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Month: October 2017

You can believe Donald Trump or you can believe the rotting corpses.

Published by digby on October 13, 2017

You can believe Donald Trump or you can believe the rotting corpses.

by digby

This is amazing:

Late last month, Pentagon communications officials inadvertently included Bloomberg climate reporter Christopher Flavelle on an internal distribution list, in which Defense Department and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials discussed their evolving strategy for presenting the response to Hurricane Maria.

Despite repeatedly alerting officials to the error, Bloomberg continued receiving the emails for five days. Those messages, each of which was marked “unclassified,” offer a glimpse into the federal government’s struggle to convince the public that the response effort was going well. That struggle was compounded by the commander-in-chief, and eased only when public attention was pulled to a very different disaster.

Below are passages from those messages, tied to the events that federal officials were trying to respond to.

Sept. 28: Eight days after Maria hit, coverage of the federal government’s response is getting more negative.

The Government Message: Pentagon officials tell staff to emphasize “coverage of life-saving/life-sustaining operations” and for spokespeople to avoid language about awaiting instructions from FEMA, “as that goes against the teamwork top-line message.”

Sept. 29: San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz criticizes Washington’s spin, calling Puerto Rico a “people-are-dying story.” 

The Government Message: FEMA talking points ignore Cruz, instructing its officials to say that “the federal government’s full attention is on Hurricane Maria response.”

Sept. 30: Trump attacks the mayor’s “poor leadership ability.”

The Pentagon worries that Trump’s “dialogue” with Cruz is becoming the story, with “many criticizing his lack of empathy.”
The Government Message: FEMA stresses its success in reaching “all municipalities in Puerto Rico.”

Oct. 1: Trump calls critics of the response “politically motivated ingrates.”

The Government Message: Defense staff admit that “the perception of USG response continues to be negative.” Spokespeople are told to say, “I am very proud of our DOD forces,” before conceding “there are some challenges to work through.”

Oct. 2: The massacre in Las Vegas dominates the headlines.

The Government Message: The shooting “has drawn mainstream TV attention away from Puerto Rico response,” FEMA says. Still, the roundup seems to have lost some of its previous optimism. It concludes, simply: “Negative tonality.”

Here, it’s taken to its natural conclusion:

Death tolls are one of the main ways the public understands the impact of a disaster. And as my colleague Alexia Fernandez Campbell and I reported earlier this week, the official death count from Puerto Rico of 45 is very much at odds with other reports from the situation on the ground.

On October 3, President Donald Trump used the low death toll — which was then 16 — as an opportunity to play down the severity of the disaster when he visited the island. And on Thursday, a Republican lawmaker used the low death toll to again claim the situation in Puerto Rico is no longer life-threatening.

“If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said on CNN’s New Day, as first reported by the Hill.

[…]

The New York Times on Thursday described Puerto Ricans desperately hunting for bottled water in the capital of San Juan. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that some have been resorting to drinking water from contaminated Superfund sites. And the Guardian cited FEMA officials who said that they had a shortfall of nearly 2 million meals a day to meet the food needs on the island.

Counting the dead in the wake of a disaster the scale of Hurricane Maria is no doubt extremely challenging. But Vox’s analysis suggests that the government is being very cautious in designating deaths as directly or indirectly hurricane-related, and painting a less severe picture, compared to the public information available. And so the American public — and some policymakers like Perry — may perceive the situation on the ground as less serious than it is.

On Thursday, a day after Vox published its findings, two members of Congress announcedthey were requesting an audit of the Puerto Rico death toll, citing our report. “It would be morally reprehensible to intentionally underreport the true death toll to portray relief efforts as more successful than they are,” wrote Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS). “If, on the contrary, this information has benignly been muddled due to a lack of capacity on the island, then the federal government must work hand-in-hand with Puerto Rico’s government to provide a clearer assessment.”

I’m going to guess there’s nothing benign about it.

And, by the way, more are dropping from untreated diseases every day. It’s the tropics.

But they shouldn’t have managed their money better, amirite? They only have themselves to blame.

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He’s just going to blow it all up

Published by digby on October 13, 2017

He’s just going to blow it all up

by digby

I am more impressed by his populism and isolationism every day. Just this week, he’s told Puerto Rico they can all die, he’s signed an executive order to destroy health insurance for millions and now this:

President Trump announced Friday that he was decertifying the Iran nuclear deal, stating that he will not support a “fanatical regime that has spread chaos and death around the world.” Simultaneously, his administration issued sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard for supporting terrorism, a move which reveals Trump has every intention of letting the deal implode.

