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Month: April 2018

Flim Flam Fascist

Flim Flam Fascist

by digby

Krugman on Ryan:

Look, the single animating principle of everything Ryan did and proposed was to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. Can anyone name a single instance in which his supposed concern about the deficit made him willing to impose any burden on the wealthy, in which his supposed compassion made him willing to improve the lives of the poor? Remember, he voted against the Simpson-Bowles debt commission proposal not because of its real flaws, but because it would raise taxes and fail to repeal Obamacare.

And his “deficit reduction” proposals were always frauds. The revenue loss from tax cuts always exceeded any explicit spending cuts, so the pretense of fiscal responsibility came entirely from “magic asterisks”: extra revenue from closing unspecified loopholes, reduced spending from cutting unspecified programs. I called him a flimflam man back in 2010, and nothing he has done since has called that judgment into question.

So how did such an obvious con artist get a reputation for seriousness and fiscal probity? Basically, he was the beneficiary of ideological affirmative action.

Even now, in this age of Trump, there are a substantial number of opinion leaders — especially, but not only, in the news media — whose careers, whose professional brands, rest on the notion that they stand above the political fray. For such people, asserting that both sides have a point, that there are serious, honest people on both left and right, practically defines their identity.

Yet the reality of 21st-century U.S. politics is one of asymmetric polarization in many dimensions. One of these dimensions is intellectual: While there are some serious, honest conservative thinkers, they have no influence on the modern Republican Party. What’s a centrist to do?

The answer, all too often, has involved what we might call motivated gullibility. Centrists who couldn’t find real examples of serious, honest conservatives lavished praise on politicians who played that role on TV. Paul Ryan wasn’t actually very good at faking it; true fiscal experts ridiculed his “mystery meat” budgets. But never mind: The narrative required that the character Ryan played exist, so everyone pretended that he was the genuine article.

And let me say that the same bothsidesism that turned Ryan into a fiscal hero played a crucial role in the election of Donald Trump. How did the most corrupt presidential candidate in American history eke out an Electoral College victory? There were many factors, any one of which could have turned the tide in a close election. But it wouldn’t have been close if much of the news media hadn’t engaged in an orgy of false equivalence.

Which brings us to the role of the congressional G.O.P. and Ryan in particular in the Trump era.

Some commentators seem surprised at the way men who talked nonstop about fiscal probity under Barack Obama cheerfully supported tax cuts that will explode the deficit under Trump. They also seem shocked at the apparent indifference of Ryan and his colleagues to Trump’s corruption and contempt for the rule of law. What happened to their principles?

The answer, of course, is that the principles they claimed to have never had anything to do with their actual goals. In particular, Republicans haven’t abandoned their concerns about budget deficits, because they never cared about deficits; they only faked concern as an excuse to cut social programs.

And if you ask why Ryan never took a stand against Trumpian corruption, why he never showed any concern about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, what ever made you think he would take such a stand? Again, if you look at Ryan’s actions, not the character he played to gullible audiences, he has never shown himself willing to sacrifice anything he wants — not one dime — on behalf of his professed principles. Why on earth would you expect him to stick his neck out to defend the rule of law?

According to Politico, Ryan has “Trump fatigue”. Poor, poor baby. He’s only the third most powerful man in the government.

[He] has frustrated and disappointed some of the speaker’s friends and allies. They cringed watching him waste the goodwill he had earned. They worried that Trump’s recklessness, and the inevitable guilt by association, would come to define Ryan’s time in politics more than the policies he championed or the way in which he conducted himself. And they came to understand that history will likely be unsympathetic to Ryan’s predicament. “Paul had a responsibility to try and get as much done as he could with Trump as president, but also to control and contain the worst instincts of Trump. And that proved to be an impossible task,” Wehner said. “Did Paul do everything right? I’m sure he would say that he didn’t. I think it was an anguished time for him.”

In truth, it’s an anguished time for many in the GOP. Ryan is far from the only Republican to walk this tightrope, juggling grave concerns about Trump with the desire to keep the peace and achieve policy results, all while keeping their donors and constituents happy. It’s just that Ryan has a higher profile—and faces his reckoning with history sooner than others.

Oh boo hoo hoo. Trump is the real Joh Galt. He’s even a “builder.” How do you like him now?

