Brothers in arms
by digby
In an interview with Bloomberg before the election, Mr. Putin suggested that reporters were worrying too much about who exactly stole the material.
“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?” he said, in a point that Mr. Trump has sometimes echoed. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”
Trump has said this many times.
The question is why he’s so sure that it won’t be turned on him some time in the future.
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Get out now
by digby
Do not fuck around with this thing:
#Irma is the strongest #hurricane in the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean Sea & Gulf of Mexico in NHC records https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFb pic.twitter.com/P8ebbQJR4k— NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) September 5, 2017
I went through a major hurricane on the gulf coast that killed a whole bunch of people when I was a kid. My Dad worked for NASA at the time and got word that it was an epic storm and he took me out of school and he and my mother and I went north days ahead. A lot of people laughed at us for being so hysterical and they stayed to “ride it out.” It was devastating.
Just get out people. The worst thing that happens is that you waste some time. You can’t save your prpterty from a Category 5 hurricane. It’s not worth dying over.
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Trump troll of the week
by digby
If Trump can get Ryan and McConnell on board with this, it would be a Very Good Thing. But I’m not holding my breath:
President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have agreed to pursue a deal that would permanently remove the requirement that Congress repeatedly raise the debt ceiling, three people familiar with the decision said.
Trump and Schumer discussed the idea Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting. The two, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.), agreed to work together over the next several months to try to finalize a plan, which would need to be approved by Congress.
One of the people familiar described it as a “gentlemen’s agreement.”
“The president encouraged congressional leaders to find a more permanent solution to the debt ceiling so the vote is not so frequently politicized,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
With a deadline of Sept. 29 looming and Congress nearing their summer recess, the debt ceiling is primed to be a big issue when they return. Here’s what you need to know. (Video: Meg Kelly/Photo: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the meeting.Another person familiar with the meeting said Vice President Pence is open to changes he considers in line with the “Gephardt Rule” — a parliamentary rule making it easier to tie raising the debt ceiling with Congress passing a budget. The rule is named after former House majority leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).
The deal comes after Trump sided with Democratic leaders Wednesday on a plan to temporarily raise the debt ceiling and fund hurricane relief, rejecting a Republican plan and vexing many in his party.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said at a news conference Thursday that he opposes scrapping the debt-limit process.
“I won’t get into a private conversation that we had [at the White House], but I think there’s a legitimate role for the power of the purse of the Article 1 powers, and that’s something we defend here in Congress.”
Article 1 of the Constitution sets up Congress’s powers, giving it the authority to write and pass legislation and appropriate government money.
The U.S. government spends more money than it brings in through taxes and fees, and it covers that gap by issuing debt to borrow money. The government can borrow money only up to a certain limit, known as the debt limit or the debt ceiling. The government routinely bumps up against this ceiling, requiring Congress to raise it again and again. These votes are often politicized and can cause panic among investors.
If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, investors have warned that the stock market could crash because the government could fall behind on its obligations if it isn’t allowed to borrow more money.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has suggested scrapping the existing debt-limit process and replacing it with one that automatically lifts the borrowing limit every time Congress appropriates future spending.
It remains to be seen if Trump’s base will be more upset that he’s canoodling with Chuck Schumer than Paul Ryan, but I think he’s got enough juice with his cultists that they’ll suddenly decide they believe bipartisanship again. They’ll back him no matter what he does.
We’ll see. Ryan and McConnell still have to agree to bring this stuff to floor and I could see Bannon and the Freedom Caucus boys pushing them from the opposite direction, Democrats fighting among themselves about resistance and Trump remains above the fray.
I’d give this a 1% chance of actually happening but you never know …
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The Russian tapestry
by digby
I wrote about the latest threads in the scandal for Salon today:
Today is a very big day for Donald Trump Jr. He is going to testify before investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee about his fateful meeting in June of 2016 with a room full of Russians he thought were bearing dirt on Hillary Clinton. This will presumably be the first time Don Jr. has submitted himself to questioning by anyone more aggressive than his father’s pal Sean Hannity, although one can assume his lawyers have been drilling him for some time to ensure he doesn’t screw the pooch and say something incriminating.
I frankly don’t understand why people are still wondering if there was collusion during the campaign. Clearly, Junior was happy to receive information on Clinton from what he was told was the Russian government. His colleagues Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were copied on the same offer, and they attended the meeting where the info was supposed to be turned over. Those are confirmed events. Whether they received any information is still unknown but there is no doubt they were at least willing to collude, which seems like it should be a problem (at the very least) for Kushner, who is currently working in the White House with a top security clearance.