Key quote: “In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated… our participation can be canceled by me, as president, at any time.”

I’m sure Kim Jong Un will have a renewed interest in negotiations knowing that.

Sadly, the Republican party is fine with all this. This isn’t what they consider the “crazy” stuff.

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Is everyone still impressed with Trump’s “populism”? I’m sure Puerto Ricans are

Published by digby on October 13, 2017

Is everyone still impressed with Trump’s “populism”? I’m sure Puerto Ricans are


by digby

I wrote about the ongoing disaster for Salon this morning:

It’s more than a little bit ironic that President Trump was ranting this week about pulling the broadcast licenses of NBC stations when there are a group of absurdly biased stations owned by a right wing company called Sinclair Media that has bought off the FCC and actually is broadcasting lies and fake news on behalf of Donald Trump. (This New York Times article from last August tells the tale.) Apparently, Trump watches this conservative network, or follows its discredited journalist Sharyl Atkisson on twitter, because on Thursday morning he cited this promo for her upcoming program:

Trump became enraged at this and let fly with an astonishing series of tweets essentially saying Puerto Rico was asking for it and there’s a limit to how much the federal government is willing to do to fix it:

Even the man Trump calls “Ricky,” the Governor who has gone out of his way to kiss his ring and treat him like a savior, had to respond to that::

 It’s long past time for them to be accountable for their territorial government’s past financial mismanagement. That would include the disabled, children, the elderly and the poor who have no money so will have to pay with their health, their futures and their lives. It’s the kind of tough love Trump always practices when people mishandle their money. People other than himself, that is.
After all, when it comes to financial catastrophes, he’s an expert. He’s failed at dozens of businesses, from airlines to football teams to fraudulent real state scams and cheap foreign-made consumer goods. He has bankrupted four businesses, including casinos — which is almost impossible — and has always made sure that other people paid the price. The people whom he owed millions of dollars, from local vendors to employees to big banks and hedge funds, were “held accountable” for the mistake of providing money and services to Donald Trump without getting their money up front. He taught them a lesson they won’t soon forget.

Needless to say, the difference between how Trump has treated the other states that were hit by big storms this year is a little bit different.

He hasn’t tweeted one of those for Puerto Rico. In fairness, it’s highly likely that until the hurricane hit, and for some time afterward, he had no idea that Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens. Once he found that out — and also learned that Puerto Ricans on the island can’t vote in presidential elections — he realized that it was probably safe to treat them like second-class citizens who don’t deserve government help, at least not the way Real Americans do in states Trump won.

White House chief of staff John Kelly gave a press briefing on Thursday. When he was asked about Trump’s tweets he said this:

This country, our country, will stand with those American citizens in Puerto Rico until the job is done but the tweet about FEMA and DOD and the military is exactly accurate. They’re not going to be there forever, and the whole point is to start to work yourself out of a job and transition to the rebuilding process.

It’s their country too. A Category 5 hurricane hit Puerto Rico just three weeks ago. Why are they even talking about this?

Kelly didn’t address the fact that Trump’s real purpose with the tweets was to once again fulminate about the financial cost of disaster relief for Puerto Rico, which he has been doing from the beginning when he wasn’t insulting the island’s people and whatever local leadership he found to be improperly grateful for his grudging attention.

In any case, FEMA is not just an agency that parachutes in and out of disaster areas. In the first days after Hurricane Harvey, FEMA director Brock Long told CNN, “FEMA is going to be there for years … this disaster is going to be a landmark event. We’re setting up and gearing up for the next couple years.” The agency was in New Orleans for more than seven years after Katrina. As of today, FEMA is still operating 50 disaster recovery centers in Texas and 18 in Florida.

I tried to find out where such centers may be in Puerto Rico, but the relevant FEMA website was down for hours and then gave a warning that the site was not safe. That likely makes no difference to most Puerto Ricans, since 80 percent of the population still has no electricity and the biggest problem at the moment is that many are living in houses with rapidly spreading mold and disease-carrying mosquitoes and lack safe drinking water. This is exposing them to dangerous bacteria, including a life-threatening infection known as leptospirosis, which the governor says has probably killed at least four people so far, with the number likely to climb.