Inopportunity knocks by @BloggersRUs

Inopportunity knocks
by Tom Sullivan


Lewis “Scooter” Libby

Bloomberg’s Natasha Bertrand last night raised my eyebrows when she casually suggested Donald Trump may have tried “bribing” people testifying to the grand jury. The reference was to the grand jury in the Russia investigation and a story NBC broke Thursday afternoon.

Special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators decided they could move forward with a final report in the Russian election interference probe without interviewing President Donald Trump. Months of talks with the White House broke down after the FBI raid Monday of the office of Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. The prospect of the real estate baron lying to federal investigators about what they will already know from the Cohen files made Trump’s sitting down for an interview with the FBI that much more risky.

Instead, investigators believe they already have enough to move forward to a report based on four findings suggesting obstruction of justice (emphasis mine):

Three sources familiar with the investigation said the findings Mueller has collected on Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice include: His intent to fire former FBI Director James Comey; his role in the crafting of a misleading public statement on the nature of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son and Russians; Trump’s dangling of pardons before grand jury witnesses who might testify against him; and pressuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Mueller would then likely send a confidential report to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Russia investigation. Rosenstein could decide whether to make the report public and send its findings to Congress. From there, Congress would then decide whether to begin impeachment proceedings against the president, said two of the sources.

The New York Times first reported in late March that in discussions with their attorneys now-former Trump attorney John Dowd had suggested pardons for former advisors Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. The report raised questions of whether the Trump team “was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation.” It was not clear then whether Trump was aware of the pardons discussion beforehand.

As if to punctuate the point, ABC later reported later Thursday that Trump has already signed off on plans to issue a pardon to “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. A jury convicted Libby in 2007 of lying to the FBI and obstructing justice in the Valerie Plame affair. President George W. Bush later commuted Libby’s sentence, but did not issue a pardon.

The Libby pardon has been months in the planning, reports ABC. But it gives the appearance the Trump White House offered Flynn and Manafort a presidential “Get Out Of Jail Free” card in exchange for noncooperation with the Mueller investigation. That the Libby story appears hours after news that pardons for those who might testify against Trump forms one basis for an obstruction of justice charge is at best inopportune.

Asha Rangappa, senior lecturer at Yale University and former FBI agent told Vox in March, “Attempting to use the pardon power in this manner could constitute obstruction of justice, witness tampering, or even bribery, and would be an abuse of power, plain and simple.”

Trump’s habit of buying people’s silence appears to have prompted the FBI’s raid of Cohen’s office in the first place. It is his go-to move. He’s just more skilled at doing it with funny money.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Arming Teachers: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by tristero

Arming Teachers: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

by tristero

Arming teachers: what could possibly go wrong? Plenty, but I gotta admit, I’d never thought of this:

A teacher from the Florida high school where 17 people were shot dead two months ago has been arrested after leaving his gun in a public toilet. 

Sean Simpson, 43, absentmindedly left the loaded weapon inside a cubicle, says Broward County Sheriff’s Office. 

It was found by a homeless man who fired a bullet into the wall before Mr Simpson snatched it from his hands. 

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School teacher previously said he was open to the idea of arming teachers. 

Mr Simpson told police on Sunday he realised he had left the legally registered pistol in the toilet at the Deerfield Beach Pier after hearing a single gunshot. 

After running back to the bathroom, the science teacher encountered a homeless man holding the gun, who, he added, appeared drunk. 

Police arrested Mr Simpson and Joseph Spataro, 69, at the scene. 

Mr Simpson was charged with failing to safely store a firearm, and was released after paying a $250 (£175) cash bond. 

Mr Spataro, who told police he fired the Glock 9mm handgun to see if it was loaded, was charged with firing a weapon while intoxicated and trespassing.

“It wasn’t a credible story”

“It wasn’t a credible story”

by digby

From the New Yorker:

Sharon Churcher, one of the lead A.M.I. reporters on the story, told me, “I do not believe that story was true. I believed from the beginning it was not true.” Other employees at A.M.I. had questions about Sajudin’s credibility.

They are trying to say that prevented them from publishing …

lol.

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“Throw a little gas and everyone goes crazy…”

“Throw a little gas and everyone goes crazy…”

by digby

I’ve mentioned this before in recent days but I think it’s important that everyone recalls how Trump really feels about chemical warfare when we hear his minions go on about how morally offended he is by such acts:

Assad is killing terrorists and “throwing gas” and you can bet Trump actually admires him for that too. His motives for bombing or withdrawal, either of which he announces on odd and even days, are governed by his disordered mind which deep down only knows one thing: domination.

