effort to promote the president’s agenda.

The anti-Heller move, however, rankled allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who keeps a close eye on his party’s 2018 plans and is deeply sensitive to attacks on his members. Several McConnell political advisers said they received no warning and vented that it was a serious misstep, especially with the party holding just a two-seat majority.

It sounds like they’ve got a big fight on their hands. Hooray for the good guys, right?

Wrong:

Heller’s team was also blindsided and infuriated by the barrage, said one adviser to the Nevada senator. But, fearful of further antagonizing the White House, they refrained from hitting back.

I will still be surprised if the moderates are the ones to stop this atrocity. Far more likely to be the wingnuts, who are being given cover by the Koch brothers.

Who knows? Maybe they’ll push too hard and a whole group of “moderates” will fall out. But that would be a real change of pace for the Republican Party. None of the so-called moderates have ever bucked the leadership.

“I know you are but what am I” is not presidential

by digby

Has anyone noticed the picture Trump has on his twitter page is a huge crowd dressed in red with arms stretched out in Nazi salutes?

I wrote about Trump’s “I know you are but what am I” gambit for Salon this morning:

In the wake of the big Washington Post report last week chronicling the Obama administration’s responses to the Russian interference in the presidential campaign, Donald Trump finally admitted that it happened. Well, sort of. He did it the only way he could that would make him feel comfortable: passing the buck. In one of his greatest acts of chutzpah yet, Trump attacked Obama for failing to stop the Russian government from helping him win the election.

Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017

Obama Administration official said they “choked” when it came to acting on Russian meddling of election. They didn’t want to hurt Hillary?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017

Then he seemed lose himself for a moment and just tweeted out in all caps MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

It’s tempting to think this was all just Trump needing to vent on twitter (not that that is an acceptable practice for the President of the United States) but it appears to be the official White House strategy. Kelly Ann Conway echoed his line on Sunday Morning:

“It’s the Obama administration that was responsible for doing absolutely nothing from August to January with the knowledge that Russia was hacking into our election. They did absolutely nothing. They’re responsible for this…I have a hacking question for the Obama administration: Why did you, quote, choke, in the name of one of their senior administration officials? Why did you do nothing? Why didn’t you inform candidate Trump?”

Trump himself went on Fox and said, “Well I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it. The CIA gave him information on Russia a long time before the election. … If he had the information, why didn’t he do something about it? He should have done something about it. But you don’t read that. It’s quite sad.”

That’s crazy talk. The whole world knew about it on June 14, 2016 when the Washington Post first reported that Russian actors had hacked the DNC. And Donald Trump certainly knew about it at least as early as July 27th when he said, “They hacked—they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

In the first presidential debate in September, Trump memorably responded to Hillary Clinton’s assertion that the Russians had interfered by saying, “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She’s saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t—maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”

And as for Conway’s obnoxious question about why the Obama administration didn’t inform candidate Trump, well they did. After that contentious debate exchange NBC News reported:

During Sunday’s debate, Donald Trump once again said he doesn’t know whether Russia is trying to hack the U.S. election, despite Friday’s statement by the U.S. intelligence community pointing the finger at Putin –- and despite the fact that Trump was personally briefed on Russia’s role in the hacks by U.S. officials.

A senior U.S. intelligence official assured NBC News that cybersecurity and the Russian government’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 election have been briefed to, and discussed extensively with, both parties’ candidates, surrogates and leadership, since mid-August. “To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation,” said the official. “The intelligence community has walked a very thin line in not taking sides, but both candidates have all the information they need to be crystal clear.”

His rejection of this information has continued for months with tweets about the Russia scandal like this:

“Witch Hunt!”
“a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election”
“fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election”
“taxpayer funded charade”
“a total hoax”
“an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election”
“A total scam!”
“phony”
“Fake”
“a hoax”
“FAKE NEWS”

These statements were all made since he became president. The only one failing to inform him is himself. And his persistent unwillingness to criticize Vladimir Putin or even admit that it’s happening has created an overwhelming suspicion that he’s hiding something.