Rachel Maddow noted on her show Thursday night that the hospital ship USS Comfort is docked in the San Juan harbor with eight patients on board. It has 800 beds. No one knows why sick people haven’t been transferred there. Volunteer nurses sound panicked, saying, “People are going to die, something is not working.”

Disaster response to Hurricane Maria has been a mess from the beginning. There may be some valid reasons for it, although the defensiveness of the administration — including the FEMA director who said they were “filtering out” the mayor of San Juan’s complaints — indicates an awareness that it has dropped the ball.

There is no possible excuse for the continuing obnoxious behavior of the president of the United States, who truly seems to believe that the people of Puerto Rico must suffer and die because some politicians in the past mismanaged the territory’s finances and the island’s citizens aren’t showing enough gratitude for the meager attention he’s given them.

It’s not hard to figure out why. These are not his voters and they are making him look bad. As the mayor of San Juan tweeted in response to his appalling comments:

Health & fitness for office by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 13, 2017

Health & fitness for office
by Tom Sullivan

The Master of Disaster wants to take a wrecking ball to the signature achievement of his predecessor, the Kenyan Usurper. His Hill colleagues having failed to repeal and replace Obamacare, he uncapped his mighty pen and set about the task on his own with yet another Executive Order. So badly does he want it killed, he almost walked out of his announcement without signing it. The Vice President had to call him back.

From the Washington Post:

The White House confirmed late Thursday that it would halt federal payments for cost-sharing reductions, although a statement did not specify when. Another statement a short time later by top officials at the Health and Human Services Department said the cutoff would be immediate. The subsidies total about $7 billion this year.

Trump has threatened for months to stop the payments, which go to insurers that are required by the law to help eligible consumers afford their deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses. But he held off while other administration officials warned him such a move would cause an implosion of the ACA marketplaces that could be blamed on Republicans, according to two individuals briefed on the decision.

This is part of the “synthetic repeal” Andy Slavitt, former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Obama administration, mentioned last week in a tweet storm last week.

It’s the slow sabotage of the system by people without a care for those harmed. The order includes recycled ideas that haven’t worked in the past.

From the New York Times:

In a joint statement, the top Democrats in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said Mr. Trump had “apparently decided to punish the American people for his inability to improve our health care system.”

“It is a spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America,” they said. “Make no mistake about it, Trump will try to blame the Affordable Care Act, but this will fall on his back and he will pay the price for it.”

Lawmakers from both parties have urged the president to continue the payments. Mr. Trump had raised the possibility of eliminating the subsidies at a White House meeting with Republican senators several months ago. At the time, one senator told him that the Republican Party would effectively “own health care” as a political issue if the president did so.

Jonathan Chait observes that sabotage would be unnecessary if the system truly were imploding as advertised (by the GOP):

The exchanges in 2017 had stabilized financially, as insurers found a profitable price point. The Republican Party has, as a matter of theological principle, refused to accept the possibility that Obamacare might succeed at its stated ends. If Obamacare were truly collapsing, sabotage would not be necessary. It is the law’s success, not its failure, that has made Trump so determined to wreck it.

********************

In press photos from yesterday’s signing, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina’s 5th District features conspicuously in front next to the sitting president. Foxx is not on any committees with oversight of health care and has never been prominent in health care debates, so why she was there is a mystery.

Or maybe not, as Howie reminded readers this week:

… most people outside of North Carolina who have ever heard of this unfortunate batshitcrazy extremist just know Virginia Foxx for her tight embrace of bigotry and radical right buffoonery. In North Carolina, everyone knows she hates immigrants and she hates gays and she hates… well… she sure hates public education. She just doesn’t believe in it. Like so many Republicans, she doesn’t think education is for everyone, just for the wealthy. So it’s completely appropriate that this year, she’s fighting for her political life against Jenny, a dedicated public school teacher.

That would be my friend Jenny Marshall. Jenny has been working the district hard since serving as a Sanders organizer and delegate to the 2016 DNC convention.