This is who he is. Trying to pin some kind of ideology on him like populism or isolationism is a fools errand.

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Trump’s campaign to threaten and silence women is coming unraveled

Trump’s campaign to threaten and silence women is coming unraveled

by digby

This article in Vox speculates that the Feds came across evidence of a campaign to threaten and pay hush money to people who had information about Trump’s sexual issues

Three days after the FBI raided Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office, one clear possibility of what they were looking for is beginning to emerge.

That possibility is this: investigators suspect there was a major, potentially illegal, off-the-books spending operation aimed at making problems for Donald Trump’s campaign go away — and they’re wondering what Trump himself knew about it, or even whether he orchestrated it.

Consider the following. Agents wanted information on Cohen’s payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels. They wanted information Cohen might have on a payment of $150,000 to Karen McDougal, shelled out by the National Enquirer’s parent company. They wanted information on a potential effort to prevent the release of Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” tape.

More broadly, the search warrant asked for Cohen’s communications with Trump himself, and other Trump associates, about “potential sources of negative publicity” before the election. It also asked for all communications between Cohen and two top National Enquirer figures, David Pecker and Dylan Howard.

Consider also the Washington Post’s report that Cohen is under investigation for “possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations,” along with the background information that raiding a lawyer’s office and targeting his communications with his client is an extremely serious matter unlikely to be carried out lightly.

Now recall, per Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, that Steve Bannon has bragged the Trump campaign “took care” of about “a hundred women.” (I’m assuming that number is hyperbole, but here’s what Bannon said.)

Bannon had previously bonded with [Marc] Kasowitz when the attorney had handled a series of near-death problems on the campaign, including dealing with a vast number of allegations and legal threats from an ever growing list of women accusing Trump of molesting and harassing them.

… “Look, Kasowitz has known him for twenty-five years. Kasowitz has gotten him out of all kinds of jams. Kasowitz on the campaign — what did we have, a hundred women? Kasowitz took care of all of them.”

We now know how two women — Daniels and McDougal — were taken care of by Trump’s allies: they were paid off with a combined $280,000. We’ve also learned of an earlier payment from the same media company that paid McDougal: $30,000 to hush up a former Trump building doorman who claimed he knew about a Trump love child.

Viewed together, all this looks a bit like a shadowy and very well-funded effort to hush up problems for Trump — one that certainly does not seem to have abided by campaign finance disclosure and contribution limit laws. And it leaves several more questions.

How many other, similar payments were there? For instance, the search warrant reportedly seemed to allude to efforts to prevent the Access Hollywood tape from coming out — if that happened, what did it entail?

Where exactly, was this money coming from? Solely Michael Cohen and American Media Inc., as claimed? Does it trace back to Trump himself, or companies controlled by him? The Trump campaign? Or could funds be coming from some other wealthy figure?

And if the funds aren’t coming from Trump, then why are others doing these extremely expensive favors for a billionaire presidential candidate? Were they looking to be repaid later on? Seeking “leverage” over him, as the Associated Press hypothetically suggests? None of the possibilities look good.

To be honest, I don’t care much about Trump paying hush money for consensual affairs, per se. He’s a sexual sleazebag, to be sure, but extra-marital affairs aren’t matters of state, they are civil matters at best. If there were threats of violence or some kind of criminal payment scheme then they should have thought twice before doing it because when someone decides to run for president their life becomes an open book. Trump was able to flout that convention more than anyone in history but it was always going to be revealed one way or the other.

If he was paying off people to keep quiet he was tremendously vulnerable to blackmail. And considering the multiple accounts of sexual aggression and assault as well as his bragging on the subject, it’s probable that he’s silenced some women from coming forward with actual crimes.

Trump’s treatment of women was an issue in the campaign but it came too late in the cycle to really stick and frankly, I don’t think most people gave a damn. It was a bros vs hos elections and the bros, unsurprisingly, won. However, things have changed since then. The nation has had its consciousness raised about this behavior, some of which is attributable to the spectacle of a president being elected despite admitting to sexual assault and the ensuing #MeToo movement that exposed the ubiquitous nature of it.

