Month: December 2017

Nunes supposedly recused himself, didn’t he? by digby

I thought after Nunes was caught playing Nancy Drew with the White House staff lastspring that he wasn’t going to be involved in the Russia probe. So what in the hell is this?

A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly — and perhaps criminally — mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans.

A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee’s high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven’t informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House’s general counsel.

The people familiar with Nunes’ plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence.

That final product could ultimately be used by Republicans to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether any Trump aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign — or possibly even to justify his dismissal, as some rank-and-file Republicans and Trump allies have demanded. (The president has said he is not currently considering firing Mueller.)

Republicans in the Nunes-led group suspect the FBI and DOJ have worked either to hurt Trump or aid his former campaign rival Hillary Clinton, a sense that has pervaded parts of the president’s inner circle. Trump has long called the investigations into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election a “witch hunt,” and on Tuesday, his son Donald Trump Jr. told a crowd in Florida the probes were part of a “rigged system” by “people at the highest levels of government” who were working to hurt the president.

The sources familiar with the separate inquiry said it was born out of steadily building frustration with the Justice Department’s refusal to share details of the way the Trump dossier was used to launch the FBI’s investigation of his campaign team last year — or whether it was the basis for any court-ordered surveillance of Trump associates.

The group is relying on the same documents and testimony provided by top Obama administration officials — such as former acting attorney general Sally Yates, former attorney general Loretta Lynch and former UN ambassador Samantha Power — who were grilled as part of the intelligence committee’s broader Russia probe.

It’s unclear how many members of the intelligence committee are participating in the side effort. Lawmakers on the full committee interviewed by POLITICO refused to discuss it.

“I don’t talk about what we do behind closed doors,” said Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who’s leading the intelligence committee’s bipartisan Russia probe. “I’m not going to talk about that,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), another member of the panel.

A congressional aide with knowledge of the meetings said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was not among the participants. ”While he does believe the FBI and DOJ have recently made decisions worth looking into, he is and will always be a defender of the FBI, DOJ and the special counsel,” the aide said.

Nunes’ office declined to comment about the effort, but he has aired his suspicions about the law enforcement agencies before.

“I hate to use the word corrupt, but they’ve become at least so dirty that who’s watching the watchmen? Who’s investigating these people?” he said in a Fox News interview earlier this month. “There is no one.”

The bad faith is breathtaking. Nunes has been working to cover up whatever Trump was up to from the beginning. The idea that he’s pretending to do oversight is beyond belief.

DOJ and FBI officials also declined to comment. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the FBI and Mueller’s team at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. “The special counsel investigation is not a witch hunt,” he said.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he wasn’t aware of the Nunes effort but said it fit with what he sees as an increasingly destructive bent in Republicans’ rhetoric and actions.

“I think what we are seeing in our committee … is an effort to attack the Department of Justice, an effort to attack the FBI, to attack Bob Mueller, is an effort to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what they’ll find and try to discredit them in advance,” he said. “It’s a pernicious thing to do that will ultimately inflict long-term damage on these institutions.”

The Nunes-led group is the latest evidence of an increasingly toxic and bruising confrontation between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the highest ranks of the justice system. Some Hill Republicans are irate about the Justice Department’s refusal to provide more details about its investigation of Trump associates’ ties to Russia. They’re also frothing over the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia dossier, which GOP lawmakers have openly mocked as “discredited” and “disproven.”

In recent weeks, GOP lawmakers have berated top Justice Department officials and threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress, and a couple of rank-and-file members described ongoing investigations of Trump associates in startling terms — including as a potential “coup” attempt. On Wednesday, Fox News reported that Nunes intends to subpoena senior FBI agents connected to the dossier.

Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called for the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, to be replaced amid claims by Republicans of anti-Trump bias infecting the bureau. And Gowdy, the chairman of the House oversight committee, joined House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte on Tuesday to request interviews with senior FBI officials as early as Thursday — which some lawmakers say is the precursor to subpoenas.

I’m no apologist for the FBI. Most of them are conservatives. But the idea that they were acting as partisans on behalf of Democrats is absurd. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to these right wingers that FBI agents and other members of the intelligence community,who are hostile to say the least to that harridan Hitlery Clinton, may have uncovered evidence of crimes by Donald Trump. Actually, it has occurred to them and that’s exactly why they are are scrambling to help their Dear Leader cover it up.