None of this is to say that President Obama and his administration made the right decision by not taking action earlier. The Washington Post article is fairly damning on that count. And as Julia Ioffe observed in this article in the Atlantic, it might have made a difference in another way if the administration had done before the election what it did afterwards:

When Obama did make the attack public, the amount of panic and political dust kicked up by the release of the intelligence report in January, along with the congressional investigations it triggered, proved debilitating for Russian ambitions. The Russians lost their main ally in the White House, Michael Flynn, who was pushing President Trump to unilaterally lift Russia sanctions.

It’s doubtful that alone would have altered the outcome of the race. We know that the Republican leadership was happy for the Russian government to help their team get elected and they would have dismissed any public actions as dirty partisan pool. But it is possible that it might have made the Russian government pull back from the brink and think better of making such an audacious move.

It’s likely that the administration thought Clinton was a lock and that they could deal with it properly after the election. That was very bad judgment. They should have known that in a year in which the Republican Party had 17 (mostly) qualified candidates and yet they nominated Donald Trump, anything could happen.

Blaming Obama for the Russian hacking will probably convince most of Trump’s voters that he’s off the hook. They’ll believe anything. But that won’t solve his problem. Thanks to his own clumsy, self-destructive attempts get the investigation into the interference quashed he’s now the subject of a criminal inquiry. Tweeting in so many words, “I know you are but what am I” isn’t going to change that.

This is the worst case of “I know you are but what am I” in American political history but it’s quite clever. It’s leaving Democrats disoriented and the media bewildered.

Haberman claims that this is a technique Trump uses in order to make deals — be on all sides of an issue.

So… this is your way of telling your cult members you lied to them again when you said it was a “hoax” & “fake news?” #maga https://t.co/b1gBOSohoK

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 26, 2017

He didn’t do more but if he had the Trump campaign would have complained that he was meddling in the campaign.That’s why they didn’t do more.

Is he going to stick to the new line that the Russians did interfere? Who knows.

Talked himself into  corner… did it happen or didn’t it?

Cyber-security commission?

If it was real now they are going to have to back sanctions he’s going to have to change his tune. Totally reversed himself.

“I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election.” He JUST heard? https://t.co/8oS2md6gV7

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 25, 2017

Get busy. Get loud.
by Tom Sullivan

Link here.

The country awaits the new scoring from the Congressional Budget Office of Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Obamacare repeal bill. Expect the report to show millions will lose the protections of health insurance coverage. With opposition mounting to the repeal bill released last Thursday, President Trump cannot understand why Democrats do not join with Republicans and “wrap their arms around it so that everybody is happy with it.” He complained Sunday to Fox News, “Well, their theme is resist. I’ve never heard of anything like this, resist.”

Except that time he “moved on” that married woman down in Palm Beach and failed.

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana urged Congress to designate a National Day of Civility on July 12. Johnson, a Republican, was responding to the shooting of his colleague Rep. Steve Scalise on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia. No doubt he is more sincere than the president.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch is suspicious, if not of Johnson, of others urging civility. He recalls the 2010 Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity as a good-natured but misguided diversion. Elsewhere, T-partiers were “working their proverbial butts off” to elect a slate of retrograde politicians that would give Republicans control over redistricting in state house across the country. The GOP sweep in 2010 would introduce the country to a slew of voter suppression measures and more:

The truth is that a lot of the people pleading for a return to civility in American politics are actually hoping for something different: Passivity, or inaction. It’s not something completely new — using protests and occasional lapses into violence as an excuse to crack down on dissent and take away the civil liberties that are supposed to be guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights is an old trick.

REPUBLICANS: [want to pass a law that will kill people]
PEOPLE: people will die
REPUBLICANS: how dare you
MEDIA: we are a divided nation— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) June 23, 2017

The shootings in Alexandria by James Hodgkinson, an unstable man with a history of domestic violence, while inexcusable, are sadly inevitable in a population of 320 million, Bunch writes.