We don’t know how many women Trump’s “fixer” has silenced either with money or threats or both. But we may find out now. Anyone with Trump’s history and half a brain would have thought twice about running for president in the first place. He doesn’t even have half. His ego takes up all nthe space where his brain should be.

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Politics and Reality Radio: A Political Scientist Says Dems Need to Start Fighting Dirty for American Democracy

Politics and Reality Radio: A Political Scientist Says Dems Need to Start Fighting Dirty for American Democracy

with Joshua Holland

This week, we’re joined by David Faris, a political scientist at the Roosevelt Institute who authored a new book titled, It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. Faris argues that Republicans have exploited every institutional power to create an anti-democratic partisan electoral advantage, and Democrats need to fight fire with fire if they want to move the country forward.

Then we speak with Evan Weber, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, about the “Sunrise Semester” program — his organization’s plan to train dozens of young climate activists across the country to take time off to help save our planet.

Finally, we go back to the archives for an interview with Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University, about a fascinating and troubling study he conducted which found that a significant number of gun owners also have anger and impulse control issues. 

Playlist:
Cream: “SWLABR”
Rolling Stones: “She Smiled Sweetly”
Patsy Cline: “Back in Baby’s Arms”

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

The master negotiator at work

The master negotiator at work

by digby

Of course he is…

March 8, 2018:

Eleven Asia-Pacific countries have just signed the trade pact formerly known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Although the US pulled out last year, the deal was salvaged by the remaining members, who signed it at a ceremony in the Chilean city of Santiago.

Chilean foreign minister Heraldo Munoz said the agreement was a strong signal “against protectionist pressures, in favour of a world open to trade”.

The deal covers a market of nearly 500 million people, despite the US pullout.

In the absence of the US, it has been renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

Extraneous adjectives aside, its supporters say it’s hugely significant, and could be a model for future trade deals.

What does it do?
Its main purpose is to slash trade tariffs between member countries.

But it also seeks to reduce so-called non-tariff measures, which create obstacles to trade through regulations.

There are chapters which aim to harmonise these regulations, or at least make them transparent and fair.

There are also commitments to enforce minimum labour and environmental standards.

It also includes a controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism, which allows companies to sue governments when they believe a change in law has affected their profits.

Who’s in it?

In alphabetical order: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

The US is conspicuously absent.

Could he rejoin? Possibly. But being schmaht as a whip as he is, by pulling out they ended up doing this:

However, the revised agreement dropped about 20 of the original provisions (mostly those insisted on by the US), suggesting a US re-entry would require some intense negotiation.

Trump pulls out, they eliminate the provisions the Obama administration insisted upon and now Trump wants to rejoin. So the best case scenario is that he has to fight to bring it back to where it was but knowing him, the most likely outcome is that he’ll make it much worse. Great.

Sounds about right. Why anyone listened to him blather incoherently about trade and thought he knew any more than what he heard back in 2007 about the yellow peril buying up America, weren’t listening.

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Trump’s messages to Vladimir

Trump’s messages to Vladimir

by digby

I wrote about Trump, Bolton, Syria and Russia for Salon this morning:

If there has ever been anything one could call a Trump doctrine (other than “Bomb the shit out of ’em”) it would have to be “Don’t ever let anyone know what you are planning to do.” Donald Trump railed against Barack Obama and George W. Bush for announced pullouts from Iraq and Afghanistan, always showing by his comments that he had no understanding of, or respect for, treaties and diplomatic accords. He simply believes the U.S. can do what it wants, whenever it wants, in foreign countries. This is not surprising, since he also repeatedly insisted that the U.S. should be able to seize the natural resources of any country in which it has troops, either not caring or not understanding that doing so would be a war crime.

During the 2016 campaign, when asked about his plans to defeat ISIS, Trump said, “I don’t want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is,” and he has consistently reiterated his “surprise attack” doctrine as president, as he did last year:

I’m not going to tell you anything about what response I do. I don’t talk about military response. I don’t say I’m going into Mosul in four months – we’re going to attack Mosul in four months. Then three months later, we’re going to attack Mosul in one month. Next week, we are going to attack Mosul. Meantime, Mosul’s very, very difficult. You know why? Because I don’t talk about military, and I don’t talk about certain other things

He literally seems to believe that the only military tactics and strategies are surprise attacks, carpet bombing, civilian bloodshed and mass executions. Torture and wholesale slaughter is how you teach the enemy that they cannot defeat you. The more unpredictable this global superpower is (according to the Trump doctrine), the more the world will fear it and the more other nations will capitulate to its demands. It’s simple: Might makes right.