Furthermore, Trump himself said the very next day:
I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week, and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting. I wonder if the press will want to attend. Who knows?
He never held that specific “discussion.” But it certainly sounds as if he thought he was getting hold of some serious dirt on Clinton.
Don Jr. is not the most poised of Trump’s various offspring, and he has a history of saying untrue things in public while looking like a five-year-old who wet the bed. He won’t have to take an oath, but he should resist the temptation to follow in his father’s footsteps and lie, because he can still be prosecuted for perjury. Manafort has already testified before congress, and another attendee of that meeting, Russian émigré lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, was called before the grand jury. So at least two other people have already told their version of the story.
But that meeting is just one investigative thread in this complex scandal. A major story about the Russia interference in the election hit on Wednesday night, confirming the covert Facebook campaign that had been reported earlier in the year by Time magazine. The Washington Post reported that Facebook had informed the House Intelligence Committee that an internal investigation uncovered advertising bought by a Russian “troll farm” known for disseminating Russian propaganda. Whether that’s the only incident is unknown, but what makes this interesting is that the ads were very carefully targeted, which most observers believe must have involved some expertise on the American side. That avenue of investigation suddenly looks much more promising.
Coincidentally (or not) this revelation comes on the heels of a proposal by Rep. Ron DeSantis, a Florida Republican, to limit the Mueller investigation to six months, complaining that it’s nothing but a “fishing expedition.” DeSantis is one of the congressmen who benefited from the release of hacked internal documents from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, an action that also seemed to be based on specific targeting information that Russian hackers would be unlikely to know.
And just to keep things interesting, Rep. Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence chair, who had supposedly recused himself from the Russia investigation after being caught running around in the middle of the night conspiring with the White House to try to prove that President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, seems to have jumped back in the fray. According to CNN, Nunes lost his temper at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray for failing to produce documents pertaining to the notorious “Steele dossier,” suggesting that he has a funny definition of “recusal.”
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told CNN that Nunes sent a subpoena to the Department of Justice to try to discredit the dossier — whose contents, as far as we know, have never been officially confirmed in the first place. Schiff said some Republicans seem to think if they can accomplish this it will undermine the entire investigation, which means they are truly grasping at straws.
Finally, there’s the latest strand of the investigation pertaining to Trump’s repeated falsehoods about not doing business in Moscow while he was running for president. The stars of this subplot are the colorful Russian-American gangster Felix Sater and his boyhood chum from Brooklyn, Michael Cohen, who is Trump’s longtime lawyer. Cohen gave an ill-advised interview to Vanity Fair which was published on Wednesday.
Cohen, the man everyone sees as the Trumps’ Tom Hagen, claims that he’s been instructed by counsel not to talk to the president, but he basically said over and over again that there was nothing anyone could do to make him squeal. Nothing. He declared there was “no money in the world that could get me to disclose anything about them,” meaning the Trump family, and promised that he’d “never walk away.” At one point he said he’d take a bullet for Donald Trump. The president will surely get the message that his honorary son is honoring the Trump omertà.
Cohen was brought into the Trump Organization by Donald Jr., and like Jr., he has been asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cohen had wanted to testify in public but was talked out of it by people who know he has a hair-trigger temper and was likely to blow up on national television. He told Vanity Fair that he might lose his cool during the committee hearing anyway, because he won’t put up with “stupidity,” and promised that his transcript would be “interesting to read.” All these Trump people sound like they’ve watched too many episodes of “The Sopranos.”
Nearly eight months into the Trump presidency, the various threads of this Russia scandal are slowly being woven into a tapestry that will illustrate what really happened between the president’s campaign and the Russian government in 2016. So far it’s not looking pretty.
Stormy weather
by Tom Sullivan
Screen grab, aerial view of Barbuda after Irma strike via ABS Television/Radio.
The eye of Hurricane Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, damaged or destroyed 95 percent of the French portion of the island of St. Martin according to one local official — “an enormous catastrophe.” The island of Barbuda has been reduced to “literally rubble,” reports Prime Minister Gaston Browne. Nearly one million are without power on Puerto Rico, which was spared a direct hit.
With 180 mph winds, Irma has been described as an EF4 tornado 45 miles wide. Florida Gov. Rick Scott warned that Category 5 Irma is “bigger, faster and stronger” than Hurricane Andrew. Officials ordered a tourist evacuation of the Keys on Wednesday and the governor will instruct residents to leave today, reports the Miami Herald:
On Wednesday morning, a caravan of cars and trucks — many towing boats — headed north out of the low-lying Keys. Traffic backed up south of Upper Matecumbe but wasn’t much worse than the usual workday rush or weekend crush. An estimated 12,000 visitors left the Keys. And even some old-time conchs who rode threats out in the past admitted they were rattled.