It’s frustrating. But it’s important to remember that it was inevitable that some wingnuts would rally around Trump. Even in Watergate for all the mythic memories about the Republican party being true statesmen back in that golden time, most of the party in congress stuck with Nixon almost all the way to the end. They were out there, making the case that the Democrats were out to get Nixon all the way through.

This is a little bit extreme, what with the talk of coup and suggestions that the FBI wanted to assassinate Trump but that’s the difference between the Republicans of yesterday and today after years of insane propaganda from their hate radio and state media.

Update: More on Nunes’s cover up.

It’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers — digby

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Working digits no longer necessaryby digby

The big tax plan is done and the Republicans are taking their victory lap. They love them some Trump today. But according to GOP apostate Bruce Bartlett, they may have just had their way with him and have no more use for his (very tiny) “working digits.”

President Trump believes he has just won a great victory in Congress with final passage of huge tax cuts in sight. He should not be so cheerful; it could mark the beginning of the end for him and his party.

The reason is that signing the tax cuts and some judicial appointments were the only things Republicans in Congress ever needed Trump for. Republican insider Grover Norquist has long said that Republican presidents are just nuisances because they tend to muck up the finely tuned plans that Republicans in Congress have been working on for decades to downsize government. The perfect Republican president, he has always said, has enough working digits to sign his name on legislation and that’s it.

Trump himself is a perfect example of how Republican presidents screw things up. Republicans in Congress had for years a clever plan to abolish Obamacare and replace it with nothing. Of course, they always said they had a plan to replace it, but no one was ever told what it was. That’s because there was no replacement; it was all a lie, a fig leaf to get rid of Obamacare and, especially, the taxes that financed it.

Unfortunately, no one told Trump. He thought congressional Republicans had an Obamacare replacement ready to go the moment he took office. Trump messed up the plan by insisting that the Obamacare replacement be enacted simultaneously with the repeal legislation.

Except, there was no replacement and never any intention of having one. In the end, the Republicans failed.

Desperate for a win, Team GOP scheduled a game with its easiest opponent, the tax system. Again, there was no bill, and neither Trump nor Republicans in Congress paid the slightest attention to his campaign’s vague and contradictory promises.

Republicans also abandoned any pretense of doing actual tax reform. It appears that they simply sent out a call to every lobbyist in town asking for a tax wish list. When they added up all the provisions there was about $6 trillion in lost revenues over a decade. Then Republicans cast about for tax increases to reduce the net revenue loss to $1.5 trillion, the maximum loss they thought they could get away with.

The biggest revenue raiser was abolition of the deduction for state and local taxes. This provision mainly helps the states with relatively high taxes and large public sectors; namely, the blue or Democratically controlled states such as California. The reason is that federal deductibility lowers the effective burden of state and local taxes by the amount of one’s tax bracket. Republicans have long believed that this encourages excessive state spending and taxes.

Eventually, Republicans found $4.5 trillion in tax increases that would fall mainly on Democrats or that undermine Democratic programs such as Obamacare.

The extraordinary thing about the tax bill is that it has little support among the general public. Numerous polls have found roughly two-to-one opposition. This is quite amazing because tax cuts are like Christmas — everyone gets a present.

Republicans have been obsessed with getting the tax cuts over the finish line — racing to complete it in the dead of night because they can see the handwriting on the wall. Recent elections and polling data show Trump and the GOP with among the lowest approval ratings ever recorded.

They got the Holy Grail. They don’t really need anything else They can just coast until Democrats take over and they can start rending their garments over deficits to force them to cut back programs for their constituents. They certainly don’t need him anymore.

It’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers — digby

A year is enough?by digby

Remember this?

That was Nixon’s first State of the Union address after he fired Archibald Cox.

Mark Warner gave a speech on the floor of the Senate today. He’s not the hysterical type:

“Any attempt by this president to remove special counsel Mueller from his position or to pardon key witnesses…would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities. These truly are red lines.”

“I’m extraordinarily concerned because there does appear to be effort to undermine not only investigation, but law enforcement and FBI in general-there we get into uncharted territory where never seen this from either political party in past where you undermine validity of FBI.”

He’s right, there is. They’ve even got people on Fox saying that the FBI conspired to assassinate Trump.

Warner saying this means something. There must be a reason he felt the need to make this speech right now.