So it was actually something of a relief to see Trump impulsively tweet at Russia on Wednesday morning, warning that U.S. missiles would be coming at Syria. Whether the Russians will perceive this as a favor is not known, but Trump gave them plenty of time to re-evaluate their strategy and possibly engage in talks or some kind of delaying action. It’s not an optimal way to conduct military affairs, but it could be worse. Perhaps by warning his adversary, however impetuously, it will lead to less loss of life in an impoverished country already overwhelmed by violence and terror. That’s one reason why more thoughtful leaders announce their plans.

Unfortunately, this also confirms that Trump still doesn’t care about gathering allies to form a united front in these situations. Apparently, there had been no consensus reached among the NATO countries, much less the rest of the world, and the Pentagon had no idea that Trump was going to tweet out a threat to send missiles at Syrian targets.

How did this happen? Well, it’s reasonable to assume that Trump was watching “Fox & Friends” at about 6:15 a.m., when Brian Kilmeade said this:

This morning the Russian ambassador hopped on Lebanese TV and said, “If there is a strike by the Americans then missiles will be downed and we will even go to the source of those rockets. So they’re saying, ‘Don’t do it, and if you do do it, we’re coming after you.’”

Trump’s tweet was sent about half an hour later.

We don’t know if he consulted with anyone to confirm that the Russian ambassador in Lebanon actually said anything like that. If he asked his new national security adviser, John Bolton, whether he should fire back on Twitter, it’s likely he was told, “You go boy.” Most professionals would think it was inane for a president to use Twitter to threaten military action and that responding in such a way to some random diplomat’s purported ramblings was dangerous and stupid. But Bolton doesn’t care about international alliances either, and he’s likely very happy to see Trump get in Russia’s face, making it clear that Bolton is the new sheriff in town.

Trump seems to have regretted his outburst, however, but not because he showed his hand. The tweets he sent following the missile threat sounded almost conciliatory toward Vladimir Putin:

Somebody needs to tell him that the only “arms race” we are in is his race to spend the country into penury on unneeded military hardware.

Then Trump tried to shift the blame for any “issues” with Russia onto Robert Mueller’s investigation, which he may think was a clever deflection from his ill-considered threat but is actually quite revealing of his own state of mind:

It’s obvious that Trump is dying to bomb somebody, somewhere. But the only war that’s currently available is one in which Russia is deeply involved. No matter how much he is provoked and how impulsively he reacts in the moment, he finds it necessary to publicly backtrack and make clear that he doesn’t wish to personally antagonize the Russian president. To the extent he believes he must respond militarily to the gas attack in Syria, he’s trying to make it clear that it’s because of Democrats and Obama and Mueller and the Department of Justice and the media and everyone else who has created all this unpleasantness against his will.

Nobody buys this, of course, least of all Putin. Indeed, the Russian president may be enjoying the spectacle of Trump squirming as he tries to restrain himself from becoming the brutal, remorseless “war president” he is temperamentally suited to be — perhaps because he is hamstrung by something Putin knows and Mueller is close to finding.

I’m hard-pressed to see how more death in Syria will amount to anything positive. So I can only wish Trump luck in beating back his worst instincts, and Bolton’s advice, even if it is only because the president is terrified of whatever Putin might reveal about him. Creating some space for diplomacy or even just a pause in an unstable situation is better than thoughtless escalation. It’s hard to believe, but this is one time when Trump’s personal corruption may end up being a small service to mankind.

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Beyond insane

Beyond insane

by digby

Brian Stelter of CNN:

The other day I said that the line where Fox News ends and where President Trump begins is getting blurrier by the day. Trump illustrated this really well on Wednesday night. At 8:48pm, he tweeted out, “Big show tonight on @SeanHannity! 9:00 P.M. on @FoxNews.” Any reasonable person would wonder if the two men talked before showtime. Did Trump know what was coming? Hannity said no in a tweet directed at “the Fake news industrial complex:” He said Trump “was not given ANY heads up on my monologue.”