“I don’t think it’ll be safe anywhere,” said Melissa Norman, who was packing up belongings at her mobile home in Key Largo’s Blackwater Sound. She’s heading to Fort Myers, where she has an aunt.
Officials are hoping for a more orderly evacuation than occurred during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 which created gridlock. Irma is expected to make landfall in South Florida on Sunday.
Here are the current conditions & forecast for #HurricaneIrma. Updates continue all morning long on @weatherchannel. pic.twitter.com/CTvb3IO3vv— AMHQ (@AMHQ) September 7, 2017
By Monday night into Tuesday, Georgia and the Carolinas may get a visit from Irma.
Not looking forward to the visit.
Speaking of unpredictable forces of nature, the president shived his own party yesterday by striking a deal with Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi on a short-term
extension of the debt limit:
Democratic congressional leaders announced Wednesday that they had reached a deal with President Trump in an Oval Office meeting to pass hurricane relief funding this week, along with measures to push off pressing fiscal deadlines to December — over the apparent objections of Republican leaders.
Meaning, if this comes off, Republicans will be looking at another debt limit vote ahead of the 2018 mid-terms, something they’d hoped to avoid. The move by the president left Republicans “shell shocked.”
Cry me a river.
* * * * * * * *
Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.
Get out of Dodge
by digby
I’m sure it’s not necessary for me to say this, but … get the hell out of Florida right now if you haven’t already. This is unbelievable:
A meteorologist on Chris Hayes just said that if there was such a thing as a Category 6, this would be it. It has had sustained 180 mile an hour winds for more than 30 hours. The last one with such sustained winds was Hurricane Alan in 1980 which last for 18 hours.
Get out people.
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Even the weather report is a fake news conspiracy now
by digby
He’s always been a conspiracy nut but Limbaugh has gone full Alex Jones now:
Rush Limbaugh didn’t say the magic words, but on Tuesday he basically accused the media of creating fake news about Hurricane Irma, which is threatening Florida after hitting Barbuda and Antigua. The storm’s 185-mile-per-hour winds tied the record high for any Atlantic hurricane making landfall.
[Category 5 Hurricane Irma slams Lesser Antilles, and is targeting Florida]
“These storms, once they actually hit, are never as strong as they’re reported,” Limbaugh claimed on his syndicated radio show. He added that “the graphics have been created to make it look like the ocean’s having an exorcism, just getting rid of the devil here in the form of this hurricane, this bright red stuff.”
Why would the media exaggerate the threat of a hurricane? Here’s Limbaugh’s theory:
There is symbiotic relationship between retailers and local media, and it’s related to money. It revolves around money. You have major, major industries and businesses which prosper during times of crisis and panic, such as a hurricane, which could destroy or greatly damage people’s homes, and it could interrupt the flow of water and electricity. So what happens?
Well, the TV stations begin reporting this and the panic begins to increase. And then people end up going to various stores to stock up on water and whatever they might need for home repairs and batteries and all this that they’re advised to get, and a vicious circle is created. You have these various retail outlets who spend a lot of advertising dollars with the local media.
The local media, in turn, reports in such a way as to create the panic way far out, which sends people into these stores to fill up with water and to fill up with batteries, and it becomes a never-ending repeated cycle. And the two coexist. So the media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit because they’re getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers.To state the obvious, these are potentially dangerous comments from Limbaugh, who is based in Palm Beach, Fla. He is encouraging listeners who might be in Irma’s path not to take seriously the official guidance disseminated through the media.
“I wish that not everything that involved news had become corrupted and politicized, but it just has,” he said.
You have to love he fact that even Rush Limbaugh sees it all as a big capitalist plot. I don’t think these people even know what swill they’re spewing anymore. Their ideology is a pie of ruins so now they’re spreading conspiracy theories like a bunch of freshman Marxists to discredit the news media.
Aye yay yay. Drinking is called for.
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Sure, people with warrants deserve to die in a historic hurricane
by digby
Yet another creepy sheriff. Sam Stein reports:
As Hurricane Irma churns towards Florida, the Polk County Sheriff’s Department sent out a series of tweets Wednesday telling those with outstanding warrants that they will be sent to jail if they turn up at a storm shelter. The tweets used cheeky language—“we’ll gladly escort you”—as a guise for a policy that will likely risk lives. Floridians who stand to be jailed may simply choose not to seek shelter in the midst of a Category 5 storm. If that happens, Carrie Horstman, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s office said, the fault won’t lie with authorities. “I don’t know at this point what this storm will do,” she told The Daily Beast. “We are trying to give people a heads up as many days in advance as possible to prepare of this storm.”