It’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers — digby

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What are these human rights you speak of?by digby

I wrote about our new (or rather old) approach to human rights for Salon this morning:
America has long had a disconnect between ideals and reality when it comes to human rights. After all, the country was founded on the idea of the inalienable right to life, liberty and happiness, even as it held slaves and stole the land of its Native inhabitants in a genocidal rampage. There were Red scares, Jim Crow, deportations, internment and mass incarceration, some of it still happening today. And that’s just what we did in our own country. Indeed, it’s obvious that throughout American history, our elegant paeans to freedom and liberty and the rights of man were not universally applied.

Progress on human rights seems to come in fits and starts and is commonly denied to minority populations as long as possible. Still, hypocrisy being the proverbial tribute vice pays to virtue, there is value in having ideals even if you don’t entirely live up to them. At least they remain alive and part of the dialogue. When a nation is the world’s only superpower, it especially behooves its leaders to make the effort to promote and adhere to such ideals as much as possible, lest the rest of the world gets the wrong idea and decides it is a menace they need to oppose. This is just common sense.

Most people think Jimmy Carter was the first to put human rights front and center in U.S. foreign policy. But that had actually been coming for some time, mostly from the Congress and at the behest of the public, which had been awakened by the Vietnam War to the downside of American power abroad. This included the ugly revelations about U.S. support for authoritarian right wing regimes around the world in the name of opposing Communism.

It’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers — digby

This is not normal people, not normal at allby digby

In fact, it’s Saddam, Quadaffi dictator style stuff:

Good Lord, you need to watch this. After Ben Carson’s Prayer, Mike Pence actually delivered a prayer of thanks to Trump. Must watch. pic.twitter.com/sAq9OQnQT9

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 20, 2017

And that was after this. Also not normal:

Ben Carson delivers the traditional cabinet session benediction. pic.twitter.com/PvZ3GLeOmn— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 20, 2017

We don’t usually have ceremonies where the cabinet sits with the president while he pats himself on the back for his greatness, slags his enemies and then listens while his sycophants pray and praise him.

It’s a personality cult.

Anyway…

It’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers — digby

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Yes, Virginia, your vote does matter
by Tom Sullivan

Virginia Delegate-elect Shelly Simonds.

Democrats here in 2012 won a county commission seat by 18 votes. There was a recount and a court case, of course. That surgically precise gerrymandering you’ve heard of? It split a college campus down the middle, wreaking havoc with students voting. Many had to vote provisionally until the Board could sort out on which side of the district line they slept at night.

T-partiers argued before the local Board of Elections that the students’ votes should not count anyway. (You ain’t from around here, err ye?) The Board chair quoting statute chapter-and-verse didn’t phase them. Symm v. United States didn’t matter. The law should be what they thought it should be, since the law as-written didn’t work to their advantage. After a coed stood up to speak for the students, one T-partier flashed a handwritten sign at her: “You are a law breaker.”

The story is legend on the campus of Warren Wilson College, actor James Franco’s alma mater. But Virginia just topped it:

NEWPORT NEWS — The balance of power in Virginia’s legislature turned on a single vote in a recount Tuesday that flipped a seat in the House of Delegates from Republican to Democratic, leaving control of the lower chamber evenly split.

The outcome, which reverberated across Virginia, ends 17 years of GOP control of the House and forces Republicans into a rare episode of power sharing with Democrats that will refashion the political landscape in Richmond.

It was the culmination of last month’s Democratic wave that had diminished Republican power in purple Virginia.

Democrat Shelly Simonds is the apparent winner in the 94th House District, upsetting Republican David Yancey in a district that represents part of Newport News. A three-judge panel is set to certify the results today. New York magazine’s Benjamin Hart reminds readers Democrats won more of the popular vote in November and would control the state assembly outright if not for gerrymandering.

You’d hate yourself if you were the one who didn’t vote, now wouldn’t you?

* * * * * * * *

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

It’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Ady Barkan, a hero for our timeby digby

Disabled people are being arrested protesting these tax cuts that are obviously designed to reward millionaires and lay the groundwork for destroying the social safety net, also known as the Republican Agenda:

Ady Barkan sat in a wheelchair on Capitol Hill, his words amplified by a human megaphone. His voice weak from the effects of the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the 34-year-old activist was flanked by fellow organizers protesting the GOP tax bill in the Hart Senate building, who repeated him in unison.

“I have ALS. I am dying,” Barkan said. “But when we come together our voices echo so loud through the halls of Congress, out to the Supreme Court, up Pennsylvania Avenue, all the way to Wall Street.”

A few minutes later, Barkan was arrested by Capitol police for his role in the protest. As he was led away, he walked slowly, leaning on a cane for support. Barkan is no stranger to activism; he’s worked for the progressive group Center for Popular Democracy for five years. But ever since his ALS diagnosis last year, his fight against the GOP tax bill has become deeply personal.