But while no one should incite violence, there’s also a real danger in too much “civility” and calm at a moment like this, when it’s unfortunately not an exaggeration to say the fate of America as a democracy is hanging by a thread. If you’re not angry about what’s taking place in Washington at this very moment, you’re not paying attention. Which is what they’re going for.

It’s easy for people who lie with verve to cow civilized opponents with charges of incivility. Most of the time, they fall for it too. Calls for civility come whenever those in power strive to hang onto it in a system that is “unfair and unequal.” Don’t fall for it this time, not with “the fate of America as a democracy … hanging by a thread,” Bunch insists. One gathers he has more on his mind than Obamacare repeal.

The people are going to have to do what the politicians won’t do. Fight — with reckless abandon but under control. Violence never solves anything, but meaningful social changes has never come without large-scale resistance and with righteous anger, from Selma to Stonewall and beyond. Reasonableness has its place, but it’s important to understand that there’s a class of folks out there who talk about “civility” when what they really mean is don’t call your senator, don’t circle the Capitol at 5 p.m. Wednesday night to show your outrage, and by all means do not say anything that will interfere with this orderly transfer of $800 billion from the struggling middle class to the already wealthy. Yes, there’s a problem with the level of anger in American politics right now. It’s not high enough.

There’s still time to have your voices heard on the Republicans’ Better Care Reconciliation Act (Obamacare repeal). Don’t worry if your senators are Democrats and already with you. Don’t assume they know what you think. They need ammunition. That’s you. If your senators are or Republicans, get loud 24/7.

See who will be most affected by the Senate health-care bill’s subsidy cuts https://t.co/740spVcuVx— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 26, 2017

“You can take all the right steps, you can show all the personal responsibility in the world, but there are things that will happen that you will never be able to plan for.“

He just wants a little civility for heavens sakes

by digby

President Trump gave an interview today. He said this about the health care bill:

“When I ran, I talked about the rigged system because I saw I was winning states that I wasn’t getting, the delegates I should be getting. I would look at this and I would say ‘what kind of a system?’ The whole system is very, a lot of bad things going on. A lot of very bad things going on.

One of the things that should be solved are probably won’t be is the Republicans and Democrats don’t get together. And I am open arms, but I don’t see that happening. They fight each other, they the level of hostility. 

And by the way, this isn’t just Trump… this has been like this for years. You’ve been doing this for a long time. It has been like that for a long time. But the level of hostility as an example of the health care bill you are reporting on and everyone is reporting on. It would be so great if the Democrats and Republicans could get together wrap their arms around it and come up with something that everyone is happy with, it’s so easy, but we won’t get one Democrat vote, not one, and if it were the greatest bill ever proposed in mankind we wouldn’t get a vote, and that’s terrible thing.

So there is well look their theme is resist. I’ve never heard anything like this. Resist.

He says thing like this with wide-eyed wonder and then rushes off to tweet some hideously rude comment.

Here are few things he’s said about Democrats:

That’s from a list of hundreds of insults he’s hurled at everyone in media and politics on twitter over the last couple of years.

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Politics and Reality Radio: Study Finds the Right’s More Divided Than the Left; In MSM, Trump Spoke About Islam 7x More Than Muslims.

with Joshua Holland

This week, we’re joined by political scientist Lee Drutman, the author of a new study that finds — yet again — that cultural divides between the parties are more consequential than differences over economics and other concrete policy disputes. But what might be a more controversial finding is that the supposed existential battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party is overblown, and those who supported Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in last year’s primaries are more similar ideologically than the conventional wisdom would suggest.

Then Joshua Holland takes a quick look at the politics of Senate Republicans’ disastrous health care bill.

Last but certainly not least, we speak with Meighan Stone, a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, about her new study looking empirically at how the mainstream press covers the Islamic community and refugees — who speaks, what topics are selected and the overall tenor. What she found goes a long way toward explaining why large numbers of Americans’ hold negative attitudes about the world’s second largest religion.