You can help Jenny help Virginia Foxx find her way back to Watauga County at Blue America.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Even his charge of “fake news” is projection

Published by digby on October 13, 2017
Even his charge of “fake news” is projection

by digby

As Trump tries to silence the mainstream media for “fake news” check out what’s actually happening:

On an otherwise regular morning in mid-August, viewers in Providence, Rhode Island were treated to a segment called Behind the Headlines with Mark Hyman, which immediately followed the local weather report. 

“We have the greatest health care in the world,” Hyman says, despite the fact that some 27 million people in the U.S. do not have health insurance, and millions more are underinsured. 

“Did Obamacare make us healthier? No,” Hyman declares. “With Obamacare in place, more Americans are dying than ever before. Now this doesn’t mean Obamacare is killing people, but it does mean that Obamacare isn’t making people healthier.”

The connection between Obamacare and a higher mortality rate has no correlation whatsoever, and experts actually cite more car crashes, drug overdoses, and gun deaths as the driving reasons for that rate — not Obamacare. 

And despite the fact that millions of people in the United States are under- and uninsured, the Affordable Care Act has given an estimated 20 million people access to health insurance. Access to care saves lives, not the opposite.
Despite his concession that higher mortality rates don’t mean Obamacare is killing people, Hyman ends his segment with the conclusion that “government-directed health care can kill.” 

Hyman’s segment, which runs daily between a minute and a half and two minutes long, is one of several must-run “news” segments that spread misinformation, echo Trump administration talking points, and function as nationalist and right-wing propaganda. 

Sinclair often defends the must-run segments by arguing that they don’t take up much time, but the short packaging is part of what makes the programming so insidious. They’re slotted into local newscasts easily and not clearly marked as opinion or required programming.
The segments run on 174 stations currently owned by Sinclair, which is aggressively expanding. 

Approval of Sinclair’s acquisition of Tribune Media Company is currently pending. Should the deal be approved, it would add 42 stations to Sinclair’s empire, and the broadcasting company would reach 87.3 million homes. Nielsen estimates 119.6 million households in the U.S. own a TV. 

And the massive expansion, which would reach 72 percent of U.S. households, wouldn’t have been possible without the Trump administration. Congress has imposed a 39 percent cap — and Sinclair already reaches about 38 percent of households. 

Last spring, Trump’s FCC Chairman Ajit Pai reinstituted a loophole that allows broadcasting networks to cover more than the Congressionally-instituted cap. Pai says he never discussed the Sinclair deal with Trump and said in a letter to House Democrats that the FCC has “not been fueled by a desire to help any particular company.” 

But the deal, should it be approved, could be a boon for Trump. 

The short journey from the Trump White House to cable news 

One of the must-run segments is anchored by a former Trump adviser, Boris Epshteyn, who consistently shares misleading talking points and echoes misinformation from the Trump administration under the guise of “political analysis.” 

Epshteyn is a central figure in the Trump universe. He served as a senior adviser to Trump during the campaign and made the rounds on cable news for the then-candidate. After Trump won, Epshteyn took a role in the White House, where he worked for three months. 

During his short tenure, Epshteyn authored the White House’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, which failed to mention any of the Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. 

Last month, Epshteyn was questioned by Congress as part of the Russia investigation. His segment, The Bottom Line, is fed into local newscasts across the country daily. 

In a recent segment about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Epshteyn calls Obama’s executive action “wrongful overreach,” and says Trump’s decision to rescind the program with a six-month delay is “the correct approach.”

Here are couple of segments:

More examples at the link. Chilling…

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These Russian bots are really something

Published by digby on October 12, 2017

These Russian bots are really something

by digby

I’m joking. This just shows that there is a real organic neo-fascist movement in this country. And this is certainly creepy although I drove through that area not too long ago and there were a LOT of Trump signs and confederate flags so it’s not totally surprising.

Thousands of people in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, this week opened their mail to find vile and disturbing neo-Nazi flyers.

The white supremacist(s) behind the mass mailing appeared to have scoped out neighborhoods in three towns: East Greenville, Red Hill and Pennsburg.

East Greenville Police Chief Andrew Skelton told HuffPost that a resident with a Philadelphia Eagles flag in their front yard got an envelope addressed to “Eagles fan.” Another envelope, addressed to “Proud American,” was sent to a resident with an American flag in their front yard. And another envelope, addressed to “Intrepid Gardener,” was sent to a resident often seen gardening in their front yard.

Get ready:

The flyers come two months after a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — the largest such rally in over a decade — drew attention to a resurgent and emboldened white supremacist movement in the United States.