ALS is a terminal neurodegenerative disease that causes a person’s muscles to atrophy. The symptoms vary from person to person; some lose their speech first, while others’ mobility lapses first. ALS patients typically die within three to five years of their diagnosis. Others, including renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, live for decades with the disease.

Barkan was diagnosed with ALS in October 2016, about three months after he noticed his left hand was too weak to shuffle a deck of cards. Before then, he was a healthy young father who went for runs regularly. In the past year, his disease progressed rapidly, limiting his ability to walk or move his arms. He can no longer pick up his son Carl, a toddler with a curly head of hair who recently started to walk and talk.

Eventually, Barkan will need a ventilator to help him breathe and a feeding tube after he’s no longer able to swallow food on his own.

“If I can’t get a ventilator, I won’t live,” he said. “It’s expensive to have a ventilator and have the care you need to accompany it.”

In recent weeks, Barkan has become the face of the protest movement against the GOP tax bill. Unlike the fight over Obamacare repeal, the tax debate has been more challenging for activists to message around. To many people, tax cuts for America’s corporations and wealthy are abstract, even if they are unpopular. Congressional Republicans, desperate for a big legislative “win” this year, are charging ahead. But it’s people like Barkan who are trying to remind lawmakers that the tax bill has real and human consequences — in his case, through potential cuts to Medicare the bill could trigger.

Barkan’s remaining time is limited, and he’s using it to fight.

“Everything is harder,” Barkan said. “Getting in and out of the van where they put you, getting up and down from the chair to walk to fill out my Miranda rights form. Carrying my stuff back to the hotel from the jail. Standing in the cold last night. But those are minor problems at the moment.”

It is an abomination that anyone in this rich country should even have to think about losing health care.They are giving millions away to people who are already rich today, people who have so much money they cannot possibly spend it all.

It breaks my heart that Barkan has been dealt the card he’s been dealt but he is an inspiration.

It’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers — digby

Trump’s amen cornerby digby

I think if there’s one thing about the Trump cult that has surprised me the most it’s not the racism or the naked authoritarianism. It’s the fact that his most zealous supporters are the religious right. It’s not that I believed they were all that sincere, but this level of cynical opportunism and hypocrisy is off the charts. Via Right Wing Watch:

Donald Trump wasn’t exactly the dream candidate of the Religious Right. Throughout the Republican primary contest, many in the social conservative movement urged voters to pick what one group of anti-choice activists called “anyone but Donald Trump.”

But once it became clear that Trump was going to win the GOP nomination, he started aggressively courting the evangelical Right, including holding a massive meeting for Religious Right leaders in New York that many cite as a turning point for their support. On the day of that meeting, Trump announced the formation of an evangelical advisory board that included Religious Right leaders including James Dobson and Michele Bachmann. Trump’s selection of Mike Pence as his running mate sealed the deal for many on the Religious Right. Trump’s “amen corner” of prosperity gospel preachers and domininionists eventually expanded to include the large share of Religious Right leaders, who offered various theological explanations for their embrace of a morally flawed candidate.

Once he was elected—with 80 percent of the white evangelical vote—Trump kept his evangelical advisory board intact and promised to give it unprecedented access to the White House. He stacked his Cabinet with friends of the Religious Right, including Tom Price at Health and Human Services, Betsy DeVos at Education and Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development. Far-right pastor Ralph Drollinger worked with Trump’s transition team to set up weekly Bible studies for Trump’s Cabinet members. The conservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society vetted potential judicial nominees.

The White House continues to hold weekly calls with evangelical advisory board members. Conservative leaders also receive a weekly email from the White House compiling “highlights for—and requests for action from—the conservative world.” And Religious Right leaders report enjoying an open door with the Trump administration. Former Southern Baptist Convention official Richard Land told The New York Times that conservative evangelical leaders have a “regular, ongoing and continuing dialogue” with the administration.

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins said in August, “I’ve been to the White House I don’t know how many more times in the first six months this year than I was during the entire Bush administration.” The Susan B. Anthony List’s Marjorie Dannenfelser said she visited the White House seven times in Trump’s first 100 days in office. Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said in September, “I’m told from people before me that even under George W. Bush, we didn’t have this kind of access. It certainly is unprecedented and we’re very grateful.” Land gushed about evangelicals having “unprecedented access” to the White House, adding that there “are more evangelicals in this administration as personnel than any administration in my lifetime.”