In an interview, Horstman further explained that it was policy to check IDs at the shelter doors to prevent sex offenders from getting to close to children. “While we are checking, if we see someone with an active warrant we have to place them under arrest,” she added. She didn’t seem persuaded by the criticism that this would discourage people from showing up in the first place. “That is a risk a person would run,” Horstman said. “I think it is much safer to be in our jail than to expose yourself to a Category 5 storm. You are using the phrase, ‘people who are scared to go to jail.’ If you have a warrant, legally you should be in jail. You should turn yourself in and be safe in our jail rather than risk your life waiting out a storm.”
That’s a real public servant there. Probably a Limbaugh fan.
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Oh look, more evidence that the GOP congress may have benefited from Russian meddling
by digby
There’s more news on possible Russia collusion in the 2016 race:
Representatives of Facebook told congressional investigators Wednesday that it has discovered it sold ads during the U.S. presidential election to a shadowy Russian company seeking to target voters, according to several people familiar with the company’s findings.
Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian “troll farm” with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda, these people said.
A small portion of the ads, which began in the summer of 2015, directly named Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the people said. Most of the ads focused on pumping politically divisive issues such as gun rights and immigration fears, as well as gay rights and racial discrimination.
The acknowledgment by Facebook comes as congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are probing Russian interference in the U.S. election, including allegations that the Kremlin may have coordinated with the Trump campaign.
The U.S. intelligence community concluded in January that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election to help elect Trump, including by using paid social media trolls to spread fake news intended to influence public opinion.
Even though the ad spending from Russia is tiny relative to overall campaign costs, the report from Facebook that a Russian firm was able to target political messages is likely to fuel pointed questions from investigators about whether the Russians received guidance from people in the United States — a question some Democrats have been asking for months.
“I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots. Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware really raises some questions. I think that’s a worthwhile area of inquiry,” Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said during a May airing of the podcast Pod Save America. “How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?”
How indeed?
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Russian assistance to the GOP congress in 2016. We already know quite a bit about direct help. This is just more evidence.
I assume Mueller is also looking at this which explains why House Republicans are so agitated and anxious to cut his investigation short. Some of them are even implicated.
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Why the plight of the DREAMers is unprecedented
by digby
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| Why do they protest? Because they are Americans and they don’t believe their country is a police state. Are they right? |
If you want to understand why the situation with the DREAMers is so acute, read this long piece by Dara Lind at Vox. This is a unique situation brought about by America’s paranoia and essential racism. We’ve always had migration back and forth over the southern border and Latino culture has been part of America since the westward expansion. But we’ve never had kids in this situation before because we’ve never had such draconian laws before.
The Trump administration’s announcement Tuesday, that it will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — removing deportation protection and work permits from nearly 800,000 young unauthorized immigrants — unless Congress passes a bill in the next six months to protect DACA recipients, isn’t a punt or a reprieve. It’s an opportunity to deflect, or share, the responsibility for what would be an unprecedented act in US history.
There’s never really been a time when a generation of people, raised and rooted in the United States, has been stripped of official recognition and pushed back into the precarity of unauthorized-immigrant life.
Even though DACA never officially legalized anyone, ending it would be, in a way, the biggest “illegalization” of immigrants in American history.
As a policy matter, it’s straightforward: Ending DACA is unprecedented because DACA itself was more or less unprecedented. Never in US history had the government offered protection to so many people who didn’t have (and weren’t subsequently given) the opportunity to get full legal status from there.
The government has a lot of power to shape immigrants’ lives — but it’s never had perfect control over who immigrates to begin with. The history of immigrants who received DACA protections is unique, and the legal status to legitimize or delegitimize them is too. Often as not, when politicians try to reconcile law and reality, the result is that the law gets changed to bend to the reality — not that the reality is changed by enforcing or changing the law.
DACA was one such attempt. If Congress and the White House can’t agree on a bill within a six-month timeframe, and the Trump administration rescinds DACA, the US will be in wholly uncharted territory.
Please read the whole thing to fully understand how we got here and what this situation represents fundamentally about our country. These 800,000 of our fellow Americans deserve to be secure in their lives and futures. But it’s bigger than just them. This is about our definition of ourselves as a country and society.