Marilyn Mayo, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said flyer campaigns like this are designed to “promote white nationalism and anti-Semitism.”

The ADL, Mayo said, has documented a “huge recruitment drive” by white supremacist groups in recent months that includes coordinated flyer campaigns in towns across the country, primarily on college campuses.

It’s unclear why this part of Pennsylvania, halfway between Philadelphia and Allentown, was targeted. Skelton, the police chief, said he had consulted with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office, which told him the mass mailing didn’t amount to a crime.

A report by NBC10 estimated that 5,000 flyers were sent out in total. Allyson Sanders, 30, received one of those flyers at her Pennsburg home Tuesday afternoon.

Inside the envelope — addressed simply to “Head of Household”— was a flyer featuring an apparently non-white man holding a knife to the throat of a white man in a business suit.

“‘Multicultural’ USA’,” it read. “Felling Enriched?”

At the bottom of the flyer is the web address for The Right Stuff, a prominent white supremacist site, next to a Swastika in Confederate flag colors and what appears to be the logo for The Daily Shoah, a Right Stuff podcast.

I can’t imagine why there’s been a upsurge in white supremacy lately.

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Terrifying quote of the week

Published by digby on October 12, 2017

Terrifying quote of the week

by digby

His attitude is the only one that matters

I know I mentioned it yesterday but I’m just putting this out there for posterity because … well, we are in terrible danger:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think I have a little bit different attitude on North Korea than other people might have.

And I listen to everybody, but ultimately my attitude is the one that matters, isn’t it?

That’s the way it works. That’s the way the system is.

But I think I might have a somewhat different attitude and a different way than other people.

I think perhaps I feel stronger and tougher on that subject than other people, but I listen to everybody.

And ultimately, I will do what’s right for the United States and, really, what’s right for the world.

Because that’s really a world problem; that’s beyond just the United States.

That’s a world problem, and it’s a problem that has to be solved.

Don’t worry Mr President, it’s all about you

Published by digby on October 12, 2017

Don’t worry Mr President, it’s all about you

by digby

He can’t understand anything beyond his own experience so this is how they framed that notorious meeting at the Pentagon:

To be successful, Mattis and Tillerson decided they should use talking points and commentary with which they believed Trump would be most familiar: the role that the military, intelligence officers and diplomats play in making the world safe for American businesses, like The Trump Organization, to operate and expand abroad. American troops provide stability, diplomats push rule of law and anti-corruption measures and the intelligence community provides context and analysis that drive the first two, the briefers explained, according to the officials.

They should have offered the Trump Organization the mineral rights in Afghanistan. For all we know they did.

Even so, after that meeting ex-Exxon CEO Tillerson was so appalled that he called Trump a fucking moron. I’m going to guess this meeting wasn’t the first time he’d said it. In fact I’d love to hear the context for his remark. I’m guessing that someone said, “wow, do you think he understood what we were saying?” and Tillerson replied, “of course not, he’s a fucking moron.”

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Harvey, Irma and Maria — one of these is not like the other

Published by digby on October 12, 2017

Harvey, Irma and Maria — one of these is not like the other

by digby


There you have it:

In Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is still operating 50 Disaster Recovery Centers to help residents recovering from Hurricane Harvey.

In Florida, FEMA is  running 18 Disaster Recovery Centers to help residents there after  Hurricane Irma.

In Puerto Rico, 83% of the people living there — all U.S. citizens — remain without power after being hit by Hurricane Maria.
But President Trump threatened Thursday to withdraw FEMA, the military and other federal officials from the struggling island.

“We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!” the president tweeted.

Trump has already come under fire for the way his administration has responded to Hurricane Maria, which decimated Puerto Rico, compared to the way he handled Harvey and Irma.

The president tweeted or retweeted 25 times about Hurricane Harvey in the days leading up to the storm and the 48 hours after it made landfall. He tweeted about Irma 23 times during that timeframe. For Maria: the president sent two tweets.

Trump visited Texas four days after Harvey made landfall. He traveled to Florida four days after Irma made landfall. It took Trump 13 days to visit Puerto Rico after Maria made landfall.

In Texas and Florida, Trump spoke of the great job carried out by his administration, praised local officials for their hard work, and promised residents that the federal government would be there for the long haul.