In exchange for access and help on their policy priorities, Trump has earned the love of the Religious Right. Some called his election a miracle. Others determined that he must have personally come to Christ. Many have gone to bat for Trump’s most controversial comments and positions. An early campaign faith adviser started a group called POTUS Shield that is dedicated to shielding the president from spiritual attack.

This was the year the Religious Right moved into the White House.

Trump, the racist, self-dealing, sex-obsessed, pussy-grabbing, tax cheating, con-artist and gambler with other people’s money is their man. And nothing can shake their “faith” in him.

Unless they are welcoming him as the antichrist in the hopes that Jesus is on his way, there is no explanation for this. He proves that they have no morals. It’s an astonishing display of rank tribalism which proves this particular faction is not about religion at all. So maybe we can stop pretending it is?

Anyway, for the rest of us heathens it’s the Holiday Season and if you feel like putting a little something in the Hullabaloo Christmas stocking this year it would be much appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers — digby

The Holy Grail of millionaire tax cutsby digby

As the congress votes to give the wealthy a tax cut windfall at the expense of everyone else, the nation looks on in disgust:

With the House of Representatives set to vote on the Republican tax reform bill Tuesday before sending it to the Senate and then the President’s desk for signing on Wednesday, the plan faces growing opposition and a widespread perception that it will benefit the wealthy more than the middle class, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

Opposition to the bill has grown 10 points since early November, and 55% now oppose it. Just 33% say they favor the GOP’s proposals to reform the nation’s tax code.

Two-thirds see the bill as doing more to benefit the wealthy than the middle class (66%, vs. 27% who say it’ll do more to benefit the middle class) and almost four in 10 (37%) say that if the bill becomes law, their own family will be worse off. That’s grown five points since early November. Just 21% say they’ll be better off if the bill becomes law.

More than six in 10 (63%) see the tax bill as leaving the President and his family better off. Just 5% think it harms the Trump clan. And disapproval of the President’s handling of taxes has risen six points in the last month, to 57%.

And:

President Donald Trump, the bill’s salesperson-in-chief, lands at an overall 35% approval rating in this poll, his worst mark yet in CNN polling by one point. Trump’s approval ratings continue to be the lowest for any modern president at this point in his presidency. As of December of their first year in office, all first-time elected presidents back to Eisenhower have approval ratings of 49% or higher except for Trump.

But nothing will stop them from their quest to put more money in the pockets of rich people. It’s their reason for living. If the average losers out there don’t understand that rich people are the only ones who matter who cares? The base will stick as long as their leaders continue to demagogue all the people they hate and the donors will be ecstatic and that’s all that matters.

This is yet another awful day in our ongoing nightmare. But it won’t be as bad as the day they start whining about the deficit they are exploding. Oh wait they already are.

They are insane. That’s all there is to it. Holy grail? Holy hell…

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

If you would like to drop something in the old Christmas stocking it would be much appreciated.

cheers — digby

You knew they’d say there was voter fraud didn’t you?by digby

I know this will come as a big shock to everyone but the Alabama Secretary of State is very concerned:

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill is investigating a concern over potential voter fraud in last Tuesday’s special Senate election.

It all stems from a brief interview FOX10 News Reporter Kati Weis conducted at the Doug Jones victory party on election night when a young man made a comment that has now gone viral on social media.

The interview took place just minutes after the race had been called.

While live on air, in the middle of the crowded party, Kati walked up to a number of jubilant supporters at random, asking them for their reactions to the big win.

But, it was this question and answer that has caused controversy:

“Kati: Why are you excited to see this victory? Man: Because, we came here all the way from different parts of the country as part of our fellowship, and all of us pitched in to vote and canvas together, and we got our boy elected!”

Merrill said he is trying to find out who the man is, and if he really meant what he said, or if he only misspoke.

“Well, it’s very disconcerting when someone who’s not from Alabama says that they participated in our election, so now it’s incumbent upon us to try to identify this young man, to see what kind of role he played, if it was to simply play a canvassing roll, or if he was part of a process that went out and tried to register voters, or if he himself actually became a registered voter,” said Merrill.

That’s right. This one remark is resulting in an investigation into voter fraud because idiots have made it go viral.

Meanwhile, Roy Moore is collecting money for a “recount” which I’m sure will be used for something much more useful to him personally.

It’s fundraiser time! If you’d like to put a little something in the Christmas stocking it would be most appreciated.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!