Playlist:
Pauline Henry: “Feel Like Making Love”
Santiago y Luis Auserón: “Las Malas Lenguas”
Pluto Shervington: “Kung Fu Fighting”
Donald Fagen: “Snowbound”

As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes, Soundcloud or Podbean.

What will we tell the children?

by digby

I encourage you to read the NY Times’ chronicle of all the president’s lies since he took office. It is an awe-inspiring list, and a very handy reference for someone like me.

Apparently Republicans are fine with this. I can’t help but recall the endless caterwauling over the fact that President Clinton didn’t immediately publicly admit that he had had a consensual affair. It was the end of the Republic. he had to be impeached.

But as long as they get their tax cuts they are a-ok with this.

There are no right wing terrorists, only patriots

by digby

I posted the other day about the new study on terrorist violence in the United States. It showed that the most common form, and its deadly, is right wing violence. Surprise.

Get a load of this from Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones:

The Department of Homeland Security announced today that it is restarting a $10 million grant program for “Countering Violent Extremism” but will no longer fund Life After Hate, a group dedicated to countering neo-Nazis and white extremism.

In January, before President Barack Obama left office, DHS announced it would be giving grants to Life After Hate and 30 other anti-extremist groups and law enforcement agencies, but the Trump administration suspended them before the money had been awarded. The new list of grantees announced today by Trump’s DHS includes groups that combat Al Qaeda and ISIS and leaves out organizations primarily focused on countering white supremacists and other far-right hate groups. Perhaps this should come as no surprise because, as Reuters reported in February, Trump transition officials as far back as December were debating changing the focus and name of the program from “Countering Violent Extremism” to “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.” President Trump has also made it a habit to largely ignore attacks committed by anyone who doesn’t qualify as a “radical Islamic terrorist.”

“Obviously we are disappointed in that decision,” Life After Hate co-founder and board member Tony McAlver told Mother Jones. Comprised of 50 former members of right-wing hate groups, Life After Hate has received 10 times more requests for help in the past year than in the previous five years combined, McAlver says. The organization was hoping to secure a $400,000 grant from DHS, which would have allowed Life After Hate to expand its efforts with an in-house tech team to identify and counter neo-Nazi recruitment online. “It was not to pay salaries and stuff,” McAlver says. “It was for a specific online campaign.”

Here’s the response from the Trump administration liars:

Responding to questions from Mother Jones, DHS denied that Life After Hate was excluded because of its focus on far-right extremism. “DHS used its discretion to include other factors and information when reviewing each applicant” such as whether the applicants “were viable to continue after the award period,” said DHS spokeswoman Lucy Martinez. “The program has not been altered to focus on any one type of violent extremism,” she added, maintaining that 16 projects funded by DHS “are equipped to handle all types of violent extremism, including white supremacist violent extremism.”

That’s BS. They will not bother with right wing violence. They are allies, good Real Americans, Trump voters. Remember, Trump routinely celebrated vigilantism on the campaign trail , having his crowds chant “Death Wish” and encouraging gun nuts to exercise their second amendment rights on Hillary Clinton if she had won in order to keep her from appointing a Supreme Court Justice. Right wing terrorists are valued members of their base.

Is he having memory issues?

by digby

He sent that this morning. Does he not know what year it is?

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Make it go viral

by digby

Watch this video. It shows exactly what these GOP monsters are trying to do. For fucking tax cuts for Ivanka.

Andy Slavitt on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell from Andy Slavitt on Vimeo.

Put this video on your Facebook page. Tweet it, send it by email, whatever. It says everything about what they are turning us into.

People, we are an incredibly wealthy country. We don’t have to deny heath care to our most vulnerable citizens. We don’t have to deny it to anyone. We have the money. We are just being run by radical zombies who have only one thought in their minds as they rampage through the country: tax cuts for Ivanka. It’s their only purpose in life.

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